Death Angel's Shadow (12 page)

Death came again to Demornte. Nine gaunt horses beat their hooves with hollow echo through the silent streets of Demornte, past the overgrown fields, past the empty, staring houses, past the mocking smiles of skeletons. Death had returned to Demornte flying varied standards--idealism, sadism, duty, vengeance, adventure. New banners, but it was death that marched beneath them, and the omniscient eyes of the deserted houses, of the laughing skulls recognized death and welcomed it home.

Only nine men. Many had started, seasoned mercenaries hired with Gaethaa's wealth, adventurers drawn by the boldness of the mission, men of hate with festered scores to settle with Kane. But the way had been hard, and some had fallen on the trail, others had deserted when they thought more about the man whom they were seeking. At Omlipttei outlaws had mistaken them for a troop of the Lomarni guard; their ambush had slain many. And when they at last had reached Demornte, many had not trusted the triple spell which Cereb Ak-Cetee swore would protect them from the dreaded plague. They had tried to desert; Gaethaa had pronounced them traitors and thus servants of evil, and he had ordered all deserters executed. The fight had been short and vicious, for these were hardened warriors. At the end there were left only Gaethaa and eight of his men to ride to Sebbei, where Cereb Ak-Cetee's magic had shown Kane to be staying.

We are enough, said Gaethaa. We must not give this demon a chance to escape his doom. And so they had followed him into the ghostland of Demornte.

Gaethaa--called also Gaethaa the Crusader, the Good, the Avenger--had fallen heir to extensive baronial estates in Kamathae. As a boy he had spent most of his time in the company of his family's men-at-arms. He had grown to despise the pampered luxury and wasteful existence of his class, and to yearn for adventures like those the men talked of by the fires. At manhood he had resolved to use his wealth to fight the battles of the oppressed, to seek out and destroy the creatures of evil who preyed upon mankind. He was a fanatic in the cause of good, and once he had recognized a center of evil, he trampled over every obstacle that would hinder him from burning it clean. For several years he had marched forth against petty tyrants, evil wizards, robber barons, outlaw packs, and monsters human and inhuman. Always he had vanquished evil in the name of good, shackled chaos with law. And now he rode against Kane, a name that had always fascinated him, but which he had half regarded as legendary, until he began to realize the truth that lay in the fantastic tales of this man. Kane would be a magnificent challenge for Gaethaa the Crusader.

Alidore had followed him from the first. A younger son of impoverished Lartroxian gentry, he had left home early and had passed through Kamathae when Gaethaa was organizing his first mission. Gaethaa's idealism was mirrored in Alidore, and the young man had joined him with unfailing enthusiasm. Through all of Gaethaa's campaigns he had followed faithfully and fought bravely against all odds. Now he was Gaethaa's lieutenant and most trusted friend. Alidore would follow wherever his lord should lead and fight beside him with the same unfaltering zeal of idealism.

Cereb Ak-Cetee was a young wizard from the plains of Tranodeli. He looked like a gawking hayseed choirboy in his silken mage's cloak, but be was very far from harmless. Cereb needed wealth and experience before he could pursue his training to the not inconsiderable height of his ambitions. Gaethaa had noted the sorcerer's skill in penetrating defenses and ferreting out fugitives, and he paid Cereb handsomely for his services.

Next in rank--although Cereb's position was ambiguous--came Mollyl from the ill-famed island of Pellin in the Thovnosian Empire. Mollyl was a dark man who smiled only when another screamed in agony. His total lack of fear--perhaps he lost it in the exultation of killing--made him indispensable to Gaethaa in battle. Mollyl took Gaethaa's wealth, but he would probably follow him without pay, so long as his lord offered him new fields of delight.

Also from the Thovnosian Empire, but from the island of Josten, came Jan. Ten years ago when Kane's pirate feet had terrorized the island empire, Jan had seen his family butchered, and Kane himself had chopped off his right hand when Jan had tried to fight back against the raiders. Since then Jan had laced a padded base to the stump of his wrist, and from the base he could affix either a blunt hook or one with needle tip and razor-sharp inner curve. He had joined Gaethaa for vengeance.

Although aging, Anmuspi the Archer still boasted he could thread an axehead at a hundred paces. Few who had seen the mercenary shoot would care to call his boast. Anmuspi's luck had run out in Nostoblet in Lartroxia South. A palace revolution had failed, his employers were crucified, and Anmuspi was put on the slave block. Gaethaa had bought him after hearing the auctioneer proclaim his skill as an archer. For Anmuspi it meant only another shift in employers, and he followed Gaethaa's every command faithfully. For Anmuspi right and wrong were not his to question; obedience was his code.

Dron Missa was a footloose adventurer from far Waldann. His people were a warrior race, and even among them Missa excelled as a swordsman. Gaethaa promised him adventure, so Dron Missa had exuberantly come along for the ride.

Two others sought vengeance. One was Bell, a peasant from the Myceum Mountains. Bell was fully as stupid as he was brutal and powerful. Five years before Kane had sacrificed two of Bell's sisters as part of an ill-fated sorcerous experiment. Bell never tired of telling people what he planned to do to Kane someday.

Sed tho'Dosso listened carefully to Bell's descriptions of torture, for like Jan and Bell he had a score to settle with Kane. Several months previous when Kane had been organizing the desert raiders of Lomarn, Sed tho'Dosso had offered resistance on the grounds that he should lead since his band was the largest. Kane had peremptorily smashed Sed tho'Dosso's forces and had left the bandit chieftain staked in the sun to die. By a freak chance he had escaped death, and when he heard of Gaethaa's mission in crossing the Lomarn, Sed tho'Dosso eagerly joined him.

So they rode through Demornte, each man silent with his own thoughts. Death rode nine gaunt horses through the familiar streets of Demornte, and dead Demornte bade Death welcome.

The moon cast pale light upon Rehhaile's slender body as she watched Kane moodily toss stones into the lake beneath their perch. Goose pimples rose on her tanned skin, and she wriggled over the velvet moss of the bank to press her shivering form against his. His body was warm, though his mind was distant, and she rested her head against his shoulder in contentment.

Rehhaile did not share the gloomy apathy, the bitter despair of her people. She loved the sunlight while the others generally kept to their shops and houses. As a result her lean figure was tanned an even brown that matched her unbound hair, and there was a strong hint of freckles across her face. Her features were somewhat boldly shaped, although not to the point of losing femininity. Her breasts were small and firm, her hips slim--making her appear a few years younger than her twenty years.

Bunching her long fingers over the massive muscles of Kane's shoulders and back, she began to massage them, trying to shape the knotted muscles to the pattern of the ripples on the lake. Kane seemed to ignore her, but she reached out with her mind and sensed that she was drawing him into lazy arousal.

For Rehhaile was blind, her wide eyes altogether sightless. Her mother had died from the plague while Rehhaile yet lay in her womb. Her father had sworn that death should not take all from him, and a physician had quickly torn her from the dead womb. Both father and physician died of the plague within the week, but somehow Rehhaile had survived while all about her Demornte was seared by the plague. Someone had taken care of her, for Demornte was a land of motherless children and childless mothers. Later she made a living by whatever way she could, for the most part hanging around Sebbei's sole tavern.

But Rehhaile had been blind since birth. And yet she had in place of sight an infinitely more precious power of vision. Her macabre birth, a genetic mutation, some whim of the gods--the reason was unknowable and unimportant. She was given a psychic talent that provided a far more wondrous sense of perception than any human eyes could afford.

Rehhaile could reach out to link her own mind with another. Through this psychic contact she could share the other person's perception of his surroundings, in effect see through another's eyes, hear through his cars, feel through his fingers. And along with this sharing of sensory impulses, Rehhaile could actually sense the feelings of another mind--not so much read the thoughts, but experience for herself the myriad emotions that drift through the corridors of the mind. Her incredible talent to see into another human mind established Rehhaile as a sorceress in the eyes of the townspeople of Sebbei, and in their despair they accepted this without concern or curiosity.

Because she could perceive the emotional turmoil of others, Rehhaile shared the distress of that soul she touched. If there was pain, she tried to soothe it in whatever way she could. For the people of Demornte nothing could be done. Theirs was an inconceivable, inconsolable grief, and their emotions were a burned out wasteland that could never be healed. The people of Sebbei largely ignored Rehhaile just as they ignored everything except their bitter memories. Rehhaile lived with them because there was nothing else she could do. And in sharing their thoughts, she shared their joyless depression, a steeping in gloom that almost overwhelmed her own soul.

The rare travellers whom chance brought to Sebbei were a marvel to her. She bathed in the exotic colors of their thoughts, finding a universe of unimagined interest and vitality even in the mind of a stray camel driver. She often tried to persuade these strangers to take her along with them across the desert, but inevitably the knowledge of Rehhaile's witch powers would turn them cold to her appeal.

Then Kane had come to Sebbei, and she had experienced worlds of sensation unlike any she had ever imagined a human mind could hold. Kane had been a whirling labyrinth to Rehhaile. Most of his emotions were altogether alien to her, and many frightened her with their strangeness. But she had recognized the awful need for rest that screamed within him--the unaswerable longing for peace. So she had gone to him to minister to his agony in the arts that only she knew, and through the months of companionship they had known, it seemed to Rehhaile that the pain had somewhat dimmed within Kane.

She tugged a shock of red hair playfully. "Hey! What do you see down there in the pool?"

His mind was cold, far away. "Ripples on the water like the passing of years. Man enters life and there is a splash. His life sends out ripples--small ripples for a little man, huge waves for a great man--waves that overwhelmed the tiny ripples, wash them away or remold them. But in the end it is all the same, for the ripples go out into the lake of life and soon die away, to leave the lake smooth for new lives or stones."

She scratched lightly with her nails. "Make that up just now?"

"No. I heard that analogy from the sage Monpelloni whom I studied under in Churtannts." Rehhaile did not know that Churtannts had lain in ruins for over a century. "Only I don't fit the frame he proposed here. I'm something marooned on the surface of existence. Instead of a short splash, I keep floating there, struggling about and making an endless succession of waves."

"I can see you there. Like an old bat fallen in and flopping about the pool." She dug her nails in deeper. "Come back to me, Kane! Don't you love me?"

He rolled over so abruptly she nearly slipped off the bank. His cold blue eyes bored into her blind face. Those eyes--how they frightened her with the promise of death that lurked within! But now Rehhaile thought she sensed an even more haunted glare.

"No, Rehhaile!" He said with slow intensity. "Can't you understand! Your life is only a brief ripple across the pool, and mine is a constant flow of waves into infinity! Your ripple is only noted in passing and swept aside!"

She shivered with a coldness not of the wind. "And do you love me?" he returned.

"No!" she answered him softly. "For you there can be no love. I can only pity you and try to soothe that which can never be healed."

"I think you begin to understand," Kane said with a bitter laugh. Then soon they lay together under the pale moon. And about them the ghosts of dead Demornte slipped by unheeded.

"Their faces are as empty as the skulls we've passed!" commented Dron Missa, craning his long neck to stare down a seated townsman who stolidly watched them ride by. "Bunch of fish faces! I've eaten baked fish that had more intelligence in their boiled eyes than these cretins."

"Thought they ate only flesh in Waldann--raw flesh at that," scoffed Cereb Ak-Cetee.

Missa laughed unappreciatively. "Nothing wrong with raw flesh. Tastes good with a little salt. Once ate a squirrel raw on a bet--whiskers to tail with the thing still kicking. I've hated the little furry bastards ever since."

"How about keeping your mind on finding that tavern," interrupted Gaethaa caustically. His nerves had been on edge since entering Sebbei. Ruined cities were no novelty to him. But the utter lack of curiosity shown by the people was unnerving. Their indifference upon seeing a band of heavily armed strangers ride into their city was unsettling and something of a subtle insult.

The first person they encountered in this city of ghosts had been a disheveled fat man with a yellow streaked beard. He was sitting loosely before a stagnant fountain near the unguarded city gates. With a vapid expression he had watched their approach, then scurried off giggling when Alidore stopped to question him. It was not an auspicious welcome.

Several others that they met had turned away or closed their doors when hailed, and Gaethaa had grimly recalled the stories heard while crossing the Lomarn that in Sebbei there dwelled only ghosts and madmen. Still it seemed evident now that they would confront no organized opposition from the townspeople. This would make their mission one of more direct attack--Gaethaa had been prepared to use more subtle tactics should it have developed that Kane had established himself as ruler of the dead city.