The Trials of Trass Kathra (28 page)

“Look at you, Redigor – you’re struggling to survive every second, rotting, being eaten from within. Face it. You’re coming apart at the seams.”

“I will survive long enough.”

“Really? Because you know what it is that’s eating you alive? It isn’t the fact you don’t belong in a human body, it’s the fact that the body is that of a good, brave and honest man. A strong man. One who’s been fighting you every step of the way.”

“It’s been over a year, girl. Jakub Freel is gone.”

“You want to place a bet on that?”

Kali raised her gaze, addressing Redigor no longer but the Hel’ss Spawn that loomed beyond them both like a giant cowl.

“I’m willing to bet,” she went on, “that there’s
too much
of Jakub Freel left in this form for your bargain with this elf to ever work. I’m willing to bet that contact with it will leave you tainted, corrupted, as rotten to the core as he is. Because that’s
your
destiny this time around, isn’t it? Not to eradicate the Old Races but humans? And how can you do that if you help one spark of humanity to remain alive, even in a different form?”

The Hel’ss Spawn hung there, silent.

“This hybrid... this
freak
isn’t part of your natural order. The elves’ time has passed and we, the humans, walk this world. Humans you have returned to destroy. Isn’t there, then, no other choice but to destroy this man?”

Redigor laughed softly. “That is very clever but aren’t you forgetting something, Miss Hooper? If the Hel’ss takes it upon itself to destroy me, then your friend dies too. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want that to happen.”

Kali’s brow creased. “You’re right. I wouldn’t. If I could help it. But I can’t help it. And neither can Jakub Freel.”

She paused. This was the only part of her plan that was utterly out of her hands, and it depended very much on how good a judge of character she was.

“Isn’t that right, Freel?”

Redigor laughed louder. “What are you trying to do?
Talk
to him? Do you have any idea how deeply he is suppressed? How far away I have sent him?”

“I
said
,” Kali reiterated. “Isn’t that right, Freel?”

“Really, Miss Hooper, this is just –”

Redigor stopped. His eyes lost focus and he staggered. He snapped a look at Kali – venomous, hateful – and then as his face twisted in an attempt to prevent it, a single word was forced out from between his lips.

“Yyyyyyeeeeesssssss.”

“Hello, Jakub,” Kali said, smiling.

“No!” Redigor protested. Despite his vast age his voice sounded like that of a petulant child. “You will remain where you are!”

“What’s the matter, elf? Is it that you just can’t understand why someone might be willing to sacrifice themselves for a greater cause? You wouldn’t, would you, seeing as how you buried yourself the last time this bastard came around. Buried yourself while the rest of your people died. You called yourself a Lord? Well, let me tell you something – a Lord is as much responsible for the welfare of his people as their rule.”

“O-ho no, girl,” Redigor spat, barely able to stand. The wind whipped at his clothing, making cracking sounds. “I know what you’re doing. Trying to distract me while your friend reasserts himself. But it won’t work. I’ve come too far, done so much, to be halted now.”

“Yeah? Well then, why don’t we ask Jakub once more. Freel, tell the man. Tell him that if it stops what’s happening here, you’re more than willing to die.”

Redigor’s gaze snapped around him, as if seeking some defence from what threatened him. But there was no defence from that which came from within. He doubled over, clutching himself,,and from his mouth came words once more unbidden by himself. This time they came through gritted teeth, even more forced, and all the more determined.

“Damn. Right.”

“This... will... not... happen!” Redigor screamed. He span to face the still looming cowl of the Hel’ss Spawn. “This... human has been purged. He is nothing but an echo. You cannot touch me. I am
clean
.”

The Hel’ss Spawn, though, had clearly decided otherwise, and as Redigor turned, it pulled back from the clifftop as if from something horribly disfigured and diseased. Redigor opened his arms to it, pleading, and over the watery roaring of the entity Kali even heard him beg. Words she never thought she would hear from the First Enemy of the Final Faith.

Please
.
God
.

It was too late. Severed from the process, the alterations the Hel’ss Spawn had made to Freel’s body were already starting to reverse, the exotic, aquiline cut of his face, the thinning out and elongation of his limbs, the shape of his ears. And as all of these features became more human looking once more, the dark shapes that had roved his body like living tattoos returned to again consume him. Weakened, Redigor collapsed to his knees, and then onto his hands, on all fours, like a dog.

His gaze moved slowly up to meet the looming Hel’ss Spawn, his body trembling with a mix of fear and rage.

Before him, the Hel’ss Spawn rose to its full height, and both Kali and Redigor knew what was coming next.

Redigor’s whole body quaked.

“No!” he screamed. “I am Bastian Redigor of the Ur’Raney!”

Redigor’s head drooped, and his back heaved in great, wracking breaths. When, a second later, he looked up again, he spoke with a different voice.

“NO! I AM JAKUB TREMAYNE FREEL, PRINCE OF ALLANTIA. I AM HUMAN!”

Kali swallowed as the Hel’ss Spawn darted down, as quick as a snake, enveloping him and lifting him from the ground in an unbreakable embrace. As Redigor/Freel thrashed helplessly in its grip, Kali saw some discolouration as it started to leech his soul, and Redigor/Freel began to scream.

It was a scream of the damned and Kali wanted so much to turn away, but couldn’t. Freel had made the decision to sacrifice himself for the greater good and the least she could do was stay with him until the end. She steeled herself, therefore, as the Hel’ss Spawn continued to suck at its victim, contenting herself with the knowledge it would all be over very soon.

It was, though, taking
too long
. Longer to consume Redigor/Freel, and in a seemingly far more agonising way, than she had witnessed with any of the Hel’ss Spawn’s earlier victims.

Something was wrong.

Kali’s first instinct was to rush in, unable to allow herself to condemn Freel to this, but then she forced herself to stop.

What, she thought, if something wasn’t wrong?

What if something was
right
?

That had to be it, she realised. What was causing this was exactly what she’d said. She’d called Redigor a hybrid, a freak who belonged in neither the old world or the new, and when it came down to it, that was exactly what the Hel’ss Spawn was, too. The Hel’ss had left this spawn behind during its
last
assault on Twilight, when it had come for the elves and the dwarves, and that imperative had somehow remained with it. In other words, it was following the natural order of things, taking Redigor’s
elven
soul before it started to consume that of Freel the human.

Gods, if that were true, Kali thought, she could save Freel. But she didn’t have much time. She had to time this exactly right.

There was only one question. Time
what
exactly right?

Kali realised that she hadn’t a clue how she was going to get Freel out of this but, as usual, that didn’t stop her. As Freel/Redigor continued to scream, the elf’s essence continuing to be absorbed, she tensed, running every kind of scenario through her mind and coming up with nothing. But again, as usual, that didn’t stop her. There was a moment – a fleeting moment – where the Hel’ss Spawn seemed to pause, perhaps sated by elf and ready to begin consuming the human, and in that moment Kali roared and ran right at it.

She grabbed Freel about the waist, tore his body from the Hel’ss Spawn and, with legs pumping, took the two of them over the edge of the cliff, into the vertiginous drop towards the sea.

With the wind slapping at Kali like wet sheets of cloth, a more than little confused Freel struggled in her grip as his elven features began to fade. This was good. What was bad was that they were both plummeting towards the tempestuous sea crashing onto the rocks below. It was not an ideal situation to be in, but got instantly worse. Even as the two fell, another raging sea – the liquid form of the Hel’ss Spawn – came at them from the top of the cliff, plunging downward with the hunger and determination of a predator that had momentarily mislaid its prey. The entity roared as it came, and with both it and the sea closing on them at an ever increasing rate, it was like being trapped between two deadly, vertical jaws.

Kali wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or cheesed that Jakub Freel chose this particularly troubling moment to regain some awareness, staring at her in confusion.

“Kali Hooper?”

“All right, mate?”

The Allantian craned his neck, looking down, and then up, at the pursuing Hel’ss Spawn.

“Erm, we seem to be falling to our deaths while being chased by a... well, by a –”

“Yep,” Kali said. “Trying to deal with it.”

“I’m presuming that, as usual, you’re making this up as you go along?”

“Yep. Sorry.”

“Oh, please,” Freel managed, attempting to be polite but unable to disguise a slight break in his voice, “don’t be, don’t be...”

Kali narrowed her eyes. “I’m thinking,” she said, “that we could maybe separate and dive into those rock pools down there.”

“Yes,” Freel answered, totally unconvinced.

“Or perhaps angle our fall so that we glide – you know.”

“Perhaps.”

“Or –”

“We could pray?” Freel offered.

“That’s the one.”

There were mere moments before the two of them impacted with the water – and rocks – at the base of Horizon Point, and they spent a couple of them staring at the Hel’ss Spawn as it accelerated beyond their own rate of descent, threatening to catch up an instant before the impact came. As a choice between horrible ways to die, it was no choice at all, and both Kali and Freel closed their eyes. With the roaring of the Hel’ss Spawn and the crashing of the waves, neither of them heard the sharp, almost insect-like
zzzzzz
that played about them for a second before being replaced by a sound something like the lashing of twine.

They did, however, feel something wrap itself tightly about both of their bodies, and then snatch them up into the air. For a few seconds neither of them had a clue what was happening but then they were swinging across the cliff face, out of the way of the Hel’ss Spawn.

They watched as, like some great waterfall that had been severed from the river that fed it, the viscous mass plunged by them with a scream that sounded distinctly elven to impact with and dissipate into the sea.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

K
ALI AND
F
REEL
hung suspended for what seemed like an age, the line that bound them tightly together creaking loudly as it swung back and forth across the cliff face like a pendulum on an overwound clock. They might have been rescued from the Hel’ss but they were not out of danger yet. Twisting and turning on the end of the line, waves crashing beneath them, both Kali and Freel had to take it in turns to kick out to avoid being smashed into projecting parts of the rock, or to prevent the line becoming dangerously snared around them. On occasion their kicks sent them into an uncontrolled spin, one or the other of them colliding with or being dragged painfully across the rough rock face, and after a few such impacts both of them were beginning to wish that they hadn’t been rescued at all.

Gradually, however, the creaking softened, the swinging became less pronounced, and they came to a stop. The two of them stared at each other – in the position they were in, having little choice – and after a second the line jerked, and they felt themselves being hauled up.

They rose in fits and starts, their combined weight clearly causing whomever or whatever was doing the hauling problems. The sheer height of Horizon Point meant that they had to wait a good half hour before they found out who or what that was, and in the end they heard it before they saw it.