Ascendancy of the Last - Lisa Smedman [56]
The priests halted in a loose-knit group before the altar. Shi'drin stepped to the front, turned, and raised his hands. His fingernails were filthy, the sleeves of his robe soaked with slime and blood. He caught Kвras's eye. For one terrible moment, Kвras thought Shi'drin might ask him to perform the sacrifice. Then Shi'drin closed his eyes.
"Ghaunadaur, your faithful servant calls," Shi'drin intoned. "In your name, I feast." Then he transformed. His fingers melted into his hands, his arms trickled toward his body like melting candle wax, and his head turned into a blackened puddle on his shoulders. Soon all of him, including his robe and tabard, had turned to ooze. The black blob he'd become bulged against the lowest step of the dais, and flowed up to the altar.
The other priests formed two lines, stretching from the doorway to the dais. Kвras, by careful maneuvering, placed himself as far from the altar as he could get, beside the chamber's only exit. He pretended to follow along as the priests muttered their devotions and swayed back and forth. He moved his lips in time with the rest, mumbling what he hoped would pass as a prayer.
Fortunately, Ghaunadaur's faithful had no set liturgy. Like the god they worshiped, their rituals were amorphous and ill-defined. Each priest praised the Ancient One in his own fashion. If any of the others noticed that Kвras was uttering nonsense, it wouldn't matter. He just prayed that the Ancient One itself wasn't listening.
A few moments later, the first of the sacrifices staggered into the altar room: an orc, her eyes glazed, a dribble of the drug she'd been forced to drink drooling from her mouth. Even from a distance, Kвras could smell its licorice-sweet scent. The tempo of the priests' mutterings increased, found a rhythm. "Onward. Oblivion. Onward."
With each word, the captured slave took a step forward, stumbling as if shoved by invisible hands between the two rows of priests. Compelled by their magic, the orc made her way, one halting step at a time, to the dais. At last she bumped her shins against it, fell forward, and cracked her head on the stone. She rose, her snout bloody. She levered herself up onto the first layer of the dais. Then the second. Then onto the altar stone itself.
The priests fell silent. With a wet, slurping sound, the black ooze that was Shi'drin slithered onto the altar. As it engulfed the orc, the glaze fell from her eyes. Her cry of anguish was cut short as her flesh sizzled. The stench of burned hair filled the room. For a heartbeat or two she struggled, then fell still. A pitted bone poked momentarily out of the black ooze, then got slurped back inside.
Now a second slave stumbled into the room, this one a male half-orc. Like the first sacrificial victim, he stank of the drug he'd been forced to consume. The priests began their chant anew, compelling him forward.
Sickened, Kвras played along. "Onward. Oblivion. Onward."
One by one, eleven more captured slaves marched to the dais, climbed to the altar, and were consumed. Feeling faint, Kвras wondered if the sacrifices were ever going to end. He vomited in his throat, and harshly swallowed the bile down again.
As the thirteenth captive was being dissolved, a sound like stone being slammed by a sledge rent the air. Instantly, the priests fell silent. Heads turned. Kвras peered down his line and saw that a Y-shaped crack had opened in the altar stone and the altar had split into three pieces. Judging by the reactions of the priests, it was an auspicious omen. They seemed tense, anticipatory.
Kвras didn't like the thought of that.
A greenish sludge oozed out of the. "The Great Devouring is at hand!"
"They have cracks and puddled on the upper level of the dais. It dribbled onto the lower level, then onto the floor. Kвras watched it, his every muscle tense. When it reached his boot, he shifted his foot slightly. Its stench made his stomach lurch. But he couldn't very well flee, not with the