Sword of the Gods - Bruce R. Cordell [92]
Demascus cried, “Let go!” and wrenched at the restraints again, on the edge of complete panic. So much for his matter-of-fact voice, part of his mind observed. Fresh daggers of pain shot down his wrists and arms.
Murmur chuckled.
Demascus remembered the alley and Inakin, where he’d walked through shadow. He tried to push away his distress and concentrate, imagining himself setting foot on the gloomy road as if it was any other path … Nothing. Because he couldn’t see where he was going!
This is it, he thought. I’m going to be eaten. His mind felt sluggish, fevered.
Murmur’s grip enveloped him. And still he couldn’t see a godsdamned thing! Only a mocking shimmer came through the blindfold.
Wait. The texture reminded him of … Was it his Veil? It was.
“Help me, Wrath and Knowledge!” he screamed. “Or all you’ve revealed ends here!”
The Veil flexed, unknotted itself from around his head, then settled around his neck like a simple scarf.
Murmur’s oily arm, veined with scarlet crystal, gripped him tight with hideously flexible fingers. The monster’s visage blocked the open cell door. Its mouth was agape, and its scarlet eyes swirled like twin views into the Abyss.
And beyond, Demascus saw the cavern, striped with light and dark. Each stripe of gloom was, from a certain point of view, like a shortcut. A path. An escape!
Demascus imagined walking down a darkling lane …
A cool wind tousled his hair as he stepped out of the manacles, out of Murmur’s grip, and to the far side of the cavern into a pool of shade.
He was free, and he could see. His mental inventory of his situation bloomed in his hindbrain as he subconsciously noted the details of the horrid chamber, where each cell was embedded or hung, how many steps from where he stood to the edge of the pit, and the location and distance to—
A howl of anger lashed the room. “Come back here!”
—the exit to the chamber of horrors; it was on the opposite side of the room, across the pit from where he’d appeared.
Murmur lifted its hands as if beseeching the roof to collapse. Demascus felt some disregarded terror stir in answer behind his eyes. He mentally clamped hold of the diaphanous wight, until it settled again into the place where forgotten night terrors go.
Others were less successful. A miasma of tumbling color and shapes streamed from the mouths, eyes, noses, and ears of a swathe of manacled captives.
The turbulent mist of bad dreams flowed to Murmur. They lapped over and layered the demon. It turned around in the the torrent as if luxuriating in the flow, and a ghastly second skin materialized around it. A skin of twining arms and gaping mouths, undulating worms and exposed viscera, transforming Murmur’s already horrific bulk into an unspeakable nightmare.
The captives who retained their sanity screamed. Demascus whispered, “Lords of shadow, preserve me.” Murmur was an enemy beyond his strength, he knew it. He should flee, immediately, before—
The slap of bare feet on rock pulled his eyes from the awful visage. A black-haired halfling and a watersoul wearing just scraps of clothing were running, free of their cages and manacles, to the exit. On the opposite side of the room, another handful of unshackled captives variously ran, limped, or crawled from their cages.
Demascus blinked at the escapees, who were like the embodiment of hope that life might go on. At least for some. He blew out his breath as the panic Murmur’s countenance had blasted straight into his brain subsided.
“No one escapes,” said all the nightmare’s mouths at once. The massed voices were like a toll of doom.
A limb of hands and arms and red worms snapped up the black-haired halfling and hurled him directly into the pit. A squirming limb swiped at the fleeing watersoul but missed.
The next escapee was not so lucky; a woman with only one boot and scars running down her arm screamed when Murmur caught her. Her eyes found its own, desperate for succor. Then Murmur tossed her into the pit.
“No!” he yelled.
Murmur bellowed from a dozen mouths, “Demascus!