The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [77]
Cazio took the hilt. Certainly it was a trick of some sort, but at least he would go down fighting, not tortured to death in some dungeon.
He stood, not raising the sword until Niro Marco took the position of guard.
With an amazing quickness that belied his earlier assertion, the man lunged at him. Cazio caught the blade in perto, bound it down to uhtave, and struck the Fratrex Prismo of the holy Church in the chest.
Except that the point stopped as if he had hit a wall. For an instant he thought the fellow was wearing a breastplate, but then he saw the truth: His point wasn’t touching the man; it was stuck in something a fingers-breadth from Niro Marco’s chest.
He tried to yank the weapon back for another blow, but all of a sudden his arms and legs went loose and he was on the floor.
“Now,” he heard the fratrex say, “these men will take you to a place of contemplation, but I’m going to warn you: I can’t allow you to reflect for long. I’m here only for a short time, and then I must go to Eslen, with or without any help you may be able to give me. I would like to save you, but if you don’t have anything to tell me by tomorrow, I’m going to have to encourage you any way I can. If that’s no use, well, perhaps we can still lustrate your soul before it leaves this world. It’s the least I can do for your father.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE WALK BEGINS
WHEN THE WITCHLIGHTS went out, Stephen shouted and batted at the darkness. Adhrekh hollered orders, and Zemlé screamed. Then something rough struck him, and he heard a deep, ragged gasp of breath. His feet stood suddenly on nothing, and he heard a second shout, this one in that other voice.
Do not trust…
Then silence and wind and the wait for the stop at the end.
Something hit him again and knocked all the air out of him. The pain was blinding, but he still could feel, so he figured he wasn’t dead.
That wasn’t so bad, he thought. The floor mustn’t have been as far as I thought.
But as he hiccupped air into his lungs, Stephen understood that something had him gripped tightly around the torso, and they were still hurling through the darkness. Was it one of the Aitivar, diving in a vain attempt to save him?
But they weren’t moving so much down as forward. Whatever had him was flying.
What could fly that was large enough to carry a man? Only something from legend and likely something nasty: a wyver, a dragon…
He cried for help but had the feeling the sounds were dying just past his lips. He couldn’t struggle. Even if he could, and succeeded, it would mean a long fall.
The smell hit him again, and the creeping sensation of something infinitely malevolent surrounding him, and he suddenly felt stone smack against his feet. Whatever had gripped him had released him, and he fell on his bottom.
He scuttled back, crablike, in terror to escape from the thing. A hard stone wall stopped his retreat.
The darkness remained elementally absolute.
“What do you want?” Stephen gasped. “I—what do you want of me?”
He was answered by a thunder of incomprehensible words that seemed to roll around him, a gibbering no human throat could make. Part of him was fascinated despite the horror. Was this the language of demons?
“I can’t—”
“Hush.”
It went in his head like a pin through an insect. His mouth froze open.
“Is this the one?” the thing went on. “Are you the one? Are you shadow or substance?”
The voice was burring right in his ear—in both ears, in fact, as if whoever it was somehow was whispering in them both. It didn’t sound like a human voice, but he couldn’t say exactly why.
Stephen still couldn’t move his mouth, so he couldn’t answer.
“The smell of you,” the voice continued. “Revolting. I don’t understand how you don’t take your own lives from that alone.”
It paused, and Stephen had the sense of something immense slithering around him. But when it spoke again, its voice was still right in his ears.
“You smell of other things, too. You stink of the sedoi. It all rots in you, mayfly. All comes to you to rot. Or will.”
Stephen was shivering uncontrollably.