The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [112]
Something was happening. A glow, lights, strengthening not within the prone figure’s clothing but from within the body itself. The Lord Marshal hesitated, uncertain, staring. The singular internal lights began to flicker.
And then—they went out. Faded away, along with the rest of the big man’s strength. Smiling viciously to himself, the Lord Marshal prepared to coil a length of cable around the breeder’s neck. Both his physical and astral self were completely focused on the task at hand. On finishing it.
“They’ll write poetry about this moment. A paean to the present Lord Marshal.”
His jaws parted and his mouth opened preparatory to letting out a cry of triumph. What emerged instead was a gasp, accompanied by a wide-eyed look of surprise and shock. His astral face spun around, seeking the source of the interruption. Of the surprise. Of the spike that had been plunged deeply into the back of his physical being.
A young woman stared back at him, her gaze no longer distant.
With waning strength, both the physical and astral Lord Marshal lashed out simultaneously. The blow sent Kyra flying across the room to smash into the protruding spikes of a decorative column. They bit— deeply. Her eyes widened as she slipped off the spikes and fell to the floor. They stayed that way, open and staring, even when she stopped moving. She did not move again.
On the balcony above, Dame Vaako had taken it all in. Waiting, waiting for just the right moment. Waiting to be sure.
“Now!” she yelled at her consort. “Kill the beast while it’s wounded! Now.”
Ceremonial poleax in hand, Vaako leaped from the balustrade, landed on the floor below, and raced toward the throne.
Wallowing in agony, unable to pull the deeply set spike from his back with either physical or astral hand, the Lord Marshal saw his commander general rushing toward him. Hope surged above the pain.
“Vaako . . . help me. . . .”
Halting, heart racing, Vaako stood above the older man, staring. Then he raised the ancient but still serviceable weapon. Its blade edge, beautifully and reverently maintained, glinted in the somber light of Necropolis.
The Lord Marshal’s expression changed from one of expectation to one of complete disbelief.
“Vaako?”
Taking aim at the neck of the man lying prone before him, the commander general’s fingers clenched convulsively on the staff of the weapon he held. At the same time, the Lord Marshal’s astral body surged clear, away from any possible death blow. Separated, it could rejoin and rejuvenate its physical self even after a seemingly fatal strike. Then appropriate chastisement could be meted out to the traitor, after which . . .
Riddick was there, standing over the astral form. A minor inconvenience, that turbulent part of the Lord Marshal knew. No ordinary weapon could harm an astral body.
Only too late did it realize that the dagger that swept down in a sweeping arc was the one that had been pulled from the back of Irgun the Strange.
Instinctively, the Lord Marshal’s physical self snapped away from Vaako’s blow. The downward slicing blade sent sparks flying as it struck the floor, leaving a gouge behind it. The Lord Marshal’s physical body then automatically rejoined his astral self, despite a cry from the latter.
And at that precise moment of physical and astral convergence, Riddick finished his swing, sinking the supernal blade clutched tightly in his fist up to its hilt in the Lord Marshal’s conjoined skull. Mouth gaping, instantly now made Full Dead, the Lord Marshal fell forward to the floor. As he did so, the blade that had been sunk into his brain broke with an audible snap.
From above, realizing what had happened, realizing how in the blink of an eye it had all gone completely, utterly, terribly wrong, Dame Vaako screamed as if she had been stabbed herself.
“Nooooo!”
And further back, and higher up still, a certain inquisitive