The Nether Scroll - Lynn Abbey [86]
A thought that was not his own rode the whistling sound into Tiep's mind. The Beast Lord's tentacles lost none of their horrific qualities but, suddenly, Tiep wanted to be near them, to feel them against his skin, to offer up his paltry thoughts and emotions to a superior mind for its amusement, its pleasure.
Tiep was not alone in striding forward. All of the slaves did, and the swordswingers… and Rozt'a. He wasn't alone until he fought the compulsion and threw it out of his mind. The whistling went away, too, and Tiep swore to himself that he'd never again complain about the way magic didn't work around him. Then he reached out to stop Rozt'a from taking another step toward the nightmare.
Rozt'a fought him more vigorously than she'd fought him at the egg-chamber wall, and for no good reason. Desperate to avoid attention, Tiep punched her on the chin. Striking his foster mother was one of the harder things Tiep had done, good cause or bad, but it broke the Beast Lord's hold over her. Rozt'a was herself again-the remote, passive self she'd been since they'd found a solid granite wall between them and the egg.
Unless the Beast Lord had walked through stone, Tiep was sure the other egg-chamber tunnel was somewhere-not far-to his right. More than anything in the world, he wanted to find that tunnel and get back to the egg chamber. He was gathering his courage for a walk along the pool chamber wall when Rozt'a succumbed to the Beast Lord's compulsion for a second time. This time a hug, rather than a punch, was sufficient to keep her beside him in the dead-end tunnel, but the moment Tiep released her, she surged again.
Body contact with a body unaffected by the compulsion was apparently sufficient to keep Rozt'a free from the Beast Lord's compulsion but holding hands wasn't enough contact. Tiep draped his arm around her shoulder and kept it there as he weighed the risks of leaving the dead-end tunnel.
On the up side-the Beast Lord had his worshipers' complete attention, which meant no one was paying any attention to the chamber walls. Rocks had toppled since the whistling began and not drawn a sideways glance from the Beast Lord or his swaying congregation. On the down side-if Rozt'a slipped back into the Beast Lord's power or his own immunity weakened…
The down side won.
Tiep stayed put and watched the newly hatched swordswinger enter the green-glowing pool. The enslaved goblins joined hands in a circle around the pool. They blocked Tiep's view; he took that as a sign that Tymora hadn't abandoned him. His confidence rebounded- he and Rozt'a could wait. The pool chamber had been empty when they first arrived; it would become empty again.
He hoped.
Rozt'a leaned against him. She shuddered every few minutes. At first, Tiep thought that was the Beast Lord trying to get into her mind, then he noticed that his shirt was damp and he realized that she was sobbing. He'd be sobbing, too, if he let himself think about what had happened or what likely lay ahead, so he remembered the good times.
There had been good times in Tiep's life, but not many that didn't involve Galimer, Druhallen, or Rozt'a. He felt tears brewing and tried to think of nothing at all.
Time passed-more than a few minutes, less than an hour. The pool-side ritual showed no sign of ending: The goblins were still in a ring, and all the swordswingers were in the water. The Beast Lord was going from goblin to goblin, massaging their scalps with his tentacles. Tiep could watch now, he was beyond nausea.
A rock shifted to the right of their tunnel. Tiep thought nothing of it; other rocks had shifted. It would be a while before the chamber completely recovered from the shaking it had received when the egg hatched out a swordswinger.
Another rock moved and Tiep heard a sound that could have been a boot crunching over gravel. All the sounds had come from the right side. He tightened his hold on Rozt'a. He saw a shadow, then a silhouette.
It was tall enough, but the shape was wrong-headless and hunch-backed. It stopped in front of the tunnel