Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [66]
Shrugging, I stepped through the doorway into the pyramid, into a corridor that had been kept narrow for defense. Glow globes drifted lazily here, above my head. And above them, on the featureless walls to either side, there were shadow-mouthed holes through which, I imagined, burning oil or some nastier liquid could be poured down on attackers. I was glad not to be an army trying to conquer this place.
The corridor took several sharp turns—also for defensive purposes—and after the second turn I began to see darkened stairwells leading up into the interior of the building. I stayed with the main hallway and soon came out into a small, circular guardroom where at last I was met.
“Greetings, Ruenn Maclang,” Diken Graye said, his voice without inflection, almost mechanical. At his back I tallied a dozen dark-feathered Vhichang with loaded and locked crossbows aimed at my chest.
The Vhichang are avian but they have human-type hands and arms instead of wings. The tips of the quarrels that nestled in their crossbows were discolored red and I doubted that it was rust. Thoughts of poison made my stomach clench.
I nodded to Graye. “Greetings,” I replied.
My recent confederate’s eyes alternately surged and ebbed with crimson, and a speck of toir’in-or stone had been inserted into his forehead so recently that the wound was bruised and angry around it. He was “controlled” more fully than any of Vohanna’s servants I’d seen before, and I knew he was here for only one reason, to taunt me with the fact that the “goddess” had taken from me my last companion.
“I am sorry,” I said to him. “I should have realized the witch would try to seize you. I should have warned you.”
Graye’s mouth opened and closed, as if he couldn’t get enough air. His body stood atremble. His face twisted then; the crimson of his eyes waned.
“You...could not have known that....”
The words died away, leaving the mouth to hang slackly open, and a chill wave of gooseflesh swept my body as Diken Graye’s features wavered and...changed. Eyes went dead black; lips seemed to swell, to ripen. Skin that had been ashen with pain turned as dusky as buffed and burnished gold. The mouth pursed around a tongue that dabbed at white teeth.
I had seen such a display before, but still it shocked. I wasn’t going to admit it, though.
“What could I not have known...Vohanna?” I asked calmly.
And from inside Diken Graye’s occupied form, Vohanna chuckled with a voice as sweet and sick as rotted honey.
“Why, you could not have known that anyone who has toyed with the discipline of the toir’in-or is susceptible to me. Well, particularly susceptible to me.”
I considered, then remembered. Diken Graye had flown Rannon’s airship on the day we crashed into the river above Timmuzz. That proved he had some training as a pilot and some knowledge of milkstones.
“Ah,” I said, smiling briefly at her then, as if it did not overly concern me.
Vohanna/Graye turned her head to one side, like a hungry bird studying a cricket. I met her gaze, keeping my face neutral.
She looked me up and down, then waved a languid hand as if in dismissal of what she’d seen.
“But do tell me, darling Ruenn,” she said. “Before I have you killed. What possessed you so foolishly to invade my home? To destroy my lovely ships? To kill my servants?”
“’Tis simple,” I said, bowing my head slightly. “I had to prove to you that you need better servants.”
She frowned, and for the first time I saw her look confused.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You need better servants,” I repeated. “Someone like myself, for example. You see, I’ve come to swear fealty to you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
OATH OF FEALTY
“I’ve come to swear fealty to you,” I had said.
Vohanna’s eyes, so inky black within Diken Graye’s face, did not blink. But I saw a flush of copper creep up from under the dusky-gold tinge that painted Graye’s skin.
“You think me a fool?” she spat. “I