Soldiers Live

136

Fortress with No Name: Godstalking

Goblin was too eager. Twice I felt compelled to yell at him to slow down. He plunged down the dark stairwell at a pace I could not match. Even wearing the Voroshk apparel the bruising impacts with the walls became too much for my nerve.

We had not yet gone as deep as the ice cavern where Soulcatcher lay when I bellowed an order to stop. Wonder of wonders, this time Goblin heard me. And listened. And responded when I told him we had to go back up.

"What?" He turned the word into a two syllable whisper from an old tomb.

"We can't do this in the dark. We'll beat ourselves unconscious before we get down there. Or at least get there too beaten up to think."

He made a sound that signified reluctant agreement. He had had a few unpleasant collisions of his own.

"We have to go get lights." Why had I overlooked something so obvious? Because I was too damned busy looking for the subtle and the sneaky, I suppose.

The stairwell was much too tight to turn the flying posts. We had to back them up. That was a slow, humbling, sometimes painful task. And things did not get much less humiliating when we did reach the top.

The girls and the white crow awaited us. In attitudes so smug they could be read even though the ladies were clad for action. Arkana swung a lantern back and forth.

For an instant I suffered an entirely irrelevant worry because I had not brought my Widowmaker costume. It seemed appropriate to the situation. But definitely not necessary.

All that armor ever was was a costume.

Now Shukrat waved a lantern back and forth. And laughed.

"Not a word," I grumped.

"Did I say anything?"

"You're thinking it, darling daughter."

She raised her lantern higher, the better to see what I was wearing. My apparel was in slow, creeping motion all around me, repairing extensive damage. "Not a word from me, old-timer. You know your Shukrat. Honors her elders to a fault. But I'm going to laugh, now. Please don't jump to conclusions and think that it's at you."

Arkana laughed harder.

Goblin made a series of noises, depleting his vocabulary fast.

"He's right. Give us those lanterns. We need to get this done." I hoped my dimwit failure to consider the need for light would not be the one little thing that got us destroyed. And that that was the last little thing I had been dumb enough to forget.

Goblin took the lantern from Shukrat. He headed down into the earth again. He was not nearly so hurried this time. Possibly his lust for revenge had begun to cool.

I took Arkana's lantern. The white crow flapped over to the tip of my post. Before I finished telling it that traveling with me might not be a good idea. Shukrat had another lantern going and was helping Arkana get herself another lit.

The girls had been ready for us.

I bickered with them all the way down to the ice cavern. They had fun with me all the way. They refused to listen to my warnings.

The white crow decided the cave of the ancients would be a fine place to detour. I bellowed, "Don't touch anything in there! Especially don't touch yourself." I continued, mumbling, "When will I learn to keep my big damned mouth shut?" It would be a great and wonderful irony if the bird's touch was Soulcatcher's undoing, after all her lucky years.

Goblin got the hurries again. When I tried to slow him down he told me, "There's something going on with Kina! She's starting to stir."

"Shit!"

Keeping up was impossible, until we reached the black barrier. There Goblin's nerve failed him. There he froze, recalling the horror of the years he had spent on the other side.

"Goblin. We're almost there. We've got to do this. We've got to do it now." Numb as I was to things supernatural even I could sense Kina's proximity and her heightened awareness. Which must not be our fault. Her attention was focused elsewhere. "Now!" I said with more force.

Behind us the girls had begun whispering, troubled. They sensed much more than I ever could.

I told them, "You two go back upstairs now. I guarantee you that you'll be glad you did. Especially if things don't work out for us. Goblin."

He reclaimed his courage. Or maybe just found his hatred again. His face hardened. He started forward.

"Don't rush," I stage-whispered as he passed through the black barrier. "Girls, I mean it. Start running now. There have to be some survivors." I pushed through the terrible barrier behind Goblin, nearly messing myself with the fear. Despite what I had told the little man this was no time to be slow or tentative. Once we breached the barrier Kina knew that we had come. Her slowness would be our only ally.

Once I breached that barrier I flung myself into the anteroom area outside the entrance to Kina's prison. Goblin lined himself up to charge. I had to do several things at once: encourage him, prepare myself to weather what was about to happen and do my thankless bit to make this deicide work.

Got to keep the whole picture in mind. Got to do each thing on time, in the right order, just the way you worked it out over the last few months.

As Goblin surged forward I placed my flying post into the angle where the floor met the left-hand wall, then plastered myself against the wall above it and willed my Voroshk clothing to form a protective scab over it and me. Then, in light almost too dim for use, I found the right page in the First Father's notebook. I kept my protection open just enough to let me watch Goblin hurtle straight at Kina and, to my surprise, drive One-Eye's spear into her temple. I had expected him to go for the heart.

I completed the cantrip that would destroy Goblin's post, finished shutting me and my post in. Then I allowed myself to feel lower than snake shit because of what I was doing.

I had been hard at work justifying myself to myself for months. And had carried on. But now it was happening. And when it was over I would have to live with my deceits forever.

The entire universe shook. The cavern where Kina lay was big but it was confined. The stairwell was the only escape the products of that violence could find. The energy wave pounded at my protection.

I clung to the stone wall, beneath layers and layers of Voroshk material, while the universe howled and shuddered. I swore that if Kina was powerful enough to get through this I would enlist in her service myself because the only thing tougher than her would be the guys who tied her up. And they had not been seen for several millenia.

The noise began to fade. But I had trouble hearing it go. The roar had deafened me temporarily.

I hoped the girls did head back up the way I told them.

I hoped the violence did no damage elsewhere. I doubted that it would. A major earthquake had split the plain open without destroying the ice caves or doing any harm down here.

I willed the Voroshk clothing to open a crack through which I could see. If need be, if Kina had survived but was injured, I would push my post in there and blow it, too. And if I survived a second blast I would start hoping that I did not suffer a heart attack or starve to death while trying to climb those miles of steps.

The material protecting me had been so traumatized that it took ten minutes to respond. It twitched and shivered and crawled, moving in small surges, as it tried to heal itself.

Once I had an eyehole I discovered that there was nothing to see. Intense bright light still burned inside Kina's cell. It might have been fading but it was going slowly if it was.

It was half an hour before I could look for details without having my eyeballs hurt. Just as well. It took that long for my protective outfit to heal and relax sufficiently to allow me off the wall.

Those outfits are made smart. They take just long enough recovering to keep you from doing something stupid.

I mounted my post and moved forward, knowing, as I went, that my protection would not survive another blast soon.

At first I could find nothing. Later, after the light faded some more, I began to discover bits of what might once have been tooth or bone embedded in various surfaces. Of flesh, be it Goblin's or the Goddess's, there was no sign.

In fact, I doubted that any of the tooth and bone fragments could have belonged to any mere mortal. The explosion had been that violent. More violent, even, than those that had destroyed the Voroshk shadowgate, that had initiated the collapse of the Palace.

Kina's destruction had somehow added vast energy to the explosion.

My post was not behaving quite right. It stuttered and was slow to respond. It must have gotten rattled around some even though I had done my best to protect it.

Once the light faded round where the Goddess had lain I saw what looked like a long black snake lying in the rubble of Kina's rock bed. It was the only nonwhite thing in the place, other than me.

I approached carefully. For all I knew that was the bone of darkness that had snuggled next to Kina's heart. And I was prepared to believe that anything I saw or experienced in this place would be illusion.

Kina was the Mother of Deceit.

One of the great powers of the Deceivers was their ability to leave you doubting everything and trusting no one.

The black thing was no snake. It was the deformed remains of One-Eye's spear. It had come through the violence with surprisingly little damage. It was just twisted and bent a little, and lightly charred on its surface. The metal inlays had been only slightly distorted by intense heat.

Man, he must have put some artful protective spells onto that thing.

I gathered the spear, went and made sure that I was securely attached to my post, then gave it the command to take me back to base point.