Cenotaph road omnibus bo.., p.44
Cenotaph Road Omnibus : Books 1-3, page 44
“Here’s the gateway into the city. Remember what I said,” cautioned the mechanical.
“Lossal Boulevard.”
“Right. Luister len-Larrotti.”
“Got it. And thanks, Knokno.”
“Just don’t mention it.” Lower, the mechanical added, “To my boss. Won’t do having humans killed in the park. He’d scrap me for sure.” All the way back into the park, the mechanical mumbled. Inyx heaved a sigh of relief when she saw Dicca proper.
Streets. Paved. People wandering along. Campaign posters plastered on every wall. Hustle. This was her world, not that of illusion inside the park.
Whistling to herself, she set off to find Lossal Boulevard, where Knokno had said she could find lodging.
Inyx tried to remember the name Knokno had given her. She’d been distracted at the time and couldn’t — quite — remember. Still, she’d found Lossal Boulevard easily enough. It turned out to be a major arterial cutting through the heart of Dicca. Lined with shops, she found enough to eat. The vendors didn’t even give her strange gold pieces a second look as they exchanged their wares for them. Inyx felt she was being cheated and overcharged, but she said nothing.
Raising a fuss might be the stupidest thing she could do. Everywhere throughout the city were Claybore’s soldiers. Their presence kept even the most boisterous quiet. Many of the citizens around her grumbled, but none came out and spoke against the grey soldiers. Whether from fear or approval, it was hard to say.
Inyx wandered, looking at the wares offered in the many stores along Lossal. The street turned increasingly dingy and more people lounged in doorways, eyeing her in suspicion and lust. She straightened her shoulders and made sure her sword was near at hand. Never had she turned and run because of being in a strange, unfriendly portion of a town. Inyx sought out such places; they made her travels along the Cenotaph Road more interesting, if more dangerous.
“Luister Something-or-other,” she said to one man leaning bonelessly in a doorway. “Do you know of him?”
“Luister’s a common-enough name,” came the answer. The man picked his teeth with a slender steel spike as his eyes took in Inyx’s form. He didn’t miss a thing, not the trim waist, the slender legs, the womanly swell of her breasts, the piercing blue eyes, or the lustrous black hair. She almost laughed in the man’s face when she saw his look. Inyx had seen it before, and in men with a much better chance of doing what the man mentally considered.
The amused expression on her face made him stiffen.
“Luister len-Larrotti’s down the spittin’ street.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, bitch. You two deserve one another.”
She turned and glanced back over her shoulder. The man wilted, seeming to collapse in onto himself. He turned and walked off hurriedly. Inyx wondered at the parting curse. It made no sense to her. She continued on, the fatigue of her plight finally catching up with her. When she saw a small sign dangling out from a stone facade, she sighed in relief. Luister len-Larrotti, Fine Rooms, it read.
She knocked. A small peephole opened. A rheumy eye peered forth, studying her.
“What do you want?” came the question, muffled so much by the thick wooden door that Inyx couldn’t tell if the voice belonged to male or female.
“A room. A friend recommended your boarding house.” Inyx began to wonder why Knokno had bothered mentioning this place.
“You wish to stay?”
“What a ridiculous question. I just said I did.” She stamped her foot and took a deep breath. She quickly lost patience with this interrogation. The eye again studied her.
Then the door opened. In the shadows stood an elderly woman, shawl pulled over her shoulders. The old woman gestured Inyx inside. The door closed and bolted behind them, she finally spoke.
“Not often I see the likes of you. You’re a young’un, aren’t you?” The old woman reached out and pinched Inyx’s behind. If a man had done that, his hand would have been severed from his wrist in an instant. Inyx didn’t know quite how to respond to a woman old enough to be her grandmother.
“I’m from the outlands. In for the election,” she lied. The old woman bobbed a greying head in acknowledgment. “I only need the room until the election’s over.”
“Can always put up a fine lass like you for a week.” Inyx mentally filed the information away. About a week until the election for Lord of the Twistings.
“How much?”
“Don’t worry yourself over that none. Come in, sit, enjoy some of my fine herb tea. Don’t see many visitors here. Not recently, not ones as pretty as you. Some muffins? Made’em myself.”
The room made Inyx force back a tear in her eye. It so closely matched her mother’s "parlor that she felt transported across worlds, backward in time. But all this was gone on her home world. Gone forever, along with her mother, brothers, and husband.
“Eat. Sit and eat. And drink the tea. Brewed it myself. Good, or so’s everyone tells me.”
“Hmm, it is good,” said Inyx, surprised. The tea daintily tingled on her tastebuds, exciting a cinnamon taste that mingled subtly with peppermint — or perhaps lemons. She failed to pinpoint the exact taste. Trying the muffins, she found them equally good. They satisfied her growing hunger better than any of the meat and cheese she’d purchased from the vendors along Lossal.
“So seldom we sees fine ones like you,’’ repeated the old woman. She sank into a chair across from Inyx. “Tell me about yourself. In for the election, but who’s tending the farm with you here?’’
“No one,’’ Inyx said. “Fact is, I’m a traveller from much further away than the outlands.’’
“The Cenotaph Road?’’
“You know of the Road, then.” Somehow, this made her relax even more. This kindly old woman already knew of interworld travel. “I’m trying to find friends of mine.”
“Your party has become separated?” came the sharp question. Inyx relaxed even more. Here was someone to care for her, someone who knew all her woes.
“They follow, but I don’t know how long they’ll be. The grey-clad soldiers chased me off, away from the cenotaph.” Inyx found herself confiding in the woman. She told of the demon, the fluttercraft flight into Dicca, the deadly illusions she’d confronted in the park. And she told even more, things that had remained buried under the brittle crust of hurtful memory for too long.
“My husband Reinhardt,” she heard herself saying, “died almost three years ago. It’s hard figuring out exactly when because of time differences between worlds. It must have been three years; it seems to me like an eternity.”
“You loved him much.”
“Yes.” Inyx sighed, picturing tall, dashing Reinhardt in her mind. The dark hair and white smile, the three parallel pink scars on his right cheek where the winter bear had slashed him, the quickness of his movements — she saw it all again. And it hurt.
“Along the Cenotaph Road, no one dies,” came the old woman’s soft words.
“Reinhardt is dead. I buried him with my own hands. It was one of those damned foolish things that should never have happened. He and my brother Patrin got involved in politics, an election…”
“Like the one for Lord of the Twistings?”
“Different. The election was for nothing of any consequence, but others didn’t consider it such. Others wearing grey uniforms.”
“The soldiers killed him?”
“They ambushed him. Patrin lived long enough to tell me where. I found Reinhardt. He died in my arms. And then I tracked down and killed every single one of those murdering bastards. I killed them, slowly, as slowly as I could.” She felt the horror and terror and anguish welling inside her. Inyx relived Reinhardt’s death, those of the murdering soldiers sent by Claybore to subjugate her world. “Then I walked the Cenotaph Road. There was nothing of importance left for me on my own world. Nothing.”
“The soldiers’ deaths might rekindle Reinhardt’s flame. Somewhere along the Road, he again lives.”
“I don’t believe that. I…” Inyx stopped, the words choking her. The old woman grew in stature, shoulders widening, shape changing in eye-confusing shifts until a tall, dark man with perfect white teeth stood before Inyx. “Reinhardt!” she cried.
“My dearest Inyx. It’s been so long. Too long. My love!”
Strong arms held her in the embrace she had hungered for over three long, lonely years. She buried her face in his chest and unashamedly cried.
“Reinhardt, where have you been? How could you have let me think you were dead all this time?”
“No questions, my dearest. Not now. Not until after a proper homecoming.” His strong, blunt fingers worked at the ties on her tunic. Inyx felt a pang of — what? Confusion tried to turn her inside out. Then the remembered feel of Reinhardt’s hands on her breasts drove away all uncertainty.
She crushed her body to his, kissed him hungrily, felt him respond. Almost frantic now, the passionate lovers worked to get free of unwanted clothing.
On the floor, their bodies merged into one surging, striving unity. Inyx felt the heavy body weighing her down in familiar ways, the pressures inside, the heavy breathing in her ear. She stared at the ceiling, dread welling up inside again. Something was wrong, something still niggled at the fringes of her mind. Then she forgot all about it, gasping, crying, rejoicing.
“Reinhardt!” she cried. “Oh, Reinhardt, yes!”
Chapter Five
“Oh, woe, why must I be such a weakling? A craven, that is all I am,” lamented Krek. The giant spider walked in the center of a ring of twelve soldiers. They eyed him with a combination of fear and awe. Lan Martak guessed that creatures the size of Krek didn’t exist on this world — or if they did, they weren’t inclined to talk and berate themselves.
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Krek,” he said. “The howler spotted us and guided the soldiers in.”
“I could have fought. Oh, the horror of it. Krek-k’with-kritlike, Webmaster of the Egrii Mountains, has fallen on such hard times. And all because I am so cowardly.” Lan said nothing. He’d seen his friend in moods like this before. Absolutely nothing but time got him out of them. “Who am I to even breathe the name of Webmaster? I, who have shamed myself in the eyes of all my hatchlings? Lovely little Klawn knows me for what I am. A coward. I can never again hold up my head.”
Lan involuntarily shivered when Krek mentioned his mate’s name. Krek was enormous; “lovely little Klawn” was even larger. She and the giant spider had mated, then Krek had left the web before being ritualistically eaten by her. Choosing the Cenotaph Road over being devoured seemed to Lan a reasonable choice. For Krek, it went against all his race’s mores and genetically inbred behavior patterns. Somewhere, perhaps even on this world, Klawn followed along the Road, still seeking her mate to finalize the nuptials. Lan didn’t want to share even the same continent with that love-crazed female.
“And if that were not enough, in the Suzerain’s care I slaughtered helpless innocents. With these I slaughtered them!” Krek clashed together his mandibles. The noise echoed across still forests. The soldiers guarding him jumped in alarm, their hands reaching automatically for the tubes they carried at their sides.
Lan frowned when he saw this reaction. He’d guessed those were weapons of some sort. But what type? While his magic sense required much more honing, it didn’t give the slightest twinge when he studied those tubes. Rather than magic, they utilized mechanical principles, much like the robotic servants encountered on the world he and Krek had just vacated.
He had no “feel’’ of magic being used by any of the men. If anything, they relied too heavily on the ordinary world around them. His ears turned toward the leader as he grumbled about having to walk.
“If she hadn’t stolen our fluttercraft…” was all Lan overheard. But hope surged. She the captain had said. Lan had no idea what a fluttercraft was, but the she had to mean Inyx.
It had to!
“You mean we’re walking because Inyx robbed you?’’ Lan called out to the officer in charge.
“What? You know her?’’ came the immediate question.
“Captain, the spider,’’ complained one of the guards. Krek had dropped into a forlorn lump in the middle of the road, refusing to go on. He wept, tears staining the areas under his dun-colored eyes and eventually dripping onto his furred legs and matting them. This, for the spider, was the ultimate in degradation.
“Halt!” ordered the leader. To Lan he said, “Get the bug moving again or we move it for you.”
“He’s not a bug,” said Lan, indignant. “He’s an intelligent being. More so than you, I can see.”
The captain pulled forth his tube and aimed it directly at Lan’s midsection. Not knowing what the device did made Lan more uneasy than if he’d possessed intimate knowledge of its workings. On his home world those entrusted with law enforcement sometimes used wheel lock pistols. Those were cranky, delicate, and not very accurate, yet they killed at a considerable range. While he didn’t see any clockwork firing mechanism on the sides of the soldiers’ weapons, he guessed they, too, had the ability to kill at a distance.
When Lan didn’t properly respond, the soldier slowly swung his cylinder in an arc until it pointed at Krek. At the last possible moment before pressing an inset firing button, the captain lowered his aim. A finger-thick beam of intense light speared forth and vaporized the dirt just under Krek’s back legs.
Startled and frightened, the spider leaped straight up into the air. For an instant, Lan stood open-mouthed and gaping, just like the soldiers. Krek had become airborne, his eight coppery legs spread from his body like a furry pinwheel. He landed with a heavy thud, whirling to face the captain of the guard.
“Never do that to me again,” the spider raged. “You could have set my fur on fire!”
“I’ll do more than that if you don’t get your bulky carcass moving. It’s a long way into Dicca. Silvain’ll have my head on a spike for taking so long, as it is.”
“Silvain?” asked Lan quietly.
“Shut up and get moving.” This time the imperious gesture with the tube got both Lan and Krek trotting along.
Close enough to carry on a low-whispered conversation,
Lan asked his friend, “Have you ever seen the likes of their weapons before?”
“Never,” said Krek. “Nor have I heard of worlds where such are possible. Do they hide little fire elementals in each weapon? It seems a magical chore hardly worth accomplishing.”
“It’s not done magically,” Lan said. “I don’t ‘see’ any spells being used.”
“One little book and the boy thinks he is a master sorcerer,” scoffed Krek.
“I know what I know,” said Lan defensively. “However they produce the light beam, it’s not done magically. This world is more advanced technologically, but I think I can get around that with a few well-chosen spells.”
“Make me invisible first.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” said Lan. “I don’t even know if it’s possible.”
“I don’t even know if your plan is possible,” countered Krek.
They walked in silence for another mile before Lan calmed down enough to speak again.
“Remember how Claybore’s death beams bent around me? I think I can control that spell now. Before, it came to me on a subconscious level. I’ve been working on drawing it to the surface of my mind. I know it will work.”
“You try it first. But before you do, what was that I heard about Inyx? You mentioned her name to the grey-clad soldier captain.”
“He said a woman had stolen their fluttercraft, whatever that is. Some form of transportation, apparently. I didn’t get any good idea of when this happened, but it explains why they don’t have her as a prisoner.”
“Like they do us.”
“Krek, we can escape whenever we want. I’m playing along to get information.”
“About Dicca, the capital city where the Lord of the Twistings rules supreme?” said the spider in an arrogant tone. “I know all. I hear so much you do not. They take us to Alberto Silvain, Claybore’s commandant on this planet. Or so I surmise. Silvain is the military governor who ordered these miserable wights out to intercept us. I assume he learned of the cenotaph through Claybore’s magics. Silvain is occupied with elections in Dicca. These odd sorting processes you humans use are rigged in this instance, with the Lord of the Twistings the shoo-in favorite because of bought votes and Claybore’s influence.”
“What else have you overheard?” asked Lan.
“Nothing.”
Lan shook his head. The spider managed to be vexing, even when he didn’t try very hard. Still, with the information they now shared, Lan saw little reason to remain in the custody of the soldiers. They weren’t of the highest caliber. They jumped at their own shadows and knew nothing of woodlore. Claybore’s usual tactic was to bring in a few key officers, then recruit locals for his army. He paid well and offered quick promotions. Such things appealed to the lower types. All the while, they were being exploited and used for interworld conquest.
Lan doubted any of these men realized Claybore’s designs extended across dozens, maybe hundreds of worlds. Alberto Silvain knew, just as Kiska k’Adesina had a world back and Lyk Surepta on Lan’s home world. A privileged, powerful few leading the ignorant, greedy many.
It was a conquest plan that worked all too well.
When the howler screamed across the sky, Lan Martak acted.
The soldiers stopped to gawk. They were natives of this world, but the sight of a howler still meant a special treat for them. Lan jerked to one side, kicked at a kneecap, and felt it crunch, then grabbed. He had regained his sword and dagger. Against the death tubes, these meant little, but he had magic on his side.
“Die, you spitting scum,” came the captain’s curse.
Lan’s eyes glazed over as he summoned up all the inner power resting inside him. He remembered the nightmare battles with Claybore when the sorcerer’s skull cast forth the twin ruby death beams. The ruby shafts had parted, bent around Lan’s body. He mentally clutched at that spell now and moulded it for his own use.
