Star of doom v1 0, p.17
sTAR OF dOOM V1.0, page 17
They backed out, astounded at her anger. Sonja followed them until they had crossed the threshold, then slammed shut the heavy wooden door and shot home the bolt. Then, turning, she dropped her sword to the floor and, with tears crawling down her cheeks, walked to Daron’s cot and fell on her knees.
Could even ghosts find a home here, in this desolate atmosphere, this ziggurat of death reared over a noisome pit that led straight to hell?
Sonja felt the chill of the World of the Dead steal over her, settle upon her as an icy cerement. Did her heart still beat? Had she indeed lived the life she remembered? Were there any answers anywhere that were true answers, that anyone could find amid the madness that life and death offered?
What error had been made that Time could not be retraced like a path, and Truth be taught to tread it?
She knelt by the body of her beloved, listened to his labored breathing and felt the ache of his wounds in her own body. Her soul festered in anguish. Sonja stared into his half-closed eyes and looked for a hint of stars, the promise of some return. But there was only pain, and a longing for release.
Mitra!—but an emptiness had blossomed in the heart of the world!
She realized now that the solace of a hundred possibilities had preoccupied her mind, both obviously and unconsciously, during all the long hours of hardship, fear and peril that she had shared with Daron, and thus she could avoid facing the truth in her heart.
And now Daron was dying.
Daron, the only human being Sonja had ever met who understood, by the very nature of his own existence, the solitude that estranged her soul from the souls of even her friends; and with that estrangement yet also understood her loyalty to the entirety of the human race. He had understood.
The depth of the pit beneath her was no greater than Red Sonja’s sorrow.
She knelt closer, and felt his faint breath on her cheek. Her lips trembled.
“Daron…?”
His hand moved feebly toward Sonja’s, missed, groped and finally found it. She moved her hand into his, held it strongly—strongly—holding onto Daron.
“Daron, can you hear me? Listen to me—”
He gripped her hand, weakly at first, then with more urgency. His eyes opened frilly and looked into hers; in the glow of the orange torch-flame they were hollow.
“Daron…”
“Sonja, I—” He coughed. Fresh blood ebbed from his wound, spilling quietly down his side.
“Quiet, Daron. Rest.”
“I will not live. I am—dying, S-Sonja…”
“Quiet, Daron!”
“Sonja, I love you, and I am a fool.”
“Quiet, Daron, quiet!”
He smiled; it became a grimace. He sighed, closed his eyes, opened them again. Her face was close to his, her breath warm on his face.
“What a fool I am,” he whispered hoarsely. “What was I trying to prove? And yet…”
“Daron, keep still. The soldiers are taking the ziggurat—they’ll defeat Thotas. I’ll get Ban-Itos in here; he can help you; he can cure you—”
“No one can cure me. I’m dying, Sonja. And I want to die. Can you understand that? Or believe that? I can’t, yet I—”
“Please, Daron, please. You’re hurt, but Ban-Itos cai^—”
“I want to die, Sonja. I must—because of my father—I owe it to my people, whoever they are, wherever they are. I owe it to you…”
“Daron, you can’t say that!”
“I’d only bring you harm, Sonja, if I lived. Don’t you know that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.”
“I care. I’m the—son of an evil sorcerer. And you—”
“Mitra, I don’t care!” she cried, tears coming to her eyes. “I’ve been the fool, Daron—not to know how much I loved…Mother of Mitra, I swear on the thrones of the gods that I’ve never felt this way before in my life. Never, never!”
“Sonja—”
“I love you, Daron! By the gods of the heavens, by the devils of the hells—Mitra help me—I—I love you!” Her hand pressed his; he clenched it and gasped in pain as his wound again gaped and ran with blood. Sonja sobbed, bending her head to his shoulder, wetting his face with her tears, touching her cheek to his. Then she lifted her head, stared deeply into Daron’s burning, hollow eyes.
“I love—”
She moved her mouth to his, kissed him deeply and then drew away, sobbing, wiping tears from her face.
“Gods, gods,” Daron moaned, trying to lift his head. “I had the world…
Suddenly overwhelmed with all that was in her, Sonja threw back her head and stared at the smoky ceiling of the chamber. “Mad gods of Creation!” she cried out in a choked, trembling voice. “I love this man, I love him! Give him back to me!”
“What have I done?” Daron moaned, his hand’s grip weakening as his life ebbed. “This…Sonja, I didn’t intend this. Not…”
“I love hun!” Sonja shrieked to the uncaring ceiling. “Don’t let him die!”
“Sonja…”
“Daron, Daron!” His hand was limp and cold in hers.
“I—didn’t wish you pain—” He coughed blood. “We had the world—Sonja…”
“Daron, no! No!” She rubbed his hand frantically, stared into his closing eyes, kissed his forehead, his eyes, his lips.
His unmoving lips.
His hand, limp, was utterly strengthless in hers.
“No!” Sonja howled. “No/”
She rose to her feet, bent over him and took his face in her hands. For a long moment she studied him with tear-blurred eyes, stared at him. She felt herself sinking into an abyss, a cold abyss of despair where something horrible was waiting—
Something feeding itself on her pain and anguish.
“No!” she cried furiously, groping for her sword, feeling a wild desire to slay the cruel gods who had created the worlds. Instantly the cold abyss and the feeling of horror subsided…
“No,” she whispered, half question, half declaration. Then, regarding again the body of her lover: “I did wrong—I loved you from the moment I saw you, but I refused to acknowledge it. And now I’ve lost you…You’re a sorcerer’s son, but I love you, Daron.” Again her sorrow threatened to overwhelm her, and again the abyss yawned. “In the name of Mitra, open your eyes and look at me! I’m losing my mind, Daron. For a moment I felt a demon feeding on my pain!”
He did not answer, could not answer, did not open his eyes or respond to the kiss of her warm lips.
“Daron!”
Again, the horror of something waiting to feast on her anguish—something not far away. Something within the ziggurat.
“Gods of the hells!” she screamed at the dark ceiling, the tears starting down her face again. “Why would you not save him for me?”
Then she crumpled up beside him on the cot, buried her head in her arms and sobbed.
She knelt there a long, tear-filled, soulless time, feeling herself damned by her pride and by her own fate.
She wept until she could weep no more, until her head and sides ached, until her whole body ached with all the pains she had ever suffered. And she ached with a love she had not realized until too late, and that was the bitterest ache of all.
Until a blue light filled the room.
A blue light.
She blinked her sore eyes and looked up from where she knelt, and saw the strange being of her destiny, halfman, half-woman, glowing with the blue radiance of the deep night of her fate.
“Mitral”
“You are your own fate, Sonja of Hyrkania.”
“What in the name of—?”
“Call on none but yourself, seek none but yourself, arrest not the motion that impels you forward on the ordained road.”
Astonished, Sonja whispered to the being, “Who are you?”
“You are unto yourself alone, Sonja of Hyrkania. The past opens up in you, the future unfolds before you. You are your own fate, Red Sonja.”
Sonja leaned back, still kneeling, but now an anger grew within her: for the fate she saw behind the prophecy was one of blood and sorcery, of terrible solitude and love found only when lost.
“In the name of Mitral” she yelled at the thing. “Tell me who you are and why you plague me!”
“You chose your path as it was chosen for you. You are the path you have chosen, Red Sonja. You are the choosing of that path.”
“Tell me who you—I”
The blue radiance increased abruptly, and Sonja had to avert her eyes. She fell silent, overwhelmed by weariness, and the aftermath of anger and loss. She listened numbly as her doom was read out to her; and she thought, ‘Why must I be told? Most human beings are permitted ignorance, and thus they may hope.’
“You are your own fate, Sonja of Hyrkania. You claimed your sword as your strength and your heart, yet you are more. You are unto yourself. Damn not the gods for the path you chose and are, Red Sonja. Long ago you chose to follow it and live it.”
The blue radiance vanished, leaving her alone in a dark room with the corpse of her lover and a solitary, mocking torch-flame.
Gods of the gods! It was Iatos who had said to her, “I am weary of always being the survivor.”
“Why damn the gods for the path you choose and are, Red Sonja?”
“Daron—Mitra, help me.”
“You are your own fate, Red Sonja of Hyrkania. “
She was aware of the immense, waiting silence of the All—and then, of a pounding on the door.
Sonja rose slowly, tired and drained. She approached the door, lifted the bar, stood back.
The door was pushed open, and Ban-Itos stood there. He entered quietly, then closed the portal again. He looked at Daron, then at Sonja. Her brilliant red hair was disheveled, her face white and tear-stained.
“He is dead?” the wizard asked in a whisper.
“He is dead, and I loved him…
Ban-Itos looked upon her with the gaze of the mystic. “Then, you will avenge him.”
They stared at one another, breathless—and then Ban-Itos held out his arms. Stumbling forward, Sonja moved into them, hugging the old man as he embraced her strongly in return—the first time since the death of her father that she had allowed any man thus to comfort her.
Then, respectfully and affectionately, Ban-Itos held her back, stared into her great blue eyes and said softly, “We have not yet gained the High Temple. Thotas is there; he still lives. Take the ashes of Odurac, I beg you, Sonja.”
Feeling like some ghost intruding upon the memories of a family she had loved but no longer belonged to, Sonja turned from the old wizard, crossed to the cot, bent over the still form of Daron and, lifting open his tom robe, drew from his belt the leather sack holding the ashes of the dead sorcerer.
Then she looked at Daron’s composed face, damp and gray, and watched it for a long, tense moment. Leaning over, she kissed him, drew back and looked into his features again, then closed his eyes and smoothed his wet hair. Finally she turned from him, knelt and retrieved her sword. The pouch containing Odurac’s ashes she secured to her own belt.
Ban-Itos went to the door and opened it. There was a crowd of mercenaries in the hallway, weary and battle-tom, but ready to follow Red Sonja where she might lead them. Sonja walked forward, staring at her troops, counting them, pleased to see that so many had survived the battle on the stairs, that so many had followed her so far; pleased with them, her soldiers, despite the sorrow for Daron, her lover.
Then she turned to Ban-Itos and said to him grimly, “If it means death for me, then let it be so. I will avenge him.”
“Daron should not have died,” said Ban-Itos, shaking his head. “It was my time, not his. His stars foretold no disaster. It is as though he were under a curse that took the doom and placed it upon him.”
“Aye, a curse.” Sonja’s eyes grew hard, determined. “Osylla…”
Then she strode forward. Her troops moved aside before her, making a passage. Red Sonja of Hyrkania passed between the ranks of her warriors, leading the way up the corridor into the High Temple of the ziggurat, and to the sorcerer who ruled it, and to the Star of Doom.
Chapter 11
Thotas
Halfway down the corridor that connected the temple with the monstrous cavern, they came upon a pile of corpses, hacked and charred.
No—not all corpses. For eyes still dully flickered there, arms still moved awkwardly and fingers, red-stained and sticky, still trembled. Scowling, Sonja stood before the thick carpet of bodies which stretched from wall to wall. She recognized them by their clothing and armor as Ostor’s barbarians. Evidently they had made their way here hoping to loot the High Temple, leaving others to fight the priests upon the bridges, but had encountered steel and blasting sorcery. Among them lay the bodies of a few blue-robed priests.
As she made to step through and over the corpses, determined at any cost to reach Thotas, one of them weakly called out her name. Startled, she searched the tangle of carnage to see which grim warrior in leather and mail deemed it more important, dying, to call out to her than to make peace with his gods.
“Red…Sonja…
She looked, and saw him. His face was turned toward her, and blood seeped from his nose and mouth, matting in his beard and mustache. He was helmetless, and gore was congealed in his long, tawny hair.
“Red…” It was Ostor, chief of brigands, loudmouthed commander of an outlaw army, dying on the 171 floor of a sorcerers’ citadel, reduced to a broken remnant of his former belligerence.
“Ostor,” Sonja said. “Why didn’t you wait?”
“What—what madness have we fought?” he whispered bleakly as his eyes began to cloud over. “You led us into hell. All my men—dead. Bolts of fire—blue smoke—beings from all the hells…This is not earth…I am dying in the midst of some nightmare—Enkidu curse you!”
“You were a fool,” Sonja hissed at him, “who wished to gain all the plunder for yourself.”
“There is no gold,” Ostor gasped. “There was never any gold. There is only death—and flames, and these—monsters in human guise.”
“You’re a fool, Ostor. And you’re dying a fool’s death. You have only your greed to blame.”
“I—I was led into a trap. You led me—to death.”
“You are your own death, fool. You led men when you couldn’t even master yourself. You sought to cheat us all.”
“You lied to me. There is no—treasure here.”
Sonja shrugged. “You don’t know that. These hell-priests may have a vast wealth of gold stashed away in their vaults. But they can smelt it in hell’s pits for all I care!”
“Woman, you—are mad!”
“And you’re a fool.” Sonja turned away from him. “Slay me, slay me,” Ostor whispered strangely, as his last shivering gripped him. “Slay me—do not let me die—by a sorcerer’s wounds.”
Sonja grunted at him, “What difference, Ostor? You’ve lived by plunder—sent hundreds of innocent steppe-villagers to their doom. You’ll bum in the hells till the end of the world, no matter whether I slay you or __ » no.
His eyes closed; he grimaced with huge pain, shuddered briefly—and then went limp.
Sonja regarded him somberly, wondering at her own feelings. What was this hate that made her taunt a dying enemy, even one as cruel and barbaric as Ostor? Was it the madness of the star growing upon her? Then, the sooner her work here was done the better: for Daron had promised that some would survive. There would be some few remaining, grateful to breathe untainted air again. She did not care if she were to be one of them or not.
Looking up from his body and over the pile of corpses, she lifted a foot to begin her advance—and paused. Nine blue-robed men stood before her, across the carpet of corpses—pale, bald men, motionless, staring at her with their yellow eyes.
She glowered at them, tensing to charge to the attack should any one of them make so much as the shadow of a gesture.
But they did not move. The one in the forefront asked in a quiet voice. “You are the leader of these barbarians?”
Sonja answered carefully, “I am.”
“We would speak with you.”
“Then speak. Or act—whichever you wish. It will mean your deaths, regardless.”
“We do not wish to die, by your hand or Thotas’s. Nor do you wish to die, as you shall if you try to oppose us. Let us have no more death.”
“What game is this?” Sonja demanded. She sensed Ban-Itos coming up from behind her to stand by her side.
“No game,” the bald priest assured her. “If you will help us destroy Thotas, we will protect you from him.”
“A trick,” Sonja snarled.
Ban-Itos muttered in a low voice into her ear: “I think not…”
“We wish your pledge of aid,” said the priest in front. “We will not harm you.”
“Hundreds and thousands lie hacked and burned,” Sonja reminded him, “fallen into your Pit, slain by your sorcery—”
“We could have destroyed you as you came across the plain had not our energies been drained. Thotas and his stone have stolen our strength—and much of yours, also.”
Sonja’s eyes flickered; her nostrils quivered.
Ban-Itos told her quietly, “It is true. The being in the stone is indeed an Ajar-Alazwat—a Feeder-upon-Pain, which lives and grows by draining the energies of living things. We would have been demolished on our approach had not the thing within this temple held these men back. I know now our determination would not have been weapon enough against their sorcery.”
“But your magic, Ban-Itos—and Daron’s—”
“Not enough. These men are strong. I soon realized that something was draining their energies, directing them elsewhere.”
“Then it has all been a sham.”
The sorcerer in the forefront broke in. “No sham. Our strength is truly weakened, red-haired woman. Thotas and the Ajar-Alazwat have stolen our defenses. Our Master lusts madly after limitless power; he is destroying himself. We will serve him no more—and we can aid you if you will aid us.”
“We do not need your aid,” said Sonja. “We have a weapon.”
