RIDERS RACED toward Bloodsong through the moonlight, three riders and one riderless mount. She removed her battle-helm and the Tarnkappe.
“Bloodsong!” Huld cried. She reined to a halt and jumped to the ground. “There’s blood on her!”
“Then there was a battle?” Valgerth asked, staying atop her mount, warily watching the surrounding ruins. Her bared sword gleamed in the moonlight.
“Huld claimed that she saw something happening by the tree,” Thorfinn explained.
“But we heard no swords striking or death cries,” Valgerth added.
“Lie down,” Huld ordered. “I’m going to use my healing spell.”
“No, Huld,” Bloodsong said. “They’re only flesh wounds, and it’s just my face. You must not waste your energy needlessly.”
“What was it you fought?” Thorfinn asked, watching the ruins.
.“A corpse,” Bloodsong answered, “of a friend from the past.”
“Then there might be more.” Valgerth looked around.
“No.” Bloodsong shook her head. “I think they would surely have already attacked if there were. And I’ve seen no sign of soldiers. My guess is that the thing that attacked me was all Nidhug thought he needed here. He was very nearly right. But now we should ride fast for the end of the valley,” Bloodsong said, mounting her steed. She replaced the Tarnkappe beneath her battle-helm and vanished from their sight. “Nidhug will probably have sensed the battle here and may already be planning new attacks.”
* * *
Nidhug had waited hopefully during the battle, sorcerous senses straining. But the Death Slave had failed. Afterward, however, for a short while, whatever had cloaked Bloodsong’s presence from him had been removed. So at least he now knew that she did indeed ride with the other three.
She has too much luck or the Gods’ favor riding with her, Nidhug thought with a flicker of apprehension, remembering his nightmare. Or is it the hand of HeI herself aiding Bloodsong, giving her luck, sparing her again and again from certain defeat? Or perhaps he need look no further than Bloodsong’s own strength and determination to survive. She should have died many times, he remembered, while yet a slave in Nastrond, yet she had gone on to do the impossible, escape, others with her, and to become a cherished legend among his slaves. Even death had not kept her from finding a way to return and challenge his authority.
She’s too dangerous, he suddenly decided. I dare not indulge my whim of prolonging her suffering, not any longer. She must be destroyed at once, and those with her. She is close enough now for energy spell to be used. Before dawn, she will be no more than a charred skeleton with a Hel-ring I can retrieve from its finger.
Nidhug left his chamber and hurried down his demon-guarded stairway, pushing down memories of his nightmare, mastering the apprehension he had momentarily felt, determined to end Bloodsong’s threat before the rising of the sun.
* * *
The scuffling footsteps of Death Slaves awakened Jalna. The sounds stopped.
“Blloodsssong’sss frrriennnd?” she heard.
“Yes, Eirik.”
“Folllowww ussss.”
“I can’t. I can’t walk. Nidhug hurt me.”
There was silence, then dried flesh creaked as Eirik bent toward her.
She felt the cold touch of bony hands and arms slide beneath her, lift her into the air.
Eirik began carrying her through the darkness. She did not struggle, knowing it would do no good, hoping that Eirik was somehow trying to help her again. Scuffling sounds behind them indicated that other Death Slaves were following.
She felt rocky walls pressing close as Eirik bent slightly forward to avoid a low ceiling. Feeling herself slipping, she gripped his arms. Pieces of decaying flesh came loose in her hands. Repulsed, she relaxed her hold, fighting down nausea and horror.
On and on they went, the other Death Slaves following. Then they emerged from the narrow tunnel and Eirik stopped.
Jalna heard the others edge past and continue forward a short distance. The sounds of rocks tumbling to the ground began.
“Eirik?” she said, “what are they doing?”
“Lossst ourrr memoriesss whennn weee ... diiied. Youuu brrrought mmmine baaack ... wwwith Bllioodsssong’ss nammme. I ... wwwoke othersss. Onne of uss thinksss therrrre iss a wayyy ouuut ...”
The sound of rocks hitting the floor continued on and on.
* * *
In the Cavern of the War Skull, Nidhug studied a yellowed scroll while four women chained to the Skull whimpered in fear. He looked up from the scroll.
There was a slight danger to himself in what he intended to do, but he had decided to risk it. Should something go wrong, the four sacrifices were already in place to replenish his energies.
He positioned his arms so that they formed the shape of a Rune and chanted a phrase related to that Rune over and over until satisfied, then used his arms to form another Rune, chanted a different phrase, repeated the process for another and yet another Rune until he had raised sufficient power to work an energy spell.
The Skull grew brighter and the whimpering of the women louder as he concentrated his will and directed the energy he had collected to beyond the walls of Nastrond, across the countryside until it hovered unseen far above the moonlit valley through which Bloodsong and her companions now rode.
The energy condensed into a tighter and tighter sphere of power, heating up, beginning to glow white-hot beneath its black exterior.
The sorcerer-king grimaced with concentration as he willed the energy sphere to grow smaller and smaller, hotter and hotter. Soon, it would be hot enough, and he could release it in a violent blast of flesh-searing heat, causing the valley and anything within it to burst immediately into flames.
Smaller and hotter the black sphere grew, invisible against the night sky above the valley.
But something suddenly disturbed his concentration, sounds, screams, rocks falling.
Apprehension flitted through the king’s consciousness, weakening his grip on the black energy sphere above the valley, Desperately he tried to regain control, to stop the premature release of the heat the sphere contained. He began to succeed, his control returning.
Nidhug’s neck was suddenly gripped by bone-cold fingers, shattering his concentration.
Above the valley the sphere’s energy burst outward too soon, partly as light above the valley, mostly as pain back to Nidhug.
Nidhug’s screams joined those of the women on the Skull as the pain of the crushing hands around his throat combined with the returning energy to sear his consciousness.
* * *
Above the valley, light suddenly flashed, turning the night into day,
Huld screamed in pain as her night eyes were seared by the sudden, intense brightness.
The mounts of the four riders reared in fright.
Bloodsong, Valgerth, and Thorfinn whipped their swords from their scabbards, expecting an attack.
The Hel-warrior brought her horse under control and glanced up. The sky was again dark. No thunder rumbled. There were no clouds. Stars twinkled serenely. The moon hung majestically in the blackness.
“Sorcery?” Bloodsong asked. “Huld?”
“Probably,” Huld responded.
They waited, tensed, wondering what had happened and why they had not been further attacked. But when the moments stretched away and nothing else happened, they began to relax.
“Perhaps it was not Nidhug’s sorcery at all,” Thorfinn suggested as he sheathed his sword.
“Perhaps not,” Valgerth agreed.
“Whatever it was,” Bloodsong noted, “it did us no harm.”
“That’s not true,” Huld said unsteadily. “That flash was too bright for my night eyes. I’m blind.”
* * *
Nidhug fought to push back the throbbing pain from the failed spell, fought to understand what had happened in the cavern, struggled to free himself from the deadly hands at his throat.
His eyes finally focused on the Death Slave before him. Its tattered hands gripped his neck. Its skullish face mirrored his own.
Nidhug tried to shout words of power, found he could but barely make a sound, immediately forced himself to try to mentally project the needed words of power into the Death Slave’s mind.
He felt his consciousness slipping, saw the room darkening, understood that the Death Slave was winning the battle. He frantically renewed his efforts, broke through to the Death Slave’s mind at last, and mentally screamed the words of power.
The Death Slave shuddered and slumped to the floor. It immediately became dust within which maggots writhed.
Nidhug staggered backward and leaned against the table of scrolls. His vision cleared, revealing another Death Slave reaching for him, and behind that yet another. Farther away, near the wall of the cavern, Nidhug saw a Death Slave holding the slave woman he had imprisoned within the Death Slaves’ chamber. In the wall of the cavern a man’s height above the floor gaped a dark opening, rocks scattered below it on the cavern’s floor.
The king drew air deep into his starved lungs, evaded the attacking Death Slave, breathed deeply again, and shouted the words of power needed to revoke the Death Slaves’ unnatural lives.
Jalna fell heavily to the floor amid Eirik’s disintegrating flesh as he crumbled with the rest of the Death Slaves. Moments later, cold mounds of dust alive with maggots were all that remained of the Death Slaves in the cavern.
Nidhug staggered and clutched at the table for support. He fell to his knees, his corpse’s face twisted into a mask of pain, his energy-drained body succumbing to a new attack of age-sickness.
He raised his arms toward the Skull, muscles trembling, his strength nearly gone. He struggled to pronounce the incantation for rejuvenation, fought to concentrate before death succeeded in claiming him.
Understanding that he was trying to activate the youth spell, Jalna acted, began pulling herself across the floor toward him, determined to try to stop him, to strike while he was yet weak, to finish what the Death Slaves had started.
Teeth clenched with determination, panting from her exertions, Jalna pulled herself closer and closer. The distance between her and the sorcerer decreased at a maddeningly slow pace. She tried to crawl faster. Sweat streamed from her skin. The dust from one of the Death Slaves clung to her moist body as she crawled through it and kept moving toward Nidhug.
But now the Skull was glowing, the women screaming louder, the spell beginning to work.
No! Jalna thought, trying to crawl even faster. He can’t win again!
She had nearly reached him now. But four purple rays suddenly streamed down from the Skull, bathing the sorcerer-king’s body, renewing his youth and strength.
Jalna reached up, grabbed his gold-trimmed robe in her hands, pulled herself higher, and gasped in pain as the purple rays covered her too. She circled his throat with her hands, began to squeeze with all her strength, her eyes half closed with agony and strain.
Nidhug threw her back. She sprawled upon the floor, sobbing with defeat.
He stood tall and glared down at her for but a moment, then stepped forward, drove a booted foot into her side, her stomach, shoulder, back, striking out at her again and again as she twisted and turned, trying to avoid the blows.
When her screams stopped and her movements ceased, he bent down and made certain she still lived, then dragged her by her hair to the cavern’s wall and clamped the iron collar around her slender throat.
He went back to the Skull, leaned against the table, and tried not to think about how close he had again come to dying.
The rejuvenation spell had given him the strength to deal with the slave woman, but her intervention had prevented the youth spell’s satisfactory completion. The women chained to the Skull were now dead, however, and therefore useless. More sacrifices would have to be brought to complete the spell.
He glanced angrily back at the unconscious slave. Even the most horrible punishments he could imagine no longer seemed sufficient for her. When Bloodsong is destroyed, I will enjoy inventing new agonies for that one, he thought, while I decipher the true identity of her soul.
* * *
In darkness, Jalna drifted, unconscious, alone. Then came a woman with long blond hair in a black, silver-trimmed cloak to stand before her. Courage! Your Goddess smiles on you! And I bring a gift.
From Skadi? Jalna asked, but something, a memory she could not quite reach, said her Goddess was no longer Skadi. But who?
The gift will drive away the king, for a little while. I will say a magic word to you, and your mind will remember it when the right time comes.
The woman pronounced strange syllables, smiled at Jalna, then vanished.
And Jalna, alone, drifted in darkness once more.
* * *
Nidhug stood at his table below the Skull.
Once more, Bloodsong had escaped certain defeat. Or had she?
Nidhug concentrated, reached out with his senses beyond Nastrond’s walls, searching for the riders in the valley. Yes, there they were, three riders riding hard through the moonlight, unharmed, her three companions, and, he assumed, somewhere nearby, Bloodsong herself.
He widened his search, seeking soldiers, found them, a patrol of a dozen men camped at the exit from the valley, one of the groups General Kovna had sent out the previous afternoon.
Nidhug doubted that the soldiers could stop or capture the Hel-warrior, He suspected that whatever cloaked her from his sorcerous senses probably cloaked her from physical ones as well. No, the patrols General Kovna had sent out would probably be no more than an annoyance to Bloodsong and her companions. He had never really expected her to succumb to such conventional forces, anyway, or he would never have used sorcery to try stopping her, nor would he have expended his strength and endangered himself as he had. And if she did have a way to cloak her presence from physical senses, she could probably slip through the army camped on the plain beyond Nastrond as well. Yes, Bloodsong might be able to do that, but not her companions.
Very well, he thought, let her come to me, let her even enter Nastrond. I’ll leave the gate invitingly open. But once she steps within the fortress, my powers will be able to shatter whatever defenses she has, magical or otherwise. And even if she should succeed in reaching the passageway leading to this cavern, there are always the guardians waiting to burrow into her flesh.
A pleasing image arose in Nidhug’s mind: Bloodsong lying helpless at his feet on the cavern’s floor, unable to walk. He laughed at the thought, almost hoped she got that far, imagining the amusements he could have with her before he placed her corpse in the dark cavern below and sent her soul to the realm of unending agony.
Amusements could be had as well with her companions, should they survive the trap he would have prepared for them within Nastrond.
A wave of weakness brought his thoughts back to himself and the interrupted youth spell. He looked at the unconscious slave chained to the wall. I can steal a little more strength from her, then summon more sacrifices.
He walked to Jalna and used sorcery to awaken her.
She opened her eyes and stared into his.
“I will honor you with a fresh kiss, slave.” He laughed and bent down. “Resist and I will paralyze you again.”
Jalna did not try to get away as his corpse-like face neared hers. Then, just before his grinning teeth touched her lips, she whispered strange words, “Jitzah tee jeeah lou dloo.”
Nidhug stopped. Into his mind flashed the image of the watcher from his nightmare.
Jalna saw confusion on his skullish face. Then horror.
He cried out a strangled sob. The watcher now had a face. “You?” he gasped. “By all the Gods of the Damned! Please! Not you!”
Nidhug lurched to his feet and stumbled from the cavern, pulling on his black silken hood as he went, sobbing with horror.
In shock, Jalna watched him go. She had no idea what the strange syllables she had uttered meant or why she had felt compelled to say them. She thought maybe she had heard them in a dream, and like a dream they were already fading from her mind. She quickly tried to remember them. She might need them again. But she soon gave up. They were already gone.