Bloodstone (33 page)

Asbraln had recovered the spear, raised it in grief-clumsy hands. He laughed in a choked rumble. "One of our own," he announced, pointing to the iron spear-point.

With a shrug, Dribeck dismissed the incident. Constant confrontation with violent death this night left him too numb to sense any realistic emotion. Logically he understood that chance had again spared him a grisly death, but he was too drained to feel any particular relief.

The sounds of combat were fading. It came to him that his panting company had stood for several minutes, slumped from fatigue, binding their wounds. No Rillyti had challenged them. Voices of others sounded close at hand. Torches were flickering across the tangled battlefield.

"I think," Dribeck hazarded, "that once it gets light, we may discover that we've won this battle."

But there were other eyes that looked upon the conflict, alien sight to which the darkness posed no barrier--a malevolent force that pierced the night and perceived the torn and death-laden battlefield. It saw that its army had been overcome, its fierce legions strewn upon the bodies of their slayers, scattered in flight into the fastnesses of the swamp.

The Rillyti are broken. Your power is checked. How shall I defend these walls when the sun brings their army against us?

The sun will find none but the dead. In a few hours all shall be completed. Already my being courses with the driving energies of the cosmos, so that their puny sorceries have only for a moment thwarted me. Did you imagine that I have revealed to you all o f the power that lies within me? Now you shall know, arrogant man, that there are yet secrets which defy even your conception!

Now through the forest swept the army of Selonari. Carrying torches, they searched among the trees, pausing amidst the piled dead to give aid to a wounded comrade, to dispatch a floundering batrachian. Outnumbered beyond hope, the fragmented Rillyti army slunk away into Kranor-Rill, driven like scum before a cresting wave. Desperate knots of men and bufanoids yet struggled in the darkness, but when their fellows came upon there, steel gleamed in a score of hands, and the duel became a slaughter. For all that, the human advance was not an unbroken flow. Countless vortices of swirling violence marked the suicidal stand of some blood-maddened batrachian, whose savage blade might rend and tear, long after it seemed possible for any creature so wounded to fight on.

Such islands of strife, however vicious, 'could not stem the crushing advance. Pressing upon the swampland's perimeter, the worn but jubilant troops watched the last of the Rillyti turn and flee, their mindless ferocity finally mastered by human might.

Then struck gibbering horror--inconceivable terror that drove sanity from the frightened souls of men. Phantom shapes were emerging from the mist, streaming along the sullen stones of the causeway--an army of maggots vomited over the dead tongue of some impossible serpent. Spectral figures of green flame they were--shadowy creatures whose substance was the coruseant energy of Bloodstone. Like a rippling point of fire they flowed across the rubrous stone, an unending army of captive souls.

The shadow creatures of Bloodstone. A demon army of shimmering flame--monstrous shapes of things dead, but denied the freedom of dissolution. Their semi-translucent bodies took. strange and horrid forms, some terrifying in that their alien figuration was of ages beyond human memory, others equally abominable for the dread familiarity of their aspect.

There were creatures who resembled the Rillyti, but of taller, more erect stature, with limbs of more subtle build, and peaked skulls of intelligent mien. Reptilian. These were the Krelran, the centuries-dead builders of Arellarti. Nor were theirs the only shades of the vanished races of elder Earth. Octopoid monsters writhed forward; clearly the six thick tentacles which slithered down from bloated trunks provided unnatural locomotion for creatures that hinted of the ocean's black depths; two whiplike tentacles extended menacingly from the humped shoulders of each trunk, above which sprouted a rounded head bearing six lidless eyes like a coronet, and a toothless maw that gaped like a death wound where the face should have been. Other bizarre shapes, fewer in number, joined the onrushing horde. Chitinous spider-like creatures, large as a horse, clicked across the stones on four spindly limbs. Four more such limbs thrust forward, metallic claws clashing, from the upward-curling cephalothorax. Fluttering through the air on moth wings of fire came humanoid beings whose angular bodies were clothed in shaggy scales, whose faces were set with great compound eyes like glittering mosaic. Hairy beasts like misshapen apes slouched forward, long arms swinging to the ground.

Here were creatures of the distant past, shadow slaves of Bloodstone since the dawn of Arellarti. They seemed to be fiery wraiths in the life image of their millennia-lost bodies. Such was not so for the teeming bulk of their army. These were shapes which appeared withered and twisted with gnawing decay-distorted, skeletal things, molded of the same shimmering energy, which gave them the aspect of forms enshrouded by devouring flame. Most of these corpse-like shapes were batrachian, an eerie devolution ranging from the elder Krelran to the bestial Rillyti. But many were the spectral images of human lamia, whose energy-wreathed silhouettes included brutish dawn races, along with scores of men, women, even children, of the present peoples of the Southern Lands.

For Kane had not been altogether accurate when he dismissed the Rillyti sacrifices as useless superstition. These were creatures whose souls had been stolen by Bloodstone's searing tongue of energy, enslaved throughout the centuries, imperfect shades of those whose souls had been offered to the monolithic crystal as it lay dormant--crudely fed to their god through the Rillyti's unholy sacrificial rites. But there were many other shapes in this army of abominations; and these were somehow the most terrifying of all.

Marching shoulder to alien shoulder with these creatures of horror came the naked figures of many men--those whose souls Bloodstone had captured through the destroying power of Kane's ring. Horribly familiar were many of these shapes, some whose blackened bodies yet lay warm upon the blasted bulwarks. The dead of Breimen were there--men who had died from the searing energies of the bloodstone ring--as were the soldiers of Selonari who had fallen when Teres revealed Kane's treachery to Dribeck. Death at the burning touch of Bloodstone was far more hideous than ever it had seemed, for those who died under its caress of shimmering energy fed their souls to its unhallowed power. Bloodstone thirsted for organic life as well as cosmic force...

Teres shuddered with loathing. Among the dread horde of Bloodstone's shadow slaves she had recognized the glowing profile of Lutwion. And although full realization of this horror now menacing them did not come at once, fragments of understanding suggested themselves to the men, threatened to plunge frighted reason into the protective darkness of insanity.

Through the oily mists rushed the lamia of writhing energy--naked, silent, eyes staring pools of flame. Their numbers were myriad, but they bore no weapons save the outstretched limbs that blazed with glimmering fire. Shaking off its pall of fear, Dribeck's army awaited this new horror; a thousand grim faces prepared to learn whether steel could master these dread specters of elder evil.

In a sudden wave they burst upon the awestricken men, a grotesque spume of emerald and crimson-veined shadows. Swords slashed and thrust into their macabre vanguard. Bodies that appeared phantasmal now proved substantial. Resistance met the searching blades, though not the touch of flesh. Steel sheared through the wraithlike figures with the sickening feel of clinging jelly-gristle-boned, repulsive substance whose consistency suggested an unthinkable congealment of noxious mist. Bloodless phantoms with rubbery strength in their limbs, fangs and talons like sharpened horn.

The shadow creatures would not die.

They yielded to steel's ripping might, but they would not fall. With mindless fury they threw themselves upon the soldiers, submitted to their desperate blades with awful disregard for individual preservation. Swords sliced through them, their wielders overbalanced by the uncanny resistance the weapons struck. But grievous wounds saw neither blood nor nameless ichor, nor yet did the creatures falter in the face of any number of mortal wounds.

Bloodstone's enormously amplified power, now spiraling to impossible limits with each passing moment, had achieved the cosmic transmutation of energy into matter. The crystal entity had clothed its captive souls in a semblance of matter--an inconceivable substance of primal nature, whose characteristics were neither wholly of matter nor of energy--a blasphemous caricature of life, which, not living, could not die.

Teres had led her decimated company to the front line of this hideous attack. Yelling in revulsion as she thrust, she plunged her sword into the unfeeling breast of one who had been her countryman days before. The blade darted through, then back. Barely staggering from its impact, the specter reached for her. Teres recoiled in dismay and slashed at the grasping arms. The blade sprang through, severed one entire arm and the other at elbow. The butchered limbs dropped, but her assailant stepped closer, bloodless stumps waving. With a burst of loathing, she lopped off the creature's head. It bounded to the earth, but the decapitated figure yet groped for her. She froze for a stunned instant, and the apparition lunged for her. Teres sidestepped and slashed through its thigh. The leg fell away, precipitating the maimed shadow creature to the ground. Blindly it hunched forward on its belly.

In horror Teres saw that her comrades were likewise beset. A buffet knocked her sprawling, as one of the moth-winged creatures soared past. Behind her the lepidopteran struck, and bore a soldier to the earth. Its taloned hands gashed his face and throat as they grappled, while the man's blade stabbed ineffectually. Another shadow creature--a withered batrachian shape--reached down for her. Teres slashed for its legs and rolled agilely from under its toppling weight. There was nothing insubstantial about these monsters' strength, she realized, hacking the lamia apart as from the ground it clutched for her.

Another human shade--did it seem familiar? Wildly Teres swung her blade in a downward arc, clove through head and shoulders, through chest to belly level, before the rubbery flesh stopped the steel. She yanked free her sword, then doubted her eyes... as the two segments swung back together, sealing the ghastly wound. Setting her teeth, she chopped out again and dismembered the thing.

The shimmering form of a young girl stalked toward her. Teres remembered her near death upon Bloodstone's altar, and horror stayed her arm. Something at that instant clutched her boot, and Teres looked down to see a dismembered hand had caught her ankle in vise-like grip. The ground was crawling with severed segments of the shadow creatures, writhing blindly forward with maniacal intent. She hacked at the repellent thing, parted forearm from wrist; spider-like, the hand climbed onto her calf. Then the girlish apparition leaped upon her, clawed fingers raking for her eyes, grappling for her sword. Bitterly Teres repented her involuntary hesitance and fended off the shadow girl's attack. There was cold strength in the arm that sought to wrest free Teres's blade, and the claws that gouged her cheek were dangerously real. Twisting, Teres planted a boot in her assailant's belly and drove her back. The jolt dislodged the scrambling hand from its purchase on her thigh, and for a moment Teres tore free. Pitiless now, her sword slashed again and again to dash the decay-pocked specter piecemeal upon the earth.

Retreating to regain her breath and conquer the nausea that shook her, Teres looked upon a battlefield of nightmarish terror. In a seething stream, the shadow creatures of Bloodstone stormed across the burning roadway. Surely only a small fraction of their myriads had engaged the human army thus far, and there seemed no way the thousand or more warriors could long stand in the face of such overwhelming numbers. Already they were falling back beneath the irresistible pressure of the energy phantoms' relentless advance.

Arrows, spears were useless. Fear-driven swords were taking a terrific toll on the weaponless foe, but to what avail? Hacked and dismembered, the shadow creatures continued to wriggle forward, driving the soldiers before them. The forest floor was alight with loathsome scuttling things. A malignant intelligence directed their onslaught, so that even the disjoined fragments conspired against the embattled humans. A lepidopterous torso, limbless and decapitated, yet fluttered about the line of combat, striking the unwary onto the outstretched grasp of the enemy, until someone sent it plummeting on sheared wings. Near her, a fallen soldier died with throat ripped open by the vomerine fangs of a severed bufanoid head. A mangled torso rolled beneath another soldier's retreating step and pitched him onto the horror-covered ground. An ape-like shade, sundered across its belly, continued its horrid advance with torso swinging between hairy arms, while its hips shambled off at another angle.

Men were dying under the shadow creatures' assault. The glowing figures could not be killed--only disabled through arduous tactics, which drew a man's efforts while more of the creatures rushed upon him. The demented wraiths were swarming over the desperate warriors--clawing, biting, choking the life from their victims, oblivious to the wounds that tore their unnatural flesh. The plight of Selonari's army was enough imperiled, with just the human and batrachian phantoms to contend against, but the terrifying presence of these other creatures from Earth's lost antiquity had shattering impact.

The monstrous octopoids were deadliest. Their bulk was over half again that of a man, much of that in the powerful tentacles which lashed out to crush and strangle. Severed, the serpentine tentacles slithered forward like fiery pythons, no whit less dangerous until chopped into stubby fragments. Equally menacing, although few in number, were the arachnoid creatures with their darting speed and chitin-edged claws. The moth-winged specters, also but a few, presented danger in their unexpected attack from the air, while their taloned digits and stabbing mouth parts made them formidable opponents. And the shaggy ape creatures carried strength enough in their slouching frames to rip a man apart.