The Sin War Box Set: Birthright, Scales of the Serpent, and The Veiled Prophet (78 page)

“I’m making no claim! I’m speaking the truth! If your people find Zorun Tzin, they’ve got to make certain that they don’t touch him.” Uldyssian remembered something else. “And watch for black lesions. I think they worsen as the body burns out….”

He expected the three mages to act immediately, but instead, Amolia looked to her two companions. The trio stood in silence, simply eyeing one another.

Then, without a warning, Kethuus vanished.

“Word has gone out concerning your suspicions of Zorun Tzin,” Amolia announced. “Now we turn to the question of what to do about you, Uldyssian ul-Diomed.” Her gaze narrowed dangerously. “What, indeed…”

And suddenly, an emerald sphere materialized around him.

This body was not going to last for very long. Malic knew that the moment he had taken it, but his choices had been very limited at the time. He had managed to linger in the corpse of the giant for far longer than even he had thought possible. Mephisto had surely been smiling on him when the fool spellcaster had reached for the crystal.

That piece remained in his hand, although for what reason, Malic did not yet know. He was not certain that he would have time to use it to amplify his transfer to another host. For that matter, who was to say that his next victim would be one worthy of keeping permanently?

Only Uldyssian thus far matched the criteria.

He kept to the shadows, using what he knew of his own spells to hide him from the inner sight of the mages. It was more difficult to cast properly in this body, for its former occupant had been of a calling using other forces. Given time, Malic supposed that he could have adjusted, but time was not on his side.

He had to find Uldyssian. No other body would suffice.

Malic passed a barrel whose top was covered in moisture. On a dread hunch, the high priest peered as best he could into the water. The image was distorted but still clear enough to reveal a dark spot near his left ear.

“So soon…” he muttered in Zorun Tzin’s voice. Malic had barely even worn this body! It had taken two days for the lesions to start on the giant, and Durram’s young form had lasted
weeks
before the first had grown evident.

“Time grows shorter with each one,” the specter realized. “I must have you soon, Uldyssian.”

But first he had to find his quarry and escape a city full of mages who thought him a renegade from their ranks. For that, Malic would need another body already, one that would hold for a time. It would do him little good to switch to a host that would fail him almost immediately.

Then a sudden suspicion made him crouch further into the shadows. A moment later, a cloaked figure stepped into the alley in which he had gone. The figure carried with him a staff, marking him immediately as one of Tzin’s fellow mages.

As if to make matters worse, another mage appeared at the opposite end. He, too, wielded a staff. Both men slowly wended their way toward each other, with Malic in the midst.

But hidden in the dark, the undead priest was not concerned. He had seen the trappings of each man and knew exactly what to do. After all, he was still a servant of Mephisto, was he not?

As the pair closed, Malic drew the proper symbols in the air, then thrust a finger at the mage on his left.

At that very moment, his target saw him. Raising the staff to shoulder level, the spellcaster growled, “Stand there, Zorun Tzin! You are my prisoner!”

Unperturbed, Malic pointed at the second of his pursuers.

That mage also raised his staff. “You presume too much, dog of Harakas! He is mine!”

“Sarandesh pig! Like all your clan, you seek to steal instead of earn your prize!”

They confronted each other as if Malic did not exist. The Harakasian mage thrust one end of his staff at his Sarandeshi counterpart. The latter countered the attack. The two magical staffs clattered together with a flash of unleashed energies.

“Crawl back into your mud hole, Sarandeshi!”

“I’ll wipe such words from your ugly face, Harakasian!”

The Sarandeshi rubbed a glowing rune on his staff. A red aura began to form over his adversary.

The other spellcaster immediately touched one of his own runes. A golden glow formed around the red, devouring it.

The two let out guttural cries and went at each other, using both physical and magical means. They fought like two frenzied cats, nothing existing for them but their mutual hatred.

And as they fought, Malic calmly slipped past them. The power of his master, the Lord of Hate, had once again been proven supreme. His two would-be captors would either slay each other or have to be forced apart by any other mages who found them. Either way, the distraction would serve Malic well.

But he needed to do more. As he slipped from one alley to the next, the spirit considered carefully. The Triune was in ruins; there would be no help from there. His lord Lucion was also no more, a victim of Uldyssian….

From Zorun Tzin’s lips erupted a curse at his own stupidity. He was in
Kehjan
. The capital. He was
not
alone.

The city was the culmination of generation upon generation of building, often over the sites of older structures. The current populace had little, if any, notion about parts of their home’s past. Malic, however, knew much.

The entrance he sought was completely hidden from those who trod upon it. That had been done for aesthetic reasons in part, but also for reasons of safety. The depths below were dark and dangerous and, in places, populated by things undreamed. The underside of Kehjan’s history could be found there in the form of stolen and lost treasures and the bodies of the dead.

It was simple for Malic to locate the hidden lever in the decorative column on the corner of the next alley. The lever, barely an inch long, creaked with age as it finally moved.

Next to the column, a portion of the street dropped open. Malic leapt down into the hole. Then, when the stone did not move back into place as it was supposed to, he struggled to close the hole again. Zorun Tzin’s body made the task more difficult, the mage obviously not as concerned with physical superiority as the high priest had been.

Once Malic had finally sealed the hole again, he climbed down a cracked and ancient set of stone steps into a blackened chamber in which the rush of water could be heard. The small globe of light Malic summoned revealed dark, turbulent waters pouring through a canal as wide as the streets above. The depths of the canal could not be made out, but he knew that a man could disappear below with ease.

Aware that the hunt continued above, Malic scurried along the edge of the canal deeper and deeper into the maze of tunnels. The system ran underneath all of Kehjan but rarely was visited by those above, unless some terrible blockage occurred and water levels rose to threaten the streets. The mage clans would also be loath at first to search for him down here, for different and more deadly reasons.

And it was for one of those reasons that the spirit had ventured into this hellish place.

Rats, serpents, and other vermin fled from the unaccustomed light. Some of the creatures lacked any eyes, generations of breeding in darkness making such features useless.

Something bobbed in the water not far from Malic. He paused to inspect its familiar shape.

The body had been down here for some weeks. Much of the flesh had been nibbled away, but enough remained to keep part of the corpse intact. It had been a man of middle age and, from the looks of his garments, fairly prosperous. A robbery victim, no doubt. There were few who would venture down here, but bandits were among that lot.

In fact, ahead he heard a pair of voices in argument. They spoke with the accents of the low caste, and their argument appeared to concern the division of spoils, in this case a ring and a jeweled broach.

“The ring I’ll take,” declared one. “I cut it off his finger, so’s it’s mine!”

“Never so! The broach, it’ll be harder to sell! You take it. You said he’d have gold! If’n I can’t have gold, I deserve the ring.”

Around the corner, an old brass lamp on the ledge illuminated a pair of scruffy figures in beggar’s rags. They paused in mid-argument when Malic, his glow light dismissed, appeared.

“Who’s this?” growled the one who had cut off the finger of their absent victim. He was short and wiry and, other than some missing teeth and a few scars, looked in relatively good shape.

His partner, on the other hand, while taller and fuller, clearly suffered the first stages of some disease that would eventually eat away his flesh.

“I want his sandals,” snarled the second, indicating Malic.

The high priest did nothing until they were nearly upon him. Then, with one hand, he slammed his stiff fingers into the throat of the larger bandit, while with the other, he seized the wiry one by the chest.

The taller thief fell back against the mossy wall, clutching his ruined windpipe. His partner stood frozen, caught by Malic’s magic.

The spirit reached into a pouch and removed the bit of crystal. He thrust it into one open hand of the thief, then closed the fingers. Malic then thrust his will into the man before him—

And suddenly, he stared out of different eyes at the slack-faced figure of Zorun Tzin.

The mage slumped into his arms. Malic let Zorun fall from him into the dark water. The dull splash echoed through the ancient tunnels.

Next to him, the second bandit struggled to breathe. He stared at what he thought was his partner and reached out a hand for help.

Malic pressed him against the wall with a strength inhuman. He pulled from his new host’s waist a dagger.

“Not fit for me,” the spirit whispered to the choking, frightened man, “but fit enough for what I seek.”

He brought the dagger up and, as the bandit squirmed, cut a simple, shallow pattern over the chest. Streaks of blood dripped down.

When that was accomplished, Malic placed the blade in his teeth, then reversed his grip so that he could now set the fragment directly in the center of his design.

The other bandit grew more frantic. His struggles intensified, nearly causing Malic to lose the crystal. The spirit grew incensed. He forced his victim to look straight into his eyes.

Caught by those eyes, the thief froze. Malic began muttering under his breath.

A slight bubbling sound caught his attention. He kept his gaze on the bloody pattern but spoke faster.

The bubbling suddenly intensified. It was now not far from him. Out of the corner of his new eye, Malic glanced toward where Zorun Tzin’s corpse floated.

The body bobbed up and down—then, with a swooshing sound, it vanished beneath the surface.

Malic went back to his chanting. The tunnel had suddenly grown quite cold. In the dim lamplight, both his breath and that of the hapless bandit could be seen.

Something erupted from the black waters, rising well above Malic’s back.

Without the least sign of concern, the spirit turned around. Behind him loomed a bone-white thing that resembled some of the jellyfish of the inner sea. Yet this apparition was several times his size, and in the center of the translucent mass, two pale, bulbous orbs fixed on the puny human figures.

A forest of leafy tentacles hung under the fiend, each one arrayed with serrated edges. Fragments of meat and other grisly objects hung from many of the appendages, but they were not nearly so horrific a sight as within the boneless mound that was the creature’s body. In there, already dissolving, was the carcass that had once been Zorun Tzin.

In addition to droplets of water, other things fell from the monstrous creature, inedible bits of the mage’s clothing.

Malic faced the beast. “You understand the hidden tongue, demon! You answered it.”

A thick bubbling sound escaped the fiend.

“My master is Mephisto, brother to your master…Diablo….”

Again, the demon bubbled. By this point, there was hardly anything left of the dead mage save a few bone fragments, including the skull.

“By the pact of the Three, you must bow to my power. You must obey my will! Understand?”

Some of the leafy appendages moved. Malic recognized this as an affirmative response. He smiled.