“Run,” the crow told me.
I did not run. I got hold of Santaraksita and started pulling.
Goblin was talking to himself, something about wishing he had had the good sense to steal One-Eye’s spear if he was going to get himself into something like this.
“Goblin!” I heaved the standard. It was not my intent that it do so, but it stood straight up and bounced a couple of times on its butt before it tipped forward and fell into the little wizard’s eager hands. He turned with it as the illusions surrounding Kina evaporated.
90
If Kina was ever human, if any of the countless forms of myth regarding her creation indeed resembled fact, a lot of work had gone into making her big and ugly.
She is the Mother of Deceivers, Sleepy. The Mother of Deceivers. That great hideous form covered with pustules from which infant skulls suppurated could no more be the true aspect of Kina than the sleeping beauties had been.
The stench of old death became powerful.
I stared at the body, now lying upon the icy floor. It was the dark purple-black of the death-dancer of my dreams but it dwarfed Shivetya. It was naked. Its perfect female proportions distracted from the ten thousand scars that marred its skin. It did not move, not even to breathe.
Another feather of vapor rose from one huge nostril.
“Get the fuck out of here!” Goblin shrieked. He jerked to the right suddenly, the Lance of Passion darting toward some target I could not see. The Lance’s head burned like it was covered by flickering alcohol flames.
A huge, unheard scream tore at my mind. Suvrin and Master Santaraksita moaned. Tobo squealed. The white crow unleashed a random stream of obscenities. I am sure I contributed to the chorus. As I kicked and punched the others to get them going, I realized that my throat was raw.
Goblin whirled back to his left, thrusting at the wisp of mist that had left Kina’s nostril a moment before.
Once again pale blue fire surrounded the head of the Lance. This time it ran a foot up the shaft before it faded. This time the Lance’s head betrayed penstrokes of dark ruby glow along its edges.
Another wisp of the essence of Kina rose from her nose.
There was no darkness or mist hiding the entrance now. Kina’s focus was elsewhere. Suvrin and Santaraksita were on the stair already, wasting breath babbling about what they had seen. I slugged Tobo up side the head with all the force I could muster. “Get out of here!”
When he opened his mouth to argue, I popped him again. I did not want to hear it. I did not want to hear anything. Not even a divine revelation. It could wait. “Goblin! Get your sorry butt in motion. We’re out of the way.”
The third wisp impaled itself upon the Lance’s head. This time the fire crept two yards up the shaft, though it did not seem to affect the wood directly. However, this time the Lance’s head became so hot that shaft wood in contact with it began to smolder.
Goblin started to back down but another wisp rose and drifted faster than he moved, getting between him and the stair. He thrust at it a few times but each time he did, it drifted out of reach. It continued to control his path of retreat.
I am no sorceress. Despite a life spent in the proximity of wizards and witch women and whatnot, I have no idea how their minds work when they are involved with their craft. So I will never be clear on what thought process led Goblin to make his decision. But from having known the man most of my life, I have to conclude that he did what he did because he believed it was the most effective thing that he could do.
Having failed to skewer the wisp, having noted that a second had appeared and had begun to circle him from the opposite direction, the frog-faced little man just whirled, lowered the head of the Lance and charged Kina. He let out a great mad bellow and drove the weapon through the flesh of an arm and into her ribs below her right breast. And just before the weapon struck home, one wisp flung itself in front, trying to block the thrust. The Lance’s head was ablaze when it pierced demonic flesh.
The second wisp set Goblin aflame.
Even screaming, telling me to get out, Goblin continued to heave against the Lance, driving it deeper into Kina, possibly in some mad, wild hope of penetrating her black heart.
The blue flame feasted on Goblin’s flesh. He let go of the Lance, threw himself to the icy floor, rolled around violently, slapping at himself. Nothing helped. He began to melt like an overheated candle.
He screamed and screamed.
On that psychic level where I had sensed her moments earlier, Kina also screamed and screamed and screamed. Suvrin and Santaraksita screamed. Tobo screamed. I screamed and staggered into the stairwell, retreating despite the urging of that mad part of me that wanted to go back and help Goblin. And there could have been no greater madness than that. The Destroyer ruled the cavern of her imprisonment.
Goblin had struck a fierce blow but in truth, its impact was no greater than the nip of a wolf cub at the ear of a dozing tiger. I knew that. And I knew that the cub, caught, was trying to buy time for the rest of its pack.
I gasped, “Tobo, go ahead as fast as you can. Tell the others.” He was younger, he was faster, he could get there long before I could.
He was the future.
I would try to keep anything from coming up the stair behind him.
The screaming continued down below, from both sources. Goblin was being more stubborn than ever he had been with One-Eye.
We climbed as fast as Master Santaraksita could manage. I stayed behind the other two, already ready to turn and put the unholy pickax between us and any pursuit. I was convinced that the power of that talisman would shield us.
Darkness no longer inhabited the stair. Visibility was much better than it had been when we came down. So good, in fact, that had there been no landings to break up the line of sight, we would have been able to look up the stairs for a mile.
I was gasping for breath and fighting leg cramps before the screaming stopped. Suvrin had collapsed once already, losing what little his stomach contained. Master Santaraksita seemed the hardiest of us now, without a complaint to his name, though he was so pale I feared his heart would betray him before long.
As we fought for breath I stared downward, listening to the ominous silence. “God is Great.” Gasp. “There is no God but God.” Gasp. “In Mercy He is Like the Earth.” Gasp. “He Walks with Us in All Our Hours.” Gasp. “O Lord of Creation, I Acknowledge that I am Your Child.”
Master Santaraksita had enough spare breath to chide, “He’s going to get bored and find something else to do if you don’t get to the point, Dorabee.”
“How’s this?” Gasp. “Help!”
“Better. Much better. Suvrin! Get up.”
The white crow arrowed up the stairwell, nearly bowled me over landing on my shoulder. I did make the process more difficult by trying to duck the arriving bird. It lashed my face with flapping wings. “Climb,” it said. “Slowly, without panic. Steadily. I will watch behind you.”
We climbed for five or ten days. Hunger nagged me. Terror and lack of sleep made me see things that were not there. I did not look back for fear of seeing something terrible closing in. We moved slower and slower as the effort devoured our energies and will, and our capacity for recovery. It became a major trek and an act of ultimate will to climb from one landing to the next. Then we began resting between landings, though neither Suvrin nor Santaraksita ever suggested it.
The crow told me, “Stop and sleep.”
No one argued. There are limits to how far and hard terror can drive anyone. We found ours. I collapsed so fast I later claimed I heard my first snore before I hit the stone of the landing. I was only vaguely aware of the crow launching itself into the darkness, headed downward again.
