The emir was at her back. He reached into his own pouch and grabbed his sunstone, held it up and pinched it. The sunstone flared into light.
They were standing in a huge room, circular in shape. There were high walls all around them, twenty feet perhaps. And above those walls were seats.
We re in a coliseum, Talon realized, a place for blood sports.
'Welcome,' a man called out, 'to the Arena of the Great Wyrm.'
Talon halted, heart hammering, and saw a man standing before them in fine robes at the very center of the ring. At his side stood a dark creature, hairy and winged. Talon had never seen such, but she recognized it from her mother s description. It was a Darkling Glory.
Behind the man, a pair of burly guards were holding the wyrmling girl, Kirissa.
'Areth,' a voice cried at Talon s back. 'Areth Sul Urstone!' The Emir Tuul Ra sprang forward, confusion thick in his voice, as if he wanted to embrace his old friend but suspected that he should flee.
'Areth Sul Urstone no longer exists,' the swordsman said. 'I am the master of this house. I am the king of the Shattered Earth. I am the Great Wyrm that haunts your nightmares. I am Lord Despair.'
At their back, Talon could hear heavy feet. Vulgnash and the Death Lords had stepped in to block the company s escape.
The emir looked crushed, confused. He staggered forward, as if he might embrace Areth.
But Daylan warned him back. 'Hold, my friend. This is not the Areth that you so loved.'
'Areth!' the emir shouted in a near panic. 'Resist him. You can resist evil. Resist it, and it will flee from you!'
Despair laughed. 'No, there is not much left of him in here. What remains is hardly aware. Like a mouse stung by the venom of a scorpion, he is torpid. Yes, that is it, a mouse. He is a mouse hiding in my skull, a frightened mouse shivering in the recesses of my consciousness, dreaming of escape. He cannot resist me.'
'But, Areth,' the emir cried, 'we re here to rescue you.'
'Too late,' Despair said. 'You should have come years ago, fourteen years ago. You could have offered ransoms. You could have fought valiantly.'
'There is no coin that we could have paid with,' the Emir objected. 'There is no chance that we could have won.'
'Ah,' Lord Despair said, 'that is where you are wrong. You could have fought. It is true that you would have died, and Areth would have been saddened for a moment. But he would have also been comforted by the depth of your love. The knowledge of what you had sacrificed might even have steeled him, so that he could endure all of our torments. But alas, we ll never know. All he felt for you in the end was hurt and betrayal.'
'That s a lie,' the emir said. 'Areth knew that I loved him as a brother. I would have come for him years ago. I would have come and died. But the wyrmlings would have destroyed our people in the backlash. Areth knows that, too, I am sure. And he would have suffered for an eternity rather than see that.'
The smile the crept across Lord Despair s face was terrible to see. It was cruel beyond torture, and it mocked all who beheld it.
'He held on to such noble sentiments for as long as he could,' Despair said. 'But here in Rugassa, we have perfected torment, and in the end, pain drove all such thoughts from his mind.'
The Emir Tuul Ra attacked then; with a cry of anguish he drew his blade and lunged. Talon felt sure that it was a last desperate attempt to rescue Areth Sul Urstone, to free his soul, to save him from what he had become.
With the strength of a Runelord, the emir leapt thirty feet, blinding in his speed.
But Despair blurred into motion himself, easily batting aside the emir s weapon, and then landed a crushing blow with the butt of a dagger to the emir s head.
The emir fell to the ground with a crash, his sword clanging to the arena floor, then ringing as it spun away.
Talon almost charged next, but Daylan warned her back. 'Ware! Ware! He has more endowments than we do, and he has the powers of an Earth King besides.' There was fear in Daylan s voice, and regret and horror.
Lord Despair studied the fallen emir, as if dissecting him with his eyes.
'Fourteen long years Areth waited for you,' Despair said. 'Fourteen years of torture. Let s see how well you bear up as you suffer his fate.'
Then he turned his cold gaze upon the rest of the company. He glanced at Kirissa, who struggled in the grasp of her wyrmling guards.
'Fools,' Despair said. 'Why do you even bother to resist?'
'Ah,' Daylan said, 'and that is where you are wrong. We are not fools. The rules I live by are not the rules of this physical world. They are the rules of the invisible world. By abiding by those laws, Despair, we gain power that you never could comprehend, nor control.'
Despair dismissed him with a flick of his eyes. 'If you insist,' he said. 'But what has all of your power gained you? Yes, you resist me, but your efforts are of no consequence.'
'Until now,' Daylan said. 'Your time is coming to an end. The True Tree has been reborn. The Torch-bearer has returned. The Restoration of All Things is at hand.'
'The remains of the True Tree are rotting away at Castle Coorm,' Despair said. 'And the Torch-bearer writhes in my dungeon, and shall soon be joining me.'
Without blinking, Despair must have uttered some silent command, for from the corner of her eye Talon caught a movement. She whirled with her weapon in hand just in time to see specters hurtling toward her silently, as insubstantial as a mist. In their shapes, she thought that she saw the remains of their forms-skulls shrunken and meatless, with pits for eyes. A ghostly hand reached out to touch her with fingers of bone.
She cried out and tried to lurch away, but the finger brushed her hand. Instantly it felt as if the blood froze in her veins, racing up her arm, and her entire right side went numb.
The icy sensation swept up her arm, paralyzed her shoulder, and stopped her heart with its piercing cold. She heard Rhianna cry out and a rush of wings as the woman leapt into the air.
'Run!' Rhianna shouted.
But Talon could not stagger a step. The wight had taken her by the hand, and she could not break free. Even with the strength of a dozen warriors of Caer Luciare, her knees suddenly felt too weak to hold her, and she collapsed to the arena floor.
19
Thus sayeth the Great Wyrm: I am your god. Above me there is no other. Thou must serve me or perish. The dumb man seeketh to disobey, and the fool seeketh flight.
With a glimpse of the shadow wights rushing up behind her, Rhianna leapt into the air with a shout of warning, and flapped up into the darkness. The arena was about one hundred and fifty yards across and had a high ceiling, but in the darkness she could not be certain how high.
She glanced below. A wave of wights had rushed in behind Vulgnash. Talon whirled to do battle, but it was in vain, for a wight merely took her hand, and its paralyzing touch drove her to the floor.
Daylan Hammer sprang forward, bringing his war hammer to bear on Lord Despair, raining blows upon him like a human cyclone. But Despair merely danced back, parrying every blow with his great sword, until after a dozen blows from Daylan s weapon a wight leapt into the air and grabbed him from behind, arms locked about his throat in a death grip, and rode him to the ground.
With her companions all either dead or paralyzed, Rhianna had no choice but to seek escape.
