Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

Ramachni met the creatures on the stair. He cuffed the first off the side with one blow of his paw, and bore down on the second with his teeth, savaging it, and left its corpse where it fell. Hercol, Thasha and Cayer Vispek were on the stairs already, and leaped to attack the other creatures before they could spring. But above, Arunis was goading the idiot to renew the attack, beating him about the head and screaming, “More, much more! Kill them instantly!”

The idiot bent nearly double, and his back heaved like a retching dog’s. Once, twice-and then he vomited, and went on vomiting, an impossible flood of slick black oil. It raced down the staircase toward Ramachni, and just as it reached him, the whole sheet burst into flame.

Ramachni shouted a word of command. The flames died instantly, and the oil thinned to water and drained off the sides. Now the whole party was on the stairs. Hercol and Cayer Vispek had caught up with Ramachni, and the three of them were within twenty steps of the sorcerer and the fool. Then the idiot, his head cocked to one side, began waving his hand spasmodically before him.

This time three creatures appeared and flew to the attack. They were very different from the hags he had summoned before. These were creatures of mud and fire, but they were also mirror images of the attackers. There was a blazing bear for Ramachni, a mud-fire Hercol and a mud-fire Vispek. The clash was terrible. Pazel could not see clearly what happened to Hercol and Vispek, but Ramachni’s huge foe caught him squarely, and the two bears rolled like a snarling, blazing boulder down the staircase, felling several of the party as they went. Pazel felt the rush of wind as they rolled past him. Lifting his head, he found the stair above him empty all the way to Arunis. With a feeling like he’d once had as a child, reaching for a pan on the stove that happened to be glowing an alluring red, he ran straight up the broken stones.

The idiot kept waving and moaning, and suddenly Pazel saw the creature’s arm lengthen obscenely, and then the giant hairy hand with its scabs and black bitten thumbnail caught him cleanly, and more angry than frightened (of course this had happened, of course!) he was scooped from the staircase, hurled over the moonlit grass and stones-and plunged headfirst into the river.

Thasha had stopped to help Cayer Vispek fight his double. It grappled with him, strangling, howling in Vispek’s own voice, and it barely seemed to feel her club. But when she landed a sound blow she felt its arm buckle slightly, and then Vispek, wriggling free, cried out in rage and slashed it to pieces with his sword. Thasha pulled him to his feet. Vispek, shocked, pointed past her. She whirled-and saw Pazel strike the river’s surface, forty feet from shore.

Gods! Was he even conscious, after a fall like that? Thasha broke for the river. There was his hand, thank the Blessed Tree, but the river was violent, he was sucked under again, it would be the hardest swim of her life to reach him.

Then she saw that Ibjen was well ahead of her, boots off already, and like a diving cormorant he shot into the Ansyndra. Thasha’s heart was torn. Pazel needed her, but the battle needed everyone. Still praying for her lover she charged back up the stairs.

The tol-chenni’s giant hand was still smashing and flailing, but now it was an armored fist. Up it soared above her; down it came with a rending crash. She leaped; stone stairs were pulverized. Now she was falling, scrabbling to stop herself. She caught the black silhouette of the fist against the moon, it was plummeting again, she could not dodge it With a roar, Ramachni leaped above her, braced his bear’s form against the blow. She raised her hands into his fur. There: oh Gods, the blow was crippling, lethal. The bear toppled onto its side, and with a shout of pain Ramachni abandoned it, leaped out as his old, mink self. The ghost-creature tumbled from the staircase, and vanished before it touched the ground.

Ramachni was dazed. Thasha grabbed him and leaped again, and the mailed fist struck where they had lain a moment before.

All of them had been driven to ground; the stones above them were now more rubble than staircase. With his left hand still on the idiot’s neck, Arunis flexed the fingers of his right, and the mailed fist did the same. He was gaining control, and he leered, enjoying it. He spread his fingers wide; the idiot’s ghastly hand did the same. Then the fingers started to grow, slithering down the ruined staircase, each one a serpent as thick as a man’s body.

Hercol did not wait for them to close. He charged forward with Ildraquin, right into their jaws, and Vispek was beside him, sword held high. The snakes proved clumsier than they looked: caught between serpent reflexes and Arunis’ conscious control. Hercol danced among them; Ildraquin swept a figure eight, and two heads fell. Vispek’s blade tore the throat of another. But the wound began to close almost before it could bleed, and already new heads were forming on the gushing necks.

Then Ramachni shook himself and sprang from Thasha’s arms. A stinging, furious word left his mouth. The remaining snakes caught fire. The whole conjured arm jerked back and shrank away to nothing, and far above them Arunis cried in awful pain, cradling his own hand.

So there were costs for the power he’d seized.

Then Arunis stood again, and his gaunt face was mad with fury. He took hold of the idiot once more. This time nothing sudden happened; the sorcerer’s face became quiet; the tol-chenni stopped his gestures and held still.

“On guard, on guard!” cried Ramachni suddenly. “He is preparing something worse than all that has come before! I cannot tell what it will be, but-Ah Mathrok! Scatter, run!”

It was too late to run. Around them, a circular pit suddenly opened, deep and sheer. Bristling at the base of the pit were spikes-no, needles, needles of burnished steel, five or six feet long. The party huddled together; the space they occupied was barely large enough for them all. And then the rim of the pit-the inner rim, beside their feet-began to crumble.

Ramachni closed his eyes. At once the cracks in the earth stopped growing, and there were sighs of relief. But the mage remained very still and tense. Above them, Arunis and his slave tilted their heads together, in perfect synchrony, as if one brain were directing them both. Thasha saw Ramachni wince, and then the cracks once more began to spread.

The instant he struck the river Pazel knew that something was wrong. He kicked and flailed. He was a strong swimmer, but his wildest efforts barely lifted him to the surface; it was as if the water were partly air. There was a roaring below him, and a sense of infinite, rushing space.

He looked down into the Ansyndra, and thought the madness of the spores was infecting him anew: beneath his feet he saw a black tunnel, twisting down and away, a tunnel enclosing a cyclone. It was no illusion, he realized, horrified. He was seeing the River of Shadows, treading water above a hole in the world.

There was no escaping it. He had not yet begun to sink, but his terrified paddling had not moved him an inch toward shore-and suddenly there was no shore, for the Ansyndra had swept him downstream, to where the sheer stone wall jutted out into the river’s path. Pazel threw out his hands as the current slapped him against the stone. For twenty feet he scraped along its slimy edge. Then, miraculously, his hands found something to grip.

It was only a thin vine, reaching down from a crack in the wall, and its tendrils began to break as soon as he seized it. But for a moment it stopped him. He gulped a breath, furious. A ridiculous death. Not even in the fight. And damn his stupidity, he was carrying lead! Mr. Fiffengurt’s blackjack was still there in his breeches, sewn into its special pocket. He couldn’t spare either hand to cast it away.