Gregory Keyes - The Infernal city

“Stay together!” Sul shouted. He took a step, and again the unimaginable sensation, and now they were in utter darkness—but not silence, for all around them were chittering sounds and the staccato scurrying of hundreds of feet.

They were in an infinite palace of colored glass.

They were on an icy plane with a burning sky.

They were standing by a dark red river, and the smell of blood was nearly suffocating.

They were in the deepest forest Attrebus had ever seen.

He was braced for the next transition, but Sul was suddenly swearing.

“What?” Attrebus said. “Where are we? Is this still Oblivion?”

“Yes,” he said “We’ve been interrupted. He must have sniffed out my spoor and laid a trap.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is part of a trail I made to escape Oblivion,” he said. “It took me years to make it. It starts in Azura’s realm and ends in Morrowind. I used the sympathy of Dagon’s gate to enter his realm at the point my trail crossed it, so we really started in the middle. A few more turns and we would have been there. Now …”

He scratched the stubble on his chin and glanced at the leaves overhead.

“We’re lucky,” he murmured. “We have some time before dark. We might have a chance.”

“A chance against whom?” Attrebus asked

“The Hunter,” Sul answered. “The Father of the Manbeasts—Prince Hircine.”

In the distance Attrebus heard the sound of a horn, then another behind him.

“We’re being hunted by a daedra prince?”

“The Hungry Cat, we call him,” Lesspa said. She actually sounded excited. “I knew coming with you was the thing to do. There could be no worthier opponent than Prince Hircine.”

“That may be,” Attrebus said, “but I don’t intend to die here, no matter how honorable a death it might be.”

“He won’t necessarily kill us,” Sul said absently, turning slowly, looking out through the curiously clear forest and its enormous trees. “He didn’t kill me, the time he caught me. He just kept me here for a few years.”

“How did you escape?”

“That’s a very long story, and I didn’t do it without help.”

“Well, being held here won’t do either.”

“He’ll probably kill us,” Sul said. He pointed. “It’s that way—another door that will put us back on track. It’s in a more difficult place, which is why I prefer this one—but it will do.”

“And if it’s trapped, too?”

“Hircine always gives a chance,” Lesspa said. “That’s his way.”

“She’s right,” Sul agreed. “It’s not sport if the prey can’t escape.”

The horns sounded again, and a third joined them, in the direction Sul had just pointed.

“That’s bad,” Attrebus remarked.

“Those are Hircine’s drivers,” Sul said, “not the prince himself. We haven’t heard his horn—you’ll know it when you do, believe me. If we can get past the driver, we might have a chance.”

“We’ll get past him,” Lesspa said. “Mount behind me, Prince Attrebus. Sul, you ride S’enjara with Taaj.”

Attrebus climbed up behind Lesspa. There was no saddle, or anything to hold onto but her, so he reached around her waist.

The tigers began at an easy lope that was still far faster than Attrebus could have run. Lesspa had a lance in her left hand, and so did Taaj. The other two Khajiit had small but efficient-looking bows.

The horns sounded again, the loudest now being the one they were headed toward.

Because of the lack of understory, and because the huge trees were spaced so far apart, they caught glimpses of Hircine’s driver from a fair distance, but it wasn’t until the last thirty yards that Attrebus saw what they faced.

The driver himself might have been a massive albino Nord with long, sinewy arms. He was bare to the waist and covered in blue tattoos. His mount was the largest bear Attrebus had ever seen, and four only slightly smaller bears ran along with him.

“Bears,” Lesspa sighed. It sounded as if she were happy. She shouted a few orders in her native dialect.

The archers wheeled and began firing, but Sha’jal was suddenly moving so fast that Attrebus nearly fell off. Everything to the sides blurred; only their destination was clear, and getting larger with terrifying speed.

Sha’jal bellowed out a deafening roar and bounded up on one of the bears, using it as a step to kick himself even higher, and all of the weight went out of Attrebus as they soared straight at the driver. He brought up a spear with a leaf-shaped blade bigger than some short swords, but not quick enough to hit the huge cat. Lesspa’s lance went true into the driver’s chest, but the resulting impact spun them half around, and Attrebus finally lost his grip. He hit the ground on his shoulder, felt pain jar through his skeleton, but all he could think of were the bears all around him, so he scrambled back up despite the pain.

A good thing, too, because one was coming right for him. He drew Flashing, made a wild stroke, and staggered aside as the bear lunged for his throat. Flashing bounced off the beast’s skull, leaving a cut that appeared to only make it madder. Then it reared up over him, giving him the opportunity to thrust his blade into its belly. It bawled and threw its weight on him, wrenching his weapon from his hand. He threw up his arms to protect his head and tried to roll aside.

He was only partly successful; the beast came down on his lower body, claws ripping into his byrnie. He kicked at the crushing weight, but it was only the bear rolling off to lick at its wounded belly that freed him. Heaving for breath, he took Flashing back up and chopped though its neck.

A flash like lightning lit the trees; he turned and saw another of the bears topple, smoking, as Sul leapt over it and toward the heart of the fray. The white giant was gone, and in its place something between a man and a bear was fighting the Sench-tigers. It hurled two away, but even as it did, Sha’jal leapt on the driver’s back and closed his viselike jaws behind his neck. The other Khajiit were finishing off the mount. The other bears lay in brown heaps.

The were-bear bawled and tried to shake free. Sul strode up almost casually and cut him from crotch to sternum.

The tigers plunged into the were-beasts’ steaming entrails. They were quick about it, and before Attrebus had taken another twenty breaths, they were mounted again, riding hard as the other horns drew nearer. By the sound of it, one of the drivers was behind them and the other was coming from their left flank.

“Hold on!” Lesspa yelled. He was just wondering why when they were suddenly moving downhill in what amounted to a controlled fall. They burst into open sunlight and bounded over a stream as they left the forest behind and plunged downslope to a grassy savanna. A red sun was just touching the horizon, painting bloody the river that meandered across the flatland. Of course, this was Oblivion, so it might be blood. Off to what he presumed was the south, he saw a herd of some large beasts, but before he could figure out what they were, they were on the plain and he couldn’t make them out anymore. They were in the same general direction as one of the drivers who was approaching and blowing, so he hoped that whatever they were, they might slow him down.

“More our element, grassland,” Lesspa told him.

It was only then that he noticed that M’qar was riderless.

“Where’s J’lasha?” he asked Lesspa.

“On Khenarthi’s path,” she replied.

“I’m sorry.”

“He died well. There’s no sorrow in that.”

A herd of antelopes with twisting horns scattered at their approach.

Lesspa slowed Sha’jal to a walk and dismounted. Taaj and Sul followed her lead.