Mel Odom - The Black Road

Do it! Mat roared in Darrick's head.

The sword blazed blue again, a true and cold blue like that found in the sea before the deep turned black. Swinging, not holding anything back, Darrick felt the enchanted weapon shatter through the bone golem's ribcage and grate to a stop embedded in the creature's spine.

The bone golem howled with pain, but its macabre voice carried laughter as well, rolling gales of it. "Now you're going to die, insect."

"No," Darrick said, feeling the power tingling through the sword. "Go back to hell, demon."

Eldritch blue flames leapt down the length of the sword and curled around the bone golem's spine as it reached for Darrick. The fire grew, enveloping the bone golem and burning away whatever magic bound the skeletal remains of the dead rats together. Flaming bones toppled into the sewer water, hissing when they struck.

For a moment, everyone-including Darrick-stood frozen in disbelief.

Run! Mat yelled.

Turning, Darrick ran, raising his knees high to clear the water level. The sword continued to glow, chasing back theshadows that filled the tunnel. Taramis and the demon hunters came after Darrick.

Less than fifty yards farther on, the tunnel ended at a T juncture. Without hesitation, the sword pulled Darrick to the right. He ran on, filmed by the condensation filling the tunnel as well as perspiration pouring from every pore. His breath burned the back of his throat, and he was convinced the stench of the place was soaking into him.

Only a short distance farther on, the tunnel ended without warning. Sometime in distant years past, the sewer had collapsed. The sword's bright blade illuminated the pile of rubble that blocked the passageway. Cloaked in the shadows and the collapse of broken rock, rats prowled the rubbish heap. Hundreds of them scampered and crept along the broken rock.

Above the rubble, a rounded dome of fallen earth peeked through. No longer shored up by the stones, the earth had collapsed inward over the years but had not completely fallen. There was no way to guess how many feet of earth and rock separated the tunnel from the surface.

"Dead end," Palat growled. "That damned sword has played us false this time, Taramis. Those guards will be down on us in another moment, and there's no place for us to run."

Taramis turned to Darrick. "What is the meaning of this?"

"I don't know," Darrick admitted.

In the distance, the splash of the closing guards running through the sewer grew steadily louder in Darrick's ears. At least in this part of the tunnel, the water level was a few inches below knee-high, and the current was weak, little more than a steady flow.

Darrick felt betrayed. The voice that he'd thought had been Mat's had only been another demon-spawned trick. Staring at the sword, he knew it had been bait for an insidious trap.

No, Mat said. This is where ye're supposed to be. Just hold yer water, I say, an' things will be revealed to ye.

"What things?" Darrick demanded.

Taramis and the other warriors turned to watch him, and the splashing of the approaching church guards grew louder, more immediate.

There were three of us in that cavern when Kabraxis stepped through into our world, Mat answered . The magicks that Buyard Cholik unleashed when he opened that gateway to the Burning Hells marked all of us. Them doubts in yer head, Darrick, that's just Kabraxis playing on yer fears. Just hold the course.

"Three?" Darrick repeated. "There weren't three of us." Unless Buyard Cholik was being counted.

There was another, Mat insisted. We all lost somethin' that night, Darrick, an' now we must stand together to get it back. Demons never enter this world without sowing the seeds of their own destruction. It's up to men to figure out what they are. Me? I been lost for a long time, an' it wasn't until ye found Hauklin's sword that I come back to meself and ye.

Darrick shook his head, doubting all of it.

You're worthless, boy, his father's voice said. Hardly worth the time to kill you. Maybe I'll just wait until you get a little bigger, put a little more meat on your bones, then I'll dress you out and tell everybody you up and ran away.

The old fear vibrated through Darrick. In the shadows he thought he could almost see his father's face.

"Darrick," Taramis called.

Even though he heard the man clearly, Darrick found he couldn't respond. He was trapped by the memory and by the old fear. The stink of the stables behind the butcher's shop filled his nostrils, making the images of the men before him and the sewer tunnel around him seem dreamlike.

C'mon, Darrick! Mat called. Pay attention, damn ye! This is the hold that Kabraxis has found over ye. Me, why, that foul demon up an' lost me out in the ghost ways, an' maybe I'd be there still if ye hadn't found Hauklin's blade the way ye done.

Darrick felt the sword in his fist, but he blamed it for leading them into the dead end. Maybe Mat still believed the sword was a talisman of power, something to stand tall against the demons, but Darrick didn't. It was a cursed thing, like other weapons he'd talked about. Palat had owned a cursed weapon; he knew what he was talking about when he denounced Hauklin's sword.

It's the demon, Darrick, Mat said. Be strong.

"I can't," Darrick whispered hollowly. He watched the torchlights of the approaching guards gather at the far end of the tunnel.

"You can't what?" Taramis asked him.

"I can't believe," Darrick said. All his life he'd trained himself not to believe. He didn't believe that his father had hated him. He didn't believe that it was his father's fault that he was beaten. He'd trained himself to believe that life was one day after another at the butcher's shop and that a good day was one when a beating didn't cripple him up.

But ye escaped that, Mat said.

"I ran," Darrick whispered, "but I couldn't outrun what was meant to be."

Ye have.

"No," Darrick said, gazing at the guard.

"They're waiting," Palat said. "They figure there's too many of us for them to take without losing more than a few of their own. They're going to hold up, get more archers in here, then take us down."

Taramis stepped toward Darrick. "Are you all right?"

Darrick didn't answer. Helplessness filled him, and he struggled to push it away. The feeling settled over his chest and shoulders, making it hard for him to breathe. For this past year, he'd put his life into a bottle, into the bottom of a glass, into the cheap wine in every lowdown tavern he'd wandered through. Then he'd made the mistake of trying to sober himself up and believe there was more than futility in his life.

More than the bad luck and the feeling of being unwanted that had haunted him all his life.

Worthless, his father's voice spat.

And why had he saved himself? To die at the end of a collapsed sewer like a rat? Darrick wanted to laugh, but he wanted to cry as well.

Darrick, Mat called.

"No, Mat," Darrick said. "I've come far enough. It's time to end it."

Moving closer, holding the lantern he held up to Darrick's face, Taramis stared into his eyes. "Darrick."

"We've come here to die," Darrick said, telling Mat as well as Taramis.

"We didn't come here to die," Taramis said. "We've come here to expose the demon for what he is. Once the people here who worship him know what he is, they will turn from him and be free."

The malaise that possessed Darrick was so strong that the sage's words barely registered on him.

It's the demon, Mat said.

"Are you talking to your friend?" Taramis asked.

"Mat's dead," Darrick said in a hoarse whisper. "I saw him die. I got him killed."