“You should be dead,” said the priest. “This is decades of work, the life force of thousands of slaughtered creatures, and it is the key that will bring back our Mistress.”
“Your mistress is a fraud!” shouted Calis. He came up to the Pantathian, weaving slightly, and said, “You are snakes lifted up and given arms, legs, speech, and cunning, but you are snakes!” He leaned forward until he was nearly nose-to-snout with the creature. “Look into my eyes, snake! See what you face!”
The old priest blinked and stared into Calis’s eyes. Mystic communication passed between them, because suddenly the priest fell to its knees, turning away, holding up its arms as if shielding itself from Calis’s gaze. “No! It cannot be!”
“I carry that blood within me!” shouted Calis. Erik wondered where the strength to hold himself that way came from; a lesser man would be dead from the burns.
“It is a lie!” screamed the lizard man, turning away.
“Your Green Mother is the lie!” shouted Calis. “She is no goddess! She is one of the Valheru!”
“No! They were lesser kin. None were as great as She Who Birthed Us! We labor to bring her back so that in death we will be born again to rule at her feet!”
“Fools!” said Calis, and Erik could sense the strength leaving him again. Miranda took careful hold of his right side, helping him stay erect. “Murderous fools, you are nothing but what she made you, bent creatures of no natural root, the makings of a vain thing who knew only her own pleasures. You were dust under her feet, and when she rose with her brethren during the Chaos Wars you were forgotten!” Calis stumbled, and de Loungville came to help hold him. “If there was any possible way to redeem you and your kind, we would not be here.”
Then Calis took a deep breath. “You are a pawn and have always been a pawn. It is no fault of your own that you must be destroyed, but you must be obliterated, root and branch.”
“You are here to do this?” said the High Priest.
“I am,” said Calis. “I am the son of he who imprisoned your AlmaLodaka!”
“No!” shrieked the High Priest. “None may speak the most holy of names!” The old serpent rose, puffing a dagger from its robes. Erik didn’t hesitate, but ran two steps up the dais and hacked as hard as he could at the High Priest. The old creature’s head sailed from its shoulders, landing a short distance away, while the body collapsed.
Erik looked at Calis who said, “You did well.”
“What now?” asked de Loungville, as the thudding against the door became more rhythmic. “They’ve gotten themselves a ram. That’s a heavy bar on the door, but it won’t hold forever. Those Saaur are strong.”
Calis said, “Find us another way out, or we have to fight back the way we came.”
De Loungville turned and ordered the men to start searching for another exit. “Here is what their temple was about,” said Calis, as Miranda helped him sit upon the steps. “Tens of thousands of lives given up over the last fifty years in vile sacrifice so they could create that.” He pointed weakly at the green stone. “It is a thing of captured life.”
Miranda said, “Your father spoke once of the false Murmandamus using the captured lives of those who died in his service to shift into the same realm as the Lifestone. We should have suspected they would again use such means.” She pointed at the stone. “This is a far more powerful tool than that simple deception.”
“What do we do with it?” asked Erik.
Calis groaned in pain. “You,” he said to Miranda, “take it. You must take it to my father. He and Pug are the only two men on this world who might understand how to utilize it.” The pounding on the door served to underscore the urgency of his words. “If the Emerald Queen gets this key to Sethanon, joins it with the Lifestone.
Miranda nodded. “I think I understand. I can get a few of us out of here. . . .”
“No,” said Calis. “I’m staying. I’m the only one who might begin to understand what else we might find here. Take the Valheru helm we found, and this key. Try for the surface.” He looked at Boldar and said, “Take the mercenary with you. He’ll keep you alive until you find a place you can use your arts to get home.”
Miranda smiled. “You bastard. You told me you don’t know anything about magic.”
Calis said, “There is no magic, remember?”
“I wish Nakor were here,” said Erik.
Calis said, “If Pug couldn’t find the Pantathians after looking for them for fifty years, it follows this place is very secure, and I suspect that using magic to get in or out is equally impossible.”
“Damn you,” she said, a tear running down her face. “We do need to climb up to the surface, or near it.”
“Well, then we’d better hope there’s another way out.”
A few minutes later, de Loungville reported they had found a stairway at the rear of the hall leading upward. “There you go,” said Calis, trying to smile. “I need to rest a bit. And the men need to look around.”