"The Vengeance of Karl Eldritch"
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dochermes"The Vengeance of Karl Eldritch"
8/28-8/29/1980
I.
After the Tel Shai knights had been escorted from the room, old King Gowain sank wearily into his chair. He felt ill at the deceit he had been pressed to carry out against those who had so recently helped him. Lifting his goblet, he saw only a thin film of wine remained in its bottom. Then he heard something and lurched to his feet. On one wall hung a life sized portrait of his father, Ulmic the Bold, in full armor. This painting now swung open from behind, and a huge bulk filled the space behind it.
"What? Who knows of my secret passage..?! Oh. You." Gowain dropped back into his seat.
"You did well, my lord," said Karl Eldritch. He wore the tan uniform of the palace guard, the loose blouse and trousers and high polished boots, but without insignia of any kind. Instead of the usual saber, he bore a strange metal device strapped to one hip, and a long knife at the other. At six foot seven and more than three hundred pounds, he was the biggest man to have ever been in Bruenig. Eldritch kept his head shaved, and his pale hazel eyes stabbed out from beneath heavy black brows.
"Can I keep nothing from you?" demanded the King wearily. "Since I accepted you as my advisor, your influence has grown too much over the court. The army. The people. You were meant to be a power behind the throne, not the throne itself."
"You have nothing to fear from me, your highness," said the huge warlock with a smile. "I am not Bruenigan. How could I wear the crown? No, I am content to merely help you against your enemies."
"Like those who came here at my invitation?" The old man scowled and shook his head. "Not a year ago, those Tel Shai knights came here to aid this realm against the Taurians. They risked their lives and asked no reward, and today I repay them by luring them into a trap."
"You do not know them as I do," said Eldritch. "Their heroism is a sham. They have overthrown rulers and installed their own puppets in the world beyond... and now I have reason to believe they intend to do the same in the adjacent realms. Beginning here, in Bruenig."
King Gowain was silent for a long moment. The truth was, he no longer felt confident he could defy this strange sorcerer who had all but taken over his court. "Very well. Do as you will, you have shown yourself shrewd and perceptive so far."
"Your majesty will not regret this," Karl Eldritch said. He turned and exited through the wall panel, closing the painting behind him. Gowain gazed on the portrait of his renowned father and almost wept at how weak he himself had become.
II.
In the bedroom provided for him, Jeremy Bane changed from his usual clothing into the Bruenig garb provided. The loose white blouse with full sleeves, the baggy black trousers with their silk sash, the polished leather boots.. all fit well enough. But he felt so uneasy he could hardly stand it. Knowing they would be required to wear local clothing, he had told his team to leave most of their personal items locked in the CORBY. He himself was uncomfortable without the matched silver daggers Kenneth Dred had given him. They had been such powerful weapons against enemies in the Midnight Wars that he seldom left them out of reach. Now they were concealed in a compartment within the pilot seat of the CORBY, and the helicopter itself was hidden under camoflauge tarp deep in the woods miles from this palace. The daggers should be safe and yet he fretted over them.
At only twenty-three, the Dire Wolf carried himself with such a serious, self-assured air that he seemed much older. Gaunt, just over six feet tall, Bane watched the world through wary gray eyes that seemed constantly suspicious. Right now, he decided that he and his team would not do this again. If they were required to leave their field suits and gear behind, they would just have to decline invitations, even from a king.
Bane let out a breath and decided to make the best of things. They would enjoy the banquet, listen to some speeches and maybe learn some gossip about other realms. Then, as soon as he manage, he would get his team back to the CORBY and return to the world. He opened the door and stepped out into the hall where a young boy wearing much the same clothing as he had on stood at attention.
"May I help you?" asked the page.
"No, thanks, I'm going to round up my friends and get ready for the meal." Bane started to move past the boy, but the page hurried to get alongside him.
"I beg your forgiveness, but I must accompany you," said the boy. He looked to be about ten or eleven, with the typical blond hair and heavy features of most Bruenigans. "It would mean a caning for me if I did not follow my orders."
"Oh, all right," Bane said grumpily. "I don't want to encourage child abuse. Come on, we're just going down the corridor." He started walking with the boy beside him. This part of the castle of King Gowain was all dark wood paneling with niches that held benches or marble statues. At nightfall, the high narrow windows had been covered with heavy drapes and numerous candles burned in metal sconces set high on the walls.
Three doors down, he stopped just as a door opened and Michael Hawk came out. The criminologist was in his early sixties and there was a lot of grey in the shaggy dark brown hair and the wide face was furrowed by long exposure to sun and wind. Hawk gave them his wry crooked smile.
"You feel uncomfortable in these clothes?" asked Bane.
"Aw, these aren't bad. Wait until we go to an embassy function and we have to wear tuxedos. Those collars are torture." Hawk shrugged. "At least I've got an appetite. I skipped lunch today because I had too much paperwork. And you're always hungry, aren't you?"
"Always," agreed Bane. "We might as well eat everything in sight. Come on, let's get the rest of our crew and get this over with." They went down a few more doors and Bane knocked on the door next to the staircase. Weaver stuck his head out immediately.
"I'm all set," he said. Steven Weaver was an American black man with short hair and a thick mustache. The Bruenigan clothing looked good on him, but some of that was from his innate confidence which bordered on vanity. "Ready to chow down, boys?"
"All we need is Cindy," Bane said. "The ladies are in a different wing, Bruenig isn't ready for co-ed dorms. We'll have to ask a page to fetch her." He started down the wide marble staircase, with the page rushing to get ahead of him. They were led to a huge high-ceiling chamber which had a long L-shaped table taking up most of its space. On the walls were tapestries covered with intricate abstract designs and logs blazed unnecessarily in a stone fireplace near the head of the table. More than thirty people in the white blouses and black trousers were already seating and chatting away in a happy confusion of noises. Some food was already set out but no one would think of taking a bite before the King arrived.
The three Tel Shai knights were shown to seats at the section of the table with stood perpendicular to the main length. The King and Queen sat in the middle, on raised chairs of elaborate carved wood, with a seat on either side of them left empty for some tradition no one understood. Bane and Hawk were seated to the right of the King, Weaver to the left. Bane could smell roast beef, pork and chicken, and his stomach rumbled audibly.
"Let's hope the King and Queen get here soon," Hawk whispered.
The conversations had paused as the three guests from the outside world appeared. Very few of the Bruenigans had ever left their realm and they stared at Weaver as if he had two heads. He had expected this. Bane had told him there were no black people in Bruenig, and some ogling was going to happen. Weaver smiled pleasantly and settled back in the chair, which at least had a cushion.
As Cindy Brunner was led in by her own maid, a girl of about twelve, the crowd grew momentarily still but the chatter started up again immediately. Just twenty-one, Cindy was only five feet one and barely one hundred pounds and the Bruenigan outfit looked great on her. Her dark blonde hair had been arranged to sit in a coil atop her head and she grinned at her teammates with open delight at the whole situation. Getting all dressed up for a banquet suited her fine.
As she was led past Bane, she whispered, "Still having trouble with the telepathy," and he nodded. As soon as they had arrived in Bruenig, Cindy had been having difficulty with her powers, as if there was some interference. Maybe another telepath who was untrained, or maybe something about Bruenig itself... she wasn't sure. She had not been in enough adjacent realms yet to be certain if her telepathy worked equally well in different ones.
As soon as Cindy settled down next to Weaver, her first words were, "Why isn't everyone eating yet?" and heralds by the doors raised their horns to sound a fanfare. All the Bruenigans rose and the KDF team followed their example. Proceeding slowly through the doors and to their places at the table were King Gowain and Queen Ambril, wearing red silk robes over their clothing and with plain gold crowns which bore the mace symbol of the realm. Gowain's hair and beard were white with only a few black strands remaining, and Ambril was a good thirty years younger. The marriage had been arranged by her prosperous family after the first Queen had died in childbirth.
Raising a hand, the King announced, "Let us all be seated," and lowered himself into his own chair. "I believe tonight we shall make our speeches and our toasts to good health after the first course has been served." There was a round of laughter and approval from the crowd. Servants began cutting the meat and doling out slices, ladling steaming vegetables and sweet potatoes onto china plates and pouring spiced wine.
III.
In a small room above the dining hall, Karl Eldritch peered through a thin gauze section of the back of a painting. To those in the hall who happened to look up, it was just one of a series of depictions of battles fought long ago. But from this darkened vantage point, he could watch the banquet. There were many such peepholes throughout the castle, installed by Eldritch himself without the king's knowledge.
The giant warlock lowered a cloth down over the back of the painting and laughed low to himself. Behind him, his two cronies waited as he lit a few candles with matches he had brought from the world. Revealed in the flickering light, Christopher Lincoln and Venom stood watching the sorcerer they grudgingly served.
Lincoln was a small thin man, almost frail-looking, with washed-out yellow hair and lime green eyes deepset in a bony face. He was the most powerful telepath known in the Midnight War. The rogue intelligence agency known as the Mandate had captured him six years earlier and, although he had escaped and been on the run ever since, they had never given up on retaking him. Under Eldritch's protection, he felt safer now than he had in all those years. "I am damping the girl's abilities just enough that she has stopped trying to use them. She's gifted. With Tel Shai training and experience, she could be a challenge to even me at some point."
"That must remain conjecture," Eldritch said, "since she will not live that long. Venom, your squad is ready?"
"Of course," answered the Snake man. "Twenty hand-picked members of the elite palace guard standing by. Their loyalty is to me... and ultimately to you, of course. They are not fools. They can see the coup is imminent." Venom's real name was Cir'willa Shar, he was an Amrath... a branch of the Snake men bred for centuries as warriors with extra-potent poison in their fangs. A slim muscular man with black hair and saturnine features, it was only the cold glitter in his eyes that gave his true nature away.
"Good. Now it only remains to spring the trap." Eldritch led his men from the small observation chamber out into a dim hall lit by a single candle near the far door. Two men in the tan uniforms of the palace guard stood at attention. They saluted by raising their right hands to the sides of their faces, then immediately dropped those hands to the hilts of their sabers.
"Stand by," Eldritch ordered as he passed through the door, followed by Lincoln and Venom. He passed down a narrow stairway and came out in another hidden chamber where one wall was the bricked backside of the fireplace in the dining hall. The air in the room was stifling but he seemed not to notice. Here on the floor were three metal devices which looked like a bellows, a sceptre and a steel bar with a lense on each end.
"The inventions of ancient Zhune," Eldritch said as if to himself. "How much labor it has cost me to recreate some of them from memory. The real relics remain hidden away somewhere, of no use to anyone!"
"We've heard this before," the telepath grumbled. "Jeremy Bane stole the Zhunite artifacts and hid them. You swore revenge and have plotted ever since to regain them. The lost science of the ancients, advanced beyond today's knowledge, we know."
A bit of an edge came to Eldritch's deep voice. "Humor me again if you will, Lincoln. You have not seen the ultimate secret of Zhune being used. Matter into energy and energy into matter. The atomic flame I can unleash by converting just a few cells of my body into pure force. Perhaps I need to demonstrate it to confirm who is the master here."
"No, no, that won't be necessary," said the telepath. "Sorry if I spoke out of line."
"Very well." The warlock bent and picked up the metal sceptre, which ended in a peculiar tuning fork protruding from the large end. "Now we will see the sheer genius of the Zhunites. Four thousand years have passed and modern science still cannot duplicate what they created." He stepped over by the brick wall, and thumbed a button on the side of the sceptre. Both Venom and Christopher Lincoln felt dizzy and uncomfortable but did not know why. There was something they could not quite hear but could feel through the bones of their heads, a deep vibration that made them both reel and almost fall.
Seeing this, Eldritch laughed. "The Sound of Deathlike Sleep, they called it. It's a subsonic vibration below the pitch which Human ears can hear, but it induces a deep slumber which lasts for at least an hour. Zhunite healers used it when they had to amputate limbs on the battlefield. There. That should do it." The huge warlock slid aside a wooden panel at eye level and peered through yet another peephole he had installed. "Hah! What a pretty sight. Come, you two."
Leading the Amrath and the telepath back out into the hall, Eldritch opened a side door into the great dining chamber. Everyone was unconscious, several had fallen out of their chairs or had dropped their heads into the food in front of them. The four KDF members were no exception. Eldritch could not contain his laughter. "Finally. The Dire Wolf has stood in my way too often. Three times has he defied me, wrecked months of planning, dared to lay hands upon me. Now his life is forfeit. Lincoln, take the girl. Venom, carry the black man. I myself will haul Bane and Hawk. To the cells in the dungeon which have been prepared for them, hurry. The vengeance of Karl Eldritch has just begun!"
IV.
With a single twitch, Bane came back to full awareness. A year of the tagra tea diet at the Order of Tel Shai had already begun to boost his recuperative powers to where he recovered from jury or being drugged in a fraction of the time a normal person would need. He sat up, feeling the heavy manacles around his ankles which bound him to a wall with two feet of chains. He was naked. He was in a cell which had stone walls, straw on the floor and dim light through a barred window in the door. The stink of urine and
sweat and fear was heavy.
Well, he thought, King Gowain was not the grateful old monarch he seemed. Bane stood up, flexed his arms and legs and found no damage. For the moment, he had to assume his team was in the same state he was and probably being held not far away. The Dire Wolf examined his chains, found they were new and in good shape. No weak link there. The iron bolt to which the chains were fastened was also solid. He scowled in the dim light. Dropping to his knees, he began searching the floor by touch, digging through the foul straw and not really expecting to find anything useful. Twenty minutes went by. Then, just within reach, his fingers closed around a thin, bent nail that had been discarded when installing the door. In the gloom, Bane grinned and got to work.
In the cell next to him, Cindy Brunner also came back to consciousness and got up on her hands and knees. It took her a second to figure out what had happened, and she thought they had been drugged by something in the food or wine. The Teachers at Tel Shai had told her that within another year of the tagra diet, her body would shrug off any poison or dope with minimal effect, but she wasn't there yet.
Getting to her feet, Cindy checked herself for damage. No bruises, no pain anywhere. She found no soreness or stickiness, so she concluded gratefully that she had not been molested. Her head didn't even hurt. She was not tied up, despite the fact there were chains fastened to the wall not far from where she had been thrown. The cell sure smelled bad, though. Closing her eyes, she tried exerting her telepathic awareness and got only a faint muted buzz, like trying to hear something too far away. That settled it. Some other telepath with more experience was interfering with her ability. Cindy focused and visualized a barrier around her, a wall of light that kept out other influencs. Making it more solid, forcing away whoever was messing with her powers, the little blonde began to fight free.
In his own cell, Michael Hawk groaned and sat up, taking in the situation. Naked and chained in a filthy dungeon. Not the first time, he thought glumly. The Mexican jails were the worst, although the ones in the Middle East were a close second. He took stock of the situation and examined the manacles around his wrists. Brand new. The manhunter sighed. Over the decades of his career, he had accumulated a dozen useful gadgets which he concealed in his tailored clothing. Since he had joined the KDF, he had been glad to see Bane and the others begin to carry some of the gimmicks themselves. Even stripped naked, Hawk had a trick or two left. Plopping down on the dirty floor, he pulled up his left foot and peeled a flesh-colored adhesive off the instep where it had escaped detection. Coiled inside that adhesive was a short flexible length of tungsten with saw teeth on one edge. The teeth were coated with diamond dust. He had long ago tried to come with an answer for any situation. Patiently, the criminologist began working on sawing through the link holding his left manacle together....
Steven Weaver rolled over and sat up. He took a minute to let the situation sink in. Well, a naked black man in chains, he thought, how original. He got to his feet and looked around the cell. What a dump. He was sure more than one prisoner had died in here and not been noticed for a few days from the way it stank. Like the others, he examined his bonds for any weak links or signs of rust and found nothing. There was one thing he could try. Wrapping the chains around his arms to make them taut, he lifted clear of the cold stone floor and hovered up near the ceiling. The artificial wings of the Black Angel outfit helped him to steer while in flight, but the levitation itself was his own gralic attribute.
Pulling the chains their full length, Weaver made himself head away from where they were fastened to the wall. He could carry a two hundred pound man while flying, and he had hit speeds in excess of one hundred miles per hour at his best. His levitation was a power not to be underestimated. Steadily, eyes narrowed in concentration, he pulled on the chains until his mind and body ached with the effort.
V.
In the corridor behind the dining hall, Karl Eldritch pointed to the elite guards who were now loyal to him. "You three. Go check on the prisoners. Do not speak to them, just make sure they are secure. They are tricky and will try anything to escape. One of you report back to me, the other two remain watching them." As the guards turned and marched quickly away, the warlock swung back to his two henchmen.
"Now, while those four are our prisoners here, we will return to the real world. Bane and the girl are the only two who reside full-time in the KDF building. I know that the Trom and Taper are in New Mexico at the present. That leaves only Khang, the silver man, unaccounted for. If he should happen to be there when we arrive, I will blast him with my atomic fire and reduce him to stray atoms."
Venom spoke up. "The people in the dining room will be waking soon, Eldritch. What are they going to think of finding they have been unconscious and their guests are gone?"
"I neither know nor care," the sorcerer said. "More important triumphs are at hand. When we find the vault at the KDF building, I can retrieve my Zhunite treasures. More than that, that strongroom is filled with forbidden artifacts that Kenneth Dred had accumulated during his lifetime. The cursed sword Hellspawn. Cyrinkyl. The mirror of Chij. Darthan blasting wands. Oh, we will have more loot than we can carry in one trip. Come. We will need canvas sacks to bring with us."
"The girl!" said Lincoln with sudden surprise. "She's fighting me. She's trying to break free of my damping." The small blond man took a deep breath. "The little bitch is more gifted than I expected."
"All right," Eldritch grumbled. "Then we must go to the dungeons before we leave. If she frees her mind, she might influence the guards. I suppose we must kill the prisoners to be sure they won't cause trouble... all except Bane. His death must be drawn-out and painful." The warlock led his men down the corridor in exasperation.
VI.
Three guards in their tan uniforms, with the red mace emblem of Bruenig on their armbands, came down the stone steps to the dungeon. There had been no prisoners here for weeks, since the King tended to let the High Court keep those accused of crimes in its own cells and he himself had not felt the need to imprison anyone recently. The steps opened to a square open area with six cells, three to a side facing each other. Near the base of the steps was a round wooden table littered with scraps of food on tin plates and mugs left empty by previous guards on watch. A pair of gaming dice sat on the table, as well.
The two wall torches had gone out, and the oldest guard went to relight them with the brand he held. Margen, check the prisoners," he said. "I suppose we must resign ourselves to sitting down here until dawn. Persal, you will report back to Eldritch."
"Feh," said the one called Margen. "And with the feast going on overhead yet. Ah well, what is left untouched by the royalty always finds its way to such as us." He looked in the first cell. "The wench is still here, and a toothsome morsel she is indeed. Hah, I wondered how she would look without a stitch but I did not expect to ever find out."
"It's more than you deserve," came Cindy's voice from within the cell.
Margen went to the next cell and said, "That's strange. Wasn't the one called Dire Wolf in here? I'm sure of it. Was he taken somewhere else?"
"Not that Eldritch told us," said the senior guard. "Why?"
"The chains lie empty on the floor," Margen said, taking a large key from his sash and unlocking the door. This was the last mistake he was to make in life. From beside the door where he had not been seen in the poor light, Jeremy Bane swung around and blasted a hooking punch that twisted Margen's head around so far that his neck broke. Before the body hit the floor, the Dire Wolf plunged across the dungeon to tackle the second guard. Persal had managed to get his sabre half out of its sheath before a savage side kick ruptured his heart and flung him onto his back.
The senior guard stepped away from the wall torch he had been lighting and shifted the short firebrand to his left hand so he could get his own sabre from its scabbard. That brief delay cost him everything. Bane crossed the dungeon in a blur, sank his fist in the man's stomach to double him up and then brought the edge of his other hand down in a rabbit punch to the back of the neck. The man dropped face down and was still.
"GodDAMN," said Weaver from his cell, where he had seen the entire confrontation take place in just a second or two. "I thought I saw fast fighters before, but man...!"
Still naked, Bane glared around the dungeon furiously before letting out a tense breath. "Sound off, is everyone here?"
"I'm here, I'm fine," came Cindy's voice.
"Same for me," said Hawk. "I got the manacles off but I can't manage the door."
"I'm okay too," Weaver said, "aside from being naked as a jaybird."
Bane picked up the simple key from the sash of the dead man at his feet and rushed to open the door to Hawk's cell. "Mike, get Cindy and Steve free. I'm going to strip these guys, we need clothes for our escape and the weapons will be useful too."
In a few minutes, all four KDF members were assembled. There had been only three guards, but Cindy was small enough that one man's shirt reached halfway down her thighs and would serve its purpose. The loose baggy clothing of Bruenig was a blessing as the three male Tel Shai knights managed to get dressed and tie up the sashes so everything fit well enough. The boots did not work out, only Hawk managed to get a pair on, so they remained barefoot and Bane without a shirt.
"Help me get these guys out of sight," he said and they hauled the three dead guards into a cell. As he closed the door, the Dire Wolf snapped, "Now we get out of here and reach the CORBY no matter what is in our way."
"I hear you talking, man." Weaver strapped the scabbard around his waist and tightened its sash. "This is no way to treat guests."
Cindy had been looking at the steps leading up from the dungeon and she said, "Hey you guys. Two more are coming down here. One is the telepath who has been blocking my powers. He's still trying to shut my mind down. The other is... he's a Snake man!"
"Thanks for the heads-up," Bane said as he grabbed the wall torches and snuffed them out on the floor. In the sudden darkness, they saw the flicker of a candle coming down the steps. In that unsteady light, Christopher Lincoln and Venom descended.
"The girl is still resisting me," said the telepath to the Amrath beside him. "I'm surprised she has so much will power, I would have thought..."
His words were cut off as Venom hissed, "They're loose!" He charged full tilt, his upper canines already extending downward with their points glistening. But before he could cover more than a few steps, Black Angel rammed into him at eighty miles an hour, smashing him against the stone wall behind them with bone-breaking force. Weaver regained his footing easily, since the Amrath had taken most of the impact. Venom showed no signs of movement.
Between Cindy Brunner and Christopher Lincoln, unseen waves of mental concentration met and clashed. The young girl staggered back, struggling but unable to match the more experienced telepath's domination. Lincoln had started to grin in triumph just before a rock the size of a human fist cracked hard against his forehead. He made a gasping noise and dropped not far from where Venom was sprawled.
Hawk was lowering his arm. "The government asked me to help track that mind-reader down years ago," he said. "But I was tied up with other cases at the time."
"Nice throw, Mike," Bane said. He flipped Venom over and appropriated the Snake man's white blouse for himself. "Anyone else heading down here, Cin?"
"Nooo." Her voice was uncertain as her full powers returned. "But there is a mind nearby I recognize. Oh my God... Karl Eldritch. Eldritch is here too!"
"That guy! We can't get rid of him," Bane growled. "So he's behind all this, our being invited here and then thrown in this filthy hole. These two must be working for him." The Dire Wolf started up the steps. "Come on, team, we're busting loose if we have to pull the castle down." He leaped up, taking the steps two at a time and went through the open door at the top to find Karl Eldritch standing not ten feet away.
VII.
The giant warlock blinked and then grinned wickedly. "Free? Why am I not surprised?"
"You again!" Bane said. "I thought you were killed by that fall from the plane last time we met."
"Oh, I am hard to slay. Perhaps impossible. My body can convert weapons used against me into energy I can use. That fall was painful but I recovered within minutes. I may be immortal." Eldritch's pale hazel eyes probed past Bane to where the rest of the team was assembled. "All of you, loose already? I assume the guards are dead. My men, Lincoln and Venom?"
"What do you think?" the Dire Wolf replied sharply. "You're the twisted mastermind behind all this, then. Let me guess. You always have a big scheme under way. You're expecting to take over Bruenig, aren't you?"
"Absolutely," chuckled the sorceror. "But you need not concern yourself with this realm's fate. You're going to be stray atoms drifting in the air." Eldritch raised a meaty hand and drew on the ultimate secret of ancient Zhune, which he alone had rediscovered. A few cells of his body were converted into pure elemental atomic force, white light flared up from his palm and the Dire Wolf lunged forward to slam that hand against the warlock's own chest.
A round tunnel was blasted entirely through the body of Karl Eldritch, vaporizing his heart and leaving neat cauterized edges. The huge warlock did not seem to react for a second, then he fell forward with his face hitting the stone floor with a thump. The stench of burning flesh rose in the air.
Bane exhaled sharply. "Whew. I only thought of that at the last second. Glad it worked."
Michael Hawk prodded the body with a bare toe. "If he's not dead after this, I give up. You could put your arm through that hole."
"Cindy, we need you to guide us out of here," Bane said. "Read nearby minds and get us past them." Bane glanced over at the blonde telepath. "Cin?"
"Wait. I'm getting King Gowain's mind. He's nearby with most of his guards. He's upset, he had nothing to do with our being held prisoner. He's... he's afraid Eldritch has taken over completely and is going to overthrow him."
"All right. I'm going to trust your ability. We'll wait to talk to the king and straighten things out. Are you sure he's not the enemy?"
"Yes. I can follow his thoughts. He's blaming himself for letting Eldritch get so much authority and he's ashamed that guests of the court have been mistreated. His mind is full of remorse." She looked over at her captain. "I'm positive."
Bane thought for a second. "Okay then. You haven't been wrong yet. When Gowain gets here, we'll see if we can get everything straight." He glanced down at the huge hulk by his feet. "And at least we can tell him he doesn't have to worry about Karl Eldritch any more."
4/27/2014
8/28-8/29/1980
I.
After the Tel Shai knights had been escorted from the room, old King Gowain sank wearily into his chair. He felt ill at the deceit he had been pressed to carry out against those who had so recently helped him. Lifting his goblet, he saw only a thin film of wine remained in its bottom. Then he heard something and lurched to his feet. On one wall hung a life sized portrait of his father, Ulmic the Bold, in full armor. This painting now swung open from behind, and a huge bulk filled the space behind it.
"What? Who knows of my secret passage..?! Oh. You." Gowain dropped back into his seat.
"You did well, my lord," said Karl Eldritch. He wore the tan uniform of the palace guard, the loose blouse and trousers and high polished boots, but without insignia of any kind. Instead of the usual saber, he bore a strange metal device strapped to one hip, and a long knife at the other. At six foot seven and more than three hundred pounds, he was the biggest man to have ever been in Bruenig. Eldritch kept his head shaved, and his pale hazel eyes stabbed out from beneath heavy black brows.
"Can I keep nothing from you?" demanded the King wearily. "Since I accepted you as my advisor, your influence has grown too much over the court. The army. The people. You were meant to be a power behind the throne, not the throne itself."
"You have nothing to fear from me, your highness," said the huge warlock with a smile. "I am not Bruenigan. How could I wear the crown? No, I am content to merely help you against your enemies."
"Like those who came here at my invitation?" The old man scowled and shook his head. "Not a year ago, those Tel Shai knights came here to aid this realm against the Taurians. They risked their lives and asked no reward, and today I repay them by luring them into a trap."
"You do not know them as I do," said Eldritch. "Their heroism is a sham. They have overthrown rulers and installed their own puppets in the world beyond... and now I have reason to believe they intend to do the same in the adjacent realms. Beginning here, in Bruenig."
King Gowain was silent for a long moment. The truth was, he no longer felt confident he could defy this strange sorcerer who had all but taken over his court. "Very well. Do as you will, you have shown yourself shrewd and perceptive so far."
"Your majesty will not regret this," Karl Eldritch said. He turned and exited through the wall panel, closing the painting behind him. Gowain gazed on the portrait of his renowned father and almost wept at how weak he himself had become.
II.
In the bedroom provided for him, Jeremy Bane changed from his usual clothing into the Bruenig garb provided. The loose white blouse with full sleeves, the baggy black trousers with their silk sash, the polished leather boots.. all fit well enough. But he felt so uneasy he could hardly stand it. Knowing they would be required to wear local clothing, he had told his team to leave most of their personal items locked in the CORBY. He himself was uncomfortable without the matched silver daggers Kenneth Dred had given him. They had been such powerful weapons against enemies in the Midnight Wars that he seldom left them out of reach. Now they were concealed in a compartment within the pilot seat of the CORBY, and the helicopter itself was hidden under camoflauge tarp deep in the woods miles from this palace. The daggers should be safe and yet he fretted over them.
At only twenty-three, the Dire Wolf carried himself with such a serious, self-assured air that he seemed much older. Gaunt, just over six feet tall, Bane watched the world through wary gray eyes that seemed constantly suspicious. Right now, he decided that he and his team would not do this again. If they were required to leave their field suits and gear behind, they would just have to decline invitations, even from a king.
Bane let out a breath and decided to make the best of things. They would enjoy the banquet, listen to some speeches and maybe learn some gossip about other realms. Then, as soon as he manage, he would get his team back to the CORBY and return to the world. He opened the door and stepped out into the hall where a young boy wearing much the same clothing as he had on stood at attention.
"May I help you?" asked the page.
"No, thanks, I'm going to round up my friends and get ready for the meal." Bane started to move past the boy, but the page hurried to get alongside him.
"I beg your forgiveness, but I must accompany you," said the boy. He looked to be about ten or eleven, with the typical blond hair and heavy features of most Bruenigans. "It would mean a caning for me if I did not follow my orders."
"Oh, all right," Bane said grumpily. "I don't want to encourage child abuse. Come on, we're just going down the corridor." He started walking with the boy beside him. This part of the castle of King Gowain was all dark wood paneling with niches that held benches or marble statues. At nightfall, the high narrow windows had been covered with heavy drapes and numerous candles burned in metal sconces set high on the walls.
Three doors down, he stopped just as a door opened and Michael Hawk came out. The criminologist was in his early sixties and there was a lot of grey in the shaggy dark brown hair and the wide face was furrowed by long exposure to sun and wind. Hawk gave them his wry crooked smile.
"You feel uncomfortable in these clothes?" asked Bane.
"Aw, these aren't bad. Wait until we go to an embassy function and we have to wear tuxedos. Those collars are torture." Hawk shrugged. "At least I've got an appetite. I skipped lunch today because I had too much paperwork. And you're always hungry, aren't you?"
"Always," agreed Bane. "We might as well eat everything in sight. Come on, let's get the rest of our crew and get this over with." They went down a few more doors and Bane knocked on the door next to the staircase. Weaver stuck his head out immediately.
"I'm all set," he said. Steven Weaver was an American black man with short hair and a thick mustache. The Bruenigan clothing looked good on him, but some of that was from his innate confidence which bordered on vanity. "Ready to chow down, boys?"
"All we need is Cindy," Bane said. "The ladies are in a different wing, Bruenig isn't ready for co-ed dorms. We'll have to ask a page to fetch her." He started down the wide marble staircase, with the page rushing to get ahead of him. They were led to a huge high-ceiling chamber which had a long L-shaped table taking up most of its space. On the walls were tapestries covered with intricate abstract designs and logs blazed unnecessarily in a stone fireplace near the head of the table. More than thirty people in the white blouses and black trousers were already seating and chatting away in a happy confusion of noises. Some food was already set out but no one would think of taking a bite before the King arrived.
The three Tel Shai knights were shown to seats at the section of the table with stood perpendicular to the main length. The King and Queen sat in the middle, on raised chairs of elaborate carved wood, with a seat on either side of them left empty for some tradition no one understood. Bane and Hawk were seated to the right of the King, Weaver to the left. Bane could smell roast beef, pork and chicken, and his stomach rumbled audibly.
"Let's hope the King and Queen get here soon," Hawk whispered.
The conversations had paused as the three guests from the outside world appeared. Very few of the Bruenigans had ever left their realm and they stared at Weaver as if he had two heads. He had expected this. Bane had told him there were no black people in Bruenig, and some ogling was going to happen. Weaver smiled pleasantly and settled back in the chair, which at least had a cushion.
As Cindy Brunner was led in by her own maid, a girl of about twelve, the crowd grew momentarily still but the chatter started up again immediately. Just twenty-one, Cindy was only five feet one and barely one hundred pounds and the Bruenigan outfit looked great on her. Her dark blonde hair had been arranged to sit in a coil atop her head and she grinned at her teammates with open delight at the whole situation. Getting all dressed up for a banquet suited her fine.
As she was led past Bane, she whispered, "Still having trouble with the telepathy," and he nodded. As soon as they had arrived in Bruenig, Cindy had been having difficulty with her powers, as if there was some interference. Maybe another telepath who was untrained, or maybe something about Bruenig itself... she wasn't sure. She had not been in enough adjacent realms yet to be certain if her telepathy worked equally well in different ones.
As soon as Cindy settled down next to Weaver, her first words were, "Why isn't everyone eating yet?" and heralds by the doors raised their horns to sound a fanfare. All the Bruenigans rose and the KDF team followed their example. Proceeding slowly through the doors and to their places at the table were King Gowain and Queen Ambril, wearing red silk robes over their clothing and with plain gold crowns which bore the mace symbol of the realm. Gowain's hair and beard were white with only a few black strands remaining, and Ambril was a good thirty years younger. The marriage had been arranged by her prosperous family after the first Queen had died in childbirth.
Raising a hand, the King announced, "Let us all be seated," and lowered himself into his own chair. "I believe tonight we shall make our speeches and our toasts to good health after the first course has been served." There was a round of laughter and approval from the crowd. Servants began cutting the meat and doling out slices, ladling steaming vegetables and sweet potatoes onto china plates and pouring spiced wine.
III.
In a small room above the dining hall, Karl Eldritch peered through a thin gauze section of the back of a painting. To those in the hall who happened to look up, it was just one of a series of depictions of battles fought long ago. But from this darkened vantage point, he could watch the banquet. There were many such peepholes throughout the castle, installed by Eldritch himself without the king's knowledge.
The giant warlock lowered a cloth down over the back of the painting and laughed low to himself. Behind him, his two cronies waited as he lit a few candles with matches he had brought from the world. Revealed in the flickering light, Christopher Lincoln and Venom stood watching the sorcerer they grudgingly served.
Lincoln was a small thin man, almost frail-looking, with washed-out yellow hair and lime green eyes deepset in a bony face. He was the most powerful telepath known in the Midnight War. The rogue intelligence agency known as the Mandate had captured him six years earlier and, although he had escaped and been on the run ever since, they had never given up on retaking him. Under Eldritch's protection, he felt safer now than he had in all those years. "I am damping the girl's abilities just enough that she has stopped trying to use them. She's gifted. With Tel Shai training and experience, she could be a challenge to even me at some point."
"That must remain conjecture," Eldritch said, "since she will not live that long. Venom, your squad is ready?"
"Of course," answered the Snake man. "Twenty hand-picked members of the elite palace guard standing by. Their loyalty is to me... and ultimately to you, of course. They are not fools. They can see the coup is imminent." Venom's real name was Cir'willa Shar, he was an Amrath... a branch of the Snake men bred for centuries as warriors with extra-potent poison in their fangs. A slim muscular man with black hair and saturnine features, it was only the cold glitter in his eyes that gave his true nature away.
"Good. Now it only remains to spring the trap." Eldritch led his men from the small observation chamber out into a dim hall lit by a single candle near the far door. Two men in the tan uniforms of the palace guard stood at attention. They saluted by raising their right hands to the sides of their faces, then immediately dropped those hands to the hilts of their sabers.
"Stand by," Eldritch ordered as he passed through the door, followed by Lincoln and Venom. He passed down a narrow stairway and came out in another hidden chamber where one wall was the bricked backside of the fireplace in the dining hall. The air in the room was stifling but he seemed not to notice. Here on the floor were three metal devices which looked like a bellows, a sceptre and a steel bar with a lense on each end.
"The inventions of ancient Zhune," Eldritch said as if to himself. "How much labor it has cost me to recreate some of them from memory. The real relics remain hidden away somewhere, of no use to anyone!"
"We've heard this before," the telepath grumbled. "Jeremy Bane stole the Zhunite artifacts and hid them. You swore revenge and have plotted ever since to regain them. The lost science of the ancients, advanced beyond today's knowledge, we know."
A bit of an edge came to Eldritch's deep voice. "Humor me again if you will, Lincoln. You have not seen the ultimate secret of Zhune being used. Matter into energy and energy into matter. The atomic flame I can unleash by converting just a few cells of my body into pure force. Perhaps I need to demonstrate it to confirm who is the master here."
"No, no, that won't be necessary," said the telepath. "Sorry if I spoke out of line."
"Very well." The warlock bent and picked up the metal sceptre, which ended in a peculiar tuning fork protruding from the large end. "Now we will see the sheer genius of the Zhunites. Four thousand years have passed and modern science still cannot duplicate what they created." He stepped over by the brick wall, and thumbed a button on the side of the sceptre. Both Venom and Christopher Lincoln felt dizzy and uncomfortable but did not know why. There was something they could not quite hear but could feel through the bones of their heads, a deep vibration that made them both reel and almost fall.
Seeing this, Eldritch laughed. "The Sound of Deathlike Sleep, they called it. It's a subsonic vibration below the pitch which Human ears can hear, but it induces a deep slumber which lasts for at least an hour. Zhunite healers used it when they had to amputate limbs on the battlefield. There. That should do it." The huge warlock slid aside a wooden panel at eye level and peered through yet another peephole he had installed. "Hah! What a pretty sight. Come, you two."
Leading the Amrath and the telepath back out into the hall, Eldritch opened a side door into the great dining chamber. Everyone was unconscious, several had fallen out of their chairs or had dropped their heads into the food in front of them. The four KDF members were no exception. Eldritch could not contain his laughter. "Finally. The Dire Wolf has stood in my way too often. Three times has he defied me, wrecked months of planning, dared to lay hands upon me. Now his life is forfeit. Lincoln, take the girl. Venom, carry the black man. I myself will haul Bane and Hawk. To the cells in the dungeon which have been prepared for them, hurry. The vengeance of Karl Eldritch has just begun!"
IV.
With a single twitch, Bane came back to full awareness. A year of the tagra tea diet at the Order of Tel Shai had already begun to boost his recuperative powers to where he recovered from jury or being drugged in a fraction of the time a normal person would need. He sat up, feeling the heavy manacles around his ankles which bound him to a wall with two feet of chains. He was naked. He was in a cell which had stone walls, straw on the floor and dim light through a barred window in the door. The stink of urine and
sweat and fear was heavy.
Well, he thought, King Gowain was not the grateful old monarch he seemed. Bane stood up, flexed his arms and legs and found no damage. For the moment, he had to assume his team was in the same state he was and probably being held not far away. The Dire Wolf examined his chains, found they were new and in good shape. No weak link there. The iron bolt to which the chains were fastened was also solid. He scowled in the dim light. Dropping to his knees, he began searching the floor by touch, digging through the foul straw and not really expecting to find anything useful. Twenty minutes went by. Then, just within reach, his fingers closed around a thin, bent nail that had been discarded when installing the door. In the gloom, Bane grinned and got to work.
In the cell next to him, Cindy Brunner also came back to consciousness and got up on her hands and knees. It took her a second to figure out what had happened, and she thought they had been drugged by something in the food or wine. The Teachers at Tel Shai had told her that within another year of the tagra diet, her body would shrug off any poison or dope with minimal effect, but she wasn't there yet.
Getting to her feet, Cindy checked herself for damage. No bruises, no pain anywhere. She found no soreness or stickiness, so she concluded gratefully that she had not been molested. Her head didn't even hurt. She was not tied up, despite the fact there were chains fastened to the wall not far from where she had been thrown. The cell sure smelled bad, though. Closing her eyes, she tried exerting her telepathic awareness and got only a faint muted buzz, like trying to hear something too far away. That settled it. Some other telepath with more experience was interfering with her ability. Cindy focused and visualized a barrier around her, a wall of light that kept out other influencs. Making it more solid, forcing away whoever was messing with her powers, the little blonde began to fight free.
In his own cell, Michael Hawk groaned and sat up, taking in the situation. Naked and chained in a filthy dungeon. Not the first time, he thought glumly. The Mexican jails were the worst, although the ones in the Middle East were a close second. He took stock of the situation and examined the manacles around his wrists. Brand new. The manhunter sighed. Over the decades of his career, he had accumulated a dozen useful gadgets which he concealed in his tailored clothing. Since he had joined the KDF, he had been glad to see Bane and the others begin to carry some of the gimmicks themselves. Even stripped naked, Hawk had a trick or two left. Plopping down on the dirty floor, he pulled up his left foot and peeled a flesh-colored adhesive off the instep where it had escaped detection. Coiled inside that adhesive was a short flexible length of tungsten with saw teeth on one edge. The teeth were coated with diamond dust. He had long ago tried to come with an answer for any situation. Patiently, the criminologist began working on sawing through the link holding his left manacle together....
Steven Weaver rolled over and sat up. He took a minute to let the situation sink in. Well, a naked black man in chains, he thought, how original. He got to his feet and looked around the cell. What a dump. He was sure more than one prisoner had died in here and not been noticed for a few days from the way it stank. Like the others, he examined his bonds for any weak links or signs of rust and found nothing. There was one thing he could try. Wrapping the chains around his arms to make them taut, he lifted clear of the cold stone floor and hovered up near the ceiling. The artificial wings of the Black Angel outfit helped him to steer while in flight, but the levitation itself was his own gralic attribute.
Pulling the chains their full length, Weaver made himself head away from where they were fastened to the wall. He could carry a two hundred pound man while flying, and he had hit speeds in excess of one hundred miles per hour at his best. His levitation was a power not to be underestimated. Steadily, eyes narrowed in concentration, he pulled on the chains until his mind and body ached with the effort.
V.
In the corridor behind the dining hall, Karl Eldritch pointed to the elite guards who were now loyal to him. "You three. Go check on the prisoners. Do not speak to them, just make sure they are secure. They are tricky and will try anything to escape. One of you report back to me, the other two remain watching them." As the guards turned and marched quickly away, the warlock swung back to his two henchmen.
"Now, while those four are our prisoners here, we will return to the real world. Bane and the girl are the only two who reside full-time in the KDF building. I know that the Trom and Taper are in New Mexico at the present. That leaves only Khang, the silver man, unaccounted for. If he should happen to be there when we arrive, I will blast him with my atomic fire and reduce him to stray atoms."
Venom spoke up. "The people in the dining room will be waking soon, Eldritch. What are they going to think of finding they have been unconscious and their guests are gone?"
"I neither know nor care," the sorcerer said. "More important triumphs are at hand. When we find the vault at the KDF building, I can retrieve my Zhunite treasures. More than that, that strongroom is filled with forbidden artifacts that Kenneth Dred had accumulated during his lifetime. The cursed sword Hellspawn. Cyrinkyl. The mirror of Chij. Darthan blasting wands. Oh, we will have more loot than we can carry in one trip. Come. We will need canvas sacks to bring with us."
"The girl!" said Lincoln with sudden surprise. "She's fighting me. She's trying to break free of my damping." The small blond man took a deep breath. "The little bitch is more gifted than I expected."
"All right," Eldritch grumbled. "Then we must go to the dungeons before we leave. If she frees her mind, she might influence the guards. I suppose we must kill the prisoners to be sure they won't cause trouble... all except Bane. His death must be drawn-out and painful." The warlock led his men down the corridor in exasperation.
VI.
Three guards in their tan uniforms, with the red mace emblem of Bruenig on their armbands, came down the stone steps to the dungeon. There had been no prisoners here for weeks, since the King tended to let the High Court keep those accused of crimes in its own cells and he himself had not felt the need to imprison anyone recently. The steps opened to a square open area with six cells, three to a side facing each other. Near the base of the steps was a round wooden table littered with scraps of food on tin plates and mugs left empty by previous guards on watch. A pair of gaming dice sat on the table, as well.
The two wall torches had gone out, and the oldest guard went to relight them with the brand he held. Margen, check the prisoners," he said. "I suppose we must resign ourselves to sitting down here until dawn. Persal, you will report back to Eldritch."
"Feh," said the one called Margen. "And with the feast going on overhead yet. Ah well, what is left untouched by the royalty always finds its way to such as us." He looked in the first cell. "The wench is still here, and a toothsome morsel she is indeed. Hah, I wondered how she would look without a stitch but I did not expect to ever find out."
"It's more than you deserve," came Cindy's voice from within the cell.
Margen went to the next cell and said, "That's strange. Wasn't the one called Dire Wolf in here? I'm sure of it. Was he taken somewhere else?"
"Not that Eldritch told us," said the senior guard. "Why?"
"The chains lie empty on the floor," Margen said, taking a large key from his sash and unlocking the door. This was the last mistake he was to make in life. From beside the door where he had not been seen in the poor light, Jeremy Bane swung around and blasted a hooking punch that twisted Margen's head around so far that his neck broke. Before the body hit the floor, the Dire Wolf plunged across the dungeon to tackle the second guard. Persal had managed to get his sabre half out of its sheath before a savage side kick ruptured his heart and flung him onto his back.
The senior guard stepped away from the wall torch he had been lighting and shifted the short firebrand to his left hand so he could get his own sabre from its scabbard. That brief delay cost him everything. Bane crossed the dungeon in a blur, sank his fist in the man's stomach to double him up and then brought the edge of his other hand down in a rabbit punch to the back of the neck. The man dropped face down and was still.
"GodDAMN," said Weaver from his cell, where he had seen the entire confrontation take place in just a second or two. "I thought I saw fast fighters before, but man...!"
Still naked, Bane glared around the dungeon furiously before letting out a tense breath. "Sound off, is everyone here?"
"I'm here, I'm fine," came Cindy's voice.
"Same for me," said Hawk. "I got the manacles off but I can't manage the door."
"I'm okay too," Weaver said, "aside from being naked as a jaybird."
Bane picked up the simple key from the sash of the dead man at his feet and rushed to open the door to Hawk's cell. "Mike, get Cindy and Steve free. I'm going to strip these guys, we need clothes for our escape and the weapons will be useful too."
In a few minutes, all four KDF members were assembled. There had been only three guards, but Cindy was small enough that one man's shirt reached halfway down her thighs and would serve its purpose. The loose baggy clothing of Bruenig was a blessing as the three male Tel Shai knights managed to get dressed and tie up the sashes so everything fit well enough. The boots did not work out, only Hawk managed to get a pair on, so they remained barefoot and Bane without a shirt.
"Help me get these guys out of sight," he said and they hauled the three dead guards into a cell. As he closed the door, the Dire Wolf snapped, "Now we get out of here and reach the CORBY no matter what is in our way."
"I hear you talking, man." Weaver strapped the scabbard around his waist and tightened its sash. "This is no way to treat guests."
Cindy had been looking at the steps leading up from the dungeon and she said, "Hey you guys. Two more are coming down here. One is the telepath who has been blocking my powers. He's still trying to shut my mind down. The other is... he's a Snake man!"
"Thanks for the heads-up," Bane said as he grabbed the wall torches and snuffed them out on the floor. In the sudden darkness, they saw the flicker of a candle coming down the steps. In that unsteady light, Christopher Lincoln and Venom descended.
"The girl is still resisting me," said the telepath to the Amrath beside him. "I'm surprised she has so much will power, I would have thought..."
His words were cut off as Venom hissed, "They're loose!" He charged full tilt, his upper canines already extending downward with their points glistening. But before he could cover more than a few steps, Black Angel rammed into him at eighty miles an hour, smashing him against the stone wall behind them with bone-breaking force. Weaver regained his footing easily, since the Amrath had taken most of the impact. Venom showed no signs of movement.
Between Cindy Brunner and Christopher Lincoln, unseen waves of mental concentration met and clashed. The young girl staggered back, struggling but unable to match the more experienced telepath's domination. Lincoln had started to grin in triumph just before a rock the size of a human fist cracked hard against his forehead. He made a gasping noise and dropped not far from where Venom was sprawled.
Hawk was lowering his arm. "The government asked me to help track that mind-reader down years ago," he said. "But I was tied up with other cases at the time."
"Nice throw, Mike," Bane said. He flipped Venom over and appropriated the Snake man's white blouse for himself. "Anyone else heading down here, Cin?"
"Nooo." Her voice was uncertain as her full powers returned. "But there is a mind nearby I recognize. Oh my God... Karl Eldritch. Eldritch is here too!"
"That guy! We can't get rid of him," Bane growled. "So he's behind all this, our being invited here and then thrown in this filthy hole. These two must be working for him." The Dire Wolf started up the steps. "Come on, team, we're busting loose if we have to pull the castle down." He leaped up, taking the steps two at a time and went through the open door at the top to find Karl Eldritch standing not ten feet away.
VII.
The giant warlock blinked and then grinned wickedly. "Free? Why am I not surprised?"
"You again!" Bane said. "I thought you were killed by that fall from the plane last time we met."
"Oh, I am hard to slay. Perhaps impossible. My body can convert weapons used against me into energy I can use. That fall was painful but I recovered within minutes. I may be immortal." Eldritch's pale hazel eyes probed past Bane to where the rest of the team was assembled. "All of you, loose already? I assume the guards are dead. My men, Lincoln and Venom?"
"What do you think?" the Dire Wolf replied sharply. "You're the twisted mastermind behind all this, then. Let me guess. You always have a big scheme under way. You're expecting to take over Bruenig, aren't you?"
"Absolutely," chuckled the sorceror. "But you need not concern yourself with this realm's fate. You're going to be stray atoms drifting in the air." Eldritch raised a meaty hand and drew on the ultimate secret of ancient Zhune, which he alone had rediscovered. A few cells of his body were converted into pure elemental atomic force, white light flared up from his palm and the Dire Wolf lunged forward to slam that hand against the warlock's own chest.
A round tunnel was blasted entirely through the body of Karl Eldritch, vaporizing his heart and leaving neat cauterized edges. The huge warlock did not seem to react for a second, then he fell forward with his face hitting the stone floor with a thump. The stench of burning flesh rose in the air.
Bane exhaled sharply. "Whew. I only thought of that at the last second. Glad it worked."
Michael Hawk prodded the body with a bare toe. "If he's not dead after this, I give up. You could put your arm through that hole."
"Cindy, we need you to guide us out of here," Bane said. "Read nearby minds and get us past them." Bane glanced over at the blonde telepath. "Cin?"
"Wait. I'm getting King Gowain's mind. He's nearby with most of his guards. He's upset, he had nothing to do with our being held prisoner. He's... he's afraid Eldritch has taken over completely and is going to overthrow him."
"All right. I'm going to trust your ability. We'll wait to talk to the king and straighten things out. Are you sure he's not the enemy?"
"Yes. I can follow his thoughts. He's blaming himself for letting Eldritch get so much authority and he's ashamed that guests of the court have been mistreated. His mind is full of remorse." She looked over at her captain. "I'm positive."
Bane thought for a second. "Okay then. You haven't been wrong yet. When Gowain gets here, we'll see if we can get everything straight." He glanced down at the huge hulk by his feet. "And at least we can tell him he doesn't have to worry about Karl Eldritch any more."
4/27/2014
