The Land Below the Sunset

Chapter Eleven

As if in a dream, Propriano felt himself wrenched to one side. The fire that Nebr had vomited forth passed within inches of his shoulder and a wave of heat singed his hair and filled the air with cinders. There was a thunderous boom as the bolt tore through the wall behind. Stone blocks caved in and tongues of crimson flame jumped up the side of the building.

He struggled to regain his senses. He could still see the dim afterimage of Urufax's hypnotic eyes. An unreal lethargy tugged at him. He seemed to hover on the border of sleep and wakefulness.

A voice was shouting in his ear. It dragged him back to consciousness. He saw that one of the maskers who had been holding him had thrown aside his disguise. The one who had saved him from the bolt of flame. The eggshell white mask lay shattered on the flagstones. The face underneath shone coral pink in the splashing firelight.

"Chendu - ?"

"Take it! Take it!"

Take it? What was he talking about? Then Propriano noticed the sceptre pressed into his free right hand. His fingers closed around it.

Urufax recovered rapidly from the surprise. "Rend him limb from limb!" he screamed at the maskers still holding Propriano.

They tightened their grip. Propriano reacted without thought. As he swung the sceptre the jewels set into it began to pulse with pure blue light. The sceptre touched the masker pinning his left arm and the light flared up. The masker's fingers twitched open and it swayed back, hanging immobile like a puppet with tangled strings. Others held his legs. He dealt with them in the same way.

"You have discovered the power of Starfire," hissed Urufax. "It will do you no good."

He beckoned the habdigars clustering behind him and spat a harsh syllable between his teeth. They advanced slowly, black eyes glittering like droplets of tar in the light. 

Chendu addressed them with a word Propriano did not recognize. The nearest of the habdigars paused in confusion. The rear ranks backed away. Chendu took Propriano's arm and edged him along the terrace to where the shield lay. The habdigars watched them inscrutably.

"They're conditioned to respond to certain sounds," he said. "Now they don't know whom to obey."

Urufax called the habdigars to order with a scathing snarl. One drew a pronged weapon from the harness across its chest and brandished this at Propriano and Chendu with an ululating cry. The rest followed suit and the throng again began to close in.

"There is no avenue of escape," said Urufax. "Your plan is exposed as witless, Chendu - the enfeebling consequence, no doubt, of your Invader blood."

"Feeble, is it, you pasty leech?"

Urufax whirled around at the voice. A figure stood upright in the plundered coffin, a burly warrior with close-cropped hair and a face as hard as a weathered crag. He held a large spiked mace in his fist. As Urufax gaped in astonishment, the warrior brought it up and slammed it with splintering force straight into his fang-rimmed maw.

Taltivin scrambled out of the coffin and aimed another blow as the vampire reeled back. Caught off balance, Urufax fell to his knees. Taltivin smashed down at him, putting all his might into a desperate barrage of blows. He had learned to size up the danger in a man with one glance, and he knew that if he let Urufax get back on his feet he was doomed.

The front ranks of the habdigars had got close enough by now for Propriano to have reached out and touched their pronged batons. Seeing their master buckling under Taltivin's attack, they suddenly stopped and crouched uncertainly like bees caught by a cold evening breeze.