Agent of Prophecy Read online

  Grappa sneered. “That dwarf is already mindless. He seems to enjoy slavery. Why defend him when all he does is exactly what’s asked of him?”

  Nicholas stalked toward the young bully. “You will leave Grisham alone, or I’ll make sure you’re in no shape to do anything. We each deal in our own way with what has become of us. Don’t make things worse.”

  The ogre’s crunching footsteps echoed in the cave, and anyone who’d been distracted by the incident quickly turned back to their work—including Grappa. The punishment for slacking, even for a moment, was brutal.

  The ogre reappeared, and this was one of the rare occasions when he brought company. Two men in slaver garb walked in behind him, dragging a wooden chest toward the far end of the cave.

  The ogre turned to the slaves and bellowed, “Move back. Boom.”

  Grisham was yanked backward by the collar as the other slaves raced away from the chest. Apparently they understood what was happening much better than he did.

  The two slavers pushed the chest into a crevice in the wall of the cavern. When they could push it no further, one of the slavers struck flint against metal to light a rope that was trailing from the blackened chest. A bright spark caught on the rope, sending flickering shadows throughout the cavern. Then the slavers, too, ran from the chest.

  A whoosh pierced the silence, followed by an explosive pressure wave that blew everyone off their feet.

  Grisham lifted himself up off the floor. His eyes stung, but apart from that and the ringing in his ears, he was unharmed. He gave a small prayer of thanks to the one above. Some were not so fortunate. He looked around and saw that two men had been killed by flying debris.

  While the ogre went to examine the results of the explosion, the human slavers disconnected the two dead slaves from the main chain and dragged their remains away.

  Grisham turned to Nicholas, who had a slight trickle of blood dripping down his forehead. “What do they do with the dead?” he whispered.

  Nicholas shuddered. “They’re fed to the megapedes.”

  Grisham knew of these beasts. Megapedes were armored creatures that could eat through stone as rapidly as a person could walk through a pool of water. The Ta’ah back home avoided them even more than they avoided the demons. The megapedes didn’t seek out the Ta’ah, but if they happened to come across one, they wouldn’t hesitate to fight.

  The ogre stomped back to the center of the cavern. “Bash rock, or bash head.” He looked directly at Grisham and pointed at all of the scattered rocks. “Puny dorf. Lots bashing.”

  Grisham picked up his hammer and went back to work with the rest. But as he did, he heard a muffled gasp to his left. Grappa. The surly teen was carrying his pickaxe in his off hand, while the other hand lay limp at his side. As he returned to work, he could barely swing his pickaxe.

  He’d been injured in the explosion. And now he had to hide that fact or he would be sent to the megapedes with the others.

  I can’t live with myself if I don’t try to help him.

  Grisham moved closer to Grappa and whispered, “Do you want to trade? I think I can wield the pickaxe and you could wield the hammer with one arm.”

  Grappa’s face turned red with fury. “Stay away, vermin! I’ll have no—”

  “Bash!” the ogre yelled from across the cavern.

  Grisham scurried back to his puny rocks. As he worked, he cast glances toward Grappa, who continued to have difficulty swinging his pickaxe one-handed.

  Unfortunately, the ogre noticed too.

  The taskmaster stomped toward them. “Bash good!” he bellowed in Grappa’s ear. His voice was so loud that it even hurt Grisham’s ears, several feet away.

  The ogre watched Grappa a moment more, then reached out and lifted the teen’s limp arm.

  Grappa screamed in pain.

  The ogre responded by slamming the boy’s head against the wall.

  For a moment, silence fell across the cavern like a shroud. Then the ogre stomped his foot and shouted, “Bash!”

  Everyone immediately went back to work, trying to ignore the human slavers disconnecting Grappa from the chain and dragging him off to the megapedes.

  After Grappa’s death, the slaves grumbled more frequently about escape. Grisham wanted to escape no less than anyone else, but despite his Ta’ah roots and his familiarity with underground passages, he was utterly lost down in these mines. They’d taken too many turns and had passed through too many tunnels that all looked exactly the same. Even if he and the other slaves could escape the chains, they’d never escape the mines themselves.

  Nicholas agreed with him, except for one part. “Grisham, if you ever get a chance to escape, don’t worry about anyone else. Take that chance. If anyone can do it, it’s a ‘dorf.’” He chuckled. He’d been calling Grisham that lately in mockery of the ogre. “Besides, most of us are resigned to dying down here. I’ve been here so long I barely remember any other way to live. You don’t deserve that fate. Promise me, if you find a chance, you’ll take it.”

  Grisham promised. “What’s the penalty if you’re caught escaping?”

  Nicholas shrugged. “I don’t know. Megapedes, probably. You never know, they might just stick you back on the chain and it wouldn’t matter at all.”

  Only two days after that discussion, Grisham thought he might have the chance to find the answer to his question. When the ogre departed after the evening meal, there was a commotion at the far end of the chain, and one of the slaves raised his pick and smashed it down on the chain that bound him. It took a few blows, but he snapped through it, then scrambled away and disappeared into the passages, hopefully to his freedom.

  Nicholas sighed and bowed his head in prayer. “May luck guide your feet.”

  Grisham laid his head on the ground and he too hoped for the escapee’s welfare. As his eyes closed, he wondered whether he would ever find the courage to do such a thing.

  Grisham was woken by the bellow of the ogre. “Wake! Move!”

  He and the rest of the slaves scrambled to follow the ogre’s directions. As the ogre herded them out of the cavern, Grisham couldn’t help but wonder why.

  Did the ogre even notice the missing slave? Or the broken chain?

  Was it that easy?

  As they moved in a line through various passages, Grisham heard the sound of screaming as if someone was being tortured. He hoped that poor soul wasn’t the missing slave. Maybe it wasn’t that easy after all.

  Eventually they passed through a tremendous arched entrance guarded by two other ogres and stepped into a cavern vastly different from all the others.

  At its center was a giant rectangular building, thirty feet high, maybe sixty feet wide and long, constructed of white stone. Dwarven construction, Grisham thought. Along the front of the building stood a series of pillars etched in runes that Grisham couldn’t read, and the two huge doors between the pillars had no handles.

  Statues stood throughout the rest of the cavern: dwarves, elves, humans, ogres, giants, even one statue of a snake. But Grisham noticed that only females were represented; there was not one male among them—though he wasn’t sure about the snake.

  All in all, the cavern felt like a place of worship. A temple of sorts.

  Their ogre escort knelt and growled, “Down!”

  Grisham knelt, and so did everyone else.

  A cracking sound erupted from the white building, and purple flames briefly painted the edges of the doorframe. The doors opened, and chanting drifted from inside the building as a woman appeared in the opening and walked forward gracefully. The woman’s movement reminded Grisham of a snake.

  Beside him, Nicholas mumbled a prayer.

  Grisham was struck by how brightly the woman’s aura shone. Brightness correlated with life force, and this woman’s aura was like a beacon of light, outshining that of anyone he’d ever seen, with the exception of that cursed wizard Azazel.

  He suddenly realized that the other slaves had all bent down with their
foreheads pressed to the floor, whereas he’d been on his knees staring at her the entire time. The woman noticed and smiled.

  Then her melodious voice broke through the chanting. “Rise. Let me look at all of you.”

  They stood, and the woman approached. Her hair was so dark that it seemed to shimmer purple where the torchlight reflected off it. Her pale skin, too, shone with an otherworldly radiance. And then he saw the pointed ears, and he recognized her for what she was.

  This was a priestess of Lilith.

  His father had long ago warned him of the influence that the worshippers of Lilith had on unwary men, and Seder’s words came back to him very clearly.

  “Avoid the influence of Lilith.”

  Her silken robes hugged the curves of her body, and those curves weren’t lost on some of the other slaves. Attached to her waist was a flail with writhing snakes emerging from its handle. As she approached the line of slaves, the snakes reached out with flickering tongues as if to sniff the objects of the priestess’s attention.

  She walked slowly down the line of slaves, inspecting each slave she passed. When she reached a teenaged boy, she paused, smiled, and caressed the boy’s cheek.

  Grisham blinked and rubbed his eyes. He was positive that the teenager’s aura had diminished in brightness after she touched him, while hers had gotten slightly brighter. Had she… stolen some of his life force?

  The priestess continued down the line, assessing each slave. But when she reached Grisham, to his horror, she stopped and faced him directly.

  She cocked her head and looked amused. “Ata Ta’ah?”

  She spoke in the old language. Are you a Ta’ah?

  Grisham bowed his head and responded in kind. “Ken, ani Ta’ah.”

  Yes, I’m a Ta’ah.

  She flashed the fangs he’d known were hiding behind her lips. Then she continued down the line.

  This woman immediately recognized me as Ta’ah. How could that be?

  When she’d examined all the slaves, she returned to the entrance of the building and nodded to someone behind the slaves.

  A human was dragged into the cavern, groaning and screaming. As he was pulled past the line of slaves, they all saw who it was.

  The slave who’d tried to escape.

  He was bloodied and beaten. Worst of all, he was caught. And now, it was clear, he would be made an example to the rest of them.

  The two slavers held the captive in front of the elf priestess. She caressed his bloodstained cheek, and this time Grisham was sure of what he saw: a distinct dimming of the man’s aura while hers grew ever brighter. She continued her caress until the man’s mouth fell open, a vacant expression on his face, his eyes staring blankly at the priestess.

  The priestess leaned in. She tilted her head and exposed her fangs. She sniffed deeply at his neck. And then she clamped down, violently ripping out a chunk of his exposed neck.

  Grisham fought to control his nausea. He knew what the others didn’t: that that man was dead before she bit into him. The bite was for show. It wasn’t the bite that killed him, nor the caress. It was that deep sniff. When she sniffed at his neck, she drained whatever remained of the slave’s life essence from him.

  If she could do that, what couldn’t she do?

  When the day ended, Nicholas and Grisham lay on their sides and whispered about the earlier events.

  The grizzled soldier murmured, “I’ve never been as scared as I was today, when we knelt in front of that priestess. Her power… and all those female statues… I suspect that if she wanted to, she could simply suck the soul out of any man she wanted.”

  Grisham nodded. He doesn’t know how true that is.

  “Did you hear what happened to Gregor?”

  “Is that the guy who ran away?”

  “No. That’s the boy the priestess touched. He hasn’t spoken a word since.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  Nicholas shrugged. “Stole his soul?”

  Again, Nicholas’s guesses were close to truth.

  “I was worried we were all going to be fed to the megapedes for what the escapee did,” Grisham said.

  Nicholas yawned. “Me too. Though I’ll tell you this. I think I’d rather face a ravenous megapede than to have that woman lay eyes on me again.”

  As they lay down to sleep, Grisham decided he agreed. There were fates worse than death.

  That night, he dreamt of the megapede pit.

  He floats above the scene, an energy crackling within him. Below him, slavers are feeding what’s left of the escapee into the pit. Grisham floats forward so he can see down into its depths, and for the first time in his life, he sees with his own eyes what a real megapede looks like.

  It’s terrifying.

  They are like unimaginably large centipedes, with green-hued interlocking bony armor, six black eyes, and monstrous front mandibles. Against his will, Grisham floats downward, closer, closer, until he can see every detail of the beasts. What they look like. What they sound like. What they smell like.

  He is practically on top of them now, and he feels a sharp pain at his neck, and he tries to scream but cannot—

  Grisham found his voice as he woke from his slumber with a start.

  He screamed.

  A shooting pain ran down his back, but as he stretched, still shaking loose the cobwebs, he felt a soothing pop and breathed a sigh of relief.

  He looked around and was shocked to see that the rest of the slaves had backed as far away from him as the chains allowed, and were staring at him with wide eyes. They were afraid.

  Of me?

  He stood, only to realize with a gasp that he was dragging no chain. He looked down and saw his collar at his feet, snapped in half, the chain still attached. Something had happened to his clothes, too. His shirt’s seams were stretched almost to bursting, and his pants were torn in strips.

  What had happened? Who had severed his collar, and why? What was everyone so afraid of? He’d simply been sleeping, dreaming about the megapedes…

  His eyes found Nicholas. He stood closer than the rest, and his expression wasn’t one of fear, but of concern.

  “Nicholas?” he said. “What’s going on? How…?” He gestured down at the broken collar.

  Nicholas frowned. “You don’t know?”

  “Know what? Please, tell me.”

  Nicholas came forward and touched Grisham’s shoulder. “Grisham, I swear on the life of my poor children that what I tell you is true. I was asleep, when I was awoken by a strange sound. I looked over to your spot on the chain, and instead of you lying there, I saw a young megapede making chittering noises. I shouted in alarm, waking the others. We all watched as the megapede bit down on the collar it wore, snapping it easily in two. Then it began to… dissolve… and you were there again.”

  Grisham stood stunned. I dreamed of a megapede, and then…

  He did feel different. Like ice was running through his veins. And a crackling feeling, like… like he wanted to explode. He remembered Seder’s words.

  “I have unlatched powers that were hidden deep within you.”

  He opened his eyes again and looked at his friend, who was clearly worried for him. “Nicholas, I’m going to escape.”

  “Yes.” Nicholas smiled. “I know you are. And you’re going to succeed, my young friend.”

  “And I want you to escape with me,” Grisham said.

  The grizzled man shook his head. “Thank you, Grisham, but no. I would only slow you down. A dwarf might have a chance of finding a way through these tunnels. An old man like me…” He shook his head. “And I have no desire to face that priestess again. This is your chance. You promised me you would seize it.”

  Grisham smiled widely. “What if I assure you that I know the way out?”

  Nicholas’s eyes widened. He narrowed his eyes for a moment, then nodded slowly.

  Grisham looked at the others. “What about the rest of you? If I could get all of you freed from your chains,
would you leave with me?”

  Almost all the slaves nodded.

  Grisham took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m going to get us all out of here. But first, I need a promise. That what you’ve seen me do, and what you will see me do… it’ll remain a secret between us.”

  Nicholas turned to the other slaves. “Are we all agreed?”

  One of the men laughed. “Of course. Who would ever believe what we just witnessed? I don’t even believe it myself, and I saw it with my own eyes.”

  The other slaves also nodded assent.

  “Good,” said Grisham. “First, I’m going to break the main slave chain, then you all can slip yourself off. You’ll still have the collars around your necks, but you’ll be free.”

  He closed his eyes and reached for the new power that had been unlocked within him. He brought back the image of the megapedes in the pit, recalling every detail, and as he did, a strange sensation surged through him.

  His chest cracked. Pain wracked his body. He was changing.

  He opened his eyes again, only to be struck by a wave of nausea. Six images assaulted him at once. He had to concentrate on coordinating his six eyes so they could focus on a single object.

  The slaves had all scrambled away again. But the main chain lay in front of them.

  Grisham crawled toward it on uncoordinated legs. The main chain was thick, thicker than a muscular human’s forearm, but it was no match for a megapede’s jaws. Grisham bit it cleanly in two.

  “We are free,” said one of the humans. The voice was familiar, but Grisham couldn’t remember the man’s name. “Time to go up, Grisham.”

  Grisham was having trouble thinking clearly, but that cue helped.

  He took a tentative bite of the wall nearest him. The rock crumbled away easily. He bit again. His jaws were so powerful, it required almost no effort whatsoever. Soon he found himself tunneling as quickly as his feet could clumsily carry him.

  He remembered to angle upwards as he tunneled. Slowly, he began to feel more at ease in this body. His dozens of feet gripped their way up the slope he created, and pebbles tumbled down the newly formed passage behind him. He couldn’t remember why he was going up, but he knew it was important. Bite. Tunnel. Move upward. That was all that mattered for now.