CY 579, Readying 14 (Freeday)
Canon Barkinar shook his head, gritting his teeth and clenching his fist as he sought to dispel the memory: how the Fire Temple had failed the Dark Lady that day! Fifteen years had not assuaged his anger, but he would salvage her honour and avenge that loss: not by armies and a fool's war, but by bringing her forth. All the Temple sought this end, but it was he that would achieve it. He grinned to himself, his moods more fluid than the beloved medium of Earth ought to be: But let it be so! Today he would be the earthquake, the landslide that swept roaring over the enemies of the Dark Lady.
His group descended a short flight of stone stairs to the wide polished corridor leading to the very heart of the Temple. Canon Barkinar swept along in front of them like an avalanche, thick brows furrowed in contemplation.
The corridor emerged into the Greater Temple. It was a great spartanly-appointed chamber with corridors running off in all directions, the room itself roughly eighty feet to a side with walls and ceiling made of slabs of perfectly polished black marble so skillfully joined together it was impossible to slide so much as a needle between them, and each corner seam bordered with fine-cut onyx. Their lights – stones magically altered to emit a constant carnadine phosphorescence – were reflected in the black stone as strange, wobbling reflections like drawn dead faces or twisted near-demonic forms. Sixty feet above them, the Temple's was set with tiny stars that absorbed and reflect the light back with gleamings that seemed almost mocking with malevolence.
High above and beside the false stars, dark-skinned gargoyles – winged, fiendish constructs imbued with a twisted spark of life and of every form and sort – lurked on little platforms set atop the flying buttresses that encircled the Temple. The buttresses were carved in the shape of naked women, their flesh shot through with corruption and faces twisted in sinister expressions, fungus and rot, each holding one of the symbols of the Temple's faiths in an outstretched stone hand – a bowl of water, a constantly-burning flame, a pyramid of rocks and sand, or a little column of air magicked to constantly swirl in their palm like a tiny dust devil, barely visible in the light. The gargoyles sat still – almost as still as their namesakes of stone – their unblinking red eyes watching the worshippers below on the temple floor.
Barkinar sneered again as he looked on the lewd, corrupted supports, noting that each representation of the other elements was contained or supported by a construct of his own element: truly, Earth was the foundation of all elements, though the fools of the other Temples could not see it. Well, they would see soon enough.
Canon Barkinar entered the Temple with a sweeping bow and a moment's pause on the threshold to make the obscene gesture of his faith, dark narrow eyes gleaming with malicious devotion. He waved dismissively to the hulking, oozing troll guards and reverently entered with his entourage trailing behind. The room reeked of grime, old incense snd the metallic scent of dried blood.
Ten yards beyond the corridor began a dais of wide steps that rose to a platform with a stone altar flanked by two huge, shining pillars of gold inlaid with horrifying, cabbalistic images. Behind the altar a purplish curtain of some seemingly unearthly material dripped with an offensive humidity; there was nothing Barkinar could do about that. The altar itself was made of an unwholesome and dark stone that had fallen from the heavens untold eons before Man had ever set foot north of the Lortmils into the swamps of the Etters, where it had been found by a degenerate race of lizard-men that had honoured and worshipped it. Naming it only Eater they had danced loathesome turns about it under the gibbous moon during their high holy seasons until eventually they were driven from the land with spears and fire by the tribes of Man advancing from the southwest. Reviling the stone, the Men had hauled it out to cast it back into the swamps where it had been forgotten for an age. It had been unearthed, however, by other Men more willing to embrace darkness, who had yoked demonic creatures to drag it from the marshes into the underhalls of the Temple, every step of theirs heavy with the stench of heat and sulphur. There, dark Dwarves from the lightless deeps of Oerth had carved it into a great clawed paw reaching up as if grasping greedily at the heavens, and covered with the symbols of elder evil. Now it was the altar of the Greater Temple, its scaly surface stained with the rusty ochre of old blood. On either side of the curtain were carvings representing each of the Elemental Temples; blue triangle, brown square, aquamarine circle, red diamond, and flanking those were two great stone statues of monstrous appearance.
The first was was the Temple's icon of the Dark Lady Zuggtmoy, Mistress of Rots, Oozes, Slimes and Fungi, and more lately that of the quadricornate aspects of Elemental Evil. It was a repellent image done in dark, earthy granite: a grotesque, toadstool-like abomination with four stumpy legs like tree-trunks, thick fingerless limbs and a round swelling atop it that might be mistaken for a bulbous head with weeping organs sprouting from it at unsettling angles. It had been carven with such attention to detail that its very oozing pores were rendered with a preternatural, loathsome realism, making the viewer feel that the thing might leap toadlike from its pedestal to the Temple floor to smash and rend. Every part of it turned the eye; someone had even bound a sickeningly filthy loincloth around what passed for its swollen abdomen with a gold chain like some kind of cosmic joke against the very notions of propriety and decency themselves. The very sight of the great statue was sufficient to inspire utter revulsion.
The other was carven in a red swirling carnelian, at all points a lurid mix of red and brown like a representation of chaos itself. It was seemingly a bearded old man in worn robes, stooped and hunched, with a large bald head, slender arms and bony hands leaning on a great sword. His body was wastrel-thin but every aspect of the presentation seemed to subliminally convey strength and hostility, glowering into the Temple with a fiendish grin too wide to be entirely human. This was the god Iuz, Lord of Lies, Pain and Oppression – the near-physical embodiment of evil itself. Iuz the Destroyer had been a mortal warlord of the faraway Howling Hills a hundred years before, it was said, but had ascended to godhood through unspeakable rites consummated after a lifetime of cruelty, savagery and despotism. He was said to be appear either as an old man, as the statue, or sometimes as a wrathful, nine-foot red demon. Whatever his aspect, he and his servants controlled a wide stretch of dread lands north of Furyondy. Unlike Zuggtmoy, it was said his physical avatar walked loose on Oerth itself there, personally directing his great armies of fanatical humanoids.
Barkinar approached the stairs, kneeling before each figure – for in truth he was servant to both, and had been since he came to the Temple. It was not so surprising; Iuz and Zuggtmoy both sought the conquest of Verbobonc and Furyondy, and perhaps the entire Flanaess – or maybe all of Oerth, one day. As they shared their goals they shared this blasphemous Temple, pooling resources and even worshippers towards their common ends. Iuz already freely walked Oerth's soil, his sandaled feet blighting it with each step; why not Zuggtmoy, as well?
Of course, it was equally simple to see that two such powers could not coexist indefinitely with their goals. What happened when none were left to oppose them save each other?
Well, that was not Barkinar's problem: he would be long dead by then. For now, it was enough to merely serve, and acquire glory and power. The future would take care of itself.
At a gesture from Barkinar the humanoid servitors mounted lights at the entrance and spread out to place the other continuous lights around the room. Romag took two more and followed his master. They did not use torches or burning tapers. This offering was made by Earth and Earth alone: Barkinar would not contaminate his ceremony with the presence of Fire.
They climbed the stairs one at a time, slowly and with humility, head bowed in respect, empty hands before him. Submission to the will of Zuggtmoy and Iuz was a necessary part of the service; humans were mere mortals, after all, and the gods would use them as they would. The bugbears filed into the room, the ogres shuffling into place here and there where there was room for their towering bulk. Other priests of the Earth Temple followed in procession, joining the service to offer their devotions and the few other human servants of the Temple – bandits, largely, and some of the Temple guards – trailed after, looking nervous and uneasy. They lined up along the wall in the back, but stayed close together, as if they feared something dire.
Barkinar turned to his faithful lackey Romag and handed him his prayer book: the sacred Book of Earth. It was dark-coloured, rough-face and bound in some kind of skin, blackened with age. As the light struck it, a man's cured face could be seen stretched horribly across the cover. 'Father Romag, open our common prayer tome to the Word of Offerings.' The younger priest bowed, reverently taking the book from Barkinar as he gestured sharply to the bugbear servants. A pair of them wordlessly approached with an ancient canted brass lectern inscribed with horrifying demoniac faces, which they set up before the Place of Earth. Romag approached it and reverently set the Book of Earth upon it, opening it to a crimson bookmark with tassels of some fabric that looked suspiciously like human hair. Romag marked the place with a small stick and stepped aside with another bow, joining the other priests kneeling before the dais as Barkinar took his place at the altar.
'Bring the sacrifice,' he commanded coldly, waving his hand.
Two sneering bugbears hauled a struggling, supple form out of the dark corridor: a figure of callimastian and callipygian beauty, her splendid nudity sheened with sweat and her auburn hair matted around her shoulders. She had been rendered nude as a sign of sacrificial humility before the goddess, who appreciated such things – and because it amused Barkinar to do so, though not just in her case. Sensitive green eyes rolled wildly with terror in a beautiful, heart-shaped face: 'P-please,' she mumbled hoarsely through full lips cracked with thirst, struggling futilely against the iron grip on her arms, lithe muscles writhing like a dancer's against their strength.
Several of the bandits turned towards her: Barkinar marked angry grimaces, nervous eyes and even a furtively lustful stare as they contemplated her nubile form. 'I – I'm sorry. Bark – Master Barkinar!' she babbled in a panicky stammer. 'M-my lord, please! I beg you! I'm sorry! Don't do this! I – I'd never do it again! I promise! And – the bandits, my lord – my men! They won't obey you! You need me! Or – or you could let me go!' she gabbled, seizing on a notion. 'I swear, I'd never – '
'Silence her,' Barkinar hissed.
'No! Wait!' the captive begged, keening with fear as Romag slipped a leathern gag with a bulky knot into her mouth and pulled it tight, tying it behind her head. She moaned in terror through the muzzle, casting Barkinar an entreating look that was coldly ignored. 'Let this sacrifice serve as offering and example both,' he said, casting a threatening look down on the human bandits in the back of the chapel, 'and let the lesson not be lost upon others.'
He waved at Romag and the under-priest turned smartly to signal the bugbears. Pitilessly they dragged her up the stairs; gamely she fought every step of the way but their strength was irresistible.
The bugbears lifted her as she struggled wildly, lashing cords about her wrists and ankles and making them taut to rings set into the altar itself so that she was stretched out spread-eagled upon the cold, unyielding stone. She tried screaming through the gag, but it came out like a muffled howl and her hard tugs at her bonds yielded nothing as though her strength was waning. She stopped to breathe hard, panting dizzily.
Barkinar leaned down to inspect her eyes; her pupils were large and dark. Good, he thought: the drugs were working after all. She would be weakened and pliable, or pliable enough for the ceremony.
He reached under the altar and produced a strangely-shaped mitre, made all of a strange sort of white gold. It was strangely shaped, as if designed for a head that was not quite human, horrible and ellipsoid and deformed. Its surface had been cast with an eerie squamous texture and set with gems the like of which had never been seen on the surface of Oerth. He set it on his head and raised his staff, stepping back to face the assembly; the room now fell utterly silent save for the girl's terrified moans.
Some of the passages there were written in Common but fully half were scrawls in some terrible, profane black tongue that not even High Priest Hedrack knew the origins of, forcing the mouth to move around intonations never designed to be spoken aloud by a human tongue. His voice warbled higher then lower, back and forth with an eerie, evil sonorousness that the congregation echoed, so much as they could, until the hall of gleaming black stone began to reverberate with their atonal cacaphonies. The other Earth priests prostrated themselves with deep grunts and mumbles like the clashing of stone or the falling of earth. Squatting on the floor in their dun brown robes they even halfway resembled small boulders.
'Servants of Earth,' Barkinar intoned with gleeful piety, 'We gather in the Strength of Stone! which raiseth us and protecteth us!'
'Amin,' the congregation returned, in human voices or the growling semblance of human speech from the bugbears and ogres.
'The blessings of Earth be with you and with us all,' Barkinar prayed, his voice and arms rising. 'Power and fate from our Blessed Lady unto you!' he intoned, waving his arms over them all. 'The Lady be with you!'
'And also with you,' the others grunted back, shuffling restlessly.
'I command unto you: do works in her name I have done her evils but I have sinned, my brothers and sisters, in what I have failed to do for her! Bring darkness into your hearts! Do your will unto the weak! Send them to her, rot and mold!'
Ritually, the worshippers rhythmically smote their breasts, though the bandits did not engage in this, nor in the responsorials. Instead, they looked askance at the others. Some fingered their weapons uneasily, trading looks with each other. 'We see and we hear,' they chanted in the responsorial. 'Our fault,' they yelped and howled in rough Common, though some had lapsed discordantly into their own tongue, 'Our fault! Bless us with your Earth! Bless us with your hate!'
'Help and protect us, Dark Lady, as we war and slay in your name! Give us the strength of your hate! Give us the strength of your darkness! Wither our enemies with your rots and molds! Smite our foes with the strength of Earth!' Barkinar howled to the roof. 'You alone are the root of the world!' And the others raised their arms and emitted a low, constant droning, a growling hymn that rose and rose as Barkinar raised his arms higher, then vanished as he slashed them down. All was silence again.
Barkinar looked up and the dim lighting cast his features in shadows of grim malice. 'Let us now name our faith,' he commanded.
'We believe in the power of the Lady,' the assembly muttered,
'Maker of fungus, rot and mold,
Mistress of earth, stone and sand
She will rise to dominate
And destroy all the false gods of the world
And bless us with her power!'
'She will bless us with power and might,' Barkinar interjected. 'Blessed be all of us, and cursed be all others, for the good of the Lady and her mighty workings!'
Then he raised his arms again and began again the wordless, formless hum as he turned back to the tome, reading the accursed writings there. 'Fan'gla nngl'thuh Zuggtmoy Oeth'k suth'az k'far,' he grunted and susurrated, his voice deeper and horrifyingly wet, its sounds disturbingly like the sound of fronds of fungus rubbing together, followed by a hiss like spores streaming from an orifice, if such could be imagined or conjured from the human frame.
The first utterings of Barkinar in that accursed language cut into the acute, ominous stillness, as if the temple itself was awaiting the shock of the words. As his chantings rose higher a faint tremor ran through the very stone deep, deep under their feet, like. There was another tremor as a pulse of eldritch power rippled through the air like a muted wave, and then another.
The bandits muttered in alarm, but the humanoids and priests said nothing. They had performed the ceremony many times before, and knew its dread portents. The girl's green eyes bulged with terror, then rolled up with a groaning shudder of pure fear as the evil magical pulses of the place kept coming, beginning to ripple through her, too – for she also knew the ritual. She shuddered as the arcane waves washed over her naked body, eliciting shivers in her supple form, and whimpered though her gag for mercy with an entreating stare to Barkinar, but he spared the girl stretched in her bonds only the briefest of cold glances.
His cacodemoniac chanting rose several octaves, then dropped unexpectedly back into a hissing Common: 'See me, oh Lady, and grant me power from my sin!' he cried, his echoes rising as he made the sign of his faith again and returned to the evil tongue of the book. The room began to pulse, violet light flashing, malevolent stars gleaming in the ceiling: for a moment it seemed as though the temple's roof had really become transparent and that they all were seeing through it to distant stars shimmering evilly in the night sky above.
Then a sickly violet lick of electricity flicked between the pillars, its light illuminating the room with a purple flash. Another puce tongue of plasma jumped from one pillar to the other as the very air trembled, then began to whistle as it hurtled past the girl, drawn via some unseen portal into some unknown, inner gulf. The girl moaned again with eldritch horror, twisting weakly against her bonds as the throbbing pulsations of the room vibrated through and within her, shivering body and limb in time with their sickening throbbings.
'N'geth slochkh tha, n'geth f'ta slochkh, n'geth kngra'schk!' Barkinar wailed deeply, arms reaching to the walls. 'Kl'ng rshck THON!' The lights pulsed faster and faster, purple sparks thrown off from the pillars.
'Barkinar! Don't do this!' the woman shrieked, voice ragged with fear. She had somehow wrenched her gag loose and was twisting on the altar, shaking in every limb. Her skin was soaked with sweat. 'P-please!' she cried. 'I'll do anything! Anything!' But Barkinar's gaze was impassive and heartless as he completed the last of the gestures of power, his splayed fingers tightening into closed fists. A little jump of electricity – not much, merely a spark – leapt from his fists into the pillars.
Then the throbbing light and roaring sound took on a new hue: lower, more urgent, more insistent. The sable-haired girl shuddered as she felt the altar pulling at her very soul, writhing and heaving at her bonds with the little strength she could muster.
Suddenly, her face twisted in hatred as she turned towards Barkinar. 'Burn in hell!' she screamed, teeth bared defiantly. Then she looked down in terror as the very air trembled around her in shades of putrified brown, grey and black faster and faster until it darkened the very room with its brown luminescence. The lights failed, all sound was replaced with a keen shrieking that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. The ochre light grew and grew, filling their vision until suddenly there was a blinding russet flash that they all turned away from, coupled with a long, wailing scream. Every stone surface heaved with a shudder of incredible power followed by a thudding boom that nearly threw them from their feet.
When the earthy glow disappeared and their glow-stocks again lit the room, the altar was empty. The ropes hung, limp and severed, and the air sizzled with an electric stench like rotten ozone.
Canon Barkinar stood straight, surveying the empty altar with satisfaction, hiding his elation.
Abruptly he turned to the assembly, stalking around to the front of the dais. 'The mass is finished: go,' he instructed them in a deep, brusque voice. 'Go now and do your work in her name! Go!' The congregation grunted or grumbled in nominal assent and filed out of the room in a shuffling mass, evil grimaces etched on their faces. 'Go!' Barkinar hissed next to the human bandits, who milled uncertainly, looking on the altar with disbelief and anger. Barkinar leaned forward, lips drawn back to bare his teeth. 'And do not forget what you have seen here,' he growled at them, eyes burning with rage. The marauders recoiled from his fury, then slipped resentfully out the temple's entrance into the long dark corridor.
When they were gone and the Temple was empty of all save him and the omnipresent gargoyles, Barkinar sank to his knees before the altar, facing the towering statue of Zuggtmoy on her dais. He cleared his mind and closed his eyes, letting his consciousness reach out as his hands worked over the spell designed to attract her attention. He would bring his goddess right to Oerth itself; her feet would defile the world once more!
There was a spark in the darkness, then nothing.
Then it returned, stoking itself higher and brighter in the mind's eye, inescapable.
Sounds came down the strange silver thread of consciousness as the spark reinvigorated itself, gleaming. And now there was a voice: a mortal, human voice stumbling over the simplest of words in the Old Tongue with an execrable accent like a child or a fool.
Then there was a sensation – like a passing without consumption, a gift that began and ended abruptly, and darkness again.
More and more often had these words filtered down from above, and this movement – a sacrifice, unwilling, falling through the Veil into the elemental spaces She had created: the Elemental Nodes. That was well enough, for while the savage gods of light had locked Her in this accursed prison, They had not bothered to block Her sight into the Nodes; and so, the sacrifices served as entertainment for Her in the timeless hours, until they met some horrible fate at the claws and teeth of the other, more savage creatures she'd sequestered in those little pocket planes.
Like a great boulder shifting, the dark goddess Zuggtmoy raised Her vast bulk from the floor, bits of broken rock and filth falling away from Her abundant abhorrence as She swayed onto her thick pod-feet. The goddess began to walk, great legs swinging with remarkable agility for Her size, pod-feet thudding down with agitation on the blighted stone. She had been imprisoned thirteen years ago – truly, not long for a demoness ascended to goddesshood, but such was the infernal construction of Her prison that each day, hour and moment seemed to span limitless, intolerable years. This was the curious time dilation of the Warp – a deliberate punishment of the foul gods of the humans and Elves that had imprisoned her here, She was sure.
She was still on Oerth, She knew: long years She had spent here on the Prime Material plane of existence, plotting the conquest of Oerth from Her mighty Temple and she remembered it well. Before then, many times she had come to this plane as a minor demoness – a manes, a flabby dretch, a skeletal babau, even a succubus, though none would have guessed now that that had ever been so – so that even as she knew her prison was in Oerth, she sensed it was also outside it at the same time. For, while She was surrounded by black onyx, Her real, spiritual prison was made by the four great Gates that the cruel enemy erected in the Temple. Each set of Gates – one on each of the upper floors, four in all – were made of fire-cured bronzewood and sealed with blessed iron and silver. Into each was also set the religious wards of a score of gods from a dozen different faiths, all inscribed by the foul priests of good as part of the great and terrible Binding that locked her away behind the Veil; on Oerth, yet not, in the same moment.
The very thought of these disgusting insults erected in Her own Temple to bind Her made Her want to smash something small and helpless; to hurl a tidal wave on a coastline; to poison a forest!
But what the Gates really meant was that even if Her foolish devotees had known where She was, they were powerless to release Her by themselves. They needed Her help: they needed strength, to break the gates. Yet while She hated her prison, She did not know if She wished to return to Oerth. There had been strife there. Challengers. Treacherous allies. Enemies. The frustrations of a war waged – and lost.
But what had really stuck with Her had been the pain of the Gates being sealed. It had been more almost than She could have borne. It had torn Her into hundreds, into thousands, scattered Her essence to the Planes: the Astral, the Elemental, the Ethereal. Her consciousness had been fragmented for a moment into all the possible outcomes of every aspect of her personality. She'd had momentary glimpses of Tarterus, Acheron, her home plane the Abyss, even the glow of the Seven Heavens, the shining marble of Olympus and the green fields of the Happy Hunting Grounds.
And then had come the twisting pain of reintegration, as all Her selves – blasted not to every corner of the universe and the Outer Planes– slammed back into Material reality, all of Her, every sharp-edged facet smashing together at the speed of light, or darkness.
That had been real pain: aeons of agony, compressed into thin shards of moments. Her psychic scream had probably been heard as far out as the Nine Hells. It was an suffering She had never felt in all Her existence in any form before, not when as a succubus an evil priest had summoned her and wracked her spirit, not when as a manes she'd been slowly devoured by the jagged maws of a balor and sent shrieking back to the Abyss. Nothing any mortal creature had ever felt could ever compare. Her personality had only stayed intact out of sheer will.
And now, Zuggtmoy wandered these few dull monotonous rooms in this petty gaol on Oerth, trapped in a pocket plane without time or meaning – ironically, itself a Node that She could not leave! She could not even return to the Abyss! She cursed again the forces of light: She could still confer divine powers upon Her followers from here – that was the right of all gods, or goddesses, with which few could interfere – and see into her precious Nodes, but that was all.
And now the nagging voice had returned; it relented not but kept on burning like a shrill note in Her mind-space, singeing where it touched Her personality. She shook irritably, ripples undulating through Her fungoid corpulence.
'Great Lady, holy goddess, Matriarch of all – can You hear me?' Barkinar called eagerly into the dark. 'We sent a gift through for Your amusement, Your pleasure! To the Nodes! Did You sense her?'
Nothing. Emptiness. The goddess did not hear.
He grit his teeth; he would not give up so easily. 'Great goddess! Queen of corruption and decay! Hear us! We call to You, our Regent!' he cried into the black psychic plane.
Nothing. Again.
Then, his heart trembled as he felt a sluggish sensation – awareness: reluctant, almost unwilling.
A connection! Dark joy shot through his heart as he felt the foul whispery featherings of her consciousness. 'Great Dark Lady!' he called excitedly. 'Mistress of Molds! Regent of Rots! We call to You, Your faithful followers! Come to freedom! Help us break Your chains and come to the world!'
Slowly She turned towards the direction of the voice, petulant and bad-tempered. Why did they continue to disturb Her? Surely they could see that these constant interruptions were worth nothing! One mighty fist slammed into the wall, sending shards scattering, but to Her frustration the stone simply reformed where it had been and still the voice ceased not! It was intolerable, a reminder of Her being locked away in this metaphysical gaol, so close to reality and yet so far. How She would have smashed the caller if only he had been in Her pseudopods!
She wondered what her onetime allies were doing in her absence. When She'd been free, She'd had to endure Iuz's constant, foolish scheming to use the Temple to draw off the armies of Furyondy so he could invade them from the north – as if She had not known his true plans! But his support had been useful… and by keeping him in her sphere perhaps She could one day turn him against the other major powers in the region.
Iuz' lands were in what had once been the Dulsi Plain, as the humans named it. Once She had converted Verbobonc, Iuz would be useful in breaking Furyondy, and then in destroying the Horned Society, which occupied the long wastes south of Iuz' lands. Meanwhile, Zuggtmoy could be free to capture the Wild Coast and subvert the Pomaraj peninsula, with its endless hordes of orcs and goblins. What wonderful monstrosities of elements and rot She could make of them!
But the politics – these constant, mammalistic intrigues – frustrated and tired Her: alliances and double-dealings and petty treacheries. She vastly preferred the simple joys of slow corruption, devolution and absorption. Even Her own Temple – which She had made, for Herself, whatever Iuz had contributed! – was split into factions, most of which served Her but others Iuz and one even in league with Lolth, the evil spider demon-goddess, outcast of the Elven pantheon! How Zuggtmoy would have liked to crush that pretty little bitch! And the punishments She would inflict on the disloyal of Her own Temple – had the fools really never considered this? How they would weep when her pseudo-feet trod the soil of Oerth once more!
A stray thought passed: had Iuz let Her be bound in here? He had not intervened, when the clerics of Good had arrived.
But no, that was foolishness – what good was an ally trapped?
Barkinar concentrated, deepening his trance. 'Hear me, Great Dark Lady! We are trying to free you!' he thought into the void, feeling a massive, sluggish spasmodic tremor somewhere alone in the dark. 'The power – use the power we have sent you with this sacrifice! She delivers strength! See us! Use your own power to break free!'
Their call, again: always these sacrifices, always these demands.
Still… the opening and closing of the Nodes, like valves or machines, fed Her, gave strength. The sacrifice, the donation of a living creature was a gift of energy, of meaning, even if the sacrifice was caught in the Nodes by something else and eaten. She could even feel the energy coursing through Her stumpy limbs. There was power from that; not from the life-force, that was a foolish thing. It was sheer esoteric energy, released by the act of the sacrifice, and the words that gathered power and sent it to Her through the traversing of the Node gates itself like a watermill driven by the power of the flow beneath it.
She stomped towards the boundary of her prison on great stump feet, experimentally planted her thick arms against the walls – both material and psychic – and pushed.
Even at the mental distance Barkinar could feel the strain of that heave: it had power in it, so much power. 'Yes! Yes, my Lady!' he hurled the thoughts into the darkness. 'Smash the chains that bind You! Come to us in the Lands of Dawn!'
The accursed Gates resisted and Zuggtomy shoved harder, digging in her feet and watching the physical manifestation of the onyx around her crack and fracture, even as Her mind battered at the divine enchantments. They could not be strong everywhere! She could break through! Stone splintered under Her pseudopods and the very walls shook, dust both real and metaphysical sifting down.
The sigils on the Gates flickered, then shone brighter as Zuggtmoy's ponderous spiritual bulk shoved against them, doubling Her power again and again until they creaked and shivered, their very timbers rattling in their frames and the massive cold-wrought iron chains rattling as the evil goddess thrust against the bonds holding Her beyond the Fane. The magical bonds stretched and warped and the sigils glowed brighter and brighter until the heat began to scorch the hardened bronzewood.
But she tired. The Gates were strong, so strong and the hate of the gods of light too great. Her flaccid mind, great with bulk but slow to move, strained at the magical web but it gave less, and less, seeming to consolidate and strengthen.
The sigils remained intact on each of the great silver doors of the Temple, unmoved and unmoving. The light died away and they were quiescient once more.
Barkinar felt it still; the imposing weight of the arcane and pious wards flickered, trembled… but held. The fire in their iron died, the smoldering ceased and the Gates cooled, their sigils unbroken.
'NO!' he roared into the empty Temple, raising his hand imploringly to Zuggtmoy's statue beside the altar. Not so soon! She must try! But it was too late – the surge of strength he'd felt was gone. 'Lady! We do not know how to reach you. But fear not! Soon we will breach the glyphs and runes, and release you into the weeping night!'
A mental tremble surged through the connection and instantly he knew he'd put a foot wrong. 'THE DARK LADY DOES NOT FEAR!' the outraged thought erupted down the connection and for a moment Barkinar thought She might break his mind for the offense of his accidental impiety. 'SHE WAITS – BUT NOT FOREVER, WORM! FREE ME FROM THIS ACCURSED PRISON!'
And then She was gone.
Barkinar reeled backwards, almost tumbling down the dais in his exhaustion; his cassock was soaked with sweat around his shoulders and back and his chest ached. He touched his nose; there was blood there; a blow from the intensity of her telepathic command.
He sagged on the steps. Failure. Failure again, as there had been so many already. His fist clenched in rage. How many times? How many times must he arrange the sacrifice, just to gain the attention of a deity who seemed almost more content to sleep, lost in her own memories? He must find a way to bring Her back to the mortal world. He must. He would do so, or he would die. For now, only the fool Hedrack could actually speak directly to the Dark Lady, but that would soon change, Barkinar swore. Soon, he would be the greatest cleric of Zuggtmoy at the Temple. One day, he would be highest among the Temple!
He would have the bugbears and ogres clean and prepare the chamber again. And at least that treacherous woman would wander the Nodes and suffer their torments! Her fate, at least, was sealed.
She had been a rare prize and it agonized him that her being had not been sufficient to accomplish his goal. He must try again – and then a dark thought crossed his mind.
A beautiful, spirited woman had produced great energy for the goddess – some integral essence of the spirit, he concluded. Then perhaps he only needed another? Or more than one? He had seen the evidence already: an orc or two produced little value. Surely mathematics was the solution to his problem.
He rose to his feet and flew down the corridor, his broodings carrying him away down the dark, dripping tunnels.
Somewhere in the unworldly darkness, his goddess slumbered on.