Chapter Two

The upright crocodile opened its jaws as it came toward him, a hungry parody of a smile. There was dark blood on its rows of curved teeth, and muscle rolled under the scale on its heavy, hunched shoulders. Its great tail swung gently to and fro behind it.

Merodach tightened his grip on the mace. It was likely that he, at a mere twenty-five hundred souls, could not fight off a daedroth on his own. The thought of calling for help did not even cross his mind. That would embroil him in debts he might not pay in many lifetimes. The loss of his current incarnation would be preferable.

Running would be useless. Daedroths were faster than they looked, and spellcasters besides.

"Did Belteshazzar summon you?" Merodach said. The daedroth hissed. Fire spouted from its jaws. Merodach avoided most of the blast, but felt the heat through his right pauldron. He threw himself bodily past the creature, swinging at a scaly leg as he went past. The blow connected, but then the fat tail swung around and caught him in midair. He was treated to a view of whirling walls as he flew across the room, and then he tucked his head down just in time to slam into the floor on his back.

Merodach rolled to his feet, gasping to reinflate his lungs. A shock charge crackled past his right ear as he dodged again, not quite as quickly as before. As he watched, the daedroth shook itself, jerking the wattle under its chin back and forth. A puff of white steam rose from its head and shoulders. Merodach swore silently as he realized it had dispelled the poison from his mace. That was the trouble with enchantment poisons as opposed to herbal ones. But I am no alchemist.

A very slight movement caught his eye. He glanced that way quickly, reluctant to take his eyes from the monster in front of him. The dark kynaz from the cage sat slumped in a corner of the room, head lolling. He had no time to gauge whether she was alive or dead, because at that moment the daedroth gathered its thick haunches and leaped at him.

He stepped partly to one side and slammed the mace into its ribcage. There was a faint crack as a rib broke, and then one mighty claw hooked his breastplate and tore it off. His arm caught in the strap, and he was yanked upwards, nearly pulling his shoulder out of the socket. Merodach swung the mace with his free arm, but he was dangling in the air now. The daedroth grinned again, licking its chops. Its hot breath stank of brimstone.

Merodach dropped the mace and drew his belt knife. The daedroth swatted at him with its free hand, making him swing back and forth. He hissed as two claws sliced across his belly, and then he swung back toward the creature and stabbed up into the roof of its mouth with his belt knife.

Its jaws closed on his arm. Numerous teeth pierced his flesh, digging for the bone, and then the daedroth dissolved into yellow sparks and he dropped to the floor.

"Summoned," Merodach wheezed. He sheathed the knife, though it was difficult to pry his fingers loose, and groped for his mace in the welter of gore. Belteshazzar had not been powerful enough to summon a daedroth. Someone else is here.

He took stock of his injuries quickly. His right arm was bleeding in many places, pierced from wrist to elbow. He'd been lucky that the daedroth had not broken the bone or torn the artery in his upper arm. His shirt had gone the way of his breastplate, and he was bleeding freely from the wounds in his belly. All of this hurt, but a Dremora who cannot manage pain is unlikely to survive more than a soul or so in any given incarnation.

The biggest problem was that his left arm was pulled severely enough to interfere with his holding the mace, and his right was weakening fast from blood loss –

And he heard feet shuffling in a side chamber. Merodach's fingers closed on the handle of the mace at last, and he jerked himself upright with an effort. "Show yourself," he said.

What entered through the small doorway was not another kynaz. It was a pair of clannfear. They came toward him with mincing steps, flexing their tiny forearms. One of them rattled deep in its throat. Both were full grown, their heads at the level of Merodach's even with the stooped posture common to that race of lesser daedra.

"Flaming Scourge," Merodach said, and then he was fighting for his life again.

A very long five minutes later, Merodach fell to his knees. Both clannfear were gone, dissolved to sparks like the daedroth before them. The unseen spellcaster had won. He bled from many wounds now, with his right greave torn off and the flesh of his upper leg mauled. He kept a convulsive grip on the mace, but he was quickly growing too weak to lift it.

Merodach tried to stand up. His right knee gave out and spilled him to the floor again. His head was beginning to ache from the loss of blood, and the fountain in the middle of the room seemed very far away now. He growled, deep in his throat, and began to crawl toward it on his belly. The cuts in his flesh scraped against bits of bone on the floor, but he ignored it.

After a yard or so he became too dizzy to tell which way was forwards. Merodach laid his head on his arm for a moment to rest. When he opened his eyes again, there were booted feet in front of him. He looked up in time to see Mishael sink to one knee on the filthy floor, regarding him. A long braid of amber hair slid forward over his shoulder.

"Hail, Ebel-Merodach," Mishael said. "It seems your present life is drawing to an end."

"So… it… seems," Merodach said. The individual words were hard to master, dredged up from deep within.

"I could finish you, and add another soul to my tally," Mishael said.

"Yes."

"But that would be unworthy of me," Mishael said. "I might as well admit I could not vanquish you while you were strong."

"Even… so…" Merodach said.

"Nor will I place you in my debt forever by saving your life," Mishael said. "I need no such burden myself."

"Good," said Merodach.

"But I will see that your contest is fair. None will enter this room for the next hour." Mishael rose easily and turned to go. He paused on the threshold of the sloping hallway. "For myself, I hope you will reach the fountain. Farewell, Ebel-Merodach."

"Farewell," Merodach said to the other caitiff's vanishing back. He resumed his slow progress toward the fountain of blood. The stuff on the floor was already close to drying, no good to him.

His strength failed him after another yard or so of crawling. He rested on his elbows, trying not lose consciousness again as his head spun.

Something moved at the periphery of his vision. Merodach turned his head carefully to avoid oversetting his fragile equilibrium. The kynaz from the cage still leaned in her corner, but as he watched, she rolled her head upright against the wall. Her eyes slid open. They were very dark, for the eyes of a kynaz, but that was all the detail he could make out in the dim room. It seemed to be growing dimmer, in fact. Merodach had died only once before, but he remembered the experience quite clearly. It would not be long.

He edged forward a little further. The fountain was still yards away. Odd, he remembered the chamber as smaller than that.

There was a rustle of fabric. Merodach looked back at the dark kynaz. She was pushing herself onto her feet, staggering upright with a hand braced on each wall of the corner. Her robe was in even worse condition than before, torn across the bottom so that it showed her scrawny legs. The edges were stiff with drying gore. As he watched, she took a stumbling step forward, then had to lean against the wall again.

Then she looked at him. Merodach looked back.

"The daedroth is gone," she said. Her voice was thin and breathy, and the echo normal to a kynaz was almost absent. It still possessed a strange harmonic, a high and distant vibration. Or possibly that was the effect of blood loss. "The clannfear are gone also," the dark kynaz said.

Merodach bared his teeth as realization struck. "You…" he said. "You summoned..."

The other kynaz nodded once. Her face was still quite blank, and the dark eyes looked at Merodach as if they saw something on the other side of him. She took another stiff and unsteady step, then another. The next one brought her away from the wall. She lurched toward Merodach with the kind of gait generally seen only in infants and zombies. There was something in one of her hands, but the drape of her torn sleeve partly hid it.

Merodach breathed, forcing air into his lungs. He still had his mace, but he could not lift it. He contemplated drawing the dagger at his belt. She would probably scorch him to death with a spell before he succeeded. He was too weak to move very quickly.

"…killed Belteshazzar," he said. And summoned the others to cover her tracks. She planned it to look as if he were slain by his own summonings. But that worm of a kynval could never have summoned two clannfear, let alone two clannfear and a daedroth. He felt a grudging admiration for the attempt. It had been cleverer than anything Belteshazzar could possibly have conceived.

It meant his certain death, of course. A mage who could summon more than one creature at once was as much a rarity as a kynaz with backward horns. And by taking two souls instead of just one, she might add enough to her strength to be taken for clan-kin rather than property.

"I killed the kynval mage, yes," said the kynaz. Merodach frowned as she went around him, giving him a wide berth on her way to the fountain of blood. She shook her sleeve back, revealing the fragment of skull in her hand.

It had a horn attached to it. A very shiny one, short for a kynval. Merodach smiled in chill appreciation as the kynaz used it to scoop blood from the basin, then sipped from its edge. He was very thirsty. No doubt she somehow recalled that he had let the kynval have her. He would want revenge under the circumstances, too.

The dark kynaz made her stiff way over to the fountain of mana. The blue liquid plashed quietly in its basin. She stuck her face directly into the stream of magicka as it shot up, wetting her purple-black hair, and held both hands down in the basin. She stood that way for a few seconds. Merodach risked another short wriggle toward the fountain. He went too fast, and this time everything went black.