THE LAIRING CHAMBER OF DREADED ULTO
From the smoldering jungle of Azaocratz' lair, a curving staircase of draped and purpled marble ascends. Viványa, admiring the way Tzark walks up the narrow, gilded banister, climbs onto it and tries to follow him, but slips, and slips again. He turns to walk backwards, speaking to her, "Look ahead, not at your feet. Do not think of falling, only of what's before you." Viványa keeps at it with earnest enthusiasm, and Tzark takes satisfaction in watching how the young pirate begins to slip less and less.
Rokál grouses, "What is this waste of vigor? We still have Ulto to defeat."
"Actually," Tzark says, "I say we find Harrin's brood first. Glaneir, have you any idea where Ulto may be keeping them?"
"None," Glaneir snorts. "Pray cease your absurdities, thief. Obviously we must catch Ulto first. Torture it out of her. Lo! There is her tower now!" She gestures through a glassless opening into the windy blue night, and they see a minaret that twists out of the tower above to spear the roiling underbellies of the clouds.
Viványa leaps down from the banister and quickens her pace, and soon her eagerness spreads to Rokál and Tzark.
Ulto follows grudgingly; she had never planned to run these rampant savages through her own personal minaret, but the silver keys seem to have gone missing, not due to theft (She is certain she would have detected even the most skillful pickpocket) but due to some rogue enchantment. Regardless, now that the keys are lost, only one route to the Upper Tower remains open to her.
The staircase branches through an archway, and Glaneir announces that they are now climbing into the roots of Ulto's minaret. The torchflames here have the color of bleeding tongues, and overhead, a candlelight chandelier of rubies and platinum is sparkling, endlessly long, spiraling upward above the stair until, after the comrades have passed many balconies and night vistas of fast-increasing height, it ends at a doorway forged of fire and gold.
The threads of the door's surface flow like uneasy muscles, and as the four draw near, two masses bulge out of it and drop onto the floor, then slither into shape as a pair of golden, fire-eyed lynxes.
Rokál readies his blade, but Glaneir gives him a quelling gesture and says, "I am known to these beasts."
The lynxes, seeing their master, become passive and allow the warriors to pass within.
They enter the chamber of Ulto.
Like the golden door, the room is woven from glittering sinews. Its shape is that of a tulip's bulb, as seen by insects within, and at the center of the ice-white floor, crowded amid tables of glassware and fragile instrumentation, there lies a vast bed, ring-shaped around a central pit, its softness blanketed with the velvet of human skins. From the central pit, a pillar of lurid fire seethes with the incense of sacrifices. Unclean smoke rises coiling toward the roof, making the firelight flicker and dance, before billowing upward through openings in the ceiling, out into the tempestuous night. A pair of iron staircases descend through those openings, winding from the sky above, down to the ice-white floor.
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"It seems the sorceress is out," Glaneir says. "Let us not dawdle, then. She must be in the Upper Tower." She gestures onward toward one of the iron stairways.
"No," Rokál says. "We must investigate this place."
Ulto bites back her arguments, lest she seem to be defending Ulto's chamber. It irks her to think that Tzark might plunder her collection of gilded child-skulls, one of her only indulgences. She concedes, "It appears I cannot prevent this foolishness, but heed this warning: steal nothing, touch nothing, destroy nothing, for who can guess what curses might be—"
The crash of shattering glasswork interrupts her; Rokál has kicked over a table of crystal daggers. "My eyes see no curses," he declares.
"Lovely," Tzark says with relish, and smashes open a glass-fronted cabinet, which he begins ransacking for valuables. "Oh by the way, Glaneir," he adds with a sidelong glance, "you were Ulto's slave, no? You must be thrilled to get the chance to destroy some of her treasures." He smiles benevolently. "Have no fear, we'll leave the best of the smashing to you." With a gesture of invitation, he points her to Ulto's fragile possessions, and watches her expectantly.
Ulto wrenches her mouth into a smile. "Ahahah. Yes. Wonderful. Only…" she searches furiously for an excuse, "I'm afraid that my fear of her is still too fresh. I could never harm her things myself."
"A shame," Tzark says. "In that case, let me smash a few on your behalf; just point at one and I'll hurl it against the wall."
Laughing and smiling with even more teeth, Ulto points to the smallest and least valuable object in sight, a tiny phial which rests beside the gigantic, expensive soap-bubble of her human fat distillery. Tzark picks up the distillery. "This?" he says, and smashes it into smithereens, then stomps the pieces into a ruin of total pulverization.
"… yes… that," Ulto manages, her forced giggling distorted by waves of murderous hate. "I am… so happy!"
Meanwhile Viványa has been sniffing suspiciously at the air around the bed. Suddenly, she says, "Glaneir."
Ulto, thrilled at the interruption, takes a few steps toward the blood-haired warrior. "What is it?"
"So this is the chamber of Ulto?"
"Of course. As I said."
"And did her slaves sleep here?"
Ulto glances aside, uneasy. She finds that although the pirate's voice lacks the depth possessed by full-grown men, there is something dire in it.
The wolf-scars on Vivict's throat, Ulto had seen from the beginning; now she hears them too; they are a scratchiness, a purr in the chords, making every word a subtle growl, and the words are, "It smells like you."
Rokál freezes. Tzark jerks his head up; he had not intended to confront Glaneir now, but her back is open, and he has his knife.
"What are you, a dog?" Glaneir demands. "I served here often. The odor of this place clings, I fear."
Viványa bares her teeth. She trusts her nose more fully than her eyes. But just to be certain, she stalks, without taking her eyes off of 'Glaneir,' to a nearby wardrobe of rich, gilded ebony, grabs out a silken tunic of exorbitant grandeur—no garment for a slave—and takes the scent. It is not the scent of the chamber, but of a person: Glaneir.
Tzark sees the moment when the last uncertainty leaves Vivict's eyes, replaced by battle-light. Drawing his thieves' dagger, he sprints at Ulto's back.
Ulto shouts, "Very well then, dog! Witness Ulto!" She begins an elaborate gesture, but Viványa hurls a throwing axe and shatters her sternum, and at the same instant Tzark slams into her back, stabbing her heart.
Ulto turns and cackles at him, "Did I not tell you? My master cut out my heart, and Azaocratz devoured it!" She leaps to the base of an iron stair. Rokál intercepts her with a swing of his crescent axe, sending an arm splattering to the floor, but Ulto bounds up the steps, uncaring, with Rokál at her heels and the others sprinting after. To the pursuers, the sorceress seems almost to fly, springing three yards at a stride, flashing up and out into the tempests of the night.