Page 115 of Master of Storms
Marduk stared at that restless sparkling light within the ruby in horror.Andri? “What did you do with his body?”
She merely smiled. “Someone will find it. One day.”
“And the key?”
“I was lying, Marduk.” She kept advancing. “I can do that now, you realize, because I don’t have anydrekimagic. The key’s not here. I already have it secreted away elsewhere. I do have to thank you for delivering it directly into my hands. Now I have exactly what I need to deliver my vengeance upon all who ruined me. War is coming, Marduk, and I have new friends now. New allies. Together we will destroy everything theZiniand theZilittubuilt.”
Marduk steeled himself. Solveig would have discovered him missing by now. He had to keep Amadea talking. If there was anything he knew about his mother, it was that she liked to gloat. “What have you done with Elin?”
And then mentally, he sent a spear of thought arching toward the keep. “Solveig?”
“That’s not the question you should be asking.” Elin snapped her fingers and suddenly a trio of torches of the walls flared to life, though they burned a sickly green. Chaos magic. “The question you should be asking is, what do I intend to do with you? This is the yawning Abyss ofZilittu. This is where they send their enemies to die. It seems fitting to bury you here. Alive.”
He lunged to the side—or tried to. His boots seemed to be stuck to the floor.
Marduk fell to his hands and knees. The torch hit the tiled floor in front of him, and suddenly his palms were glued to the floor too.
What the hell was she doing to him?
“Ah, ah, ah, Marduk. Traitors must be punished.” His mother knelt down to see his face. “That’s something my father taught me. Traitors must be crushed. They must beforgotten.”
In desperation, he sent a sweep of fire flaring toward her from the flickering torch.
It vanished as it came within a foot of her skirts. Amadea’s laughter died down. “Oh, Marduk.” She swept her palm over the floor in front of her. Dust parted, revealing a tiny set of brass runes chiseled into the floor. “Sumerian is the mother tongue,” she chided, pointing to the first word. “It is what the Goddess spoke when she wove Chaos into the world. And this ring here—” her palm slid across the floor revealing a curving line of words “—circles you entirely. It’s a void of magic. The moment you stepped over this line—albeit unknowingly—you became defenseless.”
He had to reach her. “Solveig!”
There was no answer. Only silence. Maybe it was the ring of spell work on the floor surrounding him.
She couldn’t hear him.
“Goodbye, my treacherous son. You will be the first of my children to die.” His mother pushed to her feet, brushing the dust from her skirts. “Though I assure you that you won’t be the last.”
“No—"
She spoke a word he didn’t understand.
The floor vanished beneath him.
He was suddenly kneeling on nothing; only a thin web of Chaos magic lay interlaced beneath his feet.
His stomach plunged into the abyss far below.
“Solveig!” he screamed as he plummeted into the darkness.
Reaching desperately for hisdreki, he tried to claw at the air around him.
His wings…. His wings wouldn’t work. There was some strange weight settling over his mortal skin, trapping thedrekiwithin him. Marduk screamed as the abyss swallowed him whole.
And then the earth rushed up to capture him in its gaping maw.
He slammed into solid rock, screaming as his shoulder popped from its socket and several ribs shattered. Tumbling over uneven ground, he finally fetched up against something hard and angular.
The torch landed beside him, still burning.
Goddess’s mercy. Every inch of him felt ablaze with pain. There was no air in his lungs. No movement in his right leg. Nothing but darkness and pain and the silent groaning of the earth as the torchlight flickered… and died.
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