Diablo: The Black Road. Mel Odom

the door.”

      Cholik watched the slaves loading huge sections of broken stone into the carts, then pushing the carts up to the dump sites. Other slaves filled large buckets with smaller debris and filled more carts. The ironbound wheels creaked on dry axles and grated against the floor.

      “The work to uncover the door went quickly,” Altharin said. “As soon as I knew we had found it, I sent for you.”

      Cholik strode toward the door, drawing on the remaining dregs of his strength. His legs felt like lead, and his heart hammered against his ribs. He’d pushed himself too far. He knew that. The confrontation with Raithen and the spell he’d summoned to destroy the rats had shoved him past his limits. His breath felt tight in his chest. Using magic no longer came easy to the aged and infirm sometimes. Spellwork had its own demands and often left those too weak to handle the energies warped and broken. And he’d come into the spells late in life after wasting so many years in the Zakarum Church.

      The ground inclined toward the door, and Cholik’s steps hastened of their own accord. Slaves noticed him coming and cleared the way, yelling at one another to get out of the way.

      Hammers rose and fell as more slaves put additional scaffolding into place, climbing higher up against the door. In their haste, part of the scaffolding fell, swinging like a pendulum from a fixed point, and four men fell with it. A lantern shattered against the stone floor and spilled a pool of oil that caught fire.

      One of the fallen men screamed in pain, clasping a shattered leg. The torchlight revealed the gleam of white bone protruding through his shin.

      “Get that fire put out,” Altharin ordered.

      A slave threw a bucket of water over the fire but only succeeded in splashing it toward the huge door, spreading the flames into little pockets.

      One of the mercenaries stepped forward and cut the ragged shirt from a slave with quick flicks of his dagger. He dipped the shirt into another bucket of water, then plopped the soaked garment on top of the fire. Sizzling, the fire died.

      Cholik strode forward through the fire, unwilling to show any fear of it. He summoned a small shield to protect him from the fire and walked through it unscathed. The act created the effect he wanted, drawing the slaves’ attention from their fear of the door and replacing it with their fear of him.

      The door was a threat, but a toothless one. Cholik had proven on several occasions that he had no compunctions about killing them and having their bodies thrown into the abyss. Gathering himself, standing now despite the weakness that filled him only because he refused to let himself falter, he turned to the slaves.

      All their frantic whispering stopped except for the groaning man nursing the broken leg. Even he hid his face in the crook of his arm, whimpering and no longer crying out.

      Knowing he needed more strength to face whatever lay on the other side of Kabraxis’s door, Cholik spoke words of power, summoning the darkness to him that he had feared decades ago, only begun to dabble in a few years ago, and had grown strong in of late.

      The old priest held up his right hand, fingers splayed. As he spoke the words, forbidden words to those of the Zakarum Church, he felt the power leech into him, biting through his flesh and sinking into his bones with razored talons. If the spell did not work, he was certain he would fall and risk becoming comatose until his body recovered.

      A purple nimbus flared around his hand. A bolt shot out and touched the slave with the broken leg. When the purple light spread over him and invisible hands grabbed him, the man screamed.

      Cholik continued speaking, feeling stronger as the spell bound the man to him. His words came faster and more certain. The invisible hands spread-eagled the slave on the ground, then lifted him up, dangling him in the air.

      “No!” the man screamed. “Please! I beg you! I will work! I will work!”

      Once, the man’s fear and his pleading might have touched Cholik. Those things did not touch Cholik intimately, for the old priest could never remember a time when he’d placed the needs of another above his own. But there had been times he’d gone with the Zakarum Church missionaries in the past to heal the sick and tend to wounded men. The recent trouble between Westmarch and Tristram had been rife with those incidents.

      “Nooooo!” the man screamed.

      The other slaves drew back. Some of them called to the afflicted man.

      Cholik spoke again, then closed his fist. The purple nimbus turned dark, like the bruised flesh of a plum, and sped along the length of the beam that held the slave.

      When the darkness touched the slave, his body contorted. Horrible crunching echoed in the cavern as the man’s arms and legs shattered their sockets. He screamed anew, and despite the agony that must have been coursing through him, he remained alert and conscious.

      A few of the priests who had left Westmarch with Cholik but who had not yet abdicated the ways of the Zakarum Church knelt and pressed their faces against the cavern floor. The teachings of the church held only tenets of healing and hope, of salvation. Only the Hand of Zakarum, the order of warriors consecrated by the church, and the Twelve Grand Inquisitors, who sought out and combated demonic activity within the populace of the church, used the blessings Yaerius and Akarat had given to those who had first chosen to follow.

      Buyard Cholik was neither of those things. The priests who had put their faith in him had known that, had believed that he could make them more than what they were, but only now saw what they could become. Cholik, feeding off the slave’s fear and life as they came back to him through the conduit of the spell, was aware that some of his followers regarded him with fear while others looked at him hungrily.

      Altharin was one of those horrified.

      Bracing himself, not knowing for sure what to expect, Cholik spoke the final word of the spell.

      The slave screamed in anguish, but the scream stopped in the middle. The spell ripped the man apart. The explosion of blood painted the frightened faces of the nearby men crimson and extinguished two torches as well as the residual pools of flame from the shattered lantern.

      A moment more, and the desiccated remains of the slave plopped against the cavern floor.

      Even though he’d expected something, Cholik hadn’t expected the sudden rush of euphoria that filled him. Pain echoed within him as well, sweet misery as the vampiric spell worked the restorative effects. The lethargy that had descended upon him after using the spells earlier lifted. Even some of the arthritic pains that had started to blossom in his joints faded. Part of the stolen life energy went to him, to borrow and use as he saw fit, but the spell transferred some of it to the demon worlds as well. Spellcraft designed and given by the demons always benefited them.

      Cholik stood straighter as the magical nimbus around him lightened from near black to purple again. Then the hellish light drew back inside him. Refreshed, senses thrumming, the old priest regarded his audience. What he’d done here tonight would trigger reaction in the slaves, the mercenaries, Raithen’s pirates, and even the priests. Some, Cholik knew, would not be there come morning.

      They would be afraid of him and of what he might do.

      The realization made Cholik feel good, powerful. Even when he was a young priest of the Zakarum Church and holding a position in Westmarch, only the truly repentant and those without hope who wished to believe in something had clung to his words. But the men in the cavern watched him as canaries watched a hawk.

      Turning from the dead slave, Cholik walked toward the door again. His feet moved with comfort and confidence. Even his own fears seemed pushed farther back in his mind.

      “Altharin,” Cholik called.

      “Yes, master,” Altharin responded in a quiet voice.

      “Have the slaves get back to work.”

      “Yes, master.” Altharin gave the orders.

      Trained survivalists themselves, knowing they offered no blood allegiance, the mercenaries