Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner Page A

lay between Arellarti and the distant forests. The Rillyti alone presented enough threat, even if-
    An envenomed blade drove through his back, ending his fears forever.
    Pensive, Kane looked down at the spear-impaled form, half wondering that he felt no regret. Had the centuries stripped from him every vestige of humanity, then? "There was an outside chance you might have gotten through," he explained to the corpse.
    If this sudden flash of violence perturbed the Rillyti, there was no indication. The swamp-dwellers had scattered, although many a hulking form could be seen standing apart or huddled in small groups. Though none came near him, their slitted eyes turned upon him a gaze of unfathomable interest. A low croaking passed among them--harsh rumbling syllables that conveyed a note of urgent excitation.
    How long their awe of the bloodstone ring might maintain this nervous truce, Kane cared not to guess. He was gambling on the blighted wisdom of one whose visions brought madness coincident with lost knowledge. To win meant power whose limits Alorri-Zrokros had but hinted; failure would be disaster that similarly confounded human imagination. Since that night in Jhaniikest's tower, Kane had given no thought to the odds.
    Warily Kane turned his back on the death-laden portal and stepped determinedly into the street. A few of the Rillyti stood in his path, but as he strode toward them, they shuffled away hastily. As he passed, Kane sensed that the watchers were following at a cautious distance. Continued beyond the gate as the swamp-buried causeway, the main avenue radiated through the Krelran city from its central nave. Garlanded with creepers and sparse undergrowth, its geometric perfection was only slightly hidden by leaning walls and heaps of debris. The colossal dome, now blotting out the setting sun, squatted at the city's heart, its curved walls arched above the peripheral structures in sullen mockery of a rainbow.
    Reckless in the presence of that which for weeks had dominated his thoughts, Kane hurried toward his goal. His shallow wounds bled afresh as he clambered over mounds of rubble and impatiently hacked restraining vines. Even in his haste, he noted that the street was in far better repair than its antiquity warranted--though whether this was due to the permanence of Krelran architecture or because the city was not altogether untenanted he could not judge. Behind him sounded the leathery slap of webbed foot, the scratch of claw on stone. The Rillyti shambled in macabre procession and hunched in the shadows as he passed, peering with basilisk intensity from apertures in the time-blasted edifices. Kane absently noted rhythmic syllabism in their subdued croaking-dirge--like in its ominous tone of mingled dread and expectancy.
    Framed by the eon-haunted structures that pressed upon the debris-piled avenue, festooned with lianas and spider-rooted trees that insinuated through cracked walls, the colossal dome awaited Kane at the dead city's heart. Fired by the dying sun--or by Kane's fevered imagination--the igneous stone blazed with volcanic hue, conjuring flame images of irresistible summons. It seemed to waver in Kane's vision, and though it beckoned with the compelling lure of flame to moth--promising doom, but with it an infinite moment of unimaginable ecstasy--Kane's purpose was unswerving. His obsession to cleave through the barrier of centuries, to command the secrets of elder-world science, totally consumed him, drove from his thoughts all caution, all doubt. Before him lay the key to incalculable power; every atom of his energy must be directed toward unlocking it. He limped, though unaware of the pain of his wounds, of the sapping agony of exhaustion. The ordeal of wrenching a path through the swamp and the hysteria of headlong battle at death's crumbling precipice had left his spirit numb to further shock. Now he was surrounded by scores of savage batrachians, alone in a lost city whose prehuman antiquity