Diablo: The Black Road. Mel Odom

      Twisting and squirming, hands flailing through the bands of invisible force that held him captive, Raithen fought against Cholik’s spell. Surprise and fear marked Raithen’s face, and Cholik knew the man realized he wasn’t facing the weak old priest he thought he’d been talking to with such disregard. The big pirate opened his mouth and struggled to speak. No words came out. At a gesture, Cholik caused Raithen to float out over the balcony’s edge and the hundred-foot drop that lay beyond. Only broken rock and the tumbled remains of the buildings that had made up Tauruk’s Port lay below.

      The pirate captain ceased his struggles as fear dawned on his purpling face.

      “Power has brought me to Tauruk’s Port,” Cholik grated, maintaining the magic grip, feeling the obscene pleasure that came from using such a spell, “and to Ransim buried beneath. Power such as you’ve never wielded. And none of that power will do you any good. You do not know how to wield it. The vessel for this power must be consecrated, and I mean to be that vessel. It’s something that you’ll never be able to be.” The priest opened his hand.

      Choking and gasping, Raithen floated back in and dropped to the stone-tiled floor of the balcony overlooking the river and the abandoned city. He lay back, gasping for air and holding his bruised throat with his left hand. His right hand sought the hilt of the heavy sword at his side.

      “If you pull that sword,” Cholik stated, “then I’ll promote your ship’s commander. Perhaps even your first mate. Or I could even reanimate your corpse, though I doubt your crew would be happy about the matter. But, frankly, I wouldn’t care what they thought.”

      Raithen’s hand halted. He stared up at the priest. “You need me,” he croaked.

      “Yes,” Cholik agreed. “That’s why I’ve let you live so long while we have worked together. It wasn’t pleasant or done out of a weak-willed sense of fair play.” He stepped closer to the bigger man sitting with his back against the railing.

      Purple bruising already showed in a wide swath around Raithen’s neck.

      “You’re a tool, Captain Raithen,” Cholik said. “Nothing more.”

      The big man glared up at him but said nothing. Swallowing was obviously a hard and painful effort.

      “But you are an important tool in what I am doing.” Cholik gestured again.

      Seeing the priest’s fluttering hand inscribing the mystic symbols, Raithen flinched. Then his eyes widened in surprise.

      Cholik knew it was because the man hadn’t expected to be relieved of his pain. The priest knew healing spells, but the ones that caused injury came more readily to him these days. “Please get up, Captain Raithen. If you have led someone here and the fog has obscured their presence, I want you to handle it.”

      Showing restraint and caution, Raithen climbed to his feet.

      “Do we understand each other?” As Cholik gazed into the other man’s eyes, he knew he’d made an enemy for life. It was a pity. He’d planned for the pirate captain to live longer than that.

      Aribar Raithen was called Captain Scarlet Waters by most of the Westmarch Navy. Very few people had survived his capture of a ship, and most ended up at the bottom of the Great Sea or, especially of late, in the Gulf of Westmarch.

      “Aye,” Raithen growled, but the sound wasn’t so menacing with all the hoarseness in it. “I’ll get right on it.”

      “Good.” Cholik stood and looked out to the broken and gutted buildings that remained of Tauruk’s Port. He pretended not to notice as Raithen left, nor did he indicate that he heard the big pirate captain’s slight foot drag that told him Raithen had considered stabbing him in the back.

      Metal whispered coolly against leather. But this time, Cholik knew, the blade was being returned to the sheath.

      Cholik remained at the balcony and locked his knees so he wouldn’t tremble from the cold or from the exhaustion he suffered from spell use. If he’d had to expend any more energy, he thought he’d have passed out and been totally at Raithen’s mercy.

      By the Light, where has the time gone? Where has my strength gone? Gazing up at the stars burning bright against the sable night, Cholik felt old and weak. His hands were palsied now. Most of the time he maintained control of them, but on occasion he could not. When one of those uncontrollable periods arrived, he kept his hands out of sight in the folds of his robes and stayed away from others. The times always passed, but they were getting longer and longer.

      In Westmarch, it wouldn’t be many more years before one of the younger priests noted his growing infirmity and brought it to the senior priest’s attention. When that happened, Cholik knew he’d be shipped out from the church and placed in a hospice to help with the old and the diseased, all of them dying deaths by inches and him helping only to ease them into the grave while easing into a bed of his own. Even the thought of ending his days like that was too much.

      Tauruk’s Port, with Ransim buried beneath, the information gleaned from the sacred texts—those things Cholik viewed as his personal salvation. The dark forces he’d allied himself with the past few years willing, it would be.

      He turned his gaze from the stars to the fogbound river. The white, cottony masses roiled across the broken land forming the coastal area. Farther north, barbarian tribes would have been a problem to their discovery, but here in the deadlands far north of Westmarch and Tristram, they were safe.

      At least, Cholik mused, they were safe if Raithen’s latest excursion to take a shipload of the king’s gold fresh out of Westmarch had not brought someone back. He peered down at the layers of fog, but he could see only the tall masts of the pirate ships standing out against the highest wisps of silver-gray fog.

      Lanterns aboard those ships created pale yellow and orange nimbi and looked like fireflies in the distance. Men’s raucous voices, the voices of pirates and not the trained acolytes Cholik had handpicked over the years, called out to one another in casual disdain. They talked of women and spending the gold they’d fought for that day, unaware of the power that lay buried under the city.

      Only Raithen was becoming more curious about what they sought. The other pirates were satisfied with the gold they continued to get.

      Cholik cursed his palsied hands and the cold wind that swept over the Hawk’s Beak Mountains to the east. If only he were young, if only he’d found the sacred Vizjerei text sooner …

      “Master.”

      Startled from his musings but recovering in short order, Cholik turned. He tucked his shaking hands out of sight inside his robes. “What is it, Nullat?”

      “Forgive me for interrupting your solitude, Master Cholik.” Nullat bowed. He was in his early twenties, dark-haired and dark-eyed. Dirt and dust stained his robes, and scratches adorned his smooth face and one arm from an accident during the excavation only a few days ago that had claimed the lives of two other acolytes.

      Cholik nodded. “You know better than to interrupt unless it was something important.”

      “Yes. Brother Altharin asked me to come get you.”

      Inside his