My Master awaits you, her voice touched inside his mind. He knows of your intent, Were-cat, she taunted him. He knows of all your elaborate plans, but you know as well as I that they mean nothing. As you saw, we are ready for your army, and your careful preparations were nothing but chaff drifting in the wind. My Master is all-powerful, Were-cat. That is why I serve him faithfully.
"There's no accounting for taste," Tarrin growled.
The Demoness' eyes flashed slightly in anger, but she continued. Your daughter for the Firestaff. That was the offered deal, and it will be honored. My Master agreed to those terms in good faith, and he will fulfill his side of the bargain. The look she gave him was absolutely predatory. He had no illusions that that agreement would be terminated the instant Val felt he had the upper hand.
"I'll make sure I kill you first," Tarrin hissed at her, images of her cutting his son's throat burning in his mind.
I'm sure you will, she agreed mildly, though she had an evil smile on her face. And I'm sure you'll let me tell you that my Master has generously given you to me. Your soul will be mine, Were-cat, as it was always meant to be. Now that we've gotten the reciprocating ugly threats out of the way, you will follow me.
"What did she say?" Jesmind whispered, forgetting that she could communicate with him in an utterly silent manner. But the Demoness was just that, a Demoness, and he knew that she understood all languages. Even unspoken ones. It was an aspect of her telepathic abilities. Shiika had told him about that, so in a way, Jesmind hadn't really blundered. Nothing she would say could be withheld from the Demoness.
"She taunted me, I taunted her, then we threatened each other. Now she's taking us to Val."
"Oh," she said, her eyes baffled, but she let it pass.
Tarrin reigned in his anger as he followed the scaly Demoness, who slithered along ahead of them, totally unafraid of exposing her bare back to them. Tarrin looked at the passage carefully, and to his relief, he saw that Jesmind was studying it with absolute intensity. It was nearly twenty spans wide, and the sides of the grand gallery were lined with thick, smooth, black stone pillars, ten spans thick each, that soared a hundred spans over their head to join to the ceiling. The air was cool and dank, and there were smells of ancient decay drifting in that air that did little to mask the unnatural stench of the Demon's scent as they followed her. Many Demons had travelled that passageway, as well as many humans, Goblinoids, and other foul-smelling things the likes of which Tarrin could not even imagine. The light in the passage seemed to come out of the ceiling, but there was no visible sign of it. The only reason he believed so was because the area behind the pillars was cast into dark shadow, and from that shadow he could sense lurking creatures that defied his imagination, things never before seen in his world. Things he did not want to see, things even more horrific than the Demons. The place exuded an ancient evil, but the sense of Val and the evil of the creatures that served him made it even worse, gave the place a heavily oppressive feel, a feel that they were nothing but prey to those who lurked and looked onto them.
"This place is creepy," Jesmind whispered to him, her tail shivering.
"It fits with what I expected from Val," he told her in a grim voice, a voice empty of emotion.
The Demoness looked at them over her shoulder, her knowing smile annoying the Were-cat to no end.
Tarrin amused himself with fantasies of how he was going to get that Demoness as they moved on, a pleasant distraction that also kept him from thinking about what he intended to do. That had to be a surprise, or Jesmind wasn't going to get away with Jasana.
The passageway penetrated into the deepest heart of the black stone pyramid, and every step they took was another second ticking off the clock that ruled them all. The conjunction was very close now, very very close now, so close that the luring song of the Firestaff was actually starting to reach into the real world, teasing him and tempting him with its promise of eternal life and absolute power. The power of the artifact was growing with each second, keyed to the alignment of the moons on this most important of all days, and as those moons moved closer and closer to that moment, the power of the Firestaff had begun to swell in preparation for its opportunity to find release. Tarrin ignored its temptations and its promises, for there was something before him even more important to him than the allure of power. The passage seemed endless, eternal, and its singular sameness caused Tarrin to lose track of time, to forget where he was in his count. That only worried him a moment, because he knew that Val had that opening to look upon the moons, and that would be all the clock he'd need. He was intimately familiar with how the moons moved and how fast each one went, so a single glance would tell him everything he needed to know. Val knew his plan, but he could not escape the ultimate finality of the conjunction, which was the deadline by which everyone based their plans. Tarrin, Val, the gods, Jenna, everyone. That end of all ends played into Tarrin's hands much more than Val's.
After an interminable amount of time, Tarrin saw that the passage finally opened ahead of them. The Demon slithered forward just a little faster when the end of the passage came into view, and after a moment they reached it. It opened into a chamber so vast that all of Aldreth could have fit inside it. The mountain-sized pyramid was hollow at its core, only with a shell of intimidating thickness enclosing this cavernous opening within, so large that Sapphire and her entire brood could easily fit within it. The journey from the edge of that chamber to the middle would still take several moments, so far away it was. Tarrin could see the huge hole in the western wall of the chamber, high above, and it shone light down on a large dais, a pedestal nearly a hundred spans off the floor in the very center of the chamber, but from the distance he was at he could easily see everything atop it except those things on the far edge. Upon that raised dais in the center of this vast chamber rested a strange statue of ink-black stone, as well as several figures that he could see near the edge. One of them was considerably shorter than the others, flanked by a pair of unnaturally tall, misshapen forms that had to be Demons.
Jasana.
Come. The moment draws nigh, the voice of the Demoness touched him. It is time to face your Master.
Eyes narrowing, fists clenching, Tarrin drew in all his strength, drew in all his resolve. This was it. Now he would see how well he could play the game against a god.
It was the longest and shortest walk of his life. Tarrin felt every footstep creep by, but they were to the dais before he realized what had happened. He could feel Val's presence, an overwhelming, suffocating weight that bore down on him, the might of a god, an aura that was absolutely unmistakable. It had the same sense of power that the Goddess' presence did, and where the presence of the Goddess uplifted him, the presence of Val sought to oppress him. The Goddess accepted him with love, but Val endured his presence with abject hatred, and he could sense it all around him. But he was not afraid. Val could not touch him, could not harm his daughter or mate, so long as he played the game correctly. The Demoness started slithering up the stairs leading to the top of the dais, and Tarrin mounted the stairs with Jesmind following him closely behind, almost brushing against his back, feeling what he felt but unable to shrug it off as he could. Tarrin's eyes fixed on the rattle-tipped tail of the Demoness' snaky lower body, giving him a visible reference point to organize himself, to push the fear away, to ready himself for what was coming. He took in a deep, cleansing breath, and exhaled out all his doubt and fear, leaving behind nothing but a knowledge that when the time came, he would know what to do without even having to think about it. And that was his greatest advantage. Val could put his hand all the way in Tarrin's mind, and find nothing. He would find nothing in Jesmind's mind either, only reinforcement that the plan that had been made was the plan. When in fact, it was nothing but a diversion around which Val could prepare.