Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

owe me favors. Many who would come when I called."
    "But are you ready to risk open war in the corridors, Scour? Many of us are.
    Hazel d'Ark could be the key that finally opens our long delayed potential. With what we learn from her, we could become gods of the whole Empire, rather than just this place."
    "Don't I get a say in this?" said Hazel. "If I was just offered a little civilized consideration, I might well cooperate with what you want."
    "I doubt that," said Lament, looking directly at her for the first time, his eyes as cold as Scour's. "Not with what we intend to do to you."
    "What do you want, Lament?" said Scour.
    "There is a gathering at the Summerstone. All the Blood Runners. We want Hazel d'Ark brought to the Summerstone, to see what effect it has on her, and her on it."
    "That's dangerous," said Scour immediately. "Too many unknowns. Too much out of our control. What if she regains her full powers?"
    "What if she does? She is one, and we are many, and this is our place of power.
    Nothing happens here without our consent. You know that."
    "True. Very well. She goes to the Summerstone." Scour turned his bloodred eyes on Hazel, and she had to fight down an instinctive need to fall back a pace. "If nothing else, it should be interesting to see what you make of the Summerstone.
    And what it makes of you."
    In a stone hall that seemed to stretch away on all sides forever, the Blood Runners were dancing. Their long robes flapped and swayed as they stamped and strutted and pirouetted around the great standing stone. There were maybe a hundred of them, all told, weaving in to and away from one another without ever once connecting or colliding. They moved quickly, confidently, through endless measures of a complicated pattern Hazel couldn't even comprehend, let alone follow; driven by an energy that pushed them to their limits.
    Hazel stood to one side, her arms held firmly by two of Scour's headless bodies.
    She didn't even bother to try to fight them. Scour and Lament had joined the dance the moment they arrived, almost as though pulled in against their will, and were now lost to her; just two more willowy albinos stamping their pale feet on the gray stone floor. There was no music, only the rhythm of hammering feet on the floor, and the Blood Runners' fast, frantic breathing. Their eyes were wide and staring, lost in the grip of some inner song, some violent siren call to which only they were privy. Hazel turned her attention to the great standing stone, expecting it to have the impact it had manifested in Scour's image, but to her disappointment it was just a stone. It meant nothing to her.
    Human arms thrust up out of the stone floor, holding torches to light the hall around the stone. The walls were too far away to be seen. If there were walls.
    It was like standing on an open plane. The ceiling high above was lost in gloom.
    More of the severed heads with their brains exposed stood on pedestals in the middle distance, like so many computer terminals standing ready for use. Hazel wondered if that was to be her eventual fate, when the Blood Runners had got all they wanted from her, and she shuddered despite herself. Hundreds of the
    headless bodies formed a perimeter circle, containing the stone and the dance at a respectful distance. They were utterly motionless, unmoved for the moment by the will of their owners.
    From listening to Scour and Lament, and occasionally egging them into arguing with each other, Hazel had managed to build up some notion of how they lived here. They all derived their powers from the Summerstone, making them all theoretically equal, so they pursued power and influence by forming ever-changing partnerships and cabals, and creating ever increasing private armies of the headless men to enforce their will on the physical plane. Intrigue was rife, occasionally breaking out into open clashes between opposed armies in the stone corridors. The already precarious status quo was apparently on the edge of breaking down completely with Hazel's arrival, and the possibility of accessing the full power of the Madness Maze.
    The Blood Runners danced on and on, sweat dripping from their faces as their bare feet slammed harder and harder against the unyielding stone. Hazel lost all track of time with nothing to measure it against. But finally the Blood Runners stopped, crashing to a sudden halt, their feet hammering down in one last simultaneous step, as though the unheard music had been