Return of the Paladin

by Layton Green

  “Bah! You succeeded, did you not? I knew a powerful mage would be the only way to defeat them.”

  “I didn’t defeat them. A few of us barely made it out, and the rest were killed.”

  “Collateral damage is always unfortunate.”

  As his magic boiled inside him, Val worked to control his utter distaste of Zagath. This was a business transaction, nothing more, and he had to see it through. “I’m curious: how did you descend so low, and how did you get away?”

  “I had my own version of a Skincloth, and was the only one smart enough not to go through the archway.” Zagath shuddered. “What are those creatures, anyway?”

  “I have no idea. I just hope I never see one again.”

  The crime lord rose on his throne, exposing the scales on the lower half of his body. “Give it to me.”

  “Give me the name of the Coffer thief.”

  “First the Trident.”

  Zagath’s shrewd eyes slipped to the side, and Val heard the bristling of weapons. Val knew it was bad business for Zagath to give up the name of a fellow criminal, and he feared a double cross.

  After a long moment, in which Zagath was no doubt judging Val’s strength and contemplating the wisdom of attacking a representative of the Congregation, he said, “I’ve no wish to quarrel, mage. You’ve earned your fee.”

  As soon as Zagath told Val the name of the buyer who had approached him about stealing the Coffer—someone named Takros of Crete, a name Val had never heard before—he extended the Trident. Yet when Zagath reached for the weapon, Val said, “If you’re lying, I’ll return for you.”

  Zagath’s smile was like the stab of an icicle. “Return where, mage? You have no idea where you are.”

  Val’s return smile was just as cold. He tossed the Trident to Zagath, then reached inside his cloak to extract a silver bauble the size of a golf ball. Val threw it on the ground. Instead of shattering, it expanded to form a portal that opened onto a room inside the Sanctum. The shadowy forms of the gathered mages, including the unmistakable silhouette of Lord Alistair, could be seen in the background.

  “They’ve been waiting to hear from you,” Val said.

  Zagath’s eyes bulged when he saw who was on the other side of the portal. After a long pause, he bowed deeply and said, “The name I’ve given you is true. You have my word.”

  “Excellent. Oh, and one last thing,” Val said. “To reward the kethropi for their assistance, I agreed to give them your location.”

  Zagath gave a strangled cry as he rose on his throne.

  “You brought this on yourself by putting my team’s life in danger. Five kethropi didn’t make it back. Still, we’re not in the business of double-crossing partners on a deal—which is why I’m giving you a half hour start before I reveal this exact location to the kethropi raiding party waiting in the river. I’d leave now, if I were you. I suspect it won’t take them long to locate the connecting tunnels.”

  “You’ve destroyed my livelihood! Everything I have!”

  “The Congregation knows you’ve been allowing the black sash access to Undertown in exchange for a fee. You’re lucky they agreed to let you live. Look at it this way, Zagath. Now that you have the Trident, you can set up operations in any city, wherever you wish.” Val’s lips parted in a thin smile before he stepped into the portal. “It just won’t be in New Victoria.”

  -29-

  With their hands on their weapons and their eyes in constant motion, Will and his companions followed behind the Skinwalkers on a steady march atop the bluff through the abandoned streets of Old Town. As pale and silent as death, the terrifying beings seemed to know exactly where they were going, never pausing to gain their bearings.

  A luminous moon should have cast more light on their surroundings, but whatever spell or unnatural darkness cloaked the ancient city prevented Will from getting a good look at his surroundings. It was as if Old Town was not real on some level, a murky impressionist painting hovering somewhere between reality and imagination. Yet sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, the looming shadows would congeal enough to reveal a collection of architecture similar to the rest of Praha, and even more grand: hovering palaces and elaborate arched bridges spanning towers and obelisks and pyramids, viaducts that led to columns and ziggurats and cupolas, everything interconnected with a symmetry that spoke of vision and genius beyond Will’s comprehension. Perhaps, he thought, mortal eyes were not meant to gaze directly upon the wonders of Old Town, and he could only truly see the city when he wasn’t looking.

  Or perhaps it was simply cursed.

  Fearing the wrath of the Skinwalkers, no one dared use a glow stone. In cautious whispers, they debated whether they should keep following their guides or try to escape, and they came to the conclusion that, even if they knew where to go, the Skinwalkers would hunt them down and kill them. No mortal weapon can harm them, the journal had said.

  Will didn’t know whether that proscription included Zariduke, but the question was irrelevant. The plague-blackened sword strapped to his back now felt like the hump of a cripple, an ill-fated burden that was his alone to bear.

  Judging from the size of the bluff on the map, Old Town could not be more than a couple of miles across. After navigating the broad stone streets for less than half an hour, the pale creatures stopped in the center of a wondrous sight that had more solidity than the rest of the buildings: an amphitheater soaring high above their heads.

  The ground-level ring of high-backed thrones fit for giants spanned fifty feet in diameter, while the next row up, more than twenty feet above their heads, was double the size. The higher reaches of the amphitheater were lost in the darkness above. The structure resembled a cone of enormous size balanced on its tip, and Will had no idea what supported it.

  The Skinwalkers spread out to encircle the party. When the creatures started walking forward, tightening the circle, Will wondered if they had herded them through the city to perform some type of ritual sacrifice.

  Once the party was gathered close together, the pale beings stopped moving. Will glanced down and noticed the blackened marble at his feet was a shade lighter. As his fear and confusion reached a fever pitch, the ground beneath them started to shift. It took a moment to understand what was happening, but when the ground looked as if it were rising, he realized the entire section of marble on which he and his friends were standing had started to descend.

  Dalen’s eyes bulged with fear, and Mateo started to jump to higher ground. Yasmina laid a hand on his arm. “I wouldn’t,” she said, eying the Skinwalkers.

  Like Mateo, Will’s instincts screamed at him to leap up while he still could, but the presence of the pale guardians and his curiosity at what lay below kept him—and everyone else—from taking action.

  The slow moving platform did not have sides or railing. Descending into utter blackness was disconcerting, but a flicker of colored light soon appeared beneath them. The light grew steadily in size, clarifying into a circle of polychromatic color that seethed and flowed below them, a perpetual churn with no pattern as far as Will could tell.

  “Does your journal have anything to say about this?” Will said through grim lips.

  “This is uncharted territory,” Skara said. Though weary and grief-stricken, there was an undercurrent of wonder in her voice.

  “Whatever those lights represent,” Dalen said, “it’s no illusion.”

  “Is it magical in some other way?” Mateo asked.

  “Not that I can tell. Lucka, I’ve no idea what it is.”

  “Yaz?” Will asked. “Can you see anything?”

  “Only that the bottom is near. And I can sense a . . . presence.”

  “A malevolent one?” Skara asked.

  “It’s unclear. A life form unlike any I’ve encountered.”

  “The Nephili,” Skara whispered.

  It became clear they were sinking into a chamber of some sort, and in its center was a pool of roiling energy similar to the one in the stor
ehouse, about the size of a large hot tub. Only the energy in this basin was brightly colored instead of dull, as vigorous as the other was torpid. A polychromatic Rorschach blot in constant flux.

  Skara stepped to the very edge of the platform and peered down. “What on Urfe is that?”

  “My guess?” Will said. “It’s a healthy one of those other things.”

  “Krikey,” Dalen said.

  Mateo returned the wafer to Skara’s backpack and was staring wide-eyed at the floor, gripping his urumi blade.

  It seemed as if the platform was heading straight into the basin of energy, causing Will to prepare to leap away, but then he realized it was positioned to land just alongside it. Yet instead of striking against the floor, which looked crafted of pure silver, the platform dissolved under their feet as they landed, depositing them gently and causing everyone to gasp in wonder.

  Skara raised her weapons. “What magic is this?”

  Now that they were standing right beside the basin, they could see tiny bubbles of color covering the surface, constantly forming and evaporating, along with wavelike swells that simmered and churned beneath the surface. The prismatic light was so bright it took Will’s eyes a minute to adjust to the rest of the room. Yet he gawked when his vision cleared. The walls of the spherical chamber, which spanned at least two hundred feet in diameter, were crafted of the same pure silver as the floor and divided by onyx partitions into shelves about three feet in height. Tall and slender objects with spines crafted from a single piece of precious stone filled the shelves. There was a section filled with ruby-bound volumes, another from moonstone, another from emerald, and so on.

  “Is this a library?” Will said.

  “Look!” Dalen said. “Inside the basin!”

  Will whipped around to find the colors inside the strange pool gathering into the shape of a city so beautiful it took his breath away. Not just any city, but a city he recognized from the height of the buildings and the unique, interlocking nature of the architecture.

  The city was Praha, as he imagined it must once have looked, beautiful beyond imagining.

  “A most exquisite vista, is it not?”

  Will spun again. The voice, as dry and raspy as a whisper in the desert sun, had come from his left. At first he saw nothing, but then he noticed, down a darkened passage set between two shelves, the outline of a shadow-encased form reclining on an ebony throne. The being was very tall and angular, its fingers as long and delicate as a blade of grass. Enormous almond-shaped eyes with silver pupils regarded them in solemn repose, and knife-edged cheekbones slashed down its face to create gaping holes in the fleshless face. Will could not tell if the being was made of bone and shadow, or was cloaking itself with magic.

  Skara released a strangled cry. “Nephili! You exist!”

  “As do you, hominid, unless my eyes deceive me.”

  “After all these years of searching. Decades, centuries. My family . . .”

  Her voice trailed off, overcome by emotion.

  “Come no closer,” the Nephili warned, after Skara took a few steps forward. Will and the others moved to stand beside the adventuress, close enough to see that the Nephili was ensconced at the entrance to a deep alcove. Behind the throne he could see more of the silver shelves, filled not with tomes but with gemstone-covered ampules, chests, urns, and other containers.

  “How are you alive?” Skara asked. “Who are you? Are there any others?”

  “I am the first and last of my kind. My true name, if spoken to hominid ears, would rattle your delicate bones and release your mind from the tenuous tether of its soul.”

  “Not much for modesty,” Will muttered.

  “What is modesty to one such as I?” the Nephili replied. Apparently it had sharp hearing. “What is left to me except the insanity of truth?”

  Despite the being’s haughty rhetoric, it had yet to stir from its throne, and Will got the sense it was barely alive, too weak to move and clinging to consciousness by the thinnest of threads.

  “We came to make a bargain,” Will said. “We have something you might want.”

  “You do indeed. But it is not the tjulkych.”

  Interesting, Will thought, that his armband failed to translate the word. Maybe it was on the blink. “The what?”

  “That which the angry one carries on her back.”

  The Nephili was looking right at Skara Brae. Slowly, keeping her hand on her cudgel and maintaining eye contact the entire time, the adventuress took the Sephyr Wafer out of her pack and held it high. “No?” she said, in a challenging tone. “This is of no desire to you?”

  Its laugh was the crunch of dead leaves in a cemetery. “Desire? What do hominids know of desire? Of promise and disappointment, rebirth and damnation, of the infinite melody of that theme? That which I desire disappeared from this world a thousand and more moons ago. There is only release left for me, escape from the prison of corporeality.”

  “Then why did the Skinwalkers lead us here, if not to carry the wafer?”

  “They were programmed long ago. Far before the affliction that doomed my kind. My life force keeps the guardians alive, and that is all.”

  Programmed, Will thought. Interesting terminology.

  “Then I don’t understand,” Skara said. “What is it that you want?”

  As if leaning into the gale force wind of a hurricane, the Nephili bent forward so slowly it pained Will to watch. It used its elegant fingers to probe the shadows coagulated on its chest, withdrawing a plague-stained, three-pronged dagger with a wavy hilt. With the torpid curl of a wrist, it dropped the dagger beside the throne. “I want you,” he said, as if the effort had expended half of its life force, “to end my existence.”

  After a moment of stunned silence, saddened by the thing’s awful state, Will blurted out, “We’ve brought you a wafer. Will it not help?”

  A snarl twisted its aquiline features. “A single tjulkych? Do you think we did not try to reverse the affliction? The handful we left at the kvulnych were a fool’s prayer for a miracle that will never come. All races fade to oblivion, and our time has come.”

  “What about this pool?” Will waved a hand towards the basin of chaotic energy at their side.

  “When I die, so will the wellspring. It is weakened beyond repair. Before we crafted this funereal chamber, the wellspring reached above the surface, to the very top of the amphitheater, a fountain of life to us all. A single wafer would only prolong my cursed existence. What is the value of an eternity in exile, helpless inside this prison, the last of my kind? The affliction is too strong, and I’ve not the strength to take my own life. Take the blade and dip it into the pool. Restore its power.”

  Skara moved to take the knife, but Will beat her to it, grabbing the dagger and backing away as the Nephili watched over them. He doubted whether this enfeebled being could help them, but he asked anyway. “Not long ago, a thief opened a portal in Praha and stole something very valuable. The Coffer of Devla. We need to know who stole it, and where it is now.”

  At the mention of the Coffer of Devla, the Nephili seemed to draw back upon itself, sinking deeper into the chair. Almost as if it were frightened.

  Or maybe it was Will’s imagination.

  “Can you help us?” Mateo asked, moving to stand beside his cousin.

  “If the thief did indeed depart from our city, then yes, I can aid you. But you must promise to do as I ask in exchange.”

  “Oh, we agree,” Skara said softly, her hand slipping towards her bladed cane. She did not look happy that Will had grabbed the dagger, and he knew she would fight him for it if she had to.

  “And how do we leave?” Will asked.

  “Unless I am restored, returning to the surface is impossible.” As Will’s heart sank, the being’s left hand upturned in its lap, the shadow fingers stiffly unfurling. “Yet there is another way. A portal left by a hominid who sought me long ago, brought here by the guardians.”

  Will didn’t need to ask how
that turned out. “A portal to where?”

  “Wherever you wish to travel.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In the chamber behind me.”

  “Then why haven’t you left?” Will asked. “Can’t you escape the plague by going someplace else?”

  “Do you not yet understand the nature of this place?” it said, as if talking to a child. “We came as a seed and of one body we remain. To use a hominid analogy, the city is our flesh, our flesh the city. The wellspring, the tjulkych, the kvulnych, it is all one. I could no more leave than you could step out of your own skin. A hominid portal is a worthless device to us.”

  Will felt sorry for the wretched state of the Nephili, but he was also growing tired of its condescending attitude. “Then find our thief, send us out of here, and we’ll give you what you want.”

  “How do you propose to do such a thing from afar?”

  “How long will the portal last?”

  “Long enough to do as I ask before you leave.”

  “I’ll stay,” Skara said.

  Will moved to face her and saw an unhealthy gleam in her eye. It felt as if she were looking right through him, but then her eyes latched on to the knife, and she took a step forward. Mateo noticed and stepped between her and Will.

  “Don’t try it,” Will said to Skara in a low voice. “I’ll give you the knife, but don’t try to use it before we open the portal. We’ll be stuck down here forever.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Do you think I wish to kill him in this wretched state? I want him restored.”

  Her comment took him aback. “You’re both mad,” Will muttered, then raised his voice to the Nephili, though he had the feeling it had heard the exchange. “We agree to your terms.”

  The being was staring at Skara, and when it spoke, its voice dripped with contempt. “This one will approach me to retrieve the portal. You will lower the dagger into the wellspring to restore it as I search for your answer. We shall proceed from there.”

  Will turned to his companions and encountered no dissent. Skara had already started walking towards the Nephili with her weapons drawn, giving the throne a wide berth. She stopped as she passed the Nephili, and Will heard the being whispering something to her, presumably instructions. After a moment, Skara threw back her head, howled with forced laughter, and continued into the treasure chamber behind the throne.