‘The ghosts of Skavengard,’ Vika said. ‘Those who died here when the beast was unleashed. They would see us stay here with them for ever.’
‘They’re shadows!’ Garric snarled. ‘What can shadows do?’
‘We must leave this place!’ the druidess cried. ‘Break the door down!’
They ran through the library towards the door on the far side. A section of stone banister tumbled down and smashed to powder nearby. Aren was halfway across the room when he felt a stinging blaze of pain on his cheek. He put his hand there and his palm came away damp and red. He stared at his blood in bewilderment, then at the wall where the shadows moved.
As Keel’s running silhouette passed by, one of the ghosts struck at it, quick as a snake. Aren saw a shallow slash appear on the Bitterbracker’s pack, parting the canvas there even though nothing had touched him. A moment later, Fen cried out, and as she raised her arm, they saw a long cut had been scored through her coat, from her wrist to her elbow.
‘That’s impossible!’ Osman gasped.
They had no time for his denials. Garric and Keel came up against the door on the far side of the hall and put their shoulders to it. It gave a little, but then it was shoved closed again.
‘The bastards are holding it!’ Keel said, and they slammed against it again, with no better result.
Cade yelled and clutched his thigh as he was struck, too. The shadows circled like predators, darting in and out. Though their blows were glancing, they cut deep enough to bleed, and deep enough to pierce a vein or an eye if they found the right spot. Aren and Fen staggered this way and that, holding up their arms to defend themselves from their invisible opponents. Another piece of masonry crashed down, and this one nearly struck Grub on the head. Ruck dashed about wildly, barking, snapping at the air.
‘We must fight shadow with shadow!’ Vika said. ‘Use your silhouettes, hmm? Fight back!’
‘What madness is this now?’ Osman demanded. ‘Shadow with shadow?’
But Aren saw her meaning and, caught up in a wild moment, he cried: ‘I’ll show you!’ Then, with his eyes on the wall, he raised his sword and swung it at the air. His silhouette copied him and the shadows darted back from it, retreating beyond his reach.
Now Fen, who saw what he’d done, raised her bow and drew the arrow she had nocked and ready. ‘Dodge this!’ she spat, and let fly down the length of the library. Her arrow was aimed at nothing, but its shadow streaked along the wall, flitting between the pillars of the tall window-arches. The ghosts ducked out of the way, but one was too slow and the arrow’s shadow buried itself in his forehead. The real arrow lost all momentum and clattered shadowless to the floor as the ghost crumpled, dissolving with a distant shriek.
‘So the dead can be killed again!’ Garric cried in triumph. ‘Spread out! Send them back to the Shadowlands!’
They slashed here and there, and their shadows did the same, but it was clumsy and dangerous work. Their eyes were on the wall and not on each other, and more than once a sweeping blade almost hit one of their companions. The ghosts, for their part, were nimble. They hovered at bay, darting in when they could. Occasionally one was struck and dissolved like the first, but more appeared, rising up from the darkness.
Aren took another cut, this one across the back of his upper arm. He saw Grub stabbing at the air, blood running into his eyes from a wound on his shaven scalp. Garric and Keel, fighting back to back, flinched and swore as they were cut and cut again.
Soon they were all bleeding from shallow wounds, and still the ghosts came on. They might not have the force to strike a deadly blow across the Divide, but enough small ones would end in the same result. Cade slashed here and there with his knife, panting in panic. Aren spared a moment to check his friend was holding up and almost tripped over Ruck, who was whirling around their feet.
It was then that he realised Ruck was entirely unhurt. There wasn’t a scratch on her. Why had they not struck her, even once?
He raised his head and looked over at the wall. She was low enough that her body didn’t block the light from the windows. She cast no shadow among the ghosts. And if there was no shadow to strike …
‘Get down on the floor!’ he shouted. ‘Get below the light!’
He threw himself down and his shadow disappeared from the wall an instant before one of the ghosts lunged at him with a dagger. The others stared at him as if he was insane, but Garric bellowed ‘Do as he says!’ They flung themselves to the floor, and as their shadows sank out of sight, an angry hiss rose up from the ghosts.
Aren went scrambling across the flagstones towards Fen. ‘Oil and tinder! Quick!’
Fen shucked off her pack and dug through it. The shadows on the wall prowled, hunting anxiously, but no one was within their reach.
Garric crawled over, his collar wet with blood. ‘What’s your thinking, boy?’
‘Ever seen what happens to your shadow in firelight?’ he said as he took a clay flask of oil from Fen. He pulled off the stopper, tore a rag from his shredded coat and stuffed it in. It was a trick he’d learned from Kuhn, his father’s bodyguard, and it had led to a particularly shameful adventure when he’d accidentally burned down a barn and never admitted it. ‘Light it,’ he told Fen, holding it out to her.
Fen was already striking sparks into her tinderbox, trying to ignite the small wad of kindling there.
‘The doors are held fast! Do you want to burn us alive?’ Keel said as he saw what they were doing.
Garric held his hand up to his friend. He studied Aren closely, and there was something new in his gaze, something that wasn’t loathing or disgust. Something that gave Aren a surprising and unwanted flush of pleasure, even in this most dire situation. Something like respect.
‘Let him try,’ Garric said.
‘Oh, Nine, hurry up!’ Cade wailed. ‘He’s here! Azh Mat Jaal!’
A wave of cold washed over Aren as the Sorcerer King slunk into the library. He was taller and thinner than the others, hunched and robed, a seven-pointed crown upon his brow. The other ghosts drew back, retreating to the corners as he loomed larger, growing in size as he approached. Fen chipped frantically with her flint and steel, striking sparks, and the tinder caught at last. She blew on it to give it life as Aren put the end of the rag into the smouldering kindling.
Azh Mat Jaal searched the room slowly, as if he knew they were hiding but not where. He lifted one hand, clawlike fingers cupped as if cradling a globe. Then he began to squeeze.
A crushing force began to build around Aren’s jaw and head, vicelike, inexorable. At first it was uncomfortable, then painful, then excruciating. The pressure increased until his cheekbones felt they must shatter, his jaw break, his skull crack like an egg. The others were afflicted by the same force, holding their heads, suppressing screams.
Finally, the rag caught fire. With the last sensible thought in his mind, Aren threw the flask of oil. It shattered on the floor and burst into flame, and suddenly, between the ghosts and the intruders, there was an inferno.
A loud screech echoed through the chamber and the pressure on their heads was released. Azh Mat Jaal retreated from the flames, his hands before his face, his shadow thrown this way and that by the restless, changing light. The other ghosts fled in panic to the edges of the library. The flickering, jumping fire tore at them as they passed, flinging their shapes back and forth, making them wail and howl and paw at themselves.
‘The door!’ Vika cried. ‘Now, while they are weakened!’
Keel shoulder-charged the door with reckless force and it flew open, sending him sprawling into the room beyond. The others followed his lead, scrambling through the heat and poisonous smoke, out of the library and off through the cold and darkening halls. But however fast they went, wherever there was light the ghosts gathered, pooling like ink in their wake.
‘Which way, Vika?’ Garric demanded, over and over. ‘Which way?’
But Vika didn’t know. In the confusion of their escape, she’d be
come lost. She led them onwards anyway, jerking and twitching and mumbling to herself, and with no better option, they followed.
We are close, she’d said. Close to the bridge, close to freedom, and yet it felt so far away now.
Vika staggered to a halt and Garric’s face became taut with anger. As Aren caught them up, he saw why.
That scalloped ceiling. That mural.
‘We’ve gone in a circle,’ Osman said.
As they stood there panting, the shadows began to swarm in. They rose from the floor, deathly memories of the living, with their tall headdresses and elaborate robes and their knives. Foremost among them was their king, dark and terrible as he drew himself up to his full height.
Aren felt his stomach sink. There was no outrunning them. Azh Mat Jaal raised a hand, fingers curled, and as he began to squeeze them together, Aren felt a familiar, dreadful pressure building behind his eyes …
The last light of the sun flared and died on the peaks, and the room dimmed sharply. From the heights of Skavengard, a great shriek heralded the waking of the beast. The ghosts cringed and fled at the sound, until only the shadow of the Sorcerer King remained, tall against the stone, emanating hatred. For a long moment he stood there, clawed hand squeezing tighter, loth to release his prey. Then he swept his cloak around himself and stepped from the light into nothingness, leaving Aren panting in relief as the pressure on his skull receded.
His relief did not last long. There was a distant boom as the gate to the beast’s lair was thrown open. They’d outlasted the ghosts of Skavengard, but it was a poor reprieve, for something far worse was coming.
Vika’s eyes were closed in deep concentration. She leaned on her staff as if she’d fall without it, sorting through the fragments of her addled mind. They heard the beast begin its rampage and knew their only hope of escape lay in their guide remembering the way out before the doom of Skavengard found them. It was a slender thread to hang their lives upon.
‘Vika!’ It was Fen, crouching by a doorway on the far side of the hall.
‘Leave her be!’ Osman was uncharacteristically sharp. ‘She needs to think!’
Fen ignored him. ‘Vika. I think this is one of the marks you’ve been following.’
Vika’s head snapped around, her eyes flying open. She shambled quickly over to Fen, who was pointing at a small symbol etched in the stone, invisible to all but the keenest eyes. Fen’s eyes, it seemed, were keen indeed.
‘Polla’s druidsign,’ said Vika, and suddenly she cackled. ‘Fortune smiles on us yet! We have the path! This way!’
One last push. One last effort. Powered by the potion coursing through their veins, they hurried on. Doorways flitted past to their left and right in the grim twilight. Narrow corridors twisted and turned as they headed down back ways. Vika led with confidence again, following the druidsigns, crying out ‘There!’ and ‘There!’ as she spotted them. It was slower than before, for at every junction they had to search for the marks, but any progress was better than none.
They were running through a pillared atrium, open to the sky and dripping with the recent rains, when they heard a titanic shriek of outrage echoing across the valley.
‘Reckon it just found out we ain’t where it thought we were,’ Cade said.
‘It’s found the sanctum, and found it empty,’ said Vika. ‘Now it will follow the scent of our blood.’
They fled from the pounding that followed, out of the atrium and down a set of spiral stairs. The beast boomed and raged behind them, closer and closer.
It wouldn’t catch them, though. Believing that was the only thing that kept the strength in Aren’s legs. When they escaped Skavengard there’d be no pursuit, no more enemies on their tail, only a straight shot to safety and liberation. Then he and Cade could make their own choices, beholden to nobody.
I’ll have that freedom, he swore to himself. No one will control me again. Not through false promises and lies, nor chains, nor force of arms. When I die, I’ll die free. That’s more than my father could say.
Another distant scream of outrage sent shivers up his back.
‘Found the blood we left at the pit, hasn’t it?’ panted Vika.
And it knows it’s been tricked, Aren thought.
Running, gasping, the clatter of scabbards and the rustle of cloaks. The dark closed in on Skavengard. They heard another scream in the distance, and Aren knew it had found his blood, left at the amphitheatre on the south side of the central island. This time the chill he felt was deeper, more profound, as if something unutterably cold and endless as the void had brushed past him. It was enough to make him stumble and clutch at his chest, and though it passed a moment later, Aren knew the beast had tasted him, and now he was marked.
The druidess had been wise; the beast had been deceived by false trails, sent zigzagging around the island. But now there were no more diversions to delay it. The sound of its pounding increased in volume and a foul breeze began to blow.
‘It’s reached the third island!’ Keel said.
‘Take heart! It has yet to find us!’ Osman said.
‘Grub don’t know about you,’ said the Skarl, raising an arm slashed by shadow-daggers, ‘but he leaving pretty good blood trail.’
They rounded a corner and found themselves at the bottom of a long, wide stairway, stretching many storeys upwards. There were landings flanked by doors on either side, with time-smoothed statues of black stone standing between them. Visible at the top was a pinched arch, and Vika’s face lit up at the sight of it.
‘The bridge!’ she called.
As if in answer, the beast screamed, an overlapping howl from a legion of mouths; and they knew they had no time left.
They surged up the steps, thighs burning, for even Vika’s art had its limits. The wind gathered around them, growing in force as the air thickened and became resistant, and the choking stench of the beast forced its way into their nostrils and down their throats. It slammed and crashed and raged its way towards them, tearing through Skavengard in search of its victims. White-faced in the moonlight, eyes fixed on the arch, they climbed and climbed as the wind became a hurricane.
Grub led the pack up the stairs; he had no interest in waiting for Vika any more. Keel was hard on his heels, driven by fear, and Aren and Cade came after. They laboured up the last steps and saw the bridge before them. It was a long, wide tunnel through the air, with curving walls and teardrop-shaped windows along its length. Midway across was a huge circular gateway, its surface inlaid with stark silver runes that troubled the eye.
The beast howled, so close now that they heard the cracking of jaws and clashing of teeth, and they put their heads down and sprinted as the bridge started to shake around them. The runes began to glow, their light growing fiercer with every moment. Grub raced through without hesitation, Keel close behind him. Cade’s arms pumped and his cheeks puffed, his gaze fixed on his goal, and he and Aren ran through it, too.
Safe! Safe, surely! These symbols must keep the beast at bay, like the circle in the sanctum.
Instinct told Aren he should keep running, but it felt like cowardice, so he slowed and glanced back to check on his companions. He saw Fen, Garric right behind her and Osman following. Vika had fallen behind. She staggered and stumbled frantically, jerking and lunging as she fought to keep up.
She couldn’t. Her disordered body betrayed her, her staff slipped on the flagstones and she tumbled in a heap.
‘Vika!’ Aren yelled. The hurricane stole his voice but Osman saw his face. He turned his head and saw Vika lying there, Ruck barking frantically at her side. Without a moment’s hesitation, he went back for her.
The screams of the creature reached deafening pitch as Fen and Garric raced through the ring of wards. Now they were so bright they hurt, and Aren had to cover his eyes with an arm.
‘Move, boy!’ Garric shouted as he approached, but Aren just pointed over his shoulder. When Garric saw Vika had fallen, he blanched.
Osman had pulled h
er to her feet by now and shoved her back into motion. Fighting against the wind, they hurried for the gateway, where the glare was so intense that it was like looking into the sun, and they were reduced to black shadows limned in burning light. Ruck rushed through and whirled, barking madly at the beast they could hear crashing up the stairs.
‘Run!’ Aren screamed over the wind. ‘Ruuuuuun!’
The beast reared up at the top of the stairs. Aren saw nothing more than a hint of its form in the blinding glare, but it was enough to root him in place. He glimpsed a flailing monstrosity, yawning with mouths and mouths within mouths, propelled by massive tentacles that coiled slimily around it like a thrashing nest of eels.
It boiled into the corridor and shrieked as it was struck by the glow from the wards; but though it burned and wailed in agony, still it tried to fight its way onwards. Aren was transfixed, his tearing eyes locked on the dread shadow battling against the light, as the rotten wind blew against him and made him want to gag.
Osman and Vika struggled through the hurricane, Osman with his arm round the druidess, propelling her forward. They stumbled out of the blaze of light, gaining form and features as they neared, and Aren heard himself screaming at them again to run, run, run!
A barbed tentacle came snaking from the whiteness. It wrapped round Osman’s body, once, twice, and then buried its daggerlike tip into his shoulder. He was pulled suddenly to a halt, mere feet from the ring of runes. Vika staggered onwards, carried past Garric and Aren by her own momentum.
Osman’s eyes met Aren’s, and Aren saw pleading there, as if someone, anyone could avert his fate now. Aren and Garric lunged towards him, reaching out to pull him through.
Then he was wrenched away like a rag doll, yanked back down the corridor towards the terrible shadow at the top of the stairs. The beast screamed and plunged out of sight, and Osman was gone.
Garric and Aren stumbled to a halt, numb, staring along the bridge as the light dimmed and the beast’s cries fell to silence.
The Ember Blade Page 37