“Let’s go ahead and put you on, then,” I whispered, donning the robe of John the Baptist.
As had happened in the cathedral, a quiet descended over me and calmed my thumping heart. I peered around. The dark forest looked uniform in all directions, reminding me of my recurring dream. But I wasn’t a powerless child and I didn’t plan to wander aimlessly.
I had a target.
Kneeling, I wiped out a small circular area in the forest floor. The carpet of rotten leaves hid jelly-covered toadstools, which I wiped away, too. With my sword, I scratched my family’s casting circle into the earth and filled the grooves with copper filings. I then produced a Ziploc bag from one of my pockets and upended it over the circle. A clump of cat hair landed in its center—hair which held Marlow’s casting residue from when he’d murdered Lady Bastet.
A current of fear wormed through me. The last time I had cast through the hair, Marlow had sensed me. He’d attacked me. This time, Chicory assured me, he couldn’t. The distilled blood that had delivered me to the Refuge would veil me from Marlow’s detection.
Hope to hell Chicory’s right.
“Cerrare,” I said, closing the circle.
I incanted then, my staff aimed at the hair. The clump of hair shifted and rolled, sending up smoke, which the staff’s orb inhaled. I braced for a counterattack, but none came. Within moments, the staff was tugging me from the circle, in a direction opposite from where the sun had set.
He’s here.
Planting a foot against the tug, I returned what remained of the hair to the bag, pocketed it, and then broke the circle and covered it with debris. Veiled or not, I couldn’t get careless. The cane pulled me past trees, toward the man who had killed my mother.
Not to confront him, I reminded myself as black anger smoldered inside me. To find Lich’s book.
Before long, the forest thinned and opened onto a wide plain. A rocky hill rose from its center, an ancient palace at its plateaued pinnacle. Though impressive, the scene was hardly the stuff of postcards. The palace was made of black stone, the columned stories that stood atop one another unwieldy and wicked looking. Here and there firelight burned in windows.
Looks like someone’s home.
I scanned the open plain around the palace for guards. Instead, I spotted the silhouettes of what looked like large, hunchbacked dogs. Wargs, I realized, vicious predators with keen senses of sight and smell. Marlow was using them as an outer ring of security.
I checked to ensure my robe was secure around me before stepping from the trees and toward the palace. I moved quickly and quietly, keeping track of the wargs as I went. There were at least two dozen of them patrolling the large plain. Every so often, one would stop and raise a ragged muzzle before resuming its patrol.
Realizing I was on a collision course with one of the wargs, I crouched, retreated several steps, and held still. The approaching patrol was the size of a small rhino, its hair dark and bristly. Harsh breaths huffed from its wet muzzle.
When it got to within twenty feet of me, the creature stopped and raised its head. I stiffened. A jelly-like substance dripped from the warg’s face. Bald patches showed over its coat, where the same substance appeared to have corroded through. The warg’s face waxed toward me, toadstools ringing its glowing eyes like blackheads. Could it sense me?
I tightened my grip on my sword, debating whether or not to strike before the warg could send up an alarm. With a final snuff, the warg lowered his head again and resumed patrolling.
Exhaling, I set my sights on a staircase that climbed to a wall surrounding the palace complex. I had considered circling the hill to search for a more concealed way up, but I didn’t like how the warg had looked in my direction. And the way that stuff was eating into its face…
I grimaced and hurried my pace.
Near the staircase, I opened my wizard’s senses. The approach looked clear, but a ward protected the staircase in a field of barbed energy. I followed a path up to it. The energy blocking the staircase crackled and spit. My enhanced blade might cleave it, but without Marlow knowing? No, better to leave the ward intact and trust that the distillation of blood would fool it.
I was bracing myself to step through when something rammed into my side.
I stumbled into a backpedal from the largest warg I’d ever seen. It crouched onto its haunches, equally startled. The warg must have doubled back on its patrol.
Now, it came sniffing forward. When I stepped to one side, it pivoted toward me, a growl shaking the thick foam over its fangs. The damned thing could sense me. When I inhaled what smelled like spores, I imagined them communicating back to the toadstools and slimy fungi that covered the warg’s face, their root-like threads penetrating its canine brain, whispering to it.
I took a quick look around. Two more wargs were approaching, eyes glowing a sickly green through the darkness. I gauged the distance to the staircase—about fifteen feet away—but the large warg had cut me off. With my sword held out, I slid the staff into my belt and dug into my pockets.
Where are you?
At last my fingers encountered the golf-ball sized rocks. Coughing grenades. I pulled one out and whispered, “Attivare.” The rock tingled as the magic at its core came to life.
I turned and hurled the grenade as far from the palace as I could. With a bark, the large warg charged me. I pivoted and brought my sword around, twisting my grip so the flat of the blade caught it instead of the edge. Metal rang against the side of the warg’s head. The beast stumbled past me and ate dirt.
I backed toward the staircase as the warg recovered and wheeled. The skin over one half of its face had shorn off, revealing plates of bone.
Fifty yards away, the grenade landed, releasing a burst of human coughing. The other two wargs that had been closing in on me turned and sprinted toward the fake sound. The large warg looked over its shoulder, then back in my direction. It took two stalking steps forward.
Go, dammit. Go with the others.
The warg moved its sniffing head from side to side, as though no longer sure where I was. Maybe the result of half the fungi being wiped from its face. I switched to an underhanded grip, ready to thrust the blade up into the warg’s heart if it lunged again.
Its glowing gaze roamed all around me.
At last the creature released a snort and sprinted off to join the others.
I let out a trembling sigh and hurried past the defensive ward. A searing heat broke through me, but thanks to the blood match, my magic remained intact. I started up the steps. Very soon I realized that the palace complex wasn’t composed of black stone, but covered in black mold.
Higher and higher I climbed. On the dwindling plain below, the wargs had resumed their patrols. I didn’t slow until I reached a landing that ended at the defensive wall. My staff tugged me toward a large door that hummed with locking magic. My sword could cleave it, but would that send up an alarm?
I scanned the rampart high above. I couldn’t see anyone—or anything—patrolling its length. The dome of protective energy that extended over the palace looked to be identical to the ward at the base of the hill. It would let me through.
Judging the wall to be about twenty feet high, I took several steps back, sword aimed down. With a running start, I whispered, “Forza dura!”
The energy from the sword erupted against the landing and launched me up. As the cold air rushed past my ears, I saw that I was short. Afraid of overshooting the wall, I’d gone too soft. At the height of my parabola, I stretched out an arm and managed to catch the lip of the rampart. My body banged against the wall, but I held on, working my fingers into a slimy groove in the stonework. I threw my sword arm over and heaved myself the rest of the way onto the rampart. As I fell, I broke through the second ward in another searing wave.
I bit back a grunt and lay panting. I was alone on the walkway and, by all appearances, still hidden. Above me, the columned palace teetered into the night sky. I stood and looked down. Far below, a co
urtyard led onto a lower level of the palace. But the hunting spell was tugging me in the direction of a guard tower farther along the rampart.
I entered the square tower through a low archway and descended a spiral staircase. Though torches burned in brackets in the wall, the shut-in air carried a stench of rot. After one flight, I left the stairs and crept down a covered walkway. It soon opened onto a large columned room, the hunting spell tugging me toward a doorway on its far side. Halfway across the room, I stopped cold.
I knew this place.
The large column to my right was black at its base, but not from mold. I knelt down to examine it more closely. The cracks in the floor that radiated from the column held bits of gray ash.
This is it, I thought in numb certainty. The site of my mother’s execution.
I rested my head against the column’s cold stone. Despite having experienced my mother’s death in Lady Bastet’s scrying globe, despite the event having been confirmed by Chicory, being here, now, in the same spot, made it real in a way those experiences hadn’t. My heart broke as I remembered the way her cracked lips had shaped her final words.
I love you, Everson.
“I’m here to finish what you started,” I whispered, blinking back tears.
A gargling voice made me turn. A pair of black-robed figures were entering through the far doorway. I rose slowly and, tamping down the hunting spell, gripped my sword and staff.
Were you among them? I asked silently of the two. Among the ones who called my mother a traitor? Who hurt her? Who stood here and watched her execution?
Anger tightened my grip until it hurt.
The book, a more rational part of my mind whispered urgently. You’re here to find and destroy the book. Do anything that raises an alarm, and you can kiss the mission goodbye.
That seemed to work. Forcing down my anger, I moved behind the column as the robed figures came closer, continuing their gargling exchange. I was preparing to let them pass when, deep inside their hoods, torchlight glistened over large, inhuman eyes. Fish’s eyes.
Revulsion turned to fresh rage.
You were there, I decided, lips trembling. Both of you. And you watched her burn.
With an anguished cry, I swung my blade at the nearer figure’s head.
7
The blade flashed, ripped through fabric and flesh, and came out the other side on a gout of dark fluid. Something wet thudded to the stone floor and rolled over. I glanced down to find large, vacant eyes staring up at me from a scaly face covered in the same fungi I’d seen on the wargs.
The creature’s companion let out a sputtering shriek and jumped back. Before it could get a fix on me, I drove the sword into its gut. The blade broke through an exoskeleton, and I heaved the hilt up with both hands. The creature gargled, the hood falling back from its face. A pair of vile fish’s eyes searched around in vain before seeming to settle on me.
“I can play judge and jury too,” I grunted.
The blade broke through the creature’s breastplate and cleaved its heart. I yanked the blade back, depositing the creature beside its headless companion. I then stared down at the two of them for several moments, panting in the horror and exhilaration of what I’d just done.
I dragged their bodies into a dark corner of the room and dusted the main floor with dragon sand. A whispered “fuoco” ignited the sand, evaporating the trails of fluid and hiding evidence of the slaughter. No other creatures had come to investigate, suggesting no alarms had been raised.
Need to keep my anger in check from now on, though, I thought as I cleaned my blade on the side of my pants. It had been the dual shock of standing in the same spot where my mother had been slain and then suddenly seeing the creatures who had participated in the act. Still, I didn’t know how these things communicated with one another. If it was through the fungal growth that seemed to coat everyone and everything, word of the attack could reach others.
I restored the hunting spell. As it pulled me toward the far doorway, I wondered about the two I’d just slain. I had thought the Front was a splinter group of magic-users, of humans. But those fish eyes… Was that what decades of worshiping the Whisperer had done? Devolved them?
The hunting spell led me down a corridor and up several flights of stairs. More robed figures appeared, their unhurried cadence telling me news of their murdered companions had not reached them. I eased into shadows until they passed and their gargling voices receded away.
In another flight, my cane jerked me from the stairwell and into a small courtyard on the top level of the palace. Cold wind blew around me. From a building opposite me, low chanting sounded. I stiffened as one voice climbed above the others. The forceful yanks of my cane notwithstanding, I knew the voice belonged to Marlow. The Death Mage.
My heart surged into a full gallop as I canceled the hunting spell, pulled my cane into sword and staff, and crept across the courtyard. The building was tall and narrow, moldy columns bracketing a doorway through which greenish firelight glowed. I edged along a shadow beside the doorway and peered inside, the robe of John the Baptist concealing me.
The altar-like room featured a rectangular pool of water at its center. Statues of what looked like gods and goddesses—the original saints, most likely—rose along the perimeter of the room to act as pillars. But the statues, along with the rest of the room, were covered in a gunk that dangled in thick ropes and dripped over the twenty or so robed figures chanting around the pool below.
My gaze followed the pool to the far end where a tall figure presided over the chanting, one arm raised. The green flames that rose from the pyres on either side of him glistened from a gold mask inside his hood. My stomach clenched into a nauseous fist.
It’s him.
I picked up the chanting as I watched him. The words were nonsensical, but they evoked visceral sensations of death and decay. At the end of the verse, something stirred inside the pool’s foul waters. Another elemental? I could just make out a viscous web-work of black energy that seemed to unite the chanters to whatever lurked below the waters.
The Whisperer, I realized. This is the ritual that opens the portal. It was work Lich had begun centuries before and that Marlow had resumed upon finding his book. The larger the portal, the more powerful Marlow and the Front would become, and the more likely they would be to defeat the Order.
Ultimately, the Whisperer itself would emerge.
My eyes fell back to the pool in time to see a tentacle lash up before disappearing into the depths again. Beyond the pool, Marlow dropped his hand momentarily before raising it and resuming the chant.
A charge shot through me. A book. He just turned the page of a book. I eased forward, squinting. Yes, it was hard to see, but it was there, his black robe camouflaging the tome he palmed at his chest, tendrils of dark magic twisting from its pages.
Okay, I thought, deep breaths.
I slid my staff into my belt and reached into a pocket until I encountered a vial. A light shake told me it was the dragon sand. With a trembling hand, I loosened the cap. I doubted Marlow kept the book on him twenty four-seven. I could hold out for a more opportune moment, but with a pair of corpses downstairs waiting to be discovered, the risk felt too great.
I had to strike now.
I gauged the distance to the book and aimed my sword at it. The tip of the blade wavered as I drew a breath.
“Vigore!” I shouted, drawing the sword sharply back.
The force invocation hooked the book and yanked it from Marlow’s grasp. The book shot across the room, over the pool, between the chanters, and into the doorway, where it smacked into my raised hand like a fastball into a catcher’s mitt. I ducked around the side of the doorway, already bringing the book down and flipping through the leather-bound tome.
“Someone’s taken the codex,” Marlow shouted. “Stop him!”
The chanting broke into a confusion of shouts, and I could hear more splashing from the pool.
This is the book. Th
is is it!
Heart slamming, I dropped the book at my feet and pierced it with the blade. The magic swirling around it fractured and broke apart. The plan was actually working! Emptying the vial of dragon sand over the defenseless tome, I leaped back and shouted, “Fuoco!”
Flames exploded from the book and gushed into the altar doorway. Voices and shrieks sounded from beyond. The pages of the incinerated tome floated up and disintegrated into ash.
Chicory! I called through our link as I backed away. It’s done! The book’s destroyed!
I chucked away the empty vial of dragon sand and drew the staff from my belt. I raised it just as a black bolt of energy shot past the flames. The enhanced staff drew the bolt inside, where the energy swirled. With shouts, two of the chanters broke through the flames.
“Rifleterre,” I commanded, aiming the staff at them in turn.
The energy absorbed by the staff discharged twice, nailing the chanters and knocking them to the ground.
Did you catch that Chicory? I called again. I’m ready to come home!
More figures moved beyond the flames. I jammed a hand into a pocket holding several lightning grenades and pulled two of them out. “Attivare!” I shouted, throwing them into the doorway. Lightning ripped from the heavens and slammed through beam and stone, collapsing the entranceway.
Ears ringing, I wheeled and sprinted across the courtyard toward the stairwell I’d arrived by. I was nearly there when a battalion of the fish-headed creatures came swarming up. Gargling at one another, they fanned around me, scimitars in hand. I enclosed myself in a crackling shield as the first wave moved in. Blades slashing, they set upon the shield.
“Respingere!” I called.
A potent white pulse detonated from the shield, sending the attackers tumbling over the courtyard and each other. Before they could fully recover, I hacked a path through them to the stairwell and descended, throwing a shield over the opening behind me to block their pursuit.
Chicory? I tried again. Now would be a really good time.
The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Page 80