I could feel Arianna behind me, watching.
“Thank you,” I said, and dropped into the water.
I experienced a stomach-dipping feeling of falling. Something rammed into my side—the ground, I realized—and I began to roll, black toadstools breaking around me. I finally came to a stop at the bottom of a hill. As my vision steadied, I stood and got my bearings.
Away to my left, the pit to Dhuul belched bile-green fumes. Marlow and the other magic-users advanced on it, bright energy flashing from their wands. Shadow creatures were emerging from the pit to meet them, inky energy spewing from their tentacled forms.
Take your staff, a voice sounded in my head—my father’s. It’s clean.
I looked around and spotted the slender wood staff several feet ahead of me. I retrieved it and then cleared an area in the toadstools. In the spongy earth, I etched a casting circle and filled it with copper filings. In the center of the circle, I placed the strands of Lazlo’s hair, aimed my staff at them, and incanted. Light swelled from the opal as it absorbed the hair’s essence.
Seconds later, the staff kicked in my hands and pulled me toward the pit, which made sense. The lion’s share of Lazlo’s soul was somewhere inside the portal, maintaining it. But by concentrating into the spell, I could feel another force splicing from the main pull. And that force was directing me to the keep on the opposite side of the pit, directing me to the glass pendant where the rest of Lazlo’s soul was being held to give Lich life.
It was here.
I glanced over at the battle. The shadow creatures had surrounded the magic-users but were keeping their distance as white magic burst from wands. Flesh-colored bats shrieked and circled above. In the collective mind, I could feel the magic-users’ straining efforts. I had to hurry.
Eyeing the plain around the pit, I chose my route. With the creatures’ attention on the magic-users, and the robe of John the Baptist to hide me, I set off, staying well away from the action. I checked myself as I went. The small sack of magical artifacts swung from my belt while my coin pendant did the same over my chest. I had my staff back, my sword now sheathed inside it.
The only way, Everson, is to trust you have everything you need.
Holding to Arianna’s words, I rounded the pit, jumping oozing rivulets that coursed from the hills and flowed toward the abyss. The battle raged like a growing storm behind me, while across the pit, the keep loomed larger and larger. It was square-shaped and forbidding, walls black with mold. A large door stood in the front, its portcullis raised like an upper set of fanged teeth.
Okay, he’s left the front door open. Overconfidence or an obvious trap?
Certainly he had to have something defending his keep. No sooner than I’d begun considering what that could be, my right leg plunged through the toadstools. I tried to throw myself backward, but my forward momentum was too strong, and I plunged the rest of the way into water.
Wonderful.
I resurfaced with a sputter and splashed for solid ground. When the toadstools rippled in a spreading wave, I realized they hid a large pool, one surrounding the keep like a moat. I struggled harder, but it was like trying to climb out of a break in the ice. More and more of the surface kept coming apart in chunks of toadstools. As the water dragged on my clothes and robe, I felt my magic fizzling. I kicked furiously to keep my head above the surface, but the water was different here, heavier. Desperate, I aimed my cane downward.
“Vigore,” I whispered, hoping for a force to propel me from the water. But my magic was waterlogged.
I stopped scrabbling and forced a pair of calming breaths. My only option was to swim for the keep. I turned and began to breaststroke, arms breaking through the floating toadstools. The pond was deep—my feet had never touched bottom—and I didn’t want to think about what might be lurking beneath me. Just have to hope the robe is keeping me veiled.
I was halfway to the keep when the water bulged ahead of me. My gut clenched. Something large had just passed beneath the surface. I slowed and peered around. The toadstools were rippling on all sides. Keep going, I counseled myself. Have to keep going. I resumed swimming, eyes fixed on the front of the keep. Something brushed my leg. Keep going. What felt like a hand wrapped my left ankle. I kicked it away. Keep going.
When my knee sank into something, I nearly shouted before realizing I’d encountered semi-solid ground. I clawed my way up the pool’s far shore, the foul water running off me. I peeked over a shoulder and wished I hadn’t. My passage had stirred the bottom of the pond, and now leeches the size of small boats were flapping to the surface, their black bodies writhing over one another.
I scrambled to higher ground, water streaming from my hair and splattering onto the back of my hand.
But this water was bright red.
I raised the hand to my head and felt the slick skin of a leech. The creature, whose weight I had mistaken for water, extended down my back, its tail ending below my waist. Its mouth was attached to the crown of my head, sucking the life from me. I tried to peel the creature away, but it held fast. Panicked, I balled my hand into a fist and began hammering its head. It wouldn’t let go. I could feel its body warming and swelling against mine, bulging with blood. White spots danced around my vision.
Not thinking, Everson, I scolded myself.
I stopped punching and dug into my pocket until I encountered the bag of salt Olga had given me. Tearing it open, I grabbed a handful of the salt and threw it over my back. The creature slapped against me. I took a second handful and ground it against the leech’s head. The leech released me and flopped to the ground with a heavy thud. I staggered the rest of the way to the keep, stopping outside the portcullis. I felt faint and my legs were trembling. I’d lost a lot of blood.
I turned toward the battle that continued to flash and rage on the far side of the pit. They were counting on me, and I’d be damned if I was going to let a leech doom the mission.
I recited my centering mantra. My prism came back quickly, perhaps for the power of the collective, and fresh power crackled through me. With a whispered “Respingere,” I blew the excess water from me and then sized up the entrance. No wards from what I could detect. Lich must have limited his defenses to the barrier to his realm, counting on Dhuul’s shadow creatures to intercept anyone who made it through. Anyway, without the Banebrand weapon, what could anyone who entered actually do?
I tested the threshold with my cane. The opal end passed cleanly through.
I reactivated the hunting spell, waited for the cane to kick in my grasp, and entered Lich’s keep.
27
I hadn’t gone far when I began to encounter guards. The fish creatures appeared first, the same ones I’d been made to see in the Refuge when Whisperer magic had superimposed nightmares over my senses. Their large, incandescent eyes shifted wetly as they passed, their pupils flat lines.
I kept to the shadows, counting on the robe to hide me. When the creatures had gone, I moved on, the hunting spell tugging me deeper into the keep. One level up, I encountered a new variety of creature that oozed along on slug-like appendages. Blank eyes stared from gray heads without mouths.
I felt like I was walking backward along an evolutionary line. But that was Dhuul’s objective, after all. To devolve everything, return it to chaos. These creatures may well have been human once.
Where are you? came my father’s voice in my head.
Inside, I replied. The pull of the hunting spell is getting stronger.
Good, he said. Use the power of the collective as you need to.
I didn’t like the pain in his voice. How are you doing?
Don’t think about us, he said. Your focus is the glass pendant.
Before he could break away, I felt a member of the Front get buried beneath an assault of shadow tentacles. The Front was beginning to falter. I swallowed hard and broke into a run: down a corridor, up another flight of steps, the cane and the desperateness of the situation urging me on. Creatures stopped
and turned, sensing my movement.
Screw ’em, I thought.
At what felt like the top level of the keep, I arrived in a room. I stopped and peered around. The space was crammed with bookcases heaped with old tomes and folios, papers spilling from them. Various writing implements, scrying devices, and spell items were scattered across tables. Chairs for writing and reading sat here and there. I picked my way further inside, half stunned.
I was in Lich’s library/lab, yes, but I was also in the de facto headquarters of the Order of Magi and Magical Beings. And it wasn’t the huge celestial hall I’d imagined, but a bachelor pad in need of housekeeping. My eyes fell to a half-finished letter to a magic-user regarding some request or other she’d made. Many of my own messages would have been sent to and from this same room. I felt like I was peering behind the curtain in Oz.
My cane tugged and pointed at the far side of the room. On a corner of one of the tables, a necklace with a lamp-shaped pendant hung from a small stand. A sickly orange light glowed through the pendant’s sides. The glass pendant, I thought in disbelief. I’ve found the glass pendant.
I glanced around. And still no sign of Lich.
I pulled the sack from my belt as I sped across the room. Setting the sack on the table, I reached for the glass pendant. Strong magic stirred inside it. Of course there’s strong magic, I thought, trying to talk down my wariness. It’s sustaining Lich’s life force.
I nodded to myself and lifted it from the stand.
The pendant began to scream.
I cupped a hand over it as though it were a mouth, but the screaming persisted. “Shut up,” I hissed, encasing the pendant in a shield, hoping that would mute the sound. But no luck. The alarm was magical.
I looked around wildly as footsteps slapped up the steps. The fish and slug creatures were emerging from the stairwell and entering the room, scimitars drawn. They advanced on the glass pendant, which was pulsing brightly enough to throw my shadow against the back wall.
“Vigore!” I cried, sweeping the cane toward the creatures. As the force toppled bookcases and shoved the creatures back, I reached into a pocket for the dragon sand. I scattered it in an arc and shouted, “Fuoco!” Flames exploded from the sand, engulfing tomes and creatures before settling into a high wall between us.
I really had to hurry now.
I dug into the sack, pulled out a wand, and aimed it at the glass pendant.
“Disfare!” I shouted. A burst of bright red energy emerged, enveloping the pendant. But when the energy dissipated, the glass faces remained intact. The pendant continued to pulse and scream.
I exhausted the wands and moved on to the maces and amulets, repeating the invocation. But though the magic in each enchanted item was powerful, none seemed to have any effect on the glass pendant.
C’mon, dammit, I thought, digging in the sack. It has to be one of you.
I squinted back at the flames. The fire was keeping the creatures at bay, but it would only be a matter of time before the commotion attracted Lich—unless, of course, he was already on the battlefield, claiming souls. I was tempted to tap into the collective, to check on them, but my father was right. My focus needed to be here. I reached into the sack again.
Only one item remained: the rusty dagger.
“Please, let it be you,” I whispered, and plunged the blunt blade against a glass face.
Something broke. The screaming stopped. Holy crap—it worked, I thought, my ears ringing in the sudden silence. But when I looked down, the pendant was intact, the glass not even scratched. It was the dagger that was in pieces.
“How unfortunate,” someone said.
I wheeled to find Lich standing on the far side of the room, his back to me. The flames had been extinguished. Several of the fish and slug creatures were on the ground, burnt to a smoking crisp. The rest were arrayed on either side of Lich in a defensive formation.
“Your collaborators were counting on you,” Lich said. “Now half of them are fallen while the rest hardly have strength enough to stand, including your father.” A cold wind blew through the narrow window he was peering out of, ruffling his robe and shuddering my sweat-soaked body. “I’ll harvest their souls in a moment, but first I want to make you an offer.”
I spiked the glass pendant against the floor and tried to smash it with my heel. I grunted with the effort, but it was like trying to crush a block of granite. The magic that protected it was too strong. I called up the syllables my grandfather had left on the vault wall.
“Gug-lugal-i!” But though I drove power through them, they did nothing.
“Come now,” Lich said, turning to face me. “There’s no point in carrying on like that.”
I looked up at him, my legs trembling with exhaustion and fear. As a last resort, I unsheathed my sword and stabbed the pendant. Lich watched me patiently, his gray, vein-mapped head canting to one side as though in pity. He signaled to his creatures to move away as he stepped between them.
“I understand your fear,” he said. “When I discovered the fissure to Dhuul, when I understood his desires, I was just as revolted as you are now. He whispered of returning the world to a primordial state, of feeding on the dissolution. Horrible, horrible images, Everson.”
“Yeah, so horrible that you’re helping them come true,” I said, giving the pendant another vain jab.
“Like I told you, his arrival was inevitable. One could either ignore that or come to the best terms possible. My siblings chose the former, leaving me to act as Dhuul’s lone diplomat. Not at all what I wanted.”
“Sure.”
“It was a Faustian bargain, Everson, I agree. I would help deliver Dhuul into the world in exchange for the Order being spared. Understand this, though. Once Dhuul feeds on the enormous release of energy, he will leave in search of other worlds. He will leave us to rebuild this world, to construct new order from the chaos. Don’t you see? The Order of Magi and Magical Beings will become a godhood, Everson. We will be the Creators, the life-givers.”
With Lich’s mind warped by centuries of Dhuul’s influence, I could only imagine the nightmare world he would bring about. I peered at the horrid creatures on either side of him.
“The souls you believe I’ve sacrificed,” he said, gesturing toward the window, “they suffer now, yes, but they will soon know power they never thought possible. And all because I was willing to look on the horrible being Dhuul, and where others saw dissolution and death, I saw opportunity.”
“Opportunity for yourself.”
“For the Order,” he insisted. “The only entity I have ever truly served.”
“Bullshit.” I aimed the sword at him.
“I understand the enmity you feel toward me,” he said, taking another step forward. “I did take your mother’s life. Nothing I say can, or should, lessen that in your mind. But do know that when I entered the Refuge, it was to make the same appeal to them as I’m making to you now. They were only stalling the inevitable and, in doing so, prolonging the agony of the souls toiling below. The members of the Front attacked me, and I fought back.”
“And lives were lost, yeah, yeah, yeah,” I interrupted, anger spiking through me. “Do you want to know what really happened? You were the runt of Saint Michael’s children. You didn’t get the powers you thought you deserved, and so you went looking for them. You found the fissure to Dhuul, a being that could only emerge into our world if someone helped him. He promised you power. You jumped at it. Period. End of story. All this talk of making the tough choice for the Order is horseshit. Dhuul probably didn’t have to convince you of anything, either. Didn’t even have to use Whisperer magic. He simply made the offer and then let your power-hungry little mind come up with the rationalizations all on its own. You killed your brothers and sisters. Murdered them. Let that sink in for a second.”
Lich’s brows crushed downward. “I could destroy you now, is that what you want? Your power is undeveloped, your soul of no use to the effort, and yet I’m offe
ring to safeguard it, to make you a god.”
“Why?” I challenged.
“Because it’s my role, Everson. I may appear different, but in many ways, I am still Chicory. I am still the one who looks after you. The only reason I kept you in the dark—all of you in the dark—is because I didn’t want to see you destroyed. As head of the Order, I’m responsible for you.”
Something like pleading took hold in his hideous eyes, and I hesitated. Lich actually saw himself as a parental figure.
“It offended me to learn that your mother and grandfather cloaked their powers from me,” he continued, “that others faked their deaths and went into hiding. It offended me deeply. If only they’d listened.” His voice faltered, as though threatening to regress to the little brother he’d once been. “If only they’d trusted me.”
I saw an opening, however slim, and lowered my sword slightly. “I know you believe Dhuul’s arrival is inevitable,” I said. “I know you believe the bargain you made is the only way to spare the Order, but it’s not.” I thought about the Word my father and the others had spent centuries cultivating. I thought about them battling Dhuul’s creatures below. “Please. Release the souls from the portal, and help us cast Dhuul out. It can be done.”
“And what would become of us?” Lich challenged.
“There’s a chance we won’t make it,” I admitted. “But the magic-users you’ve watched over these years will survive. The Order will survive. Isn’t that what you want?”
I was trying to appeal to his paternal instincts, and for an instant, I believed he might relent. But his jaw clenched suddenly, molars bulging through the skin of his cheeks. Dark energy stormed around him as tentacles sprang from his back. “Die then!” he shouted.
The creatures, which had been shifting and murmuring while Lich and I talked, rushed forward, scimitars flashing. I battered the monstrosities with force blasts and slashed my blade at those who came too close. I didn’t hold back. If this was to be my final fight, there was no sense in conserving energy.
The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Page 96