Awakening Camelot: A Wizard's Quest (Awakening Camelot Duology Book 1)

by Dan Wingreen

  "Can you promise me that you'll come back out alive?" he asked. Eallair opened his mouth, but now it was Aidan's turn to cut him off. "Look me in the eyes, Lee, and tell me you'll be fine, and I'll believe you and I'll stay here. I trust you not to lie right to my face, not again, not about something like this. So if you tell me you'll be fine, I'll believe it. But you have to look me in the eyes and tell me. Can you promise me that? That you'll come back alive?"

  For the longest time Eallair didn't say anything. Aidan held his gaze the whole time, not even blinking, refusing to break eye contact for even an instant. He’d never been more serious about anything in his life, and he needed Eallair to see that.

  "No," Eallair said eventually. "I can't promise."

  Aidan nodded, relieved and disappointed in equal measures. "Okay then. I'm coming with you."

  Eallair's eyes flashed with frustration as he leaned in close to Aidan, their foreheads almost touching, but when he spoke his voice was soft, almost intimate. "I could knock you out, you know. Stun you and leave you here, or shackle you to the wall, like that cop had you when we first met. I could make you stay out here."

  Aidan raised an eyebrow and almost smiled. "You won't, though."

  "And why wouldn't I?"

  "Because it's my choice, not yours." This time Aidan did smile. "Even making the wrong choice is better than having the right one forced on you, remember?"

  Eallair let out a breath. "Do you have any idea how bloody annoying it is having your own words turned on you?"

  "I can imagine," Aidan said dryly.

  Eallair's lips twitched and he let out a sigh.

  "Fine, all right, you can come." He squeezed Aidan's shoulders. "But you have to listen to me and do whatever I say when we're in there, hear? If I tell you to run, then you damn well better start runnin’." Aidan frowned.

  "Don't even. You ain't a burden and you ain't useless, but you can’t use magic right now and you can't protect yourself against those that can. I can keep you safe enough as long as we're in tight spaces, but if it gets too open and we get separated I can't protect you and myself at the same time. If I tell you to run, it's gonna be for my safety as much as yours, okay?"

  Aidan forced himself to push back the doubts and protests that desperately wanted to come out. As hard as it was to admit, Eallair was right. He needed to be protected, at least for now, and he could easily be a distraction if they got split up at the wrong time.

  "Okay. I promise to do whatever you tell me." Aidan swallowed heavily and reluctantly forced his next words out, like a child being made to spit out dirt he would have happily eaten. "Even if you tell me to run."

  I also promise to do everything I can so you don't have to.

  Eallair looked at him for a few seconds, then nodded.

  "All right then," he said, his lips pulling into a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Let's go hunt ourselves a necromancer."

  And with that, he ducked into the cave.

  Aidan worried at his lip and hesitated. Now that he was actually allowed to go, he was starting to get nervous about actually going.

  Get it together, Aidan. Suck it up and put on your big boy pants—

  Oh great. Now I'm starting to sound like a teenager.

  He shook his head to clear it, then steeled himself, stepped over the lip, and followed Eallair in.

  Inside, the cave—what he could see of it anyway—was narrow and dark. The kind of dark Aidan was used to, which didn't exactly make it comforting. Even the bright moonlight from outside only illuminated the ground and walls a few feet in. Eallair was a barely visible outline in front of him, his head moving like he was looking around, although what he could possibly see in the darkness Aidan had no idea.

  Strangely enough, the only thing that kept Aidan from panicking was the wrong feeling on his chest getting heavier.

  "Oh Merlin," he muttered, putting his hand on the cold, surprisingly smooth rock wall to steady himself.

  "Hmm?" Eallair said absently.

  Aidan swallowed against the sudden wave of nausea, waiting for it to pass before he spoke. "That's awful," he said.

  "Huh? Oh. Right." Eallair turned to face Aidan. "It'll probably get worse as we go on, but you'll start getting used to it. Eventually."

  "How could anybody get used to this?"

  "It's the way foul magic works," Eallair said quietly. "It gets inside you, slowly, until you wonder how it ever bothered you in the first place. Then you start to want more…"

  "Is that what's gonna happen to us? We're gonna start…wanting it?" Aidan asked nervously.

  "Huh? What? No; of course not. You gotta use the magic for that." He couldn't see, but Aidan imagined Eallair's lips were twisted into one of his more annoying smiles. "We'll just deal with it better, after a bit. Acclimate, like. Come on, let's get to it then."

  Aidan was just about to ask how he suggested they do that when they couldn't see ten feet in front of them, when a sudden, bright bluish-white light sprang into life, illuminating the whole cave. The light faded slightly into an orb floating over Eallair's hand, then rose up and started to hover just below the ceiling a few feet above their heads.

  The cave was even more narrow that it seemed in the dark, barely wide enough for Eallair's shoulders to fit without touching the walls. Walls that, Aidan noticed, were completely smooth. So smooth they actually reflected the light, almost like they were polished. Only the ground seemed rough and natural, but even that seemed carefully planned. Like whoever made the passageway purposefully kept the ground from being too smooth to move quickly over. The narrow passage went straight for a few feet before pitching down sharply, leading deeper into the earth.

  "Someone made this," Aidan said, quickly taking his hand off the wall.

  "Aye," Eallair said, craning his neck to look around. "Same person what made the hill, I'd guess." He grinned at Aidan. "Bloody fascinating it is."

  Aidan let out a small chuckle at Eallair's boyish enthusiasm. "Kind of creepy, actually. Who made it? And why? And is the whole thing going to be like this?" He walked over to Eallair and looked at the place where the path started to dip down. "All the way down to…wherever this goes?"

  "Nah," Eallair said with a dismissive wave. "Probably connects up to a real cave system at some point. As for who made it, can't see anybody but the Shaman having that much power. Dunno why he'd do it though."

  Aidan frowned thoughtfully. "Before he dropped us in that hole, a bunch of other People kind of dropped down on their knees around him. It looked like maybe it was a group thing? Like maybe the Shaman was borrowing their powers."

  "You saw that? Really?" Eallair asked. Aidan nodded. "Well, that puts things in a new light. If he couldn't do that on his own, then he definitely couldn't do this. Unless they all did it. But still, why?" He shook his head. "If they didn't, then someone more powerful than half a village of shaman people did, and considerin’ the circumstances, there really ain't a lot of options on who that could be."

  Aidan's heart sped up. "You mean the necromancer?"

  "Aye."

  "But…can necromancers even do that?" Aidan asked.

  "No," Eallair said, subdued. "And that's what's worryin’ me. You sure you don't wanna wait outside?"

  Aidan glared at him. "Not on your life."

  "Might be on yours."

  "I don't care." Aidan crossed his arms stubbornly.

  Eallair sighed. "All right then. Might as well press on."

  He slowly walked down the passageway, Aidan following close behind, scared of losing the light. He needn't have worried about that though, since the orb seemed to always stay exactly between them, right in the middle no matter how far apart they were.

  Aidan lost track of time as they walked down the straight tunnel, but eventually Eallair's guess proved to be right and almost out of nowhere they encountered another opening that led into a different cave. This one was rough and dirty and even colder, and the walls definitely didn't reflect the light. I
f anything, they muted it.

  Aidan touched the wall and his fingers came away grimy and slightly wet.

  Well that was a great idea.

  "Ugh," Aidan said, quickly wiping himself off on the bottom of his pant leg. "I'm gonna need to shower for a week when we get out of here."

  "Oh, the possibilities…" Eallair murmured in his ear, suddenly right behind him.

  Aidan shivered, and it wasn't completely because of the cold either.

  They continued on. The narrow uniformity of the first "cave" almost immediately turned into chaotic randomness, with certain parts of the real cave being so narrow they had to turn sideways to pass, and others suddenly opening up into large caverns that could have held half the village they'd just come from. Passages twisted and turned, looped back around on each other and branched off, but always they followed the feeling of wrongness. If they went down a tunnel that had their chests feeling lighter and less tainted, then they immediately backtracked until they found a different one.

  It was unnerving to Aidan, and more than a bit frightening, chasing a feeling they should have been running away from. Even the walls seemed to be against him with the way they swallowed the light and blurred the edges of the darkness. Aidan found himself walking so close to Eallair he was surprised they hadn't tripped over each other yet. They bumped into each other more than once, and the third time it happened, without a word Eallair slipped his hand into Aidan's and held it tightly. Aidan nearly stumbled in surprise, then gratefully squeezed back, smiling softly.

  Even darkness seemed easier to take when Eallair was around.

  He’d been right, though. After a while the oppressive wrongness was easier to handle, like the dull background ache of a sore muscle instead of a breath stealing weight right on top of his stomach. That bothered Aidan almost more than the darkness. This kind of thing shouldn't be something a person could get used to so quickly.

  It had been less than an hour since they'd started wandering through the real caves, as far as Aidan could guess anyway, when they entered another large cavern. It smelled musty and stale, and had strange, sharp rocks hanging from the ceiling.

  "What are those?" Aidan asked warily, stopping just inside the cavern.

  "Stalactites," Eallair said. "They're formed when water drips down over hundreds of thousands of years, usually in limestone caves, because of the minerals in the water."

  Aidan stared at him.

  "What?" Eallair crossed his arms defensively when he noticed. "I ain't making it up."

  "How would you even know that?" Aidan asked.

  Eallair lifted one shoulder in a shrug. The gesture was surprisingly close to being cute. "Knew a guy once what liked to study rocks, is all. Just because I ain't ever been to one of your fancy government schools, where they don't even teach history I might add, don't mean I don't know things."

  A smile tugged at Aidan's lips. "I never said you didn't."

  "Well. Good then." Eallair nodded firmly.

  Aidan laughed. It was a quiet laugh, but it echoed through the open cave.

  Guess even comic scroll heroes are insecure about some things.

  "The thing is," Eallair said a few seconds later, looking around the cavern. "There are usually more at the bottom, pointing up. Stalagmites, they're called. More than usually. Always, actually."

  He turned back to Aidan.

  "Except here."

  Aidan started to ask why that mattered, when he noticed something too. The floor that Eallair was pointing at was smooth. Very smooth. In fact, now that Aidan looked closer, it was reflecting the light from the orb too. Just like—

  Oh shit.

  "Lee, the floor looks just like the walls of that tunnel," Aidan said quietly.

  They'd been looking for the necromancer's lair, and it looked like they might have just found it.

  Eallair's eyes widened.

  And then a sound broke through the silence, echoing through the cavern. A scrape, like something being dragged across a hard surface.

  "What's that?" Aidan whispered, suddenly very aware of how his voice carried.

  Eallair didn't hear, or maybe he just ignored it, too busy trying to turn his head in every direction at once. Searching.

  Something walked out of the darkness and into the edge of the light.

  At first, all Aidan could think about was his nightmare. The skeletal arm covered with dry, long dead skin reaching for him. The sound of bone scraping across the alley. A scream tried to burst from his lips, but it died in his throat, his whole body seizing up in pure terror.

  But even as he panicked and desperately willed his body to move so he could fucking run, he began to notice the differences between nightmare and reality. The thing from his dreams had been little more than bones and skin. This thing, whatever it was, had obviously been human, once. Recently, too. Its skin was pale with death, but intact. Whole. Its hair was long and greasy and matted with dirt. In fact, the whole thing was filthy. Naked too; and definitely male, its bits swaying as it walked. The thing that was making the scraping noise wasn't bone, but its feet dragging across the floor as it shuffled towards them. It should have been horrible, and it was, but it held almost no resemblance to the nightmare come to life Aidan had thought it was; he found himself relaxing.

  Relatively, at least.

  "What the fuck is that?" Aidan whispered.

  Almost as if it was answering him, the creature turned its bright, horribly aware eyes towards him and let out a low, unearthly moan that echoed all around them.

  Except, he realized after a moment, it wasn't echoing off the walls.

  Like a signal, the moan was picked up by what Aidan could only assume were more things in the darkness surrounding them. It's so loud. How many of them are there? Then, as the moans died down, the shuffling started. Heavy, halting steps seemed to come from everywhere. Aidan gripped Eallair's hand, squeezing it hard enough to get a pained grunt from him.

  And then they started coming into the light.

  Five, ten, fifteen, more; all like the first with long black hair, pale, ashen skin, fever bright eyes, and filthy, like they'd been buried deep in the dirt. Several had obvious wounds; a hole in the chest, a neck bent at an impossible angle, torn out throats, animal damage of every kind. Others looked like normal people except for the pale skin and the too-bright eyes.

  "Undead," Eallair said.

  Undead. Of course. Why is that surprising me?

  "That's why he's in the bloody caves!" Eallair exclaimed suddenly, his face lighting up. "They must go all over, under the desert, all 'round, right near the shaman people's villages, or near enough that he can make tunnels anyway. Right to their graveyards. Instant foot soldiers! That's why they knew to go to that spot in the desert, they knew the necromancer would go right for their cemetery. Kind of brilliant all around actually."

  "Lee," Aidan said, worried.

  "Hmm?"

  "The walking dead are, um, walking. Right towards us."

  Eallair blinked—and Aidan wanted to hit him because how the hell could he get distracted when they were being stalked by corpses—and looked around.

  "Right then," he said, nodding. "Stay close."

  "Not about to go running off," Aidan muttered under his breath.

  The undead were halfway across the lit-up portion of the cavern, getting closer with every step. More than twenty were visible now, with even more making noise where Aidan couldn't see. How many bodies were at the village? He thought back, trying to remember. More than forty. But how many were freshly dead and how many were undead? He didn't think there were that many undead. Maybe twenty? Not as much as there seemed to be in this cavern, anyway. Wasn't the necromancer supposed to be weaker after his attack?

  "There are a lot more undead here than at the village," Aidan said.

  "Aye, not surprising," Eallair said. "Necromancy's all about proximity. You can control more undead closer you are to them than you can far away. Actually, considerin’ how far down we a
re, this necromancer's gotta be pretty powerful to send as many as he did to the village. Assuming he didn't go up to the surface for the attack, anyway."

  "Great," Aidan muttered. The undead were getting closer; there must have been over two dozen in the light now. "So, what are we gonna do now?"

  Eallair shot Aidan a quick grin. "We take his power away."

  With that, he raised his hands, palms out, and unleashed two white-hot streams of fire.

  The flames roared out of his hands and slammed into the first uneven, shambling row of undead. They went up like dry twigs, blazing in the dark as the fire eagerly consumed them. The streams didn’t stop there though, they went past the burning monsters, through them, hitting more and catching them ablaze too, before Eallair slowly spread his hands apart, moving the fire to get the rest that weren't directly in front of them.

  They burned.

  The ones in front fell to the floor, dead—or re-dead—within seconds as the fire melted them nearly down to the bone. The ones behind took longer to fall, but they did, a few dropping right on top of their already burning cousins. Aidan gagged at the rancid stench of burning flesh. The fire must have cooled rapidly as it got further away from Eallair though, because the ones behind them kept shuffling past the burning bodies, on fire, but not really slowed much at all.

  Not only that, but the fire lit up the whole cavern. It was larger than Aidan thought, easily the biggest open space they'd seen down there.

  And it was filled almost completely with undead.

  "I think we need more fire!"

  "Kinda hard to do," Eallair said, gritting his teeth. "I dunno if I can burn them all, not before they get us."

  "Then what do we do?" Aidan asked, panic creeping in at the edge of his voice.

  "Running sounds good."

  Aidan nodded rapidly, suddenly very glad they hadn't gotten too far into the cavern. That sounded like the best idea he'd ever heard.

  Eallair grabbed Aidan by the hand and pulled him towards the entrance to the cavern—

  Which collapsed in front of them with a loud crash that drowned out the moans of the undead, covering up the hole like it had never even been there, before they'd gotten more than two steps.