by William King
He was wasting time. If the tunnels were there, he did not know how to access them. If the was another route in, it would take him a long time to find it. This door in front of him would provide a means of access and it was controlled by magic which was something he did understand. All he had to do was work out the spell that would control it.
Magic was as much his gift as warfare was Tyrion’s. Now was his time to shine. He still felt embarrassed and insecure about the way his brother had saved him during the attack by the skinks. He could have handled it if he had been given time. He could have blasted the lizardmen with his spells. But by the time his magic was ready, the skinks were already dead, killed by his brother’s deadly blade.
Now they were confronted by a problem that could not be solved with a sword. He would find a way through this door using only his knowledge and his talents. And he’d better make a start soon or they would be here forever.
Once again he gave his full attention to the slann magic. He could see that untangling one knot of power would move the door. All he had to do was utter the words of an opening charm. What gave him pause was the web of magical energy that flowed out of that turnkey spell.
He was not sure what would happen if he did not neutralise those connections first. It might be that the whole complex of spells was completely harmless. Perhaps they fulfilled some ritual function. He doubted that was correct and he was not willing to take any chances with magic he understood so little.
He inspected the web of spells once again, concentrating not so much on their function as simply their place in the pattern. He wondered what would happen if he cut the connections.
Would it trigger something? Would some protective process react? Would guardians spring to life?
He did not know and he could not. The minds that had created this magic were too alien for him to understand. He was simply going to have to do what was necessary.
He hesitated for only a moment longer, knowing that he would gain nothing by waiting, but still reluctant to commit himself to an action that might have fatal consequences. Once again he found himself envying Tyrion. In moments like this he lacked his brother’s decisiveness.
He cast his spell almost savagely. The door shook as if caught in an earthquake. The humans looked around in panic, ready to bolt. Another miscalculation, Teclis thought sourly. He should have warned them. Too late now anyway.
The doorway slid sideways, disappearing into a recess in the wall. It was an awesome feat by the builders, combining magic with engineering on a huge scale. What was revealed in the chamber beyond immediately stopped the humans from taking flight. Teclis heard Tyrion catch his breath and saw him begin to take a step forward.
In the distance lay bodies. Some magic had prevented them from decomposing although they did look desiccated. The corpses were human. In the hands of one was a naked blade which glowed with its own internal fire to Teclis’s magesight.
They had found Sunfang and the last resting place of its bearer. Still he sensed something wrong here. All he needed to do was find it…
‘Stop!’ Teclis said. He said it loudly and with as much force as he could. But it was too late. The humans had seen the piles of gold objects strewn about the chamber. They had found the treasure they had searched for for so long. Nothing was going to stop them taking it. As a group they plunged forward into the room, ignoring Teclis’s desperate shout. ‘No! Wait! Don’t!’
It was already too late. The air within the room shimmered and ghostly, ghastly shapes began to take form. At first they were merely dancing sparkles of light but then the tiny shimmering motes raced together. They became outlines of creatures that looked like skinks. They hovered in the air above the corpses and then flowed into them, vanishing like poison gas breathed into the lungs of a victim.
The corpses shook as if the ground they lay upon was in the grip of an earthquake. One by one, the dead bodies pulled themselves upright. They lurched into motion like puppets on strings. More and more ghostly outlines shimmered in the air. They flowed towards alcoves in the walls and Teclis saw the mummified remains of other lizardmen lying in the darkness there. Once again, the motes of light vanished inside the bodies of the dead. Once again, the corpses began to move.
What had happened here? The slann were not famous for their knowledge of necromancy. They were said to have shunned it. Was this spell the product of some later degenerate cult? Or was it a product of the curdled magic he had sensed.
Teclis cursed. This was his fault. He should have given them more warning before he opened the door. He should have stressed the fact that no one was to enter much more strongly than he had.
It was too late for regrets now. The trap was sprung. All he could do was pray to the old gods and hope they were listening.
There were dozens of dead bodies within the tomb now, all animated. Their flesh had an odd dry quality and as they moved they made a strange wheezing sound as if the air being forced from whatever remained of their lungs was whistling out through gaps in their flesh. There was a stink of herbs and embalming fluid and the faintest hint of the sickly sweet odour of corruption.
The animated human corpses moved strangely, as if whatever was wearing them was confused as to how to make them walk. The first of the reanimated had reached Leiber’s men now. They were just standing there, slack-jawed, paralysed by the sight of one horror too many.
Tyrion was already in motion, blade held ready to strike. He was obviously torn between obeying Teclis’s injunction against entering the room and leaping into the fray. Teclis did not know what to tell him. The best plan might be to retreat in the face of this undead horde.
One of the humans went down. The walking corpses simply tore him limb from limb, painting themselves in his blood then using his torn-off arms as bludgeons with which to attack Teclis’s companions. That forced the still living humans to react. They responded violently, hacking with their swords, lunging blades deep into unbeating hearts, slashing the throats of things that no longer needed to breathe. The living humans could not kill their foes with normal weapons. Teclis tried a spell, but it fizzled out as it passed into the air of the chamber. Powerful wards were still active in there, dampening and negating his magic.
Another of Leiber’s men went down, screaming and struggling, as the wave of moving corpses passed over him. ‘Tyrion!’ Teclis shouted. ‘Help him.’
Tyrion sprang to the doomed man’s aid, blade lashing out with the force of a thunderbolt. The impact sent the animated corpses reeling backward. The blade took large chunks out of their dry flesh. They did not bleed. They felt no pain. It looked like the only way to stop them would be to chop them to pieces. Fire might work, but without being able to use his magic there was no way to make it.
Or was there?
‘Tyrion! Get Sunfang. That will hurt them.’ Teclis wished he was sure of that, but it seemed like their best chance of getting out of this hellish place alive.
Tyrion seemed to have worked this out for himself. He was already in motion towards Aenarion’s time-lost blade.
Chapter Six
Tyrion leapt at the walking dead man with the burning sword. He knocked aside the clumsy stroke of Sunfang and struck Argentes’s corpse in the face with the pommel of his blade.
Argentes clutched Aenarion’s sword in the unbreakable grip of his dead fingers. Tyrion grappled with him, determined to get his hands on the weapon he had sought for so long.
But the animated corpse was incredibly strong and his many companions surged towards Tyrion, keen to rend his flesh. The elf prince grasped Argentes’s hand and broke his wrist with a twist. White bone jabbed out through dry flesh. Still Argentes would not let go of the sword. He grabbed Tyrion’s throat with his good hand and squeezed. Tyrion made his neck muscles rigid to resist being choked but iron-hard nails bit into his flesh, drawing blood.
Tyrion twisted Argentes’s swor
d hand, smashing the last of the bone and tearing the strip of flesh and the tendons that still attached it to the arm. Sunfang dropped free and he caught it.
It felt like a living thing in his hand. The blade burst into tiny flames. Tyrion could feel the blazing heat coming from the sword but the flames did not seem to do the metal any damage. It did not soften or become malleable.
He lashed out at Argentes with the sword he had carried for so long.
The smell of seared flesh filled Tyrion’s nostrils when the blade bit home. A hideous shriek emerged from dry lips. A grey tongue flickered forth as if imitating the action of a serpent. In a moment the bone-dry corpse was in flames. It reeled away from Tyrion, tumbling backwards into the ranks of its own undead companions, setting the clothing of some of them alight as well.
‘For Emeraldsea and the Phoenix King!’ Tyrion shouted his battle cry and leapt among the attackers, striking right and left, setting fire to animated corpses, searing their flesh, burning their bones black as they fell. The magic of the blade made it much more deadly to these creatures than it would be to the living.
Teclis saw the effectiveness of Tyrion’s blade against the undead. He could work similar fiery magic, just not within the protected confines of the inner sanctum. He needed to lure the monsters outside their circle of protection before he could destroy them.
Inside the sanctum the humans had panicked and were fighting desperately, simply trying to stay alive. No one was paying very much attention to him. It was going to cost them their lives.
Why should he care? He could save himself and Tyrion. The others were only humans. He had no reason to care whether they lived or died.
By elven standards they were going to die soon anyway, so what difference would a few more years make? Chances were they would be carried off by disease or disaster within months if they made it back to their homelands anyway.
And yet he did care. He felt responsible for them. He had brought them here. They had followed him into this danger. And though their lives were short, they were the only lives they had, and if he did not do something they would be lost.
Most elves would not have given him a chance of living a few years when he had been but a sickly child. He found that he had a certain sympathy for humans that most other elves lacked. He could share their perspective. He could see himself in them. They were poorly made and despised by his kindred as well.
‘Everybody out of the chamber,’ Teclis shouted. ‘Now!’
‘They’ll just follow us,’ Tyrion responded.
‘That’s what I want!’
Tyrion shrugged. ‘Come on, lads,’ he bellowed in his best battle-ground voice. ‘Get out of there. My brother has a plan.’
His voice carried effortlessly above the din of battle. More importantly it had that note in it that commanded obedience.
Leiber and the other humans almost jumped to obey. They raced and scrambled for the doorway, tearing themselves from the grip of ravening undead, twisting and writhing and scrambling over and through the moving corpses until they reached the exit.
Tyrion was behind them, pushing them on, encouraging them, helping them get free of their attackers, somehow never getting pinned down himself. The blade had given him the power to dominate this situation.
He pushed Leiber through the doorway and sent him sprawling. Another human ended up beside Teclis, terror and hope at war on his face. Teclis tried to smile reassuringly but it did not work. He lacked his brother’s charisma. Tyrion was already fighting his way back across the chamber to get the rest of the men out.
Teclis breathed deeply, willing his heartbeat to stop racing and his mind to become calm. He reached out, twisting the winds of magic to his will, feeling them flow through him and around him, responding to his gestures and his voice and his attitude of mind. He thought of flame and tiny fires flickered into being around him, sending shadows skittering away into the gloom. He intensified his command and the fires grew hotter and brighter, blazing forth from his hands in sudden hellish eruptions.
The humans scrambled away from him, moving back down the corridor away from the combat as fast as they could. Forces flowed around him, in great spiralling serpents of fiery energy. Now all he had to do was trigger them. He waited for Tyrion to get out of the chamber.
His brother slashed his way through more walking corpses over to where the human had fallen. With a sudden flurry of blows he cleared the area, lifted the man over his shoulders and made for the door again.
Burdened by the additional weight, unable to use his weapon, all he could do was run. Teclis wanted to shout for him to drop the human and get himself clear. His feelings of responsibility towards the man were as nothing to what he felt for his brother. Something made him keep his mouth shut though. Perhaps the belief that Tyrion could win free.
The undead clustered around his brother now, seeking to pull him down, clawing at his armour, scratching his face and exposed flesh. Tyrion kicked and butted and used his body weight to push assailants aside, but even he could not do anything against the enormous tide of desiccated flesh through which he was attempting to swim.
‘Drop him!’ Teclis shouted. ‘Get yourself out. Don’t be a bloody hero.’
Tyrion grinned and kept moving. Leiber surprised Teclis by springing back into the room to aid Tyrion. He said something that Teclis could not hear. Tyrion dropped his burden and started fighting again with the sword. Leiber dragged his companion through the archway and out into the corridor. Tyrion followed a moment later.
‘Back!’ Teclis bellowed. ‘Get clear and don’t come back!’
They took him at his word, rushing down the corridor. Teclis found himself facing the regiment of animated corpses. For a moment the sight of them almost froze his heart. He took a step backwards and they followed, leaving the chamber and its protections behind. Teclis kept back-pedalling. They kept following until the corridor was full of them.
Teclis spoke the final words of his spell.
A gigantic wall of flame sprang into being in front of him, hot as hell, with all the incandescent force of a blast furnace. Corpses shrivelled. Eyeballs popped. Skulls exploded as the brains within superheated. Blackened bones kept moving forward through the flames until even they were consumed.
Within moments it was all over. Tyrion looked at him with something like awe.
‘That was impressive,’ he said.
‘If we are going to get the treasure we need to do so now,’ said Teclis. ‘We may not get another chance.’
Tyrion held up the blade. ‘I’ve got what I came for,’ he said.
Teclis gestured at the surviving humans. ‘They haven’t.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Tyrion to Leiber and the others. ‘You have earned it.’
Teclis strode back into the death chamber and studied the inscriptions on the walls. He knew enough about the ancient slann writings to know that he had stumbled across something important. There was something about the runic language that he recognised, something that niggled at his subconscious, and told him that he really needed to pay attention to what he was seeing.
He recognised one of the runes in particular. It could mean either the end of the world, or the end of an age or both. Another rune concerned the elves. A third concerned the coming of Chaos. A fourth represented a Keeper of Secrets. The way they were laid out hinted at a conjunction of all these things. They were all inter-related although he did not know how.
He understood only a few of the words, or rather the pictoglyphs, but those that he did understand filled him with dread. He knew that the ancient slann had been master diviners and that they had left writings predicting the future that had often come true.
He was not entirely sure that he believed in the efficacy of these visions as exact prophecies. He sometimes suspected that the slann had the means to predict the ebb and flow of magic. If you could do t
hat, you could predict the coming of a new dark age simply because you would know when it was possible for daemons to enter the world.
This was something for the scholars back at the White Tower to unravel. Teclis began to copy out what he had seen, sketching the runes as best he could upon parchment, doing his best to memorise everything that he could not copy down.
Leiber and his fellows filled their backpacks with golden objects and Tyrion watched them all bemused. The humans had gone from being terrified to being ecstatic in the space of a few minutes. They picked up glittering strands of slann jewellery and inspected them and then stuffed them into their backpacks, only to take them out moments later when they had found a yet more attractive and possibly valuable example of the gold worker’s art. They were laughing out loud and whooping with joy.
Leiber looked around like a man who has achieved a long-held dream and no longer has any idea of what he wants to do with his life. In that moment Teclis felt sorry for him. Finding the treasure chambers of Zultec had been more than simply a means of getting rich to him. It had been something that had given his life meaning.
Teclis thought about his father and the dragon armour of Aenarion. He wondered what would happen to Prince Arathion if he ever worked out how to remake that ancient, potent artefact. Would his life suddenly be without meaning and purpose? How would he motivate himself to go on?
Teclis looked at Leiber with some curiosity. The man was not diving into the ancient piles of gold and jewellery. He was watching his followers do that but was not helping himself to anything. One of the men came running up to him and offered him a necklace. He was shouting about the value of it, about how much it was worth and how they could use the money to buy a farm, a ship, an estate, if that was what they wanted. He was laughing and crying at the same time and telling Leiber that never again would they want for women, wine or food.