The Seven Signs: Three Book Collection

by D. W. Hawkins

  Here, no one did the nastier things. This place felt like a different world. Bethany knew the slums existed in the city—she’d seen the faces on the day they had arrived, dragging Dormael in a horse cart. Hungry, distant faces hovering at waist-level, flitting like ghosts through the crowds. Shawna hadn’t seen them, and neither had D’Jenn. Big people never looked down, but Bethany always knew where to look.

  You learn where to look, or you starve.

  She used to huddle outside a tavern during the wintertime, listening to an old blind man tell stories at the window. Bethany suspected that the old man knew that she was listening to his stories, because he always sat at the window, even when it was too cold to have it open. He would leave his plate close to the edge of the sill, and never raised a ruckus when she picked something from it that she figured he wouldn’t miss. He just went on telling his stories, and never looked down.

  He was blind, anyway—he couldn’t have seen her if he’d wanted to.

  One night, the old man wasn’t there anymore, and he never showed up again.

  The stories he told, though, were always wonderful tales of magic and monsters. He told of old heroes, pirates, and adventure. In the old man’s stories, there was always a cave that was home to some dreadful, man-eating creature which guarded a horde of treasure, or a magical castle full of evil spells and traps. Bethany had always thought that she’d never even get the chance to see a real wizard.

  She never thought she’d be one.

  Bethany was enjoying her time in the Conclave, this short period where no one knew what to do with her. She was expected to start training soon, she knew that, but since they’d been here, she had been in a sort of limbo. No one was looking for her, so it was easy to go where she wanted. Big people never knew where to look.

  In her time in the Conclave, she’d explored most of the upper floors looking for evil magical traps. She’d flitted past classrooms full of attentive students, the teachers either blind to her presence, or unconcerned. She had found areas in the tower where huge tapestries hung, large enough for her to take fifteen steps from one end to the other. There were floors polished so black that they looked like a mirror, and places where flowing script was written into the very walls, inlaid with silver, brass, and gold. There were high, quiet balconies that jutted out of the Conclave Proper as if they had grown from it, where wind whipped across the platform, and there was nothing to hold onto. There were close places, places that always held a gathering of one sort or another, students bustling back and forth through a cloud of conversation. Bethany had moved through it all unseen—or, at least, unnoticed.

  Thunder cracked across the sky, this time even louder than before. Bethany could smell the rain coming, and her Kai tingled with excitement at the coming storm. The first patters of rainfall began to splash into the paving stones, filling her nose with the smell of rock and water. She pulled her hood up and sheathed her dagger, rising from the edge of the fountain. Bethany had spent a hundred nights out in the rain, and she had no wish to repeat the experience today.

  Shawna was occupied, and she knew Dormael had left the Conclave to go into the city. Bethany had watched Allen and D’Jenn trot across the courtyard earlier, her new uncle carrying more weapons than Bethany could name. She took a deep breath, and decided to run by the dining hall and steal a sweet-bread cake.

  After that, she would do more exploring. She’d overheard a few of the Initiates talking about the tunnels underneath the Conclave, and that there was supposed to be a labyrinth full of magical items. Bethany had found a few ways into the Conclave basements already, but had neglected to venture into the darkened corridors. Today was a fine day to explore.

  Smiling, she scampered toward the dining hall, staying where most people never bothered to look.

  ***

  Dormael wasn’t sure how long his torture had gone on.

  Inera had taken him to the brink of death over and over again, and brought him back with that jar of swirling lights. During his lucid moments, he had the presence of mind to wonder what kind of magic she’d used on him, but soon his thoughts would again devolve into pain and despair. He knew that she was breaking him, conditioning his mind to believe that she was the only thing that could make the pain stop, could heal him and bring him back to health. The knowledge of it didn’t help—he could feel his resolve slipping away. Each time she came to him, crooning to him and placing light kisses over his body, he had to fight not to beg her for respite.

  If he didn’t get out of here soon, he would break.

  “I know your will is draining away, my love,” Inera said, swaying toward him with the jar. “Saying the words would be so easy. Serve me, Dormael. I will show you the ways to true power, and together we might be strong enough to challenge him!” She ran her fingers over his chest, tracing lines in the blood that was covering his naked skin. Her mouth was bloody from the kisses she’d been giving him, still blazing like cold fire over his chest.

  “Just kill me,” he uttered, forcing the words out through the blood in his mouth. “I’ll never serve you, Inera. If there’s anything left of you in there, just kill me.”

  “You’re wrong, Dormael. You will serve me. You will beg to serve me!”

  “No,” was all he could get out before he descended into a fit of shallow coughing.

  Inera hissed and turned back to the table, setting the jar down on its worn, wooden surface. She took a deep breath and sighed, bowing her head. Dormael could see the muscles in her shoulders working beneath her pale skin. Her back, too, was riddled with those strange scars.

  “This is taking too long,” she said, reaching into the jar and grasping one of those strange lights in her fist. “We’ll just have to do this the other way—the harder way. I’d hoped to have you by my side, Dormael, instead of at my feet.” She whirled toward him, stalking forward and slamming her hand against his mouth, forcing the light inside.

  Dormael swallowed on reflex. The fire ran through his muscles again, his stomach heaving as his body wove itself back together, like a scarf unraveling in reverse. It made Dormael want to empty his stomach every time, even though there had been nothing on his stomach since the firewine at the Headless Dancer.

  Inera moved to the wall before him, holding what looked like a piece of thin charcoal, and began scrawling on the stone. She drew a large circle on the wall, and began to scrawl glyphs around it. He didn’t recognize the working, though he knew how to construct all the types of the Greater and Lesser Circles.

  “If you won’t agree to help me, love, then I’ll just have to force you to do it,” she said, speaking through her teeth as she drew in angry, sharp strokes. “I had hoped that you would take your rightful place, but if you insist on being obstinate, I am forced to see you turned.”

  Turned?

  “What are you doing, Inera?” he asked, suspicion reaching cold fingers up his back.

  “There are ways, dear Dormael, to force you to my will. My master taught me many things, secrets beyond the ken of what you and yours are willing to learn. Old things, ancient spells of power. You will see, my love—you will see very soon.” Her eyes were alight with rage, her mouth pulled in a tight line across her pallid face.

  In a flash, he understood. He was suddenly filled with cold, overpowering dread. Something inside of him had suspected. The woman he’d once loved looked like a corpse. Jureus had shown no outer signs of necromancy—no scars, no pallid skin, no white hair—and he had been the first necromancer Dormael had seen up close. Jureus, though, had been a boy.

  Inera, he realized, must be higher in the necromantic pecking order. Her master must be the same shadowy figure that had spoken to Jureus in the camp. A new disgust welled up inside of him as he looked at her, imagining the woman he’d shared so many close nights with eating human flesh, relishing in abhorrence. He wanted to vomit all over again.

  “You’ve become one of them,” he said. “You’re working with the vilth.” The words had been mea
nt as an accusation, but they sounded more like an admission of defeat as they escaped his mouth. Some part of his heart—forgotten in the years since he’d seen her—ripped open again and started to bleed.

  “Yes,” she replied, her eyes showing no remorse.

  “You’ve eaten human flesh. Sacrificed people to your god.”

  Inera shook her head, favoring him with a silvery peal of chilling laughter.

  “That, and so much more, my love,” she smiled. “You’re about to see.”

  She pulled a little black dagger from her belt and slashed her palm, squeezing the gray flesh so that it started to bleed. Dormael watched in morbid fascination as she chanted, speaking a language he’d never heard, and began tossing her blood over the Circle on the wall. The men in the room shuffled away from her, trying to put distance between themselves and the wall. Inera threw her arms out, raising the dagger to the ceiling, and her blood began to smoke. It hissed and turned into black vapor, wisping away into nothing.

  Dormael panicked. He reached down into his being and pulled his Kai awake, trying to force it to bear against the magical pressure of the Circle that contained him. It was no use—summoning his magic was like trying to arm-wrestle with a giant. The Circle couldn’t be circumvented by battering against it with his power, which was the reason they were built in the first place. Dormael felt like an animal pacing in a cage, waiting for a predator to be locked inside with him.

  He tried to move on the chain, to swing far enough in any direction to gain purchase with his feet. If he could kick something across the sand that formed the Greater Circle, he could break it. He scrambled back and forth with his toes, trying to gain purchase on the stone. It was wet, filthy with his blood, and his feet only slipped back and forth as he struggled. The manacles dug into his wrists as his weight jerked back and forth. Try as he might, he could not reach the sand around him.

  Dormael’s heart beat against his ribs like it wanted to escape his chest. His eyes shot around the room, trying to find something that might help him, might get him out of this. Dormael had no idea what Inera—or the creature that now called itself Inera—had in store for him, but he knew he didn’t want to find out.

  Then, he saw something that made him freeze.

  The knife that had gone to work on Dormael’s body was lying on the wooden table, forgotten. The knife was glowing—or rather, his blood was glowing, giving off a rose-colored mist that wafted up from the blade like a strange, magical fog. In fact, there were splotches on the table that were emitting that same odd miasma. Everywhere his blood lay outside the Greater Circle, it was glowing. Inera’s men had their eyes locked onto her, fearing whatever she was about to unleash. No one, as of yet, had noticed his blood.

  The bastards don’t know where to look.

  It had to be D’Jenn. He would be following a blood trail, then. The crafty bastard might even be close. Dormael let himself feel an inkling of hope, then turned his gaze on Inera. He had to stall her at all costs, and give D’Jenn time to make it here.

  “Inera!”

  She ignored him.

  “Inera! Turn around and face me, you bitch!”

  She kept chanting, her back to him.

  “You can still walk away from this, leave the service of this vilth! It’s not too late!”

  She gave no reaction.

  Her chanting reached a crescendo as she spat angry, guttural words in the direction of the Circle on the wall. She tossed more blood on it—left, right, up, and down. It began to coalesce, sliding into the cracks between bricks, and became one undulating mass. The blood turned a deep black color, and the surface of the Circle became a mirror made of darkness.

  “Inera!” he shouted. “Inera, I still love you!”

  She paused, her spell caught at the apex, waiting like a headman’s axe at the zenith of its terrible swing. Inera turned her head toward him, keeping her body turned toward the Circle. Her eyes were sad, a pained grimace on her face. Dormael got the distinct impression that maybe, beneath the monster’s skin, there was something of the woman he’d known living in that body.

  “It’s too late, now,” she said. “Much too late.”

  This can’t happen this way!

  Dormael’s heart skipped a beat in disbelief. He pulled again at his Kai, trying desperately to wrench his magic out one last time. He raged and raged against the pressure of the Circle containing him, but it was a futile struggle, and he knew it.

  He was going to die.

  “Goodbye, Dormael. No matter what you think, I will always love you.”

  With that, Inera turned her head back to the blackened Circle, snarled another guttural word, and tossed another splotch of blood into the middle of the inky surface.

  There was a sound like nothing Dormael had ever heard, a strange sucking noise that tried to pull sound itself from his ears. The black fluid began to spin, and then the center of the Circle pulled away, as if it were opening into the Void itself. Everything in the room was pulled toward the portal, including Dormael. His toes were sucked toward that yawning abyss, the manacles once again biting into his wrists.

  Something reached a sinuous, wet hand from the black, grasping the edge of the Circle where it met the wall. Its skin was a grayish color, its fingers too long, disjointed and deformed. Its head appeared next—narrow and pointed in an odd, triangular fashion. Its eyes were glowing yellow embers along the sides of its face, though Dormael wasn’t sure if those were eyes at all. It didn’t have a mouth, but there was a hole at the tip of its face. A long, sinuous tongue whipped out and tasted the air as it slithered into the room, tendrils reaching out from the tongue like the feelers of some blind cave worm.

  Dormael would have screamed, but terror had frozen the sound in his throat.

  The thing—whatever it was—plopped onto the floor with a wet squelch. It was about the size of a large dog, though the similarities stopped there. It didn’t have any legs, but two sets of arms instead, as if some mad child had designed the thing from a nightmare. It’s abdomen looked boneless, like a stomach that the thing dragged behind it. It got its bearings, then began to pull itself along the floor with those twitching, disjointed arms, tongue whipping out as it came toward Dormael’s Circle.

  Dormael started to panic. A primal instinct screamed at him to run. He kicked and struggled, slipped and grunted and screamed, but he continued to hang on the chain like a worm on a hook.

  His magic wouldn’t answer his call.

  Then, he felt a familiar sensation. Something ancient, something alien circling his consciousness like a beast from the deep. He knew that feeling, that presence—he’d felt it before, after his fight with Jureus, when he’d nearly died. The ancient presence was somehow here, somehow reaching out for him. Dormael gritted his teeth and reached back, grasping to it like a lifeline.

  Time slowed—or his perception of it sped up, he wasn’t sure. The creature was moving as if the air was thick jelly, and the expressions of everyone around him were frozen. He felt the ancient thing in his mind again, sifting through his consciousness to find some way to communicate with him. Pain, concern, and fear all faded into the background.

  This is an abomination.

  Sounds like a fair description, Dormael replied. Humor, though, was lost on the alien presence.

  The woman summoned this thing from the depths?

  Yes, Dormael said. What is it? What is it going to do to me?

  It is called a Taker. It will crawl into your body and eat your insides, then wear your skin, the ancient presence said into his mind. Every time it spoke to him, Dormael’s vision vibrated as if he were tumbling down a hill, and his sight went wildly out of focus. He could feel its voice in his chest.

  That sounds disgusting, Dormael replied.

  I do not understand this word.

  Nevermind, Dormael said. Why are you here? How did you get here? Through that Gate?

  I do not know. My memories are shattered, my being sundered.

&nb
sp; That doesn’t sound pleasant. Again, though, the thing didn’t react to the levity.

  I can sense you. I was once two, but I am now one, and now there is you. How can I sense you? The thing sounded confused.

  Dormael wondered if he was supposed to have an answer for it. Part of him had begun to believe that he had made up the entire episode, or that it was a result of his Kai, as Lacelle had believed. Now, though, he wasn’t sure how he felt about being vindicated. The consequences of being correct might be more than he wanted to deal with.

  How am I supposed to know? Dormael wanted to shake his head. I don’t even know what you are. Do you know? He kept his eyes on the Taker, which was crawling toward him in tiny, eking increments. His skin crawled at the sight, somehow more terrible now that it moved slower.

  I do not know. My memory is fragmented. Part of me is gone. I was two, and now I am one. But now, there is you, the ancient presence said.

  I don’t think I’ll be here much longer. Not if that thing on the floor has its way, Dormael replied.

  If you die, what will happen?

  I don’t know, Dormael said. I’ve never died before—not all the way. The presence was quiet for a few moments, and Dormael could feel it pondering, trying to piece something together. Sharing his head with the thing was starting to give him a headache.

  I may be able to touch your world. I will try, it said.

  Time rushed back into place. The Taker squirmed, quivering toward Dormael faster than he thought it would be able to move. It reached the edge of the Greater Circle and stopped to gather its slimy, skinny arms beneath its body. It started to raise itself from the floor.

  Then, Dormael felt his head swim. His body tensed, as if he were falling from a great height, and his vision stretched, the far wall retreating from him as everything in his peripheral sight rushed closer. His mind reeled, and his vision blurred. Something moved from him, some strange, invisible force that felt wrong, like it didn’t belong in his world.

  The presence moved out from Dormael, exploding from his chest like an invisible wind. Dormael swung backwards on the chain, crying out as the manacles bit into his wrists all over again. The ancient presence slammed into the Taker, struggling against its advance with what meager energy it could muster. They fought for a bare moment, and Dormael could feel the struggle happening in his mind as he communed with the alien entity, but soon the Taker gained the upper hand. The alien presence had only limited ability to touch Dormael’s world, and its power was soon broken. It retreated back to whence it had come.