Ghostfire
Page 14
His every muscle tensed as he dropped into a battle stance. He stared at the ghostfire for a long moment and saw no further sign of that face. The Asura wondered for a moment if he had imagined it, but knew he had not. What it meant, he did not know. But he was even more cautious as he continued down those spiral stairs. His flesh tingled, every nerve ending ready to react to an attack.
Ivar passed beneath two other ghostfire lamps before coming to the bottom of the stairs, where a tall wooden door blocked further progress. There was a sphere of ghostfire on either side of the door. He eyed each globe carefully, wondering what magic had allowed that strange observer to peer out at him before. But he saw nothing out of the ordinary.
He pushed the door open.
As he did, a dozen spheres floating around the room blossomed into light, illuminating a small chamber that reminded him instantly of Timothy’s workshop. There were shelves and benches and long worktables. Yet as Ivar blinked his eyes against the brightness of the ghostfire, he saw that the instruments arrayed throughout the chamber were those of magic, not mechanical invention. On the shelves were jars of herbs, the dried skulls and organs of animals, rolled parchments and grimoires, and strange artifacts that Ivar was sure ought to have been in the archive room high in the fortress, where the Grandmaster of the Order was supposed to store such things. The Oracle of Vijaya was there, along with myriad talismans and objects of power.
This was a wizard’s laboratory. Yet the Wizards of Old had long since died out, and only the mages that had descended from them remained. Practicing magic in such secrecy was outlawed by the Parliament of Mages. Guilds often kept their magical research, practices, and rituals to themselves, but within each Order, secrecy was not allowed. In this way, the Parliament hoped to prevent the rise of renegades who practiced the darkest magic.
Ivar took a step backward. His discovery of the room was enough. Someone in SkyHaven was practicing magic in secret—likely black sorcery that would cause the culprit to be turned over to the constabulary and imprisoned in Abaddon.
He paused. With all of the clutter in the wizard’s laboratory, he had only just noticed the strange metal frames on the table. Frowning, the Asura slipped into the chamber and went to the table, picking up one of the frames. It was the base of a ghostfire lamp.
The metal was cold to the touch. Far colder than it ought to have been, given the temperature in the chamber. Holding that metal lamp base in his hand, he glanced around once more. Another table, this one shoved into a shadowy corner, drew his attention.
The Asura sniffed the air, and a ripple of alarm went through him. Death. He had smelled it before, but now the scent was stronger. Ivar strode to the table in the corner and paused there, looking with horror upon the remains of an enormous lizard whose body had been dissected upon the wood. Other animals there were as well, dead and withered things. And against the wall, at the table’s edge, a human head.
Ivar’s nostrils flared. He glanced round once more, looking at the open door and at the spheres of ghostfire. Again he felt the sensation of being observed, of eyes upon him. The head was barely more than a skull, only dry skin pulled tight over bone, and a few wisps of hair. But he was sure that this man—if indeed it had been a man—had been experimented upon just as surely as the lizard and other dead animals upon the table.
Horrifying. And yet… and yet… the scent of death was not only here in this chamber, but elsewhere as well. Ivar frowned. Elsewhere. Farther below, to be precise.
Only then did he see the opening in the wall at the back of the chamber. It was to one side, cut into the stone so that with the brightness of the light, it would seem only a shadow. Instead, it was a passage.
Ivar paused only a moment. He ought to have gone back, he knew, and told Cassandra. But the scent of death and the presence of that decapitated head drew him on. He wanted to know the identity of the monster who had used this chamber as his magical laboratory. Careful to maintain the hue of his skin, to blend with his surroundings as best he could, Ivar moved to that passage and peered within.
Stairs.
He started downward, the wall curving once more, but after only two dozen steps, he came to a chamber so vast, it gave him pause. There was a strong draft within, cold air that slid over his skin as though it might seize him at any moment. This room must have taken up all of the available space in the base of the island, so that the outer, earthen wall of SkyHaven’s undercarriage was little more than a hollow shell.
Ivar stepped inside.
There must have been a thousand ghostfire spheres, and hundreds of lamps as well, bolted to the walls all around that vast chamber. They flared to life, and Ivar brought up both hands to cover his eyes, so bright was their blaze. For a moment his control over his skin lapsed, his concentration slipping, and he felt the sensation of heat that always accompanied a shift in the hue of his flesh. The markings of his tribe appeared on his skin in dark black, controlled by his power over his flesh but on so deeply a subconscious level that no distraction could remove them.
Eyes narrowed, he peeked out from beneath his hands, blinking away the glare.
There were bodies strewn across the floor.
Ivar rushed to the nearest mage, a woman who wore the vestments of the Order of Molochai. Her skin was dry, almost scaly—as though all of the moisture had been drained from her. He felt for her pulse but knew what he would find. Her flesh was cold.
The mage was dead.
They were all dead.
How many mages had been reported missing in Arcanum in recent months? Ivar felt certain he had found them. The stench of so much death ought to have been overpowering, and yet instead there seemed to be only that unsettling odor he had caught before, an unsettling aroma like that of damp, moldy paper.
He withdrew slowly from the corpse, hot beneath the glare of so many ghostfire flames. Time to return to the halls of SkyHaven above, to find Cassandra and reveal to her the horrid secrets that lay below.
Ivar turned back the way he had come.
In the darkness of the stairwell, just outside the entrance to the vast chamber, someone waited, cloaked in shadows.
A man’s voice echoed through the room. “Filthy savage.”
The corridors of the Xerxis echoed with the thunderous footfalls of Lord Romulus. The Grandmaster had ridden with speed gifted by magic into the heart of the city of Arcanum, and dismounted his enormous horse in the shadow of the spire of the Xerxis, the headquarters of the Parliament of Mages. Breathing heavily, snorting much like his horse, he stormed the doors of the Xerxis. It was well that the sentries had swung the doors open before him, for the massive mage would have battered them down otherwise.
The gigantic Lord Romulus had to stoop slightly to walk through the arched doorways of the Xerxis, and even still the horns of his iron helmet scraped the frames as he passed through. The fur that was slung across his back flapped behind him as he hurried along a corridor toward the quarters of Alethea Borgia, the Voice of Parliament.
“Lord Romulus, please,” called a sentry who had given chase from the moment he had entered the complex. He was a young mage with unpleasant features that made him seem rough, but a manner that belied the grimness of his face. He looked like a warrior, but whimpered like a coward.
“My Lord, Grandmaster or not, I cannot allow you to go any farther into the Xerxis without an appointment. You’re entering the residential wing and—”
Romulus stopped so suddenly, the ugly man collided with his back. He rounded on the sentry, glowering down at him. He stood at least half again as high as the whining guard.
“My business is urgent enough, youngster, that I might break you with my bare hands if you delay me a moment longer.”
The sentry’s lip actually quivered. Lord Romulus almost shattered some of his bones for that alone.
“Yes, My Lord, it’s only that no one is allowed—”
“There is too much at stake here for me to wait for an invitation.”
At the top he looked first left, and then right. There were doors in either direction, the quarters of some of the Parliamentary ministers. But only one of those doors was guarded by a quartet of combat mages from the Order of Tantrus, of which Alethea Borgia was Grandmaster. She was the wisest woman Romulus had ever met, and the highest authority in Parliament—the highest authority on all of Terra.
He turned right and started down the corridor toward the Tantric guards. The sentries began to shout at one another, all of them turning toward him with their hands up, magic sparking and spiraling around them. Their hands came up. Three of them formed weapons from pure magical energy, a sword and a spear. The fourth wore a black veil over her face, and now she tore it away. Where her eyes ought to have been, dark purple magic churned and danced like flames.
It was this woman, with the magic pouring from her eyes, who stepped past the others and held up a hand to stop him.
“Halt!” she snapped.
“I shall not,” thundered Romulus, though he did pause ten feet away from them, glaring down upon them. “I am Grandmaster of the Legion Nocturne and I demand an audience with the Voice of Parliament. A crisis has arisen and she must learn of it immediately!”
The Tantric mages moved to form a half circle around him. The mage with the purple flames burning in her eyes remained in front of Alethea Borgia’s door.
“You are known to us, Lord Romulus,” the woman declared, her voice carrying along the corridor, fingers of purple fire emerging from her eyes like tentacles… or like serpents, swaying cautiously, waiting to attack. “But for the safety of the Voice, no one may enter her personal chambers without an appointment. You must follow the same rules as any other mage. Even a Grandmaster must do this. Others know this, and follow this protocol.”
Fury raged in Romulus’s heart, laced with suspicion. “Others? What others?”
The fire-eyed mage frowned. “It is hardly your place to—”
From within the chambers of the Voice there came a scream. The four Tantric mages spun and stared at the door.
“Blast you!” Lord Romulus roared. “Who is in there with her?”
The purple magic that snaked from her eyes receded to embers as she turned to him again. “Grandmaster Maddox of the Order of—”
“Out of my way!” Romulus bellowed.
As he shoved them aside, none of the sentries fought him. Magic roiled around his right hand as he clutched it into a fist, crimson light spiffing out of his palm and enveloping his entire hand. The door would be sealed with magic. But Romulus had the strength in his muscle and bone of three men, and the magic of three mages, at least when it came to the sorcery of brute force. He brought his fist down like a hammer, streamers of red energy spiffing off of it, and the door exploded inward, shattering into several pieces as it crashed to the floor.
Romulus had always thought Alethea Borgia was a beautiful woman, despite her advancing age. She was slender and silver-haired and had perfectly sculpted features.
Now, though, the Voice lay crumpled on the floor of her quarters, eyelids fluttering as she struggled to remain conscious. Her nose was broken, blood streaming from both nostrils, and she gagged loudly, and her hands batted the air as she tried to break the tendrils of night-black magic that encircled her throat, strangling her.
Silhouetted in the sunlight that spilled in through the tall, arched windows across the room, Leander Maddox stood grinning like a madman. When the door crashed inward and he saw Romulus and the Tantric combat mages rush in, he laughed. His face was utterly pale, and his eyes were as black as the ebony magic that he wielded in both hands.
And still, though they had caught him in the act of murder, he laughed.
Romulus roared. His hands swept up and, even as they did, a spell was upon his lips. Uttering words of a language spoken only in the deep forest by the Legion Nocturne, he crafted a battle-ax of pure magic, and minor spells dripped off of it like venom. The comparison was accurate. Its blade would poison anyone it cut.
Maddox looked sickly, even weak, but there was no weakness in that laugh, or in the magic that erupted from him like blood from a mortal wound.
“Leave her be!” Lord Romulus shouted.
With both hands above his head, he threw the ax. It turned end over end, spinning toward Maddox’s face, toward those pitch-black eyes. At the last moment, Leander’s head turned at an impossible angle and he grinned. Shimmering black light spread from his eyes and into a shield. The ax struck that magical defense, and was deflected.
“No!” Romulus barked, and he reached out a hand to summon the ax back to him.
“I think not,” Maddox said.
But Lord Romulus knew Leander Maddox. The voice that issued from his mouth was not that of the man he knew, not that of the professor he had once respected. It was a voice that chilled him to the bone.
Maddox raised both hands. The tendrils that had been strangling Alethea dissipated into a dark mist, and then were gone altogether. The Tantric mage whose eyes were purple fire rushed past Romulus, shouting a spell that caused the air in the room to ripple with the power that was about to be unleashed.
The ax Lord Romulus had wrought rose into the air, controlled now by Leander Maddox, and flew at her. It struck her in the chest and she dropped, dead, to the floor.
Romulus screamed and ran at Maddox, forgetting about magic entirely now. The massive mage, whose size dwarfed even the burly Leander, curled his huge hands into devastating fists.
Maddox turned as night-black as the magic he had wielded, and then dissolved into mist. In a moment he was gone, as though he had never been there, and Lord Romulus was left with nothing to strike but the air.
Behind him he heard Alethea Borgia coughing, trying to speak. The Voice would live. He had arrived in time, or so it seemed. But the Grandmaster of the Legion Nocturne would not rest until Leander Maddox was dead.
Alastor hissed, baring its fangs as it leaped at Timothy. In that moment, the boy was more terrified and more confused than he had ever been in his life. Alastor had been Nicodemus’s familiar, and when the Grandmaster had been destroyed, the cat had disappeared. Run off. But, somehow, Nicodemus—his soul, at least—was inside the cat, warping it, transforming it into a monster.
The creature slashed the air with its claws as it jumped up at Timothy, who was still seated atop his horse. The boy stopped breathing. Overwhelmed, he could not think to defend himself. He only stared, eyes wide, as those claws sliced down toward his face.
“Cawwww! Cawwww!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Timothy saw a swatch of darkness blotting out the sunlight. He heard the heavy flap of wings beating the air. The rook cawed loudly again, and long, almost like a war cry, and darted down from the trees above to come between the boy and the monstrous cat-creature.
The bird spread his wings wide, slowing as he struck the cat-creature. The rook raked his talons across Alastor’s hideous face, dragging gory furrows into the cat-creature’s flesh. The monster shrieked in pain and arched its back, twisting away from the attacking bird and dropping to all fours on the forest floor.
“Edgar!” Timothy cried happily. He did not know how his familiar had found him, but was thrilled to see the rook again.
“Back off from the kid, kitten, or I rip your eyeballs out!” Edgar said, and he circled around Timothy and then began to dive at the creature again.
The creature—half Alastor and half Nicodemus—hissed and sat up on its hind legs, claws up and ready to fight the bird.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Timothy said. He snapped the reins on his horse and the steed trotted forward. The fear that he had felt moments before drove the boy onward. His heart
pounded and he knew he never wanted to be that afraid, never wanted to be that close to death again. He kicked the horse’s flanks, intending to trample the cat creature beneath the animal’s hooves. The thing was a freak of nature. An abomination …
Then he heard those words in his mind: Freak. Abomination. And he remembered them being used to describe him. Timothy pulled up on the reins as the cat creature’s eyes widened and it realized it was about to be pummeled and broken beneath the horse’s hooves. In that instant of hesitation, with those bloody scratches down its face, it took the opportunity to dart into the woods and disappear into the trees.
“Yeah!” Edgar cawed, flapping his wings, flying higher to peer into the woods in case it should double back. “You should run. And keep running, kitten, or I’ll have your whiskers!”
But Timothy was no longer worried about Nicodemus. The cat-creature was gone. Edgar would guard against its return. The boy pulled up the reins again and turned the horse to see Caiaphas scrambling to his feet. Constable Grimshaw had attacked him, and the navigator’s horse had bolted. Caiaphas had nowhere to run.
Grimshaw’s clothes were torn and filthy and his hair was matted. His eyes were insane. But the Constable smoothed his mustache in that familiar way and grinned as he strode toward Caiaphas. Timothy could not see the navigation mage’s features beneath his veil, but his eyes alone revealed his terror.
“Where will you go, fool?” Grimshaw snarled.
The last time they had clashed, Timothy had watched in horror as Verlis had bitten Grimshaw’s arm off. But whatever black magic had wrought the Constable, a new arm was even more horrifying. The solid magic that had replaced his arm pulsed pink and white now, changing shape. What had been a tentacle now at least looked like an arm. Grimshaw thrust out a hand, and that magical arm erupted in pink-white lightning, a dozen bolts of sizzling power that spread out into a kind of cage that dropped down over Caiaphas. Where it struck the navigator’s skin, it burned him, and Caiaphas shouted in pain and fell to his knees again.