CHAPTER 10
She opened her eyes again and found out that nothing had changed.
She was in the very same situation she had only believed to be in a few moments before: hands and feet bound, sitting against the rock, with Grace on her side. The two substantial differences between the dream – if a dream it had been – and the reality were the absence of the cat girl and the fact that now her companion was aware of her and of her being awake.
«Don't move too much, he's keeping an eye on us», Grace whispered, turning in her direction just as much as needed. «I don't believe he can hear us from that far, but I'd rather not draw attention on us too much anyway».
«Can you free yourself?» she asked in a tone as low as hers.
«Not yet. Trying, anyway.»
«She said she would help us escape,» Amanda murmured to herself, «I hope she thought about the ropes as well».
«What are you talking about?»
Amanda turned to her. Indeed, she thought, it might have been better to inform her of the news, at least the most important parts. So she briefly told her what the girl had said while she was unconscious, hoping for the whole time that she wouldn't reply that she had hit her head too hard.
Grace actually just nodded for the whole time, adding some sporadic remark every now and then, like, "That's why I couldn't raise those bones, you can't revive the same dead twice", or "And they thought it was my fault, just for a change".
When Amanda told her about the fairy that the healer had wanted to capture, Grace interrupted her. «This explains why Lyana’s body was in my garden. Since she was dead, they must have thought of using her to put me out of their way before I could find out what they were doing. They ought to know I would, sooner or later.»
«The same Lyana I know?» Amanda asked.
«Yes. They must have lured her to the clinic with the excuse of offering her a job. Then they found out she wasn't that stupid. Too bad she wasn't that good in hand to hand combat either.»
«Look who's talking...» the other woman replied in a murmur.
«I am a surgeon, not a boxer. And unfortunately I'm not even an escape artist, these ropes are cutting through my hands and I can't slip out of them, or undo the knots.»
Amanda sighed. She had already tested the strength of the bounds holding her. If the cat didn't help them somehow, they would never leave that place. The wall behind them had several protrusions, all of them polished by the time though, none that could be used to cut the ropes.
«So», Grace started talking again, «now they have to find an immortal for their blood sacrifice. This should give us some time at least».
Amanda realized she hadn't completed her explanation. «No, I think they will sacrifice the two of us».
Grace contained a laughter. «No way! Being sacrificed would ruin the reputation of any necromancer».
«I don't think we're in the position to prevent it.»
«Indeed it's a matter of position. If I were free and standing up maybe I could do something.»
«What do you mean?»
«This cave is ancient. There have been many deaths in here in the past.»
«That doesn't sound reassuring to me.»
«It wasn't supposed to. But for a necromancer such a place is a center of power, it's like having an army at hand, all you got to do is call it forth.»
«What for? You saw what happens to your army if it gets close to the obelisk.»
«Ah, never mind that! Those were zombies, tricks for novices. No, there's better in here, it all takes having enough power to call it.»
«And you do?»
«Probably not. Not without a sacrifice. That obelisk isn't the only one needing blood. And anyway it's useless, I'd have to set myself free first.»
«Maybe...» Amanda tried to say, but she was distracted by something brushing her hands. She didn't need to look to recognize the feeling of cat fur tickling her skin. Finally she had come.
Suddenly she felt words form in her mind, echoing like distant shouts.
«Portal»
«Open»
«Go»
Obviously, being close to the obelisk wasn't enough to allow its guardian to communicate directly and in an understandable way with someone who wasn't sleeping, or unconscious. Nonetheless those brief sentences were far more than the gestures she had had to use in front of her house.
The paw of the cat slipped between her wrists. She felt something brush against the ropes and suddenly they gave way, while blood started painfully running again in those places where the pressure had hindered it so far.
A whisper from Grace made her stop for a while before bringing her hands forward and starting to untie her ankles. «Wait, if he sees us we won't have time to set ourselves free before they stop us again».
She stood motionless, not really convinced.
«What should we do then, jump on both feet until we reach the portal?» she whispered back.
«No, we'll put an end to all this here and now», the necromancer replied, noticing that meanwhile the cat had approached her and was about to cut her ropes. She pulled her hands sideways and the claw cut through the skin of her wrist instead, squirting blood. The cat stood, astonished, not sure about how much that had been voluntary, then tried again more carefully, and this time Grace did nothing to hinder it. As soon as her wrists were free, she started massaging them, staining her hands with blood as if it were a normal thing to do.
Exploiting the fact that Amanda was in front of her in the line of sight of the healer, she moved her hands to her bosom. Amanda flinched when she saw them.
«What...?»
«Shhh! Silence!» she interrupted, preventing her from finishing the question. «Now I will show you a true necromancer at work».
Blood was still flowing from her wrist, dripping on her suit and mingling in the black of the fabric. The air around her seemed to be charged when she started murmuring ancient words of power and her mind expanded outwards, searching for what she knew had to be there, somewhere, waiting to be awakened.
Amanda felt the rock tremble under her. It took her some time to understand that it wasn't actually vibrating, and that what she felt was more like a subterranean current, an energy river flowing, looking for relief. She wasn't the only one to feel it.
Dozens of heads turned towards them, as if hearing an inaudible call.
«What are you doing?» the only one of the people there who was able to use his vocal chords – as well as his free will, at least from his point of view – shouted. No one cared to give him an answer.
«Stop them!» he then added for his mindless slaves, who once again started moving in unison towards the two women.
Amanda frantically tried to untie her ankles.
«Whatever you're doing, hurry!» she said.
«I... can't...», Grace struggled to reply, as if every single word required a tremendous effort. «Not... enough... power...»
Amanda interrupted her attempt. The knots were too tight, she would never be able to undo them before they reached her. A thought crossed her mind. She didn't know if it would do any good, but after all she had nothing to lose trying. If her blood had to be shed, at least let that be for a righteous cause, not for freeing a demon from his secular prison.
«Take my blood, if it can help!» she almost screamed to the necromancer.
«It can», was the dry answer she received before something invisible and sharp, like a lash of pure energy, neatly cut her wrist. She felt no pain, she just saw her skin split open and the blood start flowing out, then Grace seized her wrist with her hands, dipping them in her life fluid. Even though it was not the right time at all for that, she couldn't help thinking about how many diseases could be passed on like that. Then she had no time to think about anything more, because the puppets of the healer were on them.
Laying on her back, her arm kept backward in an unnatural position since Grace didn't seem willing to let go, she kicked with both feet, trying to keep that people at ba
y, hitting some of them before a couple could grasp her legs and hold them still, starting to pull her.
She tried to wriggle free, she was about to forcefully take her arm back from the hands of the other woman, so to be able to try and use at least that one to defend herself, but she froze when suddenly everything around her seemed to stop for a second.
An icy current coming out of nowhere blew on her, making her shiver and, it seemed, doing the same to the people holding there, as they stopped as if unsure about what to do next.
They had no time to make up their minds about that.
Again the whole cave seemed to shake and, from the depth of the rock, whitish protrusions started to rise, like weird mushrooms growing at an incredibly fast pace. But they were not mushrooms, they were bones, the huger Amanda had ever seen.
They surfaced like wrecks from the depths of the sea, then they raised and grouped together, forming a coherent shape. If Amanda had ever had the chance to see a dragon in its true shape, she knew it would have looked exactly like the thing that now stood in front of her, at the entrance of the tunnel in which she and Grace were. Or at least it would if someone had carefully and expertly removed all traces of flesh, skin and muscles from its body, leaving only the skeleton.
She didn't wonder how a skeleton could even move without anything keeping bones together or allowing them to coordinate their movements. Maybe she would have, hadn't she been too busy ducking to avoid being hit by a series of vertebrae that once might have been a tail, and that now were moving in the corridor, sweeping away anything they hit.
Most of her fellow townsfolk who had been sent there to seize her where flung along the tunnel or the cave as if they had been weightless. Other avoided the tail of the undead monster by sheer luck, not really trying to, and kept trying to hold her still. They didn't have enough self-consciousness to seek shelter, and their master didn't seem to be in the right mood to issue new orders, busy as he was in trying to hide somewhere, lest the dragon could reach him.
After a second, Amanda saw the bony tail slip away from the tunnel as its owner leaped forward. When it reached the well it stopped, as if an invisible force had grabbed it and tried to snatch the life from those bones. Then the beast seemed to shake it away and went over the well in a single leap. If it hadn't been completely impossible, Amanda would have sworn that it had been flying, sustained by wings who couldn't even sustain an infinitely smaller creature, being nothing but bones.
The head of the dragon snapped forward to the healer, who was in a defensive stance not unlike the one Grace had used before, and much less useful. Long-time dead jaws snapped shut, teeth that hadn't done their job for hundreds of years did it for one last time, tearing the body of the unfortunate man in two.
The dragon raised its head as if to swallow the morsel, which slid down its palate and fell down, there being no throat along which to go, then rolled to the edge of the well and finally fell into it.
In the very moment the man had ceased living, the eyes of all Tejarak citizens there had shone of a new light, as their clouded minds were set free of the dark influence that had brought them there night after night.
Their eyes were full of confusion, unable to understand where they were, or why they were there.
Amanda, who meanwhile had been completely untied by her feline friend, searched the crowd for a face, and when she found it she reached it in a hurry.
«Shim! Listen! Do you understand me?»
The dwarf looked up at her in amazement. «Not if you speak so fast. What's happening? What's this place?»
«Listen to me, I'll explain later... now you have to bring these people away, quickly. There's a portal at the end of that corridor.»
Shim turned another unsure look at her, saw the resolution in her eyes and understood it was not the time for questions.
«OK, everyone listen!» he shouted, his voice amplified by the cave itself. «I am detective Stonehand of the Magic Control Department, now keep calm and come this way, everything is going to be fine».
The first to react where the police officers mixed in the crowd. They were as confused as anyone else, but they were trained to obey their superiors without too many questions, especially when the orders were issued in such an hurried tone.
Soon the crowd started to be lead to the portal, while some officers took care of helping those who were still in the well.
Shim turned to Amanda again. «You're bleeding», he said looking at her arm.
«Later Shim, later», was the only answer he got as she walked away to reach and pull Grace away from the crowd.
«Are you OK?» she asked, tying an handkerchief as well as she could around her wrist. Actually the cut wasn't deep and the blood had almost stopped flowing out already, but she wanted to be sure.
«Almost. Don't do that, I'll need more.»
«It's over, Grace!»
«No. Not yet. I have to restrain that... thing... until everyone has left, then I'll have it tear the ceiling of the cave down... that thing must be buried once and for all.»
«She's right», a voice whispered in her head. A voice she was starting to find familiar.
«He died here», said the voice, still forming short sentences, the best she could do.
«The obelisk.»
«Trapped.»
«Again.»
«But it must.»
«Buried.»
«Forever.»
«I believe», Amanda said, «that the cat is telling me that the obelisk trapped the demon again because the body he was bound to died here, and that it must be buried again».
«Hadn't I already said that?» Grace grunted, back to her usual spiteful tone.
Amanda looked at her.
She still didn't like that woman.
But she was going to stay and help her till the end.
THE AUTHOR
Carmelo Massimo Tidona, employee, writer and translator in his spare time, has been reading and writing since as long as he can remember. Some of his short stories have been published in various anthologies.
For 0111edizioni Carmelo Massimo Tidona published:
“Trittico Oscuro”, collection of urban fantasy tales (2009, Italian).
“Riflessi d’Ombra”, urban fantasy novel (2009, Italian)
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