by IGMS
Ash sheathed his sword. He refused to be party to any more killing. He knelt beside Gaunt. Closing his eyes he pressed a coin into the dead man's palm and sheathed his blade. "May you find beauty, my friend," Ash said.
Then he heard Levant's wretched scream of: "No!"
Ash ran into the dark, shouting his friend's name again and again.
Levant's answering shouts never sounded any closer.
"Gaunt is dead!" Ash threw the truth at the darkness.
"Kinslayer claimed Efrem," Levant shouted back. His voice sounded wrong, shorn of certainty. "It tasted a true brother's blood."
And so seven were five, and their enemy had yet to show his hand. That, more than anything, terrified Ash.
Blaine's voice called: "Raz is dead, damn him to a thousand hells, he came at me out of the dark! There was nothing I could -- no, no . . . Mornar, it's me!" The words were cut-off by a blood-curdling scream followed by the anguished sobs of understanding as Tomas Mornar stood over the corpse of Blaine, the five survivors reduced to three with cruel efficiency.
"Where are you, Mornar?" Ash called. "What do you see?"
"I . . . I didn't know. How could I have known?"
"Where are you. Talk to me, Mornar."
"I don't know . . . I followed a light. I can hear the sea. I couldn't hear it before. I couldn't hear anything."
"The enchantment is broken," Ash said. "Naru was right, there is evil in this place. You can feel it in the air, even with the darkness banished. Evil strong enough to turn friend against friend as simply as this." Ash shook his head even though the others could not see the gesture. "We have to root it out. End it. We owe it to Blaine, Gaunt, Raz and Efrem We have to walk out of here alive to see that their lives are written into the legends; that they don't end four dead men among thousands simply because we failed."
"Quite a stirring speech, Ash," Levant said, his voice thick with bitterness. Give the man an enemy he could see and strike down with his sword and Levant was deadly. Surround him with ghosts and night whispers and he became vulnerable. His natural superstitiousness began with the curse on his blade, but they did not end there. "We can't bring our comrades back, but we can find this thing and kill it. And after it is dead we walk out of this gods-forsaken place and tell their story. Now, walk toward my voice."
Of all things Levant began to sing.
His voice was coarse, but it suited the mournful ballad he chose. The melody was a soldier's farewell to his comrades. Ash followed the anguish of Levant's song until he emerged onto a balcony overlooking a small courtyard. Levant sat on the side of a fountain, its basin filled with the flotsam and jetsam of the sea. He saw Mornar stepping out of the shadows beneath a similar balcony on the far side of the courtyard. His friend looked like the very embodiment of Death itself with Blaine's blood staining his face. The blood was thick around his mouth, as though -- and Ash winced at the thought -- he had torn his swordbrother's throat out with his bare teeth.
Levant looked up to where Ash stood on the balcony, his sword resting across his knee just as it had a few hours earlier when Ash sought him out in the city. The only difference he could see, even down to the warrior's expression, was the coating of blood on the silver blade. Levant turned the blade over and over again as he sang. Efrem Kerr was sprawled at his feet. Efrem's wounds were terrible; six deep cuts that exploited every weakness in his amour and combined to open him up like a cuttlefish prized out of its shell. A single red smear, like a tear, stained Levant's cheek. He fell silent and stood, tossing the Kinslayer up to the balcony where Ash stood. It landed near Ash's feet.
"I won't touch the damn blade again," Levant said, staring at it. "Take it, it's yours."
"What are you talking about?"
"I didn't choose the sword, it chose me, just as it has chosen you. In time it will turn on me, just as it did my father. I will not hide from my fate. Pick it up, and let us find this thing and be done with it."
Ash knelt, grasping the Kinslayer's hilt. He felt none of the repugnant thrill he had felt the first time he handled the blade. Indeed, it felt right in his hand. It thrilled at the taste of blood. Without thinking, he handed his own, inferior blade, to Levant.
"There is no curse, you know that, don't you, Levant?"
"Throw your pot-sticker down to me unless you want me to walk unarmed into the belly of the beast. I grow weary of the stench of the sea and all that damned salt."
"I would never raise a hand against you."
"Because I would slice it off, I know." Levant smiled the smile of a man who knew he was going to die.
There was nothing majestic about the citadel. The stonework was so pitted and worn it held together only because of the sea salt that had calcified in the wounded stone-like mortar. In places it wept the black oil of ruptured seaweed, in other places it was limned green by algae or speckled white by limpet shells. Ash clung to the iron balcony rail which had flaked and burned a deep red now. Traces of what once must have been a fabulous mosaic lingered on the tiles of the courtyard, but the images had faded, the colors bleeding together where they hadn't washed out completely. A hermit crab scuttled sideways across the ruined face of one of yesterday's heroes.
It took Ash a few minutes to find a way down from the balcony to the courtyard. As he wandered the wretched corridors of one of the lower spires he tried again to reach the mind of the raveller, or that part of his own mind where he heard the raveller's voice.
This thing turned us on ourselves, Naru. Levant cut down Kerr, Mornar did Blaine, who had already killed Raz. My blade felled Gaunt. Seven cut down to three in minutes through cheap tricks. And now I wield the Kinslayer. This is a black day.
If he heard, Ashrak Naru had no answer. Ash was alone. Alone with the dead, alone with the survivors, alone with the damned hermit crab scuttling across the floor without a care in the world. Frustration and anger welled up inside him.
Then the voice came, and the worst of it was that it knew him: Come to me, Jayant Ash. I hunger to taste the air of freedom, to stand once more under the dawn sky. Come to me. Know me like I know you.
An image flared in Ash's mind's eye: a casket fashioned of bone in a dank chamber. The marrow had completely eroded through in places so that the brittle casing crumbled to reveal the mummified remains of the corpse within.
Ash looked down at the sword he clutched too tightly in his hand.
"Is that you?" Ash said, his voice echoing dully in his ears. He waited, but there was no answer. Walking down a narrow flight of stairs he dragged his fingers across the wall, then touched them to his lips without thinking. He tasted the thick layer of salt that had accumulated on them. Was it poison? Was it possible that something he had come into contact with, like the salt liming the walls, was responsible for these hallucinations? The doubt growing within him was insidious, undermining every thought he had.
Ash reached out for the wall, needing its steadying influence. The image of the bone casket flashed across his mind's eye again as he did. He pulled away from the wall as though stung. Breaking contact with the stone was enough to banish the unwanted vision.
Tentatively he reached out again. Braced for the vision this time, he tried to glean what he could from it. Fragmentary details. Walls bearing the subtle remains of a bas-relief, its frieze too decayed to decipher. Shadows clinging to it, appearing to move beneath his scrutiny. Only they weren't shadows, he realized. A thick oleaginous shape oozed over the lid of the bone casket. The impression of pressure he felt, the weight bearing down on him, made him think the bone casket was down, still below the surface of the sea, not up amid the gods.
Release me.
"Get out of my head," Jayant Ash shook his head violently, breaking contact with the stone and its trace memories. He staggered down the rest of the worn-down stairs and along the short passage into the courtyard.
Levant looked at the bloody sword in Ash's hand, a peculiar, almost predatory expression in his dull eyes. His lips curled into the p
arody of a smile as he raised his hand in greeting.
"It's here! Whatever it is, it's in the very fabric of the citadel itself! Get up off that fountain, Levant!"
"Release me, Ash," the strange young man said, and toppled sideways.
"We cannot make any direct physical contact with the stones. Nothing," Ash told Mornar as the pair of them helped a distressed Levant stand. The young swordsman was unsteady on his feet, all color blanched from his fine-boned face. He tried to reach down for his sword, but almost pitched forward onto his face. "The evil of this place lives on in the stones."
"A raveller?"
"Or his essence, perhaps, sealed away in death into the structure, awaiting release. Naru told me they called it the City of Blazeus, but now I am not so sure Blazeus was a man. More like something so far removed from humanity that his enemies not only slew him, they sank his entire citadel in the hopes that his grave would never be found."
Mornar licked is lips and looked from Ash to Levant and back again. "And he's been waiting all these years for fools like us to come release him?" He shook his head. "Why now? You saw the heavens raining silver fire, you felt the earth buck and writhe. Are we puppets in some universal game? Is that it? I'll never forget how easily we turned on one and other."
Mornar wiped his fingers across his mouth. It was a subconscious gesture; the implications of their enemy's nature obviously unmanned him. He stared at the puddles spotting the courtyard's ruined mosaic, his eyes darting from one to the next as though something might slither out of them. Another hermit crab scuttled across the ground, disinterested in the three men.
"I have no liking for this, Ash. Even the elements around us, the stone, the earth, and the stagnant water, cannot be trusted. We ought to leave right now. Let Gerant raze this place. Let him rain naphtha and fire down from the sky. See how this Blazeus deals with a second death."
"Spoken like a true warrior," Levant said sarcastically.
Ash turned to look at him, unsure whether the words had been Levant's or a mocking taunt from the thing they sought to kill.
"What do you suggest?" Mornar said, bitterness creeping into his tone. He kicked out at the hermit crab in frustration, sending the creature tumbling across the uneven stones. It came to rest on its back, pincers scrambling in the air as it struggled to right itself.
"That we do what we came here to do, of course," Levant said. His legs buckled under his own weight as he tried to stand. Ash reached out to steady him, then wondered if it were safe to touch him and pulled back. Levant turned to him, pity in his eyes. "How do you live with such fear, Ash?" He shook his head. "There is nothing in me save anger at our brothers' deaths."
Ash had no answer. He offered his shoulder for Levant to lean on, but his swordbrother shook him off.
"What do you remember from when the thing was inside your head?" Ash asked a moment later.
"Nothing," Levant said, a little too forcefully for Ash's liking.
"Did it speak to you?"
"I said there was nothing. Now let's go find this bone casket and slay the beast once and for all."
And Ash understood: Levant was scared. Ash had never seen his friend scared before, not so long as he bore the Kinslayer to guarantee his immortality. He could only imagine what was going on in Levant's head now that the first aspect of the blade's curse had come true.
Ash was also worried. He hadn't mentioned the casket or anything else he experienced during his vision, yet Levant had known about it, right down to the material of the coffin. Which could mean only one thing: Levant had shared his vision. The voice had spoken to him just as it had spoken to Ash.
Had Levant succumbed? Was he, even now, a shell urging them on to their deaths to fulfill the base desires of his new master?
Or was he simply chasing his own death?
A movement in the shadows caught Ash's eye. He turned, trying to see what wasn't there.
"Fear has you jumping at nothing," Levant mocked, slamming his new blade into the Kinslayer's empty sheath. He turned slowly in a full circle, arms out wide and yelled "Time to die!" into the congregation of shadows that clung to the courtyard. The sheer power of his words carried up and down every passageway and into every chamber of the crumbling citadel. Listening to them, Ash did not know whether they were a promise, a threat, or a prediction.
The crimson light of dawn greeted the three men as they stepped out from beneath the cover of the broken roof. It was an anomaly of the collapse. Their search for the casket had taken them down four defensive stairwells, deep into the belly of the citadel, below the line of the water -- and yet the walls held back the sea and what should have been the roof opened up to the sky.
The light lay like blood on the floor's shattered mosaic. So much of the citadel was damaged, and not just by the tidal forces of the sea. It was easy to picture righteous marauders plundering the place, breaking anything of even remote beauty for the sheer joy of destruction.
"So much hate," Ash said. He could feel it in the air. The acrid tang of burning still seemed to linger. But could something as basic as fire ever cleanse these tainted walls? The Kinslayer thrilled to it; he could feel the intense need of the steel. It thirsted for blood.
"Let's get this done," Levant said again. Levant had grown stronger the deeper they had ventured. Ash also noticed the surety with which he walked, as though the way were all too familiar to him. Levant offered a wry grin, and for a moment he was undeniably his old self. But it was a fleeting moment. A thin veil of shadow ghosted across his face, and any trace of levity was gone. His gaze strayed to the hilt of the Kinslayer, lingering.
"Can you feel it?" Mornar asked, as they left the fragile safety of the light.
Ash didn't need to ask what he meant; he could feel it, too. The air had thickened around them, growing denser and more difficult to breath. Levant didn't seem hindered in the least as he pushed on, deeper into the subterranean chambers. "He's close," Levant said, turning back to face them. "I can feel him. Can't you?"
"Yes," Mornar said. His hand had strayed unconsciously to the hilt of his sword. Mornar reached out with his left hand, letting his fingers trail lovingly down the wall.
"Be careful," Ash said, unnecessarily.
Can you hear me, raveller? He sent the thought out desperately, willing Naru to respond. My friends are dead. I know they are. The City of Blazeus has taken them all. They may look like themselves, but they are gone. And now they are leading me down to his tomb. If I am like them when I come out . . . if . . . He wanted to beg for death, to have the raveller's promise to slay him, but Naru couldn't hear him. Ash was alone.
They pushed open an unornamented and unadorned doorway.
Ash looked from Mornar to Levant, searching for even the merest hint that his friends remained. He could not see into them; shadows obscured their eyes. The voice whispered over and over in his head, release me, and Kinslayer's hunger thrilled through his veins.
Ash walked through the door. Not once did he suspect that the darkness might have crept into him, that his reasoning might have betrayed him.
It was a bare room, dominated by a rot-riddled sarcophagus that had collapsed into a wretched pile of bones. It was impossible to tell the desiccated bones of the casket from the bones of the interred.
His first thought upon seeing the ruination was: They all died for this?
He could not imagine how the soul of the raveller could live on while his bones crumbled. How could he have been absorbed into the stuff of the citadel, living on for millennia in the trace memories of the stone. How could someone become so afraid of death that he would choose to live an eternity in a stone prison rather than give up his grip on life?
Well, Ash vowed, death will come to you now.
He closed his eyes, drawing on an inner well of strength to see him through.
Release me. The two words reverberated through his skull, so filled with hate they made his flesh creep.
He licked his lips nervously and op
ened his eyes. Nothing in the room had changed. The casket lay split open by entropy, his swordbrothers standing sentinel over it.
Release me.
"Are you in there, Mornar?" Ash asked, but his friend's eyes were empty black orbs. "Answer me true, my friend."
"What's wrong with you, Ash? You look --"
Ash turned slightly to one side so that he wouldn't have to look into Mornar's eyes as he eased the Kinslayer up between Tomas Mornar's ribs and into his heart, twisting the hilt to finish the job. As he pulled the sword free, Mornar's eyes flared wide in shock. He tried to talk, but his mouth hung slack, denied words by the pain of the sword thrust.
Ash stepped back, expecting Mornar's legs to buckle as the life left his body, but the warrior didn't fall. He clung tenaciously to life, his hands clutching at the wound in his gut as though he couldn't understand why blood was leaking between his fingers. "Why?" the creature said with Mornar's voice, but it wasn't Mornar.
"You are not him, you are not him!" Ash screamed over and over, desperate to believe that the thing before him was nothing more than a ghost in the man's shell. Ash couldn't allow even the tiniest doubt to creep in and steal away his resolve. He swordbrother was gone. Ash swung the Kinslayer again, and again, matching his screams as it cleaved flesh and bone. Mornar threw his hands up to protect his face. His stomach wound opened wider, spilling his guts down his legs, and Ash cut away his hands and then cleaved open his skull. It was a shocking display of naked savagery, over before it had truly begun.
Grunting and gasping from the sudden exertion, Ash turned to see Levant coming up behind him. The man's mawkish face burned with what Ash could only interpret as hatred.
"And then there were two," Levant said, looking at the bloody blade in Ash's hand.
Yes, yes, release me, release me!
Ash blocked blow after blow, but Levant pressed him into the wall. He fought with wild, uncontrolled anger, like a man who already knew he was doomed. Again and again his blade snaked out, catching Ash, each small cut weakening him a little more.