"It's a maze down there," he said looking back at Isolde. "A labyrinth underneath the city. We don't know where most of it leads, but the way is marked out to our safe houses."
"You're not coming..."
CRUNCH!
The wooden door at the top of the stairs exploded open. The iron bolt tore through the wood as flesh, fur, and steel flooded in.
"Hold them off!" Nicolo cried over the sound of steel blades ripping out of belts and scabbards and the stampeding feet of hoofed demons.
The devils cried out in vicious screams, horns blew shrill notes, and the smell of rot and sweat came like a wave. Isolde saw the beasts cut the first man right in half in their savage assault. He disappeared under the fray of clashing blades, and Isolde jolted back as someone grabbed her shoulder.
"Run!" It was Nicolo, "take the tunnels!"
He pushed her through into the darkness and the last thing she heard was the cries of men as the stone wall clunked shut and the utter black swallowed her whole. She could hear her breathing, and the thumping beat of her heart. She tried to silence it and let her eyes adjust until she became aware of the faint sound of a second set of lungs in the darkness.
"Who's there?" she hissed out in a half whisper.
"I can't let you get out with that crystal."
It was the voice of Volo. Terror struck down Isolde in the darkness and she felt her knees go weak. She heard a step and a shuffle in front of her and she charged forward toward it. Her body crashed into the heavyset man and she heard him curse as he tumbled back into the ground. She went down for a moment and caught herself in time to lunge forward again. She sprinted into the darkness as her eyes became aware of her surroundings.
It was tight, maybe enough room for two men to walk side by side, and was lined with dark bricks. She ran on, looking for signals on which way to go, not knowing if Volo was on her tail or not.
How could he betray his own?...
She couldn't fathom it. It didn't take long, a minute or so of running, before she came to a crossroad in the tunnels. The resistance men had painted arrows on the walls. Church to the left, Toro ahead, Nicolo's the way she had come, and a cross marking the right. Everything inside her screamed to return to the church. If she got there, she could double back and find Nicolo again. The dull thud of steps was growing from behind.
Nicolo is gone...
She didn't wait any longer, the cross was a warning, and she knew that going forward was the only way for her to go.
***
Harald's eyes were transfixed by the fire. He let a second handful of powder flash into the flames so that the brilliant blue light exploded up again. His heart was racing, yet his mind knew the words and they came to him without thought.
"O Hallodarth," he began to chant in a low, long tone. "Mighty king of old, come to me now."
Again he flashed powder into the flames and they burst even brighter than before so that all the shadows in the tomb vanished for a moment before racing back.
"O Hallodarth, by the permission of your Lord, Hēr, I command your soul to speak with me."
Flash.
"By blood and bone, you will speak with me."
The energy in the room was electric, it built and built until some invisible threshold had been reached, like a great wheel breaking its rusted axle and starting to turn. He could feel the eyes of the guardian skulls and dry whispers being hissed behind him. Harald took the wicker cage of the chicken, broke it open and ripped the poor thing out. The animal squawked in fear, and in a rush, Harald held it over the flames and slit its neck so that its crimson blood poured into the fire. The flames roared and hissed, and he watched the blood boil in red blobs and steam away. The chicken went limp and he tossed its lifeless body into the flames.
"By blood and bone, I summon you, O Hallodarth!"
The air around him felt alive, it was angered, frustrated. Harald could feel the eyes on him, he knew what he had done was a sin against nature itself. To sacrifice life for personal gain. To bring back the dead from their eternal rest. The room was alive, he could feel the darkness all around him.
"O Hallodarth," Harald cried, "I command you to appear before me! Use the mundane remains of this body before you to speak! By the Lord of Death himself, I command you to appear!"
A great sigh seeped out from the skull in front of him and Harald felt his heart stop. His eyes widened and he waited with bated breath.
"Whoooo..." the skull hissed, "suummonssss meee?"
Harald's heart stopped, the skull had spoken! Someone was here with him. His mind was racing, he had to make sure it was Hallodarth, Vis had warned him of the dangers of opening portals to the nether and of the fiends that could creep through.
"Wh-who are you?" Harald stammered.
Silence. Only the crackling of the fire broke the air and Harald waited with bated breath.
"Who are you?" Harald demanded again.
"Haallodaaarth..." the reply came, like wind seeping out the earth.
"Hallodarth who?" Harald asked.
"King of Swooona... and Moouusa... of duuust and nooothiinng..."
The skull cackled like the crackling fire and the laughter chilled Harald to the bone.
"King Hallodarth," Harald started, "I have summoned you for your help."
"And whooo are yoou..."
Harald paused for a moment.
"I am Harald," he said, "of Eyndale. I have permission from Lord Hēr to speak with you."
"Theeen speaaak..."
"Your guardians... the draugrs, we need their help to fight the north, may we use them?"
The crackling laughter returned.
"Ussse them?..." the skull hissed, "they are the sooulss of men!... myy friendss and loyal retaainerss..."
"I am sorry," Harald said to the flickering skull, "I meant no disrespect, but our situation is desperate and we need your help."
"Nooo... youu need theeiir help, Haaraald. I neeed them no mooore, alll meen gooo to theee neext wooorld aloone... theeey neeed seeerve mee noo moooore."
"If you don't need them," Harald said desperately, "then might we have your permission for them to join us in battle?"
"Yeeeessss... sooo loong asss yoou promissse tooo releeaase theiir booondssss too thiiis mortal wooorld. Giiive theem eeternnal ressst asss theiir rewaaard."
"I promise this to you, King Hallodarth. Thank you, thank you for your help, may you rest easy."
Harald felt as if a weight had been eased off his shoulders. He had got what he came for, there might be hope yet for the battle to come. He smiled to himself, but as he did, the flames in front of him flickered. The room grew heavy and the shadows deepened to an inky black that seemed to spread across every crevice and surface of the crypt.
"Who is there?" he cried out.
As if by answer, the flames of the fire and torch blew out as one, and the impenetrable black of the tomb swallowed him whole. Laughter began to shake the room, deep booming laughs.
"Who is there?" he cried out again.
Thoughts of Vis's warning rippled through his mind. He hadn't closed off the doorway in which Hallodarth had entered. Something had followed the king through. The laughter shook Harald to his core, he could feel it deep in his bones, his heart thumped but he couldn't move. It was a fear, an utter terror that seemed to be heavy in the air itself. He tried to call out again, but the words were stuck in his throat.
"I SEE YOU!"
The words came from all around, like terrible screaming that pierced his skull.
"YOU WILL DIE, HARALD GRIMEYE!"
CHAPTER IX
It had been hours since she had heard the limping steps of Volo. He was gone, she was sure of it, but the tunnels seemed to run forever. Unmarked passages cut to the left and right from the main walkway she was going down, they must have been the uncharted areas Nicolo spoke of. She had seen a room a while back full of bones stacked high against the walls like some kind of macabre exhibit, but she had walked on from it.
On and on and on through the darkness. She kept going until she could see light streaming into the underground ahead of her. Isolde felt the first ray of hope and ran for it. As the light beamed down, a white arrow pointed up toward its source with the word Piaza painted below it. It was a way out, which was good enough for her.
She scrambled up the passage, following the light and found it was an old stone stairway she was on. The space got tighter with rubble and rubbish until she had to squeeze her way through, and suddenly, the fresh air of the open world filled her breath and her head popped out into a shadowy alley.
She pulled herself out of the tunnels and slipped over into the alcove of a doorway. It looked like the same slums she had come from, but she felt safe in the shadows and could at least see where she was going now.
"You're good..."
The voice wafted over from the far side of the alley and sent shivers down Isolde's spine. From out of the shadows, Marco appeared and stepped forward into the muddy street.
"Where did you go!?" she hissed, doing her best to keep her voice low.
Marco put his finger to his lips to silence her and crept over to the alcove she was hiding in.
"Where did I go?" he said, his eyes wide. "I ran, and you were smart to do the same."
"You're a coward," she hissed, "there's a whole war going on and people are dying while you run and hide!"
Marco shook his head, "don't look at it that way, you will get it twisted. Here everyone is the same, child, man, woman... demon... all just souls."
"People are dying!"
"They're already dead," Marco snorted.
The easy dismissal made Isolde's blood boil.
"Things are different here," Marco explained. "We don't die, those people will be stitched back up and things will go on as they always have."
Isolde's mouth twisted into a frown.
"It's such a sick place," she said.
"A mirror of its creator’s mind..." Marco's eyes stared down the alley. "We tried to make change once. A movement... a revolution... there were hundreds of us, all working underground in the shadows. After every battle, every scrap or skirmish, both sides would pull back their wounded and put them back together. No one ever died, it just went on and on until Bezhaal worked out that if he couldn't kill us, then he would have to control the situation another way. He sent death squads out with the order to capture, not kill, and so one by one he brought the rebellion to its knees by putting us into the cells of his keep."
Marco looked at Isolde and she could see the pain in his eyes.
"Each of us sentenced to an eternity in the darkness... can you imagine the loneliness?... the madness?..."
"How did you escape?" she asked.
"I didn't..." he said.” I was never caught. You see I wasn't part of this rebellion, not until the end anyway... no, I was the High Lord, captain of the Creator's forces... the fall is greater from the top..."
"What happened?" Isolde asked.
"I am a wanted man... hated by all... but maybe if I can help you, then I can bring some good back to this place."
A distant horn sounded and whined through the air before a second, third and fourth joined the chorus in tones that struck fear into Isolde's heart.
"The witch is coming," Marco said, "I did not think it would take long..."
Marco took Isolde by the hand and pulled her out of the shadows.
"Come on," he cried.
She didn't know what she was doing, and with no other real option at hand, she followed him. They slipped along the edges of ramshackle homes and kept to the darkness of the streets where they could. Up winding streets and down narrow alleys, all empty and lifeless. He seemed to know the way and never stopped to second guess himself. Isolde assumed that it was because he had spent countless lifetimes in this horrible place.
"Where is everyone?" she whispered through panting breath.
"Hiding," he replied, "you get good at it when you live here."
They didn't stop though, and soon enough Marco had led her right out of the slums that ringed the city and clung to the great walls that hedged them all in together. The street opened up to a paved yard that had been neglected as much as everything else she had seen, but none the less still held an air of grandeur and opulence.
"La Piazza del Toro," Marco said to the question on Isolde's lips. "It is nothing more than a platform for public executions now..."
Isolde felt a bulge in her throat as she noticed the decrepit wooden frame of what must have been the gallows and the dried blood below it.
A throaty cackle echoed off the bricks and Isolde's head snapped up to attention. A demonic death squad was shuffling in, she looked back and lost her breath as more of the fiends came in from behind. They were surrounded with nowhere to go. The cackling laughter faded away and the fiend that Isolde knew only too well stepped forward into the ring of mangy fur and vicious steel.
It was her... the black witch... Orlog.
Shredded black rags clung to her frame as she limped across the plaza's floor. She looked old, her skin saggy and grey, the old scars of blackened runes that covered her skin were dull and stretched, and her thin grey hair fell in patches.
The witch came to within a foot of Isolde, and with a toothless smile, held out her hand palm up with long, dagger-like fingers drooping back.
“My darling, Isolde,” she hacked up from a dry throat. “you have come to return my heart.”
Isolde didn't know what to say, she was stuck for words with her heart in her throat. She looked at Marco desperately but her friend had been taken and was held fast with two great devils twisting him down to his knees.
"I don't know whether to call you mother anymore," Orlog rasped with a twisted smile. "You were supposed to be there for me... but you got that wretched woman to cut me out before I could even be born."
Ama... the mention of the woman gave Isolde strength. She was the one in control here, she was the living nether walker.
"Silence," Isolde ordered.
She looked the witch in the eye and saw her hand curl back up.
"You are nothing but a broken soul," Isolde took a step forward and forced Orlog to give a little ground. "I could crush you, wretched hag, but I need something..."
Orlog hissed as Isolde, pointed a bony finger at Marco and gave the demons the signal they were waiting for. Marco cried out in sudden agony and Isolde watched as the demons raised his twisted arms up his back. It was a foul torture and Isolde saw the tears form in the corners of his eyes.
"Give me the ruby," Orlog barked, "or I will snap his arms right off his rotten shoulders."
"Don't do it!" Marco screamed.
An explosion of pain burst through Isolde's belly and her breath got knocked right out her throat. Orlog had taken the moment's distraction to take the advantage. Isolde doubled over in pain, the witch's fist had been harder than steel, but she knew that the hag could not take the ruby from her.
"No, I cannot," Orlog whispered into Isolde's ear. "But I can show you a pain you could never imagine... I can strip your flesh and gouge your eyes, I can kill all those you love until you give me what's mine..."
The witch's voice began to wane and Isolde's head went light. She felt dizzy and the world around her seemed to grow brighter. She could hear something, a voice, like chanting from far away yet all around her. It was calling her. The cries of Orlog and the demons seemed so distant, and her body felt so light. She could swear she was floating as the world around her washed away in bright purity.
***
"YOU WILL DIE, HARALD GRIMEYE!" the voice shrieked and pierced Harald's skull.
"Who are you?" he demanded, but the demonic voice only screamed at him louder
"YOUR PRECIOUS ISOLDE IS BURNING IN HELL WITH HER MOTHER!"
"No!" Harald cried, "you are a liar. By the name of the holy Lord Hēr, I demand you reveal your name."
"MY NAME!? YOU WOULD CHOKE ON IT, VILE BAG OF ROTTING FLESH, YOU WILL CHO
KE!"
"YOUR NAME!" Harald boomed.
"ARGHHH..." the demon howled, "ASCIXAPLUS IS MY NAME, THIRD DUKE OF BEZHAAL'S HELL, RULER OF FIFTEEN LEGIONS, DECAYER OF FLESH, FALSIFIER OF PROMISES, CAUSE OF DARKNESS, AND BRINGER OF YOUR DOOM!"
Fury rose in Harald's heart, he could feel his teeth gritting tightly in the impenetrable darkness of the crypt. Yet he felt no fear, not from whatever foul being he was speaking to. All he felt was rage and hatred.
"Return to the darkness, foul beast, return to the hell from where you came!" Harald cried out.
The demon hissed and Harald felt the rotten breath blow across his face. It was icy cold and ran through his hair and carried the scent of rotten eggs that made his stomach turn.
"I command you to leave, by the name of holy Lord Hēr."
The demon cackled.
"I WILL RETURN TO MY LORD," it said, "AND I WILL DEVOUR ISOLDE. I WILL REND HER LIMB FROM LIMB AND COOK HER ALIVE OVER THE FLAMES OF TORMENT."
With a flash, the flames of the sacrificial fire and torch fluttered back to life and Harald shielded his eyes from their brilliance. What have I done? He cursed himself, he shouldn't have sent the beast back, he should have kept it here. Isolde... he thought, and then an idea sprang to him.
He took some of the bonemeal powder he still had and flashed the fire, letting the brilliant blue flames spark up high.
"O Isolde, Astrid's daughter, I summon you forth to speak with me in this place."
Flash.
"By blood and bone, I summon you, O Isolde."
What am I doing... he thought to himself. What would happen if he summoned back her soul?
"By the word of Lord Hēr, I summon you, O Isolde, come speak with me in this place."
Harald waited a moment. Why wasn't it working? All was silent in the crypt, and the skull before him made no motion and made no sound.
"Isolde Astridsdottir, lady of Eyndale, I call to you and demand that you make yourself present here in this place!"
Land of the Gods (Isolde Saga Book 4) Page 6