The stone floor buckled; Nora staggered against Aruendiel. The columns of the temple seemed to shudder as the air vibrated with a deep, calamitous groan. Olenan laughed as Nora’s left foot dipped into empty space. Aruendiel yanked her back. Her other foot toed the edge of a new, ragged gash in the temple floor, a chasm brimming with darkness. There was no telling exactly how deep it was. She heard the tinkle of falling stones far below, like someone fingering an out-of-tune piano in the house next door.
“I’ll break out of any prison you try to build,” Olenan said from the other side of the rift.
Aruendiel thrust Nora back another step. He did not move from the edge of the crevice. “Olenan, I’ll give you a choice,” he said. “Stop these murders, stop this pretense of being a goddess, and live out whatever time the deaths you’ve caused have already bought you.”
“Or, what?”
He shrugged slightly. “Very much the same, except that you will have much less time.”
“You can’t kill me. I will never die,” Olenan said, but this time, Nora thought she heard something bleak in her tone. “Anyway, I don’t think you really want to kill me, do you?”
A long moment before Aruendiel spoke. “I won’t enjoy it.”
“Ah.” Olenan laughed again, not happily. “Well, that’s something new for you. I thought you enjoyed killing.” She paused, provokingly. “Like that unfortunate woman who was your wife.”
Aruendiel’s voice was steely and polite. “You are correct. She was unfortunate.”
“She made a bad choice in her husband.”
“I must agree.”
“I should have warned her. How you hate female weakness, and how ruthless you can be. Remember poor Warigan? Of course you do.”
“I don’t need you to remind me. This grows tiresome,” Aruendiel said, just as Nora repeated, “Warigan?”
She thought she recognized the name, but it fluttered away, maddeningly. Aruendiel gave a half glance at her before turning back to Olenan.
“Did you tell Nora about her?” Olenan said mockingly. “I feel most sorry for those children, left without a moth—”
Olenan doubled over, clutching her chest, retching. Her thin frame convulsed, straining; her head snapped back; she gasped for breath.
A mass of thorny tendrils erupted from her mouth, dark leaves unfolding. As Olenan gagged, the brambles lengthened, wrapping themselves around her neck and her arms, tangling in her hair. Blood dripped from the thorns and smeared the leaves. Nora winced in involuntary sympathy. She had read about silencing spells like this one. They would kill an ordinary person, but probably not a powerful magician with a ready command of healing spells. Or a goddess.
Olenan ripped at the vines, tearing them out of her mouth. They withered at her touch. Dry leaves flew. Olenan coughed and spat red.
From her knees, she looked up at Aruendiel, very white, blood smearing her mouth. She giggled. “No, you didn’t tell her, did you?”
In a sterner tone, she added: “What you just did was rude. And impious.” She lifted her hand casually, one finger raised.
Nora felt deep cold wrapping itself around her limbs, making her skin burn. She had a sudden, convincing intuition of something unknown and very large prowling nearby, just out of sight.
Aruendiel clapped his hands and rubbed them together. Abruptly, the air warmed again; Nora felt her internal equilibrium return. “Did you think we came here unprotected?” Aruendiel said.
Olenan had turned away, extending her hand toward the Kavareen. The creature was crouching, ears flattened. “Come here, beast,” Olenan said. Ears still pinned back, the Kavareen slunk over to where Olenan knelt. She gave it a rough scratch on the top of its head. The Kavareen submitted, tail twitching.
Nora tensed. One quick gulp—that’s all it would take, she thought. Now. She did not entirely look forward to seeing the Kavareen devour Olenan, but she could live with it.
The Kavareen turned its empty eyes toward Nora, then with quick violent affection rubbed its cheek against Olenan’s head.
“This is my abomination now,” Olenan said fondly.
Nora shot Aruendiel a horrified, questioning look. He shook his head gravely.
“I thought—instead of destroying the monster, why not tame it?” Olenan let the Kavareen nuzzle her, then pushed it away, smiling. “That’s enough, you. Are you hungry?” she asked, scratching its chin. “Soon, soon, my dear.”
The Kavareen yawned, giving a glimpse of infinite darkness, then butted its head gently against Olenan’s shoulder. Nora had never seen it quite so friendly, even in the old days with Hirizjahkinis, before it ate her.
“I didn’t know you liked cats,” Nora said.
“I don’t. Just this one. It’s big enough to be useful.” Olenan looked directly at Nora. “And now, what shall I do with you? You rebelled, you defied me—”
Aruendiel shifted slightly; Nora sensed the spell he was wielding silently without being able to identify it.
“—you broke my trust,” Olenan said. “Is that another binding spell, Aruendiel?” She smiled, her brows wrinkling apologetically, as though she were ever so slightly embarrassed for him. “Oh, no, my mistake. Melting my flesh into mud—what an unkind thought.” She shrugged. “I have my own protection spells, you know.”
“Your quarrel is with me, Olenan, not her,” Aruendiel said quickly.
“That’s not entirely true,” Olenan said. “But don’t worry, I won’t hurt her. That protection spell of yours won’t even know what’s happening. I’m going to hurt you, Aruendiel.”
She pointed at Nora.
Nora’s field of vision constricted, until all she could see was Olenan’s face, intent, no longer smiling. The other woman’s eyes were dark gems. Nora felt a sudden shift in all her perceptions, as though a camera shutter had clicked. Then the impression dissolved, and she could not have said what, if anything, was different.
Next to Olenan, the Kavareen gave a quiet snarl. Aruendiel whirled with an urgency that should have been a warning.
“Nora?” Then, shouting: “Nora?”
His face was not even a foot away. His gray eyes went past her. She could not get him to meet her gaze. “I’m right here,” she said.
He said again: “Nora?”
Chapter 32
Nora waved a hand—hello, hello—in front of Aruendiel’s face. “Can’t you see me?” She stared at her hand. It seemed perfectly normal: solid, opaque, grubby. Nails ragged and black from scrabbling through the caves.
“Where is she?” Aruendiel wheeled, glaring at Olenan.
Olenan’s wide mouth flexed as though she would like to laugh. “Oh, she’s not far away. But you can’t see her, can you? Can’t hear her, can’t touch her.”
He scowled. “Your invisibility spell.”
“You won’t find it in any book. And I never taught it to you,” she said reflectively. “I knew I should keep some secrets for myself.”
Aruendiel turned back to where Nora had been standing, although she was now a foot to his left. “Stay near me—I will work out the counterhex directly,” he instructed, raising his voice.
“All right,” Nora bawled back, the way you did on a bad cell phone connection. Did he hear her at all? She grabbed for his hand, but somehow her fingers glided past his. He seemed unaware of her touch.
Olenan was laughing outright now. “I should have done this earlier. You can’t break this spell, Aruendiel. My father taught it to me—he and Nagaris worked it out. Yes, that Nagaris. They were real magicians in those days. Not like now.
“Well, what next? Your magic isn’t doing very well, is it? But I know you’re proud of your swordplay.”
She lifted one arm, fragile looking but straight as a pencil. And the big stone statue of Sisoaneer—the one that Nora had always admired for its lifelike quality, the vaguel
y baroque fluidity of its lines—stood up.
A wilted garland drooped over one blind stone eye. The offerings that had been piled at its base crunched under its feet. In one hand the stone goddess held the sculpted skull; in the other, the curved stone knife. The blade looked sharper, more like a real knife, than Nora remembered.
The statue cleared the crevice in the floor with one long stride and swung at Aruendiel’s neck.
Rocking back on one leg, Aruendiel parried the statue’s weapon with the sword that had materialized in his hand. The knife skidded down his slanting blade. Stone screeched against steel. The statue reversed and slashed downward—excellent backhand, Nora noted—and missed his sternum by an inch.
A sword wasn’t going to do much damage to a limestone statue. Why had he not tried a shielding spell? Nora began a spell, missed a step, had to start again. The weapons met with another grating shriek. This had to be hell on Aruendiel’s blade. He manipulated it with practiced deftness, even as his long, rickety frame seemed to teeter with every hit.
Nora’s shielding spell was in place. Before she could draw a new breath, the stone knife cut straight through it. The spell was meant for arrows, not a weapon wielded by a piece of stone that probably weighed several tons, and she wondered if Vlonicl had a spell against living statues.
She shadowed Aruendiel as he fell back. If he could see her, he would probably tell her to get away, she was too close to the battle. Some combination of noises behind her—rustling, a dull slapping sound—made her spin around.
She blinked, made herself look again.
“Dear god, fuck no,” Nora said in English. “No. No. Aruendiel, look out!”
He couldn’t hear her.
Out of the shadows of the columns came a low, scuttling shape, groping a path across the floor.
Another followed, oddly humped. It was crawling toward the combatants, although facing backward. Its pallid toes gleamed like dirty pearls. In the darkness that stretched to the back of the temple she sensed other furtive movements.
“Aruendiel, the dead people,” Nora said, this time in Ors, her voice quavering. “She got the dead people to move. All those dead people, they’re moving.”
The statue swung again at Aruendiel. He diverted it with what seemed to Nora to be agonizing deliberation.
“Aruendiel!” Nora shouted uselessly. His back was turned as he lifted his sword again.
The foremost of the corpses moved closer, pushing itself along on knees and elbows. Its long hair, matted with blood, dragged on the pavement. Nora shrank back a few steps. Could zombies see through an invisibility spell?
Now she recognized the dead person. It was a pilgrim, an older woman, who stretched out a scrawny, yellowish arm. Nushka, her name was. Nora had treated her for a liver ailment. Nushka didn’t weigh more than eighty pounds or so, and when she was alive, Nora would have no more been afraid of her than of a kitten.
Now it was different.
Nushka’s body crept forward. It was less than a yard away from Aruendiel’s bootheel. Two more of the dead were close behind her, crawling stiffly, and other bodies were stirring behind them.
Aruendiel thrust his blade forward at the statue, then feinted sideways, letting the stone goddess bring the knife down on empty air. He almost seemed to be enjoying this match, Nora thought—a chance to demonstrate his swordplay. Absorbed in the fight, he still hadn’t noticed the zombies.
Unsure what to do, Nora yanked Nushka’s body upward with a levitation spell. At least she could stop its advance. The corpse felt slippery under her magic, a drunken marionette, arms and legs jerking violently. Nushka’s head rocked back and forth, eyes fixed. Her jaw moved mechanically as though she were trying to get out the same clogged syllable over and over again.
Aruendiel glanced back in time to see Nushka’s clawed hand sweep through the air inches from his face. Recoiling, he frowned. “What—? Nora!”
“Here!” she said, out of habit.
Aruendiel gave Nushka’s body a hard look. “That’s your levitation spell, on top of her spell—” He whipped his attention back to the statue as the stone blade slashed toward his head. He ducked. “What has she done here? They’re not alive, and no, it’s not an animation spell—” He parried a blow from the statue, then another.
“Definitely not alive,” Nora said, keeping an eye on the two corpses that had been trailing zombie Nushka. The one that was crawling backward she couldn’t recognize from this angle; the other was the weathered, muscular body of a ganoi man named Gelm, making unsteady progress on his hands and knees. “What I want to know is, are they going to eat my brain?”
“Nora, if you’re still near, don’t let them touch you,” Aruendiel said, just as Gelm sideswiped the other corpse, which immediately grabbed for Gelm’s arm. In a second, the two bodies were rolling over in a ferocious embrace, shoving, kicking, groping blindly for a handful of the other’s flesh.
“And don’t just hang them in midair,” Aruendiel added, watching the statue narrowly as it raised the knife again. “It’s untidy, and disrespectful to the dead.”
A wet, sickening crack: Gelm had bent his opponent’s elbow forty- five degrees in the wrong direction, and now he was trying to twist it off.
“What do I do, then?” Nora said, lowering Nushka’s body, but not all the way. She noticed again that her levitation spell seemed clumsier than usual.
The stone goddess slashed at Aruendiel again. Staggering a little, he deflected the blow with his sword.
“Counterhex them!” he shouted. As he edged to one side, his hand darted out to touch the statue’s left hand, the one cradling the sculpted skull. The knife came down just as the stone hand crumbled into powder. Aruendiel winced visibly as he retracted his arm. The skull crashed to the ground.
Nora called out to Aruendiel, apprehensive about his injury, but he was lifting his sword again.
A counterhex? The Selvirian countercharm had worked on the bats. She tried it now. It didn’t help against zombies. Or was her spellcraft off, somehow? First the levitation spell had felt balky—
Down at her feet, another wriggling zombie, a Ghaki soldier, was about to bang into her shin. Without thinking, Nora jerked herself into the air.
Nothing wrong with that levitation spell. And why, she wondered as she landed behind the soldier and watched his body crawl away, armor scraping the pavement—why were none of the moving dead actually walking upright? Zombies weren’t known for being graceful, but it was as though these zombies didn’t know how their bodies worked on the most basic level. By comparison, the movements of the stone goddess were almost human in their agility.
She glanced at Aruendiel. He retreated a few paces, but most of the statue’s left arm was gone, leaving an uneven stump. His touch seemed to be dissolving the stone, a little at a time.
Olenan hadn’t used a classical animation spell on the zombies, Aruendiel had said. “Did she do some kind of weird levitation spell to get them moving? And it’s interfering with my spell?” Nora spoke aloud, half hoping for some kind of response from Aruendiel. She heard him grunt, and saw that the statue had landed another hit, this time on the side of his rib cage. Aruendiel wrenched away, staying on his feet but looking more unsteady than Nora had seen him yet.
There were lots of different levitation spells, because people so often needed to move things. Usually you applied a magic pull or push from outside. But there were a few rare levitation spells that could make an object budge itself. . . . Nora closed her eyes, willing a half-forgotten page from Aruendiel’s library to come into focus.
A thud, a curse from Aruendiel. She opened her eyes to see him on the floor, rolling sideways. The statue stomped at his kneecap, missed. He scrambled to get upright, yanking hard against something that held him back.
Behind him was the Ghaki soldier, empty-eyed, loose-jawed—one hand wound tightly in a
fold of Aruendiel’s tunic.
Nora rattled off a levitation spell counterhex, quick and crude. She could tell right away it wasn’t a perfect hit, but it wasn’t terrible, either. Her spell found a precarious grip on the magic binding the Ghaki soldier’s body and began to unravel it.
The soldier wavered, then collapsed with a slow clatter of armor. The dead face never changed expression.
Aruendiel pulled himself free, just in time to dodge as the statue aimed its foot at him again.
“Good! Try something more precise, Nora. The Loedan variation,” he said. “It’s faster. And—thank you.” His sword caught the edge of the stone knife.
Under his raised arm Nora glimpsed the Kavareen some yards away, ears pricked forward, yellow eyes fixed on the duelers. Resting her chin on one hand, Olenan scratched the Kavareen behind its black-tipped ears, watching the fight with a faint smile. Then the statue moved into Nora’s sight line, blocking her view, although its left arm and shoulder and most of its head had disappeared—
A scream, very close. It sounded as though it came from a living throat. Nora spun around. Along the wall of the temple came an advancing tangle of arms and legs—corpses swarming around someone who was staggering forward and trying to beat them off simultaneously. Without being able to see the person’s face, Nora recognized the swirl of glossy black hair, the slender neck and shoulders.
“Yaioni?” she shouted. “What are you doing here?”
Yaioni, falling to her knees as a burly dead man wrapped his arms around her waist, did not answer. Nora recollected again that she was invisible and inaudible. This was hard to get used to.
The Loedan variation. What was Aruendiel talking about? She racked her brains, and blessedly, it came back to her.
He was right, this spell was faster. A suddenly limp body in a ganoi’s gray robe let go of Yaioni’s waist and slithered to the floor. The dead man’s name came to Nora: Goatfoot. One of the other zombies tugged at his arm in an appraising way, as though testing to see how firmly it was attached.
How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic Page 42