by Greg James
He was studying the sky with cautious eyes.
“Look,” he said. “Do you see how the clouds have changed?”
Milanda shielded her eyes and squinted up at them. He was right. They were much darker and heavier. “What does that mean?”
“That we must find other shelter.”
“But we’re in the middle of the wilderness.”
“I know.”
There were tales of storm winds that chased one another out of the Heart of the World and into the wilderness. The same tales told of bodies discovered, the flesh and muscles torn clean away from the bone. The winds were picking up. Soon, they would become fierce enough to bite through furs and into skin. They would have to be quick before it was upon them.
Khale moved against the wind, with Milanda sheltering in his wake. She was still in her nightclothes and barely protected.
The sky overhead became heavy and pregnant, its dark heart seeming to follow them. He kept going. He brought Milanda to a dark entrance that led down into the earth. The storm’s shadow fell as a pall over the land, and the first drops of rain scattered over the surrounding rocks.
“Inside. Go. Now.” Khale pushed her in through the opening and down the steps.
Milanda stumbled over her own feet as Khale lifted and dragged the great stone back over the entrance. The air clapped around their ears as the rock crashed back into place.
Darkness descended, and the storm’s rage became a distant muttering.
“What will we do here?” Milanda asked.
“We will wait,” he said. “Storms do not last forever.”
“But it’s so dark.”
Khale whispered and there was light, a curl of flame appeared above his gnarled palm. He began to lead the way down the steps. Milanda wondered if this was a place where he felt at home.
Here, he was no longer bound to the world of the living.
As they passed the silent stares of crucified guardian carcasses mounted on the walls, she wondered what it felt like to be in such a state of death, rotting before your own eyes, helplessly watching as time and the dark gnawed on your bones and picked away the choicest remaining pieces of your flesh. Such pain, such horror, such suffering—all to protect the superstitious bones of the dead and buried.
A sound echoed up to them from below.
And Milanda wondered if they were alone in this place.
*
Khale’s conjured flame illuminated a doorway scabrous with rust and textured with dead beetle-shells. The barrier of ancient iron was loose, and it took little effort for him to force it open. The light of his flame hurried away into the silty black mire waiting across the threshold, illumining nothing, revealing nothing.
“Strange,” he said.
“What is it?” asked Milanda.
“This place is old, yet here is an iron door—something made by those with greater skill than the men who struck the rocks and arranged the stones above our heads.”
“Mages?”
“Not everything men do not understand is the work of mages, girl. You’ll see.”
He crossed the threshold and waited for her to follow. She did. She couldn’t leave him. He could see how this was all far outside her ken. The rough ground stung through slippers at soft feet that had not ventured beyond the bounds of a castle before this day.
They trod the ways of a thoughtful labyrinth; an old order shattered by fallen floors and obstructed by collapsing walls. Its long, lonesome corridors led on to crossroads which, in their turn, led them deeper, to spaces where unwashed, mosaic tiles lay scattered about, revealing crumbling scales of plaster beneath. Brown stains decorated the decaying geography as moss and lichen adorned the stones of more natural landscapes. There was nothing natural here; there was only disquiet and malignancy.
They came to a great hall at its heart. It was an atrophied heart, to be sure. Whatever doors once guarded its portals, wooden or iron, they had long since rotted away.
Eyes watched them enter, and Khale’s flame illuminated their bearers: a number of pale statues set at regular intervals around the broad, ovular space. Traces of the wild winds lashing at the surface penetrated deep into the catacombs and made the timeworn figures moan with echoes of loss and betrayal from aeons gone. Their outlines were smooth and their human features long lost. No inscriptions or sigils survived to tell their tale.
Khale heard footsteps. Then, they were gone. A ghost of time and memory, he thought. He could feel decay breeding in his nostrils and stinging at the roots of his brain. Everything here was rotten.
Perhaps it had not been so wise to explore after all.
Milanda’s hand tightened on his. “We should leave,” she said. “This place is haunted.”
Khale could feel something, like the cold that bled through his boots when they were above ground. Even though the statues had been blinded by the passage of ages, it was as if they could see and were looking at them. Milanda shifted uneasily against him. He could feel that she wanted to be gone from here. In his disquiet, he did not think to tell her a calming lie.
Better to be ready than at ease.
Khale shrugged her off and approached the nearest statue. The more closely he examined it, the more his thoughts on how the statues had come to be in this state changed. From a distance, it looked like simple corrosion, but this close it looked to be an aspect of their design. The limbs that might have been arms crossed their chests, in a manner that suggested they had been bound, and the faces were shaped as if the hollows made for eyes, ears, and mouth never bore a single detail.
Khale swore under his breath and reached out to touch the stone.
“No, don’t do that!”
The shout was Milanda’s, and she came running, snatching at his hand. Khale looked down at her with a furrowed brow. She met his gaze. She did not flinch or look away.
Strength in your blood, Alosse, he thought. A strength you never had. You never could look me in the eye for long.
Khale relaxed and let his gaze return to the statue. “There is something strange here,” he said, “but it is shelter from the storm. You sleep. I will watch.”
“Don’t you need to sleep?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because of what I see when I close my eyes.”
“What do you see?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I do, tell me.”
“Very well,” he said. “Sometimes, I see forests but not of trees, only of rusted spears and spines of twisted iron, each bearing a dozen or so of the dead. They are not all of them soldiers, and many hang there writhing and bleeding onto earth that has gone soft and dark as blood. I see castles beyond that are not of stone, where a dense smoke crawls skyward from towers that scream loud with plain, human voices. Gradually, the screams turn to silence, and the smoke ebbs away, and then the castle doors are flung open by unseen hands and yet more of the dead crumple out of the wrought gates to lie still. There are too many women and children among them. And I see the ones who have orchestrated everything with old shadows in their eyes and scarred-pale skin drawn over their faces. They turn to me, they see me, and they smile, for it is all men who do such things can do—smile. Smile knowing they are right, smile knowing their good work is done, and so they go on; they survive while all else in the world chokes, dies, and expires. And, you know, even now, we are walking over the backs of the dead. They are all here with us, beneath the earth.”
“Then it was not my dream. It was yours.”
Khale looked at her.
“The one where I was in the cavern and walking across the backs of the dead. That was one of your dreams.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, it was. One of the oldest. How came it into your mind?”
“I don’t know,” Milanda whispered. “It must be this place.”
Khale returned his eyes to the statues, “Perhaps.”
*
Milanda dreamed again, and for a long
time her dreams were like fragments and broken patterns drifting through dark water, trying to find one another and take form. Then, she saw the great hall in which she slept at Khale’s behest. It was a grand place with gold-chased pillars of polished marble and silver filigree shimmering in the hangings that covered the alcoves the statues would come to occupy.
Though the hall itself was grand, the scene she witnessed could only be described as carnage. Blood shone in streaks and smears across the mosaic floor tiles. Robed bodies were strewn, headless and limbless, all about. Only one of their number was left standing, and he was encircled by warriors dressed in crude armour of beaten iron and torn leather strips. Their faces were cruel, and their short swords were wet with gore. They laughed at the survivor, jeering and taunting as they closed in around him. They held out their swords and made him dance to evade the light thrusts of each blade. They cut him lightly at first, so that his blood ran only in trickles, but they soon grew bored and hacked away at him, tearing away flesh and cloth.
It was then that he shouted something out.
“Juular!”
The warriors cut his throat, silencing him.
They stood around the corpse, exchanging uncomfortable glances with one another. They fell upon the dead man, slashing and hewing away at his remains until only broken bones and pulp were left to bleed across the floor.
Their work done, they made to leave the hall—and screamed as one. Shadows gathered around each man, binding them, raising them, and casting them into the alcoves where the hangings collapsed, twisting around the writhing forms, hardening into shells of rigid stone.
The screams of the men died away to nothing.
All that was left for them was silence, darkness and the waiting.
Waiting for someone to come.
Milanda awoke, starting up from where she was curled on the ground. Khale had covered her with his jacket of skins, for warmth, and conjured a small fire of colourless flames from the ether. It bathed the hall in luminous shades and hues Milanda could not put a name to.
When she looked at Khale, for a moment she shrank away, seeing how the fire illuminated his features. It showed his age—his true age. Every line, every mark, and every scar he had borne since he left his mortality behind. His reptilian eyes shone with the same light as the conjured fire. But she could also see something else: an emptiness too great to be considered sadness, a hollow existence that eclipsed simple melancholy. The trails of tears he once wept showed, as did the depths left behind by screams—his own and those of others. No man alive was as near to the true nature of Death as he. His eyes were on the statues, watching. Milanda’s eyes did the same, passing from one to the other.
They did not move.
Then … they did.
Slowly, at first. Flexing, writhing and shuddering movements passed through the stone of each figure. Khale was on his feet, raising the sword he had been sharpening while she slept. Milanda got to her feet, too. Cracks began to spread across the statues. A cold sweat beaded Milanda’s skin. Her heart pounded out a silent rhythm. The statues shattered; each one a chrysalis giving birth.
“Murtuvae,” Khale said. “Dead men back from their graves.”
“How?” Milanda asked.
“Because there is witchcraft in these walls,” Khale replied.
“I don’t want to die here.”
“Then do not die,” Khale said, drawing a knife and passing it to her.
“But I can’t fight. I’ve not been taught.”
“Behind me, girl, back to back, or these things will run you through. Murtuvae are not swift, you may have a chance.”
He turned and met one of the dead as it brought down its crusty short sword. Parrying, he managed to use his blade as a club to slam it to the ground. Bone splintered. Rotten armour and dead matter fell away, but the other murtuvae came on as their fallen comrade shuddered back to his feet. Their eyes were gristled pearls, staring hate at the living.
“Can’t kill what doesn’t live,” Khale cursed, “awkward bastards.”
Milanda danced as the man in her dreams once danced. She had to be quick, as their blades strove to bring her down. She parried and countered their slashes and lunges, feeling something guiding her hand. A strength that was not her own cut open corpse-flesh and drove holes into perished leather. Khale’s back slammed into her own as he fought, pounding the breath from her body and she heard him muttering fiercely under his breath. Her sudden skill with a blade, it was his doing. Her lungs hurt, and her head clouded, but she continued to fight. The bones of the dead rattled and chattered in time with their rusted armour and worn swords.
“How can we kill them?”
“How do you kill the dead?” Khale asked.
“Cut off their heads?”
“They’re dead. That does nothing. The bodies will keep on coming. They will keep hacking away at us until we tire and drop.”
“What woke them up?” she asked, looking around the chamber.
Khale parried a savage slash and headbutted a dead man back onto his haunches, “I have no idea, child.”
But she thought of the supernatural fire and the colours it cast.
“There’s witchcraft in these walls ...” she whispered to herself, “The fire! Stop the fire.”
The dirty blade of a short sword cut at her midriff, tearing fabric and grazing skin.
“And leave us in darkness? You’ll die.”
“The fire, Khale. Do it. Trust me. I will die on one of their swords if you don’t.”
She heard a lengthy sigh leave Khale’s lungs. He muttered a word under his breath and darkness fell. Then, silence too.
Milanda waited, she breathed, she slashed at the shadows with the knife in her hands. She struck at nothing.
“They are gone,” he said.
“I can’t see.”
“I know, and it seems better that you don’t. I can see it now. They used me. The fire was a sorcerous light, and it brought them here.”
“Like moths to a flame.”
“Yes, but how did you know, child?”
“I had a dream. They killed someone, those warriors, when they were alive, and as he died he spoke a word that bound them in stone. He was a mage, and I could feel how they were waiting. They were waiting for another mage to come so they could be set free.”
“Out, out are the lights,” Khale said, quietly, “out all.”
And the only sound in the lightless chamber was their own tired breathing.
*
The storm was long past and Milanda was glad to be back on the surface of the world. Its deep places sheltered secrets she had no wish to know more of. She had suffered enough of the terrible dreams they gave her.
Khale led her out of the darkness, for it did not impede him; he moved as if born to it, more so than to light. She ascended the steps from the catacombs behind his broad back and came out into the open air, which she breathed in deeply.
It was dawn, and as the sunlight shone in his eyes, she thought of Khale and the dreadful transformation the nacreous fire had made to his flesh, showing the pain he bore within.
He walked ahead of her to one of the rune-scarred stones, and she watched as he bowed to it, acknowledging a Darkness deeper and more profound than that of the Four.
Chapter Fourteen
Leste spent her first few nights alone in the wilderness, huddled by the fire. The dregs of her heroic charge to the rescue had dissipated a few hours after leaving Colm, when her horse stumbled in the mired land made by the previous day’s rain. She had been thrown from the saddle and was lucky to land on ground soft enough that the worst harm was done to her pride and her backside.
The horse was not hurt, and the leg that had disappeared into the ground up to its fetlock was not broken in any way. Yes, she thought, for an idiot I’m very lucky.
She took the rest of the first day at a steadier pace and could feel the horse thanking her for it as it picked carefully across the uneven, treache
rous earth.
In the evenings, she gathered roots and torn grass for a meagre fire forged with the kindling sticks she’d remembered to pack. The fire wasn’t worth much; it ate its fuel in a matter of minutes and guttered, continually threatening to go out. After two hours of tending and cursing on the first night, she let it die and ate dried meat and black bread by the moonlight diffused through overhanging clouds.
The skies were grey, whether it was night or day—that was the way of things.
She wondered if it were different in other parts of the world, if indeed there were other parts. She had heard tell of farther lands than Port Blight, down on the south-east coast, and Mearsea to the West, but that was all she had—tales. Her father had told her tales, or was it her mother? They had died so young that she wasn’t sure which.
But tales were the leftovers of a different time; of heroes and warriors who fought for the good and lived by codes of courage and honour. Leste looked at the fallow earth around her and wondered if such things could grow in such a stony, unloved world.
She went to sleep and saw the faces of her mother and father hanging over her. Old ghosts that she could barely name, but the sight and memory of them still made her weep.
*
The days grew harder as she pressed on with a horse still tired from its initial headlong charge out of Colm’s gates. She should have listened and remembered better. They said a pursuit should be a thing of pace and not speed, but she had wanted to try to bring Khale down within a day. Her blood had been up, and she’d now set herself trailing behind him, rather than coming hard upon him.
She counted off a mocking version of the eight-day prayer as a mantra to focus her mind.
Murden, Vaden, Chuden, Maden, Voyen, Neden, Mirden, and Anden.
Two for death, two for blood. Two for plague, two with no grub.
She came upon the wagon in the middle of the third afternoon; cresting a hill, she looked down and saw wild dogs at their work. The creatures stalked the wilderland roads: thin, mottled curs with ragged muzzles and raw eyes. The horse that had been drawing the wagon was little more than skin on bone; the dogs had gorged themselves on its stringy flesh and innards. The wagon’s cloth covering was torn and hung in loose tatters. The people travelling in it were dead. Leste didn’t have to get much closer to see that. The dark forms twisted on the ground, white in places where gnawed bone was showing through, told that part of the story. A growl and a cry went up from the dogs. Leste saw them fighting over something, tearing at soft flesh and spilling death-cooled blood onto the ground. She looked away and swallowed the bile gathering in her throat.