Wicked Ways: An Iron Kingdoms Chronicles Anthology

by Douglas Seacat

  Morrow, give me strength, he prayed. He reached out to the spirits closest to him. They seemed whole unlike those nearer the priest and his monolith, who were little more than half-devoured shells.

  Let us through, he pleaded, and some of the spirits moved aside, out of Grimes’ way. He couldn’t actually see this; instead, he felt it. Grimes would have to use his suit to move the ghosts Elliot could not reach.

  He tried speaking to the specters nearby, but most ignored him. They were too terrified to even speak. Their emotions were so powerful, he had to fight to keep them out of his head. He searched among them until he came across one that was quieter, less consumed by the sickness. It was the spirit of an officer in the March of the Dead. It still seemed to know its identity—it had bowed its head and was praying to Ascendant Angellia. It was afraid but not yet mindless.

  He opened his mind to it and invited it into his head. “Captain Illian Hennet,” he said to it, after sensing its name. “Let us help one another.”

  Flashes of memories flooded his mind. Many were ancient memories of the man’s life five hundred years ago. He pushed those aside, seeking something more recent. There was only one. It was dark image, as if viewed through the black room. He saw Father Murdoch, who was a twisted shadow in the spirit’s memory, in a private chamber with a tall stained glass window. He and another man, gaunt, hawk-nosed and ugly, were standing over an open crate filled with glass vials containing greenish liquid. Wires and mechanical apparatus were attached to them. The memory changed, and he saw Father Murdoch again, this time secreting a hoard of the vials beneath a flagstone in a dimly lit hall. The nave of the church. Then finally, the image of the clock tower in center of the city. It was bright, and its hands indicated noon.

  A bomb.

  That truth hammered into Elliot, and he understood how Father Murdoch was going to feed the terrible entities on the other side of the gate. He was going to kill the congregation in the church above them and let their souls be drawn into the gate and devoured. Together with all the souls of the March, it would be a great reaping, indeed.

  Elliot ripped the hood off his head, and found the specter of Illian Hennet hovering nearby. Grimes was trying to push through the crowd of spirits, and Versh and Eilish were behind him, trying to add their weight to his.

  Abigail and Kincaid were aiming their pistols at Father Murdoch, looking for a clean shot, but the twisted priest had gone behind the infernal monolith for cover.

  “Abigail, Kincaid!” Elliot shouted and staggered closer to his teammates. “Don’t talk—just listen. Father Murdoch has planted an explosive in the church. He means to kill hundreds, perhaps thousands, of worshippers and feed their souls to his infernal masters.”

  “You’re sure?” Abigail asked. “Tell us what to do.”

  He turned to Kincaid. “Can you disarm a bomb?”

  “How hard can it be?” he answered. “I’ll damned well try. Where is it?”

  Among Hennet’s thoughts he had seen the tiled mosaic that depicted the ascension of Angellia, and then the tomb of Alexei Tzentesci. He understood, though the thought sickened him.

  “The one who might know,” he whispered, “is being kept from telling us. We have to open the tomb of Alexei Tzentesci.”

  Kincaid balked. “There’s a bomb in the casket?”

  “No,” Elliot said. “But answers might be.”

  Grimes, Versh, and Eilish had nearly pushed through the crowd of ghosts, and Father Murdoch stood waiting for them, arcane runes forming around his howling blade. He unleashed a bolt of dark energy that struck a spirit next to Grimes, consuming it in black fire.

  “We have to hurry. It could detonate any moment,” Elliot said.

  Abigail and Kincaid half-dragged him from the room. He said a silent prayer to Morrow as they left the physical battle to the others.

  When they reached the casket of the knight, the singing in Elliot’s head became deafening. He could barely see his companions; it was as if he had put his hood back on and cut himself off from the entire world except for the strange duet. The male voice dominated, filled with something akin to grief. They had returned to the chamber where Alexei’s sarcophagus rested.

  “You’re really sure?” Abigail asked.

  He tried to speak, failed, and settled for a simple but sharp nod.

  “Bank robbing, grave robbing, what’s the difference?” Kincaid muttered to himself. He drew a crowbar from one of the long pockets festooning his mechanik’s rig and leveraged it into the narrow gap between the sealed lid and the stone below. He groaned and strained and then with a shove managed to pry the lid off, breaking a portion of the upper surface in the process. He mumbled under his breath, “I’m going to get cursed for this, I just know it.”

  A sudden crimson glow from within cast them all in a bloody hue, and Elliot reeled from the magnitude of its mental force. It bellowed evil. Kincaid winced, and Abigail shielded her glasses with the back of one hand, but Elliot required more than just protection for his vision. He felt the light penetrate his flesh like a sudden fire too close at hand.

  “It’s a rock,” Kincaid muttered, leaning in until the upper part of his body was lost in the red cloud, “with runes. Among the bones and dust.”

  “Get it out of there,” Abigail ordered, but Elliot yelled a warning before Kincaid could move.

  “Wait!” he gasped. “It does need to be removed, but Morrow only knows what happens if your skin touches it. Be careful. We need to destroy it but not near the remains.”

  “I’m gonna listen to the boy,” Kincaid said. From among the various tools attached to his person he found a thick pair of clamped tongs, which he used to carefully seize the stone and extract it from the sarcophagus, shielding his eyes from the baleful red glow. He placed it upon a stone bench against the wall and then extracted a hammer, which he hefted.

  As he did so, Elliot sank to the floor, his mind overwhelmed by a surge of the incessant singing, which had risen in tone, combined with the bloodstaining light, and the merciless, smothering pressure of time. He had no more control of his thoughts than he did in the feverish days when he’d first discovered the power of prayer, but now he felt helpless instead of enlightened. He watched with dimming vision as Kincaid raised his hammer.

  I wish he’d say our names again, he thought distantly. But maybe Kincaid’s way was best. Not to get attached. Any of them could die at any time.

  With a crunching sound of broken stone, there was a bright explosion of red light. Then it faded and was gone. So too did the torches in the room flicker suddenly. All but one went out. The clarity that returned to Elliot’s mind was a soothing balm. The intense singing was gone, the man’s voice silent. Abigail activated the Strangelight projector on her lumitype and swept its violet light around the room, perhaps to see if anything else untoward was approaching.

  Elliot gasped for air and climbed back to his feet. Looking at the pried-open sarcophagus for a moment, he didn’t see just bones and dull rusted armor but the face of an old man, a knight in armor, his face serene as though sleeping, his hand upon the hilt of a sword. Alexei Tzentesci, still here in spirit, but no longer corrupted. It was at that point he realized there was still a song being sung. A woman’s voice, closer and stronger now, no longer joined in a distracting harmony.

  The light that burst upon him was only behind his eyes, only for him to see, the sort that drove men to quest their lives away in the name of their god. He heard nothing in the vacuum, but there stood the holy lectern from which Father Murdoch had no doubt delivered hundreds of sermons, praises for the ascendants, blessings from Ascendant Angellia, and the word of Morrow. Before he had been seduced and corrupted. The lectern shone in a new light, one Elliot could only describe as divine.

  As his normal vision returned, he saw Kincaid had taken his arm to steady him—he’d almost fallen again. Abigail was carefully sweeping the remnants of the unholy stone into a leather satchel, no doubt preserving them for later study. Sh
e tucked this into her bag and then asked, “Are you all right, Elliot? What happened?”

  “She showed me,” he gasped. His chest ached. A fever like he’d not felt since childhood wrapped itself around him to burn and freeze him at the same time. “The lectern. The bomb. It’s beneath the lectern.”

  “We can’t leave him,” Kincaid breathed to Abigail. “This kid looks like he might—”

  “I am not alone.” Elliot lowered his chin to his chest. “Go. Save their souls. Go!” He said this last to Kincaid, who had hesitated again.

  He felt them leave, though he could no longer see them or hear their passage. He sagged the rest of the way to the floor and listened to his own voice as if from a distance.

  “Yes,” he said. “I will give it to you. Take me.”

  The last torch flickered out.

  “I am not afraid to die. My life is yours to use as you must, Ascendant.” His voice faded with the light. I would be your vessel.

  The singing he heard now was no longer menacing but soothing and beautiful, a promise of comfort and knowledge and enlightenment. He might have imagined it, but it felt real to him, as real as the voices of the countless spirits he had addressed and that no one else could hear. It swelled in his ears, his mind.

  If I do not survive, he thought. See me to Morrow, if you are satisfied with my service and my soul.

  • • •

  LIKE PAGES FLIPPING THROUGH A BOOK, he could see much but so little as he rose on steadied, strengthened legs. He watched himself, and it was not his will that impelled his legs to move.

  He was not there but could see as Kincaid entered the crowded nave in the church above, rushing through alarmed people who parted to make way. He tipped the lectern to reach the flagstone below it. The mass of worshippers raced from their pews, climbing over one another, dashing blessed statuary and symbols aside in their frantic desperation to escape the church. Abigail raced among them, her hands held high, her eyes wild behind her glasses, her mouth open to shout. The prelate looked confused and indignant as she shouted questions or orders at Kincaid, but he ignored her. Instead, he leaned down and set his crowbar against the flagstone to pry it loose. This revealed glass vials, each a foot long and an inch in diameter, capped with a bronze cylinder and built into a mechanikal device that controlled the arming mechanism. He lifted the pair out. The fluid inside the vials was bright green. The prelate’s eyes widened. She put a hand to her mouth.

  As Elliot turned his attention away from them and toward the battle closer and below, he felt the serenity of one moment—Kincaid and Abigail bent over the bomb and together deduced how to defuse it. The next moment, he could see the battle against Father Murdoch had turned against his companions.

  Yet the dizziness in him that gave him strength surged him into motion.

  The spirits were pushing back against Grimes, strong in numbers despite the protection afforded him by his suit. Elliot knew it was only a matter of time before Versh and Eilish were forced to use more violent methods to clear a path to Father Murdoch.

  Have faith, Elliot, a spirit whispered unexpectedly into his mind. Her voice was clear but terrified. Doctor Jana Goodman had managed to hold onto much of her identity, though she couldn’t free herself from the gate’s pull.

  Doctor Goodman, I’m so sorry, he said to her. Guilt and sorrow washed through his mind. He felt powerless, alone.

  But I am not.

  He’d felt powerless like that before, his body withering away in a hospital bed, ravaged by a sickness that ate at him like the infernal horror was eating away at the souls before him. He would have died, should have died, but for one thing: a kindly priest, Father Owen, who spent his days at his bedside, and others like him, afflicted by the wasting disease that had spread through the town. The priest had provided what comfort he could to the dying before they passed to Urcaen.

  He was a good man. I am a good man.

  Yes.

  That priest had come to him day after day and spoken to him of Morrow, of the great battle in Urcaen that he would one day take part in. It gave him hope, it gave him purpose, and eventually, it gave him the strength to fight through his illness and survive. He wasn’t ready yet to join Morrow.

  His faith had seen him through his darkest hour, and now he stood in a most holy site while his friends confronted a darkness greater than any he’d encountered, growing like a tumor beneath the church, in the very halls of this sacred space. Anger at this outrage poured into him, and he began to pray in earnest.

  Morrow is hope, and hope can spread swifter than any sickness.

  It was the last thing Father Owen said to him each day as he lay ravaged by illness all those years ago, and it always gave him comfort.

  Morrow is hope, and hope can spread swifter than any sickness. He let his mind touch the spirits nearest him, let Father Owen’s words flow into them. He could feel her presence still with him and knew it was she who had allowed him to stand. It was her wisdom in the words, her knowledge, that swept through him like a cleansing flood. Her song was still in him, and it thrummed with the blood in his veins.

  The song spread from his mind into the minds of the spirits nearest him, and they did not turn away. They took up the harmony, even though some of them were able to do little more than look up, brokenly.

  She is with us all, here and now.

  He felt a swell of power that was not his own growing inside him, something bright and pure, the very antitheses of Father Murdoch’s infernal gate. In his mind’s eye, he saw the chamber, saw the plinth under which rested the mortal remains of the ascendant and her knights, and saw them begin to shine. The light was dim at first, but as the spirits chanted, it grew brighter, their voices, their souls acting like a catalyst to increase the strength of the prayer and its accompanying song.

  Elliot ripped his hood from his head. The light was not just in his mind. The plinth shone with a fierce blue light, illuminating the spirits of the March and outlining them in holy radiance. Grimes had cleared a hole, and Versh was battling Father Murdoch, crossing blades with the priest.

  The light grew steadily, and within it Elliot saw the outline of a woman, her arms laden with a heavy tome. A sense of serenity washed over him, a peace unlike any he had felt before, and he saw Father Murdoch shrink from that holy light, clinging to the infernal gate and holding his blade out to ward it off. The song had become a single extended pure tone, like the ringing of a bell.

  Light exploded across the chamber, seeming to erupt both from the silhouette of the woman and Elliot himself. He felt a storm in his chest that made it seem like an empty cavity, devoid of his life-giving organs. He was a shell containing a holy tempest.

  Versh took this moment to strike, and he smashed his blade into Father Murdoch’s, knocking the weapon spinning away. The priest reeled back, and Eilish capitalized on the moment and loosed a bolt of arcane fire, hitting the priest in the chest and pitching him off the plinth onto the ground.

  Harlan Versh wasn’t finished, though. He took his blessed blade in both hands, and for a moment he was limned by the azure glow of the ascendant. He smashed his sword into the black stone with a wordless cry of rage, and a sharp crack sounded through the room. Again he swung his sword, and this time the black stone shattered, cracking in half. The red runes along its surface guttered and died.

  The light from the ascendant’s manifestation grew brighter and brighter until Elliot had to look away.

  I have served you well, have I not? I have been honored to serve. In your embrace, I have been pious. I have been—

  The light winked out, and the spirits in the room went with it, passing on to Urcaen and led to Morrow’s domain by one of his greatest servants. Elliot realized that Doctor Goodman’s soul had also disappeared with the ascendant, and intense relief washed over him. Death was not the worst thing that could happen.

  His chest ached. But it had often ached, ever since he was a sickly child. His mind cleared, though, and the ache was a
longing that had been answered once and was assured to be answered again. He could not find his breath, but he knew he didn’t need it. Not anymore. He had done what he was here for. Fulfilled his purpose.

  He slowly allowed himself to collapse and take in his last moments as a fulfilled entrant to the next world instead of an eternally struggling pilgrim.

  “Elliot?” Grimes came to him. His voice was underwater.

  Goodbye, Duncan, Elliot thought. He wished he could speak the words aloud, but he was too weak to open his mouth. This body has finally given its last. You were my good friend.

  “Elliot? You hear me, right here, right now.” Grimes leaned in and listened for Elliot’s breathing. “No, no, you don’t do this.”

  Goodbye.

  The explosion that jolted his entire body brought him to an upright position, a scream on his lips. He could feel a savage heat in his very bones. He turned to face Grimes just as the jammer prepared to touch his electrified gloves to Elliot’s chest a second time.

  “Stop!” Elliot shouted.

  “Not if you give up again, dammit,” Grimes said, edging closer, his eyes angry.

  “I’m here!” Elliot skittered away, just out of reach. “I’m right here! I’m not leaving! Now you’re just being spiteful!”

  Grimes sighed heavily, his face streaked with tears that ran into his teeth as he began to grin. “All right then, but next time you’d better fight a little harder to stay alive. I won’t always be there to save your sorry hide.”

  Nearby, Versh was bent down over the body of Father Murdoch. “He’s bleeding badly, but he’s still alive,” he said as he began working on the priest’s wounds. “You don’t get to die yet. Not until you answer some questions.”

  “No one else dies today,” Grimes said meaningfully.

  “I’m here,” Elliot said again, emphatically. But he could feel that part of him wasn’t and likely never would be again. Something had changed, though he didn’t know what.

  • • •