The Dread: The Fallen Kings Cycle: Book Two

by Gail Z. Martin

  “All, and none. I seek Konost. Permit me to pass and return.”

  The hag gave him a long look once again and then stepped aside, pointing to the middle tunnel. “I hope you have one more gift in that bag. There’s another gatekeeper—one who isn’t as pretty as I am,” she said with a harsh laugh. “Then again, after you’ve been down here a while, you won’t be pretty, either.” She gave a mocking laugh. “Go.”

  The middle path descended steeply, growing colder with every step. Tris could sense the spirits of the dead nearby; their conversations formed a whispered hum just out of earshot. The path was narrow, requiring him to move sideways at some places, and the sharp rocks jabbed into his skin. Even though he was in spirit form, pain was real.

  Gradually, the pathway widened. Tris entered a large cavernous chamber. Bones and skulls were stacked along the walls and embedded into the ceiling of the cave. Some of the bones were arranged in tableaus, with lines of dancing skeletons holding hands as if at a spring dance, or fixed in depictions of everyday life: sitting around a table, reclining on a picnic, or playing sports. In other places, the bones formed abstract patterns, runes, or a repeating motif of the three-bone symbol of the Shrouded Ones. Along the back wall of the cave was an elaborate mural made from bones. Three figures—Peyhta, Konost, and Shanthadura—were carved into the rock, the only figures in the entire cavern not sculpted from bone. These three cowled figures accepted tribute from a long line of skeletal supplicants who came on foot, crawling on hands and knees, carried in the arms of others, or riding on bony horses and mules.

  At the base of the mural was a large white building, also constructed from bone. Tens of thousands of human bones built its pillars and lintels, while its roof was tiled with flat shoulder bones. Skulls and pelvis bones adorned the walls in ghastly combinations, while smaller finger and toe bones edged the top of the wall-like ribbon. Between where Tris stood and the bone-covered temple was a wide river with only one bridge. Like the temple, the bridge was built of the bones of countless men, women, and children. It arched across the dark river supported by a latticework of long bones, suspended with the graceful curving strands of hundreds of human spines.

  As Tris walked closer to the bridge, the smell of decay became stronger. A shambling figure with putrefying flesh peeling from its rotting frame blocked the bridge’s entrance. Tris approached cautiously. Though the figure walked unsteadily while patrolling its post, Tris had no desire to find out just how quickly it could move if it detected prey.

  Tris stretched out his magic. While the corpse of the gatekeeper was very old, strong magic kept it from disintegrating into dust. Tris’s anger flared. Trapped within the eternally rotting flesh of the stinking corpse was a sentient spirit. To reanimate the dead by forcing an unwilling soul back into a rotting body was forbidden to any Light mage. Konost obviously played by her own rules.

  Carefully, Tris reached into the bag for the last passage token: the human heart. It, too, was halted in a state of waxy partial decomposition. Tris could feel the vile magic that preserved it. Holding the heart in his hand, he approached the bridge.

  “Gatekeeper! I have a gift for you. Allow me to pass and return and the gift is yours.”

  The shambling corpse stopped and turned toward the sound of Tris’s voice. Its yellow, gelatinous eyes fixed him in their gaze. “Not unless you can destroy me.”

  “I have no cause to fight you,” Tris replied, keeping his hand on Nexus’s grip, ready to draw. “Take the heart and stand aside.”

  The gatekeeper moved forward warily, snatching the heart from Tris’s hand. The gatekeeper pulled aside the filthy remnants of his shirt to reveal decayed flesh that barely covered the bare bones of his ribs. He pushed one hand through the rotting sinew to place the heart where it belonged inside his chest. As Tris watched, the putrefying flesh lost its green-and-black hue as it knit together. Oozing pustules of festering rot closed to become purple-and-brown lesions and then faded to the sickly gray of a fresh corpse.

  The gatekeeper drew its sword from the ragged remains of an ancient leather scabbard. He began to advance, and where Tris had glimpsed sentience before, he now saw craft and intelligence. The gatekeeper swung his ancient sword, and Tris met the bone-jarring swing with Nexus. Nexus’s blade flared with the contact, warming in Tris’s hand as the gatekeeper swung again with lethal force. Here, on the Plains of Spirit, it was easy to let himself merge with the magic of the sword. He remembered his grandmother’s warning: The sword draws a breath from your soul.

  The gatekeeper showed no sign of tiring, and Tris wondered what magic imbued the corpse with its power. Tris knew he could not sustain pitched battle forever. His foot slipped, and the gatekeeper scored a deep gash to Tris’s shoulder. The sight of blood oozing from the wound made Tris wonder if the damage sustained here in the Nether marked the body he had left behind.

  The triumph of inflicting a serious wound distracted the gatekeeper. It was only for a second, but it was the opening Tris had been waiting for, and he lunged, driving Nexus between the corpse’s ribs, into the newly returned heart. Nexus’s blade flared once more, bright as the sun, and Tris felt the blade pull a surge of his magic down its steely length, even as the grip grew dangerously hot in Tris’s hand. The corpse guard screamed as magic fused with Nexus’s fiery glow, and Tris realized what the sword meant to do a second after it had begun to force life energy down the honed edge of the blade. His magic burst into the gray, dead heart, and then sent tendrils of white-hot power through every nerve and vein.

  Spitted on the point of Tris’s sword, the gatekeeper began to tremble, screaming, as the power surged through his body. As the return of its heart had forced back the putrefying flesh, now the blast of Tris’s summoner magic drove out the deathly pallor of the corpse flesh, and in its wake, left living tissue.

  The transformation took only seconds. Tris watched in horror as Nexus drew upon his power, until the body from which the blade protruded was that of a living, bleeding man.

  The gatekeeper dropped his sword and sank to his knees, watching red blood flow from the chest wound in astonishment. He drew a shuddering breath, and he raised his head to meet Tris’s gaze.

  “You have passed the challenge and given me my freedom. Go—and if you can best the goddess, return in peace.”

  The gatekeeper slumped forward, dead, and Tris pulled the blade free. He half expected to see the form crumble into dust or reanimate, but the dead man’s body remained crumpled where it fell. Tris wiped Nexus’s blade clean on the hem of his tunic. He stretched out his magic, intending to offer to help the gatekeeper’s soul to cross over, but the soul had vanished. Sword in hand, Tris walked across the bone bridge.

  The weight of dead souls pressed around him. These souls had been stolen, hollowed, from deathbeds and battlefields throughout the course of centuries. Tris wondered if the gatekeeper’s soul was among them. Konost’s role, Tris realized, was more accurately “poacher” than “guide.”

  Souls crowded him, desperate for the touch of his magic. They wailed and screamed, cursed and begged. He knew that to yield to their pleas would be to allow them to drain him dry of magic, stranding him among them, but their cries tore at his conscience. He listened for just one soul, Cwynn’s essence, but heeded the Dread’s warning not to call to his son until he had first defeated Konost. As he approached the temple of bones, Tris let his power search out the shadows for the life force he recognized as his son. Just as he neared the bottom step to the temple, he felt a quiver of recognition. The essence that trembled in response to his magic was young, and for the first time, Tris could sense nascent power.

  Stay hidden until I call for you. Tris wasn’t sure whether Cwynn’s soul could understand his warning. Whether it knew his meaning or gathered a warning from his tone, the essence did not come closer, although Tris marked its location in his mind.

  Sword at the ready, Tris squared his shoulders and began to climb the temple steps. Where others might see on
ly long-dead bones, Tris’s magic resonated with the screams of the captured souls still bound to the bones that made up the grisly ossuary. They begged and pleaded for the release he had granted to the gatekeeper, and it took all of Tris’s shielding to block them out so that he could focus on the task before him.

  Inside the temple, walls of stacked bones were decorated with elaborate crests formed from even more skulls, ribs, teeth, and tibias. Swags made from hundreds of forearms and shin bones crisscrossed the open room as if awaiting a party. A huge chandelier hung suspended from the ceiling, formed from every type of bone, with decorative pendants fashioned from the smallest finger joints. At intervals around the walls other complete skeletons had been positioned like skeletal guards, swords clasped in bony hands, forever at attention, awaiting the call of their mistress.

  To Tris’s mage sense, the temple stank of blood magic and death. Enshrined on a throne of skulls in the middle of the temple was a gray-shrouded form. The being stood, and Tris saw that it was a woman, so emaciated that every bone showed through her tissue-thin, gray skin. Lusterless dark hair fell lank to her shoulders. Her eyes were solid black. Ancient power radiated from the figure, and Tris knew he had reached his goal. This was Konost, and he fought a wave of mortal fear.

  “Give me back my son, Cwynn, and I’ll leave in peace,” Tris said, although Nexus remained unsheathed and ready in his hand. It glowed, as if it alone possessed life in the realm of the dead.

  “How dare you enter my lands to steal away my servants! I give you nothing.” Konost’s black eyes stared at him, unblinking. Her thin lips drew back from mottled teeth that protruded from gray, receded gums.

  “Then I will take Cwynn from you, as I took your gatekeeper. You have no power over his soul. You cannot keep a soul that is not whole.”

  Konost’s bony features twisted in anger. “I rule in this realm. Win the boy’s soul from me if you can, summoner, but be prepared to forfeit your own.”

  Konost lashed out with magic. Tris felt the goddess’s power wash over him like a tide pulling him beneath the heavy waves of the sea. He felt Konost’s power robbing his body of its breath, draining the blue-white glow of his life force. Tris saw the skin on his hands grow shriveled and wrinkled like an old man, and he felt his body weaken. Konost, guide of dead souls, was calling his life and essence to her.

  The sheer power of the attack forced Tris to stagger. Nexus flashed in his hand, its runes burning with the fire of the magic that forged it. For an instant, the sword’s power halted the drain of Konost’s magic. Tris knew his remaining life force could not sustain the power he would need to defeat Konost, and he reached deeper with his magic, drawing on the currents of the Flow. Tris forced his summoner’s magic into this spirit form, warring cell by cell against Konost’s deadly power, winning back breath and blood and sinew.

  Konost gave a shrill cry of anger. She clapped her hands together, and the bones of the skeletal warriors that ringed the inner temple began to tremble. The warriors advanced on Tris, and Konost stepped back, laughing.

  “Prove your power in battle, Summoner-King. If you want your son, fight for him.”

  Twelve skeletal warriors advanced, swords raised, forming a circle around Tris. He raised Nexus. Tris felt the magic of the old blade thrum through its grip, and as the warriors attacked, Tris drew on the magic of the Flow.

  Nexus became a flaming athame, as light and magic flowed from the blade’s tip like fire. The blaze forced the skeletons to fall back, but Tris knew he could not channel this much power forever. He focused his power on the dark magic that animated the dead bones. He sent his summoning magic along the channels of power, calling to whatever remained of the spirits and hollowed souls of the reanimated skeletons. Tris drew in as much of the Flow’s power as he dared and wrested the dead soldiers free from Konost’s grip. Konost’s skeletal guards collapsed into a heap of bones.

  “What right have you to invade my realm? Who do you think you are?” Konost shrilled. “I am the Guide of Dead Souls.”

  “And I am the Lord of the Dead.” Tris met her eyes defiantly. Despite his victory, his life thread was growing dangerously dim, and he knew he could not remain separated from his body for much longer without risking his ability to leave the Underrealm. Weakened by hunger, thirst, and fatigue, he did not know how many more of Konost’s onslaughts he could withstand. “Give me my son.”

  “I do not do the bidding of mortals!” Konost’s black eyes glinted with rage, and Tris felt her power growing like a storm cloud. He rallied his own magic for one last defense.

  “I call to your soul, summoner. And I will take what is mine!”

  It felt as if a cold, dead hand reached inside of his chest, compressing both heart and breath. Tris fell to his knees. Konost seemed able to pull the marrow from his bones. This was the goddess’s true power, to call souls. Tris felt his soul, a glowing shadow of himself, straining against its mooring in the nerves and sinews of his body as Konost tried to wrest it from him.

  Nexus burst into an arc of blue-white flame that seemed to drive the air from the chamber. In the flame, Tris saw a shimmering form, a ghostly image of his grandmother, the summoner Bava K’aa, the sorceress who forged Nexus. He saw his own image as well and recognized the stolen whispers of his soul. Konost has no power over partial souls.

  Nexus engulfed him in a blinding ball of fire and Tris screamed. Konost’s grip weakened, and then suddenly, his soul was free of her grasp. Every inch of his body throbbed, as if he had been skinned alive and then the flayed hide roughly reattached. Life returned as the fragile soul thread began to glow once more. And in that moment, another presence streamed through the conduit of Nexus’s blinding light. At first, Tris thought it was Talwyn’s magic he felt flowing through Nexus, but the tide of power was too strong. It refreshed his weary form, gave him strength to climb to his feet, rushing through his body in a cold, bracing wave. Tris remembered that Pevre had told him that the whole Sworn village would keep vigil. And then Tris knew: Talwyn was channeling not just her own life energy, but sustaining him with the life force drawn from the entire Tribe.

  “You may be the guide of souls, but you have no power over life,” Tris said.

  Konost screamed, throwing herself toward him, bony hands and blackened nails outstretched. She touched the white-hot arc of light and recoiled, shrieking as if burned.

  Tris flung out his magic to Cwynn, pulling his son’s shattered soul to him and sheltering it within his own form. Cwynn’s familiar life force huddled within him, and Tris felt it reach out reflexively to the Flow. The connection only lasted for an instant, but its power was blinding. For that moment, Tris felt the full power of the Flow channeled through him. Once before, when he and Carina had healed the shattered Flow beneath Margolan and Dark Haven, Tris had felt that magic run through him at its full strength, threatening to incinerate him with its power. Channeled through Cwynn, the Flow was no less fearsome, but it felt contained, as if it were taking its natural course.

  A blast of power illuminated Konost’s chamber, power that radiated from Nexus, the connection to the Sworn, and from Cwynn channeling the Flow. Brilliant light dispelled the shadows and a swell of power rose around Tris, making the ground shake hard enough that he nearly lost his footing. Lightning arced from Nexus’s tip, striking the temple walls. The bone-inlaid crests fell, shattering on the stone floor. Overhead, the swags of smaller bones tore loose from their moorings, pelting him as they fell and raining down like hail. The massive chandelier swayed dangerously, and then its cord gave way, sending it to the floor with a crash. With a final salvo in Konost’s direction to deter her from following him, Tris ran for the bone bridge and used his summoning magic to withdraw the trapped souls that held it together, letting it collapse behind him into the swift currents of the black river.

  Konost was shrieking curses at him as he ran, carefully choosing his path over the treacherous footing. He refused to look back. Tris stumbled as Cwynn’s attachment to th
e Flow winked out, and he knew that Talwyn was limited in how long she could draw on the life force of the Sworn. Hurry, Tris, he could hear Talwyn urge across the bond. Attackers come. I can’t channel the power to you if we’re under siege.

  Nexus dimmed, still light enough to show their way back through the gateways and to dispel the menacing shadows that dwelled in the dark places of the Underrealm. He met no resistance from the gatekeepers, but he also knew that if his power failed him before he reached the world of the living, or if his mortal body died before he could take it back, he and Cwynn would never leave Konost’s realm.

  Tris felt himself weakening. The blue-white glow of his life thread was growing dimmer, and he knew he did not have the power left to draw on the Flow again without being lost beneath its roiling power. Moving on sheer willpower, Tris burst through the last of the gates, stumbling and falling, to make his way back to where the Dread waited.

  Nexus’s glow winked out and its fiery runes went dark as Tris fell to his knees at the threshold to the Dread’s abode. Well done, Lord of the Dead.

  Cold, ancient power flowed over him. Where Nexus had been fire and the Flow had been water, the magic of the Dread was unlike anything Tris had ever felt. The magic seemed to soak through his flesh into his bones, healing the injuries he had sustained in the Underrealm, restoring his life thread and soothing the places that still were raw where his soul had been battered.

  A gift, for a worthy warrior. We honor our pact with your people.

  Release your son’s soul. We will see to his safe return.

  Reluctantly, Tris loosed his hold on Cwynn’s essence, knowing that he did not have the power to accompany his son back to Shekerishet. Dangerous beings dwelled in the Nether, but Tris doubted that anything would be foolish enough to attempt an attack on the Dread.

  “Thank you,” Tris said, his voice thick with fatigue. “Now please, can you show me how to get out?”

  The cold night air had never seemed so sweet. Even on the Plains of Spirit, as Tris emerged from the barrow of the Dread, the sounds and smells of the living world burst upon his senses, a stark contrast to the lightless realms below. His spirit rejoined his body with a violent spasm, and his mortal body felt heavy as he shifted from pure spirit to flesh and bone. A tremor shuddered through him, and strong hands held him by the shoulders.