by Kenyon, Nate
A Luminarei guard spotted him and shouted to the others. As they took flight, Mikulov stepped from the shadows, took a deep breath, and slammed his hands together in a mighty clap, finally letting go of the beast within.
Jacob led the two women toward the vast recesses of the Courts of Justice as quickly and quietly as he could.
He tried to steady his feet as they slipped among the wide columns into a cooler, covered space. He had no doubt the angels would be here any moment; he could only hope they would have assumed the Horadrim had kept going down the wide corridor instead of following them inside the courts. From what Tyrael had told him about this place, it was likely to be empty, since a new archangel of Justice had not been named and the angels were at the Ascension, and he knew from their map that directly on the other side, they would find a corridor leading to the Angiris Council room.
Above a massive set of doors hung a glittering replica of El’druin, ten times the size and cast in some kind of strange metallic ore. The symbol of Justice itself, meant to humble all who entered.
But that was nothing to what they found beyond it.
The next room was empty, or it appeared to be. It was set up like an amphitheater, with seating running around three sides and facing an open ring in the center. Giant lecterns of stone and crystal faced the ring and the seats on the other side, and one wall was inscribed floor to ceiling with words writ large and with an elegant hand. From what Tyrael had said, Jacob knew this must be the Wall of Edicts—the laws of the Heavens themselves, carved in stone and followed for millennia.
But it was the statues that dominated the ring, robed male and female angels that towered over the seats below, their arms outstretched and pointing to where the accused would stand and where a spiraling column of stone rose to the ceiling. Figures crawled from the column, demons and tortured angels crying out in agony, the condemned and sentenced, their sins permanently frozen upon their intricately carved features as they reached toward the giant statues, begging for mercy.
“The darkness within,” Gynvir whispered. The barbarian was staring at the carvings, her face drained of color, mouth agape. Shanar stood next to her in a similar pose, tears wetting her cheeks, for once unable to speak a word. Jacob knew what Gynvir meant; the sense of terrible deeds and unforgivable sins permeated this place, as if the ghosts of those who had passed through the Ring of Judgment had taken up residence and haunted its walls. The heavy silence pushed down on them. He imagined the trials that had taken place here over the centuries, those angels who had faced their sins with dignity and those who had gone screaming to the prison cells he knew were somewhere below their feet.
There would be no mercy shown for the guilty. If the Horadrim were captured, if they even lived long enough to make it to this place, they would be condemned to their own private torment.
Jacob shivered. Everything that he had ever done wrong seemed to crash down on him all at once, culminating with what had happened in the Gardens of Hope. He touched the hidden sheath that held the weapon Commander Nahr had forged for him—the Sicarai’s sword. He thought he had lost it in the earlier struggle when the light-tree tendrils had touched him. Now he drew it out, staring at the glowing double blade, the weight of it in his hands steadying his nerves.
His breakdown in the gardens kept coming back to him. He had wanted to embrace everything that Tyrael had expected of him, but at the first sign of adversity, he had collapsed like a child, screaming for help against the ghosts of his own past. And now the Horadrim were scattered, some of them likely dead, and the mission was in tatters.
Forgive me, Jacob prayed silently. It was wildly ironic that he was standing here now, in the heart of Justice itself, exposed yet again as a fraud. He had let his father, his friends, his entire world down, and he was leading the woman he loved to her certain doom.
The thought stunned him with its simplicity. Yes, I love her. Of course he did; he always had. The truth of it had been lost within a sea of complications and denials, but Shanar’s kiss in the Pools of Wisdom still burned on his lips, and the taste of her still haunted him. The fact that they were all likely about to die only served to heighten the intensity of his feelings.
He glanced at her, saw the loveliness in her face, the vulnerability she tried to hide with jokes and a carefully constructed casualness that covered up her true self. Her incredible skill had gotten them this far. It fed a growing fire within him, a determination to make this final stand an honorable one.
As he took Shanar’s hand, a muffled thud came from somewhere outside, and the floor shook under their feet. Jacob stumbled and caught himself, supporting Shanar before she fell. A rumble ran through them like thunder.
He did not know why he thought of the monk, only that he sensed in some way that Mikulov was responsible for the explosion. Mikulov had drawn the attention of the Luminarei. They had to use the distraction that the monk had provided and hope the corridor that led to the Council room was clear.
A noise came from beyond the courtroom. Someone was coming. They had to hide somewhere, and fast. Jacob led Shanar and Gynvir down through the ring of seats to the floor, where the huge column of stone towered over them, even larger than it had appeared before. The carved angels and demons were three times the size of him. Quickly, he tucked himself between two of them at the base of the column, and Shanar and Gynvir did the same. The condemned reached out as if to hold them for all eternity, smothering them with their cold, frozen embrace.
A moment later, an entry beyond the lecterns slammed open, and four Luminarei guards came rushing through the courtroom, weapons out. They did not hesitate, continuing out the far end and disappearing through the doors. Jacob waited another moment to be sure there were no more coming, and then he emerged from the small space and escorted the two women up the steps. The guards had left the door behind the lecterns slightly ajar. Jacob crept up to it as quietly as possible, just close enough to peer through the crack.
Another corridor led away from the courts. It was empty. No Luminarei guards stood there ready to ambush them.
He brought Shanar and Gynvir out of the Courts of Justice, toward the Angiris Council room, where the Black Soulstone waited silently for them, its secrets buried deep within its ebony shell.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Imprisoned in the Fist
Pain lanced his skull, a sharp spike driven through his temples that quickly turned into a throbbing ache. He wandered through dream landscapes, one blending into another. The Sicarai was coming at him again and again, the edge of his sword gleaming in the light of a raging fire. The flames consumed the people who had been lashed down, unable to escape. The smell of cooking flesh grew stronger as the screams of the tortured and dying rose up from all around him. Leah reached out, begging for his help, but he could not move his arms, and behind her stood Deckard Cain, a look of sadness and regret etched upon his features. Cain’s beard was full of blood.
Tyrael opened his eyes. Darkness pressed in on him for a moment, and he tried to sit up, but another flash of pain drove him back again. He blinked, trying to clear his sight and orient himself. The world came crashing in all at once. He was in a prison chamber, his arms and legs shackled to the stone wall behind him. He reached up until the chain stopped his arm short. He could just touch the back of his head, and his hand came away sticky with blood.
Nausea rolled over him. He closed his eyes and took a slow breath, then opened them again.
Cullen sat slumped against the wall opposite him, also chained, his bald, bloodstained head against his chest. He did not move, did not seem to breathe.
Tyrael gathered himself and attempted to sit again, this time more slowly. The thudding pain subsided slightly, and he was able to prop himself up until the chains stopped his movements. The bonds that held him were meant for angels and vibrated at a frequency that neutralized an angelic resonance. He felt them buzzing against his flesh.
He looked around at the walls, stained with fluids
of demons. The smell of death was strong. Movement came from the shadows beyond. A monstrosity of flesh, rolling greasily in the dark, a glint of red fire flashing from baleful eyes that glared out as if from the pits of the Burning Hells themselves. Chains rattled as the thing pulled against its demonic bonds, bands of silver with a ring of pure light running through them. It stepped forward, moaning. Tiny, lipless mouths with needlelike teeth gaped like landed fish all over its body, and little arms draped themselves over the fat that oozed from every crevice.
Another moved in the opposite corner, hissing and grunting, a coiled, deceptively calm demon like a snake about to strike. Minions of the Hells, captured by Imperius and the Luminarei. They were kept here to intimidate other prisoners and occasionally, if they got close enough, tear them to shreds.
There was no music here, no bright lights and glittering crystal. Tyrael and Cullen were in the belly of the Fist, the underground prison of the High Heavens created to keep the condemned for all eternity. Room after room of carved and dripping stone, cells built to hold creatures that could not be contained anywhere else. Demonic torture chambers with blades built to slice thick flesh, flay skin from bone. Other chambers specially shielded to keep angels pinned to the walls. Bottomless wells filled with brackish, ice-cold water, where demons were submerged to their necks and forced to swim until they could no longer move, when they were dragged out and forced to go through it all again. The rooms led from one passage to another in a maze that confused anyone unlucky enough to break free; the lower depths were said to still hold the mummified remains of those who had wandered there and perished in the dark.
“Cullen,” Tyrael whispered. His throat felt as if it were on fire, his lips cracked and dry. He pulled gently against the chains that bound him, then harder. They held firm; these were no ordinary chains forged of simple iron. They were built to hold the strongest angels housed in the Fist and could not be broken by a mortal.
Cullen shifted slightly and moaned. Tyrael could not see any obvious wounds. Perhaps the blood was not his own. Thomas. The thought brought back everything that had happened in the gardens, the Sicarai brutally disemboweling the Horadrim as he knelt, defenseless and wounded. Blood seeping out onto the crystal dust.
Anger coursed through him, and he yanked the chains harder. Someone had locked him up here and taken El’druin. Panic ran through Tyrael as he realized Chalad’ar was also missing.
A low, grating sound brought him back from the edge. Light came around cracks in the door to the cell; a moment later, the door swung open, and the Sicarai entered the room.
“Release me,” Tyrael said, his voice hoarse and far too weak to be commanding.
The Sicarai didn’t answer. He only waited. It wasn’t long before someone else joined them.
Balzael walked through the door and took up a position next to the Sicarai. He carried something, but Tyrael could not see what it was in the shadows. “A clipped bird in a cage,” Balzael said. “I promised you that not so long ago, did I not? I had hoped you would return here voluntarily. I must admit, I still had my doubts. I imagined you to be too much of a coward to do it. But you came even earlier than I had expected, and you brought friends.”
“Release these bonds,” Tyrael said quietly, “and see how much of a coward I am.”
Balzael chuckled. “I think not. Although I would enjoy making you bleed, mortal. You disgust me. Do you know the Council discussed your archangel status at their last meeting? They do not know what to call you. Traitor, perhaps. You will stand trial, if you live that long. Your crimes are punishable by death. I may take it upon myself to carry out justice a bit early and save us all the time.”
“Death comes to all of us sooner or later.”
“All mortals, yes. I can smell your stench from here. You chose to stand with the filth of Sanctuary, and now you will suffer their fate.”
“Imperius does not know what the stone is doing to him,” Tyrael said. He was growing tired of the lieutenant’s games. “To all of you! Can you not see the corruption, the darkness that has crept into your midst? Soon the High Heavens will fall, and the Burning Hells will rise to take their place.”
“He cares not for your theories.”
“Get him in here. Whatever he has to say, he can say it to my face.”
“Imperius? Why would he want to see you? He is far too busy with the Ascension, and I would not bother him with such drivel.” Balzael chuckled again. “You have no idea what is really going on. You are not very smart, are you, little bird? Perhaps your mortal status has affected your mind.”
A chill ran through Tyrael at Balzael’s words. “Imperius does not know I am here,” he said. “If not my brother, who else is a part of this, other than the destroyer? Those creatures that have been chasing us?”
“That is none of your concern,” Balzael said. “You have played an important role, finding the nephalem stronghold and opening the door, and now it is time for your friends to finish the job they came to do. You, however, will not be joining them.”
He held what he had been carrying up to the light, then tossed it at Tyrael’s feet. The Chalice of Wisdom clinked and rolled across the stone, coming to rest just inches away. In spite of himself, Tyrael felt the hunger for it rise up within his breast. He shuddered.
“We have kept a close watch on you,” Balzael said. “Now you are a slave to the chalice and will do whatever it takes to bathe in the pools again. But do not worry. I do not think you will live much longer. Regrettably, I believe that you will be killed attempting to escape along with your friend here.”
Tyrael was more immediately concerned with the other things Balzael had said. The chill deepened. As much as he did not want to hear it, they made some kind of sense. You have played an important role . . . now it is time for your friends to finish the job they came to do. All that time spent searching for the catacombs and knowing the phantoms were lurking somewhere close by, feeling them . . . that night in New Tristram, when they had killed the bar patron and marked Jacob. They could have swarmed the Horadrim then, but they did not. And the battle on the mountain, when they had flitted among the trees and above the cliff face, never attacking. Why?
Tyrael managed a grim smile. “What do you mean, finish the job?”
“Imperius and the rest of the Council will be informed that you and your friend, along with the other man the Sicarai killed, are the only ones who came here to steal the stone. I will make sure to explain your foiled plan to them. You are the perfect distraction.”
Understanding dawned. “You want the stone for yourself,” Tyrael said. “And you are going to use us to steal it.”
Perhaps at first, Balzael had hoped the stone’s influence on the Council would compel them to destroy Sanctuary. But the Council would not act quickly enough. So Balzael had to improvise.
“The archangels will put you to death when they find out what you have done!”
“Perhaps,” Balzael said. “If they can find me. Of course, by then, if all goes well, I will be beyond their reach. But if I die, so be it. That would be a small price to pay for the end of the human race. Our scouts you call phantoms have been well trained. They will do the dirty work.”
Tyrael’s mind was reeling. Could he really have been manipulated in this way? Had he been so blind? Chalad’ar was supposed to help him see the truth, not hide it away.
He looked at the chalice lying at his feet. In spite of all that had happened, his thirst for it was nearly overpowering. He still longed to disappear within its depths, to lose himself among the threads and find peace in oblivion.
“You do not know where the rest of the Horadrim are,” he said. “You do not know how many we have or whether they are still alive.”
“But I know where they are going,” Balzael said. “You have sent them after the stone. I have ordered all guards away from the chamber, and the rest of the Luminarei are attending the Ascension. All we have to do is wait for them to bring the stone back to Sanctuar
y, and then we will take it. Do you really think any of them can get away from us, once we choose to come after them?”
“You cannot enter the catacombs,” Tyrael said. “They are shielded from you—”
“Enough of this,” Balzael said. “Do not concern yourself with such trifles when there are so many more important things to accomplish.” He strolled over to where Cullen lay against the wall. “You still do not understand,” he said softly. “The stone holds great power. It may be forged from darkness, but its true purpose is too special to waste.”
A faint rumble made the walls and ceiling tremble slightly. Balzael looked at the Sicarai. “What was that?”
“I do not know, my lord,” the destroyer said. “I will find out—”
“No,” Balzael said. “It does not matter. Imperius has been sequestered in his chambers, but it is time to fill him in. On our terms, of course. You know what to do. Go.”
The destroyer nodded once and disappeared. Balzael reached down and took Cullen by the throat, half lifting him off the floor. He turned back to Tyrael. “This one shall be an example. So that you will truly feel the power we wield over you.”
Tyrael struggled against the chains as the monstrosities in the corners of the room moaned eagerly, red eyes glowing, mouths snapping open and shut. “Do not kill him,” he said. “He is an innocent.”
“Oh, he is far from that,” Balzael said from the shadows. “But I will not kill him. You will.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Luminarei
The necromancer slipped through shadows and light. Rays streamed through the arched openings from the gardens and fell across the corridor, but they could not cut completely through the darkness.
Or perhaps that existed only in his mind.
He had watched Thomas get cut down and had seen Tyrael and Cullen taken by the Sicarai, dragged away toward the Courts of Justice. He had felt the dull whump of the explosion and could only assume it had been Mikulov; whether he had survived it was a mystery. And he had not seen Jacob, Shanar, or Gynvir.