“There’s not much natural about that particular sickness, let me tell you—” Terian began.
“Ah, it’s like the good old days once more,” J’anda said, “but, you know, with a little redder sky overhead.” He waved a hand toward Cyrus and Vara. “And without the benefit or curse of your endless bickering.”
“I always thought it was cute,” Vaste said, “until I started hearing the kinky tales of—”
“Shhhh,” Vara said, “or I’ll regale you with one now.”
“Your mother-in-law is right over there,” Vaste said gleefully. “I’d like to see you do it. Keep in mind she’s killed more people than even you have.”
“I’ll put my fingers in my ears and hum loudly,” Quinneria offered.
“Much appreciated,” Vara said.
“Oh, betrayed by the troll hater,” Vaste said. “How could I not see it coming?”
“Cyrus Davidon!” Rhane Ermoc shouted across the field between them as Windrider cantered the last hundred meters or so to the base of the temple steps. “I was wondering if you were going to show up.”
Cyrus drew Praelior and heard the sound of bows being nocked among the Army of Goliath. “I didn’t have much reason to fear coming, Rhane,” he said, holding the blade aloft but keeping Windrider still only fifteen or so feet before the Goliath warrior. “At least, not from you.”
“Rub it on in, why don’t you,” Ermoc said with a sneer.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Cyrus said, twirling Praelior in his fingers. “Let me tell you a little secret I learned after you took my sword away … it’s the warrior that makes the blade, not the other way around. That’s why I kept thwarting you even without my sword, even when you ambushed me with superior numbers. You were never going to beat me because—”
“Because you’re a heretic,” Ermoc said. “A cheater. A—”
“And you’re a chickenshit, a coward, a thief, and a terrible swordsman,” Cyrus said, staring him down. “I was known before I had the sword. I outmaneuvered you before it ever touched my hand. And now …” he drew Rodanthar and held one weapon in each hand, “what do you figure your odds are if you keep standing in my way?”
Ermoc’s face twisted with familiar hatred, pulsating with rage, but it faded into resentment. “I’m not going to block you. You’re supposed to be here. He wants you here.”
“Because he likes me more than you,” Cyrus said, instinctively driving the blade into Ermoc’s ego. Ermoc twitched, and Cyrus knew he’d found his mark.
“Because he demands it,” Sareea Scyros called out, taking up the defense for Ermoc.
“He demands a lot of things, doesn’t he, Sareea?” Terian asked. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter to you, because every single bit of you—your honor, your loyalty, your sword—they were all for sale all along.”
Sareea smiled at Terian. “I sought power. You sought … satisfaction.”
“I’m pretty satisfied,” Terian said, smiling, and drew his axe. “Reasonably powerful now, too.”
“You are nothing compared to him,” Sareea said, shaking her head.
“Well, I’m the Sovereign of Saekaj and Sovar,” Terian said. “That’s not exactly ‘nothing.’ I mean, the last guy to hold that position was a—”
GOD.
The voice came from the top of the pyramid, as clear and strong as when it had rumbled down from the heavens above Sanctuary and rained onto the balcony like the downpour of the previous night. The ground seemed to shake under the power of Malpravus’s voice, and every horse but Windrider screamed in fear.
The sky shimmered above them, and now Cyrus saw the pillar of light shining out of the top of the pyramid, thin and coruscating, like the light of a spell. He stared as the ground rocked once more, and the voice stretched out and assaulted them all, shaking their very bones.
Watch … my … rise …
“It’s starting,” Quinneria said. “He’s going to do it now.”
“Do what now?” Vaste asked, nearly falling off his horse as the earth quaked and quailed.
“The spell,” Vara said, sounding dead certain.
“What?” Cyrus asked. “He doesn’t—we didn’t bring our army for him to—”
“Don’t you get it?” Vara sounded quiet in the midst of the thundering earth, as the thread of light extending out of the top of the temple began to widen, to solidify into something darker, leaving its tenuous grip on the sky behind and reaching out like spidery fingers, extending down toward them. “He doesn’t need our army to sacrifice, not for this. He never did.” Her eyes were wide and white, and fixed on his. “Why would he? He’s brought his own.”
91.
The tendrils of magical energy curled out of the top of the temple and down, down upon them. They twisted out of the sky like blood drifting in the water, lancing through the air with their own path charted, curling and roiling as they grew closer. Cyrus saw them come and was breathless. They struck Sareea Scyros and Rhane Ermoc like spears in the back and both of them shook, their armor rattling like their breath as it left them; Ermoc’s skin turned from swarthy to waxy pale, Sareea’s went from a deep blue to cerulean as the life was ripped from her, the tendrils of energy pulsating upward as it stole their vitality, carrying it back to the source at the top of the temple. Their screams halted in the middle, their throats going dry and their expressions of horror grew stiff and deathly, their eyes vacant.
“Hold on!” Quinneria shouted. Green spell-light surrounded them as tendrils reached in their direction. They fractured against her spell, splitting as they batted against the sphere she’d drawn around them. She held out her hands as if she could stop the coming cataclysm and it seemed to Cyrus that she did, at least in the small pocket where they stood, their horses bucking in fear beneath them as the sky started to blacken from all the twisting tendrils reaching down from the temple top.
The tendrils spread to the Army of Goliath, splitting and splitting again, until there were enough points for every single member of the army. Some tried to run, some were struck dumb and motionless as they watched what approached, but none escaped. The black spell-craft twisted into their bodies as it had Ermoc and Sareea’s, and Cyrus saw the pulsation as life was drained, as every single one of them came to their unnatural end. Bodies squirmed and writhed in the darkness, screams began and ceased just as abruptly, the jerking of some twenty thousand bodies as the spell did its work was like a writhing mass upon the field before the temple.
“Was this … was this what it was like at Thurren Hill?” Vaste asked in horrified awe.
“Yes.” Quinneria said, shaking with the exertion of keeping her spell around them. The tendrils of black were dancing all about its edges, licking at the barrier. The grass beneath their feet withered and turned brown before their very eyes.
When the tendrils were done with their horrible work, they held still, hanging in the air above their subjects, thin now, half the size they’d been when they started. A pulse of white glowed at the origin on the temple’s top and ran down each spell thread to the bodies at the end.
“Uh oh,” Quinneria muttered.
“Don’t say that,” Vaste said in rising alarm. “He just massacred his whole army. What could prompt an ‘uh oh’ after that?” He shook for a second. “Please let it be something innocuous, something despicable but harmless like—”
“Goat buggery?” J’anda suggested. When Vaste looked at him in horror, the enchanter shrugged. “Not harmless, I suppose, but perhaps less worrisome than—”
“Necromancy,” Vara said as the white pulses got smaller, running to each link at the end of the spell’s chain. Rhane and Sareea caught them first, being closest, and their dead eyes glowed with life once more as the tendrils relinquished their hold, turning to smoke once their dark work was finished.
Rhane Ermoc and Sareea Scyros stood unnaturally, their bodies tilted at odd angles, their weapons still at the ready. Cyrus watched the same fate befall the entire army of Goliath, the
tendrils wafting away once their pulses were carried. The corpses remained upright, their eyes glowing like—
“Ghouls,” Cyrus said under his breath.
“Yes,” Vara said. She drew her sword, the blade bursting into flame as she did so. “They are undead.” Terian matched her with his axe, the fire’s light illuminating his grim expression.
“What are the odds they’re just going to let us stroll on up there?” Vaste asked. “You know, without a fight?”
Only one may pass, Sareea and Ermoc said, in the same disembodied voice that had been rolling over the countryside since the sky had turned red. And it is not you, troll.
“Cyrus,” Vara said, catching his eye, “the very minute you leave, he will send his legions against us.”
“I know,” Cyrus said, clutching Praelior with one hand and Rodanthar in the other. He closed his eyes for a beat and cast the spell himself, both blades lighting from guard to tip with holy flame. “Which is why I’m not leaving.”
Don’t be a fool, dear boy, Malpravus said in his cold hiss through the mouths of the entire Army of Goliath as it rattled forward on dead legs, lurching toward the base of the temple where they stood. It doesn’t need to be this way … come to see me … come to speak … leave the others behind … I know what you want … what you need …
“By the very fact you think I would leave my friends behind to be slaughtered by you,” Cyrus said, with more than a little coldness of his own, “you show me that you don’t know anything at all about me—and you never have. If you mean to have a talk, Malpravus, then we’re all coming up.” He raised Praelior. “But if you want to have a slaughter … well, I’m happy to grant that to you as well.”
There was a moment of silence, broken by Vaste’s barely calm voice. “I never thought I’d say this about Malpravus … but please let it be the talk.”
The silence reigned once more, and then all the corpses of the field rattled at once, bringing their weapons high and clinking their armor as they made to charge, Malpravus’s voice crackling off the top of the temple like summer thunder.
You have chosen … death.
92.
“I did not choose death!” Vaste shouted under the red sky. “If there’s a choice, I choose pie—”
“Up the steps!” Cyrus shouted as the Army of Goliath charged forward in a shambling herd. “Dismount and climb!”
The rattle of bones and armor was loud, and Cyrus looked back just to see if somehow the skin had been stripped off the army in the process of the spell doing its work. They were all still fully clad in skin and clothes, but the rattle came anyway, and Cyrus wondered if perhaps it was inside his head.
The sky was red once more, a tendril of crimson seeping up to the sun from the temple’s top, and Cyrus was left to wonder the purpose behind it, and how far it reached. Is it red in Reikonos right now? Could they see this in Luukessia, if anyone were there?
He turned as he dismounted Windrider, spinning as he left the saddle, pulling a leg over. “Get out of here!” he shouted at the horse, who did not spare a moment in galloping off down the side of the temple, away from the army. The other horses followed in his wake, whinnying shrilly all the way. Cyrus looked back, however, to see that the savanna cats were hissing and spitting at the army of the dead surging toward them, and he realized that they had no intention of fleeing. Take after their masters, then …
“Come on!” Terian shouted to Sareea, who was charging at them, sword raised. For a moment, Cyrus thought he was going to unleash a force blast, but he did not. He swung the axe and brought it down, landing it to the side of her neck. The dead Sareea seemed to move slower than the one he’d seen in battle in Isselhelm, and when the flaming axe struck through her, she burst into flames, screaming holy fire out of her mouth as she burned up from within.
Vara sank her blade into Rhane Ermoc in a similar fashion; the same holy flames welled up inside him, crackling beneath his armor and spilling out like he’d been doused with oil. He raged and flailed, and was consumed in mere seconds, leaving nothing but his armor and sword behind in a clinking rattle as they fell to the ground.
Cyrus charged up the steps to the temple only just behind Vara and Terian, who were leading the way. He caught a glimpse of the horses turning the corner and escaping around the side of the temple, but when he looked back he saw the savanna cats leaping up the stone levels of the pyramid, hissing at the dead who were running to the base of the temple.
“Terian, Vara!” Cyrus called, throwing a hand to point back, “Take rear guard with those weapons of yours, I’m not sure if anyone else can—” He threw a look back and stopped dead in his climb.
Zarnn and Fortin had stationed themselves on the first level of the temple and the Army of Goliath was flowing into them like a river of the dead. With their cats perched to the side of the stairs, they had created a breakwater for the dead coming at them, and chaos had been unleashed. Armored dead were running up the stairs and into a cacophonous mass of screams, claws, fists, headbutts, kicks and general fighting of a sort Cyrus could not recall seeing even in his days in the Society of Arms. As he watched, Fortin ripped a Goliath warrior apart and threw both halves into the crowd, bowling over a dozen others. One of the cats was hissing around a skull it had ripped the head from one of the dead and batted away another so severely that it lost an arm and a leg. Zarnn screamed as a dead warrior clanged against his new armor. He ripped its arm off, stealing its sword, like a dagger in his mighty fist, and plunged it through three heads in a row.
“On the other hand,” Cyrus conceded, mesmerized by the violence upon the step, “maybe it’s under control.”
“If we kill Malpravus, this stops, yes?” Vara asked, hair fallen from beneath her helm and into her eyes. When he did not answer, she looked to Quinneria. “Yes or no?”
“I’ve never raised an army of the dead before,” Quinneria said, stooped over on a step below them, breathing hard as she watched the Goliath forces begin to surge over the bottom lip of the temple’s first level like a mindless horde of ants, “but I don’t think they’ll survive without him, no.”
“I watched Curatio exorcise a whole army of the dead once,” Terian said, paused a step above Cyrus, looking like he wanted to continue charging up them without further thought. “Any chance you could do that?”
“Possibly,” Quinneria said. “Did he have any help?”
“He had the Red Destiny of Saekaj,” Aisling said, somewhat muted. “He channeled the souls into it, presumably so that Vidara could reabsorb them later, since they were stolen from her to begin with.”
“He was also very exhausted afterward,” J’anda said, casting a spell and sending purple light down into the middle of the army below. He shuddered, but an undulating line began in the middle of the ruckus as several of the dead began to tear into their own.
“So now that Malpravus has, uh … done what he’s done,” Longwell said, his lance pointed in front of him like it could shield him from what was ahead, “how do we stop him?”
“We get up there and kill his bony ass for good,” Cyrus said, waving them forward as he leapt a step above Vara and Terian. “However we can.” And he charged, his own armor rattling now as he hurried up to fight the last battle.
93.
“I see you made it up here after all,” Malpravus said as Cyrus crested the last step to the top of the temple, his eyes penetrating into the dark ahead. He could not see the necromancer, but knew he was there from the voice, no longer disembodied.
Cyrus glanced backward quickly to confirm that his party was still with him. Fortin, Zarnn, and the cats had now retreated to the third level of the pyramid, the undead army swarming all around them, trying to scale the levels to flank them but failing. The four of them were holding together as a group and killing their way through the rising tide of the dead. For a moment, Cyrus watched bodies fly off the levels around them, in pieces, before he turned his attention to the others.
Vara and T
erian were closest to him, their weapons still aflame like his. They stood just outside the temple arch, a simple squared lintel, after which began the darkness. Behind them were Quinneria, Vaste and Mendicant, followed by J’anda, Aisling, Longwell and Ryin. They were tightly grouped, and the apprehension was plain on every face he saw, the red light giving them all a bizarre tint.
Cyrus took a cautious step into the darkness and the sound of battle outside faded in his ears. Water dripped in the distance, echoing through the dark. The air in here was dank, as if there were a pool of water somewhere below. He saw stairs leading down and suspected there were catacombs beneath the main chamber. Another step and he could see a great seal in the middle of the floor, not unlike the one in the foyer of Sanctuary, though he could not make out the details in the dark, even with his swords shedding their crackling light.
“I really must thank you for this, my lad,” Malpravus said, his voice quiet and calm. “I couldn’t have done this without you.” He was still somewhere ahead in the dark, and Cyrus could not yet see him.
“How did I help you?” Cyrus asked, the sound of dripping in the distance like a quiet punctuation to their increasingly surreal conversation.
“It was Mortus,” Malpravus said. “Your conquest of him. Striking out against a god, you see … it’s simply not done, not these days. Bad form. Yet you did it, cleaving his fingers from his hand and proving once more a lesson long forgotten. Some looked at your victory, your conquest of a god, and marveled. They are mortal. They are … weak.” A low laugh echoed through the chamber. “I looked upon it and said, They are stronger than I. How do I gather that power unto myself?”
“So glad I could help you in your journey for personal excellence,” Cyrus muttered, taking another tentative step. He glanced back and saw the others following him slowly, all knotted together tightly in formation.
“You see,” Malpravus said, taking no apparent notice of his reply, “death is the great equalizer. We all end up as ivory-bleached bones, devoid of that softness and warmth that you seem to so prize … Except that some do not.” Now Cyrus could hear the smile in the necromancer’s words. “Some special few, perched upon their currents of magic as a leech unto a vein, live forever … and I mean to be one of them.”
Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) Page 53