“NOOOOOO!” Cyrus shouted, and Malpravus’s skull-face snapped to look right at him, the eyes glowing red.
“And now you see your end,” Malpravus said, glaring right at him, the grin leering in the flickering spell-light as the impossibly strong skeleton hands dragged Cyrus down, pressing him against the stone, “your friends cannot save you, nor can you save them. In the end, the only thing that would save you … is power.”
“Or perhaps a friend with power?” came the soft voice of Mendicant.
“What was that?” Malpravus asked, the skeletal face puckered with curiosity.
Cyrus looked over to see the goblin holding out his clawed fingers. Circular blasts of red no larger than the diameter of a mead horn shot from his fingers with perfect precision and blasted the bony hands clear of Cyrus’s chest and legs.
Cyrus vaulted to his feet, the horrifying pressure of the grasping hands gone, and stared right into the face of Malpravus, who was glaring back at him with a surprising amount of fury given he had no mouth with which to make expressions. “He said you’re dead wrong,” Cyrus said, and he leapt forward.
Malpravus was down to a snakelike spine wavering above his pelvis and legs, and he hissed as his backbone started to extend. The necromancer’s speed was slower than Cyrus’s now that both blades were in hand. My strength doesn’t match his, but if I do this right, I won’t need it to …
Malpravus met him with his free hand and Cyrus clashed against it as it elongated into a bone sword. Cyrus hit it high with Rodanthar and it cracked, then in the exact same spot a second later with Praelior and it shattered.
Malpravus’s red eyes glowed brighter, looked wider. “You can’t—”
Cyrus leapt in under the hand and struck at the one channeling the magic toward the center of the room. With two solid blows he sheared it off, but the magic poured out of the stump and he narrowly dodged the reprisal from the other stump, the bone whistling over his head as he ducked below Malpravus’s empty, skeletal pelvis.
“I possess none of the weaknesses of your flesh,” Malpravus leered down at him, and Cyrus struck at the left knee joint. He severed the leg and kicked it free and was rewarded by a kick from the other bone-foot, twisting around to rattle him through his armor with a glancing blow. “I need not stand as you pathetic mortals do …”
Cyrus spun and smashed the leg as it kicked at him again. Now the broken thighbones spun like wheels in their sockets. Malpravus had no legs to stand on, yet showed no sign of falling. “Dammit,” Cyrus muttered.
“The head, you idiot!” Vaste screamed from behind him. “It’s talking to you! Put a sword through it!”
“If only it were that easy,” Malpravus said tauntingly, his spine elongating again as he stretched toward the ceiling, the glowing red eyes receding as he drew away.
That’s where he’s weak, Cyrus realized. He’s been bobbing that damned head away this whole battle!
With a whispered breath, Cyrus cast Falcon’s Essence and surged into the air, running. He slapped Malpravus’s spine and sent a hard rattle up and down the body. Malpravus let out a bellow of outrage that shook the walls and brought down more rock from the ceiling. Cyrus dodged, a piece of stone the size of a bench clobbering him in the arm as he continued his run upward, ignoring the pain surging through him.
“Now you see me,” Malpravus said, “and I see you. You see my weakness, but I have seen yours all along.” The skeleton’s teeth grinned. “Tell me, dear boy … while you’re chasing me, whatever is happening to that wife of yours?”
Cyrus could not help himself. His spine chilling in terror, he spun in the air and looked back down.
“GO!” Vaste screamed. “YOU HAVE TO STOP HIM FIRST OR WE’LL ALL DIE, INCLUDING VARA!”
Cyrus closed his eyes and looked away from the battle below, not daring to think, not courageous enough to look for fear he would see something that would take the heart out of him. The magic pooling in the middle of the room was cracking even harder now, black as the darkest night, and it lashed out in front of him as Cyrus jerked hard down, ducking just beneath it as it filled his nose with a singeing smell.
“This is why you will not win,” Malpravus said, “why you cannot. This is your fault, your failing. You have always sought to add weakness unto yourself while I have sought to eliminate it from me. You seek softness, the touch and caress of warm humanity, of mortality, while I eschew it for the cold embrace of immortality.”
Cyrus ran as the head snaked in a steady circle, drawn away on the neck like a toy on a string. It whipped around, avoiding the solid column of magic bursting up from the crackling orb of magic in the center of the room, and hit its limit.
Nowhere left to run, Cyrus thought as he charged it down.
But it did not run. Malpravus’s glinting skull snapped as it hit its full extension, and then it whipped right back at him.
Cyrus saw it coming, just a hair slower than himself. He saw the small jerks that told him that Malpravus was not going to meet him squarely, was not going to crash into him with those cold red eyes, and he drew a deep breath of the dank temple air, taking in a lungful of the energy crackling through it—
And he flung his swords out to either side and charged forward into destiny.
96.
The head of the snake realized its mistake at the last, but it was too late. Malpravus bobbed to the left, desperately dodging, and struck Praelior. The blade carved an inch-long indentation into the white plate of bone, the sound of sword meeting skull like a scream piercing the night. A hard shudder ran down Cyrus’s arm from the site of the impact, and he smelled acrid stinking death as he struck, tasted bile running up his throat, and it gagged him even as the force spun him around from the hit.
He saw the blood, though, black and viscous, oozing out of the wound he’d made as the skull dodged away again, trying to escape further injury. The black ooze dripped to the ground—
And hit the lines between the stones in the middle of the room—
And trickled toward the seal, just barely making it, a thimble-sized drop that seeped barely a quarter-inch into the symbol before halting, spent, too thin to carry on any farther.
“Got it!” Cyrus shouted as the skull raced away from him, red eyes watching him in fear.
“Mendicant!” Quinneria shouted, “NOW!”
The green energy Quinneria had been pouring into the union of spells at the center of the room gained a new entrant, a blazing red energy as the goblin stepped into the fight and Quinneria faded out. She took a step back, staggering like Malpravus after the hit, and then regained herself, twirling hands around her face, her body, red burning at her fingertips not from the spell she was casting, but her own life that she was using to do so. She drew a ragged breath that Cyrus imagined he could hear and then thrust out both hands under the magic burning over the seal.
The effect was immediate; there was a sound like an explosion, a rumble that shook the room.
“WHAT?!” Malpravus’s scream was higher-pitched than Cyrus had ever heard it before. It was followed by the rushing of what sounded like wind. The black magic pouring out of his bony stump ceased in an instant. Opposite him, Cyrus watched Vaste and Ryin both collapse, face-first, to the ground, exhausted. Mendicant held steady, but only just, dipping both front hands down to catch himself.
“IMPOSSIBLE!” Malpravus screamed, the last of the spell energy blowing out the roof and disappearing into the sky, blue shining back down. “YOU CANNOT—”
A vortex of red spell-light was swirling slowly out of the seal, roiling into the air in a slow spin, twisting as it reached out for Malpravus’s bony form, guided toward him inexorably until the cone had touched his skull. He tried to run but failed; it took hold of him like a firm hand, gripping him, circling his skull and engulfing him. The necromancer’s shrieks filled the air as the vortex swallowed him up, yanking his long spine as it tried to flail and grow out of the tornado’s grasp. He could not grow fast enough to outrun it,
however, and he tipped into it as if he were falling in an unavoidable hole, the bony protrusions that were all that were left of his legs the last thing to disappear.
Slowly spinning, the vortex claimed him, dragging him down, shrinking as his screams grew quieter and quieter, the spell circling hard down to the surface of the seal until it vanished between the profiles of Yartraak and Mortus, as though it had never existed at all.
“My gods,” Terian said, his face white with bone powder, his breath coming in great shuddering gasps. “Did we—”
“The army!” Mendicant said and spun, but there was silence at the entry to the pyramid, and silence flooding down from the open sky above.
“Weak and pathetic,” Fortin opined from just inside the entry to the temple, a limp corpse clutched in a craggy hand. “Also … they are no longer moving.” He crushed the body’s skull in his hands.
“Cyrus …” Vaste said, lifting his head, his eyes heavily lidded.
Cyrus, for his part, was still standing several feet in the air, feeling weak, like all the vitality had been drained out of him by the tornado that had stolen away Malpravus. He dispelled the Falcon’s Essence without thinking about it and came clunking to the ground only a few feet from Vaste. He shuddered at the pain as he twisted his ankle. He tried to cast the healing spell but couldn’t concentrate, so weak was his mind. He cringed and staggered along to the healer. “What is it?” he asked, feeling as though he might fall down next to the troll.
Vaste looked up at him with cracked lips, bleeding between the lines, faint oozing green coming out. His eyes were bloodshot, yellow veins running out from the irises, and when he spoke, it came out in a cracking gasp. “V … Vara …”
“Oh, gods,” Cyrus said, hit by the hammer of memory. He turned, and he saw her, and his whole body went cold as if he’d just had the whole north dumped upon him.
97.
“Vara!” Cyrus shouted, his voice resonating off the walls of the temple, echoing out of the hole in the roof and returning back to him as he thrust Praelior into its scabbard and then fell to his knees, skidding over stones in a mad race to get to her. He still held Rodanthar in his hand, the plates of his greaves scratching against the floor, the guard of the sword scraping in his scramble.
She lay in a corner, dead, her open eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Her sword lay beside her in limp fingers, and the dust of bone had left the blood pooled at her neck speckled with white. Her blue eyes looked dull even as they reflected the sky shining in from above, but there was no strength in her muscles, and she did not respond when he called her name.
It’ll be all right, he thought as he scrambled to her on all fours, his breath catching, the smell of the dusty dankness rising up from deeper within the temple. She’ll be fine, just fine, I just need to get to her …
He reached her side and threw off the gauntlet from his right hand, running sweaty fingers over her cold, pale flesh. He left a trace of wetness like a tear as he rubbed her cheek, looking down into those blue eyes with his own, trying to meet a gaze that was no longer there to be found. His hand shook as he touched her, skin like snow, and he ran his fingers down to her throat, where the damnable hand of Malpravus had done its worst.
The spell, Cyrus thought, shaking his head to bring him back to himself. I need … the resurrection spell. He concentrated, closed his eyes, whispered the words—
And felt the air rush out of him but nothing else, his hand not even coming to glow.
“No no no,” he muttered and took another breath, soothing, calming. “I can—you can’t—” He imagined the spell, remembered the effect, spoke it into being under his breath—
And nothing happened.
His breath came harder now, in a frenzy like the battle he’d been in only moments earlier. There had been no glow, no power, nothing. His hand shook above her face as he held it over her. He took a breath, then another, trying to slow them, trying to fill his lungs with air. The smell of death was all around him, the air was still and quiet, no one was speaking—
“You can’t be dead,” he whispered, and he breathed the spell out once more.
His hand fell on a lifeless breast, covered over by a silver breastplate crusted with dust. He felt for movement, and when it still did not come, he felt his blood rage, throbbing in his veins. “I can’t—I can’t—”
“You’re too agitated,” his mother’s quiet voice came from over his shoulder, soothing like the smell of a warm meal on a cold eve. He remembered the crackle of the fire, the pleasant, radiating warmth of the hearth, of sitting on her lap, of staring into those green eyes …
I meet you.
He breathed the words again, and the light glowed faint from his hand, the breastplate springing back to motion beneath his wet fingertips as they slid down and smeared the silver with his perspiration. Vara drew a ragged breath, blood pumping out of her neck. He gasped his surprise, his relief, and his hands shook again—
A glow behind him, red, streamed out, and Vara’s neck was made whole, the pale skin knitting itself back together beneath the flowing blood, bright, snowy white beneath the crimson river below her chin. Her eyes shone, wide with panic and pain, glaring like a summer sky as they found his, and her hand leapt up to grab his in her mailed fist.
“Oh, thank the …” Cyrus felt all the breath come out of him, draining him as though it were his life’s blood run out. He closed his eyes for a second and embraced the darkness before forcing them back open to stare down at his wife. “Are you … all right?”
Vara took a rattling breath before answering. “That depends,” she said. “Is Malpravus dead?”
Cyrus looked over his shoulder, past his mother to the seal. The others were scattered about it, in varying states of weakness and injury. Vaste was now sitting up, though Ryin was still lying flat. Mendicant and J’anda both looked exhausted. Longwell leaned on his lance like a cane and Aisling lurked in the shadows. Zarnn and Fortin both lingered, like statues guarding the exit. Cyrus’s eyes fixed on the seal in the middle of them all. “He’s … well, he’s …”
“He’s trapped,” Quinneria said.
“Trapped for how long?” Vara asked, trying to sit up.
“For now,” Quinneria said. “Hopefully forever.”
“If someone brings him the blood of sacrifices, is he going to spring out again?” Vaste asked, looking quite sick to his stomach, head between his knees.
“That’s a very real danger, yes,” Quinneria said. “I think it might be best if we find a way to seal this place off somehow.”
“Bury it in rock?” Mendicant looked up. “Even if we collapsed it, the sides wouldn’t cover the seal, there’s too little left of the roof.”
“This feels like a problem that could be dealt with tomorrow,” Cyrus said, taking Vara’s hand in his. She looked up at him weakly, still pale.
“Well, if nothing else,” Terian said, brushing off his breastplate, “I think that Goliath's done. Sacrificed on the altar of their leader’s ambition for power.” He stared into the silence. “I feel that’s a very fitting end for them, somehow. Poetic, in a way.”
“Yay,” Vaste said weakly. “I’d consider it all more of a victory if we hadn’t just crammed Malpravus into a vase in hopes that it never breaks.”
“The seal is a little stronger than that,” Quinneria said. “It’s not as though most people go running around willy-nilly, bleeding on seals. Why, the Avatar of Mortus would probably still be there if you two hadn’t gone bandit hunting or treasure seeking or whatever it was you did.” She sighed. “No one has come to this place in years. You can feel it when you listen closely.”
“All I can hear at the moment is the rather considerable thudding of my own heart,” Vara said.
“Come on,” Cyrus said and lifted her up as he had done on their wedding night, cradling her in his arms. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Should I not?” he asked, before taking a single step.
She looked ready to protest but
stopped with a roll of her eyes. “Just this once again, perhaps.”
“All right, then,” Cyrus said, smiling down at her, “let’s go find our horses and go home.”
98.
“As usual, you seem to lead a life of constant adventure, Lord Davidon,” Cattrine Tiernan said with a faint smile as she walked him down the street in Emerald Fields on the following day. It was another glorious summer day. Cyrus was warm beneath his armor, but he welcomed the heat; the terror of seeing his wife dead in the corner of the temple continued to chill him, sleeping and awake, and it had left him in a state of fatigue that was slowing his step.
“At this point, I’m just calling it what it is—trouble,” he said, walking alongside her. Each of their steps stirred the dust on the dirt street. There wasn’t even the slightest hint of a breeze, the air was so still.
“May I ask you something?” She waited for him to nod. “Our dwarven miners, Keearyn and his family …”
Cyrus stiffened. “Yes?”
She smiled, and he saw a twinkle in her eye. “Well, it’s been a bit quiet up in the hills of Rockridge, lately, other than the caterwauling of those damned savanna cats—”
“You can’t have the Brotherhood of the Savanna Cat without the cat, I suppose.”
“Well, there are a half dozen of them now,” she said a bit irritably. “They’ve captured one for every troll in Sanctuary. I see them racing around on the hills on the backs of those monstrous things.” She shook her head in annoyance. “Anyway, I was simply wondering did you send them—the dwarves, not cats—into some sort of trouble?”
“No,” Cyrus said, and even to him his answer sounded odd. “Not trouble, I hope. They should be fine, just … busy. Elsewhere. For a while.”
Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) Page 55