“No.”
“You gave the city to me,” Lahar said. “You said it was mine.”
“It is,” Marah said, “but I don’t want any more ghosts.”
“So they go free? After what they did?”
Tyrus said they would take them prisoner and decide their fate on another day. Lahar argued against it, but they both grew quiet when the air chilled. Marah’s eyes became whiter, and she frowned at the keep.
She said, “We have to go to the cellars.”
Tyrus asked, “What is down there?”
“Suffering and pain.”
Tyrus asked Elmar, “What is she talking about?”
Elmar said, “The lower levels are where the emperor made his beasts.”
Marah said, “I can help them.”
She walked up the stairs to the massive doors. Tyrus hurried after her. Whatever was awaiting them inside, he refused to let her be the first through an enemy’s door. Olroth and the rest of the party followed them.
II
Lahar stumbled through King’s Rest. Olroth and his thanes took the Roshan prisoner while Marah led Tyrus deeper into the keep. She moved through the hallways as though she had been born there. Lahar meant to follow—he intended to honor his oaths—but he didn’t recognize his own home. The tapestries were gone, replaced by bare stone in many instances, but a few had been replaced with Roshan art. The candles were cold, and the walls seemed darker, filled with more shadows than he remembered.
He had drifted away from Marah when he noticed the Hall of Ancestors was barren. What had once been a monument to the Baladan Dynasty—marble busts and tapestries honoring seventeen generations of kings and queens—was an empty hallway. At first, Lahar questioned if it was the right hall, but the floor had markings where many of the pillars had stood. All that remained were faint outlines in the dust.
Lahar remembered standing beside his brother, Lior, as their father, King Lael, walked them through the twenty generations of their house. Maybe Marah’s strange voice had infected his mood, or he dreaded the strange things she said, but Lahar heard the whisper of his ancestors. He hoped his weary mind was just playing tricks on him.
“She’s right.” Lahar spoke to himself. “This place is full of ghosts.”
Even the sounds were wrong. His father had thrown great feasts, and most days, an army of servants bustled about, making his home smell of baked bread and roasting meats. Alone and dumbstruck, Lahar wandered more halls. His family had been erased from his ancestral home, and everything looked squalid, as though an old friend had been dressed in filthy rags.
He drifted to the throne room and stood before the big chair. Everything but the throne had changed. Lahar lost himself in the memories. Dozens of noble houses had lived in Shinar, and hundreds more were spread across the kingdom. He had spent untold hours memorizing their sigils. The houses were more than names and shields, though. He had met many of them either at court or traveling the countryside with his father.
Larz Kedar found him. “Milord, we should secure the keep while we can. Convince Marah to give them the villas. A handful of sorcerers can defend King’s Rest from a large army.”
Lahar’s gaze fixed on his father’s empty throne.
“Milord?”
“Give me a moment.”
After the battle, when the elves and Norsil had been poised to tear into each other, Marah stopped them. She gave Shinar to him because it was his birthright. Standing there, though, he wasn’t sure if he wanted the throne. He was an outsider, a tourist. The Shinari were murdered, and he was alone in a world of barbarians.
Larz asked, “Milord?”
“Do you really want to fight them for this mess?”
“If they take Shinar, they’ll never leave the coast. Jethlah built this place to end the Age of Chaos. This was the fortress he used to pacify all of Argoria. We can’t let them have it.”
“We lost the war.”
“Milord?”
“There’s nothing left to rule. Who are we saving from the Norsil?” Lahar moved to the windows to watch the sunset. “Before long, Azmon will return. He’ll kill the Norsil just like he killed my people.”
“One fight at a time, milord. We can’t give the barbarians a stronghold.”
Lahar agreed, but after having watched Marah fight Azmon, he knew he had little to offer. The next war would be decided with sorcery, not steel. At best, he and his knights could serve as guards for Marah. Alivar had a famed Dragon Guard, and many of the other prophets had reformed the order. He assumed Marah would need men to die in her place, too.
Larz said, “We have birds again.”
Lahar laughed. “The old messenger tower is still working?”
“No, milord. My students and I brought birds. We sent messages to the Red Tower, and they have replied.” Larz held out a tiny scroll of paper for Lahar. “We have news from King Samos and the rangers.”
“How do the birds find you again?”
“It’s an old trick.”
Lahar took the scroll and squinted at it. The thing was nonsense, but after a moment, he realized that was because the writing was so tiny.
Larz said, “I already deciphered it. I can show you the key. Annrin of the rangers asks you to abandon the city. She wants you to take Marah from the Norsil. As does Samos.”
“Is that all my cousin wants?”
Larz shook his head. “He orders you to kidnap Marah or… failing that… kill her.”
Lahar made a note to learn the cypher later, to make sure the message said that—but his anger got the better of him. He crunched up the message and threw it away. King Samos was a distant cousin of the Baladan Dynasty, by marriage, and was in no position to order Lahar to do anything. And Lahar wasn’t a sellsword who killed children.
Lahar growled before he asked, “They would kill a prophet?”
“A Norsil prophet, who would destroy Ironwall.”
“She’s not Norsil.”
“The Butcher of Rosh has her ear, which is terrifying.”
Lahar almost laughed at the absurdity of it all, but he was too angry and scrubbed his face with his hands to hide his frustration. “She is still a child.”
“I would never waste such talent.” Larz sighed. “We can learn things from her, as all sorcerers have learned from the prophets. They are closer to the source than any of us. But if she won’t abandon the Norsil, we must protect ourselves.”
“I swore an oath to serve her.”
“Before she joined the Norsil.”
“An oath is an oath.”
“Not so, milord. If King Samos betrayed Ironwall to the Norsil or the Sea Kings, all of the noble houses would rise against him. The oaths of loyalty must be honored by both parties. Marah has a duty to you as well as you to her.”
“I’m in no mood for lectures. We will talk about this tomorrow.”
“We should secure King’s Rest tonight and—”
“I said tomorrow.”
Lahar heard his father’s sternness in his own throat, and that bothered him almost as much as the request to kill a child. Marah had him seeing ghosts everywhere, even in his own voice.
Larz left the throne room.
Lahar returned to the window. Red clouds burned across the horizon, and the night sky darkened. Dozens of thoughts filled his mind, but he was too tired and hungry to deal with Ironwall’s request. Whether they could save Marah from the Norsil—and whether she needed saving—were debates for another day. Lahar had hoped defeating the Roshan would make him feel better about all the people he had lost, but it didn’t. He felt as empty as he had seven years before, when the monsters tore holes in the walls.
III
Drowning in dead voices, Marah struggled to hear herself think. The suffering swirling around Shinar centered on the keep and the tunnels below. The misery numbed her to everything else. She shuffled t
hrough the hallways, drawn to the servant tunnels that led to the cellars.
The voices became worse:
Your father did this to us.
He killed us all.
He would not let us stay dead. He gave us to the demons.
Marah saw their memories—beasts hunting them at night, killing them, and dragging them to that place, where they were mutilated and reformed into terrible monsters. The horror of it turned her stomach, and she struggled to make sense of all the bloodshed. Between the battle the day before and the memories of the dead, the awfulness blended together into one long nightmare. She swallowed vomit and followed the voices to the tunnels.
Tyrus stayed beside her, sword drawn. He forced his way through each door, but they just led to more empty rooms. He kept glancing at her, checking on her, as though he feared her as much as he feared what waited for them underneath the keep.
They found stairs leading to the cellars. Marah went toward them, but Tyrus pushed her back. He sheathed his giant sword and drew a nasty knife.
“I go first,” he said. “If you hear a fight, hurry up the stairs. I’ll be behind you, and we’ll bar the door.”
Marah latched onto his voice like an anchor in a storm. The ghosts howled at her, and she realized that, for Tyrus, the stairs were probably quiet and dark. For Marah, the voices grew worse the deeper they descended.
The cramped stairs were barely wide enough for one person. Tyrus was so large that he took up most of the space. Marah hugged one cold stone wall as she crept after him. The stench of an old slaughterhouse filled the passage. They found her father’s workshop, where he’d created his beasts. The gray stones were scarred by jagged white claw marks, and large beasts, wall breakers, had torn holes and dug out sections of the tunnels to make room for bigger creatures. Marah followed the claw marks to the tunnels beneath Shinar.
Hundreds of voices moaned at her:
This was their nest. This is where he hid the worst monsters.
This is where they dragged us when they killed us.
This is where he collected bones for more beasts.
Images flooded her mind as the same story repeated itself. Beasts the size of people with red-burning eyes and long talons roamed the streets at night and set upon craftsmen and soldiers, many of whom were Roshan starving from the siege. They dragged the people into the tunnels and mauled them. The dead were dragged to the cellars and stacked in the workshop.
She fought against the ghosts, but they shared their fate with her. One said, Their claws dragged me from my bed at night… Another said, And he took my body apart and arranged it with others. He drew runes on me and made me into a beast… Still another said, The monsters played with me before I died. They enjoyed making me scream… I hungered for flesh, and no feeding could make the hunger go away. I couldn’t stop myself from killing. The runes make you do horrible things. He forced me to bite and claw people… He forced me to murder children…
The cellar was filled with pools of dried blood, and the remains of dead people were cast about the floor and walls.
Tyrus’s voice broke through the storm. “A child shouldn’t see such things.”
Marah whispered, “I knew it was here. They told me.”
“The ghosts?”
Marah nodded as tears streamed down her cheeks.
“We should leave.”
“Not yet.”
Through the eyes of the dead, Marah saw her father climbing down the stairs of King’s Rest to draw runes and carry out the summoning rites. She saw him make beasts out of their bones. The images were less horrific than the battle the day before. Watching him build beasts wasn’t as terrible as seeing the horde of them snapping their jaws at her.
Some of the voices were angry and wanted revenge, but most were still hurt and confused. They asked Marah why they had been tortured and eaten by monsters. She blinked away tears and listened to things that could not be unheard.
A piece of the demons stayed in Shinar. Marah thought the voice belonged to a sorcerer, one of the many bone lords her father killed. Their essence stained this place—they marked Shinar as their own. That is why it feels like an open wound.
Marah whispered, How do I wash the stain away?
Fire will cleanse their spores.
Marah vomited and leaned into a wall to avoid falling down. The ghosts showed her the runes, and she wiped her mouth.
Tyrus picked her up. “Marah, we should leave.”
Marah said, “You go.”
“I won’t leave you here.”
Marah’s pupils became pinpricks as she drew on the source, so much power that the air chilled enough to make her breath fog. The cold didn’t last long because she summoned orbs of flame that filled her hands. She made the fire so big Tyrus flinched and pulled away.
Marah said, “Put me down.”
Tyrus did so.
A voice asked, Why didn’t anyone stop him?
“You’ll burn if you stay,” Marah said. “Everything is going to burn.”
More voices haunted her:
We were forsaken. The demons fed on us, and no one stopped them.
They used us to kill people. They forced us to watch.
No one could resist.
Voices howled as the fire grew stronger. The Runes of Dusk and Dawn filled her mind’s eye, swirling around her, as she wove a spell. Some of the runes she had learned in the Red Tower. Others she’d learned from the dead. A few she improvised by listening to her instincts. She spun a maelstrom of flame around herself that spread to the tunnels and eradicated everything it touched.
She sensed Tyrus and others retreating up the stairs.
The fire roared in the tunnels. Tendrils of flame crawled across the stone, seeking out the black filth that the bone beasts had left behind. Runes raced through Marah’s mind as the fire branched and grew.
The effort to control such a large spell took its toll. The beginning of a migraine pinched her left eye socket, and her arms began to tremble as though she were carrying a great weight. Her tiny hands gestured wildly as though she were juggling the storm, but the movement helped her organize all the runes.
Thank you, child.
The voices quelled. She didn’t notice the silence at first, but the wails of the dead stilled and sighed. Many sounded relieved. Marah didn’t understand all the runes, but the flames removed the lingering feel of demons that plagued the dead. Many of the ghosts were indifferent, considering her offering a minor balm, but for others, the fire cleansed a festering wound.
Marah collapsed to her knees as the flames died. She gasped and held her head. The pain was like a long needle behind her eye.
In the silence, one of the voices sounded different. Unlike the angry ghosts, it spoke with strength and sounded like a real person. Marah wondered if it had been there all along, underneath all the other wretches.
The voice said, The dwarves are losing the war for the Deep.
Marah asked, “What war?”
The dwarves abandoned the siege to fight the demons. Shinar was a distraction. The real battle is being fought in the Underworld.
“Who are you?”
You would not believe me even if I told you.
Marah scowled and repeated the question. “Who are you?”
One of the prophets, long dead.
Marah coughed at all the smoke in the cellar, and she cast about to see if she was alone. She knew the voice was nowhere near her, but her surprise made her feel alone and vulnerable.
“What is your name?”
I was once known as Kennet. You must help the dwarves, like I did. If the Deep Ward fails, the demon tribes will burrow to the surface.
The other voices stirred and began to drown him out. Trying to find the one voice again was like trying to separate oil from water, and Marah sensed that he withdrew deep into the Underworld. She reached for hi
m, grasped at him, but the mob drowned him out. Other parts of Shinar begged to be cleansed. Bone lords had summoned creatures in the villas, and her father had other sites where he’d made flyers and the largest wall breakers.
The dead begged to be burned clean.
Marah doubled over again. Her head throbbed, and she vomited. She coughed and blinked tears out of her eyes. Then Tyrus found her, lifted her as though she weighed nothing, and carried her up the stairs.
Tyrus coughed as he carried Marah away from the cellars. When they reached the upper levels, he set her down and closed the doors to cut off black smoke. The Shinari Knights and the Red Sorcerers came running, the rattle of armor and clomp of boots echoing down the halls. Thanes spread out as well, swords drawn, and everyone looked prepared to fight.
“It’s nothing.” Tyrus waved them off. “Calm down.”
Larz Kedar said, “What happened down there? It felt like before, when Azmon was fighting on the walls.”
Marah said, “I burned away the beasts.”
Tyrus saw the words spark fear in everyone’s eyes, and he tried to calm them down. He explained that the beasts were dead, and that Marah had cleaned the cellars of spores. He hoped that was a good enough explanation, because he didn’t understand what he’d said.
He coughed and spat, and the smoke left his throat raw.
Blades stayed unsheathed, but the tension lifted a little, and people spread out again to search the keep. Larz stayed near Tyrus and Marah, watching them both. Marah went to a window, and Tyrus stayed back to watch the room.
“What do you want?” Larz asked Tyrus. “Why bring the Norsil here?”
“To kill Azmon.”
“Are you going to take the Norsil to Sornum?”
“If that’s where Azmon ran off to.”
Larz sidled up closer. “Do you think the seraphim will let the grigorns have Marah? If she sides with the Norsil, she might as well side with Moloch and the shedim. The angels will destroy her.”
Tyrus waited for the pudgy bald man to say more. A staring contest began, and Tyrus considered how to handle a sorcerer who threatened his ward. His first instinct was to grab Larz’s bald head and slam it into the stone floor, but he didn’t want to provoke the Red Tower.
Dance of Battle: A Dark Fantasy (Shedim Rebellion Book 4) Page 6