Dance of Battle: A Dark Fantasy (Shedim Rebellion Book 4)

by Burke Fitzpatrick

  THE TOMB

  I

  Tyrus carried Marah into the demon lands. He marched behind Silas and Warlord Blastrum while thousands of wardens spread through the passageways. The eye-watering smells of the demon tribes had returned, and everyone wore scarves to protect themselves. The ground shifted under his feet, and he found skeletons and rotten filth on the floors. Most of it was crushed into tiny pieces, and many of the wardens commented that the tunnels had been freshly used.

  The main tunnel was big enough for a dozen dwarves to march side by side, but it was riddled with side tunnels and junctions. The wardens sent teams with priests to explore them. The journey slowed to a crawl because Blastrum ordered each junction searched and closed off.

  The entire column came to a halt while the dwarves collapsed burrows and dens. Tyrus spent most of his time waiting for them to complete their work. Marah said the passages were empty, but Blastrum wanted to control the system of tunnels, so they waited for the sound of shifting rocks until the wardens said it was safe to move forward.

  The deeper they traveled, the worse the air became. The dwarves seemed immune to it, but the few elves and thanes with them would cough and spit. The sounds traveled far in the tunnels, irritating the dwarves. A cough was usually met with a nasty shush that sounded more clipped, like a curse.

  Tyrus asked Silas, “Why is the air worse?”

  “Our cities have plants that clean the air. This is a stagnant place. There’s no breeze.”

  Weird sounds also filled the place. Unlike the dwarven tunnels, which were clean and quiet, the demon lands gave the impression of a dark wilderness. Water dripped from the ceiling and plinked into still pools. Moss and luminescent plants gave off strange lights, muted colors that did little to brighten the darkness. Insects chirped from time to time, and the clatter of claws on stone echoed through the tunnels.

  When Tyrus flinched at a noise, Blastrum said, “Insects. Carrion creatures, not dangerous, mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  “Avoid anything that’s easy to catch. They’re usually venomous.”

  Tyrus nodded. “What kinds of carrion? Rats?”

  “You seldom see them this far down.”

  Tyrus frowned. He had never heard of a place without rats. “They can’t live down here?”

  “They’re easy meals.”

  The first night they camped in the tunnels, Tyrus couldn’t sleep. With his runes, he saw and heard and smelled too many strange things to relax. And the fact that they were in enemy territory had him on edge. The wardens arranged a netting around Marah to keep the bugs off her. Tyrus wasn’t concerned about venom. He had the runes to ignore such things, but he lay on the ground, rested his back against a wall, and held Marah in his arms to keep her away from the filth on the floor.

  “This is going to take forever,” Tyrus said. “They’ll hear us coming miles away.”

  Marah said, “Gorba already knows we are here.”

  “Then we walk into a trap.”

  “I’ll know when we are near a trap. He can’t hide that from me.”

  “Marah, you’re trying to outwit a very dangerous creature.”

  “He is hurt and running. There’s a chance I can get what I want.”

  “We’re crawling.”

  “We don’t have that far to go.”

  “Gorba won’t run for long.”

  “I know.” Marah hugged him tighter. “But we’re so close.”

  Tyrus dreaded what would come next. The invasion was much slower than he expected. They had spent most of the day traveling a few leagues. At the rate the dwarves were exploring the tribesmen’s tunnels, they might spend a year marching through the demon lands, and the shedim would wait for them. He saw little point in sneaking around. A long and boring trip would become chaotic and bloody with little warning.

  Hours stretched into days as they crawled through the demon territory. No one slept well, and the brief journey took a greater toll. The relatively short distance from Ros Mardua to Ros Tolamor felt longer than the distance from Shinar to Ros Mardua even though Tyrus knew it was only a few miles.

  The old passageways were in ruins. Sections had caved in, and many of the stones had been cannibalized for something else. The work was very old, though. The place had been dismantled hundreds of years before. He also saw the worry in the wardens and heard their whispers, but he didn’t speak their tongue.

  He asked Silas what they were saying.

  “This is a very dangerous section of the old ward.”

  “Why?”

  “Normally, we would have fought them by now. They never let us seal their burrows without a fight.”

  They found old outposts, little more than forts, gutted and falling apart. The foundations gave some evidence of dwarven masonry, but most of the structures were small piles of rocks. The rest of the stones had been scavenged. With so much material missing, they looked like half-finished structures that had been toppled and covered in a thick layer of grime.

  As the tension grew, Tyrus wanted to abandon the campaign.

  He told Marah, “They are luring us into a trap.”

  “Knowing there is a trap is how you defeat it.”

  Tyrus shook his head and bit back an angry retort. Having a child lecture him on strategy was infuriating, but she had lost the soft voice of the child again and spoke with the harsh tones of the other. He saw how hard she was working to survive whatever awaited them, and he still wasn’t sure if she could win. She was strong, but so were overlords.

  He said, “We should let them come to us, to ground we choose.”

  “Yes, but they have something I want.”

  “What if we pick a place to kill Gorba first and come back?”

  “We can’t wait for that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Breonna will kill Lahar.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “I hear whispers.” Marah grew quiet. “This is taking too long.”

  They passed through two dead outposts and found Ros Tolamor much like the others: abandoned and filthy. The wall blocking the city looked as though a giant had kicked it over, and the once-great gates, which must have stood at least thirty feet tall, were gone. Tyrus assumed the iron had been scavenged for weapons. The dwarves seemed proud to have entered the city once more, and Tyrus wondered if the history of the place was making them swell with pride.

  Entering the ruins felt wrong. So much dirt rested on the buildings that they looked spongy and soft, as though covered in fresh snow. The place was abandoned, and the shedim let them stroll in without a fight. Tyrus would have been more at ease if they had spent days breaking through defenses. The slow march to a dead city mocked them, and he realized that was what bothered him. The dead city seemed to be laughing at them. The shedim didn’t care if the dwarves reclaimed the city because there was nothing worth laying claim to. The ruins were worthless.

  II

  Marah found the city oddly quiet. The change was pleasant, at first, until she realized the stillness was the same as the dwarven temples. She reached for the source and probed the city with her senses. She found the same runes, etched into random stones throughout the city, as the dwarves used to ward their temples. The demons had silenced the dead.

  She found a ward close to her and used a bolt of lightning to scrub it from the stone. The party reacted as though they were being ambushed. Wardens closed ranks. Boots stomped, and shields clashed. Everyone waited on her to do something.

  Lord Nemuel asked, “What was that?”

  Marah said, “They put wards on the walls.”

  “Why would demons ward the city?”

  Marah scowled at the other runes. The dead were muted, and she had not expected that. Removing the one ward let her hear some of them, and ghosts drifted around her. Their voices were like whispers, hard to discern. She asked them if they had
seen Gorba Tull.

  He is too much like Moloch. He blends into the shadows.

  Another voice said, All of the overlords are hard to find.

  Marah asked, Why?

  They must learn to hide if they want to survive in the Nine Hells.

  The group explored the city. Marah removed wards as she found them, and the ghosts guided her toward the Tomb of Prophets, but the buildings they passed looked as dead and forgotten as everything else they had seen. Layers of dirt and grime covered the stone streets, marked by thousands of clawed tracks. Empty, dark windows sat in old buildings. As Marah cleared away more wards, she heard more voices.

  There are more wards throughout this place. He silences us.

  Marah grew nervous. Is he silencing Kennet too?

  Kennet was never stronger than Gorba.

  Marah asked, What do you mean?

  Leave, Marah, while you still can.

  It is too late, another voice said. They are coming for her.

  Marah asked, How much time do I have?

  It doesn’t matter anymore. You must fight as you knew you would.

  Marah glanced around at the dead city. Her mouth had dried, and she worked to swallow. Her tongue felt thick. How many are there?

  Gorba brings a legion of shedim, a thousand warriors. There are far more slaves. Tens of thousands.

  Marah asked, Where is Gorba Tull?

  He is too slippery to spy on.

  Silas grew nervous beside her. He muttered things about the traps waiting for them in the city. Marah heard his complaints, but she strained to hear Kennet. If she could ask him a few questions, they could leave before the shedim arrived. Silas kept distracting her, though, with talk of columns rigged to collapse and drop the ceiling on them or murder holes in the floor or armies hiding in the empty buildings.

  Marah said, “The city is empty, Silas, but the tribes are on their way.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look at the tracks on the floor,” Blastrum said. “Thousands of them.”

  Tyrus asked, “Why are the prophets buried this far down?”

  “Hundreds of years ago, this city was one of our greatest,” Silas said. “This used to be one of the keystones of the Deep Ward. There are more monuments to the kings who campaigned against Skogul. The tribes fought for centuries to take it from us. They spit on all of our heroes.”

  One of the wardens found an old cook fire. The embers were cold but fresh. The wardens discussed what could have made the tribes run away.

  Blastrum said, “The shedim won’t let them run away.”

  The dwarves sought a section of the city they could defend. If the tribes were coming, they wanted to find a choke point to funnel them into a kill box. Blastrum’s wardens used shield walls to control empty streets, but many of the buildings were little more than piles of rubble.

  The hard defenses had all been broken.

  Voices told Marah to flee, but another voice whispered, You are so close.

  Marah asked, Why must I be so close?

  They try to silence me… It will be easier to talk once you are closer.

  Marah thought the voice might be Kennet, but she had a bad feeling. If her father could reach out to her from Sornum, then Kennet should be able to talk to her within the city.

  “Marah,” Tyrus asked, “what’s wrong?”

  She pointed down a long street. “We need to go down there.”

  Silas asked, “Why do you tremble?”

  The shedim are coming… You don’t have time for this.

  “An army is close, but I can’t find them.”

  People reacted more calmly than she expected, but they were already on edge. Blastrum ordered the wardens to continue down the street and asked her more questions. He worried about false floors and falling stones, but Marah told him she had found no traps.

  Blastrum asked, “What game are they playing?”

  “It’s contempt,” Tyrus said. “They think we are easy to kill.”

  “Not so, Tyrus,” Lord Nemuel said. “They’re afraid a trap might kill Marah. They want her alive.”

  All eyes turned to her, and she asked the voices if that was true. Many seemed reluctant to tell her, but others mocked her for having to ask. They accused her of being a willful child. They asked her how many warnings she had ignored to invade Gorba’s lands and provoke his wrath.

  You did this to yourself. We all told you it was a mistake.

  Marah forced down tears. I just need a moment with Kennet.

  We begged you to stay away from this place.

  Marah’s heart stammered, and she took ragged breaths, but the panic gave way to anger. Gorba was toying with her and thought her friends were weak. She would prove that she was not afraid. She wanted to punish him for scaring her friends. If she could find Kennet and remove the wards, they could run away. All she needed to do was remove the wards and free him, and they could talk while Tyrus carried her back to Ros Mardua.

  III

  Tyrus held his great sword and followed Marah down a long and dirty street. Her short legs made the journey agonizingly slow. They traveled through a few districts until they found a causeway decorated with large statues. Most were crumpled, broken, and defaced. Silas spoke the names of long-dead kings and champions. Tyrus ignored the history lesson to pivot at any slightest hint of movement. Marah directed them toward a smaller temple at the end of the row.

  Blastrum asked her why she wanted the tomb, and she said it contained runes she needed. Blastrum directed teams of wardens to secure the streets leading to the tomb, and the wardens hurried to set up shield walls. Thousands of dwarves set up a perimeter around the tomb while priests helped move stones to block intersections.

  Tyrus stayed at Marah’s side and watched them work. The city was filled with holes. As he gazed about the massive cavern, he saw rock walls riddled with black tunnels, like a massive beehive. The tribes could come from anywhere, and he realized the city was like a barren field on the surface. There were no natural boundaries to help them win a fight.

  He had guessed that the shedim felt scorn for the dwarves, and the more he studied the city, the more he knew he was right. The shedim didn’t care about the city. The only thing of value in Ros Tolamor was Marah.

  Tyrus said, “Marah, we should go.”

  “Not yet, Tyrus. I just have to remove the wards.”

  “How long will that take?”

  Marah didn’t answer. With his strong hearing, he heard her mumble to the ghosts. She asked why someone was so hard to hear. The way she spoke to the ghosts brought back an old memory of following Azmon through the Nine Hells. He had talked to himself too, saying things like, “We are close, Master.” Marah had the same halting gait and the same pensive stare in her eyes. She was following a strange voice to a dangerous place.

  Silas said, “There is no city to claim. This place is in ruins.”

  “Have the tribes done this before?” Tyrus asked. “Given up a city without a fight?”

  “They live to fight.”

  “Can you tell if they are near?”

  “If she can’t find them, I will be of little use.”

  Tyrus shifted his weight, studying the walls. He reminded himself that Marah hadn’t lost a fight yet, but the one coming felt different. They had overextended themselves. He searched shadows for movement, sensing a presence. No matter where he turned, he thought he felt something creeping behind him. Their enemy was close, but he saw nothing.

  He wanted to shout at the creatures to show themselves. Instead, Marah stepped up to the doors of the tomb. The thing was a smaller temple, a pyramid in shape, with tiers like the dwarven temples’. Columns had once stood by the large marble doors, but they had cracked and blocked the entrance.

  Marah used sorcery to push them aside. The scrape of stone
and the clang of the heavy objects when they crashed into the ground made everyone flinch. The heavy thuds echoed throughout the city, and Tyrus waited for screeches or war cries to answer. Nothing came from the darkness.

  Tyrus said, “Let me open the door.”

  Marah said, “I can use runes—”

  “If that is a trap, I have the best odds of surviving it.” Tyrus knelt beside her as they considered the doors. “They planned this. You’re standing where they want.”

  “I know,” Marah said. “But what I want is here, too.”

  “Can you take it from them?”

  “Yes.”

  Her confidence gave him hope. They were about to anger an army of demons, and the battle hinged on Marah’s ability to fight them off. She looked around the dead city, and Tyrus followed her gaze. The empty buildings gave him a chill, and all his instincts shouted at him to leave.

  Marah asked Tyrus, “Are you afraid?”

  Tyrus nodded.

  “So am I.”

  “Hold on to your fear,” Tyrus said. “It might keep you alive. When I tell you to run, you run. Don’t look back. You leave me behind.”

  “I won’t—”

  “You must. You are more important than me.”

  Marah frowned. “You can’t leave me.”

  “I’ll do everything I can to stay with you, but I won’t let them take you. They’ll have to kill me first.”

  “I don’t want that.”

  “The tomb is important enough to die for?”

  Marah glanced at the doors and nodded. Tyrus had no choice but to trust her. She lived in a world of runes and ghosts that he would never understand. If his ward needed to enter a tomb, then he would fight to claim the damn thing.

  “Then we go,” Tyrus said. “But if this goes bad, promise me you’ll do whatever it takes to get away from here.”

  “I promise.”

  Tyrus searched her eyes and nodded. He stood and studied the doors, which gave him few choices. He had to enter blind and hope his reflexes would save him from whatever was on the other side.

  Marah whispered to herself, “Hold on to my fear.”