Child of a Dead God nd-6

by Barb Hendee

  "We haven't found Chane yet," Leesil argued.

  "It doesn't matter-just go!"

  Leesil headed into the tunnel. As Magiere followed, she saw blood matting the fur on Chap's neck and the dark stain on Sgaile's cowl and vestment.

  "It is a clean cut," he said without slowing. "I will dress it later."

  They couldn't stop, not with Li'kan still free behind them. Whatever held the undead back, Magiere wasn't about to wait and see if it lasted. She felt little relief when they passed the last skeleton-filled hollows of the tunnel and approached the parted stone doors. She desperately needed her strength to last for one more task. Magiere stepped out behind the others into the dark library.

  Wynn was kneeling next to Osha but gazing blankly at the floor. Such sadness lingered on her face, but it vanished when she looked up at all of them. Her eyes locked on the orb as Magiere crouched to gently set it down.

  Magiere turned immediately, throwing her weight into one of the stone doors.

  "Leesil!" she grunted, and he came in beside her. Sgaile joined them as well.

  The door barely moved at first, and Magiere wished she had her hunger again.

  Finally, the bottom edge grated along the floor. It took longer to close the other one, and both Sgaile and Leesil's faces glistened with sweat by the time it shut.

  The iron beam still lay on the floor.

  Realization passed across both Sgaile's and Leesil's faces, followed by doubt. Sgaile had only one good arm and couldn't be doing well with his wounded shoulder.

  "One end at a time," he said. "And you must get it off the floor before we can assist you."

  Magiere took hold of the beam's end. In place of hunger she tried to find fury, remembering her mother dying in bed. She thrust upward with her legs.

  "Now!" Magiere grunted, as the beam's end reached her waist.

  "Where is Li'kan?" Wynn asked.

  Leesil and Sgaile ducked in, bracing one shoulder each beneath the beam.

  They all heaved, pushing up with their legs, and Magiere's arms began to tremble. As Leesil and Sgaile pressed upward, she poured all the strength she could summon into one last thrust.

  The beam grated over the stone bracket of the closest door. As it crested the bracket's top, Magiere shouted, "Get back!"

  Leesil and Sgaile ducked clear as she let go.

  The beam dropped, and a dull clang echoed through the library as it settled. Leesil bent over, panting. Sgaile wavered on his feet and was breathing shallow and fast.

  "Where is Li'kan?" Wynn repeated.

  Magiere slumped against the stone door. When Li'kan's hunger returned, it would grow into starvation, and they couldn't let her loose into the world.

  "She can't leave this place," Magiere panted. "Ever."

  Wynn stood up, but Leesil cut in before she could speak.

  "Did Chane come out?"

  Wynn swiveled toward him. Her mouth opened, then closed as she glanced toward the path around the ends of the bookcases.

  "Yes," she finally answered. "But he left. He is not in the castle."

  Leesil groaned in frustration. "You don't know that. Chap, see if you can sense him."

  Chap growled, loping off along the row of bookcases.

  Magiere glanced toward the iron beam's other end still resting on the floor. Leesil and Sgaile were spent, and she didn't feel any better. But they had to finish.

  Li'kan must never leave this place.

  "What was that thing?" Leesil suddenly panted out.

  Magiere shook her head, not because she didn't know, but rather that she didn't want to think about it.

  "An undead," she sighed. "That's all I felt, but worse than any other… I could barely stand it."

  "Not Li'kan," Leesil said. "In the light… what was that misshapen serpent… horned snake… whatever tried to swallow us?"

  Magiere stared at him, baffled by what he said. Chap loped back into sight, coming up beside Wynn. The dogged huffed once for "yes."

  Wynn's mouth tightened. "As I told you, Chane is gone."

  Magiere turned back to Leesil in puzzlement.

  "I didn't see anything in the light," she said.

  Sgaile shook his head. "I saw nothing, just light too bright to look into."

  Leesil straightened, his sweating face gone blank.

  "How you could miss it?" He glared at everyone in disbelief. "It could've swallowed the whole platform. It had teeth instead of fangs, and rows of horns taller than you, and scales all over its face and snout. Its coils were turning all over the cavern!"

  "Coils?" Magiere whispered.

  She hadn't seen a serpent's head-just the coils in her waking dream, and the sense of an undead all around her… within her.

  "Don't look at me like that!" Leesil snapped. "I know what I saw. Those coils were taller than two men… maybe three!"

  "No," Magiere said. "I didn't see-"

  "Fay?" Wynn whispered.

  Magiere stared dumbly at the sage.

  Wynn knelt beside Chap, looking into his eyes. "He says he sensed a Fay. Not all of them together, as when they come to him. Just one alone… cold… malicious."

  "It was an undead!" Magiere snapped.

  Wynn ignored her and frowned at Leesil. "You couldn't have seen… what you say. Maybe you heard or read something and the shadows played tricks on you."

  "No!" Leesil snapped. "We were practically blinded, there was so much light."

  Magiere was so tired, she didn't care anymore what anyone had seen.

  Wynn shook her head at Leesil. "I can only guess, but it is not real- only a myth. Even less, just a metaphysical emblem, a weurm or-"

  "What are you babbling about now?" Leesil growled.

  "It is Numanese, my language," Wynn growled back, "for a type of dragon."

  Chap snarled and lunged between all of them.

  Wynn flinched. "Stop shouting at me! We heard you the first time-a Fay!"

  The sage's anger vanished when she spotted blood-matted fur on his neck, and she reached for him.

  Sgaile's angry voice startled Magiere. "Enough talk! We must bar the doors!"

  She turned wearily along the tilted beam to grab its other end. But Chap's and Leesil's claims of what they'd experienced below-what either had seen or felt-ate at her.

  One had sensed a Fay, and the other had seen a dragon, while she had felt the presence of an undead.

  It was nonsense, nothing but the madness of this place. Leesil and Chap were wrong.

  Magiere called the last dregs of her strength and hoisted the iron beam's grounded end.

  "Someone comes," Danvarfij whispered and notched an arrow to her bowstring.

  "Wait," Hkuan'duv warned in a hushed voice and belly-crawled a short way out from the wall.

  His companion was having difficulty breathing the frozen night air, but they had to retain their vigil. In the moonlight, he saw the tall, auburn-haired man slip out of the castle gates and trudge across the snow. But he was alone.

  Hkuan'duv waited, but neither the man's white-templed companion nor their robed followers came out.

  The man kept on with two bulky packs over his shoulders and a large folded canvas in his arms. He paused to look back.

  Hkuan'duv let the hood of his white-covered cloak drop low and peered under its edge, watching.

  The man closed his eyes, sagging where he stood. He looked lost and defeated when he gazed listlessly about the white plain. The man turned and pushed on, never looking back again.

  "Should I fire?" Danvarfij whispered.

  Hkuan'duv considered having Danvarfij bring the man down. But they would have to move into the open to retrieve him, risking exposure, and then hide a body once they had finished questioning him.

  Only the artifact, and dealing with Magiere, mattered to Hkuan'duv.

  "He is nothing to us," he whispered to Danvarfij. "Let him go."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Magiere explored the castle's near reaches with Leesil
and Chap, while Wynn tended to Sgaile and Osha in the library. They had all agreed to wait out the night and return to camp after dawn, but their efforts quickly became pointless.

  They found no beds, blankets, kitchens, or sculleries. Either no furnishings had been brought to fill this place, or they had long ago decayed and been cleared away. They gave up and returned to the library, finding Osha awake.

  As they entered, Wynn went still for a moment as if listening. "Since you did not find anything, Chap says we should move to the study that he and I first occupied. Though small, there is a heat source there."

  Magiere nodded and heaved up the orb. "All right."

  Sgaile and Leesil supported Osha as Chap led them through the varied passages to a tiny room. Neither Chap nor Wynn understood anything about the floor brazier filled with glowing fist-sized crystals, but Magiere didn't care. Without fuel for a fire or a place to burn it, any heat was welcome. The castle had grown colder as the night stretched on, and they had all slept in worse places.

  Then again…

  Not with madness written upon walls in an undead's fluids. Not with an ancient undead, perhaps impossible to kill, locked in the depths beneath them.

  Doubts nibbled at Magiere. More so as she set the orb with its deceptive spike in the study's back corner. Still far too close for her peace of mind.

  "Will Osha be all right?" she asked.

  "I believe so," Wynn answered. "And Chap's neck appears to be healing."

  Magiere ran her hand over the dog's head. She hadn't forgotten Chap's claim that he'd sensed a Fay in the cavern. It was harder to dismiss than Leesil's claim from half-shadows glimpsed within the orb's glare. Then again, she'd seen coils in her dreams.

  "Sgaile's wound is the worst," Leesil said. "He may have chipped his collarbone, but I dressed it as well as I can."

  "At least we're all alive," Magiere said, but didn't add for now.

  Whatever had led her here and toyed with Li'kan-and by whatever name anyone called it-their three separate perceptions of what had come to the cavern didn't match up.

  Undead. Fay. Dragon.

  Magiere didn't want to know the answer to that puzzle. She didn't like thinking that the voice Chap had heard in Li'kan's mind was the same one in her own dreams. And when she looked at the orb in the corner, she didn't even want to stay in this room.

  In another life, another time, could she have been just like Li'kan?

  "I need privacy," she muttered. With her dagger and falchion, she shoveled in the floor brazier, pincered a glowing crystal between the blades, and headed for the door. She paused there, looking to Leesil.

  "Are you coming?" she asked.

  He picked up their coats to follow.

  "Stay within calling distance," Sgaile advised.

  Magiere headed for the closest opening along the corridor's wall. The door was long gone, and she stepped into a bare room, dropping the hot crystal in the rear corner. Leesil laid out one coat near it and began stripping off his hauberk. Magiere considered stopping him.

  She didn't want him dropping his guard in this place. But by the time she finished second-guessing, he'd already slumped tiredly against the wall and reached out for her.

  Magiere knelt down and collapsed against his chest. Leesil pulled the other coat over both of them as she shivered, but not from the cold.

  Many pieces of an ancient mystery had been unearthed in the last half year. The few that made any sense suggested that this "night voice"- il'Samar-had planned her birth. Welstiel hadn't seemed to know even that much, and certainly not that she'd been made to master a horde of undead and serve as general for the return of an ancient enemy.

  But it didn't matter. She wouldn't be pushed onto any path but the one she chose.

  And as to the rest, all the fragments of the Forgotten they'd stumbled onto, which Wynn's sages so desperately wanted…

  "I know what I saw," Leesil whispered. "Maybe it wasn't real. I mean, wasn't really there… but I couldn't have come up with that out of pure fancy."

  Magiere tilted her face up. "I believe you, but something isn't right, especially about Chap's claim."

  "I'm sick of it all," he whispered and closed his arms tightly around her.

  Magiere closed her eyes and just listened to Leesil's slow sigh, feeling his chest rise and fall beneath her cheek.

  Leesil was a different story. His birth and training had been planned by dissidents among the Anmaglahk, so that he might fight this coming "enemy" that Most Aged Father feared. Even the an'Croan ancestor spirits had tried to enforce his destiny.

  Unlike her, Leesil refused to even talk about it-but denial wouldn't help.

  No one could avoid something they wouldn't acknowledge. That was no better than raising one's eyes to the sky and denying that a chasm lay but a few steps ahead in the path. Leesil had to recognize the forced destiny that others were trying to press on him. If not, it might take him anyway in his blindness. At some point, Magiere had to make him see this, if they were to have any chance at all in going their own way.

  But for tonight, he'd been through enough-they all had.

  The room was empty but for a high window barely within reach of the hot crystal's glow. The light of Leesil's amulet had faded the moment they barred the library doors to the tunnel. Li'kan's shadow animals never reappeared, as if their presence depended upon hers, or upon the white undead's awareness and focus.

  Magiere wondered if some unnatural barrier existed between castle and cavern. How else could this place remain so cold resting above that misty chasm of heat?

  How long had it been since she and Leesil had had a moment alone?

  "I've been thinking," he said suddenly.

  She tilted her head back. "About what?"

  "Once we get home, we might add Wynn's herb and lentil stew to the menu… maybe her flatbread to serve with the fish chowder. We'll have to move the Faro table closer to the hearth by next autumn. It's too cold by the front window-"

  "What?" Magiere grouched, playing along. "We're not blocking half the patrons from getting near the fire."

  "They can sit down and play a hand," he countered. "How else am I going to earn any winnings come winter?"

  Magiere closed her eyes, listening to him prattle and imagining home and hearth on nights where the most vexing question was what to offer patrons for dinner and why the latest ale shipment was late. She slipped an arm behind Leesil's waist beneath their cloaks.

  The headless bodies of undead still lay in the stairway chamber. Below them in the depths, that ancient white thing still waited, though imprisoned in solitude. And its master had somehow wormed into Magiere's dreams.

  But all Leesil wanted was to hold her and talk of their tavern-their home-as if nothing had happened at all.

  And she let him.

  Wynn finished checking Sgaile's dressing, though he grew impatient with her ministrations. The wound was clean, but she still suspected Welstiel's blade had chipped his collarbone.

  "No lasting muscle damage… I would guess," she said, "but it will take some time to heal."

  Osha leaned against the wall. She had cut off the hem of her elven tunic and used it to bandage his head, but she could do nothing for his pain. At least he was awake and alert, and this was a good sign. Chap's neck was healing, though she worried about infection, considering he had been deeply bitten by two walking corpses.

  Sgaile looked directly into Wynn's face.

  "I thank you," he said.

  She rocked back from knees to her heels and sighed. "I wish I had salve. If we were back at the guild, I could make a poultice against infection."

  Sgaile shook his head. "Do not be concerned. It is a clean wound."

  She expected a harsh reprimand for running off and getting lost in the night, but Sgaile leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. Perhaps he was just too tired to bother.

  Wynn got up and went to the doorway, peering along the dark hallway. A low orange glow spilled
from the next doorway ten paces away. She glanced back to Osha.

  "You rest," she told him. "I want to check on Magiere and Leesil."

  He started to get up. "You cannot go alone."

  Strangely, Sgaile did not even stir. Wynn went to push Osha back down. He did not resist but began to argue again.

  "Wynn-"

  "Chap will come with me-now rest!"

  By the time she reached the door, her stomach rolled slightly.

  We should leave Magiere and Leesil in peace.

  She looked down to find Chap on her heels. "I know."

  Where do you think you are going?

  Wynn sighed in exasperation. "I cannot leave here without more answers."

  She pulled out her cold lamp crystal, rubbed it sharply, and headed off the other way along the corridor. Chap trotted out ahead and stopped in her way.

  "Do not tell me you have not thought the same," she whispered. "We cannot leave without knowing what might lie within reach in the library! Who else here, besides me, could find anything of importance in that place?"

  Chap's jowls wrinkled, but he finally turned about and headed down the corridor.

  We cannot spend all night searching… and you cannot carry much more when we leave, so be judicious in your choices.

  "Domin Tilswith would never forgive me if I did not try to bring some of it back."

  With what? You do not have your pack, and I doubt the others will want to return here again before we leave these mountains.

  "We are not the only ones who came," she answered, "and others brought packs and gear as well."

  Chap slowed but did not stop as he glanced back at her with narrowed eyes. By the time they reached the stairway chamber, Wynn knew he was fully aware of what she had in mind.

  Black ichors covered the floor around four headless bodies. On their way to the study, Leesil and Sgaile had tossed the heads off down the columned corridor, thinking it best to separate the heads from the bodies. They had no lamp oil with which to cremate the corpses.

  Wynn swallowed hard.

  Well… get on with it.

  She shot Chap a seething glare and swallowed again.