Tapping a finger on her cheek, Kurio took a slow turn around the room. She should trust her talent, which had proven uncannily reliable in the past. Something to do with Gannon was amiss, but what?
With a resigned shrug, she secured her globe inside her pack, along with the cloth from under the door, and slipped into the hallway. There were a number of other doors she hadn’t investigated, but she was already pressing her luck. As she stood there hesitating, chewing her bottom lip, a soft breath of air brushed her cheek. A draft, from where?
She held out her hands and slowly crossed the hallway. As she reached the middle, the draft caressed her fingers. It seemed to be coming from a massive gilt-framed painting that covered much of the wall.
Kurio took a step back and frowned. The paint was cracked with age, though she could see it had been restored in places. A stern-looking family gazed down upon her: a man wearing a high-buttoned suit centuries out of date; a wife dressed in a voluminous skirt, with a waist so small it had to be cinched; and two children, a boy and a girl, both clothed as miniature versions of their parents. They all wore grim expressions, as if the beloved family dog had just died.
Kurio felt around the frame, smiling as she easily found a locking mechanism. The painting swung out into the hallway, supported by well-oiled hinges. Behind it, an opening. A staircase led down.
Kurio ducked inside and pulled the painting shut behind her. Blackness. In a few moments she had her alchemical globe in her hand again. She’d expected dust and cobwebs, but the stairway was as clean as if it had been scrubbed yesterday.
Carefully, she descended. The steps kept going until the wooden walls were replaced with stone, and Kurio was sure she was a few stories below ground level. Maybe this was a secret entrance to the catacombs. Or to ruins from the cataclysms, which were even deeper.
At the bottom, she found a strange door. It was made of an orange metal—orichalcum—as was the frame it was set in, and plain and polished, as if it had been installed recently. She could see her reflection in it, slightly distorted.
Her breath caught in her throat. It had a Sandoval lock above a handle. His stylized initials were etched into one corner. Which meant the door was a thousand years old.
There was no keyhole, just a series of four coded dials. Each one had ten different Skanuric runes, which meant there was roughly one chance in ten thousand of guessing correctly. It looked like she was out of luck.
Unless …
Kurio recalled the four Skanuric runes on Gannon’s ring. She didn’t know their meaning, but that didn’t matter. That the dials contained the same runes as the ring gave her confidence.
Could it be this easy?
Turning each dial, she selected the four runes in order. Inside the lock, mechanisms clanked and whirred. She gripped the handle, prayed to a few different gods, and pulled.
The door swung open, and a foul reek invaded her nostrils—the stench of old meat and rancid fat. Kurio heaved, clamped her nose shut with her fingers, and breathed through her mouth. Her stomach churned as she imagined the air invading her mouth, on her tongue. She gagged, then swallowed thick spit.
Bloody hells, what’s this about?
Beyond the door, a corridor led into darkness. She rushed along it, wanting to get this over with and get out of there as quickly as possible.
The walls were rough-cut stone, ancient. This must have been part of the catacombs. Someone had delved deep into the earth until they’d broken through into the ancient ruins. It seemed to Kurio like a great deal of effort, for what reason? A builder could easily include a decent-sized secret room in a house as large as Gannon’s, and no one would suspect a thing.
Dust stirred underfoot, coating her boots and the cuffs of her pants. She must have gone a hundred yards before the corridor ended, opening into a circular room.
Hanging from the ceiling, like the sausages and hams in the kitchen, were two human bodies.
Iron hooks stuck through their feet held them upside down, limp arms dangling above the floor. The bodies were hairless with red splotchy skin, just like butchered pigs that had been scalded and scraped. Both were men, and not small either. Their throats had been cut. An incision ran from chest to groin, and their innards were missing. In the pale light of her globe, their skin sparkled in places, and Kurio decided it had been rubbed with rock salt for preservation.
A long bench caught her eye as she tried not to look at the corpses. As in the kitchen on the ground floor, the bench held large jars of flour, several smaller containers, and an enormous bowl of rock salt. And books. Recipe books.
Oh, gods. They’re eating them.
A half-barrel against one wall seethed with maggots—the source of the stench and presumably the resting place of the missing organs. Kurio felt her gorge rise and looked away, swallowing bile.
A faint noise from the other side of the room made her jump. There was another door, this one wooden and bound with iron.
Don’t, Kurio.
But she had to.
She skirted around the edge of the room, keeping as close to the wall as possible to avoid the butchered men. Her skin crawled, and she wanted to run away as fast as she could. But there was that door …
Gripping the handle as hard as she could, she tried to calm her mind and steady herself. A noise meant something moving. There could be a prisoner locked in here, chained up until they were ready to be butchered like an animal.
Calm down. Deep breaths. No, not deep breaths. Just open the door, take a look, and leave.
She inched the door open and thrust her alchemical globe in front of her through the gap. The vile stench was even worse now.
A dozen pairs of orange eyes punctuated the darkness. She caught a glimpse of wrinkled, yellow-skinned limbs with blood-covered hands, fanged mouths, and finger-length horns jutting from heads and backs. Clumps of rotting meat were scattered across the floor.
Dead-eyes! Here, in the city!
She stopped breathing and whispered a prayer. Her alchemical globe trembled in her grasp. She pulled it back and slowly closed the door. Its hinges creaked, and the orange eyes turned toward the sound. Screeches and snarls erupted as claws scrabbled across stone. Almost as one, the monsters burst toward the door.
Kurio slammed it shut and ran. She ducked under the hanging corpses, cringing as their fingers brushed her head. Panting like a dog and sweating rivers, she raced along the corridor, flung herself through the orichalcum door, and shouldered it shut. Hands shaking uncontrollably, she spun the dials, not caring if the runes didn’t match the pattern she’d found them in.
Even in her panicked state, she realized those creatures couldn’t be Dead-eyes, as she’d first thought. Dead-eyes were said to have white pupil-less eyes and thin white limbs. Those hideous creatures had to be … demons.
Gods help me!
Before she knew it, she was flinging open the painting and dashing down the corridor.
“Hey! You there! Stop!”
Kurio ignored the man’s voice. She didn’t think she’d stop for quite some time.
She threw herself down the servants’ stairs, hearing thumping footsteps behind her. In the kitchen, she grabbed a jar of flour and dashed it against the wall, groaning under the weight. It broke with a satisfying crash and enveloped the kitchen in white powder.
The footsteps trailing her faltered, then stopped. “Thief!” the man shouted, obviously trying to wake the other servants.
But Kurio knew he was too late. She was almost free.
A dozen quick steps, and she was outside. Moments later, she slammed the door to the lane behind her, jammed a pick into the lock, and snapped it off.
Sweat cold on her face, limbs trembling, she raced down the lane and was soon lost in the surrounding streets.
Chapter Eight
A Fortuitous Encounter
MARTHAZE’S SHADOWY VISIONS CUT Aldric to his soul, as if they were made from razor-sharp blades. He watched through the long-dead priest’
s eyes as a wave of Mutinate cavalry—warriors from an empire long since turned to dust—charged a seething horde of demons. Lances pierced flesh and bone and shattered against toughened hides and armor. Horses screeched, joining the wailing of the demons that threatened to drive men crazy. Sabers were drawn. Dark purple demon blood whipped from their flashing blades, but scarlet blood was torn from humans too. One pocket of cavalry fought the hardest, and Aldric realized the demons were targeting Lord Beremas, the last ruler of the Mutinate. New demons rose from where they’d lain hidden amid others; larger, darker, carrying serrated blades as long as a man was tall. The massive demons made short work of the cavalry surrounding Beremas, and the lord was hammered down, black steel blades chopping until there was no hope of survival. Aldric cried out, although he knew this battle against Nysrog had been fought in ages past, and Beremas was long dead and turned to dust.
Then the sorcerers arrived, their glittering lights blowing demons and Dead-eyes into bloody mist. Too late, as usual. Even in the dream, Aldric could smell the charred meat, the blood, sweat, and piss of battle.
Demons and Dead-eyes matted the land. The dusty haze that surrounded the demons stank of decay and bitter feces. A river to the west was jammed with bloated bodies, the land around it covered with sheets of flesh that festered and decomposed in the heat of the arid south. Valleys were clogged, and hills seethed. Dust choked the air, turning snot and tears to mud.
Marthaze turned to the woman by his side, the sorcerer he hated. “Lord Beremas has been slain.”
Sian only nodded, eyes narrowed in concentration.
“I should be out there,” he muttered. “Healing the injured.”
“It’s too dangerous,” she replied. “You know this. The gift of your god is too valuable to risk. Content yourself with healing those who survive and are brought back.”
Bloody sorcerers, he cursed. But he knew she was right, and that galled him all the more.
“There!” she shouted, her tone gleeful. “Can you see it, Marthaze? The Chain!”
Another atrocity, but that thought he kept to himself.
Sian’s Grandmaster strode through the battlefield, surrounded by her wards. Around her neck she wore the Evokers’ prized possession, the Chain of Eyes, said to have been crafted by three different gods and gifted to mankind to help them defeat Nysrog and his abyssal minions. Though the Grandmaster was the youngest ever to have risen to the rank, her power was immense. She waded into the mass of demons, trailing lesser sorcerers behind her. Around her, a burnished conflagration erupted. Sparks whirled like butterflies caught in a circling wind.
Where they touched the demons, the foul creatures shrieked and died, their bodies blasted to ash and dust. Nysrog’s fell minions, Dead-eyes, and corrupted humans alike were unable to withstand the strength of the Chain of Eyes. Even the demon-worshiping sorcerers—what they’d taken to calling “the Tainted Cabal”—fled its wrath.
Sian clapped her hands in delight, and Marthaze reluctantly admitted that corrupt sorcery sometimes had its place.
She turned to him. “Once the demons are defeated and Nysrog is sent back to the abyss, the sorcerers will guarantee the demon lords will not return.”
“Guarantee?” Marthaze spat. “How can you say such a thing? You know his cabal will work toward his return.”
“I don’t know the details. Only that the Evokers are working on something that will prevent Nysrog from ever rising again. It is rumored they will release such power that the world need never live in fear. It will seek out and destroy any sorcerer who grows skilled enough to breach the veil between our world and the hells.” She moved closer to Marthaze, a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes. “They are calling this creation ‘the Revenants’. It will save the world.”
Any rogue sorcerer’s death could only be a good thing in Marthaze’s book. But to kill anyone who had such skills? What if they had no intention of summoning demons? To preemptively slaughter someone for growing their knowledge—the idea sat ill with him.
“Your work begins,” Sian said, gesturing down the dirt track toward a train of wagons bearing wounded soldiers.
Marthaze’s heart sank, though he drew himself up, steeling himself for the long days ahead.
The first injured soldier brought to him was a woman. Both her arms had been severed at the elbow. Blood-soaked bandages covered the charred flesh of a hastily implemented cauterization. Despite all he’d seen in the years of war against Nysrog, Marthaze wept.
The woman’s eyes were glazed, and her movements sluggish, no doubt the effects of a heavy dose of poppy oil. But some glimmer of awareness broke through, and she gazed at Marthaze. He wiped his eyes, not wanting her to see his despair.
“My hands,” she said dully. “I can’t feel my hands. Will I be able to hold my children again?”
Marthaze almost fell to his knees as hopelessness and anguish swamped him. “I’ll do my best.”
That was all he could do. All that Menselas required of him.
Aldric woke, slick with sweat under his blanket. His fire had burned to ash, and the silence of the forest around him seemed as loud as the clamor of war it replaced.
He sat up, hugged his knees tight against him, and wept as Marthaze had.
~ ~ ~
“Caronath,” Aldric whispered, enjoying the sound of the city’s name. It was a place he’d only heard about in stories or read about in books.
He had finally arrived after more than a month in the wilderness, joining a paved road a few days ago. Slowly, the forest had thinned, replaced with tilled fields and villages—signs of civilization carved from an unforgiving land. His heart had lifted at the sight of wood smoke pluming from chimneys, farmers in the fields, cattle grazing. But he couldn’t help wanting to turn back to the forest. There were mysteries there. Lost knowledge and treasures that could benefit everyone—if a person could survive to bring them back.
His encounter with the wraithe had been a week ago, but his bruised ribs were still sore. He’d thought about the chance meeting often as he’d traveled. A being so old, it defied logic; and one of many, if the legends were to be believed. The whole world had been theirs once, their sorcery propelling them to greatness. But they were much reduced, both in number and culture. Time had a way of wearing anything down, making dirt out of mountains.
His mind turned to the Revenants in the priest’s memories. He hadn’t learned any more of this power through his use of the relic, and had to assume the sorcerers of old had either failed or abandoned whatever mad plan they’d created.
Crops in the fields were slowly replaced by herds of animals as the city neared. Cows and pigs; barns filled with clucking chickens and quacking ducks. Food for the city’s inhabitants, raised as close to the city as possible so the animals weren’t killed or defiled during the night. Timber buildings began appearing, then brick houses, as the city walls loomed closer.
Aldric joined the throng at the gates and breathed in the dirt-laden air. He passed under the gatehouse’s shade and into the dusty sunlight of the streets of Caronath, where the road’s massive pavers gave way to cobbles. He guided his horse along the main street, eager to take in the sights, but also wanting to ease his way into what would be his new home for the foreseeable future. Until he was inevitably ordered elsewhere.
This close to the gates, the city was as crowded as a marketplace. As he’d expected, there were more of the fair-haired, pale-skinned people of the cold northern climes here, but he could see many other races mingling with the northerners. A few Illapa, with their greenish skin and dark hair; the occasional dusky-skinned Inkan-Andil from the far west; and some San-Kharr, like himself, with dark gray skin.
One young San-Kharr woman carrying a basket of fruit reminded him of his sister. Hopefully his family was well, and Kittara … he’d have to talk with her in more depth when he returned home. It wasn’t good for her to dwell on things that just weren’t possible. The chance that she might quicken and become a sorcerer w
as minuscule.
Suddenly, the crowds and noise and closeness of other people was too much for Aldric. The stillness of the forest had faded from him too quickly. He found himself chafing at humanity and steered his horse down a side street to separate himself from the masses.
Deep parallel ruts marred the stone streets: worn by countless carts and wagons—a testament to the age of the city. He saw a few wards nailed above doors and windows. Weak talismans, but good enough to deter anything that made it through the city’s defenses, sending them after easier prey.
A flaxen-haired woman walked toward him, her mark of sorcery plain to his eyes. This was a slice of luck. Sorcerers were rare, and even rarer to meet one in the street.
“Excuse me,” Aldric said, leaning from his horse slightly. “Could you tell me where the nearest sorcery merchant is, please?”
He needed to replenish his supplies before he reported to the Church. Especially since what he did, what he was, wasn’t well tolerated by his brethren.
The woman looked him up and down and sniffed disparagingly. “Cheapest ones are on the main streets. Plenty there to choose from.”
“I’m after a high-quality shop, not a cheap one that sells worthless charms,” Aldric said. “I used up many of my materials on my way here.”
The woman frowned and squinted up at him. Her gaze traveled over his dusty clothes and horse, to the emblem stamped into his leather saddle. Her eyes widened as she recognized the holy seal.
“Oh!” she said. “Excuse me, ah …?”
“Magister will do.”
She nodded, swallowing. “Magister. Why do you need a sorcerer’s … Oh. Yes, well … Pearello’s shop is on North Sorrel Avenue.” She pointed up the street. “Maybe ten streets farther. Turn right and look for the sign.”
Aldric nodded and gave her a smile. “Thank you.” There was no need to ask what sign. Anyone with arcane power would recognize it.
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