Nail turned back to assure the others the way was safe. Zane, wasting little time, was already on his way over the narrow bridge, Beer Mug right behind him.
“I’m too heavy.” Liz Hen handed Bedford Boy’s reins to Dokie. “Lead the pony.”
“But my arse feels itchy,” Dokie exclaimed.
“I don’t care what your arse feels.” Liz Hen waddled her way over the bridge, holding her chubby arms out for balance. Once she’d cleared the chasm, Dokie, scratching at his rear with one hand, began pulling Bedford Boy slowly toward the bridge, reins in the other. Nail risked a glance behind Stefan and Gisela. The dark opening they had just come through was now aglow with torchlight and loud voices. The knights!
There was a scrape and a muffled noise, and both Liz Hen and Gisela screamed.
Nail turned just in time to see Bedford Boy tumble from the bridge. The pony’s scarved, chestnut-colored face turned up to his briefly as it dropped and disappeared into the darkness and was gone—vanishing like a vapor of smoke into the blackness.
Dokie Liddle stood in the center of the bridge, eyes wide, urine staining his britches and running down his legs. He stood that way, frozen; then with two quick strides he was across the span to safety. “You stupid!” Liz Hen smacked him across the face, crying aloud, “That pony carried all our food, you stupid!” She hugged him to her thick body, sobbing. “All our food,” she muttered between sobs.
The sight of Bedford Boy plummeting into the ghastly chasm was fixed in Nail’s mind. It was a soundless fall. He stared at Liz Hen and Dokie. They clung to each other in an embrace of both horror and relief—horror that the pony was gone, relief that Dokie was alive. “He just stepped right off,” Dokie kept muttering, “just stepped right off.”
Flickering torchlight advanced up the tunnel behind Stefan and Gisela as a host of knights bearing torches boiled toward them from the opening, a handful of barking dogs behind them. Stefan immediately swept Gisela up into his arms and, in four loping strides, carried her over the bridge. He ran by Nail and disappeared down the passageway in the far wall. Zane retreated down the tunnel too, Beer Mug on his heels.
Nail felt an arrow zing past his head. He whirled in time to see several knights drawing their bows, while at the same time a line of five other knights and three dogs were running over the stone bridge toward him. A second arrow pierced one of the canvas sacks Lilly carried. The pony bounded away from Nail, knocking Liz Hen and Dokie aside as it raced away down the tunnel. But Liz Hen and Dokie were quick to pick themselves up and follow the pony in its mad escape.
Then, with a deafening crack, the stone bridge gave way.
Rock and mortar and four of the Sør Sevier knights and all three dogs plummeted down into the black nothingness. The fifth knight lunged forward with a clamor, landing halfway on the lip of the chasm, his lower body hanging over. The man clung to the edge of the pit just a few paces from Nail, arms scrambling to find purchase on the stone, hands grasping at the pebbles and buckets and bits of wood scattered there. But his efforts were to no avail. He slipped and disappeared from view, screaming as he fell.
Nail, torch in hand, was alone now, facing the remaining Sør Sevier knights and dogs. They stared at him from across the open chasm, all of them appearing as shocked as he, having just witnessed their five companions tumble away into the darkness.
They gathered their wits quickly, though, and in an instant, the knights’ bows were again drawn. Nail whirled and sprinted into the tunnel, arrows whizzing by, clattering off the stone wall behind him, one striking the torch from his hand. “Aeros wants them alive, fools!” a gruff voice shouted. Nail ran on, gladly leaving his torch and the Sør Sevier knights and the gaping black pit behind.
The passageway leading from the bridge was long and narrow and dumped them into a second cavern about the same size as the one they had just fled.
There they stopped to catch their breath.
“They won’t soon cross that chasm,” Stefan said, handing a newly lit torch to Nail. “With the bridge gone, no man can jump that distance.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Zane said. “Remember Cotton Stansfield at the Mourning Moon Feast two years ago? I daresay he ran and jumped near twenty feet to win the athletic competition.”
“I don’t think they will follow us,” Nail said. “And if they do, it will take them a while to figure out a way across that pit.” But one thing was certain in Nail’s mind: if there was another way across that chasm, those men would soon find it. There wasn’t much time to linger.
Nail led them onward. Their path clung to the far left of the chamber. To the right of the path lay a sheet of ghostly water, an underground pond fed by melting snow seeping through cracks from above. It lay flat and still, and scarcely stirred when Nail’s boot kicked in a pebble. The stillness of the pool was disconcerting. Cobwebs of mist rose from the water in places. The bitter air about this new cave was damp and harsh to breathe.
They skirted the pool along the narrow path, all eyes on the black water, all of them drawn to it as if transfixed. Beer Mug lapped at the water. Zane bent to take a drink too, but his sister stopped him with a firm hand and admonished him not to.
A cool drink sounded good to Nail. But Bedford Boy, along with their water skins, was gone. And from the looks of it, Zane needed fresh water in a bad way. But this pool appeared less than fresh. It looked dead. Nail, unable to keep his eyes off the water, stopped and knelt, holding his torch out, studying the eerie black pool, shuddering as he did so. Something was in the water.
He jumped back, startled at what he saw. Like ivory ghosts, the floor of the pool was lined with human skulls. But upon closer inspection, Nail wondered if the skulls were human at all. The dark water distorted what he saw, or what he thought he saw. Be they human or monster, either way there were skulls down there, hundreds of them, all bone-white and awful. Although the pool frightened Nail, it also reassured him; it proved that they were still on the right path. Shawcroft had called it the Place of the Skulls.
Nail led them away from the pool. Nobody but he, it seemed, had noticed the skulls in the water, or if so, they kept the awful sight to themselves. The path they followed led to another tunnel. It eventually widened out and continued on straight and slightly upward, though it seemed that this passageway was newer, with freshly chiseled walls. To their right was a wide set of stairs leading up into the darkness—the staircase so wide a group of twenty horsemen could have climbed it abreast. The stairway Shawcroft asked me to climb! Nail wondered what was up there. To his thinking, it was best they just continue on and leave these mines as soon as possible. Still, the stairs pulled at him.
“Should we go up the stairs?” he asked Stefan.
“We haven’t the time. We dare not tarry. And Shawcroft mentioned traps.”
“He said he dismantled them.”
“Traps?” Zane uttered. “I don’t know what you boys are carrying on about, but I don’t think those knights can get across that chasm.” He sat down, easing his back gingerly against the tunnel’s wall. “I’m taking a load off. I need a rest, perhaps a little nap.” Zane nodded his head toward the wide staircase. “That’ll give you two plenty of time to find out what’s up them stairs.”
Beer Mug lay down next to Zane, placing his head on the boy’s lap.
Nail looked at Stefan. “Come with me.”
“You mustn’t leave me, Stefan,” Gisela pleaded.
“You can come, Gisela.” Stefan handed his torch to Dokie. “Don’t let it go out. These two torches are all we’ve got left.”
Third step up, far left stone against the wall—Nail bent and pushed on it as Shawcroft had instructed. With just a touch, the stone seemed to move of its own volition, but just barely. There was a howl of wind from the darkness above, then a faint metallic clink, clink. Then silence.
Nail marched up the stairs, holding his torch aloft, hearing Stefan’s and Gisela’s rustling steps not far behind. He grasped the hilt of
the dagger at his belt, more for comfort than out of a belief that the short blade would be of any use on this dreadful stairway.
The stairs emptied them out onto a square room with a high ceiling. The carved columns that supported the roof were draped in spiderwebs. Wooden coffins lined the wall. Some had crumbled and fallen open, revealing bits of cloth and bone. Some skeletons were embedded in the walls, their bones rotting away in the sullen air. It was a dire place. A tomb. The mournful darkness of the grim room seemed to press in on the torchlight. Tiny streams of silver liquid seemed to bleed from random cracks in the walls, slowly pooling on the floor.
Nail entered the coldness of the room, Stefan and Gisela right behind him, the girl’s eyes glued to the skeletons in the walls. Nail handed the torch to her. Its light lay softly upon an altar that dominated the center of the vaulted room. It was cross-shaped, about waist high, and capped with an altar stone similar to the one in the Gallows Haven chapel. Beautifully worked carvings encircled the base, eerily similar to those stitched onto Shawcroft’s satchel.
With Stefan’s help, Nail slid the slab of stone aside, revealing what was hidden inside the altar. He wasn’t really sure what he had expected to find, but sealed within the silence of the stone box was a gigantic double-bladed battle-ax. Its curved, gleaming edges and pointed horns looked as sharp as a slice of grass. The weapon had a thick haft of steel wrapped in black leather interwoven with Vallè runes and silver thread. It was the most magnificent thing Nail had ever laid eyes on. He glanced up at Stefan. The boy’s eyes were wide with wonder, Gisela’s even more so. Nail’s mind reeled. Is this what Shawcroft was digging for? Here? At Sky Lochs? With that fellow, Culpa Barra, at Deadwood Gate? Sparkling weapons? The questions flittered away as he looked back into the altar.
Nail reached down and picked up the ax. It was twice as heavy as it looked and took some effort to lift, the finely honed blade scraping against the stone of the altar as he dragged it up and out. A curious feeling stole over him. It suddenly felt as if he knew this weapon, as if he had held it before, and holding it now was in some way the right thing.
He thought he saw tendrils of blue smoke misting up from between his fingers wrapped around the iron hilt. But then the vision was gone.
Still, he felt a strange sense of connection to the thing, of completion. His own blood-streaked face reflected back at him in the ax’s gleaming surface. His image was twisted, distorted. With matted blond hair coated in dried blood, he looked like a demon child of the underworld. His eyes, now peering from under the strands of his bloody hair, were feverishly aglow in the image that danced back at him from the wondrous ax blade.
“What’s this?” Gisela said, thrusting the torch over the open altar.
Nail looked from the ax to the girl. She was reaching her free hand into the altar toward a bright blue stone that sat atop a black swatch of silk. She snatched up the sparkling azure gem and held it in her trembling fingers. “It’s so pretty,” she said. “It glows like the stained glass in the chapel when the sun shines.”
Nail was disappointed that he was not the first to find the marvelous stone. It shimmered blue shards of brilliance in the torchlight and set Nail’s heart to racing.
Nail scowled at Gisela and set the ax down against the altar.
“Give it to me,” Stefan demanded with a stern voice. He reached onto the altar himself, taking up the black silk, then held the silk out to Gisela. “Give it.”
A guarded look was on her face as she placed the blue gem carefully within the silk. Stefan hastily wrapped the stone in the cloth and handed it to Nail. “Shawcroft wanted you to have it. This place frightens me like nothing else. Let’s go.”
Tucking the silk-wrapped stone into Shawcroft’s satchel next to The Way and Truth of Laijon, Nail hefted the huge battle-ax, once again admiring its quality.
Is this my destiny? It was as if he had seen it all before, hovering at the edges of his dreams. A blue stone? An ax?
Stefan and Gisela were already heading back down the stairs. Nail took a step to follow, but then noticed that on the first step down, the stone against the far left wall was moving. Then came the low, moaning rumbling of rock grinding against rock from the room behind him. He turned and looked one last time at the cross-shaped altar, which now seemed to be sinking into the floor.
It wasn’t the sight of the altar slowly disappearing that froze his blood. It was something far worse. They shouldn’t be there! his mind raged. To draw them was strictly forbidden on pain of death. And to carve them . . . no, his mind couldn’t grasp what he saw.
They were only small carvings. But it seemed they numbered in the hundreds, all of them, one after the next, receding into the floor as the altar sluggishly sank downward.
Carved at the base of the vanishing altar were burning eyes, flashing teeth, leathery clawed wings, serpentine tails—nameless beasts of the underworld.
Dragons!
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they found Dokie and Liz Hen tending Zane’s wound. Beer Mug, sad eyes fixed on Zane, whimpered.
“Have a gawk at this, boys.” Zane said, trying to keep an unconcerned look on his face, but there remained a strange, sickly glaze over his eyes. His armor was off, strewn about the wide corridor at the base of the stairs, all of it coated in congealed blood. The wound in his side was shocking to behold. Broken shards of rib were visible there beside his inner organs, the skin around the wound just mangled, clotted, torn meat. The stench of it engulfed Nail, nearly causing him to retch. He had not realized how injured Zane was. It was obvious to them all now: Zane was dying.
“What in all of creation is that?” Zane asked, pain-filled eyes on the heavy battle-ax cradled in Nail’s arms.
“What a thing to have to lug around now,” Liz Hen snorted, squinting at both Nail and the ax with disapproval. “As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about. Now we have to haul that thing about too? What use could that thing ever be to anyone, Nail? You stupid, stupid bastard.”
* * *
After clawing their way free of slavery, the Five Warrior Angels arose again, each with an angel stone, each bearing a divine weapon. Thus they began their War of Cleansing. The demons of the sky, once fearsome with fire and might, shook and trembled before them. All came together under the Warrior Angels’ Banner of Cleansing, dwarf and Vallè and oghul alike. And the Fiery Demons and their dark lords fled before them.
—THE WAY AND TRUTH OF LAIJON
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TALA BRONACHELL
4TH DAY OF THE MOURNING MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON
AMADON, GUL KANA
The flutist, a woman with deft fingers and delicate windpipes, blew an upbeat tune whilst dancing a jig to the tempo of the kettle drummer behind her. Half the revelers in Sunbird Hall danced; the other half dined on all manner of food. Servants, wild-eyed and flushed with heat, rushed from hall to kitchen and back again at the beck and call of the celebrants. Serving girls carried silver trays laden with pewter goblets of ruby-colored wine. Dishes of roast duck, ham, and Autumn Range elk, along with large bowls filled with grapes, apples, carrots, figs, and nuts of every hue covered the tables. All celebrants were dressed in their finest attire, many women with garlands of beads wrapped around their heads. The Mourning Moon Celebration was full of pomp and frivolity. The steward, Ser Tomas Vorkink, had overdone himself in preparing Sunbird Hall this year. The entirety of the king’s court was full of joy and laughter.
All save Tala and Lawri. They were sitting alone at the end of a long table. Lawri was listless, sickly, her once beautiful face sunken and sad. And Tala’s mind couldn’t rid itself of the image of Denarius blessing her cousin. . . .
Tala clenched her eyes shut. Do not think of it. Would she never be able to wash away the fog of numbness and disbelief that clouded her mind over the event?
She knew that the spirit of Laijon worked in mysterious ways. Not all prayers and priesthood anointings wer
e meant to be understood by the layperson. But the more rational side of her mind wished to claw the man’s eyes out. In the depths of both her mind and heart, what she’d seen was wrong.
Lawri, seemingly unaware of her surroundings, looked sicker by the day. She folded her arms on the table and rested her head on her hands, feigning sleep. Tala’s heart ached for Lawri in so many ways. She felt for the black dagger strapped to her thigh under her dress. Only after clutching the dagger’s hilt could she relax. Having the Bloodwood blade at her side was reassuring. She had been carrying it ever since she’d knocked it from the assassin’s hands.
The music of the celebration had softly worked its way down to naught but a solo bagpipe, its flowing notes seeming to contain ages of sorrow. It put Tala in a mood now more befitting the ill look of Lawri.
“Wine, if it pleases m’lady?” The barmaid from the Filthy Horse Saloon, Delia, held a silver tray with five goblets. Tala graciously took one, sipped of the fruity wine, then nodded nervous thanks to the dimple-faced girl. The fact that she herself had introduced Delia to the castle’s kitchen matron, Vilamina, earlier that day worried Tala. The assassin’s game had taken on many angles, and Tala was not yet sure what part Delia had to play. But here the lowly barmaid was, serving drinks to the royalty of Gul Kana.
As with all of the serving wenches, Delia wore a short plaid skirt and a billowy white shirt cut low about the neckline, with a tightly cinched corset that accentuated her already large breasts. As she made her way through Sunbird Hall with the tray of wine, the barmaid drew the admiring eyes of many a soldier. To Tala, the girl was a bit rough around the edges and looked terribly out of place surrounded by so much finery.
At times, so much finery made Tala sick to her stomach. The mass of painted royalty and strutting soldiers filled Sunbird Hall with their myriad of voices, all but drowning out the delicately played notes of the harp and bagpipes. Many sat at the long tables, while others lounged on soft-cushioned furniture, long benches, and stumpy divans covered in velvet and expensive bearskins. Black pillars lined the chamber. The walls between the pillars were strung with tapestries that portrayed Laijon’s journey from young fisherman to great grayken hunter, to slave, to demon slayer. Large candelabra lined the walls too. And there were hundreds more candles atop the rows of polished wooden tables set throughout the room. The overabundance of torchlight and candlelight threw an almost blinding warm glow over the room. The rows of wide double doors to the Sunbird Hall balcony high along the easternmost end of the room were thrown open, allowing for a breeze to cool the red-faced crowd.
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