Drops of rain struck Mosiah’s cheek, rising wind blew cold against his already shivering body. A magical storm was brewing; the sky was darkening with thunderclouds. Jagged lightning tore through the air, thunder rumbled around him, making his heart stand still, reminding him of the creature. He looked again at the body of the wizard…. Suddenly, Mosiah started to run.
Panic drove him from his hiding place. He admitted that to himself as he stumbled over the uneven ground, dragging the heavy crossbow with him, his gaze constantly darting fearfully around him. Panic and a desperate need to find other people, someone, anyone who could tell him what was going on. His need for information—his need to know—was greater than his fear of the creature. This horrible panicked feeling would leave as soon as he knew for certain what was happening!
The storm lashed out at him, driving him forward with whips of wind and rain and stinging hail. Water streamed into his eyes; he could see nothing, yet still he ran, caroming off trees like some crazed gamepiece, slipping in the wet grass, entangling himself in clutching weeds.
Finally, bruised and battered, he stopped, huddling in a small grove of trees. Slumping back against a tree trunk, gasping for breath, he thought suddenly, “Simkin!”
In his terror, he had forgotten all about his erstwhile companion. “Simkin would know what’s happening. Simkin always knows,” Mosiah muttered bitterly. “But where the devil did he get to?” Unslinging the quiver of arrows, Mosiah dumped it on the ground and kicked at it with his foot. “Simkin?” he yelled above the storm, feeling incredibly stupid, yet hoping against hope to hear that insipid “I say, old chap!” in reply.
There was no green and orange feathered arrow among the metal ones, however. Angrily, Mosiah kicked the quiver again. Only silence.
“Why should I want that fool around anyway?” he mumbled, wiping the rain from his face—rain that mingled with his tears of fear and frustration and the knowledge that he was now completely lost. “He’s only trouble. I—”
Mosiah hushed, listening.
The thunder boomed around him, lightning lit the gray gloom until it was nearly bright as day. But through the noise and confusion of the storm, he thought he had heard … yes, there it was again.
Voices?
Weak with relief, Mosiah nearly dropped the crossbow. Shaking, he set it carefully on the ground and peered out from the cover of the dripping foliage. The voices were near him, coming apparently from another small grove of trees only a few yards away. He couldn’t understand what the voices were saying, it was difficult to understand their shouts over the noise of wind and rain and thunder. Perhaps it was centaurs. Mosiah hesitated, listening closely. No, it was unmistakably human speech! Warlocks, undoubtedly.
Mosiah moved forward cautiously He planned to call out when he was close enough. The last thing he wanted to do was to startle some nervous warlock and find himself mutated into a frog. He could hear the voices quite plainly now, it sounded as if there were several men in the small grove, shouting orders of some sort. Words of glad relief were on his lips, words of thankfulness at finding friends, but Mosiah never spoke them.
Reaching the outer trees of the grove, the young man slowed his pace. Why? Mosiah didn’t know. His mind urged him to leap forward, but some deeper instinct kept his voice silent, his steps quiet. Maybe it was because—even though he couldn’t hear clearly above the storm—he didn’t understand the speech of these men. Maybe the bad experience with the Duuk-tsarith in the Grove long ago had taught him a bitter lesson in caution. Or maybe it was the same animal instinct for self-preservation that had kept him safe from the creature of iron.
Padding softly around a tree, knowing that he himself couldn’t be heard above the storm, knowing, too, that he would be difficult to see in the driving rain, Mosiah crept near the source of the voices. Gently parting the wet leaves, he saw them.
He held perfectly still—not out of fear or caution. He felt no emotion whatsoever. It was as if his brain had left him, had said, “I’ve had enough, let someone else cope with this for a while. Good-bye.”
Those speaking were humans. But they were like no humans he had ever before seen or imagined.
There were six of them. They were male, from the sound of their voices and the muscular appearance of their bodies. At first Mosiah thought they had heads of iron, for he could see the lighting reflecting off their shining scalps. Then one of them removed his head, wiping sweat from his brow, and Mosiah realized that the strange humans were wearing helms, similar to the bucketlike contraption Simkin donned on infrequent occasions.
In addition to their helms, the strange humans were dressed alike in suits of shining metal that fit them like their own skin. In fact, it might have been their skin, for all Mosiah knew, except that he saw one yank a glove from a hand, revealing flesh like his own. The man had taken off the glove to toy with an object he held in his hand—an object that was oval-shaped and fit neatly in the palm.
The man showed the object to a companion, saying something in his unintelligible language, apparently with regard to it, for he sounded disgusted and shook the object. The companion shrugged, barely glancing at his partner. He was keeping watch, staring out from the grove of trees, and he was obviously tense and nervous.
The man with the object in his hand continued to shake it until one of the other men made a hissing sound. Reacting hastily, the man pulled the glove on over his hand, turning to face the same direction as his other five companions. All of them crouched low in the wet brush, and now Mosiah could see through the driving rain that each man held one of the oval-shaped objects in his hand and that they pointed them forward in front of them.
Mosiah kept watch with them, wondering what had drawn their attention. He still felt no fear, not even curiosity. He was numb, in shock. If the men had turned around and faced him, he could have done nothing but stand and stare at them. Once one did happen to glance behind him, but he did so quickly and nervously, obviously more worried about what was ahead Mosiah, well concealed by the brush and the cover of the heavy rain, remained hidden, unnoticed.
A warlock, a witch, and their catalysts emerged from another small grove of trees some distance from the one in which Mosiah and the strange humans were hiding. The magi moved cautiously and—from the wild-eyed, terrified expressions upon their pale faces, expressions that Mosiah knew must reflect his own—it was apparent that they had suffered similar, frightening experiences. Their black robes marked them Duuk-tsarith, and at the sight of the magi, the metal-skinned humans in the brush crouched down even further.
A lost child catching sight of his parents could know no greater joy and thankfulness than Mosiah experienced at the arrival of the Duuk-tsarith. Flattening himself against the tree trunk, he hoped fervently he was out of range of the spell he knew the warlock would cast on the strange humans and waited for the inevitable. The metal-skinned humans moved quietly, sinking down into the brush with a skill that indicated that they had been well trained in the art of concealment and ambush. But they did not move quietly enough. The Duuk-tsarith—it is said—can detect a rabbit’s presence by the sound of its breathing.
The warlock reacted instantly. His black robes swirling around him, he faced the grove. Pointing toward it, the warlock cast a spell, a Nullmagic spell that is the Duuk-tsarith’s first form of attack. The warlock was exceptionally powerful, in addition, he must have been suffused with Life by his catalyst, for Mosiah felt a slight draining effect of his own magic even though he stood some distance from the enemy. Expecting to see the metal-skinned humans fall writhing to the ground, helpless as the spell bereft them of Life, Mosiah started to leave his own hiding place, hoping to be able to question the Duuk-tsarith and find out what was going on.
But he halted, stunned. The strange humans were not affected by the Nullmagic. Seeing the warlock aware of their presence, realizing that concealment was no longer necessary, they rose to their feet. Mosiah, watching, saw in his mind another man who had not been a
ffected by the Nullmagic—Joram.
These strange humans were Dead!
Raising his right arm, one of the Dead pointed at the warlock. A beam of blinding, intense light streaked out from his palm. The air hummed and sizzled, the warlock collapsed, dying without a cry, leaving his catalyst to stare at him in astonishment. A thin wisp of smoke rose up from the man’s black robes and Mosiah recalled with awful clarity the death he had witnessed earlier; the hole burned through the man’s flesh.
Mosiah glanced from the warlock to his fellow Duuk-tsarith, but the witch had vanished. Her disappearance appeared to disturb the Dead, who remained crouching in the trees, their metallic heads turning this way and that as had the great metallic head of the iron creature Mosiah had seen earlier. After a moment, the Dead man who stood in the center of the group shrugged his shoulders. Pointing to the warlock’s catalyst, who was kneeling over the body of his master, performing the Last Rites, the Dead man began to walk forward.
Pressed against the tree, Mosiah waited, cringing, for them to kill the helpless catalyst. The Dead man walked toward the Priest. The catalyst heard them coming, but he did not look up. With the steadfast courage of his faith, he anointed the head of the dead warlock with oil and spoke the ritual words, “Per istam sanctam unctíonem indúlgeat …” in a firm voice.
The Dead man kept his hand raised, the light-beaming object trained on the catalyst. To Mosiah’s astonishment, however, the strange humans did not murder the priest. One of the men reached out (gingerly, it seemed to the watching Mosiah) and grabbed hold of the catalyst by the arm.
Angrily, having still to complete his rite, the catalyst shook off the Dead man’s grip. The Dead glanced at another of the strange humans, as if for instructions.
This man, whom Mosiah was beginning to realize must be the leader, spoke in the unintelligible language of the Dead and made a motion with his hand. The metal-skinned human backed off slightly, allowing the catalyst to complete his rite in peace.
A mistake, Mosiah counseled them silently from his hiding place. Of course, being Dead, they could not sense the heightening tension in the air, the magic that was beginning to build and boil around them. They couldn’t know that the witch was still near.
“…quidquid deliqústi. Amen.” The catalyst came to the end of the rite. Reaching out, he closed the warlock’s staring eyes and began, slowly, to rise to his feet.
Mosiah heard one of the Dead cry out—a shout of fear and terror that echoed weirdly from the metal head. Pointing at the corpse of the warlock, the metal-skinned human began to scream in terror. The corpse was changing into a gigantic snake. The warlock’s eyes that had just been closed in death now opened wide, burning with a red, unnatural life. The warlock’s body elongated and grew, becoming a reptilian body bigger around than an oak. Rearing up out of the wet grass, its flat oscillating head swaying slightly, the dead warlock—now a huge hooded cobra—towered over the metal-skinned humans, its forked tongue flicking in and out of its venomous mouth.
The leader of the Dead fell back in terror. He aimed the deadly beam at the snake, but his arm shook visibly and the beam missed its target, striking a tree branch and setting it aflame. Lunging swiftly, the giant snake sank its fangs into the Dead man’s shoulder, easily piercing the metal skin. The Dead man’s cry of pain and terror echoed through the forest, causing Mosiah to grit his teeth until it ended in a high-pitched wail of death.
Wrenching its fangs loose from its victim, the snake reared back to focus on its other enemies. The Dead were fleeing in panic, however, crashing blindly through the woods. Standing near the snake, the catalyst watched them run away. When they were gone from sight and when the sound of their screams could no longer be heard, the snake shimmered in the air and collapsed to the ground. Bereft of its magical Life, the cobra was once more the corpse of the warlock.
Mosiah, realizing he had quit breathing, drew in a shivering breath. Sweat beaded on his forehead, he was shaking violently and uncontrollably. The sudden appearance of the black-robed witch hovering beside him made his heart lurch wildly in his breast. He very nearly ran away himself, but her strong hand reached out and grabbed hold of him.
“I told you I’d find him!” said an aggrieved voice coming from a bit of orange silk the witch wore tied around her wrist. “I brought you straight to him!”
“You are Mosiah?” said the witch, her eyes glittering from the depths of the black hood, staring at him intently. “Yes,” she answered her own question. “I recognize you.”
Mosiah recognized her as well, and the recognition robbed him of his ability to speak, for this was the witch who had captured him and nearly sent him to his death.
The orange silk disappeared from the witch’s wrist, coalescing in the air to become the tall, thin body of Simkin. But it was a changed Simkin—a pale, distraught Simkin, a Simkin whose normally elegant, fashionable attire appeared to have been flung on without care or thought. He wore breeches of coarse cotton, such as might have been worn by the meanest Field Magus. A slovenly tunic of leather covered a drab silk shirt with a torn sleeve. The bit of orange silk still fluttered bravely in his hand, but the next instant he stuck a corner of it into his mouth and began chewing on it distractedly.
“What’s going on?” Mosiah managed to gasp weakly, looking from Simkin to the witch.
“Precisely the question we would ask you!” the witch hissed at him, reminding him forcibly of the snake. He glanced nervously at the warlock’s body and saw the catalyst hurrying in their direction.
“We cannot stay!” the catalyst called softly. “One of the creatures of iron is coming this way!”
“The Corridor!” the witch said, and the catalyst caused one to gape open instantly. Simkin leaped inside, almost before the Corridor was open, and the catalyst followed.
Mosiah hesitated. He could hear the low humming noise of the iron creature, he could feel the ground shake beneath his feet. Yet he would almost have chosen to take his chances with the blind monster than the witch, whose presence and touch brought back the pain of the binding vines and their flesh-piercing thorns.
“You fool!” The witch’s hand closed over his arm. “You will not survive in its path an instant. It has no eyes, but it is not blind. It kills with unerring accuracy. I will take you with me, whether you choose to go or not. But I would prefer that you came voluntarily. We need your help.”
The humming grew louder. Mosiah remembered the wizard, fleeing… The hole burned in the flesh … Yet still he hesitated—a man stranded on a sheer cliff face with a great boulder crashing down on him from above, his one hope a leap into a dark chasm below.
“Where?” he asked through lips so stiff they would barely form the word. The Corridor was already starting to close.
“Emperor Xavier’s,” said the witch, the hands holding Mosiah tightening with an ominous grip.
“Don’t,” he said softly, swallowing. “I’ll come.”
The Corridor opened, sucked him inside, and squeezed shut around him.
13
Death Crawls
It was all so quiet. Garald, stepping cautiously from the Corridor, wondered briefly if the Thon-li—who were in a pitiable state of confusion—had made a mistake and sent him to some distant, peaceful part of the world. But it took the Prince only a moment to realize that he had reached his destination, only a moment to realize that the quiet was not the quiet of peace.
It was the quiet of death.
The Corridor closed hastily behind Garald. He was dimly aware of Cardinal Radisovik covering his eyes with his hand, murmuring a prayer in a broken voice. Garald was also aware of his bodyguards—the Duuk-tsarith, trained from childhood to the discipline of silence—gasping aloud in shock and anger. Garald was aware of this, yet none of it touched him. It was as if he stood alone upon this world and, looking around, saw it for the first time.
The sun shone brilliantly, a startling contrast to the stormy weather they had just left. Flaming in the slate blu
e sky, the orb blazed with fierce energy, as though trying to burn away all evidence of the horrors it had witnessed Garald could see, looking southward, his storm clouds surging in this direction. By all the rules of warfare, this weather attack by Sharakan’s Sif-Hanar should have prompted Xavier to order his own Sif-Hanar to counterattack, leading to a rousing, thunder-clapping battle in the air. But this had not happened The sun was out, the day was fine. The reason was obvious.
Merilon’s Sif-Hanar lay dead beneath their Gameboard, their bodies among several sprawled on the scorched and blackened grass.
The Board itself had been destroyed, chopped completely in two. Made of massive stone, an exact copy of the one used by Prince Garald, half of it leaned at an unlikely angle, propped up by the bodies beneath it. The other half lay on the ground. Staring at it, Garald could not imagine the tremendous blow it must have taken to shatter the magical stone.
Slowly, looking around him cautiously, Garald walked over to the Board. Kneeling beside it, he touched its smooth surface, cool beneath his fingers. Like the stone, the Board’s magic was broken. No miniature dragons breathed their flame into the air from its surface, no small giants tromped across it, no tiny figures of warlocks and witches fought their enemies in enchanted battles. The Gameboard of Merilon was empty and lifeless as the eyes of the bodies that lay crumpled beneath it.
Lifting his gaze from the Gameboard, Prince Garald saw the true field of battle.
It was strewn with bodies. The Prince could not begin to count the number of dead. Cardinal Radisovik walked among them, his red robes of office fluttering about him in the winds of the approaching storm—a bitter wind that blew across the Field of Glory, sucking up the warmth of the sun and returning it with a breath of ice.
“If you are searching for those who might yet live, Radisovik, you are wasting your time,” Prince Garald started to advise the catalyst. Nothing lives out there…. Nothing…
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