Alfred sighed. “You’ll be disappointed. I wish I could say I acted because of some noble ideal—chivalrous honor, self-sacrificing courage. But I didn’t. In Bane’s case, it was pity. Pity for an unloved child who would die without ever knowing a moments happiness. And Haplo? I walked in his skin, for a few brief moments. I understand him.” Alfred’s gaze went to the dog. “I think I understand him better than he understands himself.”
“Pity, mercy, compassion.”
“That’s all, I’m afraid,” said Alfred.
“That is everything,” said the phantasm.
*
The road on which they traveled was empty, deserted. It had been trampled by many feet, part of the army of the dead had passed this way, flowing out of the city onto the many highways leading to the Fire Sea. Helmets, shields, bits and pieces of armor, bones and, here and there, a fallen, shattered skeleton lay scattered in the army’s wake. Farm carts or carriages were discovered abandoned, their passengers either murdered or they had fled the rumor of the dead army’s coming.
Alfred had first believed Tomas to have been correct. They had not seen one living being since they emerged from the catacombs. He feared that everyone in or around Necropolis must have fallen victim to the dead’s fury. But on their journey, he thought more than once that he caught a glimpse of furtive movement in the tall kairn grass, thought he saw a head lift, eyes—living eyes—peer fearfully out at them. But the carriage whirled past too swiftly for him to confirm what he’d seen or mention it to the others.
But it was a tiny crack of hope, splitting the darkness like light shining from beneath a closed door. His spirits raised, whether because of the newfound hope or the phantasm’s comforting words, he couldn’t tell. His brain was too jounced and jostled for coherent thought. He clung to the side of the carriage, hanging on to it in grim resolve. Life did have meaning and purpose. He wasn’t certain what that was, yet. But he had decided at least to keep searching.
The carriage neared the Fire Sea, neared danger. Topping a rise, Alfred gazed down on the docks far below, gazed down on an army of dead, swirling and milling about the ships in chaos. He was reminded of a colony of coral grubs invaded by a hungry dragon hatchling. At first each grub sought only to escape the crunching jaws. After the initial confusion and panic, however, the threat united the insects and they turned, as one, to repel the invader. The mother dragon had rescued her young just in time.
Confusion and panic might reign on the docks at this moment, but a single goal would soon unite them.
The carriage dashed down the hill, veering in an easterly direction that would take them clear of the docks. Jonathan drove the maddened pauka at a breakneck pace. The army and ships vanished from Alfred’s sight.
The wild ride finally came to a halt. The carriage brought up on a rock shore of the Fire Sea. The pauka collapsed in the traces, sinking to the ground, breathing heavily.
Before them, the vast ocean of flaming magma gleamed orange-red, its fiery light reflecting off the glistening black stalactites spiraling downward from the cavern’s roof. Huge stalagmites, dark against the red background of the sea, formed a jagged-toothed shoreline. The magma washed and pushed against them sluggishly. A meandering stream of water, that had escaped from the city above plunged, hissing, into the sea, sending rolling clouds of steam into the hot, sulfurous air.
The living and the dead stood on the beach and stared out across the sea. Barely visible, in the distance, Alfred thought he could make out the opposite shore.
“I thought you said we’d find a boat here,” said Haplo, eyeing the prince grimly, suspiciously.
“I said you would find the way to cross here,” corrected Prince Edmund. “I said nothing about a boat.” The white, gleaming arm of the phantasm raised, an ethereal finger pointed.
At first Alfred thought Edmund meant them to use their magic to cross the sea of flame.
“I can’t,” the Sartan said meekly. “I’m too weak. Its costing me nearly all my energy, just to stay alive.”
He had never before felt the weight of his own mortality, never before realized that his powers had physical limits. He was beginning to understand the Sartan of Abarrach, beginning to understand them as he had begun to understand Haplo. He was walking in their skins.
The phantasm said nothing; again Alfred thought he saw a smile flicker on the translucent lips. It continued to point.
“A bridge,” said Haplo. “There’s a bridge.”
“Blessed ...” Alfred had been about to say, Blessed Sartan. The words died on his lips. That was one oath he’d never use again, at least not without serious thought.
Now that Haplo had pointed it out, Alfred could see the bridge (he supposed one could dignify it by that appellation). In reality it was nothing more than a long row of large, oddly shaped boulders that happened to be arranged in a straight line extending from one shoreline to the other. It looked almost as if a gigantic column of rock had crashed into the sea, its skeletal remains forming the bridge.
“The fallen colossus,” said Jonathan, in understanding. “Except it was located in the middle of the ocean.”
“It used to be in the middle of the ocean,” said the prince. “The sea is shrinking, and now one may reach it and use it to cross.”
“If we have the courage,” Haplo murmured. He fondled the dog, scratching it on the head. “Not that it makes any difference.” His eyes flicked to Alfred. “As you said, Sartan, we have no choice.”
Alfred tried to reply, but his throat burned, the moisture in his mouth had gone dry. He could only stare at the broken bridge, at the huge gaps yawning between segments of the shattered column, at the magma sea, flowing beneath.
One slip, one false step ...
And what has my life been, Alfred wondered dismally, but an endless series of slips and false steps?
*
They scrambled down among the boulders on the shoreline. The way was treacherous—hands and feet lost their grip on wet rock, mists floated before their eyes, obscuring their vision. Alfred chanted runes until he lost his voice and came near losing his breath. He was forced to concentrate on each footstep, each handhold. By the time they reached the base of the broken colossus, he was exhausted, and the difficult part lay ahead of them.
They halted at the base to rest, survey the way before them. Jonathan’s pallid face glistened with sweat, his hair straggled down around his temples. His eyes were sunken, dark shadows surrounded them. He wiped his hand across his mouth, licked his tongue across parched lips—they’d been attacked before they could carry off water—and gazed across at the opposite shore as if he fixed one end of his will on that dark horizon, planned to use it as a rope to pull himself along.
Haplo walked out on the first segment of broken colossus, examined the stone beneath his feet. The first segment, the base, was the longest and would be the easiest to cross. He squatted down on his haunches, stared curiously at the rock, ran his hand over it. Alfred sat gasping for breath on the shore, envying the Patryn his strength, his youth.
Haplo motioned. “Sartan,” he said peremptorily.
“My name ... is Alfred.”
Haplo glanced up, scowled, frowned. “I don’t have time for games. Make yourself useful, if that’s possible. Come take a look at this.”
They all ventured out onto the colossus. It was wide—three large farm carts might have been driven abreast across it and left room on either side for a carriage or two. Alfred crept across it as gingerly as if it had been the branch of a small hargast tree spanning a rushing stream. Nearing Haplo, the Sartan’s foot slipped, sending him sprawling on his hands and knees. He closed his eyes, fingers dug into the rock.
“You’re safe,” said Haplo in disgust. “Hell, you’d have to work at throwing yourself off this thing! Open your eyes, damn it. Look, look there.”
Alfred opened his eyes, gazed fearfully around. He was a long way from the edge, but he was acutely conscious of the magma sea flowing ben
eath him, and that made the edge seem much closer. He wrenched his gaze from the orange-red viscous flow and stared down beneath his hands.
Sigla ... inscribed on the rock. Alfred forgot his danger. His hands traced lovingly the ancient runes carved on the stone.
“Can these help us in any way? Is their magic good for anything anymore?” Haplo asked in a tone that implied the magic had never been good for much in the first place.
Alfred shook his head. “No,” he said, voice husky. “The magic of the colossus cannot help us. Their magic was meant to give life, to carry life from this realm below to those realms above.”
The prince’s cadaver raised its head, dead eyes looked above to a land it could see perhaps more clearly than the land on which it now walked. The expression on the face of the phantasm grew grim and sad.
“The magic is broken now.” Alfred drew a deep breath, looked back at the shoreline, at the broken, jagged edges of the column’s base. “The colossus didn’t fall by accident. It couldn’t have, its magic would have prevented such an occurrence. The colossus was knocked down, deliberately. Perhaps by those who feared it was sucking life out of Necropolis and carrying it to realms above. Whatever the reason, its magic is gone, can never be renewed.”
Like this world, the world of the dead.
“Look!” cried Jonathan. His face, his eyes reflected the heat of the fire.
They could barely see, in the distance, the first ships setting out from the shoreline.
The dead had begun the crossing.
CHAPTER 44
FIRE SEA, ABARRACH
THEY HURRIED FORWARD, traveling as fast as they dared across the rune-inscribed column. They had an advantage over the ships, in that the shrinking Fire Sea flowed at its narrowest point there. They were much closer to the shore than Kleitus and his army. The sight of the ships gave them impetus, renewed strength. The sigla may have lost their magic, but the runes carved into the stone provided traction, sure footing on a slippery surface.
And then they came to the end of the broken segment. A huge, V-shaped gap separated one part of the colossus from another. The magma sea churned in between, roiling among the sharp, jagged edges.
“We can’t cross that!” said Alfred, staring at the gap in dismay. “Not up here we can’t.” Haplo measured it with his eye. “But we might down below. Even you could make that jump, Sartan.”
“But I’ll slip! Fall in! I—I ... I’ll try.” Alfred gulped, lowering his eyes before Haplo’s narrow-eyed, angry glare.
“No choice. No choice. No choice,” Alfred chanted, instead of the runes. What magical resources he had left, he had to conserve. And, somehow, the litany seemed to help.
“You’re a fool,” Haplo said, overhearing him. The Patryn stood at the bottom of the vee, legs akimbo, balanced easily, catlike, on uneven strata of rock. He gripped Alfred’s thin arm, steadied the shaking man. “Jump for it.”
Alfred stared fearfully across what looked to him to be an immense stretch of flowing lava. “No!” He shrank back. “I can’t! I’ll never make it! I—”
“Jump!” Haplo roared.
Alfred bent his knees, and suddenly he was flying through the air, propelled by a strong boost from behind. Arms flailing, as if he might flap his way across, he landed heavily on the edge of a lip of rock about twenty feet above the lava sea. He was slipping. His hands scrabbled for purchase. Pebbles slid beneath his fingers. He was falling, sliding into the magma beneath him.
“Hold on!” Jonathan shouted frantically.
Alfred made a wild grab at a jutting piece of rock. His fingers curled around it, and he managed to stop his fall. His hands were wet with sweat, he started to lose his grip, but his foot found a toehold, and he stopped himself. Arms and legs aching with the strain, he hauled himself up over the lip and hunched there, shivering in reaction, not daring to let himself believe he was safe.
He didn’t have time to relax. Before he knew what was happening, Jonathan leapt across the gap, assisted from behind by Haplo’s tireless arms. The young duke landed easily and gracefully. Alfred caught hold of him, balanced him.
“There isn’t room for both of us. Go on up.” Alfred told him. “I’ll wait here.”
Jonathan started to protest.
Alfred pointed. The top edge of the column protruded outward, forming another shelf, this one overhead. It would take strong arms to hoist oneself over that ledge.
Jonathan saw, understood, and began climbing up to the top. Alfred watched him anxiously, for a moment, and was intensely startled to find that the cadaver of Prince Edmund was standing on the shelf beside him. How the corpse managed to cross was beyond Alfred’s ability to explain. He could suppose only that the phantasm had assisted its body.
The gleaming white shape was the cadaver’s glistening shadow, barely distinguishable from the mists curling around them. The phantasm seemed so independent. Why does it bother to drag the shell along with it?
“Stand clear, Sartan!” Haplo shouted. “Go on up with the others!”
“I’ll wait! Help you!”
“I don’t want your”—the next words were unclear, lost in the churning sound of the magma—“help!”
Alfred pretended he didn’t hear any of it, waited stolidly, back braced against the rock.
Haplo fumed on the shore, but there wasn’t time to argue. He checked the sword that he had thrust into his belt, made sure it was secure. Leg muscles bunched. He launched himself outward, hurtled through the air above the magma, and landed like a fly against a wall on the smooth-sided rock beneath Alfred. He began to slip. The dog, across the way, barked loudly.
Alfred reached down, caught hold of the Patryn’s rune-covered wrists, and pulled. Pain shot up his back, muscles gave way, feet scraped over the surface of the ledge on which he stood. He was losing his hold. He must let go or risk sliding over the edge.
Alfred refused to give up. He searched inside himself, found physical resources he never knew he possessed. He held on tightly and, with a last, desperate burst of energy, lunged backward. His feet slid out from beneath him, but not before he had pulled Haplo up onto the ledge.
The Patryn grabbed hold of rocks and Alfred and hung on until he caught his breath, then dragged himself the rest of the way over. Without warning, the dog sailed across in a graceful bound. Landing beside them, nearly crowding both off the ledge, the animal gazed at each of them with bright eyes, obviously enjoying itself immensely.
“More ships are crossing!” Jonathan reported from up above. “We’ve got to hurry!”
Alfred’s body ached, muscles burned. A pain in his side was like someone jabbing him with a knife. He was cut and bruised and wondered if he’d have the strength to walk, let alone climb over that shelf. And how many segments of this colossus remained left to cross? How many gaps, perhaps wider than this? He shut his eyes, then, drawing a breath that brought his burning lungs no relief, he wearily prepared to go on.
“I suppose I should thank you—” Haplo began in his usual sneering tone.
“Forget it! I don’t want your thanks!” Alfred yelled at him. It felt good to yell. Felt good to be angry and let his anger loose. “And don’t feel like you have to pay me back for saving your damn life, because you don’t! I did what I had to do. That’s all!”
Haplo stared at Alfred in blank astonishment. Then the Patryn’s lips started to twitch. He tried to control himself, but he, too, was tired. He began to laugh. He laughed until he was forced to lean against the rock wall to support himself, laughed until tears crept from beneath his eyelids. Dabbing at blood seeping from a cut forehead, Haplo grinned, shook his head.
“That’s the first time I ever heard you swear, Sar—” He paused.
“Alfred,” he amended.
*
They had made it safely across one gap but it was only the first of many. The steam-driven dragonships of the dead churned through the magma sea, black against fiery red. Alfred trudged over the broken column, tried not t
o look at the ships, tried not to look at or think about jumping over the next crevice. One foot after the other, over and over and over and—
“We’ll never reach the shore in—”
“Hush! Freeze! Stop!” Haplo hissed, cutting Jonathan off in mid-sentence.
Alfred jerked around, the alarm in the Patryn’s tense call tore through the lethargy of aching body and despairing mind. The runes on Haplo’s skin glowed, the normally blue color tinged purple in the red glare of the magma. The dog stood near its master, growling, ruff bristling, legs stiff. Frantically Alfred glanced behind, expecting to see hordes of dead following them across the colossus.
Nothing. Nothing was chasing them. Nothing blocked their path ahead. But something was wrong. The sea was moving, gathering itself together, rising up around them. A tidal wave? Of magma? He stared harder at the sea, attempting to convince himself it was an optical illusion.
Eyes! Eyes watching him. Eyes in the sea. Eyes of the sea. A fiery red head poked up from the depths of the magma, slid toward them. The unblinking eyes kept them under constant surveillance. The eyes were enormous. Alfred could have walked into the black slit of the pupils without ducking his head.
“A fire dragon,” Jonathan gasped.
“So this is how it ends,” said Haplo softly.
Alfred was too tired to care. His first thought, in fact, was one of relief. I won’t have to jump over another damn crack.
Smooth and sharp as a spear point, the dragon’s head thrust upward. Its neck was long, narrow, and graceful, topped by a spiky mane that resembled stalagmites. Scales glowed bright red when the body lifted from the sea. Contact with air cooled them instantly, turning them black, with a lingering red glow, like coals in a banked fire. Only the eyes remained vivid, flame red.
“I don’t have the strength to fight it,” said Haplo.
Alfred shook his head. He lacked the strength to talk.
“We may not need to,” Jonathan said. “They attack only when they feel threatened.”
Death Gate Cycle 3 - Fire Sea Page 37