“Nysrog,” breathed Aldric.
“Guag-Arbela,” said Niklaus, drawing a sharp glance from the priest. “The fearsome ancient battle that sent Nysrog back to the hells.”
“An end to the madness,” Valeria said. “That was over ten thousand years ago.”
“Not an end,” said Gannon. “From what we’ve seen tonight.”
Aldric took a step toward the wall. “This … war is still going on. That’s all I can say.”
Niklaus laughed. “Why not tell everyone the truth? The demon lord Nysrog was banished, but not killed. His corrupted sorcerers and progeny were wiped out, except for a few who realized they were going to lose and made an early escape. Since then, they’ve gathered power and insinuated their agents into the noble classes, governments, and merchant organizations in every country, with the sole aim of bringing back their lord, Nysrog. That is their greatest desire, the lust that drives them.”
They were all staring at Niklaus. In all his years serving Sylva Kalisia, he had never found himself in a situation so fraught with uncertainties and hidden variables. He had the sense that far more hung in the balance than he realized. He debated whether to cut his losses and take his chances out there among the demons. He was fairly certain he could fight his way through the infernal creatures. Their focus was on the ruin and this group of misfits. But … her hand guided him. The hand of his goddess. And if he was to prove himself to her, to show he was worthy of becoming her equal, there was no question of stopping now.
~ ~ ~
Aldric noticed that Kurio glanced sideways at himself and Sokhelle, but he didn’t speak. Couldn’t. For the secrets of his Church were not for others to hear. That Niklaus knew of them was more than troubling, and Aldric vowed to question the mercenary the next chance he got, away from the others.
“Well,” Gannon said quietly, “it’s a good thing we have sorcerers like Sokhelle on our side, then. And Churches like yours and Aldric’s. But I’ve never heard of this Nysrog, either spoken of or in history books. So I think we’re fairly safe.”
“Myths and superstitions,” said Valeria dismissively. “Tales of a primitive society.”
“Whatever it is,” Bryn said, “the orichalcum on that wall is worth a fortune.”
“You’ll die if you try to touch it,” Priska said. “There are complex wards protecting it. I can sense them.” She smiled gratefully at Soki. “I wouldn’t have been able to before.”
Aldric was impressed by her assessment. Priska had made rapid strides under Soki’s tutelage, and he supposed her intense desire to undo her inferior training and embrace her talent had proven fierce motivators. Perhaps he’d been too hasty in dismissing her …
“The wards are powerful,” Sokhelle confirmed. “I wouldn’t attempt to break them without weeks of studying.” She turned to Aldric. “This is where you come in, isn’t it?”
He nodded slowly, his eyes still taking in the ancient battle and the frightening form of Nysrog.
“Aldric,” Niklaus said, “it’s your turn. You said you could get us inside.”
All eyes turned to Aldric, and he felt the stirrings of unease. His job had always been to keep people out of the ruins, to keep them safe, and the horrors sealed within. Now he was about to crack one open and lead a group inside. They had been herded here; it seemed obvious to him now. But if they stayed outside, they’d be torn apart by the demons. They had to secure themselves inside the ruin. There was no other choice.
Just for a short time, he told himself. Just until the demons leave.
And then what? A fraught race back to Caronath, perhaps with the demons on their trail? Or perhaps the demons wouldn’t leave, not with the knowledge that they were barricaded inside with nowhere to run.
The Tainted Cabal had to be behind the appearance of the demons. He glanced at Gannon and Kurio: newcomers who had preceded the coming of the demons and also the Dead-eyes. Were they part of the Cabal? Or innocent bystanders caught up in events beyond their control?
“Aldric!” Soki warned as something hammered into her barrier, sending ripples across its surface. “That was a rock. A big one.”
Three demons resolved from the darkness outside and threw themselves at the sorcerous ward, scratching at it with their talons, hammering with their fists and their two-tipped blades. More appeared until there were at least twenty of the slavering creatures attempting to breach the barrier.
Fanged mouths roared defiance, and from somewhere in the distance came the strange chant they’d heard in the settlement: “Nar armathuk!” The demons outside screamed it too and slapped their chests, some slicing themselves with their talons. The chant echoed off the cliff walls as the demons worked themselves into a frenzy.
“Your sorcery is a giant sign calling them here,” Niklaus said dryly.
Soki scowled at the mercenary. “If it wasn’t for my sorcery, they’d be pouring through the cave entrance. Care to try your luck fighting them off?”
Niklaus grinned and rolled his shoulders. “These are lower demons. I’ve fought worse. Far worse. I’d survive. Though I’m not sure about everyone else.”
“Enough!” shouted Aldric. “Please. Can you put your differences aside for a moment? I have to concentrate.”
Soki shook her head, but gave him a contrite look. Niklaus just shrugged and moved to the cave entrance, where Stray Dog and Bryn were standing.
“Lots of demons,” Stray Dog said. He was favoring his injured leg, putting all his weight on the opposite limb.
Bryn nodded. “They’re like a swarm of ants. Where are they coming from? I’ve never even seen a demon before.”
“From the hells,” Valeria said. “Or that’s what I assume. Likely a sorcerer’s summoning gone wrong. Sorcerers are always after greater power.”
Both Soki and Priska gave the priestess a sharp look. Soki opened her mouth to say something, then apparently thought better of it.
Aldric thought of Priska’s Covenant, the Gray Hand; they’d turned to summoning creatures from the abyss. Had Priska such knowledge? Had she done something stupid, energized by what she’d learned from Soki along with the greater control of her powers?
“That’s what I’ve heard too,” Gannon said. “Never trust a sorcerer. Present company excepted, of course.”
Soki screamed. She placed a hand to her forehead and fell to her knees in the dirt.
Aldric rushed to her aid. “What is it?”
Priska helped him lift Soki to her feet. Her face was drained of blood, and her body trembled in Aldric’s hands.
“There’s … something assailing me,” she gasped. “Not sorcery. I don’t know what it is. It’s … clawing at my shield, trying to tear it down.” She screamed again, and her knees buckled. “Quickly, Aldric, open the ruin!”
Stray Dog moved to assist Priska in supporting Soki, and Aldric approached the orichalcum doors. He kneeled before them and rubbed his face, trying to banish his weariness. He took a deep breath and, with a whispered cant, awoke his sorcerous sight.
The doors glowed a pale rose, then brightened to a lurid purple as their sorcerous wards revealed themselves to him. Intricate, complex things, layer upon layer of barriers and traps. He suppressed a gasp. Far from the usual wards he’d encountered, these ones were an order of magnitude more elaborate. Whoever had created these wards was a master capable of the finest sorceries. Even Aldric’s teachers, the best the Church could afford, paled in comparison. Whoever shaped these was possessed of a talent that dwarfed even Soki’s. Only sorcerers from the age of Nysrog and before had the skill required to shape these wards.
He wiped his damp palms on his thighs. Holy Menselas, should he even open the doors? But if he didn’t, they’d be ravaged by the demons.
He glanced at Soki, and his chest tightened at the thought of losing her. Of seeing her taken by the demons. Abused. He couldn’t let that happen to her. She was special to him. He’d never felt this way about any woman before.
Aldric return
ed his attention to the abstract wards. He ignored the most potent ones—so puissant they shouted pain and death. Carefully, he reached for both his dawn-tide and dusk-tide energies and shaped them into a spike. Holding the forming calculations firm in his mind, he touched the talisman on his belt. Its algebraic markings confirmed his mathematical solution and gave him the mental space to let go of those patterns and to create others. The familiar rounded shape of the talisman in his palm calmed him, settling his thoughts. Aldric was suffused with power, filled with the certainty that his god guided him.
He sent his sorcery forth, searching for a unique ward. Centuries ago, his Church had stumbled onto the fact that these ruins were not meant to be sealed for all time. Though they were guarded by powerful forces and fell creatures, their creators had installed a back door of sorts. Once you knew it was there, it was possible to use arcane power to dissipate the wards, to create a window of safety through which you could enter and exit at will. Although these wards were far more complex than any he’d seen before, there should still be a back door to them. Or so Aldric hoped.
He rechecked his calculations, clenched his resolve, and drove his spike into the center of a ward located at the bottom left of the door. For a moment, nothing happened. Aldric breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been annihilated.
Then, with his arcane sight, he saw the swirling sorceries dissipate, coiling and compressing into churning knots.
He heard Priska gasp and knew she was seeing the result with her own sight.
Aldric wiped sweat from his forehead and turned to the others. His gaze found Soki first. She stood immobile, a frown on her face, staring at the wards. Eventually, she nodded. She had seen everything he’d done, and now knew one of his Church’s secrets.
Aldric wondered how much trouble he’d be in when he told Archbishop Hannus. And what the Church would do to Priska and Soki.
“What happened?” asked Kurio.
Valeria sneered at Aldric. “Did you fail?”
With a crack and a groan, the line separating the two doors split open a hair’s breadth. Chill wind whistled through the gap, its force pushing the doors a few fingers wider. A faint violet glow shone through the breach. Violet scaleskin, and quite bright too, which meant the fungus had been absorbing powerful sorcerous emanations.
“Well done,” Soki said, giving Aldric a wan smile. “A neat trick, and just in time. Let’s get inside before the demons tear down my barrier.”
Aldric couldn’t help basking in her praise, though it was only a simple technique, not his skill, that had opened the ruin.
“The sooner we’re behind those thick doors, the better,” Gannon said.
“There could be traps,” Aldric warned. “We can’t rush in.”
“Let him rush,” Bryn said, nodding toward Gannon. “One less person to split the loot with if he trips something and kills himself. He’s not part of the team.”
Any further argument was stopped by an almighty creak as the doors opened wider. Aldric turned to see Niklaus with a palm on each, pushing with all his might. The whistling of the wind faded once the gap grew larger, and the air inside smelled stale, motionless for an age.
Soki spoke a cant, and two points of sorcerous light arced through the open doors. They floated upward and stuck fast to the stone ceiling, revealing a spacious room.
Niklaus strode through the doors. When nothing happened to him, the others rushed to follow.
Aldric waited until everyone was inside; then he took one last look at the depiction of Nysrog and followed. With Stray Dog’s assistance, he pushed the doors together, and they closed with a thunderous clang of finality.
“Don’t you have to reinstate the wards?” Kurio asked from behind him.
Aldric turned. He was surprised that she didn’t seem at all scared or nervous. “They’ll spring back into place themselves,” he explained.
“And then I can release my barrier,” Soki said. “I’m not sure I can maintain it much longer.”
“What’s all this frost?” asked Bryn. “It’s as cold as a frost giant’s tits in here.”
Valeria screwed up her nose at the swordsman’s comment. Niklaus gave a short chuckle.
Aldric examined the floor of the room. It was covered with what looked like baked paving bricks measuring two feet to a side. They were a gray so dark it was almost black, and each depicted a swirl of curved lines. Each pattern matched up with the one next to it, so the entire floor seemed a mass of tentacles. The pattern was at once beautiful and creepy. He’d never seen anything like it before in any other ruin.
“Healing first,” Aldric said.
He bade Stray Dog and the others with injuries to sit, then opened himself to his god’s power. Before long, their wounds had sealed over, and fatigue had drained from their tired eyes.
Aldric passed a weary hand over his own face as the last injury closed, but as he did, Menselas’s power flared again, and he felt his tiredness vanish. He started in shock. That had never happened before. It was impossible to heal yourself using the god’s power. Had Menselas himself reached down and banished Aldric’s exhaustion? Why? Did the god want him ready for something?
Being healed by Menselas set Aldric’s mind to skittering. It was a sign, and any other time Aldric would have rejoiced, but not here, not now …
Aldric thought again of the demons. Or perhaps there was danger inside the ruin. Hannus’s directive to explore it had always sat uncomfortably with Aldric, but now … He held back the impulse to urge everyone to leave this place immediately and take their chances with the demons.
“What’s that?” asked Priska.
Aldric saw that she was pointing farther into the ruin, to a series of broad paved steps that led down to another platform at the entrance to a second massive chamber. The platform was slicked with frost and growths of violet scaleskin, and to each side was a forty-foot drop. At the bottom, faintly lit by the scaleskins’ luminescence, a gray misty membrane churned and seethed, like water under a pier, with an occasional white sparkle erupting from the film.
Thirty yards from the side edges of the platform, rising from the membrane, carved walls arced up and overhead. The carvings showed hordes of men battling demons—another representation of Guag-Arbela, the final battle against Nysrog. Armored knights fought alongside robed sorcerers, swords and staves raised to the heavens. Soldiers formed shielded tortoise shapes to withstand the demons and—Aldric’s breath caught in his chest—fell sorcerers. The Tainted Cabal.
“I still can’t believe that demons are real,” said Bryn, mostly to himself. “The ones outside looked far more dangerous than the Dead-eyes. More intelligent, more vicious.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the minor demons,” Niklaus said. “It’s their masters you need to worry about. They keep themselves hidden, even now, after so long. They lurk like slugs under stones, offering temptations and rewards to the weak-minded.”
“It looks to me,” Gannon said, “as if there are demons of greater power alongside the humans that control them. See, there.” He pointed at a mail-clad demon that towered over the others. “Does he not command them?”
“Ancient history,” said Aldric. The sooner he was back to Caronath to report all of this, the better. His Church would … he paused. What power did his Church have to stand against such creatures? He hoped they weren’t relying on a handful of sorcerers, like himself, and some guards. Besides, Menselas’s power was used for healing, not for fighting. Although … it had helped Aldric to kill the strange Dead-eye.
“I’m going down the steps,” Bryn said, pulling Aldric out of his thoughts.
“No!” Aldric said. “These places usually have guardians. We must be careful.”
“You can see there’s nothing here,” Niklaus said. “But you’re the expert, I suppose.”
The platform continued into the chamber for twenty paces before it ended at a colorless veil of arcane power.
“There are more of those curtains f
urther in,” said Kurio, tugging at her short hair with one hand. “See? And there’s something right at the end of the chamber.”
Peering into the gloom, Aldric saw the platform extended beyond the first veil, but couldn’t make out what Kurio had described.
One of Soki’s sorcerous globes detached from the ceiling, shot down the stairs, and swerved upward to stick to the cavern’s roof. “Mursel ken-dur,” she chanted, and the globe burned as bright as a small sun.
Kurio was right. Beyond the first veil there was a second. And a third. And a fourth. And behind them all, Aldric could make out a cube shape. Some sort of coffer perhaps, waist-high, possibly made from metal. But each barrier clouded his sight further and details were difficult to make out.
Under the brilliant light of Soki’s sorcery, he could see that the patterns on the baked pavers in front of the first veil were different from in the first chamber. And some were covered with what looked like Skanuric script.
“Well, Aldric,” Niklaus said, “are we going to huddle here or go exploring?”
Aldric rested one hand on the hilt of his khopesh. There was no sign of a guardian, a Reaper, or anything more powerful. But still … this place troubled him. He kept expecting a monster to set upon them whenever their backs were turned.
“We should stay here,” he said firmly. “We’ll wait by the entrance until dawn, then see if the demons have gone.”
Revenant Winds (The Tainted Cabal Book 1) Page 43