“How will we know it’s dawn?” asked Stray Dog.
“Soki and I will know. And Priska. The dawn-tide will find us, even here. It will be weak, but we’ll feel it.”
“This is ridiculous!” said Bryn. “There’s no guardian. And there’s something at the end of that chamber. Probably treasure! Worth a great deal to the right person. I’m going to take a look.”
He began to descend the steps.
Gannon’s mail clinked as he strode after him. “A quick look, then we’ll come back and rest,” he told Aldric. “We all need some sleep.”
“I second that,” Valeria said. “And I wouldn’t mind some tea later. Priska, are you able to …?” She waved a hand.
“Yes,” Priska said. “I can heat up some water.”
“Then that’s settled,” said Valeria.
Kurio’s toe traced a crescent line in front of the steps. “I don’t like this place,” she said. “And those sorcerous barricades—are they to keep us out? Or to keep something in? Or both?”
“Aren’t you the least bit curious?” Gannon asked, looking at her. “And what danger could we possibly be in? We have not one but three sorcerers with us.”
“That’s right,” said Niklaus. “Enough arguing. Let’s go.”
Against Aldric’s misgivings, they all followed Bryn onto the platform at the bottom of the steps. The frigid air chilled Aldric’s exposed skin.
“It’s Skanuric,” Soki said, examining the writing.
“What does it say?” asked Gannon.
Aldric swallowed and looked at Soki. She met his eyes, grimaced, and then shrugged as if to say, It’s up to you.
“It’s instructions,” Aldric said, a reluctance to translate tugging at him.
Soki walked along the line of writing-covered pavers, head bowed as she examined them. “On how to breach the sorcerous barrier. Curious. Why create a barrier and then leave instructions on how to open it?”
The instructions were incredibly complex. Aldric’s knowledge and skill weren’t enough to decipher all of the workings. After the first few pavers, his comprehension failed.
“Could you open it?” Stray Dog asked Soki.
“Why not?” added Valeria. “I’ll admit what’s behind these four curtains has me interested.”
Niklaus gave her a sharp look, but Valeria only shrugged.
“Don’t tell me you don’t all want to know too,” she said. “We’re walking where no person has for millennia. There’s obviously something of value here. We’d be remiss if we didn’t try.”
“I’m afraid it’s not going to be that easy,” Aldric said. “The writing warns of multiple challenges and of sorcerous and divine power. And …” He hesitated. “Demon blood. The meaning is unclear. Skanuric is difficult.”
Niklaus cleared his throat and flashed Aldric an annoyed look. “What Aldric fails to mention is that the writing also speaks of the reward at the end.”
“Niklaus,” warned Aldric.
“It’s hardly a trap,” the mercenary countered. “It’s just a vault, albeit an unconventional one. A sorcerer—or sorcerers—of great power created this to safeguard their valuables.”
“And what valuables they must be, eh!” Bryn said.
“I can breach it,” Soki said quietly, and all eyes turned to regard her. “At least, I think so. It’s … difficult, but won’t require much dusk- or dawn-tide power.”
“Do it,” Gannon said.
Bryn and Stray Dog nodded their agreement.
“Wait,” said Soki, “I’ll work a divining first.” She turned to Priska. “Would you like to try?”
Priska’s mouth opened in surprise; then she nodded eagerly. “Yes! I won’t let you down this time.”
She took her talisman in her hand and whispered a cant. Aldric felt her dusk-tide energy flow, then form into complex patterns.
“Good,” Soki told her. “You’re coming along nicely. Now, frame your questions, bind them, and send them out.”
This sorcery was complex, beyond Aldric. Perhaps he should make use of it more. After all, its influence hadn’t corrupted Soki. Through his sorcerous sight, he could see the dusk-tide roiling around Priska, its shadows made material.
“There’s something there,” whispered Priska. “Something valuable.”
“I knew it!” said Bryn.
“Hush,” hissed Soki, then to Priska, “What else?”
“There’s a tunnel … stretching through the rock … an exit, I think. I …” Aldric saw the shadows around her disperse. “I lost it. I’m sorry.”
Soki rested a hand on Priska’s shoulder and smiled. “You did well. And it will get easier with training and practice.”
“This is excellent news,” Valeria said. “We can scoop up the treasure and leave this derelict place through the back door. We’ll avoid the demons and be away before they know it.”
“I don’t think that’s wise,” Aldric said. “We shouldn’t tamper with what’s here. Better we wait the demons out.”
“Oh, come on, Aldric,” Valeria said. “You just want your Church to come back later and take everything for themselves!”
“That’s not true,” Aldric protested. “This place is dangerous.”
“Yeah,” Niklaus said with amusement. “We’re all about to die.” He looked around with an expression of mock fright.
Valeria and Priska laughed, as did Bryn and Gannon. Their mirth had a relieved edge, as if they needed an outlet after barely escaping death at the hands of the demons. Kurio didn’t look amused; instead she glanced around at the ruin with a frown.
Aldric looked at Soki, hoping she’d agree with him.
She shook her head. “Valeria has a good argument. I mean, it’s probably safer if we see what is in the chamber. As Gannon said, we have three sorcerers, and you have also been touched by Menselas. And Niklaus, Bryn, and Stray Dog are all skilled warriors.” She spread her hands. “We have to at least try. If we succeed, we can discuss what to do next. If we don’t, we’ll just have to hope the demons leave. And I, for one, try not to rely purely on hope.”
“That’s decided, then,” Gannon said. “Will this barrier take you long?”
“No,” Soki said. “A few minutes.”
Aldric moved back to the base of the stairs and tried to smooth his frown. This was why his Church kept the ruins sealed, so treasure hunters weren’t tempted to risk their lives. And here he was, leading a group of people inside a ruin more powerful and disturbing than any he’d ever encountered before.
He recalled the carvings of Nysrog and the Tainted Cabal and wondered what specific dangers this ruin might hold.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Guardian
NIKLAUS WATCHED AS SOKHELLE placed herself in front of the first veil. She looked back at Aldric, long raven hair sliding over her shoulder, and gave him a reassuring smile. He returned it, but when she directed her attention back to the sorcerous curtain, the priest’s smile slipped from his face. The fool was probably feeling guilty the settlement and everyone in it had been destroyed. Niklaus wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. People died every day.
But there was an oddness to this situation he disliked. It wasn’t lost on him that the demons that had followed them from the settlement were similar to those he’d killed in Caronath. The Tainted Cabal had come out of hiding, and perhaps they’d found out he’d stolen the grimoire and come for him … But the Dead-eyes and the demons were at odds, he reminded himself. Which meant there were two players in this game.
He stood tall, stretching his back and rolling his shoulders to loosen them. This ruin was old and had probably been here long before Caronath was even a settlement. Niklaus had seen a few similar hoary places over the years, but had never considered entering one. The goddess had sent him here. Perhaps she knew what he was working toward, and this was a test before she allowed him to ascend and join with her.
Bryn chatted amiably with Priska, who seldom returned words of her own. The death o
f Razmus had to be weighing heavy on her. Stray Dog stood with Gannon and Kurio, the two newcomers, all three of them fixated on Sokhelle and what she was about to do.
Valeria sidled up to him. “There is power here,” she said in low tones, “if we can take it.”
Niklaus snorted. He had Valeria’s measure. And if she continued down this path, the goddess would slap her down.
“Leave me out of your plans,” he told her. “I go where and do what she tells me.”
“I only want to bring her glory.”
Bring yourself glory, you mean. “Enough, Valeria. Leave me be.”
The high priestess slunk away to the rear of the group, a faint sneer on her lips and fire in her eyes. Niklaus returned his attention to Sokhelle. She was kneeling now, speaking cants as an arcane fog rose to surround her. Priska moved to stand just behind the woman, obviously entranced by what she was about to attempt. Aldric looked to Sokhelle when Niklaus felt the touch of dawn-tide and dusk-tide sorcery through the goddess’s sword.
Soki’s lithe body became partially obscured as she worked her intricate cants. His skin prickled with sorcerous ether. Lines scribed the air in front of Sokhelle: spectral pictograms and phantom schematics. Sorcery was skill. Sorcery was knowledge. Sorcery was intellect. And Soki was a master of all three. So potent were her weavings, he heard them crackle as they met the freezing air.
A hiss of breath escaped Aldric—a surge of jealousy? The priest didn’t fool Niklaus, even though he was blind to his own desires. He hid behind his healing abilities and confined himself in the strictures of his Church. But the call of his sorcery was strong. However much Aldric forced himself to despise it, he longed to use the power, to make a difference. Niklaus almost laughed out loud.
“Ah …” Soki whispered. Then she barked a series of cants, words torn from her throat in quick succession. A crack sundered the air, then a flash of brilliance.
When Niklaus’s eyes recovered, the veil was gone. Behind it, the platform extended to the second barrier.
Soki stumbled to her feet, brushing at her knees. Aldric rushed to her side so she could rest her weight against him. She looked at him with weary eyes, then her red lips curled into a smile.
“I did it!” she said, and spun on her heels, hair flowing like a billowing skirt. She clapped her hands. “It was … harder than I thought. I was stretched to the limits of my knowledge. If the next barrier is more complex, my guess is I’ll fail.”
“That’s no way to talk,” Bryn said. “Come on!” He strode past them, toward the next curtain.
The goddess’s sword on Niklaus’s back vibrated slightly, and he sensed a break in reality, a gate opening. Soki’s globes winked out, and blackness came crashing down. Only the faint light from the violet scaleskins remained, casting their glow across the ruin. Ice cracked all around them as the cold intensified.
A Reaper, thought Niklaus. No, something darker, pulled from the hells or the abyss.
Before he could shout a warning, an elongated shadow plummeted from the ceiling. It landed heavily, and the pavers beneath it cracked. A faint, deep-throated singing sounded, with a low, intense resonance that shook Niklaus’s bones.
With slow grace, a lanky figure rose from the floor to tower above them, twice the height of a man. It shook its head, as if confused at being woken from thousands of years of slumber.
A frigid mist rose from its exquisitely crafted armor of black metal that fitted like a second skin, and the two curved swords clenched in its fists. The creature’s proportions were strange: long limbs with an extra joint; a cinched waist between slightly wider chest and hips. Atop its long neck was an elongated head covered with short bristly hair, and a pointed snout with needlelike fangs that dripped viscous saliva. Its eye sockets glowed a bright orange.
Niklaus drew the goddess’s sword from its sheath and rushed the beast, hoping it wasn’t fully awake yet and therefore vulnerable. Their only hope was to keep it distracted until Sokhelle and Priska could scourge it with sorcery.
Aldric shouted a cant and spherical wards sprang up around him. So the priest knew what it was too.
Niklaus thrust her shining blade at the thing’s throat, but it scraped off without leaving a scratch.
Aldric’s crescent blade rebounded off the creature’s armor with a clanging sound, as if it had hit an anvil. Even star-metal was useless against it.
“Go for its eyes!” shouted Aldric. “Or its mouth!”
A good plan, if they could get close. But Niklaus had another idea. He backed up a few steps to give himself room, dodging sweeps of the creature’s blades as it weaved a net of sharp steel around itself.
Kurio somehow loosed two bolts from her crossbow in quick succession. One struck just below the creature’s eye and ricocheted into the darkness. The other disappeared into its maw, to no effect.
Gannon made a stand by her side, feet wide, sword held high, as if daring the beast to come at him.
Valeria raised a hand, but her sneering smile turned to dismay in an instant. Whatever she’d tried to do with her goddess’s power had failed, Niklaus thought. She backed away.
Shrieking, glittering lines of sorcery erupted from Sokhelle and scoured across the creature’s armor, leaving blackened smoky scars in their wake. But no blood poured from them, and Niklaus realized they’d barely scratched the surface of the tough metal. Neither their blades nor sorcery could harm it.
The faint singing that came from the creature rose in volume and intensity.
Bryn and Stray Dog joined their furious assault. Bryn’s sword bounced off the creature as he pounded it with manic cuts, to no avail. He backed away, eyes wide.
Stray Dog’s axes had more effect. Each battering strike, propelled by his immense strength, dented and cracked the creature’s armor. With a roar, Stray Dog flung himself into an overhead strike, but the axe shattered on impact.
Finally, the beast reacted. A lizard-quick strike of its arm sent Stray Dog crashing into a tangled heap. The creature leaped and landed on top of him, crushing his chest. The big man struggled even as blood frothed from his mouth, and lashed out feebly with his remaining axe. Its blade skidded across black metal.
His other fist hammered at the creature repeatedly, quickly becoming a bloody mess. The creature stomped its foot onto his rib cage with a loud crack. Stray Dog gurgled, his head shaking from side to side uncontrollably. His torso was almost split in two, and jagged shards of bone stuck out from his flesh. Blood sloshed across the floor.
The creature struck again, just as gracefully and quickly, hammering a limb into Sokhelle and Priska. Sparks erupted from their spherical shields as they absorbed the crushing force, but it batted them away, sending them tumbling across the floor.
His expression one of abject dismay, Aldric clutched his talisman, and Niklaus felt a massive surge of dusk-tide power. The priest uttered Skanuric cants, sending flames cascading toward the beast.
Niklaus and Bryn dived out of the way and scrabbled for safety. Furnace-hot air from Aldric blasted across them, singeing skin. Aldric continued to speak the dark sorcery, pouring his desperation into the cants. The light of his fire painted the beast and the chamber in pulsing yellow and red, joined by more of Sokhelle’s coruscating lines as soon as she recovered.
The creature ignored the sorcery surging over it. “You are but a worm,” it roared at Aldric, words resounding with immense strength. “A fool meddling in what he cannot understand. You have pulled me from my home. I am sent to destroy you.”
“Flee!” Aldric yelled to the others. He ceased the cataract of fire, and his wards glowed brighter and seemed to split into two layers.
An instant later, the creature hammered a limb down on top of him, and Aldric’s outer wards vanished completely as the stone beneath him buckled. His inner wards held, but were soon fractured by the immense pressure the beast was forcing onto them, cracking his arcane shield. Swaying with exhaustion, and face pale with fear, Aldric cried out more Skanuric w
ords, probably attempting to create new wards with the dusk-tide power.
The fool thinks he can withstand the creature. Or maybe he was trying to give them time to escape. But where could they run?
Niklaus had survived incredible odds before, by the grace of the Lady Sylva, and he trusted in his own abilities and her guidance. He drew his cane and sprinted toward the beast, past Aldric’s blurred form. He ducked and weaved—avoiding Sokhelle’s glittering lines and the creature’s slicing blades—and leaped high, cane held in one hand. He thrust it past the creature’s gaping maw, deep into its throat.
The beast tossed its head, throwing Niklaus through the air. He landed with a crunch of bone; his chest felt like it was gripped in a slowly closing vice. Placing his hands on the ground, he pushed himself to his knees. The movement sent pain shooting through his body.
“Pitiful worm,” the creature thundered. “My hide is iron. My—” It coughed and staggered to the side, then heaved up a torrent of green sputum.
It keeled over with a screeching wail, the skin of its face rippling, as if something moved beneath it. Its limbs twitched, muscles spasmed, then its black armor split along multiple lines. A foul-smelling greenish liquid gushed out, pooling across the pavers. Miraculously, the creature’s chest ceased to heave, and it uttered a long, drawn-out sigh.
Niklaus levered himself to his knees. His chest ached, breath coming in agonizing, wheezing gasps. The creature had called him a worm, but it was the worm of Ak-Settur’s venom that had killed it.
Aldric wiped sweat from his eyes and continued staring at the corpse of the creature from the abyss. He dropped his shields and backed away. Sokhelle rushed to him and clasped him in her arms. Everyone was shouting in relief or horror or amazement. Aldric squeezed Sokhelle’s arm, then rushed to Niklaus’s side.
“See to Stray Dog first,” he managed to tell Aldric.
“He’s gone. Menselas’s divine healing is powerful, but it can’t breach the veil between life and death to bring a soul back.”
“A pity,” said Niklaus. If it could, he might have a use for Aldric.
Revenant Winds (The Tainted Cabal Book 1) Page 44