“It’s getting hotter,” Isiilde said.
“I think we’re overstaying our welcome. We need to hurry.”
The two broke into a trot. Isiilde looked from one mound of treasure to the next, searching for the jagged sun she had glimpsed in Marsais’ study—it seemed a lifetime ago. Time, she decided, was not constant, but a fickle, moody thing that slipped through fingers, or clung for far too long. Isiilde wanted to shout at time to stop, to freeze and let her think. And it did, or at the very least, she thought very fast.
Isiilde stopped. “Wait.”
Acacia was at her side in a moment. “What is it?”
“If you were the Keeper, and brought an artifact here to hide—where would you hide it?”
“I don’t know the Keeper.”
“He didn’t destroy it,” Isiilde said quickly. “He placed it here, under guard. As if he thought it might be useful one day to someone pure of heart. Where would you put it?”
Acacia turned, and stopped. Sweat beaded on her brow, and she tugged at her armor. She stared straight at the door. “Others would be lured by gold, but he wouldn’t want a priestess to be killed in this trap—the door.”
“Marsais!” Isiilde shouted. Far away, across the great hall, Marsais spun, and tensed to run to her. “Look by the door!” He was closer. He did not question, did not ask why, simply turned and ran with Elam on his heels. His long, lanky form moved swiftly through the sweltering maze, until he disappeared behind a hill of gold.
“Go back to the Portal,” Isiilde said. “As long as I don’t touch anything, I’ll be fine.”
Acacia did not argue. She wiped the sweat from her brow, and trotted back the way she had come. Isiilde did not want to abandon the search on a hunch. She continued on, searching the treasure with a quick eye, and fast feet.
It all blurred together, until she heard a triumphant shout. Isiilde raced back to the portal. The others were there, all drenched in sweat and licking parched lips. The great hall felt like a kettle.
Marsais came running, the spiked sun clutched in his hand. Steam rose from the metal, but she sensed a weave lingering on him. When she stepped near, she shivered: an ice rune.
“I don’t bloody know about the rest of you, but that portal is looking inviting,” Oenghus panted. Elam nodded in agreement. His lids were heavy, and he looked sleepy, as if the heat were slowly melting his insides.
Isiilde looked at the portal. “How do we control it?”
Marsais hesitated, and then stepped into the clearing of stone, directly beneath the churning energy. When nothing snatched him up, or blew him to pieces, the rest followed. “With Whispers,” he explained. “You keep an image of the recipient in your mind’s eye. Much like an illusion.”
“If the same applies to Gateways, then how did Lispen open one here?” Isiilde asked. “Had he been here before?”
“A name will work for the very talented, or very desperate. A sketch, even,” said Marsais.
“We could bloody end up anywhere,” Oenghus said. He nudged the remains of Lispen the Louse with his boot.
“We will be fortunate if we end up somewhere and not everywhere,” Marsais murmured.
Oenghus groaned. He hated dangerous things that he could not bash.
Marsais studied the artifact in his hand. It was a nasty, bristling thing, all green-tinged and dark. A light entered his eyes; one Isiilde knew well. “Perhaps this is the key.”
“What do you mean?” Acacia asked. “Isn’t that the binding part?”
“It is, but it is also warm.”
“Everything is warm in here, Scarecrow,” Oenghus said, pushing his sopping hair away from his face.
“Not like that—it’s vibrating. It wants to be reunited.” Grey eyes focused on the nymph. “You’ll need to go first.”
“She does not need to go first,” Oenghus argued.
“It’s fifty feet off the ground, Oen. Even you would break your thick neck.”
The full implication slammed into Isiilde. She would have to weave levitation, not only for herself, but for each and every one to fall through the portal. Lispen the Louse seemed to mock her from the floor. Marsais was placing their lives in her hands.
“Can you do it?”
Isiilde looked into his eyes. “I have to.”
“Yes, you do,” he said, flatly.
There was no choice.
“I know you will.”
She arched a brow. “Did you foresee it?”
“No.” No lies, no false assurances, only truth. He smiled, a wolfish half grin that made her want to kiss the man. “I’ve always said you’re brilliant, have I not?”
He did not give her time to answer. Marsais thrust the spiked sun towards the portal. Long fingers tightened around its jagged edges. Blood sprang to life, trickling down his forearm. He began to chant, not in the language of the Wise Ones, but in that grating, hissing echo that could only be Abyssal. The portal slowed, and shimmered, moving like a sluggish stream. The air thrummed with power and the Gateway fought and bucked like a stallion bound by a fragile thread.
Isiilde did not think; she did not worry. Her fingers flashed, and she sang the Lore in her own, flowing tongue. A feather rune, a layer of air, a spirit, and a binding tether to herself. Isiilde shot upwards like an arrow, leaving Lispen on the floor of his greatest and last success.
Energy crackled in her ears, hummed through her bones, and set her nerves on fire. All the hours that she had spent staring at the portal in the Spine, wondering, dreaming, aching to know—the time was finally here. Her heart swelled, not with fear, but with pure, unbridled excitement.
The portal reached out and snatched her from the air.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Zoshi hugged his knees. The man was gone, and so was the boy’s eye. The empty socket throbbed, and the wad of cloth that he had pressed to the bleeding wound was crusty with blood. Zoshi could not see a thing. He wondered when he would die.
At least he could hear. That thought did not encourage him, because he did not like what he heard. That Chain rasped like a living, breathing thing—a sound that sent his knees knocking.
Zoshi blinked, and put a hand up to his face. Still pitch black. Resigned to blindness, the boy shut his eye, and listened. He could stay here and die of hunger, or he could get off his arse and try. But his body did not want to move. It shook, and rooted him to the stone like a twitching fish on land.
Start small, that’s what his mum would say. But the thought of her made the boy want to cry. Zoshi cast his mind elsewhere, because crying never did anyone any good. He thought of his giant friend—Oenghus, and imagined the man standing beside him right there in the dark. With that thought, Zoshi moved an arm, and then a leg. He didn’t trust those thin twigs to support him because his head swirled like an ebbing tide. So the boy scooted forward, towards that rasping sound and the way he had come.
He touched his sack of supplies and gathered them up, finding strength. Zoshi began to crawl—over bodies, over armor, weapons, and the cold ground, until the rasp of the Chain filled his ears. And then the emptiness came. That great expanse of nothing, the sea of bones and dead, and the lair of the Chain. Zoshi’s arms and legs turned to stone, and the image of Oenghus shattered. He was rooted in place.
Zoshi started to cry. It hurt. Pain burst in that empty socket, and warmth leaked down his cheek anew. He gasped for breath, unable to move as that Chain rasped a mocking tune.
The boy did not want to die with that sound in his ears.
Through snot and tears, he began to sing his favorite song: The Mule King. At first the words came so faintly that they might have never been, and then he sucked in a breath, and sang through the rawness of his throat. “The young king’s son, a foppish dandy, strode ‘long the lane in lacy finery...” Zoshi darted forward, singing louder. “Cursing the laborers, dodging the mud...” The rasping Chain fell away. “Slipped on a slurry left by a pig—” Something cool and wet touched his cheek. Mist.
He wiped away tears, and blinked. A greenish light filled his eye. He shook his head, thinking that he imagined it, but when he looked again the light was still there. The cavern took shape.
The Chain slithered in the bones and bodies, and now, shadows moved in the strange light. He could see—really see—enough to tease and terrify. This was a nightmare, all a very bad dream. Death would wake him soon.
A shadow stood in front of him, smiling. It came like a flash of light that seared itself in the back of his eyeball. He blinked the spots away, and watched as the shadow fell into a pale, perfectly preserved corpse. The fingers curled, and the non-human inhaled. The man sat up, and cocked his head at the boy.
Zoshi ran, and promptly tripped over that big Chain. He threw his hand out to catch himself, and touched cold steel. It instantly warmed at his touch. Blue runes flared to life with a crackle of energy. His hair stood on end, and light flooded the cavern. He clung to that light, and scrambled to his feet, clutching the warhammer like a lifeline in a storm-tossed sea.
Everywhere, all around, the dead were rising, and the creatures surrounded him, eyes burning with hate. Life could, it turned out, get much worse.
The thought pushed the boy over the brink. He began to laugh, a mad chortle that bubbled from his throat and echoed in the vastness. The white light from the warhammer filled him. Zoshi raised the hammer and roared. It came out as a squeak, but the challenge was there.
The newly-risen warriors edged back from the jagged light. A few cracked their necks and flexed fingers, giving their elegant swords an easy twirl. With amusement dancing in their cold eyes, they turned their backs on the boy, and filed out of the cavern in a quick line.
It was so sudden, so swift, that he wondered if he’d imagined it all. But no, the hammer still thrummed in his hands. He lowered the weapon, and looked to that breathing Chain. Filled with courage, Zoshi knew that if he didn’t find out, he’d die of wonder. With nothing left to lose, the boy edged along the Chain, following its course through the remaining skeletons. The hammer’s light pushed back the dark. And that light met a hole in the cave. The Chain disappeared into nothing. It wasn’t dark, it wasn’t lightless, it was... an absence.
Between the rattle and rasp, Zoshi could hear a beating heart. Not his own, but a slow, ponderous thud. The boy edged forward, and thrust the hammer closer to the void. It swallowed the light whole. Both drawn and repelled at once, he felt as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff. His feet moved; one step, two, and another. It put him on the precipice of a hole in the realm.
The warhammer went cold in his palm and its light began to fade. Zoshi sucked in a breath and staggered back. The cavern spun, all twisted and shadowed, and he ran—away from the great tear, away from the Chain to follow the dead.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The tide had turned. A rush of loyal warriors stormed down King’s Walk, giving chase to the traitors. Morigan left a troop of paladins to guard the key point. She glanced at the four dead Wraith Guards and gave chase with the remaining eight.
Battle raged through the corridors. Brutally but steadily, loyal guards pushed the traitors back, and the crimson-banded soldiers scattered like rats in a sewer. But rather than pursue, Ielequithe called her troops to a halt.
Morigan paused to catch her breath, and in the lull Thira and Rashk found her. Bram and Evie were not far behind. The pair looked as unruffled as when she’d first set eyes on them.
“You know the way best, Morigan,” Thira said.
Morigan closed her eyes, casting her thoughts to the maps. As tired as she was, her mind was a haze, but long days of healing had made exhaustion a constant companion. She nodded, and took the lead.
Ielequithe barked an order, and the soldiers fell in line. Now all that was left was to storm the tunnels and kill Tharios.
With a troop this large, she kept to the wider corridors, wary of ambushes. But in the armory, the vast hall of ancient armor, Morigan held up a hand. Her silent order stilled the advance. Fog swirled at the far end. Soldiers lined up on either side of her, facing an impossible foe.
“Ah Void,” Evie sighed.
“Language, love,” Bram chided.
“How is this possible?” Rashk hissed. “The Fog was trapped in the arena.”
Thira murmured the Lore and wove a deft breeze. It stirred the ancient tapestries, and brushed relics from before the Shattering. She gestured, and the wind picked up, pushing at the mist. It parted.
A pale, angular man stood solid and real in the center. Sharp ears poked from long white hair that fell past his shoulders. Ethereal and perfectly sculpted, he stood like a dream. But his eyes—those silver pinprick eyes gleamed like a sword’s edge. He was not alone. As the mists parted, ranks of pale warriors mirrored their own line. The Fey, in the flesh.
“Zahra protect us,” a paladin whispered.
“Your Archlord is dead,” the Fey stated from across the great hall. His voice reminded Morigan of Isiilde’s, so much so that it gave her pause, but whereas the nymph was unaware of her beauty, this man tasted every word, as if Tharios’ blood were on the tip of his tongue. His long fingers caressed a barbed staff capped with a jagged sun. Soisskeli’s Stave.
Thira stepped forward. “Who are you?”
“The rightful ruler of this Isle,” he replied. “I ask that you leave, now. Every man, woman, and child. You have three days to vacate my island.”
“Who are you?” Thira repeated.
“I think you know, but I’ll humor you—I am the shadow under your beds; the creak on the roof; I am nightmares and horrors. And here I stand, a myth, a tale, a god in the flesh. You call me Pyrderi Har’Feydd.”
A ripple traveled through the ranks behind Morigan, and across the way, Eiji smirked, twirling a blade in her hand.
“And you just expect us to leave? Is that an ultimatum, Har’Feydd?” Thira asked.
“It is.”
“Or what?”
“What does one do with rats in a home?” He idly studied the jagged sun on the stave, turning it this way and that. “There are two choices: drive them out or slaughter the vermin. I offer you a chance to save yourselves.”
The Fey alongside Har’Feydd did not move. The men were like ice, cold and remorseless, eyes burning with hunger. Morigan had seen that lust before—in hordes of Wedamen. The Fey’s stillness, however, was far more unnerving than a raging mass of crazed berserkers.
Pyrderi turned to leave, but stopped. He cocked his head, and turned. “There is one small matter—it’s not a request.” Gleaming eyes settled on her. “You, Morigan Freyr, will remain as my guest.”
The blood in her veins went cold. “Why me?” she asked.
“I’d like to dine with that nymph who suckled on your teat.”
In answer, Morigan snatched a spear from a soldier, and hurled it at the god.
The spear fell short. Not from lack of strength, but from a hand. Pyrderi Har’Feydd had stepped aside and deftly snatched her spear from midair. She had barely seen him move.
The Fey warriors charged in silence, and the mist swept over the fighters.
“Get out,” Bram shouted to Evie. “Warn Chaim!” The Valkyrie did not argue. Even as arrows flew, she sprinted away, weaving through Isle Guards.
The next minutes were frantic. Chants and prayers rose in the air; weaves crackled and steel clashed; grunts and cries and blood filled the great hall. The Fey moved like Forsaken, swift and silent, with one lethal difference: their blades hit.
“Fall back!” Ielequithe shouted.
The tide shifted once again. This time, Morigan found herself on the run. Soldiers funneled into the wide hallways and in the press, from connecting corridor to adjoining room, the Fey came at them from all sides. The enemy knew the castle; knew every twisting corridor and forgotten passage. And they came not with a roar, but with smiles plastered on cold faces.
Morigan hacked and swung, and where blades did not pierce the Fey, her axe did. Screams howled in he
r ears, and the scents of blood and bowels clogged the air. But she was calm as a butcher hacking at meat. One foe replaced the next, until her arm stopped aching and all went numb.
“Fall back!” There was desperation in that order.
Bit by bit, in the mad chaos, the Isle Guards gave ground. In a haze of blood and an explosion of weaves, a thought pricked her calm: the King’s Walk and that perfect tear in the castle wards. Already, soldiers were funneling through the long tunnel.
The Fey had driven them here.
“The tear, Thira!” Morigan shouted over the din of battle.
Thira stepped beside Morigan, unleashing a chain of lightning that crackled with red heat. Fey dropped, and more came. Blood seeped from the Wise One’s nose and ears, and Morigan shoved the woman back into the King’s Walk. The stream of retreating soldiers caught the Wise One up, and pushed her back.
Morigan stood with Rashk and the remaining Wraith Guards, holding the narrow space, giving the others time to clear the passage. The Fey’s goal was not to drive the soldiers out, but to escape. And then it happened. While Morigan was lost in the moment, one axe swing after another, cleaving skulls and deflecting blows, a small form slipped behind her. A slice drew searing pain across her leg. She staggered.
Morigan spun, but her attacker rolled back, a look of triumph on Eiji’s face. Rashk leapt between the two, and crouched low like a tiger, robbing Eiji of her shorter advantage. The Rahuatl sprang, and the two engaged.
A Fey’s blade slipped through a chink in her mail, and pain bit Morigan’s shoulder. Unable to hold her shield, she let it slide from her arm, and turned, bringing down her axe. It sunk into the Fey’s skull with a crunch. She wrenched it free, and staggered forward, towards a lever in the wall.
She dropped her weapon, and with one good arm, gripped the lever. For the first time in history, she pulled the lever that sealed the King’s Walk. Soundless gears turned, teeth met teeth, and she bit out the Lore, feeding the Gift into dormant wards. The gates fell, one after another, crashing down on the Fey and those unlucky soldiers who were fighting to stem the tide.
The Broken God (Legends of Fyrsta Book 3) Page 35