It was just as well that I couldn’t move because I would have screamed otherwise.
A…thing lay upon the table, dripping with blood and other fluids, its sides pulsing as it breathed. It looked like someone had stitched together a collection of rejected cuts from a butcher shop and covered them in yellow grease. I saw hearts beating outside the ribcage, a vast coiling maze of intestines, livers and kidneys and pulsing organs I couldn’t even identify. The form looked vaguely human, but only if I squinted, and a smell of rotting meat came from it.
Rosalyn ran her fingers along the thing tenderly.
“When Morvilind came to kill me, he also tried to kill my husband,” said Rosalyn. “His magic wounded him, but I saved Jason’s life.” She stroked the ghastly thing again, smiling. “But I had to replace some of his organs. In time, I had to replace more, and more, and still more. Thankfully, the Knight keeps me well-supplied with prisoners. Someday I shall get the spells and formulae right. Someday I will restore Jason. Then we will kill Morvilind, and at last, we can have peace. Peace! Peace!”
She threw back her head and laughed, and then broke down sobbing, her shoulders shaking under the dark sweatshirt. Mr. Cane remained impassive at her side, though I had the impression that the banehound was embarrassed.
At all once, the crying jag ended, and glassy calm fell over her.
“Well,” said Rosalyn, turning from the hideous thing that had been her husband. “I suppose we had better get started.”
Chapter 11: Artifact
I twisted my head around, looking at the others.
Riordan, Hakon, and Robert stood motionless, lined in the green light from the massive symbol, their expressions rigid masks of pain. They were still breathing, but otherwise, they could not move.
If they could not move, why had I been able to turn my head?
I tried to move my feet and found that I could not, but I could turn my head and move my arms a little. I tried to cast a spell, but I couldn’t force the power into the patterns of a magical spell.
But why could I move even that small amount? Was my magic somehow shielding me from the effect of the Seal of Binding? That seemed unlikely. Both Riordan and Hakon were stronger wizards than I was, even if I knew spells that they did not, and Riordan had the added protection of his Shadowmorph.
I looked down at myself. I still held the Nihlus Stone in my left hand, and the thing was…sputtering. The green light from the Seal flowed up my legs and torso, but the hieroglyphs on the Nihlus Stone glowed with a harsh blue light, and the light of the Seal shattered whenever the symbols on the Stone flashed, creating the sputtering effect.
I noticed something else about the Stone, too.
It was moving.
Portions of it were sliding around, moving over each other, like the Stone was one of those Rubik’s Cube things. As it did, different symbols flashed on its surface, some brighter, some dimmer. The pain in my legs and arms was beginning to lessen, the shell of green light around me growing dimmer.
The Nihlus Stone was disrupting the Seal of Binding.
But that didn’t make sense. Rosalyn had been ready for us. That Seal had been prepared well in advance. She must have cast it in case Mr. Cane was unable to stop us. If she had been planning to bind us, why had she thrown the Nihlus Stone at me? Rosalyn seemed too smart and too careful to have made such an obvious mistake…
I remembered her wild mood swings, how she had broken down weeping by the ghastly assemblage of meat and organs she thought was still her husband. Rosalyn Madero might have been smart, but she was no longer sane, and it was possible she had not been thinking clearly when she had thrown the Nihlus Stone at me.
Of course, maybe it didn’t matter. I didn’t know how to use the damned sphere or how to make it do anything useful.
I raised my left hand, grimacing in pain, and stared at the Stone. Its segments kept spinning around each other, and it reminded me of an old film from the 20th century that showed the cloud bands of Jupiter spinning around each other in different directions. Then the segments locked into place with a clicking noise, the glyphs shining with white-blue light.
The Stone was ready. But for what?
Rosalyn limped closer, her metal staff clanging against the floor with every step. She muttered to herself as if having an argument with someone only she could see. Mr. Cane trailed behind her, expression calm as ever. He was staring at me, but Rosalyn wasn’t paying any attention. Mr. Cane touched Rosalyn’s arm as if to warn her, but she shook her head and kept moving.
Mr. Cane saw a danger in the Nihlus Stone. But what did it do? And more to the point, how could I activate it?
I still held the magical power that I had summoned for a spell. The power of the Seal of Binding kept me from directing the magic into a spell…but I thought I could direct it into the Nihlus Stone.
I focused all my will upon the Stone, pouring the magic into it.
For a moment, nothing happened, but the Stone shivered beneath my fingers, growing even colder.
Mr. Cane’s eyes narrowed. “Madam! There is danger! Madam!”
“What?” said Rosalyn.
“The Stone!” said Mr. Cane with chagrin.
The Stone’s shivering grew more pronounced.
“What?” said Rosalyn, and her confused expression seemed to come into focus. Her eyes widened, and she leveled her staff at me, green fire blazing up its length.
The Nihlus Stone exploded in my hand.
At least, that was what I thought had happened. But I still felt its cold weight against my fingers, though it blazed with blue-white light. The light erupted from the Stone and shot outward in a ring of blue-white haze, hurtling through the chamber and bursting through the walls and into the eternal night over Venomhold.
Mr. Cane vanished in a swirl of gray mist, the summoning spell upon him undone. The green fire on Rosalyn’s staff faded away, that spell broken as well. The Seal of Binding vanished in a flare of light, smoke rising from the floor. The thing on the steel table began thrashing and gurgling, and I understood what the Nihlus Stone was at last.
It broke spells.
It had broken every spell in the chamber, the Seal, the summoning spell on Mr. Cane, and the power that Rosalyn had summoned on her staff. Could it break any spell? No wonder Morvilind wanted the thing.
Riordan and the others staggered as the Seal of Binding collapsed, and then they exploded into motion. Rosalyn started casting another spell, but the others moved first. Robert squeezed the trigger on his crossbow, and a quarrel buried itself in Rosalyn’s stomach. She staggered back with a grunt, and Riordan hurled a lightning globe into her as Hakon cast his own spell. Invisible force threw Rosalyn into one of the shelves, and the shelves collapsed around her, bottles and metal devices bouncing off the floor.
As she did, I heard a distant clanging, similar to the gong Corbisher had used to announce the presence of the Knight in the Great Hall.
“What did you do?” said Hakon.
“I don’t really know,” I said. “The Nihlus Stone…I think it breaks any spells within its area of influence.” The hieroglyphics on the Stone had gone dark, and it had gotten warmer against my hand.
“Useful,” said Hakon.
“Yeah, we can talk about it later,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Another deep chime rang out, and blue light flared from the windows.
“Go?” cackled Rosalyn. She sat up, and as I looked at her, she wrenched the crossbow quarrel from her stomach. Blood gushed from the wound, staining her clothes, but her staff pulsed with green fire, and the wound in her stomach started to shrink. “You cannot go.”
“Sorry, ma’am, but I believe we can,” said Robert, pointing his crossbow at her again.
“No need, my bold young Graysworn,” said Rosalyn. She dropped her staff in her lap and raised her gnarled hands in surrender. “I will not resist you. But you will not escape.”
“Yeah, I doubt that,” I said, dropping the Nihlus Stone in
to a pocket. It was heavy enough that it made my coat drag at my shoulder. I dug through my other pockets, pulling out the variety of small objects I had collected. Using these physical objects, I could find the nearest location in the Shadowlands that corresponded to one those locations on Earth, and I could open a rift way to escape.
I cast a probing spell on a pebble from a park in the suburbs of Milwaukee, seeking its linkage to Earth…and nothing happened.
Rosalyn saw my expression and laughed.
“Oh, hell,” I said, understanding what had generated that blue light in the windows. “Hell, hell, hell.”
“What is it?” said Riordan.
I ran to one of the windows and looked down.
It was a long way down to the courtyard below and the vast stone building that housed the Great Hall. Around the base of the Tower of Regrets, I saw the lines of a large circular sigil of blue light.
It was a Seal of Shadows, designed to block travel to and from the Shadowlands, and so long as I stood within it, I couldn’t open a rift way.
“A Seal of Shadows,” I said, spinning away from the window. “We’re trapped unless we can get outside of it.”
“Use the Stone again,” said Hakon.
I yanked the Nihlus Stone from my pocket. It still felt warm to the touch, and the hieroglyphs on its surface had gone dark. There was a glimmer of light in some of the symbols, but they were not nearly as bright as they had been earlier. I sent magical power into the stone, and I felt it push against my mind, but nothing happened.
“Uh,” I said. “I think the Stone needs to recharge first. Or cool down. Or something. Either way, it needs a few minutes.”
“Yes,” said Rosalyn, slumping against the broken shelf with an exhausted sigh. Whatever magic that allowed her to heal herself had drained her strength. “The Knight’s wards detect whenever an artifact as potent as a Nihlus Stone is used within the precincts of Venomhold. You really shouldn’t have used the stone, Nadia. What the Knight will do to you will be far more painful than anything I would have done.”
Maybe Rosalyn hadn’t been completely careless in throwing the Nihlus Stone at me. And she wasn’t wrong, either. If Nicholas got his hands on me, I would wish that Rosalyn had killed me.
“We’ve got to get outside of the boundaries of the Seal,” I said, looking out the window. “I think the Seal is large enough to cover the entire Tower, which means we need to get out of the Tower first.”
But it was a long way to the base of the Tower. For that matter, the only way in and out of the Tower was the Great Hall. If that alarm gong had rung in the Great Hall, then Karst knew we were here…and so did all her pets and all the Rebels.
“We can’t go down the stairs,” said Riordan. “Listen.”
I heard a faint noise coming from the iron stairs. The distant shrieks of hunting anthrophages rose to my ears, along with a rushing noise that I realized was the sound of a lot of people running up the Tower’s spiral stairwell at once.
They were coming for us.
“How long is it going to take that magic rock to recharge?” said Robert.
“I don’t know,” I said, looking at Rosalyn. “Could be five minutes, could be a week. How long will it take?”
Rosalyn gave a lethargic shrug, her eyelids fluttering. “Variable. Depends on the strength of the spells and the user. Could…could…”
She slumped and went motionless, her eyes rolling back into her head as she fell unconscious.
I thought about killing her then and there.
She had done her best to kill me and Riordan and the others, and she would have killed us if I hadn’t figured out how to use the Nihlus Stone. Yet I couldn’t. She was right. Rosalyn was me, or at least she might be what I would become, and the thought horrified me.
Besides, I had bigger problems just now.
Something on one of the shelves caught my eye, a pouch full of glittering things. I recognized them at once, grabbed the pouch, and stuffed it into a pocket. If we lived through this mess, that would be vengeance enough.
“We’ll have to hold here until the Stone recharges,” said Robert.
“We will be overwhelmed,” said Hakon. “Our best chance is to fight our way free, hit the enemy with overwhelming force.”
“We’ll be the ones who are overwhelmed,” said Robert. “You saw all those creatures in the Great Hall. There…”
“There is another way,” said Riordan, running across the workshop. “Look.”
We followed him as he pointed out the window.
There were other towers around the Tower of Regrets, all of them shorter and smaller. One of the highest of the nearby towers looked like a ziggurat, a steep pyramid with stepped sides. The terraces got broader as they descended, and some of them would have to be outside the boundaries of the Seal of Shadows.
The ziggurat was close, but that didn’t do us a damned bit of good. I could levitate, but I couldn’t fly.
“We can escape on that ziggurat,” said Riordan.
“How?” said Hakon. “The nearest terrace is at least thirty yards away. Not even a Shadow Hunter can make a jump like that.”
“The Shadow Hunter doesn’t need to make a jump like that,” said Robert, yanking something from his belt. “I brought a rope.”
“So did I,” said Riordan.
“Oh, God, I could kiss you,” I said, glancing back at the stairs.
“I’m married,” said Robert, opening the collapsible grapnel at the end of his rope.
“I wasn’t talking to you, dumbass,” I said, and Robert guffawed. “Hakon, do you know the levitation spell?” He was in good shape for his age, but there was no way a man in his seventies could go hand-over-hand on a rope for such a distance.
“I do,” said Hakon.
“Ready?” said Riordan, opening his own grapnel.
Robert nodded, and both men threw their grapnels. They soared across the gap from the Tower to the ziggurat’s upper terrace, and both grapnels caught. Riordan and Robert tugged on the ropes, and then tied them around the base of one of Rosalyn’s massive metal worktables.
“We’ll go first, as fast as we can,” said Riordan, hopping onto the windowsill. “If anything comes after us, shoot it down with your spells. Captain Ross, let’s go.”
He swung into empty space, gripped the rope, and began to go hand over hand down the incline. Robert followed suit, and I climbed onto the windowsill, Hakon next to me. It was a long fall to the courtyards of Venomhold, and I had a brief vision of my head splattering against those black flagstones like a dropped melon in a grocery store parking lot.
“Look out!” said Hakon.
A dark blur descended towards us. It was moving too fast to get a good look at the thing, but I glimpsed black-feathered wings and a twisted gray body. Hakon cast a spell, but the creature was moving too fast, and his bolt of fire missed it. I flung a lightning globe, and I hit the flying thing. It went into a spasm, its black wings clawing at the air as it began to weave like a drunk. Hakon cast again, and this time his ball of fire shot into the creature and burst out the other side in a spray of embers.
The winged creature, whatever it was, dropped like a stone.
“Nadia!” I saw Riordan swing onto the terrace. Robert followed suit a moment later, breathing hard, and yanked his crossbow from its shoulder holster.
“Ready?” I said to Hakon.
He snorted. “It would be cliché to point out that I am far too old for this.” He stooped and gripped the rope, casting a spell as he did so. I followed suit, gathering magic for a spell, and swung over the abyss of empty air below me, my arms straining as I grasped the rope.
Then I cast the levitation spell, and some of the strain on my arms eased. With the levitation spell holding me, I pulled myself along the rope without too much trouble. I glanced to the side and saw Hakon doing likewise, though his face was red with strain. I could have made my way down the rope by physical strength alone (thank God for all those pushups and
pullups), but I figured it was better to save my strength since we were going to have to run for our lives.
I heard the flap of wings, and both Riordan and Robert snapped up their crossbows and fired. A hideous metallic squawk filled my ears, and I felt the breeze as something heavy fell past me. I wanted to look, but I didn’t dare slow down. I was hideously vulnerable on the rope, and the sooner I reached the terrace, the sooner I could fight back against whatever those winged things were.
At last, I reached the terrace, letting the levitation spell carry me the rest of the way up. Riordan gripped my hand and helped me to stand, and I dismissed my spell, my boots clicking against the black stone. I squeezed his hand and ran to help Robert pull Hakon onto the terrace. Even with the aid of the levitation spell, the old man was red-faced and breathing hard. Only his magic and sheer iron willpower had gotten him across the rope.
“Can you open a rift way from here?” said Riordan.
I helped Hakon up, reached into my pocket, and grasped one of the keys to my apartment, casting the probing spell. Once again, I was rebuffed. We were still within the boundaries of the Seal of Shadows. I touched the Stone again, but it still felt warm.
“Not yet,” I said. “We have to get a little farther.”
“Go!” said Riordan, gesturing to the others. “We…”
“Down!” barked Robert, raising his crossbow and pulling the trigger.
Both Riordan and I ducked, and a crossbow quarrel missed my head by a few inches. I rose just in time to see a blur of black and gray tumble from the sky. Hakon straightened up, fire blazing around his fingers as he began another spell.
A dozen creatures hovered in the air between the ziggurat and the Tower, black wings flapping.
They were harpies.
I couldn’t think of any other word to describe them. I had seen pictures of mythological harpies in a book about ancient Greece, but I hadn’t known they actually existed in the Shadowlands. The creatures had the lower bodies of black-feathered birds, their legs covered in black scales and their toes tipped with claws. They had the upper bodies and arms of human women, but their skin was the same mottled gray as the anthrophages, their eyes a venomous yellow, and their noses were black craters on their gaunt faces. Like the anthrophages, they had large fangs and claws tipped each one of their fingers.
Cloak Games: Shatter Stone Page 18