by Layton Green
He looked back. The shadow beings had followed.
Deeper into the tunnel, twists and turns and loopholes, a maze of blackest night before bursting through a veil of spirit into a starscape stretching to infinity and littered with impossible geometric shapes, doorways to other planes slipping in and out of existence, dancing along the edges of worlds, skirting the rims of universes.
A younger spirit mage might be dumbstruck by the journey, awed by the specter of divinity, the order within the seething chaos, but Dean Groft had traveled the pathways of spirit many times before, deep into the cosmos. He ignored the spectacle and focused on the purpose of the journey.
Another glance confirmed the presence of his pursuers, flowing steadily behind him.
They’re tracking my spirit signature, he realized.
With a sinking heart, he realized why Alistair had used spirit mages as the subjects of his unholy experiments. They could go to the same places Groft could, and he guessed they could endure longer than he, with their unnatural infusion of pure spirit.
Just to make sure, he passed through a few hell dimensions and then up to the empyrean realms, shielding himself with spirit as he burrowed through the elemental planes.
Nothing fazed the two beings.
There was only one thing left to try.
With a burst of power, he opened a rift to the Place Between Worlds. Most beautiful of all places in his home universe, a primary plane of reality that Dean Groft had oft visited but did not truly understand, it was a fitting site for what he planned to do.
He wondered briefly whether it mattered where souls die and if they could travel the same pathways after death, whether his plan jeopardized his reunion with his wife.
Not all things can be known by the mind of man, he said to himself.
Not all things should.
His world exploded in color as he entered the Place Between Worlds. Otherworldly hues preserved in solid state, melted rainbows forming tubular passages and wide open plains stretching to infinity, no sky or ground, just a primordial soufflé of grottoes and tunnels and conduits of color, polyhedra and spirals and archipelagos, the building blocks of magic, of reality, of the awesome unknown power of creation.
Groft ignored the flat, one-dimensional circles that signaled the entrance to new worlds. Likewise, he avoided the Astral Wraiths, long and fluttery shapes similar in composition to the shadow beings following him. The Astral Wraiths were terrible adversaries who devour the essence of wayward travelers, and which no one knew how to kill. They might serve his purpose—he had no idea what would happen if the shadow beings came into contact with an Astral Wraith—but flying too close was risky. He had a different goal in mind.
Most of the time, the Place Between Worlds existed in silence. Yet eventually a high-pitched whine arose, a whistling rush of air akin to a boiling teakettle. The Astral Wind, bringer of chaos and buffeter of souls. Something even a spirit mage feared. No one knew what happened to those caught in the wind, because no one had ever returned. His guess was that the Astral Wind spanned dimensions and universes, or perhaps broached an entirely new plane of reality. Spirit mages could find their way to new dimensions, but if they could not keep track of their progress, lost in the wind, they might never get back.
Instead of ducking into another world, Dean Groft kept his course straight and true. If the shadow beings caught and killed him, they could follow his spirit signature back to Urfe and wreak havoc.
Sensing them at his heels, he whirled and cast Astral Cord, connecting his essence to that of the beings following him. He felt the invisible cord attach, and tested it with a sudden burst of speed.
The cord drew taut, jerking him backwards, closer to the shadow beings.
For better or worse, their fates were linked.
The wind keened louder. Groft kept flying. He turned and saw blasts of silver light heaving through the forms of the shadow beings, as if anxious or fearful.
As the Astral Wind overtook them, screaming into Groft’s ears, the sound of reality itself splitting, he used the last of his magic to encase himself in Spirit Skin, a final desperate measure that might help shield him from whatever lay ahead.
The Astral Wind spun them so violently that Groft lost all sense of direction. He vomited as he spun in circles through worlds and dimensions and realities so fast his vision could not keep up. Yet as he whirled through time and space, snapping the link to his adversaries as his Spirit Skin weakened, he felt at peace with the knowledge that the return pathway was scrambled and the three of them were hopelessly lost in the multiverse, with no way back to Urfe.
What came next, only the Creator knew.
-40-
As the rubber ball flew through the hole in the stone, the ground gave way beneath Will’s feet. He fell through a trap door that hinged open, his momentum slowed, and then he was floating inside an enormous hall with columns of jade and a floor made of gold.
He looked up. The trap door had swung shut behind him. There was no sign of the archdukes, but his companions had fallen through the floor with him, drifting slowly downward as if caught in a featherweight spell, droplets of blood from their various wounds suspended in midair. At first he assumed Selina had arrested their fall, but when he saw her struggling to right herself, he knew the magic had come from a different source.
The floor was thirty feet below them. Soft golden light, a captured sunrise, illuminated the room. With nothing else to do as he descended, Will absorbed his surroundings.
The jade columns portioned off a smaller square, about the size of his high school gym, within the larger rectangle of the vast hall. Outside the jade columns, ingots representing a huge variety of gemstones formed the walls of the chamber, diamond and sapphire and opal stacked in neat rows from floor to ceiling. Thousands and thousands of them. Will caught his breath. Whether melted in a forge or shaped by the hand of an alchemancer, he couldn’t begin to grasp the amount of wealth those walls represented.
Gemstone statues, glass display cases, and a cornucopia of other treasures filled the space inside the columns. An exquisitely carved urn cradled butterflies of spun gold. Swords and goblets and full sets of armor, cloaks and girdles and helms, priceless works of art from a plethora of cultures. Some of the artistic styles looked familiar to Will, and some looked fantastical, either created by societies endemic to Urfe, shaped by mages, or from another world entirely.
“By the Queen,” Mala whispered, as she gaped at the treasure.
In the center of the hall, a circle of twelve marble sarcophagi surrounded a golden statue on a pedestal. The statue was of a tall Mayan chieftain with arms spread wide, as if showcasing the room to his visitors. A headdress of sunrays crowned the figure, and he grasped an azantite rod beset with a variety of gemstones.
As the party touched down, they regained freedom of movement. Mala approached one of the display cases. Inside was a violet amulet matching her eyes, embedded with pieces of azantite that formed a nine-pointed star.
“The enneagon of Kirna Tuluth,” she breathed. “A legendary talisman.”
After walking around the room and inspecting the various items, touching them to ensure they were real, no one needed to question where they were. They had arrived, Will knew, in the treasure room of Yiknoom Uk’ab K’ahk, and the only question that remained was what sort of guardian lay in wait. Somehow, it made him more nervous that nothing had appeared yet.
Maybe someone had found this place already, he thought with a nervous chuckle. But if that was the case, then why was all the treasure left behind? The room looked untouched for millennia.
Keeping a wary eye on the circle of marble sarcophagi, silent sentinels carved in Egyptian style, Will stepped onto the pedestal and tapped his sword against the gold statue. It was solid. “Yiknoom, I presume?”
Gunnar peered up at the statue. “Aye,” he said, at the same time a voice sounded in Will’s head. The same raspy voice, full of rot and power, that had whispered in h
is ear in the spider web.
I am pleased you bear witness to my cathedral.
Will spun, just as he had the last time, but there was no one to be seen. “Did anyone else hear that?”
“Aye,” Gunnar said again, raising his war hammer and crouching into a fighting stance. Sash and short sword in hand, Mala whirled one way and then the other. Mateo and Selina pressed close together, scanning the room.
As Will jumped off the pedestal, his head swiveling to find the source of the voice, it spoke again.
An accumulation of the greatest my age had to offer.
At that moment, Will understood. He knew why they had floated softly down through the ceiling, why the room was laid out in such an orderly fashion, and why no terrible guardian had approached them thus far.
The disembodied voice belonged to the sorcerer king himself, his thoughts or his essence somehow preserved through the millennia. And what the spirit of the eldritch mage desired above all else, the last pleasure available to his vain and putrefied soul, was for them to bear witness to his glory.
To see.
“Show yourself!” Mala commanded.
A spray of laughter echoed in Will’s head, the rustle of dry leaves in a cemetery. I am where I have been for eons, daughter of the wagon wheel, and will remain for eons to come. The Lord of All Suns to your children and your children’s children, a thousand generations bowed before me, all bearing witness to my glory and trembling at my everlasting might.
Humility, Will thought, was not a strong suit of the sorcerer king.
I commend you on being the first to survive my trials. You may observe my riches as your lives expire, but be warned, to touch my possessions is to incur my—
The sound of shattering glass broke the monologue. Will whipped around to find Mala standing in front of a large azantite chest covered in runes and engravings and surrounded by shards from the smashed display case. Two pairs of azantite rings, attached to each side of the coffer, provided a means by which to insert poles and carry the chest.
Mateo’s face broke into a reverent expression. “The Coffer of Devla.”
Stop.
Mala whipped out a canvas bag that somehow expanded to encompass the entire artifact. She fitted the bag around the corners and slid the fabric across it. Once the coffer was concealed, the bag shrank to normal size, and Mala stuffed it into a waist pouch. After that, she strode three display cases over, smashed another one, and withdrew a glove made of chain mail.
Stop!
“Catch,” she said, and tossed the glove to Mateo.
STOOOOOPPPPPP!!!!!
The sarcophagi at the base of the pedestal shuddered open. Twelve mummies encased in swaths of gold-plated wrapping climbed slowly out of their tombs, shaking off their eternal rest. Each held a razor-tipped iron staff with handles shaped like ankhs.
Mala paled as she unsheathed her sword. “True Egyptian mummies. Human servants encased in molten gold by alchemancy, then imbued with unnatural life by a sorcerer. Abominations. Deadly ones.”
Each of the beings was as big as Gunnar, and they advanced on the party with fluid movements, staffs clenched in their golden hands.
Mateo struck first, dropping the glove Mala had thrown and snapping his blade at the nearest mummy. The weapon vibrated as it clanged off the metallic skin.
The mummy feigned a kick and jabbed the staff at Mateo’s chest. Without his shield, the one-handed fighter was forced to scramble out of reach. The mummy pressed the attack, causing Will to leap to his cousin’s defense.
“Put on the glove!” Mala shouted.
Will wondered what she knew, but Mateo was in no position to retrieve the item. Will staved off the advancing mummy’s attack and thrust straight into its chest. His sword only penetrated an inch or so into the monster’s gold-plated armor, and there was no snip of blue-white light.
The gold is real, despite the alchemancy that fused it together.
The mummies swarmed the party, outnumbering them almost three to one. Highly skilled warriors who seemed impervious to attack, Will wasn’t sure what to do. He had resorted to using Zariduke as a defensive weapon, blocking thrust after thrust from the iron-tipped staffs.
Mala and Gunnar were on their heels. The battle was too tight for Selina to use Wind Push or a similar spell, so she flew straight up, trying to create distance, but a mummy launched its staff at her and pierced her through the leg. She fell screaming to the ground, yanking out the staff and arresting her flight just enough to break her fall. Mateo roared and ran to her defense. Will noticed he had picked up the glove and that it had somehow, magically, attached to the stump of his left arm. Before he reached Selina, the sylvamancer swept away the advancing mummies with a thrust of her palms, sending them crashing into a pillar.
Two more guardians rushed the sylvamancer from the side, and she morphed into a giant tortoise and retreated into her shell. The mummies used their staffs as bludgeons and battered her. When the shell started to crack, Selina morphed back into human form. Will and Mateo arrived just in time to defend her, Will’s eyes widening when his cousin stopped an iron tip from piercing his side by catching it with the palm of the chainmail glove. Mateo looked just as shocked. He backhanded a mummy in the face with the glove and sent it sprawling.
Selina could no longer walk, and Will could tell her power was almost spent.
“The eyes, Will!” Mala shouted. She and Gunnar were both locked in a desperate battle. “Go for the eyes!”
Fighting to keep the horde of mummies away from Selina, knowing he and Mateo were about to be overwhelmed, Will stared into the golden orbs of his opponent and, with a flash of insight, understood why Mala had cried out. The mummy’s liquid gold eyes moved like magma within the sockets.
They moved—which meant they were not as solid as its skin.
Which meant he might be able to pierce whatever lay underneath the gold plating, perhaps the magic that kept the thing alive.
He whirled to the right, isolating one of his opponents. An iron tip grazed Will’s side as he slid inside the blow, coming face to face with the mummy. The monster grabbed Will’s neck with its hand, squeezing so hard Will couldn’t breathe, but he reared back and jabbed his sword upward, into its left eye.
The blade slid through and, with a blue-white pop, the life force of the mummy dissolved. The shell of gold armor fell to the floor.
Will didn’t waste time. He dashed behind one of the mummies attacking Mateo, planning to jab it in the eye by surprise. The mummy turned at the last moment, and Will switched his grip and slashed horizontally across the mummy’s face, right between the eyes. Another snip of light.
Ten to go.
Three mummies charged Will. They must have processed what occurred, because they guarded their eyes as they fought, heads lowered and keeping their distance with their staffs. They pressed him hard, pinning him against a column.
Will was beginning to tire. He couldn’t break through their defenses, and the mummies were enormously strong. One slip-up meant an iron-tipped staff through the chest.
He risked a glance to see if anyone was close enough to help. Mateo had dragged Selina to one of the marble sarcophagi and was using it to guard her back while he fought off an attacker. Mala slipped through a mummy’s defenses and jabbed it in the eye with her dagger. The tomb guardian didn’t disappear, but it stumbled away, clutching its ruined orb. Then Mala noticed that, just like Will, Gunnar was surrounded by three attackers and about to be overwhelmed. An iron tip caught the big man on his left arm, spinning him around. Sensing a victory, the others pressed harder.
One of Will’s attackers rushed him. He didn’t have time to aim for the face. Gripping Zariduke in both hands, he swung a mighty blow that severed the mummy’s staff. The guardian dropped its weapon and wrapped Will from behind, underneath his arms. Will couldn’t shake him and had to defend against the other two attackers while the third mummy tried to drag him to the ground.
He had seconds
before the mummies overwhelmed him, as did Gunnar.
Mala noticed.
She glanced at both men, first at Will and then at Gunnar, trying to decide whom to save. Expressionless, she sprang onto an emerald pillar to her left, using it to vault high over her remaining two attackers.
When she landed, she sprinted straight for Will.
“No!” Will roared, redoubling his efforts to free his arms. “Go to Gunnar!”
An iron tip slipped through Will’s defenses and jabbed him in the thigh. He screamed and dropped his sword arm in pain. The third attacker’s staff came straight for his heart, but Mala entered the fray just in time, batting away the blow with her short sword. She spun and swung at Will’s head. He got the hint and ducked, and Mala stabbed the mummy holding Will in the face, just missing an eye.
Gunnar cried out, a prolonged scream that gurgled in his throat and caused the hairs to raise on Will’s arms. A quick glance revealed a group of mummies surrounding his friend, jabbing him over and over.
When the screams ended, the mummies surrounding the fallen warrior straightened and fanned out to converge on the remaining members of the party. Will felt like vomiting. Mala didn’t cry out in reaction to Gunnar’s death, but she attacked the mummy in front of her with a vengeance, driving it against a pillar with a furious combination of attacks. The mummy took a desperate swipe with his staff, missed, and this time Mala’s aim was true. She lunged forward with her two blades, piercing the mummy through both eyes at the same time, blinding it.
Will did a quick count in his head. Two mummies killed, two blinded. Eight still fighting.
It was too many.
Selina was down. Gunnar dead. Mateo was losing the battle against his lone attacker, and another was heading right for him. He’d never hold them both off. As Will blocked two staff thrusts and rushed to his cousin’s defense, limping on his wounded thigh, a staff swept out his legs at the ankles, and Will fell hard to the ground, dropping his sword.
Before he could recover, three mummies rushed him, staffs poised to run him through.