by K. J. Coble
Except one.
“I will show you how,” she told Asyra.
“NO TRAIL,” AELREN GRUMBLED wearily as he led the remnants of the Vothan party along the tunnel, holding his torch out ahead of him. “I think we’ve lost them.”
Strayden grunted. Looking down along the floor, he saw no disturbance in the dust, save that which they were making with their owned damned feet. He began to wonder if they weren’t lost, now, themselves. Four damned men—all that remained of the world-beating Fifth Cohort!
“Wait,” the younger Vothan said, his pace picking up. “There’s a branch ahead and...yeah, there’s signs there!”
Desperate for any hope, Strayden and the others scrambled after Aelren as he rushed to the spot. They caught up to him as he knelt at an intersection of two corridors. His torchlight revealed footprints gouged through dust to bare flagstone. And there was other evidence, too. “Blood trail,” Aelren said, panning his torch over the prints.
Speckles that had darkened to rust-brown stood out in the light. A look around revealed to Strayden more of them, and smears of the same on a wall. “Someone was hurt,” he said and glanced further up the corridor before glancing at the side-branch. “And it looks like they came from that way and went that way.”
“Seems pretty clear which way we’re going, then,” Durrak said.
Strayden started to reply that he wasn’t so sure, but a sound echoed faintly down from the straight corridor. All of them stiffened and Strayden clenched his axe close. “Wasn’t just me that heard that, was it?”
“Sounded like something being dragged,” Durrak said, the torchlight picking out the confused wrinkle of his face.
“Dragged...” Strayden replied meaningfully and hefted the axe, shifted his grip on his shield.
Getting the meaning, Durrak nodded and shook himself out to readiness. “Well, you’re the Captain.”
“Keep close,” Strayden growled at Aelren, nodding at the torch, and started forward.
“What about the trail?” the younger man asked.
“We can come back,” Strayden replied. “But I got a feeling it won’t matter.”
Battle-tense, the Vothans resumed their creep down the corridor, Aelren’s single torch lighting their uncertain way. The trail and blood spots continued, had clearly come from this route. Another weird echo lilted down the corridor at them, a weird shuffling and, again, the dragging, like a sack pulled across stone.
And yet another sign made itself known, thickening the air.
“Gah,” Strayden let out with a grimace as he got too full a breath. “Gruzh’s fly-ridden leftovers, what is that stench?”
“Rot,” Durrak said ominously. “Death.”
But whose? Strayden’s mind reflexively asked. And he dreaded the answer.
They slowed their pace. Strayden had the sense of the air changing ahead, as though the passage was about to open up. Aelren’s feeble light made it uncertain. But the yellowy rot-stink intensified, set nostrils to burning, eyes to watering. Every breath became a battle against nausea. And the sounds increased, too, like many bodies moving around.
Bodies...
Something grabbed at Strayden’s foot and, with a yelp, he jumped back. The motion carried him into Aelren, who dropped the torch. The fluttering light cast wild shadows for a moment before settling in sparks by their feet, still sputtering.
Glistening foulness writhed beside it, fumbling still for a grip on Strayden’s boot. It was a corpse—had to be—yet still moving, like the mummies before, but different. Reeking tags of muscle and viscera still clung to gleaming bone. The crawling course of the thing up the hall trailed behind it, a smear of effluvium in the dust.
“It...it’s still fresh, somehow.” Strayden held out his axe, helve-first, and prodded the thing. It stiffened with a wet gurgle and ceased its movement. Another prod from him triggered no reaction.
Durrak cupped a hand to his face. “Guess we know what stank so bad.”
“Sounds like more of them,” Aelren said, scooping up his torch and pointing it onward.
He was right. The echoes of feeble movement filled the darkness ahead. Strayden started that way, drawn both by morbid curiosity and fear—that he’d find Lyssa’s rent form amongst whatever death still twitched ahead in the shadows.
“Captain...” Durrak began.
Strayden moved on without acknowledgement. Aelren followed with the light, Durrak with a grumble.
The passage opened up into a huge chamber, lined with columns and statues to one side, alcoves containing doors to the other. Aelren’s lone torch barely picked out details nearby, and the far end of the room remained sheathed in gloom. The air stank of vileness, though, and the torch’s illumination was more than sufficient to highlight the awfulness carpeting the floor.
Dozens—more—of corpses in various stages of decompensation twitched and dragged and struggled across the flagstones. Most lay stiffening, though it was clear they’d been powered with horrid energy not long ago, to have gotten to where they collapsed. Others crawled amongst them, in some cases picking at their desiccated comrades. Claws and teeth and wild, clotted hair-clumps and dripping, empty eye sockets glinted as Aelren panned the torch about.
Every square inch of Strayden’s flesh squirmed. Every nerve tingled. He wanted to back out of here, now. He knew he’d never unsee whatever the hells this was.
But none of the things moved to attack. Hells, it didn’t look like they could!
“Izzliv make me cold as steel...” Durrak murmured from Strayden’s side. “What by all the drunk gods is this?”
Aelren knelt beside a heap of the things. It shifted as one of the half-buried bodies tried to pull free, then stilled. He recoiled with a shudder. “It’s like they’ve run out of...I don’t know...fuel?”
“What?”
“Like a fire when the charcoals burn down,” he said with a shrug. “Look at them. You can see them fading.”
“Check—” Strayden started to say, but rising bile forced a reflexive gulp. He took a breath and tried again. “Check them for...for the Lady Lyssa.”
The others looked at him, grimacing. But they moved in amongst the things without further comment, knew the grim work they had to do. Strayden did as well, trying to stay within range of Aelren’s torch. Occasionally, a spidery claw reached feebly for his ankle and he had to kick it away. Mostly, the things were going still, cold. Mostly, they had the same, uniform look of foulness—and nowhere did he see a scrap of white or skin of ebon.
“Looks like they came from over here,” Aelren said, pointing the torch at one of the doors in the corner to their left.
Cautiously, they converged on the spot he indicated. Their course carried them across the front of the middle, largest alcove, and its gleaming, ten-foot door. Strayden paused, looking up at the massive, regal likeness fashioned into the bronze surface. He blinked in recognition of the stern features of the face. “We’ve seen that guy before.”
“Aye,” Durrak said, “Thyss-Mallik. Again.”
Strayden scanned the details of the huge door. More of the symbols he had no hope of deciphering descended in columns to each side of the tyrannical figure. At the Pharoah’s feet, spread shoulder-width, a cobra coiled and reared up, its cowl flared, its fangs bared. Between those, barely visible as Aelren carried his light to the corner and further away, appeared to be a hole.
“Will you look at that?” Strayden murmured and moved towards the door. In deepening gloom, he stepped to within a foot of it and stopped, had to resist a sudden urge to touch. But the one lesson of this hellish place he’d learned was don’t. Instead, he leaned close, squinting as he examined the hole in the cobra’s mouth, not ornamental, not some kind of damage or corrosion.
A keyhole.
Strayden started to reach for the double-ended key shoved into his belt, when words from the others drew his attention. He turned from his examination with half a squawk of anger only to see all three of them standing in fro
m of the alcove to his right, gawking, as though they’d seen Gruzh, Himself. With a grating of teeth, he strode to their sides.
And gagged when he saw the horrors crafted into the bronze of the smaller door. It took him only moments to see the likeness between the things still twitching and rotting across the floor around them and what was portrayed on the metal slab. Drying foulness still streaked the bronze, handprint smears and streaks that had drooled to the floor to pool and clot.
“Gah,” he spat, “I guess we know where they came from.”
The others didn’t reply, didn’t move, either.
“Hey!”
Strayden shoved Durrak, who at first hardly reacted, stood stonelike and just stared at the bronze effigies. He flinched at a harder shove, though, sudden anger flaring across his face and a fist clenching reflexively about his axe. The anger set him to shaking his head, as though casting off some funk. He looked at the door he’d stared at and loathing suddenly bloomed across his features.
“What the hells is wrong with you?”
“I...” Durrak shook himself again. “I thought I was seeing something else.” His gaze went to Aelren, holding his torch close to the door and drifting slowly towards it. The Nuburran lurched suddenly after his comrade and yanked him about by the shoulder to look him in the eye. The same thing happened; anger, then a shiver as conscious thought returned to glazed eyes.
“It was...beautiful,” the young Vothan murmured. “It was...” He looked at the door again and grimaced in horror.
“You’re an idiot,” Stradyen muttered. He waved them over to the middle door. Slowly, as though awakening from a long, troubled slumber, they followed him. “This on the other hand is worth looking at.” He indicated the keyhole.
Durrak smiled. “Now this is the first damned thing that has made sense.”
“Uh-huh.” Strayden shoved his axe into his belt at the right hip and pulled the key from the other side of his buckle to examine it in the torchlight. After a moment, he remembered which end he’d inserted to open the previous door and flipped the key to the opposite side, held it up. “I wondered about this.”
The Nuburran nodded eagerly. “Do it.”
Strayden held up the key, but his hand shook so badly he missed the hole once, twice. With a curse, he paused, took a breath, and aimed the teeth into the hole, his grip stabilized this time. Iron ground against bronze as it went in.
“Hey!” Aelren suddenly barked. “Sigurd!”
The three companions turned to their right—Strayden leaving the key in, but unturned—to see the fourth member of their party still standing, slack-jawed in front of the first door. Blank eyes stared without seeing. Sigurd’s hand came up, reached for the door.
Durrak stooped, picked up a bit crumbled from the columned façade before them, and flung it at the man. The chunk of rubble glanced off Sigurd’s helm, jolted head and body sideways and then into a dazed spun. Coming back around to face them like a man-sized top, his eyes flashed with pain, followed by rage. A hand shot to his forehead and he snarled. “Gruzh’s balls, man! What the hells was that for!”
“Get your ass over here!” Strayden called. “And maybe we could all not try touching every damned thing in this place like new recruits the first time in a whorehouse!”
“I mean...” Aelren began with a goofy grin. “That’s where I met Durrak’s mother.”
“Not now!” both Strayden and Durrak barked back at him.
Strayden turned his attention back to the key, still protruding from the hole in the bronze cobra’s mouth. He took it in hand and glanced at Durrak. “Last lock we encountered came with an ugly surprise; why do I get the feeling this one will bring another?”
Durrak opened his mouth to reply but a wave of new sounds cut off whatever he intended. Dragging, shuffling, and a faint hiss of stirred air. His face crinkled with fear and he stiffened, looked over Strayden’s shoulder towards the far side of the chamber, from which they’d come.
Dust purled into the room from the passage they’d emerged from, hazing the air. Through this miasma stepped and staggered bent figures in rags of by-now familiar funerary wrappings. The first few tripped or tangled up in the fresh corpses strewn across the floor. But more piled in after them, a wave, dozens or hundreds strong. They milled about in momentary confusion till eyeless sockets turned towards the foursome in front of the door—
“Just turn the damned thing,” Durrak rasped.
—and the whole mummified tide shambled towards the survivors of the Fifth Cohort.
Strayden wrenched the key so hard around he was surprised it didn’t break. A boom went through the great door, bronze thrumming with aftershocks. Dust purled from the creased around it. Great weight shifted with a low rumble of metal on stone. The door titled ever so slightly inward.
Strayden leaned into it. “Go!”
Aelren nodded wide-eyed and shoved Sigurd ahead of him as Strayden’s weight cracked the door wide enough to fit through. The two passed through, one after another, the departure of Aelren’s torch plunging the chamber around them into seething dark.
Durrak backed towards the crack with axe and shield at the ready. “No need to be a hero now. Come on!”
Strayden yanked at the key, but it slipped in sweat-gluey fingers. He fumbled again, tried to get it free. It wouldn’t budge. “Damned thing’s stuck!”
“Leave it!”
“How do you plan on locking the door after us, idiot?”
Something grabbed at Strayden’s shoulder. He didn’t need to turn to know it wasn’t Durrak, the chill of the grave worming into his arm. Without looking, he spun left, swinging the rim of his shield before him. The iron band caught the mummy grappling for his arm under its bony chin. Ages-rotted sinew crackled apart and the skull leapt from the stump of it neck to bounce off another shambling corpse behind before shattering on the floor.
Another mummified form lunged at Durrak from his right, tried to cut off their escape. But the huge Nuburran pivoted, swung his axe overhand into its face. The axe blasted through the bridge of its nasal cavity, kept going into it exploded out through the crotch and kicked sparks off the floor. The mummy didn’t so much fall as disintegrate.
Strayden reached one more time to the affixed key. But dead fingers clawed at hand and arm, caught in chain links until he withdrew reflexively, nipping boney fingertips off with the violence of the motion and feeling their icy touch still linger moments after ending. No use. He backpedaled, crashed into Durrak, and forced his retreat through the doorway. There was a moment of resistance.
“Go-go-go!”
Durrak gave way and together they fell back through the cracked door. On the other side, Aelren and Sigurd were already leaning into it to force it closed once more. The creak of stone on stone filled the air.
Hands shot through the crack, waved frantically for a purchase on something, even as the door crushed against them. Strayden and Durrak whirled with weapons ready, began hacking and smashing. Severed hands fell to the floor, twitched, and resumed the attack from the floor as Strayden had seen them do before. And, as before, his boots were ready to end them with stomping heels.
Pressure from the other side shivered, gave way before the frenzied, cornered strength of the mortals. The Vothan survivors got the door shut with a last flurry of motion. But the scuffling, hammering, and grinding continued on from the opposite face of bronze. They were still there.
“Here!” Sigurd said, rushing over to a shadow in the dark.
He’d discovered a statue, one of many, arrayed in two ranks on either side of the hall they’d entered, marching off into the shadows. The nearest one, Sigurd was trying to pry off its pedestal. Seeing his intent, Durrak rushed to his side and together they tipped it, crackling from its mount and carried it over to the door. There, they laid it down, its head forming a wedge at the corner, keeping the way blocked.
Still the motion continued from the other side, causing the bronze to ring.
Stray
den backed away and pivoted, breathing hard as he took in their new surroundings. They stood in a long hall, lined with columns alternating with statues like the one they’d appropriated. The latter appeared to be, by their finery and headdresses, representations of past Pharoahs, faithfully crafted to show height, weight, foibles, and even disfigurements. Closer figures stood straight-backed and fierce. Further on, there seemed to be a slow degradation, as if succeeded generations and lines had faded in glory, lost the luster of their predecessors.
The hall angled slightly upwards ahead of them, climbing. Behind them, the door shuddered with blows.
Strayden noticed ornamental torches in sconces affixed to the columns, none of which had likely seen use in a thousand years. “Get a couple of those lit,” he said, pointing. “If we’re going to keep going, I’d at least like a little more light.”
“That’s it then,” Durrak asked as the other two went to retrieve a couple, “just keep going? How long?”
Strayden looked him in the eye. “However long it goes.”
EDDAR URIUS CURSED Scintallos and knew he was doomed.
The first hint of disaster had been when he ordered the army up the escarpment in what he’d planned as his feint towards Bazul and his cornered force. They’d struck the rear of the Xyxian Immortals, hemming in the Emperor from below, and they’d peeled away like the skin of a peach before a blade. It’d seemed too easy.
It was.
Suddenly, Urius’ men were halfway up the slope, carried along by their momentum and the false taste of victory, and the Immortals were closing in behind and below them once more.
Urius had seen it then and tried to regain control, wheel units about to keep their line of retreat open to the mouth of the valley. But the men had kept going, consumed with frenzy and fear. Pockets of resistance tightened before them, only to be destroyed in orgies of slaughter. Slashing attacks from the flanks slew hundreds in minutes. They kept going, shouldering their way up the escarpment to their besieged ruler.