Of Dark Things Waking (The Redemption Chronicle Book 3) Page 29

  "Blesséd sehk," Angbar breathed.

  "Syn?" Takra knelt, touched the ground where the girl had been sitting. There was no trace of her.

  "Nothing to do but wait for her," Seth said. "She does this."

  Angbar looked worried, but he nodded reluctant agreement. Takra picked up the wardbook and flipped through the spell. "I can go after her. Maybe if I cast Hover first I won't fall through the ground like she did." She wasn't eager to try it, but she would if she had to.

  Suddenly the runes in the gemstone swirled. Takra took a step back just as the diamond morphed downwards, forming into a ladder that led into the dark. Syntal waited at the bottom in a dim pool of light shining down through the passage. "Next time I'm casting Hover first," she called.

  Takra laughed with nervous relief. "You found the way in! Are you all right?"

  "Yeah. I dropped the spell as soon as I fell, and landed down here." She rubbed her thigh. "My leg smarts, but I'm a'fin. Get down here, you have to see this."

  v. Angbar

  They climbed down into a small cavern. Syntal and Lyseira summoned light, and Angbar flinched from the sudden brilliance. It illuminated cold stone walls, a deep reddish-brown. The short passage terminated with an imposing set of steel double doors, etched with the same chanter marks from the bizarre gemstone. But the doors weren't closed. One had been torn nearly in half, blasted into the darkness beyond; the other sagged from its hinges.

  Angbar approached cautiously, the mantras spinning through his thoughts in case he'd need them, and took a closer look. The doors were massive constructs of solid steel, at least a foot thick each. It would have taken incredible power to destroy them.

  He glanced at Seth, who returned a grim nod. "I'll go first," Seth said, taking Lyseira's glowing staff.

  "Whatever happened here happened millennia ago," Syntal protested. "I know it looks frightening, but I doubt there's any threat." Seth ignored her and stepped through the doors.

  "It's clear," he called back softly a minute later. As Angbar and the others followed, he went on: "Watch the railing on the right. I can't see the bottom."

  A shift in the acoustics, a staleness to the air, told Angbar he had entered a large space. The left wall was the same reddish-brown, studded with dull crystals the size of his fist. At the limits of Lyseira's clericlight, he could just make out what may have been a door. But there was no right wall—only the railing Seth had warned about.

  Syntal immediately crossed to it and held her hand out, shining chanterlight into the emptiness. But despite being brighter than Lyseira's, the light revealed only air. Beyond the railing, the room seemed to plunge into nothingness.

  "The floor slopes," Lyseira pointed out. "You see that?"

  "And the wall curves," Angbar said. "It's spiraling down." Seth moved up, bringing the door into better view as he advanced the light. When he reached the door, Angbar saw that the broad ledge continued, spiraling gently downward, sporting another door again at the light's limits.

  What is this place? Angbar wondered. Did he build this whole thing just to house the sixth wardbook? Or is it like the Safehold—someone else built it, and he just used what was already here?

  "The crystals are primed," Takra said from behind him, examining the crystals on the wall. "Do you see that? I think . . ." She lifted her hands and chanted a quick light spell, pressing one glowing palm to the crystal. An answering luminance flickered to life in the heart of the stone, then welled into brilliance—followed immediately by the next crystal along the wall, then the next. In seconds a trail of light tore down the spiral beneath them, illuminating a single, winding ledge that snaked down, into the heart of the earth, around a massive column of empty space.

  "Blesséd sehk," Angbar breathed. He gripped the railing and peered over. The light was still racing downward, igniting level after level of the . . . Tower? he thought. Some kind of underground tower.

  "What is this place?" Lyseira wondered aloud.

  "There were people here," Seth said, nodding at the ground. "Look."

  In the newly radiant lighting, Angbar saw bones on the floor. A lot of them. "They died here," he murmured.

  "I wonder what happened," Lyseira said.

  "It's just a ruin," Syntal said. "It doesn't matter. It's like the Safehold, or Kesselholm. Just another ruin from Lar'atul's time. It's not―"

  A wail from somewhere beneath them cut her dismissal short, a cry of such raw anguish it made Angbar's skin crawl. It struck Syntal silent, left all of them staring at each other in horror.

  But Angbar wasn't sure he'd actually heard it. It had the sensation of a memory.

  "Did you hear that?" Takra asked.

  "Yeah," Angbar said. "It was―"

  Another cry, this one strangled and brief. A sound from a nightmare so vivid it haunted his ears upon waking. "Wait a minute," Angbar said. "We've seen this before. This is just like Kesselholm."

  Syntal looked at him. "Pulse-shades?"

  As if she had summoned them, Angbar caught a glimpse of someone running—just a flicker, vanishing into his peripheral vision. When he turned to follow it, he caught an impression of a swordfight: brutal and short.

  "What's happening?" Takra raised her hands, ready to chant.

  Angbar waved her down. "Don't. Whatever you do—don't attack them. They don't even know we're here."

  "They're like actors," Syntal said. "They're remembering something that happened to them."

  "Something horrible," Angbar said, "if experience holds."

  "Ghosts?" Takra demanded.

  "Not exactly."

  "Just trust us," Seth said. "And keep your spells to yourself."

  A shade cried out in First Tongue, some kind of panicked warning. Angbar had been learning First Tongue, hoping to read Ethaniel's History, but he still glanced at Lyseira. "'They've found us,'" she translated.

  Another shout. This one he recognized before Lyseira said, "'Run.'"

  A swarm of shades surged past them, their pounding steps like whispers across the stone. They were harder to see than the ones at Kesselholm had been, there and gone as his gaze caught them in turn. He managed to catch a view of one of the runners—a girl, maybe twelve winters old—and followed her with his eyes until she slammed into some invisible barrier. No! she screamed just before her back tore open, spilling her to the floor a second before she vanished entirely.

  Lyseira turned to Syntal, paling. "Do you think he wanted to show you this?"

  "I don't know." Syn started forward, keeping her eyes on the wall. "But the book is down here, and we need to find it."

  It's like the riots, Angbar thought at first as he followed her. The screams of rage, the cries of the dying—all around him, inescapable. Then he realized it wasn't like that at all. The riots in Keswick had been violent, yes, but that violence had expressed itself as much in destruction as it had in murder. This was different.

  This was a massacre.

  From the open space in the central shaft of the tower, he caught flashes of light or flame, flickering across his vision like sunspots. He tried to follow them, but they were too fast—and try as he might, he couldn't pinpoint where the lights were coming from. As they descended, he realized what he was seeing.

  "It was chanters," he said. "They're in the shaft at the center. Hovering. Just . . . raining spells down on the people here."

  "I thought the same," Syntal said, "but I can't catch any of them. They're too fast."

  "I don't think they're too fast," Takra said. "I think they're invisible."

  "They're not invisible." Syn sounded annoyed. "It's just that you have to look directly at them. Pulse-shades―"

  "No," Takra said. "Not the pulse-shades. The chanters themselves. In the original attack. They were invisible."

  Syn stopped short, her eyes combing the open area beyond the railing. Angbar saw a Ves—the spell was unmistakable—flicker from nothing and hurtle into a dying scream. Ves always came from the chanter's outstretched finge
r. It was just how the chant worked.

  "She's right." The realization struck him with dread. "They were just . . . floating there, slaughtering everyone here, and the people couldn't . . ." He felt sick. "They couldn't even see them."

  "By Akir," Syntal said. "That's brilliant."

  He looked at her with naked horror.

  "Not the killing," she hurried on, "I just mean—the strategy. The invisibility." She looked at Takra, whose face had gone carefully neutral. "We have to figure that one out." Then, like an afterthought: "It could have saved a lot of lives here." And she pressed on, spiraling downward.

  Angbar looked at Lyseira: Did you hear that? It was Seth's expression that caught him, though: staring at Syntal's back with eyes like flint.

  The next door ahead hung open. Syntal brushed past it, certain the wardbook lay below, but Angbar slowed to glance inside. He found a generous room with multiple raised daises that may have been intended as beds, a few scattered wardrobes and tables—living space.

  Then the shades of a mother and her two young children passed through him. The mother turned and mimed slamming the door, whispering frantic commands to her children.

  "She's telling them to hide," Lyseira said from behind him. "She says they'll keep it dark in here and wait for―"

  A smear of darkness peeled itself from the wall, shaped vaguely like a man. Angbar remembered the children screaming, their mother dashing over to them. Ahk shai! she screamed, arms wide, trying to protect her children. Ahk all a Mei! She dropped prostrate, her face to the floor.

  "'We kneel.'" Lyseira's voice was like crumbling ash. "'We accept Her.'"

  The mother seized her children by the shirts, forcing them to their knees. Ahk all a Mei!

  Mehiya dessen-té, the darkness seethed. A red shadow erupted from its outstretched hand.

  The mother screamed, impaled by crimson, and crumpled. Her children wailed. Angbar looked away before their cries abruptly cut off.

  "'She declines you,'" Lyseira said sickly.

  The darkness flowed toward the door, fading as it approached, but Angbar stepped aside for it. The thought of letting it pass through him made him want to gag. As it vanished, he saw old skeletons lying where the shades of the mother and her children had just died.

  "Lyseira!" Takra called from out on the ledge. "The Kesprey! I think the Kesprey were here!"

  The two of them dashed back to the broad ledge and looked where Takra pointed. Two levels down, on the opposite side of the tower, a half-dozen shades clad in blue and grey hurled flame into the gulf of open space at the tower's center. The massacre slowed as the chanters there were forced to defend themselves. Detonations erupted beneath the Kesprey's feet; lightning arced through them; and the Kesprey held, impervious.

  Kesprey. The word seized Angbar's heart, filled it with hope. They fought back. They resisted―

  He remembered a sound like glass shattering, and a gap appeared in the light that now ringed every level of the tower. From that place of shadow just behind the Kesprey emerged two more smears of darkness, each with a livid crimson blade.

  "Behind you!" Lyseira screamed, too consumed by the horror of the moment to remember she couldn't change the outcome. "Behind―!" And an answering cry from the pulse-shades themselves, a warning so desperate it curdled Angbar's blood:

  Mal'shedaal!

  The black figures attacked—one with deliberate purpose, its crimson weapon methodical and implacable, the other laying in to the group of Kesprey like an erupting volcano. Angbar remembered the shrieks as the tower's defenders died, the grim determination of the invisible chanters' spells turning back to the task of wholesale butchery.

  The panic in the air was palpable now, the shades so thick he could sense them easily: running, trampling, dying. Here and there pockets of Kesprey held out, fighting back, but they were grossly outnumbered. The Mal'shedaal flowed from one group to the next, sliding through the shadows and emerging to overwhelm them.

  Syntal had ranged far ahead, leaving everyone else behind. Seth broke into a run, trying to catch up to her. Angbar and the others gave chase, surging downward through a tower of unspooling horrors: shrieks and blasts of remembered flame, a brown mist that roiled downward and left the floor slick with remembered blood.

  "Stop!" Lyseira called. Seth drew up, threw a wild glance back. Lyseira pointed at the shade of a man in white robes, clinging to a doorframe. "I know him! From the fourth Seal—the Hall of the Council! Remember?"

  "We have to catch up to Syntal," Seth said, "before she―"

  But Lyseira ignored him. As the man in white vanished through the door, Lyseira went after him. Seth scowled.

  "Get to Syntal," he said to Angbar as he came back. "Don't let her open the book." Then he dashed after Lyseira, and Angbar and Takra continued downward.

  vi. Lyseira

  No, the man said to the empty room. He clutched his amulet, bearing the triangle-and-cross of the Kesprey. Stay in Tal'aden. Finish the preparations. We can't win here. There's no escaping. Every word as distinct and hollow as her memory.

  Then he glanced at her, and she remembered him: Alec Goburn, First of the White. He had sat to Ethaniel's left; had been one of the Kesprey's leaders. For a heartbeat she thought he could see her, somehow, across the millennia. She reached out, fingers trembling—and a blue haze passed through her from behind, a man-shaped form that reminded her of the Mal'shedaal. Indistinct, its features obscured. Because it didn't die here, she suddenly thought.

  Alec, the haze said, and that was when she recognized its weapon: a longsword she had known since she was a child.

  Lars, Alec said. A single word, pregnant with suspicion. You did this. Understanding came into his eyes, a dawning of cold realization. Didn't you?

  She has to trust me, Alec. Lar'atul's voice issued from the blue haze, a hiss of wind over a frozen lake. I'm sorry.

  You've returned to Her.

  No. I told you—

  You think I would believe anything you tell me? Alec gasped, naked pain glaring from his eyes. This—it was a sanctuary, Lars. They could have lived. They could have survived the Seal. All they needed was secrecy.

  She would've learned of it anyway. She was on the cusp. I had to be forthright, or She'd have suspected me next.

  You betrayed us.

  Lar'atul's voice hesitated, its blue form trembling. Yes.

  You demon, Alec growled. You snake.

  I am. And the haze lunged forward, sword high.

  Alec brought up his staff to block in a squeal and shower of sparks. He danced backward, eyes flashing. You sehking snake!

  Lar'atul twirled his blade. A green glow stole over it.

  Alec started praying for Godsflame—Lyseira recognized the words—and Lars darted in, weapon diving. Alec cut off the prayer, lurched into a clumsy parry—and his staff collapsed to ash as Lar'atul's sword struck it. His face became a mask of raw horror, branded into Lyseira's memory, just before Lars slammed his sword into it. She caught an instant's spray of blood and bone before the wound blackened, turning to a line of slag that spread over Alec's dead body, transforming it, too, to ash. A second later his ruined corpse collapsed on itself, a pile of black dust that still lay in the room before her eyes.

  I'm sorry, my friend, Lars whispered, and left the room the way he'd come in.

  vii. Angbar

  Syntal paused just long enough to chant a Hover, then jumped over the railing.

  "Sehk," Angbar heard himself say. "Syn, wait!" But she had already descended out of sight.

  Takra chanted and followed her. Angbar did the same, dashing through the cries of the dying to reach the rail and give chase.

  The tower looked different from here. From the spiraling ledge, he'd only been able to see what was in front of or across from him; here, he could see everything. It was a predator's view of a herd of stampeding prey. Spells licked out like poison darts, claiming victims by the dozens. Now he could see that horrible brown mist pockmarked the e
ntire structure, sending many plunging over the rail to escape it. Their shades plummeted past him, screaming.

  He tried to shut it out, to remember it wasn't real. It might not be real, his mind told him, but it still happened. It was real then—real enough that it scarred the Pulse here, just like the cataclysm did at Kesselholm. He sank slowly toward the ground, somewhere below, wishing he could make his descent faster as his thoughts kept crashing into each other. How can she not see this? he wondered as he saw Syntal below him. How can this not give her pause? Ordlan Green's admonitions—that failing to restore the Pulse would somehow doom the world—felt distant here, academic, when confronted with the visceral horror of such wanton slaughter.

  Now, as Syntal touched down, the floor of the tower came into focus. It was shrouded in bones.

  The realization made Angbar's stomach lurch, forced him to close his eyes before he vomited. He made the rest of the descent that way, fighting for control of his guts; praying that when he set down, he'd feel solid brick beneath his feet and not the uneven sprawl of old bones.

  The ground rose to meet him. It felt solid. He opened his eyes and took in a floor covered in the ancient remnants of shattered corpses, an open canopy occasionally flashing with the shades of those who still remembered hurling themselves to their deaths. But he had his balance. His feet were steady.

  "Sehk," Syntal said. "There's nothing here."

  "Can we . . . wait?" Takra managed, a tinge of green in her cheeks. "These pulse-shades . . . let them finish, and then look for it?"

  "It's not real," Syntal snarled. "Don't you get that? Just ignore it." She stalked along the wall, scanning with Spellsight for some clue. "We have to do this before Seth catches up to us. He'll be going crazy. Stuff like this really bothers him."

  "It should bother you," Angbar said. "Would you . . . stop? Look around? Syn!"

  She ignored him, still scanning the walls and the ruins of the dead with equal intellectual distance.