Broken Crescent (31 page)

A third human in a similar mask stood guard, though he seemed to pay more attention to the torture in front of him than the door behind him.

Something bumped into Nate. Nate whipped around and grabbed Solis by the neck and slammed him into the wall before he realized who it was.

From inside the room came the words, “Did you hear something?”

“Yes, the last of this creature’s power squeezed into my hand.”

Nate backed up a step and placed his hand over Solis’ mouth. He turned to face the doorway. Fortunately, he hadn’t stumbled into the light and it seemed the guard couldn’t see him from inside the brightly lit room.

“No, Thantis, something outside. Could that ghadi come back here?”

There was laughter from the one holding the remaining ghadi. “All that thing could do is find a place to curl up and die.”

The one at the table, Thantis, rolled off the now-dead ghadi. The guard kicked the too light body into the corner with the other corpses. The one holding the last ghadi laughed and spun the creature toward the table. “Now I will enjoy this.” This last one had lost his mask, and his scars were fully visible across his face and his shaved head. There were also a set of fresh scratches across his left cheek.

Apparently, at least, this one did. The ghadi kicked and clawed, and it took all three men to restrain it.

Nate let go of Solis and gripped the dagger.

Nate stared at the man without the mask. He knew the runes carved into the flesh, and he could see three spells.

The names of the spells.

Like the candles were named.

Nate concentrated and whispered the incantation, one of the three invocations he had memorized. Instead of naming a candle, however, he named one of the spells on the face of the man holding the ghadi.

Nate could feel the pull of energy, the potential force building in his words, released when he completed casting the simple beginner spell.

This time he wasn’t lighting a candle.

The man screamed and clutched at his face as if someone had poured acid into his eyes. The runes in the man’s skin were traced in fire, the spell branding the man’s skin.

“God help me,” Nate whispered. The one who had guarded the door had his back to Nate. Nate jumped him, stabbing with the dull ceremonial dagger.

Nate’s subconscious suffered from a perverse sense of humor, only letting him realize the full implications of what he was doing when he had grabbed the masked man from behind.

Nate jabbed the dagger into the man’s back, above the kidney. It seemed to do little more than bruise his opponent. The dull blade couldn’t pierce the man’s robes, much less his skin.

The man reacted to Nate’s attack by letting go of the ghadi and stumbling backward into Nate as they both slid on the blood-slick straw. Nate felt the man grabbing for his arm and Nate tried another blow with the dagger, under the arm this time where the clothing seemed thinner. The blade tore the fabric and might have gone in half an inch.

The man threw himself backward, slamming Nate into the wall next to the doorway. The impact stunned Nate enough to loosen his grip on his opponent’s neck. The man pulled away and spun around, reaching for a blade hanging from his own belt. As he moved, Nate could hear the unmistakable syllables of the Gods’ Language emerging from behind the snarling demon mask that faced him.

That couldn’t be good.

Nate clutched the handle of the dagger in his fist, and punched the demon as hard as he could in the center of its crooked nose. Nate’s fist, weighted with the dagger, made a satisfying crunch against the mask. Satisfying enough that Nate barely noticed the skin on his knuckles splitting open.

The blow had the intended effect. Nate could feel the dissipating potential as the incantation was interrupted. Nate threw his fist again at the cracked demon face. The left cheek of the mask caved in and the man’s head snapped back. He was still trying to pull his weapon.

Nate kicked him, low. As the man doubled over, Nate brought the pommel of the dagger down on the back of his skull. The demon mask came off as the man fell to his knees. He was about to hit the man again, when something slammed into the small of his back, sending him tumbling over his kneeling opponent.

Nate rolled over on his back just in time to see the end of a staff hurtling toward his face. He jerked his head to the side just in time. The staff struck the floor next to him, close enough to burn his ear and deafen him with the sound of the impact.

Above him, Nate saw his attacker’s snarling face. Freshly burned runes wept clear fluid over the man’s cheek and shaven head. Nate tried to scramble to his feet, but he saw the next swing coming.

Before the staff came down, someone jumped the man from behind. The swing went wild, giving Nate a chance to scramble upright. Nate saw his chance and ducked inside the staff’s reach. He began slamming his weighted fist into the guy.

With the third blow, the man dropped the staff.

By six or seven, the guy was on the ground.

Nate turned to face the table, looking for the third man.

The last one lay on the table, still wearing his mask. A massive gash ran the length of his torso. Nate shook his head and turned back to the man he had just dropped.

“Thank you, you probably saved my life . . .” Nate trailed off. He had thought Solis had jumped the guy to help him out. But he wasn’t talking to Solis.

Standing next to him was the last living ghadi, its arms stained red with blood. Nate stared at the blood-drenched ghadi.

“Kill it!” Solis yelled from the doorway.

Nate looked at him. “What?”

“It killed a man.”

Yeah, and you watched.
“Good for him,” Nate said. “These—” He choked back the words because he didn’t have the appropriate vindictiveness in this language. Now that the adrenaline was leeching away, he was thinking about Yerith. What had happened to her and the other ghadi? Looking at the straw bedding and the chambers off the main room, Nate thought that this place must be where the ghadi had been kept.

Where Yerith worked.

The rooms were small enough that he could just turn around and see the whole of it. There was no one left here, not Yerith, not any other ghadi.

Nate dropped into English.

“Bastards!” He kicked the unconscious man closest to him. He looked back at Solis, who still stood in the doorway, refusing to enter. “I’m not crying for them.”

Solis was shaking his head “That thing isn’t human. If it realizes it can hurt us—”

Nate walked up to the remaining ghadi. “The one that came to our cell. He was here.” He talked as he approached, even though he knew the ghadi couldn’t understand him. Nate hoped that a calm tone and body language would get his point across.

“What are you doing?”

“Shut up,” Nate snapped at Solis. The coward made him nostalgic for Osif.

Nate didn’t make any sudden moves. He didn’t want to startle the ghadi. “A ghadi brought us this.” Nate slowly held up the dagger. “Maybe you know why.”

Solis sounded panicked. “You can’t speak to these things. They don’t conspire. They barely think. . . .”

Nate ignored him, and fortunately, so did the ghadi. The ghadi looked at Nate, then at the dagger. Like the other ghadi, Nate saw something akin to recognition in its eyes.

It turned and walked toward the doorway. Solis almost fell on his face as he scrambled out of its way. The ghadi stopped in the doorway and motioned to Nate to follow him.

Nate was worried for a few moments that Solis might jump the creature, but it seemed that Solis didn’t have it in him. He shrank back against the wall as first the ghadi, then Nate, passed by him.

Nate only paused long enough to gather the lantern. “What are you doing?” Solis whispered now, as if he was afraid the ghadi might actually understand him.

“I’m following the ghadi,” Nate said.

The ghadi walked back the way Nate and Solis had come. Nate walked after him, and after a few moments, Nate heard Solis’ footsteps behind them.

Soon they were in another branch of the caverns. The ghadi led them into an unused area, and past a couple of partial cave-ins that made Nate feel nervous. Nate was starting to think that this ghadi wasn’t leading them anywhere, when they stopped in a cylindrical chamber.

It was a dead end, and the ghadi stopped in the center of the room. They seemed to have left the sounds of fighting far behind them.

“What now?” Nate asked.

He looked at the dagger. There weren’t any warriors lining the walls as he had seen under Manhome, so there was no conveniently empty sheath to fill. Even so, he was still convinced that he held a key to something. It was too much like the dagger that Arthiz’s men had used. For all he knew, it could be the same dagger.

Nate held up the lamp and studied the walls. They were carved in bas-relief, an army of flattened ghadi staring out at Nate. These weren’t warriors, and from the way they were dressed, Nate suspected that they had been ghadi of some status. They weren’t armed.

Nate carried the lantern around the circumference of the room, looking at the walls. He heard Solis gasp when Nate illuminated the central focus of the carvings.

It was familiar, he had seen this before. . . .

No, that was wrong, he had only glimpsed a vague outline on a weathered stone that had been defaced. No one had gotten around to defacing this, the carving was as sharp and detailed as the day it was made.

Erupting out of the flat bas-relief was a plant-cloud-creature that extended parts of itself a full foot above the surface of the stone. There were plantlike tendrils, insectile feelers, organic floral shapes, and organs Nate had no name for.

“Ghad,” Solis whispered.

This thing?
Nate looked at the ghadi for some reaction. The ghadi did seem transfixed by the sight of the carving, but only for a moment. After a few seconds, the ghadi turned toward Nate and held out a hand.

Nate looked at the extended hand, with its extra joints and too-long fingers. It was still coated with blood.

The ghadi clenched its hand and opened it again, several times, insistently.
What do you want?

Tentatively, Nate held up the dagger and the ghadi grabbed it so quickly that Nate worried that he might have misjudged the whole thing. Solis pulled away, stumbling back into the wall, as the ghadi gripped the dagger.

For a moment the ghadi faced both of them with the dagger raised, then he turned and sank the dagger into one of the many orifices that were scattered around the Ghad carving.

Nate watched the dagger slide in to the hilt and he felt the same sense of electric potential that he had when he had last seen something like this done.

The sound of grinding stones filled the chamber as the relief sculptures moved, sliding along the wall. Solis sprang away from the wall, as if it burned him. In front of them, the Ghad sculpture seemed to unravel. It split in two around the dagger with the halves sliding open to reveal a doorway.

Behind them, the bas-relief walls met where the entrance had been, sealing the room off. The air from the new doorway was heavy and damp and smelled of age.

“Now we’re trapped down here,” Solis muttered.

M
ATE WALKED up to the part of the Ghad sculpture that still held the dagger. He pulled the dagger free. When he did so, there was a slight resistance, as if there was some suction or magnetic force holding it in place. The ghadi made no move to stop him.

The walls didn’t slide shut. Instead, the newly revealed hallway started glowing. Nate blinked, because it seemed for a moment as if the air itself had become luminescent. The brightness hurt his eyes.

It took his eyes several long moments to adjust enough for him to realize that the light came from stones evenly spaced along the walls of the corridor. Bricks the size of Nate’s fist cast full-spectrum light that seemed as intense as full sun.

The ghadi walked into the hallway, waving them forward.

Nate took a few steps to follow and saw Solis still standing in the entranceway.

“Come on,” Nate said.

Solis hesitated, then started walking after Nate.

Nate touched one of the glowing rocks. The surface was as cold as the surrounding stone, and covered in familiar rectilinear runes. Nate noted the regular positioning of the stones and could see half a dozen that seemed dead. The dead ones all had suffered cracks that obliterated part of the inscription.