Child of a Dead God (50 page)
Chane turned circles as the monks scattered, snarling and crying out, but he kept his eyes on the shadow above—like a pair of wings gliding on a wind, though no breeze flowed through the dark chamber.
“From the walls!” Welstiel shouted.
Chane spun away toward the foot of the wide stairs. Another shadow stalked in, low to the floor, coming from the archway, a silhouette of black paws stretching up to four narrow legs. As it drew closer, a head and long snout took shape.
A wolf. In two quick steps, it leaped at Chane.
He flinched, unable to dodge away, and it passed straight through his chest.
Chane stumbled as deep cold flooded his torso.
“They cannot damage you!” Welstiel called out. “They are only ghosts!”
“No,” Chane rasped, clutching his chest. “They are something else.”
Ferals thrashed about, clawing and screeching, as the shadows assaulted them. Welstiel swung his sword, and steel rippled through a shadow bird’s flapping wing. But the translucent creature flew higher, unfaltering. Welstiel flung his pack aside.
Chane did the same but peered upward uncertainly. Steel had no effect upon these things.
The two younger monks lost all control, their twisted faces frantic as they slashed at empty air. Jakeb looked even less coherent, though he was silent. Only Sabel and Sethè remained calm and pulled weapons—her knife and his iron cudgel.
Cold pain spiked between Chane’s shoulder blades.
He choked as a shadow darted out of his chest. It flew upward, but this time he clearly saw the shape of its head and tail—a raven.
An eerie howl filled the chamber.
Chane quickly scanned about for either shadow wolf, but the howl had come from somewhere more distant. Its dying echo rolled from the narrow passage to the chamber’s left side. Yellow-orange light glimmered in the dark therein, and another shadow wolf bolted out of the narrow opening.
No, this one was silver-coated, and Chane recognized Chap.
The dog barreled into the room like a beast gone mad. And directly behind him came the blur of a white figure. Glistening black hair whipped about her naked body. Her wild, slanted eyes glinted.
Chap charged straight at Welstiel, and his howl twisted into raging snarls. A startled Welstiel barely ducked out of the dog’s way.
“Assist me!” Welstiel ordered.
Chap wheeled about, charging again, and Jakeb threw himself in the dog’s path. Chap snapped and slashed at the monk with fangs and claws, trying to get past. Chane looked back to the naked undead.
Her smooth, perfect face filled with confusion, until one young monk rushed her with hooked fingers. Before the monk landed a grip, she snatched him by the throat, flinging him away one-handed.
The young feral spun head over heels, until his body slammed into the chamber’s side wall. He slid down to the floor in a twitching, broken heap, and then ceased moving at all.
Chane turned his eyes back on the woman—this illusory frail thing.
This was one of Welstiel’s “old ones.”
She could destroy them all effortlessly. Before Chane could look for a way out, another figure emerged from the narrow passage.
Magiere’s eyes were black amid the yellow light behind her. She skidded to a stop with her falchion drawn.
Chane’s throat tightened at the sight of that blade, but her attention was not fixed on him. Her eyes widened, unblinking, as they locked on Welstiel.
Leesil emerged behind Magiere, wearing a glowing amulet upon his chest. A tall blond elf in a dark tunic came next.
Escape was no longer an option.
Chane readied himself for an onslaught, not knowing who would come at him first.
Chap was still harrying Jakeb, trying to get past to Welstiel, and only three other monks remained on their feet.
“Chane!”
He twisted toward the familiar feminine voice.
Chane froze, staring at Wynn.
A second elf, taller than the first, stood at the passage’s arch with his arm wrapped protectively around her. She leaned into the young elf, her cheek pressed against him, and the cold lamp crystal in her hand illuminated her round, olive-toned face. Her small mouth opened halfway at the sight of him, and she clutched the elf’s cloak.
Chane went hollow inside.
And that emptiness filled with rage. It built on a desire to tear the elf’s arm from its shoulder socket and rip his throat out—anything to take that offensive hold off of Wynn. He almost dropped his sword to free both his hands.
Sabel hissed as she rushed around Chane, straight toward Wynn. He could not grab her in time. Leesil charged out, shining blades in his fists, their outer edges running like wings down his forearms.
Chane snarled, ready to kill the half-blood or jerk Sabel back, whichever of them he caught first.
Sabel swerved, and swung for Leesil’s face with her knife.
Wynn pressed against Osha, her emotions in a tangle.
Welstiel was here. How was this possible? And he was surrounded by robed figures casting about and screaming at shadow ravens and wolves. She had seen their tabards before and recognized them—the Sluzhobnék Sútzits, the Servants of Compassion. But they were horrible, twisted and savage. Her heart sickened at their pale skin, colorless eyes, and the misshapen teeth in their snarling mouths.
Only Li’kän stood staring about, as if lost.
And Chane . . .
Wynn cried out his name before thinking. Truth struck her like poison or sudden illness.
Chane had come with Welstiel . . . to get the orb.
Chap ripped into one robed undead, tearing the back of its calf, and then charged straight at Welstiel with his muzzle dripping black fluids. The silver-haired monk was too fast and twisted about, back-fisting Chap and driving him off. Chap’s voice shouted in Wynn’s mind.
Get Magiere away! She must reach the orb first . . . before Welstiel!
Wynn ducked from under Osha’s arm, shouting as she reached for Li’kän.
“Magiere, go! You must find it now!”
Aside from Magiere, Li’kän was the only one who might know how to get through the stone doors. Wynn’s fingers closed on Li’kän’s chill skin, and the undead half-turned.
Li’kän’s expression flattened at Wynn’s touch.
And Wynn was suddenly aware just how foolish her action was.
Magiere faltered when she saw Welstiel.
He looked shabby and weatherworn, but the white patches at his temples still glowed. How could he have found this place, when she’d only learned of it in her dreams two moons ago? She could only see one answer.
Welstiel had trailed her, perhaps from the very day she and Leesil had left Bela, some half a year ago.
Magiere hadn’t seen him since the sewers of Bela, but she’d learned much of him since then. Images of her mother surged up—Magelia lying on a bed, bleeding to death in a keep as Welstiel took away an infant Magiere.
They shared a father he had known and she had not, but which of them was better for it? A small piece of Magiere might have pitied her half brother. But the greater part longed to rip his head from his shoulders and watch his body burn.
Hunger came back, and Magiere’s jaws began to ache. Tears flooded from her eyes as the room brightened in her sight. She clenched her grip tight on the falchion’s hilt.
Sgäile flew past, shining garrote wire in his hands as he went straight at Welstiel.
Leesil raced toward a mad, robed female brandishing a crude knife.
“Magiere, go!” Wynn shouted. “You must find it now!”
Magiere barely heard this over the rage telling her to rend any pale-skinned thing in her way—and get to Welstiel. Turning her head with effort, she saw Wynn’s small hand wrapped around Li’kän’s forearm.
Fear welled within Magiere’s bloodlust.
But Li’kän just stood there and made no move to strike the sage. The white undead twisted her head, her gaze falling upon Magiere.
Li’kän rushed Magiere before she could react. The undead’s small hand closed on Magiere’s wrist. She bolted for the corridor, jerking Magiere into motion.
Magiere’s hunger and rage vanished.
“Go with her!” Wynn cried.
Magiere didn’t look back. Only she could retrieve the orb—and only Li’kän could help. No one told Magiere this. No one had to. The pull to follow the white undead overrode everything else.
Li’kän emerged into the great library, and Magiere shook free of the undead’s grip. Li’kän bolted on without waiting, and by the time Magiere caught up, the undead stood before the stone doors. Li’kän tucked one narrow white shoulder under the iron beam, midway along one door and just beyond its stone bracket. She wrapped her slender fingers around the rusted iron’s bottom edge, waiting expectantly.
Magiere sheathed her falchion and set herself likewise at the other door’s midpoint.
Li’kän’s frail body tensed, and Magiere called hunger to flood her flesh as she shoved upward.
The beam’s weight nearly crushed her back down, but Li’kän slowly straightened upward.
The frail undead’s half of the beam rose steadily, until it cleared the stone bracket. But every joint in Magiere’s body ached as she strained to follow. She pushed harder with her legs as Li’kän held her half up against the stone door.
Magiere was soaked in sweat by the time her end of the beam grated out of its stone bracket. She dropped it, stumbling away, and Li’kän released her end. The beam crashed and tumbled across the stone floor, and a metallic thunderclap echoed through the library.
Li’kän took hold of her bracket and began pulling. Magiere tried to do the same, but her side barely moved. When the space between was wide enough, the undead stopped and slipped in.
A strange sensation washed through Magiere as she stepped through the gap.
Not a strong one, but like the lightness that followed a heavy burden cast off, as if she might never feel fatigue or hunger again. Pain and exhaustion from nearly a moon in the mountains slipped away.
When Magiere regained her senses, Li’kän stood slumped in a downward-sloping dark tunnel of rough-hewn stone. The undead’s features appeared to sag.
Rather than the release Magiere felt, some sorrow or loss seemed to envelop Li’kän. The white undead hesitated, back-stepping once, and shook her head slowly. Then her body lurched as if jerked forward, and she stepped downward along the tunnel.
Magiere followed Li’kän’s dim form, but glanced back once, wondering if the doors behind should be shut. But the white woman kept going.
Far down the tunnel, along its gradual turn, Magiere saw pale orange light filtering from somewhere ahead. And by that dim light, she spotted strange hollows evenly lining both sides of the way.
As she moved on, her night sight sharpened.
A figure crouched inside each of those hollows. She stopped and peered into one.
Age-darkened bones almost melded with ancient stone, but the skeleton had not collapsed when its flesh rotted away ages ago. It was curled on its knees, almost fetally, with its forearms flattened beneath it. The skull top, too wide and large to be a man’s or a woman’s, rested downward between the remains of its hands. With its forehead pressed to the hollow’s stone floor, its eyes had been lowered for centuries.
Like a worshipper waiting in obeisance for its master’s return.
Magiere glanced back up the tunnel, turning about to look into hollows along the tunnel’s other side. She saw only one occupant that had once been human. Others she couldn’t guess.
Some of the crouched, curled forms were small, but one was huge, with an arching spine and thick finger bones that ended in cracked claws. A ridge of spiny bone rose over the top of its downcast skull.
The hollows stretched on, endlessly, toward the dim light down the tunnel.
Li’kän turned to move on. She never glanced once at the hollows, as if the occupants’ endless vigil were only proper in her presence.
Through wide arcing turns spiraling down into the earth, Magiere followed. At every step, skeletons hunkered in their small dark hovels, their eyes averted from Li’kän’s passing.
Leesil thrust and slashed at the dark-haired vampire, blocking her every attempt to get past him. She slashed back with her knife, hissing and twisting beyond the arc of his winged blades. Her jaws widened with small jagged teeth and protruding fangs. Beyond her, Chap harried a silver-haired undead and a younger male.
And then Chane rushed in and tried to duck around the woman.
Leesil shifted with a sharp slash of his right blade. Chane jerked up short, twisting away from the blade’s passing tip, but the mad little female came at Leesil again. And a stocky man with an iron bar closed around her other side. Leesil panicked, facing three at once.
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