Necromancer Awakening (49 page)

Nicolas slipped into a group of pilgrims as they entered the Great Hall.

The palatial hall was separated into two halves, one comprised of several large, sunk-in sitting areas, ringed with polished travertine stone banisters, and the other a banquet area with rows of glazed-granite tables and benches. The walls, ceiling, and floor all looked as if they were carved from a single piece of polished rust-brown marble.

A group of women gathered in the closest sitting area. They were speaking with animated gestures.

“I’m well past my time now,” a woman said. “I think I’m pregnant.”

Most of them smiled when they heard the news, but an older woman didn’t share their excitement.

“Don’t set your hopes as high as last time,” the older woman said.

They passed the group before he could hear the rest of the conversation. Why would they tell a pregnant woman to not be happy?

The base of the helical tower was on the far end of the room…right where Mujahid said it would be. Arched openings running up the outside wall allowed natural light to illuminate the spiraling stairs inside.

His group would pass the base of the stairs on their way to another shrine, so he slowed in an effort to fall back to the rear. He had to do something about the guard that followed them, though.

He dove into the stairwell, releasing two ropes of necropotency behind him. With a strong mental tug, he pulled the guard into the stairwell behind him with one rope while using the other to gag him.

Nicolas dragged the guard behind a half wall, then pulled the dagger from his robe.

The guard’s eyes bulged, but the mystical gag kept his screams from being heard.

“I’m so sorry,” Nicolas said.

Nicolas thrust the dagger into the guard’s throat. He backed away as the life drained from the innocent man.

What have I become?

When the last shred of life left the guard, Nicolas raised him and bounded up the spiral staircase toward the sanctuary, losing count of the number of turns it made.

A cloaked man in leather boots, wearing a talisman like Mujahid’s, ran down the stairs toward him.

There has to be a way through this without killing everybody I run into!

The words of Siek Lamil echoed in his mind. “You will make the journey to the Plane of Death with the blood of many men on your hands.”

He shot a cylinder of necropotency toward the man’s throat.

The man vanished, and a wave of power passed through Nicolas’s chest from front to back.

It happened so fast that Nicolas had to look twice. He cursed under his breath and continued up the stairs. There was no going back now.

A great shudder forced him to the ground as another barrier quake started, but the quake fueled his determination. He would put an end to these quakes and to Kagan as well.

Mujahid looked at the Pinnacle guardsmen gathering in the plaza and knew, in his heart, that he was defeated.

“Get us out of this alive and I promise I won’t make jokes about you playing with dead things,” Yuli said.

“Let’s just hope we bought him enough time,” Mujahid said.

Shouts arose from the guardsmen.

Mujahid watched with a mixture of surprise and anger as three undead emerged from the eastern arch and sliced through the guards like master swordsmen.

“That damned boy,” he said. “I told him to go straight for the central tower and forget about us.”

“Fear not, Lord Mujahid,” a voice said from behind.

Tithian
.

“The
damned boy
is right where you sent him,” Tithian said. “I left him on the central stairs a moment ago. I think I scared the both of us. In fact, I think he tried to kill me.”

“Three penitents,” Mujahid said. “Not bad for a rusty life magus.”

“My people are cleaning up the guard on the east end, but they can’t do it all. They’re spies and assassins, not soldiers, and certainly not magi.”

“You were right. I…you should know, that’s all.”

“In your own words, old friend, let’s survive this war first, then we’ll tend to forgiveness.”

Mujahid nodded. “Where do you need us the most?”

“Make your way through the eastern arch to the tunnels. We can draw the council out from a position of strength and cover. You have the proper sigil?”

“I taught
you
of sigils, if I recall.”

Tithian smiled and vanished.

The ground rumbled as the quake continued, and the stairwell filled with dust.

The way the tower was tapering, he should be getting close to the sanctuary. He made one more turn around the spiral staircase, clinging to the central wall, and a travertine-lined corridor came into view as he rounded the curve.

This was the place Mujahid told him about.

Portraits of magi set in bas-relief lined the corridor on each side. The passage ended in a large arch with two massive stone doors. They hung open to reveal a multi-hued orb of cascading light in the room beyond. As the liquid light flowed over the orb’s surface it broke around swirls of energy that radiated every color of the rainbow. A beam of golden yellow as wide as the orb rose straight up from the top. The amount of energy it radiated was incalculable. He’d experienced this much power only one other time—near the barrier wall under the city of Aquonome.

This had to be the Great Orb of Arin.

So why were the doors open?
Kagan must have heard that rumpus going on out there.

The ground around him shook, but the Orb of Arin seemed to be permanently fixed in the air, unmovable by any natural force.

He approached the orb, expecting to be attacked at any moment. Mujahid warned him that Kagan would be close to the orb, especially if there was a disturbance on the island. But Nicolas was alone. He filled his well with power to enhance his senses.

As he walked closer to the orb, a war of emotion erupted inside him. He could leave. If this orb was anything like the Orb of Zubuxo, then all he had to do was reach out and touch it. It took the Cichlos back home. It would take him home too. Back to Kaitlyn. He could put all of this behind him and hold her in his arms once more. It had been almost a year since he last saw her. Was she waiting for him? Did she think he was dead?

The heir. He who walks between worlds…Nicolas.

The voice resounded through his being as if it possessed him. It was different this time than under Aquonome. In the sea, a cacophony of voices had bombarded him, but this time a single, majestic voice entered his mind.

You have come. And now you must bring down the sky.

“But I don’t know how.”

You are not alone.

A blanket of energy hit his back and wrapped around him. The power drained away from him, emptying his well until the last drop of necropotency vanished. It was a shield of some sort.

He spun and saw a tall, slender man standing in the doorway.

The man wore a plain black head cover that laid flat against the top of his head. It was shaped like a zucchetto worn by a Catholic bishop, except broader, covering more of the head, and without the stem on top. Tufts of silvery hair poked out from beneath the cover. A red scapular trimmed with black wrapped around his shoulders and hung down to the center of his chest, where he clasped his slender fingers together. His black, floor-length cassock hid his shoes, but they clacked against the stone floor when he stepped.

“I believe you are my son,” the man said.

Kagan
.
He set a trap for me and I walked right into it.

“That makes you the son of a god, you know,” Kagan said. “It also makes you the sole heir to my throne. It would be wise for us to get to know one another, wouldn’t you agree?”

Nicolas seethed. Kagan was the reason he was here, the reason this world had destroyed itself, and he was the cause of all the pain Nicolas saw on the Field of Judgment.

One of them would die today. And Nicolas would make damned sure it was Kagan.

Mujahid led Yuli and the remaining men through the eastern arch to a small plaza, bordered on each side by Pinnacle buildings. The hidden entrance he had shown Tithian decades earlier was just ahead.

A guard across the plaza shouted.

So much for stealth.

Dozens of Pinnacle guardsmen rushed from the barracks on the far side of the plaza, drawing swords and shouting battle cries.

When Mujahid looked at the barracks, for the first time in decades, it was as if everything he hated about this place, every bad memory he had, came flooding back.

He thought about the day they banished him and stripped him of an office he never asked for. He thought about Kagan’s tyranny, and how the archmage usurped the voice of the gods themselves. He thought of all the dead, trapped in a hellish existence, waiting to be judged by a god who could no longer help them. And he thought of his brethren—men and women of Clan Mukhtaar, who suffered agonizing deaths at the hands of Kagan’s agents for no other reason than their faith.

He thought of Nicolas, too…the infant, ripped from his world and birthright…the young man, torn away from his true love and the only home he had ever known, thrust into a conflict he didn’t ask for or cause.

He thought of all these things, and something snapped. The carefully-crafted prison that kept his rage in check came crashing down, and he made no move to stop it this time. He welcomed it. He encouraged it.

Now. Now is the time for you to be free.

The hatred flowed through him, and he smiled. They would all suffer. These guardsmen defended Kagan, and that would cost them their lives.

The symbol of ascension ignited in his mind and he raised his hands over the plaza. He heard the guardsmen shout as one before they charged.

He wove threads of energy through symbols of power, forming patterns he had never attempted before. The hatred was leading him to hidden recesses in his consciousness that, until now, were undiscovered…and his smile grew broader.

Symbol after symbol ignited and pulsed with power as he imbued them with necromantic energy. He flooded the dancing symbols in a crackling bath of arcane force, channeling more power than he thought possible, until the pain in his head grew unbearable.

And still he smiled.

He heard Yuli’s battle cry, as if from far away, and archers releasing arrows into the charging patrol. He listened as soldiers on both sides fell. It no longer mattered if they were friend or foe…they added to his power. Power was all that mattered. No one would live. A Mukhtaar Lord decreed it so.

No…the being he was becoming decreed it so.

And still he smiled.

He cast the power forward, summoning the entity that demanded to be summoned.

Time slowed its eternal march until it stopped. He turned to his right and saw men with mouths wide open, their arrows hanging in the air as if frozen in a wall of translucent ice. He turned to the oncoming charge of Pinnacle guard, and watched as some of them hovered over the ground, caught in mid step.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Only power mattered. Only hatred mattered. Only the being he was becoming mattered.