The Fifth Vertex (The Sigilord Chronicles) (37 page)

As he descended the lower level bloomed with light, and Urus exhaled with relief. He remembered back in Kest, running through the dungeons in the pitch dark with nothing but the chain on Goodwyn's suzur to guide him. At least here he would have some light.

On this level the dead were afforded even more luxurious accommodations. They each had full-sized doors that led into small apartment-like chambers. Each of those had a foyer, marked by a plaque, and then the burial chamber itself, containing a stone sarcophagus in which lay the body of an ancient Vultaran.
 

The plaques didn't bear words, but sigils that Urus guessed were like names, and then below that maybe a description of that person's deeds in life. He couldn't tell, at least not until he got to the third tomb.

In this one, he recognized two sigils from his book. He pulled the book out and flipped through the pages until he got to a chapter that looked exactly like the plaques on the walls. The name-sigils were identical. Below that, in ancient Kestian, the book read: "Stebin Ombish, Fourth of the First, Master of the 9th Circle."

There was some more writing he couldn't translate, followed by "killed in the Fulcrum War holocaust."

If this was the same Fulcrum War that Murin had talked about, this man had died thousands of years before and might have been one of the last sigilords, if he was a sigilord at all. Urus hated not knowing anything about sigils or sigilords. He hated not knowing the answers to puzzles.

For good measure, he ran his hands over all the sigils on the plaque just to be sure none of them did anything special, then stepped back out into the hallway. He hurried through the remaining rooms on that level, keenly aware of the precious little time he had left.

He found another staircase going down, and instead of taking the stairs he hopped up over the railing and dropped to the level below, letting the time pressure rush him into making careless mistakes—careless mistakes that a true Kestian warrior would never have made.

Urus crept through the ever-shrinking corridors, wondering if only the corpses of long-dead sigilords populated the catacombs. Perhaps he had chosen wrong, and there was no vertex down there.

He shrugged off his doubts and kept going, determined to search every inch of the tombs. His determination did not last long. After just a few more minutes of searching, the corridor came to an abrupt end.

There was no door, no opening, or even as much as a crack in the dead end, just a confusing jumble of raised lines and swirls chiseled out of the stone. The relief carvings bore a similar style as the name-sigils on the rooms above, but none of it made any sense; none of the lines seemed to connect to each other.

Murin!
Urus called out with his mind. No response came. He was going to have to figure this out for himself.

Urus inspected the lines on the wall more carefully. The more he looked, the less random it all seemed. Certain shapes and curves repeated themselves, and he saw the same line strokes and carvings in several places. On either wall to the side of the dead end, raised lines of shaped stone lifted out of the smooth rock wall, stopping short at the corner.

I wonder if it's just a crazy sigil
, Urus thought, and pressed his hand against one of the lines, calling forth his power. Instead of glowing like a sigil, a square section of the wall slid to the right, changing places with the adjoining square section.

Urus stepped back and exclaimed aloud, "A puzzle!"

Finally a puzzle I can solve
, Urus thought. He took a few more steps back and looked at the wall from the new perspective of a riddle that needed solving. He scanned the lines on the side walls, noting how they stopped abruptly in the corners.
I'll bet if I make the lines connect, the door will open
.

He approached the puzzle wall again, and blue smoke poured from his hands as he shifted and rearranged parts of the wall. The pieces had no seams and there were no cracks or any other evidence that the stone could be moved.

"Masters of space and time" is what Murin called the sigilords. Urus was finally beginning to appreciate the depth of power those people once had, and why the blood mages wanted it for themselves.

Urus lost himself, and all sense of time, in the puzzle. He had gotten nearly all of the lines to match, but he realized a crucial mistake too late and had to undo most of his moves and start over. Finally after spending far too much time on the puzzle, the four lines that grew out of the side walls crisscrossed in an intricate weave across the dead end wall, resulting in an amazing sigil.
 

A moment later the sigil flashed blue and the wall simply vanished. It had been a locked door after all and the sigil had unlocked it. Urus felt as proud of himself as he had the one time he had managed to navigate the network of gas lamp pipes to find the source, except this time he hadn't gotten stuck between walls with only Goodwyn, some rope, and a jar of wax to pull him out.

Fingers still surging with the heat of his power, he pulled Hugo from its sheath, thankful for its protection. He thought back to the real Hugo, the doll who had been his lone childhood companion for so long. He remembered Hugo's name sign, the four crossed swords on the straw doll's chest. He pressed his fingers to the blade and that same name sign flashed blue then cooled, leaving the etched image of crossed swords in the center of an outline of a doll scored into the metal.

Urus had no idea what he had just done to his sword, but there was no time to find out. He had to find the last vertex.

As he stepped across the new threshold the darkness receded, replaced by a soft green glow. The dome-ceilinged, circular chamber held a single coffin in the center. Aside from the sarcophagus, the room held no other furnishings or decorations. not even a single sigil was carved into the walls.

Urus was about to approach the casket when he noticed blood beginning to drip from the ceiling. At first it was just a few drops, then a steady stream, finally it looked like a river of blood poured through some unseen opening in the dome. The pool of blood rose from the floor, assuming the shape of a tall, thin man. A moment later, clothes and human features appeared and the blood splashed back to the floor.

The tall, white-robed man stood in the center of the blood pool, a wicked smile on his scarred, pockmarked face.
 

This must be Draegon, the man Murin said Anderis wanted to succeed as ruler of the Order
, Urus thought.

"I am indeed Draegon, leader of the Order of the Sanguine Crystal, Blood Mage of the 13th circle," Draegon said aloud, his smile spreading over impossibly white teeth.

He can read my thoughts
, Urus thought. He had no idea where Murin or Timoc were, and his protective knights were too far away to do any good. He was all alone and he had to come up with a plan soon.
If he can see inside my mind then I'll have to make sure he likes what he sees.
 

"I believe I have you to thank for removing the ward that protected this chamber," Draegon said with a wry grin. "Without your help, I could never have penetrated that wall."

Fear and panic surged through Urus. Had he really just helped Draegon find the fifth vertex?

"Come closer, boy, I would see the annoying little creature that has been nipping at my heels all this time."

Urus took a few steps closer, tightening his grip around Hugo's hilt.

"I'll take that," said Draegon. Hugo escaped Urus's grasp and flew into Draegon's hand. "Such an impressive and heavy weapon. This must have been forged for a giant!"

Alone and unarmed, Urus channeled all of his hatred for the man and all he had done, hoping his opponent would sense it.

"You think me evil, do you?" Draegon said, taking the bait.

"You destroyed my homeland, killed all of my people and countless others in other cities and Ishimani knows how many others died in what's left of Waldron by now," Urus said through clenched teeth.

"How many people have the Kestians killed in battle? How many died in the Fulcrum War on both sides? When will you foolish people understand that there is no good or evil. There is only what we need and that which opposes our needs. I oppose your needs, so you think me evil. You oppose mine, therefore you are evil."

"I'm not evil. I'm nothing like you." Urus stalled for time until he could find an opportunity, hoping the rage and hatred on his mind would keep Draegon from seeing what else he was thinking.

Draegon raised an eyebrow, then smiled. The leader of the blood mages covered his mouth with his hand and spoke. Urus couldn't read his lips and Murin's translation power failed him.

"You have been reading my lips, haven't you? You're deaf, and quite talented at hiding that fact. A deaf sigilord!" Draegon said with a laugh. "A more rare creature does not exist in the universe. Next you'll tell me that you rode here on a dragon or that your sigils are blue!"

To avoid reacting to Draegon's mention of blue sigils, Urus recalled as many powerful, overwhelming, and terrible memories as he could, hoping to flood Draegon's mind with distractions. He focused on his deafness and dredged up traumatic memories, some he'd thought long forgotten. He remembered his sire pounding his ears until they bled, his peers teasing and taunting him because of his speech problem and deafness, and his lack of the true Kestian killer instinct.
 

Unable to hold back the flood of emotion, Urus dropped to his knees and wept. He wondered if Draegon was in his mind, somehow, rooting around for bitter memories.

"How could one with so much power have led such a terribly painful life?" Draegon asked. "Life is not about right or wrong, good or evil. It is about those who have power and those who don't. Had you known how to use your sigil power, you could have shown those children that it was they who were weak and helpless. I have many powers, including the power to cure your deafness."

Urus looked up at Draegon, a man who could likely kill him with a single thought. Urus had never thought about what it would be like to be able to hear, only what his deafness had cost him over the years.

"You can?" he asked. Urus had to struggle to keep hold of that tiny thought in the back of his mind that reminded him of what he was doing without letting Draegon see it. The idea that someone could cure his deafness tugged at his heart.

"That and much more. I can give you control of your power. I can teach you, you would have the so-called Kestian killer insti—wait! What have we here?" Draegon gasped, stepping closer to Urus.

"Where?"

"Deep in your mind, buried way in the back where no one could ever see it," said Draegon. Urus panicked. Had he caught on? Did Draegon know what Urus was planning?

"What? What is it?" Urus asked.

"A memory so terrible that your mind sealed it away, where not even you would find it, yet it is at the core of who you are and who you have become. Oh, I must see this memory," Draegon said, coming even closer. He stood over Urus and placed his hands on Urus's head.
 

This is it, this is my chance. All it will take is one strike,
Urus thought.
 

"Come, see what I see, Urus. See why you should join me, let me cure your deafness and unleash your true power," Draegon said. A jolt of heat rippled from his neck to his toes. Urus blinked and the world in the stone chamber was gone, replaced by his childhood home. He stood in the corner of the main room, watching in horror as the memory unfolded around a tiny, younger version of himself.

***

Young Urus sat on the floor, his legs crossed as he rocked himself back and forth, the motion a poor substitute for his absent mother's embrace. In the weeks before her death, she had only rocked him like that a few times, but he remembered each one: the warmth of her shoulders, the firm but comforting pressure of her hand on his back, the soothing vibration that came from her throat as she sang him to sleep. He wanted that warmth, that comfort, but he knew he would never again feel that safe or that loved.

Tears spilled onto Hugo's chest as he held the doll. His sire had thrown the doll away a dozen times, but each time Urus managed to find it, and each time he had gladly endured the beating he got for fishing the toy out of whatever sewer or hole into which the angry old man had tossed it.

Urus watched as the tears absorbed into the crossed swords drawn into the ratty cloth material. He wished that Hugo was a real warrior who would come and save him from his father. Without his mother around to temper the man's foul moods, Urus felt like a training dummy, enduring punches and kicks day in and day out, his wounds healing only so that they could be reopened again.

A throbbing pain erupted in Urus's left ear. He rolled to his side, covering his head with his hands. Blood gushed from his ear while his father kicked him in the stomach and stomped on his knees and feet. His father rolled him over and held him down so he could punch the other ear. Urus's vision blurred, and the pain in his head was so intense he was sure he was going to black out.
 

He didn't even know why his father was angry this time. It didn't matter—the man always found some excuse to be angry and to take that anger out on Urus. Through a mix of blood and tears, Urus looked at Hugo sprawled out on the floor: the warrior hero that was, at least in Urus's dreams, everything that a Kestian warrior should be.

The blows hit him in so many different places Urus could no longer tell what his father was hitting him with, or where. Everything hurt, or bled, or both.

"Save me, Hugo," Urus whispered to the doll with the last of his energy, reaching out and touching the crossed swords on the doll's chest with a bloody finger.
 

A rush of heat and pain flowed down his finger, through his wrist and up to his shoulder. A thin, blue tendril of smoke drifted from his fingertip into the symbol on Hugo's chest. The symbol flashed blue and then faded.

Massive hands as thick as stone hammers clamped onto Urus's neck and lifted him up. Urus looked down into his father's face as he choked, flailing and struggling for just a single gulp of air. The man's face contorted in a rictus of anger and hatred. Urus gasped, certain he was about to die.