The Inner Circle: Holy Spirit (34 page)

‘
I don’t know.’ Jakob
shrugged. ‘Noah might.’

‘
Let’s go.’ Ilgrin
flew for what was left of the great tree. Countless whisps drifting
up from the battlefield caused him to pause cringing. To add insult
to injury, his soldiers were playing dirty.

After allowing Jakob to drop the final
stride to his feet, Ilgrin landed ahead of him and raced down into
the roots. He cast a worried glance into the flames devouring the
upper parts of what was left of the tree. He couldn’t help but feel
concerned about how long it would take before they reached the
bottom.

‘
We’ve got to get to
the dungeon.’ Ilgrin put a hand on Jakob’s shoulder. ‘Take me by
the quickest route you know.’

‘
Sure,’ Jakob
replied. ‘But I really wish you’d tell me what you’re
planning.’

‘
There’s no time.’
Ilgrin hurried through the massive doorway and into the main
entrance.

‘
Um, Ilgrin,’ Jakob
called, forcing him to come to an abrupt stop. ‘It’s this way.’ He
nodded toward a doorway across the room.

‘
Right.’ Ilgrin
hurried through the door and down a long curling staircase, before
entering a crudely made tunnel with the occasional root prodding
through the glistening dirt wall. ‘Quickly,’ Ilgrin urged, having
noticed a rise in temperature.

‘
Look,’ Jakob said,
pointing at a large iron door.

‘
Give me the keys,’
Ilgrin ordered the guard, tearing off the cumbersome Devil’s crown
from his head and looping it around his belt.

‘
My lord.’ The silt
bowed deeply before handing them over.

‘
Thank you.’ Ilgrin
tried one of the keys in the lock only to find that it didn’t turn.
He moved onto another one. ‘Now get yourself out of here. Quickly,’
he snapped at the guard. ‘The tree is burning down. Warn anyone
else working underground who might be unaware.’

‘
Immediately, Devil
Sa’Enoch,’ the guard replied as he hurried along the length of the
tunnel.

‘
Got it.’ Ilgrin felt
the third key move into place, turned it and was satisfied to hear
the lock slide. He burst into the dungeon with Jakob at his heels
and rushed over to the cage that housed the silt he was looking
for. ‘Noah!’

‘
The Devil honours me
too much with such frequent visits,’ Noah uttered sarcastically as
he approached the bars. ‘To what do I owe this
pleasure?’

‘
There must be a
store room.’ Ilgrin gripped the bars. ‘I need black powder and
anything else that’ll burn.’

‘
And you
think
that I’m going to tell you where to
find it?’ Noah laughed. ‘Why in Maker’s name would I do
that?’

‘
Because I’m your
Devil,’ Ilgrin snarled, thrusting a hand through the bars to lock
his fingers around Noah’s arm. He pulled him up against the cage
and forced his hand around Ilgrin’s crown.

‘
Stop!’ Noah cried,
his hand blistering. ‘Please!’

‘
Tell me!’ Ilgrin
shouted, removing Noah’s hand from the crown, but maintaining his
grip on the demon’s arm.

‘
I’ll have to show
you,’ Noah sobbed. ‘It’s too far away.’

‘
All right,’ Ilgrin
grumbled. ‘But if you so much as breathe the wrong way, you’ll
suffer twice what you just did.’ He jangled the keys about until he
found the right one and used it to open Noah’s door.

‘
This way.’ Noah
hurried toward the exit.

‘
Noah,’ Ilgrin said
softly, before moving to follow the silt. Noah turned around, his
expression one of suspicion. ‘You should probably be warned that I
have one of these now.’ Ilgrin moved his cape to reveal a pistol at
his hip.

‘
I understand,’ Noah
uttered nervously.

‘
Come on,’ Ilgrin
said to Jakob, before the two hurried out of the dungeon after
Noah.

Noah was fast and occasionally Ilgrin
had to ask him to slow down for fear of losing him, but eventually
they came to a room containing that which Ilgrin had been hoping
for.

‘
This is it?’ Ilgrin
hurried into the room to examine the capsules and crates of weapons
stacked up against the walls.

‘
This is precisely
what you need,’ Noah’s voice sounded strange over Ilgrin’s
shoulder.

‘
Watch out,’ Jakob
yelped. Ilgrin spun around as quickly as possible, but in a room
filled with weaponry Noah had known just where to find himself a
pistol. The silt’s aim was perfect but Jakob leapt into the path of
the bullet and received it in Ilgrin’s place.

The human hit the ground with a
heavy thud as Ilgrin charged across the room and slammed Noah
against the wall. His pistol tumbled from his hand and clattered
across the bricks at the same time as the first dense cloud of
smoke wafted into the room. At first Ilgrin suspected a whisp, but
quickly recognised the dirtier colour for what it was.

‘
Smoke?’ Noah’s eyes
revealed his confusion.

‘
Give me one good
reason why I shouldn’t just leave you here to burn in Hel,’ Ilgrin
spat, shoving his arm up against Noah’s throat and waving his
pistol in the man’s face.

‘
Please,’ Noah begged
weakly. ‘I was only doing what I had to.’

‘
You’re pathetic.’
Ilgrin backed up toward the capsules of black powder and threw them
onto a trolley, all the while keeping his weapon levelled at Noah’s
face. Next he removed the large crates, before finally dragging
Jakob out by his collar. He slammed the door and locked it to
Noah’s pleas for his life.

‘
Jakob,’ Ilgrin
called out to the man, but he was dead. ‘Oh, for Maker’s sake.’
Ilgrin bit his lip in frustration. ‘I still need you.’ He put his
hand against the man’s chest and felt it tingle.

The bullet squeezed its way out of
Jakob and bounced across the floor as the wound in his chest healed
over.

‘
Ilgrin,’ Jakob
gasped when his eyes burst open and his chest began to rise. ‘I
thought you didn’t believe in--’ The man cut himself off by
belching loudly. The black mist shot out of his mouth and oozed
away from his flesh.

Ilgrin watched in captivated silence as
the whisp drifted through the door he’d closed just moments
earlier. ‘No!’ Noah cried. ‘Get it away from me. Help! Help me!’
Thereafter his words became unintelligible and the man simply
screamed unceasingly.

‘
Carry everything you
can manage,’ Ilgrin ordered Jakob, only to observe the man
struggling to lift a single crate. ‘Really?’ Ilgrin uttered
disbelievingly. ‘Just push the trolley,’ he said, only to freeze at
a loud banging behind him. Ilgrin followed the sound, his eyes
coming to rest on the door and it occurred to him that Noah was no
longer screaming.

The door shuddered violently a second
time as something incredibly heavy slammed against it. With the
next hit, the lock broke and the door flew open. There was a heavy
thud that sounded like the footfall of a large animal. The creature
Noah had become hunched low in order to squeeze through the
doorframe. Oddly enough, the thing still bore Noah’s resemblance,
but everything had gotten a lot larger and a lot more muscular. The
mutant silt took a step into the light, boasting leathery grey skin
and two large horns that’d sprouted from his head. His mouth curled
up into a cruel smile, his eyes locked on Ilgrin and his laugher
was revealed to be a menacing rumble.

‘
Run!’ Ilgrin
shouted, only to turn around and find that Jakob was already
halfway down corridor.

The crates fell from Ilgrin’s arms as
he raced along the passage, but he maintained his grip on one and
hoped dearly that it contained what he needed. Noah thundered along
after them, slowed down only by his sheer bulk and the immensity of
his wings getting in the way as they dragged along the walls. Jakob
disappeared around the corner up ahead, but almost immediately
raced back toward Ilgrin, his face filled with fear. An explosion
brought a ball of fire and flying bricks around the corner after
him. Ilgrin leapt into the air, gripped Jakob’s shoulders in his
toes and shot through a passageway above his head.

The level above was going down in
flames. They hurried passed raging fires and around falling lumps
of charred wood. ‘It’s this way.’ Jakob pointed. ‘We’ll have to go
through the inner space.’

‘
No problem,’ Ilgrin
said sarcastically at the end of the tunnel and looked out into the
cavity where not a single surface seemed to be free of flames.
‘Hold on,’ Ilgrin grabbed Jakob and pulled him into the air where
they were struck by an almost unbearable wall of heat.

‘
See there,’ Jakob
gasped. ‘That’s the main entrance.’

Following the human’s extended finger,
Ilgrin found the large double doors and was pleased to see the open
woods beyond. Behind them the wall of the cavern erupted in a spray
of flames and debris as Noah thrust himself into the open space.
Ilgrin doubled his efforts in reaching the exit, but the distance
between himself and Noah was decreasing rapidly. Snapping his wings
shut, Ilgrin shot through the doorway and into the woods. He threw
open his wings and fought for the sky.

Noah blasted through the doorway taking
half of it with him and tumbled along the ground covered in flames.
The monster roared in frustration as he rolled about in the dirt.
Once the flames were extinguished he turned to glare angrily after
Ilgrin, but instead of pursuing, he fled into the night. Ilgrin
took the opportunity to land and tear open the crate he’d been
carrying in his toes. Inside, all he found was a large pile of
daggers.

‘
Damn it.’ Ilgrin
hung his head.

‘
If I may ask,’ Jakob
tilted his head. ‘What was your plan?’

‘
I wanted something
to spread the fire east around the New World army,’ Ilgrin replied.
‘My people could fly to safety and their army would be
trapped.’

‘
I don’t think the
fire needed any help.’ Jakob turned slowly to take in the
devastation. ‘Hel has been destroyed . . . and the battle is
over.’

‘
You’re right.’
Ilgrin sighed as he watched silt homes crumbling through a haze of
thick smoke. Here and there, small skirmishes broke out when
soldiers leapt from their hiding places wielding swords, but there
were so few humans remaining that their attacks were
short-lived.

‘
What now?’ Jakob
shook his head at the senseless destruction surrounding them. ‘Hel
is ruined.’

‘
They’ve destroyed
everything we have,’ Ilgrin said bitterly. ‘Now . . . I’m going to
return the favour.’ He turned to face Jakob with a hateful sneer.
‘Spread the order. Resurrect everyone.’

CHAPTER
Twenty-Six

Mother

Kintor was a small city in the
southernmost parts of Kilk. It had no true walls--not the type that
would prevail in battle, anyway. To compensate for this lack of
protection, the city lords had agreed to construct watchtowers
where soldiers could be posted armed with bows, arrows--and, more
recently, pistols. On that particular day, the watchmen knew that
their arrows would do very little to protect them, so they simply
clung to their bows and quivered in fear of the strange anomaly
taking place before their eyes.

Kintor had always been a rather bright
city, despite being so close to the borderlands. Occasionally a
whisp might’ve drifted up from Old World, but for the most part,
their little city was free of grief or suffering. It’d been that
way since the dawn of time--until about a month or two earlier,
when mysterious visitors had been seen entering from the south. It
had been a slow transformation, but a transformation nonetheless.
The previously joyous Kintor that its citizens had known and loved
had since become a darker place. And it wasn’t just the steadily
approaching whisp cloud in the south that brought with it a sense
of foreboding. No, there was something happening to the city
itself.

The watchmen were especially aware of
the darkness within the city. Why wouldn’t they be? From such a
vantage point, they were able to see everything within and without.
It was for this reason that they squatted low and shook in fear as
they eyed the woodlands in which their humble city was nestled. The
trees had become strangely animated. Each of them struggled against
their roots in an effort to lean away from the city, whether it be
to the north, south, east, or west, dependant on their position.
The birds had disappeared earlier that very day and chained dogs
howled unapologetically. The wind was furious, leaving not a loose
item to rest unmolested.

Of course, the watchmen were only human
and could not have known about the woman screaming in pain on a bed
in a house toward the centre of the city.

Seteal Eltari had suffered a great deal
of pain in her life--both physical and emotional--but this pain was
unlike anything that’d preceded it. She couldn’t remember much of
her time at Mistress Daorey’s house. Most of it had passed by as
some sort surreal haze. Seteal had spent the time in misery. For
the remainder, she’d been in pain. But this pain was something that
couldn’t be ignored, surreal haze or none. It was as though the
child were fighting against her, refusing to leave. Blood spilt
continuously from between Seteal’s legs and out of her nose and her
mouth and her eyes and her ears. She coughed and sneezed a spray of
blood. There’d been blood in her urine and in her vomit.