When the Heavens Fall (46 page)

The orb felt hot against the Guardian's calloused fingers. Holding it up to the light, he saw that the swirling mist inside was faintly green.
Earth-magic.

“Store it carefully,” Merin added. “When the glass breaks—”

“I know how it works.”

Luker rose. Slipping the glass globe into his belt pouch, he walked to Chamery's gelding and unfastened the saddle's girth strap before lifting the saddle clear. As he dropped it in the dirt, his sight blurred for an instant, and he leaned against the gelding until the dizziness passed.

Footfalls sounded behind. “I'm coming with you,” Jenna said.

Luker made no response. Crossing to his mare, he lifted his saddle clear and transferred it to the gelding.

“You need me,” the assassin went on. “This is what I do.”

“I work alone,” Luker said.

“So do I. This time we'll just work alone … together.”

“Alone, together, got it.” The Guardian placed his flask in one of the saddlebags. “You ever fought Kalanese before?”

“I don't intend to
fight
them, I intend to
kill
them. There's a difference.”

He met her gaze for the first time. The desert sun had brought out freckles on her nose and cheeks, and her patchwork of scars was more evident across her tanned skin. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“If you ride away now you might make it out of here alive.”

“I could say the same to you.”

“Don't screw with me. This isn't your cause.”

Jenna's crooked smile held a hint of ruefulness. “Maybe you're right,” she said. “Maybe that's the appeal of it.”

Luker studied her. There was something she wasn't telling him, but what was new? Truth was, a second pair of eyes might be useful in the Kalanese camp. And in spite of what he'd said about her making a break for it, the safest place for her to be in this godforsaken wilderness was by his side. “All right.”

The assassin's smile broadened. “We go for the soulcaster first, yes?”

“Aye. I've got something special planned for him.”

Jenna raised an eyebrow. “The globe Merin gave you?”

“I'll fill you in on the way.”

“How do you want to make the approach? The soulcaster will have sent out scouts.”

“Not when I last looked, he hadn't. Just a couple of guards outside where they're holed up. We'll have to dispose of them quietly.”

“Best you leave that to me, then.”

Luker stepped into the saddle. “When the trouble starts, I want you out of the way. Find some place to hide and give me cover.”

“You trust me to watch your back?”

“Just as long as you're not shooting at it,” Luker muttered.

Chuckling, Jenna crossed to her own horse. She tied her hair back in a ponytail, then took a pair of black leather gloves from her saddlebags and slipped them on. “Feels good, doesn't it?” she said, catching Luker's eye. “To be doing something, I mean.”

The Guardian showed his teeth. “Aye. Kalanese have been hunting me long enough. Now it's my turn.”

 

C
HAPTER
14

E
VEN FROM
several hundred paces away Parolla could see the Forest of Sighs was dying. The branches of the trees drooped as if drought stricken, and rust-colored leaves swirled between the boles. As the forest died it released a flood of necromantic energies, and Parolla inhaled them on every breath. The effect was intoxicating, a heady rush that made her heart thunder in her chest, made the darkness within her seethe and bubble. Looking down, she saw she was digging her fingernails into her palms. Blood trickled to her wrists, but there was no pain. The wounds healed immediately, the skin knitting together until not even the faintest scar remained.

The deserted tribal settlement she walked through was a haphazard cluster of huts built from planks overlaid with animal hides. At the center of the village was a stand of trees, all of which were dying. Small wonder the savages who'd once lived here had fled if even their sacred glades were succumbing to the infection. The branches of the trees were adorned with fetishes and strips of cloth similar to those that had decorated the glade where Parolla had met the dwarf. Strangely, however, the ditch surrounding the trees was empty of bones.

Pausing in the shade of a doorway, she unstoppered her flask and drank deeply. Water was no longer a necessity, because the death-magic emanating from the forest was all the nourishment she needed. Parolla, though, was wary about becoming dependent on its … sustenance. Already the dark energies were starting to stain her mood. Every time she closed her eyes her blood would rise to immerse her, and the black tide brought with it memories from parts of her mind she had long believed closed off. The recollections fanned to new life the flames of her bitterness, her yearning for vengeance. And as her resentment grew, so the voice of restraint inside her became harder to discern.

She should turn back now, she knew. Doubtless the effects of the death-magic would only become stronger as she traveled toward its source. And while she feared she might be overwhelmed by the darkness, she feared even more losing the will to fight it. There was so little in her past that was not tainted. How simple it would be to surrender to her blood and let it burn away the doubt and self-pity. Parolla laughed. Turn back, would she? What did she have to return to? Where would she go? Shaking her head, she replaced the cap in her water bottle. She had chosen her path a long time ago, and it was too late to stray from it now. Especially since she was so close to what she sought. The source of the strands of death-magic was somewhere within the forest, no more than a handful of days' travel to the south and east.

Near enough for her to risk scouting what lay ahead.

Parolla sat down and closed her eyes, then felt a moment of light-headedness as her spirit floated free from her body. Reaching out to one of the threads of death-magic, she experienced a tug, like dipping her fingers into fast-moving water. The tendrils were channeling necromantic energies to some far-off place. Parolla had only to merge her spirit with one of the threads and it would take her to its source.

She gave herself to the current.

It was like riding a swollen river, and she allowed the flow to carry her along. The world streaked past in a dizzying blur, the colors of the forest changing from rusty green to brown, to gray, broken by flashes of white Parolla assumed to be ruined buildings. Then she detected activity ahead, and she fought the pull of the death-magic. She slowed.

The landscape came back into focus. If the forest had been dying round its borders, it was all but fully dead here, what little life remaining buried deep underground and fading fast. The branches of the trees were bare, the trunks blistered, the undergrowth withered. There was no sight or sound of either birds or insects. So what had she sensed that had made her stop?

A flicker of movement among the trees in front. Moving nearer, Parolla saw a dark-skinned, mustachioed man wearing studded leather armor beset by a dozen white-cloaked figures carrying spears. The lone stranger wielded a two-handed sword, and Parolla watched as a single swing of his blade beheaded two assailants.
Impressive.
Ducking under a spear thrust, he then delivered a cut to the midsection of a third opponent that carved open his abdomen and sent his intestines tumbling out round his feet.

Only for the stricken spearman to retaliate with a stab that grazed the swordsman's shoulder.

Parolla's breath hissed out.

It was only then that she detected the tendril of death-magic emerging from his chest. Unlike the thread she'd been traveling along, this tendril was pouring sorcery
into
the man, not drawing energy
away
to some as yet unknown destination.
Undead,
she realized, her pulse quickening. And souls summoned back from Shroud's realm could mean only one thing.

A portal to the underworld. It must be!

The swordsman's resistance was almost at an end. Already he was bleeding from countless wounds, and there was an increasing desperation to his cuts and parries, a weariness in his movements. As the undead pressed in all about he put his back to a tree and swung his sword in a wide arc in an effort to keep his assailants at bay.
A waste of time.
A white-robed woman went down with a shattered knee, but a score more attackers were approaching from behind the mustachioed man. Alerted by the sound of footfalls, he glanced over his shoulder.

A look of resignation entered his eyes.

Parolla hesitated. It would be intriguing to see what happened when he fell—whether he would rise again and join the ranks of the undead who'd just killed him.

Turning away, she resumed her journey along the thread of death-magic.

A while later she sensed a concentration of power ahead, and she slowed her flight again. In front of her rose a vast rippling dome of sorcery, the rays of the sun glinting off it like light off a restless sea. All around, the trees were blackened as if a fire had swept through them. Trunks had been sheared in two and branches sliced clean away where the black wall passed through them. Even now one of the giant boles toppled into the trees beside it, snapping branches as it fell.

Parolla approached the dome and brushed her fingertips across it. Such a casual show of power, no doubt intended more as a display of strength than as a means of keeping intruders out. The dome was no barrier to Parolla, of course, for it was fashioned from death-magic, and in her spiritual form she was able to flow through to the other side without leaving so much as a wrinkle to mark her passage.

She found herself at the edge of a derelict city bathed in shadow. The forest encroached far into the ruins, making it difficult for her to determine the settlement's size, but it must once have been home to thousands. In places the walls of the buildings rose to the level of her waist, in others only to her ankles. To her left was a road along which dozens of white-robed figures were moving, dragging young trees behind them by their upper branches. Dark fire played across the wood as it came into contact with the dome, and the trees were still burning as they were hauled into the remains of a long, rectangular building from which smoke curled into the sky. The clang of metal striking metal struck up.

The tendril of death-magic Parolla was following led deeper into the city, and the farther she traveled along it, the more intact the ruined houses became. Ahead was a huge domed structure, and within it, she sensed, was the source of the threads.

Covering the distance in a heartbeat, she floated through the wall of the building.

Inside was a dais shrouded in darkness and surrounded by scores of white-robed figures. Parolla paid them no mind, for her attention was fixed on a throne atop the stage. Flanking it were four undead warriors armored in golden chain mail. An old man sat hunched in the chair amid a cloud of death-magic. Lank white hair hung down to his shoulders, and his beard was matted and streaked with dirt. His deliberate movements spoke of great frailty, his affliction no doubt caused by the touch of the sorcery about him.

Parolla looked round for a portal, but she could see no sign of one. She clenched her hands into fists. She'd come all this way for nothing? Yet for the undead to have been resurrected, their souls would surely have had to pass through Shroud's Gate. Could a portal have been opened, then closed again? Possibly, but then why was the magic still so strong in this place? Was the old man himself responsible? There was something on his lap, but Parolla could not make it out through the fog of sorcery.

Rising above the crowd of white-robed undead, she drifted closer.

The old man was talking to a figure standing at the foot of the dais: a plump woman wearing a voluminous yellow robe trimmed with golden thread. Her long brown hair was tied up and held in position with jeweled pins, and she was wringing her hands in front of her face.
This one is no undead.
Parolla's vision clouded as she tried to focus on the woman's face. Blue eyes … No, green. Jowly, with a double chin and …

Parolla blinked. A shake of the woman's head, and flesh began to melt from her face. Abruptly her brow appeared more prominent, and her eyes—brown now—became more deep-set. The hue of her gown faded to match the ivory robes of the undead round her, then darkened to gray, and finally black. There was power here, Parolla realized. A sorceress without question.
And a slippery one at that.

The woman was speaking to the old man, and Parolla heard her mention the name “Lord Mayot.” Then her voice faltered, and she tilted her head toward Parolla—her face gaining ten years as she did so.

Parolla's skin prickled.

The old man looked straight at her.

*   *   *

Luker scampered beside Jenna to the stockade surrounding the village and crouched in its shadow. Since leaving the Waste this morning he'd skirted four such settlements, all abandoned to the desert. This one was smaller than the others, and reminded him too much of his birthplace for comfort with its rutted streets and its houses made of salmon-colored mud bricks. There was no sign of movement in the alleys beyond the fence, but the Guardian hadn't expected there to be—he'd swept the settlement with his Will a short while ago and found the only Kalanese abroad were the two guards patrolling the marketplace. Still, there was no point in hanging round for trouble to come calling. To his right, a section of the stockade sagged to the ground where the supports had come loose from the earth. Luker led the way across, scowling as the boards groaned beneath his feet.

Jenna took the lead as they edged toward the center of the village, a small loaded crossbow in each hand. At the end of the next alley she held up a hand, then pressed her back to the right-hand wall. Beyond, Luker saw more mud-brick buildings surrounding a square. Across and to the left was a squat structure of gray stone, and beside it were two makeshift gallows. Two gallows. As if one wasn't enough in a village little more than a stone's throw across. Jenna laid her crossbows on the floor before lowering herself to her stomach and peering round the corner of the building. Moments later she drew back and rose to whisper in Luker's ear.