“Norse burial customs dictate people of importance should be buried with grave goods.” Marius gestured around the room and they walked. “This is how we honor that tradition while still preserving our Radiants. When they die, they’re stripped of their flesh, their bones coated in wax. Then acolytes wrap each bone in thin silk lace, for protection and as a surface to decorate. It’s been years since any of them were on public display, but they still need tending to from time to time.”
Cal snorted and jerked a thumb toward one of the corpses. “Hey, Holloway, I think you owe me some bling.”
“Sure. When this is all over, I’ll take you shopping.”
“Here.” Marius stopped in front of a skeleton toward the back of the hall. Her plaque read Radiant Hærfríðr the Puretongue in runes, Icelandic, and English.
Her pedestal had to be taller to compensate for her short height, and she was posed with one arm swept to the side, the other clutching an illuminated text to her chest. Her gaping eye holes had been covered with sapphires circled with diamonds. The gossamer robe draped over her shoulders was cut to reveal her rib cage which, outside and all the way in, had been coated in filigree and pearls. Almost every vertebra was visible, and all decorated with a bejeweled golden cuff. Her long silver hair had been preserved and crowned with a gilded wreath and a gold-plated nimbus behind her head. Not one finger was unadorned, nor one speck of her robe plain. At her hip, a silver dagger was sheathed.
Cal whistled. “Well, she’s a looker, I’ll give her that.”
Marius ignored him and stepped up to the pedestal, stretching to reach her sheath. The dagger hummed faintly as he drew it out, its blade twinkling pure silver. He held it aloft for a moment.
“How does it feel?” Edie asked, itching to leave this place. “Truthy?”
Marius’s golden eyes were wide. “It feels—”
Without warning, the corpse’s free arm dropped. Edie started, wondering if removing the dagger had destabilized the Puretongue in some way, and she would come crashing to the floor and break into a thousand little pieces.
Then, her ring-heavy hand shot forward and gripped Marius’s wrist.
The vivid inhaled sharply and tried to pull his arm away, but her grip tightened. With the horrible groan of scraping bones, the Puretongue leaned forward and slowly lowered into a crouch, then slipped off her pedestal, to her feet.
All around them, rattling and clanking filled the air. Edie whipped around and watched in horror as the other gilded skeletons climbed out of their alcoves with heavy, deliberate movements.
Marius’s cry cut the air as he wrenched his wrist from the Puretongue’s grasp: “Run!”
Edie didn’t need to be told twice; she was off pronto. But as the group sprinted toward the exit, the heavy doors swung shut with a resonating BANG. Edie watched in horror as a glowing barrier sprang up from the floor and blanketed the entrance.
She was the first to reach it, and she pounded against the doors, trying to force them open. In a second, she was joined by the other three, but even their combined strength wasn’t enough to open the magically-sealed exit.
“Fuck!” she screamed, beating her fists in time with her flailing heart. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, no!”
There was a loud clang, too close by, and she turned just in time to see one of the skeletons nearest the entrance step down from his pedestal. His plaque said Radiant Geir the Tempest, and he was dressed in full plate armor, a gold nimbus similar to the Puretongue’s attached to his silver helm. Two filigreed oval holes in his breastplate revealed his ribs, and the handle of his falchion sword was shaped like a comet’s tail.
The rubies in his skull seemed to glow as he stood at attention before them. Behind him, the other Radiants fell into rank, drawing their weapons. The longer they were animated, it seemed, the faster they moved. They were almost as fluid as living people now.
And there were so many. Edie and the others would never be able to take them all down, not without weapons.
“This is impossible,” Marius whispered, looking as transfixed as he did disturbed.
The group backed up as the skeletons began to advance, but could only put another foot or so between them before their backs hit the door.
Edie’s mind reeled. The torches were beginning to go out, row by row. If she could just— But there were so many.
Panic suffocated her, but the Aurora’s honored dead didn’t care.
One of the skeletons toward the front, a man with a jewel-encrusted jaw and silver doublet, raised a flail and swung it toward Cal, startlingly quick. The revenant ducked a second too late, and it connected with his jaw. A sharp crack rang through the crypt, and Cal’s gun clattered to the floor. As he darted to retrieve it, the skeleton reared back for another strike.
“Cal!” With a cry, Satara dove forward, pushing Geir out of the way and seizing the other’s arm. A corpse with glaring emerald eyes and a platinum crown practically leapt onto her back, wrapping her braids around its hand and yanking her to the ground. She hit the floor hard and immediately went limp.
Edie screamed, “NO!” and tried to summon power in her hands.
Marius slid across the floor to cover Satara, summoning a shield of light around them both. But where was his blade? He wasn’t hitting anything. Now was the time to hit things!
The icy feeling built up her arms. Time to kill.
Something whistled through the air. It was a sound that haunted Edie’s nightmares, and she knew what it was before she saw Radiant Swift Wind’s raised bow. She jerked to the side just in time, but the broadhead arrow still grazed her ear, taking a chunk of the lobe in its razor-sharp clutches. Hot, sticky blood suddenly coated her neck, and pain tore through her body in a sudden, pulsing, screaming, excruciating wave.
Time to die.
“Enough!”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Edie was sure it was her father’s voice booming through the crypt, but she couldn’t see him. All at once, a cloud of blue light formed around her and burst forth like a wave, blanketing the room.
As it hit each skeleton, they became subdued: Eygísl the Vengeful turned his head toward her and lowered his lance, Geir stood at attention, Swift Wind returned her arrow to its quiver. The one in the silver doublet stopping whaling on Marius’s shield.
Death is my domain. You were stupid to think you could use it against me. The voice in Edie’s head almost didn’t found like her own.
She gritted her teeth, breath coming faster and fogging in the suddenly chilly air. She clenched her fists, and the Radiants fell robotically back into rank.
Stay.
It was a moment before the haze over her mind lifted and throbbing pain replaced it.
Without thinking, she raised a hand to her bleeding ear, hissing when she found that the lobe was mostly torn off. Only a small piece was missing, but the broadhead had torn upward and nearly severed it from the rest of her ear.
She turned away from the Radiants. For some reason, what they were doing wasn’t important … she just wasn’t sure why right now.
Carefully, she extracted the arrow from the door, and the chunk of her flesh along with it. She worked mostly on instinct as she pieced her ear back together and called up her blood magic. As it whispered through her, she let her eyes drift closed. What felt like a couple seconds later, she could feel that it was fused back in place, the bleeding staunched. There would be a nasty scar, and she might be lopsided, but she refused to leave flesh on these grounds.
What a creepy thing to think, she realized a second later. She shook her head and turned.
Her three companions stood there, staring at her. Satara was conscious now, her body glowing faintly from Marius’s healing magic. The looks on their faces gave Edie pause.
“What?”
“You…” Marius began uncertainly. “You were turned away, swaying and muttering to yourself for nearly five minutes.”
“Nothing we said could get your attention,” Satara added.<
br />
Edie glanced around the crypt. The Radiants stood watching her, too, though their gazes were less intelligent. Subtle blue light glowed in their eye sockets. Slowly, the realization of what she had done crept up on her. Her whole body started to tingle with equal parts glee and terror. “I…. Well, that’s— good,” she managed.
“Turning someone else’s zombies into yours is pretty advanced,” Cal mumbled, rubbing his jaw. “Even if whoever cast that spell is probably a billion years dead by now. Kudos.”
“There shouldn’t be undead down here at all. The Aurora has never used necromancy.” Marius took a step forward, looking at the neat regiment of undead Radiants. “I don’t understand.”
Cal shrugged nonchalantly, but his expression was grim. “Looks like Eirik isn’t the only one keeping secrets.”
Eirik. They still had something they needed to do—and now they had a little more help to pull it off. Edie glanced at her small army of skeletons and turned to the crypt doors. “We need to leave. Can one of you open this?”
With a good deal of clattering, one of the Radiants—Something-or-other the Mournful, she thought she remembered, whose breastplate seemed to be a reliquary for his own gold-encased heart—stepped up beside her. He swept his velvet cloak to the side and produced one gloved hand. His palm glowed as he laid it against the door, and with another bright flash, the barrier dissolved and the doors croaked open once more.
Marius left first, breezing past the Mournful with his head down.
Edie followed him closely, reaching out to touch his arm. “Marius, it’s okay—”
He pulled it away. When he turned, his expression was … there was no way to describe it other than broken. And like any broken thing, there were edges too sharp for her to touch: “An army of undead Aurorans may be okay for you, hellerune, but not for me.”
She shied away. Yet another reminder of what an abomination she was in his eyes. Great.
He’d need to get himself together before they could confront his father, but that was his problem. She turned to focus on getting her newly acquired army out of their crypt.
As she did, however, she noticed that the floor beneath them was … shaking? For a moment, she wondered if it was vibrations from the temple above, or the canal, but no. The sound, the timing—
Footsteps.
She turned her head and squinted into the darkness down the hall. Marius must have heard the thumping, too, because he conjured another ball of light in his hand.
At first, they couldn’t see anything but darkness beyond the scope of the glow. Then, slowly, it reached something in the darkness—something silver. The light hit it here and there as it slowly paced closer, and though Edie couldn’t make out its form, she could tell it was massive, towering at least four or five feet above them.
“Oh,” Marius breathed. In a second, he had conjured his sword. “I forgot about him.”
“Him?”
Slowly, the huge silver thing stepped into view. It seemed less like a creature and more like a construct, a metallic being almost resembling a human but not quite. Its waist was a little too thin, its arms and legs a little too long, its head a little too small. Its mouthless face was smooth, with two tiny, glowing orbs where eyes should have been. A pair of wings formed of metal layered to look like feathers stretched from a foot above its head to the backs of its armored calves. It held a spear as silver as itself.
As soon as the light fully illuminated it, it stopped and leaned forward slightly, scanning their forms. An eerie, resonant, almost robotic breathing sound issued from it.
“The Crypt Keeper.” Marius spoke fast. “I’ve never seen him awake before. I always thought he was a guardian statue or something symbolic, not something that could actually walk.”
The Crypt Keeper emitted a strange, low belch, like it was trying to say words but the necessary parts had long fallen into disrepair.
It straightened up, and its white orbs turned red.
Even faster, Marius continued, “It can’t be reasoned with. We’re going to have to fight it.”
Cal, who had come out of the crypt after the Radiants, growled at the construct. “Great, another fucking metal thing I can’t shoot at. You’re gonna owe me a drink after this, Sunshine.”
The Crypt Keeper gave a grinding, mechanical roar and raised its spear. Runes etched on its surface flashed as it brought the spear down at their feet, the head of it barely missing Edie. The flagstones cracked, and debris flew.
Edie staggered back, adrenaline surging through her veins. She threw her hand forward as orders flew wildly through her head, hoping her horde could understand her. Go, go, attack!
They did. Blue and gold flashed together in a glorious wave, light and death working as one within the Radiants’ bodies as they charged the Crypt Keeper’s legs. Marius conjured his glowing shield and joined the charge, and to Edie’s surprise, Cal did, too; he wove in between the construct’s legs and started to climb up its wings.
And speaking of wings, behind her, Edie was surprised to hear a pair unfurl. Wind beat her back for a moment, and before she could turn her head to make sense of what was happening, Satara had lifted into the air. She darted toward the Crypt Keeper’s head with one of her magical battle-cries. An azure flare enveloped her, bolstering her defenses; then she made impact, kicking the construct hard enough to leave a dent in its face. Thank god wooden shields weren’t the only kind shieldmaidens knew how to wield.
Edie swelled with pride, then confidence. Her friends—two of them without weapons—were taking this thing down like experts. She looked down at her hands and willed the icy magic to fill her. The chances of her being able to hurt this thing with death magic seemed slim, but she had to try.
Blue fire engulfed her hands like it was nothing. Astonished, Edie reeled back and flung the magic at the construct as hard as she could. A blast left her palm and struck the Crypt Keeper in the chest, leaving a scorch mark.
Its torso spun 360 degrees; it waved its spear wildly, trying to shake Cal off its back or knock Satara out of the air, but to no avail. Edie could see that Cal was dismantling it piece by piece, tearing off the slats of its wings and letting them fall to the stone floor. Before her, Marius and the gilded army were deftly avoiding its stomping feet—she’d only seen one Radiant get crushed and one kicked into the canal so far.
They were going to win. This thing had walked straight out of her nightmares and into its own doom.
Edie reeled back for another strike. Jab and flow, find a rhythm. More blue flame, more scorch-marks. She did it again, and again, until— No … but that wasn’t right. It wasn’t real fire; it shouldn’t leave any scorch-marks.
Holy shit. I’m decaying it.
A plan sprang into her mind suddenly, and she cupped her hands to shout, “Guys! Ease it toward the canal!”
Her friends’ tactics shifted. Satara, who was drawing most of the Crypt Keeper’s attention, swung around and ducked so that she was hovering just above the rushing waters. Edie called off her Radiants, and the lot scurried out of the path of the stomping construct to stand behind her.
Stay!
She rushed into the fray, weaving around Marius and smacking her glowing hands onto the Crypt Keeper’s closest knee. Before her eyes, the silver tarnished, then rusted and grew brittle. The longer she held her hands in place, the more it spread until the entirety of the construct’s right leg looked like the hull of an abandoned ship.
Above her, the Crypt Keeper groaned and wavered.
“Cal, get off!” she shouted upward.
“One sec….” The revenant kicked, the thick heel of his boot connecting with a spot he had been working on for a while. He’d stripped the metal away and revealed the bolts that riveted the construct’s right wing to its back. “A little help here?!”
Edie backed up and shot a blast of magic under his foot. The next time he struck it, the wing twisted off with a groan and slammed to the stone floor.
Cal hopped
off, landing next to Edie with a grunt. Behind him, urged on by repeated blows from Marius’s shield, the construct wavered and screeched as it staggered to the edge of the canal.
Satara had been hovering just out of reach, but dove forward once she saw it teetering. As the Crypt Keeper tumbled into the frothing water, she was able to snatch its spear.
She touched down next to Edie, twirling the weapon in her hand triumphantly. “I’ll be having this.”
“Let’s get to the chapterhouse right away,” Marius said, already trotting past the crypt and toward the bridge they had crossed earlier. “We’ve already wasted enough time, and I’m sure someone has heard us down here.”
They’d done it. She’d done it, and not by improvising, but with actual magic.
After fighting the Crypt Keeper, crossing the bridge didn’t seem so scary. Edie just made sure to walk straight and avoid looking down.
Marius tried to ignore the sound of Edie’s sacrilegious army clattering behind him, instead rushing to the back door of the chapterhouse. He found it blessedly unlocked, and opened it to reveal a narrow stone staircase. At the top, gold light shone through the barest cracks in the hidden doorway.
Motioning for the others to remain silent, Marius padded up the stairs and pressed his ear to the wall. The others gathered behind him, the Radiants’ armor and weapons clanking softly.
His father’s voice floated through the door, speaking familiar words. “We invoke Tyr’s fortitude and bravery, and ask for strength, and for him to be present during this sacred rite. God of battles, may we strive to match you in valor and virtue. Pantheons, grant Adherent Ynga Sól’s power as she remakes herself in the Wolfbinder’s image.”
Marius closed his eyes. In his mind, he could see himself in the chapterhouse those few years ago, surrounded by at least forty other vivids. His father shone in the sun, gesturing for him to kneel and hold his arm out on the altar. He heard the whisper of a blade being drawn, the ceremonial blade used only for Tyr’s Rite. Marius remembered it—a saber with a hand guard shaped like a wolf’s jaws.
No Earthly Treason (The Necromancer's Daughter Book 2) Page 33
