The Sealed Citadel

by Edward W. Robertson

  They came to another dry stream bed, the bottom littered with rocks and weeds. Rowe dropped into it, the growth on the banks hiding him from view. The clouds and treetops made it hard to tell their direction, but Cally thought they were now headed to the east.

  His throat went tight. He shifted deeper into the eyes of his moth, barely able to feel his feet beneath him.

  He waited until he was sure. "It's coming for us."

  Rowe shot a glance behind them, then at Cally. "It's coming this direction?"

  "I mean it's coming this exact direction, because it's tracking us."

  "How far back?"

  Cally took another look through his scout. "No more than a quarter mile."

  Rowe ran on another few steps, as if he hadn't heard. "Take the children south. Get them back to the clan."

  "Don't tell me you're going after the wight!"

  "No choice. I'll buy you as much time as I can."

  "Do you think you can win a fight against a whole town of norren?"

  "What's that got—?"

  "Because that thing did. You won't buy us more than a minute against it."

  "Could be right. But if I don't try, we're all dead."

  "Then we need to send the one with the best chance of stopping it," Cally said. "Me."

  Before Rowe could argue, or he could be overcome by the terror that was already threatening to strangle him, Cally turned and ran in the opposite direction. Rowe's mouth hung open in shock. Then the sergeant righted himself, called encouragement to the children, and ran on.

  Their footsteps faded until Cally heard nothing but the whispers of the forest. The wight was coming up fast and Cally slowed to give himself more time to think and to get a read on his surroundings through the eyes of his scout. His heart was fluttering even harder than the moth and he found he had to keep his thoughts very narrowly focused to prevent an avalanche of bad ones from sweeping over him.

  A stick. That was what he needed. Really what he needed was a warhorse, a cavalry sword, and as long as he was dreaming, an army of priests, knights, and archers at his command. But what he could get was a stick, so he found one, three feet long and as thick as two of his fingers.

  His blood had dried up again. He corrected that, then summoned the nether to him like a tide flooding over a mud flat. He surrounded the stick with it, shaping the shadows as Yobb had taught him to do. While the wight was still a minute away from him, he sent the moth soaring above the trees, taking in as much of the landscape as it could.

  Then he found an eight-foot ledge overlooking the trail the wight was tracking and ascended it.

  He'd just reached the top when the scuttle of the creature's feet sounded from ahead. Cally brought more nether to him, along with some ether, hiding its light in his hand. The wight appeared within the trees. The sight of it—its monstrous face, its spindly legs and asymmetric arms, the foreign lilt of its strides—made him gag.

  Eyes stinging, he swallowed his bile and stepped to the ledge. "Stop!"

  His voice rang across the stillness of the forest. The wight skidded to a halt, feet apart, its arms angled. The claws of its heavy hand gleamed like the carapace of a beetle.

  "I am a sorcerer of the north." To accent his words, Cally held up his stick—which no longer appeared to be a stick, but rather a cruel sword. He stretched out his right hand, letting the light and the dark dance around it. Then, in a bit of embellishment he came up with on the spot, he sent some of the nether up the illusory sword, lighting it afire while simultaneously praying that the stick wouldn't burn to ashes. "Heed my words!"

  The wight stared at him. He thought there was a hint of wariness within its oversized eyes, but he wasn't sure that the creature could understand him, or was even intelligent at all.

  "You have been betrayed by the Lannovians." His voice crept higher. He cleared his throat. "They created you to be nothing more than a tool of murder and destruction. You're their slave, and as soon as you've done their job, they'll destroy you as a danger to them."

  The abomination cocked its head. The skin around its mouth dangled long and useless, as if all of its teeth had fallen out. This might have been comforting, as it implied it couldn't bite or eat him, but somehow it was the most horrific part of all.

  "I heard your creators speak of it. Look inside yourself and you'll know that it's true. Do you feel proud to be their sword? Well you shouldn't, because nobody throws a good sword away after the battle's done, which means you're not a sword, but a monster to them.

  "But there's a way out. Stop the killing and leave this place. Travel east, to the Wodun Mountains. They're too tall and unforgiving for people to live there, but surely a being as hardy as yourself will do quite well there, free from the interference of humans.

  "Or you can stay here, if you like. But you'll be used by one side and hunted by the other. There's only one way that ends for you."

  He made a low sweeping gesture with his false sword; the remaining flames on its length flared, then dwindled to nothing. The wight's eyes searched his face and he would have sworn he saw some glimmer of recognition within them. Should he have made his threat more direct? If it was smart enough to understand him, was it smart enough to understand reason? Or only power?

  It lurched forward, leaves flying from beneath its warped toes. Cally grunted in panic and scampered back from the ledge. He halfway expected the monster to leap up beside him, but it dashed to the slope to Cally's left, feet churning the soil.

  Cally clenched the nether tight and thrust out his right hand. A column of fire erupted from thin air. It pounded into the wight, flames lapping around its misshapen body, obscuring it in smoke and hot light.

  The fire diminished almost as fast as it had arrived. The wight lay on the ground, legs akimbo like a battered spider. Its eyes were wide and its skin was smudged with soot.

  Cally took a step back, bringing another handful of nether to him. He tried to reach into the shadows within the wight to see if it was dead, but his grasp slid off the creature as if it had been oiled.

  That felt wrong. Very wrong. Normally he could touch the nether in anything. Alarmed, he tightened the nether for a second strike.

  The wight whipped itself to its feet in a move too fast for Cally to process. It managed to take two long steps up the slope before he hit it with a second pillar of fire. Smoke and heat burst back in his face. He retreated, eyes fixed on the silhouette barely visible within the boiling cloud.

  This time, the wight hadn't even been knocked all the way down, falling to its hands and knees instead. The scorching on its hide seemed lesser, too. It groped forward with its clawless hand, as if it was blinded, then blinked at Cally, smoke coiling from its slack mouth.

  Dread rose inside Cally like a rat climbing up through his guts. He had known he wasn't likely to be able to kill it. It had taken the Order years of study and work to learn even a crude and time-consuming method of doing that. And for all the leaps forward he'd made in his power, he was still little more than an apprentice.

  But still, he had hoped.

  He struck it a third time before it could get back to his feet, but this just staggered it. It was like the wight was somehow building an immunity to his attacks. Cally was already running toward his now-distant moth, watching the beast as it gathered itself up and took an unsteady step, testing its footing.

  Cally crunched through the leaves. Within seconds, the wight was thudding along behind him. The thought leaped into his head, wholly unbidden, that he should just turn the nether on himself and burn his brain to cinders.

  He beckoned to the nether, braiding it into little ropes, then sent it diving into the ground behind him. As the wight romped across them, he sent them shooting up, seeking the shadows within the wight's feet. The braids threatened to slide right off the surface of the beast, but somehow they found some minor hold. The bonds drew fast, roping the wight's feet in place. Its forward momentum slammed its face into the ground.

  Witho
ut breaking stride, Cally poured more nether into the bonds. He could feel the wight struggling within them, an awful strength even in its bony legs, yanking at its feet like it would happily rip them off if that's what it took to free itself. But the ropes of shadow were as sticky as any web. Cally had opened a lead of hundreds of feet by the time the wight got one foot free, and added a hundred more before it got up and began to run after him.

  Every second mattered. Not only for the norren children. But because Cally's scout had spotted a bridge ahead. One that he intended to use, and then destroy when the wight was halfway across.

  It came for him relentlessly, seeming to soar across the forest floor. Cally ran harder than he had in all his life. His breath ran short and a spear of despair pierced his stomach. He sent the nether coursing through himself, washing away his exhaustion.

  Too soon, he could hear it ripping through the undergrowth behind him. He waited until it was close enough to hear its breath whistling from its awful mouth. Bonds sprung from Cally's hands, latching the wight to the ground. It tripped again, landing hard, but not even grunting.

  Cally could feel it ripping the nethereal ropes ripping loose within a matter of moments. Just as it had been with the flaming pillars, the wight seemed to be adapting to the sorcery. By the time it tore free completely and resumed the chase, Cally had only gotten a hundred yards ahead of it.

  His moth was still ranging ahead, covering the route to the little bridge. Still too far away. Mind racing, Cally swerved slightly toward a V-shaped gap between two steep humps of rock. As he passed through it, he reeled the shadows to him, stretching them across the gap in a simulacrum of stone. It was hasty work. Very hasty. But the wight was lost in haste too, and when Cally glanced back, he spied it detouring around the illusion, gaining him precious seconds.

  This brought the bridge that much closer. Still not close enough. Cally bound the monster to the earth a third time, but it had no sooner crashed to the earth than it was crawling forward, yanking its legs free.

  He wouldn't make it. Not to the bridge. But a narrow jag of the ravine might be within reach. He straightened toward it, brushing his tired lungs with shadows to prepare for the final push.

  The trees thinned; the crack split the ground just ahead. From up through the eyes of the moth, the gap had looked narrow enough to step across, but now that he was upon it, it seemed to stretch apart before his very eyes. It was too far to jump. He knew it was too far. But maybe if he got very, very lucky, he wouldn't die on impact from his fall, and would be able to heal himself before too much of his blood departed his body. If he got even luckier, the wight wouldn't come down to make sure that he was dead.

  He jumped. Open air beneath him. Sixty feet down, maybe more. Broken rocks and shrubs at the bottom of the gorge. Terrifying but more heightened than anything he'd felt in his life. The moment stretched until it felt like it would become everything; his eyes bulged so hard it felt like he could see behind him. He was dropping, the other side was still feet away. He reached out for it.

  He missed it. And came down on a short ledge just below it. Pain jarred up his ankles. He stumbled forward, banging into the rock wall and falling down.

  He sat up. The wight was already coming to the side Cally had leaped from. He had no doubt it would make the jump. As it planted its feet, preparing to spring, he shot shadows into its soles, gluing it to the ground.

  The bonds ripped loose beneath it, barely slowing it down. The wight soared across the gap, it normal arm reaching forward and down, its clawed arm lifted high. Ready to strike. Its plum-sized eyes were filled with predatory hate. Cally pressed his back to the rock, ready to jump past it as it landed and take his chances with the fall.

  But the wight was arcing downward. The bond had tripped it just enough. The hate fled from its eyes, replaced by focus and concern. As it fell level to the ledge Cally was on, it whipped its body forward, slamming its claws down into the rock.

  Its body banged against the face of the ravine, but its beetle-shiny claws held fast. Its arm tensed as it began to pull itself up toward the ledge. Cally skittered forward, stomping his boot onto its hand. The wight glared up at him. Its grip didn't slacken one bit. He struck it with fire, but this didn't do anything more than make it close its eyes, the flames rolling harmlessly from its grayed skin.

  It slapped its other hand onto the surface of the ledge, scrambling about for a hold. Cally backed away, looking for a route up the cliff, but there was none. The wight dug the fingers of its left hand into a small notch and heaved.

  Cally had no sword to hit it with. He didn't even have his stick, he'd thrown it away during the chase. With this lament came a thought—an outline within the shadows. He grabbed hold of it, bringing it forth without allowing himself to think about it, shaping the shadows even as he summoned them.

  He found himself holding a black blade, short but vicious. He lifted it high and hurled it down.

  Not into the wight's clawed hand. Into the rock it was clinging to.

  The rock burst, barfing chunks of itself to all sides as it gave way beneath the wight's grip. The monster stared at him with sheer murder. It made no sound as it dropped. It struck the rocks below not with a thump, but a crack. The body slid away, lost within the brush.

  Cally watched for a moment, then turned back to the cliff. He tried a few hand-holds, but still couldn't see any way up it. After a fruitless struggle, he turned around, sat on the ledge, and gazed down at the site where the wight had fallen.

  And reached for his moth.

  16

  "How in hell did you know that would work?" Rowe said around a mouthful of venison.

  Cally glanced around the campfire, which smelled wonderful. Not wanting to upset them, he'd begged off telling the story until the norren children had been brought away.

  "What, the moth?" He'd sent it after Rowe, then flapped it around Rowe's face, keeping it out of swatting distance until Rowe picked up on the fact it wasn't a normal moth. After that, it had been a simple matter of using it to lead Rowe to the ravine. "It seemed better than starving to death on the side of a cliff."

  "Not the moth. Going back to face the wight."

  "Oh, that. I had no idea if I could stop it. I just thought it would be fun to try."

  Rowe removed something unchewable from his mouth and flicked it into the fire. "Fun?"

  "Waiting to be chased down and killed by it would be demonstrably unenlightening. Therefore, the only reasonable alternative was to run toward it, and see what happened."

  "Tell me how you fought it."

  It was very much not the protocol to discuss the ins and outs of sorcery with soldiers, but Cally thought they were a little beyond protocol. He explained the ways he'd tried to destroy and delay it, and how each individual effort grew less effective the more it was repeated.

  Rowe stared into the crackling fire. "Think it's dead?"

  "It fell from a height high enough to alchemically transmute a human from a solid into a liquid. But a wight isn't human, as evidenced by the fact it's a wight. In conclusion, I don't know."

  "But after it hit bottom, you didn't see it move."

  "Correct." Cally hunched forward, examining the scrapes on his arm from his short fall onto the ledge. "Did I do the right thing?"

  "It worked."

  "Those aren't the same."

  "No," Rowe said. "They're not." He swept back his hair. "The gods are prone to show favor to those who are bold. Unless you get it wrong. Then you just die. The thing is to be bold when you can and be smart enough to know when you can't."

  "That sounds very wise, but I can't help but notice it still hasn't answered my question."

  The soldier snorted. "It was the right move. I would have told you to go myself. Didn't think you were ready for it. Think you've aged more in the last seven days than in the seven years before them."

  "That seems to be what happens to you when all civilization is yanked from beneath your feet, and people go ab
out lopping off each other's heads and summoning demons at each other. Anyway, where have you been all this time?"

  "Hunting the Lannovians. Lady Minabar. Had some success of my own. Got the book back." Rowe reached beneath his farm-bought cloak and tossed a now-familiar volume at Cally's feet. "Not that it was worth the trouble to get it."

  Cally bent down and snatched it up. "What do you mean? This is the source of all our trouble. Now that you've removed it from their grasp, you've reduced their ability to cause trouble back to perfectly normal levels."

  "You sound smart. I have to keep reminding myself how stupid you are."

  Cally muttered something unkind. "You believe taking the book from them won't stop them from commanding the wights. Why? Have they already created their whole army? Or you think they're no longer dependent on the book to make more now that they've worked out how to make the first one?"

  "Say you steal a book of power. There's something in it that you badly want. You know its rightful owners are out there hunting you, trying to get it back. What do you do?"

  "Take copious notes. And memorize the good bits. Damn it, you're right, aren't you? In the last few days, Yobb has taught me several new skills. I don't need her to retrain me every time I want to use one of them now. I just do it."

  "They're going to use the wights to wage war. There's only one way to stop them now."

  "Assassinate Minabar."

  "And Vassimore, too. She's likely taught him as well. I know. Not what you wanted to hear. But this is black magic. The worst of it. So bad that the Lannovians broke their oaths and killed for it. You can be too good and pure to take the hard actions now, if you want. And the Lannovians will use your inaction to cause horror beyond what your mind will allow you to see. Undoing that will require us to commit horrors a thousand times worse than what we're talking about doing right now."