The Sealed Citadel

by Edward W. Robertson

  Rowe shot him a puzzled half-angry look. "If it gets close, drop down and hang on tight."

  "But don't let go?"

  "What do you think we're going to do? Jump?"

  "Of course not. Only an idiot would do something like that."

  He maneuvered himself to the outside of the railing, crouching while keeping an extremely firm grip on the iron bars. The wight had already entered the outer door and was darting from room to room. Once it came to the study, Rowe lowered himself so his legs were dangling into open space. Somehow, Cally was able to convince himself to do the same.

  Not a moment too soon, for the wight was already swerving through the dining room and then onto the balcony. Cally used his moth to watch as the demon swiveled its head right and left. It stood there, mouth whistling, then swung about, running straight for a room whose many shelves filled with moldering lumps suggested it had been a pantry. The space was tight enough that if you stood in the center and extended your arms you could touch both walls at once, yet despite there being almost nothing to search, the wight remained there until Cally's hands began to ache.

  At last, it backed out of the pantry. It finished its search of the quarters in a span of seconds and bounded back into the outer hallway. Cally and Rowe pulled themselves back up onto the balcony.

  "Did it track us here?" Cally whispered.

  "Either that or it's guarding this room. Which means what you want might be here. But we don't have much time. They're patrolling. They'll be back."

  Cally shook his sore hands. Frowning, he headed for the pantry. It was filled with a fungal, disturbing smell, as if he'd catch some wasting disease if he stayed inside it too long.

  Fortunately, he saw it immediately: hastily drawn on the right-hand wall with a bit of charcoal. An image of the Citadel. The keep itself was marked with the Duset of Arawn—except the parallel squiggles were further marked with two dots beneath them.

  The ancient symbol for death.

  Beneath the keep, however, the artist had sketched a series of parallel straight lines which sometimes bent at right angles. Squares bordered the parallel lines on both sides. Near the very bottom, one such square was marked with a black star.

  Merriwen had left them a map.

  ~

  The staircase led down into utter darkness. A smell climbed up the steps as slowly and painfully as an old man who has outlived his children. It smelled of mold, as elsewhere in the Citadel. But dampness, too. And something that even in its faintness made the bile rise in Cally's gorge. The lair of something that should never have been uncovered.

  "Well," Cally said. "I can't see a thing, but it certainly smells promising."

  Rowe grunted. "Smells like if we die down there, our corpses can only improve the odor."

  "That's what makes it so promising. You can bet the place we have to go is the place we least want to."

  "Know any spells to make my nose disappear?"

  Cally took a deep breath, which he regretted at once, and started down the steps. They were made of stone and the middles of the fronts of the treads were shiny, smooth, and rounded. Worn down by thousands of people across hundreds of years. How long before even stone lost the war with time and had to be replaced?

  His moth fluttered ahead, right at the edge of the light. They hadn't seen any wights since leaving Merriwen's chambers. Maybe the last of them had tired of skulking around their prison and had escaped into the city to hunt prey. Maybe.

  They reached the first landing. Cally glanced at the copy of the map he'd made, as if it might have changed in the last few minutes. But no, against all odds, the star was still down at the very bottom of the underground. He glanced out into the hallway anyway. It was strewn with tangled cloth, barrel staves, and other debris that had decayed beyond recognition. Impossible to say if this was wreckage of the battle that had seen the loss of the Citadel, or if the wights had simply gotten bored during their long internment and trashed the place.

  They continued on until the steps terminated four floors deep. Cally bit the inside of his mouth again to get a bit of blood flowing. The nether drew up around his arm as if it was alarmed.

  The bottom floor was a dungeon. The smell had gotten worse. Skeletons rested in the cells, the bones of their arms stretched out through the bars. Prisoners abandoned to die, trapped within the dual prisons of their cages and the wards of the Citadel. No one had witnessed them except each other.

  Cally and Rowe glanced into each cell, finding nothing of interest. Further down the passage, the iron bars were replaced with solid stone walls and metal doors. Some were unlocked. Others were locked and Cally had to break them open with shadows. Others still were jammed shut and Rowe had to shove them open with a piercing metal shriek that sounded as if the building itself was being stabbed.

  Cally came to another locked door. He spun up a black dart and cast it into the lock, which snapped with a brittle twang. He opened the door. Something leaped out and rammed into him, bowling him over.

  The wight lifted its clawed hand. Cally kicked away from its stinking weight. Its claws clinked down into the stone. They were worn and broken. The thing was very, very thin, like the skin of a lizard wrapped around bare bones, and it wobbled as it tried to get to its feet. Weakened and made frail by however many years it had been trapped there.

  Yet it still had more than enough life to it to kill.

  It lunged at Cally again and he rolled aside, the tips of its claws scraping his skin. They weren't going to be able to kill it, but could they lure it back inside the cell and slam the door on it?

  He was opening his mouth to suggest as much as Rowe swung his sword down with both hands. The wight had fallen forward after its lunge and couldn't get out of the way. The sword struck it square on the neck.

  The stroke would have beheaded a bear. Instead, it laid a cut across the demon's neck, drawing a thin stream of blood—or at least a purple-black liquid the color of sick nether.

  Though it wasn't life-threatening, it was the worst wound Cally had seen a wight suffer. Acting on pure hunchery, he drew the nether into a curved blade and hacked into the exact same spot Rowe had hit. His dark blade gouged an inch deep, spraying bruise-colored blood into the air. The wight's bloodshot eyes went wider than ever. Its vile mouth hooted with pain.

  "Hit it again!" Cally said. "Where it's already wounded!"

  The thing was trying to scrabble away. Cally glued its feet fast to the ground. Its elbows, too. Rowe hacked at it again, driving the blade another half inch into its flesh. The next strike, if it was from the same source that had already dealt the creature damage, would land even more shallowly.

  But Cally's next attack wasn't made of nether. He raised the pearly ethereal scimitar and cleaved it into the wound, which was already feebly trying to heal itself. The demon's neck split to the spine, head lolling. With the instincts of a man who knows how to kill, Rowe chopped at it relentlessly until Cally told him that all of the nether inside the monster had gone still.

  Rowe stood over it, breathing heavily. He snapped his wrist, splattering the ichor coating his sword across the floor. "Can we do this to the other wights?"

  "If we can convince them to lock themselves in an empty room for sixty years first. Otherwise, I would not bet my life on it, which is what we'd have to do to try. This one was a lot weaker than the others. I've barely been able to hurt them."

  "Still, you figured something out there. If we don't find this weapon of yours, we might be able to work with this."

  "Or at least die making a vainglorious final effort."

  The wight was indisputably dead—in fact, it already seemed to be decaying, or at least shrinking into itself—but they stuffed it back in its room anyway. They resumed the search. Every other cell held nothing more than old bones and straw. If the map was accurate enough to be trusted, the star was near the far end of the hallway, and appeared to be on the left.

  Checking the cells there, however, they only found one
thing that was remotely unusual. In the last cell, a large V had been scratched onto each wall, presumably by a very bored and equally uncreative prisoner named Vee or Victor or Vallisar.

  Yet Rowe paused there, trailing his hand along the walls. He stopped and peered up at the ceiling. "Come here."

  Cally was the type to ask why before doing so, but he'd known Rowe for long enough to know that he was the type who wouldn't explain until after you did what he said, if he bothered to explain at all. Cally walked over to him. Rowe laced his fingers together, forming a basket, and motioned for Cally to step into it. Cally did so. Rowe boosted him toward the ceiling. Cally reached up to catch himself before his head bashed into the ceiling—and one of his arms slipped into an unseen hole.

  "My goodness!" He felt around with both hands. "There's a tunnel here. How'd you know that? I'm looking right at it and can still barely see it."

  "Norren design. Or more likely stolen from them."

  "Like that vault the children were hiding in at the village. How'd you know it was here?"

  "V's on the walls aren't V's. They're the rays of a star."

  "Like on the map. And the way the V's are aligned puts the star's center on the ceiling. Pretty clever."

  "Right. Now climb."

  "I can't help but notice you keep sending me in first."

  "You have the light. And the sorcery. And unless you want to also have my boot up your ass, get climbing."

  Cally went. The tunnel angled upward, tight but blessedly short. The upper end was covered by what turned out to be a large flower pot, which Cally barely managed to move without being crushed by it.

  He crawled out and found himself inside…well, he wasn't sure what he was inside. The ceiling was a high arch the light of his ether couldn't reach to the top of, but the air smelled earthy, like herbs and greens. Which was almost certainly due to the neat beds of herbs and greens planted in rows on the dirt floor. Still, it looked like a chapel, or even a small cathedral—yes, the tall windows typical of such places were missing, but that's because they had been bricked up. There was moonlight coming in from the ceiling, though, where new windows had been cut out, as narrow as arrow slits.

  Rowe absorbed this in a blink and quietly drew his sword. Cally held the nether close. A stone path ran between the rows of crops. Past the vegetables, the floor was paved again, and tables stood on it, covered with small glass bottles, stones and gems, ink pots, a mortar and pestle, surgical knives, and a number of small bones. Most of the odds and ends showed signs of wear, but unlike everything else in the Citadel, they bore no patina of age.

  Cally drew a little more nether to him.

  The back end of the church was elevated from the floor by a pair of steps. On it and the walls behind it stood what Cally had been hoping to find all along: rack after rack of weapons. Beautiful swords, shiny-tipped spears, unstrung bows, towering polearms. He just hoped the wight-slaying weapon was among them—and that he'd have the ability to identify it.

  "Good evening."

  Cally quite nearly dampened the front of his trousers. He spun toward the voice, brightening the ether so much he could hardly see. An old man was seated on a chair between a desk and a low bed. White hair spilled down his shoulders while a black and white beard tumbled down his chest. He was dressed in a much-mended black robe. The symbol on its front was ivory-shaded with time: the White Tree of Barden.

  "Ah, there you are." Wrinkled as his face was, his eyes didn't look old at all, an emerald green common in many old Narashtovik families. "Wasn't sure that you'd make it."

  Cally knit his brow. "You were expecting us?"

  "Ever since the invasion began." The old man wriggled in his seat, as if about to attempt to stand, but settled for craning his neck as he looked them over. Examining Cally, his good cheer fell. "You're…not from Narashtovik. You're from the south. In my heart, I always feared this is how it would end for us."

  "I am with the Order," Cally said. "And so is my friend. We're looking for a way to kill the wights. The one promised by this book." He retrieved Merriwen's tome from inside his shirt and displayed it to the old man. "Do you know it?"

  "I should think so," the old man laughed. "After all, I wrote it."

  21

  Things seemed to crash and fall inside Cally's skull. "You wrote it? But Merriwen wrote it. And Merriwen's long dead."

  "You idiot," Rowe said.

  "Merriwen isn't dead? And he's you?" Cally flapped his arms at the old man. "You're the founder of our faith! Why would you let us think you were dead?"

  "I thought it best," Merriwen said slowly, as if choosing each word with care, "if no one knew of my ongoing involvement here."

  "You've been holding up the wards. For all this time. All by yourself."

  "Indeed. Now as for yourself. You say you're from the Order, but you look more Mallish than Narashtoviker. And what's worse, you struck the wards with an attack expressly forbidden by the Order."

  "I never said I'm a very good member of the Order. In fact, I'm about to leave it."

  Merriwen gave him a curious look. "Yet you're risking your life coming here to save it?"

  "Yes, well I'm learning that the world is a complicated place. And also a very stupid one." Cally pressed his hand to his forehead. "How can you still be alive? Have you been trapped in this chapel all this time?"

  "Ask your questions after we get what we came here for." Rowe turned to the old man. "You claim you're Merriwen. If that's true, then you know how to kill the wights."

  The old man gave him a wry look. "If I'm Merriwen? Do you suppose I locked myself in here with a pack of demons just to play a prank on you?"

  "Whoever you are, you lied about being dead. Man lies once, trust him to lie twice."

  "I am who I say I am." He sounded tired. "And I know how to kill the wights."

  Cally edged closer. "How?"

  Merriwen fixed him with a look. "Didn't you even bother to read my book?"

  "In fact, I did. That's how I know I don't know how to dispel them. To me, most of it was total gibberish."

  The old man chuckled merrily, then grew serious. "That is for the best. This knowledge should be destroyed. Along with everyone who has it and would be tempted to use it." Merriwen reached forward and tapped Cally's gut with a gnarled finger. "The answer is right there."

  Rowe groaned. "If you're about to tell us the answer was inside him all along…"

  "What a stupid idea. There is a form within the wights. Very hard to see unless you know what you're looking for. Fortunately for you, I am about to show you." Effortlessly, a spherical cloud of shadows appeared within his hand. His fingers twitched like he was tumbling a coin between them. The shadows rolled into three thick strings, then spun themselves into a complicated braid. "It will look like this. But as I said, it will be hard to see. Like a shadow of a shadow. You will likely want to feel for it, the way you might feel your way through a lightless room."

  "And once I've found this form?"

  "Sever it. As hard as you can. This will kill the construct."

  "If it's that simple, why couldn't the Order figure it out?"

  "Have I mentioned yet that it is very hard to see? In that case, let me tell you it is very hard to see. On top of that, you can't just reach inside them. You can only access the braid by entering the wight's nether through an open wound."

  "Which the Order isn't so great at producing. But they heal as fast as the devil, don't they? I'll need to spike them as deep as I can, then reach inside to…sever them."

  Merriwen nodded sagely. "Just so."

  Rowe gazed down on the old man, arms crossed. "It's that simple. Then why didn't you ever kill the wights infesting this place?"

  "I tried. But they learned to stay away from me, or attack in numbers to overwhelm me. Besides, most of my energy was devoted to maintaining the wards." He motioned to Rowe. "Do you know how to use that sword you wear? Or is it just to impress the ladies?"

  "I know how to us
e my weapon."

  Merriwen narrowed his eyes, giving Rowe a closer look. "You remind me of someone I knew a very long time ago. Although I suppose at this point 'a very long time ago' is when I knew everyone I knew." He planted his hands on the arms of his chair and pushed himself to his feet, looking mildly surprised at his success. "Anyway, I made a trinket some time ago when I was bored. I hate to see it going to waste."

  He shuffled over to his workstation. A black staff was leaned against it, although it wouldn't be much use for walking, as it wasn't quite four feet long. He hefted it, then lobbed it to Rowe, who snatched it from the air. Rowe turned it one way, then the other, revealing that it was flattish, more oval than rounded. He cocked his head, gripped it near the middle and at one end, and pulled.

  With a leathery whisper, he unsheathed a sword. It had no cross-guard and the blade was darker than most steel, a rich pewter. As soon as Rowe drew it all the way clear, bolts of lightning crackled up the blade, black and purple and silver.

  He yelled in surprise and threw the weapon aside. The lightning stopped the instant the handle lost contact with his hand. The blade clanged to the ground with a sound like music.

  Merriwen scowled at Rowe. "Is that how you treat all priceless artifacts? Or just mine?"

  "What was that?"

  "A very effective tool against the wights, as it draws on a power quite similar to the one used to create them. Careful not to wield it for too at once long, though. Or it will drain a vital essence from you."

  Rowe bent to pick up the blade. He held it up, watching the lightning zip along the steel. "And turn me into one of them?"

  "Something far weaker and more miserable. If you start to feel yourself getting lightheaded…"

  "Got it." He sheathed the weapon with a click.

  "So he stabs them," Cally said, "then I reach inside and sever the braid?"

  Merriwen nodded his wizened head. "That is the way I would do it, yes."

  "I am honored to be entrusted with this knowledge. And horrified that I'm the one that has to go put it to use. Now if that's all there is to be said on the wights, would you mind telling me how in hell I broke the wards?"