Join us, join us, join us, they said to her.
Skeleton jaws clacked at her, and the spirits swirled around her in a ragged, wisping cyclone, their voices pitched like the whine of biters in her ears.
Avataaar… they whispered.
Cat claws punctured her leather trousers and dug into her thighs.
“Ow!”
Details returned. Sore head against cool stone wall. Sore hands and knees, sore everything.
Tombs.
To her relief, the ghosts had been a dream, though her presence in the tombs was not. Nor was the cat. Ghost Kitty crouched on her lap, ears flat against his head. He emitted a low growl and glared out the doorway of the House of Sun and Moon.
Karigan rubbed her eyes and looked and heard voices. A man in the livery of a castle servant held a knife to Iris’s throat, while at least two others stood nearby confronting Agemon with swords.
KARIGAN HAUNTING
“Damnation,” Karigan whispered. When and how did this transpire? She detached the cat from her thighs and set him on the floor. With a hiss he scuttled into hiding beneath one of the benches. Agemon must have disobeyed Brienne’s orders and slipped out while Karigan napped.
“Tell us, old man,” said the intruder with the knife to Iris’s throat.
“You should not be here!” Agemon cried. “You have broken taboo—you are unclean. The Black Shields shall be very cross with you.”
The man snorted. “You mean the Weapons? We took care of them.”
At least Agemon had the good sense to keep quiet about Brienne and Fastion. Unless, of course, the thug meant Brienne and Fastion. In any case, Agemon just stood there wringing his hands in distress.
“You will tell us,” said a second man dressed in the uniform of a Sacoridian soldier, “which is the highest of the high kings here. Tell us or we cut the girl’s throat.”
Iris whimpered.
“Highest of the…? Who are you people? Why have you invaded these sacred avenues?”
“Second Empire, old man, and this place is not sacred to us. Disgusting and strange, perhaps, but not sacred.”
“Spooky,” said the third man with a shudder. He wore no disguise or device. He was a plainshield, much unkempt.
“Shut up, Thursgad,” the soldier said. Then self-importantly he drew himself up and proclaimed, “We are here in the name of the empire.”
Karigan thought Agemon would faint. He actually tottered a bit, but then he spoke a string of foreign words in a commanding voice and spat at the soldier’s feet.
The man holding Iris said, “Well, well. That was not a very nice thing to say.”
The other two intruders looked as perplexed as Karigan felt. What language did Agemon speak? What did he say? And Thursgad! She remembered that name—one of Immerez’s men.
Whatever Agemon said didn’t matter. She had to do something, but in her condition she could not hope to overcome three fit-looking, armed men.
Need another way.
Trying to think hurt her head. What could she possibly do?
Agemon was pulling on his hair and there was some exchange of words, and finally he acceded to whatever demands the cutthroats made. He led them away down the corridor.
“Damnation,” Karigan murmured.
She’d have to follow, but carefully. That was the only thing she could think of to do at the moment—follow and keep an eye on them. She would intervene if they looked ready to kill Iris or Agemon. In the meantime, she hoped they’d bump into Fastion and Brienne, or any of the other Weapons who came in with them. They’d know what to do, and could easily take on the three men, even Fastion with his injured leg.
Karigan allowed the intruders with their captives to get some distance on her, then she crept from the House of Sun and Moon after them, flitting behind columns and keeping to shadows. Her fading ability might prove useful so long as she evaded the lamplight, but she didn’t want to draw on it until she had to so she didn’t exhaust her reservoir of energy. She wouldn’t mind a whiff of stallion breath about now.
She extinguished lamps as she went, as much to signal the Weapons something was afoot as to provide extra darkness for her ability to fade. The downside was the intruders would realize they were being followed should they look behind them. Fortunately this was not yet the case, for they plunged on, intent on following Agemon.
Agemon turned down one of the more ancient corridors lined with open wall crypts. They were niches, really, chiseled out of the rock wall, and most filled with yellowed bones. There were some shrouded forms, as well as empty niches, everything neat and orderly, of course.
There was less decoration in this cavelike portion of the tombs, aside from sketchy murals, some so old she could barely make them out. They were full of death iconography and the gods, with whom she was becoming all too familiar. Some of the wall art, it appeared, was made to cover Delver drawings.
She maintained her guarded distance, but by some trick of the acoustics, she could hear snatches of conversation as if the men were speaking into her ear. Agemon spoke of doom to the men, about how they’d never see the living sun again.
Thursgad, she saw, clutched something to his chest. It must be the book. The book that would bring down the D’Yer Wall. He also seemed the most nervous of the three, jumping when he came too close to an occupied crypt, muttering to himself about spirits, glancing this way and that. It did not stop him, however, from plucking gold rings and necklaces and brooches from the dead and stuffing them into his pockets.
Karigan dampened another lamp. She couldn’t get every lamp, but she left a good deal of unsettling dark behind her.
The corridor dead-ended, and she was so tired she almost laughed at the pun in her mind. A shrouded form lay in a niche there with a crown upon its breast. Karigan could not read the Old Sacoridian script carved above the niche, except for the numeral one. Hairs stood up on the back of her neck.
“This is the first high king,” Agemon said. “He is King Jonaeus.” He bowed to the shrouded figure.
The intruders showed no such sign of respect. The one who pointed his knife into Iris’ back said, “The book, Thursgad!”
Due to the strange acoustics, Karigan could hear Thursgad’s nervous breaths as he fumbled with the book. This would be a good time, she thought, for the Weapons to arrive, or even for some ghosts to lend a hand. Ghosts had helped her in the past, but of course they couldn’t bother to show up in the one place you most expected to find them.
Figures.
Thursgad placed the book on the niche shelf next to the remains of King Jonaeus. He and the others stared at it. Nothing happened.
Karigan thought of ghosts again, this time the ones who appeared in her dream. Join us, they told her. Maybe it was a message; maybe joining them was a good idea…
“Open the book,” the man with the knife ordered Thursgad. “It probably has to be open.”
Thursgad reached for it with a trembling hand.
“Nooooooooo…” Karigan said in a faint, withering voice from the shadows.
It must have filled the space around them for they looked all over for its origin. Thursgad stuck his hands under his armpits.
“Desecratoooooors…” Karigan moaned.
“The lamps!” the soldier cried.
“I told ye there’d be ghosts,” Thursgad said, his voice high-pitched.
“Shut it,” the man with the knife said. “Some trick of the air. Now hurry, open the book.”
When Thursgad refused to budge, the soldier opened it. “Nothing,” he said.
The knife man jabbed the point of his blade into Iris’s back and she cried out. “This wasn’t the right high king, old man. You’d better show us the right one.”
Agemon pulled on his hair again. “But King Jonaeus was the first. He decimated your empire!”
Karigan had to give the caretaker credit for bravery. She hoped it didn’t get him killed.
“Try again,” the knife man said, “and tak
e us to the right king this time.”
Agemon hemmed and hawed, then resolutely led the way down the corridor toward her. Thursgad and the soldier each grabbed lamps to light the way.
A good time to fade, Karigan thought, and she turned and strode into the dark. She could not see well, but she couldn’t let the intruders catch up to her. Or could she?
She didn’t exactly like the idea, but she thought it might prove effective. She removed a shroud from a royal pile of bones and crinkled her nose, trying to remind herself of how fastidious the caretakers were.
Thursgad did not like this, not one bit. It was wrong to be here. The spirits didn’t like it, either. Aye, he, Rol, and Gare were desecrators all right, and the memory of the spirit’s voice sent another chill spasming up his spine, yet Rol seemed determined to ignore it, and Gare, though clearly shaken, chose to imitate Rol and pretend nothing happened. The old caretaker had gotten a queer look in his eye when the spirit spoke. He was probably used to spirits. He probably encountered them all the time.
After this whole adventure, Thursgad was going to take the treasures in his pockets and head west to Rhovanny. No more of this, no more tombs, no more Second Empire. The crazy old ladies in the woods were bad enough to begin with. Let Sarge call him a rustic bastard and deserter all he wanted, but he was going to have no more of this. He’d take his treasures and buy himself a piece of land on one of the lakes in wine country. Maybe he’d buy himself a vineyard. That’s what he’d do. He’d become a prosperous wine farmer and no one would call him a rustic bastard ever again.
He hoped the jewels weren’t cursed.
He kept close to Rol and Gare, unsettled at how many lamps had been extinguished. But not all, not all…It could not have been a trick of the wind. The old caretaker walked into the dark as though he knew the path by memory and needed no light. Thursgad kept his gaze plastered on Rol’s back, as if that would prevent him from seeing spirits. He didn’t exactly like seeing the contents of the niches either.
Despite his precautions, he caught movement from the corner of his eye. There was the swish of a shroud and his worst nightmare came to life when one of the corpses rose from its shelf. Thursgad screamed and almost dropped his lamp, and the others whirled to see the shrouded figure behind them.
The spirit raised a linen-wrapped hand, blotched with dried blood, and pointed at them. “Trespassersssss…” it whispered.
Gare was on it in a second, swiping his sword through the shroud. The shroud drifted empty and formless to the floor, the spirit gone.
AVENUES OF HILLANDER
Thursgad screamed and ran.
The way the intruders pushed and scrambled their way down the corridor, practically falling over one another, almost made Karigan laugh. If they didn’t hold the lives of Agemon and Iris in their hands, she’d consider it good fun. Her haunting was clearly having an effect. Even on the man with the knife.
The trouble was that in mere moments they’d be in the brightly lit main corridor, making her ghostly antics more difficult to pull off.
Sure enough, once the intruders reached the light, they slowed down and relaxed and put aside their lamps. Karigan watched from the darkness of the old corridor as they marched onward. She glanced briefly into the dark behind her, wishing she’d had a chance to pay her respects to King Jonaeus as Agemon had.
The intruders continued past the corridor leading to the House of Sun and Moon, and when they passed Queen Lyra’s chamber, Karigan was so tired she was nearly tempted to slip into bed next to the dead queen and take a nap.
As she followed the intruders, she wondered yet again what she could do. She’d begun to erode their confidence with her haunting, but they seemed to have regained it. If she could frighten them again, maybe they’d make a mistake, slow down, scatter, give Agemon and Iris a chance to escape.
They came to a large round chamber with a domed ceiling, murals painted in its coffered recesses. In the center of the chamber stood a huge, heroic sculpture of a king on a horse, with his arm stretched out like a conqueror offering benediction to the conquered. Down here that would be the dead. All that was missing was a pigeon or two.
A colonnade surrounded the chamber and from it led galleries like spokes to a wheel. At each entrance stood a suit of armor.
“Avenues of Hillander,” Agemon said. “This way.” And he led the men into one of the galleries.
King Smidhe, Karigan thought, looking at the statue anew. The king responsible for unifying Sacoridia’s provinces. Agemon was taking those men to his tomb.
She needed to do something. She glanced desperately around, then flitted off down a different gallery, gazing at various Hillanders in eternal repose for inspiration. A good many were installed in sarcophagi, but others rested fully garbed on funeral slabs, their parchmentlike skin taut over skulls and bony hands.
Karigan paused and tapped her foot, thinking fast. The intruders knew nothing of her or her ability to fade. Well, Thursgad might remember, but she doubted he’d connect his “spirit Rider” of two years ago with the ghostly presence in the tombs. He didn’t strike her as overly bright. To them she’d appear a ghost, even if she couldn’t fade completely in the light. In fact, being only partially faded would enhance the effect. That was her hope, anyway.
She smiled at the plan, but her smile turned to a grimace as she started removing royal raiment from its owners. Agemon was going to have a fit.
A pair of white marble sarcophagi lay at the end of the gallery, practically glowing in the lamplight, the likenesses of King Smidhe and Queen Aldesta regal in their serenity. Behind them was a false window of stained glass backlit with a lamp, depicting a king and queen looking at the castle from a distance, the crescent moon above the highest turret. The king bore a torch.
“This better be the one, old man,” the knife wielder said, holding Iris close.
Agemon mumbled imperceptibly and fiddled with his specs.
Thursgad approached King Smidhe’s sarcophagus with the book. Karigan took this as her cue to make her ghostly appearance. She’d extinguished several lamps along the way to aid the effect, but it had surely been a trial getting this far dragging her heavy, kingly mantle of thick velvet and fur along the floor behind her.
She faded out, and in the light, looking through her hand was like looking through clouded glass.
“Halt!” she cried.
They turned. Thursgad dropped the book on the floor with a resounding boom and hid behind King Smidhe’s tomb.
Agemon took to muttering and pulling on his hair, while Iris, even with the knife held close to her, looked about to laugh. The other two intruders were dumbstruck.
Karigan raised her borrowed scepter, threw her arms wide. “Desecrators!”
She stepped forward, but kept her progress slow. She couldn’t tell what made her head hurt more—the fading or the crown pressing on her scalp wound.
“Defilers!” Karigan wished the intruders would do something other than gape at her. Agemon gazed at the ceiling. Was he praying? Cursing her for despoiling his precious corpses?
“Who are you, O spirit?” the soldier asked, his voice trembling.
“Shut up, Gare,” the knife wielder said.
Karigan kept moving, allowing light and shadows to fade her in and out. What, she wondered, should her response be? She decided the ghostly thing to do was not to answer at all, so instead she moaned. “The empire will faaaaail.” And she disappeared into the deepest, darkest shadow she could find.
“You lie!” the man with the knife screamed, his voice echoing down the gallery. “Gare, the book!”
When Gare did not move fast enough, the knife wielder shoved Iris out of the way and reached for the book on the floor.
This was the very thing Karigan had been waiting for. She tossed aside scepter and crown, and threw off the mantle, and charged at the intruders, sword drawn, yelling like a crazed demon.
Thursgad, who poked his head above King Smidhe’s sarcophagus, f
ainted. Gare’s mouth dropped open and only the man with the knife had the presence of mind to react by drawing his own sword. Agemon grabbed Iris and ran with her down the gallery.
Good, Karigan thought. Now she had only herself to worry about.
As ready as the man was for her, he looked confused, and when their swords clashed, Karigan realized she’d not dropped her fading. She did so now so it would no longer drain her strength. After all, he could see her in the light, translucent though she was, and once they engaged, it was clear she was a solid living person and not a ghost at all.
She danced away and put Queen Aldesta between herself and them, but Gare jumped up on the sarcophagus lid, straddling the figure of the queen, his sword hurtling down on Karigan. She blocked it, but it felt like a hammer blow. Somehow she held onto the sword and swept it like a scythe into Gare’s leg. His scream was horrid and he tumbled off the tomb, crimson splattering white marble.
The last man came after her and their exchange of blows was deafening. Sweat burned Karigan’s eyes. If only she could keep this up. If only she could get past his defenses.
But as he pressed her around the king’s sarcophagus, she stumbled over the unconscious Thursgad. She managed to keep her footing, but could not properly block the man’s next blow. It sliced down her forearm, elbow to wrist, the leather guard protecting only a portion of her wrist before the blade slashed down the back of her hand.
Karigan’s sword clanged to the floor and she cried out, but the man did not pause. He came for the kill. She ducked just in time feeling his sword hum over her head.
The only thing left to her was to call on her fading and run. This she did and she had enough presence of mind to grab the book as she went.
The man was on her heels. She sought the dark places, but there weren’t enough to hide her. She pushed a statue in his path and threw an urn at him. This slowed him little. She felt like she ran in mud.
When she came to the domed chamber with the statue, she ran blindly down another gallery. She must hide, and hide quick. Someplace dark.
The High King's Tomb Page 58
