Vehre glanced at Vik Ihmel, who was seated on grass not far off . His maimed arm rested on his knees. He’d tugged the loose end of the sleeve up to stare at the stump.
Vehre heaved a frustrated breath, grasped Thali by an arm and led her away. They could do nothing for either man right now. Vehre headed toward a group of holy brothers and companion witches. He’d decide how best to team them while the war was stalled.
***
Marun connected the last of the marks on the canvas tarp. The cloth had been spread and pegged as flat as possible within a tent he’d appropriated for the spell. Having been left without chalk because of the bombardment of his pavilion, he used blood. He painted the signs with a hastily fashioned brush of human hair. The life fluid of at least a dozen white witches lined the canvas, symbols of ancient meaning, some of which he had the barest comprehension, some that he didn’t understand at all.
He painted the marks from memory. His first master had demanded he do this many times, so many that he didn’t need to think about it. The spell however, the spell that opened a new gate, that spell he didn’t remember so very well. It was a chant that required time, care and no distractions. If he failed, he would die … or end up where dying would have been preferable.
Not even his soulstone would protect him from a badly miscast portal spell. His soul’s link to his body would doom him. The hell he opened would drag all that he was inside. This was the peril of portal magic: it warped a hell out of shape, creating a shortcut to elsewhere in their plane of existence. Only perfect control prevented the hell from intruding past the portal boundary.
He stood and surveyed the finished circle. Then, sucking in a deep and firming breath, he stepped inside the scrolling blood marks. He fixed the broken temple in his mind and began the chant.
He worked it slowly. He worked it carefully. He still faltered half way through. His memory failed him at a crucial point, and the invisible power gathering at his feet began to unravel.
He looked down. A small gap had appeared in the circle centre. Blackness waited beneath, deeper and more malevolent than any his mistress had ever thrown. This blackness did not lurch upward. It lurked. It waited. It hungered.
“Oh!” For the life of him, he could not remember the remaining words of the chant. The magic unravelled further and the gap widened. The spell trapped him within the circle, and the only way out was down to his eternal torment or complete destruction. He could not scream for the fear that filled him, no intelligence left to summon even that much protest.
A movement at the entrance of the tent pulled his horrified eyes upward. Kehfrey held the flap high and stared in at him. Suddenly Marun remembered sense, or at least love.
“Go!” he screamed. “Don’t come here!”
Kehfrey let the canvas flap slip down and stood firm before the circle, eyes filled with a strange and knowing light. “I’ve seen this before,” he said. He looked down at the darkness beneath Marun. “I’ve seen that!”
Marun cried out as his felt himself fall. Unexpectedly, his wrist was caught in a firm grasp. “Kehfrey!” he protested. “No!”
Kehfrey now crouched with his feet and one hand planted to the side of the growing rift, just within the circle of blood. He had trapped himself inside the magic boundary, Marun dangling by an arm just beneath. The waiting dark radiated infinite malice. It welcomed them with cold patience.
“Say the spell!” Kehfrey shouted. “Say it!”
“I don’t remember!”
A white light erupted from out of Kehfrey’s skin. It played down his arm and over Marun. And the sorcerer remembered. He screamed the words. He spoke them desperately. The rift began to shut, but it threatened to close above him.
“Climb!” Kehfrey grunted. He held the sorcerer with all the strength in him, but couldn’t lift the man higher. The blackness beneath dragged at Marun’s limbs. The pull was immense.
“Climb!” Kehfrey gritted out.
Marun grabbed the edge of reality with a hand. Together they struggled until his booted toe caught on the ledge. He heaved himself up through the contracting fissure. Still screaming the words that had been gifted to him, he launched to a stand, once more straddling the rift. Kehfrey never released him through all of it. He stared down at the narrowing gap and watched balefully. When Marun looked down, his incredible saviour roared at him.
“No! Keep your head up! Continue the spell!”
Marun ripped his gaze off doom and fixed on the canvas to the fore. He’d felt something! He’d felt—! A promise, a will, an emptiness, a hunger. He’d felt the unholiness of a ghoul’s animation, and it was not the Great Mother’s power. The black of shadows had never been the goddess’s true gift. She’d borrowed it and passed it on from this horror, this annihilation lurking within the broken portal beneath his feet. All shadows came from this!
“The spell!” Kehfrey snarled.
In his horror, Marun had faltered. He continued, the white around both of them a soft glow that promised safety. He stared at Kehfrey’s bent head, at the strange divine light playing in his vibrant hair, and he chanted until the tent flashed out of sight.
***
They were on the mount. The clouded sky drizzled on them. Broken stones surrounded them. It was wonderful. It was real. It was earthly. It was chill and wet and safe.
Marun stepped two paces forward. A great explosion had blasted the terrain recently, but he sensed the Ancient Power waiting beneath the torn dirt. Despite the destruction, the well of souls was strong and stable. He had succeeded. He was within Ugoth’s wards.
“Who are you?” Kehfrey said.
Marun looked at him. Exultation disintegrated. “I am Tehlm Sevet, slave of the Great Mother,” he answered.
“Slave,” Kehfrey repeated. “I’m sorry for you, then.”
“So am I.” He stepped away. “I will send you back to the tent now.”
Kehfrey followed after him. “I will stay with you.”
“No.” Marun pointed him back. “You must not be here when the shadows rise. She has abused you enough.”
“But …! But I don’t want you to be hurt!”
“I won’t be. You’ve already seen to that. Stay in the entry point. I will send you back.”
Kehfrey nodded reluctantly. Marun kissed him and pressed him into the entry point. Kehfrey clutched at his arms.
“Please!”
“No!” Marun wrenched free, backed off, uttered the quicker return chant and sent him back. Alone, he knelt on the broken earth.
“Gods!” he cried. “Oh, gods! Who is he?” He thumped the earth with his fists. “Who is he?”
Unsurprisingly, the goddess would not give him an answer. He bent his head in sorrow.
“He loves me!” Loved him enough to have risked the worst of hells. Marun remembered Kehfrey’s words in the tent.
I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen that!
“He’s fought a hell already,” he whispered. Comprehension lifted the hairs all over his body and sent a shiver down his spine. And he knew, abruptly, that the ancient entity coiling beneath him understood this as well. She had known Kehfrey would save him from a miscast portal spell. She had known he had the power. She had used them both again.
He looked down at the earth, eyes dark with anger. Though she had crippled his mind with regards to Kehfrey’s identity, this latest feat he could not help but understand. The unearthly glow, the divine white, the dreams of a different Kehfrey sleeping in the cavern of crystal teeth: these could not be mistaken.
“He’s a god. Isn’t he, bitch? You swallowed him somehow, but he escaped from you. He slipped out of your womb and you never noticed until I brought him to Held Mount as a child. He got himself born into a human life without your leave. You have nothing left of him but an immortal avatar and his true name, and he is so potent he resists even the pull of these significant tokens.
“Which god was he that he can oppose even you while caught in your hot embrace? Who was he?
”
She was silent under him, but her resentment grew palpable. Marun felt sick, ill enough to retch until he collapsed. He was so close to understanding, so very close, but her spell on his mind would kill him first. The magic was a burgeoning pressure in his head. She’d give him a stroke before letting him know.
He gave up. The relief he felt was only physical. His spirit felt all the blacker for what he was about to do.
“What a fine joke on us both,” he said. “I have taken one of the faceless gods as a lover, only I have raped his mind with black power time and again. And you hint he will forgive me? You are such a liar! How black is your heart, goddess? Truly? Did you invite that annihilation in just to win your lost god back? Do you love the feel of how it nibbles away at your core like you have nibbled away at mine?”
Work my will! she thundered up at him at last. He remembers nothing! You have nothing to fear!
He laughed. “Nothing can hold him forever!” he repeated back to her.
She coiled angrily. He laughed again and rose to his feet.
“Come then, bitch! Fill me!”
And she did. He screamed in agony, in rapture, in sorrow.
***
Ugoth scanned the mount, a sense of something not right pervading his mind. The air felt wrong, not so much the smell of it; a prickle of power raised the hairs all over his body. Trepidation froze him, and the swelling menace seemed to scratch at his spine.
“Something is wrong!” Vik cried, echoing his thoughts.
Ugoth watched him whirl to face the crown of the mount. Vik’s expression lengthened with horror. Ugoth looked upward.
Shadows rolled down the hill toward them, massive, thick shadows.
“Retreat below the next ward!” he screamed. “Retreat down the hill!” He backed up and almost fell off the ledge.
Vik grabbed him with his single arm and dragged him to rights. “Careful!”
“Vik! Hurry!”
Ugoth shoved him toward the side. Vik raced along the ridge. Ugoth thundered after him. They leapt from five feet up and slid down gravel. All along the ridge, soldiers, monks and witches rushed to get below the highest wards. Most of them didn’t make it.
Looking back as he slid, Vik witnessed some of them die. Cries of fear cut off as lives were drained. Then the shadows hid the fallen. He knew he wasn’t going to make it either. The evil cloud was just behind the king.
Blackness clutched one of Ugoth’s arms. He went numb to the bone and thought he was finished, and then Herfod’s moving ward erupted into life. Vik stopped sliding and Ugoth thumped into him. He grabbed him and hung on as the thick cloud rolled over them both. The glow of the ward spread until it encapsulated Vik as well.
“Ugoth!” Vik cried. He could see nothing, just the dim glow around himself and the king. The black of the shadows roiled against the blue ward, recoiling and returning.
“I’ve got you.” Ugoth whispered. “I won’t let go. Get up carefully. We have to keep moving down.” He set his left hand in Vik’s remaining one and they rose together.
“I saw Thali die,” Vik whispered. “The cloud rolled right over her. Vehre would not have left her. He must be dead too.”
“I know. Move down. Careful!”
They had both slipped on unstable slate and thudded onto their seats, but Ugoth’s grasp on Vik never lessened. Vik was forced to use his stump to right himself. They stood together and crept downward again, unable to see further than two feet in front.
A noise in the darkness brought them to an anxious halt. A sobbing voice wandered closer. A figure appeared in the murk, a sturdy form glowing holy blue.
“Vehre!” Ugoth shouted and snagged his arm.
The azure light expanded as they connected, and the shadows retreated further off. The abbot stared at him, momentarily frozen, whether by astonishment or relief, Ugoth could not at first say, but he soon ascertained that anguish immobilized the man. “I wasn’t touching her!” Vehre cried. “She was dead before I reached her!”
“Vehre!” Ugoth hissed. “Get over here!” Vehre moved a step closer. The nimbus around him shone steady and bright. “You monk bastard! Why did Herfod forgive you that much?”
“He must have known Vehre would protect you,” Vik said “Let’s go! Marun is up in the temple. That is the only way this much shadow could have been called.”
They began to creep downward again, Vehre still sobbing softly. Ugoth dared to release his arm, prickling with tension as he did so, but their merged auras did not lessen, and they were still able to see several feet ahead and behind.
“How did he get up there?” Ugoth said after a moment.
“His first master wasn’t a summoner,” Vik whispered back. “He was a rift maker. He could open gates from one place to another. His master must have left an old gate up within the temple. Marun never learned enough to create his own.”
“So he used a gate left by this first sorcerer?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“I feel a change,” Abbot Vehre whispered. “I think we passed below the next ward!”
“But the shadows have gone past it!” Ugoth cried.
Vik stopped moving suddenly. “There are things moving about here! Ugoth! Marun can call up ghouls in this darkness!”
“Gods!” Ugoth pulled his sword.
The abbot removed his mace from his hip sling. “Good thing you let me have this back,” he said to the king.
“When Brother Herfod decides to trust someone, you don’t ignore him,” Ugoth said tersely.
“Hsst!” Vik said. “I think they’re coming closer!”
“Vik! You had best put yourself to my back. Don’t let go! Slide up my arm and down my back. Hang onto my belt.”
“No! You put your left hand in my belt. I need to get my weapon out. I’ll guard our backs.”
“You’ve only got one arm!”
“It’s my sword arm, fool! Let me use it!”
Ugoth backed into him. His left arm crept along Vik’s body until it snagged in his belt to the rear.
“Don’t let go, Ugoth!”
“I’m not going to. I refuse to let you become a gods busted ghoul.”
“Thank you. Go for their heads, by the way. If you knock their brains out, they become stupider.”
“It doesn’t stop them?”
“Not always. Heads don’t seem to matter much to a ghoul. Hitting their spines is best, but it’s harder to reach their spines, isn’t it? They won’t come at us backwards.”
“You sounded so much like your brother just then.”
“Don’t be stupid. He sounds like me.”
Ugoth laughed, and the undead rushed out of the gloom. Vehre knocked the first of them back with a hastily summoned orb, and then the three warriors only had time to hack down what had once been their allies. It was at this point that Vik truly regretted never taking monks vows. Nevertheless, he commenced praying for help.
***
“Gods!” Ugoth cried. One had bitten his leg. Vik jerked forward and kicked the dead face off. To their side, Vehre spat a prayer and tossed the orb it created forward. After the ensuing blast, they were able to move another two feet, and then the ghouls were on them once more.
“Gods!” Ugoth hissed again. He grunted and struck at another undead opponent. He hacked with a will, but his arm was almost done. “Gods damn you, Marun!”
He heard Vik panting for breath at his back. Vehre uttered another hoarse prayer and cast a shot of azure at the foremost ghouls. They moved forward into the breach.
It seemed there was no end of ghouls. Some of them had been hacked before, but they came on a second time or a third, those that had not been blasted by Vehre, those who still had spines that permitted reasonable function. Ugoth thanked the gods that most of his army had been below the third ward. If not for this small mercy, the three of them would have died minutes ago. Even so, there were enough undead to bring them to their knees in another few.
He grunted and
swung again. He must do this or die.
“We should cross the next ward soon!” Vehre said huskily, but his tone was overlaid with despair.
“Keep onward!” Ugoth commanded. “We will win through!” He was probably a liar, but he refused to give up. Damn you, Marun!
Vehre croaked yet another prayer. The orb lit up the field before them as it blasted back the ghouls. They rushed into the opening, slowing when the black cloud closed in.
And then a dead Cho Korth warrior rose from behind a boulder and charged Ugoth with a spear. Ugoth’s downward momentum gave the attack enough force to cleave chain mail. The spear gutted him. He grunted and sank to his knees. His hand released Vik’s belt.
Vik felt Ugoth sag, felt also the clasp on his belt loosen. He hacked a ghoul that charged down from the rear and pressed back into Ugoth harder, until only his legs were against the fallen king. He had no time to see what had occurred. He would fight and he would die, but not before Ugoth lost Kehfrey’s ward completely.
Vehre thudded his mace into the undead warrior and cried out in desolation. They were doomed. The king died. “Vik, let up! You’re pushing it in farther! Gods! Oh, gods!” he pleaded hoarsely. “Help us!”
A god answered. The manifestation blinded Vehre. He threw up his free arm against the white light. Holy radiance blasted through the darkness. The ghouls faltered and fell to the earth, the false life spilling from them like sludge and oozing back into the dirt. In the ensuing quiet, in which only their hoarse gasps sounded, the brightness dimmed.
Vik whirled. “Oh!” he breathed.
The angel regarded him in silence and then smiled sardonically. “How interesting. You have my face.”
“Save the king!” Vik screamed. “We’ve no time for pleasantries!”
The smile widened. “I think I like you. This boldness of yours must be why he likes you too.”
Bound in Stone 3 Page 41
