by Nazri Noor
“Let’s see,” Bastion said. “Belonged to one of Charlemagne’s twelve paladins. Roland, was it? They were big in the Crusades.”
“That’s the one,” Herald said. “Nicely done, Brandt.”
Bastion shrugged. “I’m not just a pretty face.”
I rolled my eyes. Herald carried on, completely unbothered.
“Now,” he said. “Durandal is famously powerful, but most importantly, more or less terrestrial in nature. Sure, there’s stuff about its origins being divine, but what matters is that it was wielded by a human, and it died with its human. The crucial bit here is that we don’t know where it is. That’s where Asher comes in.”
Asher grinned bashfully, giving a sort of sheepish salute. “I sent out some feelers to probe the area. Which is to say, I got in touch with some of the dead here, to see what they knew.”
I blinked at him, impressed. “Wow, Asher. You speak French?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know how else to put it, but the language of death is universal. Seems to be how necromancy works. Words don’t even matter.”
“Obviously,” Sterling grunted, rolling his eyes at me, finally acknowledging my existence. “Pssh.”
Again, I ignored him. We had to focus on the task at hand. Threatening to plunge Sterling into sunlight if he didn’t stop acting like a baby could wait.
“Let’s just get started,” Herald said. I thought it was interesting how he defaulted to the role of sorcerer-in-charge in Carver’s absence. Actually, I found it pretty damn hot.
“Right then,” Asher said. “Everyone stand clear.” He sat on the grass, then placed one hand against the earth. We gathered around him in a loose circle.
“What happens now?” I whispered, nudging Herald with my elbow.
Asher’s hand burned with pale green fire.
“Now he’s checking,” Herald whispered back. “Like I said, the sword is lost to history. No one knows where Durandal is. But the dead might. Out of the legions and legions of those who have fallen over the centuries, someone must have an idea. And Asher is listening, and waiting.”
That was when I first heard it, the whispering, first of a dozen voices, then of hundreds. Asher blinked, and his eyes burned with the same jade fire as he focused on something deep in the earth, on something only he could see. The light went out, then on again as he blinked once more.
“There,” he said. “There it is. Everybody, stand clear.” He pressed a second hand into the ground, and the whispering stopped.
But then the screaming began.
The ground didn’t even shake as a seam in the earth began to open, then slowly, horribly transformed into a gaping chasm that screamed as awfully and as loudly as the portal on that first night I met Hecate. But I looked down into the pit, and I gasped. This was nothing like the gateway to Hecate’s domicile. For starters, there were all the hands.
Hundreds of them, lining the inside of the hole. No, thousands, of differing lengths and sizes, the arms of long-dead men and women and children, the color of their skin indistinguishable even in the moonlight because they were all muddy, caked with earth and soil. It was a grim and sobering reminder of the greatest truth of them all: that at the end of all things, none of us are better than the others. Beneath the earth, the worms eat everyone. Kings and peasants taste exactly the same.
Then I saw it, the gleam of silvery-white metal from deep within the pit, moving slowly, at first, then faster and faster as hands passed the thing up from the wet depths. Even from far away, Durandal was something to behold, not just a sword in appearance, but a hallowed, ancient weapon in the shape of a crucifix. Faster and faster it moved, passed from one pair of dead hands to the other, until finally, one last set of hands brandished the paladin blade Durandal just over the lip of the great screaming hole.
Asher leaned forward, fearless and stalwart, then grasped the hilt of the blessed sword, hardly even flinching as his fingers made contact with those of the dead hand holding the blade. Making sure he had a firm grip, Asher pressed Durandal against his chest, then grinned as he waved into the pit. “Thanks,” he called out, beaming. At least three of the hands waved back. Finally, the hellhole closed up, sealing as abruptly as it appeared, taking with it the dreadful, symphonic howling of the dead.
Careful to offer me the sword pommel-first, Asher presented Durandal like he would an ancient, sacred relic. Which, in many ways, it was. I could feel the sting of time and divine import radiate from the cold metal as I closed my hands around it, the sword gleaming so perfect and bright that it looked almost as white as the moon. I slipped it into my backpack to keep along with Vanitas, that strange sense of reverence only completely falling away when I released Durandal and let it fall into the pocket dimension.
“That was easier than expected,” Herald said, sticking his hands into his hips. “I guess that means we can all head back, unless anyone’s up for some sightseeing.”
Nobody really had a chance to answer, because the earth began to move. We sprang away from the fissure that Asher had opened, the scar of it still imprinted in the ground, but from the fear and concern on his face, it was clear that the quake wasn’t another necromantic event.
“This isn’t me,” he cried out, confirming what I already knew.
It happened so fast. A spire of rock jutted out from the ground, bringing with it a burst of torn earth, spraying clods of dirt and chunks of jagged stone every which way. Higher and higher it climbed, until it was taller than a man, then as tall as a house. I followed the rocky spike to its peak, and my heart swooped when I saw what waited on its pointed tip.
“Well, well,” said Agatha Black. “Now isn’t this a coincidence.”
Chapter 16
We weren’t ready for that. At least I could say that I wasn’t, because before anyone could move, the air just in front of our group glimmered. Bastion had already erected one of his force fields.
Had we caught Agatha’s attention somehow? Did Carver’s scrying give away our location?
“You’re not getting the sword,” I blurted out.
Agatha’s laughter filled the meadow. “Little one. You may keep your toy. A witch knows when she needs tools for her rituals.” She pressed her hands together, levitating off the spire of rock. “But I am no mere witch. I am the hand of the Eldest that crushes the weak. I am the mouth that sings their song of doom.”
“Then if you aren’t here for the sword,” I said, my mind still wrestling with the question, “why are you here at all?”
Agatha sneered at me. “Must the lioness repeat herself? I told you. Mere coincidence. I came here to do my holy work. You have your ceremonies, little one. You and your friends.” She cast her gaze across us all. I caught Asher flinching at the sight of her, his eyes filling with terror, and it made me hate Agatha even more. “You have your rituals, and I have mine.”
“Doesn’t matter why she’s here,” Prudence cried out, loud enough to alert us all. “Stop her. Kill her.”
We advanced as one, Agatha’s laughter raining down as we launched the first salvo of arcane missiles, fire and frost and bone lancing towards her. But she was protected by the very talent she had given her descendants, that bizarre gift of occult telekinesis. As strong and sturdy as Bastion’s shields were, Agatha’s were nigh impenetrable. I reached for my backpack, unclasping it to let Vanitas fly out and join the fray. I’d become so used to his blood thirst that I expected him to laugh as he soared straight for Agatha’s heart. This time, there was none of his easy laughter. Vanitas knew exactly what we were up against. Maybe he was even frightened.
I searched for Prudence among the crowd. Would we need to hit Agatha with another one of those ridiculous combos? Last time, the only way we had stopped her was for Prudence to assume her dragon shape, and for me to invoke the power of Nightmare, the exhausting, terrifying torrent of both shadow and flame that I called from the Dark Room.
Wincing, I remembered that we also had a third, cruci
al ingredient in the mix, one that still hadn’t been enough to annihilate her: Odin’s horse, Sleipnir, in the form of a massive eighteen-wheeler truck. I watched for the gleam of the air around Agatha as each of our missiles struck her force field. It shimmered around her, an invisible bubble. If only we could crack it.
Something else cracked, just then, the terrible sound of stone shattering and snapping. My eyes went huge as the spire that Agatha had summoned from out of the depths of the earth broke off, then went flying straight for her. Bastion had uprooted the damn thing, hurling it at his grandmother like an enormous, flying battering ram. With any luck, the stone pillar would be enough to smash Agatha’s defenses. I paused in battle just then, considering how ridiculous I sounded, how we’d never fought anyone or anything as powerful as the lioness.
And she proved herself once more. Agatha slashed her hand through the air, and the spire of rock splintered into hundreds of sharp, worthless pieces, just fragments of harmless slate as they struck her force field.
“So my grandson thinks to turn his powers against me,” Agatha said. The air felt so much thicker with her menace, the night darker. “Who do you think gave you your gifts, child? You and your harlot mother.” She clasped her hands together. “But you children do so like your playthings. Then here. Have more of them.” Agatha lifted her hands to the sky, her eyes glowing a stark, hellish red. “Have as many as you like.”
The earth trembled. No, it felt as if the sky itself was shaking, as if something massive and ancient from deep within the ground was struggling to break free. And break free they did: more of the enormous, hideously sharp crags of rock, siblings of the first that Agatha Black had called out of the ground.
I dodged the closest one frantically, readying my body to shadowstep if any of them got too close. More and more erupted from the earth, sending us scattering. I looked for the injured among us, but the spires were too huge, too numerous. From the thicket of stone spikes, all I could see were the flailing bolts of magic we sent at Agatha Black, at least those that could find their mark as she dodged and weaved through the petrified forest of her own making.
And as she dodged, she came closer, and closer.
I crouched to the ground, prepared to shadowstep, my heart thumping as I guessed at where the others were – whether they were safe, or even alive – when I caught the flash of silver, and what looked like the sheen of moonlight glinting off of lupine claws. I forgot all about our vampire and werewolf.
So had Agatha.
Sterling came first. He wielded the same katana once gifted to him by Susanoo, the Japanese god of storms. The blade crackled with electrified rage as he brought it around in an arc, the air crashing with the shattering of glass as Agatha Black’s force field broke under the combined physical and magical might of Sterling’s blow.
Gil came next, bounding here, there, off of the spires of stone, building momentum, then bringing his vicious claws up and against Agatha’s body. She cried out at the contact, and the blur of black fur and red eyes that was Gil in his wolf form streaked past her through the night. Before he departed, I could have sworn that he and Sterling exchange high fives.
At once, Agatha’s control over the rocky spires diminished. One by one they fell to the earth, crashing and disintegrating into motes of worthless dust. If anyone came here, they would find imprints of huge stone things that had flattened the grass, but no sign of what had done the flattening. All this fighting – all the quaking of the earth – must have called attention. Good thing the battle was over.
Or at least that was how it seemed. The three glistening gashes ripped into Agatha’s torso should have killed anyone. Instead she looked serene, unbothered by the blood dripping out of her in streams. Instead, she brought her hands against her wounds, staring at her own blood, before once again lifting her arms to the sky. Then she called out in a lilting, terrible voice.
“It begins.”
Twelve copies of Agatha Black’s voice echoed her, sounding horribly from out of the air. From somewhere far away, or far, far too near, came the unmistakeable sound of human screaming. Dozens of voices, all reaching for the sky with the terrified pitch of their horror. Agatha laughed one last time before her body vanished into a pillar of blood-red light, before it streaked into the sky. Dread settled in my chest when I looked up. The sky overhead was supposed to be cloudless, sprinkled with beautiful stars.
But thirteen of them had turned bright red.
Heedless of my friends shouting after me, I shadowstepped towards the sound of the screaming, instinct and fear driving every muscle in my body. We were so far from the village. That kind of screaming didn’t come from a small huddle of people. It sounded as if half the town were wailing their heads off.
I ran farther and harder, the distance of the shadowstep taking its toll on me, but I didn’t care. I needed to know. My lungs fought for more of the Dark Room’s dead, thin air, and when I couldn’t take it anymore, I stumbled out into reality, my foot catching on the grassy ground as I emerged in a cool, damp clearing just outside of town.
There were fires, everywhere, and just as many people running around to put them out. But as I watched, the roar and crackle of flame playing as the orchestra to the screams of the townspeople, I realized with stark horror that each of the flames was moving. Running.
Every flame was a human being, flailing and screaming. Each one was a candle that Agatha Black had set alight with her magic. And every last one of them was burning alive.
Chapter 17
The countryside was cool, the air sweet with the smell of lush grass. I sat on the side of a hill, by rights in a perfect place to relax, to take in the quiet rush of wind through the trees, of a clear night lit by a canopy of stars.
But inside, my body was screaming.
Mercifully, the fires had ended. Royce and the others arrived in time, doing what they could to help the victims of Agatha’s flames, but even Romira’s mastery of pyromancy could do nothing to reverse the intensity of the fires the witch had created. There were, in short, no survivors, only piles of ash and blackened skeletons.
We hauled our asses away just as we heard the first siren. We couldn’t very well hang around inside town. This was the modern day, far, far away from a time when people would be condemned to the stake as witches. But when the appearance of unfamiliar foreign faces coincides with the spontaneous combustion of dozens of locals, it behooves those strange faces to flee the scene as soon as humanly possible.
Far below us, down at the foot of the hill, the city was bathed in the red and blue of sirens, emergency services doing their damnedest best to help where they could. I shook my head mournfully. Those people didn’t need paramedics and police. No one could help them. Send a hearse instead.
My insides clenched with the sobering reality of once again coming to terms with the lioness’s power. What, if anything, could we have possibly done to stop her?
“There was nothing we could do.”
Bastion sighed as he slumped onto the grass next to me. Even with the distance the pulse of his body was warm from exertion. It was comforting to have something human nearby.
“You read my mind,” I sighed. “I don’t even know what we’re supposed to do now.”
Bastion shook his head. His fingers dug into the earth, clawing and pulling at tufts of grass, his knuckles white, his hand shaking.
“We find her,” he said. “We kill her. All thirteen of her.”
“Easier said than done.”
“We don’t have a choice,” he said coldly. “We do something – anything. We fight. I knew there would be casualties along the way, but – not like this.”
I placed my hand on the back of his. I didn’t know what else to do. Bastion stiffened, but he didn’t draw away.
“We’re just sitting here loudly agreeing with each other,” I said, “when we both know the answer. We have to suck it up and carry on. What the hell else can we do? It’s not like we can just give up.”
>
He nodded, his hand sliding up to squeeze mine briefly, quickly across the wrist. Then he retrieved it, folding his hands in his lap. I only really remembered myself then, that a gesture I would have used with a friend was suddenly so different, so accidentally meaningful with someone like Bastion. But again, I thought, who was he to me, anyway?
“I never even once imagined that the trip to find Durandal would end this way.”
I looked up at the sound of Herald’s voice. His glasses glowed blue, then red, then white, alternately reflecting the sirens and the stars. On instinct, my hand flitted as far away from Bastion as possible, slipping into my pocket as Herald sat to my other side to join us.
Bastion sighed. “You and me both. But we do what we gotta do. Regroup, and figure this out.”
Herald leaned lightly against me, the back of his hand brushing against my thigh. Even through the denim of my jeans, it felt warm, familiar, and correct.
“I hate to put it this way because it’s so stupid and cheesy, but the world is counting on us,” Herald said. “They don’t know it at all, but they are.”
“Speaking of which,” Bastion said. “I should go join the others. It’s not a good look for the Lorica that I’m not over there with them.”
He clambered to his feet, brushing off the back of his jeans, even though it was too dark for anyone to find grass stains there anyway. Just Bastion being Bastion. I followed his figure as he walked off to the other end of the hill, joining Royce, Romira, Prudence, and – the others.
The Boneyard boys, mainly Mason, Asher, and Sterling, had kept to their own little huddle, sitting not too far from me and Herald on their own little patch of grass, speaking to each other in hushed tones. Sterling kept to himself in silence, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Near them, splayed out in the grass, was Gil in his human form, gently snoring.
