His Kai sang to him of deep, abiding menace. It hummed in the very stone of this place. It waited in the dark.
The armlet cast everyone’s profile in stark lines of red and black, highlighting their sharp expressions. The crimson light cast long, uncanny shadows on the walls. For a moment, Dormael thought he counted an extra shadow—what looked like a little girl hugging Bethany’s heels. When he looked again, though, it was gone.
They reached the bottom, after turning a few corners, and clustered together in the dark as D’Jenn sent his light flitting upwards. It revealed a forest of pillars stretching into the darkness. They held up a vaulted ceiling, which was carved along its edges with tiny figures covered in centuries of grime. The room was so vast that Dormael wondered if it stretched the entire breadth of the temple.
The walls had square keyholes built into them, each about the size of a small liquor cabinet. When he stepped farther down the wall to his left, he found a niche which contained a stone sarcophagus. The keyholes lined the walls on all sides of the ancient coffin, and as Dormael got close enough to investigate, he realized the purpose for which the keyholes had been intended.
“They’re bone cabinets,” he said, his voice echoing into vaults. “This is a crypt.”
“I read something about this place during my First Four,” D’Jenn said. “It said something about the vaults beneath Orm containing the wisdom of our ancestors. I always thought there was a library here, but now I see what the author meant.”
“This is how you commemorate your dead?” Shawna said. “By storing their bones in little holes in the ground?”
“Only priests,” D’Jenn answered. “It’s an old custom. Went out of style a few hundred years back.”
“Why?” She eyed the cabinets with open distaste.
“People used to think that holy men would be raised from the dead when the gods returned,” D’Jenn said. “They don’t anymore.”
“How odd,” she said.
“What is it Cambrellians do?” Dormael said. “Don’t you put the ashes of your dead relatives in little totems, and leave them around the house?”
“Not the ashes,” Shawna replied, shaking her head. “Something significant to them. And they’re shrines, Dormael, not totems.”
“They’ve got masks on them, too,” Allen said. “I’ve seen one of them before. They put some kind of plaster over the dead person’s face, and make a copy of it to have around the old homestead. It’s like the thing is watching you. Gives me the shivers.”
Shawna gave him a withering look, but Allen ignored her.
“These dead priests aren’t going anywhere if the gods return,” D’Jenn said, sweeping his eyes around the room. He increased the power to his magical light, illuminating the wide expanse of the floor. “Look.”
Detritus lay scattered over the stone. Little piles of grime were everywhere, and Dormael thought they were the remains of bones interred in the crypt. At the edge of D’Jenn’s light, Dormael could see a tipped sarcophagus, lid shattered on the floor. Whatever body had once been inside was now dust. Broken tablets lay here and there, discarded where they had been smashed.
“They desecrated the graves here,” Allen said. “Trashed everything.”
Dormael could see it in his mind’s eye—a group of whooping raiders pouring down the stairs in a frenzy. He could see them pulling the remains out and tossing them into the floor, heaving at the lids to the sarcophagi. People were capable of all sorts of distasteful things when their blood was up, and Dannons more than most.
“I don’t like this place,” Bethany said.
“Agreed, little pig,” Allen replied. “Agreed.”
“Do you really think whatever we’re looking for will be down here?” Shawna said, eyes on the darkness around them. “Why would they bury it with the bones?”
“Has nothing to do with the bones,” D’Jenn said, walking farther into the room. “If Indalvian did leave something here, he would have put magical protections in place around it. Magic lasts longer underground—it keeps things from interfering with the spell. Sunlight, wind and rain, all sorts of things can muck up an old working. It just makes more sense to put it down here.”
“Same reason the Crux is in the basement of the Conclave, and not the tallest tower,” Dormael added.
“Give me a moment,” D’Jenn said. “Let me listen, and see if I can pick up any resonance with my Kai. If there’s magic down here, we should be able to feel it.”
“Listen?”
The voice startled Dormael halfway out of his skin. Everyone spun toward the sound, and Allen muttered a curse as they saw what it was. The old man stood before them once again, bloodstained hands wringing together.
“Listen, listen—that’s what they said. Listen to them, they said. Listen to them wail. I can still hear it.”
Everyone shared a wary glance.
“Can’t you hear them? What are you doing here? This is no place for you. There is only us here,” the apparition said.
“Who is this ‘us’ it keeps talking about?” Allen hissed.
“Maybe all the dead priests,” Dormael muttered. Allen gave him a sharp glare, to which he replied with a shrug. Weapons rustled as everyone moved back from the bloody priest, stepping deeper into the room. Bethany huddled close to Dormael’s free hand as they shuffled across the gritty stone floor.
The ghost’s eyes followed them as they went, gleaming with cold fire like the gaze of a nocturnal hunting cat. He twisted his hands together in perpetual motion, pausing only when they twitched with bizarre little spasms. His mouth worked at the air, as if it struggled for words, even when he stood mute. His head teetered atop the thinness of his neck, turning to follow them as they moved away. Spattered bloodstains decorated his robe from torso to ankles.
“They don’t listen,” the spirit said in a strange, sing-song tone. “They never listen.”
Skittering noises issued through the shadows around them, bringing everyone to a nervous halt. The air grew cold, and the darkness heavy. Dormael tightened his grip on his spear, grinding the wood into his palm. D’Jenn’s light began to flag, as if the shadows gained ground in an ongoing struggle for supremacy.
“They will stay—yes!—they will stay. The hole is quiet. The hole is deep.” The old man took another step toward them, a painful smile carving deep lines into his gray skin. “Come and see.”
Whispers flitted through the dark.
“Come and see!”
“Twist them up!”
“The hole is deep!”
“Crunch their bones!”
“Pull them apart!”
Dormael glanced around the catacombs, but could see no one else in the gloom. He heard D’Jenn’s Kai singing through the ether, and could sense something siphoning his energy. Without the magical light, they would be left to the shadows cast by the armlet’s crimson glow. He shared a glance with D’Jenn, and clutched Bethany’s hand.
“Eyes open, little one!” he said. “Stay close behind us!”
“Alright,” she squeaked.
Allen pulled his saber, tossing the sheath aside. “Don’t worry, little pig. Your uncle Allen is the baddest thing down here.”
“Will our weapons even work on that thing?” Shawna said. “It’s a spirit.”
“Steel,” the specter said, spitting the word as if it were poisonous. “They always bring their steel. Their sin. Their blasphemy!” A tremor went through his body, but his eyes stayed locked to Dormael and his friends. Something moved beneath the robe, like an animal turning over in its sleep. The shade took a shuffling step in their direction, mouth working at the air as whispers cut through the shadows.
“Tear them!”
“Rend them!”
“Pull them to the bottom!”
“Either of you wizards got any clever ideas?” Allen said, holding the point of his saber in the ghost’s direction.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dormael said, gathering his mag
ic. “But I don’t think it wants to talk.”
The old man began to sing, but the voice that emerged was that of a child, high-pitched and pure. It cut through the crypt like an otherworldly cry, bouncing from the stone around them. Dormael could have sworn that each echo had been made from a different throat, so that the shadows returned a chorus of disembodied voices.
“Evmir forged the world with a hammer made of light…”
The apparition stepped toward them.
“Devla made the beasts, and Bast knew wrong from right…”
His hands gripped the neck of his robe, pulling at the hem.
“Eindor whispered secrets to water, sky, and stones…”
The cloth bled as it came apart, as if the robe were skin instead of fabric.
“War comes from Aastinor, and Neesa gave us songs…”
Shawna gave a cry of disgust as the phantom’s chest was revealed, the shapes of hands moving beneath his skin.
“Two more gods to never court unto your dying breath…”
The voice deepened from the childlike register to something old, and hungry.
“Aeglar, God of Trickery, and Saarnok, Prince of—”
Allen’s scream sliced through the darkness, cutting the aged priest off before he could finish. He stepped forward with a great swipe, and brought his curved sword down at an angle. The spirit’s head toppled from his neck with a fountain of blood, which began to disappear soon after touching the air. His body slid to the floor with a whisper.
The crypt went dead silent.
Allen stood over the body, which had yet to disappear. He looked at his saber as if he couldn’t believe it had worked, then hefted it at the companions to demonstrate the fact. A smile was beginning to blossom on his face when the body began to move once again. Bethany squealed in horror as the spindly arms of the apparition began to reach for the dismembered head. Allen cursed, and stepped away from the phantasm.
“Steel,” the head uttered as the hands turned it to face them. “Always the steel. We will show you what your steel is worth.” The body tottered back to its feet, limbs shaking with spasms. It held its head out with an accusatory gesture, then tried to shove it back in place. “Come and see—yes!—come and see!”
“The hole is deep.”
The voices were closer than before, the darkness colder. The old man began to spew insane laughter, coupled with a second voice that wailed in agony. The party scrambled away from him, but the darkness gathered close on all sides, and herded them together.
Then, the specter began to change.
Hands ripped from his back, tearing the skin asunder as they struggled to get free. Teeth appeared in the mass of struggling fingers, chomping mouths on the ends of fleshy tentacles. Screams issued forth from the darkness, and were echoed by Bethany as she clamped down on Dormael’s hand. The phantom wailed in pain as all manner of limbs began to erupt from his body, and he became a struggling mass of blood, meat, and teeth. His voice distorted, reverberated with the stone of the crypt. Dormael could feel his screams resonating in his chest, and also with his Kai.
The mass wriggled across the floor, fighting with itself. Voices whispered in the shadows while the creature screamed, making Dormael’s hair stand on end. The wraith began to take on a humanoid shape, rising on fleshy appendages made from what looked like pieces of bloody corpses clutched together. Hands ripped free from its midsection, clutching a fistful of dismembered eyeballs in wet fingers.
Shawna let out a noise of pure disgust. Everyone readied their weapons as the fiend paused, and turned to face them. Dormael twisted his power from the ether, readying a strike that would immolate the thing where it stood, burn it from this hole forever. The armlet’s song warmed to his thoughts. D’Jenn’s magic rang out, and his mace floated into the air above his head, ready to come down with crippling force.
“Remember me, you ugly bastard?” D’Jenn yelled. He gestured, and his morningstar whistled through the air toward the specter’s midsection. It sank in with a meaty thump, and blasted a gory hole through the monster’s belly. It screamed in pain, but the hole immediately began to fill with clutching hands, teeth, organs and fingers, until a flurry of bloody activity closed the wound behind D’Jenn’s weapon.
The brute reached a meaty arm backward without looking, and whipped D’Jenn’s morningstar from the ground. It flew toward Allen, but D’Jenn caught it in his magical grip, making the metal hum in protest. Allen let out a curse, and moved sideways to flank the gory phantasm.
“Watch yourselves!” Dormael called, warning his friends as he released his magic. The freakish wraith erupted with bright flames where it stood, and wailed in pain. Arms emerged from the mess, though, and began to tug the burned flesh away. Pieces of it were ripped off, and tossed to burn on the stones around it. It squirmed and twisted as it tore at its own body, but the magic only served to slow it down. Even as Dormael turned the strength of his power against it, he could feel it leaching his magic away, feeding upon it somehow.
Cursing, he abandoned the spell in favor of his spear.
“I don’t think we can kill this thing!” D’Jenn said.
“If I start cutting,” Shawna growled, “I’ve got to reach the bottom sometime.”
“I’ll give you a hand with that,” Allen said.
The monstrosity took a swipe at Allen, its arm striking like a tentacle. The gladiator slipped out of its way, answering with an arcing cut from his saber to the fleshy appendage. Pieces flew into the shadows, and the beast growled as it pulled the wounded arm back. It regenerated just as it had before.
Shawna stepped into the specter’s other side, cutting vicious slices into its leg. It took a clumsy swipe at her head, but she ducked the fiend with quicksilver grace, and cut it again on her way out of range. The leg erupted into a flurry of gore as it healed itself, but the monster stumbled on its weight for a moment as it pulled its leg back together.
As the phantasm turned to engage Shawna, Allen quick-stepped toward its flank. He swiped at its leg with his curved weapon, scoring hits as the creature stumbled under its own weight. His blade, though, was little more use than Dormael’s magic had been. Allen was forced to step back out of range as another arm shot out to attack him, which gave the leg time to reform itself.
Dormael gave Bethany’s hand a squeeze, then slipped it free so he could grasp his spear. He stepped into the fight, and stabbed at the horror’s eyes, trying to skewer them on the tip of his blade. The hands holding the eyeballs slipped left and right, trying to dodge his attacks. Dormael kept up the pressure as Allen and Shawna moved in to menace the spirit-beast’s flanks.
Together they cut, stabbed, and sliced into the wriggling mass of body parts. They forced it to backpedal toward the wall, but the aberration was able to heal every wound that they dealt. Try as they might to bring it down, their attacks did little real damage.
“Drive it toward the sarcophagus!” D’Jenn called, bathing their surroundings with magical light. Dormael chanced a quick look around, squinting his eyes at the painful intrusion of brilliance. A few links beyond the monstrosity was one of the niches, a stone coffin sitting dusty in the center. D’Jenn shared a nod with Dormael, and headed for the alcove.
Dormael was forced onto his heels as the spirit lashed out with a great, fleshy arm. He yanked a magical shield into place just in time to stop the blow, but hands ripped free of the offending arm and began beating at the barrier. Dormael poured more power into his defense, and split his consciousness to cut at the arm with a blade made of air. Pieces fell away, and the specter roared with pain, but it absorbed the attack just as it had the others.
Allen darted in while it was distracted and swiped at its leg, scoring another deep cut. The monster abandoned its attempt on Dormael and swiped at his brother, but Allen rolled under the blow and came up swinging. His sword bit deep into the beast’s leg, but the cuts soon disappeared beneath a slithering mass of angry meat.
Shawna’s arms da
nced a deadly pattern as she flowed through the fight, silvery blades singing through the air. She moved like a shadow, slipping into the wraith’s defenses like an eel, and back out again before it could touch her. It roared in anger every time she came near, and it redoubled its efforts to grab her. Shawna stayed out of its range by the barest margin, surviving only because the ghost had to divide its attention between her and Allen.
D’Jenn’s song cut through the ether, and Dormael saw him lifting the lid from the sarcophagus. Lines began to etch themselves into the outside of the lid, weaving patterns deep into the surface of the stone. Matching lines burned themselves into the base of the ancient coffin, and Dormael realized what his cousin was doing as the pattern revealed itself.
“Bring it here!” D’Jenn called. “Force it into the sarcophagus!”
The air grew cold as voices flashed through the crypt once again.
“Not long now!”
“Bring them into the dark!”
“Tear them!”
“Devour them!”
“The hole is deep!”
The brute rallied itself, roaring in anger. Dormael tried to take the initiative, stepping forward to thrust his spear blade at its eyes. The hands holding them sank into the undulating mass of gore, and emerged again with new eyes locked to the companions, one set for each attacker. New, smaller tentacles ripped themselves free of its torso, and struck at all of them at the same time.
Hands shot toward Dormael, and he stepped back on reflex. His spear came up to meet the attack, biting deep into the wraith’s fleshy arm. The spear jerked in Dormael’s hands as he took the force of the blow. He tried to pull the blade free and attack again, but the fiend’s arm twisted around the haft of the spear. Bloody hands scrambled to grab hold of Dormael’s weapon, heedless its edge. Before Dormael could react, his spear was ripped from his hands. It disappeared into the roiling mass of of bloody appendages.
Dormael pulled another shield up just in time to avoid being crushed by a second arm. He felt a drain on his power immediately, and had to pour more energy into the spell to keep the phantasm from reaching him. The thought of those arms pulling him into the creature’s body chilled him to his bones.
The Seven Signs: Three Book Collection Page 111
