by Joey W. Hill
He smelled death, a few days old. Outside the cave, the odor came from the remains of those who’d tried to breach the sorceress’s wards once they were activated. The stronger stench came from within, those trapped with her whom scavengers couldn’t reach. He disliked thinking of her body sharing the same space as those rotting corpses, but he could hear her cackling response to that.
We’re all meat in the end, my lord. A buffet for scavengers. She’d say cold things like that when the darkness rose in her eyes. When she felt closer to the light, she’d speak a different truth. The body’s a home. One we should love and respect for its care of us. One day, probably sooner than we’d like, we’ll all have to leave home.
The entrance to her cave was flanked by layers of concealing rock, and the terrain leading up to it was steep, uneven. “If she didn’t have time to craft an exception to my presence, I may be incinerated when I try to enter her cave, as the others were,” Uthe said.
“When we get there, let me examine the shape of her protections. I may be able to keep you unsinged.”
“That would be a kindness, my lord.”
They moved forward together. One step, two steps. Uthe slid his pack off his shoulder, ready to drop it. A breath later, he felt the dark magic Kel had mentioned. It struck him deep in the bones, like a fever ache. He knew the touch of the demon intimately, but there was a distance to that touch. This was up close, a blast of power that speared terror through his soul.
Fuck that. He shook off the intimidation tactic and focused on the true threat. It came with the third step. The illusion of empty, rocky terrain vanished. A cloaking barrier. He ducked just in time as a blade whistled over his head.
He charged forward, ramming the solid body of a man swathed in Saracen garb. Like the Crusades, just as Cai had said. Turban, face scarf, and sashed tunic. A dozen more like him had been waiting, and now they spilled out, surrounding him. No, not all. Several were already gone, one of them leaving a brief impression of wide dark eyes, the whites rolling in terror as the man was yanked away from Uthe and disappeared into a blast of magic that sent a wave of heat rolling along the back of Uthe’s neck.
Keldwyn had entered the fray.
Uthe slammed his elbow into the nose of one grappling him from behind, and broke the wrist of another so his curved blade clattered to the stone. The weapon had been a poor choice in these close quarters, one surprise swing the most it could accomplish before the fight became grunting, ugly hand-to-hand. Elbows, knees and fists became the measures of survival. A dagger sliced Uthe’s arm, but it brought his opponent close enough for a headlock, where he crushed the skull as efficiently as a nutcracker. Thank God, these were mere mortals, the only magical enhancement they’d possessed in the cloaking spell. Whoever had sent them had hoped the element of surprise would result in a lucky strike.
But they’d also moved too soon. Uthe and Keldwyn hadn’t even breached the cave yet. Uthe detected an element of frustrated rage in the dark magic. Despite being immersed in blood and violence, he bared his teeth in savage satisfaction. Not so easy to control your minions at this distance, is it?
He caught a brief glimpse of Kel. The Fae Lord was using flashes of glamor to confuse his opponents, putting himself left when he was right, above when he was below. Yet when the time for contact came, Uthe wasn’t surprised to see Keldwyn was accomplished in hand-to-hand fighting. The heel of his palm drove the nose of one attacker into his brain. A graceful pivot ducked him beneath the guard of another, putting him behind his opponent. Kel twisted the Saracen’s head, a terrifyingly effortless snapping of the spine. It was like watching a cook take a chicken’s head.
As another of his own assailants tried to rise, Uthe drove his fist into the man’s rib cage and through the heart. The bloody heat of it, the violent disruption of its rhythmic beat, was something he hadn’t experienced in some time. His own heart was pounding like thundering hooves. He rose to his feet, taking stock. Not that he was counting, but it looked like he’d taken down five and Kel took eight. Well, the Fae had the advantage of his magic.
Keldwyn came to him in a swift sinuous stride, assuming a back-to-back position with Uthe as they listened together for reinforcements. None were forthcoming. Not yet, at least.
Uthe dropped to his heels, giving the dead men a closer look. Head scarf, skirted tunic, boots, a belted jerkin over it. No evidence of the modern world. No watch, no T-shirt. He picked up the blade of the one who’d first attacked him. It was authentic, the same weapon the Saracens had used during the Crusades. Dipping his head, he inhaled deeply. People now had a different odor than they had during that time. Different food, less preservatives, different types of hygiene. Olfactory memory was strong for vampires. If he closed his eyes, this scent took him back hundreds of years.
“They don’t belong here. This isn’t a modern day sect.” Uthe studied the dead men, eyes glazed, faces slack. “I think they’ve been brought here from the past. Saracens. Deserters, not part of the regular army or true believers, so at least not innocents.”
“And from their mindless fervor, under a spell as well.” Kneeling, Keldwyn tore a strip off a tunic and reached for Uthe’s arm, gripping it above where the dagger had sliced him. “You’ll need this to help the clotting. It’s still bleeding heavily.”
Uthe hadn’t paid any attention to the wound, beyond positioning it so the blood dripped into the ground instead of on himself. Keldwyn did an efficient field dressing on the knife wound. His hands lingered on Uthe’s arm, giving him a hard, quick squeeze. “You should be more careful, Varick. If you’d been a blink slower, that first human would have taken your head.”
“If I’d been that slow, I’d have deserved it.” Hearing his given name on Keldwyn’s lips was unsettling. Uthe pushed away the feelings, as well as the kneejerk reaction to tell him not to use it. “Not all of us have glamor at our disposal, my lord.”
“Hmm. Since you face possible incineration, I’ll let the insult to my fighting skills pass. Let’s get into your sorceress’s cave before more reinforcements are sent.”
Keldwyn’s expression said he wasn’t going to wait much longer for that explanation Uthe had promised, especially since Uthe didn’t seem overly surprised to have warriors from past history thrown in their path. However, he did understand the need to find a more defensible position first. Picking up the discarded pack, Uthe led the way up the incline.
He hadn’t been certain how much of the terrain was actual and what had been manufactured by the cloaking spell, but the rock overhangs became even narrower, forming a useful choke point at the tapered entrance to the sorceress’s lair.
The death smell increased exponentially, but he focused on the low hum of energy hovering around the opening. Mindful of Keldwyn’s greater expertise in this field, he shifted enough to give the Fae a better view.
Keldwyn had closed his eyes, though, absorbing the magic through other senses. “An extremely complex protection spell, one with a variety of lethal snares to it,” he said without opening them. “But there is a way past them, triggered by the right person. When you entered her home, were there traditional words of courtesy you offered?”
Understanding his intent, Uthe spoke clearly. “I come to your door in peace. In the name of the mission we share, may the Madman of the Wilderness forever be praised.”
Silence, but the humming changed. His own senses weren’t as keen, for vampires weren’t magic users, but Keldwyn’s gaze flickered in acknowledgement. “It responded to your voice.” He looked thoughtful. “I believe she made provision for you to enter without harm.”
“Are you certain?”
“No. But fairly so.” The Fae looked annoyed. “I care little for you risking yourself, but see no way around it.”
“Then no time like the present.” He paused. From a sad spurt of tenderness, he finished the ritual greeting he’d used on his rare visits. “I enter as your guest, and will do you no harm.”
“As long as you act
like a guest, you’ll be treated as one. If not, I’ll feed you to my djinn.”
He heard the echo of her tart voice in his head, saw the bright eyes and lips that rarely smiled, though she always seemed grimly amused with the world. He moved forward, eyes searching the darkness, all senses adjusted for anything amiss.
There was no threat, but as he moved through the narrow defile and into the main chamber, his heart constricted at the sight that awaited him. There were times he wished a vampire couldn’t see in the dark so well. Cai’s banked rage made even more sense now. While the younger vampire would not have been able to look into the cave and see the sorceress, a violent death had a particular scent to it that Rand’s keen nose, as well as vampire senses, would have detected.
Her twisted limbs showed how valiantly she’d fought. What sickened him was seeing her torn clothing, the broken fingers, the ripped flesh. He studied the fanned out pattern and condition of the men’s bodies that littered the cave floor. They reminded him of a group of wooden soldiers picked up and flung, then torched by fire.
How had they made it past her wards and protections? Her defenses would have been considerable, but the enemy she faced had found a way, and used weak men to do its bidding. As evil always did.
“She made a good accounting of herself,” Keldwyn said.
Uthe looked up, surprised to find the Fae next to him. “How did you get through?”
“The shielding could not prevent a Fae magic-user of my level from entering, but it was clever enough I did not want to risk disrupting its nature and possibly destroying its recognition of you. It made more sense for you to go first.”
“And if I was incinerated, there really wouldn’t be anything left to do, right?”
“There was that, yes.” Keldwyn didn’t smile. He was looking at the ruins of Fatima’s body. “So what happened here?” His voice was low and respectful.
“She used her magic to fight, until she realized the numbers would deplete her energy to the point she couldn’t protect what they’d come to take. I think that’s when she made the decision to sacrifice herself and put all her energy toward that protection.” Kneeling by her body, Uthe put his hand over her mangled fingers, his throat thickening at the memory of how they’d once felt. Thin and cool, like gnarled sticks, but full of life.
“The explosion probably occurred when death was imminent. She knew the protection spell would be triggered by the release of her soul, but she wanted one more strike on her own terms. It burned the bodies.” He imagined her summoning that last bit of defiance to blast them away from her and touched her face. “I’m sorry, Fatima. So sorry we did not come in time.”
Bowing his head, he said a prayer for her soul to Allah, since that was the face of the Divine that Fatima had preferred. Then he rose. There were sconces on the wall, the torches burned out. But Uthe found more in a woven basket and replaced them. Fatima was a sorceress, so apparently she hadn’t needed a lighter. As soon as he had the thought and glanced toward Keldwyn, he saw the Fae was already on it. Keldwyn moved to the first torch, touched it, and flame appeared.
“It looks far more impressive than it is,” Kel said at his quizzical look. “More a conversation with the elements than actual magic.”
A pragmatic explanation, yet Uthe couldn’t look away as Kel moved to each of the four torches, bringing the flames to life seemingly from the touch of his fingers. Fire licked along Uthe’s body as he thought of the way Keldwyn could do the same to him. He was standing amid rotting corpses and still affected by the Fae’s mesmerizing qualities, not surprisingly. He’d spent a great deal of his life in violent circumstances, and other impulses and needs had learned to live and grow within their proximity.
Kel glanced over his shoulder. “I did not dismantle the spell, so nothing can get into this cave with us.”
“But the longer we are here, the more time we give reinforcements to arrive.” Uthe was sure reinforcements would be coming. They’d deal with that when necessary. As the light spread through the chamber, he saw the things he’d seen on past visits. A cot, some basic equipment for preparing and preserving food, a radio. Everything else was dedicated to Fatima’s purpose. Containers for potions and ingredients, stacks of books. Hundreds of carved symbols on the walls, a language that stretched in every direction, like stars and planets crowding a universe.
He stood back, studied the symbols. There was something different. Colors. She’d used colors and dyes, so it seemed as if certain strings of symbols went together and intersected with others.
She couldn’t make it simple, because she’d known other enemies would be sent to decipher it. The colors were for him. The colors of the chakras, which told him the order in which they should be studied, but that wouldn’t make it an easier problem to solve. It just narrowed down the amount of data he would need to study. They wouldn’t be leaving the cave anytime soon, which meant he had time to do something else first.
“There are several chambers beyond this main one,” he said. “Including one with a water source. I’ll clean and prepare the body there and form a cairn over her for burial. It won’t be according to her faith, but she’ll at least be laid to rest with respect and prayer. As for the rest of them…” His lip curled with distaste. “I’d like to burn them to ash, but the smoke would choke us.
“I’ll take care of them,” Keldwyn said. “But do we have time for any of that?”
“The answer is there,” Uthe said, looking at the ceiling. “But I do not know how long it will take me to decipher it. Hours at least.”
Uthe went to his pack, removed a smaller bag. As Keldwyn watched him, he withdrew a generous length of shimmering silk, let it play over his hands. His fingers were too rough, snagging the delicate fabric. “I’d intended to give this to her as a gift. She loved beautiful fabrics.”
Keldwyn gripped Uthe’s shoulder. “I am sorry.”
“She expected to die in the service of this quest, as do I. The manner of her death was undeserved for such a noble spirit, though. No matter how often that turns out to be the way of it.”
His bitterness was the symptom of too many losses over the years, but as always, the sharpest bite came from the staring eyes of the long dead, on a battlefield where he had survived and they had not. It always went back to Hattin. He put the silk back in the pack. He would prepare her body, and figure out what he’d come here to find. He would honor her as well as those dead Templars by making sure her tireless work didn’t go to waste.
He lifted his head at a waft of warm energy. Keldwyn stood at the apex of the corpses. He had his hands spread as a green glow left his fingertips and drifted down to the floor, settling over the dead like mist. A mist that started thickening, solidifying. Brown veins started to run through their flesh. Uthe inhaled the decay of the natural world. Dried leaves in damp earth, the bones of a mouse left by an owl, algae covering creek stone with slickness.
“We perhaps should have kept one alive,” Keldwyn said absently. “Question them about who sent them.”
Uthe shook his head. The bodies were starting to disintegrate, the odor of violent death replaced by something far less difficult to endure. “They are under compulsion, my lord, with souls already blackened. They are puppets of their master, with no true knowledge of him.”
“Is that how you knew they were deserters and thieves from the Saracen army?”
Uthe nodded. “The demon possesses souls with capital crimes already marked upon them. It is how he is able to compel them from a great distance. Death brings them a chance to seek redemption in the afterlife, where they can cleanse their soul before they move on to another life and hopefully do better.”
“A Christian who believes in reincarnation.”
“I am not a Christian,” Uthe said. “A religion isn’t necessary to believe in God and obey His Will. Will you watch for our enemies while I take Fatima’s body to the water?”
“I will. And since I will have time to kill…literally,”—a fer
al smile touched Keldwyn’s mouth—“once you start your studying, I’ll hunt in the immediate area. Dispatch any reinforcements who get close enough.”
“Sounds like an efficient plan. Though Cai won’t thank you if you don’t leave him or Rand anyone to disembowel.”
Uthe spoke in a casual tone, though he didn’t like the idea of Keldwyn fighting by himself. Which was as absurd as his desire to pull out his sword earlier, since the Fae was capable of taking out a couple dozen humans on his own. But hadn’t Keldwyn been the one that said even a human could get in a lucky strike?
“Cai should think about that next time he disrespects a high Fae,” Keldwyn responded, unconcerned. “As his lupine companion would tell him, a bad dog gets no treats.” The Fae positioned himself to watch the entrance, but he tilted his head toward Uthe. “Before you bury your sorceress, you will tell me what we face and why we face it. You may save the detailed explanation for later, but I will know the gist of it now.”
His tone made it a clear command. Uthe would have taken exception to it, but in Keldwyn’s position, he would have felt the same way. He met the Fae’s dark gaze.
“The demon is an enemy that was imprisoned over a thousand years ago. We discovered him in the ruins of Solomon’s Temple, and I was charged with his guardianship until a way to dispatch him back to his origins was discovered. That is the weapon Fatima has created. She sent me the message several ago that it was at last ready.”
“So the demon knows the answer to his demise has been found.”
“Yes, apparently.” Uthe looked down at the twisted corpse, anger and pride surging through him. “Though it didn’t come from her. The message to me may have been intercepted, or the demon was monitoring her progress another way. She would have killed herself before giving them anything. She was much like her ancestor, Haris.”
