Chased By Flame

by Michael Wolff

  An eternity later Mykel found his arm buried up to the elbow in a versi’s entrails, panting like a tired, weak panther. He had no idea how he managed to kill the thing; the hawk-headed beast plunged down from above like its namesake before thought could react. He heard the scream, whirled, and impaled the beast by sheer chance.

  “Lad! Lad!” Lazarus, his voice a shaft of light piercing the darkness of this nightmare. “We’ve got to get downstairs before the Myrrh comes through the Riftgate.”

  Downstairs. Mykel though to ask why Lazarus was so insistent that the threat was downstairs—what is this Riftgate he’s talking about? —and then he decided he didn’t want to know, since that would only lead to the question of what a Myrrh was, and he did not want to find that out either.

  There were snatches of dancing steel tolling through the screams, of shifting mails and gearing leather. A resistance had finally been roused to the threat, men of the Ring and Crown Knighthood. Yet even the best of men with steel fared little better than the woman on the first floor. Often the steel’s dance skittered off in the middle, followed only the ripping of a male’s voice. The first time Mykel turned to assist and was stopped by Lazarus’s hand. “We have to get going.”

  “But they’re dying—”

  “A great many more people will die if we don’t get to the Riftgate in time!” Lazarus barked. “You cannot fight every battle! You have to choose your victories. Now come on!” And he disappeared around another bend. Mykel hesitated for a moment but then followed, the howls chasing him down the hallway. I’m sorry.

  They entered a dining room. It was meant for banquets and entertainment, with long oak tables bordering the chamber’s perimeter, leaving the center free for a chain of elaborate mosaics woven into the velvet carpet, lilies of silver and lapis lazuli, their azure petals in full bloom. For a moment Mykel allowed himself a breath of relief; there was no black anywhere. But then he noticed the golden cloaks scattered across the lilies of lapis lazuli, cold and still with the breadth of a man. Solvicar. The lack of their corpses before this place was a testament of their endurance; it was a miracle they had lasted this long without dying.

  One still was. Leaning on his sword in the room’s center, John Jekai seemed almost asleep; the bloodied ring staining the azure petals made a haphazard cradle. Mykel knew he was awake. There was a tension about Jekai, one too tight to call for sleep. “Lazarus...”

  “I know.” The old man slowly spun around, his augur eyes still even as he scanned the chamber. “Something’s here.”

  Mykel opened his mouth to ask what, and then a crackling filled the air, the dance of jittering bones swaying like limp marionettes. Mykel forced himself to turn around. “By the gods,” he whispered into the din that filled the marble walls.

  The five golden cloaks that marked makeshift graves rose and formed men, or what could pass for being men. Skulls wore their skin loosely, limp flaps of flesh dangling and swaying as their bearers rose, almost as if they were moaning. Where those pinkish flags hung blood and lichens held sway above, the patches of near-bare bone squirming as if alive. Of eye or sometimes jaw there was no sign, either sunken or more likely rotted and broken. The only clean things about them were their blades, sharp and glinting. The newly-risen Vicars glanced at each other and came forward in a pack, each step rattling doom.

  Jekai was already moving. He burst past them, cloak flaring behind him like a banner of shadow. His blade flicked out, a silver serpent, to touch head and chest and arm, and where that snake touched limbs were lost in a haze of blood. One, two, three breaths, the sword became a swath in the torch-light, and the holy men were dead.

  “Gods,” Mykel breathed.

  They rose again, faces dripping the last of their skin away. A wordless howl beat from their dead jowls, a scream that pierced the air and made the world swim in nausea. The world was swimming, Mykel realized. Within those ululations the familiar vertigo stole into him, dropping him to his knees. He struggled to lift his head, to see... and in the insect’s myriad-eyed vision he swore the world... folded in on itself in a mirage fit for a black-grained desert. It pulled the five men-who-were-not-men towards one another in a grating sneer, as if all the winds of the worlds emerged to drag them into the distortion.

  Mykel watched with a tingling horror as the men slid into each other, becoming liquid, rippling into each other like the images of a stone-cast pond. A flash sounded, the world wept and moaned, and Mykel was finally able to breathe. The vertigo had ceased. Then something prickled at the back of his neck, and he looked up. “Son of a whore,” he breathed.

  The man... the thing... was grotesque. If the versi were monsters, then they were nature’s monsters, misshapen combinations of man and beast that existed only through the slightest twisting of fate’s threads. Yet it was not those creatures that made Mykel’s heart pulse in his throat. This thing was a night shadow amidst noonday zenith, rippling evil as surely as a wolf hungers meat.

  The creature had the thick, dark skin of an insect’s exoskeleton, with pinchers curving from the head and from the jaws both. Glowing green eyes pierced the visor of the armor, but other than that there was no other shade to distinguish it, save from the blue-black cloak it wore about the shoulders, torn and ragged at the ends. Sometimes the blue would shimmer with motion before fading into shadow; it was the surest way of seeing it and the most sickening. Mykel knew without Lazarus telling him that this was a Myrrh.

  The Myrrh growled and charged, Lazarus growled and charged. Mad. Mykel thought stiffly. This is all madness! In the damned creature’s unarmed state Mykel expected Lazarus to cut the thing in twain, but at the last instant a blade appeared in the Myrrh’s sickly white hands, blue-black bone appearing from out of nowhere. The blades met with a thunderous concussion, a great unearthly chime that tolled the chamber, blue light crackling between the blades in electric threads.

  From the ground sprang more versi, a thousand strings of ooze spinning together into beast-faced man-shapes. Their red eyes lighted with the malevolent spark Mykel remembered, and then swarmed around the Myrrh and Lazarus to reach the tender prey.

  They were met by steel. Mykel threw himself into the melee before reason rooted him still as a fear-crazed fawn. He tried to mimic Jekai, tried imitating that flowing dance that required a mind blank of thought, but his thoughts kept dogging him despite his wishes, a scramble of fear and numbness as he fought through the black mass. The library that lay beneath Castle Amden... there was an old legend, a very old legend. It was once the House of Ivan the Ninth, the books said, the first Amdenion king to be born outside the kingdom’s borders.

  A hack sent a black bull’s head tumbling. Made King in 458 when his wife, the king’s daughter Catherine, died of illness, Ivan became the closest thing Amden came to a tyrant. Mykel jerked the khatar blade across an ebony-grizzled chest, and nearly threw himself aside to avoid the blood spurting out.

  When foreigners and challengers to the crown came, Ivan issued a writ of sedition declaring imprisonment for all who dared attack the monarchy. It was said that his men, called the Children of Twilight for the crest of black stars upon their leather jerkins, rounded a thousand for execution, a thousand more for interrogation, and a thousand still for torture.

  The steel khatars dyed violet as they became embedded into a goblin’s neck, eyes blazing like orbs of fire. It died moments after Mykel completed the stroke, its headless body twitching even before it hit the ground. It was said that Ivan himself took care of the torture. It was said his son Peter was conceived in that very room. A cross-stroke followed a backstroke, and a fury fell to pieces. It was said that Peter’s first howl was joined by the howls of those tortured by his father, who left a moment after his birth to continue his pleasure.

  The flash of crimson eyes was the only warning
they had, and even then not enough. New versi struck out at them, more insane than the last. Anasazi and Arachne, the King and Queen of Spiders. Orochi, the eight-headed dragon that devoured the eight granddaughters of Amaterasu. Behind them were gorgons, centaurs, trolls and ogres beyond number. All of these and more lunged and attacked and fell to Mykel’s khatars, though it was a miracle that blood touched everything but him.

  A roar turned Mykel about. A versi leapt for Jekai’s unprotected back. Mykel had every right to let the Solvicar die, yet the librarian found himself moving faster than he thought he could move. Time, immersed in honey, each second winding down an eternity. Mykel practically threw himself across the distance between them, and the world filled with versi flesh.

  The khatar caught the demon at the apex of its leap, cutting into its neck. For a moment the beast hung upon the blade as its bearer flailed into an awkward landing, then slumped off the steel with the impact of the landing. Mykel pushed himself to his feet even as black claws filled the world around him, pinching, biting. Then there were sharp killing sounds, the air became clear, and Mykel rose to see Jekai glaring at him from under his black hood. The contact was brief and loathing; there were plenty of fresh versi to replace the fallen. Mykel was at once repulsed and settled. Even with the saving of his own life the man felt no gratitude. Then again, Jekai seemed hardly the man who treasured such things.

  A sudden growl spun Mykel about just in time to see a versi in mid-flight, its crooked talons bent for raking the flesh off a man’s face. Even as Mykel prepared a counter he knew he was seconds too late; despite himself he raised too-late arms to ward off the strike...

  ... And found himself in a blizzard of thorny creeper worms. Looking down Mykel could see the worms burrowing through the versis’ frames, right down to the pointed tips of ebon claws. A glance over the shoulder revealed Jekai’s right palm thrust forward, grasping a sickly white flower adorned with thorns. The flower glowed briefly before dying. Jekai’s lone eye peeked over the moonlight petals; hate warring against the gratitude of being saved. A jord, Mykel remembered. The word numbed the librarian. A real life Geo-wizard. A real life Geo-wizard who desired Mykel’s death, but the small details mattered not for the moment. A tightening of Jekai’s brow, and everywhere there were nests of burrowing toxic vines, settling down the frame of the demons caught in the transformation spell.

  Wait. “Lazarus.” The Myrrh laid still, a pool of black blood oozing from the steel that pierced it to the cobblestones. Is it...” Mykel cleared his throat to hide the slight crack in his voice. “Is it...”

  “Dead?” Lazarus asked idly. The tone ill-matched his appearance; his cloak and coat had long jagged tears in several places, and new scars welted his cheek, still fresh with the blood. “It is as dead as it can get. A Myrrh is of manna. When the body dies its essence returns to the land. It is the same with the Versi.” He paused as the room shook again with a fluxing wave, momentarily bending out of shape.

  “Don’t worry, lad.” Lazarus came and helped Mykel up. Reaching into what remained of his cloak he pulled a clean rag and wiped the blood from the red cloak. “The effects of what’s being unleashed are felt by everyone in the Realm, I can imagine. It will pass.”

  The words seemed to shake Jekai from his awed stupor. “You,” he whispered. Even in the dank torchlight his eye glowed with a loathing hate. “You appear on the heels of disaster, worm. I have half a mind to split you in twain.” He glanced at Lazarus and said nothing; though his face made it plain he wished a similar fate for him.

  “The boy has nothing to do with this,” Lazarus said.

  “Something is.” Jekai spat. “Demons rising out of nowhere, the castle become a nightmare...” he chuckled and waved a hand to the corpses with their golden cloaks still. “And dead men rising up to kill the nearest man in sight. You see this, and ask yourself how I cannot suspect a traitor.”

  Mykel balked but Lazarus said, “Where is the rest of your squad?”

  “We split into smaller units to better deal with the onslaught. That was an hour ago. They are dead, I fear, or turned into monsters, most like. My tracker led us to this chamber, but to no avail.” He gestured, and Mykel started. There was no door out of this chamber save for the one they had entered. This room was a dead end.

  “Hmm.” With effortless grace Lazarus strode to the eastern wall. He paced a bit back and forth, gloved fingers lightly tracing the wall’s plain white paint. Periodically he upturned his hand to watch stray layers of dust pattern themselves against the black leather. There was something there, Mykel realized. Something there on the wall. A glance to Jekai revealed a puzzled face. He doesn’t see it yet. Perhaps with all of his years as a Solvicar he could not bring himself to see it.

  “There,” Lazarus whispered. He stopped at the center of the wall, glanced up and down at it, and then waved a hand. Ropes of Fire came into existence as if beckoned, whooshing outward to door-shape. The ropes widened, filled out and merged, and became a doorway of red-gold flame. Another wave and the Fire turned in on itself, twisting to thick whispers of smoke and finally into air. “There.” Lazarus said again.

  “How can you do that?”

  “It is not easy. There is enough manna here to light a signal fire broad enough to trip the senses of every Weirwynd still living. Finding the Mirage-spell that hid the door is similar to finding the needle in haystack.”

  “Vile tricks,” Jekai spat. From the look of his face he seemed ready to spit something on his blade. “Filthy magic. I should kill you on the spot.”

  “You can kill me later,” Lazarus answered dryly. “If my estimate is correct, the source of this calamity lies within.” He waved a hand towards the doorway in a grandiose manner.

  Jekai looked ready to explode. For hidden amidst the spoken words the unsaid words rang sharp and clear. Jekai’s holistic nature led him to equate a source with some sort of giant nest where demons were involved. More demons than any of them had ever seen. The army of Order might eventually win against these minions of Chaos, but not today. Not with a single Solvicar; even if he was a master swordsman. “What...” Jekai’s jaw grated when he spoke; the words came out edged and twisted. “What... do you propose?”

  “I can stop this.” Lazarus answered. “I know what’s happening. I’ve seen it before. But it must be done quickly, for we have little time left. Alone I have little chance. Together...” he paused, and the silence in that breath was thick with the certainly of failure. “Together we might survive. Everyone might survive.”

  John Jekai looked like he wanted very dearly to kill something. His hand trembled above the hilt of his weapon as if he might actualize the desire. Within, Mykel knew, the man was poised on the cusp of choice. He could kill the Ravenkin and damn the royal family, or save the royal family and damn himself. Secular loyalty warred with religious, flickering in that singular brown eye. Finally, it was the religious light that relented. “The royal family are puppets,” he said as he released the hilt. The blade slammed home in the leather sheath as though it was Mykel’s heart it pierced. “But I cannot stand idly by and let another be consumed by the forces of Chaos.”

  “As you wish.” Lazarus nodded.

  “I will still kill you.”

  “Again, as you wish.” Lazarus replied. His jowls crinkled into a sort of a smile. “Later.”

  “Later.” Jekai agreed, and then gestured to the door. “After you.”

  “Of course. We must hurry. There is not much time.”

  Enough time for what? Mykel wanted to ask as they started down, but kept his lips shut. Part of him knew he would know the full horror of it soon enough.

  Part of him knew he would regret knowing it, too.

  XII

  With no torches lit, the library se
emed lifeless. Gone was the scent of pages aging. Gone was the ruffling of paper, the feel of boiled leather. Now there was only emptiness. The very air became hollow.

  “Good. They have not breached the barrier yet.” Lazarus was the very face of calm. Raising his hand, the old Khatari willed a spark of smoke to emanate from the leather glove. He let it go, and it danced into flight, touching both Jekai and LeKym. Before either could blink it was gone, vanished into the dark.

  “That should keep them busy for a while.” Lazarus whispered. There, out of the blackness, were slivers and curls of smoke, just barely making man-shapes. He created the illusions as a cover, the librarian realized. It was a lure to fool the enemy. But who exactly was the enemy?

  “Move out, and stay close to me.” Lazarus whispered grimly. “I’m not going back for you two. Keep up and you won’t die.” Thus inclined, the two went quickly after their guide.

  It became crystalline clear that they were being led to a dead end. This was Mykel’s second home; dark or light he could transverse to any door in this place blindfolded. Yet here was a path that Mykel knew not. It wasn’t supposed to exist. It wound directly into the concrete walls and out again several times. It shouldn’t have been hard to accept; Lazarus had built this entire library with his bare hands, if the legends held any truth. Still, it was a little unnerving to walk through walls.

  Within a few minutes the three came upon yet another flaw in the library’s design. From what Mykel could recognize, they were in the southwest corner of the castle; a stone’s throw away from a door that led the visitors outside to the castle gardens. In fact, the three should have been in the garden, if not for the curving stone path that replaced the main, if not all, doors that were supposed to be there. Mykel bit his lip in an effort to control himself.