Will Power

by A. J. Hartley

  I called her name. “Look at him, Renthrette!” I cried. “Look at your brother.”

  Her eyelids flickered and opened for a second. They rested on the skull beside her face and she smiled.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Garnet. Now rest.”

  “No,” I shouted, as the tomb door inched further across the opening, “it isn’t him. He’s different.”

  “No,” she murmured, her eyes still shut. “No.”

  “How did he find us?” I tried, desperate now. “How did he know we were here? He says he spoke to Lisha: Where? When? How could he have found them and why would he have gone looking? He didn’t know they were here. Lisha is outside the city and couldn’t have come to him. He must be lying. Renthrette, it’s not your brother. Look.”

  Her eyelids rippled again and confusion crossed her forehead as the last of the lamplight was closed out of the tomb. In the last second before the darkness took us, her eyes opened all the way; she saw the hollow eye sockets, yellow and gnawed by rats; and she screamed.

  In that instant the grip which seized me broke, the finger bones shattered, and the tomb door quavered and fell slowly into the passageway, crashing full length and breaking upon the flint floor with a deafening roar that seemed to resound through the earth. I staggered out after it, gasping the air, and Renthrette followed, shrieking and brushing at the torn limb which had encircled her. The rest of the corpse seemed to stand for a second and then tumbled in pieces, many of the bones turning to powder before they hit the ground.

  Renthrette sank back against the opposite wall, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth and her eyes fixed on the empty tomb. She was wheezing, rather than sobbing.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “It wasn’t him.”

  For a while she said nothing, so I sat down beside her and slipped my arm around her shoulders. I had, after all, seen this little trick before. She didn’t rebuff me, or react at all, for that matter. She just sat there, breathing heavily and biting into the back of her wrist till the print of her teeth showed bone white.

  “What was it doing?” she asked.

  There were lots of possible answers to this, some of which I preferred not to consider, so I kept it simple. “Trying to stop us.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re about to fulfill a prophecy,” I said. “But we’d better be quick. If he, whatever that thing in the library is, has sensed us here, he’ll be sending troops. We have to find that passage.”

  I helped her up. She could have rested a while longer, but I dared not risk it. We moved back down the passage to where the largest tombs were. The lamp oil was still burning in a pool on the floor, but we couldn’t carry it with us and visibility at the far end was almost nil.

  “This is impossible,” I said. “How could we have missed it?”

  “What’s that?” said Renthrette.

  I followed her gaze steeply upward and my heart stopped. High above the other tombs was a figure, armored and crouching, ready to pounce. I took a step back, but the warrior didn’t move and, now that I got a second look at it, it seemed unlikely that it would.

  “That’s it!” I said. “That’s the statue. Let me give you a lift.”

  I locked my hands and she stepped into them wordlessly, using them as a stirrup to hoist herself up. Then she grasped the masonry and hauled herself the rest of the way.

  “Are you up?” I said. “All right. Now, take hold of his spear, above his hand. Got it? Now, pull it toward you.”

  For a moment nothing happened, then the spear seemed to break off and snap forward. But it didn’t fall, and as it moved, something heavy behind the wall disengaged. Renthrette jumped back hastily as the entire section of wall lurched back a few inches and then dropped vertically into the earth with a great rush of dust and a thunderous rumble. Behind where it had stood there was first darkness, then a lean, gray Stehnite face under a steel helm. It was Toth.

  “You have proved many people wrong today, Mr. Hawthorne,” he said, as soon as he had leaped down. “I am glad, and grateful.”

  Renthrette stared at him. I thought I saw her hand stray toward her sword.

  “Renthrette,” I said, “this is Toth, a Stehnite chieftain.”

  “Enchanted,” he said.

  Renthrette returned his half bow with a kind of stunned nod, but there was no time to dwell on courtesies. Others were appearing at the hole in the wall and dropping cautiously into the passage. Among them were Orgos and Lisha. Renthrette came to herself instantly, embracing them heartily and with real joy.

  “Quick!” I said. “They know we’re here. They’ll try to shut us in.”

  “They will try,” said Toth, darkly, “but now that I have set foot in the city of our fathers, I will not leave it.”

  At this utterance, many of those gathered in the passage made sounds of assent, but a glance up at where the statue had been told me that there were not many of them. About three dozen Stehnites and a pair of sleek gray wolves had come in through the passage. The rest would lay siege to the walls with Mithos and the other chiefs. I doubted it could possibly be enough.

  Orgos, taller than almost everyone else there by a hand, conferred with Toth, and the unit began to move quickly back the way we had come, their weapons drawn. For a second I found myself face to face with one of the wolves and I saw thought, or perhaps even recollection, in its yellow eyes. It was a huge, pale beast, its fur gleaming like brushed steel and with a white blaze on its throat. As I looked at it I knew I had seen it before, long ago in that mountain cave where we had met Sorrail, and that it also remembered. The wolf held me in its gaze, and I, overcome by a rush of guilty regret for a lot of things, swallowed hard and held my breath. It watched, considering, then moved off, following the others. I blinked the memory away as best I could.

  We hurried through the monuments and sepulchers, past the open tomb which had so nearly been my last resting place, and into the circular chamber near the steep staircase. There we stuttered to a halt. Orgos, at the front of the line, had raised his palm in a call for silence. No one moved.

  Over the sound of my heart I heard a sloshing sound, like barrels of ale being drawn up from the cellar, followed by a harsh splitting thud, like an axe biting lumber. An acrid scent drifted down the stairs. With it, trickling black down the steps and collecting in pools at our feet, came the oil.

  A dozen of the Stehnites realized the same thing in the instant that I did and began shouting in their own language and jostling backward. We moved as a unit, panicked and erratic as the flames started rushing down the steps toward us, bluish for a second, then red. A young Stehnite who had strayed to the front of the column found himself suddenly engulfed in the blaze. He came running toward us, screaming, but I suppose the shock was too intense, for he fell suddenly, and was lost in the fire. The heat followed a moment later. It filled the passage like a wall, and our attack broke against it like water on stone.

  SCENE XX

  The Soul of the Arak Drül

  “Is there another way out?” demanded Orgos. Toth shook his head.

  “Not that I know of, but it’s been generations since we were last here. There may be an exit that we don’t remember.”

  “We can’t go this way,” said Orgos, “and if we wait for the flames to die down, the battle will be over and we will be at the mercy of our enemy.”

  “There is another way,” I said.

  “What?” said Orgos, wheeling.

  “There are stairs at the other end,” I explained. “I don’t know if they go anywhere, but I saw them when Renthrette and I first came down here. They may also be burning, but if the enemy reacts to our actions as we think of them, we may have a moment’s advantage.”

  “What do you mean?” Toth asked.

  “I think that whatever it is that lives in the library senses our actions rather than truly reading our thoughts, and only when we are either physically close to him or unusually focused. It can feel the impulse behind an action
, but nothing more complex. It didn’t know I was lying to Sorrail when I came back. I’m guessing, and it would be too much to hope that it doesn’t know we’re here now, but I think it can only act through other people, so we may still have time. Follow me!”

  And with this dangerously heroic cry I bounded off, a pack of Stehnites at my heels. The perceptive reader will need no reminding that running toward the stairs I had seen beyond the tombs was also running away from certain death in a blazing stairwell, so you can hold back the “hero” judgment for a bit. We retraced our steps for, it seemed, the dozenth time, passed the gaping hole through which our companions had entered, and found the tight spiral staircase I had glimpsed earlier in the shadows beyond the rubble.

  I didn’t even have to point it out before Orgos and Toth had barreled past me like a pair of startled bison and bounded up the steps with their weapons drawn. I hesitated for a second, wary of getting caught in another cascade of fire, but we seemed to have a moment’s advantage, so I joined the pack behind Lisha which was, I thought, as good a place to be as any.

  The stairs went up for some distance and the whole unit began to slow perceptibly as we got higher. I slipped closer to the back of the column with each step, my breath coming in great sucking gulps as if I was a tadpole in a drying mud puddle. But unless I missed it somewhere, your average tadpole never has to climb stairs for the privilege of doing hand-to-hand battle with a vastly superior force, a prospect which rarely quickens my step.

  And suddenly the company stuttered to a halt. I crawled up to them and lay wheezing on my back while the Stehnites above me relayed the message: The way ahead was blocked. A heavy slab of stone (at the very least, since no one knew what was on top of it) lay over the stairwell. We were stuck. I sat on the steps, breathing heavily. I was wondering whether it said something about my heroism that I had started at the front of the unit and was now at the very back, when something sounded below.

  I had not minded being the last of the group on the stairs since the fire had cut off any possible pursuit, but now something was moving a bit below us. It was an unhurried, shuffling sound, but it was getting louder. Uneasily, I took a cautious step down, but the spiral was too tight to see anything more than a few feet away. I took another step, then another, and was considering going lower when a figure half-dragged, half-lurched around the bend in the stairs.

  It was large and it bore an ancient sword, and though the light was too low to see detail, I needed no time to consider the nature of what was facing me. I had seen its hand, the pale bones wound tight round the sword hilt. As I fled upward, I looked over the rail of the stairs down to where the ancient Stehnite tombs were emptying one by one, their bodies moving with single and uncanny purpose.

  For a moment my voice forsook me, and I ran headlong into the Stehnites on the stairs before they had even seen me coming. “Move!” I managed, unhelpfully. “They’re coming. The dead are coming after us.”

  I didn’t need to say more, because the first was already upon us. I pushed past one of the Stehnites and then turned, astonished at his lack of response to what he saw. But then, I don’t know what he saw. He looked on the foul and ragged skeleton and he did nothing. None of them did. Only when it leaned forward and precisely thrust its rusted sword through his lungs did any of them react.

  In the screaming that followed I took the scimitar which fell from the dying Stehnite and hewed the arm from the ancient corpse. It came on and its bony fingers reached for my face. With an instinctive and horrified surge of emotion, I cut wildly at its neck and the head tore free in a spackling of dust and tiny bone shards. The body fell under the feet of those that followed it and we, pawing desperately to get away from them, climbed over each other in the madness of fear.

  Then Renthrette passed me going down and her sword sang on their dead crowns. After they had got over the initial shock, some of the Stehnite turned to aid her. I, on the other hand, kept moving until I was in sight of Toth and Orgos, their shoulders set against the slab of marble above them and sweat glazing their features. Others pushed along with them, and one of them counted, trying to time their surges of energy.

  “Dead goblins!” I sputtered. “Coming from behind.”

  “We heard,” said Orgos. “But we’re kind of busy. . . .”

  “Try harder,” I said, glancing behind to see if the corpses of the ancient Stehnites were cutting through our ranks yet. “It can’t be that heavy.”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Orgos, with commendable patience.

  “Too bad you didn’t bring one of those immense beasts that you had with you the last time you attacked the city,” I said.

  “Alas,” gasped Toth, “she was the last of her kind. Her aid now would indeed be . . .”

  “She?” I repeated, aghast.

  He glanced at me and a question rose in his face, but whatever he was going to say was forgotten as they heaved at the slab once more. With a great shout they all strained at the rock and something seemed to shift. More joined in, pushing upward, levering with the hafts of their weapons until a crack of light appeared around the stone rim and spread like the sun breaking from clouds. With one great surging roar, the slab was pushed up and clear and gray light fell into the shaft.

  Toth was the first out, swinging himself up and into a crouch like a hunter. Orgos followed, with a brace of Stehnites on his tail. Then me, and I needed only a second to see where we were. Ranged about us were shelves of books, and two vast staircases led up to a gallery that skirted the great translucent dome which arched above us.

  We were in the library, and there were soldiers everywhere.

  They seemed to be coming from all sides, running fast like hounds converging on a wounded sheep. Arrows whistled through the air and skipped off the marble floor. One of the Stehnites fell clutching his leg and rolling, as the others spewed out of the hole like water from a geyser. I ducked and scuttled toward a pillar, thinking vaguely that this is where I would normally be taking leisurely shots with my crossbow. But the crossbow was lost and I was left diving for cover, clutching a rusted scimitar and wondering what the hell kind of use I could possibly be, even if I could stay alive for another five minutes.

  The Stehnites were a valiant group and they ran at the enemy with the kind of self-restraint I was used to in Orgos, meaning none. Orgos himself was in the thick of things, of course, his sword sweeping in great lethal arcs. I think only Toth, who had hacked his way past at least a couple of the tall, pale soldiers, showed a similarly furious dignity. But there were dozens of the immaculately dressed and trained Arak Drül, and they burned with a deep, smoldering hatred for the goblins. High on the gallery stairs, an officer arranged his mail-clad archers and they showered us with arrows in audible sheets. Beside him was one of those who I had seen on the city walls during the battle. He was dressed in flowing pale vestments, his eyes shut but his fingers moving rapidly, as if he were drawing out invisible thread.

  “Get down!” I shouted.

  The arrows came again, but this time we were blinded by the flash of brilliant emerald flame that came with them. A cry of despair rose up from those around me, and the Stehnites that had survived the first wave of the flaming missiles scattered and ran for cover.

  Except Toth. He sprang up the stairs four at a time, his great cleaver before him. The archers turned their sights on him, but by luck and speed they could not find their mark, and the volley was weak and erratic. Then he was almost upon them and their line quivered in panic as several fumbled for their swords. One of the wolves, the paler of the two, bound up after him and burst upon the line of soldiers, which buckled, then broke. Some fled, others just dropped in horror as their ancient enemy tore into them. The priestly figure’s eyes snapped open and he staggered back, his spells forgotten in the face of those ravenous lupine jaws.

  Then Orgos leaped from the balustrade into the fray, and Lisha, seeing how the scattered Stehnites had taken heart, attacked the stairs, her dark spear flash
ing its electric blue fire before her. The Stehnites followed her lead with a shout of defiant unity, forcing the Arak Drül soldiers back up into the domed gallery. Renthrette, who had held off the skeleton soldiers almost singlehandedly, now emerged from the hole in the floor, looked briskly about her, and leaped after the rest. I broke cover and joined the pack. At the top of the stairs, the Arak Drül sentries were fighting a losing battle, many having fallen to the Stehnite onslaught. Those that remained were white-faced and wild-eyed. Several cast down their weapons in desperate submission, and it seemed it might be over.

  But as I climbed the stairs to join the victors I heard the library’s great external doors clang wide and heard the unmistakable sound of horses—many horses. I turned, suddenly cold. Below me, polished and grim, came the pride of the Arak Drül cavalry, pouring in through the huge doors, riding two abreast. There were too many to count, and, at their head, still and resolute, rode Sorrail.

  He wore silver armor made of rings and riveted plate, but he bore no helm and his hair was brushed back like spun gold. A cape of fur varying from gray to black was draped about his shoulders, and at its hem the pelts ended in half a dozen wolf heads, snouts hanging down around the flanks of his mount, eyes sightless in defeat. His face was hard and cold but his mouth held a hint of disdain, even amusement, that such rabble should dare to challenge him. He led his horse toward us, and his cavalry followed, a study in confidence and unnatural composure.

  Their horses hesitated at the foot of the stairs, but only for a moment. Then—implausibly—they were coming, lances lowered like a gray thicket of death, and there was nowhere for us to go. I had never seen horses move like that. It was like they weren’t actually horses at all, or had been taken over by some controlling mind. The Stehnites shrank back and even Toth and Orgos lowered their weapons and stood watching as the horses clattered up the steps toward us.