“This way.” Without waiting to see if the sorceress followed, Norrec stomped down the corridor in the direction he felt certain that the sarcophagus lay. Galeona hurried to catch up, the dark-skinned woman slipping an arm around his own as if the two were lovers in the midst of a moonlit walk. He did not struggle free, aware that this way he could also keep her under watch.
Now and then a face familiar to him stared out from the dust-ridden statues. Norrec marked each with satisfaction, remembering their order from the vision. Not only did they prove that he headed in the correct direction but particular faces indicated to him that the final chamber had to be only a short distance further.
And yet . . . and yet something about the statues also caused the veteran some unease, for although outwardly they seemed identical to those he recalled, minute alterations in detail began to haunt him. Certain features on some of the faces looked ever so slightly off—the shape of a nose, the curve of a mouth, the strength of a jaw. Most of all, the eyes tended toward different appearances. Never completely, but enough to make Norrec finally pause at one in order to look.
“What is it?” Galeona whispered, anxious to move on to their ultimate destination.
The face he stared at, the face of one Oskul, a roundheaded, officious mage who had briefly been Horazon’s sponsor to the Vizjerei council, resembled much the visage as Norrec’s memory recalled it . . . but the eyes should have been narrower and the artisan had also given the orbs a sleepy look, not at all in keeping with the ever-active personality of the man. Nothing else about the statue seemed out of place, but the eyes proved to be enough to disturb him yet more.
Still, Norrec had been in the tomb for only a short time and had spent only a fraction of it among the ghostly sculptures. Whatever mistakes he now recalled likely had more to do with the artist’s failing rather than anything else.
“Nothing,” the soldier finally remarked. “Come on.”
They journeyed on for a few minutes more—and at last entered the crypt. Norrec smiled as he studied the ancient site. Here, everything looked as it should. In the niches on the left and right, the skeletal figures of the Vizjerei sorcerers silently greeted the newcomers’ arrival. The vast stone coffin atop the dais matched perfectly his vision.
The coffin . . .
“Horazon . . . “ he whispered.
With growing eagerness, Norrec dragged Galeona toward the sarcophagus. The horror he had suffered during his dream visit to this place had been all but forgotten. All Norrec wanted to do now was open the coffin. He left the witch to the side, then reached up to take hold of the lid.
At that moment, his gaze slipped down to the clan markings again, something about them snaring his attention.
The dragon remained as it had been—but now below it lay a fiery star.
He stepped back, the truth dawning slowly on him. There had been too many errors, too many differences in detail . . .
“What’s wrong? Why didn’t you open it?”
Glaring at the traitorous markings, the veteran fighter snapped, “Because it’s not real!” He waved his hand at the legion of dead mages. “I don’t think any of this is real!”
“But that’s mad!” Galeona touched the coffin. “It’s as solid as you or I!”
“Is it?” Norrec extended his hand—and as he had hoped, in it he now held the sinister ebony sword. “Let’s see what exactly the truth is!”
As Galeona watched in both astonishment and dismay, the soldier raised the sword high above his head, then brought it down hard on the massive sarcophagus.
The blade cut through without pause and yet no line appeared in the coffin. The two halves of the great stone monument did not separate and collapse . . . and the tattered bones of Horazon did not tumble to the floor.
“Illusion . . . or something akin to it.” He turned to the horrific throng lined up against the walls, glaring at the dead as if they were to blame. “Where is he? Where’s Horazon?”
“Perhaps down another passage . . .” suggested Galeona, her tone indicating she did not completely trust his sanity at the moment.
“Yes, maybe so.” Without waiting for her, he charged out of the crypt. For some distance, Norrec followed the single corridor, looking for a side passage, a doorway. Yet, not once could he recall having seen one. In both ver sions of his dream, it had always been only this single passageway. The great Arcane Sanctuary had always consisted of only this and the actual burial chamber itself. Hardly the immense edifice one would have expected.
Unless what he had seen had been designed simply for the benefit of curious and greedy intruders—and the rest lay hidden elsewhere.
The frustrated fighter paused to glare at the statue of one of his—no, Bartuc’s—former rivals. The bearded man smiled in what Norrec felt a very mocking manner.
That brought him to a decision. He raised the black blade again.
“What do you plan to do this time?” snapped Galeona, her patience with him having finally gotten thin. Great power he might wield, but so far Norrec had evidently not impressed her with his running about in circles.
“If there’re no passages, I’ll make one of my own!” He glared at the statue, desiring very much to wipe the condescending smile off its face. Here would be the perfect location to begin cutting his way out. Norrec held the sword ready, determined to bring down the mocking effigy with his first blow.
But as he swung, as the blade came within inches of beheading the smiling statue, Norrec’s entire surroundings fragmented. The floor rose and the walls pulled away, the rows of statues seeming to fall back as if fainting. The enshrouding webs folded in on themselves, utterly vanishing. Stairs bloomed like flowers, twisting and turning. Part of the floor ceased rising and instead dropped lower, leaving the two standing near a precipice. The only thing that remained consistent through the growing anarchy was the yellowish illumination.
“What’ve you done?” Galeona cried. “You fool! It’s all falling apart!”
Norrec could not answer her, unable even to keep his footing. He fell back, the heavy armor dragging him down. His weapon flew from his grip and as it did, it faded away. The ground shook, keeping him from rising and, worse, rolling him toward the edge.
“Help me up!” he called to the sorceress, growing desperate. The gauntlets tore at the stone floor but could not get a grip anywhere. Around him, the Arcane Sanctuary continued to transform itself without any noticeable rhyme or reason, almost as if the tomb had gone into convulsion as a human might.
Galeona looked his way, hesitated, then looked to her right, where a stairway had suddenly formed.
“Help me, damn it!”
She sneered at him. “What a waste of my time! You, Augustus, Xazax—all of you! Better I relied only on myself! If you can’t even pick yourself up, you might as well stay here and die, fool!”
With one last contemptuous glance at Norrec, Galeona started toward the steps.
“No!” Anger and fear vied for supremacy in him, anger and fear of the likes the fighter could never have imagined. As the witch fought her way to what might be freedom—abandoning Norrec to whatever fate awaited him—the urge to strike out, to punish her for her betrayal grew almost overwhelming.
Norrec pointed at her with his left hand. Words of power gathered on his lips, ready to be spoken. With one quick phrase, he would rid himself of the treacherous woman.
“Damn it! No! I won’t!” He turned from her, pulled down his hand. Let her flee without him if she liked. He would not have another death on his hands.
Unfortunately, the armor did not agree.
The hand rose again, this time against Norrec’s will. He struggled to lower it, but as since almost from the beginning of this terrible quest, the soldier found himself not the master, but simply the means. Bartuc’s armor sought retribution for Galeona’s failing—and it would have that retribution regardless of what its host wanted.
The gauntlet flared crimson.
Their surroun
dings still in complete flux, the darkskinned enchantress had only now made it to the twisting staircase. To her misfortune, however, it shifted to the side, forcing her to readjust her path. As Norrec’s hand came up, Galeona managed at last to set a foot on the first and second steps.
“No!” shouted Norrec at the gauntlet. He looked at the fleeing woman, who had not bothered to take even the slightest parting glimpse at her struggling companion. “Run! Hurry! Get out of here!”
Only after he had blurted out the warning did Norrec realize what he had done. Those words more than anything else caused Galeona to pause and look over her shoulder, costing her the precious seconds she had needed.
The dark words that the fighter had struggled not to say burst free.
Galeona saw what he did and reacted, striking back. She pointed at the prone figure, mouthing a single harsh word that some memory not of Norrec Vizharan’s past recognized as a spell most foul.
Brilliant blue flames surrounded the witch even as she finished speaking. Galeona raised her head and howled once in utter agony—then burned away to ash in the blink of an eye.
Norrec, though, had no time to acknowledge her terrible demise, for suddenly his entire body became wracked in pain, as if each bone within sought to break apart. Norrec could feel even the tiniest of them slowly but inexorably cracking. Although the armor’s magic had destroyed her, Galeona had succeeded in her own spellcasting. He screamed, shaking uncontrollably. Worse, despite his agony, the armor did nothing to help and instead appeared to be trying to rise so that it now could use the very staircase upon which the sorceress had perished.
Yet although the suit made it to the steps, it could go no farther. Each time it tried, an invisible force buffeted it back. Norrec’s fist slammed against air, sending new shockwaves through the already-suffering man.
“Please!” he croaked, not caring that only the armor could possibly hear him. “Please . . . help . . .”
“Norrec!”
Through tear-drenched eyes, he tried to focus on the voice, a woman’s voice. Did the ghost of Galeona call to him to join her in death?
“Norrec Vizharan!”
No . . . a different voice, young but commanding. He managed to turn his head some, although the action caused more torture within. In the distance, a vaguely familiar woman pale of skin but black of hair futilely reached out to him from what appeared to be a crystalline doorway at the top of yet another flight of stairs. Behind her stood another figure, this one male and with long, wild hair and a beard, both as white as snow. He looked suspicious, curious, and frightened all at the same time. He also looked even more familiar than the woman.
To Norrec he could be only one person.
“Horazon?” the soldier blurted.
One of the gloved hands immediately came up, the gauntlet ablaze with magical fury. Bartuc’s armor had reacted to the name—and not with pleasure. Norrec could feel the formation of a spell, one that would make Galeona’s death seem a peaceful end.
But as if reacting in turn to the armor, an awful moaning arose, as if the very building itself took offense to what it saw. Horazon and the woman suddenly disappeared as the stairway shifted a different direction and new walls formed. Norrec discovered himself suddenly standing in a high-columned hall that looked as if a grand ball had just ended. Yet, even that changed quickly.
No matter what the room, no matter where the woman and Horazon had gone, the armor did not care. Another spell erupted from the fighter’s mouth and a ball of molten earth flew from his hand, exploding seconds later against the nearest wall.
The moaning became a roar .
The entire sanctuary shook. A tremendous force buffeted Norrec from every side. Worse, he realized that not only did the air close in on him—but so did the walls and the ceiling. Even the floor rose.
Norrec raised his arms, now evidently his own again, in a last futile effort to staff off the onrushing walls.
The meal had been a sumptuous one, better by far than any Kara could have imagined, including those which Captain Jeronnan had served her. If not for the fact that she was the prisoner of an insane mage, she might have enjoyed it even more.
During the meal, the necromancer had tried on more than one occasion to pluck some bit of reason from the white-haired sorcerer, but from Horazon she had only received babbled words and inconsistent information. At one point he had spoken of having discovered by accident the Arcane Sanctuary—the name by which legend called Horazon’s tomb—then he had told Kara that he had built it all by himself through masterful sorcery. Another time, Horazon had told his prisoner that he had come to Aranoch to study the massive convergence of spiritual ley-lines centered in and around the city’s present location. Even she had heard that mages could tap the mystical energies of this region far better than in any other spot in all the world. However, afterward he had spoken, with great trepidation, of fleeing to this side of the seas in fear that his brother’s dark legacy still followed him.
Gradually Kara came to feel as if she spoke to two distinct men, one who truly was Horazon and another who simply thought he was. She could only think that the terrible trials through which Bartuc’s brother had suffered, especially the horrific war against his own sibling, had combined with his centuries-long seclusion to tear apart his already-fragile mind. The necromancer grew somewhat sympathetic to his plight, but never did she forget that not only did this mad sorcerer still keep her in his underground labyrinth against her will, but also that, in times past, his magic had, on occasion, been as black as Bartuc’s had ever been.
One other thing Kara had noted that unnerved her as much as her host’s sanity. The Arcane Sanctuary itself acted as if more than simply an extension of Horazon’s tremendous power. Many times, she could have sworn that it, too, had a mind, a personality, even. Sometimes she would note the room around her shift subtly, the walls moving and the general design transforming even when the wizard paid it no mind. Kara had even noticed that the table and the food changed. More to the point, when the necromancer had tried to push Horazon on the matter of Bartuc, a peculiar darkness had slowly begun to pervade her surroundings—almost as if the edifice itself wished an end to the troubling topic.
When they had finished, Horazon had immediately bid her to rise. Here in his sanctum, he had not babbled too much about ‘the evil,’ but still the watery-eyed figure acted with caution in all things.
“We must be careful,” Horazon had muttered, standing. “At all times we must be careful . . . come . . . there is much to do . . .”
Her thoughts more on escape than his constant warnings, Kara had also risen—only to see a sight so startling that it had made her knock her chair over.
From the table itself had emerged a hand completely formed of the wood. The hand had seized her empty plate and had dragged it down into the table. At the same time, other hands had materialized, each seizing an object and dragging it, too, into the table. Still stunned, Kara had stepped back, only then discovering that the reason she had not heard her chair strike the floor had been because two more appendages formed from the marble at her feet had caught the piece of furniture before it could hit.
“Come!” Horazon had called, his expression now somewhat peevish. He seemed not at all disturbed by the unsettling appendages. “No time to waste, no time to waste!”
While the dining hall had worked to clear itself, he had led her up a flight of stairs, then through a polished, oak door. Behind the door lay another stairway, this one going back down. Despite having wanted to question the trustfulness of their path, the young dark mage had quietly followed even when that set of steps had ended at yet another doorway which seemed to lead back to the vast hall again. Only when Horazon had opened the door and instead of the great hall she had been confronted with a wizard’s laboratory had Kara finally blurted out something.
“This is impossible! This room shouldn’t be here!”
He had looked at her as if she had been the mad one. “Of
course, it should be! I was looking for it, after all! What a silly thing to say! If you look for a room, it should be where you want it, you know!”
“But . . .” Kara had ceased her protest, unable to argue with the facts before her very eyes. Here should have stood the grand room in which she and Horazon had eaten, but instead this imposing if disorderly chamber had greeted her. Thinking back to the impossible journeys she had already made in the sanctuary, the darkhaired spellcaster had finally come to the conclusion that the ancient mage’s home could not possibly completely exist on the mortal plane. Even though no architect could have ever solved the physical problems she had encountered, it had been said of the most powerful Vizjerei that some had learned to actually manipulate the very fabric of reality itself, to create for their use what some called “pocket universes” where the laws of nature were what their masters decided it should be.
Could that have been what Horazon had accomplished with the Arcane Sanctuary? Kara could find no other explanation for everything she had experienced. If so, he had created a marvel such as not ever seen before in all the world!
Despite his ragged robe and otherwise unkempt appearance, in this chamber Horazon had taken on a more formidable look. When he had stepped to the center of the room, raising his arms and beckoning to the ceiling, Kara had expected fire and lightning to play from his fingers. She had expected winds to rise from nowhere and perhaps even the Vizjerei’s body to glow bright.
Instead, he had simply turned back to her and said, “I brought you here . . . but I don’t know why .”
After taking a moment to register this odd statement, the necromancer had replied, “Is it because of the armor? Your—brother’s—armor?”
He had stared up at the ceiling again. “Is it?”
The ceiling, of course, had not answered.
“Horazon . . . you must remember what they did with your brother’s body, your people and mine.”
Diablo #1: Legacy of Blood Page 27
