The shaking intensified. They clicked frantically and Portia did not understand them, but she could smell the raw reek of their fear. The herders threw themselves into the work of turning the mighty gears of the outer doors. Their hands were clumsy in their panic and haste.
A thunderous boom echoed through the halls as the doors far behind them were blown open. Portia heard the elaborate Oriental panels slam into the walls and the wrenching jangle as the hinges shattered.
"Work faster," she urged the herders who had begun to argue amongst themselves in sibilant whines.
An intense change of air pressure heralded the approach of danger. A sphere of distorted shadows extended down the corridor and Kanika’s small silhouette could be seen at its center. She effortlessly knocked through doors and blew out the walls of the corridor. The shaking continued, increasing in magnitude. The herders shook their heads mutely at the door. The shifting structure had the gears hopelessly jammed. Time was running out and Portia felt her plans about to shake apart like the walls around her. She cursed herself for not striking Kanika when she had the chance.
"Stand aside!" Portia swung the axe into the door. Sparks flew as metal contacted metal, but the axe bit only a small hole into the panel. She pressed her palm to it instead, and before she could even finish calling upon the light within, the doors flew open with a squeal of protesting metal.
Out in the courtyard, the reapers were converging on the palace. Ever-widening cracks had formed in the pavement there, buckling the golden paving stones and tripping the guards as they sought to render aid to their queen. Lahash barred her way, leveling his barbed iron pike at Portia’s heart.
"Halt!"
"I’d rather not. Your queen is dead and what has taken her place is not going to be happy to see you. Besides, I am in a dreadful hurry. Please, stand aside."
He lowered the pike and reached for Portia, but her hard gaze stopped him cold. An aura of flame blazed from her, betraying her furious temper. The moment grew strained between them before the commander stepped away from her, avoiding her eyes like a dog that had been kicked.
"Captain Lahash." One of the reapers jogged up and stumbled as he beheld Portia. He sputtered and ducked his head to them both. "These herders were with her."
The herders warbled with panic, pointing toward the castle with their fleshless hands.
The commander growled, his heavy brows lowering. Without much menace behind his gesture, he pointed his sinuous black-bladed dagger to Portia’s throat. "You will explain."
The anger faded, replaced by indignation. "I will not. I had nothing to do with this. Investigate all you’d like, but I am going back to the sanctuary." She made only a few steps away before the ground heaved so mightily that it knocked her off her feet, leaving her sprawled on an island of pavement surrounded by ominous, acrid steam that billowed up all around her. Lahash crouched a few yards away. Portia could see a cavernous space below them, lit with a dusky glow. The captain scrambled onto the more solid ground of the courtyard, leaving Portia behind on an unstable slab that slid precariously into the maw. With a few strong sweeps of her wings, Portia rose out of the cave-in.
"The machine is doing this, isn’t it?"
Lahash ground his jaw. "Someone has engaged Her Majesty’s rift engine. It was not time yet! We do not have possession of the portal soul!"
"And you never will, so help me."
A shudder groaned through the ground, prying open the hard-packed road in another gasp of sulphurous steam that blasted a knot of reapers, leaving most of them dead. Portia dodged the blast, flapping frantically above it.
"Is this damned thing supposed to tear the island apart?"
"The rift engine is part the system that keeps the island aloft."
"Of course it is." Portia sighed. "And that means that the island is going to shake apart soon, isn’t it?" She turned away, scanning the horizon for the shimmering sanctuary tower in the distance. Time was now a more dangerous foe than Kanika as the land below her disintegrated.
"She would not have initiated it," the captain insisted. "Not without the proper protocol. I was not informed!"
"Can this tantrum wait?"
A drumbeat thudding came from behind the palace walls. The masonry curved outward with a loud groan before bursting apart with a clatter of stones and shrapnel. They saw the aura first as it emerged from the gaping hole in the palace’s façade, bringing down the soul-forged bricks around it as if the emanation of shadow and light was a solid thing. The roof of the central chamber collapsed and a fearsome cloud of dust rushed outward, flowing around the aura like water over a stone. The figure at the center of the sphere remained untouched by dust and metal. She glided down the stairs, eyes glowing darkly gold.
"Majesty?" Lahash hastily bowed and took two steps toward the collapsed walls.
Her face turned toward him, no longer the charming heart-shaped visage that Portia knew as Kanika, but something else familiar. Part Kanika, part Belial, and part…
"Nigel!" Panic seared through Portia’s soul. She realized now why Kanika’s eyes seemed so very familiar, but in Kanika’s innocent face, she had failed to recognize them. A shudder crept through her at the memory of the girl’s touch, or waking up with her head pillowed in Portia’s lap. But the revulsion was immediately replaced with dread. When she had fought Nigel in the convent, it had been a near thing. Without Imogen’s help, she did not think she could have defeated him. He still wore the souls of his victims around him like a cloak, and Belial glowed brilliantly and foremost among them, her power still intact and ready for Nigel’s use. Portia landed, putting Lahash between herself and her damnable foster-brother.
"Sweet sister," Nigel said in a voice that still sounded like Kanika’s piping tones, but with a dreadful deep echo. "Still here? You were never good at a footrace."
The reapers retreated from the voice, falling back behind Lahash but looking to Portia.
"What do you want?" Portia shouted.
"I’ll be getting to you soon enough, dear foster sister, but there are other things that require my attention. Imogen is waiting."
The ground rumbled, opening another hole in the courtyard’s center, this one a wide maw that consumed several square yards of paving stones and not a few reapers. Through the nearly blinding smoke and steam, Portia could see a piston the size of an oak tree moving gears as big as carriage wheels. The engine below roared with effort, puffing and gasping like a living thing. A hum sang beneath the terrific noise, following the small balls of lights that zipped past in thick glass tubes. The lights were shuttled away from the palace, streaking through clear pipes that vanished beneath the remaining road that lead toward the sanctuary.
Portia squinted into the gloomy fog and saw the proof of her suspicion as a sliver of silver-white light began to rise from those sacred grounds. The sanctuary was not, Portia realized, a rebellious enclave, or at least not solely that. Belial had allowed it not only to remain, but to thrive and flourish because somehow it abetted her plans.
She turned slowly toward the steps of the ruined palace. "What have you done?"
"I am taking what is rightfully destined to be mine." The creature that had once been Kanika chuckled and crouched down, then leapt straight into the air, leaving a crater below her. Like a dark comet, she streaked toward the softly lit trees of the sanctuary. A taunt echoed back to them, hauntingly: "Too slow, Portia."
"No!" Portia followed with a few sweeps of her wings. "Damn it!"
"Portia, my lady!" Lahash bellowed after her. "Where do you lead?"
"Excuse me?"
"We seek revenge upon this creature that has taken our queen from us. Where do you lead us in retribution?"
Portia paused. "Lead you?"
"Yes." Lahash lowered his eyes. "We will follow you. Tell us what we must do to stop this creature and we shall obey." He touched his breastplate with his closed fist.
Although she doubted his sincerity, she accepted his oath. "To the s
anctuary."
Lahash nodded. "We will meet you there." He took up the twisted horn that hung from his belt and blew a shrill, cutting note that mobilized the reapers and herders.
"Captain Lahash, once you and yours have dispatched the usurper, will you then turn your blades on me?"
The question caught him off guard, she could tell. He offered her a grim smile and a shrug. "No one can truly see the future, Lady Portia."
"Got it." She wheeled away from them, striving to catch Kanika.
Fissures cracked the landscape from one side of the island to the other. Salus was slowly collapsing in on itself. The tremors had not let up and were worsening by the minute.
Kanika was nowhere in sight. Frustrated, Portia waited near the wrought iron gate for the rest of the demon army to arrive.
Lahash arrived, his troops bearing one of the broken doors of the palace to lay across the stream. Two herders reached with their sinewy hands and chattered to one another, and then to Lahash.
"What are they saying?" Portia asked him.
"The wards are still down," he translated. They whistled and clicked. "More than down, broken." Lahash paused, thoughtful. "The girl, Kanika. She accompanied you at the behest of the queen. She was here. In the sanctuary." The sense of wonder in his voice alerted Portia at once.
"Kanika? Yes, she came with me." Portia remembered the girl’s reticence, how she had all but dragged her into the sacred area. She had felt the ward when she had stepped through, but somehow Kanika had injured the protective spell. "She broke the ward. She allowed you and your men to follow us."
"We are banned from this place. But when you invited Kanika inside, it opened a path for the rest of us."
Portia looked around, the weight of guilt beginning to press hard on her chest. At the sanctuary’s boundary, the grass was already dying back into black curls as the vile gloom of Salus encroached into the sacred space.
"I did this," she whispered, "and now Nigel has full access to every inch of this place." Beyond the splinters that had once been an elegant bridge, a bright light shone through the obscuring mists that protected the heart of the sanctuary. "The tower. It is the key to this. All the soul-lights shot straight for it, and it is where Imogen is being kept. What was Belial’s intent with the tower? How is it tied to the rift engine?"
Lahash squinted into the fog beyond the hedgemaze. "Tower?"
"See, there?" Portia pointed. "How did this place play into her plans, Lahash?"
A membrane slid across his reptilian eyes, then retracted. He nodded. "I see it now, but I am not certain about her intentions. I only knew she meant to open a gateway between this place and the living world. She has allies there in your world, powerful necromancers. The Aldias, they are called. They had struck a bargain, but I do not know what it entailed."
Portia sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Of course. So help me, if I live through this, I am going to purge every last one of those traitors from this earth." She turned to Lahash. "Lay the bridge. Bring a flame-thrower, if you have one. We won’t have time to fuss with that hedgemaze they have."
The commander barked out the orders. Reapers and herders swarmed to comply, arranging the heavy bronze door over the remains of the bridge and the bodies of their compatriots.
When satisfied with their work, Lahash made a nod to her. "Lead on, Lady Portia."
"Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d rather walk beside you. That way, I won’t leave my back exposed to your knife."
—9—
THE SMOLDERING remains of the fine hedge maze broke Portia’s heart. The sweet grey smoke soon mingled with the acrid black plumes that roiled into the sky out of the gashes in the ground around the sanctuary. The fissures had broken apart the soft turf, sending clumps of dying sod into the steaming metal entrails of the island. Glass tubes ran through the ground beneath them with flashes of light blinking through them, coming faster and closer together. They all converged at the base of the tower.
"Souls, or the remnants thereof." Lahash indicated the small spheres of light. "Amazing how they still shine."
"After having been consumed, portioned off, pressed into gold, and burned like coal. It is rather something," Portia agreed bitterly. They gazed down into the gash and Portia felt the coin that hung from the axe press against her hand. She opened her palm and took the coin into it, closing her fingers around the small comfort it offered. There was something of Imogen there; she could feel it. It both gave her peace and sickened her at once.
The tower’s light burned steadily brighter as it absorbed each soul sphere jetting into it.
"What becomes of them here, then? If they are not bricks or lampposts or chairs or what have you."
"Fuel. The inferior souls, the fractured, the mad, the children, they were always burned for fuel to keep the island floating. I can only imagine they provide the catalyst for the machine."
A quake rocked them nearly off their feet, but the land directly below remained solid and sturdy. They retreated from the edge of the rifts nonetheless and advanced on the shining tower itself. As they crossed one of four ornate bridges into the inner garden, the sky cleared into a pristine blue and the air smelled sweetly of summer breezes, ocean mists, and just the faintest hint of lilies.
The tower remained pristine and looked just as Portia remembered from her brief visit there. Whatever magic protected this most sacred area, it still functioned and seemed to thrive on the influx of soul fragments being pumped into it. Although the chug of the engines could no longer be heard, the strange and chiming hum was stronger here.
The herders hesitantly moved ahead, issuing commands amongst themselves and their hounds by a series of clicks, huffs, and whistles. In the sparkling light, Portia could see the subtle differences in their faceplates and telescopic eyes—many were brass, others copper, and some were pewter. The flesh around each protuberance was puckered with scars, some far newer than others. As one of them returned to make report, Portia could see herself reflected in the convex lens before it blinked and the herder turned its face away. It brought its hands up, and Portia saw the bare muscle pulsing, almost writhing around the finger bones. It pointed to the tower reaching high into the filmy clouds.
Portia nodded and bid it follow her, but the creature recoiled.
"You must. If this is going to succeed, I’ll need you all."
It shook its head.
"Do you want to save your queen or don’t you?"
Lahash cuffed the herder. "Do as she says!"
A muffled cry sang through the grating of its faceplate; it could have been words. Losing his patience, Lahash ripped the brass plate from the creature’s mouth, disgorging a slurry of thick saliva and blood. The herder’s jaws had been cut away, leaving the interior of the mouth gaping and lipless. A lolling tongue flapped in that toothless maw like a dying fish.
"Annn-errrrr," the herder moaned.
"Danger? You’re warning us of danger? Where have you been this entire time?" Lahash’s black dagger had sliced the pitiful thing’s throat and was returned to its sheath before Portia could even react.
"Damn it, Lahash! What do you think you’re doing?" Portia threw him aside, knocking him hard to the grass.
The herder sank to the verdant ground with a sigh that sounded almost relieved. The monocle telescope clicked into focus and Portia saw her face in it once again. "Nnnnn-iiiiii-eeee-lllllll," it said with what little air remained to it.
"Nigel?" Portia prompted, kneeling beside the creature.
The nod was minute. "Nn-ii-ee-ll annn-errrr." It jerked and the telescope lost focus, its life ending with only a few quiet clicks.
"You idiot!" Portia rose and rounded on the commander. He still sat in the grass, rubbing his shoulder where she had hit him. "It could have told us something useful!"
"Then ask the rest," Lahash snarled. "Damn lot of them click at each other like cockroaches. What one knows they all know."
Portia took him by the throat and lif
ted him from the ground with little effort. "You are not helping. Either you start helping, or I am going to make sure that you don’t interfere with my plans again. Is that clear?"
He said nothing, but averted his eyes. Portia dropped him and turned to the remaining herders. They retreated from her anger, faces cast away, telescopes whirring furiously into a closed position before clamping shut.
"Ridiculous! Will not one of you give me any more information?" She threw up her hands as they shied from her. "Then I suppose we’ll just have to do this the hard way. Now get over there and investigate, damn it." The herders hesitated, but she took one by its shoulders and, turning it toward the tower, gave it a definitive push. "Go!"
The herders slowly shuffled their way toward the tower, hands outstretched and telescopes clicking. The reapers did not follow them; instead, they looked nervously between Portia and Lahash.
"After you, my lady." The commander bowed, a mocking grin curving his thin lips.
Portia bristled. "I hope my axe blade is the last thing you ever see."
Lahash shrugged. "Suit yourself."
* * * *
The sanctuary tower looked as if it had been carved out of a single opal. The walls were translucent and shimmering with a thousand colors. Even Lahash had to pause to marvel at it. The receiving antechamber on the ground floor was empty, but a circular staircase climbed the wall to their right. Portia started up the stairs, leaving the others a few yards behind as they negotiated the small space with their armor and weapons. She could not be bothered to care.
Portia’s breastbone throbbed incessantly now, a sensation nearly unbearable, and she scratched at it furiously.
Every few turns, the narrow stairs opened onto a spacious floor. Most contained couches and clusters of thick, tasseled cushions on the floor. Others held beds draped with gauzy curtains, but most had simple furnishings and smelled of incense. The whole place had a monastic feel about it. In every room she came to, Portia scanned for signs of Imogen, even just a stray red hair littering the pristine floor. But she saw nothing and had no time to search. She climbed on, her soul beginning to feel weary as at every turn there were always more stairs, but her legs never flagged in their strength. The tower was unendingly high. Portia all but stumbled into the last room, a sprawling chamber with an arched, clear crystal ceiling bounded on all sides by an ivory balcony.
The Labyrinth of the Dead Page 10
