Wicked Ways: An Iron Kingdoms Chronicles Anthology
Page 31
The terror of what Elliot had seen had not faded, and Versh’s words only heightened the fear. The name of the infernal master echoed through his mind like a bell of doom. He glanced at Grimes.
“Yep,” Grimes said. “Doom, destruction, and death. We’re hitting the trifecta.”
Elliot said, “I could feel his essence slipping away, taken from him. Likely it’s happening to the others. Wouldn’t that suggest the gateway is real? That’s how it can feed? Perhaps there was something like it when the army was destroyed, but it hadn’t been opened all the way. A plan that failed, but now is coming to completion.” He realized he was babbling slightly, but the words came to him as if borrowed from the ghost whose last moments he had witnessed. The pieces of what he had seen and heard came together.
Versh nodded. “Yes. What you saw must be one side of the infernal gate, in their otherworldly realm. It must have a counterpart nearby. In our world. One which, until a few weeks ago, either did not exist or was broken. If these powerful infernals are gathering, then they must be preparing to reap a great harvest of souls, likely all those in the March plus more, if they can reach them. We must warn the prelate.”
Elliot trembled. “There was something else. Maybe another spirit guarding or holding the gateway? I couldn’t focus upon it. I thought I heard distant singing. It didn’t feel like anything else. I think maybe it is trying to help the spirits, but it’s failing. Something is preventing its song from reaching us.” Elliot shook his head, realizing he was not making a great deal of sense. “It’s all scattered, the memories. I didn’t get a clear vision.”
Grimes gave him a funny look. “You sure you’re all right?”
Abigail said reassuringly, “You did better than anyone else could have. We’ll figure out what it means.”
“Let’s find Father Murdoch,” Versh said impatiently. “We must convince him to let us speak to the prelate.”
No one offered any argument. Though they hadn’t seen what Elliot had, it was clear they believed him and Versh’ interpretation of the vision. They hurried back down the passageway, toward the entrance to the crypts. Versh was now in the lead, his pistol still in hand.
They reached the chamber entrance to the crypts and climbed the stairs. The room above was empty, and all but one light had been extinguished. Father Murdoch stood in the center of the room, holding a black candle that seemed to shed more darkness than light. In his other hand he held a sword, its blade as black as the shadows in the room. Blank spectral faces writhed and howled along the weapon’s length.
Elliot sensed the wrongness in that chamber long before Father Murdoch spoke, and Versh must have sensed it as well—he kept his pistol in hand.
“You have seen?” Father Murdoch said.
“Seen what, Father?” Versh said and circled to the priest’s right, clearing the passageway so the rest of the team could enter the room.
“You have seen the fate of this city, the great reaping which is to come,” he said. “They told me.”
“How long have you been their slave?” Versh said, and Elliot heard the metallic rasp of his sword sliding from its sheath.
The rest of the team looked confused. They sensed something wrong, but no one had drawn their weapons. The thought of attacking a priest of Morrow was almost unthinkable, even to those less pious than he was. But the meaning of Versh’s words and suspicions took hold in the minds of each of them. This indecision was all the time Father Murdoch needed.
“They have seen you, Elliot Foss,” he said, his lips twitching up in a sepulchral smile. “And they send their regards.” The priest stepped back, and the light of his candle grew dark, cold, and the shadows behind him gained a terrible substance.
“Beware!” Versh cried and leaped forward, swinging his blade.
Fear washed over Elliot, a smothering tide that weakened his knees. He heard weapons being drawn around him as the team finally recognized their peril.
And then he heard her. No, not just one voice, but two, almost in harmony. Her voice was distant, and his was nearer, and Elliot sensed the male voice was soothing her, holding her at bay, making it harder for her to see into this place, to hear those who needed her.
Murdoch brought his blade up to deflect Versh’s sword, smashing the blade aside with casual ease and then driving the Illuminated One backward. He moved far too swiftly for a man of his age, former knight or not.
Two blobs of shadow had separated from the rest behind the priest and were moving to either side of him, flanking him. As the shadows grew closer, they gained form and substance, becoming gaunt man-shaped silhouettes from which the semblance of a human face, pale as a winter’s moon, stared out with cold hatred. They looked both familiar and strange and new at once. Umbral reavers, almost certainly, like but different from the ones they had faced in Castle Raelthorne.
“Kill them,” Father Murdoch said, and the two shadows suddenly had blades in hand, short slender swords that seemed to be made of shadow like the creatures that wielded them.
Elliot’s knees gave, and he sank to them as if in prayer. A breathless thrill of ecstasy and panic swept through his chest. They sing, he thought. His song prevents her from descending. He stands between and blinds her to our plight.
He looked up at their attackers.
The shadow assassins surged forward, and Father Murdoch stepped back. As they moved, a tidal wave of fear preceded them, and all but Versh fell back before it. This, too, confirmed Elliot’s suspicion—he had felt that terror before. Their manifestation was different, but that these were umbrals was certain. In Castle Raelthorne, they’d had Mel’s ingenuity, the great light by which she had banished all shadows. They had nothing like that with them now.
But they did have Versh. The thunderous crack of his blessed quad-iron pistol rang through the chamber. One of the reavers spun to its right, a blessed bullet lodged in its shoulder. It hissed and glided across the floor at the Illuminated One, its sword flicking out in a thrust.
Runes surrounded Eilish’s hand, and a shimmer of some spell came into being around Versh even as he moved to parry the incoming blow, knocking it aside with his pistol as he brought his sword around in an overhand slash. The reaver avoided the strike with fluid grace and whipped its own blade around in a riposte, its point scraping against the mail the Illuminated One wore beneath his great coat and failing to penetrate, no doubt thwarted in part by Eilish’s protective magic.
The second reaver moved toward Grimes, who was closest, but the jammer had frozen in place, his voltaic gauntlets raised defensively but his teeth gritted and his face showing his mute horror. His mouth was moving, but there were no words. He was one of the bravest men Elliot knew, but infernals had unmanned him before, a fear he had yet to entirely shed. He had shut down.
Hear me, Ascendant Angellia, Elliot prayed as he staggered back to his feet. His legs were heavy like lead. Hear my voice. Let your blessed song protect us. Your sacred church and library are assailed.
Elliot stumbled to Grimes’ side, focused on the reverential power of the distant woman’s voice to resist the unnatural fear projected by the infernal. He put himself in front of Grimes but realized he had no good way to defend himself or his friend.
The umbral would have surely run him through, but blue light behind Elliot lit up the chamber. He turned to see Eilish pointing his fist, again encircled with glowing runes. A bolt of energy shot from his outstretched hand to strike the creature Father Murdoch had summoned, knocking it backward with arcane force.
The spell gave Elliot time to reach up and grab the jammer’s face with both hands. “Look at me,” he said. “Fight it, Duncan.”
“You can’t kill them,” Grimes said, his voice quivering. “You can’t kill the dark.”
“They’re not invulnerable. We can hurt them. Morrow is with us.”
“Morrow is with us,” Grimes said, and brought his hands up, his gauntlets crackling softly.
“We need you,” Elliot said.
A piercing scream rang out from the across the chamber, a scream that could not have been made by a human throat. Versh had struck the infernal a mighty blow with his sword, cutting deep into its torso. It did not bleed, but its face showed anger and what might be pain. Versh fell back to avoid its counter-attack and raised his pistol to fire, straight into the umbral’s face. Its body quickly unraveled back into the shadow stuff from which it had emerged.
“Look,” Elliot said, turning Grimes’ head toward the fading infernal. “We can do this.”
The destruction of the umbral reaver seemed to reach Grimes—he pulled away from Elliot and brought his gauntlets up. The shame in the man’s eyes was hard and unforgiving, but Elliot knew they could deal with that later.
“I’m fine,” Grimes said gruffly. “Find some cover before you get yourself killed.”
Elliot was no warrior and knew not to protest—he fell back behind Abigail and Doctor Goodman. His head ached—the singing was still there, but felt very distant. The man’s voice was stronger, and the song it sang had started to make sense to Elliot. It was an ancient promise, a vow to tend her bones and protect the knowledge she had gathered in this place.
The crushing truth struck him: the knight Alexei Tzentesci. The first Husband of Angellia, he who kept her bones safe for that first crucial thirty years. Something was very wrong here. The first guardian of this place was now preventing one of Morrow’s greatest servants from intervening, from stopping an unholy abomination at a place where her power should be strong. How? Alexei should have passed safely to Urcaen centuries ago. But perhaps not; there had been holy spirits before. Not malevolent specters but pious souls who refused to pass to Urcaen from a sense of obligation, duty, and sacrifice. Might Alexei have been one? A gentle and watchful spirit who protected this place until the evil here overwhelmed him—the presence of a corrupt priest like Murdoch made it all too possible.
Abigail and Doctor Goodman’s pistols, loaded with rounds designed to affect incorporeal targets, had some impact on the reaver, but they only wounded it, failing to destroy it.
Father Murdoch rushed toward the entrance to the crypt, smashing aside Grimes with the flat of his blade as the jammer tried to stop him. He disappeared into the gloom.
Before both investigators could reload, the reaver surged forward, its blade leading. Abigail managed to twist aside, falling to her back to evade. Doctor Goodman finished reloading and snapped her pistol up to fire, but the infernal was dangerously quick. Its blade caught the doctor beneath her chin and transfixing her throat. She made a surprised grunt, her eyes wide with terror and pain, and fell backward, blood pouring down her front from the hideous wound.
“Let her be, Tzentesci,” Elliot said aloud but more strongly in his mind. If the knight could hear, he did not respond, his soothing song continuing unabated. Then he was startled from his thoughts as he saw Doctor Goodman struck.
Another blast of arcane force from Eilish hit the reaver, knocking it away from Doctor Goodman. The sound of Versh’s pistol followed. The reaver staggered forward, and Grimes overcame his terror enough to grab it with his gloves, trapping it as he would an angry specter. It struggled and nearly broke his grip but Versh reached him in and chopped his sword into its head, bisecting it completely. The infernal, like the other, screeched then dissipated.
“Doctor Goodman is dying.” Elliot crouched over the wounded woman. She was still breathing, one hand clapped over the terrible wound in her throat. Blood poured through her fingers in red jets.
Versh reached them first and knelt next to the doctor. His face was grave, but he took the doctor’s hand and his own.
“She’s not going to survive that,” Kincaid said, and Abigail hushed him. A terrible silence fell over the chamber, leaving only Doctor Goodman’s wet gasps.
“Be at peace,” Versh said. “Morrow has seen the work you have done this day, and you will be welcomed into his domain.”
Doctor Goodman tried to speak, but her strength was fading.
Elliot fell back, his thoughts scattered, his body twitching as a weakness overcame him. In his heightened state of awareness, he could sense her soul leaving her body, and when she became still, even without the Strangelight he thought he saw a flicker of a ghostly shape moving toward the entrance to the crypts. That alarmed him. He shouldn’t be able to see her spirit so clearly, and the Illuminated One’s last rites should have helped ease the violence of her death and put her spirit to rest, easing its passage to Urcaen.
“I saw her spirit,” Elliot gasped. “She’s headed for the crypts.”
Versh looked up at him, his eyes filled with a mixture of grief and rage. “The infernal gate. It must be interfering, and that means it’s close—along with Murdoch.” He said the name as if it had bitten his tongue. “Follow her.”
Elliot reached out and gently closed Doctor Goodman’s eyes from where they were wide open and staring in death. His fingertips shook. “We cannot waste time. More than her soul is at stake here.”
• • •
THEY DIDN’T NEED ANY OF THEIR EQUIPMENT to determine where Father Murdoch had gone. They spotted a reddish glow visible at the far end of the main passageway—Father Murdoch was not attempting to hide his activities. In fact, it seemed as if he were summoning them to him.
Versh led the way, with Abigail and Grimes following close behind. Eilish, looking somewhat shell-shocked, walked beside Elliot while Kincaid took up the rear.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” the arcanist said. “And I’ve seen some pretty terrible things.”
Elliot respected the man; he’d helped them fight the umbral reavers and had shown real bravery. The simple fact that he was accompanying them now spoke volumes about his fortitude. Most mercenaries would already have fled to town.
The red glow intensified as they moved down the main passage, passing through the chamber that held the remains Alexei Tzentesci.
“Wait,” Elliot began, but the team was already moving, drawn ahead by the red glow. Elliot paused a moment, fearing what he might see, then rushed to catch up. He heard Abigail’s sharp intake of breath from just ahead. The passage opened up into a much larger central chamber that seemed crowded with shapes.
For a moment, the singing of the ascendant and her first husband were drowned out beneath the wails and cries of the suffering dead.
The chamber was filled with the hateful yellow glow, arising from countless afflicted spirits, each bearing cancerous stains on their beings. Whatever had held them at bay from this place before seemed to have been undone. They were all staring intently at a structure that looked to have been recently erected in the center of the room—a monolith of basalt stone shot through with red glyphs in an unfamiliar but eerily beautiful script. It was the other side of the infernal gate he’d witnessed in the destroyed spirit’s memory.
Worse yet, the monolith had been built upon a stone plinth bearing the likeness of a woman in trappings of a Morrowan clergyman. Around the plinth were nine sarcophagi, the other knights interred with the ascendant to watch over her, those who had taken up Alexei’s duty after he passed his reliquary on. Despite the horror of the infernal gate, a subtle sense of calm and peace exuded from that plinth. Elliot groaned—he recognized the visage of Ascendant Angellia, and the true blasphemy of what Father Murdoch had done came crashing down on him. The priest had not just fallen to corruption; he had plummeted into an evil vaster than Elliot could understand. The priest had defiled the resting pace of an Ascendant of Morrow, twisting its sacred purpose to one so monstrous, it defied comprehension. Now the corruption of Alexei paled in comparison. In his mind, Elliot’s horror became an angry prayer, Ascendant Angellia, witness what transpires in your absence!
In his head, Angellia’s singing missed a note.
&n
bsp; Father Murdoch stood next to the gate, surrounded by the souls feeding it. His face was a rictus of obscene glee, and he held his long sword before him in a two-handed grip, its black blade howling with demonic faces.
“Come,” Father Murdoch called out. “See what has been wrought beneath your notice, Illuminated One. See the summoning of the Sounder at the Gates!”
He struck the black blade against the basalt slab, and the howling intensified. A terrible wailing rose up through the chamber, and two of the spirits closest to the gate were pulled up against it, their screams piercing through Elliot’s mind like icy daggers. They became shot through with yellow light and then disappeared.
Versh loosed a cry of sheer outrage and rushed forward. He ran into the first rank of spirits, and Elliot felt the chill wind of their ire. They pushed the Illuminated One back, shoving him with their spectral force.
Versh raised his pistol to shoot down the ghosts in his way, but Elliot grabbed him by the arm. “No! These spirits are victims. There has to be another way.”
Versh wheeled on him, glowering. “What? Speak quickly, as each soul that passes feeds this unholy bargain.”
Over the Illuminated One’s shoulder, two more spirits were sucked through the gate.
“Duncan,” Elliot said, and the jammer was instantly by his side. “We need to make a path for Versh and the others. Help me.”
“Talk to them, if you can,” Grimes said. “I’ll make a hole. Abigail, Versh, the rest of you, behind me.”
Elliot stepped back into the passageway. He put the hood over his head, shutting out the awful sights and sounds in the chamber. He let his senses expand in the darkness and was nearly struck dumb by the sheer volume of pain and terror he encountered. The spirits in the room were crying out, a single paean of unworldly fear. He clenched his teeth, distantly tasting blood in his mouth as he bit down on his tongue.