by Barb Hendee
“I don’t like this,” he grumbled. “The door isn’t even barred.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Magiere answered. “Help me.”
Sgäile joined Leesil, and they put their own efforts behind Magiere’s. And they both flinched at the squeal of rusted metal as the door opened wider. Magiere didn’t hesitate to slip through before anyone else.
Leesil followed, with Sgäile and Osha behind, and paused to let his eyes adjust. The temperature was no warmer than outside.
He and Magiere had entered the lairs of Noble Dead before—first Rashed and Teesha’s warehouse in Miiska, and then Ratboy’s lavish home in Bela. Both times, Leesil had had a sense of something therein, by Teesha’s needlepoint and the paintings in Ratboy’s townhouse. These false impressions of “life” marked a presence. But as his sight adjusted, he saw no such things here.
Dim twilight slipping through the iron doors offered barely enough illumination for his half-elven eyes. He stood in a long stone corridor wider than the council hall in Bela. Paired rows of pillars the breadth of elven trees stood near to either side wall, and each broadened at the base where it met the floor. The open way between was wide enough for seven armed men to walk freely abreast, and it ran on toward the castle’s hidden depths. The walls beyond the pillars were difficult to see, but sections of stone appeared deeply etched by age in random patches.
“You said it looked wrong,” he whispered to Magiere. “Do you mean compared to your dreams?”
“Older,” she answered. “What I saw was sound and clean, even in the snow and ice.”
“Maybe you saw it from the past?” he asked. “Through the eyes of who . . . whatever guided you here.”
Magiere closed on one pillar and sniffed sharply.
“Pull out the amulet,” Sgäile whispered.
“It won’t be much use for tracking this close,” Leesil answered.
“For its light,” Sgäile insisted. “There is something wrong with these walls.”
Magiere’s gaze wandered as she sniffed again, and this time her nose wrinkled.
Leesil pulled the amulet out. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “Something familiar but . . . I’m not sure. Thin— and all around.”
Osha watched her intently. “Wynn? Or Chap?”
“No,” Magiere answered.
Sgäile tapped Leesil’s shoulder. “Come.”
He stepped around the first left pillar toward the wall beyond. Leesil followed, and his gaze fell on a patch of stone etched by decay. The amulet’s light spilled across it, but the roughened age didn’t vanish.
It became a wild patch of worn and faded black writing scattered along the wall.
Some crude implement had been used for the rough strokes, and even so, Leesil couldn’t make out what it said. Once or twice he spotted Belaskian lettering, or something like it, but the characters didn’t spell out words he recognized.
“Elven . . . and some Sumanese, I believe,” Sgäile whispered. He crouched low, his fingers tracing a wandering line. “Here . . . and again, but not words in my people’s language.”
“More here,” Osha called.
Leesil spotted him near the next pillar down the wall. The young elf lifted his gaze up the stone wall.
“More above,” Osha whispered, and he looked to a height no person could have reached.
Magiere pushed in beside Leesil, flattening her hand upon the writing. She sniffed again and shuddered in revulsion.
Sgäile watched her. “What are you doing?”
“Magiere?” Leesil whispered.
Her eyes moved across the gibberish on the walls. She pressed her face even closer to the stone and inhaled deeply.
Magiere spun away, choking as she stumbled in the open corridor. She reached for her falchion and cast about, as if looking for a threat.
“Blood,” she whispered. “From one of them . . . written with its blood!”
Osha lunged backward into the open corridor.
“What nonsense do you speak?” Sgäile asked Magiere. “This is not blood.”
Leesil grabbed Sgäile’s tunic shoulder and pulled him up. “Not from the living—from the dead . . . undead . . . the ones we’ve fought, the vampires, their fluids are black.”
Both he and Sgäile backed away.
“I can smell it,” Magiere hissed. “Faint . . . but everywhere.”
“Who do such sick writing?” Osha asked.
Leesil remembered that an’Cróan were repulsed by any mutilation of the dead. Even he didn’t want to imagine how this demented practice had been accomplished.
“Is there harm in touching it?” Sgäile asked.
Leesil shook his head. “Not that we’ve experienced. But let’s move on.”
He turned down the long corridor with Magiere close beside him. They stuck to the center between the pillars.
Farther on, they spotted a massive archway straight ahead, shaped in a peaked echo of the iron doors and the outer gates. Its frame stones were rounded and smooth but unadorned, and through the opening lay a wide stone stairway leading to upper floors. As they stepped through the arch, narrow passages stretched into the dark on the left and right.
“No central hall,” Sgäile said. “No main meeting or feasting place.”
“What?” Leesil asked.
“Human fortifications usually have a main hall from the entrance, where visitors are greeted and formal meals are held. But not here—this place is strangely built.”
“It wasn’t made for the living,” Magiere said, looking down one side passage. “The dead don’t take in visitors or host feasts.”
Leesil thought he saw a flicker in the dim side passage beyond Magiere. Then it was gone, and he turned away.
Magiere suddenly flipped the falchion between her hands. She ripped off her coat and let it fall.
A mute shape, darker than a shadow, sailed toward them through the dark air in the side passage.
Leesil quickly shed his coat. He’d barely separated his blades back into both hands when the darting shadow shot into the stairway chamber. It rose higher . . . and spread into a set of wings.
An enormous black raven wheeled in the chamber’s heights. It tucked wings and began to fall. When it spread out again at the bottom of its diving arc, Leesil saw the landing of the stairs behind it—through it—in the amulet’s light. He remembered Ubâd’s ghostly guardians in the Apudâlsat forest.
The black winged shadow leveled straight at Osha.
“Don’t let it hit you!” Leesil shouted.
Another shadow shot out of the passage, rising behind its falling twin.
He raised his blades out, fanning them in the air as he shouted, “Here!”
As Osha dodged away, the first shadow raven swerved toward Leesil. He dropped and rolled forward beneath the bird’s dive.
It slammed into the archway’s wall and vanished.
Leesil heard the flutter of wings out in the pillared corridor, and the second raven flew at Sgäile. At the last instant, Sgäile lunged aside, out of its way.
“Stay off the stairs and in the open!” Magiere shouted. “Don’t get penned in.”
An eerie caw sounded loudly, and Leesil saw the first bird coming in low along the pillared corridor. When it neared the peaked archway, the amulet’s light seemed to shine upon its black feathers.
Magiere stepped into its path.
Leesil went cold with panic, but the raven stalled, wheeling up in a flutter of wings.
“We need light!” Sgäile shouted.
Leesil spun about, still uncertain what Magiere was doing. The amulet’s light turned with him, spreading over the chamber and stairs. He spotted the second raven diving along the central stairway, straight for Sgäile’s back.
"Down!” he shouted.
Sgäile dropped flat, and the raven passed an arm’s length above him. It swerved suddenly, straight at Leesil’s face.
He had no defense against something that co
uld pass through solid walls and threw himself aside. His shoulder hit the floor, and his hauberk’s rings grated along the cold stone. As he rolled, he grabbed the amulet’s leather cord, trying not to stab himself with his own blade. The cord snapped, and he cast the amulet to the chamber’s center for light. Then he saw Magiere.
She turned to face the bird swerving toward her and just stood there, waiting before the archway. Her arms opened wide, as if challenging the thing coming at her.
“Magiere!” Leesil shouted.
She whipped her arms together and under as the second raven darted for her chest. And her falchion swiped upward.
The tip’s arc caught the bird, dead center. A screech filled the chamber as it exploded into smoke.
Trails of sooty vapors blasted around Magiere, driven by the bird’s momentum. They collected beyond her, smoke gathering again into the raven’s form. It shot out the peaked archway as its twin dove in from the corridor.
The first shadow raven slammed into Magiere’s back.
She buckled as it shot out her chest and rose up the center stairs. Sgäile’s eyes widened at the sight just before he had to duck away from the bird’s passing.
A rumbling growl escaped Magiere’s mouth as she straightened.
Leesil took a shaky breath. These things had no more effect upon her than did the ghosts of Apudâlsat.
“How?” Osha cried out from where he crouched by the archway’s near side.
“She can’t be hurt by such things,” Leesil shouted. “But we can, so watch yourself!”
The first raven turned for another pass. Magiere couldn’t get her blade up in time. She swung at it with her free hand as the amulet’s light glimmered on the bird’s form.
Feathers tore away in Magiere’s hooked fingers, and a squealing caw echoed through the chamber.
Torn black feathers turned to vapor before they reached the floor.
The shine upon the raven’s plumaged faded as it righted its tumbling body. Magiere whipped the falchion in the air, and it wheeled away out of reach.
Leesil didn’t know what these creatures were, but he saw an advantage.
Magiere’s falchion inflicted true injury on an undead, so these birds were something akin. And when they couldn’t harm her in their shadow state, one had appeared to turn solid for an instant.
“Watch for light on their feathers!” he shouted as Sgäile rose and backed toward Magiere. “That’s when they can be struck!”
Leesil reached for Osha to drag him clear of the wall.
The black shadow of a wolf’s head thrust through the stone, its jaws spreading wide.
Wynn knelt upon the floor near Li’kän.
Her pity mixed with fear as she tried to read aloud from pieces of writing on the walls. Every word drew a cringe from the pale woman, though her eyes were filled with hunger for the sound. She had been alone for so long that she no longer recognized the wall writings as her own. Chap urged Wynn on, hoping to learn more from whatever memories flashed through the undead’s mind.
He was able to gather that Li’kän had been one of three guardians who once existed in this place, perhaps as far back as its original construction. She was the only one left.
Though Li’kän had the attributes of a vampire, Chap sensed no hunger in her, at least not for the blood of the living. What sustained her remained a mystery.
Time and again, Wynn halted over a mislettered word she couldn’t make out. A few times, Li’kän slowly mouthed something. Wynn tried to catch the woman’s voiceless, breathy utterance, sounding it out as best she could.
Some writings described events Wynn could not understand, but most were incoherent ramblings. In the worst places, the characters grew haphazard, perhaps written after Li’kän’s mind had deteriorated too much.
Wynn dearly wished to return to the iron sheaf’s hide pages or any other texts she could lay her hands upon. The clearer prose might hold far more than the mad marks upon the walls. She grew weary from constant fear, and her throat was getting dry. And she wondered if she would ever again leave this place.
Li’kän’s fascination with her voice, her words, seemed to be all that was keeping Wynn and Chap alive. But it also made them prisoners. If Wynn stopped talking too long, Li’kän became agitated.
Chap stayed close, but often, Wynn dared not turn her attention from Li’kän to ask what he learned.
He suddenly pricked his ears and looked to the doorway.
Li’kän rose fluidly to her feet, turning the same way.
“What is it?” Wynn asked.
From a distance, she heard a voice shouting, and then the hint of metal striking something hard.
Li’kän darted out of the study. Chap lunged for the doorway, halting to look about the outer corridor, and Wynn quickly joined him.
Outside, the passage had dimmed once more. Had they been in this chamber all day? But Wynn saw no shadows moving. How far had Li’kän brought them beyond the pillared corridor?
Stay behind me, Chap ordered as he trotted out.
Wynn hurried after him. Ahead down the corridor, Li’kän’s white form turned right at an intersection.
Chap rounded the corner ahead of Wynn. When she followed, she caught a glimpse of Li’kän far ahead. Dim light from outside spilled through ice-glazed windows high along the corridor’s right wall. Wynn shuddered as the undead passed through those shafts.
Li’kän did not even flinch as waning daylight slipped across her naked body.
The shouting ahead grew louder, and Wynn ran on behind Chap as one voice became clear.
“Watch for light on their feathers!”
Li’kän swerved left into the opening of a narrow passage.
“That was Leesil!” Wynn cried. She followed as Chap turned in behind the undead.
Li’kän raced out the corridor’s distant end. The space beyond was lit by a soft amber glow. Chap bolted out, leaving Wynn behind, until she, too, skidded into the open.
Magiere stood in a huge chamber before a wide staircase, and shadow ravens circled high above. Leesil reached for Osha, crouching beside a broad archway.
A wolf shadow lunged from the wall, directly behind them, snapping at Osha’s leg.
“More damned dead!” Leesil spit.
He jerked Osha aside, and the lanky elf tumbled away as the wolf’s transparent jaws closed on air. Another wolf shot from the small passage on the chamber’s far side, and it charged at Sgäile. For an instant, amber light glittered upon black fur and eyes.
Images of Li’kän mangling the two anmaglâhk flashed into Wynn’s mind.
“Li’kän, stop this!” she shouted.
Leesil spun about at her cry, as Sgäile ducked around the stone banister, poised to strike the wolf coming for him. Leesil ran to Wynn, grabbing her coat and pulling her backward.
