by Kenyon, Nate
She stopped abruptly a few feet from Shanar, Gynvir, and Jacob, cocked her head like a dog, and sniffed. Her head swung in their direction, her blind eyes searching.
“You,” she said, pointing a long, bony finger at Jacob. “I have a message to give you. You bring the dark, the dreams, the blood and screams. You bring the black birds that sit on our shoulders and pluck out our eyes. The phantoms that snatch our children and pile them up like rotten logs against the doors to freedom! You bring . . . him.”
Shanar glanced at Jacob. “I don’t think she likes you,” she said.
The old woman threw her head back and gave a long, gibbering laugh that ended abruptly as another woman hurried around the corner, spying her and rushing over.
“Molly,” she said, touching the crone’s arm as she glanced quickly at Jacob, “you shouldn’t be here. Come away from them; come now . . .”
The old woman shook her head. “They must know,” she whispered. “They have seen the black beasts and have felt their touch.” She began muttering again under her breath.
“Strangers frighten her,” the younger woman said to them as she petted the old woman’s sagging flesh. She was well dressed, but dark circles ringed her eyes. “Molly was a follower of the Prophet of the Light, and it touched her mind. When he was killed, she was never the same. She gets out during the day sometimes, when I work in the shop. Not that there are many people to serve anymore.”
“We just need some supplies,” Jacob said. “We aren’t here to bother anyone.”
She would not meet his eyes. Instead, she pulled on Molly’s arm, but the old woman would not budge. “You shouldn’t have come here,” the young woman said. “I don’t know who you are, but it’s not safe. Ever since the damned church and its dark ways, we’ve been targets for things that are better left alone.”
“People are disappearing,” Shanar said. “You lost someone.”
The woman nodded once. “Eli’s wife. Three guardsmen on patrol. My . . . father. My brother. Many others, vanished at night or when they were alone. Just . . . gone. Sometimes people think they have seen something, some shape moving beyond the light, a whisper perhaps, but then nothing. Whatever they are.” She shook her head. “I won’t speak more of it. Come on, Molly.”
But the old woman pulled away once again, shaking the other’s grip. “They . . . hunt us,” she hissed, the filmy whites of her eyes like two small moons within the wrinkled pockets of her sockets. “I have seen them.” She gestured to her eyes. “These do not matter. I see better without them. Phantoms! They paralyze with a glance, kill with a touch. They take flight like birds and walk on their wings like spiders’ legs. They steal your souls.”
Jacob thought back to the night at the Slaughtered Calf. The thing that had bent over him was a vague shape in his mind, fogged by the mugs of mead he had consumed. But he remembered how it had moved, like an insect skittering across ice, fluttering in some strange way just beyond the edges of his sight. He remembered how it had reached out with a sort of black tendril, touching his skin.
The old woman shuffled closer, peering up blindly at Jacob’s face. “They want you,” she said. “You bring them upon us.” Suddenly, she grabbed his robe and yanked at it, pulling it down enough to expose the puckered wound on his shoulder. One gnarled finger caressed his flesh, then withdrew. “You have been marked,” she said. She turned and screeched out at the empty street in a mad panic, “This one has been marked, and now he will come! The destroyer of worlds!”
“You should not talk like this!” The young woman tried to calm her. “They mean no harm—”
“Why shouldn’t I?” the old woman shouted. “Anyone here deserves to know that death is coming for them! Death from the skies, from the phantoms that descend upon us, from the destroyer! Death everywhere! I have seen them, seen them in here”—she pointed to her head—“and they will mark those who shall serve as guideposts, beacons for their soul-stealing brethren and the one who will follow them! We are all doomed!” The tendons stood out in the old woman’s neck, her body straining as she lifted her ragged dress all the way over her head, exposing her wrinkled, sagging flesh and the odd, crescent-shaped scar that marked her chest just above the heart.
Cullen was trembling with excitement. He stood outside a crumbling stone building high above the outskirts of town, built like an ancient fortress along the Sweetwater River. The ruins of the church of the Way of Dreams lay all around them, mostly burned and toppled to the ground, but huge limestone blocks remained, gleaming white in the sun. A gigantic carving of a serpent’s head sat tilted at a strange angle, its beady eyes staring blankly. A few feet away, a single statue still stood, the arms of the prophet severed at the shoulder, the statue’s face obscured by bird droppings and white crust from the salty air.
It hadn’t been that long since Cholik’s evil reign, and yet these ruins appeared to have been here for a century or more. It was likely part of the dark magic that had driven the man to madness and ruin, Kabraxis’s spells crumbling along with the stone itself. The smaller building, which still remained mostly whole, was apart from the rest, its deep-set window slits black as pitch, brambles growing up its sides and obscuring the foundation.
Cholik lived here. Cullen had read about him in the histories of the west kingdoms written by a scholar who had studied with the king’s cousin at Westmarch. Cholik had been obsessive, first with the Zakarum faith and then with the occult, as he began to slip down a black road of corruption, and he very likely had collected an extensive library of rare texts, many of them demonic in nature.
A man like Cholik would have been secretive to the point of madness. He would have protected his greatest treasures. Cullen shivered. What Nahr had found might only be a fraction of what was hiding within these walls—and what was left might be very dangerous indeed.
“The people believe this is a haunted place,” Nahr said. “They won’t cross the threshold. Even my men avoid it like the plague.” He stepped forward and yanked at the heavy wooden planks that had been secured across the entrance, and they dropped free with a clatter. He pushed open the door. Blackness yawned inside. “There is a library on the main floor,” he said. “That’s where we found the texts. But they’re mostly cleared out now.”
“Aren’t you coming?” Thomas asked.
“I’ll wait outside,” Nahr said. “I don’t like the feel of it. Evil lives in the bones of this place, and I wouldn’t stay too long. It gets into you.”
“Fair warning,” the skull said from the necromancer’s pouch. “He’s right, but I don’t suppose you’ll listen. There’s magic here, and it’s not the friendly kind.”
The others looked at one another, but Tyrael strode forward without hesitation, vanishing into the dark, Mikulov close behind. “My eyes, Humbart, if you please,” Zayl said, and removed the skull from the pouch. White bone gleamed in his hand as he followed Tyrael into the gloom. Cullen could hear Humbart muttering.
“Come on, then,” Cullen said to Thomas, who looked slightly ill. The two of them stepped through the door, Cullen first. His heart raced in his chest. Nothing was going to keep him from this.
The hallway’s walls were crumbling, the smell of mildew and rot heady in his nostrils. He blinked, eyes adjusting to the darkness. There were rooms on either side but no sign of Tyrael, Mikulov, or the necromancer.
Cullen suddenly had the overwhelming sense that he was being watched. He took a few more steps, the back of his neck itching. The hairs on his arms stood up. Something very bad happened here. He took another step, and a rat the size of a small dog sprang from the room on the left and raced past his feet, nearly tripping him. Thomas let out a cry of disgust and kicked at it, and the creature squealed and disappeared through a hole in the wall.
“Nasty filth,” Thomas muttered, as a glow emanated from beyond and Mikulov stepped out into the hall from a room near the end of the home.
“The library is empty,” the monk said. Cullen hurried to the en
d and looked in to find Tyrael and Zayl standing in a dusty room, the necromancer holding up a small flame that sent light dancing across the walls. The shelves that lined the room were bare except for a few tattered remains of parchment.
Cullen’s heart sank. They had been close to something—he could feel it. They took the rickety stairs to the second floor. It was dark, the small windows covered with wood. Dust rose up and choked them, and the sound of creaking floorboards nearly made Cullen turn back. He had no doubt that ghosts lived here, waiting in corners and behind closed doors for a victim. Inside what must have been Cholik’s bedroom, he found markings on the walls that appeared to be demonic in nature. But the room contained little else except a rotting bed and a table.
They took the stairs back down and explored the rest of the house. Finally, they faced the root-cellar door.
“You first,” Thomas said. Cullen shook his head. Zayl took the lead, descending into darkness with his flame aloft, ducking thick cobwebs and rat droppings. Worn, rotting boards creaked and groaned at their steps, but they held.
The cellar was so dark it swallowed the light of the flame. The others walked slowly, shuffling with hands out as if to ward off whatever might lurk there. The floor was made of hard-packed dirt, the walls old stone that bled moisture. Cullen expected something to leap out at them at any moment, something so terrible and vicious they would never make it back out alive. His heart beat so hard it threatened to fly from his chest.
But the cellar did not give up its secrets. It was also empty of anything of value, and eventually, Cullen’s hopes sank.
Finally, they took the stairs back to the main hallway. As they gathered once again, Thomas touched Cullen on the shoulder, as if sensing his disappointment. “Our chances of finding answers here were slim,” he said. “So we keep looking, go through the rest of the books Nahr has in his home. Maybe there’s something we missed.”
Cullen nodded, trying to keep the negativity from his voice. “I felt something,” he said. “Some . . . energy. There’s a presence here, or an echo of one.”
“Aye,” the skull said, still sitting in Zayl’s gloved hand. “A demon like the one this man conjured leaves a trace like a bad smell. It can worm its way into your heads, so that sooner or later, you’ll end up like me.”
The others began to file outside. Cullen was the last to move, and as he started toward the door, a thought occurred to him.
The rat. Where had it gone?
He returned to the spot on the wall where the hole was and felt for seams, tapping gently. It sounded hollow. With rising excitement, he knelt and examined the rat hole. It was a little too man-made. He reached in and felt around, waiting for the feel of sharp rodent’s teeth clamping down on his flesh.
High up, just about as far as he could get, a latch of some kind stuck out. He gave it a sharp yank, and it let go as a section of the wall moved, revealing the outlines of a door.
Cullen pushed the hidden door open to a black hole. “Come quickly!” he shouted. “I’ve found something!”
Tyrael was at his side again in an instant, followed by the others. “Light,” the archangel commanded, and the necromancer brought his flame forward. The flickering light revealed a small, windowless room built out of stone blocks. Old stains covered the floor and speckled the walls. Blood, Cullen thought. But then the thought was washed away as he caught a glimpse of the texts that lined the walls behind a wooden desk.
He stepped forward, but Mikulov caught his arm. “This is the lair of a madman,” the monk said. “There may be protections still in place.” He crouched at the doorway, studying the floor. For a moment, his fingers played across the stone, and then he pressed down. A square section of the floor sank about half an inch as a scythelike blade attached to an iron rod slashed an arc across the entrance at shoulder height before burying itself in the wooden frame just inches away from Cullen’s nose.
He swallowed hard and nodded at the monk, who had regained his feet. Mikulov slipped under the still-quivering blade, his steps light and carefully placed, but no other traps revealed themselves. After a few moments examining every surface, the monk declared it safe.
And, fingers trembling with excitement, Cullen was finally able to approach the ancient texts and scrolls and examine what he had found.
Chapter Sixteen
The Bone Demon
Tyrael held up a hand, indicating to the others to halt for a moment. The going was hard up here, the ground steep and heavily wooded. They were now somewhere northeast of Bramwell, deep in the mountains and far off any path.
The evening before, the Horadrim had reconvened back at Nahr’s home. Jacob, Shanar, and Gynvir had returned in somber moods, relating their accounts of the old madwoman who had recognized Jacob’s puckered wound and then shown them her own. The destroyer of worlds! the old woman had screeched. Tyrael knew of only one kind of being that went by that name: the Sicarai. If a Sicarai was after them now, they were in trouble and running out of time.
But what about the black-winged creature that had made the mark on Jacob’s shoulder? How was it connected to the Heavens, and how were the disappearances of the people of Bramwell involved?
In spite of his concern over the destroyer and the so-called phantoms, as he studied the rough terrain around them, Tyrael thought that his team might be coming closer to its goal. Cholik’s hidden chamber had given up its secrets, one by one. They had brought the old texts and parchment filled with notations back to Nahr’s place, where Cullen was able to examine them at length. Many of them were demonic in nature. One, in particular, held a marker that moved like a snake when touched; the marker appeared to be made of leather, but Cullen eventually determined it had been woven from human tongues, and the necromancer had destroyed it in the dust outside Nahr’s home.
But Cholik’s notes proved extremely valuable. Cullen had been able to piece together the location of Tauruk’s Port, an abandoned shipping town some distance from Bramwell, built on the ruins of an even older city inhabited by Vizjerei sorcerers and used to summon demons. Cholik had been searching for an extensive cave system that lurked under the mountains and connected to the old ruins, and apparently, he had found it and had loosed Kabraxis there. His notes also made reference to a Zakarum repository at the mouth of another entrance to the caverns, high in the mountains overlooking the gulf—a repository that supposedly contained texts written by Akarat himself.
Nahr had come along as their guide through the treacherous wilderness, but his familiarity with the landscape faltered after they left the immediate area around the city. After several hours hiking through increasingly steep and dangerous terrain, they had reached a plateau of sorts where the mountain fell away on one side to the gulf.
Thomas and Cullen stood together head-to-head amid a patch of trees, consulting the drawings of the landmarks they had hastily sketched based on the information they had found in the hidden chamber. Their breath fogged the air; a chill breeze had swiftly dropped down from the Hawke’s Beak mountain range, bringing heavy clouds and mist that swirled around their feet.
“I think we need to go west,” Cullen said. He pointed to where the ground dropped steeply toward the water far below. “If we skirt the edge of this peak, then, as was written here, we will see the shape of the spider in the rock—”
Thomas was shaking his head. “I don’t believe we’re on the right slope,” he said. “Look here . . .” He pointed at the drawings in Cullen’s hand. “We should have found the ruins by now, if the texts were correct.”
They went on, the conversation growing more heated as Tyrael stepped to the edge of the drop. He stared out over the tops of trees that had grown bent by wind, rain, and snow, their ragged limbs like weary soldiers determined to hold the line against a relentless enemy. An emptiness inside him grew larger by the moment, rapidly swallowing his newfound confidence. Time was running out. They had so much to do, and every single step of his plan had to go perfectly. Tyrael had begun to for
mulate a way into the Heavens without being seen; that much was easy . . . but what about turning this group of bickering strangers into a team of nephalem warriors strong enough to survive what they would see beyond the gates? What about navigating them safely through the treacherous arms of the Luminarei? Assuming they could even find this place of safekeeping, how could they steal the soulstone out from under an army of angels and return it to the realm of the nephalem?
You cannot possibly survive, a voice said. It sounded much like Deckard Cain. In this, you are overmatched and alone. You must end it now, before it is too late.
“We are near a place of power,” the necromancer said, coming up next to him. “I feel it.”
The skull had remained nestled in its pouch and uncharacteristically silent during this journey. The night before, the group had bedded down in Nahr’s workshop and spent an uncomfortable night, with Gynvir muttering about the “demonspawn” necromancer being too close for comfort. At one point, Humbart had threatened to call in the spirits of his long-dead comrades to silence her, and that had nearly led to the skull being cleaved in two by the barbarian’s battle axe before Tyrael ended the disagreement like a parent separating two squabbling children.
Zayl had remained several yards behind the others as they hiked up the mountainside, but Tyrael had noticed his strange gray eyes constantly searching their surroundings, his head up and alert. He was no fool, this necromancer. They were lucky he had stayed with them.
“Gynvir does not trust my intentions,” the necromancer said.
“She is a member of the Owl tribe, which once protected Mount Arreat and the Worldstone from invaders from the Dreadlands, before the Bearers came and brought the rage plague to the barbarians,” Tyrael said. “Her tribe was consumed. Only the explosion on the mountain seared the plague from her flesh and saved her from the same fate.” He glanced at the necromancer, who looked out over the vast forest. “One of the Bearers was your kind, twisted by the plague and the demon Maluus into something else, an abomination. He did great damage to Gynvir’s kin.”
