by Kenyon, Nate
Zayl did not change his expression. “Necromancers are not often corrupted,” he said. “But when we are . . .” He shrugged. “The results can be dangerous.” Now he turned to look at Tyrael. “What we find in these mountains will take us down a path that requires teamwork. She will have to work through her anger for us to have any chance to succeed.”
“Let us hope it comes soon enough.”
Zayl nodded. He was silent for a long moment. “Once we find the lair of the nephalem, what then?”
“We turn you into warriors and thieves,” Tyrael said. “We use every skill at our disposal. Trickery and disguise, misdirection, surprise. We cannot beat the Luminarei face-to-face. We must use the angels’ pride against them and get in and out before they realize what is happening.”
“And if they discover us?”
“We die fighting.”
They watched the clouds darken on the horizon and lightning brighten their underbellies in purple bursts of color. Rain was coming, a stippled line that marched relentlessly closer and promised to drench them to the bone.
“What you seek up here is protected by a death spell,” Zayl said. “It is ancient and well-conceived, and it will take great skill to break it.”
Tyrael patted him once on the shoulder. “You should begin soon, then,” he said.
The necromancer led them down the steep incline, and they zigzagged across the slope to keep their feet and braced themselves against the trunks of trees as they went. Mikulov slipped away and then back again several times, his face growing grim as he spoke in a low voice to Thomas and Cullen. Whatever concerned him, he did not say to the others, and Tyrael did not ask. If it were important enough, the monk would come to him.
The brush thickened in places, making it slow going, and they had to skirt a gigantic rock outcropping that created a sheer cliff at least one hundred feet high, going nearly sideways for what had to be an hour before finding a way down and doubling back. Nahr had grown more hesitant as they went, unfamiliar with the terrain. Noises seemed to echo all around them. Once or twice, Tyrael thought he saw movement beyond the mist, but it was gone before he could turn his head.
By the time they reached the base of the cliff, the air was thick with moisture, and the mist had shrouded the trees. They gathered in a small clearing. Ancient grooves and cracks on the cliff face dripped with water, the cracks forming the shape of a gigantic spider. “The formation from the texts,” Cullen said. “This is the place—the ruins should be here.”
An animal called in the distance, the sound drifting through the forest like the cry of the damned. The skin on Tyrael’s neck prickled, hair on his forearms standing on end. Zayl approached the sheer rock. He knelt and withdrew a short red candle from his pouch, lighting it with straw from a small tinderbox, muttering words of power.
The sky above them began to darken further, and a chill breeze pushed the mist into swirling shapes that danced around their ankles and caused the candle flame to gutter. Zayl held his gloved hand around it and placed the candle firmly in the dirt. He drew a series of designs, connecting them with forking symbols. Then he dripped red liquid from the vial in his pouch and muttered under his breath, waving his hand over the flame.
Another puff of wind came from nowhere, lifting the dirt and spinning it in mini-cyclones before drawing it up into a vague shape. A sound like a whisper rose from a smoky mouth lined with the barest suggestion of teeth.
Gynvir cursed at the sight, her hands on her axe.
“Speak quickly, spellcaster,” the conjured demon hissed. “Before I am finally set free. Your binding spell is almost spent.”
“Break the mountain, X’y’Laq. Bar’qual d’al amentis.”
“You do not want to do that,” the demon said, a lilt in its voice. “It is a death spell. You don’t know what you will find inside.”
“And conjured by a very powerful mortal, in league with demons,” Zayl said. “I cannot test it myself.”
“It would put me in danger!” the demon whined. “What if Il’qual’Amoul were to stretch me at the wheel—”
“We don’t have time for games,” Zayl said. He made a grabbing motion around the flame, squeezing his fist. The demon squealed in pain.
“Stop . . . I will do as you wish!” X’y’Laq screeched. When Zayl let go, the thing hissed again, whimpering. “You will pay for that,” it muttered, after a moment. “Just wait . . .”
“Now, X’y’Laq.”
“Very well.” The demon took a deep breath, sucking the swirling dirt into itself and swelling in size, taking in more and more until its open maw loomed over the necromancer.
And then it exhaled, sending the dirt cloud rushing toward the cliff.
Pebbles caught in the draft bounced off rock, and the ground shuddered, and the wind howled like a banshee. Tyrael stood tall against the storm, squinting into it as the others shielded their eyes, turning away.
A demon exploded from the soil before the cliff, a humanlike shape made of dust and the bones of the dead strung together into limbs that cracked and screamed, its massive shoulders like slabs of white rock below a ghoulish face that leered down at them.
“Break it, X’y’Laq!” Zayl shouted, but X’y’Laq laughed.
“You should have considered the consequences!” it squealed gleefully. “Il’qual’Amoul will strip the flesh from your bones! You will—”
With a ground-shuddering growl, the gigantic bone demon reached down with a clawlike hand made of human tibias and skulls for joints and wrapped its fingers around the smoky form of X’y’Laq.
The smaller demon screeched again, struggling against the bones as it was lifted up and away from the candle flame. Its essence stretched longer and longer, thinning as it writhed, X’y’Laq’s needlelike teeth trying to bite down without success.
As X’y’Laq screamed one last time and the smoke trail snapped, Zayl muttered something, and his enchanted bone dagger appeared in his hand. The blade glowed brightly as he strode forward and thrust it into the bone demon’s abdomen.
The giant roared in pain, and the necromancer twisted the blade into the nest of bones, yanking downward. More bones spilled from inside it like entrails. The demon swiped at Zayl, and the necromancer jumped back, slicing off the tips of two bony appendages. But the bone demon swung its other limb too quickly for Zayl to react. It caught his arm and spun him like a doll, the dagger flying through the air to land twenty feet away.
As Il’qual’Amoul reared up over the prone necromancer and raised a gigantic foot to stomp, a blur of bright energy exploded toward it. Mikulov thrust his palm outward in a thunderclap of power that shattered the bone demon’s leg and stopped its deadly attack. Dry bones flew everywhere, hitting the cliff and bouncing back. Without its leg, Il’qual’Amoul teetered and then fell back into the hole that had opened with its passage, stuck with its head and shoulders sticking out of the ground.
Tyrael drew El’druin from its sheath and swung the blade with all his strength, severing the demon’s head.
Almost instantly, the swirling storm subsided as the bones lost the energy that had been animating them and tumbled back into the muddy ground. The wind died, leaving them all panting in the silence.
Zayl regained his feet, reaching out a gloved hand. The bone dagger flew through the air to him, and he returned it safely to his sheath. Although it had seemed to last forever, the entire sequence had lasted only seconds.
The red candle was gone. Where it had stood was now a gaping hole in the ground strewn with human bones, exposing a set of stone steps leading into darkness below the cliff face.
Tyrael led the descent into the gloom.
El’druin glowed brightly against the dark as they picked their way through the remains of Il’qual’Amoul. These bones were ancient, bleached white where the mud hadn’t stained them a darker brown, the remnants of those long gone from these woods.
But what they found in the room beneath the cliff was fresh.
The steps ended at an archway cut into the rock. The air was dry and stale belowground, but the smell of rot was heavy. Shanar invoked a spell that sparked the glow from her staff and illuminated the stone floor of the chamber beyond as Tyrael sheathed El’druin; they would face no threat here.
The bodies of the missing people of Bramwell were stacked like cordwood against the far wall. Limbs twisted every which way, entangled around one another; pale, lifeless faces stared blankly as the Horadrim filed slowly into the silent chamber. Commander Nahr gave a low cry and came forward, kneeling in prayer. One of the closest bodies was a young man still clad in the armor of the city guard. Nahr reached out to touch the corpse’s hand. “Lorath’s good friend Robert,” he said. “They grew up together in Westmarch. Robert came to Bramwell with his father last year to help fortify the wall patrols and left a young wife behind. He had planned to return this month.”
Tyrael watched the commander stand up and turn away. He wanted to do something but could not; these people were long past saving.
He looked around. The space was perhaps one hundred feet across and appeared to be naturally formed. It was also mostly empty. Tyrael’s heart sank. He felt for the chalice, nestled against his breast. The numb feeling spread through his limbs, encased him in its ironlike grip. His body ached to stare into Chalad’ar’s swirling depths again, as he had the night before when the others slept. The chalice gave him a kind of peace he could not find among the living. He craved the expansion of his mind, needed the euphoria that washed over him as he slipped between the strands of light . . .
“The breaking of the mountain will bring other things our way,” Mikulov said, cutting through Tyrael’s trance. The monk’s voice was low enough for the others not to hear. “We may not have much time before we are discovered.”
Tyrael nodded. This was no time to drift off in some kind of fog. But they had found nothing but death here: no nephalem ruins, no further clues. “The texts were wrong,” he said.
“There is one place we haven’t looked,” the monk said. He nodded to the gruesome pile of bodies.
No. The smell of death was overpowering; the unnaturally dry air belowground and the sealed state of the cavern had preserved them to some extent, but Tyrael could see the slime on their skin, the puffy flesh, and the rot that had begun in earnest in those below the first layer.
As he stood there, a draft touched his face. The bodies were piled high enough to conceal another passageway.
Overcome with grief, Nahr nevertheless set his jaw and threw himself in with the others as they moved the bodies one at a time, gently at first, then faster, gripping slippery, cold limbs and swinging them to the side as quickly as they could, their resolve hardening their stomachs and minds to what must be done.
As they reached the worst of the decaying corpses, more cold air wafted out, and another opening was uncovered. It was low enough so that Tyrael would have to duck to enter it, but it appeared to be man-made.
“More light,” Tyrael said, as the last corpse was set aside, and Shanar brought her staff closer, illuminating the arched doorway. They entered a second room carved from the rock. Mages had done this, by the look of the work, perhaps Vizjerei, Tyrael thought, or older.
The walls were covered with carvings: a giant made of the mountains themselves, a beast with many heads, a gigantic dragon coiled among the stars, a man exploding into rays of pure light and energy. Below the largest of them was a flat slab of rock like an altar, and upon it sat tattered remains of cloth, jewels, and scrolls.
This was no repository, Tyrael thought. And it was old, far older than the Zakarum Church. Thomas and Cullen began to examine the objects on the slab, talking excitedly as they placed items gently in their rucksacks. The scrolls had been remarkably preserved in the dry, cool air, but they were delicate.
Cullen now held aloft a small, strangely shaped dagger with a flat, broad blade. The dagger had a jeweled hilt and a squared-off end rather than a point. “I’ve never seen such a weapon,” he said. He turned. “Mikulov, have you ever encountered in your travels—”
But the monk was not there.
Chapter Seventeen
The Attack
Mikulov watched the circle of hooded men from his position in the trees.
He had left the underground cavern when the wind had carried a message from Ytar to him, alerting him to danger. The bone demon had only been the beginning. The balance in the elements had been upset by its presence, and that would surely bring more fiends, drawn like moths to a flame. The others needed time to explore what was underneath the ruins, and he would give it to them.
He expected trouble. But even the monk was surprised by what he found.
In a smaller clearing below the cliff, the men were chanting softly. They wore cloaks adorned with runes and carried long staves that they leaned on for support. Their hoods covered their faces completely.
Spikes protruded from their bodies in a gruesome display of religious fervor, and behind them lurked monstrous berserkers, their greenish skin and rippling muscles seeming to glow in the shadows cast by the trees and the clouds that loomed overhead.
A berserker threw its masked head back and roared at the sky, then took a spike and hammered it through a cloaked man’s neck.
There was very little blood. The robed figure barely seemed to react at first. But the chanting grew louder as the figure began to convulse, shuddering, a red light emanating from beneath his feet. The robes tore as his body swelled and rippled, wounds opening like hungry mouths, his flesh transforming, entrails protruding from a wet hole in his abdomen, bones red with blood sticking out from muscle and sinew.
A dark vessel. An awakening. This was what the cultists had been trying to accomplish back in Tristram. The demon hovered several feet off the ground, ropes of intestines hanging over the shattered remains of its legs, a sickly blood-red glow washing the clearing like the fires of Hell.
Another berserker hammered home a spike in a second victim, then a third. The men began to transform as the chanting reached a fever pitch. Mikulov considered an attack, but these were powerful demons, and it would be risky to confront them alone. And there was movement from below the clearing; it was impossible to tell how many other creatures might be approaching.
Better to warn the others and get out now, before it was too late.
Thunder crashed overhead, and rain began to fall in earnest as the monk quickly made his way back up the slope. The ground, covered in leaves and needles, grew slippery and treacherous, but Mikulov did not falter. He could hear the gods in the drops of rain pattering all around him, feel them in the growing buzz of energy in the air, the smell of the wet bark and the leaves on the ground. They were warning him. All things eventually returned to their maker, but the death wielders that were coming were not a natural part of this world. They were a violation of order and light, and that made the gods angry.
The image from his vision of several nights before returned to him—Tyrael transforming into a figure in dark robes with no face. What did it mean? He knew he must meditate on this, but now he would return to the cliff and gather the others quickly, and they would decide together whether to stand here and fight or make their retreat to wait for a better time.
That was when something huge and black moved in the forest at the edge of his sight.
The Horadrim and Nahr emerged from the cavern opening and into the dull gray light of the breaking storm, weapons ready. The sky had turned dark, clouds were close over their heads, and the rain lashed at their faces and drenched their clothes in moments.
Tyrael was at the front, the others close behind. He blinked into the rain, trying to clear his eyes as he looked around the clearing for danger. What had come over him inside the cavern? He couldn’t lose sight of the importance of human life; protecting Sanctuary and its inhabitants needed to remain a priority, along with the Heavens. The Horadrim were the key to everything. It was up to him to make sure that they escaped this place alive
and accomplished their mission.
Do not fail in this, he told himself. Deckard and Leah perished to save Sanctuary, in service to the light. Do not forsake them or forget your purpose.
A figure emerged through the gloom. Tyrael drew El’druin before he recognized the monk’s lithe form.
“The creatures that have taken the people of Bramwell are here,” Mikulov said. “I have seen one moving through the trees and heard others. But they move quickly and are not easily tracked.”
“Phantoms,” Nahr whispered. His face was pale. His own sword was a beautifully forged weapon with the marks of the Zakarum faith engraved along its long, razor-sharp blade. “I will taste their blood before the end of this!”
Mikulov pointed to where the forest dropped off. “There are others. Dark vessels and berserkers and more down among the trees.”
As if in answer, a tremendous crash shook the ground as a huge berserker tore through the tree line and entered the clearing. This one was larger than any Tyrael had ever seen.
Another emerged behind it, then another, each as large as the first. The lead berserker roared and smashed its maul into the ground with vicious force, a teeth-jarring impact that drew other creatures into the dim light and lashing rain. Dark vessels hovered behind them, entrails snaking below their severed torsos.
Several spiderlike beasts as large as a man slipped on long, hairy legs through the ground cover, their fangs clicking, multifaceted eyes reflecting the glow from El’druin as they paused, their front legs up and feeling the air. On the other side of the clearing, grotesquely fat horrors waddled forward, seemingly made out of human skin sewn together, wrists ending in bloody, oozing stumps. Hellions slunk into the light around them, weaving between their legs and snarling at the Horadrim, who had tightened ranks near the temple’s entrance.
