Salvation (Scars of the Sundering Book 3)

by Hans Cummings

  “My people have no such restrictions, and Aurora celebrates love in all its forms. Frankly, it’s not anyone else’s business.”

  Scout Stonehammer ran her fingers through the fiery fuzz on the side of her face. “Well, I suppose it isn’t at that. Answer my question, though, Gisella. What’s your story?”

  She told Valora of Pancras’s assignment and having taken the opportunity to accompany him to pursue her own investigation. “Qaliah joined us because she wanted to leave Muncifer and had no better offer, nowhere else to go.”

  “And somehow, you and the minotaur just happened to have the same goal, all along?” Valora regarded her, eyes narrowed.

  “Not at all. When we departed Muncifer, he believed he was sent here to teach at the Arcane University.” She decided not to reveal his subsequent death and resurrection at the Etrunian fort. “There was an… incident… with some death cultists along the way, and Pancras received a vision from Aita. He became a bonelord, en route, and embraced Aita’s quest to dispatch the Lich Queen before she regained her power. After the vision, he revealed to me information about my past. Names, relationships, things I had divulged to no one in Muncifer. Only my sister possessed such knowledge, well, and the gods, I suppose.”

  “Bah! Gods always meddle when they’re not wanted.” Valora spat on the ground.

  “Aurora has never led me astray. Besides, all coincidences look like fate when viewed in hindsight.”

  “Now, you sound like the clan elders.” Valora held up a fist and pulled Quincy to a stop. She and Gisella dismounted. They secured the reins of their steeds to a fallen tree, and Gisella followed Valora up a hill until the dwarf woman dropped to her belly. They crawled to the edge.

  Below them, the ground gave way to a sheer rock cliff, stretching downward hundreds of feet to a rocky beach. The waves crashed and hissed against the jagged rocks. Waterlogged tree limbs and a few scuttling crabs were the beach’s only occupants.

  “It doesn’t look like hundreds of shuffling feet have been churning up the beach.” Valora pointed to the water’s edge. “You can see an almost unbroken line of that sea moss down there.”

  Gisella, indeed, observed it. “How long would it take someone to walk across the bottom of the bay from Ebonwick?”

  The dwarf rolled over on her back and counted on her fingers. “Good question. It’s only been a few days since one of the moons came back, eh?”

  “And the dead have been reported to march only on double-dark nights.”

  “Well”—Valora chewed on her lip—“I don’t know what the bottom of the bay is like. It could take a week, maybe more.”

  “So, we need to make camp and wait.” Gisella didn’t mind sleeping outdoors. The breeze blowing inland from the sea felt a bit cooler than the stifling humidity of the city.

  “Nah, let’s go down there and see if there are any old tracks. Undead supposedly march from Vlorey, too. They’ve got to be tearing up the ground somewhere. There aren’t any floaters, right? Just walking undead?”

  “As far as I know.”

  Gisella and Valora crawled away from the edge and returned to their mounts. The dwarf cursed as she swung her leg over Quincy’s back.

  “Damn, I was hoping this would be a quick and easy job.”

  ***

  Another day of perusing tome after tome from the shelves in Kale and Kali’s cellar brought no answers to Delilah. Her failure to determine why only she could activate the moon gate gnawed at her. Ori’s persistence in insisting he possessed some important information served only to irritate her further.

  She left Alysha and Katka to scour the volumes while she returned to the Arcane University. Guild business called, and Headmaster Agata requested an audience several days in a row,

  Delilah met with the headmaster in the Council of Wizardry chambers. She waited in her center chair, newly outfitted with a raised footrest to keep her short legs from dangling. The elderly woman strode in, her footsteps echoing through the empty, stone-walled chamber, and bowed.

  “Archmage.”

  “Headmaster.” Delilah returned the bow with a nod of her head. “I apologize for keeping you waiting. I was engrossed in my research.”

  “Which? The moon gate or the egg?”

  The egg? Maris’s bloody spear, I forgot I told them about that. “Well, the dragon took the egg, so I’ve been concentrating on the moon gate.”

  “You allowed that dragon to fly off with Pyraclannaseous’s egg?” Headmaster Agata’s mouth hung agape, her eyes betraying her simultaneous horror and incredulity. Delilah, certain the old woman’s eyebrows would merge in the center of her face and remain fixed like that for eternity, threw up her hands.

  “Kale did. You can blame my brother. He claimed the dragon was quite eager to meet with Terrakaptis, which is where we wanted the egg to go in the first place.” Delilah hoped the dragon told the truth. If Yaamkyrsku lied, she would not allow Kale to forget it. His helping with the moon gate mostly made up for his gaffe of sending the dragon away in the first place, but only barely.

  Acting on an idea she had, Delilah leaned forward. “What do you know about the moon gates?”

  Headmaster Agata frowned and clasped her hands behind her. “Not much, I’m afraid. Only what I read in history books. They were built in the Age of Legend and thought lost during The Sundering. There were always reports of a suspected site cropping up here and there, but no one took them seriously.”

  “Why not?”

  “No one knew how to make them work.”

  Except me, apparently. “I see. That’s about all I was able to find out, too.”

  “Fine. Now then, there’s some school business to discuss.” Analogous to torture, Delilah accepted the mundanities of running the Arcane University as a necessary cost of her new station. Most of the issues Headmaster Agata brought before Delilah did not actually require archmage approval; however, she did it out of deference to an archmage who resided on campus. Delilah felt as if the words “Yes, that’s fine,” were burned into her brain.

  Once she had addressed all of the headmaster’s concerns, Delilah strode the grounds as a demonstration of her interest in the students, gave some pointers to a group of novices who practiced on the training dummies their precision to deliver fire to a target, and finally, returned to her brother’s house to check on Alysha and Katka’s progress. Ori, of course, illuminated his most recent project at his raised desk behind the counter, and Delilah steeled herself to rush past him.

  “Oh! Archmage Delilah, please wait.”

  “No time, Ori. Important things to do!” Delilah trotted through the shop and headed straight for the cellar door.

  “Oh. Well, this is important, too. It’s about your moon gate.”

  Delilah stopped, her hand hovering just above the concealed door pull. She growled her brother’s name before forcing a smile and turning to face the blue drak.

  “Oh, uh, I read about them in one of the books I illuminated.”

  Her smiled faded. “What about them?”

  “Oh, well, they were built in the Age of Legend—”

  Blah blah, I’ve heard all this before. Tell me something new, or I’ll turn you into a newt.

  “… built by draks. Oh! Did you know draks first formed the Mages Guild?”

  “Wait, what? What was built by draks?” Delilah held Ori by the shoulders, and the color drained from his face.

  “Oh! The moon gates. The moon gates were built by draks.”

  “That’s it!” Delilah pulled the blue drak into a hug, rubbing the side of her face against his. She turned, barely registering the thud of his body as he hit the floor, and threw open the door to the cellar. Delilah sped down the stairs, clutching at the bookshelves to keep from sliding into Katka and Alysha, both seated on the bottom step reviewing different tomes. Losing hold of her staff during her descent, she allowed it to tumble down the steps and onto the cavern floor.

  “What’s wrong?” Alysha offered a hand to t
he archmage.

  “Only drak wizards can activate the moon gates because drak wizards built them!” Suddenly, it all made sense to her. Most powerful artifacts, unless specifically constructed for use by anyone, were attuned only to those who built them.

  Alysha clicked her fingers. “Because during much of the Age of Legend, there were only drak wizards.”

  Katka picked up Delilah’s staff and handed it to her. “Great. What’s that mean for us?”

  “Well, I guess it means we’re not going anywhere without her.” Alysha pursed her lips and pointed to the archmage.

  “It also means we can stop fooling around with all these books and try to figure out where the closest moon gate to Vlorey is.” Delilah approached the runed circle and activated it. She set the Queen and King to their proper phases and stared at her apprentice.

  It took Katka a moment to realize the archmage awaited her response. “Oh! I think we’ve worked out what a lot of the combinations are, but we couldn’t test them without you, of course.”

  “Without maps from the Age of Legend, we had to makes some guesses.” Alysha handed Delilah a piece of parchment on which the two women had drawn a key to possible combinations.

  The archmage scanned the paper. Except for Celtangate, all of the locations close to Vlorey included a question mark. “Why, this seems pretty straightforward. I thought when the world was healed, it returned to pretty much the way it was before The Sundering.”

  “Well, sure, all the landmasses are pretty much the same.” Alysha leaned on her staff.

  “A lot of the cities changed names.” Katka pointed to Velzuna. “Back then, this was just Cardoba, the city, I mean. After the healing of the world, the city expanded its territory, the nation was called Cardoba, and they changed the name of the city to Velzuna.”

  “Why?” Delilah scratched under her chin. “That makes no sense.”

  “Who knows?” Katka threw up her hands. “Ask someone in Velzuna. There are probably a dozen different stories.”

  “I guess we should just go down the list, starting with the ones closest to Vlorey. How will we know if the moon gate opens in the right general area?” Delilah, unfamiliar with the city, knew only that it sat on the northern coast.

  “It sits near the water, and it’ll look warm.” Alysha took the parchment from Delilah. “I’ll call out the runes. We’ll start with the ones we think are near Vlorey, and move on to Ortuuz if that doesn’t work, though I don’t fancy we’d find a boat on an island rumored to be uninhabited.”

  The archmage activated the Runes of Selene, set the moon phases, and worked her way around the runic depictions of the constellations as the Frost Queen announced them. When she tapped the last rune, the moons vanished, and the azure glow flickered out.

  “Damn. I guess it was too much to hope for this to be easy.” Delilah activated the circle and tried the next one.

  The next three gave the same result—instant deactivation. With the fourth combination—labeled Faenwar?—the gate sprang open. Water poured through the moon gate. Delilah dove out of the way as the torrent rushed past her and bowled Katka off her feet. Delilah’s staff spun across the room, landing on the far side of the runed circle. Her apprentice was swept away by the flood waters as they continued to pour out of the open moon gate.

  “How do I shut it off?” Delilah yelled to Alysha as she ran after Katka. Her apprentice screamed and grunted, bouncing off the walls, as she was flung down the tunnel that led to the chasm outside. The water gushed out of the tunnel like an uncorked keg, and Delilah made a desperate dash, diving to grab Katka’s sleeve. She managed to hook a claw on the young woman’s robes and then another.

  The smooth, stone walls of the tunnel offered little upon which to gain purchase, and the rushing water threatened to knock the drak off her feet. Katka’s weight, greater than Delilah’s own by a factor of two, didn’t help.

  Delilah’s claws dug into the wall, leaving white gouges as the water pushed her along. The gorge came into view, the precipitous drop beyond the entrance promising a long fall and sudden stop.

  Her apprentice twisted against the rush of water and grasped Delilah’s arm. Their eyes met as the drak’s grip on the wall gave way. They tumbled toward the edge.

  Chapter 21

  Upon examination of the beach, they found no evidence the undead had marched across the sand. With little to go on other than the assumption the undead traveled in nearly a straight line from Vlorey to Zamora, Scout Stonehammer and the Golden Slayer rode in an arc away from the coast. This afforded them the greatest chance to cross the path the undead used, assuming they had not sprouted wings and flown across the land.

  The rocky, scrub-covered plains near the coast gave way to rolling grass and farmlands further south. They covered a good amount of ground by the time the sun set and the moons rose; however, they discovered no evidence to help them determine whether the undead had traveled through the area

  Scout Stonehammer built a small, low fire in a shallow pit and piled rocks around the edges to further shield the flames from sight. They found a short shrub on which to secure Moonsilver. Gisella suggested Valora hitch Quincy to a bramble at the other side of camp. Once they completed preparing the area for their overnight stay, Valora sat against her saddle, chewing on a slice of jerky.

  “They can’t not leave tracks right?” She waved the jerky in the air as she spoke.

  “I’ve never tracked undead before.” Gisella sipped some of the Ravenbrier mead she brought along. “I assume if their strides are similar to those of a live person, they would leave traces of their passage. I don’t see how they cannot.”

  “I hope they don’t sneak up on us in the night.” Valora pulled at her gorget. “I hate sleeping in armor.”

  “The ones Qaliah and I encountered in Ebonwick didn’t seem interested in us at all.” Gisella shared Valora’s disdain of slumbering fully clad, but out in the open, she was reluctant to risk being unprepared if they needed to act quickly.

  “Well, Quincy is a pretty light sleeper, so if anything moves around out there or startles him, he’ll squeal, but I’m not taking any chances.” She pulled an axe out of the scabbard on her saddle and laid it across her lap.

  Gisella gazed at the waxing moons, rising just above the horizon, although the Queen showed more of her face than did the King. “I could keep watch while you sleep. I’ll wake you when the moons have completed half of their nightly journey.”

  “Suit yourself. No one but Quincy keeps watch when I’m out here alone.”

  Within a few minutes, Gisella heard the dwarf snoring. The warm night air, the mead, and fatigue from riding all day conspired to thwart her plans, causing Gisella’s eyes to grow heavy. Determined to keep watch, despite Valora’s assurances that Quincy’s vigilance was sufficient, she paced to remain alert.

  When she finally sat again, sleep overtook her. She awoke to Quincy’s grunts and snorts in response to Valora’s cooing at him. Her neck ached from falling asleep with her chin resting on her chest, and she found a tender area on her side where her breastplate pinched throughout the night.

  Gisella removed her armor and linen shirt to examine the bruise, heedless of the show she’d give the dwarf if Valora turned to face her. The angry, plum-colored contusion followed the contour under her arm.

  “I suppose that’s a mark of Aurora?” Valora crossed her arms as a crooked smile overtook her face.

  “The mark of a fool who fell asleep sitting partially upright.” Gisella dressed herself and winced as she donned her breastplate. The dense and oppressive air indicated the day would be even more humid than the last.

  “I searched around a bit before you woke up. Some scrub deer came through in the night but nothing else by the looks of it. Eat up and let’s get moving.”

  Gisella washed down some dried fish with mead as Valora doused the fire and scattered the embers. Shortly after setting out, they came upon a farmer’s field that lay fallow for the current season
. The dark, rich earth was churned up all across the field, as if someone recently plowed while drunk.

  “Nothing’s planted, which isn’t unusual necessarily, but why does it look like someone’s been digging?” Valora patted Quincy’s neck and urged him forward, but the boar snorted and backed away from the dirt.

  Gisella’s stomach twisted in knots. She slid off Moonsilver and gripped her spear. “If they didn’t plan any crops here this season, grass or weed should have sprouted by now, yes?”

  “Something.” Valora dismounted and joined Gisella at the field’s edge.

  The Golden Slayer jabbed her spear into the dirt and dragged it through the soil. Impractical for plowing, it moved enough soil to confirm her suspicions.

  A long, white bone lay exposed. Gisella followed it with her spear and uncovered a bony hand. She moved to a different spot and scraped some more, exposing a tuft of hair still attached to the worm-infested flesh of a head.

  Scout Stonehammer made a gesture to ward off evil. “If this whole field’s like that, there could be thousands of corpses under the dirt.”

  “They’re moving at night and concealing themselves during the day.” Gisella cleaned the tip of her spear with the edge of her cloak. “That’s why there have been no reports outside the city.”

  Valora shielded her eyes from the sun, gazing toward the southern horizon. “The homestead isn’t too far away. Should we warn them?”

  Gisella, already halfway to Moonsilver when she heard Valora’s question, intended to do just that.

  ***

  The instant Delilah realized she was about to be flung into the gorge to her death, she became most disappointed that no vision of her life, no vision of her past adventures, no vision at all flashed before her. All my life, and there’s nothing worth remembering? That just doesn’t seem fair.