“Marah said the gates are still strong.”
“Yes, but it is easier to defend a city than to reclaim one. Once they are inside, the city becomes a battlefield. We lose the bottleneck. They pump warriors through one gate, and we pump them through the other.”
“I would imagine so.”
Tyrus endured the lectures to be polite, but sometimes Silas spoke to him as though he hadn’t lifted a sword before. Whenever a wall fell, the fighting took to the streets. That was how one razed a city.
“I don’t think you do,” Silas said. “When the gate falls, their numbers become a problem. We lose the good ground and have to retreat to the tunnels, but they won’t chase us. It’s easier for them to dig dozens of new tunnels. So one broken city becomes hundreds of cracks in the Ward.”
Tyrus appreciated Marah’s onion description. He imagined a bunch of arrows piercing the onion, and he thought he might understand what losing a major city was like for the dwarves. But the circles and spheres played tricks with his mind. He preferred a flat battleground.
Marah squirmed against him again, and he asked her to use the ward.
“No. I need them.”
Tyrus asked, “Can’t you scout the way ahead? If it’s clear, why not use the paint again? Just for a little while.”
“Things change too fast.”
“Once we get to Koruthal, you can spend time in their temple and look at the scrolls in their vault. Silas says it is like the other one, but bigger. So it should be quiet.”
“The vault isn’t going to help me.”
“I thought it was important.”
“It might be, but what I want is beyond Ros Koruthal.”
“But I thought—”
“Tyrus, I’ve already talked to some of the dwarven masters about the vault.”
“Did Silas—” Tyrus caught himself from asking a stupid question. “You mean dead masters.”
Marah snuggled up closer to him, and Tyrus held her more tightly, trying to find some way to give her comfort. A strange thought occurred to him—he wondered if that was how fathers felt when their children had nightmares. Tyrus knew little of families and children. Having lived with the Norsil, he’d learned some, but their customs were quite foreign, compared to his homeland’s. He’d never taken care of any of the children in his charge. He defended them and hunted for them, but the mothers had soothed them if they cried at night.
He reminded himself that the small creature in his arms was more dangerous than a child. He had to focus, but his mind wandered because of the tedium of the Deep. They trudged across stone in the dark, one foot after another, over and over again. At least on the surface, he could study the scenery and enjoy changes in the weather.
Tyrus told Marah, “You take on too much.”
“I have to.”
“The priests say you shouldn’t be talking to the ghosts. It is forbidden.”
“I can’t shut them out,” Marah said. “There are too many of them.”
“I would kill them if I could.”
Tyrus ground his teeth. Anyone who hurt Ishma’s child inspired a dreadful fury. He would hack them apart as cruelly as he knew how—maiming them and letting them bleed out—if he could hurt voices.
Marah said, “I lose myself sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t hear myself think.”
“Hold my hand and squeeze it as hard as you can.” Tyrus had used the trick to help warriors survive an etching—sometimes it worked. “Squeeze until it hurts, and focus on that. Think about your fingers and your knuckles.”
“This won’t distract me.”
“Sometimes, when I have a bad wound, I’ll hit myself somewhere else, and the pain kind of shifts. So if my arm is cut, I’ll punch my leg hard enough to bruise it. And it helps me ignore my arm.”
Marah giggled.
The sound startled Tyrus, and he shifted his chin to look at her. “What?”
“The dead think that’s funny.”
“They’re laughing at me?”
“You hit yourself when you are hurt?”
“There’s not much that helps with the pain. You just have to ride it out. It makes you do strange things.”
“There are potions for pain.”
“You mean poisons. And when you have as many runes as I do, they don’t work. I can’t even get drunk anymore.”
Marah asked, “Should I punch myself?”
“Well, maybe not in front of the dwarves.”
Marah hugged him again. “Tell me a story about my parents.”
“I don’t like talking about your father.”
“Then tell me about my mother.”
Tyrus spoke of Narbor, describing the city and the noble houses. He talked about the sea and the naval powers and Ishma’s lancers. Narbor wasn’t that different from Shinar, but it was on the coast and smaller and had a more troubled history.
Tyrus spoke around the royal couple because he didn’t have many good stories to tell. Ishma and Azmon had fought each other toward the end of the marriage—she feared the demons and their influence at the court. Tyrus had once tried to tell her that they were stuck with them. Once you accepted their help, you couldn’t just walk away. Ishma refused to accept that.
He shifted to the story of saving Ishma from the Hurrians.
Marah said, “You told me this story.”
“I know, but it’s the best one that I’ve got.”
“Why?”
“It’s the only time I ever felt like a real champion. I fought for the right person, for the right reasons. And they wrote songs about the battle—one marked man against impossible odds, saving a queen.”
“You’re a hero.”
“One good day doesn’t erase a few bad decades.”
“Why were they bad?”
“Because I was young and strong, and I enjoyed hurting others.”
Marah asked more questions, but Tyrus grew silent. They kept marching, and Marah used sorcery to protect herself. The chill of it and the darkness that always lingered at the end of the long passageways brought back bad memories of the time he and Azmon had traveled to the Black Gate.
He had fought the shedim before, and he knew what waited for them at the end of the tunnels. Marah was too young to see such things.
When they took a break to sleep, which Tyrus thought was more of a long nap than a real sleep, he dreamed of Ishma. For the first time in a long time, his rest didn’t end in nightmares. She didn’t transform into Lilith or Mulciber. He didn’t find himself drowning in monsters or being ripped apart by languished foes.
He ate at a small table with a young Ishma. The caravan that snaked through the Kabor Mountains had stopped for the midday meal. The sun made her hair glow, and Tyrus studiously ate his cold pheasant to avoid her scandalous neckline. Ishma shamelessly flirted with him, trying to pry out as much information about Azmon as she could. However, the details, the words, weren’t in the dream, just her laughter and her smile and her large green eyes.
With one wink, Tyrus felt like an awkward boy, but her smile kindled something inside him, making him feel powerful and kingly, as though the two of them had inherited the world. He could have fought for her and made her queen of Sornum. But he didn’t, so he had to live with regrets. He was just a man who had eaten a lunch with the most beautiful woman in all Sornum.
When Tyrus woke, he heard Marah whimpering in her sleep. He rested a hand on her, and her eyes snapped open.
He asked, “Will you please paint the ward on your face?”
“It blinds me.”
“You need your rest.”
“I’ll rest when we save Ros Koruthal.”
She sounded like an old campaigner. She did that often, sounding like a child one moment and a general the next. He wondered which voices she spoke to and which ones she listened to,
and his questions filled him with dread. She was no different from any general or king. The people she listened to would decide her fate.
IV
The texture of the stone passageway changed. Marah awakened to the changes by degrees because the natural sounds slowly overtook the unnatural ones that plagued her. Many more voices echoed from the dark, and they were living voices that competed with footfalls and shuffling. The column slowed and moved toward the left wall, giving space for dwarves to shamble past.
Thousands of dwarves passed Marah and Tyrus. They were laden with packs and goods and herded smaller creatures—children, she realized—before them. The column came to a halt as the two groups questioned each other, and the passage clogged.
Marah whispered, What is going on?
Refugees fleeing Koruthal.
Marah pulled herself higher on Tyrus’s shoulder. She had painted runes on her face to help her see in the dark, and the line of dwarves stretched into the distant shadows, which her runes couldn’t pierce.
Marah whispered, Is this all that’s left?
The Wardens and Priests defend the last gate. They sacrifice themselves so the people have time to reach another city.
They’re dying?
The Tusken took the city. It’s only a matter of time.
Other ghosts competed for attention. Through the storm of voices, Marah learned the story. The tribesmen had burrowed past one of the walls and swarmed the city. While the wardens fought to contain them, the Tusken breached the walls and sent teams to open the gates. They had been fighting, street by street, in the city ever since. The sheer weight of numbers pushed the wardens back.
The Risen have returned.
Other voices took up the chant. Marah squeezed her eyes shut, but dead dwarves shared fragments of memories with her. Powerful shedim were following the Tusken into the Ward. Marah saw their leader, a bulbous demon with one eye and a body covered in tiny burning faces. His pale face had a greenish tint, and his mouth, once human, stretched from ear to ear and was filled with hundreds of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. Between his neck and his waist, his humanity slowly twisted into a demonic shape partially hidden by black robes. He had scales and frightening talons. Several large creatures followed him, dark-skinned demons who stood nine feet tall and had batlike wings. Hundreds of burning faces decorated their bodies, and they wore dark, twisted armor and carried long, cruel spears.
Tyrus asked, “What is it?”
Marah trembled against him. The images trapped her like a nightmare, and she had lost the ability to speak or command her body. She gazed at the horror of the shedim and froze.
“Marah? What is wrong?”
“The demons.” Marah licked her lips. “They march on Ros Koruthal.”
“You can see them?”
“They are horrible, Tyrus. They are…”
Tyrus knelt and set her on her feet. When she swayed a little, he held her shoulders. “Use sorcery. Block the voices.”
Marah instinctively obeyed. The air chilled, and the victims of the shedim stopped shouting. She still trembled, though. The images of the fat green one had seared into her mind. He radiated an evil that twisted her stomach in knots.
Tyrus asked, “You saw real demons?”
Marah nodded.
“They are nightmares given flesh. I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“I can’t unsee it.”
“I know, but we can turn back. You don’t have to do this.”
Marah wanted to agree. She had known of the shedim, but seeing them march over dead bodies and hearing the wails of their victims was too real. She had not really understood the Black Gate, and the truth of it—the shame of her ignorance, and the horrors it belched into the world—made her want to run away. Fear rooted her feet, though.
The dwarves continued filing past. Her sorcery was protecting her from the voices, but she remembered the stories. The defenders of Ros Koruthal were sacrificing themselves for these people.
Marah said, “We have to help them.”
“How many demons are there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are the angels?”
Marah eased her ward, and the flood of voices returned. She repeated Tyrus’s question and heard many answers. The seraphim were fighting deeper in the underworld, harassing the shedim legions.
“They fight them closer to the gate.”
A voice whispered, You aren’t strong enough to fight Gorba yet.
Another agreed. He will steal your powers from you. You will make him stronger.
Marah visualized the ward runes and retreated from the teeming dead. Tyrus spoke, asking questions, but Marah was distracted by the scale of the battle. She had not appreciated how large the Underworld was or how difficult it would be to reclaim the Ward. She imagined Dura groaning and calling her a foolish girl.
She asked herself, What have I done?
Tyrus gathered the leaders of the column. He lifted her up so she was looking them in the eyes. He shared what he knew with Silas and Nemuel and Klay. They spoke of last stands and retreats and old enemies. Marah listened, numb, and confirmed the details when they questioned her.
Silas banged his hammer on his shield. “Get these people moving.”
A commotion erupted as Tyrus barked orders at the Norsil and Nemuel directed the elves. The wardens and priests shouted at the refugees and got the two columns into order again. Each side hugged the walls to keep the traffic moving. The bunched knot slowly unraveled.
The heat and press of bodies made Marah dizzy. She reached out with her senses, as she had done in Paltiel, trying to understand the strangeness of the Underworld. She thought, for a moment, that she could feel the Black Gate anchoring all the anger and pain to the bottom of the world. The Underworld was the opposite of the Paltiel Woods. There was no serenity or sacred silence. The shadows seethed.
She sensed the suffering of the Deep.
High-pitched screeches echoed through the tunnels. The dwarves hurried away from the sound. Marah released her ward again, and the voices of the dead shared more horrors with her. She felt trapped again, unable to talk or move. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over her cheeks.
Tyrus asked, “What is that sound?”
“Monsters,” Marah said, “hunting the children.”
V
Tyrus almost screamed at the press of bodies around him. He resisted the urge to shout and push and fight for space. However, the dwarves handled the situation, and the mob gradually sorted itself out. He found himself breathing heavily and craving an open field under a blue sky. All the warm bodies bouncing into him gave him a strange sensation as if he was being buried alive.
All the while, screams filled the passage. A fight was coming, and if they didn’t get the refugees out of the way, he feared they would be trampled before they had a chance to set a line.
Also, Marah frightened him. She seemed surprised by the creatures of the Deep. Her tiny fingernails dug into his neck, and she trembled hard like she had fallen into a freezing stream. Tears fell down her cheeks, and he tried to calm her by brushing her hair.
“People are dying, Tyrus.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I can hear it happening.”
“That happens when a city is sacked.”
“It’s awful. There’s so many… Horrible, it’s horrible.”
Tyrus was confused. “It can’t be worse than Shinar.”
“Those people were already dead. The dwarves are dying. They’re being murdered. Eaten. They’re ripping them apart right now. I can see it, Tyrus. I can’t stop seeing it. There’s so much blood.”
“You’re watching—” Tyrus swallowed his shock. “Marah, use the runes. Shut out the ghosts.”
He cradled her face. She had the look he had seen on children after a battle, like an orphan who had watched her parents di
e, and he realized she was an orphan. Her father had abandoned her. Her mother and Dura were gone. Tyrus could have kicked himself for being so stupid. She didn’t need mentors and tutors. She needed parents.
“Marah, we can help these people get to safety, or we can try to save the ones still in the city. But I don’t know what the city looks like. I don’t know the numbers or the terrain. Maybe the dwarves control a key defense, or maybe they are fighting to the last out in the open.”
She blinked at him, and more tears rolled down her cheeks.
Tyrus said, “You know what we are headed toward. Can we help them?”
“The city can be saved.”
Tyrus hoped she was right. “We can run or we can fight.”
More howls filled the tunnel, making Marah flinch and cry. Then her face changed as a furious glower twisted her eyebrows. The sneer on her lips and the knit of her brow reminded Tyrus of Azmon. Her wrinkled forehead pushed a little knot onto the bridge of her nose.
The uncanny resemblance left him speechless.
Marah said, “They need to be stopped.”
“So we fight.”
Old training kicked in, and Tyrus controlled his dread. He busied himself with the task of moving forward, solving little problems that would get them to the city. Each little thing moved him forward and helped him overcome the enormity of what was about to happen. He unslung packs and dropped unnecessary gear. He barked orders at half the Norsil, and they did the same. The others picked up the discarded items, and Tyrus told them to follow as quickly as they could.
Silas asked, “What are you doing?”
“How far is the city?”
“Not far,” Silas said. “An hour, maybe more.”
“An hour for you or an hour for a thane?”
Silas grimaced. “We must stay together.”
“We’ll see how bad it is first. Follow as fast as you can. There might not be a fight worth having up there, and the faster we figure that out, the faster we can fall back to Dun Berthal.”
Nemuel hurried to his side. “You’re going to scout with Marah?”
Marah said, “We need to hurry.”
Nemuel said, “Let me have her.”
Dance of Battle: A Dark Fantasy (Shedim Rebellion Book 4) Page 34
