Vorik stood at the edge of the stairs, peering down. “Whatever transpired here . . . the answers lie below,” the old man stated.
Jaharra strode purposefully to the steps. “Then answers we shall have!” Over her shoulder she called, “Fisherman, keep up!”
Morbed kept pace with the wizard as they descended the winding stairs. After several spiraling turns, their path opened onto a large, long passageway.
Jaharra gestured, and the glow from her orb illuminated the full length of the hall like water filling an aqueduct. The stench of death hung heavy even in the immense subterranean space.
The explorers stepped around giant dislodged chunks of stone and passed small storage rooms filled with old furniture, linens, and tools, arriving finally at an intersection where the spokes of four hallways joined. Jaharra’s light spread to illuminate the corridors, each two and a half times the height of a human and five times as wide.
Vorik stood staring down a corridor that ran opposite the tunnel ending under the great hall. This led deeper into the mountain. Massive hunks of masonry littered the path. Markings of forced passage were etched in the walls to the end of sight, where the corridor appeared to bend.
“This way,” the necromancer rasped.
Just then one of Aedus’s ghost wolves came trotting from the recesses of the hall that the group would have entered had they continued forward.
The druid kneeled as the wolf barked silently. Aedus muttered an unintelligible phrase and held his hand to the spirit’s head. He closed his eyes. His brow furrowed. “Bones. Further in and below. Many and many of them.”
Vorik turned. “Crypts.”
Clovis removed his helm. “I will begin my search there.”
Jaharra cut in, “We still don’t know what happened here. What if the thing outside these walls returns?”
“Then I will know the glory of righteous battle,” the crusader responded.
Jaharra stood before the crusader, and although he towered over her, somehow it seemed as though she looked down on him. “I say we find answers before all else.”
Clovis’s tone was even. “Command as you wish. I am my own master.”
Aedus sighed. “Though his time with us has been brief, I think we all know that this easterner will do as he pleases.”
Without saying as much, Morbed agreed. Since their meeting, the holy man had displayed a single-minded determination to find a means of vindicating his religion, a quest the warrior hoped might be realized in discovering the remains of Akarat, upon whose teachings the Zakarum Church was founded. For the crusader, it was more than just a mission to venerate his order’s patron; the Zakarum had long ago fallen to corruption, and Clovis believed that Akarat’s bones held within them an unassailable purity, capable of scouring the historical blight and restoring faith in the order.
On the rare occasions when Clovis spoke, he said that if he found the bones, the world would see the Zakarum in a different light. Morbed had questioned early on if Clovis’s own faith had truly weathered years of scorn. Indeed, the more time he spent with the crusader, the more Morbed believed that the warrior’s faith was, in fact, unshakable.
Then, too, there were the late nights during their recent voyage, while the others slept, when Morbed would tread softly to the galley and see Clovis seated alone, head bowed, eyes distant and forlorn over a brim-filled cup of cold tea. He often wondered what transpired in the mind of the holy man during those long, quiet moments.
Aedus indicated the spirit wolf. “Kasha will go with him and lead him back when necessary.”
Jaharra responded, her eyes not leaving the holy man, “Very well. We’ve wasted enough time.”
Clovis and his new pet set out. The wizard drove past the others, and the light moved with her.
* * *
Jaharra and her companions rounded the bend. Before them stretched another long passage, and at its end were more bodies, a score of them heaped just outside the ruins of two massive iron-banded wooden doors. An open chamber lay beyond.
In their approach the visitors crunched insects beneath their feet. Here in the depths of the stronghold, the smell of decay and putrefaction had thickened to become nearly overwhelming. Slowly Morbed and the others stepped over the fallen, all of whom, save two, wore the light armor of the harriers. The two defenders lay closest to the chamber entrance.
The room itself was a grand, towering space. Niches in the walls housed statues of various horned aberrations, situated in a ring and posed as if holding court. Spaced between these, around the periphery, were large arched tunnels with wooden doors set deeper in, flanked by great stone braziers. The floor was starkly etched with a wide circle at the outer perimeter, intersecting lines and loops combining in the center to form an elaborate symbol.
Higher up and stretched along the wall’s circumference were rusted chains, pinned to the mortar in various places, where skeletal remains hung from timeworn shackles, their bony frames held together by yellowed ligaments and ragged cloth. Jaharra’s light ascended the tower’s height farther, where the macabre display continued upward, circling them, grim skulls leering down in immortal condemnation. At the uppermost reaches of the tower, a rounded parapet jutted out, winged gargoyles looming at each side, mouths set as if in screams.
Jaharra’s voice sounded strange; although it should have echoed in the expanse, it seemed instead to flutter from her lips and die at their feet. “I heard tales that the wayfarer was versed in various magical arts.”
Aedus was looking around, wide-eyed. “This is unnatural. Noise does not even carry here . . . almost as if a spell has been enacted to mask screams.”
“Or the bellows of giant beasts,” Jaharra offered.
Vorik spoke next, his words barely more than a whisper. The others crowded close to hear him. “I’ve seen summoning chambers such as this in my youth . . . in Kehjistan, once called Kehjan . . .”
In his youth, Morbed thought. How many ages ago was that?
The old man’s eyes seemed clouded. “There it was, in the distant past, that Vizjerei sorcerers tore at the veil between worlds and called forth demons . . . at first to learn from them but later, foolishly, to enslave, to bend the hellspawn to their own dread purpose. Summoning was quickly forbidden, but in time the Vizjerei once again set about their profane rituals. The Mage Clan Wars erupted. In a desperate bid to tip the scales of battle, the Vizjerei employed demons against their enemies. At the gates of Viz-jun, carnage gave way to chaos as binding spells broke. Brother fell upon brother. Great horned monstrosities rent flesh, bone, stone, and mortar. Walls tumbled, corpse mounds rose, and a red haze obscured all. It is said by the most gifted necromancers that the horrors of that final conflict left an indelible stain upon the fabric of our world.”
When Vorik finished speaking, a pall of silence reigned. For a moment it seemed as though no one breathed.
Morbed felt a draft and turned to the closest archway. The door set into the wall there was open. He quickly scanned the room, blurted, “The fisherman!” and tore off in pursuit.
CHAPTER TWO
The goal of their journey should have been simple enough, but events had taken a sour turn since they had set out from Westmarch.
It had all started with a summons from none other than Justinian, the king of Westmarch. Rumors of their band’s success against the Aranoch bandits had earned Jaharra and her compatriots no small notoriety.
Within the gilded confines of his royal chambers, Justinian disclosed the existence of lost, inaccessible ruins sprawled beneath the realm, the time-ravaged remains of a long-forgotten civilization below the bogs—ruins that few living mortals had ever glimpsed.
His Highness also divulged rumors of a prowling vagabond. Although the marauder’s activities were carried out on moonless nights, there were those who witnessed a shrouded figure toting cartloads of crates from with
in the city proper; still others at the riverfront docks told of deckhands in red tabards hauling covered items aboard a dark vessel that would arrive and depart before the rising sun, not to be seen again for several fortnights. Season upon season the elusive scoundrel had preyed upon the realm and its people. What distressed the king most, however, were hushed reports of the unnamed wayfarer stealing into the catacombs of the time-lost ruins beneath Westmarch’s neighboring bogs and plundering the tomb of Rakkis, the founding monarch of the kingdom. And so it was that His Highness enlisted Jaharra’s band to find the vagabond, kill him if necessary, and reclaim any stolen items or artifacts.
Shortly after this audience with the king, Clovis threw in his lot. Rumors of the wayfarer’s possessing rare and unique artifacts sparked within the holy man a hope of discovering the remains of Akarat. Although he was greeted at first with suspicion by Jaharra, Clovis pressed his case and, on the merits of his piety and value as a warrior, was granted reception.
They soon set about gleaning information. To learn more of their elusive quarry, they palavered with merchants, sailors, innkeepers, and the harlots who solicited along the docks. They elicited occasional sightings of a black-sailed merchant cog drifting westward into the Great Ocean beyond all known trade routes. However, no such accounts had surfaced for nearly a full lunar cycle, and no glimpses of the furtive pilferer or his red-garbed fellows had been evidenced for the same length of time. Aedus worried that the trail had grown cold.
It was near the end of these inquiries that the party was confronted by the fisherman.
From the outset the old man’s demeanor aroused suspicion, but the longer he spoke, the more knowledge he seemed to possess. He claimed to be a onetime friend to the vagabond, a humble ocean harvester who delivered bounty to the reclusive man’s island home. He claimed also that the wayfarer’s mood in recent months had grown turbulent, that many of his house guard had abandoned him, that no payment or trade for the fisherman’s last consignment had been given, and that the sailor feared to strike out alone, seeking compensation. And so the arrangement was made for the old seafarer to lead them to the hermit’s doorstep, and on that very same day they set out.
Despite his testimony, there were times during the voyage when the fisherman didn’t seem to know his own ship, and Jaharra especially kept a more watchful eye on the sailor. His behavior had become increasingly curious upon their approach and yet more troublesome after their arrival at the island.
Now, as Morbed raced through the darkness of the passageway—right hand repeatedly touching the cold stone on one side to guide him, left hand reaching out in front—he wondered exactly what it was the fisherman was playing at.
Noises echoed ahead, and he allowed the sounds to lead him through what he sensed was a labyrinth, the passages here much tighter than the grand halls that led to the summoning room. He lost track of how many turns he took, and there was no indication that his companions had followed him.
A dull glow made barely visible yet another turn in the warren. Morbed rounded the corner and stopped, spying the fisherman rushing out of a side room, aided by the faint purplish light of a lantern clutched to his chest.
Odd to carry the lantern in such a way, Morbed thought offhandedly as he set off after the old man.
The fisherman led Morbed on a swift chase up several flights of spiraling stairs and down another close hallway before ending in a cramped nook, where a narrow set of tall stone steps was briefly illuminated until the lantern light was cut off from above, the sudden darkness accompanied by the sound of a wooden trapdoor falling shut.
* * *
Winded from his exertions, Morbed fumbled up the stairs and, dagger ready, threw open the trapdoor to see the fisherman huddled at the base of a statue, staring into the lantern as if probing it for some hidden meaning. Morbed noticed for the first time a thick rusted chain fastened to the lantern’s large top ring, its other end affixed to a single manacle locked around the sailor’s left wrist.
Frigid air bit deep as Morbed climbed out and into the open space. The sky above had not blackened entirely, but here and there twinkling stars pierced the gloom. Surrounding him were several marble statues: men and women, some clothed, some nude; two small, imp-like creatures; a horned ghoul; something that appeared to be half-human, half-animal; an armored giant hefting a massive double-bladed axe; and just behind the thief, a hooded figure draped in flowing robes, arms outstretched as if awaiting an embrace. Wind hissed through the gallery.
A waist-high crenellated wall, the battlement of a rampart, swept out and around, enclosing the statuary. The blustering gale outside the wall suggested a wide, open gulf, and Morbed could tell without nearing the edge that a steep drop-off lay beyond. He looked up and over his shoulder to see towers looming above. He was in the bastion’s upper reaches but not at the highest point.
Morbed considered the statue hunched over the fisherman. It was a gargoyle-like creature, similar to the ones at the parapet in the summoning room, its bat wings thrust forward and curling in as if to shelter young, its mouth gaping like a snake with its jaw unhinged. Set deep within the gullet was a glittering white crystal. The sailor sat against the marble base in a heap, cradling the lantern, seemingly oblivious to his observer. Sensing no threat, Morbed sheathed his dagger and looked down to see one of the spirit wolves clambering up through the closed trapdoor. It emerged, its keen, twinkling eyes taking in the scene.
There was a sudden flash of light and a noise like a small crack of thunder.
Jaharra appeared opposite the fisherman. She stared, her pupils black pinpricks. Her hair whipped about like a tethered bird struggling to break free. “Something you’d care to explain?” she asked the fisherman, her voice uncharacteristically restrained.
The old man looked up as if just realizing they were there, his eyes wide and moist, pressed brows wrinkling the center of his forehead. “I prob’ly shoulda stayed away,” he managed, his jaw slack. “That’s what I shoulda done, but I couldn’t.”
Jaharra stepped forward. The sailor pulled the lantern closer. “You’re no fisherman, are you?” the wizard asked.
The old man’s lips pulled back on one side, revealing two missing teeth. “Spent my life on the water but not on no fishin’ hulk. Grew up on merchant ships . . .” The old man’s eyes fell once again to the lantern, its dim glow deepening his wrinkles.
Morbed sat near the edge of the trapdoor, listening intently.
The fisherman’s voice had dropped so low it seemed as though he was speaking to himself. “Trade. I always believed in fair trade,” he said, lantern light reflecting in his wet eyes. “It ain’t right to just take and not give nothin’ back.” Tears spilled over. “Pirates killed our whole crew, all except me. Hardly seems fair, does it?” His eyes flickered to Jaharra for an instant before locking once more onto the lantern. “They didn’t offer no choice, not really. Join the crew or feed the sharks. So I joined. Did things . . . awful things. Thievin’, fightin’, but I’s grateful I didn’t have to kill nobody. One night we come upon a fishing boat. Took everything the old sea dog had, and they was set to take his life, too, but he traded . . . Told the captain ’bout this island, ’bout the hermit who was thievin’ from Westmarch. Traded so he could live, see?”
Jaharra took a knee and propped her elbow atop it. The spirit wolf sat, cocking its head to one side.
“We came at nighttime. They made me walk with him up to the main gates, to make sure he didn’t give a signal or try to run, while they snuck off his boat, shadowed us in the forest. He told the guards we come to talk to the master of the house, that there’d be a new fisherman delivering goods and the master would want to know my face. They opened the doors, and that’s when the captain and his men swooped outta the darkness. That’s when the alarm sounded. They told me to watch the fisherman while the others washed the castle floors red.”
The old man’s hand r
ubbed down his face from forehead to chin. “We stayed behind while they pushed their way through, deep inside . . . We heard things . . . god-awful screams like I ain’t never heard no dyin’ man make. The fisherman begged me to let him go. Told me I could say he just escaped, but . . .” The seafarer’s face constricted. Spittle hung from a quivering lower lip. “I was scared, too scared o’ what they’d do to me if he got loose. Then we heard a sound like a white squall, a rogue wave roarin’ up outta the dark, and there was a crash . . . Me and the fisherman shut the doors, but they just come apart. We ran . . .”
The fisherman’s feet kicked out as if he were still running. “Chunks of stone twice the size of your head come down all around us. One caught the fisherman square on the crown. He fell but was still alive, callin’ for me to help him to his feet, but I could hear that thing comin’, and I kept runnin’. I didn’t look back, but I heard the old sea dog’s scream, sailin’ out across the night sky. That thing, it threw him . . . threw him way out into the woods. I heard that scream, and then I didn’t hear it no more, except . . . except every night when I closed my eyes.”
The old man stood up shakily and turned toward the battlement, holding the lantern close. “I made it to the hulk and out to sea. I lived . . . again. But nothin’ . . . nothin’ sat right with me. Shoulda been glad to escape, but I knew. Knew I had to come back. Had to make things right . . .”
Still staring out at the chasm, the sailor shuffled first one foot, then the other, toward the edge. “Kept hearin’ his voice inside my head after we got here. He wanted me to tell you. Warn you . . .” The old man took another step and held the lantern in both hands, gazing into it as if divining portents from a scrying glass.
Jaharra rose quickly. “Whatever you’re thinking about doing, don’t.”
“I shoulda had you go find him. Give him a burial or maybe set him out to sea. But I know now . . . I know how to make it right . . .”
Diablo III: Morbed Page 2
