At what felt like the top level of the keep, I arrived in a room. I stopped and peered around. The space was crammed with bookcases heaped with old tomes and folios, papers spilling from them. Various writing implements, scrying devices, and spell items were scattered across tables. Chairs for writing and reading sat here and there. I picked my way further inside, half stunned.
I was in Lich’s library/lab, yes, but I was also in the de facto headquarters of the Order of Magi and Magical Beings. And it wasn’t the huge celestial hall I’d imagined, but a bachelor pad in need of housekeeping. My eyes fell to a half-finished letter to a magic-user regarding some request or other she’d made. Many of my own messages would have been sent to and from this same room. I felt like I was peering behind the curtain in Oz.
My cane tugged and pointed at the far side of the room. On a corner of one of the tables, a necklace with a lamp-shaped pendant hung from a small stand. A sickly orange light glowed through the pendant’s sides. The glass pendant, I thought in disbelief. I’ve found the glass pendant.
I glanced around. And still no sign of Lich.
I pulled the sack from my belt as I sped across the room. I set the sack on the table but hesitated as I reached for the glass pendant. Strong magic stirred inside it. Of course there’s strong magic, I thought, trying to talk down my wariness. It’s sustaining Lich’s life force.
I nodded to myself and lifted it from the stand.
The pendant began to scream.
I cupped a hand over it as though it were a mouth, but the screaming persisted. “Shut up,” I hissed, encasing the pendant in a shield, hoping that would mute the sound. But no luck. The alarm was magical.
I looked around wildly as footsteps slapped up the steps. The fish and slug creatures were emerging from the stairwell and entering the room, scimitars drawn. They advanced on the glass pendant, which was pulsing brightly enough to throw my shadow against the back wall.
“Vigore!” I cried, sweeping the cane toward the creatures. As the force toppled bookcases and shoved the creatures back, I reached into a pocket for the dragon sand. I scattered it in an arc and shouted, “Fuoco!” Flames exploded from the sand, engulfing tomes and creatures before settling into a high wall between us.
I really had to hurry now.
I dug into the sack, pulled out a wand, and aimed it at the glass pendant.
“Disfare!” I shouted. A burst of bright red energy emerged, enveloping the pendant. But when the energy dissipated, the glass faces remained intact. The pendant continued to pulse and scream.
I exhausted the wands and moved on to the maces and amulets, repeating the invocation. But though the magic in each enchanted item was powerful, none seemed to have any effect on the glass pendant.
C’mon, dammit, I thought, digging in the sack. It has to be one of you.
I squinted back at the flames. The fire was keeping the creatures at bay, but it would only be a matter of time before the commotion attracted Lich—unless, of course, he was already on the battlefield, claiming souls. I was tempted to tap into the collective, to check on them, but my father was right. My focus needed to be here. I reached into the sack again.
Only one item remained: the rusty dagger.
“Please, let it be you,” I whispered, and plunged the blunt blade against a glass face.
Something broke. The screaming stopped. Holy crap—it worked, I thought, my ears ringing in the sudden silence. But when I looked down, the pendant was intact, the glass not even scratched. It was the dagger that was in pieces.
“How unfortunate,” someone said.
I wheeled to find Lich standing on the far side of the room, his back to me. The flames had been extinguished. Several of the fish and slug creatures were on the ground, burnt to a smoking crisp. The rest were arrayed on either side of Lich in a defensive formation.
“Your collaborators were counting on you,” Lich said. “Now half of them are fallen while the rest hardly have strength enough to stand, including your father.” A cold wind blew through the narrow window he was peering out of, ruffling his robe and shuddering my sweat-soaked body. “I’ll harvest their souls in a moment, but first I want to make you an offer.”
I spiked the glass pendant against the floor and tried to smash it with my heel. I grunted with the effort, but it was like trying to crush a block of granite. The magic that protected it was too strong. I called up the syllables my grandfather had left on the vault wall.
“Gug-lugal-i!” But though I drove power through them, they did nothing.
“Come now,” Lich said, turning to face me. “There’s no point in carrying on like that.”
I looked up at him, my legs trembling with exhaustion and fear. As a last resort, I unsheathed my sword and stabbed the pendant. Lich watched me patiently, his gray, vein-mapped head canting to one side as though in pity. He signaled to his creatures to move away as he stepped between them.
“I understand your fear,” he said. “When I discovered the fissure to Dhuul, when I understood his desires, I was just as revolted as you are now. He whispered of returning the world to a primordial state, of feeding on the dissolution. Horrible, horrible images, Everson.”
“Yeah, so horrible that you’re helping them come true,” I said, giving the pendant another vain jab.
“Like I told you, his arrival was inevitable. One could either ignore that or come to the best terms possible. My siblings chose the former, leaving me to act as Dhuul’s lone diplomat. Not at all what I wanted.”
“Sure.”
“It was a Faustian bargain, Everson, I agree. I would help deliver Dhuul into the world in exchange for the Order being spared. Understand this, though. Once Dhuul feeds on the enormous release of energy, he will leave in search of other worlds. He will leave us to rebuild this world, to construct new order from the chaos. Don’t you see? The Order of Magi and Magical Beings will become a godhood, Everson. We will be the Creators, the life-givers.”
With Lich’s mind warped by centuries of Dhuul’s influence, I could only imagine the nightmare world he would bring about. I peered at the horrid creatures on either side of him.
“The souls you believe I’ve sacrificed,” he said, gesturing toward the window, “they suffer now, yes, but they will soon know power they never thought possible. And all because I was willing to look on the horrible being Dhuul, and where others saw dissolution and death, I saw opportunity.”
“Opportunity for yourself.”
“For the Order,” he insisted. “The only entity I have ever truly served.”
“Bullshit.” I aimed the sword at him.
“I understand the enmity you feel toward me,” he said, taking another step forward. “I did take your mother’s life. Nothing I say can, or should, lessen that in your mind. But do know that when I entered the Refuge, it was to make the same appeal to them as I’m making to you now. They were only stalling the inevitable and, in doing so, prolonging the agony of the souls toiling below. The members of the Front attacked me, and I fought back.”
“And lives were lost, yeah, yeah, yeah,” I interrupted, anger spiking through me. “Do you want to know what really happened? You were the runt of Saint Michael’s children. You didn’t get the powers you thought you deserved, and so you went looking for them. You found the fissure to Dhuul, a being that could only emerge into our world if someone helped him. He promised you power. You jumped at it. Period. End of story. All this talk of making the tough choice for the Order is horseshit. Dhuul probably didn’t have to convince you of anything, either. Didn’t even have to use Whisperer magic. He simply made the offer and then let your power-hungry little mind come up with the rationalizations all on its own. You killed your brothers and sisters. Murdered them. Let that sink in for a second.”
Lich’s brows crushed downward. “I could destroy you now, is that what you want? Your power is undeveloped, your soul of no use to the effort, and yet I’m offering to safeguard it, to make you a god.”
; “Why?” I challenged.
“Because it’s my role, Everson. I may appear different, but in many ways, I am still Chicory. I am still the one who looks after you. The only reason I kept you in the dark—all of you in the dark—is because I didn’t want to see you destroyed. As head of the Order, I’m responsible for you.”
Something like pleading took hold in his hideous eyes, and I hesitated. Lich actually saw himself as a parental leader.
“It offended me to learn that your mother and grandfather cloaked their powers from me,” he continued, “that others faked their deaths and went into hiding. It offended me deeply. If only they’d listened.” His voice faltered, as though threatening to regress to the little brother he’d once been. “If only they’d trusted me.”
I saw an opening, however slim, and lowered my sword slightly. “I know you believe Dhuul’s arrival is inevitable,” I said. “I know you believe the bargain you made is the only way to spare the Order, but it’s not.” I thought about the Word my father and the others had spent centuries cultivating. I thought about them battling Dhuul’s creatures below. “Please. Release the souls from the portal, and help us cast Dhuul out. It can be done.”
“And what would become of us?” Lich challenged.
“There’s a chance we won’t make it,” I admitted. “But the magic-users you’ve watched over these years will survive. The Order will survive. Isn’t that what you want?”
I was trying to appeal to his paternal instincts, and for an instant, I believed he might relent. But his jaw clenched suddenly, molars bulging through the skin of his cheeks. Dark energy stormed around him as tentacles sprang from his back. “Die then!” he shouted.
The creatures, which had been shifting and murmuring while Lich and I talked, rushed forward, scimitars flashing. I battered the monstrosities with force blasts and slashed my blade at those who came too close. I didn’t hold back. If this was to be my final fight, there was no sense in conserving energy. But as a second wave of attacks commenced, my vision began to waver. I was still suffering from the blood loss. How much longer before Thelonious came swooping in?
“The Banebrand was meant to prevent the ruination of the Order,” Lich said from behind his horde. “It’s ironic, then, that you and the others intended to use the weapon to bring that ruination about. To destroy the only member of the original Order strong enough to still be standing.” He was no longer the father figure, but the gloating youngest child.
I grunted as I swung my sword through a fish-man’s neck.
“Your grandfather found the Banebrand, yes. But he did a poor job concealing it. The weapon remained in the vault after his death. I acquired it—a handsome stiletto, I’m sure you’ve been wondering—and cast it into the pit. The Banebrand is no more. I cannot be destroyed.”
I refused to let his words bury my will.
Flinging the last of the dragon sand at him, I used what strength remained in me to ignite it. Red-orange fire swallowed him, but Lich stepped through the burst a moment later, unscathed. He strode from amidst the flames and his army of creatures. I backed from his glowing eyes and writhing tentacles. Tripping over the glass pendant, I fell against the back wall.
“I cannot be killed,” Lich said, “As far as you are concerned, I am the Death Mage.”
The tentacles seized me and wrapped me around. A smell of rot and death came off them. When Lich’s withered face clenched, muscles inside the black appendages bulged. I grunted as my ribs crushed around my heart and lungs. With the pain, red lights slashed over my vision.
A blast from the sword repelled him once, I thought weakly. If I can just summon enough power…
My sword arm was pinned to my side, but my hand and wrist were free. I cocked them up until the blade was aimed at Lich. With the breath of air I had left, I prepared to utter the invocation … and then stopped.
The stiletto Lich had recovered in the vault.
The symbols Grandpa had written on the wall and made permanent through magic.
A gift he had left me long ago.
In an instant of insight, the pieces snapped together. I wanted to laugh at the obviousness of it. Instead, I grunted as the ribs down my right side cracked in a goring line.
I know what they mean, I thought through the pain. I know what the symbols mean.
And with that knowledge, my sword stiffened in my grasp and began to sing in a high and powerful note. Lich’s eyes canted downward. His tentacles softened and writhed, as though in distress.
I drew a choked breath and uttered, “Vigore.”
Rose-colored fire exploded from the blade and plumed against Lich’s chest. He screamed as the force sent him into a backward roll, tar-black blood spilling in his wake. I fell to the floor at the same moment he landed against the far wall. The tentacles that had been torn from his body twitched and slapped over the burning floor between us. The sword was still in my grasp, still glowing.
The creatures fled, while Lich moaned and tried to push himself upright.
“There’s an ancient Hittite story,” I grunted through my jagged breaths. I staggered in a circle in search of the glass pendant I’d kicked with my heel moments before. “Known mostly to scholars … mythologists. Goes like this. Poor farmer raises prize ram. Greedy king wants ram for himself. Farmer coats prize ram in mud, then cleans and festoons common ram from his stock. King’s soldiers come and take common ram. Farmer gives prize ram to son.”
Lich sat against the far wall, a tarry pool spreading around him. I spotted the glass pendant behind a table and used a foot to drag it out by its chain.
“King never knows the difference,” I finished.
I’d been wrong in the vault. The symbols Grandpa had etched were Akkadian syllables, yes, but when that script had been adopted by the Hittites, the symbols became logograms: entire words. In this case, gug lugal-i meant “ram to king.” Grandpa had encoded his actions in the Hittite story. A story that, as scholars of mythology, we both knew.
I held the sword up. Fresh rose-colored light bloomed along the blade’s glinting edge. It had taken a few moments, but across the room, understanding finally dawned in Lich’s eyes. The king in this case was him; the prize ram was the Banebrand weapon. Which meant the stiletto in the vault had been a fake. The blade Grandpa had passed to me was the real item.
“N-no,” Lich stammered. “No!”
He threw his hands forward, fingers writhing. Inky black magic spewed from them and coursed across the room. But upon reaching me, the magic broke apart, killed by the Banebrand.
I positioned the glass pendant between my feet and, gripping my sword in both hands, squared my body to Lich’s. “For your crimes against the Order of Magi and Magical Beings, including the murder of my mother, Eve Croft, I sentence you to the ultimate penalty.”
“I can give you eternal life, infinite power,” he babbled. “Anything and everything you’ve ever—”
“Disfare!” I shouted and drove the blade down. The tip crunched through the glass face, and, in a blinding flash, the glass pendant blew apart. I fell against the back wall and landed hard.
I looked up in a daze as slivers of light streamed from the glass pendant in a celestial show. They were the souls Lich had entrapped. Their beauty stole my breath. In them, I saw the wrongness—the absolute wrongness—of what Lich had done. Such things were never meant to be imprisoned.
The souls encircled me on their way from the keep, healing me. And in them I felt the wisdom and power of those who had come before, all the way to Lich’s siblings: the original Order.
One soul lingered.
“Lazlo,” I whispered.
You found me, he said. Now see that it is ended.
The final light, Lazlo’s light, streamed off, and the ruined room dimmed. The glass pendant lay in pieces beyond my outstretched legs. Beyond it, against the far wall, slumped a rotting corpse, black toadstools and mold already growing over it, consuming it. The only thing streaming from Lich’s body was
a dark, putrid liquid. He had no soul of his own, after all. He’d pledged it to Dhuul long ago.
The earth shook.
I pushed myself to my feet and made my way to the narrow window beside Lich’s body. The pit yawned in the middle of the nightmare landscape below, but the matrix of souls that had held it open was no more. The sides were shuddering and sliding down, taking the shadow creatures with them. What remained of the Front backed from the far side of the pit, carrying the fallen.
The magic-users were too far away for me to distinguish the living from the dead.
Marlow? I called into the collective. Father?
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Father? I tried again, but something seemed to have disrupted my connection to the collective. The keep shuddered and rumbled around me. I spun to find cracks spreading in the walls, chunks of stone falling from the ceiling. Without Lich to sustain them, his creations were falling apart.
I fled down the stairs as a wall collapsed behind me.
“Protezione!” I called. More stones broke over the spherical shield that took shape around me. I darted and leapt my way down, bursting from the keep moments before the entire structure collapsed.
Without breaking stride, I aimed my sword behind me and shouted, “Forza dura!”
The force launched me like a cannon ball. I cleared the leech-infested moat, landing in the toadstools beyond. I rolled for several yards, sprang up, and stumbled into a fresh run. By the time I reached the other magic-users, I was out of breath, heart hammering. I removed the robe of John the Baptist.
Only half of those I’d arrived with remained. The others lay in a solemn line.
“What happened to—?” I started to say, but several of the magic-users silenced me with fingers to their lips. They stepped apart, and I saw Marlow kneeling, facing the pit, power warping the air around him.
Joy and relief flooded through me.
“He’s forming the Word,” a woman whispered to me.
It took a moment for the message to register. “But I destroyed the glass pendant,” I insisted. “The pit is collapsing.” I looked beyond my father to where the hole in the earth rumbled and coughed.
Death Mage (Prof Croft Book 4) Page 21
