The remains of the figure of Ephraim lay on the marble, scattered in a dozen fragments. Now stained red with his blood.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“The sun ascends toward its zenith and yet night is gaining on us!” Eldaeus crowed, his wild, green eyes watching the unnatural cloud of darkness forming in the west. “We are getting close. I can feel them.”
Jikun’s lips twisted into a grimace of agreement. He could feel it too—a disturbing heaviness that weighed upon his soul. The air was clear but for a few unruly flurries, and yet something else was tangible. In his experience, there was but one taste that matched this bitterness… this weight. ‘Death.’
“What I wouldn’t give to have a god-damn necromancer right now,” Jikun hissed with resentment.
“You mean Navon?”
“…Yeah. That’s the one,” Jikun spat.
Eldaeus shrugged. “I would personally rather have a skilled hunter.”
Jikun turned enough in his saddle to catch the calculating contemplation of his last remaining companion. “…Why a hunter…?”
“Well, because wereboars are extremely dangerous prey.”
“…You know we’re hunting Relstavum, right…? That darkness is from Relstavum. I told you, wereboars do not exist.”
Eldaeus had learned better than to disagree with him. “Well, I do not think we are going to get Navon either way,” he huffed with an air of indignation.
Jikun threw him an exasperated glare. ‘At least I have Eldaeus,’ he boasted sarcastically. And if he had listened to Navon—listened that Darcarus had been using him—he might have had his captain as well.
‘No you wouldn’t, you fool,’ he rebuked himself, reminding his delusional affections that his captain had made himself very clear. Even if he had listened to the male, this outcome would likely have been the same.
As Darcarus had stated, they had walked different paths since Elarium.
Jikun briefly wondered where the two now were. Navon possibly remained on the war front, reverting into the same game they had spent a century playing. It was familiar to him and offered some semblance of unity to allay his fear of being alone. And the prince? He scoffed in derision. The prince was probably sailing to Sevrigel to rush to his brother’s side, Ryekarayn’s woes entirely forgotten.
Gods damn them both.
Eldaeus had more than proven his value as a companion—he, at least, was still beside him for the final task.
The silhouette of a town was materializing beneath an expanding sable cloud. ‘We have managed to stay on Relstavum’s trail through every trial.’ His gut tightened painfully. ‘And we are close, now.’
Their mares pawed restlessly on the cart-chiseled snow as they neared the unmanned gate. Darkness had settled over the land, a thick blanket that blocked the sun with such detestation that no light could penetrate through its shroud. Instead, the sky around them glowed orange, casting the town in an amber hue like the dying embers of a fire. The portcullis had been raised wide, but only a dusting of snow scuttled in to coat the desolate street.
The town was as still and silent as the frozen tundra.
Jikun felt a chill slither down his spine, but it was not the winter air that had caused it. He pulled the reins taut, drawing the mare to a stop before the walls.
“You may be right, Jikun,” Eldaeus spoke after a moment. “Wereboars cannot write.”
But the male’s insanity could not weaken the tangible fear that hung leaden in the air. Etched across the grey, stone walls were the familiar markings that had marred Dahel—black, chilling circles that were scrawled with precision across the surfaces. Jikun could almost pray for such a mental ailment that would deaden the dread that threatened to overtake his senses.
“YOU THERE!” a shout burst from the leftmost tower. A human had appeared, partially obscured beneath the remains of a parapet.
Jikun started at the unexpected living being. ‘They’re not dead yet?!’
“By Zephereus, are you all they sent?!” the soldier wailed in disbelief. “You won’t be enough. The man is mad! I said we need an ar—!”
But he never finished. A roar of otherworldly howls surged like a storm from the necromantic symbols below him, erupting with a flash of blood-red light. They reduced his booming voice to the pitiful cries of a child as they submerged the town of Rustall in a grey, hissing haze.
“Gods, it’s happening!” Jikun hollered as his mare reared. He clenched his thighs tightly as he fought from being flung from the saddle. Memories of hungry, clawing wisps and splayed bodies rushed across desert sands. “Like Dahel! Eldaeus, these people are going to die!”
There was an internal crack of thunder that shrieked its way to the town’s core and the necromancy flared to life. Black tendrils erupted like a nest of angry serpents, pouring from the visible symbols in droves, slithering their way into the streets and buildings in a ravenous quest for living creatures.
Eldaeus was out of the saddle in seconds. There was startling life in his eyes—not like the wild innocence that drove him to reckless trivialities, but a clarity of genuine comprehension.
The lucidity passed as quickly as it had come, but a fragment of sanity seemed to remain. “Give me the reins!” he cried. “Dismount!”
And without sensible reason, Jikun obeyed. The screams were escalating now, horrible, twisted shrieks that emanated not from the necromancy, but from the souls it tore from the living hosts. “What are you doing?!”
Howls… hideous howls! He could not hear himself above their gleeful keening! He felt as though his mind was slipping… sliding… rushing away from him…!
Eldaeus’ hand was upon his forearm, the horses gone. ‘Where?’ And then there was blood.
His blood?
No, Eldaeus’ blood. It wove a mark upon his frigid hand, intricate and unknown.
The keening dulled.
“What is this?” Jikun gasped, the voices whispering like distant thunder across his brain. He winced as he glimpsed the smoke spiraling through the town beyond. ‘Dying… they are all dying in there…!’
Eldaeus drew his blades. “Real Farvian protection magic!” And before Jikun could reply, the male sprinted for the city’s gate with a maniacal bellow that could rival the howl of any Darivalian wolf. “We must stop Relstavum and save the people!”
Jikun’s boots anchored him to the snow, like shackles binding him to the safety of the field outside. “This is—!”
“Our chance!” Eldaeus cried, and he halted a step before the town’s gate, turning and beaming with triumph. It was optimism that would have put Navon to shame.
And then he turned and leapt inside.
Jikun put a hand to his chest, feeling the terror inside expand. ‘Damn it!’ he growled to himself. ‘He is right! I cannot fight Relstavum directly, but while he’s distracted, I can sure as I god-damn breathe drive a blade through his back!’
Suppressing his fear, he crossed the border of the living and into Death’s domain.
The effect was instantaneous. A chill coiled into his lungs upon his first inhale, searing his insides with such cold that it burned as keenly as fire. Eldaeus had stopped several yards ahead, his blades hanging loosely in his hands as though the reality of his course had abruptly caught up to him.
“Do not break the seal,” Eldaeus uttered in an agonized whisper. His voice lilted oddly to Jikun as though from across a great distance, warped by the souls through which it passed.
Jikun gritted his teeth and advanced, pausing only briefly at the Faraven’s side. “Come, Eldaeus. We have to move!” He walked past the male, feet stirring the thick fog about their calves in a twist of shimmering silver. There was a soft squish beneath the heel of his boot and his mind leapt with images of raw, torn tissue. He steeled his resolve. “We have retribution to pay!”
The steps behind him immediately quickened. Even Eldaeus understood.
Yet they had not advanced far before the bodies began to litter the streets
—twitching corpses of things that had once been.
At first, there were merely one or two, shoved into the alleyways and mounds of snow at haphazard angles, as though mangled by some great beast. They twitched and flailed, but their eyes were glazed and the mouths hung loose and dry.
Jikun had seen enough dead to identify them easily—moving or not. His feet hastened until his accelerated breaths shredded his lungs with the baleful chill.
“We are getting closer,” Eldaeus gasped in mutual affliction, head flitting from terrace to terrace as though the stalactites were poised to rain down upon them.
Jikun’s breath wheezed painfully through cracked lips. “Not fast enough,” he replied, feeling his sense of self struggling arduously to remain within its corporeal structure.
But the Farvian warding endured, dulling the voices of the necromancy. Still, they tore at his core. Faster and louder now, as though the force of magic was congregating in the town’s center, beckoning them to join.
Nearby, a hand slammed into the frosted glass of a window pane. It slid away and a yowl of delight erupted from within.
“Faster!” Jikun urged. “Relstavum is harvesting the last of the living from this region of town—his magic is moving toward the center!”
He was running, now. The buildings were rushing by in blurs of brown and white, imprinted with corpses that littered their stairs and pressed against the windows. The magic had grown swifter since Dahel—where once the necromantic chaos had sent the people fleeing for refuge, now they appeared to escape no further than the steps outside their homes.
He skidded around the icy bend in the street and jerked to a stop. Eldaeus rammed solidly into his shoulder, but Jikun hardly noticed. His body had stilled, his breath so imperceptible that it created no more than a tiny puff of white before his lips. Something stood silhouetted in the supernatural glow.
“What is that ahead…?” Eldaeus murmured with an audible swallow.
For the briefest moment, Darcarus’ beasts conjured in great forms across Jikun’s mind. ‘He came back?’ His eyes strained into the darkness, speculating how far the prince had run before empathy had hastened his return.
But when the street ahead remained quiet, Jikun’s guard rose once more. “Like the serpent near Dahel…” he trailed off quietly. ‘The hel’onja is not the only undead beast Relstavum can summon…!’
In the unnatural darkness of the streets up ahead, two shapes were silhouetted against the amber glow—hulking, bent shapes, unnaturally suspended in time. The larger of the two stood on four legs, its posture as rigid as stone, but with fur rippling across its massive body in the whipping breeze. A vandrant, a territorial beast of Arisfare, the region in which many of the True Blood Sel’vi had resided before Eraydon’s death. And the other, Jikun recognized from Dahel—the creature that had flattened its body to unnatural thinness. An agretha, Esra had said. ‘Her favorite.’ He felt a prickle run across his skull, causing his hair to rise. Even across the distance, Jikun recognized the unmistakable glistening of scales and the spikes that jutted along its back and hindquarters in lethal spires.
But the creatures did not so much as glance his way.
“I do not believe they know we are here,” Eldaeus exhaled in almost tearful relief.
The adrenaline fled Jikun’s body in a rush. “We will avoid them,” he whispered, hardly audible even to himself. “Step into the alleyway.”
But the dark magic around them seemed to feed off of his alarm. The soft whisper he had spoken intensified, echoing across the distance, louder and louder until he screamed his command in the face of the tremendous beasts. “STEP INTO THE ALLEYWAY!”
The two forms abruptly quivered, as though awoken from a deep sleep. Jikun could hear the cracking of bones, the popping in sockets where tendons snapped in place like the stiff, dried string of a bow.
“They know,” Eldaeus croaked.
Jikun’s hand flew to the hilt of his blade and the movement evoked a chain reaction from the necromantic monstrosities. The vandrant crouched onto its haunches and then launched high across the cobbled stones to land with an earth-shattering thud before Eldaeus. The tremor sent the Faraven staggering backward in a flurry of snow.
There was a flicker of movement in the distance where the beasts had stood sentinel.
The agretha had vanished.
“Eldaeus, watch out!” Jikun shouted, frantically scanning the landscape for some sign of the creature.
Silver fog swirled in web-like strands and the Darivalian leapt to the side, crashing into a booth of abandoned leather. He raised his hand against a churning pool of black that broke from the concealment and flowed rapidly toward his feet. Damn it, this was a delay he could not afford!
He threw his frustration into his magic; ice ruptured powerfully from the earth in a disarray of stalagmites, puncturing through the black liquid as uselessly as a sword through water. A few shards of ice careened from his control to pierce through nearby windows and puncture writhing corpses.
The agretha retreated into the darkness and Jikun used the momentary reprieve to glance for Eldaeus. Perhaps they could yet devise a swift escape…!
No sooner did he allow himself to be distracted than the pool of black rematerialized at Jikun’s breast, erupting with spines. Three deflected off his breastplate to leave behind a massive dent, two gouged clean through the scale mail along his arm, and the last tore his ear in two, spraying his hair with blood.
‘It’s fast!’ There was no fleeing this beast. Instinct gripped Jikun coherently above his pain; he scrambled for the opposite end of the booth.
Across the street, Eldaeus had daringly scaled to the upper story of the nearby building and was hanging precariously by the ice-coated balcony rails. He swung at the pursuing beast as it leapt and embedded its talons into the stone.
Jikun pressed his hilt to his bleeding arm. ‘At this pace, Relstavum will finish the spell before I return them to the earth!’ He rolled around the booth, ice crawling at his fingertips.
The beast had vanished once again.
‘Shit!’ Jikun swore, leaping to his feet. He stumbled once more into the open expanse of the street, scouring the road and walls for the black pool.
There was a soft ripple in the shadows and, on instinct, Jikun drew the snow into a wall of ice, sucking the moisture from the air and intensifying the already dry atmosphere.
A thud of spines smashed against his barricade.
He was making no progress on the offensive! Was Navon truly so necessary to his magical success?! At the Pass, the male had almost killed him! While Jikun had never honed his magic, his lack of experience had never endangered anyone but himself. He could feel the memory of the pain Navon had inflicted expanding in his chest… one rib threatening to tear apart from the other…
And a thought pushed past his resentment.
The instant the volley ceased, Jikun countered. He spun free of his protection, causing the snow to melt and reform as great spears of ice that ripped through the creature’s legs. As the agretha’s pinned body quivered to liquid once more, its form bulged, flexed, writhed…
And then exploded in an internal mass of expanding ice.
“Fuck you, Navon,” Jikun exhaled heavily through the tinkling of icy shards. He spun around the frosty street.
The Faraven was standing calmly in a bank of snow, the headless body of the vandrant pumping blood out at his feet.
Jikun had no time to wonder at Eldaeus’ miraculous success. “Are you alright?” he grunted, sheathing his blade.
Eldaeus’ grin spread and he nodded triumphantly. “Not a scratch on me, but my boots are stained.” He looked down and turned out his heel. “And I am not certain if I can scrub this out.”
Jikun’s concern dulled to be replaced by a familiar exasperation. “Focus, you half-wit! Relstavum is still—!”
His words were terminated as a keening shattered through the protective barrier on his mind. The taste of iron filled hi
s mouth and he whirled around. From the town’s walls beyond came a rushing, twisting cloud of black, as though the shroud over the sky had dipped down and now roiled and careened its way to them. Instinct seized hold of Jikun and he sprinted forward, grabbing his companion as he went. “RUN!” He looked down at his hand frantically, but the Farvian protection was still intact. ‘Maybe this is it—the culmination of the spell!’ “Faster, Eldaeus! This might be our only chance!”
The Faraven let out a squawk as he glanced over his shoulder. “You do not have to warn me! The proximity of that sea is enough motivation for me!” He paused and then grinned. “I just made a rhyme, did you hear that? Sea, me?”
Jikun willed himself to run faster. ‘Ice. You can still barricade yourself in ice,’ he told himself, but he was plagued with doubts of whether his magic could protect him from such a sinister force.
The hazy forms of buildings ahead were taking shape now, growing in size and prestige. A statue loomed amongst them, brandishing a stone sword to the raging heavens. ‘The town square!’ If Relstavum controlled his souls at the center of Rustall, then these were the man’s final moments…!
And then Jikun’s body lurched, invisible talons ripping at him from the inside. He tottered, regaining his balance through pain-filled gasps.
Beside him, the Faraven’s eyes bulged and his mouth opened in a silent cry of agony. “I do not think,” he rasped, “that the Farvian protection can hold if we move much closer!”
Jikun felt the ground beneath his feet shift and a thousand hands, as faint and delicate as cobwebs, reached from the teeming ocean of silver beneath them. The Farvian symbol on Jikun’s skin burned with fury. “We can’t stop here!” he shouted, and dove behind a nearby empty booth. “We have to move closer—I cannot control enough magic to cross the distance and we cannot afford to miss…!”
The thick smoke, churning with the consumption of the city, was advancing. They were running out of time! Jikun leaned sharply from the booth, straining to discern the shapes through the mist at the town’s square. A wailing of souls ripped past him from a nearby building, blowing the glass clear from the windows to shower them with tiny shards. And then the mist ahead dimmed and a silhouette of a man became emblazoned against the reddening sky, tall and weathered, wearing a thick cloak that billowed in the howling wind. He emanated raw power as he raised his arms to Emal’drathar, commanding the otherworldly storm to do his bidding.
Heroes or Thieves (Steps of Power 2) Page 52
