by Tanya Huff
The zombies had left the steel door leading to the catacombs ajar.
A closer examination determined that the surrounding piles of rubble had not been pushed aside by the opening door. They’d been removed, one at a time, from in front of the threshold. Someone had gone down into the lower levels shortly before the zombies had come up.
The cousin Louise Renier claimed had found the artifact?
Perhaps.
It wasn’t important.
Finding the workshop was important. Freeing Natalia was important. The rest he’d deal with as circumstances forced him to. Not before.
Although the zombies had nearly taken it from him with the amulet, he held on tightly to a strong belief in his ability to deal with anything.
Louise Renier lifted her head, her ears pricked forward as she heard the sound of booted feet against stone. The tread was too heavy to be that of another goblin, and none of the family ever descended into the catacombs in skin form. It had to be Aurek Nuikin.
And it’s certainly about time, she snarled to herself.
The goblin, bleeding from a number of not-quite-fatal wounds, struggled weakly under her front paws. Adjusting her grip, Louise considered what she should do with it. In spite of what it obviously feared, she wasn’t going to eat it. Although her twin insisted goblins were an acquired taste, she found them bitter and containing far more gristle than should be anatomically possible. Old boots were less chewy and significantly tastier.
The footsteps came cautiously closer.
Louise shrugged furred shoulders, braced her haunches against the wall, and rolled the goblin off the ledge into the water. Its remaining eye opened wide with terror and, had it not earlier lost its tongue, it would have screamed. It gurgled once and sank without a trace. Just before she tucked herself away out of sight, Louise batted its tongue in after it.
Aurek followed the pull of the zombie bone along the narrow ledge, the trio of lights maintaining their distance around his head. After he passed, the lichen—obviously phosphorescent—glowed with a greater intensity. Unfortunately, the effect created new shadows rather than banishing the old ones.
With every sense warning him he wasn’t alone and suggesting greater speed, he continued to move methodically forward. He had every confidence he could survive an attack, regardless of type or direction, but doubted he’d last a heartbeat if he slipped and fell into the water.
His caution was justified when he reached the place where the ledge had crumbled. Looking like nothing so much as a large bite taken out of the stone—a resemblance Aurek sincerely hoped was coincidence—the ledge tapered inward to the curve of the wall, disappeared completely for a full twelve inches, then tapered out again.
Not trusting masonry clearly older than the rest of the city, he decided not to creep out onto the damaged stone even though a good eighteen inches remained, wide enough to hold him before the ledge disappeared. He’d jump over the damaged areas—from solid stone to solid stone. Or what he assumed was solid stone.
Scuffing his boots, clearing the place he’d launch himself from, he reasoned that if he kept his feet apart and his weight on the forward foot, he’d slide along the ledge rather than across it when he landed.
The quiet sound of water lapping against the gap nearly stopped his heart. As far as he could tell, these lower sewers had no currents. What, then, had moved the water?
Drawing in several deep breaths, his nose having become nearly numb to the stench, he shook himself loose and got ready. He couldn’t hesitate. It would have to be one smooth, powerful movement.
“One, two,” he murmured; then he stopped and shook his head. “I’m an idiot,” he told the catacombs at large, slipped his hand into his pocket and his thumb into the leather loop.
Up above, tucked into the arc of the vaulted ceiling, a foul smelling mist—its stink lost in a hundred other putrescent odors—drifted along the dripping stones. Although its edges were translucent and marked by eddies as air currents lightly touched its diaphanous perimeter, the center seemed, at times, almost opaque.
Aurek, now across the gap and back on his own two feet, never even noticed the mist as he paused to identify a series of scratches in the wall at about waist level. Goblin. He didn’t know what the marks meant, but they could’ve been directions, warnings, or love letters for all he cared.
With a contemptuous smile, he kept walking. Goblins were unworthy of his attention unless they were waving short swords in his face and barely worthy of it even then.
Can you possibly be as good as you think you are? Louise wondered from her hiding place, the contemptuous smile irritating her more than she’d thought possible. Or are you merely too arrogantly stupid to be afraid? Had it been Dmitri she watched, she would have assumed the latter but, though Aurek Nuikin and his younger brother were similar in a great many ways, this was not necessarily one of them. Aurek had years of living Dmitri didn’t have. Aurek had confirmed power Dmitri didn’t have. And if he was as good as he seemed to think he was, Aurek would have uses Dmitri didn’t have.
When the ledge spread out onto a broad platform, two body lengths wide and at least twice that long, Aurek felt the hair lift off the back of his neck. This close, he could sense the power trickling through the ancient shields.
“This is it, Natalia,” he whispered. “I know it is.”
Slowly, he crossed to the foot of the stairs. The ruined carvings almost seemed to writhe in the multiple shadows thrown by the wizard-lights. Holding out his hand, he watched the zombie bone rise until it angled against gravity and pointed directly up the stairs.
Moistening his lips, he put the bone away; he wouldn’t need it anymore. The longer he stood at the bottom of the stairs, strangely reluctant to begin the climb, the more the emissions spreading down from the archway made his skin crawl. It felt as if a thousand ants scurried about beneath his clothes.
All his instincts screamed, “Evil! Evil! Evil!”
How could he find his Natalia’s freedom in such a place? But how could he run away without being certain? Without, at least, discovering the full extent of the knowledge behind the shields? Hidden knowledge was wasted knowledge.
“There are no evil spells,” he reminded himself sternly. “Only spells put to evil uses.”
Manic laughter drew his gaze down to a scummy puddle filling a shallow depression worn into the stone just past the lowest step. A wild-haired man stared up at him from under heavy lids, thin lips twisted into a sneer. You’re a fool, Nuikin. You were a fool then, and you’re a fool now.
Teeth gritted so tightly that the pull of muscles along his jaw broke open the scab barely formed over his torn ear, Aurek stomped the puddle into a hundred scattered water droplets, each with its own laughing image. Resisting the urge to burn them all to faceless steam, Aurek began to purposefully climb the stairs.
The laughter followed him.
I don’t really hear it. It’s all in my head. I don’t really hear it. He’s dead. Repeating that mantra over and over, Aurek climbed a little faster, miserably aware that he couldn’t out-climb memory.
At the top of the stairs he paused, a little out of breath, and studied the arched doorway. Grotesque faces stared back at him from the stone. Some were meant to be men, and some were meant to be beasts, but the sculptor had captured on each of them an expression of utter terror. The unknown artist’s skill was so great that rather than feel sympathy for such torment, the observer felt caught up in their horror. Aurek couldn’t stop himself from glancing back over his shoulder, as if to see what they were watching for.
For a moment, he thought … but no. There was, as he knew there would be, nothing behind him.
Louise darted back behind the curve of a buttress, wondering what could possibly have caused Aurek Nuikin to turn around at the exact moment she stood exposed on the ledge. She didn’t think he saw her—his circle of light spread barely to the bottom of the stairs and humans had notoriously limited vision—but her heart pounde
d in her chest. Sitting back on her haunches, she groomed her whiskers with quick, jerky motions.
She was too close to success to spook him now. She couldn’t take the chance, not when in another moment she’d know.
And if he was as powerful as she suspected? What a weapon he’d be to wield against her twin!
On either side of the archway, facing each other across five and a half feet of open space, was a slit about three inches high and twelve inches long cut into the stone. Checking for traps, and not finding any, Aurek curiously approached the slit on the left.
His initial impression was incorrect. The slit hadn’t been cut into the stone; the pale gray blocks had been laid to form it. Beckoning a light closer, Aurek peered into the cavity. He could see nothing but the identical stones of the back wall; if anything lay abandoned on the floor, the angle was too steep for him to see it. Not until he crossed over to the right did he discover what the cavities had been used for.
Finger bones, their ends cracked and shattered from trying dig a way to freedom, lay on the bottom of the slit, time having long since turned tendons and ligaments to dust.
As he could feel no power gathered specifically around either cavity, Aurek could only assume that there had been no magical purpose in bricking these two people in alive. They weren’t guardians, and they were far too enclosed to have been an effective deterrent. Without the chance that had left the finger bones in sight, there would have been no way of knowing the cavities ever had been occupied. Had they been enemies? Slaves bought especially for the purpose? Had the ancient wizard gathered power from their terror and their lingering deaths? Had he taken pleasure in their dying? Had he put them there merely because he enjoyed causing pain?
Aurek hated unanswered questions. The search for solutions had driven him all his adult life. Unfortunately, he searched for a specific solution now and had no time to waste on uncovering general knowledge.
But after his Natalia was freed and he could approach scholarship once again not in necessity but in joy … He made a silent promise to the two and, heart pounding with near-painful anticipation, turned to face the entrance to the workshop.
There was no actual door, just the archway opening into the room. But light stopped at the inner edge of the arch, as though the shield protecting the workshop and its contents from discovery kept it from entering. If I have to remove the shield, Aurek mused, fingers splayed out but not quite touching the perimeter of the light, I won’t be entering the workshop today.
But the shield wasn’t a physical barrier and should have no effect on the physical plane.
Should have no effect.
Although the shield and his lights were the only spells Aurek could sense running, the shield itself would prevent him from sensing power use within its borders. He had no way of knowing what he’d step into. But it would take time and energy he didn’t want to expend to lower the shield.
Why should his Natalia have to wait any longer?
He rolled the piece of zombie bone between his fingers. He’d already destroyed the workshop’s guardians, and he could surely defeat anything that remained. He had, during the course of his life, learned more than most men would ever know.
Caution or cowardice; he would not force his Natalia to wait for her freedom.
Squaring his shoulders, he stepped through the shield.
Yes!
Louise crept closer, her ebony fur making her a large, rat-shaped shadow in the near darkness. There was nothing to do now but watch and wait and dream of the day when she would be Lord of Richemulot.
Overhead, the patch of mist drifted closer as though it, too, watched and waited.
Aurek stood perfectly still, the archway a blank sheet of opaque nothing at his back. In front of him were cases upon cases of books and scrolls. More lay scattered over a massive table, its surface scarred with a hundred ancient experiments. Metal cylinders, glassware of all descriptions, and squat clay jars sealed with stoppers of cork and wax jostled for room with pieces of bone, half a dozen whole skulls of various species, horns and claws and teeth. What had once been a human brain lay like a gigantic shriveled prune on a silver tray. A cabinet, six feet high by three feet wide by two feet deep, held a multitude of tiny drawers, each meticulously labeled in a language Aurek couldn’t read.
Yet.
In the far corner, a horsehide chair and worn footstool sat in a cluster of tall iron candlesticks. A thick book bound in pale leather and a pair of round spectacles rested on the small table drawn close to the chair.
The dust, which should have lain over everything like a translucent gray blanket, had been disturbed in a number of places. Red-brown stains were splattered over many of the nearer scrolls, and the drying body of half a rat still held a scrap of vellum in its teeth.
Perhaps Louise’s cousin used them to run interference when he retrieved the amulet, Aurek mused. With the rats keeping the zombies occupied, it would be easy enough to go quickly in and out again.
Trembling in reaction, Aurek reminded himself to breathe and moved forward, stepping over the body of a dead rat without even noticing it. He understood now why his own book had drawn the attention it had. He could no more walk away from this room than he could voluntarily stop his heart from beating. Such a huge amount of knowledge gathered in one place! Eyes wide, he lightly caressed one of the scrolls. Time had left them dry and brittle, but the preservation spells had held, and even the most delicate could still be read.
The spell he needed was here. He’d grown so attuned to it over the course of his desperate search that he could feel its presence without having to do anything but stand and stare.
Slowly he turned toward the book by the chair. He would undoubtedly already know a sizable proportion of the spells it contained—the spells that every wizard learned in common before scholarship turned to a specific path—but even if the book held only the one spell he had yet to learn, it was worth everything he’d gone through to find it.
In an alcove, a six-foot nightmare of bone straightened. A horned skull turned on a human spine over the shoulder bones of a bear. Dried blood flaked out of joints and crevices as it flexed clawed hands. Empty sockets stared at the intruder’s back.
Thrown sideways, bruised and bleeding from a gash on one arm, Aurek slammed into the cabinet and dropped to the floor—the remains of half a rat squashed under one knee. Scrabbling to his feet, he stared in horror at the creature that had attacked him. The zombies were not the only guardians the ancient wizard had left behind.
Nor, it appeared, were they the most dangerous.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t merely undead, for no living creature had ever worn flesh around that mismatched collection of bones. Diving under the massive table, hearing claws rip into the wood above him, Aurek searched his memory for some clue as to the horror’s identity.
It would have to be a necromantic spell.…
And then his blood chilled as he realized what it had to be: a bone golem. Created from the previously animated bones of skeletal undead. No more intelligent than other golems, but strong, and virtually indestructible. Worse still, the physical attacks were not the greatest danger he faced—the laughter of a bone golem could kill, and usually did.
It’ll laugh soon. Head cocked, listening to the sound of battle, Louise backed away. She’d never been closer than the bottom of the stairs, but she knew what guarded the workshop. Although the family traditionally had nothing to do with wizards or wizardry, they were adept at recognizing an opportunity for personal advancement and, after the first time Louise had heard the bone golem laugh, she’d made a point of learning what it was and how it might be used against Jacqueline.
She had a number of such opportunities cached throughout Richemulot, just waiting for the fates to provide her with the final piece she needed to set them in motion—and lo, the fates had provided Aurek Nuikin.
The simple scholar he claimed to be would stand no chance in a confrontation with her sister. A jo
urneyman wizard would die only a little less slowly. But if Aurek Nuikin had power enough to defeat the bone golem, he would have power enough to be an effective weapon against Jacqueline.
If the bone golem killed him, it proved he wasn’t strong enough for her purpose.
And it was all at minimal risk to her.
He had to defeat it before it laughed. Knowing what it was and what it could do would provide some small protection but not, Aurek feared, enough. Fire would destroy it, but fire would also destroy the rest of the workshop. If the golem burned with even half the intensity of the zombies, it would ignite every combustible object in the room.
A trio of ivory claws scored the heavy leather of Aurk’s boot, ripping away its protection. Another in the same place would tear off his foot.
Even if he had wanted to run, to abandon the book that held Natalia’s freedom, he couldn’t. The golem paced between him and the door.
All at once, the table’s protection was thrown aside as the golem finally figured out how to reach him. Aurek dove and rolled and felt his shoulders nearly yanked from their sockets as his pack was torn away. He screamed as claws gouged searing lines of pain into his back. Shredded, his clothing hung off his shoulders in a grim mockery of the fashionable dress of Pont-a-Museau.
Gasping for breath, he struggled to his knees, expecting another attack. When he turned, he saw the golem lift its horned head and its jaw begin to open.
All golems were susceptible to dispelling magic, but only if the wizard executing it was as powerful as the wizard who had originally created the creature. If it turned out he wasn’t powerful enough, he’d have spent all he had for nothing and leave himself defenseless.
But I haven’t much choice.
It was either take the chance or die for certain when it laughed.
