She wondered if she would ever see him again but, re-materializing on the surface, Lady Veber’s only ambition was to see her son. The consequences of her actions might mean a death sentence, but knowing she had avenged her boy’s illness gave her a sense of relief. The rest would take care of itself.
From the transmat pad near the cliffs overlooking the ocean, Lady Veber walked purposefully up the trail to the estate. A few staff members and one or two robots met her at the entrance. She heard them talking about the state of her affairs— budgets and personnel issues— but their words were clutter to her ears. She drowned them out with thoughts of Philip and how he might have been faring since she was away.
In the wing of the estate where their private quarters were located, Lady Veber passed her own door on her way to Philip’s. Although she was tempted to enter unannounced to surprise him, she paused to knock. She waited, but hearing no response, she tried the handle and went in. The lights were off, except for a few candles burned down to stumps. Concerned, she crossed through to the bedroom.
Before Lady Veber had left for Aldorus and the capital city, she had been aware that her son had started collecting animals so she was not surprised to see the cages, even if their silence was unnerving. Her attention, however, was immediately drawn to a figure standing with its back to her in the dull candlelight.
“Philip?” she asked.
The person turned. Now in less shadow, it was clearly a woman and completely naked. She was also without hair and her skin was tattooed with strange lettering across her entire body. It took Lady Veber a moment to recognize her as Annis, the handmaiden.
“Annis—?” Lady Veber began but stopped.
The handmaiden’s eyes, cloudy white without pupils, showed signs of recognition, but didn’t reply. Behind her, beside a wooden table, the rough outline of a door was scrawled onto the wall with white chalk. Lettering like that written on Annis’ flesh was inscribed around the edges of the fake door.
“Where’s my son?” Lady Veber pleaded.
Annis, or whoever she was now, began moving toward her with plodding steps. With a scream, Lady Veber ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Chapter Sixteen
When the stranger first arrived at the Katak village, one of the younger froglings went to the chief’s hut and told him the news. Lying in a cot covered with moss to comfort his tired bones, the chief struggled out of bed, standing with the help of his wooden staff.
“There’s some people here,” the young Katak croaked.
“Alright,” the old frogling said. “I’ll be there in a moment.”
When the chief emerged, most of the villagers had assembled around the main bonfire still smoldering from the night before. On the far side, the stranger waited. He was taller than the Katak or even the Sylvan. He wore brown vestments and carried a tall staff of curved wood, topped with a skull. His skin was gray and chalky like bleached bones, and his eyes blazed like fires from otherwise empty sockets.
The stranger was not alone. Accompanying him were creatures the chief learned later were called Ghuls. Like their master, they were somewhere between alive and dead, with rotting skin hanging off their bodies in various stages of decay.
As the chief approached, the stranger reached into his mind.
Greetings, the stranger said telepathically.
Who are you? the chief thought.
I am Ghazul of the Necronea.
Necronea?
My people live below the ancient cemetery west of here, Ghazul said.
What do you want?
The chief could feel the stranger’s eyes staring through him, examining every fiber of his being.
You’ve served your village a long time, Ghazul said, but now you see the end is coming and you’re afraid.
All things die, the chief replied.
But do they have to?
What are you suggesting?
Life everlasting, the stranger said. I’m offering you and your people life without end, and in return, I ask only that you provide us with what we need.
Which is what?
His mouth, without lips, turned up at the corners, baring his teeth in a gruesome smile.
Sacrifice.
When Sir Golan and the rest of the group arrived at the crypt, the three froglings outside were heading back toward the village. Unlike the rest of the Katak, these warriors showed no interest in fighting.
“Tell them their chief is dead,” the knight said, turning to Silandra.
Silandra focused on the Katak, singling out the apparent leader.
“He says good,” she replied after a pause. “He says their chief made a deal with the man who lives below the graves. He says they were promised endless life but given only death.”
“What about Sisa?” Mel asked.
“She’s inside the crypt,” Silandra replied.
Sir Golan approached the marble building, giving the door a firm shove.
“It appears to be locked from the inside,” he said, tapping the metal with the tip of his sword. “The door is thick, too. I doubt even Rippana could do more than scratch it.”
Mel reached into her satchel, removing a tool shaped like a small wand.
“What’s that?” the knight asked.
“A plasma torch,” Mel said.
“How novel...”
Mel stared at him, her eyebrows raised.
“It’s... really not.”
“Fair enough,” Sir Golan replied, sheathing his sword and crossing his arms.
Sizing up the door, Mel set the torch against it, a brilliant blue light erupting from the tip, and began cutting a long, narrow swath across the metal surface. In less than a minute, a slab fell inward with a loud, echoing crash.
Sir Golan stepped inside first, calling in the rest soon after. The crypt was a single room with a limestone sarcophagus filling most of it. Figures were carved along the sides of the coffin and the lid, but the knight did not recognize the creatures depicted.
“What are they?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” Silandra replied.
“They’re running from that fellow there,” Squire remarked, pointing at a biped figure with tentacles coming from its face.
“It’s the same person portrayed on top,” Sir Golan said, motioning to the lid.
Sculpted in relief, the humanoid lay facing the ceiling, his arms crossed. A pair of angry eyes glared from beneath heavy, curled brows at the center of a domed head. Instead of a mouth, four tentacles protruded from his lower jaw. Each feeler coiled around itself, reaching out as if to touch Sir Golan and the others.
“Who cares?” Mel shouted, throwing her arms in the air. “Has anyone noticed there’s no other exits in this room? Where did Sisa go?”
Sir Golan, realizing she was right, took another look at the coffin lid.
“Help me with this, Squire,” he said.
The Cruxian and the robot pushed against the top of the sarcophagus. At first, the lid remained stubbornly motionless, but after a few more attempts, the limestone gave way, sliding a few feet to the side.
Sir Golan peered over the side.
“It’s empty,” he said.
“How can that be?” Mel asked.
“Except for a staircase,” the knight went on.
Mel clenched both fists and shook them. “Gah!”
“You’re very excitable,” the knight observed.
When Silandra reached the bottom of the staircase, the others had fanned out into a circular chamber lined with blazing torches. Thick roots twisted along the walls and hung from the ceiling. The air smelled dank and rotten.
“There’s tunnels going in every direction,” Mel said, shining a flashlight down one of the passages.
“The floor is covered in tracks,” Sir Golan noted. “Difficult to tell which ones are fresh.”
“Can you sense your daughter?” Squire asked.
In her mind, Silandra focused her thoughts on Sisa like squint
ing at a fuzzy object in the distance.
“I think...” she began, “I think she’s in that direction.”
Silandra nodded toward a tunnel no different than the rest.
His sword drawn, Sir Golan cautiously plodded inside with Mel behind him providing light. Silandra followed and Squire, with his energy shield active, protected the rear. The path was narrow and serpentine, everyone except Mel having to crouch at times to avoid hitting their heads.
Scraping the top of his helmet against the tunnel roof, Sir Golan sent a scattering of loose dirt into Mel’s face.
“Watch what you’re doing!” she protested.
“I beg your forgiveness,” the knight replied ceremoniously.
“Why do you talk like that anyway?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“Never mind...”
Sir Golan stopped.
“What is it?” Mel asked.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” he said, “shine your light over there.”
The beam of the flashlight landed on an object protruding from the ceiling at an angle. The knight tapped his sword against it, producing a wooden sound.
“I believe it’s a coffin,” Sir Golan said.
Silandra came closer and noticed the end of the coffin was torn open, the edges splintered.
“It’s empty,” she said.
As they continued, they came across more caskets poking from the dirt, each one broken and empty. A few were scratched along the sides as if by claws. Silandra became aware of another pattern.
“The tunnel keeps changing direction every time it hits a coffin,” she said.
“Oh, lord,” Mel said. “They’re using the tunnel to access the bodies. I bet all the tunnels are used for that. There must be hundreds of graves in that cemetery.”
“To what end?” Squire asked.
“Hell if I know!” Mel replied.
Squire emerged from the narrow tunnel into a spacious chamber, the others having come out before him. The walls of the domed room were red clay with rocks jutting from between tree roots. Entrances to several more tunnels were visible in the dim light and the roar of flowing water was coming from the far side.
“Sisa’s footprints are going that way,” Sir Golan said, motioning toward the thundering noise.
Mel trained her flashlight in that direction, the beam catching watery mist floating through the air.
“She’s close,” Silandra said anxiously.
“Make haste!” Sir Golan shouted, starting to run.
Following his master, Squire and the others quickly caught up with the knight at a wooden bridge on the edge of a cliff. An underground river cascaded below, disappearing into the dark. The other end of the bridge was lost in the gloom.
“Looks kinda rickety,” Mel remarked, scanning the planks with her light.
From somewhere up ahead, a girl’s voice cried out, echoing off the rocks. “Let me go!”
“Sisa!” Silandra shouted.
“Mom?”
Silandra sprinted down the bridge with Sir Golan close behind. Mel looked at Squire for a moment before running after them. The robot followed, his heavy feet clomping against the soft, soggy wood. When he caught up, his master was slashing the arm off a humanoid creature with sickly skin and glazed eyes. Silandra and Sisa, illuminated by Mel’s flashlight, were sharing an embrace. With a stroke of Rippana, Sir Golan sent the creature’s head flying into the water rushing below. The rest of its corpse collapsed against the railing.
“What is that thing?” Mel asked.
“A Ghul,” Sisa replied, buried in her mother’s arms.
“Foul monsters,” Sir Golan muttered.
Watching Silandra and her daughter together, Squire regretted his lack of emotional depth. He wondered if Mel could give him an upgrade.
From the darkness, farther down the bridge, sounds started coming closer.
“We should go,” Mel said, turning back the way they had come.
“You go,” Sir Golan relied. “I’ll hold them off while you make your escape.”
“Should I stay too?” Squire asked.
“No need,” the knight said. “Now be off!”
Reluctantly, Squire obeyed his master and followed Mel and the two Sylvans. Before they reached the end of the bridge, Mel stopped.
“What is it?” the robot asked.
“Look!” Mel replied.
The hulking shape of a man blocked their way. Eight feet tall, the creature was covered in patches of skin, each different but all sewn together in a jigsaw puzzle of flesh. On each patch, an archaic letter was tattooed and glowed with a bluish hue.
“It’s a golem,” Silandra said, “held together with Dark Psi.”
“Dark psionics?” Mel asked. “I knew someone who used that...”
“It’s an abomination,” Silandra replied.
“He wasn’t so bad...”
The flesh golem planted one of his heavy feet on the bridge. Squire felt the planks shake.
“Without Sir Golan,” the robot said, “I don’t know how to stop this monster.”
“The power comes from the ancient writing on his skin,” Silandra said. “We must destroy that to destroy the golem.”
The creature’s other foot came down hard on the bridge. His eyes were nothing but specks of black like shards of coal.
“Mel,” Squire said, “you didn’t happen to upgrade me with a flamethrower by chance?”
“There wasn’t enough time,” Mel replied.
“That’s a pity.”
“Wait,” Mel said, reaching into her bag. “This’ll do the trick.”
She pulled out a metallic cylinder and, removing a round pin on the top, tossed it at the golem’s feet.
“Stop!” Silandra shouted but the device exploded, engulfing the creature in a fireball.
Covered in sticky, burning napalm, the golem waved his arms and stomped his feet. The bridge swayed and buckled beneath the shifting weight.
“Uh oh,” Mel whispered.
Flames climbed up the golem’s body, consuming patches of flesh as they rose. The strange, mystical lettering turned from blue to orange, and then to nothing as the skin burned to ash.
“Run!” Silandra screamed, grabbing her daughter as they stumbled back down the bridge.
The golem’s massive shape, now almost completely black, teetered like a thick tree about to fall, and then it did. With a deafening sound as loud as the rushing waters below, the creature landed face first, snapping the wood planks like kindling. The supports under the bridge splintered, sending the whole structure sideways.
Squire felt himself floating in midair, the cavern swirling around him until air became liquid and he was submerged.
When Mel woke, the first thing she noticed was the water pouring out her mouth as she lay on her side. The second thing, as her lungs emptied, was a bluish tinge coloring her hands and the mud around her. She thought in horror that the flesh golem had returned, but rolling over and looking up, she saw only Squire standing beside her and the dome of his displacement field protecting them both.
“Where are we?” she asked, coughing out the last drops of water.
“I’m not exactly sure,” Squire replied, “but I should think we’re somewhere under the bridge.”
Mel sat up. The ground was spongy and covered in shallow puddles. Although her satchel was missing, she still held the flashlight firmly in her tiny hands. She shined the beam on the wall of the displacement field but saw only darkness beyond it.
“Are we underwater?” she asked.
“Did I not mention that?” the robot said.
“No!”
“We fell into the water after the bridge collapsed,” Squire explained. “I switched on the displacement field, letting the liquid run out through the one-way membrane.”
“Huh,” Mel said. “That was genius!”
“Oh, thank you so much,” the robot said as if embarrassed by the compliment.
“What
about Silandra and Sisa?”
“I’m afraid you were the only one near me. I don’t know where the others are at the moment.”
Mel got to her feet.
“The air in here won’t last long,” she said. “We should find the shore.”
Mel and Squire started walking, the dome moving along with the robot. Mel nearly tripped over the bones of a ribcage sticking out of the river bottom. She wasn’t exactly sure if this was a river at all, but she could vaguely see water running across the surface of the displacement field. Whatever was covering the dome, it had a fast current. In time, the ground started slanting upward which she took as a good sign. When the top of the dome broke the surface of the water, Mel was no longer sure.
The halo of torchlights shined on the other side of the field. Shapes moved back and forth. Many shapes.
No longer underwater, Squire switched off the dome. Mel, her pink hair dangling damply around her shoulders, looked with wild eyes at the people she saw. Like Ghuls, their skin was discolored and even absent in some places, but they also wore armor fashioned from bones and carried hooked swords like the blades of a scythe. One was in brown vestments like a priest and held a curved staff with a skull on the end. Beside him, next to an altar-like stone table, Silandra was visible. Only then did Mel notice someone else, a girl lying on the table.
She wasn’t moving.
Death was not the end, Grand Necromancer Ghazul believed. For those with the power and knowledge, death was only the beginning of everlasting life. His people, the Necronea, were the embodiment of reanimation. As the Spring knows the Winter, they knew death as the dark before the light.
Ghazul watched the Sylvan woman emerge from the subterranean river, both her and the daughter in her arms soaked to the bone. He reached into her mind and learned the woman’s name, Silandra, and felt the deep sorrow flowing from her heart. She did not understand what Ghazul already knew and he pitied her for that. She saw only death in her daughter’s face where the Grand Necromancer saw hope.
Surrounded by the Necronea, she also felt fear, but Ghazul assured Silandra there was no danger, directing her to lay Sisa’s body onto the stone table. After doing so, she turned to him.
Imperium Chronicles Box Set Page 46
