“How wonderful for you,” said Libavya. “But our prisoners might prove useful. And once I become a vyrkolak…feeding upon the Balarigar and an Arvaltyr for my first meal, yes, that would be pleasant.”
“She is too dangerous,” said the Malvashar. “We ought to kill her at once.”
“The Lady Caina will cooperate perfectly,” said Libavya with a smile. “She is dangerous, yes, but if she misbehaves, you’re going to kill poor little Svetlana Valcezak in front of her. Our sister of the Magisterium isn’t strong enough to fight three Temnoti at once. Or you’ll kill that whore in the red dress. Or we’ll let my men amuse themselves with her first, and then the Balarigar will get to watch as you kill her and raise her as a reveniri.” Libavya turned a brilliant smile in Caina’s direction. The glow from her eyes made it look ghastly. “I trust we understand each other?”
Caina glanced at the others. Ilona stood rigid, her face a bloodless mask. Svetlana still held her power ready, but her confinement had left her exhausted, and Caina doubted that she could put up much of a fight.
No. Fighting now would be futile. They had to delay.
“Perfectly,” said Caina.
“How very splendid,” said Libavya. “Balarigar, if you will lead the way, please? You ought to consider yourself privileged. I understand you are the first new Arvaltyr to rise since Iramis burned. Well, you shall get to witness the creation of the first new vyrkolak in centuries.” Her smile widened. “And then the first new vyrkolak shall consume the first new Arvaltyr. Fitting, no?”
“Both of you,” said Caina in a low voice, looking from Ilona to Svetlana. “Do exactly as I say. Understand?” They nodded.
Libavya laughed. “Exactly as you say? You cannot save them, Balarigar!”
Caina grinned without mirth and gesture at the door. “Shall we?”
She led the way into the prison corridor and towards the coffin of Cazmar Vagastru, Ilona and Svetlana following her, Libavya and her allies bringing up the back.
###
The witchfinders and the mercenaries marched in silence up the street, making for the sanitarium.
Kylon’s valikon burned in his right hand, dancing with white flames and wreathed in freezing mist. He had not bothered to dismiss the sword. The time for stealth and planning and cunning was over, and now the time for fighting had come. In a way, it was almost a relief. Kylon understood the necessity for the sort of webs that Caina spun, but he never enjoyed them. He preferred to face a foe with a sword in hand, though he knew not every enemy could be defeated with a blade.
Basarab, Calugar, and Teodor led the column, Basarab with his massive club, Calugar and Teodor with swords in hand. Teodor looked grim and dangerous, like an old wolf ready for battle once more. Gone was all trace of the confused, frightened old man that Kylon had seen in the woods north of Vagraastrad. The knowledge that his daughter might still be alive and imprisoned beneath the sanitarium had galvanized him.
Kylon hoped Teodor would not find Svetlana’s corpse in the darkness below Vagraastrad.
Or that he would not see his daughter reanimated as a reveniri.
Kylon walked alongside Seb, Antonin Crailov before them. The red-coated assassin had been amused at their insistence that he walk in the front, but he had accepted without any argument. Crailov knew that they didn’t trust him. So far, he had not led them false, but there was still no way Kylon would trust him.
The sanitarium loomed out of the darkness. Most of the lights had gone out in the windows, though the gates to the garden remained open. A few lights still shone in the windows, but the mansion now had a deserted feel. Almost like looking at a tomb, or a ruin where no one had lived for a long time.
Kylon drew on the sorcery of water and sent his arcane senses reaching out, seeking for any sign of foes waiting in the mansion itself. He knew he would not be able to detect Caina, but perhaps he could find Ilona, who had remained behind. Kylon sensed no one in the mansion, and…
He blinked, his valikon coming up in guard on reflex.
“What is it?” said Seb.
“Lord Kylon?” said Basarab.
“There’s a new necromantic aura radiating from beneath the mansion,” said Kylon. “A powerful one.” He felt it billowing out like smoke, the power cold and corrupt and rancid. Both Seb and Basarab cast spells, and the battle magus and the High Brother flinched in alarm.
“He’s right,” said Seb.
“An aura fell and evil indeed,” said Basarab, shaking his hands as if trying to get something foul off his fingers.
Crailov looked back at Kylon. “I think, Lord Kylon, we both know what that means.”
Kylon did, and it filled him with rage and fear.
It was the Ring’s aura he sensed, which meant that someone had taken it away from Caina.
“It means,” said Kylon, “that Lady Libavya has started her spell to raise Cazmar Vagastru.”
“Then we had best hurry,” said Basarab, and he led the way to the mansion’s gates.
Chapter 17: Immortality
Caina walked as slowly as she dared through the prison corridor, the armory, and the dusty library.
As it happened, that was fairly slow.
Lady Libavya Jordizi, Caina suspected, was not accustomed to moving in haste. That was the sort of thing servants did while waiting upon their betters. The Temnoti glided in silence, seeming to float above the floor save for the occasional glimpse of a pallid gray tentacle lashing from beneath the hem of their robes. The footmen followed, and then the reveniri, dozens of them.
Caina walked as slowly as she could manage, expecting Libavya to erupt at any moment, but the noblewoman never did. Perhaps she was confident of success. That was good. An overconfident enemy was liable to make serious mistakes.
Or maybe her confidence was well-founded.
But Caina could only drag out the walk for so long, and soon they reached the crypt of Cazmar Vagastru.
“You will stand in the corner,” rasped the Malvashar in his gurgling voice, pointing with the tentacle that served as his left arm. “Should you attempt to escape or disrupt Lady Libavya’s spells, my brothers and I shall strike you dead where you stand. Should you summon your valikon, we shall strike you dead where you stand.”
“You heard the Malvashar,” said Caina to Ilona and Svetlana. “Let’s not be rude.” She walked to stand in the corner, the women following her. The Malvashar and the other two Temnoti moved to a position halfway between the corridor and the door to the library, in a position where they could watch Caina, the coffin, and the door all at once. The coffin…
Caina blinked in a few times, not sure that she had seen it.
Unless she missed her guess, the coffin was pulsing.
Both the green light and the arcane aura it emitted were pulsing like the beat of a heart. Caina looked at Libavya as she strode into the crypt, and the emerald on the Ring was pulsing with the same rhythmic glow. It was as if the coffin and the Ring knew each other, recognized each other.
“Ah,” said Libavya, raising her left hand to gaze at the Ring. “Yes. I understand now. That was what I was lacking. The coffin of Cazmar is locked, and the Ring is the key. One day the Iron King knew that he would return, that he would need to summon his loyal servants once more. The coffin is locked, and the Ring is the key that would open it.” She turned an irritated glance at the Malvashar as her footmen and the reveniri filed into the crypt, the footmen gazing with fear at the glowing glass coffin. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“The Temnoti are the custodians of the relics of Rasarion Yagar, my lady,” said the Malvashar. “It is not our place to use them. Merely to stand guard over the instruments of power.”
“Then is it the place of someone like Lady Libavya to wield them?” said Caina.
Libavya laughed. “As if they could stop me.”
The Malvashar’s eyes, all three of them, turned in Caina’s direction. She wasn’t sure, but she thought the Malvashar’s bulging third eye was
looking at Svetlana while his other two eyes looked at Caina. Did the third eye in their foreheads grant the Temnoti an ability like the vision of the valikarion, the ability to see arcane auras and spells?
“You misunderstand, Balarigar,” said the Malvashar. “Do you know who is worthy to wield the relics of the Iron King?”
“Who?” said Caina.
“Those strong enough to take them up without destroying themselves,” said the Malvashar.
Dozens of reveniri filed into the crypt, moving to line the walls. More emerged from an archway on the far end of the crypt. Undoubtedly that archway opened into more vaults beneath the Lord’s Castle where additional reveniri awaited Libavya’s call.
“A cruel philosophy,” said Ilona. “As thuggish as the Iron King was in life.”
“What are the three of you going to do when Libavya gets herself killed?” said Caina. She looked to see if Libavya had overheard the remark, but her attention was on the glass coffin and the Ring.
The Malvashar gave a slight shrug. “A new bearer shall be found. It matters not who bears the relics of Rasarion Yagar. If you lived long enough, you would have understood.”
“And what would I have understood?” said Caina, glancing around. The footmen were watching Libavya and the coffin. The reveniri wouldn’t see Caina, of course, but they would see Svetlana and Ilona. The full attention of the three Temnoti was on Caina. No, the moment had not yet come for action.
“The Final Night is inevitable,” said the Malvashar. “The Iron King shall return, and he shall open the way for Temnuzash. The world shall belong to the Great Master, as shall all mortal lives. But you shall die today, and you will not see the glory of Temnuzash revealed.”
“Will I?” said Caina. “You seem very certain of that.”
“You are too dangerous to our plans to leave alive, Arvaltyr,” said the Malvashar. He considered her, his antennae twitching. “You seem very calm for a woman facing her death.”
Caina met his eyes and grinned. “Everyone dies, high priest. No one lives forever. Not even the Temnoti.”
It was hard to read expressions on that twisted, gray face, but she suspected that he was annoyed.
“Lady Libavya,” called Caina. “The Malvashar just told me he expects you to fail and to bestow the Ring upon a new bearer.”
Libavya broke off her contemplation of the coffin and looked at the Temnoti priests, a frown starting to come over her face.
“Do not listen to the Balarigar, my lady,” said the Malvashar, calm once more. “All human endeavors carry the possibility of failure. Even the Iron King was defeated by the Warmaiden, though she was slain. Perhaps you shall fail, but I expect you shall succeed, and you shall rise to immortality as a vyrkolak.”
“And what then?” said Caina. “Do you think Talmania will let you keep the Ring? I assume you plan on killing all the nobles of Vagraastrad and making yourself the ruler of the city. Do you believe the Umbarians will let that pass?”
“I believe,” said Libavya, glaring at Caina, “that the Umbarian Order is fighting for its survival against the Emperor. If I present the Order with an accomplished deed, they will care little, so long as Vagraastrad does not stand in their path. I believe that Talmania will soon have larger problems than her little quest to find all five of Rasarion Yagar’s relics.”
“Lady Libavya,” said Caina. “Don’t do this. If you do this, if you open that coffin and raise Cazmar, I believe you will bring only disaster upon yourself.”
Libavya pointed at Caina. “And I also believe that you are trying to delay in hopes of a miracle. Malvashar!”
“My lady?” said the Malvashar.
“If any of them speak, kill them immediately,” said Libavya. “If they try to escape or do anything the least bit threatening, kill them. I have no desire for any further delays.”
“As you command, my lady,” said the Malvashar with a shallow bow. He gestured to the other two priests, and they moved closer to Caina and Ilona and Svetlana, all three of their eyes watching. The Malvashar, however, turned and stared at Libavya. Perhaps he was not as confident in her abilities as he claimed.
Libavya paid no further attention. She strode up the final steps of the bier and stood a few feet away from the glowing glass. Her chest rose and fell in the rhythmic, shallow breathing spell casters sometimes used to reach an appropriate mental state, and she lifted her hands and began casting a spell. Green fire started dancing around her fingers, throbbing in time to the pulse from the coffin and the Ring on her fingers.
Caina watched as Libavya began assembling an intricate spell of necromantic science, the threads of power complex and controlled and precise. Whatever else she might have been, Libavya Jordizi was a skilled sorceress. If she had been taken into the Temnoti as a child, she had been practicing sorcery all her life, and those years of practice had given her a great deal of skill. It looked vaguely like the sort of spell a petty necromancer would use to reanimate a corpse, but far more complex. The spell would also require a great deal of sorcerous power, likely more power than most wielders of arcane force could summon without aid. In a flash, Caina understood why Libavya’s previous attempts to unlock the coffin and raise Cazmar had been unsuccessful. She hadn’t been strong enough.
But now the Ring had given her that strength.
And Caina had brought that strength within her reach.
Had she made a terrible mistake? It looked like she was about to find out.
Libavya kept working the spell, continuing it far longer than her strength should have allowed. She was drawing on the Ring’s power, and the relic blazed to both Caina’s physical eyes and the vision of the valikarion. Libavya began to tremble with fatigue as she kept casting, and Caina wondered if the noblewoman had pushed too hard, if the spell was beyond her ability even with the power of the Ring.
Then Libavya shouted and flung out her hands, and green fire erupted from her and stabbed into the glass coffin.
“Cazmar Vagastru!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “By my will, I free you! By my power, I bind you! By my authority, I compel you! Come forth! Rise again and walk among the world of the living! Cazmar Vagastru, I summon you!”
She thrust out her left hand, and the emerald in the Ring burned hotter. A shaft of green fire stabbed from the Ring and sliced into the glass coffin like a knife through a loaf of bread. The lid of the coffin shattered into a thousand glittering shards with a thunderclap, and the noise echoed through the crypt.
Bit by bit the echoes died away, and silence fell once more, broken only by Libavya’s panting.
Then Caina heard the rasp of steel against glass.
Something was moving within the opened coffin.
The dark thing she had glimpsed within stirred. A low, rumbling groan came from the coffin, followed by the rasping noise. Ilona let out a frightened sound before she mastered herself, and Svetlana held her power ready. Not that it would do much good. The necromantic aura that radiated from the coffin intensified.
The thing within the glass box was awakening.
A figure in the coffin sat up.
The first thing Caina saw was the black armor. It looked savage and barbaric, a shirt of black scales backed against leather and a fur-trimmed black cloak. It was the sort of armor the Kagari horsemen wore, and likely the design had been copied after the Iron King had driven the Kagari from Ulkaar. Armored gauntlets covered the figure’s hands, and the fingers were tipped with serrated blades a few inches in length.
The figure’s face…
A wave of revulsion went through Caina.
If a man could live a thousand years without dying, but aged for every one of those days, he might look like the creature sitting in the coffin.
The face was milk white and scored with a thousand deep lines, making it look almost half-mummified. Ragged gray hair clung to the scalp. The eyes were like black pits into nothingness, and the withered lips had pulled back from the yellowed teeth. The skull-like head t
urned back and forth, the unblinking black eyes sweeping over the crypt.
Caina felt a deathly chill as that terrible gaze moved over her. The thing in the coffin had been a mortal man with a heartbeat and all the customary desires of a mortal man, but that had been a long time ago. Now it was a creature with appetites and lusts beyond human comprehension.
And Libavya had just let it back into the world.
“Cazmar Vagastru, szlacht of the Iron King and lord of the vyrkolaki!” thundered Libavya.
The creature looked at her and blinked once.
“Yes. Yes. Cazmar Vagastru,” he said in a dusty voice. “That was my name. That is who I was. I had forgotten. It was long ago. So long ago. The Warmaiden…I burned. How I burned…”
“I, Libavya Jordizi, summon and bind you!” said Libavya, her voice ringing through the chamber.
Cazmar took no notice of her. “I burned, but the priests took me, the priests made me sleep. They said they would return and wake me. They said…”
“By my will and the power of the Ring of Rasarion Yagar, I compel you!” said Libavya.
Again, Cazmar took no notice. He didn’t even seem to realize that she was there. That was bad. Libavya had tried to bind him, and if she had succeeded, he wouldn’t have been able to ignore her.
“Cazmar Vagastru,” began Libavya, but Cazmar’s black gaze fell upon the Temnoti.
“The priests,” he spat. Something red blazed in the back of his eyes. “You wretched fools. You failed the Iron King. You failed me! We tried to bring Temnuzash to this land and cover the world in the Final Night. You failed to stop the Warmaiden! You left me to rot in this damnable box for a thousand years!”
His voice grew louder and deeper, so loud the crypt vibrated with it.
“Lord Cazmar,” said the Malvashar. “We only followed the bidding of the Iron King. We…”
“Silence!” roared Cazmar, climbing out of the coffin and getting to his feet.
His movements were…wrong. They were fluid and lithe, but there was something alien to them as if a power other than human will controlled his limbs. A black saber of Ulkaari design and a dagger hung from his belt, and despite the centuries, his boots still gleamed.
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