by Graeme Ing
“It’s a shadow link. What it’s connected to is very real. And mean.” I jerked my head toward the chamber.
“And what is it connected to?” She stared at the wriggling cord.
“A grak.”
“What’s—?”
“Later. Stay back.”
Why had Babbas brought me to a grak’s lair? Graks didn’t start fires or destroy streets. I chewed my bottom lip. How had he even known about it? Master Begara’s advice in class had been pretty specific regarding the grak: “Turn and run.”
I took a deep breath and wriggled my shoulders. I could beat it. The tomb wights had been easy.
I pushed Ayla back toward the stairs. She glared at me.
“This is dangerous,” I whispered. “I know what I’m doing.”
Did I? I handed her the lightstick and crept forward, nudging loose stones with my boot to clear the way, never taking my eyes from the archway. The room was filled with heaps of rubble. The spectral rope snaked behind a huge fragment of a fallen buttress lodged against one wall.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
I drew a sizable ball of magic from my core and blasted a massive Dispel into the room, bathing the entire area in a purple flash.
The grak leaped onto the ceiling, sending rubble clattering in all directions. It scuttled toward me, upside down, hundreds of barbs along its ten legs clinging to the bare stone ceiling. A razor-ridged carapace protected an abdomen the size of a barrel, yet the thing stretched eight feet in length, counting its forked, bony tail and oversize head. Two spheres of flylike eyes reflected a distorted version of my look of horror. Saw-toothed pincers clacked repeatedly and its antennae quivered, probing the air in front of it.
I stumbled backward, my heart thumping in my ears.
Kristach. I’d hoped it’d be smaller.
“Run for the boat,” I yelled, following my own advice as the creature chased me from the room.
Once she saw it, Ayla screamed loud enough to wake the dead, then slipped on the rubble and landed on her butt.
I grabbed her wrist and yanked her up. She broke from my grip, flew around the corner, and thumped up the steps toward the barge. “Cast off, cast off.”
A heartbeat behind her, I limped up the stairs and skidded to a halt, kicking up a cloud of ash from the landing.
Babbas and the barge had gone.
“He left us behind,” Ayla said, peering up and down the shadowy river tunnel.
“The tristak son of a bikka!”
The grak crunched over the rubble at the bottom of the steps. I whirled about, scanning the dock for an escape. We were trapped.
The creature crouched low, its spectral cord flailing behind it, and then it sprung off with all ten legs. I planted my feet firmly as it flew up the stairs toward us. Kristach!
Magic seethed within me and I launched a bolt of red fire from my fingers. My Necrotic Ray scorched one of its legs, causing it to shrivel and rot away. Amid a stench of decaying flesh, the creature fell back down the stairs.
“Gods, it’s gross.” Ayla glanced down at it. “Things like that live down here?”
Worse, honey, much worse.
The grak righted itself and raised up on its hind legs, watching us, its antennae plucking the air. Ayla jabbed the lightstick toward it but it didn’t seem bothered by the blazing light or the sparks dripping from the end. The grak hissed and clacked its huge pincers. Ayla stepped back and her foot crunched through a rotten board, sending her lurching toward the frigid river. She grabbed the wall to save herself. The lightstick fell onto the landing between us.
The grak leaped again, this time running up the walls. Its pincers opened wide, revealing rows of barbs.
I’d made a crucial error in judgment by disturbing the grak. I stepped back. There was nothing between me and the river now.
I shot another Necrotic Ray at its head, and grunted with the mental exertion of the magic burning through me. The creature rolled aside and the ray hit another of its legs, which turned black and fell off. The creature continued upward, filling the landing in front of us.
Belaya preserve us. This thing was huge.
My whole body tensed, still hurting after my beating in the bargee taproom. I drew on my magic, siphoning it through my body, my arms tingling. Blue energy arced from my fingertips, lighting up the whole tunnel in a blinding blue flash. Lightning flickered across the grak’s body. Its legs and antennae quivered in a frenzy. Its shrieking wail deafened me and I winced.
Ayla sprung forward, brandishing a hunk of wood. She stood at the grak’s flank and struck it again and again on its head until the wood splintered and broke. The creature retreated, scampering back down the steps, only to regroup and sit atop a giant chunk of rubble. I threw another lance of magic at it to show who was boss. It snatched up a broken tile and deflected the beam.
“What are you doing?” I asked Ayla.
“Helping. I’m not standing by uselessly while you have all the fun.”
“That’s exactly what I want you to do.”
This was tough enough without looking out for her too.
“How can it do that?” she asked, peering around the corner. “How can a giant bug use tools like that?”
The grak snatched a rock with one of its feet and hurled it at me. It repeated the motion, flinging a flurry of masonry up the stairs. I jerked my arms up to protect my face. Rocks pummeled my sore body until I collapsed to my knees, quivering in agony. Mustn’t cry out. Not in front of the girl. I bit my tongue and tasted blood.
The lightning should have dropped it. This was embarrassing enough without Ayla watching me getting my ass kicked. And what in Lak’s name was she doing now?
Ayla darted across the landing, dodging the missiles. She snatched up fallen chunks and hurled them back. The rocks crack-cracked as the grak batted them aside with its tile shield. Its own bombardment ceased.
She growled. “I know this is a test. Give me more time. I’ll find a way.”
A test? What?
“Get back and keep quiet,” I said.
I slipped my Ashtar dagger from its sheath and inched forward to the top of the stairs. A hundred glistening eyes stared up at me. Its pincers sawed back and forth. When its maw opened, green goo dribbled out, lubricating the saws. It rocked side to side.
I tensed and gripped my knife so hard that my hand began to shake.
It sprang, every vicious barb on its legs extended, its tail arched over like a scorpion. Ayla moved too late and it slammed her aside, smashing her against the wall. I was slow to sidestep, and razor barbs shredded my robe. Pain exploded along my side. I gritted my teeth and stabbed my dagger deep into its head, which crunched and squelched. Limbs thrashed all around me, threatening to disembowel me, but I pushed the knife through the back of its head cavity and into its abdomen, my arm up to the elbow in its hot, slimy innards.
Ayla picked up a six-inch splinter of wood and threw herself on the creature’s back, driving the stake into an eye. The eyeball exploded, drenching me in ichor.
Disgusting! I scraped the stuff from my face, blinking hard.
Finally, the grak’s legs gave way and it belly flopped. I twisted my knife one last time and withdrew it, flicking the goo from my arm. Ayla rolled off, leaving the stake embedded in its head. She clasped her bleeding arm and glanced at the corpse, her nose scrunched.
“I was expecting ghosts and skeletons,” she said. “Stuff from graveyards.”
“Yeah, well some real nasty things live down here, and there are deeper, darker places than this.”
Maybe people wouldn’t hate necromancers so much if they knew what we protected them from.
Her eyes grew as wide as plates as she studied the corpse. Her body trembled.
“This thing is real,” she muttered.
“You think? What do—?” I sucked in a breath. “Are you kidding me that you thought this was a test?” I screamed.
“Like a rite of initiation, or some
thing.”
I leaned against the wall, one hand clasped to my bloody side. I panted heavily.
“You saw this thing. It nearly killed us both. You thought this was make-believe?”
She nodded but fire burned in her eyes. “How was I to know? You could’ve conjured it all to see how I’d react. I wasn’t scared of it, you know.”
“Well you should have been. Kristach, Ayla.” I shook her by the shoulders. “I told you necromancy was dangerous. There aren’t going to be any tests down here in the real world. That’s for the classroom.”
She jerked herself free and stepped aside to dab her arm with a handkerchief.
“We’ll have to disinfect that when we get back,” I said.
My insides screamed at me and a dull ache covered me from head to foot. I cautiously probed beneath the shreds of my robe. No serious harm done, but damn, it hurt.
I retrieved my dagger, wiped it on my ruined robe, and replaced it carefully in its sheath. The gem set into its hilt pulsed bright yellow, whereas previously it had been dull and lifeless. I shuddered to consider that the grak’s depraved soul lay trapped within the gem. The knife had been a gift from Phyxia. I treasured it but its power over life and death gave me the creeps.
I watched the river sweeping by. Babbas would never have found the grak himself and lived. Someone had told him to bring us here. Someone who wanted me dead. I wiped the sweat from my brow. What did I know that put my life in danger? What had Phyxia been trying to tell me? I stamped my foot. Infuriating woman.
I had enough magic left to replenish my Perception and Shadowsee. The creature’s spectral cord remained, flickering and barely visible.
Ayla reached for it and her hand passed right through it. “If it’s dead, why is this still here?”
“The grak was being controlled by a spell. Like a puppet show. This is a clue to who cast it. We need to follow it before it fades.”
I picked up the lightstick, ushered her down the steps, and followed the ghostly rope along the hallway.
“What if there’s another one?” she asked.
Then we were dead. I had insufficient magic to go through that again.
“Hurry,” I said. “The connection spell will fade quickly.”
The hallway was dry and free of rubble, but every step jarred my aching body. I cursed not being able to move faster, but clenched my teeth and manned up. The spectral cord no longer writhed, but simply floated in midair. We wound our way around corner after corner and up several flights of ancient stairs. My limp grew more pronounced and I panted with the exertion.
“Where did that thing come from?” Ayla asked. She’d slid under my right arm to offer some support. “An egg? Tell me that wasn’t a baby one.”
“You don’t want to know.”
The grak’s cord was barely visible now. I nearly missed it when it angled sharply to the right into a narrow pipe that spiraled downward. Water dribbled down the center. I slipped and fell, then slithered and slid down the steep pipe on my butt. Hardly dignified but it worked. Ayla followed, landing beside me.
I hoped that she had forgotten her question. I didn’t want to lie, but neither did I want to tell her what a grak really was—the soul of a person imprisoned inside any one of a number of foul and disgusting creatures, to do the bidding of its controller until insanity and depravity took over.
“It’s gone,” she muttered.
I recovered my breath and got to my feet. Great. Deeper in the undercity than I’d care for, and the trail had gone cold.
“Hear that?” she whispered.
I held my breath and strained my ears. A voice.
“This way,” she said, taking a step into the hallway we’d tumbled into.
I put my finger to my lips. “Sound carries a long way underground. Be quiet or they’ll hear us too.”
The lightstick had all but burned itself out. I handed it to Ayla behind me, so that I masked most of the light as we advanced. The tunnel turned and emerged into a hall. Glow beetle light flickered from within, so I took the lightstick and crushed it underfoot until it went out with a flash of sparks. We crept inside the hall and crouched in the inky shadows.
Two lines of pillars ran the length of the room to a distant exit. Each pillar propped up a giant, seven-feet-tall skeleton. Cobwebs and dust covered them from head to toe. There was no end of bones and skeletons in the undercity. Big deal.
Two men stood in the center of the hall, a glow beetle cage on the floor between them. They resembled demonic conspirators in the eerie red glow. One man looked about my age, dressed in a Guild robe. I’d seen him around but never learned his name. The other was Babbas. My fists clenched. I’d turn him into a grak, if I only knew the spell.
“I told you everything,” Babbas said. “Now pay up.”
“Liar. You warned him,” the other necromancer said.
“Did not. Babbas followed your instructions.”
“The grak was supposed to kill him, you fool, not the other way round.”
The man wore a journeyman robe. My conversation with Begara came flooding back. What fool had taught a journeyman how to control a grak? What in Lak’s name was going on?
“Maybe they killed each other,” Babbas said, hand held out. He cast a crooked, menacing shadow on the wall.
“You’d better hope so.” The journeyman plopped a purse into Babbas’s eager hands. Coins chinked. “I’m not going back there to find out. Get the light. We’re leaving.”
He strode into the hallway at the far end of the hall. Babbas picked up the beetle cage and scurried after him. The chamber around Ayla and I grew dim.
Ayla stood on tiptoe before one of the giant skeletons, peering up into its rib cage. What was she gawking at? I grabbed her by the sleeve and set off after the two men. We’d gotten halfway through the long chamber when a shimmer of magic prickled my skin.
The giant skeletons tore themselves free of the pillars, creating a horrendous grinding and scraping sound that echoed around the chamber. Webs and dust flew in all directions as their bones clacked and rattled, stretching as if from a long slumber.
A second ambush. You fool, Maldren!
I ran for the nearest wall. “Ayla, over here.”
“I didn’t touch them.”
“I know. They’re sentinels.”
The monstrous skeletons crowded toward us, gray shapes in the encroaching darkness. Only the barest glimpse of light remained from the receding men. I counted a dozen of them clawing the air, before they’d surrounded us with our backs to the wall. I groped at my belt for another lightstick.
My gut was empty of magic. Kristach, we were in for another beating.
“We can’t just stand here.” Ayla stepped forward and kicked the leg out from under one of them. The huge bone clattered across the floor and the skeleton clung to its neighbor, hopping on one leg. She stepped among them into the gloom.
Bony hands grabbed hold of my torso. I dodged a punch and stuck my hand into the nearest rib cage. Ancient bones are light. I lifted him off the ground, him still kicking and punching, and I flung him against another. The pair of them tumbled to the ground in a pile of legs, arms, and ribs. That wouldn’t stop them for long.
The last of the light vanished, plunging us into utter blackness. Bones rattled and clacked in front of my face. Something kicked me and pain shot up my leg. I stumbled back against the wall.
The unlit lightstick fell from my hand.
Ayla shrieked some sort of battle cry. Bones clattered on the stone floor in the same direction as her cry. Damn it, I couldn’t see anything!
“Come and get it,” she yelled. “Who wants broken bones next?”
An ominous thump echoed in the chamber.
“Maldren, help.”
Lak and all his demons!
I took a punch to the gut and doubled over. Since I was halfway there, I dropped to the ground and groped for the damn stick.
“Are you all right? Keep talking so I can find you.
”
My fingers closed around the tar-wrapped cylinder and I struck it against the floor. Red light blazed, illuminating the entire chamber. Six skeletons loomed above me, while four more pummeled Ayla. The two I had smashed had finally figured out whose bones were whose and were reassembling before my eyes. Nasty, tenacious things, sentinels.
I snatched up one of their thighbones, scrambled to my feet, and headed toward Ayla, swinging my club wildly. She had managed to snap one of their arms off, and she smashed at its ribs as she sheltered her head with her other arm. I whirled like a dervish and careened into the mob, my thigh club knocking three heads from their shoulders. Skulls thudded as they hit the ground. I fought my way toward her, biting back against the cramping in every muscle.
“You should have let me handle it,” I said.
“I’m not useless, and I’m not scared.”
A skeletal hand gripped my arm. I pulled it free, shoved his sternum and he fell back into another. They stuck together, broken ribs interlocked. Four more stepped forward.
I didn’t have time for these games. The journeyman was getting away. I owed Babbas a kick in the nuts too.
I dredged deep within, gathering up every dribble of power, every trickle of magic. My head pounded. Pins and needles doubled me over. I needed one last spell. I gritted my teeth and scrunched my eyes closed.
“Cover your eyes,” I said and threw my club to the ground.
I clapped my hands together and could see the blazing light I had created through my eyelids. The skeletons exploded. Bone shards rattled against the walls and rained down on us. Then there was total silence. Despite Ayla’s bravado, we’d have lost. Bones to Dust was an effective but messy spell. It also tended to splash magic over a great distance. The journeyman would know I was here now, as would every creature within half a league.
“They look shattered,” Ayla said, deadpan, but winked at me. She brushed off hundreds of tiny bone fragments and fingered her bruises, wincing.
I rolled my eyes. Despite the beating, I believed that she had enjoyed the fight.
“Follow me.” I hurried toward the far exit as fast as my limp would allow.
