“Sweet Oj and Ren, what is that?” Ross’s voice trembled as he pointed toward Thornwood’s turret.
Threads of blue-white energy rippled up the tower, arcing into the sky. Where they converged, the air shimmered and roiled. As Corran and the others watched in horrified fascination, a jagged, bright line formed like a streak of fire in the heavens, and the fabric of the sky itself appeared to bulge and shift as if something massive lurched against it. The fire lanced through Corran’s thoughts, and he swore it burned through every vein in his body, pressure and pain that nearly stripped him of consciousness.
“We’re out of time,” Corran breathed. “The First Being. He’s here.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Riding away from Corran and his friends on the cusp of battle might have been the hardest thing Rigan ever had to do. Even when they had gone against Machison and Blackholt, splitting their efforts, they had each only expected to face one man, a few guards, and some dangerous magic. Frightening as that had been, it seemed like nothing compared to Corran going up against an army of monsters, while Rigan went with strangers to face down powerful blood witches and stop an eldritch being from a nightmare realm.
“Vorn, Demetras, make sure the sigils are chalked as we move forward,” Mina ordered, and two of the Wanderer-witches moved to either side of their group and set to marking spell signs on tree trunks and boulders along the route. “Store energy to replenish us when we return, and ward off evil from the path we’ve cleared.”
“Tennera, Holton, and your climbers—gather the gear. We’ll create a deflection while you head down the cliff. Watch for ghouls. You know the plan. Gods go with you.” Six more men and women left the main group, coils of rope slung over their shoulders, and headed toward where the ground met the sky, high above the river.
Rigan knew that Mina spoke the Wanderer’s language like a native though she was not of their blood, but she addressed their cadre of fighter-witches in the common tongue, for his sake and that of the other newcomers.
“You wanted to learn from the Wanderers,” Brock said, riding up beside him. “Well, now’s your chance.”
“I don’t know the language. I can’t chant the words,” Rigan fretted.
“The words are merely a focus point; the magic is in the intent,” Mina said, dropping back to join them. “Hone in on the energy the group raises, and reinforce it with your power. If we heal the Rift, we seal the First Creature inside. Killing the blood witches behind this assures that they won’t try it again.” Taking out powerful blood witches would also slow the arrival of new monsters, and reduce the number of times small Rifts opened, spreading the taint.
“Are there others in your group like me?” Rigan asked.
Mina frowned. “Meaning?”
Rigan felt his cheeks color. “Um… with extra magic? I’ve never really gotten an answer on whether mine is strange by Wanderer standards—because it certainly is compared to my grave magic.”
Mina’s expression softened. “Now isn’t the time for long explanations, but I can tell you this: your magic is still… unusual… in its strength.”
Rigan turned his focus back on Thornwood. The cliff side dropped off nearby, and he could hear the rush of the river far beneath them. Tennera’s group would rappel down the cliff to the caves below and come up through the tunnels that led into the manor. Rigan had no doubt that both teams faced an enemy awaiting their attack, but he was happy to be remaining above ground.
The sound of fighting carried on the wind across the hills. Not the clang of steel, but the shrieks and howls of monsters and the shouts and screams of the men who fought them. Corran was out there somewhere. Rigan swallowed hard, willing his thoughts away from worry.
The blood witches had left a maze of traps for them all along the approach, along with more monsters roaming the area than Rigan had seen in one place. Fighting cost time and precious energy, and left them all tired and wounded before they got to the real battle.
“Shit,” Rigan muttered. “What in the name of the Abyss is that?” Blue-white veins of energy laced up and down the manor’s walls. Even from a distance, he could feel the wrongness of the blood magic. It felt fouled and twisted, making him want to recoil.
“We’re running out of time,” Mina said, casting an anxious glance toward the manor and the dark sky above it. “We’ve got to get inside.”
Rigan stretched out his senses, “listening” for familiar magic and looking for threats. He felt the strains of Aiden’s and Elinor’s power, and the fading energy of blood magic coming from the battlefield outside the manor, where the monsters gathered the thickest. He felt grave magic stir, and it released a knot in his gut, assuring him that Corran must still be alive.
The stench of blood magic overlay everything. The closer they got to the manor, the stronger the echoes of the power he had felt beyond the Rift grew, and he shuddered to remember how it had felt to have the attention of He Who Watches upon him.
He sensed that presence growing stronger with each day that they traveled closer to Thornwood. Once its dark tendrils touched his mind or its monstrous eyes beheld him, he was bound to it by a mental contamination as potent as the taint that leaked through the Rifts. Maybe the First Creature’s notice slowly stripped away the sanity of those it touched, driving them mad, he thought. Aiden and Corran had argued otherwise, but Rigan knew this fight was as much his personal battle against madness as it was a last-ditch effort to save the world.
“I can feel him. He’s coming,” Rigan murmured. Mina looked at him with concern and nodded as if she recognized how he knew. “We’ve got to get to the tower. Might be too late already.”
“Not too late. Not yet,” Mina replied.
The remains of barricades hunkered on each side of the entrance to the manor. In some places, the uprooted trees and jumble of boards and broken wagons still smoldered. Other sections stank from the black blood that soaked them, evidence of the battle that had torn them apart.
Smoke hung heavy over the battlefield, choking them with the stench of burning bodies, barely covering the smell of rot and decay. Underlying all of it, Rigan caught the bitter, acrid odor of the ichor that ran through the veins of the monsters, a scent that haunted his nightmares and brought the memories of his time in the Rift far too close.
Rigan and the witches rode hard for the manor, urged on by the survivors of the battle. He glimpsed Corran, Trent, and Ross among the blood-smeared survivors, and the sight gave him courage for the real fight that lay ahead. This close to the manor, blood magic shimmered in the air around them as the blue-white threads of power crackled up and down Thornwood’s walls as if grounding lighting.
He felt the call that hummed through those threads, an unholy summons to a creature from the fever dreams of madmen. The blood witches must be insane to heed that voice. And then Rigan knew: the blood witches had also felt the presence that haunted him, but they had opened themselves to it, given themselves up to its service. And now, as acolytes to the darkness from beyond, they were prepared to usher in the end of the world.
“Hurry,” Rigan grated, feeling the pressure building in his mind. Now that he knew what it was, the presence loomed closer than even when he had been inside the Rift. It recognized him, and that made his stomach roil. Knew him, wanted him, and had set its taint like barbed hooks into the fabric of his mind, coveting his sanity and his magic.
Just as Rigan felt despair nearly choke him, he sensed another, familiar presence. Corran. His brother worked grave magic nearby, and the strands of power that came from years of sharing the magic in their blood loosened the hold of the darkness that had threatened to claim him. Rigan drew in a deep breath and spoke a centering litany, reinforcing the walls in his mind, the safeguards around his magic. The darkness receded.
He Who Waits could afford to be patient and allow Rigan to come to it.
“This is too easy,” Brock muttered. They had left the horses beyond the front gates, crossing the last bit o
f ground on foot, sidling up the steps, waiting for an ambush. Rigan wondered if the witches had gotten to the caves without a fight, if they had been able to make it underneath the manor, where old stories said a passageway led to the river. Maybe they were already in position, awaiting the signal.
Maybe they were already dead.
“The blood witches are waiting for us. For me,” Rigan said quietly. Mina snapped to look at him, and he saw the truth in her eyes. “They can’t bring He Who Watches across with just the three of them, and the two witches in the yard didn’t have the power. I crossed a line when I worked blood magic in the Rift. It found me, knew me. Needed me.”
“You’re not alone,” Mina urged. “We have your back. The Wanderers share your blood. When the time comes, open yourself to them. Eshtamon had a reason for his choice.”
Fear left Rigan dry-mouthed and forced the breath from his lungs. He remembered how his magic had joined with Corran’s and Aiden’s in the final moments of the battle against Blackholt.
“Together,” he managed, although he had no clear idea of exactly what that meant. All he knew was that word mattered, and he hung onto it like a raft in a flood.
“Together,” Brock and Mina echoed.
The too-quiet manor beckoned for them to enter, while the tainted power rose around them with every step. Rigan could feel the vines of magic that shimmered against the outer walls like fire in his veins. They had seen a light in the window of the tower, but Rigan knew it was a decoy. The blood magic pulled him like gravity toward what he guessed might have once been a ballroom. That’s where the other Wanderers would circle and meet them, waiting until signaled for back-up.
Rigan and Mina led the way, with the rest of the Wanderer-witches close behind them. Even within the manor, two of the witches trailed behind, marking sigils as they went. The Wanderer chant started like a low hum and grew in intensity, magic weaving between them like a soft, golden light. It prickled his skin and raised the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck. As the glow brightened, he saw it pulse, a counterpoint to the blue glow enveloping Thornwood.
Rigan did not know the words to the chant, but he let himself fall into a trance, listening to the cadence, to the beat of his heart, feeling the strengthening pulse of the shared energy. He sensed the magic rising around him and through him, and gave himself over to it, allowing it to pull from his power.
He called to that magic and sent it in a blast that flung open the doors to the ballroom. The stench of a charnel house billowed out, heavy with the copper tang of blood and the bitter edge of shit and piss. Bodies lay scattered across the parquet floor, dropped where they had been sacrificed. Gall and wormwood burned in a censer, around an altar heaped with skulls and hearts.
Nightshade’s blond hair and sullied robes hung heavy against his spare frame, sodden with the gore that had sprayed his face and spattered the walls. A wild smile creased his features, and the mad spark in his eyes bordered on ecstatic. Wraithwind looked like a scholar caught in an abattoir, with a cloud of tangled gray hair above spectacles dripping with blood and wide, unfocused eyes that looked drugged. The two witches continued to chant and dance in an orgiastic frenzy, paying no attention to the newcomers, wholly intent on the culmination of their summoning. Shadowsworn alone appeared to be in full command of his faculties, not yet lost to the excess of the ritual, and his head snapped up as the door slammed open.
A glowing tide of power surged as Rigan and the Wanderers burst into the room. A cry from Mina called to their reinforcements, who swept into the ballroom from the other side, sending their wave of magic flooding toward the three bloodied witches. The power hit an invisible obstacle and parted around the altar and its supplicants like water around rock.
“We’ve been waiting. He said you’d come.” Shadowsworn’s eyes were bright with power, filled with the energy stolen from the wretches whose bodies and blood fed his magic.
Rigan heard Mina raise her voice, and the witches from the caves appeared at the opposite door, forming a line to seal the room. They sent the full blast of their power forward, only to see it deflected short of its target. Some of the magic spent itself against the shimmering defensive wards that protected the ritual, while the rest shook the walls and sent a snow of dust down on them as cracks appeared in the ceiling.
Three blood witches should not be able to repel so many Wanderers, unless they had gained a taste of the power promised to them by the beast they summoned. From the satisfied glint in Shadowsworn’s eyes, Rigan guessed that He Who Watches had given his loyal acolytes a portion of his magic to finish the summoning.
The oppressive weight of the First Creature’s presence filled the room, and Rigan winced as the pain in his head intensified, like daggers stabbing through his eyes. It felt as if the huge totality of He Who Watches had slipped its dark tendrils inside his skull to prise it apart until the First Being could fit inside. Rigan gasped and staggered, then drew on his magic and stubborn will to straighten and shove back against the entity clawing at his mind.
He Who Watches didn’t want him as a sacrifice, or an offering. He wanted the power that eluded him in the Rift, and the soul that battled for control. If the First Being won, it would crack open Rigan’s bones and drain his magic like marrow. And there would be no champions left to fight against the darkness.
“You’re too late. You can’t stop the rising,” Shadowsworn said. “But we want the gravedigger. Our master has need of his power.”
“No.” Rigan’s voice, low and determined, carried even over the chanting and cries of the wild-eyed blood witches.
Behind him, he felt the Wanderer-witches’ power gather once more, and at the same time, Rigan felt the appearance of the Rift like a physical blow. An irregular stain appeared in the ceiling and in the middle of it, a pinprick of blood red light gradually tore down through the blackness like a gash cut by a knife. The energy running along the walls of the manor suddenly heaved and shifted, arcing, and Rigan saw the Rift with both his eyes and his magic. He felt the reaction of the witches linked to his power, a mix of fear, dismay, and resolve. The chanting grew louder, faster, and the power rose.
The line in the ceiling glowed blue, then a sickly, foxfire green, finally blazing red like a raw wound. The Rift looked like a ragged cut in the night itself, and the air around it bulged as if something were pushing against a barrier from the other side.
The Wanderers’ chanting rose above the wind, and energy crackled all around them, in shimmering, diaphanous waves, coalescing overhead in a sparking cloud. The sigils all around them glowed with inner fire.
Eshtamon, if you’re paying attention, we could really use your help. The Elder God’s attention had been sporadic at best thus far, but Rigan figured a silent plea couldn’t hurt.
Rigan had never felt magic in quite the same way, surrounded by dozens of other witches, physically linked as they called to their power, melding will and mind through the repetition of the chant and the trance state it produced. He felt larger than his body, too big to be contained within his own skin, and he could detect the consciousness of those around him and sensed their essences brushing against his own.
In his mind, he saw a swirl of golden, pulsing power rising above the Wanderers; it had a center bulge that slowly gathered more of the glow to itself in spiraling arms that twisted faster and faster like a maelstrom. Beyond it, the Rift had grown nearly too bright to look at, blood-red and seeping energy. The air around the gash appeared distorted, and the red line of the Rift broadened, and tendrils of something dark and foul wriggled free, pushing against the opening.
Rigan felt the power of the Wanderer witches throughout his whole being. He drew on the energy of the ring of grave sigils he had marked on his body, as he had done the night they battled Blackholt, and felt the rising power of the marks the Wanderers chalked as they reflected and strengthened the magic. He thought again about the battle raging at the lower wall and realized that the monsters had not been summoned m
erely as protectors. They were sacrifices, like the men who fought them, called to slaughter to feed the power of the blood witches in the tower that sought to free an abomination. A source of power—and as that realization dawned on him, Rigan determined to use that power, even if it damned his soul to do it.
He stretched out his grave magic, calling to the souls of the men who had died in the battle, and praying that Corran was not among them. The souls flocked to him, lending him their energy and Rigan felt the warmth of it thrumming through him grow to a heat that seemed to set his body on fire from the inside.
Rigan felt the blood magic tearing at the essence of the dead and dying monsters, ripping the last glimmer of existence free of their savaged corpses, and sensed that the monsters fought that desecration fiercely, using up their waning power and straining that of their would-be masters.
The golden, glowing energy shifted, and the Wanderer sigils glowed blindingly bright, focusing reflected magic on Rigan. The spiral arms of the coalescing magic twined clockwise around him, as the black, putrid tendrils from the thing beyond the Rift also snared him, twisting in the opposite direction.
Though his feet remained planted on the ground, Rigan felt his essence pull loose of his body, rising until he hung between the heavens and the ground beneath. The two powers warred against his skin, and he struggled to harness more of his grave magic, sending out a silent summons to all the restless spirits who would heed his call.
The Rift grew wider, and the tendrils that pushed through thickened. Everywhere the dark tentacles touched Rigan they burned his skin with a fire that burrowed agonizingly deep, trying to draw out his magic and life, perhaps his very soul. The First Being stank like the taint, smelling of wet rot, old corpses, and putrefaction.
Their touch opened his mind’s eye, and Rigan glimpsed He Who Watches. He had no words or frame of understanding for the terrifying creature, and the horror of it felt too big for his skull to contain. He screamed in pure, primal fear as a single, blood-red eye beheld him and the notice of a First Being fell upon him. Then the notice passed, the eye turned away, and Rigan felt overwhelming relief.
Vengeance Page 53
