Song of the Risen God

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Blast, but we ain’t leavin’ no monk witnesses,” said another, and he lifted his bow, aiming for Thaddius.

  “More boxes inside, though,” Elysant cried out. “You’ll not open them without us!”

  A woman slapped at the bowman’s arms, lowering the weapon.

  “So we all got reason to bargain, then,” said the big man.

  Brother Thaddius wasn’t listening. He rolled several gems between his fingers, calling to their magic, readying a strike. He counted five enemies and suspected at least a couple more still on the stairs behind them.

  Five enemies, two torches.

  Thaddius fell into the vibrations of his moonstone, let the magic tickle his sensibilities, begging release.

  “Well?” the big man said, coming forward, just beside the center sarcophagus, lowering his sword to put it in line with Thaddius, who stood barely two strides away. “Ye take out what’s in the box and put it down on the floor,” he ordered Elysant.

  The small woman glanced up at Thaddius, who gave her a slight nod. These two had been traveling and fighting together for a decade, and so nothing more needed to be said.

  “Now!” yelled the big man, so Sister Elysant moved, but not for the open stone box.

  She leaped forward, her staff spinning, at the man who was twice her size. He squawked and gawked, surely surprised, as she whipped her staff across with such precision and power that it took the sword from his hand.

  Elysant halted the swing by loosening her top-hand grip and pulling the staff down with her bottom hand, letting it slide so that she held it, hands apart, near the middle as she turned it vertical. A punch out with her top hand sent the top of the staff crashing down at the man’s head. He got his arm up to block, but it didn’t really matter, for the strike was a feint, Elysant flipping her top, right hand over to a backhanded grasp and suddenly reversing, pulling that top hand back and down while pressing up powerfully with her left hand, turning her shoulders and stepping forward to strengthen the blow.

  Up between the man’s legs came that solid stave, crashing into his balls and lifting him up to his tiptoes.

  Behind him, the other ruffians shouted out and leaped to action, the archer lifting his bow once more, having been joined by a second bowman, then ducking below the ceiling line on the stairs.

  But it was Brother Thaddius who struck next, releasing the power of his moonstone in a great sheet of wind and placing that wind wall perfectly, just in front of Elysant and blowing back toward the stairs.

  The large man, already off balance and grabbing at his smashed balls, went tumbling backwards and rolled away, crashing into the side of the sarcophagus along the wall to the right of the stairs. Both archers tried to fire, but their arrows flew wildly and they, too, flew backwards, the man on the stairs cracking hard against the wall, the lead archer stumbling into his bowman companion.

  The torches went out in the gust, both of them, and so Thaddius dismissed the magical light emanating from his diamond as well, leaving the vault in pitch blackness. Thaddius went down behind the short end of the central sarcophagus, across from the entry. He felt someone roll near and knew it to be Elysant.

  He shuffled about and tapped her on the shoulder, warning her to be ready, then inched his way up the sarcophagus, reminded himself about the stones piled atop it, and released the energy of another magical stone, a chunk of graphite.

  A sudden flash brightened the room and showed the ruffians, and then that flash, a stroke of lightning, reached across to strike three of them, including both archers.

  Again the vault was dark.

  “Now,” Elysant whispered, and Thaddius brought forth his diamond light. Elysant leaped out from behind the funerary, driving the end of her staff into the face of the large man like a spear. His nose crunched, his eyes crossed, and he let go of his balls to grasp at his flattened sneezer, blood pouring.

  Two others came at the monk woman, though, driving her back from finishing the large man, while the third ruffian, still standing, went around the sarcophagus the other way, charging for Thaddius.

  “Behind me!” Elysant cried, backing toward the corner, far right from the stairs and just beyond the smaller box.

  Thaddius rushed to the corner, falling into his magic, confident that the finely skilled Elysant could buy him time. She worked her staff brilliantly, slapping aside a woman’s spear thrust, then catching a descending sword midshaft and twisting the staff over and out to tangle with the spear-wielding woman.

  She even managed to crack the swordsman about the face as she brought her staff back into a defensive position. Still, she knew that she and her friend were in trouble.

  “Hurry,” she pleaded, for over at the stairs one of the archers was back up, trying to set an arrow to his bow, and yet another, a husky woman, stood tall and shook off the effects of the lightning stroke. Even the large man was steadying himself.

  And over toward the center, the man who had charged at Thaddius had diverted and was now standing atop that central sarcophagus, hoisting a large rock over his head.

  Across went Elysant’s staff, right to left once more, to intercept a sweep of the spear. Pressing out and down, the monk ducked low and left, just avoiding the stab of her other opponent’s sword.

  “Dismiss the light!” she cried, snapping the staff back the other way to drive back the swordsman.

  Brother Thaddius certainly understood her sentiment, but he disagreed with her choice, for it was too late. The man on the sarcophagus was already throwing the rock, and the darkness would only stop him and Elysant from dodging.

  The rock arched in over the two ruffians, forcing Elysant to desperately duck, and Thaddius, behind her, had to turn fast, instinctively slapping at the rock with his hand to help guide it aside so that it only clipped him, doing no real physical harm beyond a bloodied finger and a bruised hip, before it cracked against the corner and fell to the stone floor.

  More troublesome, though, was that Thaddius had slapped it with the hand holding the magical gemstones, and two of them fell from his grasp, including a healing soul stone, leaving him only the diamond and one other!

  Elysant fought furiously, holding the two at bay, meeting the rush of the third, the woman coming from the stairs, with a sudden stab that stole her breath and his momentum.

  Thaddius looked about for his fallen treasures.

  “The light!” Elysant yelled.

  “No, not that one!” the large man with the splattered sneezer yelled, apparently at the man on the center grave. “No, put it back!”

  Thaddius glanced back. The man on the sarcophagus already had another stone lifted up high. Stealing the light wouldn’t help.

  The man with the rock paused, gawking in surprise at his unexpectedly frantic friend, and that gave Thaddius all the time he needed to throw forth another gust of wind.

  It blew the rock holder back off the far side of the casket. He fell hard to the floor, his rock falling hard to slam him about the shoulder and head, with the other rocks, all smaller, also tumbling atop him.

  Thaddius growled at the win. If only he could gather his other stones.

  As he resumed his search, though, a loud crash turned his head back around almost immediately, and he stared in shock as the lid of that central sarcophagus slid to the side and fell away.

  The vault echoed with screams.

  “Run!” the large man howled.

  Up stood the contents of that coffin, a withered corpse wearing Abellican robes, its shriveled face and now permanently lipless grin staring out from under a fine black hood, its almost skeletal hands clutching a stave that seemed made of polished stone.

  The large man, limping still, bolted for the stairs, but the ghoulish newcomer leaped out of the coffin to land beside him, the staff flashing across to crack the man on the side of the head, shattering his skull and sending him skidding down to the floor in a spray of blood, bone, and brain.

  The archer at the stairs let an arrow fly,
almost point blank, which seemed to Thaddius a sure hit, but somehow it flew wide of the corpse’s head as the undead thing only dodged slightly.

  The archer didn’t wait even long enough to see it, though. He turned and fled up the stairs as soon as he had fired. His companion, too—now somewhat recovered from the shock of Thaddius’s blast, hair dancing, clothing smoking—tried to climb.

  But the stairs before him suddenly began to glow, and the second archer shouted in pain as he stepped upon them.

  The zombie ghoul turned away from him.

  Thaddius didn’t know what to do. The fighting in front of him had stopped, the three battling Elysant scattering to either side of the room, ducking, trying to find a way out. And Elysant seemed uninterested in pursuing them, now that this new and greater monster had appeared.

  “Do something,” she begged her magic-using friend.

  Thaddius had no idea what that something might be. He thought to dismiss the diamond light, hoping that he and Elysant might find their way out in the darkness before the monster caught them.

  The man on the stairs yelled in agony. He had fallen across the steps, the stones red hot, and his clothing ignited, brightening the room. He writhed and fell from the stairs, landing atop the sarcophagus on that wall and then tumbling to the floor, where the flames ate him.

  The zombie turned right, where the first two of Elysant’s attackers had circled and were now rushing for the stairs. The third, the last woman into the fray, inched along the right-hand wall, scrambling over the open stone box; then, as the ghoulish monster went for her companions, she sprinted for the stairs.

  Elysant, though, ever the ferocious warrior, leaped for the zombie.

  Thaddius wanted to tell her No! Run!, but he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth, and he came to see the order as useless anyway as he watched the robed zombie dispatch the other two men along the far wall with effortless speed and power. The stone staff crashed through the shield of the swordsman with stunning force, slamming him in the shoulder and throwing him into the air to slam against the wall.

  The woman with the spear stabbed the zombie, but the staff came across in a vicious downward chop to shatter both the prodding weapon and the arm holding it. Up came the stone staff again, the tip flashing under her chin, and with what seemed like a simple shrug, the zombie sent the ruffian flying away. She landed, kneeling, beside the casket along that wall, her head upon it.

  The zombie lifted the stone stave to execute her.

  “No!” yelled Elysant, and she cracked the zombie across the back of its head with all the force she could channel through her own wooden staff, a blow that would have felled almost any man.

  She did save the ruffian woman, for the wraith paused. The woman yelped and flung herself to the side, then scrambled to get her feet under her, running for the stairs, where the other woman was now yelping in pain as she skipped and jumped across the molten field.

  Elysant fell back as the ghoulish monster slowly turned about.

  “Run!” she yelled—to Thaddius, to the man who had been sent flying, and to the fellow still on the floor behind the central sarcophagus, who was only then extracting himself from the rubble.

  “And you, go back to hell!” Elysant growled, setting her staff into a wild and powerful flurry, stabbing, striking, sweeping it across.

  The stone staff turned and dipped, rose fast and then set vertically against the floor, defeating the skilled woman’s every attack with practiced ease.

  Elysant fell back defensively. “Run,” she said again, though with less confidence, surely. She growled and steadied herself and added more powerfully, “For your lives, I say!”

  The man against the wall slipped past behind the zombie. The man on the floor scrambled past, or tried to, as the zombie moved to crush him with the stone staff.

  Elysant’s staff intercepted, the monk deftly turning it as a lever to buy the wounded man enough room to get by.

  The zombie stepped back and put up its staff, its dead, lidless eyes staring at the woman. The monster seemed to smile wider somehow, and slowly nodded, as if in approval.

  The man ran up the stairs, yelping, his boots smoking when he stepped on the still-glowing area.

  “Mercy,” the undead thing said, still nodding, and though the word was strained and sounded more like “Erce,” Elysant understood it.

  “Thaddius, run,” she said, setting herself in better balance.

  But Thaddius hadn’t moved, hadn’t even looked for his gems. He stood, half bent to the floor, diamond still in hand, looking back at the zombie with his jaw hanging open.

  “Run!” Elysant yelled, as if trying to break him from a trance.

  “Waited,” the ghoul gasped. “… inally fre…”

  Elysant moved as if to strike.

  “Wait!” Thaddius yelled at her.

  “It didn’t hesitate to strike our attackers,” Thaddius continued when she stopped. “Why? Why is it standing passively now?”

  “Fi … nal … ly frrrrr … eee,” the ghoulish monster forced out. “Guar … di … an … take … all.”

  “What does it mean?” Elysant demanded.

  The zombie extended a hand and opened wide its bony fingers, two stones falling from its grasp: an orange citrine, much like the one Thaddius had used to open the stone box, and a shining red ruby. It let go of the staff with its other hand, the stone item falling hard to clang against the floor at Elysant’s feet.

  “Take,” the zombie intoned, reaching up to unfasten the cloak and hood, which fell to the floor. “Take all.”

  Thaddius and Elysant recoiled when the thing then untied its robe. “I … am … free … rest.”

  The robe fell to the floor. The naked corpse shivered violently for a few moments, then crumpled to the floor in a pile of jumbled bones and paper-thin gray skin.

  Elysant fell back a step. “By Saint Abelle,” she breathed.

  Brother Thaddius stepped past her to retrieve the citrine and ruby. He stayed low, eyeing the staff, narrow and long. “Stone,” he said, shaking his head, for how could that be? He moved to touch it, but hesitated, and instead stood up, staring in shocked disbelief at his friend. “The staff looks like stone, like fine marble. How?”

  Elysant dropped her own staff, stepped over, and, with a growl, lifted the unusual weapon, gripping it strongly in both hands. Her eyes went wide immediately.

  “What?” Thaddius demanded.

  “Power,” she said. “The enchantment. I feel it.” She put the weapon through some movement, twirling it and stabbing left, then sweeping it behind her back to catch it and present it defensively before her. “Perfect balance.”

  “Such a stone is too brittle!” Thaddius reasoned.

  In response, Elysant brought the weapon up over her head and drove it with all her might against the open rim of the middle sarcophagus. It struck with enough force to take a small chip from the funerary stone, but the staff itself showed not a scratch.

  “Apparently, not so,” said the woman, shaking her head, obviously beyond impressed with this treasure.

  “‘Take it all,’ the monster said,” mused Thaddius, as Elysant bent to inspect the damage to the sarcophagus. “He was guarding—”

  “No monster!” Elysant interrupted, her gaze now removed from the sarcophagus as she stared wide-eyed at the lid that had been pushed aside.

  “What do you know?”

  “Belfour Albrek,” she read softly, as if she could barely get the words past her lips. “The Rock of Vanguard.”

  “Saint Belfour,” Thaddius breathed, immediately falling to his knees. He began to sob, overcome. They had been saved by the undead specter of St. Belfour!

  Elysant followed him to the floor, gasping and laughing, not crying, but every sound came from the same place of reverent disbelief.

  After a long while and many prayers, the two gathered up the corpse carefully and moved to the open coffin. There they paused, however, for the box wasn’t emp
ty. A second staff lay within, and a small pouch.

  Thaddius took the pouch and opened it, nodded as he discovered a small trove of sacred Ring Stones. When she took the staff, though, Elysant wasn’t similarly nodding.

  “What is it?” Thaddius asked.

  “Not for fighting,” the woman replied, and she held it forth.

  Thaddius brought the magical diamond closer and increased its radiance. The staff was of wood, but like none he had ever seen before. Green and shot with lines of silver, the body of the light staff was marked by six sockets made of silver and connected by a line that resembled a thread, if that thread had been fashioned of the stuff of soul stones. One of the sockets held another diamond.

  “I have never…” the monk remarked, taking the staff from Elysant. He bit short the remark with a gasp, for as soon as he gripped the staff, he heard clearly the song of that diamond, as surely as he heard the one in his other hand, as if he had already coaxed its magic into a usable state.

  He looked at Elysant and smiled widely. “Not for your kind of fighting, perhaps,” he said wryly, and he couldn’t wait to find some time to more properly test this treasure. “Let us be done here and let the dead properly rest.”

  The companions reverently arranged the body of St. Belfour in his sarcophagus. Thaddius then used Belfour’s own citrine to seal the funerary box, again uttering many prayers.

  They gathered up the two staves, the robe, the cloak, and the hood, and Thaddius recovered the rest of his fallen gems, putting them in the pouch beside the newfound ones. They took the three coffers from the small stone box, and then that container, too, Thaddius resealed with the magical stone.

  “He is at rest now,” Thaddius said, looking back one last time from the stairs, which had cooled to normal once more.

  “He was waiting for Abellicans to come and retrieve the items,” Elysant said. She looked at the robe she was holding. “We should have dressed him.”

  “He dropped the robe as another treasure for us,” Thaddius replied. “Why would he have done that if he wanted us to simply put it back on him?” He smiled at his companion. “You follow the fighting style of Saint Belfour. Wear it.”