Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Chapter 53

With a wail that sounded like the condemned souls of a thousand sinners, tumbling angles and swirls and streaks of darkness materialized out of the darkness itself, like shadows coming to life.

As the tables at the far end of the room were violently upended, the dark tangle exploded through them. Splinters of wood of every size flew through the air.

Tables shattered in succession as the beast born of a clutch of shadows came raging across the room toward Richard.

The sound of popping and splintering wood boomed through the dusty air of the library.

Cara and Rikka both sprang in front of Richard, each with her Agiel in her fist. He knew all too well what would happen should they encounter the beast. The thought of Cara being hurt like that again ignited his rage. Before they could charge toward the dark mass smashing through the heavy library tables, he snatched them both by their long blond braids and with a roar of anger tossed them back.

“Don’t get in its way!” he yelled at both Mord-Sith.

Ann and Nathan both cast their arms toward the thing, unleashing magic that made the room shimmer as if seen through the waves of heat over a roaring fire. Richard knew that they were compressing the very air itself in an attempt to drive back the attack. Their efforts had no effect on the knot of shadows that rolled and twisted through solid wood as it came across the room. They all backed away, trying to keep distance between them and the threat.

Richard ducked as a long board—the entire edge of one of the shattered tables—whipped past his head and smashed against a post. One of the lamps broke open, sending flaming oil splashing across the ancient carpets, setting them ablaze. Gray smoke billowed up behind them as they faced the beast charging for Richard.

Zedd unleashed a fiery bolt of lightning that passed right through the center of the dark mass of disorder as if it were not even there, only to hit the bookshelves against the far wall. Books and flaming paper flew up into the air. Great clouds of dust and smoke boiled up as the room filled with the sound of the cacophonous blast.

Terrible wails and keening, like the howls of the doomed through an open doorway down into the depths of the underworld, came from the beast as it came ever onward, crashing through the thick mahogany posts. Lamps spun through the air as they were flung aside, their silver reflectors casting flickering light around the room and creating shadows that gathered into the beast as it grew more dense, and darker yet.

Magic being hastily conjured by Ann and Nathan wasn’t visible to Richard, but it seemed to pass right through the beast, as if it were made of nothing more than it appeared, shadows all jumbled together, and yet the knot of darkness crashed through solid wooden tables and posts, splintering them as the thing advanced across the room. Twisting beams squealed and boards shrieked under the stress as another post snapped. The edge of the balcony sagged, then dropped several feet before hanging drunkenly. Another post exploded as it was pushed past its capacity to bend by the onward rush of the dark menace. The edge of the balcony dropped several more feet. Bookshelves teetered on the tilting floor and then toppled, sending an avalanche of books plunging down into the main room.

Amidst all the confusion, destruction, and noise, as he backed across the room, watching the approaching menace, trying to think of how to counter it, Richard found his shirt grabbed at the shoulder. With surprising strength, Nicci rammed him through the open doorway. Tom, standing guard in the hallway, snatched Richard’s other arm and helped pull him out of the library as Cara and Rikka followed, guarding his retreat.

In the room, the beast continued onward, smashing anything in its way as it turned toward the doorway, toward Richard.

Ann, Nathan, and Zedd all summoned forces Richard couldn’t even see, but he could sense them by the hum in the air and the radiating waves of a queazy feelings it gave him in the pit of his stomach. He could feel the air being buffeted as magic was conjured and cast.

None of it did any good. They might as well have been attacking shadows.

Nicci turned back to the room from the doorway and lifted a fist toward the snarl of shadows tumbling toward her. The sudden explosion made everyone wince and duck as she unleased a bolt of power that was both blindingly bright and icy dark laced together into one terrible blast. The discharge of thundering power rocked the Keep, shaking the floor and rising dust from every crack and corner. The twisting rope of destruction exploded through the beast, spraying apart. Showers of sparks rained down as bookshelves flew asunder. Wood, debris, and hundreds of books along with sheafs of paper were blasted into the air, leaving fluttering pages to drift through the pandemonium. It looked like a blizzard of paper had been turned loose in the room.

The deafening discharge of power from Nicci that rocked the Keep also sliced right through the stone walls like flaming pitch through paper. Through the jagged slashes cut in solid stone, ribbons of dusty bluish sunlight suddenly penetrated into the room. The contrast of harsh light against the otherwise dark room made it all the harder to see the murky collection of shade and shadow as it moved through the confusion of destruction.

Everyone covered their ears as the terrible wail that sounded like lost souls increased to a terrifying pitch, as if the power Nicci had set upon it had reached down into the underworld to sear them in their dark sanctuary.

While it didn’t look to have done much to stop the shadowy beast, it did seem to get its attention. Nothing else had.

Nicci ran out through the door and shoved Richard, starting him moving down the hallway. He was reluctant to leave Zedd to such a threat, but Richard knew that the thing was after him and not his grandfather. Zedd would be safer if Richard ran. He didn’t think, though, that running was necessarily the solution to his safety.

“Stay out of its way,” Richard told Tom. “It will rip you to shreds. That goes for you two as well,” he said to Cara and Rikka as they shepherded him down the hall.

“We understand, Lord Rahl,” Cara said.

“How do we kill it?” Tom asked as they ran sideways down the hall, keeping a wary eye toward the library.

“You can’t,” Nicci answered. “It’s already dead.”

“Oh great,” he muttered as he turned back to help Nicci, Cara, and Rikka make sure that Richard kept moving. Richard didn’t really think that he needed any physical encouragement. The wails of the dead were enough to urge him to run.

Flashes of light along with angry shrieks came from the doorway as those in the room still fought to destroy, or at least contain, what looked like nothing so much as living shadows. Richard knew that they were wasting their time. It was made in part with Subtractive Magic and they had no weapon against that. The thing had already proven that much to them, but they were probably trying to distract it so as to give Richard time to get away. So far, it hadn’t proven itself susceptible to such tactics. Shota had told him as much.

At an intersection, Richard took the paneled hall to the right. The rest of them followed. At intervals they passed open areas with chairs and couches and dark lamps. Such spots must have once hosted warm conversation and companionship.

As they turned and ran down a wider corridor with tan, troweled plaster walls and golden oak floors, a wall ahead exploded. Dust and debris billowed toward them. Richard slid to a stop on the polished wood floor and reversed direction as the jumble of shadows emerged from the white cloud of dust. Everyone else had previously pushed him on ahead, so that now, having had to turn around, he was at the rear as the beast rapidly closed the distance.

The dark snarl looked like it had collected yet more random shadows along the way—small angled shadows, broad leafy shade, inky dark corners, dark haze of dusk—and crumbled them all together like wadding up paper. The way the shadows folded back on themselves made swirling black shapes that constantly eddied over and under and through one another. It was dizzying to watch, even for the brief glimpses he took as he ran.

And yet, it was so insubstantial that when he glanced over his shoulder he could see light from windows far off down the hall right through the thing. Even so, as they raced around corners, the beast would sometimes go wide and graze the walls, and when it did, it ripped apart the wood, or plaster, or stone as easily as a bull going through bramble.

Richard had no idea how to fight a cluster of crumbled shadows that could tear through solid stone without even slowing.

He recalled Victor’s men in the woods, so violently ripped to shreds in mere moments. He wondered if this was the thing that had slashed through them, if this was the fate they faced that terrible morning when the blood beast came looking for Richard.

Two wizards and two sorceresses had now tried to stop Jagang’s conjured beast without any practical effect. And Nicci was more than a mere sorceress. She had been taught the sinister art of how to use Subtractive Magic in exchange for dark oaths that Richard feared to think about. Even that hadn’t stopped the beast, although it did seem to get a reaction.

Nicci stopped and turned to the dusky collection of shadows careening down the paneled oak halls behind them. She looked like she intended to make a stand. As he caught up with her, Richard, without slowing, planted his shoulder into her middle, knocking the wind from her as he lifted her clear of the floor, carrying her over his shoulder like a sack of grain as he ran.

The halls all around lit in a blinding flash of white light as Nicci—having quickly recovered her breath—cast magic behind even as she was being carted down the hall. The floor shook, nearly knocking Richard from his feet as he ran. Blackness, like the flash of light, caught them and swept past for an instant as Nicci unleashed terrible power at the thing chasing them. By the haunting keening that echoed through the halls, Richard thought that Nicci’s effort must have done something.

She seized his shirt in both fists as she squirmed. “Let me down, Richard! Let me run myself! I’m only slowing you down and it’s catching up with us! Hurry!”

Richard immediately spun her around in his right arm so that she would be facing the right way. As he dropped her to the ground he kept his arm around her waist until he was sure she had her balance and was up to speed with the rest of them.

With Nicci beside him and Tom, Cara, and Rikka right in front of him, they all raced down halls without knowing where they were going. They switched randomly from right turns to left, going past some intersections while taking others. He could hear the beast crashing after them. Sometimes it followed down the halls and corridors, sometimes, when they went around a corner, it clipped though the walls, trying to close the distance, trying to get to him. Stone, mortar, and wood seemed to make no difference to the thing as it broke through each with equal ease. He knew that a thing conjured by Sisters of the Dark and tied to the underworld would have abilities that no ordinary creature would possess, so he had no idea what the limits of it might be.

As he ran, he yelled to the two Mord-Sith and Tom. “You three go straight! Try to get the thing to follow you!”

They looked back as they ran and nodded to his orders.

“That thing isn’t going to follow them,” Nicci said in a low voice as she leaned toward him as best she could at a full run.

“I know. I have an idea. Stay with me—I’m going to take those stairs up ahead.”

At a stairwell, as the three in front shot past it, Richard hooked a hand on the black stone sphere atop the granite newel post, spinning himself around it and to the right. Nicci did the same and they both shot down the stairs at full speed. The beast cut the corner, crashing through the post, sending granite fragments riccocheting off the walls and the sphere bouncing down the hall. Cara, Rikka, and Tom, having already passed the stairs, slid to a stop on the polished marble floor. They were trapped above the beast. They immediately followed it down the stairs.

Richard and Nicci bounded down the steps three or four at a time. He could hear the otherworldly howl of the thing right behind him. It felt as if it were touching the hair at the back of his neck—it was that close.

At the bottom of the stairs, Richard cut to the right, following a stone passageway. The beast went wide, crashing into a tan, polished marble wall. The stone slab shattered with a loud bang but the beast rushed onward. At the first stairwell Richard came to he raced down it, then took the second and third flight down as well to the bottom.

The broad hallway running straight off from the stairs had carpets at regular intervals, making it more difficult to keep their footing. The walls had beaded wainscoting beneath smooth plaster. Brackets spaced down the passageway, centered above each carpet held what looked like glass globes that brightened as Richard raced toward each one in turn. He ran as fast as he could, Nicci at his side, the shadows tumbling onward like death itself right on their heels.

At spiral iron stairs, Richard jumped sidesaddle onto the railing and slid at breakneck speed in a corkscrew course down into the darkness. Right with him, Nicci threw one arm around his neck for balance and did the same. Together they plummeted downward, gaining some precious distance on their pursuer.

At the bottom the railing spilled them out onto a cold, tiled floor. They both tumbled across the smooth green tiles and slid to a sprawling stop. Richard scrambled to his feet and snatched one of the glowing spheres from a bracket.

“Come on, hurry,” he said as Nicci did the same.

They raced through endless rooms and passageways, taking as wild a route as he could in an effort to shake their hunter. Occasionally they gained a precious few paces. At other times, especially in the halls, the thing regained the distance and inched ever closer. Some of the rooms were cozy paneled suites. The beast seemed to suck the shadows right out of the cold, dark fireplaces as it passed them. The globes they carried cast a warm glow across intricately woven carpets and richly upholstered chairs. Bookcases held leather volumes. Richard accidentally knocked over a bookstand, but kept his balance and kept running.

After charging down yet more flights of stairs, some broad with landings and others nothing more than narrow shafts that seemed bottomless, the rooms began to become less grand. Some of the halls were tiled on all sides with odd patterns. One of the chambers was immense and empty, with fat round stone pillars spaced evenly throughout. The lights they carried were not enough to penetrate the farthest reaches. Occasionally, the passages were little more than shafts chiseled through solid rock.

Other rooms and halls were protected with shields that Richard deliberately charged through. He didn’t want Cara, Rikka, and Tom coming near the thing chasing him. He didn’t want them meeting the same fate as Victor’s men. He knew that Cara would be furious at him when she found herself blocked by shields. He hoped he lived to hear her lecture.

They emerged from what appeared as they’d run through it to be a storage room for construction material, with burlap bags and stone stacked to each side. Richard recognized the material from his time in Altur’Rang at forced labor working on Emperor Jagang’s palace. Now Jagang’s beast was hunting him down.

They emerged on the far side of the storage room into a long, corridor with a slate floor. The smooth, stone block walls rose uninterrupted to a lofty ceiling that had to be at least a hundred and fifty feet overhead, creating a narrow, towering vertical slash through the interior of the Keep. Down at the bottom of that soaring passageway, Richard felt like an ant.

He immediately cut to the right down the immense corridor. The booming drumbeat of their boots echoed all around him as he ran with all his strength. He soon had to slow a bit for Nicci. They were both near the end of their endurance. The wail of a thousand dead souls tumbled ever onward, never seeming to tire.

As he ran, Richard couldn’t even see the end of the tall passageway disappearing into the distance. That this was just one corridor of many gave him a profound sense of the enormity of the Keep.

Arriving at an intersecting passage to the left, Richard turned and ran down it a short distance to where they encountered an iron stairwell. Trying to catch his breath, he glanced back and saw the knot of shadows round the corner. Pushing Nicci ahead of him, they bounded down the stairs together.

At the bottom they found themselves in a small, square room that was little more than an intersection of stone passageways going off in three directions. Richard held the glowing sphere out, taking a quick glance in each passageway. He could see nothing down two of them. In the one to the right he thought he saw something glimmering. He’d been down in the Keep before and had encountered strange places and one of those places was what he needed now.

Together he and Nicci raced down the passageway. As he’d thought, it wasn’t very long, just long enough to take them under the colossal corridor and then a little farther to where it opened into a kind of entry area with walls covered in small fragments of colored glass meticulously arranged into elaborate geometric designs. The light from the two glowing spheres glinted off the small glass pieces to send thousands of colored reflections sparkling and shimmering around the room. There was only one other opening, off against a far wall.

Richard staggered to a halt. The strange glittering room made his skin crawl with a sensation much like spiderwebs brushing against him. Nicci turned her head away, swiping at her face as if to get something off her. He knew that such a sensation was a part of a broader warning to stay away.

Small pillars made of polished, gold-flecked stone stood to each side of the distant opening holding up an entablature. The passageway beyond the pillars, not much taller than Richard, appeared to be roughly square and made of simple stone blocks that disappeared off into darkness. It seemed an elaborate and impressive entry for such a plain hallway down in the bowels of the place.

Richard hoped he was right about the reason.

As they crossed the entry room and approached the opening, the area before the pillars began to give off a faint reddish glow. The air itself began to hum in a very troubling way.

Nicci, her hair lifting out from her head as if she were about to be struck by lightning, seized his arm, pulling him back. “That’s a shield.”

“I know,” Richard said as he dragged her by her grip on his arm.

“Richard, you can’t. It’s not just an ordinary shield—not just Additive. It’s laced with Subtractive Magic. Such shields are deadly, this one especially so.”

He looked back the way they’d come and saw the shadowy beast tumbling down the passageway toward them. “I know, I’ve been through places like this before.”

He hoped he was right that this particular shield was like the ones he’d been through. He needed the kind that he’d encountered before, the kind that guarded the most restricted areas. If it was anything less, or one that was actually more powerful or more restrictive than the ones he’d seen before, then they were going to be in a great deal of trouble.

The only way out of the room they were in was back through the passage with the beast that was coming for them, or onward through the shield.

“Let’s go, hurry.”

Nicci’s chest heaved as she struggled to catch her breath. “Richard, we can’t go through there. That shield will take the flesh right off our bones.”

“I’m telling you, I’ve done it before. You can command Subtractive Magic, so you can make it through as well.” He started running toward the passage. “Besides, if we don’t, we’re dead anyway. It’s our only chance.”

With a growl of surrender, she ran along with him through the shower of glittering reflections from the glass mosaics that covered the walls of the room. “You’d better be right about this.”

He grabbed her hand and held it tight, just in case being born with the Subtractive side was necessary. Nicci had not been born with it, but had acquired the use of it. He didn’t know a great deal about magic, but from what he’d learned, there was a great gulf between being born with it and simply being able to use it. He had helped others, without the gift, through shields before, so between her abilities, and his hold of her, he figured he could get her through—if, that was, he could make it through himself.

The air all around them turned as red as a crimson fog. Without pause, Richard charged right though the doorway, pulling Nicci along with him.

The sudden avalanche of pressure felt like it would crush them. Nicci gasped.

Richard had to force himself against that pressure in order to advance. At the razor edge of the plane along the opening surrounded by polished stone pillars, heat seared across his flesh. It was so intense that for an instant he thought he’d made a huge mistake, that Nicci had been right, and that the shield would burn the flesh right off his bones.

Even as he flinched in reaction to the unexpected burning sensation, his momentum carried him through the doorway. He was somewhat surprised not only to find himself alive and well and not at all harmed, but that the passageway was not at all what it appeared from the other side. When he’d looked through the opening before, it looked like a simple stone block passage. Once past the pillars, it was polished stone that seemed to shimmer with a rippling silver surface that made it appear three-dimensional.

A glance back showed the snarl of shadows streaking for the entrance to the opening. Still holding Nicci’s hand, Richard backed them farther into the sparkling passageway.

He was too exhausted to run anymore.

“Here we live or die,” he told her as he labored to catch his breath.