Fire Sea

37

The skull lay where he had nudged it, sending it rolling onto a pile of dry bones. More bones, and more skulls—almost too numerous to count—filled the chamber. The floor was carpeted with bones. Well preserved in the sealed atmosphere, undisturbed through the centuries, the dead lay where they had fallen, limbs twisted grotesquely.

“How did they die? What killed them?” Alfred glanced this way and that, expecting to see the killer emerge at any moment.

“You can relax,” said Haplo. “Nothing killed them. They killed each other. And some of them weren’t even armed. Look at these two, for example.”

A bony hand held the hilt of a sword, its bright metal had not rusted in the dry, hot atmosphere. The notched blade lay beside a head that had been severed from its shoulders.

“One weapon, two bodies.”

“But then, who killed the killer?” Alfred asked.

“Good question,” Haplo admitted.

He knelt down to examine one of the bodies more closely. The skeletal hands were wrapped around the hilt of a dagger. The dagger’s blade was lodged firmly in the skeleton’s own rib cage.

“It seems the killer killed himself,” said Haplo.

Alfred drew back in horror. Haplo looked quickly about, saw evidence that more than one had fallen by his or her own hand.

“Mass murder.” He stood up. “Mass suicide.”

Alfred stared, aghast. “That’s impossible! We Sartan revere life! We would never—”

“Just as you never practiced necromancy?” Haplo interrupted curtly.

Alfred closed his eyes, his shoulders sagged, he buried his face in his hands. Jonathan stepped gingerly inside, stared dazedly around the room. Prince Edmund’s cadaver stood stolidly against one wall, evincing no interest. These were not his people. The lazar glided among the skeletal remains, its dead-living eyes quick and darting.

Haplo kept one of his own eyes on Jera. He walked over to Alfred, slumped dispiritedly against the wall.

“Get a grip on yourself, Sartan. Can you shut that door?”

Alfred lifted an anguished face. “What?”

“Shut the door! Can you shut the door?”

“It won’t stop Kleitus. He came through the warding runes.”

“It’ll slow him down. What the hell’s the matter?”

“Are you sure you want me to? Do we want to be ... locked in here?”

Haplo gestured impatiently at the six other doors in the chamber.

“Oh, yes, well, I see,” Alfred mumbled. “I suppose it will be all right...”

“Suppose all you want. Just shut the damn door!” Haplo turned, surveying the exits. “Now, there must be some way to figure out where these lead. They must be marked—”

A grating sound interrupted him; the door starting to slide shut.

Why, thank you, Haplo was about to comment sarcastically, when he caught a glimpse of Alfred’s face.

“I didn’t do it!” the Sartan protested, staring wide-eyed at the stone door that was grinding its way inexorably across the opening.

Suddenly, irrationally, Haplo didn’t want to be trapped in this place. He leapt forward, interposed his body between the door and the wall.

The massive stone door bore down on him.

He pushed against it with all his might. Alfred grabbed wildly at the door with his hands, fingers scrabbling at the stone.

“Use magic!” Haplo commanded.

Desperately, Alfred shouted a rune. The door continued to shut. The dog barked at it frantically. Haplo made an attempt to stop it using his own magic, hands trying to trace runes on the door that near to squeezing the life from him.

“It won’t work!” Alfred cried, ending his attempt to stop the door. “Nothing will work. The magic’s too powerful!”

Haplo was forced to agree. Near being crushed between the door and the wall, he lunged sideways, pulled himself free. The door shut with a dull boom that sent dust into the air, rattled the bones of the skeletons.

So the door shut. It’s what I wanted. Why did I panic like that? Haplo demanded of himself angrily. It’s this place, a feeling about this place. What drove these people to kill each other? To kill themselves? And why those warding runes, preventing anyone from coming, anyone from leaving?...

A soft blue-white light began to illuminate the chamber. Haplo looked up swiftly, saw runes appear, running in a circle around the upper portion of the chamber walls.

Alfred drew in a deep breath.

“What is it? What do they say?” Haplo braced himself.

“This place is ... sanctified!” Alfred breathed in awe, staring up at the runes whose glow grew brighter, bathing them in radiant light. “I think I’m beginning to understand. Any who bring violence in here . . . will find it visited on themselves!’ That’s what they say.”

Haplo breathed a sigh of relief. He’d begun to have visions of people trapped inside a sealed room, dying of suffocation, going mad, ending it swiftly.

“That explains it. These Sartan began fighting among themselves, the magic reacted to put a stop to it, and that was that.”

He shoved Alfred toward one of the doorways. It didn’t matter where it led. Haplo wanted only to get out of here. He almost flung the Sartan into the door. “Open it!”

“But why is this chamber sacred? What is it sacred to? And why, if it is sacred, should it be so strongly guarded?” Alfred, instead of studying the runes on the door, was peering vaguely about the room.

Haplo flexed his hands, clenched them tightly. “It’s going to be sacred to your own corpse, Sartan, if you don’t open that door!”

Alfred set to work with infuriating slowness, hands groping over the stone. He peered at it intently, murmured runes beneath his breath. Haplo stood near, to make certain the Sartan wasn’t distracted.

“This is our perfect chance for escape. Even if Kleitus does manage to make it this far, he won’t have any idea which way we’ve gone—”

“There are no phantasms here,” came the lazar’s voice.

“. . . no phantasms here , . .” whispered its echo.

Haplo glanced around, saw the lazar flitting from one corpse to another. The prince’s cadaver had left the doorway and moved over near the white wood table in the center of the chamber.

Is it my imagination, wondered Haplo, or is the prince’s phantasm gaming shape and form?

The Patryn blinked, rubbed his eyes. It was this damn light! Nothing looked like it was supposed to look.

“I’m sorry,” said Alfred meekly. “It won’t open.”

“What do you mean, it won’t open?” Haplo demanded.

“It must be something to do with those runes,” the Sartan said, gesturing vaguely up at the ceiling. “While their magic is activated, no other magic can work. Of course! That’s the reason,” he continued in a pleased tone, as if he’d just solved some complex mathematical equation. “They didn’t want to be interrupted in whatever it was they were doing.”

“But they were interrupted!” Haplo pointed out, kicking at one of the skulls with his foot. “Unless they went mad and turned on themselves.”

Which seemed like a very real possibility. I have to get out of here! Haplo couldn’t breathe. Some strange force in the room was expanding, squeezing the air out. The light was intensely bright, painful, hurt his eyes.

I have to get out of here, before I go blind, before I suffocate! Clammy sweat dampened his palms, chilled his body. I have to get out of here!

Haplo shoved Alfred aside, hurled himself at the sealed door. He began to trace runes on the rock, Patryn runes. He was frantic, his hands shaking so that he could barely form the sigla he had known how to shape since childhood. The sigla burned red, dimmed, went out. He’d made a mistake. A stupid mistake. Swearing, he grit his teeth and began again. He had a vague sense of Alfred attempting to stop him. Haplo brushed him away, as he would have brushed away a stinging fly. The white, blue light was growing stronger, more brilliant, beating down on him like the sun.

“Stop him!” The lazar’s shrill voice. “He’s leaving us!”

“... leaving us ...” came the echo.

Haplo began to laugh. He wasn’t going anywhere and he knew it. His laughter had a hysterical edge. He heard it, didn’t care. Die, We’re all going to die...

“The prince!” Alfred’s voice and the dog’s warning bark came at the same time, were almost indistinguishable, as if the Sartan had given the dog words.

Body and mind numb from sickness, fatigue, and what could only be described as panic, Haplo saw that at least one member of their group had discovered a way out.

The prince’s cadaver slumped over the table, the dreadful magic that had kept it alive was gone. Edmund’s phantasm was walking away from the husk that had been its prison, the spirit’s form tall and regal as the prince had been in life, its face transfigured by an expression of rapt wonder. The arms of the cadaver lay flaccid on the marble. The arms of the phantasm reached out. It took a step forward moving through the solid wooden table as if it were a phantasm. Another step and another. The phantasm was leaving its body behind.

“Stop him!” The lazar’s shifting features, blending those of the living and the dead, faced Haplo. “Without him, you will never recover your ship! Even now, his people are attempting to break down the runes you have placed on it. Baltazar plans to sail across the Fire Sea and attack Necropolis.”

“How the hell can you know that?” Haplo shouted. He heard himself shouting, but couldn’t stop. He was losing control.

“The voices of the dead cry out to me!” the lazar answered. “From every part of this world, I hear them. Stop the prince or your voice will join them!”

“... your voice will join them ...” hissed the echo.

None of this made sense anymore. It was all an insane dream. Haplo shot Alfred an accusing glance.

“I didn’t cast the spell! Not. . . not this time!” Alfred protested, wringing his hands. “But it’s true. He is leaving!”

The prince’s phantasm, arms outstretched, glided through the wood table, approaching the center. The spirit grew clearer in the vision of those watching, the lifeless cadaver began to slide to the floor. Where was he going? What was drawing him away?

What would bring him back?

“Your Highness!” Jonathan called out, voice cracking with frantic urgency. “Your people! You can’t leave them. They need you!”

“Your people!” The lazar added its persuasion. “Your people are in danger. Baltazar rules now, in your stead, and he is leading them to war, a war they cannot hope to win.”

“Can he hear us?” Haplo demanded.

The phantasm heard. It hesitated in its movement, gazed at those standing around it, the expression of wonder blurring, marred by doubt, sorrow.

“It seems a pity to call him back,” Alfred murmured.

Haplo could have made a sarcastic comment, but he lacked the energy. He was irritated with himself for having been thinking the very same thing.

“Return to your people.” The lazar was luring the phantasm back to its corpse, crooning to it gently, as a mother lures a child from the perils of the cliffs edge. “It is your duty, Your Highness. You are responsible. You have always been responsible. You cannot be selfish and leave them when they need you most!”

The phantasm dwindled, faded until it was nothing more than the gibbering ghost it had been before. And then, it vanished, disappeared altogether.

Haplo shut his eyes, hard, thinking again that the eerie blue light was playing tricks on them. Blinking, he glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed.

Alfred stared vacantly at the white wooden table. Jonathan was assisting the reanimated corpse to stand.

Would anyone notice if a man, walking down a street in broad daylight, cast no shadow?

“My people,” the corpse said. “I must return to my people.”

The words were the same, the intonation was different. The difference was subtle, a change in the pitch, the modulation. He wasn’t reciting them by rote, he was thinking about them. And Haplo realized that Edmund’s corpse had become a “he,” no longer an “it.” The sightless eyes were sightless no longer. They were fixed on the lazar and in the eyes was the shadow of doubt. Haplo knew then where Edmund’s phantasm had gone. It had, once again, joined with the corpse.

Glancing at the lazar, he saw that it had seen the same phenomenon and that it was not pleased.

Haplo didn’t know why, he didn’t care. Strange things had happened—were happening—in this room. The longer he stayed, the less he liked it and he hadn’t liked it much from the beginning. There had to be some way to shut off those damn blue lights ...

“The table,” said Alfred suddenly. “The key is the table.” He approached it, stepping carefully over the bodies that littered the floor. Haplo went with him, keeping up with him, step for step. “And look at this! The bodies around the table are facing outward, as if they had fallen defending it.”

“And they’re the ones who weren’t armed,” Haplo added. “The sacred runes, a table these people died to protect. If they had been mensch, I’d say this table was an altar.” His eyes met Alfred’s, the same question was in both.

The Sartan considered themselves to be gods. What could they possibly have worshiped?

He and Alfred drew close to the table now. Jonathan was examining it closely, brow furrowed. He reached out a hand.

“Don’t touch it!” Alfred exclaimed.

The duke snatched his hand back. “What? Why not?”

“The sigla on it. Can’t you read them?”

“Not very well.” Jonathan flushed. “The runes are old.”

“Very old,” Alfred agreed solemnly. “The magic has to do with communication.”

“Communication?” Haplo was disappointed, disgusted. “Is that all?”

Alfred began slowly unraveling the tangled skein. “This table is ancient. It did not come from this world. They brought it with them from the old world, the sundered world. They brought it with them and they established it here, beneath the first structure they ever built. For what purpose? What would be one of the first things these ancient Sartan would attempt to do?”

“Communicate!” Haplo said, studying the table with more interest.

“Communicate. Not with each other on this world, they could do that by means of their magic. They would try to establish contact with the other worlds.”

“Contact that failed.”

“Did it?” Alfred studied the table. He held his hands above the sigil-inscribed wood, fingers spread, palms facing down. “Suppose that, in attempting to contact the other worlds, they made contact with ... something, someone else?”

The force that opposes us is ancient and powerful. It cannot be fought, cannot be placated. Tears do not move it, nor do all the weapons we have at our command. Too late, we have come to admit its existence. We bow before it...

Haplo recalled the words, couldn’t think, for the moment, where he’d heard them. On another world. Arianus? Pryan? An image of a Sartan speaking them came to mind, but Haplo had never spoken to another Sartan, except Alfred, before coming to this place. It didn’t make any sense.

“Does it say how we get the hell out of here?” Haplo demanded.

Alfred, hearing the jagged edge to the Patryn’s voice, looked grave. “One of us must attempt the communication himself.”

“Just who are you going to communicate with?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right. Anything to end this. No, wait, Sartan. I’m in on this, too,” Haplo said grimly. “Whatever you hear, I’m going to hear.”

“And you, Jonathan?” Alfred turned to the duke. “You are the representative of this world.”

“Yes. Perhaps I can learn how to help. . .” Jonathan’s glance strayed to his wife, the words died on his lips. “Yes,” he said again in a low voice.

“I will guard the door,” offered the lazar, moving to stand beside the sealed rock.

“That’s not really necessary.” Alfred found it difficult to look directly at the dead woman. He tried, but his gaze kept shifting, sliding away from her. “No one can enter this hallowed chamber.”

“They entered the last time,” the lazar said.

“.. . the last time .. .” whispered her phantasm.

“So they did!” Alfred licked dry lips, swallowed.

“We can’t worry about that now,” Haplo said shortly. “What do we do?”

“Put your .. . uh, put your hands on the table. You can see the indentations where the hands are to be placed. Like this, palm down, thumbs touching, fingers spread. Haplo, make certain none of the sigla on your skin come in contact with the wood. Make your mind a blank—”

“Think like a Sartan, huh? I can manage that,” Haplo did as instructed. Gingerly, he placed his hands on the table. Muscles twitched involuntarily, expecting a jolt, pain, he didn’t know what. He touched wood, solid beneath his hands, cool, reassuring.

“I warn you, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Alfred reiterated, nervously placing his hands on the table.

Jonathan, opposite them, did the same.

Alfred began to chant the runes. The duke, after a moment’s hesitation, joined in, speaking the language of the arcane clumsily and uncertainly. Haplo sat still, kept silent. The dog curled up on the floor near its master.

Soon, the three men heard nothing except Alfred’s chanting. And, soon, they couldn’t hear that.

The lazar stood near the door, watching in silence, watched Alfred slump forward, watched Haplo’s head rest on the table, watched Jonathan cradle his cheek on the cool, white wood. The dog’s eyes blinked sleepily, closed.

The lazar raised its chill voice. “Come to me. Follow my call. Fear no runes of warding. They are for the living. They have no power over the dead. Come to me. Come to this chamber. They will open the door for you, as they opened it long ago, and invite their own doom inside. It is the living who have done this to us.”

“... done this to us . . .” came the echo.

“When the living are no more,” the lazar intoned, “the dead will be free.”

“...free...”