Nekropolis

TWENTY-THREE

Everything stopped-the music, the conversation-and everyone turned toward Dis and slowly went down on bended knees. I don’t mind showing someone respect, provided they earn it. But the idea of paying homage to a person I’d never meant as if he were royalty-even if in Nekropolis he was-really grated. Still, I knelt along with the others, though I gritted my teeth while doing so.

Dis strode into the chamber with the easy confidence of someone who is lord of all he surveys and doesn’t feel a need to make a big deal out of it. He paused for a moment, smiled, and then gestured for us to stand. Everyone complied, but they remained silent, watching Father Dis and waiting for their next cue.

Dis wasn’t what I had expected. There was nothing monstrous about him at all. He stood over six feet, had short curly black hair, a large but distinguished-looking nose, and a relaxed, charming smile. This was the ultimate Lord of Nekropolis? He looked more like an Italian movie star.

He walked through the crowd, smiling and nodding to those he passed, stopping once or twice to shake someone’s hand (or paw or claw). And then he continued walking-straight toward us.

When he reached us, he stopped and flashed that smile of his. “Varvara, how lovely to see you, as always.” He took her hand and kissed the back of it. His voice was a mellow tenor, but with an odd accent I couldn’t quite place.

“My Lord,” Varvara said solemnly, all trace of the shallow, fashion-crazed party-girl persona she affected gone.

Dis released her hand and turned to Devona and me. “I see we have two new guests this evening. Charmed, Ms. Kanti.” He kissed Devona’s hand, and she just watched him, flustered. “Mr. Richter.”

I held up my gray-skinned hand. “If you’re going to kiss my hand too, I have to warn you, it’s seen better days.” I couldn’t help it; I’m even more of a smart aleck than usual when I’m nervous.

Dis chuckled. “I’ve seen far worse in my time, Mr. Richter, believe me.” And then the pupils in his warm brown eyes dilated, becoming windows to a darkness deeper and colder than anything I had ever imagined. His pupils returned to normal and he shook my hand. “So glad you two could make it tonight. I hope it shall turn out to be a memorable experience for you both.”

And with that he left us and walked toward the pentagram-shaped dais. “The time is nigh!” he called out in a commanding voice, the charming host gone, replaced by the Lord of the City. “Let us begin!”

He mounted the dais steps and climbed to the top, and passed through the ring of Sentinels. He took a position in the center of the pentagram and waited. The five Darklords, including Varvara, then joined him, each standing on the point of the pentagram which corresponded to the location of their stronghold in the city, facing Father Dis.

I half expected dramatic music to swell as Dis and the Darklords raised their arms above their heads, but the chamber was silent, the air charged with anticipation. Everyone stood gathered around the dais, watching, waiting. Dis chanted no harsh, multisyllabic words of magic, made no complicated mystic gestures. All he did was simply look upward-and the Nightspire began to open.

As if it were an ebon flower curling back its nightdark petals, the tip of Nightspire blossomed open to reveal Umbriel. The shadowsun hovered huge and heavy in the eternal night of Nekropolis’s sky, its hue no longer pure black but now shot through with patches of gray. It seemed to sag in the sky, as if weary and barely able to keep itself aloft.

The Darklords lowered their hands until they were pointing at Dis. And then gouts of darkness blasted forth from their palms to engulf him in a turbulent, writhing shroud of shadow. Dis inhaled, drawing the darkness into him as if it were air, and then, with the Lords continuing to feed him with their shadow, Dis l owered his arms, threw back his head, and opened his mouth wide.

A torrent of darkness surged upward from deep within the being that called itself Father Dis, spiraling up through the interior of the Nightspire, geysering forth from the opening, and streaking across the starless sky toward Umbriel. The stygian bolt struck the shadowsun, feeding, restoring, renewing it. As we watched, the patches of gray began to shrink, and Umbriel seemed to grow stronger and more vital. It was a wonder to behold. A dark wonder, yes, but a wonder just the same.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, I became aware of movement on the dais. One of the Sentinels-the one I’d recognized earlier, with the scar on its chest-was stirring. It moved its thick-fingered hands to theline of puckered flesh, plunged them into the skin, and pulled open its chest. It reached into the cavity and brought forth a crystal a bit larger than a man’s fist.

The Dawnstone.

I understood in a flash how the artifact had been smuggled past the Nightspire’s wardspells. Concealed within a Sentinel, one of Dis’s own guards, it hadn’t tripped any of the mystic protections.

Some of the others in the audience had noticed the Sentinel’s actions, and were shouting and pointing. If the Darklords and Dis were aware of what was happening, they gave no sign. The Lords continued pumping Dis full of darkness, and he in turn continued feeding it upward into Umbriel.

The Sentinel cupped the Dawnstone in its hands, and a warm yellow glow began to suffuse the crystal.

“It’s activating the stone!” Devona shouted. “But that’s impossible! A Sentinel is a golem, a mystic automaton without a mind of its own! It can’t work magic!”

The Dawnstone’s glow was getting brighter.

“Well, this one can!” I said.

People were shouting to the Lords, trying to get their attention, but it was no use. Whether the Lords couldn’t hear or couldn’t afford to be distracted at this point in the ceremony, they didn’t respond. Neither, for that matter, did the other Sentinels, who remained motionless on the dais. Maybe they too were somehow part of the ceremony, or perhaps they needed Dis to command them to action. Whichever the case, they stood by, useless.

Dis’s red-robed attendants, the Cabal, dropped their serving trays and rushed toward the rogue Sentinel, their hands flaring with crimson energy. But the Sentinel merely pointed the Dawnstone at the oncoming attendants. A dazzling lance of white light blazed forth from the crystal and washed over the Cabal. They didn’t even have time to scream. One second they were there, the next they were gone. Not even dust remained.

A number of the Darklords’ guests-the vampires especially-fell to the floor, crying and moaning in pain, injured from merely witnessing the release of the Dawnstone’s awesome power. Keket managed to remain on her cloth-wrapped feet, but she’d averted her eyes, unable to face the Dawnstone’s luminance. Her Warders huddled behind her, whining like terrified dogs. Everyone else either stood in mute fear or was trying to escape the chamber. No one headed for the Sentinel, which was slowly starting to turn around to face Dis and the Darklords.

It looked like it was up to the dead man. I drew my 9mm, aimed at the Sentinel’s head, and squeezed off three shots.

I wasn’t the world’s greatest marksman when alive, but death has given me a much steadier hand, and my shots hit their intended target. But I might as well not have bothered; the bullets merely scratched the Sentinel’s doughy gray flesh.

I decided to try a different target and fired three more shots at the Dawnstone. Because of the way the crystal was glowing, it was hard to tell if I hit it, but I believed I did. But instead of being rewarded with the sound of shattering magic crystal, nothing happened.

“I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy,” I muttered as I pulled out the spent clip and replaced it with a fresh one.

The Sentinel completed its turn and aimed the Dawnstone at Father Dis and, along with the five bolts of darkness still blasting into him from the Darklords, a stream of white light struck him full on the chest. The shadow streaming forth from Dis’s mouth cut off as the Lord of Nekropolis screamed.

Take all the pain in the universe, not just physical pain, but all the mental and emotional anguish you can imagine. Put them all together, double, triple, quadruple them, and you still wouldn’t match the intensity of the agony in Father Dis’s cry.

And then the ground began to shake, as if the Nightspire shared its master’s anguish. I wondered if the disturbance was localized to Dis’s island, or if the entire city experienced the tremors. I feared the latter.

I finished reloading and turned to Devona. “Time to get your crystal back,” I said.

She nodded grimly, and we started toward the dais, but before she could get three steps, she stiffened, grimaced in pain, and fell to her side. In my concern for Devona, I momentarily forgot about the Sentinel, the Dawnstone, the Lords, and the quaking of the Nightspire. I knelt by her side.

“What’s wrong?”

She touched the side of her head and between paingritted teeth forced out, “My head…feels like it’s…on fire…”

I feared she was suffering from some delayed reaction to viewing the Dawnstone’s brilliance. I wanted to help her, wanted to take away the pain, but I didn’t know how.

“Forget about me, go…stop…Dawnstone…”

I didn’t want to leave her lying there in agony, but I knew if someone didn’t do something soon, we’d all be destroyed. I nodded, squeezed her hand, then stood and half-ran, half-limped toward the dais. I weaved between weeping and wailing guests, my mind racing to come up with some sort of plan of attack.

I couldn’t hurt the Sentinel by shooting it, couldn’t shatter the Dawnstone. I certainly couldn’t physically battle the golem, nor did I have any mystic knowledge that would allow me to attack it magically. And I didn’t have anything in my jacket of tricks that would help. If only the damned thing’s hide wasn’t so blasted tough! Then I could-and then I realized: its skin might be impenetrable, but what about its insides? There was a gaping hole in its chest now where the Dawnstone had been concealed. If I could just get a shot at that hole…

I circled the dais, looking for an angle. It wasn’t easy, considering the other motionless Sentinels in the way, not to mention the Darklords and Father Dis. But I finally found a space between a Sentinel and Talaith that, while not perfect by any means, would have to do. I aimed, doing my best to ignore Dis’s cries and the chamber’s shaking. Steady, steady…I fired.

One, two, three shots right into the open gash in the Sentinel’s chest. Success! The creature staggered and the Dawnstone’s beam winked out. But the golem didn’t go down. Instead, it leveled the Dawnstone at me and I was blinded by the crystal’s blazing light. I raised an arm to protect my eyes, but I felt no heat and no pain.

The light extinguished, and I blinked furiously, trying to force my eyes to work again. Within seconds, I could see once more, although my vision was peppered with floating purple and orange afterimages. I took a quick inventory of my body, and as near as I could tell, the Dawnstone hadn’t harmed me. I was grateful the crystal produced no heat; otherwise, I likely would have burst into flame.

The Sentinel seemed to regard me for a moment-it was difficult to tell for certain since it possessed no facial features-and then it turned and began descending the dais. I checked Dis. He knelt in the middle of the pentagram, obviously shaken. The Darklords were still emitting beams of darkness at him, though, and the Nightspire continued quaking furiously. Dis got to his feet and looked up at Umbriel once more. The shadowsun was covered with gray patches, many more than before, and jagged fissures criss-crossed its surface. The Renewal Ceremony was failing.

Dis opened his mouth and released a shout of equal parts frustration and determination, and pure darkness fountained from deep within him and rushed upward toward Nekropolis’s dying sun.

The Sentinel, meanwhile, had reached the chamber floor and was stomping toward me, the Dawnstone held at its side in one massive hand. Magic hadn’t harmed me, so it looked like the big bruiser was going to get physical. No problem; this kind of fight I understood.

I aimed for the gash and squeezed off three more shots.

The Sentinel took a step back, swayed, and then dropped the Dawnstone, which fell to the floor with a loud clack! but was undamaged. The rent in the golem’s chest widened, and out spilled a black flood of tiny hard-shelled insects.

I stared in surprise, and suddenly a whole lot of things began to make sense.

I didn’t have time to reflect on my newfound realizations before the insects were upon me, covering me completely from head to toe. I slapped at them, tore at them, hit the ground and rolled in an attempt to crush them, but while I got a few that way, there were just too damned many, gnawing, chewing, ripping away at my undead flesh. It didn’t hurt, of course; I felt a certain distance from what was occurring, as if it were happening to someone else.

And then I couldn’t move my left arm anymore, nor my right. I fell to the floor, my legs useless. I couldn’t see, for I no longer possessed eyes. And my thoughts became erratic and sluggish, and I realized the insects had penetrated my brain.

I experienced a moment of vertigo, followed by darkness. Then I could see once more, only now I was looking down upon a carpet of insects that were picking clean a rag-covered skeleton, and I understood what had taken place. The insects had destroyed my body and released my spirit. I was dead, for the second time.

I wasn’t upset by this development, didn’t feel anything about it one way or the other. It just was.

Although I had no body, at least none that I was aware of, I did appear to have a limited range of vision, as if I were still using eyes to see. I wanted to know what the Sentinel was doing and, as if having the desire was all that was necessary, my vision focused at the golem.

It stood motionless while the insects finished their work, and then like a movie in reverse, they flowed back into the Sentinel. When they were all inside once more, the golem gripped its chest wound and pinched it closed, in order to hold the insects in, I presumed, and then stomped back toward the dais where Father Dis and the Darklords still struggled to renew Umbriel.

I watched, unconcerned, as the Sentinel retrieved the Dawnstone and mounted the steps of the dais. The golem then raised the mystic crystal and once more unleashed a blast of light at Dis. The ruler and founder of Nekropolis screamed, and the dark power he channeled upward to Umbriel was cut off again. He fell to his knees as the tremors which shook the Nightspire grew even more violent. I wondered idly how long the structure could withstand such shaking, not that it mattered much. Nothing mattered. The concept no longer held any meaning for me. Everything just was.

And then I felt a pull, as if something were drawing me toward it. I “looked” in that direction and saw a light a thousand times brighter than any the Dawnstone could ever produce. I began drifting toward that light, slowly at first, and then faster, leaving the struggles of the flesh creatures behind me, already forgotten.

And as I neared the light, I heard a voice, a voice that I hadn’t heard in almost two years.

It’s not like you to leave a job unfinished, Matt.

With a jolt, I remembered the Sentinel and the Dawnstone, Dis and the Darklords, Umbriel and the Nightspire.

And Devona.

Dale was right; I still had work to do.

Thanks for the reminder, pal.

I turned away from the light and moved back toward the chamber and the struggle taking place on the dais. I had no idea what I could hope to do as a disembodied spirit-I just knew I had to do something. I wished Lyra were here to give me a few pointers. She’d spent enough time as a spirit and probably could…And then it hit me. Lyra and Honani, one soul exchanged for another.

I didn’t have a spell designed by Papa Chatha to aid me, but I did have a hell of a lot of determination. I concentrated on drifting toward the Sentinel, who was still unmercifully blasting Father Dis with the Dawnstone.

More specifically, I aimed for the gash in the thing’s chest.

I slipped into the Sentinel’s body and was suddenly aware of another consciousness within it. A fragmented, alien consciousness that I experienced as a million tiny voices whispering back and forth to each other. And then I sensed the voices become aware of me and begin speaking as one, only they weren’t whispering this time: they were shouting-shouting for me to get out.

But I wasn’t about to go anywhere. I concentrated my entire will on merging with the Sentinel, on becoming one with it, being it. I could feel the alien presence’s grip on the golem begin to weaken, and I took advantage of the opportunity to seize control of the Sentinel’s arms.

The alien presence shrieked within my mind as I brought the crystal to the chest of the body we shared, pried open the gash, and aimed the stone within. I sensed that all I needed to do to activate the Dawnstone was will it.

I did.

Light flooded through our shared being, and I could hear the presence’s agonized screams, feel its death throes. And then the presence was gone, and the Dawnstone’s light grew dim and went out altogether, leaving me alone in the Sentinel’s body.

I began to feel my thoughts slipping away then, to feel my very Self begin to dissolve into an approaching night that was warm, welcoming, and eternal.

I didn’t care, though. All that mattered was Nekropolis-and more importantly, Devona-was safe. I only wished I’d had a chance to say goodbye.