Shadowblood

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Unconscious sentries lay at their feet. Tamara opened the postern gate. For a moment Rik feared that something had gone wrong, that Asea was not there but then she stepped into view, fully garbed in her war-gear, and said, “You have not been spotted?”

“Not as far as I can tell,” said Tamara.

“Where is Rik?” Asea asked. Rik was pleased. Even a master sorcerer could not spot him. His new talent might prove very useful if he survived. On the other hand he was starting to discover a downside. Maintaining this strange form of invisibility was draining his strength fast. He felt as if the life were slowly being leeched out of him.

“He is with us.”

“I am here,” Rik said. His voice emerged as a thin whisper, as if he were only partially in the same world, or it were echoing down a long corridor from very far away.

“I see you have been developing new talents,” she said. “Did Tamara teach you this?”

“He taught himself.”

“Impressive. You have become wraith-like. That might prove to be dangerous in the long run.”

Rik wanted to ask her what she meant, but this did not seem like the time or the place. They had too much to do, and too little time to do it in. “We had best move on,” said Rik. “If we’re going to do what we came for.”

Asea nodded. There was worry etched on the silver mask of her face and suddenly, and for the first time, it made her look old. Rik had a sudden fierce premonition that this was not going to end well for her, or any of them. He regretted coming to this vast ancient fortress, surrounded by its deadly spells, inhabited by servants of an ancient evil.

They headed along the benighted corridors, their way lit be sorcerous glowglobes, their path led by Tamara. Every now and again, Asea stopped and worked a simple-looking sorcery, as if she were trying to confirm something, perhaps the direction in which they intended to go.

All around them was silence, as if the Palace slept, though Rik was sure it was not so. When he looked through the shadows he sensed furious activity all around, and the flows of ancient energies.

Was this a trap or was it simply something else going on? What he felt made him uneasy, and he could understand why Asea seemed so nervous. Tamara pushed on, decisively, as if she were out for a stroll in the park. Now that she was committed, she was really committed. Rik admired her coolness and determination even though he knew she was just as on edge as he was.

They kept to the less intensely used parts of the Palace, heading always downwards, towards the heart of the darkness. He was reminded of the cellars of the Inquisition back in Halim although this was a thousand times worse.

The voices gibbered within his head, afraid and angry. They did not want him to be there, although there was nothing they could do about it save scream their panic. The Quan sensed something wrong with the ebb and flow of magical energies around them, and Rik was inclined to trust those alien instincts in matters like these.

There was power in this place, so great that he doubted even the most insensitive could fail to notice it, and so tainted that it made his stomach turn. He sensed flows of corrupt energy all around, a power related to that which fuelled the armies of the dead in their war of conquest.

“Now we’re approaching the heart of this,” said Asea. Tamara merely licked her lips and nodded.

“Do you want your pistols, Rik, or your blade?” Asea asked.

“No,” he whispered. “Leave the pack upon on your back though so I can get to them quickly.”

He had feared that she would object to his words as a high noble might object to taking a command from a peasant, but she merely nodded and obeyed his instructions.

“The blade on my belt is the truesilver one Azaar gave you,” she said to the nearest shadow, and he realised that she could not, for all her power, perceive him. At any other time he would have felt triumphant, now he only felt worried as he realised that her power had limits and he had passed beyond the edges of them. He made a note of where the blade was in case he had to reach for it quickly.

“Perhaps you should scout ahead, Rik,” said Tamara, “since you seem to have manifested a talent for this beyond mine.”

“I will do that,” he whispered as he passed her and moved silent as a shadow, and invisible as the wind, down the haunted corridors of the Palace.

He drifted ahead of them, moving up to junctions and checking for guards, then returning. He stood guard as Tamara opened locks that let them down into the deep dungeons. He walked in shadows beside them as they moved through endless cells and chambers towards the strange magical heart that pulsed in the core of the place, feeding on the sorcerous energies of uncountable deaths. There was some sort of feedback between the plague and the spell that bound the undead. He felt certain of it, even if he was not sure why.

They were getting close now and Asea gestured for them to halt. “We’re very near now and I want you all to be ready. You will have to protect me while I close the Gate. You’ll know when it’s done.”

“What if something goes wrong?” Tamara asked nervously.

“Then flee,” said Asea.

“I don’t like the look of this at all,” said Handsome Jan. A huge mob of walking dead surrounded the cottage. It was quite clear they sensed the presence of the living and were hungry.

“This is it,” said Toadface. “We’re all going to die. If we are lucky.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said the Barbarian. He had drawn his blade and laid it on the remains of the table. He was pouring powder into the barrel of his rifle. “We’ve been in worse situations. We’ll get into others.”

“What are they waiting for?” asked Handsome Jan.

“For us to die of boredom,” said the Barbarian.

Sardec shook his head. The big man’s stupidity had rarely seemed so impenetrable. Sardec realised then that he was merely scared and nervous, and rightly so. They were all going to die in the next few minutes. There were far too few of them and far too many of the walking dead.

Hopeless as it seemed, they needed to do something. He was not just going to stand here waiting to be slaughtered. They were going to take a few of those monsters out there with them. He almost laughed at that. How did you kill the dead? He told himself it did not matter.

“You lot, prop more of that furniture against the door. Watch the windows. I want a man at every one and some of you upstairs, shooting down into the mob. If they break in, we’ll retreat upstairs and make a stand there.”

He did not need to say last stand. Everybody understood that. He could see all the men exchanging looks at once pitiful and bold. Marcie and Rena shepherded the children upstairs so that they could not hear the rest of this discussion. He was glad of that.

Toadface looked at him, licked his lips with his long tongue and said in a choked voice, “If things don’t work out well, sir, I think I speak for all the lads when I say it’s been an honour to serve under you.”

Sardec found himself surprisingly touched by the chorus of ayes that echoed round the ruined cottage. He hid the emotion behind a stern facade and said, “No need to be emotional, Toadface. We’re not dead yet.”

“Never say die, eh, sir?”

“That’s right. Now load up and get ready to show those stinking bastards what for. We’re still among the living so let’s try to remain here.”

A shout from upstairs got Sardec’s attention. It was Weasel from his sniper’s position on the roof. “Something’s happening, sir. They are starting to move.”

Rik did not like this at all. The corridors were silent. It was as if this part of the great labyrinth beneath the Palace had been abandoned.

It was too easy. Things had gone too well. They had penetrated the most heavily defended part of the Dark Empire and so far no one had been able to stop them.

He told himself not to worry too much, to save his fears for when things really went wrong. Both he and Tamara were skilled in the arts of breaking and entering, and had powerful sorceries to aid them beside. Tamara knew her way round this Palace, as did Asea from the days before the Schism. They had advantages that he had never enjoyed during his career as a sneak thief. It was not so surprising that they had managed to come as far as they had undetected.

He took a deep breath and concentrated on his surroundings, reaching out through the shadows. His perceptions flowed in the direction of the Gate and as he did so he felt them altering, being changed by the powerful sorcery of the place. The shadows seemed thicker, curdled like old milk, denser and sourer, charged with an evil energy.

He looked into a great chamber and saw the Black Mirror. He understood at once why it was so called although it was not a mirror at all. It was an arch of stone in the middle of which was a field of force so dark and brilliant it reflected its surroundings. At the centre of it he sensed an absence, a hole in the fabric of space-time that was growing larger in infinitesimal increments and which might, if not closed, eventually grow large enough to swallow the world. It was like a wound in the surface of the universe which was, with glacial slowness, being torn ever wider.

A group of black-robed sorcerers knelt at the five cardinal points of sorcery around the Black Mirror. Their eyes were closed and their lips writhed as they chanted. They seemed oblivious to all that happened around them, locked in a world of their own by chains of sorcerous energy binding them to the Mirror. Around them at a distance from the gateway stood others, who looked powerful and alert. These would be the guardians and he sensed a subtle wrongness about them that made his heart sink.

He remembered Tamara’s tale of the creatures she had fought. Even with the advantage of surprise and his sorcery could he beat such a thing? If it had power akin to a Nerghul, he could think of only one way. It came to him then that the real reason he had agreed to come along on this suicide mission was that it gave him an excuse to feast again, to drain life using thanatomantic magic, and feel the indescribable ecstatic burn that it provided.

He was like those men he had known back in Sorrow who were addicted to drink or dreamdust, the ones who somehow always managed to find a reason to go back to the bar or dealer no matter what promises they had made or how much resolve they claimed to have. There was part of him that wanted to use that tainted magic and always would. The path that had led here was the path that gave him the excuse he needed.

He studied the sorcerers of the Mirror and the unholy energies that infused them. They burned with power bled from that flowing into the Gate. They were very strong.

“It’s behind that doorway,” he heard Asea say from by his side.

“Yes,” said Tamara. “Rik and I can clear a path. You can follow if you can pass the spells binding the Gate.”

“That I can do,” said Asea.

“Are you ready, Rik?” Tamara asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“On the count of three then, let us go.”

Rik’s stomach lurched. The moment was upon him at last; within the next few heartbeats he might be dead. His remaining breaths might be numbered to only a few more than Tamara’s count. Nonetheless excitement burned in him too, and he felt so eager to get to grips with the enemy that he could barely restrain himself from making the shadow — walk.

“One,” said Tamara. Rik slid his blade from the scabbard and focused his mind back through the shadows into the Gate chamber.

“Two.” He tightened his grip around the blade, picking the spot from which he would emerge and planning exactly how he would strike.

“Three.” He stepped forward into the shadows and fell through the whispering void towards his target, one of those assigned to protect the sorcerers. Emerging on the far side he reached out with one hand. Instinctively, guided by the knowledge of the Quan, he lashed out, draining life from the guardian.

Tendrils of dark energy burrowed into his foe through vein and muscle and bone and he became aware of just how altered the Terrarch was. Strange things had been added to him. His bones had been strengthened, his heart altered and that which flowed through his veins was not blood but something clotted and black and oily.

There was little resistance; his prey had not been expecting the attack. Energy flowed into Rik, feeding him strength and driving him onwards.

The sensation of vampirism was ecstatic. The flow of power enabled him to drain his victim all the faster. The Terrarch’s skin turned pale and grey and ashen and began to flake off. He took on a withered mummified look. A strange whistling moan emerged from his lips as life fled from him.

A deluge of memories far too fast to be assimilated flowed before Rik’s eyes. He saw the Terrarch’s youth, his initiation into his strange cult, and the operation that had transformed him into something other than human. He saw the pumps that had drained him of blood and replaced it with black fluid and the surgery that had replaced his internal organs with things torn from corpses and altered and grown in glass jars bubbling with nutrient fluid. He felt the taint that the Terrarch carried within him, cancer-like. He saw how the Terrarch’s eyes had been scooped out and replaced with new ones that had been stolen from dead men and changed to let their own see things that other men could not.

He took part of the stolen life force and forced it into the spells that made him faster and stronger. Time slowed.

It came to him that his victim did not even know what was killing him, saw him only as a deadly shadow. He was almost drained now and would not last much longer. Rik lashed out with his blade, severing the head with one blow. It rolled away across the floor, little more than a mummified skull to which a few wisps of hair clung.

Tamara danced across the room, far faster and stronger than a human. She had managed to sever the head of one of the guardians in the first moment of surprise, but the others swarmed towards her, unaware still of Rik’s presence, or uncaring.

Tamara’s movements would have been sight-blurringly swift to a normal mortal, but to Rik they seemed as slow as something happening in a dream. He had time to take in the precision of her attacks and the beauty of her technique as she dodged her foes.

They were as fast as she and as strong and he noted that their power came not from spells but from the modifications that had been made to them. They looked like Terrarchs but they were something else now, creatures modified by eldritch sorcery.

Rik swirled over to them, exulting in his power, he struck the head from one’s shoulders before it knew what was going on. Decapitation was a proven way of killing them. He did not want to experiment when facing creature’s as potent as any Nerghul.

The changelings were not stupid. They noticed what was going on even if they could not see Rik. Two of them turned and their blades slashed through the air where he had been a moment ago. He ducked their strokes and sprang backwards away, knowing that getting in the way of those razor edged blades would be fatal, even if it only happened by accident.

“I see something,” said one of the guardians. “The shadow of a shadow of a shadow. There’s another here, a sorcerer.”

Tamara took advantage of the instant of confusion to drive a stiletto through his eye. She left it there, buried in the brain and slashed a tendon. Her foe toppled and writhed, beating hands and feet against the paving stones like a lizard dropped on a hot skillet.

Rik swept towards his own assailants, slashing and cutting. He felt his stolen energy draining away fast. The many spells enwrapping him were taking their toll. He knew that he would have to finish this quickly or drain another foe, and with the edge of his life-hunger dulled by satiety, he was not sure that he wanted to do that again quite so quickly. He rained blows down on one of the guardians, a hundred cuts that would have drawn blood from any normal mortal but left his opponent with more slashes that a butcher’s block. The impact drove it back.

Its companion slashed at Rik, and its blade bit home. Pain surged up his arm, and the cloak of shadows flickered and dissipated around him. He invoked the healing spells Asea had taught him, and knitted his own flesh back together but he had lost the advantage of invisibility.

“There he is,” said one of the guardians. “We have him now.”

“Do you?” Rik asked, springing tiger-like on the foe he had driven back and knocking him to the ground. Straddling his opponent’s chest he placed his blade against its neck and pushed down, sawing the head partially from the shoulders. A swish of air behind him warned him of peril and he sprang just in time to avoid being pinned to the enemy. Instead, the guardian’s blade went through its companion’s breast with such force that it became embedded in the floor.

Rik attacked in that moment of defencelessness and slashed away the hand holding the blade, at the wrist. His foes may have been invisibly armoured by magic but their weak spots were at the joints of their limbs and necks, which had to remain flexible and thus vulnerable.

He shouted this information to Tamara, just in case she had not realised it herself, and set to work at butchery. He hoped that Asea would get here in time. He sensed there was something unstable about the Gate.

Sardec watched as the undead rolled forward in an irresistible wave of stinking, rotting flesh. Their feet made an awful squelching sound and their bellows breath whistled eerily. There was the thunder of musketry and the smell of gunpowder as the Foragers opened fire.

Their foes were packed so close that they could hardly miss. Walking corpses toppled to be trampled underfoot by their companions who kept on coming.

It seemed like only a matter of moments before they had reached the walls of the cottage. Sardec could see their yellowish faces, bloodshot eyes gleaming, the blood of old wounds running down their heads. He had faced crowds and regiments before but there was something about the silence of the undead that was deeply unsettling.

Silence was the wrong word, he thought. They did not speak. They did not shout. They did not whisper. They made no attempt to communicate. The only sounds that came from them were involuntary. The whistle of air from corrupted lungs, strange groans that might have been the emissions of animals. They looked like humans, but they came on like an army of ants, and whatever intelligence that was in their eyes was as different from that of humans as an insect’s might have been.

The door bulged as the weight of dozens of bodies pressed against it. With a crack it gave way and the undead monsters began to crawl in over the piled furniture. Sardec prepared himself for close combat.

The door exploded inwards and Asea entered. In one hand she held her lightning wand, in the other was a sword of truesilver. The runes on the blade blazed in the eddy currents of powerful magic. There was a brilliant flash, and the smell of ozone filled the air. One of the guardians fell, skin blackened, and then Asea spitted him on her blade. His flesh sizzled as the blade worked its way in; when it reached his heart, the chest seemed to collapse inwards as if bones and internal organs had liquified. If they were magical in nature that was quite possible.

Rik redoubled his efforts, fighting his way over to Asea and preparing to defend her. With the aid of her magic, the fight was soon over. Once they had done with the guardians, the sorcerers were easy prey. They never stirred from the ecstatic communion with the Mirror even as he killed them. They stood uncontested in possession of the gate chamber. In the distance, alarm bells rang.

Rik looked at his patron. “What now?” he asked.

“You and Tamara hold the door. I will do what we came here to do. After that is done you must flee.”

“What about you?”

“I will try and get out but if worst comes to the worst you must abandon me. You and Tamara have the means to get out. I do not.”

“I won’t do that,” said Rik. “I won’t leave you here.”

“I don’t think you have any choice in the matter, Rik, unless you are keen to die. Now take up your position. We must get on with it.”

He stared at her, not yet willing to do what she said. She shook her head and smiled. “I thank you, Rik, for what you mean to do, but your death will serve no purpose. It would suit me better if you lived. I have made provision for you in my will. Karim has the documents with him.”

“You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?”

“I suspected it might come to this, but I hoped it would not. Now in the name of the Light let me get on with this, or we shall all die here in vain.”

She tossed him the blade and the lightning wand. He held the blade gingerly by its insulated hilt and stuffed the wand into his belt. It was useless to him at the moment since he did not know how to use it.

He glanced around the room taking in the scene of utter devastation. All of the guardians were dead and decomposing with supernatural swiftness, taking the evidence of whatever supernatural tampering had been done to them to the grave. The air stank of rotting flesh and things long dead. The glow of the glittering gateway anchoring the spell hurt the eye if he looked at it too long. The sorcerers lay sprawled in their own blood, smiles etched eerily on their faces.

He glanced at the silver-masked figure of Asea, bowed to her and took up position beside Tamara. Behind him he could hear Asea making preparations. A glance backwards showed him that she was inscribing a circle of power around the gateway in chalk, kicking the bodies of the dead out of her way where necessary.

Whatever she was planning he hoped it would work. He could hear alarms ringing and the sound of men approaching from the distance.