The Order

23 The Road to Gea Kul

Deckard Cain sat upright on the bed of straw. Somehow he had managed to fall asleep again, after the incident with the feeder. Dawn crept in through the small window, painting the room will a dull, gray light.

He was drenched with sweat, gasping for air, the walls seeming to close in on him as he tried to orient himself. The dreams were getting worse, filling every moment of sleep and twisting the truth, binding his heart with threads of lies until he couldn’t fight his way free. As they got closer to the answers they were looking for and his dreams continued to change, he could no longer remember what had really happened so many years ago. He had met Tyrael that day in the Pandemonium Fortress, and it had changed his life forever. But the Lesser Evil Belial, ruler of one part of the Burning Hells, had never appeared.

It was all wrong. Yet the dream had begun to sow the seeds of doubt in him, until he felt he could no longer trust his own memories.

If only Tyrael were here. The loss of the archangel of Justice during the destruction of the Worldstone was devastating. Meeting him in person had been a seminal moment in Cain’s life; after doubting for so long, and then living through the horrors of the invasion of Tristram, to see an archangel face to face was like looking into the sun. There were those in years past who had said that the angels were as bad as demons, and that most of them preferred that humans be destroyed. But they did not know the truth. Tyrael had been a protector of the Horadrim and all of humanity when another member of the Angiris Council would have had them destroyed. He was Justice incarnate, a creature so pure in spirit, he made all others seem like moths beating against a flame.

But now he was gone, and Sanctuary was exposed and vulnerable. Who would save them now? Who would step in, when the world was at its darkest point?

Who would stop Belial from destroying mankind?

Cain and Mikulov took Leah out of Kurast before the sun had fully entered the sky. The road stretched before them like a jagged scar cut through burned flesh. The husks of trees huddled in small groups, banding together to ward off the plague that had stripped them of life; some looked blackened, as if they had been scorched by fire.

An abandoned wagon sat by the roadside, overturned, the remains of two oxen still yoked to its frame. Leah drew closer to Cain as they passed, and she sensed a tension in him; he could not look away from the wagon, and he gave it a wide birth, skirting the edge of the road.

The oxen’s vacant, eyeless stare seemed to mock her. What makes you think you can survive this? they seemed to be saying, their rotted lips pulled away from their jaws, exposing rows of teeth in macabre grins. There is only death here. Turn around and run away, as fast as you can.

For a moment she was tempted to do it. But then she thought about returning to Kurast, and what might happen to her there without Cain and Mikulov. Those people they had met on the way into the city were nothing but empty shells, like ghosts. They were already dead; they just didn’t know it yet. And though she hadn’t actually seen anything the night before in Cyrus’s room, she had the feeling Uncle Deckard had, and it had frightened him badly.

For some reason this made her think of her mother (not your real mother, Leah’s mind insisted on pointing out; your real mother left you): Gillian making her breakfast on a sunny morning before they went to visit Jonah’s market for vegetables; then they would walk down to Caldeum’s gates to watch the action at the trade tents, and if she was lucky, Gillian would buy her a honey stick for a treat. Those were the good days, before Gillian’s sickness had taken all the happiness away. It was all too much for her to bear.

“What’s wrong?” Cain was looking down at her in concern, and Leah realized that tears were running down her face. She shook her head, watching his bearded face through a prism of colors, afraid that he would lecture her again about being responsible and strong and facing her fears, but instead he put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into him, smelling the dust and smoke of his tunic, and was glad to have him, so very glad, even if he was a strange old man, and even if she didn’t entirely trust him yet.

To entertain them as they walked (and, Leah suspected, to distract them a little bit too), Mikulov told them stories of his homeland in the foothills on the edge of the Sharval Wilds, and his extensive training to become an Ivgorod monk—the hours of sitting motionless, learning to read the voices of the gods in all things, dissolving the sense of self and need and serving the Patriarchs. He told them of his intense physical exercises and mountain excursions, wrestling giant beasts that lurked there far away from the world of men. Even at her young age, Leah suspected that some of these stories were exaggerated, but Mikulov told them with surprising intensity and enthusiasm, and she found herself losing track of time as she listened to his voice.

Cain questioned him further about his beliefs, and Leah sensed a great sadness within him about leaving his masters and the order of monks that he had known for so long. It was a decision, he said, that might mean his own death, although she didn’t quite know why. Then they began talking about the Horadrim, and at that, Leah began to drift off, losing interest. She didn’t understand all of that stuff, only that Uncle was a member of some kind of mage clan and that they were supposed to do something Cain thought was important. But most of what they discussed had to do with ancient writings and prophecies. It was more than enough to bore a young girl to tears.

Leah noticed that the sky had grown darker, and in the distance black clouds obscured the horizon. The clouds seemed to be clustered in the direction they were headed. A chill settled over her bones. She tried to remember what had happened back home, during the fire. Much of that night was a black hole to her; she dimly remembered waking up to the smell of smoke, then nothing until she woke up outdoors on the ground, James’s cloak over her shivering body. She knew Cain must have gotten them out somehow, but it was a mystery to her.

The same thing had happened at the evil man’s house, after she had eaten all that food and fallen asleep. She had awakened to a dim sense of panic and something strange growing over her bed like black ropes, and then suddenly they were outside, running through the darkness with people chasing them. When they reached the graveyard . . . Leah sighed. She just didn’t know. It was as if someone had stepped neatly into her head and taken over for a while, then had given it back again sometime later.

Leah didn’t like losing control, and she liked it even less when she couldn’t remember anything. What did it all mean? Could she really be crazy?

A terrible thought occurred to her: what if whatever had been wrong with Gillian was wrong with her too?

They stopped for the night some distance off the road where a huge shelf of rock formed a natural shelter against the wind and any prying eyes. Cain explained to her that they did not want to light a fire, because it might draw attention to them, and they could do without other people looking to steal what little food they had. Leah had left James’s cloak behind in the strange little village when they had run away. She missed it, both for its warmth and for its safe, strong, fatherly smell.

Mikulov had brought three loaves of bread from Cyrus’s kitchen and a canteen of water, and they shared some of the bread and passed the canteen around, huddling together for warmth. It wasn’t much to eat, and Leah’s stomach growled late into the night.

The next morning dawned cold and wet, the ground covered with dew that smelled like bad eggs. The traveling party resumed walking, with little conversation this time. They shared more bread around lunchtime, one of them occasionally saying something or pointing out a feature of the landscape, but Mikulov’s stories had ended, and the last of any forced cheeriness between them had been bled away.

Eventually Leah stole a glance at Cain, who was watching the horizon, where the same black clouds seemed to boil and twist, never shifting away from the spot they had been the day before. Leah began to get the feeling that they were not clouds at all, but oily smoke or even some kind of living, breathing presence waiting for them to arrive, when it would strike.

It had been a while since she had thought of the bird pecking at the string of meat, back when the pack of boys had terrorized the old beggar. But the image came back to her now: the crow’s beady eyes fixed on her own as it bent to pull, tear, and swallow the gray flesh, a clawed foot resting on the carcass for purchase, sharp, black beak going to work. In her memory the bird had grown to nearly human size, and its feathers were no longer black and shiny, but dull and thin and falling out, so that she could see right through them to the crow’s skin beneath.

They watched that blackness churn as they climbed a long, slow rise in the road, finally reaching the top.

Gea Kul spread out below them in the distance, huddled on the edge of the sea, a miserable-looking town that had grown up and overrun its borders some time ago. Shanties and muddy refuse pits lined the road, which ran straight down the hill, and there were more carts and dead horses here, and even, Leah realized with fresh horror, dead people. She saw skeletal hands reaching from beneath an overturned wagon just a few hundred yards away, as if people had been trapped and had tried to claw their way out. The smell of rotting flesh wafted up to them, mingling with the scent of the ocean.

This seemed like the last place in the world they should be; if everyone from Gea Kul were trying to flee the town, why should they be trying to get in? Could these Horadrim that Cain and Mikulov were so anxious to find really do anything to stop the evil that had taken this city? If they had so much power, why hadn’t they helped these people who had died on the road?

A far more terrifying thought occurred to her: what if they were the ones responsible?

Things were moving on the horizon, tiny black specks that seemed to swarm over the town like gnats: crows, hundreds of them, their black wings flapping as they soared and dove toward the ground.

Leah tried to calm her trembling. She could not get the image of the crow in Caldeum out of her head. A bird’s beady eye, staring at her like a black moon . . .

She followed Cain and Mikulov down the hill. At the bottom of the long slope, they had to pass through the opening between two tall carriages, one of them overturned, the other sideways in the road. Sticking out from underneath the overturned carriage was a dead woman’s arm, the skin peeling, the ends of the fingers raw, the nails torn completely off.

As she stepped quickly past, the woman’s hand reached out and grabbed her foot.

Leah screamed. The woman’s grip was strong and ice-cold, and her fingers dug painfully into Leah’s flesh. She yanked hard enough to pull the woman out from under the carriage.

The woman opened her eyes. She stared up at Leah, her mouth working, gray tongue poking out from between cracked and peeling lips. Her face was skeletal, her hair matted, her flesh a blue-white.

“You are damned . . .” she whispered. “They will return . . . soon . . .”

Leah stared in horror at the huge, purple bruises covering the woman’s neck. Something alien seemed to rise up within her, and she screamed again, and this time Cain was at her side, beating the woman’s wrist with his staff until the bone snapped, and pulling Leah backward and beyond the narrow space, into the open air.

Still, the woman reached out for them, her ruined hand dangling limply, her legs caught under the carriage. She started making a strange sound, deep in her throat, as though she had swallowed a bone; after a moment Leah realized she was laughing, and the three travelers ran down the road away from the terrible sight, the woman’s laughter following them on the wind until they could no longer hear her and the sound of the crows cawing overhead drowned out everything else.

24 The Horadric Chambers

The woman had been alive.

As they approached the miserable port town, the clouds darkened overhead. Guilt washed over Cain like the threat of rain. Clearly the woman had been another victim of the feeders, with those bruises on her neck, yet he had panicked, breaking her arm to get Leah free. His desire to protect the girl was so strong, he had reacted without thinking.

The feeders were only pawns in a much larger game. They were worker bees, mindless drones carrying out a mission. But what was the mission, and who had ordered it? What had the people who died on this road been running from?

The crows were everywhere. They settled on the broken, blackened limbs of trees, pecked at the human corpses on the ground. They circled overhead, cawing and flapping, like a macabre welcoming parade under menacing skies, flitting shapes against the boiling clouds that hovered over the town. The very air seemed run through with a charge, and Leah remained so close to Cain’s feet that he almost tripped over her as they entered Gea Kul.

He put a hand on her shoulder to calm her. He had sensed something building again before he had intervened with the woman, that familiar drop in temperature that had preceded a manifestation of her powers before. They all felt the tension.

Gea Kul’s streets were a maze of shoddy, decrepit buildings and confusing intersections. The stench of the sea permeated the moist air as a light mist descended, turning everything at a distance into murky, indistinct shapes. The call of the crows was amplified, the mist serving to bounce the sounds in strange and disorienting directions.

There were people here. Cain sensed them hiding in shadowed doorways, keeping out of sight; they caught glimpses of haunted, pale faces hovering in windows before ducking away, flashes of movement in alleyways, faint footsteps and scraping noises. They were more skittish than wild deer. The mist made the entire scene feel dreamlike and unsettling. He glanced at Mikulov, who slipped his blade out.

Around the next corner a young boy not much older than Leah stood in the street. The line of his ribs showed through his shirt, his eyes sunken and haunted.

He raised his arm slowly and pointed a long, thin finger at them.

Leah gasped and pressed herself against Cain’s legs. Two men were standing behind them holding makeshift clubs. Several more people materialized soundlessly from the mist, all of them as thin as death itself. Cain glanced up to find that the rooftops around them were lined with crows, their black bodies fluffed against the cold, their eyes staring relentlessly, motionless.

The men with clubs shifted closer. The silence of the crowd was unsettling, the threat of violence hanging over them. Leah’s grip on Cain’s arm tightened painfully, her nails digging into his flesh; she was so tense she seemed to be vibrating like a struck tuning fork.

The rigging of a distant ship creaked in the stillness. A long, low moan rose up over the streets and grew to an echoing wail. The crows lifted off the rooftops all at once with a thunderous flapping of wings. The sound went on, growing louder, and the crowd scattered in all directions, fading back into the shadows until it seemed as if they had never been there at all.

A man hurried down the street. The mist made it difficult to make out his features, but he was large and white-haired, and slightly hunched. As he hurried closer, Cain could see that he carried a horn in one hand.

The man raised the horn to his lips and gave off another blast. “The streets of Gea Kul are no place for a fine young lass like this,” he said. “They don’t like the sound, reminds them of a feeder’s call at night. But it won’t take them long to return. Follow me, quickly now, my friends. You don’t want them coming back on you, believe me.”

They followed the man to a weathered structure with a sign hanging outside pronouncing it the Captain’s Table. He opened the door and ushered them into a silent, empty dining room lit by lanterns, the surroundings as worn as the building’s exterior. Thick boards had been nailed across the windows, but the room was neat and clean. “Not sure why I bother,” the man said, as he closed and bolted the door behind them. “No patrons anymore, but I know no other way. ’Tis the service that taught me. Make your bunks tight enough to bounce a coin, they said, or swab the decks ’til your fingers bleed.” The man stuck out his hand to Cain. “Forgive me; my manners are as rusty as the old tub sitting at the dock. Captain Hanos Jeronnan, at your service. These seas have seen plenty of me over the years. Settled here with my daughter to make a life of it, back when Gea Kul was a better place.” The old man’s eyes grew distant. “’Twas a long time past.”

Cain sensed a kindness and strength about Jeronnan. He was old, his face lined and haggard, curly hair and sideburns white as snow, but he was wide in the shoulders, and his grip was still strong.

“Does your daughter still live here?”

Jeronnan shook his huge head. “Lost her many years ago. I kept up the place, though. Had my reasons.” He nodded at Leah, and his face softened as he looked at her. “Are you hungry, lass? A bowl of fish stew would warm your bones.” He shuffled into the kitchen as the three of them took a seat in the nearest booth away from the door, and returned only moments later with three bowls balanced on a tray. As Cain began to speak, the big man raised a blue-veined, meaty hand. “Fill your bellies,” he said. “Then we’ll talk.” He stood back and folded his massive arms.

Cain took a bite and realized he was starving. The stew was delicious. He finished the bowl in moments, and saw that Jeronnan was already on his way with more, along with mugs of frothy ale and water for Leah.

Finally the three of them sat back while Jeronnan pulled up a chair with a scrape of wooden legs and settled his bulk on it. “Nothing makes a man happier than seeing his cooking enjoyed by a group of fine strangers,” he said. His energy was infectious, and soon Leah was smiling shyly too, stealing glances at the big man when he wasn’t looking: apparently she’d found a new hero. When Jeronnan pulled a wrapped honey stick from his pocket and gave it to her, she beamed with surprise and happiness, as if he’d handed over a pound of gold.

“Now tell me what you’re doing in a place such as this? Gea Kul’s been my home for near on forty years now, but it’s a cursed town. Legends tell it was built on top of an ancient mage battlefield. There were many who said I was crazy for staying through the worst of it, but I won’t give up. Just don’t see many others coming here voluntarily.” Jeronnan looked Cain up and down. “You’re a sorcerer,” he said.

“I’m a Horadric scholar,” Cain said.

“Ah.” Jeronnan rubbed his beard. “You’ll be looking for your brothers, then.”

A chill raced through Cain’s bones. “I am,” he said. “Have you seen them?”

“Aye.” Jeronnan sat back in his chair, the look on his face impossible to read. “Have a soft spot in my heart for sorcery, and there’s good reason, even if you might think it’s a strange one. There was a lovely necromancer who passed through years ago and sat in this very booth . . .” He shook his head, a soft smile on his big, shaggy face. “I know the very thought of necromancers makes most people want to run the other way, and most of them look stranger than a ship on dry land, but Kara was different. She was sweet, and gentle in her own way. Kara’s passed on, either from here, or from this world, or both, while I remain, a bullheaded old sea captain who doesn’t know when to quit.”

“The Horadrim,” Mikulov prodded gently. “You’ve seen them?”

Jeronnan nodded. “They’re responsible for much of the terror that has fallen over this poor town, or so it’s been said. Me, I’ve known many mages in my day. This one who led them . . .” He shook his head again. “I don’t think the evil in him was born from any order of men.”

Jeronnan went on to tell them about the group of Horadrim who had come to Gea Kul many months before, and the leader of the group, a man named Rau, who had established the order in town and had a huge, stone tower built on the edge of the sea. But soon Rau disappeared, the group went into mourning, and tragedy struck. “There was darkness all around that place,” Jeronnan said. “And eventually that darkness came to Gea Kul.

“Soon enough, there were sightings of creatures that visited people’s homes in the middle of the night, sucking the life right out of them. People started locking their doors and staying in with lanterns burning. Others began to act mighty peculiar, as if they were haunted—sometimes flashing eerie smiles, vacant stares, cocking their heads like they were hearing voices. It was enough to make you believe the entire town had gone mad.” He shrugged. “There were other changes, too; some of them you’ve seen with your own eyes. Those people out there, wasting away, like walking corpses.”

“How have you avoided the same fate?” Cain asked.

Jeronnan reached down to a pocket and withdrew something covered with a leather sleeve, which he carefully removed. An ivory dagger shone in the lantern light as he held it up. “A gift, from an old friend,” he said. “She returned here after her adventures in the desert and gave me this charmed blade. It’s a rare gift, something an old captain like me doesn’t deserve. They don’t like it, these feeders. They stay away from here.”

The captain handed the blade to Cain. Cain turned it over in his hands, feeling the carefully balanced weight and the energy held within it. A necromancer’s blade was a vital part of their magic, and they would never willingly give up their personal weapon. But this one was similar to those used by the priests of Rathma in their rituals. Jeronnan’s friend must have enchanted it herself and brought it to him.

“She must have admired you greatly, to give you this.”

Jeronnan smiled again, but this time it held a tinge of sadness. “Kara was like a second daughter to me. But she went off to find new adventures with that Norrec fellow, and I haven’t heard tell of her in years.”

Cain removed the Horadric book from his sack, placing it on the table. Jeronnan looked at the familiar symbol stamped on the front cover, a figure eight with an amber gemstone in the middle. “I’ve seen this,” he said. “The symbol of their order. I knew two boys from town who joined with them before the feeders came. Used to carry these books around all day. They were good boys, in spite of the man who led them.”

“This group of scholars,” Cain said. “They’re still here, in Gea Kul?”

“They picked up and left in a hurry a couple of months back, after the tower was done. But there’s a hidden place in town where the order used to gather, for study. I don’t know its exact location, but I can take you to the area, if you like.”

The streets were empty, a fresh glaze of rain making them shimmer. Cain followed Captain Jeronnan through the mist, watching his giant back and staying close. He had considered whether to trust the captain or not; for all Cain knew, the old man could be leading him into a trap. But Jeronnan’s motivations seemed pure. He had brought his horn and dagger to keep the people away, but they hadn’t seen a soul. Gea Kul was an abandoned wasteland, and Jeronnan was Cain’s only lifeline.

Cain had left Mikulov with Leah at the Captain’s Table. As much as he had wanted the monk with him, he had been even more concerned with keeping Leah safe. The situation had become too dangerous. Cain had made Jeronnan promise to return to the inn as well, once they had reached the area where the Horadric gathering place was located.

Jeronnan stopped in a street full of rundown shacks. Garbage piled in corners reeked of old, rotted food; huge rats scurried away from the sound of their footsteps echoing through the silence. “The group met somewhere near here,” he said. “I used to see some of them on this very street, but then they’d disappear, and I never knew exactly where. I don’t know what you plan to do, should you find them. But we’re badly in need of help. There was a time when this town saw its fair share of trade, when the taverns were full of rowdy sailors and the docks heavy with goods bound for Kurast and Caldeum. I won’t say it was a place for royalty, mind you, but it was a town full of life.” Jeronnan put his hand on Cain’s shoulder. “I’m a good judge of character, and something tells me you’re the man to bring a sense of peace back to Gea Kul.”

Jeronnan handed Cain the horn. “Blow this, should you need me again. It’ll keep those who have been corrupted by the feeders away, and I’ll come find you with my dagger in hand and whatever force I can muster.” He took Cain’s hand in both of his and squeezed it. “Take care now,” he said. “And good luck.”

He disappeared into the mist. Cain tucked the horn into his sack. He looked around at the abandoned huts on all sides, and the now-familiar feeling of being the last man left in Sanctuary settled over him again. He was closer to his goal, yet in many ways he felt even more isolated and forlorn. The weight of the world had been placed on his shoulders, and he had no idea if he was up to the task at hand.

I’m no hero.

That much was true. But he would do all that he could to make up for his past mistakes, and he would sacrifice his own life, if necessary, to save this world. That would have to be good enough.

Cain studied the row of buildings again, looking for a clue to the location of the hidden entrance of the Horadric hall. The site was typical; years ago, the Horadrim were known for hiding their meeting places in plain sight, and in an area that people would least expect to find them. It would be protected by a spell of concealment, of course. Quite likely a powerful one.

He searched through his more familiar texts for something that might help him, but found nothing. The mist grew thicker, writhing across the ground as the minutes ticked past. Finally his fingers settled upon the ancient Vizjerei spellbook he had found in the ruins.

Demonic magic, written by the followers of Bartuc, the Warlord of Blood. Cain carefully flipped through its crumbling pages. There: a spell meant to reveal anything that had been cloaked by magic. But this kind of incantation was dangerous. It called attention to itself, and Sanctuary was no longer protected from the Burning Hells and all the creatures that lived within that cursed place. It would light up like a beacon in darkness, drawing moths to the flame.

What other choice did he have? He could search for days and never find the entrance.

Cain recited the words of power, feeling the ground begin to thrum beneath him, and as he did so, he felt the gaze of thousands turn to focus on Gea Kul, the senses of things he did not want to know, abominations that hid in dark caverns stinking of rot and blood. Above them all loomed a black tower with what had once been a man living within it, a man who was now something else entirely—a creature that lived on pain.

The Horadric symbol, the figure eight with sharp points like fangs, glowed a blood red from the side of one of the larger stone buildings about a hundred feet away. Cain tucked the old book away and ran, his tunic flapping like a crow’s wings, the mist swirling all around him, and as he reached the building, he realized that the lower right point was the handle of a door cleverly hidden in what had appeared to be a smooth wall. As the spell’s power receded and the symbol began to fade again into oblivion, he grasped the handle and pulled, and it opened easily, revealing blackness inside.

The voice that came down from the Black Tower was thunderous inside his head, like the rumble of boulders across a mountain. It cried out in rage at his presence, a challenge to battle, an inarticulate scream that promised to shatter his skull.

Deckard Cain ducked into the building and closed the door carefully behind him, cutting off the scream abruptly, and turned to face whatever might be waiting for him.

A set of stone steps led down into gloom. Somewhere a candle flickered, lending a faint amount of light to the landing below. Someone was here.

A grating noise floated up to him. Cain heard nothing more, and he descended slowly and carefully through the dark.

At the bottom of the stairs was a simple room with a wooden desk and open doors on either side, enough light from the door on the right bleeding through for him to see. The desk was empty, but a tapestry on the wall behind it bore the Horadric symbol.

It had been slashed nearly in half by a sharp blade.

A waking dream came to him, of black-clad soldiers laying waste to this place, hacking with their heavy swords and overturning tables, putting torches to dry pages of books, and these men turned into huge, hopping crows, their beaks like black daggers. Cain touched the tapestry, felt the marks beneath it, gouged into stone; it had not been slashed by a blade, after all. There were three equal tears, as if some giant creature had raked it with razor-sharp talons.

What else would he find down here? Would it lead to salvation, or to his destruction?

He slipped quietly through the right-hand doorway into a large library. The remains of a candle flickered on a table, guttering in a pool of melted wax; it had burned nearly to the bottom. Simple wooden shelves lined all four walls, most of them full of books; of these, some looked familiar, while others he had never seen before. The collection was remarkable.

On the table was an open book. It looked similar to the one he had found in the ruins.

Cain smelled something foul, like rotten meat. Another room loomed through an archway beyond this one, pitch-black inside. He heard movement, and a low, guttural snarl, accompanied by the sound of something scraping against rock. Feeling exposed in the candlelight, he flattened himself against the wall and moved as quietly as a ghost to a corner between two bookcases.

The thing that emerged from the archway was so huge and incomprehensible that at first Cain had trouble processing the sight of it. It appeared to be made of human limbs and torsos all rolled together, along with a forest of jutting spikes of what looked like rock and shards of wood. Two long arms ended in clubs rather than hands and sprouted the same shards of wood or stone. At least three separate heads emerged from putrid, swollen flesh, white-filmed eyes rolling in their sockets.

The monstrosity moved slowly and laboriously, ducked to clear the arch, more than ten feet off the floor. Its dripping shoulders nearly touched both sides of the opening as it leaned into the library, grunting with the effort. It seemed to have one main head in the center of its chest, and as it swung in Cain’s direction, those eyes fixed on his face.

The creature paused, as if studying him. Then it opened its mouth and roared, the putrid stench of its breath washing over Cain as the mouths of the other heads screeched in unison.

The candle flickered and nearly went out. Fresh panic rose up in Cain as the creature took a lumbering step toward him and threatened to knock over the table, sending them into darkness. He slipped out from his hiding place and went for the door, but the monster moved with him and reached out its long, clubbed limb as if to smash him into the floor.

Cain had no time to react other than to swerve and duck, and the monster roared again. The candle went out. Suddenly he could see nothing, and sounds seemed to cascade at him from all sides. Feeling dizzy in the pitch-black room, Cain stumbled against the edge of the table. He heard the thing coming, blind now as well, and the table was shoved hard against him, throwing him backward into the bookcase.

The room flared to life again as a brilliant, white-hot light blossomed in its center. Cain blinked against it and saw a robed, hooded figure in the second doorway from the front room. The figure threw a second burst of flame at the creature’s feet, sending it back as it waved its arms and screeched in rage.

Cain pushed the table aside as the stranger beckoned to him to follow. They ran past the desk and tapestry and stairs, through the door on the other side as the thing in the library howled again and lumbered after them, crashing into the table and walls, shaking the floor as it smashed its way out.

They were in a long hallway made of stone with a blank wall at the end. The man went straight to it and pressed a hidden lever, and a stone panel slid aside, revealing a new set of stairs descending into the earth. He threw another ball of light that revealed a narrower passage extending beyond the bottom step. This section seemed much older than the library, the walls cracked and covered in moss. The stranger headed down.

Cain hesitated at the top. He knew nothing more about this new arrival than he did about the thing chasing them; for all he knew, he was the Dark One himself. There could be even greater danger below. But another bellow from the creature broke his paralysis, and he took the steps as quickly as he dared, being careful of the slippery moss.

The man pressed another hidden spot in the wall, and the door at the top slid closed again with a rumble of grating stone. The noise of the creature above them was cut off abruptly. He took a torch from the wall and dipped its top in the spitting ball of light on the floor. Slender fingers rose up to slip the hood away to reveal a young man’s face, as pure and white as fresh snow.

“My name is Egil,” the man said. “I mean you no harm. I am a member of the First Ones—the Horadrim. Please, follow me.”

25 The Camp

Cain followed the man through the dripping, moss-covered tunnel, his mind filled with endless questions: how had Egil found him? How many Horadrim were left? Did they know about the impending demon invasion of Sanctuary?

Other, darker thoughts pushed their way in as well. He wondered what had happened to their leader, Garreth Rau. Could this strange young man be trusted? And if something happened to Cain, who would take care of Leah?

But Egil seemed to be in too much of a hurry to speak. Cain struggled to keep up, following the dipping, flickering torchlight as he rushed forward. Cain tried to get closer, finally catching the sleeve of Egil’s tunic, making him stop and turn. The man’s face was curiously calm and patient.

“What was that thing in the library?” Cain said.

“We call them the unburied, but nobody is sure exactly how or why they have come,” Egil said. “They seem to be created from the bodies of the dead, along with other pieces of the landscape around them, as if someone rolled them all together and lit a spark of life. There is powerful black magic awake in Sanctuary. Perhaps this is a result.”

“And what were you doing there?”

“It was our former meeting place, before . . . we left Gea Kul. I was trying to recover some of the texts. Now, I am afraid they may be ruined.” Egil sighed, the first sign of any emotion he had shown. “It is a terrible loss. But it wasn’t the only reason I was there.”

Egil explained that the prophecies had foretold Cain’s arrival on this very day and the brothers had been eagerly awaiting it for months. The order was in a transition, he said, and new leadership was needed. Many of them hoped that Cain would provide crucial information to them about the changes in Sanctuary since the destruction of the Worldstone.

“This transition,” Cain said. “Is it because of Garreth Rau?”

If Egil was surprised, he did not show it. “It is complicated,” he said. “We will tell you everything, I promise, as soon as we return to camp. But now we must go. This tunnel is part of a large network, built under Gea Kul many years ago, and no one knows how far it runs or its purpose. But the unburied most certainly came from here. There may be other creatures within these tunnels, or beneath them. It is very dangerous.”

Cain shook his head. “I must return to a place called the Captain’s Table, if you want me to accompany you. I have friends there.”

Egil hesitated, then nodded. “I know of it. I can take you to them, and then we will go meet my brothers. Please, come.”

The man moved with a fluid grace, making almost no sound, his torchlight flickering off an arched ceiling that seemed to close in over Cain’s head. They passed several branches in the tunnel, finally taking one that sloped upward to another set of stairs leading to an iron grate. Leaving the torch burning in a brace on the wall, Egil pushed the grate aside, and Cain found himself at street level, just a short distance away from Jeronnan’s inn.

When they arrived at the Captain’s Table, Mikulov and Leah were overjoyed to see him. Leah threw her arms around his neck and squeezed him tightly, while Jeronnan shook Cain’s hand with both of his own. “I suppose you’ll be moving on, then,” he said. “You can trust this man, Egil. I know him well enough, born and educated here in Gea Kul. He’s a good lad.” Jeronnan handed Leah another honey stick. “A little something for your troubles, lass,” he said. “Stay well.”

Mikulov wanted to know more about the order, but Egil was growing desperate, warning them of the dangers of traveling through Gea Kul after dark. “We have less than two hours to be free of the town,” he said. “We will have time to talk later.”

The four of them said their good-byes, thanking Jeronnan profusely for his help. The captain insisted on giving them some fish wrapped in paper for the journey, though Egil said it wasn’t far. Cain tried to return the horn, but Jeronnan wouldn’t take it. “Remember,” he said, his huge hand on Cain’s shoulder. “Should I hear the sound of that, I’ll come to your aid, wherever you may be. I may look old, but I’m still a match for anything that might be wanting to hurt you.”

They left before night fell. In the street they saw no one other than the crows, which continued to swoop and caw loudly above their heads, the sounds traveling in the fog that had continued to thicken. Egil led them back into the tunnels beneath Gea Kul, picking up the torch again from the wall and taking them through a dizzying warren of intersections, finally emerging beyond the town through a sewer entrance.

He left the torch and took them into the wilds beyond and away from the sea, with Mikulov watching their backs. Leah remained glued to Cain’s side, suspicious of their new friend and his strange looks; Cain did have to admit that Egil’s colorless eyes were intense, almost hypnotic, and his white hair and eyebrows gave his face a waxy sheen. He had no other apparent facial hair, and his skin was smooth and unlined.

Beyond the town, the landscape quickly changed to a wilderness of scarred, leafless trees, slabs of rock and dead grasses sprouting in thick, razor-like tufts from patches of dry soil. They followed a narrow path winding through the tufts. Egil kept looking at the skies nervously, but the crows appeared to have lost them at the entrance to the tunnels, and there was no sign of any pursuit from here.

The ground rose gently as they entered a thicker copse of trees. It was dark and gloomy, dead branches reaching out like skeleton fingers overhead. Mikulov closed ranks in the rear, and Leah grabbed Cain’s hand again as Egil slowed his pace, finally stopping completely in a small clearing. He gave a low, soft whistle. Almost immediately an answering whistle came from somewhere to their right. Leah’s grip tightened as three figures emerged from the gloom, closing in on all sides as silently as ghosts in the dim light. One of them was huge, even wider through the shoulders than Captain Jeronnan and several inches taller than Cain himself. He carried a bow, an arrow notched and ready.

The figures paused. The mist drifted in and swirled around their feet.

“My brothers,” said Egil, his voice trembling with emotion. “We are saved. I have found him.”

26 The First Ones

The camp was not what Mikulov had expected. He had had a vision of a sprawling complex of wooden temples and studios and sleeping quarters, buildings rising up out of the wilderness as builders swarmed over them, while others meditated or discussed strategy or led scholarly discussions on the future of Sanctuary itself: something that fit with the grand history of the order, as it had been written.

This was nothing but a network of caves, set within the rocky face of a steep incline that led up to a cliff overlooking the town and the sea. There was little evidence on the outside that anyone was living there at all.

The location itself was the biggest problem. The Ivgorod masters had taught him about the ways of war, and the most important thing in choosing a stronghold, after its defensibility, was to have an escape route, should the battle turn against you. These caves appeared to be a dead end, and a deathtrap should they be discovered by a force stronger than their own.

The three men who had met them in the jungle were initially suspicious, but after Cain showed them his reproduction of the Horadric text, along with the other texts and scrolls he had in his rucksack, they grew more animated. The biggest one, a man named Lund, appeared to be what his masters would have called slow-minded; but he had a kind heart, and Leah took to him almost immediately. Lund was as thickly muscled as an ox, and his bow was nearly as tall as a full-grown man. Mikulov wondered how he could draw it back, but as he showed Leah its pull, he drew the string effortlessly in one fluid motion, pointing out a knothole in a tree over fifty yards away before burying the arrow in its center.

As they arrived at the cave entrance, more men swarmed around them, about thirty in all. Cain was treated like a returning king by some, and all but ignored by others. “Never mind about them,” Egil said quietly, after they had a moment to speak. He nodded at the group of men who had held back when Cain arrived and were now gathered to one side, whispering to each other. “There are two divisions here: those who believe in the prophecies and the future of the Horadrim, and those who do not. For those of us who believe, you are our salvation.”

“And for those who don’t?” Mikulov asked.

“They may take a bit more convincing,” Egil said, with a wry smile. “But they are good men. They will come around, once we have our meeting tonight. We will all hear about your journey, and discuss what lies ahead.”

“I’m no savior,” Cain said. “Just a scholar who has studied enough of the ancient texts to know we must act quickly. There is little time left. Ratham is only three days away.”

Egil looked blankly at him. “Ratham? The month of the dead? Why should that be important?”

Mikulov tried to explain what he had found in the scrolls, but the discussion went downhill from there. It didn’t take long for him to realize that these men knew very few actual details about the dangers facing Sanctuary and had only the faintest sense of what was to come.

This was a great disappointment. Cain and Leah sensed it as well, and Mikulov felt the energy that had formed when Egil had been leading them here begin to dissipate. Still, those who peppered Cain with questions seemed to think he had come here to lead them to a victory against the darkness, and they wasted little time trying to convince him of their worth.

Perhaps I am being too quick to judge, he thought. We must give them a chance to prove themselves. If they were Sanctuary’s only hope, then so be it. The gods would provide the answers, in time.

More persistent questions about the group of men, and their former leader, were turned politely aside until the upcoming “meeting,” which would happen after they broke bread. Mikulov sensed Cain’s growing frustration at the seeming lack of urgency from the group.

But there seemed to be no immediate danger here, and inside the largest cave, torchlight flickered brightly against the walls as the smell of smoke filled the air. As the members of the order directed the travelers to sit on piles of animal furs around a cooking fire and handed them mugs full of cider, Lund lumbered in with an antelope carcass over his giant shoulder, an arrow still buried in its chest. “We eat well tonight!” the big man shouted, a grin plastered across his face, and several others cheered and clapped enthusiastically, causing Lund to do a little jig before laying the antelope down and beginning to dress it with a knife. A man named Farris, who was the leader of the group that favored disbanding entirely, grumbled at first, but then even he reluctantly joined the others.

As the celebration grew more raucous, Mikulov took the opportunity to slip out into the cool night, and he stood for a moment in the shadows of the cave entrance, tasting the air. There was a sentry stationed in the trees, and another somewhere above the cliff face. His senses had been finely tuned over years of focused meditation and training; he could hear the sentries shifting on their haunches and smell their strong male scent on the breeze, although they had not noticed him.

Summoning the power of the gods was no small matter, but Mikulov was an Ivgorod monk, and he felt their power flowing through his limbs like water over rock. It lifted him as he moved with blinding speed, so quickly that a blink of a human eye would have missed it.

The sentries never even turned in his direction. In seconds he was in the trees above the cave, climbing effortlessly up the steep slope until he reached the top. He looked out over the valley below, aglow in the moonlight. Gea Kul lay on the edge of the sea in the distance like a rotting carcass washed up by the black waves, and to the right, a tower rose up out of the rocky shoreline, dark and silent.

Mikulov remembered standing on a cliff like this one only a few days earlier and staring out over the trees at Kurast, imagining what was to come. Cain and Leah had been strangers to him then, yet he had been filled with a confidence that seemed curiously absent now.

He felt the weight of centuries beneath him, anchoring him to this place as Ratham approached. He knew that he would be challenged by something terrible. His destiny had been preordained since the moment of his birth; what role he would play in the looming battle was unclear to him, but it would come, whether he was prepared for it or not.

It was not the way of his people to question their duty, yet he couldn’t help wondering what would happen if he simply slipped away, into the night, leaving all this behind. Would his path change? Or would he simply be forced back here by some circumstance beyond his control, ending up at the same place in the end?

Were his masters right? Was he too headstrong, too selfish, too eager to leave the Ivgorod monastery without their blessing? Was he not ready for this challenge?

Would his pride be his downfall?

No. Mikulov shook his head. Now was not the time for misgivings. He had spent years preparing for this. He had studied the ancient texts of Ivgorod, and when those had not shown him enough, he had traveled across Sanctuary to find more, some of them nearly as old as time itself. A thread had connected them all, if one only knew where to look; he had picked up that thread, following it through the centuries, a common theme that predicted the rise of a great evil, and a battle that would make all others pale in comparison. It had brought him to Deckard Cain, and he had led Mikulov to this place.

The gods would show him the way.

In the distance, above the mist that clung to the shore, the stone tower seemed to sway like a cobra about to strike. For a moment, Mikulov imagined tendrils of smoke slithering outward, writhing through the air, and he heard something whisper on the wind, words that he could not understand. The text from one of the ancient scrolls came back to him, signs the Patriarchs had interpreted about a sickness in the skies and the ground, the screams of tortured souls rising up against the gods themselves . . .

A shriek split the night, shredding entire trees in its wake, rolling forward with gathering speed, a hurricane of rage that flattened cities and emptied the seas and struck the stars from the sky. Mikulov’s eardrums shredded, popping against the pressure; his eyes bulged outward, breath ripped from his chest, the blood boiling in his veins. He felt his skin begin to peel away, muscle stretched from ligament and bone, his organs squeezed like ripe fruit until they burst, and the wind took it all until there was nothing left but empty rock in an ocean of blackness.

Mikulov came to gasping like a drowning man, clawing at the ground with his fingernails. The night was silent and still. He climbed to his feet, looking around him, feeling his body as if to make sure it was whole. He was unharmed, at least physically. But he had been badly shaken.

He shivered. He had never felt such power, had never had his own body and mind possessed in such a way. He felt as if the black smoke had wormed its way inside his lungs and he was now tainted by its touch. Something within the great darkness was coming after him, and it was huge, and grinning, and wanted to swallow him whole.

He knew who was responsible for this. It was the man inside the tower: the Dark One.

Inside the caves they sat on furs around the fire, languid and slow after their heavy meal of venison. Several of the other men were cleaning up; others were asleep, but a smaller group remained awake. Lund sat cross-legged like a monstrous child, licking his fingers, Leah next to him watching open-mouthed as the giant man grinned, his mouth shiny with grease. The conversation had taken many different paths and eventually had wound around again to why they were here tonight.

This was the so-called important meeting Egil had been promising him.

Cain sighed and rubbed his itchy beard. The order was nothing like what he had expected. He needed a bath, and clean clothes, and a good night’s sleep. What he had learned during the past several hours was enough to fill his heart with dread, and he needed some time to think it all over and decide what to do.

Everything Egil had told him seemed to fit, more or less, with what Hyland had said. The order had grown up out of circumstance, more than anything else. The discovery of a cache of hidden texts in an abandoned, secret Horadric meeting place in Gea Kul had intrigued a small group of scholars, who had taken ownership of the crumbling texts and attempted to get them reproduced. They had brought the texts to Garreth Rau, a litterateur in Kurast, and a chain of events had been set in motion that would prove to be their downfall.

Many years before, Rau had worked as a servant boy to a member of the Taan mage clan in Kurast, and he had his own obsession with ancient texts, after he had discovered his master’s libraries. The magic held within these texts was powerful, the prophecies they foretold astonishing; Rau had studied in secret, learning how to create new books out of the old, eventually leaving the sorcerer’s employ and starting his own business. The books that the Gea Kul scholars had brought him had been like the finest wine to him, and although they had only the barest understanding of what these texts contained, he had seemed inspired by what he read. Something had clicked into place, and Rau had made a pact with them: they would return together to Gea Kul, and the scholars would swear oaths to uphold the tenets of the Horadrim, to seek out more knowledge and form an official order.

Rau had been a natural leader, and he had quickly taken over. They reclaimed the ancient Horadric meeting hall, which had given them a place to gather, organize nightly study sessions, plan trips outside the town to search for more texts and artifacts, and attempt some of the spells within the books they had found. Rau had encouraged them to learn the Horadric ways, but he had a raw talent and power none of the others had possessed. The litterateur had understood the depths of knowledge that these ancient texts plundered. The more he had studied them, the more convinced he had become that he could use them for personal gain.

“He called us the ‘First Ones,’” Egil said, passing the bottle of cider to Cain. “Back then, things were still good between us, and we thought we would become heroes, leaders of a new Sanctuary based on the Horadric principles we had embraced. At least, some of us did. But he’d based everything on his own corrupted vision. He called himself royalty, had some idea he was descended from a powerful mage. He even showed us a crest that was supposedly from his family, although we had understood him to be an orphan. We had no idea that he had fallen so far.”

“What do you mean, fallen?”

Egil sighed, looking at Lund, who avoided his gaze. It was as if the big man was ashamed—which, Cain thought, might not be far from the truth.

“Dark magic,” Egil said. “We did not see it at first. We followed him blindly. He led us on more quests to find artifacts, received prophetic visions of ancient sites to explore. He instilled faith in us, even during several excursions that led to actual demon encounters, which he always handled with ease. He knew the right spells, and they would yield to him. But with each new artifact he found, he grew more powerful, his intentions darker, his obsession with the dark arts more intense. Members of our order began to disappear and then return changed, completely loyal and obedient to Garreth. He began to talk of a new vision for the Horadric tenets, holding daily lecture sessions about the future of the order.

“He believed that the original Horadrim were wrong about the nobility of Tyrael and his intentions. He spoke derisively about the archangel, who formed the Horadrim but never directly combated the Prime Evils, after all. Instead, Tyrael used the mages to do the brunt of the work, Rau told us. Why couldn’t this powerful angel do battle himself, he would ask? Was humanity truly more powerful than the angels? Why were the angels considered any better than the Prime Evils, when they judge humanity so harshly?

“He spoke of humanity in the same way. Humans were inherently evil, he said, worse even than the creatures of the Burning Hells. Look how they treated each other, he said, the weakest of them, those who could not defend themselves, beaten down and destroyed like cattle. The time would come when a new order would arise to lead Sanctuary, and all those who did not embrace it would be gone. He began to insist we call him master. He had a tower built for himself in secret on the edge of the sea, by people—or other things—we never saw. It went up nearly overnight, through some kind of black magic.”

So Garreth Rau had become the Dark One. It didn’t surprise Cain, not really; he’d begun to suspect it since Jeronnan’s story of the scholars’ arrival in Gea Kul and their leader’s strange disappearance. Still, it was unsettling to know that one who had studied the ways of the Horadrim so closely could have been so terribly consumed with hatred.

“The prophecies have foretold it,” Cain said. “One of the Lesser Evils of Hell had corrupted him.”

Egil nodded, his strangely pale eyes somber. “It was Lund who discovered the final truth.”

Cain looked at the big man, who had stopped smiling, his gaze suddenly wary. “Don’t like to talk about that,” Lund mumbled, looking away.

“But we have to,” Egil said gently. He turned to Cain. “Rau had taken to leaving our meeting place by that time, and he was gone for longer and longer periods. He had Lund run errands. Lund traveled to the Black Tower to bring him some texts and witnessed a blood ritual. A . . . sacrifice of another member of our order. Garreth had made a secret pact with the Burning Hells. Somehow, through his studies he had found a connection.”

“Blood,” Lund muttered, his hands nervously working at a seam in his tunic. “Too much of it. Didn’t like that at all.”

Egil made a soothing motion, and Lund seemed to relax a little. “There was . . . a sacrifice. We tried to bring Garreth to his senses, but it was too late. He had been lost to his darkness, perverting what he had learned from the Horadric texts and following the very demons that he had once sworn to defend Sanctuary against.

“After that, our eyes were opened. We realized we had to escape or be destroyed by what was coming. We managed to get away under the cover of night and ended up here, in these caves. The few texts we managed to bring with us pointed to the arrival of a man who would save us from the darkness we faced. We’ve been waiting for you ever since.”

“Not all of us,” one of the men muttered from across the fire. He was tall and blond, and he’d been silent for most of the meal and the conversation afterward, but Cain recognized him: it was Farris, the leader of the group of skeptics within the order.

“The prophecies told of his arrival,” Egil snapped. “Isn’t that enough for you?”

“And we’re just supposed to believe it, now that he’s arrived?” Farris shrugged and took another swig of cider. “The legends are long past, and the Horadrim, if they ever truly existed, are gone. What’s left is darkness and death. We should go back to our homes and hope for the best.”

There were a few murmurs of agreement from Farris’s friends. “What homes?” Egil said, his voice growing louder. “Did you not see what Gea Kul has become? What the Dark One has done to us, to our land? You are blind if you think you can just go back—”

Farris leapt to his feet, his face bright red. “Don’t tell me how blind I am, Egil. Your blind faith has kept us living out here, in these caves, while our loved ones suffer and die alone. I would rather die with them than with you.”

Cain was growing ever more unsettled. He had hoped to find true mages who would help him conquer the darkness; but Egil, at least, seemed to look to him as some kind of hero, while the rest of them seemed suspicious, incompetent, or worse.

As he had suspected for so long, the Lesser Evils of Hell were at work in Sanctuary. Belial had sunk his claws into Garreth Rau. What would happen next was unclear, but Cain could not help but feel more uncertain than ever.

Cain felt the walls of the cave closing in on him. He got to his feet and glanced at Leah, who had fallen asleep leaning against Lund’s massive thigh. “I must take some air, to clear my head,” he said. “Perhaps we should all take some time to think. Please excuse me.”

The night was cool and silent. Cain’s legs trembled with exhaustion. He tried to make sense of a world that suddenly seemed turned upside down.

How could he have been so badly mistaken? Everything he had learned through months of research had pointed him here, to these men—only to result in a dead end. The group was a disaster. He was no savior, and if Sanctuary depended upon him, and him alone, all was lost. What was more, the idea that this group could be of any help in deciphering Leah’s condition and remarkable powers was laughable; they couldn’t even set up a decent camp, never mind find the answers to abilities that may have been based in magic or something else entirely.

Cain felt a touch on his sleeve. Startled, he glanced over to find Mikulov standing next to him. He hadn’t heard the monk arrive; in fact, he had been so absorbed in Egil’s stories, Farris’s arguments, and his own growing despair, he hadn’t even realized until now that Mikulov had been absent for some time.

“They are not what you expected,” Mikulov said. It was a statement, not a question, but Cain nodded. He wanted to remain strong, to appear as if he still held the confidence that what they were doing was right. Instead he found himself speechless, unable to describe the hopelessness that had welled up within him after meeting the men he had thought would be their salvation.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he said. “Perhaps we should have taken a different path. Perhaps there are others—”

Mikulov shook his head. His entire body seemed to be humming at a pitch just high enough to be beyond normal human perception. Cain could feel it like a struck piece of metal, and he was reminded of the evening he and Akarat had found the ruins in the Borderlands. It seemed so long ago.

“There is bad energy in the wind tonight,” Mikulov said, staring out into the blackness beyond the cave entrance. “The gods are in hiding. There is great evil in that tower on the shore, and I fear it has found us.”

“The Dark One, Garreth Rau.”

He turned to Cain, his eyes shining in the faint light from the cavern. “I had a vision, just now, of his watching us. His anger was like the strongest sun, burning everything it touched to ash. I have never felt anything like it. I fear that he has already begun the rituals that will bring the undead army to march upon Caldeum.”

“Then we have very little time left.”

Mikulov nodded. “I, too, have been questioning our path here. I expected something different as well. But we cannot afford to stop now. The gods have led us here for a reason. We must remain strong, my friend. A great battle is coming, and any weakness we have will be used against us.”

Cain sighed. The weight of the entire world was on his shoulders, pressing down until he wanted to scream out for relief. It was a burden too heavy for one man to carry. “What would you have us do, Mikulov?”

“Get some sleep.” Mikulov smiled, but his face was haggard and drawn. Cain realized that he had gotten used to the monk’s constant serenity and balanced energy, and now that they seemed absent, it was all the more shocking to behold. “We need to heal our minds and bodies. Things will seem better in the morning. They always do. Then we will go to work. What choice do we have? Leave now, in the dead of night? Abandon all that we have come to believe? What we know to be true?”

Cain nodded. Mikulov was right, of course. But Cain got the sense the monk was holding something else back, something that might shake him to the core, if he were to hear it.

There was something important he was missing. Egil had described Garreth Rau’s descent into darkness. His power had grown with every ritual and every demonic spell. Eventually even his physical body had begun to change; he had become a mutated, monstrous shell of his former self. But he had mastered the dark arts with such precision, it seemed as if he could do anything.

Yet he had let his brethren escape. A man who wielded power such as this should have had no problem finding a small, fractured group like these men and laying waste to them. Why had he left them alone? Was there still a shred of humanity left inside that remembered what they had meant to him, something that held him back?

Or was there some other, much darker reason?

“Excuse me?”

Cain turned to find Egil standing behind them, hands clasped at his waist. Over his shoulder was a burlap sack. The young man’s pale face was like a moon in the darkness. “I fear we have disappointed you,” he said. “Some of the others have lost faith, like Farris. They feel that our attempt at reforming the Horadrim is a fool’s game, and that the order died away for good years ago. Many no longer believe in angels or the High Heavens. They say that if Heaven exists, why wouldn’t it act against the evil that is gathering here? But there are those of us who do believe, and have been waiting for someone like you to show us the way to salvation.”

Egil paused, as if hesitant to speak again. “I have heard stories,” he said finally. “My uncle lived near Tristram, for a time, before settling in Gea Kul. He told our family everything he had heard about the demon invasion there. He even claimed to have seen demons himself. And he told us about you. Now . . .” Egil shook his head, “he is gone, taken by Garreth and his feeders. My father and mother survive, but they no longer recognize me. They are victims too.” His eyes met Cain’s and held them. “Those stories about your wise counsel during the dark days of Tristram are what inspired me to study the Horadrim myself. I know you can help us. We are . . . fractured, and in need of a leader. But we are eager to learn. If you join us, the others will come to believe it too.

“I promise you, we will not let you down.”

Deckard Cain stared out at the night, listening to the creak of wood, the faint sound of insects buzzing. His hearing seemed preternaturally acute—the ears of a deer as it lifts its head from feeding at the approach of a wolf, he thought, a half smile crossing his face. I am an old man, but I am not dead yet. The wind seemed to whisper back promises of violence: of cold, dead things reaching up from watery ground, and he knew that Garreth Rau was out there somewhere, standing just as he was, staring into the night sky. He shivered.

Egil’s face was upturned toward him, waiting expectantly. Then the young man took the sack off his shoulder and dug inside, withdrawing something that made Cain suck in his breath with astonishment and wonder.

“We found this among the ruins of a monastery in Khanduras,” Egil said. “We were never quite sure how to use it. But I suspect you could teach us.”

Cain took the object in both hands, turned it over, admiring the workmanship. It had been a long time since he had seen one. It was a bit larger than a man’s skull, and heavier than he remembered, the intricate carved wood seeming to tingle against his skin.

The Horadric Cube.

“You have a powerful tool here,” Cain said. “Its magic is remarkable. You must use it wisely.” But when he tried to give it back, Egil shook his head.

“Please, take it,” he said. “Teach us what you know. Read the texts we were able to save from our library. They told us of your coming, and they may have more information that would help.”

Cain’s mother’s voice came back to him through all these years: The scrolls say that someday the Horadrim will rise up again when all seems lost, and a new hero will lead them in battle to save Sanctuary . . .

And her voice again, this time as a warning: Be careful what you wish for, Deckard.

Cain tucked the cube carefully into his rucksack. “We have much more to discuss before we sleep,” he said. “I want to know everything you can possibly remember about your time in Gea Kul, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant. There may be something important we can use.”

Then he took Egil’s arm, and Mikulov stepped up on his other side, and the three of them went back into the caves, where the others waited for them.

27 Lund’s Bow

She stood on a platform that soared high above the clouds. The platform was so small she could not sit down, and its edges were crumbling away, and lightning flashed all around her, lighting up the sky with jagged cracks of purple and white. She trembled, terrified, afraid to move, afraid to even breathe. In moments she would slip and tumble end over end into the abyss.

Voices came to her through the crashing storm, a crazy old beggar and a pig-eyed bully: “The sky will turn black, the streets fill with blood . . . where’s your crazy mother? Servicing the men at the tavern? . . . we should toss you in the fountain, wash off the stink . . .”

The sound of flapping joined the voices, and she looked all around but could not see the birds until she faced the front again and a crow at least twice her size was hovering just before her, fanning its wings, its huge, sharp beak snapping forward and nearly grazing her skin, its beady eyes fixated on her own.

She screamed as the crow began to change, its feathers melting into Gillian with crow’s talons for hands, a knife buried hilt-deep in her chest; then that changed to a hood hanging over features shrouded in shadows, the talons rippling into long, bony fingers, a hunched, robed figure hovering just out of reach. It was the dark man. YOU ARE MINE, his voice thundered in her head, and one arm extended toward her as lightning cracked once again and thousands of horrible, skinless beasts gathered behind him. She felt herself being ripped open and laid bare, something pulled out of her like a ribbon unwinding from her stomach, and as she looked down, she screamed again because the ribbon was her own blood, coiling in the wind like a long, red snake and lit with blue fire.

Leah woke up to silence. Gray light trickled in from the mouth of the cave, and the smell of smoke still lingered, but the fire was dead. Lund slept next to her, his giant chest rising and falling slowly, and she sighed and waited for her galloping heart to slow down. The dream had been so real. She knew that the dark man and his demons meant to destroy the world. She shivered in the cold morning air.

The camp came awake slowly. Men stirred, muttered to themselves, got up to fetch water and start the fire again. Lund awoke a short time later and smiled sleepily at her, and Leah felt warmth for him begin in her chest and spread through her limbs, dispelling the chill. She didn’t know why, but he made her feel safe, as if his great strength could protect her from harm. At the same time, his mind was like a child’s, and he had nothing to hide. She liked that.

She looked around the cave for Uncle Deckard and found him deep in conversation with the man named Egil, two others from the camp she did not know (a tall, thin man with glasses and a shorter, round one with no hair), and Mikulov the monk. The old man’s face was deeply lined and gray, his eyes ringed with dark circles. Their voices were low, but she heard the words ennead and ammuit, or something similar; they kept gesturing over a book they passed back and forth, arguing over its contents. Then Cain took out a strange, square object from his sack, pointing to its carved, wooden surfaces as if they held some great mystery. It looked like just another box, and she turned to Lund, who was sitting up, the smile on his face so wide she could not help smiling herself.

“This is yours,” he said shyly, bringing something out from behind his back. It was a tiny bow made from a sapling and antelope sinew, with half a dozen arrows whittled to points blackened by the fire and topped with blue feathers at the other end.

Leah took the bow from him and held it as she might cradle a baby in her arms. Ever since she had seen him shoot his arrow through the tree trunk, she had been fascinated by his bow, the way the arrows whistled, cutting through the air, the low twang the string made as it was released. But she’d been unable to budge the tough wood when she tried to draw back the string and had finally given up in frustration after she’d almost toppled over just holding the huge weapon.

This bow was just her size. “Can we try it?” she asked. “Please?”

Lund nodded at Uncle Deckard. “Ask him first.”

Lund took her out into the clearing and taught her how to stand with her feet firmly planted on the ground, how to notch an arrow to the string and sight down the shaft, squinting, then draw straight back toward her eye with one elbow bent, the other locked. Her first few arrows wobbled terribly and flew into the woods or into the ground; but on her eighth try, the arrow flew straight, missing the target Lund had painted on the tree by mere inches. Lund clapped and jumped up and down like a small boy, then ran and collected the fallen arrows for her to try again.

By lunchtime, Leah had hit the target three times. The muscles in her arms ached, her fingers had grown raw and sore, and her hands trembled, but she did not want to stop. There was strength in the bow, a way for her to take control of her fear, even master it. With a weapon like that, she was no longer powerless against the darkness.

She imagined the huge, dark shape of the crow before her, its beady eye the target. Lund showed her how to let her breath out in a long, slow hiss and hold it while she released, keeping everything else still. This time, her arrow hit near the center of the circle, and Lund finally convinced her to quit for the day.

The camp was busy, the smell of cooking thick in the air. Uncle Deckard had more men around him, and he was talking loudly and gesturing while the others watched intently, nodding or shaking their heads. They pointed to passages in books, looked at maps and objects from Uncle’s sack, drew designs in the dirt. There seemed to be two different groups arguing with each other. The fat, short man with no hair (his name was Cullen, she believed) was saying something about an army of ghouls—feeders, he called them. The way he gestured, his face growing red as his voice grew louder, made her shiver. Lund took her hand and led her away.

Before dinner, they all took turns bathing in the stream that ran below camp, the frigid water making Leah gasp and raising goose bumps on her skin. She used a bar of goat’s fat and flower oil that Lund gave her. It felt good to scrub away the dust and grime that had accumulated on the road, and she dipped her head under the water briefly, her breath catching in her chest, and emerged feeling reborn and new again.

At night they all ate around the fire again, and there seemed to be even more men this time, all of them focused on Uncle Deckard as he told stories about the Horadrim and their great battles from many years ago. Leah listened to the descriptions of Jered Cain and Tal Rasha, two warrior mages who battled monsters like the crow and skinless beasts from her dreams, and worse; she grew sleepy as Cain talked about the town called Tristram and what had happened there, then described his search for someone he called the Dark Wanderer and the battle at Mount Arreat with a monster called Baal.

The men listened intently. Some of the stories should have been scary even to them, but they seemed enraptured by Uncle Deckard’s skill at telling. For some reason, Leah wasn’t afraid anymore either. Uncle’s voice soothed her, and Lund’s presence made her feel as if nothing bad could possibly happen here. The fire in Caldeum, the strange village, and what had happened in Kurast all seemed so far away.

She fell asleep leaning on Lund’s shoulder, more content and safe than she could remember feeling in weeks.

“There has to be more,” Cain said. “The key is Al Cut. The tomb of Al Cut—what does it mean? He was mentioned in a book of prophecies I found in the Borderlands, in reference to an army of the dead. And the name was written at the bottom of the drawings of a boy haunted by feeders just a short distance away in Kurast. How are these things connected?”

The day had dawned gray and cold, the sun hidden behind a thick layer of dark clouds, and as the hours had passed, Cain’s newfound enthusiasm and energy had begun to wane. Ratham was only two days away, and time was running out. The order had listened raptly to his stories around the fire the night before, and he had felt a connection growing with them; but there was so much left to learn, and so much to teach, that he felt overwhelmed and lost.

At least there had been some attempt to recreate the Horadrim in a similar way to their founding, centuries before: the fledgling scholars had dedicated a person to each of the main mage groups, just as the original Horadrim had consisted of mages from each school of magic, and these so-called leaders had taught others within their ranks in the ways of the Ennead, Ammuit, Taan, and Vizjerei. But their teaching had been erratic and often completely wrong, and Cain had found himself spending as much time correcting misconceptions about transmutation, illusion, and prophecy as he did finding out anything useful.

They had already been over everything they had in their possession, but it wasn’t much. Egil had explained that before the group had escaped the town, Rau had already begun to gather hundreds of creatures around him, some of them the drained husks of the citizens of Gea Kul and surrounding areas, others much darker and more threatening. He had become a mage of considerable skill and training by then, summoning things from the netherworld that none of the other mages had ever seen or heard of before. Some of these creatures, the things they had called feeders, had spread out across the land, draining strength from the populace in a way that the rest of the order had not fully understood.

“Has anyone heard of this man, Al Cut? Either living or, more likely, long dead? Someone important from history—a mage, perhaps?”

The men who had gathered around him (Egil, Cullen, Mikulov, and another one called Thomas) remained silent. They were looking for some clue that would help them plan their attack on the Dark One’s stronghold.

Cain dug into his rucksack and took out the book of Horadric prophecies that he had found in the Vizjerei ruins, the one that appeared to have been written by Tal Rasha himself. “The passage is here,” he said. He read it aloud: “And the High Heavens shall rain down upon Sanctuary as a false leader arises from the ashes . . . the tomb of Al Cut will be revealed, and the dead shall lay waste to mankind . . .”

“May I see it?” Egil asked. When he looked it over in his hands, recognition dawned in his eyes. “Is it possible?” he said softly. “It can’t be . . . these ruins in the Borderlands. Was there a library below a collapsed temple, and a foul demon that guarded its contents?”

“How did you know that?”

“We were there, several months ago,” Egil said excitedly, his voice rising. “In those ruins. We were chased out by a foul demon that possessed one of our order. Garreth pushed it back long enough for us to escape, but we were forced to leave some of our possessions behind. A pack with our food, and this text, as well as a book of ancient Vizjerei spells we had found there. Demonic magic.”

Cain held up the book of Horadric prophecies. “You brought this text with you to the very same ruins where I found it?”

Egil nodded. “Garreth said we would need it on our journey, and we never questioned him about things like that. He was always right. But this time . . .” He shrugged. “The demon was not the only threat. There were sand wasps and dune threshers. We barely escaped with our lives.”

A chill ran down Cain’s spine. He and Akarat had followed Rau’s First Ones into the Vizjerei ruins; it was their footprints he had seen in the dust, and their belongings he had found behind the temple. It seemed almost too much of a coincidence to be possible.

Cain skimmed through the text again, most of it already familiar to him. It was full of very old writings that seemed to predict Cain’s own path to these caves, as well as the fall of Kurast and Gea Kul to the darkness. It was almost as if it had been written recently, rather than hundreds of years ago.

A passage near the end, just before the mention of Al Cut, told of thousands of lost souls buried deep beneath Gea Kul, a killing field from the depths of Sanctuary’s history that held something terribly dangerous and important. But the book ended there abruptly, as if the scribe who had written it had run out of pages.

“I need to see the companion texts to this one,” Cain said.

Egil put up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I do not have them,” he said. “If there are more, they must still be inside our Horadric library in Gea Kul. I had returned there to try to find more answers, before I found you.”

The idea of returning to that place, and having to face creatures like the unburied once again, filled Cain with dismay. He could not possibly fight something like that; he was a man of words, not weapons. Yet what choice did they have? There were no more answers to be found in this camp, and if they remained here, Cain was certain it would only be a matter of time before the Dark One and his army would come for them.

“We must go back to Gea Kul, to your meeting rooms,” he said. “We need those books.”

“There are other artifacts there, too,” Egil said. “Or at least there were. Things we had found on our journeys—”

Cullen shook his head, jowls wobbling. “It’s too dangerous,” he said. “Garreth has spies everywhere. He’ll find us!”

Cain held up a hand. “We cannot cower in fear anymore. Look at how you’re living in these caves, like animals, while the man who used to lead you is slowly destroying this world, and you are doing nothing to stop him.” He stared at Egil, Cullen, and Thomas, challenging them with his gaze. “Our enemy will find us soon enough if we do not act. You call yourselves Horadrim. It’s time to embrace your destiny and prove yourselves worthy of such a name.”

There was silence among the group. The three men avoided his look, staring at the ground.

“I will go with you,” Mikulov said. “And fight to the death, if need be.”

“I will go too,” Egil said, looking up, a new glint in his eyes. “We will not let you down.”

Thomas nodded. Finally Cullen did the same. “Good,” Cain said. “We take our first step tomorrow, at dawn. We have two days. May the archangels be with us all.”

28 The Possession

As the gray light of dawn bled from the sky, the small group reached Gea Kul and the entrance to the tunnels that led under the town.

Leah had remained at the camp with the others, with Lund as her protector. It was too dangerous for her to come along, and she seemed to feel at ease with the gentle giant. It pleased Cain to see them hand in hand, like two absurdly mismatched but happy playmates, and he knew that Lund would do anything to keep her safe.

On the way Cain had told them more stories about his traveling party’s search for the Dark Wanderer after the fall of Tristram and the assault on Mount Arreat by Baal. He had ended with the story of Tyrael’s heroic journey into the mountain to destroy the Worldstone, where he had sacrificed himself for the good of Sanctuary. Cain had meant to inspire the order with his tales, but in the end he had inspired himself as well. As he had spoken, growing more animated and dramatic as he went along, Cain had thought of his mother, the gleam in her eye as she told the children about the ancient mages and their battle with the Prime Evils. He had thought it to be madness, but now he realized that it was the passion of the righteous. To these men, they were simply stories, as inspiring as they might be, but Cain had been there on Mount Arreat, running for his life, had seen the things he had described with his own eyes. He knew what the darkness could bring.

Cain stood for a moment, looking at the row of shacks sitting silently before them. There were people inside some of them, hidden away from prying eyes, mere shadows of the men and woman they had been before. He shook his head, clenching his fists. Rage built within him like a cresting wave. Garreth Rau was bleeding the life out of the people of Sanctuary, and it had to be stopped.

A pop and blaze of light caught his attention. Egil had opened the grate and taken the same torch he had left behind just days before, lighting it with one of his bags of exploding powder.

They entered the tunnels together. Egil led them through the dank, dripping stone corridors, torchlight flickering across the walls and picking up some kind of luminosity in the moss, setting off an eerie glow. It was this same moss that, mixed with the minerals from the hills outside the First Ones’ camp, caused the explosion of Egil’s bags of powder. The air was frigid; Cain could see his own breath as he hustled to keep up with the others, pushing his poor old knees to the breaking point.

Several different turns and branches led to others, but Egil seemed to know exactly where he was going. Eventually they arrived at the steps leading to the secret door. They listened; all was silent beyond, and Egil pushed the hidden lever that slid back the door with a loud rumble.

The hallway was empty, the room beyond black as pitch. The door to the library had been damaged by the unburied, chunks of rock strewn across the floor. A bug the size of a small mouse skittered through, insect legs ticking against the stone, causing them all to jump. Nothing else moved.

“Give the torch to me,” Mikulov said. He took the burning brand and strode forward, stepping over the rubble with Cain close behind. The old man’s breath caught in his throat. In spite of the danger, he was enthralled by the prospect of the books he had caught a glimpse of on his last visit; he couldn’t wait to get his hands on them. He felt sure the secret of Al Cut could be found somewhere among their brittle pages.

The library did not disappoint him. It was even more impressive than he remembered. The thrashing about of the unburied had taken several shelves down and strewn their contents about the room, but most were intact. Torchlight revealed shelf after shelf of rare texts, many of them in nearly perfect condition. The air held a faint hint of rot, but there was no sign of the creature, and the rooms beyond were dark and silent. Cullen and Thomas righted the table and began to gather the books on the floor, stacking them carefully. Egil stood in the doorway, motionless, an odd look on his face as he surveyed the damage.

Cain let his fingers drift over the spines of the nearest texts, taking some of them down to peruse more closely, losing himself in the familiar, heady scent of old paper; here were original documents from the church of Zakarum, next to texts on the history of the Horadric order, the Vizjerei, and the priests of Rathma. His heart beat faster. Some of them he had seen before; others he had not. An Ammuit treatise on illusion and the bending of planes of reality sat next to a reproduction of a Taan book on divination. There were ancient writings from spellcasters and witches; formulas for healing potions; curses, powders, and spells; and tomes on shape-shifting and elemental magic by the druids of the northern forests. Other texts were written about the umbaru witch doctors from the jungles of Torajan, outlining concoctions of tree root and herbs of which Cain was only vaguely familiar.

On a lower shelf, he found a folded piece of parchment. Bringing it closer to the light, Cain found it to be a map of the tunnels under Gea Kul. He saw the very rooms where they were standing, sitting above the spokes of a wheel-like design that stretched beyond the entire town to the sea. There were other notations that he could not make sense of at first; they looked like buildings of some kind, buried beneath the earth. The map was detailed and carefully drawn, and he tucked it into his rucksack for safekeeping.

Cain returned to the shelves and paused, astonished, staring at a volume as he drifted back through decades of memories. Could it be? He took the book down with trembling hands, blowing dust from its cover.

A history of Westmarch and the Sons of Rakkis, a copy of the same text his mother had burned in front of him when he was just a boy.

This one is not part of your destiny . . . Your proper texts are with Jered’s belongings, when you choose to read them.

Cain was alarmed to find himself close to tears. An old man like me shouldn’t cry for what’s past, he thought. There’s not enough time left in these bones for that.

“Rau was a scholar at heart,” Thomas said, breaking the hypnotic spell that had seemed to fall over Cain as he lost himself in the library’s contents. “He was always focused on the pursuit of knowledge, driving us to collect whatever we could find. He studied these texts and learned from them.”

The range of knowledge was remarkable. The First Ones must have spent years collecting them, and even then, the breadth of the collection almost defied belief. Yet Rau had left it all behind. And that led to an important question: what other, more disturbing texts did he have in his possession now?

Cain could not help but see the parallel between himself and Garreth Rau. But what had caused Rau to veer off the path of righteousness? Cain had regretted the years he had lost before he had found his true calling, convinced that he could never make up for them. But perhaps they had done something important in giving him the wisdom of time and the perspective to keep from making the same mistakes and being tempted by the seductive power of evil.

You must come to belief in your own way, in your own time.

Mikulov had found a lantern on the wall; he lit it with the torch, handing the flame to Egil to hold. The room grew brighter, the yellow flame illuminating the rows of books. The men had brought large sacks with them, and Cain began to direct Thomas and Cullen on which books to gather up and take with them.

It was Thomas who found it. On the floor, near where the table had been overturned, he discovered the companion text to the one in Cain’s rucksack.

The bindings were identical: hand-sewn leather, with the Horadric symbol branded into the cover, with the mark of Tal Rasha inside. Cain had Mikulov bring the lantern closer and opened the brittle book as carefully as he could, scanning its contents. The writing was dense, as if its author had tried to cram as much as possible onto each page. Rather than a continuation of the prophecies from the first text, much of this one was a recounting of the Mage Clan Wars and the founding of the Horadrim by Tyrael, and Cain’s excitement slowly turned sour as he flipped through it.

In the second half of the book, the pages were blank.

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. The range of texts from the library could take him months to read, and there was no guarantee he would find any answers, even then.

No. He studied the blank pages more closely. It did not make sense that they would be empty. Words were hidden here: he was sure of it.

Cain removed the book of demon-summoning magic from his rucksack, searching for the reveal spell he had used before to locate these very chambers. He felt the dark power flow through him once again as he spoke. The lantern flame guttered and then flared up, and something unseen seemed to enter the room; he heard the others gasp with fright, but he did not look up, his eyes bound to the blank page as words began to appear there, as if freshly written.

The text described an ancient battle from the Mage Clan Wars many centuries before, fought over a forgotten city. The brothers Bartuc and Horazon, leaders of the Vizjerei sorcerers, gathered thousands of followers each; light and dark clashed, and the streets ran with blood, their vast powers nearly splitting the land in two before Bartuc prevailed in this particular battle and slaughtered what remained of Horazon’s followers. The two brothers escaped the killing fields, leaving the dead sorcerers to rot where they had fallen.

A short time later, Bartuc returned to the city under the cover of darkness and used his demonic powers to cover up what he had done and sink the city deep beneath the ground, burying it forever and erasing it from history with a powerful spell. But the dead sorcerers from the battle remained, entombed in the ruins of ancient buildings and tunnels that connected them.

A drawing scratched into the text’s pages, this one more crudely done, filled Cain’s heart with fear.

The lost city’s name was Al Cut. And its location was chillingly familiar.

Gea Kul had been built directly on top of it.

The notations from the other map came back to him; they marked the spots where Al Cut’s buildings lay, entombed forever beneath the sands of time.

“Al Cut,” Cain breathed softly. The revelation was like a thunderbolt. “It’s not a man; it’s a city.”

“Where’s Egil?”

The urgency in the voice broke the spell that had fallen over Cain. He looked up to find Thomas looking frantically around the room and Cullen still packing books into his sack with a frenzy that made him seem almost mad with fear. Something had terrified the two men. The lantern no longer gave their surroundings a warm yellow glow; the gloom crept out from the corners, seeming to eat the light, and the cold had returned like the touch of icy, dead fingertips.

Cain remembered the odd look on Egil’s face as he had stood in the entrance to the library. He glanced at Mikulov, who shook his head, then nodded in the direction of the only other way out of the library—the archway from which the unburied had appeared several days before. The torch Egil had been holding was tucked neatly into a bracket on the wall.

Wherever he had gone, he had been without a light to guide him.

“What’s back there?” Cain asked.

“A meeting room,” Thomas said. “And a . . . place for rituals. There’s an entrance to a lower chamber, but we never used it.”

The men’s sacks were heavy with books. “Take these back to the camp,” Cain said. “Mikulov and I will go look for him.”

Thomas began to protest, but Cain raised a hand. “Go,” he said. “He may have gone that way, and you can catch him. Take the lantern, and protect those texts. We’ll follow you in a moment.”

Thomas shouted Egil’s name, but there was no response. The two men hoisted the sacks, took the lantern.

Thomas put his hand on Cain’s shoulder. “Hurry,” he said. “There is something evil here. I can feel it.” Then they headed back to the passageway. Mikulov grabbed the torch from the wall and stepped through the entrance to the next room. Cain followed him inside.

The torchlight revealed a smaller chamber with a large, wooden table and chairs at its center. The walls were bare, and the air smelled more strongly of mold and rot. It was empty. Mikulov swept the torch down toward the dusty floor, revealing footprints leading to another archway beyond.

A frigid draft washed over them, followed by a faint, echoing moan. Mikulov looked at Cain and slipped out his blade. They moved cautiously to the next archway. Inside was an empty room with a round ceiling and a circle at the center. A portal. Cain could only guess where it might lead. There was a red jewel in its center, and he knelt there and pried it free, slipping it into his sack for safekeeping.

Another noise, this one like a shuffling of feet, drew their attention to an open door. Mikulov tensed, muscles going rigid as he held up the torch for a better view.

Egil stood in the doorway. He had his head down, his colorless hair nearly glowing in the torchlight, hands held at his sides. His breathing was slow and even, white clouds rising in the cold air.

Cain called his name, but the man did not move or answer. Mikulov took several steps forward, keeping the torch out like a weapon. He held his blade down, away from sight.

The two men stopped halfway across the room. “Something is wrong,” Mikulov said quietly. “I don’t think—”

Egil looked up, his face making Mikulov abruptly cut off whatever he was about to say. Egil’s pale skin had gone gray and lifeless, blue veins running underneath like map lines. His eyes caught the fire and reflected it, like an animal’s in the dark.

He was grinning at them.

Cain took an involuntary half step back. The look on Egil’s face . . . it wasn’t Egil, in there. This was someone else.

“It’s about time you arrived,” the thing rasped. “A bit too slow, I’m afraid, and still blissfully unaware. Then again, you were always the last one to see the truth, weren’t you, Deckard Cain?”

“Who are you?”

“You know who I am.” The creature slid forward, as if floating inches off the floor, and stopped ten feet away. “After all, you came here looking for me.”

Cain tried to calm his racing heart. Garreth Rau. If he had indeed been able to possess Egil’s body, his skills were considerable indeed.

“There are others here too.” The thing turned its gaze on Mikulov. “Do you really think that what you are about to do will make any difference?”

Cain tried to stop him, but it was too late. Mikulov moved blindingly fast, but Rau barely seemed to glance at him as green light erupted from his hands and a brilliant flash painted the room. Cain cried out and put his arm up to protect his face, and he was thrown backward to the floor, landing hard and hearing the loud crack of something breaking. He lay for a moment, stunned. When he looked up again, the torch was out, but a strange glow remained, Egil’s slight frame bathed in it as if his own flesh was on fire.

Mikulov was on the floor against the wall, motionless. He didn’t appear to be breathing.

Cain crawled to the fallen monk’s side, cradling his head in his arms. Mikulov’s eyelids fluttered, and he moaned softly.

“Deckard?”

The voice was different now, lighter, touched with fear. Familiar. Cain looked back, and Egil’s face had changed, the jawline softening, cheekbones more pronounced, eyes large and dark as pitch.

“It’s cold here, Deckard. I can’t get out of this place. Please.”

Cain’s own blood turned to ice. It can’t be. The pain came rushing back like a freezing river, chilling him to the bone.

“Amelia,” he said. The words were ripped out of him like a hand twisting his insides. “No.”

His dead wife, gone thirty-five years now, vanished from his life like a phantom. He had buried the truth for decades, pushed it down so deep it had nearly disappeared. The pain was too much for him to bear. But there was more, so much more, and to even begin to think of the rest of it meant madness.

“We thought it was safe. We needed someplace to go. My mother, she begged us to come. I . . . you weren’t there, Deckard. I tried to reach you, but you were lost with your books; you weren’t there . . . You were never there.”

“You aren’t real—”

“They took us, Deckard. They hurt us. Please don’t let them hurt us anymore. Don’t let them hurt your son.”

Egil’s face rippled, changed again, flesh melting like wax forced to the flames, a screaming, blood-soaked mask of pain that re-formed itself, becoming smaller and rounder, softer yet, plump cheeks and smooth brow. The face was someone else’s now, someone who had haunted Cain’s dreams for decades, a young boy who had learned to run before he could walk, who had never slowed down enough to listen to a word his parents said, a wild, trembling ball of pure energy and a true force of nature.

“Daddy!” The boy was crying hysterically. “I don’t like the monsters, Daddy! Please come get me!”

With a strangled cry, Cain launched himself at the possessed figure, the walls he had erected around these memories during so many long years suddenly crashing down all at once, and the flood of pain and suffering pouring out like rushing water over a broken dam.

As he reached the thing that had taken Egil, it closed its fingers around Cain’s throat, holding him like a small toy, their faces inches apart.

The thing’s features had changed again. This time, what was revealed was not man, woman, or child, but something inhuman. Raw flesh stretched shiny-slick across knobs of bone surrounded a gaping maw full of sharpened, bloody teeth.

“They cry for you,” Belial spat at him, his breath like rotting flesh. “You never could look at their bodies, could you, Deckard? See what we did to them on that empty road? Yet their physical pain was nothing—only the beginning. We took their souls and made them slaves, and they have been suffering under the watch of my loyal servants ever since. You ignored them for so long for your precious books, you hardly noticed what they meant to you until they were gone. And now you have brought us another one to play with, just in time. We thank you for doing our bidding, even if you weren’t aware of it.”

Deckard Cain saw a flash of an empty, overturned wagon upon the road to Caldeum, the splash of blood across the spokes of the wheel. Red-stained shapes under rough blankets that men had draped over them. “You . . . lie . . .”

The demon roared, throwing its head back and howling at the ceiling, its laughter shaking the foundations of the building like an earthquake. “Everything is a lie, old man. All that you see, all that you believe. Your family was a lie, your sad little life of solitary study, your loneliness and anger. Even your pathetic little quest to find us. You think all that you’ve done, the things you have found along the way, the signs that brought you here—all that was your doing?”

Cain’s legs gave way, and he sagged against the creature’s arms as its fingers tightened around his throat. Everything seemed to click into place: Akarat’s discovery of the texts that had led them to the ruins, and the Horadric prophecies he had found there that had been left by the First Ones seemingly by accident, texts that had eventually led him to Caldeum, Kurast, and finally to Gea Kul. So many coincidences, so many close escapes.

“Even now, you do our bidding, old man. This shell we inhabit will die in a moment, yet you will be too late to stop what is happening.” The thing grinned at him. “The little girl. You left her alone, didn’t you? Left another one alone again. You thought she was safe. You poor fool. Check the book. You—ahhhhh.”

The creature sighed, eyes suddenly growing dim and fixed, face re-forming, features bubbling back to their original shape as its hands went slack and Cain dropped, gasping, to the floor. Egil slumped, already dead, falling toward Cain and wetting his face with blood.

He looked up as Mikulov slid his punch dagger back out from the base of Egil’s skull. Mikulov stepped back, breathing hard, his eyes wild, as the green light that had bathed the room began to fade into darkness. Cain pushed Egil’s body off him, scrambling backward as the blood soaked through his tunic, wetting his skin. He fumbled in his rucksack, pulling out a bag of Egil’s powder and throwing it against the wall. The pop and flare filled the room with light once again, and Mikulov retrieved the torch and lit it.

Cain found his staff in one corner, snapped in two. The cracking sound he had heard when he had fallen earlier came back to him, and as he gathered the pieces, a deeper fear spread through his limbs and urged him on. His fingers touched the piece of parchment paper in the hidden pocket of his tunic, the edges old and crumbling, its message seared once again across his memory: We regret to inform you . . .

“Wait!” Mikulov cried, but Cain ran as fast as his trembling, nearly useless legs would carry him, careening through the shadows with the torchlight following behind and Mikulov continuing to call out. Egil was dead, poor Egil, another young man who had trusted Deckard and had paid the bitter price for it, as had Akarat, the young paladin who had been filled with such confidence. Used like all the rest.

I will not let you down, Akarat had said, back at the Vizjerei ruins. Egil had said much the same thing before they had come here. And they had not let him down, but Cain had been unable to protect them in return, as he had promised himself he would. And now he feared the worst for someone else under his care and protection. Someone he had promised to keep safe.

The demon lies.

Yes, of course it did. But lies were often wrapped in truth.

Deckard Cain reached the library, Mikulov close behind with the torch. The room was silent and empty and shrouded in shadows, the remains of their search strewn in piles on the floor. The book of Horadric prophecies was still open on the table. Check the book, the demon had said. Cain flipped through it with trembling fingers, all the hidden text still legible as Mikulov stepped to his side and the flickering torchlight brightened its pages.

“What is it—?”

Cain let out a small cry, stepping away from the table and the book. But it was too late. He had already seen what had been scrawled across the last two pages, written in blood, still fresh and wet.

The words were seared into his brain:

The girl is mine.

29 The Warning

Long before they reached the caves, they could smell the smoke.

Cain and Mikulov had caught up with Thomas and Cullen before the two men left the tunnels. They had been slowed down by their heavy burden of books, while Cain and Mikulov had been propelled ever faster by their fear of what they would find when they returned to camp. The two men sagged as Mikulov explained briefly what had happened to Egil, Thomas leaning on Cullen for support. Thomas and Egil had been close friends, Cullen explained, as Mikulov assumed Thomas’s sack of books for him. It was a tough blow to take.

But it was nothing compared to what they found when they reached the clearing.

Black smoke billowed from the cave’s entrance. The bodies of men and other creatures still lay scattered across the ground, many of them with arrows buried to the fletching in their necks and chests.

What drew their eyes was the huge wooden cross that had been erected in front of the cave, and the thing that hung there.

Lund’s chin rested on his chest. The huge man was naked, his hands and feet lashed to the wood, rope digging cruelly into flesh the color of white marble. But Lund was beyond any pain now.

He had been split from throat to groin, his innards spilling out and hanging down to the dusty, blood-soaked ground.

The crows had been at work on him. One still remained, perched upon the right crossbar above Lund’s fingers, a gigantic black bird with glossy feathers and curved talons. It pecked at his fleshy thumb, pulling loose a string of meat, and cocked its head at them, peering, as if deciding whether they were a threat. Then it opened its beak and cawed, the sound echoing across the hillside like the scream of the damned before it flapped its wings and rose, still screeching, up and over the tops of the dead trees and out of sight.

Thomas fell to his knees in the dirt, a high wail bursting from deep within him. Cullen closed his eyes and looked away, then was violently sick. Cain’s apprehension turned to a full-blown, galloping panic as he shouted Leah’s name over and over and received silence in return.

Cain held the sleeve of his tunic against his face as the smoke washed over him, along with another smell that made his stomach churn: burning flesh. The heat from the fire inside the cave nearly beat him back, but he pressed on, shouting Leah’s name again and hearing nothing in return but the crackle of the flames.

He got close enough to the fire to see the remains of charred bodies, clawed hands reaching upward as if searching for salvation, before his eyes threatened to boil in his skull and the hairs on the back of his hands started to curl and burn. There was no hope of finding her in here; he had to turn back. But the smoke was thick and swirling all around him, filling his lungs, and he lost his bearings, stumbling in the searing heat until someone grabbed him with strong hands and pulled him back out into the cooler air as he gasped and coughed and spat into the dirt, tears streaming down his face.

The girl is mine. The words had kept running through his head as he’d hobbled into the cave’s entrance. Garreth Rau had Leah. He felt it in his heart, like a black hole that threatened to swallow him up. He remembered a night not so long ago when James had pulled him and Leah out of the burning house in Caldeum. This time it was Mikulov who held him up.

“She’s not in there,” Mikulov said. “Listen to me. They saw her being taken away. She’s alive, Deckard. She’s alive.”

Slowly, Cain came back to his senses. He looked up to find a small group of men gathered around him; along with Mikulov, Thomas, and Cullen, there were perhaps a dozen more, most of whom he recognized from the camp, many of them with injuries of some kind. He saw a man with a lacerated cheek, as if he had been clawed, and another with a maimed arm. All had the haunted, beaten look of abused dogs, their eyes darting here and there in anticipation of another attack.

Cain set his trembling legs back under him and wiped his face clean, bringing himself back under control with tremendous effort. His eyes still smarted from the smoke, and his lungs were burning. But now was not the time to panic; if Leah had any chance at all, it would be because he remained calm and rational. Every single moment, every move he made, was crucial.

“We tried to fight, but there were so many of them,” Farris said. They were still gathered in the clearing, and Cain was asking those who remained to tell him exactly what had happened. The youngest and strongest of those who were left, Farris also seemed to be the only one who could speak of the massacre that had occurred without breaking down. “They came with no warning. There were townspeople from Gea Kul carrying knives and pitchforks, and other . . . unspeakable creatures. We saw goat-things and fallen ones, and some kind of monstrous walking dead. Some of us were able to escape into the woods during the madness. I watched from the hill as they surrounded Lund and the little girl. He fought them back with his bow, killing many.” Farris nodded toward the smoke pouring from the cave. “They began burning those who had fallen inside. Some of those bodies in there are not ours but were killed by Lund’s arrows.”

A few of the remaining men muttered their agreement, all of them avoiding looking up at the body of Lund that still hung over them, a stark symbol of their failure.

They made an example of him, Cain thought. A warning to us, should we choose to fight back.

“Tell me what happened to Leah,” he said.

“They killed Lund in front of her. The crows . . . they attacked him, and they were so fast, and there were so many. He could not hit them with his arrows. When he was finally overcome, the townspeople tried to take her, too.” Farris shook his head, his eyes haunted by the memory. “But she fought back. I don’t know how she did it, but she used powerful magic and killed several. It was like an invisible hand was battering them. I saw one who was picked up and crushed against the rocks like a doll. Then they used some kind of dart and drugged her. They dragged her off with them.”

“Was she hurt? Tell me!”

“I . . . I don’t know,” Farris said. He looked around the small group, his bloody face growing flushed with anger. “But this should serve as a lesson to all of us! Many of us wanted to end this long ago, but we were convinced to wait, that help was on the way. Look at what that help has done for us!”

Farris pointed up at Lund’s broken body, then back at Cain. “You are no savior,” he said. “No true Horadrim would have allowed this. That way of life is long gone, and many have lost their lives pursuing it. Sanctuary has changed, and not for the better! It’s time for us to stop playing at fantasies, stop pretending to be something we are not. We would all be well served to accept the truth, run far from here, and live out what time we have left before they come for us again.”

The other men nodded. Mikulov started to speak, but Cain held up a hand to stop him. “You are all good men,” he said. “I thank you for your bravery here today. I am no Horadrim, and never was. I’m only an old scholar. Perhaps Farris is right: perhaps you should all get as far away as you can. I’m sorry.”

Blinded by fresh tears, Cain stumbled, nearly falling to his knees without his staff before catching himself and continuing on, away from the group. It was no use carrying on like this anymore. They had been outsmarted at every turn; what was worse, it appeared quite possible that his entire search for his Horadric brothers had been orchestrated by Rau and Belial. He was like a puppet, and they had been pulling the strings.

He pulled the parchment from his hidden pocket and unfolded it carefully, his fingers shaking. He had spent more than thirty years banishing everything that had happened from his memory, erecting such strong walls around the disappearance of his wife and son, it was as if they had never existed at all. But it was all crashing back down upon him, every moment, every emotion, his overwhelming guilt, his rage, his sorrow, and he was not strong enough to stop it anymore.

Cain folded the parchment with the upmost care and returned it safely to his pocket. The lord’s men had suspected bandits, but they had never discovered who had done it. Justice had not been served, not for all these years.

Sometime later, he was not sure how long, Mikulov was at his side. “You cannot mean what you say,” he said in a low voice. “All you have fought for, all we have been through—”

“Is for nothing,” Cain said bitterly. “There are no Horadrim left in Sanctuary. I am not even Horadrim, just a crude shadow of what I might have been. If I had listened to those who loved me, if I had embraced my destiny, I could have stopped this. I could have been strong enough. But I am not.

“We must face the truth.” He stopped, and grabbed Mikulov’s arm, holding on like a drowning man. “We are alone, and Ratham is upon us.”

30 Blood Ritual

The tower was trembling.

The man formerly known as Garreth Rau placed his blue-veined palms upon the moist stone of the interior chamber wall and closed his eyes. It had been built for him in less than seven days by inhuman hands, under his very specific instructions, for a purpose only he fully understood. The tower was perfectly straight, each seam of rock flawlessly smooth and strong, its circular interior exact in its measurements, down to the width of a human hair.

It was made to channel the lifespark of the living directly into the arms of the dead. Its shape would harness the demonic magic he called into existence, magic that existed deep within the ether and had been banned in Sanctuary for generations.

The Dark One smiled. The stone hummed under his fingertips, slight enough to be barely noticeable. But he felt it. He was in tune with the vibrations, acutely aware of their power. The tower was a conduit, a focal point of sorts, built upon the well of power he had spent so many months preparing, and upon the graves of thousands of dead mages, buried where they had fallen among the cursed streets of Al Cut.

“You are playing a dangerous game.”

The Dark One turned from the cold stone to face the man who had spoken. The man stood with his hands clasped behind him, still dressed in the same clothing the villager had worn. Physically, this was the same man who had hung above the blood ritual just two nights before, but his spirit was vastly different. The body was only a vessel.

Anuk Maahnor, Bartuc’s captain and one of the thousands who had fallen in the great battle of Al Cut, had returned to serve him.

“Your abilities are strong,” Maahnor said. “Calling me to this bodily shell took skills I have seen in only one other man: Bartuc himself. But demonic magic is wild and powerful. You may control it, and eventually realize it is controlling you. And you will require far more than that to call the rest of our army back to life.”

“Feel this,” the Dark One said. “Touch the pregnant belly that will give life to your brothers.”

Maahnor walked over to the stone and put his own possessed hands upon it, closing his eyes. A moment later, a slight smile creased his lips, and he breathed in deeply. “It is good,” he said. “But still not enough.”

The Dark One nodded. “I have more,” he said. “A nearly endless supply.”

Only in the course of the battle at the camp in the hills had the reason behind Belial’s orders become clear to him: the girl’s pure power was breathtaking—even, the Dark One was loath to admit, stronger than his own. She had tossed about his demon horde like kindling, and only the dart filled with Torajan root had taken her down. If his archer hadn’t acted so quickly, he didn’t know what might have happened. Perhaps she would have cracked the world in two. It did not matter; the important thing was that her abilities would provide the ignition for the vast well of energy he had gathered with the help of his feeders. Once ignited, this lifespark would raise his undead army.

“Commune with the spirits of your men, Maahnor. Get them ready. Come tomorrow, they will regain the strength to rise and walk, and you shall lead them into battle once again.”

“I will speak to them,” Maahnor said. “But they serve me, not you. Should they choose to go to battle, they will fight at my side, for me.”

Rage erupted inside the Dark One, making the blue veins pulse in his forehead. “Your return to the living plane has given you a false sense of your own talents, Maahnor. You are bound to me by the blood ritual—a thread that connects us through the centuries. You are duty bound to obey.”

“Perhaps,” the man said, walking around the bulbous face of the containment chamber, “or perhaps I shall take control right now, and awaken them myself.”

“Not even the Lord of Lies himself could break such a contract.”

Maahnor smiled. “You have much to learn, my poor little friend.”

The Dark One felt the familiar twinges of inadequacy and fought against them. That was the old Garreth Rau, a helpless child who had let others take advantage of him. Those days were gone.

He had to teach this insolent man a lesson.

The Dark One raised his arms, summoning the element of fire. Blue arcs like lightning flew from his fingers, striking Maahnor in the chest. But the man did not cry out or fall back, as the Dark One had expected; instead he smiled again and raised his own hands, cupping the blue fire and holding it away from him.

Shame and fear rushed through the Dark One. He was the strongest mage in Sanctuary. Belial had told him so, and he had demonstrated his talents many times. This could not happen.

Maahnor took a step toward him. The Dark One faltered slightly, falling to one knee. But just as he thought all was lost, a fresh wave of power flowed through him. He regained his feet and struck back with a mighty blast of fire, sending Maahnor flying across the room, where he crumpled in a heap.

The Dark One stood over the man, who looked up at him in shock. “Do not defy me again,” he said, “or your new life will be far shorter than you think.”

The Dark One climbed the long steps to the ritual room at the top of the tower, flush with the success of battle. But a small part of what remained of Garreth Rau felt discomfort. He did not understand what had happened in the containment chamber. Why hadn’t he been able to wield such power at first? How much of this talent did he control?

It did not matter, he thought. Garreth Rau is no more. There was only the Dark One, lord of Sanctuary. There was no room for indecision and failure.

Outside the stone walls, he could hear the crows.

There were countless numbers of the birds now, blanketing every surface. Some were his servants; others had simply flocked here on their own, perhaps feeling these very same vibrations from miles away. Called home to join the battle, they swooped and darted through the slate-gray skies above the heads of other things cavorting in the surf: his children, born of darkness, blood, and fire.

The old man had done exactly what he had been supposed to do. The fool. Everything the Dark One had put in motion had worked flawlessly. His spies had followed Cain and the girl for the remainder of their journey, keeping out of sight unless they had been required to provide a little push. The remaining First Ones had played their roles, willingly or not. Possessing the body and soul of Egil had been particularly sweet, even when he had been forced to yield it to the Lord of Lies himself.

Yet the plan had not truly been the Dark One’s own, he had to admit. He was a conduit of sorts, too. Belial had been the one to whisper in the Dark One’s ear about the girl’s importance. He had been the one to suggest this deceit: all the clues he had placed in Cain’s path had been Belial’s work—the appearance of the demon in the ruins, the books the First Ones had left there for Cain to find, the man in Caldeum he had possessed for long enough to point the old man to Kurast.

He took his hands from the stone and turned away, walking across the empty floor to where his captive lay alone and motionless. No. He might be serving his lord for now, but soon enough he would rule this world and order the deaths of thousands of guilty men, women, and children. He was in control. Sanctuary would be his prize, in return for opening the gates of Hell. Belial had promised it to him.

From below, in more hidden rooms populated by devices too unspeakable for humans to fathom, he heard the distant screams of those he had imprisoned and tortured. Their pain helped feed the insatiable need of the tower for energy, just as his feeders drained the people of their lifespark and brought it here, where it gathered like a building electrical storm.

But Maahnor was right: it was not enough.

He stared down at the girl, still heavily drugged. All this had been necessary because of her. She was the key to awakening his slumbering army. Yet her power was so dangerous, he could not have brought her here had he been acting alone. She had been protected by something he only faintly understood.

The Dark One slid the familiar blade from the sleeve of his robe. It had tasted his blood and found it satisfactory, and it would taste the blood of many others before the final deed was done. The girl would provide the spark that he required. He could sense it, feel the pulse of energy from her even as she slept.

It was time to test her.

The Dark One shivered with anticipation. He brought a small corked vial from the pocket of his robe and knelt next to her in the shadows. Removing the stopper, he waved the bottle under her nose, then sat back and waited. A moment later, she began to stir. He smiled. She stretched against her bonds, but the chains that bound her held strong. Judging by what had happened at the camp, he had little faith that such a thing would contain her once she was fully awake. But in her current state, with the drugs still thick in her veins, she would have little energy left for a fight.

As she moaned softly and her eyelids fluttered, he quickly bent forward again, slipped his blade up against the ball of her right thumb, and let it bite down, holding the vial under her skin to catch the blood as it dripped.

He never would have expected what happened next. Leah opened her eyes, her gaze fixing vacantly on his face. The Dark One immediately felt the temperature in the room turn to ice, and at the same time he felt a sudden heat on his skin, like the sun beating down on him.

Something invisible yet immensely powerful exploded out of her. He felt as if an unseen hand punched him in the chest, lifted him into the air, and threw him against the wall. He tumbled to the floor in a heap as pain radiated throughout his body. Fear flooded his limbs, and he scrambled to his feet, fumbling in his robes for what remained of the drug he had used to keep her still.

As he moved toward her once again, he felt his master stir.

The girl is strong. Belial’s voice thundered in his head. His hunger for her was like a ravenous beast’s. The Dark One felt the demon’s need rush through him, propelling him back toward her like a slavering madman before he stopped himself with every last ounce of strength he had left. Her eyes had rolled back into her head, and her mouth was working soundlessly.

He sensed her power waiting for him, and he also sensed that if he tried to feed upon her as he fed upon the others, she would destroy him.

The thought filled him with fresh terror. Quickly he knelt and pierced the skin of her arm with the needle, then stepped back again as she began to rise up from the floor, her mouth opening as if to scream, before she sank back into silence and sleep.

The Dark One tried to calm his thudding heart. How had she reacted to him with such brute strength? The drug was barely containing her now. There had been two incidents in which his strength had been put to the test, with worrisome results.

He had to prepare the more elaborate ritual to tap into her power and focus it properly. A new blood ritual. He held up the small vial with a few drops of her precious life’s essence. He had to prepare further. The ancient Vizjerei magic, Bartuc’s legacy written in blood, would hold the key.

The Dark One felt Belial slowly contain his raging hunger. Even the true ruler of the Burning Hells understood what had to happen. The Dark One smiled. Once again, he felt in control. When he’d been just a boy in Kurast, he had been ordered around, ridiculed, and beaten mercilessly. After all, what was a simple servant boy compared to the great sorcerers of Sanctuary?

They had not known the truth: that he held the blood of legends in his veins, and that his destiny had been foretold centuries before.

The Dark One went to the window and looked out at the creatures below, more than three hundred of them now, and more coming. He felt them return his gaze, their calls of excitement rising up to him. He held out his arms and screamed into the frigid air, and the creatures responded in kind, their cries growing to a frenzy of mindless lust. He watched as several of them turned upon one of their own and tore it limb from limb, bathing in the demon’s blood. The cries rose up to him through the mist, echoing off the surface of the water and causing the crows to lift into the air in a deafening symphony of flapping wings. The wind washed over his face, and he closed his eyes.

The old man was on his way, along with the monk: he could feel it. He welcomed the challenge. This was what he had been waiting for, a clash of epic proportions, and revenge for his ancestor, who had sacrificed himself for the greater good and been condemned to entombment for all eternity with a demon. Jered Cain had been responsible for that, and his offspring would pay the price. Belial had already baited Deckard with the thought that his wife and young son had been tortured and killed by demons, their life’s essence dragged off into the Hells to suffer for all eternity; did it matter that this was a lie, that this could not have been possible? No. It did not matter how they died; the truth was irrelevant. The important thing, as Belial had taught him, was how you used the information and, in this case, Deckard Cain’s pain and suffering.

Let them come. His plans were almost complete. They were entering the month of Ratham, he held the lifespark of thousands within the tower, and the girl was here. The old man had no army; even if he made it this far, his life would end quickly. The Dark One almost felt disappointed at the thought. Deckard Cain still had a role to play in this game, even if it was short-lived.

When he opened his eyes, the creatures below were battering themselves against the base of the tower, trying to get in. Their ranks seemed to grow even as he watched. But this was nothing compared to the legions of faithful servants he was about to call back to life. Together they would spread out across the land, claiming Sanctuary for the coming of their lord, and to hell with anyone who stood in their way.

The Dark One turned from the window to begin his final preparations for the end of this world and the birth of his new kingdom.

31 A Plan Emerges

Cain stood under the trees on the edge of the clearing, leaning heavily on a crude piece of wood he had found for a walking stick. Every bone, every muscle in his old body ached terribly. He was falling apart like an old wagon, the sides cracking, wheels coming loose from their axles.

I am no warrior. The old man barely managed to sigh at the thought. He had never pretended to be one. Wasn’t his journey across the wilds of Sanctuary something for much younger, stronger men to do? How had he ever thought that he had a chance to defeat this terrible evil, with or without assistance?

The truth was, he had never thought such a thing. His hopes had been built around the promise of finding a surviving brotherhood of Horadrim, men stronger and more resourceful than he was, who would take up the battle for him.

Instead, he had found this.

Mikulov had gone to pray to the gods for answers, and Cain was alone. Across the clearing, the remaining members of the First Ones were gathering the few personal items that remained. The fire inside the cave had finally died down enough for them to enter, but most of what had been inside was so badly burned or damaged by smoke, it was useless. The men had piled the meager supply of weapons to one side, but Cain had a feeling they wouldn’t be needed; Garreth Rau had crushed the group beyond repair, and against his strength the remaining members of the order were like flies battering themselves against a lantern. Those who were left would be gone soon, returning to the shattered remains of their homes or simply disappearing into the hills, slinking away in the night like beaten animals from the slaughter.

When he thought of Leah, his panic returned with a vengeance—a galloping, savage terror that threatened to overwhelm him. He remembered her anger and fear when they had first left Caldeum, the night at the bridge when he had told her about her real mother; how she had run from him, into the hills; their escape from Lord Brand and the things beneath the graves; how she clung to him as they entered Kurast. Her distrust had slowly changed to something else as they went along. And he, in turn, had learned something from her: he was capable of caring about another human being far more than he cared about himself.

He hadn’t felt this way since the loss of his wife and child, so many years ago. Yet it had come far too late for his salvation.

She called me Uncle.

Cain wiped fresh tears from his eyes. He realized with a start that his objective had changed. He was no longer driven to save Sanctuary from the invasion he knew was coming; his purpose had become much more personal. There were thousands of ravenous creatures between him and the girl. There was no hope of reaching her. But he would go anyway, and he would die trying.

He watched as Farris argued over a blackened cook pot with Thomas, the two men growing red-faced and heated. This could not be where it all ended. He remembered the stories of the Horadrim his mother had told when he was a boy, and how he had questioned the truth of them, while a part of him had remained a believer in the nobility, the ethics and bravery of the order. Even then, he had wanted to believe in the legends. He had spent the last decade of his life dedicated to the order, immersing himself in the lore, trying to make up for lost time. He was an old man, but he was not helpless.

Something stubborn set itself inside of him, making him shake his head. It cannot end here, he thought again. He was not strong enough alone, but the men who remained could still fight. Who was to say they couldn’t rise to the occasion? They had fancied themselves Horadrim once. Why not now?

Wasn’t that his true talent, finding the strength within others?

Cain hobbled across the clearing. Someone had cut down Lund’s body, but the cross remained intact, the bloody rope still wound around the bar. He stopped underneath it, waiting. Eventually, the conversation died down, as the men began to notice him. He stood patiently.

It was Thomas who spoke first.

“Are you leaving us now?”

It could have sounded petulant and angry, but it did not. Cain pointed up at the cross. “An intimidation tactic,” he said. “As old as time itself. A show of strength, meant to break your will. But we cannot be broken. We are part of an ancient order formed to defeat the dark forces that plague us.”

“We are no Horadrim,” Farris said bitterly. “It’s better that we just leave. You said so yourself.”

“You may not be, in the way the mages of old would have described them. But have you studied the ancient texts of the schools of magic? Do you know the legends, understand the teachings of the order?”

Cain looked around the small group. “Have some of you performed magic in the spells you have found, even small magic?” Several of them nodded, while others looked away. “So have I. But this alone does not make you Horadrim.”

He hobbled over to Cullen and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. He had taken off his glasses, and his face had become softer, more expressive. He looked like a boy. “You are gentle,” Cain said, “yet you hide it deep inside yourself. Let your mercy and kindness come through.” He turned to Thomas, who kept his gaze cast toward the ground, and waited until the man looked up at him. “You, Thomas,” he said. “You’ve lost someone close to you, and your friendships run deep. You are loyal to the end, and your loss enrages you. This is a strength, not a weakness. Use it to your advantage.”

Cain looked at Farris. “You are a skeptic,” he said, “always questioning the truth of things. But deep inside, you have a burning desire to believe. I was once like you, Farris. Instead of embracing who I was, I hid from it until it was almost too late for me. You must let your faith come through and trust in others, and in what you know to be true. The ability to become more than who we are lies within all of us, but we must seek it out and strive to be better than we ever thought we could be.”

Others in the small group were nodding now, glancing around at each other. Cain recognized two of them as former members of Egil’s inner circle, but one man had formerly been aligned with Farris.

“But what hope do we have?” one of them said, a man named Jordan who had cuts to his face from the attack. “We are a dozen men, and some of us are wounded. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of those demons out there. And our former master is a powerful mage. What can we possibly do against such a force?”

“You have me.”

The voice came seemingly out of nowhere. Cain turned to find Mikulov standing behind the group, at the foot of where the ground rose up to meet the cliffs. The monk had his muscled arms folded across his chest, and he stared at the small group with a fire and energy that seemed to lift him up and make him appear larger than before.

Mikulov’s eyes flashed. He was only one man, but he looked able to take on an entire army. He reached out his hand, and Cain clasped it.

“You have found your gods once again,” Cain said. “They have given you strength.”

Mikulov nodded. “With them on our side, we will not fail.”

Cain hesitated. The voice of his long-dead wife and son, channeled through Egil, came back to him, and he felt as if his heart might break. He knew that it was far too late for them. But Leah had become a physical representation of all he had lost. She was still alive; he could feel it in his bones. He could not lose her, too. It seemed as if his entire life had come down to this single moment in time: all that he had been, and all that he had wanted to be, coming together to point him in a direction he was destined to go.

“The Dark One will have a force like nothing we have seen before,” he said, looking at the men around him. “I have learned enough from the texts to suspect an army of the risen dead, entombed beneath Gea Kul, in the remains of what was once a city called Al Cut. There will be other foes as well, human and demonic. But we are not helpless. Whether you are Horadrim does not matter; whether we are willing to face our fears, and refuse to let them win, is what matters now. We must use our wits and our own particular strengths to fight through hell and pierce the enemy’s heart.”

Cain described the plan taking shape even now within him, a way to use the tunnels of Gea Kul and turn the small size of their group into an advantage. He could only hope that the others would not see how thin the plan was, how fragile. He noticed more of them nodding as he went on, warming to what he was saying. There was hope yet, and he meant to use every bit of it.

Finally Cain knelt in the dust, slinging his rucksack down before him, feeling the men’s eyes upon him. What they needed now was a symbol, something that would inspire them to embrace their fear and use it. He withdrew the pieces of his shattered staff that he had collected after the encounter with the possessed Egil in the Horadric chambers, laying them out in the dirt. His aches and pains had faded to a distant throbbing now, as his pulse began to speed up. He took out the jewel he had pried from the portal, then removed the Horadric cube and slid the items into it, one at a time, the pieces of the staff disappearing with a low thrumming of energy into a space that should have been far too small to contain them.

But the space inside the artifact was infinitely larger than it appeared. The inner workings of the cube were a mystery long lost to time. It could transmute certain objects into others far more valuable, combining magical traits in a way that led to a more powerful whole. This staff, and the portal jewel, would be transformed.

He had not used one in a long time. But he felt the familiar thrill as the cube did its work.

There was a buzzing crackle and what felt like a surge in the air, as the hair on Cain’s arms raised up. Then he reached in and removed the new object. It was taller than the old staff, the wood whole and strong. Intricate designs had been carved like flames along the wood’s surface. Blue fire licked over the shaft, then faded. Cain could feel the energy held within it.

Cain got to his feet, waving off Mikulov’s offer to help. He set the bottom of the staff in the dirt, leaned upon it, and stared out at the men, who looked back in astonishment. The staff was his talisman, a source of power that would lead them all like a beacon through the blackest night. But they would need far more than that to prevail.

“True Horadrim,” Thomas whispered. He had dropped to his knees in the dirt, his eyes sparkling with tears. “You are the one from the prophecies, just as Egil said.”

Cain went to him, and put his hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “Get up,” he said. “I am no hero. You are. I am nobody to kneel in front of, certainly, and I am old, but you are not. Be strong. We are not alone in this fight, and we have a few tricks left.”

The others followed him as he climbed the slope. It took him a long time, with his old bones protesting again and his muscles cramping as he went. But he would not hold onto Mikulov or anyone else. This was something he needed to do on his own.

While they went, he asked the First Ones to describe exactly what had happened when Leah had been hit by the dart. The plan was progressing in his mind into something stronger. Finally he reached the top, and the skeletal trees ended on the edge of the cliff. Deckard Cain hobbled to the edge and looked out over the valley, through the mist toward the sea. He could just make out Gea Kul gathered there, the hunched back of a sea serpent with the Black Tower rising up like the head of the beast.

They needed more allies. He had no real reason to trust Jeronnan other than blind faith. But something told him the old sea captain would come through.

The others remained behind him as he removed the horn and raised it to his lips.

The sound rose up like a low moan of a mortally wounded beast and grew into a wail of the damned. It echoed over the tops of the dead trees, amplified through the mist, reaching out across the valley. Cain slammed his staff down on the rock, and a crackle of energy and power rippled outward with a flash of light. A moment later the distant screams of others came from somewhere beyond the trees, as if in answer. Friend or foe, he could not tell.

Cain turned to the others as the sounds echoed and died away. “I need you to find a type of root that grows near here,” he said. “And bring me your shovels and pickaxes. We have some more digging to do.” He took out the folded parchment that contained the map of the tunnels under Gea Kul.

“This is our way in. And then we go to war. But not in the way you think.”

32 The Tunnels

As he had promised, the old sea captain came searching for the source of the horn’s blast. Cain met Jeronnan on the edge of the jungle and explained what he needed to do. The only way for them to have a chance of victory was through trickery and deceit, and Jeronnan would provide a distraction. The captain eagerly agreed, ready to fight for his beloved town.

They studied the map of tunnels that led directly underneath the Black Tower. Cain took careful notes of strategic locations to place his charges, while the others dug for the root he needed and the right minerals to fill his sacks. The plan fell into shape. A spell of concealment would hide them long enough to get underground and away from prying eyes. From there, while Jeronnan led a march on the tower aboveground with the few remaining citizens who were not under the sway of the feeders, their party would slip in secret beneath the streets and infiltrate it from below.

If Cain was right, they had until the sun rose before Ratham would begin.

Thomas knew the upper tunnels even better than Egil had, and he wasted little time getting them to the right entrance. He led the small group under the cover of darkness through knee-high dead grasses to a separate sewer grate away from the town’s main gate, well hidden by a mound of refuse and mud. They pulled the grate aside, entered the narrow hole, and climbed down an iron ladder to the stone floor, where Thomas lit his lantern, bathing the passage with yellow light.

The tunnels were dark and empty, dripping with moisture. They smelled like moldy graves. Cain prayed they would not become his tomb.

The remaining First Ones had pitchforks, swords and bows, kitchen knives and hammers. It was a sad army of perhaps twenty-five people, several of them wounded. Mikulov was at the lead with Thomas and the lantern, while Cain brought up the rear with Cullen. Farris remained aloof, but he had agreed to come, and his small, loyal group had joined him. Cain was not quite sure whether he could be trusted. But there was little choice now.

They shuffled forward until the last of the glow from the entrance had faded away. Then they paused, huddled close together, as if trying to remain bathed in the light. The lantern’s glow penetrated the darkness only a few feet.

The sound of scratching came from somewhere down in the tunnel. Thomas held the lantern up. They saw nothing at first, and then, just beyond the circle where the light penetrated, something moved. A ghostly moan drifted up to them, followed by a thud and a bone-shivering crash.

“Cover the light!” someone hissed, and Thomas threw his cloak over the lantern, plunging the tunnel into darkness. Another thud shook the walls, dirt and small pebbles trickling down to the floor.

The thuds came again, closer this time. “Footsteps,” whispered Cullen in the dark, his voice full of fear.

A foul stench overwhelmed them. Thomas uncovered the lantern again and held it up.

An unburied stood about thirty feet away, its massive girth nearly filling the tunnel. The smell of rotting flesh washed over them once again as the thing fixed multiple sets of filmy eyes on them and roared, charging down the tunnel as if it meant to crush them under its bulk.

The men erupted in panic. Thomas turned to run, and the lantern nearly went out in the ensuing bedlam. Mikulov darted forward, and suddenly there was a flash of bright light, and the unburied roared again as the sound of fists striking flesh followed another bone-shaking crash. Cain shouted at the men to wait, holding out his arms in the tunnel as they came toward him.

Thomas stopped, his face as white as parchment, before he set himself and turned back.

The creature slumped sideways against the tunnel wall. One gigantic limb had been torn from its body, and oozing gashes gaped like new mouths in its torso. Mikulov’s movements were a blur as he attacked again, slicing at the thing’s meaty neck with his blade. The unburied roared in pain or anger and tried to turn, lashing out with the spikes of its good arm, but it was slow and clumsy in the confined space, and the blow crashed into the stone wall as Mikulov moved lightly on his feet, dancing out of range before darting in again and pummeling the soft flesh with his fists and blade.

The monk cried out as he struck, and a wave of power exploded from his palm, causing the creature to fall back as its many fanged mouths opened and closed, hissing and dripping dark fluids.

With a small cry of his own, Cullen ran forward, raising his pitchfork and thrusting it straight into the monster’s side. Another man released an arrow from his bow, which sank deep into the unburied’s back.

As it lumbered around again to face the rest of them, Mikulov swung his blade, slicing deep through the monster’s neck with one mighty blow.

Foul dark fluid spouted from the wound. The creature’s head tilted to one side, exposing a stump of rotten, writhing meat. Its swollen, putrid body trembled, Cullen’s pitchfork quivering like a tuning fork.

Mikulov stepped forward with his palm thrust out and struck once again with blinding speed, unleashing a wave of pure energy directed straight into the unburied’s chest.

The creature exploded.

Bits of dead flesh flew in all directions, covering the closest men with gore. Chunks of rock rebounded off the tunnel walls and rolled to a stop at Cain’s feet. Part of an arm came to rest next to the rock, twitched once, and was still.

The lantern flame guttered with the blast but did not go out. Thomas held it up again, revealing a scene of such carnage it was almost impossible to believe. Pieces of flesh still wriggled like the legs of a dead insect. One of the disembodied heads opened its fanged mouth, white-filmed eyes rolling blindly in a suppurating skull, before Farris crushed it under his boot with a sickening, wet crunch.

The tunnel was silent for a long moment. “We . . . killed it,” Thomas said wonderingly.

“Can you kill something that’s already dead?” Cullen said, grinning like a madman and wiping gore from his glasses.

They all looked at each other. Several of the men shouted and clapped one another on the back. But Cain could not share in their celebration. They had little time to waste. He imagined Leah chained in a dark room, with Garreth Rau preparing the demonic ritual that might cost Leah her life.

After he had received the letter about his wife and son, Cain had gone to visit the place where the accident had happened. The stretch of road on the way to Caldeum was unremarkable—a place where the road narrowed with thick trees on either side, providing cover for whoever had surprised them, perhaps. But a road like any other. He had never actually seen the overturned wagon; that had been long gone by the time he arrived. But he had imagined it lying there on its side in the weeds, one wheel still spinning lazily in the hot sun while Amelia and Jered were dragged away into oblivion. He hadn’t been able to help feeling as if the entire world had changed in that moment, and from then on the sound of a wagon’s wheels on cobblestones had always left him cold and empty.

Thomas led them on, through one tunnel and down another branch until he reached a point where he said none of the First Ones had ever been. He consulted the map, finding his way deeper, into more unfamiliar spaces and toward the center of the vast and complex tunnel system.

The air grew colder as they descended. Thick green moss grew everywhere, and at one point they had to wade through knee-deep brackish water that felt like ice on Cain’s skin. Shortly after, they heard the soft patter of tiny feet. Dozens of rats rushed toward them in a panic, running under the men’s legs.

There was something else up ahead. Something moving in the dark. The lantern revealed a familiar ghostlike creature, low to the ground and moving on all fours. The creature’s face was contorted into a snarl, its bald head shiny in the lantern light, eyeless sockets glaring blindly out at nothing. It hissed at them.

“A feeder,” Cain breathed softly. “We must kill it, quickly now, or it will tell others, and we will be overrun with them.”

The men drew back in shock as the feeder turned and climbed up the wall, its claw-like hands gripping the stone, then turned to them once again, hanging upside down like a bat, before crawling away and disappearing into the darkness.

Mikulov took the lantern. “Wait here,” he said, and raced off down the tunnel. The rest of the men were plunged into darkness so thick and absolute, they couldn’t see their own hands in front of their faces. Cain cautioned them to be quiet and still, and spoke the words of power until the jewel in the head of his transformed staff began to glow, and light bathed the faces of the men around him, as if they had been touched by flame.

A crackling flash came from somewhere in the distance, along with an inhuman screech of pain. Cain led the party forward. They found the lantern on the floor, and Mikulov standing over the mangled bodies of three feeders. “There were others,” he said. “They got away.”

Cain’s blood ran cold. They were surely scouts for Rau, and any left alive would scurry back to him and report their position, if they didn’t simply lie in wait and ambush the First Ones at some upcoming bend in the tunnel.

“We must be careful,” he said. Thomas regained the lantern, and Cain took up the rear. He expected to encounter a horde of ghouls around every corner, but the tunnels were empty. He did not know whether to be relieved or concerned.

They went deeper still. He felt something as they got closer to the center of the wheel of tunnels—an almost undetectable thrumming from the ground beneath their feet.

Then, far beneath the surface, the ceilings of the tunnels finally opened up to a cavernous space so vast it defied the imagination. They stood upon the edge of a silent, black hole, the light from Thomas’s lantern swallowed up by the shadows, the dust of generations thick upon every surface and the smell of closed tombs in the air.

They had found it, at last: the lost city of Al Cut.

33 Al Cut

Thomas led them through an empty, shattered street. Al Cut had been impressive once, a showplace of ancient Sanctuary. The streets were wide and paved, the buildings mostly made of stone and brick. They stared in wonder at the structures lined up and silent as graves: long-abandoned homes of the people who had lived here centuries before. The damage caused by the mage battle was still apparent, as scorched rubble lay across scattered and broken walkways, and many houses leaned drunkenly, their foundations weakened by whatever magical forces had struck them.

The scope of the lost city was staggering. The strangeness of discovering it down here, so far belowground, made it almost impossible to process; the ghosts of its past inhabitants seemed to float at the edges of Cain’s vision, disappearing when he turned to look.

“I have seen this place,” Mikulov said. “I have been here in my dreams. It is a city of the dead, burdened with the weight of thousands of lost souls.”

Nobody else dared to speak. The sense of some unnatural power gathering under their feet had increased, and the need to hurry along with it. The dust lay everywhere, but more chilling were the footprints that led through it. Some of them appeared human, but many others did not.

“Dawn is coming,” Cain said. “We must not waste any more time.” He sensed movement from an alcove on the right, but when he turned to look, the space was empty save for a huge spider on a web. The creature, the size of his fist, sat defiantly, staring back at them with multifaceted eyes, hairy legs twitching.

They continued through the street, skirting a place where a wall had collapsed, wandering through more deserted buildings. They remained silent, as if to speak here would disturb the dead. The size of the space swallowed the lantern beams; the city went on and on, the cavern’s ceiling stretching so far above their heads it disappeared like a starless sky. They passed several crumbling Vizjerei libraries and a monument to some ancient, long-forgotten leader or war hero.

It seemed to go on forever. But where were the bodies? The legend had told of the remains of Vizjerei mage warriors left to rot where they fell. Had they simply been carried away by scavengers, or was something more sinister at work?

Finally the ground began to rise gently, and the small party passed through the far edges of Al Cut. Cain saw the ceiling of the cavern come back into view, arching downward to meet the far wall, where a new tunnel loomed, its entrance as black as pitch.

Water sluiced down the center of the floor, through a groove in the stones, and out from the tunnel’s entrance. Cain could smell the brine.

This was the spot he had been waiting to find.

They entered the tunnel. “We’re close,” Thomas whispered, as they moved along. “By my calculations, we should be beyond Gea Kul now.” The mood among the men had grown tense; Cain’s plan had worked flawlessly so far, but once they had broken cover, they would no longer have the luxury of surprise.

Cain consulted the map before directing the others to place the packages they had carried with them into strategic locations along the tunnel. The group made slow progress, continuing forward. The sea was just beyond them, separated by a layer of rock. If he could only—

Deckard Cain.

Cain whirled around, searching the dark, his skin prickling. The voice had sounded close by his ear, yet he saw nothing dancing through the shadows, no demon face, no ghostly apparition. The other men acted as if they had heard nothing.

A familiar moment from the distant past returned to him: standing in his room as a boy after a fight with his mother, the smell of burned pages still thick in his nostrils, staring out at the dark as something whispered his name.

Come find us, and learn the truth about this world. Your destiny awaits, as does mine. We are linked, you and I, through history and legend. We are more alike than you care to believe. I am a scholar, as you are. I am descended from those you would call heroes. But they were blind, as you have been. You can change that.

Cain gritted his teeth. He dared not respond. The others would surely panic, if they knew they had been discovered. The Dark One was powerful indeed, to find Cain down here, but there was a chance he did not know their true location and was only sending out his thoughts into the void, hoping to engage his enemy.

Still, Cain could not help wondering. Were they truly alike? Were their paths intertwined, forever bound, and did he have a choice in all of this? He had to believe that he did. Humans were born of angels and demons, and the battleground between Heaven and Hell lay within their own souls. The desire to act with selflessness, charity, and love was in a constant battle with greed, anger, and jealousy. Sanctuary existed within mankind itself, and as such, humans held a special power that could be harnessed for either great good or great evil.

Your sea captain is dead. The little girl is dead. The gates have already been opened. There is no use resisting any longer.

Join me in welcoming our true master to Sanctuary.

Cain’s heart raced. It could not be true. He would not believe it. He must not listen to the lies—

“We are here,” Thomas whispered. “If I am right, we are under the tower itself, or close to it.”

Cain came back to himself with a jerk. The men were standing at the foot of another ladder, its rusty rungs moist and covered with slime. Far above them, faint gray light trickled down, along with a steady rain.

He realized he had broken out in a cold sweat, and his breaths were coming fast and shallow. The demon lies. You must not listen. If Leah were dead, he would feel it; he had to believe that. Rau was toying with him, trying to bring him out where he could be slaughtered.

Yet another voice nagged at him, a darker voice. In spite of his better judgment, he had used the book of demonic magic. He had opened the door to his own soul, just as Garreth Rau had done.

Had he let something terrible in?

They were close now. The Dark One could feel them. Deckard Cain was coming, along with his pathetic little army of castoffs and misfits, those First Ones he had not seen fit to use himself.

All except for one. The easiest to possess.

The Dark One watched through another’s eyes as the men began to climb the ladder, rising up out of the depths of the tunnels one by one. Climbing right into his web. The iron rungs were slick and corroded from the ocean air. Carefully now, he thought. Don’t slip. We wouldn’t want an accident to happen, not when you’re so close.

It was sad, really, that Deckard Cain had come so far, through deserts and mountains, over so many miles, only to be lured into a trap like any other useless human. For the mortals of Sanctuary were indeed useless; they were cruel, vicious, a plague upon the world, and the coming of the Burning Hells would wash all of them away like a cleansing fire, leaving mindless husks in their wake.

The Dark One would rule over what was left, as he had been born to do.

Rau opened the ancient book, his fingers trembling. It was time.

As he began the ritual, he could feel Belial waiting like a trembling, multi-limbed god, ready to burst forth in all his glory. The Dark One sensed a power so immense it was like looking into the sun. The demon’s thought tendrils were already weaving themselves around his mind, becoming one with his own, caressing him, cradling him with promises of the riches that awaited his chosen ones, after the coming storm.

The Dark One could feel the pulse of his demon horde outside. They had made short work of the sea captain and his pathetic group of allies; there had been perhaps thirty of them fighting through the streets with makeshift weapons, the last remaining citizens of Gea Kul who had resisted the feeders’ hypnotic pull before. But they were easy prey for the huge flock that had gathered in service to their dark lord. The captain had been the last to fall, a man who might once have made a forbidding adversary, but who was now old and frail. The Dark One had watched through others’ eyes as the old man had disappeared under a wave of feeders, his last image a hand thrust up through the writhing, bloody shapes, clutching at the air as if waiting for a salvation that would never arrive.

War had come to Sanctuary, but the battle was one-sided. This was only a small taste of what was destined to happen. Soon the final spark would be lit; then, the true army would rise. A legion of undead sorcerers, commanded by me. There were cities to conquer, entire territories to overcome. The possibilities made the Dark One shiver with anticipation.

Belial’s mental tentacles squeezed his mind, bringing him sharply back to himself. The Dark One returned to the book he had been reading. He took a bag of powder from his robe and drew a symbol around the girl, who was still drugged and lying motionless in the center of the room. Even in the depths of her stupor, he could feel her breathtaking, raw power—her mother’s gift, passed down and magnified. She would be sacrificed for the end of the world, her essence the final spark to light the fuse below his feet. What better way to serve your lord and master?

The Dark One muttered the spell he had practiced so many times, his voice low and rhythmic. The activity of the creatures gathered outside grew more frenzied. He had to time this perfectly; as the energy began to build around him and he felt a wind come up within the smooth walls, he felt he had finally reached the pinnacle of his craft. The feeders screeched their love for him, swooping and darting around the tower. He was commanding the armies of the Burning Hells, bending them to his will, just as Bartuc had so many years before.

The floor had been designed with grooves to catch the girl’s lifespark and channel it; it would rush down through the center of the Black Tower and soak into the waiting space below, joining the energy of countless others.

The Dark One bent to his work.

34 The Courtyard

The men climbed the slippery rungs of the ladder, one at a time. Mikulov looked at the feet of the one in front of him, Farris, who had insisted on going first. The monk’s heart, normally slow and calm even in the midst of battle, had sped up, and a cold sweat had broken out across his skin. The moment he had trained for his entire life was coming, and he was afraid that when he came face to face with the void, he would hesitate, just long enough for it to matter.

You are not ready. The voices of his masters returned to him, as if in a dream, their accusation sharp and judgmental. They sat in their chamber upon the council seats in ceremonial robes, their long, white beards and smooth heads nearly identical. You must remain here for more training, until you overcome your pride and impulsiveness. If you do not, you will make a terrible mistake.

Yet Mikulov had left, vanishing like a thief in the night, while the others slept. Now his day of reckoning was here, and he was as frightened as a small boy.

Perhaps my masters were right, after all. Perhaps I have been a fool.

Mikulov had meditated back at the First Ones’ camp and had found the gods once again. He had regained the strength and confidence that had propelled him through this long journey. Yet, as the sounds of a demonic army grew louder just above them, that strength seemed to bleed away once again, leaving him alone.

Farris had reached the top. Water dripped steadily down upon them all, wetting their clothes. The light that bled through the grate was a sickly gray. “I can’t move it,” Farris whispered down, after heaving at the iron with his shoulder. “It’s too heavy—”

Something yanked the grate up and away, nearly causing Farris to fall backward. A monstrous clawed hand reached down from above and grabbed him around the neck, pulling him through the opening and out of sight.

One of the First Ones shouted a warning from below. Mikulov looked down and saw hideous creatures at the foot of the ladder, forcing their way up just below the rest of the traveling party.

A trap. He scrambled up the last rungs, his fear suddenly forgotten in the rush of energy that washed over him, and thrust himself out, going into a roll and regaining his feet in a smooth, powerful burst, his weapon up and ready.

He had emerged onto a huge, stone courtyard. A cold, stinking rain pattered down from leaden skies.

The courtyard was seething with creatures from the depths of Hell itself.

A group of skinless, muscled beasts approached from the left, slinking on all fours, their doglike, snarling faces dripping acidic fluid. Mikulov spotted several female demons with their swords extended, sensual curves carelessly exposed between blue-veined patches of flesh. There were huge beetle monsters and a swarm of airborne insects with six-inch stingers, and beyond their ranks, hundreds or perhaps thousands of the feeders, advancing upon all fours with their moonlike faces turned skyward.

Farris had been pulled out of the tunnel by a red-skinned overseer, a leader of the dog-beasts—the horned, heavily muscled fallen ones, their eyes glowing with demon fire. The overseer threw its head back and howled at the sky, beating its bloated chest with clawed fingers, and snapping a long barbed whip over the backs of its minions. Mikulov expected to see Farris ripped limb from limb, but the creatures parted as he walked forward, smiling.

“Welcome to hell,” Farris said, spreading his arms wide. Behind him, the demon horde screeched with excitement, the sound nearly deafening.

Thomas had cleared the hole and was standing next to it, blinking into the gray light, a stunned look on his face. “You?” he said. “No. Not you, Farris.”

The man was grinning. His pupils were dilated and fixed, his face slightly flushed. “He is under the control of another,” Mikulov said quietly. “Possessed, like Egil in the meeting room.”

Farris turned his hypnotic gaze on Mikulov. “You thought I was going to just sit by and wait to die, with all of you? It was my choice to join the Dark One.”

“The Dark One?” Thomas said. “Garreth Rau?”

Farris nodded. “It was their choice, as well.” He pointed to the hole, as three others climbed out. Farris’s crew. They quickly took up positions around the tunnel opening as Cullen, then several more First Ones, and finally Cain emerged, laboring more slowly from the climb. Farris’s men were surrounding him, closing in. Cullen looked around in confusion, but Cain seemed to realize immediately what had happened.

Betrayal. Mikulov hesitated only a moment, and in that single flash, everything that he had done in his short life, everything he had learned on this journey came together in a moment of singular clarity. His impossible choice to leave the monastery had been the right one. The gods spoke to him all at once as lightning split the sky and thunder crashed; the sea whispered and wind blew, relaying their message of faith and strength.

The thousand and one gods had guided him with a steady hand. His sacrifice was for the greater good, and he would make it willingly, knowing that at the last moment he would once again become one with all things.

You are not ready . . . until you overcome your pride and impulsiveness. If you do not, you will make a terrible mistake.

Mikulov glanced at Cain. The old man’s eyes widened, and he shook his head, reaching out a hand and starting to speak, but Mikulov was already gone.

Deckard Cain watched helplessly as the monk gave him a slight smile and a nod, then turned to the demonic army looming all around them. He knew what Mikulov meant to do, glimpsed it in the determined set of his face, and felt it in his bones.

They were surrounded, outplayed and outmatched once again. Farris had given them away. I should have seen this, Cain thought. I should have stopped it when I had the chance. His love and his fear for Leah had blinded him to the truth.

Mikulov screamed, a low, guttural sound of triumph as he launched himself headlong into the snarling mass of demonic flesh. The monk’s fists and feet lashed out with breathtaking speed, his blade flashing as he slashed and hacked at the enemy, drawing them away from Cain and the First Ones. The demons responded en masse, their bloodlust raised to deafening levels as they attacked, but Mikulov held his own, whirling in a blur of energy as a wave of blue light crackled out like ripples in a pond and felled dozens more, pushing the rest back.

He was opening a path that led toward the Black Tower, in the process almost certainly sentencing himself to death.

Cain glanced down at the hole from which they had emerged. Feeders and other beasts were swarming up the ladder, their features contorted into terrifying snarls. He turned to Farris. “This is not the way,” he said. “You are making a terrible mistake.”

“I don’t think so,” Farris said. He motioned to Cain, Thomas, and the half dozen other First Ones who stood clustered together. “Secure them,” he said to his men.

The three men hesitated, looking uncertain. “You cannot trust a demon,” Cain said to them. “Whatever you have been promised, it is a lie. Remember what I said around the campfire. The Dark One and Belial will tear you apart once you have done what they want.”

“Farris,” one of them said, glancing at the beasts all around them, several of which had started to advance once again on their position. “I don’t think—”

“Enough!” Farris shouted, his face flushing red. “Take them now!”

The men hesitated again, giving Cain the chance he needed. He took the last bag of Egil’s powder from his sack and threw it at the tunnel opening.

The powder exploded in a blinding flash just as the first feeder stuck its head out of the hole; it fell back, screeching and on fire, taking several others with it as it careened back down the ladder. At the same time, Thomas lashed out with the side of his shovel, catching Farris in the temple. The man dropped without a sound.

The other three were now badly outnumbered. They put their hands up, shaking their heads as Cullen leveled his pitchfork at them.

“Hurry,” Cain said. Mikulov’s path was littered with the torn and broken bodies of dead creatures, but it was closing again quickly. They had only moments to spare.

The remaining men rushed through the opening, toward the Black Tower.

Mikulov was on fire. The gods’ power flowed through him, encased his limbs, and gave him the strength to fight through a sea of vicious, snapping demons. Elemental energy crackled and flashed with each blow. He moved too quickly for the human eye to process, hitting monsters from everywhere at once, slashing at them with his holy blade. Dozens fell, gushing black blood, arms and legs severed and twitching, heads rolling across the slippery stone.

But for each creature that fell, ten more took its place. In spite of himself, Mikulov began to tire.

As he decapitated a howling, red-faced overseer and its head toppled from its muscled shoulders, a scavenger’s claws raked his back, drawing blood. He turned and sliced off its arm, sending the monster howling and stumbling away, spouting gore across the backs of the fallen ones that had crept up from behind. Three of them rose up, snarling, before he whirled and sent a crackling burst of focused energy directly at them, turning their faces into black, smoking ruins.

As they fell back, shuddering, a flying insect darted in and sank its stinger into Mikulov’s shoulder. White-hot pain raced through his arm and across his chest, causing him to gasp and stagger. His heart stuttered; there was poison in the stinger. He sliced the insect in two with his blade, then crushed what was left beneath his feet.

Two more flew at him, and he used one arm to slash them both in two, his other arm hanging useless at his side. An unburied lumbered through the midst of the fallen imps, roaring with its multiple heads and raising its arms like rock-studded anvils ready to crush anything in its path. Mikulov ducked under its killing blow and delivered a series of lethal slashes to the creature’s back and legs, bringing it toppling to its knees. But as he moved to cut off its stinking, dead skull, it swung wildly backward with one arm and caught him in the side.

The blow was like a wagon colliding with a tree. It lifted Mikulov in the air and sent him sprawling. The monk’s skin, thickened through years of training and physical punishment, was tough enough to withstand almost anything, but his bones beneath were not. He felt a rib snap as he landed upon the backs of more scavengers, their sharp fangs nipping at him as they flung him to the ground.

Mikulov lashed out at them, making the creatures scatter, then lay on his back, gasping for air. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath, not anymore. The stinger’s poison continued to work its way deeper; he felt it racing through his veins, each pump of his heart pushing it along. He looked up into the sky as rain fell on his face, burning his parched throat with a sour, metallic taste. Even the rain was tainted here.

The small space around him was closing quickly, feeders advancing on all sides. There was a moment of calm when the gods all became silent within his head and everything slowed down to a crawl. Time ceased to matter. He was a small boy, running through the mountains, ducking under the cool shade of trees, and splashing across brooks filled with trout. Something was chasing him: a man, playing a game of tag. But the man changed as Mikulov ran, and Mikulov changed too, growing taller, stronger, his body thickening with the weight of years, and the thing chasing him wasn’t a man at all, but a beast with a black hood and the wings of a crow.

Mikulov closed his eyes against the advancing demon army, shutting out the brutal, ravaged faces. He called to the gods and drew their energy from the air around him. He held it deep within himself, as if taking a huge, deep breath; a warmth began in his chest, soothing at first, and then it grew into the heat of a raging fire. Still he held on, feeling the power filling him up, spreading through his limbs as the gods accepted his gift and returned it to him tenfold.

The monk opened his eyes, the fire alive and writhing like a dragon within his chest. The creatures were upon him now.

He smiled, and let it all go.

Deckard Cain was halfway to the Black Tower when the world exploded.

It began with a soft pop, and then a ripple of blue fire burst outward from where Mikulov had fallen, a wave of light. The pop was followed by a thump that Cain felt deep within his core as the ring of fire expanded, taking down everything in its path. A whisper of heat washed over him, and then the shock wave hit, knocking him off his feet and taking the breath from his lungs.

Cain drifted for a moment, as if a wall of water had collapsed over him and sent him tumbling through the deep, before he came back to himself. His head ringing, he sat up as the wave passed, looking around in shock and horror. A cold shiver ran down his spine, a sense of doom overwhelming him. Nobody could have survived such a blast.

But he had already known that would happen, hadn’t he? He had known it as soon as the monk had met his gaze, back at the tunnel hole. Cain had seen it in his eyes, a quiet, steady purpose, as if he had met his fate already and come to terms with it, and the rest was simply a matter of time.

Most of the creatures standing within one hundred yards of the explosion had simply vanished, turned to ash; those farther away were either dead or mortally wounded. But at the edges of the blast zone, others were regaining their feet. An overseer threw back his head and roared into the leaden sky, and his minions howled in return.

Mikulov had given Cain’s party an opening, but he had not stopped all of the demons. A new resolve gripped Cain, an almost frantic determination, a need to hurtle himself forward. He pointed at the Black Tower and shouted at the remaining First Ones to hurry. Then he stood and stepped over the scattered bodies as quickly as he dared.

His staff seemed to hum under his fingers as he went, the ruby top glowing softly. He had recited no spell, called nothing into life. Yet it had been activated in some way, like a lightning rod in a storm. In fact, the air around him had begun to vibrate.

He had no time to puzzle over that. The noise of the demon horde had begun to grow once again. He glanced to his right and left, and saw feeders coming fast on all sides like giant white crabs, moving forward in packs. They would be upon him in seconds.

As one leaped at him, a whistling arrow caught it in the side of the neck, and it went down without a sound. Cain glanced back to see Thomas with another arrow notched and ready, Cullen at his side with his pitchfork.

“Go!” Thomas shouted, waving at him. “We’ll hold them off!” Then he turned and shot at another feeder as it rushed at him, taking it down with the thwack of an arrow through the chest.

Cain turned toward the Black Tower, running the final few feet to the open archway at its base and disappearing inside.

The archway led to an inner wall and a huge wooden door with the symbol of the Horadrim engraved in it. But the symbol had been altered. Demonic runes had been added that foretold the end of the world: the fall of humanity and the age of demons, a foul corruption of the sign of goodness and light, and a clear warning to all who entered.

The door swung open with a low whine, revealing a dark and empty hall. He ducked through and shut the door against the raging creatures outside.

Whatever happened now, he was alone. His friends were sacrificing their lives to give him precious time. They had turned out to be true heroes, after all. The urge to rush forward came over him again. All his life, he had stood on the sidelines as others fought, choosing to remain in the background. At first his excuses had to do with his scholarly pursuits and, later, his advancing age, but all had had the same result. He was a coward at heart, was he not?

This was the time to act. Yet an inner voice began to question all of that once again, seeds of doubt creeping back in. He was an old man, and not prepared for a fight like this. He had never wielded a sword. What would he do, once he reached the enemy? What kind of skills did he possess to face such a horror?

Leah. He was the little girl’s only hope. And that, more than anything else, was what finally got him moving again.

The staff’s light illuminated a set of stairs. The stairs were circular and ran around the edges of a dizzying open shaft that reached up far beyond the edges of his light, with a column of stone at its center. From somewhere above, he could see a faint gray glow.

His heart pounding in his throat, Cain began the climb. The stairs went up forever, and his breath began to labor, his chest burning, knees protesting, the familiar ache in his back unbearable. He felt his mind enter an entirely new state, as if he were hovering just outside himself and watching the progress, and it seemed his entire life was playing itself out once again through this final act: his mother, watching from beyond the edges of the fire, her eyes filled with sorrow mixed with hope; his days as a young schoolteacher in Tristram, more absorbed by scholarly texts than anything the children did; his wife and child walking hand in hand into the distance, leaving him forever; and finally, alone with his books at the End of Days, old and broken, waiting to rejoin his family in a place of peace and hope, a place beyond all imagining.

Beyond the tower walls, the demons had fallen strangely silent. Cain heard the call of a single crow, echoing across the courtyard like a harbinger of doom. He pictured the remains of the First Ones, gutted and hung from their feet from the archway, blood pooling on the stone. The image was so strong, he almost believed he was having some kind of vision, and his stomach churned from the truth of it. He must not stop, must not let the horrors that had already happened distract him from his goal. Above him was Leah, and somewhere close was the Dark One, waiting for him.

He only prayed he was not too late.

35 The Ritual Chamber

Leah swam upward through ocean water, the color as black as night. Somewhere far above her head was a hint of blue, and she struggled toward it, her lungs aching, her eyes growing blurry and sightless as she pushed against the void.

At some point the hint of blue changed; it became something else, a black hole, the pupil of a giant unblinking eye. It was the crow from the streets of Caldeum, pecking at ruined flesh and pulling it taut, cocking its head at her as the muscle snapped.

Silly little girl, the crow said. You think you have free will. What you do has no consequence here. I own you.

At that, the voice changed, and the eye melted into the beggar, shouting about the End of Days, his voice ragged and cackling. The sky will turn black, the streets fill with blood! You are doomed. The Dark One is powerful, I tell you. He will raise a demon army! The dead will walk among us!

The beggar melted into Gillian. She stood over Leah with a knife in her hand. The dead are restless, Gillian said. The demons, ready for blood. They want it, Leah. They bathe in it.

And that changed into the image of her real mother, but her face was shrouded in shadow, and she stood silent and motionless. No matter what Leah did—begging and pleading, screaming, crying—her mother did not move, did not react, only stood in the darkness like a statue.

When she opened her eyes, she did not realize at first that she had left the dream. Her surroundings were dark and silent, and the black pupil that had watched her was still there. But as she regained her bearings, Leah realized that what she was seeing was the hooded face of a man, standing before her.

She had no idea how she had gotten here, who the man was, or what he might want from her. The last thing she remembered was being at the camp outside the cave, and the things that had come for them through the trees. Had she been taken by some sort of monster?

Where was Uncle Deckard? Fear prickled her flesh. Why hadn’t he come for her?

The man was chanting something, his voice a low, even tone that brought chills. The floor vibrated all around her, shaking her to the bone. Then she felt something: a gentle pressure against her waist. Deeper fear made her pulse speed up, but her heart fluttered strangely, like a dying bird in her chest, and she felt light-headed.

She looked down at herself.

A creature climbed up her body like a wriggling snake, its hair matted and thin, shoulders nothing but skin and bone. It hunched over her, its claw-like hands pulling at her like the crow with the scrap of dead meat; when it looked up with its black holes for eyes and its purple, cracked lips, she barely recognized the horror of its face. In her mind she saw Gillian again, and the air had become threaded with lines of blood that danced and curled through it like charmed snakes around Gillian’s head before they sank through a hole in the floor and disappeared.

Something came awake in her, something huge and powerful, and before she lost consciousness again and fell down a dark, endless well, Leah gathered the last of her dying strength and screamed, the sound echoing through the stone rooms and beyond, before fading away to the sound of crows, cawing and beating their wings against the walls of the tower like the thunderous applause of an audience waiting for her end to come.

Deckard Cain heard Leah scream.

The sound brought chills, yet it gave him hope. The sound of her scream meant he still had a chance. He redoubled his efforts, and when he glanced up, he was near the top of the staircase and facing a small landing and another closed door. The light came from here—an open window that looked out over the gray sea, where white-sapped swells like the endless movement of time washed onto the rocks.

Cain stood at the window and gasped for breath. Every muscle in his body cried out in agony; every bone ached with each beat of his heart. He had never felt so old and broken; he had no idea how he had been able to climb so high.

When he placed a hand on the wall, he could feel the energy within the tower itself.

It came up through the stone from deep within the ground, or perhaps it was flowing the other way; Cain could not tell. His staff glowed brighter, seeming to feed off the energy as it raced through Cain’s fingers, up his arm and down the other.

He listened to the other side of the door and thought he could hear the sound of movement. A soft thump and a scraping noise drifted out, then, so shockingly loud it made him stumble back, a low, bone-shaking moan of something inhuman.

For a moment Cain could not place why it sounded so familiar, before it suddenly clicked: Jeronnan’s horn.

There were feeders inside.

Cain tried the door and found it unlocked. He swung it open to madness.

The room beyond was circular, taking up the entire circumference of the top of the tower. It was empty of any furniture or other decoration, save for two low, flickering torches set in wall sconces shaped like skeletal hands.

But that was not what held Cain’s gaze. Fingers of dread walked their way down his spine as he looked in horror at the scene before him.

Leah lay face up on the floor in the center of the room, her arms and legs shackled. Feeders were at work on her wrists and ankles, neck and lips, their misshapen, ghoulish bodies writhing in ecstasy, their scalps glistening wetly through strands of white hair. They had latched their purple, worm-like mouths upon her like leeches. Cain could hear the sounds of them sucking at her as their shoulders moved, bones jutting out like wings from their backs.

They looked like giant, featherless birds. Abominations. He shuddered.

Leah’s eyes had rolled back into her head, showing the whites. Her skin was too pale, her breathing fast and shallow, and her flesh seemed to collapse upon itself, as if she was being hollowed out.

Cain ran forward with a small cry, disgust and rage mixing within him as he raised his staff and spoke words that burst from somewhere deep within him. His staff came to brilliant, sparkling life, and before its red glory the feeders hissed and shrank back, one of them making that low moan again. As they hopped to the windowsill, their features changed, feathers growing from flesh, noses turning to black beaks. They flew away, flapping into the wind.

Cain crouched next to Leah, touching her face; her flesh was cold and clammy, and she did not stir. But she was not dead, not yet; he could feel the faint, feathery pulse in her wrist. Outrage washed over him again as he cupped her head gently to his chest. They will pay for this.

Something else moved at the edge of the room. Cain looked up to see a dark, hooded figure seem to congeal from thin air and step right out of the stone wall itself, his hands hidden under long sleeves of his robe. The figure appeared to float forward like an apparition.

Leah suddenly convulsed upward, her back bending until it seemed it would break, and the tower began to tremble.

“I have been waiting for you, Deckard Cain,” the figure said, reaching up with long, bone-white fingers and slipping the hood away from a face that came from the depths of Hell itself.

Eyes glowed like coals buried deep within pockets of bruised skin above a black hole where a nose should have been. Its lips were drawn back from toothless gums, its slick, suppurating flesh crossed with blue veins that pulsed with each beat of its heart.

“Garreth Rau,” Cain said. He got to his feet. “You don’t know what you’ve done—”

Rau spread his arms wide toward the window and the bruised sky. “The way of the Horadrim has long since passed, and a new era has begun, one that will embrace the Burning Hells and all that are birthed from its hellfire. I will lead the way, and you will be the last witness to a dying world, imprisoned here forever. How fitting that will be!”

“Belial has corrupted your thinking,” Cain said. “You must listen to me, Garreth. You cannot believe his lies. He will use you until he no longer needs you, eat you alive, consume your soul, and then he will cast what is left of you out.”

Rau smiled. “Clever,” he said. “Using my name. Gaining trust, and trying to make me remember who I am? Then perhaps you should address me as Tal Rasha.”

“I don’t understand—”

“My true ancestor and namesake, one I have taken for my own. Imprisoned forever in Baal’s tomb by your flesh and blood, Jered Cain. Betrayed by the only one he really trusted.” The Dark One’s face had twisted itself into a vicious grimace, and his eyes burned even brighter than before. “Or don’t you remember?”

Cain shook his head. “Tal Rasha was not betrayed,” Cain said. “He chose to take Baal within himself, to save Sanctuary.”

“That’s the story the world has been given. Lies, spun to hide the truth. Your Jered Cain was no hero. He used demonic magic to trick Tal Rasha, and shoved the soulstone into him against his will. He turned his back on his friend and left him to rot for all eternity. Instead of saving him, Jered chose to sacrifice him so he could escape with his own life. He was a coward.”

“Jered and Tal Rasha were colleagues. Both of them were Horadrim, selected by Tyrael himself to lead Sanctuary from darkness. They were—”

“I know the histories!” the Dark One shouted. “Do not pretend to lecture me, Deckard Cain. I have read the secret scrolls, the texts that tell the truth about what happened.” He whirled and picked up a text from a stand, showing Cain the crest branded into its cover. “This is the crest of the Tal Rasha family. And this—” he took a piece of torn paper from his robe, showing the same crest—”this is from my own parents, who died when I was just an infant.”

Cain shook his head. The entire idea was preposterous; Tal Rasha had never had children and certainly had never had a family crest. “You’re wrong,” he said. “There is no Tal Rasha family tree. There never was.”

The Dark One’s face grew more furious, and Cain caught a glimpse of the petulant little boy he must have been. “You dare to try to tell me this,” he said. “When your own family felt so abandoned by you, they ran away, only to fall victim to demons? Do you know their souls still suffer, crying out for you? And you still cannot and will not act. Still you turn a blind eye to their suffering. And once again, you cannot protect a child who depends upon you. It is too late. Your precious Leah will die, in order to give life to the destruction of Sanctuary itself.”

“No.” Cain shook his head. “Belial has lied to you yet again. My family was attacked by bandits. It was a robbery, nothing more. They—”

Rau reached out a hand. Blue fire coursed from his palm across the space between them, catching Cain in the chest and throwing him backward, pinning him to the floor. As he lay on his back, helpless, the trembling of the tower increased until the sound of thunder threatened to drown out everything else.

The Dark One turned his attention to Leah, washing her with fire. She convulsed again, and something exploded from deep within her, a flash of power so strong and bright that Cain could not hear or see anything but the beating of his own heart and the rush of his blood.

The wave of power raced through the Black Tower, flowing down into the ground where the containment chamber sat, pregnant with the lifespark of thousands of mortal men. The chamber exploded in a flash of light, energy racing through stone tunnels in all directions.

Far below, within the silent catacombs of Al Cut, a man stood waiting. Anuk Maahnor spread his arms wide and smiled as things long buried in the earth began to stir.

Bones creaked; sinews cracked; leathery muscle and skin, mummified over years of entombment, returned to an approximation of life.

But this life was unnatural. Creatures dead for centuries rolled in their graves, hidden from view until they burst through walls and into open spaces.

The power continued to course down the tubular center of the Black Tower and through the grid of tunnels beneath it. The symmetrical pattern of the tunnels themselves lent strength to the spark, feeding upon itself in a circular pattern with the tower at its center.

Veins regrew on top of bone and sinew, and black fluid flowed like blood. The dead marched with purpose, joining together in lines that grew longer as more joined the others, their moldy, eyeless sockets staring blankly forward, hairless, patchwork skulls oozing. Jaws worked soundlessly, teeth cracking together as if they attempted to speak. But their throats and vocal cords had long since rotted away.

They marched, led by Maahnor, toward the surface.

The souls of your wife and son came to live with the creatures of the Burning Hells long ago, the voice thundered inside Cain’s head. The archangel Tyrael, that stinking beast, is here with us as well, as our prisoner. Now you will join them and bow to me, Belial, ruler of Hell and all who live within it, and soon to be ruler of Sanctuary and the High Heavens above.

Belial, the Lord of Lies, loomed over him like a giant ready to crush anything in its path. Cain squeezed his eyes shut tight, returning to the place in his mind that had kept him sane after the loss of Amelia and his son, so many years ago. He focused on the teachings of Jered Cain, who had written that the true nature of a warrior lies in his ability to remain focused within the storm of battle. He was in his mother’s home, sitting at his old desk under candlelight; his hands were young again and unmarked, his eyes strong and his heart filled with the ecstasy of a man who had found his life’s passion. The pages of Jered’s books and the familiar smell of dusty old paper calmed him.

But the image would not hold. It dissolved into the motionless bodies of his wife and young son, ravaged by the goatmen that had chased them down and dragged them into the brush.

Ah, their wounds were painful, but even now, they still suffer, unable to pass beyond the Hells, waiting for a hero who will never come. Their hero did not exist. But you know that, do you not? You have known the truth for a long time, and still you choose to ignore it.

The vision switched to a landscape filled with the screams of the damned. Fire licked at the feet of humans bound and hung across a vast chamber, while others were forced to labor under the eyes of demon masters. Overseers lashed their bloody backs with cruel whips, driving them forward; they pulled carts full of molten iron to forges that burned hot enough to peel the skin from their limbs. Others beat long swords and armor into shape with hammers. Pile after pile was stacked along the walls of the cavern as the people carried them from the forges and placed them there.

We prepare for the coming war, Belial said. Garreth Rau has opened himself to me, and soon I will control his mortal form. First Caldeum will fall and then the rest of Sanctuary’s cities, and when the undead army has finished its work, we will unleash a new army of our own, using Sanctuary to storm the Crystal Arch, taking Silver City and the High Heavens themselves.

Cain stared at the hundreds of people, their bare feet raw and bloody, their faces filled with pain and suffering. His heart broke.

The souls of his wife and son flitted among them.

When Deckard Cain opened his eyes, the vision vanished. It was a vision, nothing more—a lie fed to him by Belial, a master of manipulation. He knew this, knew that the souls of his loved ones could not have been spirited away like this. Yet fingers of doubt continued to creep in, no matter how hard he tried to force them away, plucking at his sanity.

He was jolted back into the room at the top of the Black Tower, where the Dark One stood over Leah, hands outstretched, as the thunderous sounds of thousands of undead soldiers grew louder far beneath them. Cain imagined line after line of them marching to the surface, their faces half formed and horribly twisted by unnatural forces, rusted weaponry clutched in their bony hands.

The power continued to flow from Leah, through Garreth Rau and the tower, into the caverns below. It popped and crackled like fire, yet it was not, and though Leah was not conscious, something else within her continued to respond to Rau’s spell.

He must not let Rau and Belial turn him away from what he had to do. You must act, and do it now.

Cain struggled to his feet. His staff was close. He picked it up and hobbled around Leah’s shuddering body, then swung the staff with every last ounce of his strength.

The wooden shaft shattered across Garreth Rau’s temple, snapping his head back. Black blood flew from a gash in his forehead, and his hold over Leah seemed to be broken. Cain did not hesitate; he gripped the end of the staff with both hands and raised it over his head, driving the jagged end down into Rau’s chest.

A gout of thick blood sprayed from the wound as Rau staggered back, clutching at the wood protruding from his flesh. Cain felt the tower shift, as if swaying in a strong wind, and the sound of the demonic horde outside quieted for a moment.

He rushed back to Leah’s side, cradling her head again. She had definitely been drugged, as the First Ones had said; if he was right, there was only one drug that would have this powerful an effect.

Cain slipped his hand into his rucksack and took out the liquid he had prepared from the root the First Ones had gathered a few hours before. It was the only known antidote for the Torajan formula that he believed the Dark One had used—the same drug he had used to calm Leah back when he had first met her in Gillian’s home and she had gone into one of her trances. Nothing else could have kept her under like this.

Gently, he touched Leah’s lips with the liquid.

A few moments later Leah moaned lightly, her eyelids fluttering. Cain worked at the chains that bound her but could not release them. The girl’s skin was pale, her face sunken, her limbs nearly skeletal. Chills washed over him, and fresh anger at what she had suffered.

A noise made him turn. Garreth Rau had regained his feet. He drew the wood from his chest, an inch at a time; when the last of it had emerged, his skin had already closed around the wound.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Rau said, tossing the shaft aside. His smile revealed blood on his teeth. “Belial comes to greet his army soon. The girl’s power draws him here.”

“Then he will take full possession of your physical form,” Cain said. “You will cease to exist, pushed out of yourself and into the void, while the Lord of Lies inhabits your body and uses it for his own.”

“No.” Rau shook his head, but Cain saw a flash of doubt. “He has promised me that I will rule alongside him—”

“Belial cannot be trusted,” Cain said. “You really think he will allow you to remain in control? He has told you lies about your ancestry, Garreth, to manipulate you into doing what he wants. He has told you lies about me. But when the time comes, he will not hesitate to cast you aside.”

He thought of what he knew of Rau’s childhood, growing up as an orphan, very likely starving for something to hold on to and give him hope. Belial would prey upon that, making him feel strong and in control, using this to gain a way in. “Possession is often slow and insidious,” he said. “Think about your powers, how they manifest themselves. Have you ever felt as if they are not completely your own?”

“You are frightened, old man. Your words betray you.”

“Belial has very likely already manifested his power through you, used you as a conduit. He is brainwashing you, testing the bonds, weakening your interior defenses. He means to overthrow this world, in preparation for an assault on the High Heavens. Once he has used you to gain access to this realm, just ask yourself one thing: why would he need you any longer?”

Rau seemed about to speak again, but his expression changed to one of puzzlement and, finally, a trace of fear. He seemed to be struggling with something.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. He shivered. “It can’t be. I won’t let you. I won’t . . .”

Cain was no longer sure whether the man was talking to him or someone else. Suddenly Rau screamed, gasped, and screamed again, scratching at his own face and drawing rivulets of blood. His features rippled and changed, bony plates growing up from his forehead, his eyes yellowing.

Finally he relaxed, a thin, haughty smile playing about his lips. Garreth Rau was no more.

“Deckard Cain,” the Lord of Lies rasped, the breath rattling in his lungs, “you are resilient, for your age. I must thank you for your assistance in bringing little Leah to me. But I’m afraid your job is complete, and so is hers.

“It’s time for you and your little friend to die.”

36 The Walking Dead of Al Cut

Mikulov came to, one moment at a time.

He was lying on his side, covered in the remains of vaporized feeders and imps. He found himself in the middle of utter devastation: a small crater marred the stone floor, with him at its center. The stone had cracked nearly all the way to the tower, revealing a deep, wide crevasse that fell away into darkness. Farther away, bodies of demons and feeders littered the courtyard in all directions. Several mortally wounded creatures were writhing in their death throes.

But, incredibly, he remained unharmed.

Mikulov’s head throbbed, and his mouth was dry as cotton. He sat up, shaking off the ash, and looked around more fully. What he saw chilled him to the bone. Seemingly everywhere, the dead were emerging from the ground: through tunnel exits, climbing from the huge crack and other, smaller fissures that ran across the courtyard. There were hundreds already, and more kept coming. They hooked bony fingers over the stones, wave after wave, pulling themselves up and gaining their feet, standing motionless in rows with weapons at their sides, all of them facing the Black Tower.

A man stood before the tower doors. At first glance, he looked unremarkable—in peasant dress, middle-aged and worn. But his eyes glittered in deep-set sockets, and his posture was straight and strong as he assessed his army.

Mikulov made his way through the ranks of the dead. They did not move, did not even turn their heads as he passed, even when he brushed against their slippery flesh. He kept his pace steady, his eyes straight ahead. If he could just reach the front of the crowd . . .

The ranks of the walking dead seemed to go on forever. The strange man watched him without speaking. When Mikulov had come within twenty feet, he held up his hand. “Do not come closer,” the man said. “Who are you, and what is your business here?”

“I am Mikulov, of the Ivgorod monks,” Mikulov said. “My business is my own.”

“I am Anuk Maahnor, captain of the army of Bartuc, Warlord of Blood, and keeper of the tower. I will ask you again: what is your business?”

“Get out of the way,” Mikulov said.

“I think not.” Maahnor smiled. “You are one man. We are all mages here, trained in the dark arts by our master himself. You shall not enter in this lifetime.”

“Not one man!” The voice came seemingly out of nowhere, but a moment later, Thomas and Cullen pushed through, shivering as they brushed against the strangely still, silent ranks of the dead. “Three, at least,” Cullen said, at Mikulov’s side. Cullen grinned at him, but his hands shook as he gripped his bloody pitchfork.

Mikulov smiled back. He felt no fear; a strange calm had descended upon him. He felt a peace his masters had spoken of many times, one he had not known before. A harmony with the gods, an acceptance of his fate, and an understanding of his own strengths and limitations.

“So be it,” he said. “We will take on your army.”

Maahnor looked surprised; then he smiled once again. “I accept your challenge,” he said. He raised one hand, then dropped it in a slashing gesture. Immediately, the undead soldiers leapt into action, raising their weapons and charging forward.

Other than their footsteps thundering on the stone, they made no sound. Cullen gave a cry and lifted the pitchfork. Thomas tried to fit an arrow to his bow, but his hands fumbled, and he dropped it.

Then the soldiers were upon them. Mikulov felt the power of the gods coursing through him as he lashed out, catching the nearest one by the arm as it thrust its sword and turning with it, using the weapon’s momentum to cut several of its brethren in half. He moved in a blur of fists and feet, crunching bones and skulls, leaving piles of bodies behind him.

The undead were slow and clumsy, but as they fell, more took their places, and Mikulov realized with dismay that those on the ground had begun to reassemble themselves and stand up again.

“Keep fighting!” he shouted at Cullen and Thomas, but the men were terrified, and he could tell it would not be much longer before they were overcome.

Help us, Mikulov prayed as he fought desperately for an opening, trying to work his way forward. Let the gods hear my cry. But the undead kept coming, wave after wave, relentless as the ocean tide, as Maahnor stood watching silently at the tower’s entrance, waiting for the end.

Cain looked at Leah. Her eyes had come open, pupils flat and black as pinpricks. The chills he felt deepened; something had come over her, the way it had that night at Gillian’s house and again in Lord Brand’s manor. He had released something that he did not know how to control, and for the first time, he wondered if it had been the right choice.

Leah sat up with one fluid motion, tearing the arm shackles from the floor effortlessly, then yanked her legs free and stood. The temperature in the room dropped quickly, and the now-familiar buzz of energy swarmed around her.

She paused, and looked around, her gaze finding Belial. The two of them observed each other for a long moment, and some spark of recognition seemed to come over them both.

“I know that face,” Belial whispered. “Who—”

The sound of crows drowned out everything else. They blackened the windows of the tower, blanketing every inch of the outside walls as Belial released a thunderbolt of power that was met by Leah’s own. A crackling flash erupted, blinding Cain for a moment. He blinked against it, trying to find his bearings as the crows’ wings continued to beat against the stone walls, their cries growing louder.

Cain caught a glimpse of something huge and inhuman across the room, where Garreth Rau had stood; later he was never sure whether it had been real or only imagined, for when he looked again, he saw Rau at the window, writhing in place as if gripped in a titanic inner battle. Leah stood with her arms out and her head up, eyes blazing, and as she looked at him wildly, he saw the real Leah for just a moment, and the terror in her eyes was so raw and horrible he wanted to comfort her. As soon as he took a step toward her, he was held in the grip of her power, immense and immovable; as it squeezed him, cutting off his breath, he cried out, pointing to the hole in the floor and willing her to release the energy there.

He wasn’t sure if she understood him or was even capable of controlling it. But Leah let him go and cried out, and something huge and invisible seemed to leap from her, barreling down the hole and through the center column of the tower, into the ground below.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then a series of muffled booms occurred, one after another. The Black Tower shuddered. Directly below them, if Cain had calculated correctly based on the map, were the charges made up of Egil’s powder he and the First Ones had set in place against the tunnel walls. Leah’s blast had ignited them, as he had hoped. He imagined the implosion below them, the sea crashing inward with tremendous force, washing through the lost city of Al Cut and crushing everything in its path.

Garreth Rau stood framed in the open window, looking back at the two of them with surprise, his features rippling and changing, and then changing again; he stared into Cain’s eyes, the pain and anguish seared into place.

“You . . . were right,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “They were lies . . . all of them.”

With a single, strangled cry, he threw himself backward out the window and disappeared from sight.

For a long moment, nothing happened, and then there was a faint, muffled boom, and the tower shook more violently. “We must go now, Leah!” Cain shouted. This time, when he took her hand, she allowed herself to be led easily to the door.

Stones began to crumble, falling from the ceiling. Cain risked one more look back; crows had come through the window, their bodies beginning to change, feathers retracting, ghoulish features protruding before Cain pulled Leah away from the room and down the stairs, away from their mournful, hungry cries.

Mikulov had nearly come to the end of his strength when he happened to glance up at the tower. What he saw shocked him; a figure tumbled head over heels through the air, robes flapping like a bird’s wings as it plummeted to the ground. At first he was filled with horror, imagining it to be Deckard Cain. But as it hit the ground with a tremendous boom, he realized it had to be the Dark One himself.

How it had happened he did not know, but the body’s impact set off a shock wave of power that rushed through the courtyard like an ocean swell. The effect was immediate and dramatic; almost as one, the undead soldiers dropped lifelessly to the ground like puppets with their strings cut. The connection that had bound them, the magic threads Garreth Rau had created, had been severed.

Mikulov turned back to the tower. The body Anuk Maahnor had occupied was lying motionless on its back—what was left of a simple villager, bleeding from the eyes and mouth.

The stone courtyard shuddered, and a rumbling sound came from beneath their feet. Cullen pointed up at the tower, which was swaying back and forth. “It’s going to come down!” he said, as more cracks appeared around them and the rumbling grew louder. “Run!”

They raced downward, stumbling several times but somehow never falling as the tower trembled violently. More stones came loose above them, plummeting down through space and crashing into the floor below. The steps grew shakier as they went, but they reached the bottom without getting hit.

Cain pulled Leah by the hand through the entryway and out the door, into the courtyard under blackened skies. The entire world seemed to be coming to an end; the ground was littered with bodies, and the stone beyond the steps had split in multiple places, exposing jagged, gaping holes in the earth.

Cain led Leah around the crevasses, then scooped the docile girl into his arms and ran as fast as he could, driven by pure adrenaline as a loud groaning noise came from behind them and the ground began to tremble even harder. He risked a glance back; the Black Tower started to lean as the stone underneath it buckled and twisted, frothy spray exploding up through cracks and sending rocks, dirt, and bones flying many feet into the air.

As the tower teetered on the edge, seemingly forever, Cain sensed a presence rise up above the crows that circled and flapped away from the structure, a great evil that watched with unblinking eyes as the walls came down.

He kept going. They were perhaps one hundred feet away when the bottom of the tower imploded with a tremendous earth-shaking roar. Cain stopped again and turned as the top half toppled over and fell, hitting the ground in an avalanche of stone and mortar. Pieces of rock flew like shrapnel in all directions as a gigantic hole opened up and the base collapsed into the ground, burying the tunnels and caverns beneath it in debris. A geyser of seawater shot fifty feet into the air, and a wail of rage from that unseen presence rose up over everything before slowly dying away, leaving nothing but the last few crows circling aimlessly in a dead sky.

37 Gea Kul, Resurrected

“Over here!”

Cain was startled to find Thomas and Cullen waving frantically at them from across the courtyard, where they stood with Mikulov and a small group of people. Cain was overjoyed to see Mikulov alive; he had thought the worst.

Captain Jeronnan was among them as well. The big man waved too; although he was covered in blood, he appeared to be more or less unharmed.

Thomas hurried over to them and tried to take Leah from Cain’s aching arms. “No,” he said, hugging her fiercely to him. He kissed the top of her head as tears wet his cheeks. The girl was unresponsive but breathing evenly, and color had started to return to her face. Everything seemed to come to the surface at once, and a torrent of emotions poured from him as he fell, sobbing to his knees, cradling Leah to him like a baby.

“You’re all right,” he said over and over, and in his mind he was speaking to his wife and son as well as Leah. “I promise you, everything is fine now. You’re safe.”

Eventually, Cain allowed Thomas to take Leah from him, and he sank back, utterly exhausted, before Mikulov helped him gently to his feet.

They limped over to the others. Cain clasped Jeronnan’s huge hand in both of his, managing a smile, although he felt like he might collapse at any moment. The man embraced him.

“How did you—”

“’Twas the necromancer’s blade,” Jeronnan said. “The creatures met us in Gea Kul, and we put up an honest fight, but they had me by the throat, and they took me down to the ground with them. Thought I was done for. But I managed to get Kara’s knife in a few of their bellies while we struggled, and they ran from it, the cowards. Most of them came this way, looking for the real battle, I would guess. We followed them here.”

“Is it really over?” Cullen interrupted anxiously, peering at Cain’s face. He was bleeding from a scalp wound, and the pinkie on his right hand appeared to have been bitten off. He clutched his hand to his chest and blinked through broken spectacles, his eyes bloodshot.

“I don’t know,” Cain said. “I think for now, perhaps it is.”

He looked back at the ruins of the Black Tower. Somewhere in the rubble lay the remains of Garreth Rau, who was surely dead, having spent the last moment of his life finally standing up for himself in a way he never had before, and saving the world in the process. It was almost enough to make Cain believe in humanity again. But other thoughts were more unsettling.

What had appeared there as the tower collapsed? Had it just been his imagination, or had it been Belial himself, there to witness the end of his plans?

Perhaps, Cain thought, he had been there to witness the beginning.

After exploring some of the ruins left behind by the collapse of the Black Tower, and finding nothing left alive and no signs that the demon horde would return, the small group left for the Captain’s Table. There were perhaps fifteen of them in all; Jeronnan’s group had sustained heavy losses, and those citizens who had survived were wounded and dazed, as if just coming out of a deep sleep.

The day began to lighten as they walked, and when they reached the streets of Gea Kul, a single ray of sunlight broke through the gray clouds, shining directly upon the Horadric meeting place like a beacon of strength. Beyond it was a ruin of collapsed buildings, but this one remained standing. Thomas whispered to Cullen and pointed it out to Cain, who nodded. That, more than anything else he had yet seen, gave him hope that the worst was over, at least for now.

By the time they reached the tavern, the sun had broken through completely, and people were starting to emerge from their houses and hiding places, blinking in the bright light like terminally ill patients who had been given a reprieve from death. Most were emaciated, with telltale bruises on their necks, and they did not seem to respond to anything other than the sun’s warmth. They craned their heads to peer up into the sky, squinting, traces of vacant smiles upon their sunken faces.

Leah, however, remained unresponsive. Mikulov carried her for the first few minutes, and then Cain, in spite of his utter exhaustion, insisted upon taking her in his arms for the rest of the way, while Thomas and Cullen walked beside him. He put her head on his chest and listened to her soft breathing to assure himself that she was still alive.

“I will not let you go,” he whispered to her. “I promise.” For a moment he thought he might have heard her try to speak, but she remained silent and still.

Gradually, almost imperceptibly, Sanctuary began to return to life. The sunlight brought more people out into the streets, and a celebration of sorts began to spread from neighbor to neighbor as the citizens of Gea Kul realized the reign of terror had ended. Many had been lost during the collapse of the caverns beneath the town, but those who had seen the ruins of the Black Tower themselves returned to tell others, and rumors of the Horadric heroes who had defeated the Dark One grew, until a small crowd began to gather outside the Captain’s Table. Eventually Thomas and Cullen went out to speak to them, and a roar of appreciation rose up as the last of the day’s warm rays bled from the sky.

Cain remained inside, sitting with Leah and holding her hand. Her wounds had been cleaned and covered, and he had dressed her in fresh clothes Jeronnan had given him. They were some of his daughter’s childhood clothes, Jeronnan said, that he’d kept for all these years. The captain insisted there wasn’t a more fitting person to wear them now.

Cain couldn’t find anything physically wrong with Leah. She had lost a lot of blood, certainly, but her color was good and her heart strong. And so he waited patiently by her side, refusing to clean his own wounds or allow himself to sleep.

Eventually, in spite of himself, he nodded off in his chair. When he snapped awake sometime later, she was looking at him, puzzled.

“Uncle?” she said. “Where am I? What’s happened?”

Emotions rushed through him, choking his voice: “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I . . .” Leah looked bewildered. “I remember we stayed at an inn, and met a man . . . I remember you were kind to me. You watched after me. But I don’t remember anything else.”

“You’re safe, and that’s all that matters,” he said, warmth blooming in his chest. He decided not to tell her exactly what had happened during the past few days, no matter how much she begged him. Her childhood would be better without these memories to haunt her, and if he had learned anything through this ordeal, it was that childhood was a precious gift, not to be taken lightly.

He was alarmed to find himself close to tears. “I love you, Leah. We are family now.”

She sighed and nodded, and her eyes drifted closed. Cain sat and watched her for some time, the ghost of a smile on his face. He thought of his wife and son, their bloodied bodies under the blankets the men had spread in the ragged brush. For so many years, it had haunted him, his inability to lift those blankets and see them one last time. The idea of how they had suffered had remained with him like a ghost, buried deep beneath his consciousness until it had become a black, bottomless well. Belial had used that pain to his advantage.

But Cain knew now that they were at peace, that whatever they had suffered had ended long ago and it was time to put them to rest, once and for all.

Eventually he was able to close his eyes again, and this time, his sleep was dark, calm, and deep.

38 The Road Ahead

The next few days were bright and sunny as life came back to Gea Kul.

About half the town was gone, swallowed up by the ground. But the people began to clear the streets that remained intact of the debris that had gathered there, unchecked, over many months. There were more spontaneous celebrations, and more than a few times Deckard Cain left the Captain’s Table only to find a small crowd waiting for him outside, like religious pilgrims. They were respectful enough, but they made him nervous; he was never one to accept adoration gracefully.

Still, they seemed to consider him some kind of hero. “You are that, you know,” Mikulov said, when they left one day and found more than two dozen waiting outside, asking to shake Cain’s hand. “A hero. The last of the Horadrim.”

“I hardly think—”

“It takes all kinds,” Mikulov said. “You don’t have to carry a sword to be heroic.” He smiled. “For a smart man, you seem to have missed the point. You led us to the edge of death and back again. You were the only one with a plan, even at our darkest point, when we wanted to give up. Without you, we would have been lost.”

“And without you, Mikulov, we would have been lost. We’re all heroes, then. Every last one of us.”

“If that is so,” Mikulov said, “then you are responsible for it.”

They walked in silence for a while. Their mission today was an important one, and something they had to do quietly, and alone.

Cain had done a lot of thinking during the past few days, a lot of it about Leah. She was a special little girl; there was no question of that, and yet she had suffered almost unbearable trauma, enough to have blocked it all out. She seemed to remember almost nothing of what had happened, during not only the battle in the tower but much of their entire adventure. It was as if her mind had completely erased anything she had been unable to process.

He, of course, remembered everything, and his latest revelation had to do with Leah, and with the true meaning of the battle between darkness and light. Garreth Rau had been defeated, at least in part, because he had not taken into consideration that Leah had her own free will and the ability to make a choice to fight back for good instead of evil. And he had not understood the power of human relationships—the good in them. Cain hadn’t either, not for a long time, but Leah and Mikulov had changed all that. They had helped make him whole again.

Cain and Mikulov walked through the streets until they reached the Horadric meeting place. Cain was nearly certain that the Dark One’s army had been destroyed. But he had to be sure.

The building still stood, but it had been badly damaged. They managed to get down the stairs to the place where the tapestry hung in tatters on the wall, but the tunnel entrance was choked with debris, and the rooms beyond the library were gone, collapsed into the floor.

They returned to the surface and walked beyond the building to find that this part of the town had simply vanished, swallowed by the earth below and leaving a crater filled with stone and murky water. It was as he had hoped, Cain thought. The lost city of Al Cut, and all it contained, was gone.

“Using Egil’s formulation to destroy the tunnel walls and bring in the sea?” Mikulov shook his head, a look of admiration on his face. “That was the move of a brilliant strategist. None of us really understood what you were doing when you had us dig for the mineral vein. Even when we put the bags against the walls where you told us, we didn’t think it would work.” He shrugged. “But how did you ignite them?”

“It was Leah who did it,” Cain said. “I had witnessed her power before. I knew from studying the map that the caverns were vulnerable if we placed enough of the explosives in the proper areas, and the moss was present to cause the chemical reaction we needed. And I knew that the tower was some sort of focal point above the lost city that we might be able to use like the wick of a lantern.”

They stood and looked out over the destruction. Cain thought about Garreth Rau, and how Belial had twisted whatever vulnerabilities existed in the man to his advantage. And that led to other, more disturbing thoughts. Belial was not one to give up so easily. Cain began to wonder whether it was over, after all. He had come to realize that the prophecies could be interpreted in different ways. Perhaps this was only the first stage in a much larger, much more dangerous plan.

He had to know more, to be sure.

“Thank you, Mikulov, for everything,” Cain said. “I will have to leave here soon, but I will never forget what you did.”

“Nor will I forget you,” Mikulov said. They clasped hands. “I must leave as well. The members of the Floating Sky would have me executed for leaving the monastery, if they could, and may be searching for me even now. But my fate is with the gods. Perhaps we will see each other again, someday.”

They returned to the inn, where Cain told Cullen of his plans. “What?” Cullen blinked in surprise. “But we have so much to do! We must recruit more brothers to the order! You said—”

“You will be fine here,” Cain said gently, putting a hand on Cullen’s shoulder. “You and Thomas are more than capable of leading others to the light. You have both studied the texts; you understand what is required. I would only get in the way.”

“Nonsense.” Cullen shook his head, his jowls jiggling comically. “You are the only true Horadrim left in Sanctuary!”

If that’s true, Cain thought, it’s even more important that I seek out answers and learn the truth of what the Worldstone’s destruction really means for all of us.

Cullen protested even more, but Cain’s mind was made up. They went outside in time to meet Leah and Thomas, who had gone searching for saplings to make a new bow and new arrows for Leah. Although she did not remember Lund or anything about the camp, something had remained with her, and she was eager to try to shoot again.

“There’s new growth out there,” Thomas said, his face full of hope. “The trees are already returning! And we saw more animals, too. Life has come back to Kehjistan.”

Thomas and Cullen went into the inn, talking animatedly about what they had both seen. Cain took Leah’s hand. This was the moment he had been dreading; he would have to find a place for her where she would be safe. He would have to explain why he had to leave her, and he felt as if his heart might break.

They sat in the shade near the docks. “Where will we live, Uncle?” Leah asked. “Will we have our own house?”

In a halting, uncertain voice, Cain told her about what he had to do. It was a nearly impossible task, and in the middle of it Leah stood up and began skipping rocks across the water. He could not tell if she was angry or sad, but he continued to explain himself as best he could. The world was an uncertain place, and as much as it hurt him to say it, he had responsibilities that he could not avoid. If not he, then who else would do it?

“I want to go with you,” Leah said.

That stopped him short; it reminded him of when he had considered finding a safe place for her before, on the road to Kurast, and how she had refused to let him then. But this was different. It was not just a journey, but a way of life.

He stood up and joined her at the water. “You don’t know what that means,” Cain said. “There are . . . dangers in Sanctuary, things that I may not be able to protect you from—”

“I don’t care!” Leah shouted, and when she turned to him, there were tears streaming down her face. “You’re the only family I have now, and I want to be with you! Please don’t leave me, Uncle!”

Once again, she buried her face in Cain’s tunic. They had formed a bond that could not be broken, and he realized with sudden shock that he could not leave her behind, any more than she could bear to be without him.

“All right,” he said, tears welling in his own eyes. “I was wrong, Leah. You will travel with me, and we will never be apart again.”

He began to think about writing everything down, creating a book of his own, for her benefit. She was not yet ready, but someday, perhaps, she might study the Horadric ways, just as he had. If this was their destiny, he would embrace it, and when the true demon invasion came, they would be ready to face the enemy together.

The two of them sat that way as the water lapped against the docks, and Deckard Cain imagined his wife and son sitting next to them. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt at peace.