Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (20 page)

The rest of the shrin
e is
an
endless void
. 
E
ntering
is like s
tep
ping in
to
an icy
pool.

H
e
quietly
sets his blade on the ground, kneels low, and spread
s his hands
.
Information
plac
ed in
to
his mind by the Eidolos makes him
understand
this
is
needed
to
earn
their trust. 

They were once captives
of
the Whisperlands,
just like
he is
, but they’
ve evolved. 
Decades spent in that fugue has
destroyed
whatever they once were
. 
They are necrosis beings, more shadow than living.

And they,
too
, have reason to oppose the Shadow Lords.

They regard him suspiciously.  He doesn’t understand what might be going through their alien minds, but he feels the darkness
push against him
. 

They
gaze into
his shadow-drenched soul.  He’
s forgotten so much
about himself
he i
sn
’
t sure what they
’
ll find. 

His body shakes. 
H
e’
s afraid, but he knows this is necessary. 
He
’
ll
endure
anything
if it will help him
escape this prison, this quagmire
in
the endless dark. 

They’
re closer now.  He
didn’t
see the
m
approach.  The
ir bodies
are featureless
except
for
narrow
slits
for eyes and
the
barely discernible outlines of
grim
faces.  They stand shoulder to shoulder and look
at
him, look
inside
him. 
Their touch is as cold as death.
 

H
e’
s on his knees
.  He prays with them, only it isn’t
prayer, not
tru
ly
,
for there are no g
ods
t
here
,
no deities
except
for
the soot angels, twisted succubi
whose likenesses are
cast
upon
a slab of
stone
:
a mongrel avatar
,
an
orgy
of dark
seraphim
twisted together in a
violent
erotic dance.  Claws and teeth and bat’s wings fuse together
.
T
he trio of wom
e
n
is
locked in a
tangle of
shadow
s
. 

He’
s seen this before
, in history texts and drawings
.  It was in the church where Dane Knight performed the sacrific
e that
created
human magic.  There
had never been any
reports
of the
triple-succubus
likeness
having been
seen
anywhere else. 

The statue
bleeds darkness,
a
different dark
ness
than the air
in
th
e Whisperlands
. 
Theirs
is
an
ancient and primal
power
.  It fuels the mad arcane natives, tho
se aboriginal marauders.  They pay homage to the
core
of demonic
flesh
.

He looks i
nto
its
gruesome multiple faces
and sees a
force that has
beheld
ages.  It is not of
his world, or perhaps of any world.  It bears a purpose.  It searches.

We search
, one of the natives tells him.  The words echo through his mind
and
repeat, layers of sound filter
ed
over one another, a resonant and whispered meaning. 
We hunt.

What do you search for?
h
e asks, but there is no
answer.  It occurs to him they might not
even
know.

He stares back
at
that twisted triple angel, that masochistic altar of vampire pain.  He is dwarfed by its presence. 
G
lacial smoke billow
s
from between its
curved fangs and
its
molten
seductive smiles. 
He breathes it in, and it
soils his soul.

They walk through fields cleared of trees,
over ground packed with
clay and low mounds of rock and bone.  He doesn’t remember leaving the shrine.

The two natives are with him.  He doesn’t know their names, isn’t sure if they even
recall
the concept of
names
.  Both wear primitive battle dress, armor made from
the carapaces of shadow insects
and
bladed gauntlets carved
from
bone and steel. 
O
ne wears a helmet made from
some
sort of longhorn’s skull
, and t
he other wields a tall staff adorned with dark skins and
sharp
edge
s
. 

He’
s
safe with them
. 
They search,
either for
something in the Shadow Lord’s possession
or
something
else
that is
located
near
their stronghold, the
Black Citadel
. 
The Citadel
lies
near
a place called
the City of Thorns,
where
these shadow beings
are
taking
him.  They
believe
he can help them somehow. 

H
e
has become a part of
some sort of shadow rebellion
.  H
e is
allied
with
the
se shadow people
,
who
search
for the means to oust their oppressors.  He has been caught up in the politics of the damned.

We can be more.

They walk through shadow-
soul fields and past
towers of crumbling iron.  The patchwork landscape is a conglomeration of detritus sucked in from other worlds
and
drenched in darkness
.   

Flames
send pale smoke into the
sky.  The fires form
spot
s
of light in the perpetual dark. 

The
y pass
the
burned homes
of
shadow
villages, haphazard settlements littered with the corroded remains of dust corpses. 
He smells cooked meat and vehicle fuel
.  Ashen
remains
drift in the air and
land on his tongue. 

If his escorts feel any sorrow for the carnage they witness, he can’t see it.  Their grim visages remain unchanged, caricatures of human faces.

We search,
one of the natives says.  It
’
s been some time since they spoke.  Their voices
are
utterly foreign and false,
as if spoken by
an automaton, but there is a soul buried somewhere deep inside, some semblance of the creatures they once were. 

The details of his f
ormer life gro
w
hazier
by the day.  They are more like dr
eams now than memories, distant and hard to recollect.  He holds on to j
ust a few vivid details, and with
every
step more of th
em
fade away.

What do you search for?
h
e asks.

The stone
, they say. 
The stone, and the door.

He fears that’
s supposed to make sense to him.  It doesn’t, at least not in this world, or
in
this life.

O
thers
join them
, natives
with
skin so
dark
they
resemble
walking carbon silhouettes.

There are only a few
of them
at first
.  A
ll
of them are
attired
like
his two escorts, who he’s come to call Bull-Horns and Longspear.  The new arrivals also wear battle-dress,
and each of them
maintains at least one article of armor or weaponry or clothing that sets them apart from the others.  One
yields
a
bone-white
ceramic sword; another wears a steel helmet with
no eye-
slits;
one
holds a crescent axe in each hand; and yet another carries a dented iron shield with a skull emblazoned on its face.  He doesn’t know
if they do this for his sake, or for their own. 

Soon they are a dozen, then two dozen.  They march across the Whisperlands in near
silence.  The black wind comes,
hard and cold and filled with particles of sharp dust
.  The air
smell
s
of toxins and industrial waste.  Blood smoke fills the sky
. 

Th
e
y march
through
barren fields
,
towards
a
fast-flowing black river
.
 
W
reckage and war waste
litters the
path.  The
y see the
s
moking husks of
burning homes
and the
opened c
orpses of elephantine beasts.  The e
arth
has been
broken
apart
by cannon
fire
,
and the
fields
are
covered
with
poison fumes so dense they will never dissipate. 
There are d
eep trenches where bone crafts
fe
ll from the sky
.
P
iles of black corpses
have
nearly
moldered
to dust, and f
lecks of
collapsing bodies pull
away in the wind.

We search
, Bull-Horns
says
again, and all he can do is nod.  His body aches with fatigue, his legs are weary, and worry gnaws at his gut. 
We search.

I know.

They come to the
dark
river. 
Bony refuse floats on the surface
, and h
e sees the
outlines
of beasts swim
ming
below
.
 
The
river
stands
between the
m
and
the base of a wide path that cuts its way
through
an imposing onyx
cliff
several hundred feet
high
.  The path is difficult to see
in the darkness, but
it’
s been marked with the pale bones
of
massive
creatures
.