Fire Sea (43 page)

“Then what the hell are you doing wasting time?” Haplo demanded angrily. “We've got to get out of here! If we knew the way—”

“The runes!” Alfred remembered, stared at the wall of the catacomb, shining in the light. He pointed a shaking hand. “The runes!”

“Yeah? So?”

“They'll lead us out! I—Wait!”

Alfred's fingers traced the carvings on the wall, ran over the whorls and notches and intricate designs. Touching one, he spoke the rune. The sigil beneath his fingers began to glow with a soft, radiant blue light. A rune carved beside the one he touched caught the magical fire and began to glow. Soon, one after the other, a line of runes appeared out of the darkness, running down the length of the hallway and vanishing beyond their line of vision.

“Those'll lead us out of here?”

“Yes,” said Alfred confidently. “That is …” He hesitated, wavering, recalling what he'd seen in the halls in levels above. His shoulders sagged. “If the sigla haven't been destroyed or defaced …”

Haplo grunted. “Well, at least it's a start.” The voices were louder. “C'mon. It sounds like they're massing the whole damn army! You go on ahead. I'll get the prince. Knowing Baltazar, I have a feeling we may run into trouble trying to reach the ship without His Highness along.”

The preserver was knocked unconscious, but he was alive. Alfred could leave him with a clear conscience. The Sartan hurried over to the duke's side, bent down, not certain what he could do or say to persuade the grief-stricken man to flee for a life that he must now care little about.

Alfred started to speak, stopped, sucked in a breath.

Jonathan's magic had worked. Jera's eyes were open, staring about her. She looked up at her husband with the warm and shining eyes of the living. He reached out to her but at that moment, her visage wavered, dissolved, and she was staring at him with the cold, vacant gaze of the dead.

“Jonathan!” her living voice moaned in pain. “What have you done?”

And there came a chill echo, as if from the grave, moaning, “What have you done?”

Horror filled Alfred, numbed him. He shrank back, bumped into Haplo, and clutched at him thankfully.

“I thought I told you to go on ahead!” the Patryn
snapped. He had one hand on the prince's arm, the cadaver moving along quite docilly. “Leave the duke, if he won't come. He's no use to us. What the devil's the matter with you now? I swear—”

Haplo's eyes shifted, his voice trailed off. The Patryn's jaw sagged.

Jonathan was on his feet, helping his wife to stand. The arrow was lodged in her breast, the front of her robes were stained with her life's blood. That much of her image remained fixed and solid in their minds. But her face …

“Once, on Drevlin, I saw a woman who had drowned,” Alfred said softly, voice tinged with awe. “She was lying beneath the water and her eyes were open, the water stirred her hair. She looked alive! But I knew all the time that … she wasn't.”

No, she wasn't. He remembered the ceremony he'd witnessed in the cave, remembered the phantasms, standing behind the corpses, separate and apart from the body, divided.

“Jonathan?” the voice cried again and again. “What have you done?”

And the dreadful echo, “What have you done?”

Jera's phantasm had not had time to free itself from the body. The woman was trapped between two worlds, the world of the dead and the world of the spirit. She had become a lazar.
¹

CHAPTER
34
THE CATACOMBS,
ABARRACH

T
HE PRESERVER GROANED AND STIRRED, REGAINING CONSCIOUSNESS
. The footsteps were on the move again, the arguing voices silenced. Apparently they had their orders and were coming after them.

The animated corpse of Prince Edmund gazed about with the dazed air of a rudely awakened sleeper; its phantasm, hovering at the prince's shoulder, whispered incoherently, sounding like the hissing of a chill wind. The duchess's cadaver was a frightful apparition. Her image constantly shifted, dissolving one moment into that of a writhing phantasm, only to coalesce again into a pale and bloody corpse. Her husband could do nothing except stare at her; the enormity of his terrible crime had stunned him senseless. Alfred was deathly white, whiter than the corpse, and looked as if he were going to keel over any moment. The dog barked frantically.

“It would be easier,” Haplo said to himself bitterly, “just to lay down and die … except that I don't dare leave my body behind.

“Get moving!” he ordered, poking Alfred none too gently in the ribs. “I've got the prince. Go on!”

“What about—” Alfred's gaze was fixed on the duke and the terrible form that had been the duchess.

“Forget them! We've got to get out of here. The soldiers and most likely the dynast himself are coming.” Haplo
shoved a reluctant Alfred down the hall. “Kleitus will deal with the duke and duchess.”

“They will send me to oblivion!” the lazar shrieked.

“… oblivion …” came the echo.

Fear jolted both the lazar's body and spirit into movement. Haplo glanced behind him in the eerie, blue, rune-lit darkness, and had the awful impression that two women were running after him.

Jera's flight impelled Jonathan to movement. The duke followed after his wife. His hands reached out to her, but he couldn't seem to bring himself to touch her. His hands dropped limp at his sides.

Alfred chanted. The runes on the walls shone brightly, lighting their way deeper into the catacombs. The light rarely failed. If one line of sigla on one side of the wall grew dim or darkened, the sigla on the other side was almost certain to be visible.

The runes led them far below the catacombs. The floor sloped downward at a steep angle that made it difficult to traverse. The cell block soon came to an end, as did the modern improvements such as gas lamps on the walls.

“This part… is ancient!” gasped Alfred, panting from the exertion of running, staggering, and stumbling. “The runes … are undisturbed.”

“But just where the hell are they leading us?” Haplo demanded. “They're not going to drop us in a hole, are they? Or run us smack into a blank wall?”

“I—I don't think so.”

“You don't
think
so!” Haplo sneered.

“At least, the runes aren't leading our enemy to us,” Alfred ventured. He pointed back at the path they had taken. It had been swallowed up by darkness, the runes had gone out.

Haplo listened carefully. He couldn't hear the footsteps or the voices. Perhaps the fool Alfred had finally managed to do something right. Perhaps the dynast had given up the pursuit.

“Either that, or he has sense enough not to come down here,” Haplo muttered. He felt sick and wobbly on his legs. It
took an effort just to draw each breath. The runes swam in his blurred vision.

“If I could rest … a moment. Have time to think—” Alfred suggested timidly.

Haplo didn't want to stop. He couldn't imagine that Kleitus would just let them slip through his fingers. But the Patryn knew, though he'd never admit it, that he couldn't walk another step.

“Go ahead.” He sank down thankfully onto the floor. The dog curled up at his side, crowding close, resting its head on Haplo's leg.

“Watch them, boy,” he commanded, turning the dog's head in a slow sweep to include everyone in the narrow tunnel. The prince's cadaver had come to a halt and stood staring at nothing. Jera's body and spirit flitted restlessly from one side of the hall to another. Jonathan collapsed onto the tunnel floor, buried his face in his arms. He hadn't spoken a word since they'd fled.

The Patryn closed his eyes, wondered wearily if he had strength enough to complete the healing process. Or was healing possible, considering the powerful poison that had been used on him….

The dog lifted its head, barked once sharply. Haplo opened his eyes.

“Don't go anywhere, Your Highness.”

The prince's cadaver turned around. It had been heading down the hallway. Purpose had apparently replaced dazed confusion.

“You are not my people. I must return to my people.”

“We'll get you there. But you've got to be patient.”

The answer appeared to satisfy Edmund's cadaver, which again stood stock-still. His phantasm, however, wavered and whispered. The lazar stopped its restless pacing, turned its head as if a voice had spoken to it.

“Is that what you desire? The experience will not be a pleasant one! Look at me!” it cried in a ghastly voice.

“… at me …” came the echo.

The phantasm appeared resolute.

The lazar lifted its arms, its bloody hands wove strange
runes around the prince's cadaver. Edmund's face, once peaceful in death, twisted in pain. The phantasm disappeared, life gleamed in the corpse's eyes. The lips moved, mouthing words, but only one among them heard what he said.

The lazar turned to Haplo. “His Highness wonders why you are helping him.”

Haplo attempted to look at the lazar, to meet the eyes, but found he couldn't. The sight of the blood, the arrow, the shifting face was too horrible for him to bear. He cursed himself for his weakness, kept his gaze on the prince.

“How can
it
wonder anything? It's dead.”

“The body is dead,” the lazar answered. “The spirit is alive. The prince's phantasm is aware of what is transpiring around it. It could not speak, could not act. That is why this living death in which we are trapped is so terrible!”

“… terrible …” came the echo.

“But now,” continued the lazar, the awful visage cold with pride, “I have given him, as far as I am able, the power of speech, of communicating. I have given him the ability to act, spirit and body as one.”

“But … we can't hear him,” Alfred said in a weak voice.

“No, his spirit and body were too long divided. They have joined together, but the joining is painful, as you can see. It will not last long. Not like mine. My torment is eternal!”

“… eternal …”

Jonathan groaned, writhed in agony nearly as acute as his wife's. Alfred blinked, incredulous, and opened his mouth. Haplo gave him a vicious nudge, warning him to silence.

“His Grace repeats the question: Why are you helping him?”

“Your Highness,” said Haplo, speaking to the prince slowly, carefully considering his words, “in helping you, I'm helping myself. My ship … remember my ship?”

The cadaver may have nodded.

“My ship,” Haplo continued, “is on the other side of the Fire Sea, docked at Safe Harbor. Your people now control Safe Harbor. I'll get you across the Fire Sea, if you'll keep
your people from attacking me and grant me passage out of the docks.”

The cadaver stood without moving, only the dead eyes flickered in answer.

The lazar listened, then said, with a slight sneer, “His Highness understands and accedes to the arrangement.”

So much, thought Haplo, for my plan to abandon the duchess and her traumatized husband. She—or whatever it is she's turned into—could prove extraordinarily useful. He leaned over, caught hold of Alfred's robes.