Fire Sea (47 page)

Which seemed like a very real possibility. I have to get

out of here! Haplo couldn't breathe. Some strange force in the room was expanding, squeezing the air out. The light was intensely bright, painful, hurt his eyes.

I have to get out of here, before I go blind, before I suffocate! Clammy sweat dampened his palms, chilled his body. I have to get out of here!

Haplo shoved Alfred aside, hurled himself at the sealed door. He began to trace runes on the rock, Patryn runes. He was frantic, his hands shaking so that he could barely form the sigla he had known how to shape since childhood. The sigla burned red, dimmed, went out. He'd made a mistake. A stupid mistake. Swearing, he grit his teeth and began again. He had a vague sense of Alfred attempting to stop him. Haplo brushed him away, as he would have brushed away a stinging fly. The white, blue light was growing stronger, more brilliant, beating down on him like the sun.

“Stop him!” The lazar's shrill voice. “He's leaving us!”

“… leaving us …” came the echo.

Haplo began to laugh. He wasn't going anywhere and he knew it. His laughter had a hysterical edge. He heard it, didn't care. Die. We're all going to die …

“The prince!” Alfred's voice and the dog's warning bark came at the same time, were almost indistinguishable, as if the Sartan had given the dog words.

Body and mind numb from sickness, fatigue, and what could only be described as panic, Haplo saw that at least one member of their group had discovered a way out.

The prince's cadaver slumped over the table, the dreadful magic that had kept it alive was gone. Edmund's phantasm was walking away from the husk that had been its prison, the spirit's form tall and regal as the prince had been in life, its face transfigured by an expression of rapt wonder. The arms of the cadaver lay flaccid on the marble. The arms of the phantasm reached out. It took a step forward, moving through the solid wooden table as if
it
were a phantasm. Another step and another. The phantasm was leaving its body behind.

“Stop him!” The lazar's shifting features, blending those of the living and the dead, faced Haplo. “Without him, you

will never recover your ship! Even now, his people are attempting to break down the runes you have placed on it. Baltazar plans to sail across the Fire Sea and attack Necropolis.”

“How the hell can you know that?” Haplo shouted. He heard himself shouting, but couldn't stop. He was losing control.

“The voices of the dead cry out to me!” the lazar answered. “From every part of this world, I hear them. Stop the prince or your voice will join them!”

“… your voice will join them …” hissed the echo.

None of this made sense anymore. It was all an insane dream. Haplo shot Alfred an accusing glance.

“I didn't cast the spell! Not … not this time!” Alfred protested, wringing his hands. “But it's true. He is leaving!”

The prince's phantasm, arms outstretched, glided through the wood table, approaching the center. The spirit grew clearer in the vision of those watching, the lifeless cadaver began to slide to the floor. Where was he going? What was drawing him away?

What would bring him back?

“Your Highness,” Jonathan called out, voice cracking with frantic urgency. “Your people! You can't leave them. They need you!”

“Your people!” The lazar added its persuasion. “Your people are in danger. Baltazar rules now, in your stead, and he is leading them to war, a war they cannot hope to win.”

“Can he hear us?” Haplo demanded.

The phantasm heard. It hesitated in its movement, gazed at those standing around it, the expression of wonder blurring, marred by doubt, sorrow.

“It seems a pity to call him back,” Alfred murmured.

Haplo could have made a sarcastic comment, but he lacked the energy. He was irritated with himself for having been thinking the very same thing.

“Return to your people.” The lazar was luring the phantasm back to its corpse, crooning to it gently, as a mother lures a child from the perils of the cliff's edge. “It is your duty, Your Highness. You are responsible. You have always

been responsible. You cannot be selfish and leave them when they need you most!”

The phantasm dwindled, faded until it was nothing more than the gibbering ghost it had been before. And then, it vanished, disappeared altogether.

Haplo shut his eyes, hard, thinking again that the eerie blue light was playing tricks on them. Blinking, he glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed.

Alfred stared vacantly at the white wooden table. Jonathan was assisting the reanimated corpse to stand.

Would anyone notice if a man, walking down a street in broad daylight, cast no shadow?

“My people,” the corpse said. “I must return to my people.”

The words were the same, the intonation was different. The difference was subtle, a change in the pitch, the modulation. He wasn't reciting them by rote, he was thinking about them. And Haplo realized that Edmund's corpse had become a “he,” no longer an “it.” The sightless eyes were sightless no longer. They were fixed on the lazar and in the eyes was the shadow of doubt. Haplo knew then where Edmund's phantasm had gone. It had, once again, joined with the corpse.

Glancing at the lazar, he saw that it had seen the same phenomenon and that it was not pleased.

Haplo didn't know why, he didn't care. Strange things had happened—were happening—in this room. The longer he stayed, the less he liked it and he hadn't liked it much from the beginning. There had to be some way to shut off those damn blue lights …

“The table,” said Alfred suddenly. “The key is the table.” He approached it, stepping carefully over the bodies that littered the floor. Haplo went with him, keeping up with him, step for step. “And look at this! The bodies around the table are facing outward, as if they had fallen defending it.”

“And they're the ones who weren't armed,” Haplo added. “The sacred runes, a table these people died to protect. If they had been mensch, I'd say this table was an altar.” His eyes met Alfred's, the same question was in both.

The Sartan considered themselves to be gods. What could they possibly have worshiped?

He and Alfred drew close to the table now. Jonathan was examining it closely, brow furrowed. He reached out a hand.

“Don't touch it!” Alfred exclaimed.

The duke snatched his hand back. “What? Why not?”

“The sigla on it. Can't you read them?”

“Not very well.” Jonathan flushed. “The runes are old.”

“Very old,” Alfred agreed solemnly. “The magic has to do with communication.”

“Communication?” Haplo was disappointed, disgusted. “Is that all?”

Alfred began slowly unraveling the tangled skein. “This table is ancient. It did not come from this world. They brought it with them from the old world, the sundered world. They brought it with them and they established it here, beneath the first structure they ever built. For what purpose? What would be one of the first things these ancient Sartan would attempt to do?”

“Communicate!” Haplo said, studying the table with more interest.

“Communicate. Not with each other on this world, they could do that by means of their magic. They would try to establish contact with the other worlds.”

“Contact that failed.”

“Did it?” Alfred studied the table. He held his hands above the sigil-inscribed wood, fingers spread, palms facing down. “Suppose that, in attempting to contact the other worlds, they made contact with … something, someone else?”

The force that opposes us is ancient and powerful. It cannot be fought, cannot be placated. Tears do not move it, nor do all the weapons we have at our command. Too late, we have come to admit its existence. We bow before it…

Haplo recalled the words, couldn't think, for the moment, where he'd heard them. On another world. Arianus?

Pryan? An image of a Sartan speaking them came to mind, but Haplo had never spoken to another Sartan, except Alfred, before coming to this place. It didn't make any sense.

“Does it say how we get the hell out of here?” Haplo demanded.

Alfred, hearing the jagged edge to the Patryn's voice, looked grave. “One of us must attempt the communication himself.”

“Just who are you going to communicate with?” “I don't know.”

“All right. Anything to end this. No, wait, Sartan. I'm in on this, too,” Haplo said grimly. “Whatever you hear, I'm going to hear.”

“And you, Jonathan?” Alfred turned to the duke. “You are the representative of this world.”

“Yes. Perhaps I can learn how to help…” Jonathan's glance strayed to his wife, the words died on his lips. “Yes,” he said again in a low voice.

“I will guard the door,” offered the lazar, moving to stand beside the sealed rock.

“That's not really necessary.” Alfred found it difficult to look directly at the dead woman. He tried, but his gaze kept shifting, sliding away from her. “No one can enter this hallowed chamber.”

“They entered the last time,” the lazar said.

“… the last time …” whispered her phantasm.

“So they did!” Alfred licked dry lips, swallowed.

“We can't worry about that now,” Haplo said shortly. “What do we do?”

“Put your … uh, put your hands on the table. You can see the indentations where the hands are to be placed. Like this, palm down, thumbs touching, fingers spread. Haplo, make certain none of the sigla on your skin come in contact with the wood. Make your mind a blank—”

“Think like a Sartan, huh? I can manage that.” Haplo did as instructed. Gingerly, he placed his hands on the table. Muscles twitched involuntarily, expecting a jolt, pain, he didn't know what. He touched wood, solid beneath his hands, cool, reassuring.

“I warn you, I don't know what's going to happen,” Alfred reiterated, nervously placing his hands on the table.

Jonathan, opposite them, did the same.

Alfred began to chant the runes. The duke, after a moment's hesitation, joined in, speaking the language of the arcane clumsily and uncertainly. Haplo sat still, kept silent. The dog curled up on the floor near its master.

Soon, the three men heard nothing except Alfred's chanting. And, soon, they couldn't hear that.

The lazar stood near the door, watching in silence, watched Alfred slump forward, watched Haplo's head rest on the table, watched Jonathan cradle his cheek on the cool, white wood. The dog's eyes blinked sleepily, closed.

The lazar raised its chill voice. “Come to me. Follow my call. Fear no runes of warding. They are for the living. They have no power over the dead. Come to me. Come to this chamber. They will open the door for you, as they opened it long ago, and invite their own doom inside. It is the living who have done this to us.”

“… done this to us …” came the echo.

“When the living are no more,” the lazar intoned, “the dead will be free.”

“… free …”

CHAPTER
38
THE CHAMBER OF
THE DAMNED, ABARRACH