Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon (37 page)

Dougal and Riona crouched at the far end of the square. After the last of the ghosts spiraled out of view, chasing the charr and the asura, they let out a held breath.

“All right,” said Riona, “now we need to get—”

That was the moment that three ghosts wafted out of the surrounding ruins and descended on her. These were dressed in ancient Ascalonian armor and keened
and wailed as they attacked. For Dougal it was all too familiar.

“Vala!” shouted Dougal, slicing his sword through the nearest ghost. It let out a scream and dissipated, struck to the heart by the ebon blade. “I’ll get them!” Another blow and he chopped a ghost through the eyes. It popped like a soap bubble.

The third ghost turned from its attack on Riona and leaped at Dougal, too fast for him to riposte. The spirit passed through him, and he could feel his heart freeze with its passage. He spun as it emerged from his far side and snapped loose with the sword. It caught the ghost immediately, and before it could even scream, it was gone.

Riona staggered to her feet, her face wan from the chilling touch of the ghosts.

“We need to go,” said Dougal, “before any other ghosts find us.”

“Too late,” said Riona, and looked over Dougal’s shoulder at the bone-strewn square they had just crossed.

The square was now filled with ghosts: soldiers and citizens, men and women and children. They watched the pair silently, their eyes wide with curiosity and madness.

“What are they waiting for?” asked Dougal, but he immediately had his answer. On the opposite side of the square, atop the shards of a collapsed tower, Adelbern appeared in full armor and bearing the ghostly remains of Magdaer, his double-bladed sword.

“You have invaded my kingdom and threatened my
people,” said Adelbern, his long hair blown back by unseen breezes. “You are traitors to Ascalon and to humanity. I have found you guilty, and the verdict is death! Subjects! Carry out the—”

Adelbern did not finish his sentence, for the ground beneath their feet began to hum and shake. Slowly, one of the bones pulled loose from the others and arced out, over the nearby buildings, to the east. Then another leg bone, this one belonging to a charr. Then a skull. All of them were suddenly magnetic, pulled by some unseen force toward the east. The air was soon filled with the shards of bones, daggers, and clubs of skeletal remains forming a broad gray-white river.

“What is this?” shouted Adelbern. “What sorcery is this?”

“Kranxx,” said Dougal, kneeling down next to Riona in the shade of a toppled pillar, safe from the blows. “He said he had one more trick. He must have gotten the Golem’s Eye to work again.”

The ghosts themselves were confused as the bones sailed through them, leaving ripples in their spiritual form. Then one, then another, turned and started to chase the airborne rainbow of remains. These may have been their own bones in life, and perhaps they were incensed that they were being disturbed.

“Halt!” shouted the king at his deserting followers. “I said halt! Kill these interlopers, and then we will deal with the sorcerer.”

The was a huge thumping noise, as of a building filled with kettledrums collapsing, and Adelbern, the ghostly king of Ascalon, the Sorcerer-King who had
struck fear in the hearts of the charr, turned, his face contorted in shock and awe.

Above the line of buildings behind him arose a titanic figure, humanoid at the top and serpentine at the bottom, made entirely of bones and bone fragments. It was the same shape as the tomb guardian Dougal and the others had fled, the defender of Blimm’s tomb. Except it was made of every bone in Ascalon City.

And at the back of its neck rode a small figure with a large head, gripping the bones like a rider holding on to his saddle. In his other hand he held his misshapened hat and beat the side of the creature with it.

“I got it to work!” Dougal could hear the asura’s thin voice from the height. “Praise the alchemy, I built myself a city guardian!”

“Destroy it!” shouted Adelbern. “Destroy the abomination!”

Now another serpent appeared, this one a thin blue-white one that snaked around the torso of the city guardian. This one was made entirely of ghosts, each crawling on the backs of others as it spiraled upward, trying to reach the small asura.

“Kill the little monster!” shouted the ghost king. “Kill it and take its power!”

Kranxx apparently noticed the ghosts trying climb its creature’s form and kicked his great mount hard. The serpent-bodied city guardian lurched to the left, collapsing buildings in its way and scraping off hordes of ghosts. More spirits rose in their place, and Dougal could hear the king laugh.

“You will join my kingdom!” exhorted Adelbern.
“You and all the world of the living! I shall take you, and you will join my generals, and we will march on your cities and sweep them all from our path.”

“It’ll be a cold day in Rata Sum!” snapped Kranxx, and the city guardian got taller now, reaching up to the overcast clouds.

“I will command your power!” bellowed Adelbern, ghostly spittle flying from his lips.

“I’ll give you your wish!” answered Kranxx, his eyes as mad as the ghost’s. “This is for Gullik! I will send you and your minions back beneath the earth!”

And with that, the city guardian, made of all the mortal remains of the ghosts of Ascalon, lunged forward like an arcing cobra, its huge head and massive arms before it as it descended right onto Adelbern and his spire.

“Command
this,
bookah!” shouted Kranxx. The late king barely had time to scream.

And then the centuries-old remains of Ascalon City cascaded down onto the king in a tidal wave of bone. The ossified skeletons turned to dust as they hit, but they were relentless and eternal, and the rest of the body followed, pouring ton upon ton of disintegrating legs, arms, and skulls onto the king’s bastion.

It went on for what seemed to be several long minutes. And when it stopped, a huge fog bank of dust and death hung over the city. And there was no sign of ghosts, kings, or asura.

The pair stumbled through the cloud of pulverized bone, making for the hazy pillar of light.

“He must have pulled in every loose bone in the city,” said Dougal, shaking his head.

“And the ghosts with them,” said Riona. “It will be a while if they re-form.”

“You think he got Adelbern?” asked Dougal.

Riona shrugged. “I’m sure he drove him back. It is going to be a long time before he shows his undead face aboveground, though I bet he won’t be alone when he does.”

The air was so thick, they almost toppled over the edge of the pit without seeing it. The dust cleared enough to show a huge beacon lancing from the bottom of the pit toward the sky, punching through the low-hanging clouds. Somewhere at the base were the remains of the tower where Adelbern, the Sorcerer-King, invoked the Foefire.

Dougal reached into his pack and pulled out a length of rope. He handed it to Riona. “Find something solid to anchor this,” he said. “I’m going in.”

“I’m going with you,” she said.

He shook his head as he peered down into the
blackness of the well. “I need someone back here guarding my way out. Otherwise, I’m never coming out of there alive.”

Riona frowned but nodded in agreement as she went to fasten the rope around the base of a nearby statue. Dougal recognized it as a portrayal of Adelbern in his younger days, soon after he had returned from his battles with Kryta to claim the crown. It hurt to think how far the king had fallen from that hopeful age. He and the rest of the world.

Once Riona secured the rope, Dougal swung his legs over the ridge of broken stone around the pit. He mentally overlaid Dak’s map. No, Savione’s map. Was that the ghostly courtier’s curse: that he could not leave for the Mists until the ghostly dagger was removed? Would he return as well?

Carefully, Dougal climbed down the side of the pit, Riona playing out the rope from above. He could feel the intensity of the light on his back, almost pushing him against the wall. If he was right, he would not have to crawl all the way to the bottom of the shaft.

The wall was slippery as well, and slicked with moss. Dougal had a hard time finding handholds. The rope meant he didn’t have to, but he didn’t like to trust himself entirely to his equipment. Ropes had been known to snap, and there was always the chance the ghosts would find it and cut it loose. Of course, if that happened, the lack of a rope would likely be the least of his troubles.

There. About halfway down the pit, a passageway delved farther into the depths. At some distant point in
time it had been framed by a pair of heavy doors, but one was missing and the other canted at an angle, its wooden face reduced to splinters. Now it reminded him of the empty eye sockets of a sun-bleached skull.

Dougal swung over to the entrance. There was a thin perch before the door. Dougal reached into his pack and fished out a small lantern on a lanyard. He lit it and hung it around his neck. He would need the light once he moved away from the Foefire.

“I’m there!” he shouted up to Riona.

Her head appeared at the rim of the pit. “Good. What do you see?”

“This must have been a secret escape route for the royal family,” Dougal said as he moved deeper into the foundations under the main square. “I’m surprised to see so little security.”

As the words left his lips, Dougal felt something under his foot click. He recognized the sensation right away: a pressure plate. He braced himself for something horrible.

Dougal froze and nothing happened. All right. Then the trap would spring when the pressure was removed.

The trap was probably meant to go off when he walked past the pressure plate. That meant that if he leaped backward, he might survive. The trap would go off where it expected him to be, and he’d be just fine.

Or maybe whatever it was would affect the entire tunnel and kill him anyhow.

Dougal decided that that was unlikely, if this tunnel had been made for people who had to get out of the
royal chambers in a hurry. The artisans who had crafted the trap would have known that. They wouldn’t have put in a trap that might accidentally kill the people they were trying to protect. A smart trap maker would have it so that it would affect only people entering the catacombs this way, not leaving them.

And it must be older than the charr invasion itself, made for earlier rulers. He could not imagine Adelbern ever using a tunnel to escape.

Dougal threw himself backward, spinning about and throwing himself flat on his face and covering his head with his arms.

The trap sprang as Dougal’s weight left the pressure plate. Fire did not engulf the passage. The floor did not drop away. Instead, he heard something come crashing down into the passage, right where he would have been if he’d walked blithely past the trap.

Dougal sat up and looked back up the passageway. In the light from the tiny lantern still hanging from his chest, he saw a series of spiked poles that had stabbed down from a set of concealed holes in the ceiling. These would have run him through and left him impaled on the poles until he either bled to death or died of thirst.

Despite that, there was just enough room around the spikes for Dougal to squeeze his way past. “I’m all right!” he shouted back toward the entrance, but Riona said nothing. Perhaps she could no longer hear him.

Dougal snaked his way through the catacomb. There were multiple passages now, some doorways crushed, others as open as spoiled tombs. The Foefire had twisted the catacombs when it struck. The darkened halls here
had probably stood tall and unshaken once, but now the place was littered with bricks that had fallen from the ceiling and walls. In some sections the roof had caved in entirely, and in others it looked as if it might do so in an instant.

Finally he reached the site of the vault on his mental map. It was a slab of stone that seemed solid enough to serve as the foundation for a castle. It showed no hinges, knobs, or other features, only a dark hole in its exact center, just a little bigger than the size of his fist.

Five years. It had taken him five years to get to this point.

Dougal scanned the door with his eyes and his fingertips, hoping to find some flaw in it, some hint of what he needed to do to make it swing open. Finding nothing, he knelt down, brought his light up to the hole in the middle of the door, and peered into it.

He started cursing right away. “It’s a Thief’s Nightmare,” he said to himself. To work this sort of lock, you have to put your entire hand into the hole, grab the handle, and then turn it in the proper sequence. If you screw it up, a blade springs out to remove your hand at the wrist. Worse, you can’t see what you’re doing. Your arm blocks the way. Barbaric. And effective.

Dougal steeled himself and stuck his hand into the black hole, hoping that it would still be attached to him the next time he saw it. The metallic handle felt cool in his hand as he grabbed it.

He turned the handle counterclockwise until it reached a point of resistance, and there was a click. There was no sudden pain, no blade dropping. He had
unfastened the first tumbler. Sweating now, he began to turn the handle in the other direction, past the original point. There was a bit of resistance. Was that the second tumbler, or was it the trap about to spring?