The Black Shriving (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 2) (64 page)

The demon lord screamed again, a harrowing, awful sound that deafened Asho. White light poured out of its mouth and eyes, and then its chest ruptured, sending huge, clotted pieces of ichor-drenched flesh blasting out past Asho's turned head.

The demon's final wing beat lifted them one last time into the air, then the wings of flame simply dissolved away into nothing. They rose a few yards closer to the stars, hung still for a moment, and then began to fall.

Terrified, Asho reached for power, but Kethe was gone. Her connection had shut down. He saw her falling behind the demon, eyes closed, limp-limbed. Frantic to save her, Asho pulled his blade free of the demon's ruined chest and smacked its serrated edge into the demon's shoulder. He hauled himself up and over, his body pulling away from the demon's altogether as they plummeted toward the ground.

"Kethe!" His scream was torn from his mouth by the wind. Faster and faster they fell; the hold, the fires, and the fleeing demons below rose up toward them with horrific speed. At last, Asho was able to reach out and catch Kethe's arm. He pulled her in close, releasing his blade as he hugged her tight. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and took in what power he could of his own accord.

It was pitifully little. With Kethe's soothing presence gone, his whole body felt tortured, his soul burned and abused. He drank in a sip, turned so that he would hit the ground first, and whispered,
Your soul to the White Gate.

The ground soared up toward them, and Asho expended everything he had in one final push against it. He felt blood rise in his gorge and pain cleave through his head, and then they hit and everything went dark.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Ser Tiron stood with blade drawn, staring fixedly at the steps that led from the underground chambers to the storage room above. Iskra was by his side, a hand resting lightly on his mailed shoulder. It galled him to be down here, hiding as others waged war above, but Iskra had given him a direct command: stay below and act as her last line of defense should the enemy come down those steps. He'd had no choice but to obey, and worse, a part of him had been relieved; he was battered, wounded, his vision gray with exhaustion, barely able to lift his blade, and unsure if he would last more than a few heartbeats in battle.

He glowered at the steps, listening intently to the dull cries and filtered crashes. Occasionally the ceiling shivered as if punished by some primal force. Captain Patash had led his soldiers up to the storage room, where they would have more room to fight should the enemy make it past the Sin Casters. Tiron had heard some yells from them, but nothing that spoke of a full assault.

"That cannot be Lord Laur assaulting us," said Iskra quietly.

"No," agreed Tiron, opening and closing his grip on his sword. "Unless we lost time passing through the Portals."

"I've never heard of that happening," said Iskra.

The sound of footsteps echoed down the stairs. Tiron tensed, but it was merely an Agerastian soldier, a broad-shouldered woman with a broken nose and a pattern of small, pale scars like sword nicks across her tanned face. She saluted and spoke quickly, and even though Tiron didn't understand her words, her attitude was clear: relief mixed with shock.

Orishin poked his head out of one of the side rooms. He blinked, then emerged, sliding a black-bound book into his satchel. He questioned the soldier rapidly in Agerastian, then turned to Iskra. "They are retreating, my lady. She says the demons have been beaten back."

Demons
. Ser Tiron gazed at his blade. He'd have been useless up there without Mæva to enchant his sword.

"The Ascendant be praised," Iskra said reflexively, and then Tiron caught a flicker of a frown as she caught herself. "Come. Let us go up and see how we can help."

"Iskra," said Tiron, raising a hand to forestall her. "You should stay down here while we make sure -"

She simply strode past him toward the steps. The broken-nosed soldier raised her eyebrows, clearly impressed at Iskra's bravery, then turned and climbed the steps ahead of her. Ser Tiron swallowed a curse and followed, Orishin at his heels.

Captain Patash's soldiers were standing in loose formation across the breadth of the storage room, having dragged crates and sacks into a loose barricade before them. They had seen no combat, Tiron saw with relief; as brave as they might be, they would have been helpless before even one demon. Patash snapped a quick command, and the soldiers pulled aside a crate to allow Iskra to step through. Another command, and ten soldiers fanned out into the courtyard ahead of her, the others forming a rear guard.

Tiron exchanged a nod with Patash before following Iskra outside, where they all stopped as they gazed upon the destruction. Ser Tiron stepped past Iskra, gently pushing aside an Agerastian so that he could look up at the inside of the courtyard's front wall. It was charred, and many of the rocks were cracked, with large gaps at the very top where chunks had been torn free. At the foot of the wall lay a long mound of remains, not bodies but, rather, shattered skeletons tangled in old cloth, a jumble of yellowed bones and dirt, as if they had been disinterred by a brutally indifferent gravedigger. It was impossible to tell how many had fallen there. Fifty? A hundred? Two of the aspen trees were badly burned, one snapped in half like a celery stalk. A boulder nearly Tiron's size lay a few yards to his right. It had dented the wall above it, pushing out the heavy rocks where it had impacted.

Patash whispered something that might have been a prayer. Smaller heaps of bone lay here and there across the courtyard, the corpses of rotting animals, mostly. An eagle. What might have been a three-yard-long snake over by the wall. Tiron recalled how the demon he had helped kill up in the mountains had decomposed rapidly till nothing was left but the mountain goat it had possessed; these no doubt were similar remains.

"There," said Iskra. "Hurry. Bring them inside."

Tiron followed her pointed finger and saw a torn robe of yellow and purple. One of the Agerastian Vothaks was almost hidden under rubble near the wall, while another lay on the far side of the fallen aspen. Not dead, he saw, but sick to the point of death. Patash's soldiers ran forward and gently lifted them, then carried them back to the storage room, and as they passed, Tiron saw their deathly pallor, the blood running from nostrils, ears, and the corners of their mouths, the vomit and blood spewed down their fronts, their gnarled and twisted limbs.

He almost formed the sign of the triangle, but he caught himself in time. What kind of battle had raged out here? Needing to take action, he tapped Patash on the shoulder and nodded to the front gate, then strode forward, sword at the ready, stepping over piles of bones and into the gatehouse tunnel. Its interior was also charred, the ground covered in sooty stains, and when Tiron emerged on the far side he stopped once more in wonder.

A huge hole had been dug out of the ground on the far side of the oak tree, four yards across and perhaps three deep. An ashen pit. This front section of the island was gouged and furrowed as if it had been hacked at by a giant, and bones and rotting animal corpses were littered everywhere. Lifting his gaze, he thought he saw movement at the far end of the causeway. Possibly something fleeing into the forest that covered the lower slopes of the mountains, but he couldn't be sure.

Patash said something and pointed, then began to jog toward where Audsley was kneeling beside two bodies.

No
, thought Tiron. He ran after Patash, pain stabbing through him as he went, and staggered to a halt beside Audsley to look down at Asho and Kethe.

"Are they dead?"

Audsley looked up at him, solemn behind his spectacles. "No. But they're not doing well. Not doing well at all."

Tiron knelt down beside Kethe and reached out to touch the side of her neck. She looked strange in a way that he couldn't pin down, not wasted and sickened like the Vothaks, but insubstantial, her veins clearly visible like blue tracery through her skin, her lips bloodless. Her armor was scorched and bloodied and torn, but not Kethe herself; she looked as clean as if she had just emerged from a bath.

He felt at last a faint and erratic pulse. Grunting, he slid his arms under her knees and shoulders and lifted her to his chest. He was shocked by how little she weighed, less even than a child.

Patash caught him under the elbow and helped him stand. "Bring Asho," Tiron said, looking down at the Bythian.

Only then did he really study Asho's countenance, and saw the signs of Sin Casting writ large. Blood was running from the boy's mouth, nose and ears; his skin, always pale, was now waxen; his eyes were sunken; his hair was singed and burned. Patash called to several soldiers, who ran over and picked up Asho, and then together they staggered over the torn-up land to the front gate.

They returned to the courtyard and there passed into the great hall. Tiron looked around the gloomy interior, hoping for a sign of Ser Wyland and the others, but it was empty. "Light the fire," he snapped, and Audsley rushed over to the main pit. He dropped some logs into the ashen center, and a moment later they roared to life.

Tiron lowered Kethe onto a bedroll, sat on his heels, studied the suddenly roaring fire and then looked to Audsley. "How did you do that?"

Audsley shrank back, but was prevented from answering by Iskra, who rushed into the hall and went to Kethe's side with a wordless cry. She knelt by Kethe and cupped her cheek, studying every inch of her as quickly as she could, smoothing her hair, shaking her head in powerful denial of what she was seeing.

"Kethe? Kethe!" She turned to Tiron. "Remove her armor. Hurry!"

Tiron began to work on the buckles and straps, cutting through the ones that were warped or too tightly knotted. Iskra hovered beside him, then commanded someone to fetch her water and a cloth. The groans of the surviving Vothaks were a dull tapestry of pain in the background, and as more fires were lit, the hall slowly began to feel alive once more.

"Orishin," said Iskra, pulling herself away from Kethe's side with great reluctance. "Captain Patash. Audsley."

The three men gathered before her. For a moment, Iskra seemed not to know why she'd called them to her side, staring blankly at them all, and Tiron almost rose to comfort her, but then she ran her hands through her hair and gathered herself.

"Orishin, please translate. Captain Patash, please post guards on the walls. I would also appreciate your sending a group of your soldiers to carefully search the hold and the island for any of our people. Audsley will then show you where our food and belongings are kept. I want a meal cooked immediately. I want fresh water brought in from the lake. The hall looks like it's been abandoned, so I want bedrolls, blankets, everything pulled out of storage so that it can be used again."

She hesitated and looked around the hall. "Where is Ser Wyland? Brocuff? The others?" She pressed her hand to her face. "No, of course, they must have gone into hiding to avoid being massacred by the demons. We'll send people down to Hrething tomorrow to collect them."

The pile of armor by Kethe's side grew as Tiron cut free her chest plate and began sawing through the leather ties that held her shoulder plates on. He listened abstractly as Orishin translated in a steady whisper, and out of the corner of his eye saw Patash nod, then turn to where his soldiers were standing uncertainly to the side and give them commands.

Iskra reached out and took Audsley's hands in her own. "Magister. Please, help Kethe. What can we do for her?"

Tiron pulled away to give them space, and Audsley and Iskra knelt by Kethe's side. She was breathing shallowly, her face turned toward the fire, the light of which only accentuated her unnatural appearance.

Audsley frowned as if listening to a distant conversation, then shook his head. "I am no expert, my lady, but I have heard that this may happen to an Alabaster - sorry, a Virtue - when they exert themselves too much."

"I fear you're right," said Iskra, caressing Kethe's hair. "Oh, Kethe."

There was heartbreak in her voice. There was nothing he could do for her, not with this, not now.

"Did I tell you, either of you, of my brother?" She looked up at Tiron, her eyes bright with tears, then to Audsley. "He was like Kethe. He had the gift. Just before he left us, he was beginning to look a little like this." She bent down to run trembling fingers down the side of Kethe's cheek. "Though this – this is far more advanced..."