The Children of Urdis (Grimwold and Lethos Book 2) (23 page)

Thorgis had followed him after all. His sword, glowing no more than any other well-maintained blade, clanged off the snake demon's red and black scales. The beast's head swiveled around and forgot Syrus for a moment. The body was so long it extended almost to the entrance. With a careless slap of its tale, the beast whipped Thorgis flat and then knocked aside his dropped sword. It returned to Syrus, the crushing hands resuming their upward pass.

He was going straight into the fangs of the demon.

The world stopped. It grew dim and fuzzy. Syrus felt nothing, heard nothing. The massive jaws of the snake hung open, and Syrus's head tingled at the thought of being crushed between them. Yet he did not move.

Is this death, he thought.

Something like it. The voice filled his mind, and had not every part of his body been held down he would have jumped in surprise. The voice was rough and warm, buzzing like a distant swarm of bees at the center of his mind.

Are you the demon? Syrus thought. Not satisfied to kill me in one go. You want more time to toy with me.

I have no time at all, the voice answered. I am Grimwold. You know me, old friend. I cannot explain this myself. I am also near death, but I have a chance to aid someone. So I chose you. Let yourself go and I will fill you with my strength. It will be glorious, I promise.

The world hung still, but Syrus noticed in reality it was moving a fraction of its normal pace. The demon's arms were still raising him and the venom on its fangs still gleamed. All was all so slow that it seemed motionless. The voice did not speak again, nor did it sound much like Grimwold. Yet what did he have to lose?

He let himself go limp and closed his eyes. Despite the heart-pounding terror of his situation, he tried to breathe slowly.

Then the world resumed its normal speed. His vision snapped back to clarity. The sounds of the room rushed back into his ears: the scrape of scales on stone, Thorgis's curses as he retrieved his sword, his own ragged breathing.

And he felt strong. Strong as a hundred men.

He pulled his arms free with no effort. As the other arms fed him into the mouth of the snake, Syrus grabbed its jaws top and bottom.

The human eye seemed to widen in surprise. Perhaps it was the pupil constricting in the blue iris. Syrus did not care. He felt like a god. The arms shoved at him and the jaws tried to clamp shut, but Syrus was in full control. He snapped the creature's jaws open, hearing bone snap.

The hands let him drop. He landed on his feet. The snake rolled onto its back, hissing and spitting with agony. Its jaws hung open, broken.

Syrus knew the creature was not dead. His head hurt and he felt as if something were poking his eyes. Grimwold, whatever he was doing, seemed to guide him. He spun on his heels and stalked for Thorgis. He felt as if he were looking at the young man for the first time. He marveled at his similarity to Eldegris, but his obvious fear brought a sneer to Syrus's face.

"Get off the floor, boy," he said. It was his own voice, but he felt like a passenger in a carriage listening to the driver speaking. "Give me that sword."

Syrus did not wait for it to be granted, but snatched it from Thorgis's hand. The blade lit anew. Hot runes of glowing yellow wrote themselves in the air around the blade and began spinning. Syrus wanted to study it more carefully, but instead he marched forward to the writhing demon's head.

He dragged the blade along its length and the demon's scales cut open like old skin. At the head, he held the point out for the human eye to see. The arms that spanned the top length of its body reached out to try to stop him, but recoiled when the sword swept over them.

"Disgusting thing," Syrus said. "Back to the mist realms with you."

He sliced the snake's head off with one powerful backhand cut. It rolled away with a hiss, disgorging black blood into the hallway. It gurgled out of the stump in thick gouts, more like oil than blood. The stench was sulfurous, and behind him Thorgis moaned in disgust. Syrus watched the body coil and writhe until it stopped. The arms, however, continued to flex and grab in any direction. When an arm grabbed another, each wrestled as if trying to pull the other from the body.

Be safe, Syrus. The voice again filled his head, a loud buzz that worsened his headache.

Find the way out and bring the answers with you. We're depending on you.

The crushing pain in his head released but his eyes throbbed. The sword in his hand suddenly electrified, jolting him with a snap and causing him to shout in pain. The blade clattered as it landed on the stone. The symbols vanished and it seemed a normal blade again. Syrus staggered to the edge of the balcony and leaned on it. The snake demon lay still but for dozens of arms flailing mindlessly.

"By the gods, how did you do that?" Thorgis approached, retrieving the sword from the floor. It did not shock him, but nor did it spring back to life.

"It was Grimwold. He possessed me."

"How?" Thorgis's face was incredulous. They stared at each other in silence, and at last Syrus shrugged.

"Let's leave this place. The stench is unbearable."

"We can only head down," Thorgis said. He peered skeptically over the balcony.

"Then that is our direction. We have a duty to fulfill." Syrus rubbed his head, feeling the short stubble of his hair beneath his palm. "Down into the dark to find the answers my king has demanded of me."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Grimwold had held the sword again. Even if it was with Syrus's hand, the glory of that blade had suffused his soul. He was now floating in the white space Kafara had shown him. She had opened a door in his bedroom, planted a soft kiss on his head, then told him to find Syrus. Nothing but white existed beyond the door. When he had turned back to her she was already fading into nothing. He stepped into the light and floated. From Syrus's eyes the world had been blurry and in his limbs it had felt heavy.

He floated now. Bright and light, a warm buzz filled his ears. He weighed nothing and felt nothing. No one was in his mind, nor did he feel as if he had a mind. He felt like a thought. Yes, he was a thought rising in the mind of something incomprehensible. He was a bubble on a stream of brilliance. He would drift here forever.

The sword. Of course, it was connected to this place. It was of this light. Holding it again had brought him here. Had raised him as thought in the mind of the world.

His name thundered from somewhere and he drifted. Was it down or up? There were no directions here. He had no hands to grasp, nor feet to kick out for the ground.

It was down. The voice became thunder. The brilliance evaporated like thin water on a hot stone. Dry, dead grass spread throughout a glade of naked hazel trees. Brown and gold leaves rolled in a breeze he did not feel. He stood behind a short, dark man with shoulder-length dark hair. A beautiful woman with yellow hair hugged him. Both were dressed in ragged, black clothes. Both were weeping.

A body lay in the grass. It was naked but for a loin cloth. A horrible wound had been carved into its chest and blood still seeped from it. The man's face was impassive and still, more like wax than flesh. Black whorls radiated from the cut, seeming to writhe and tremble as he looked at these.

Grimwold found his own hand seeking the same spot on his chest. He now had a hand and a body. He felt them but did not see them. Not without concentration. He was light and thought. He did not belong in this world, but somehow he was here.

The wounded man was him, of course, and the dark man was his companion, Lethos. He did not recognize the woman. None of it was of any consequence. He had been somewhere in the dark before this, and now that he possessed the light he cared not for a body or friends.

"You are stuck here too?"

The voice startled him, not in the way it would in the world. His heart did not race or he did not gasp. He simply turned toward the source behind him.

The boy wore gray rags splattered with rusty stains. His sandy hair felt to his shoulders and across a too-prominent brow for a child his age. Intense blue eyes regarded him, seeming to draw him down out of the light into the world. Grimwold stared at the boy. His presence seemed somehow brighter than the world around him. Everything now seemed sapped of its color, like red cloth left in the sun too long.

"Am I stuck here?" Grimwold asked. The boy shrugged. The world around him continued in silence. Lethos and the woman exchanged words he could not hear only a few feet away.

"Maybe you're stuck. Maybe not." The boy walked over to Grimwold's body lying in the grass. He shook his head as if in pity. "Your body is just right here. All you have to do is lie down in it and you will live again. How nice."

"I want to get back to the light." Grimwold was suddenly aware of weight again. He looked at his hands and found them before himself. Unlike the body on the ground, he wore the clothes and mail coat he had worn the day the arrow had struck him. He remembered it now, all of it. He remembered Syrus and Lethos and Kafara's final words. He turned to his friend, willing his bond to touch Lethos's mind. Yet he only spoke eagerly to the beautiful woman with him.

"I don't know what that is," the boy said. "I have been here since the strange men came with their white ship. They killed my family and me. Everyone was killed and they left nothing behind. I am trapped here now. I just walk around the island and no one sees me."

"That is a terrible fate," Grimwold said. "You are a ghost now. Is that what I am? Is this the ghost world?"

Again the boy shrugged. He joined Grimwold by his body. "Just get back into it. You will forget me and return to life."

Grimwold bit his lip. The memory of the light was already fading. How much worse would it be when he left this realm? He might never have a chance to experience it again. Yet hadn't he proclaimed death to be the coward's way out?

"Go on," the boy said.

"Is there anything I can do to help you, lad? You seem to know much about this place, yet I am ignorant. If there's something I could do that you cannot."

"There is," the boy said, his mature face seeming to brighten. "The strange men left something behind. I think it's blocking me."

Grimwold peered at the boy. He tried to recall all the legends of the afterlife, but he had not been much of a student of such things. He had always expected Danir's shield maidens to bear his body from the battlefield up into Danir's hall. Could this boy be a demon trying to trick him into the mist realms instead? Syrus would certainly know, but he was of no aid here.

"What is this thing?"

"It's that, only bigger." The boy pointed at the body on the ground, indicating the black swirls on Grimwold's chest. The tendrils spun and slithered like worms across his flesh. If it moved so in life, neither Lethos nor the woman gave any indication they recognized it.

"Is that what has kept me out of my body?"

The boy shrugged. "I can show you mine. It's not here, but far away. Let me take you."

The boy grabbed his hand and pulled gently. Grimwold held steady. "You are eager to take me somewhere else."

"But it's not here," the boy said, his blue eyes widening. "It's where my village was. I cannot get close to it, but you are a real warrior. You could."

Grimwold stared at the boy still clutching his gnarled hand in his own small one. He glanced at Lethos and his woman, both who now leaned beside him examining his wound. The black mass seemed to jump and dodge as both of them tried to wrap his wound in bandages made from ribbons of their own clothes. If Lethos had the choice, he would aid the boy without hesitation. Grimwold suspected the worst in people, and he had not often been wrong. How much higher were the stakes in the world of ghosts? If he left his body, would he find it again?

"Please, you're the only one I've found who can see me. I've been alone for so long and I want to go to my family. If you can chase away that black thing, then I might be able to leave. I just feel it's right."

"Lead the way, then." The boy gave a genuine smile, or at least Grimwold judged it so. A demon had possessed his own sister for years, and yet he had never known. Still, he had a chance to help this boy as well as learn more about what these so-called strange men left behind. They were undoubtedly the Tsal, and according to Kafara, he would spend his days in battle with them. Best to know the enemy.

They took three large steps and the world blurred. Grimwold shouted in surprise, but the boy merely laughed, his voice smearing into the world as it melted into streaks and whorls of pale colors. When he set his foot down again he was in the ruins of a village. Familiar A-frame constructed homes had collapsed into burned ruins. Though the color here was as desaturated as before, the rusty blood stains were still obvious on doors and walls that had not burned down. No smoke rose here, and no bodies lay amid the ruins. He had visited scenes like this a hundred times in his youth. He had been the cause of such terror, and he was no longer proud of it. He had sailed with Aros the Conqueror once and sowed chaos and terror as a raider. But with his practiced raider's eye he saw all the spoils that had been left behind. Cooking pots and trestles still stood over hearths. Barrels and casks remained stacked. This place had been raided for the people only.

"What happened here?"

The boy stood with arms on his hips, surveying the damage. His sandy hair fluttered in a wind Grimwold did not feel. "Only six came, but they were as gods. Each was as strong as ten men, and their flesh was as hard as iron. Their leader wove a black mist from his hands. It smelled like lambs at slaughter. I think we all died then. I got so cold and weak. When I opened my eyes again, I was here alone."

"Why do you think you were left here? Dead children should become servants in Danir's hall."

The boy shrugged, and still holding Grimwold's hand, he tugged him farther into the village. Grimwold passed between charred frames and scattered debris. The rutted paths between homes led to a central square where the boy halted. Grimwold looked up in disgust.