The Midnight Sea (The Fourth Element #1) (12 page)

Chapter Fourteen

I
f you are one of those fortunate people who have never faced a very large sandstorm approaching on an open plain, I can tell you that it is one of the most terrifying things in all of Nature.

That we were riding
toward
it rather than
away
from it made matters worse. The wind picked up, blowing a fine grit into our eyes. I could see the outer edge of the storm clearly now. A boiling wave that rolled across the earth, far taller than the highest towers of Tel Khalujah and as wide as the Midnight Sea.

At first, it seemed to be creeping like fog, but as we drew closer, I realized this this thing they had conjured was racing along. The horses whinnied in fear.

“Stick close,” Tommas called over his shoulder. “I’ll try to make an air bubble once we enter.”

Darius rode only a few feet away. It was strange not to feel him at my back, but we’d taken separate mounts from the Barbican. He clutched the reins with his right hand, his left hanging dead by his side. The weight of the cuff around my own wrist never seemed so heavy.
It takes a piece of the daēva. Maims
them…

Ilyas was far ahead, leading the vanguard. I could tell Darius the truth right now, tell him what we learned at the Barbican, and Ilyas would never know.

But in the time it took for me to consider this, we had closed the distance to the storm. I took a deep breath and reflexively made the sign of the flame. A moment later, the world turned to choking brown dust. It whipped my skin, howled in my ears like a chorus of Druj. I crouched in the saddle, head bowed, as the horses slowed to a walk.

They’re mad, I thought. We can’t fight in this. We can’t even see. The poor horses will be blinded…

And then I felt a force open a small space in the maelstrom. Tommas had made good on his promise. I could still hear the roar of the wind, but it no longer touched me. I wondered what it was costing him to shield us, and how long he could keep it up for. Part of me hated Ilyas for pushing him so hard, but I had seen more than a hint of exhilaration in Tommas’s eyes when he’d made the storm. He
enjoyed
working with air, and why wouldn’t he? He was like a bird with clipped wings, suddenly able to fly again. And air didn’t do the same damage as earth. It didn’t break you. Just
used
you, like a blacksmith used a set of bellows to heat his forge.

We crept forward, passing a weathered stone marker that indicated we’d found the Royal Road to Persepolae. I drew my sword. The storm battered at Tommas’s walls and I wondered what would happen if they collapsed completely. We would never find our way out, and the Holy Father only knew how long it would take for the sandstorm to subside.

Still, Ilyas led us deeper. The light dimmed, turned a strange shade of yellow. And then we stumbled out into clean air. And a scene from nightmare.

Bodies littered the ground. Some wore the white and gold of the guards from Gorgon-e Gaz, but at least three were clad in tunics of light blue, a triangle with a slash through it embroidered on the breast. The same symbol that was tattooed on Darius’s palm.

Daēvas.

They looked charred. Some were still smoking.

We were not out of the storm, not by any means, but someone had created a wide dome that held it back, a hundred times larger than the bubble Tommas had conjured. From the black lightning that flickered along its surface, I guessed it was the necromancers. The Antimagi.

Four of them were facing a knot of the surviving daēvas off to the left. They had added links to their chains and I saw one of the brown-robed Purified from the Barbican stumbling along, blank-faced, as its new master strode through the carnage, teeth bared in a savage grin.

“To me!” Ilyas screamed, galloping toward the necromancers.

Tommas and most of the soldiers followed him, but I wheeled my mount in the opposite direction, where the last living humans were about to be slaughtered by Druj. I counted nine Revenants on the battlefield, and several drifting shadows that could only be liches. Myrri ripped one apart with air, as Tijah raised her scimitar and rode at a Revenant, screaming her ululating Al Miraji battle cry.

I shook sand from my eyes and ducked under the whistling blade of one of those Undead warriors. The air reeked of blood and cooked meat. Then Darius was at my side. We were both mounted, but the thing still looked us in the eye. I parried another thrust, my teeth rattling in their sockets, as Darius crept around behind it. The Revenant was big but not very smart, and a moment later, its head was sailing through the air.

One of the guards from the Barbican screamed as a lich wrapped him in its cold embrace. I watched in horror as his mouth worked silently, the veins on his face and neck turning black. Myrri tore it apart just as he bit through his own tongue. A second later, another rose up behind her, swaying like a cobra. I lunged, slashing wildly. My blade severed its inky substance, but the parts began to coalesce again immediately. Then Tijah emerged from the murk and we managed to hold it off long enough for Myrri to recover and destroy it.

But the tide of Druj seemed endless. The instant we killed one, another appeared to take its place. I swung my sword until my arms grew numb. We’d been lucky with the first Revenant, but the others were proving much harder to kill. I was bleeding in a dozen places where I had been too slow to escape those five-foot-long iron blades. None of the wounds were life-threatening, but I was starting to feel foggy, disconnected from my body.

Across the dome, I caught a glimpse of Ilyas and his scarlet
qarha
hacking a path through the Druj like a scythe through ripe wheat. One of the necromancers seemed to be down, but so were most of the soldiers from the Barbican. Tijah and Myrri had been swept away from me. Dust swirled in the orange half-light, although the barrier seemed to be holding for the moment.

I blinked sweat from my eyes as a tremor shook the ground, followed by a hail of rocks and dirt aimed at the necromancers. Someone very powerful was working with earth and it wasn’t Darius. I would have known.

“Nazafareen!” My daēva rode over. He too was streaked with blood, some of it his own, some of it the foul black ichor of the Revenants. He had saved me more times than I could count this day, leaving my side only to rescue the last Purified from certain death at the hands of a Revenant, whose head he now flung to the ground.

I unwound my
qarha
. “There’s something I need to tell you,” I said. “About the daēvas. Ilyas—”

I saw his eyes widen and looked over my shoulder just in time to see a necromancer striding out of the gloom, chains clanking. His captives seemed wholly attuned to their master’s movements, limp as dolls but never hindering him. Their hair was dry as winter grass, their gums stretched over skeletal teeth, even as blood and life flushed the necromancer’s ruddy cheeks. He held something silvery in his hand. It looked like an orb.

My horse reared up at the sight of him, whinnying in terror. I was thrown from the saddle, striking the ground with a bone-jarring thud as the necromancer hurled the orb toward us. I rolled and it exploded a few yards to my left. Thin lines of flame shot out in all directions. I felt Darius’s fury as he was driven back. Of course they would use fire, I thought dimly. Those charred bodies should have been warning enough. I realized that I had no idea how to fight this creature.

The necromancer walked straight through the dancing flames as though they didn’t exist. His captives shambled along behind him and I could smell them now. Shit and piss and the stink of human misery. I turned and retched on the barren earth.

I thought it was the necromancer who had entreated us to join them on the plain. The leader of their little band of Antimagi. He looked like a normal man. If you saw him in a crowd, your gaze would pass right over him. He had shoulder-length brown hair, held back by a golden circlet. Sharp cheekbones and a long, slightly crooked nose. As he drew closer, I noticed that his tunic had a fringe on the bottom, and that fringe looked like human hair.
Pale, soft
leather
…

I scrambled to my sword and picked it up, heart thumping.

He stopped a few feet away and looked me over. Then he smiled. Without breaking eye contact, the necromancer yanked one of his captives forward, a black-haired boy, and slashed a knife across his throat. The boy sagged against the necromancer’s chest, his feet kicking feebly. He couldn’t have been more than eight years old. A skinny little thing, all knees and elbows. Shock gripped me as the boy’s life ran out of him in a red tide.

A mercy, a mercy, it’s a mercy, I thought, tears blurring my vision. He’ll rest with the Holy Father now.

I started to raise my sword, but had no time to use it before the ground at my feet began to crumble and gape open. Hands thrust out, the nails black and ragged. Then five swords erupted, ringing me in rusty iron.

“My children!” the necromancer cried. “Witness their birth, Water Dog!”

I knew I would have only one chance to kill the Revenants before they emerged fully so I didn’t waste my breath cursing him. I just started hacking. My blade bit through putrid flesh, through bones as old and hard as fossils. I screamed my sister’s name, let my hatred of the Druj lend strength to my failing body. Always, I had relied on Darius. We fought as a pair, each watching the other’s back. No matter how bad things got, I knew my daēva would save me.

Not today. But I was still a Water Dog. The light against the darkness. And I still believed that, despite the magi’s lies. I was born to kill Druj. If not for the King and Satrap Jaagos, then for myself. For the cause of right.

It almost worked, this little speech I gave myself.

I managed to behead four of them, but then a pair of arms like iron bands wrapped around me and lifted me off the ground from behind. They reeked of the grave. My breath came in harsh gasps as it squeezed me tighter. Stars exploded behind my eyes.

The necromancer’s face swam in front of me. I saw him open a hidden catch in the dead boy’s collar and let the corpse fall to the ground.

“I’ve always wanted a Water Dog,” he said, in the same way a child might say they had always wanted a kitten to play with.

I struggled and kicked as he came forward, the open collar in his hands. It was a loathsome thing, caked with gore and what smelled like dried vomit. I screamed and the Revenant clamped a hand over my mouth.

“Shhhh,” the necromancer whispered, as he fitted the collar around my throat. The metal was ice cold. “We’ll have fun, you and I.” He trailed his fingers across my breast. “It’s a long journey to Bactria. But you’re young and strong. I’ll be careful not to use you up too quickly.” My knees buckled as the collar snapped shut.

“Release her,” he told the Revenant.

I felt his mind, dark and crawling like a rotten stump. Firelight flickered red on the chains, reflected back from the mirrors of his eyes.

“On your knees,” the necromancer commanded.

I sank down. My sword lay at his feet, but he had no concern for it. He owned me now.

“I think I shall name you Lea,” he said musingly. “It was my mother’s name. You have the same color hair. Like sun-warmed honey.”

The look on his face when I seized the hilt and drove it into his belly was priceless.

“I’m already bonded, you fool,” I said, giving the blade a vicious twist and then sweeping it out in an arc that severed his hand at the wrist. The chain hadn’t yet struck the ground when I took the Revenant’s head on the backswing.

For in the moment that the collar snapped shut around my neck, I felt my daēva drive him back. My true bond, that preceded all others. A shining wall around my mind and soul that the necromancer’s scrabbling fingers could not breach. For some reason, he couldn’t sense it. The power of the nexus, of the living world, was beyond him.

The instant the necromancer lost his slaves, the flames winked out. He shrieked in pain and rage. I still wore the collar, the end of the chain trailing in the dirt with his severed hand twitching inside the cuff like some loathsome pale spider, and I wanted it off more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. How many people had this creature tortured and killed over the years? He looked at me, still clutching his belly, and
smiled
.

I brought my boot back to kick him in the face. He would not die fast, I decided. Not at all. And then a shadow detached from his body and solidified into a
second
Antimagus, and I realized with something close to despair that this fight was not over.

The gut wound should have been a mortal one, had he been truly human. But he was something more, even without the poor creatures whose lives he had fed on. Thank the Father, the others were still alive. A woman and one of the Purified from the Barbican. They curled on the ground, trembling. I was glad they had survived because there had already been too much death today, but also because the thought of facing ten more Revenants made me want to curl up beside them.

I felt Darius at my back an instant before he pushed me aside and faced the twin necromancers. Each had seized a blade from the Revenants I’d slain, and they whirled them one-handed in blurring arcs.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Darius glanced at me, and for a wonder, his lips quirked in a smile.

“I think you would have been tough meat for him to chew, bond or no,” he said.

I felt the coating of blood and sand on my face crack as I grinned.

“Oh, you silver-tongued flatterer,” I said, and then we were both fighting for our lives again.

Parry, thrust, stab, block. The necromancers were skilled with a sword, but Darius and I were better. Again and again, we dealt them blows that should have been fatal. Each time, they healed within seconds. Exhaustion washed over me as I spun to the side and narrowly avoided an overhand strike to my face. But the necromancers showed no signs of tiring. Mirror images of each other, one was missing its left hand, the other its right. If we did manage to kill one somehow, would it too split in half? The thought chilled me to the bone.