The Nomad (27 page)

Ryana suddenly understood, and she licked her lips nervously. “The undead will rise.”

Kara moistened her fingertip and tested the wind, which had increased significantly. “It is coming in very fast,” she said. “Quickly. We do not have much time.”

A shadow suddenly fell over them, and a shrill, piercing cry echoed through the deserted streets. They turned quickly. The roc was perched atop the building they had just emerged from, its huge wingspan darkening the plaza. Its giant head bent down toward them as it raised its wings and snapped its powerful beak hungrily.

“Nibenay,” said Sorak, quickly unsheathing Galdra. “He still controls the bird.”

Ryana barely had time to draw her sword before the roc leapt off the roof and came swooping down at them, its huge, powerful talons outstretched. She dodged to one side, barely avoiding the roc’s gigantic claw. She landed on the ground and rolled, coming up with her sword ready.

Sorak had waited until the last possible instant, then darted forward, underneath the roc’s outstretched talons. He swung Galdra in a powerful overhand stroke aimed at the giant bird’s lower quarters. The blade barely brushed the roc’s feathers, cutting several of them as, with a deafening screech, the bird landed just behind him.

“Kara!” Sorak shouted over the deafening screeching of the roc. “Make it stop!”

“It will not respond to me!” cried Kara. “Nibenay’s will is too strong! I cannot control the creature!”

“Stay back!” shouted Sorak, circling around the bird as it turned toward them, its wings folded back and up, its huge beak snapping as its head darted back and forth between him and Ryana. It lunged at Ryana. She ducked beneath its snapping beak and swung her sword with both hands. It struck against the roc’s beak, and it felt like she had struck a stout agafari tree. The shock of the impact ran all the way down her arms and into her shoulders. For a moment, she felt numb. The bird’s head darted down toward her again, and she leapt, diving to the ground and rolling away.

Sorak ran in toward the bird, but before he could strike, it jumped aside, turning as it did so and sweeping out with its wings. One wing caught Sorak in the side, and he fell, almost losing his grip on Galdra. But by that time, Ryana had regained her feet and came in at the roc from the other side, thrusting at its flank.

The giant bird shrieked as Ryana’s sword entered its side. The roc twisted toward her, craning its neck around to snap at her. She recoiled, barely avoiding having her head bitten off. Sorak, meanwhile, quickly regained his feet. He took several running steps and leapt, stretching out, diving directly beneath the bird. He swung out with Galdra and the elven steel struck one of the roc’s legs, passing completely, effortlessly, through it.

The roc screeched with pain as its leg was severed, and it collapsed to the ground, directly on top of Sorak. Ryana rushed in and thrust at it again, her sword entering the creature’s breast as the roc threw its head back and screamed at the sky. Its head arced down to snap at her again, but Ryana leapt aside and came in once more, thrusting deeply just beneath the bird’s right wing. The roc emitted a long, drawn-out, ear-piercing shriek and fell over heavily on its side with a loud crash. It thrashed several times, then died.

“Sorak!” Ryana shouted. “Sorak!”

“Here,” he called out.

She ran around to the other side of the bird’s carcass. Sorak was dragging himself out from underneath it, freed when the roc fell over. He had been pinned by the bird’s crushing weight, unable to move, and Ryana helped him to his feet. He was covered with the creature’s blood.

“Are you all right?” Ryana asked him anxiously.

“Yes,” he replied, taking a deep breath. “Merely winded. I could not breathe under there.”

“Catch your breath quickly,” Kara said, coming up beside them. She pointed at the sky.

The storm was moving in fast as the dark clouds scudded across the setting sun, blotting out its light. One large cloud moved across it, darkening the sky, and then the sun peeked out again briefly, and then another cloud moved across, blotting it out once more, There was more light when it passed, and then the main body of the cloud bank swept across the sun, and it disappeared from sight, plunging the streets into darkness.

Night had come early to Bodach.

For a moment, they simply stood there in the sudden darkness, staring at the clouds that had moved in to block the sun. The wind picked up as the storm moved in, blowing dust and sand through the streets in swirling eddies. Lightning flashed, stabbing down at the ground, and thunder rolled ominously. And, in the distance, they heard another sound… a long, low wail that rose in pitch and fell again. It seemed to echo down toward them from the deserted streets coming into the plaza, and a moment later, it was repeated, and joined by several more in a grim, chilling, ululating chorus. Night had fallen, and the ancient, ruined city of Bodach was suddenly no longer deserted.

“They rise,” said Kara.

“Hurry!” Kara cried. “There is no time to lose.
Run!”

She started sprinting across the plaza, toward a street leading off to the left. Sorak and Ryana ran after her. They headed north, down another street that curved around to the left and then ran straight again for a distance of some fifty to sixty yards before it branched off into two forks. Kara went right. They ran quickly, leaping over obstacles in their path, dodging around dunes that the wind had piled up against the building walls and rubble that had fallen into the street from the collapsing buildings.

All around them now, they could hear the bloodcurdling groans and wails of the undead as they rose to walk the streets once more. The sounds seemed to be coming from everywhere. They were coming from inside the buildings, and from the cellars underground, and from the ancient, long-dry sewers that ran beneath the city streets. Together with the rolling thunder and the rising whistle of the wind, it made for an unwholesome, spine-chilling concert.

“Where are we going?” Sorak shouted as they ran. It had taken him a few moments to reorient himself, and he had abruptly realized that they were running in the wrong direction. “Kara! Kara, wait! The raft is back the other way!”

“We are not going back to the raft!” she called over her shoulder. “We would never reach it in time anyway!”

“But this way leads north!” Ryana shouted, gasping for breath as she ran to keep up with them. She, too, had suddenly realized that the direction they were heading in would take them to the very tip of the peninsula. If they kept going in this direction, they would reach the northernmost limits of the city, and the inland silt basins. And then there would be nowhere left to go. “Kara!” she called out. “If we keep going this way, we shall be trapped!”

“No!” Kara shouted back over her shoulder, without breaking stride. “This way is our only chance! Trust me!”

Sorak realized that they had no other choice now. Kara was right. Even if they turned around at this point, they would never reach the raft in time, nor would there be time for Kara to once more raise the elementals. They would have to go back through the entire city, and it would be a running fight all the way.

The wailing of the undead was growing louder now and ominously closer. Already, he could see several of them come lurching out of the building doorways in the street ahead of them.

Sheet lightning flashed across the sky, briefly illuminating the streets as the shambling, walking corpses came staggering out from their resting places. The wind howled, and there was a deafening clap of thunder that seemed to shake the building walls around them. And then the rain came.

It came down in torrents, with all the strength and try of a fierce desert monsoon. Within seconds, they were drenched clear through to the skin. It was ramming so hard that it was difficult to see much more than several yards in front of them. Water flowed rapidly down the sides of the buildings and fountained off the rooftops in sheets, cascading to the streets below.

Rivulets formed and ran across the paving bricks, sluggishly at first, then gathering speed and size as the volume of water rapidly increased. Rains were infrequent in the Athasian desert, for the most part coming only twice a year, during the brief but furious monsoon seasons, so the buildings and the streets of Athasian towns and villages were not designed for drainage. If the roof leaked, it made little difference because the storms, though fierce, were usually of short duration, and then the sun came out again and everything dried quickly in the relentless desert heat. If the streets turned into muddy soup, no matter. They would remain that way only for a short while, and then the water would run off into gullies and washes, and in little while, the streets would dry and traffic would make them level once again.

The city of Bodach had been engineered by the ancients to take into account the extremely fierce monsoons that swept across the desert—then the sea—during the very brief storm seasons, but in all the years that the city had been abandoned, the gutters had cracked and been filled with wind-blown sand. The slight grading of the brick-paved streets, designed to allow the water to run off into the gutters at the sides, was not enough to compensate for gutters that no longer functioned.

Sorak and his two companions were soon sloshing through water that ran ankle deep. The hard desert soil beneath the paving bricks could not soak up the sudden volume of water, and so it ran in sheets across the bricks, instead of trickling down into the cracks. The uneven street they ran on became slippery, and to fall or turn an ankle now would mean disaster.

However, the rain did nothing to impede the slow, relentless progress of the undead. Sorak and Ryana saw the dark and spectral figures through the sheets of rain as they came lumbering toward them. More and more of them were coming out into the streets now. Sorak glanced behind him and saw their figures staggering out of the buildings, moving spastically, like marionettes with half their strings cut. And there were walking corpses directly ahead of them, as well. Several came lurching out of building doorways as they ran past.

“We’re never going to make it!” Ryana shouted. “Sorak! You have to summon Kether!”

“There’s no time!” he shouted back.

To summon the strange, ethereal entity known as Kether, he would have to stop and concentrate, empty his mind and settle his spirit to make himself receptive to the being that seemed to descend upon him from some other plane of existence, and he could not stop for even a moment. The undead were all around them and moving closer. He pulled Galdra from its scabbard. Galdra was now their only chance.

“Stay close behind me!” he called out over the noise of rain and wind and thunder. “And whatever you do, stay on your feet! Don’t fall!”

Ryana drew her sword as well, but she knew from hard experience that, at best, it could provide only a temporary respite. The undead were animated by spells, in this case an ancient curse that had survived for several thousand years, claiming more and more victims as time passed. Galdra, with its powerful ancient elven magic could kill them and send them to their final rest, but her sword could, at best, only dismember them. And then the severed, rotting body parts would only come together once again.

Ryana took Kara by the arm and ran to stay close behind Sorak in the blinding rain. Ahead of them, a dozen or more undead were clustered together in the street, staggering toward them with their arms outstretched, their mummified flesh shrunk back to expose brown and ancient bones that glistened in the rain.

Sorak ran to meet them.

* * *

Valsavis groaned and opened his eyes. He was dizzy, and his head felt as if it were splitting. He lay among the scattered treasure, a sorcerer-king’s ransom in gold and jewels and silver, and he remembered what he said to Sorak about too much wealth bringing a man nothing but trouble. In this case, the axiom had been demonstrated painfully and literally.

“Get up, you fool!” Nibenay’s angry voice spoke within his mind. “Get up! They are getting away! Go after them!”

Valsavis raised himself to his hands and knees, shook his head to clear it, and slowly got to his feet.

“Hurry, you great, hulking, brainless idiot! You wasting time! You’ll lose them.”

“Shut up, my lord,” Valsavis said.

“What? You dare to—”

“I will not find them any easier for your voice yammering in my mind!” Valsavis said angrily. “I need no distractions!”

“Go!” said the Shadow King. “Go quickly! They have the talisman! They must not get away!”

“They shall not, rest assured of that,” Valsavis said grimly. “I have a score to settle with that elfling.”

He left the treasure lying there and went outside. The sky was dark. The clouds were sparking with sheet lightning. Thunder rolled. Any minute, it would start to rain. If he was to pick up their trail, he would have to move quickly.

He saw the dead roc lying in the plaza in a giant, dark pool of coagulating blood. Well, he thought, so much for his ride out of here. Nibenay must have had the giant bird attack them, and they had made short work of the creature. But then, what did Nibenay care about his leaving the city safely? Had the Shadow King even paused to consider that when he set the bird upon them?

The thought of leaving the city safely suddenly and unpleasantly reminded him of its undead population. The sky was darkened by clouds. Night had come early to Bodach. And even as he stood there, he heard the wailing start, a chorus of doomed souls crying out their agony.

“Stop standing there like a stupid mekillot!” the Shadow King’s voice hissed in his mind. “Find out which way they went!”

“Be silent, you noisome worm,” Valsavis said, not caring anymore how he spoke to the sorcerer. If he could, he would wrench that damnable ring off his finger and fling it as far away from him as he could, but he knew only too well that it would not come off unless Nibenay wished it.

For a moment, the Shadow King actually fell silent, shocked by his response, and then Valsavis felt the tingling in his hand start to increase, and then burn, as if his hand were being held in flame. It began to spread up along his arm.