The Sacred Hunt Duology (117 page)

“It is the song of approach,” she said, “and of departure. The stairs were built to chime it, by some magic or some craftsmanship that has long been forgotten. No one could approach by stealth those who waited above. No one could leave in secrecy.”

“Then they'll hear us below.”

“I do not know,” she said. “But I think not. For the chamber of the Sleepers lies between us and our enemy.”

“Lead,” King Cormalyn told her quietly.

“As you command.”

The music continued, but it played as cacophony; this many men were not meant to approach or depart in so disorderly a fashion. Or perhaps it was meant to be discordant; what had dwelled in this citadel in the mythic past no one could say for certain except Evayne, and she would not name it. Whatever the reason, many were the soldiers who, on their descent, stopped a moment to tie their sword knots and ready themselves fully for combat.

Yet what greeted them was an empty hall, and a long one; it was fashioned of
plain stone, but of larger blocks than were used anywhere else in the city. There were no windows—had this part of the building originally been underground, there would have been no need—but there were also no torch rings, no lamp hooks, no provision for the light.

The halls were high, the ceilings, where the light carried by the servants of the Kings or the Exalted was strong enough to make them visible, vaulted in an odd, fanned lattice. To the side, left and right—east, west, south, and north seemed for the moment to have lost their meaning—were narrower exits from the main hall they traversed, darkened branches into the unknown. Evayne kept them to their course; any difficulty was again with the Order's members, many of whom were accustomed to pursuing their studies with a single-minded purpose that occasionally bordered upon the irresponsible.

Yet if curiosity drove them to stare into the ruins of doors and halls as they passed them by, it also drove them forward, and at last, after a time that was only measurable by the lowering of the oil in the lamps, the hall ended in a forbidding set of doors that stretched from floor to unseen ceiling.

Set across the closed doors was a large seal with runes emblazoned in a closing spiral from edge to center; it seemed to be made of gold, and in the darkness of torch and lamplight, it radiated light like a bonfire.

“These are the last of the doors,” Evayne said softly. “There were three, but two have already been breached by the breaking of the earth and the sinking of the city. They were magicked once, but the source of their power has long since fled this world.”

“Magic,” Meralonne told her, “does not flee when the caster dies.”

“No,” she nodded, taking his correction as quietly as she had always done. “But it
is
weakened when the race dies. Or when the race leaves.” She smiled slightly. “And if I gave you the impression that no magic remained here, please forgive me—for the magic is not one that you or I could easily break.” She turned and bowed to the Exalted, and they came.

“It offers warning,” the Exalted of the Mother said quietly.

“And promises danger,” Evayne added.

“You read the oldest tongue?”

But the seeress did not reply. Instead, she said, “Exalted, grace us; open the door that your ancestor barred. We have so little time.”

People seldom saw any of the Exalted hesitate; they thought it merely a trick of the light, for with surety and purpose she approached the wide doors. Lifting her arms, she began to speak, her tone quiet and reasonable, her words incomprehensible. Minutes passed; the sound of flames lapping oil and air, of breath being drawn, formed a stage for her voice.

The doors dissolved.

And with them, the darkness.

• • •

Silence, blessed silence. The cries of the dying, the pleas of the soon to be killed—they did not touch the Sleepers' Crypt at all. It was hard for the men and women assembled without not to rush headlong into it. There had been little peace in the last few weeks. But they were well aware of their duties.

No lamps shone that were bright as the light in the crypt; day ruled there, framed on all sides by darkness and earth. Upon three stones biers, arranged like the petals of the trifold flower, lay the Sleepers. Their feet pointed inward, heads to the round, curved gallery sculptors had made of the walls. Above them, stellar vaulting, beneath, concentric circles laid into the fabric of the stone itself.

Yet it was not the architecture which drew and held the attention; it was the Sleepers themselves.

“Do not approach them,” the Exalted of Cormaris said. His voice while not sharp, was hard. “And be wary of crossing any circle's path.”

The Kings nodded, and word, as ever, was sent through the ranks. Yet no man or woman passed the biers who did not stop a moment to gawk. Even the knowledge of the darkness that waited in the halls beyond this chamber did little to still the Sleepers' spell, for they were beautiful and they filled the heart with a deep longing, and a cold one.

“Did you always know where they were?” Meralonne asked Evayne quietly.

“Not always.”

“Did you know of it while I taught you?”

“No.”

The mage stepped past her; she raised a hand to his shoulder reflexively, and then let it drop before she touched the heavy darkness of his robes.

“Mage,” the Son of Cormaris said.

“If I could, I would not wake them,” was the low reply. “I understand what you vowed, Exalted, and I would not force you to defend that oath while there is a greater enemy—a mutual one—to face.” He bowed slightly, and then stepped carefully around the periphery of the widest circle to better see the light of a Sleeper's face.

He—if he it was—was both tall and slender, with hair that fell around his face like a spill of pure silver. His lashes were white, and his skin pearl-like in its luster. He wore a golden breastplate, and a shield, with a design that denied the light yet did not claim the darkness, lay below his folded arms. Blued and gilded greaves he wore, and gloves, and beneath his chin a long and flawless gorget. His helm rested beneath the steeple of his hands.

Yet he held no sword, nor was one laid at his side.

“What—what are they?”

Meralonne turned at the sound of the voice, meeting the gaze of a young man
before that man was swept past him by the movement of his fellows. Still, knowing that the answer might be carried by the room's perfect acoustics, he answered.

“They are the Princes of the First-born.”

“And what was their crime?” The Exalted of Cormaris asked.

“Did your Lord not tell you?”

The Exalted frowned. “Only that they were guilty of betrayal.”

“But not what that betrayal was?” Meralonne's smile was bitter indeed. “It was manifold, Exalted. And for it, they have lost their swords and their names—see, you cannot glance upon the device that was once the pride of their kin.” He lifted a slender hand and pointed to the shield.

“You know much, Meralonne.”

“Legend lore is one of my specialties,” the mage replied. “Come. The darkness is waiting, and it will wait neither peacefully nor long.”

D
ARKNESS AND DEATH;
the cries of the dying a glimpse of what eternity in the Hells must be like. Every man, every woman, tensed as their feet crossed the threshold from light and silence into the footpaths of the undercity.

Beyond the cavern of the Sleepers, in a twisted, broken tunnel that might never have seen the day, the torches began to flicker: a change in air currents. The army shifted uneasily, but Evayne was unconcerned; she followed the winding tunnel until it once again reached a flat, worked place. The ruins of a hall, broken gargoyles, the bases of statues that had once lined the ways—these were blanketed in shadows that grew heavier and heavier with each step taken.

Those steps were silent, a gift of the mages who now walked slowly behind their compatriots and ahead of the main body of Priests. Anyone with the sight for it would see them coming; the lattice of magical light necessary to blanket such a large group had a distinct and unavoidable signature. Still, that signature was less obvious than the sound of a hundred—and more—booted, heavy pairs of feet. Any advantage, no matter how slender, would be used.

The Kings led again, but this time, the ranks of their Swords and Defenders were broken by the presence of war-mages. Mandaros' Priests also walked in the forefront, judging the shadows, looking for any signs of life, natural or no.

They did not see as keenly as the woman who walked in midnight-blue robes; they did not have the hidden eye. But if she saw danger at the start of their descent, she did not speak its name: They journeyed into darkness to destroy a door through which a God was stepping. Danger enough.

• • •

The first creature to come out of the darkness swept in from the side, through a tunnel that was rough-hewn and recessed into the hall along which they had chosen to walk. It was not humanoid, and in the end, not sentient enough to realize that a small army was bearing down upon it.

It was fast enough, however, to claim first blood—first death—before its victory celebration was brought to a messy, and magical, end. For one brief second, the cries of its dying agony eclipsed the suffering of those below.

There was no body to study.

The mages fanned out into the side tunnel, but they found no other such creatures on the prowl. Fifteen minutes, perhaps less, and the army was once again on the move.

• • •

Another demon, hunting Gods only knew what, fell to the mages. A third.

The fourth came down from above, casting a dark and fiery web upon the unsuspecting Priests at the rear of the group. Although the war-mages joined the fray as quickly as they could, the maze and the updrafts in the large, abnormally shaped cavern were the territory and the strength of the beast. The fight was long and hard, and in the end, fully twenty men and women lay badly injured or dead.

But the seeress brought worse news than that.

The enemy would soon be warned of their presence. They would have time to prepare a defense.

• • •

Karathis-errakis erupted into the coliseum like the living flame that he was. He spun in air a moment before guttering; the ground approached his knees and the heels of his multiple hands as he rushed to abase himself against it.

“Lord.” His voice was muffled by dirt and the sound of the dying, but it was clear enough—barely—to be heard.

Karathis' gaze, where it met the back of the prostrate creature, literally burned. But Karathis-errakis knew better than to scream or attempt to protect himself; to interrupt a lord while he presided over the damned was never a wise course. But to do nothing, this time, was even less wise. He waited, hoping to survive the wrath of a demon lord in the throes of the Conviction and the Contemplation.

It was not Lord Karathis' even temper which saved errakis' existence upon the mortal plane. “Enough, Karathis.” The fire burned less fiercely; the smoke of charring flesh gave way to the simple stench.

In the Hells, such interference would be an open declaration of war, and such wars, in a landscape where power and rulership meant everything, were common fare. But there had been no rulership challenges upon the mortal plane in millennia, perhaps because there was no easy dominion over the souls of those who had not yet chosen. Or perhaps it was merely because a demon lord rarely walked the plane; two were almost unheard of. Karathis turned his gaze upon Isladar, and Isladar raised an unfettered hand, one quite human in seeming.

Karathis did not know the limits of Isladar's power, for he had never seen Isladar use it to its full extent. Isladar ruled no terrain in the demesnes, he forced no lesser creature to bear his name and do his bidding, he chose to absent himself from the ducal struggles, when the hierarchies of the Hells underwent their radical changes—and yet, absent, he incurred the wrath or enmity of no Duke.

It was almost as if he existed outside of the realm which had birthed him.

And in that realm, the unknown was the greatest danger of all. Karathis frowned openly as his surroundings lost the edge and the clarity that the Contemplation brought on.

“Speak,” he said.

Karathis-errakis did immediately as bid. “Strangers approach from the southeast.”

“What is this?”

The creature swallowed, and the last of its protective flame went out completely. “We think—we think at least one hundred, at most three. Humans.”

“Impossible,” Karathis said, folding his arms while his claws grew darker, longer, and harder.

“From the southeast?” Isladar asked.

The creature did not respond.

“Answer him.”

“Yes, Lord Isladar.”

“Interesting. Were they armed?”

“Yes. But—the armed men have not been fighting in the tunnels. They move with speed, and in complete silence.”

“How were they discovered?”

“Arradis-Shannen was destroyed in the seeker's cavern. Before he died, he sent word.”

Arradis-Shannen served Sor na Shannen as lieutenant. He was not the most perceptive of creatures—but he was one of the more powerful; had his intellect ever matched his ambition, he would have been a threat.

“They have mages,” Karathis said coldly, no question in the question.

“Yes, Lord.”

Karathis seemed satisfied, but Isladar was not. “Karathis, do not be a fool. Arradis-Shannen was
Kialli
. If he were brought down in battle by mere human mages, we would have felt the ground breaking beneath our feet.” The demon lord turned to stare into the darkness at the mouth of the coliseum's southern doors. “No, they have Summer magic,” he said softly. “They think to bring the light with them into the Winter's haven.”

At this, Karathis smiled; his teeth gleamed a moment before his lips once again covered all but the longest of them. “Let them bring light,” he said softly. “We lost many to the cursed bardic voices—let them supply the final sacrifices that our Lord requires.”

“We cannot afford that,” was Isladar's steely reply. “Think: the one who carries the Hunter's Horn may lead the human pack.”

Silence.

And then the darkness began to fold and fray as Karathis raised his voice in a roar and a summons.

• • •

“This is not possible,” Sor na Shannen said, her voice a sensual growl—and a furious one. “Karathis—”

“I closed the tunnels personally. I
saw
each unmaking. Or do you challenge this?”

She said nothing; it was a small enough council that she did not dare to stand her ground. In a fight at this range, Karathis was assured a victory—with a lord of his stature, she could not even be certain it would be a costly one. “We cannot hold that tunnel,” she said at last.

“We have no choice.”

“Look at it. There are no crawlways above it, and none below; it is too low to properly shadow. If Isladar is correct, the strongest of our number will not be able to wield full power.”

It was Karathis' turn to snarl. “You are not required to hold it indefinitely. A few weeks—”

“You will not have weeks,” Isladar said quietly.

Karathis turned a dark, dark ebony; his eyes burned orange, a glitter of sparks. Yet he did not argue with Isladar's words. Instead, he spoke two of his own. “How long?”

“Hours, I think. And at that, few.”

The demon lord looked to the Gate that stood at the center of the coliseum, its iridescent keystone shining above a mass of roiling shadow. The altars were before it, and around them, piled like the refuse they had become, bodies. Not enough of them.

Karathis turned, wings unfurling from between the span of his shoulder blades. He gestured, and an ebony blade came to his hand, slick and wet from use.

“Isladar,” he said softly, the fine ridges of his wings flexing at each syllable, “you know what must be done. Do it.
I
will attend to the intruders.”

• • •

They felt the first tremors as the ground beneath their feet began to shake. Rubble from the walls came trickling down, as if the firmament had become, for a moment, a dangerous liquid.

The Lord of the Compact barked out orders before the rumbling stopped; the Kings pulled back, or rather, the Astari advanced, surrounding them in a slender protective shield. They held position as the ground trembled again.

“What is the cause of this?” the Lord of the Compact shouted.

“Some sort of magic,” Sigurne replied, her brow furrowed.

Were the Lord of the Compact a less literal man, his sarcasm might have reverberated in angry echoes down the length of the hall. Instead, he said through clenched teeth, “Can you counter it?”

“Not if we don't know its type, no,” she replied, her tone ever more serene.
There was reason that she often performed the function of liaison between the Crowns and the Order. “But if the Magi cannot discern it—” Her words were broken by the ominous shifting of rock; the ground shook and the ceiling creaked as if, having borne the weight of the earth for millennia, its strength was finally giving out.

• • •

Evayne, the crystal ball of the seer caught between two pale hands, looked into swirling mist, her pupils so large her eyes seemed blacker than the shadows.

“Evayne?”

She looked up at the sound of her name—a bad sign. When her sight was keen, and the vision clear, a storm raining down upon her exposed head could not distract her. Kallandras knew it for fact; he had seen it happen. Now was not that time; her eyes were already resuming their violet shade, and the ball was dimming—cooling, he thought—between her palms.

“I cannot say for certain,” she said at last. “I feared it might be the elemental magics—but it seems that they are too wild for our enemies.”

“They are not too wild,” Meralonne APhaniel said softly, “but they are not appropriate here. If what you have said is true—if what you have seen is true—we are on the road to the Cathedral that once stood at the heart of Vexusa. If you look at the ground here, and here,” he pointed very carefully, “I would say that we are almost upon it. Call the elemental earth magics, call the Old Earth, and it is quite likely that not only the tunnels, but also the Cathedral, would be destroyed.” His smile turned grim. “And the caster, for that matter, if old tales are true.

“Never bargain with the Old Earth when you have nothing of value to give it.” He paused a moment as the tremors stilled. “The demon-kin have nothing at all of interest to the earth.”

“Not to the earth, little brother,” a voice said in the darkness. “But come. Let there be
fire
.”

Orange light, white roiling heat. Framed by it, fanned by it, a creature half the height of the halls, with wings of dark flame, and a sword that shimmered as it cut the air. It stood, manlike but not in any way human, its eyes of fire, its tongue of flame.

“This is ill news,” the platinum-haired mage whispered softly. He gestured and the hall, yards away from where the creature stood, was suddenly illuminated by a shimmering opalescent wall.

“You know what it is?” Evayne's voice, tighter, smaller somehow.

A lift of a brow answered her question; a glimmer of arrogance. “Oh, yes,” he said, master to student, as if for a moment that relationship had never been broken. “He is—or was—one of the Dukes of the Hells.” Meralonne lifted a hand, and to it came a blade that only Evayne and Gilliam of Elseth, of the assemblage gathered here, had seen him wield. It was blue ice to dark fire, thin and hard and
uncompromising. “Tell me,” he said to Evayne, although his gaze did not leave their enemy. “You learned the Winter rites—did you ever learn the wild ones?”

“No mortal can contain the wild ways,” was her curt reply. “How can you test me at a time like this?”

“It was not a test,” was the equally curt answer. “It was a very, very strong hope. I do not know everything about you or your kin—and those mortals born of immortal blood, no matter how tainted, can sometimes bear the wild weight a moment or two.” He turned to look at the men and women at his back: the Kings, the Astari, the Defenders, the Exalted and the Priests, the mages. The dogs. “How important is this mission, Evayne? At what cost must we succeed?”

Fire casually began to bore a hole through the transparent wall that Meralonne's magic sustained. He grunted. “Answer me; we do not have much time.”

Her violet eyes narrowed as she glanced at her back, seeing what he saw; then they widened as she understood what he asked her. “Not at that cost,” she said sharply.

“We will never reach the Cathedral if a price is not paid. Do you not understand what you have seen this day? This was Vexusa, yes, but before that it was something far worse, far darker; the Sleepers fell at the heart of a God's dominion. There are places upon the world that still hold the ghosts of the things that have passed within them; there are places, dark and deep, that hold more. This is one.” Meralonne spoke from between clenched teeth; his knuckles, where they gripped the sword, were white. Fire had worn the shimmering wall to a clothlike thinness; before the wall snapped, the mage cried out sharply—a three-word command in a language that contained only magic. The wall shuddered, shrank, and flew to his outstretched hand, becoming a shield of the same substance as his sword.