Necromancer Falling: Book Two of The Mukhtaar Chronicles (56 page)

It was possible the phallus alone would get him beyond the energy field. But first, he’d rather not be wrong and get tossed across the room again. And second, the more he thought about things, the more he realized how necessary the Rod of Domination would be.

Mujahid reached for the rod, but Thalina grabbed his arm, pulling it away from the hovering cube of energy.

“The God Nuuan will disapprove of this as well, my lord,” Thalina said. “I’ve seen men try to take the Rod of Domination before. So have you.”

“I have?”

“The burning people.”

Mujahid remembered the horrific images in the mosaics leading into the temple.

If these objects were the key to getting through the energy field, then perhaps the symbol of ascension was the key to getting into the hovering cube. What other reason would Digby have to depict his eyes as glowing in
The Queen’s Retreat
?

Mujahid ignited the symbol of ascension and extended his arm.

Again Thalina tried to stop him.

He faced her and she shrank away.

As his hand passed into the energy cube, a surge of heat engulfed the horned phallus. Images of the burning men in the mosaics flooded through his mind, and for a moment he thought he’d made a horrible mistake. But the heat that likely would have burned him alive diverted from his hand into the phallus. When the last of the heat subsided, Mujahid retrieved the Rod of Domination.

Thalina looked at him as if he would burst into flame at any moment.

The rod was an object of power. Mujahid could sense the energy within. But there was something else. The moment he grasped the Rod of Domination, the ambient field of probing energy evaporated. And he was convinced it would no longer restrict him from using necropotency.

Mujahid walked toward the invisible energy field. He glanced at Thalina. “Are you coming along?”

“Only one may pass,” Thalina said.

Mujahid stepped past the threshold where the energy field had stopped him. But there was no difference between that step and the last.

As he walked farther, lights flickered into existence in the darkened alcoves at the top of the stone steps.

A rush of wind blew past him and up the stairs as the center door swung open with a creak.

An ominous sign. The estate’s central door was known as the Mourning Door. And the Mourning Door only opened upon the death of a Mukhtaar Lord.

He climbed the steps in the shadow of the statue of Nuuan, offering a silent prayer to Zubuxo for protection and safe passage. Only Nuuan and Digby knew, with any certainty, what was inside the temple. And they were keeping quiet on the subject.

His mind worked quickly now that he was capable of using necropotency again. Events whose significance had gone unnoticed earlier were revealing their true weight with every step he took.

At the
true
estate, when he’d moved the portal from the Algidian Peaks to this place, the symbol had changed to a hive. Nuuan’s prophecy mentioned a
hive
. But there was more to the prophecy than that. If he recalled the words, they were “when I bring the temple to you, rouse the hive and fight.”

When I bring the temple to you.

This could be no coincidence. The temple was an exact replica of the Mukhtaar Estate. From a certain point of view, moving the portal could be interpreted as bringing the temple to them.

And then there was Thalina’s confusing comments about the priests of Nuuan.

Whoever he found inside this temple, he no longer believed they would be human.

Any similarities that existed between the outside of the temple and the outside of the Mukhtaar Estate vanished when Mujahid reached the top of the stairs.

The Mourning Door looked in upon a long, wide tunnel, which was illuminated by an inner light source that cast striated shades of amber along the walls. The tunnel wall was coated in a slippery substance that gave Mujahid the impression of stepping inside a living being. It cambered downward to the left, until anything farther was out of sight.

Mujahid glanced back at Thalina, who had prostrated herself on the ground.

Stone slab gave way to dirt and pebbles as Mujahid stepped into the tunnel.

But the sound that returned from deep within made him stop.

Dozens of feet walking—no,
clicking
—came from the corridor ahead. Mujahid considered going forward, but the creature emerging from the lower tunnel filled him with a terror he’d not known in decades. Perhaps ever.

It landed in front of him with the grace of an adda-ki and held six tarsal swords extended straight out to the sides. The nightmarish insectoid figure towered over him. More than a dozen eyes filled an ant-like skull, and four independent pincers opened and closed around its elongated mouth. The overlapping scales covering its body would make it impervious to steel, and the muscular legs, bent backward at the knee joint, would make escape impossible. This creature could reach the top of the ziggurat in two jumps.

Argram!

What Mujahid was seeing couldn’t be real. Argram were predators that once hunted humans to near extinction. But they themselves had been extinct since before recorded time.

Not even the battle with the ancient cyclops had paralyzed him with as much terror as he felt in this moment.

But he had to fight. He had to survive.

He ignited the symbol of ascension and opened a channel to the skull symbol.

The probing energy returned and entered his mind. This time it didn’t stop him from casting.

Be at ease, Mukhtaar Lord
, a voice said in his mind. The voice was like a thousand people speaking in perfect unison. But it was calming. Hypnotic.
We are the Emissary. We are the Speaker. We are peace.

The argram folded its tarsal swords and bent its knees until it was the same height as Mujahid.

The presence of this creature defied everything Mujahid knew of natural philosophy.

Yet here was an argram, folding its deadly tarsal swords—swords that were natural extensions of its chitinous exoskeleton. And it spoke of peace.

Mujahid released his grasp on the necropotency and extinguished the symbol of ascension. It had been a foolish move born of fear anyway. Had he chosen to fight, it would have been the shortest battle of his life.

“This can’t be,” Mujahid said.

The argram cocked its head to the side and walked around Mujahid, viewing him from all angles. Its pincers clicked and clacked as it circled.

Mujahid swallowed.

“You are exactly who we know you to be,” the argram said.

“I may not be who you
think
I am,” Mujahid said.

“You are the
other
,” the argram said. “Your nestling told us you would come.”

Nuuan.

“Come,” the argram said. “We have much to discuss. But we cannot do so here.”

The argram nodded toward the temple’s entrance, and Mujahid saw Thalina out of the corner of his eye.

“There are those who would not understand what we are about to tell you,” the argram said.

“I have questions,” Mujahid said.

“Questions only the queen can answer.”

The argram strode farther into the tunnel.

Mujahid swallowed again.

In his most feverish imagination, marching into a hive of curiously
non-extinct
argram was a thought Mujahid never entertained as possible.

He took a deep breath and followed. His life was in the argram’s hands now, for better or worse.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

In the year 791 BCE, Aziz Qureshi stepped over the threshold, becoming Aziz Lord Mukhtaar Qureshi. By the time I had become a man, Lord Aziz had already passed into the Plane of Peace. While Clan Zerubula considers Lord Aziz a tyrant, it is of interesting note that Aziz’s most staunch supporter, Jagur Babayev, was a Zerubulan priest. Babayev writes that Zerubulan claims of tyranny began with a failed assassination attempt. Clan Zerubula found Lord Aziz to be a most uncooperative target.

In the final decade of his life, Lord Aziz sealed the Mukhtaar Estate to Catiatum and Zerubulan priests and ordered the suspension of all ritual in Catiatum and Zerubulan territories.

- Coteon of the Steppes, “The Mukhtaar Chronicles: Coteonic Commentaries” (circa 680 BCE)

Coteon was close, but he didn’t have the entire story. The true origin of Clan Zerubula’s claim was after the Necromantic Council ruled in favor of Lord Aziz’s father, ending the Zerubulan Revolt, an event that took place several years before Lord Aziz was born.

- Mujahid Mukhtaar, Private Commentaries, 22 CE

Aelron brought his fist to his nose as the stench grew overpowering.

He and Morrigan stood on a stone landing, several stories under the city of Egis. They’d carried torches down from the safe house above, but the underground chamber was so large that the light didn’t reach beyond a few feet into the murk.

The house was nothing more than a concealed stairwell leading to the city sewers.

“Don’t touch the water unless you absolutely have to,” Morrigan said. She tugged at a mooring line until a boat came into view.

Boat was overstating it. It was a raft with thick boards nailed into place to form side rails.

“Where’s it go?” Aelron asked.

“This is a river of shite and brown water. Where do you
think
it goes?”

The boat slid up along the platform and rocked from side to side in the water that
wasn’t
water.

“The Sodality uses these sewers for clandestine meetings,” Morrigan said. “Usually with the Azure Dawn. If there are any Dawn down here, they might agree to smuggle us out of the city.”

“And if not?”

“Then nothing changes. Hop in.” She nodded toward the boat.

Aelron glanced back toward the stairs.

“Have you forgotten something?” Morrigan said. “I’m not exactly in the best standing with the Sodality right now. If they find me they’ll kill me. Then they’ll kill
you
for seeing them kill
me
. Do you think staying beneath one of their safe houses for long is a good idea?”

Aelron rubbed his temples, then climbed into the wobbly vessel. It nearly toppled when Morrigan climbed in after him. He tried to steady it by placing his hand on the platform, but the boat had drifted farther from the landing than he’d thought, and his hand wound up in the fetid water.

When he pulled his hand back, he had to spend a few minutes scraping it on the corner of the platform to get the sludge off.

“Brilliant,” Aelron said.

“I wouldn’t pick my nose with that hand, if I were you.”

“I wasn’t planning on picking your nose.”

Morrigan groaned a fake laugh and steered the craft away from the platform with a beam of tapered wood that served as a makeshift rudder. She aimed it toward a darkened tunnel entryway.

The stench was no better in the tunnel, and Aelron was sorry they’d left the torch behind. If the Azure Dawn was down here somewhere, they could float right by without Aelron or Morrigan being any wiser.

Stories of the Dawn’s ability to blend in were as close to myth as he’d ever heard at the Elysian Fortress. The elder rangers made it sound as if a person’s own mother could be Azure Dawn, and they wouldn’t know until she traded them for a shipment of Shandarian Powder—the Dawn’s primary source of income. Aelron saw an adda-ki throw its ranger once while out on patrol. The rider accused it of being a Dawnmaster in disguise. And two others believed him until Jacobson told them all to bugger off and learn how to ride.

Some years later, Aelron learned the Dawn always wore a sapphire tattoo of a sun. It had something to do with their initiation ritual, or their religion, or an oath no one fully understood.

They passed several more landings. He couldn’t see them well, but the splashing of the water would change whenever they emerged from the tunnel into a chamber. The noise would fade rather than echo.

A shaft of light broke the darkness up ahead, and before long they were drifting into a tunnel that made them shield their eyes.