The High King's Tomb (60 page)

T
hursgad screamed and ran.

The way the intruders pushed and scrambled their way down the corridor, practically falling over one another, almost made Karigan laugh. If they didn’t hold the lives of Agemon and Iris in their hands, she’d consider it good fun. Her haunting was clearly having an effect. Even on the man with the knife.

The trouble was that in mere moments they’d be in the brightly lit main corridor, making her ghostly antics more difficult to pull off.

Sure enough, once the intruders reached the light, they slowed down and relaxed and put aside their lamps. Karigan watched from the darkness of the old corridor as they marched onward. She glanced briefly into the dark behind her, wishing she’d had a chance to pay her respects to King Jonaeus as Agemon had.

The intruders continued past the corridor leading to the House of Sun and Moon, and when they passed Queen Lyra’s chamber, Karigan was so tired she was nearly tempted to slip into bed next to the dead queen and take a nap.

As she followed the intruders, she wondered yet again what she could do. She’d begun to erode their confidence with her haunting, but they seemed to have regained it. If she could frighten them again, maybe they’d make a mistake, slow down, scatter, give Agemon and Iris a chance to escape.

They came to a large round chamber with a domed ceiling, murals painted in its coffered recesses. In the center of the chamber stood a huge, heroic sculpture of a king on a horse, with his arm stretched out like a conqueror offering benediction to the conquered. Down here that would be the dead. All that was missing was a pigeon or two.

A colonnade surrounded the chamber and from it led galleries like spokes to a wheel. At each entrance stood a suit of armor.

“Avenues of Hillander,” Agemon said. “This way.” And he led the men into one of the galleries.

King Smidhe,
Karigan thought, looking at the statue anew. The king responsible for unifying Sacoridia’s provinces. Agemon was taking those men to his tomb.

She needed to do
something.
She glanced desperately around, then flitted off down a different gallery, gazing at various Hillanders in eternal repose for inspiration. A good many were installed in sarcophagi, but others rested fully garbed on funeral slabs, their parchmentlike skin taut over skulls and bony hands.

Karigan paused and tapped her foot, thinking fast. The intruders knew nothing of her or her ability to fade. Well, Thursgad might remember, but she doubted he’d connect his “spirit Rider” of two years ago with the ghostly presence in the tombs. He didn’t strike her as overly bright. To them she’d appear a ghost, even if she couldn’t fade completely in the light. In fact, being only partially faded would enhance the effect. That was her hope, anyway.

She smiled at the plan, but her smile turned to a grimace as she started removing royal raiment from its owners. Agemon was going to have a fit.

A pair of white marble sarcophagi lay at the end of the gallery, practically glowing in the lamplight, the likenesses of King Smidhe and Queen Aldesta regal in their serenity. Behind them was a false window of stained glass backlit with a lamp, depicting a king and queen looking at the castle from a distance, the crescent moon above the highest turret. The king bore a torch.

“This better be the one, old man,” the knife wielder said, holding Iris close.

Agemon mumbled imperceptibly and fiddled with his specs.

Thursgad approached King Smidhe’s sarcophagus with the book. Karigan took this as her cue to make her ghostly appearance. She’d extinguished several lamps along the way to aid the effect, but it had surely been a trial getting this far dragging her heavy, kingly mantle of thick velvet and fur along the floor behind her.

She faded out, and in the light, looking through her hand was like looking through clouded glass.

“Halt!”
she cried.

They turned. Thursgad dropped the book on the floor with a resounding boom and hid behind King Smidhe’s tomb.

Agemon took to muttering and pulling on his hair, while Iris, even with the knife held close to her, looked about to laugh. The other two intruders were dumbstruck.

Karigan raised her borrowed scepter, threw her arms wide. “Desecrators!”

She stepped forward, but kept her progress slow. She couldn’t tell what made her head hurt more—the fading or the crown pressing on her scalp wound.

“Defilers!” Karigan wished the intruders would do
something
other than gape at her. Agemon gazed at the ceiling. Was he praying? Cursing her for despoiling his precious corpses?

“Who are you, O spirit?” the soldier asked, his voice trembling.

“Shut up, Gare,” the knife wielder said.

Karigan kept moving, allowing light and shadows to fade her in and out. What, she wondered, should her response be? She decided the ghostly thing to do was not to answer at all, so instead she moaned. “The empire will faaaaail.” And she disappeared into the deepest, darkest shadow she could find.

“You lie!” the man with the knife screamed, his voice echoing down the gallery. “Gare, the book!”

When Gare did not move fast enough, the knife wielder shoved Iris out of the way and reached for the book on the floor.

This was the very thing Karigan had been waiting for. She tossed aside scepter and crown, and threw off the mantle, and charged at the intruders, sword drawn, yelling like a crazed demon.

Thursgad, who poked his head above King Smidhe’s sarcophagus, fainted. Gare’s mouth dropped open and only the man with the knife had the presence of mind to react by drawing his own sword. Agemon grabbed Iris and ran with her down the gallery.

Good,
Karigan thought. Now she had only herself to worry about.

As ready as the man was for her, he looked confused, and when their swords clashed, Karigan realized she’d not dropped her fading. She did so now so it would no longer drain her strength. After all, he could see her in the light, translucent though she was, and once they engaged, it was clear she was a solid living person and not a ghost at all.

She danced away and put Queen Aldesta between herself and them, but Gare jumped up on the sarcophagus lid, straddling the figure of the queen, his sword hurtling down on Karigan. She blocked it, but it felt like a hammer blow. Somehow she held onto the sword and swept it like a scythe into Gare’s leg. His scream was horrid and he tumbled off the tomb, crimson splattering white marble.

The last man came after her and their exchange of blows was deafening. Sweat burned Karigan’s eyes. If only she could keep this up. If only she could get past his defenses.

But as he pressed her around the king’s sarcophagus, she stumbled over the unconscious Thursgad. She managed to keep her footing, but could not properly block the man’s next blow. It sliced down her forearm, elbow to wrist, the leather guard protecting only a portion of her wrist before the blade slashed down the back of her hand.

Karigan’s sword clanged to the floor and she cried out, but the man did not pause. He came for the kill. She ducked just in time feeling his sword hum over her head.

The only thing left to her was to call on her fading and run. This she did and she had enough presence of mind to grab the book as she went.

The man was on her heels. She sought the dark places, but there weren’t enough to hide her. She pushed a statue in his path and threw an urn at him. This slowed him little. She felt like she ran in mud.

When she came to the domed chamber with the statue, she ran blindly down another gallery. She must hide, and hide quick. Someplace dark.

T
hursgad awoke to silence.
Dead
silence.

He sat up recalling where he was and shuddered. The last thing he remembered was a crazed spirit charging him and his cohorts with sword raised. He peered around the corner of King Smidhe’s sarcophagus to see what was what and recoiled with a gasp. Gare lay there in a pool of blood, unmoving. Had the vengeful apparition killed him?

Thursgad scrubbed his face. Gare was dead and Rol was nowhere to be seen; had abandoned him in this miserable place. Or maybe because the dead were displeased by the desecration of their tombs, Rol hadn’t left willingly but was spirited away to some cursed shadow world to be tormented for an eternity.

Thursgad pushed himself to his feet, gazing warily at his surroundings, but nothing so much as moved. He did not know what he’d do if he saw another ghost. He made the sign of the crescent moon hoping to placate angry spirits and calm himself.

A throbbing against his hip reminded him he carried Grandmother’s mysterious sphere. He’d obeyed her instructions so far, not handling it or telling anyone about it, but now it seemed to want out of its purse. Was it time to release the sphere? Grandmother told him to smash it when he was ready to leave the tombs. He was certainly more than ready, having no wish to disturb the dead further and share in Gare’s fate, or Rol’s—whatever that was.

Thursgad tentatively loosened the drawstrings of the purse, removed the sphere and rested it on his palm. It was heavier than it looked, and it almost felt like it sucked on his flesh like a leech. He shuddered again.

He could not see his reflection in its silvery surface, but there was underlying movement, like shadows or black smoke. Grandmother had not explained what the spell did, but he knew it couldn’t be anything good. Maybe he shouldn’t release it at all, but if he didn’t, one way or another Grandmother would find him and punish him, and he’d seen what she could do to those who displeased her. She scared him more than any ghost.

He’d obey her wishes, but not until he was nearly out of the tombs. He rolled the sphere around his palm, searching its gleaming surface for any indication his was the proper course. Aye, he’d find his way out of the tombs, release the spell as he left, and flee the castle, the city, and the country. He’d escape to Rhovanny to become a prosperous wine farmer. That’s just what he’d do.

Fingers closed around his ankle.

Thursgad screamed. He should have made sure Gare was really dead, but he had not, and with his nerves already on edge, he lost hold of the sphere. It flew through the air in a graceful arc. He fumbled after it, but it was slippery as if oiled, and escaped his grasp. He watched in horror as it plummeted to the floor.

When the sphere hit stone, it did not bounce or roll, but cracked like an egg. No yolk oozed from it, but it expelled a wisp of smoke.

“Help me,” Gare whispered.

Thursgad kicked his ankle free of the man’s grasp and backed out of reach. He watched the smoke spiral up from the sphere, wondering why nothing else happened. He expected the ceiling to cave in, a maelstrom to sweep through the catacombs, doom to descend, but all was still. Too still, now that he thought of it. Aye, much too still…He tensed, ready to bolt.

Until he heard scratching from beneath the lid of King Smidhe’s sarcophagus.

Thursgad promptly fainted once again.

K
arigan hid a short distance down one of the passages that led off the main chamber where the statue of King Smidhe sat astride his marble horse. She stood in the shadow of a column trying to catch her breath, and held her wounded arm to her, fingers clamped over slashed flesh. The book was tucked beneath her elbow.

From this vantage point, she could see the man searching for some sign of her in the main chamber to indicate which way she’d run. He knelt to the floor and touched something. Karigan glanced at her wound and discovered blood oozing between her fingers and dripping to the floor. He would track the droplets until he found her. She’d have to run again, and she wasn’t sure she had it in her. She could just give him the book, and that would be the end of it. She could rest.

But the real end would be how Second Empire put the information in the book to use. The end of Sacoridia.

She would have to try and hide it before the man caught up with her. And he
would
catch up. She knew it.

Before she took a single step, however, a strange sensation crept over her, a palpable shadow, though the passage she stood in was neither darker nor lighter. The tombs were, by their very nature, a still place, but they were too still.

The man stood erect, glancing over his shoulder and up into the dome. He appeared to sense it, too, whatever
it
was.

The air grew colder and a force pulled on Karigan, made her stumble from her place of hiding. Moans rose and echoed through the corridors of the tombs, like the opening of an ancient door that has lain shut for centuries and is forced open. The moans keened in layers, some far off, some close to Karigan’s ears. She wanted to burrow into a corner and hide, but she was being called.
Raised.

Bones rustled beneath shrouds. The dead scrabbled at the insides of sarcophagi trying to escape. The linen-wrapped dead arose from funerary slabs. Spirits streamed by her, kings and queens, whole royal families with crowns upon their heads, some mere shadows with gaping holes where their eyes should be. Their passage was a chill wind.

A skeletal hand with a bejeweled ring on its finger skittered by her feet like a spider.

“Bad dream,” Karigan whispered, suddenly recalling her nightmare in the House of Sun and Moon.

She tried to hold onto the column she’d been hiding behind, but the calling forced her on, her trailing hand leaving a smear of blood on stone. The calling pushed her forward, compelled her to join the dead in their march toward the main chamber.

She was faded out, a ghost herself. She tried to drop the fading, but could not. Some greater power had taken command of her ability.

Karigan, along with the dead, spilled into the chamber. They were a ghostly sea that surged and receded in waves. The man spun around and around, aware of the spirits by the look of terror in his wide eyes, but there was no way to know how much he actually saw. The ambulatory corpses, royal mantles dragging on the floor behind them, were very visible.

Awakened,
the spirits moaned.
Why are we awakened from our sleep?

The man screamed when a corpse bumped into him. The scream attracted the spirits and they swarmed him. He thrashed and then crumpled to the floor, whimpering and throwing his arms over his head.

Why?
the dead implored.
Why are we awakened?

Karigan wanted to know why, too. Had the intruders triggered something?

Great pressure built in the air and the lamps of the tombs dampened to a weak orange glow, leaving the dome in darkness and the lower levels of the chamber in a sickly light. The spirits gusted around her in an even more agitated state.

Whyyy?
they wailed.

A vibration crept up through Karigan’s feet, up her legs. As the throbbing increased, statues, armor, and vases shook and rattled. The tremors continued to intensify and all around objects crashed to the floor.

A queen’s pallid spirit came face to face with Karigan and screamed, her mouth opening into a cavernous void, before she drifted away in shreds.

The statue of King Smidhe on his horse quaked. His outstretched arm cracked at the elbow and smashed to the floor, chipping the horse’s mane on its way down.

The tremors increased even further and Karigan feared the whole of the castle would collapse upon her. If the tombs were shaking this much, it must be far worse above ground.

A powerful vibration almost knocked Karigan off her feet. The head of King Smidhe’s horse broke off and shattered into millions of pieces. The floor cracked open and she scrambled backward to avoid falling into it. The crack expanded, opening to impenetrable depths.

A wall of dank, even colder air rose from the abyss and the dead cried out around her. One of the shambling corpses fell into it, crown, scepter, and all, but something worse shot out of the void like flights of arrows, dark spirits whose painful shrieks added to the cacophony of the others. Karigan wanted to press her hands over her ears, but she held onto the book with a death grip.

The new spirits flew around her. They passed through other spirits leaving swirls of otherworldly dust behind them. Before Karigan could leap out of the way, one passed through her like a sword of cold steel sheathed in her ribs. She staggered. Another came at her and reflexively she batted it away with the book. Perhaps because it was a book of magic it deflected the spirit.

Ghostly voices wormed through her mind. She sensed great age in them, but could not discern the words. These spirits were far older than the oldest of those interred in the tombs. From the time of the Delvers? Maybe even older. Their graves must lie below the Halls of Kings and Queens.

The statue of King Smidhe, horse and all, finally weakened by millions of cracks, collapsed into shattered limbs and rubble. Masonry from above began to shower down. Karigan fought her way through spirits toward the shelter of one of the corridors, but found it in equal tumult.

She breathed hard, wishing away the destruction and the dead, wishing for balance and normalcy, wishing she were nestled in her own bed. No doubt that bed was being jostled hard right now. She could not imagine the chaos up in the castle.

Was this it for her? Would she die crushed in the tombs? Would she be buried beneath the rubble with those already dead?

Her breathing constricted as panic set in. She had survived many things and averted disaster a time or two, but this was way beyond her ability to fix—there was nothing she could do against such a force. She would never see her father or her aunts again, or Condor, or her friends. She closed her eyes against the devastation and chaos, wondering what death would really be like.

As if in answer, she felt the presence of the death god’s steed beside her. She opened her eyes to find the stallion standing there in the corridor with her, his mane and forelock flowing in a supernatural breeze.

“Can you make this stop?” she asked. Or, had he come to claim her?

He turned his head just enough to fix her with one obsidian eye. That eye was a turmoil of stars, a race through the infinite. Karigan shook her head and looked away, fearing she’d get swept away in that gaze.

The destruction around her seemed far off, as though the closeness of the stallion buffered her from it. More of the dome’s ceiling panels crashed down, raising a powdery dust. The spirits whirled and rose and vanished into it.

“Well?” Karigan demanded of the stallion. “What are you going to do?”

He snorted at her as if marking her impertinence, then knelt down before her.

“Oh, no,” Karigan said, backing away. “This is your thing to fix. Your master is the god of death, and this is—this is dead business.”

His gaze caught her again and this time she could not escape. She was drawn into a vision of his making. In it she was swept out of the tombs, out of the castle, and upward among the stars as if suspended on wings. Below her she saw the castle and Sacor City. It was still dark and street lamps glittered below as tiny pinpoints of light. Despite the darkness, she could see everything: how the buildings shook and houses crumpled, how the city walls gave way. The towers of the castle wobbled. People fell from walls, were crushed beneath rubble. Others ran screaming through the streets. Fires consumed the noble quarter and other neighborhoods.

It was as if the hill the castle and city sat upon was coming to life and trying to shake the constructions of humanity off its back.

A castle turret toppled, then another, and a portion of the roof fell in. Karigan screamed along with those in the vision.

The hill then heaved and collapsed in on itself taking the castle and about a third of the city down with it, leaving a vast smoking crater. It wasn’t just dust rising, she realized, or smoke from burning buildings, but dark spirits spiraling out of the crater like a malignant cloud.

Karigan fell from the sky.