The Last Page (85 page)

A flurry of dark cloth filled his vision. Something flew through the air. It had launched itself just before he turned around. A black-and-gold shape struck him heavily in the chest, sending him sprawling amid the graves.

His sword, jolted from his grasp, did mindless cartwheels on the spot, sent its bolt of electricity harmlessly into the ground.

The creature pinned him with expert efficiency. Everything went black.

“Caliph? Caliph? It’s okay.”

A cloak’s heavy folds parted revealing a yellow sky, shadowy branches and a disheveled but gorgeous halo of golden hair.

Sena’s lips gasped, forming airy words just above his face. Her body pressed him into the carpet of leaves.

Even though Caliph’s horror had already given way to dazed surrender, his mind, for some unaccountable reason, had snagged on the memory of their struggle in the library.

His hand fumbled reflexively for his sword but it was stuck in the ground several yards away.

“I think you’re bleeding,” she wheezed.

She was real. Caliph’s hideous exhaustion-strangled laugh echoed through the trees. He closed his eyes and began to cough.

“Thirsty—”

“Me too. The water is a hundred yards back with my horse.”

She rolled off and lay on her back like him, staring up at the tangle of limbs. For a minute they both gulped oxygen.

“I don’t know where the others are.” She swallowed. “I think Sheridan fell. I saw you go down the slope and followed you. Your horse is dead.”

Caliph winced and tried to sit up.

“Don’t—” She forced herself to all fours, pulling a leaf from her hair. “You stepped on a branch and ran part of it into your foot. Hold still.”

Her fist took hold of a fat twig protruding from the tender skin between his toes and yanked it out with a swift straight jerk. “It’s a mess down here,” she said.

Caliph bit back on the pain that exploded in his foot.

“Thanks.” He sounded ridiculously apologetic.

She examined the wound for fragments.

Caliph swore under his breath. It felt like she was digging with a shovel.

“What did you say happened to Sheridan?” he asked, trying to stay still.

“I don’t know. Maybe he got eaten and that’s why we’re still alive.” She scrunched her nose in distaste and put her mouth to the wound. She sucked hard and spit.

“I’ll go to the horse. I think brandy and linen is all we have to work with.” Crouched at his feet in the twilight like a beautiful ghoul, lips red with his pain, she made efforts to reassure him. “I’ll hurry.”

She stood and started walking, quick as her tired legs would move. She wished she could see what might be lurking in the woods. Her eyes ached from studying the
C
srym T
.

She blinked several times, rubbed her eyes with her palms. A brilliant migraine was exploding at the back of her head. She could see Inti’Drou glyphs when she closed her lids, like someone had stapled the pages to their undersides. Then it dawned on her that there might be a way . . . a way to see them more clearly and still ease the pain.

I’ll carve my eyes.

She marched through the dying wood, thinking of the procedure, still aware of the leaves falling around her, aware that they glowed with velvety redness in the sinking sun, scarlet bodies twinkling like dozens of eyes between the trees. They were there, beyond the geometry of the wood, haunting her steps. The Yillo’tharnah. They squatted. They followed from angles that could not be protracted with instruments made by men.

She could feel them watch her as she topped the low hill and found her horse. They stared while she inspected the creature’s right front leg. It was bleeding and didn’t look good.

Patiently she led the animal back to Caliph. She bandaged and cleaned his wound, continually glancing behind her at the invisibles she felt breathing across her neck.

She rinsed her mouth with brandy and gave Caliph some to drink. “It’s probably not a good idea to walk on it, especially since we don’t have a boot.” She took back the flask and had another hit.

“Are you going to carry me?” he joked. Sena didn’t laugh as he struggled to his feet.

“You can ride my horse,” she said distractedly. “I think it’s starting to founder.” It was a baseless guess. She knew virtually nothing about horses.

Sena sniffed. The cold was making her nose run.

“Caliph? Are we going to go . . . or are you going to stand there and stare at me all night?”

But Caliph didn’t answer. An alarmed expression, blazoned in red light, was crawling over his face. He was talking. But not to her.

“It was just like this,” he whispered. “A cemetery in the woods . . . and I was standing . . . over there.”

He looked around.

“It was right here.” He limped in a circle. “I think.”

“What was?” Sena asked. She had never seen him like this.

He didn’t answer. He hobbled farther into the yard, tracking toward the pile of dirt the sexton had left behind. Sena’s heart quickened.

“Caliph, it’s getting dark. I’m worried.”

But his black eyes were fixed on the marker that leaned above the half-exhumed grave. The sky grew darker by the moment. When Caliph reached it, he sat down heavily on the mound. Sena looked down with him.

Several feet below, the ripped-apart boards of an ill-made coffin made it look like the corpse had forced its own way out. They lay splintered, thrown carelessly aside. The gray shriveled form mocked her with empty eyes partly covered by leaves.

Caliph was sick. Neither of them had eaten much when the party stopped for lunch and his stomach turned up thin, clear bile in substitution of a good vomit.

Sena suddenly understood his reaction. Her eyes grew wide, a pall coming over her face.

The night she opened the
C
srym T
a
she had not paid any attention, but the sexton had excavated precisely according to her words, one that’s not so old . . .

N
ATHANIEL
H
OWL, DIED
545 Y.
O
.T. W
REN
.

T
HE
H
OLOMORPH ON THE
H
ILL
.

M
AY THE BENEVOLENCE OF
A
DUMMIM KEEP HIM IN CLAY FOREVER
.

He lay exposed to the air like one of his own freakish experiments.

“He’s come back,” Caliph gurgled. A viscous line strung between his lower lip and the mound where he crouched, looking away.

“Caliph.” She bent down beside him. “It’s only grave robbers. He’s not alive.” Weird glyphs from the
C
srym T
, however, made her doubt her own words. She had read the necromancer’s notes, seen the secrets in the margins, found the truth behind Cameron’s stories.

“I dreamt it. Can’t you smell it?”

“Smell what?”

“Piss!” For the first time since she had known him, Caliph’s face looked truly pale. His skin was clammy against her fingers. He babbled without sense.

“I did it. I shouldn’t have, he was just . . . gods! Why can’t he just be dead?”

“He’s dead. He’s dead.” She rocked him in her arms, suddenly frightened. “He’s dead.”

The words ran together in a macabre lullaby. Darkness settled in around them. Only faint light ebbed through the black thatch of trees.

“We have to go, Caliph.”

She felt an approaching presence. In her mind’s eye she imagined something stop to sniff the dead horse on the other side of the hill. It tilted its small head to listen.

Caliph wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Cold light had filled his eyes.