The Thieves of Blood: Blade of the Flame - Book 1 (26 page)

“Do tell,” Diran said in a tone that indicated he’d like Hinto to do anything but continue.

“Oh, yes! It wasn’t easy, mind you. The first seventeen gave me no trouble really, but after that—”

“If you’ll excuse me,” Yvka said, “I’ll take my leave.”

She looked at Ghaji’s hands. He still held his axe and sharpening stone, though he hadn’t been doing anything with them while they’d talked.

“You’re obviously quite skilled with your hands, Ghaji,” Yvka said. “There’s something in the cabin that makes a squeaking noise and keeps me from falling asleep easily. I thought perhaps you might be able to find whatever is causing the noise and fix it for me. If you could, I’d appreciate it. Very much.”

She gave Ghaji a look full of promise, then turned and headed for the cabin.

Diran smiled. “You’d better go, my friend. It’s impolite to keep a lady waiting when she has a squeak that needs tending.”

T
he amphitheater was empty now. The stone floor was once again in place, for the punishment was over, and Erdis Cai’s undead crew had been fed. The citizens of Grimwall had gone back to whatever duties were theirs to perform within their subterranean city. Even Onkar and Jarlain had departed, leaving only Makala and Erdis Cai. Makala sat staring at the amphitheater’s stone floor, Zabeth’s final screams replaying over and over in her mind.

The vampire lord stood looking down at her, head cocked slightly to the side in puzzlement. “Your friend fought most valiantly. You should be proud of her.”

“What difference does it make how I feel? Zabeth is dead. Nothing can change that.”

Erdis Cai continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “The shifter would’ve proven most worthy if it hadn’t been for her age. While strength of spirit is an important quality, youth and vitality are also necessary.”

“You and Jarlain keep talking about worthiness,” Makala said, unable to keep the hatred and rage she felt out of her voice, “but old or not, Zabeth was infinitely more
worthy
than any of you lot could ever be!”

The vampire lord’s eyes flashed blood-red for an instant before returning to their more muted crimson color. “Perhaps you’d appreciate your friend’s sacrifice if you understood what she died for.” He considered for a moment before turning and beginning to ascend the amphitheater’s steps. “Come,” he ordered without looking back at her.

Makala had no intention of doing as Erdis Cai commanded, not caring whether her defiance would lead to her own punishment on the amphitheater floor, but as if of its own accord, her body rose to its feet, turned, and began following after the vampire lord. Makala struggled to stop, to make her body obey her once more, but it was no use. Whatever spell Erdis Cai had cast on her, she had neither the power nor the will to resist it.

She followed him out of the deserted amphitheater and through the city streets. At first she thought he was leading her back to the stairs they’d taken earlier, then she realized they were heading in the opposite direction. Before long they reached the far side of the underground city. The braziers were few here, the light dusk-dim. Erdis Cai continued walking until he came to a craggy section of cavern wall that hadn’t been made smooth like so much else in Grimwall had. He stopped, and though he issued no command for Makala to do the same, she did anyway. She no longer knew if her body remained under Cai’s spell or if she duplicated the action simply because she could think of nothing else to do. She watched as the vampire lord pressed his gauntlet-covered hand against the wall, and though she could
see nothing to mark this section as different from the rock surrounding it, Cai pressed and was rewarded with grating sound of rock sliding against rock. He removed his hand as a door shaped in a half-circle slowly swung open in front of them.

“I can’t tell you how many years I’d been using Grimwall as a base of operations before I discovered this door. I know I was still mortal at the time, though.” He started to walk through the door, then paused and glanced back over his shoulder at Makala.

“This set of stairs spirals downward and can be somewhat tricky for mortals to negotiate. Remain in physical contact with me as we descend.” He offered his arm in a gentlemanly gesture, but when Makala made no move to take it, he said, “Suit yourself,” and passed through the opening in the wall. Makala, whether of her own desire or not, followed.

As they began going down, the door closed shut behind them, leaving Makala in total darkness. The stairs wound sharply and steeply downward, and it wasn’t long before Makala found herself becoming dizzy. Despite her earlier reluctance to take Cai’s arm, she now reached out and put a hand on his armored shoulder to steady herself, being careful to avoid touching the jutting spike there. She gasped as her flesh came in contact with the metal. It was freezing cold, so much so that it was painful to the touch. She tried to yank her hand away, but she couldn’t pull it free no matter how hard she tried. She kept on trying as they wound down ever deeper into darkness but without success. After a time, the cold hurt so much it burned like fire, and soon after that, her hand began to go numb. By the time the darkness finally gave way to a flickering greenish glow, she couldn’t feel any sensation from her fingertips to her elbow.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped into a chamber lit by the same greenfire braziers as much of the rest of Grimwall. Makala’s hand was still stuck fast to Erdis Cai’s shoulder. As he came off the last step, she stumbled and nearly fell onto him, but terrified of what might happen if her body collided with his armored back, she gripped hold of the stairwell wall, tearing her nails on the rock.

Erdis Cai started to turn then, but the motion was awkward, and he realized that the flesh of Makala’s hand had adhered to his armor.

“My apologies. I’ve worn this armor for so long that I often forget I have it on.” He removed the gauntlet from his left hand, then reached over his shoulder and took hold of Makala’s wrist. Gently but firmly, he pulled her free of the freezing-cold obsidian metal and then released her wrist.

Makala fell backward onto the steps, landing painfully on her rump. She cradled her useless right arm, unable to feel anything up to the shoulder now. When Cai had pried her off his armor, she’d expected the skin of her fingers and palm to peel off and stick to his shoulder in a raw bloody handprint, but her skin was intact—smooth, pink, and healthy—save for the total lack of sensation, of course.

Erdis Cai put his gauntlet back on. “You will recover in time. One of my armor’s abilities is the power to drain the lifeforce of an opponent and feed it into me. It’s more efficient than drinking blood, if not as satisfying, but we weren’t in contact for long, and I did not consciously attempt to drain your lifeforce, so there should be no permanent effects.”

“Should?
” Makala said, though in truth she was already beginning to feel tingling in the tips of her fingers.

“Forget your arm and look around you, lass. We have arrived at the very heart of Grimwall, the site of the greatest treasure it has ever been my good fortune to discover.”

The braziers here burned low, but at a gesture from Erdis Cai the green flames blazed higher, driving back the shadows and clearly illuminating the entire chamber. Once they had, Makala wished it had remained dark.

They stood at the outer edge of a circular stone chamber two hundred feet across. It was more roughly hewn than the rest of Grimwall, the wall, ceiling, and floor uneven and cracked in numerous places. Recessed areas eight feet high and four feet wide had been carved into the wall, and standing upright in each of the alcoves was a corpse garbed in full armor. Their flesh was dried, withered, and papery, drawn close to the bone. Though the creatures’ bodies looked ancient, their armor appeared new and highly polished: breastplates, backplates, helms, shields vambraces, and gauntlets. Their weapons were also in excellent condition: swords, battle-axes, pikes, war hammers, spears, poleaxes. These were warriors of death, standing guard through the ages deep within the rock of Grimwall, but whatever they had been in life, they hadn’t been human. They stood six-and-a-half feet tall, orange-red skins covered with dark reddish-brown hair. They had flat noses and chins, pointed ears, and sharp yellowed teeth. Worst of all, though their eyelids were closed, Makala had the impression that the desiccated things weren’t so much dead as sleeping.

“Magnificent, aren’t they?” Erdis Cai said. “There are twenty-five alcoves, each containing a squadron of eighty hobgoblin warriors.”

“Eighty?” Makala imagined one armored corpse standing
behind another, and another and another … “That means there are—”

“Two thousand in all,” Erdis Cai said. The vampire lord’s voice held more emotion than Makala had heard since meeting him. He sounded excited, eager, almost like a small child impatient to open a long-anticipated present and start playing with it.

In the center of the chamber was a large circular pool full of a thick blackish substance that resembled pitch, though it didn’t have the acrid smell. This liquid gave off a coppery tang than seemed familiar to Makala, though she couldn’t identify it. There were four greenfire braziers in the chamber, set at regular intervals around the circumference of the pool. A narrow walkway stretched across the pool to the base of a stone dais engraved with strange runes located in the exact center of the chamber. The dais reminded Makala of the obsidian table in Emon Gorsedd’s Chamber of Joining, and she feared the comparison might be too close for comfort. Shallow channels less than a foot wide had been carved into the floor—twenty-five in all—running from the edge of the pool and extending beneath the feet of the dead hobgoblin warriors, and presumably beyond so that all two thousand were connected to the pool of black liquid. However, the channels were dry, for the surface of the ebon liquid didn’t quite reach up to floor level.

Then Makala realized that the substance in the pool wasn’t black. It only seemed so because of the eerie greenish light given off by the burning braziers. The liquid that filled the pool was red, because it was blood. Gallons and gallons of it.

“The goblinoid empire lasted for eleven thousand years,” Erdis Cai said, “but these warriors refused to perish along with
their civilization. All two thousand of them sacrificed their lives so that they might enter into a state of living death, and here they have slumbered for centuries, waiting for the day when they would be called upon to fight once more.” A sly smile twisted Erdis Cai’s lips. “Of course, I’m sure they thought they’d be summoned to serve their own kind, but then death—just as life—is full of little surprises.”

Makala turned to Erdis Cai. “You intend to wake these …
things’?”

“Of course. It’s what I’ve been working toward for the last four decades, but I’m not doing it for myself.” He touched the blood-red symbol on his chest and bowed his head in reverence. “I’m doing it for
Her.”

As if in response to the name, the blood within the pool bubbled for a moment then fell still.

Erdis Cai raised his head and when he looked at Makala, his crimson eyes gleamed with mad fervor. “Can you imagine it? The Black Fleet sailing under my command, holds filled with these warriors, all two thousand of them restored to life and ready to do whatever I ask of them. It shall be glorious!”

“Glorious? It’s appalling!”

Erdis Cai went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “The enchantment upon the warriors is a complicated one, however. In order to wake them, one life must be sacrificed for each warrior, and none shall so much as raise a hand until the two thousandth sacrifice has been completed.”

Makala stared at the nearly full pool with a sudden sick feeling. “How many …”

“One thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven,” Erdis Cai said matter-of-factly. “The magic of this chamber keeps the
blood fresh, and a good thing, too, for it’s taken a long time to collect it all. We’ve had to be careful not to take too many candidates for sacrifice at a time, lest we anger the Lhazaar Princes enough to cause them to put aside their differences and come together to stop us. Not just anyone is suitable for sacrifice, otherwise we could’ve resurrected the warriors years ago. A sacrifice has to be a warrior as well, or at least possess the spirit of a warrior, but in and of itself, that isn’t enough. One must possess—”

“Strength and vitality,” Makala said as the awful implications of what Erdis Cai was saying began to sink in. “That’s what makes a person—” she took a deep breath—“worthy.”

Erdis Cai smiled, clearly pleased. “Precisely! That’s why you should honor your friend’s death. She gave her life so that we could identify the most important sacrifice of all.” The vampire lord’s smile stretched into a feral grin. “The last one.”

Makala felt light-headed and she feared she was on the verge of passing out. “But … you said you’d only sacrificed one thousand, nine hundred …”

“And ninety-seven,” Erdis Cai supplied. “That’s correct, but to make matters even more complicated, sacrifices can only be made during certain times of the month. We identified two other worthy ones several weeks ago, but we’ve been waiting for the next time of sacrifice to arrive before … using them. Luckily, we found you before that time, lass, so now we can sacrifice all three of you together and complete the rite at long last.”