Under the Shadow of Darkness: Book 1 of the Apprentice Series (19 page)

Kerlith was becoming upset. “I would never do that. My master either. He was the one who called you and you didn’t want to come, remember?”

“You’re right. I never said I was any different either. Don’t think that I am. I’m no better than anyone else. Wait a few years; you’ll get there too. Believe me I didn’t start out this way, but we all get there eventually. Hey, enough about this anyway. If you live through this, you’ll see.”

Kerlith couldn’t accept the archmage’s depressing view of humanity but he had no further counterpoint so he said in defeat, “Well, you’re here now.”

“Yes, I am. And I am going to close this breach or die trying but don’t expect anyone to come help us. We are on our own out here. I’m sorry, kid.”

Alexius said, “Master Nes’egrinon, there is some movement over there. It looks as if it may be something? Shall we investigate?”

The archmage growled, “Let’s get this over with.”

Bel scuttled down the mountain as fast as he could, trying not to stumble over rocks and stones as he ran, leaping over small boulders, holding his staff long in front of him, mage-light shining brightly. The slope of the earth flattened and he barreled into the rambling mass of dead at the base of the mountain, pushing through them, him trying to not think about how crazy this all was. The dead stepped out of his pathway, at least the ones that saw him coming, many reaching a hand out and touching his clothing or his skin as he dashed by, somehow pleased to at least touch the living.
Their dress is odd. These must have been dead a long, long time. No wonder they do not venture out much further. They have been dead too long. Maybe they have forgotten what it feels like to be alive.
Whatever the reason, Bel was glad that they did not try to attack him. As they got thick in front of him his run quickly slowed to a jog then to a walk then to a slog as he had to push more and more of them out of the way. The thickness of the presence of death wrapped around Bel, blanketing him in intense claustrophobia; he had to keep moving, had to keep pushing through or he would scream; he had to hold on; he could not let it escape his throat. They were everywhere! The deeper he got in, the more hands that reached out to touch him. Now some saw him as he approached and waited, outstretched arms waiting for him, voices croaking, “Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood,” their long dead throats full of dust and dirt, barely able to make an audible sound. He couldn’t stop; he had to push through, had to keep moving for he knew as soon as he stopped one would surely bite him. The temptation was too great. He knew that they couldn’t help it. They were human beings, once anyway, but no one can resist hunger forever. Bel remembered his father’s dog and the tricks they would play on him. His father loved to put a treat right on the dog’s nose, sometimes even on top of his head. The dog wasn’t allowed to eat the treat until his father said so. It seemed to little Bel like such a mean thing to do but still it amazed him how his father could have such command over the dog.
These dead were not dogs; they were not blindly obedient animals. Yet they hungered like our dog never did. When Pa told our dog to not eat the treat, the dog’s belly was already full; the treat was only a sweet ending to a meal. These dead are starving; I must keep moving.
It was like passing a delicious sandwich inches from the mouth of a starving person—and Bel knew he was the sandwich.

Bel glanced back and the mountain seemed far away; there were at least a thousand dead swinging and swaying in a constantly moving surf between him and the mountain now. He felt like he was a different person then, a person who was running toward the breach but didn’t really want to, a person doing it out of duty. Now he no longer wanted to go back; it was pulling him so hard; every fiber of his being was being drawn toward the breach and all he could think about was how to get there faster. He was suddenly like a puppet in a marionette show and in the audience at the same time. Every cell in his brain told Bel that he should be anywhere but here and do everything in his power to get far, far away from this place, yet here he was, sucked towards it like an insect to blue light. Bel squeezed his mage-wood staff tighter and pressed on. Up ahead there was a clearing and there, right there, a bluish glint.
It is the light of my master’s staff!

Dread dripped off of Bel in his sweat. It invaded his nostrils. It was the nausea in his belly. It was the taste on his tongue. He swished chalky saliva around in his mouth and spit but the foul taste would not go away. He wouldn’t have been surprised if his tongue were black. It tasted horrible, dreadful, terrible. But he couldn’t keep away; it was drawing him in, pulling him in, calling him to come closer and deeper into a monstrous place full of fetid, rotten dead things and he could not get there fast enough. If the path were clear of dead he would be running towards the breach in a full gallop; it was just so obvious that he needed to get there as soon as he could but still, he couldn’t understand why.

He pushed through another group of dead but tripped on a leg and nearly fell. There were just too many of them. He waved his staff above his head and pushed a small amount of love into the mage-wood, not a lot, just a little, just enough. He didn’t want to create a stampede. He didn’t want a few thousand confused and disoriented dead full of panic and fear running and trampling him or his master and the others. A pinkish purplish puff surrounded him and the ghoul-kind quickly leapt back, smashing into each other, some tumbling, trying to escape the cloud of Fear. Bel plodded it out of his staff and in front of him, clearing a path through the dead as he slowly stepped through.

“Master? Master? I am coming! I’ll be right there!” Bel yelled out to where he last saw the glint of mage-light but he could not see his master or Alexius or Kerlith. He pressed on through the throng to where he last saw the light, hoping that he would find them soon. He was getting close to the breach and did not know what to do. All he knew was that something strong had a hand on his chest and was pulling, drawing him, tugging on him to come closer to the entrance and whatever it was he knew it wanted to kill him.

The sound was getting louder too. It was the roar. The terrible wail that invaded his mind in what seemed like so long ago when they hid out in an abandoned home in the forest.
A lifetime ago. I overcame the roar then. Or maybe it just gave up?
Bel could not be certain of why it left him then but it was certainly here now. And getting louder. It was in his mind and it felt so odd to Bel because around him, for the most part, the ghouls were silent. They stumbled around and he could hear the shuffling of their feet. When he came close to them some would mumble through dry and dusty throats in an almost inaudible croak but Bel was completely astonished at how quiet several thousand, if not tens of thousands, of wandering corpses could be. But the roar in his mind, that was another story. He wished he could block it out, but it only became louder and stronger the closer he came to the breach.

Bel reached the small clearing and called out again, “Master? Kerlith? Alexius?” Then something grabbed him and spun him around. The tug on his shoulder nearly caused him to fall. He jammed his staff into the ground for support, looked down and saw that he was gone. His body was gone. He looked at his staff and where it should have been and then at his missing arms and down at where his legs were supposed to be and they were all gone.

“Nooooooo! The breach has me!” Bel wailed.

“Sshhhh! Shut up, Fifth Year! Do you want to get us all killed!” the voice of Nes’egrinon spoke.

Bel looked around and seeing nothing whispered, “Master? Where are you? Are we in the land of the dead? Did we fall into the breach?”

Kerlith’s voice said, “We’re invisible, stupid.”

Nes’egrinon said, “Snuff out your mage-light and grab Alexius’ shoulder. Keep your eyes peeled. We’re trying to find someone or something that would give us an indication as to what is keeping this rift open.”

Bel reached out in the air with his hands and swung them softly, trying to hit a body part, trying to find Alexius, still not understanding what had happened to him.

“That’s me,” Kerlith said. “Here give me your hand.” Kerlith traced Bel’s hand back to Alexius’ shoulder.

“Okay. I’m ready.”

The invisible band stepped slowly, centipede-like towards the breach in a circuitous pattern giving them ample time to cast their amazed eyes at the giant tear in the fabric of reality glistening and pulsing in front of them. It was a large black jagged hole, very tall but not very wide. They could see nothing past it’s opening yet corpses would occasionally pop out of the blackness or drop into it as if they were crossing the threshold of a doorway, instantly appearing or disappearing. Bel so desperately wanted to know how this was possible and the tug on his chest so desperately wanted him to cross the threshold but he dared not.

“”

“Did… did any of you hear that?” Bel questioned nervously.

No one responded.

“” sang in Bel’s mind again, the mage-words, commanding him to come, the words that he often used to call the light, to call the light to join with his inner light, but now it was death calling to the death within him. It was darkness calling to darkness to join. And he felt the pull and he didn’t like what that meant. Every First Year knew that you must have light within you to call to light.
But if darkness is calling to me, what does that mean? I can feel the pull. Does that mean that I have death inside me?

Bel’s skin began to crawl. He didn’t like being invisible. He didn’t like that the dead were visible while he was not. He didn’t like the fact that something dark, deep within the underworld, was pulling on him to merge with it. The fact that he just killed a man by draining his life-force, albeit unintentionally, dragged on his mind. He felt filthy, dirty and rotten. He was a killer, a murderer, and he deserved to be there in the land of the dead; he deserved to join with the darkness. Maybe he did have death inside him.

Kerlith’s voice shook, “I can’t. I can’t do this. Please. Please, stop me. I can barely control myself.”

“What? What are you talking about, boy?” Nes’egrinon spat.

“The darkness calls me! I can barely control it. It wants me to run into the breach.”

Nes’egrinon blindly grabbed Kerlith’s arm and held it tight. “You have to keep it together, Apprentice. For your master. Do this for your master! Keep it together! Or all is lost!”

“” They all heard it again.

Kerlith was nearly in tears, straining against the archmage’s pull. “The life I pulled out of the one-armed boy. It was tainted. Infected. I shouldn’t have! The blackness is inside of me! It is being drawn into the breach. I feel I must go.”

“I feel it too. You must fight it!” the wizard barked.

Kerlith released his hand from the old man’s shoulder and wrestled away from his grasp then began walking toward the breach. He became visible. They all did.

Nes’egrinon slammed his staff into the ground and screamed in a panic, “”

The ground trembled and an orb of light erupted from the tip of his staff and swallowed everyone then quickly dissipated. Kerlith continued to walk toward the gaping hole. Alexius ran forward and placed a hand on Kerlith’s arm but Kerlith flung it back, sending Alexius into the air. The soldier landed crumpled on the ground and struggled to get up. Kerlith screamed, “Don’t touch me! Don’t try to stop me!”

Nes’egrinon was hunched over, gasping. With great difficulty he arched his back and raised his arms high and slammed the staff into the ground in front of him. “” Again the light flashed out, ripples careening across the valley, then was gone.

Bel was unfamiliar with that particular word and thought perhaps that his master was trying to destroy the breach before Kerlith fell into it.
Didn’t apocalypse mean ‘destruction’? Wasn’t it the word used to describe the end of the world?
He didn’t know what his master was doing but he wanted to buy him more time. Bel welled up power into his belly, concentrating it, focusing it, then sent a pulse out his arms and through his pointed staff. The ball of energy careened into Kerlith’s legs knocking him to the earth, him stumbling, tumbling, like a child’s plaything tossed out of a toy box.

Kerlith leapt to his feet and howled, “You! That’s it! I’ve had enough of you! This ends now!” He ripped out the stone that was hanging from his neck, breaking the thin rope necklace and pointed both fists at Bel, the neck stone in one hand and the stone ring on the other, both glowing brightly. Kerlith’s lip quivered feverishly and Bel knew from the contorted painful look on his face that the darkness had his former classmate’s mind.

Nes’egrinon heaved his staff once more. “”

Bel prepared himself. He would fight Kerlith. Now or later, it made no difference. But at least now he was doing it to save his life. He would try not to kill him in doing so. “You want some of this! I’m here!”

Alexius quickly scrambled out of their way.

The old wizard desperately swung his stick of mage-wood and screamed out the words of the old language again, pushing out his energy, draining what little he had. This time as the light washed out and softly faded, a trace of a man standing in the center of the breach appeared. It was then that Bel remembered that the mage-word apocalypse meant “revelation.” His master was calling for what was hidden to be revealed, for darkness to show itself.

The ghoul stepped out from the breach, stood in front of them and laughed hysterically, “Hahahahahaha.” He took a swig of blood and said, “Enough of this entertainment. You will be of no use to me if you fight and waste all of your energy on each other.”

Kerlith’s face softened then he looked down at his feet. Bel snuffed the light out of his staff and walked up to his classmate. Kerlith looked up at him, confused and distraught. Knowing what he was feeling, Bel said, “It’s okay,” then walked back behind his master. Kerlith shook his head briskly and joined him.