Fire Sea (53 page)

“Don't hang around here with me,” snapped Haplo, pushing the animal away. He started walking. “You like the Sartan so much, you go be
his
dog. I don't want you.”

The animal grinned. Tail wagging, it trotted along close to Haplo's side.

The only one alive.

Haplo had seen many dreadful sights in his lifetime. The Labyrinth killed without mercy or compassion. But what he saw that day in the palace of Necropolis would haunt him the remainder of his life.

Jonathan knew his way around the palace, led them swiftly through the twisting corridors and confused maze of

rooms. They moved warily, cautiously at first, keeping to the shadows, hiding in doorways, fearing at every corner to meet more of the lazar, searching for new victims.

The living hold us in bondage. We are slaves to the living. When the living are no more, we will be free.

The echo of Jera's voice lingered in the halls, but there was no sign of her or any other being, either living or half-living.

The dead, however, were everywhere.

Corpses littered the corridors, lying where they'd fallen, none of them resurrected, none of them treated with any ceremony at all. A woman cut down by an arrow held a murdered baby clasped in her arms. A man taken unaware, stabbed from behind, stared sightlessly at them, an almost comical expression of astonishment on the dead face.

Haplo yanked the sword from the body, appropriating it for his own use.

“You will not need that weapon,” said the prince. “The lazar no longer pursue us. Kleitus has called them. They have more urgent business.”

“Thanks for the advice, but I feel better with it, all the same.”

Swiftly, working as he walked, keeping his group moving, the Patryn traced in blood several sigla on the blade. Looking up, he met Alfred's horrified stare.

“Crude,
1
admit,” Haplo told him. “But I don't have time for anything fancy.”

Alfred opened his mouth to protest.

“This spell might,” the Patryn added coolly, “sever the magical life that binds those lazar, holds their bodies together. Unless you think you can remember that spell you cast on them?”

Alfred shut his mouth, averted his eyes. The Sartan looked ill, haggard. His skin was gray, his hands trembled, his shoulders were bent beneath a crushing weight. He was suffering acutely, and Haplo should have been exultant, should have reveled in his enemy's torment.

He couldn't, and the feeling angered him. He drew a sigil in the blood of his ancient enemy and felt only gut-wrenching

pain. Like it or not, Alfred and I spring from the same source. Branches far removed from each other, one at the top of the tree, one at the bottom; one reaching toward the light, the other keeping to the shadow. But we each grow from the same trunk. The blade of the ax is biting into the trunk, intent on bringing down the whole tree. In the Sartan's doom, Haplo could read his own.

Do I take this knowledge of necromancy back to My Lord? Or do I conceal its discovery? That would mean lying to My Lord. Lying to the man who saved my life.

What am I thinking? Of course, I'll take the knowledge back to My Lord. I'll take Jonathan. What's the matter with me? I'm growing weak! Sentimental! All the fault of that damn Alfred. He goes back with me, too. My Lord will deal with him.

And I'll watch and enjoy every minute …

Only one left alive.

They came to the antechamber, near the throne room. The courtiers who'd waited on Kleitus, currying his favor, hoping for even a glance from the dynastic eye, lay dead on the floor. None had been armed, none had been able to fight for their lives, although it appeared that a few had sought desperately to escape. They'd been stabbed from behind.

“They got what they wanted,” said Jonathan, gazing at the bodies dispassionately. “Kleitus paid attention to them at last, every one.”

Haplo glanced at the young man. Alfred was enduring vicariously every agony the dead had experienced. Jonathan, by contrast, might have been one of the corpses. He and the dead Prince Edmund bore an uncanny resemblance to each other. Calm, solemn, untouched by the tragedy.

“And where is Kleitus?” Haplo wondered aloud. “And why did he leave these dead behind? Why not turn them into lazar?”

“You will note that there are no necromancers among this group,” Alfred answered in a low, shaken voice. “Kleitus

must maintain control. He will return, in a few days’ time, and raise these dead, as has been done in the past.”

“Except,” added Jonathan, “that now Kleitus can communicate with the dead directly. Through the intervention of the lazar, the dead have gained intelligence.”

Armies of dead advancing with purpose and resolve, bent on slaughtering those they envied and hated—the living.

“That is why we have found no one in the palace,” said the prince. “Kleitus and Jera and their army have moved on. They are preparing to cross the Fire Sea, preparing to attack and destroy the last remaining people left alive on this world.”

“Your people,” said Haplo.

“They are my people no longer,” said the prince. “Now my people are these.” The white, glistening phantasm stood among the corpses, its cold light casting a pale glow over the chill faces. The whisperings of the unhappy spirits filled the air as if they were answering him.

Or pleading with him.

“We have to warn Baltazar. And what about your ship?” asked Alfred suddenly, turning to Haplo. “Will it be safe? Will we be able to leave?”

Haplo started to snap that, of course, his ship was safe, protected. But the words died on his lips. How could he be sure? He didn't know what powers these lazar possessed. If they destroyed his ship, he'd be trapped here until he could find a new one. Trapped, battling against armies of dead, battling against those who could never be stopped, never be defeated. Haplo's breathing shortened. The Sartan's panic was catching.

“What's he doing now? Where is Kleitus at this moment? Do you know?”

“Yes,” the prince answered. “I hear the voices of the dead. He is mobilizing his forces, gathering his army together, preparing to send them forth. The ships swing at anchor, waiting. It will take some time for him to board all his troops.” Haplo could have sworn the phantasm smiled. “The dead cannot be herded about like sheep now. They are

intelligent, and intelligence brings independence of thought and action, and that leads, inevitably, to confusion.”

“So we have time,” Haplo said. “But we have to cross the Fire Sea.”

“I know of a way,” said the prince, “if you have the courage to use it.”

It wasn't a question of courage anymore.

Alfred spoke Haplo's thought. “We have no choice.”

CHAPTER
43
NECROPOLIS,
ABARRACH

N
ECROPOLIS HAD FULFILLED THE DREAD PORTENT OF ITS
name. Mangled bodies lay huddled in doorways, struck down before they could reach refuge. Nor would they have escaped, even then. Doors had been split asunder, beaten down by the dead, in their efforts to wrest life from the living. They had been successful. The water that ran in the gutters was stained dark with blood.

The phantasm of Prince Edmund led them through the winding tunnels of the City of the Dead. They avoided the main gate, which might be guarded, escaped the city through one of the rat holes. Once outside the walls, they could hear, in the distance, a dull rumbling sound that echoed off the high cavern ceiling and shook the ground on which they stood. The armies of dead, preparing for war.

Numerous pauka, still harnessed to their carts, roamed the outskirts of Necropolis. The animals were bewildered, frightened at the smell of blood. Owners and riders were dead, bodies left to lie where they'd fallen or resurrected and borne away to assist in the slaughter. Haplo and Jonathan commandeered a carriage, dragged the bodies of a man, a woman, and two children out of it. Alfred climbed inside, scarcely knowing what he was doing, acting completely under guidance, usually Jonathan's, but sometimes— roughly—Haplo's.

The carriage rattled off. The pauka appeared relieved to

have someone in control of its life once more. Jonathan drove, Haplo sat beside him, keeping watch. The cadaver of Prince Edmund sat upright in the passenger seat next to Alfred. The prince's phantasm acted as guide. They headed eastward for several miles, traveling in the direction of Rift Ridge. Reaching an intersection, the carriage turned southward toward the Fire Sea. The dog ran alongside, occasionally barking at the pauka, much to that animal's discomfiture.

Jonathan drove as fast as he dared. The carriage rocked and bounced over the rock-strewn highway, fields of kairn grass whipped past them in a dizzying blur of greenish brown. Alfred clung to the side of the lurching carriage, expecting every moment to be pitched out of it or overturned in it. He rode in fear of his life, a thing he couldn't understand, for his life had very little meaning left to it.

What base animal instinct in us drives us? Alfred wondered to himself bitterly. Forces us to continue living, when it would be far easier to sit down and die.

The carriage rolled around a corner on two wheels. The Sartan was thrown violently against the chill form of the cadaver. The carriage righted itself. Alfred righted himself, Prince Edmund's corpse assisting him with its accustomed dignity.

Why do I cling to life? What is there left for me, after all? Even if I escape this world, I can never escape the knowledge of what I've seen, the knowledge of what my people have become. Why should I race to warn Baltazar? If he survives, he'll continue to look for Death's Gate. He'll figure out how to enter and carry the contagion of necromancy into the realms beyond. Haplo himself has threatened to bring the art to the knowledge of his lord.

Yet, Alfred pondered, the Patryn spoke of that when we first came. He hasn't mentioned it since. I wonder how he feels about it now. Sometimes I imagine I've seen the same horror that I've felt in my soul reflected in his eyes. And in the Chamber of the Damned, he was the young man seated next to me! He saw what I saw—

“He fights against it, as do you,” said the prince, breaking in on Alfred's thoughts.

Startled, Alfred tried to speak, to protest, but the words were jounced out of his mouth. He nearly bit off his tongue. Prince Edmund understood, however.

“Only one out of the three of you opened his heart to the truth. Jonathan doesn't understand completely, yet, but he is near, much closer than you.”

“I want… to know … the truth!” Alfred managed to get out, shooting the words from between clenched teeth to keep from biting his tongue again.

“Do you?” asked the phantasm, and it seemed to Alfred that he saw it coolly smile. “Haven't you spent your life denying it?”

His fainting spells: used consciously at first to keep from revealing his magical powers, had now become uncontrollable. His clumsiness: a body at odds with its spirit. His inability—or was it refusal—to call to mind a spell that would give him too much power, unwanted power, power that others might try to usurp. Constantly putting himself in the role of observer, refusing to act for good or for evil.

“But what else could I have done?” Alfred asked defensively. “If the mensch once found out I had the power of a god, they would force me to use that power to intervene in their lives.”