Path of Bones (52 page)

It was a
cutgate,
the largest and most powerful
cutgate
he’d ever seen.  An absence waited on the other side, a vast and freezing void.

Muscles blazing and fingers about to break from the pressure, Dane hauled himself up the crumbling slope.  He looked up, his face glazed with cold sweat.  The Red Hand Bloodspeakers were all dead on the stones above, their eyes replaced with burned holes.  Gallaean, the Allaji and Kala were down there on the slope with him, struggling to climb out.  The sky churned with blazing white light.

“You stupid bitch!” Gallaean shouted at Kala.  “You weren’t supposed to activate the portal until we’d established a link with Ironclaw Keep!  What if Crinn isn’t ready yet?!”

Crinn.  Goddess, it can’t be.

Dane rose, unsteady.  Hurt sliced through his body, and every breath was filled with glass.  Gallaean was the closest, so Dane launched forward and grabbed the priest-captain from behind.  The man was big and strong, but the angle was uncertain and the excavated sides of the pit were unstable, so Dane was able to pull them both down backwards.  He found his footing and twisted sideways, casting Gallaean into the pit.  The priest vanished from sight, his screams echoing through the darkness below.

The Allaji gripped his
raak’ma
and moved for Dane, sloughing through the dirt on the slope like he waded through ocean waters.

“
Fool!” Kala shouted at Dane.  “You’re too late.  The door to Chul Gaerog has opened, and now you’re going to die!”

Seventy-One

Streams of acid and fire exploded across the sky.  A blinding sphere of light issued from Corinth’s twisted network of ruined towers and crumbling sandstone structures.  A pulse of orange and crimson exploded like a blazing star.

“
Goddess,” Argus whispered.  He felt like he’d swallowed a chunk of ice.  “We’re too late!”

A column of ice-pale energies tore out of the heavens in a blinding pillar.  The air was thick with soiled magic.

“Chul Gaerog,” Razel said with frightened awe. 

“
Yes,” Jar’rod said from behind them.  “Kala opened the
cutgate
without waiting to establish contact with General Crinn’s armies.  Now she will enter the Black Tower and steal Vlagoth’s power.”

“
Or kill us all in the attempt,” Argus said.

The three mages and Fon were just outside the city, in the ruins of an old watchtower lacking a roof and most of its circular wall.  Slayne and his Black Eagles were at Corinth’s gates, where they’d already killed a dozen of Kala’s mercenary soldiers.  Brutus was with them, and even from their distant vantage Argus saw the red-skinned brute hacking enemies down. 

“What do we do?” Razel asked.  Even in light of everything that was happening, hearing her frightened unnerved him. 

“
We keep moving,” Argus said, wishing he felt half as confident as he sounded.  “I’ll send a message to Toran.  He’ll have to figure out a way to seal off Corinth so no one else can use the gate.”

“
And what do
we
do?” Razel asked.

Argus took a breath.  Fear lanced through his chest. 

“We have to stop her,” he said.  “Keep her from entering the Tower.  And if we’re too late to do that...we go in after her.”

“
In?” Razel asked.  “You mean…into Chul Gaerog?”

Argus could only nod. 

Seventy-Two

Ijanna drowned in light.  Power poured from her body.  She couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t even see. 

Visions floated through her mind.  Her son, her imprisonment in the death camps.  The Chul.  The Phage.  The Shadow Guild.  She saw the faces of everyone she’d ever known.  Her chest swelled with hope, and sadness. 

Shadows grasped at her soul.  She felt the presence of the true power behind those lives, behind the Veil.  The breath of that black God fell over her like a diseased cloud. 

Hands pulled her away from the nightmare. 

“Get up!” Kath shouted.

He hauled Ijanna to her feet, and the world crashed down around her in all its brutal clarity.  Clouds of fire burned overhead, and heat and electricity scorched the air.  Only a few scattered soldiers remained – the rest were dead, cleared away by the magic which had been drawn out of her in a violent and explosive blast.  Phage troops battled Kala’s soldiers, and bloody smoke curled across the ground.  A dark-cloaked Veilwarden threw spheres of black fire and immolated mercenaries and slaves, cackling with glee the entire time. 

Ijanna’s mind swam.  She was dizzy and disoriented and her head felt like it had been filled with sand.  Her legs were weak, and every breath was a struggle. 

She and Kath had somehow been freed from their bonds.  Kath picked up his axe and handed Ijanna the
thar’koon,
but she let the blades fall to the ground.

“
I don’t need them anymore,” she said.  “Kala won’t help.  She’ll only do more damage.”

She nearly collapsed.  Kath caught her and held her up with one arm as he swung around.  His dirty skin was soiled with grime and blood.  Sweat poured down his face as he searched for a way to escape. 

“Hang on,” he said. “We have to go.”

“
I know,” she said.  She stared at the pit, and the hole waiting at the bottom.  A rip between worlds.  A place of darkness, and truth. 

The way to Chul Gaerog.

Something cold clutched at her heart.  She ignored it, as well as her urge to run.  She’d run long enough.

It was time to go home.

Seventy-Three

In the moments before his bonds had burned away, when he thought he was going to die, Kath’s mind flooded with memories of his life.  They were nothing clear that he could focus on with all of the chaos and noise – just snippets of his childhood, his love of games, his father’s books, his mother’s sweet smile, Julei’s yarn and her nameless cat, Calestra’s large and expressive eyes, always so wise, always filled with sorrow.

How he wished he could see them again.

Kath held Ijanna up.  He expected her to fall from exhaustion at any moment.  He wasn’t sure who the new arrivals were – the blonde-haired Jlantrian warrior battling Kala and her allies, the black-clad Veilwarden and his well-armed troops – and he didn’t much care. 

He had to protect Ijanna.  She was all he had left.

Three of Kala’s mercenaries bore down on them with swords drawn and lips peeled back into snarls.  As Kath turned to face them he saw the Princess’s black lions, their midnight fur drenched in blood as they ripped through invading soldiers.  They eyed he and Ijanna and stalked towards them from the front of the manor, moving in a blur, just ebon shadows with fangs and teeth. 

“I love you,” he told Ijanna, and he left her there at the edge of the pit and went to meet the soldiers head-on. 

Seventy-Four

“I love you, too,” Ijanna whispered, but she doubted Kath heard her.  She watched as he tore into the mercenaries with unbridled ferocity.  His axe dashed blades aside and cleaved into flesh.  Blood splashed up around him as he cracked through armor and threw his enemies to the ground.

Ijanna Breathed the Veil around him and infused him with strength, then turned towards the pit.

Kala was nowhere in sight.  The mysterious blonde warrior wrestled with Drazzek Ma’al for control of a double-headed scimitar.  They were up to their knees in the dirt on the slope, and the yawning void was just a dozen paces below them.  Darkness spilled from the bottom of the pit like an inky cloud. 

Ijanna jumped down as she Breathed, guiding herself with cold power.  She landed on Drazzek’s back and threw him off balance.  Pain shot through her skull as his elbow connected with her jaw.  She fell back and slid down towards the hole.  Down to where she was meant to be.

Seventy-Five

Kath grimaced in pain.  Blood oozed from a deep gash in his leg, and another cut burned across his chest.  Grime covered his face and hands, and he felt skull fragments on his fingers.  He braced his axe,  which was slick with gore.

The Veil chose you.

The first man went down easy, but after that Kath’s luck ran out.  The second soldier sliced into his leg with a serrated blade; Kath knocked the weapon aside and took the mercenary’s face in his hand, then brought him down and smashed his head against a rock before finishing him off with the axe. 

The third man was quick.  A scimitar painfully hacked into Kath’s arm before he used his axe to snap his attacker’s leg sideways at the knee, then ended his opponent’s screams by burying his blade in the man’s neck.

Kath’s head was spinning.  Blood oozed down his body.  Soldiers fell back, burned by Veilfire and brought down by arrows. 

He looked behind him and saw Kala standing at the edge of the pit, staring down at Ijanna.  The Princess’s back was turned to him, and her hands crackled with raw power.  He tried to reach her, but suddenly his legs seemed to fail him, and it took all of his strength just to remain standing.

The Veil chose you.  Something you have to do. 

Kath groaned in pain and hobbled towards Kala as fast as he could.  He heard the lions closing in. 

Seventy-Six

Dane saw Ijanna roll away with blood on her lips.  She fell onto her back and slid down the slope, and as he watched her fall Dane suddenly remembered her from the death camps.

Goddess, it can’t be. 

Dane felt the magnetic draw of the void.  Sparking light knifed out of the darkness.  The Allaji grabbed his throat and squeezed.  Air pressure built in his lungs and blackness danced at the edge of his mind. 

“
No…” he gasped, and he threw his weight forward.  The double-edged scimitar hung between them, each man gripping the central hilt, but as Dane shifted one of the blades cut clean through his armor.  Blood gushed from the exposed muscle in his shoulder. 

The weapon came free as they slid.  The Allaji lost his grip and fell back.  Dane cried out in pain, gripped the hilt and rammed the blade through the other man’s face.  Blood sprayed onto black earth. 

Ijanna slid closer to the void.  Dane fell away from the Allaji’s corpse and fought his way through the dark sand, sinking as he reached for the Dream Witch.  Pain sizzled across his hands and hot blood rained from his wounds.  Black dots streaked across his vision as he struggled, intent on reaching her before he died.

I’ll help her, I have to help her.  Goddess, I killed her son.

He’d almost made it to her when he saw a glare of eldritch fire up above.  Princess Azaean stared down at them both, laughing.

Seventy-Seven

Kath saw the black-clad Veilwarden blast through Kala’s men with gleaming arctic blades.  His crimson-cloaked soldiers hacked down the last standing line of mercenaries.  The air smelled of fire and blood.

Even with her forces gone, the Princess laughed.  Ice-hued fire dripped from her fingers like grease.  That power sharpened to a spear point, aimed down into the pit.

There was no way he’d reach her in time to stop her from killing Ijanna.  She was too far, the lions too close.

The Veil chose me.  Something I have to do.

The pain was unbearable.  Tears stained his face.  Kath threw himself forward, putting all of his weight behind the axe to send it spinning end over end.  The lion’s shadows fell over him. 

The blade caught Kala in the back with a sickening crunch.  She didn’t scream, didn’t even cry out, just fell forward and crumpled to the ground, dead.

Kath screamed as the lions tore into him.  He caught sight of Ijanna sliding towards the hole.  She was going home. 

Maybe in another life he’d face Malath Zayne.  Maybe he and Ijanna would be friends, even lovers. 

But not here, not now.

The Veilwarden sent a roaring wave of fire screaming across the ground.  It fell over Kath and burned away his flesh moments after the lions tore out his throat.

Seventy-Eight

Fire ripped overhead, scraping the edges of the pit and immolating the stone discs.  Heat fell over them.  Dane winced and recoiled as he slid through the loose soil. 

He fell backwards, and his hand caught Ijanna’s wrist.  She felt so light, and as he touched her a jolt of energy poured through him, a shocking spike of power that punched straight to his heart.