The Sin War Box Set: Birthright, Scales of the Serpent, and The Veiled Prophet (91 page)

Uldyssian was stunned…and even more furious than ever. “You should’ve turned right back!”

“Listen! There’s more. So much more. Listen!” Serenthia described the beast guarding the way and how she had managed to destroy it. Uldyssian’s brow rose at this, but he refrained from interrupting. “And then…and then I reached the end of the passage and saw them…
all
of them! An endless sea of them. So horrific. So terrifying!”

She became caught up in the nightmarish vision again. The grotesque, fiendish faces. The macabre, chilling forms. The incredible aura of evil…

“Serry!” Uldyssian shook her by the shoulders. “
What
did you see?”

The merchant’s daughter steeled herself. In a low, steady voice, she managed. “I saw…I saw into what could only be what Rathma called the
Burning Hells,
Uldyssian! The passage in the grasslands leads out of our world and into wherever
they
must exist!”

He opened his mouth in what surely would have been a denial of her words, then shut it tight. Uldyssian nodded grimly. They had all dealt with demons long enough. A magical gateway to the infernal realms was no longer a stretch of the imagination.

Seeing that Uldyssian would not argue, Serenthia forced herself to tell him the worst yet. “They were there. They were there. Thousands and thousands of them! Maybe more. I don’t know—their numbers looked endless.”

“Who, Serry? Who?”

Her eyes grew wide as saucers as she continued to envision their ranks. “An army…an army of
demons.
And they can only be getting ready to march on Sanctuary!”

Not for a moment had Achilios hesitated to go out and scout for his friends. His existence—if he could even call this miserable suffering through which he went that—was expendable. It was important for the others to survive…for Serenthia to survive.

With Uldyssian so distracted, it had been simple for the hunter to slip away from where he had been lurking. The tall grass hid him well, and the soft ground eliminated whatever unlikely sound his boots
might
make.

As ever, he kept an arrow ready. The quiver was filled with more. That was the only useful gift that the angel Tyrael had given him, a never-ending supply of sharp and, in some manner, magical arrows. Achilios wished that he could show his gratitude to the treacherous angel—to
both
angels who had used him—by managing to fire a few into whatever served as their hearts.

But, for now, he cared only that the bolts would prove of use against whatever might lurk out here.

And there was certainly
something
hidden in the grasslands. Inarius would have planned some trick by which to wear Uldyssian down before any true confrontation. At least, that was the impression Achilios had of the Prophet.

He was long gone from the encampment by this point, but thus far the only thing he had discovered was the disconcerting lack of any wildlife whatsoever. It was not just that Achilios had run across no rabbits, cats, or other large animals, but there were also no birds or, judging by the complete silence, even one insect. The creatures of the grasslands had found it prudent to flee, and that did not bode well.

There was also hardly anything that could even be called a breeze anymore. What had existed when Achilios had first set out had lessened more and more as he progressed, to the point where only his trained eyes could see the barely perceptible movement of the grass.

Achilios hesitated. For the first time, he noticed that some of the grass ahead was weaving contrary to others. No wind could cause that.

He raised the bow, suspicious that the odd movement meant that something moved low through the grass. Out here, it might be an animal as powerful as one of the jungle cats, but Achilios doubted it. Most animals
fled
his presence, acutely aware of the wrongness inherent in him.

But if it was not an animal, he could think of only one thing, a demon of some sort.

Standing as still as a rock, Achilios waited. The grass continued to weave in its odd fashion, but nothing emerged.

Finally growing impatient, the hunter took a step forward. Instantly, he noted some more agitated movement from the nearest plants. Again, Achilios paused, bow ready to fire.

And again, he was disappointed. Achilios had heard as a child an expression
the patience of the dead,
but he found it held no truth when it came to him. There were limits to even the hunter’s will, and he had reached those limits long ago. Indeed, if anything, being dead had made him
more
impatient than he had been in life.

Still keeping the bow steady, Achilios finally trod forward. To his surprise, the spot where he expected something to be hiding revealed
nothing
. No animal. No demon. It was almost as if the grass moved of its own accord.

Frowning, the blond archer scratched a dirt-flaked cheek. His instincts—and possibly what passed for his edyrem abilities—were as strong as if he were still breathing, and they insisted that something was amiss. Yet whatever it was he could not discover.

That it was night bothered him less than it did Mendeln or Uldyssian. Even as a youth, Achilios had always had exceptional night vision. Undead, it had heightened. He surveyed the area meticulously, seeking some hint of the threat he felt certain surrounded him.

A small, dark form buried in the grass to his left caught his attention. Setting the bow next to him—but keeping his fingers close to it—Achilios used his free hand to tug at the object. The grass was thickly wound around it, so tangled, in fact, that he nearly tore apart what he was trying to retrieve.

Frustrated, Achilios pulled his hand from the bow and grabbed his knife. The grass proved stubborn to cut, but he finally did.

The mangled thing had once been a black bird. The body had nearly been crushed to a pulp, and some of the grass had wound so tightly around the body that the head and wings had nearly been severed.

Achilios judged its death to have been no more than a day. Had there been the usual flies about, the body would have been in worse shape. As it was, it unnerved him that nothing had thus far come to feed on the carrion. He turned the avian over, trying to decide just what had killed it. Other than the tightly wound grass blades, there was no evidence of anything that would have left injury.

He stiffened. Keeping his eyes fixed on the dead bird, he slowly lowered the corpse to the ground. At the same time, Achilios manuevered the hand with the knife toward the now-open palm. He slipped the blade into his other hand, then started to reach for the bow.

His fingers never reached it. His wrist was snagged, what suddenly bound it tightening enough to cut off the blood of a living man.

Achilios spun around, bringing the knife down. The sharp edge cut deep into
grass
.

His other hand came free, the grass blades wrapped around the wrist falling off and wriggling on the ground. The hunter grabbed for the bow—

The grass lunged at him from all sides. It snagged his arms like a hundred coiling serpents. Achilios managed to slash a few more blades, but then his bound hand could not reach the rest.

Suddenly, the grass underneath began churning around and around. The ground there grew soft, and to his horror, Achilios started to sink.

Not again! Not again!
He remembered with dread the tentacles of the demon in the forest and how at one point he had been certain that the creature would drag him under. Instead, it had sought to tear him apart, but that fate—more welcome to him than the other, obvious choice—was not what was intended here.

And as he struggled to keep himself above the surface, the hunter knew that this was no lone occurrence. He had discovered part of the Prophet’s strategy. The angel intended to strip all hope from Uldyssian by the time the two of them actually confronted each other. There were probably other such terrifying spots hidden all through the grasslands, perhaps even with different menaces.

Achilios’s leg sank beneath the soft, turned-up soil. He fought to free himself not only for his own sake but for that of his friends.

For Serenthia…

But although the archer fought with a strength beyond mortal extremes, he could not stop his other leg from following the first, then the rest of his lower half. That left him all but facing into the dirt.

The empty hand went next. Achilios shifted his knife around, trying to cut his remaining wrist free. The sharp edge sliced through several grass blades, and at last Achilios could maneuver his hand better. He quickly slashed at what remained around his wrist.

The hand came free. With monumental effort, the hunter ripped his forearm loose. Unfortunately, his other arm was completely under, and now fronds were seeking his throat. The dirt—the hungry dirt—was only inches from his face.

A desperate growl escaped Achilios. He turned the knife around and dug furiously at the base of the grass nearest his head. Achilios madly chopped at the ground, ripping away at whatever plants he could reach. He felt the pressure on his arm ease up. Like a wet dog, he shook the soil from his other shoulder.

With a grin only death could allow, Achilios raised himself slightly. That gave him even more room to adjust his reach. He immediately put the knife to work. More and more of his buried arm came free.

But then, from beneath the ground, from what surely were the few roots he had left after severing the grass blades, new shoots darted up. They grew to full maturity in less time than it took him to grasp the enormity of their rising.

And with an eager vigor, the new blades coiled around him in such numbers that it seemed Achilios wore a shirt of grass. They tightened their grip on his hand, and although he refused to release the knife, their work made it certain that it was as useless to him as all else.

Both arms were pulled under. The hunter’s torso became buried up to his chest. Achilios shook his head frantically as he sought to keep it from coming closer to the ground.

Then, from beneath his face, a new patch of sinister blades blossomed to life. Achilios knew that he could do nothing to stop them and in his fury screamed his anger.

Grass thrust up into his mouth and nose. Other blades snared his head, hugging him like a lover as they forced his open mouth to kiss the dirt. Darkness closed over Achilios’s face as he was dragged under….

Seconds later, the only sign remaining of his presence was the abandoned bow. The grass that now filled the entire spot gently weaved back and forth.

Waiting…

Achilios had
not
returned, and there were demons in wait. Inarius surely had his own followers ready to attack and even if they did not, there was an army of angels coming to destroy everything.

Despite that dread reality, Uldyssian had no choice but to march the edyrem into the grasslands. He was now playing a game whose rules had been decided by some force beyond his ken. His only hope lay in doing the unexpected…but whatever that might be, he could not say.

The sun had risen, but what might have been something to lift his spirits quickly proved extremely troubling. Not only had the fiery orb seemed to rise sooner and faster than normally, but it also rose in the
wrong
direction. It now hung in the north, the same direction the edyrem had to march to meet their foe.

Somehow, Inarius had
moved
the sun.

Although no one made mention of it out loud, the astounding feat left the edyrem slow and disheartened as they journeyed. The question in everyone’s head was obvious to Uldyssian: How could someone who could move the sun be defeated?

It was Rathma who offered him some ray of hope, however slight. He was the only one among them who looked upon the sight unimpressed.

“That is not the sun,” he informed Uldyssian. “What you see is illusion. The sun is still where it was, but our perceptions see it in the north.”

“Which means?”

Rathma almost sneered at the sun. “What my father did took much power, but in the end, it is only your imagination that makes it real. It does not make his true might any greater than it was before.”

It was an unsatisfying answer in many ways, for Uldyssian still did not know the angel’s limits. As far as he could see, if this was but an illusion of sorts, it was a
damned
impressive one.

And what was worse, it was constantly blinding.

Still, if it was an illusion, it occurred to him that there was something he could do to negate Inarius’s trick, something Uldyssian had already done more than once in the past. True, the very first time, it had also been achieved through Lilith’s manipulation of him, but now he was far past needing her foul power to augment his. It was certainly worth a try, at least.

Uldyssian concentrated on the sky, focusing on one of the tiny clouds scattered here and there. All he needed was the one.

A wind arose, the first cool breeze anyone had felt in weeks. Around him, the son of Diomedes sensed the others react. They knew that whatever was happening was his doing and took heart from it.

And with that to further stimulate his hopes, Uldyssian threw himself into the spell. The air shifted. The cloud expanded, becoming ten, a hundred, a thousand times its original size. It also thickened and, as it did, grew a deep gray.

Uldyssian not only called upon his own power, but he continued to press it and his will on his very surroundings. He had done this before, albeit not on such a grand scale. It concerned him to expend himself so much before facing Inarius, but the Prophet had left him no real choice, which he expected was just the way his rival wanted it.

But Uldyssian could not think about such things. He had to concern himself only with the moment at hand.

The cloud now absorbed all those others around it, then expanded farther. It crept purposely toward the north, eating away at the blue sky.