Sun and Serpent, page 32
Through the miasma, he sensed Astaptah’s presence over him, a nexus of dark energy. Horace maintained his psychic connection to his foe, holding onto it like a lifeline. It was the only thing keeping him from sinking into unconsciousness. Beside Astaptah stood the man they had found in the palace, like a loyal servant. What kind of creature could serve an evil like Astaptah? Maybe I should have killed him when we met.
Then Astaptah was leaning down. He held a knife in his hand. With a sardonic grin, he aimed the blade at Horace’s left eye. Horace struggled but the spike held him fast and he was too weak to move away.
“I wonder what you will see,” Astaptah said, “without your eyes, Horace. I suspect it will amaze you.”
Suddenly, Astaptah dropped the knife and flinched back as a long blade of steel flashed toward his head. Jirom rushed at Astaptah. His sword cut through the air, and the dark-robed sorcerer retreated. In that moment, Horace dared to let himself hope. However, Astaptah recovered as quick as a jungle cat. Emerald flames leapt from his hand, and Jirom disappeared from Horace’s view amid a stench of burning leather and flesh. Gritting his teeth, Horace took a deep breath.
Then, Astaptah was attacked again, this time by a swarm of flying ice and stony shards. Horace could feel Princess Dasha channeling zoana behind him. Although the magical assault was fruitless—Astaptah merely waved it away—it gave Horace time to gather what little strength he had left. With a low grunt, he managed to push himself off the spike. More blood poured from him, but he hardly felt it. He was having trouble concentrating. He didn’t have much zoana left, but he gathered it all and pushed it through the connection into Astaptah. Just a little more. Dig, Horace. You’re almost there.
Astaptah looked down and his triumphant smirk faltered. “That’s enough. No more! I can’t . . .”
The Dark King’s face contorted. He clutched at his robes and tore them away. Underneath, his body was writhing as if thousands of serpents wriggled beneath the skin. Spots of inky blood appeared as the flesh broke open and wept.
“It’s too much!” he cried out. “Take it back! Take it from me!”
His eyes bleeding, Astaptah thrust his hands down toward Horace. However, the power had raged beyond his control. Dusky beams exploded around him, carving channels in the floor and walls. The chamber shook.
Gathering his legs under him, Horace steadied himself. He couldn’t see clearly, but he knew Astaptah was standing directly in front of him. Behind the Dark King, the frieze pulsed with frantic energy. Horace took a breath and held it. Then he propelled himself forward with all his strength. He struck Astaptah, chest to chest, and they tottered toward the back of the dais.
Three steps . . . four . . . The writhing frieze loomed before them. Their momentum slowed to a halt as Astaptah recovered his balance. He was far stronger than he looked. He grabbed Horace by the temples and began to squeeze. Horace hissed in pain as pure power stabbed into him, threatening to crush his skull. He had a choice. He could use what was left of his zoana to defend himself, or he could continue to feed it to Astaptah, but he couldn’t do both. He pushed it out, into his enemy, knowing it was the last thing he would ever do, and hoping it was enough. But Astaptah did not budge. Although his body rippled and twisted with the over-burgeoning of energies, he held on, too. They were locked in a fatal embrace, but Horace knew he could not outlast his foe. His power was fading fast.
Astaptah staggered as something leapt onto his back. Looking up through the fog clouding his mind, Horace saw Pumash clinging to the Dark King’s shoulder. With animalistic savagery, Pumash sunk his teeth into Astaptah’s neck. Blood spurted as the flesh tore open. Astaptah lifted his hands and dark radiance exploded from his palms. Pumash was thrown off him with a shriek, but Horace saw his chance. He rushed Astaptah again. His shoulder caught Astaptah in the midriff, and he wrapped his arm around his adversary’s waist. Astaptah struggled in his grasp, but Horace held tight and drove with his legs. Together, they collided with the frieze.
The stone carving was rubbery to the touch. As his hand and forearm made contact first, Horace felt intense cold, and a hungry pulling as hundreds of tiny appendages reached out from the gateway to latch onto him. Astaptah must have felt it, as well. His struggles became frantic, kicking and clawing to get free. Fierce heat burned down Horace’s back as light blazed behind him, but he ignored it. All his focus was on pushing Astaptah, and himself, into the portal between worlds. It was the only way, he had reasoned, to Seal it once more.
“No!” Astaptah shouted.
Horace held onto his foe tightly as they pushed through the gateway’s frigid membrane. It engulfed them. Horace turned for one final look into the chamber behind him. Jirom and the two women were running toward him. He saw at once what they intended to do. Horace shook his head, but he wasn’t sure they could see him anymore. He and Astaptah had passed most of the way through the gateway. His muscles and joints were locking in place from the icy cold, but his mind remained active. This must be done, but you can survive.
As his friends charged up onto the dais, Horace used the last of his zoana to fashion an enchantment. With a smile, he let it go. A moment later, Jirom, Dasha, and Elia vanished. Horace’s view of the temple chamber disappeared as he and Astaptah passed through the veil. There was still one thing he had to do. The rift between worlds throbbed behind them like an angry wound. He had to close it for good, but he was spent as the last dregs of power had drained out of him. However, Astaptah blazed above him like a black sun. The Dark King’s withered flesh felt like old paper, his bones a bundle of dry sticks, but the zoana pulsed within him like a living thing. Horace reversed the direction of their mystical tether and drew forth the power. Astaptah spasmed, but Horace ignored it as he wove his spell. Bracing himself, he let it go in the direction of the rift.
Scintillating light exploded all around him. Images flashed before his eyes. He saw his wife Sari in the wedding dress she and her mother had sewn, walking down the aisle of the old church in Tines where they had been married. His heart ached to hold her again. Another flash, and he was in the front room of their modest house as the midwife handed him Josef for the first time. Tears wet his eyes as he held his newborn son. A small cry escaped Horace’s lips as the light flashed again. He stood on the deck of the Sea Spray.Shouts filled the air. Horace turned to see Sari and Josef on the deck beside him, neither noticing as the burning mast started to fall behind them. Terror and grief dueling in his chest, he lunged toward them, but the light flashed again. The slick deck of the Bantu Ray rolled beneath his feet. Horace fought to keep his balance as the storm tossed the vessel about. Green lightning crackled overhead as a great wave came over the gunwales. It picked him up and tossed him over the side. He hit the water like a stone and sank into its icy embrace. The lightning continued to play above him as he drifted down into the depths. His lungs burned. One final flash of light.
He and Astaptah floated in a black void. No light to be seen, not even stars. But Horace sensed other presences in the vast nothingness. The rift had closed. The portal between worlds was Sealed once again.
Astaptah’s voice echoed inside his skull. You have killed us, Horace.
No, he answered. We shall live eternal in the Outside. But your dream is dead. The world will live on, without you or your gods. And if you try to reach for the gate and sunder the Seal, I will be here to stop you. Every time.
Astaptah’s power raged, and Horace felt his own energy returning. They rotated until they faced each other again. Horace smiled as the zoana bloomed and they resumed their battle.
Forever and ever. A worthy price to pay. Goodbye, my friends.
The undead surged around the combined army of rebels and Akeshian troopers in a rising tide, a force of feral hunger driven by dark sorcery. Several of the barricaded doorways of the tenement block had been sundered, and the troops were fighting inside those buildings, trying to hold back the inevitable.
From his vantage atop the roof of the southeast corner building, Three Moons surveyed their impending defeat. Retreating into this complex had bought them some time, but now they were spread out. The soldiers and rebels were being overwhelmed with alarming swiftness, entire platoons decimated and devoured in a span of minutes, collapsing under the weight of bodies. It was over.
A Thuumian company tried to break out of the containment, exiting their assigned block house on the east flank. They got into the open street and then lost all cohesion. They were slaughtered and torn apart within a dozen heartbeats, with a scant few even reaching the end of the block.
The remnants of Emanon’s paltry command staff watched from the rooftop. Pradi Naram had gone below a half a bell ago to fight alongside his soldiers. Runners came with news and left with orders, but none of it made much difference. They had no reinforcements, and their enemy gained strength with every passing minute. Three Moons watched the way Emanon stroked the haft of his spear and knew what the man was thinking. Any minute, he would leave this perch and find a place to sell his life. Like the pradi, he would choose a warrior’s death among his comrades. A noble death.
Three Moons tried to laugh, but it came out as a dry cough. Noble death? There’s no such fucking thing. Just a series of bad choices compounded by useless gestures.
The din of the fighting lessened in his ears, becoming almost silent as he watched the swords rise and fall, the undead leaping into the wall of blades again and again, the savage ferocity writ on their bestial faces. Lifting his gaze to the east, he couldn’t make out the palace any longer through the haze of rain and darkness. Somewhere out there, the Blades were likely fighting for their lives, too. I’m sorry, Jirom. We couldn’t get to you. With any luck, I’ll see you in the next life.
The main doorway below him gave way with a dreadful crack, and the undead poured in. Shouts echoed in the tenement’s rooms and hallways where Ralla’s company was positioned. Three Moons made up his mind. It appeared that Emanon did, too, at the exact same time. Three Moons followed him inside the building and down the stairs. At the bottom they found the fight.
Ralla had retreated from the front of the ground level to give her troops some space. As the undead flooded in through the doorway and front windows, the rebels cut them down with arrow fire and flung javelins. That dropped a few but then the undead swarmed into them. Swords and axes cut into cold flesh with heavy thuds like they were chopping wood.
Three Moons followed Emanon to the front of the defense, where Ralla and her first squad stood as a bulwark, against which the undead tide crashed again and again, flinging blood instead of spume with each contact. While the Akeshians on either side of them fell and were dragged away, the rebels remained steadfast in their resistance. Three Moons knew they would eventually be overcome, outnumbered and surrounded. He had seen many battles in his years, seen thousands die bloody, horrible deaths—tens of thousands— but the reek of dark sorcery hanging over this slaughter sickened him worse than anything he’d ever witnessed. He couldn’t help thinking this is how humanity would end, dragged down into extinction by the dead.
A pair of ghuls scrambled past the front line. Dragging weapons stuck in their cold flesh, they leapt toward Three Moons. He called to a spirit out of instinct and was amazed when two broken boards tore themselves from the wall. The fiends’ heads exploded in showers of brown and gray. A pair of air elementals spun across the ceiling, delighting in the chaos. Another undead attacked from a doorway to his left, sprinting through the line. Three Moons summoned an ember and sent into the fiend’s gaping mouth. A moment later, its skull erupted in flames. Staggering, clawing, the thing fell and curled in upon itself. Rebels surrounded it, chopping the thing to pieces.
Apparently, the spirits weren’t quite done with him yet. Three Moons took full advantage of that. He called to all the ghosts and goblins he could muster and formed them into a whirlwind of destruction, targeting only dead flesh. Wiping the sweat from his eyes, he turned to survey the battle. The rebels were holding, but the undead closed around them like a noose, slowly choking the army to death. This is it. No grand speeches. No eternal glory. Just a cold death and my bones left for the vultures to pick over.
He was preparing to expend the last of his magical energy in one last burst of defiance against the powers assailing them when a tremor ran through the floor underfoot. As he staggered to keep his balance, a burst of light exploded in the street outside, as if the night had suddenly lifted and sunlight poured down. The potent radiance blinded him for a moment as raw power—more than he had ever felt before—erupted somewhere to the east in a single, tremendous burst. Then, it was gone.
Three Moons was blinking furiously to clear his vision when he heard the shouts arise. It can’t be. Can it?
As he rubbed the last afterimages from his sight, what he saw drained the blood from his face. Jirom had appeared in the street, along with the Blades, the Akeshian princess, and her bodyguard, all of them looking as stunned by their sudden appearance as he was. Jirom turned away, ignoring the enemies ringed around him as he looked back to the east.
He pointed. “It’s Jirom! They’re back!”
With a shout, Emanon led with troopers through the press in a desperate charge. Three Moons followed close on their heels, flinging the last scraps of his magic to aid Ralla’s company as they cut their way through the press of undead. He also kept an eye on the rear, but the remaining Akeshian infantry had stepped up to hold the line, preventing the enemy from streaming into the gap behind them. But for how long? Already he saw the lines further shrinking as soldiers fell to filthy claws. Even worse, some of those fallen men and women rose again to the fight as black-eyed monsters, intent on killing their former allies.
Finally, the company burst out of the building. They surrounded the tight knot of mercenaries, using their bodies to make a wall between them and the undead.
“It’s about time you showed up!” Emanon shouted.
It was clear that Jirom wasn’t listening. He still faced eastward. Up close, Three Moons saw their commander was covered in cuts and scratches. The princess knelt on the ground beside another man that Three Moons didn’t recognize. Half his face was burned away, revealing red muscle and bone. The bodyguard stood over the princess. All of them looked as if they had walked through a meat grinder. “Sarge?” he said, hoping for a response. “It looks like you’ve been doing some damage on your own, but we’ve got a real scrap here. We could use a little guidance.”
Emanon reached out with his free hand. “Jir?”
Three Moons was about ask where Horace was when a second quake shook the earth, followed by a sudden rush of undead clogging the street on both sides of them. Ghuls dropped from rooftops and windows to land on the pavement, breaking bones in the process but dragging themselves toward the living troopers with frightening intensity.
Three Moons called to the spirits of earth and stone and set them to work on the mortar holding together the brick walls of the storefronts on the far side of the street. A brisk wind blew down the avenue as air spirits lent their strength. He was rewarded with a sudden crackle of breaking cement before those walls collapsed outward, burying that side of the street in a mountain of rubble. Then he slumped to the ground, exhausted. He couldn’t do any more. He was spent.
Struggling to get enough air as the battle seethed around him, Three Moons glanced over at the princess and the man she was watching over. She had his head in her lap, heedless of the blood streaming from his horrendous wounds. “Who is he?”
The princess replied without looking over. “I don’t really know. But I think he saved us all.”
Saved us all from what?
Three Moons looked around. The crowd of undead was growing. Emanon and Captain Paranas led their fighters in a furious defense, but they didn’t have the numbers to hold out. Piles of corpses were heaped all around them. There was no time to pull a wounded comrade back from the fighting. Every moment and every breath were spent just trying to stay alive. Against a mortal foe, they might have been able to turn the tide, but the dead felt no fear. Even as they fell by the dozens, more poured in to take their place. As Three Moons watched, he was suddenly very glad he wouldn’t die alone.
But we all die alone, soldier. You know that. You’ve watched enough of your sisters and brothers take that solitary path. Seven decades spent in this world, and what have you got to show for it? Flat feet and a wagonload of sorrows. But maybe I redeemed myself here at the end. Finally, I found a cause worth dying for.
Yella fell, and Three Moons reached through the forest of legs to drag him back from the fighting. While he pressed a hand against the ragged bite wound gouged in the younger man’s side and looked through his bag for a semi-clean rag to bind it, a tremendous eruption of thunder shook the sky. He knelt over Yella instinctively as the ground bucked beneath them. Most of the troopers fell to the ground around him, and Three Moons looked up with fear. What new deviltry is this?
A bright glow limned the fog over the east end of the city. Troopers stumbled as they tried to regain their footing, ready to resume the battle. They looked about, by their expressions unsure whether to believe what they saw. Thousands of undead sprawled around them, unmoving.
Three Moons reached out with his mind. The spirits concurred with his observation. The undead were . . . dead, again. The dark magic that had animated them was gone, leaving nothing behind but empty shells. The storm clouds dissipated, revealing a gray sky streaked with bands of red and gold. Above the western horizon, the wan sun was fixing to set. Three Moons took a deep breath and let it go. As he exhaled, a great weight lifted from his chest, and with it went the adamantine control he had kept over himself for these past few years. Tears formed and ran down his cheeks.
Jirom was on his knees, his sword dropped from his hand. Far in the distance, more rumbles sounded, not from the sky but the ground. A structure was collapsing in the temple district, and with its demise, Jirom seemed to contract within himself.
