The Order, page 16
The gates were hanging open. He and Leah raced through them, Leah leading the way now. They turned up an unfamiliar street and ducked into a dark alley, Leah running through it to another, wider street, the distance between them lengthening quickly. Cain increased his pace to a hobbling run until his lungs burned with the effort, but Leah was faster, and after another turn he lost her completely in the dark and the fog, and stood panting on a corner, close to panic. Where had she gone?
The town was silent, all windows dark. It appeared abandoned, and Cain had the same feeling he’d gotten back in Caldeum, as if everyone in Sanctuary had disappeared all at once, and he was utterly alone.
A shout came from behind him, and he was about to start running again when he heard a voice raised in an urgent whisper: “This way. Hurry!”
Someone beckoned to him from the shadows of the alley across the street. Cain could make out nothing else but the glint of eyes in the dark. He hesitated as the sound of pursuit grew louder; they would be upon him at any moment.
“The girl is here,” the voice said. “She is safe. Please! Come!”
May the archangels protect us, Cain thought. He crossed the street as fast as his aching legs would allow and slipped into the alley, ready to face whatever waited for him there.
FIFTEEN
The Graveyard
It took a few moments for Cain’s eyes to adjust as he followed the stranger through the gloom. The person who had spoken to him was a man with his head shaved smooth; he wore some kind of cloth wrapped around his waist, and he moved with a quiet grace, slipping through the night without a sound.
The man led him through the alley to the other side, which opened to a small space between the last row of homes and the stone wall that ringed the town. Leah was waiting for them. She seemed to be in the same trance that he had seen earlier, and did not react to his presence or move in any way.
A light appeared from somewhere beyond the alley. Someone called out, and Cain heard the sound of running feet. “This way,” the man said from a trench at the foot of the stone wall. “We must go now.”
Cain took Leah by the arm and led her to the trench, which held the end of a clay pipe and a trickle of water, wastewater from the town, most likely; it ran under the wall, through a space covered by iron bars. A portion of the bars had given way, and there was just enough room to squeeze through.
The man disappeared through the hole. Cain helped Leah down and climbed after her. Brown, foul-smelling water seeped through his tunic and chilled his knees and arms; at the end he had to go onto his stomach and wriggle, pushing his things ahead of him, and the cold ran all the way down his body. There was a moment of claustrophobic terror as Cain’s clothes caught on the bars and he didn’t have the strength to pull free, but the man grabbed his arms and pulled him the rest of the way.
The scratch Cain had gotten when he had crossed the bridge throbbed dully as he got to his feet and gathered his staff and rucksack. The area where they had emerged was treed and silent, but flat and free of underbrush, and they were able to move quickly.
The icy air made his wet tunic cling to his chest and legs, and he shivered, his teeth chattering, hands shaking. Shadows seemed to flutter all around them, giving the illusion of movement; he heard things slithering, soft thuds and the rustle of dead leaves, the faint crack of a branch, and once, a fluttering of wings overhead.
As they reached an open space among the withered trees, the fog dissipated, and gravestones thrust up from the ground like huge, jagged teeth. The stones, which leaned in different directions, had been placed in a circular pattern that led to a round plot in the center with a crypt.
Cain felt a gathering of dark magic that prickled the hairs on his neck. The door to the crypt hung open. Blackness lurked within it.
The man had stopped inside the first ring of stones, holding Leah’s hand. Cain studied him in the moonlight that trickled down through the opening in the trees. He was some kind of monk. He had a thick black beard. Heavy wooden beads hung around his neck, armor was bound to his forearms, and he wore boots laced up to his knees. His upper chest was bare, and muscles stood out like cords across his shoulders and arms.
Friendly or not, Cain realized, they had little choice but to trust him. He had given them no reason so far to doubt his intentions, and if Cain’s instincts were correct, they were going to need all the help they could get.
As if in answer, a group of shadowy forms burst through the cover of trees all around them. Their pursuers from the town had arrived. Hands grabbed Cain from behind, and others converged on the monk and Leah.
The monk moved with blinding speed, seemingly without effort. It was as if he disappeared and reappeared in another location, slipping through space faster than Cain’s eyes could track him, his fists like flat iron anvils as they pummeled those townspeople who dared come within reach. Those who had been holding Cain let him go, and he fell to his knees in the soft ground, looking up in time to see the monk crack two skulls together with a mighty crunch, then drive his foot into the midsection of yet another robed figure, sending it flying at least ten feet backward.
As several more cultists converged on him like mindless puppets, the monk spun and released a thunderbolt of energy that cracked the darkness with a white-hot burst, searing Cain’s eyes and making him throw his arm up over his face. When he looked back, blinking away the dots of light that danced before him, the cultists were nothing more than a circular pile of grotesquely seared arms, legs, and torsos. Leah, however, remained unharmed, just a few feet away, still standing immobile as if rooted to the spot, her gaze blank and unblinking.
A scream of anger came from halfway across the graveyard, and Lord Brand emerged from the trees. Brand raised his arms, and Cain felt the ground shift beneath him. Horrified, he scrambled to his feet as something pushed upward through the sod.
A hand and half an arm of decayed flesh emerged, its bony, white fingers wriggling like worms.
Gillian’s voice came back to him, from the night of the fire . . . the dead clawing their way from the ground, the way they did in Tristram. The earth will split, and hell will spew forth . . .
“We must go, now!” Cain shouted, as the ground began to heave and ripple across the graveyard. The monk picked Leah up and threw her over his shoulder. Cain pulled a scroll from his rucksack and spoke as quickly as he dared, the runes glowing green across the parchment before it began to smoke and crumble in his hands. A distraction for their escape: a spell of elemental magic, easy to conjure, difficult to control.
Crackles of lightning split the night sky, illuminating a nightmare landscape of rotted flesh and blindly grasping hands. Cain did not wait any longer, skirting the edge of the graveyard and avoiding the things that seemed to search him out. The lightning struck the ground in two places, searing flesh and sending explosions of dirt and grass into the air. Another struck at Brand’s feet, and he was thrown backward against the remains of his followers.
Cain didn’t stay to see the rest. The monk was already gone through the trees, and the old man went after them, leaving the graveyard behind as lightning crashed and shook the earth.
They ran headlong through the jungle, pushing through brush and splashing through another trickling brook, branches scratching Cain’s face as he stumbled in the dark. His mind went over and over the scene in the graveyard, trying to make sense of it. How had Brand and his followers arrived there so quickly? Who was he, exactly, and what was his purpose?
Our master commands it, Brand had said. He had known about Cain and his Horadric studies, had seemed to know about the impending demon invasion. But he had not answered Cain’s question: who was their master?
The monk slowed his pace after a few minutes and proceeded more cautiously and quietly, holding the noise to a minimum. There did not seem to be any pursuit. Sometime later they broke from the jungle. The monk had led them to a hill overlooking the road to Kurast, on the other side of Lord Brand’s town. The night sky had cleared, and it stretched overhead like a black carpet peppered with stars. There was just enough light for them to make out the road, a ribbon winding through the valley below.
Cain caught his breath, his sides aching, lungs burning, knees ready to give out. Leah was clinging to the monk with both hands around his neck, and when he set her down gently in a grassy spot, she slumped forward, her eyes glassy and staring at nothing. She must remain strong in the face of danger. But as he watched Leah sit like a lifeless statue, his heart broke for her. She was no warrior. She was just a little girl.
“They have not followed us here,” the monk said. “We are safe, for now.” He put his hands together and gave a slight bow. “I am Mikulov,” he said. “From Ivgorod. And you are Deckard Cain, of the Horadric order. I have been following you since Caldeum. It is time we talked of the dangers that are facing us all. We have much to learn from each other, and not much time left.”
SIXTEEN
The Hidden Room
The Dark One walked the dusty earth. He strode freely among fiends who gibbered and cavorted under a blood-tinged moon, the souls of the damned under their cloven feet. They were the only companions he wanted. This wasteland was his, an area devoid of all green and lush life that grew under the sun—free of all humans, too, at least within this space he had claimed as his own.
Not so far off, sleeping like the dead among the broken and abandoned buildings of the city, were the still-living, breathing husks of men, drained of their will. They were emaciated to the point of collapse, and lived only to serve him, and he took what he needed with the help of his ghoulish soldiers, ruling over them with an iron fist. Their life essence would provide a key element for his grand plans, built upon the extensive research he had done into the ancient writings of the most powerful sorcerers of dark magic. What he was attempting had never been done, not at this scope, and it would require the souls of many thousands of people. It would also require the command of a master of the dark arts, someone with the abilities few had ever possessed.
Someone like him.
As a boy, he had always felt something deep within him that was above the poverty and squalor of his surroundings. He knew that his proper station was above the other boys in the orphanages he passed through, whether they recognized it or not.
He had never known his mother or his father; they had disappeared long before his memories began, and all he had of them was a family name and crest on a scrap of tattered parchment he kept in his pocket. In his daydreams he imagined they were respected, powerful people who had been driven into hiding or killed in a political uprising, forced to give him up as an infant or risk his death. In the string of orphanages he endured beatings, starvation, and nights of sleeping on cold, louse-infested straw; fifteen-hour days of washing laundry in the stream, cutting wheat in the fields, or cleaning out the horse stalls; and teasing from his peers, which often ended in a bloody nose or split lip. He remained silent during these moments, refusing to give in to the urge to run and hide, and the boys eventually found something else to occupy their boredom. When they left him alone, he spent the few precious moments he had learning how to read, and devoured every text he could find.
He learned something about human nature during that time: far too many people, when alone and left to their own devices, were not who they seemed to be. Children were told stories of demons and monsters to keep them in line, but it seemed to him that the real monsters wore human skins.
Eventually, someone else took notice of him. He was older then, and living mostly by himself on the streets. The sorcerer who took him in had an eye for natural talent, and a taste for pain. This sorcerer was not a good man, but a powerful one, and the Dark One learned much under his tutelage. He learned even more through the secret texts he discovered in the man’s library and, later, in moldering tombs and forgotten ritual rooms hidden among ancient ruins outside the city, where the sorcerer sent him to gather artifacts from the days when mages ruled Sanctuary.
In one such hidden chamber, he discovered a text that spoke to him more than any other: a genealogy that traced a pattern of births from one of the most powerful mages in history. On the cover of that text, branded into the cracked leather binding, was the same crest from the scrap of paper in his pocket.
The Dark One listened to his footsteps crunching through the broken shells that had washed up onto the shore. His back was hunched, his head thrust forward. He peered out from under his hood. Beyond him lay the water, the smell of sulfur thick in his nostrils. There were things in the shallows, red-skinned beasts that dissipated like smoke, bloody apparitions that screamed soundlessly into the night sky. They had gathered for him, and before long they would be completely under his control. Soon, the Dark One thought, he would rule all of Sanctuary. In the coming End of Days, as the moon turned black and its pull leached the seas from shore, he would transform fully and take his rightful place at the side of the Lord of Lies. And then he would wipe the scourge of humanity off the face of the world, ridding it of the true monsters and paving the way for others to rebuild what was left. This was his destiny.
Find the girl.
The words were whispered in his ear, bringing his thoughts into sharp focus. The wind brought him the sound of wings. His scouts were returning, with news. They would not dare come here empty-handed.
The Dark One waited while a giant bird swooped down toward him through the night and settled to the ground with a flapping of feathers that sent wind rippling across the water. As the bird extended its talons, its legs lengthened and grew thicker, wings rolling up like tubes into human flesh, feathers transforming, blending together into a black cloak, beak morphing into a hawkish nose.
The man who now stood before him was skeletal, pale-skinned, and tall, and he held his hands with fingers intertwined at his waist like battling spiders. His cloak was similar to the Dark One’s own, and his back was slightly hunched. But there the similarities ended.
“My lord,” he said. “I have news. I have seen the girl you seek.”
The Dark One smiled. This was what he had been waiting for; the girl and her traveling companion would soon be in his possession. “You have her, then?”
Lord Brand’s thin smile faltered, and he broke eye contact. “She has escaped from us, along with the old man. There was someone else who assisted them. In spite of the prophecies, we did not foresee it.”
Rage blackened the Dark One’s heart, and he took a step forward, his hands clenched into fists. “How could you let that happen?”
“We bound her with black magic, as you instructed, but it was not strong enough. She broke free. Still, we might have had them in the graveyard, were it not for this monk, and the old man. He is . . . resourceful.”
“He is nothing. Weak and useless, and gravely delusional.”
“He raised a powerful storm, my lord. And the spell that had concealed them is still active.”
“You have failed me.”
“I . . . I am sorry, my lord.”
“Let me show you something,” he said. He turned away from the pack of ravenous demons and entered the tower with Lord Brand behind him, descending through the hidden panel to the rooms below. This time he passed the chambers where men hung by hooks, going lower, then lower still. Moans and the shaking of chains followed him to a larger room where no torches guttered upon the dripping, moss-covered walls.
The things that gathered there did not like fire, but the Dark One did not mind the darkness; his eyes had also grown accustomed to it, and the moss that encased the walls glowed a faint green, giving off enough light for him to see.
A gigantic, circular stone structure dominated the room, leaving only a ten-foot-wide passageway around it. The structure was like the bulb at the end of a tendril of stone, growing up through the center of the Black Tower.
Archways every few feet allowed access to the passage around the stone bulb. From each of these archways creatures emerged, their pale skin luminous in the faint light.
They watched in silence. “What are they?” Lord Brand whispered finally. His face was drained, his mouth slack as he stared in astonishment. “Feeders? I have heard stories, but I have not seen . . .”
“They were men once,” the Dark One said. “The easiest to corrupt, through greed or fear or rage. Now they exist to gather what others possess and bring it here to me, where I keep it safe. This is a weapon, a very rare and dangerous one. And it will ensure our own victory in the coming war.”
The creatures crept forward on all fours, their backs twisted and hunched grotesquely upward, their bellies swollen like ticks. One of the creatures passed them, turning a blind, moon face upward, and he put his hand upon its hot, slippery scalp as it hissed with pleasure at his touch.
The creatures approached the bulb, placing their mouths upon a series of small tubes that projected from the stone opposite each archway. Faint, unearthly cries and sobs drifted through the cave, a thousand people in agony. Each of them sighed, quivering, as they released their burden and their swollen torsos withered away to bone and skin.
Lord Brand recoiled as the shrunken, wraith-like husks returned through the archways, making way for more creatures to come forward. They watched in silence as the cycle was repeated and more of them appeared, always more, regurgitating the contents of their bellies into the stone gourd, the cries of the damned drifting through the dark.
“They are loyal servants, and they do not fail me,” the Dark One said. “Do you understand?”
Lord Brand nodded. “I do, my lord.”
“Good.” The Dark One’s rage was boiling now, and he could not contain it for much longer. The power churned within him, begging to be released. He gritted his teeth as they returned to the surface and he thought of all who had wronged him over the years. They must pay for their sins. For a brief, terrifying moment he imagined his own failure, and a slow death followed by oblivion, his family name and crest once again buried in the bowels of history while Deckard Cain and his legacy lived on.
