The Order, page 31
Two more flew at him, and he used one arm to slash them both in two, his other arm hanging useless at his side. An unburied lumbered through the midst of the fallen imps, roaring with its multiple heads and raising its arms like rock-studded anvils ready to crush anything in its path. Mikulov ducked under its killing blow and delivered a series of lethal slashes to the creature’s back and legs, bringing it toppling to its knees. But as he moved to cut off its stinking, dead skull, it swung wildly backward with one arm and caught him in the side.
The blow was like a wagon colliding with a tree. It lifted Mikulov in the air and sent him sprawling. The monk’s skin, thickened through years of training and physical punishment, was tough enough to withstand almost anything, but his bones beneath were not. He felt a rib snap as he landed upon the backs of more scavengers, their sharp fangs nipping at him as they flung him to the ground.
Mikulov lashed out at them, making the creatures scatter, then lay on his back, gasping for air. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath, not anymore. The stinger’s poison continued to work its way deeper; he felt it racing through his veins, each pump of his heart pushing it along. He looked up into the sky as rain fell on his face, burning his parched throat with a sour, metallic taste. Even the rain was tainted here.
The small space around him was closing quickly, feeders advancing on all sides. There was a moment of calm when the gods all became silent within his head and everything slowed down to a crawl. Time ceased to matter. He was a small boy, running through the mountains, ducking under the cool shade of trees, and splashing across brooks filled with trout. Something was chasing him: a man, playing a game of tag. But the man changed as Mikulov ran, and Mikulov changed too, growing taller, stronger, his body thickening with the weight of years, and the thing chasing him wasn’t a man at all, but a beast with a black hood and the wings of a crow.
Mikulov closed his eyes against the advancing demon army, shutting out the brutal, ravaged faces. He called to the gods and drew their energy from the air around him. He held it deep within himself, as if taking a huge, deep breath; a warmth began in his chest, soothing at first, and then it grew into the heat of a raging fire. Still he held on, feeling the power filling him up, spreading through his limbs as the gods accepted his gift and returned it to him tenfold.
The monk opened his eyes, the fire alive and writhing like a dragon within his chest. The creatures were upon him now.
He smiled, and let it all go.
Deckard Cain was halfway to the Black Tower when the world exploded.
It began with a soft pop, and then a ripple of blue fire burst outward from where Mikulov had fallen, a wave of light. The pop was followed by a thump that Cain felt deep within his core as the ring of fire expanded, taking down everything in its path. A whisper of heat washed over him, and then the shock wave hit, knocking him off his feet and taking the breath from his lungs.
Cain drifted for a moment, as if a wall of water had collapsed over him and sent him tumbling through the deep, before he came back to himself. His head ringing, he sat up as the wave passed, looking around in shock and horror. A cold shiver ran down his spine, a sense of doom overwhelming him. Nobody could have survived such a blast.
But he had already known that would happen, hadn’t he? He had known it as soon as the monk had met his gaze, back at the tunnel hole. Cain had seen it in his eyes, a quiet, steady purpose, as if he had met his fate already and come to terms with it, and the rest was simply a matter of time.
Most of the creatures standing within one hundred yards of the explosion had simply vanished, turned to ash; those farther away were either dead or mortally wounded. But at the edges of the blast zone, others were regaining their feet. An overseer threw back his head and roared into the leaden sky, and his minions howled in return.
Mikulov had given Cain’s party an opening, but he had not stopped all of the demons. A new resolve gripped Cain, an almost frantic determination, a need to hurtle himself forward. He pointed at the Black Tower and shouted at the remaining First Ones to hurry. Then he stood and stepped over the scattered bodies as quickly as he dared.
His staff seemed to hum under his fingers as he went, the ruby top glowing softly. He had recited no spell, called nothing into life. Yet it had been activated in some way, like a lightning rod in a storm. In fact, the air around him had begun to vibrate.
He had no time to puzzle over that. The noise of the demon horde had begun to grow once again. He glanced to his right and left, and saw feeders coming fast on all sides like giant white crabs, moving forward in packs. They would be upon him in seconds.
As one leaped at him, a whistling arrow caught it in the side of the neck, and it went down without a sound. Cain glanced back to see Thomas with another arrow notched and ready, Cullen at his side with his pitchfork.
“Go!” Thomas shouted, waving at him. “We’ll hold them off!” Then he turned and shot at another feeder as it rushed at him, taking it down with the thwack of an arrow through the chest.
Cain turned toward the Black Tower, running the final few feet to the open archway at its base and disappearing inside.
The archway led to an inner wall and a huge wooden door with the symbol of the Horadrim engraved in it. But the symbol had been altered. Demonic runes had been added that foretold the end of the world: the fall of humanity and the age of demons, a foul corruption of the sign of goodness and light, and a clear warning to all who entered.
The door swung open with a low whine, revealing a dark and empty hall. He ducked through and shut the door against the raging creatures outside.
Whatever happened now, he was alone. His friends were sacrificing their lives to give him precious time. They had turned out to be true heroes, after all. The urge to rush forward came over him again. All his life, he had stood on the sidelines as others fought, choosing to remain in the background. At first his excuses had to do with his scholarly pursuits and, later, his advancing age, but all had had the same result. He was a coward at heart, was he not?
This was the time to act. Yet an inner voice began to question all of that once again, seeds of doubt creeping back in. He was an old man, and not prepared for a fight like this. He had never wielded a sword. What would he do, once he reached the enemy? What kind of skills did he possess to face such a horror?
Leah. He was the little girl’s only hope. And that, more than anything else, was what finally got him moving again.
The staff’s light illuminated a set of stairs. The stairs were circular and ran around the edges of a dizzying open shaft that reached up far beyond the edges of his light, with a column of stone at its center. From somewhere above, he could see a faint gray glow.
His heart pounding in his throat, Cain began the climb. The stairs went up forever, and his breath began to labor, his chest burning, knees protesting, the familiar ache in his back unbearable. He felt his mind enter an entirely new state, as if he were hovering just outside himself and watching the progress, and it seemed his entire life was playing itself out once again through this final act: his mother, watching from beyond the edges of the fire, her eyes filled with sorrow mixed with hope; his days as a young schoolteacher in Tristram, more absorbed by scholarly texts than anything the children did; his wife and child walking hand in hand into the distance, leaving him forever; and finally, alone with his books at the End of Days, old and broken, waiting to rejoin his family in a place of peace and hope, a place beyond all imagining.
Beyond the tower walls, the demons had fallen strangely silent. Cain heard the call of a single crow, echoing across the courtyard like a harbinger of doom. He pictured the remains of the First Ones, gutted and hung from their feet from the archway, blood pooling on the stone. The image was so strong, he almost believed he was having some kind of vision, and his stomach churned from the truth of it. He must not stop, must not let the horrors that had already happened distract him from his goal. Above him was Leah, and somewhere close was the Dark One, waiting for him.
He only prayed he was not too late.
THIRTY-FIVE
The Ritual Chamber
Leah swam upward through ocean water, the color as black as night. Somewhere far above her head was a hint of blue, and she struggled toward it, her lungs aching, her eyes growing blurry and sightless as she pushed against the void.
At some point the hint of blue changed; it became something else, a black hole, the pupil of a giant unblinking eye. It was the crow from the streets of Caldeum, pecking at ruined flesh and pulling it taut, cocking its head at her as the muscle snapped.
Silly little girl, the crow said. You think you have free will. What you do has no consequence here. I own you.
At that, the voice changed, and the eye melted into the beggar, shouting about the End of Days, his voice ragged and cackling. The sky will turn black, the streets fill with blood! You are doomed. The Dark One is powerful, I tell you. He will raise a demon army! The dead will walk among us!
The beggar melted into Gillian. She stood over Leah with a knife in her hand. The dead are restless, Gillian said. The demons, ready for blood. They want it, Leah. They bathe in it.
And that changed into the image of her real mother, but her face was shrouded in shadow, and she stood silent and motionless. No matter what Leah did—begging and pleading, screaming, crying—her mother did not move, did not react, only stood in the darkness like a statue.
When she opened her eyes, she did not realize at first that she had left the dream. Her surroundings were dark and silent, and the black pupil that had watched her was still there. But as she regained her bearings, Leah realized that what she was seeing was the hooded face of a man, standing before her.
She had no idea how she had gotten here, who the man was, or what he might want from her. The last thing she remembered was being at the camp outside the cave, and the things that had come for them through the trees. Had she been taken by some sort of monster?
Where was Uncle Deckard? Fear prickled her flesh. Why hadn’t he come for her?
The man was chanting something, his voice a low, even tone that brought chills. The floor vibrated all around her, shaking her to the bone. Then she felt something: a gentle pressure against her waist. Deeper fear made her pulse speed up, but her heart fluttered strangely, like a dying bird in her chest, and she felt light-headed.
She looked down at herself.
A creature climbed up her body like a wriggling snake, its hair matted and thin, shoulders nothing but skin and bone. It hunched over her, its claw-like hands pulling at her like the crow with the scrap of dead meat; when it looked up with its black holes for eyes and its purple, cracked lips, she barely recognized the horror of its face. In her mind she saw Gillian again, and the air had become threaded with lines of blood that danced and curled through it like charmed snakes around Gillian’s head before they sank through a hole in the floor and disappeared.
Something came awake in her, something huge and powerful, and before she lost consciousness again and fell down a dark, endless well, Leah gathered the last of her dying strength and screamed, the sound echoing through the stone rooms and beyond, before fading away to the sound of crows, cawing and beating their wings against the walls of the tower like the thunderous applause of an audience waiting for her end to come.
Deckard Cain heard Leah scream.
The sound brought chills, yet it gave him hope. The sound of her scream meant he still had a chance. He redoubled his efforts, and when he glanced up, he was near the top of the staircase and facing a small landing and another closed door. The light came from here—an open window that looked out over the gray sea, where white-sapped swells like the endless movement of time washed onto the rocks.
Cain stood at the window and gasped for breath. Every muscle in his body cried out in agony; every bone ached with each beat of his heart. He had never felt so old and broken; he had no idea how he had been able to climb so high.
When he placed a hand on the wall, he could feel the energy within the tower itself.
It came up through the stone from deep within the ground, or perhaps it was flowing the other way; Cain could not tell. His staff glowed brighter, seeming to feed off the energy as it raced through Cain’s fingers, up his arm and down the other.
He listened to the other side of the door and thought he could hear the sound of movement. A soft thump and a scraping noise drifted out, then, so shockingly loud it made him stumble back, a low, bone-shaking moan of something inhuman.
For a moment Cain could not place why it sounded so familiar, before it suddenly clicked: Jeronnan’s horn.
There were feeders inside.
Cain tried the door and found it unlocked. He swung it open to madness.
The room beyond was circular, taking up the entire circumference of the top of the tower. It was empty of any furniture or other decoration, save for two low, flickering torches set in wall sconces shaped like skeletal hands.
But that was not what held Cain’s gaze. Fingers of dread walked their way down his spine as he looked in horror at the scene before him.
Leah lay face up on the floor in the center of the room, her arms and legs shackled. Feeders were at work on her wrists and ankles, neck and lips, their misshapen, ghoulish bodies writhing in ecstasy, their scalps glistening wetly through strands of white hair. They had latched their purple, worm-like mouths upon her like leeches. Cain could hear the sounds of them sucking at her as their shoulders moved, bones jutting out like wings from their backs.
They looked like giant, featherless birds. Abominations. He shuddered.
Leah’s eyes had rolled back into her head, showing the whites. Her skin was too pale, her breathing fast and shallow, and her flesh seemed to collapse upon itself, as if she was being hollowed out.
Cain ran forward with a small cry, disgust and rage mixing within him as he raised his staff and spoke words that burst from somewhere deep within him. His staff came to brilliant, sparkling life, and before its red glory the feeders hissed and shrank back, one of them making that low moan again. As they hopped to the windowsill, their features changed, feathers growing from flesh, noses turning to black beaks. They flew away, flapping into the wind.
Cain crouched next to Leah, touching her face; her flesh was cold and clammy, and she did not stir. But she was not dead, not yet; he could feel the faint, feathery pulse in her wrist. Outrage washed over him again as he cupped her head gently to his chest. They will pay for this.
Something else moved at the edge of the room. Cain looked up to see a dark, hooded figure seem to congeal from thin air and step right out of the stone wall itself, his hands hidden under long sleeves of his robe. The figure appeared to float forward like an apparition.
Leah suddenly convulsed upward, her back bending until it seemed it would break, and the tower began to tremble.
“I have been waiting for you, Deckard Cain,” the figure said, reaching up with long, bone-white fingers and slipping the hood away from a face that came from the depths of Hell itself.
Eyes glowed like coals buried deep within pockets of bruised skin above a black hole where a nose should have been. Its lips were drawn back from toothless gums, its slick, suppurating flesh crossed with blue veins that pulsed with each beat of its heart.
“Garreth Rau,” Cain said. He got to his feet. “You don’t know what you’ve done—”
Rau spread his arms wide toward the window and the bruised sky. “The way of the Horadrim has long since passed, and a new era has begun, one that will embrace the Burning Hells and all that are birthed from its hellfire. I will lead the way, and you will be the last witness to a dying world, imprisoned here forever. How fitting that will be!”
“Belial has corrupted your thinking,” Cain said. “You must listen to me, Garreth. You cannot believe his lies. He will use you until he no longer needs you, eat you alive, consume your soul, and then he will cast what is left of you out.”
Rau smiled. “Clever,” he said. “Using my name. Gaining trust, and trying to make me remember who I am? Then perhaps you should address me as Tal Rasha.”
“I don’t understand—”
“My true ancestor and namesake, one I have taken for my own. Imprisoned forever in Baal’s tomb by your flesh and blood, Jered Cain. Betrayed by the only one he really trusted.” The Dark One’s face had twisted itself into a vicious grimace, and his eyes burned even brighter than before. “Or don’t you remember?”
Cain shook his head. “Tal Rasha was not betrayed,” Cain said. “He chose to take Baal within himself, to save Sanctuary.”
“That’s the story the world has been given. Lies, spun to hide the truth. Your Jered Cain was no hero. He used demonic magic to trick Tal Rasha, and shoved the soulstone into him against his will. He turned his back on his friend and left him to rot for all eternity. Instead of saving him, Jered chose to sacrifice him so he could escape with his own life. He was a coward.”
“Jered and Tal Rasha were colleagues. Both of them were Horadrim, selected by Tyrael himself to lead Sanctuary from darkness. They were—”
“I know the histories!” the Dark One shouted. “Do not pretend to lecture me, Deckard Cain. I have read the secret scrolls, the texts that tell the truth about what happened.” He whirled and picked up a text from a stand, showing Cain the crest branded into its cover. “This is the crest of the Tal Rasha family. And this—” he took a piece of torn paper from his robe, showing the same crest—”this is from my own parents, who died when I was just an infant.”
Cain shook his head. The entire idea was preposterous; Tal Rasha had never had children and certainly had never had a family crest. “You’re wrong,” he said. “There is no Tal Rasha family tree. There never was.”
The Dark One’s face grew more furious, and Cain caught a glimpse of the petulant little boy he must have been. “You dare to try to tell me this,” he said. “When your own family felt so abandoned by you, they ran away, only to fall victim to demons? Do you know their souls still suffer, crying out for you? And you still cannot and will not act. Still you turn a blind eye to their suffering. And once again, you cannot protect a child who depends upon you. It is too late. Your precious Leah will die, in order to give life to the destruction of Sanctuary itself.”
