When the Heavens Fall (22 page)

“Oh, and Luker, if this happens again … Next time, you'd better make sure you finish me off.”

“If you give me cause, count on it.”

At that moment the Guardian sensed a burst of distant power, so faint as to be almost imperceptible. He stiffened.
Death-magic.
Was Chamery in trouble? No, the source of the energies was too far away for it to be the boy. It came from the north. A sorcerous duel perhaps, somewhere beyond the city's limits?

More hurried footsteps in the corridor. Chamery appeared in the doorway, his face bloodless but for spots of color on both cheeks.

Luker's expression darkened. “I told you to watch Jenna.”

“I've done what I can for her,” the mage said. “Right now we have more important things to worry about. The Book of Lost Souls has been activated.”

Merin's rasping voice broke the silence. “How? How do you know?”

“Because I can sense it!” Chamery said. “Guardian, tell him.”

Luker's eyes widened.
That surge of sorcery?
According to Gill, Mayot had taken the Book to Arandas, maybe farther north still. To detect its power from such a distance … His thoughts shifted to Kanon, and his stomach fluttered. His master would be out there somewhere, sensing this too. What nightmare was he about to walk into?
And not just Kanon either.
Because for all Luker's talk of going after his master and not Mayot, something told him he wouldn't find one without also finding the other.

Chamery's gaze held his. “We must leave. Now!”

Merin said, “We're more than three weeks' ride from Arandas.”

“Meaning every moment counts.” The mage's look at Luker was imploring. “
Tell
him!”

The Guardian hesitated. Merin was right. It would take them three weeks to get to Arandas, and then only if they didn't encounter trouble in the Remnerol wildlands and the Gollothir Plains north of the Shield. And when was the last time Luker had passed that way without having to blood his swords? He thought back to when Gill's message reached him on Taradh Dor. He'd spent five days reading and rereading the summons. Five days deciding whether to answer it or just throw the damned scroll in a fire. Five days wasted! The need to
do
something was suddenly overwhelming.

“The boy's right,” he said to Merin. “We leave now.”

*   *   *

Long before Romany saw Shroud's disciple approaching, she heard the clip-clop of his horse's hooves on stone. A glow appeared among the ruins and began weaving its way toward her through the darkness. Moments later the knight arrived at the dome. He did not appear to have suffered any injury at the hands of the spirits in the forest, though the sword in his hand was surrounded by wisps of gray mist as if shreds of the banished Vamilian souls clung to the blade. The pale light radiating from it illuminated the carvings on the dome, and for a heartbeat the image of the three-masted ship seemed to rise and fall on the stony waves. Romany's stomach lurched.

As the knight reined up, he cast a look at her hiding place, and she shrank back behind the cover of a low wall. A trickle of sweat ran down her back—just the heat, she assured herself. There was no cause for alarm because Shroud's disciple could not possibly detect her through her wards. In any case, he had come here not for her, but for Mayot. For the Book. Provided she did not intervene in his struggle with the old man, she was perfectly safe.

She risked a look back at the dome. The knight had loosened a lance from its bindings along his horse's flank and now gripped it in his left hand as he steered his mount toward the dome's arched entranceway. Death-magic flowed from the opening, and the disciple's sword flashed brighter as it fed off the sorcery. The threads of power snaking out into the city had multiplied a hundredfold since the Spider unlocked the Book, but the knight did not hesitate as he plunged into the murk. Did he know that the Book's power had been unleashed? Did he care? He could not, after all, back down from any clash with Mayot, for the Lord of the Dead was not a master who tolerated timidity in his servants. Romany felt a tingle of expectation. How could Mayot defeat such a man? Wouldn't any sorcery he threw at the knight just serve to make him stronger?

As Shroud's disciple passed along the archway, the light of his sword receded.

Romany let her spirit float free from her body and followed him into the gloom. She chose a vantage point high above the dais from which to observe the confrontation. The glow from the knight's sword was now dazzlingly bright, illuminating the farthest reaches of the dome. It could not, however, penetrate the shadows that hung about the dais. The maelstrom of death-magic radiating from the Book was like a wound in the fabric of creation—a vortex into which all life was being drawn. Romany could feel its tug even in her spiritual form. What toll must it be taking on Mayot himself, sitting at the heart of its power?

The knight's progress across the dome was measured. Deliberately so, the priestess suspected, in order to add to the creeping dread Mayot must surely be experiencing. Clutching the Book to his chest, the mage watched in silence as the rider drew near. He looked small and frail as he blinked against the light, and Romany wondered what was going on behind his dark eyes.

Not a lot, most likely.

Shroud's disciple halted at the foot of the dais and raised his visor. Romany couldn't make out his face from where she hovered, but she did see Mayot flinch. His left eyelid started fluttering, and the priestess smiled. Stupid old man! Did he only now perceive the true measure of the other players in this game? Had he expected them all to have countenances as fair as Romany's?
Impossible!
Would Mayot's nerve hold now he had stared into the whites of his enemy's eyes? Or would he bend the knee to Shroud's disciple as she had taunted him?

Mayot stared down at the rider for a while, his hands turning pale where they gripped the Book. Then he seemed to relax, his expressionless mask slipping back into place.

The knight's voice boomed out. “I am Lorigan Teele, knight commander of the Belliskan Order. Hand over the Book of Lost Souls, sir. I command you in Shroud's name.”

When Mayot spoke, his voice sounded shrill in comparison. “The Book is mine. Mine, do you hear! By what right does your master claim it?”

“I did not come here to reason with you—I am the deliverer of Shroud's judgment, not his mediator. My master claims the Book because he can.”

Mayot leaned forward in his chair. “He sent you to
steal
it from me, then? Ah, but it is too late for that. The Book's power has already been delivered into my hands.”

“Delivered? By whom?”

The corners of Mayot's mouth twitched, and for a moment Romany feared he would betray her presence. Instead he said, “The rules of the game have changed, Lord Knight. Your master is no longer in a position to demand anything of me. If I agree to surrender the Book, what does he offer in exchange?”

Romany stiffened. This was not part of the plan!
Treachery! And after all I've done for him!
In retrospect, perhaps she should have insisted Mayot fight the knight as the price for her unlocking the Book's secrets, but in doing so she would have revealed too much of her hand. Besides, she was not so foolish as to think the old man would hesitate to break such an oath if it suited him.

Lorigan came to her rescue. “Shroud does not deal with mortals,” he said to Mayot. “Nor does he look kindly on those who presume to test his patience. Now, hand over the Book, sir, or spend an eternity regretting your insolence.”

“You dare threaten me? I hold immortality in my hands! Does your master expect me to give up such a prize for nothing?”

“Immortality?” A chuckle sounded from the knight's helmet. “Shroud is a patient god, mortal. You may cheat him for a time, but one day he will hold your soul in his hands.”

“Perhaps it will be
me
holding
his
. The power at my command now rivals that of your Lord.”

Lorigan's booming laughter rang out. Romany had to stop herself laughing with him.

Mayot's voice hardened. “It would seem this conversation is at an end.”

The knight closed his helmet's visor with a snap. “So be it. Defend yourself—”

Even before he had finished speaking, sorcery roared into life about Mayot. A seething torrent of blackness raced from his hands toward Shroud's disciple, and Romany watched wide-eyed as whatever defensive wards Lorigan had fashioned about himself were ripped apart. The man was knocked backward out of his saddle. His horse screamed as its flesh melted from its bones, then its legs collapsed from under it. By the time it hit the ground it was no more than a skeleton crumbling into ash.

The knight lay sprawled on his back amid a swirling cloud of leaves, still clutching his sword in one hand, his lance in the other. Wave after wave of death-magic hammered into him, pinning him to the floor. Tiny symbols etched into his armor glowed red in the darkness. The sorcery invested in the metal had held Mayot off until now, but Romany could sense it weakening beneath the old man's onslaught.

Somehow Shroud's disciple made it to his feet. He took a heartbeat to steady himself, leaning into the storm of sorcery as if it were a gale-strength wind. Then he pulled his left arm back and hurled his lance at Mayot.

A flash of lightning lit up the blackness.

Mayot raised a hand, and a blast of death-magic intercepted the weapon, smothering the light.

The lance melted into nothing.

Lorigan set one foot on the first step leading up to the dais. The death-magic opposing him intensified, clawing at him with a palpable hunger. A screeching sound reached Romany, like talons drawn along metal. The knight's armor crumpled inward, throwing off sparks. Still he kept his feet. Then, with a roar that transcended the din of the magical conflagration, he took a step toward Mayot.

Another step, and another.

Shroud's disciple was clutching his sword in both hands now. It shone with an impossible radiance, driving Mayot's shadows back to within a few armspans of the old man himself. Romany shielded her eyes. Heavens forbid that the blackness might burn away entirely to leave her looking at the mage again. Lorigan climbed another step, halfway now to the dais.

The swell of Mayot's sorcery escalated once more.

Ripples of death-magic from the battle battered Romany's spectral form, and she retreated higher toward the roof. Below, the glow from Lorigan's sword was rapidly losing its contiguity, bleeding into the darkness on all sides. The air about it shimmered. Then, with a tortured scream of metal, the sword exploded, sending light streaking in all directions like a thousand shooting stars.

The storm of death-magic closed round Shroud's disciple until all that held back the blackness was the red glow radiating from the symbols etched into his armor. Lorigan bellowed his defiance, but for the first time Romany heard pain mixed in with the anger. He raised his right leg to take another step, lowered it inch by agonized inch onto the next stair. A scratch of metal on stone. Then his foot gave way, and he fell to his hands and knees with a clang.

Get up!
Romany silently urged him.

She started. Cheering for one of Shroud's disciples? Whatever was she thinking?

Suddenly the blazing symbols on Lorigan's armor were extinguished like blown candles, leaving the priestess squinting into the gloom. Moonlight gleamed on metal, then it was engulfed by the gray rush of Mayot's sorcery.

The knight screamed, a piteous sound that made the hairs on the priestess's arms stand up. On and on it went, a cry of such torment it shivered the air. Romany had left her migraine behind when her spirit floated free from her body, but now the pain was back—a sharp, hot agony as if someone had stabbed a needle through her head. She clawed at her ears, but there was no escaping the noise, and she clamped her teeth together to prevent herself adding her own scream to Lorigan's. Through her spirit-eyes, she saw the small, shining thing that was the knight's soul blacken and shrivel until with a final shriek it was snuffed out by the shadows surging round it.

Mayot's sorceries raged on for a handful of heartbeats. Then the death-magic flickered and died, the tendrils of darkness thinning and dispersing. Romany heaved in a breath. The wind began to fade. The steps the knight had been climbing had melted into molten stone, an orange glow cooling to gray. Leaves whipped up by the maelstrom of power started falling back to the ground. Those that came down on the red-hot rock burst into flames.

There was no sign of Lorigan Teele.

Romany drifted up to the roof of the dome where the light filtering through the star-shaped holes was brighter. For a time she stared up at the stars through a break in the clouds, waiting for the beating of her heart to slow. Her head felt like it might crack open at any moment, and if she concentrated hard enough she could still hear the reverberations of that dreadful scream.

All the same she forced a smile. She wasn't about to let anything detract from the triumph of tonight's proceedings. Yes, there had been surprises along the way, but the knight's death marked the successful completion of the opening moves in the game. Romany had expected Lorigan Teele to give a better account of himself, but then men so often flattered to deceive. Doubtless Shroud was even now wishing he'd sent a woman in his place.

No way, of course, that the Lord of the Dead could have predicted the Spider's interference and thus anticipated the measure of opposition his knight would face. How long before he could summon more of his servants here for another strike at Mayot? A few days? Weeks, even? Shroud, after all, did not have a web such as the Spider's along which to ferry his disciples. And while he was moving his pieces into position, there would be time for the goddess to plan her next move, for Mayot to immerse himself in the power of the Book. When Shroud's followers finally arrived in this godforsaken backwater, they would face a challenge greater even than the one the knight had encountered.