Born Of Darkness (Book 7) (8 page)

Gerd slapped the head of the mace against his palm. He squinted into the darkness then limped up behind Kormak. He was quiet now, giving his full attention to their surroundings. Kormak missed the man’s chatter. The silence was ominous.

He moved up to where the open sarcophagus lay. He checked the angles of attack from the aisles of treasure chests.

None of the dogs, not even Fang, wanted to get close to the coffin. Rodric glanced around fearfully. He had clearly never seen the hounds behave this way before.

Rhiana moved over to Kormak’s side. Shadows danced away from the flickering torch. He noticed how clean the edge of the pearl’s glow was compared to the constant shifting of the pool of torchlight’s boundaries.

“Well, it’s open, you were right about that much,” said Gerd, bending to inspect the coffin. He squinted at the runes.

“You’re probably right about them being binding signs although I have no idea what some of the other ones are for.” Gerd leaned closer and gestured for Rhiana to bring the light closer. “It looks like some of them have been damaged.”

“Deliberately?” Kormak asked.

“Take a look for yourself.”

Some of the runes were defaced. It was possible someone had done that with a chisel when they were attempting to open the coffin. He said as much.

“Maybe,” said Gerd. “But who would do that? All of the sailors know they would be skinned alive for tampering with the Treasure Fleet’s cargo. Why take the risk?”

“Because they were greedy,” Kormak said.

“Royal Marines guard those chests,” Gerd said. “No one is more loyal to the King-Emperor.”

“Still they can be tempted, like any other man.”

“Maybe but it does not make any sense. Why this particular thing, a coffin, why not a casket of jewellery?”

“Because they wanted the seals broken and whatever was in it to get out,” Kormak suggested.

Rhiana said, “Cargoes get tossed against each other, particularly when the seas are rough. You’ve seen what a storm on the World Ocean is like, Kormak. This might all have been an accident.”

“When it comes to Old Ones being unleashed I don’t believe in accidents,” Kormak said.

“It doesn’t mean they can’t happen,” said Rhiana.

Gerd shrugged. “Does not really matter. Someone tampered with the coffin or it was smashed open by accident. The main thing is that whatever was within it got out and we need to find it.”

“The coffin could have been tampered with here in the vault,” Kormak said.

“By who? The chancellor? That old man served the bloody King for twenty years and the king’s father before him for twenty-five more. He was no more likely to take anything from here than I am.”

“So it’s a fifty-fifty chance then,” said Kormak.

“I suppose you think that’s funny.”

“Well, I know you need the gold, Gerd. You’ve told me often enough since you got to the palace.”

“If the sarcophagus was damaged, it might be mentioned on the manifest,” Rhiana said. “The Admiral would have had to sign for it and he would have to certify that it arrived in the same condition as it set out. It’s his responsibility after all.

“More bloody paperwork,” muttered Gerd.

“Did I just hear you volunteering to check it,” said Kormak.

“Still looking for ways to skive off, I see.”

Fang had returned to where the chancellor’s body lay. He sniffed and growled. He seemed to have screwed up his courage. The other Shadowhounds clustered around him. Their tails were down but their teeth were bared.

“Looks like Fang has picked up a scent,” said Rodric. He looked at the abbot, then at the dogs, then at his feet.

Gerd glanced at Kormak. “I know what you’re going to say,” he said.

“We’d best see what we can find,” said Kormak.

***

Rodric moved slowly over to his hounds. “Now boy, seek,” he said. His voice was low and encouraging, like a man talking to a nervous child. “Seek!”

Fang sniffed. His nose wrinkled as if he did not like what he smelled. His ears pricked up and his lips drew back in a snarl and he began to move forward. “Balthus, Slasher, follow Fang! You’re not going to let yourself be shown up by the runt of the litter, are you?”

With visible reluctance, Balthus and Slasher slunk after Fang.

“Either those are the most cowardly Shadowhounds I have ever seen,” Kormak said. “Or there’s something about this Old One has them really troubled.”

Rodric wrinkled his nose and glared. The way his lips drew back to reveal his teeth reminded Kormak of his dogs. “There’s nothing cowardly about my hounds,” he said. He sounded personally affronted.

“That’s what’s worrying me,” Gerd said. “I’ve seen those dogs hamstring a Shadow-blighted mastodon and look cheerful while they were doing it.”

Rhiana glanced at the dogs. She looked pale in the torchlight. She was becoming more wan by the moment.

“What is it?” Kormak asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “I just don’t like being cooped up in these tunnels.”

Kormak remembered how he had felt in the ocean’s depths and wondered whether it was the same for her down here.

“You don’t have to come with us,” he said.

“Try and stop me.”

“I would not dream of it.” Kormak glanced over at Gerd. “You got the essence of truesilver?”

The abbot nodded.

“It’s time to treat your weapons with it.”

CHAPTER NINE

GERD DRIBBLED THE last of the liquid metal on to the head of his mace. He smeared it on the runes with the sleeve of his tunic. The air smelled faintly of polish and something more acrid that made the back of Kormak’s throat tighten.

“We’ve got about an hour,” Gerd said.

“An hour of what?” Rhiana asked. She sounded tetchy. Perhaps because the abbot had treated his own weapon and Rodric’s but not hers. It would be easy for her to take it as a sign that they did not trust her. Maybe Gerd didn’t.

Gerd said, “An hour during which our weapons will cause an ungodly amount of pain to any Old One. It will kill any of their blood too.”

He paused for a moment as if considering his next words. “You had best be careful not to get yourself hit.”

It was all the explanation or apology Rhiana was going to get. Kormak waited for her angry denial but it did not come.

“Poison,” she said.

“In a sense,” Gerd said. “It’s something that burns the Old Ones like poison ivy burns us.”

Rhiana said, “The armour Kormak’s wearing will have the same effect, won’t it? That’s not just essence of truesilver. It’s made from it.”

“It’ll certainly make an Old One or one of their bloody servants think twice about hitting the wearer a second time.”

“You ever consider making weapons from it?”

Gerd grinned. “What do you think the runes on this mace are made from? The truesilver alloys that men make are not much use for normal blades, too soft and won’t hold an edge long, but they have their uses. The mace will hurt an Old One.”

“Your order believes in being prepared, doesn’t it?”

Gerd sounded serious. “Sometimes it’s the only advantage we have. You take whatever you can get.”

“It was the Solari who came up with all this stuff though . . .”

“They used it but they had better weapons. Sunblades, lightspears, dayshields, armour made from sungold. They picked up the knowledge from the Angels of the Sun when they warred against the Old Ones in the Dawn Ages of the World.”

Kormak remembered the thoughtful scholar Gerd had been as a boy. The smell of the old classrooms, and the way the light fell through the stained glass windows came back to him. He shook his head. It was the pain-killing potion. It was making him dreamy even as it numbed his wounds.

Gerd tilted his head to one side and studied the Guardian. “You all right? You look a bit sickly.”

Kormak wondered about that. If he was not at all right, he was putting their lives at risk. The Old One had almost killed him last night and he had been in better shape then.

Still, there were four of them and the hounds. Gerd and Rodric were better prepared than any royal guardsman, and Rhiana had strange powers of her own. If he left things much longer the trail might vanish and they would lose this chance to find the creature from the sarcophagus.

He hesitated for a heartbeat. Was he afraid? He remembered what his teachers on Aethelas had taught him.

Fear was just his body’s way of telling him to be prepared for danger. There was something large and predatory waiting for him out there in the darkness, and he was not sure he could deal with it. He turned that thought over and over in his mind.

“Let’s go,” he said. The others followed him with hesitant steps, as if they sensed his reluctance to go on.

***

The Old One heard the cries of hunting beasts seeking prey. They echoed down the damp-walled tunnels of the catacombs like the calls of restless ghosts.

They were still a long way off. For a moment, he ignored them. What could those noises have to do with him? He was a hunter, not prey. Only the stupidest of animals would fail to recognise that truth, and hounds were far from the dullest of creatures.

He squatted on his haunches and tried to remember how he had got into that damned coffin. He shifted his form, expanding his cranial area, increasing the processing power of his brain. His limbs became weaker, his senses duller but his thoughts raced faster and his memory became keener.

Recollections danced through his mind and were gone too quickly to grasp. Beings of metal and glass and beings of light. Great towers of spun starlight. Cities buried deep beneath the mountains. The feel of the wind on his wings as he flew in the moonlight. He could not make any sense of the riot of images. He could put no names to any of it. These things might as well be the memories of dreams. Perhaps they were.

What had been done to him? He felt certain he had once owned a great deal of knowledge but all of it had somehow drained out of him.

The howling came closer. He smelled dogs and other things, things he did not like. One of those scents belonged to the mortal that had wounded him. The other scents were equally unpleasant. They made his nose twitch and brought tears to his eyes. His hackles rose.

How long had he been squatting in the dark before the noise of the dogs roused him? He did not know. He had lost track of time.

While he had been trapped in the coffin, time had not mattered. Its passage had been just another torture, like the hunger for flesh and for other things that had gnawed at his core.

Hounds. The human was leading a pack through the dungeons. The human who had wounded him was out there, with dogs and other mortals. It had brought weapons and allergens and sorcery.

Be calm. It was not certain that the human was hunting him. But who else could the human be looking for? Best be prepared.

He needed to adapt to meet the potential threat. This form, whilst excellent for cogitation, was not suitable for survival in the face of the threat represented by the human’s armaments.

It was however excellent for sifting through the memories of memories. It could, perhaps, grasp those butterfly ideas that had flickered through his mind earlier. He stood on the brink of a breakthrough, a realisation about why he was here, what he had done and what had been done to him. All it would take would be a little time and then . . .

The howls were much closer. How much time had he lost in examining his own thought processes in this mentally splendid but physically flabby form? Once he had possessed an intrinsic sense of time’s passage, of exactly where he was. But now . . .

He would have to find those answers and soon but right now, he had a more pressing problem. He threw himself forward. He balanced on all fours. His snout elongated. His fingers retracted and became stubby paws. His thinking became more feral as his body changed. His memories dwindled until all he could remember was what had happened a few minutes ago. The complex web of thoughts broke up. His senses became keener, his body stronger and more resilient.

His sight blurred and his sense of smell improved. Clouds of interesting aromas drifted around him. Dank stench of dungeon tunnels. Moistness of distant water. Faint tingling of fungal spores drifting through the dark. Reek of old blood and pain.

The slavering hounds so near, so near.

***

Fang’s nervousness evaporated once he had the scent of prey in his nostrils. His tongue lolled out. He panted. The other hounds took their cue from him. Their eyes were fierce. Their howls were full of hunger. The sound echoed down the corridors, a noise to inspire dread in any who heard it.

Rodric grinned even as he strained to hold the great beasts on the leash. This was more like it. This was what he had expected. This was a hunt and he was the Master of Hounds.

Gerd limped along, his bad leg dragging, an expression of exasperated determination on his face. He was going to keep up no matter what happened. Rhiana had a haunted look, as if she could hear something they could not and it troubled her.

This place was a maze of stairs and vaults. Corridors twisted and sloped until all sense of direction departed. Open doors led into cells containing chained skeletons, desiccated bodies and machines of torture.

Something like dread entered Kormak’s heart as they moved through the dungeon corridors. He recognised the flicker of fear passing through his mind. He had felt it before, in the night, in dark enclosed spaces, under the stars and under the earth. He had felt it while he hunted creatures he knew to be more dangerous than him, who might turn at bay and slay him out of hand. He had felt it when chased by men and beasts and monsters.

This situation might end in his death. He would survive only by being faster or stronger or more cunning than that which opposed him. Luck or brawn or quickness of sinew would decide his fate. The knowledge that each moment might be his last thrilled him. He walked the edge of the abyss of oblivion. At any moment he might tumble into it. The gates of the Kingdom of Dust yawned and Death looked out with glittering eyes.

It was what had kept him hunting monsters in the dark for decades. It was for this he lived and from this he would die and in his secret heart of hearts, he did not care. Gerd had been right. They would have to pry his dwarf-forged blade from his cold dead hands. There was no other way he was giving this up. He looked at the abbot and got an answering grin. Gerd too felt the thrill of the hunt.