Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (47 page)

EIGHTEEN

WEB

Cross
entered a
labyrinth
of
shadow
and
stone. 
Everything
was
unstable
,
like he floated in
a cold void sea. 
The d
arkness
twisted and bent.  The
details of the
ceiling
were obscured in
a haze of swirling golden shadows and
patches of inky darkness.  The air pulsed like
pools of rippling oil. 

He
passed
crystal domes cracked
open
by
some
unnatural calamity.  Twisted passages snaked like veins through the heart of the canyon wall.  Bones and sediment
had
frozen in the
milk rock
. 
Murky blue-black
light emanated from
within
the walls.

He stepped through an archway of whalebone, a massive jaw ridged with blunted teeth. 
Pale
oil
s
dripped down and splashed onto the floor. 

Cross
came to
a cavern
of batholitic rock
.  The air
was
smelted
and white.  Curved
stone
spiraled away
in
cyclone
s
of ebony and silver
. 
Cavernous echoes sounded through the Netherwere – the world below, a vast network of catacombs and tunnels that ran like a maddening maze into an infinity of twisted underground canyons and natural chambers, abandoned Cruj dwellings and Maloj temples, Vuul slave mines, subterranean Gol settlements and the hidden lairs of the secretive Regost.

Low rolling fumes buried the floor, so thick they seemed almost liquid.  The
mist
rolled at hi
m
from
out of
a series of tunnels
he thought
led
to
the Carrion Rift.
 
He followed them.  Soulrazor/Avenger
was
heavy in his grip.  His
boots
echoed loud in
the darkness.

C
oncentric rock formations
twisted
like black grain down a funnel.  Sounds
came at him
, distant growls and shouts.  He was getting closer to the breach, he could feel it. 
Geothermic pressure squeezed the air and made it sweat.  Vents of
bitter
steam
pushed out
of
scar fissures
and
blocked
sight
of what lie ahead
.

He wandered for what felt like days.  The blade tugged him this way and that, as if it knew the way.
It took him to the source of the echoes.  He heard wind, and something like rain.

The Obelisk of Dreams
lay on its side
at the end of the tunnel, literally pushed through the
in
side of the
canyon wall, fused between two realities.  Everything shifted
around it, folded in
to
unnatural p
atterns.  Drifts of
rock
dust
fell from the ceiling.

The artifact was
just
as h
e remembered it
, utterly
black and
icy cold. 
To even be near it
chilled the blood
. 
Faint whispers
of
pain bled from the cracks in the Obelisk’s surface.  Silver runes like scars
littered
its
utterly
dark
face.  It was still whole
,
in spite of the violence it had lived through.

Drifts of rubble
fell
from
the walls
.  E
verything wavered like heat images. 
He saw his breath,
and
then saw it again.  He stood at a place conjoined, where the boundaries threatened to come unglued.  The floor stretched and compacted. 

He
moved close
r
to the Obelisk.  It was safe.  He’d beaten Azradayne and the Shadow Lords to it.

Now what?

Cross studied the monument.  It was so innocuous, so still.  It barely seemed possible that it could bear such import.  The Obelisk had rested in the hands of the renegade necropolis of Koth for decades, but the undead had lacked the knowledge of how to destroy it until Red had offered
them
that information. 

To destroy it
required a sacrifice
.  A
particular sacrifice.

That sacrifice was supposed to have been
me
,
he thought. 
I wonder if the Shadow Lords have already prepared another.

Another sacrifice.

Cross looked past the Obelisk and
through the shattered rock wall
,
into the wreckage and madness of the Carrion Rift. 
A shifting barrier like black smoke separated
the two
realities. 
He look
ed
through the ebon fumes,
into the world he once knew. 
The top half of the twelve-foot Obelisk hovered over the void
of the canyon.
A
sea of s
creaming vapors
melted down the vast trench
. 
Black t
entacles writhed and twisted in the bladed shadows
below
.  The Rift was a place buried in darkness and mist.

Why would anyone
want
to rule this world?
h
e wondered. 
The Southern Claw fight to stay alive, to protect our own.  What
do
the Shadow Lords want?  Power?  Dominion?  They’d rule from atop a throne of dust,
and wear
a crown of ash.

Another sacrifice.

Cross stood at the boundary
.  He could reach through
if he wanted and enter
the Carrion Rift
.  He could step
back in
to
his
own
world
, onto ledges of crumbling roc
k and jutting bits of stone on
his side of the canyon
.  He could be free
of the Whisperlands
. 

Not yet.  Not yet.

Blood trickled down the Rift walls. 
Things lurked in the
darkness below
.  H
e felt their
eyes on him, sensed their ravenous
hunger
.

Another sacrifice.

Because
I
lived, there will be another sacrifice.

There was another
wide
shelf
of rock
on the
opposite canyon wall.  It was
littered with s
hards of black iron wreckage.  He saw broken engines and shattered railway cars, sunken turrets and cracked metal wheels. 

It occurred to him
that
Snow’s remains might have been there in
the
ruined remains of the train
.  He’d
almost
forgotten what she looked like.  He pictured her charred
body
folded in
to
the metal.

Cross tried to put
sight
of her from his mind, but he couldn’t.  He saw her, burning on the train.  It was
one of the
only memor
ies
he had
of her
whe
re
he could
still
picture
her clearly.

Stop it,
he told himself. 
This doesn’t help. 

But he was already crying, and
he couldn’t stop.

He waited.  It was
hard to know how much time
passed.

Cross
stood
in the cold dark
.  The
necronaught wreckage
was
in sight
,
and
the
Obelisk
was just a few feet away
.  The caves shifted unnaturally
all
around him.  He
looked back
down the twisted rock corridor
and saw
steam clouds and molten shadows.

Cross
held
Soul
razor/Avenger
ready
.  He wasn’t sure what good it would do, what good
he
could do against a
cadre of powerful
warlocks
. 
He tried to remind himself he’d survived battle
s
with
the
necrotic angel minions of the Revenger Korva, and that this would be no different.

But the truth was he felt less
sure
of himself than he had
for
a long time
. 
H
e
had
no idea what he
should
or
sh
ouldn’
t expect
from
the arcane blade.  It served its own whim, held its own agenda.

He shivered.  His grip on the gelid hilt slipped, so he righted himself and held it tighter.
  He considered propping himself against a wall to rest, but the shifting atmosphere told him that would be unwise.

Another sacrifice.

He wondered who the Shadow Lords had found.

It had to be someone particular.  The conditions for the sacrifice
required
to
destroy
the Obelisk of Dreams were exact: a mage who’d forcibly been separated from their spirit, and then
had
had that connection
restored
.  So far as he or anyone in the White Council knew, Cross was the only mage that
had ever
happen
ed to
.  Now
he wasn’t even a mage anymore,
something
he tried
not
to think about.

They’d have to create their own sacrifice somehow.  They’d have to force those conditions, find a way to do it intentionally.
  He
was
sure they could: Margrave
had
told him
that
Koth had found a way, and if
circumstances hadn’t made it so
Cross had wound up fitting their criteria
,
that sacrifice would have been Snow
.

But do the Shadow Lords
really want to destroy
the Obelisk
?
he wondered. 
What else would they do with it?

What if the Obelisk isn’t even what they’re looking for?

He wasn’t sure why that
last thought occurred to him.  I
t came like a
bolt
of lightning out of a clear and quiet sky. 
And like some festering wound or a horrible itch, once
the notion
was there
,
it wouldn’t go away.

Are they looking for something
else
?

Cross watched the tunnels.  He glanced behind him, into the Carrion Rift.  He waited for the Shadow Lords, or
for
their minions.

He wondered what else they could be searching for.

If the Shadow Lords truly had the means to come and g
o from the Whisperlands at will
, it made little sense for them to seek anything else. 
If they
didn’t
really have the means to leave the Whisperlands, if that had all been a lie,
then maybe
they
sought escape
, just like he did
…but that meant Kyver and the Grey Clan
had
lied to him, and he had trouble believing that.  He hoped
his
instinct
about them had been
correct.