Diablo III: Storm of Light (29 page)

The Horadrim did not allow them to stand for long. Shanar’s staff flared brightly, sending bolts of fire through their ranks, and Gynvir’s axe drew blood. Norlun shouted orders at his men and kept them in front of him. “Do not let them protect the snake any longer!” Tyrael shouted. He pointed at where Norlun hid behind the largest templar, and Mikulov raced through a thicket of waving spears, disarming as many as he could without harming them.

But most of the templar would not surrender, fighting with their bare hands. A dozen more died on the steps before Norlun threw down his weapon and ordered the templar to give up.

The knights surrounded the remaining men, disarming them
quickly, and the templar leader proved to be a coward in the end. The sniveling little man was on his knees when Tyrael approached him. Norlun’s hands had been lashed together behind him by Gynvir.

“I thought we might meet again,” Tyrael said. “Under different circumstances.”

“Please,” Norlun began, “spare my soul—”

Tyrael took the man by his shirt and lifted him to his feet. He glanced at the instruments of torture along the walls. Anger flooded through him, and he thought of tearing Norlun’s head from his shoulders for what he had done.

“Let him go,” a voice said. General Torion crossed the stone floor to Tyrael’s side. “I would end his life now,” he said, “but he deserves to hang in the square, where the citizens of Westmarch can see him.”

Tyrael dropped Norlun to the floor. “Put him in with the others,” Torion said. The knights led the templar leader to the cell where the guards were being held, as Lorath Nahr, a scratch on his face and blood on his armor, came forward to stand at Torion’s side.

“Sir, I have troubling news,” Lorath said. “Commander Barnard has succumbed in battle.”

The other knights shuffled their feet, murmuring. Torion shot them a sharp glance. “He died nobly, then,” the general said. “We will give him a hero’s burial. Were there other losses?”

“Eleven knights in all.”

Torion sighed, rubbing his face and looking suddenly older. “Have you gotten word to your father?”

“I sent several messengers for him. At least one will get through.”

“Good. We need him here, now more than ever, to assume his former post.” He turned back to the Horadrim. “The Church of the Holy Order is back in the hands of the people,” he said. “I’m
not sure how you gained entrance to the cathedral—some dark spell, no doubt—but without your help, there would have been more bloodshed on both sides.” He indicated Zayl with a gesture. “The necromancer has helped save the city of Westmarch more than once. For that, we are in your debt.”

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Lorath said. Torion nodded. “The Horadrim seek artifacts important to their order that may be hidden below these chambers. Considering the circumstances, perhaps we could allow them some time to search for them?”

Torion looked doubtful. “Whatever might be here belongs to the people,” he said. “My gratitude does not extend to allowing strange spellcasters to wander around a holy landmark without a guide, archangel or not.”

“I will stay with them, sir,” Lorath said. He glanced at Tyrael. “If they will have me.”

Tyrael nodded. “We are not your enemy, General,” he said. “If young Lorath remaining with us would settle your mind, we are in favor of it.”

“Very well,” Torion said. “We will make sure the grounds are secure and stand guard outside. Norlun does not command as much respect among the people of Westmarch as he thinks, but it would be good to remain vigilant. You have the night to uncover your secrets.”

As the rest of the templar were herded into cells or marched away upstairs by the knights, the Horadrim went deeper beneath the cathedral.

Along with Lorath Nahr, the group reached the end of the larger chamber and passed through the arch that led to the second room. Cullen stood motionless before an opening in the wall, deep in thought. When Thomas touched his shoulder, the
smaller man jerked and blinked at them. “I’ve found our hidden entrance,” he said simply. “Such as it is.”

The others peered into the opening. Steps led into the inky blackness below, the ceiling and walls made of rough stone. The smell of dusty, abandoned spaces wafted up, the air cold on their skin.

Tyrael sent Jacob and Mikulov back to the larger room to gather more torches. The Horadrim took the steps in single file, Tyrael in the lead, Lorath at the rear.

The torch in Tyrael’s hand flickered, although the air was still. The stairs descended on a gentle curve, going on for some time. Eventually, Tyrael began to sense a pattern in things; a thin crack in the wall on his right appeared again a few moments later at the same angle and depth, and a small section of a step that had crumbled was repeated in exactly the same place several dozen steps later.

He paused, bringing the torchlight closer. Footprints were clearly marked in the dust in front of him, but he was certain there hadn’t been footprints at the top of the steps when they had begun, and there was no place along the way where men could enter the staircase. So how had they appeared now?

He felt a touch on his arm. “We are going in circles,” Cullen said. “Those prints are our own. You see?” He placed his sandal on one of the prints, a perfect match. “You are mortal but not human, and the entrance is shielded. Perhaps I should lead.”

Tyrael handed him the torch, and Cullen continued down around the next curve. Almost immediately, the staircase straightened and the steep grade flattened out as the walls widened. A few moments later, the steps ended at the mouth of another tunnel.

They might have gone on forever, Tyrael thought, if not for Cullen. It only served to emphasize that Tyrael was not one of them. He dropped back to Lorath’s place at the rear as the Horadrim
continued ahead, walking along a silent and empty path that deadened their footsteps and through an underground cavern that appeared to be naturally formed. The torchlight illuminated the walls as they closed in before the cavern expanded again and the ceiling soared above their heads. Although the path forward was well worn, there was no sign that any humans had been here for centuries or more. Once or twice, they heard something like water trickling somewhere out of sight, but they never saw evidence of it, and still the cavern continued on endlessly into darkness.

They spoke softly at first, and then their voices faded away naturally into silence as they went on. The magnitude of the cavern demanded quiet respect, as if their words were an offense to the gods gathered there. A weight seemed to fill the air around them, the swirl of dust beneath their feet bringing with it the smell of history.

It was not, Cullen thought, at all what he had expected. There was no evidence that the firstborn nephalem had ever been here; the cavern had been carved from violent, rushing waters centuries ago, judging from the shape of the walls and floor. But it felt oddly familiar to him all the same, as if he had been here many years ago as a small child. There was an entire world underneath the ground, one that had remained in a suspended state waiting for their return.
His
return, Cullen thought. What had happened with the key and the power that had run through him had changed him in some fundamental way, as if he had previously lived an entire life and only now had become aware of it.

At one point, they came to a natural bridge of stone that spanned a chasm far too deep for their torches to reveal the bottom, and the echo of their footsteps here bounced back to them as if they were being followed by invisible figures. The necromancer
and his skull muttered softly to each other; Zayl asked for Cullen’s torch and took the lead, with Cullen and Thomas remaining immediately behind and Mikulov following. The bridge was narrow, and they had to cross it in single file, the floor on either side dropping away into nothing, pebbles rattling down into the depths at their passage like small animals scrambling to get away.

As the last one cleared the bridge, a deep, threatening groan echoed through the chamber, shaking the floor beneath them. The stone bridge separated with a cracking sound, and a fissure appeared halfway across before the stone settled again and became still. The gap was nearly four feet across.

Shanar stepped to the beginning of the bridge, holding out her torch for a better look. “No way to go but forward,” she muttered, as the group stared through the flickering light. “I hope there’s another way out of here, or we’re going to become part of the lost city ourselves.”

“We could try to make it over,” Cullen said. But when Shanar stepped out onto the bridge, the stone groaned again and seemed to shift, and she leaped back to safe ground. There was no choice but to keep going.

They walked for long enough that time seemed to blend and then stop altogether. It could have been one hour or ten, and Cullen felt himself fall back into the dreamlike state that had come over him as he had slipped the key into the lock. The spirits of the dead had come to rest within him, and the necromancer must have felt something, too, for he glanced back sharply at Cullen several times, and the skull kept muttering things that were too low for anyone to hear.

Sometime after they crossed the bridge, the path began to descend, slowly at first and then more steeply. Later they came to a place where the cavern opened up again and the tunnel branched; to the right, a path climbed gently upward before disappearing
into the inky black. But to their left was a shallow alcove containing something that made Cullen catch his breath.

A statue of a man had been carved from the rock, as if it had just stepped out of the wall fully formed. The statue was incredibly lifelike, more than twice the size of Tyrael himself. The man’s flowing robes seemed to move in the flickering torchlight, his long hair cascading over his shoulders. His strong jaw and clear forehead would have been handsome were it not for the hard angle of his eyes, which were cast upward as if glaring at an imminent threat.

“By the Light,” Lorath breathed softly. “I have never seen—I would not have thought that such a thing could exist here.”

Inscribed in the rock wall next to the statue’s arm was a circle with a slit across the center.

The necromancer held a torch as Cullen touched the circle with his fingers. This was for him, he realized, for all of them, a symbol of their heritage and their destiny, a circle that had begun near the dawn of time in Sanctuary, which they completed now with their presence here.

He took the ornate key out of his rucksack and slipped it home.

A thrum of power raced through him, similar to the one before, but this time, he was ready for it. Almost instantly, Cullen felt his own body respond, a call and answer to something ancient and unknown.

A sound like the deep and mournful call of an ocean beast echoed through the cavern. The statue rotated its head, staring at the newcomers. Its gaze fixed upon Tyrael, stone eyes remaining locked on the archangel’s face.

The circle began to shimmer and dissolve, and the shimmering continued outward until the entire section of the wall was as transparent as a pane of glass. On the other side of the wall stood two massive columns and two more statues, these of women
with beckoning arms outstretched. Cullen stepped forward through the shimmering wall as if passing through water, feeling only a momentary shiver before he was beyond it and alone.

He looked back. Thomas passed through the wall, and then one at a time, the rest of the Horadrim came like ghosts through the veil between what seemed to be the living world and the dead.

Eventually, they all gathered beyond it, and as the last one passed through, the wall became whole again. The space was open now, the circle complete.

Cullen turned back to see what lay before them.