Malediction (Scars of the Sundering Book 1) (40 page)

"I'm
sure we all have things in our past which taint our souls." Pancras stood
again. This time, Arnost allowed it. Delilah, Kali, and Edric were dining at
the table. He sat down next to the dwarf and grabbed a hunk of bread. "How
long did we live under old bonehead? We were surrounded by evil-doers and the
wicked for most of our lives. It's bound to leave a mark, a stain, if you
will." Pancras didn't need some addle-minded human mystic to tell him that
the past can leave a scar.

"That
is not what I am sensing. You would do well to allow yourself to be thoroughly
examined. Something is not right."

Pancras
poured himself a goblet of wine. "Very well. When I have the opportunity
to venture into the city again, I will come see you. Yes?"

Arnost
blinked, looking from the drak twins to Pancras and back. "I think this
situation is more serious than that."

“Until my
task here is complete, I have been confined to the palace under order of the
princess.” Arnost’s assessment bothered Pancras. The dark dreams, the
spontaneous appearances of undead in the catacombs, his inability to remember
anything about the ritual he just performed, all pointed to some sinister
interference. Pancras didn’t want the distraction. He was so close to
completing his task and ensuring their freedom to depart Almeria on time.

“Then
perhaps I should look you over now.” Arnost licked his lips as he wrung his
hands.

Delilah
threw a piece of bread across the table at her brother. “Do you really think
something is wrong with him?”

Kale caught
the bread in his mouth. Pancras frowned at them, snatching the next piece of
bread out of the air. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

Chasing his
bread with a gulp of wine, Kale shook his head. “I don’t know. Forgetting stuff
and necromancing in your sleep. It can’t hurt to check, Pancras.”

With Kali
and Edric at the table, Pancras did not want to discuss the strange goings on
that seemed to follow him from Drak-Anor. He pushed himself away from the table
and shuffled toward his bedroom. “Fine. Come along, Human.”

Pancras
didn’t wait to see if Arnost followed him. He half expected the human to
sputter and leave. He knew his behavior was unreasonable but at the moment
didn’t care. The more Kale and Delilah conjectured that something might be
wrong, the more Pancras was certain that something indeed was.

Arnost shut
the door behind him. He clutched the golden lyre around his neck. “Perhaps you
could sit down?”

Pancras sat
on the edge of his bed and prepared himself for what he expected to be a waste
of time. The sort of magic the faithful practiced differed from the sort he
practiced primarily in technique. Where the arcane energies Pancras harnessed
were flashy and obvious, Arnost's divination would be subtle with few outward
effects. Divinations and many healing charms were perfect for charlatans, and
Pancras had encountered many such people during his life who professed to be
people of faith.

The human
held the golden lyre symbol above Pancras's head as he hummed a repetitive
drone. The symbol flared, bathing the room in golden light. Pancras held up his
hand to shield his eyes and felt the warmth of the light washing over him.

"The
light of Apellon reveals much that is hidden."

Pancras felt
something stir within him. The room dimmed, darkening at the edges of his
vision. The darkness crept in around him, and he felt his chest tighten. The
light from Arnost's symbol flared; yet, the darkness overtook Pancras. His
muscles convulsed, and he flopped backward onto the bed, his mind spiraling
into a void.

* * *

Delilah's
head snapped around as a clatter arose from Pancras's room. Light flooded from
the gap beneath the door as a moaning wail rattled the walls. She leapt out of
her chair, snatching up her staff as she ran for Pancras's room. As she left,
she heard Edric talking to Kali.

"Leave
the wizarding problems to them, Lass. You don't want to crowd the room if
things go bad."

Throwing
open the door, she squinted against the blinding light. Rising from Pancras's
prone form on the bed was a dark figure, a hole in the light. It loomed over
Arnost with black, smoky wings and shadowy claws.

It snarled
as Delilah entered the room. "This one is mine. You will all march in the
Undying Legion before the end."

Delilah
pointed her staff at the shadow demon. She gathered arcane energy while
deciding what to throw at the creature. Pancras's room was small, and the
potential for backsplash and collateral damage was great.

Kale bumped
into her and grabbed her shoulder. "Deli! That's the… thing! The one we
fought under Ironkrag!"

Arnost
raised his symbol of Apellon higher. "Be gone, demon! Flee from the light,
foul creature of darkness!"

The shadow
threw back its head and laughed. "Your antiquated notions of power hold no
sway over me." It reached forward and grabbed the golden lyre in its hand.
It crushed it, extinguishing the light. Darkness engulfed the room.

Delilah
heard the clatter of Arnost's symbol hitting the floor. "
Dapane
phlogone!
" She directed a stream of fire toward the creature and hoped
she aimed high enough to miss Pancras. The flame poured across the room, but
was extinguished by the darkness surrounding them.

"No!"
Pancras's voice cried out from in front of Delilah. She noticed a faint green
glow through the shadow. He groaned, and Delilah heard the sounds of his hooves
hitting the floor.

"
Exoria!
Apothoun tis daimonikees dynameis!
" A burst of emerald light flooded
the room. The shadow demon screeched and spun around, tendrils of greasy black
smoke swirling around it.

The tendrils
diminished the shadows. Kale ran over to help Arnost, who was down on one knee
in front of Pancras's bed, to his feet. The dark tendrils whirled around the
room, buffeting Pancras and sending papers and linens flying.

Darkness
engulfed the room once more for a brief moment and then disappeared.

The green
glow from Pancras's rod faded, and he grabbed one of his bedposts to steady
himself.

Arnost
plucked the crushed remains of his golden lyre from the floor. "You cannot
tell me that was 'nothing'."

Delilah and
her brother helped Pancras steady himself. His room was in shambles, and most
of his laboratory equipment upended or smashed. He held his head as he sat on
the edge of the bed. His cheeks were sunken, and his eyes stared ahead,
unfocused. For the first time, Delilah noticed Pancras appeared haggard and
aged.

"Do you
know what that thing was, Pancras?" Delilah sat next to him on the bed.

"I
think Kale is right. It was the shadow demon we encountered under
Ironkrag."

"I
thought we destroyed that thing." Kale pulled a chair over from the small
table. "Did it follow us here?"

"I have
never encountered a demon before." Arnost looked up from his ruined
symbol. "It did not feel as foul as I expected."

For all the
talk about Sarvesh being a demon of flame and fury and all her time spent under
the various ill-tempered overlords of her people before Sarvesh took control,
Delilah was sure she never encountered a true demon before, either.

Pancras
confirmed her suspicions. "I do not believe it was a demon. Some sort of
shadow creature, bound to a more powerful master, for certain. But a true
demon? No, I don't think so."

"What
was it then?" Arnost grunted as he failed to bend his golden lyre into its
original shape.

Delilah
looked at her brother and then at Pancras. "It’s that thing you fought
under Ironkrag? How did it get here?"

Pancras
stood, shaking his head. "How it followed me here is a question I cannot
answer right now."

"Is it
gone?" Kale hopped off the bed, helping to steady Pancras as the minotaur
exited his room and returned to the dining table. Edric was deep into his
second helping, and Kali appeared to be willfully withholding her desire to get
involved.

Pancras sat
down at the table and poured himself a goblet of wine. "That is a question
Arnost will have to answer."

"At
some point, you should probably tell us non-magical folk what's going on."
Edric tossed a bone across the table, missing the bowl appropriated for cast-away
bones. He grabbed another one from the roasted rack in the center of the table.

A wave of
guilt passed over Delilah. It hadn't occurred to her that Kali and Edric might
have no clue about what just happened.

Pancras
motioned for Arnost to join them at the table. "I think we should all take
a moment to discuss it. Wouldn't you agree?"

* * *

Arnost sat
next to Pancras and drank the proffered goblet of wine before he responded.
"Yes. Yes, I think that is wise."

Pancras
refilled Arnost's goblet and then topped off his own. "Before we left
Drak-Anor, Kale, Edric, and I dealt with a mob of ghouls that had been
bothering the good dwarves of Ironkrag. We found they were apparently being led
by a shadowy creature, which I dubbed a 'shadow demon' for lack of a better
descriptor. It seemed to draw its power from a nearby chaos rift and a
bloodmaw."

"What's
that?" Kali tossed a hunk of bread to Kale after taking one for herself.
Arnost continued working to reshape his amulet while he listened.

"A
creature of chaos. Mostly teeth." Pancras knew about such creatures from
his studies at the Arcane University but never saw one before that encounter.
"Otherworldly creatures aren't really my area of expertise. Unless I'm
forgetting something, we never directly defeated the shadow-thing.
I"—Pancras chewed on his lip as his eyes shifted to look down at the
table—"I assumed it was destroyed when I closed the rift."

"I got
thrown through the rift!" Kale spread his wings. "It made me grow
wings and breathe fire. I felt sick for a long time before that, though."

Arnost
looked up from his golden lyre. "You passed through a chaos rift?"

Delilah
nudged her brother, spilling his wine. "It explains a lot about him."

"It was
after that when my disturbing dreams began. Not mere nightmares, these were
more vivid even than those. I can recall very little detail, but they all ended
with me spell casting. I would awaken and learn of yet another outbreak of
undead."

"Yeah,
yeah! That zombie at the tower." Kale flicked wine off his fingers in the
direction of his sister.

"And
the undead in the catacombs." Delilah smacked her brother's hand.

"The
dreams didn't come every night, and I don't remember dreaming at all when I
slept without wearing my focus. I woke up with pounding headaches many
mornings, after that." When Pancras listed the instances aloud, they
seemed like more than just coincidence, even though the occurrences all
happened over the course of several months.

"Did
you see what happened to this shadow creature? Did it touch any of you? What
happened when the rift closed?" Arnost gestured for Delilah to pass the
bread.

Pancras
rubbed the back of his neck. "The rift vanished in a flash of light. I
felt something slam into me and was thrown to the ground. What did that thing
say in my room? Something about the Undying Legion?"

Arnost shook
his head and scoffed. "Idle threats, I'm sure. The Lich Queen's army was
called the Undying Legion. Anyone who fell in battle against her army would
rise again the next night and join them as they marched across the land. She
was defeated long ago."

Pancras was
a young minotaur when she met her final defeat at the Battle of Badon Hill. Her
armies mostly rampaged in the plains north of the Celtan Forest, so they heard
only exaggerated stories in Muncifer. He always fancied she had a personal
vendetta against Vlorey and the kingdoms of the north.

"I
heard she was called the Witch Queen until the humans and elves killed her once
and she came back as the Lich Queen." Kali tore into a rib, smacking her
lips as she wolfed down the meat.

Edric
chuckled. "Leave it to the tall folk to muck up killin' somebody."

Pancras was
familiar with that story, as well. "I heard that, too. I also heard she
planned to be killed as the final part of her ritual to grant her immortality
as a lich."

Retaining
all the power they had in life, in decaying bodies that grew hardier and more
difficult to destroy the more they decayed, liches were nasty undead. Pancras
despised intelligent, self-aware undead. Automatons like skeletons and zombies
were one thing, but anything beyond that required the destruction of life to
sustain itself, and never was he able to reconcile his personal beliefs with
that.

Kale drained
his goblet of wine. "So this shadow-thing? It was a minion of the Lich
Queen, maybe?"

Pancras
glanced at Arnost. The human nodded. "It's possible. A remnant biding its
time."