The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (38 page)

"We have set bile wolves all over the city," Autar said. "sowing chaos and panic. The arbiters should be drawn to that like flies to manure. But we can no longer afford to wait. We are going to have to give the moths a much larger flame."

"What do you propose?" Anderis stepped off the balcony and returned to the room at the top of the central tower.

"Your efforts retrieving corpses in the catacombs are now at an end. How many do you suppose you have unearthed?" Autar asked. No matter how much he hated the blood mages or despised this particular mage, he could not deny the man's brutal efficiency. Set the creature to any task, and he would execute it no matter the cost.

"We've only had a few months to dig, but I have found ways to speed up the labor. We've probably found at least three or four full generations down there."

"That will have to suffice for now," said Autar. "Let us begin."

Autar joined Anderis in the tower room, relishing the heat from the fire in the stove. He ran his eyes along the smooth striations in the green marble floor, channels he himself had spent days carving and imbuing with his own power. The lines rolled around the floor in wide curves and sweeps, each groove about the depth of a thumbnail, with hundreds of tiny sigils painstakingly carved along its length. Viewed up close the lines looked like random carvings, but from above the massive sigil was clear, and it would bring about his long-awaited revenge. It was his masterwork, the culmination of his knowledge as a sigilord and his suffering in exile in the banished realms.
 

"Remind me again how this won't kill me," Anderis said, taking off his robe and shirt. He knelt on the floor in the center of the large sigil carved into the marble.
 

"It should not kill you," Autar said. "But this will be no small sacrifice. Once I am done, you will need to eat, and to drink the special tonics I brewed, or you will die."

"And in return for this sacrifice, I get Almoryll," Anderis said. For the first time since he had met the blood mage, the man looked genuinely worried.
As well he should.
Autar knew Anderis planned to betray him. That was the way of the blood mage, but it mattered not. Once the ritual was complete, none of Anderis's plans for betrayal would matter.

"Blood mage, once I have my revenge, you can have all the castles you wish on all the worlds you like," Autar reassured him.
Pathetic blood mage
.
Once I have what I need, you shall be the first to die.
 

"So how does this work?" Anderis asked.

"Like this." Autar drew a small curved blade from a sheath at his belt. With a single quick motion, he slashed it across the inside of the blood mage's thigh at an angle, severing the femoral artery in such a way that it wouldn't be able to close off the blood flow on its own.

The blood mage screamed and threw his head back. Autar grabbed Anderis and held him by the hair, keeping his head up and eyes forward. Blood gushed from the wound on the blood mage's leg and poured into the sigil-etched channels in the floor.

"The arbiters will be unable to resist what comes next," Autar said as he watched the blood form little rivers, filling the loops and swirls of the large sigil. "They will be helpless in my snare."
 

The blood-red lines in the floor revealed the shape of a large teardrop in the center of a circle.

It was the blood sigil.

As Anderis's magic-imbued blood ran across the surface of the miniature sigils carved into the base of the channels, an inner glow shone out through the dark red liquid. Once the sigil was full, the power of Autar's yellow sigilcraft combined with the potency of the blood mage's vital fluid, and the room exploded with yellow, red, and orange light.
 

Autar slapped a muddy poultice on Anderis's wound and rolled the mage outside the sigil, to a spot where he could recover from the blood loss. He could have let the poor creature die right there and no one would have noticed, but Autar liked safeguards, and the blood mage's power might be useful in the future.

Autar stood in the center of the sigil and felt an unstoppable stream of power rush over him. It was like nothing he had ever felt before, stronger than the most powerful sigil he had ever cast. He was instantly aware of all those he now controlled. He could feel them, move them, order them to do his bidding.

"With this sigil," Autar said, raising his hands above his head. "I command the dead to rise!"

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"What do you mean, Spider's gone?" Goodwyn demanded.

"What else would it mean?" Owl snapped. "One second he was up here on the roof with us, and the next he was gone."

Goodwyn's ability didn't usually work on command, but this time he tried anyway. Closing his eyes and opening his mind to all the possible futures that might exist, a dream-filled landscape pressed into his thoughts.

In one of his many visions, the shimmering image of Spider stood on the ground next to water rushing over the street, just as a flaming arrow shot through his back, protruding from his stomach.

His eyes shot open and he shouted, "I have to save him!"

Without stopping to think of a plan, Goodwyn vaulted over the edge of the roof. As the earth rushed up to meet him, he lashed out toward an open window with the suzur. It gripped the edge long enough to halt his fall. A moment later he was on the ground, racing away from the building.

He had only made it two blocks when the street before him crumbled and sank. A rush of cold salt water churned to the surface and splashed up over the street, forming a moat a few meters deep around the several city blocks occupied by the group. Goodwyn skidded to a halt at the edge of the collapsing street as water consumed it, exactly where he had foreseen it stopping.
 

The water wasn't his concern. Packs of the acid-dripping wolves piled into the streets on the other side of the newly created moat. They howled, barked, and clawed at the pavement, stymied by the few meters of water that separated them from their prey. Observing the situation from afar, their handlers stood back, fists clenched around the flaming whips they used to drive the animals.

A moment later Spider tumbled into the street from the building next to the newly created waterway. He stumbled twice more, then rolled to his feet, shouting, "I did it! I did it!"

Counting the exact number of seconds in his head, Goodwyn waited, then flung his suzur directly at the boy, who was still celebrating his feat at having created the water barrier.

Spider ducked as the weapon hurtled through the air. The instant it passed over his head, the suzur split a flaming arrow in half, right before it would have impaled the child. Arrows arced through the air from every angle and direction, casting the street in a flickering orange glow.

Goodwyn swept up the boy and ran for the shelter of an alley on the side of the building opposite the one from which Spider had emerged. He watched the arrows fly, noticing dark shadows circling overhead like enormous vultures, waiting for them to die. The winged creatures, with spade-shaped tails and teeth the size of daggers, dove and rose, trying to reach the two of them, but their broad wingspan made it impossible for them to maneuver that low between the buildings.

Wyverns
, thought Goodwyn.
Those aren't even supposed to be real!

As the creatures flapped frantically, trying to regain altitude, glowing green arrows sank into their scaly hides. He followed the path of the arrows and saw Urus's new companions loosing arrows of pure magic into the sky.

"Wyn!" Goodwyn heard a shout. "Wyn!"

Therren ran from building to building, stopping to press his back against the wall and avoid volleys of flaming arrows. It only took him a few moments to meet up with them.

"What are you doing?" Goodwyn asked.

"You just jumped over the wall with no explanation. We had to come see what was happening," Therren said, panting.

"We?"

Therren turned and pointed to the roof of the building whose shelter he had just left. Urus and the green-eyed girl, Luse, appeared, each accompanied by a ghostly, glowing sigilcraft warrior. They jumped from the roof, only to land halfway down on a flexible, thin band of…something glowing…that appeared out of nowhere to slow their fall. They slid off the ramp and landed next to Goodwyn and Therren.

Goodwyn shook his head. So much had changed since he had last seen Urus. Was his friend even the same? Urus had new friends, incredible powers, and had apparently been through quite an ordeal. Goodwyn could see it in his eyes.

"We need to get back to the stronghold," Urus signed to him, crowding into the small alley that sheltered them from the ceaseless barrage of arrows. None of them could see the archers responsible.

"I had to save Spider," Goodwyn signed his reply.

Urus opened his mouth, as though he was about to say something, when he instead tilted his head to the side to peer over Goodwyn's shoulder. He jabbed a finger past his ear and asked, "What the hell is that?"

Goodwyn peered around the corner to look past the moat, beyond the pacing pack of bile wolves. Urged by the cracking whips of the wolf handlers, more creatures filed toward the moat. As he focused more closely, he could see that they were human-shaped, only they were mostly bone.

Skeletons!
Spider could be responsible for saving us all
, Goodwyn thought, noting that the only thing separating them from a horde of enemies was the ring of collapsed streets that formed the water barrier. A few of the wolf handlers carried massive planks of wood over their heads.
 

"They're going to bridge the moat", he told the others.

"Are those skeletons?" Urus asked.

"Fall back!" Goodwyn shouted, then led the retreat toward the building that housed the rest of their company.

They scurried back in the direction they had come. The sky above had become darkened with an uncountable number of the wyverns. They circled overhead, spitting acid down on the ground, leveling the ruined remains of the island's buildings. Goodwyn had no doubt that they would destroy the island, and everyone on it, within minutes.

The enemy had them hemmed in. A wall of flaming arrows continued to land on one side, while the wyverns descended in sorties, spitting stone-melting acid on the ground behind them. There was nowhere to go.

Goodwyn's ability failed him, and he could not see where the enemies might be in the future. Their number was so great, he couldn't keep track of them in the present.

The sound of an explosion boomed in the distance, echoing in the vibrations of the crumbling buildings. Whirling in the direction of the explosion, Goodwyn saw a wyvern spiraling to the earth, its wings ablaze in bright red fire.

Then a hail of red balls of flame erupted from the far side of the island. They soared through the air, slamming into the flying beasts, knocking them out of the sky. The wyverns dropped like stones as the blood-red fireballs hit.

Fireballs of blood-red flame
, he thought.
This is Cailix's doing
.

The blood mage's attack on the wyverns didn't slow the march of the enemies on the ground. Goodwyn saw the wolf handlers drop their planks across the moat, and then an ocean of living dead poured across the narrow bridges.

"We're going to be overrun!" Goodwyn shouted. "The dead are coming!"

Even as he shouted, he saw Urus frantically sketching something in the air with blue smoke drifting from his fingers. His drawing hung in the air, an inscrutable symbol Goodwyn didn't recognize. Urus raised his hand to press it against the glowing symbol, but looked up and again focused on something over Goodwyn's shoulder.

"Who the hell is that?" Therren asked.

A young man, covered in dirt and debris, raced ahead of the lead wall of surging skeletons, waving his hands over his head, shouting incoherently. He seemed vaguely familiar, but Goodwyn couldn't put a name to the face, especially at this distance. Before Goodwyn could call out to the young man, or do anything to slow the enemy behind him, a blue light flashed on the horizon, then grew until the world had been enveloped by the impossibly bright light.

Chapter Twenty-Eight