The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (44 page)

Chapter Thirty-Two

Urus stood on the rooftop, letting the world around him coalesce and solidify back into normal space. The streets were clear, far too clear for his liking. The absence of the undead skeletons and their hell-borne companions was unsettling. He was grateful for the time before Cailix opened her eyes, as it gave him a moment to ponder the consequences of what he had just done.

He had no idea what had come over him, or what would possess him to do such a thing. He had never kissed anyone before, and would certainly never consider kissing someone who looked like Luse. She was graceful, beautiful, and—just so much more than he would ever be.

She's also thousands of years old
.
That has to be wrong somehow
.
She'll never forgive me
.

Cailix's nudge brought him out of his downward spiral of panic.

"Things certainly have changed since I last saw you on that beach," Cailix said.

"You have no idea," Urus replied. "Colin said that…that you're sick because of me. You got sick because of my blood."

Cailix shook her head, hard. "Colin doesn't know what he's talking about. I didn't get sick from using your blood…well, not
just
your blood. I used the blood of a dead sheep, too. I've done a lot of stupid things, and I regret a lot of them, but saving you on that beach is not why I'm sick."

Relief filled him, but he held it in check. He had no idea how to make her feel better, what to say, or what to do. Awkward moments of silence passed between them until finally Cailix took a deep breath. "I'm sick because I used dead blood to try to save my…my mother," she said. "Anderis killed her."

"Is he…did you…" Urus stammered.

"He's dead," Cailix said. "I didn't get to be the one that kill him, but he's dead nonetheless. Before he died, he told me how to reverse the sigil, and he gave me this." She pulled a simple leather tube from her belt. From inside the tube, she extracted an ornately carved metal rod with a sigil on top.
 

"What is it?"

"I don't know," Cailix said. "But
this
was their plan. The army of creatures, the dead, the attack on the city, it was all to lure the arbiters here so Autar and Anderis could steal this. Autar called it a returning rod."

Urus gasped. "A returning rod? Luse told me about those. They could use this to get to Almoryll, the place the arbiters took me that day on Aldsdowne. Almoryll has portals to hundreds of other worlds and Autar's sigilcraft can open them all. Almoryll also sits on a vault of magical artifacts of unimaginable power. If he escaped this world, with his armies he could conquer any world he wanted."

"Then you have to keep it away from him at any cost," Cailix said, stuffing the rod back into the leather cylinder. She turned it over in her hands a few times, studying it, then handed it to Urus. "Now come on. Let's go undo the blood sigil."

They navigated the deadly set of decaying stairs that led off the roof and into the empty husk of the building below. Urus poked his head out through a window and examined the street. It appeared to be empty, save for some fresh debris stirred up by the recent passing of Autar's army.

"Can you hear anything?" he asked Cailix.

"Just the sounds of battle coming from the southeast," she said after scanning the street. "Let's go."

She led him on a winding path toward the center of the island, sticking to alleys and the spaces between clusters of buildings to avoid the main avenues. The loneliness of the place disturbed him. There were no people, no signs of life, nothing. It felt as lifeless as the glass-covered desert where Kest had once been.

"Where are we going?" Urus asked.

Cailix pointed up at a tall spire that rose above all the other decaying buildings. Urus recalled seeing that spire the first time he had been on Findanar, when they had fallen for Autar's ruse and foolishly thought they were there to rescue him from the arbiters.

Grinding his teeth to suppress the memory and the anger that came with it, he followed Cailix across the slippery, snow-moistened streets. As he watched her lead the way, he was struck by a subtle change in the way she carried herself. She was certainly as grim and determined as before, but she seemed stronger—not just in her demeanor, but physically. She ran and leapt across the rubble of Findanar like a gazelle while Urus hobbled behind her, struggling to keep up.

They made it to the base of the spire, and Cailix circled it, searching for an entrance.

"I thought you knew how to stop the blood sigil," Urus said.

"That doesn't mean I know how to open the damn door," Cailix said. "Why don't you just use your magic to get us up there?"

"I'm light-headed and weak already," Urus said, suddenly feeling even more exhausted, as though talking about his fatigue made it worse. "And I don't know how much strength reversing the sigil is going to need."

They stealthily searched the stone wall, again finding nothing.

"Why would he leave this place unguarded?" Urus wondered aloud, running his hands over the stone, hoping to find some kind of recessed hinge or handle, anything that might open it.

Cailix tapped his shoulder and waited for him to focus on her lips before speaking. Urus already missed being able to sign with Luse. "I told you, conquering this city wasn't his end game. Using that metal stick to get to…Almo…Ulmer…"

"Almoryll," Urus corrected.

"Yeah, there," Cailix said. "You aren't the easiest person to understand. All Autar wants is the stick, and when he finds the bodies of the arbiters, he's going to come looking for it."

"They're all dead? Even their leader?"

"All dead," said Cailix.
 

The thought of Vogon being dead did offer Urus a little bit of relief. The chancellor had been just as dangerous and ignorant as the foolish old battlemaster who was probably still hiding in a cave under the glass desert.

It doesn't matter what world I'm on
, he thought.
People like them are everywhere.

Cailix took a few steps back to peer up the side of the tower. "Did you know this leader?"

"I did, and he got what he deserved."

"It's a shame you didn't get to kill him yourself," she said.

Urus thought about it for a moment, but he couldn't agree. He didn't like fighting and certainly didn't like killing. He wasn't like Cailix, or Goodwyn, or Choein or any of the others. He didn't want to kill people or get revenge. He just wanted to be done with it all, to walk away to a place where people didn't expect him to be something he wasn't and call him
my lord
.

"Yeah, a shame," he said, not wanting to argue with Cailix.

A further search of the tower's base revealed a sigil, a shallow symbol roughly scratched into the surface of the stone, probably done with a dagger or some other small blade. Urus recognized it immediately and pressed his palm to it.

The crude carving flared yellow and faded as a small section of the wall next to him vanished.

The foolishness of what he had just done hit him like a punch to the stomach.

"Stupid!" he shouted. "That was Autar's sigil. Now he knows we're here."

"Then we'd better finish this before he gets here," Cailix said. She charged into the darkness within the tower, onto an iron staircase that spiraled up along the outer wall of the spire.
 

Round and round they went, climbing until they were covered in sweat and panting, despite the cold air blasting against the outside of the wall. When this was all over, Urus was going to wrap his leg in ice and not walk for at least a month.

"Wait." Cailix held up her hand as they reached a spot that felt like it could have been halfway up the tower. "You asked me before if I could hear anything. I do now, and it sounds like stomping…lots and lots of stomping."

"Run!" Urus urged, practically pushing her up the staircase as they made for the top.

Well past the point of having no more energy, with every muscle in his body aching, Urus stumbled up out of the stairwell behind Cailix and collapsed onto an open platform at the top of the tower. On the other side of vaulted stone archways, facing the four cardinal directions, lay crumbling balconies and decrepit trellises that once may have held vibrant, brightly blooming flowers on vines. Now, nothing remained but the decay.

Cailix tugged on his shirt and half-ushered, half-dragged him over to one of the balconies, where she pointed to the street below. Exhausted, he just wanted to lie down and rest.

"They're coming," she said.
 

Urus watched as the living dead crawled out of windows, stepped out of doorways, and appeared from every possible nook and cranny on the island. From this height they looked like a swarm of fire ants, flooding the streets as they sought out their prey.

Urus hated fire ants, one of the many types of creatures of the desert he did not miss.

"Okay, we don't have much time. What do we do?" he asked.

"I don't know. When Anderis died, he just said, 'blood in the floor'"

"What do you mean, you don't know? I thought you said you knew how to stop the sigil!"

"Anderis was dying," Cailix snarled. "I didn't exactly have time to get him to write down step-by-step instructions!"

They both studied the floor. An exquisitely carved sigil filled the space. Perfectly chiseled channels marked the main sigil, but as Urus inspected it more closely he could see thousands of smaller sigils carved within the channel of the larger sigil. It was like nothing he had ever seen before, a masterpiece of artwork, but for the terror it had summoned from the grave.

Cailix knelt to inspect the sigil. She scraped something from the channel with her fingertip and touched it with her tongue. Her eyes then seemed to glaze over as she concentrated on something.

"So that's how they did it," she said.

"How?" Urus urged, trying not to think about the massive horde of undead creatures marching on their position.

"He said, 'blood in the floor.' The grooves in the floor were filled with blood. The blood of a blood mage, to be exact." She squinted and tasted another fleck of the dried blood from the channel, the sight of which made Urus nauseous. "Anderis's blood."

"So you have to bleed into the channel, and I activate the sigil?"

Cailix nodded and stood up. "Yes, but it won't be just a little bit of blood."

"How much?"

"Almost all of it." She pulled a knife from inside her sleeve.
 

"But—" Urus was about to protest when the tower shook violently. Pieces of stone and plaster peeled from the walls and dropped. Enormous, pounding vibrations rocked the tower in time with huge jets of water spraying up out of newly formed holes in the streets.

"They're sinking the island early!" Cailix shouted, struggling to remain standing.

Murin!
Urus called out with his mind.
Murin, the island is sinking too soon! We're still on it!

Urus ran to the balcony to gauge where the enemy horde might be, only to find most of the streets off in the distance to be abandoned. He looked down to see if the tower had cracked at all during the tremor. They were there.

Animated skeletons, scraps of flesh still clinging to their bones, surrounded the tower at the base. They clawed and scratched at the stone trying to climb it, but a few of the creatures were trying a new tactic—they were climbing on top of each other rather than attempting to scale the damp, slimy surface of the tower.

It won't be long before they all figure out what to do
, Urus thought.
They'll be upon us in minutes!

"They're scaling the wall!" he shouted, as he ran back into the room.

"We have to do this now," Cailix said.

"But you could die," Urus pleaded. "All that blood!"

"My blood has brought nothing but pain and misery to everyone around me," she said. "If I do this thing with my blood, the blood of a monster, and we stop that army, I'll die happy."

"Cailix, don't talk like that." Urus grabbed her by the shoulders. "There's got to be another way."

"Shut up, you stubborn oaf!" she yelled and pushed him away. "Those skeletons will be up here in minutes. If we don't do this we're dead anyway."

Cailix knelt in the center of the sigil and slashed upward across the inside of her thigh. Urus was stunned by the amount of blood that came gushing out. Every Kestian was taught from an early age where all the major arteries were and how to sever them, but actually seeing the femoral artery gush like a red waterfall was something else entirely.

"If you don't bandage me up after this, I will come back from the dead and kill you," Cailix said, her eyelids already heavy. Her head drooped to one side. Only Cailix could make a joke like that.
 

The blood quickly filled the channels of the sigil, a dark purple color as it ran beneath Cailix, gradually changing to a brighter red the further it flowed from the source.

Another tremor slammed the tower, this time knocking loose pillars and sending cracks running along the floor.

"Now, Urus, before the sigil breaks," Cailix called with the last of her strength. She slumped forward over her knees.