Death Mage (Prof Croft Book 4) Page 5

  The energy from the sword erupted against the landing and launched me up. As the cold air rushed past my ears, I saw that I was short. Afraid of overshooting the wall, I’d gone too soft. At the height of my parabola, I stretched out an arm and managed to catch the lip of the rampart. My body banged against the wall, but I held on, working my fingers into a slimy groove in the stonework. I threw my sword arm over and heaved myself the rest of the way onto the rampart. As I fell, I broke through the second ward in another searing wave.

  I bit back a grunt and lay panting. I was alone on the walkway and, by all appearances, still hidden. Above me, the columned palace teetered into the night sky. I stood and looked down. Far below, a courtyard led onto a lower level of the palace. But the hunting spell was tugging me in the direction of a guard tower farther along the rampart.

  I entered the square tower through a low archway and descended a spiral staircase. Though torches burned in brackets in the wall, the shut-in air carried a stench of rot. After one flight, I left the stairs and crept down a covered walkway. It soon opened onto a large columned room, the hunting spell tugging me toward a doorway on its far side. Halfway across the room, I stopped cold.

  I knew this place.

  The large column to my right was black at its base, but not from mold. I knelt down to examine it more closely. The cracks in the floor that radiated from the column held bits of gray ash.

  This is it, I thought in numb certainty. The site of my mother’s execution.

  I rested my head against the column’s cold stone. Despite having experienced my mother’s death in Lady Bastet’s scrying globe, despite the event having been confirmed by Chicory, being here, now, in the same spot, made it real in a way those experiences hadn’t. My heart broke as I remembered the way her cracked lips had shaped her final words.

  I love you, Everson.

  “I’m here to finish what you started,” I whispered, blinking back tears.

  A gargling voice made me turn. A pair of black-robed figures were entering through the far doorway. I rose slowly and, tamping down the hunting spell, gripped my sword and staff.

  Were you among them? I asked silently of the two. Among the ones who called my mother a traitor? Who hurt her? Who stood here and watched her execution?

  Anger tightened my grip until it hurt.

  The book, a more rational part of my mind whispered urgently. You’re here to find and destroy the book. Do anything that raises an alarm, and you can kiss the mission goodbye.

  That seemed to work. Forcing down my anger, I moved behind the column as the robed figures came closer, continuing their gargling exchange. I was preparing to let them pass when, deep inside their hoods, torchlight glistened over large, inhuman eyes. Fish’s eyes.

  Revulsion turned to fresh rage.

  You were there, I decided, lips trembling. Both of you. And you watched her burn.

  With an anguished cry, I swung my blade at the nearer figure’s head.

  7

  The blade flashed, ripped through fabric and flesh, and came out the other side on a gout of dark fluid. Something wet thudded to the stone floor and rolled over. I glanced down to find large, vacant eyes staring up at me from a scaly face covered in the same fungi I’d seen on the wargs.

  The creature’s companion let out a sputtering shriek and jumped back. Before it could get a fix on me, I drove the sword into its gut. The blade seemed to break through an exoskeleton. I lifted the hilt with both hands. The creature gargled, the hood falling back from its face. A pair of vile fish’s eyes searched around in vain before seeming to settle on me.

  “I can play judge and jury too,” I grunted.

  The blade broke through the creature’s breastplate and cleaved its heart. I yanked the blade back, depositing the creature beside its headless companion. I then stared down at the two of them for several moments, panting in the horror and exhilaration of what I’d just done.

  I dragged their bodies into a dark corner of the room and dusted the main floor with dragon sand. A whispered “fuoco” ignited the sand, evaporating the trails of fluid and hiding evidence of the slaughter. No other creatures had come to investigate, suggesting no alarms had been raised.

  Need to keep my anger in check from now on, though, I thought as I cleaned my blade on the side of my pants. It had been the dual shock of standing in the same spot where my mother had been slain and then suddenly seeing the creatures who had participated in the act. Still, I didn’t know how these things communicated with one another. If it was through the fungal growth that seemed to coat everyone and everything, word of the attack could reach others.

  I restored the hunting spell. As it pulled me toward the far doorway, I wondered about the two I’d just slain. I had thought the Front was a splinter group of magic-users, of humans. But those fish eyes… Was that what decades of worshiping the Whisperer had done? Devolved them?

  The hunting spell led me down a corridor and up several flights of stairs. More robed figures appeared, their cadence telling me news of their murdered companions had not reached them. I eased into shadows until they passed and their gargling voices receded away.

  In another flight, my cane jerked me from the stairwell and into a small courtyard on the top level of the palace. Cold wind blew around me. From a building opposite me, low chanting sounded. I stiffened as one voice climbed above the others. The forceful yanks of my cane notwithstanding, I knew the voice belonged to Marlow. The Death Mage.

  My heart surged into a full sprint as I canceled the hunting spell, pulled my cane into sword and staff, and crept across the courtyard. The building was tall and narrow, moldy columns bracketing a doorway through which greenish firelight glowed. I edged along a shadow beside the doorway and peered inside, the robe of John the Baptist concealing me.

  The altar-like room featured a rectangular pool of water at its center. Statues of what looked like gods and goddesses—the original saints, most likely—rose along the perimeter of the room to act as pillars. But the statues, along with the rest of the room, were covered in a gunk that dangled in thick ropes and dripped over the twenty or so robed figures chanting around the pool below.

  My gaze followed the pool to the far end where a tall figure presided over the chanting, one arm raised. The green flames that rose from the pyres on either side of him glistened from a gold mask inside his hood. My stomach clenched into a nauseous fist.

  It’s him.

  I picked up the chanting as I watched him. The words were nonsensical, but they evoked visceral sensations of death and decay. At the end of the verse, something stirred inside the pool’s foul waters. Another elemental? I could just make out a viscous web-work of black energy that seemed to unite the chanters to whatever lurked below the waters.

  The Whisperer, I realized. This is the ritual that opens the portal. It was work Lich had begun centuries before and that Marlow had resumed upon finding his book. The larger the portal, the more powerful Marlow and the Front would become, and the more likely they would be to defeat the Order.

  Ultimately, the Whisperer itself would emerge.

  My eyes fell back to the pool in time to see a tentacle lash up before disappearing into the depths again. Beyond the pool, Marlow dropped his hand momentarily before raising it and resuming the chant.

  A charge shot through me. A book. He just turned the page of a book. I eased forward, squinting. Yes, it was hard to see, but it was there, his black robe almost camouflaging the tome he palmed at his chest, tendrils of dark magic twisting from its pages.

  Okay, I thought, deep breaths.

  I slid my staff into my belt and reached into a pocket until I encountered a vial. A light shake told me it was the dragon sand. With a trembling hand, I loosened the cap. I doubted Marlow kept the book on him twenty four-seven. I could hold out for a more opportune moment, but with a pair of corpses downstairs waiting to be discovered, the risk felt too great.

  I had to strike now.

  I gauged the distan
ce to the book and aimed my sword at it. The tip of the blade wavered as I drew a breath.

  “Vigore!” I shouted, drawing the sword sharply back.

  The force invocation hooked the book and yanked it from Marlow’s grasp. The book shot across the room, over the pool, between the chanters, and into the doorway, where it smacked into my raised hand like a fastball into a catcher’s mitt. I ducked around the side of the doorway, already bringing the book down and flipping through the leather-bound tome.

  “Someone’s taken the codex,” Marlow shouted. “Stop him!”

  The chanting broke into a confusion of shouts, and I could hear more splashing from the pool.

  This is the book. This is it!

  Heart slamming, I dropped the book at my feet and pierced it with the blade. The magic swirling around it fractured and broke apart. The plan was actually working! Emptying the vial of dragon sand over the defenseless tome, I leaped back and shouted, “Fuoco!”

  An explosion of flames burst from the book and gushed into the altar doorway. Voices and shrieks sounded from beyond. The pages of the incinerated tome floated up and disintegrated into ash.

  Chicory! I called through our link as I backed away. It’s done! The book’s destroyed!

  I chucked away the empty vial of dragon sand and drew the staff from my belt. I raised it just as a black bolt of energy shot past the flames. The enhanced staff drew the bolt inside, where the energy swirled. With shouts, two of the chanters broke through the flames.

  “Rifleterre,” I commanded, aiming the staff at them in turn.

  The energy absorbed by the staff discharged twice, nailing the chanters and knocking them to the ground.

  Did you catch that Chicory? I called again. I’m ready to come home!

  More figures shifted beyond the flames. I jammed a hand into a pocket holding several lightning grenades and pulled two of them out. “Attivare!” I shouted, throwing them into the doorway. Lightning ripped from the heavens and slammed through beam and stone, collapsing the entranceway.

  Ears ringing, I wheeled and sprinted across the courtyard toward the stairwell I’d arrived by. I was nearly there when a battalion of the fish-headed creatures came swarming up. Gargling at one another, they fanned around me, rapiers in hand. I enclosed myself in a crackling shield as the first wave moved in. Blades slashing, they set upon the shield.

  “Respingere!” I called.

  A potent white pulse detonated from the shield, sending the attackers tumbling over the courtyard and each other. Before they could fully recover, I hacked a path through them to the stairwell and descended, throwing a shield over the opening behind me to deny their pursuit.

  Chicory? I tried again. Now would be a really good time.

  I was beginning to worry that the link wasn’t working, that he couldn’t hear me, when the place on my forehead where he’d mashed his thumb began to tingle. The sensation spread over my body. Any moment I expected to find myself back in the basement. But as quickly as the sensation came, it began to fade. Chicory’s voice echoed through my thoughts.

  Go back to the place where you arrived.

  The forest? I asked, still racing down the stairs. Why not here?

  The barrier is thinner there.

  But I destroyed the book—there shouldn’t be a barrier!

  His voice broke in and out, but I caught something about the dissolution process taking time. The tingling sensation disappeared from my forehead. A pressure remained behind my eyes and deep in my ears, but those had persisted since he’d first stamped me.

  Chicory? I tried again.

  No answer.

  Great, so I was going to be escaping the palace and re-crossing the plain of wargs with the place on full alert. I grunted out a curse. The hunting spell had shown me the shortest route in; retracing my steps seemed the surest bet for getting back out. If I could remember the way.

  I emerged from the staircase, raced down a corridor, and found myself in the pillared room where my mother had been executed and I had slain the two creatures. It still smelled of burned blood.

  I was halfway across the room when a robed figure filled the doorway ahead of me. “Stop,” he commanded. Recognizing his voice, I skidded to a halt, heart pounding in my ears. A gold mask glistened from his hood as he strode forward and drew his wand. Marlow had escaped the altar room, evidently, but how in the hell had he beaten me down here?

  The mask turned from one side to the other, searching for me.

  “Vigore!” I shouted, thrusting my sword toward him.

  A storm of energy burst from the blade. The Death Mage sliced his wand through the air, and the force broke to either side of him, shaking the walls. I dug in my pocket for the remaining lightning grenade as he continued his confident advance.

  Let’s see how you like a face full of electricity, pal.

  “Attivare!” I called and winged it at him.

  “Ghioccio,” he answered, slicing his wand again. The magical grenade thudded to the ground at his feet, encased in a snowball.

  I summoned a shield around me and began to search for another long-range weapon when I remembered that with the absorbing properties of the staff, the Death Mage couldn’t hurt me. Conversely, with the magic cleaving properties of the sword, I could hurt him. Badly.

  Still, Chicory’s warnings about Whisperer magic stole through my thoughts. I couldn’t just run at him headlong. I eased beside the charred pillar and adjusted my sweaty grip on the sword.

  “Show yourself,” Marlow demanded, coming nearer. “Who are you?” Though the mage could sense me, the robe was still cloaking my identity. His footsteps came closer and closer until they were almost beside me.

  Someone who thinks you’re a lowlife piece of shit, I thought, and stepped out. The sword glinted as I put everything into my swing. The blade disappeared into the neck of his gown and came out the other side. Only there had been no resistance. And the mage was still standing.

  What the…?

  “Ah!” he called triumphantly.

  In a blink, he was several feet from where he’d been standing, black energy curling around the end of his wand. An illusionist? He snapped the wand toward me. The bolt slammed into my shield, knocking me backward. I recovered my footing and thrust the sword at his torso. Once more, the blade disappeared into his gown as though it were thin air.

  Marlow was suddenly on my other side, fresh black bolts cracking from his wand. They slammed into my shield one after the other, the second bolt lifting me from my feet. I landed against a pillar with a grunt, sword and staff falling from my grasp. The shield shattered into sparks around me.

  No, I thought, pawing for my weapons.

  The skirt of the mage’s black gown swished toward me. He spoke a Word. Vines broke through my mother’s ashes in the floor cracks and climbed around me, binding me to the pillar. Before the cinching tendrils could crush the air from my lungs, I drew in a breath.

  “Resping—”

  A vine wrapped my neck, choking off the Word. The Death Mage stopped in front of me. I raised my eyes to that awful gold mask with the empty eyes and the mouth set in a frown. The mage was holding his wand at shoulder level, ready to cast again. I struggled, but the vines were like steel cables, growing thicker. I knew how this would end. Any second, flames were going to burst around me. In my peripheral vision, I could see other black-robed figures drifting into the room to witness my execution.

  At least I destroyed your damned book, I thought. And when the Order gets their hands on you…

  But the Death Mage seemed to hesitate, head tilted to one side.

  The vines had torn the robe of John the Baptist apart, and I was visible to him now. He turned and said something to the others, his voice taking on the gargling quality from earlier. A pair of mages came forward, one lifting my sword from the ground, the other my staff.

  Marlow turned back to me. “Everson Cro—”

  A bright fireball exploded against his side, blasting him a
cross the room. The other mages let out choking sounds as their robes began to strangle them. I cut my eyes toward the sound of footsteps. My mentor was running toward me, corduroy jacket flapping at his back.

  Chicory!

  “I decided it would be easier to just come myself,” he said in a pant. “And with the book destroyed…” He waved his wand, and the vines around me withered. I broke my arms free from the pillar and tore the tendril from around my neck. I then began to kick my legs free.

  Meanwhile, Marlow had recovered and gained his feet. Chicory turned and hurled another fireball at him. Marlow repelled it with a slice of his wand, but a third Chicory fireball knocked him back with a grunt, flames flashing off his gold mask. Marlow’s magic might have been powerful, but it was fading, and Chicory was throwing haymakers.

  I struggled to break the last of the vines from my legs so I could help him.

  Marlow incanted quickly. Tendrils of dark magic writhed from his wand like tentacles and sprung out to encircle Chicory. The energy swallowed him, blacking out his light. Panic rose in my throat. But in a blinding flash of magic, Chicory blew the tentacles apart.

  He and Marlow circled one another, wands raised.

  “You won’t defeat us,” Marlow said.

  “You’ve already lost,” Chicory replied matter-of-factly.

  Light and dark magic exploded from their wands in a savage exchange. The other magic-users were still struggling against their throttling robes. I spotted the one who had taken my sword. White hair spilled down either side of a moldy face. A woman? The sword had fallen beside her. As I scrambled toward it, the woman’s robe released her neck, and she drew a ragged breath. Marlow must have broken the strangulation spell. I lunged for the sword, but the woman grabbed the handle first.

  Crap.

  She shouted something in her gargling tongue as she swung the blade toward me. I jumped away, but too slowly. A force blast numbed my right side and knocked me the length of the room. I landed on my back and skidded across the floor several more feet. When I came to a stop, I lifted my head. The woman was rushing Chicory from behind.