Margaret Weis - Fire Sea

Kleitus howled in agony, clutched at her, trying to wrest the blade from her hand. She stabbed him again, and the dead guards joined her in the attack. The dynast fell, disappeared beneath flailing hands and stabbing swords and slashing spears.

Alfred’s arm was nearly yanked out of the socket. He tumbled headfirst into Haplo’s grasp. Alfred heard a pleading scream cut off in an agonized gurgle—the Lord High Chancellor.

The door ground shut. But everyone standing in the dark tunnel could hear the lazar, either through the walls or in their hearts.

“Now, dynast, I will show you true power. The world of Abarrach will belong to us, to the dead.”

And her echo, “... to the dead ...”

The lazar’s voice raised, chanting the runes of resurrection.

Alfred’s eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness inside the tunnel. The darkness wasn’t absolute, as he’d first feared when he emerged from the bright light of the chamber, but was red tinged, dimly lit by reflected light shining down a slick-walled corridor. From the light and from the heat, a magma pool was not far distant. Alfred turned to ask Haplo if he should activate the guide-runes, saw the Patryn slump to the floor.

Concerned, he hastened to Haplo’s side.

The dog stood over its master, teeth bared, a warning growl in its throat.

Alfred tried to reason with the animal. “I want to see if he’s injured. I can help—” He took another step, his hand outstretched.

The dog’s growl deepened, the eyes narrowed, ears flattened. We’ve shared some good times, the dog appeared to be advising Alfred. And I think you’re a fine fellow and I’d be sorry to see you come to harm. But that hand comes any closer and you’ll find my teeth in it.

Alfred withdrew the hand hastily, retreated a step.

The dog watched him warily.

Peering over the dog’s shoulder at Haplo, Alfred studied the man and decided that, after all, he wasn’t injured. He had fallen sound asleep—either the height of bravery or the height of folly, Alfred couldn’t decide which.

Perhaps, however, it was really only common sense. He seemed to recall something to the effect that Patryns had the ability to heal themselves in their sleep. Now that he thought of it, Alfred himself bone weary. He could have kept moving, the sheer horror of he’d witnessed in that chamber would have propelled him on until he dropped. As it was, it was probably better that he rest, conserve his strength for whatever lay ahead. He glanced nervously and fearfully, at the sealed door.

“Do ... do you suppose we’re safe here?” he asked aloud, not quite certain to whom he was addressing the question.

“Safer here than anywhere else in this doomed city,” answered Prince Edmund.

The cadaver seemed more alive than the living. The phantasm had once more departed from the body, but the two appeared to act in conjunction. This time, however, it was as if the corpse were the shadow.

“What’s wrong with him?” Alfred’s pitying gaze encompassed Jonathan. The duke, lost in a rapt vision, had been led like a child from the chamber by the prince, the cadaver’s cold hand grasping the duke’s that was not much warmer. “Is he ... insane?”

“He saw what you saw. Unlike you, he continues to see.”

Witness to that tragic, ancient slaughter, Jonathan was apparently oblivious to the current terror surrounding him. At the cadaver’s gentle urging, he sat down on the stone floor. His eyes stared back into the past. Occasionally he cried out or made motions with his hands as though endeavoring to help someone he could not see.

Prince Edmund’s phantasm was clearly visible in the darkness, a reverse shadow, a shining whiteblue outline of a corpse shrouded in darkness. “We will be safe,” he repeated. “The dead have more urgent business to do than chase after us.”

Alfred shuddered at the grim, solemn tone. “Business? What do you mean?”

The phantasm turned glittering eyes back toward the door. “You heard her. ‘We will have our freedom only when the tyrants are dead.’ She means the living. All the living.”

“They’re going to kill—” Alfred was appalled. His mind recoiled from the supposition. He shook his head. “No, it’s impossible!” But he recalled the lazar’s words, recalled the expression on the face that was sometimes dead, sometimes horribly alive.

“We should warn the people,” he mumbled, although the thought of forcing his weak and weary body to continue on was enough to make him weep. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was.

“Too late,” said the phantasm. “The slaughter has begun and will continue, now that Kleitus has joined the ranks of the lazar. As Jera told him, he will discover true power—power that can be his eternally. The living are his only threat, and he will take care to see to it that such a threat does not long survive.”

“But what can the living do against him?” Alfred demanded, shuddering at the horrible memory. “He’s ... he’s dead!”

“Yet you cast a spell that caused the dead to die,” said Prince Edmund. “And if you could do it, then so could another. Kleitus cannot take the chance. And even if it were not so, the lazar would kill out of hatred. Kleitus and Jera both understand now what the living have done to the dead.”

“But not you,” said Alfred, staring at the phantasm, puzzled. “You said you understand. And yet I sense in you only deep regret, not hatred.”

“You were there. You saw.”

“I saw, but I don’t understand! Will you explain it to me?”

The phantasm’s eyes were suddenly hooded, invisible lids closing. “My words are for the dead, not the living. Only those who seek shall find.”

“But I’m seeking!” Alfred protested. “I truly want to know, to understand!”

“If you did, you would,” said the prince.

Jonathan gave a fearful cry, clutched his chest and pitched forward, writhing in pain. Alfred hastened to the man’s side.

“What happened to him?” he gasped, looking over his shoulder. “Are we being attacked?”

“It is not a weapon of our time that has hit him,” said the phantasm, “but a weapon of the past. He is still in the vision of what has been. You had better wake him, if you can.”

Alfred turned Jonathan over, saw the pinched, blue lips, the bulging eyes, felt the clammy skin, the thudding heartbeat. The duke was so completely wrapped in the spell that he might very well die of shock. Yet to waken him might be worse. Alfred glanced at the slumbering Haplo, saw the wan face peaceful, lines of sickness and suffering smoothed out.

Sleep. Or, as the ancients had termed it, “little death.”

Alfred held the duke in his arms, soothed the young man/ murmured comforting words and interspersed them with a singsong chant. Jonathan’s stiffened limbs relaxed, the pain-twisted features eased. He drew a deep, shivering breath. His eyes closed. Alfred held Jonathan a moment longer, to make certain he was truly asleep, then eased him down onto the stone floor.

“Poor man,” said Alfred softly. “He will have to live with the knowledge that he brought this terrible evil on his people.”

Prince Edmund shook his head. “What he did, he did for love. Evil has come out of it, but—if he is strong—good will prevail.”

Such a sentiment might read well in a child’s bedtime story, but in this fire-lighted tunnel, with unspeakable horrors raging in the city above . . .

Alfred slumped back against the wall, sank down to the floor.

“What about your people?” he asked, suddenly remembering the Kairn Telest. “Aren’t they in danger? Shouldn’t you be doing something to warn them, help them?”