Haplo was growing better, but, suddenly, Alfred himself was gripped with pain. The poison entered his system, flowing from the Patryn to the Sartan, stabbing at his insides with knives of flame. Alfred gasped and moaned and doubled over, nausea twisting bowels and stomach, seeming likely to tear him apart.
An enemy who would turn around and slaughter him without compunction,
A horrifying suspicion came over Alfred. Haplo was killing him! The Patryn cared nothing about his own life, he would die and use this opportunity to take his enemy with him.
The suspicion vanished in an instant. Haplo’s hands, growing warmer and stronger, clasped the Sartan’s more tightly, giving what life and strength he had to give back to Alfred. The circle between the two was truly forged, truly complete.
And Alfred knew, with a feeling of overwhelming sadness, that Haplo would never forgive him.
“Stop! No! What are you doing?” Someone was yelling in panic.
Alfred came back to his surroundings, to their peril, with a jolt. Haplo sat upright and, although he was pale and shivering, he was breathing normally, his eyes were clear, their gaze fixed on Alfred with grim enmity.
Haplo broke the circle, jerking his hands from Alfred’s grip.
“Are ... are you all right?” Alfred asked, peering at Haplo anxiously.
“Leave me alone!” Haplo snarled. He attempted to stand, fell back.
Alfred stretched forth a solicitous hand, Haplo shoved him away roughly.
“I said leave me alone!”
Gritting his teeth, he leaned against the stone bed and pulled himself up off the floor. He was about to attempt to stand, when he glanced out the cell, over Alfred’s shoulder. The Patryn’s eyes narrowed, his body tensed.
Becoming aware of the panicked shouting behind him, Alfred swung around hastily. The preserver was yelling, but he was yelling at the duke, not at Alfred.
“You’re insane! You can’t do such a thing! It is against all the laws! Stop it, you fool!”
Jonathan was singing the runes working the magic on the body of his dead wife.
“You don’t know what you are doing!”
The preserver lunged at Jonathan, attempted to drag him away from the corpse. Alfred heard the preserver add something about a “lazar,” but the Sartan didn’t understand the incoherent shout.
Jonathan flung the preserver off him with a strength born of grief, despair, and madness. The man slammed into a wall, struck his head, and crumpled to the floor. The duke paid no attention to him, paid no attention to the sounds of pounding footsteps, far away, but drawing closer. Holding the still-warm body of his wife to his breast, Jonathan continued to sing the runes, tears running down his face.
“The guards are coming,” said Haplo, his voice sharp-edged, cutting. “You’ve probably saved my life just to get me killed again. I don’t suppose you gave any thought as to how we get out of here?”
Alfred looked involuntarily back down the way they’d come, realized the sound of the pounding boots emanated from precisely the same direction. “I. . . I—” he stammered.
Haplo snorted in derision, glanced grimly at the duke. “He’s too far gone to be of any help to us.” The Patryn stood up, somewhat shakily, nearly falling back on the stone bed. A furious look warned Alfred to keep his distance. Haplo regained his balance, staggered out of the cell, peered down the hallway that continued on into impenetrable darkness.
“Does it lead out of here? Or does it dead-end? If it comes to a dead end, then so do we. Or we could wander around in a maze forever. Still, it’s our—Well, hullo, boy! Where did you come from?”
The dog, seeming to materialize out of the darkness, leapt on its master with a joyous bark. Haplo bent down to fondle it. The dog wriggled and danced and nipped at his master’s ankles in a frenzy of affection.
The footsteps were nearer, but they had slowed and now Alfred could hear voices, indistinct but audible. From the fragments of conversation, it appeared that they were wary about entering the catacombs, facing the dread magic of the mysterious stranger.
Haplo patted the dog’s flanks, looked inquiringly at Alfred.
“I know what you’re going to ask me!” Alfred cried distractedly. The Sartan rose hastily, avoiding the Patryn’s gaze, and crossed the hall to where the preserver lay in a heap on the floor. He knelt beside the body of the comatose man. “And, no! I can’t remember the spell that I used to kill the dead. I’m trying but it’s impossible. It’s like my fainting. It’s something I can’t control!”
“Then what the hell are you doing wasting time?” Haplo demanded angrily. “We’ve got to get out of here! If we knew the way—”
“The runes!” Alfred remembered, stared at the wall of the catacomb, shining in the light. He pointed a shaking hand. “The runes!”
“Yeah? So?”
“They’ll lead us out! I—Wait!”
Alfred’s fingers traced the carvings on the wall, ran over the whorls and notches and intricate designs. Touching one, he spoke the rune. The sigil beneath his fingers began to glow with a soft, radiant blue light. A rune carved beside the one he touched caught the magical fire and began to glow. Soon, one after the other, a line of runes appeared out of the darkness, running down the length of the hallway and vanishing beyond their line of vision.
“Those’ll lead us out of here?”
“Yes,” said Alfred confidently. “That is . . .” He hesitated, wavering, recalling what he’d seen in the halls in levels above. His shoulders sagged. “If the sigla haven’t been destroyed or defaced . . .”
Haplo grunted. “Well, at least it’s a start.” The voices were louder. “Cmon. It sounds like they’re massing the whole damn army! You go on ahead. I’ll get the prince. Knowing Baltazar, I have a feeling we may run into trouble trying to reach the ship without His Highness along.”
The preserver was knocked unconscious, but he was alive. Alfred could leave him with a clear conscience. The Sartan hurried over to the duke’s side, bent down, not certain what he could do or say to persuade the grief-stricken man to flee for a life that he must now care little about.
Alfred started to speak, stopped, sucked in a breath.
Jonathan’s magic had worked. Jera’s eyes were open, staring about her. She looked up at her husband with the warm and shining eyes of the living. He reached out to her but at that moment, her visage wavered, dissolved, and she was staring at him with the cold, vacant gaze of the dead.
“Jonathan!” her living voice moaned in pain. “What have you done?”
And there came a chill echo, as if from the grave, moaning, “What have you done?”
Horror filled Alfred, numbed him. He shrank back, bumped into Haplo, and clutched at him thankfully.
“I thought I told you to go on ahead!” the Patryn snapped. He had one hand on the prince’s arm, the cadaver moving along quite docilly. “Leave the duke, if he won’t come. He’s no use to us. What the devil’s the matter with you now? I swear—”
Haplo’s eyes shifted, his voice trailed off. The Patryn’s jaw sagged.
Jonathan was on his feet, helping his wife to stand. The arrow was lodged in her breast, the front of her robes were stained with her life’s blood. That much of her image remained fixed and solid in their minds. But her face . . .
“Once, on Drevlin, I saw a woman who had drowned,” Alfred said softly, voice tinged with awe. “She was lying beneath the water and her eyes were open, the water stirred her hair. She looked alive! But I knew all the time that... she wasn’t.”
No, she wasn’t. He remembered the ceremony he’d witnessed in the cave, remembered the phantasms, standing behind the corpses, separate and apart from the body, divided.
“Jonathan?” the voice cried again and again. “What have you done?”
And the dreadful echo, “What have you done?”
Jera’s phantasm had not had time to free itself from the body. The woman was trapped between two worlds, the world of the dead and the world of the spirit. She had become a lazar.[14]
14
From the proper name, Lazarus. Originally, in ancient times, the word was used to refer to a person with a loathsome disease, such as leprosy, considered to be living death. In more modern times, following the Sundering, Sartan practicing the forbidden art of necromancy used the word to refer to those who were brought back from the dead too quickly.