The voice that came down from the Black Tower was thunderous inside his head, like the rumble of boulders across a mountain. It cried out in rage at his presence, a challenge to battle, an inarticulate scream that promised to shatter his skull.
Deckard Cain ducked into the building and closed the door carefully behind him, cutting off the scream abruptly, and turned to face whatever might be waiting for him.
A set of stone steps led down into gloom. Somewhere a candle flickered, lending a faint amount of light to the landing below. Someone was here.
A grating noise floated up to him. Cain heard nothing more, and he descended slowly and carefully through the dark.
At the bottom of the stairs was a simple room with a wooden desk and open doors on either side, enough light from the door on the right bleeding through for him to see. The desk was empty, but a tapestry on the wall behind it bore the Horadric symbol.
It had been slashed nearly in half by a sharp blade.
A waking dream came to him, of black-clad soldiers laying waste to this place, hacking with their heavy swords and overturning tables, putting torches to dry pages of books, and these men turned into huge, hopping crows, their beaks like black daggers. Cain touched the tapestry, felt the marks beneath it, gouged into stone; it had not been slashed by a blade, after all. There were three equal tears, as if some giant creature had raked it with razor-sharp talons.
What else would he find down here? Would it lead to salvation, or to his destruction?
He slipped quietly through the right-hand doorway into a large library. The remains of a candle flickered on a table, guttering in a pool of melted wax; it had burned nearly to the bottom. Simple wooden shelves lined all four walls, most of them full of books; of these, some looked familiar, while others he had never seen before. The collection was remarkable.
On the table was an open book. It looked similar to the one he had found in the ruins.
Cain smelled something foul, like rotten meat. Another room loomed through an archway beyond this one, pitch-black inside. He heard movement, and a low, guttural snarl, accompanied by the sound of something scraping against rock. Feeling exposed in the candlelight, he flattened himself against the wall and moved as quietly as a ghost to a corner between two bookcases.
The thing that emerged from the archway was so huge and incomprehensible that at first Cain had trouble processing the sight of it. It appeared to be made of human limbs and torsos all rolled together, along with a forest of jutting spikes of what looked like rock and shards of wood. Two long arms ended in clubs rather than hands and sprouted the same shards of wood or stone. At least three separate heads emerged from putrid, swollen flesh, white-filmed eyes rolling in their sockets.
The monstrosity moved slowly and laboriously, ducked to clear the arch, more than ten feet off the floor. Its dripping shoulders nearly touched both sides of the opening as it leaned into the library, grunting with the effort. It seemed to have one main head in the center of its chest, and as it swung in Cain’s direction, those eyes fixed on his face.
The creature paused, as if studying him. Then it opened its mouth and roared, the putrid stench of its breath washing over Cain as the mouths of the other heads screeched in unison.
The candle flickered and nearly went out. Fresh panic rose up in Cain as the creature took a lumbering step toward him and threatened to knock over the table, sending them into darkness. He slipped out from his hiding place and went for the door, but the monster moved with him and reached out its long, clubbed limb as if to smash him into the floor.
Cain had no time to react other than to swerve and duck, and the monster roared again. The candle went out. Suddenly he could see nothing, and sounds seemed to cascade at him from all sides. Feeling dizzy in the pitch-black room, Cain stumbled against the edge of the table. He heard the thing coming, blind now as well, and the table was shoved hard against him, throwing him backward into the bookcase.
The room flared to life again as a brilliant, white-hot light blossomed in its center. Cain blinked against it and saw a robed, hooded figure in the second doorway from the front room. The figure threw a second burst of flame at the creature’s feet, sending it back as it waved its arms and screeched in rage.
Cain pushed the table aside as the stranger beckoned to him to follow. They ran past the desk and tapestry and stairs, through the door on the other side as the thing in the library howled again and lumbered after them, crashing into the table and walls, shaking the floor as it smashed its way out.
They were in a long hallway made of stone with a blank wall at the end. The man went straight to it and pressed a hidden lever, and a stone panel slid aside, revealing a new set of stairs descending into the earth. He threw another ball of light that revealed a narrower passage extending beyond the bottom step. This section seemed much older than the library, the walls cracked and covered in moss. The stranger headed down.
Cain hesitated at the top. He knew nothing more about this new arrival than he did about the thing chasing them; for all he knew, he was the Dark One himself. There could be even greater danger below. But another bellow from the creature broke his paralysis, and he took the steps as quickly as he dared, being careful of the slippery moss.
The man pressed another hidden spot in the wall, and the door at the top slid closed again with a rumble of grating stone. The noise of the creature above them was cut off abruptly. He took a torch from the wall and dipped its top in the spitting ball of light on the floor. Slender fingers rose up to slip the hood away to reveal a young man’s face, as pure and white as fresh snow.
“My name is Egil,” the man said. “I mean you no harm. I am a member of the First Ones—the Horadrim. Please, follow me.”
25
The Camp
Cain followed the man through the dripping, moss-covered tunnel, his mind filled with endless questions: how had Egil found him? How many Horadrim were left? Did they know about the impending demon invasion of Sanctuary?
Other, darker thoughts pushed their way in as well. He wondered what had happened to their leader, Garreth Rau. Could this strange young man be trusted? And if something happened to Cain, who would take care of Leah?
But Egil seemed to be in too much of a hurry to speak. Cain struggled to keep up, following the dipping, flickering torchlight as he rushed forward. Cain tried to get closer, finally catching the sleeve of Egil’s tunic, making him stop and turn. The man’s face was curiously calm and patient.
“What was that thing in the library?” Cain said.
“We call them the unburied, but nobody is sure exactly how or why they have come,” Egil said. “They seem to be created from the bodies of the dead, along with other pieces of the landscape around them, as if someone rolled them all together and lit a spark of life. There is powerful black magic awake in Sanctuary. Perhaps this is a result.”
“And what were you doing there?”
“It was our former meeting place, before . . . we left Gea Kul. I was trying to recover some of the texts. Now, I am afraid they may be ruined.” Egil sighed, the first sign of any emotion he had shown. “It is a terrible loss. But it wasn’t the only reason I was there.”
Egil explained that the prophecies had foretold Cain’s arrival on this very day and the brothers had been eagerly awaiting it for months. The order was in a transition, he said, and new leadership was needed. Many of them hoped that Cain would provide crucial information to them about the changes in Sanctuary since the destruction of the Worldstone.
“This transition,” Cain said. “Is it because of Garreth Rau?”
If Egil was surprised, he did not show it. “It is complicated,” he said. “We will tell you everything, I promise, as soon as we return to camp. But now we must go. This tunnel is part of a large network, built under Gea Kul many years ago, and no one knows how far it runs or its purpose. But the unburied most certainly came from here. There may be other creatures within these tunnels, or beneath them. It is very dangerous.”