Mikulov shook his head. His entire body seemed to be humming at a pitch just high enough to be beyond normal human perception. Cain could feel it like a struck piece of metal, and he was reminded of the evening he and Akarat had found the ruins in the Borderlands. It seemed so long ago.
“There is bad energy in the wind tonight,” Mikulov said, staring out into the blackness beyond the cave entrance. “The gods are in hiding. There is great evil in that tower on the shore, and I fear it has found us.”
“The Dark One, Garreth Rau.”
He turned to Cain, his eyes shining in the faint light from the cavern. “I had a vision, just now, of his watching us. His anger was like the strongest sun, burning everything it touched to ash. I have never felt anything like it. I fear that he has already begun the rituals that will bring the undead army to march upon Caldeum.”
“Then we have very little time left.”
Mikulov nodded. “I, too, have been questioning our path here. I expected something different as well. But we cannot afford to stop now. The gods have led us here for a reason. We must remain strong, my friend. A great battle is coming, and any weakness we have will be used against us.”
Cain sighed. The weight of the entire world was on his shoulders, pressing down until he wanted to scream out for relief. It was a burden too heavy for one man to carry. “What would you have us do, Mikulov?”
“Get some sleep.” Mikulov smiled, but his face was haggard and drawn. Cain realized that he had gotten used to the monk’s constant serenity and balanced energy, and now that they seemed absent, it was all the more shocking to behold. “We need to heal our minds and bodies. Things will seem better in the morning. They always do. Then we will go to work. What choice do we have? Leave now, in the dead of night? Abandon all that we have come to believe? What we know to be true?”
Cain nodded. Mikulov was right, of course. But Cain got the sense the monk was holding something else back, something that might shake him to the core, if he were to hear it.
There was something important he was missing. Egil had described Garreth Rau’s descent into darkness. His power had grown with every ritual and every demonic spell. Eventually even his physical body had begun to change; he had become a mutated, monstrous shell of his former self. But he had mastered the dark arts with such precision, it seemed as if he could do anything.
Yet he had let his brethren escape. A man who wielded power such as this should have had no problem finding a small, fractured group like these men and laying waste to them. Why had he left them alone? Was there still a shred of humanity left inside that remembered what they had meant to him, something that held him back?
Or was there some other, much darker reason?
“Excuse me?”
Cain turned to find Egil standing behind them, hands clasped at his waist. Over his shoulder was a burlap sack. The young man’s pale face was like a moon in the darkness. “I fear we have disappointed you,” he said. “Some of the others have lost faith, like Farris. They feel that our attempt at reforming the Horadrim is a fool’s game, and that the order died away for good years ago. Many no longer believe in angels or the High Heavens. They say that if Heaven exists, why wouldn’t it act against the evil that is gathering here? But there are those of us who do believe, and have been waiting for someone like you to show us the way to salvation.”
Egil paused, as if hesitant to speak again. “I have heard stories,” he said finally. “My uncle lived near Tristram, for a time, before settling in Gea Kul. He told our family everything he had heard about the demon invasion there. He even claimed to have seen demons himself. And he told us about you. Now . . .” Egil shook his head, “he is gone, taken by Garreth and his feeders. My father and mother survive, but they no longer recognize me. They are victims too.” His eyes met Cain’s and held them. “Those stories about your wise counsel during the dark days of Tristram are what inspired me to study the Horadrim myself. I know you can help us. We are . . . fractured, and in need of a leader. But we are eager to learn. If you join us, the others will come to believe it too.
“I promise you, we will not let you down.”
Deckard Cain stared out at the night, listening to the creak of wood, the faint sound of insects buzzing. His hearing seemed preternaturally acute—the ears of a deer as it lifts its head from feeding at the approach of a wolf, he thought, a half smile crossing his face. I am an old man, but I am not dead yet. The wind seemed to whisper back promises of violence: of cold, dead things reaching up from watery ground, and he knew that Garreth Rau was out there somewhere, standing just as he was, staring into the night sky. He shivered.
Egil’s face was upturned toward him, waiting expectantly. Then the young man took the sack off his shoulder and dug inside, withdrawing something that made Cain suck in his breath with astonishment and wonder.
“We found this among the ruins of a monastery in Khanduras,” Egil said. “We were never quite sure how to use it. But I suspect you could teach us.”
Cain took the object in both hands, turned it over, admiring the workmanship. It had been a long time since he had seen one. It was a bit larger than a man’s skull, and heavier than he remembered, the intricate carved wood seeming to tingle against his skin.
The Horadric Cube.
“You have a powerful tool here,” Cain said. “Its magic is remarkable. You must use it wisely.” But when he tried to give it back, Egil shook his head.
“Please, take it,” he said. “Teach us what you know. Read the texts we were able to save from our library. They told us of your coming, and they may have more information that would help.”
Cain’s mother’s voice came back to him through all these years: The scrolls say that someday the Horadrim will rise up again when all seems lost, and a new hero will lead them in battle to save Sanctuary . . .
And her voice again, this time as a warning: Be careful what you wish for, Deckard.
Cain tucked the cube carefully into his rucksack. “We have much more to discuss before we sleep,” he said. “I want to know everything you can possibly remember about your time in Gea Kul, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant. There may be something important we can use.”
Then he took Egil’s arm, and Mikulov stepped up on his other side, and the three of them went back into the caves, where the others waited for them.
27
Lund’s Bow
She stood on a platform that soared high above the clouds. The platform was so small she could not sit down, and its edges were crumbling away, and lightning flashed all around her, lighting up the sky with jagged cracks of purple and white. She trembled, terrified, afraid to move, afraid to even breathe. In moments she would slip and tumble end over end into the abyss.
Voices came to her through the crashing storm, a crazy old beggar and a pig-eyed bully: “The sky will turn black, the streets fill with blood . . . where’s your crazy mother? Servicing the men at the tavern? . . . we should toss you in the fountain, wash off the stink . . .”
The sound of flapping joined the voices, and she looked all around but could not see the birds until she faced the front again and a crow at least twice her size was hovering just before her, fanning its wings, its huge, sharp beak snapping forward and nearly grazing her skin, its beady eyes fixated on her own.
She screamed as the crow began to change, its feathers melting into Gillian with crow’s talons for hands, a knife buried hilt-deep in her chest; then that changed to a hood hanging over features shrouded in shadows, the talons rippling into long, bony fingers, a hunched, robed figure hovering just out of reach. It was the dark man. YOU ARE MINE, his voice thundered in her head, and one arm extended toward her as lightning cracked once again and thousands of horrible, skinless beasts gathered behind him. She felt herself being ripped open and laid bare, something pulled out of her like a ribbon unwinding from her stomach, and as she looked down, she screamed again because the ribbon was her own blood, coiling in the wind like a long, red snake and lit with blue fire.