“Has anyone heard of this man, Al Cut? Either living or, more likely, long dead? Someone important from history—a mage, perhaps?”
The men who had gathered around him (Egil, Cullen, Mikulov, and another one called Thomas) remained silent. They were looking for some clue that would help them plan their attack on the Dark One’s stronghold.
Cain dug into his rucksack and took out the book of Horadric prophecies that he had found in the Vizjerei ruins, the one that appeared to have been written by Tal Rasha himself. “The passage is here,” he said. He read it aloud: “And the High Heavens shall rain down upon Sanctuary as a false leader arises from the ashes . . . the tomb of Al Cut will be revealed, and the dead shall lay waste to mankind . . .”
“May I see it?” Egil asked. When he looked it over in his hands, recognition dawned in his eyes. “Is it possible?” he said softly. “It can’t be . . . these ruins in the Borderlands. Was there a library below a collapsed temple, and a foul demon that guarded its contents?”
“How did you know that?”
“We were there, several months ago,” Egil said excitedly, his voice rising. “In those ruins. We were chased out by a foul demon that possessed one of our order. Garreth pushed it back long enough for us to escape, but we were forced to leave some of our possessions behind. A pack with our food, and this text, as well as a book of ancient Vizjerei spells we had found there. Demonic magic.”
Cain held up the book of Horadric prophecies. “You brought this text with you to the very same ruins where I found it?”
Egil nodded. “Garreth said we would need it on our journey, and we never questioned him about things like that. He was always right. But this time . . .” He shrugged. “The demon was not the only threat. There were sand wasps and dune threshers. We barely escaped with our lives.”
A chill ran down Cain’s spine. He and Akarat had followed Rau’s First Ones into the Vizjerei ruins; it was their footprints he had seen in the dust, and their belongings he had found behind the temple. It seemed almost too much of a coincidence to be possible.
Cain skimmed through the text again, most of it already familiar to him. It was full of very old writings that seemed to predict Cain’s own path to these caves, as well as the fall of Kurast and Gea Kul to the darkness. It was almost as if it had been written recently, rather than hundreds of years ago.
A passage near the end, just before the mention of Al Cut, told of thousands of lost souls buried deep beneath Gea Kul, a killing field from the depths of Sanctuary’s history that held something terribly dangerous and important. But the book ended there abruptly, as if the scribe who had written it had run out of pages.
“I need to see the companion texts to this one,” Cain said.
Egil put up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I do not have them,” he said. “If there are more, they must still be inside our Horadric library in Gea Kul. I had returned there to try to find more answers, before I found you.”
The idea of returning to that place, and having to face creatures like the unburied once again, filled Cain with dismay. He could not possibly fight something like that; he was a man of words, not weapons. Yet what choice did they have? There were no more answers to be found in this camp, and if they remained here, Cain was certain it would only be a matter of time before the Dark One and his army would come for them.
“We must go back to Gea Kul, to your meeting rooms,” he said. “We need those books.”
“There are other artifacts there, too,” Egil said. “Or at least there were. Things we had found on our journeys—”
Cullen shook his head, jowls wobbling. “It’s too dangerous,” he said. “Garreth has spies everywhere. He’ll find us!”
Cain held up a hand. “We cannot cower in fear anymore. Look at how you’re living in these caves, like animals, while the man who used to lead you is slowly destroying this world, and you are doing nothing to stop him.” He stared at Egil, Cullen, and Thomas, challenging them with his gaze. “Our enemy will find us soon enough if we do not act. You call yourselves Horadrim. It’s time to embrace your destiny and prove yourselves worthy of such a name.”
There was silence among the group. The three men avoided his look, staring at the ground.
“I will go with you,” Mikulov said. “And fight to the death, if need be.”
“I will go too,” Egil said, looking up, a new glint in his eyes. “We will not let you down.”
Thomas nodded. Finally Cullen did the same. “Good,” Cain said. “We take our first step tomorrow, at dawn. We have two days. May the archangels be with us all.”
28
The Possession
As the gray light of dawn bled from the sky, the small group reached Gea Kul and the entrance to the tunnels that led under the town.
Leah had remained at the camp with the others, with Lund as her protector. It was too dangerous for her to come along, and she seemed to feel at ease with the gentle giant. It pleased Cain to see them hand in hand, like two absurdly mismatched but happy playmates, and he knew that Lund would do anything to keep her safe.
On the way Cain had told them more stories about his traveling party’s search for the Dark Wanderer after the fall of Tristram and the assault on Mount Arreat by Baal. He had ended with the story of Tyrael’s heroic journey into the mountain to destroy the Worldstone, where he had sacrificed himself for the good of Sanctuary. Cain had meant to inspire the order with his tales, but in the end he had inspired himself as well. As he had spoken, growing more animated and dramatic as he went along, Cain had thought of his mother, the gleam in her eye as she told the children about the ancient mages and their battle with the Prime Evils. He had thought it to be madness, but now he realized that it was the passion of the righteous. To these men, they were simply stories, as inspiring as they might be, but Cain had been there on Mount Arreat, running for his life, had seen the things he had described with his own eyes. He knew what the darkness could bring.
Cain stood for a moment, looking at the row of shacks sitting silently before them. There were people inside some of them, hidden away from prying eyes, mere shadows of the men and woman they had been before. He shook his head, clenching his fists. Rage built within him like a cresting wave. Garreth Rau was bleeding the life out of the people of Sanctuary, and it had to be stopped.
A pop and blaze of light caught his attention. Egil had opened the grate and taken the same torch he had left behind just days before, lighting it with one of his bags of exploding powder.
They entered the tunnels together. Egil led them through the dank, dripping stone corridors, torchlight flickering across the walls and picking up some kind of luminosity in the moss, setting off an eerie glow. It was this same moss that, mixed with the minerals from the hills outside the First Ones’ camp, caused the explosion of Egil’s bags of powder. The air was frigid; Cain could see his own breath as he hustled to keep up with the others, pushing his poor old knees to the breaking point.
Several different turns and branches led to others, but Egil seemed to know exactly where he was going. Eventually they arrived at the steps leading to the secret door. They listened; all was silent beyond, and Egil pushed the hidden lever that slid back the door with a loud rumble.
The hallway was empty, the room beyond black as pitch. The door to the library had been damaged by the unburied, chunks of rock strewn across the floor. A bug the size of a small mouse skittered through, insect legs ticking against the stone, causing them all to jump. Nothing else moved.