“Run!” Lynas shrieked, shoving me towards the door, his stick raised defensively.
Something dug into my mind, barbs of alien thought ripping their way inside me. I staggered and fell to one knee. When the barbs retreated I knew what I had to do. A quick glance at the undead thing reforming convinced me that it was the only option.
A name coalesced in my mind. “Dissever,” I intoned, slicing the knife across my forearm. “My blood, your blood. My flesh, your flesh. My enemies, your enemies.” A frisson of energy ran through me, linking us. This pact, it went both ways. It urged me to attack.
The knife punched straight through enchanted bronze into the undead thing’s insides. The creature reeled back, shrieking. I stabbed and cut, reeking fluids spurting across my face. A mad energy filled me. I was out of control, wild and screaming with rage that stormed into me from the knife.
“Run!” I snarled at Lynas, struggling to resist the urge to tear his throat out with my teeth and gulp down hot spurting blood. Instead I hacked away at the fleshy thing growing from dead bones. An unbearable pressure began building behind my eyes.
Lynas ran. I heard the door crash open and glimpsed his light receding down the tunnel, chased by my manic laughter. The black knife cut though the thing with ease, and the armour may as well have been soft cheese. My vision ran red as bloodlust howled deep in my heart. The pressure in my head exploded. Something inside me broke.
My Gift awoke.
Wind shrieked around me, tearing at stone and rubble. Unearthly strength flooded through me. A thousand fragmented thoughts from the city above roared into my mind. Too much. All too… much…
When my senses returned I was drenched in blood and covered in bits of bone and gobbets of flesh. The thing’s head – a ruined mass of cracked bone and rotting flesh – gaped at me like a freshwater pike, impaled on a spike of wood rammed into the floor, its over-large jaw still gnashing. Light guttered behind its three malformed eyes. Whatever the thing had been, even it couldn’t handle what I’d done to it. I both laughed and cried as we stared at each other, my body trembling with the afterbirth of magic.
Parts of the ceiling had collapsed, burying both the doorway and the small hole through which we had originally entered under blocks of stone I hadn’t a hope of moving. I was trapped, but held onto a shred of hope that somehow Lynas had got out and was running to summon help. I sobbed at the thought: who would come back for a nobody like me? Lynas barely knew me. If the streets of Setharis had taught me anything, it was that you could only rely on yourself. And even if Lynas did get out, nobody would get up off their arses to dig all the way down here. My lantern was almost out of oil.
After the last flicker of light died away I spent days – I didn’t know how many – in that near-darkness, the dim septic green from the thing’s eyes my only source of light. I went a little mad, I think, shrieking for help and clawing at the walls until my fingers were raw and bloody. My throat slowly dried to sandy parchment, lips cracking and hunger churning in my stomach. Eventually I took to licking damp from the walls, and then, eventually, gnawing putrescent flesh from the undead thing’s bones while it watched. In my delirium a macabre amusement filled me at the foul act, supposing that it was one way to ensure the thing did not rise again. Consciousness came and went. I talked to the head, even asked it questions about its past, though it never answered. The knife, however, whispered incessantly inside my head, promises of war and slaughter yet to come.
I’d given up hope, had no energy left to fight, and had curled up to sleep, maybe for the last time. I slept for what felt like an age, barely stirring as hallucinated sounds of digging drew closer. That’s where the magi found me as they dragged out the last boulder – curled up on the floor in front of the still-living head, my black knife cradled in my hands. I blinked as torchlight seared my eyes.
Archmagus Byzant was first to squeeze through the gap, his craggy face and neat white beard streaked with dust, emerald ring glowing like a verdant sun. He took one look at the head on a spike and held up a hand to still those behind him. He approached carefully, his eyes never leaving me, ignoring the blinking head completely.
“Are you well, boy?” he said softly, comfortingly. “Are you able to talk?”
Kill, Dissever demanded. Blood. Strong blood. My body throbbed with the illusion of strength. I almost did it. I almost snarled and tried to leap forward to kill and eat the Archmagus. What stopped me was the sight of the two initiates behind Byzant tasked with holding lanterns. The look on Harailt’s face, the shock and disbelief as he stared at me, the naked fear in him, stirred something inside of me, a wordless and horrible rage – I needed to split his face with an axe and hack him into quivering pieces. But it was something more powerful than anger at Harailt that stopped me flinging myself at them; it was the honest worry – for me! – on Lynas’ face that shook me to my core and threw off the bloodlust. He was a wild mess of scrapes, cuts, and bruises. He must have suffered terribly on his flight out of the Boneyards, and his hands still shook with fear. He had crawled blind through the tunnels for days to reach help and then insisted on coming back down to retrace his steps to find me. I didn’t think I could have done the same.
My eyes hurt, vision blurred with tears. I owe you my life, Lynas Granton. One day I’ll do the same for you or die trying.
“I’m fine, Archmagus,” I croaked. “I just had to deal with this… this…”
“Revenant,” he said. “It is the Worm-taken corpse of some sort of magus, mindless and animated only by magic.” His eyes narrowed as he noticed Dissever. “Hand me that blade, boy.”
I swallowed. My hand shook but didn’t obey me. “I… I don’t think I can, master.”
He looked at me, looked into me, nodded, lifted his hands and snapped his fingers. “A blanket, you fools, fetch water and a blanket. You are very lucky that he lives, Harailt, you boil-brained whelp.”
Byzant studied my weapon, his frown deepening. Dissever did not like that one bit. It hunkered down in my mind and went quiet. I felt my hand loosen around the hilt.
The Archmagus pried it from my hand. “A spirit-bound blade,” he said. “A most impressive find. The making of such objects is a lost art. Only the gods can forge such items now.”
He did something to me. I felt it happen, but didn’t know what. I sagged, eyelids drooping. “Mine,” I mumbled.
“Yes, boy. I understand now how you survived. This knife is undeniably yours.”
The last thing I saw was Lynas grinning at me, his joy and relief piecing my heart. As sleep crushed down on me, I couldn’t help but wonder: had I actually, somehow, acquired a friend?
Chapter 15
Soft warm skin brushing across my forehead. Soothing. Stroking my hair. I opened my eyes to Charra’s dust-streaked face. Dank, stale air from the catacombs filled my nostrils. Boneyards. Walls. I was surrounded by walls crushing down on me! I panicked, then shuddered with relief at the sight of the clouds overhead. I was just in a pit, not buried alive. Just a stupid hole in the ground. I sagged, panting, Charra patting my back awkwardly.
Oh Lynas. I couldn’t save you after all.
“I’m so sorry,” Charra said. “The old nightmare?“
“Nothing I can do about it,” I said gruffly. “It happened and it will never leave me. That’s all there is to say.” Old memories of Dissever drenched in blood stirred. “I’m falling to pieces here, chased by daemons, and if the Arcanum discover me I’m in no shape to resist.”