Alfred set to work with infuriating slowness, hands groping over the stone. He peered at it intently, murmured runes beneath his breath. Haplo stood near, to make certain the Sartan wasn’t distracted.
“This is our perfect chance for escape. Even if Kleitus does manage to make it this far, he won’t have any idea which way we’ve gone—”
“There are no phantasms here,” came the lazar’s voice.
“. . . no phantasms here , . .” whispered its echo.
Haplo glanced around, saw the lazar flitting from one corpse to another. The prince’s cadaver had left the doorway and moved over near the white wood table in the center of the chamber.
Is it my imagination, wondered Haplo, or is the prince’s phantasm gaming shape and form?
The Patryn blinked, rubbed his eyes. It was this damn light! Nothing looked like it was supposed to look.
“I’m sorry,” said Alfred meekly. “It won’t open.”
“What do you mean, it won’t open?” Haplo demanded.
“It must be something to do with those runes,” the Sartan said, gesturing vaguely up at the ceiling. “While their magic is activated, no other magic can work. Of course! That’s the reason,” he continued in a pleased tone, as if he’d just solved some complex mathematical equation. “They didn’t want to be interrupted in whatever it was they were doing.”
“But they were interrupted!” Haplo pointed out, kicking at one of the skulls with his foot. “Unless they went mad and turned on themselves.”
Which seemed like a very real possibility. I have to get out of here! Haplo couldn’t breathe. Some strange force in the room was expanding, squeezing the air out. The light was intensely bright, painful, hurt his eyes.
I have to get out of here, before I go blind, before I suffocate! Clammy sweat dampened his palms, chilled his body. I have to get out of here!
Haplo shoved Alfred aside, hurled himself at the sealed door. He began to trace runes on the rock, Patryn runes. He was frantic, his hands shaking so that he could barely form the sigla he had known how to shape since childhood. The sigla burned red, dimmed, went out. He’d made a mistake. A stupid mistake. Swearing, he grit his teeth and began again. He had a vague sense of Alfred attempting to stop him. Haplo brushed him away, as he would have brushed away a stinging fly. The white, blue light was growing stronger, more brilliant, beating down on him like the sun.
“Stop him!” The lazar’s shrill voice. “He’s leaving us!”
“... leaving us ...” came the echo.
Haplo began to laugh. He wasn’t going anywhere and he knew it. His laughter had a hysterical edge. He heard it, didn’t care. Die, We’re all going to die...
“The prince!” Alfred’s voice and the dog’s warning bark came at the same time, were almost indistinguishable, as if the Sartan had given the dog words.
Body and mind numb from sickness, fatigue, and what could only be described as panic, Haplo saw that at least one member of their group had discovered a way out.
The prince’s cadaver slumped over the table, the dreadful magic that had kept it alive was gone. Edmund’s phantasm was walking away from the husk that had been its prison, the spirit’s form tall and regal as the prince had been in life, its face transfigured by an expression of rapt wonder. The arms of the cadaver lay flaccid on the marble. The arms of the phantasm reached out. It took a step forward moving through the solid wooden table as if it were a phantasm. Another step and another. The phantasm was leaving its body behind.
“Stop him!” The lazar’s shifting features, blending those of the living and the dead, faced Haplo. “Without him, you will never recover your ship! Even now, his people are attempting to break down the runes you have placed on it. Baltazar plans to sail across the Fire Sea and attack Necropolis.”
“How the hell can you know that?” Haplo shouted. He heard himself shouting, but couldn’t stop. He was losing control.
“The voices of the dead cry out to me!” the lazar answered. “From every part of this world, I hear them. Stop the prince or your voice will join them!”
“... your voice will join them ...” hissed the echo.
None of this made sense anymore. It was all an insane dream. Haplo shot Alfred an accusing glance.
“I didn’t cast the spell! Not. . . not this time!” Alfred protested, wringing his hands. “But it’s true. He is leaving!”
The prince’s phantasm, arms outstretched, glided through the wood table, approaching the center. The spirit grew clearer in the vision of those watching, the lifeless cadaver began to slide to the floor. Where was he going? What was drawing him away?
What would bring him back?
“Your Highness!” Jonathan called out, voice cracking with frantic urgency. “Your people! You can’t leave them. They need you!”
“Your people!” The lazar added its persuasion. “Your people are in danger. Baltazar rules now, in your stead, and he is leading them to war, a war they cannot hope to win.”
“Can he hear us?” Haplo demanded.
The phantasm heard. It hesitated in its movement, gazed at those standing around it, the expression of wonder blurring, marred by doubt, sorrow.
“It seems a pity to call him back,” Alfred murmured.
Haplo could have made a sarcastic comment, but he lacked the energy. He was irritated with himself for having been thinking the very same thing.
“Return to your people.” The lazar was luring the phantasm back to its corpse, crooning to it gently, as a mother lures a child from the perils of the cliffs edge. “It is your duty, Your Highness. You are responsible. You have always been responsible. You cannot be selfish and leave them when they need you most!”
The phantasm dwindled, faded until it was nothing more than the gibbering ghost it had been before. And then, it vanished, disappeared altogether.
Haplo shut his eyes, hard, thinking again that the eerie blue light was playing tricks on them. Blinking, he glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed.
Alfred stared vacantly at the white wooden table. Jonathan was assisting the reanimated corpse to stand.
Would anyone notice if a man, walking down a street in broad daylight, cast no shadow?
“My people,” the corpse said. “I must return to my people.”
The words were the same, the intonation was different. The difference was subtle, a change in the pitch, the modulation. He wasn’t reciting them by rote, he was thinking about them. And Haplo realized that Edmund’s corpse had become a “he,” no longer an “it.” The sightless eyes were sightless no longer. They were fixed on the lazar and in the eyes was the shadow of doubt. Haplo knew then where Edmund’s phantasm had gone. It had, once again, joined with the corpse.
Glancing at the lazar, he saw that it had seen the same phenomenon and that it was not pleased.
Haplo didn’t know why, he didn’t care. Strange things had happened—were happening—in this room. The longer he stayed, the less he liked it and he hadn’t liked it much from the beginning. There had to be some way to shut off those damn blue lights ...
“The table,” said Alfred suddenly. “The key is the table.” He approached it, stepping carefully over the bodies that littered the floor. Haplo went with him, keeping up with him, step for step. “And look at this! The bodies around the table are facing outward, as if they had fallen defending it.”
“And they’re the ones who weren’t armed,” Haplo added. “The sacred runes, a table these people died to protect. If they had been mensch, I’d say this table was an altar.” His eyes met Alfred’s, the same question was in both.
The Sartan considered themselves to be gods. What could they possibly have worshiped?
He and Alfred drew close to the table now. Jonathan was examining it closely, brow furrowed. He reached out a hand.
“Don’t touch it!” Alfred exclaimed.
The duke snatched his hand back. “What? Why not?”