Roel nodded, and still cautious-sword in hand, shield on his arm-he started forward, Celeste at his side. Across the broken pave they trod, cracked pillars standing along its perimeter, to come to the last of its extent, and they found themselves on a dark hilltop.
Outward they gazed across the world into which they had come. The land before them was sere and dark and of ash and cinder and sloped down toward widespread stone ruins lying just past the base of the hill. Far beyond those shambles and over the horizon, crimson light stuttered across the dull gray sky and a deep rumbling rolled o’er the blackened ’scape.
“Oh, but what a dreadful place,” said Celeste, her face twisted in revulsion against the reek of cinder and char and brimstone borne on the coiling wind. “Perhaps it is Tartarus after all.”
“If not, then yon,” said Roel, pointing down at the ruins, “must be the City of the Dead-Senaudon.” Celeste turned her gaze toward the remains.
The town itself had once been walled about, yet much of that barricade had fallen, and great gapes yawned through the stone. Crumbling houses and broken buildings made up the city proper, though here and there parts of such structures yet stood, some nearly whole.
And but for rubble lying strewn, empty were the streets within.
Roel intoned: “‘It is held in the hands of an idol in a temple on the central square of the City of the Dead.’ ” He glanced at Celeste. “That’s what the Abulhol said.
Hence, if it is Senaudon, the arrow must lie”-Roel turned and pointed downward-“there.” Celeste’s gaze followed Roel’s outstretched arm, and arranged about a square in the heart of the shambles a large group of imposing buildings remained, though holes gaped in their roofs.
Again the distant ruddy sky flashed bright, and the ground shuddered, and across the land a wave of thunder came rolling.
Roel glanced at Celeste. “Come, let us ride.” They mounted, and with packhorses in tow, down they rode, down through the twisting wind, down toward the vestige of what had once been a mighty city, now nought but a city of ruin.
And Roel yet gripped Coeur d’Acier, and his shield remained on his arm. Celeste held her bow, a keen arrow nocked to string.
The horses’ hooves crunched through ash and cinder, and small puffs of dark dust rose with every step taken, only to be borne away on the chill wind. As Celeste and Roel neared the broken walls, they could hear a banging, a thumping-and in the coiling air at the main entry into the city a gaping char-blackened gate swung loose on its hinges and thudded against its support.
The horses shied, but at Roel’s command and that of Celeste, forward through the opening they went and into the rubble-strewn cobblestone streets. To either side stood broken houses, doors agape, shutters banging in the groaning air.
Celeste’s horse flinched leftward, and the princess looked rightward to see what had affrighted it, and there in deep shadows of an alley she saw- “Roel!” she hissed, and pointed. In the darkness a form lurked: manlike it was, but no living man this, for bones showed through gapes in its desiccated skin, its flesh stretched tight like wetted parchment strung on a ghastly frame and then dried taut in sunlight. And the being shambled toward them, and it snuffled, as if trying to catch an elusive scent, and the creature emitted a thin wail, but the sound was lost in the sob of the wind.
“Keep riding,” said Roel, and they continued onward, heading for the city square.
They passed more alleys, more wrecked buildings, of which some had been dwellings, others once establishments of one sort or another. And the air wept among the dark ruins.
From the gloom came more of the beings, living corpses who once had been human. Some had shreds of clothes yet clinging, while most were completely exposed. Many were nought but fleshless beings, while others had tissue hanging on their frames and straggles of long hair stringing down from their pates. Some still had eyes in their skulls, the lids gone, the skin flaked off, leaving behind huge glaring orbs, somehow not shrunken away. Lips were stretched tight, drawn back from yellowed teeth in horrid, gaping, rictal grins. Most were wasted men-with long bony arms and legs and grasping taloned fingers, their ribs jutting out, their groins bare, their manhoods blackened and withered, some of which had rotted away or had dried and broken off-
but many of the beings were gaunt women-flat dugs hanging down, tufts of hair at their groins, their woman-hoods shriveled and flapping-and Celeste shuddered in horror at the sight of all.
“Liches,” muttered Roel. “The walking dead.”
“How can this be?” asked Celeste. “Some are nought but skeletons, and yet they move.”
Roel shook his head. “I know not the ways of the departed, but surely these are cursed, for did not Chiron say that for the Cymry this is the dreadful place where the souls of those who commit the most heinous deeds go when they die?”
“All of these committed heinous deeds?” asked Celeste, looking ’round. “But there are so very many.” Roel nodded but said nought as on they rode, a crowd of corpses shambling after, and the farther they went, the more of the living dead joined them, all snuffling, as if to inhale the essence of life that this man and woman and these horses had brought into their world.
And in the distance the leaden sky bloomed red and the ground shook, followed long after by a grumbling roar.
Now they came unto the central square where the once-stately buildings stood.
“Which is the temple?” asked Celeste, gazing about.
A ghastly laugh greeted her query and echoed among the ruins, the wind twisting it about so that its source could not be found.
As Celeste’s and Roel’s gazes searched the square, again the eldritch mirth resounded. Celeste said,
“There,” and pointed. High up on the wall of one of the buildings, in an array of dark niches stood torchbearers, yet none of their flambeaus were lit.
“We seek the temple of the gray arrow,” called Roel.
The macabre beings looked down with glaring eyes and once more there came nought but a hollow jeer, and one called out in a ghoulish voice, “Death awaits.
Death awaits.”
Again the dull sky flared scarlet afar, and the ground shuddered, and a rumble rolled across the dark land.
Roel turned to Celeste and said, “Mayhap that is the temple, for it is the only place so warded.” And they rode forward toward a set of wide steps leading up into the stately building where the torchbearers stood high above. Beyond the stairs and between columns and across a broad landing a doorway blackly gaped onto empty dark shadows within.
And behind Celeste and Roel the dead shuffled close.
And as the princess and her knight came to the foot of the steps and stopped, outstretched hands reached for the pair. And one of the living corpses laid a skeletal palm on a gelding, and the horse screamed. A dead being grasped at Celeste, and as its desiccated fingers clutched her leg a deathly chill swept through the princess. Shrilling, Celeste kicked at the creature, and its arm cracked off and fell to the ground, the brittle bones shattering on impact.
“Roel, ride!” Celeste shrieked, and she spurred her mount forward. But Roel had cried out a warning at the same time, for one of the living corpses had touched his mare, and at the squeal of the horse, Roel swung Coeur d’Acier and took off the undead thing’s head.
Straight up the steps Celeste galloped, Roel coming after, and the torchbearers in the niches high above shrieked in rage, for living beings were defiling the empty hall below. And one of those corpses put a horn to its lips and sounded a thin call, more of a wail than the cry of a clarion, and the moaning wind carried it throughout the ruins of the city, and beings shuffled forth through the dark.
Across the landing galloped Celeste and through the gaping portal, and just inside she leapt from her mare and shouldered one of the doors to. At the other door, Roel did the same, and- Boom! Doom! — the massive panels slammed shut. On the back of Roel’s door a beam rested in a pair of brackets; with a grunt Roel slid it across to mate with a like set of brackets opposite and bolted shut the entry.