As soon as he spoke to his emperor’s spirit, he would report great progress, even after fifteen centuries. If Kurgan could issue orders through the lens and continue to rule from the underworld, his empire could endure for eternity, and Utros could feel great satisfaction for having done his duty more thoroughly than any man in history.
But he felt a chill in his heart. Majel’s spirit was also there beyond the veil. Nathan and Nicci had told him that Iron Fang was aware of his wife’s betrayal with his own general. Did revenge survive fifteen centuries in the underworld? For a spirit, did time pass at all?
Utros stood before the blood-tinted lens. He was a brave and determined man, as history had shown countless times, but this might be his most unnerving encounter.
“Activate it now!” he demanded of Ava and Ruva. “I must see them.”
“We need to stay so we can use our gift and make the connection through the veil,” said Ruva, glancing at the uneasy spectators. “But these others…”
Ava looked at the nearby soldiers, who were troubled and frightened by the blood-tinted lens. “Yes, Utros. Perhaps privacy is best.”
He turned to First Commander Enoch. “Send all troops away, clear the area. I will have a private conversation with my emperor.”
“Understood, General.” Enoch barked orders, drove off the soldiers, and then retreated as well, while Utros stepped up to the looming glass disk. He could show no fear or hesitation, not to his emperor, not to his soldiers. At least now, no one could overhear his words.
As the sunset sank into deep twilight, the sorceresses went to opposite sides of the lens. The glass gleamed like a moonstone, translucent, showing only shadows in its interior. Whispering to each other now that they stood alone with the lens, Ava and Ruva reached up to touch the round rim. They sketched designs with their fingertips, dipping into the softened crystal and drawing spell-forms that glowed with orange heat. The designs continued to shimmer as the twins made successive marks, indicating anchor points around the rim.
Ava reached upward and clockwise, while Ruva drew downward and in the opposite direction. They completed ten runes, and each woman finished her last mark at the same time. The runes continued to blaze as the sorceresses stepped back.
Warmth and energy rippled through the glass, making the lens transparent, and then intensely clear, to show images not of the opposite side, but magnified through the veil, swirled with hints of a greenish mist.
Utros stepped even closer until his face was only inches from the curved surface. He peered into the blood-soaked glass and saw shapes there, spirits, shadows, the echoes of countless people, millions of slain, millions who had died of old age, countless men and women who had lived since the dawn of time. The Keeper had so many in his possession, so many.…
Utros longed to find the ones he needed. Moisture formed in his eyes, but he didn’t want to admit they were tears. “Majel,” he called, glad that no one else could hear him. “Where are you? I didn’t leave you. I still want you. We need to speak.” He would find Majel first, and afterward he could make his formal report to Iron Fang. His heart demanded satisfaction before his mind did. “Majel, where are you?”
The spirits seemed to hear him through the lens. Shapes were distant and infinite, but they responded and found the one he sought.
Ava and Ruva stood back, barely breathing, but Utros could pay attention only to the curved glass in front of him. As a figure came forward, he recognized the way she moved. He knew her instantly, because he had given her his heart.
“Majel…” He remembered her beauty, her shining eyes, the softness of her skin.
As she approached the lens, the greenish mists cleared. “Utros, is it you?” He knew the voice.
But when her image sharpened, Utros could only stare, feeling his heart break.
Majel’s face had been stripped away. Moving the raw red muscles of her jaw and her exposed, smashed teeth, she said, “I am here, my love.”
CHAPTER 47
After an endless but brief journey immersed in the silvery froth of the sliph, Nicci emerged from a well nearly identical to the one in Ildakar. She couldn’t see through the quicksilver behind her eyes, inside her mouth and lungs.
“Breathe!” the sliph commanded. “Breathe now!”
Nicci choked, coughed. She had been engulfed in that otherworldly presence, soaring along, but now that they had arrived at their destination, the sliph ejected her. Nicci tumbled over the low wall around the well.
She dropped to her knees and sucked in lungfuls of air, tried to assemble details, remembering where she expected to be. Tanimura! Dry branches, weeds, and twigs snapped under her knees and palms as she moved forward, then climbed back to her feet.
She saw an overcast night sky above, crisscrossed with forest branches. She heard the whispering sounds of night insects, the cry of a hunting bird, but she saw no sign of any city. “Where?” she coughed out, and turned to see the form of the hard-featured silver woman rising above the mirrored pool.
“Tanimura. As you commanded.”
Nicci looked around. “This is a forest.”
“The forest is outside of Tanimura. Because of our hidden plans in the war, we could not put the sliph well in the middle of the city where others might find it.” The sliph looked at Nicci as if she were slow-witted. “You can walk to your rendezvous from here.”
Nicci slowly recognized the Hagen Woods, a wilderness on the outskirts of Tanimura. “At least the well wasn’t inside the Palace of the Prophets,” she said. “It has been destroyed.”
“Destroyed?” said the sliph, sounding surprised. “As part of a battle? Is it a great victory for our cause?”
“The palace was destroyed in a battle,” Nicci answered cautiously, not wanting to give information that the sliph didn’t need to know. “I have my mission. I will call you when I am ready to return.”
The sliph’s features showed nothing but determination. “I will be here. We must achieve victory against the evil wizards of the New World.”
The strange creature settled back into her metallic pool like a candle melting in a puddle of wax. Nicci heard a rushing sound as the silver froth retreated into the depths.
The Hagen Woods … it made sense to her now. For centuries this dark forest had been a sinister place, supposedly haunted and dangerous. The gifted young men trained by the Sisters were warned never to go there, but Nicci and the Sisters of the Dark had performed numerous rituals in the woods. With a chill, Nicci remembered when she herself had been brought into the forest as a young convert, surrounded by grim Sisters who indoctrinated her into the service of the Keeper. The initiation had been horrific and painful. The other Sisters had watched with acid enjoyment as they tied Nicci down and summoned the Keeper’s monstrous servant. She’d been forced to submit to the brutal caresses of the warty-skinned being who took her and took her again, as she writhed in pain, unable to fight. Nicci had wept but clenched her teeth, trying not to scream. It hadn’t been rape because she had requested it. She surrendered her body and soul, and it had changed her forever.
Now she shuddered. No wonder the sliph well had remained hidden in the Hagen Woods for all this time. Few people explored here, and those who did seldom returned. Nicci wondered how long the rumors and warnings had existed about the dark forest. Maybe this had been part of Sulachan’s insidious cause, too, a bastion of rumors spread to keep the woods empty so the sliph could transport spies whenever she wished.