Finally he found the front doors, and he pulled them open and they ran out, into the frigid night.
The fog was thick, swirling across the ground and shrouding the nearby houses. More townspeople crowded the front walk, chanting, all of them in the same gray robes. As Cain led Leah through their midst, they reached out with grasping hands to clutch at his tunic. But they were slow and clumsy, and he was able to swing with his staff and tear free before he heard a shout. He turned and stared in shock; there was powerful magic here indeed.
Lord Brand had emerged after them, but the manor was no longer there. In its place stood a modest, one-story house, its straw roof sagging inward.
“Run, Leah,” Cain said.
The gates were hanging open. He and Leah raced through them, Leah leading the way now. They turned up an unfamiliar street and ducked into a dark alley, Leah running through it to another, wider street, the distance between them lengthening quickly. Cain increased his pace to a hobbling run until his lungs burned with the effort, but Leah was faster, and after another turn he lost her completely in the dark and the fog, and stood panting on a corner, close to panic. Where had she gone?
The town was silent, all windows dark. It appeared abandoned, and Cain had the same feeling he’d gotten back in Caldeum, as if everyone in Sanctuary had disappeared all at once, and he was utterly alone.
A shout came from behind him, and he was about to start running again when he heard a voice raised in an urgent whisper: “This way. Hurry!”
Someone beckoned to him from the shadows of the alley across the street. Cain could make out nothing else but the glint of eyes in the dark. He hesitated as the sound of pursuit grew louder; they would be upon him at any moment.
“The girl is here,” the voice said. “She is safe. Please! Come!”
May the archangels protect us, Cain thought. He crossed the street as fast as his aching legs would allow and slipped into the alley, ready to face whatever waited for him there.
15
The Graveyard
It took a few moments for Cain’s eyes to adjust as he followed the stranger through the gloom. The person who had spoken to him was a man with his head shaved smooth; he wore some kind of cloth wrapped around his waist, and he moved with a quiet grace, slipping through the night without a sound.
The man led him through the alley to the other side, which opened to a small space between the last row of homes and the stone wall that ringed the town. Leah was waiting for them. She seemed to be in the same trance that he had seen earlier, and did not react to his presence or move in any way.
A light appeared from somewhere beyond the alley. Someone called out, and Cain heard the sound of running feet. “This way,” the man said from a trench at the foot of the stone wall. “We must go now.”
Cain took Leah by the arm and led her to the trench, which held the end of a clay pipe and a trickle of water, wastewater from the town, most likely; it ran under the wall, through a space covered by iron bars. A portion of the bars had given way, and there was just enough room to squeeze through.
The man disappeared through the hole. Cain helped Leah down and climbed after her. Brown, foul-smelling water seeped through his tunic and chilled his knees and arms; at the end he had to go onto his stomach and wriggle, pushing his things ahead of him, and the cold ran all the way down his body. There was a moment of claustrophobic terror as Cain’s clothes caught on the bars and he didn’t have the strength to pull free, but the man grabbed his arms and pulled him the rest of the way.
The scratch Cain had gotten when he had crossed the bridge throbbed dully as he got to his feet and gathered his staff and rucksack. The area where they had emerged was treed and silent, but flat and free of underbrush, and they were able to move quickly.
The icy air made his wet tunic cling to his chest and legs, and he shivered, his teeth chattering, hands shaking. Shadows seemed to flutter all around them, giving the illusion of movement; he heard things slithering, soft thuds and the rustle of dead leaves, the faint crack of a branch, and once, a fluttering of wings overhead.
As they reached an open space among the withered trees, the fog dissipated, and gravestones thrust up from the ground like huge, jagged teeth. The stones, which leaned in different directions, had been placed in a circular pattern that led to a round plot in the center with a crypt.
Cain felt a gathering of dark magic that prickled the hairs on his neck. The door to the crypt hung open. Blackness lurked within it.
The man had stopped inside the first ring of stones, holding Leah’s hand. Cain studied him in the moonlight that trickled down through the opening in the trees. He was some kind of monk. He had a thick black beard. Heavy wooden beads hung around his neck, armor was bound to his forearms, and he wore boots laced up to his knees. His upper chest was bare, and muscles stood out like cords across his shoulders and arms.
Friendly or not, Cain realized, they had little choice but to trust him. He had given them no reason so far to doubt his intentions, and if Cain’s instincts were correct, they were going to need all the help they could get.
As if in answer, a group of shadowy forms burst through the cover of trees all around them. Their pursuers from the town had arrived. Hands grabbed Cain from behind, and others converged on the monk and Leah.
The monk moved with blinding speed, seemingly without effort. It was as if he disappeared and reappeared in another location, slipping through space faster than Cain’s eyes could track him, his fists like flat iron anvils as they pummeled those townspeople who dared come within reach. Those who had been holding Cain let him go, and he fell to his knees in the soft ground, looking up in time to see the monk crack two skulls together with a mighty crunch, then drive his foot into the midsection of yet another robed figure, sending it flying at least ten feet backward.
As several more cultists converged on him like mindless puppets, the monk spun and released a thunderbolt of energy that cracked the darkness with a white-hot burst, searing Cain’s eyes and making him throw his arm up over his face. When he looked back, blinking away the dots of light that danced before him, the cultists were nothing more than a circular pile of grotesquely seared arms, legs, and torsos. Leah, however, remained unharmed, just a few feet away, still standing immobile as if rooted to the spot, her gaze blank and unblinking.
A scream of anger came from halfway across the graveyard, and Lord Brand emerged from the trees. Brand raised his arms, and Cain felt the ground shift beneath him. Horrified, he scrambled to his feet as something pushed upward through the sod.
A hand and half an arm of decayed flesh emerged, its bony, white fingers wriggling like worms.
Gillian’s voice came back to him, from the night of the fire . . . the dead clawing their way from the ground, the way they did in Tristram. The earth will split, and hell will spew forth . . .
“We must go, now!” Cain shouted, as the ground began to heave and ripple across the graveyard. The monk picked Leah up and threw her over his shoulder. Cain pulled a scroll from his rucksack and spoke as quickly as he dared, the runes glowing green across the parchment before it began to smoke and crumble in his hands. A distraction for their escape: a spell of elemental magic, easy to conjure, difficult to control.
Crackles of lightning split the night sky, illuminating a nightmare landscape of rotted flesh and blindly grasping hands. Cain did not wait any longer, skirting the edge of the graveyard and avoiding the things that seemed to search him out. The lightning struck the ground in two places, searing flesh and sending explosions of dirt and grass into the air. Another struck at Brand’s feet, and he was thrown backward against the remains of his followers.