Finally he relaxed, a thin, haughty smile playing about his lips. Garreth Rau was no more.
“Deckard Cain,” the Lord of Lies rasped, the breath rattling in his lungs, “you are resilient, for your age. I must thank you for your assistance in bringing little Leah to me. But I’m afraid your job is complete, and so is hers.
“It’s time for you and your little friend to die.”
36
The Walking Dead of Al Cut
Mikulov came to, one moment at a time.
He was lying on his side, covered in the remains of vaporized feeders and imps. He found himself in the middle of utter devastation: a small crater marred the stone floor, with him at its center. The stone had cracked nearly all the way to the tower, revealing a deep, wide crevasse that fell away into darkness. Farther away, bodies of demons and feeders littered the courtyard in all directions. Several mortally wounded creatures were writhing in their death throes.
But, incredibly, he remained unharmed.
Mikulov’s head throbbed, and his mouth was dry as cotton. He sat up, shaking off the ash, and looked around more fully. What he saw chilled him to the bone. Seemingly everywhere, the dead were emerging from the ground: through tunnel exits, climbing from the huge crack and other, smaller fissures that ran across the courtyard. There were hundreds already, and more kept coming. They hooked bony fingers over the stones, wave after wave, pulling themselves up and gaining their feet, standing motionless in rows with weapons at their sides, all of them facing the Black Tower.
A man stood before the tower doors. At first glance, he looked unremarkable—in peasant dress, middle-aged and worn. But his eyes glittered in deep-set sockets, and his posture was straight and strong as he assessed his army.
Mikulov made his way through the ranks of the dead. They did not move, did not even turn their heads as he passed, even when he brushed against their slippery flesh. He kept his pace steady, his eyes straight ahead. If he could just reach the front of the crowd . . .
The ranks of the walking dead seemed to go on forever. The strange man watched him without speaking. When Mikulov had come within twenty feet, he held up his hand. “Do not come closer,” the man said. “Who are you, and what is your business here?”
“I am Mikulov, of the Ivgorod monks,” Mikulov said. “My business is my own.”
“I am Anuk Maahnor, captain of the army of Bartuc, Warlord of Blood, and keeper of the tower. I will ask you again: what is your business?”
“Get out of the way,” Mikulov said.
“I think not.” Maahnor smiled. “You are one man. We are all mages here, trained in the dark arts by our master himself. You shall not enter in this lifetime.”
“Not one man!” The voice came seemingly out of nowhere, but a moment later, Thomas and Cullen pushed through, shivering as they brushed against the strangely still, silent ranks of the dead. “Three, at least,” Cullen said, at Mikulov’s side. Cullen grinned at him, but his hands shook as he gripped his bloody pitchfork.
Mikulov smiled back. He felt no fear; a strange calm had descended upon him. He felt a peace his masters had spoken of many times, one he had not known before. A harmony with the gods, an acceptance of his fate, and an understanding of his own strengths and limitations.
“So be it,” he said. “We will take on your army.”
Maahnor looked surprised; then he smiled once again. “I accept your challenge,” he said. He raised one hand, then dropped it in a slashing gesture. Immediately, the undead soldiers leapt into action, raising their weapons and charging forward.
Other than their footsteps thundering on the stone, they made no sound. Cullen gave a cry and lifted the pitchfork. Thomas tried to fit an arrow to his bow, but his hands fumbled, and he dropped it.
Then the soldiers were upon them. Mikulov felt the power of the gods coursing through him as he lashed out, catching the nearest one by the arm as it thrust its sword and turning with it, using the weapon’s momentum to cut several of its brethren in half. He moved in a blur of fists and feet, crunching bones and skulls, leaving piles of bodies behind him.
The undead were slow and clumsy, but as they fell, more took their places, and Mikulov realized with dismay that those on the ground had begun to reassemble themselves and stand up again.
“Keep fighting!” he shouted at Cullen and Thomas, but the men were terrified, and he could tell it would not be much longer before they were overcome.
Help us, Mikulov prayed as he fought desperately for an opening, trying to work his way forward. Let the gods hear my cry. But the undead kept coming, wave after wave, relentless as the ocean tide, as Maahnor stood watching silently at the tower’s entrance, waiting for the end.
Cain looked at Leah. Her eyes had come open, pupils flat and black as pinpricks. The chills he felt deepened; something had come over her, the way it had that night at Gillian’s house and again in Lord Brand’s manor. He had released something that he did not know how to control, and for the first time, he wondered if it had been the right choice.
Leah sat up with one fluid motion, tearing the arm shackles from the floor effortlessly, then yanked her legs free and stood. The temperature in the room dropped quickly, and the now-familiar buzz of energy swarmed around her.
She paused, and looked around, her gaze finding Belial. The two of them observed each other for a long moment, and some spark of recognition seemed to come over them both.
“I know that face,” Belial whispered. “Who—”
The sound of crows drowned out everything else. They blackened the windows of the tower, blanketing every inch of the outside walls as Belial released a thunderbolt of power that was met by Leah’s own. A crackling flash erupted, blinding Cain for a moment. He blinked against it, trying to find his bearings as the crows’ wings continued to beat against the stone walls, their cries growing louder.
Cain caught a glimpse of something huge and inhuman across the room, where Garreth Rau had stood; later he was never sure whether it had been real or only imagined, for when he looked again, he saw Rau at the window, writhing in place as if gripped in a titanic inner battle. Leah stood with her arms out and her head up, eyes blazing, and as she looked at him wildly, he saw the real Leah for just a moment, and the terror in her eyes was so raw and horrible he wanted to comfort her. As soon as he took a step toward her, he was held in the grip of her power, immense and immovable; as it squeezed him, cutting off his breath, he cried out, pointing to the hole in the floor and willing her to release the energy there.
He wasn’t sure if she understood him or was even capable of controlling it. But Leah let him go and cried out, and something huge and invisible seemed to leap from her, barreling down the hole and through the center column of the tower, into the ground below.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then a series of muffled booms occurred, one after another. The Black Tower shuddered. Directly below them, if Cain had calculated correctly based on the map, were the charges made up of Egil’s powder he and the First Ones had set in place against the tunnel walls. Leah’s blast had ignited them, as he had hoped. He imagined the implosion below them, the sea crashing inward with tremendous force, washing through the lost city of Al Cut and crushing everything in its path.
Garreth Rau stood framed in the open window, looking back at the two of them with surprise, his features rippling and changing, and then changing again; he stared into Cain’s eyes, the pain and anguish seared into place.
“You . . . were right,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “They were lies . . . all of them.”
With a single, strangled cry, he threw himself backward out the window and disappeared from sight.
For a long moment, nothing happened, and then there was a faint, muffled boom, and the tower shook more violently. “We must go now, Leah!” Cain shouted. This time, when he took her hand, she allowed herself to be led easily to the door.