The dog jumped at Kleitus. A savage kick sent the animal rolling. Now there was no one to help Marit, even if they could have. The Sartan on board ship were battling for their own lives.
Summoned by the blade, the dead smelted the warm blood of the living, a smell they craved and hated. Ramu watched, helpless and appalled, as the lazar attacked his people.
Alfred bumbled his way through the melee, disrupting magic, tripping up the shambling corpses, leaving confusion and chaos in his wake. But he managed to reach Ramu.
“These dead ... are ours!” Ramu whispered, awed. “This horror . . . our people . . .”
Alfred ignored him. “The blade! Where’s the blade?”
He had seen it fall near Hugh the Hand. He knelt by the assassin’s side, searched frantically for the knife. He couldn’t find it. The blade was gone. Tramping feet had kicked it aside, perhaps.
Marit was nearly finished. The sigla on her skin no longer glowed. She had dropped the useless sword, was fighting Kleitus with her bare hands. The lazar was slowly choking the life out of her.
“Here!” Hugh the Hand rolled over, shoved something at Alfred. It was the knife. He’d been lying on it, his body hiding it.
Alfred hesitated, but only an instant. If this was what it took to save Marit ... He picked up the blade, felt it squirm in his hand. He was about to launch an attack at Kleitus when a black-robed form stopped him.
“Our creation,” said Balthazar grimly. “Our responsibility.”
The necromancer advanced on Kleitus. Intent on its kill, the lazar was unaware of Balthazar’s approach.
The necromancer reached out, took hold of one of Kleitus’s arms, and began to speak the words of a spell.
Balthazar had hold of Kleitus’s soul.
Feeling the dread touch, realizing his doom, Kleitus released Marit. With a fearful shriek, the lazar turned on Balthazar, attempted to destroy the necromancer’s soul.
The battle was a strange and terrifying one, for it appeared to those watching that the two were locked in an embrace, an embrace which might have been—but for the hideous contortion of the faces—a loving one.
Balthazar was nearly as pale as a corpse himself, but he held firm. A slight gasp escaped him. Kleitus’s dead eyes widened. The phantasm flitted in and out of the lazar’s body, a prisoner longing for freedom yet fearful of venturing into the unknown.
Balthazar forced Kleitus to his knees. The lazar’s screams and curses were frightful to hear, echoed mournfully by the man’s own soul.
And then Balthazar’s grim expression relaxed. His hands, which had been exerting deadly force, eased their grip, though they held the lazar firmly.
“Let go,” he said. “The torment is ended.”
Kleitus made a final, desperate effort, but the necromancer’s spell had strengthened the phantasm, weakened the decaying body. The phantasm wrenched itself free. The body crumpled, collapsed onto the deck. The phantasm hovered over it, regretfully; then it drifted off, as if blown away by the breath of a whispered prayer.
Alfred’s shaking hand closed tightly over the blade’s hilt. “Stop!” He gave the magical command to the blade in a quivering voice.
The battle ended abruptly. The lazar, either frightened by the loss of-their leader or commanded by the magic of the blade, broke off the attack. The dead disappeared.
Balthazar, weak almost to the point of falling, turned slowly.
“Still want to learn necromancy?” Balthazar asked Ramu with a strained and bitter smile.
Ramu looked down at the ghastly remains of the Sartan who had once been the Dynast of Abarrach. The Councillor made no reply.
Balthazar shrugged. He knelt down beside Marit, began to do what he could to aid her.
Alfred started to go to Marit, discovered Ramu blocking his way.
Before Alfred quite knew what was happening, Ramu had taken hold of the Cursed Blade, wrenched it from Alfred’s grasp. The Councillor examined the knife curiously at first, and then with dawning recognition.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I remember weapons like this.”
“Heinous weapons,” Alfred said in a low voice. “Designed to help the mensch kill. And be killed in their turn. For us—their protectors, their defenders. Their gods.”
Ramu flushed in swift anger. But he could not deny the truth of the words, or deny the ugly thing he held in his hand. The blade quivered with life. Ramu grimaced; his hand flinched. He seemed loath to touch it, but he could not very well relinquish it.
“Let me have it,” said Alfred.
Ramu thrust it into the belt of his robes.
“No, Brother. As Balthazar said, it is our responsibility. You may leave it in my care. Safely,” he added, his gaze meeting Alfred’s.
“Let him have it,” said Hugh the Hand. “I’ll be glad to be rid of the damn thing.”
“Councillor,” Alfred begged, “you’ve seen what terrible forces our power can unleash. You’ve seen the evil we’ve brought on ourselves and others. Don’t perpetuate it . . .”
Ramu snorted. “What happened here the Patryn brought on herself. She and her kind will continue to cause disruption unless they are finally halted. We sail for the Labyrinth, as planned. You had best prepare for departure.”
He walked off.
Alfred sighed. Well, at least when they reached the Labyrinth he would see to it that . . .
At any rate he would . . .
Or then he might . . .
Confused, miserable, he tried once again to go to Marit.
This time, the dog blocked his way.
Alfred attempted to circle around the animal.
The dog thwarted him, dodging to its left when Alfred went to his right, jumped to its right when Alfred veered to his left. Becoming hopelessly entangled in his own feet, Alfred halted. He regarded the animal with perplexity.
“What are you doing? Why are you keeping me away from Marit?”
The dog barked loudly.
Alfred attempted to shoo it aside.
The dog would not be shooed and, in fact, took offense at the suggestion. It growled and bared its teeth at him.
Startled, Alfred stumbled several steps backward.
The dog, pleased, trotted forward.
“But . . . Marit! She needs me,” Alfred said and made a clumsy attempt to outflank the dog.
Quick off the mark, as if it were herding sheep, the dog swerved in. Nipping at Alfred’s ankles, the animal continued to drive him backward across the deck.
Balthazar raised his head; the black eyes pierced Alfred.
“She will be well cared for, I promise you, Brother. Go do what you must without fear for her. As to the people of the Labyrinth, I have heard what you said. I will make my own judgments, based on the hard lessons I have learned. Farewell, Alfred.” Balthazar added, with a smile, “Or whatever your name might be.”
“But I’m not going anywhere—” Alfred protested.
The dog leapt, hit Alfred squarely in the chest, and knocked him over the ship’s rail, into the Fire Sea.
22
Snapping jaws caught hold of the collar of Alfred’s frayed velvet coat. A gigantic dragon—its scales the red-orange of the flaming sea in which it lived—caught the Sartan in midair and carried him, curled up like a frightened spider, to her back, where she deposited him gently. The dog’s teeth sank into the rear of his breeches, took firm hold of him, steadied him.
Alfred required several moments to recover himself, to realize that he was not being immolated in the Fire Sea. He was, instead, seated on the back of a fire dragon next to Hugh the Hand and the lazar Jonathon.
“What?” Alfred gasped feebly, and could only continue to repeat the word in a confused manner. “What? What?”
No one answered him. Jonathon was speaking to the fire dragon. Hugh the Hand, a cloth over his nose and mouth, was doing his best to try to stay alive.