Necromancer's Curse Page 31

  The halls were dank, filled with the rank odor of moving flesh that had rotted or been chewed away. King Thorgar had led them deep into the castle, back to the halls of the Cleric’s Guild.

  Both he and Alma were fully healed, looking as youthful as they had before stepping foot outside the castle grounds. Bipp was relieved to see them strong and full of confidence. For a short while he had wondered if he would be forced to face the Necromancer with two seniors at his side.

  “They must drag their prey back here,” Bipp whispered. They tried to move as silently as possible, with barely a shuffle as Alma’s robes rustled and Bipp’s untrained feet treaded lightly.

  Alma shook her head. “Not the undead. They feed on their captives straight away. I’m not even sure they could hold out long enough to drag someone here.”

  Bipp wrinkled his nose. “Then what is that stench?”

  “We’ll be finding out soon enough,” King Thorgar said in a low voice.

  As they rounded the corner, Bipp was surprised to see a familiar landmark. The hallway here forked. On their right it ended abruptly in a dead end. A massive, round stone was set in place, sealing the corridor like a cork. Alma glanced at it and froze, pale. She bowed to the seal and made the sign of Ohm as she murmured a prayer.

  Bipp saw the source of her reaction. In front of the seal, which he had seen only months before from the opposite side, was a pile of glittering green sand. It was the remains of a brave cleric, one who had sacrificed his soul to seal in the Necromancer centuries ago, an act which had surely saved all the free lands.

  King Thorgar ignored the grisly reminder. Not out of disrespect but because keeping his eyes sharp and mind alert could be the difference between life or death—or undeath—in the lair of the Necromancer.

  “These are his inner halls,” Thorgar whispered, “the place where his undead minions roamed for ages after we sealed them in here. They were guarding something here, something dear to him, and I’m betting this is where we’ll find the fiend lurking.”

  Bipp understood the explanation to be a warning and steeled himself. He gripped the frying pan in his left hand and frowned. His hammer was still a couple stories above in the Grand Library. It had felt good to show he could take out a couple skeleton warriors using just a cooking tool, but now that they were potentially nearing the most dangerous master of dark sorcery to exist in the last millennia, he suddenly felt inept.

  Thorgar held up a hand for them to stop and pointed at a closed door. The woody surface of it was covered with a dark mold, sticky and acrid. He looked to Alma, and she closed her eyes.

  She whispered an incantation, holding up her hands and pointing them at the closed portal. Blue haloes of light flickered in the air and danced across the door’s surface for a moment before returning to her body.

  “The trap is disabled,” she said.

  Thorgar nodded tentatively and placed the palm of his hand against the moldy door. Bipp did not blame him for the trepidation. It was one thing to say you had cleared away a trap set by the Necromancer and quite another to be the one to then open that door.

  They all held their breath as Thorgar pressed against it. The hinges creaked as it opened a few inches, and he paused as if he expected something more to happen.

  The room beyond was still as a cemetery.

  Thorgar sighed and let the door creak open the rest of the way. He took a wide step inside the room, glass battle-axe firmly in hand, and Bipp followed with Alma right beside him. Bipp almost gagged when he entered, the overwhelming stench of sulphur assaulting his senses. He fought the urge to vomit even as saliva filled the corners of his mouth with the taste of copper.

  A cloud of low-hanging mist blanketed the floor unlike any other he had seen before. There was nothing natural about the dense fog, which did not even break apart and swirl, unlike the mists that came off the Green Serpent River during the autumn chills. Bipp was certain the overpowering stench was coming from it.

  Thorgar halted them. He lifted his head as if listening for something, and Bipp mimicked his behavior, wondering what caught his attention. He could hear nothing. There were no footsteps, or breathing, or talking…just the sound of bubbling water.

  The room was narrow, more like an entryway than a proper study. There were doors on either wall in front of them. Thorgar seemed to settle on one, nodding toward it for Alma.

  She repeated her incantation, sending halos of blue over the chosen door.

  Bipp took a sharp step back as the light revealed shadowy figures hiding in the corners of the tight room they were in. They moved in sharp, flat angles, shielding their faces from the priestess’s holy light, and cowered back into the deeper shadows beyond. Bipp quickly checked behind him, searching the fog for more of the creatures, but ghosts of Alma’s light had seared themselves over his vision, floating before everything he looked at.

  “The seal has been removed,” Alma whispered, though in the thick silence it might as well have been a shout.

  Thorgar nodded and jumped forward to throw the door wide, eager to be away from the room and its ghastly inhabitants. He shoved quickly through the door and stepped inside.

  Bipp clearly heard a click on the other side and threw himself headlong at the king, bowling him over and spilling them across the floor. A wave of scorching heat singed his boots, and Bipp threw an arm up to block the blinding firelight. Waves of flame licked the doorframe and engulfed the room of shadows they had just exited.

  Through the burning light, Bipp could make out more of the writhing shadows, smothered in fire and shimmering heat.

  “Alma!” Thorgar yelled, abandoning stealth now that their arrival had been announced by the fire trap.

  The flames burned out quickly, cold stone walls not leaving much for it to cling to. Bipp and Thorgar anxiously stared at the rapidly darkening doorway, dreading what they knew they would find.

  Then Alma walked through the ruined portal with her fingers and thumbs pressed together in a diamond, a circle of holy light outlining her body. As she stepped into the room, she let the protective spell drop and her shoulders sagged.

  Thorgar jumped to his feet and wrapped the priestess in his arms. “By the gods, girlie, I thought we lost you just then for sure.”

  A disarmed Alma seized up as her king shook her about. Finally Thorgar seemed to remember himself. He gently released the priestess and stepped back, rubbing the back of his neck. Bipp found it amusing to see such an infamous hero, legendary among his people, showing signs of embarrassment over hugging a girl.

  “Is the Agimat…?” Bipp said, breaking the awkward silence.

  “Tip-top,” Alma answered a bit too quickly, lifting her sleeve to reveal the golden bracer, which was too large to fit around her wrist and had to be fastened to her bicep instead. “After what we went through in the Gralok…” She shivered. “Let’s say I didn’t go through all that just to lose the Agimat in a petty trap.”

  “Is that so?” a stiff voice asked from behind them.

  Bipp twirled around with the pan raised. He had not even had a chance to take in the room they had entered, which was wide and round with a domed ceiling, a typical design for a holy sanctum. The ceiling was meant to represent the ever-bending heavens and the circular room to duplicate the holy circle and attune its energies more clearly. Rows of silver mirrors lined the walls, each and every one of which had been shattered. The center of the room had a circular landing, tiered in concentric steps that led up to an altar. At the foot of those steps, bits and pieces of a statue of Ohm lay.

  The Necromancer must have destroyed it in anger, replacing the idol of the gnome god with an obscene figure. It looked molded from melted black wax, a hooded monstrosity that had many arms raised in different directions. Bipp could not help staring at it, though he knew he should be keeping his eyes on the figure standing behind it.

  “Necromancer!” Thorgar said contemptuously.

  “So I am,” the Necromancer hissed, though Bipp kn
ew he was actually laughing.

  “You bastard,” Thorgar growled. “After all you’ve done to our people, you dare stand there and laugh.”

  The Necromancer hissed again and slammed the base of his staff onto the floor, the serpent feathers waving behind the gargoyle head as his eyes blazed with unholy fire. “Did you come here to hurl insults, or can we move right to the part where I destroy you and your friends?”

  Bipp threw his hands in the air. “Wait! Stop! We don’t want to fight with you!”

  Thorgar and the Necromancer shot him equally incredulous looks.

  The Necromancer’s eyes became slits of light, and the Shadow Stone stopped its circuitous route, wavering in the air beside his shoulder. “What trickery is this, then?”

  “Why are you doing this?” Bipp said, stepping between the Necromancer and Thorgar.

  “He’s a servant of the Shadow,” Thorgar said.

  “No. He’s not,” Bipp adamantly denied. He turned to the Necromancer. “You’re not, or at least you weren’t. You were once a devout follower of Ohm, a cleric, humble, peaceful Hublin searching for a way to push back the darkness and help your people.”

  The Necromancer floated back, as if Bipp’s words stung. His crimson eyes faded to a dull orange. They seemed to be dwelling on long forgotten memories. “That name…it is not mine,” he said in a shaky voice.

  “Yes it is!” Bipp replied, taking a step closer to the Necromancer. “You are Hublin Hofflton, the goodly cleric who one day set out on a pilgrimage to become a Master Cleric. Ohm himself shared his pipe with you.”

  The Necromancer’s arms twitched, and he turned his face away from Bipp.

  “How can you, Hublin, the gnome who travelled for many months to find Ankobellum, have so lost your way?”

  “You know nothing of what you speak!” the Necromancer shouted. Radiating shadows pulsated as the fires returned to his eyes.

  Bipp could see it now. Something had a grip over the corrupted gnome’s soul, something dark and vast beyond comprehension. He kept his eyes trained on the Necromancer, ignoring the Shadow Stone in his peripheral vision.

  “I do know! I know you wanted nothing more than to avenge little Ginnie’s death and that of so many others like her. Innocents that fell before the Shadow Lord’s growing hordes of cobolds, that very same Lord you now serve! I know that now you are commanding the very monsters you once sought to exterminate from the land!”

  Bipp was close enough now to place a foot on the higher landing of the altar. His palms itched. A couple more steps and he might be able to lunge forward and snatch the Shadow Stone. Beneath the Necromancer’s cowl, he could almost make out a face. He could feel the uncertainty circling the Necromancer’s mind and pressed on.

  “You are not the Necromancer. You are Hublin, disciple of the light. It is you have been tricked, but not by me or the king. It’s the Shadow Lord who has pulled the wool over your eyes, my friend.”

  He could see Hublin’s face now, though it was a ghostly pall over the physical form he commanded. The shadows tightened and pulsed hard over Hublin’s form.

  Bipp stepped onto the platform fully, and his insides felt pushed together as he heard dark whispers emanating from that swelling cloud of shadows. They were speaking to the lost cleric with enticing promises and cunning guile.

  Fear seized him and Bipp fell backward a step, pressing his hands over his ears to block out the residual noise of the Shadow Lord’s servants. “D-don’t l-listen to th-them, Hublin!” He fought hard to speak over their swelling ire.

  The Necromancer slammed his staff onto the floor again and shouted, “I am not Hublin! He was a fool…too weak. I have ascended from that mortal coil. I am the Necromancer!” Behind him the Shadow Stone spun in place violently. His eyes became a fiery crimson once more, and he aimed his staff at Bipp. “You will not speak your lies anymore. You will bow before me, your Lord General!”

  An invisible force seized Bipp’s body, pushing him down to his knees. He tried to fight against it, but the power behind that will was unimaginable. It kept pressing, forcing him to drop his frying pan so he could throw his hands down and brace himself lest he fall flat onto the steps.

  “I’ll never bow to the Shadow,” Bipp said, gritting his teeth. He felt a stinging sensation as droplets of blood trickled out of his nose.

  “Why do you resist the inevitable?” the Necromancer snarled.

  “F-for…” Bipp’s words were lost under a groan of pain.

  The Necromancer’s eyes narrowed. He could swear Bipp had said something strange. But what was it? More memories flickering back into his mind, meant to weaken his resolve? “What did you say?” he demanded, pulling back only enough so that Bipp could speak.

  “For Alma,” Bipp said in a voice that was barely a whisper.

  “What?” the Necromancer said.

  He quickly snapped his head to face Thorgar, who was crossing the room in a dead run with his axe raised overhead. He laughed at the sight of the pitiful king thinking he could stand against the might that the shadows provided. With a flick of his wrist, the Necromancer sent a spectre after the king. He relished the sight of Thorgar throwing himself to the side, trying to dodge the insatiable hunger of the spectre.

  “This is going to be fun. I have been waiting a long time to watch you stripped down to bare bone. Perhaps I will—” The Necromancer’s voice broke off as a flicker of movement caught his attention.

  Crimson eyes locked on the spot. Across the room he caught it again, reflected in the broken fragments of an oval mirror. He suddenly remembered that three had entered his sanctum. The devious gnome had been distracting him!

  The Necromancer spun about, frantically groping for the woman’s whereabouts.

  It was too late. The air shimmered, revealing that Alma was already on him, wrapped in her spell of concealment. Her sleeve was lifted, revealing a blinding light that flowed through a powerful ancient magic. Before the Necromancer could stop her, the light flooded through his being as she grasped his wrist.

  Alma screamed a prayer to Ohm, and the Necromancer wailed like a banshee. His body quaked hard and tried to break free of her vice-like grip as smoldering smoke burst from the folds of his tattered cloak.

  Thorgar roared as he leapt onto the Necromancer’s flailing form, wrapping his arms around his wretched neck and tugging him down low. “This is our chance, get the Shadow Stone away from him!”

  Bipp was back on his feet, climbing the stone steps toward the dais. The Necromancer’s scream stung his ears as Alma continued her assault with the Agimat. As he climbed the top step, Thorgar lost his grip, toppling backward down the other side.

  “Now Bipp!”

  Bipp sucked in his breath and crouched down, eyeing the spinning Shadow Stone. He knew he only had one shot at this, and carefully lined up his body. Alma’s incantation grew louder and the Necromancer clawed at her face, but she quickly pulled back out of reach.

  Bipp leapt into the air, throwing his hand out to snatch the floating Stone. His heart soared when his fingers closed around the powerful artifact. And just as quickly his victory turned to wide-eyed shock as his fingers passed completely through the Shadow Stone, which was no more substantial than a bundle of smoke. He fell down the other side of the steps, desperately trying to brace his body against the impact.

  In a blinding instant, Bipp saw Hublin’s ghostly form screaming pitifully for the Shadow Lord to save him, and then his staff came down hard across Alma’s head.

  Lines of magic sparked, and the priestess tumbled down from the dais. The Necromancer, still howling in pain, folded in on himself and moved as fast as the flowing shadows trailing around him. One minute he was there, writhing and squirming in pain, and the next, his huddled form was hurled backward through the door behind him by an invisible force, pulling the shadows of the room after him and slamming the door shut.

  “On your feet!” Thorgar yelled, the fading form of a spectre lying on the floor in a puddle o
f purple goo.

  Bipp was already retrieving his weapon, and Alma rose from the steps, rubbing her temple.

  “Are you strong enough to keep on?” Bipp asked.

  Alma firmed her gaze and nodded. “He’s very weak. Now is our best chance.”

  The king needed to hear nothing more. He was already running toward the door the Necromancer had retreated through.

  Broxlin pumped his arms, swinging his mighty hammer down as if he were trying to bury iron stakes in the ground. The cobold’s wooden shield splintered in half, and Broxlin’s third blow caved in the dazed monster’s chest. All around him gnome warriors were battling scores of the hairy creatures.

  “General Broxlin,” one of the warriors called as he parried blows with a heavy-set cobold, “something’s deeply wrong here!”

  Broxlin grunted and spun about, swinging his hammer into the side of a cobold readying to stab Fodlor in the back. The monster whined as its broken body hit the ground, and Fodlor leapt backward from the cobold he fought, right over the downed monster. Broxlin was not surprised to see the gnome quickly bury his sword in the injured creature’s chest while raising his shield to block a club as the other cobold pursued.

  Something was wrong. That much was true. The problem was that Broxlin could not figure out what it was. From the moment they had stepped outside the castle, he felt it looming over them. It was not the scores of cobolds that surrounded the place that disturbed him, though he was surprised to see how their ranks had swelled in the passing years. There was something else, something that left him feeling withered and growing more weary by the second.

  At first he thought it must be the work of some dark shaman, but the only one to be seen was more interested in hurling insults at her tribe than casting proper offensive spells. And then, shortly after the weakness began washing over him, he could swear something was watching them on the battlefield.

  Broxlin tried to push away the nagging feeling, telling himself they were just growing weary from the long hours of battle and that it was the hundreds of cobold eyes resting on them that gave him that strange sensation, but he knew deep down that was pure poppycock.