A Discourse in Steel

  The key did its work, Nix turned it, the door slid open, and he and Egil piled through. The door slid closed behind them, cutting off the frustrated growls and roars and hisses of the horror.

  “Fak,” Egil said, breathing heavily.

  “Seconded,” Nix said, his heart a hammer on his ribs.

  They stood in a small square room, perhaps three paces on a side, their backs to the door. Another metal door was opposite them. The glyphs and sigils etched into its surface made Nix dizzy. He saw it had a keyhole like the others.

  “Is that another lock?” Egil said.

  The creature slammed into the door behind them. The wall shook, and the metal groaned. The creature slammed into it, again, again. The metal bent and veined under the stress.

  “Time to go,” Nix said.

  He moved to the door, studied the glyphs as best he could. Likely they were some kind of triggering spell if the door were not opened with the proper words or items.

  “Those glyphs?” Egil asked.

  “Some kind of trigger, I’d wager,” Nix said.

  The creature hit the door behind them again, its frustrated roars and growls gaining ferocity. The metal squealed and a line appeared, a slight buckling.

  “What will it trigger?” Egil asked.

  “Nothing good,” Nix said. To the key, he said, “Open the lock. Try not to trigger the magic.”

  “Give us a pear.”

  Nix and Egil cursed in unison.

  “Why does everything have to be so damned complicated with you?” Nix said to the key. “Fine. I owe you a pear, too, to go with the pomegranate.”

  He didn’t wait for a reply, just shoved the key into the lock. It fitted itself to the mechanism, grumbling all the while, and he gave it a turn.

  The glyphs on the door flared and acrid smoke filled the room. The door didn’t open.

  “What happened?” Egil said.

  Nix shrugged. “Maybe the glyphs fizzled? I don’t know. It’s unlocked, though. Let’s pry it open.”

  Nix gave Egil one of his daggers and, while the fleshy horror tried to beat open the door behind them, the two of them worried at the seam between the door and the wall. They got it open a hair’s width and water started streaming in, warm and stinking.

  “Shite,” Nix said, seeing their danger. “Hurry. Hurry.”

  The more they pried it open, the faster the water poured in, filling the small room. Egil jerked it open a hand’s width and the water started to rise rapidly.

  “By fakkin’ drowning?” Nix said, pulling at the door. “Really? Really?”

  “On two,” Egil said.

  Both of them grabbed the edge of the door.

  “One, two.”

  They pulled, both of them grunting with exertion.

  The water rose to their waists, their stomachs.

  “Come on, Egil! Fak!”

  The sinews and veins and muscles in the priest’s arms looked carved out of stone. His face and head reddened with exertion, turning Ebenor’s eye bloodshot. With a final heave he jerked the door open enough for them to fit through. Water rose to their necks.

  Nix held the light crystal before his face. “Bright,” he said, and the eye opened fully, casting a bright beam of white light.

  “Get a breath,” Nix said, tilting his head upward to keep it out of the water. He shed his falchion, keeping only his daggers and his satchel, the latter with the metal plates and the leather sling of chimes he’d taken from the chest.

  “And leave your hammer.”

  “Aye,” Egil said, then, “Don’t drop your satchel. Those chimes came dear. One, two, three.”

  They went under. The moment they cleared the doorway they were in open water. The submerged mausoleums and crypts and tombs of the necropolis loomed darkly around them. Nix flashed the light from his crystal around to get his bearings and watched in horror as the bottom of the lake rolled and boiled, throwing up a fog of mud.

  But even through the mud he could see the grasping, bony hands and decayed forms of dead serpent men clawing their way out of the bottom. He understood immediately what had happened. The glyphs he’d triggered on the door hadn’t fizzled. They had awakened the dead.

  Nix grabbed Egil by the arm, spitting bubbles, and pointed through the murk at the rising dead. Clouds of mud and dirt polluted the water. Corpses were clawing their way up all over the lake bottom. Nix pointed up toward the surface, shined his light that way. Egil nodded, but before Nix could start for the surface, a bony hand emerged from the lake bottom under his feet and grabbed him by the ankle.

  He exclaimed in surprise, expelling a cloud of bubbles. He lurched upward, pulling the dead thing with him. A torso emerged, scaled skin sloughing from the bones. A reptilian skull capped the sinewy neck. The mouth opened wide, as if to bite him, but he kicked it in the face, knocking its jaw clean off. But he could not dislodge the undead’s grip.

  Egil swam down, bubbles pouring from his nose, grabbed the corpse by the arm and chest, and tore the arm off at the shoulder. Nix was free and swimming, catching sight of countless undead lurching and swimming toward them through the murk. He shook the severed arm free as he swam.

  They pulled at the water for all they were worth, following the path of Nix’s light, legs kicking, arms wheeling. Nix’s lungs already burned and the churn from the bottom had turned the water dark. He had no idea how far they were from the surface. He imagined the dead right behind him, lipless mouths revealing rotting fangs, their decayed bodies sloughing skin and organs as they tore through the water after them. His heart pounded against his ribs. His chest ached, screamed for air, and it was all he could do not to gasp a lungful of fouled water. All it would take is one of the dead to get an ankle and pull him down. He’d drown in—

  They broke the surface at last.

  “Go, go!”

  Both of them gulped air but neither of them slowed. Side by side they swam like the Hells themselves were at their heels, legs kicking, arms wheeling. The air reeked of decay. The release of the dead had turned the lake into a charnel house.

  They reached the shallows. Nix could see the shoreline ahead. He was relieved that Mere had gotten clear of the lake, but wasn’t sure he would. His arms and legs were numb from exhaustion. He was failing. After two more strokes he could not lift his arms. He stood in the shallows and tried wading, but even that was too much.

  A hand closed on him, pulled him along: Egil, always Egil.

  “Move!” the priest shouted at him.

  Nix did his best, but Egil did most of the work, towing Nix along through the waist-deep water. Nix looked behind, where the smooth surface of the water gave no hint of the horrors rising out of the murk. The water came to thigh, knee, and Egil let him go. Nix stumbled along beside his indefatigable friend. Behind them, the water started to churn as the dead rose.

  “Mere!” Egil called, as he and Nix staggered onto the beach. Nix fell to all fours, but Egil pulled him up.

  “Where is she?” Nix said, weak-legged and gasping. “Mere!”

  Figures emerged from the tree line, six of them, and Nix knew they’d stepped out of one pile of shite to plant their feet firmly in another.

  The two guildsmen in front held Mere between them. One was a droopy-faced, heavyset man with his long hair pulled back in a topknot, and his face still showing the bruise Nix had given him back in the guildhouse, while the other was just as tall, but more compact-looking, with sharp features and intelligent eyes. Nix could not see it but he imagined a blade at Mere’s back. Her eyes were not frightened. They were fixed intently on Egil and Nix.

  “We have her,” said the compactly built man.

  “And her bitch sister, that faytor,” said the droopy-faced one. “Now, you spill where Channis is and maybe someone lives through this, or at least dies easy.”

  The other four guildsmen moved up. They must have had Rose back in the tree line.

  Mere’s voice sounded in Nix’s head.

  You tell me w
hen.

  “We don’t have Channis,” Nix said.

  “That’s a fakkin’ lie,” said the droopy one.

  The other one checked something on his hand, a tattoo.

  “We know he’s alive,” the man said.

  “He slipped us a day and a half ago,” Nix said. Suspicions started to form in his thinking, but the sound of soft splashes from behind pushed them away. He shared a look with Egil and the priest gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  Get ready, Nix said to Mere.

  Nix glanced back to see heads breaking the surface, grinning, reptilian skulls, first just a handful, then a dozen, then several score. The dead rose in their stinking dozens, rising as they walked through the shallows. They moaned wetly.

  “Gods, what are those!” Nix said, feigning terror.

  He beamed the light from his magic crystal out into the lake. The guildsmen exclaimed in fear, cursed, and—as Nix had known he would—Egil burst into motion while they were momentarily distracted.

  The two men near Mere gave sudden gasps and grabbed their heads. Mere had done her work.

  And Egil, unarmed, simply charged, covering in only a few strides the space between him and the man holding Mere. The man recovered from Mere’s mental assault enough to throw Mere aside and slash awkwardly at Egil, but the priest simply caught the man’s forearm in one hand, stopping the slash, then loosed a punch with his other hand that caught the man squarely in the side of the head. Nix had never seen anyone remain standing after taking one of Egil’s punches flush and the droopy-faced man was no exception. He hit the ground like a brained pig.

  The man who’d checked his tattoo—the Seventh Blade, Nix presumed—backed off and took a fighting stance while the other four men charged out of the tree line, but before the four could close, another form burst out of the trees from the side, tall and dark and scaled and fanged and clawed—the creature that had harried their steps since Channis had fled.

  And all at once Nix’s suspicions—suspicions he’d held since he’d first seen the creature on the ruined bridge—hardened into certainty. Channis’s transforming body, the ridges on his face, the fangs, the sloughing skin and hard, scaly skin beneath. Channis hadn’t been killed by the creature. Channis was the creature.

  Channis roared and hissed, bounding forward on overlong legs, and tore out the throat of one of the guildsmen with a clawed slash. The others turned to face it but they were too slow. It leaped atop one and they fell to the ground in a heap. It opened its mouth wide and sank fangs into the man’s throat. The man screamed and writhed, but only for a moment before he went quiet and still. The others stabbed the creature with their short blades and it hissed in rage and pain. A backhand claw turned the face of one man into a bloody flap dangling from the exposed faceplate, but the other managed to drive his blade deep into the creature’s hide. It hissed, its tongue sticking far out, and bounded back, bleeding profusely.

  Egil, meanwhile, used the distraction of the creature to charge the compact man. He hit him in the side and they fell to the ground. The man tried to bring his short sword to bear, but Egil held it out wide and slammed Ebenor’s eye into the man’s face. He went still, dead or unconscious.

  Channis loped off into the tree line, and the last guildsman, a mousy-looking slubber with a protuberant nose, took in the situation. His expression fell and he backed off a step, and another.

  “You can stay with them dead things,” he said in a high-pitched voice, nodding at the lake. “I’ll just go my way.”

  Nix drew and threw one of his daggers before the man took another step. It slipped into his neck and the man fell, gagging, dying.

  “The fak you will,” Nix said.

  “We have to go!” Mere said, pointing at the dozens of corpses shambling out of the water.

  “Aye, that,” Nix said. “Where’s Rose?”

  “They didn’t hurt her,” Mere said, and led them to where they’d left her in the trees.

  She opened her eyes as Egil started to lift her.

  “I think I can walk,” she said. “You click them guild slubbers?”

  “Clicked them,” Nix said, with a nod. “And we’re going to go fix you right now.”

  He glanced back at the lake. The dead had stopped at the water’s edge, standing in the shallows, hundreds of them, empty eye sockets staring out at them, fanged mouths open in frustrated anger.

  “Let’s get back to Odrhaal,” Nix said.

  “What about those two?” Mere asked, indicating the two unconscious guildsmen.

  Nix spat. “Throw them to the dead, Egil.”

  The priest nodded and walked toward them.

  “You can’t do that,” Mere protested.

  “Why can’t we? They were going to kill you.”

  “But they didn’t,” Mere said.

  “Then what?” Nix said.

  “Bring them,” Mere said. “I have an idea.”

  Nix didn’t like it, but he trusted Mere. “You get the big one, Egil.”

  Nix searched both men, disarmed them, found the dowsing rod on the droopy-faced one. He snapped it in half. He recovered his and Egil’s clothes and other gear from the boat, got dressed, and they set off. Egil armed himself with a sword from one of the dead guildsmen. Nix collected his daggers.

  “Eyes and ears,” he said. “Watch for that creature.”

  There was nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal.

  —

  They made their way back through the dark toward the tower. When they reached it, Nix stepped before the statue of Odrhaal, his pants soaked, his body battered, one of the metal chimes cold in his palm, but the magic in it sending a warm tingle up his arm. Egil stood beside him. Both of them eyed the image before them, the reptilian face, the clawed hands. The voice in Nix’s head, in all of their heads, was silent, as if waiting…

  Behind them, Rose whimpered.

  “Do it,” Egil said.

  Nix nodded and struck the chime on the sculpture’s pedestal. The high-pitched note it rang caused him to wince and recoil. Egil and Mere cried out. The tone rang only one time that was audible to their ears, but it nested in Nix’s mind and continued to sound in his head, like a prolonged scream of agony. He shook his head and staggered back a step, his own shout matching the scream in his head.

  The tube warmed in his hands, pulsed as though it had a heartbeat. Waves of magical energy, like expanding smoke rings, poured from its end. He pointed the chime at the statue and the energy from its tones, perhaps from their collective screaming, put a latticework of cracks in the stone.

  The ringing in his head was going to split his skull but still he kept the chime aimed at the statue. A piece of stone the size of a gold royal fell away, revealing scaled flesh beneath. Another fell away, another, the bits of polished white stone falling like snow, Odrhaal molting his prison.

  Nix’s eyes watered, his head throbbed, his mouth formed screams, and the shriek of the chime reverberated around in his skull. He thought he must soon pass out but he clung to consciousness and kept the chime pointed at Odrhaal.

  More stone fell away, revealing the finely scaled, shiny black-green skin beneath, the deep eye sockets, the shallow nose ridges, the sleek head, the three-fingered hands, the long fangs poking out from under the lip ridges. Odrhaal wore thick, layered robes of green cloth. Triangles within triangles were sewn in gold thread on the sleeves.

  By the time the ringing in his mind began to diminish, Nix was on his knees. The chime, now brittle, cracked in his hand, crumbled to bits. He looked up at Odrhaal, his vision blurry. A clawed hand flexed, the long fingers graceful even in that small movement. Odrhaal’s eyes opened and the vertical slits looked down on Nix.

  Nix began to scream anew.

  —

  Odrhaal’s slit-eyed gaze had weight and it took all Nix had to stay on all fours rather than lie flat and grovel. Nix felt as if he’d awakened a demon, or maybe a god, but he’d done it for Rose and he’d have done it all again. r />
  He twisted his head to the right and saw that Egil too was on all fours. The priest’s head was down, the eye of Ebenor staring at Odrhaal, and a string of drool hung from his mouth. Mere alone remained on her feet, standing between Odrhaal and Rose, her eyes wide. Twin streams of blood leaked from her nostrils. Nix wondered if they were communicating mentally.

  We are, said Odrhaal, his soft voice like a hammer blow in Nix’s head. We all are now.

  Nix’s vision blurred and his head felt…full, swollen. An irrational terror seized him, caused his body to tremble, his thoughts to churn. He couldn’t understand it and didn’t want to. He only wanted to curl up in a ball and weep, but his body would not answer his commands.

  Without warning, blood gushed from his nose and he retched. He was vaguely aware of Egil experiencing the same thing near him. The priest, however, managed to utter a few curses between retches.

  You’re hurting them, Mere projected, then said aloud, “You’re hurting them. Stop. Please.”

  “I needed to feed,” Odrhaal said, as if that somehow explained what had occurred. “But I’m sated. For now.”

  The pressure in Nix’s head relented. The terror subsided. He spit blood, raised his head.

  “I’m not hurting you, though,” Odrhaal said to Mere, his sibilant voice measured, as smooth as a polished stone. He stood right before Nix. The serpent man reached down and took the leather sling holding the remaining chimes.

  “You’re hurting me some,” Mere said, dabbing at the blood leaking from her nose. “But not like with them.”

  “You’re strong,” Odrhaal said, his tongue flickering forth as if tasting the air between him and Mere.

  “Help…Rose,” Nix managed.

  Odrhaal waved a scaled hand dismissively. Bands of polished stone wrapped several of his fingers. “I already have. She is, once more, herself, and only herself. I keep my promises, Nix Fall of Dur Follin.”

  Nix exhaled with relief. At least they’d saved Rose. That made it all worth it. Whatever might come from freeing Odrhaal, at least they’d saved Rose.

  The mindmage stepped forward, kneeled, and put his clawed hand on Rose’s head, a possessive gesture that Nix disliked. Rose groaned, rolled over, blinked open her eyes. They showed surprise upon seeing the serpent man, but only for a moment. Mental communication must have passed between them for a drip of blood leaked from her nose.