THE CATACOMBS, ABARRACH

THE PRESERVER groaned and stirred, regaining consciousness.

The footsteps were on the move again, the arguing voices silenced. Apparently they had their orders and were coming after them.

The animated corpse of Prince Edmund gazed about with the dazed air of a rudely awakened sleeper; its phantasm, hovering at the prince’s shoulder, whispered incoherently, sounding like the hissing of a chill wind. The duchess’s cadaver was a frightful apparition. Her image constantly shifted, dissolving one moment into that of a writhing phantasm, only to coalesce again into a pale and bloody corpse. Her husband could do nothing except stare at her; the enormity of his terrible crime had stunned him senseless. Alfred was deathly white, whiter than the corpse, and looked as if he were going to keel over any moment. The dog barked frantically.

“It would be easier,” Haplo said to himself bitterly, “just to lay down and die ... except that I don’t dare leave my body behind.

“Get moving!” he ordered, poking Alfred none too gently in the ribs. “I’ve got the prince. Go on!”

“What about—” Alfred’s gaze was fixed on the duke and the terrible form that had been the duchess.

“Forget them! We’ve got to get out of here. The soldiers and most likely the dynast himself are coming.” Haplo shoved a reluctant Alfred down the hall. “Kleitus will deal with the duke and duchess.”

“They will send me to oblivion!” the lazar shrieked.

“... oblivion ...” came the echo.

Fear jolted both the lazar’s body and spirit into movement. Haplo glanced behind him in the eerie, blue, rune-lit darkness, and had the awful impression that two women were running after him.

Jera’s flight impelled Jonathan to movement. The duke followed after his wife. His hands reached out to her, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to touch her. His hands dropped limp at his sides.

Alfred chanted. The runes on the walls shone brightly, lighting their way deeper into the catacombs. The light rarely failed. If one line of sigla on one side of the wall grew dim or darkened, the sigla on the other side was almost certain to be visible.

The runes led them far below the catacombs. The floor sloped downward at a steep angle that made it difficult to traverse. The cell block soon came to an end, as did the modern improvements such as gas lamps on the walls.

“This part ... is ancient!” gasped Alfred, panting from the exertion of running, staggering, and stumbling. “The runes ... are undisturbed.”

“But just where the hell are they leading us?” Haplo demanded. “They’re not going to drop us in a hole, are they? Or run us smack into a blank wall?”

“I—I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so!” Haplo sneered.

“At least, the runes aren’t leading our enemy to us,” Alfred ventured. He pointed back at the path they had taken. It had been swallowed up by darkness, the runes had gone out.

Haplo listened carefully. He couldn’t hear the footsteps or the voices. Perhaps the fool Alfred had finally managed to do something right. Perhaps the dynast had given up the pursuit.

“Either that, or he has sense enough not to come down here,” Haplo muttered. He felt sick and wobbly on his legs. It took an effort just to draw each breath. The runes swam in his blurred vision.

“If I could rest ... a moment. Have time to think—” Alfred suggested timidly.

Haplo didn’t want to stop. He couldn’t imagine that Kleitus would just let them slip through his fingers. But the Patryn knew, though he’d never admit it, that he couldn’t walk another step.

“Go ahead.” He sank down thankfully onto the floor. The dog curled up at his side, crowding close, resting its head on Haplo’s leg.

“Watch them, boy,” he commanded, turning the dog’s head in a slow sweep to include everyone in the narrow tunnel. The prince’s cadaver had come to a halt and stood staring at nothing. Jera’s body and spirit flitted restlessly from one side of the hall to another. Jonathan collapsed onto the runnel floor, buried his face in his arms. He hadn’t spoken a word since they’d fled.

The Patryn closed his eyes, wondered wearily if he had strength enough to complete the healing process. Or was healing possible, considering the powerful poison that had been used on him. ...

The dog lifted its head, barked once sharply. Haplo opened his eyes.

“Don’t go anywhere, Your Highness.”

The prince’s cadaver turned around. It had been heading down the hallway. Purpose had apparently replaced dazed confusion.

“You are not my people. I must return to my people.”

“We’ll get you there. But you’ve got to be patient.”

The answer appeared to satisfy Edmund’s cadaver, which again stood stock-still. His phantasm, however, wavered and whispered. The lazar stopped its restless pacing, turned its head as if a voice had spoken to it.

“Is that what you desire? The experience will not be a pleasant one! Look at me!” it cried in a ghastly voice.

“... at me ...” came the echo.

The phantasm appeared resolute.

The lazar lifted its arms, its bloody hands wove strange runes around the prince’s cadaver. Edmund’s face, once peaceful in death, twisted in pain. The phantasm disappeared, life gleamed in the corpse’s eyes. The lips moved, mouthing words, but only one among them heard what he said,

The lazar turned to Haplo. “His Highness wonders why you are helping him.”

Haplo attempted to look at the lazar, to meet the eyes, but found he couldn’t. The sight of the blood, the arrow, the shifting face was too horrible for him to bear. He cursed himself for his weakness, kept his gaze on the prince.

“How can it wonder anything? Its dead.”

“The body is dead,” the lazar answered. “The spirit is alive. The prince’s phantasm is aware of what is transpiring around it. It could not speak, could not act. That is why this living death in which we are trapped is so terrible!”

“ ... terrible ...” came the echo.

“But now,” continued the lazar, the awful visage cold with pride, “I have given him, as far as I am able, the power of speech, of communicating. I have given him the ability to act, spirit and body as one.”

“But ... we can’t hear him,” Alfred said in a weak voice.

“No, his spirit and body were too long divided. They have joined together, but the joining is painful, as you can see. It will not last long. Not like mine. My torment is eternal[14]”

“... eternal ...”

Jonathan groaned, writhed in agony nearly as acute as his wife’s. Alfred blinked, incredulous, and opened his mouth. Haplo gave him a vicious nudge, warning him to silence.

“His Grace repeats the question: Why are you helping him?”

“Your Highness,” said Haplo, speaking to the prince slowly, carefully considering his words, “in helping you, I’m helping myself. My ship ... remember my ship?”

The cadaver may have nodded.

“My ship,” Haplo continued, “is on the other side of the Fire Sea, docked at Safe Harbor. Your people now control Safe Harbor. I’ll get you across the Fire Sea, if you’ll keep your people from attacking me and grant me passage out of the docks.”

The cadaver stood without moving, only the dead eyes flickered in answer.

The lazar listened, then said, with a slight sneer, “His Highness understands and accedes to the arrangement.”

So much, thought Haplo, for my plan to abandon the duchess and her traumatized husband. She—or whatever it is she’s turned into—could prove extraordinarily useful. He leaned over, caught hold of Alfred’s robes.

“Have you come up with something? Do you know where these runes are taking us?”

“I ... I believe so.” Alfred’s voice lowered, his gaze shifted to Jera. “But do you realize—she can communicate with the dead!”

“Yes, I realize it! And so will Kleitus, if he gets hold of her.” Haplo rubbed his arms, his skin prickled and burned. “I don’t like this. Someone’s coming. Someone’s following us. And whoever or whatever it is, I’m in no condition to fight. It’s up to you to save us, Sartan.”

“And now I understand,” the lazar was saying softly, speaking either to the prince or to the other half of its tortured being. “I hear your words of bitter sorrow. I share your regret, your despair, your frustration!”

The lazar wrung its hands, its voice rising. “You want so desperately to make them listen, and they can’t hear! The pain is worse than this arrow in my heart!” Grasping the arrow’s shaft, the lazar jerked it free, hurled it to the floor. “That pain ended swiftly. This pain will last forever! Never ending! Oh, my husband, you should have let me die!”

“... should have let me die ...” came the mournful echo that faded into the silence of the tunnel.

“I know how she feels,” Haplo said grimly. “Pay attention to me, Sartan! There’ll be enough time later for your tears ... if we’re lucky. The runes, damn it!”

Alfred wrenched his gaze from Jera. “Yes, the runes.” He swallowed. “The sigla are leading us in a definite direction, keeping in one path. If you’ve noticed, we’ve passed by several other tunnels, branching off from this one, and they haven’t taken us down those. When I spoke the runes, it was in my mind that I wanted out and so I think that the runes are leading me where I asked to go. But—” Alfred hesitated, appeared uncomfortable.

“But?”

“But that exit might very well be the front entrance to the palace,” Alfred concluded miserably.

Haplo sighed, fought back a strong desire to curl up in a ball and be sick. “We’ve got no choice except to keep going.” The burning of the runes on his skin was strong. He rose slowly and painfully to his feet, whistled to the dog.

“Haplo.” Alfred stood up, laid a tentative hand on the Patryn’s arm. “What did you mean, you know how she feels? Do you mean I should have let you die?”

Haplo jerked away from the man’s touch. “If it’s thanks you want for saving my life, Sartan, you won’t get them. By bringing me back, you may have imperiled my people, your people, and all those fool mensch out there you seem to care so much about! Yes, you should have let me die, Sartan! You should have let me die, then you should have done what I asked and destroyed my body!”

Alfred stared, confused, frightened. “Imperiled ... I don’t understand.”

Haplo lifted a tattooed arm, thrust it into Alfred’s face, pointed at the runes on his skin. “Why do you think Kleitus used poison, instead of a spear or an arrow to murder me. Why use poison? Instead of a weapon that would damage the skin?”

Alfred went livid. “Blessed Sartan!”

Haplo laughed, briefly. “Yeah! Blessed Sartan! You’re a blessed bunch, all right! Now go on. Get us out of here.”

Alfred started down the hallway. The sigla on the walls flamed into soft blue light at his approach. The prince’s cadaver waited for the lazar, held out its hand with regal dignity, despite the gaping hole in its chest.

The lazar looked from the dead prince to her husband.

Jonathan’s head was bowed, his hands clutched at his long hair, tearing it in his bitter regret.

The lazar regarded him without pity, its face smooth, cold, frozen in its death mask. The phantasm, trapped within, gave the lazar its life, a terrible life that stared out of the dead eyes with sudden, dreadful menace.

“It is the living who have done this to us,” she hissed.

“... done this to us ...” whispered the echo.

The duke lifted a ravaged face, his eyes widened. The lazar took a step toward him. Cringing, he shrank away from what had once been his wife.

The lazar regarded him in silence. The two halves of her being shifted, separated, the spirit attempting futilely to free itself from the body’s prison. Turning, without a word, the lazar joined the dead prince, its feet trampling heedlessly over the blood stained arrow it had hurled to the floor.

Wild-eyed, Jonathan plucked an object from beneath his robes. Steel flashed in the already fading light of the runes.

“Dog!” Haplo shouted. “Stop him!”

The dog leapt, teeth slashing. Jonathan cried out in pain and astonishment. The knife he held clattered to the tunnel floor. He made a grab for it, but the dog was swifter. Standing over it, the animal bared its teeth, growling. Jonathan fell back, nursing a bleeding wrist.

Haplo put his hand on the duke’s arm, steered him down the tunnel after Alfred. A whistle brought the dog trotting along behind.

“Why did you stop me!” Jonathan asked in a dull voice. His feet dragged. He walked blindly. “I want to die!”

Haplo grunted. “All I need is another corpse! Get moving!”