Into the Labyrinth (6 page)

“The citadel,” the old man said.

“What?” Xar asked with feigned carelessness. “What did you say about the citadel?”

The old man opened his mouth, was about to reply, when he suddenly let out a shriek, as though he’d been kicked. “What did you do that for?” he demanded, whirling around and confronting empty air. “I didn’t say anything. Well, of course, but I thought that you … Oh, very well.”

Looking sullen, he turned back around, jumped when he saw Xar. “Oh, hullo. Have we met?”

“What about the citadel?” Xar recalled hearing something about a citadel, but he couldn’t remember what.

“Citadel?” The old man looked vague. “What citadel?”

Xar heaved a sigh. “I asked about the Seventh Gate and you mentioned the citadel.”

“It’s not there. Definitely
not
there,” the old man said, nodding emphatically. Twiddling his thumbs, he looked nervously around his cell, then said loudly, “Pity about Bane.”

“What about Bane?” Xar questioned, eyes narrowing.

“Dead, you know. Poor child.”

Xar couldn’t speak, he was so amazed. The old man kept rambling on.

“Some would say it wasn’t his fault. Considering the way he was raised and all that. Loveless childhood. Father an evil wizard. Boy didn’t stand a chance. I don’t buy that!” The old man looked extremely fierce. “That’s the problem with the world. No one wants to take responsibility for his actions anymore. Adam blames the apple-eating incident on Eve. Eve says the serpent made her do it. The serpent claims that it’s God’s fault for putting the tree there in the first place. See there? No one wants to take responsibility.”

Somehow Xar had lost control of the situation. He was no longer even enjoying Samah’s tormented screams. “What about Bane?” he demanded.

“And you!” the old man shouted. “You’ve smoked forty packs of cigarettes a day since you were twelve and now you’re blaming a billboard for giving you lung cancer!”

“You are a raving lunatic!” Xar started to turn away. “Kill him,” he ordered Marit. “We’ll learn nothing from this fool while he’s alive …”

“What were we talking about? Ah, Bane.” The old man sighed, shook his head. He looked at Marit. “Would
you
care to hear about him, my dear?”

Marit silently asked Xar, who nodded.

“Yes,” she said, seating herself gingerly beside the old man.

“Poor Bane.” He sighed. “But it was all for the best. Now there will be peace on Arianus. And soon the dwarves will be starting up the Kicksey-winsey …”

Xar had heard enough. He stormed out of the cell. He was very nearly irrational with fury—a drunken sensation he didn’t like. He forced himself to think logically. The flame of his anger was quenched, as if someone had shut off one of the gas jets that gave light to this palace of tomb-like darkness. He beckoned to Marit.

She left the old man, who in her absence continued talking to his hat.

“I don’t like what I am hearing about Arianus,” Xar said in a low voice. “I don’t believe the doddering old fool, but I have long sensed that something was wrong. I should have heard from Bane before now. Travel to Arianus, Daughter. Find out what is going on. But be careful to take no action! Do not reveal yourself—to anyone!”

Marit gave a brief nod.

“Prepare for the journey,” Xar continued, “then come to my chambers for your final instructions. You will use my ship. You know how to navigate Death’s Gate?”

“Yes, Lord,” Marit answered. “Shall I send someone down here to take my place?”

Xar considered. “Send one of the lazar. Not Kleitus,” he added hastily. “One of the others. I may have some questions for them when it comes time to raise Samah’s body.”

“Yes, Lord.” Marit bowed respectfully and left.

Xar remained, glaring into Zifnab’s cell. The old man had apparently forgotten the Patryn’s existence. Rocking from side to side, Zifnab was snapping his fingers and singing to himself. “ ‘I’m a soul man. Ba-dop, da-ba-dop, da-ba-dop, da-ba-dop. Yes, I’m a soul man …’ ”

Xar hurled the cell bars back into place with grim delight.

“I’ll find out from your corpse who you really are, old fool. And you’ll tell me the truth about Haplo.”

Xar strode back down the corridor toward Samah’s cell. The screams had ceased for the moment. The dragon-snake was peering in through the bars. Xar came up behind him.

Samah lay on the floor. He appeared near death; his skin was clay-colored and glistened with sweat. He was breathing spasmodically. His body twitched and jerked.

“You’re killing him,” Xar observed.

“He proved weaker than I thought, Lord,” Sang-drax said apologetically. “However, I could dry him off, permit him to heal himself. He would still be weak, probably too weak to attempt to escape. However, there would be a danger—”

“No.” Xar was growing bored. “I need information. Rouse him enough that I may speak to him.”

The bars of the cell dissolved. Sang-drax walked inside, prodded Samah with the toe of his boot. The Sartan groaned and flinched. Xar stepped in. Kneeling beside Samah’s body, the Lord of the Nexus put his hands on either side of the Sartan’s head and raised it from the ground. The lord’s touch was not gentle; long nails dug into Samah’s gray flesh, leaving glistening trails of blood.

Samah’s eyes wrenched open. He stared at the lord and shivered in terror, but there was no recognition in the Sartan’s eyes. Xar shook the man’s head, dug his fingers to the bone.

“Know me! Know who I am!”

Samah’s only reaction was to gasp for breath. There was a rattling in his throat. Xar knew the signs.

“The Seventh Gate! Where is the Seventh Gate?”

Samah’s eyes widened. “Never meant … Death … Chaos! What … went wrong …”

“The Seventh Gate!” Xar persisted.

“Gone.” Samah shut his eyes, spoke feverishly. “Gone. Sent it … away. No one knows … Rebels … Might try … undo … Sent it …”

A bubble of blood broke on Samah’s lips. His eyes fixed in his head, staring in horror at something only he could see.

Xar dropped the head. It fell limp and unresisting, struck the stone floor with a crack. The lord laid his hand on Samah’s inert chest, put his fingers on the Sartan’s wrist. Nothing.

“He is dead,” Xar said, cool with controlled excitement. “And his last thoughts are of the Seventh Gate. Sent the Gate away, he claims! What nonsense. He proved stronger than you thought, Sang-drax. He had the strength to continue this deceit to the end. Now, quickly!”

Xar ripped apart Samah’s wet robes, laying bare the still chest. Producing a dagger—its blade was marked with runes—the lord set the sharp tip over Samah’s heart and pierced the skin. Blood, warm and crimson, flowed from beneath the knife’s sharp edge. Working swiftly and surely, repeating the sigla beneath his breath as he drew them on the skin, Xar used the knife to carve the runes of necromancy into Samah’s dead flesh.

The skin grew cool beneath the lord’s hand; the blood flowed more sluggishly. The dragon-snake stood nearby, watching, a smile lighting the one good eye. Xar did not look up from his work. At the sound of footsteps approaching, the Lord of the Nexus said merely, “Lazar? Are you here?”

“I am here,” intoned a voice.

“… am here,” came the sighing echo.

“Excellent.”

Xar sat back. His hands were covered with blood; the dagger was dark with it. Lifting his hand above Samah’s heart, Xar spoke a word. The heart-rune flashed blue. Fast as lightning, the magic spread from the heart-sigil to the sigil touching it, from that sigil to the one touching it, and soon blue light was flickering and dancing all over the body.

An eerie, glowing form wavered into being near the body, as if the dead man’s shadow were made of light instead of darkness. Xar drew in a shivering breath of awe. This pallid image was the phantasm—the ethereal, immortal part of every living being, what the mensch called the “soul.”

The phantasm tried to pull away from the body, tried to free itself, but it was caught in the husk of chill and bloody flesh and could only writhe in an agony comparable
to that experienced by the body when it had lived in torment.

Suddenly the phantasm disappeared. Xar frowned, but then saw the dead eyes pathetically lit from within: a mockery of life, the spirit joining momentarily with the body.

“I have done it!” Xar cried in exaltation. “I have done it! I have brought life back to the dead!”

But now what to do with it? The lord had never seen one of the dead raised; he had only heard descriptions from Haplo. Appalled and sickened by what he had seen, Haplo had kept his descriptions brief.

Samah’s dead body sat bolt upright. He had become a lazar.

Startled, Xar fell back a step. He caused the runes on his skin to glow bright red and blue. The lazar are powerful beings who come back to life with a terrible hatred of all things living. A lazar has the strength of one who is past feeling pain and fatigue.

Naked, his body covered with bloody tracings of Patryn sigla, Samah stared around in confusion, the dead eyes occasionally flickering with pitiable life when the phantasm flitted inside.

Shaken by his triumph, overawed, the lord needed time to think, to calm himself. “Lazar, say something to it.” Xar motioned, his hands trembling with excitement. “Speak to it.” He drew back against a far wall to watch and to exult in his achievement.

The lazar, a man, obediently stepped forward. Before death—which had obviously come by violence, to judge by the cruel marks still visible on the corpse’s throat—the man had been young and comely. Xar paid scant attention to the lazar beyond a brief glance to assure himself that it wasn’t Kleitus.

“You are one of my people,” said the lazar to Samah. “You are Sartan.”

“I am … I was,” said the voice of the corpse.

“I am … I was,” came the dismal echo from the trapped phantasm.

“Why did you come to Abarrach?”

“To learn necromancy.”

“You traveled here to Abarrach,” repeated the lazar,
its voice a lifeless monotone, “to learn the art of necromancy. To use the dead as slaves to the living.”

“I did … I did.”

“And you know now the hatred the dead bear for the living, who keep them in bondage. For you see, do you not? You see … freedom …”

The phantasm coiled and wrenched in a futile attempt to escape. The hatred on the face of the corpse as it turned its sightless—yet all too clear-seeing—eyes to Xar caused even the Patryn to blanch.

“You, lazar,” the Lord of the Nexus interrupted harshly, “what are you called?”

“Jonathon.”

“Jonathon, then.” The name meant something to Xar, but he couldn’t think what. “Enough talk of hatred. You lazar are free now, free from the weaknesses of the flesh that you knew when you were alive. And you are immortal. It is a great gift we living have given you …”

“One we would be happy to share,” said the lazar of Samah in a low, dire voice.

“… to share,” came the fearful echo.

Xar was displeased; the rune-glow that came from his body flared. “You waste my time. There are many questions I will ask you, Samah. Many questions you will answer for me. But the first, the most important, is the one I asked you before you died. Where is the Seventh Gate?”

The countenance of the corpse twisted; the body shook. The phantasm peered out through the lifeless eyes with a sort of terror. “I will not …” The blue lips of the corpse moved, but no sound came out. “I will not …”

“You will!” Xar said sternly, though he was somewhat at a loss. How do you threaten one who feels no pain, one who knows no fear? Frustrated, the lord turned to Jonathon. “What is the meaning of this defiance? You Sartan forced the dead to reveal all their secrets. I know, because Kleitus himself told me this, as did my minion, who was here previously.”

“This man’s will was strong in his life,” the lazar answered. “You raised him too quickly, perhaps. If the body had been allowed to remain quiet for the requisite three days, the phantasm would have left the body and then the soul—the will—could no longer have any effect on what
the body did. But now the defiance that died with him lives still.”

“But will he answer my questions?” Xar persisted, frustration growing.

“He will. In time,” Jonathon answered, and there was sorrow in the echoing voice. “In time he will forget all that meant anything to him in life. He will know only the bitter hatred of those who still live.”

“Time!” Xar ground his teeth. “How much time? A day? A fortnight?”

“I cannot say.”

“Bah!” Xar strode forward, came to stand directly before Samah. “Answer my question! Where is the Seventh Gate? What do you care now?” he added in wheedling tones. “It means nothing to you. You defy me only because that’s all you remember how to do.”

The light in the dead eyes flickered. “We sent it … away …”

“You did not!” Xar was losing patience. This wasn’t turning out as he had foreseen. He’d been too eager. He should have waited. He
would
wait the next time. When he killed the old man. “Sending the gate away makes no sense. You would keep it where you could use it again if need be. Perhaps you
did
use it—to open Death’s Gate! Tell me the truth. Does it have something to do with a citadel—”

“Master!”

The urgent cry came bounding down the corridor. Xar jerked his head toward the sound.

“Master!” It was Sang-drax, calling and gesturing wildly from the end of the corridor. “Come swiftly! The old man is gone!”

“Dead, then?” Xar grunted. “All for the best. Now let me be—”

“Not dead! Gone! He is gone!”

“What trick is this?” Xar demanded. “He couldn’t be gone! How could he escape?”

“I do not know, Lord of the Nexus.” Sang-drax’s sibilant whisper shook with a fury that startled even Xar. “But he is gone! Come and see for yourself.”

There was no help for it. Xar cast a final baleful look at Samah, who appeared completely oblivious to what was going on. Then the lord hastened down the corridor.