The Labyrinth of the Dead (8 page)

"Imogen!"

"Portia, no! Wait!" Kanika raked her
fingernails along Portia’s forearm, but it did not stop her.

Portia ran down the bridge and leapt
over the low hedge with ease, catching up with the column of veiled women.
"Imogen!" Desperate joy surged through her flesh, bringing a flood of
glittering tears to her eyes.

She came up beside the figure and put
her hand on her beloved’s shoulder, feeling the aching familiarity of it
beneath the filmy veil. The young woman tensed and pulled away without uttering
a sound.

"Imogen, it’s me! I’ve come to bring
you home."

Portia stepped in front of her and
reached for the hem of the veil. The garden shifted abruptly, flinging the sky
into her view as she hit the ground. Portia froze, her chest aching and her
breath coming in ragged hiccups.

A statuesque figure came to stand over
her. Her fingers were the color of fine brandy and showed just beneath the edge
of her veil, crackling with energy. "This is
our
home. You are not
welcome here."

"Am I not?" Portia dragged her legs
beneath her and unfurled her wings, ignoring the pain that lanced through them.

The woman drew herself up into an
intimidating posture. "I am not impressed by your half-bred heritage, Nephilim.
Wings or no, you are no angel. And you are also not dead." She huffed. "I did
not invite you here. You came tearing through my wall and through my ward and
you are not welcome to stay.
Neither
of you." Behind her, the line of
women continued on the path across the dell and into an arch cut through a very
tall hedge.

"Imogen," Portia shouted once more,
scrambling to her feet. "Imogen!"

Imogen skipped a step, but the women
ahead and behind took her by the elbows and guided her away.

Furious, the brandy-skinned woman
thrust her hand out toward Portia, blue-white power hissing from her fingers.
Portia threw up her palm, meeting the woman’s with her own, pressing flesh to
flesh. The pressure was intense, but Portia wrapped her own power around it,
surrounding the assault, then sending it back. The woman staggered and dug in
her heels before breaking off her attack and rubbing her hand.

Portia brandished the axe. "I have no
desire to hurt you. But I will not allow you to stop me from taking Imogen home
with me. If I have to cleave you in half to get to her, I am sorry, but that is
what will be done."

Through the veil, Portia could see her
dark eyes widen as she saw the axe. "Where did you get that?"

"What does that matter?"

"Because it tells me exactly how
witless you are."

Portia frowned. "Why?"

"Do you have a habit of taking
dangerous weapons from strangers?" She nodded toward where Kanika was failing
to hide behind the hedge. "Or is she not a stranger to you?"

"Is she a stranger to you, madame?"

"No. I know her. I would recognize that
wretched aura no matter whose face she wore."

"What?" Portia turned her head to see Kanika’s forehead pinched and pale with anger. A searing
heat blossomed in her belly and knocked her breathless to the ground once more.

Portia saw the flash of the next bolt
aimed at her and brought the axe up to deflect it. To her surprise, the flare
of magic struck the axe head and was absorbed by the metal.

Encased in a bubble of light, the woman
hovered above her, hands stretched forward and ready for another blow. "This is
a fool’s errand, child. Go home. You will leave now."

"Like hell I will!" Portia lurched to
her feet and ran after Imogen. The arch opened into a small clearing, and
beyond that, a hedgemaze. The veiled women were
nowhere to be seen. "Is this place naught but mazes and labyrinths?"

The brandy-skinned woman appeared by
her side, still floating within her protective sphere. "We have to guard our
secrets somehow. You Nephilim interlopers come more and more often now. We
protect what is ours, the very last thing we have left to protect: our souls."
She moved forward, out of Portia’s reach, and disappeared around the first
turn.

Portia followed, but there was no sign
of her. The verdant path between the two tall hedges looked untouched, with not
a single blade of grass crushed underfoot.

"Madame, you won’t frighten me away
with your threats and parlor tricks. I mean to take Imogen back with me, and if
I have to hack through every nook and cranny of this damned maze, then that is
what I will do." Portia raised the axe.

"No, don’t." Kanika jogged up behind
her.

"Why not?"

"Because you won’t find the way."

Portia touched her breastbone. "I
will."

"No." She pushed Portia’s arm down,
lowering the axe but not touching the thing herself. "There is an easier way
than going through. Go over." Kanika made a flapping motion with her hands.

"I’m hurt. I can’t fly." She flexed her
right wing, feeling the joints grind painfully.

"Let me fix it."

"How?"

Kanika plucked a coin from her pocket.
"Do you have your rosewater still? And that Blessedwood
root powder?"

Warily, Portia found the two items.
They were certainly not the most potent of her arsenal of herbs, but she was
reluctant to part with them.

"Don’t worry, I won’t need much,"
Kanika said, as if she could hear Portia’s thoughts. She took the coin to a
flat stone just off the path and laid it down. She sprinkled it with the
powder. "Now, hit it with the hammer side. And make sure you say ‘I release you
to my service’ to the coin when you do."

"What?"

"Just say, it! It’s important or else
it won’t work."

"Why don’t I just hit it and you say
it?" Portia felt reluctant to speak the words. It seemed too easy, and she
wondered if Kanika was simply mocking her, seeing how far she could get Portia
to follow. "If this is safe, why don’t you go ahead and show me how it’s done?"

The girl rolled her eyes. "All right,
fine. Sure thing." She watched Portia carefully, obviously enjoying the view as
Portia swung the battle axe over her head and brought it down squarely on the
copper-black coin. It cracked clean in the middle and a few sparks shot forth.
"I release you to my service," Kanika declared in a voice weighted with
authority. "You are mine now to command." She sprinkled the broken coin with
rosewater and took the paste of Blessedwood root
powder and scraps of shadow-gold and rubbed it onto the portion of Portia’s
wing that was swollen and bruised. "Knit and mend and bind together, heal what
was broken once and safeguard it from being injured again."

At those words, the contusion grew hot
to the touch with a radiating warmth that filled Portia’s entire body. The limb
flexed easily and her weariness faded. On the stone, the remains of the coin
smoldered a moment, then collapsed into a small pile of cinders.

"Kanika, what have you done?"

"I helped you! Besides, it isn’t like
they had any personality left. And what purpose is there in this existence?"
She flicked the coin that hung from the axe. "They helped you. I am sure they
would be pleased to know it. It isn’t any fun at all when you go through a
whole lot of trouble just to survive that long only to have your soul consumed
and the scraps pressed into gold for greedy necromancers." She handed the bag
of powder and the bottle of rosewater back to Portia with a smile. "And it is
going to help you get your Imogen back. And that is what we want, isn’t it?"

Portia felt numb. "What ‘we’ want? No,
Kanika, you are already too deeply involved. I think we might want to part ways
soon." She looked down at the axe. The initial revulsion she felt for it had
faded, and she was growing used to it. More than used to it, she was growing
fond. She wondered if she sent Kanika away, could she still keep it?

The girl harrumphed. "After all I have
done thus far, this is how you treat me? I might as well help you, t’would be a shame not to. I mean, I’m here aren’t I? And
able. And
willing
." She batted her eyelashes. "Just means I know I can
count on you to help me later."

Portia hesitated. "We’ll discuss this
in a minute. Stay here."

It took a few false starts before she
could manage to bring herself aloft from the ground. She was sweating and
panting as she finally rose high enough to catch some of the rank breeze and
glide over the hedgemaze. It was a mind-numbing thing
to look down into, the pathways shifting and undulating as she watched. It was
a maze forever changing, rearranging itself.

"Well, no wonder I couldn’t follow
her."

"What do you see?" Kanika’s
voice was but a snatch of melody from below.

"Nothing of value yet…wait…"

Out of the draping mist, the form of a
tower emerged, pale as marble and glimmering like an opal as it reached up into
a sky that was the perfect shade of rich, wintertime blue. Portia sank slowly
from the sky, hovering within the shrouding fog as the veiled women exited the
hedge maze below her. One by one they emerged into the serenity of daylight and
roses. Several of them had lifted their veils and were coaxing a group of
newcomers to drink from a silver cup of water fetched up from the well. The
newcomers were all female and dressed in motley rags. They took the water
gratefully.

"Intractable moppet," the
brandy-skinned woman growled up at Portia.

 Portia blinked in the feigned sunlight. She did not
see Imogen among the women at the well. "You bring in souls from outside your
precious walls. Surely you can offer me hospitality as well?"

"To stay, they must earn their keep by
making daily forays into the city of Salus to search for innocents before the
queen scents them," the woman replied. "You have no intention of doing so."

"Are there any men among you?"

"No." She shrugged and waved her hand
dismissively. "We give them what they need to fight their way out of Salus."

"That’s hardly charitable."

"’Tis a good
thing this is no charity then, isn’t it?"

"Madame," Portia drew closer to the
ground, "you must understand my purpose here. I have come to reclaim my
beloved, whose body lies living still and needs the soul returned to it."

"Noble," the woman said, nodding. "But
quite impossible."

Portia made to step down onto the
silken grass when the woman brought a fiery sword from midair, holding it like
a warrior long trained.

"You will not so much as lay a toe on
this hallowed ground. You bring a curse with you." The woman nodded toward the
axe. "And I will not have this forgotten tower so easily remembered. Perhaps
the rest of the souls here pale in comparison to the one you love, but they are
each precious to me. Do not make me kill you."

"If you could, I’d be impressed."
Portia folded her arms and hovered with annoyed snaps of her wings.

The woman below her drew back her veil.
Her eyes were as amber as her flesh and her ebony hair was bound up in a series
of elaborate braids. "Then come down here and we shall see who will perish,
little half-angel."

"More than half." Portia lifted the axe
and the coin swung in feverish circles.

"Portia!" Kanika’s
shrieking voice carried through the sheets of fog. "Portia, come quick! They’re
here!"

The woman’s eyes
widened. "The queen’s dark armies have tracked you to this place—they have
found you here." She swore to herself. "I knew you would be trouble. You have
brought death here."

"I wouldn’t have thought that death was
so frightening to the
dead
."

"Obviously, you do not think often."

"I’ll tell you what. I get rid of the
problem and you let me into your ivory tower."

The woman seemed amused by the
proposition. "If you survive, mayhap I will speak to you again. If you return,
call out for Celestine. But do not let that baggage you travel with come within
the span of my arms. She is not welcomed."

Portia nodded. "As you wish. I will
return and I will hold you to your word." She turned and crossed back through
the shrouding mists to find a horde of shadows encroaching on the garden gate
beyond the bridge. She landed firmly on her feet beside Kanika. "I thought you
said they wouldn’t follow us here."

The girl shrugged helplessly. "They
aren’t supposed to be able to come in here."

"Well, we have some time to think.
There is a ward up, after all."

"I wouldn’t count on that."

"Why not?"

Kanika pointed and shrank back,
pressing herself into the hollow of Portia’s wings.

The first herder had returned to the
gate, its hand outstretched with fleshless fingers splayed. It took in a deep
breath that whined around the holes in its mouth plate. Then it waved the other
hand. From out of the enveloping darkness, they came forward: hulking creatures
with studded armor barely containing their muscular bodies. Spikes of bone
protruded from their forearms and hands, each one tipped with a barbed point.

Two of them pushed through the stinging
vines as if they were honeysuckle and leaned into the gate. The metal groaned
and gave way in minutes, and the reapers came through two abreast. The
moonflower fell to the ground and was crushed underfoot.

Portia scaled the bridge, surveying
them from the top. "They are going through an awful lot of trouble just for
me."

"What can I say, Portia sweet? You’re one
of a kind."

"What happens if one dies here?"

"I have no idea, since you’re still
alive."

Portia nodded. "Best not to risk it,
then." She crouched down and readied the axe. Closing her eyes, Portia called
on the deepest recesses of power that she usually kept divided, lest she lose
control entirely. It flowed into her waiting soul, lighting her flesh as it
came, traveling across her belly and down her legs and up her arms and out
across her wings. Her skin began to tingle, and then to glow. Her muscles twitched,
and her wings stretched wide and flexed nearly of their own accord. The
sensation was strange, as if she was not the only one whose command her body
now answered.