Evan nodded, eyes wide. “It was something evil, that’s for sure.”
“I’m going to have to put it right, and I need your help,” Tris said.
“My help? For the king?”
Tris managed a smile. “Yes. I need you to remember, where did the
dimonn
rise?”
Evan’s eyes darkened. “From the foot of the barrows outside the village.”
“Are you certain?”
“Aye. Saw it when I went to gather firewood.”
Tris thought for a moment. “Has anything disturbed the barrow?”
Evan gave him a frightened look. “How did you know?” His sudden movement made a silver talisman slip into view beneath his ruined shirt. Tris reached down and lifted it into the light. It was the mark of the Lady, wrought in silver, and by the look of it, very old.
“Where did you find this?”
Evan slumped back into the bed. “I didn’t disturb the barrow, if that’s what you’re thinking. But two nights ago, when the moon was dark, something did. The next morning, when I went to gather wood, I saw that someone had dug into the barrow. I was curious, so I looked closer. There was a pile of rocks to one side, a lot of them carved with markings. What was left looked like a doorway into the barrow, with stone doorposts and more of those funny marks.”
“And the necklace?”
“It was in the pile of rocks. I meant to give it to my mum. She likes—liked shiny things.” His voice caught as he corrected himself.
“Did you go into the barrow?”
“I’m not crazy!” Evan suddenly remembered where he was. “M’lord,” he added hastily.
“Smart boy,” Tris said. “I have a feeling that necklace saved your life. It’s been touched by old magic, very old.” He looked up at Soterius and the others. “Whoever or whatever disturbed the barrow also weakened its protections. The runes Evan saw were part of those wardings, and so was the talisman, I’m betting. That
dimonn
didn’t get out by accident.”
“The black robes,” Evan murmured.
“What did you say?”
“The night the moon was dark, my brother said he saw two strangers on the road outside the village. That’s odd, because we don’t get many outsiders our way. Said they wore black robes. They didn’t stop and they didn’t speak to anyone, so I didn’t think of it again.”
“Did your brother say anything else about the men?” Tris asked.
Evan thought for a moment. “He said he didn’t like their look. He didn’t see them up close, but he thought one man wore a necklace made of bones.”
Tris and Soterius exchanged glances. “Shanthadura followers,” Soterius muttered.
“Sounds likely,” Tris replied. He stood and looked to Esme. “The poison is gone, but it will take a few days before he feels better. Since he can’t go home, let’s see about finding him a place here in the castle.” He didn’t say it aloud, but since the
dimonn
had marked the boy once, Tris preferred to keep him within the wardings, to prevent the
dimonn
from returning to finish what it had started.
“Call for Coalan,” Tris continued. His valet, Soterius’s sixteen-year-old nephew, would be the perfect person to help Evan. Like Evan, Coalan had also lost his family to violence, but in his case, it had been Jared’s soldiers and not
dimonns
who were responsible for the slaughter. “Have Coalan sit with him until Evan’s feeling better.” He met Esme’s eyes. “Get whatever you need to fix him up.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
Soterius and Harrtuck fell into step beside Tris as they left the guard tower. “That story about an amulet from a tomb remind you of anyone?” Soterius murmured.
Tris glanced at him. “Yeah. Jonmarc.” Long before he
had become Dark Haven’s brigand lord, Jonmarc Vahanian had been a blacksmith’s apprentice in a poor Borderlands village, hired by a stranger to retrieve an amulet from one of the cliffside tombs. That night, magicked beasts overran the village, slaughtering everyone except Jonmarc, who was wearing the amulet during the battle. The scar that ran from Jonmarc’s ear down below his collar was a permanent reminder of that fight.
“Only it was a blood mage who wanted the amulet then. Foor Arontala,” Soterius replied.
Tris shrugged. “The way I see it, Arontala’s blood magic isn’t that different from what the Shanthadurists are doing. The question is… what do they want from the barrows?”
“I have this awful feeling you’re going to feel the need to ride out there and take a look for yourself,” Soterius said, resignation in his voice.
Tris gave a lopsided grin. “Of course.”
A small group of heavily armed soldiers rode out from Shekerishet with Tris and Soterius the next morning. Sister Fallon also rode with them, and Beyral the rune scryer, along with Esme, the king’s healer. Although the morning was bright, the group rode in silence, alert for signs of danger. After a candlemark’s ride, they arrived at the crossroads just beyond the village lane.
“Can you feel it?” Tris said to Fallon.
She nodded. “There’s power that shouldn’t be here. It feels wrong.”
Tris nodded. “Just as well it’s daylight.”
If they had doubted Evan’s word, the stench of rotting bodies quickly proved the truth of the boy’s tale.
The villagers’ bodies, many of them torn to shreds, lay strewn across the village green. Nothing else appeared to be touched, verifying that the murders had not been the work of raiders.
Tris nudged his horse on, past the carnage and toward the path that led from the village into the forest. Soterius and two of the guards led the way, with Fallon and Tris in the middle, followed by three more soldiers. Tris appreciated Soterius’s attempt to protect him, but if the
dimonn
manifested, the soldiers were unlikely to be able to hold it off.
They had timed their arrival for just after the sun’s highest point, since the netherworld was at its closest at noon and midnight.
Dimonns
were among Tris’s least favorite supernatural foes, and he had the scars to justify his opinion. After a short ride, they reached the barrow.
The barrow was a mound covered with sod. If someone hadn’t looked closely, it might have passed as a hill, and many of the ancient barrows were assumed to be part of the natural landscape by those who lived in their shadow. Tris knew otherwise. Barrows like these dotted the landscape of the Winter Kingdoms. Some were just the resting place of long-dead warriors and warlords, men who lived and fought before the kingdoms had come into being. Other barrows held the remains of something else, and while Tris was not sure what that something was, the legends said it wasn’t human.
Those barrows had been thought to be so dangerous that the nomadic Sworn patrolled them, making their circuit from the Northern Sea on Margolan’s far border down across Dhasson to Nargi. Tris had not met the Sworn, but as he dismounted from his horse and approached the
desecrated barrow, arranging a meeting with one of their warriors suddenly jumped to the top of his list of things to do.
Tris’s mage sense prickled a warning the closer he got to the barrow. He heard nothing unusual with his ears, but on another level, it seemed as if voices whispered just beyond hearing range. He did not need to recognize their words to sense the malevolence.
“I need you and the men to step back,” Tris said to Soterius. “Protect Esme.”
“We’re here to keep you in one piece,” Soterius said levelly, meeting Tris’s gaze.
“I appreciate that. But if a
dimonn
’s what we’re really up against, it won’t care about swords. Magic’s the only thing that can turn it.”
“We’ve vowed our lives to keep you safe.”
“Then honor that vow by stepping back. If I’m distracted by worrying about protecting you, I’m that much more likely to make a fatal mistake.”
Soterius yielded, but his dislike for the order was clear in his face. “Fall back!”
When the soldiers had stepped back a dozen paces, Tris joined Fallon in walking a circle around the barrow, using his drawn sword as an athame as they raised wardings for protection. Or, more precisely, to protect the soldiers and anyone on the other side of the warding from what was inside it with him and the two mages. When they finished, Tris kept his sword in hand, although he knew it was unlikely to deter whatever dwelled within the barrow.
“Look here.” Fallon bent over a pile of rubble. Beyral knelt next to the stones, and Tris could see that her hands were working in the complex motions of a spell.
Beyral’s magic made the runes on the broken pieces of stone glow. “Someone set sigils of protection over the entrance to the barrow,” Fallon said quietly. “These are old—very old.”
“The Sworn?”
Fallon frowned. “I don’t think so. I’ve come across the barrows they patrol on occasion and their magic feels completely different. No, I don’t think this is one of theirs.”
“Can we seal it back up and put protections back into place?”
Fallon and Beyral exchanged glances. “If it were the two of us alone, I’d say no. Whoever did this the first time was a powerful mage. But your magic is stronger—and you’re a summoner. I really don’t want to think about anything you can’t bottle up.”
“Let’s get started,” Tris said, with an anxious eye toward the sky. Although late-summer afternoons seemed to last forever, Tris knew that strong magic required time, and he would prefer to finish the working long before the sun began to set.
Tris had just lifted the first of the sigil stones into his hands when he felt a rush of frigid air. A black shadow spread from the gaping hole in the barrow’s side, growing like a bloodstain.
Beyral began to chant, while Fallon and Tris stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the shadow’s way. Tris had given Evan’s talisman to Fallon, and its protection gave her more freedom to move.
“
Lethyrashem
!” Fallon spoke the banishment spell as Tris gathered his power for the first salvo. The
dimonn
fell back momentarily, and then surged forward once
more. Magic arced between Tris’s hands and a blinding flare of light streaked toward the growing shadow. The thing shrieked, and the odor of burned, rotted meat filled the air.
The
dimonn
twisted, evading the worst of the blast, and this time it was Beyral who sent a curtain of flame, cutting off the
dimonn
as it lunged for Fallon. Tris anticipated its next move, and his sword-athame drew an opalescent scrim between himself and the
dimonn
.
“We can’t contain it forever—any great ideas?” Tris shouted.
“If you can get it to back down, Beyral and I can seal the opening with runes,” Fallon replied.
What are you?
Tris stretched out his magic toward the shadow.
I am hunger.
The
dimonn
’s voice sounded like a hundred screams in Tris’s mind.
Who loosed you?
Those who would be my master.
Why have you come?
To consume everything.
“Wrong answer,” Tris said between gritted teeth. To make the next magic work, he would have to drop his shielding. That would make it a contest to see whether he could be faster than the
dimonn
.
In one breath, Tris dropped the coruscating power that shielded him from the
dimonn
. It rushed toward him, and the
dimonn
slashed at him, and one clawed arm sliced through the chain mail that protected Tris’s arm and shoulder. He could feel the
dimonn
’s hunger for blood, for life, for power. The fresh blood drove the
dimonn
into a frenzy. Tris fought vertigo as he ignored the pain, and he saw his
opportunity. Tris met the
dimonn
with the full brunt of his power, drawing on the magic of the Flow, his own life force, and on the fire within that pumped the bright red blood from his wounds. Everything else seemed to dim as Tris poured his power into forcing the
dimonn
back into the darkness of the barrow. Distantly, he could hear Fallon’s spellcasting and Beyral’s chanting, and beyond the wardings, the shouts of his soldiers.
Tris shut it all out, everything except the screeching wail of the
dimonn
as his power forced it backward. He could feel the old magic of the barrow, the sundered charms, and the broken spells. The old power buoyed him, feeding back into his magic.
“Ready, Tris!” Fallon shouted.
Tris charged forward with a cry, and a wave of power roiled up around him, rising from the barrow itself. The
dimonn
clawed at the sod, its talons gouging into the dirt as the magic forced it back from the edge of daylight into the darkness of the tomb. Beyral and Fallon ran past Tris, each carrying part of the stone lintel that had once capped the barrow entrance. They pushed the broken stone into the hole that had been dug into the mound, and their chants raised the dark runes on the stonework into fiery lettering. The
dimonn
gave one last shriek from the depths of the mound, and Fallon and Beyral brought down the rest of the marked stones, burying the talisman Evan had found in the center of the stone sigils.
Warily, Tris let the power flow out of him and gasped as the pain of the gashes on his shoulder fully registered. He did not drop the outer warding until he had helped Beyral and Fallon completely seal the barrow entrance. Together, they stood and made one last working over the
mound, incorporating magic to deter any who might think to repeat the desecration.