Macob liked to terrify his victims. For all Nicholas knew terror might be necessary to necromantic spells, but he thought the main motive was that Macob had learned to enjoy it. "Since you destroyed Doctor Octave, I would think you in need of more mortal assistance."
"Which you could provide." Macob said it without much evidence of interest.
"For a price." Macob seemed to have an air of preoccupation that Nicholas didn't like. Not only was it not terribly complimentary to himself but it made him wonder what else was happening in Macob's little kingdom. Was it Madeline that was drawing the necromancer's attention, or Ronsarde and Halle, or Arisilde? He needed to do something to regain Macob's interest. "Despite all your sorcery, essentially you're just a criminal. A criminal who has been caught. I'm a criminal who has never been caught."
Macob's head lifted and his eyes returned to Nicholas. "I've caught you."
Give him that one or not? Nicholas made a swift mental calculation. I think not. "After I walked into your trap."
There was anger in Macob's eyes and something of frustration. "I wanted to bring you down here. I wanted to see what you were."
"And you wanted the other sphere."Macob hesitated, then nodded to Rohan's sphere, suspended above the corpse. "That one is dying.
It was never any good to me. Octave made it work for his ghost talking but it was never good to me."
He gave Nicholas a sidelong look. "Not as I am."
As an attempt to elicit information, it was fairly transparent. Not as he is? Not while he's dead, he means. And is that state likely to change? Nicholas obligingly said, "It must have been one of the first constructed. And Rohan is powerful, but not as powerful as Arisilde." That was as close as he wanted to come to mentioning the others. If they were dead he couldn't help them, but if they lived, the last thing he wanted to do was direct Macob's attention toward them.
"You know much of the spheres?"
"No." Macob would know if he made anything up.
"The woman." Macob hesitated. He knew he was betraying himself and it was making him angry.
Dangerously angry. His voice was a low ominous growl. "Does she know of the spheres?"
So Madeline was free and causing great consternation. Nicholas smiled. "She knows all that she needs to." Or at least she thinks she does. He added, "I could engage to obtain the missing skull for you. That is the item you're in need of, isn't it? The one Octave wanted to question the late Duke of Mondollot concerning? I doubt the Duke's information would have been helpful; it was surely removed by Gabard Ventarin at the time of your death as a further precaution." He paused. He had Macob's rapt attention. "It was removed to the palace, was it not?"
"Yes. A trophy." Macob stared at him, the malevolent eyes narrowed. "I know where it is. I can obtain it myself. I would not engage you to do so. I would sooner engage a viper."
Nicholas's mouth quirked. Constant Macob, necromancer and murderer a hundred times over, thought he was a viper. He was not quite light-headed enough to thank him for the compliment, but said, "That's a rather unjust assessment in light of your activities, isn't it?"
"I continued my work," Macob said, but he wasn't much interested in defending himself, to Nicholas or to anyone else. He was looking at the corpse again, his attention leaving his prisoner. "That is the only thing of importance."
Nicholas frowned. Vanity might not be the key to Macob's character after all. Was it obsession, instead? With his family dead from a swift and violent plague he had not been able to stop, had he thrown himself into his work until it had achieved such an overwhelming importance that every other consideration fell by the wayside? It would explain a great deal. And it makes him far more difficult to manipulate.
Macob turned back to Nicholas and started to speak, but the necromancer froze suddenly, all motion arrested, his head cocked in a listening attitude. Without another word, he strode toward the door. As he reached the shadow across the opening his form seemed to dissolve and it was impossible to say if he had walked out or vanished into the darkness. Nicholas sat up and awkwardly rolled his torn coat sleeve back to get to the shirt cuff and the lock picks. He tore open the seam of the cuff with his teeth and shook out the picks. This explained Macob's preoccupation at least. Nicholas might have preferred that Madeline had sought the safety of the surface instead of taking the sphere on some sort of rampage through Macob's hiding place but he also preferred not to become the central element of the next necromantic spell.
Working the lock picks on his own manacled wrists was difficult, but he had gotten himself out of handcuffs before and the manacles came off with only the sacrifice of some scraped skin. Nicholas stood too quickly and had to steady himself on the crypt wall as the floor swayed and his sight narrowed to a dark tunnel. He rubbed his temples as his vision cleared, thinking this could present a problem.
As soon as he could see he stumbled to the plinth and leaned on it. He checked his pistol but it wasempty and the extra ammunition he had had in his coat had been removed along with his clasp-knife and anything else that might serve as a weapon. They had left his matches and other articles that might possibly be of use, just not at the moment. He shoved the pistol into his pocket with a muttered oath, then looked up at the sphere, suspended in the net above the corpse. Destroying it would probably be a great disservice to the furtherance of human knowledge, but he wouldn't leave it for Macob.
There was a sound from the door of the crypt, a soft footstep. Nicholas looked up and saw a man standing in the doorway, pointing a pistol at him. He was a large man, about Nicholas's age, with greasy dark hair and a ruddy, rough-featured face, his once good frock coat ragged and dirty. One of Doctor Octave's colleagues, Nicholas thought. There had been two other men besides the driver. Perhaps Macob had taken the rest of the ghouls with him and left only this last human servant to guard his prisoner. He had to be running out of ghouls; there had been a limited number to start with and Arisilde's sphere seemed to go through them rather quickly.
The man's eyes were lifeless, dull, but the pistol didn't waver. Nicholas said, "I'm no good to him dead." That wasn't quite true, but this man didn't look as if he had access to all his faculties.
He motioned with the pistol, indicating that Nicholas move away from the bier. The corpse was obviously important to Macob; he had gone to a deal of trouble to obtain it and the missing skull still obviously worried him. While there was madness in the necromancer's method, it didn't rule him. He had reasons for everything he did. Not what one would call "good" reasons, perhaps, but reasons nonetheless, Nicholas thought, obeying the man's gesture and backing away toward the wall.
Nicholas reached the wall and turning suddenly, stretched up and grabbed one of the torches. The man's reflexes were slow, doubtless the result of whatever Macob had done to him to secure his obedience; he was just raising the pistol to fire when the torch landed on the corpse. The rags of rotted clothing caught immediately.
There was an instant of hesitation, then the man ran for the bier. He dragged the torch out, dropping it on the ground, then beat at the burning clothing, oblivious to anything else. Moving forward, Nicholas picked up a broken paving stone from the floor. The man turned just as he was within reach and brought up the pistol. Nicholas grabbed his wrist to turn the weapon away from him and they grappled.
Nicholas lost his grip on the stone, trying to keep the pistol from pointing toward his head. The man wasn't inhumanly strong but he fought like an automaton with no concern for his own safety. Nicholas managed to swing him around, driving him back against the wall of the crypt, when there was a shriek of rage from somewhere above their heads.
No, Macob hadn't taken all the ghouls with him. A quick glance upward showed Nicholas two of the creatures were climbing through the crack in the dome and scrabbling headfirst down the wall. He wrenched an arm free and punched the man in the jaw, knocking his head sharply back and sending him sprawling. He heard the pistol strike the floor somewhere but the ghouls were almost on him and there was no time to look for it. He bolted for the door out of the crypt.
Once out in the half-light he ran past the dais and plunged into the maze of passages between the crypts, with no time to get his bearings. The ghouls moved too fast and he only had a few moments head start at best.
He could hear them behind him, careening into walls, screaming in high unearthly voices with all too human rage. He ran down between a row of crypts and saw an open passage into the rock wall. It wasn't until he had plunged into it and found himself in near total darkness that he realized he was too far down in the cave for this to be part of the catacomb and that he had hared off into totally unknown territory.
He couldn't go back now. He kept running, stumbling over half-seen obstructions along the ground, bouncing into walls, knowing that if he fell they would be on him in seconds. He saw a darker pool ofshadow across the passage in front of him and knew it might be a hole in the ground. There were claws scrabbling on the rock behind him and he jumped wildly, not pausing to judge the distance or gather himself.
He hit the far side, lost his grip on slick stone and slid down. He caught the edge of the fissure, his feet finding purchase on a slope littered with loose pebbles and rock chips. The suddenness of it took his breath away; he hadn't really believed it was a hole until he felt the empty cold air beneath him instead of solid earth. The ghouls were screaming almost directly over his head, so he released his tenuous hold on the edge and let himself slide down.
The ghouls had tried to attack Madeline again and the sphere had destroyed them. The things had come after her only reluctantly, as if they had been driven to it. Since then she had had no sensation of being followed.
She was almost ready to sob with relief when she found a tunnel that led upward. The slope was steep so she made a sling for the sphere out of her scarf and tied it around her neck. Makeshift and none too secure, it still freed both her arms and made climbing the upward passage much easier.
She came out above the cave with the standing crypts again on a reasonably whole section of the walkway, her legs sore from the steep climb. The entrance to the catacomb should be over to the right, above the balcony, if she had her bearings. She could see flickering firelight, greasy in the bad air, showing between the cracks in the walls of the large crypt in the center. What is Macob doing in there?
she wondered. No, don't think of it, just go while you can. The sphere didn't make her invulnerable.
She crept along the broken remains of the walkway, ducking to stay below what was left of the balustrade and moving slowly, despite her fear. As she drew closer to the place where she was certain the walkway met the catacomb, she saw something strange in the quality of light. After a moment her eyes found the glow of another torch, burning at the entrance of a crypt on this side of the cave.
She kept moving but that torch worried her. She reached the ruined balcony and saw with relief the entrance to the catacomb appeared unguarded by revenants. A few steps up and she would be in it and running back toward the sewer. She hesitated. The ghouls didn't need torchlight. In fact, she rather thought they were afraid of fire, from what Nicholas had said. Firelight meant people.
Her hands were clammy and her back hurt from the fall and she didn't particularly want to die down here. But if Nicholas hadn't gotten away it might be him. Muttering under her breath, she carefully found her way past the broken arch that lay across the balcony and back onto the walkway.
The crypt with the torch was closer but there was an impediment. Part of the walkway had collapsed entirely, leaving a gap of a few feet. She was able to get a handhold on an overhang and step easily across, but it would not make for a quick getaway.
The walkway curved and she pressed herself as closely against the wall as she could. She could see the front of the crypt now. A large part of the pitched roof had collapsed but there were still statues of helmeted pikemen on either side of the intact doorway. The torch was jammed into a loose chink above the door and she could see the mortar and stones had been knocked out of it, leaving an opening into the crypt. More evidence: if the ghouls had wanted in they could have climbed the wall; they had no need to open the crypt's door.
Speaking of ghouls.. . . There were at least three of them, like bundles of dry rags and bones, seated in front of that gaping doorway. They weren't moving or making any sound and she would have missed them entirely if she hadn't been certain they were there somewhere. They looked like unstrung puppets, cast aside until they were wanted again.She edged along the wall, cautiously. She could see down into the crypt itself now, but it was deep in shadow and the torch had dazzled her eyes somewhat, so the ghost-lichen's light was negligible. Staring hard, she thought she could discern movement inside. Then a form leaned across the shaft of firelight falling through the open door and Madeline's heart leapt. It was Doctor Halle.
That's all I needed to know. Moving back until she was above the doorway and the guardian ghouls, she studied the edge of the walkway. The wall had crumbled here so if she was quick and sure-footed she could leap down to the flat spot there, and then to the floor of the cave. Not so hard.
Not as hard as hanging in that flying harness in The Nymphs. She moved to the edge and readied herself, then hesitated.
What if she got them killed? Would it be more sensible to flee up the catacomb and bring help?
Before she could decide, her foot dislodged a pebble and it struck the rocks below with a loud crack. All three of the ghouls reacted as one, their heads whipping around and the glazed, glaring eyes staring straight at her.
To hell with it, Madeline thought. She clutched the sphere tightly and leapt.
Being more used to humans who fled from them, her attack caught them by surprise. As she landed on the cave floor they started back from her but she could already feel the sphere shaking. When the light burst from it an instant later, she turned her head away and shut her eyes tightly to keep from losing her night-sight.
The light faded and she looked back to see three heaps of bones, scattered as the ghouls had started to flee. No, four heaps of bones; there had been a fourth one against the wall of the adjoining crypt that she hadn't seen.
She stepped forward into the doorway, whispering, "Doctor Halle?"
"Good God, it's you," his voice answered reassuringly.
She stepped back and pulled the torch free, holding it so she could see the inside of the crypt.
Ronsarde lay on the ground, his head pillowed on a folded coat. His face was still and sallow, his eyes sunken back in his head. The wrinkles and age lines were brought out in high relief; she hadn't realized before that he was so old. Halle was kneeling next to him. Their clothes were torn and filthy and Halle's face was bruised but he didn't look as badly injured as Ronsarde.
"You'll have to carry him alone," Madeline told him. "I've got to hold on to this thing."
Halle was already lifting Ronsarde, dragging one limp arm across his shoulders and pulling him upright. It was only the two of them, she saw. No Nicholas, no Arisilde. "Have you seen the others?" she asked.
Halle half-carried, half-dragged Ronsarde to the doorway and Madeline stepped back out of his way and cast the torch aside. They didn't need it and she didn't have any spare hands. Halle said, "Your man Crack was with us-"
"We found Crack; there's a catacomb above here and he was in it. We sent him back for help. I hope he's found his way out by now." I hope Nicholas isn't dead. And what did Macob do with Arisilde? There was no time for speculation. She climbed up onto her rock step and took Ronsarde's free arm.
With Halle pushing and her pulling, they managed to get him up onto the first ledge. Madeline looked up at the walkway unhappily. She could make it and Halle could on his own, but. . . . But we're not giving up now. She grabbed one of the balusters and swung up, ignoring the ominous crack from the stone and the wrenching pain in her arm. She reached down for the Inspector and caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Ghouls, several of them, leaping from roof to roof across the sea of crypts. Andsomething else behind them, something dark, its form impossible to discern in the half-light.
Halle followed her arrested gaze and swore, loudly. Ronsarde picked that moment to come back to consciousness. He straightened in Halle's grasp and said, "What the devil?"
"Climb," Halle ordered succinctly. "Then run."
Ronsarde didn't argue, only reached up for Madeline's hand. She braced her feet and leaned back and in another moment he was scrambling up beside her. His breathing sounded labored and harsh but there was nothing they could do for him now. Madeline got to her feet and helped him stand as Halle climbed up beside them. "That way." She pointed toward the catacomb. "Hurry."
Halle caught Ronsarde's arm and hurried. Madeline followed, not taking her eyes off the approaching ghouls.
The creatures had stopped on the roof of the nearest crypt, watching them with those staring eyes but not coming any closer. Their terror of the sphere was gratifying but the dark thing that her eyes just couldn't seem to focus on was still coming, flowing over the rooftops toward her, sometimes like an airy mist, sometimes like something far more solid and ominous.
They reached the gap in the walkway and Halle got Ronsarde across with difficulty. Madeline almost stepped backward into it, but her boot caught the edge and she recovered with effort, then turned and jumped across.
It had slowed them down but it didn't stop their pursuer. The dark thing vas on the walkway now. A glimpse back showed Madeline its motion was more halting and jerky now, more like a man running. The sphere under her arm was ominously quiet. If it can't stop that thing we're dead, she thought desperately.
They reached the entrance to the catacomb. Madeline caught Ronsarde's other arm and helped Halle pull him up the broken steps. She stumbled, barking her shins on the stone and barely noticing. The thing was almost on them; its proximity made her skin itch. She gave Halle a shove and shouted, "Keep going."
She swung around in time to watch it cross the balcony and start up the steps toward her. It was a man now, she could see his shape in the obscuring cloud of shadow and firefly flickers of light. The sphere was silent in her arms. It wasn't going to help them. He was on the top step a hand's breadth away and she could see his face. An old man's face, but hideous with greed and somehow inhuman, like a death mask.
Then Madeline felt a concussion, and there was a searing white light. She blinked and found herself sitting on the step, staring at the cave of crypts, and everything was rippling like a hot stone-paved street on an intense summer day.
The man was nowhere to be seen. Then an instant later her eyes found that unnaturally dark blot of shadow and mist, tumbling back across the crypts, a leaf in a windstorm.
The sphere in her hands was hot and trembling a little.
Sense returned to her and she staggered to her feet and ran after Halle and Ronsarde.
The slope was steeper than Nicholas thought and he couldn't control his descent. He half-tumbled to land hard on a shelf of rock. He blinked dirt out of his eyes and managed to push himself up, feeling bruised and battered muscles protest. He squinted up the slope toward the narrow opening at the top but the ghouls didn't seem to be pitching down after him.
He was on a ledge hanging above a deep, shadowed pit with sloped sides. There was ghost-lichenhere, just enough to see by. The walls were rough stone, pocked with irregular cracks and fissures, and a pool of foul-smelling water had collected in the bottom. It was either the dim, unnatural quality of the ghost-light or his blurry vision, but the dimensions of the pit were hard to judge and a fold in the rock cut off his view of a section of it. There was a crack in the wall nearby that seemed to open into a deeper fissure. He kept an eye on it warily as he staggered to his feet. It was the perfect lurking spot for ghouls or revenants..
The wall just above him was too steep to climb and he started to make his way along the ledge to where the slope wasn't so dramatic. There seemed to be an inordinate amount of debris from the catacomb down here. He stumbled on a pile of bones and disturbed a ragged heap of detritus that gave off an odor so sickly sweet it made him gag.
There was a scrabbling above him, then a shower of pebbles rained down the slope as a revenant burst out of a crack and barrelled straight for him. Nicholas reached for his pistol before he remembered it was empty. He flung himself back against the wall and grabbed up a rock. He had time to see the creature was an old revenant, its features distorted until they were barely recognizable as human, its clothing in rags, then it raced straight past him and flung itself into the deeper crevice he had noted earlier.
Nicholas stared after it, his brows drawing together. That. . . was not a good sign.
Down in the pit below he heard a shifting, something heavy moving and grating against the stone.
Nicholas hesitated, but an awkward scramble across the ledge would just make him more of a target. It was better to face whatever it was here with the wall at his back. Then it growled.
It was a low rumble, sounding more like rock grinding but with an animal tone to it that was unmistakable. The sound reverberated throughout the pit like a distant underground train. That isn't a ghoul, or a revenant. Nicholas sank back against the wall and held his breath.
Something stirred below, creeping out of the deep shadow. At first it blended in against the mottled surface of the rock, then he made out something vaguely like a human head with patchy gray-green flesh.
There was a scrambling in the rocks above him and Nicholas twitched minutely before he caught himself.
He stayed motionless even when chips of rock and bone rained down on him. Then he saw a revenant burst from cover on the ledge above and skitter down the slope.
The thing below moved in a blur, suddenly resolving into a recognizably human shape. Its skin was horribly discolored and gaped open in places to reveal bare yellowed bone. Nicholas thought it was a larger version of the revenants until it started to climb the slope toward the one that was trying desperately to escape.
Seen in perspective it was far larger than any human, perhaps twenty feet tall. Moving with an uncanny swiftness, it climbed the rocky slope and snatched the revenant. What Nicholas had seen before was the bare crown of its head and it had been standing further down in the pit than he had thought. Its skull still bore ragged remnants of hair and it wore rusted chains wrapped around its upper body. The revenant had barely time for one shriek of terror before the thing tore it apart.
Slowly, Nicholas started to edge backward toward the fissure in the rock wall. It might be a dead end and teeming with revenants but it was too small for that thing to fit into. It had to be another dead fay, like the one Macob had used for the Sending. Perhaps buried in the catacomb, long forgotten beneath the present-day city's foundations.
It was eating the revenant, or trying to. It doesn't realize it's dead, Nicholas thought. The sight would sicken him if fear hadn't already overridden every other emotion. He reached the end of the ledge and eased himself carefully to his feet.
It turned suddenly as if it had heard him. The one remaining eye seemed to be staring directly at him, though it was covered with a heavy white film; the other eye was an empty socket surrounded by bare skull. The mouth was open, revealing jagged teeth and the decaying lips were curled in a snarl. Nicholasleapt for the next ledge.
He heard it behind him as he landed and he swarmed up the jagged rocks. He felt a tug at his coat just as he reached the lip of the crevice and threw himself forward. The coat ripped and he rolled down over rough rock and foul-smelling debris. The thwarted roar of rage echoed down the narrow passage.
Nicholas crawled several yards further down before he looked back.
It was digging at the edges of the fissure and pounding the stone, furious at losing its prey. The thing's face was even worse at close view, the dead tattered flesh revealing the bone beneath and the teeth jagged yellowed daggers. He could see the wound that must have killed it the first time, a gaping hole in the side of the skull that looked as if it had been made by a cannonball or a ballista.
That would have been an ignominious end to a checkered career, Nicholas thought, taking a deep breath to try to calm his pounding heart. His hand was burning and he realized he had ripped his glove and torn his palm open climbing the rocks and not even noticed. He found a handkerchief in an inner coat pocket and stanched the blood, then stood carefully, trying to ignore the fact that his knees were still shaking. Keeping his head down to avoid the low ceiling of the passage, he made his way deeper into it, stumbling a little on the bones and other unspeakable debris that littered the floor.
It was so dark, with only small patches of the ghost-lichen to light the way, that there could have been any number of revenants hiding in the crevices and gaps in the rock, but nothing attacked him. Nicholas thought he would be safe until the fay stopped clawing at the entrance and snarling its frustration. The revenants still active down here must have survived by learning when to go to ground; they would stay silent and still until the creature left.
There was a brighter patch of dimness ahead and Nicholas headed for it. The passage was growing more narrow and he had to climb fallen chunks of stone and navigate narrow gaps. He struggled through the last crevice and almost fell out of it onto a paved floor. There was just enough light from the opening in the wall ahead to show him that this was a room built of regular shaped blocks and not just a hollow carved in the rock. Another part of the old fortification, perhaps. The opening had been a square window but a chunk knocked out of the corner gave it an irregular shape. It was high on the wall and Nicholas had to look for hand-and foot-holds in the ancient mortar before he could pull himself up high enough to look out.
Outside lay another section of the pit about half the size of the area haunted by the fay. There was a gap in the side that must lead back to the other section and a round, regular opening overhead. Nicholas could still hear the creature growling and scratching at the other entrance to the crevice, so he was at least temporarily safe here. There were bones scattered on the ledges below and several corpses in a much more recent state of decay, still clad in rags of clothing. Nicholas squinted at a pallid form on the ledge several yards below and stiffened suddenly. The body lay face down but the hair was almost shoulder-length and entirely white.
Nicholas had scrambled up onto the flat stone sill of the window before he realized what he was doing. He hesitated, listening for the fay, and heard another low rumbling growl echo through the crevice.
He lowered himself as far down as he could, then let go and dropped to the ledge immediately below.
Trying to move as silently as possible, he climbed down the rocky slope, cursing the small avalanches of pebbles his boots touched off. Closer he could see the body was the right size, that it wore a dull-colored dressing gown. If he's not dead, Nicholas thought. If the fall down here or the old dampness of the place hadn't killed him yet. He reached the outcropping and crouched near the motionless form, brushing the loose hair back from the face.
It was Arisilde. His face was white and there were dark bruises under his eyes, that was all Nicholas could tell in the light from the ghost-lichen. He looked dead. But he looked dead before. Nicholas rolled him over, gently lowering his head to the ground. There was dirt in his hair and his robe was stained andtorn from contact with the damp stone, but Nicholas couldn't see any new injuries. If he was breathing it was shallowly and Nicholas's own pulse was pounding too hard for him to detect Arisilde's. Damn it, we're both going to be dead for certain in a moment. But Isham had said Arisilde was waking.
Nicholas patted Arisilde's face and chafed his freezing hands while trying to think. Isham had also said something about a "corpse ring" which Madele had removed. Nicholas hadn't heard the term before but he remembered Madele's interest in the ring that had charred the flesh around the dead woman's finger at Chaldome House. Arisilde didn't appear to be wearing any kind of a ring now but he hadn't before either, when they had first found him in this condition in his apartment.