Turold gently drew out the knife and eased her on the floor, hoping against hope that the blow wasn’t fatal. Looking down on her, there was no way to tell if she was dying. Her face was already the image of death, while her body was heaving and covered in blood.
“Can you hear me? Are you still with me?”
“Yes…I don’t think you killed me,” she said. “You’ll have to finish the job.”
“No! Clearly you’re alive for a reason. Rest here while I go find—”
“Please—they can’t find me here!” she said, sitting up in terror. “If you won’t kill me, you must take me away. Quickly!”
“Who? Who’s coming? Why are you so afraid?”
“The Messengers of the God! They’re here—I can feel them, hear them. Can’t you?”
“I don’t hear anything,” he said, losing patience. “You’re scared of priests? From which temple?”
“Not priests, not from a temple!” she said, clutching his jacket. “You don’t understand, the god lives, he only ever slept; he might still awaken! And will, if they find me!”
“What god sleeps?” he said, with a laugh. “I don’t know what nonsense Sir Otrygg filled your head with, but the gods don’t meddle in human affairs, or send priests to abduct young women.”
Ignoring him, she stumbled to her feet and leaned awkwardly against the chair. Though she must be in incredible pain, her grim face only smiled—or seemed to smile, locked in its frozen expression. Turold suddenly noticed that the wound, once trickling blood, had stopped. Even the bloodstain began to diminish, and within seconds, was gone.
“Your wound!” he gasped.
“It’s what I feared; not even you can kill me,” she said, bitterly. “Sir Otrygg tried. He hoped that a trained assassin would know the art. But this is clearly beyond your powers.”
“He tried to kill you before?”
“With spells, not a blade,” she nodded. “For several days, all for naught. So we placed all our hopes in you. And now I see we were both wrong. You’re useless.”
“Useless!” he cried.
She pushed past him and ran for the door, only to stop short, retreating.
“They’re here—they’ve found us! You fool, if you hadn’t kept talking…”
And then he felt it, as if it had been there all along. A powerful magic that he had only encountered once before, when Hildigrim led him to the ruins of Castle Amaranth. Great sorcerers had perished there, and according to legend, continued to fight there still, cursed by their insatiable greed. Just beyond the door he felt a similar kind of darkness and anger. It reminded him of a man groping in the dark for a lost coin in the grass, growing more and more desperate with each empty handful.
“The Messengers—what are they? Sorcerers? Assassins?”
“No, much worse! Please, come away from the door, we have to—”
But she realized it was too late. They were here, there was no place else to go. Turold tried to discern the mysterious presence that approached, unable to track their movement or breathing. Only a faint hum, that seemed to come from a great distance, but grew gradually louder the longer he listened to it.
“Show yourself!” he cried, drawing his blade.
The hum increased still louder, like the hiss of a thousand wings from a shattered nest. He ran to the door and thrust it open, ready to meet his fate, even if a dozen necromancers were on the other side with “death” and “revenge” on their lips.
At least he could have talked to necromancers.
The walls and ceilings of the shacks were crawling with cockroaches and ants, and high above, a condensing cloud of wasps. But this wasn’t a random swarm that converged mindlessly on the hovel. They seemed to move with one thought, one mission. And upon seeing him, their forces advanced with incredible speed. In a few seconds he would be overrun, the ants eating their way through his clothes and flesh, if the wasps didn’t reach him first. There was no time to think, only to react; he uttered the first spell that came to his lips and hoped for the best. There wouldn’t be time for a second.
A curtain of flame swept between him and the Messengers, consuming the first line of attack. Even above the hiss of the flames he could hear their cry, a wall of rage that sounded eerily like the word “advance!” Turold backed away as the flames spread over the walls, licking at his coat and boots. If they were to escape they had to do it soon, or else they would perish with the Messengers—and go straight to the gods!
“Quickly, out the window!” he commanded.
“It’s too high—you won’t survive it!” she said.
“But you will!” he shouted, shoving her towards it.
He climbed on her back as she crept through the window. A quick look behind, as the walls collapsed and the wasps dropped like firebrands; then she leapt wide of the building, Turold flapping behind her. She smacked against a tree and tumbled wildly until colliding with the road below. Turold landed safely on her back, then bounced a few feet away, with only a few cuts for his pains. She, on the other hand, had shattered every bone in her body and was twisted out of shape. Oh gods, what had he done? Perhaps knives were one thing, but a fall like this…
Suddenly, as if a puppet master had pulled the strings, she sprung back to life again.
“I take it back: you’re not as useless as I thought,” she said, lurching up.
Turold bent down to support her.
“I apologize…I would never have suggested it, had I not known—”
“That I was dead already? Better to feel dead than die at their hands, I suppose.”
“And those…were the Messengers? That’s what Sir Otrygg saw?”
“Yes, they came to the house, though not in such numbers,” she said, twisting her arm. “He beat them back, but the shock of seeing them, and knowing what they meant…that’s what killed him.”
“I still don’t understand, what ‘god’ are you talking about?” Turold asked.
“Surely you’ve heard the legends. Of the god they buried beneath the city in times long past…from which the magicians draw their power.”
Turold expected her to punctuate this statement with a laugh, since even the dead must have a sense of humor. Of course he knew the legends, the stories of a great battle between the old and the new; how the first stones of the city were laid on the bones of a vanquished god, a terrible power that once threatened the earth. A convenient origin myth required for every new world that popped out of existence, to cover up the centuries of mundane toil and backbiting. Yes, he knew the legends. But neither he nor any sensible magician believed them.
“What does any of this have to do with Sir Otrygg or the book?” he insisted.
“That’s what The Codex is,” she said, standing up on tottering legs. “His book. Written by his acolytes as a guide to resurrection. Sir Otrygg hoped to use it to wake the dead, to save me from the beyond, but he strayed too far. In trying to rescue one life, he may have roused them all.”
Above them, several shacks collapsed in flames and tumbled to the street below. More and more were now catching fire.
“We should go. It isn’t safe here. And they’ll soon be back.”
“I know a place. They shouldn’t be able to find us,” Turold agreed.
“If he’s awake, he can see everything. You can’t hide from a god.”
“He’s a legend, not a god. No one believes that nonsense, anyway.”
“Would you believe in me without seeing it first?” she asked.
Turold had no response.
