Sword of the Gods - Bruce R. Cordell [104]
The Veil’s animated end scanned the tableaux a moment, then directed them down a cobbled lane lined with a crumbling columbarium wall. Displaced urns from the wall lay shattered and askew across the way. Dark ashes spilled from some.
“A whole lot of disturbed graves,” said Chant, his tone worried.
“But is there any sign Kalkan came this way?” Riltana asked.
Chant kneeled to the cobbles. He carefully examined the stone, then rose, nodding. He said, “Something came this way recently, wearing boots. Scrapes along the paving stones are far enough apart to indicate whoever it was either was unnaturally tall, or more likely, that he was in a hurry.”
“Be on your guard, either way,” said Demascus, his own breath a waterfall of white. He stepped forward. His boot came down on a loose funerary urn. The sound of it cracking beneath his heel was loud as a bombardier’s detonation. Oops …
Sure enough, something stirred in response. Demascus pulled his sword free and ignited the imaginary glyphs along its edges, as greenish luminescence coalesced from the shattered urns. The glow swirled into a blot, and became a vaguely humanoid shape of terror.
“A specter!” barked Chant, his voice a full octave higher than normal.
The ghostly creature’s swirling, ethereal tatters feathered across him, and Demascus’s nose hairs froze and his fingertips went numb. He slashed, but his blade passed right through the specter as if it were only a dream.
Then it screamed. A barrage of horror sleeted through him, potent as a shot of whisky and sharp as a scalpel. He fell on his face, and his sword spun away from his nerveless grip.
“Lords of light!” he croaked, and scrambled for his weapon on hands and knees that suddenly didn’t want to function.
His hand found the hilt, and he regained his feet, barely. Where was the specter? He couldn’t see it. Was it gone? No. Unlikely it would appear just to say “Boo!” then run off.
The pawnbroker lay on his back, and Riltana perched on a grave marker a full ten paces away.
“Chant, are you all right?” he asked.
The man groaned.
The specter, quick as an eye blinking open, reappeared. It hadn’t gone anywhere, it had just turned invisible.
Its insubstantial claw glided straight through Demascus’s leather armor and drew a tear across his soul. Strength poured from him, and it was all he could do to not go down again.
His first instinct was to step away through a lane of shadow. But … that would probably only make him even more vulnerable to the creature’s attacks. It was the light he required. Light like what had blazed in the temple of Oghma, when he’d stood before the avatar of knowledge …
Some measure of his strength returned as a half-real glyph on his sword brightened. He summoned the temple light of his vision and set his sword afire with it. The specter came on, oblivious, until he swept his sword through the insubstantial undead. Golden light outlined the specter.
Features resolved above the undead’s ill-defined and vaporous torso for a single heartbeat: a man’s face, teeth gritted in ageless hate. Demascus laughed, and his voice broke strongly across the lane, “Your reign of terror ends here, lost one.” A wild exultation fired his limbs and his mind, a side effect of the glorious light. But he didn’t care. He reveled in it.
The specter retreated, flickering as if attempting to fade from sight again, but the radiant glow prevented it from slipping away from mortal eyes.
“Destroy it, while the gods’ light pins it!” Demascus yelled.
Chant rolled to his feet and sent three metal-tipped shafts through the undead’s swirling form, tearing great rents in the ectoplasmic flesh. Riltana popped up opposite Demascus, and shoved her short sword directly into the torso, where a living being would have kept its heart. Her blade took fire from the radiance still surrounding the