42. NECROPOLIS #2
“Think of the Cathedral,” Solai said as she handed them each two more captured demons in tubes. “We’ve all been to the white room when we were consecrated as children. You may not remember it, but your body does.”
Ysira addressed Sister Ilusha. “Once we’re through, you know how to make the tracking system stop killing people?”
“I do.” Ilusha said it to the rocks. She couldn’t hold Ysira’s gaze for long. “I may not be much good in an exorcism, but I am a fully trained inquisitor.”
“I’ll go first,” said Solai. “Urien said there might be motion sensors.”
She lifted a hand, golden sparks dancing over her fingertips. “I can blind them.”
She took Ysira’s hands and pressed something into them: a cylinder of not-quite-stone, shaped roughly like the hilt of a blade. Ysira stared at the ashek, speechless. She didn’t know how to convey that she didn’t feel worthy of this.
“This belonged to Elyas Var Teneb,” Solai said. “Or it would have. He never had the chance to claim it. He hoped you’d find your way to us one day, and he’d be proud to see you wield this. For the Scar.” More quietly, she added, “For Neri. For my children, and for yours.”
“For Naxal.” Saraida stepped up to the Gate. “You won’t be alone.”
Solai nodded to her, grateful, and the two women stepped through the hole in the universe together.
Ged drew his sword before he followed. “Be ready for anything.” Taraven went next, then Goran, then Ilusha. After one last look at Zal Fel, Ysira tucked the ashek into her belt and followed.
They emerged in very close confines. Ysira could hear the others breathing, feel the heat off their bodies as the Gate pulsed behind her.
As if it had detected their arrival, the opposite wall gave way.
The pale-stone shifted. Rectangular segments scrolled apart, sliding over each other to reveal the expanse beyond—austere, windowless, and vast as any Inner City plaza.
In its center, two domes protruded from the low ceiling and floor, mirror images of each other.
Between them, rotating slowly, levitated a pyramidal structure of the same dark metal as Ged’s ring.
Tiny spots of red flared on its surface as another hour ticked by.
Ysira guessed the pyramid was about two hundred feet away, equidistant from the Gate and the white door that led to the rest of the Cathedral. It all seemed deceptively simple, too simple—until Ged stepped forward.
The floor rippled. Three tetrahedra, miniature versions of the ones that patrolled the city streets, rose soundlessly out of the floor like heads from underwater. They floated there, perfectly still.
Ged took another step. When the foremost of the tetrahedra began to rotate, he held up a fist and stopped.
They all backed away, just a step out of range.
Ysira could see now what Urien had told them to look for: dark patches at each tetrahedron’s apex, where light winked off a reflective surface. Motion sensors.
“Let me go first, alone,” Ysira muttered. “If I get hit—”
“You’ll keep getting hit, and the rest of us will still be trapped here while you’re blasted to pieces,” Solai said. “Besides, only Semira can control the system with his ring. We all go, on my signal.”
She recited a prayer, then something else in Zal, of which Ysira understood four words: her family’s names.
As Dacil Var Solai called on her demon, the rest of them spread out as much as the space would allow.
They readied themselves to sprint. Golden light sputtered and flared between Solai’s hands.
A blood vessel burst in her eye. Then she shot a beam of extradimensional energy at the first tetrahedron’s apex.
The light refracted in two more controlled beams toward the other sensors.
She couldn’t destroy them, couldn’t even damage them—but she could blind them. She gasped, “Now!”
They ran. They split off in five different diagonals—better some of them get hit than all of them.
Ysira was halfway to the pyramid when Solai lost control.
A green ray struck the floor, punching up a hail of rubble.
Ysira ducked and dove. Couldn’t be sure if she’d been hit.
A severed arm struck her in the head. She threw herself behind the pyramid and looked up in time to watch Ged jam his ring into the base.
The pyramid’s rotation ceased. The tetrahedra melted back into the floor.
Ilusha was doubled over, retching. Blood plastered Saraida’s curls to her forehead, a shower of dust coating her armor, but she was well enough to help Goran to his feet and check him for injuries. Solai, drenched in sweat and breathing hard, jogged toward them from the Gate.
The severed arm had been Taraven’s. There wasn’t much left of the knight, just a mass of bone, metal, and viscera smeared across the white floor.
They had no more than a heartbeat to process before Ilusha snapped, “Someone heard that. Six of them, outside, coming to investigate now.”
“Telepaths?” Ysira asked, thinking fast. “At least one.”
“Handle them,” Ysira ordered her. “Don’t let them send for help. I’ll cover you.”
“Line up,” Ged told the others. “No explosives. We do this quick and quiet.”
The white door opened to reveal three Cathedral guards, one armored knight, and two black-robed, white-eyed priests. Ysira recognized the Church’s battle-scarred Chief Inquisitor, Brother Jarak, as he drew two slender swords.
Solai ran at him before Ysira could. She hurled a fistful of brilliant golden light, stunning Jarak like she’d stunned the motion sensors. She raised her ashek.
And then Ysira had no choice—the second telepath, another inquisitor, was on her.
She had to kill him quickly, keep him away from Ilusha as Ged, Saraida, and Goran engaged the knight and Guardsmen. So, Ysira gave ground, let her defenses slip as if from exhaustion. She drew her opponent back—toward the Gate.
The inquisitor sidestepped her thrust and stabbed her in the stomach. Ysira clenched her teeth through the pain. She seized him by the shoulder. Metal sliced deeper into her guts as she pulled him closer, close enough to wrench his dagger from its sheath and plunge it into his back.
With a cry, the inquisitor let go of his sword.
It slipped out of Ysira with a slick, wet sound.
She dragged the inquisitor around and forced him back, a hairsbreadth from the shimmering, pulsating fracture of the Gate.
Through blood loss and pain, he fought her.
He coughed up a red splatter. Ysira twisted the knife and shoved him into the open maw of the Source.
Behind her, someone screamed. Ysira whirled to see Solai on her knees, clutching her temples.
Her ashek, already clumsy in her untrained grip, sputtered out on the ground.
Jarak drove his blade up, an expert thrust through a gap in her armor.
Ysira sprinted toward them, but it was too late.
Solai was dead before she hit the floor.
It was so stupidly predictable. For a moment, Ysira had had hope, and in the end, it was just as she’d feared. She’d sent this woman to her death.
Jarak met Ysira at a run. They exchanged a series of hard, fast crashes.
He was swifter than any opponent she’d faced, save Rakalem.
Jarak trapped her glaive between his swords and twisted, wrenching it from her grasp.
He kicked it out of her reach. He spun one sword in his grip and rammed the pommel into Ysira’s diaphragm.
She fell, gasping. He slammed an elbow into her jaw.
Drops of blood splattered the floor. Her head swam.
He slit her throat, right below her old scar, and shoved her away as he ran toward Ilusha.
On her knees, Ysira hacked up blood from her mangled airway.
It cost her several precious seconds to suck down oxygen and recover.
She stood and hurled a knife—badly. The blade grazed Jarak’s leg, made him stumble.
Ysira closed the distance and tackled him from behind.
As he shook her loose, she wrenched out another knife.
They faced each other, both breathing hard. Jarak was doubled over, clutching his leg. He narrowed his eyes, head tilted ever so slightly, as though recognizing what was wrong about Ysira’s consciousness. His weathered features hardened with new resolve.