right, two steps back as respect and the older priest’s tolerance dictated.
Letting his irritation burn away the traces that were left from his own anger and resentment at his approaching mortality, Cholik said, “Of course, I am all right. Why would I not be?”
“You were so quiet,” Altharin said.
“Contemplation and meditation,” Cholik said, “are the two key abilities for any priest to possess in order that he may understand the great mysteries left to us by the Light. You would do well to remember that, Altharin.”
“Of course, master.” Altharin’s willingness to accept rebuke and toil at a relentless pace had made him the natural candidate for being in charge of the excavation.
Cholik studied the massive door. Or should I think of it as a gate? The secret texts he’d read had suggested that Kabraxis’s door guarded another place as well as the hidden things the demon lord had left behind.
The slaves continued to labor, loading carts with broken rock with their bare hands by lantern light and torchlight. Their chains clinked and clanked against the hard stone ground. Other slaves worked with pickaxes, standing on the stone surrounding the door or atop frail scaffolding that quivered with every swing. The slaves spoke in fearful tones to one another, but they also hurried to finish uncovering the door. Cholik thought that was because they believed that they would be able to rest. If something behind the great door didn’t kill them, the old priest thought, perhaps for a time they would rest.
“So much of the door is uncovered,” Cholik said. “Why was I not called earlier?”
“Master,” Altharin said, “there was no indication that we were so close to finding the door. We came upon another hard section of the dig, the wall that you see before you, which hid the door. I only thought that it was another section of cavern wall. So many times the path that you chose for us has caused us to punch through walls of the existing catacombs.”
The city’s builders had constructed Ransim to take advantage of the natural caverns in the area above the Dyre River, Cholik remembered from the texts. The caves had provided warehouse area for the goods they trafficked in, natural cisterns of groundwater they could use in event of a siege—which had happened several times during the city’s history—and as protection from the elements because harsh storms often raced down from the summits of the Hawk’s Beak Mountains. Tauruk’s Port, founded after the destruction of Ransim, hadn’t benefited from access to the caverns.
“When we started to attack this wall,” Altharin continued, “it fell out in large sections. That’s why so much rubble remains before the door.”
Cholik watched the slaves loading huge sections of broken stone into the carts, then pushing the carts up to the dump sites. Other slaves filled large buckets with smaller debris and filled more carts. The ironbound wheels creaked on dry axles and grated against the floor.
“The work to uncover the door went quickly,” Altharin said. “As soon as I knew we had found it, I sent for you.”
Cholik strode toward the door, drawing on the remaining dregs of his strength. His legs felt like lead, and his heart hammered against his ribs. He’d pushed himself too far. He knew that. The confrontation with Raithen and the spell he’d summoned to destroy the rats had shoved him past his limits. His breath felt tight in his chest. Using magic no longer came easy to the aged and infirm sometimes. Spellwork had its own demands and often left those too weak to handle the energies warped and broken. And he’d come into the spells late in life after wasting so many years in the Zakarum Church.
The ground inclined toward the door, and Cholik’s steps hastened of their own accord. Slaves noticed him coming and cleared the way, yelling at one another to get out of the way.
Hammers rose and fell as more slaves put additional scaffolding into place, climbing higher up against the door. In their haste, part of the scaffolding fell, swinging like a pendulum from a fixed point, and four men fell with it. A lantern shattered against the stone floor and spilled a pool of oil that caught fire.
One of the fallen men screamed in pain, clasping a shattered leg. The torchlight revealed the gleam of white bone protruding through his shin.
“Get that fire put out,” Altharin ordered.
A slave threw a bucket of water over the fire but only succeeded in splashing it toward the huge door, spreading the flames into little pockets.
One of the mercenaries stepped forward and cut the ragged shirt from a slave with quick flicks of his dagger. He dipped the shirt into another bucket of water, then plopped the soaked garment on top of the fire. Sizzling, the fire died.
Cholik strode forward through the fire, unwilling to show any fear of it. He summoned a small shield to protect him from the fire and walked through it unscathed. The act created the effect he wanted, drawing the slaves’ attention from their fear of the door and replacing it with their fear of him.
The door was a threat, but a toothless one. Cholik had proven on several occasions that he had no compunctions about killing them and having their bodies thrown into the abyss. Gathering himself, standing now despite the weakness that filled him only because he refused to let himself falter, he turned to the slaves.
All their frantic whispering stopped except for the groaning man nursing the broken leg. Even he hid his face in the crook of his arm, whimpering and no longer crying out.
Knowing he needed more strength to face whatever lay on the other side of Kabraxis’s door, Cholik spoke words of power, summoning the darkness to him that he had feared decades ago, only begun to dabble in a few years ago, and had grown strong in of late.
The old priest held up his right hand, fingers splayed. As he spoke the words, forbidden words to those of the Zakarum Church, he felt the power leech into him, biting through his flesh and sinking into his bones with razored talons. If the spell did not work, he was certain he would fall and risk becoming comatose until his body recovered.
A purple nimbus flared around his hand. A bolt shot out and touched the slave with the broken leg. When the purple light spread over him and invisible hands grabbed him, the man screamed.
Cholik continued speaking, feeling stronger as the spell bound the man to him. His words came faster and more certain. The invisible hands spread-eagled the slave on the ground, then lifted him up, dangling him in the air.
“No!” the man screamed. “Please! I beg you! I will work! I will work!”
Once, the man’s fear and his pleading might have touched Cholik. Those things did not touch Cholik intimately, for the old priest could never remember a time when he’d placed the needs of another above his own. But there had been times he’d gone with the Zakarum Church missionaries in the past to heal the sick and tend to wounded men. The recent trouble between Westmarch and Tristram had been rife with those incidents.
“Nooooo!” the man screamed.
The other slaves drew back. Some of them called to the afflicted man.
Cholik spoke again, then closed his fist. The purple nimbus turned dark, like the bruised flesh of a plum, and sped along the length of the beam that held the slave.
When the darkness touched the slave, his body contorted. Horrible crunching echoed in the cavern as the man’s arms and legs shattered their sockets. He screamed anew, and despite the agony that must have
