Cholik stood and looked out to the broken and gutted buildings that remained of Tauruk’s Port. He pretended not to notice as Raithen left, nor did he indicate that he heard the big pirate captain’s slight foot drag that told him Raithen had considered stabbing him in the back.
Metal whispered coolly against leather. But this time, Cholik knew, the blade was being returned to the sheath.
Cholik remained at the balcony and locked his knees so he wouldn’t tremble from the cold or from the exhaustion he suffered from spell use. If he’d had to expend any more energy, he thought he’d have passed out and been totally at Raithen’s mercy.
By the Light, where has the time gone? Where has my strength gone? Gazing up at the stars burning bright against the sable night, Cholik felt old and weak. His hands were palsied now. Most of the time he maintained control of them, but on occasion he could not. When one of those uncontrollable periods arrived, he kept his hands out of sight in the folds of his robes and stayed away from others. The times always passed, but they were getting longer and longer.
In Westmarch, it wouldn’t be many more years before one of the younger priests noted his growing infirmity and brought it to the senior priest’s attention. When that happened, Cholik knew he’d be shipped out from the church and placed in a hospice to help with the old and the diseased, all of them dying deaths by inches and him helping only to ease them into the grave while easing into a bed of his own. Even the thought of ending his days like that was too much.
Tauruk’s Port, with Ransim buried beneath, the information gleaned from the sacred texts—those things Cholik viewed as his personal salvation. The dark forces he’d allied himself with the past few years willing, it would be.
He turned his gaze from the stars to the fogbound river. The white, cottony masses roiled across the broken land forming the coastal area. Farther north, barbarian tribes would have been a problem to their discovery, but here in the deadlands far north of Westmarch and Tristram, they were safe.
At least, Cholik mused, they were safe if Raithen’s latest excursion to take a shipload of the king’s gold fresh out of Westmarch had not brought someone back. He peered down at the layers of fog, but he could see only the tall masts of the pirate ships standing out against the highest wisps of silver-gray fog.
Lanterns aboard those ships created pale yellow and orange nimbi and looked like fireflies in the distance. Men’s raucous voices, the voices of pirates and not the trained acolytes Cholik had handpicked over the years, called out to one another in casual disdain. They talked of women and spending the gold they’d fought for that day, unaware of the power that lay buried under the city.
Only Raithen was becoming more curious about what they sought. The other pirates were satisfied with the gold they continued to get.
Cholik cursed his palsied hands and the cold wind that swept over the Hawk’s Beak Mountains to the east. If only he were young, if only he’d found the sacred Vizjerei text sooner …
“Master.”
Startled from his musings but recovering in short order, Cholik turned. He tucked his shaking hands out of sight inside his robes. “What is it, Nullat?”
“Forgive me for interrupting your solitude, Master Cholik.” Nullat bowed. He was in his early twenties, dark-haired and dark-eyed. Dirt and dust stained his robes, and scratches adorned his smooth face and one arm from an accident during the excavation only a few days ago that had claimed the lives of two other acolytes.
Cholik nodded. “You know better than to interrupt unless it was something important.”
“Yes. Brother Altharin asked me to come get you.”
Inside his withered chest, Cholik’s heart beat faster. Still, he maintained the control he had over himself and his emotions. All of the acolytes he’d bent to his own ends feared him, and feared his power, but they remained hungry for the gifts they believed he would bestow. He intended to keep it that way. He kept silent, refusing to ask the question that Nullat had left hanging in the air.
“Altharin believes we have reached the final gate,” Nullat said.
“And has Altharin halted his work?” Cholik asked.
“Of course, master. Everything has gone as you have ordered. The seals were not broken.” Nullat’s face creased with worry.
“Is something wrong?”
Hesitation held Nullat mute for a moment. The pirates’ voices and the clangor of ships’ lines and rigging against yardarms and masts continued unabated from below.
“Altharin thinks he has heard voices on the other side of the gate,” Nullat said. His eyes broke from Cholik’s.
“Voices?” Cholik repeated, feeling more excited. The sudden rush of adrenaline caused his hands to shake more. “What kind of voices?”
“Evil voices.”
Cholik stared at the young acolyte. “Did you expect any other kind?”
“I don’t know, master.”
“The Black Road is not a way found by those faint of heart.” In fact, Cholik had inferred from the sacred Vizjerei texts that the tiles themselves had been shaped from the bones of men and women who had been raised in a village free of evil and strife. They’d never known need or want until the population had grown large enough to serve the demons’ needs. “What do these voices say?”
Nullat shook his head. “I cannot say, master. I do not understand them.”
“Does Altharin?”
“If he does, master, he did not tell me. He commanded only that I come get you.”
“And what does the final gate look like?” Cholik asked.
“As you told us it would, master. Immense and fearful.” Nullat’s eyes widened. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Nor has anyone else in hundreds of years, Cholik thought. “Get a fresh torch, Nullat. We’ll go have a look at what Brother Altharin has discovered.” And pray that the sacred texts were right. Otherwise, the evil that we release from behind that gate will kill us all.
Pressed into the side of the mist-covered cliff, holding himself on his boot toes and the fingers of one hand, Darrick Lang reached for the next handhold. He was conscious of the rope tied around his waist and loins. He’d tacked the rope to a ship’s spike he’d driven into the cliffside five feet below, leaving a trail of them behind him for the others to use. If he slipped and everything worked right, the rope would keep him from plunging to his death or into the river sixty feet below. If it worked wrong, he might yank the two men anchoring him to the side of the cliff down after him. The fog was so thick below that he could no longer see the longboat.
I should have brought Caron along, Darrick thought as he curled his fingers around the rocky outcrop that looked safe enough to hold his weight. Caron was only a boy, though, and not one to bring into a hostile situation. Aboard Lonesome Star, Caron was ruling king of the rigging. Even when he wasn’t assigned aloft, the boy was often found there. Caron had a natural penchant for high places.
Resting for just a moment, feeling the trembling
