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Chapter Seventeen

The words scraped through Rae’s mind like sandpaper across glass. Still gripping the spiritblade, Rae drew a fragment of his bound zephyr, wrapping himself in the storm. Gusts of wind and lightning played through his cloak and ruffled his hair, flattening the ground around him and kicking waves of dust into the air. The voice came again. Louder.

—the unmaker is coming. he is coming for me. for us.

“Show yourself. I’m tired of this game, spirit.” Rae scanned the tree line. There was nothing but broken stumps and swirling debris. “What do you want with me?”

—to live. to live again. help me!

And then he saw it. A wave of rising shadows, billowing out of the ground like a ripple on a still pond. It washed over the trunks of broken trees, disturbing the blanket of mist that still clung to the ground. Strange crows startled into the sky, swirling over the trees before turning north, screaming as they fled. There were shapes in the wave that rose from the ground. Shapes and voices.

“Guys!” Rae let the zephyr carry him across the ground, leaving a trail of swirling dust in his wake. La and Mahk turned to look at him as he landed between them. The zephyr retreated into his soul. Then their eyes fell on the distant shadow.

“What is that?” Mahk asked. “I mean, you see that, right? The shadows . . .”

“We see it,” La answered. “And whatever it is, I’m willing to run away from it.”

Mahk set off at a steady lumber. La tore after him, leaving Rae staring at the wave. It was getting wider, either growing or simply coming into view. Without a clear idea of how close it was, it was impossible to tell how big the thing could be. Rae was still trying to convince himself that it was just a trick of the shadows, a figment of his imagination. But the voices . . . 

They skittered through the air, songbirds at first, quickly resolving to the chattering of madhouse victims, the singing of dirges, the whispered threats of murderers. The sound of it shouldn’t reach this far, but those voices scraped against Rae’s skull. Shapes formed in the wave. Faces. Hands. Mouths. It was closer than he thought.

It was a wave of skeletons, their skulls blackened, splintered, grinding together as they rolled forward, carried by an unseen force. Skulls crested the wave, whispering their threats before being swept under, grasping hands and shattered ribs pulling at the trunks as they passed. A tree fell and turned to cinders, not a dozen yards away. Small eddies of choking ash swirled through the wave, twisting into the sky, tornadoes of bright embers and thick smoke. The wave reached the creek that Rae had just forded, turning the water to steam, curling up as it smashed against the opposite bank. A wall of clawing fingers rose into the sky, balancing on the tip of their momentum for a heartbeat, two, and then crashing back down. The sound of shattering bones and the howling of the dead filled the air.

Rae turned and ran. He reached for the zephyr, but the spirit refused to answer. The wave of chittering voices chased him through the broken forest. One voice echoed louder than the rest in his mind: the voice in his skull, carrying him forward, urging him on. Mocking him as he stumbled, laughing at his fear, whispering death and oblivion in his heart. He ran, and the words followed. Or led.

They reached the strip of wasted land and broke through the trees, hammering across the cracked earth. I think I know what caused this, Rae thought. His foot went through the soft bones of an eroded skull. He didn’t want to end up like that. They reached the threadbare tree line. The sound of the undead wave crashing across the desolation filled the air.

Lalette was way out in front of him, swiftly passing Mahk as the big man stumbled over a rise in the landscape. La vaulted a fallen tree, landed hard, regained her feet and pounded up a gentle hill. A crown of stones ringed the crest of the hillock, gray and smooth, as though they had been worn down by a river. Mahk lumbered up the hill, his chest puffing from the sprint. The sound of the rolling tide of bones crept closer to Rae. He didn’t dare look back, but when La reached the top of the hillock she twisted around. Her eyes told him all the story he needed to know.

“Rae! Haul it!” she shouted.

The massive pack was slowing him down. It banged from shoulder to shoulder, throwing off his stride and threatening to topple him with each step. He twisted his right arm free of the pack, but as it fell, the left arm loop twisted around, cinching around his elbow like a noose. He torqued around, the pack bumping along behind him as he tried to free himself. Inadvertently, his eyes strayed up to the rapidly approaching wave.

Twenty feet away, then fifteen. Ten feet and he was still staring at it in horror.

“Rae!” La screamed.

He drew the sword and slashed the pack loose, slicing through his arm in the process. The blade was sharp enough for that, at least. The pain focused his mind. He ran, but the bones were clattering just behind him. The voices rising from the black tide slithered around him, words lost in an endless susurration. He ran as fast as he could, pumping his legs in utter panic. They got closer. He ran faster, drawing on reserves of terror and rage that he didn’t think he held. The bones got closer. Lalette was staring at him from the top of the hillock, helpless, terrified. Mahk stood next to her. He was clenching his jaw. Mahk knew. He knew Rae was as good as dead, and there was nothing either of them could do.

Rae grabbed at the storm mote lodged in his soul. This time it answered like a swift hound, hungry for the hunt.

A cloud billowed around Rae’s shoulders. Shafts of rain lashed the ground at his feet. He felt the wind pick up, and then he was flying, briefly, frantically, rocketing into the air like a bullet. He was riding a squall line of driving rain and spattered hail, flecked with lightning. It broke against the trees, swallowing them in a gray wall of roiling cloud. He looked down. The ground skidded by, a dozen yards beneath his feet, the log that La had vaulted and then the start of the hill. He looked up. He was flying straight at Lalette.

Rae dropped the spirit like a hot coal, releasing the storm and covering his face, tucking the sword against his ribs to keep from skewering his sister. He hit the ground hard. Arms and legs flailed as he rolled across the hard earth, his hand smashing against one of those massive stones, La shrieking as he bowled her over. The spiritblade flew from his hand. La jumped to her feet, dragging Rae up with her. The storm continued, curling outward like a wave, dissipating as the connection to the elemental plane of Air was cut off. Beneath them, the wave of blackened bones was still coming. Rae scrambled to where the sword had landed, drawing it as he squared off against the coming doom.

Mahk braced one foot on a boulder and drew his flintlock. The report cut through the gibbering from the skulls below, but the shot didn’t seem to have any effect. He started to reload, but the pistol came apart in his hands. He held the pieces, staring at them for a long moment before throwing them to the ground.

Mahk whipped the sword that they had pilfered from the abandoned caravan from his belt and shook it at the wall of approaching bones.

“Come on, then! We’ll see if you break!”

The wave struck the base of the hill. At first, Rae thought the elevation was going to save them, but rather than washing past like water against a stone, the blanket of crawling bones started up the incline. Its flanks drew together, adding depth to its mass, until it was a narrow river snaking its way up the low hill. Rae drew his flintlock and pointed it at the nearest skull. When he pulled the trigger, the hammer dropped and the pan flared, but nothing happened.

“What the hell . . . ?” he muttered, lowering the pistol and staring at the weapon. Cinders crawled around the pan, worming their way through the metal and wood of the stock. Suddenly, the flintlock fired. He dropped it, startled by the sound and recoil, only to realize he’d been pointing vaguely in the direction of Mahk. The big man stared down at a bright red weal across his forearm, then looked up at Rae before shaking his head.

Lalette growled in frustration and charged past her brother. She had the spear in her hands, and reached the crown of boulders that served the hillock like a little wall just as the abomination crested the hill. She struck hard and fast, smashing a skeleton as it loomed beneath the boulders, scattering its bones and breaking the wave’s momentum. Rae and Mahk joined her in a heartbeat, waving swords and screaming. For a moment they were able to hold the demon back, if demon it was, and not the remnants of something else. Their flurry of blades and spear thrusts shattered bones. A cloud of splintered dust rose around them, filling the air with the smell of mildew. A scree of bone shards collected underfoot.

Slowly, though, they lost ground. Lalette was forced back from her stone, and when Rae tried to cover the gap in their defenses, the wave lapped around him and threw him to the hard-packed dirt. He tried to reach for the storm in his soul, but something wasn’t connected, as though the sudden influx of Chaos had disrupted the binding. Mahk dragged him away from the crest of the hill, swearing as the creature swarmed over the boulders. Rae finally scrambled to his feet. Mahk’s sword was pitted with rust and the edge was as jagged as a lumberjack’s bucksaw. Veins of rust shot through the steel. The big man threw it to the ground, and the steel burst into flakes.

“Well, hell,” Mahk muttered. He faced the coming wave with his hands balled into fists, the knuckles already bloody. “Not much else we can do.”

A windship scudded overhead, low to the trees and moving fast. Just as its shadow passed over them, the mainsail and outriggers dipped hard. Rae could imagine the rigging snapping tight, the sound of the spars groaning under the sudden course correction. The windship spun around like a leaf in a stream. Incredible handling, Rae thought. Miracle it didn’t tear itself apart.

The windship dove, and a single figure dropped from the main deck. It fell like a rock, straight at them. Rae was horrified, his heart in his throat. He didn’t want the last thing he saw to be some poor sap splatter all over the ground right at his feet. But just before the figure reached the ground, four wings of silver light sprouted from its back, catching the wind. The figure—a woman, he realized—landed in the middle of the carpet of bones. They blew away from her like leaves in the wind. She folded her spirit back into her soul, banishing the wings and snuffing out the silver light of her blade.

She was dressed in the tight-fitting quilted top and armored kilt of the justicars. Gold trim lined the high collar that covered the lower half of her face, exposing only silver eyes and a mop of short blond hair that was close-cropped on the sides. Gold and silver chain mail chased the hem of her kilt and ran down her belt. Lawbinder, Rae realized.

Now we’re really dead.


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