The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 15: The Yellow Death, Part 1

 Banners hung along the walls, tattered and faded. Vos murmured that this looked like a muster hall. Quiet as he was, his voice still echoed off the high ceiling above. 

Casimir pointed his lantern here and there, picking out what looked like decayed racks of weapons and rusted piles of armor. Dust lay thicker here than it had at any point in their journey, and the air was full of a thick, unpleasant reek of mold. 

Denisius thought of spoiled food, and wondered just how quickly this fortress had been abandoned when the Yellow Death struck, or if he was smelling something even more unsavory than rotted provisions. He tried to tell himself that after thirty years or more, any plague victims must have been reduced to nothing but bones. In the utter darkness and the cloying aroma of things better left unseen, he had a hard time believing it.

Ammas had circled behind them and was propping the doors open with broken pieces of furniture, splintered lengths of wood that had probably been tables. Barthim was pitching in. "Argent Council won't like it," he said breathlessly, wiping his forehead, "but they haven't been down here in years, and we need to be able to come back this way if it's necessary."

"Why would it be necessary?" Denisius didn't much care for how high-pitched his voice sounded in his own ears.

Ammas didn't answer. Vos frowned and drew his blade, turning his gaze toward the far end of the hall, where a series of archways led to other passages. A single jawless skull lay on its side, staring blindly at them. Casimir shivered and pointed his lantern elsewhere.

Carala didn't like it. The moment they passed the sealed door, that unsettling smell of sulfur intensified to the point she almost felt like gagging. After a few minutes she became accustomed to it, but she was never not aware of its presence. She wondered if the others could smell it. In her own nostrils, it was thick enough nearly to seem like a physical thing. Idly she toyed with her dagger, drawing it from its sheath and passing it from one hand to the other, following the beam of Casimir's lantern and wishing she had her own light source. She considered asking Deni if she could carry his torch, especially since he and Vos were their only swordsmen.

Instinctively she found herself drawing closer to Ammas. Partly it was because there was something ineffably comforting about the way the airy spirit danced in its silver cage, and partly because alone of them all Ammas did not seem on the edge of being consumed by panic. Even Barthim, who in her brief acquaintance with him had struck her as the sort of man unlikely to be troubled by anything, still seemed to be recuperating from the suffocating closeness of the siege tunnel. 

The cursewright smiled thinly as she came near. "Hold this, would you?" With one hand he held out the walking stick; the other was rummaging through the pouches on his belt.

Nodding, Carala took the stick. The spirit in the cage flitted closer to her. Somewhere in her head -- it was assuredly not in her ears, extraordinarily sharp though they were -- a voice seemed to whisper soothing words, gentle reminders that not so far above their heads the sun shone on a living world, that this dead ruin was not all there was.

"The smell is worse here," she murmured to Ammas. The cursewright nodded, his fingers curled around a battered tin. As Carala watched, he opened the tin, exposing a thick black paste which he began to smear under his eyes. "What is that, exactly?"

Ammas chuckled without much humor. "You and Casimir, one just as curious as the other. Sometime I'll tell you all about this. It's spirit salve. Why don't you keep hold of the light? I'm afraid I'm going to be looking at the ground rather a lot." Carala nodded, sheathing her dagger and leaning on the walking stick with both hands as Ammas tucked away the tin of salve. "As for the smell," he said bracingly, drawing his own dagger, "I expect it to get worse. Eventually we'll all be able to pick up on it." His gaze, so strange and somehow not at all like the man she had come to know in the last three days when seen above the black smudges of the salve, fixed on hers. "Can you hear anything?" His voice was soft, so soft only wolf ears could hear it.

Carala stared into the looming darkness ahead. For a moment, she could hear nothing at all. Then, somewhere, a trickle of water, dripping in some lightless region before them. Her pupils grew wide as she stared into those shadowy arches. Ammas watched closely, frowning. Amid the hazel of her irises he could see tiny flecks of amber. Whether they were always there or were appearing now as she focused her senses, he did not know. "Wait -- wait -- " Carala's voice was a low hush.

"Yes?" Ammas prompted gently.

She looked up at him wonderingly. "I hear music."

So startled was Carala by what she'd heard that she wholly forgot to keep her voice down, and all of them looked at her curiously. 

"Music?" Denisius repeated with a doubtful smile that would have been patronizing if not for the fear at its edges. "I think you must be hearing things." Vos and Barthim looked just as dubious, peering into the suffocating blackness ahead. Casimir's brows knitted anxiously.

Ammas, on the other hand, now looked deeply alarmed. "All right," he murmured. "Draw close, all of you. Casimir, behind me. Keep close to Carala. Vos -- keep them in a box." The skymetal dagger in his hand threw back the light in odd blue gleams. Sweat was standing out on his cheeks and forehead. All around him he could feel the doors creaking open, the Veil of Ravens peeling back, the Dead waiting expectantly to be called upon for aid . . . or, failing that, inviting him to step into their rooms and traverse the terrible vistas beyond.

With any luck they would pass through this abandoned fortress and find their way into the crypt in the Chalk Hills without incident. But Ammas was not feeling especially lucky, and he knew better than to believe the things that had been sealed away here would stay quiet. The Yellow Death did not rest so easily. It had, after all, been designed to be nearly impossible to halt.

Keeping his gaze lowered, Ammas led them through the central and widest arch, his apprentice and Carala behind him, Denisius to his left, Barthim to his right, and Vos at the rearguard. Beyond the arch the passageway was more like a wide road, paved with sensible and well-preserved bricks, flanked by columned walkways where long-extinguished lanterns peeked from tarnished brackets. The smell of sulfur was now thick and rank. Carala was forced to cover her mouth and nose with one dark blue sleeve, or else gag at what to her senses was an intolerable stink. Denisius noticed and called on them to pause for a moment as he helped tie a kerchief around her face.

"Be quick, Lord Marhollow," Ammas hissed. Ahead the passage opened into what might well have been a plaza; the shape of some large central structure was barely visible at the edge of the spirit's dancing light. "We mustn't linger in one place too long."

Denisius scowled at Ammas, but didn't argue. The siege tunnel had been bad, but there was a watchfulness in this empty place that made every hair on his body stand to. Constantly his ears strained to pick up whatever it was that Carala claimed to have heard, but all he could detect was utter silence. Yet somehow it was a patient silence, and he would be very glad to be out of it.

The wide place ahead was laid out like a great rectangle, the columned walkways stretching out in either direction to ring the place in a forest of evenly placed stone trunks. Carala glanced up, seeing columned galleries rising up beyond the spirit's range of light. At least five stories' worth of such galleries towered over them, and whatever ceiling there might have been was lost in the shadows above. In her ears that strange music -- scraping, dissonant, and ugly, but unmistakably music all the same -- continued to rasp and creak from all around them. It set her teeth on edge, and inside she could almost see the she-wolf pacing, her hackles up, her tail switching erratically, waiting for the moment it would be necessary to strike. Or, perhaps, to flee.

Casimir's lantern was not quite as bright as the caged spirit, but its beam could be focused for longer distances. At Ammas's urging he shone it here and there, distantly illuminating a domed brickwork ceiling far above them. Dominating the chamber was a grand but dry fountain, its central pillar long since disconnected from whatever water source had once given it life. Under thick dust they could make out the shape of armored figures, antique soldiers of the sort who had served in the Emperor Kyrantine's cohorts. 

"It might have been a barracks," Vos said from the back. "This would be a central drilling area, with the quarters themselves behind the galleries. There are similar fortresses in Nythel built into the hills. It was a design Emperor Kyrantine favored. When I first joined the army I was stationed in a place not too different from this. The central barracks wasn't even half as large, though."

"Vos the Warlord," Barthim muttered. For the first time, Vos grinned at one of Barthim's sobriquets. "If you are being so wise, which is the way out?"