A great gust of wind swept up from the dusty floor, but Isak barely noticed. This time as his fingers touched the black sword it flared, searing-hot, even as light burst from the Crystal Skull. Isak gasped and staggered back, his hand now firmly wrapped around the black sword’s long grip — it was the only thing he could see through the white light, a midnight force that not even the power of the Skull could eclipse. Power surged up his arm with such ferocity he felt his bones creak and judder. Magic flooded his body and invaded his mind with shards of ice before the presence of the Skull balanced it.
He dropped to one knee, his great shoulders shaking with the effort of holding the weapon as dark stars burst before his eyes. Suns wheeled through his mind, scorching a path across the holes torn in his memory. Voices clamoured in his ears, hundreds, thousands of beseeching voices, and as he moaned under the pressure, his own voice felt like the vengeance of the heavens, crashing through his mind.
Distantly he felt a hand under his shoulder. He tried to scream a warning for Mihn, but his voice was not his own. His heart boomed in his chest, his ribs shrieked in pain and the rune on his chest burned once more, the stink of charred flesh filling his nose.
And then the hands holding him felt blessedly cold against the surging heat of magic, a foundation stone upon which Isak braced himself. The heartbeat of more than one man pulsed in those hands, it was dozens, hundreds. Through the rune on his chest he could feel them, with Mihn a second conduit to those who had bound themselves to him. The soldiers of the Ghosts, their brute strength a force of its own in his veins, marched alongside the cold, remarkable men of the Brotherhood, and leading them all, the iron-hard will of Legana’s sisterhood.
Blood trickled from his nose as Isak embraced his Skull’s power and drove back against the monstrous, remorseless flow of power from Termin Mystt. Air returned to his lungs and he gasped furiously to clear the swirl in his mind. He felt Mihn urge him up and at last his strength returned, allowing him to rise once more and face the obsidian statue.
Shards of black glass were sloughing off it, flaking away with increasing speed. The wind continued unabated, whipping up great gusts of air and tearing clouds of dust from the statue. More and more disintegrated until, in a matter of heartbeats, just an armoured man was left, his sapphire eyes staring down at them through the breeze that threw his long hair across his face.
With jerky movements, the man — Vorizh Vukotic himself — looked at the sword now in his hand. The emerald pommel of Eolis shone in the weak light as he stiffly raised the weapon hilt-first up to inspect. His eyes widened as he recognised the weapon.
‘So it begins,’ the man rasped.
Isak echoed his movement, struggling for a moment to bring up the black weapon to inspect. His hand shook, the raw power of Termin Mystt barely shackled by the Skull. It was perfectly, flawlessly black. Only its outline was visible; although Isak could feel some form of decoration on the guard against his wrist, he could see nothing. His left hand he kept pressed against the Skull at his waist.
An otherworldly echo surrounded him, filling his lungs and mind. Isak realised it was the presence of the divine, some part of Lord Death bound to the sword. The memories of Ghenna returned to him; those awful sights and agonising sensations, but he had endured them somehow, and thus prepared, Isak refused to submit to the terror welling inside him.
Vorizh turned to look at the bodies of his siblings as they faded beneath ever-increasing mist. Isak tensed, ready to raise the black sword, though a dull ache ran through his bones and magic prickled on his skin, but there was no outrage on the vampire’s face; there was barely even curiosity.
‘You had help in the tests?’
‘Your last test was killing your brother and sister — don’t fucking dare take exception to how I’ve gone about it,’ Isak gasped. ‘I’ve travelled most of the way across this country you’ve torn apart and I’ll gladly kill you now.’
His voice sounded hollow, distant, as if altered by the presence of the sword. Behind him, Isak sensed Mihn flinch, and her remembered the small man’s account of being in Death’s throne room.
The vampire’s face twitched, muscles moving uncertainly into the configuration of a smile. ‘You bear the burden with great resilience; your Gods made you well, white-eye,’ Vorizh rasped. ‘Now I will help you become their equal.’
Isak spat on the ground and turned away. His face was taut as he fought to control the raging forces inside him, but that was nothing new to the savage-tempered white-eye.
‘Spare me. You’ll help me how I say because you know what I can give you.’ He paused. ‘Or relieve you of, mebbe. Either way, shut up and follow me. I think your sister wants a word.’
CHAPTER 18
Every step back up through the ziggurat was an effort. Isak’s limbs were heavy and sluggish, as though he wore armour of lead. The sword itself weighed nothing, but Vorizh had been right to call it a burden: it dragged at his mind and sapped his strength, filling his head with the buzz of wild energies and amplifying the voices of daemons carried on a breeze his cheek couldn’t feel.
Behind him Isak could hear the soft, neat pad of Mihn’s bare feet and sensed the man keeping as close he could. Of Vorizh there was no sound, and more than once Isak turned to check the vampire was still with them. The sight was far from encouraging. Behind Mihn was a shifting, restless mass of shadows; only the vague outline of a human form remained — that and two darkly gleaming sapphire eyes.
A lambent glow on the stairs ahead told Isak it was the last flight to go. He almost groaned with relief as he struggled up them and onto the night shrouded upper floor of the Grand Ziggurat. A dozen Black Swords were there now, each man holding one of the spluttering mage-torches to cast white light over the proceedings. With Termin Mystt in his hand Isak could no longer taste the magic leaking from the torches, only a sense of a great twisting cloud of magic centred on him.
He looked past the people waiting and realised each level of the ziggurat was similarly lit, as was the shoreline of the island on which it stood, and the wide bridge they had crossed to reach it. For a moment he entertained the hope that the sensation was just that, the concentric rings of torches surrounding him, but a part of him recognised the deeper resonance in the air, like looming storm-clouds, when even the Gods held their breath.
‘Lord Sebe,’ intoned Priesan Sorolis, ‘you have walked the labyrinth and hold the mysteries of Vanach in your hand. The signs are fulfilled, the mysteries revealed.’
The old woman’s face was solemn, but she glanced momentarily at the third figure that left the ziggurat, and when she did, her hand started to shake in the folds of her robe.
She raised her arm to indicate the brightly lit bridge leading to the shore. ‘A place has awaited you in the Hall of the Sanctum since our founding; come.’
Isak didn’t respond, but he looked at his companions, feeling light-headed in the breeze washing over them. Doranei and Veil smiled, relieved by his obvious success, while those more sensitive to magic stared aghast at the black sword in his right hand. He glanced down at it and tried to flex his fingers. A flicker of worry ran through him as his numb fingers failed to respond, then at last his muscles became his own again, though his fingers moved only fractionally.
‘Lead on,’ Isak croaked, still staring at the sword apparently fused point-down to his hand.
The Priesan obeyed and headed back down the levels with the rest of the Sanctum, but Isak made no move to follow. He was too concerned by the fact that he could not remove his hand from the grip of Termin Mystt. There was no pain, but it felt as though he were the one being gripped, not the other way around.
‘Isak?’ Vesna said cautiously as he approached his friend. ‘Is all well?’
Isak looked up warily, until he realised Vesna hadn’t spoken loud enough for the Black Swords to hear above the hiss of their torches, that he had spoken at all told Isak he was betraying too much.
‘It is,’ he replied. ‘We have what we came for.’
‘More than that, it appears,’ Legana commented, the divine light inside her waxing stronger the closer she came to the sword. Then she focused her attention on Vorizh as the vampire went to the edge and surveyed the city beyond. ‘We are thirteen now?’
