The Mongoliad: Book One

As they reached an archway, Cnan realized she could see more of the room, and their shadows were stretching, eager to run down the hall before them. She glanced over her shoulder and saw why: the yellow glow of torchlight spilling out of the stairwell.

“Here they come,” Finn said, shoving her lightly. “Into the tunnel.”

Yasper complied, and they departed the burial chamber. The tunnel ceiling was even lower, and with her head canted forward, Cnan took note of the smoothness of the floor. Worn down by the passage of innumerable feet, over the course of countless years. How many generations had brought their dead down here? she wondered.

When they reached the first corner, Finn hung back, ready to face their pursuers.

The first died without a sound, Finn’s spear thrust driving through his ragged robe and into his chest. The hunter shoved the monk off his weapon and moved to the right side of the tunnel to await his next victim.

The monk had been carrying a cudgel, and the wooden club lay in the tunnel, not far from Finn’s feet. Cnan stared at it, her fear warring with her desperate desire to uphold her Binder vows. But she had killed once already, she reasoned, there was already blood on her hands. Her mind flashed to the slaughtered animals aboveground and the persistent stain of their blood on everything.

At some point, the amount of blood no longer mattered.

The second man came around the corner and took Finn’s spear low in the belly. He collapsed in a heap, writhing and moaning, until Finn dispatched him with a quick flick of the spear tip.

Cnan darted forward, snatching up the club. She positioned herself on the other side of the tunnel, ready to bring the weapon down on the head of the first man foolish enough to stick it around the corner.

Behind them, Yasper cursed. Cnan dared to look and saw nothing but shadow. Yasper’s tiny light had gone out.

Finn grunted, and she whirled around to stare into the face of one of the filthy monks. His eyes were bulging and his mouth was opening and closing. His breath—how could it be possible?—was even worse than the corpse-rot stink of the courtyard. His hands scrabbled feebly at the ash shaft of Finn’s spear, protruding from his chest. He grunted and strained, broken Latin spewing from his mouth. Cnan caught a few words—vengeance and reclaiming among them—and then the breath rattled in his throat.

He was dead, but she hit him on the head anyway. Just to be sure.

The howling monk came next, the flaming skull-crowned staff roaring before him, and Finn hauled Cnan back, blocking the clumsy swing of the flaming staff with the steel tip of his spear. Sweat sprang on his brow and arms, coating him against the heat of the fiery ram skull. The monk swung the staff to and fro, forcing Finn back; he started chanting in time with his swings, an obscene liturgy.

Cnan stumbled down the hall, fleeing the fiery beast on the end of the pole. The tunnel filled with boiling orange light, and the heat—the waves of it, rolling over her—were too much, too much like…

And she was back in the burning house again, eight years old. The fire monster had her mother in its burning clutch, and it snapped and snarled at Cnan as she tugged and pulled at her mother’s heavy hand. Her skin blistered as it snorted fire, and her tears sizzled to steam on her face, burning her eyes as she shed them. Wake up, she cried, wake up.

The monster roared closer. Stark horns protruded from its fiery flesh, and its eyes were a maelstrom of black and red flame. Its mouth yawned open, fire gushing from its empty throat, and she remembered screaming, as if the violence of her cry could force the beast away. But the monster only howled with glee as it devoured her mother, its fiery tongues licking the skin from her face and arms, leaving nothing but black ash.

A shadow interposed itself between her and the flame beast, a phantom that shattered her memory. She came back to the present and found herself sprawled on her ass in the subterranean tunnel. Finn, his hand grabbing at her clothing, was dragging her away from the ragman priest and his fiery stick.

They passed Yasper, who—as soon as they were behind him—threw the fat jug he had scavenged from the ruins. The crazed monk shrieked and waved his flaming skull-crowned stick at them, and he paid no mind to the tumbling jug. It struck the stone floor in front of him and shattered.

The hallway erupted with blue flame, and a concussive wave of superheated air filled the tunnel. Yasper flung himself down on Cnan and Finn, or maybe he was bodily thrown by the wave of force—she wasn’t sure of anything after the explosion of light and sound. Fingers of heat crawled across her skin, stroking her cheeks and eyebrows. She didn’t dare open her mouth, for fear those hot tendrils would fling themselves into her throat and chest.

And then the tiny sun went out, leaving smoke and shadow and tiny strands of blue and yellow flame in its wake. The stench of burned meat filled the tunnel, and somewhere in the near distance, a pitiful creature mewled and whimpered.

Coughing, Yasper dragged himself off Cnan and leaned against the tunnel wall. His face was streaked with ash and sweat. “Such a waste of good aqua ardens,” he sighed.

Finn snarled something in his native tongue, and Yasper only nodded absently as he shoved himself upright. “But I didn’t kill us,” he replied, indicating the burned and smoking heaps in the hall. “The Virgin protects the truly clever.” He stamped out several tiny fingers of flame that were dancing on the floor.

The staff with the ram skull lay on the floor, its horned crown still afire, but the flames guttered and shivered as if they were slowing dying. Using his scarf, Yasper beat out the scattered rings of fire that wreathed the pole. Protecting his hands, he lifted the staff and, with its light, illuminated the passage beyond Cnan and Finn.

“Et facta est lux.” He grinned. “We’d best hurry before the rest of them find their courage again.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ERIC BEAR

Thanks to my family, to my friends, and to everyone who’s fought alongside me on this book, both metaphorically and literally. Thanks to all the other writers, especially Mark, for working harder than any one person should. Thanks to my dad and my grandpa, for guiding me down the path of writing.

GREG BEAR

It’s been terrific working with all of these fine writers, clashing steel in the mornings under Neal’s guidance, then quaffing coffee and breakfasting out of pink boxes of muffins while plotting at a mad pace…watching Mark outline and organize chapters on our blackboard while Joe and Cooper paced and swung and flashed their blades, shooting ideas back and forth with Neal across our writers’ table, talking across the continent with E.D. (and wickedly offering her virtual muffins), collaborating with son Erik on both fight strategies and chapters…while we all ventured on foot and horse through untold carnage and across wide plains of rippling grass, straight into the fabulous territories of Harold Lamb, Talbot Mundy, and Robert E. Howard… Thanks to all for the amazing experience!

E.D. DE BIRMINGHAM

E.D. would like to thank the brilliantly talented Nicole Galland for her brief but magnificent contribution to this project and the opportunity to pick up where she left off, and also Agent Extraordinaire Liz Darhansoff, for making it all possible.

JOSEPH BRASSEY