Azarion straightened from his slouch against the wall and unsheathed the knife at his hip. Stolen from the guard he killed in the catacombs, it wasn’t much in the way of weaponry but better than nothing.
More movement rippled through the darkness before a ribbon of vapor unfurled itself from the shelter of a broken column to float above the street’s cobblestones. Azarion possessed a newly discovered and puzzling talent for seeing through illusion, but whatever hovered in midair before him wasn’t an illusionary mask cast over a person. Nor was it a mist. The night was cold and clear, and dry enough to sting the lungs with each breath. And mist didn’t move the way whatever this was did. As insubstantial as a cloud, it bore the vague outlines of a person, its borders solidifying until Azarion could make out the ghostly form of a man.
He wore the clothes of another age and stared at Azarion from a face half hacked away by a sword or an ax. The grotesque visage didn’t take away from the intensity of the one-eyed gaze that rested on Azarion. A mournful keening, separate from the wind’s own dirge, rose along the street, and soon the wraith was joined by a throng of other wraiths.
Men, women, and children, young and old, they poured out of doorways and windows and bled through the scorched walls. Their keening turned to hollow wails that crescendoed and ebbed over and over until Azarion’s ears rang. He stood, blocking the feverishagacinfrom their gazes. None approached them, buttheir numbers swelled, spreading through the city streets to surround the temple where he sheltered.
“I told you,” theagacinwhispered behind him. “This is a grave, and we’re desecrating it.”
He didn’t dare take his eyes off the ghostly crowd to look at her. “They’ve done nothing so far except deafen me with their wailing.” He had far more to fear from the living than the dead.
“Not just wailing.” The witch’s tone firmed. “Can’t you feel it? They’re calling to something. Beseeching it to come.”
Her words, more than the shifting spirits and their wretched cries, sent a spike of ice water down his spine. He didn’t ask her to explain. Those who worked magic, any magic, possessed a sense that others didn’t for the odd and unnatural. His shaman mother often sensed things otherworldly and strange when working her rituals. If the witch said this was more than the grieving of the suffering dead, he believed her.
He bent to empty the satchels, finding only rations, utensils, and a bone needle and thread. A small bundle tumbled out last, and his fingers made short work of the binding. He crowed in triumph when bits of charcoal for starting a fire spilled onto the portico floor.
“What are you doing?” Theagacin’s wide eyes were fever-bright, her gaze frightened.
“Drawing a circle of protection around us. My mother taught me this.” He set to work, using the charcoal to sketch a circle around himself and theagacin. Sacred words of power, taught to him and his sister when they were children, spilled from his lips, and the soot-stain arc he’d drawn shimmered faintly in the darkness.
“It’s coming,” the witch said, her warning almost drowned as the ghosts’ wails pitched to ear-ringing shrieks.
Azarion eyed the circle, searching for any gaps. His handstrembled as he filled in the spots he’d missed. There could be no gaps, or whatever the ghosts had summoned would break through the meager protection.
The mob of wraiths pulsed with a kind of ravenous eagerness for whatever horror approached. Their wailing halted with an abruptness that made Azarion jump. Midrigar’s spectral prisoners thinned like fog before a sunrise, fading from a vaporous army crowding the streets to shredded wisps of smoke that sank into the cobblestones and walls or darted away, quick as moths chased by bats. In moments, the city emptied, leaving only the suffocating silence that had first greeted them at the gate.
It was a false serenity.
They didn’t have long to wait for the thing summoned by the dead. Azarion spotted a strange warping of the stones along the side of one of the buildings facing the temple where he sheltered with theagacin. At first, it looked like the masonry oozed in spots, as if the moonlight glimmered so hot, it melted the mortar used to hold the stones in place. He squinted for a better look and noticed the melting was simply the watery movement of a translucent creature as it crawled down the structure like a long-limbed crab.
Three times the length of a man, with two arms and two legs, it scuttled along the surface of the building until it reached the street. Long fingers—seven on each hand—detached from the wall and stretched out to skate across the cobblestones. The thing had no face, only the watery outline of a skull atop a neck and shoulders whose shape rippled, collapsed, and re-formed as if made of melting ice.
Free of the wall, it paused to crouch, rocking one way and then the other, head tipped up as if to sniff the air with a nose that wasn’t there. Azarion dared not breathe. Behind him, the witch was as silent as the dead.
Suddenly, it pivoted on its haunches, its faceless head whipping toward Azarion. Spindly limbs tucked into themselves before snapping apart as the creature hurtled toward them, eating the distance in disjointed leaps.
Azarion spoke over his shoulder. “Agacin,” he said. “If you have fire, now’s the time to use it.”
The creature kept coming, limbs rippling like the thrashing of a worm as it crossed the avenue and clambered up the temple steps. Azarion’s skin crawled as the thing’s head ratcheted from one side to the other in spasmodic jerks. Whatever it was, it didn’t belong in this world.
Azarion stepped farther back in the protective circle, careful not to scrape away the charcoal’s flimsy barrier. Spidery fingers reached for him. Blue sparks crackled off its hands when the otherworldly predator touched some invisible wall. It recoiled, emitting a shrieking buzz like that of a disturbed hornet’s nest. Azarion glanced down at the circle’s drawn barrier, noting it now glowed a hot yellow.
The thing paced back and forth, agitated fury in every line of its misshapen body. Azarion was reminded of the caged cats the Empire imported for fighting in the Pit. Given a choice, he’d rather fight a clowder of those than one of these monsters.
It hurled itself against the invisible obstruction created by the charcoal and the Savatar incantations. A shower of sparks lit the darkness once more, followed by the angry buzzing. Gnarled fingers clawed at the resistant magic, the creature desperate to grasp the prey it could so clearly see but couldn’t reach.
Azarion spared a quick glance for his companion. She had gained her feet, and her wide eyes glittered with terror. “I’ll kill us both before I let that thing take us,Agacin.”
She turned even paler, thin fingers clutching the blanket as ifit were a shield. “No,” she whispered, gaze darting back and forth between him and the monster. “Please. No one should have to die inside Midrigar.”
Her obvious horror made him pause. She was right. His own soul cringed at the idea of joining the imprisoned dead.
The creature suddenly halted its frenzied attempts to breach the spell wall. Its head slowly swiveled on its spindly neck. The featureless visage split apart in the space where a mouth might have been, creating a lesion from which a fleshy tongue, red as pulped meat, unfurled to taste the air.
“What’s it doing?” theagacinwhispered.
Azarion studied it. Even without a face, its body language revealed much. Something had drawn its attention, and like a serpent, it tested the air for the scent of other prey.
