Atticus drew in a deep breath, suppressing the violent urge to cough out the dust that seemed to have gotten caught in his lungs, and thrust Holyborn—still scabbarded—through the loop in his belt. Then he planted his hands on the glamour rune, spreading one hand to the left and the other to the right, extending the range of the rune inch by inch until it spanned the entire wall.
He suddenly doubled over, clutching his knees, struck by a tremendous surge of nausea and fatigue. His mind was foggy. His vision was swimming. He saw two, and gradually three, of the runelight-coated wall. The ground was shaking beneath his feet. Had the sheer force of the rune ripped out chunks of stone from underneath him? But it was aglamourrune, Atticus thought. Not a—
“They’re coming down the stairs!”
The scream cut through the cloud of panic that had immobilized the crowd, and a frenzy of movement broke out. Scholars shoved and elbowed past one another, determined to get to the corridor at the back of the chamber. Beams of sinister crimson light issued from Atticus’s left, glancing across the walls, accompanied by the sound of metal-plated boots grinding and crashing against stone.
“Halt!” Atticus bellowed.
The order boomed through the tunnel network. Dust and stone tumbled down from the ceiling, raining upon those who either had yet to flee the chamber or had decided to stay and heed Atticus’s instructions. The departed scholars returned, coming to their senses, realizing that there was no use running from the man who’d initiated their retreat to begin with.
Once silence had fallen over the crowd, Atticus said, in the sharpest, sternest tone that he could manage, “Do as I say, and the research you’ve done, the projects you’ve worked on, and the books you’ve read will not amount to nothing. Do as I say, and the future of our society—and thus all of humanity—may yet live on.”
Atticus was not certain whether it was because he had convinced the masses, or because they simply wanted something to do with themselves before they died, but the scholars rallied to his cause, drawing up to the rune fixed onto the wall.
He darted a quick glance over his shoulder. He hadn’t estimated how long it had taken him to reach this chamber, but he was hoping at least half an hour.
He hurried down the line of scholars, advising them on the conformation of the glamour rune, the exact length of its whorls and curves, the thickness of the singular straight line that carved through the middle. Some of their initial attempts were clumsy, though those who had already sketched the rune counseled them, gesturing at the places that required improvement. The shorter scholars wiggled between the taller, who shuffled aside to make room, and then copied their neighbors.
Atticus went back to his own position, then gave the command.“Push!”
The scholars obeyed. They shoved forward, embedding each of their glamour runes into the wall. The blue light intensified, merging with the glow of Atticus’s rune, just as dazzling as moments before.
He drew another, then piled it atop the last, enhancing it. A horrendously potent burst of energy coursed up his arms, thrumming through his muscles. He could nearlyfeelthe power of the runes cast long before his time, even centuries before Eldreave’s, tracing the course of history all the way back to Edmond Azren.
No, Atticus could not just feel their magic, the rune taught to them by their professors, but the souls of the ghosts themselves. They thrashed and flailed at the barriers of his mind. They wept. They screamed. They recounted the chronicles of their disquiet. They told Atticus again and again, until he thought their voices might bleed into his skull and drive him insane, the torture they had faced, the agony they had seen throughout the thousands upon thousands of years they’d been entombed.
He drew back, satisfied with the added force of the rune.
Recalling Eldreave’s instructions, Atticus unsheathed Holyborn, which was humming shrilly in his ears, and was promptly assailed by a destructive wave of power. He hefted the sword in his hands, grimacing at the weight. Around him, scholars screamed, recoiling from Holyborn, their eyes rolling into the backs of their heads. A young man crumpled to his knees and wailed, clutching the sides of his head. Blood gushed out of his nostrils.
Unsheathe the sword, grasp the hilt, and then drive the blade into the ground at your feet. The doors to purgatory will open and, thereupon, free the ghosts within.
Atticus wrapped his hands around the hilt, his knuckles whitening and his face alight with silver radiance. He slammed the blade down through the stone before him. When it met resistance, he held Holyborn high, groaning, and swung down once more. Nothing happened for a few moments.
Then reality dissolved around him. Holyborn evaporated, turning into black and silver flakes of ash that spiraled into the air. The scholars—those who’d managed to find room at the walls to invoke the glamour rune—disappeared.
Faintly, Atticus made out a tenebrous maelstrom of creatures, ofghosts, whirling out of the catacomb walls. They flooded through the chamber glowing with runelight, then through the arteries of the tunnel network. A roaring, shrieking amalgam of shadow and flaring ruby eyes. They nipped at the heels of the black-armored soldiers. They whipped around them and raked their dark, nebulous nails down their great gauntlets. Some of the ghosts were crushed against the walls, as though by crossing between one world and the next, they’d gained some degree of corporeality. But most of them rampaged through the soldiers, who started to turn heel, absconding.
Meanwhile, the world continued to dissolve.
Why aren’t we out?Atticus thought.
A landscape materialized around him. Ten fortresses made of glimmering white stone, their dim peaks disappearing into the hazy sky above. And a river of molten lava.
The ghosts that had once been drowning in the river were gone, released from purgatory by Holyborn... but the scholars of the Orphic Basilica, Atticus included, had not returned to the material world.
Through some rapidly diminishing connection to reality, Atticus felt Holyborn shatter in his hands. A sound, as of crackling metal, came from afar.
Then the gates to reality slammed closed.
27
Roy was thrown out of the vision—the memory,he reflected with astoundment and disorientation—and tottered backward, as though he had been shoved in the chest by a pair of phantom hands.
He couldn’t explain how, but when he’d been inside that memory, he had sensed and felt the world around him as crisply as he could now. He had seenthroughWalestone’s eyes and experienced with surreal clarity the unrestrained magic of the Orphic Basilica, the urgency of the ancient scholars’ retreat... and the revelation of the Elder Scribes’ sorcery.
Roy blanched. For all he knew, Walestone could be lying, could have woven an illusion within his mind. But what purpose would lying serve?
