Chapter XIV

  Archelaos

  In which Archelaos is brought forth

  Before a chamber in the house of Archelaos, the shadow-king governor of Urashtu, Red Gryphon Lysander Xenakis stood at the threshold and hesitated. Khratu help him, the situation he faced more than lived down to his expectations. Directly across from him, inside the small room, a mirror gleamed brightly, its gold frame highly polished and reflecting a black glow. Appropriately enough. Lysander stared into it.

  No reflection stared back.

  Turning abruptly on his heel, Lysander faced his companions. Sejanus, his prime centurion, did not hide his disgust at the mirror. Mouth puckered, he looked as if he were sucking on a lemon. Ziri, the Star Dragon spymaster, regarded the mirror with narrow eyes.

  “Obviously, Archelaos didn’t use this mirror to trim his beard,” Lysander said dryly. Reflexively he stroked his own face. Beardless, and he would keep it so for as long as he remained in the legions.

  The other personnel Sejanus had brought tittered nervously, but none answered Lysander. They stepped into the room. Ziri went over to the pool, which dominated the right side.

  The chamber itself made a mockery of the oracula used by all who were not seers to communicate across the world. Strict rules governed their operation: The light of the sun or moon must strike the relevant signs of the zodiac. This in turn activated either a mirror, or call-globes stationed at intervals in the hexagon layout of the room. Every oraculum always contained a large pool of crystal clear water in the center, for the summer and winter solstices, or those times when a scryer wanted to see a larger tableau of events.

  But Archelaos was an eidolon.

  He availed himself of one mirror, which reflected nothing, and a pool whose black waters repelled all light. The luminary bodies of the firmament did not animate any part of his “oraculum.” Most damning of all, Archelaos used a permanent roof and not a retractable one—further proved his less than orthodox purpose for the chamber.

  Ziri turned slowly to face Lysander. Upon first meeting the master of arcana, Lysander formed an impression of him as coolly unflappable. Now; however, the tension lines around his eyes betrayed him.

  “This is a summoning room,” Ziri said, pointing to the mirror and the pool. “These are portals. I’m willing to gamble the pool is for bringing forth a multitude. Like our giants. The pool perhaps allowed Archelaos to see them wherever they were, and he teleported them to where he wanted them to be.”

  “Perhaps?” Lysander asked. “What are the options? They didn’t use a portal to get to Abris; they just appeared out of nothing.”

  “Which suggests they come from Erebossa. Look, we never established whose children the giants might be. My grandmother is a naiad, so I can teleport to any nymphaeum or sacred spring. To go anywhere else I would need a portal. But it is possible to open a gate to Erebossa, walk through it, and then come out in some other part of Thuraia. I wouldn’t advise it, but it is possible. Usually something a shadow sorcerer might do, but given that the giants use Erebossi allies, why wouldn’t they use shadow methods, too?”

  Lysander raised an eyebrow. Ziri could teleport? And naiads, too, apparently. Who would have thought Bessa Philomelos would be the herald one extraordinary revelation after another?

  Including Bessa herself.

  But thinking of her was a luxury for another time, he resolved, and turned back to the mirror. Dull bronze and fronted with glass, the mirror bore a strange pattern on the frame. He leaned closer. No, not a pattern. A language, more like. Shadow script.

  “I’ll take your word on the pool. But are you sure about the mirror? You can read those … words? Are they a summoning spell?”

  Ziri gave the mirror a cursory glance, his lips curling in distaste. “You think I could decipher this? Even if I could I wouldn’t: It wasn’t written in a tongue anyone this side of Erebossa was trained to speak. Or read. This is genuinely an infernal language.”

  “Nevermind,” Lysander said quickly, diverting his attention now to the pool. Not that contemplating the pool cheered him any more than the mirror; both made his arm hair stand up. The chill prompted him to twitch his heavy crimson cloak about his body. Lined about the neck and shoulders with the red and white feathers of the gryphon that gave his rank its name, the cloak at least concealed his involuntary reactions.

  Ziri stared past Lysander at Falconer Scorpius, the Venatorium priest Sejanus had brought with them. His title, falconer, indicated his high rank as a priest of the Huntress, for She often assumed the form of a golden eagle. But Ziri particularly fastened his gaze on the falconer’s gloves: delicate silver lines wove a tracework of subtle patterns into the leather gloves, from the cuffs to the fingertips.

  “When the silver fades, so goes our protection,” Scorpius had warned.

  Divine protection made them all willing to venture into the secret lair Archelaos had kept hidden in the governor’s palace. As the eidolon had been inhabiting the body of the governor of the imperial province of Urashtu, the eidolon could hardly afford to allow any obvious sign of his true nature to appear where just anyone could see it.

  Lysander turned back to Ziri. “You’re not thinking—”

  “We’d need to secure the room first,” Ziri said, catching the eye of Scorpius and the Marinite priest they’d brought with them.

  “Secure the room,” Lysander said evenly. “To summon an Erebossan king here? Have we no better option?”

  Again he surveyed the room. Black stone, black marble—the color of the infernal powers. Veins of red pierced the ebon black of the marble. Red, the color of the death powers. An aggressive threat display, in a way, but Lysander would not be deterred. No matter what, he would not leave the governor’s palace until they found what Archelaos had been up to while playing governor.

  The Five—the Six abyssals known to have walked Thuraia in human form the past few years—had all carried out specific tasks.

  Two once posed as librarians, to thwart searches for key tomes concerning the Primordial Age, when the gods had walked Thuraia. One had been stationed in Valentis, to make a hecatomb of its citizens—but for Optima Nuriel’s fervent wish to return to her childhood home, he would have succeeded. Another, as she—Bessa—had deduced, was supposed to allow entry to a place still not known to them. The one posing as a sea captain had aided the capture of Her Holiness, Halie, the Sea Lord’s daughter.

  And Archelaos? Still now his purpose remained opaque to them. Idle whim did not bring him to Urashtu, and for no light reason did he usurp its governor. Of this they were certain.

  Their certainty ended there.

  “Why not just have an echomancer do this?” Sejanus demanded. “Bringing an abyssal here can’t be the only solution. And I thought—didn’t the others say the Huntress and the Sea Lord are against summoning Erebossi?” He turned to the two priests, an obvious appeal for assistance.

  “The Huntress forbids us doing business with Erebossa,” Scorpius agreed, exchanging a glance with Telemachus, the Marinite.

  “As does the Sea Lord,” Telemachus agreed. “If you do this thing, we can’t be part of it.”

  Sejanus nodded triumphantly, and turned to Ziri. “But we just need an echomancer to see what Archelaos was doing. The man, I mean, since the fiend did everything while wearing his body. I don’t see—”

  Ziri smiled tightly. “You forget, I think, that the sons of the Abyssal Serpent aren’t like us. They are not subject to time, and they can See the echomancer and the prophet, too. I’m a scryer and I can’t scry for them. I wouldn’t even attempt it, even if it were possible: If you can See them, they can See you.”

  Dammit. The arcanus had a point. “They planned around her,” Lysander reminded them.

  Ziri and Sejanus looked up at him.

  “During the battle on the Night of the Burning Sky, Arrianus was with the women in the aerie. According to him, Archelaos said he and his faction planned around Lady Nensela. She’d thwarted their plans for over enough millennia that they had to take her into account. But—suppose she wasn’t the only seer they targeted?”

  “You mean him?” Sejanus pointed to Ziri, who shook his head in unison with Lysander.

  “I mean an echomancer,” Lysander clarified. “The echomancer would See what the body of Archelaos did, but like the good man said, the fiend was looking out through the eyes of Archelaos. It would See the echomancer. If I were fiend-Archelaos, and I knew I would cross paths with the Lady Nensela, I would assume that I would need a reserve plan. Like this room. And our desperate need to find out what he was up to when he was here. It’s the perfect trap.”

  It was all Lysander could do not to shudder. Suppose he had been willing to give the order for an echomancer to be brought to this damned room? An eidolon, wearing the body of one of the many soldiers in Lysander’s legion, could stroll as he pleased to the hospital tent where Lady Nensela was kept in stasis. The prophet had attempted suicide to avoid possession, and in but a moment an eidolon could undo her measures, dooming them all. This time Lysander did shudder.

  Sejanus narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. “A trap? We bring an echomancer here…and an abyssal could usurp his body? But wouldn’t we know?”

  “Why should you know?” Ziri asked. He gestured to the priests. “I don’t think even they would know. Maybe. I think Her Grace, Halie, would know. Xenakis is right, it’s a perfect trap. But doing nothing isn’t an option if we want to find out what Archelaos set in motion here. Years, and years he has to act, and Lady Nensela has shown me that flesh and blood immortals think in extremely long terms. She thinks nothing of making plans to do something fifty years in the future. If you visit her, she’ll serve you wine she’s been storing in the sea for three hundred years. That’s the minimal amount of time she likes to age her wine. Do you think anything from Erebossa would behave differently?”

  Sejanus groaned, defeated.

  Clapping a hand on his shoulder Lysander asked, “Who would you give the order to, old friend? You wouldn’t order any of our people to risk possession. I’d follow Lady Nensela’s example and kill myself before I gave that order.”

  “You’re right. Yes, you’re right.” Nevertheless, he shot Ziri, a baleful glance. “But we are not going to summon an abyssal. There has to be another way.”

  Before Ziri managed to reply Lysander held up a hand, quelling him.

  “Fellows, you’re forgetting that we have an asset close at hand. One who has the authority to tangle with Erebossi in a manner we cannot: His Holiness, Lysimachus, son of the Sea Lord.”

  Lysimachus favored Lysander with a cool stare from his throne in what had once been the sitting room of the supreme magistrate of Abris. The dragon’s eyes narrowed.

  Dragon.

  Though he currently wore a human shape, Lysimachus made it impossible to forget his draconic nature. His golden eyes, molten like his sister’s, carried the weight of his immense age. Legend had it that he’d been present for the First Cataclysm over eight thousand years ago. Certainly if it was true no sea dragon existed but for those created by the Sea Lord Himself, then Lysimachus was born thousands of years before even the dawn of the Cataclysm Age.

  Before Lysander’s ancestors existed, Lysimachus walked the world. In his youth Lysimachus had known men of valor whose names were lost to the mists of time, whose bones had withered to dust and ash, whose memory could be found nowhere except his own.

  And one day? One day Lysander’s name, too, would only be an echo, a fragment of the dragon’s memory—if the dragon should trouble to think of him once this moment had passed. Part of Lysander wondered what the dragon made of him. What unit of measure did the dragon use when estimating the worth of a man, when he determined if the man was worthy of his aid or not? Would he even deign to respond to Lysander’s request?

  Perhaps Lysander passed his examination, for the dragon relaxed slightly in his throne. Clad in mother-of-pearl, clever artisans fashioned the throne to resemble an open clamshell. Its iridescent sheen provided the only spot of color in an otherwise dull white and grey room.

  The dragon said, “The room you speak of is a shadow gate of a kind. What do you expect to find on the other side?”

  Succinctly, Lysander explained their errand. “We can’t afford to let the abyssal’s works survive his death,” he finished.

  The dragon smiled, startling Lysander. His teeth were very white, and his canines very sharp. “You mean his exit from Thuraia. From Erebossa he came, and to Erebossa he went. A spirit of any kind is indestructible. Still, you have the right of it.”

  “Yes, Your Holiness. Will you accompany us?”

  “I will not.” His tone brooked no opposition.

  Counterarguments formed in his mind, but before Lysander could voice them Lysimachus spoke again.

  “You see with the eyes of a man, a being of flesh and blood and bound to this world. I see with different eyes.”

  The words died in his throat as memory came to Lysander, of the legends he’d learned as a boy concerning sea dragons. And so he remembered then: the eyes of sea dragons beheld what mortal eyes never could.

  The dragon nodded at him. “You know of what I speak. I will tell you now what I see with my eyes: We are besieged on all sides, son of man and woman. Abyssals and their allies assault this very camp. I battle them.”

  Cold dread washed over Lysander. Beside him, Ziri’s sharp inhale underscored his sentiments.

  Arrianus let out the first syllable of his favorite cuss word, then stopped himself just in time. “Is that, uh, normal?”

  The dragon arched an eyebrow. Privately, Lysander agreed the question lacked precision.

  “Not every place is hospitable to the creatures of Erebossa,” Lysimachus replied after a while. “Nor is every host they seek. But the giants you fought here changed conditions by their very arrival. And Nensela of Ta-Seti has attracted very powerful entities. Kings.” He drew his hand across chest, and that was when they saw the sword in his grip. Or part of it, anyway—only the hilt was visible in midair. As for the rest—“They are held back by my hand. I dare not turn my eyes away.”

  Again the dragon’s eyes bore into Lysander. And then he turned his formidable gaze to the other men. Arrianus audibly swallowed. Lysimachus rose, standing at a commanding height. With a start, Lysander realized the dragon would loom over his auxiliary officer, Pyralis. As a Salamandran, Pyralis himself stood a little more than seven feet tall.

  “Approach,” he commanded.

  They obeyed, moving to within an arm’s reach of the dragon. His curt nod halted their steps.

  “Sons of man and woman, you also will do battle. This day, ere the next day dawns, you will fight. My Father requires you to be victorious.” The celestial sword in his hand remained visible. Now he ran a long finger along the edge, slicing open the fleshy pad. Golden ichor surged forth.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Wonderment made Lysander forget himself, and he stared. Poets of old had sung of the ichor of the children of the gods, and its fantastical properties. The dragon leaned forward. Before Lysander could react, he pressed his thumb to Lysander’s forehead and smeared the ichor over his eyelids. The droplets fell into his eyes. Blinking, he tried to ride out the tingling in his eyes. For a moment he closed them.

  A sensation came over his body, as if he had been awakened in the middle of the night by a thunderclap. Blood surged in his veins, and his breath quickened. Every day since the battle he’d carried a dull ache in his muscles, a consequence of too much exertion and too little rest. Now it all vanished, replaced by the odd feeling that he could sling his gryphon over his back and carry it to another country if he so chose. Invigorated, he opened his eyes.

  And promptly wished he hadn’t.

  “Amyntas save us,” Arrianus gasped.

  Ziri and Sejanus did not look any happier.

  Monsters, grotesque and terrible, surged through the room. Several had multiple heads. Several lacked even one, their eyes glowing green in their chests below where their necks should have been. Others bore no eyes at all, but made up for it with an abundance of teeth.

  Lysimachus sat back in his throne. Now the men perceived the white hot glow surrounding him, the power radiating from his very person. His lips thinned as he regarded them once more.

  “You see now with my eyes. You hear now with my ears. You fight now with my strength. And you will know that which you would not have known. When you find the one you seek, take from him the key of the shadow king you call the Fifth Abyssal. Go forth. Conquer.”

  Dismissal. Bowing low in obeisance, Lysander and his companions acknowledged the dragon’s command. They hastened to obey, exiting the hall with all deliberate speed.

  Back at the pool, Lysander again examined the mirror.

  This time he saw it true: it was a looking glass, such as the kind used by scryers to view events in distant places.

  And the events within made the skin prickle on the back of his neck. A curious creature flitted about, in a strange meadow of grey grass and black flowers. Why should Archelaos have looked into such a place? Unless…

  Without hesitation he reached into the mirror, seizing the creature and pulling it into the room with them.

  “Ugh.” Sejanus recoiled at the sight of it.

  For Lysander, the slick texture of its flesh set his teeth on edge. What was this thing? A three-headed cat? No, the central head was that of a cat. A rat’s head made up the left, and a possum head made up the right. Batwings flapped against his hand, but at least the barbed tail curled away from him, resting on the creature’s back.

  “Lackey,” Lysander said, his deep voice echoing off the stone walls. “Your master’s key. Give it to me.”

  All three of the heads cried out in horror. “Don’t make us betray him! He’ll punish us!”

  With his hand on the creature’s flesh, Lysander now had at his command the power of an echomancer. What he saw of his captive’s past made his blood run cold, but he hardened his heart against pity.

  “So, you were once a man? And now you are an abominable beast. Fitting punishment, and we both know why.” Bile rose in his throat, and Lysander forced it back down. “But I can give you to the Abyssal Serpent if you prefer that.”

  No idle promise did he make. His Holiness Lysimachus, Son of the Sea Lord had seen to that. But would this, this thing make it worth his while?

  The three-headed creature stopped squirming. All six of its hazel eyes focused intently on Lysander. At this juncture the Abyssal Serpent offered the beast its last, best hope: though the Serpent would devour him, it might eventually spit him out. If, if, if he was redeemable. Infernal kings offered no such hope to their slaves.

  “I have your word?”

  His word? This little—! This creature presumed itself high enough to question anyone’s honor? One who had brought himself so low as this ought to be more humble. The creature’s heads cried out in protest when he tightened his grip in response.

  “I will do your bidding, Great One!”

  Oh, thank Khratu. Eager to let it go, Lysander flung the chimerical beast back into the mirror. It scampered out of their sight, leaving them to view the meadow, which held many other assaults on their vision. Meanwhile, Lysander took the opportunity to wipe his hand on the wall. And then grimaced at the grimy streak he left behind.

  “We’re all going to need a bath after this,” Arrianus muttered.

  Presently, the cat-rodent-chimera returned. Steeling himself, Lysander snatched it out of the mirror again. Its wings terminated in human hands, and in its right hand it clutched a black object.

  “You gave your word,” the creature reminded him, holding out a glowing black stone.

  Which Lysander ignored. Taking the stone would seal their deal. Knowledge the loremasters of the Supreme Strategos had taught him, when he was only a youth and had not yet joined the legions. And this very morning, Lysander slew an aurochs as an offering to the Strategos before setting out for the governor’s palace.

  Bless me, Khratu, for I must do battle.

  “What did your master want in Urashtu? Why come here?” With one hand he held the creature by its cat neck. Though the thing’s body was the size of a leopard, its weight strained him not at all. Testament to the strength the Sea Lord’s son bestowed on him.

  The creature gasped. It tried again to give Lysander the stone, and again he ignored it. Its six eyes dimmed somewhat as it conceded defeat.

  “Every Gate ever built was made of a cosmic stone, O Master of My Fate. Much of it fell from the heavens to Urashtu. Men believed it gone, but the stone can be found deep in the bowels of Thuraia, my lord. For my master I had men find a new vein, for a new Gate.”

  “A shadow gate?”

  “It could be that, oh merciful one.”

  “And what is it meant to be?” Lysander’s tone brooked no evasion.

  “A-a-a, a world Gate. A world Gate.”

  Surprised, Lysander paused. World gates? ‘World’ in itself was a promise, a promise of new lands to explore, new people, new possibilities … and new conquerors.

  The giants.

  They can come to our lands. We can’t go to theirs and retaliate. So Lady Nensela once observed.

  “Is the gate in Urashtu?” Sejanus whispered. But in the silence even his whisper resonated, echoing against the walls.

  The cat mouth gaped. At a jab from Lysander it yowled out, “I don’t know! I mean, I don’t know. I gave the ore to Vartanian’s people when they came for it, and they took them somewhere else. I wasn’t to know. Now I understand why,” the cat said bitterly.

  Tears ran down all three faces. And for what reason did the beast cry? Regret over its lack of power? Frustration that all of its scheming came to this greasy end? The dragon had spoken truly, for Lysander now knew things he would not have known otherwise. But with his Sight into the creature’s past, pity found no purchase in him. Arriving in Erebossa in such a state as this creature took a tremendous amount of effort in evil endeavors. Effort made without remorse or hesitation, no matter the warnings given to him. Effort made without regard to the costs he had pitilessly forced others to pay.

  The fool did not deserve one drop of pity … but Lysander was no oathbreaker, and mercy cost him nothing to bestow.

  With his free hand he palmed the chimera’s body. One twist, then a snap, and the creature died. Lysander caught the stone before it could fall to the ground. For the final time he tossed the corpse back into the mirror, where its body fell with a dull thud into the lifeless meadow.

  Immediately he whipped out a handkerchief from his belt and vigorously wiped his hands. While he would like to think the ichor of Lysimachus made him impervious to any infernal taint, why take chances? Now he turned his gaze upon his companions, who had watched him impassively.

  “Because I killed his body in the Cosmos, his spirit will go now to the Abyssal Gates. His lord, it seems, is too preoccupied to intercept him on his journey.”

  Arrianus arched a wing-like eyebrow. “His lord? Archelaos?”

  The smile Lysander gave him carried no mirth. “That was Archelaos. The original governor. Foolish enough to let an abyssal inside him, and wicked enough to be a hospitable host. Arrogant and stupid also, to think it would coexist within him. A lesser infernal might have, or so I’ve read. But he dealt with a king. They don’t coexist. They rule.” He dropped the handkerchief, letting it fall to the floor.

  “By the gods,” Arrianus whispered. His face had paled to an almost deathly grey.

  Although Lysander agreed with his sentiments, he wondered to himself if Arrianus had ever struck deals with Erebossi. Some sorcerers summoned them for consultations, but Arrianus had never once suggested that tactic during his years of service in Lysander’s command. Perhaps he’d had sorcerer friends with less scruple…

  The weight in his palm commanded his attention. Yet even so, the black stone so precious to the former Archelaos looked rather unremarkable. Granite, with gold flecks. Basically, a rock. Only its purpose as a keystone imbued it with any significance. All keystones allowed their possessors to enter the places they warded; on this side of Erebossa it usually meant the abode of a sorcerer.

  But an infernal keystone?

  A heaviness settled in Lysander’s bones. The keystone could only lead to a the domain of a king abyssal. Nor did he fail to notice the absence of abyssals once he entered the palace—the eidolon-Archelaos would have protected his temporal citadel from rivals and infernal arcana. But once inside his infernal stronghold, new horrors awaited them. Horrors Lysander could not unsee.

  Go forth. Conquer.

  Lysander strode over to the pool. The men followed. He tightened his grip on the stone, then held his hand over the water. Suddenly, the waters rippled, then reared back, the reverse of a wave crashing against a shore. The water vanished, and in its place an obsidian staircase gleamed. It led down, into a vast darkness.

  “Wait,” Ziri said, speaking for the first time since they’d left Lysimachus.

  They glanced at him.

  “What Archelaos said,” Ziri began. “About Vartanian’s people. We raided Honoria Vartanian’s house when we went to rescue Edana Nuriel. Half my team searched for threads that might show what she was up to.”

  “And?”

  “We found a blood codex with codes that let her talk to her lackeys. After months of trying we weren’t able to crack the code. Now I know what it says, because I’m reviewing my memories with ichor in my eyes. We need to find a place she called the Table of the Sun.”

  The name made him arch his eyebrow. Travelogues spoke of such a place, but not in any context he could reconcile with an eidolon’s schemes.

  “Are you certain?” Lysander asked. “The Table of the Sun is supposed to be in Ta-Seti. Some field where meat is spontaneously generated for poor travelers to eat.”

  “Yes, I also know of that table. But Vartanian specifically contrasted her Table with the Ta-Setian one. The Ta-Setian Table is harmless, an act of kindness. But Honoria’s Table is something else. I think it was a place where people were fed to something.”

  “To what purpose? What god would make such a demand? Or rather, what infernal being is propitiated by eating people?” Lore failed him here; Lysander could think of no reason besides sheer malice for an Erebossan to eat people.

  At his feet, darkness awaited. He could see no further than three steps down. It occurred to him that he was being foolish, to suppose his imagination adequate to anticipate the motives of an infernal entity.

  “This I couldn’t tell you,” Ziri admitted. “I will have to review the papers again, of course.”

  “First thing when we return,” Lysander said, projecting a confidence he did not feel. Squaring his shoulders he took to the stairs, the darkness swallowing him up moments later.

  Each man carried a glowlight affixed to a short shaft, like a torch. Other than each other’s footsteps, they heard nothing else as they walked. They saw nothing else, either. Only a vast darkness so thick they felt as if they were swimming in it. The stairs went down, down, down. Lysander sensed a good hour had passed before they finally came to the last step.

  They hadn’t spoken to each other the whole way, but now Lysander sensed it safe to risk breaking their silence.

  “We’ve come this far,” he observed. “I have courage—but not just because of the boon from His Holiness. I have courage because two who have fought longest by my side are with me in this. I have courage because we are joined by a man who spends all his time thinking of ways to thwart the plans of those who aim to do evil.”

  Sejanus smiled sardonically, his teeth gleaming in the glowlight. “No rally talks, Old Man. No speeches of encouragement. I’m not wettin’ myself over this. I’ve got a story to tell now that my grandkids will actually listen to. You know, when they exist, I mean. After we win this so my young’uns can grow up.”

  Arrianus appeared to have recovered somewhat from his shock over the fate of Archelaos. “I dreamt of this. When I was a boy—yes, I was one, once—I had dreams of fighting battles. Battles the poets would write epics about, starring me, the hero who did extraordinary feats of magic. I thought those dreams had come true. Now I see. And I am … I am seeing this through to the end. Lead on.”

  Ziri sketched a salute, one commander to another, and Lysander nodded in turn.

  Now a path stretched before them. The glare of the glowlights bounced off the obsidian glass that formed the walls of a narrow passage. Two men, if not bulked by armor, could walk abreast. For Lysander and the others it was necessary to walk single file.

  Glass crunched under Lysander’s boots, making him wish he’d worn the ones with hobnailed soles after all. Movement to his right caught his eye. He glanced at the wall, then halted. Yellow eyes peered out at him. In a blink the eyes vanished. From behind Sejanus exclaimed, and Lysander whirled to see his prime centurion staring aghast at the wall to their left.

  “The al?,” Arrianus said calmly. “Pay them no mind. We have the ichor.”

  Al?. The loremasters of the Lyceum taught him a little of the al?, faceless abyssals who possessed those who slept, paralyzing them. They resided, said the lore scrolls, in the depths of Thuraia. The Third Eidolon had been a kind of al?, and once attacked Bessa in a manner similar to others of his kind. Fortunately, Edana had laid her hands on a special weapon—a weapon Lysander wished he had in his hands just now.

  From that point on, a multitude of eyes watched their steps. Occasionally the walls shook, as if rammed by something attempting to break through it. But Lysander did not deviate in his steps, and neither did his men.

  An orange light bloomed ahead, flickering and jumping against the walls. Lysander’s nostrils flared. The light gave no warmth, but a foul odor kept company with it. The odor grew worse, now stinging their eyes to the point that they watered. At once the men drew out from their kits the cloths they’d normally reserved for bandages. They tied them around their faces, covering their noses. As soon as the men finished, they resumed their trek. They drew nearer, to the ember lights, then halted just short of what appeared to be a threshold.

  Lysander stood still, again looking at what was before him with the eyes of an immortal. Again his neck prickled, as if a sword dangled near. After a moment he spoke.

  “Put your lights away. Ready your weapons.”

  Each man readied himself accordingly, Sejanus unsheathing his short sword, and Ziri his long knives. However, Arrianus was a graduate of the Rhabdomachaeum, the school where sorcerers learned to do battle with staves and wands. He drew out now a wand as long as a short sword, but carved from the ivory from a hydra’s tooth.

  Lysander drew his own sword. He thought suddenly of the honor knife he used to carry, an ancestral blade fatal to basilisks. Carried now by Bessa, by his will, for her own protection. Well, he now carried the protection of Lysimachus, and the Sea Lord by extension. It should suffice.

  Bessa. By the gods, one day he and Bessa would dine by a fire and tell each other of their adventures in this mission. Lysander’s lips curved, then he banished all thoughts of a sweet future. Now a dreadful present must claim his attention. He went forward. Once they crossed the threshold, the passage widened. Sejanus and Arrianus flanked Lysander. Ziri acted as rearguard. Before them stood six mirrors, with seemingly identical frames to the one in the upper chamber they had come from.

  Each mirror showed a different image. One was dark, revealing nothing. Three showed secret chambers similar to the one in the upper room they had descended from. But the fifth one…

  The men recoiled. Ghastly images assaulted their sight. Writhing blood-red walls, pulsating floors of some sort of morass. Shapes occasionally rose up from the morass, then sank back down. Eerie screams and cries rang out, chilling the men to their bones. And sometimes, a creature shambled past the mirror.

  One looking glass caught Lysander’s attention, and he drew closer. “This is where the infernal Eel lives. Oh, what do we have here? The so-called Master of the People is calling on his hospitality. How convenient for us, two enemies in one place.”

  Sejanus narrowed his eyes; clearly Lysander’s interpreting aloud the meaning of Archelaos was not lost on him. “You mean the eidolon who wore the body of Archelaos? He’s with Murena?”

  “Yes. Let’s see how abyssals entertain one other. You think they offer each other honey cakes and spiced wine?”

  With his words, the scene shifted somewhat. A bellow rang forth, and bloodcurdling screams followed, to be cut off abruptly. The source of the screams wasn’t obvious. Blood spattered against the walls, joined in short order by pieces of flesh that sailed from the right of the viewing glass to thud wetly against the wall on the left. They sank in to the walls, becoming part of it.

  Lysander shuddered. Was this how the walls were constructed? He focused his will on the looking glass, and the scene again shifted.

  Murena filled their view. As ever the abyssal remained horrific to behold, with his lava eyes and cavernous maw, from which issued another bellow. Viscous, oily liquid formed a morass of his floors. The liquid spattered, bubbled, and popped, as if in protest.

  Murena’s eel legs hadn’t fully regenerated, only getting as far as where his calves might be, if they were actual legs. The stumps rested atop the black morass. He was surrounded up to his human hips by dreadful beasts. Murena snatched up one of them by the neck, exactly as Lysander had done to Archelaos. He was shouting, but his words were a fierce cacophany until Lysander focused, and the ichor of Lysimachus took over.

  “WHY. DID. YOU. LET. HER. ESCAPE?!”

  The thing writhed, its pseudopod legs wriggling uselessly. “Your Majesty! I swear it, I swear that I was elsewhere! We all were! We didn’t see her—”

  Lysander held his breath. Her? Who? Another child of the gods captured, as Halie had been captured?

  Murena twisted, and the creature’s head snapped off. He tossed the head in one direction, and the body in the other. He moved on to the next lackey, repeating the question.

  Another creature shambled up, coming to a stop behind Murena. The creature seemed to be all mouth, with legs and arms attached, and a semblance of eyes atop its maw. They were red, and egg-sized, without pupils or an iris. Its bottom lip hovered just above the oil pit. Its teeth moved; however, an indication it was speaking. Lysander immediately recognized it from Archelaos’s memories.

  “The abyssal that wore Archelaos,” Lysander said, identifying him for the benefit of his men.

  “An intruder penetrated your abode, Pr’tah’nxx.” Archelaos’s former possessor sounded vaguely gleeful, as if amused that Murena should suffer such an indignity.

  Murena’s head swiveled. Completely backwards, allowing him to see his companion. The eels that formed Murena’s hands sank their teeth into the creature he was clutching. Pitiful mewling ensued, but Murena ignored it. “And why do you say that?”

  Ex-Archelaos replied, “Because I believed—falsely, as it turned out—that an intruder was entering from your east gate. The alarms had rang out, you see. But they rang falsely, for no one was there. All of your lackeys say they were called elsewhere from their stations. Does that not sound like a coordinated attack to you?”

  Murena’s body swiveled, joining his head in the direction of his companion. The process made the teeth of his eel hands flay the pet by accident. Or by design, perhaps.

  “You’re saying she didn’t escape? That someone stole Nensela from my grasp?”

  Lysander’s blood ran cold. Why did Murena speak of her as if she were his captive, when she simply lay in an unbreakable sleep in his camp hospital?

  “Her spirit,” he whispered.

  Murena had somehow captured Lady Nensela’s spirit.

  “But if she escaped, doesn’t that mean she’s awake? Maybe?” Sejanus wondered aloud.

  Before Lysander could even entertain the hope, the Master of the People began speaking again.

  “That they did. Or helped her. But there’s no need to worry. I know where she is. And my army is on its way to her right now. She won’t escape a second time.”