Soul Fire (Darkling Mage 8)

“Don’t worry,” Carver said. “There’s more where that came from.”

And where his riches came from, exactly, we could never be sure, but I imagined that living for centuries gave a lich ample time to build wealth. I wondered if Carver knew about the concept of compound interest.

“I have to ask, though,” I said to Carver. “A magical beast’s cry? I’m still wary about how that’s going to work out.”

“Throughout history, man has done strange things to acquire reagents,” Carver said. “Ground-up mummies to make oil paints, crushed beetles. Magic, too, is an art. Is it truly so odd to think that it would sometimes demand things that are rare and bizarre, things that are nonetheless of great value?”

He placed Banjo on the ground. After a few seconds of sniffing, Banjo trotted into the center of the circle, as if he somehow knew of the part he would play.

“One of you will need to produce blood, of course,” Carver said, his tone only slightly condescending.

“Done.” Bastion extended his hand, then slashed across it with

the end of one finger. A bead of blood welled up from his palm, drawn by the invisible blade he’d produced. Just the guy we needed for the job, a walking telekinetic artillery platform.

Bastion grimaced as his blood dribbled to the ground, hitting the stone with a faint hiss. Banjo looked at it curiously, tilting his head, as if listening for something. Carver, for some reason, stepped back.

“What about the incantation?” I said.

“Ah.” Carver stepped even farther away from the circle. “What is uniquely interesting about Artemis’s ritual is that Banjo’s voice is not, in fact, one of the reagents. It is the catalyst. Here is your incantation.”

Banjo sat on his haunches, threw back his little head, and howled.

That sound could not have come from a corgi’s throat. What started as a small dog’s yowl quickly magnified and transformed into the moon-hailing howl of a wolf, not so far from something Gil might emit in his werewolf form. The howl was soon joined by other voices, some deeper, others shrill, as if Banjo was being accompanied by an entire wailing chorus of horrible unseen hounds.

The ground shook. I exchanged glances with the others, and they were braver people than me, every one of them, but I could still detect the glimmers of panic behind their eyes. Banjo’s incantation grew louder and louder, the Boneyard itself rumbling and shaking at its very foundations.

At each of the four corners of the circle, the stone simply crumbled away, sinking into nothing. Banjo continued his baleful song, howling at the starless ceiling of the Boneyard, as the four of us fell screaming into the abyss, the darkness between dimensions.

Two minutes later, we were still falling.

Chapter 15

The first thing I sensed, when I came back to consciousness, was the ocean, the unmistakable scent of salt and sea. The second was the stink of ozone, the telltale odor of lightning that flashed bright enough to penetrate the thin skin of my eyelids. That was when all of my senses came rushing back.

I must have hit my head, or the strain of dimensional travel must have knocked me out. Me, and the others. My eyes flew open as I gasped for air, sitting upright, my hand pushing into the slick, wet rock underneath me. I glanced down, my heart pounding as I saw how near I was to open, churning water, to what looked like a boiling ocean.

I was on an island, if you could even call it that. A large expanse of rock was more like it. Prudence and the others were sprawled around the same island, only just returning to consciousness themselves. Around us was angry green water, waves crashing with peaks of white froth that burst across the rocks, then trickled in rivulets back into the furious sea.

A storm howled in the gray sky above, sheets of rain cutting into my skin. Banjo’s yowl of a thousand voices was still clanging in my ears. The clouds were dark, almost thick enough to blot out the rays of the horrible green sun that hid behind them. But each time lightning flashed, I saw the shapes moving among the clouds. I saw the things that breathed the lightning.

“Dragons,” I mumbled. My clothes stuck to my skin, the damp running down my back, my thighs. I was shivering, but not because of the cold.

The mists surrounding the island made no sense with the ferocity of the winds, but there they lingered, like curtains. Dark, ominous silhouettes moved beyond the fog, like shadow puppets, with the slow, heaving gait of old and terrible things that predated man, and the world itself.

Bastion groaned as he sat up, then rubbed his eyes. “I am not a fan,” he said blearily.

“Understatement,” Prudence said. She shook Gil until he snorted and woke up. He glanced around hurriedly, then stiffened. The look on his face told me that he’d have been happier to stay knocked out.

“Don’t look now,” Gil said, sitting perfectly still. “But we’ve got company.”

The sound of low, threatening growling pierced clear through the crash of wind and waves. An enormous wolf the size of a horse crested a jagged, mound-like protrusion, a massive sword gripped between teeth as huge and sharp as tusks. Fenrir, the wolf of Norse legend that was fated to eat the sun. Slightly beyond it was a great, hulking dog with three slavering heads. Cerberus. Ah, the locals were coming out to welcome us.

Just at the edge of the island, glaring at us with malevolent eyes, was the upper body of a beautiful woman with weeds and coral in her hair. She sat silent and waiting in the eye of a huge whirlpool, queen of her personal maelstrom, the tentacles of her lower half stirring and beating the water into a frenzy.

Then a red squirrel, of all things, bounded across the rocks, observing us with black, intelligent eyes. A curious member of the Great Beasts, I thought, until I figured out who it was: Ratatoskr, the little creature of Norse myth who gnawed at the tree of life.

Despite appearances, the Great Beasts all had a few things in common. The words chaos, terror, and destruction came to mind. And for the most part, they were exactly as advertised: larger than life, primal, terrifying. Also, for whatever reason, they were pissed. Like, really pissed. More shapes drifted in the fog, more silhouettes appearing on the crags of rock around us. The entrance to the home of the Great Beasts was small and confined by design. We were surrounded.