Legacy of the Demon (Kara Gillian 8)

“Not on purpose,” Pellini grumbled. “But you getting sucked into a soul-hungry void could put a hitch in our plans.”

Scowling, I stuffed my fists into my pockets then had to unstuff them to clamber over a boulder. “We need the gimkrah.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he muttered.

“What’s gotten into you?” I shot him a disparaging look. “If you don’t want to back me up, don’t.”

“It’s not that,” he snapped.

We hiked up the hill to the base of the column in silence. At the top, I turned to him and folded my arms. “What is it then?”

He looked away. “I have a bad feeling.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“Not with anything substantial.” He pulled out a camo bandana and mopped his face. “Sorry, Kara. I know we need the gimkrah. I just can’t shake this feeling of a crap storm on the horizon.”

I exhaled. “Fair enough. I’m the last person to dismiss a bad feeling as bullshit. All I can do is promise to be quick and doubly careful.” I offered him a reassuring smile. “Trust me. I don’t want to be up there any longer than necessary.”

“I’ll be here,” he said, folding his arms over his broad chest.

I ran my hands over the basalt of the column, murmured to it. In answer, the stone flowed and morphed, creating narrow stairs that wound up around the thirty-foot column. As I climbed, I kept my eyes on the steps ahead of me. The last time I’d made this ascent, falling was my only worry. This time I knew what awaited me at the top, and a misstep seemed a minor concern.

But knowing what to expect meant I could prepare, and by the time I reached the top I had four pyghahs drifting around my head like a glowing special effects crown of chill-out. Calm and cool. That was me.

I eased off the steps and onto the foot and a half wide circle of stone that surrounded the void hole. The blackness pulled at me with invisible fingers that promised eternal un-life in death. Breath shuddering, I added a fifth pygah sigil to the others. Better. Somewhat. At least I could concentrate without imagining the Icy Claw of Doom reaching for me out of the depths.

Faint traces of arcane flickered around the edge of the hole—not that I was even sure it was a hole. Not a bit of light penetrated, which made it appear less like a shadowy well and more like a two-dimensional circle of unrelieved black. I knelt to get a better look, absurdly pleased that I did so by choice rather than because my legs buckled in fear—like the last time I was up here. Thousands of teensy sigils no larger than sugar ants formed a barely detectable band around the perimeter. Mzatal’s work, and I marveled that he could create so many so small. I peered closer then straightened. Pellini was right. It’s stupid for me to risk myself up here. We should go home.

No. I caught myself before I stood. Aversion wards, and seriously powerful ones at that. Fortunately, as with all of Mzatal’s wards, they were attuned to me. Yet even so, they emitted a muted aversion—the cumulative effect of their sheer numbers, I suspected.

Interesting. This was clearly Mzatal’s next layer of protection in case anyone got past the initial fear of the void itself. I sat back on my heels, daring to hope. With a security system this meticulous, he had to be protecting something, and that something just might be the gimkrah.

Now to tap into the core and see what I could find. I pushed down the incessant gnaw of the aversions and focused on the center of the darkness, visualizing and feeling everything I could remember of Lannist’s dimensional pocket. A whisper of familiarity brushed my senses. Encouraged, I closed my eyes and recalled the description of the gimkrah, creating my best-guess vision of it in my mind’s eye. First, a ball of crystal. Then pulsing red at its center. So far so good. I had a nice, clear image. The last part was to form a cage around it with bands of pinkish metal. How many bands though?

Eleven, I thought on wild impulse. The lords’ magic number. I mentally added eleven bands to my structure.

I startled as the image snapped into 3D crystal clarity. The red deepened to a maroon shot with flickers of crimson lightning. Unfamiliar runes marked the bands like etchings made with ink born of the void. Okay, I had my gimkrah. Concentrating, I called in the feel of a dimensional pocket around it. A bubble of golden light in utter darkness.

The gimkrah hovered in that bubble, so real I felt sure I could reach out and simply take it. Was it possible I’d somehow called it to me? I didn’t want to open my eyes and break whatever mojo I had going. I tried reaching for it, but it lay inches beyond my fingertips. I stretched farther. Just a little more, and . . . I’d . . . have it.

My eyes flew open as I tipped forward. I scrabbled at the lip of the hole, but it might as well have been greased ice. Before I could draw breath to cry out, the darkness swallowed me.

• • •

Nothingness. No sense of my body. No sense of falling.

Silence.

Every thought an eternity.

Shit.

• • •

Voices whisper. Thousands upon thousands. A few that I recognize surface in the sea of murmurs.

“Zharkat.” Mzatal.