The False Martyr Read Free Page A

did
not even know they were here. They had not been used in
generations, had been forgotten, abandoned. Yet he could see them
in his mind. He saw the pattern in them, the winding passages,
alcoves, dead ends, even the places where the roof had given way,
where nature had reclaimed its underground realm. It was all
dictated by the Order, laid out according to Its plan, and that
plan was Lius’ to read.
    Stretching his mind, he
thought about the walls, the ceiling, the stones that held back the
earth, the stresses they felt, the strain of thousands of pounds,
of thousands of years. Behind him, the demons were coming. They
were through the hidden door, were getting closer. He could not
outrun them. They were too fast. Even with his knowledge they would
find him, would hunt him by simply sensing his fear. He had to stop
them. The Order showed the way.
    Shifting the box to his
left hand, Lius reached down with his right. A brick waited exactly
where he knew it would be. He lifted it and struck, slammed it
against the wall high up and to the left. It rang out, but there
was no other immediate change. Lius dropped the brick and ran. He
only had a few minutes, but his mind was on the patterns around
him, tracing the changes he had made, watching the web of reactions
spread out from that one contact.
    Turning down a side
passage, he heard the creatures closing. They were incredibly fast.
In a few short minutes, they would have him. He came to a great
round room. The ceiling rose three stories, almost to the surface.
Arrayed in the walls were carved out nooks where the bodies of
ancient counselors were housed, rising in a honeycomb to the
ceiling above. Lius ran to the far end of the room. There were no
other passages leading from it. He was trapped. The creatures were
only a hundred paces away, but Lius felt calm. In the pitch
blackness, he watched the Order, saw the bricks shifting, the
stones splintering where they had held the heavy outer wall that
protected the Eclesia, the Temple of Order and Hall of
Understanding, for a thousand years. Dust began to stream down,
mortar crumbled, stones slipped, creaking, straining, cracking. The
first creature appeared at the far end of the room.
    Lius climbed into a notch
in the wall, displaced the skeleton that it housed, held his sleeve
to his mouth, and curled his body around the box as the ceiling
collapsed. In a rain of stones, the far end of the hive fell in and
thirty feet of wall followed it down. Stone rained in like a
mountain collapsing to the sea. The creatures were caught in that
devastation, had no escape, were wiped out.
    And when they were done,
when the dust settled, Lius crawled out from his notch, wormed
through the hole he knew would be waiting, and climbed the rubble
to the light. Water fell from the sky, streaming down the shattered
stones. The night was dark, but compared to the catacombs, it might
have been day. He tucked the box in his robes to protect it from
the storm and stumbled through the streets. The Xi Valati had said
to go north. That is what he did.
     

Chapter 2
    The
14 th Day of Summer
     
    Eight pyres. Ipid counted
again, but it was too few to mistake . Ten
thousand defenders had been slaughtered. An entire city had been
reduced to rubble. And only eight Darthur had been killed? Ipid sat on his horse, watched the dawn light
illuminate the jumbled sticks, the silent bodies upon them, and
shook his head.
    A single warrior stood
before each pyre, head raised to the rising sun, back stiff, chest
puffed out, voice bellowing. They sang the same melody that Ipid
had heard the previous night. Just as then, the song described the
battle, words graphic, details cruel in their clarity as they
portrayed the experiences of a single warrior. Unlike last night,
the warriors were not singing about themselves. They sang the parts
of the fallen men, recorded their accomplishments and the
misfortune that had ended them. Focusing on the singers, Ipid felt
his stomach churn at