The Seventh Gate

9

Xar clasped his hand around Haplo’s wrist. The Lord kept his hand on the wrist even when he could no longer feel life pulsing through it. Xar sat silently, staring into the darkness, seeing nothing at first. And then, as time passed and the flesh in his fingers grew cool, Xar saw himself.

An old man, alone with his dead.

An old man, sitting in a dungeon cell far below the surface of a world that was its own tomb. An old man, head bowed, stoop-shouldered, grieving over his loss. Haplo. Dearer to him than any son he’d fathered. But more than Haplo.

Closing his eyes against the bitter darkness, Xar saw another darkness, the terrible darkness that had fallen over the Final Gate. He saw the faces of his people, lifted to him in hope. He saw that hope change to disbelief, then to fear in some, anger in others, before his ship swept him into Death’s Gate.

He could remember a time, countless times, when he’d emerged from the Labyrinth, weary, wounded, but triumphant. His people, stern and taciturn, had not said much, but their very silence was eloquent. In their eyes he saw respect, love, admiration . . .

Xar looked into Haplo’s eyes—wide open and staring—and the lord saw only emptiness.

Xar let fall Haplo’s wrist. The lord gazed in dull despair around the dark cell.

“How have I come to this?” he asked himself. “How, from where I began, did I end up here?”

And he thought he heard, in the darkness, sibilant, hissing laughter.

Furious, Xar bounded to his feet. “Who is there?” he called.

No reply, but the sounds ceased.

His moment of self-doubt was over, however. That hissing laughter had caused the emptiness to fill with rage.

“My people are disappointed in me now,” Xar muttered to himself. He turned back, slowly and purposefully, to the corpse. “But when I rejoin them in victory, coming to them through the Seventh Gate, bringing to them a single world to conquer, to rule—then they will revere me as never before!

“The Seventh Gate,” Xar whispered, as he gently, tenderly, composed the body’s limbs, folding the flaccid arms across the chest, stretching out the legs. Last, he shut the staring, empty eyes. “The Seventh Gate, my son. When you were a living man, you wanted to take me there. Now you will have the chance. And I will be grateful, my son. Do this for me, and I will grant you rest.”

The flesh was cool beneath his fingers now. The heart-rune—with its dreadful, gaping wound—was beneath his hand. All he had to do was close the sigil, mend it, then work the magic of the necromancy on Haplo’s corpse, on all the rest of the runes tattooed upon the body.

Xar rested his fingers on the heart-rune, the words of mending on his lips. Abruptly, he drew his hand back. His fingertips were stained with blood. His hand, which had always held firm in battle against his foes, began to tremble.

Again a sound, outside the cell. Not a hissing sound, but a shuffling. Xar turned, staring hard into the darkness. “I know you are there. I hear you. Are you spying on me? What do you want?”

In response, a figure advanced on the cell. It was one of the lazar, one of the frightful living dead of Abarrach. Xar eyed the shambling corpse suspiciously, thinking it might be Kleitus. Former Dynast of Abarrach, now a lazar, murdered by his own people, the Sartan Kleitus would have been quite happy to return the favor by murdering Xar. The lazar had tried arid failed, but was ever on the lookout for another opportunity.

This lazar was not Kleitus, however. Xar breathed an involuntary sigh. He was not afraid of Kleitus, but the Lord of the Nexus had other, more important matters to consider now. He did not presume to waste his magical talents fighting a dead man.

“Who are you? What do you want here?” Xar demanded testily. He thought he recognized the lazar, but could not be certain. One dead Sartan looked a great deal like another to the Patryn.

“My name is Jonathon,” said the lazar.

“. . . Jonathon . . .” came the echo that was the trapped soul, forever trying to free itself from the body.

“I come, not to you, but to him.”

“. . . to him . . .”

The lazar’s strange eyes, which were sometimes the blank eyes of the dead and sometimes the painfilled eyes of one living in torment, fixed on Haplo.

“The dead call to us,” the lazar continued. “We hear their voices . . .”

“. . . voices . . .” whispered the echo sadly.

“Well, this is one call you needn’t bother to answer,” Xar said sharply. “You may depart. I have need of this corpse myself.”

“Perhaps you could use my assistance,” the lazar offered.

“. . . assistance . . .”

Xar started to rebuff the lazar, bid it be gone. Then he remembered that the last time he’d tried to use the necromancy on Samah’s corpse, the spell had failed. Giving life to Haplo was far too important to Xar to take a chance. The lord glanced distrustfully at the lazar, doubting its motives.

All he saw was a being in torment, like every other lazar on Abarrach. The ghouls had only one ambition, so far as Xar knew, and that was to turn other beings into horrid copies of themselves.

“Very well,” Xar said, his back to the lazar. “You may stay. But do not interfere unless you see me doing something wrong.”

And that would not happen. The Lord of the Nexus was confident. This time, his spell would succeed.

The lord went resolutely back to work. Swiftly now, ignoring the blood on his hands, he closed the heart-rune on Haplo’s body. Then, mindful of the spell, he began to trace over the other sigla, muttering the runes as he worked.

The lazar stood silent, unmoving, outside the cell door. Soon, concentrating solely on his spellcasting, Xar forgot all about the undead. He moved slowly, patiently, taking his time. Hours passed.

And suddenly, an eerie blue glow began to spread over the dead body. The glow started at the heart-rune, then spread slowly, one sigil catching fire from another. Xar’s spell was causing each individual sigil to burn with a mockery of life.

The lord drew in a shivering breath. He was shaking with eagerness, elation. The spell was working! Working! Soon the body would rise to its feet, soon it would lead him to the Seventh Gate.

He lost all feeling, all pity, all grief. The man he’d loved as a son was dead. The corpse was no longer known to Xar. It was an it. A means to an end. A tool. A key to unlock the door of Xar’s ambition. When the last sigil flared to life, Xar was so excited that, for a moment, he actually struggled to recall the corpse’s name—an essential in the concluding moments of the spell.

“Haplo,” said the lazar softly.

“. . . Haplo . . .” sighed the echo.

The name seemed whispered by the darkness. Xar never noticed who spoke it, nor did he notice the scrabbling, scuffling sound that came from behind the stone bier on which the corpse lay.

“Haplo!” Xar said. “Of course. I must be wearier than I thought. When this is done, I shall rest. I will need all my strength to work the magic of the Seventh Gate.”

The Lord of the Nexus paused, going over everything one last time in his mind. All was perfect. He had not made a single error, as was evidenced by the shimmering blue of the runes on the dead body.

Xar raised his hands. “You will serve me in death, Haplo, as you served me in life. Stand. Walk. Return to the land of the living.”

The corpse did not move.

Xar frowned, studied the runes intently. There was no change. None whatsoever. The sigla continued to glow; the corpse continued to lie on the bier.

Xar repeated his command, a hint of sternness in his voice. It seemed impossible that Haplo should, even now, continue to defy him.

“You will serve me!” Xar repeated.

No response. No change. Except that perhaps the blue glow was starting to fade.

Xar hurriedly repeated the most critical of the rune-structures and the blue glow strengthened.

But still the corpse did not move.

Frustrated, the Lord of the Nexus turned to the lazar, waiting patiently outside the cell.

“Well, what is wrong?” Xar demanded. “No, don’t go into long explanations,” he added irritably, when the lazar started to speak. “Just . . . whatever it is, fix it!” He waved his hand at the corpse.

“I cannot, Lord,” said the lazar.

“. . . cannot . . .” came the echo.

“What? Why?” Xar was aghast, then furious. “What trick is this? I’ll cast you into oblivion—”

“No trick, Lord Xar,” said Jonathon. “This corpse cannot be raised. It has no soul.”

Xar glared at the lazar, wanting to doubt, yet something in the back of his mind was nudging him painfully toward the truth.

No soul.

“The dog!” Xar gasped, outrage and frustration combining to nearly choke him.

The sound he’d heard, from behind the bier. Xar dashed behind it, arrived just in time to see the tip of a plumy tail disappear around the front.

The dog sped for the cell door, which had been left standing wide open. Rounding the corner, the animal skidded on the damp stone floor, went down on its hind legs. Xar called on his magic to halt it, but the necromancy had left him weak. The dog, with a wild scramble, managed to get its legs underneath it and sped off through the corridor of cells.

Xar reached the cell door, planning to vent his anger on the lazar. He had at last recalled where he’d seen this particular dead Sartan before. This “Jonathon” had been present at the death of Samah. Xar’s spell had also failed to resurrect that corpse. Was this lazar deliberately thwarting him? Why? And how?

But Xar’s questions went unanswered. The lazar was gone.

The dungeons of Necropolis are a maze of intersecting and bisecting corridors, burrowing far beneath the surface of the stone world. Xar stood in the doorway of Haplo’s cell and stared down first one corridor, then another, as far as he could see by the fitful, sputtering torchlight.

No sign, no sound of anything living—or dead.

Xar turned back, glared at the body on the stone bier. The runes glowed faintly, the spell preserving the flesh. He had only to catch that fool dog . . .

“The creature won’t go far,” Xar reasoned, when he was at last calm enough to reason. “It will stay in the dungeons, near its master’s body. I will set an army of Patryns to the task of searching for it.

“As for the lazar, I will put out search teams for it, too. Kleitus said something about this Jonathon,” Xar mused. “Something about a prophecy. ‘Life to the dead ... for him the gate will open ...’ All nonsense. A prophecy implies a higher power, a higher ruling power, and I am the ruler of this world and any other I care to take over.”

Xar started to leave, to order his Patryns to their various tasks. Pausing, he glanced back a final time at Haplo’s corpse.

Ruling power . . .

“Of course I am,” Xar repeated and left.