Free The Sorcerer's Bane by B. V. Larson Page A

him before he could speak. “You accuse Nadja of this?”
    Gruum nodded.
    Therian’s nostrils flared. His chin rose high, and he looked as if he were about to strike Gruum. Gruum knew the look well.
    “Sire, I saw her do it. She stood right before me, and stepped into nothing—into a void.”
    “A hole?” echoed Therian, as if having a further thought. “I realize now the depths of your delusion. You suggest that she—a little girl caused this invasion beneath the palace? She opened those countless holes that led to nothing?”
    “I don’t know, sire. I would suspect it however, yes.”
    “Tell me why I should believe you, barbarian from the steppes.”
    “Trust, sire. Trust me as I have done you, with my life in the balance, a dozen times over. And know that I saw her do it—standing before me even as you do now. If I had not seen it with my own eyes I would not have believed it possible.”
    Therian stared at him for a long time. Finally, he nodded. “One strange thing puzzles me,” the King said at last.
    Gruum breathed more easily. It was a relief to be believed, even if the implications were truly awful. “What is it that troubles you so, sire?” he asked.
    “Why did she show you what she can do? She must have known that you would come tell me.”
    Gruum tried to think of an answer, but could not. Before they could speak further on the subject, the cobbled street beneath their feet lurched and shifted.
    “What was that?” Gruum asked in alarm.
    The citizenry of Corium looked around their city fearfully, for it shook and moved beneath them as if an angry giant had taken hold of the world. Therian turned toward the central stair, which swayed and cracked as they watched. Chips of stone fell and clattered onto the cobblestones.
    “It is the beginning,” the King said.

-14-

    When the invasion came, an hour before dawn split the sky, it came not just from one stair—or even from all four. It came from the buildings themselves, from the homes of butchers, from the ironworks and from the tallow shops. Everywhere a shrine to the dead existed. Everywhere bodies had been stashed and stacked in secret. The closet which Gruum had located in the servants’ quarter had been thick with dead. They rose as one to shamble into the heart of the palace. The dead that had resided upon shelves, slabs of marble and in cold drawers within every family crypt or temple mausoleum exited their places of rest. Centuries worth of dead walked. Even those of the royal families dug their way free of their tombs upon the mountains of Corium. They marched and shuffled down the long stair where Therian had walked to bury his sire two years ago. With little thought and heedless of one another, ancient dead kings and queens jostled one another. Many fell tumbling from the steep mountain stairs. They still squirmed and thrashed at the bottom of cliffs where they lie broken, leaking the last ounces of fluid from their desiccated bodies.
    The living clubbed and slashed the waves of dead, but still they came on. When one was hacked to bits, a dozen more took its place. Those in Corium that still drew breath were dragged down, one at a time.
    Therian still held within him the strength of many souls he had consumed during the night. He chanted spells and hacked with his twin blades. None of the dead could face him. He reaved through them, as unstoppable as a winter storm.
    Gruum stood at his flank, protecting the King’s blind spots. He kept the few grasping hands that managed to get close from closing dry fingers upon the lord’s ankles. It was all he could do. The men around them stood wisely back, and they fought the stragglers as they came from shops and shrines up and down the street, chasing townsfolk who thought to hide in their homes and ride out the horrors of this night.
    “Burn them when the fall,” Gruum urged, “keep your oil at hand, do not waste it!”
    The troops did as he bid, kicking stacks of writhing bones and