The Nomad - By Simon Hawke Page 0,90

bricks, sluggishly at first, then gathering speed and size as the volume of water rapidly increased. Rains were infrequent in the Athasian desert, for the most part coming only twice a year, during the brief but furious monsoon seasons, so the buildings and the streets of Athasian towns and villages were not designed for drainage. If the roof leaked, it made little difference because the storms, though fierce, were usually of short duration, and then the sun came out again and everything dried quickly in the relentless desert heat. If the streets turned into muddy soup, no matter. They would remain that way only for a short while, and then the water would run off into gullies and washes, and in little while, the streets would dry and traffic would make them level once again.

The city of Bodach had been engineered by the ancients to take into account the extremely fierce monsoons that swept across the desert—then the sea—during the very brief storm seasons, but in all the years that the city had been abandoned, the gutters had cracked and been filled with wind-blown sand. The slight grading of the brick-paved streets, designed to allow the water to run off into the gutters at the sides, was not enough to compensate for gutters that no longer functioned.

Sorak and his two companions were soon sloshing through water that ran ankle deep. The hard desert soil beneath the paving bricks could not soak up the sudden volume of water, and so it ran in sheets across the bricks, instead of trickling down into the cracks. The uneven street they ran on became slippery, and to fall or turn an ankle now would mean disaster.

However, the rain did nothing to impede the slow, relentless progress of the undead. Sorak and Ryana saw the dark and spectral figures through the sheets of rain as they came lumbering toward them. More and more of them were coming out into the streets now. Sorak glanced behind him and saw their figures staggering out of the buildings, moving spastically, like marionettes with half their strings cut. And there were walking corpses directly ahead of them, as well. Several came lurching out of building doorways as they ran past.

“We’re never going to make it!” Ryana shouted. “Sorak! You have to summon Kether!”

“There’s no time!” he shouted back.

To summon the strange, ethereal entity known as Kether, he would have to stop and concentrate, empty his mind and settle his spirit to make himself receptive to the being that seemed to descend upon him from some other plane of existence, and he could not stop for even a moment. The undead were all around them and moving closer. He pulled Galdra from its scabbard. Galdra was now their only chance.

“Stay close behind me!” he called out over the noise of rain and wind and thunder. “And whatever you do, stay on your feet! Don’t fall!”

Ryana drew her sword as well, but she knew from hard experience that, at best, it could provide only a temporary respite. The undead were animated by spells, in this case an ancient curse that had survived for several thousand years, claiming more and more victims as time passed. Galdra, with its powerful ancient elven magic could kill them and send them to their final rest, but her sword could, at best, only dismember them. And then the severed, rotting body parts would only come together once again.

Ryana took Kara by the arm and ran to stay close behind Sorak in the blinding rain. Ahead of them, a dozen or more undead were clustered together in the street, staggering toward them with their arms outstretched, their mummified flesh shrunk back to expose brown and ancient bones that glistened in the rain.

Sorak ran to meet them.

* * *

Valsavis groaned and opened his eyes. He was dizzy, and his head felt as if it were splitting. He lay among the scattered treasure, a sorcerer-king’s ransom in gold and jewels and silver, and he remembered what he said to Sorak about too much wealth bringing a man nothing but trouble. In this case, the axiom had been demonstrated painfully and literally.

“Get up, you fool!” Nibenay’s angry voice spoke within his mind. “Get up! They are getting away! Go after them!”

Valsavis raised himself to his hands and knees, shook his head to clear it, and slowly got to his feet.

“Hurry, you great, hulking, brainless idiot! You wasting time! You’ll lose them.”

“Shut up, my lord,” Valsavis said.

“What? You dare to—”

“I will