Shifting Stars by Gary Stringer (best fiction books of all time txt) 📗

made a wish. If she was right, salvation would come to hand. If she was wrong, well, she supposed she could call Dreya. She might be able to get here in time to rescue her – she might even save Jett – but that wouldn’t help everyone else.

“Please let me be right!” she prayed.

She felt something fly into her hand, a small glass vial, and quickly closed her fingers around it. It was cold to the touch, she thought as she closed her pocket dimension, but she’d never felt anything more beautiful.

Catriona opened her eyes, daring to look.

“Yes!” she cried. She was right: she still had a single vial of water Blessed by Mandalee. Tears in her eyes, she brought it to her lips and kissed it. “Oh, Mandalee. Even now, you’re here for me. In spite of everything.”

“How’s that little thing going to help?” Jett demanded, trying to force the undead limbs back with his magic.

He was right. Time for sentiment later. Now the people of New Quernhow needed her to act.

“I have a ridiculous radical plan,” she told him, “and you’re going to hate me for it.”

“Why?”

“Because I already hate myself for thinking it!”

Even as she spoke, the door finally gave way, and undead by the dozen, the score, came pouring into the chamber. Jett fought them off with his magic as best he could, as they retreated through the alcove into the previous chamber, which Cat tried to block with an ice wall.

Knowing that wouldn’t hold them back for long, Cat’s mind was racing, trying to fill in the details. She needed to do something that had never been done before. Something clerics would say was blasphemy: replicate Holy Water. She could replicate regular water in her sleep, but Holy Water had to be Blessed by clerics. Or so they said. Cat didn’t believe it. There had to be a way.

“How does Holy Water work?” she pondered, mostly to herself. “Strip away the religion, and how does it physically work?”

Well, she considered, druid healing sometimes used water. For some infections, or for healing multiple patients at once. The magic was suspended in the water, so as the water penetrated the skin, so did the magic. Then that magic could draw the infection out of the body. Holy Water must do the same.

“The undead absorb the water, then the magic can get to work on them from the inside! You can call it a Blessing; you can call it anything you like. But it’s just magic at a particular frequency, to which the animation magic is susceptible.”

It was the same phenomenon that meant Mandalee’s magic caused Dreya pain. It wasn’t a matter of good magic versus evil magic. Magic wasn’t good or evil. Magic, like all power, like all knowledge, was neutral. It was the application that made it good or evil.

Dreya wasn’t evil, either, just because she was aligned with the Dark. The idea that Light was good, and Dark was evil was lazy thinking. There were many good deeds done in the shadows, and much evil done in the light of day.

The reason White-aligned cleric magic was painful to a Dark-aligned wizard was nothing more than a clash of incompatible frequencies. Like music that was full of discordant notes. Disharmonious.

“So? How does that help?” Jett demanded.

“It helps because now I know I can definitely do it and I hate myself even more!”

Her ice wall shattered under the relentless assault.

“Give them one last push with magic and then run out the door we came in!” Cat ordered. “On three…One…Two…Three!”

With their different magics, they created a powerful gust of wind that pushed the undead back about twenty feet. It also knocked over whole piles of books and papers that had stood undisturbed for a millennium. The companions ran for the door as fast as they could.

As Cat ushered Jett out, he cried out in warning, “Look out!”

Cat yelped as she felt something grab her ankle: it was a disembodied skeletal hand. She tried to strike it with her staff, but it wasn’t enough to make it let go. “Get ready to close the door!” she yelled. She had an idea, but they needed to be fast.

The druidess quickly shifted to falcon form, leaving the hand nothing to hold onto, and flew out before it could try again. Jett slammed the door shut as she shifted back, staff in hand. Pressing her palm against the wooden door, she closed her eyes and spoke softly to the spirits of that place.

“You recognised me, or my staff, or something, before. Please recognise it again and seal this door.” To her relief, the mechanism clicked into place. “Thank you, and I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Jett was distraught at the thought of the undead on the rampage in there, tearing all that ancient knowledge to shreds. “You’re right, I hate this plan,” he told Cat.

The druidess shook her head. “Haven’t even started yet!”

“But you’ve got a way to get them out, right?” She didn’t reply. “Right?” he tried again, desperately.

She couldn’t even look him in the eye as she said, “I’m sorry.”

Chapter 23

Without another word, Catriona shifted to falcon form and flew away. Jett could levitate himself out the way they came, but she didn’t have time to wait for him. As she flew up and over the lake, she could see how the water was already churning as the undead stirred and began to rise from their aquatic bed. The people of the village, seeing what was happening, began screaming and running away from the lake. Now that they been awakened, the undead would kill every last person, just as Ulvarius ordered three centuries ago. Others would come; other settlers, friends and relatives, and the undead would kill them, too.

More than likely, some people would escape, but the undead could be very literal when it came to following orders. If they had been told to kill anyone with knowledge of this place, they would hunt down those who escaped. When the undead