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Her twisted limbs showed how valiantly she'd fought. What sickened him was seeing her torn clothing, the broken fingers, the ripped flesh. He studied the fanned out pattern and condition of the men's bodies that littered the cave floor. They reminded him of a group of wooden soldiers picked up and flung, then torched by fire.
How had they made it past her wards and protections? Her defenses would have been considerable, but the enemy she faced had found a way, and used weak men to do its bidding. As evil always did.
"She made a good accounting of herself," Keldwyn said.
Uthe looked up, surprised to find the Fae next to him. "How did you get through?"
"The shielding could not prevent a Fae magic-user of my level from entering, but it was clever enough I did not want to risk disrupting its nature and possibly destroying its recognition of you. It made more sense for you to go first."
"And if I was incinerated, there really wouldn't be anything left to do, right?"
"There was that, yes." Keldwyn didn't smile. He was looking at the ruins of Fatima's body. "So what happened here?" His voice was low and respectful.
"She used her magic to fight, until she realized the numbers would deplete her energy to the point she couldn't protect what they'd come to take. I think that's when she made the decision to sacrifice herself and put all her energy toward that protection." Kneeling by her body, Uthe put his hand over her mangled fingers, his throat thickening at the memory of how they'd once felt. Thin and cool, like gnarled sticks, but full of life.
"The explosion probably occurred when death was imminent. She knew the protection spell would be triggered by the release of her soul, but she wanted one more strike on her own terms. It burned the bodies." He imagined her summoning that last bit of defiance to blast them away from her and touched her face. "I'm sorry, Fatima. So sorry we did not come in time."
Bowing his head, he said a prayer for her soul to Allah, since that was the face of the Divine that Fatima had preferred. Then he rose. There were sconces on the wall, the torches burned out. But Uthe found more in a woven basket and replaced them. Fatima was a sorceress, so apparently she hadn't needed a lighter. As soon as he had the thought and glanced toward Keldwyn, he saw the Fae was already on it. Keldwyn moved to the first torch, touched it, and flame appeared.
"It looks far more impressive than it is," Kel said at his quizzical look. "More a conversation with the elements than actual magic."
A pragmatic explanation, yet Uthe couldn't look away as Kel moved to each of the four torches, bringing the flames to life seemingly from the touch of his fingers. Fire licked along Uthe's body as he thought of the way Keldwyn could do the same to him. He was standing amid rotting corpses and still affected by the Fae's mesmerizing qualities, not surprisingly. He'd spent a great deal of his life in violent circumstances, and other impulses and needs had learned to live and grow within their proximity.
Kel glanced over his shoulder. "I did not dismantle the spell, so nothing can get into this cave with us."
"But the longer we are here, the more time we give reinforcements to arrive." Uthe was sure reinforcements would be coming. They'd deal with that when necessary. As the light spread through the chamber, he saw the things he'd seen on past visits. A cot, some basic equipment for preparing and preserving food, a radio. Everything else was dedicated to Fatima's purpose. Containers for potions and ingredients, stacks of books. Hundreds of carved symbols on the walls, a language that stretched in every direction, like stars and planets crowding a universe.
He stood back, studied the symbols. There was something different. Colors. She'd used colors and dyes, so it seemed as if certain strings of symbols went together and intersected with others.
She couldn't make it simple, because she'd known other enemies would be sent to decipher it. The colors were for him. The colors of the chakras, which told him the order in which they should be studied, but that wouldn't make it an easier problem to solve. It just narrowed down the amount of data he would need to study. They wouldn't be leaving the cave anytime soon, which meant he had time to do something else first.
"There are several chambers beyond this main one," he said. "Including one with a water source. I'll clean and prepare the body there and form a cairn over her for burial. It won't be according to her faith, but she'll at least be laid to rest with respect and prayer. As for the rest of them..." His lip curled with distaste. "I'd like to burn them to ash, but the smoke would choke us.
"I'll take care of them," Keldwyn said. "But do we have time for any of that?"
"The answer is there," Uthe said, looking at the ceiling. "But I do not know how long it will take me to decipher it. Hours at least."
Uthe went to his pack, removed a smaller bag. As Keldwyn watched him, he withdrew a generous length of shimmering silk, let it play over his hands. His fingers were too rough, snagging the delicate fabric. "I'd intended to give this to her as a gift. She loved beautiful fabrics."
Keldwyn gripped Uthe's shoulder. "I am sorry."
"She expected to die in the service of this quest, as do I. The manner of her death was undeserved for such a noble spirit, though. No matter how often that turns out to be the way of it."
His bitterness was the symptom of too many losses over the years, but as always, the sharpest bite came from the staring eyes of the long dead, on a battlefield where he had survived and they had not. It always went back to Hattin. He put the silk back in the pack. He would prepare her body, and figure out what he'd come here to find. He would honor her as well as those dead Templars by making sure her tireless work didn't go to waste.
He lifted his head at a waft of warm energy. Keldwyn stood at the apex of the corpses. He had his hands spread as a green glow left his fingertips and drifted down to the floor, settling over the dead like mist. A mist that started thickening, solidifying. Brown veins started to run through their flesh. Uthe inhaled the decay of the natural world. Dried leaves in damp earth, the bones of a mouse left by an owl, algae covering creek stone with slickness.
"We perhaps should have kept one alive," Keldwyn said absently. "Question them about who sent them."
Uthe shook his head. The bodies were starting to disintegrate, the odor of violent death replaced by something far less difficult to endure. "They are under compulsion, my lord, with souls already blackened. They are puppets of their master, with no true knowledge of him."
"Is that how you knew they were deserters and thieves from the Saracen army?"
Uthe nodded. "The demon possesses souls with capital crimes already marked upon them. It is how he is able to compel them from a great distance. Death brings them a chance to seek redemption in the afterlife, where they can cleanse their soul before they move on to another life and hopefully do better."
"A Christian who believes in reincarnation."
"I am not a Christian," Uthe said. "A religion isn't necessary to believe in God and obey His Will. Will you watch for our enemies while I take Fatima's body to the water?"
"I will. And since I will have time to kill...literally,"--a feral smile touched Keldwyn's mouth--"once you start your studying, I'll hunt in the immediate area. Dispatch any reinforcements who get close enough."
"Sounds like an efficient plan. Though Cai won't thank you if you don't leave him or Rand anyone to disembowel."
Uthe spoke in a casual tone, though he didn't like the idea of Keldwyn fighting by himself. Which was as absurd as his desire to pull out his sword earlier, since the Fae was capable of taking out a couple dozen humans on his own. But hadn't Keldwyn been the one that said even a human could get in a lucky strike?
"Cai should think about that next time he disrespects a high Fae," Keldwyn responded, unconcerned. "As his lupine companion would tell him, a bad dog gets no treats." The Fae positioned himself to watch the entrance, but he tilted his head toward Uthe. "Before you bury your sorceress, you will tell me what we face and why we face it. You may save the detailed explanation for later, but I will k
now the gist of it now."
His tone made it a clear command. Uthe would have taken exception to it, but in Keldwyn's position, he would have felt the same way. He met the Fae's dark gaze.
"The demon is an enemy that was imprisoned over a thousand years ago. We discovered him in the ruins of Solomon's Temple, and I was charged with his guardianship until a way to dispatch him back to his origins was discovered. That is the weapon Fatima has created. She sent me the message several ago that it was at last ready."
"So the demon knows the answer to his demise has been found."
