Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) by Aaron Schneider (my reading book .txt) 📕

other to form ovoid hoops. The bones inside them whined and hissed as black vapors rose before congealing within the hoops.

There was a titanic rasping breath from within the skull-framed cavity, and Milo felt air drawn across his face toward the awakening gate.

The skulls flexed like scaled horny lips around the yawning mouth of the cavity, while above, the churning pools narrowed to scowl at the ghul before the gate. With a spasm in his mind to make up for the momentarily frozen organ in his chest, Milo realized the entire gate had become the vast simulacrum of a face.

“IMRAH MARID, DAUGHTER OF BASHLEK MARID, YOU ARE KNOWN TO US,” the gate announced in a deep, cavernous voice. “FAZIHR JUBAL, SON OF HAMOTH, YOU ARE ALSO KNOWN TO US.”

The gate then directed its gaze to Milo and Ambrose, turning from one to the other.

“YOU ARE NOT KNOWN TO US,” it declared, cold breath hissing between the fangs of the arrayed skulls. “HOLD FAST, OR YOU SHALL BE CONSUMED.”

Milo and Ambrose exchanged concerned glances, but neither moved.

More skeletal limbs extended from the gate, some emerging from the layers of ribs and vertebrae. They gripped the walls, floor, and ceiling of the tunnel, and with a sound like a thousand splintered fingers raking stone, the gate dragged itself forward. By reflex, both men tensed, and Milo prepared to run, Ambrose unlimbered his rifle. The dark, liquid eyes fixed both of them with a cautionary glance but did not repeat its warning. It didn’t need to.

The ghuls shuffled back to make way for the gate, sliding around Ambrose and Milo.

“If this is some sort of trap,” the bodyguard said in a soft, deadly whisper even as he stood perfectly still, “I will make certain you both are sent to Hell screaming.”

“Peace, Jurhumidon.” Imrah’s words were sharp, but her tone was strikingly sincere. “Rousing the gate’s anger could kill us all.”

Milo didn’t kid himself that he could read ghul body language after having learned of their existence only hours ago, but he did notice that both Imrah and Fazihr seemed to be watching everything with rapt, almost anxious attention. Whether that was because they feared the gate or they feared that the gate would kill them remained to be seen.

It crawled forward until Milo could have stuck his hand into the skull-ringed orifice the gate spoke through. This close, the light showed a space lined with spurs of jagged bone stretching beyond the reach of the lamp. The thought of being drawn into that barbed throat to be pierced and torn filled Milo with a horror so potent he almost broke and ran right then.

“BE STILL,” the gate instructed, and the mass of bones began to writhe and undulate. Skeletal hands composed of bones so long and thick they couldn’t be human reached out of the rattling corpus. Fingers as thick as Milo’s wrist reached up and dipped into the stygian pools that served as eyes. As slowly and solemnly as at any christening, the gate bent its limbs downward and touched Milo and Ambrose gently upon their scalps.

Milo’s entire body shrank as cold the likes of which he’d never known stole over him. Goose flesh covered him, and he felt as though his organs were retracting. A blast of air slipped between his numb lips, coming out a plume of condensing vapor. Desperate, futile shivering wracked his body, and he lost his grip on the horns of the skull lamp.

For the second time that day the light vanished, and for a heartbeat, everything was swallowed by blackness and obliterating cold.

But as suddenly as it had come, the cold left, and a second later, Milo had the horns of the lamp pressed into his hands.

“Thanks,” he muttered as the light rekindled, expecting to see Ambrose’s grin.

Instead, a skeletal hand retracted back into the gate, disappearing with a series of dull clicks.

“MORTAL MAN AND CHILD OF THE FALLEN,” the gate intoned. “NOW YOU ARE KNOWN TO ME. BASHLEK MARID AWAITS YOU.”

The huge skeletal arms reached for the cavernous mouth, gripped its edge, and pulled. There were more awful sounds of bones rasping and scraping, then the cavity widened into a portal just tall enough to accommodate Milo and wide enough to allow Ambrose.

Milo looked at Ambrose.

“It says that we are awaited.” He had done his level best but failed to sound cheerful.

Ambrose grunted and stepped forward, moving through the shadow of the gate with chin thrust forward and eyes roving.

“Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel much better.”

Milo tended to agree, but he felt that saying as much in front of Bashlek Marid’s daughter might not be the best idea. Swallowing as he tucked the skull lamp under his arm, he followed his bodyguard through the tunnel within a tunnel, trying not to think about the thousand needles of bone mere inches from impaling him from hundreds of different angles. The air in the tunnel smelled of dust and old blood.

After emerging out the other side of the gate unscathed, he stood with Ambrose and waited for the ghuls to emerge.

“The gate wasn’t so hard to convince after all,” Ambrose noted, his mustache twitching. “Almost like it knew what was coming before she revealed my identity.”

“Perhaps Imrah has more authority than she understands,” Milo offered with a shrug. He turned to see the glint of the ghuls’ eyes coming through the tunnel.

“Maybe,” the big man conceded, his face expressing anything but concession on the point. “Or maybe our escorts weren’t privy to information their leader has. My point is, careful what you say. Our host might not thank you for being too honest.”

Milo nodded his understanding as Imrah and Fazihr emerged from the gate’s shadow.

“See?” Ambrose called jauntily. “Not nearly as much trouble as you thought it would be, eh?”

The ghuls exchanged glances, then stared blankly at the bodyguard. Milo wondered how a species could look so sinister just standing silently, but then he looked back as he heard the gate close with a wince-inducing chorus.