The Hunter's Gambit

by Nicholas McIntire

  The door swung open and a well-dressed man greeted him, “Ah, you’d be the messenger.”

  He nodded, “Where’s the package?”

  “Upstairs. If you’d be so good as to follow me.”

  Tanner followed the man up a long stairway and into an empty room. There was a fire in the hearth, but otherwise it looked as though this house had been cleaned out in a hurry.

  He felt the hand on the back of his head, but before he could even open his mouth he collapsed to the floor.

  Sammul stood over him, shaking his head at the sight. Poor boy. He wondered whether this child had woken up with any premonition that this day would be his last.

  Sammul rooted through the messenger’s bag until he found the Lord Captain’s orders. He pulled them out of the case and tore them open, reading them over.

  And then he tossed them contemptuously into the hungry fireplace, smiling as all those golden seals, all those shimmering wheat stalks the Lord Captain was so fond of, blackened and melted away in the inferno.

  CHAPTER 40

  Demon's Dirge

  THE LAST OF the mountains vanished beneath Jonas as he shot towards his target. Beneath him the tiny cliffside town of Krilya punctured the cliffs an instant before Dalita crumbled into the Grey Sea.

  He dove towards the village, recklessly gaining speed as he neared the earth. Mere moments before he struck the rocky soil, Jonas pulled himself up and flared his wings, sharply breaking his descent.

  His boots struck the ground and he straightened, looking around to see if anyone had seen him.

  There were a few vaguely curious glances from children, but for the most part he was ignored. Remote as Krilya was, its inhabitants were not selected by accident.

  Here and there he noted an angel, but by and large the town’s populace were humans from Ilyar. Or more accurately, priests from Ilyar.

  “You have come to worship?” a dry voice asked hopefully from behind.

  Jonas turned to regard an ancient man. He was stooped over a cane and wore a tattered shroud of ocher cloth. Jonas recognized him immediately as the High Priest of Dazhbog.

  “Your Eminence,” Jonas said quickly, “I need to go to the Cathedral at once. I fear the sanctuary in danger.”

  The High Priest nodded his head gravely, “And well you should fear, young Magus. But I’m afraid you are a touch late.”

  Jonas stopped, taking a moment simply to breathe. His grandmother had been correct. And whether it was due to her negligence or to the intricacies of prophecy no longer mattered. The Presence had been released into the realm of life once again.

  “How long has it been?” he asked weakly, allowing the days of harsh travel and over-taxing to finally catch up with him.

  “I suppose it was two weeks ago. A small group came to the cliffs, but they did not stay in the village. They were gone by morning.”

  Jonas nodded his resigned understanding. The full moon. “I understand. I wonder, Eminence, if I might go down to the Cathedral itself. Though it has been defiled, a bit of guidance would almost be worth the journey at this point.”

  The High Priest bowed his head, and Jonas caught the unmistakable glint of tears shining in his eyes. “I have little doubt my Master would be most appreciative of your prayers.”

  Jonas rested a hand on the man’s shoulder, then turned and made his way towards the edge of the village. As he neared the drop-off, a skeletal stairway became visible, leading down the face of the rock and towards the churning sea beneath.

  He took a deep breath before stepping onto the mist-slick stone, delicately taking the steps one at a time while concentrating painfully on his footwork. While he might have time to shift before he struck the water, he would prefer not to test his own strength after having flown so far and for so long. As it was, his body was exhausted from spending so much time in the Archanium.

  His feet only betrayed him once, slipping on the penultimate step. Jonas managed a leaping fall that landed him on the stone platform. He straightened and gazed up at the carved prominence that was the Cathedral’s façade.

  His eyes immediately went to where the Third Gate should be standing, encased in eons of wards and shields.

  He was greeted instead by soot and splinters.

  The Prince stepped into the Third Transept, noting the painful detail with which the space was rendered. The murals that covered the walls depicted the legend of the Magus Cassian in a series of elaborate scenes.

  A great deal of love and devotion had been put into this place, and yet now it appeared to be all for naught. The structure had failed in its purpose, its guardians in their duties.

  The Second Gate was also absent, though it seemed less violence had been necessary to force it open. Instead of ash and rent bits of blackened timber there remained a simple stone archway leading into the next Transept.

  This space was less intricate, the stone polished but unadorned and reflecting a more natural beauty. But what caught Jonas' attention were the traces of constructed magic that had, until so recently, resided at the center of the space. A pace from where he stood, Jonas felt the remnants of what he now recognized as the Revenant Spell.

  “It was a construct.” he whispered.

  Jonas had originally assumed that the revenants in Drava had been the result of a specific spell that had been read rather than constructed. The magic that still clung to this room told a different story.

  The Magus Stephen must have come into the room and claimed the construct before his master had the chance. Or perhaps the construct had been drawn to the first through the door. Either way, once the spell had selected a master, no amount of skill in the either hemisphere of the Archanium would have allowed Bael to extract it for himself.

  Constructs were such old forms of magic and so misunderstood by Jonas' peers that to be in the presence of even this echo was humbling. Jonas only knew enough to recognize it, but not to craft one. Such knowledge had been lost since the Dominion War.

  And then Jonas remembered where he was and realized that he was looking through the Prime Gate. Into the rough, cave-like hollow that, until mere days ago had trapped the volcanic evil of the Demonic Presence. Even now he could feel its echoes, lingering in the stone. A profound Other had once been caged here.

  The air split violently. Jonas cried out as the whip of conjured lightning struck him. He fell to his knees and clutched at his splintered shoulder.

  “Well, it would appear that Master Bael was correct. He said someone was sniffing around in his wake. He never said it was you.”

  Jonas managed to turn his head enough to catch sight of a sandy-haired man, his fine clothes belying the ugliness of the power that surrounded him.

  “Sammul.” Jonas coughed.

  The High Magus sneered, “This truly is a delightful moment, isn’t it, Highness? I’m actually rather pleased my first spell failed to kill you. What a pity if you were struck down without truly understanding. And what a waste of so many years.”

  As Sammul approached, his heavy boot strikes echoed through the transepts.

  “Although,” Sammul considered as he came to a halt before Jonas' kneeling form, “I must say I am displeased. The good Lord Captain will simply drop dead. Everyone will assume it was his malady that finished him off. And you, of course. I’ll only have this memory to comfort me. But I suppose it will have to suffice.”

  Jonas could hardly focus his vision for the agony coursing through him. The pain, combined with his exhaustion, was threatening to overwhelm him. It was all he could do to retain consciousness.

  “And now, Highness,” Sammul said softly, “I fear we must part ways for the last time.”

  A red nimbus flickered around him, growing in strength and deepening until it radiated the color of old blood.

  Jonas knew he had only heartbeats before it was over. He hurled himself desperately into the waves of the Archanium, lashing out with the first thing his mind touched
.

  A shield of air snapped into existence just as Sammul’s thunderbolt arched towards him. The shield shattered, deflecting the damage into the walls of the Cathedral.

  Jonas drew himself to one knee and clasped another spellform. This one he chose with a bit more thought.

  A gale bellowed from within the mountain, hurling both men through the transepts and out towards the sea.As he slid through the Third Transept, Jonas reached out with his functional arm, catching one of the intricately carved pillars and clinging to it. He held onto the spell with a newfound desperation, pouring his entire being into it and feeding the tempest. He heard more than saw Sammul tumble past him with a shriek.

  Eventually the wind died down. Jonas was only vaguely aware of it, that and the fact that he was still alive. He caught a glimpse of the High Priest’s face before passing beyond the gates of exhaustion into what he could only guess were the cool, unrelenting arms of death.

  Bael stood at the end of the trail, staring into the endless expanse of white before him. Behind the Demon, the armies of the Zra-Uul stood ready to march.

  He opened his pallid mouth, tasting the frozen air for the Lord Captain’s fear. The man would be petrified to discover that eighty thousand men were marching towards Kalinor in the dead of winter.

  Through the Demonic Presence, Bael could feel the reverberations of Aleksei Drago’s pain and desperation. Through the Archanium he could sense the echoes of Jonas Belgi’s handiwork throughout the pass. He could even grasp the type of spell the prince had used.

  We can taste it. The collective thrum of the Presence slithered through his mind, sending a cascade of pinpricks across his skin. The voices still startled him at times, but even when it invaded his thoughts unbidden it was a welcome change from the perpetual emptiness that had gnawed away at his being for so many years.

  “Genius.” he muttered to himself as the Archanium echoes flared up through the snow, painting a picture, telling the story as vividly as any illumination.

  The echoes were hauntingly familiar in their construction, almost as though he’d cast them himself, though they lacked any of his own of brutality and force. It was as though Jonas Belgi had whispered across the meridians of the Archanium and the mountain answered with thunder and destruction ten-thousand fold.

  As much as he hated Jonas Belgi, Bael was not above acknowledging greatness when he saw it. The prince had conjured magic very similar to the spells the Magus Elise would have summoned one thousand years before, so perfectly apt for this particular obstruction. It was actually poetic in its simplicity, and it showed the casual use of an intellect Bael had underestimated in the past.

  Watch that one. The Presence hissed in his ear. Could be troublesome. Meddlesome. Stinks of Hunter and Wood. Stinks of angel.

  Bael frowned. For a moment, he had detected fear amidst the violent vibrations that filled his head. The Demonic Presence of legend had been a force that the Magus Cassian had commanded, though Bael had quickly learned that such tales were gross simplifications.

  He no more commanded the Presence than it commanded him. But he needed it to survive in this world, and it relied on his tie to this earthly realm, to the Archanium, for sustenance. Without him, the Presence would fade from this world, forever locked away in the desolate plain that fool Cassian had stumbled into a thousand years before.

  Though it had spent the better part of the last era sealed in the heart of a mountain, the Presence had grown comfortable in the soft, wet world Cassian had borne it into. It was loathe to leave it. A thousand years had sharpened its hunger, though without a human host its strength had dwindled, a flicker once a conflagration.

  We need time, Child. Time to feel, to learn, to feed. Feed Us, and We will grow strong in you. You will have what you desire. But only with time. You would be wise to fear, for now. Stinks of angel. Seraphima. Dangerous. Deadly.

  Do not be baited. Do not be trapped. Beware Cassian’s Pride.

  A tremor rippled through Bael, nearly forcing him to his knees.

  It was not the first time the Presence had recalled Cassian’s Pride. Bael had asked questions, had tried to divine what it was about the words that disquieted the Presence so deeply. What did they mean? But every time the words entered his mind they were immediately suppressed by a titanic wail, the one sound he’d heard from the Presence that deviated from the angry drone of its collective voice.

  For all the bile the Presence held for its ancient host, Bael was beginning to suspect that it still possessed a shadow of the long-dead Magus. There had been moments in the dark when an image had flashed unbidden across his mind’s eye, something from a world he didn’t recognize, a face he’d never beheld.

  A man’s face, gold of hair and eye, a single, vivid white scar scrawled from his right eye to the hard edge of his jaw, as though tracing the track of a tear.

  The moment he tried to concentrate on the images, they vanished like so much ephemera, and yet he found himself increasingly haunted by the obvious emotion locked in those sad golden eyes; love unlike anything Bael had ever seen. He had recognized the shade of the feeling, had felt it pass through a heart not his own, and had discerned its nature only due to its omnipresent absence in his own heart.

  This had been something primal, and so alien, so unlike anything that had ever been directed at him, he scarcely believed it could be real. Such things existed in stories and songs, not in the cold reality of life. Life offered many things, but each carried an inescapable counter. Hope ending in disappointment, love ending in betrayal, life ending in death.

  That was the world Bael recognized. That was a world Bael understood.

  That love betrayed Us. He betrayed Us. We stopped his heart. We thought he was Our puppet, Our vessel. We stopped his heart, but We could not kill it. You are better. You are stronger. No nasty Hunter, no Wood, no angels to save you.

  We are your salvation. We are your freedom. We want to feed. Feed on the Hunter. Feed on the Wood. Grow strong. Stronger than him. Stronger than his pride. Than love. You have no love, Child, only Us. We will give you what you want. You will feed Our hunger, and We will make you strong.

  That one, the Presence spat its name for Jonas, the angel, the one who stinks of Hunter and Wood, that one did this.

  Bael realized that the Presence had been growing angrier that longer it read the echoes of Jonas' spells, the longer it had to stew on someone of Angelic blood impeding its progress once again.

  Its violent vibrations built into an aching crescendo that throbbed through Bael’s core until he thought his very being might shatter. It was the first true taste of the Presence’s fury he’d felt since it had been released back into the realm of the living, but this time it had a target, an enemy.

  His enemy.

  You will take Us back there. Where We were born. Where We were caged. Where We will suckle, and grow, and consume.

  Bael felt the Presence like a powerful hand on the back of his head, forcing him underwater, drowning him. He released his will and his desperate need for control. He plunged into the violent torrent of the Archanium, the guiding hand of the Presence scattering the worst of the maelstrom.

  The fragmented spell-structure of the Nagavor lifted from his vision like a veil, revealing a seething nether of burning, malignant green, yellow, and black. Spellforms billowed like smoke and shattered like crystal into a thousand new, jagged incarnations of malice and decay before coalescing into great writhing serpents of crackling yellow-green energy surging through rivers of liquid darkness.

  He was speechless, relieved that his body no longer required breath in the airless void that surrounded him. He stood in awe of the extraordinary storm that was the Demonic Presence until time lost all meaning, his body frozen stiff on a distant mountain while his mind witnessed a vision of power so staggering that he was only the second man to behold it in the history of Creation.

  Our greatest mysteries may be well beyond you, Child, but
consider this a promise. Protect Us, nurture Us, feed Us, and you will rise a god fit to break this pitiful world to dust and reforge it into something worthy. With Us. Together.

  Always together.

  An ink-black spellform roiled and tumbled towards him, gathering a piercing wail that drowned out even the storm’s chaotic rage. Bael clawed outwards with his mind, clawing at the ink-black even as it drooled through his fingers, even as it crashed into his chest, burning, searing his flesh and bone.

  He could smell his skin blacken and burn as his bones cracked and pierced the carrion that his body had become. Through it all, he refused to scream, to beg for release. Bael opened his mouth and exhaled into the frigid air.

  The world exploded in Demonic fire.

  A beam of pure malevolence erupted from him, boring into the wall of snow and rock, sending it up in a howling column of steam. The howl became a roar as the beam bore through the pass.

  He heard another sound, and realized it was the men behind him. They were cheering him on, eighty thousand voices raised in worshipful praise. They thirsted for blood, just like him. They hated, just like him.

  Bael fed their hatred into the fire and it burned with a new intensity. The mountain screamed as the column of white shrieked towards the heavens.

  And then he burst through.

  The dark fire flared out over the mountains and splashed across a cliff face half a league away, tainting the rock with slick black soot.

  Bael withdrew himself from the Presence, from the Archanium, resisting the urge to collapse into the snow. The cheering of the men intensified to deafening levels.

  Bael allowed himself a smile of triumph.

  “Good Prince Belgi,” he snarled to the skies, “we’re coming for you.”

  Jonas was floating. All around him ephemeral light-shapes squirmed and shook, swimming this way and that in a sea of blue luminescence. Thoughts and sounds echoed in his mind, but he was unable to assign significance. Time seemed frozen in place. And then, from the depths of the deep blue sea, he understood something.