Death's Executioner

by Charlotte E. English

  Nanda spun about. He stood, unruffled, a few feet away, on the other side of the platform. Near at hand was the stout walls of a withy-hut, a latticed door built into its façade. He glanced only once at Nanda, perhaps assuring himself that she had survived the passage in one piece, and then knocked firmly upon the door.

  Rattling reached Nanda’s ears, a sound as of a basket of dry bones being shaken.

  She heard nothing else, but apparently the signal to enter had been given, for Niklas unlatched the door and pushed it open.

  A gesture ushered Nanda inside first.

  The room beyond was tiny, the woven floor uneven; Nanda pitched sideways upon entering, her foot inadvertently set down upon a rupture in the ordered tangle of the withies. A powerful melange of aromas assaulted her nostrils: pungent, herbal smoke, stale sweat, and the indefinable scent of sickness.

  In a chair tucked into a shadowy corner sat the woman Anouska, her thin fingers clutching the chair’s protruding arms so tightly her knuckles gleamed white. An emaciated, shrunken figure, she must have been three, four times Nanda’s age — easily over a century old. The relentless passage of years may have stolen her vitality away, but the withered husk left behind had life to it yet, chiefly in the hard pair of eyes which took in Nanda’s entry. Pale, yes. Paler… as Nanda stared in growing disbelief, those eyes drained of all colour, turning stark, ghost-white.

  ‘Malefic,’ she hissed, and her hands gripped her chair-arms so hard the wood creaked in protest. ‘I smell it on you, woman.’

  ‘Malefic?’ echoed Nanda, disturbed in spite of herself. ‘Is that what they are called?’

  Anouska did not answer. She watched Nanda with those eerie eyes, unblinking. Was she even breathing? Did Nanda imagine the distrust, fear even, that she saw in their expression? Perhaps she suffered some delusion. Such advanced years frequently brought senility with them, a cruel reward for a life lived long and well.

  ‘It is not me,’ she said, as calmly as she could. ‘I am no malefic.’

  ‘You have been near,’ hissed Anouska. ‘Near… did it strike you?’ She sat up as she spoke, leaned toward Nanda with an odd, hungry ferocity Nanda knew not how to interpret. ‘Did it?’ she repeated.

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘Good.’ Anouska sank back into the embrace of her chair, some of her strange energy deserting her. Too much. She shrank back into a faded shadow of a woman, diminishing in her every aspect. ‘Better you had died, than that.’

  ‘What?’ Nanda whispered. ‘Why?’

  A sniff of disdain. ‘Need you ask? Has the whole world forgot?’

  ‘We… have not been obliged to deal with them in many years.’

  Anouska shook her head. Her mouth stretched into a death’s head grin, no mirth in it. Disdain, again. Mockery. ‘Forgotten,’ she spat. ‘And you are come here for help, is that it?’

  ‘We are in dire trouble without it, ma’am.’

  ‘Do not ma’am me, young woman.’ Anouska bristled, and for a moment Nanda thought she would spit at her.

  Nanda hoped Konrad was meeting with more success, at The Malykt’s Temple. Surely he must. ‘You warded the bridges, once,’ she tried. ‘Why? Was it because of these malefics?’

  ‘Much good it did us,’ growled Anouska. ‘Still they came, thick and fast. Close one door and another opens, and another…’ Her eyes turned distant, remembering.

  ‘They open by themselves, then, these doors?’ Nanda persisted.

  Anouska’s distant look faded. ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘By themselves? How should they?’

  ‘Then who opened them? Who would facilitate the passage of such a thing?’

  ‘Who?’ Anouska shook her head in slow despair. ‘You remember the question I asked you when you came in?’

  Did it strike you. ‘I do,’ Nanda said.

  ‘There is your answer. Can you not manage so simple an equation?’

  Nanda thought, and… blanched. ‘I might?’ she said. ‘I? Were I struck?’

  ‘It is always better when they kill,’ said Anouska, as if that was an answer. But then, perhaps it was, for she added, ‘When they did not… we had to do it.’

  ‘Kill?’

  ‘Death is not the worst of all possible fates,’ hissed Anouska.

  Nanda fought her way through the convoluted alterations in subject with an effort. There was a thread here, a line of argument making sense in Anouska’s aged mind, filled as it was with so many years, so many memories, so many thoughts… her mind obliged her with a sudden memory of her own: Konrad doubled over in agony, black bile or blood or something pouring from his mouth, a flash in his eyes that was nothing of his: darkness? Rage?

  Had he used the word conduit, or had she?

  ‘It… corrupts,’ she said shakily, her stomach churning. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘How could it not?’ said Anouska simply. ‘You have seen it. You know.’

  Nanda had. She did. Such a nightmare must spread itself, could not touch without destroying — one way or another.

  ‘Spirits above,’ she breathed. Konrad. Was he irrevocably marked? She had healed the physical damage to his body, purged the taint from his blood — or had she? She had not known then what she was looking for. If there had been a touch of darkness in him, well… that was Konrad. How could she have known to look for more?

  ‘A lucky escape?’ Anouska’s hard stare returned, and those eyes… they sent another shiver down Nanda’s spine. ‘Or something else?’

  ‘A friend was… struck.’

  ‘Then you will have to kill them.’ Anouska spoke simply, matter-of-fact, as though she had not just condemned a living man to an abrupt death at the hands of his own loved ones.

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘There is no other way. Only death will purge the foul touch of a malefic from the blood.’

  A year ago, a few months ago, Nanda could have welcomed such news, for Konrad alone had the power to die — and live. And die again.

  Not now. He couldn’t die, not now, not when it meant a final end.

  ‘There must be a way,’ she said stoutly. ‘To save him.’

  ‘You lose sight of the problem,’ said Anouska, brisk now. ‘To lose a friend, yes, that is a pity, but as you hesitate and keen over it a malefic remains abroad. Killing more. Corrupting more. What shall you do, witch? Have you the strength to fight it? Or shall you lose your chance to sentiment, and grief? You cannot afford such weakness now.’

  Nanda shuddered inwardly at such words, wondering at the life this woman had led. What had turned her so hard, so cold? Had it been the malefics?

  ‘What did you do?’ said Nanda, taking hold of herself, and shoving down the wild panic surging up in her. ‘When the malefics came? How did you fight them?’

  ‘Me, nothing,’ Anouska said. ‘I was a mere child, the last time a malefic manifested in Assevan. My father was struck. My mother slew him. Another witch slew her in her turn. Both were lost, the moment that rot touched them.’

  Nanda’s nausea grew. Spirits help me, what a history lies behind this woman. What an impossible duty lies before me. ‘And the malefic?’ she persevered. ‘How was it subdued?’

  ‘No ordinary weapon can slay a malefic,’ said Anouska, confirming Nanda’s worst fears. ‘If you can get near enough to one to wield it, which is doubtful.’ Raking Nanda with a disdainful glare, she made her feelings as to Nanda’s probable valour clear.

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘There is one entity whose Will can oppose such evil,’ said Anouska, hoarse now, dry as paper. She gave a cough.

  ‘Shandrigal,’ breathed Nanda. Say it is so. Give me one weapon in this war, one I can wield.

  ‘Aye,’ said Anouska, but not quite as though she was answering Nanda’s question. She nodded to herself, and that rictus split her face again, a grin gone horribly wrong. ‘Smelled that on you, too. Shandral, are you? They do not make them the way they used to.’

  Nanda wished, for one selfish moment, that she had met this wo
man in her earlier years — before she was spirit-drained, before she was diminished. At the height of her powers. Then the gritty, grimy old woman might have been impressed.

  Never mind what she thought. ‘I am Shandral,’ Nanda said, lifting her chin. ‘And if my Mistress has the means to counter this threat then I shall bear Her banner proudly.’

  ‘I wonder,’ mused Anouska distantly, ‘if they are still there?’

  ‘What?’ said Nanda, breathless. ‘What, and where?’

  ‘There was a blade,’ said Anouska. ‘There were three. Brightness itself, all of them, the Shandrigal’s gift to our benighted realm.’

  ‘Two were lost,’ said Niklas, the first time he had spoken since entering Anouska’s house.

  ‘Then but one remains,’ said Anouska. ‘Shall it be enough?’

  ‘It must be,’ said Nanda. ‘Only tell me where to find it.’

  ‘You imagine yourself saving your friend, do you?’ said Anouska, and gave a dry, deathly chuckle. ‘Walking away a hero? No one battles a malefic and lives. That is the nature of it, Shandral. There was a sacrifice. Always.’

  Nanda swallowed. She had seen the nightmare Anouska called malefic, seen the frightening speed with which it moved, the merciless onslaught it brought. Too fast, too brutal, for study; she could not even say what it had looked like, quite. All that she had taken away was a confused jumble of impressions: darkness, glinting talons, impossible speed. Blood.

  Whoever slew the malefic could hardly hope to do so without being struck, as Anouska put it. And to be struck was to die.

  To wield that blade, then, was to die — whether or not she took the malefic with her. And Konrad’s life, too, was forfeit.

  For a moment, courage failed her. She quailed, despair overwhelming her in a rush. What nightmare was this? She’d had hope, only a few scant hours ago. How long ago it seemed. Her only problem then had been her surfeit of spirit-pacts, the slow drain on her health that would, at last, kill her. Her hope had come out of Konrad’s ready offer of assistance, the belief that somehow he would help her free herself of the consequences of her own folly.

  Now they were both doomed.

  Chin up, Irinanda Falenia, she scolded herself. Despair killed as surely as any malefic.

  Oddly, it was a recollection of Tasha’s existence which saved her this time. That sardonic grin, the eye-rolling insouciance with which a child turned lamaeni far too young defied everything the world had to throw at her. What would she say to this news? How would she respond to the challenge?

  Do your worst, then. Nanda could almost hear her say it.

  ‘The blade,’ Nanda said, more steadily than she would have thought possible a moment ago. ‘Where is it?’

  Anouska looked to Niklas.

  ‘We have custody of it,’ he said, reluctantly. ‘It is here.’

  ‘Give it to me,’ said Nanda. ‘Please.’

  But Niklas shook his head. ‘That is not for me to decide.’ He, too, looked Nanda over with — not disdain, but something tending in that direction. She knew how she must appear, to those with senses enough to see. A drained spirit-witch, caught by her own ego, her too-comfortable belief in her infallibility. A woman who had put herself in such disorder could not be trusted with such a mission. She had not the strength left for it.

  Well. If death was in Nanda’s near future anyway, what better use to make of it than taking a malefic with her? ‘I can do this,’ she said. ‘And I will.’

  Niklas shook his head again. ‘It is not for me to decide. We will consult.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘We will bring the blade,’ he said, talking over her objections. ‘To The Shandrigal’s Temple. It shall be decided there.’

  That would be enough, for a beginning. Nanda nodded. ‘Bring everyone you can,’ she said. ‘I will not accept that there is nothing to be done for those struck. There must be something. If we all work together—’

  Anouska fell to hoarse cackling. ‘You think that was not tried?’ she wheezed. ‘You think we would have fallen to slaying those we loved, if there had been any alternative?’

  ‘We must try,’ said Nanda doggedly. ‘I cannot simply accept—’

  ‘Accept,’ snapped Anouska. ‘Accept what you must. Life demands that of all of us. Accept, and do. But do not dither, or more of your loved ones will die around you.’

  Life demands that of all of us. So it did. Konrad had been forced to accept the upheaval of his life, long ago, the loss of the person he had been. The role that had been thrust upon him. He had borne it, borne all of it, year upon year, performing his harsh duties with more honour than Nanda had imagined possible. He did not deserve such an end. Life had demanded too much of him already.

  Nanda thought of Tasha, and the inspector, and steeled her nerve. She had allies in this. She had options.

  The way forward would not be easy, but a way must be found.

  ‘I will find you at the Temple,’ she told Niklas. ‘There are things I must do, first.’

  ‘Stubborn,’ muttered Anouska. ‘You will see. You will see.’

  ‘When hope fails, at least there is the stubborn refusal to accept defeat,’ said Nanda, with a flash of her impish smile. ‘It has got me out of trouble more than once.’

  ‘And into it, too, I’ll wager,’ said Anouska.

  Chapter Five

  The Shandrigal’s Temple occupied a spot so close to that of The Malykt, Konrad marvelled at himself that he should never have set foot in it before. Both constructs were given prominent positions at the very heart of Ekamet, and a mere two minutes’ walk carried Konrad out the grand double-doors of the one and into the equally majestic entrance of the other.

  He entered cautiously, not for fear of the malefic leaping out at him from some shadowed nook, but out of a feeling of wrongness. He was the wrongness here, a creature belonging so utterly to The Malykt that he could have no business placing himself under The Shandrigal’s roof. This was why he had never come here before, despite Nanda’s influence over his life. He was the opposite of everything her Mistress stood for.

  He paused in the entrance hall, half expecting a smiting for his presumption.

  Nothing came.

  In its essential design, this second temple was surprisingly similar to The Malykt’s. Both were built from solid, ash-grey granite; both possessed the soaring height, the grandeur, the handsome, imposing façades lit with improbably large windows. The tall roofs and coloured domes. They had been built at the same time, in all probability, and bore all the prevailing architectural conceits of their era.

  Their interiors differed. This hall, similar in proportion to The Malykt’s, and with the same echoing hush courtesy of marble and tile, differed in its details. The carvings adorning the central pillars, the mosaic images set into the floors, bore The Shandrigal’s symbols in a riotous tangle, possessing in consequence a liveliness missing from the Temple of Death.

  How fitting, Konrad thought. Of all the things one would expect of the dead, liveliness wasn’t supposed to be one of them. Even if his experience had sometimes been rather different.

  He was the vanguard. Hard on his heels came Diana, attended by, in all probability, most of the rest of the Order. When had these two Orders, devoted to such opposite principles, worked together in this fashion? Had it occurred in living memory?

  Some quality of the brightness in that hall stirred his disgust. He preferred the sobriety and deep silences of his own Temple; the celebratory atmosphere of this one was unseemly, vulgar, detestable— he raised his hand, the one that held his heavy, silver-topped cane, with some half-formed thought of beating the life out of those repulsive pillars.

  The intensity of this thought shocked him, and he lowered his hand again. The thought was gone, so completely he wondered that it had entered his head at all. What bizarre impulse had gripped him? He stood in silence for some moments, breathing too hard, and felt it again: a stirring of something ugly in his soul. Something he would not hav
e been eager to acknowledge as his own.

  ‘Welcome to the Temple of—’ Someone had come in, unnoticed by Konrad in his momentary self-absorption. A woman, smiling. But when she caught sight of him, she stopped smiling, stopped talking, stopped everything. Her face registered shock, dismay — and alarm. ‘Sir?’ she said, visibly gathering herself. ‘Are you—’

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said, pushing down that inexplicable ugliness, drawing his civilised habits back around himself. Like armour. ‘I come from The Malykt’s Order; the rest will soon arrive, and numerous others as well. There has been — there is an emergency.’

  She was young, this Shandral, with some quality that reminded him of Nanda. Not her appearance: she had typical Assevan features, the pale colouring and dark hair, and a freshness about her that could belong only to extreme youth. An acolyte, of some sort? Had she even achieved her eighteenth year, yet? Perhaps it was that penetrating stare that put him in mind of Nanda, the intense focus, that indefinable suggestion that she saw right through him.

  What, he thought, did she see? Nothing she enjoyed.

  ‘You are the Mal—’ she began.

  ‘Best not to say it out loud,’ he interrupted hastily.

  She nodded, regaining her composure. ‘What is the nature of this emergency?’

  ‘Malefic.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘No,’ she breathed. ‘That cannot be—’

  Tumult cut her off, the clamour of many arrivals. Konrad heard Diana’s voice rising above the hubbub. ‘A place of comfort for Talin please, at once. No, I would not have chosen to move her just yet, but leaving her behind is unthinkable, and this is by far the better place to prepare for this war. Ah! You.’ This last was directed to the woman he’d just been speaking with, Konrad surmised, and so did she, for she started at Diana’s words and hurried over. ‘Where is Katya? If she is not here, she must at once be summoned. There is no time to lose.’

  ‘It’s true, then,’ said the acolyte, staring ashen-faced as the majority of The Malykt’s Order shattered the silence of her Mistress’s Temple, pouring grim-faced into the echoing hall.

  ‘Konrad,’ said Diana, stopping as she made to pass him by. An odd, searching look at him; it made his guts churn. What was she seeing, now? ‘Are you well?’