Stormtide

by Den Patrick

  The gholes dragged the first of the men forward and he screamed out in Solska. ‘No, please, no!’

  Veles swung his great wedge-shaped head down so his snout was pointing at the man’s chest. The man’s eyes widened in fear and Kimi could tell he was shaking, even from the other side of the cavern. She slid away from the brazier, hoping the shadows might make her less noticeable.

  Veles lifted one great foot from the ground and scored the man’s forehead with a single claw. A bead of blood shone in the ruddy light and Veles snorted. Something like smoke emerged from his nostrils and the cavern became heavy with the stench of sulphur.

  ‘Please, just let me go,’ said the man. ‘I’ll forget I ever saw you, I’ll tell them I never came here.’

  Veles remained perfectly still, or so it must have seemed to man in front of him. Kimi watched the dragon’s tail snake around, a sliver of metal glittering at the tip. The man barely flinched as the tip of Veles’ tail whipped around behind him, piercing his flesh with a deft touch.

  ‘Please. Anything but this!’

  Kimi watched in horrified fascination as the man’s hair turned snow white in the space of a few breaths. No sound escaped the man’s mouth as he began to stoop, his skin wrinkling and shrivelling as he grew gaunt. A moment later the man slumped on the floor, his youth devoured. Veles pulled the blade from the man’s back with the tip of his tail, which curled gracefully around behind him. Kimi struggled at her bonds as a terrible panic suffocated her.

  So, you are awake, my Yamali jewel. Kimi froze as if she had been struck. The words had appeared in her mind without the need for sound to bring them to her ears. She had witnessed this before with Silverdust. Slowly, she forced herself to her knees, then her feet, shaking so hard she was sure she would fall. She stood up and took a deep breath.

  ‘You can speak?’

  Of course I can speak. You don’t live as long as I do without mastering a number of languages. I am an expert in every tongue that is spoken in Vinterkveld, and a few that history has forgotten. I do not merely speak. I converse.

  The serpent slunk across the cavern but maintained a respectful distance from her. She eyed the tip of the dragon’s tail and the dagger that had been secured there with a breathless dread. His face was long and contained every shade of parchment and polished bone, with a rabble of jutting teeth, some broken, others blackened, most sharp as daggers and just as long. Kimi stepped around the blunt tip of his jaw until she could see one eye, at least a hand’s span wide. The orb was ringed with a diseased red, while the centre bore a cloudy rheum that made the iris indistinct.

  You’ve been very busy since arriving in my kingdom. Veles snorted another plume of sulphurous smoke. Many of my children are missing, and many that remain have lost hands and arms. The dragon made a peculiar noise that was neither growl or purr and Kimi wondered if the creature might be laughing.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Kimi, her eyes drawn to the corpse at the far side of the cavern. Slowly at first, the dead man rolled onto his side, then pushed himself up onto hands and knees with tremulous effort. The head turned first one way and then the other, as if trying to remember where he was.

  Of course, I’ve had to refresh my ranks. And new recruits are so hard to find these days.

  ‘Oh no,’ whispered Kimi, too appalled to think of anything else to say. Veles turned to the other men.

  These three are Okhrana, not merely soldiers or hired thugs. Imagine the Emperor sending his most prized Okhrana to Izhoria after all these years! There must be something here he really wants. Veles turned his blind gaze back to Kimi and snorted another stinking plume. Or someone.

  ‘Don’t kill them.’ Kimi surprised herself even as the words fell from her lips. She forced herself to her feet and looked Veles in the eye. ‘Don’t make them into gholes. Please.’ Killing Okhrana was bad enough, but seeing them changed so horrifically was more than she could bear. Veles made the strange sound that was neither growling or purring again.

  I have read their minds and they seem convinced they are tracking the bearer of an artefact. One of the Emperor’s most treasured, most powerful, most ghastly artefacts. Imagine such a thing. Just imagine such a fantastic bauble fetching up in dreary Izhoria. Perhaps you know something about this, my Yamal jewel? Or should I say, my Yamali thief?

  ‘I’m not a thief. And I didn’t choose to come to Izhoria. I merely want to get to Khlystburg.’

  You have the Ashen Torment and you will give it to me or the lives of these men will be forfeit. Though only the stars know why you’d want to save the lives of your persecutors. Of course, humans never did make much sense to me. So squeamish.

  The gholes became restless and the men in their grasp stared at their comrade with undisguised horror. Veles cast a look across the cavern and the gholes forced the men to their knees.

  Can you not see that I’m doing you a favour by killing these men, my Yamali thief?

  ‘I’m not a thief.’

  I can make these Okhrana go away. The serpent drew himself up so he towered over Kimi. And all I want is one little artefact in return.

  ‘I don’t have it,’ said Kimi. ‘I wore it on a chain around my neck and it was lost in the fight.’ She felt the something heavy brush against her thoughts, not a physical sensation, but something unsettling. Panic set in as Kimi realised the serpent was attempting to read her mind.

  It seems you are a closed book, my Yamali thief. Veles reached forward with a claw larger than Taiga’s sickle. The tip of the blackened bone touched Kimi lightly on her throat, then traced a line down to her breastbone.

  Of course, this is most unfortunate. To lose such an artefact is unthinkable. Unconscionable even! And I am denied the simple pleasure of reading your mind to see if you speak falsely. You leave me no choice but to kill them.

  ‘Wait! No! I lost it during the fight!’ Kimi’s heart raced and a deep disgust rose within her.

  Veles withdrew from her, moving in an explosion of curling coils and sinuous movement. He arrived by the cavern entrance just as more gholes arrived. Kimi’s heart nearly stopped in her chest as she laid eyes on Marozvolk. She was being dragged by four gholes and Kimi prayed that the woman was unconscious rather than dead. A grim-faced Tief entered the room on his own two feet, though his hands were bound.

  ‘Please don’t hurt them,’ shouted Kimi. ‘I lost the Ashen Torment in the swamp. I would give it to you right now if I had it.’

  Veles reared upright, sat back on his haunches, then slipped two claws of one vast foot around Marozvolk, catching her under her arms. He lifted her closer, as if inspecting a favourite doll. Marozvolk’s head lolled to one side but she did not wake.

  Perhaps this one is more important to you than the Emperor’s Okhrana? Perhaps she too is a Yamali thief? Veles held her closer to his muzzle and sniffed again. I smell the arcane on this one. He turned his rheum-blinded eyes back to Kimi. Are you certain you do not want to tell me where the Ashen Torment is?

  Kimi thought of the shattered artefact hanging from its chain at the circle of stones; she thought of Taiga, sleeping and vulnerable.

  ‘I lost it. I lost the Ashen Torment in the fighting and …’

  Veles set down Marozvolk’s limp body and scored the forehead of the nearest Okhrana. His tail whipped around a second later, and the man aged in the space of a few heartbeats.

  ‘No, please! It’s broken, shattered into pieces,’ shouted Kimi. ‘All that remains is a shard. Nothing more.’

  I have met ones such as you before. Spirited and stubborn. Surely it is of no great concern to you whether my trinkets be broken or whole.

  Kimi looked around the cavern and the single tunnel leading out. She saw Tief, bloodied and bound, eyes wide, and worse yet Marozvolk, who had still to wake.

  ‘If I tell you where it is will you give me your word that all of my friends can leave Izhoria unharmed?’

  You want me to give you my word? How quaint. Let me consider it for a moment. Veles turne
d and dispatched the last of the Okhrana with a languid grace, no doubt carrying out an unholy tradition that had been repeated hundreds of times. The man died without a sound, his mind fled. His body aged and withered, only to stand with effort moments later, another ghole for Veles to command.

  I have considered it. Veles loomed over Tief and extended a single claw just above his forehead.

  ‘Don’t hurt him!’ shouted Kimi, though it was anger not fear that drew the words out of her. She didn’t care for the callous way the dragon gamed with her, nor the helplessness of her situation.

  I give you my word that your friends will die next unless you tell me precisely where the Ashen Torment is.

  ‘It’s at the stone circle! I left it at the stone circle.’ Tief gazed at Kimi with a look of dread and disbelief in his eyes. She had damned Taiga to almost certain death, and worse yet the dragon would likely make a ghole of her.

  What stone circle?

  ‘We made our camp there. It’s where your gholes found us. Where they captured Marozvolk and I.’

  Veles drew close to her and stared from one diseased eye. Kimi had no way of knowing if he was entirely blind; certainly the serpent’s lack of vision hadn’t slowed him down. He gave another snort so loud that Kimi shrank back behind the brazier, feeling foolish and small.

  We will see if the Ashen Torment has been destroyed as you say it has, and what mood takes me upon my return. Perhaps I will release you and your friends after all. It is good to try new things. Can you possibly imagine how incredibly tedious it is to live in a swamp for over a hundred years?

  Kimi stood up again, confused by the dragon’s ramblings. His mood seemed to weave and coil as much as his body, and his anger flowed and ebbed so quickly she could barely follow it.

  ‘I imagine it’s lonely more than anything else.’

  Dragons are not social creatures, little thief. Though I confess, I find these conversations a pleasant diversion.

  Veles snorted a plume of sulphurous smoke and turned away, gesturing to his followers with a black talon. A handful of gholes marched Tief across the cavern, while another mob dragged Marozvolk and deposited her at Kimi’s feet. Veles watched all of this as he moved slowly across the cavern, slinking and prowling in a way that unnerved Kimi.

  The stone circle, you say. How curious. I have no recollection of such a place. Suddenly he was a flurry of looping coils and whiplash motion, disappearing from the cavern, his tail clattering against the tunnel mouth as he left. The gholes turned as one and raced after their master, leaving the cavern in silence.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Kjellrunn

  Kjellrunn emerged from Sundra’s bedroom the following evening, taking small steps, one hand pressed to her side and the throbbing pain that resided there. Sundra spoke at the altar in a low and calm voice. Trine stood just behind her, attired in the dark garb of Frejna’s priesthood. Every so often Sundra would pause to let Maxim translate a sentence or two. A small congregation of roughly thirty townspeople had gathered on the low benches. Some listened attentively, while a few stifled tears for the recently departed and others sat with their heads bowed in contemplation.

  ‘She got what she wanted,’ whispered Mistress Kamalov, emerging from the shadows. ‘It is a real temple now.’

  Kjellrunn eyed Trine and felt a pang of annoyance. ‘That should be me up there. Sundra asked me to be her initiate.’

  Mistress Kamalov gestured to the stairs behind her and soon they were back in Kjellrunn’s room where they could speak without fear of interrupting Sundra’s service.

  ‘Perhaps you should be by the altar,’ said the renegade Vigilant. ‘Or perhaps it is better you study with Sundra and with me.’ She perched on the edge of the table and inspected the room. Kjellrunn felt faintly embarrassed her former master had not seen the simple chamber, though in truth there was little to see. At one point, not so long ago, she had shared the kitchen of a woodcutter’s chalet with the woman. Every afternoon they had trained together, but now Trine had usurped her in Mistress Kamalov’s estimation, and Sundra’s too it seemed.

  ‘It seems you dislike Trine as much as she dislikes you,’ added Mistress Kamalov.

  ‘I don’t dislike her …’ said Kjellrunn before being silenced by a stern look from her former master.

  ‘Kjellrunn. I see with my own eyes how you two girls circle each other. Like cats, yes?’ She hunched her shoulders in imitation of a cat with its hackles up and mimed claws with her bony fingers.

  ‘I’m not a cat,’ said Kjellrunn, her mind drifting to the very same creature she’d imagined in the doorway the previous day. Mistress Kamalov crossed her arms and frowned.

  ‘Horseshit.’

  ‘I dislike her because she’s unbearably rude.’ Kjellrunn sat down on her bed. She took a deep breath as the pain flared in her side before subsiding. ‘Did you send her to spy on me?’

  Mistress Kamalov chuckled with a distinctly unhealthy rasping sound.

  ‘Is that what you think? I sent a spy?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ confessed Kjellrunn. ‘So much has happened since we came here and I’ve struggled to make sense of any of it. All I know is that Trine always seems to be close by with a sour look on her face. She seemed desperate to be your new apprentice—’

  ‘More horseshit,’ said Mistress Kamalov. ‘All the novices are mine now. Who else will teach them? You think I know anything about the secrets of House Plamya? House Zemlya? Of course not. All I can do is stop these children being a danger to themselves. Trine is not my only apprentice. They all are.’

  ‘She’s never had a kind word for me.’ The more Kjellrunn thought about it the more she realised she barely knew the girl. ‘And now she’s the new initiate of Frejna. That was my position.’

  ‘Sundra needed an assistant and Trine is the only girl the same age as you. Sundra could not ask the boys to do such a thing. They fidget too much.’

  ‘So why does Trine hate me so much?’

  Mistress Kamalov looked away and smiled. ‘When I was on Vladibogdan there was another woman, a girl, who also studied at Academy Vozdukha. Natalya Sokolov. She came from a good family in the Vend Province and had all the airs and graces you might expect, along with all the pomp and arrogance.’ Mistress Kamalov rolled her eyes, a curious gesture that belonged to a much younger woman. ‘Whatever I did Natalya had to do it better. She had to be more skilled with the arcane, earlier to rise and later to bed, more thorough in her studies. There was no end to the ways in which Natalya Sokolov set herself up against me.’

  ‘How did you beat her?’

  ‘Beat her? There was no need to beat her. She graduated from the academy and was posted to the Novgoruske Province. I heard she hunted down three gangs of bandits and was famous within the Synod for a time. She used her powers so freely that she died of a strange wasting sickness. It is common to people who draw on the arcane power of the air.’

  ‘That’s awful.’ Kjellrunn grimaced.

  ‘But not as awful as Natalya was. She will not be missed. My point is, some people convince themselves you are their enemy, or that they must best you in some way. Some people need opposition in order to feel alive, yes?’

  ‘So … you’re saying Trine is in competition with me?’

  ‘It would seem so.’

  ‘And there’s no great conspiracy or reason to hate me?’

  ‘The conspiracy is simple! She is an angry young woman with a stick up her backside. She is much like you in this way. Perhaps this is why she dislikes you so much. You remind her of herself, except you are fair whereas she is dark, in hair and temperament.’

  Kjellrunn laughed wearily, then winced and pressed a hand to the crossbow wound. ‘I do not have a stick up my backside.’

  ‘Of course. And birds have been known to fly north for winter.’ Kjellrunn couldn’t help herself from grinning. She had missed the wizened old kozel. ‘I cannot believe you thought I would send a spy.’ Mistress Kamalov shook h
er head. ‘As if I have time to worry about you with a temple full of children running around and barely any money to feed them. Idiot.’

  ‘Fine. I’m an idiot.’ Kjellrunn stared at the renegade Vigilant, suddenly serious. ‘But now it’s time you told me what’s going on with my powers and my anger. I need to learn why I can’t go near the shore without …’ She waved one hand, searching for the word. ‘Whatever it is that happens.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Mistress Kamalov. ‘You have made it clear that you do not take these powers lightly. That is to be commended.’

  ‘So you’re willing to teach me again?’

  ‘If you are willing to be taught,’ said Mistress Kamalov.

  Kjellrunn nodded. ‘I’m willing. I want to learn how to control this. I want to stop being scared of this.’

  ‘Good.’ Mistress Kamalov smiled. ‘We have wasted a lot of time, yes?’

  The very next morning brought an abrupt change of routine. The temple steps and sombre readings of Sundra’s black book had been exchanged for a gentle walk to the shore.

  ‘How is your wound?’ asked Mistress Kamalov as they walked the nearly empty early-morning streets of Dos Khor.

  ‘It hurts less than I was expecting,’ replied Kjellrunn, pressing tentative fingertips to where the crossbow bolt had split her open.

  ‘Students with access to the powers of earth often heal at a faster rate. Those with the powers of water and earth faster still.’