by Darius Hinks
He looked back and saw that, even accompanied by Damára, the others were only a few minutes away. He looked back at the bridge and saw that, like everything else, it was quickly disintegrating. Each fresh tremor threatened to destroy it, but on the far side there was a portal – a tall cave mouth that was also familiar. He recalled that he had passed through the portal with Orion, on his first visit to the Vale of Fincara. He had little time to reminisce, though. Each fresh tremor caused the bridge to slump and crumble. Haldus stepped onto it, then paused, sensing that the whole edifice was about to collapse.
The others reached his side and looked at him expectantly.
‘This isn’t the first time you’ve been here,’ said Clorana, noticing how Haldus studied the archway.
‘I came here with the king,’ he replied, peering into the darkness.
‘Orion came here?’ asked one of the young warriors, his voice full of awe.
Haldus frowned. ‘He was troubled. He wished to pit himself against the forest spirits. I sought him out, wishing him to lead the Wild Hunt, as he has done so many times before, but he was obsessed with something I mentioned in passing. I had spoken of Cyanos’s strangeness and mentioned how he had begun worshipping a spirit by the name of Amphion.’ Haldus shook his head. ‘As soon as I mentioned the forest spirit, Orion could think of nothing but hunting it down and demanding fealty from it.’
‘Amphion,’ said Clorana, looking puzzled. ‘The eagle spirit. I thought that was just a story.’
Haldus shook his head. ‘Cyanos created a sculpture in the shape of the spirit and he meant to sacrifice his own people by burning them alive in it. Then we arrived and he discovered that the spirit was playing him for a fool. Cyanos was so tormented that he begged Orion to forgive him and let him join the hunt.’
Haldus looked pained. ‘And I was the biggest fool. I believed he was genuinely contrite.’
‘Cyanos has been a liar since he was a child,’ muttered Damára.
Haldus nodded, sounding bitter as he continued. ‘I see that now. But he has a honeyed tongue. Since Orion burned on his winter pyre, Cyanos has been my shadow. He convinced me that all his learning gave him knowledge no one else had – even Naieth. He was the one who tricked me into a battle that lost me my army. He was…’ Haldus glowered across the bridge. ‘I will make him pay.’
They crossed the bridge at a brisk jog, sensing that, at any minute it might collapse. Then, upon reaching the other side, they rushed into the cave mouth.
They were immediately enveloped by darkness and noise. The mountain’s death-throes were all the more terrifying when heard from inside. Rolling, apocalyptic explosions rocked the walls and ground. After feeling his way blindly through the chaos, Haldus felt a rush of hope as he saw stairs up ahead. He fell again, scraping the skin from his legs and arms, but the pain only focussed his thoughts. He was haunted by the haughty, refined features of Lord Cyanos, smiling serenely as he assured Haldus that he should take his hawk lords to the Cromlech of Cadai. Haldus seethed as he considered all that Cyanos had lost him. A third of his kinsmen dead, and the rest trapped forever in the Cromlech.
Haldus led the others on, up the stairs and through the clouds of dust. They climbed in silence for a while, listening for the angry whirring of the giant flies. Then, the prince’s thoughts were interrupted as he saw lights up ahead. He thought at first that it was daylight, but then he realised it was grubs, circling overhead, pulsing with a lemon-coloured glow. He stopped for a moment to watch, stunned by this latest horror. Each grub was a kind of ridged, winged sac, enveloping the severed head of a fallen asrai warrior. The light came from the acid that was slowly digesting each of the heads.
Haldus watched for a moment, horrified, then he flinched and backed away as something flew from the shadows and bounced off his chest.
As he staggered back towards the stair wall, he saw that the object was another grub, but one without light. It hurtled towards him again and he realised that, unlike the ones overhead, this grub was an empty sac with a gaping, serrated mouth. It rushed towards Haldus’s face and he lashed out wildly with his fist.
The grub swallowed his forearm and blazed with yellow light as it started to digest him. He punched it furiously with his other hand until it fell away.
‘Guard yourselves,’ he called to the others. Then he hurried on.
Finally, a more natural light appeared and Haldus emerged into another fume-filled gully. It was hard to see anything clearly, but he knew this was the approach to Cyanos’s halls.
‘Almost there,’ he called back as he jogged through the clouds with the others staggering after him.
Gloom enveloped them again as they entered Cyanos’s home but this time the darkness was punctuated by fires. Sconces lined the walls and, despite the chaos outside, several of them were still lit – guttering and spitting each time the mountain shook.
‘Let me guide you,’ said Damára, appearing at Cyanos’s side as he paused to consider his route.
He looked gratefully at her. ‘I may need your help when we find him, too.’
She smiled in the shifting light. ‘The great Prince Haldus needs my help. These are strange days indeed.’
Haldus blushed in the darkness.
Damára laughed softly and touched his face, tracing his deep scars and low, brutal brow. Then, using her staff for support, she lowered herself to the ground and touched the rock.
Clorana and the other young warriors watched with fascination as she muttered incomprehensible phrases. Light pulsed beneath her fingers and the air took on a sulphurous tang. Then she nodded and stood up again.
‘He’s close,’ she said, with distaste in her voice, ‘but he’s not alone.’
‘Lead the way,’ said Haldus and, as they trooped off down the passageway, he looked back at the others. ‘Keep your weapons ready.’
Damára’s silver hair was a beacon, leading them past the yawning, pitch-black openings that surrounded them. As they ran, the tremors grew even more violent. There was now a constant shaking that rattled stones down on their heads and shoulders and, every now and then, opened fissures at their feet.
Damára paused beside a door and turned towards Haldus with a confused expression. ‘The eagle spirit is here, still trapped in the mountain, beyond this door. Cyanos has made no attempt to free it. I can see them both clearly. One is distracted by pain, the other by madness. They do not know we are here.’
Haldus looked at the door. It was closed and locked, but the tremors had jolted it from its frame. It would be an easy enough job for a few of them to dislodge it. The mountain shook again and a series of brittle cracking sounds rang out overhead. With dust and pebbles bouncing off his helmet, Haldus stared at Damára. ‘How far away are they?’
‘They’re close,’ she replied, with a strange smile.
The ground shuddered and several of the torches went out. Haldus looked back the way they came.
‘Will you let him live?’ asked Damára.
Haldus glowered and waved some of the warriors over to the door. ‘He has to pay for what he has done.’
The door had already been dislodged and it took them minutes to lift it from its hinges. It clattered noisily to the ground, but Haldus saw no need for caution. The air was filled with creaks and groans as the mountain began to collapse.
The doorway led into a neatly hewn passageway that unnerved Haldus and the others almost as much as the madness outside. The plastered walls were lined with intricate maps and cases full of leather-bound books. Haldus grimaced as he stepped closer. These were the trappings of humanity – the strange industry of outsiders with their printing machines and their colleges. He hurried past the books and made for another doorway at the far end of the small antechamber. This opening had no door and there was a blazing light coming from beyond the threshold, along with a mixture of ominous sounds: a chorus of muttering voices and a weird, inhuman screeching noise.
Haldus glanced back at the others and sign
alled that they should approach with care, then he crept up to the doorway and peered around the frame.
He saw a circular chamber, lined with rows of seats, surrounding a wide platform – a stage of some kind. The light was coming from a blazing fire in the centre of the stage, in which a huge figure was struggling and thrashing.
Haldus recognised the incredible being as Amphion – the eagle spirit. It was as huge and terrifying as he remembered, but it was still pinned to the stone floor by the spear Orion had thrust through it in the spring. The walls were scorched and blackened by fire and he realised that this chamber must be all that remained of Cyanos’s ‘Great Work’ – the vast sculpture he had built to sacrifice his people in. Amphion must have remained trapped for all this time, enveloped in the flames that spilled from its own feathers as it tried to free itself. The screeching he had heard was the sound of the spirit’s pain and fury.
The voices came from several hundred asrai warriors – Cyanos’s alvaír, with their strange, avian masks. They were dressed for war, clutching bows and spears, and they were all leaning forwards, listening eagerly to the speaker striding back and forth in front of them. It was Cyanos. He was still clad in his black, iron breastplate and, despite his attempts to hide them beneath a thick, fur-lined mantle, Haldus saw that he still had two strange lumps where his wings had once been. His face shone with the same radiance and beauty, but his once vivid green eyes were now dull, and clouded by madness. There was a brazier behind him, burning with an amber glow and filling the chamber with heady fumes.
‘These are not just my ideas,’ said Cyanos with a smile. He spoke in soft, comforting tones. ‘All of this was explained to me by Lady Ordaana.’
As Haldus and the others peered into the chamber, Cyanos waved his spear towards his struggling prisoner. ‘The forest ancients were once the holders of great power, but they have had their day. Try as they might, they cannot help us in the great wars that are looming. The world is facing dangers they can scarcely dream of.’ He looked pityingly at Amphion. ‘So we must abandon the old ways. We must join our strength to the storm that approaches us from the north. My children,’ he said, lowering his voice to a whisper and leaning out from the stage, ‘the true gods have offered us a chance to join them. Ordaana thinks we are her slaves. As does that hate-warped tree spirit, Drycha. But I tell you now, we serve a power far greater than any of them.’
The masked warriors roared their approval, rattling their seats and hurling rocks at the trapped spirit.
Haldus backed away in shock. They were deranged, bestial even. He sniffed the air and sensed that the fumes coming from the brazier were charged with sorcery. This was not simply the devotion of eager subjects; Cyanos had enchanted them.
Cyanos strolled across the stage and held up a small, crumbling book. ‘Join your voices to mine as I perform the final rites. Rid the forest of this deceiver. Lend me your spears.’ A harsher edge entered his voice. ‘Bring death to Orion.’
Cyanos’s voice was still soft, but it had an incredible impact on the crowd. The warriors leapt to their feet, whooping like dogs and clattering their weapons.
Damára edged closer to Haldus and whispered in his ear. ‘I did not foresee this.’ There was panic in her voice. ‘He means to do something terrible. I don’t know what. I don’t understand…’ She shook her head. ‘It’s worse than I thought. He’s part of something bigger. The power he speaks of is the Dark Gods of Chaos. You were right. We have to kill him.’
Haldus looked back to the stage as Cyanos pointed at the flaming eagle. ‘Orion left us this gift and finally I am ready to use it.’ He tapped his book. ‘Once I have drained its power I will be unstoppable. We will be unstoppable.’ He arched his back and read out a single, grotesque syllable.
The crowd echoed his gentle utterance with a furious roar and the chamber filled with light. The flames around Amphion flared brighter and the whole mountain juddered. Rocks crashed down amongst the asrai and several new fissures opened up in the walls, but Cyanos and his subjects seemed oblivious to the danger.
Cyanos crooned a second word and, as the crowd roared their reply, there was another, even more violent blast. A huge chunk of granite fell from the shadows and smashed down into the crowds. Still, they seemed oblivious.
‘Quickly, father,’ said Clorana. ‘He is insane.’
Haldus scowled. ‘I need to question him. I need answers.’
She shook her head. ‘There is no time.’
Haldus closed his eyes, then nodded. ‘Very well. Wait one minute, then shoot once,’ he said. ‘Then flee for your lives.’
He crouched low and ran into the chamber, keeping to the back wall and circling around behind the back row of seats.
Clorana reached out after him in shock, but did not dare cry out. Then she turned to the others and nodded. They edged forwards and nocked arrows to their bows, while Damára clutched her staff and lowered her head in readiness.
Rocks were falling all around them now and the ground felt like the deck of a storm-tossed ship. As Cyanos read another word from the book, the resultant howl wrenched another great chunk of the ceiling free, adding an explosion of dust to the fumes that already filled the chamber. Amphion’s screeches grew even more terrible but, however hard the spirit twisted and writhed, it could not free itself from the spear Orion had planted in its chest.
Haldus was blinded for a moment, then, as the dust cleared, he saw that Amphion was being torn apart as a result of Cyanos’s magic. The spirit was in terrible torment.
Cyanos paused, halfway across the stage, to admire his handiwork. He looked at the struggling spirit with an expression of intense satisfaction then he looked back at the book and traced a finger over the page, preparing to read the next word.
All that emerged from his throat was a hoarse cough and he frowned in confusion. Then he reached up and touched the shaft of wood that had appeared in the centre of his neck.
His eyes widened and he looked past the stunned audience to where Haldus was standing at the back of the room, still holding his bow.
Blood rushed from Cyanos’s throat as he tried to move and he dropped to his knees.
The alvaír roared in drug-fuelled outrage and turned to face the criminal who had shot their lord, but at that moment, a wave of arrows slammed into them as Clorana and the others did their work.
Haldus dropped from view and the masked warriors charged towards the doorway, hurling spears and curses at their attackers.
With the crowd distracted, Haldus circled around the back of the room and jumped onto the stage, where Cyanos was still choking and spluttering. Haldus strode towards his betrayer with hate burning in his eyes, drawing a sword from his back as he leapt over the pieces of rubble.
‘Wait,’ said the noble, recognising Haldus’s intent. He tried to smile, despite his pain. ‘I can explain. I did not know I was sending you into such danger. If I did, I would–’
The chamber shuddered as another slab of rock crashed onto the stage, throwing Haldus from his feet and hurling him into the front row of seats.
He lost consciousness and when he came to, there was a searing pain in the back of his head. Warm blood washed over his back, but when he reached around to examine the wound he found that his helmet had saved his skull.
Haldus swayed drunkenly as he climbed to his feet. The chamber was a mess of flying rubble, dust and fumes and he struggled to get his bearings for a second.
A masked warrior barged past him and he saw that the whole chamber was about to give way. The doorway had vanished behind a wall of rubble and huge cracks had opened in the ceiling, flooding the chamber with daylight and growing wider by the second. He looked back towards the stage to find that it had been obliterated. Where Cyanos had been, there was just a swirling mass of debris and a huge, jagged boulder. He rushed towards it with a howl, and clattered his sword against it, furious at being denied his vengeance.
Haldus could bear the thought of his impending death, but
not the idea that he had been cheated of his prey. He snatched a battered object from near the boulder. It was Cyanos’s book and he stared at it in outrage and disgust.
He dropped to his knees, deaf to the chaos that surrounded him and began pounding the book on the broken stage.
A shape loomed over him and he paused as heat washed over the side of his face.
As the walls came tumbling down, Haldus looked up to see a terrifying vision. The splintering ground had freed Amphion. The flaming spirit was looming over him, all four wings extended, screaming in relief and hatred. The bone-spear was still embedded in its chest, but the rock that had held it was gone.
Haldus cowered as the blazing creature attacked.
Heat and light enveloped him.
Chapter Sixteen
It was not the death Haldus had expected. Heat sank deep into his body, burning away memory and thought. Spirit flames coursed through his limbs and flooded his heart, but caused him no pain. As his body dissolved in the furnace of the eagle’s feathers, Haldus saw visions of his life with Orion. Every terrifying hunt – countless centuries of untrammelled wildness. Then, as the heat grew, he realised the memories were too strange and varied to be the record of a single, mortal life. As this idea took hold, it lifted him free of the flames and placed him at the heart of a celestial glade, surrounded by blazing boughs and immortal, impossible beings.
The gods, he thought, and I am one of them. I am a god.
Haldus’s soul swelled as he realised he was an immortal. He trod proudly beneath the dazzling branches, studying the incredible beings that surrounded him. One in particular drew his gaze – an antlered brute, the size of a mountain, seated on a towering throne of living oak. Kurnous had eyes like two enormous burning coals and the air around him shimmered with the heat of them. As Haldus approached his eternal lord, he dropped to his knees, awed and afraid.
