by Edward Cox
Standing upon the palm of the Giant’s Hand were the red glass bell, hanging from a sturdy structure of stone, and the simple, wooden door in its red glass frame. Guarding these monuments, four Aelfirian soldiers held rifles in their hands, power stones primed and ready.
Somewhere, a Genii was watching.
Protected by the illusion of cool air, Van Bam stood barefoot upon the golden-red sands. Beside him, was Angel, dependable as ever, but tense and edgy. About fifteen paces away from the two magickers, stood Gulduur Bellow – an imposing ten feet tall, thin and wiry beneath his brown habit, the scars on his skin paler than the bleached sky. Thirty yards of shimmering heat separated the group from the Giant’s Hand; and the Nephilim had used his blood-magic to render himself and his human companions undetectable to prying eyes or listening ears.
Lord Buyaal could not see or hear them. Not yet.
The only person missing was Namji. Before the group had left the sanctity of the western mountain range, Bellow had summoned Namji into his cavern. That had been the last time the Relic Guild agents had seen her. There had been no farewells, no explanations; Bellow had simply emerged from his lair alone, stating that the young Aelf would not be travelling with the humans. Angel had objected, but Bellow had refused to elaborate on his reasons, only saying that it was necessary.
Van Bam recalled how he had promised to take Namji back to Labrys Town, but the illusionist was a changed man with bigger things on his mind now.
The invasion of the Labyrinth was imminent.
‘We must wait for Buyaal to make his move,’ Bellow said, his voice calm and close within the concealing spell he had cast. ‘We cannot see into the citadel, but the citadel can see out. If you try to open that doorway now, a thousand rifles will fire upon you. But when the time comes, you remember what to do, Van Bam?’
Watching the four guards up on the Giant’s hand, Van Bam nodded.
With his body decorated by the symbols and glyphs of a tainted thaumaturgy, the illusionist could feel the energy of his augmented magic vibrating inside him. The power of blood-magic caused Van Bam’s green glass cane to sing with a clear, continuous peal of worry that only he could hear. Its song was like a rope stretching to snapping point, an elevator cable trying to lift too heavy a load. It was far more power than Van Bam should have been wielding, but it made him feel invincible.
Angel was looking at him, her face was creased with concern.
‘You do know what you’re doing, right?’
Van Bam nodded at her, once, with confidence.
‘It is Buyaal’s uncertainty that will work in our favour,’ Bellow said. ‘He cannot predict what will happen if the two of us fight. And to be honest, neither can I.’ The Nephilim looked up at the pink sky and smacked his lips as though tasting the air. ‘While I am keeping the Genii busy, the two of you must act swiftly. Head straight for the Giant’s Hand. You must get to that doorway before Buyaal locates you.’
‘What are you going to do?’ said Angel. ‘You can’t take on an entire citadel by yourself.’
‘Of course I can’t.’ A wry smile came to Bellow’s lips. ‘That would be stupid.’ He turned his dazzling blue eyes to the magickers, his smile fading. ‘I promise you that I will do exactly what is necessary to prevent Buyaal sending an army to Fabian Moor. Before this day is over, I intend to destroy Mirage’s doorway to the Great Labyrinth. You have one chance to get home.’
With anxious eyes, Angel looked at Van Bam, and then at the guards standing upon the Giant’s Hand, who would think themselves surrounded by nothing but scorching, barren desert. ‘We get ourselves into really dumb situations, you know.’
Van Bam didn’t respond.
Angel swore. ‘I wish I had a gun. A knife, at least.’
‘You do not need a weapon,’ Van Bam said, his voice a growl of energy. ‘Bellow has given me power enough for us both.’
‘Then you’d better use it to watch my back.’ Angel’s face was stern, almost angry, but her voice was small. ‘Because I have to tell you, Van Bam, I can’t remember the last time I was this scared.’
‘Have faith in me, Angel.’ The illusionist longed to use the magic he had been loaned. ‘I will not let you down.’
The slightest of breezes disturbed the unremitting heat.
‘It has been an honour to meet you both,’ Gulduur Bellow said. ‘And even more to help you return home.’ He tasted the air again. ‘But now … it begins.’
Glassy tinkling came from somewhere, higher in pitch than the singing of Van Bam’s cane. Up on the Giant’s Hand, one of the Aelfirian soldiers shouldered his rifle, and stepped up to the bell of red glass. He reached up into the bell, and began running his hand around the inside of it, creating an answering call to the tinkling, joining with it, and the sound spread across the desert with an eerie voice like ice dust showering upon the strings of a harp.
Buyaal was making his move.
Van Bam’s limbs shook with energy.
To the left, beyond Gulduur Bellow, before the Giant’s Hand, the waves of heat began to thicken and rise towards the pink sky as if a great veil of water was being drawn up from golden-red sands. Dunes flattened, shapes began to form, and shadows flittered and whispered among them. Slowly, the veil of water solidified into huge stone blocks the colour of copper, and the south wall of Mirage was revealed.
Stretching far to the left and right of the Giant’s Hand, the wall had at its centre – directly opposite the desert sentinel – great wooden gates. As Bellow had forewarned, the citadel’s rampart was manned by hundreds of soldiers, all watching the desert with their rifles ready, the violet glow of power stones visible despite the harsh glare of the sun.
‘Get ready,’ Bellow said. He produced his curved dagger from the sleeve of his habit. ‘When the fighting starts, don’t wait, don’t try to help me. I will give you as much time as I can. But when you see me raise the desert, be mindful that your time has nearly run out.’
Movement caught Van Bam’s eye.
From the gates of Mirage, a stone bridge materialised, growing from the citadel, bridging the desert to join with the fingertips of the Giant’s Hand. Almost as soon as it had connected, one of the guards opened the doorway to the Great Labyrinth, revealing the thick mists of the Nothing of Far and Deep. Mirage’s mighty gates yawned wide, and a procession of soldiers strode out onto the bridge, marching six abreast, clad in light blue uniforms. The old Aelfirian captain who had welcomed the group to Mirage led the invasion force, dressed in crimson robes.
‘Goodbye, my friends,’ Bellow said, then cut his tongue with the point of the knife. He closed his mouth and collected blood.
‘Here we go,’ Angel whispered.
Van Bam took her hand in his.
Stillness gripped the desert, disturbed only by marching boots. Not until the soldiers were halfway across the bridge in a procession showing no sign of ending, did the Nephilim act.
Bellow barked a single word, spitting red mist into the air. His voice held such volume and passion that it blistered the desert heat with the rage of blood-magic. An eruption of wispy vapour ballooned before the Nephilim as the magic in his voice travelled faster than the sound of it. The roar of a sonic boom echoed among the dunes, but the spell raced straight towards the bridge, carving a deep furrow in the sand, before hitting its target.
The bridge tore apart with an explosion of stone and bodies, and a great cloud of dust billowed towards the sky. As debris and broken corpses rained to the desert sands, the screams of the dying filled the air, along with cries of alarm from the soldiers lining the south wall. Gulduur Bellow took his knife and sliced it across his palm. The blade disappeared up his sleeve, and the Nephilim smeared his blood over both his hands. His voice hissed sibilantly as he began intoning the spells of blood-magic. His long, quick fingers, red and glistening, began weaving an intricate design of symbols in
the air.
‘Now,’ Van Bam snarled, and he and Angel ran for the Giant’s Hand.
The illusionist whispered to his own magic, conjuring a globe of invisibility that continued to conceal the agents as they passed beyond the Nephilim’s protection, racing as fast as they could through the sand. The cries of soldiers up on the wall became decisive shouts, orders, commands, and all along the rampart power stones began flashing on a host of rifles spitting bullets down into the desert.
Van Bam, risking a glance back, saw that Bellow had dropped his concealment. The giant blood-magicker was free for all to see. He was weaving his spells in the air, and the bullets were reduced to splashes of molten metal before they came within twenty feet of him.
A second sonic boom cracked across the desert as Bellow’s second shriek released the magic he had conjured. The spell overtook Van Bam and Angel, racing away from them to slam into Mirage’s entrance with hate and fire. The huge wooden gates erupted into fierce white flames; the stone archway collapsed. Voices screamed in agony, and a few burning soldiers rolled out onto what remained of the bridge to die. It seemed the impact had shaken the entire citadel.
With thick black smoke blooming towards the sky, boiling across Mirage like a storm cloud, Van Bam decided to add a little extra chaos to the confusion. He raised his green glass cane, whispered to the magic vibrating in his veins, and with joy released a little of the heightened power he wielded.
Ten thousand coppions burst from the sands at the base of the citadel. The army of scorpion-spider hybrids scrambled up the south wall, poison stings lashing. All along the rampart, soldiers shouted in panic.
Up on the Giant’s Hand, the four guards had taken defensive positions. One of them had closed the doorway to the Great Labyrinth, and stood with his back to it. They were not diverted by the Nephilim attacking the citadel; their rifles tracked across the desert, clearly searching for the humans seeking to use the doorway.
Once Van Bam and Angel had come within ten yards of the Giant’s Hand, the illusionist drew the healer to a halt. A strange energy was lacing the air, different from blood-magic but no less powerful. It raised the hairs on the back of Van Bam’s neck.
‘What is it?’ Angel said, her teeth clenched. She shivered and rubbed at the gooseflesh on her arms.
‘Buyaal,’ Van Bam growled.
Although the Genii himself didn’t make an appearance, his thaumaturgy did. The illusion of ten thousand coppions scaling the citadel’s wall turned to green mist, swirling away to nothing. The white fire burning the tall gates dampened and died; but the billowing smoke was drawn up into the air, gathered into a single, dense black sphere that hung above Mirage like a hole punched into the pink sky. The sphere burst, and sped towards Gulduur Bellow as a great arc of liquid night, sparking with the power of higher magic as it went.
Bellow dropped to one knee, punching a bloodied fist into the sand. A dome of energy inflated around the Nephilim that hissed and screamed when Buyaal’s thaumaturgy hit it. In moments, the darkness had surrounded the dome, creaking and droning as it tried to crush the blood-magicker inside.
‘No!’ cried Angel. ‘What do we do, Van Bam?’
‘We go home,’ the illusionist replied.
He stabbed his green glass cane into the desert and began whispering to his magic.
The darkness surrounding Bellow had set as hard as stone. The soldiers up on the citadel wall were cheering, believing their foe to be vanquished. But Buyaal’s magic was no longer compressing the dome. It had ceased crushing the Nephilim inside, and cracks had begun appearing in its surface. A red glow came from within, its light intensifying through the cracks, and the black dome shook. With a shout of thunder, the spell shattered into shards that slapped to the sand, melting and steaming.
Gulduur Bellow rose to his full height. With fresh blood on his hands, he once more wove symbols and glyphs in the air. Up on the battlements orders were shouted, and the soldiers began firing their rifles again.
This time the hail of bullets stopped, hanging like a swarm of bees trapped in the air. With one graceful motion, Bellow swept an arm before him, sending the bullets hurtling back towards the citadel in a mighty barrage. Chips of stone erupted from the walls with a metallic pinging. Cries came from the soldiers as their own bullets tore into them, knocking them away from their defensive positions.
Bellow yelled at the sky, his voice summoning the wind. The gale was sudden, ferocious, howling, and the Nephilim used it to command the desert itself to rise. The sand of Mirage spiralled up into a series of tornadoes. Each grew fatter, thicker, spinning faster and faster, taller than the south wall. As a searing, shredding storm of sand, the tornadoes attacked the citadel.
‘He raised the desert,’ Angel shouted above the howling wind. ‘Now, Van Bam!’
With the storm raging around him, Van Bam released the spell he had conjured.
Instead of the usual musical chime followed by a soft flare of green, the cane shuddered in Van Bam’s hand as he freed the full might of his augmented magic. The blood symbols on his skin itched and burned, and he gritted his teeth. The colour seemed to bleed from the cane, forming a great circle of poisonous green beneath Van Bam and Angel. The illusionist pulled the cane from the ground and stood upright alongside the healer. They watched as the spell flowed towards the Giant’s Hand, its venomous hue snaking through the copper sands like a sea beast cutting through an ocean.
It reached its destination.
A tremor shook the desert.
The four soldiers guarding the doorway to the Great Labyrinth staggered. They cried out in alarm as the Giant’s Hand began to curl its fingers. With sharp cracks and the grind of stone on stone, the fingers curved over the soldiers. Panicking, stumbling, they lost their footing tumbled down thirty feet to the desert floor. Their cries ended abruptly as their bodies smashed upon the sharp and broken ruins of the bridge.
The Giant’s Hand clenched into a mammoth fist. The red glass monuments shattered; the doorway to the Great Labyrinth was crushed to matchwood. Like a slow punch, the fist rose towards the sky, dragging clear the monstrously sized arm bones that connected to it. Twenty yards beyond it, another arm emerged from the sands, handless, chipped and worn, a great pillar of bone. As hand and stump boomed to the ground, another tremor shook House Mirage, and a colossus pulled itself out of the desert.
It heaved its body upright, and a great fall of sand pouring from long buried bones went spinning to join Bellow’s tornadoes. The lower jaw of the colossus was missing, and red fire burned in the huge eye sockets of its skull. A few of its ribs had snapped off, and its bare joints ground and knocked together. The colossus fell forward, pulling the rest of its body from the desert. It had no legs, and its spine slid free like a tail. It dragged itself into the storm, towards the citadel.
‘Oh Timewatcher, oh shit,’ Angel cried above the gale. She had crouched down, covering her head with her hands. Her breath came in short, panicked gasps. ‘What’s going on, Van Bam?’ she shouted. ‘The doorway … how do we get home now?’
Van Bam pulled her upright. He laid a hand upon the side of her face, staring deeply into her eyes. ‘Illusions are only as strong as your faith,’ he said, his breath blowing upon her face, full of the power of blood-magic. ‘Believe as I do. See the truth.’
Angel snapped out of her panic. Taking steadying breaths, she blinked rapidly, and saw that behind the grand illusion of the gargantuan skeleton, the Giant’s Hand remained where it had always been, a sentinel of stone, upon which still stood the doorway to the Great Labyrinth.
From the citadel, the Genii was launching a counterattack against the Nephilim. The tornadoes lost all momentum, and tons of copper sand hissed to the ground as though the howling wind had been snatched from the air. Buyaal then sent his higher magic over the citadel wall as a flock of frenzied blackbirds, shrieking chaos as they hurtled towards Bello
w.
But with the air no longer filled with the sandstorm, the soldiers manning the ramparts gained their first clear view of the monstrosity dragging itself towards the citadel. The colossus had no voice, but its ancient bones groaned like falling trees as its hand grabbed the top of the wall. Stone crumbling in its grip, soldiers shouting in terror, the mammoth skeleton hefted itself up, preparing to breach the defences, to climb into the city beyond.
With blood-magic prickling his skin, Van Bam drew his fellow magicker into an embrace. ‘Believe with me, Angel,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘We are lighter than the air.’
They levitated fast, up and onto the palm of the Giant’s Hand. Van Bam quickly assessed the situation. On the wall of Mirage, the few soldiers who had held their ground fired rifles at the colossus, their bullets smashing uselessly against the hard bone of its skull; but most of the soldiers had abandoned their posts, fleeing in fear. Down on the desert floor, Gulduur Bellow fought with Buyaal’s thaumaturgy. The giant was almost performing a graceful dance as his blood-magic flared and burned and he battled the flock of frenzied birds.
The magickers of the Relic Guild owed the Nephilim a debt.
‘Van Bam,’ said Angel. She was almost smiling. ‘Let’s go home.’
With pandemonium raging across the desert, the illusionist snatched open the doorway to the Great Labyrinth. The Nothing of Far and Deep moaned at him, calling him home—
Angel yelped.
Van Bam wheeled around. The healer was wincing in pain, her teeth bared. Her head bobbed forwards, as though she had been struck from behind, and then she fell to her knees.
‘Angel!’
Van Bam rushed towards her. He stopped when a voice said, ‘Sneaky little magickers,’ and Lord Buyaal materialised behind the healer.
