Black Guild

by J. P. Ashman

  Coppin sighed; cried. Longoss could hear her soft sobs. He felt her hand on his.

  ‘I’m going to Mother’s, as soon as I can. The bitch had things I could use—’

  ‘To murder it.’

  Her hand fell away. ‘To stop it having the shit existence most folk in this world have.’

  The silence that followed was broken by a whistle and a grate. A whistle and a grate.

  ‘Oh for ’morl’s sake.’ Coppin sniffed and wiped at her face. Longoss felt the movements through his hand, which remained on her heart.

  ‘I’d love it. I’d protect it. I give ye my—’

  ‘Don’t! Don’t give yer word on something ye’ll have to break it over, again.’

  Longoss moved his hand away this time and felt his own eyes dampen. ‘Ye’re right to say that.’

  ‘I know the love ye feel, Longoss.’ Coppin rolled, pressed herself into Longoss’ side. ‘I feel it too,’ she whispered, the quietest yet. Longoss only just heard it, and the next. ‘But I have no love for what’s inside me and that fact is killing me more than the Black Guild ever could. It’s how it is though, Longoss. It’s how it is and I can’t help it.’ She broke down completely and Longoss pulled her in closer, squeezed her gently and found the top of her head with his mouth. He kissed her and rocked her.

  There’s time yet, lass, he thought. There’s time yet.

  ***

  ‘Well, there it is,’ Pangan said. He stood in a black alley, hooded lamp in hand. It offered enough glow to see his feet and an arm’s length. He pointed within that light, pointed towards the tavern he and his companions knew oh so well. The tavern owned and run by one of their own. Well, Pangan thought, a former one of our own, harbouring another former one of our own. Pangan took a deep breath and lowered his arm. The masks behind him hadn’t moved. They hadn’t even uttered a word upon their arrival, nor during their journey through Dockside to the tavern. Pangan shuddered at what stood behind him and wondered how long the two he’d known so well had left in their current states. They’ve certainly achieved a lot… a lot of destruction.

  ‘What now?’ the young watcher lad said from outside the lamp’s light, his voice attempting confidence but betraying trepidation, to say the least.

  ‘We—’

  Pangan was cut off as Terrina and Rapeel pushed past. There’d been no given order. No word between them. They just moved. Pangan nearly dropped the light. He swore and squinted at their backs as the duo disappeared into the gloom of the street. They’d lost or removed their cloaks it seemed, which was probably best for the fight to come.

  ‘You didn’t order that,’ the hidden girl watcher said, stating the obvious.

  ‘No. I didn’t.’

  ‘So, Master Son must have?’ she asked, a shake in her voice considering what was to come.

  She’s likely remembering those freaky masks taking down the nobleman before destroying Bronwen’s poison pad. I know I am. Pangan shuddered once more and started as someone stepped alongside him. A knife was in his free hand faster than his head turned.

  ‘I did indeed order it,’ Poi Son said, glancing sidelong at Pangan, who scowled.

  ‘Could have told me,’ Pangan managed, looking forward once again, although it was pointless in the dark. ‘Did you have the street lamps doused too, Master Son?’

  There was a pause. ‘No,’ Poi Son said, ‘that will have been Bronwen.’

  The girl gasped from the blackness.

  Pangan looked to Poi Son once more, but before he could say anything a white flash like sheet lightning lit up the alley, those in it and the street and tavern beyond. Pangan closed his eyes. All he heard were curses, his own joining the others. An after-image of Poi Son’s side profile remained etched behind his eyelids and he prayed at that point, to whomever listened, that he wasn’t blinded permanently. I couldn’t cope with that man standing before me for the rest of my days. Pangan shielded and opened his eyes at the same time.

  ‘Was that Mistress Bronwen’s magic?’ Bill asked, from behind Pangan.

  ‘No.’ Poi Son rubbed at his eyes. ‘No, that was the tavern I should think.’

  Pangan frowned. He was shielding his eyes with his free hand as if it were a sunny day, despite it being dark once more. ‘A protection of some kind?’

  ‘Yes, Pangan,’ Poi Son said. ‘Courtesy of the mage Longoss has helping him.’

  ‘This gets better and better,’ Bill said to a chorus of grunted agreements, prayers and oaths from the assassins and street-assassins in the alley.

  ‘Quiet, all of you,’ Poi Son said. They obeyed.

  Pangan squinted once more into the dark. ‘Did you see our two out there, during the flash?’ he asked anyone who might have an answer.

  ‘No.’ Poi Son.

  ‘Yes,’ the watcher girl said. Heads turned her direction: stared at the dark.

  ‘I saw them both slipping around the side of the tavern as the light flashed, and I saw them thrown back, to the ground.’

  ‘And?’ Pangan asked, leaning her way.

  ‘And that’s it,’ she said flatly. ‘I can barely see you in your lamplight—’

  ‘Shit!’ Pangan dropped the light and it smashed, killing the attention drawing flames within. Everything fell to pitch and the smashing of glass and the clattering of metal on stone echoed between the tall buildings to either side.

  ‘Pangan?’ Poi Son sounded cross, confused and concerned, all in the one word.

  It was too late. Before Pangan could apologise for the lamp that had illuminated their position, the first wave of arcane energy struck.

  Men screamed. So did a girl.

  Chapter 39 - Bangs in the night

  The interior flash of light woke Severun with a start. ‘They’re here,’ he blurted, an after image of the cellar ingrained temporarily on his retinas. Fading, the image was replaced by a darkness he cast away as quickly as the flash had come and gone. Candles and lamps flared to life around the cellar as his companions surged to their feet.

  ‘How many?’ Egan asked, arming himself as swiftly as the others, despite his myriad of weapons, concealed and otherwise.

  Severun huffed. ‘It doesn’t work like that, Egan.’ Before Severun could say more, the door above them clattered open. Severun looked up to see Keep stood there, crossbow in hands.

  ‘Hurry!’ Keep shouted. ‘It looks like The Three are at war out there!’ He rushed off then, Longoss sprinting up the steps to follow, Coppin close behind, knives out. Severun gave chase, as did Egan, but Longoss stopped on the top step, turned and held his hand out to Coppin.

  ‘No you don’t, lass.’ Longoss blocked Coppin’s path as she tried to push past, ignoring him, but for a scowl.

  ‘He’s right, Coppin my dear,’ Severun said, from the bottom step.

  ‘Stay out of it, wizard!’ Coppin snapped without turning.

  Longoss looked round her and met Severun’s eyes. There was the slightest of nods as the big man held Coppin back. Severun swallowed hard and sighed before nodding in return.

  ‘Longoss ye fat shit, get off—’

  Longoss took Coppin’s weight as she fell limp in his arms and, despite the man not needing it, Egan helped Longoss lift Coppin back down the steps, Severun making way for them.

  ‘She’ll hate us for this,’ Longoss said as they lay her on her makeshift cot.

  ‘No doubt,’ Egan agreed, pulling a blanket over and up to her chin.

  Longoss looked from Coppin to Severun. ‘How long?’

  Severun winced. ‘I can’t be sure, but long enough for what we need to do, I hope.’

  Longoss leaned down and kissed Coppin’s forehead before following Severun and Egan up the steps and out into the tavern proper.

  Forgive me, Coppin, Severun thought as the trio found Keep and two of his trusted patrons, who were in on all that was happening. Trusting them in this feels wrong. Severun looked from one man to the other, both of them short but stocky, faces not too dissimilar to a mastiff’s. H
e’d have thought them brothers if he hadn’t been told different.

  A bright white flash lit the cracks of the barred and bolted shutters and door. Severun staggered and Egan reached out, catching his arm. The will behind the assault that caused the flash felt like someone had shaken Severun’s brain. He mastered himself, but a haze remained.

  ‘My defences won’t hold long,’ he said, eyeing Longoss and Egan.

  Keep balked at Severun. ‘Ye’re saying that now? Already?’

  ‘I am!’ Severun snapped, annoyed at the question. Anger flooded him, flushed through his veins like fire and he almost snapped out more than words. A hand rested on his shoulder and squeezed. Severun rounded fiercely on the owner of the hand.

  ‘Do what you can,’ Egan said, holding up his other hand to stop Keep from saying any more.

  Another flash and Severun staggered once more. And again Egan caught him, lowering him this time to a chair where Severun slumped.

  Longoss rushed to a shutter, tried to peek through the gap.

  Breathing heavily, the air in the room stale, Severun watched Longoss and Keep’s two thugs, who were looking back at him, their shaken nerves plain to see.

  ‘Is it her?’ the uglier of the two said – and that was saying a lot. ‘Is it Bronwen?’

  Severun sucked in a breath. Bronwen? ‘Yes,’ he said, without thinking any more. ‘Yes. That makes sense.’ He’d been confused at the level of power being thrown at his shielding, but hadn’t wanted to say, hadn’t wanted to scare them, or himself. He laughed silently. Your staggering and snapping is doing that, you old fool. He waved Egan off and focused, closed his eyes. ‘When I say,’ he said, seeing a wicked shadow in his mind’s eye; a presence trying to impose itself on him. ‘When I say,’ he repeated, ‘prepare to receive guests. I’ll drop…’ he took a breath and shuddered as the foreign will exerted itself and another flash lit the shutters. The pain behind his eyes was brief, but immense. He barely held on to consciousness.

  ‘Severun?’ Egan again, stepping towards him.

  ‘I’ll let but a few… through…’ Severun was struggling to speak. Struggling to do anything but fight off Bronwen’s assaults, both the visible, outside, and those within his head. How is she doing this? ‘I’ll-let-some-of-them-in-then-close-it-off,’ he spat out, before her wicked presence struck again.

  ‘Now!’ Severun had to shout the word. Project the meaning to his companions to ensure they acted. He had to release his shielding of the tavern because Bronwen had beat him, but for a heartbeat. She’d felt him release the words in a rapid stream; she’d known it’d taken all of him right there, right then. She was weakening him with every moment that passed and he was unable to do anything about it. He didn’t even know where the witch was in relation to the tavern.

  In my head, that’s where.

  Crashing wood stole Severun’s brief respite from the magical assault, Bronwen’s attack hindered whilst he dropped all his magic and concentrated on blocking her out. But that concentration had been shattered like the shutters to either side, so he threw himself back into the shield as two figures tumbled into the taproom. Two figures wearing horrifying masks, one red, one white with blood-red tears.

  A flash silhouetted the masked assassins. Severun’s shield was back up. They’re trapped from their allies, he managed to think but not say, one eye closed, the other flicking from one mask to the other. They’re trapped inside… with us.

  Severun fell sideways from the chair, both eyes now closed, his mind’s eye entirely open, to him and to her. To Bronwen. As the distant voice of Egan screamed for Severun, and fading shouts and curses came from the lips of the others, the outside world fell away and Severun felt himself roll free from it; escape his daily bonds.

  ‘You’ve realised what this will take,’ Bronwen said, her soul as much of a crone in vision as he’d heard she was in person. Bronwen hissed a laugh, the sound wheezing from damaged lungs despite her corporeal form being elsewhere. ‘You’ll fail, Severun. Confined as you are to your laws and rules and ancient restraints your guild forces upon you.’

  Severun’s soul straightened, stretched out to its fullest height, width, depth, mass. He smiled through it and revealed the darkness that tainted its edges – that ever strained to reach his soul’s core. ‘You assume much, Mistress Bronwen.’ Severun didn’t project himself, didn’t waste energy in such a way. He projected the words, empowered them and made her see. Made her see Him, the one whom Severun had unwittingly been keeping at bay for many months. At least for the most part. If only I was fully me, Severun thought, the realisation that he was not solely himself staggering his soul. He eyed, so to speak, the hesitation forming in Bronwen’s fading features as she too realised it, or at least a portion of it.

  ‘If you wish it this way,’ she sent to him in the same way he’d sent his meanings to her. ‘Have it!’

  Severun’s soul railed at the assault the arcane wielding witch directed his way, the black edges of his pulsating soul curling back as if burnt blacker still, veins of that darkness creeping in towards his core; fear laced with a knowing that he was fighting two beings, not one. A horror in knowing he was defending against her and himself both.

  What if I can’t hold? Severun thought throughout the attack he struggled to divert and diverge and absorb and dissipate. What if she breaks my will… enough to… let Him in completely?

  Severun screamed, body and soul and mouth and light-leaking eyes; heart and churning stomach and throbbing, pulsating and agonising brain.

  Bronwen laughed and pushed Severun harder.

  Both Keep’s and Egan’s crossbows snapped bolts, one smaller than the other, towards the masked assassins as soon as they stood from their dramatic rolling entries. Keep’s bolt scored a line across the white mask of the female, who leapt to the side: towards the uglier of Keep’s two men. Longoss watched the woman move, and move fast, impossibly so. He’d seen Severun slump, eyes closing and knew him to be fighting his own battles in some wizarding way. The brutal fight breaking out before him was more to Longoss’ liking, although the blood-stained white mask the woman wore stole his momentum; stole any initiative he might have used, and needed.

  Egan’s bolt thumped into red-mask’s shoulder, a hand’s breadth above the man’s heart. Longoss glanced that way and knew it would have been a killing blow if the assassin hadn’t moved so damned quick. That red mask came on, bolt torn free, twin hatchets lashing and slashing at Longoss in an enhanced yet familiar way.

  ‘Rapeel?’ Longoss managed, coming to his senses and deftly avoiding the bite of those wedged blades. The mask said nothing, its grimacing visage of a burned man drawing Longoss’ attention as Rapeel came on and on, and on.

  Egan stumbled past Longoss, barged aside by Keep who’d dived to stay clear of the female assassin, her stilettos soiled with the life of the ugliest thug lying in a spreading, steaming pool of arterial blood.

  As Egan passed, Longoss used him as a well needed distraction. He’d seen Rapeel’s eyes behind the mask, seen them glance at Egan as the witchunter stumbled, rapier leading the way. Longoss rushed forward, small knife jabbing towards Rapeel’s bloody shoulder where the bolt wound should be paining and hindering him.

  Rapeel turned in a flash, taking the plunging knife much like Longoss had taken Terrina’s stiletto when… Terrina!

  A familiar shriek turned Longoss’ head whilst he dived to the side, narrowly avoiding Rapeel’s trailing hatchet. Crashing hard into a splintering stool, Longoss’ confusion swept him tenfold. He’d recognised Blanck’s mask as soon as he’d seen it; he’d even recognised the blood red tears the assassin had shed when Longoss had taken his eyes, amongst other things, for killing Elleth. He’d never imagined it was Blanck’s sister wearing the mask though. He couldn’t have imagined her doing much at all after the work he’d put into carving her legs and face up. Face. Hence the mask, Longoss thought, grimacing as he saw Terrina drop the second ugly thug, the man’s wild slashes with his scramasax
doing little to hinder the woman. She turned and her frenzied eyes locked onto Longoss. Swallowing down his shock and confusion, Longoss managed a wink, intending to infuriate her, to throw her off her…

  Keep fell hard, despite his prowess with the large knife he’d drawn. Longoss watched in stunned disbelief and horror as his old friend and mentor writhed on the floor, Terrina leaping over him as Egan crashed past her on a defensive retreat from Rapeel, the former street-assassin far more dangerous than he had ever been before.

  Terrina sprinted at Longoss as he forced himself to his feet, breaths shuddering with the shock of it all and the exertion; his energy and speed paled in comparison to the woman’s closing on him like an arrow to a butt.

  All Longoss could do was throw his all into his defence as Terrina’s blades came in. She shrieked as she was wont to do, twin stilettos punching out at him at odd angles, making it hard to avoid their bite. And he didn’t. The pain lanced through Longoss’ own shoulder – where she’d stabbed him the last time they’d met. Again with the fucking shoulders, he thought, before the other blade scored a line across his outstretched palm, which was lucky considering he’d expected it to slide straight through his hand. Grunting with the pain and exertion, wishing he had Sears’ vial of whatever-it-was healing potion, Longoss threw himself forward and into Terrina, barrelling her to the floor where he could use his weight and superior strength, even with a stiletto embedded in him.

  ‘Where’s your bitch, Longoss?’ Terrina said through the mask, voice muffled and akin to her brother’s. ‘I want to do to her what Blanck did to the other whore.’

  Longoss roared and drove his head into the bloody mask below him. Or so he thought.

  A dull thud of pain followed by lances of the same shot through his skull as his forehead met wooden floorboards. Terrina had shifted herself under him, and worked the knives she held as she did so. Longoss screamed despite his brutal stoicism.