The Poisoned Quarrel: The Arbalester Trilogy 3 (Complete Edition)

by Duncan Lay

  “Talk, curse you!” he hissed at the man. “Repeat my words!”

  “He will not do that any longer, creature of darkness,” someone shouted in Gaelish. “We are stopping you.”

  Swane turned to see a pair of white-robed priests of Aroaril step out from a side street. Their words were foreign but the Kottermanis recognized the robes, the same ones their own priests wore, and they stepped away from them.

  “Priests of Zorva! Kill them!” Swane shrieked.

  But none of the Kottermanis moved to obey.

  Swane smiled. Enough of this deception. It was time to show the world who he really was.

  “Run now, or you will die,” he told the priests, forcing himself to say it in Gaelish. He reached out with Zorva’s magic. These two did not have anything like the strength of the priestess. They would be easy to overpower.

  “We are not afraid of you,” the shorter of the two priests said scornfully.

  Swane smiled. “You should have been,” he said.

  “Don’t you mean we should—?” the priest began, but blood burst from his nose, ears and eyes and he fell to the ground, twitching. The other began to pray in a loud voice but Swane snuffed him out like he would a candle, bursting his heart with a gesture. It was just a shame he had not dedicated their deaths to Zorva. Imagine the power that would have flowed then!

  He turned away from the priests and back to the Emperor. “Now tell them: I am your heir and Kemal is the traitor,” he ordered.

  The Emperor threw back his head and shouted out those orders and Swane looked around triumphantly. But the Kottermanis were looking, if anything, more hostile.

  “Your Emperor has given an order! Obey it!” he barked.

  “Step away from the Emperor. We do not know what you are but nobody who can slay priests of Aroaril like that can be good,” a Kottermani officer declared. “Kneel down and we shall take the Emperor into a church and hear his words then.”

  “They will be the same,” Swane rasped.

  “Then it will be my head. But that is a risk I will take,” the officer said flatly.

  Swane smiled ruefully, then flung out his hand and the officer was picked up and thrown backwards, smashing into a building with a sickening crack.

  “Out of my way, or you will join him,” he ordered the Kottermanis.

  Instead of fading away, they moved to block his way out.

  “So be it,” he said with a shrug and reached up towards the gate. The stones on the wall were in poor repair and it was a simple matter to send them crashing into the packed ranks of Kottermani soldiers, sending men flying or crushing them. The screams were never-ending. He grinned as he worked, his body singing with the ecstasy of the power. Destroy them now and get the Emperor outside and try again. These fools might be against him but the rest of the army would obey whatever the Emperor said.

  He expected the Kottermanis to run—but instead of running off, they ran at him. He flicked them away as if they were ants, until the survivors cowered among the rubble. He prepared to use the last of it to clear his path to the gate when he felt his power being blocked again. He whirled to see Kemal, Fallon and a new army of Gaelish and Kottermanis arriving—with the priestess at the front.

  “Stop now, Swane. Stop now and throw yourself on Aroaril’s mercy before you do this world any more damage!” the priestess cried.

  Swane glared at them. All his enemies in one place. It was time to finish this. He whipped out his bone knife and turned to the Emperor. “Bow down and bare your chest to me,” he ordered. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kemal racing at him but he snapped his fingers and sent the prince flying.

  The Emperor fell to his knees, dragging his silken shirt open. Swane summoned a chunk of stone, bouncing it across the cobbles until it scraped to a stop beside them. He grabbed the Emperor by the shoulder and bent him backwards across the stone. Then, in a practiced move, he slashed the Emperor just below the rib cage. As the surviving Kottermanis cried out in horror, he reached in and up and tore his beating heart free as he prayed to Zorva.

  The surge of power he felt as he raised the Emperor’s heart made him shake. With his bloody trophy still in his hand he turned to face them all, ignoring their cries of horror and protest.

  “Now you will all die,” he promised.

  CHAPTER 83

  Rosaleen had stopped Kemal being thrown to his death and now the Kottermani prince struggled to his feet, waving at his surrounding men. “Arrows!” he snapped.

  “Crossbows! Spears!” Fallon shouted.

  A hail of missiles flew out at Swane but they all missed, veering off in all directions, some to clatter harmlessly into buildings, others to crunch into the surviving Kottermanis around the gate.

  “My turn now!” Swane cried and reached upwards.

  Instantly the houses along the street began to crumble—but as fast as he tugged at them, Rosaleen and the various wizards pushed them back into place.

  Swane laughed at them. “I can do this all day,” he boasted. “Can you?”

  Rosaleen glanced around to see the wizards looking shaky. Bridgit appeared by her side, her face drawn.

  “He is right. We cannot hold him much longer. You need to try something different,” she said.

  “I shall confront him. Aroaril’s power will defeat Zorva,” Rosaleen said confidently.

  Bridgit grabbed her hand. “He has already killed two priests,” she warned.

  “I have no choice. I have to face him,” Rosaleen said.

  “Use fire,” Gallagher called.

  One of the wizards picked up a chunk of broken spear and handed her the makeshift torch, holding his hand over the top until it sparked into flame. Rosaleen drew back her arm and hurled it at Swane, the missile turning into a roaring ball of flame as it flew.

  Swane reached up and sent the missile flying past him, to smash into a merchant’s shop with a thunderous blast that sent chunks of timber and brick cartwheeling across the street.

  “Metal. He can’t do anything with metal,” Fallon said. “Get the heads off arrows and spears, anything we’ve got.”

  While Swane bent over the bodies of wounded men, doing more foul work with his knife, men and women hurriedly stripped the metal heads from shafts.

  “Throw them now!” Rosaleen called and while Swane was too far away for most of them to even reach him, let alone do any damage, a hail of metal objects flew down the street. Yet, instead of falling to the ground, they picked up speed as they flew, a deadly hail all aimed at Swane.

  But Swane slapped his hands on the ground and cobbles rose like a sheet, the metal assault bouncing off his stony shield.

  He pointed at them and the wounded men he had been working on rose and began shambling towards them, their eyes dull, each with a hideous wound just below their ribcage, yet all carried swords. Behind them, Swane was already kneeling beside more.

  “Aroaril, not these again,” Fallon groaned. “Only fire can stop them.”

  “You take them. I’ll stop Swane,” Rosaleen said firmly.

  Fallon tightened his grip on his guisarme. “Take out their legs and then their hands. Once they’re down, the wizards will have to burn them up.”

  “What about Rosaleen? She needs all the magical help she can get,” Gallagher growled.

  “So do we. If we don’t stop him, every one of us will end up in his army and this will become a city of the dead,” Fallon replied. “Now, are we going to stop him or are we going to talk about it?”

  Nobody answered and he pointed at Gallagher. “Carve her a path through them. Keep them off her and give her a chance.”

  Gallagher clasped his wife’s arm. “None of them will touch you,” he swore, then beckoned to the others. “Come on!”

  *

  Rosaleen walked down the street, feeling as if she was in a nightmare. There had been no need to give orders to the Kottermanis; they had seen the shambling horrors lurching towards them and reacted instantly, hacking and chopping at
their former comrades.

  The creatures of darkness veered towards her but the men around her fought viciously to keep her clear. Pieces of the creatures littered the street but even when they were down, even when arms were parted from bodies, they still clawed and grasped.

  Behind them, Swane was creating new ones as fast as the old ones were being cut apart. Each time he bent life to his evil and prevented souls from finding release felt like a whip to her heart.

  “Swane! Enough!” she screamed.

  Swane turned to face her, blood dripping from his hands, his eyes like the burning pits of Zorva.

  “You cannot stop me. None of you can. I will go on and on until this city is under my control and the whole world will bow down to me or be destroyed!” he cried, his voice cracking with madness.

  She hated and despised everything about him and reached up with all of that, praying for the power to end this evil. She imagined Swane burning in a holy fire, his filth cleansed from the world. She pointed at him, expecting to see him wither in a blast of her power.

  But he merely laughed at her and slapped his hands together. A huge burst of wind rushed down the street, knocking over the living and undead alike. Rosaleen struggled against it, fighting to stay in place, but with another surge from Swane, a gust picked her up and sent her tumbling along.

  She hit the cobbles, felt skin scrape from her shoulder and back and the wind blast from her lungs and she lay there, gasping for breath, her eyes burning with tears. She had given him everything she had and he had laughed at her! How in Aroaril’s name could they hope to stop him?

  A hand reached down and took her arm, pulling her into a sitting position and cradling her while she whooped breath back in. She looked up gratefully to see a grim-faced Bridgit and nodded her thanks.

  “Can you see a weakness?” Bridgit asked quietly. “Can you beat him?”

  Rosaleen coughed and shook her head. “I wanted to wipe his evil from this street but it was as if I was a child. He is holding too many souls now, the power within him is beyond imagining.”

  Bridgit looked away, down the street. There were screams as men were falling prey to Swane’s creatures, or at least parts of them, while Swane himself was hard at work creating more.

  “You can’t fight hate with hate. The opposite of hate is love. Use that,” she said.

  Rosaleen looked at her, wondering if these hideous images had caused Bridgit to lose her mind but her friend’s eyes were alight with her idea.

  “We must take away his power,” Bridgit said. “The souls he has will only find peace when he dies. If you give them that peace first, then he won’t have them anymore.”

  Rosaleen opened her mouth to say that was impossible, but then she closed it. With a heave from Bridgit she stood and walked again towards Swane.

  Again, the creatures converged on her but the living fought even harder to keep them away. She dropped to her knees and bowed her head. She was dimly aware of Gallagher smashing at a creature with a fallen length of timber, of Fallon and Kemal fighting back-to-back against a pair of them, of Bridgit calmly pointing out targets for the handful of other wizards still on their feet. As for Swane, he was carving up more bodies, seemingly intent on creating a foul army of the dead. Then she shut all that out and reached out for Swane with her mind.

  There was a thunderstorm of hatred there, ready to rip her apart if she dared to enter but she waited outside, not attacking but calling instead. She reached not upwards but inwards, calling on what she knew and what she had experienced.

  She started with what was freshest in her mind, the love between a woman and a man. Everything she felt about Gallagher she sent into that thundercloud. Almost immediately it began to shrink, and in her mind’s eye she felt a sense of peace as souls were freed from Swane’s slavery, using her memories of love to slip the chains of evil fastened around their spirits. Then she turned to her memory of her happy childhood, sending out the love of a child for its mother, a simple, heartfelt emotion. She could feel the thundercloud shrinking every moment and pressed on.

  She was vaguely aware that the creatures were now crazed in their desperation to get to her but while her protectors fought just as furiously, the creatures were moving slower. Some had stopped.

  Yet there was still a dark heart to the thundercloud that was Swane’s power and she instinctively knew she needed more. “Help me!” she cried. “Hold my hands!”

  She raised them up and the first one she felt was Bridgit. With a surge that made her convulse, she took Bridgit’s love of a mother for their child, the longing and regret for children lost and the overwhelming need to protect a baby and sent that out at the cloud.

  “More!” she cried.

  Next came Feray and she took not just love for husband and children but the love for a people and for fairness and justice. From Gallagher came a love for the sea, for his friends and, in a wave that warmed her, for herself.

  From Kemal came the love of Kotterman, of its landscape and sun. Other hands touched her and she took their love and sent it into the cloud. Love between men, between women, for pets, for sunrises, for food and more, much more, she took and sent.

  In her mind’s eye, that thundercloud was almost gone. There was just one, small cloud but it was still as black as sin and ready to tear her apart. It was, she sensed, the bedrock of his power. She could not find anything else within her, or within the people touching her, but then Fallon’s hand pressed on her shoulder.

  She gasped and raced through love for wife and child, for village and friends and found, buried deep down, his love for Prince Cavan. Nothing happened but she pressed on, using Fallon’s regrets and determination to wipe out the evil deed he had been tricked into, his agony at what he had done and his desperation to make up for it.

  The cloud burst apart and she opened her eyes.

  She could barely see down the street because there were so many people touching her but the creatures had all fallen. And while Swane was still standing, he seemed different somehow.

  “I have done all I can. He is all yours,” she said. She felt like she had run some enormous race and sagged back into Gallagher’s gentle hands.

  *

  Fallon winced. He had been using the guisarme to bring down Swane’s creatures for Kemal to chop and his broken ribs were agony. But he felt strangely better. It was as if Rosaleen had taken some of the darkness out of him when she had taken on Swane. He looked around cautiously. The creatures had battled ferociously to get at Rosaleen and although they lay all over the street, in various pieces, Fallon could see he was not alone in thinking they might come back to life. When nothing stirred, he looked further down, to where a strangely shrunken Swane knelt, whimpering.

  “Quick, before Swane does anything else,” Fallon said.

  Next moment there was a mad rush down the street to grab Swane, strip him of his bone knife and pin him, two men to each arm, holding him on his knees.

  Fallon followed a little slower and looked down at the Prince. His face had changed again. No more did he look like some perverted version of Cavan. Now he had a shifty cast to his face, his eyes darted left and right, seeking to escape, and while his jaw had shrunk, his teeth seemed to have grown too large for his mouth.

  “This is not the end!” he snarled. He tried to struggle but there was no real strength in him and the two Gaelish and two Kottermanis who held him controlled him easily.

  “It has to end here. How should he die? By fire?” Kemal asked.

  “We should do it in front of everyone, like he tried to do to us,” Gannon said fiercely.

  Fallon shook his head. “He does not deserve it. The people know what he is really like now.”

  “Then how shall he die? I have many men who would be delighted to do it, after what he did to their comrades,” Kemal said.

  Fallon hefted his guisarme. “No,” he said. “I killed his brother and I killed his father. Now I will kill him and it will all be over.”

 
; Swane opened his mouth to say something but, after what Fallon had heard from Aidan, he had no wish to give this bastard a chance to curse him. He lunged, the steel spike driving through Swane’s right eye and deep into his brain, scraping against the back of the Prince’s skull.

  Swane convulsed, then went limp and Fallon pulled the weapon out and threw it away. There was none of the satisfaction he had thought he would feel. In fact he felt like he needed a bath.

  “Burn his corpse and that will be an end to it,” he said tiredly, slumping to the ground. Kemal extended a hand and he allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

  “What now?” Kemal asked.

  Fallon groaned. “Food. Then sleep,” he said. “After that, do you want Gaelland? Want to make your empire complete? Do you want to keep fighting?”

  Kemal grinned and held up his hand, which was smeared with blood. “We’re blood brothers now,” he said. “And after all we’ve been through, do you think I want to fight you?”

  “You would have done anything to kill me a few moons ago.”

  “True,” Kemal admitted. “But I was a different man then. As were you. A few moons ago you offered me a deal. Now I would like to offer you one, a treaty of peace that will guarantee your freedom and give you the money you need to rebuild.”

  Fallon smiled, then winced at the pain in his side. “It sounds good but I am no longer the Lord Protector of Gaelland. I need to talk to my wife first.”

  “Well, if she’s going to lead the country then I am very glad we are going to be at peace.” Kemal grinned and patted Fallon on the shoulder. “Go and see her, my friend.”

  Fallon clasped hands with Kemal and then stumbled down the street to where Bridgit and Feray were lecturing a contrite-looking Asil and Kerrin.

  “Hey!” he shouted.

  Instantly Kerrin raced across to him, thumping into him around the chest, making him groan as much from the cracked ribs as from the feeling of holding his son again.

  “You did it. You saved me, just as you said you would,” he said into his son’s hair. “I am so proud of you.”

  “Are you going to stay with us now, Dad?”