The Serpent Tower

by William King

  “I will arrange it,” he said. He spoke it as a Terrarch should to a human, peremptorily, with every expectation of getting no objections, then he saw she too was looking at his hook. It struck him that perhaps she felt revulsion towards it, the way he sometimes did, and he realised that he did not want her there if she could only look on him with horror so he added; “If you wish.”

  She raised her hand to her mouth and looked at him. He wondered if she had read his own feelings on his face. “My friends, sir. They have no place to go.”

  “I will see to it that they are looked after as well.” And he would. He had come to a decision. Even if the girl could not stand the sight of his hand, he would see to it. He would do it because he wanted to, and it pleased him to do so.

  “I will go with you, sir,” she said. There was trust in her voice. That touched Sardec too.

  “Is something bothering you, Master Rik,” said Karim. He paused to look around. They were in the Terrarch part of the camp, and in the distance, he could see Rena and her two friends walking along in the company of none other than Lieutenant Sardec.

  “No,” Rik lied. He might have bloody well guessed. What had he expected? It had not taken her long to find her Terrarch lover had it. He did not know why he had expected better. Sardec was an officer. He was rich. It did not matter to her that he would use her and discard her once he was fed up of her. She could not see past the glitter of his noble title. She deserved what was going to happen to her, and he was glad.

  Only why did it have to be Sardec? He could have accepted any of the other officers, but not him. Sardec had made his life miserable from the get-go. Sardec hated him for being who he was. She must know that too. It was as if she had deliberately chosen this to annoy him.

  Well, what did it matter? He wrenched his mind away from Rena and forced himself to concentrate on what the Lady Asea might want. She was, after all, the most dangerous person he had ever met.

  Chapter Nine

  Asea had placed her tent on the hill where the rest of the Terrarchs had pitched theirs, but hers was slightly apart, in the space between the land used by the officers and the army’s sorcerers. There was a clear area all around, as it were being shunned even by other Terrarchs.

  The tent was the same sorcerous self-erecting structure she had used on the trek to Deep Achenar. Just the sight of it filled Rik with foreboding. That was an adventure that had not turned out well. It had led to the death of his closest friend and an encounter with an ancient demon god. They had been lucky to get out of Achenar with their lives.

  Rik felt as if unseen eyes were watching him, which perhaps they were. The Magisters of the army had most likely placed warding spells on the area, and there were sentries among the tents to make sure nothing untoward happened to the High Command while they slept.

  Karim gestured for him to wait and disappeared inside the tent. A moment later, he reappeared and held the tent flap open, ushering Rik inside. As the youth stepped inside he felt as if he were passing through an invisible barrier. It was much quieter within than without. The night sounds of the camp were all but inaudible. Here was a subtle magic, he thought.

  The tent’s interior was a small, separate world of luxury. Thick carpets from the southern lands covered the floor. A glowstone set on a rune-marked brass tripod provided light and a little heat. Incense rose from small stands in each corner. Lady Asea sat in a corner on a folding chair reading a book; in front of her was a small portable table. On it stood a silver tea service and cups. She looked up as he entered. In the shadows, her inhuman face had a sinister loveliness.

  “You wanted to see me, milady?” Rik said. He knew it was not his place to speak first, but he was in a mood to test things.

  “Yes, Rik, I do. There is much that we should talk about and we can do it here without eavesdroppers. The spells that keep the noise out also keep our words unheard by any but us.”

  “Is such secrecy necessary, milady? I am but a common soldier.”

  “I am rather afraid it is, Rik, and there is no need to call me milady, at least here in private.”

  “Thank you, milady.”

  “I have not forgotten about you, Rik, while I was away. Quite the contrary, I have been looking into your background. I’ve been to Sorrow among other places.”

  “I had not realised my past was that important.”

  “It is good that you did not. I fear you might have drawn unwelcome attention to yourself if you did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All in good time. This is a story best told with all the events in their proper order.”

  Rik said nothing. If she was determined to be mysterious there was nothing he could do about it.

  She gestured for him to take a seat and indicated that he should help himself to some tea. He sat but he did not drink. He studied her face. Lady Asea was said to be over two thousand years old but there was no trace of age in her features, no lines, no coarsening of the skin. There was no real sign of it in her eyes, which were larger than a mortals, and somehow inhuman, although he could not put his finger on exactly why. Perhaps the pupils were slightly bigger; perhaps the iris was flecked in a subtle way. She did not seem discomposed by his scrutiny, but returned it just as levelly.

  “I visited the Temple Orphanage on Rose Street,” she said. “A depressing place.”

  Just the words brought the memories back with feverish intensity. The gloomy corridors, the cobwebs in high places, the musty smell forever at war with the reek of cabbage cooking, the dimness and the sounds of children crying, and the endless chanting of joyless prayers.

  “I always found it so,” he said.

  “I am not surprised. The ratepayers of Sorrow are not overly generous in their support of the unfortunate. But that need not concern us here. What should concern us is that I found your name and your mother’s on the Temple register. And I talked to the Master in charge”

  “Pternius?” His image flickered through Rik’s mind, a tall, doleful looking Terrarch, not cruel like some of the Temple masters, just disappointed as if he had expected better from life and not found it.

  “The same. He remembered a boy called Rik, who ran away when he was eight along with a boy called Leon. He also remembered the night when your mother was brought in. The Temple is not just an orphanage, it’s an almshouse and a hospital for the poor.”

  Rik had been too little to really understand that when he had lived there, but his memories of the place confirmed this to his adult understanding. He remembered the chambers with the sick and the mad and the dying, and the priests constantly coming and going, and the prayers, always the prayers.

  “He remembered my mother?”

  “Yes, he did. It was a difficult birth and there was something of a scandal. Poor Pternius seemed quite frightened. There was a cover up.”

  Rik looked at her sharply. Her expression had not changed. It was still calm but somehow there was an intensity in her voice that had not been there before.

  “A cover up.”

  “Yes. The poor girl was terrified and babbling about all sorts of things. She spoke of dark sorcery, of thanatomancy and old forbidden rituals.”

  “Thanatomancy?”

  “A peculiarly vile form of dark magic,” said Asea. “Vampiric, forbidden on pain of death even to Terrarchs.”

  “My mother knew about this?”

  “She described it. Pternius reported it to the Magistrate. He was told to keep quiet, that the matter was already under investigation.”

  “Was it?”

  “The District Magistrate then was called Areoc. He has left Sorrow. I have instigated an effort to track him down.”

  “So you are no closer to knowing what happened.”

  “I found some of Areoc’s constables from that time. They were humans, mostly old men now. They talked. There had been an investigation. A woman called Ilara, the same name your mother gave Pternius, had reported a killing that looked suspiciously like a
thanatomantic sacrifice eight months previously. She answered to the description of your mother that Pternius gave me.”

  A strange feeling pressed down on Rik, as they discussed this woman he had never known, his mother.

  “You know what my mother looked like? Tell me?” It came out sounding oddly eager and pathetic. What might have been sympathy flickered across Asea’s face.

  “A young woman not much older than you are now, about 20, tall, good looking, black hair, a mole on her neck roughly where you have one. Not very well educated, a prostitute the constables thought.” Rik tried to picture this stranger and found he could not. He had half-hoped that some vague primordial memory would be stirred but nothing came.

  “So young? Do you think she might still be alive?” Asea shook her head.

  “She died about a month after giving birth to you. Murdered, the constable said. Same way as in the killing she had reported, same way as she babbled to the midwives about, the ritual of the Black Blade.”

  “The Black Blade?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Believe me, I do.”

  “The victim is gutted while still alive, tortured with small hooks attached to the sorcerer by enchanted wires. He devours her soul as she passes and feeds on the energy.”

  “Devours her soul?” Rik was stunned and angry and sad all at once.

  “It gives the sorcerer energy, prolongs their life, rejuvenates them.”

  “It was a human who did this then,” said Rik. “I mean no Terrarch would need to do that. You don’t age.”

  Asea shook her head. The look she gave him carried a complex mix of emotions. “You have a lot to learn, Rik. There are many, many reasons why a Terrarch would do this. In this place we do age, just much more slowly than you do.”

  “But you…you are almost two thousand years old and you don’t look any older than I do.”

  “There are reasons for that, Rik. One of them was that I was born in the Sacred Land before the coming of the Princes of Shadow. Terrarchs born here, on Gaeia, age much more quickly.”

  “Did a Terrarch kill my mother then?” It would not have surprised him. It was one more tally to be added to the long score he had to settle with them.

  “I believe so. Certainly the sacrifice she claimed to have witnessed was performed by a Terrarch.”

  “How could she have seen such a sacrifice and lived?”

  “I don’t know. It may be the sorcerer was engrossed by the ritual. It may be the sorcerer was so drugged he did not notice her. An enormous amount of potent narcotics must be consumed during such rites.”

  “You seem very familiar with such things…” Asea recoiled as if slapped then she laughed.

  “You do not know the seriousness of that accusation, Rik. I have had Terrarchs killed for less, and killed them myself.”

  He saw he was on very shaky ground, and had not realised it. They had been talking so familiarly that he had almost forgotten who and what she was. “Still we need to understand each other, you and I. To answer your question, I am familiar with thanatomancy because I have been an enemy of its practitioners. To hunt a beast you must learn all you can of its habits.”

  Another interpretation occurred to Rik but he kept his mouth firmly shut. If you thought you might die of a disease one day, and there was one potential cure, you might well seek out the knowledge of it.

  “You think my mother saw the sorcerer, and managed to escape unnoticed.” It seemed best to get the conversation back on safer ground.

  “I think she went into hiding when an arrest was not made immediately. I suspect the sorcerer was an individual of some power and influence.”

  “Why?”

  “All the records pertaining to the case save the most basic have vanished. It is not uncommon for the documents concerning old cases to be lost or destroyed. It is uncommon for pages to be torn from the watch ledgers on the days in question.”

  “It would be easy enough to have done in Sorrow, if you were rich enough.” Rik knew this for a fact. Charges could be dropped, men released from cells, pardons granted if the right palms were greased. The gang lord Antonio had done it, and he had heard tales of many others doing it. Once it had even been done for him. Poor Leon, he thought. “Someone was covering their trail.”

  “And they did it very well. It’s cold now.” Sadness pressed down on Rik now. He had lost someone, and he had never even known her. His mother had tried to do right, and she had been killed as a consequence. Someone who could cover a trail like that could track someone like his mother down eventually. There were places where you could hide for months, even years, but sooner or later someone sufficiently determined would find you. He knew it. It was why he and Leon had joined the army and left Sorrow behind them.

  “Did you find out anything?”

  “The constable thought your mother had been involved with some sort of cult. That would fit. Such sorcerers are often members of cabals.”

  Another thought occurred to him. “Did she ever mention my father?”

  “No, Rik, but I have my own suspicions about that.”

  “How? Have you worked some sorcery?”

  “I have. I did it the first time I talked to you in the camp in the mountains. Do you remember that?”

  “When you asked me about soldiers selling mystical books?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your spell told you who my father was? That is powerful magic.”

  “It told me something about you; you have something that might have come as a gift from your father or your mother. I have ruled your mother out. She was human, and this thing could only have come from a Terrarch, and most likely only from one born on Al’Terra, our lost homeworld.”

  “What thing?”

  “There are certain divinations that can be performed to reveal people’s surface thoughts. They almost always work. Those spells do not reveal yours.”

  “Spells can sometimes fail, or so I have heard.”

  “Yes, they can. There are a number of natural phenomena that can cause spells to go awry, not to mention the fact that even the most skilled wizards makes mistakes. God knows I have made some myself. There are other tests we need to perform.”

  “Are there?” he replied.

  “Give me a lock of your hair.” Rik was suddenly wary. Locks of hair, nail clippings, splashes of blood were all things the Old Witch had collected back in Sorrow whenever she wanted to lay a curse on someone. She stared at him, and offered him a small knife. Something in her manner told him that she would not take no for an answer.

  Reluctantly he took the knife and cut off a small length of hair. He handed it back to her along with the knife. She took it and passed her hand over it murmuring something in the ancient tongue. “I suspected as much,” she said eventually.

  “Suspected what?” She took the hair, placed it a sealed package and then placed the package within one of her trunks.

  “That it would not hold a trace.”

  “I would appreciate it if you returned that lock to me, or destroyed it.”

  “I need to test it with more elaborate spells, but rest assured it will be destroyed when it is no longer needed.” And that was that, he thought. He would need to see about recovering the lock himself some time.

  She opened her hand and held something out to him. “Take this and hold it.”

  He studied the thing warily and made no move to take it. He was very suspicious now and wondered where this was all leading.

  “Take it,” she said. Her voice was laced with subtle compulsions. He felt a near overwhelming urge to obey, but he resisted.

  “What is it?” he said. The words were difficult but he spoke them instead of doing what he was told. She smiled as if he had just proven something she suspected. He wondered if he had fallen into some sort of trap by not taking the stone. He wished that he knew more about what was happening here, about what was going on. He did not like this feeling of being someone else’s pawn at all
.

  “It is something I brought from the homeworld, a magestone. It is a simple thing really, used for testing children, to see how much magical potential they had. That was a thing far more common there than here, and far more useful. Take it. It won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  He took it. It was a smooth, hard gem-like object, cool to the touch. He thought one surface had been scratched but when he inspected it, he saw that it had been etched with an Elder Sign, one he did not recognise. He felt oddly disappointed. He had expected it to shine or glow or respond in some way, and yet it remained totally inert. Asea nodded as if another suspicion had been confirmed.

  “I know you have magical potential,” she said. “Yet the stone says no. The sign should glow when you hold it. Keep gripping it for a minute. Let us see if something happens.”

  There was silence. Both of them looked at the stone. Rik felt as if it were a grenade with the fuse burning. If he had no magical potential, he could not become an apprentice. Was it possible Asea had made a mistake about that? Of course it was. She had said so herself.

  Eventually, she gestured towards herself with the palm of her hand, indicating he should return the stone.

  “You resist all forms of divination very well,” she said. “Shadowblood.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you never heard the expression?”

  “No.”

  “The old horror tales are no longer told?”

  “Horror tales? What do you mean?”

  “The Shadowblood were a dark legend on Al’Terra. They were the fist of the Desecrator, secret and deadly.”

  Rik had heard of the Desecrator. Who had not? “The Prince of Shadow?”

  “Perhaps the greatest of them.”

  “You are saying there is some connection between he and I?” He glanced over his shoulder. It was like being told there was some connection between himself and the Shadow of God. The Princes of Shadow had been evil’s greatest champions. “That’s madness.”

  “I would be happier if it was,” she said. There was fear in her voice and that made him more afraid, for she was one of the greatest sorcerers of the realm, perhaps the world. Anything that could make one of the First nervous was something of which he should be terrified. “But alas it is not. We had thought the Shadowblood gone from the world. Azaar believes he destroyed them all. It seems that my half-brother made a mistake.”