by D. P. Prior
Rhiannon snatched up the black blade and swung with all her might. The gargoyle screeched and flapped into the air, gouts of black blood spilling from its side. The Ipsissimus stood petrified, his face the colour of death. He merely stared at the gilt Monas lying at his feet. Rhiannon lunged for it, but the gargoyle was quicker, slapping her aside with its wings. She thrust with the sword, but it swayed away and raked her shoulder with its talons. Her arm went cold and she switched the sword to her left hand. She couldn’t let him take the Monas. Not now. Not after all the sacrifices.
The gargoyle made a play for it, but Rhiannon jabbed it back. Still the Ipsissimus did nothing. Footsteps were pounding up from behind, but Rhiannon didn’t dare to look. The gargoyle swiped at her face, she ducked, but then its other hand grabbed her sword arm and shook the blade from her grasp. She spun and aimed a punch at its head, but it twisted her wrist and threw her to the ground. With one hand it claimed the Monas, and with the other it gripped her throat, forcing her to stare into its hellish eyes. Rhiannon twisted her head to the side, but it tightened its grip. She was choking. Choking—
Something cannoned into the gargoyle, knocking it to its back. Rhiannon rolled and saw Shader atop the creature, trying to find a way through its flailing hands. It smothered Shader with its wings, knocking the gladius from his grasp. Shader threw a punch that snapped the gargoyle’s head back, but the creature dislodged him with a whack from the stump of its tail. Rhiannon picked up the black sword again and took a swipe as the gargoyle flapped into the air. It tucked his legs out of the way of her blow and sped off towards the far end of the Homestead.
Shader was up in an instant and retrieved his gladius. With fury in his eyes he turned on the Ipsissimus.
‘You did nothing!’ he raged. ‘Nothing!’
Rhiannon tried to touch him, tried to share in his despair, but Shader shrugged off her advance and ran towards the ridge where the liche that had once been Dr Cadman awaited Ikrys with open arms wreathed in amber fire.
There were tears streaking the Ipsissimus’s face, but Rhiannon couldn’t go to him; couldn’t risk another rejection of her touch.
Something tugged her robe from behind and she turned to see Sammy gazing up at her, his face filthy, eyes blank and distant. He must have dragged his way to her even though he was exhausted to the point of death. She stroked his cheek and then pulled his face to her chest, running her fingers through his matted hair and hoping the end, when it came, would be swift.
***
Even the undead turned to face the figure on the ridge as the gargoyle landed and offered it the Monas.
Shader continued to run, weaving in and out of the stationary combatants strewn across the battlefield. The men looked too exhausted to move, too overcome with despair. The cadavers just seemed forgotten, and lacking volition of their own they simply stood there. A few surviving demons spiralled into the east, but all else appeared frozen in time.
Shader barged through a cluster of undead and sprinted for the slope leading up to the ridge.
Just before Sektis Gandaw’s hands reached the Monas, the gargoyle drew it back. Amber flared from it, lancing skywards, searing a hole in the firmament. The skeleton that was Sektis Gandaw threw its arms up and then watched as the clouds were sucked towards the hole. They swirled and coalesced, forming a pattern like a gigantic skull.
Still Shader ran, knees burning as he fought his way up a scree bank.
‘Blightey!’ Sektis Gandaw cried out as the skull turned towards him, the eye cavities filling with a bloody hue. Whilst he was distracted, the gargoyle sprang at him, reaching for the pieces of the statue that bathed his hands in amber light.
Shader reached the overhang leading to the ridge and had to sheathe his gladius to find hand holds. He swung a leg over the edge and then rolled to the top. Drawing the gladius once more, he dived straight at the gargoyle’s back. The creature must have sensed the attack as it squawked and flapped a few feet into the air, carrying Sektis Gandaw with it, dangling by the wrists. Shader skidded beneath them, rolled, and came up with the sword ready.
The amber in Sektis Gandaw’s hands flared and the gargoyle released its grip. As Sektis Gandaw floated slowly down beside Shader, an aperture opened above him admitting cobalt skies that washed away the apparition of the skull. The gargoyle flapped its wings furiously as a gigantic black fist soared through the opening and struck it full in the face. The gargoyle went into a spin, dropping the Monas. Sektis Gandaw snatched it out of the air as the black hand gave the gargoyle an almighty slap, sending it into a tumbling spin. With more frantic flapping, it righted itself, but saw the hand racing in pursuit. With a screech of utter horror it dived for the edge of the Homestead and disappeared. The black hand wavered for a moment, as if searching for its prey, and then retreated to the aperture.
‘Kill him! Kill him now! Kill him for Nous!’ Dave the Slave clambered over the lip of the ridge, eyes burning with zeal, lips drawn back in a feral snarl.
Shader raised the gladius to strike Sektis Gandaw’s exposed back, glanced at Dave as the hunchback climbed to his feet, shaking his fists in anticipation—and hesitated.
Sektis Gandaw turned, amber fire snaking about his body and striking the ground. A shockwave rolled across the ridge and Shader tumbled from the precipice. He clutched the edge with one hand and clung to the gladius with the other. Pain lanced through his shoulder and his fingers began to slip. Dave threw himself to his belly and grabbed Shader’s wrist.
‘No!’ he yelled. ‘No! You must not fail!’
The cobalt hole in the sky widened as a figure seated upon a throne came through. Shader looked into the frenzied eyes of Dave the Slave, watched the movement of his slavering jaws, and recoiled in horror.
‘Hold on,’ Dave growled. ‘I am the voice of Nous. You must not fail!’
‘No,’ Shader said. ‘No!’
He slipped through Dave’s grip and tumbled down the scree bank with the hunchback’s screams in his ears.
Shader’s head cracked against stone and he lay supine, gazing helplessly at the figure on the throne holding out the serpent’s body of the Statue of Eingana with a single amber fang blazing like lightning. The liche that had once been Cadman accepted the statue even as Dave slid down the slope to Shader’s side.
‘Get up!’ he cried. ‘Get up before it’s too late.’
It was already too late. Shader watched the liche slot the other fang inside the mouth of Eingana and then press home an eye. Too late for him, too late for the Earth, too late for Nous and all his damned creation. The liche clawed at the Ipsissimal Monas, prised the second eye free and inserted it in the head of the serpent. It raised the Statue of Eingana above its head, amber bursting from it with scintillating luminosity. The man on the throne stretched out his arms and the liche started to back towards him, the glare from the statue so intense the two figures were just silhouettes to Shader. The liche shook the statue in triumph and turned to face the throne, but then its skull shattered into a thousand pieces and a thunder-crack shook the ridge. The liche fell, pitching the statue to the earth.
Shader tried to rise, but his head was pounding. A small figure holding a long smoking tube appeared above the far edge of the ridge. He dropped the weapon, vaulted to the surface, and sprinted for the statue with a black cloak billowing behind him.
Shadrak! Shader rolled to a sitting position and tried to screen out Dave’s shouting.
The assassin dived for the statue as the man on the throne stood. The air rippled and some invisible force struck Shadrak, hurling him back across the ridge. The man stooped to pick up the statue and held it like a parent with a newborn child. The light faded enough for Shader to see he was dressed in a tunic and trousers of grey, with polished black shoes and perfect hair. The face was waxen and bloodless, the eyes cold and clinical. He caught Shader looking and glanced down at the remains of Cadman’s skeletal body.
‘A host body, no more, but it served its purpose.’
‘Oh, but I do, you pathetic little insect. I’ve waited a long time for this.’
Sektis Gandaw resumed his place on the throne and the aperture sealed, leaving only clear skies in its place.
‘You have failed Nous!’ Dave screamed. ‘You are cursed forever. You have doomed us!’
Shader’s skull was a nest of stinging insects. Coppery blood was on his tongue, and his heart ricocheted around his ribcage, threatening to burst from his chest.
Voices. He could hear voices—Dave snarling, Barek telling him to back off. Someone was calling his name.
‘Rhiannon, is that you?’ His own words were a drowning mush. Their sloshing echo passed deeper and deeper into the heart of a black abyss, met with a rising stream of speech, coiled about it, became as one.
‘Not good.’
‘Aristodeus?’
‘Not good at all.’
SHADER
Book Three
THE UNWEAVING
D.P. Prior
First Edition, 2014
ISBN 978-1-63068-373-3
Copyright © 2014 D.P. Prior. All rights reserved.
The right of D.P. Prior to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be, by way of trade or otherwise, lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my beta readers:
Ray Nicholson, for a great chapter by chapter breakdown, and for offering suggestions for that problematic scene.
Valmore Daniels, for a detailed and fearless critique, throwing in some much-needed early copy editing, advising on US English usage, and helping to improve the clarity of a few chapters.
Cover art and interior sketches: Anton Kokarev
Cover design and manuscript formatting: Valmore Daniels
Map of Aethir: Jared Blando
Map of Sahul: Theo Prior
Map of The Nousian Theocracy: Mike Nash
Interior sketches: Patrick Stacey
Photo of the author: Theo Prior
Conversion of italics from Pages to Word: Paula Prior
A DWARF WITH NO NAME
Dwarven City of Arx Gravis, Aethir
One year before
The Battle of the Homestead
So much blood.
Canals of it running through the streets of Arx Gravis. It dripped from the walkways and bridges like diseased rain, making the waters of Sanguis Terrae, the great lake at the foot of the ravine, a perfect match for its name. It even flowed along the corridors of power all the way to the Dodecagon, and though he knew the council chamber better than any other dwarf, knew the twelve stone doors were hermetically sealed, Thumil kept expecting the first trickle of red to seep through them, pool beneath the debating table, and rise till it drowned him and Cordy, that bald bastard Aristodeus, and … He looked at the once familiar dwarf twitching with nerves or damped down rage at the head of the table, scarcely dared take in the black axe clutched to his armored chest in white-knuckled hands. Looked and went blank. He couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say the name. It hardly seemed to fit anymore.
He straightened his blood-spattered robe. Hard to believe it had once been white. What must he have looked like now? Nothing like one of the Council of Twelve, that’s for sure. Any illusions he might have had about status, about being untouchable in dwarven society, had scattered like rats before a mouser.
All he could focus on was those dead eyes that used to have the hue of walnut, at once sad but twinkling with good cheer. Now they were black as the Void and just as hungry. Hungry for more slaughter. Hungry for the murder of his own kind. They saw Thumil watching, narrowed when he squeezed Cordy’s hand, wringing out what little strength was left in her. Then they flitted left to right, hunting out betrayal in the shadows beneath the amber glow-stones set into the lintel above each door. Used to be those lights gave the chamber a homey cheer, like the warm embers of the hearth in Kunaga’s, where they’d grown drunk together, set the place heaving with bawdy songs and uproarious wit.
Thumil blinked back tears, met that tortured gaze that asked if he were friend or foe; read in that grimacing face the accusation of betrayal, the desperate need to trust. Those eyes had been ready to kill him, that much he knew. Didn’t matter how close they once were, if it hadn’t been for Cordy, he’d have been a head on a spike, along with all those other dwarves.
She’d always had the persuasion, Cordy. Only woman alive who could have got him to the altar, but even she’d nearly fallen victim to the black axe. Whatever trust their old friend still had in her was teetering on a knife’s edge. There’d been no mercy in that demonic glare. None whatsoever.
The eyes were feverish now, fixed right on him, daring him, willing him, begging him. Shog, the poor bastard looked a mess, beard all matted and streaked with froth, face carved with frown lines like scars. But that’s all it was now: a face. Thumil couldn’t allow himself to give it a name. The mere thought that this butcher was once a person, once a friend, brought bile to his throat, sent spasms through his innards that made him double up.
Cordy let out a sob, gripped his hand tighter. Her palm was greased with sweat. Could have been gore, for all Thumil knew. Shog, she’d seen enough of it. The specks of crimson on her dress gave testimony to that, and there was a corona of roseate mist that swirled about her. Thumil blinked and it was gone. Must have been his eyes. Must have gotten blood in his eyes.
How he loved her at that moment, needed her, knew with all his heart it was the two of them against the world. He put his cheek to her beard, sought the comfort of its soft bristles, but it was lank, cold with the perspiration of fear, or perhaps the wetness of congealing blood. He couldn’t bear to look, preferring instead the way his mind chose to picture her. How blessed he was to have her as his wife. How cursed in everything else. Maybe together they could keep the darkness at bay, forget what they’d seen, what they’d been forced to do; because it was a betrayal, however you looked at it, but it was the only choice they had. The only one they’d been given.
Aristodeus stepped behind the butcher, holding the black great helm aloft, flecks of green glimmering on its casing in the half-light. There was a collective intake of breath and then silence as the philosopher lowered the helm.
Thumil’s heart lurched. He wanted so much to say no. What if the killing could be stopped some other way they’d missed? Council wasn’t used to making emergency decisions. Trick him, was all the bald bastard offered—him and his homunculi friends. Trick him and kill him, or trick him and take his name, shame him like no other dwarf had been shamed, then shut him in the dungeons till a cure could be found. Thumil winced. There was no cure for evil like the black axe brought. Maybe killing would have been fairer to everyone.
He stretched out his hand, but Cordy put a restraining arm around his shoulders.
“No,” he rasped, the word not passing his clenched teeth. He forced his lips open, groaned way back in his throat, felt his friend’s name worming its way up from his guts, spilling into his mouth… and then it was gone as the helm covered the head and was sealed in place by a sparking theurgy from Aristodeus’s fingertips. Locked tight, just like the shogger said it would be, never to be removed.
Aristodeus stepped back, rummaging in the pocket of his robe. “Well,” he said, producing a pipe and wagging the stem at Thumil like he was making a clever point to a student, “that’s that taken care of. You dwarves ar
e safe as houses now, touch scarolite.” He rapped his knuckles on the helm.
“Huh?” a muffled voice came from inside.
Two of Aristodeus’s homunculi emerged from a wall, as if they’d been hiding inside the very stone. Thumil blinked and shook his head. Was it an illusion, like the concealer cloaks employed by the ravine city’s assassins, or something more innate to their nature as spawn of the Abyss? One had hair like fleece, twisted into long gray ropes. The other’s was a spray of slick black tendrils, surmounting an overhanging forehead and eyes like distant stars. They were carrying a rectangular block of crystal, which they set atop the table. With almost surgical care, one of them pried the butcher’s fingers from the haft of the black axe, while the other lifted the cursed weapon free. The barest hint of a smile curled at the creature’s gnomic face before it placed the axe on top of the crystal and gave a satisfied nod as it sank into the block, settling in the middle.
Cordy gave Thumil a look full of concern, but the best he could manage was a shrug. Never liked dealing with homunculi. Never trusted them, but the philosopher had convinced the council there was no other way. Smug bastard probably thought he had them worked out, just like he did everyone else. Even now, he was tapping out the bowl of his pipe and refilling it, seemingly without a care in the world.
“See you again, Nameless Dwarf,” said the homunculus with the dreadlocks, voice tinged with regret—or was it sarcasm?
“What’s that?” the butcher asked, pivoting his head so he could get a better look through the narrow eye-slit of the great helm.
Thumil didn’t like the way the others were already calling his old friend the Ravine Butcher, but ‘Nameless Dwarf’? Is that all he was now, a dwarf with no name, a dwarf who, according to Aristodeus, never had one, not at any point in time?
Didn’t make sense, as far as Thumil was concerned, but he couldn’t deny the reality. One minute the name had been on the tip of his tongue, the next it was as if it had never been. How could he have known this dwarf all his life, known his father, Droom, and his mother, Yyalla, and yet not have a clue what to call him? How many years had they fought together? Drunk? Shog of all shogs, Thumil even knew his brother, Lucius. Had known, rather. Poor old Lucius had gone to the seethers for starting all this black axe business. Small price to pay, Councilor Grago had argued: one isolated action by the council to avert a major catastrophe. Old Moary had tried to prevaricate, as always, but Grago had scared them into action. First time in hundreds of years, and the taste of complicity was like vinegar to Thumil. Once was enough for him, and most of the other councilors had agreed. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake again; wasn’t about to watch his friend put to death. Grago wasn’t happy about it, but what could he do without a majority vote?
