Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  The Ascension.

  Yes, the Ascension. The central tenet of their Church. The long-awaited and much sought moment of rapture when they would, each and every one of them, become one with their God.

  What utter nonsense.

  The poor, deluded fools really did have as little idea of what was happening as the Hooper girl had when she’d faced him at Bel’A’Gon’Shri. Less so. At least the bloody and battered little tomb thief had known some kind of threat was nearing her world, if not its actual nature; whereas these zealots, blinkered by their own teachings, believed it harmless, even benign.

  It was not wholly their fault, this ignorance. The fact was, he could control many things, but the one thing he could not control was the appearance in the skies of the Hel’ss. Visible in Twilight’s azure haze for months now, its presence lessened little even during the day. There was no avoiding it, no escaping it, and, if only to prevent the inconvenience to his plans that a mass panic might cause, it had needed to be explained. In such a way that suited his purposes. The glamour he had therefore insinuated into the minds of key members of the Faith’s elite had ensured they interpreted the approach of ‘the other’ as part of the process that would, as they wished, deliver them from their mortal coil into the embrace of their Lord of All.

  He had given much thought as to what form this glamour should take, considered many scenarios, but in the end it was a corruption of the actual truth that served him best.

  The ‘other’, he said, was a herald of the coming Ascension, which appeared in the heavens to facilitate the rapture itself. While it was true that the Hel’ss was linked to Kerberos, it was, of course, nothing of the kind, but he saw no reason to share this part of the entity’s sordid history with the humans. They would, after all, all be gone before they found this out.

  Oh, how simple it had been. While initially worried about the degree of will it would take to weave such a deception in the minds of so many, it had not taken long for the part truth to take on a life of its own. Such was the pliability of true believers that they were willing to accept anything that bolstered their own beliefs, and while it was true that he had been forced to ‘tweak’ the minds of a few who began to express doubts, the slavering vegetables they had become were no longer a problem. Otherwise the elite of the Final Faith had delivered his wondrous news to their underlings who had, in turn and through means subtle and otherwise, dutifully instilled that belief in the minds of the masses.

  So it was that the thing that was about to annihilate them all was perceived to be an object not of death but of life. Glorious, everlasting afterlife.

  Yes, they were fools. But they were happy fools.

  Even Makennon – although it was true to say she was less happy than most.

  Ah, Katherine, Redigor thought. He missed the feel of her, her inner fire, as it were, but in his new guise it would not have been appropriate for him to take advantage of the Anointed Lord in that way. If he had been capable of feeling sorry for anyone, he would have felt sorry for Katherine. The woman – strong, proud, but fallibly human – had barely been released from servitude to him when her mind had once more become no longer her own. She, of all of them, had required the most delicate manipulation because she had felt his touch before, and with one slip he could have revealed his true self to her. He could not remove her faculties in the way he had with the others, she was too prominent for that, so instead it had been necessary for him to… deaden certain parts of her mind. On the surface, she continued to perform her role as Anointed Lord as she always had but, when her official duties ended for the day, Makennon could now be found locked in her apartments, staring into her fire, in whose flames she sought but failed to find that part of her mind she sensed was awry.

  It was almost a pity. He had promised Makennon at the moment of his ‘death’ that he would crush her church, but now, through his own manipulations, she was likely to miss it.

  Bastian Redigor sighed and reflected on events of the past year. A year – it was nothing to an elf, not even the blink of an eye and, yet, saddled as he was with this human form, it had seemed eternal. Probably no less so for Jakub Freel who, in unguarded moments, he could hear screaming in fury from somewhere deep within. Redigor admired the Allantian for his strength – even after all this time, when he should have become nothing more than a whimpering echo of his former self, Freel protested with the same strength as he had when first been lost. He was not, however, quite strong enough, and it took only a few moment’s concentration on his part to quell the internal rebellion. Yet still, when his energies could have been engaged in other matters, it was bothersome.

  But not for much longer, he hoped. Because in doing what he was going to do for the Hel’ss, he very much hoped that the Hel’ss would do something for him in return.

  Guards stiffened to attention and then moved aside as he reached his apartments. The Pale Lord barely acknowledged their presence as he swept inside. As the door was closed behind him, he allowed himself a moment of weariness, and leant against the wall with a sigh.

  As always, when he entered this so-called sanctuary, the first thing that struck him was how painfully human it was, and he rued the pretence that made it necessary to keep his private space in the style of Jakub Freel. Long as he might for things elven, he instead had to surround himself with the trappings of the sometime prince of Allantia, and these creature comforts sickened him. No less so, in fact, than the sound of that damnable Eternal Choir, whose caterwauling voices and specious songs penetrated even these thick walls. It had been beyond his – or rather Freel’s authority – to have them silenced, and so, instead, he had ensured that they suffered for their art by living up to their name. A small conjuration had bound each and every one of the singers to their positions, where they had been forced to remain since he had taken up office that seeming eternity ago. A secondary, smaller conjuration ensured that observers saw and heard nothing beyond the norm, and only he knew how they stood there now, their emaciated, undying forms with their desperate eyes struggling for release but finding all they could do was continue to sing.

  It wasn’t much but it was poetic. And it would have to do.

  Thankfully, there was one part of his apartments where he could escape both Freel’s trappings and the Eternal Choir. The inner sanctum – or prayer room – that was common to the quarters of all the Faith elite was sound-proofed and sacrosanct, and no one bar the occupant would dare set foot inside its walls. Safe in this knowledge, Redigor had removed the small altar and kneeling stone that had sat in the centre of the round, windowless chamber and replaced it with a circle of power drawn upon the stone flags of the floor. It was inert as he entered the chamber but, with a small wave of the hand, the runes that made up its pattern pulsed with a bright blue light and, a second later, an equally bright blue and slightly sparkling fog swirled dreamily in the centre of the sanctum.

  Not even slowing his pace, Redigor walked into it. Through it.

  And was somewhere else.

  The cramped, circular confines of the prayer room gave way to a much larger space, one that not only looked different but felt and smelled different, too. Here there was a chillier aspect to the air, and a tang of brine about it, and if you listened very, very carefully, the sound of waves and gulls could be heard from somewhere in the distance.

  Away from the cathedral, in this quiet place, Redigor succumbed to a greater tedium than mere weariness, and for a second actually staggered then steadied himself against a wall, his lips pulling back in pain. Only here, far from the stage on which his act needed to be maintained every day, could he acknowledge that it was far more than weariness affecting him.

  The fact was, his possession of Jakub Freel required little effort on his part, but what did require effort, and sometimes a great deal of it, was ensuring the body did not succumb to the rigours of the dark magic he would have it employ. The channelling of such forces through an elven form exacted some small price on the physiology, bu
t channelled through a human it was the cause of a biological rot that had to be monitored and addressed almost constantly.

  Redigor pulled up the sleeves of his tunic and examined the black weals that writhed on the skin of his forearms like living tattoos, leaving necrotised patches of flesh, and knew this pattern was reflected on other parts of his body as well. He knew this because he could feel the burning the writhing brought with it.

  A year in human form was, indeed, a long time, and he was unsure for how much longer he could stem the tide of the rot. Already he could feel it manifesting itself in his internal organs, feel them throb and twinge as they threatened to collapse. If that happened there was every chance he would not survive to see the arrival of the Hel’ss. What he needed was a way to rid himself of it. The problem was that though he possessed the capability to take another host, that act would be self-defeating, not only because it would remove him from this position of power but also because he was running out of time. There was no chance he would be able to reestablish himself before the Hel’ss arrived. The only solution, therefore, was not to run from the rot but to eliminate it completely, and it was with this, that if the legends were right, he believed the Hel’ss could help.

  Redigor took a deep breath. In the centre of the chamber was a large tank-like structure, wrought of iron and studded with thick rivets strong enough to contain the weight of water that one or two portholes on its side revealed to be contained within. The water was the colour of algae and had clearly come from the sea. There was a dark shape barely discernible at its heart, the size of a tall and stocky man.

  Redigor waved a hand and wheels on the side of the tank began to turn. From within, the sound of sloshing and draining water was heard. It was not the first time Redigor had drained the tank but, each time, it had been refilled in order to preserve the items he’d contained within. Different items. This time as the water drained away, foot by foot, what was revealed was not the figure of a man but a woman – a woman carved of wood.

  The water gone, Redigor proceeded to a hatch between the two wheels and heaved it open with a metallic groan. Water continued to stream down its inside and pooled at his feet, but Redigor paid it no attention, his eyes fixed on the ship’s figurehead.

  Half rotten, encrusted with barnacles and with its joints accentuated by embedded layers of seaweed, the figure was twice his height. It thrust forward, staring over and beyond him, and looked almost desperate, as if seeking a wave it knew it would never ride again. Its features were smoothed by the erosion of years at sea, yet still distinguishable: the half-gown that had once connected it to its ships prow, the curve of its torso and breasts, its arms pressed to its sides, and its head, once crowned with flowing locks of hair, reduced now to a layering of rotten, jagged and jutting wood. What stood out the most, though, were its eyes, larger than those of a real human; blank orbs veined not with blood vessels but the grain exposed by their carving, that stared straight ahead and yet saw nothing at all.

  But he would make them see.

  It was time to awaken this lady.

  Redigor closed his own eyes, falling into a deep concentration in the silence of the chamber. After a second, a sibilant whisper could be heard drifting from him, although his lips appeared not to move at all. The words he spoke were strange, short and clipped at first, though became longer and louder, and each began to overlap the other until eventually it sounded as if a crowd of people were whispering in unison with Redigor. Still, though, his lips did not move.

  But as the volume increased yet more, others did.

  With a sudden, almost horrified inhalation of air, the mouth of the figurehead opened, and at the same time, its eyes. What had previously been dead wood was suddenly transformed into the semblance of human eyes, though they were grotesquely distorted, bulging, matching the size and shape of the carved orbs themselves. Cartoon eyes, fishmen’s eyes – or perhaps the eyes of a suffocating and drowning man.

  Which was exactly what they were.

  The eyes’ grotesque appearance was made even more so by the fact that their gaze flicked about the chamber in panic, settling on Redigor, their surroundings, even trying to look down, presumably in search of the form that should hold them. They saw nothing, of course, for the body they had once inhabited wasn’t there, and the eyes widened in terror.

  Water vomited from the figurehead’s mouth.

  “Who were you?” Redigor asked.

  The eyes shot to him, though still flickered wildly, trying but unable to tear themselves away, to make sense of what was happening.

  “I don’t know.”

  Redigor sighed, wearily. The human race’s hold on their existence was stupefyingly weak, hardly worth the effort of their drawing their first pathetic breaths at all.

  “Answer me,” he demanded.

  “My… my name was William… William West, sir.”

  “And what were you, William?”

  “I… I was second mate on the Fulsome Wench, sir.”

  Redigor nodded. This at least confirmed he had summoned what he wished – necromancy was so prone to strays and intruders, chancers from the fringes of the planes. It confirmed also that West was on the crew manifest of one of the ships he had despatched beyond the Stormwall. The translocation rituals that Makennon’s people had perfected recently had come in very handy in that regard: one moment these ships had been sailing safe waters, the next unknown and lethal seas thousands of leagues away. The magical cost of such translocations – and of retrieving their almost universally doomed remains – had left him exhausted physically, but, as the Eyes of the Lord he had earlier attempted to send beyond the Stormwall had been brought down by its preternatural energies, he’d had little choice.

  “You know, do you not, William, that you are quite dead?”

  “Yes, Sir. I’m sorry, Sir.”

  “There is no need to apologise, William.”

  “I… I wasn’t, Sir. What I mean is, I’m sorry for my Meg, my wife, and Rob, my boy. They’re all alone now.”

  The smallest of smiles curled Redigor’s lip. West could not know that it was he who had sent him to his death. “Do not worry yourself, William… the three of you will be together again soon enough.”

  “Can you promise me that, Sir?”

  Redigor’s smile widened. “Oh, yes. I can.”

  William was silent for a moment and his eyes stared beyond Redigor, as if picturing that time. Then he spoke again.

  “Is there something you wish of me, Sir?”

  “Yes, William,” Redigor said. “I want you to show me what you saw.”

  “Sir?”

  “Before you died.”

  The dead sailor’s eyes started to flicker. “I… I’m not sure I want to do that.”

  “And why is that? Because it would cause you pain?”

  “Yes. The memory.”

  Redigor’s eyes, and his tone, darkened. “Is this the kind of pain you would like instead, William?”

  Something carried with Redigor’s words and suddenly the mouth of the figurehead began to wheeze and gurgle. Its eyes, in turn, became even more grotesquely deformed than before, flecked with veins that bulged with blood, threatening to burst despite the fact their owner was already dead. William’s voice became a series of strangled, bubbling gasps, the sound of a man desperate to breathe but finding only water where air should have been. Where a few seconds of these gasps would normally have ended with the silence of liquid filled lungs, and of dimming eyes, however, here they simply continued, a frantic and agonising and wild-eyed struggle for relief that the Pale Lord let continue for two minutes or more. When at last Redigor released his hold on his summoning, William West’s eyes stared forward glazed.

  “That’s better,” Redigor said. “Now… show me.”

  Before him, the vitreous of West’s eyes began to cloud over, as if beset by cataracts, and then began to swirl. At first it was like looking at a reflection of something indistinguishable in a mottled and t
arnished mirror, but then the swirls began to coalesce into the view of a storm-tossed seascape at night. Redigor leaned forward and allowed himself to be drawn into the scene – in, and very far away. He found himself travelling out from the peninsula, through the Stormwall and over an endless expanse of ocean. Land disappeared far behind him until there was nothing but water. After what seemed like an eternity an object became discernible on the horizon, and after a few seconds it resolved itself into the shape of a vessel. Then he was sweeping up to the hull of the ship, and then aboard, where at last he came to rest, or at least as at rest as the vision of a man who was trapped on a sinking ship could be.

  This was what West had seen moments before he died, and as his gaze shifted across the panorama before him, his fellow, doomed crewmen could be seen, too, frantically working the sails and ropes on the deck of their ship. The Fulsome Wench was already breaking apart, and there was nothing they could do to save themselves, but that didn’t matter to Redigor. He didn’t care about their deaths and it was not their deaths that he had summoned West to see.

  Redigor waited patiently, disappointed too many times. The seascape of the other side of the world was by now a familiar vista to him – as familiar, that was, as an endless expanse of maelstrom could be – but he needed to see more. And to see more, the location had to be right, the conditions had to be right, the stars had to be right. The chances of a translocation bringing him close enough for these conditions to be met were, of course, infinitesimal, and he was already prepared to be disappointed once more. Then, suddenly, his eyes widened.

  Something…

  Redigor’s eyes narrowed as he studied the last moments of William West’s mortal existence for the finest detail, and at last drew in a sharp breath. There, a glimpse between masts and rigging, of a star pattern that seemed similar to that on the chart from the Halo files. Then as Redigor watched – or rather as West’s perspective shifted – a clearer view, the heavens revealed in all their glory.