by Duncan Pile
…
Sestin stood at the cavernous entrance to the fifth vaerg den. He raised his arms. “Come out!” he cried, threading the command through the long, dark passageways. The sound of heavy, scrabbling claws echoed from deep within the tunnel, drawing nearer with each passing second.
The first beast to emerge was the new Den-chief, looming massively over its lesser brethren. It flew across the ground, throwing up great clods of dirt and scree with each bound. The pack followed, the very ground rumbling at its passing. Sestin extended his palm towards them and they skidded to a stop, cowering at his feet.
“Rise,” he said to the Den-chief. It stood, its fearsome head level with Sestin’s own. Its maw was monstrous – heavy jaws, black fleshy gums and cruel, broken teeth, capable of crushing a man’s skull. Sestin circled it, sensing the beast’s nervousness. It feared him, as well it should. Colossus or imp, he could snuff out its life in a heartbeat.
“How does the pack fare?” he said.
“They fare well, Master,” the Den-chief growled.
“They have accepted your will, regarding the purge?”
“There was trouble at first, Master, but it was dealt with swiftly.”
“And since then?” Sestin asked.
“Nothing Master. They hear and they obey.”
Sestin probed the Den-chief’s mind, searching for any hint of uncertainty or deception, but its thoughts were clear. “Then the time has come for the dens to merge.”
“Merge?” The Den-chief struggled to wrap its jaws around the difficult word.
“We must leave this place and do battle. All five dens will fight as one.”
“Master, they will kill each other on sight.”
“They will not,” Sestin said. The Den-chief lowered its great head in submission. The beast was right to a point; if the rest of the vaergs emerged from the tunnels that very moment they would tear each other to pieces, but Sestin had a further layer of spell-work to impose.
He projected his will into the other four dens. “Come forth!” he cried, his words carrying to the deepest, darkest caverns. Vaergs burst into motion, stampeding through the labyrinthine network of tunnels and pouring out into the open – a swarm of magically enhanced brutes some two thousand strong, snapping, snarling and baying for blood. Sestin permitted himself a satisfied smile. It was a sight that would make even the bravest men quake. He threw out a compulsion, spreading the net over the entire pack and drawing each beast under its influence. Their minds were rigid and resistant to suggestion, but that was to be expected; he’d bred pack mentality and aggression into their very bones.
Sestin had no choice but to force his will upon them, restricting and re-shaping the pathways of their minds. It was inorganic – something artificial to their make-up – but it held, and the flood of their aggression receded. Sestin secured the compulsion and released it, ready to intervene if instinct reasserted itself. The vaergs looked around in confusion, eyeing beasts that moments earlier they would have torn limb from limb. They sniffed each other tentatively, grunting and snuffling without any show of aggression. Sestin was pleased; rival had become den-mate before his eyes.
“Den-chiefs, to me,” he called. Four beasts, as massive as the vaerg already before him, loped over and stood side by side, their eyes on him alone. “You are one pack now, under my command, but to maintain order you will retain control of your dens. If in battle you come across a vaerg that is in danger, you will go to its aid, regardless of the den it was spawned in. Is that understood?”
“Yes Master,” the five Den-chiefs growled, heads bowed. Of all the vaergs, only these five had been excluded from the compulsion. Their intelligence was sufficient to override base instinct, and he wanted them clear-headed for the battle.
He surveyed the force before him – a tide of muscle, teeth and claws – and knew satisfaction. He would bring death to Helioport, and none would escape it.
…
Sestin set his pack down and surveyed the hollow. He’d chosen the spot for its remoteness. Several miles from Elmera, the unpopulated stretch of forest hadn’t been trampled by human feet in decades. The vaerg dens were nearby, and travellers gave the area a wide berth.
It was time to start building his demonic force. He would summon them one by one and tether them with binding spells until he was ready to march on Helioport. His body was charged with energy, but he wasn’t afraid. The higher demons would put up a considerable fight, but ever since successfully imposing his will on the Darkman, Sestin wasn’t worried about his ability to control even the most formidable of foes.
He walked around the hollow, measuring out the pattern he had painstakingly marked on the ground the previous day – deep grooves, cut into the soil with a sharp ceremonial knife. He came to a stop, pleased with what he saw. Every angle was exact and there were no breaks in the line.
He untied his pack and withdrew a heavy amphora, filled with the blood of a traveller he had captured and tortured the previous night. The blood was ensorcelled, swirling with the energies released by fear and death, and would serve to strengthen Sestin’s spell-work as he summoned and subdued his demonic servants. He walked around the hollow, pouring the blood out evenly until every inch of the pattern had been wetted.
He was ready. Sestin took his place in the middle of the pattern and bowed his head. His breathing deepened as he centred himself, letting his surroundings fade until his awareness narrowed to a single point. He lanced out with his thought, piercing the membrane between the planes and twisting hard. Reality cracked, exposing the swirling darkness beyond.
He widened the gap with great caution, alert for sudden attack. He’d only survived to become a master summoner because he never let down his guard. He could sense the presence of demons on the other side, but the summoner chose the servant, and he had no interest in the lesser beings crowding the portal for now. He would start with a greater demon – one that would inspire terror in the hearts of the people of Helioport. Casting about beyond the gateway, he overlooked dozens of powerful beings until he found what he was looking for; a colossus, mighty in both strength and stature. He assessed it carefully, weighing it up against the Darkman. Physically it was much more powerful but its intelligence was limited, which would make it easier to dominate. It was a brute, with a singularly destructive frame of mind – perfect for Sestin’s purposes.
Reaching out with his senses, he snared it with a compulsion. “Come,” he commanded. As expected, the demon resisted, but its willpower was weak. It was a creature of action, not of thought. Sestin shocked it with a sharp stab of pain. The creature spasmed and recoiled, hissing furiously as it struggled to break free. Sestin strengthened the compulsion, and after several exhausting minutes its resistance began to crumble. “Come!” he snapped, the word laced with authority, and the demon finally yielded.
It moved to the portal and pressed its giant head against the opening, struggling to pass through. The gap began to stretch, yawning like a dark maw. It widened further, stretching tightly around the demon’s broad, flat head until it finally burst through. Its mouth was a gash, filled with dozens of long, needle-like teeth. Its eyes were small and black, devoid of intelligence. The head was followed by a long, segmented body, slithering through the portal like afterbirth. It circled the hollow, its thick, segmented body moving on hundreds of hard, skittering legs. It was fast, and one snap of those jaws would sever a man in two.
With a flick of his finger, Sestin rendered it unconscious. It dropped to the ground instantly, its weak mind fully yielded already. He hungered to set the creature loose on the people of Helioport. Even if they found a way to defeat it, the death toll would be enormous.
Sestin paused to assess his condition. Summoning a greater demon was always draining, but less so on this occasion due to the demon’s rapid capitulation. He was far from spent. Casting his senses through the portal once more, he began to search for a second monster; something equally capable of destruction.
/> Twenty-three
Baard thrust Bonebreaker into the air and bellowed the command to move out. Or at least he tried to bellow, but his voice cracked and petered out. Since taking his place as the leader of the ogre army, Baard had discovered that the louder he yelled, the more likely he was to be obeyed. Ogres never did anything quietly; they fought, ate, drank, argued, celebrated and even slept loudly, and they expected the same of him. He’d roared, barked and bellowed his unruly troops into some kind of order, but even at their best, they remained quarrelsome, stubborn and difficult to manage.
Hardest of all was keeping them from each other’s throats. Before the Gunthaak came along, the nation had been split into disparate, feuding tribes. The Gunthaak and his coven of shamans had forced them into an unnatural alliance, and although they’d sworn allegiance to Baard, their union was fragile at best.
Within a few days of his friends’ departure from Pell, Baard had started to grasp the folly of his promise to raise an army of ogres and lead it to Helioport. Instead of a force of ready warriors, he led a rag-tag collection of tribes on the verge of killing each other. It had taken all his powers of persuasion to get the tribal leaders to gather in one place, and every breath in his body to make himself heard. He’d argued his case until he was hoarse, but they were having none of it until he promised them the one thing that could bind them together – brutal, bloody war. The more Baard described the enemy – a swarm of ferocious vaergs, hordes of soul-stealing demons – the more animated the ogres became. The sheer scale of the battle unified them in a way that nothing else could, and so it was that, despite his fears, Baard ended up with an army of ogres on his hands.
He’d got them marching before tensions could arise and drive his cause from their minds. Ogres could get by without shelter and ate their meat raw if necessary, so there were few logistics to deal with. To maintain order, Baard had established a few simple rules – no fighting, no stealing, and all disputes were to be brought before him to judge. Every night, the landscape was dotted with hundreds of haphazardly arranged campfires, and somewhere among them, Baard and the ruling Kaas gathered. They spent their evenings drinking qaak – a potent draught made from fermented nettles which tasted like old socks – and holding contests of physical strength. In Helioport, Baard had loved to arm wrestle, overpowering friends and strangers alike with his freakish strength, but the ogre appetite for such competitions was bottomless and oft-times he found himself longing for a bit of conversation.
He remembered with fondness the fire-side camaraderie he’d enjoyed on the journey to Pell, but his smile faded when he thought of the twins, Zlekic and Zaric. They’d been the life and soul of the group, keeping everyone’s spirits up with outrageous tales of drinking, gambling and wenching, but when the Darkman caught up with them at the Thundering Gorge, they’d given their lives so the other questors could escape and continue to Pell.
The twins weren’t the only ones who had sacrificed themselves for the quest. Sabu had fought the Darkman in the Temple of El-Amyari, receiving a grievous wound from the demon’s poisoned weaponry. He’d been in terrible shape when they transported out, and for all Baard knew, he might be dead. And then there was Emea, who had destroyed the Darkman in an astonishing display of power but had clearly been grievously hurt in the process. Baard couldn’t bear the thought that either of them had been killed, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he got back to Helioport, which was all the more reason to hurry his army through the mountains.
“GUNTHAAK-BANE! GUNTHAAK BANE!” the Kaas were chanting. They’d bestowed the title on him when he defeated the Gunthaak in single combat, wielding his mighty axe, Bonebreaker. Roused from his reflections, Baard realised that one of the Urzaaks was challenging him to another arm-wrestle. Repressing a sigh, Baard took a long swallow of qaak and rubbed the stiff muscles of his forearm, sore from numerous sorry defeats. He was yet to win a bout against a member of the larger, stronger race. Baard eyed the Urzaak and broke into a grin. Though considerably bigger than he was, the ogre was small for his kind and his arms weren’t particularly thick with muscle.
“Come on then,” Baard growled, and planted his elbow firmly on the barrel.
…
Shirukai Sestin sat at the table, scribbling on a leaf of parchment with a stub of charcoal. Tentatively, Chloe approached him from behind and rested her hands on his shoulders. “I don’t understand Kai,” she said. “We’re happy here. Why should we leave that behind?”
He shrugged her off angrily and stood up, walking away from her. Chloe stiffened. Who was this stranger, inhabiting her lover’s body? Kai turned around, his shoulders drooping, and once more he was the man she loved.
“I’m sorry Chlo,” he said, taking her hands in his own and caressing them with his long, slender fingers. “This whole thing has got me up at night.”
“I know,” Chloe said. “But maybe that should tell you something.”
“I can’t let it go. I need to be around it.”
“Magic!” Chloe spat. “Look what it’s done to you. Why can’t you be like me and give it up altogether? We could live a normal life.”
Kai shook his head firmly. “I can’t do that. It’s not who I am. Look Chlo, I’m not asking you to practice magic again. I just want you to come with me when I take up residence in the college.”
Chloe could tell that he’d made up his mind. “Maybe that’s not who I am,” she whispered.
Fear blossomed in Shirukai’s eyes. “Don’t say that Chlo. I need you…”
Against her will, her heart went out to him. She knew he was asking too much. She didn’t want to leave her peaceful life behind, and she didn’t want to return to Helioport. The city was part of her past, haunted by the ghosts of her youthful hopes. And yet, despite herself, she wanted to comfort him, to speak the words that would allay his fears.
It was typical of Shirukai to send her into a spin. It was less than a year since he’d walked back into her life, but it hadn’t taken long for his needs to take precedence over hers. Oh, she knew it wasn’t conscious; it was just his way, but it was always her making all the compromises. Now he was asking her to uproot herself entirely, and was holding her to ransom with his fear. Chloe knew all of this, and yet she couldn’t refuse him. For better or for worse, she loved Kai with all of her heart. She knew the fine man he’d once been, and who still showed his face in unguarded moments. He could be exquisitely tender at times, and his need for her company, though somewhat cloying, made her feel wanted.
She could feel her resolve crumbling but she wasn’t quite ready to give in. She needed time on her own, away from her lover’s intoxicating presence, so she could think things through with a clear head. The magicians of Helioport, keen as they were to see Shirukai return to the college, would have to wait until she was good and ready.
“I’m not saying no, Kai,” she said. “I just need more time to get used to the idea. I have friends here, no…I have family. I can’t just uproot myself at a moment’s notice. Please, will you wait a little longer?”
Kai looked at her without expression, and for a moment Chloe thought he was going to refuse her, but then he let out a quiet sigh of resignation. “How long do you need?”
“Six months,” she said. “Just give me six more months.”
…
Shirukai lay in bed, listening to Chloe’s breathing. The six months she had asked for had passed, but despite her promise to think things through, she actively avoided any discussion about moving to Helioport. He’d tried to bring it up numerous times, but it always upset her and led to an argument. She said she needed more time, but he didn’t know how much longer he could wait.
Shirukai felt trapped. He couldn’t leave Chloe – she was the only protection he had against the Dark God. Her presence was talismanic, keeping Ak-Thakis at bay, which in turn had allowed him to live something close to a normal life. To wake and think lazy thoughts, free from the grip of mortal terror was a liberty beyond anything he’d da
red to hope for, and yet, with Chloe at his side, that liberty was his. There were dark corners of his mind that he avoided at all costs – stones he dare not overturn for fear of what festered beneath – but in Chloe’s company they seemed distant, their threat less immediate. There were times when he felt genuinely happy, but in his heart of hearts he knew the truth; he’d struck a fragile peace with himself, and the slightest breath of wind could destroy it entirely. That was why he needed to be in Helioport. He’d been invited to return as a teacher, which would give him access to all manner of enchanted devices, artifacts and the most recent magical inventions. Among all that treasure, there had to be something that could help him erect a stronger barrier between himself and the Dark God. Perhaps he could even find a permanent solution, and live the rest of his days in peace.
Naturally, Chloe didn’t understand his desperation. How could she? She didn’t know of the foul deeds he’d committed under the Dark God’s influence, or that his mind was in constant danger of being overwhelmed, assaulted by Ak-Thakis’ probing consciousness. She didn’t know he was always looking for a way out, an escape from a destiny so horrific he daren’t contemplate it.
Shirukai ground his teeth, feeling a sickening surge of desperation. Chloe was just so damned attached to this place – her little haven of peace and tranquility where the worst thing that happened was the slugs getting into the lettuce patch. The villagers seemed to genuinely care for her, but they didn’t interfere either. Chloe had no reason to leave Caleb’s Brook, and Sestin couldn’t tell her the real reason he needed to get back to Helioport. Clenching his fists, he lay in a cold sweat, waiting anxiously for the long hours of the night to pass.
…
Belom swung his axe at the hard, unyielding trunk. The blade bit deep and stuck there for what must have been the hundredth time that day. Shifting his grip on the handle, Belom levered it back and forth until the axe-head finally came free. He rested the blade on the ground and leaned on the handle, breathing hard. The village was just visible through the trees. His gaze passed over the main cluster of huts and slid, as it always did, to a single dwelling, set back from the rest; Chloe’s cottage. Belom sighed deeply, looking for any sign of movement in the window, but the shutters were closed. Maybe she was in there with Shirukai.
