The White Song (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 5)

by Phil Tucker

  Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. The Ascendant’s words hung in the air, seeming to resonate even after they had faded away, made terrible by how kindly he had spoken them.

  Zephyr stared at him, gone fully pale. For a moment, Audsley saw her as the slender girl he had thought he knew. The wicked, vulnerable, terrified, jaded, terribly lonely young woman who’d dared to dream of a fisherwoman’s life so as to escape the clutches of her family.

  “Zephyr,” he said, startling himself. Before he could repent, he pushed his way through the Hrethings and stepped out alongside Iskra. He felt as solid as the last autumn leaf on a bare tree’s bough, pulled by a cruel wind that could pluck him free without notice. “Zephyr. Please. This isn’t you.”

  She stared at Audsley blankly, as if not recognizing him, not understanding the words he spoke. Then, as scorn began to curl her lip, he pushed on, desperate.

  “I don’t claim to know you, but I did catch glimpses, did I not, of some side of you? The young woman who wished to escape? To be free of these horrible manipulations? To put aside the control of others to live a self-determined life, no matter how poor, no matter how meager?”

  “The difference between you and me, Audsley,” said Zephyr, her tone bitingly bitter, “is that I am not afraid to take control of my own life.”

  “No, you think you have control. But you don’t. I thought I did for a while there, and, oh, how I was deceived!” He laughed weakly. “I thought I could manipulate my demons. Ride them, give them only as much access to my soul as they needed to accomplish my goals. But I was wrong. I was wrong from the very start. I should have died, Zephyr, when they first offered to save my life, to heal me so I could persist, could continue trying to do good. But look what I’ve brought to pass! Had I died then, the world would be an infinitely better place. My death would have been a blessing to — to hundreds of thousands of lives. Instead? I have brought ruin. They brought ruin through me.”

  Zephyr shook her head. “I’ve always thought you were pathetic.”

  Oh, how those words stung. How aware Audsley was of the Ascendant’s gaze, of Iskra watching and listening, of all the others. Had he ever thought he might garner even a modicum of Zephyr’s affections? Had he desired that she might one day smile at him in genuine warmth?

  “You’re right,” he said tremulously. “I am pathetic. I am only now realizing just how pathetic I am. But you? You are more pathetic still, my dear. I thought I could wrangle three demons in my soul. Oh, the pride I felt when you were impressed by my feats! Three free-willed demons. I felt myself a master, mysterious and capable of great deeds. In truth, I was pathetic, and I danced to their tunes all along. And if that was me, what of you, wearing that — that thing upon your brow? You think yourself its master? If so, I may have been pathetic, but you are willfully mad.”

  Zephyr’s hands curled into claws. “I stand here steeped in a power that none of you could ever understand, and you insult me? I came to make an offer, to allow you to serve me as slaves, but now? Now, I shall take pleasure in breaking you. In making you scream. And there will be nothing you can say or do that will change my mind. I want nothing more than your pain —”

  “Enough,” said the Ascendant, and Zephyr fell silent. “If you will not listen to reason, we will not listen to your ranting. Be gone.”

  “Be gone?” She grinned. “And what if I say no?”

  “Then I shall make you leave,” said the Ascendant.

  “Oh, I see,” said Zephyr. “I like empty boasts. Have you already forgotten how easily I dispelled your protective sphere?”

  “You didn’t dispel it,” said the Ascendant. “I let it drop when I sensed you. I wished to speak with you. I wished to try reason. I failed, and now I see no more reason to tolerate your presence.”

  “You do have nerve,” hissed Zephyr. “But I am glad of it. You give me reason to exercise my full power. What a waste it would be to have so much at my command and nothing to direct it at! Yes. Oh, yes. Breaking you will be my first and greatest deed.”

  The Ascendant extended his palm, bent his knees slightly, and then willed a small sphere of golden light to well out of his palm. Audsley watched, mesmerized, as the sphere expanded, encompassing them all.

  Zephyr flew up of her own accord and moved back before the sphere could touch her, her hair rippling once more, her eyes glittering with inhuman ferocity. “Enjoy your respite, my precious Ascendant. I summon one who will answer your words with unstoppable violence. Even now, I feel him stirring.” She flashed them a smile and pressed a hand to her stomach. “I must admit, I’m excited to see him at last. And when he’s finished with you, I’ll have him drag your corpse to Aletheia and hang you from the highest spire so the entire Empire can look up and see how weak you truly were. Your sightless eyes will gaze down as we work our final and greatest deed there —”

  The Ascendant closed his hand into a fist, and the sphere’s surface pulsed brightly, cutting off the sound of Zephyr’s voice. She spoke on for a spell, but when she realized her voice had been blocked, a look of utter fury flashed across her face, and she flew into the darkness and disappeared.

  “What —” Orishin asked in a dry croak. He stopped and coughed. “What was she talking about? Whom is she summoning?”

  “The ur-destraas,” said Audsley. “The greatest demon of all. I saw its cube below. There’s a huge chamber, bigger than even this one was. A mile long, cavernous, a cathedral of darkness. That’s where the demons were trapped. In big cubes, in the buttresses that propped up the walls. And at the very back, a single cube, bigger than all the rest. The size of a castle. It held the most powerful demon of all.” Audsley smiled weakly. “Something beyond our comprehension.”

  Iskra rubbed at her face. “We have to move, then. We can’t just sit here and wait for it.”

  One of the Cerulean Guards lowered himself to his knees in front of the Ascendant and placed his forehead on the ground. “We have nothing to fear,” he said. “The Ascendant watches over us.”

  The Ascendant looked grave.

  “Right?” The Cerulean Guard looked up. “You can defend us?”

  “I am not a god,” said the young man. “I am blessed with some measure of power, but it is only a fraction of a fraction of that which I wield in the greater spiritual realm. Here, in this body, I am... limited. I don’t know if I can repulse what is coming for us.”

  “Oh,” said the guard, hope dying in his eyes. “Then, are we doomed?”

  “We’re not doomed,” Iskra said with conviction. “While we yet breathe, we can decide our own fate. It’s what we must do now. We knew we had to make a break for it. That moment has been forced upon us, is all.”

  “Yes,” said the Ascendant. “My Grace speaks true. Let us make our escape. And if we are forced to stand and fight this greater demon? Then we shall fight. But first, Audsley, what can you tell us of this Zephyr?”

  Audsley felt his whole body grow cold, as if he had suddenly stepped off a ledge into icy water. The Ascendant’s gaze fell upon him, deliberate and peaceful and demanding, and Audsley felt his throat close.

  Aedelbert, however, pawed at his shoulder, and then reached up to lick his chin. The warm, abrasive rasp brought Audsley back to himself, and he coughed, then bent down to give his firecat a quick kiss on the head and inhale shakily.

  “She is — was — the granddaughter of the Minister of Perfection. She enlisted my help in escaping from the clan, in trying to — it sounds foolish, I know, but she wished to escape her fate, the noose that her family had about her neck, and live a simple, free life of her own choosing.”

  Tóki pointed his thumb back over his shoulder. “Are we talking about the same terrifying demon bitch here?”

  “Tóki,” murmured Iskra, but it was enough. The Hrething scowled but stepped back.

  “Yes, quite. She was my, ah, guide through the world of corruption that had saturated the Empire, and I in turn helped her attain her goals. Which did not, I must say, invo
lve any of this. She seized the opportunity to gain this power.” Audsley looked around the small crowd, daring any of them to contradict him. “I would never have dreamed —”

  “Audsley, nobody is accusing you of anything,” said Iskra. “Can you tell us anything that can help us in dealing with her?”

  Audsley nodded, forcing himself to relax. “Something of practical value. She is mercurial. Duplicitous. At war with herself. She... I don’t think she really knows what she wants. She sees opportunities and snatches at them, more because they are there than because she has a guiding strategy. Many of the, ah, ‘resources’, shall we say, that she drew on while I was with her had been acquired over the course of the years and then held in abeyance in case of a future need. Instinctual, you could say. But with an eye for weakness and how best to exploit it.”

  The Ascendant frowned. “The worst sort of enemy, I believe. At best, we can seek to influence her into reacting in a manner favorable to us, but there is not much for us to work with now.”

  “No,” said Audsley, and his shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry. I was barely able to keep up with her myself. My best advice is for us to get away, and fast.”

  Tóki grunted as he bent down to pick up a hand-ax. “All right. But we’re not exactly alone out here. Those smaller demons haven’t left, have they? And we don’t have much in the way of rope. How are we going to navigate these broken slopes? Even if we were all equipped with climbing harnesses, we’d be hard-pressed to make much progress —”

  Tóki cut off as they all lifted off the ground. Audsley felt a spasm of panic, kicked his legs, then stilled. The air beneath his feet was as solid as stone. Several of the Hundred Serpents fell into crouches, crying out in alarm, while Orishin clutched at Iskra’s arm and Patash stumbled. Only the Ascendant remained completely at ease.

  “Just as I protected you during Starkadr’s fall, so can I protect you now,” he said. “It takes great effort, but I believe I can manage to transport us in this manner for a while yet.”

  “By the White Gate,” breathed Iskra, and a tremulous smile broke out across her face. “Have you always been able to do this?”

  “No,” said the Ascendant, matching her smile. “Necessity is proving to be a great stimulant for my powers.”

  “But,” said Audsley, holding Aedelbert tight, “there’s almost no mention of previous Ascendants being able to... well. I suppose the earliest of them — but I thought that was apocrypha?”

  “Ever since my line was cloistered by the Fujiwara, the Ascendants have had no need to exert themselves,” said the Ascendant. “Perhaps that is why we were forced to live short, pampered lives in which our every need was met immediately, so that we would not manifest these powers as of old. So that we would not assert ourselves as the first Ascendants once did.”

  The sphere floated off the top of the pedestal and over the void. One of the Hrethings staggered with a curse, while several of the Cerulean Guards gulped audibly. Iskra planted her hands on her hips and stood still, her feet shoulder-width apart. Audsley felt a surge of admiration for her. She’d changed since last he saw her. Grown more solid, more poised, more determined. Helpless admiration washed through him, leaving only bitter self-loathing in its wake.

  Still, his time spent flying under the aegis of the demons had served some purpose; he felt no unease as they began to float down into the darkness. Stroking Aedelbert’s neck, he stared down, trying to make out their intended path.

  The pedestal had thrust itself up out of the shattered ground to a height of some twenty yards; they soon descended amongst the rubble, huge blocks of stone the size of cottages that lay tumbled over each other. Audsley caught glimpses of the ruined camp amidst these huge rocks: flaps of tent fabric, broken carts, out-flung limbs and splashes of blood.

  The sphere flew gently over the broken floor, rising occasionally over a particularly large chunk or easing around upflung plinths. They passed over several rents in the ground, dark chasms that speared into the depths, but none were large enough to accommodate them.

  “Over there!” said Patash. “People!”

  Audsley squinted and saw a large tent that sagged ominously, its fabric bright purple and yellow. A dozen men and women were standing in a tight ring just outside it, waving frantically in their direction.

  “The Vothaks!” said Iskra. “Oh, the Ascendant be praised!”

  Their golden sphere drifted toward the Agerastians, who threw a few final bolts of black fire into the sky, driving away a number of demons, and then nearly collapsed to their knees as the sphere enveloped them.

  Their purple and yellow robes were torn, and many of them were sporting wounds and slashes across their forearms and shoulders. They were ashen-faced, their eyes ringed with purple. It was clear that they’d been ingesting gatestone at a furious rate in their bid to keep the demons away.

  “Ilina,” said Iskra, kneeling beside the al-Vothak. The old woman looked to have aged a decade since Audsley had last seen her, with deep lines carved around her mouth and her eyes sunken in her skull. Her hair had grown wispy, and she looked to have lost so much weight that she was almost lost within her voluminous robes.

  “Curse your Ascendant,” rasped the old woman. “Curse his religion and all who follow him. But this one time, I admit to being pleased to see him.”

  Audsley moved to crouch where the other Vothaks were sitting or lying down. He knew little of field medicine, but already the soldiers were doing their best to bind wounds and stem bleeding.

  “We must escape, and soon,” said Iskra. “The Ascendant is guiding us through his wisdom and power, but we can’t stay. A demon of unimaginable power is coming for us.”

  “I do not think my Vothaks can withstand much more excitement,” said Ilina. “Or move. If we must, we can seek to delay that which comes for you.”

  “That will not be necessary,” said the Ascendant, moving forward to stand before the old woman. “You believe yourself descended from medusas?”

  “Yes,” the old woman said stiffly. It was clear she wished she could rise to face him directly. “It is what gifts us with the ability to cast magic.”

  “The result is similar to Sin Casters,” said the Ascendant. “I recently helped cleanse one such who had been laid low by his abuse of his powers. With your permission, I would offer you the same cleansing so that you may better assist us all in escaping.”

  Audsley barely restrained a snort. What a world, that the Ascendant himself should be shriving Agerastian Vothaks of their taint — but in the end, what difference did it make? The Vothaks were assuredly not descended from the medusas, as they claimed, nor was the Ascendant a holy man. They were just Flame Walkers and White Adepts, acting out an eternal dance that had existed long before Ascendancy.

  And yet…

  Audsley watched from the far edge of the sphere as the Ascendant knelt beside Ilina, who sat up stiffly, propped by one of the younger Vothaks. He fought to feel nothing when he closed his eyes and formed the triangle with his hands. Fought to repress a shiver as Ilina let out a sigh of relief and color flooded back into her cheeks. Then she inhaled deeply and managed to sit of her own accord.

  Was that a miracle? Or was it merely a channeling of the White Gate’s power, draining the Vothak of her pollution?

  A life spent in devotion urged Audsley to give thanks for witnessing such a divine act. Bitterness held those words at bay.

  One by one, the Vothaks came to the Ascendant and were shrived. Their ashen pallor receded, their eyes grew bright, and while none of them were healed of their wounds, all of them managed to rise and stand firmly on their feet. All of them also displayed to some extent a sense of conflict over having been blessed by such a contentious figure as the Ascendant.

  “I can’t sense anything mystical out there,” said Tóki. “But even so, the space between my shoulder blades is itching. We’d best move on, and hurry.”

  “Yes,” said Iskra, helping Ilina to her feet with a smile. �
�Yet this was a worthy reason to stop.”

  “Why?” asked Audsley, unable to control himself. “Do you think a dozen or so Vothaks will be able to stop the ur-destraas?”

  “No,” said Iskra. “But we affirm our own humanity by helping others. That is reason enough.”

  Audsley forced a smile, though he railed at the words. Affirm our own humanity. Luxury! Would Iskra say the same thing when the demon took her up in its hand?

  The Ascendant rose to hover cross-legged once more, and the sphere moved on, leaving the Vothaks’ ruined tent behind. The Vothaks gaped as they were carried along by the golden light, staring down around their feet as if seeking the secret behind the miracle, and then gazed with awe at the Ascendant.

  Starkadr shook and groaned once more as violence was done to its structure. Soldiers cursed and ducked beneath upflung arms, and the Vothaks raised their hands as if they could ward off thousands of rocks with black fire. Audsley clutched Aedelbert tight.

  Dust sifted down from above, and a deep and dolorous groan sounded from the walls and floor.

  “There,” whispered Patash, pointing. “A new opening.”

  Indeed it was. A crack had formed not far from where they were hovering. Some thirty yards high, it was becoming more visible by the second as the dust that had billowed forth settled.

  “There’s something in there,” said one of the Cerulean Guards.

  “Hurry,” said Iskra, stepping up alongside the Ascendant. “Please, hurry.”

  It’s no use! Audsley clamped his hand over his mouth, so eager was he to mock their pretensions. No use, no use. We’re doomed and damned, and fleeing before it will only entice it further!