by Ian Irvine
The disembodiment spell was a coiled spring inside her, which trigger would release. Every muscle was tense, resisting the agony to come. Spell-stop would return her to her body. She rehearsed the command; she might need to use it in a hurry. But what if she were confused or the magiz blocked her?
She filled a bucket with cold water and put it on top of the bookcase next to the bed, with a dangling rope attached to the handle. She had no idea if she would be able to use it in an emergency – during disembodiment her body might be comatose – but it was better than nothing.
Go, now!
She lay on the bed, closed her eyes and tried to picture the magiz as she had last seen her. It proved an unfortunate choice of image – she was torturing one of the prisoners taken in the attack on the square fortress, preparing to drink her life. Karan could not bear to watch. She triggered the disembodiment spell.
And knew what it must feel like to die by the most agonising death of all, anthracism, where the human body burned from the inside out. It felt as though molten lead had been poured down her throat. Her stomach was on fire and it was spreading to her lungs, her heart, her bowels and along her arteries to every part of her body.
Karan let out a desperate, croaking scream. Her head spun, the room whirled, bright sparks curved like meteor trails across her field of view, then, with the thud of a hammer striking human flesh, her spirit was ripped from her body.
She did not travel through the void, as she had done last time. There was no sense of movement at all, but she felt sharp gravel beneath her bare feet. It did not hurt; she had no body here, no weight.
Jagged rocks reared up all around and there was black ice in every cleft. She smelled blood and smoke and a sharp odour she did not recognise; it stung her eyes. It was bitterly cold and the air was thin; even her phantom lungs strained to draw enough. It had a metallic taste, like licking a piece of iron.
In the distance someone was screaming. Karan’s bowels clenched. She was on Cinnabar, a quarter of a mile below the golden castle with the slender towers. It would be the next to fall.
The huge green moon stood at the vertical. Another moon, half its size and red, was sinking below the horizon to her left. The third moon, the little yellow one spattered with black, was not in evidence. She tried to pick up a shard of rock but her fingers passed through it. As Malien had said, the only thing she could do here was spy.
The Merdrun army was camped among the rocks in hundreds of orange tents. Sentries patrolled between them and around the perimeter. One was coming now – the round-faced warrior-woman Uzzey, whose blonde plaits formed a loop above her head.
She was marching towards Karan; it seemed impossible that she would not be seen. She backed away but Uzzey turned at the last moment and walked right through her. Karan felt a series of tiny impacts, like windblown feathers, and sensed Uzzey’s exhaustion, then her hidden revulsion at the butchery she had been forced to carry out in the attacks.
Uzzey froze, then looked around wildly; she must have sensed Karan. Her eyes were startlingly blue and as clear as sapphires. She reached out with her left hand. She had slim, elegant fingers, though they were greatly scarred and bruised, and half her little finger had been hacked off; it ended in a brown scab. Her arm shook and she groped around her, then shivered and marched on.
Karan climbed an outcrop of red rock and studied the campsite. Apart from the sentries there were few people about and most of the tents were dark; the soldiers must be asleep. So where was her quarry?
Karan’s gaze was drawn to the magiz and Gergrig, thirty yards away in a narrow space between two rock outcrops. A dead prisoner, a golden-skinned young man, lay on the bloody ground and the magiz was crouching over him. She stood up, a sick smile on her thin mouth. Her colourless eyes were glowing – she looked like a drunkard who had just opened the first bottle of the day. Karan’s stomach heaved.
She drifted closer, her pulse pounding in her ears and every muscle taut. She had to kill the magiz, but how?
“You’ve drunk a hundred lives today,” Gergrig said coldly. “You’ve got more power than you’ve ever had, but what have you learned? How can this child see us from so far away?”
The magiz took a step back. “I… I believe she’s inherited talents that give her the gift of seeing.”
“Who from?”
“Both parents are gifted, in very different ways. And I found…” She seemed reluctant to say it.
“What, damn you?”
She took another step back, hesitated, then said in a rush, “Both have been touched in the past by… by… him.”
“By Rulke?” cried Gergrig, his dark features showing alarm, hatred, then a touch of fear. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Is this another conspiracy against us?”
“Rulke is dead. He was killed on Santhenar ten years ago.”
“Dead?” Gergrig repeated as if he could not believe it. “You’re absolutely sure?”
“Yes.”
For a moment he looked dazed, then he threw his head back and let out a chilling laugh. The jagged tattoo on his forehead shone green in the light of the vertical moon.
“Then we’re free!” He glanced over his shoulder, then lowered his voice. “Rulke was the only man I ever feared. Nothing can stop us now. Soon Santhenar will be ours, our own world at last! And once we have it, we will plot our revenge.”
To Karan’s astonishment, this brutal man had tears in his eyes. He passionately, desperately wanted a world for his people. Well, he wasn’t getting hers!
“There’s still the child,” said the magiz.
Gergrig’s emotional moment faded. “Why is she still alive?” he snapped.
The magiz did not reply.
“No child could block your attack,” he added.
“Someone lifted the nightmare from her, then tore out my link.”
“Who?”
“I think… her mother.”
Karan sank to her knees. The magiz knew too much.
“Can you attack her?”
“What’s the point?” said the magiz. “She’ll have told everyone about the invasion by now.”
“It matters,” said Gergrig, “because the red-haired brat has had other nightmares.”
Karan stiffened. What other nightmares?
“What do you mean?” said the magiz.
“I’ve been searching my dreams,” he said. “I… I think she’s seen…” Gergrig seemed reluctant to say it aloud. He lowered his voice. “Something vital.”
“What?”
“Our… one fatal weakness.”
Karan gasped; she could not help it. Could this be the break they desperately needed? But as the dreadful implications sank in, her skin seemed to freeze all the way down her back. It made things worse, far worse.
The magiz started and stumbled back, her arms flailing. “Don’t say any more!” She regained her balance. “Does the child know? Or is it buried in her subconscious?”
“Find out. Can you attack the mother?”
The magiz showed her teeth. “She was foolish enough to take the nightmare upon herself.”
“Kill her, now! Then get rid of the child.”
“It’s not that easy. I’m burning power just to locate them from so far away. I can’t keep it up, Gergrig. I’ll need all that power later, to open the gate.”
“Burn it now,” he said harshly, “or we may not get to—” He broke off, then said more calmly, “The child is a danger and you’ve got to fix it. You will take no part in the battles for the golden castle, or the ice bastion. You will do nothing except find the girl, kill her, then eliminate the rest of the family. Erase the entire household, to be sure.”
“It will be a pleasure,” said the magiz, her colourless eyes glistening in those black, black sockets.
Karan slumped against the rocks. How could she hope to stop a sorcerer who was bursting with power after drinking so many lives? A sorcerer who was addicted to death.
“How are the preparations going?” added the magiz.
“The summon stone has woken,” said Gergrig, “and the chaos has begun on Santhenar. Friend will turn on friend, sister on brother. Soon whole nations will tear themselves apart. By the night of the triple moons there will be no opposition.” He grinned savagely. “What a month of war we will have then.”
Karan reeled. Benie’s murder of Cook wasn’t an insignificant local tragedy. The drumming came from the summon stone and the Merdrun were using it to create chaos – and render Santhenar defenceless by the time of the invasion.
“Unless someone finds the stone,” said the magiz.
“It can look after itself.”
“Yet it also has a weakness. Will it be ready to bring us through by syzygy?”
“It must. Without the alignment of the triple moons we won’t be able to open the Crimson Gate, and the next opportunity is years away. Have you done the final calculations?”
She hesitated. “To be sure, I need more lunar observations.”
He glowered at her. “But you know approximately.”
“Approximately,” she said after a calculating pause, “eight weeks.”
“Get your damned measurements. I need to know to the minute.” Gergrig stalked away.
The magiz, now agitated, paced back and forth, the gravel grating underfoot, then loped towards the nearest tent. It was red with a green rope along its ridge, and was set apart from the others. Emerging with a small brass instrument like a navigator’s sextant, she sighted on the red-brown moon, which was setting. She stood there, absolutely still, and as it passed below the horizon Karan heard a faint click.
The magiz made a note on a tablet and trudged back to her tent. Karan followed, digesting what she had learned. Only eight weeks until the invasion through the Crimson Gate – presumably the red trilithon she had seen in Sulien’s second nightmare. She had to alert Tallia and Malien urgently.
And she had discovered vital information – both the Merdrun and the summon stone had weaknesses and were vulnerable. If the stone could be found and destroyed, the Merdrun wouldn’t be able to come through. And if it could not, their fatal weakness had to be identified.
But that wasn’t why she was here. She had to find a way to hide Sulien – no, her entire family – and that meant taking on the magiz. Karan stopped outside the tent and peered in.
Her enemy was standing at a table made from grey canvas stretched over yellow tent poles, entering numbers from her tablet into an almanack. It had four columns, the last three headed with coloured dots. Next to the red dot was the word Wolfrim. The green dot was labelled Stibnid and the yellow one Cromo. Karan assumed they were the moons.
The numbers in the columns must be the rising and setting times of each moon, which the magiz would use to calculate when the three of them would form a line in the night sky – syzygy – when the Crimson Gate could be opened into Santhenar and the Merdrun would invade.
Karan crept towards the entrance of the tent, but as she put her head through a horn blasted in her ear so loudly that she cried out. The magiz spun round, staring into Karan’s eyes. Could she see her?
“Gergrig!” the magiz bellowed. “Spy in the camp!” She whirled, snatched a white rod off her blankets and thrust it out.
Karan hurled herself backwards, but a blast of red fire from the rod struck her in the chest, and a pale shimmering nimbus formed around her. Now the magiz could see exactly where she was.
The nimbus slowly faded but Karan could barely move; it was rapidly draining what little strength she had in the disembodied state. Malien had not warned her about that.
Gergrig came bounding down from outcrop to outcrop. He hit the ground outside the tent, skidded, scattering gravel in all directions, and roared, “Where?”
“She can’t be far away,” said the magiz.
“Guards, surround this place!” yelled Gergrig. “Who is it?”
“I think,” said the magiz, who was red in the face and panting, “it’s the mother.”
“And she’ll lead us straight to the child,” said Gergrig savagely. “How did she get here?”
The magiz thought for a moment. “A spell of separation, or of disembodiment.”
“How dare she think to oppose me!”
The arrogance, the assumption that nothing mattered save what he wanted, was staggering. “Spell-stop!” cried Karan.
“Materialise her!” Gergrig pounded a scarred right fist into his left palm. “I’ll do the torturing; you’ll stand by. The instant she reveals where the daughter is, put an end to the sorry business.” He smiled grimly. “And I’ll deal with the mother.”
“Spell-stop!” Karan gasped. “Spell-stop, spell-stop!”
Pain seared through her innards again – terrible, blistering pain – but the command did not work. She said it again but knew it would fail – in her disembodied state she lacked the strength for it.
“Spell-stop, spell-stop!”
Nothing. The magiz pointed the rod at Karan. Thud! She was outlined with orange fire this time. Now she was burning on the outside and on the inside. She tried to get away but Gergrig ran around behind her, his long arms outspread. The magiz advanced slowly, the rod pointed at Karan’s forehead. Her teeth – yellow, crooked, pointed at the tips – were bared. She licked saliva off her fleshless lips; she ached to drink Karan’s life.
“Materialise the little bitch!” snapped Gergrig.
“Spell-stop,” Karan said feebly.
She tried to reach back to her empty body and rouse it; she imagined her right arm reaching up and flailing about for the rope attached to the bucket of ice water.
She sensed a distant splash but she was still here. Either the water had missed or it had not been enough to wake her spiritless body. Karan stood there helplessly as the magiz’s knuckles whitened on the rod, bracing herself for the agony of rematerialisation and the torture that would follow.
Then black pain flared in her head—
“Karan?” cried Llian.
She was lying on the sodden bed and her head was throbbing. She opened her eyes. She had never been more glad to see him. “What did you do? How did I get back?”
“I didn’t do anything. I heard you scream and ran in. There’s a bruise on your forehead where the bucket hit you.”
She felt the long, curving lump and winced. “Is Sulien…?”
Karan tried to get up but did not have the strength. Llian helped her to a sitting position. Cold water ran down her back.
“She’s asleep. What’s going on?”
Karan clung to him like a lifeline. He was the only solid thing in her crumbling world and she had treated him very badly. She told him in broken sentences all she could manage, that Sulien had seen the Merdrun’s fatal flaw, and it had condemned her.
“If we can find out what it is…” said Llian.
“I’ll try.”
“There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Karan looked at him blankly. She could not focus on anything except Sulien. “The magiz said the summon stone can look after itself, but it has a weakness. You’ve got to find out what it is.”
“I will.” He stared at the floor. “Do you think you can protect Sulien?”
“Maybe… if I can divert her nightmares – and the link – onto me. Then block the magiz.”
“I don’t see how that helps,” said Llian. He looked as though he were about to throw up. “She can still attack you.”
“It’s all I’ve got. Help me up. Got to do it right away.”
Karan could not walk. Llian, clearly suffering the deepest misgivings, carried her into Sulien’s room and set her in a chair next to the bed. Sulien did not stir, though her sleep was racked by shivers and shudders and occasional little moans.
Karan took her daughter’s warm hand in her own cold hand, rested her throbbing head on Sulien’s forehead, then implanted a link that would recognise the magiz, block her from attacking Sulien and div
ert any attack onto herself.
“Mummy,” said Sulien, half asleep, “what are you doing?”
“Looking after my lovely daughter. Have you had any other nightmares about the Merdrun? And their great weakness?”
“Don’t think so. But I never remember my dreams afterwards.”
When Sulien slept, Karan touched her on the forehead and tried to find that vital dream, but without success. The mind was an unmapped labyrinth and she did not know where to look. She fell back, gasping.
Llian carried her back to their bedroom, stripped her wet clothes off and put her to bed, and got in. “Karan, we’ve—”
“Can’t talk,” she whispered. “Exhausted.”
He stared at the ceiling for a long time, his jaw knotted, then blew out the lamp and turned away.
Karan lay there, aching all over. She felt utterly boneless and longed for the release of sleep, but it would not come. She kept seeing Gergrig’s savage smile and the colourless eyes of the magiz.
Little tapping pains began at the top of her skull. The magiz was trying to break through. Something oozed onto Karan’s upper lip; her nose was bleeding.
She found a handkerchief in the dark and dabbed the blood away. By diverting the magiz’s attack, all she had done was delay the inevitable. It was like a pygmy trying to fight a giant, and if she made a single mistake her family would be crushed underfoot.
But even if she could find the strength to block the attacks, sooner or later the diversion would fail and the magiz would attack Sulien directly. From this moment on Karan could never relax, day or night – she must constantly be watching for signs of an attack on her daughter.
There was only one solution, once she regained the strength for it. Return to Cinnabar and kill the magiz first.
10
OF COURSE SHE’LL FIND OUT
Llian watched Sulien playing a game with Piffle in the orchard. She was tossing the fallen leaves at him and laughing as he leaped in the air, trying to catch them in his mouth. There were yellow leaves in her red hair. In other circumstances it would have been a perfect day, for she had no memory of the nightmares Karan had lifted from her.
His eyes prickled. Time was hurtling towards the night of the triple moons and he had learned nothing about the enemy. How could he protect her when he couldn’t fight to save his own life? Would he even know when the magiz found her, or would he just discover— Llian choked.
