The Summon Stone

by Ian Irvine

He pounded across to the magiz, caught her by her scrawny throat and jerked her to her feet. “What have you done?”

  She staggered but did not fall, then raised her right hand. Gergrig released her. Her lips moved; Karan thought that she was interrogating the gate.

  “I don’t understand,” said the magiz.

  Gergrig stumbled back to the gate and swung his war hammer at the closest upright, knocking off a shovel-sized piece of rock. He inspected the exposed stone of the upright, which was as red as the outside.

  He turned, staring at the ground where the rock had fallen. “What the…?”

  He picked up the broken piece of rock. The freshly exposed surface was azure blue.

  Karan’s heart soared. The gate was a trap, one the Charon must have set up nine thousand years ago when they gave Cinnabar to the defenders. They had toppled the Crimson Gate and buried it, then disguised the Azure Gate with a permanent illusion, making it appear crimson. But the Azure Gate had been the ennobling gate, changing the people who chose it, just as the Crimson Gate had corrupted those who passed through it.

  That was why the troops in the gate had turned on one another. The conflict between the ennobling gate and their own corruption had been too great; it had driven them insane. And since their entire lives had been devoted to killing, in their madness all they could do was kill.

  What would the Merdrun do now? First of all, with their hopes shattered, they would torture her to death. Could she get away? No, she had to finish the magiz or die trying.

  Gergrig dropped his war hammer and his sword, raised his scarred right fist and shook it at the false Crimson Gate. He strained, then said in a commanding voice, “Asunder!”

  The uprights shook back and forth, the capstone grinding on their tops, then it faded to azure and the entire structure toppled backwards, hitting the ice with three ground-shaking thuds.

  “Mancers, to me!” said Gergrig. “We… will… succeed!”

  Dozens of Merdrun mancers ran forward and stood to either side of Gergrig. He pointed to the ground, where the faint shimmer of the true Crimson Gate could be seen.

  “Raise the true gate!” said Gergrig.

  It took all the power they had, but the two uprights rose slowly to the vertical, shedding chunks of frozen ground, and inch by inch the capstone lifted, hovered and settled on top. The true gate was not a thing of beauty as the false gate had been; it was battered and cracked, and covered in red iron stains and clots of frozen earth and mud. But it stood.

  Gergrig cast an anxious glance at the three moons. They were still in line, though it was not as straight as it had been; the littlest moon was creeping to the left and the huge green moon to the right. Syzygy would soon be over and so would their hope of opening the true Crimson Gate.

  “Get up!” he said to the magiz, who was lying on the frozen ground again. “Empower the gate!”

  The magiz’s acolytes lifted her to her feet and held her upright. “Can’t… do it… twice.”

  “You must!”

  The magiz looked around. The surviving defenders had fled. “Their lives wasted!” she said bitterly. “Got… no source… power.”

  “You’ve got her,” said Gergrig, gesturing to Karan. “She reeks of power, and so does her daughter. Drink Karan’s life and then the brat’s, and open the damned gate!”

  89

  I PITY YOU

  “Can’t… just kill her,” said the magiz. “To drink all her power… must defeat her one on one… then tear out… living heart.”

  Karan shuddered; the magiz said it so gleefully. Yet for the first time since she had been dragged here, she felt a surge of hope. If she could delay the magiz long enough for syzygy to be over, the invasion of Santhenar would be delayed by years. Then, before they cut her down, she would do her best to kill the evil bitch.

  “Do it!” snapped Gergrig. “You’re a foot taller and the most experienced mancer in the void. And she doesn’t know how to use the gift she’s just had woken.”

  “Move back!” said the magiz.

  Someone untied Karan’s wrists. The Merdrun, who numbered many thousands, backed off to form a circle beginning forty yards from her. Gergrig joined them. The only people in the circle now were Karan and the magiz, ten yards away.

  Karan weighed her up. The magiz limped on her replacement leg and could not be as fast or as dextrous as before, but if she kept her distance she would not need to be. With all that power she could blast Karan down.

  Or could she? If one on one meant physical combat, it would give Karan a better chance, though the magiz would undoubtedly fight dirty.

  “You old humans are so weak,” sneered the magiz. “So fettered by useless emotions. I pulled your strings through your pathetic love for your daughter.” She made it out to be a disgusting weakness.

  “I pity you,” said Karan. “Your lives are empty, meaningless and sterile.”

  “Victory gives us all the meaning we need. Your man is in Snoat’s hands, and he’s about to die, as your doomed daughter foresaw.”

  A steel fist clenched around Karan’s heart. Sulien and Llian needed her and she wasn’t there for either of them. She had not been there for a long time, and now she never would be. The pain was unbearable.

  “Get on with it!” Gergrig glanced anxiously at the moons.

  Karan did not look up. Only the magiz mattered now. She had to beat her as quickly as possible, but how?

  “Your death will be a beautiful irony,” said the magiz. “Even better than my pet traitor.”

  Yggur! “How did you get to him?” said Karan.

  “I embedded a link in him when he unwittingly went near the summon stone a month ago,” the magiz gloated.

  What?

  Yggur hadn’t been anywhere near Carcharon; he could not be the traitor. Neither had Nadiril or Hingis or any other male who could be described as a leader. The only one who had was Shand, when he had been searching for Maigraith above the Black Lake.

  Shand, Karan’s old friend and companion of many journeys, was the unwitting traitor. How was she to tell him? It would shatter him.

  Now she thought about it, it was clear that he had been affected by the drumming when she’d met him in Chanthed. It explained his rages against Llian, the false accusations Shand had made against herself, and all the other odd things he had done.

  “Your life will give me the power to open the gate,” said the magiz. “You will be responsible for the death of everyone on Santhenar, including your daughter.”

  She drew a foot-long knife with a narrow blade not unlike the boning knife poor Benie had used to kill Cook. Shimmering in the multicoloured moonlight, it looked sharp enough to split a human hair.

  Karan got out her own knife from the hidden sheath on the inside of her right thigh. It wasn’t very sharp and it wasn’t nearly long enough. How could she even the odds?

  What was the magiz’s biggest weakness? It had to be her addiction to drinking lives. And right now, utterly drained from opening the wrong gate, she was desperate to drink Karan’s life. The craving must be consuming her; how could Karan use that?

  Theoretically she could use mancery now, though she had not practised a single spell. Besides, no attack of hers could penetrate the magiz’s mighty defences.

  The magiz leaped forward, slashing with her long blade. She was faster than Karan had expected; there was scarcely a wobble of the artificial leg and she used the knife like an experienced dueller. Karan felt a tickle of fear. What if the magiz was her match in single combat as well?

  Karan’s strengths had always been her lightning reflexes and remarkable dexterity. She had lost the edge of both with time and injury, but she was still very fast. She leaped left, feinted, tensed as though she was going to go right, then leaped left again and attacked the magiz’s unprotected side, swinging high to cut through her coat deep into her shoulder, then low – a slash into her side.

  The second blow would have been a crippling one had Karan’s knife
been longer and sharper, but it caught in the magiz’s coat and only gave her a flesh wound. Karan sprang back, then lunged for the magiz’s belly.

  Somehow she got her knife up in time and the tip skated across Karan’s wrist, nicking the artery. Blood spurted. Karan tried to spray it into the magiz’s eyes but she wove out of the way and it painted a red line across her throat, then froze there like a gory gash. If only.

  Karan leaped back, holding her thumb over the artery. To fight, or stop the bleeding? She could not do both.

  The magiz did not attack at once; she was pale and shaky. The shoulder gash was a deep one and perhaps she was in shock.

  “The craving to drink my life must be eating you up,” said Karan. “It must be almost unbearable.”

  “The longer the wait, the greater the ecstasy,” the magiz said between her crooked teeth.

  Her colourless eyes reflected the light of the green moon; they were like pale green crystals bedded in soot. But Karan could see how she was suffering; the addiction was consuming her. Could it be fed?

  The magiz slashed again. Karan parried then lunged. The magiz swept her arm aside and brought her metal knee up into Karan’s crotch with all her strength behind it, lifting her off her feet. Pain spiked through the pelvic bones she had broken long ago as she landed on her back. Her elbow struck the ground and the knife jarred from her hand.

  The magiz approached warily, then kicked Karan in the side of the head, a stunning blow. High above, the line of the three moons still held. There was yet time for the Merdrun to open the gate. If she did not think of something fast, she was going to die and all would be lost.

  Karan allowed her eyes to flutter then almost close, as if she were losing consciousness. It might give her a tiny chance. Her wrist had stopped bleeding. The cut had frozen.

  The magiz bent and wrenched off Karan’s down-filled coat. Instantly the cold struck her, so intense here that she would lose consciousness in minutes, though that hardly mattered now. The magiz tore Karan’s shirt open, baring her from throat to belly, and grinned.

  “I’m going to gut you before I take your living heart. How does it feel, Karan?”

  She went to her knees beside Karan.

  “Hurry!” yelled Gergrig.

  The magiz was taking her time. “How I’m going to enjoy drinking your life.”

  Karan saw the only chance she would ever get. She forced three fingers into the magiz’s open mouth and cast the one spell she was confident of working, a simple freezing charm she had used as a little girl, long before Tensor had blocked her mancery. At any other place the spell might not have worked, but it was easy in this glacial wilderness. And the magiz, brilliant mancer though she was, had no way to block it because it had been cast inside her mouth – inside her defences.

  As Karan wrenched her fingers out, cracking and crunching sounds issued from the magiz’s throat and middle. Her knife, which had frozen to her hand, plunged down at Karan’s unprotected belly. She rolled out of the way and the thin blade snapped on impact with the iron-hard ice.

  Karan wrapped her coat around her, gasping from the cold and almost collapsing from pain and aftersickness. The magiz rose to her feet, then seemed to freeze in place apart from her bloody right arm, which slowly creaked towards Karan as if to blast her down.

  She ducked. Needles of red ice burst out of the magiz’s eyes, nose, mouth and ears; she was freezing inside. Her arm stopped, pointing at the Crimson Gate. She tried to speak but her lips were frozen shut. Had Karan won?

  No. As the magiz died, the monumental power released upon the death of a great mancer seared from her fingertips, through the air and into the gate.

  It glowed, just as the false gate had, and a crimson mist formed inside it. The gate was open!

  A big, handsome woman cried out in ecstasy, “Gergrig, is it time?”

  He sprang into the gate and stood there for a moment, his shaven head cocked. “It’s good,” he said. “You and you,” he said to the nearest two soldiers, “cut Karan down. This is the hour!” he roared. “Merdrun, to Santhenar!”

  The Merdrun army flooded forward. The two soldiers came at Karan, swords raised. But the spell the magiz had used to drag her to Cinnabar had failed on her death, and Karan felt herself being drawn home. The last thing she saw before Cinnabar vanished was a bluish glow from the fallen Azure Gate. It was still open, but where did it lead to?

  She felt an overwhelming sense of relief. With the magiz dead, surely Sulien was safe. But would Karan get back in time to save Llian?

  She felt a sickening terror that Sulien’s second nightmare had already come true – the one where she had seen Llian, dead.

  90

  THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO

  Karan materialised at the top of the little hill near the clearing. She staggered across to Malien’s night-glasses, which she had left on a stump, and focused them just in time to see chaos erupt at the pavilion in the lake – collapsing columns, sudden blazes and jagged black flashes that had to be someone using the Command device.

  “Llian, get out of there!” But the sky ship had drifted in the wind; it was hundreds of yards away. “Malien,” Karan said uselessly, “what are you doing? Go back!”

  The sky ship kept drifting away; its twin screws must have failed. Dread enveloped Karan. For a moment she could not move, could not speak. Even if Llian survived, he had no way of escape. There was no sign of Hingis, Esea or Ussarine either. What the hell was going on?

  Then Karan remembered Esea stumbling into the clearing that afternoon, and knew. Her face had shown utter despair. Why had Shand sent the three of them? How could he have not seen the danger? Because the magiz had been pulling his strings.

  She ran down to the clearing. Shand was there, talking to Yggur, Nadiril and Lilis.

  “It’s failed!” Karan screamed. “Damn you, Shand!”

  She turned away. She had to get down there now.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” said Shand.

  There was an odd, glazed look in his eye. The drumming was affecting him again, corrupting him just as it had poor Benie. He sprang at her. She leaped away from him, every muscle aching, and fury flared, at all those people, friends and enemies, who had taken it upon themselves to control her life and her family.

  “On Cinnabar I discovered who’s been betraying us to the Merdrun all this time,” she said coldly. “The magiz was boasting about using her pet traitor.”

  “Who?” Shand croaked. He turned towards Yggur as if to accuse him.

  “You!” she cried. “She put a link in you when you went to Carcharon, looking for Maigraith. And you had the nerve to blame me!”

  He doubled over, gasping, and she felt a second’s remorse, but she would pay the price later. She dashed down the road towards the bridge, which was still guarded. Could she get to the island in time? Seconds counted now.

  The shoreline was not guarded. Karan stripped off her boots, tied them to her belt and slipped into the water. She was a good swimmer, but at this time of year the water was miserably cold. The drumming was getting louder every second; it was almost deafening now and she saw the moment when it overcame the resistance of the guards and they turned on one another – just as it had turned her allies against each other. Was this how Santhenar was to end?

  The pavilion was down but the black flashes kept coming. Why had Llian needed to be there anyway? Was he just a decoy, a sacrifice?

  Karan crept out of the water and tripped over the body of a guard, lying where he had been slain. His sword was gone but there was a long brown club on his belt. She took it and, swinging it back and forth, ran barefoot up towards the pavilion.

  There were bodies all around it – Snoat’s guards. Another guard loomed up. She thumped him over the head. A second man, very tall, appeared behind him. Karan was about to whack him as well when he hissed, “Yggur!”

  “Help me look for Llian.”

  “All right,” Yggur said mildly. At least he was unaff
ected by the drumming.

  Karan went back and forth through the ruined pavilion. There was no sign of Llian. The light was fading; whatever had caught fire down near the water was burning away. Then, circling the ruins again, she trod on something soft, and it groaned.

  “Ussarine?” said Karan. “Are you injured?”

  “Broken legs.”

  She was half covered by debris – twisted copper sheets and broken screens. Karan heaved them aside. Underneath, two of the slender pavilion columns had fallen on Ussarine, one across her chest and the other over her shins.

  Karan could not budge either. Yggur materialised out of the darkness and lifted them away.

  Karan sat Ussarine up. “Have you seen Llian?”

  “No,” said Ussarine.

  “What happened?” said Yggur.

  “Knocked out, then the pavilion brought down on me,” Ussarine said grimly. “Do you know where Hingis…?”

  From the tone of her voice, she feared him dead. “No,” said Karan.

  She caught another dark flash a long way to the east, followed by a bright flare. An image flashed into her mind – Llian’s body lying on an expanse of smooth stones. The image Sulien had seen in her second nightmare. Karan stifled a cry; she had to keep going.

  “We can’t stay here,” said Yggur.

  Only then did she take in what Ussarine had said. Knocked out, then the pavilion brought down on me. “Are you saying Esea attacked you?”

  “If she hadn’t,” said Ussarine, “I would have got Llian out. And the Command device.”

  A blistering fury swelled in Karan. Esea had been willing to sacrifice Llian, and their hopes of killing Snoat and taking on the Merdrun, solely to rid herself of a good woman who had come between her and her twin.

  Karan looked up as the sky ship, its rotors spinning furiously, appeared above the wrecked pavilion.

  “Hoy!” she yelled. “Two broken legs. Lower a rope.”

  A rope was dropped. Karan tied it under Ussarine’s arms. Yggur bent and, with an effort, lifted her. The Aachim raised her into the sky ship. Karan dragged herself up the ladder, wet and cold and utterly shattered, and Yggur followed.