by David Hair
‘Of course,’ Alaron said irritably.
‘Then shall we begin? I will inscribe the dampening circle.’
The young magi watched with interest as the watch captain went about his task. They’d been taught the working, but Ramon had never mastered it and Alaron had forgotten it – he’d never thought to need such secrecy. After a painstaking hour, Muhren fused the silver dust with a flash of energy and declared himself satisfied. ‘Master Mercer, the floor is yours.’
Alaron took a deep breath, glanced at Ramon for reassurance and began, ‘Okay, here’s what we learned. There is a tomb with “JL” marked on it, and then we found the words “Voco Arbendesai” inscribed underneath. We believe that is a summoning phrase for a daemon.’
‘What does Arbendesai mean?’ Cym asked.
‘It doesn’t have to mean anything,’ Alaron replied. ‘We think it’s a name – wizards give names to daemons and bind them to that name so they can be summoned over and over again. Fyrell taught us how to do it. I had one I called “Rabbit Hat”.’ He blushed slightly at the juvenile name.
‘Mine was called “Cymbellea”,’ Ramon smirked. ‘Hel, was it ugly!’
Cym flicked an insolent finger at him.
Muhren grunted. ‘“Voco” followed by a name is the standard invocation for a daemon. I agree with your interpretation. But remember, this “Arbendesai” is likely to be far stronger than the weak daemons you bound at college.’ He frowned at Alaron. ‘I do wish you would allow me to do this.’
Alaron knew the request was reasonable, but he still shook his head. ‘I’ll do it.’ He fought to calm himself: cleanse your thoughts; release all distractions, fears, anger. Be certain. Be single-minded. Be focused. The words could be applied to all of the gnosis, but most especially to wizardry, where uncertainty could be deadly.
He stepped over Muhren’s dampening circle and activated it, then stepped over the protective circle and activated it too. Though he could still pass it, a spirit could not. He was locked inside with whatever he summoned. He faced the inner circle and spoke one word: Angay, the Rune of Beginning. The lettering and lines before him ignited in a silver glow. A shaft of light rose before him, coming to a point a few yards above his head. The air suddenly smelled of burning and heat. I can do this.
Outside the summoning circles his friends were arrayed about, ready to intervene if required. Even the general was watching. His craggy face was serene, but the light caught his eyes disturbingly.
Alaron turned back to the centre. Within the central circle where the summoned spirit was to appear Alaron had placed a bowl containing water laced with his own blood, to provide a connection for his gnosis. In it lay the body of a dead crow, something for the daemon to inhabit. He held a wooden rod in his left hand to direct his energies. In his right hand was the amber periapt that Cym had given him. He exhaled thickly. Okay, let’s go.
He raised the tip of the wooden rod into the paste bowl and let gnosis energy flow. When he pulled it out, the residue smouldered on the tip of the thin piece of wood. ‘Arbendesai,’ he called softly, suffusing his voice with the gnosis to make it heard in the spirit-realm. He repeated the word, again and again, in a gentle whisper: ‘Arbendesai … Arbendesai …’
For minutes, nothing happened. He felt the others shuffling anxiously. Damn, I was so sure …
Something hissed inside the circle.
Alaron had to stop himself jumping backwards as steam began to rise from the bloody water and flowed into the body of the crow, fleshing it out. It stood suddenly, flapping its wings and flexing its legs and spine experimentally. Then it focused on him.
By Kore … He felt all the others lean in. ‘Arbendesai!’
A disembodied voice chuckled inside his head.
Alaron braced for the inevitable assault. Unseen claws latched into his brain and the world seemed to lurch, like the heaving of a boat on the ocean. A toothy face with leathery skin hissed at him and he almost fell. It’s an illusion, he reminded himself, you’re still in the circle, standing. But the tiny cellar vanished and suddenly he was in a vast ballroom at the palace. It was the graduation ceremony. The king was staring down at him, drooling. Lucien Gavius, bloated and hostile, thundered his verdict: FAILURE!
Behind Gavius were row upon row of Malevorn Andevarion, Francis Dorobon, Seth Korion, Gron Koll and Boron Funt, hundreds of each of them, all chanting, a rising crescendo: ‘Failure, failure, failure, failure…’ They marched towards him, pointing in condemnation.
He tried to blank it out, but the sound pierced his skull like knives, louder and louder. ‘Failure failure failure failure failure!’ More people joined in – his father; his mother, her blasted eyes weeping. Ramon was chanting mindlessly. Even Cym, nuzzling up to one of the Malevorns, letting him put his hands inside her blouse, kissing him as he groped her …
Failurefailurefailure …
But I didn’t fail the tests – I was rejected because of Vult. You’ll have to do better than that. He lashed the daemon with blue fire and heard it screech obscenely. ‘Submit, Arbendesai!’ he cried.
The daemon wasn’t cowed; it sent images of the batterings he had taken from Malevorn on the training ground; pictures of Cym, lewdly coupling with Malevorn; Ramon, impaled upon meat-hooks, screaming for death – anything it could think of to shatter Alaron’s concentration. He fought back, lashing it with pain, with fire, with ice. It shrieked and whined and cursed and howled, feeding him images of Tesla’s eyeballs exploding in flames, and of Vann, dead in a ditch in Verelon, until he lost his temper fully and thrashed it with a whip of gnosis-fire.
Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder and he almost leapt in fright. It was Muhren. His hand was shimmering and his voice strained by the pain of reaching into the protective circle. ‘Easy, lad. You’ve won. Don’t kill it.’
He looked down to see the crow was thrashing weakly in the muck of the summoning paste, its feathers singed and smoking. ‘Uh – oops—’ He let the gnosis-whip fade. ‘Uh – Arbendesai, do you submit?’
‘Yesh,’ the crow squawked thinly. ‘I’ve already rukking said so three times! How may I serve you, you over-enthusiastic moron?’
Ramon laughed aloud.
Alaron threw his friend a withering look. ‘You must …’ He trailed off and looked around. He hadn’t really expected to get this far. ‘Um, guys, what exactly do we want it to do?’
Ramon guffawed again. ‘Sol et Lune, you’re an amateur! We want it to bring the Memory Crystal, or give us the next clue.’
‘Yeah, we want you to—’
‘I’m not deaf,’ the crow said irritably. ‘Are those your commands?’
‘Er, yes.’
The crow gave a little bow and hopped onto the edge of the bowl. ‘I am yours to command, master,’ it said with extreme irony.
Alaron looked questioningly at Muhren, who nodded. He cautiously removed power from the protective circles, stepping back. Sometimes spirits got it into their heads to attempt to kill the summoner, even at this juncture. But the crow merely took to the air and flapped experimentally about the room, yelping as it banged into the walls. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked it at last.
‘Learning how to fly, obviously. Did you think I was a crow in the hereafter? Or before then?’
‘What were you?’ Alaron asked curiously.
‘Buggered if I can remember.’ It landed on a chair near General Langstrit. ‘This old bastard called me up eighteen years ago and gave me a name. Once I retrieve his hidden treasure I can finally get free of this damned binding and move on. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with it.’
Alaron watched it warily. ‘I’ll be scrying you,’ he warned.
‘Yes, yes,’ the bird replied tiredly. ‘It’s in both our interests for me to do what I’m told. Just let me get on with it, eh?’ Springing into the air, it flew straight at the hatch, throwing it open with its own gnosis, and soared up and out into the night.
Muhren clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Well done, lad. You need to follow him mentally now, to make sure nothing interferes, and feed him energy if needed. We’ll stand guard.’
Ramon shook his hand as he sat and readied himself. ‘Well done, Al.’ He grinned. ‘That’s an interesting subconscious you’ve got. Vividly imagined.’
‘Huh?’
‘Didn’t you notice, Al? Everything that daemon hit you with was visible to us.’
Alaron replayed the mental duel in his mind. The graduation – Cym and Malevorn – ‘Oh Kore—’
Ramon sniggered. ‘An interesting insight, that’s all I can say.’
Alaron glanced at Cym, who raised an eyebrow and stared back. ‘I can explain – those aren’t things I think about … it was just trying to get under my skin—’
Cym regarded him frostily. ‘So, who was the pretty boy at the graduation? Perhaps you could arrange a meeting, if that’s the sort of thing you think I’d enjoy him doing to me?’ Her voice could have corroded metal.
‘Give him some space,’ Muhren growled. ‘A daemon uses whatever lever it can find. I’ve seen things that would turn your hair white when I’ve had to summon a daemon, and I’d like to think my conscience is largely clear. Give Alaron credit: he stood up to it. We saw less than half the battle, and he won it.’
Alaron looked at the watch captain gratefully. Then he closed his eyes and sent his awareness off after the daemon-crow as it flew through the twilight sky above the city.
Arbendesai returned within two hours, preening and puffed up. In its claws was a small pouch of damp-stained leather, encrusted with old dirt. ‘Ha – got it, no problems.’ It placed the pouch in Alaron’s hands and hopped about as if expecting a reward. ‘I would dearly love some cheese,’ it announced meaningfully. ‘I haven’t had cheese since the last time I saw the old gent in the corner. Love cheese, I do.’
Muhren checked the large quartz crystal inside the pouch and verified that it contained gnosis-energy of the correct type before Alaron fed the crow a wedge of hard cheese from his rations. When it had finished, with much smacking of its beak, he dismissed the spirit, leaving a newly fresh crow corpse lying inside the summoning circle. The others watched Muhren with equal measures of anticipation and apprehension. He was the only one of them who had seen a memory crystal before.
‘To release a memory crystal requires a linkage to be formed,’ he told them. ‘It’s going to take time and effort.’
They made sure the general was sitting comfortably, then Muhren sliced open the old man’s palm. Langstrit didn’t flinch but watched the crystal with a curious expression, as though some part of him knew what it was. Muhren folded his bloody fingers about the crystal and light flashed as he triggered a gnosis-link between the blood and the crystal, then sat back to quietly feed that link. The old man gave a sudden sigh and folded back into a prone position.
Cym stifled a cry. ‘Is he all right?’ she whispered.
Muhren checked Langstrit’s breathing and pulse. ‘He’s fine,’ he confirmed. ‘This will take hours,’ he told them, ‘and I had better return to my duties before I am missed. You’ll need to take turns to gently feed the crystal with a small but steady stream of gnosis. The light it exudes should not exceed a candle-light. Can you do that? Mistress Cymbellea, perhaps you can go first?’
Cym learned swiftly, as always. Muhren was surprised at her aptitude and strength. ‘Who was your mother, Cymbellea?’ he asked.
Cym didn’t look at him. ‘Family secret,’ she replied, the same words she always used.
Muhren grunted. He turned to Alaron. ‘This trust you demand runs both ways, Master Mercer. I expect you all to still be here when I return at dawn.’
‘We’ll be here,’ Alaron said tiredly. ‘And so will the general.’
‘Then I will go and check on what is happening in the city. Vult will not have been idle.’ Muhren left without another word. The general lifted his head to watch him go. The glow of the crystal in his hand lit his eyes and seemed to be trickling through his veins.
They took turns as Freyadai night wore on, sleeping in shifts, focused on their task. They had no idea what was happening above, whether Vult was closing in or oblivious, but the exhausting task and the need to rest afterwards kept their minds occupied and their fears suppressed. Time became irrelevant, something measured only by the heartbeat of the old man in their care.
When Muhren returned, well before dawn, Ramon was taking his turn with Langstrit while Alaron and Cym rested. The Rimoni girl was asleep, her face unguarded. She looked like a divinity to Alaron, the hardness normally present in her eyes absent.
She woke when the hatch opened, saw Alaron watching her and scowled.
Alaron replied with uncharacteristic boldness.
I complimented her and she didn’t throttle me. His heart soared.
Ramon, feeding the general some water, eyed his withered body. ‘Look at him – he’s lost nearly twenty years. It’s going to be a Hel of a shock for him when he wakes.’
‘It will,’ Muhren agreed. ‘I’ll take over now. Get some rest, lad.’
The moment came soon after: the general gave a small cry and they all crowded around him. The old man was muttering, his face jerking about, then he cried out again, as if in pain, and his eyes flew open.
‘Great Kore!’ he shouted, and looked about him wildly, his eyes desperately frightened.
Muhren reached out and grabbed his shoulders. ‘General Langstrit, sir – it’s all right – you’re with friends.’
The general stared at him, then visibly reeled. ‘Jeris Muhren, is that you? Where am I?’
‘My dear general, you are back. You’re really here – I can’t believe it.’ He pulled the old man into his arms, and Langstrit hesitantly returned the embrace before looking about him at the dimly lit faces surrounding him.
‘Muhren, who are these children?’
Alaron bowed, feeling a surge of pride. ‘Mercer, sir, Alaron Mercer. My father is Vannaton Mercer and my mother is Tesla Anborn.’
‘Tesla had a boy? Of course, you were born in the second year of the war. Great Kore, how long has it been?’ He clutched his chest suddenly and looked down at his half-naked body. A visible shock ran through him. ‘How long has it been?’
‘It is 928, sir,’ Muhren replied carefully. ‘About eighteen years.’
Langstrit’s legs gave way; only Muhren’s strength kept him upright. ‘Eighteen years,’ he whispered. ‘I never thought it would be so long. I thought three years, maybe … Eighteen – my Lord Kore—’ He looked at Alaron. ‘I know your father, boy. And your aunt.’
‘I know, sir,’ Alaron replied proudly. ‘My father speaks of you often.’
‘I’m Ramon Sensini,’ Ramon put in. ‘This is Cymbellea di Regia. It was we who followed the clues and brought you back – with the captain’s help, of course,’ he added.
Langstrit stared at them all, clearly still shaken. ‘Then I thank you, all of you – thank you, with all my heart, thank you.’ He looked down at his own body again, and a shudder ran through him. Cym draped a blanket around him and he huddled into it. He accepted food and drink, and calmed himself with visible effort. At last he said, ‘I had better hear the tale, Jens. Best I know the worst. Tell me everything.’
It was near dawn by the time Langstrit had heard the answers to his most burning questions. Though Muhren did most of the talking, filling him in on recent history and current events, the young people spoke most about the quest to restore him to himself. He grew calmer as he listened, and even chuckled once or twice as they explained how they’d found and unravelled the clues. ‘I had in mind it might be someone like your Aunt Elena following the trail, young Alaron. The multi-run
e I left was primed to appear before certain people only. I only included descendants of the specific people I named as an afterthought – a fortunate afterthought, as it turns out.’ He grinned at Alaron, who ducked his head, smiling.
They all liked the general, now that his personality had emerged; his vibrant energy and gruff humour was endearing. Muhren was clearly devoted to him, and now they could see why: General Langstrit exuded leadership, and gave respect as readily as he expected it.
Finally, he declared himself satisfied, although he had grown more and more worried as they told him about Vult’s presence. Alaron tried to apologise for exposing them by stealing his file, but Langstrit waved it away. ‘Mistakes are made, lad; that’s life. We learn, we make amends.’ He turned back to Muhren. ‘Vult clearly suspects your involvement, Jens.’ He looked about the group. ‘So, the Scytale, and what to do about it.’
He took a swig of the dark beer Muhren had bought with him, his favourite. ‘The Scytale first. Young Alaron was right: Fulchius – the Noros canon – stole it and brought it to Noros the year the Revolt broke out. Fulchius had fallen out with Mater-Imperia Lucia over the Crusade, so he stole the Scytale and fled to Noros, intending to create a rival to Pallas. Robler brought me in, along with a few others, all Noros veterans of the Crusade. When we drank the ambrosia Fulchius created, Robler, Modin and I ascended; the others failed and died. Fulchius had hoped that the act of creating ambrosia and showing we were in earnest would be enough to force the Rondians to negotiate – he didn’t think Lucia would risk open war. He underestimated her.
‘By the final defeat, Fulchius and his fellow canons were dead and only Robler and I were left of our inner circle. When surrender became inevitable, we decided we had to hide the Scytale and I took it on myself, so that Robler would be genuinely ignorant of what happened to it. We had already begun to think we would have to conceal the Scytale when we were besieged here in Norostein, so I had laid the groundwork. I did my best to cover my tracks, and to set a puzzle that only a friendly party could solve. I knew I would fall into hostile hands when the eventual surrender took place – I’d anticipated that I would be taken to Pallas, but obviously Vult managed to gain control of me and hid me from Lucia. By then I had erased my own memory.’
