by David Hair
A crossbow thwacked, launching a bolt into the black passageway, but it disintegrated as it flew. Another Hadishah sprang to the side of the door, raising a blade, and Kazim pulled Ramita away again as Meiros appeared. The assassin beside the door fell to his knees, reversed his dagger and buried it in his own heart, falling sideways like a sack of flour. A second crossbowman fired, but the bolt shattered in blue sparks above Meiros, and then that assassin too was howling, jerking spasmodically as his heart burst. Jamil bellowed a warcry and thrust his sword. The blade struck shields of force and Jamil flew backwards, hammering into the pillars on the far side of the courtyard.
Meiros turned on Kazim and something gripped the inside of his skull with a force like a vice. He cried for Ahm as he fell to his knees, losing his grip on Ramita. Darkness drilled into his mind, tearing his vision apart as he collapsed, screaming.
Then Rashid gestured and Ramita was ripped through the air into his arms. The attack on Kazim ceased instantly as Meiros spun to confront the man holding his wife. The emir pulled off his mask. ‘Stop or I’ll kill her!’ he shouted, and his dagger scored Ramita’s throat.
Kazim saw Meiros clearly now, not decrepit, but tall and formidable, clad only in bed-robes, and his face ablaze with fury. For a dreadful second he thought the old man didn’t care, that in his rage he would condemn Ramita. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Jamil trying to stand, but his left leg was buckling. The blade in his own hand spun, aligning with his left breast, and he fought it silently, without hope, knowing only the training he’d absorbed from Rashid was keeping the steel from plunging into his heart.
‘No! Husband, no,’ Ramita called imploringly, her eyes on the dagger at Kazim’s chest. She was on her knees now, Rashid crouched above her, his dagger at the back of her head.
‘I will plunge this straight into her brain, Meiros,’ Rashid snarled. ‘You can’t get to me the way you can these others. I can kill her before you get to me, and she and your children will die—’
Kazim’s mind was abruptly free and he sobbed in relief as his dagger fell to the marble floor. All about them, the servants were gathering, watching helplessly as this drama played out in front of them. He saw Huriya in the shadows, frozen with terror. Sister, run, he thought with all his might.
‘Rashid Mubarak,’ the old man rasped, ‘unhand my wife and I will let you live to stand trial.’
Rashid lifted his head proudly. ‘No, Meiros: tonight, you die, or she does.’ Rashid poised the tip of the blade at her neck and twisted it, ready to thrust. Kazim almost screamed as her eyes popped and her body went rigid. She clasped her belly, tears streaming silently down her face. ‘Choose, Meiros: a few more miserable years before one of us gets to you, or children to bear your name and blood.’
Kazim’s eyes flew between these two terrible men, his heart in his mouth.
*
Ramita’s knees were grazed, her blood smearing the marble as she knelt at the feet of Rashid Mubarak. She was pinned and helpless, his dagger a promise of death, but somehow she could sense the glacial steel of the two magi’s minds: it was like being caught between two great boulders. But the concealed might of her husband dwarfed the emir, and they both knew it. Meiros could break him in a few moments – but in those moments, Ramita and her unborn children would perish.
She quivered in shock to hear him. Intuitively she shaped a return thought:
she wailed inside.
‘Why would we do that?’ Rashid replied levelly, then suddenly his voice cracked like a bullwhip, ‘Stop that, old man – don’t you touch my mind!’ His blade gouged Ramita’s skin and blood sprang from the shallow cut and burned down her neck.
She heard Kazim gasp, and Meiros raised a placating hand. ‘I’ve stopped – don’t harm her.’
Rashid’s face was carved from flint. His next words sounded rehearsed, his victory speech: ‘There is no reason for us to harm either mother or children. She is an innocent, dragged here against her will by your misbegotten scheming and perverted lusts. I will take her under my protection. The children will know their heritage, and why you had to die. They will bear your name, even as they grow to hate you and all you did. They will serve Ahm as their talents and desires dictate. This I also swear.’
Meiros looked down at Ramita, his expression unreadable, but she could feel his pain.
His mental voice was resigned, like a funerary oration.
She felt fresh tears spring to her eyes.
He looked at Rashid calmly and lowered his hands. ‘Very well, I accept. You will protect Ramita and our children as if she were your own wife and they your children. Do you accept?’
Rashid smiled triumphantly. ‘I accept, old man.’ His eyes never left Meiros. ‘Kazim, kill him.’
Kazim climbed to his feet and retrieved his dagger. There can be no pity for the infidel. And he felt no pity, not for this perverted old goat. It was fitting that he should die in his bed-robes, pathetic, dishonoured. He felt his strength return in body and will.
I have crossed the deserts, survived the raiders. I have trained, I have purified myself. I have deceived him and lain with his wife. I will go down in history as the slayer of Antonin Meiros.
The old man’s pale, rheumy eyes turned to him, and focused on him with burning intensity. ‘So, you are the Kazim she spoke of. You have come a long way, boy.’
‘Shut up, jadugara,’ he snarled. He heard Ramita whimper, saw Rashid stiffen. He felt an urge to rail at Meiros, to berate him for all the ruin his kidnapping of Ramita had wrought – but their lives hung by too thin a thread. There was time for only one taunt, one extra blade to twist. ‘The babies in her belly are mine,’ he whispered and rammed the dagger up under his chin into his brain. ‘She always belonged to me.’
The ancient mage slid to the ground like a pole-axed bull.
He bent over the body. A puff of smoke, bluish-grey, barely visible, formed at the man’s open lips and Kazim inhaled. Something entered him, something strong, and he felt his body begin to react. His skin flushed, his muscles quivered and the fires in his heart flared up inside him.
We are not like the magi, Sabele had told him. The first soul we drink defines our capacity to absorb energy, and therefore our gnostic power. And your first kill will be the greatest mage in history.
You will be as a god to us.
Someone screamed, a howl of desolate grief that tore at his soul, and he turned and saw it was Ramita, kneeling at
Rashid’s feet, her face a study in agony. He stared in puzzlement, then went to her – but she looked up at him, and her hatred and despair drove him backwards like a force of nature.
Then something else hit him like a flying wall: the life and memories and powers of an Ascendant mage. They smashed his awareness apart like broken glass.
Antonin Meiros fell, and Ramita’s world fell apart. Her grief burst from her like the roar of a tiger. When Kazim looked up, she saw him as a vile rakas-demon, a prince of Shaitan, hideous triumph written across his face, and in that moment all of her love of him turned to hate. She wanted them all dead, for their cold manipulations and stage-managed seductions; for their delight in murder. She hated Huriya for coldly playing with Jos Stein, then slaying him. She hated Kazim, for using her naïveté to destroy all she loved. And above all she hated Rashid, the puppet-master of this bloody shadowplay.
She tried to stand and reach for a fallen weapon, anything to lash out with, even as Kazim stiffened, then collapsed, clutching his skull. But Rashid turned on her and seized her forehead in his hand. ‘No you don’t, you base-born bitch,’ he snarled, and darkness crackled from his palm, searing her forehead with agony, and oblivion blossomed. The world fell away.
36
Shapeshifter
Theurgy Magic
It is the shadowy world of the Theurgist which concerns me. If a man can enslave another mind through Mesmerism, where does that power end? What boundaries are there upon a Spiritualist who can leave his own body to quest through the world? How do we regulate one who can beguile the senses with Illusion? What limits can be placed upon the Mystic when his mind can link with others to impart knowledge and leech power? How can we legislate the Theurgist?
SENATOR FINNIUS LA PIELLE, PALLAS 643
Brochena, Javon, on the continent of Antiopia
Junesse 928
1 month until the Moontide
Elena blinked, her mind working furiously. Antonin Meiros dead? It was inconceivable; the man was an Ascendant, one of the original Blessed, the last one still breathing. He’d been with Corineus at the very beginning, six hundred years ago. He was as much part of the landscape as Mount Tigrat.
Elena bit her lip. When Faid left Krak, she would be cut off from all news – and it would leave the Krak without the magi who were the main reason it was considered impregnable. The Ordo Costruo contracts to guard the mountain fortress had been in place for sixty years; they were a cornerstone of Javon’s security.
She sensed Faid’s curiosity.
She sensed Faid considering.
She broke the contact and sat staring at the bowl of water, wondering what to make of it all.
‘It’s hard to believe,’ Cera whispered. ‘Meiros is really dead?’
Elena had finally managed to speak to Cera again, though it was an enforced meeting, for they were in the blood-tower together. With the day’s papers signed, they had been relaxing with a goblet of red wine each, a rich scarlo from Riban. Cera had been distant, but this news had shaken her.
‘Everyone dies eventually,’ Elena said at last. ‘It is a miracle that a man so hated lived as long as he did, Ascendant Mage or not. You must not lose heart, Cera.’
Cera looked at her frostily. ‘I have not lost heart.’
‘Nor lost your heart,’ Elena murmured. ‘Cera, why did you accept that offer to marry Salim? Why didn’t you confer with your council?’
‘Because to delay would have been to insult them and threaten everything we’ve worked for.’ Cera bit her lip. The ambassadors had departed, leaving a parting gift: a silver collar, the traditional Amteh adornment for a betrothed noblewoman. It sat about Cera’s throat now, chafing her skin. It would be exchanged for one of gold on the wedding day.
‘But—’
Cera cut her off with a gesture. ‘I must ensure the Nesti survive, that before anything else. Do you understand? That is my only imperative.’ Cera hugged herself morosely. ‘We are foxes in a trap, but this marriage gives us the chance to free ourselves.’
Elena nodded sadly. But I hoped for more for you. I have heard of the ways of sultans’ harems: they are like vipers-nests, full of intrigue and gossip, and you will be the ferang there, the outsider.
Cera looked sideways at her, her face sly. ‘Perhaps after the Crusade Salim will be dead and I can renege on my promise.’
Elena felt a chill at this display of callousness. It reminds me too much of Gurvon – or how I used to be myself. She consciously swallowed her doubts and changed the subject. ‘I have scryed Lorenzo. He will be back soon with Solinde.’
Cera nodded shortly, not meeting her eyes.
Does she know about my affair with him – is she jealous? Rukka mio, I can’t deal with that … ‘There have been no more murders in the slums,’ she reported, changing the subject. ‘Our patrols may have made Gurvon pull back.’
‘But you haven’t found him,’ Cera replied, sounding distracted.
‘No, I’m sorry. There was never much chance of finding him so easily.’ She tried to inject enthusiasm into her voice. ‘There are still clues to follow, and a breakthrough we must discuss.’
Cera looked up warily, curious. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s about the murder of Fernando Tolidi. There is a study of gnosis called Necromancy, which concerns speaking with the dead.’
Cera blinked, making the holy sign of Sol, the protection from evil. ‘What of it?’
‘Would it shock you to hear that I have dug up Tolidi’s body and performed a necromantic working, to try and determine who killed him? Spirits often bear psychic traces of the moment of death. I needed to find out if Tolidi did, to lead us to his killer.’
Cera looked troubled. ‘You never told me. The priests would condemn this.’ She sucked on her upper lip, then leaned forward and whispered, ‘Did you learn anything?’
‘Not much – a dead soul’s recollection of their own demise is usually confusing; it can jump from remembrance into fantasy. I saw a blurred vision of a thin male of pale complexion with red hair. But I also saw Fernando with Solinde, and both this young male and Solinde wore the same nightdress. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced the strange male and Solinde were one and the same.’
‘What?’ Cera sat up. ‘What do you mean?’
Elena rubbed her chin. ‘This is what I think, Cera: remember the divinations we did a few weeks ago in the blood-rooms? Remember the lizard and the coin?’
‘You told me that a lizard means a shapeshifter and a coin means corruption.’
‘Exactly – but there is another interpretation. There is a notorious shapeshifter who has appeared in the past decade, known simply as “Coin”.’
Cera sucked in her breath. ‘A shapeshifter? Are you saying�
�?’
‘That the Solinde we sent to the Krak may not really be Solinde? That it might be Coin? Yes, that’s what I’m saying.’
Cera’s hands went to her mouth. ‘Sol et Lune, the things you people do – digging up the dead, shapeshifting …’ Her voice trailed off, and then, in a deathly whisper, she said, ‘Where is the real Solinde?’
Elena hung her head. ‘I don’t know. Shapeshifters don’t like to leave the real person they are mimicking alive.’ As Cera glowered at her, her eyes wet, she added, ‘I’m so sorry, Cera. It is true, we magi can do dreadful things, I admit that. But everything I do is for you: I swear it.’
Cera looked about to retort with some bitter comment, but then thought better of it. ‘When would it have happened?’ she asked, brushing at her eyes.
‘Probably the day after your father was killed. Remember we were told her behaviour changed that day? We put it down to shock, or perhaps Gurvon’s gnosis, but it may be that it was Coin all along.’
‘But you tested Solinde before we sent her to the Krak—’
‘I did, but if Coin is powerful, I would not have detected his presence – and Coin is reputedly the most able shifter ever known. Morphic-gnosis is very difficult: most cannot change gender, or remain shifted for very long. Coin apparently can do both: he – or she, no one knows – is responsible for the murder of the former Duke of Argundy, which allowed the current Duke to gain the Argundy throne. Coin is a legend among the magi.’
Cera scowled, thinking furiously. ‘And Fernando’s last vision was of a man in Solinde’s nightdress? Did he discover her in another form – is that why Fernando was killed?’
‘It fits what we know. It’s hard to maintain a shape-change when experiencing heightened pain or pleasure, so maybe Coin inadvertently betrayed themselves to Fernando, and then panicked and killed him to cover their tracks. We know that Gurvon protected Solinde after Fernando’s death. Perhaps that was because it was really Coin?’
