by David Hair
Somewhere up the slope, booted feet came ever closer.
One last chance …
Alaron swam frantically after Cym, fear of being left behind driving him faster. The girl’s face was concentrated and fierce as she glanced back, then plunged through a crossroads into another drowned alley.
Alaron looked up anxiously: something was silhouetted briefly against the shimmery silver sky that was the surface of the reservoir.
He worked his way to her side, panting out huge pearly bubbles, and reslung the sword belt.
She turned to face him, her face wide-eyed and urgent.
He was suddenly overwhelmed.
He kicked his way through the icy water, fighting the cold with gnosis-heat, and gripped the plinth. Earth-gnosis: something he could do. The drowned buildings were black silhouettes, the surface silver. There were no fish here. Maybe they’d scared them away – or someone else had.
He reached out with Earth-gnosis, though it wasn’t easy beneath the water, and plunged his hand slowly into the stone plinth, one inch, two inches, three, four, until his fingers popped through the stonework into a tiny chamber beneath. As he touched a cold metal cylinder his heart double-thumped and almost stopped. He lifted it free.
She thrust out a hand.
She stared at him, anger flickering across her face.
38
Not Dead
Hermetic: Healing
Healing is surely the most blessed of the Gnostic Arts, yet so many scorn it as unmanly – until the day they take a wound!
SIMONE DE ROOP, ARGUNDY 793
It is better to die than to suffer the accursed touch of Shaitan upon thy flesh
BRANDED SCRIPT UPON THE BELLIES OF
CRUCIFIED HEALER-NUNS OF THE ORDO JUSTINIA,
LEFT BY HADISHAH ASSASSINS IN 908
Brochena, Javon, on the continent of Antiopia
Junesse 928
1 month until the Moontide
She wasn’t dead. Yet. This one thought rose from Elena’s mind, above even the desperate attempt to restart her healing, as Sordell stood over her, watching her shudder towards oblivion. It was primal: the need for survival entwined with the urge to strike back.
On Sordell’s right, Bastido creaked into life and a faint sound warned Sordell, and he spun, somehow blocking the wooden stave that thrust for his midriff. But Rutt Sordell had never been a warrior and in his alarm he put all his shielding there, leaving him naked to the other blows. The chain-flail lashed his face, making him reel drunkenly, then the mace smashed into his temple from the other direction and his body left the ground, spiralling sideways, and blood sprayed, arcing across the chamber as he struck the wall in a pulverising crunch. His skull left a wet stain as it slid down the stone. He landed on his back, his head propped slightly. His face was slack and devoid of awareness. It had taken perhaps half a second.
Then she realised what she’d done. Lorenzo! Blood began to pump from his broken skull. No!
She reflexively flooded her own throat-wound with healing-gnosis, all that was left to her, sucking air into the wound, then sealing it. She vomited blood, gulped down oxygen, and her vision came and went. All she could do was lie there, staring at the other three bodies.
Gurvon had laughed when he found the deadliest killer in the Grey Foxes was also a healer. It makes me tough to kill, she had boasted in return. I just keep coming back.
She began to pull herself along the floor, first to Lorenzo, though she knew already she was too late. His mouth fell open and a black scarab the size of a fist scuttled out and away, seeking the shadows. Sordell, gone again.
I killed Lori … Damn this!
No one came.
I’ve got to get help, or I’m dead. She groaned and jack-knifed her way across the floor to the head of the spiral stairs. Her legs were still too far gone to stand. She began to crawl down, head first, her mind churning as she went, barely holding spirit and body together.
Every movement threatened to rip her open again. Her ankle was pure Hel, her shoulder-blades grated and her throat was a line of fire despite all her efforts. She kept coughing up blood, unable to get a clean breath, but she went on, contorting her way through the maze of pain, slipping in and out of consciousness, not rational – but not dead either.
Somehow she reached the landing and kicked at the door.
The door opened, and someone knelt over her. She knew it was Cera just from the smell of her.
‘Oh, Ella,’ she breathed, ‘you weren’t supposed to live.’ Her face was stricken, but her tones were measured. ‘I am sorry, but you were the leg the fox had to gnaw off to escape the trap. I’m truly sorry. I made a deal. Our lives for yours.’
Elena let the world fall away.
She woke on a linen-draped bed, half-naked beneath a sheet, swathed in bandages. Her neck was encased in cloth, as were her shoulder and ankle. Chains clamped down her arms and legs. It was a battle to breath, a war against all the pain and the crushing weight of failure. She tried to reach out with the gnosis and got nothing at all. I’ve been Chained.
The door opened. She did not need to look to know who it was.
‘Hello, Elena,’ said Gurvon Gyle, sitting on the bed. ‘I swear, you’re harder to eradicate than a cockroach.’ He removed the sheet. She writhed, but the chains held. Her former lover studied her body coldly, then met her eyes. ‘I wondered if I would still feel any desire for you, despite everything. But I feel nothing at all.’
She walled up her mind, though the Chain-rune left her with limited defences, but Gyle did not attack her with the gnosis; he employed words instead.
‘You never stood a chance, Elena. The attacker has all the choices. The defender can only react. Your little protégée came to realise that.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Thank you for ridding me of Targon – though the emperor will not be pleased.’
‘I hope he dismembers you for it,’ she rasped, startled by the hideous sound of her own voice.
‘Don’t try to speak, Elena,’ Gyle warned. ‘The throat wound is still raw.’
She coughed up blood and spat it at him, missing by some distance.
/>
Gyle stroked her brow thoughtfully. ‘You trained your little princessa well, Elena. When the moment of truth came, she knew how to cut her losses. Ironic, isn’t it? The one who taught her how to be rational and self-serving became the pawn she sacrificed.’
‘Go to Hel, Gurvon,’ she grated.
‘While Mara led you a dance, chasing shadows in the canals, I was working on the princessa, poisoning her mind against you and the Kestrians. When you obligingly started screwing Lorenzo, it was the final proof she needed; from then on you were doomed. She herself sent Lorenzo into the trap we laid on his way back from the Krak. I was waiting for him.’
She cringed at the remembrance of Lorenzo. He loved me, and it got him killed. I saw Cera change – I should have known—
‘Oh, don’t be too hard on yourself, Elena,’ Gyle said mockingly. ‘You’ve done magnificently, if wrecking my plans is a criteria for magnificence. It couldn’t last, though. You got lucky, locking up Coin without realising who she was, but that only bought you time.’
Gyle paused, as a huge black scarab beetle crawled out of his pocket. He smiled thinly. ‘Rutt also says “hello”.’ The scarab ran down his arm onto her belly.
She felt a wave of desperate fear. ‘Get it off me!’
Gyle smiled as the scarab crawled up her body, its feet sharp on her skin. She writhed, trying to throw it off, but the chains held her in place.
‘Please, Gurvon!!’ she begged, truly terrified now.
The beetle paused on her left breast and its pincers teased her nipple. She screamed, ‘Please, Gurvon!’
‘The thing is, Elena, I’ve got a severe manpower shortage now – and there is so much to do to complete this coup.’
She shook her head mutely as the scarab crawled onto her collarbone.
‘Make no mistake, Elena: you and I are mortal enemies now. You betrayed me, and I can never forgive that. But I’m a practical man, and I can even bear to see you on your feet again, provided you’re under my control.’ His face became bleak. ‘I’d like to kill you, but Javon needs to see that its heroic Queen’s Champion is alive and well; that will reassure them when Cera starts making overtures to the Gorgio and suing for peace.’ He raised his arm and the scarab of Rutt Sordell crawled onto the back of his hand. ‘And of course, Rutt needs a new body.’
She clamped her jaws shut.
He grasped her jaw and nose with deft hands and pulled open her mouth. The scarab slithered down his hand and onto her cheek. ‘Of course, Rutt would prefer a male body, but beggars can’t be choosers, can they? If he wants a body capable of gnosis, it will have to be yours.’
Gyle’s eyes hardened. ‘You know, if you hadn’t screwed that Kestrian, not only would Cera have retained her friendship towards you, but I might have felt some sympathy now. But I feel nothing at all any more. Goodbye for ever, Elena.’
The head of Sordell’s necromantic scarab peered into her right eye, feelers waving, mandibles working feverishly. Then it turned and crawled inside her mouth.
There was a sharp pain and a hideous burrowing sensation in her palate.
Then nothing at all.
39
Mountains at Dawn
Jarius Langstrit
Jarius Langstrit was Argundian, a gruff career soldier who late in life found himself at the head of a legion in Noros. Two years in the Revolt elevated him to the status of legend in that country. But after the war he vanished and was never seen again. When asked during the Revolt why an Argundian would fight for Noros, he said, ‘There is no place I love more. If the mountains of Noros are my last sight, then I will die content.’
CHRONICLES OF NOROS, 923
Norostein, Noros, on the continent of Yuros
Junesse 928
1 month until the Moontide
Alaron didn’t pause to look around; he took a deep breath and kicked for the surface, gripping the cylinder of the Scytale in his hand. With the other hand he cast off his sword so that he could ascend faster. Below him he glimpsed Cym whirling, seeking a target. She’s barely trained, he thought, but then he felt Koll’s first attack, a negation of the water-breathing spell Cym had given him, while he was still dozens of yards below the surface. His next breath had to be of air, or he was dead.
He kicked for the surface in blind panic as a bolt of blue fire smashed through his shields, scorching his left thigh. He could have screamed, lost his air and died, but he didn’t – maybe it was all the blows that had been rained upon him in the practise-yards, inuring him to pain. He contorted in agony, but he kicked on. More bolts flashed below, but no more were directed at him. The silvery surface was almost in reach—
—and then he was exploding through it, gasping in the freezing air. A dark shape loomed: the statue of the King of Noros the council had set in the middle of the reservoir. He splashed towards it, and the next burst of gnosis-fire from below caught him in the belly. He shrieked and almost dropped the cylinder.
Shields, shields! He summoned Air-gnosis and rose clear of the water, a clumsy flight that pitched him at the foot of the statue of King Phylios III. He heaved himself to his knees. The waters about him grew menacingly still and he could hear shouting from the flood-banks a hundred yards away. He prayed Muhren was winning, then he heard a plop! in the water ten yards to his left and all thoughts of what might be happening ashore fled.
Cym bobbed to the surface, face-down, in a cloud of black hair. A knife protruded from her back and as she surfaced blood bloomed over her back like an opening flower. All rationality disintegrated, he dropped the Scytale cylinder and leapt into the air, swooping towards the stricken girl. He heaved Cym from the water with gnosis alone and she rose in a cascade of dark fluids, her body limp.
He started to take her back to the statue, and stopped dead, all hope dying.
Gron Koll stood beside the statue, black hair plastered over his sallow face. He bowed mockingly. ‘Thanks for bringing me this,’ he purred, stroking the cylinder.
‘I don’t care about that,’ Alaron pleaded. ‘Just let me save Cym.’
Gron Koll sniggered. ‘You’ve got nothing to bargain with.’ He raised a hand, gnosis-fire licking his fingers.
A torrent of flame lit the surface of the lake.
Belonius Vult edged cautiously towards Langstrit, who was moving with painful slowness some twenty yards down the slope. Beside him was the charred corpse of Eli Besko. That saves me the trouble, I guess. He peered with a seer’s eyes at the old man. Oh dear, you are in a dire way, aren’t you, Jari? But not dead yet. He paused. He knew Langstrit; even now, there were risks … And you’ve already done more than enough damage … The skiff was destroyed and its pilot slain. It would be a slow journey home under his own power.
And the Scytale isn’t here, that is clear now. I need to get back, before Fyrell gets ideas above his station. But first you must die, old man. Eighteen years of your riddles was far too long.
He assessed Langstrit’s remaining physical and psychic strength, then struck, a threefold attack: a cloud of gas for poison; a mental attack, and an Air-gnosis-assisted leap to drive his staff into the man’s chest. What did Gurvon Gyle like to say? ‘A short fight is a good fight.’
Langstrit saw the blur of movement and the billowing gas and with his last strength rose to his knees, pushing outwards with Air-gnosis. Ha – didn’t think that one through, did you, Bel? Two attacks that could be countered with one parry. You always were a desk-mage. He rose to his feet unsteadily, clutching his heart, feeling it drumming furiously inside. You’re not going to make it, old man, but you can take this prick with you …
Then his link to Muhren went dead: utterly, absolutely severed.
No!
No – Jens!
Evidently Vult had some connection to Fyrell, for his head was cocked, listening. ‘It’s all been for nothing, old man,’ he purred.
‘Not if I take you down, you worm,’ Langstrit spat, and Vult came at him as his final strength faded. It felt as if he was wading through water. Vult tipped his blade aside, then drove his stave at him, hammering his shields and knocking him backwards. He slashed as he stumbled, but he couldn’t control his blows. Then the iron-heeled staff was battering him again, once, twice, with energy crackling along it, too much for him now. Wood and iron smashed into his ribs and something tore inside his left breast as his ribs broke. He couldn’t breathe. He felt his legs give way and then Vult, his usual smooth mask warped with bestial anger, smashed the staff into his chest again, right over his heart, and he felt it burst. He fell backwards, the sky filling his eyes. I’ve failed. It was all for nothing.
Above him, the sunlight kissed the snowy heights with the faintest rose-pink and gold: remote, heartrending beauty – the reason he had come here from fair Argundy, the reason he had fought for this land. A fitting last sight, he remembered telling someone once, beautiful – and out of reach.
Alaron was too tired to react; he hovered above the waters holding Cym to him protectively and waited to die. He saw Koll’s glee as he summoned energy for the fatal strike—
—but Koll’s gnosis-fires disintegrated before they reached him.
‘Get away from my son!’ Tesla Anborn flowed out of the shadows, clad in red battle-mage robes, her ravaged face bared, her empty eye-sockets gleaming with pale gnosis-fire. Her ruined hands were raised in an inwards-reaching gesture as she defused Koll’s fires.
Gron Koll snarled and blasted at her, but she batted it aside and struck back with a whip-crack of lightning that made Koll’s shields flare and crackle. His body jerked and he yowled and dropped the cylinder.
Tesla struck again, no subtlety, just a torrent of fire hurled at the young mage. Koll raised shields laced with water and the fires burst over them in a hiss, and scalding steam billowed, blinding all sight. Koll shrieked, the most harrowing cry Alaron had ever heard, and fell over the cylinder.
