Moontide 02 - The Scarlet Tides

by David Hair

  And wrenched.

  Haroun’s neck snapped audibly. His face lost the smile and went slack. His eyes started losing focus as his body sagged into Kazim’s arms. Kazim lowered him to the ground, covered his mouth and nose with his own mouth and inhaled. He tasted something dry and smoky in his mouth and sucked it down, and kept inhaling as sensations flooded him, a scarlet tide of memories drawn from the failing body …

  A brutish father and a protective mother … Bullying brothers and a sister who was too pretty for her own virtue … Escape, to a masjid, learning at the feet of the Scriptualists, wanting only to belong … Rape at the hands of two soldiers in a back alley, a suicide attempt … Examinations and praise, sudden elevation … Watching those two soldiers being crucified on trumped-up charges, and the first inkling of power … being set to watch a promising young boy from Aruna Nagar, a Keshi boy, who could run like the wind …

  Kazim swallowed, and felt the hollow inside him where the gnosis waited fill up. ‘Thank you, brother,’ he whispered bitterly. Everything Haroun had ever been to him was a lie. ‘Thank you for everything.’

  Haroun ceased to exist. The cloud of memories and consciousness dissipated into pure energy which Kazim gulped down, taking it into himself until it became potential, became gnosis, straining for release.

  He dragged the body behind the door then washed his face in the basin and composed himself, drawing a mental map of the monastery from his memory. He could guess where they’d taken Elena: the secure cellar with the heavy door. The sapphire periapt still hung from his neck – he’d never taken it off, though it was of no sue to him.

  She gave it to me …

  It weighed on his neck like an unfulfilled promise.

  Lessons from the Hadishah on how to move silently, how to kill, even without weapons, combined with lessons from Elena on use of the gnosis. He’d never had the energy – or the inclination – to learn any more than how to defend his mind and body from other magi, but he could feel the potential for more. Whatever he unleashed might not be elegant or precise, but he would make sure it was potent.

  He was halfway to the door when the wards flared again, the bolt rasped and it swung open. He darted to the side, behind the in-swinging door, and grasped the only thing to hand: a candle from the wall holder. He pinched it out.

  A man stepped through: Magister Sindon, come to fix his mind, shielded and warded and already speaking as he approached: ‘Haroun, are you finish—?’

  Yes. Haroun is finished.

  It wasn’t a complicated attack: Kazim simply filled the candle with telekinetic gnosis so that it would keep its shape, then whipped it around the door, through the Magister’s unfocused shields and straight into his left eye. All the way in.

  The Ordo Costruo man gasped faintly and deflated to the floor, the candle stuck in his eye socket. Kazim was over him and flying at the guard-mage in one movement. He’d assumed the guard was magi because of the wards that had flickered on and off, so he took no chances: he blazed away with the same lightning he’d nearly killed himself with at the river, blasting it through the Hadishah man’s shields before he could gather them properly. The electricity earthed on the man’s armour and as Kazim watched, he jolted then thrashed and spasmed, while the metal armour went from cold grey to a white-hot flare in an instant. The man clattered against the wall and slid to the stone floor, still shaking.

  Some poor woman had been kept in a cage so that this man could be born. A woman like Elena. He’d known this in the back of his mind, but until now he’d never really thought about it, never taken in the whole truth of what that meant.

  The scimitar and dagger he pulled from the smoking corpse were still crackling with energy, and he fed them with more as he flitted along the corridor, the image of Gatoz violating Elena spurring him on.

  He got to the stairs going upwards undetected and silently flowed up them, gathering his cloak and hood about him to conceal any flash of skin.

  Footsteps …

  He ducked into a doorway, the privy doorway, and let someone pass, then emerged behind the man and while he slammed the dagger through his back into his heart with his right hand, his left arm went around the man’s face, smothering his coughing gasp. He winced as the man bit, hard – his last conscious act – leaving a faint imprint of teeth, even through the thick cloth of his cloak. He pulled the body into the privy and even as he shut the door, the room had already filled with the stench of voiding bladder and bowels. He had no idea who the man was, or if he’d even met him before, but he had been in his way. He considered taking more energy, but found he didn’t need to. It appeared that one soul – any soul – was enough to replenish his gnosis completely.

  He moved onwards, striding purposefully.

  The final corridor was before him. The dining hall was there, and from the noise, it sounded like most of the Hadishah were there. Cooking smoke wafted down the corridor along with the chatter of voices and the clatter of plates. He walked past, hood up, and hoped no one looked in his direction. No one did.

  Once clear of the dining room, he pounded down the spiralling stairs into the monastery’s storage rooms, pulling himself to an abrupt halt at the bottom. His caution was repaid; when he peered around the corner he saw a man there, some fifteen feet away. He was clearly a Hadishah mage, for he was playing a gnosis game with his dagger, balancing the tip on his finger-tips and making it spin, first one way, then back again. A barred door was at his back.

  Kazim composed himself, gathered more energy and reached.

  The man juggling the dagger never even felt the attack: one instant he was using his gnosis to flip his dagger from finger to finger; the next, it was ripped from his control and punched into his own throat. He choked on blood, the air in his throat bubbling wetly, and slid down the wall. His eyes went to Kazim as he tried to fight the blood-loss, repair the wound, but Kazim worked the strands of force with all his strength in a sawing movement and the blade wrenched sideways, left and right, left and right, until he felt the man’s spinal cord snap. The lights went out in his eyes before the blood jetting out of his neck had petered out to a trickle.

  He crossed the remaining distance, stepped over the body and placed his finger on the door-handle. He could feel the tingle of power there: strong, but not Ascendant-level strong, and therefore not strong enough. He inserted his own power into the flow of forces, just as Elena had taught him, and was a little surprised at how easily he disrupted the ward. It fizzled out with a sharp ‘pop’, and he wasted no time in launching himself through the door.

  *

  Elena had her eyes closed when the door crashed open, but her eyelids flew up as a cloaked and hooded figure burst into the chamber. Gatoz was unbuckling his belt, but in the intervening second between breaking in and attacking, somehow the Hadishah captain managed to draw his sword.

  Not that it availed Gatoz. The newcomer had lightning crackling down the blade of his own sword and she saw the energy leaping between the blades as they clashed, saw Gatoz jolting, his limbs jerking involuntarily with each parry. The Hadishah man howled as there was a brilliant flash and he was thrown backwards, slamming into the far wall of the room with a loud crack!

  But Gatoz was not done; he launched a left-handed bolt that seared the air about the newcomer’s head – but the man was fast, arching his body away from Gatoz’s blast, which sprayed fire over the wall. His hood fell back and she saw Kazim, his face enraged, teeth bared and eyes wide, and for the first time since she’d been shaken awake, all those hours ago, she felt a surge of hope – and pride – as Kazim – her blood-brother – leapt at Gatoz, slashing down hard as the Hadishah man tried to adjust his shielding to cope with the lightning. Their blades crashed together again, the clanging steel echoing about the room.

  They were both big men, and both were fast, and their skills had been fed by practice and augmented by gnosis. But Kazim had been training with her for months now, and he had been working very hard. She could clearl
y see the differences between the boy he had been and the man he now was: Gatoz bullocked, while Kazim flowed. Kazim danced, while the other man merely fought. Though Kazim’s gnosis-attacks were clumsy, his defence was not. Gatoz tried to blast at him and was shielded with a grace that obviously surprised him – but not her. For her, there would be only one winner.

  But it wasn’t happening fast enough. She heard shouting, and the thunder of footsteps on the stairs, and shouted, ‘Kazim, they’re coming!’

  He heard her and immediately launched another attack at the increasingly beleaguered Gatoz – but the man was no fool, and instead of trying in vain to hit Kazim, he was concentrating on defence, buying time until his men could arrive, content to be driven back and back until he was pinned against the far wall. The boots were closer, though they’d slowed – someone was urging caution, obviously – but still only seconds remained.

  She cursed her helplessness and cried, ‘Kazim, get me out of this!’

  There was no finesse in what he did; he just flung out his left hand in her direction, and a wall of force struck the bed like a hurricane wind. The bed flew sideways and upwards at bone-wrenching speed, just as the door opened and two Hadishah spilled into the room. It struck them like a runaway wagon, crushing the first against the wall and knocking the other backwards into his fellows outside. She caught a flash of bewildered faces as they shouted out in shock, then the head- and tail-boards splintered. She almost wrenched her left arm from its socket, but Kazim’s brutal spell had worked: the frame had broken and she was able to pull her right arm free, though it was still chained. Seconds later she had kicked her legs free too.

  She glimpsed a flash of steel – Gatoz’s dagger, lying where it had fallen on the floor – and she snatched it up just in time as the next Hadishah vaulted the bed. He landed on his feet above her and thrust down, trying to skewer her through the belly, but she twisted her body away and his blade buried itself in the mattress. She contorted back and slashed the tendon behind his ankle and the man shrieked and fell. She buried Gatoz’s knife in his chest, just to be sure.

  Then Kazim bellowed in pain and her eyes whipped around. He might have saved her, but he had been catastrophically distracted in doing so and Gatoz had taken the opportunity of his moment’s distraction to plunge his sword into Kazim’s side.

  The Hadishah snarled in triumph as Kazim’s left hand flew to the blade jammed in his flesh.

  And held it there.

  She saw Gatoz’s eyes bulge as he realised what Kazim was doing. His sword was stuck in his foe’s body and his knife was sticking out of the Hadishah Elena had just killed – he had no weapon left. Kazim ignored the pain of the wound and drove his own scimitar up under Gatoz’s ribcage, then he twisted it and, very slowly, pulled it back.

  The Hadishah let go of his sword as his legs began to sag.

  Elena could see the massive effort Gatoz was making to ward off the oncoming darkness – die you pig die - but then she heard someone else pushing his way over the broken bed and she spun round to find a man in full armour standing there, staring into the room, looking horribly conflicted.

  He looked at her and as their eyes met, his face hardened.

  She yanked in vain at the one remaining chain still binding her to the broken headboard, though her damaged shoulder screamed in protest. Damn this fighting with no gnosis!

  There was no time to retrieve the dagger. She whipped her free arm around, caught the chain and whirled it, lashing out at the newcomer, who caught it easily on his sword – but he hadn’t been expecting it to wrap about his blade the way it did. She tugged hard on it and yanked him sideways as he swore and tried to wrench the weapon free. He barely noticed Kazim approaching – until her blood-brother’s blade punched in under his right armpit and into his chest.

  The other Hadishah standing in the doorway about to enter the room lost his nerve and started backing away.

  Kazim wrenched Gatoz’s blade from his own side and a great gout of blood stained his tunic, but he ignored the wound as the man he’d stabbed tottered, then sprawled across the mattress at her feet, his eyes glazing over. Instead Kazim made for the door, where the retreating attacker was backed up against his fellows. Freed from any need for stealth, he raised his hands, channelled his gnosis and spewed flame into the corridor.

  The effect was devastating, and Elena heard its effect as she ducked to escape the searing heat that backwashed into the room. There was a clamour of agonised shrieking, but the voices stopped almost as quickly as they had begun. She heard body after body clatter to the ground.

  Her skin was wet with sweat and the close air heavy with smoke and the taint of burning flesh. She looked up at Kazim and started, ‘Kaz, we’ve got to get out of here. The smoke—’

  He wasn’t looking at her; he was leaning over over the armoured man lying at her feet, a middle-aged warrior with a world-weary face. ‘Brother,’ he said softly, ‘I’m sorry.’

  The man opened his mouth and blood bubbled up among his words. ‘You chose her. Don’t ever call me brother again.’

  Kazim’s face contorted in momentary sadness, then all emotion left his face. As Elena watched, he bent over the fallen man and kissed his bloodied lips as he died. To her horror she realised what she was seeing: a Dokken, drinking souls. Then he straightened, and his eyes were glazed and disoriented. She was almost too frightened to move.

  Abruptly he blinked, and was Kazim again. He picked her up in his arms and with one swift tug, pulled the last chain out of the headboard. He cradled her against him like a child, and she could feel his own heart was hammering and he too was sodden with sweat. She clung to him, shaking, as he blasted a breathable path through the smoke with Air-gnosis.

  They emerged to find the monastery ringing with silence. He put her down gently on a bed – her own bed – and she collapsed there, shaking with relief.

  He hadn’t said a word, not since the armoured man he’d killed had withdrawn his brotherhood.

  He did that for me.

  ‘Kaz?’ she asked gently, ‘Are you all right?’

  He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time, then his eyes narrowed. He looked dangerous, and she fought not to flinch as he demanded, ‘Did you do things to my mind, to make me love you?’

  She stared up at him. Love?

  His voice was trembling with emotion. His hands were trembling with restrained violence.

  What lies have they told him?

  ‘Did they tell you that? Kazim, for four months we’ve fought like cat and dog! We’ve spent half the time screaming at each other and the other half trying to beat each other to a pulp – does that sound like love to you?’

  He stared at her, and his eyes suddenly welled up. ‘No,’ he choked out, ‘no, it doesn’t.’

  Unbelievably, she felt a bubble of laughter escape her throat. ‘Of course, maybe I’m just rukking useless at charming people.’

  ‘You are,’ he told her. He scrubbed furiously at his face. ‘So why is it that I just killed my friends for you?’

  She gulped for breath and her heart stuttered, then it pounded on again, painfully hard. She had an overwhelming urge to wash all the blood and smoke and death away, to make him clean again – but all she could do was cling to him in her bloodied nightshift and try not to collapse.

  Eventually, some kind of control, even decorum, reasserted itself between them. He looked around for her cloak, plucked it from the hook and wrapped it around her. Once she was decently covered, he looked at her again, this time with a bleak sadness in his eyes.

  ‘I was a fool,’ he said simply. ‘I thought they would welcome you, for your aid against Gyle. But they’ve reached an accommodation with him.’

  Have they? Gurvon, you devious prick!

  ‘Did Gatoz—?’

  She shook her head. ‘You were on time. Like an answer to a prayer.’

  He flinched at that, as if the thought of her prayers was unwelcome. ‘Have they done anything else to you
?’ he demanded.

  ‘They placed a Chain-rune on me,’ she told him. ‘It won’t fade just because the caster is dead.’ She reached out and took his hand and pressed it to the middle of her chest. ‘You need to reach inside me and disrupt it – as if it’s a locking ward you’re opening. It’ll hurt me, but only a little, and I’ll soon recover.’

  He closed his eyes and laid both hands on her chest, and then she felt a sharp popping sensation, like a small explosion. She gasped, but the pain quickly faded and she immediately felt her gnosis begin to flow again, replenishing her like water reviving a withered plant.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. She straightened her nose, rejoicing as her healing-gnosis flowed unimpeded. ‘Thank you so much.’

  He squeezed her hand, then stood. ‘I need to find the rest of them.’

  ‘Wait,’ she told him, ‘let’s heal you first. It’ll be quicker in the long run.’ She quickly stopped his bleeding and loosely sealed the wound in his side, then she filled the water bowl from the ewer on the nightstand and charged the fluid with clairvoyance-gnosis. She scanned quickly, going room to room, from the top of the monastery to the bottom, seeking signs of movement or energy.

  ‘I’m not getting anything,’ she muttered, ‘but they could be using runes of hiding.’

  ‘We’ll check every room,’ he replied. His eyes still looked bleak.

  She admired his determination as much as she pitied his loss. She seized his hands and looked up into his eyes. ‘Kazim, I don’t know what to say – you came for me.’ Her voice was filled with wonder. ‘I don’t even know why—’

  She saw him swallow.

  He did it because he loves you, you idiot.

  He composed his face and met her eyes. ‘What Gatoz was going to do to you – it was wrong – and the others just stood aside, even Jamil. So I had to stop them.’ He looked away. ‘How can they claim to oppose evil when they do these things? You can’t clean floors with a bucket of blood.’

  It sounded like something from the Kalistham. She couldn’t have put it better if she’d tried.