Empress of the Fall

by David Hair

  ‘Ha!’ he shouted, launching himself into his best combination: a high-low-high rain of blows meant to bewilder and open up the foe for a smashing kick to the knee, followed by a rapid killing blow. Her defences opened, he smashed a kick to her knee that bent it sideways – she should have been screaming and toppling . . .

  Crunch.

  A second kinesis-blow smashed him over backwards, hurling him against a tree trunk. He bounced and thudded to the ground, the air knocked from his lungs, leaving him flailing like a beached fish. Heartface closed in, her scimitar trailing pure light along the edge. ‘Stay down,’ she warned as behind her, Ironhelm drove Salim backwards effortlessly, then skewered the sultan’s right arm. The dagger fell to the turf.

  ‘NO!’ Waqar shouted, trying to rise, even as a voice cried out in his skull.

  It was his mother, and she sounded desperate.

  ‘Go to Mother, little boy,’ Heartface told him. ‘There’s nothing you can do here.’

  Behind her, Ironhelm hammered his left fist into the sultan’s jaw and the ruler of all Kesh and Dhassa thudded bonelessly to the grass. Waqar shouted in dismay and launched himself at the masked woman—

  —who slammed him straight back into the tree again, so hard the bark imprinted itself on his back and skull. Then the ground reared up at him and he pitched onto his face, tasting blood and dirt. Heartface appeared above him, reversing her blade and slamming the hilt through his paper-soft defences and into his temple. Salim’s face flashed across the darkness and took everything away with its passing.

  *

  Even as Latif saw the masked man, someone grabbed his forearm and with terrifying strength, pulled him back out of sight. A hand clamped over his mouth and swallowed his startled gasp.

  a woman hissed into his skull.

  All of the impersonators had been trained in combat, and those disciplines were enough to freeze him in place. Bony hands pulled him against the wall. ‘Please, don’t make a sound,’ the woman whispered. Then boots clicked on the tiled hallway and Latif went still, though his mind was racing. That’s Halaam’s room the masked man just left.

  The boots stopped, and he felt a tickling presence at the edge of his consciousness. The impersonators had also been trained in how to keep a mage from their mind; it was all about inner silence. He emptied his mind in an instant, fear sharpening his response, and the girl behind him – he was sure she was just a girl – joined his efforts. A cool, smooth emptiness radiated around them. A couple of steps came closer, but still he didn’t move or even breathe.

  The boots clicked away down the hall, towards Faizal’s rooms.

  He twisted his head and looked backwards and down at the girl behind him. She was tiny, just a pair of deep-set, intense hazel eyes peering through a bekira-shroud. The air about her tingled with gnostic shielding. He was quite literally inside her defences, but he was already certain she meant him no harm.

  Unlike that masked man. ‘Is Halaam . . . ?’ he asked, heart in mouth.

  ‘Too late,’ she breathed.

  ‘Faizal—?’

  ‘Also too late. I’m only here to get you out. It’s too late for everyone else in this wing.’

  Is everyone murdered . . .? Lord Ahm, no—! ‘What about the sultan?’

  ‘You’re not the real Salim? Chotia!’ She gripped his sleeve. ‘Then where is he?’

  Hope flashed through his heart. ‘He went to the dom-al’Ahm to meet Waqar Mubarak – we must find him—’

  ‘Mubarak?’ his rescuer spat. ‘Is he behind this?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Though why not? Rashid’s so close to ultimate power already . . . Latif’s hands began to shake. ‘We must raise the alarm. The intruder is only one man.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ the girl replied. ‘There’s at least one other – do you know the Lantric plays?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ve seen Beak and Ironhelm. Your guards are all dead: if you shout, no one will come.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘I don’t know – I didn’t see where they came from. But I’ve sensed their power, and they’re stronger than anyone I’ve encountered.’ Despite her youth, she obviously thought that was a momentous thing.

  Oh, to be young and invulnerable again. ‘Who are you? Where did you come from?’

  ‘Call me Tarita. I’ve been pretending to be a servant.’

  Tarita . . . that’s not a southern name. But there was no time to press for more. ‘The wives and children are in the zenana. We must get them out—’

  ‘I’m supposed to rescue the sultan,’ Tarita replied, wavering for the first time.

  ‘And I’m not he. But the fastest way to the Walled Garden is through the zenana, and I know the way. Please – all the sultan’s wives are there, and the children are in the nursery.’ He swallowed, and added, ‘My own wife and son are there.’

  Tarita looked doubtful. ‘You should just get out. They’ll kill you if they can.’

  ‘My life means nothing – it’s the sultan who must be saved. Come, this way, there’s a private entrance.’ He pulled her in the opposite direction to the way the masked man – ‘Beak’, he guessed – had gone. He was grateful for his soft-soled slippers as they padded along the ghostly halls. All was silent – then he heard a door slam and a muffled cry. He froze, looking at Tarita. She shook her head. ‘Keep moving.’

  They traversed a hall into a gallery where three guardsmen lay unmoving in pools of blood, their own daggers lodged in their chests, fists locked around them. Their expressions were terrified. His gorge rose and he vomited. He’d seen violent death before, but he’d never become unused to it.

  ‘Come on,’ Tarita whispered, her voice flat. ‘Which way now?’

  He pointed towards the right. ‘That way.’ They darted from shadow to shadow down a long gallery, then climbed the steps winding upwards to a small door at the top. ‘It’s a servants’ entrance, but we impersonators use it when we’re in a hurry. We each have a key’ – Latif patted his pocket and cursed – ‘but I’ve lost mine—’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Tarita whispered. She touched the door, pale light flickered around her fingers, the lock clicked and the door fell open. ‘Wait here for me,’ she told him.

  ‘No,’ he said, though his legs were shaking, ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘Then stay behind me.’ She drew a small scimitar from beneath her robes. Her skinny hand looked scarcely strong enough to grip it, but she moved with practised grace.

  She must be Hadishah . . . but which faction?

  Together they crept along the dark servants’ corridor and entered a hall. She conjured light in her hands and he pointed to the right. ‘Those stairs lead to the pleasure rooms, and from there, on the far side, another flight goes up to a corridor leading to the Walled Garden.’

  They ascended three flights and Tarita again used her gnosis to force the lock; the suppressed click echoed through his shredded nerves. But the zenana was utterly silent, which chilled his soul. Light kindled on the edge of Tarita’s curved blade. ‘How many people live here?’

  ‘In the whole zenana? The sultan’s six wives and eight children on the top floor, two above this. Four of us impersonators have wives, one level above us, and there are six children – one is my son. This is the pleasure level; there are only boudoirs and pools . . .’

  ‘Twenty-four souls . . . And servants?’

  Latif coloured. ‘Oh yes, I forgot. Each of the wives has a maidservant and those with children have an ayah – so another twenty people.’

  ‘Most of your type forget servants exist,’ Tarita muttered. ‘Stay behind me, and stay silent, no matter what we find. Our goal is the sultan. Everyone else is expendable.’

  It wasn’t a comforting thing to hear, but he couldn’t fault her for it.

  She slipped through the door and onto a balcony overlooking a central pool where the wives liked to relax in the midday heat. But a whirlwind had come through: a whir
lwind with blades. Four of Salim’s wives lay scattered like debris among the wreckage, their naked bodies sliced open like butchered carcases. The pool was a cloudy scarlet.

  Dear Ahm, take them unto you . . .

  Tarita spotted the stair to the next level up. ‘Come on,’ she said, and Latif was both impressed and shamed by her courage. The air was thick with the stench of death as he followed her up steps slick with blood; an ayah was laying on her back on the top step, throat cut open. He grabbed the rails for strength. My world is collapsing around me.

  Somehow he swallowed his terror and guided the young woman – she looked barely sixteen – through the slaughterhouse, past more bodies, more blood. Then he heard screaming: a woman’s voice abruptly cut off, then another – his wife’s voice, he was certain, a fading cry for mercy. It came from somewhere to the right. He choked back a wail of despair and broke into a run.

  Umada had been chosen for him and marriage had never become love: her body didn’t move him and her company didn’t please him. But together they’d made Juset, their beautiful son, and right now, they were the most precious things in creation. He had to find them . . .

  Tarita caught him in a web of force and slammed him against the wall. She clamped her hand over his mouth and his eyes bulged as he struggled. Then he froze as the door to his own rooms opened and a grey-robed man emerged, his face concealed by a handsome helmed mask: ‘Ironhelm’, he guessed. His robes were dappled in scarlet and his blade was dripping.

  Tears stung his eyes like acid, but he’d not heard his son’s voice – it was just possible Juset was in the nursery; that thought kept him from panic. He let Tarita draw him further along the curved wall, out of the masked man’s sight. Ironhelm’s booted feet strode away.

  As soon as the assassin was out of earshot, Latif ran for the door, pulled it open – then went stock-still, because he was far, far too late.

  Umada was on the floor, bleeding her heart’s-blood into a white snowcat pelt. The ayah was beside her, her skull mashed against a pillar as if she’d been hurled there by a giant. His son Juset, his neck broken to a ghastly angle but otherwise uninjured, lay in the middle of his mother’s bed. Both women had been trying to shield him.

  Latif sank to his knees. His heart almost exploded when Tarita touched his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Her pain sounded very real.

  He somehow found the strength to go to his son and kiss his forehead and straighten his still-warm body. ‘Is there anything you can do?’ he asked, hoping against hope that she was a miraculous healer, one who could reunite soul and body. He’d have almost settled for a necromancer at that moment, just to see his son move again.

  ‘No, Latif. I’m sorry. But we have to go now.’

  ‘Can’t . . .? I can’t—’

  ‘You’ll do as I tell you,’ Tarita said crisply. ‘You at least will survive this, Lord.’

  Such was the strength in her voice . . . Ah, yes, now he could feel her using mesmeric-gnosis to strengthen his will . . . It was a relief, in a way, to just surrender to her determination. He took one last look at his dead son and let his sorrow turn to hatred.

  Who did this? he wondered. Who are these people?

  They went back to the passage, Tarita leading the way, seeking the corridor to the Walled Garden. When they heard booted feet again, they hurled themselves behind a statue into a tiny niche. The footfalls echoed closer; they went rigid, close as lovers, as the assassin approached.

  For a ghastly moment, Ironhelm’s eye-slits seemed to look their way, then he strode past and was gone, the sound of his footsteps soon fading. Tarita emerged cautiously, then reached back and took Latif’s hand. She pulled him behind her and headed for the garden.

  Someone spoke, their voice carrying from above. A glass dome gave the zenana its natural light and Latif followed the sound to the railing overlooking the atrium. He had to swallow his despairing gasp as he saw what hung in that empty space.

  Sultan Salim Kabarakhi, naked and bloodied, was suspended in the middle of the domed ceiling, rotating slowly. ‘What do you want?’ he begged, his voice broken, agonised. He was wheezing, as if through broken ribs. His handsome face was battered, his muscular body bruised and burned and the hair on his skull had been completely burned away.

  A grey-robed figure appeared at the railing: Beak, his long sharp nose quivering as he laughed. ‘What do we want? Why, everything and nothing, Great Sultan! Everything, because we want the world’ – he made an expansive gesture – ‘and nothing . . . because you can’t give it to us. You can only die.’

  Latif choked back a shout and willed Tarita to act, but she was just staring, immobilised by the sight. We must do something! But his limbs remained locked as Beak raised his right hand, blue light coalescing about his fist. Salim didn’t flinch as he turned in the air towards his killer.

  A blast of that blue light flew.

  Latif couldn’t help it: rage and despair erupted from his throat as Salim was caught in a bolt of livid energy, jerking in a death spasm as he was engulfed, then plummeted, a blackened, broken thing that splashed into the bloody pool amidst his murdered wives.

  Tarita swore, grabbed Latif’s shoulder and dragged him away from the stairs as another bolt of light struck the very place he’d been standing a second before. ‘Run!’ she snarled, and threw him towards the left even as she faced right, already conjuring energy about her. He could not stop himself glancing over his shoulder: Ironhelm was storming around the curve of the passage. Blue light crackled in both directions; Tarita staggered and cried out as energy slammed into her shields – then a semi-transparent wall of force billowed from her own fingers and anchored to the walls on either side, catching the next bolts from Ironhelm. Latif backed away, and so did she. ‘Find us a way out,’ she snapped, her eyes on the advancing assassin.

  A woman’s voice called from above in Keshi, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Two: an impersonator and a Hadishah,’ Ironhelm answered as he reached Tarita’s barrier and raked his blade, gleaming with purple energy, through the wall of force, then peeled the sides apart. Tarita and Latif turned and pelted towards the stair to the servants’ quarters below. Latif could hear their hunters closing in. He reached for the door as Ironhelm appeared along the corridor, moving like an implacable force, batting aside Tarita’s mage-bolts and conjuring a vortex of swirling purple light – necromantic-gnosis.

  Latif yanked open the door, grabbed Tarita’s collar and pulled, just as Beak came into view, hovering in mid-air above the central pool. He had a clear line of sight and his blast of fire whooshed towards them, but they were already tumbling through the door. Latif kicked it closed, and the heavy wood crashed closed on the flames, but Tarita was up and reinforcing the barrier with locking-wards anchored to the doorframe.

  She didn’t pause to see if it’d hold but shouted, ‘Go!’ and followed him down the tight spiral stairs even as a blow like thunder struck the door, sending dust filling the air as the plaster cracked and beams creaked alarmingly.

  Latif heard a footfall high above and looked up to see a third assassin: a feminine shape in the mask like a pretty girl, peering down the stairwell. Heartface, he recalled. She saw him and it felt like her eyes had reached out and gripped his thoughts . . .

  —then Tarita wrenched him from sight and Heartface’s bindings fell apart.

  With a defiant shout, Earth-gnosis thrummed from Tarita’s hands, tearing at the stairs above and pulling them into a barrier to prevent Heartface from floating down the stairwell. The walls trembled and a dozen steel fastenings gave way. ‘You’ll bring the whole thing down!’ Latif cried out, staggering onwards.

  ‘Then run!’ Tarita shrieked. Above them, somewhere in the wreckage, the door burst apart and boots stomped into the stairs; voices, male and female, crackled metallically. But Latif was at the bottom now, and pulling the door open. He stumbled through; Tarita sealed it behind them, then shoved him into motion again. The passage
they found themselves in led past storage rooms jammed with furniture; enough to furnish a hundred princely homes. They were below ground, but there were high vents through which moonlight was streaming. Tarita looked around, then blasted the nearest vent open. The stone grille went flying off into the darkness with a crash.

  ‘How can I get up—?’ he began, but she’d already gripped his collar and was leaping, bringing him with her into the darkness – and just in time, for the warded door behind them shattered, blue light flashing beneath Latif’s feet.

  Then they were outside in a courtyard surrounded by buildings. A ball of fire burst from the hole; Tarita twisted and fired back at an indistinct shape that emerged, then she dragged Latif skywards again, cursing at him to be still as he clung on in terror, trying to stop his legs from kicking. They landed on the battlements as dark shapes came blurring towards them through the night. Tarita twisted in the air, then hurled Latif into space.

  ‘WHAAH—?’ he wailed as the darkness rushed past, and just before he hit the moat in a great splash he caught a glimpse of Tarita bringing up her light blade to parry a massive blow from Beak. His gaudy mask chilling in the darkness, he battered her sideways in a cascade of sparks – then Latif went under and came up clawing at the noisome water, winded and gasping and terrified. The giant face of Luna washed the cityscape in silver, lending the dozen crocodiles in the water an almost mystic quality as they surged towards him.

  He thrashed for the outer shore, thanking Ahm and Salim that the sultan had installed metal rungs into the wall so that anyone unfortunate enough to fall in could at least attempt to climb out. He had just reached the lowest rung when the water boiled and a twenty-foot-long crocodile rose from below like a leaping salmon. He flew upwards, his hands and feet groping for the rungs, as the giant beast caught his long-shirt and arrested his progress for a moment – then the fabric ripped and he hurtled onto the filthy bank. He lay on his back gasping as a windskiff soared overhead and mage-bolts flew, striking one of the two combatants on the battlements, but he couldn’t say which. He flinched as someone – Tarita? – cried out in pain.