Empress of the Fall

by David Hair

  —and he blasted the boy’s face off with a mage-bolt.

  The tribesman crashed like a falling tree and the she-savage at his feet cried out in pain and betrayal. He smirked and hurled her off the cliff with a burst of kinesis, then walked away, whistling cheerily.

  Really, these savages are no challenge.

  Then the lightning cracked again, the thunder rolled and light drained from the world as clouds raced towards him. Twenty minutes to find shelter? he thought. I don’t think we’ve got more than two—

  *

  The White Stag bellowed, sounding his rage, and all through Feher Szarvasfeld the cry was answered as they careened down the snow-covered paths. Valdyr glanced left and saw another stag with a rider clinging to its back: Sidorzi, the dead shaman. The revenant was laughing like a fiend. Then two more shapes appeared behind him, shrieking madly: Eyrik and Luhti, all their gentle humanity subsumed in the lust of the hunt. They were somewhere between dead and alive, their skulls coated in cold blueish flesh, their eyes like pits. Behind them a misty horde of ghostly wolves and other frost-rimed beasts yowled.

  Then Zlateyr ranged up beside him, his drawn sword flickering with lightning, and as their eyes met, fierce, bloody joy erupted from their throats.

  Onwards!

  They broke through the trees and onto the plains as Kyrik cried aloud and Valdyr’s vision flashed forward to Robear Delestre, standing on a rocky slope in the midst of a crowd of Rondians a mile or so away and looking at him—

  —and an instant later, they were there.

  *

  Sacrista, still dazed, looked about for her brother. There he was, coming towards her with a wry smile on his face, twirling her sword.

  She tried to stand, and one of the bankers’ sons caught her arm, his self-satisfied face aping sympathy. ‘Can you ride, Lady Sacrista?’ he said. ‘If you’ve lost your horse, you can share mine—’

  She slapped his arm away and took a step, but had to grab at him again.

  ‘I’ve got you,’ he said, with condescending concern.

  The sun was gone and dark clouds were pouring down from the north. The wind was shrilling, frigid air slapped her face – and she thought she caught a glimpse of something in the storm. Something impossible. She tried to scream a warning, but it was already too late.

  *

  Kyrik lay in an agony of physical and mental torment as a Rondian battle-mage bent over him.

  Where’s Hajya? God of All, let her have escaped—

  There were well-dressed Rondians with pompous voices all round him. Sacrista was on her feet, clinging to a richly dressed lowlander. Her thigh was bloody, but she was alive, and the taste of defeat soured his mouth.

  Not the dungeon again, he prayed.

  Then thunder cracked again, building in intensity, and he shuddered at another sudden drop in temperature. All around, men were shouting about finding shelter.

  ‘Right you, hold still.’ The battle-mage standing over him shook him, making his head spin even more wildly ‘Sooner we’re done, the sooner we can get under cover.’ He opened his palm, beginning a Chain-rune—

  —when a shard of ice flashed through the man, piercing his left breast. He choked and crumpled to the ground, blood gushing from the wound – and instantly freezing.

  Kyrik stared, stunned, as blackness flowed from the east. Beasts roared and howled and bellowed and the thunder in the sky became the thunder of hooves.

  *

  The White Stag roared and Valdyr saw the flash of a hated face and swung his sword. The head flew and the body crumpled as he swept past, and in his wake a blast of frozen air struck the ridge. To the left and right, the four Watchers were carving down any Rondians standing, but it was the storm that was dealing the real killing blows: in moments the whole of the Delestre force was engulfed and trapped inside a dark world where flesh froze and bones broke into slivers and steel shattered. He pulled his steed about to see wolves of ice and fog rend a horse; he heard Zlateyr’s bow ring and an arrow slammed into a Rondian commander’s chest; he saw a line of rankers lurch to a frozen halt; he saw men and horses freeze solid, fall and shatter on the rocks.

  Onwards!

  Hundreds of Rondians were fleeing across the open ground towards Magas Gorge. He swept towards them, mowing down all those he passed. The Watchers in his wake were revelling in the destruction as the soft, warm auras of the living winked out.

  He craved more – then he sensed thousands of souls somewhere ahead. He led his ghostly band right to the lip of the cliff, stopping on the very edge of the precipice to survey the scene below. His stag snorted, the wolves howled and ice and snow ran like a frozen river over the rim.

  Below were hundreds, maybe thousands of Sydians and their horses, gathered for the difficult climb to the cliff-top. A sea of faces stared up at him, frightened by all they could hear and feel, even more by what they couldn’t see but could imagine.

  Then he saw that there were still living men on the cliff-top around him: men he knew: Vitezai Sarkanum men. He stared at them and became – just a little – more himself and less the hunter.

  He turned to Zlateyr. ‘These people below are Vlpa.’

  ‘Our people,’ the folk-hero replied. ‘Your people.’

  My People. Valdyr still felt the urge to continue the slaughter. His heart was thundering, his rage blazing – but other needs were now pulling at him, and the force that had borne him along suddenly wavered.

  ‘The foe is destroyed,’ he managed, and a wave of dizziness threatened. ‘These are my people.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s my brother?’

  Zlateyr pointed back up to the ridgeline and Valdyr’s preternatural senses showed him a mound lying unmoving on the frosted slope.

  ‘KYRIK!’ He leaped from the stag and ran – and suddenly he was there, right where his brother was. He barely noticed as a bitter wind swept in and the Watchers and beasts of the hunt began to fray until one final, massive gust tore the ghostly hunt apart and swept the glittering dust of their passing in a skywards spiral.

  A curtain of white closed in.

  39

  A Broken Bastion

  Imperial Owls

  The owl is the chosen badge of the Imperial Secret Service or ‘Volsai’ – magi sworn to the throne and pledged to guard against treachery. Ironically, they have become synonymous with treachery themselves, as the degree of literal and metaphorical backstabbing among the Owls is legendary.

  ORDO COSTRUO COLLEGIATE, PONTUS, 883

  The Bastion, Pallas

  Junesse 935

  Ril and Mort called air to their lungs and kinesis to their legs to augment their strength. Both were warrior-fit, used to drilling for hours, and they ate up the distance. The passage ran deeper and deeper at first, but after about ten minutes – perhaps a mile of the three or four they must traverse – it levelled. Another twenty minutes and they were climbing. Both were now sweating in pools, their lungs burning.

  ‘Reckon we’re under the docklands yet?’ Mort panted.

  ‘Can’t be . . . far off . . .’ gasped Ril. ‘Those bastards must’ve run like the wind.’

  ‘They had a good half an hour on us, probably more. But we can’t be far behind now – smell that? The stink’s much worse.’

  They stumbled to a walk by mutual consent as the climb became steeper. ‘If they were just sick people, they couldn’t do this,’ Ril noted, once he could breathe again.

  ‘Aye,’ Mort grunted. ‘There were quarantines in Pallas-Nord too,’ he added, and that thought was enough to make them lurch into a jog again.

  They reached a branch, ignored the tunnel that lacked the stench of the Reekers and ploughed onwards until their own route ended in a stair that spiralled anti-clockwise upwards into the rock.

  The stone was still too thick for clairvoyance to penetrate – Ril aborted his call to Lyra the moment he felt the aether shiver at his attempt. If their enemies sensed them, they could easily be bottled up in this stairwell.r />
  ‘What’re the odds we’re right beneath the Bastion?’ Mort muttered. He pulled an axe from his back and took the lead. ‘Come on!’

  They climbed in silence, gnostic-lamps lighting as they approached and fading as they passed. The climb was sapping, and whenever they paused to listen, they still heard nothing ahead. Then Ril felt the faintest touch of cleaner air and spotted a tiny ventilation shaft, just a slit in the stone – but more followed. They were getting closer. The walls changed from stone to brick, so they must now be climbing through the lower palace, hidden behind supposedly solid walls.

  ‘We have Earth-magi,’ he gasped to Mort. ‘Why doesn’t Dirk know about this tunnel already?’

  ‘Spoken like an Air-mage,’ Mort sniffed. ‘You have no idea what you’re asking.’

  The climb ended abruptly at a door that had been left ajar, the lintel filthy from the passage of many feet. The trail led down a dusty corridor and through another entrance, this one built into the wall so cleverly it was near invisible from the other side. They made their way into a marble-tiled corridor hung with portraits. Oil-lamps guttered here and there, too few to do much to alleviate the gloom.

  ‘The Gallery of Remembrance,’ Ril whispered. ‘Second level.’ Carved and painted faces stared at them, but the passage was empty of life.

  Mort indicated the trail of muddied feet running right and then veering left. ‘This leads to the gallery above the throne room,’ he murmured. ‘Can we risk a call?’

  But before Ril could start, the distant boom of a bell echoed out of the silence, getting louder as others joined in, and Mort clapped his shoulders, his face wide-eyed. ‘We’re too late – the alarm is raised – the attack has begun!’

  *

  The Bastion, Pallas

  Solon Takwyth strode the high inner wall of the Bastion, a cohort of Imperial Guards in his wake, until he spotted a knot of men led by Oryn Levis – Lumpy, his former second. They all looked frightened.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he called. ‘Who’s the foe here?’

  ‘It’s the riverreek sufferers,’ Levis replied, shouting above the racket. ‘There’s a quarantine pen below us in Fisheart – there’ve been disturbances all week, and ten minutes ago a horde of them leaped the fences and tore into the perimeter guards!’

  ‘Oryn, is this fuss just a bunch of rioting Reekers?’

  ‘So we thought,’ Levis replied, ‘but look—’ He jabbed a finger towards the outer battlements. ‘The Reekers have broken out and they’re scaling the Bastion walls!’

  Takwyth could see the riverside areas of Pallas-Nord, where lantern-lit ferries bobbed in the distance. Southside looked serene, the Celestium shining above the river – but he could hear alarm bells tolling across the Bruin. And to the southwest, Surrid was burning.

  Chaos is spreading . . . just as the Puppeteer said it would . . .

  The second curtain-wall where they stood was separated from the lower outer wall by a two-hundred-foot-wide killing zone. There was another empty space between the curtain-wall and the palace behind them. Takwyth looked around: they were right below the royal suite, and lights were glowing from the balcony window of Lyra Vereinen’s rooms five storeys above them. There were no outside steps other than the narrow stone staircase that wound around a buttress to the Queen’s Winter Garden.

  So two walls and a sheer climb . . . ‘How are they reaching the battlements?’

  ‘They’re climbing,’ Levis said incredulously. ‘Look! Bare-handed – it’s unbelievable!’

  Movement on the battlements of the outer wall below caught their eyes. The soldiers stationed there had been jabbing downwards with pikes and spears, presumably knocking the climbers off the walls, although they’d not heard anyone cry out. But the first of the assailants had reached the top: the ragged woman swatted a man so hard he was thrown wailing from the wall to crash, broken, in the killing zone. Another guard speared the woman through the chest – but unbelievably, she didn’t fall. Instead, she gripped the man’s spear and held it inside herself. The guard was drawing his sword when another Reeker emerged over the top and hurled himself at him, sending both guard and woman spiralling into the killing zone below.

  ‘What the Hel?’ Levis exclaimed, pointing to where the fallen Reeker-woman had stood up and was shaking off the crushed body of the man who’d fallen with her. Then she walked to the inner wall and began to climb, hand over fist.

  Levis looked at Takwyth with a growing look of desperation, his eyes imploring his friend to make sense of this: to be the knight, the protector.

  Lumpy’s not made for nights like this. Time to take charge . . . Solon drew his sword. ‘Steady, Oryn. We’re magi of Coraine.’ He turned to the senior man of his guard. These were ordinary men, not magi. ‘Form up on these walls – swords, not spears,’ he ordered calmly. ‘You saw what happened below – don’t let that be you. A man can’t climb if he’s got no hands, eh? Think about it—’

  Below them, the outer wall was now engulfed. Rolven Sulpeter had appeared on a buttress tower, surrounded by mage-knights, men of his retinue, together with the Joyce brothers and Jos Bortolin. They were holding, blasting the attackers on the battlements and sending fire and lightning down on the climbers, but the ordinary guardsmen were being overrun; they were conceding the battlements. There was no way they could cover the whole of the walls. They needed more men here, and especially more magi.

  Where are Ril Endarion and Dirklan Setallius? he wondered.

  More and more of the Reekers were pouring unopposed over the top of the outer wall, but they weren’t turning on the towers. Instead, they dropped straight to the killing ground below – then immediately began to scale the sheer walls, scrabbling like insects, their upturned faces pallid and deathly. They barely needed to grip: traces of kinesis were visible to his gnostic sight. They were making directly for him – and the royal suite, right behind.

  ‘Draw weapons,’ he shouted, ‘protect the walls!’

  The guards had barely a moment to ready themselves. The bells were tolling furiously as the Reekers came on – dozens now, almost a hundred, Takwyth reckoned as he slammed a mage-bolt into a middle-aged burgher with a paunch – who yowled, his chest all but burst open, and kept climbing.

  Beside him Levis blasted another with fire and kinesis, knocking him from the wall – but they were the only magi here. Takwyth glanced to his right and saw the first of the horde reach his cohort: his men were busy hacking off hands, and the first few riverreek victims were knocked back down the walls.

  Then a woman who looked like a fishwife grasped the sword one man was using and pinned it to the stone, then slammed her fingers through the guard’s eye-sockets, using the leverage to pull herself onto the battlements. Her silence was as terrifying as a berserker’s roar. Someone discharged a crossbow, the quarrel slammed into her chest and she recoiled against the battlement crenulations . . . then attacked again.

  ‘Holy Hels,’ Levis gasped, then they both waded in. Although they blasted climber after climber, combining fire and kinesis to clear a small swathe in the hordes below, their men were clearly wavering as people who should have been stunned or slain fought on with terrifying strength. Levis looked as pale as the diseased, but he torched another man and sent him spinning out into the void. Then with a clatter, a contingent of half a dozen battle-magi swept in and four windskiffs soared out of the darkness, everyone on board blasting away simultaneously with mage-fire.

  ‘Spread out!’ Takwyth shouted to the newcomers, experienced mage-knights, he was relieved to see, led by Jorden Falquist. ‘Plug the gaps – stand firm!’ He paused to send a diseased, half-naked woman with a crossbow bolt already through her left breast spinning away from the walls, then a Reeker launched himself at him, while two more grabbed the guard beside him.

  He parried and kicked away another attacker, buying a second, and knocked his foe off-balance, then thrust, feeding mage-fire along his blade as his sword slid between the man’s ribs and int
o his heart – and the organ exploded—

  —making the burgher snarl with fury. He raked at Takwyth’s face, so he kicked him off his blade and swept it into a roundhouse two-handed blow. Gnosis-sharpened steel cleaved neck-muscles and tore through the spinal column and the head and body separated. The man dropped – and didn’t rise.

  ‘Behead them!’ he shouted. ‘Behead them!’

  But there was no respite: another wave was breaking over the top, diseased men in filthy Imperial Guard uniforms who shrugged off the storm of mage-bolts and other spells, hammering their weapons into the midriffs of four defenders before they could even blink. Solon saw Jorden Falquist tumble from the battlements and the young lad next to him went down in the grip of three Reekers, who were biting at his neck and thighs until his veins started running black, like roots spreading through his flesh.

  They were being swamped.

  Then his attackers left the wildly flailing lad and launched themselves at him. With his left hand and kinesis he hurled one away and hacked the arm off another, then crunched his blade into the man’s neck – but the angle was wrong. Instead of lopping the head off, the blade buried itself in the Reeker’s collarbone. He had to hurl more kinesis at the third before kindling raw energy in his blade and kicked the second away, to give himself a moment’s respite so he could finish the job, almost burying his sword in the stone as he decapitated the attacker, and only then was he able to check on the fallen guard—

  —who snarled and rose from the battlements, his eyes blazing amber. For a moment, Takwyth was stunned into immobility, and the man launched himself at him—

  —and was hurled away by Oryn Levis, who grabbed his arm as he teetered on the edge of the drop into the inner grounds, then hauled him to safety. But they were breached: the few survivors were staggering back along the battlements as a sea of attackers came swarming onwards, dropping from the wall and then climbing the side of the inner bailey . . .

  . . . towards my Empress . . .