Empress of the Fall
Page 70
In response, Bruss Lamgren leaped from the stage, his two-handed sword held high, and swept it in an arc that beheaded a portly courtier while Jenet Brunlye randomly blazed death-light spells into the press, her face contorted in glee.
No! Ril leaped forty feet from his vantage to the floor below, landing between the courtiers and the advancing Reekers, who’d been thrown into confusion by Tear’s injuries. Some came straight at him: the first he slammed aside with kinesis, the next he blasted with a mage-bolt as Mort crashed to the floor beside him, his twin axes flashing. The advancing Reekers recoiled, and the courtiers spilled towards them.
‘Get out of the damned way,’ Ril shouted as he stormed towards the dais. He saw Cordan up there, his arrogant young face white with shock, and shouted, ‘Cordan! To me!’ as he hacked down one Reeker, then another, painfully aware that these were his own people, no matter what was currently driving them.
Then Lamgren was upon him, that immense zweihandle whistling past his head as he ducked and almost smashing his sword from his hands with the back-stroke. Ril fired mage-bolts and then kinesis at him, all of which was shielded as if the blows meant nothing – but for all its power, the zweihandle was a slower weapon than his, and somehow he managed to deflect it high, then stab his sword-tip into Lamgren’s chest, punching through shields and breastplate . . .
To his amazement the man didn’t even acknowledge the blow; he just grabbed Ril’s gauntlet, and baring impossibly long fangs, tried to bite his wrist. His strength was hideous, and Ril almost lost his sword—
Then Mort’s battle-axe severed the man’s neck and Ril almost overbalanced as the headless torso collapsed. He wrenched his blade free, darted in behind the whirl of the axeman’s blades and ran towards Cordan again, while Mort took his back against half a dozen Reekers who came at him.
Cordan was transfixed by the horror before him. Jenet was still standing on the stage above, blazing violet light at the nearest courtier-mage, ripping away his shields and crumbling the man’s hand to the bone. As he howled and dropped to his knees, Jenet saw Ril and for a second he was sure there was something that went beyond recognition to empathy, to remembrance.
Then her eyes blazed and an intense bolt of purple light flashed towards him—
—but Ril was already moving and conjuring – necromancy might be a blind spot for him, but illusion wasn’t, and he feinted left with a blur of himself while really darting right, and Jenet’s blaze of death-magic washed over the men attacking Mort instead. They fell lifeless to the ground, allowing Ril to reach the stage in a flowing leap that placed him between Cordan and her.
She’s not Jenet any more, Ril’s brain screamed – but he still couldn’t bring himself to unleash a fatal blow. They’d invested so much in shared dreaming and planning, even though their paths had led different places . . .
He drove in and wouldn’t let her escape him, battering aside the iron rod with his left hand as it unleashed a blaze of energy that wasted itself scouring the painted ceiling. For a moment she was at his mercy – her shields were as strong as he’d ever encountered, but a thrust from a pure-blood’s blade could punch through steel plate. She might have raw power beyond him now, but combat was also about speed, skill, precision and experience, and whatever owned her couldn’t quite transcend her own limitations in the arts of war. He tore her shields open, then thrust—
But combat was also about choices: he couldn’t kill Jenet.
His brain caught his reflexes in time to divert his own blow and pierce her shoulder instead of her left breast – and a flash in her black eyes told him she recognised what he’d done. For a moment, the thing inside her was blinked away and he believed she could be redeemed.
She lurched sideways, staggered and fell, calling his name.
Then her face changed and he knew he’d lost his chance, wasted on misguided mercy, forfeiting himself for a memory. She lifted the iron rod, the ruby blazed—
—as Mort’s axe crashed through the back of her shielding in a burst of sparks and clove through her neck. For a moment he was stunned immobile, his heart pounding, but Mort’s furious roar brought him back. ‘Fight or die, boy!’
Then Mort was surging on, hacking down another attacker, clearing a path towards Tear and the boy-prince.
‘Cordan – come to me,’ Ril called. ‘Come here!’
Then Tear, one arm hanging limp and her shoulder and thigh transfixed by crossbow bolts, rasped, ‘Come to me, Cordan.’ Her words were heavy with mesmeric-gnosis. ‘Only I can save you now.’
‘Cordan,’ Ril shouted, ‘stay here—’ His back was unprotected, but he sensed Mort behind him, and at the fringes of his awareness, the battle cries of the Imperial Guard as they stormed into the room, scattering the Reekers before them.
Henrik, you really did save the realm, Ril thought wildly, but he never took his eyes off Tear. ‘You heard what she said before, Cordan,’ he called. ‘You’re just a disposable piece in a game to her. Come back here, to me.’
The Sacrecour prince wavered, then with a wail, he hurled himself at Ril, who swept the boy behind him and raised his shields.
Tear straightened, her wounds turning purple and bones popping back into place. ‘Bad choice, Sacrecour,’ she snarled, stalking towards them.
The Winter Garden, The Bastion, Pallas
The balcony was broken, but the stair was anchored by the pillar it spiralled around. I have to get to my garden – but the top stair hung in space, five feet from the edge of the stonework.
Anyone with a little athleticism could have leaped the gap without difficulty, but Lyra’s belly was heavy and fear had turned her legs to jelly.
Behind her, the two knights crashed together, snorting like rutting stags. Sparks flew from gnostic shields, steel crashed on steel and stray mage-bolts shattered in dazzling sprays of light. Takwyth was being driven back. The gulf loomed before her, pulling at her, the drop yawning like a giant’s mouth.
Then her unborn child kicked, and adrenalin and need broke her paralysis. She backed up, took three rapid steps and leaped. Her front foot landed on a step, her back one swished in the air; she teetered and grabbed at the broken handrail—
—and for a dreadful moment she swung over the empty space, just clinging on, then she pulled herself back and hauled herself safely onto the stairs. For a moment she lay gasping and shaking. Corineus my Saviour, thank you!
She clambered to her feet, still wobbling, and looked back to see Takwyth and Twoface smashing their weapons together, then staggering apart, both off-balance. A mage-bolt caught Takwyth in the chest, but he lurched upright again and repositioned himself again between her and the masked knight.
He really is loyal. He’s prepared to die for me . . . But where’s Ril?
Urgency re-imposed itself and she wobbled down the stairs as fast as she dared, clinging to the rail as she went round and round, until, dizzy, she stepped onto the lawn at the edge of the rose-bower – just as a great crunching blow and a cry resounded from the room above.
She looked up and saw an armoured shape at the edge of the hole in the wall.
*
The duel lost all pattern amidst a sight-defying swirl of blows and counter-blows, physical and gnostic, instincts honed by decades of drills and the ‘kill or be killed’ chaos of the mêlée. Solon Takwyth was no longer thinking, just acting and reacting, caught up in the dance of death.
Twoface was too much for him, that was becoming clear as every fleeting second revealed a new twist to his powers: a death-light blast of necromancy; a spiratus-blade thrust from a phantom dagger that flashed in and out of existence in his right hand. Solon was bleeding from a dozen places now, slowing, hurt. Losing.
He’d never lost a fight. He refused to. Anger sustained him, driving him to ask more and more of himself. He was leaping and twisting like a far younger man, calling on outrageous movements he’d lost years ago, his spine and his tendons screaming, his lungs moving like forge-bellows. Beneath his a
rmour he was soaked in sweat; perspiration stung his eyes, his sight blurring . . .
But there were soldiers closing in – he could hear voices, and the aether crackled with calls:
KRANG! He blocked Twoface’s axe, and again, defending now, just holding on for help. They’d been going at it like this for – what? Two, three minutes? An age in combat. The ballads that sang of day-long combats were drivel, as any real fighter knew. Duels lasted half a minute, seldom more. This was an epic.
But it ended seconds later . . . He blocked three blows that would have levelled houses and their weapons locked, gauntlets entangled. He tried to head-butt Twoface away and their eyes locked – mesmeric-gnosis slammed through him, ripped at his mental defences and speared his vision, and then—
—he was in the Celestium, he’d just punched Endarion and Lyra was staring at him in shock as his world collapsed . . .
Twoface’s axe-haft swam through the vision and slammed into the gorget that protected his throat, crushing the metal and caving it in, ripping flesh and smashing his left collarbone. He went over backwards, still fighting for balance, but then he was treading air as he went spinning away, too numbed to shield. He smashed into the branches of a tree and splintered them, heard three limbs snap, felt his back pierced in two places as blood burst from his mouth and nose, then darkness poured in.
*
The Celestium, Pallas
In the first seconds of the assault, Dominius Wurther couldn’t tell if all was lost or all was won. As the masked prelates rose to their feet, surrounding the man in the lacquered Jest mask, the amount of gnosis-energy that boiled around them was truly daunting. That he was standing before his throne, like a target, made it all the more frightening. But his guards, no doubt motivated as much by self-preservation as loyalty, were fighting with desperate courage.
A storm of gnosis-fire slammed into the circle of protection about him, turning them from translucent pale blue to an opaque scarlet as it wavered and began to fray.
‘Kore be with us!’ he bellowed, and threw his own not inconsiderable powers into the wards at precisely the moment they began to fail.
In mass mage combat, where any kind of attack could come from any direction, defence was imperative; fortunately, defensive gnosis was stronger and easier than attacking – but an overwhelming attack; or of a sort that wasn’t expected, could still get through. Amidst the torrent of fire and projectiles, a finger’s-wide flash of purple light lanced through and one of the man at his side collapsed, his whole face turning to a flaking skull, then crumbling inwards. His defenders closed ranks and deepened their defences, but unless they countered, it was just a matter of time . . .
Then Wilfort’s men, led by his marshals, burst through the doors of the upper gallery. The Kirkegarde mage-knights were fully shielded and armed for battle, while the soldiers behind them were carrying crossbows, chosen for their penetrating power. A sustained volley burst the bubble of energy around Jest’s corrupted prelates and at least four went down. For a moment, Wurther believed they’d turned the tide.
Then those prelates who’d gone down simply stood again – and a devastating wall of flame and lightning burst over the gallery, with horrifying results. Black smoke engulfed the area, and apart from a few of the marshals who’d kept their personal shielding tight, the rest were burned to nothing. One of the marshals summoned Air-gnosis, trying to make the air breathable – which allowed him to be singled out: a dozen blasts slammed into him and he went up like a spilled oil-lamp.
The chamber was filled with smoke and flame, throwing everything into confusion. Wilfort was pouring men in from all sides, and Jest’s prelates were being struck from all sides – but they kept on getting up. Wurther backed to the edge of his Circle, not quite scared yet, but very, very nervous.
Then a third wave of Kirkegarde burst in from the opposite side, more crossbows cracked, more bolts flew and though most were shattering on the shielding, some punched through, and more of Jest’s people went down, some with three or more bolts sticking out of their flesh.
And still they kept getting up.
Draugs? Can they be draugs? ‘Necromancy!’ the grand prelate shouted, aloud and into the aether, knowing the Kirkegarde magi would pick it up and use the appropriate counter-spells.
Then a fourth wave of men smashed into the chamber, into the lower reaches, and at first he thought they were Wilfort’s men – although there had to be more than three hundred in the galleries already – but he quickly realised that instead of assailing Jest’s people, they were swarming up the walls, adhering like spiders, then pouring into the upper seats and engaging Wilfort’s men. They looked like draugs, but they moved fast. The ordinary soldiers, already caught up in a gnostic maelstrom, were panicking, for the hordes were refusing to fall. Then Wurther’s guard came under direct attack as the draugs turned on them.
His own affinities were rooted in Earth and Sorcery; necromancy was something he practised, obviously within the very strict guidelines of the faith. A draug was a corpse inhabited by the spiratus of a dead man: a spirit which still lingered, reluctant or unable to leave this world. Most spirits couldn’t inhabit a body – the energy of the living was too strong, and they didn’t have enough energy to reanimate a corpse on their own. A necromancer could facilitate that – or cancel it.
Violet light formed around his hands, he shouted aloud and sent a necromantic spirit-banishing rippling towards the clustered attackers, fully expecting them to collapse lifeless. Instead they kept coming, tearing at his knight-protectors, and at last he began to feel real fear.
They’re not draugs – so what the Hel are they?
The Scriptorium Chamber had become a slaughterhouse, but the attackers wouldn’t stop coming, and they wouldn’t die. It was Wilfort’s men who were going down and staying down.
‘Retreat,’ Wurther shouted, ‘to the Sanctum—’
In the gallery above, Wilfort was nowhere to be seen, but his men were already falling back in disarray. The chamber was lost, but there was a narrow corridor behind his plinth that led to the Grand Prelate’s Sanctum. He tried to keep his men together as they shielded and gave ground, but the not-draugs stepped aside and then it was Jest and his masked prelates before him, driving them backwards with a torrent of mage-fire. The lacquered mask heightened the apparent indestructibility of the man behind it.
Then there were just two men left to protect Wurther, and they must have realised they were doomed, because they wailed despairingly and threw themselves into one final assault, only to be met by a storm of kinesis-blows that broke their limbs and then their necks. The power used was simple and devastating, and delivered with terrifying efficiency.
And now there was no one between Wurther and his foe as he fell backwards through the Sanctum, barely able to counter the mage-bolts and gnostic fire that crackled around him. His robes were charred, his hair singed, his eyes blurring. Disbelief left him stunned: he’d never quite believed that he wouldn’t die in his bed.
Jest advanced, flicking his crozier, and another blast of kinesis hurled Wurther against the defensive barrier he’d been trying to create, shattering it and smashing him into an iron grille that gouged his back – but the padlock shattered and the door opened: a passageway to somewhere, anywhere. Wurther took it, hurtling at a speed he’d not been able to manage for decades, and found himself pelting through old catacombs he’d never realised existed, his enemy trailing him, blasting the stonework of ancient sarcophagi and memorials, until he burst through a forgotten doorway and into the space before a low mound topped by a single tree.
The Shrine of Saint Eloy.
He turned, caught at bay as Jest emerged like a stalking wolf. Behind him, the tunnel filled with more figures: masked prelates and diseased commoners, many bearing wounds that shou
ld have killed them. They filed into the open behind Jest and fanned out, facing the grand prelate.
‘For dignity’s sake, Dominius,’ Jest called, ‘stop running. Die with courage.’
Wurther had always thought courage and dignity overrated, but right now he could see nowhere else to go. Above him was the small hillock surmounted by the Winter Tree, standing stark and bare. In the mound’s base was the cave where Saint Eloy had lived almost his entire life: the heart of Koredom on Urte.
A decent place to die, he decided.
Apparently Jest thought so too. ‘It’s good that you’ve come here, Dominius,’ he remarked. ‘The place of vigil: a fine place to end your reign and begin the new age.’ He gestured with his crozier. ‘Kneel.’
‘I’m Kore’s voice on Urte, Ostevan,’ Wurther wheezed. ‘I don’t kneel.’
Kinesis-blows hammered him front and back, pummelling him until he crumpled to his knees, his face slamming into the stones. His vision blurred and blood and snot splattered on the tiles. He tried to rise, but he felt like he was clamped in irons.
‘Of course you kneel, Dom. We all kneel to someone.’
Jest walked slowly forward, transmuting his crozier into a reaper’s scythe.
42
The Winter Garden
Empires
The Yoths of northern Yuros, the Persei of Lantris, the Rimoni: every empire of the past has fallen, leaving only the dusty memories of old glories, hubris and evil. Why do you believe the Rondians will be any different?