The Core

by Peter V. Brett

  —

  Inevera drew a ward with her wand as the field demon kicked off the wall and leapt at her.

  But even the wand, its core the ulna of a mind demon, had limits. Its power spent, Inevera barely had time to slap the demon’s jaws aside and roll with the impact, keeping hold of the alagai to stay in close and out of reach of the creature’s scrabbling claws.

  From her belt Inevera pulled her curved knife, slashing open the demon’s vulnerable belly. Black ichor spattered her grimy silks, and she thrust the wand into the wound before the demon’s magic could knit it closed. He fingers danced across the wards carved into the bone, Drawing hard.

  In Everam’s light, it seemed the creature turned inside out as the magic was sucked from the ichor in its veins, refilling some of the wand’s reserve. She left it twitching on the cobbles as another demon came at her, this one neatly speared by Drillmaster Qeran, who advanced to cover her with his mirrored shield.

  Jarvah had the opposite flank, methodically hacking at the arms of a bog demon like she was pruning branches from a tree. It spat at her, but Jarvah battled the globule aside with her shield. It struck a stone wall, smoking as it burned.

  All around the ambush pocket, battle raged. A Push Guard of Sharum’ting drove a group of demons into a makeshift demon pit, a circle of one-way wards. Demons trapped inside would be held until dawn, if the circle was not broken.

  Asukaji spun his thick hora staff like a whip staff, crushing demon heads with the impact wards on the heavy end. His knuckles were covered in warded silvers, and his blows fell like thunderclaps upon the enemy. A wood demon broke through the Push Guard, but Asukaji was there, drawing wards in the air to force it back into the pit.

  This group contained, Inevera reached out with her senses, pulling at the flows of magic on the air. Tasting them.

  “This way.” She pointed with her wand. Astride her black charger, Sikvah fell in beside her, she and Jarvah weaving their voices together. The effect their song had on the ambient magic in the air was different from that of warding, but no less pronounced. She felt the spellsong weave invisibility about her as the Sharum’ting who followed did to themselves.

  Many of the demons flooding the town were of the common variety, seemingly moving without guidance beyond their own violent lusts. But there were others, alagai plucked from deep in the abyss, ancient and full of magic. Two such giants were tearing through an entire company of chi’Sharum in a small square ahead.

  Cloaked by Sikvah’s song, Inevera and her company were invisible to the demons until they struck. Cobbles exploded as Asukaji drew wards with his staff, knocking the demons off balance. Sikvah lowered her long spear and galloped at one of them, taking the demon full in the belly in an attack timed precisely to add to its stumble.

  Indeed, the twenty-foot demon went down on one knee, but the blow, which might have killed a common rock demon, seemed little more than an annoyance. Sikvah tried to pull the spear free, but it resisted her, and in that instant’s hesitation the demon swiped, taking the horse from under her.

  Sikvah leapt clear in time, landing in a roll and coming back up with her shield and short stabbing spear raised. She was a blur as she moved back in, dancing around the demon’s heavy blows. Again and again she struck with her glass spear, sending flares of magic and pain through the demon, but the attacks only seemed to anger it.

  Asukaji kept hammering the other demon with impact wards until it fell, the chi’Sharum casting chains to tangle its legs. Wards flared and strained as the powerful demon flexed and tested their strength.

  Jarvah and Sharu swept in, brother and sister side by side as they hacked at the demon’s chest. The demon swiped a great arm, throwing Sharum from their feet. Its legs kicked, and the warriors desperately pulling the chain were rung like bells on a ribbon.

  Still Jarvah and Sharu worked, protecting each other with their shields as they timed their precise blows.

  Like Sikvah’s, the attacks seemed to do no lasting damage, until Sharu made the last stroke and the rock ward cut into the demon’s breastplate activated, drawing on the alagai’s own power to form a forbidding. The ward grew brighter and brighter until the lines blended together and the demon’s chest shattered.

  The remaining warriors fell on the last demon like ants on a melon rind, hacking the powerful creature into less powerful pieces. Inevera went to the corpse of its fellow, putting her wand in the ruin of its chest and Drawing, refilling the reservoir.

  Her arm burned, wand hand aching. There was only so much magic a body could channel and survive. Already, her eyes were dry, throat and sinuses burning, muscles aflame.

  But there was no time to ponder limits. Bog demons poured into the streets, the walls all but gone now. How long had they been fighting? How many hours until dawn? Time was lost in the battle, in the hunt. It seemed like days since she led two hundred singing Sharum’ting from the town center. The time before felt like another life.

  There were too many demons.

  “All forces disengage and fall back to the forbidding!” Inevera used her earrings to send the call to her sister-wives to pass to their kai’Sharum.

  Sikvah lifted her head as horns sounded. “Three Sharum units trapped in the third layer.”

  Inevera pulled her wand, near fully charged, from the demon’s chest with a squelch. “Lead the way.”

  —

  Inevera’s arm was leaden, hora wand drained. Her throat burned as she shouted commands, muscles screaming as she fought and ran.

  The warriors didn’t feel it—energized every time their warded weapons struck the enemy—but the hora users spent something of themselves every time they channeled the power. Asukaji leaned on his staff, aura dangerously dim.

  “You cannot keep this up,” she said to him. “Use your staff and your silvers, but draw no more wards.”

  “What about you?” Asukaji asked. “I can see your aura dimming as well, Damajah.”

  “I have been doing this far longer than you, nephew,” Inevera said, but she knew he was right.

  “We won’t turn the tide fighting hand-to-hand,” Asukaji said.

  Indeed, their situation was steadily worsening. On a small rise overlooking the battle, Inevera could see the shattered gates, demons crowding to push through. The Maze was lost, alagai slowly pushing the defenders in toward the weakening pillow throne. The bay churned with water demons.

  But then a horn cut through the night, accompanied by the sound of thunder. Magic began to flare beyond the wall as three hundred spears tore into the demon ranks from behind.

  Jurim had arrived with the Wolves of Everam to nip their heels.

  —

  The dama’ting oversaw harvesting the lifeless but still magic-rich bodies of the alagai before the dawn burned them away. They were dragged into barns and warehouses, hacked to pieces as their ichor was collected in slurry vats.

  Traditionally, the demonflesh was burned away with acid and the bones treated to prepare them for warding, but there was no time for such luxuries. The Pillow Throne’s weakened power had to be extended. Sharum Pit Warders were using the raw demonflesh to power new traps in the Maze.

  The throne would recharge naturally, Drawing ambient magic in the night, but its reserve was nearly depleted, and it might be months before regaining full power in such fashion. Inevera ordered the windows of the throne room blocked and had Asukaji’s dama using hora to speed its restoration.

  The dama’ting set up a new surgery in the basement of Jayan’s burned-out palace, working in utter darkness as they cut and stitched in Everam’s light. They painted wards around the wounds with the ichor slurry, speeding healing of injuries that might otherwise take longer than the Pillow Throne to recover.

  Inevera herself worked the tables, advising her sister-wives and taking the most difficult cases upon herself. All of them were drained and exhausted, moving from battlefield to surgery with time for little more than to scrub and put on fresh robes.

&n
bsp; However much she tried to focus on the patient in front of her, Inevera could not help but see auras in her peripheral vision. The dim glow of the exhausted dama’ting. The fluttering light of the wounded. The hollow emptiness in the air when one winked out forever. Many of them were former Spears of the Deliverer, warriors who had slain alagai alongside her husband for twenty-five years.

  The Wolves of Everam had taken heavy losses. Jurim’s charge at the head of three hundred fresh dal’Sharum warriors made the difference in finding the dawn, the chaos of the Wolves’ mad assault upending the careful, even press of the alagai ka.

  But the alagai would return at dusk for the second night of Waning, having already broken their outer defenses beyond repair, and devastated their fighting number. Even if some survived until the dawn, the third night of Waning would be their undoing.

  There was a feather brush against the entrance curtains, a series of layers of thick velvet to prevent the slightest hint of sunlight in the room where the dama’ting worked their healing spells.

  “Speak,” Inevera said.

  “Damajah, you are needed on the docks.” Sikvah used the magic of her choker to deliver the words to her ears alone.

  Inevera handed off her patient and moved through the curtains to the scrub room, where she immediately began stripping her bloody robes. “Report.”

  “The fish men have come,” Sikvah said, handing her a cake of soap.

  “Everam’s balls.” Inevera spit blood into the drain of the scrub sink. “How many?”

  Servants were already rushing to towel her dry and help her into fresh robes of deep blue silk.

  “All of them,” Sikvah said.

  —

  Inevera blinked in the bright daylight as she stepped from the makeshift Chamber of Shadows. The sun was high in the sky, glittering off the water.

  Or what little water there was. Hundreds of ships crowded the bay, floating amid the wreckage of the Krasian fleet. More boats than Inevera had ever imagined could exist.

  “Should not the dice have warned of this?” Asukaji asked.

  “They might have, had I bothered to ask. The alagai hora volunteer nothing, nephew. The focus of my castings this past week has been the alagai and our defenses, not the doings of the fish men.”

  She volunteered much with the words, piercing her own aura of infallibility, but the boy had earned the lesson. The dama already experimented with the wards of foretelling.

  “Even battered and exhausted, our warriors can make them pay a bloody price for the beach,” Sikvah said, “but against such numbers, the fish men will overwhelm us.”

  Asukaji spat in the water. “They are no better than servants of Nie, striking when the alagai have weakened our defenses.”

  “It was no less than we did to them, in the Battle of Docktown,” Qeran said, “letting the alagai thin the enemy before pressing the attack. We might manage such a victory again, if we can keep the Laktonians bottled up in the bay until nightfall…”

  Inevera shook her head. “No. Not ever again. Everam will judge that night against you when you walk the lonely path, Drillmaster. You had best provide much in the balance.”

  Qeran knelt and put his hands on the dock. “I am prepared to face Everam’s eternal judgment, Damajah.”

  “Indeed.” Inevera knew that while Qeran had carried out the plan, it was born in the mind of the khaffit. Not for the first time, she wondered why she was risking so much for such a wretched creature. “If it comes to that, we will abandon the wetlands and retreat to Everam’s Bounty.” The words were bitter on her lips. “I will not let our army be destroyed for the sake of a ruined town.”

  But the Laktonians did not send their ships to storm the docks. Instead, two great vessels separated from the rest, sailing in close and releasing boats flying the white flag.

  —

  Inevera’s makeshift palace still stood, an island amid the wreckage. The warehouse floor was ruined by flood, but the upper levels remained dry and secure.

  She curled upon the Pillow Throne, pleased to see it glowing brightly once more. Enormous amounts of hora were drained to restore its well of power.

  The enemy fleet sent two emissaries, a man and a woman, to treat with them. The woman was easily recognizable from her wanted posters. “Welcome, Captain Dehlia. It is an honor to meet you. The name Sharum’s Lament carries boundless glory on the water.”

  Her eyes flicked to the man, his aura burning hot under finery that seemed too heavy on him, as if he were unused to their weight. “And you are?”

  The man strode forward. “I am Duke Isan of Lakton, elected this morning by the council of captains.”

  “Duke Reecherd is dead?” Inevera asked.

  “Killed in the night,” Isan said.

  “My people speak of you fish men as cowards, but it is bold of you to come in person, Duke Isan.” Inevera gave him a respectful nod. “Are you so confident in your numbers?”

  “I had to come,” Isan said. “Had to look you in the eye.”

  Inevera raised a brow. “Oh?”

  “The mother of the demon of Docktown,” the duke said in Krasian. “Jayan asu Ahmann am’Jardir am’Kaji, who slaughtered my family.”

  “Isan…” The name was familiar.

  “Isan asu Marten,” the duke said. “Your son stripped my father and forced him to the ground, kicking his manhood to a bloody pulp before executing him in front of my mother and her court.

  “Isan asu Isadore. My father’s body was not yet cold when Jayan asu Inevera forced a marriage contract upon my mother, and took the pen in his eye. He ran her bloodied ruin up the flagpole for all to see.

  “Isan brother of Marlan. Your drillmaster,” the duke jerked his head at Qeran, “cast tar upon my brother’s ship, and water demons dragged him and more than a hundred men down into the deep.”

  Qeran’s aura blossomed with shame at the words, but he stood silent.

  Inevera rose to her feet. “My drillmaster sinned against Everam when he exposed you to the alagai,” Inevera said. “The Creator will judge him.”

  She began to descend the steps. “My son committed grave crimes against you, for which Everam judges him, even now.”

  She reached the floor, walking toward Isan, and everyone tensed. “But it was I who ordered the attack on your people.”

  “To capture the tithe,” Isan said.

  “To capture you,” Inevera said. “To join your forces with ours in the battle against Nie.”

  She was close now. Isan looked as if he wanted to back away, but he stood his ground, meeting her eyes. In Everam’s light, she could see the blade concealed beneath his coat.

  “It is I who bears the ultimate responsibility for what was done to you and your people.” Inevera spread her arms, vulnerable in her thin silk. “Do you mean to strike the first blow for them, and cast our people into battle anew, even as Alagai Ka walks the night?”

  Isan’s eyes were wild, hand twitching toward the blade. Even now, Inevera could stop him—break his wrist before he had the weapon free of his coat—but the duke seemed to find his center, hand moving back to his side.

  “You have now looked into my eyes, Duke Isan of Lakton,” Inevera said. “What do you see?”

  “I see that you are not a coreling,” Isan said. “I see you have the only succor on the lakeshore large enough to protect my people. And so I have come personally to test your claim. Do you truly want to join with us?”

  “Everam my witness, I do,” Inevera said. “We will negotiate the terms in good faith, but in the coming night, our succor is yours as well.”

  Isan bowed stiffly. “Thank you…Damajah.”

  “Tell me what happened,” Inevera said.

  “Demons been quiet for weeks,” Dehlia said. “But the deep water began to churn at sunset last night. At first, we thought it nothing out of the ordinary, but then the leviathan demons began leaping and diving in the water, creating wave after wave, each building in intensity over the last.


  “By the time we saw it coming, we barely had time to sound the alarm. The Lament sped to the city, but what could we do to defend against such a thing?”

  “The island was flooded,” Inevera said.

  “Drowned,” Isan said, “but the island was only a tiny fraction of Lakton. Three-quarters of the city was made of hundreds of ships, lashed together around its center, connected by planks and bridges.

  “We hacked at the moorings desperately, freeing as many of the heaving vessels as we could. We were scattering when the worst of the waves hit.”

  “How many were lost?” Inevera asked.

  Isan threw up his hands. “Who can say? Some were simply docked, and able to fill with refugees and sail in short order—others had not floated free in a hundred years or more. Those that survived the waves were hunted by water demons through the night.”

  “You’ve burned every other port,” Dehlia said. “The demons destroyed the blockade and presumably took the monastery in the night. We have nowhere else to go.”

  CHAPTER 31

  HARDEN’S GROVE

  334 AR

  “The last way station has fallen,” Mother Jone announced.

  The last, Ragen thought. The wording implied the others had fallen and the news kept from court. There had been no news from the south since Ragen’s return. Any Messenger traveling into the region of the lost stations was never heard from again.

  The courtroom filled with the chatter of private discussion, but when no one spoke out, Ragen took a step forward and bowed. Euchor sighed, but he waved a hand. “Speak.”

  “His Grace recognizes the Neocount of Morning.” Jone thumped her staff, and the chatter fell silent.

  “Were there survivors?” Ragen asked.

  “None.” Euchor’s mouth was a hard line. The way stations were instrumental in extending his reach fully below the Dividing. Angiers was his in all but name, and the Krasians were retreating before his flamework weapons. The dream of becoming king of Thesa, so close to being realized, was slipping away.

  Ragen chose his next words carefully. “Your Grace, it may be time to consider evacuating Harden’s Grove.”