Book of Transformations

by Mark Charan Newton

  ‘What’s the situation now?’ Vuldon asked.

  ‘We are withdrawing.’

  ‘To here, I take it.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Urtica replied. ‘All councillors and their families are now ensconced within Balmacara.’

  ‘What exactly are you going to govern over, if there’s nothing left of the city?’ Vuldon demanded.

  ‘Do not question my motives. I am the reason you are both still in employment – the reason you were first given your new lease of life.’

  Like I give a fuck, Vuldon wanted to say, but even he thought better of it.

  Urtica seated himself at his desk and ran his hands through his hair.

  Tane looked to Vuldon then back at the Emperor. ‘Do you really think the anarchists are going to come here to get you?’

  ‘Without a doubt – they have been trying since that Shalev bitch came to Villjamur.’

  ‘Then why bottle yourself up now?’ Tane asked. ‘Why not have as many soldiers on the streets, wearing them down?’

  ‘It is not the anarchists I’m worried about.’ Urtica slid back and gestured to the flares of magic. ‘Do you know what that is?’

  ‘No,’ Vuldon grunted. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Neither do I, precisely. It is a cultist who has entered the city and, allegedly, begun a systematic destruction of Villjamur. Two garudas are taking it in turns to update me on his progress, and each time they return their news is even more disturbing. So far, much of the first level of the city has been destroyed.’

  ‘What do you mean destroyed?’ Tane asked.

  ‘Reduced to rubble. Blood in the streets. People burned by magic. Houses collapsed. How precise a definition do you require?’

  ‘Does he fight for the anarchists?’ Tane asked.

  ‘He fights for sport, so it seems.’

  ‘What do you want us to do?’ Vuldon asked. ‘You want us to stop him?’

  Urtica’s face seemed to have aged massively – even in this light, Vuldon’s acute vision could make out his tired eyes, the desperation etched on his face and the constant fidgeting of his hands. This was a man on the edge. There was none of the usual calm authority or resplendence that Vuldon had previously observed. ‘Would you mind?’ Urtica breathed, as if it now took all his reserves to form speech.

  ‘The hell are we going to do against a force of nature like that?’

  ‘You will find a way,’ Urtica replied insistantly. ‘This is what you were created for.’

  ‘Or what, you’ll kill us?’ Tane said.

  Urtica leaned back in his chair and grasped the arms with bony hands. ‘No. But I will kill the former investigator, Fulcrom, who is currently being interviewed by my agents. You . . . you had a close bond with him, yes?’

  Tane’s expression revealed his concern. Could he really have caught Fulcrom? Vuldon wondered. The investigator said that he’d be a wanted man . . . ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘I don’t need to lie,’ Urtica hissed. ‘But if you want proof, I could perhaps fetch for you a finger? Something more convincing, like his arm perhaps?’ There was an almost manic tone to Urtica’s rasping voice, suggesting that if his city was going down, then he was taking everything else with him.

  ‘We might not be able to do anything,’ Vuldon muttered. ‘If this person’s as strong as you say he is.’

  Urtica began to snicker softly. Then he addressed the surface of his desk. ‘My city is falling. Everything I worked for is failing. Those scum from Caveside need to be eradicated. And this cultist needs to be stopped. I don’t care how – just get it done or I’ll personally see to it that Investigator Fulcrom bears the full weight of my disappointment at your failure.’

  Tane placed a furred hand on Vuldon’s arm. ‘We’ll see what we can do.’

  *

  It was carnage. Verain watched though tears as Dartun threw his magic about the city without reason or rhyme. Like a man possessed, he drove his arm into walls, ripping through stone to collapse houses into the street. Men and women ran screaming into the streets and watched in slack-jawed horror as their homes were decimated.

  ‘It’s good to be back, no?’ Dartun bellowed with a frenzied grin at his cowed order who shadowed his footsteps – too afraid to do anything.

  The skies were darkening overhead, and lantern lights in windows indicated all the people looking on. She wanted to tell them to get out – evacuate – but knew they would think she was mad. Where else did people go when their world was falling apart? Home, of course. Citizens on the first level had begun to barricade themselves in, but the act hadn’t done them much good – Dartun was somehow rupturing the very ground, popping up cobbles and flagstones in street-wide spurts. She was numb to it now, they all were. They merely watched, inert, as he ripped apart the city of her birth.

  The first show of formed resistance came on the second level of the city. Standing at an intersection, where two streets banked up identical-looking slopes, two cultists from an unknown order had brought a crate of relics and tried to conceal themselves behind a wide grey-brick well. Filtering in alongside them were soldiers she recognized as being from the Dragoons. They fanned out to form a shield wall, while behind them about a dozen archers took position. In the dark skies above, two garudas moved in slow circles, their wings barely discernible.

  Please stop him . . .

  After some brief orders echoed across the street, arrows were let loose. Verain turned to face them, opening her arms in the hope that one might take her. She closed her eyes . . .

  Nothing.

  Dartun held up his hands, generating an invisible barrier that sheltered the members of the Equinox. Arrows weren’t deflected, they were disintegrated. The archers turned and ran as they realized how utterly useless they were. The other cultists moved from behind their own relic-originated shield wall and planted a few objects just in front, before retreating. Safely alongside the military, they turned back to view their work. Dartun laughed and walked forwards. He bent down and lugged a stone at the invisible wall they’d put before him. He repeated the gesture with a handful of similar stones, all the time stepping closer and closer. Then, as if the wall had become water, he pushed himself through – much to the disbelief of the two cultists. The soldiers moved shields to one side and revealed swords before advancing on Dartun.

  He crouched into a ball. Screamed. Stood and spread his arms like a prophet.

  A wave of energy knocked every soldier back several feet, sending their swords and shields clattering about the place. The two cultists turned to run and Dartun caught one of them by his feet. He pulled slowly, dragging the man back. With one hand on the cultist’s waist, Dartun pulled again at one leg.

  Verain could only hear the screams, which faded into a crunch as Dartun ripped him in two pieces. The cultist passed out just after he saw his own ruined legs sail back over his head and into the path of the military personnel.

  ‘Who’s next?’ Dartun bellowed.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Lan examined the army stationed between their current position and where they needed to be. Troops had perched on rooftops, and there were anarchist snipers firing at anything that moved on higher levels. Cultists were attacking each other, too, shown by the purple sparks of light that crackled between buildings. She didn’t think she could make any successful leaps with the priest on her back without being noticed.

  Damn.

  Time was slipping away and there was no other choice available: the safest thing they could do was head back the way they had come, back to Fulcrom’s apartment where they could work out another route or perhaps consult him on some alternative paths.

  *

  When they got to his apartment, they found the place was a mess. His door had been kicked open, his belongings had been ransacked. Papers and clothes were strewn about the place, drawers had been knocked over, pictures smashed.

  Lan strolled down the marble-tiled corridor and knocked on the neighbours’ doors. Every one of them greeted her w
ith some fear, whether it was because of her past or her attitude, she didn’t care. Only one apartment revealed anything useful. An interspecies couple, garbed in almost identical brown tunics said that people in long grey coats had started a fight with him outside the building.

  Lan tried to hide her fear. Emperor’s agents. ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘About two hours,’ the woman said.

  ‘What happened at the end?’ Lan asked.

  ‘Well, they tied him up,’ the rumel said. ‘It seems pretty strange to do that to an investigator if you ask me, and then they took him up-city.’

  They haven’t killed him, she thought. They just want answers. Lan smiled politely and only then noticed the children running around in the room behind, that this couple had children – when rumel and human relationships could not produce offspring, and suddenly it hit her somewhere deep inside, a place she’d deliberately hidden away.

  ‘We adopted,’ the woman said, noticing Lan’s gaze. ‘In case you were wondering.’

  ‘Oh no, I . . . No.’ She composed herself. ‘Thank you for you answers.’

  Stifling tears, Lan turned back to Fulcrom’s apartment.

  ‘We hope you find him,’ the rumel called out behind her.

  Lan arrived back to the room to find Ulryk sitting on the bed studying his books once again.

  ‘Ulryk, if I can get you to the Glass Tower, will you be all right on your own for a few hours?’

  ‘Of course. Did you find out what’s happened to the investigator?’

  ‘I think so. He’s been taken by agents working for the Emperor. If so, he’ll most likely be in Balmacara somewhere, and I want to get him out of there.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  *

  They set off once again with urgency, taking a different route, a circular one around the outskirts of the conflict. It was longer by far, but for some way there wasn’t the slightest sound of military personnel. Much of the city had locked itself away. As night took a grip on Villjamur, lights began to define windows of numerous shapes across the city, and people could be seen looking out onto the streets below, marooned in their own homes.

  Every now and then Lan would run up a wall and across rooftops to assess the route they were on. They managed to navigate furtive channels through the city, going backwards, and sometimes underground, in order to make progress past militarized pockets. It took them two hours to get somewhere that should have taken half an hour, and all the time Lan kept thinking that she urgently had to get to Balmacara, she had to break in somehow.

  ‘There it is!’ Ulryk exclaimed, pointing at the Astronomer’s Glass Tower. It was an impressive structure, like that of a gemstone half buried in the cobbled streets. A circular path ran around the base, and the surface of the glass was incredibly smooth, so that she could see the lights of the city reflected in its surface. It had eight equal-sized facets, about twenty feet wide, but none of them seemed to feature a door or window, no method of entry.

  ‘Do you need to get inside?’ Lan asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ulryk said, sincerely. ‘I could be near it, or on top.’

  Lan looked up, but couldn’t see the end of the structure. Somewhere not too distant were the sounds of skirmishing. Two rumels ran the length of the street behind, their footsteps echoing in the plaza before the tower. ‘I can try to get you up there,’ she said, ‘just to be safe.’

  Ulryk rearranged his clothing to check that it was tight. ‘Over your shoulder?’

  ‘There’s no dignified way to do this,’ Lan replied. She stepped forwards, leaned over and Ulryk tottered sheepishly towards her. She grabbed his arm and pulled him onto her back, tuning into her inner forces to push his weight off the ground so that he was as light as a kitten.

  Lan took a run at the wall – gritted her teeth and forced herself upwards. Her feet slipped on the glass and she was forced to run and skip and jump in order not to collapse to the ground. Every step made a strange thud, which resonated through the building. The wind came at her in thick gusts once she crested the nearest line of slate roofs, and she could hear Ulryk gasping.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ Lan called. ‘Hang on.’

  ‘What else can I do?’ Ulryk replied.

  She was beginning to feel the pressure in her legs, the strain of using forces that she wasn’t supposed to have, but before she knew it they were approaching the top of the tower. As if blindly tackling a staircase, she sought the lip of the roof with one foot then, when she felt there was enough to take their weight, she pressed down, lifting the two of them over, and Ulryk was flipped across onto the roof on his side.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Lan said. ‘Are you OK?’

  Ulryk showed more concern for the books in his satchel: once satisfied they were fine, he began assessing his own body. ‘I am well,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’ Lan pushed herself back up. The rooftop was flat, with strange, gold markings carved into the surface. They looked as if they formed an atlas of the heavens, with little flourishes of algebra and diagrams sketched in between weirdly proportioned islands. Ulryk was already marvelling at the detail.

  Lan looked back across the city, towards the formidable sight of Balmacara, the Imperial residence. Somewhere inside, the Emperor and his agents were maybe or maybe not doing something to harm Fulcrom.

  ‘Go, Lan!’ Ulryk shouted, looking up from his hands and knees. ‘You must help him.’ He stood up and took her hands.

  ‘OK, Ulryk, do what you have to do. If you succeed, what then? Should we arrange to find you? Fulcrom and I aren’t going to hang around the city, and I’ve no idea where Tane or Vuldon are.’

  ‘If on your return you could revisit this tower, then . . . that would be a boon.’ Ulryk moved to face the rest of the rooftop. ‘If I am honest, I do not possess the knowledge of what will occur from this point onwards.’

  Lan smiled at him. ‘None of us do.’

  She leapt to the tip of the tower and sought out the nearest roof. Lurking in the darkness, fifty feet below, and twenty feet across, was a bridge that would lead her to the third level of the city. What was more important is that she could see no signs of combat.

  She tuned in. She found a spurt of magnetism.

  She crouched and believed she could make it.

  She clenched her fists and jumped.

  *

  The iron door opened, a beam of light fell across his hunched form, and the agents filed in one by one, as they did on the hour, every hour so far, armed with knives and questions. Fulcrom’s hands were bound in crude manacles, but he wasn’t chained to the wall – there was no need for that in such small confines.

  It all started off nice and gentle, with the typical fake offer of friendship, as if trading goods. A mutual deal. Then matters proceeded to a little roughing up, mock-arguing among themselves, suggesting that his fate was yet to be decided. He guessed accurately at their techniques, but suspected he only had a couple of days until they would commence full-on torture, which might be even sooner given the state of the city. Their beatings centred on his abdomen at first, then his legs, leaving his face in a fit enough state to talk comfortably – they required that from him. A fist to the stomach, an iron bar to the legs, it blurred into one numbing onslaught. All they wanted to know was one very simple fact: where was Lan?

  ‘Why are you so bothered when the city is falling apart?’

  ‘The Emperor was insistent,’ one replied, and there followed an awkward silence.

  ‘Look, we know where the other two Knights are but what about the third man? Come on, tell us where it is – then all of this will be over.’

  That was a lie, and he knew it, but he was enraged by their subtly abusive references to Lan’s gender. ‘She is long gone by now – if she’s got any sense.’

  ‘This Lan – does he possess senses like the rest of us?’ one of the agents asked.

  Drawing on surprisingly deep reserves of strength, Fulcrom stood to his knee
s, stumbling more than once as he staggered to the centre of the room. His body thronged with pain. ‘Lan is a woman. Say what you will about me, but that woman has helped save numerous citizens of the city.’

  The agents spoke amongst themselves. ‘Say, if he’s fucking a monster like that, does that make him a queer? Punishment by death, that kind of act.’

  Fulcrom dashed forward and grabbed the nearest of the agents, pulling his manacles over the man’s head and back down tightly on his neck. They fell to the floor, the man’s screams choked by chains, and the agents swarmed over the pair of them, and Fulcrom remembered only being punched repeatedly in the face . . .

  *

  Lan stood atop the roof of Balmacara. The route here had been surprisingly easy. All the guards were now withdrawing into the complex, and preparing only for assaults from the ground. The anarchist threat was immense. Much of the city had been claimed, but elsewhere, at the far end of the city, a far stranger force was gathering. At first she thought that Ulryk had been successful, but this was nowhere near where she had left the priest. Fluxes of magic ricocheted across the first level, by the outer gates of the city. Out here, in the wind and the snow, it was like one of the glorious storms of old, when the weather was warmer and summer storms were intense.

  Lan had made a decision: Fulcrom had given Lan her life back – no, he had actually contributed massively to allowing her a life that she had never known before. Whatever it took, she wouldn’t leave him in there to rot. This was no radical politics, but amidst a crumbling city it seemed to be something worth fighting for.

  She walked along the edge of the roof and, when she sighted a guard with a crossbow patrolling the upper levels, she dipped down and crawled along between the tops of windows and the gutters.

  Something moved down below, in one of the small walled gardens: shadows fought urgent, silent battles – she saw guardsmen hacked down from behind, or collapsing with a bolt or an arrow in the chest, and then a group slid along the perimeter of this enclosed zone, some leaping over the walls and then guiding the others through. Were these the anarchists? She felt a primitive urge to stop them, but then came to her senses. This is no longer your battle. Fulcrom is all that matters.