by Gav Thorpe
"We're going to Mekha?" Gelthius couldn't hide his surprise.
Ullsaard glanced across at the legionnaire, almost as startled by the interruption.
"Of course, you've never been, have you? You weren't with us the last time the Thirteenth was there."
"Is it true that there's these giant lizards the size of a house, and the Mekhani have skin as red as an apple?" Gelthius had always doubted some of the stories his fellow legionnaires had told him about the desert lands, and he figured the king would tell the truth. "Do the women really have three tits?"
Ullsaard laughed and almost tripped. He paused for a moment, regaining his balance before striding on.
"No, they've got two tits like other women. The lizards though, that's true. We call them behemodons. Killed one myself, I suppose you heard."
"I did, right enough," said Gelthius with a chuckle. "Some of the lads admitted they thought you was a goner that time, when that big old thing tried to bite your head off."
The king turned his head and winked.
"I'll let you into a secret. I didn't fancy my chances much, either."
Ullsaard fell quiet, perhaps remembering the occasion, a wistful expression on his face. In the moonlight, he seemed older, the lines in his face, the sunken sockets of his eyes, the creases in his brow deeper than normal.
Not wanting to disturb his king's thoughts, though filled with questions about Mekha, Gelthius walked alongside the cart in silence. Up ahead, the scouting party had stopped beneath a stand of scattered trees, the light of the stars and moon shining from waxyleaved branches. The first glimmers of a fire flickered in the shadows.
"Looks like we're making camp here," said Ullsaard. He coughed and spat. "We need to be off before dawn. We're close to Magilnada now, better to move under cover of night when we can."
"They can't patrol the whole border, king, not with just two legions."
"Anglhan raised a third legion," Ullsaard replied with a soft growl. "Fat bastard's got more money than I have. We'll have to watch our step all the way to Ersua."
"Right enough, king. I'll head out tomorrow and have a word with some of the locals, see if they know where this new legion's kicking about."
Ullsaard stopped and straightened suddenly, his height almost toppling the baggage out of the handcart's open back. The king turned a penetrating gaze on Gelthius, who took a couple of steps back, scared by the scrutinising glare.
"You've had plenty of chances to slip away between camp and here," said the king. "Why haven't you? You're a Salphor."
"Not rightly sure, king," Gelthius replied with a relieved shrug. "My family's still in the followers' camp with the Thirteenth. No point going anywhere without them. I don't think deserting ever occurred to me, king. Just loyal, I guess."
Considering this, the king started walking again, the cart wheels rattling as the ground became rockier underfoot.
"No other reasons?" Ullsaard asked as the turned up the slope towards the copse where the fire was now burning brightly.
"I suppose I like to be on the winning side, king. Who doesn't?"
"You know the current situation, don't you? Most of my legions are trapped in Salphoria, between Anglhan's and Aegenuis's armies. The Mekhani are on the brink of all-out invasion of Okhar. The empire's straining to the limits just to keep trade moving and supplies flowing. And you think you're going to be on the winning side?"
"Well, yeah." The question seemed pointless to Gelthius. "You wouldn't be here if you weren't going to win, would you? I mean, nobody thought you could become king, did they, but you did. I don't reckon this is half as hard as that, is it?"
Ullsaard did not reply straight away. With a grunt of effort, he dragged the hand cart the last few paces to the trees. He gently lifted the yoke over his head and lowered the handles into the grass. The king grinned at Gelthius, eyes flashing in the moonlight, his whole demeanour wolfish, feral. He cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders.
"When you put it like that, I can't lose."
Temple
I
Circle after circle stood around the Last Corpse; men, women and children, staring vacantly ahead, flesh pallid. Atop the slab of black stone and bone, Erlaan lay staring at the ceiling, ignoring the silent, unmoving people around him. Beneath him, the Last Corpse was almost freezing to the touch, gradually leeching his energy from him, absorbing the life force he had taken from his father.
He was not sure what was going to happen next, but was certain that he would not regret it. Lakhyri would not explain the details of the changes that would be wrought on Erlaan, or the method by which they would be made, but the high priest had been adamant that it was the only way to reclaim the empire.
Erlaan could not hear the captives breathing, but he could feel their presence, their life in this dead place. Each of the two hundred and thirteen was like a candlelight in darkness, burning with vitality. Ten times that number had been taken, but they had been judge unworthy and sent to the deepest bowels of the Temple. Erlaan did not know what would happen to those that had been rejected, and did not dare to guess. He focussed on what was important: himself.
He had a feeling now for how the Temple worked, had experienced the transfer of energy between himself and his father. It was another sense, like touch or taste, somewhere inside him, its secret held within his Blood. Lakhyri skirted on the edge of existence, barely present, and even the youngest acolytes were dull embers compared to the prisoners that had been taken by the Mekhani.
"We will begin," announced Lakhyri, entering from one of the many dark corridors that led away from the main chamber. Behind the high priest came Asirkhyr and Eriekh bearing the tools of their craft; slabs of grey metal trays upon which glittered blades and hooks, styluses and ingots of silver and gold.
The two hierophants stood to either side of Erlaan while Lakhyri took his place at the prince's head. Erlaan shuddered as chill, dry fingers settled lightly on his brow, their touch as light as the scuttle of an insect on his flesh.
A distant chant echoed into the chamber, funnelled down into the hall through the maze of stone passageways. There was a different timbre to the invocation, a greater sense of urgency.
"Will this make me immortal, like you?" Erlaan asked.
"Better," replied Lakhyri. "You will think with the speed of lightning. The words that spill from your lips will be taken as truth by all that hear them. Every command you utter will be obeyed without question. You will run as swift as the wind. Your skin shall be as iron. Your lungs will be as the bellows of the forge. You shall be as strong as the behemodon. Your eyes will be as sharp as the hunting bird. All these gifts, our masters shall give to you. Speak no more."
The chanting washed through the chamber, bouncing from the walls, overlapping, growing in power, ripples of sound that disturbed the air like a wind on the water of a lake. Around and through Erlaan the chanting moved, rebounding from the circles of people around him to create eddies and currents that drew swirling lines of life from their bodies.
Erlaan could feel the energy, spiralling faster and faster, whirling towards the Last Corpse. Its touch was warm on his skin, seeping through his flesh and into his bones. This is not so bad, he thought.
Eriekh and Asirkhyr set to work. With slender knives, they gently flayed the skin from the soles of Erlaan's feet, peeling them as assuredly as a fruit. Around the toes, over the ankles and on to the shins they moved. Erlaan barely felt the bite of their blades as his skin sloughed sway in translucent sheets, unfolding from exposed fat and muscle like petals. Lakhyri worked on his head, moving with even greater speed and deftness, slicing away scalp and face.
So skilled were the priests that Erlaan's skin was left hanging over the Last Corpse like a diaphanous sheet. His limbs unmoving, as stiff as wood, Erlaan was rolled to one side and the next as they continued their bloody cutting on his thighs and back, his neck and buttocks, until not one part of his skin remained attached.
He could not
blink, nor swallow, nor move his tongue or wiggle a finger or toe. Bereft of skin, his body felt exposed, every slightest breeze touched on raw nerve, but the sensation was not unpleasant.
With Erlaan's skin removed, the priests swapped their blades for shorter, thinner knives. Erlaan felt the first pierce of blade into muscle at the base of his skull. That was not so pleasant. With the same precise care, the priests separated tendon and muscle, fat and artery, nerve and vein. Erlaan was feeling some pain now. It was everywhere, an irritation, an itch that could not be scratched, a pain of the mind as much the body.
Piece by piece, they disassembled him, revealing bone and organ. As with the skin, Erlaan's flesh was kept intact, separated into a few bloody ropes of sinew and muscle. He did not wonder that he still lived; the energy of the Temple, and the life of the captives, formed a shell around him, tingeing the air with a glitter on the edge of vision, replacing flesh and blood with pure power.
Lakhyri brought forth a burned crucible, in which was held a pool of bubbling gold. Erlaan was confused for a moment, until Asirkhyr and Eriekh produced a needle-fine blade and a niblike tool.
If the pain from having his flesh cut away was an irritation, the touch of pin and molten gold was an agony, a conflagration lit within his mind. The power of the Temple flowed into every stroke of blade and stylus, first crawling into his heart, every golden rune searing into the organ, a wisp of smoke quickly vanishing in the wake of every pen stroke.
Erlaan wanted to shriek as the priests moved on to his lungs. He knew that he was not breathing, not in any sense that he understood, and yet when the first runes were etched into his lungs every breath he was not taking was like breathing in the vapours of a lava-thrower. The pain was almost overwhelming, choking and internal, impossible to escape.
The torment became a never-ending coruscation of agony as brands were brought forth and sigils burnt into liver and stomach. Drills and awls buried themselves into his bone, through to the marrow, scoring an interconnected web of lines and symbols, each turn and piercing a white-hot needle of pain in his spirit.
He wanted to black out, to blot away every sensation by the time they had progressed up every vertebra and started work on his skull. Lakhyri prised open his jaw and used a tong to pull out his tongue. Sigil-headed pins were pressed into his gums and the roof of his mouth, and lines of silver sliced and melted into his tongue and lips. A shower of gold enveloped all that he could see as they laboured on his eyes, pricking and cutting, delicate strokes that were each an eternal torture he had to endure.
He thought that his torment would be ending soon as they reclothed him with his flesh, but the cessation of pain was all too brief. They branded and carved, stitched him back together with hair-thin wires upon which gleamed even tinier runes. Nails and rivets, their tips similarly etched, heads moulded in impossibly fine zodiacal emblems, reattached muscle to bone, tendon to joint. Every finger and toe, strung back together like the parts of a puppet.
They wrapped his skin across him, covering the grotesque beauty of their handiwork, using molten wax and stitches of hair to reattach his outer shell. Still they were not done. Upon his newly reapplied skin, they cut yet more symbols and patterns, down to every fingertip. They slid his fingernails and toenails back into place, now carved with swirling devices. With knife and needle, they scarred and tattooed, covering every part of Erlaan, each prick feeling like a sword thrust through him.
And then they stopped.
The agony became pain, became an ache, and then subsided.
Lakhyri held him down with his bony fingertips on his brow again. Erlaan still could not move, not the least twitching of an eyelid or the wiggling of a toe.
"It is not yet over," whispered the High Brother. "All we have done is to make you ready to receive the gifts of the eulanui. Now comes the hardest part."
Terror filled Erlaan. Tears welled in his scarred eyes at the thought that all he had endured had not been the worst.
The pain came again, forced into Erlaan through Lakhyri's fingertips, as if they delved into his brain. He felt the sheen of energy pouring over him, channelling down the lines and sigils like rivulets of water down a mountainside. Where they passed, the streams of energy left agony in their wake. They soaked through skin, drawn down into muscle by the devices wrought upon them; and through muscle into organ and bone.
Flesh bubbled, contorted, expanded. Bones lengthened and strengthened, pushing his flesh apart from the inside. Erlaan felt as if he were being ripped apart from within, unable to contain his elongating skeleton.
And then organs and flesh writhed with their own power, adding to a pain that was already too much to bear. His heart hammered, beating like a clap of thunder. He drew in a breath, a gale forced into his expanding lungs. Muscle bulged, testing the sutures in his skin, before it too was forced to change by the power of the Temple, cracking and hardening, like the crust on a lava flow, splintering and reforming constantly as Erlaan's muscles continued their distorted growth.
Life, true life, returned with a last implosion of power and pain.
Erlaan hurled himself from the slab of the Last Corpse, howling and shrieking, the last adjustments of his body settling into place. He roared, baring teeth like an ailur's. He opened eyes that were slit-pupiled and golden, and saw a world of startling colour and texture. He unclenched his fists, uncoiling fingers with extra knuckles, each digit tipped with sharpened bronze.
Panting, knotted chest heaving with effort, Erlaan pushed himself to his feet, his skin rustling like dead leaves. Around him, the desiccated corpses of the sacrifices were crumbling into whirls of dust, each a tiny storm of particles, until they too were gone, every last part of their energy flowing into the reformed beast that had been Erlaan.
"We are done."
Lakhyri's voice, once so heartless, so monotonous, was a harmony of notes, more touching than any music Erlaan had heard. The Temple blazed with rainbows of light, dancing from every surface like a sheen on oil. Erlaan moved his hand, feeling the touch of the air on every fibre of his fingers, the tiniest breeze as obvious as a fold in cloth.
Erlaan laughed to see and hear and feel the world as it really was.
Ersuan Border
Midsummer, 211th year of Askh
I
Streamers of cloud clung to the Altes Hills, lit by the warm glow of the rising sun. The mountains reared just over the horizon, bright to dawnwards, shrouded in shadow to duskwards. As Ullsaard's small troop broke camp, the king looked coldwards, knowing Magilnada lay nestled at the foot of those peaks, though he could not see the city.
The thought of it made him fume. He had expected Anglhan to skim off a few taxes, perhaps aggrandise himself a little; this betrayal went far beyond anything Ullsaard could tolerate. The king's feelings went beyond resentment at the man's ingratitude, into a deep well of anger fuelled by personal loathing. Anglhan's alliance with Aegenuis was almost understandable; Ullsaard was well aware that he had turned on the previous king. That was, he had painfully learnt, the simple facts of power and politics. But to hold Ullsaard's family hostage, to threaten the lives of his wives, made the matter personal.
He wondered if Allenya was aware of the danger she was in. Was she being held prisoner, or was she blissfully going about her normal life, ignorant of the knife that Anglhan held to her throat? Ullsaard was thankful for one small mercy; his mother, Pretaa, had left Magilnada to return to her home in Enair. At least she was beyond Anglhan's reach.
And there was the matter of Noran. Ullsaard felt enough guilt on behalf of his friend without any need for further burden.
"Are you ready, king?"
Ullsaard turned his attention to the legionnaires around him, their tents packed away, the fire smothered. He realised he had been staring coldwards for quite some time.
"We'll get the bastards, won't we?" asked one of the soldiers.
Ullsaard looked coldwards again, picturing the walled city sitting at the base of the cliff. In
his mind's eyes he saw the Hill of Chieftains and the governor's palace; Anglhan within, pleased with himself for his manoeuvring, doubtlessly plotting his betrayal of Aegenuis.
The former governor had every right to be smug. Anglhan held the one thing that could keep Ullsaard in check, dragging tight like the reins of an ailur. Ullsaard had not the first idea how he was going to change the balance of power. Anglhan had seen how easy the city had fallen to infiltration before and would have agents scouring every visitor for signs of subterfuge. A full-scale attack was out of the question. The merest hint of a legion approaching the city would spell death for Allenya and the others.
For the moment, Ullsaard was powerless, but he knew that there was no such thing as a sure guarantee. The situation would change, and when it did Ullsaard would find a way to even the score.
"Yes," said the king. "We'll be getting the bastards."
II
The hotwards reaches of the Magilnadan Gap were dominated by heavily wooded hills, heaping upon each other until they became the shoulders and ridges of the Lidean Mountains. The dawnwards extent of the forests marked the edge of the Free Country, running along the Saol River. Ullsaard had no idea how closely Anglhan and his allies were watching the roads and rivers into Ersua, but had to assume the worst.
A long detour into the mountains would add at least twenty days to the journey, so at some point the king and his bodyguard would have to dare a crossing. The easiest way would be to find some boats or a ship rather than rely on one of the bridges. In this circumstance, the careful cartography of the Askhans would prove its worth. From studying the map he had brought with him, the king knew he was three days from the Soal, and if they cut straight to dawnwards through the forests, his group would avoid any settlement larger than a logging cabin or hunting lodge.
