“What is your name?”
“Marlyn, sire.”
“You did well, Marlyn. Go to Hofsted, he will find further use for you.”
“Yes, sire.”
The young trooper scuttled off to join the burly Lieutenant who stood with his officers, ever twiddling his grey handle-bar moustache. How many times had Arbistrath told the man to shave that thing? Sure, it wasn’t the greasy long trails of a Clansman, but moustaches to the young Lord always appeared so… unseemly.
He laughed for a moment, at the absurdity of such mundane thoughts in the dire situation, before turning to the centre of the hall, to the intricate circle of chalk, lit by candles and incense, the heavy, sweet aroma filling the air and making him quite light-headed.
The shamans had been drawing the circle since morning and the rite was nearly complete, the complex devices and symbols written therein hurting his eyes to look at if he gazed too long in the dim half-light of the hall with its windows shuttered and barred.
As he made his way over, the girl turned to him, the lynchpin, the orchestrator, the ambassador from the Valley of the Spirits and, once again, he was struck by the delicacy of her features, the petiteness of her slender form and the copper-red hair that descended in gently spiralling curls to frame her green eyes.
“How long do we have left?” she asked, her matter-of-factness belying her youth.
“If the outer door to the keep holds out, then forever,” he replied, eyes gazing at the corridor that led to the entrance of the stronghold. “But if they have some way of breaching that, then minutes.”
She nodded, only a glimmer in her eyes betraying the nerves she felt, before turning back to her assistants. The circle of transportation was nearly ready, and she could already feel the build-up of elemental power in the ether, as spirits gathered about, drawn in by the ancient symbols as surely as night-time moths to a lamp. Minutes. Minutes might just be enough.
A smash of splintered wood, followed by cries of alarm and the crashing reports of metal on metal from far down the corridor.
Or then again, maybe not.
***
“Hold, men!”
The Lieutenant’s voice rang loud and clear through the corridor, rising high above the din of battle – or slaughter – in an effort to stem the tide of fear that swept the guard.
The Khrdas came at them, down the wide corridor, flipping over the hastily erected defences, dodging arrows and gutting the stalwart defenders with a hideous grace. The sheer speed and ferocity was overwhelming the Pen-Tulador town guard, more suited as they were to putting down tavern brawls and bringing sheep rustlers to justice than fighting close-combat warfare against elite soldiers. The sharp defensive stakes they hid behind in groups were next to useless against the agile infantry, made for stopping the charging bulk of horse.
“Damn,” Hofsted growled to himself, “we’re getting slaughtered.”
He looked to his side, the green recruit – what was his name? Marlyn! – stood, knowing he should run but not knowing whether forwards or back. The Lieutenant grabbed the horn, thrusting it into the young soldier’s hands, giving him a job to do.
“Sound the retreat, lad – we fall back to the main hall and protect the shamans at all costs.”
The youth nodded, placing the horn to his lips and blasting out a clarion call to signal withdrawal.
The officer snarled as his men streamed past, through the heavy door behind him and into the hall proper, the stragglers being cut down like animals as they were overtook by the pursuing assassins. Behind the carnage, Memphias himself, striding calmly down the hall, eyes and smile fixed on the glowering lieutenant.
He backed his way through the door as the last of the survivors piled in.
The corridor was lost. But, with a little luck, they might hold the hall just long enough to get their Lord – and his spiritual allies – to safety.
With the help of his men, he slammed the door to and slid the heavy iron bolt across.
And prayed that it would hold for long enough.
***
The defenders of Pen-Tulador were gathered close about the shamanic circle in the centre of the hall, shadows cast long and stark in the light of the candles and the torchlight from the walls. The hall was large – though not Pen-Merethia large – and the soldiers had a good distance between themselves and the door which they eyed with suspicious eyes and trembling sword arms.
“How much longer?” hissed Arbistrath, eyes never straying from the door.
“Shh…” bade the flame-haired shaman, as she stood, hands holding, together with the woman stood opposite her, a bowl of water that gently rippled in time to some unseen rhythm.
About the circle, around its edges, other shamanic novitiates knelt, eyes closed, humming a strange and dreary chorus that seemed to resonate in the echoing hall, coming from everywhere at once. The air was greasy, filled with static that prickled the skin and raised the hairs on the back of the neck. The tongues of all gathered about swam with a strange metallic taste, like they were sucking the blood from a sliced finger.
Without warning, the heavy wooden door, banded with iron, blew to pieces, spraying the room with sharp splinters of wood and causing soldiers to raise their hands to protect their eyes, before a howling gust of wind swept about the hall, blowing out in quick succession every candle and torch, plunging the hall to darkness and causing a wave of commotion and nervous muttering to sweep over the guards.
“Steady, men!” roared the Lieutenant, his unwavering voice instilling a modicum of discipline and bravery in every heart.
“Yes,” mocked another voice, this one cold and creeping, sending a shiver up every spine as it echoed about the pitch-black room. “Stay still for us… will make it easier…”
The scuttling of metal on stone clinked from all about as the soldiers strained in the gloom to pick out any hint of their enemy. First it seemed to be coming from the left, then the right. Then…above?
A scream as a guardsman was flattened by an impact, stabbed in the throat before the assailant fled again into the gloom, like a ghost. Then another. Then another.
Marlyn span in fearful circles in the dark, sword held out in front of him to fend off any foes, though knowing in his heart of hearts that he was already dead, for the enemy were dropping from the vaulted ceiling like invisible spiders, his comrades in arms dropping to the floor like flies.
A hand on his arm caused him to start and he span, sword raised to strike his attacker, but a female voice cut him off mid blow.
“Come with me, now!”
He allowed himself to be led by the voice, past the semi-circle of blinded soldiers until he reached the middle of the shamanic circle.
“Hold this!”
He dropped his sword at the command, reaching out his hands and feeling the cool ceramic sides of the bowl of water.
He stood, confused, wondering why he was here, when a searing light erupted, driving all shadows from the room in an instant.
He craned his neck, turning to look at the source of the illumination whilst still holding the bowl level as instructed.
The red-headed shaman girl stood, gazing up at the ceiling that crawled with now-revealed Khrdas, her raised hands sheathed in gloves of crackling blue-white lightning that left after-images with every blink of the eye.
A Khrda dropped from the ceiling, poised with daggers to hand to end her life, but she raised a hand towards him and the room resounded to the booming blast of thunder as a bolt of lightning reached out like the finger of a wrathful god to snatch the Khrda out of mid-air and hurl him, smoking and broken, a hundred feet to the far wall.
“Gwenna!” shouted Arbistrath over the fading echoes of the boom. “Get back to the circle!”
She went to reply, but a Khrda dropped down directly behind her. She felt his presence, ducking just in time to avoid his grasping arms, before spinning and delivering a blow to his chest with the palm her hand.
The Khrda con
vulsed, steam billowing from his ears, before collapsing to the ground.
“Go,” she shouted to the young Lord. “I can hold them off.”
Hofsted appeared at her side in the flickering light of her lightning, making to grab hold of her arm but recoiling, realising that to do so would be death.
“My lady…” he implored.
She looked to him with empathy in her eyes, for the old lieutenant had been good to her the last weeks.
“Go to him,” she told him. “Deliver the message that we have failed this time. I will make my way back to the valley, have no fear.”
He hesitated, then gave a curt nod before turning.
“Men! To the circle!”
The few surviving guardsmen of Tulador stumbled, half-blind into the circle, feeling potent energies enveloping them as they did. A pair of Khrdas launched a desperate assault on the circle, trying to halt the ritual, but a forked tongue of lightning licked out to casually toss them across the room, dead and twitching.
Marlyn’s eyes widened as the bowl grew hot in his hands, the once-cool water beginning to boil and steam. The girl opposite, holding the bowl with him, turned to shout at the shaman who defended them.
“Mistress!”
The shaman named Gwenna turned, casting one last look at the group gathered in the circle, before a searing white light engulfed them all, mouths scorched with the taste of tin, and they were gone.
The moment stretched on to eternity, even as the universe shrank down to the size of a pinhead, and Marlyn’s mind, frozen in that everlasting instant, burned with one image; the sorrowful, green eyes of the red-haired beauty who had stayed behind to save their lives.
***
The shockwave of the teleportation spell blasted the barred windows clean out of the building, the mid-day sun streaming in to reveal a grisly scene of battle and Memphias couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow in admiration.
A score of defenders lay in a grim semi-circle before the scorched remains of the runic pentagram, stabbed and garrotted in the dark, but so too did the remains of several of his best troops lie, smoking and blackened, about the hall, slain by the hands of the delicate-looking young woman who stood before him now, hands still aglow with coruscating power.
Slowly, and with a smile on his face, he began to clap, the sound echoing sharply off the stone walls, as his remaining men surrounded the wary shaman.
“Well done, my girl. Five, nay six Khrdas dead. That is the most our order has lost in one battle.” One lip curled up in a slight sneer of annoyance. “Ever.”
He began to circle her, sizing her up, seeing that the battle had drained her, that the spirits were already clamouring for a piece of her soul, but not yet ready to assume she was without bite.
“Though it was all for nought, you know. It was you that we were after all along.”
“Well,” she replied. “Looks like you’ve got me.” She narrowed her eyes. “If you can grab me.”
Careful not to let her see, Memphias reached behind his back, under his black cloak, to a throwing star in a small pocket; Somnusroot, was the coating. It would put her out for hours, leaving her with nothing more than a headache.
He whipped his cloak, flicking his arm up and sending the star on its way, as fast as lightning.
Well, almost. But not quite.
A small zap crackled out from an outstretched finger to knock the star off-course, before, almost as an after-thought, the girl lengthened a different finger, a second bolt lancing out to smash the Khrda leader from his feet.
Memphias landed ten yards back, his head throbbing with the force of the energies unleashed. He tried to stand, but his limbs refused to obey him. He snarled in impotent rage.
He hated sorcery.
“Now, now,” came a light-hearted chuckle from behind the girl. “This will all go a lot smoother if we learn to play together nicely.”
As Memphias struggled to right himself, Gwenna turned, taking a step back as she saw the tall, smiling figure that marched towards her, arms outstretched, one hand grasping a huge hammer as though ‘twere a toy.
“Don’t make me do things the hard way,” he grinned, a hidden yearning for violence crying out from behind his handsome eyes.
The shaman girl sniffed, one eyebrow raised.
“You’re wearing plate…”
“And…?”
She raised a hand, electricity arcing between her fingertips leaving the potent smell of ozone in the air.
“Oh…”
She unleashed the lightning once more, to blow this newcomer away too, but he raised his stone hammer, the runes on its haft glowing with some foul, dark energy. The lightning struck the weapon, the energies flaring as they contested one another, before the bolt rebounded back the way it came, the girl’s eyes widening in confusion as she was blasted clean from her feet to land, unconscious, with a thud.
Bavard and the now-recovered Memphias stood over the gently smoking girl as she lay, moaning and dazed, on the cold, hard flagstones.
“What now?”
“Now we take her to the witch. And she will tell us what we need to know.”
“Aye. Whether she wants to or not.”
Chapter Four:
The sound of booted footsteps echoing down stone corridors. The flickering glow of torchlight. The smell of herbs and spices as poultices were applied to her burns.
Her head; fie, but it throbbed!
Gwenna blinked to clear the blurriness from her vision, before thinking back to what had happened. She remembered the surging hunger of the lightning as she reached out to smite the tall, plated warrior. So easy it should have been, but no. His hammer, raised, glowing with unnatural energy, reflecting the power of the unleashed spirits of air right back at her.
She went to rise, but she couldn’t, her hands bound to the bed with coarse ropes that rubbed, her skin red where they had chafed.
She looked about, taking in her surroundings, though she knew full well where she was; Pen-Merethia, the Barbarian City, home to a Thousand Slaves.
And, more importantly, Invictus.
The room was dim, lit by a couple of steadily burning oil-lamps, one at each end of the room. Other beds were here too, though all unoccupied. A motif of a snake was carved on the wall, long and crimson, its tail in its own mouth and, as she breathed in once more the potent mixture of healing spices and herbs – Frostweed, Burnroot, she knew them all – it clicked where she was; the halls of the Blood Serpent, apothecaries to the Clans.
“She’s awake.”
A figure to her side, sat on a low stool. A wizened crone of a woman with dark wrinkled skin like a walnut and a toothless grin, put the back of her hand to her head to check for fever, the skin dry and cracking like old parchment.
“Well enough to question?”
Another figure moved out of the shadows and she started, not realising he was there. Memphias of the Khrdas looked down on her with impassive grey eyes. Instinctively she tried to summon forth the fury of the elements once more to strike him down, but the spirits failed to answer her call. She could feel them, jostling at the edge of her senses, but they were unable to reach her, no matter how much she implored.
Seeing her confusion, the master assassin smiled.
“You will find your sorcery quite… impotent, within these walls.” He pointed to the faint symbols inscribed on each and every stone, almost invisible to the naked eye, yet of potency very real in the spiritual world. “Save the King and those he chooses, none may call upon the spirits whilst awaiting his pleasure.”
She recognised the designs from her teaching, nearly retching at the lunacy that could have led someone to draw such forces into the world. At least now she understood why the Water Rune had failed in its task, drained of its power by the evil influence of the wards.
The Khrda turned his attention from the girl, speaking now to the old medicine woman.
“Is she well enough to be moved?”
“Oh yes,” th
e woman nodded, wide eyes milky with age. “She’s quite well, considering the shock she’s had.” She laughed at her own pun, putting Gwenna in mind of a cat ridding itself of a hairball.
Resigned that she was in no position to do anything at the moment, she asked Memphias.
“Where are you taking me?”
The Khrda’s eyes grew dark, as though he drew no pleasure from the answer.
“You are to be questioned.”
***
Full-bodied, deep, with subtle flavours of red-berries and a hint of vanilla. Smooth, rich, with an easy finish.
Ceceline nodded appreciatively as she set the crystal goblet down on the mahogany desk before her, licking her soft lips. Say what you like about the King, but he had fine tastes in wine. Actually, scratch that; saying what you like could get you killed, she laughed to herself. He was the Barbarian King, after all.
She must remember to thank him for this latest recommendation.
Many were the perks of being part of his Council. An immortal had great opportunity to sample the finer things in life; pleasures of the palate, pleasures of the flesh. But Ceceline enjoyed other, more sadistic pursuits as well.
A sharp rap at the heavy oak door to her chamber and she smiled.
One of which she would indulge presently.
“Enter.”
A burly Clansman strode in through the door, stopping a few paces in front of her, giving a deep and martial bow, his bearing and well-groomed appearance telling her that he was an officer, perhaps a demi-Marzban. She rose, the slit in the side of her form-fitting velvet gown revealing a long, shapely leg and she smiled as she felt the waves of strong desire and emotion radiating from the warrior. Was his topknot on straight? Did he have sufficient wax in his moustache?
She struggled to contain her amusement as he spoke.
“Prisoner for interrogation, milady.”
She nodded curtly and he clicked his fingers.
A duo of Clansmen marched in, holding between them a bound figure, diminutive and helpless looking beside their warrior forms.
The Fall to Power Page 6
