“Why are you so . . . faded?’ questioned Mudge.
“For the living to be here we have to be in two places at once,” explained Ultrich. “It’s a little confusing for me at the other end, where I’m helping Porteous defend Rotor Valley Pass against the Xaanians.”
He hesitated. “It’s a constant battle to stop the two places from colliding inside my head.”
I’ll bet it is, thought Mudge, in wonder. He realised how much more experienced his father was in the ways of spirit walkers than himself.
“It’s time for what?” said the prince to Senovila, though he more than half knew the answer.
“Time to finish this battle with the Empress,” said the Legatus. “That’s why the others are here. They heard the call.”
“The call?” said Mudge in confusion.
“Your call, in part,” said his father, “but also the signs. This confrontation between the two worlds has been coming for a long time, and the signs are noticeable everywhere now.”
He seemed bemused at Mudge’s confusion. “Signs from that which is unseen. Beyond the beyond. Endata, or primary cause, in our poor understanding of the ultimate purpose of this world.”
Ultrich paused. “That is why we’ve gathered here. Every one of us is pledged to remove the Empress from this land, and make sure she doesn't come back.”
The prince was beginning to understood. The fact there were so many different entities here, ready to help, made the situation a lot more bearable.
“The Empress won’t know what hit her,” he said with a smile.
Ultrich looked at him quizzically.
“Not just the Empress, Rossi. There’s a whole damn nest of the unborn in the netherworld.”
Mudge’s heart sank. Then a bright light burst open like a flower in the middle of the hall. Every member of that great throng disappeared from the Royal Palace, including Mudge. All that remained was a softly pulsing point of light. It was a Mesoan anchor. It marked the worldly end of the passage into the netherworld. When they came back, if they came back, the anchor would guide them to the land of the living.
Butha and Andrian looked around at the abandoned hall. For some reason, probably their lack of fighting experience, they had been left behind. There were the sounds of fists hammering on the outside of the doors. Or at least the spreading woven patches where the doors had once been. There were dozens of dead or unconscious Xaanian troops on the floor. Butha shepherded the others toward an empty corner of the hall.
Kneeling, she drew Andrian down beside her. She motioned for the other two to do the same.
“Your excellency,” she said, bowing to Onjed. “You will be First Elect when this is over. It is what your father would have wanted.”
Onjed tried to convey a regal presence, but his body began to tremble. This was too much after the ordeals he had just been through. He ran to throw his arms around her.
NINETEEN
The floor of the main hall disappeared from under him, and Mudge landed with a jolt that sent a stab of pain up his leg. He grimaced, and balanced himself on one leg as he rotated the other, checking it for damage. The last thing he wanted right now was anything to slow him down.
Beneath his feet, flagstones the size of dinner tables ran together in all directions.
Deciding there was no serious damage to his leg, Mudge pushed the dull ache in his ankle to the back of his mind. In the meantime the pressing throng of shades, supernatural beings and spirit walkers was beginning to thin a little, as they spread out to examine this new world. A sickly yellow hue came from an overcast sky, and washed the colour out of everything. It would have been unnatural on any world.
The new arrivals appeared to have landed in an enormous street. The scale of the flagstones, and the width of the thoroughfare, gave them the impression they were dwarves in a giant world.
Looking up, Mudge saw buildings of stone. The whole street soared into the sky above him. The buildings were only two or three stories high, but they were built on such a scale that their height was multiplied by a factor of five or ten.
Following his League friends, he headed for a giant doorway on one side of the street. He looked up at the metal fastening on the door, and saw it was well above his head. It had been sandblasted through. He had seen the same damage when he arrived in Xianak, due there to the occasional desert storms.
When the company went inside, they saw a picture of desolation. Powerful winds had scoured the furniture until it lay sagging and broken in the corners. Stone edges around doors and windows had been sandblasted until they were curved and smooth. The changes must have taken an unimaginable length of time.
The entourage kicked their way through drifts of sand and piles of debris. Eventually they came to a stop in the middle of the room.
“It’s been abandoned for centuries,” said Ochren. He shrugged, and slid his sword back into its sheath.
“Idiosa, the folly of the underworld,” said Ultrich. He looked around in amazement. “I thought it was just a tale from the School of Mysteries.”
Mudge started at the voice. He’d not heard his father’s footsteps joining the group. Then he looked down. The Legatus’ feet drifted slightly above the ground.
“I rather like being a double, it’s better than walking,” said his father with a smile.
“Why is this a folly?” continued Mudge. He was confounded by the vast, abandoned city of giants.
“Ah, yes,” said Ultrich. “You didn’t make it past your second year at the School of Mysteries, before I sent you off to Shaker’s Hope.”
His voice was gentle, carrying no recrimination.
“Best thing I ever did, sending you there,” he continued reflectively. Then he turned to face his son.
“When there was rebellion at the beginning of time, some of the rebel spirits came here, and built a great and terrible city in the underworld. They built it to show how powerful they were, and how marvellous their talents. They peopled it with soulless, self-seeking minor spirits, beings like themselves they incarnated into giant bodies.
“It was meant to rival they greatest cities men and women would ever build in our world, through all the millennia to come.”
He paused. “But it was missing essential things, like our love of the land, and of each other. There was no sense of purpose in the city, no heights to aim for. There was no chance they would progress beyond their own selfishness and greed.
“Left to themselves, the giants took to fighting for power. It was the only thing they understood. Life in the great city degenerated until it was no more than a brutal struggle for survival. It wasn’t long before the buildings were abandoned, and it has lain here in the desert winds for all the long ages since.
“That’s why it’s called Idiosa, the foolish choice.”
Mudge nodded. He understood now. He and the others walked slowly back to the enormously wide street, and joined the throng. They noticed the colour of the sky had darkened. It was a more ominous shade of purple now.
“Does that mean night’s coming?” asked Mudge.
Ultrich shook his head.
“It is never night here,” he said uneasily. “Nighttime is too disturbing for already disturbed minds, but I think I know what it means.”
The others looked at him expectantly.
“They are coming,” he said. “The cromadia, the four horsemen.”
There was little change in the blank looks of those around him.
“The most powerful of the rebels,” he continued. “The ones with enough power to break into our world, if they are given the opportunity.”
The Rangers looked anxiously to Ochren for direction, but he just shook his head.
“You’ll have to show us the way, Accessit,” said Ultrich, looking at Mudge. He was using the title given to the one who would next be Legatus, who would next lead the Karnatic League.
If there hadn’t been so much going on in his mind, Mudge might have done some rebelling himself. He
had no plans to be Legatus, and no intention of leading the throng around them anywhere, but the high probability of death for them all wonderfully concentrated his mind.
“I don’t think anybody needs showing anything,” he said, his voice rising above the desert winds. They were beginning to flap and tease around the giant buildings, flicking up grains of sand.
“We are going to have to make this up as we go along!” he roared to the great throng around him. He found himself turning into the giant mountain cat he had become when he faced the Empress. He looked out across the crowd.
“Don’t stick to what you think you should do,” he told them, “just be yourselves. Stay flexible. Find your own solutions.
“Trust your skills, and be confident. You know what you’re doing!
“Above all, come at them with something unexpected!”
“Am I making sense! Do you understand what I’m saying!” he roared, and the crowd around him thundered back its approval.
Mudge looked down the wide street. It ended abruptly in a wall of sand. The desert had partly buried a number of stone buildings there already. The sky, now a shade of dirty green, was darkening ominously over the barren wasteland beyond.
He called the Keeper Stone to him, but it resisted his command. It wanted something from him first. It took Mudge a while to realise it was trying to rearrange his emotional state. It was demanding more flexibility, more loyalty, and a readiness to meet the unexpected. The same things he had been telling the others they needed.
He smiled. The Keeper Stone was keeping him honest. He had given that advice to the others without making sure he was living it himself. Maybe that was why it was the Keeper Stone. It was becoming his conscience, making sure his words and deeds were always the same.
He willingly gave up his preconceived ideas. It felt good to be free from such limiting concepts as winning or losing, free to just to do his best.
The Keeper Stone unfurled. He couldn’t describe what happened in any other way. It shook itself into the shape of an enormous prehistoric eagle. Its wings cast half the throng about them into shadow. Mudge found himself clinging to its back, and then it rose swiftly into the air.
He felt like he was riding a rocking horse upholstered in eiderdown. Each feather he clung to was longer than his whole arm. The street, and then the city, dropped away below him. The great bird gained height, and turned into the wind. It was heading for a distant spot where the green-shaded sky had darkened almost to black.
Four dark shapes towered over the desert far ahead of the eagle. Their outlines blurred and changed. They were covering the distance to the city at extraordinary speed.
Mudge recognised the winged creatures that soared ahead of the dark shapes on the desert air. They were kin to the leathery creatures that had hunted Mudge and his companions in The Wilderness, and attacked them at the walled compound in the Scion Kingdoms. Mudge dug his fingers deeper into the eagle's thick covering of feathers. He had a score to settle, and his blood stirred. Creatures like this had sent Bear to the edge of death. Then his mount climbed higher in the sky, gaining an advantage.
Moments later the great eagle turned in the sky. It pulled its wings in, and rolled over into a dive. Mudge dropped his head down, and flattened his body against the eagle’s feathered back. There was a single harsh call as one of the flying demons spotted them. Then a tearing sound as great claws shredded leather wings. The demon spiralled out of the sky, heading for the desert below.
The eagle rolled over and flung itself upwards. Mudge could feel himself upside down, hanging on grimly. The eagle struck again, and another demon creature fluttered downward, one of its wings trailing behind it.
Then two of the leathery creatures converged on the eagle at once. Serrated teeth scraped across its chest as it twisted in mid-air. The protection of feathers and muscle saved the great bird from any serious harm, and its claws sent one of its attackers plummeting toward the sands below.
Mudge saw another winged shape ahead of them. He reached out with his spirit senses, and closed down its instinctive, reptilian mind. It faltered in the middle of a downbeat, then recovered. Mudge could sense something present in its mind. It was controlled by one of the cromadia, the rapidly moving shapes on the desert below them.
He reached out again, clamping down on the creature’s mind with all his strength. For a moment there was a struggle that tested Mudge to his limits, and then the winged demon fell away, a limp carcass of flesh and bone in the air. It struck the desert hard.
One of the dark, changing shapes below him paused, and raised an arm. The great eagle hurled itself aside as a spirit bolt the colour of dried blood seared past them. Mudge swirled a spirit shield about himself and his mount, and they blinked out of existence. He could feel the evil below searching for them, and he tightened the shield.
The eagle crippled the last of the winged creatures, and then swerved to avoid the crackling spirit bolts that probed the skies blindly for them. Mudge felt a moment of triumph. The demise of the creatures brought him a strong sense of satisfaction.
Plummeting out of the sky to build up speed, and then levelling off, the giant eagle sped for the city. The buildings made a distant pattern of squares and angles among the soft, rolling dunes of the desert. The sands blurred below them as the city approached. Then they were back in the same wide street they had left. Mudge alighted gingerly. It had been quite a ride. The prehistoric eagle vanished once he was on the ground.
Mudge called Ultrich and Ochren to him, and explained what he intended to do.
“Your decision,” said the Legatus mildly, smiling at his son.
Mudge realised that was another strength his father had. He was able to let go of his worries and fears as soon as a decision had been made. It was the best way to prepare for a struggle.
The surging throng of shapes and shades sorted itself into three groups at Mudge's command. Each one contained a mixture of the different forces that were present in the gathering. Mixing them up had been Ultrich’s idea. It was the way he organised the League defence forces.
When he thought they were ready, Mudge looked down the street and out over the desert. The blurring, changing shapes in the desert had begun to take on more permanent forms as they approached the city.
Mudge transported himself to a position on the roof of one of the buildings, and Ultrich masked his surprise. Spirit transportation was a rare skill among spirit walkers. His son had shown no hesitation in attempting it.
The four cromadia, archdemons of the underworld, hesitated at the edge of the fallen city. Mudge smiled to himself. The city was a monument to their fall from grace, an example of their arrogance and misplaced pride. It must seem like bitterness and gall to them to come here.
With a noticeable shudder, each of the four archdemons took on a final shape that was part animal and part human. The human part was hideously distorted. Mudge was surprised to find he recognised the grotesque shapes before him. The pictures in the old School of Mysteries texts had been quite accurate.
He realised with a shock that one of his predecessors, a spirit walker like himself, had travelled here. A spirit walker who had seen the archdemons first hand. That required extraordinary bravery, and an exceptional level of skill. The thought humbled Mudge.
The first of the archdemons was clearly Usrad, the physical horrors that followed disease, famine and war. The second was Gilliad, the emotional turmoil of despair, lunacy and hatred. The third was Ungamon, the fates that destroy the dreams of men and women and crippled their spirits, and the fourth was Illarsis, the destruction of community through greed, corruption, and hearts of stone.
The fourth was assuredly the Empress. It was she that had corrupted Xaan. Hers was an addiction to power, to the love of conquest, and the destruction of communities.
The loathsome creatures howled extravagant battle cries. Massive hooves, claws and misshapen feet stepped forward onto the streets of the city. The three battalions of Mud
ge’s companions surged forward to meet them.
Some had chosen a direct frontal attack. Some, like the sprites, skittered up the sides of buildings to launch themselves at the demons from the rooftops. And some, like the shades of previous spirit walkers, rose into the air to direct spirit bolts.
Three of the archdemons were soon fully occupied, attackers swarming thickly about them. Mudge had chosen the fourth demon for himself. He landed on the scaly shoulder of Illarsis, pleased that the Empress was his to deal with!
The Keeper Stone transformed itself into a sword of vengeance. Mudge drove the sword deeply into the join where the Empress’ neck met a scaly shoulder, angling it down toward her heart. The grotesque body stiffened, and threw him off, blasting him out over the city. He controlled his fall, and landed softly on the top of a nearby building.
It appeared he wasn’t going to get anywhere with a physical attack. Here, in the Empress’ realm, it was clear such attacks had a limited effect.
Jago and Luce appeared on either side of him. An old spirit walker in the heavy, home-spun clothing of much earlier times appeared in front of Mudge. The prince acknowledged the ancient spirit walker’s feat with a nod. Spirit transportation was always a rare thing.
He wondered if this could be the spirit walker who had been to this place before, the one who took descriptions of the archdemons back to the Mysteries school. The ancient before him smiled, and nodded, understanding what was in Mudge’s mind.
A small group of Mesoans landed on the rooftop beside Mudge. Curling sapphire tendrils reached out to touch him, and then the others. A hard, brittle light began to emanate from them all.
The prince understood at once what the Mesoans had done. This was power from the dawn of time. It was the same power the sorceress used. The Mesoans had given up their energy to help Mudge counteract hers.
He smiled his thanks. The people of the present day would need everything they had to stop her once again. The Keeper Stone reached into his mind and nudged him. He understood they fought for their land and their people. They would lose this battle if they fought for themselves.
The Unsound Prince Page 25
