by Tom Lloyd
Isak felt the magic-suffused air crackle on his skin as his bloodlust sparked to life. White threads began to race over his skin and Eolis started glowing with un summoned power, tracing blistering curves of light as he struck out. The vampire fell back from the onslaught, wielding both swords frantically to ward off Isak’s swift blows. Beside him Araia was trying to corner Mihn, but the small man just kicked up and off the nearest wall, vaulting her slashing blade and putting himself back in the centre of the room again.
Even as Isak caught one of his opponent’s swords and sheared right through it, Mihn dropped to a crouch and swung his staff up in the same movement, catching Araia’s fingers with the steel-capped end before her descending sword could reach him. The crisp blow jerked the sword from her grip.
In the next moment Isak had battered away her brother’s other sword. He chopped deep into the vampire’s neck and blood sprayed over his ragged cloak as he continued drawing the sword-blade down and through. The vampire fell away as the tip of Eolis cleared the wound and punched forward again to pierce Araia’s cuirass with a sharp crack.
The sister jerked to an abrupt halt, frozen in the act of reaching for Mihn’s throat. The smaller man rolled backwards and back to his feet, out of range, while Isak ran Araia through to the hilt before whipping the blade back out again and leaving her to collapse to the ground.
He stared down at the vampires at his feet as their last moments of life spilled away, and suddenly sensed Mihn’s eyes on him. The failed Harlequin brought his staff back to its usual upright position and looked Isak up and down, and he realised with something akin to a laugh that the gifted duellist was assessing his form, his poise after the blow.
An immortal vampire nearly ripped your gullet out, Isak thought with a sense of wonder, and still you notice such things.
Mihn gave him a small nod of thanks. ‘In another age,’ he began with no trace of exertion in his voice, ‘you would have become a great lord of the Farlan. With Bahl to teach you, you would have forged a human nation such as the Land has never seen.’
Isak looked down at the ripped tunic he wore, the frayed edges of his cloak. ‘We’re made by the trials life gives us,’ he replied, adding with a smile, ‘but I was never meant to rule – I was never built for it.’ He shrugged. ‘I find the beggar lord a more natural role for me.’
Around their ankles a thin mist began to appear, swirling up over the body of one, then both fallen vampires.
‘Feneyaz?’ Mihn asked, gesturing to the brother.
‘I would think,’ Isak said, though he’d never met any of Zhia’s three brothers. No matter how skilled a swordsman, against a white-eye wielding Eolis the result had never been in doubt, he realised, which made it likely they were both the lesser siblings.
‘What about him?’ Mihn said, looking at the statue. ‘He makes them his protectors while he sleeps?’
‘A prison of his own making – it was done to the dragon in the Library of Seasons. He’s under the weight of madness and his family’s curse, so why not sleep until change comes?’
‘And now?’
Isak stepped up to the statue to inspect it. It portrayed a man of middle years, lean of face and build, in armour similar to the plate Zhia wore under her clothes. He reached up and rapped his knuckles on the statue’s forehead. It seemed solid enough, and cold to the touch. He wiped Eolis on his cloak and sheathed it, then took hold of the Crystal Skull at his waist before he dared touch the statue’s black sword.
Nothing happened. Isak withdrew his fingers, rubbing them together. The scars faintly tingled in the proximity of such power. This was Termin Mystt, he was sure of it, but it was firmly lodged where it was, despite only resting in the statue’s hand rather than being grasped – part of the same spell that kept Vorizh a statue, he guessed. He looked at the statue’s hands: they were in exactly the same pose, but one was empty.
‘How about a swap?’ he said, drawing Eolis and resting it in the statue’s hand in the same way as Termin Mystt, its tip resting on the ground. He felt a shudder run through the rock and, pressing his hand back against the Skull of Ruling, he attempted to take the black sword again.
A great gust of wind swept up from the dusty floor, but Isak barely noticed. This time as his fingers touched the black sword it flared, searing-hot, even as light burst from the Crystal Skull. Isak gasped and staggered back, his hand now firmly wrapped around the black sword’s long grip – it was the only thing he could see through the white light, a midnight force that not even the power of the Skull could eclipse. Power surged up his arm with such ferocity he felt his bones creak and judder. Magic flooded his body and invaded his mind with shards of ice before the presence of the Skull balanced it.
He dropped to one knee, his great shoulders shaking with the effort of holding the weapon as dark stars burst before his eyes. Suns wheeled through his mind, scorching a path across the holes torn in his memory. Voices clamoured in his ears, hundreds, thousands of beseeching voices, and as he moaned under the pressure, his own voice felt like the vengeance of the heavens, crashing through his mind.
Distantly he felt a hand under his shoulder. He tried to scream a warning for Mihn, but his voice was not his own. His heart boomed in his chest, his ribs shrieked in pain and the rune on his chest burned once more, the stink of charred flesh filling his nose.
And then the hands holding him felt blessedly cold against the surging heat of magic, a foundation stone upon which Isak braced himself. The heartbeat of more than one man pulsed in those hands, it was dozens, hundreds. Through the rune on his chest he could feel them, with Mihn a second conduit to those who had bound themselves to him. The soldiers of the Ghosts, their brute strength a force of its own in his veins, marched alongside the cold, remarkable men of the Brotherhood, and leading them all, the iron-hard will of Legana’s sisterhood.
Blood trickled from his nose as Isak embraced his Skull’s power and drove back against the monstrous, remorseless flow of power from Termin Mystt. Air returned to his lungs and he gasped furiously to clear the swirl in his mind. He felt Mihn urge him up and at last his strength returned, allowing him to rise once more and face the obsidian statue.
Shards of black glass were sloughing off it, flaking away with increasing speed. The wind continued unabated, whipping up great gusts of air and tearing clouds of dust from the statue. More and more disintegrated until, in a matter of heartbeats, just an armoured man was left, his sapphire eyes staring down at them through the breeze that threw his long hair across his face.
With jerky movements, the man – Vorizh Vukotic himself – looked at the sword now in his hand. The emerald pommel of Eolis shone in the weak light as he stiffly raised the weapon hilt-first up to inspect. His eyes widened as he recognised the weapon.
‘So it begins,’ the man rasped.
Isak echoed his movement, struggling for a moment to bring up the black weapon to inspect. His hand shook, the raw power of Termin Mystt barely shackled by the Skull. It was perfectly, flawlessly black. Only its outline was visible; although Isak could feel some form of decoration on the guard against his wrist, he could see nothing. His left hand he kept pressed against the Skull at his waist.
An otherworldly echo surrounded him, filling his lungs and mind. Isak realised it was the presence of the divine, some part of Lord Death bound to the sword. The memories of Ghenna returned to him; those awful sights and agonising sensations, but he had endured them somehow, and thus prepared, Isak refused to submit to the terror welling inside him.
Vorizh turned to look at the bodies of his siblings as they faded beneath ever-increasing mist. Isak tensed, ready to raise the black sword, though a dull ache ran through his bones and magic prickled on his skin, but there was no outrage on the vampire’s face; there was barely even curiosity.
‘You had help in the tests?’
‘Your last test was killing your brother and sister – don’t fucking dare take exception to how I’ve gone about it,’ Isak gasped. �
��I’ve travelled most of the way across this country you’ve torn apart and I’ll gladly kill you now.’
His voice sounded hollow, distant, as if altered by the presence of the sword. Behind him, Isak sensed Mihn flinch, and her remembered the small man’s account of being in Death’s throne room.
The vampire’s face twitched, muscles moving uncertainly into the configuration of a smile. ‘You bear the burden with great resilience; your Gods made you well, white-eye,’ Vorizh rasped. ‘Now I will help you become their equal.’
Isak spat on the ground and turned away. His face was taut as he fought to control the raging forces inside him, but that was nothing new to the savage-tempered white-eye.
‘Spare me. You’ll help me how I say because you know what I can give you.’ He paused. ‘Or relieve you of, mebbe. Either way, shut up and follow me. I think your sister wants a word.’
CHAPTER 18
Every step back up through the ziggurat was an effort. Isak’s limbs were heavy and sluggish, as though he wore armour of lead. The sword itself weighed nothing, but Vorizh had been right to call it a burden: it dragged at his mind and sapped his strength, filling his head with the buzz of wild energies and amplifying the voices of daemons carried on a breeze his cheek couldn’t feel.
Behind him Isak could hear the soft, neat pad of Mihn’s bare feet and sensed the man keeping as close he could. Of Vorizh there was no sound, and more than once Isak turned to check the vampire was still with them. The sight was far from encouraging. Behind Mihn was a shifting, restless mass of shadows; only the vague outline of a human form remained – that and two darkly gleaming sapphire eyes.
A lambent glow on the stairs ahead told Isak it was the last flight to go. He almost groaned with relief as he struggled up them and onto the night shrouded upper floor of the Grand Ziggurat. A dozen Black Swords were there now, each man holding one of the spluttering mage-torches to cast white light over the proceedings. With Termin Mystt in his hand Isak could no longer taste the magic leaking from the torches, only a sense of a great twisting cloud of magic centred on him.
He looked past the people waiting and realised each level of the ziggurat was similarly lit, as was the shoreline of the island on which it stood, and the wide bridge they had crossed to reach it. For a moment he entertained the hope that the sensation was just that, the concentric rings of torches surrounding him, but a part of him recognised the deeper resonance in the air, like looming storm-clouds, when even the Gods held their breath.
‘Lord Sebe,’ intoned Priesan Sorolis, ‘you have walked the labyrinth and hold the mysteries of Vanach in your hand. The signs are fulfilled, the mysteries revealed.’
The old woman’s face was solemn, but she glanced momentarily at the third figure that left the ziggurat, and when she did, her hand started to shake in the folds of her robe.
She raised her arm to indicate the brightly lit bridge leading to the shore. ‘A place has awaited you in the Hall of the Sanctum since our founding; come.’
Isak didn’t respond, but he looked at his companions, feeling light-headed in the breeze washing over them. Doranei and Veil smiled, relieved by his obvious success, while those more sensitive to magic stared aghast at the black sword in his right hand. He glanced down at it and tried to flex his fingers. A flicker of worry ran through him as his numb fingers failed to respond, then at last his muscles became his own again, though his fingers moved only fractionally.
‘Lead on,’ Isak croaked, still staring at the sword apparently fused point-down to his hand.
The Priesan obeyed and headed back down the levels with the rest of the Sanctum, but Isak made no move to follow. He was too concerned by the fact that he could not remove his hand from the grip of Termin Mystt. There was no pain, but it felt as though he were the one being gripped, not the other way around.
‘Isak?’ Vesna said cautiously as he approached his friend. ‘Is all well?’
Isak looked up warily, until he realised Vesna hadn’t spoken loud enough for the Black Swords to hear above the hiss of their torches, that he had spoken at all told Isak he was betraying too much.
‘It is,’ he replied. ‘We have what we came for.’
‘More than that, it appears,’ Legana commented, the divine light inside her waxing stronger the closer she came to the sword. Then she focused her attention on Vorizh as the vampire went to the edge and surveyed the city beyond. ‘We are thirteen now?’
Zhia stepped forward, watching her brother as intently as one might a cobra. ‘Brother,’ she said without affection.
‘Sister of mine,’ Vorizh replied with a small smile. ‘See this city I built? This monument to the curses of Gods?’
‘You never told me what you were planning.’
He turned with shocking, blurring speed. ‘Tell you?’ Vorizh hissed. ‘Of course not! You are too rash, for all your plotting. You always lacked vision; remember the lover you took all those years ago, the chaos it caused? You only ever see how to further your own ends in the game, never how to end it. Better you than our noble Prince Koezh, of course; our solemn heir of suffering could never resist an added burden, but both were found lacking.’
‘And now you have found one worthy?’
Vorish turned, unblinking, towards Isak. ‘Perhaps. There is change on the wind, of that I am sure.’
‘Daemons too,’ Daken growled. ‘Don’t mean shit, though.’
Vorizh cocked his head at the white-eye as Daken advanced slowly towards him. ‘You have a pet? One that smells of the Gods?’
Zhia shook her head as Vesna stepped in front of Daken to halt the man’s advance. ‘Just a white-eye whose goal is glorious battle; do not indulge him.’
‘Another day then, lapdog,’ Vorizh called to Daken. ‘Enough battle even for your thirsty heart is at hand, I think.’
The crackle of tension in the air awakened Isak from the distraction of Termin Mystt. ‘Is this permanent?’ he demanded of
Vorizh, looking at his hand. He was holding the long weapon in a reverse grip that was completely impractical if it came to fighting.
The vampire bestowed upon him a reptilian smile. ‘Unless you can remove your own hand, dead man,’ he said with a flourish of black-iron-clad fingers. ‘I smell the marks of daemons upon you, the endless torments of the pit. What did they do to you in the Dark Place? Perhaps your hands grew back more than once down there, before some God plucked you out and back into the light.’
Isak staggered, struck by a sudden weight of memories; flashes of light burst before his eyes as lines of hurt flared across his body. Again it was Mihn who reached his side and supported the huge white-eye with a strength beyond that of his small stature.
‘Aha, it was a thief, not a God!’ Vorizh crowed. ‘Would you venture that way a second time, I wonder, little man? One day my soul may follow a similar path; what price would you ask of me for such foolish devotion, thief?’
Mihn matched the vampire’s gaze unafraid. ‘After the cruelties you have caused Vanach’s people, the anguish dealt by your own hand? Could you make amends for such a thing?’
‘If your price is an apology, I would be a madman to refuse it,’ Vorizh said, his eyes glittering in the dark.
‘You are a madman,’ Mihn said, turning his back on Vorizh as Isak started for the stair to follow the members of the Sanctum, ‘and so I offer you nothing.’
When they reached the entrance, Isak paused to summon his strength. The ziggurat was the highest point for miles around, and he felt like one missed step and he would tumble, crashing into madness or death.
‘So it looks like life did have a plan for me, after all,’ he muttered to Mihn, who was still struggling to bear as much of Isak’s weight as possible. ‘The balance of forces, controlling something inhuman inside.’
‘Could the Gods even have planned such a thing?’ Mihn asked sceptically.
The relief on his face was plain when Isak responded with a laugh, ‘No, but it’d be nice to have someone to blam
e. Not even Azaer forced me into these choices. This life’s my own.’
‘But you can control the forces?’
Isak nodded. ‘It looks like I’ve made myself into the tool required for the job.’ He made a show of prodding Mihn in the chest as he straightened, taking his weight of him. ‘Never say I don’t plan ahead, eh?’ He took a deep breath and surveyed the illuminated road. There had to be hundreds of soldiers out there, thousands, even. Faint movement in the streets beyond told him the troops were not alone, that the people of Vanach were creeping closer to see their long awaited saviour. The Gods’ plan was not for most to know, but some things would inevitably have escaped the Commissar Brigade. What it meant for the faithful servants of the Gods, only time would tell.
The question is, have they learned to fear any change, or are they desperate for release?
‘My Lord?’ called a trailing member of the Sanctum, the tall one from the Night Council who looked like a eunuch, Priesan Horotain. ‘Do you need assistance?’
‘Just a moment’s peace’d do,’ Isak muttered. He started off down the stairs, his companions following closely behind, Zhia and her brother bringing up the rear.
Should I tell her what I found down there? Isak wondered, a glance back showing him the distance between the two vampires. Does she already know? They’ll recover, maybe even find their eldest brother waiting, but she’s a cold one. From all I hear Koezh wouldn’t stand for enslaving their weaker siblings, but Zhia? There’s no way to tell; she feels the suffering of others but she’s still a politician.
He returned to the task of descending the stairs, trying to stop his uncertain legs pitching him forward into the night, but as he descended the great ramp that led from the lowest level to the island shore, he turned towards a strange scent on the air. It was hard to discern against the overpowering presence of Termin Mystt, but he was certain something had changed; some new presence lingered nearby.
