Dead Man's Steel

by Luke Scull

  ‘Sounds like a loud of horse shit to me,’ the big shield-bearer, Jax, muttered. ‘Invaders from across the ocean? We should summon the inquisition and have this assassin put to the question. Wring the truth out of him.’

  The Rag King glanced at Lady Steel. The silent swordswoman stared at Cole for a moment and then gave a slow nod. ‘I believe he speaks the truth,’ the king replied. ‘The White Lady thought to buy my favour by ridding me of Zatore’s influence.’ The king frowned at Cole. ‘Why she chose to send you of all people I cannot say. Whatever curse you carry that caused you to become... whatever it was you were, it does not change the fact that she is desperate, nor that your desire seems genuine. If these invaders do indeed move south, I will deal with that when it happens. I did not win this throne by neglecting the more immediate threat.’ The king reached up and ran a scarred finger along the grisly tapestry of his face. ‘As to the other realms,’ he continued, ‘my influence has waned. Many have their own troubles. They will not listen to me.’

  ‘Then I came here for nothing,’ Cole said bitterly. ‘Nothing except to take the lives of innocents.’

  ‘Lives you must answer for,’ Jax growled. He took a step towards Cole. The Rag King made a soothing gesture and the big man turned away in disgust.

  ‘It is true you should die for your actions here,’ the king said. ‘Curse or no curse, you have murdered enough of my men to hang many times over. A younger and more impetuous me would have seen to it myself. Still, I would not make an enemy of the White Lady. Jax, hand this young man back his weapon.’

  There was a curse followed by a clatter as the king’s companion tossed Magebane at Cole’s feet. He stared down at the ruby-hilted dagger, filled with loathing for himself, and for this weapon that had taken so many lives.

  I wanted to be a hero. I never wanted to be a killer. It’s not what I am.

  But it was exactly what he was. And without Magebane, he wasn’t even that; without Magebane, he was worthless, a nobody.

  Hating himself, he bent down and retrieved the dagger. ‘Now what?’ he asked numbly, meeting the king’s mismatched eyes, Lady Steel’s implacable gaze, Jax’s angry glare. He had failed in his quest. He wished Sasha were here instead of him. She would have convinced this strange king to send men in response to the Fade threat.

  ‘Now you leave,’ the Rag King said simply. ‘Do not return to Tarbonne. Attempt to do so and you will forfeit your life. Just as these men gave theirs in my service.’ He pointed a scarred hand at the butchered remains of the guardsmen, their lifeblood oozing out to form puddles that glistened in the torchlight. Once again Cole’s gorge rose.

  He turned and ran from the palace, one hand pressed firmly to his mouth. He almost made it outside before the first mouthful of vomit burst through his fingers.

  Weapons

  ✥

  ON THE MORNING of Thelassa’s Reckoning, the skies above the Trine opened.

  Eremul frowned up at the dark clouds overhead and let the bitingly cold rain wash over his face. It was a grim day, befitting the even grimmer events that would play out later. He could see the ship that would launch the Breaker of Worlds undergoing some final checks in the harbour. He doubted the downpour would prove any impediment to the fehd’s plans.

  Despite the rain, a small crowd had gathered to watch the terrible weapon being readied aboard the ship. Perhaps it was fatalistic interest; perhaps some thought their occupiers planned to set up a permanent base in the Grey City and were preparing to remove a rival most held no love for. Dorminia had endured three tyrants in as many months and the White Lady’s brief reign might have been the worst of them – at least until the Ancients got around to Reckoning the Grey City and everyone within.

  Strange how everything happens in threes. The three cities of the Trine; the three Adjudicators. The White Lady’s handmaidens always seem to come in a trio. Perhaps the Creator had a fetish for the number. Or perhaps it is a cosmic rule that possibility will always fill a vacuum, and three is the number from which possibility spirals.

  It was a day to be philosophical, Eremul mused. Tens of thousands of lives were about to be snuffed out like candles. It paid to focus on the greater questions when the lesser ones gave answers that made him want to slit his wrists.

  He wondered how Monique was faring back at the Refuge. He had concluded it was probably safe to leave the woman alone with Ricker and Mard. One of the men was permanently so drunk he couldn’t raise his head, never mind his cock, while the other was more terrified of the cock-rot than possible destruction at the hands of a world-breaking weapon.

  A light hand fell upon his shoulder and Eremul almost jumped out of his skin – or at least gave what passes for a ‘jump’ for a man with no legs. ‘You will join me at the Obelisk,’ said Isaac’s sing-song voice behind him. ‘The view will be spectacular.’

  ‘Must you sneak up on me like that?’ the Halfmage snarled. ‘Besides, I’ve already witnessed the devastation of one city. You recall when Salazar crushed Shadowport beneath the waves.’

  Isaac shrugged. ‘Life is a series of experiences. Take what you can before you can take no more.’

  Eremul frowned. ‘Thelassa is many miles away. Even from the Obelisk we won’t be able to see a thing. Unless your eyes have hidden uses beyond unsettling the... lesser races.’

  The Adjudicator smiled, seemingly enjoying the Halfmage’s barb. ‘Our eyes are indeed able to see further than yours, but it is different eyes we shall use. A surviving remnant of the wonders we possessed in the Time Before.’

  ‘I’m not pushing this thing all the way up to the Obelisk,’ Eremul said, tapping the wheelchair Isaac had contrived for him years ago. ‘It’s a long trek uphill and I have little desire to be set upon by an angry mob in the middle of a downpour.’

  Isaac’s obsidian eyes seemed to glitter as he took hold of the handles on the back of Eremul’s chair. ‘I shall help you.’

  *

  The Obelisk was the tallest building in Dorminia – a monolith of dark stone towering over the nearby estates that once were home to the city’s nobles and magistrates. Now that Eremul had laid eyes upon the City of Towers and its delicate spires for the first time, the Obelisk didn’t appear half so impressive. Then again, many of the things he’d once considered impressive were rather less so since the Ancients had arrived in the Trine.

  That is one of life’s great lessons. The more you learn of the world, the less you matter. When we are young we are at the very centre of the circle of Creation. As the years pass we drift to the edge until, when it is our turn to fall into oblivion, we accept it with nary a whimper.

  The Halfmage wondered if time changed the fehd as it changed men. Staring around the Noble Quarter and meeting the gazes of the immortals who now claimed it as their enclave, he suspected not.

  ‘How many of you are there?’ he asked Isaac, as the Adjudicator wheeled him through the Obelisk’s courtyard, drawing curious glances from his kin.

  ‘A thousand of us made the voyage across the Endless Ocean,’ Isaac answered. ‘In our homeland we are twenty times that number. A fraction of what your people can muster even in this small pocket of the continent, but propagation is less of a concern for those who do not age. Endless breeding is the hallmark of...’ He trailed off.

  ‘The lesser races,’ Eremul said, mimicking Isaac’s lyrical voice. The fehd officer smiled at that and for a moment it felt like old times, the Halfmage and his trusty manservant indulging in some idle banter – or at least a one-way stream of sarcasm and invective on Eremul’s part.

  Isaac is not a manservant, the Halfmage reminded himself. He is a seven-feet-tall immortal. And he is about to bring me into the very heart of fehd command here in the Trine.

  They passed the Crimson Watch barracks – now empty – and approached the Obelisk’s iron gates. The fehd on duty threw Isaac a salute and gave Eremul a questioning look, but the Adjudicator motioned for him to open the gates and his kinsman immediately complied. Th
e last time Eremul had visited the Obelisk the gates had been secured by a great padlock. As the Halfmage watched, the fehd guard moved to a strange panel that had been recently installed on the wall. It was covered in what appeared to be a grid of numbered buttons. The guard tapped out a sequence with his slender fingers. A moment later the gates clicked and slid open of their own accord.

  The Halfmage raised an eyebrow, but Isaac merely motioned him to follow.

  The entrance hall was much the same as the Halfmage remembered. As he trundled down the carpeted foyer he heard a whirring noise and glanced up to see a series of mechanical objects that looked a little like the fehd hand-cannons affixed to the ceiling. They moved as he did, tracking his path, tiny eyes of red fire winking down at him.

  ‘They are not dangerous,’ Isaac said, noting Eremul’s discomfort. ‘They only observe. In the Time Before, these could be found on every building, or so the legends say. They recorded everything.’

  Eremul slowed as they approached the steps leading up to the Grand Council Chamber. ‘If you wish me to escort you to the top floor, you will have to carry me,’ he said bitterly. ‘I am allergic to stairs.’

  Isaac said nothing. Instead, the Adjudicator turned to a section of wall just to the left of the steps. The fehd officer pressed a silvery button in the centre of another panel that had been installed three feet above the floor. Suddenly the wall slid open, revealing a small, empty room beyond. Isaac entered and beckoned Eremul to follow him.

  ‘Is this a joke?’ the Halfmage asked. He thought perhaps his one-time manservant had decided to imprison him; payback for all the humiliating labour he had forced Isaac to undertake during his four-year tenure at the depository.

  The Adjudicator turned to another panel just inside the room. There were six buttons arranged vertically on the panel.

  One for each of the Obelisk’s floors? Eremul mused.

  Isaac pressed the button at the very bottom of the panel. ‘Brace yourself,’ he said, something like anticipation in his musical voice.

  Eremul opened his mouth to ask why – but stopped in amazement as the door suddenly seemed to disappear into the floor. He had the sensation of being lifted into the air. It went on for several seconds.

  ‘We made a few improvements when we moved in,’ said Isaac wryly.

  The queasy sensation stopped and the door opened with a sharp ding not unlike the tolling of a small bell. Isaac took hold of Eremul’s chair. ‘Try not to say anything,’ he advised, and wheeled the Halfmage into the newly rebuilt top floor of the Obelisk.

  The sight that greeted Eremul wasn’t at all what he had expected. General Saverian and a half-dozen officers were sitting on high-backed chairs arranged in a circle around a slightly raised platform. Floating above the platform were several three-dimensional images of Dorminia and the surrounding region, depicted in breathtaking detail. As Isaac wheeled Eremul closer, the Halfmage’s mouth dropped open in shock. There were tiny figures milling around the deck of the largest of the floating, ghostly dioramas, which was a perfect representation of the ship carrying the Breaker of Worlds.

  ‘Is this magic?’ he said in wonder.

  ‘Not magic,’ replied Isaac quietly. ‘What you see is the harbour as it exists at this moment. The images are transmitted here through vista-spheres – one of the few surviving wonders from the Time Before. They float high in the skies above. Think of them as similar to Salazar’s mindhawks.’

  Saverian turned and frowned at the Halfmage. ‘Adjudicator,’ he said, the hint of annoyance in his voice sending tendrils of fear down Eremul’s spine. ‘You appear to have brought a human among us. May I ask why?’

  ‘I wanted to show him a fragment of the glory of what our people have achieved, sir,’ replied Isaac, diffidently. ‘While I still can.’

  ‘You are too indulgent, brother,’ said Melissan from her seat beside the general.

  ‘I fear that is the truth,’ replied Isaac, with a small smile.

  ‘We near launch,’ Saverian announced in an iron voice, his eyes focusing on the diorama before them. Sheets of rain battered the virtual deck of the ship, dripped from the colossal cannon that was moments away from reducing the thirty thousand inhabitants of Thelassa to ash. At the general’s announcement, the cannon began to shift position.

  Beyond the raised platform around which the fehd were seated, clear glass ran the circumference of the Obelisk’s top floor, providing a perfect view over Dorminia’s Noble Quarter. Rain crawled down the glass to the courtyard far below. Salazar had met his end on those cobbles months ago; a kinder death than the people of Thelassa would receive.

  For a brief moment Eremul considered unleashing his magic against those present. Perhaps he could destroy whatever strange items Saverian and his officers were using to communicate with the fehd operating the great cannon aboard the ship. At best, he might buy a small delay. Was it worth the cost of his own life?

  No one in Dorminia would piss on me if I were on fire. In Thelassa, why, they might just go and fetch some oil.

  Saverian raised a hand and adjusted something in his ear. ‘Initiate the Reckoning on the count of five,’ he announced. ‘One... two...’

  Unable to watch, Eremul closed his eyes and waited.

  ‘General,’ said one of Saverian’s officers, his skin as dark as the others’ were pale. ‘Take a look at this.’

  The urgency in the fehd’s voice was enough to snap Eremul’s eyes back open. Saverian motioned with one hand and the ethereal image of Dorminia’s harbour on the platform was suddenly replaced by a panorama of the Demonfire Hills north of the city. Broken peaks of granite rose up from the ground to stab at the heavens.

  The Halfmage’s brow furrowed. There appeared to be an outpost stationed there – a small camp of the immortal fehd and their thrall helpers, nestled within a hollow between two particularly large hills.

  ‘What is that?’ Melissan asked, pointing a slender finger at something making its way down the northernmost hill.

  It was neither human nor fehd. It looked like a man made of shadow and fire – and as it flowed across the rock, it left scorched stone in its wake. The unidentified horror was heading straight towards the fehd outpost.

  ‘Focus on it,’ ordered Saverian. ‘I want a closer look.’ The black-skinned officer twisted a dial on a panel to the side of the platform and the panorama shifted, narrowing and increasing in size and detail as the fehd relic transmitting the image moved closer to the interloper. As those gathered in the Obelisk watched, a dozen human thralls converged on the foreign invader, weapons raised. The unknown horror met them, lashed out with nebulous limbs composed of flame and shadow. Where they struck, the unfortunate thralls burst apart, bodies collapsing into ash, alive one instant and obliterated the next.

  ‘Give me sound,’ Saverian barked. The officer flicked another dial and then they could hear the screams, the harsh bark of hand-cannons exploding. The horror flowed into the camp, ignoring the tiny metal projectiles raining down upon it, tearing a path through the thralls as it closed on the handful of fehd beyond. One of them Eremul knew: a female, blue cloak fluttering behind her.

  ‘Nym,’ Isaac gasped. He turned to Saverian. ‘Sir, you sent Nym with the reconnaissance mission?’

  The general’s teeth were grinding together as though he were chewing steel. ‘Yes. That is my prerogative, Adjudicator.’

  Nym held something clutched in a slender hand – a spherical object similar to the firebombs the rebels had unleashed in Dorminia. She tossed it. There was a concussive explosion and for a moment the panorama was covered in thick dust.

  The nightmare of shadow and fire rose from the crater that had just been blasted out of the hill, utterly unharmed. It reached the first fehd, who leaped at it, crystal sword slashing. He moved incredibly fast and fought with inhuman skill. But his blade passed right through the apparition, which surged forward and engulfed the Ancient. White skin began to smoke and the fehd’s hair caught fire.

  �
��It seems not to feel pain,’ said Melissan, sounding dismayed. ‘What manner of being is this?’

  ‘A weapon,’ Saverian growled. ‘One of three, created by the gods in the time humans call the Age of Strife. They feared a mage uprising. This was their response. The gholam.’

  There was a blood-curdling shriek and then the fehd burst apart.

  ‘General, how do we stop it?’ Melissan begged, voice rising in panic. Eremul found himself shaking with fear, fresh sweat soaking his robes.

  ‘It is impervious to steel,’ said Saverian grimly. ‘It is unaffected by magic. Even our conventional weapons will not suffice. There is but one course of action. We break it.’

  Break it? Eremul’s mind whirled. The Breaker of Worlds. He means to Reckon it.

  Saverian reached up to his ear. ‘You are to adjust targets,’ he commanded. ‘I will give you the new coordinates.’

  ‘General,’ Isaac cut in desperately. ‘Our kin are there. Nymuvia is there!’

  The mighty white-haired general rose from his chair. His face was implacable, his voice as hard as iron. ‘It is the only way, Adjudicator. I will not allow it to reach the city. It must be stopped now.’

  ‘General,’ Isaac said again, pure agony in his voice. ‘Nym is my sister! Your betrothed!’ He started towards Saverian, but Melissan laid a hand upon his arm.

  ‘Stand down, brother,’ she whispered.

  Saverian stared beyond Isaac, out into the pouring rain battering Dorminia’s streets. ‘I am the shield that defends our people from harm,’ he said, biting off each word. ‘I will do whatever it takes. Understand this, Adjudicator. Whatever it takes.’

  The Halfmage spun his chair to follow the general’s line of sight. Saverian raised a hand to his ear again and spoke a series of numbers. Moments later a flash lit up the sky. An arc of light shot up into the heavens. Far above the city it suddenly changed course, veering off towards the north.

  Towards the Demonfire Hills.