by Alan Baxter
A small gash in Hood’s shoulder, shallow, barely through the skin, closed over in seconds. There was no blood, nothing to mark where it had been. Any normal person would have been cleaved in two by such a blow. Darvill narrowed his eyes as he looked at the woman’s weapon lying among the devastation.
Hood continued through the complex, like an avenging angel delivering nothing but destruction everywhere he passed. The only real challenge had been the moment the operatives had managed to combine their efforts and hit him with magic far greater than any individual seemed able to bring to bear. Darvill smiled, glad he had played a vital part in the raid by shooting that group. It was easy to feel somewhat in the shadow of his father as events progressed.
He followed, kept low behind walls and broken furniture. As he passed the woman he had shot, he slipped the sword’s scabbard from across her back. Thankfully his hail of bullets hadn’t damaged it. He turned to the weapon on the ground. It was a little over a metre long, the hilt maybe one-fifth of that length. The blade was slightly curved, some four centimetres deep, ending in an upward-sloping point. It was essentially a Japanese katana, only a little larger, the blade a little deeper. Claude had a deep affinity for swords, had studied the arts of swordplay many times in his life. This weapon filled him with wonder. The hilt, rather than the traditional sharkskin-wrapped wood with leather bindings, was carved ivory, a design of interwoven serpents, shiny and smooth with age. He ran one finger along the carving and it felt warm, slightly giving, entirely unnatural. It would certainly not slip from the grasp, even wet with sweat or blood. The tsuba, the hilt guard, was cast bronze, a slightly disquieting design of circles and lines, exquisite in execution. Its symbolism would require research. The temper line ran a smooth, undulating wave along the length of the razor-sharp blade. The weapon exuded powerful magesign. With a smile, Claude slipped the sword into its scabbard and slung it across his back. He moved on in the wake of his father.
Shouts rose from the depths of the complex, more gunfire, more screams. A voice rang above the others, ‘Protect the Commander!’
Darvill ran forward. That one they needed to keep alive. He jumped a pile of bodies, or at least the mauled parts of bodies, and dropped into a crouch outside a door. A window to his right shattered as a broken corpse flew through it, hitting the opposite wall with a wet thud. His gun raised, Darvill leaned into the room to look. A huge man with a massive walrus moustache was backed into one corner, his hands knotted in a strange configuration. His magic was old and intense. Several more bodies lay around the room, one man squirming weakly in obvious pain.
Hood stood before the big man, growling a feral noise deep in his chest, clearly restricted somehow by the man’s spell. Darvill stepped into the room, his gun levelled at arm’s length. ‘Dad, don’t kill him. We need to talk to him.’
Hood glanced around, face furious.
‘Dad!’ Darvill yelled.
Hood shook himself, saliva sprayed from his lips. He cried out, stretched and twitched, suddenly became still. His face calmed. He pulled a chair upright and sat, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, a contented smile on his face. He gestured. ‘All yours.’
Darvill nodded once and popped a bullet into the Commander’s knee. The old man screamed and dropped, clutched at his leg. To his credit, he began his incantation again almost immediately. Claude sensed the magic wards going up, but was across the room in a flash, the weapon pressed to the old man’s temple. ‘Stop. Or I will kill you.’
The Commander quietened mid-spell and scowled at Hood. ‘What the hell is this?’ He looked up at Darvill. ‘I know you, from Obsidian. I thought you were on our side.’
‘I had to ally with Caine to get out,’ Claude said. ‘But I was never on your fucking side.’
The Commander pointed at Hood. ‘I recognise him, but I’m not sure …’ His eyes widened, realisation dawning.
Claude smiled. ‘Remember now?’
‘Robert Hood. CEO of Black Diamond Incorporated. Alex Caine put you away, I thought.’
Hood lifted his palms, shrugged. ‘I guess I got out.’
‘What in all the realms are you?’
Hood chuckled. ‘That’s actually a very tricky thing to answer.’
Darvill jabbed the Commander with the gun barrel. ‘We’ll be asking the questions. It’s Caine we’re after. Where is he?’
The Commander rumbled a deep laugh. ‘Oh, your timing is terrible.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘If you’re here, you must have forced some information from one of our people. I dread to think what you did, they’re trained not to speak.’
‘You should use the old cyanide tooth capsule or something,’ Claude said. ‘Everyone cracks eventually. But he was good. Tried to give us false locations and everything.’
The Commander nodded, a deep hatred burning in his eyes. ‘So you’ve been to Caine’s place, and you know he’s been abducted.’
‘What about his bitch girlfriend?’
The Commander raised an eyebrow. ‘Silhouette? She went after him. I’m hoping she failed to find a way. We’re still looking for her. Well, we were …’
‘Where?’ Darvill yelled.
The Commander flinched, scowled again. ‘Faerie. The Fey are mad at Caine and found a way to get him.’
Darvill gestured at the devastation around them. ‘Seems you can’t actually protect much at all, old man.’ A suspicion settled over him. ‘Why are you being so free with this information?’
The Commander started laughing, shook his head. Dizziness tickled at the edges of Darvill’s vision. He realised his grip on the gun was loosening. The Commander’s face hung slack, already pale from the pain of the kneecapping. His eyes drooped. ‘You’re already dead,’ he managed in a slur before his chin fell to his chest. Drool ran from his lips.
Darvill fell to one knee, put a hand out to prevent falling flat on his face. The ground felt spongy under his palm. Or was his hand the spongy thing? As blackness closed in from the edges of his vision, his last thought was, Fucking gas. Last chance countermeasures.
Jean Chang sat among crowds of tourists and office workers in front of St Mary’s. She pulled the broad brim of her new sun hat low, sinking her face further into shadow from the harsh Australian summer sun as she watched the side of the cathedral. The tracker still worked and Darvill was somewhere under there, not moving much. She had thought to move a little closer, but didn’t dare. She had no idea why she was even taking this risk — how safe was she really among these people? But she wore a heavy weight of responsibility for the presence of Robert Hood in the world. She might not be much of a field agent after all, but she was good with information. So she would gather what she could.
The blip on her tablet started moving. She hunched down, watched the screen, glancing up occasionally. After a minute or so, Hood emerged, carrying the limp form of Claude Darvill.
Chang gasped. Hood moved away from the building into the shadow of a low wall and lay Darvill down. He leaned over his son, shouted and pumped the man’s chest, tipped his head back and blew air into his lungs.
Jean couldn’t see any obvious injuries, but she couldn’t see much detail at all from such a distance. She jumped when Darvill suddenly bucked and twisted on the ground. He cried out. Several people had paused to watch the two men when Darvill rolled to one side and vomited noisily. People quickly moved on.
Chang watched wide-eyed as Darvill continued throwing up violently for several minutes. Eventually his father dragged him to his feet and half carried him, staggering away from the building. Claude had a sword strapped across his back. That was new. Jean huddled under her hat again as they moved through the crowd only twenty metres or so from where she sat, panic fluttering in her stomach. Stupid to have come so close, there was no need for it. But what were they doing? What had happened to Claude?
When she was sure they were well out of sight, the blip on her screen showing them moving across Hyde Park, she snuck up to the door from which they had emerged. It was smashed in and
smoke drifted gently up the stairs. No way was she going down into that mess. Uncertain what to do, she returned to her spot in front of the cathedral and kept an eye on their progress on her screen. She felt safer in the crowd, and safe in the knowledge they were moving away from her. Just watch, she told herself. No need to get too close.
13
Alex did his best to ignore the icy bands biting into his wrists and ankles. Spread-eagled on an inclined, intricately-carved wooden tabletop, he closed his eyes and tried to think of anything except the Fey moving around him, probing, prodding, testing. Though when he closed his eyes, he saw the bodies of so many desperate lowen, tumbling into the Void and winking out of existence. Even here under these conditions, those horrors were branded into his mind’s eye.
The Fey magic was horrible as it slipped over and through him, like a thousand spiders running under his skin. He recognised parts of it, sensed and guessed at others. They focused most of their attention on the shards of the Darak, tested the edges where the pieces bonded seamlessly with his chest.
Occasionally they muttered to each other. A sharp pain made him buck off the table and his eyes popped open in shock.
‘Lie still, fucking human!’ the Fey leaning over him said, a sharp scalpel in his hand. ‘If you cause me to damage you too soon, there will be hell to pay.’
Alex shook his head, clenched his jaw as the Fey leaned over him again. He was tempted to time his next movement, shift his body up to meet the blade as it descended. But there was no guarantee of a fatal stab. As if reading his thoughts, another Fey leaned in and pressed hard hands into his hips. With him pinned to the table, the first creature lowered the blade once more. Alex hissed in pain at the heat of the slice. His skin parted alongside one of the shards and blood welled up. The Fey mopped at him, leaned in close for a look.
‘Capillaries and nerves, would you believe it?’ he muttered.
‘Into the stone?’ the other asked.
‘Yes, it’s actually growing into him. Or he into it, whichever you prefer. It is an organic part of him.’
‘Well, that much we assumed. But can we excise it?’
The first Fey stood straight, staring at the freely bleeding slice in Alex’s chest. He shook his head. ‘It would have no blood supply, and it relies on one now. We need to return the stone to its original state before removing the pieces. Or at least isolate it artificially. I don’t think it would survive excision and then turning. Even if we had a clue how to turn it, in or out of this fucker.’
Alex smiled to himself. They were at a loss and they knew it. All this testing and poking and cutting was just flailing in the darkness of ignorance. That gave him time. For what, he was not entirely sure, but all the while these fools were flummoxed, he had an opportunity to plan something. Or perhaps … The thought was too much to consider. He had to assume Silhouette, and subsequently Armour, were at least vaguely aware of his situation by now. Would they launch a rescue? Would they be able to?
Perhaps he didn’t have so much time after all. If they were able to save him, that would mean this risk still existed — the risk of his possession of the Darak and the value it held for the Fey. It all needed to end. He needed to end, and all the suffering he had caused would end with him. And the nightmares would cease.
The Lady strode into the room, eyes dark with fury. ‘Well?’
The two Fey jumped, standing almost to attention in surprise. ‘We’re still exploring the possibilities, my Lady,’ said the one with the scalpel.
‘And?’
‘Nothing conclusive yet, my Lady. But we have several more avenues to investigate.’
Alex laughed aloud. ‘You have no fucking idea,’ he said. ‘Tell her the truth!’ He bucked and howled as the Lady’s pain lanced through him.
‘Don’t you dare prove him right,’ she said, and swept from the room.
The first Fey turned back to Alex, rage in his amber eyes. ‘You think you can beat us?’ he hissed. ‘Meat sack!’
Alex chuckled. ‘You’re already beaten.’
Silhouette walked quickly from the town, striding along the valley in the burning orange glow of Faerie twilight. Night seemed to be falling, though she wondered if another sun would rise before the orange one had fully set. Was it ever truly night here?
Magesign swirled all around, different to that in the settlement, but no less potent. Distances also confounded her eye. As she went, the land seemed to slip and shift beneath her. She would be looking at a forest hundreds of metres away, blink, and it would be suddenly right in front of her. She turned up the valley side, looking for higher ground, and after a good ten minutes realised she was heading downwards again, the valley twisting strangely away from her.
After an hour of walking, regularly checking behind for signs of pursuit, she made a startling realisation. Intent had a direct effect on travel in this fucked-up place. She looked up the gently sloping ground to her left, to a copse of trees standing like sentinels on the ridge. She decided to go there, started moving. She closed her eyes, kept the image of the copse in mind, opened them again. She was standing among the trees.
If she let her mind wander while moving, the land seemed to take its own course and she meandered randomly. Or she inadvertently considered somewhere else and was drawn there. But if she concentrated, she could traverse wherever she pleased. She moved to the edge of the trees, looked out across the land from her high vantage point. Undulating green rolled seemingly endless in every direction. She saw a few settlements in the distance, some nothing more than soft light smeared in the expanse of the darkening landscape.
A loud buzzing interrupted her thoughts and a shadow passed over. A giant dragonfly, at least five metres long, flew by. It took a second for Silhouette to realise it was mechanical, hinges and cogs worked smoothly as diaphanous, glass-like wings beat the air making the loud burring sound. Yet the mechanics were powered with magic, magesign curling around it like smoke. A Fey sat atop the thing, riding it. Silhouette moved into the shelter of the trees, watched it cruise by. She looked across the skies and realised there was other air traffic, tiny dots moved through strangely fibrous looking clouds. All manner of machines and balloons, mostly so high she hadn’t spotted them before. They exuded a similar amount of magic to everything else, the air swamped with the thick static of arcane power.
A weight of despair descended on her. This ridiculous place, so alien, felt like a wide open maze. The skin she wore, the shape she was forced to maintain, disgusted her and thrilled her simultaneously. She wanted to be free of it. She wanted to be free of this hell. She toyed with the ring on its chain about her neck. She had the ability to find a way home. Kreek had been right in his analogy of being lost at sea, but she had a way out. She turned a slow circle, the land flexing and moving as her vision passed over it. What chance did she ever have of finding Alex?
Maybe she should simply ask where the ice mountain was and risk discovery. If she could find a lone Fey travelling, perhaps she would have a chance to fight or run if things turned sour.
‘He’s not in yet,’ a voice said.
Silhouette supressed her surprise, turned slowly. A Fey stood behind her, leaning against a tree. ‘Isn’t he?’
‘No. Should be back soon. How many did you want?’
Silhouette’s mind raced. ‘I hadn’t decided yet.’
‘What do you have to trade?’
‘Maybe I should discuss that with him.’
The Fey laughed, shrugged. ‘Fair enough. Most don’t have the guts to deal direct, but if you do, more power to you. Wanna wait inside?’
Silhouette really didn’t want to go inside anywhere, but she did need information. Time to take a chance perhaps. ‘Sure.’
The Fey wandered off through the trees. Silhouette followed him into a thicker stand of heavy, dark wood and did her best to hide her surprise again when they came to a huge house built from the forest itself. Trees grew together, formed walls as their branches formed windows and doo
rs. Leaves gathered along the top of openings like eyebrows and the roof high above them was a dense canopy of rippling green. Magic was thick about the place, as it was everywhere, but not least in the wards sealing it like a bubble from the rest of Faerie.
She followed the Fey in through a high front door, the wards tickling but not impeding her. They were for something else. They entered a large hall lit by flickering brands of not quite natural fire. The walls and floor and ceiling were all smoothly connected, a naturally grown hollow in the middle of a giant tree that just happened to be the shape of a great hall. Several humans, mostly children, moved morosely about preparing a huge feast on a massive central table. The shields, Silhouette realised, were to keep these unfortunate souls in.
The Fey turned to her. ‘Name’s Fack.’
Silhouette suppressed a juvenile grin. She nodded. ‘Sil.’
‘Strange name.’
‘I like it.’
‘Fair enough.’ Fack looked her up and down, shrugged and turned away. He gestured vaguely around the room. ‘None of these are for sale. All of them with the yellow mark.’
Silhouette looked, wondering what the trade was and realised all the humans present wore yellow armbands. These bastards traded in people. For service as well as food, it seemed. The Fey were a complicated race. At least as Kin she knew how everything worked. She fed on people, but lived among them, to some degree lived as they did. Here the rules seemed to shift and undulate as much as the confusing landscape.
‘They seem busy,’ Silhouette observed, as much to make conversation as anything. She needed to find a way to ask about the ice mountain and get out before she was too deeply trapped.
Fack grinned at them, amused by their increasingly fervent activity. ‘He’s due back any …’ He was interrupted by a rush of sound and a ringing of bells. ‘Well, right now.’
Fack hurried away and the servants disappeared like roaches from a light turned on. Silhouette found herself alone in the great hall, the huge table almost bowed under the weight of fruit and meat, bread and vegetables, desserts and cakes, her only companion. It was like something from a fairy tale and Silhouette smiled immediately at the irony of the thought. The food was soaked in magic. As she tried to see more clearly what it was, some kind of controlling enchantment, Fack reappeared from a side door, dressed in a strange finery of leaves and branches. The front doors burst open and a crowd of about a dozen children stumbled in, eyes wide in fear and confusion.
