He searched the area extensively, checking bodies – the victims of the Barghest – and partially eating some, but without any luck. He considered returning to the mansion, but felt Cú Roí would be unhappy if he left the city centre. So Sam decided to return to his Master to get orders. The pull in his head confirmed that his Master wanted him back.
‘When I find your sister, Rowan, I’m going to do things to her. Horrible things.’ He giggled.
‘You’re mad,’ Rowan said flatly.
‘No,’ Sam shouted, suddenly angry. ‘I am a god! Gods can’t be mad. Everything we do is right. Our will is the only truth, and our power the only justice!’
‘As far as I can see, you’re just the puppet. I’ve been paying attention, Sam, and you are just an animal, pushed and pulled by something else. Am I right?’ Rowan asked.
‘He doesn’t control me,’ Sam hissed.
‘He created you,’ the Elf said quietly. ‘He controls you.’
‘Where is he?’ Rowan asked. He pulled a gun from the small of his back and pointed it at Sam.
‘That’s pretty, where did you get it?’
‘There are a lot of very armed but very dead cops around the corner. Now, where is he?’
‘You made a mistake, brother dearest …’ Sam allowed his rage and hatred to flow through him. In its wake, it brought dense muscle and bristling fur. His remaining arm swelled, his skull elongated, and through the pain, Sam felt a surge of ecstasy.
This was power, he thought as he shrieked into the morning sky, his cry turning to a roar. Slaver dripped onto his matted chest, his fingers cracked as long talons appeared. His mouth suddenly crowded with fangs and his senses sharpened. He could smell Rowan’s fear; he could see sweat beading on his brow.
‘… you brought a gun to a fist fight,’ Sam said, the words slurred and mangled in his wolf’s muzzle.
The Sylph lurked in the darkness beneath the lorry, amongst the wires and filthy, oil-soaked shafts that criss-crossed its length. It waited patiently, still bound by its Master’s orders: still waiting to find Cú Roí, the Miracle Child.
So far, the Elf had done nothing to bring the Sylph’s objectives any closer. It was beginning to wonder, in its own stupid way, whether it should just dispatch the Elf and return to the Prince of Rattlesnakes.
Impatience and frustration sizzled through the liquid night that passed for its psyche. It watched, its ephemeral body laced through the infinitesimal cracks that ran through the chassis, hiding in the engine and the exhaust, seeping into the darkness beneath the seats, filling the storage container on its back, edging onto the hard tarmac below.
It watched the one-armed Therian howl and change. ‘Your carcasses will be meat for the Barghest,’ the wolf thing grunted, it’s words garbled in its malformed jaws. ‘I’ll take your steaming, gutted corpses to my Master. It’s not far to carry you, even with one arm. The rooms of the apartment block over there will soon be filled with whores, each one with a belly stuffed full of my Master’s children. And he waits for his army to quicken right at the top of the tower. A fit seat of power for a living god!’
If the Sylph had possessed a mind capable of giving words to its feelings, it might have said ‘finally’ before it materialised to kill them all.
The lorry behind Rowan and the Elf suddenly lurched into the air with a groan. Sam watched it, confused, as it hovered several feet off the ground for a second, before slowly collapsing backwards on to its side. The wailing grind of buckling steel set his hypersensitive ears ringing. He howled in sympathy.
Something crawled from the shadows beneath it. Something he had seen before. Thick, arachnid legs scrambled on the tarmac for purchase as the thing from the apartment dragged itself into the light once more. Rowan and the Elf ran to its side, out of the way of its whipping legs, which were big enough and powerful enough to tear them in half.
Thick black light wormed out of rents in the lorry’s engine block. Moments later, the cab and the container erupted, metal bursting outwards in thousands of different directions, like a spray of bullets. Darkness and shadow flowed from the holes, running down to where the legs had finally managed to get themselves under the lorry.
For a second it looked like an enormous hermit crab, the lorry its shell. Then the legs straightened, and the lorry rolled away as if it weighed nothing.
Stretching in the light, the dark creature rose to its full height, rearing fifteen feet above them. Its body was a perfect black globe, its thick limbs sprouted from it in no particular pattern. Sam felt fear for the second time that day. Rowan fired the gun at it once. Nothing happened.
The Elf raised his right hand and pointed it at the dark creature. A brilliant stream of white-hot fire lanced into it, bursting on its legs, causing steam to erupt around it. The viscous terror reared back, leaving three of its legs behind. A noise came from it, like the crashing of waves on a beach, quiet and yet powerful, and Sam knew instinctively that the thing was screaming. The Elf pulled his arm to the right, trying to catch the monster, but even with five legs it was quick. It skittered over the lorry and vanished up the road.
Fire splashed over the lorry, and Sam winced at the extreme heat that drifted off the Elf in waves. The lorry’s cab exploded with a soft thump, and more flames rose to cover it. Sam thought it wasn’t like in the movies – the cab hadn’t even lifted from the ground.
Then the Elf looked at him with those hate-filled eyes and pointed the lethal hand at him. In his altered state, Sam saw that the mouth tattooed into the Elf’s palm looked real. He thought he saw a forked tongue flicker in its depths.
‘It looks like you brought your fists to a firefight,’ the Elf spat. Sam opened his mouth to beg for his life but it was too late. The fire billowed towards him, and all he could see was white. In the moment before he was wiped from existence, Sam found himself hoping that Tabby was okay. He loved her so much …
The Blind Room was an anomaly that the Courts had tried to fathom for millennia, without success. It was first discovered in The Tower at Dusk, before the ascendance of man, by a curious Ifrit called Kilmanoi. The only evidence that Kilmanoi had been there was a short note in chalk on the wall outside. The signed message read, ‘Don’t go in’. His body’s ashes were never found.
Unlike humans, members of the Courts were not inclined to ignore such an obvious warning. They named the vast area the room was part of ‘Kilmanoi’s Hall’ and restricted themselves to peering into the pitch-black room for a few years. Eventually losing interest, they wandered back to the upper levels to enjoy the revels and orgies that took place beneath the dying sun.
A few centuries later, the curiosity became an object of interest once more, but only because of where it was situated. Kilmanoi’s Hall was a nexus: a vast cavern, containing thousands of Fairy-Rings that led all over the human world. As the Courts became gradually more interested in the lush green planet their own home seemed inextricably attached to, Kilmanoi’s Hall became more and more important.
The Unseelie Court especially came to spend more and more time there, launching their great hunts into the barbarian wasteland, running down humans in countries across the globe with fierce delight, and spawning the stories that laid the foundations of the modern human myths that Cú Roí’s terrible war would build upon.
Soon, Kilmanoi’s Hall became a thriving supernatural way station, busy with Svartálfar going to Eastern Europe, where it was dark and gloomy, to terrorise a human village with their vampiric ways, or Ifrit off to the deserts they so loved, to rape human women and kill their men. Inevitably, some travellers got lost and strayed into the Blind Room. Their screams rang across the great hall for hours before being abruptly silenced.
Eventually, an Ifrit scholar called Dizzen-Thut – the last disciple of the Firstcomer, Trauco-Lilû – wondered what the equivalent room in The Tower at Dawn was like. After a lot of negotiation with a wary Seelie Court, Dizzen-Thut gained access to the Blind Room in the alternate Tower, and what he fou
nd surprised him.
Like the Unseelie Court, its counterpart was also venturing more and more into the lands of men. The Elves found themselves in love with the misty vales and heavy forests of the islands that would become Ireland and England, Scotland and Wales. The Jötnar found kindred spirits in the savage, strong men of Scandinavia. There the Jötnar warred amongst each other and forged legends of giants and gods.
When Dizzen-Thut finally set foot in the bustle of the Seelie Court’s version of Kilmanoi’s Hall, he found it very similar to the one he knew. It was a vast space.
The hall was perfectly circular, spanning most of the entire width of The Tower, twenty-five miles in diameter. It was impossible to see one side from the other. In the centre was a massive well, nine miles across; a bore that ran down the centre of The Tower to unfathomable depths. Somewhere below, huge holes had been left open in The Tower’s side, and the dawn light flooded in, creeping up to cast its glow in Kilmanoi’s Hall. Directly above the well, in an arched and vaulted ceiling a mile high, the shaft continued, driving up into the rest of The Tower. Wisps of cloud drifted through the hall and disappeared into the upper shaft in a gentle vortex. The light from below went with the vapour, making the shaft an inverted light-well that gave some illumination to the levels above. Light was important. It was the only difference from The Tower at Dusk.
Nobody knew how far down the well went. Nobody knew if The Tower ever reached a theoretical ground, or whether it went on forever, just floating in space. A Fairy-Ring that solved the riddle had never been discovered; many had gone mad trying to fathom the mystery.
Those so struck by lunacy took to sitting at the edge of the well staring down into its golden, misty depths. Eventually they threw themselves off, never to be seen again. As a result, the Elves had erected a huge fence around the well to stop suicides. The Unseelie Court hadn’t bothered.
What remained of the floor of the Hall was a relatively thin halo; a band just under eight miles wide and dotted with Fairy-Rings. This was where the vast business of travel took place.
Signs helped the Seelie Court navigate some of the Fairy-Rings. Others had not yet been labelled. A core of intrepid adventurers slowly made their way from Ring to Ring, mapping their destinations with almost religious fervour.
A market town had sprung up in this nexus between well and walls; a thriving metropolis of millions of souls, pulled from the airy upper reaches by the allure of the mysterious place.
Balconies, windows, doors, and steep meandering staircases were carved into the walls. A vast honeycomb of rooms faced out across the new town towards the well. It was as if some alien hand had been inspired to re-build the tombs of Petra on an inconceivably vast scale. Or perhaps somebody had once glimpsed this wonder and tried to recreate it in the cradle of human civilisation.
Within the walls, beyond the doors and windows, were narrow, two-storey structures. They were pleasant, if small, accommodations. They were much sought after as homes and shops. There were hundreds of thousands of them, side by side and stacked on top of each other. Those rooms went nearly all the way up to the ceiling of Kilmanoi’s Hall. In the early days, when the Hall had first been discovered, somebody had counted that there were four-hundred-and-thirty-eight storeys. The higher floors were accessed by hidden stairways embedded in the outer wall, but after about level fifteen, they tended to be unoccupied. It took too long to climb up to them. Dizzen-Thut found every one of the lower quarters occupied, even the Blind Room.
This was a surprise, for the two Towers tended to copy each other in all things; if the Blind Room in The Tower at Dusk was lethal, then Dizzen-Thut justly suspected that it would prove lethal in The Tower at Dawn as well. Just better lit.
Therefore, finding a family of Elves living there quite happily turned out to be something of a shock. The Elves were not welcoming. They did not like Ifrit or what they did in the human world. The son particularly resented Dizzen-Thut’s presence, calling him a filthy rapist, a murderer, and an Incubus.
Dizzen-Thut had been all these things in his time, and so did not take offence. He spent two days speaking with the elfin shopkeeper and his surly son, asking them if they had ever felt any malevolent spirits or evil miasmas, or if they had noticed any feelings of dread or unexplained weakness. Neither had, and by the end of the second day, the son decided that enough was enough and moved to eject Dizzen-Thut forcibly.
Not one to allow any such assault on his person, Dizzen-Thut reached for the magic that was his birthright, intending to sear the impertinent youth across the face in a gentle warning. He was shocked when said youth’s fist cannoned into his chin and sent him sprawling to the floor.
Dizzen-Thut barely noticed the father pulling the son away nor being helped to his feet and apologised to. Instead, he turned to the Elf and asked him if he could tap into the magic. The Elf, who never had any need at home, was nonplussed at first, and then his eyes widened in all the confirmation Dizzen-Thut needed. The Ifrit rushed from the house and sent an arc of fire swelling over the crowd outside.
Once the panic subsided, Dizzen-Thut was taken to the Seelie Court where he explained his findings. The Blind Room did not allow any magic to be used. It effectively neutered the people of the Courts.
Unfortunately for Dizzen-Thut, he never managed to understand why, nor could he work out why the equivalent room in The Tower at Dusk had proved so deadly. He spent a very long time trying to figure it out before he threw himself down the well. His successor also attempted to solve the riddle, and his successor, and his successor after that. The last member of the Courts to try was one of Creachmhaoil’s contemporaries – an Elf called Darian en Yiliman who moved into the house to study it better.
When the unspeakable happened – when The Transmogrification began – it was in Kilmanoi’s Hall, the most densely populated area of The Tower at Dawn. Shortly afterwards, Darian en Yiliman was bitten by his wife and joined the vast, twenty-million-strong army of ravening undead that still plagued The Tower.
Grímnir listened to the Maiden of Earth and Water in silence. When she had finished her story, he looked at her, strung up opposite him and grunted. ‘You cannot free us then?’
‘No Grímnir – here in the Blind Room I am as helpless as a babe. I have been here for years now. Creachmhaoil betrayed me as I knew he had to, but I hid the Seed of my power.’
‘And now we have it,’ said the Svartálfar Leanan, drawing a possessive finger down Grímnir’s naked chest.
‘You have nothing, child,’ the Maiden said gently. Leanan’s face screwed up in anger, and her form shifted across the room. The vampire’s hand lashed into the Maiden’s face.
‘Careful, my Love,’ her brother said quietly. ‘The magic that sustains them cannot be used here. They are as fragile as humans, and I would hate for you to kill her before the time is right.’
Leanan backed away still snarling. Grímnir saw with anger that a trail of blood ran from the Maiden’s mouth. She had been treated similarly in the past. Her skin was grimy and scarred, her face gaunt, her eyes blackened. Her hair, which he remembered as being long and lustrous, was clumpy and matted. She was naked, and her body looked like it had been severely beaten over a long period of time.
‘You will die for this – both of you,’ Grímnir said.
‘And who will kill us, Jötnar? You?’ Damballah laughed.
‘I will be free one day, Svartálfar. Then your race will finally be extinguished.’
‘The day you come for me, I will have stripped you of your magic – I will rip your face off and choke you to death with it.’
The Maiden spoke before Grímnir could reply. ‘Quiet, Grímnir.’ She turned to face Damballah, her bruised features still exuding serenity. ‘My husband will not be pleased when he finds out what you have done here, Svartálfar.’
‘I saw your husband – he was weak and pathetic. He is no threat to me.’
‘You saw a reflection – we wax and wane like the moon you so adore, Sva
rtálfar. Be careful where you stand when we are full once more.’
‘Empty threats and dull gibberish. You who came to me … me! … asking for help, and then allowed yourself to be led here as trusting as a babe. You call yourself a god … please be quiet lest I change my mind and allow my sister to discipline you.’ The Maiden fell silent, and Damballah’s nebulous form appeared to nod in satisfaction. A dark shape skittered into the room: a black globe on five thick legs, vaguely arachnid but mostly alien.
‘A Sylph,’ Grímnir spat. ‘Filthy by-blow.’
‘Be kind to my pet – he is injured,’ Damballah admonished.
The Sylph moved clumsily over to Damballah, and its body turned to a shadow that flowed into the Prince of Rattlesnakes. ‘Ah,’ Damballah said with satisfaction. ‘The last piece of the puzzle has been located. It is time for the Svartálfar to return to the world of men.’
‘May I come with you, brother? I am hungry.’
‘But who will watch the prisoners, my Love?’
‘Make Creachmhaoil do it. The bloodless old bastard will enjoy it.’
Damballah laughed. ‘You are a delight, my dear. Of course you may come. Why should Cú Roí be the only one who dines on the flesh of man tonight? And when we succeed, we will feast on the blood of man day and night for a century!’
At fifty-nine, Sergei Constantine was still in incredible physical condition. He trained with free weights and performed callisthenics every day, and ran ten kilometres every three days to keep his body lithe and trim.
He was aware that it wasn’t enough; ever since he turned thirty, he had noticed year by year that bumps and scrapes did not heal as quickly, his joints ached abominably when it was damp, and God help him if a cold draught got anywhere near his left hip. The muscles of his chest, though still powerful, were wiry, knotted ropes. Twenty years ago, they had bulged as if slabs of chiselled rock had been forced beneath his flesh. Since then, his skin had sagged and was now marred with stretch marks and liver spots. His arms were thin and looked distressingly like an old man’s. Sergei was well past his prime and he knew it.
Immortals' Requiem Page 36
