A Lady in Crystal

by Toby Bennett

  “Not yet,” Akna hissed almost inaudibly, “it may yet leave.”

  “And if it doesn’t, it’ll be on us in seconds and we’ll have no idea what we are dealing with” Ilsar wanted to add but she knew what Akna feared, a light would draw the inhabitants of the Ghosts to them like moths. The bank above trembled with the weight of whatever it was that prowled there and more loose earth and refuse slid down into the water around them. Akna’s hand tightened on Ilsar’s wrist.

  “It’s not going away, like it or not,” Ilsar whispered. She felt his acceptance of what she said, along with a reluctance to let her risk herself further.

  “The wound’s not as bad as you think,” she assured him softly

  “It doesn’t need to be too bad to slow you up,” he whispered to the darkness but at the same time, she felt him let go of her hand and slide out from under her. The movement elicited an instant response from the scavenger lurking above them. Ilsar heard Akna back-peddling into the water and felt the rush of air as something large pounced from above. In the last instant before the attacker landed, Ilsar pulled the largest crystal she could find from her satchel.

  Light flared, sending shadows streaming away and flashing on the churning water. The light revealed a grotesque creature, with mottled flesh, at least three times as large as a man and shaped like a spider or some kind of insect. In the dazzling flash of light, Ilsar could see that much of the creature’s bulk was not organic but was instead made up of rusting metal, glass and desiccated wood. For years the phantom had haunted its treasure pile of lost and cast off things; it had lost the will to keep its original shape, instead it had found new purpose in the discarded bounty that the river had brought to it. In truth the phantom had become part of the pile, moulding itself to the things that it found, growing larger with every feeding. The eyes, that blinked and recoiled from the sudden light, were all human, the hands, sprouting from metal and wooden limbs, had once held or shaped the refuse, now comprising its body.

  Akna had been ready for the light and he seized his moment, bringing his sabre down in a double handed chop straight to the centre of the slimy body. Gore sloughed into the water, curling into the cold current and then Ilsar closed her fist over the glowing stone. The darkness washed back in, swallowing them before Akna could even pull his weapon clear; it was pure instinct, which saved Akna from a spasmodic thrust from the wounded monster. Akna yanked his sword free and managed a lucky parry to a hack from a rusty cleaver tied to one of the phantom's stiff metal legs. Akna longed to call for more light but he knew that Ilsar had done the right thing in using the light only to distract their attacker. There was no telling whether the flash had been enough to draw another inhabitant of the Ghosts; the light had seemed intense but that was most likely only in contrast with the darkness. There was nothing for it now but to hope that his first stolen strike had been damaging enough to ensure victory.

  A hand, its ragged fingers tipped with glass, raked against his chest. The heavy leather of his coat turned the blow but his straining senses could already detect the hiss and splash of new limbs rising from the water; without light there was no way that he could last long against the whirling arms and legs of the monster. Akna ducked low, gathering his legs beneath him, this unexpected move caused the next barrage of crude cutting implements and raking limbs, to miss their target. Akna uncoiled, almost instantly, throwing himself into the bulk of the monster. The long, ungainly limbs splashed into the water where he had been but the assassin's momentum had taken him inside the guard of those deadly extremities. The impact with the central mass of the monster's body was slimy and unsettling but Akna wasted no time in scrambling still further up the chaotic mulch of flesh and refuse. The creature's heads snapped at him but grotesque as they were, they were only human and easily disabled with a hack of his sword or a heavy swipe from his boot. The real difficulty was climbing the slimy hide as the monster bucked and thrashed, trying to bring Akna back into the range of its deadly appendages. Smaller arms tried to gain purchase but by now Akna was covered head to toe in slime and the creature’s own slickness worked against it. Akna was able to doggedly make his way to the centre of the abomination’s body; once there, he began to lay about him in earnest, adding to the initial damage of his first heavy blow. Freed from the need to find his opponent, Akna was able to make each blow count and the roars of aggression soon became squeals of pain, which in turn became sobs, muted to bubbling hisses, as the dying monster collapsed into the water around them.

  When the creature had given a final shudder and slumped into the current to be slowly returned to the bank of refuse that had comprised so much of its form, Akna slumped and allowed himself to slip back into the water. Despite the effluents flowing through the canals leading away from the Asylum, Akna felt cleansed as the water tugged the worst of the gore from his body.

  Ilsar let the heavy spar, she had scooped up as a weapon, drop back onto the bank of refuse and waded out to Akna, she allowed a tiny amount of light through her slightly parted fingers, so she could have some idea where she was going but the feeble aura was hardly enough to do more than define the edges of the shadows around her. Akna broke the surface of the water a few meters away.

  “Well done, the light was perfectly timed.” His breath was ragged and Ilsar could feel his exhaustion, as if it were an echo of her own.

  “I wish I could have done more, but without light...”

  “Without light you couldn’t have done anything else, I could as easily have severed your head as one of its.”

  “I’d be happier if I still had my bow, not that I can see much to aim at.”

  “You don’t have anything for closer work?”

  The length of a long stiletto winked in the pale light trickling from Ilsar’s closed fist.

  “I didn’t think this would be of much use against something that size.”

  “Let’s just hope that that was one of the bigger locals. You think we can risk the light?”

  “It might seem like too much in the dark but I don’t see how we can go forward without being able to see something.”

  “Aye, no way to avoid it I suppose, We’d best keep moving and trust that we will not get too much attention. We can’t be the only beings that need light here.” Akna hauled himself onto the bank and winced as the numbed nerves in his leg prickled with renewed circulation, “ though I’m not keen on meeting anything that can afford to make a target out of itself that way.”

  “Who knows? The phantoms might steer clear of the light, might think we’re dangerous.”

  “Who knows, indeed? We’ll have to deal with the unexpected as it happens, the only thing we do know…”

  “Is that they will be coming for us and we don’t have time to sit here worrying.”

  “This arrangement isn’t going to work if you insist on finishing my sentences.”

  “Sorry, just trying to save time.”

  “Not much of a help, if that means you want me to stand up right now.” His actions belying his joke, Akna forced himself to his feet.

  “We could find somewhere to rest.” Ilsar offered but they both knew that, however much they needed to regain their strength, they simply couldn’t give up whatever lead they might still possess.

  “We’ll be able to rest when we get back to Zenker in the pleasure districts, the rogue owes me shelter for at least a while, if he wants a share of those stones.”

  “He’ll want the Hierophant’s stone just the same as Gilsah.”

  “So we’ll have to keep him distracted and buy what we can with what we can afford to give him.”

  “Couldn’t we just leave the city by going through the Ghosts?”

  “We’ll be lucky to be able to make it back out with the lights to guide us,” Akna said indicating the aura of light still visible from over the silhouette of the great hill. “I have no idea how far the Ghosts extends or the dangers we would be facing if we went deeper. Even if we made it clear, we have no provisions o
r charts, not even weapons to bring down game. The world beyond Niskar’s vapours is one that neither of us knows and it might well be a greater risk to face it with our strength exhausted and without making any preparation. Besides which, Zenker knows a few tricks that might throw Gilash off our trail.”

  “Fair enough but you have forgotten one thing.”

  “What?”

  “The most dangerous shades, the ones that still have an instinct to hunt and kill the living , will no doubt be most numerous nearer the borders of the Lords or the Shades, where they can find victims.”

  “True enough but consider this, those wraiths are more likely to be better fed, there’s no telling what might be waiting out there in the places that have been left undisturbed for centuries.”

  As if in response to Akna’s words, light bloomed from the tumble down towers of Crown Hill. Both fugitives instinctively slipped into the stark shadows cast by the ghost light.

  “Could we have caused that do you think?” Akna asked

  “Not us.” Ilsar said pointing towards the unmistakeable glow of torches breaking from the intermittent line of lights, marking the boarders of the Shades. Akna gave a low whistle under his breath, he watched the many points of light break from the line on the hill above them and meander down towards them.

  “There’s no doubting how much Gilash wants the stone. There is only one possible result of bringing so many into the Ghosts.”

  “And so obviously.” Illsar agreed, she found herself looking back to the sickly fires burning on the tumbled parapets and skeleton towers on the hill above. “Such a blatant intrusion can only rouse the things that sleep here.”

  “Exactly what he hopes for.”

  “But it will be a slaughter, he must be aware of the fate of all who have ever tried to reclaim the Ghosts. Cardinal Greka lost nearly a thousand men trying to lift the curse.”

  “Gilash knows his history well, but he also knows that he has little chance of finding us in the dark and in unknown places. With Lothar gone, Gilash is one of the most powerful clerics in the whole Asylum, he can call on as many men as any cardinal ever could. We can be sure that both the Lords and the Shades are now being watched by his men, in the hope that we will return that way.”

  “But he can’t take the chance that we will not return at all. He hopes to flush us out by waking all the ghosts,” Ilsar shuddered. “Your old master and Lothar were indeed well matched, he’ll lose hundreds of his men.”

  “The ones that hold the torches will not matter to him, anyway, it will be the ones who stick to the shadows who survive and they have only one objective.” Akna trailed off as a low wailing echoed out over the ruined streets. From their hiding places in the lee of tumbled down houses, Ilsar and Akna watched a ragged army begin to pour forth from the yawning gates of the king’s palace. Lambent auras woke in the darkness answering the flames of the intruders from beyond the hill. The company, that marched out to answer the Patriarch’s challenge, was only a distorted reflection of anything that might once have been the court, slaughtered so very long ago. There were still diadems and robes, and the rusted metal of old armours provided loose frames for the forms of long dead knights but there was little left of human aspect. Each phantom had only the vaguest memory of what it had once been and the strongest recollections were the wounds that had been their last sensation in the mortal world. Crimson cuts had become second mouths, that sang the song of loss below their grim jaws and flayed flesh still smouldered with the memories of encroaching flame. Centuries had seen other things join the host that sheltered in the unseen depths of the abandoned hill and now they stirred, gathering improbable shapes about them. Queued by the rise of the old Kings of the Hill, the whole district began to shift and voices, more alien than the aristocrats' pained screams, joined in the protest and the advancing torches.

  The pale light cast by the scorched palaces on the hill, seemed to Akna a perverted reflection of the fierce radiance that issued from the victor’s Asylum and by that almost imperceptible illumination, Akna and Ilsar watched the wild phantoms advance down lanes, which, for some, existed only in memory; another city and another time refusing to submit to the intrusions of the epoch that its destruction had birthed.

  “They’ll be on us soon enough.” Akna said

  “And your old master is just waiting for us to run,” Ilsar looked back to the torches still making their way towards them.

  The bearers had slowed, obviously cowed by the army of wraiths, they had woken but they had their orders and there were men, just as deadly as any spent dream or dying echo, watching them from the darkness. Here and there, shrill songs and flashes told of Asemutt summoners calling forth unlikely configurations of flesh and bone, their summoning far more substantial than the pale fading phantoms advancing on them but the ghosts had numbers and had been refined down to the sharp edges of rage, loss and regret.

  “Can’t go forward or back it seems, we’ll just have to hope that they care more about the fools with the torches than us.”

  They shuffled as fast as they could, bent double and using each weathered wall they could find to hide them from the advancing tide of phantoms. While they ran parallel to the two advancing forces, Akna caught sight of the first engagement of the battle out of the corner of his eye. A summoning, half its body wreathed in living flame, broke through the wall of a house to their left; the fire spirit pulled back its hand, gathering the flame into a ball. Akna prepared to launch himself forward into Ilsar, to throw them both out of the way, when the summoning made its deadly cast but before the summoning could make good on its attack, several translucent shapes barrelled into the alley behind them. Unlike the two fugitives, the fire spirit was making no attempt to hide and the phantoms seemed to know their own from the servants of House Asemutt. Rusty harnesses creaked, as the shades of three old warriors raised time-bitten blades and charged the burning monster, that had dared to wake them from slumber. Fire seared through the first two, robbing the phantoms of their last grip on solidity and sending their rotted armour smoking to the ground but the third phantom evaded the gout of flame and drove his blackened sword into the flaming body, up to the hilt. Metal ran like blood from the wound in the fire spirit's side and the air was filled with the tang of overheated metal. There were more ghosts and more swords and the fire spirit was torn down before Akna and Ilsar could even slink from the ruined alley.

  As Akna and Ilsar turned into the next debris strewn lane of tumbled stone, it seemed as if they stepped through a curtain of heat, for a fraction of a second, it appeared that the fading smell of singed metal was overwhelmed by the stench of burning hair and the creaking of strained timbers, then there was the sound of crying, softer than the sound of the small battles being joined on the ruined streets but somehow more immediate. Ahead of them, the street filled with translucent forms and they were forced to duck into the shelter of a nearby doorway. The outer walls of the house had fallen and the roof had long been burned away but there was still an echo of the grand house that had once stood here. Years of rain and wind had stripped the stone of all but the remnants of ash but the smell that had teased them in the street, intensified along with the sounds of sobbing.

  They crept through the shell of the house, away from the howling phantoms and out into the courtyard, forming the centre of the ruined structure. Little of the ghost light from the King’s Hill had found its way into the forgotten garden. Once, when Niskar had still known the sun, the rich had rested in their hidden gardens, now it was the wild growth that held up the inner walls. Without enough light to see colour, the courtyard was a realm of negatives, pale blooms and twisting black vines, punctuated by the pale blue radiance of fungus. The cracked tiles that had wound between the old flower beds had long since been wrecked by questing roots and the statues guarding the way were over- grown or torn down. One structure had survived the ruin almost untouched by the rampant growth.

  The fountain squatted in the centre of the courtyard,
once it had been alabaster and its waters had been pure, many had sat in peace and sunshine and listened to the burbling of its bright waters; now in the darkness, the ornate sculptures, that had once belched forth joyous streams of water into the fountain's deep bowls, were ominous in their silence and their mouths were gaping wounds, clogged with dirt as black as dried blood. The cries that Akna and Ilsar could hear, came from the other side of the fountain and its attendant gargoyles, making it seem that the song of the fountain had been replaced by the despair, burbling incoherently into the eternal night.

  The ghost, that wept and waited in the gloomy ruins of her old life, had not stirred at the summons of the kings or their outrage; it was their summons that had taken her husband from her and his death that had allowed the fanatics to burst through hastily erected barricades and bring their flames to her and her child. With the streets behind them echoing with the challenges of the crazed phantoms, Akna and Ilsar had had no choice but to keep moving forward, at least that was how it had seemed. Akna began to feel doubt now and he could see confusion in Ilsar’s eyes but it seemed too late to question why they had come here, with each step the sorrow radiating from the grieving mother became more intense and to Akna’s surprise, he felt tears welling in his eyes. It took all his strength to lock arms with Ilsar and keep moving, instead of simply collapsing in grief where he stood.