Swords & Dark Magic

by Jonathan Strahan; Lou Anders

  “Someone who must be seen to die on the Wall.” She ducked back into the carriage and let him shut her in, and the sudden darkness was terrifying. Closing her eyes, Jan Ray prayed to the spirit of Hanharan, but not for herself. She asked that Dal Bamore be spared so that he could be crucified.

  “That’s no way for a man to die,” Jan Ray says, “covered in his own shit and piss.” She pulls a small curved knife from her sleeve and steps toward the hanging man.

  “Don’t pity me,” Dal Bamore says. His voice has changed. Last time, as he stood before the Council four days earlier, there had been humor to his tone, and insolence in the way he formed his words. Now he sounds defeated. But she will not let him fool her.

  It takes several slices at the rope to cut it through. As the last strands strain and part, she steps back quickly. He falls into the large bowl and tips it over, spilling the disgusting mess across the stone floor. Jan Ray wrinkles her nose in revulsion.

  “Look at you,” she says. “The big revolutionary, the idealist, the heathen.”

  “I’m no heathen,” he says. He manages to sit up, though his hands are still tied, and she can see that he’s woozy. She wonders how long Trivner has had him hanging upside down. His face is red beneath the streaks of muck. There’s blood all over his body, dried and still running. He appears unabashed at his nakedness, and Jan Ray glances away uncomfortably. From the corner of her eye she sees him shifting one leg aside.

  “I’ll have Scrivner cut it off,” she says. “He’s done it to others, many times.”

  Bamore chuckles and brings his knees up to rest his chin. He groans, but looks almost contemplative as he stares past her into the shadows.

  “Give yourself to Hanharan,” she says. “It’ll make everything easier on you.”

  “This is where we have a problem,” he says. He spits blood, closes his eyes, breathing heavily. He’s almost passing out, she thinks. We’ve almost broken him, and—

  But he is not broken. Far from it. And as he starts talking, Jan Ray realizes that he has spent these last three days growing stronger.

  “And the problem is need. You want me to give myself to Hanharan, because that will satisfy this curious need you Marcellans have to gather everyone to your flock. You need to hear acceptance from my mouth, because the idea that I don’t require Hanharan to make my life worthwhile scares you.”

  “No,” Jan Ray says.

  “It terrifies you. And I don’t need any of that at all.”

  “If it means so little to you, accept Him and have done with it.”

  “And then you win.”

  “We win anyway. Tomorrow we take you to Gaol Ten. Three days later you go on trial for heresy, for which you will be sentenced to death. You’ll be taken to the Wall, nails hammered into your wrists and ankles. We’ll pierce you with thirteen mepple shoots to attract the lizards, and leave you to die. And after you die you rot, in sight of anyone who cares to look. I’ve heard of people staying up there for thirty days before they decay enough to rip free of the nails and fall.”

  “I’ll be dead. It doesn’t matter.”

  “If you accept Him, I can arrange for the executioner to stick you with a poisoned knife. You’ll be dead before he descends the ladder.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” He grins at her. It is a grotesque expression, his startling white teeth glaring from a mask of blood and excrement.

  Jan Ray turns and walks to the far end of the chamber. Trivner has his tools of torture set out here, an array of metal, stone, leather, paper, wood, bone, and jars containing living creatures, that is in itself enough to give anyone nightmares for life. The tools are exquisitely clean, the insects well-kept, and the thought of someone tending lovingly to such things is horrific. She wonders if Trivner has a wife and children, and hopes not.

  “So why you?” she asks, picking up a long, pointed bone. It’s hollow, and dozens of small holes give it barbs.

  “Why me what?”

  “Why have the Wreckers become organized under you?”

  “Have they?” he asks, and for the first time she hears doubt. She remains facing away from him, putting down the hollowed bone in favor of a clawed glove. Each flapping finger is tipped with a razor-sharp hook. She can barely imagine the damage this would do to a human body.

  She slips her hand inside and grimaces at the slick, oiled feel.

  “Of course they have. And they’re little more than gangsters calling themselves terrorists. The name they choose for themselves says it all. They want anarchy, but for their own ends. They spout secularism, but only if it means they line their pockets, get all the slash they want. They claim to shun false gods—”

  “All gods are false,” Bamore says, “and the Wreckers—”

  “No!” Jan Ray shouts. She turns and advances on the bloodied man, and as she swings her gloved hand she sees something in his eyes that confuses her. The hooks bite in and she uses her weight to tear them through his skin. He screams—

  He screams but he’s laughing at me.

  —and the hooks open him across the chest. Blood flows. Dal Bamore falls onto his side, and Jan Ray steps back and drops the glove. She has lowered herself to this out of anger and rage, but also because she has feared this man ever since he stood before the Council and said, If Hanharan is a raindrop, I am the storm; if Hanharan is a fly, I am the spider. Now take me and make me God.

  “How can you be a god hanging from that Wall?” she shouts, and his cries fade away into a chuckle.

  As he sits up, the wounds across his chest cease bleeding.

  “No,” she says, backing away. She starts hammering on the door, screaming for Trivner, feeling her old heart fluttering in her chest like a bird trapped in a clenching. “No!”

  Bamore stops laughing, closes his eyes, and grimaces, and the cuts heal, leaving only pale streaks beneath the dried blood flaked across his body.

  “Whatever you do, they’ll remember me,” he says. As the door behind her opens and she falls out into the unlit hallway beyond, Jan Ray thinks, There’s no way that can happen.

  The last time there was a sorcerer in Echo City was almost four hundred years before.

  More screams, more shouts, and being blind was driving her mad. Jan Ray poked at knotholes in the wooden shutters with her ceremonial knife, popping out one knot large enough for her to see through. It afforded her a view of the street ahead of them, the dead tusked swine, the Blades gathered around Bamore’s rack, and the facade of one row of buildings. But she only had eyes for Bamore.

  Don’t let him wake, she thought. I had no idea how much to give him, or how little; no inkling of how effective it would be. I was flailing in the dark even before this, and now…

  If the Wreckers achieved the unbelievable and managed to take him away, there was no telling what Bamore would do. He had come to them supercilious and aloof, welcoming the tortures because they would allow for a miraculous recovery. But he had not expected what had happened after the torture. If he gained time to let it wear off, then perhaps his air of superiority would transform into a need for revenge. And powerful though the Marcellan family was, sorcery was anathema to them, evil and unknown.

  One of the buildings to their left was on fire. Screams originated within, and a flaming shape burst from a window and fell into the street. Two Blades shoved their way past a scatter of café tables and approached, and when they confirmed it was a Wrecker and not one of their own, they retreated and left them to burn. The cries soon bubbled to nothing, but the dying person continued moving for some time.

  Her soldiers seemed to have taken control. Though surrounded and besieged, they were fighting with calm determination, archers picking their targets, swordsmen allowing Wrecker attackers to approach them, picking their own places to fight. She could see two dead Blades close to the carriage, and further away were six dead Wreckers.

  Several arrows struck the carriage. It was too dark inside to see properly, but moving back from the knothole, sh
e saw the gleam of one arrowhead protruding through the shutter. It was likely that they were using poisoned tips; she would have to be careful.

  She widened the knothole with her knife, peeling out slivers of wood to afford a better view. When she looked again, it was just in time to see a dozen Wreckers charge into view from the other direction.

  Where did they come from? she thought. She almost shouted a warning, but Jave appeared from where he’d been protecting the carriage, rushing across the street toward the enemy. Four Blades went with him, swords drawn, and clashed with the Wreckers close to where Bamore was being shielded.

  Jave’s first sword swipe cut across the throat of one shrieking woman, and a spray of blood misted the air. It won’t be long now, Jan Ray thought. Reinforcements would be on their way—the moment the ambush fell, a messenger bat would have been sent back to the barracks at the gate they’d passed through—and she could already see the fight swinging their way. Besieged they might be, but the Blades were far superior fighters.

  But then something began to change. The Wreckers engaged by Jave and the others stepped back slightly, swords held before them, and something about their faces was different. It took Jan Ray a moment to discern just what it was, and she squinted through the knothole, wondering whether her poor view was distorting her vision. But no. One Wrecker screamed as his head began to shake, and before he even drew a breath for another shout, he was raving. He leapt forward onto an outstretched sword, his own slashing at the air, other hand clawing for the Blade he’d gone for…and then he grabbed the sword piercing his stomach and pulled himself closer.

  The Blade stepped back, forgetting for a moment that she was drawing the impaled man with her. In that moment of confusion, the bleeding, screaming man fisted her across the face. Her head flipped around, and he swung his other hand and buried his sword in her skull.

  Other Wreckers had charged, shifting from angry to raving, and they swept across the Scarlet Blades. Blood splashed, but wounds seemed not to hinder them. Blades parried and fought bravely, but they were not used to enemies with slashed throats coming at them still, screams faded but rage just as rich.

  “Jave,” Jan Ray said, partly in fear for her captain, partly terror at what she realized had happened. Whatever blasphemous sorceries Dal Bamore had been practicing were employed here to rescue him from certain death.

  Jave fell back and hacked at a man slashing at his arms and face. He kicked the man from him, stood, and stabbed him, again and again until he seemed to die at last. Glancing at the carriage, he shouted some order that Jan Ray could not hear, then pointed. Sending them back to protect me! she realized, and six soldiers from around Bamore moved past the dead swine to surround the carriage.

  “No!” she cried, because this could not be allowed. “No! Protect Bamore, save the prisoner! He cannot be taken!” But whether the soldiers failed to hear, or chose to obey their captain’s orders over her own, they remained close, leaving Bamore protected only by four remaining Blades.

  More fell, bodies lay strewn across the street. And she saw something terrible. The Blades who had been cut or clawed down were almost all dead, yet some of the Wreckers that lay there still moved, hauling themselves toward the soldiers even if limbs were missing, guts trailing…and, in one case, a head was severed.

  Sorcery, Jan Ray thought. Sorcery, on the streets of Echo City!

  She reached out and opened the carriage door, lifting a wooden shutter aside. She had to speak to Jave. The most important person here now was their prisoner, and if she lost her own life preventing him from being rescued by the Wreckers, so be it.

  A soldier glanced back and saw her, and his eyes went wide.

  Something struck her in the shoulder, something else fell on her and crushed her to the ground.

  She saw red.

  Jan Ray has to go deep. With the blood of the tortured man still on her hands, she leaves the dungeon levels, heading first up a slowly curving staircase with over a hundred steps that leads eventually to a lush courtyard deep in Hanharan Heights. She passes huge oxomanlia bushes, waving away tame red sparrows that flutter around her head in case she has seed for them, and everything here is beautiful, brought into being by Hanharan countless years ago and uncorrupted by the stain of sorcery. That’s what makes her most upset: not the fear of what Bamore could mean but the sadness at what his talents might bring. Echo City is miraculous and amazing enough without a monster like him using magic to twist its many meanings.

  An aide approaches and she waves him away, not even catching his eyes. And now he knows that something is amiss, she thinks, but that does not matter. She should go to the Council with this, but that does not matter either—they would brood and muse, discuss options and argue alternatives, and all the while he would be down in the Dungeons deciding when to escape.

  One chance, she thinks. There’s only one, and it all hinges on whether he knows of it or not. Dal Bamore has the talent, but he looks young. Where he had acquired it she cannot tell, and she knows for sure he will never reveal the source to her. So she must use his ego against him. He welcomed capture and torture, and now he plans the miraculous escape and recovery that will draw the wonder of the masses. She has to ensure the escape fails, and that he dies up on the Wall.

  In the corner of the courtyard, she unlocks a heavy wooden door with a key around her neck. Every priest or priestess carries such a key, but none of them has yet found cause to use it. Being the first gives her a flush of pride.

  “In Hanharan I find my strength,” she says as she closes the door behind her. There is a rack of oil lamps fixed to the wall and she lights one, watching shadows scamper out of sight. Spiders and ghourt lizards. They’ll leave her alone if she shows no fear. She draws in a deep breath and starts down. “In you I seek my truth, and to you I promise my best. In your words I hear the history of Echo City, and I vow to listen, adding my own life to the history you impart.”

  The staircase curves onto landings, doors lure her in, tunnels are swallowed in darkness. Eventually she crosses a street of the most recent Echo, built upon several hundred years before and preserved down here like a painting of older times. What she sees of the buildings’ facades resembles those above, except deserted. There are shadows that move the wrong way, and whispers, but she recites the route aloud, remembering which way to go, feeling the importance of what she is doing pressing heavily upon her like the weight of the city itself. She has no wish to see or hear phantoms.

  Several times her oil lamp almost goes out when a sudden breeze whistles in from the darkness, and she tries to ignore the smells.

  Reaching the hidden place, she uses her key again to unlock another heavy wooden door.

  Inside, the room is small and sparse. Its corners and junctions are blurred by dust and sand-spider structures. There is a table at one end, upon which sit several books, and three shelves on the left wall that hold two storage jars each. Dust on the floor is thick and undisturbed, and the books appear to have settled into place. No one has been here for a very long time.

  There is a mummified corpse curled beneath the table, wrapped in heavy chains.

  She feels a flush of terror, and for a moment she cannot believe in this place. What it contains goes against everything she holds true: the last sorcerer, trapped down here with the things that put him down…

  “I only hope it’s still here,” she says, reaching for a jar.

  The torture’s over,” she says later, holding the back of Bamore’s head and offering him the mug. “I’ve consulted with the Council. Your lack of confession means that you’ll be sent to trial, and you’ll be crucified in three days.”

  “Won’t that depend upon the verdict?”

  “The verdict is a formality.”

  “So predictable,” he says, trying to grin through his broken face. “But I won’t die up there.” Why he has not chosen to mend the damage as he healed those cuts she does not know. Perhaps it’s a sort of perverted vanity. Or, mor
e likely, he wants people to see what has been done to him.

  “Drink, in the name of Hanharan. He will watch over your final days.”

  “Your god?” Bamore sips, swallows, sighs. He has not been given a drink in days. “Hanharan can suck my cock.” He stares up at her, his one good eye twinkling as he awaits her reaction to such blasphemy.

  But she only smiles, and, behind his ruined face, Dal Bamore’s smugness turns to confusion.

  Jan Ray tried not to scream. It felt as if her whole shoulder and arm had been dipped in molten metal and then solidified, locking all the pain inside. She kept her eyes open, because she needed to see, and when she lifted the knife still in her hand, someone pressed down on her wound.

  “Priestess!” a voice hissed. It was a Scarlet Blade, splayed across her body to protect her from any more woundings. But the fool was young, and scared, and with every movement he nudged the bolt protruding from her shoulder.

  “Get…off…” she managed, and then the soldier was lifted away from her. Jave’s face came close, and he even smiled.

  “Jan Ray, I’ll give you a sword if you’re so eager to fight.” He helped her sit up, glancing around all the time, watching for danger.

  She grimaced through the agony, then looked around. The raving Wreckers had been cut down, and there were three Blades hacking at their still-twitching bodies. They appeared shocked and terrified, but beneath that was a professionalism that shone through. They’d have a story for their barracks tonight, that was for sure.

  “What are you doing out?” Jave said.

  “Going for Bamore. He can’t be taken by them, Jave.”

  “I’m ready to slit his throat myself,” the tall captain said.

  “No!” She stood, holding on to his arm and blinking away dizziness. More arrows flickered in, their energy expended in Blades’ robes. Blood soaked the street, filling the spaces between cobbles. The crowds had drawn back now, but further along the street, close to a fountain, she could still see a few curious onlookers. She knew what some people thought of the Blades, and she hated the smiles she saw.