War Master's Gate

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Ceremon, I was called,’ he said, pausing over the name so that she wondered just how long it had been since someone had actually called him anything at all save for Amalthae’s . . . what?

  ‘Her companion?’ she ventured.

  ‘Her consort,’ he corrected.

  ‘You have the Art of Speech?’ As well as being constantly under that faceted sight, there was no place in this clearing that would not be within the lightning reach of the creature’s arms. When those limbs had snatched her up from the ground and drawn her close to the mantis’s scissoring mandibles she had believed it was the end. Something other than hunger had been behind the strike, however – something other even than Mantis-kinden hatred of intruders, it seemed, for here she was, still alive.

  Ceremon just nodded. Like Amalthae, he did not look at her directly much, yet was always aware of where she was and what she did. Every small move of hers froze the pair of them for the briefest moment as they recalculated the quickest way to catch or kill her if that proved necessary. So far, Che had given them no excuse.

  ‘So . . . when do the rest get here?’ she tried.

  ‘No others. Just us.’ Amalthae went entirely still, even her antennae barely swaying, and Ceremon was suddenly motionless too, fading deeper into himself so that Che’s sense of his presence – for all that he stood right before her – almost vanished. Had she come walking into the clearing just then, she would have noticed neither man nor insect.

  And died, probably. She tried to project her own mind. What is it they’ve heard? Tynisa? Thalric? But she found no resonance of her friends, no minds at all nearby, only the convoluted density of the forest itself.

  Something moved, beside and behind her. Another mantis? But she had a feeling she would not have heard it, if it was. Despite herself, she flinched, retreating towards the known killer and away from the unknown.

  She saw something glitter, a black carapace and busy legs, as a beetle pushed itself between the close-grown trees, half scuttling, half climbing. It had large, round eyes and jaws like twin blades, a world away from those patient draught animals she had seen working on Collegiate farms as a child. Longer than she herself was, and a hunter in its own right, it regarded her fiercely, working through the small number of choices its mind allowed it.

  Had she the Speech-Art she could have calmed it and turned it aside. As it was, she thought she might find some way to accomplish the same result through magic, but she knew that she had no need. She was watched over by something more terrible than this armoured beast.

  It went for her, breaking into a run that would have covered the ground in seconds save that, barely halfway towards her, it was gone. Che, who had been expecting the move, was still surprised by it, the beetle barely seeming to exist in the space between the ground and the mantis’s closed arms, before Amalthae’s mouthparts sawed neatly into the insect’s head and stilled its frantic struggles with surgical grace.

  Ceremon took a deep breath, releasing his Art and returning to the foreground of her attention. Che had formerly understood that the Speech Art fell mostly one way: commands issued and very little save for basic impulses communicated in return. She felt that between this man and his consort there existed a more profound connection.

  ‘You haven’t killed me yet,’ Che observed, as calmly as she could after that predatory display.

  ‘No.’ Ceremon stared into the forest. ‘But you are right to think it. My people would have killed you if they had caught you. Either your blood on the forest floor there and then, or a proper bloodletting to strengthen the forest, at one of our places.’

  ‘But not you? Are you waiting till your consort gets hungry enough?’

  ‘Amalthae . . .?’ Ceremon frowned for the first time. ‘Because of her, I am not as my people are. It is difficult to . . .’ He cocked his head, so plainly listening to the beast beside him that Che looked up, expecting to meet a sentient gaze, but Amalthae continued to eat daintily, and spared her no direct attention.

  Ceremon nodded as if conceding some unheard point. ‘All kinden derive from their totem,’ he explained. ‘Each has its mystery, some easy to follow, some not.’ He glanced up at the feeding beast again, then down at the ground. ‘To the Beetle: endure. To the Ants: hold to one another. To the Moths: mastery of the mysteries of the dark. And so . . . our own path . . . To the Mantids: fight. It sounds simple, surely?’ He spread his hands. ‘And yet we have fought and fought since the very first of us, unyielding – proud and bloody – and where are we? It would have served us better if our mandate had been to win.’

  ‘I’ve never heard a Mantis speak like this,’ Che admitted.

  ‘Nor will you. These are her thoughts,’ he said sadly. ‘I only couch them in a way you may understand. We have fallen short, always, of our ideals, and now time has become an enemy we cannot fight, and in their desperation my people have come to the last twist on the Mantis path.’

  ‘Becoming allies of the Wasps,’ Che observed.

  Ceremon shrugged. ‘The Lady of the Wasps came to my people and promised a return to the old dark times, the simple times when what we were was sufficient; when what we were meant something. Some of my people believed her, or at least held to some small hope that she spoke true. And others . . . more knew that we would never receive our birthright from the hands of the Wasps, but that the simple fact of her standing there and making such an offer showed how the world had truly turned, once and for all, and that we had outlived our time in it. These, too, counselled that we should join with the Wasps, but not for any silver future. We should join with the Wasps so that we might make the world run red – or some small part of it – a final battle, a struggle to the death. And afterwards . . . for us? Nothing afterwards. No Nethyen, no Etheryen . . . Even as the Felyen to the south have passed from this world, so we would follow—’

  ‘The Felyen?’ Che demanded. ‘They fought . . .?’

  ‘They are gone,’ Ceremon confirmed softly. ‘No blood of theirs remains unshed. They have carved their own gate and stepped through it, and no more shall they be known. There are many of my people who would see that as a good thing, something to be desired.’

  ‘But not you?’

  He met her eyes briefly. ‘If not for Amalthae, I might think it, but she . . . she shows me that we have strayed from our path – no, that the path is too hard, and the ways we have fallen into are because we have strived and failed. That so many of us now see extinction as preferable to finding a new way is proof of that, she says.’

  Che nodded carefully. ‘And where do I come in?’

  ‘You are able to speak with the same authority as the Lady of the Wasps. We know this, for Amalthae can see the brand upon you, even now. If you demand it, my people will listen.’

  ‘Your people will kill me.’

  ‘Perhaps, but first they will listen. Amalthae says speak with them. Guide them.’

  ‘To what end?’ This time Che was addressing the great mantis directly, and it paused in its devouring, only the abdomen of the beetle left intact.

  ‘She says . . . she says she wishes you to save us. She says you are the only one whose words might be heard. She says . . . she has lived long and I am her third consort. Her kind . . . we are her children, and she fears for us.’ The man’s soft voice began to quaver. ‘She does not want us to go.’

  Sergeant Gorrec of the Pioneers watched the Empress as she spoke with Tegrec the Turncoat and with that gangly old Woodlouse, noting all the signs – ones he was more than familiar with, of superiors in disagreement. Of all possible places, this is not the one for argument. Not that anyone would openly defy the Empress, of course, but she was asking questions they could not answer – or maybe she did not like the answers they gave her.

  The other two Pioneers huddled close, Icnumon and Jons Escarrabin. The Beetle looked just about how Gorrec felt – namely miserable and lost and worried. He clutched his snapbow to him like a talisman. The halfbreed, though: Icnumon had change
d when they . . . well, Gorrec couldn’t say precisely what they had done, but things were definitely different.

  They had passed through into what seemed somehow a different forest. The trees grew closer, were more gnarled, their branches a solid interlacing canopy ahead, whilst the undergrowth was now shot through with briars, making progress tiring and painful. There was almost no sign of animal life – Gorrec and his fellows were tried woodsmen and knew what to look for. They spotted only the occasional mark or track that Icnumon identified as the killer mantids. The air was dim and curiously obscuring as though some shreds of fog remained even at noon, and the colours . . . nothing here was bright. Sounds were muted and, in the long silences, it seemed as if there were other noises just at the edge of hearing, a whispering and a murmuring.

  Only one of the Empress’s female bodyguards had made it this far, the Sarnesh and the Etheryen having accounted for the rest. The woman sat by herself, withdrawn and wordless; the Wasp soldier, Ostrec, seemed little better. Even the armoured man that Seda called Tisamon seemed changed here, a troubled introspection evident in his immobile stance.

  Gorrec shifted closer to Icnumon, meaning to question him, but the halfbreed’s look warned him off.

  ‘If I could tell you, I would,’ the man said, ‘but there are no words.’

  Then there was a sharp sound – a real sound – and the three Pioneers leapt to their feet, weapons to hand. Tegrec was sitting down, one hand clamped to his face, Seda standing over him.

  ‘No more discussion,’ the Empress declared. ‘You will follow my lead or you will die here.’

  ‘Your Majesty,’ came Tegrec’s thin voice, ‘Gjegevey and myself, we have both sought for the path, and in doing so we have seen where it leads. Majesty, this is not . . . this is what we wished to avoid! The Seal . . . it is here. No records, no stories even, but—’

  ‘You pair of blind fools,’ Seda snapped back. ‘Of course there is a seal here. Which war did Argastos win? Which enemy was he victorious over, except the Worm? And you thought that they would just set him as a guard in the wilderness? Oh, there are seals in many places, but Argastos guards the greatest.’

  Gorrec would not have credited the paunchy Wasp turncoat with much courage, but holding his argument against the Empress must have required all of it. ‘But we brought you here . . .’

  She planted a booted foot on his chest, her hand out with palm directed towards his face. The old Woodlouse made a convulsive, aborted movement as though about to intervene, then stepped back.

  ‘I know you sought to divert me from the Worm by dangling Argastos before me. I sought advice, and this was yours. And you were right, for Argastos is power, and a power I had best claim before my sis— before that damned Beetle can do so. But if I cannot do so – if I must destroy Argastos, or if his power is truly nothing more than a shadow – then how convenient that I shall be in place to follow my original plan, hmm?’

  Tegrec goggled up at her, but he had run out of words.

  ‘And what about you?’ she demanded of the old slave. ‘Anything to say?’

  Gjegevey shook his head and looked away.

  Gorrec had been convinced that the robed Wasp was already a dead man, but Seda turned away from him, letting him stand up. ‘This place still resists us,’ she snapped. ‘Even though Argastos himself tries to smooth the way, there is a will here that contrives a maze for us. Go find me the path, the two of you. Prove to me that you have value yet. Lead me to Argastos.’

  Icnumon straightened suddenly, starting a pace forwards, then stopping.

  ‘What?’ Gorrec demanded. Not that any of them exactly liked it here, but the halfbreed was taut as a bowstring and jumping at shadows. Or at things that were very real but that Gorrec and Jons were unable to see. Nasty thought.

  ‘Thought I saw . . .’ Icnumon grimaced. ‘A person. A Beetle woman.’ He spoke the words quietly but Seda – a good fifteen feet away – whirled round instantly.

  ‘You saw what?’ she exclaimed, storming over. Behind her, Gorrec saw Tegrec get well out of the way, no more willing to help the Pioneers than they were to assist him.

  Icnumon tried to mumble something and dismiss the matter, but Seda was staring at him and, whilst Gorrec was quite scared enough of the woman, his comrade plainly knew enough to be fully terrified.

  ‘I thought I saw a Beetle, Majesty . . . a Beetle woman, just for a moment.’

  ‘The girl is here already?’ Seda demanded. Again, Gorrec thought she would lose hold of her temper and just kill the nearest target, but again she reined it in – an admirable trait in a commander, he had to admit.

  ‘Wouldn’t call her a girl, Majesty,’ Icnumon said hoarsely. ‘Older . . . going grey. Old as Jons’s mother might be.’

  Seda frowned. ‘Then she’s not . . .’ It was plain that she made no sense of it. ‘No matter,’ she decided. ‘We press on. If you see such a woman again, bring her down if you can. Kill her if you must.’

  The Mantis-kinden were silent killers, of course, and there would be no warning when they struck. That was plainly what Thalric and Amnon were thinking, anyway, for Tynisa could read the tension in every move they made.

  When the drum started beating, they jumped, poised to take on the wave of killers that must surely be about to descend from the darkness.

  She realized she had been expecting it. It was not loud, a soft, slow rhythm like a heart, and it spoke to her at a deep and primal level.

  Thalric started speaking, some suspicious, nasty-minded comment no doubt, but she hissed him into silence. The glower of the fire lit up the woods ahead, yet always further through the trees as they approached, until it was revealed as a far greater blaze than they had expected. But, then, they have many dead.

  When the singing started, she felt her own throat tighten with it, moments from joining in. There was no hint of words to it, and it felt older than speech to her: something preserved by the Mantis-kinden from the depths of time, and not heard by any outsider since the revolution. The last ebb tide of the old ways.

  The voices, three of them, climbed like vines about each other, each with its own song, each complementing the others without seeming to intend it, as though three independent singers had somehow come together by impossibly prolonged coincidence. The voices soared, but never joyously, and the depths of their grief and loss stuck daggers into Tynisa, because she could share it. She had been born to it, and no amount of Collegium years could rid her of that burden, and that birthright.

  She felt a hand on her arm: Maure, regarding her solemnly. She understands. She has Mantis blood too.

  And Tynisa strode onward towards the blaze, drawing the rest in her wake. And they were already amongst the Nethyen, spread out amongst the trees with blades to hand, staring at these intruders, these unthinkable trespassers on their rites.

  ‘No weapons,’ Tynisa murmured, because her own rapier was clinging to its scabbard and showing no signs of leaping to her hand. ‘Fists closed, Thalric.’

  ‘These are Mantis-kinden,’ he argued. ‘Weapons and fighting are the only things they respect.’

  ‘Then I’ll let them kill you. Here and now, I say no weapons. There is more to my . . . to their kinden than you know.’

  ‘Not much more,’ he muttered, yet his sword stayed sheathed.

  The Nethyen were approaching cautiously, from behind and on either side, but ahead there was only the fire. She could now see the singers, three women, old and young and middle-aged, their voices drifting into silence as the intruders stepped out into the clearing surrounding the blaze.

  Bodies on the fire, of course, and Tynisa counted one short of a dozen corpses, and beyond the flames stood one of their idols, this one a ten-foot giant whose rotting wood was enlivened with bone, clusters of skulls giving it makeshift compound eyes.

  She was aware of many eyes fixed on them, tens of Nethyen, seen and unseen, staring silently. She felt their despair – not outrage but despair – at this intrusion. The presen
ce of the enemy here in their heartland confirmed to them what they had feared for some time now. She could read it fluently on each face. The future is here for us. What else was ours alone, save the fire, save the blade’s point? Are even these things robbed of their power and sanctity?

  They could not kill these outsiders, not yet, for they were bound by the duel, bound by their own agreement to stay their hands. And, despite Maure’s fears, that code still held them. Instead they just stared, and Tynisa felt suddenly mean and guilty. This ceremony, this wake, it was all they had, more important to them than she could appreciate, and she had pushed in and denied them even that.

  Then Maure knelt down by the fire, not far from the three singers, and drew a deep breath. And Tynisa reminded herself just what sort of magic the woman was skilled in.

  She began to sing, not quite after the style that the Nethyen had given voice to, but something akin to it, and with words that Tynisa could now follow. Maure sang with her eyes closed, her frame as still as when she had been seeking out Che.

  ‘Take wing, take wing,

  Between the trees the horn is calling

  It summons you

  It summons you to your great battle

  Look not back

  For we shall come to you

  And we shall bear your name

  Until the day we meet once more

  Take wing, take wing

  The gates of night are open

  And we shall bear your deeds

  That they shall be known evermore

  Go, warrior,

  Go, great hunter,

  Take wing, take wing.’

  Maure paused, opening those strange, iris-less eyes. Other than the crackling of the flames, the forest was utterly stilled. Tynisa saw the necromancer’s gaze shift, focusing on something that she herself could not discern, or perhaps just the smoke that shrouded the fire and twisted upwards towards the night sky.