[Von Carstein 03] - Retribution

by Steven Savile - (ebook by Undead)

  Jerek forced himself back to his feet. He stumbled back a step.

  Skellan stared at him, his one good eye bloody, the eye patch torn away from his ruined eye to reveal the ragged wound Jerek had inflicted upon him back at Grim Moor. He pushed himself up onto his knees, coiled, ready to spring forwards. Skellan smiled bleakly. It was an ugly expression on his ravaged face.

  Jerek backed up another step, bracing himself for the charge.

  He felt the spray of the waterfall on his back and realised he’d somehow managed to be manoeuvred around until the chasm was at his back. He didn’t dare risk even a brief glance over his shoulder to see just how close he was to the fall. He had to rely on his other senses. He concentrated on the echoing crash of the water. It was louder, resonating within his bones. That, combined with the kiss of the white mist on his neck was all the evidence he needed to know he was too close to the edge.

  Before he could take another step in any direction, Skellan launched a blistering attack, coming out of his crouch like some dervish possessed, spitting blood and hissing. He hit Jerek full in the chest. For a moment they hung there before Skellan’s momentum carried them both back over the chasm’s edge.

  They fell backwards through the fragmentary rainbows.

  The drop was vertiginous. Water sprayed over them as they tumbled and twisted, falling through the air. Skellan tore at Jerek, trying to break free of his hold long enough to mutate into avian form. Jerek refused to let him go. Skellan shrieked, driving his head forwards to butt Jerek full in the face. The rush of air ripped and pulled at them as they tumbled head over feet, still locked in their immortal struggle, into the cannonade of water. The sheer elemental might of the waterfall ripped them apart, throwing Jerek back against the jagged rock wall, buffeting and bludgeoning him against the jagged stone before hurling him dear.

  He lost sight of Skellan in the torrent of water.

  Then he hit the ground with bone-shattering force.

  He lay, broken, at the bottom of the fall, barely able to lift his head. Skellan was nowhere to be seen. The subterranean waterfall rose hundreds of feet above him. The agony escaped his lips. He tried to move, but couldn’t.

  “Well—that hurt,” said Skellan, his voice was barely audible above the water.

  Jerek tried to crane his neck to get a better view of his surroundings. He lay on a narrow ledge of rock that ringed a still deeper chasm. A lambent glow of orange came from below, molten in its intensity. A slender stone span bridged the chasm. Beyond the bridge lay another ledge of stone and beyond that a great pool that was fed by the constant spume of water. Splashes lapped over the lip of the pool, spilling across the narrow ledge and over the crevice. White steam rose in great clouds where the water hit the fiery pit below.

  He couldn’t see Skellan for the steam.

  Then he saw his own leg. It was a bloody mess, broken in two places below the knee so that it stuck out at an impossible angle from his body. White bone pierced his trousers.

  He tried to rise and fell back in a sunburst of agony.

  “I’m coming to get you, wolf,” Skellan taunted.

  Jerek closed his eyes against the pain. He knew what he had to do. There was no choice. He couldn’t allow himself to think about it. If he did he wouldn’t be able to go through with it. He tore a strip from his ruined trousers, wadding it into a ball and bit down on it. Even that little movement was torture. He couldn’t bear to look as he began to feel out the broken bone. He gripped the ruined leg hard and pulled down, forcing the bone back into place. The splintered edges of bone grated against each other. For a moment he thought he was going to black out from the pain. As it was the rag fell from his mouth and his screams drowned out the crash of the water.

  “You’re dead, old man. Dead, dead, dead,” the words echoed around the cavern, folding in on themselves insensibly, diminishing into a babble of water. For all his taunts, there was no sign of Skellan. Jerek could only assume he was hurt.

  Tears streaming down his cheeks, Jerek forced himself to sit up.

  He swayed dangerously and almost fell back. Jerek forced himself to remain upright even when it felt as though the world fell away from under him. Biting back on the pain, he struggled to look around the cavern. He could see Skellan, lying on his back on the far side of the narrow stone bridge. He had fallen badly, but there was no way for Jerek to know precisely how badly. He had to move, he knew. He had to finish Skellan before Skellan finished him.

  “It ends here, Skellan,” promised Jerek, taking hold of his ankle. There was nothing to brace himself on and the rag had fallen out of reach. “One, two, three!” He gasped and yanked down hard on his disjointed ankle on three, the word tearing from his mouth in a shriek. The pain was excruciating as he forced the shattered bones together, pressing them until they ground into place.

  “You scream like a little girl, wolf,” Skellan mocked. He hadn’t moved in all the time they had lain there.

  “I’m coming to eat your heart, Skellan,” Jerek called across the chasm. “Run if you can. Oh, look, you can’t.”

  Jerek gripped the rock wall beside him and clawed his way up it through the pain barrier until he stood on his broken leg. He gritted his teeth against the pain and began to walk slowly, dragging his lame leg behind him.

  Twice he stumbled and almost fell as he crossed the bridge over the lava pit. The heat coming up from the fissure was overpowering despite the fact that the pool of molten stone was hundreds of feet below.

  Skellan hadn’t moved.

  The reason, Jerek saw, was that a huge stalagmite had pierced his lower stomach and abdomen and jutted up out of the wound like an accusing spear, effectively pinning Skellan to the ground.

  Jerek stood over the fallen vampire.

  “It’s over, Skellan. You are dead.”

  Skellan shook his head, and reached up stubbornly clasping the stone spear as though intending to haul himself off it. “Not yet, wolf, not yet.” But his voice was already fading, taking on a distant quality.

  Jerek shook his head.

  “Can you see the darkness? Is there anything there for us?”

  “No,” Skellan said. There is nothing.” But a smile began to spread slowly across his face.

  “What do you see, Skellan? Tell me.”

  “I see you, wolf. I see you dead at my feet,” and, screaming in sheer bloody agony Skellan heaved himself upwards, his guts unravelling out of the huge ragged wound in his back like a huge skein of yarn. He fell back, pushing the stalagmite deeper, opening himself up. “You can’t kill me,” said Skellan, but it was obvious to both of them that he didn’t believe it.

  “I don’t need to,” said Jerek. “You aren’t important. It was never about you.”

  He knelt beside Skellan.

  “May you find some kind of peace.”

  “Go lick yourself, wolf.”

  Jerek placed his hands on either side of Skellan’s head, holding it firm as he leaned in close. He could hear it above the cry and crash of the water, the siren song of the blood. Narcisa’s words came back to him: to drink the blood of a vampire is to absorb some of its essence, its strength. Lust, hunger, need, the base primal instinct to feed drove him and this time he surrendered to it, surrendered in hate and need, and desperation. Jerek leaned in, sinking his teeth into the vampire’s throat, and drank deeply even as Skellan struggled weakly to fight him off. Skellan’s corpse kicked and bucked and thrashed until the death shudder took him and he lay still. It was unlike any blood he had ever tasted: thicker, richer and more potent. It sang in his throat even as he sucked it down greedily. This was his blood, the blood of the vampire. This was a distillate of life eternal. This was power.

  This was his curse.

  This was his damnation.

  He was a creature of the blood, a monster.

  It was in him, this sickness, this power, and he enjoyed it.

  He had proved himself a beast. Vlad von Carstein had been right when he had chosen
him all those years ago. He did make a good vampire.

  Jerek rose, wiping the last trace of tainted blood off his lips.

  Skellan wasn’t dead, not yet, but drained there was no life in his corpse. It would return though, given time. Jerek couldn’t allow that to happen. An evil of Skellan’s enormity could not be allowed to rise again. The world had hurt enough.

  Jerek reached down and hauled him up off the stalagmite. He carried him, limping and shuffling to the centre of the narrow bridge. He felt strong, stronger than he had felt in years, despite his wounds and the fire burning up his leg. Skellan’s vitality flowed in his veins.

  He held Skellan’s corpse out over the chasm. It felt light in his arms.

  “May you finally be reunited with your woman, Jon Skellan,” Jerek said solemnly as he let go. He watched Skellan’s corpse tumble head over feet until it disappeared beneath the smooth sea of orange and red flames hundreds of feet below, swallowed, cremated by the molten rock.

  There would be no resurrection for Jon Skellan, of that Jerek was sure.

  “From dust to dust returned,” he said, ending the prayer of interment.

  Skellan had, at the very last, been smiling. Perhaps he truly had seen her ghost come to carry him home and that was the reason for the smile. Perhaps his last breath had been taken saying her name.

  Jerek wanted to believe that it was so, wanted to believe that there could be some form of redemption for his own monstrous soul. He needed to believe it, but he knew it was a lie.

  Skellan hadn’t been smiling.

  Death’s rictus had been locked on his cold hard lips, and now there was nothing.

  Both flesh and spirit had been destroyed.

  Skellan was gone.

  Jerek made the sign of Ulric as he watched the lava bubble and pop.

  It was as though Jon Skellan had never been.

  Jerek walked back across the narrow bridge. Somehow he needed to escape this chasm, but first he needed to rest.

  He had lied to Skellan. This wasn’t the end. It was the beginning. He had finally sacrificed himself. Becoming a monster was the only way he stood a chance against the greater monsters he hunted.

  Drained, he slumped down against the wall, listening to the delicate sound of thunder rumbling deep within the earth until he succumbed to a fitful regenerative sleep.

  There was no rest, though.

  His dreams were haunted by a white wolf, the elusive animal leading his dream-self a merry chase through the subterranean world of his nightmare.

  He came awake gasping, “I am the wolf,” and he knew it was true. He had at last become the predator that Vlad had always known he was.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Small Magics

  Ulthuan, Fabled Land of the High Elves

  High in the mountains of Saphery, overlooking the Sea of Dreams, the eight winds were stirring.

  In the shadow of the White Tower, Finreir tried to clear his mind of all conscious thought and distraction, but a single image refused to leave his mind’s eye.

  Boots, running, knee deep in the snow; thick heavily worked steel greaves; the chinking of armour; a run succumbing to abject panic; a darkness the likes of which he had never known in pursuit.

  Finreir’s nostrils filled with the scent of animal hide and the sickly bitter taint of evil. It clung to the winds. He sensed a great gnashing of teeth, a great goring of blood and felt as though he were the black crow high up above, watching it all. Trees, like black fingers thrusting up out of the ground, rushed passed his vision as the booted figure continued his desperate flight. The head of a glinting steel axe was brought to chest height as the exhausted runner could flee no more.

  He turned on his pursuers, to face his own damnation.

  He was a small man, tiny against the harrying pack.

  Not a small man… a child of Grimnir, a dwarf, his face bloodied and bruised.

  Evil was coming for him.

  His only protection were the eight winds, none of which he could touch, and the axe in his hands. The eyes of his hunters were bloodshot, virulent, filled with hate and lust and hunger, and a single name rang out from within their minds: Mannfred.

  Finreir came out of the trance with a start, his hands trembling and sweat beading on the back of his neck. His breath came thick and fast as though he’d been running, and in that moment of revelation he could not tell whether it had been a true vision or a snatch of someone else’s nightmare.

  He staggered to one of the doors of the White Tower and leant his hand against the cold stone, embracing its calming serenity. The old tower was implacable. His chest heaved. He had never known evil quite like the insidious dream-presence.

  He sensed a disturbance in the balance of nature. This was more than a mere malevolent presence. This was a force intent on consuming everything in its path like a sickness.

  In that moment he saw a twin-tailed hawk swoop down and snatch a mouse from the fields, and wondered if the dwarf he had seen was still alive or if indeed he had even been born yet. Such was the nature of a vision quest. Its truths could be illusive or they could provide moments of clarity greater than any spy glass.

  There was only one creature that could tell him if what he had seen was history or deeds yet to come, and that was the creature through whose eyes he had seen the hunt unfold.

  It took the mage, Finreir, a long time to feel comfortable confined once more in his robes. Nature’s magics felt more intimate and liberating when stripped down for the ritual. That was why he had removed himself from the White Tower. Most of his kin looked unfavourably upon his quirks since, as a high elf, modesty was expected of him and, as a sorcerer, discipline. In truth he lacked neither, he simply saw things differently and that is what set him apart.

  Finreir believed deeply and passionately that although the Ulthuan civilisation was an ancient and wise one, those who dwelt upon the island did not know everything, and that lack of knowledge fed his unceasing curiosity. By night’s end he had begged the indulgence of the council. As the youngest adept to have been bestowed the gift of High Magic he held considerable sway, despite the fact that he was still a child amongst his own kind.

  But there were certain elves who simply did not accept him.

  “You are still young, master Finreir, prone to impetuosity. It is understandable for one who has achieved much in such a short time, but the affairs of men are of no concern to the Asur. We don’t deny what you have seen, but with maturity comes wisdom. In time you will see that it is not for us to decide the fate of the Old World. They have little knowledge of our kind and we would have it remain that way for a while longer.”

  Finreir had taken their chastisement with good grace, but the affairs had sought him out—on the eight winds, no less—and only an ignorant elf would turn his back on that.

  Within the hour he had convinced three elf warriors to accompany him.

  Something was infecting the entire Old World, something that had been brewing remorselessly over time.

  An ancient sickness bubbled up from below, incipient enough for its influence to taint the very winds themselves. He had tasted it on Shyish. It caused Chamon to burn. It infused Ulgu with its noxious stain. It made Gyrun reek with its corruption. Already it had touched Aqshy, Ghur and Hysh. None were immune.

  That was the power of the evil he hunted, but that did not seem to concern the council.

  Finreir felt deeply that such a threat could not be allowed to go unchallenged.

  The truth of his vision must be sought before a clash of civilisations wrought chaos across all the lands. Life was precious, even a dwarfs.

  He issued various orders of preparation before returning to the heights of the White Tower.

  Finreir swept up the winding stairs, rising higher and ever higher until he was one with the sky, miles above the surface of the earth. He stood in the immense domed ceiling of the tower, the vaulted windows glassless, exposing the inner chamber to the confluence of all the winds. He s
tood in the centre, the winds surging around him, whipping around in a vortex, howling in an unrelenting gale. Up here where the winds could move unfettered he held his hands aloft, touching them and letting them touch him. He became one with the ultimate power of the winds.

  All of his senses had been subsumed by the winds. The winds were his senses now, his sight, his sound, his touch and taste. The reek of corruption swelled within him like a cancer. Out there, flying upon the winds, he found empty husks stripped of life and soul to serve as sentinels. Once they had been birds. Now they were mindless automata, soulless. They were limbs of the dark force, extensions of that malevolent mind. Their unnatural presence chilled him to the core.

  This could not have appeared overnight.

  Why, he thought, had no other elf seen this before?

  Had the arrogance of his kin reached such dizzying heights that a threat such as this would pass unchallenged?

  Finreir reached out with his newfound senses, seeking his quarry. He touched the hills of Lustria, scoured the coast of Araby, swept across the Sea of Claws and down the rivers of Middenland. He brushed the Mound of Krell, and rode the Grey Mountains. He skirted the forests of Loren and then the scent, light on the wind drew him towards Black Water and beyond to the dark spires of Drakenhof.

  The stench of death was ever present. The carrion seekers circled in the air. There, laid out before him, was a trail of withered black trees that slowly gave way to a forest of bones impaled brutally upon stakes and left out to be bleached by the sun. There, pecking at the eye socket of one hapless soul, was the crow that had taken him on his vision quest, and on its breath a single word: Mannfred.