by John March
In places there were rents in the air oozing a black viscous substance which dripped onto whatever lay beneath, smoking and evaporating like spots of grease dropped onto an extremely hot stove-plate. The world-skin felt bruised, ruptured like a wound left to fester, and burst.
Strewn along the avenue in either direction lay evidence of a battle. Everywhere there were signs of damage — smashed light posts, damaged buildings, chunks of masonry in the road and, at the far end, an upturned symor, with its wheels still cycling slowly in the air.
Unmoving shapes lay scattered around the symor, and in front of a building with half its side torn away, like dirty ragged bundles abandoned to scavengers and the rain. Plumes of smoke rose from parts of the city, and a strong smell of burning wood hung in the air.
It looked like a war had raged across the city in the time he'd been away. The constant background noise of people going about their business, which he'd learnt to ignore, had been replaced with distant rumbles and shouting, suggesting ongoing skirmishes in a number of nearby places.
“Who sent for me?” Ebryn asked Addae as they approached the largest group of casters.
Almost before he'd finished asking the question, Deme peeled away from the group.
“So, we have a rogue caster called Fla Cyrus hiding somewhere in the catacombs below the streets. As you can see, he's caused a great deal of damage and killed many people. It seems this Fla managed to summon and control a small army of ephemerals, and set them loose on Vergence. We've defeated most of them and driven the remaining ones back underground.
“Unfortunately, the city guard arrived here before we had gathered ourselves in numbers and sent as many as a hundred heavily armoured men down, equipped with sevyric iron. None returned. So his ephemerals can't fight their way back up, and we can't venture down, because there is too much of the stuff scattered around down there now.”
“Which is why you wanted me here,” Ebryn said.
“Yes,” Deme said. “We've been told you can fold away far greater weights of sevyric iron than you managed in the entrance test.”
Ebryn nodded. He'd known what he needed to do from the moment he'd seen Addae in Senesella.
He looked Deme directly in the eye. “I can, but I am going to need to be much closer than this. I'll need to be down below.”
“No, not possible,” Deme said. “I won't send apprentices down there to face Fla. It's too dangerous, even with help.”
“I'm not an apprentice,” Ebryn said.
Deme appeared not to hear, turning in the direction of Brack and his men. “They will just have to take their chances. We'll need to summon ephemerals to send with them.”
“But I'm not an apprentice,” Ebryn said, speaking louder. “Look.” He pulled his adepts seal from under his shirt, and held it out for her.
She took the amulet and examined it closely. “Where did you get this?”
“Ben-gan gave it to me.”
“Ben-gan? Why did he do that?”
Ebryn shrugged. “He said I was ready. He said it meant I was free to choose my own path, and that's what I'm doing now.”
Deme stared at him tight-lipped, the same kind of expression he remembered Fidela using when she didn't like something. “Very well, but you're not going in alone, and once the iron is dealt with you're to return directly here. No heroics, this isn't a game.”
“I will go with him,” Addae said.
“No, you won't,” Deme said. “Not unless Ben-gan has given you one of these too. Hemetuen are too valuable to risk on something like this.”
“It's fine,” Ebryn said to Addae. “I'll do just as she says — get rid of the iron, and return here.” He hated lying, especially to Addae, but he couldn't see any other way he'd persuade Deme to let him go if he didn't.
She turned and marched across the road, towards Brack.
“— and where are our great leaders when we face a deadly foe? Where is the Ronyon Orim when he's really needed?” Brack was saying.
He spoke loudly, evidently trying to be heard as widely as possible.
“Ah,” Brack said as he spotted Ebryn. “Here comes the boy who should have been training in the Aremetuet, not mouldering with the rest of the cowardly Genestuer scum.”
“Elector Brack,” Deme said in a curt tone. “This young man has volunteered to go below. Perhaps some of your brave men would like to accompany him?”
“I'll go myself,” Brack said quickly. “He won't be able to stop the two of us.”
At the entrance Ebryn turned to Brack, who followed just on his shoulder. At least two dozen of Brack's men crowded behind them, standing so close they almost trod on his heels with every other step.
“I’ll need to go ahead. That way I can try to remove the sevyric iron before he knows I'm there — give him as little time as possible to do anything,” Ebryn said.
“Yes, a good plan,” Brack said. “But I won't be far behind. I'm not risking your neck just for this scum sucking traitor.”
The entrance was narrow, and Ebryn ducked down to pass the arch. Inside, an uneven set of stairs disappeared down into the dark. Heavy, dank air seemed to wrap around them as they descended, a stagnant pooling of rich earthiness mingled with the odour of decay.
Fifteen or so yards in, towards the bottom of the stairs, they found the first of the guards' bodies lying face down, neck at an impossible angle, his arms still by his side. To Ebryn it looked like the man had died while moving down the stairs, falling at once and sliding the last few steps, making no effort to protect himself.
The were-lights behind him stuttered and blinked out as Brack's men neared the body, leaving them in near complete darkness. He couldn't see where the guard's sevyric iron was, possibly part of his shield, a pendant or bracelet, but Ebryn could sense a now familiar dragging feeling from a point under the man, so he reached out, and folded it away.
The dead guard lay half inside an oblong chamber with several entrances on each side, and a single one opposite. It had clearly once served as a crypt, with sets of large stone sarcophagi crowded together in the centre. Around the perimeter of the room the dressed stone was covered in worn engravings, and a there were a dozen waist-high recesses, each holding a small misshapen statue. Chunks of broken stone lay scattered around the edge of the chamber.
“Which way do you think he is?” Ebryn asked Brack.
“Straight ahead,” Brack said. “There are older chambers beneath these.”
“For a cripple, he sure likes his steps,” one of Brack's men said.
They filed into the room behind Ebryn and Brack, and spread out, recasting were-lights, filling the room with a flickering sickly yellow-green light.
“Check the side passages,” Brack said.
Ebryn worked his way carefully to the far side of the chamber, weaving between the sarcophagi, stepping over bits of masonry, with Brack and a knot of his men just behind.
The far entrance was larger than the side ones, and a few paces away the statues in the flanking alcoves moved. Black eyes opened and strong clawed hands reached out to grasp the edge of the alcoves.
“Watch the statues,” Ebryn shouted.
Something sizzled through the air past his shoulder and burst inside the alcove with a deafening blast, blowing gobbets of grey flesh, black oily liquid, and fragments of stone across the room.
The second creature launched itself at him without pausing, leaping at his head with extended claws. Reacting instinctively, Ebryn ducked and rolled, turning as he came back onto his feet, his head numbed by the shock of the explosion.
In an instant the chamber filled with sounds of yelling and shrieks, and the crackle, hiss, and blast of hurried castings. Men stumbled around the sarcophagi struggling with the small demonic things, staggering into each other, and falling to the ground.
Ebryn hesitated a moment, torn between helping his fellow casters, and pushing on ahead without them. In front of him, one of the creatures crunched down hard with its fangs on t
he hand of a man it clung to, as he tried to fend it from his face, its claws gripping through his robes and the flesh on the front of his chest.
Brack stepped in front of Ebryn, blocking two-thirds of the room from view, his hands gesturing, speaking an invocation that ended in something like a throaty hum. The sound continued — falling into a deeper rumble, continuing with a momentum of its own as the casting finished. Ebryn had the sensation of a huge enveloping weight pressing down, like the grip of a giant fist, on everything in the room.
He made a snap decision and ducked past the entrance into the room beyond — a smaller space, barely twelve paces across, like an antechamber to the crypt room behind him.
Whatever else happened, he was determined to get to Fla before the others, if possible to prevent the carnage that would follow if Brack and his men arrived with him. In spite of the mayhem Fla had already unleashed on the city, he suspected Brack had no idea of the man's true power.
Ebryn cast his far-sense outwards, feeling the interior of the room as he passed through, extending to the passage beyond, and deeper below his feet. He followed by casting a small ward, a shallow bubble of protection against whatever waited for him.
He had no idea what to look for, how to spot traps and ambushes, or what he could do if he did. He felt downwards and outward, quickly encountering a very large area which his senses could not penetrate, where his casting failed. From this distance he couldn't estimate how much sevyric iron he faced.
On the other side of the antechamber the passage he entered was dark and sloped steeply downward, past fractured masonry and places where water dripped, and the roots of plants trailed down through the ceiling.
He clenched his teeth. He had to move fast, clearing passages and chambers, and closing them behind as he went.
Reaching out with a casting, he touched the plants above. Part of the ceiling crumbled as a thick tangle of knotted roots pushed through into the passage — dark green coils, vines as thick as heavy rope and as strong as wire, like the tentacles of some mythical sea beast.
They grew as fast as fire, running along the surface of the tunnel, dividing and dividing again. Smaller filaments spread, binding the rope-like tangles to earth and stone, until thick corded green strands smothered the entire surface of the passage. Behind Ebryn, an impenetrable knot formed to block the way, with branches criss-crossing, penetrating through walls and floor.
As he moved forward, the hedge of sticky roots grew, closing the passage behind him. A wave of green preceded him, choking alcoves and side entrances, binding statues, wrapping around cornices and pillars.
The stairs curved to the right as he descended, opening out into a smallish room at the bottom. Here he found another set of short creatures, positioned like statues, hissing and scrabbling at the entangling green flow.
At the far end, he found his path blocked by a heavy stone door. It sat flush in its frame. Like the door barring the library, he sensed more than sheer physical weight holding it in place.
Ebryn pulled a loose strand free of the nearest root tangle, holding it in his hand and focusing. No time for a subtle solution. Already he could hear noise on the stairwell at the rear of the room as Brack and his men forced their way past the barrier he'd created for them.
The gnarlwoods reached down, gouging a great hole through the dirt under the door frame. This summoning bigger and more powerful than his last, with huge slabs of knotted cords, shoulders broader than a cheg's back, creaking as they bent to the task. Stronger than any muscles of flesh — and the stone supporting the doorway fractured under the relentless pressure.
The stone door ground backwards a fingernail's breadth, and stopped. Chunks of earth and rock fell from the ceiling around him. His gnarlwoods groaned, a deep hollow sound, like wind blowing through an underground cave. Pain flowed across the connection between Ebryn and his summoning — searing, bone jarring.
Ebryn ordered his creatures back, extending his far-sense to the door, and carefully feeling his way behind the surface. As he'd expected, he found lines of energy lingering, running through the core of the stone.
He concentrated hard to make out the nature of the binding, aware all the time of Brack's party getting closer behind him, the repeated roar of a powerful casting, followed by echoing voices, and the faint smell of burning greenwood.
Ebryn extended his senses to the space on the far side of the door, working around the frame, careful to stay away from the protection on the door.
He felt a smaller chamber, with rough-edged walls, and low stone-hewn shelves along the edges. Beyond that, another similar space, and scattered on the shelves small mounds, which he realised must be long interred skulls and bones. His senses flowed into the space, touching every part of each room a once.
An arch at the end of the second room opened onto some kind of a platform with a broad set of stairs to the left, sweeping downwards in a spiral around a wide open stairwell.
He found a swarm of small creatures filling the air on the other side of the door, each the size of a large fly, with hard sharp edges and oversized jagged razor jaws. Armoured forms lay on the floor of the chambers, hundreds of the small flyers crawling over each of them, congregating around sections of exposed flesh — arms, lower legs and faces.
Get past the door, Ebryn thought, and you walk into thousands of things that look like flesh-eating flies. Perhaps even poisonous. He examined the door again, carefully testing the complex strands of the casting anchored in it. Some he recognised — elements of binding and warding, helping to hold the door in place and protect it against attacks. Other strands resonated with suppressed vitality, vibrating urgently, potent fusions of white heat and excruciating glamour.
Ben-gan had told him he could not possibly learn to recognise every thread of ephemera in every casting. A lifetime would not be long enough to catalogue all the familiar ones, and there were countless others besides. The path to success in this aspect of their art relied on instinct and intuition, a feel for possibilities.
Ebryn saw a way to overcome the ward holding the door, and deal with the swarming flyers beyond — together.
He turned and summoned two more gnarlwoods, feeling the pattern of their strength, imitating it. Turning towards the door, feeling the essential power of the gnarlwoods behind him, he threaded together the same slow, relentless strength into a casting, giving it time to build, feeding it, until the ground beneath his feet thrummed.
Ebryn stepped to the stone door and gradually released his casting at it. He focused on the door, rapidly increasing the force.
The stones around the frame shook and fresh chunks of dirt fell around him, but he hardly noticed as his attention shifted to the ward wrapped around the door. He held the lines of pain as they ballooned, stoking them, struggling against the sensation of blistering skin, burning cold running through the bones of his head, half-aware as the stone door split.
The noise reverberated deafeningly around the small space as the stone cracked, and cracked again, fracturing into dozens of pieces under the crushing pressure.
A solitary black-winged flyer buzzed through a crack as the remnants of the door shattered, sweeping away the ward, exploding away from him into the rooms beyond. Slabs of stone scythed through the air, crushing the stone railing overlooking the stairwell at the far end, and with them came a roiling wave of pure elemental pain. Like a ragged web clinging to the fractured stone, it swept a clean path, stunning all the flyers not crushed by the eruption of rocks, and dust.
Ebryn breathed hard, looking down at his hands. He felt like a giant, using its strength for the first time. He realised all the training Master Yale had given him had been like forging the body of a sword, an unsuspecting potential, waiting for a focus, given an edge in the time he'd spent learning from Ben-gan.
Under his feet the thick green vines raced out ahead as he walked through the next room, and the one after that. A thousand gummy filaments found the remnants of the swarm of biters, b
uzzing and tumbling across the floor, fastening them down to form a strange, angry, buzzing carpet under his feet.
Two of his gnarlwoods shouldered passed him, heavy footfalls pulping the carpet of vines where they stepped. The third trailed behind, set to protect against ambushes, or attacks from the rear.
Shapes moved in the gloom along the balcony, plate metal clanking, forming up in a loose group facing him. For the briefest moment, he thought he'd found survivors from the group of guards sent underground before he'd arrived, but in his heart he knew they were all certainly dead, and his far-sense detected no signs of life inside the armour.
Either Fla had animated the dead soldiers, using some arcane art, or ephemerals had been summoned and bound into the cold flesh inside. He didn't have time to decide which he found the more revolting.
Erratic sword blows bounced off knotted hardwood as his gnarlwoods crashed into the waiting soldiers.
A powerful blow from a gnarlwood sent a couple tumbling into the stairwell and down into the dark, another ripped a helmeted head away from its body. Fists as hard as stone splintered shields, and crushed in armour, scattering bodies left and right.
Ebryn reached the archway to find the landing clear. His creatures had turned left, heading down the stairs, sweeping more guards over the edge, their bodies striking the ground in crashing heaps somewhere out of sight. He followed behind them, picking his way past piles of rubble and tangles of armoured men, strewn across the landing and stairs.
Some struggled feebly to rise on crushed limbs, but tangling roots swept down the stairs with Ebryn, slithering over them like a restless tide, pinning them to the ground. Halfway down the stairs, Ebryn felt the sevyric iron.
Now for the hard part.
