Wrath of Kerberos tok-9

by Jonathan Oliver

  Silus heard a snatch of Keldren’s song, as the hatch to below opened and Dunsany and Kelos climbed onto deck. Kelos had discarded his robe, it having become all but shredded in the battle with the dragon. His bare arms were criss-crossed with many scars, some of them still weeping, and his face was a patchwork of bruises. In his hands he held a crystal decanter filled with a thick amber fluid.

  “Used to contain brandy,” the mage said, gesturing with the vessel. “Rather good brandy as it turns out. Don’t worry, I’m sure any residue won’t have diminished the potency of the dragon’s blood.”

  “And you’re sure the spell will work this time?” Silus said. “I don’t want us to be stranded millions of years from now.”

  “This time, without a doubt, the spell will work. Keldren has helped me prepare and we have gone through the nuances of the spell several times just to be sure. No casting on the fly this time. I’ll get us all home, don’t you worry.”

  “Okay, Kelos. Let’s get this over with.”

  Silus went to stand at the prow. Even with the strong wind gusting over the ship’s rail, he could smell the heavy incense of magic — cinnamon and burned stone — as Kelos unstoppered the decanter. The mage first poured the dragon’s blood over his hands, and used the remaining contents of the vessel to paint various symbols onto the deck. He muttered to himself as he inscribed each character, a look of intense concentration on his face. Dunsany knelt beside him, holding a book open before his friend, which Kelos consulted from time to time as he laid down the arcane script of the spell. When the last drop of blood had been used, he got back to his feet.

  “Technically, you know, this is necromancy,” Kelos said to no one in particular. “Not my field at all. But Keldren has briefed me on the ins-and-outs of it, and it really isn’t that much more complicated than the practise of elemental magic. Of course, one thing that any act of necromancy requires, to be effective, is a death.” Kelos glanced at his feet, beside which sat a wicker cage that occasionally shook and emitted a cluck. “Necromancers generally prefer to work with human death, or deaths. But, really, the nature of the death isn’t important. Necromancers are just naturally attracted to melodrama, preferring a human death — or twenty — to empower their spells. Fortunately, I am not as enamoured of such ostentatious gestures.” Kelos paused. “Dunsany, I know exactly what look you are giving me, and I will ask you to stop it now. Thank you.

  “Anyway, for this act of sorcery, the death in question will be given by nothing more significant than this chicken.” Kelos produced the bird from the wicker basket and held it against his chest. “And we need to do nothing more dramatic than this.” With a twist of his right hand, he broke the chicken’s neck. Kelos then produced a dagger and slit the creature’s throat, sprinkling its blood liberally over the symbols on the deck.

  “No, my friends. The death is not the dramatic part of this spell at all. This, however, you will find far more impressive.” Dunsany handed Kelos the book he had been holding. “I just hope my pronunciation is accurate. Otherwise, this could go horribly wrong.”

  The mage licked his index finger, turned a page and then cleared his throat and began to read.

  As he announced each incomprehensible word, the symbols painted onto the deck began to burn with an intense light. Silus closed his eyes against the glare, only to find the afterimage of one of the characters floating in the darkness behind his eyelids. He turned away and opened his eyes, and saw the symbol hanging in the air just beyond the prow of the ship. For a moment, he was afraid that it had been permanently seared into his retinas, but when it began to grow and dark tendrils flowed from it to caress the ship, he realised that it was all part of Kelos’s spell.

  “And so the door is written onto the very fabric of the universe,” Kelos said, closing the book and handing it back to Dunsany. “Now, all we have to do is open it.”

  Kelos gestured and the sky beyond the prow of the ship shattered, falling like a cascade of stained glass. Before them now was darkness, unrelieved by any light. A warm wind breathed from the void, rippling the sails and sending the ship into a gentle roll. Already the figurehead had been swallowed by this unmitigated night and Silus was afraid that they were all about to be plunged into oblivion when a gust of freezing cold wind threw his hair into his eyes and the deck pitched violently beneath his feet. This was a feeling he knew well. These waves that now towered about them were like old friends; indeed, just beyond them, to the north-west, Silus could see the tumult of the Storm Wall — the perpetual maelstrom that raged a handful of miles from the peninsula’s coast — and he knew then that they were finally home.

  He ran across the deck to Dunsany. “Hand me your glass,” he said, before taking the telescope and training it on the horizon.

  Just visible to the east was the dense huddle of Malmkrug, clinging to the cliffs that surrounded it. But something was wrong: whole sections of the city had been demolished or razed by fire; the ancient breakwaters that stood guard before the harbour had been broken and now protruded from the sea like the shattered tusks of a beached leviathan. As Silus watched, a vast plume of emerald smoke rose from the centre of the city, followed, moments later, by a thunderclap.

  “That was sorcery,” Kelos said, coming to stand beside him. “What in the name of all the gods is going on?”

  Silus increased the magnification on the telescope and he could now see the people crowding the city’s streets. Most were fleeing the destruction taking place all around them, hurrying inland now that a maelstrom of fire had begun to consume the harbour, but others were fighting. However, although the conflict was confined to the narrow alleys and thoroughfares of Malmkrug, this was no guerrilla assault. Silus recognised the livery of the Pontaine military and the distinctive red and blue stripes of the Vos National Army. And the battle was not confined to this one coastal settlement, for as Silus scanned along the peninsula, wherever he looked he could see flames and the clash of armies. It would seem that, just as had happened so many times in the past, the peninsula had gone to war, Vos and Pontaine once more fighting for dominance of Twilight.

  “Silus,” Kelos said. “Look.”

  Silus took the telescope away from his right eye, to see Kelos pointing to the sky, his own eyes raised. He looked up.

  A new scarlet moon hung beside the vast sphere of Kerberos. It was about one-fifth the size of the azure deity and its surface was pitted and scarred, crowded with craters that resembled nothing so much as vast pools of blood. A hazy corona partly shrouded the sphere and from this, reaching towards Kerberos, snaked a host of thin red pseudopods. Where they touched the upper atmosphere of the god, bolts of lightning lanced down into the gas giant. Silus felt each strike as a pain, deep in his guts.

  “That would be Hel’ss?” he said to Kelos.

  The mage nodded, his face pale.

  “Are we already too late?”

  To this Kelos had no answer. Something seemed to have caught his attention to the east.

  A galleon was heading towards them, its sails bearing the crossed circle of the Final Faith.

  “Well, at least something is going as planned,” Silus said. “Katya and Zac, get below. There may be violence, and I don’t want you on deck if that happens. Dunsany, tell Keldren to bring the ship to a halt.”

  Moments after Dunsany went below, the song came to an end and the sails fell limp, although a strong wind still howled in from the west.

  “I must admit, I didn’t think to see the Faith quite so soon,” Silus said.

  “They’ll have had mages scrying this area of the coast round the clock,” Kelos said, “ready to give the order to launch at the first sight of the Llothriall.”

  “I just hope that Makennon is so delighted to have her ship back that she forgoes the torture,” Dunsany said, climbing back on deck, sword in hand.

  When the galleon pulled in alongside, it was not the soldiers of the Final Faith that greeted them, but a ragtag crew of men and women, some dressed
in leather cuirasses and wielding shields and swords, others appearing to be nothing more than civilians along for the ride.

  A heavily bearded man, wearing a mismatched uniform — the helm of a commander in the Swords of Dawn and a tabard clearly filched from a soldier of the Pontaine army — leapt between the ships and thudded onto the deck in front of Silus.

  “No civilian vessels are to be sailed in these waters. We’re commandeering this ship.”

  “Hang on a moment,” Silus said, “you’re not Final Faith.”

  The men on the deck of the Faith ship laughed at this.

  The bearded man grunted and spat at Silus’s feet. “We are now.”

  “But what’s happened to the soldiers of the Faith? Why are a bunch of mercenaries crewing one of their vessels?”

  “There’s been something of a change of management, sunshine. The Red Chapter is now in charge. So, are you going to do the decent thing, climb over the side and attempt the swim back to shore, or are we going to take this ship by force?”

  In reply, Silus unsheathed his sword and drove the point into the mercenary’s right eye and through into his brain. There was a stunned silence from the Faith ship as the bearded man slid from Silus’s blade and fell to the deck, before the hiss of unsheathed weapons filled the air and bodies hurled themselves across the gap between vessels.

  The odds were hardly stacked in their favour — there were at least twenty mercenaries and only three of them — but Silus and Dunsany were skilled swordsmen and Kelos was a master of elemental magic, and the element he was most adept with was the one which currently surrounded them.

  As Dunsany and Silus stood back to back, blades dancing amongst the mercenaries, occasionally lunging out to strike one of them dead, Kelos withdrew to a quiet part of the deck, closed his eyes and began to mutter to himself, weaving complex patterns with his hands.

  When he opened his eyes, five mercenaries dropped their weapons and clutched at their throats, their faces turning purple as a flood of brackish seawater issued from their mouths. Another gesture from the mage brought four columns of water bursting up from the sea to either side of the ship. They stood for a moment, swaying like a snake caught by the music of a charmer’s flute, before they lunged at the deck, snatching up men and women and throwing them far from the ship. Kelos was still raising water elementals when he realised that the remaining mercenaries had all been accounted for, their blood soaking the deck around the feet of Dunsany and Silus.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” Dunsany said. “Something must have gone seriously wrong at Scholten if mercenaries are now in charge of the Final Faith.”

  “And, thus, getting to see Katherine Makennon is going to be rather trickier than we had imagined,” Kelos said. “What are we going to do?”

  “If we take their ship, we’re less likely to be stopped again. Flying the colours of the Final Faith, we should be able to follow the river Anclas all the way to Scholten,” Silus said. “There… well, we’ll just have to think of something, won’t we?”

  Keldren climbed onto the deck, his face paling when he saw the dead mercenaries.

  “What about the song ship?” Kelos said. “We can’t just leave it here.”

  “ This is the brave new world that you would have me inherit?” Keldren said, taking in the chaos that had gripped the peninsula. “Gods, where have you brought me?”

  “Keldren, I’m sorry, but we don’t have much time. We have to board the mercenaries’ ship.” Silus said, attempting to guide him by the elbow.

  “No, I don’t think so. I would die out there. I will stay with the ship. Perhaps find some quiet bay to anchor her in and wait for this conflict to blow over. This is not the world I was expecting.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kelos said, though Silus didn’t entirely believe the regret in the mage’s voice. After all, the elf mage had held him against his will, conducted vile experiments on his friends. Now they no longer had any use for him, it was fitting that they should leave Keldren to fend for himself. They said their goodbyes and watched from the Final Faith ship as the song ship skirted the shore, Keldren’s song fading as it rode away on its tide of magic.

  Silus took charge of the Final Faith ship, but it was horribly unresponsive. The boom came round arthritically slowly, and the ropes and masts screamed in protest as the wind pushed against them. The ship’s wheel was badly in need of oiling and as he turned it, Silus could have sworn that he heard something break deep within the vessel. He only hoped that the craft would hold together long enough for them to get to Scholten.

  Soon the jagged banks of the river Anclas rose to either side, playing host to a vast colony of gulls, whose stench and clamour rolled over them in a heady tide. When the sails fell lifeless for no apparent reason and the ship keeled to port, Silus only just managed to prevent it running aground.

  “Gods, you can tell why the people of Malmkrug never used this as a trade route,” Dunsany said, as he came to stand by Silus’s side. “The currents are lethal.”

  Silus could only nod in agreement as he struggled with the wheel.

  To the east, the sky took on a vermillion glow and he was just beginning to think that it was far too early for sunrise when, with a deafening screech, a blazing ball of scarlet energy arched overhead and impacted with the cliffs towering over their port side, sending fractures racing through the rock face. Silus pulled hard on the wheel, but whatever had broken earlier now caused the mechanism to jam, and they found themselves heading straight towards the cliffs, slowly breaking apart as they did.

  “Kelos!” Silus shouted. “A little help?”

  The mage raised his arms and cried out, and silence fell. A pearlescent light surrounded the ship. Silus watched in terror as an avalanche of boulders tumbled towards them, only to be deflected by Kelos’s magic.

  “Thank you,” Silus said, “Kelos — can you go below and see to whatever is broken? If I can’t turn the wheel we’re not going to get very far.”

  Thankfully, whatever was broken was easily repaired. Within a matter of moments, the wheel was turning again.

  Though the distance between Malmkrug and Scholten was not a considerable one, their progress was slow. Every mile was a constant battle against the fierce current and the detritus of war that crowded the river’s surface. The bodies were the easiest to deal with, as they either knocked harmlessly against the ship’s side or broke apart on the prow; the collapsed sections of riverbank, however, were another matter entirely. Several times they had to stop and sound the depths with the anchor before they could progress through a narrowed channel, and by the time they neared Scholten — its peaks just visible over the high walls of the river bank — Silus was beginning to flag, his eyes growing heavier with each passing moment.

  “Here, let me,” said Dunsany, carefully removing his friend’s hands from the wheel. “Go and get some rest.”

  Silus nodded and went below.

  As tired as he felt, however, he didn’t think he could have looked as wretched as Katya. She sat on a bunk in one of the cabins, watching Zac as he slept beside her. When Silus went to her, she shrank away, and the look he gave her chilled him more than any of the sights they had seen that day in Twilight.

  “When we get to Scholten…” she began, until sobs took her words away.

  Silus watched, utterly helpless, as she struggled to regain her composure.

  Katya swallowed, blinked and then started again.

  “I have an aunt in Scholten, I believe you met her once. When we get to the city, Zac and I will go to her.”

  “Okay, then tell me where I’ll find you.”

  “No.”

  “But, Katya, Twilight has gone to war. You may not be safe-”

  “Oh, and you think we’ll be safer with you? You think you’ll be able to defend us from what is happening; that you’ll be able to protect us from yourself?”

  “But Zac; Katya… he’s my son!”

  “And if you love him, you’ll unders
tand that what I’m proposing is the best for him. He doesn’t know who his daddy is anymore, Silus. This thing within you… it could come back at any time. Kelos told you that you have a destiny and you do, but not with us.”

  “Katya, please don’t do this. I love you both so much. Remember how long we tried for Zac? Remember how blessed we felt the first time you held him in your arms?”

  “Please, this isn’t easy.”

  “What about me? I don’t think you realise how much this hurts.”

  “That’s the problem. It is all about you, and there’s no room for us in your life now that you know what you truly are.”

  Silus felt like tearing the room apart then, felt the burn of anger and waited for it to overtake him. But he couldn’t. Katya was right. He was a completely different person from the one she had married. He could no longer justify the danger they would be in if they stayed together. He wanted only what was best for Katya and Zac, and so he had to let them go.

  “Just give me one thing,” he said.

  “And what is that?”

  “Five minutes alone with my son. I want to say goodbye properly.”

  Katya looked reluctant at first, but finally she nodded and left the cabin.

  Silus stroked his son’s head and said his name. Zac opened his eyes and blinked.

  “Hey there, looks like you slept through all the excitement.”

  “Mummy?”

  “She’s just in the next room. There’s no need to be afraid. Listen, you know that Daddy would never hurt you, right?”

  “You hurt Emuel.”

  “And that was a mistake, Zac. Daddy thought that Keldren would make him all better. Daddy…” Silus realised that if he was going to talk seriously to his son, he shouldn’t talk down to him. “I made a mistake. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. But you must understand that I would never, ever hurt you.”

  The strength of feeling behind his last statement made Zac flinch and Silus reached out to him. His son looked at the outstretched palm as though it were a weapon.