Moontide 04 - Ascendant's Rite

by David Hair

He fell to his knees as an image of his own body formed around him, a perfect version of himself, clad in silks that felt rich and soft. Gold rings adorned his fingers. He felt impossibly strong and alive, as he no longer did inside his own body.

  his Saviour said, pulling him effortlessly to his feet.

  Johan Corin was astonishing to behold: outwardly just a man, perhaps, but if you looked closer, you saw that His strong, gentle face held the wisdom of ages. His warm visage was framed by blond hair, and His brilliant blue eyes were both penetrating and joyous. When He was impassioned, His voice could crack like thunder and shatter the sky like eggshells, but when He spoke, Malevorn heard music and laughter, and most of all, an all-embracing love.

  Today Corineus was robed like a simple peasant, a wanderer, a preacher in the wilds of Yuros, proclaiming His own godhood, and he, Malevorn, was His most fervent and loyal follower.

  Until he found Corineus inside his Ablizians’ souls, Malevorn had not realised what a desperate state he’d fallen into. He was filled with fear and hatred, detesting himself for becoming a Souldrinker, a Reject of Kore. He had been cast out by the Inquisition, cast adrift among heathens, his moral compass lost.

  Johan Corin had given back his pride, spoken the words he needed to hear:

  The world made sense now. The magi were not the ordained of Kore; they were usurpers. Corineus had not been the Prophet of the Magi but of the Souldrinkers: the first of that kind. The First Ascension should have meant an Empire of Souldrinkers, given a whole world to feed upon – but that beautiful vision, of Lions shepherding the Lambs to the slaughter, had been snatched away by a single dagger-stroke.

  Malevorn had wept for what should have been when Corineus revealed the truth, but his Saviour had pulled him erect and told him what could be done to bring about that world. He understood now.

  As the first Souldrinker to die, Johan Corin’s soul had been cast into the aether, but when His Souldrinker brethren also began to die, He was there to greet them, to take them into Himself. Corineus was now a being comprised of thousands of dead souls: His Brethren, his legion. In the absence of real gods, He had become one. Already He had worshippers on both continents – and now Malevorn had brought Him more. Together they would restore Urte to what it should have been: His.

 

  In their first mental communion He had clothed Malevorn in silk and gold, raised him up and fed him wines with tastes hitherto undreamed-of, liquors of a sweetness beyond description, and He had shown him the past and postulated the future. From a dream-like Lantric palace of columned marble lavishly embellished with gleaming gilt high on a mountain peak He showed Malevorn the world in incredible detail – the most perfect scrying imaginable – including the positions of the armies of Kaltus Korion and Salim of Kesh, laid out like pieces on a war-map, with so much detail he could pick out the faces of men and women walking through market-squares or tilling fields. Only the magi were hidden. It was incredible – and it was just one facet of Corineus’ power.

  As a reward for the enslavement of so many minds to His, Corineus opened up the full range of the gnosis to Malevorn, allowing him to channel every affinity without having to learn it. He perfected his body and mind without exercise or study – it was all so easy now that he began to forget how hard his life had been before. He was ready to take on the world again.

  Corineus was attuned to his mood. He noted. They were seated on an illusory islet in a beautiful lake, a place that though wholly conjured in Corineus’s mind, seemed utterly real – and yet it obeyed His every whim. They were reclining on divans, eating grapes while observing the court of Salim of Kesh in the real world, and though Malevorn spoke not a word of Keshi, every word was clear and understood.

  Corineus asked.

  My wrath. Malevorn tasted the words pleasurably. He was to be the blade of Corineus’ conquest of Urte. ‘Wherever my Lord commands.’

  Corineus waved a hand and the surface of the lake transformed into a map of Gatioch and eastern Kesh, detailed right down to the tiny buildings and herds of beasts. His command of the Web of Souls beggared that of mere magi. He pointed to a small Gatti town built around a fortress northwest of the Valley of Tombs.

  Malevorn promised,

 

  *

  Malevorn floated high above the keep, surrounded by his Ablizian slaves. Vaqo, the Keshi desert town on the edge of Gatioch, was built around a dirty little lake. Tonight it slumbered, oblivious to the Judgement about to be cast upon it.

  He still hadn’t slept since awakening from near-death, but he felt perfect. His dreams had grown as his favour with Corineus grew; he was no longer content just to restore his family name, and even titles like ‘emperor’ sounded a little pallid when one could be God of all Urte. Information kept on flooding his brain, gifted by Corineus, stoking his ambitions higher. But this would be his first great test: to control his Ablizians in battle.

  He looked up to see all but three of his creatures hovering; those he’d left to guard the Valley of Tombs. The seventy-five Ablizians floating in the skies above the sleeping village had all altered to take the shapes of Kore’s angels – which were more or less identical to the apsaras of Ahmedhassan myth – to awe any who caught sight of them. They had huge wings and shone like fallen stars.

  he told them, and their wards flared.

  The Ablizians dropped from the skies in a loose ring about the town, while he gripped his bejewelled spear and floated in their wake. His senses expanded and divided so that he could be with each Ablizian: he could see what they saw, smell what they smelled, hear what they heard, overloading him with stimuli as eye-blink decisions flashed across his mind. He was expanding, his brain filling like a god’s, one who was aware of every worshipper’s prayer. Yes, go there – yes, destroy that – kill him – burn her – rip them apart.

  It was intoxicating, overpowering, all-consuming. It was divine.

  Using Earth-gnosis, the seventy-five Ablizians brought each house crashing down, burning any survivors to cinders or cutting them down. Every scream was cut short in a torrent of flame or a flashing blade, and the terror of the inhabitants was reflected back into their brains so that many died simply of fright.

  Malevorn gave free reign to his own expanded gnosis, experimenting with killing in ways he had never before been able to even contemplate: rending souls and bodies with esoteric spells, feeling Corineus as a companion inside his mind, guiding him as he controlled the Ablizians. He followed the carnage down the central road into the town, saw the slaughter redouble as a knot of survivors tried to fight, though half-dressed and poorly armed, desperate to shield their women and children.

  Combat images almost overwhelmed him as the fighting became more intense. Searing pain struck his chest as one of his Ablizians took a blow from behind – a spear to the heart – and the connection winked out. He found another Ablizian and guided it as it incinerated the spearman. he shouted,

  As resistance increased he lost more of his creatures, half a dozen, but lessons were learned. He had not before t
hought to shield them from each other’s awareness a little, so they saw only what was before them, allowing them to fight independently. And he tempered their attacks, making them fight cautiously, blasting from a safe distance while flying above the reach of the peasants’ feeble weapons. Here it hardly mattered: their shielding was strong enough to render any archery harmless and they could char a man in seconds, but against magi it would be harder, so it was good to practise. He concentrated on keeping them together, keeping their guard up, ensuring they protected themselves.

  The Ablizians slaughtered the remaining men, all except the local ruler and his sons and daughters, then herded them, together with the women and children, into the central square. Then he let his Ablizans loose, because they were still mortal men as well as servants of Corineus. He rode their perceptions as they butchered the ruler and his offspring and disembowelled the Godspeakers who tried to dispel them with amulets and prayers. He rode their minds as they rode each woman, and each orgasm his slaves experienced felt as if it were his own: a rapture that almost paralysed him.

  Afterwards, they burned what was left of the corpses in one giant conflagration and were gone by dawn, taking their fallen fellows away so none would know that they could be slain. The echoes of the power they’d unleashed resounded through the aether – had probably been sensed all over Ahmedhassa – but that didn’t concern him. He was elated.

  The assault had been imperfect, but the potential was clear. There were improvements to be made, but this trial had shown him what had to done. Next time would be better. A garrison town in daylight, perhaps . . . with some Rondian magi inside to spar with. He had to hone this weapon he’d built, but it wouldn’t take long.

  Tremble, Urte. He smiled wryly to himself as he stroked the diamond-encrusted spear. I am the Spear of Corineus Himself, and I am feeling wrathful.

  *

  In a town three hundred miles northeast of Vaqo, a tall, lean woman huddled inside her bekira-shroud, listening to the trembling of the aether. It was like an unseen wind that only she felt. All round her, refugees huddled over bowls of rice, wolfing down pitifully small mouthfuls while resting their legs. They were sun-blackened and travel-worn, clinging to the vestiges of their human dignity as they fled the wars. None sensed what she felt: the hidden wind that presaged a storm to come.

  He survived. After all I did, Malevorn Andevarion survived . . .

  She bowed her head, cursing the Gods for betraying her. Her dark, austere face was closed-in; only her left arm moved as she stroked the shoulder of the sleeping child at her side. The echo she sensed only confirmed her decision to leave Ahmedhassa. It held nothing now but sadness and loss, and the memories of suffering. There was only disaster to come.

  In the Uttermost East, the legends of the Brethren said, was a paradise where there were no magi, and Souldrinker rule was unchecked: where they were as as princes, and the common herd was theirs to cull. It rained there often, and the lands were lush, the sun warm, the flowers and birds brilliantly coloured. Happiness reigned. Hessaz didn’t believe any of that to be true, and nor did Sabele. But what that legend hinted was that somewhere, perhaps, she might find a place where Malevorn Andevarion couldn’t find her.

  She looked down at the small boy sleeping in her lap and her heart warmed. She pulled him to her nipple. He was drowsy, but aware enough to suckle – she had enough morphic-gnosis to cause her breasts to fill, as they had for Pernara, her lamented daughter. It helped anchor her, to keep the Hessaz part of her involved, though in truth she didn’t know any more who she really was: she had Sabele’s lives, and Huriya’s too now: she was all of them, but also herself: she was a new being.

  ‘Drink, child,’ she whispered, and as he fed, she could sense him changing, becoming Brethren. It was a sign that one day all of the world would be as she was.

  Then the first bell of morning rang and the leaders of this group of refugees clambered to their feet, calling on their flock to rise. Wearily, every joint protesting and every bone aching, Hessaz took her sleeping child and joined them on the road leading east into the mountains.

  28

  Hammer and Anvil

  The Siege of Perane

  Perane was a Rimoni fortress, notable for the fact that the Ascendant Mage Rostrea the Red captured it during the Liberation of Yuros. It remains the only instance of a legion surrendering entirely to a single person: Rostrea, an Air- and Fire-mage, had already destroyed most of the fortress when it capitulated. She remains an icon for young mage-women to this day.

  THE ANNALS OF PALLAS, 890

  Kesh, on the continent of Antiopia

  Awwal (Martrois) 930

  21st month of the Moontide

  The alarm bells rang, just before midday, but none of the battle-magi in Seth Korion’s tent spoke. There was nothing to say; in truth, they’d made their plans, even if hasty and perhaps utterly ill-conceived. The board was set and they were the pieces. It was time to play.

  As Ramon left, he glanced back and saw Seth’s pale face, and felt a flash of pity. Disinherited and falsely accused in the same moment? That had to be hard.

  The gnostic-contact with Kaltus Korion had happened three days ago; those alarm bells meant that the Inquisition was here. On the ridge-line to the west, Ramon could see horsemen strung out in a line, but just ten of them: an Inquisition Fist. Many would be pure-bloods and all would be superbly armed and trained. Then more men appeared: lines of red-clad Rondian legionaries cresting the rise, marching into position with shields abutted and spears held high.

  Here they come. Ramon swallowed, but part of him thrilled also: danger and opportunity walked hand in hand, as Pater-Retiari had always said.

  Fridryk Kippenegger whooped excitedly, shouting, ‘This is the day, yar?’

  ‘Si, amici. Let’s teach the Inquisition a lesson!’ Ramon responded, trying to sound just as enthusiastic. ‘Ready your men.’

  ‘My Bullheads are always ready!’ Kip slapped him on the shoulder, almost knocking Ramon off his feet, then strode off towards his maniple. His soldiers now resembled a barbarian horde, having adopted Schlessen dress, behaviours and ferocity through the sheer force of example of their young battle-mage.

  War is madness, and we’re the proof.

  The camp was on full alert; they’d been drilled to receive a possibly hostile parley, which was as much as the rankers knew. At a meeting of all the legion’s magi and officers, Seth had explained the situation in full, and they had taken the decision – after much discussion – not to tell the rankers, partly for fear of spies in the ranks, although that was unlikely. It was more because Ramon had persuaded them that the rankers needed to react spontaneously; given time to think, he’d argued, there would be wavering in the face of the enormity of what they were accused of. He wanted red-hot anger, followed by irrevocable action, and he’d won the argument.

  Over the past three days, they’d gone among the men, reminding them of the death-camps and the Inquisitors’ other crimes back at home. Even the chaplains, whose loyalty to the Kore forbade any criticism of the Inquisition, had needed little persuasion to spread the word: the Inquisition wasn’t loved by the ordinary clergy.

  As the camp came alive and the men first looked up and saw the Inquisitors, Kirkegarde and regular army banners on the ridge above, an audible hiss ran through the ranks. Then the officers and battle-magi started bellowing orders and the chaos gradually became orderly as the camp armed itself swiftly and formed up on one side of the parade ground, ready to face the newcomers. Their own pennants were hung at half-point, as if in mourning for what was to come.

  ‘Magister Sensini!’ Tribune Storn hurried out of the hurly-burly. ‘Is this it?’

  ‘It is. Battle-stations, Storn.’

  ‘Are the scouts in?’

  ‘We never deployed them, in case they were captured. The look-outs on the ridge rang the bells. They should be back by now.’ Ramon gripped Storn’s shoulders. ‘If this goes wrong, get the wagons out – dist
ribute what you salvage among those who escape.’ He put his mouth to the tribune’s ear and said forcibly, ‘Don’t die for nothing. It’s only money.’

  Storn looked at him like he’d just blasphemed.

  Ramon left him and started hurrying through the ranks. ‘A lot of shit will be spoken in a few moments, lads,’ he told the men as he passed them. ‘Remember, all Quizzies are liars. If you want truth, listen only to General Korion.’

  ‘Not you then, sir?’ someone quipped and he whirled, finding his own guard cohort hurrying into position around him. ‘Thought you reckoned we could trust you too?’

  ‘That goes without saying,’ Ramon said, peering for the speaker. ‘Was that you, Vidran?’

  ‘Me, sir? Nah, I think it was Bowe.’

  ‘Weren’t me! I fink it was Ilwyn!’

  ‘Enough,’ Ramon told them, looking for Pilus Lukaz. His cohort were among the few outside the magi and officers who knew what was planned. ‘Pilus, when the signal comes, you know what to do?’

  ‘We do, sir,’ the pilus replied calmly. ‘Some of us have been waiting for a chance like this for a long time.’

  ‘They’re mostly pure-bloods, Lukaz. They won’t go down easy.’

  ‘Then we hit ’em twice as hard, sir. It was Quizzies what did for my father in Verelon, just at random, to make an example of someone. Another Fist performed the decimation of the Thirteenth after the Second Crusade. We had to watch ’em garrotte one man in ten for that riot. That was five hundred of our lads.’

  Serjant Manius leaned in, his normally mild face taut. ‘The fuckers enjoyed it too. Not saying we weren’t wrong to riot, Magister, but them Quizzies joked ’bout it, even took bets on the lots they drew on who to choke.’

  ‘How many men here went through that, Serjant?’

  ‘I reckon ’alf of us, sir. All the older lads.’

  Ramon could feel their anger as they moved them into their assigned position, arrayed before a pair of canvas-covered shapes which they blocked from view. Each man had javelins to hand, and plenty of spares.