by David Hair
Ramita is here!
Her energies renewed, she strode to the door, where Hessaz clung to the doorframe. She was hobbling painfully but at least she had some arrows for her bow again.
‘Hessaz! Come with me!’ Huriya snapped. ‘The vizier and Ramita are here and I want them alive!’
*
Ramita reached the central stairwell overlooking the reception hall with Hanook a few paces behind her. The sounds of the intruders came from her left, where stairs rose into darkness, black smoke billowing from them. The balcony to her right curved around the stairwell and she took that way as black shapes poured down from above – first, beasts, then two-legged shapes following. Most – a dozen at least – poured straight down the stairs, but some saw her and dashed around the balcony, yowling and roaring.
She quelled her fear, as trained responses took over. Spreading her arms, she drew power from her core and readied elemental gnosis, the simplest to use. What little practise she’d managed would have to be enough. Her whole frame tingled with potentiality, fuelled by her fear for her children and Alaron Mercer.
‘Lady, beware!’ Hanook shouted as a bat-headed man with membraned wings on his arms leapt into the air and glided across the stairwell towards her. She threw kinesis at him, smacking him against the wall, but he gripped a torch-holder and hung on, then swung over the railing and into her path, baring massive fangs.
Behind her she heard snarling and barking, and a quick glimpse over her shoulder told her that Hanook had stopped to confront two more shapeshifters. But she had no time to worry about that: Bat-head was coming right at her. She shoved kinetic force at him again, but his wards engaged and he staggered on. So she stamped her foot and poured destructive Earth-gnosis into the stonework, the tiles crumbled and Bat-head fell through.
To her amazement he again showed his agility by grasping a wooden beam to stop his fall. He bunched his limbs, ready to leap at her.
She snapped the beam with sylvan-gnosis and he plummeted away as behind her, Hanook blasted through the shields of a wolf and shattered its face. Then a great cat sprang past its stricken comrade and hammered into the vizier. Its teeth bared, it lunged—
—and flew sideways and hammered into the wall as she hit it with a panicked burst of kinesis. The cat landed on its feet, but its legs wobbled and it slumped, stunned. Hanook rolled onto his side and blasted a mage-bolt at its head, searing the shifter’s skull to the bone.
He climbed painfully to his feet as Ramita sought a new route: she’d all but destroyed their way forward and more shapeshifters were coming, shielded, this time, and much more cautious.
She peered through the gap she’d smashed in the balcony; there were more of them below, including Bat-head, bruised and furious.
The nursery was on the other side of that gap. She was readying Air-gnosis to carry her over and into the teeth of more Dokken when Hanook gripped her arm. ‘This way!’ He thrust open a door beside her, which led to a beautifully appointed sitting room. There was a door on the left-hand wall and she went for it when suddenly Hanook stopped, clutching his chest.
Oh sweet Parvasi, he’s having a heart seizure!
She reached for him, wondering what to do, when Hanook spoke in a pained whisper. ‘Dareem! Oh no, my son …’
She understood, and her own heart broke for the old man and his loss, but it only intensified her fears for the twins. ‘Please, come …’
‘Dareem …’
Something slapped against the broken balcony outside: Bat-head, clambering over the railing with murder on his ugly bestial face. He lifted one hand, blue fire kindling in the air.
No! She unleashed more Earth-gnosis and collapsed the rest of the balcony. The Dokken’s mage-bolt blasted the plaster ceiling above her head as he vanished in a rumble and crash. Beyond where he had stood, the top of the stairway was again revealed and she saw clearly who was stepping onto the top of the stairs one flight above.
Huriya Makani.
Their eyes met, and the Keshi girl bared her teeth.
Ramita gasped, and clapped her hands. The doors flew closed, blocking off the outside world, and she sealed them with the strongest warding she could conjure. A second later the doors bulged and almost shattered as a massive force struck them, but she grabbed Hanook’s arm and wrenched him towards the door. A second blow struck the main door and almost shook it to pieces, but fear gave her wings. They burst into a smaller sitting room lined in books and ornaments and she slammed and warded the door behind and ran on. The vizier was moving in a daze, barely functioning. There was only one exit, leading back to the main corridor, but beyond the stairwell. She threw it open and looked left, saw a lean Lokistani woman with cropped hair and a drawn bow; an arrow was nocked. Both moved at once: the Lokistani tried to shoot; Ramita just shoved with the gnosis, as hard as she could.
The Lokistani flew backwards and over the edge of the broken stairwell railing, her arrow spilling impotently away. Ramita panted at the backlash of unleashing so much gnosis in so short a space of time and swayed dizzily for an instant, and this time it was Hanook who protected her, pulling her clear as blue fire flashed from a small figure at the opening of the corridor. The bolt struck his shielding, which flashed red, and he staggered. His eyes were clear again though, and Ramita marvelled at his courage in the face of such overwhelming grief. Then she spun away and dashed down the corridor, screaming for her children. Behind her, more gnosis-light flashed, and Hanook shouted defiantly, but her attention was on the nursery and that alone as she burst inside.
There was a gaping hole in the floor and another in the ceiling.
The twins were gone.
She screamed.
*
Alaron drew his sword, shifted the kon-staff to his left hand and crept back to the door, his gnostic senses vividly alive. Something was hammering at the barrier and it was too damned strong for his wards. He reached the side of the door and placed his blade against it, right beside the flap of the viewing slot – Hanook had installed them in many of the bedroom doors. Then he used kinesis to flip it up.
He glimpsed amber eyes that shone from a goat’s head with coiling horns and called, ‘Hey!’ The goat-thing stopped in the middle of pulling back its hands, presumably readying itself to pour more energy into breaking the door-wards, and stared at him from a foot away.
He slammed the sword through the slot and straight into the creature’s mouth, simultaneously feeding gnosis-energy into the steel so that it would punch through any shields, but there weren’t any and the blade went right through the back of the thing’s skull. The shifter slid off his blade, already dead, but there so no time for satisfaction. Someone – or something – hit his sword so hard it snapped off at the hilt, which spilled from his hand as he bent over in agony at the blow to his wrist. That convulsive movement saved him from the flame that burst through the viewing slot until he slammed it shut with a gesture. He started backing away as more blows hammered into the door, but they were weaker now. He’d bought a little more time.
With his kon-staff in his left hand and healing-gnosis repairing his right, he returned to the task he’d set himself. While he rebuilt the door-wards, he was also channelling power into Earth-gnosis, using it to carve a circle in the floor. The beam of amber light he conjured up sliced through the marble as easily as butter, but for all his haste, he worked carefully: he could not allow the disc of stone to fall into the nursery below.
The door behind him began to come apart and even through the thick wood he could hear snarling and bellowing as the Dokken started threatening what they would do to him. The words were in Rondian. Without stopping his Earth-gnosis work, he called upon mesmerism to create a whip from the gnosis and cracked it at the mental signatures beyond the door. Without eye-contact it didn’t do that much, but he felt at least three of the shifters reel at the unexpected blow, and that brought him a few more moments, enough time to lift the three-foot-wide disc of stone clear, revealing the wooden sub-f
loor and beneath that, the ceiling of the nursery.
Then suddenly a hole was punched in the door behind, and it caved in. He turned as a human-sized lizard head peered through.
Using telekinesis he flung the enormously heavy stone disc he’d pulled from the floor. It burst the lizard-man’s shields and struck the creature full-on. Its head pulped against the wall and it smeared down the plaster, but Alaron didn’t wait to see whatever was coming next. He reset the door wards one last time, then dropped through the floor into the room below.
I’ve got the right room! He spared a second to breathe an enormous sigh of relief, then realised the children’s ayah – their nursemaid – a grey-haired Lakh woman of indeterminate age, was staring at him with terrified eyes. She was clinging to the twins, her mouth opened to scream, but he called as quietly as he could, ‘Ayah! It’s okay, it’s me, it’s Alaron—’
She screamed anyway.
Damn it! She doesn’t speak Rondian …
He used mysticism to send calm to the woman and she stopped shrieking, then he laid a hand on her forehead and spoke directly to her mind
‘Stay calm,’ he told the ayah again, and she believed him.
He began to carve another hole to the next level down, the connection to the Earth-gnosis even smoother, though he could hear shouting and snarling in the room above as his door-wards finally gave way. He wrenched the floor tiles up, then turned suddenly and using kinetic energy again, flung them through the hole in the ceiling and upwards into the room he’d left.
Something cried out, and blood-spattered shards fell back, but his focus remained on carving the new hole, all the while maintaining his grip on the ayah’s emotions: three gnosis-effects at once – he could almost see Master Puravai’s wrinkled face smiling in praise. His aura was shining like a Corineus Day tree, glittering with every hue of the rainbow.
He dropped the last tile through the floor, smashing a hole in the ceiling of the room below, then widened the gap with a thought. He checked to make sure the ayah still had a firm grip on the twins, then pulled her to him, enfolded her and the babies in his arms and dropped through the hole. She held him tightly, her eyes wide in mute terror, but they landed safely, cushioned by telekinesis, his eyes already seeking an exit.
Then a woman screamed in the nursery they had just escaped from.
*
Malevorn bellowed in frustration. These Dokken are fucking useless! Even bloody Mercer can take them!
With his own gnosis free he would have had that damned door down in seconds and Mercer gutted a moment later, he knew it, but here he was, absolutely powerless. He glared at the goat-headed body at his feet: Kraderz, his damned pure-blood gnosis wasted – and why? Because he’d forgotten to shield while attacking the door!
Forgotten to fucking shield?! Did anyone train these fools?
Another of the Souldrinkers had sprung on Kraderz as he lay dying, so at least the pure-blood strain had been preserved, but absorbing new power took valuable seconds and Mercer was escaping with the Scytale.
Then something slapped his mind, and with nothing to shield him he almost blacked out. It was just a simple mesmeric strike, one they called ‘The Whip’, delivered blind, but without the gnosis he was left horribly dazed. When he regained his senses he realised the Dokken around him evidently knew little or nothing of mental attacks because they had been just as badly affected. So more valuable seconds lost while he gathered himself and once he could stand straight, started roaring at the frightened Dokken, ‘Get that bloody door down!’
When did Mercer become an illusionist or a mesmerist? What the Hel is going on?
A bipedal lizard smashed a gnosis-strengthened fist into the timbers, and this time he punched right through and Mercer’s wards began to come apart.
Finally!
Then the fool put his head through – and something smashed his lizard head into pulp. As the body slumped to the ground, the other Dokken lost no time in dragging him backwards, and one of them fell on their fellow to gain his energies. More time lost.
But there was no way he was going to go through that door to confront any mage, not even one as inferior as Alaron Mercer. Damn you, Huriya! Give me back my powers!
Then a shifter with a wolf’s head gripped his shoulder. Darice’s ample chest was heaving and her eyes gleaming with the new energy gleaned from Kraderz’s soul. She shoved him aside and burst through the milling Dokken and into the room, howling like a Schlessen berserker. Others followed her, and Malevorn tailed them into a bedroom, completely empty – with a round hole in the floor. A few of the Dokken peered down the hole, then yelped and ducked for cover as a hail of tiles shot upwards through the hole, battering and slicing through those nearest. Malevorn cowered with the rest, and more time was lost, until finally it seemed safe. He strode to the edge of the hole and peered down.
Mercer was nowhere to be seen, but he gaped anyway: Ramita Ankesharan was directly below him, standing beside another hole in the floor of that room. She began shrieking with loss.
Malevorn turned to Darice and pointed a finger down, yelling, ‘Get her!’
*
Huriya strode along the corridor, only a dozen yards behind Ramita and the fleeing vizier. Inside her, Sabele was ranting, but she kept the old Seeress clamped down. Her blood was up and she wanted the vizier in her grasp – she wanted to rip him to pieces for daring to strike at her.
But here at the death, she found her feelings for Ramita more ambivalent. They had grown up as sisters, shared almost every moment of each other’s lives from their childhood on. She knew her bloodsister’s shape, her smell and her moods, as well as she knew her own. Ramita still mattered to her, and Sabele had divined that their futures were entwined in complex ways.
I will make you one of us, sister. You shall be my handmaiden and we’ll be together for ever, as we always wished.
She raised a hand, but Ramita darted inside a door and Hanook interposed himself, blazing fire at her – illusory fire; she smiled and swatted it away, not reacting to the pseudo-pain that seared though her. But he’d slowed her, and he used that stolen moment to slam and seal the door.
Behind her more of the pack poured into the house, now led by Elando in his fanciful bat-guise; an idiot, poorly trained and reckless – and that, she was beginning to realise, was the same for most of the pack. She’d not known how poorly equipped the Dokken were to deal with properly trained magi. They’d been raised in the wild in small numbers; they were self-taught and most were illiterate. They couldn’t use periapts to focus their power, and many of them had only a very basic knowledge of the gnosis.
‘The city watch are coming, Seeress!’ Elando gabbled at her. ‘There is a patrol in the plaza outside!’ He had absorbed the soul of Medelos on the rooftop, but she doubted Elendo had the wit to use the pure-blood gnosis well.
‘Then we must finish this,’ she told him. Behind the door, she heard Ramita cry out in despair. ‘Break this down,’ she commanded. And take the first blows for me. Elando and his shifters leapt to do her bidding.
She wondered vaguely where Malevorn was.
*
When a bulky wolf-woman dropped through the hole in the roof, Ramita froze in shock – but the Dokken had misjudged, and went straight on through the hole at Ramita’s feet, vanishing into the room below. For a second Ramita just gaped, then someone roared outside the room behind her and everything happened at once.
Hanook had just entered, his face a mask of cold purpose stretched thinly over grief. But he acted with alacrity, strengthening the wards on the door while Ramita concentrated on the hole in the ceiling. When the next dark s
hape leapt through she was ready. She slapped her hands together, employing Earth and sylvan-gnosis on the timbers behind the plaster.
Even as the attacker began to drop through, her spell caused the whole roof to ripple like water and flow inwards, slamming the hole shut. She was too late to prevent the first shapeshifter coming through, but the closing stonework caught the second as he was halfway through and crushed his midriff. His legs thrashed then went limp, as the first attacker landed, a lion-headed man, who roared—
—then died in a wave of mage-fire from her hands, and Hanook’s. The charred corpse crumpled and fell smouldering to the tiles, even as something hammered on the door like a battering ram.
Then from below, clearly audible through the still-open hole in the floor, the wolf-woman bellowed in fury, what sounded like a ton of crockery smashed, and a young male voice shouted in pain.
Alaron!
Then the sound of two infants bursting into tears reached her as well, freezing her heart.
*
Alaron had opened his mouth to call up to Ramita when something dropped past her, straight through the hole in the ceiling, and landed before him like a falling statue. As the ayah recoiled, the twins still wrapped in her arms, he confronted the newcomer: a massively muscled naked woman who was shaking her wolf-head. She was dazed and bloodied from the fall, but as he watched, she physically pulled herself together – then she growled, and leapt at him.
He couldn’t dodge, not with the ayah and the twins behind him, so he stood his ground, though the shifter was far bulkier than him and howling in bloodlust. She was cloaked in shimmering shields, vivid in his gnosis-sight, and there was a non-too-subtle blast of mesmeric-gnosis in her howl that would have paralysed any normal human.
But he had been pummelled constantly by Malevorn Andevarion and his obnoxious pure-blood friends at college, and the past year had been one terrifying encounter after another. If there was one thing he was good at by now, it was ignoring terror. Instinctively he blocked her mesmeric-gnosis and fed his kon-staff with energy, planted his feet as Yash had shown him and launched into a driving lunge. The staff struck her shields with a blast of concentrated force as she slammed into him – and kept going. He felt like a bush in the path of a boulder.
