by Dave Morris
Altor was dismayed. ‘I pray you, do not charge me with this quest. I am not free to undertake it. I have other responsibilities.’
The man’s breath came unevenly, his eyes clouding as he sank back to the ground. ‘You must... You must stop the Five...’
‘Who?’ Altor shook his head. He did not like to refuse a dying man’s request, but his first duty was to return to Osterlin Abbey. ‘There must be somebody else. Tell me who to give the gem to—I can do that much.’
The man’s voice was so weak that Altor had to strain to catch his words: ‘Take the pommel stone to Kalugen’s Keep. Give it to Janirus. Then you’ll know.’
He said no more but gave a deep groan and went limp, his eyes freezing in the sightlessness of death, still fixed imploringly on Altor’s face.
Altor rose to his feet. He was torn. Duty required him to return without delay to his abbey. Honour demanded that he carry out the dead man’s final wishes.
Suddenly the choice was simple. ‘Very well,’ he muttered grimly to the night wind, ‘I’ll go to Kalugen’s Keep.’
Two:
Kalugen’s Keep
The Keep of Magus Kalugen stood in the heart of the icy plains of Krarth, a monolithic citadel of black stone beneath skies that were blue, cloudless and cold. The monotony of the surrounding landscape was relieved only by the occasional stunted willow tree growing beside muddy ponds. The Keep itself dwarfed all around it, like a tumble of dark rocks that had fallen from the heavens.
As Altor approached the towering walls, a bitter wind blew across the sere grass of the marshes and sent sluggish ripples through the puddles of mire that occupied the hollows. He was anxious to complete his task, hand the pommel stone on to the one the musician had named, and quit this forbidding place. It would be best not to waste any time. In only a matter of weeks the marsh waters would begin to rise, drowning the land and the causeways leading to the citadel. Then Kalugen’s Keep would be shut off from the outside world for another year. No one would enter or leave in that time except for the magi who ruled the land of Krarth, borne on their flying carpets. Only in mid-year would the citizens of the Keep be allowed to emerge and sow their fields with straggle-wheat before the harsh winter once more set in.
Jostling through the gabbling throng of merchants and peasants pouring along the causeway, Altor entered the massive gate. The colossal grey stone blocks were like the maw of a hungry demon, its teeth the iron spikes of the open portcullis. Ahead stood sentries armed with pikes. Big surly men, they glared at Altor as though he were a notorious criminal or a carrier of plague, but once he had paid the gate toll they waved him through into the city without another glance.
Inside, the streets were narrow cobbled lanes lined with shuttered grey buildings. Altor had expected as much, Kalugen’s Keep having a grim reputation. To his surprise, however, the whole city was festooned with multi-coloured flags which belied its dour semblance and gave it an almost festive air.
Somebody barged into Altor from behind and an eloquently acid insult was flung at his back. He turned to find himself face-to face with a young man of about his own age. That was the only thing they had in common. Although he had a sword at his hip, the other was not bulkily muscled like Altor but had an acrobat’s trim physique. And his clothes were not the rough homespun of any common traveller. Even his boots, though he had obviously worn them for many leagues, were as fine as any southern courtier’s, with their silver buckles and miniver lining. He wore pantaloons of gold velvet and a waistcoat studded with purple and red stones over a loose cream silk shirt fastened at the collar by a fire opal set in a silver clasp. His hooded cloak glittered like coal in the bleached daylight and his long black hair was swept back and bound in a pony tail under a jaunty hunting-cap set off with a single white peacock feather.
It was the peacock feather that struck Altor as most appropriate. He leaned down towards the young dandy and listened impassively as he finished his tirade.
‘...you fog-witted yokel, can’t you watch where you’re going?’
Altor chuckled. ‘Sorry, but wasn’t it you that bumped into me?’
‘What else do you expect, if you stand in the city’s main thoroughfare gawping at your surroundings like a puppy in a boneyard?’
A group of merchants with heavily laden pack mules were just now entering the city, so both Altor and his new acquaintance were forced to move down the avenue into the main square. Here Altor noticed a booth set on a raised platform behind a rack bearing three splendidly-coloured coats of arms.
The press of traffic into the square carried them both over towards the platform. A man with a long nose and longer beard emerged from the booth and peered critically down at Altor’s companion. ‘Ho, fellow. Yes, I mean you. Our lord the magi seek champions. Did you wish to apply for the post?’
The dandy swirled back his cloak with a raffish gesture. ‘Of course not.’
The man nodded. ‘I thought as much. In that case, kindly move away from the front of the booth. Your costume is liable to distract people’s attention from the magi’s banners.’
The dandy spluttered in indignation but, unable to think of a suitable retort, strode off into the crowd. The bearded man was on the point of withdrawing into the booth when Altor caught his eye. He gave the young warrior a long thoughtful look. ‘Perhaps you should consider becoming a champion, lad—assuming you aren’t just some farmer’s boy who stole that sword.’
‘This sword is my own,’ retorted Altor, ‘and I know how to use it. But I am confused by all this talk of champions. Don’t the magi of Krarth have men-at-arms aplenty to serve them?’
‘I see you are a stranger to these parts. Otherwise you would know that every thirteen lunar months the magi converge here for their great contest. Each appoints one or more champions to descend into the Battlepits. The winner is he who returns from the underworld bearing the Emblem of Victory.’
‘What do the magi stand to gain from such a contest?’ asked Altor.
‘Some say it’s just a game for them, others that the magus whose champion wins the contest gains a tribute of gold and magic from all the others. All I can tell you for sure, lad, is that if you become a champion you’ll never want for anything again.’
‘I’m not interested in such a reward,’ said Altor. ‘I have to get back to my monastery in Ellesland. I only came to Kalugen’s Keep so I could give this—‘
He patted his money pouch, feeling for the pommel stone, and suddenly his heart ran with ice.
‘It’s gone!’ Altor stared white-face back towards the gate. ‘I must have dropped it when I paid the entrance toll...’ He took three steps back across the square, then stopped and shook his head helplessly. ‘I’ll never find it.’
The bearded man clicked his tongue. ‘Valuable, was it, this thing you lost?’
Altor shrugged. ‘It’s not that. I swore I’d bring it to someone in the city. I’d better go to the police barracks. Maybe somebody found it and handed it in.’
‘The barracks! You could wait there forever for an honest militiaman to turn up,’ said the man cynically. ‘If anyone in the Keep found your treasure, lad, you can bet it’s snug in their pocket. Failing that it’ll be trodden under a foot of mire and slush. Take my advice and forget about it.’
Altor stared at him in amazement. ‘Forget my sworn oath? How can you say such a thing? There must be something I can do.’
‘Well...’ The man tugged at his beard. ‘I can’t see how you could find your property now with anything less than sorcery. And, although there is much sorcery in the Keep, it is all in the hands of the magi.’
‘Then I must ask a magus to help me.’
‘The magi don’t concern themselves with ordinary mortals, lad. You’d have as much luck praying to God for a silver florin to turn up in the next loaf of bread you buy.’
Almost beside himself with dismay, Altor stared around the square. Then his gaze lighted on the rack bearing the magi’s coats of arms and hi
s frantic confusion was swept away by a cold determination. He reached out for the nearest banner, on which long-limbed violet dragons cavorted across a sable field.
Leaning on the rail above, the bearded man smiled guardedly. ‘A good choice, lad. That’s Magus Byl’s pennant. You’ll find him a generous patron—if he deems you worthy to serve him, that is.’
‘I’m not interested in his generosity,’ said Altor, speaking quickly before he had time for second thoughts. ‘Not for gold, at any rate. I’ll only ask him for one boon—‘
The bearded man held up his hand. ‘That’s between you and him now. Go to meet him at the Blue Tower next to the Delicti Canal. Wait by the gargoyle trough.’
Carrying the pennant, Altor made his way off through the teeming streets. It was now getting dark and link-men scurried to and fro carrying flaring resin torches to light the way for shoppers and merrymakers.
A crier passed, extolling the virtues of his patron in a piercing nasal voice. Altor accosted him and got directions to the Delicti Canal. Turning off the main street, he left the noise and bustle behind and walked down a hushed alley. The sounds of festivity gradually faded into the distance. The canal was a ribbon of black ooze in the moonlight. Passing over a narrow bridge, Altor approached the darkened spire of a tower. A stone trough carved with gargoyle faces stood beside the door. Evidently this was where he was to wait.
A breeze blew along the canal and stirred a pungent odour up from the stone trough. It took Altor a couple of seconds to place the smell. He knew it from the funeral rites sometimes held at Osterlin Abbey. Charred bones.
Raking through the bed of damp ash filling the trough, he found a few hard fragments of bone. It was the remains of some kind of burnt offering. Then his fingers touched something else, and even as he brushed it clean for a closer look he began to feel a sense of mounting horror.
The object was a melted silver ring. This was the scene of a human sacrifice!
The moon glimmered behind dark clouds. The breeze stirred silver-sketched ripples on the black surface of the canal. Far off in the busy streets, the echoes of revelry sounded like the sighing of mournful ghosts. The tower seemed to radiant watchful silence.
Altor felt the hairs on his neck rise. Slowly he moved one hand to the hilt of his sword.
There was a rustling in the bushes behind the tower. Suddenly a black shape came somersaulting noiselessly through the air. It moved so silently that it might almost have been a trick of the light, but Altor’s instincts were not fooled. He lashed out with the banner in his left hand and the figure jackknifed, plunging into the canal with a single heavy plop like a large stone.
Two more black-clad figures came from the direction of the bridge. Digging his hand into the trough, Altor flung bone-dust in their faces. They paused spluttering. Altor’s sword shot from its scabbard, sliced the air. One head bounced across the cobblestones. The other assassin gave a muffled snarl and fell back clutching a gaping wound in his chest.
Something hissed through the air behind him. Altor whirled, snatching the banner around to use as a shield. The wooden haft splintered under the impact of two sharp-pronged throwing stars. Altor locked eyes with the one who had thrown them—a fourth man dressed all in black. This one also wore an amulet at his neck: a black badge decorated with prancing violet dragons.
He was reaching to his belt for another throwing star. Altor vaulted the trough, ducked low as the star went singing overhead, and came upright with his sword against the assassin’s chest.
‘That’s Magus Byl’s badge you wear,’ said Altor. ‘Why would he send you to kill his own champion? Talk!’
The assassin’s only answer was a soft chuckle as though at a private joke. Slowly he lifted his head until he was staring Altor straight in the eye. Suddenly he swayed back. Altor, thinking he was trying to escape, pressed the sword-tip forward. But instead of dodging to one side, the assassin only gave a resigned shrug and thrust his body onto the blade. Blood spurted darkly in the moonlight. Giving a single gasp, the assassin convulsed and died.
Altor lowered the body to the cobblestones and wiped his sword clean. He did not resheathe it. Common sense told him that it would be best to give up any hope of working for Magus Byl. But both curiosity and the warrior’s spirit drew him to the tower. It rose like a black talon against the star-dusted sky. Beyond its lightless windows, Altor was sure, lay the answer to the mystery. Why should the magus who sought to employ him have ordered his death? What had Magus Byl to gain?
He sighed and flung the door of the tower open. Enough moonlight spilled in to show a bare vestibule with a spiral stairway winding up towards the battlements. Ascending with sword in hand, Altor soon found himself in almost total darkness. Feeling his way a step at a time, he came to a doorway. He reached out to test it and it creaked open at his touch, admitting him to a moon-bathed sanctum.
The room seemed to be a shrine to one of the countless demon gods of Krarth. In the centre was a block of obsidian with a gore-soaked fur pelt draped across it—an obscene travesty of a holy altar. Pallid flames swam above iron basins on either side. A pall of grey vapour hung in the air at chest height. Beyond the altar, a wrought-iron gate led off into another chamber. Warily Altor crossed the room. Beyond the gate, the flickering flames barely illuminated a tall robed figure with skin like alabaster, stretched out across a black divan.
At the sound of Altor’s approach, the figure stirred and looked up. At his mouth, sharp slivers of ivory caught the wan light. ‘Well,’ he said, his voice like the grating of a sarcophagus lid, ‘I take it the mortal is dead.’
Altor ducked his head in a deep bow. ‘Master, he is. Shall we... um..?’
‘Drain off the blood, bring it to me. Burn the bones and meat as usual.’
Magus Byl scrutinized Altor for a moment in the gloom, then turned away and sank back on the divan. A jewelled cup rested on a table by his side, and from this he took a sip of something thick and dark.
Altor’s heart was pounding. His instinct was simply to turn and flee, but he knew that he must do nothing to arouse the vampire’s suspicions. ‘And the pennant, master?’ he said with a husky voice. ‘Shall I return it to the recruiting booth?’
Magus Byl looked up sharply. Instantly he had uncoiled, so that now he no longer reclined languorously on the divan but stood upright. His black and purple robes cascaded like streams of frozen liquid over tarnished silver chainmail.
He extended a pale long-taloned hand. ‘Come closer.’
Altor gritted his teeth. What had he said that had given him away? The assassins must have already had some arrangement for returning the banner and enticing more victims here. With his hands behind his back still holding the sword, he stepped closer.
A cruel sneer playing on his lips, Byl studied him through the iron gate. ‘Thou art not my creature...’
‘Nor shall I ever be!’ cried Altor. Lunging with all his strength, he drove the sword between the bars of the gate. There was the scrape of steel on ancient marble-hard bone, a puff of dry brown dust as it impaled the vampire’s heart, a deep grave groan from bloodless lips.
But, although crippled, Magus Byl did not fall. He raised his white hands to grip the gate. Altor, horror-struck, tugged at the sword but the hilt slipped out of his grasp. He backed away unarmed.
With the sword driven right through him, Byl resembled a giant insect impaled on a pin as he agonizingly inched the gate open. His voice escaped in gruesome gusts: ‘Come, whelp... take back thy sword... Draw it from the stone of my heart, the cage of my bones... Now it is I who shall impale thee and drink deep of thy vein-wine...’
Altor, retreating, stumbled against the altar. Reaching out to steady himself, his hand squelched against the blood-soaked altar cloth.
The shock was all he needed to break the vampire’s spell. Turning, he ran from the tower and did not stop until he stumbled back on the busy streets where merrymakers laughed and sang and the music banished thoughts of the stalking dead
.
Three:
Caelestis
Altor returned to the main square, at this hour almost deserted except for a few beggars and stragglers on their way home. A torn scrap of paper fluttered past and he trod on it: a poster proclaiming the magi’s contest.
The bearded steward was snoozing on a bench just inside his booth. Beside him, a brazier gleamed hot and red in the icy night air. As Altor approached he opened one eye and yawned, then blinked in puzzlement and sat forward to give the young warrior a closer look.
‘Weren’t you here earlier? You took Magus Byl’s pennant.’
‘Magus Byl apparently wasn’t interested in the contest,’ said Altor. He glanced at the rack, where one pennant still remained. ‘Whose banner is that?’
‘Magus Balhazar’s.’
‘And is he a vampire?’
The man chose to take this as a joke. ‘I hardly think so!’
‘Good.’
Altor reached for the banner, but just then there came a loud outcry from the far side of the square. He looked up to see the young dandy he had encountered earlier. His cloak swept out behind him like a bat’s wings as he ran, and hot on his heels were several guardsmen of the night watch.
‘Stop that thief!’ bawled the irate sergeant of the guards as the young man came racing past the booth.
Altor stepped forward without thinking and put out one arm. The dandy skidded to a halt in front of him and glanced up in surprise. For an instant their eyes locked, and Altor saw a look not of panic but of agile cunning. Then the young man ducked under his outstretched arm and reached for the last pennant. Altor lunged for it too. They both gripped the shaft at the same time.
The guardsmen pounded to a halt and began to fan out. ‘So, villain,’ gasped the sergeant, ‘will you come quietly?’
