7.
All through this long and arduous climb their destination remained a mystery. Lord Khalen and his pet wizard Orven would stand apart and consult over an ancient map, and Orven would mutter incantations, and light colored flares, and wave smoking apparatus in the air and trace complex runes into the ice.
What all this was for, Gorel could not begin to guess. Then the wizard and his master would consult the map again, and confer in low voices, and then they would plough on.
Always up, through hidden paths, ancient roads cut into the glaciers and the rock. They lost two more of the porters to a demon mine. The thing erupted underfoot, a vast black shape with claws of shadow, and it hacked the men into pieces before it vanished like smoke. Two more men died in an avalanche.
Another found a ring buried in the ice and so desired it that he began to hammer at the ice to get it out. It was so pretty and so precious that another man desired it and murdered the first for it. He then slipped the ring on and was consumed in a spontaneous combustion that left nothing but his boots.
“Where did you get the map?” Gorel asked the next time he found himself beside Orven. “Where does it lead?”
“You just keep watch for any trouble,” Orven said, “and leave the business of it to those who know.”
“Who’s financing this expedition?” Gorel said. “Who sent you?”
“No one.”
But Gorel didn’t believe him.
“Was it the Lord of the Black Tor?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say,” Orven said, and leered.
Gorel watched the foolish noble and his pet wizard. He did not trust them. This high up the high winds blew at force. They lost another man to the wind; it tossed him off a ledge and he fell, noiselessly, and was swallowed in the snow. Their numbers were dwindling rapidly. Higher and higher they climbed until all trace of the down-below was erased, and there were only the mountains, and the ice.
He kept a wary eye. He kept his hands on his guns. He felt a tension thrum all through his body. When he slept, his dreams were haunted by ghosts threaded into the bedrock of the mountain, all those chains of tiny living flames, crying out to him.
What killed you? he tried to ask. What was it, this final weapon, this widow maker, so powerful that it erased all living things?
But they never answered.
8.
The attack came at night. Gorel woke, his heart beating fast. Everything was quiet. The snow was blinding white, the moonlight a cold silver, like a knife.
All the porters were gone.
He sat up quietly. Drew his gun. The old couple who’d found him, when he was cast from his home, had been gun makers from the Lower Kidron, where they are famed for such artifice. He had forged the guns himself. They bore the seven-pointed star of Goliris.
It was all so quiet. Beside the dead fire, the boy, Kay, stirred. He blinked sleepy eyes at Gorel.
“What—”
“Hush.”
Indistinct shapes, moving on the periphery of the camp. Gorel crouch-ran to Lord Khalen’s tent. He lifted the flaps. Inside, the lord and his wizard lay entwined under pelts. For a moment he near envied them, this peace they shared, this closeness. Then he kicked Orven, and the wizard woke with a hiss of fury, which changed when he saw Gorel’s face.
“Attack?”
He looked, Gorel thought, as though he had expected something like this to happen.
Something lived up near the peaks, Gorel thought. And he did not think Orven as foolish as the man made himself appear. There was a safety in looking less than what you were.
Orven rose. He shook Lord Khalen awake. Whispered. The lord sat up and without a word reached for a long, curved sword. When Orven stepped out of the tent, he was armed with a long staff, which Gorel had not seen before. Lord Khalen, too, had shaken off the foppishness that he had affected. The two men now looked like what they must have, all along, been—dangerous men, doing a dangerous job. He wondered who they really were, those two. And who they were working for.
But there was no time for questions. He caught sudden sight of one of the shapes that loomed on the edge of the camp. A giant, white-furred monstrosity, twice taller than a man, with claws like knives, red eyes…
Ghosts in the snow.
Not ghosts.
“Snow demons?”
Orven raised his staff. He brought it down with a hard thump against the ground, and the ground shook, and far away snow rumbled: somewhere, an avalanche began. A burst of pure white light exploded from the end of the staff and shot up. It illuminated the creatures that surrounded their enclosure, and the walls of the glacier against which they made camp. Gorel took aim and fired, and a snow demon fell back with a bullet in the head.
The creatures howled.
“Don’t!” the boy, Kay, said. “They haven’t harmed us, they’re—”
Orven grinned with a face like a skull, and his staff moved in a whirl and he fired a bolt of flame that caught two more of the creatures, who howled in horror and pain as the fire consumed them.
“You want to know about death?” the wizard screamed. “I will show you the machinery of death!”
The creatures howled, and then they vanished into the snow. In one moment they were there; then they were gone, as though they never were.
The men stared at each other. Lord Khalen said, “The map.”
“Yes.”
Orven hefted a small bag.
“You have the instruments?”
“Yes.”
“We leave. Now.”
“You knew there’d be an attack,” Gorel said.
“Of one sort of another. Sure.”
“Why?”
“Your job,” Lord Khalen said, “is to shoot things, not to ask questions. We leave. Now.”
“Where to?”
“Orven?”
“I’m trying!” The wizard was frowning. In one hand he held his staff, in another a small metallic box. “The readings are all wrong…”
“I know a way.”
It was the boy. Kay. They stared at him.
“There is a path, I think. Not far from here.” It was the most he’d said in all the time that they’d been traveling. “The mountainside’s riddled with old caves. We can find shelter there.”
“Orven?”
“I don’t know, Khal. I can’t get a read…”
“Then lead the way, boy.”
Kay nodded. His eyes shone bright. He went ahead, and the others followed. Gorel kept his guns drawn and Orven his staff and Lord Khalen his sword. They watched out for the white forms.
“There!”
Gorel fired, but the snow demon leaped nimbly out of the way and vanished again. They were all around them now, he could feel them, silent, invisible…waiting.
They moved fast, following the boy’s trail along the edge of the glacier. Into the dark, and the silent white figures leaping and following, shadowing them from a distance. Gorel’s guns fired in tandem. A giant figure leaped at Lord Khalen and was blasted away by Orven’s staff.
“Good, good!” Lord Khalen said. His voice was hoarse, and his eyes shone in the moonlight. Orven grinned beside him.
“It means we’re close,” he said, at Gorel’s unspoken question.
“Close to what?”
“It! They!”
But they were thousands of feet above ground, beyond all reach, beyond all thought of rescue. The silent figures hadn’t made their move yet. They seemed content to follow, to hem the remains of the expedition in. Turnings in the path were blocked to them. The boy, Kay, led them, but led them where? Deeper into the mountainside, through fractures in the permafrost, at last to the entrance of a cave.
They escaped inside, the wiz
ard’s staff casting brilliant illumination. Gorel saw some ancient place, preserved. Several bodies, resting slumped against the walls. An Avian, two humans, a Merlangai far from the sea. Other explorers, he thought, who never made it farther. Deeper into the cave, the boy leading and they following behind. Demons plaguing their steps. Deeper and deeper, and he realized the mountain must be riddled with tunnels. A door ahead—
“Wait!”
But the boy dashed forward, too fast, too swift. Gorel lashed out, grabbed him by the shirt, but the boy was surprisingly strong. Gorel lost his footing, was dragged along in the boy’s wake. There was a recess in the rock, away from the door. The boy cowered against the rock face, covering his head. Gorel straightened himself, breathing hard. He peeked around the stone wall.
An ancient door set in the rock. Lord Khalen and his wizard crouched before it. Orven laid down instruments, etched runes into the stone. Lord Khalen muttered, running fingers over the face of the door.
“What does it say? Some kind of writing. High Zul? Can you make it out, Orven?”
“Does it say ‘friend,’ maybe? Something like that?” Orven said dubiously. “Oh, who cares, Khal? Let’s blow this thing up.”
“Ready when you are.”
The wizard muttered incantations. His staff glowed, the light so bright it blinded. Gorel withdrew. The boy, Kay, was still crouched there. His lips moved.
“What?”
“Speak, friend, and die.” The boy smiled. “Zul or Ware’i, there are no friends in war, gunslinger. Cover your head.”
But Gorel’s curiosity was too strong. He peeked again round the corner—saw the wizard and Lord Khalen straighten, face the door—their faces lit by the flame from the staff, eager, hungry—
The door vanished. In its place was a black entrance, darker than night. He saw Lord Khalen’s triumphant smile, the wizard’s rictus grin. Orven reached with the burning staff and broke the threshold.
And the darkness screamed.
A foul wind, like a mouth unused in centuries finally opening, the door its maw, and from the hidden lungs and body beyond there came a wordless scream. It tore the flesh from the two men’s faces and from their arms and it shredded their clothes and it put out the fire of the staff like the pitiful flame of a candle. Gorel ducked behind the stone wall of the recess, but it was too late, the scream was in him now, echoing and bouncing, threatening to strip him into nothing.
Near blind, he clutched the boy’s arm.
“Help me,” he whispered.
He blinked. He saw the boy reach down—and come back with a heavy stone.
The last thing Gorel saw was the rock in the boy’s hand coming down.
Then there was pain.
Then nothing.
9.
“Join us…release us…”
The voices, so many voices, fragmentary and broken. In the darkness he saw them, those thousands of tiny lights, strewn all across the mountain.
“How?” he said.
But they did not answer.
10.
He woke to find himself strapped naked to a stone altar. The stone was cold on his skin. His head pounded with pain. Monks in bloodred robes moved about the room. The room had a vaulted high ceiling. Ancient devices littered the room. One of the monks came and shoved a needle into the crook of his elbow. Gorel would have shouted, but then it coursed through him, stronger than euphoria, better than sex, more powerful than love: the Black Kiss, undiluted, pure, liquid faith feeding into his bloodstream, the product of some unbearably powerful god.
He subsided back. Let them do whatever they wished to him. He didn’t care. Only vaguely was he aware of their movements, instruments prodding him, something beeping, a man’s voice saying, “His readouts are asymmetrical.”
“Deviant?”
“I don’t know…It is curious. As though his physical age and actual age are separated by thousands of years.”
“Check the calibration.”
“I did.”
“Did you test him against the Godchain?”
“Hold on…”
The fragment of a black rock, pressed to the side of his neck. Some enormous pain jolted him out of the pleasant daydream.
Bound to the stone altar, Gorel screamed.
11.
The lights again, in the dark. Each one an isolated voice, a node on some vast and inexplicable manifold. And Gorel a tiny flare of light, moving—and as he moved between the points the light flowed in his wake, joining first one, and then another, and another, so that they were no longer so alone…
12.
When he next came to, he was sat on the edge of a bed facing a high window. Someone had dressed him again in his old clothes—even his guns were there, on the bedside table. The pain in his head had vanished, and he felt a pleasant numbness.
Gorel of Goliris stared out of the window.
He stared out onto a temperate valley. On every side rose the sheer cliffs of mountains, and low-lying clouds formed a sort of ceiling to the green hidden valley below. He saw a pleasant, bubbling brook, and monks moving, small as ants, some attending to the extensive, cultivated gardens, and others…
There were large blast holes formed into the side of the mountains, he saw, and tracks that came out of the openings. He saw the monks pull carts laden with broken black rocks. A giant pile of black rocks stood in the center of the valley like a quarry.
They were rocks, he realized, much like the one that had been applied to him.
He searched for his remaining stash of dust and discovered it was gone.
Discovered, further, that he didn’t need it.
It was everywhere, he thought. The Black Kiss. It was in the very air he breathed. He felt so good just being there, just being. No craving, no desire, no hunger, no need.
He stood up. He put his guns on, out of habit. What need was there for guns? He left the room and wandered down stone-hewn corridors where monks walked silently by. He made his way down winding stone stairs. It was as though the entire place was hewn into the very bedrock of the mountainside.
He found himself in a large, spacious dining hall. Monks sat silently eating from large earthenware bowls. More bowls on the tables sported a dizzying assortment of fruit: elephant apples and dead man’s fingers, horned melons and prickly pears, gooseberries and cluster figs. He sat down among them, and he helped himself to the abundant food.
For the first time perhaps since he’d been ripped from his home and tossed across the world, Gorel of Goliris felt…
Not exactly happy, perhaps. Happiness was not a state of mind familiar to any of the ruling family of Goliris.
But perhaps…content.
It should have been unsettling, but even more unsettlingly, it wasn’t.
He watched the monks, and he saw that there were a great many races represented among them. Avian and Merlangai, human and Nocturne, a solitary grave-wraith, a gaggle of Mon-Hai or tree spirits from the deadlands (he had thought the race long-vanished), a handful of the frog-folk called Falang, even a couple of Ebong, those carapace-wearing creatures known across the world as hardy mercenaries. How the sea-dwelling Merlangai, or the Nocturne, who only lived in darkness, all ended up here, living and eating together in harmony, he could not fathom.
He saw then that all the monks ceased from their food at once and, raising his head, saw an ancient Avian enter the room. Though he was dressed identically to the rest of the monks, there was an obvious air of authority about him. The Avian made his way slowly across the hall, until he came to Gorel, and stopped.
“Welcome, stranger,” he said. “I am the High Invigilator of the Monastery of the Final Weapon. It is rare for us to welcome new arrivals…I owe much to the young novitiate who brought you here.”
He signaled. A sm
all figure detached from one of the farther benches and came forward, and Gorel saw that it was the boy, Kay.
“I had sent him down to the city beyond the mountains, for we grow isolated here, in our contemplation, and the world beyond has the unfortunate tendency, from time to time, to attempt to intrude.” The High Invigilator smiled the smile of a predatory bird. “We do not tolerate…intrusion, Gorel of Goliris.”
“You know my name?”
“Many mysteries are known to me, prince of Goliris. Though many more remain just as stubbornly hidden.”
“So, Kay…He was working for you all along?”
“I trust, in another century or so, he will be ready to take on the blood robes.”
“Did you say another century?”
“Time moves…differently, up here,” the boy said diffidently.
“And why did you spare me?” Gorel said. “When the others are dead?”
“I would have killed you, too,” the boy said simply. “As per my instructions. But at the last moment, the High Invigilator stayed my hand.”
The High Invigilator nodded as though pecking at seeds. “Come,” he said. “Walk with me.”
Gorel rose and followed the High Invigilator, out of the hall and down twisting stairways, until they emerged into the fresh air of that hidden valley.
“What killed the Zul and the Ware’i?” Gorel said.
“Ah,” the High Invigilator said. “You cut right to the heart of the matter, man of Goliris.”
Gorel waited, but there was no more forthcoming. He said, “Who are you? What is this place? How came you to be here?”
“My, but you are inquisitive,” the High Invigilator said. “You would make a good novitiate yet.”
“Me?” Gorel said.
The Book of Magic Page 39
