by Tom Lloyd
Even after all this, Rojak marvelled, even after the curses I have placed upon these people, the vestiges of humanity remain; the arrogance, the envy, the foolish desires -curses of the Gods that they do not recognise in the faces of all those around them. Oh, how their weaknesses rule them.
As the group neared, they faltered. The Hound supporting Rojak snarled furiously; not yet letting go of the minstrel’s arm but tensing under him, readying for the fight. Rojak stared at the big man, daring the mad-eyed wretch to come closer -and astonishingly, he did, shuffling nearer until Rojak could smell his foetid breath.
The man’s eyes darted between Rojak’s face and his chest -the augury chain, Rojak realised. He was careful not to break the man’s gaze. His body was too frail to chance anything. One hasty swipe could pitch him to the ground, never to rise again. Soon, soon he could allow that, but to come so close and be undone by nothing more than a bold animal—He took a calming breath. That could not be permitted.
The leader of the pack sniffed nervously, as if unnerved by the odour of decay that overlaid his own base stench, and reached out a tentative hand. The fingernails were torn and bloody, one ripped off entirely, and the man’s fingers twitched and trembled uncertainly. The minstrel summoned enough strength to squeeze the Hound’s arm, keeping the creature still.
At last he broke eye contact and looked down. The man was brushing a wondering finger against Death’s coin, then his hand began to close about it. He didn’t even notice the shadow falling over them, the deepening dark of night that enveloped Rojak. He chuckled and the man froze, arm poised to grip the coin and wrench the chain off him.
‘If it is death you want,’ he began.
‘Then death you shall have,’ finished a cruel voice from all about them.
The man let the coin fall from his fingers and staggered back, falling fearfully to his knees.
‘To touch my herald is to ask to share in his blessings,’ the shadow continued, and a note of pleasure crept in to its voice. ‘So you shall.’
The man gave a distressed wheeze and fell down, his legs sprawled out before him and a look of horror on his face. He raised his hand and a desperate keening rose in his throat. Rojak smelled the familiar corruption on the air as he watched the man’s finger start to fester. Fat blisters of pus grew and burst all over his hand. The man howled and swatted frantically at his hand as the pustules swiftly worked their way down towards his blackening elbow, but he succeeded only in spreading the contagion onto his left hand.
He fell onto his back, limbs spasming as the blisters popped and hissed on his skin, spattering a foul paste of blood-streaked pus over his belly that began to distend and strain at the skin. His companions were almost yelping in fear; screaming, they fled into the side streets, leaving the man to his unnatural fate.
Rojak hardly noticed, for his bright eyes were fixed on the crumbling figure before him. Fingers curled and fell to the floor like fat maggots tossed into a fire; the man gurgled in terror as he writhed at Rojak’s feet. Distantly, he heard Flitter spewing onto the street and the sound sparked a laugh in his belly.
At last, the decaying shape before him stopped squirming as what remained of the man’s life fled under Azaer’s touch. He watched the remains a little longer, then, with a fastidious sniff, he turned and let the Hound support him as he set off once more on his final mission.
Up ahead, somewhere in the streets where they were heading, Rojak felt the pulse of a colossal surge of magic arc through the air. It shook the very ground under his feet, and was followed by a bright white flash, then a crash of thunder, like a raging giant -then a sudden, terrible silence.
Rojak shuffled on, eyes half closed as he felt the enormous swell of suffering ring out through the city that was so closely linked to his own body.
‘Abbot Doren, little black-winged bird snug in your nest, so glad you could make your presence felt,’ he said softly, as though whispering into the ear of a beloved child. Against the dark swathe of sky lit by bloody flickering spots, the first screams began. Rojak’s tongue flashed out to taste the air, as though he found some lascivious delight in the mingled corruption and rising stench of fear.
In the distance, coal-black clouds obeyed his summons and drew closer.
‘Our sheep have gone to fold and the night has no more need of its herald; let the final act begin,’ he murmured.
‘So tell me about Azaer.’
‘Azaer.’ The word came back no louder than a whisper, fomenting a buzz of fear that rippled from Aryn Bwr, through Isak’s body and out into the city beyond.
‘You do not know what you ask.’
‘I’m asking for knowledge -and surely I need not remind you that I’m all that stands between you and Death’s final judgment. ’
‘Threats, from a whelp?’ the last king replied with scorn. ‘I had legions burning under my hand, Gods screaming their last at my feet.’
‘And for that, the deepest pit of the Dark Place has your name carved above its entrance,’ Isak said. He had heard there were daemons that restlessly walked the Land searching for the soul of Aryn Bwr, trailing the chains with which they would bind him, if ever they found the enemy of the Gods. He hoped that was just a myth -his own enemies were plentiful enough without vengeful daemons joining their ranks.
‘I hear them,’ Aryn Bwr said, as if in answer to Isak’s thought, until Isak realised he meant only the creatures of the Dark Place. ‘I hear them singing my name in the twilight.’
‘Even here? Amidst all this?’
‘They are with me always, and still I fear to know more of Azaer.’
‘And yet you won’t tell me what you do know about Azaer - what does the shadow hold over you?’ Isak asked in amazement.
‘Morghien knows. That scarred wanderer was broken when his soul fell under the shadow. To look Azaer in the face is to allow the shadow to see your soul, to look right through you. Your threats are merely of pain and the emptiness of death.’
Suddenly Isak understood. His breath caught as the heat of Scree fell away from his awareness. ‘Not just to be faced with the void, but to have the void stare back at you.’
‘Azaer is no daemon, no God, no mortal. Look Azaer in the face and you see a horror no daemon could imagine, the part of you that exists in the void.’
‘But what is Azaer?’ Isak insisted, disturbed as much by the horrific reverence in Aryn Bwr’s voice as his words. The most accomplished, the most highly blessed - no matter what he had done with those blessings -of mortals, and Aryn Bwr was in awe of a shadow?
‘I have no answers for you there.’
‘You must know something. You’ve stayed hidden all the time I’ve been in Scree; you’re afraid of something in this city. I think your paths have crossed before.’
For a moment there was complete silence. Then—
‘Whispers . . . Shadows speaking to me from a cloudless sky while the stars watched and the moons hid. Long in the night, deep in the night, in the height of summer during the Wars of the Houses, and I, barely adult, yet leading my House’s armies, I walked the pickets when I could not sleep and found I was alone in that. Even the sentries were beyond rousing, though they stood still at their posts. I could see dawn lightening the sky on the horizon, but the Land was still dark, so dark that even the shadows had voices.’
‘Azaer spoke to you?’ Isak spoke softly, hesitating to interrupt.
‘Perhaps it was a dream, but what figment of the living mind would reveal such truths? These were terrible truths, truths that would change the face of the Land for ever, leading me down paths I had feared to tread, and showing me my own soul, its true shape and shine.’
‘Paths within you, or hidden places?’ Isak asked. ‘Why did the shadow come to you? What made you special?’
‘Why do shadows do what they do, go where they go? Shadows follow the living, witness to our deepest secrets. The shadow found me because I was the one to be found -even so young, my genius was lauded by all
. What use to tell secrets to fools? Even in darkness, the shadows will follow.
‘The blinkers were taken from my eyes. Azaer does not lie - Azaer cannot lie, for if you draw the shadows back, you reveal what is hidden. The shadows illuminate the path, they do not force one to take it, and certainly not one such as I, born to change all and leave Gods broken in my wake. Fools forge weapons to their own devices, I learned that before my tenth season, when my uncle showed me the mysteries of fire and metal. This you already know to be true: iron and stone have their shapes within them, and those shapes should never be denied. Not all steel should become a sword.’
Sudden laughter rang through Isak’s head, so fleeting that he wondered if the last vestiges of sanity Aryn Bwr had retained were gone forever.
Then the voice returned with a chilling clarity. ‘You above all know this to be true: you, the weapon both men and Gods tried to forge to their own ends, resulting in - well, not what was wanted. Azaer does not forge, but Azaer can see the shape within, because it itself lacks mortal flesh.’
‘Where did the shadow lead you?’ Isak asked.
‘Deep, deep into darkness, down paths that had not been there under Tsatach’s fiery eye.’
‘Where?’ Isak insisted, desperate for concrete information. This mystical litany was beginning to try his patience.
‘No place mere mortals could find,’ the dead spirit said, oblivious now to everything except his memories, ‘no place to be found, except at twilight, where one world meets the next; between the edges of what we know and what we fear. We were three days’ ride from where I would build Keriabral, on lands my House controlled, though I never found that barrow again. It was outside of time, the link between this life and what lies past Death’s final judgment.’
‘A barrow,’ Isak said, sensing they were getting somewhere useful, ‘so you were underground?’
‘Down into darkness, into the bowels of the Land, the heart of the Land, a point of balance, a place of harmony and standing stones. Deep; so deep I feared going further would bring me to the six ivory gates of Ghenna itself.’
‘And what did you find?’
‘Gifts, links in a chain, twelve means to a thousand ends.’
‘Twelve gifts . . . and there was no price for these gifts?’ Isak asked hoarsely. He could guess what they were now, for this was a scrap of history that made sense at last. Aryn Bwr had been a mage-smith of great power, but weapons that struck fear in the Gods themselves? The ballads and stories of that age told how Aryn Bwr had forged the twelve Crystal Skulls and made gifts of them to his allies. Nowhere did it say how he had managed this, nor from what he had forged them.
‘A fool’s price, a fool’s soul. I paid nothing, but I knew I would not witness the Land I re-forged. I strove for a legacy and it was that they tore from me. I was never driven down the path, only shown the one I would choose. My actions were predicted, anticipated, by hateful shadows that whisper and laugh in the night . . . they knew they would have me one day. They were always watching, always waiting, ever-patient for their prize.’ He broke off suddenly and Isak felt a chill breeze run through his head.
‘In a moment of desperation, I gave it, in return for petty revenge,’ Aryn Bwr said at last.
‘Revenge?’
A memory stirred, one Isak recognised from his dreams. A great fortress crowned by towers as massive as the one he had come to know so well in Tirah: Castle Keriabral, Aryn Bwr’s fortress, where he should have died -until, in a last desperate act, he’d called out a name and secured a completely different fate.
‘I remember,’ Isak said, subdued. Pain and grief flowed from the dead king’s spirit now. It took Isak a moment to shake off the anguish and pursue his original line of questioning.
‘What does Azaer want? What links the Skulls to the destruction of Scree?’
‘Deeds done openly betray little; done in the shadows, they speak the truth.’
Isak hesitated. ‘All this could be misdirection? Thousands of people are going to die -have already died. It cannot be so simple. If Azaer has had only a light hand in events, then it most likely hasn’t the strength to become more involved -this change in tactics means either it’s growing stronger, or it’s taking a risk.’
He tailed off as he tried to understand it all. For the hundredth time since his elevation, first to Krann and then to Lord of the Farlan, he cursed his own ignorance. He’d stolen time whenever he could to struggle his way through impenetrable scrolls and ancient books. He was not one who found pleasure in reading, but he knew the worth of knowledge. He had begun to associate the scent of leather bindings with a yearning for the breeze in his hair, and the feel of the rough parchment under his fingers brought on a sense of dread, a precursor to the stilted, ritualistic style of writing that invariably fogged his mind.
‘It can’t be,’ Isak muttered, more to himself than Aryn Bwr.
‘All deeds serve a purpose,’ the dead king replied solemnly, ‘but what use can shadows have of grand gestures?’
In short, careful phases they came within sight of the barricade. They were all listening hard for voices: signs of panic, sudden shouts, anything that might signal the order to attack. Doranei looked at the half-dozen wooden houses blazing away on his left, casting long shadows over King Emin’s painfully small company. The men made their way down the middle of the street in three neat columns. They marched smartly, keeping in formation, their best defence against the barricade’s defenders. Even so, every one of the Brotherhood had an ear cocked for that first whistle of an arrow shaft.
‘Your Majesty.’
Doranei didn’t need to turn his head to know it was Beyn, on their right flank, who’d spoken. The street was silent aside from their quiet footsteps and his voice carried easily.
‘Something in the shadows,’ Beyn said.
‘Something?’ the king echoed.
‘Figure; too quick to see properly, but tall, not a citizen.’
‘Hooded and cloaked in white? Watching us?’
‘Yes, all in white. Looking towards the barricade, but he saw us too. Moving alone, not frightened to be seen.’
‘Tell me if it gets any closer,’ King Emin said. ‘We don’t want to get caught up in someone else’s problem.’
‘What is it?’ Endine whispered, unable to keep quiet.
Doranei looked at his king, who looked perturbed by the news, however calm he sounded.
‘Scree’s end is near, then,’ he said quietly, sadly. ‘When the Saljin Man ventures inside a city’s boundary, it’s because it is no longer a city.’
‘The Saljin Man?’ Now Endine sounded afraid. ‘The curse of the Vukotic?’
‘The very same. The daemon can follow any member of that tribe. No doubt it can sense the death hanging around Zhia. We should move faster.’
They picked up their pace, no one needing to be told twice. They’d all heard about the daemon that plagued the Vukotic tribe, and not even Coran wanted to try his arm against it.
The ground by the barricade was littered with corpses, most unarmed and many painfully thin, and those arrows the defenders had not bothered to recover after beating off however many assaults they’d endured. Doranei tried not to look at any of the bodies too closely as he carefully stabbed every one within range, in case one of the rabid creatures was only injured. They’d been lucky so far, encountering no more than a dozen stragglers between Autumn’s Arch, where they’d left the Farlan Army, and the Greengate.
Lord Isak hadn’t bothered trying to talk King Emin out of the expedition -he was busy organising his own fool’s errand, though Lord Isak had more soldiers to accompany him to the Red Palace, where they believed the necromancer was holed up. The white-eye had grasped the king’s wrist in friendship and saluted the rest of the small band, just as any Farlan soldier would, kissing his bow-fingers and touching them to his forehead. The other Farlan had followed suit, and Doranei felt a flush of foolish pride that Lord Isak had spared them the moment of respe
ct, before the Brotherhood had dropped over the barricade and marched south, heading for the spot where their mages, Endine and Cetarn, had sensed a Crystal Skull being used.
‘That’s far enough,’ called a voice from the barricade. Doranei froze as he tried to see who’d spoken; it was the local dialect, but not spoken by a local. As if bidden, a man clambered up the barricade and removed his steel helm to reveal a cropped mess of black hair and a mass of cuts and bruises.
Doranei had seen that battered head watching him from the floor of Zhia’s study: the Menin soldier who had so reminded him of Ilumene for a moment, though there was hardly a passing likeness. Amber? he thought Zhia had called him when they’d attended the theatre with Koezh. Was it a proper nickname or one she’d bestowed that night on a whim? In the flickering firelight, the Menin hooked the spike of his axe into his belt, though Doranei could clearly see the crossbow in the man’s other hand.
‘I wish to speak to your mistress; does she still live?’ Doranei called after hurriedly clearly his throat. He told himself it was the heat and dust in the air that had dried his throat, nothing more, and certainly not the fear of attracting attention to himself when they were so exposed out on the street.
‘Does she still live?’ The Menin gave a cough that Doranei realised was a surprised laugh. ‘Aye, she lives,’ Amber said in a wry tone, ‘and I’m sure she’ll be glad to see another of her pets is still alive. Is that the whole of your company?’
Doranei looked back at his companions. All but five were men of the Brotherhood. With King Emin were his white-eye bodyguard Coran, the mages, Endine and Cetarn, and the Jester acolyte Zhia had given them to guide them to where Rojak and Ilumene were hiding. They didn’t need the masked man now, but Zhia had assured the king that the acolyte would remain loyal, and an extra sword was always welcome, even if Coran kept between the king and the acolyte at all times. They were less than a full company, though every man there was too valuable for the regiments. ‘This is all,’ Doranei called.
