by David Hair
It was some hours after Kyrik had departed. The food was gone and Ogre’s stomach was rumbling – so surely he was awake. He looked up fearfully at the stone ceiling. Could scrying penetrate stone so deep?
My wayward, homeless child, the voice went on, lost in the great world. Adrift. Unloved . . . I sent Semakha back to you, Ogre, as I promised I would – but what did you do to her? Did you know I was there, watching from inside her skull as she choked and drowned? You ungrateful animal . . .
‘You sent me back a monster,’ Ogre retorted, his voice booming in the dimly lit cave. But even in his distress he wasn’t so foolish as to reply with the gnosis and give Naxius a thread to follow back to his refuge.
Were you jealous, Ogre, that I made Semakha better than you? Is that what it was? Or are you so faithless that you abandoned her in your heart? The dark voice chuckled. Do you really think the Merozain would have you? A great ugly lumpen beast like you?
Ogre groaned. ‘No, Master. I know she’s not for me . . .’
Ogre’s head had been telling his heart so for weeks, although his heart wouldn’t listen.
Naxius’ voice rasped inside his brain, in the declamatory tones of his lectures. You have a choice in life, Ogre. Accept your station and what you are: an animated piece of offal and offcuts from better creatures – or you can use all you are to rise up. Is that not what I taught you?
Ogre closed his eyes, closed his mind, but the voice went on, I was just a drifter when I fell in with Corin and his devotees. And now look at me: deathless, all-powerful, because I forsook all emotion except ambition. Morality is an illusion, Ogre: one must take from others to rise above them. Predators feast on prey – that is the lesson of nature: I learned and I prevailed.
Ogre refused to respond. Only a fool tried to outwit the Master. Even so he had to clench his whole body up to ignore those all-knowing, malevolent tones, his every muscle twitching at the edge of response.
But Naxius wasn’t done yet. These are the Last Days, Ogre, he went on. When they’re done, it is I who shall inherit Urte. Reach out to me, my creature, and I may still let you share in my ascension to godhood.
‘No, Master,’ Ogre whispered, for his own sake, still careful not to speak with his mind into the aether.
Are you going to accept life’s beatings, Ogre, or are you going to rise up and take whatever you want? I made you strong, my child: I gave you a brain and I moulded it. I made you what you are, and your place is by my side. You slew Semakha – now return to me and take her place. I’ll even give you the little Merozain as a reward.
‘Do not speak of her,’ Ogre roared, his sudden outburst resounding through the cavern.
A sudden burst of laughter filled the air. So you are listening, Ogre. Listen, my child, I—
In utter dread, Ogre threw up the most wards he could and the voice was cut off.
But he knew that the Master was hunting him and the walls of the cave no longer felt like stone but as thin as the parchment in the book he laboured over.
*
‘My love?’ Kyrik called tentatively.
The bowed figure wrapped in blankets hunched deeper into her covers, her greasy grey-black curls shrouding her face. She was shaking with the sobs coming from deep within her chest. The small hut stank of human waste and vomit and the walls were covered with drying splatters of fluids and food.
Unthinkingly, he reached to comfort her.
In a flash, she erupted from the blankets, her mouth widening as her teeth sought his arm, her black eyes gleaming. But the chains around her neck, wrists and ankles wrenched her backwards. She yowled in frustrated hate and spat black gobbets of fluid at him. He had discovered they were harmless unless they were ingested, or got in a wound or an eye, but he was careful to quickly wipe them away. They stank of clotted blood and decay.
His heart thudding, Kyrik castigated himself for the stupid lapse. ‘Hajya,’ he breathed, staring helplessly at his wife.
She shuddered, then her eyes cleared, and she seemed to see him. ‘Kyrik? Kyrik?’ She burst into tears.
He ached to gather her into his arms, but instead he reached out with mysticism into the turmoil that was her crowded mind and snuffed the candle of awareness. She fell into an unconscious trance.
Then he gagged her, because the daemon was sometimes strong enough to break his control and rouse her, before unlocking the chains from the hooks and carrying her out into the light. She was lighter than ever, just skin and bone, and covered in sores. It was all he could do to keep his gorge down at the reek of her clothes and body.
The small group waiting outside sucked in their breath when they saw her. The big Schlessen Fridryk Kippenegger hugged his wife Sabina, while the hunter Rothgar Baredge and the Sydian mage Korznici stared silently. Behind them, the tower of horned hide and muscle that was Maegogh, chieftain of the Mantauri, watched with guarded eyes.
‘Pater Sol, she’s wasting away,’ Rothgar breathed.
‘That’s why I have to try something else,’ Kyrik replied. ‘Locking her up in the dark isn’t working.’
They all looked doubtful, for they had all seen what Hajya was like when exposed to light. Even now, unconscious, she was twitching at the thin sunlight penetrating the clouds.
‘It could kill her,’ Korznici said; the young woman could be unthinkingly blunt at times.
‘She can’t go on as she is,’ Kyrik replied. ‘I can’t bear it.’ He’d decided that Ogre might be right. At least, it was worth a try. ‘I’m going to try sunlight and wholesome, living foods.’
‘Then let me help,’ Korznici said decisively.
‘Thank you,’ he said. He carried Hajya to a small handcart and loaded her onto it, then wheeled it around the shore of the lake. The ground was covered in several inches of snow, which softened the journey. The day was cold, the skies grey; the sunlight would be fleeting, even without the ramparts of mountains surrounding Freihaafen, which would cast them into shadow within an hour or two.
Kyrik led his little group into the pines where Valdyr had built a small lean-to to use when communing with the dwyma. They settled Hajya on the ground, then Kyrik built up a fire, while Korznici removed the gag and managed to get some water down the sleeping woman, before gagging her again.
‘I hate to see her this way,’ she said. ‘She raised me like a mother among the Sfera.’
‘Then let’s do what we can.’
They steeled themselves and started removing Hajya’s clothes. Her veins were as mottled as ever, thick with daemonic ichor, and even the weak sunlight barely penetrating the clouds began to raise welts on her skin. Hajya moaned in her gnostic sleep.
Kyrik and Korznici undressed too, then he scooped up his wife and carried her down to the water, the Sydian girl following with a cake of soap and a cleaning cloth. There was a hot water vent near the bank which allowed the heated gases to bubble up through the bottom of the lake. The wonderfully warm water was soothing to his tense muscles, but Kyrik barely noticed, so anxious was he for his wife.
Together, they washed Hajya, hanging unmoving but pliant in Kyrik’s arms, first cleaning her skin, then lathering her hair – until suddenly the daemon broke through Kyrik’s spell and her eyes flashed open, revealing jet-black orbs. She thrashed about in his grip, trying to bite his throat through the gag. Her arms flailed, her nails raking as she sought to free herself, but with kinesis and muscle, he thwarted her until after a few minutes of heartrending struggle, she subsided. Her eyes cleared to brown, tears streaming from them.
Through his own blurred vision Kyrik sent soothing emotion into her mind. The daemon had once again receded, but of his wife there was also little, for she’d retreated deep inside herself, but at least she was pliant again.
Kyrik and Korznici finished washing her, then took her back to the bank where they dried her and laid her on the blankets, naked to the skies, next to the fire. Then they dressed themselves, suddenly shy of each other, and began preparing the meal. Afternoon was
waning and they’d lose the sun soon.
‘She needs as much direct sunlight as possible,’ he remarked, ‘and no meat.’
‘So the opposite of what we’ve been doing,’ Korznici noted.
‘It’s Ogre’s idea,’ Kyrik admitted.
‘Ah. He is wise, this Ogre?’
‘I think so.’
Korznici frowned thoughtfully. ‘He has the gnosis, yes? And he is partly man?’
Ogre was still something of an enigma in Freihaafen: he’d been rescued from Asiv two weeks ago, but had immediately retreated to the cave. He’d met very few people and rumours were clearly running rampant.
‘More than the Mantauri, certainly,’ Kyrik replied. ‘But I’m no animage.’
Korznici had been there when Ogre and Hajya had been recovered. ‘What’s his connection to the ogress we fought beside the lake?’
‘Her name was Semakha and she was made by the same man who made Ogre, a renegade Ordo Costruo mage named Ervyn Naxius. Ogre believes Naxius is the master of Asiv Fariddan and all our enemies.’
Korznici looked startled. ‘But this Ogre can be trusted?’
It was a good question, but Tarita had believed so, and Kyrik had been impressed by the Merozain. Waqar and Jehana Mubarak had also appeared – cautiously – to regard Ogre as true. ‘I’ve spoken to Ogre about his former master: I believe he fears him, but I see no sign of any residual allegiance.’
Korznici said slowly, ‘Then I hope that you’re a good judge.’
Just then Hajya made a snarling noise behind the gag and they both turned, startled, to see her eyes were once again jet-black and her face a rictus of mockery and malice.
Kyrik shuddered, shared a look with Korznici, then reached out cautiously and holding Hajya’s skull in a kinesis grip so she couldn’t lunge at him, pulled down the gag.
‘Kirol Kyrik,’ someone drawled in Rondian. ‘Asiv and Dragan have told us all about you.’ Her eyes trailed to Korznici. ‘Lined up a replacement for your wife already, have you?’
‘Who are you?’ Kyrik demanded.
‘The one who will eat your soul,’ the daemon snickered. ‘You’d do better to murder that construct creature, Kirol. The Master owns Ogre and will reclaim him in time.’
Daemons lie, Kyrik thought: it was the first thing every young wizard was told. But he knows that Ogre is here . . . ‘We know your weaknesses, daemon. Best you tell Asiv to run.’
The daemon spat black ichor at him, which he swatted aside with kinesis. ‘Asiv is hunting you right now, fool.’ Then Hajya’s eyes lifted and she scanned the darkening valley. ‘Where are we? What place is this?’
Kyrik immediately slammed a hand over Hajya’s eyes and pulsed darkness into her, blinding her. The daemon shrieked and snapped her teeth, but Kyrik was already conjuring mystic-gnosis, sending her back into oblivion.
He took a deep breath. Dear Kore, dear Ahm, how will I endure this?
Tentatively, Korznici laid a hand on his shoulder, but he brushed it away angrily. ‘She’s my wife, damn it!’
The young Sydian flinched. ‘Nothing was offered but comfort.’
He winced, immediately despising himself. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘I just . . . I’m sorry.’ He looked away across the lake, not wanting to see what his Hajya had become, nor to see the calm, self-possessed young woman beside him who had told him so many times that he should be doing his best to beget children on her and the other Sydian women, to strengthen the mage-blood of the Sfera, the clan’s magi.
She doesn’t know I can’t father children anyway . . .
‘I must soon return to my people in the Tuzvolg,’ Korznici said, after a few minutes. ‘They have culled the herd to survive, but the pastures are now thin and they must soon move. Unless you know of more highland pasture, that means entering the lower valley, risking Asiv Fariddan’s possessed men.’
‘Rothgar knows Mollachia well. He can guide your people to pasture to see them through until spring.’
‘You’re determined to throw us together,’ Korznici observed drily.
‘It’s not such a bad match,’ he observed.
Her face wrinkled into a pout. ‘I have let him know that he is desirable to me, but my womb is for begetting magi – and as a Sfera mage, I am forbidden to wed. He has let me know that he finds me desirable also, but will not sleep with a woman who is not his wife, nor share my womb with another man. So no, it is not a “match”.’
‘You’re not in the plains any more,’ Kyrik told her. ‘This is Mollachia, where people may marry for love.’
‘A foolish tradition,’ Korznici – all of nineteen – said gravely. ‘This place is more dangerous than all the plains, so Clan Vlpa must rebuild her strength in war and the gnosis.’
He couldn’t really argue with that. ‘I just want to see someone I like happy.’
She sniffed in amusement. ‘Kip and Sabina are happy, like frolicking otters in mating season.’
He laughed. ‘Maybe not quite how I think of them, but yes.’
‘Happiness comes in many forms, and not always through mating,’ Korznici went on severely. ‘For you, happiness will come when your wife is restored and your brother returns. I pray to the Great Stallion that these things will come to pass.’
Kyrik had been trying not to think about Valdyr.
Where are you, brother? Are you lost in this ‘dwyma’, in this Tree of Light? Or are you burned to ash?
*
Where am I? Valdyr Sarkany wondered as he climbed. Is this even my own body? Perhaps his physical form was still inside the volcano’s peak, or maybe it had fallen and been consumed by the lava pit and he was now a ghost in the Elétfa. He’d seen Gricoama fall and yet the wolf was beside him on this strange journey. Perhaps the same had happened to him?
But some things were becoming clear. The distant cold ball of light that arced overhead on a regular course was the Sun, but it was travelling much faster than normal – or he was travelling much more slowly. And the volcano was gone. There was just this immense stairway, which sometimes resembled stone and other times wood or even dark ice, winding up an equally immense cylinder of rock or wood or water or fire. At times, branches led away into the void, but so far, he’d shunned these. They’d encountered no perils, and as yet, hunger and thirst had not troubled them, but he sensed they soon would. Time might be passing oddly, but it was still passing and it had been some time since they had finished the last of the water and rations. The Tree spread above him, climbing on upwards into eternity, always subtly in motion, ever changing, like the light. Far above hung golden orbs like fruit, glowing distantly, calling him on.
Mostly, the Elétfa appeared to be a vast tree with heavily entwined branches and roots, but at other times it was a heart and arteries, or clouds above an ocean, exchanging droplets of rain and rising vapours in gravity-defying rivers, but always it was a closed system, spinning in the void: an embodiment of the dwyma, the cycle of life. It sang, a chiming note that reverberated through him and filled his nostrils with rich, wholesome air. Despite the strangeness, he felt safe.
‘Come, Brother Wolf,’ he said. ‘Another hour.’
Gricoama grumbled, but bounded on at his side, bright-eyed as a young dog.
Gradually, though, the lack of sustenance overtook him and he stumbled dizzily on a step, his aching muscles suddenly too weak to lift him. He might have slipped off the edge, had not Gricoama seized his arm in his jaws and pulled him back. That shocked him, because he hadn’t realised his peril. For a time he just knelt and hugged the great wolf.
‘That was a near thing,’ he confessed shakily. ‘Thank you, my friend.’
The wolf made a rumbling sound that struck Valdyr as both reassurance and warning.
‘I know,’ he agreed, ‘I have to be careful. But I’m hungry, and we’ve seen nothing to eat or drink.’
The wolf whined unhappily. Valdyr stroked his back, trying to decide whether the respite of sleep – and the further hours without sustena
nce that would entail – would weaken or strengthen him. But when he tried to get up, he couldn’t. Exhaustion had crept up on him, ambushing him, though he’d thought himself well enough to go on a bit further.
‘Whoever drops first, the other has to eat them and go on,’ he told Gricoama, then he chuckled uneasily. ‘That was a joke: I don’t taste good.’
I’ll be the judge of that, the wolf’s expression seemed to say – he at least looked to be in the fullness of health and not the slightest bit hungry. That reassured Valdyr – not that he’d been seriously afraid of his companion. And clearly he couldn’t go on, so he just rolled onto his side on the stair and closed his eyes . . .
*
‘Wake up,’ a woman’s voice called insistently. ‘Wake up, Valdyr. You must get up.’
Blearily, he opened his eyes, or thought he did, but what he saw wasn’t the tree: instead, he was on a well-remembered mountaintop: the camp on Watcher’s Peak where he’d kept vigil with Luhti and learned of the dwyma. And here he was, sitting beside the fire-pit on his usual log beside the old woman, her grey hair blowing in the chill breeze and the flames guttering. But he could feel neither heat nor cold.
And Luhti was dead.
‘I’m dreaming,’ he said flatly.
‘Are you?’ Luhti asked. Her features smoothed and she became the younger woman he’d glimpsed before she died: golden hair, pale skin, a small nose and freckled face. North Rondian, perhaps, or Hollenian. Lanthea, her birth-name had been, he recalled, and she was one of the first great dwymancers.
‘I must be,’ he answered, looking round. The peak was clear, the skies studded with stars. Somewhere in the distance he heard a wolf howl and knew it was Gricoama, hunting. ‘I’m in the Elétfa.’
‘So you are,’ she agreed, as he supposed a dream person would, seeing as his own mind had conjured her. ‘Perhaps we’re all a dream of the Elétfa?’ she suggested.
‘Then why did you wake me?’ he asked.
I’m talking to my subconscious, he thought. She’s not really here.
‘You need to wake,’ she replied. ‘You’re in danger. You need to eat and drink.’
