Mother of Daemons

by David Hair

  They unlocked it as Cordan wailed, ‘No, please, no, no . . .’

  The crowd hushed and shuffled as the boy clung to the bars, screaming, ‘Cora – Cora—’

  ‘He calls for his sister,’ a woman exclaimed, as if this was some sign from on high.

  ‘Cora,’ Cordan wailed, then he saw Solon. ‘Sir Solon – please, Milord – you said we were friends—’ He broke off as the soldiers finally dragged him out of the cage, thrashing and kicking.

  Rukka, Solon scowled, shut him up. He glared at the men holding the boy, but the imbeciles didn’t seem to realise what he meant.

  ‘You said we were friends,’ Cordan shrieked again as they hauled him up the steps. The crowd was silent now, and some of the women were hiding their faces . . . and some men too. ‘You gave me toy soldiers,’ the boy wailed. ‘Mercy, Milord Solon, mercy—’

  Damn it, do I have to do everything?

  Solon grabbed the boy’s face and sealed his mouth with his hand. Staring down at the huge, wet eyes, for a moment he saw that same hand kill Nita. The gallows seemed to lurch.

  This must be done, he snarled at himself. Weakness is unacceptable.

  But he was shaking, he was stunned to realise: shaking with guilt.

  No, not guilt, with weakness. That was intolerable. He lashed himself onwards. ‘Do it,’ he snarled at the soldiers, taking a step back so they could pull the boy to the block. Cordan kept struggling like a slippery eel and they all slithered and nearly slipped in Garod’s blood, but at last the boy was forced to face the block.

  ‘No speech, just keep his rukking mouth shut,’ Solon rasped – and in the silence, his words carried over the crowds, causing an increasing murmur of disquiet. He swore again, under his breath this time, and nodded at the headsman.

  Cordan twisted as soon as the soldier removed his arm to try and bow him down. Looking up at the thrones, he cried, ‘Lyra, mercy, mercy—’ Then his eyes bulged. ‘You’re not Lyra – you’re not the real queen,’ he screamed, as loudly as he could. ‘You’re not the queen!’

  Brunelda was rigid and open-mouthed, Sister Virtue muttering in her ear, then she shrieked, ‘Mercy – mercy!’

  Rukka, Solon fumed. The queen had the right to give clemency – but he’d never told Brunelda that, for this very reason. Did that rukking nun tell her? He shot Sister Virtue a murderous look. he sent silently.

  the mage-nun sent back tersely.

  Damn them all, I’m being betrayed. But the damage was done: he’d look exactly like a tyrant if he went through with this now.

  ‘The queen has spoken,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Take the prince back to the Bastion. Give him . . . his old rooms back.’

  He could see his partisans were angry at having their blood spectacle snatched away. This moment, his long-dreamed-of revenge for 909, had been transformed from sweet wine to rancid vinegar. Seeking to retrieve the moment, he reached into the basket, lifted out Garod’s head and held it high. ‘So ends the Sacrecour tyranny,’ he shouted, spraying drops of gore as he brandished it. He was dimly aware that some of the women had fainted – and that there were few cheers.

  He dropped the head and stormed down from the gallows and up the steps to the dais. ‘Get the queen to her rooms,’ he snapped at Sister Virtue, then he gestured to Roland to join him. ‘What a rukking disaster,’ he muttered. ‘Who organised it? Whose damned fault was it?’

  Roland flicked a glance at Rolven Sulpeter. ‘The old windbag.’

  Solon glowered at Sulpeter, who looked away. Dead wood. I need to take an axe to it.

  But thoughts of axes only drew his gaze back to the bloody block and then to the crowd. There was no hero-worship in the eyes of the women now, no idolising young knights, just horror . . . and fear.

  Makelli said, ‘They don’t have to love you as long as you’re feared.’

  ‘Cordan should have died too,’ he told Roland – told himself. ‘She had no right . . .’

  ‘Say the word and I’ll finish him,’ the Blacksmith growled back. ‘On the quiet.’

  ‘They heard him denounce Brunelda,’ he whispered. ‘Was he believed?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter – deny, deny, deny,’ Roland advised. ‘You’re the emperor – the truth is whatever you say it is. They understand what you’re about, Milord: you’re going to make us great again.’ He clapped Solon’s shoulder. ‘We’re stronger because of this.’

  Solon took a deep breath. Roland’s right, he told himself. This was necessary. ‘Let the boy live – for now,’ he growled. ‘We’ll ensure he doesn’t see another year. And get rid of the queen’s confessor.’ He glared about the plaza. ‘Get the gallows washed down. The dungeons are filling up and we need to make room.’

  The Celestium

  The girl was inconsolable, but for all she wasn’t used to dealing with young people, Basia tried. Holding her seemed to be helping a little. ‘Coramore, shush,’ she murmured, ‘he’s not dead – they didn’t kill him.’

  ‘I know,’ Coramore sobbed, ‘b-but Con˙ would’ve been so f-f-frightened . . .’

  Outside, the full moon lit the night sky. ‘Take me to the garden,’ she whispered, and Basia twitched uneasily but acquiesced. Like the queen’s sanctuary, the Celestium’s Winter Tree garden was an eerie place, especially when Coramore was in it. The princess had been spending most of her time inside Saint Eloy’s burial mound of late; she’d told them Solon had burned out Lyra’s garden, so presumably the dwyma had told her.

  They made their way through the secluded guest wing to the back of the great cathedral, past the guards at the gate to the lawned garden. The silver moon hung heavy overhead, casting shadows like pools of emptiness.

  The walls were manned by a double watch of both Kirkegarde and her own Corani, but Basia was still uneasy as she let Coramore go below on her own. Unease prickled at her skin and she scanned this way and that, sure someone was watching, though she couldn’t see anyone.

  *

  I could kill her, right now, Father Germane mused, clinging like a venomous spider to a low parapet just a few yards from a sentry. But why is Lyra not here as well? I’ve seen that girl several times, but never the queen . . . Surely a dwymancer would come here all the time?

  He quivered, sorely tempted to make his move, but even with his new powers, this garden gave him a queasy sense of peril. The daemon inside him whispered of other possessed men who’d tried to enter such places and come to very permanent ends. The danger might not be clear, but it was palpable. Glimpsing his prey was tantalising, but the perimeter was riddled with gnostic wards and had dozens of guards including magi. The oppressive sense of menace hanging over everything was the dwyma, he presumed.

  Reluctantly, he crept away, slithering down the wall and flitting into the shadowy warren that was Fenreach, where half the hovels were now abandoned. He emerged soon after with a new face and new clothes and walked brazenly back to the Celestium, joining the other cooks for their long, hard shift in the kitchens.

  He needed to get into the guest wing if he was to find Lyra and her entourage and kill them all – then he could join the Master in his grand project, whatever it was. He told himself he’d heard too many ‘Last Days’ sermons of late, but the feeling that time was slipping away wouldn’t leave him.

  There’ll be a way, he told himself. For someone like me, there always is.

  30

  A Sea of Fog and Ruin

  Lines of Defence

  Generals speak of layered lines of defence, but to me the first line of defence is absence. If you’re not on the battlefield, they can’t hurt you. Move in shadows, strike from behind. War isn’t about honour, it’s about winning. If you really care about looking chivalrous, write the history afterwards.

  GURVON GYLE, GREY FOX LEADER, NOROS 909

  Rym, Rimoni

  Martrois 936

  Jehana followed Ervyn Naxius down crumbling hallways lined with broken colonnad
es and fallen statues, through collapsed mansions open to the skies, across debris-strewn plazas. Nothing grew there, even centuries after the Rondians had taken the city, Naxius told her, thanks to gnostic blights. There were no weeds, no insects or rodents, no sound but the wind, no smell but old dust and grit. The dust-covered desolation was soul-sucking.

  Jehana barely noticed, though, for her attention was focused inwards, where her nascent dwyma was slowly being poisoned by ichor. Alyssa Dulayne had tried to take on the dwyma whilst wholly infected, but Jehana was to be more slowly transfigured. As the dwymancers were the masters of the natural world, she was to be the queen of the daemonic: a hideous proposition, with her psyche still racked by the linkage to Abraxas.

  But if I see it through, can he still control me . . . she wondered.

  That was the hope she was clinging to: that she could pass through the fires and then unleash them on this evil bastard. It had led her to this strange kind of truce as they felt out each other’s weaknesses. That she was barely a woman and Naxius was a centuries-old mage wasn’t forgotten; and that she was no use to him without the dwyma also hadn’t escaped her. She was playing with the deadliest of fires, but she believed if she could open herself to the dwyma fully, she would find a way to break free. Naxius seemed to believe she couldn’t – or wouldn’t.

  One of us is going to be utterly, disastrously wrong . . .

  But in any case, she couldn’t take any more of the daemon’s never-ending procession of iniquity and depravity. It left her soul raw and bleeding as memories that weren’t hers screamed through her mind. Faces she did know and love – her mother, her brother, her friends – became warped and entangled with the horrors Abraxas fed her, until it was either break free or die. And now that she knew exactly what lurked in the darkness beyond death, there was no way she wished to die, not ever.

  They know my name and Abraxas is waiting for me. So I will jump before I fall, while I still have some self-will, and – somehow – I will grow wings.

  They emerged onto a low promontory jutting out into Lake Patera. The flat, sullen expanse spread before her, the murky surface covered in fog which danced, swirling like old cobwebs, as they moved down the steps into a dell right at the edge of the water. The far shore was lost in the mists. The sun hung low in the sky, but whether it was morning or evening, she couldn’t tell, for she couldn’t work out if she was looking east or west.

  ‘Behold,’ Naxius said grandly, gesturing to the cliffs behind him, and she turned to see a big tree clinging to the edge like a wooden spider. It was covered in prickly little emerald leaves and small red berries. Then she caught her breath as her half-wakened dwyma-senses saw the tree was pulsing with strange energy, like a distorted version of the dwyma filled with hunger. She saw bones of birds had been caught in the twisted branches as if snared. She sensed the tree’s eyeless regard watching her approach.

  ‘What is this?’ she breathed, at once drawn and repelled.

  ‘When I realised what the Winter Tree in Pallas was – a nexus of the dwyma – I stole a cutting,’ Naxius said smugly. ‘It’s a brackenberry – I planted several, using sylvan gnosis to accelerate the growth, and leached ichor into the soil, to make them more amenable to my aims. Most died – the ruination spells on this city are particularly virulent – but I fed this one blood and it thrives – indeed, it has grown voraciously.’

  Jehana shuddered, her courage faltering as she saw the way the tendrils of the brackenberry stroked the air menacingly, coiling and uncoiling as the tree reacted to her presence. It fears and wants me too, she sensed. We are each other’s threshold . . . Her mouth went dry but her heart was thumping. ‘Wh—What must I do . . .?’

  ‘Go to it,’ Naxius invited, his hooded eyes giving nothing away. ‘Eat some berries.’

  The berries contain essence of both the dwyma and the daemonic. She hesitated, perceiving the tree as more creature than plant. It fears me . . . It hates me . . .

  ‘You could bring some to me,’ she said weakly.

  ‘I could, but that would achieve nothing,’ Naxius said. ‘The berries are not enough. I have been feeding them to you while you slept: they have already given you all they can. More is needed to awaken you. Go to it.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Must I compel you, girl? I thought you resolved?’

  ‘I . . . I am . . .’ she stammered, wavering.

  She took a hesitant step forward, then another, stopping a few feet from the longest of the writhing branches as she tried to work up the nerve to take that last step. The tree quivered, reaching for her, then recoiling, as frightened as she was, but drawn nevertheless . . .

  She reminded herself that without this, there would be no escape. She’d been initiated into the dwyma, but without a firm bond to a genilocus, all she could do was listen to it, feel it, almost taste it, but without the fulfilment of union, she had no hope of anything but death . . . and the waiting Abraxas . . .

  She gathered her courage and murmured, ‘Ha’ana . . .’

  Here I am . . .

  She stepped forward.

  The tree shuddered, its branches rippling and the leaves hissing, whorls like eyes fixed on her face as she took another step, then another . . .

  And then branches were whipping round, ripping her off her feet and jerking her into the tangle of foliage . . . She opened her mouth to scream—

  —but a rope-like tongue had burst from nowhere and rammed into her mouth and down her throat, gushing something like sap into her. She fought for air and lost, drowning, going blind as her clothing was rent and tendrils plunged into her skin. Stars exploded in her head, dark shadows rushed in and she floated . . . then faded . . .

  *

  Naxius watched the tree curiously. Its jerking movements were subsiding but the inner branches were still wrapped tightly around Jehana, lofted high up the trunk. The air began to throb and his whole being tingled with excitement and that intoxicating frisson of risk.

  My enemies think me a cruel manipulator, someone who lets others take the real dangers . . . They don’t understand that every experiment I essay is risk, and that failure is fatal . . .

  But for now, the die was cast and the girl was in the hands of this thing he’d made of dwyma and daemon, life and entropy. If – when – she returned, she would be something else, a dweller on the threshold of life and death. She might even exceed him . . .

  If I could, I would have taken this upon myself . . .

  But only she had been bred to be both dwymancer and mage. There was the brother, of course, but he’d promised Rashid that Waqar would not be touched and by the time he felt ready to disregard that pledge, Waqar was out of reach.

  The girl will suffice . . .

  He watched a while longer, but the tree had settled down into stillness again, savouring its new prey. He lifted his head from his musings and scanned the lake, which was once again tranquil. The northern shore was lost in the fog rolling down the river valley and in from the eastern coast as well. His gnostic senses revealed no weather-gnosis . . . but the other dwymancers were still alive.

  Lyra’s in the north . . . but where’s Valdyr?

  None of his enemies should be a threat any more: the Ordo Costruo and the Merozains were mired in the fruitless struggle to save the Leviathan Bridge, and the dwymancers knew too little. Mollachia was far away, and in any case, Valdyr was ignorant of the true stakes. He and Lyra might have evaded death, but the window of opportunity for them to thwart him was slamming closed.

  The process has begun . . . tonight will be the night.

  *

  Dirklan Setallius led the six venators in, skimming the surface of the vast fogbank Lyra and Valdyr had conjured, seeking a place to land. Finally he jabbed an arm downwards and they swooped towards a dark patch of earth.

  It had been without doubt one of the coldest and most uncomfortable journeys of Ogre’s life, but he barely cared, for his blood ran hot and his chest swelled to be so close to Tarit
a.

  But now the Master waited . . .

  They were all frozen and painfully stiff from so long in the frigid air, which cut pitilessly through even the heaviest layers and had them continually scraping ice from the eye-glasses as they came skimming down river valleys. It was a mercy now to glide in Dirklan’s wake to a wreckage-covered plaza, an island amid the fog.

  They disembarked awkwardly; the magi were able to feed heat and energy to their limbs, but all Lyra and Valdyr could do was stamp around, chaffing their numb fingers.

  Tarita’s eyes gleamed with gnosis-light as she scanned their surroundings. ‘All clear,’ she called softly, the other magi nodding agreement, then they all fell silent, taking in the dreary emptiness. There was no birdsong here, or even the moan of wind over stone. The mist swirling from their steeds’ wings gradually stilled.

  Ogre’s heart was speeding. Ever since his rescue by the Ordo Costruo, the central fear of his existence had been that he might fall back into the Master’s hands: it was the source of his nightmares and his waking dread. And now here he was, willingly seeking the Master’s lair, when all he wanted was to go with Tarita to some faraway place and hide for ever.

  But if I do that, the Master will destroy everything . . . and he’ll still find us. In his head he knew it was better to do this and die, rather than attempt to run and hide, but glimpsing the maze of desolation that had once been the greatest city in the world chilled him to the soul. It felt like a foretaste of the Master’s plans for Urte.

  ‘Hey, big boy, even you should be able to move unseen in this place,’ Tarita said slyly. ‘Just so long as you don’t fart and blow the fog away.’

  ‘Ogre will be silent,’ he answered gloomily, unable to rise to her teasing.

  The others joined them in the middle of the rock-strewn plaza. ‘Is Gricoama joining us?’ Lyra asked Valdyr.

  In response, the Mollachian turned to face the wall of fog to the north – and out of the mist trotted a dark shape the size of a pony, its fur sleek and amber eyes faintly aglow.