Mother of Daemons

by David Hair

  Oh, fuck . . . Oddly, his first reaction was relief that a difficult conversation had been avoided, but then came the regret: Lumpy wasn’t made for times like this, but they’d been comrades for a long, long time.

  But that was war: he’d lost many friends over the years.

  He signalled to a waiting serjant. ‘Oryn Levis was a Corani hero,’ he said thickly. ‘Take his body to the Bastion morgue. He’ll receive his due as one of our best.’ Then he turned his back on the carnage and walked out of that blood-spattered chamber, breathing hard.

  If Wurther knew where Dubrayle was, he’d have said. The man’s no hero. The crown was so close he could almost feel it on his brow – except that rukking Lyra had taken it with her. I’ll have a new one forged and I’ll place the damned thing on my own head if I can’t find a worthy priest. There’s nothing and no one left to stop me . . .

  He headed for the door, his mind on the morning to come. Wurther, de Sirou, Excelsior . . . I’ll behead them all at dawn. There’d be no trials, no more embarrassments like the Cordan incident. Brunelda wouldn’t attend, the executions would be almost private. Lyra and Setallius were still out there, and so was Dubrayle. He had to act swiftly to consolidate all that had been won and deny them potential allies.

  That decided, the familiar rush of adrenalin from surviving combat struck him, the relief and the triumph pumping blood through him, opening his pores and filling his lungs. Life was for the living, for the victor. He picked up his pace, waved Rollo to his side and together they strode through the vast entrance hall of the Celestium, where Corani soldiers cheered as he passed. He looked around and spied the Hollenian mercenary captain, Rykjard.

  I did well to separate that man from his legions, he thought, eyes narrowing, but without Dubrayle’s treasure trove, I still can’t pay him.

  ‘Capitano Rykjard,’ he boomed, nevertheless. ‘Well done, sir. Fine work.’

  The mercenary captain flashed him a wry salute, then indicated the wooden crates his men were hauling past. ‘The Grand Prelate’s wine cellar,’ he remarked cheerily. ‘I’ll have the best sent to you, Milord.’

  Solon laughed, saluted in return and swept on, murmuring, ‘Rollo, deal with the Hollenian tonight. Make it quiet. And make sure I get that rukking wine. Have one yourself. We both deserve it.’

  ‘The spoils of victory,’ Roland chuckled. ‘A bottle of wine – and that wanker’s Noorie wives . . .’

  Solon snorted at his friend’s unquenchable lust for life. ‘A bottle and a whore . . . I think I’ll do the same.’ He clapped Rollo’s shoulder and left him there, while he went out to take the acclaim of the troops.

  33

  The Last Night

  Stalemate

  There comes a point in the game of tabula when you are no longer playing to win but to not lose: to achieve gridlock and force a draw. This can be achieved, even when one side is vastly overmatched, by skilled deployment of your remaining pieces. But it’s a risky ploy and defeat is only ever one misstep away.

  EMPEROR SERTAIN, PALLAS 458

  Rym, Rimoni

  Martrois 936

  Dirklan was scouting somewhere in the mist ahead while Tarita and Ogre huddled together in the lee of a huge broken pillar. Ogre was thoughtfully turning over the Cadearvo mask in his hands.

  ‘Seeing that thing on your face scared me, Ogre,’ Tarita admitted. ‘It reminded me too much of Semakha – and of what you might have been if the Ordo Costruo hadn’t rescued you.’

  ‘I wish I could say that I would’ve been different,’ he replied, ‘but who knows?’

  ‘I do,’ she told him firmly. ‘Some people succumb to temptations, but others rise above them. You’re the only good thing that madman ever made, Ogre. Never think otherwise.’

  He ducked his head humbly, but she saw his eyes lighten a fraction, which lifted her spirits too. At the Merozain monastery she’d been the black sheep, the rebel; she’d seldom seen fit to praise another. I was an immature bitch, basically. Ogre, you make me a better person.

  Dirklan arrived with news of an entrance to Naxius’ hidden lair. He led the way into the sunset, scrambling along the shoreline. Fog and darkness closed in on all sides.

  Tarita listened for daemonic voices in the aether until she could make out at least one sentry ahead – she also sensed a heightened state of alertness and anticipation.

  ‘They believe this is their time,’ she murmured. ‘We need to hurry.’

  They topped a rise overlooking a walkway that had quite clearly been carved through the rubble. There was a ramp on the right leading into the lake; on the left was an archway opening into darkness.

  ‘This is as close as I dared come,’ Dirklan whispered. ‘When the Rondian Empire controlled this region, the city was patrolled regularly and such earthworks would have been noticed.’

  ‘The Master fears no one now,’ Ogre put in softly.

  Tarita squinted into the shadows beneath the arch and realised there was an ogre-construct there, standing guard. Yes, she thought, this is it: Naxius’ lair. But how do we get in without them knowing?

  They drew back to confer. ‘Can you deceive this guard as you did the scout?’ Dirklan asked her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tarita admitted. ‘I got close enough to look him in the eye and because I’d made mine look black, he was deceived. This one will see me coming – he might recognise me before I get close enough.’

  ‘Then either we get closer, or we strike fast and move fast, accepting that the alarm is raised,’ Ogre rumbled.

  ‘I don’t like that,’ Dirklan replied, and Tarita agreed. ‘We don’t know how much of a garrison he has either,’ Dirklan added. ‘I know he’s had to be discreet, but the empire lost control of the south years ago. He’d be stupid to have less than a legion, and we all know he’s not stupid.’

  They considered that in silence, then Ogre said, ‘The Master is never stupid, but there’s no food here, no supply routes, no farms. Even these possessed men must eat – we learned that in Mollachia. He’ll have guards, but maybe not so many.’ He paused, then smiled. ‘I know how to get close.’

  He outlined his plan and Tarita thought it through, matching skills to tasks. Ogre’s affinities were all Earth and hermetic, about the body and what was solid; Tarita’s were all Fire and flash. Yes, his plan might work. Between us we have what we need.

  She pecked his cheek impulsively. ‘You and me, Ogre,’ she said, a little more emotionally than she’d intended.

  Ogre blinked; Dirklan raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  ‘What?’ she flared at them, to hide her embarrassment. ‘So, are we doing this?’

  Ogre’s misshapen face creased into a slow smile. ‘Yes . . . you and me.’

  They made their hurried preparations, then she scrambled onto Ogre’s back, hooked her arms around his neck and conjured an illusion to disguise herself as a leather pack. Then Ogre rose and clambered over the rocks, effortlessly bearing her weight, and dropped into the cleared passage.

  To their right, the water lapped gently at the shore, but they ignored it and strode purposefully towards the archway where the possessed ogre stood sentry. As they walked, Tarita overlaid their auras with the false daemonic aura and began channelling the hate-babble of Abraxas through her mind, while Ogre narrowed his eyes to hide their colour.

  The sentry stepped from the shadows to confront them, an axe-headed halberd held in giant arms. ‘Yes?’ it asked, a little uncertainly, as if they puzzled him.

  ‘I have something for the Master,’ Ogre boomed.

  Ten yards apart . . . eight yards . . . seven, six . . . five!

  Tarita struck, unleashing a net of mesmeric-gnosis that caught the guard’s gaze and blinded it, throwing his intellect into the snare she’d readied and deadening his senses. He stumbled as she locked into his head the image of the ramp and the water lapping at the shore, so it was all he could see.

  Got you.

  The sentry’s lumpen face emptied of
hostility and any other expression as it slumped against the wall, staring silently at the lake.

  Tarita slipped from Ogre’s back and grinned. ‘Done.’

  He puckered up. ‘Do I get another kiss?’

  ‘Don’t push your luck,’ she advised, sashaying through the archway and peering into the dark to make sure they really were alone. The tunnel extended out of sight.

  Ogre studied the sentry. ‘He and I could be brothers,’ he muttered in a morbid voice.

  Dirklan joined them. Waving a hand before the sentry’s blank face elicited no response. ‘We could have used you in the North,’ he told Tarita.

  ‘Of course – I’m the best,’ she replied. ‘This way.’ She pirouetted, pointing at the passage into the darkness. There were no torches and the rubble-strewn tunnel exuded a sour, rotting smell, but it had been guarded so there was something down there. ‘If I was an insanely powerful mage, I’d have a nicer house,’ she commented. ‘This place is a pigsty.’

  Ogre chuckled. ‘You are an insanely powerful mage – but you don’t have a house at all.’

  ‘True,’ she admitted.

  ‘Maybe you’re just the insane part?’

  They poked tongues and touched fists, then she led the way into the dark.

  Mount Fettelorn, Noros

  Waqar had to consider every single step, which was a labour in itself. He pulsed heat through his stave into the ice coating the slate, blasted it away and clambered up, all the while using kinesis to keep from having the winds rip him away. There was snow in his hair, ice in his nostrils and beard and every inch of exposed skin stung.

  He’d tried using Air-gnosis to fly from one outcropping to a higher one, but the gales smashed him hard against the cliff-face, all but dislocating his shoulder. After that he stuck to climbing. At times he caught a glimpse of the golden lantern, waiting above him like a beacon. It felt like he’d been struggling for hours, but surely it had only been a thousand feet or so above him when he started – he should have reached it by now . . .

  Glancing back down the sheer cliff, he could no longer see the bottom, just the endlessly swirling cloud – and a vast, hungry pit beneath his feet.

  He shuddered and turned his attention back to the task at hand: moving his feet, step by step. His senses were still in turmoil and the hand Gricoama bit was throbbing. At times the sleet looked like blurs of rainbow light and the mountain he was climbing looked more like an immense tree, like the one he’d glimpsed in Cuz Sarkan, he suddenly realised . . .

  Then suddenly, with no warning, he arrived. He had been crawling hand over fist up a steep chimney, the steps barely wide enough to take his toes and the ball of his feet, the staff more impediment than aid, but as he topped it, clinging on against the wind raking the outcropping, he found a small platform crudely hewn into the rock.

  The man with the lantern was standing in front of a cave. Torches lit a tunnel that curved out of sight into the mountain. His brown robes were as stained and weathered as his skin. His hair and beard were white and his eyes gleamed gold in the lamplight.

  ‘Prince Waqar,’ he called in a rough voice. ‘Sal’Ahm.’

  Waqar stumbled forward, staggering as the wind buffeted him, until he reached the lee of the mountain, and for the first time in – days? hours? – was able to stand upright and look around properly. The cave mouth was an arch, hacked into the stone, with four strange symbols carved into the apex.

  He focused on the lantern-bearer, who was solidly built, with no sign of wastage in his shoulders and a face like leather stretched over granite. Yurosi . . . old now, but he’s been a warrior.

  ‘Where are we?’ Waqar asked, speaking Rondian.

  ‘You don’t know?’ the man replied, clearly taken aback. ‘Then how are you here?’

  ‘A dog bit me,’ Waqar grumbled, holding out his left hand. ‘Well, a wolf.’

  The man looked amused. ‘At times the river finds the sea; other times the sea finds the river.’ He raised the lantern, indicating the tunnel. ‘She’s waiting.’

  ‘Who’s waiting?’ Waqar asked, a little exasperated.

  ‘Dameta.’ When Waqar still looked blank, the man said, ‘How do you not know this? Dameta was one of the four great dwymancers, with Amantius, Eloy and Lanthea. This is her refuge . . . or at least, a way to reach it.’

  Waqar remembered something Valdyr said on the way to Cuz Sarkan, when he’d asked how the Mollach prince knew where he was going: ‘I’m told the gnosis is logical, that this happens because of that. The dwyma is more like a dream, in which everything is connected if you follow the right thread.’ Follow your impulses was the lesson.

  No doubt the journey’s more important than the destination, or some other mystic rubbish, Waqar grumbled internally, but aloud he just asked, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Caedmor, her son. Please, enter quickly – someone pursues you.’

  Waqar blanched. Xoredh? Who else could it be? ‘Then we should hurry,’ he said.

  ‘The path leads to her: she’s waiting. My place is here.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’ll face,’ Waqar warned. ‘It’s my cousin, Xoredh – he’s daemon-possessed, as strong as an Ascendant and with access to every Study of the gnosis.’

  Caedmor nodded gravely and parted his robes: beneath, he was armoured in chainmail and leather, with a Rondian longsword strapped to his belt. ‘He doesn’t know what he faces either. In any case, I cannot follow you.’ He pointed to the symbols above the arch. ‘I’m bound here.’

  Holy Ahm – what is this? ‘Dameta bound you here? What kind of mother does that?’

  ‘The kind for whom purpose matters more than familial ties, Prince Waqar. I’m sure you know what I mean.’

  He thought of Sakita, his own mother, and of Rashid. ‘What kind of life is that?’ he mumbled in sympathy.

  ‘My life ended long ago,’ Caedmor said evenly. ‘Enter; no one else shall. The journey—’

  ‘Matters more than the destination?’ Waqar suggested wryly.

  Caedmor snorted. ‘Rukk off,’ he said gruffly, snuffing out the lantern. ‘And good luck.’

  The man’s grave demeanour told Waqar the matter was closed, so he inclined his head in thanks, took a lit torch from a wall-bracket and entered the tunnel.

  Within ten paces, the cave mouth had vanished. But the sound of the wind growing louder and louder was moaning with his sister’s voice.

  *

  Xoredh burst through the grasp of the wind, punching through the turbulence with arms extended, fists first, like an arrow shot into the dark. Snow and ice crusted his hands and face as he hunted that elusive golden lamp he’d glimpsed from below. It was no longer visible, but he was certain he had the spot fixed in his mind.

  There . . . there’s a flat place . . . and a crevice behind . . .

  He landed and leaped again, powered by kinesis and burning through energy at a rate that even he, fuelled by a daemon, couldn’t sustain for long. The frigid air was thick with snowflakes that looked like lace but were jagged as broken glass, but he tore through them until he slammed into a stone platform and landed with his scimitar out and his shields shimmering.

  A moment later a straight sword flashed out of the darkness; he parried by pure instinct – and was almost knocked from his feet and over the edge. Again and again the heavy steel hammered into his guard, then a boot augmented by kinesis slammed through his shields and propelled him off the precipice ten feet behind him. He was dashed against the cliff-face, his face crunched and teeth shattered as he bounced and fell into a crevice, breaking his left thigh when he landed awkwardly. Agony screamed through him and he convulsed and howled at the pitiless night.

  Then healing-gnosis bloomed in his body. He peeled himself off the ground and hauled his broken leg from the crack. He crawled until the bone had reknit enough that he could walk, then he found the steps and climbed. This time, he found a brown-robed man with a drawn sword at the top of the steps.

  By the
time he reached the ledge again, Xoredh was fully healed. He kindled gnosis-fire and blazed it at the man as he continued advancing purposefully across the space, but to his amazement, the mage-bolt dissipated to nothing and once again he found himself frantically parrying, darting aside from another vicious kick, then lashing out as an opening appeared—

  —and the longsword swept his scimitar aside and his foe’s left fist smashed his nose again. He staggered, barely parried a chop at his neck that would have ended everything, then took a boot in the ball-sack that hurled him off the cliff again. The wind smashed him into that same crevice, this time breaking his right shoulder, and his sword spun away.

  No—he gasped as pain racked his broken body. He pumped more healing energy in, crawled sobbing back to the steps and clung to them as he gritted his teeth, pulled his scimitar back to his hand from a cleft a hundred feet below and, when he was ready, rose again.

  Abraxas showed him memories of Ostevan unable to use the gnosis against someone actively channelling the dwyma . . . and Asiv Fariddan, on a peak in Mollachia, where a kind of fog prevented the daemonic from entering . . . until ichor poisoning opened the way.

  He used a sharpened fingernail to open a vein and ran blood and ichor into the gutter of his scimitar.

  Right, you matachod . . . let’s find out what you’ve really got.

  Rym

  Ogre glanced back at the archway and the mesmerised sentry leaning against the wall. From what he could tell, the passage had been bored through the rubble, then shored up. The rough-hewn ceiling dripped water, moss clung to every surface and the air smelled mouldy and dank. He followed Dirklan and Tarita forward with only the faintest mage-light to show the way, dread seeping back into his soul. This was his Master’s lair.

  After fifty yards, the tunnel turned a sharp right and ended in another archway and a locked door. Dirklan examined it, then announced, ‘There’s no way we can open that door quickly without whoever cast the ward knowing it’s been breached.’

  ‘Three magi and we’re held up by a locked door,’ Tarita grumbled.