Mother of Daemons

by David Hair

  Dirklan smiled wryly. ‘I feel your frustration. I’m sure I could pick it undetected, but it would take an hour or so.’

  ‘Do we have an hour?’ Tarita wondered.

  ‘Who knows? It’s either that or we go back and look for another way in – or we break through and sacrifice stealth for speed from here on.’

  ‘Any other entrance is going to be the same,’ Tarita pointed out, ‘and probably better guarded.’

  Ogre raised the mask and placed it onto his face. He was immediately assailed by a cacophony of exultant hissings and snarling, so triumphal it was nauseating to experience. And Naxius’ dry voice was still in full declamatory mode: ‘. . . only true regret is that so few will comprehend what I’ve done sufficiently to realise my genius . . .’

  Ogre ripped the mask from his face, shuddering. ‘Something is happening: the daemon is agitated, very excited . . . and the Master is speaking of the end of all things. We must act.’

  ‘Then it’s decided,’ Dirklan said. ‘This doorway feels to me like a side entrance to an old Rimoni palace complex. They were built like legion camps, always much the same layout. I think Naxius has collapsed the upper levels to conceal it – even though he’s not had to worry about imperial patrols since the Rimoni governor lost control of this region, he’ll still have feared the Ordo Costruo or the Merozains finding him, hence his continued secrecy. So this complex won’t be huge and it won’t be heavily manned: his safety required secrecy more than force of arms. So we do have a chance, even with just three of us. I’ll get the door open. Tarita goes through first and after that we’re improvising – fast.’

  They clasped hands, then looked to their weapons.

  Shyly, Ogre turned to Tarita. Her narrow face was set, but there was a question in her eyes when she faced him.

  Rukk it, he thought, clasped her head gently and pulled her face to his and kissed her properly, as he’d only ever kissed one other. But this was nothing like kissing Semakha.

  When he pulled away, Tarita was still frozen in place. Ogre felt both exhilarated and emptied, but she remained unreadable as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and said, ‘Mind on the job, Big Man.’

  Then she gave him a little wink. ‘We’ll talk later.’

  I can die now, he thought, soaring inside.

  Dirklan was looking at them with a hint of amusement. ‘Hobokin and Glymahart,’ he remarked.

  Ogre knew the tale and the comparison didn’t entirely displease him, although the sad ending did. I don’t care what you think, he decided. I tried, even if her heart didn’t melt. I didn’t conceal my feelings, nor hide from them.

  ‘Are we ready?’ Dirklan asked drily as he removed his left eye-patch, revealing a faceted crystal set in the scarred socket. It kindled with a pale, menacing light. ‘Then let’s go.’

  The spymaster went to the door, touched the handle and slowly, deftly, began working the gnostic lock. Ogre, following it with a mage’s eye, admired his sure touch as he dismantled the strong ward with speed and skill – but its caster would surely sense it happening. The spymaster laid one hand on the handle and held up a finger. Then a second . . . when he lifted the third, he whispered, ‘Now—’

  He yanked the door aside, Tarita darted through, swinging her blade and a dark shape crumpled, black ichor spurting. A goat-head bounced wetly and rolled aside.

  Ogre saw another goat-man on the other side of the door and crashed his axe down on the horned skull, cleaving through the crown into the brain and it too dropped like a stone.

  There were two more running towards them from the corridor to the left. Tarita tore forward, lancing blue fire at them, Ogre pounding after her, terrified she’d leave him behind. Her bolts cut them down like blades of grass, but two more erupted from a side door.

  ‘Merozain,’ one snarled, then, ‘Ogre.’

  Crunch. His axe sliced straight through a raised arm and the neck behind. The other construct staggered, then fell as Tarita’s blade cut him in two. Ogre threw a glance over his shoulder and saw Dirklan hurrying after them.

  ‘Come on,’ Tarita whooped, her face taut and eyes blazing.

  They reached a T-junction and a possessed mage-woman with a leprous face appeared from the left. There was a brief exchange of mage-fire until the Merozain unleashed fully, immolating the mage-woman’s skull.

  Dirklan pointed to the right. ‘The central courtyard should be that way.’

  This time Ogre took the lead and saw the courtyard ahead, just as Dirklan had described it: a mossy, flag-stoned expanse open to the skies. He glimpsed movement, but there was no shouting, no alarm bells – such things were unnecessary when the defenders were mentally linked. A pair of emaciated men emerged from a door, but he’d cut the first in half before he’d fully registered their presence, while an argenstael stiletto flew from Dirklan’s hand and the second fell, a cloud of ash bursting from his eyes and mouth.

  In the centre of the huge square courtyard was a broken fountain, long since run dry, guarded by a statue of a Rimoni sea-god. Doors and corridors led off in all directions.

  Ogre listened to the daemon voices and threw out a hand. ‘This way,’ he shouted, just as a possessed goat-man emerged with a crossbow right in front of him. A blast of kinesis sent the construct spinning and the bolt flew wide, then he buried his axe in the dazed creature’s skull.

  Onwards.

  Now there were more of Naxius’ minions appearing from all over; he could sense Dirklan and Tarita firing mage-bolts backwards as they dashed along the shadowy corridors. At the next junction he found stairs and stormed up them, hurling a possessed guardsman off the landing at the top into an empty space – he glanced over the rail. It was a three-storey fall.

  Ogre didn’t wait to see the construct as it crunched silently into jagged stone and lay broken; he stormed onwards, found an unlocked door and burst it open.

  The crash echoed around a dark space – then gnostic lamps flared and Ogre came to an abrupt halt, gaping around the room.

  ‘By every god,’ Dirklan breathed behind him, staring.

  The circular chamber was a hundred feet in diameter, descending in a dozen tiers to a central circle, the whole a good forty feet across. Arrayed around it on each of the dozen tiers were dozens of stone slabs, and on every one lay a construct, part human, part monster from Yurosi or Ahmedhassan myth.

  Ogre, overawed, thought, This is how I came into the world.

  He saw dozens of his kindred lying amid rows of the horrific and the lovely: slender alvarai from the Northern tales lying beside swamp-beasts of Ventian folklore, lamiae and draken-men, and so many others, all slumbering . . . or lying in wait. There was one nearby who looked exactly as Semakha had when she was new-born and innocent.

  ‘Vessels,’ he guessed aloud, ‘made for daemon souls.’

  ‘Do we . . .?’ Tarita asked, kindling fire in her left hand.

  ‘No,’ Ogre protested, ‘there’s no time . . . and—’

  ‘Ogre’s right,’ Dirklan interrupted, ‘there’s no time. Which way?’

  Tarita peered through the door behind them, shielded a bolt, then slammed the barrier shut and warded it. ‘There’s only onwards,’ she drawled, pointing across the chamber. ‘Let’s go.’

  She hurried past Ogre, though she flashed him a sympathetic look. ‘Come on. We can deal with this later.’

  They took the opposite door, crossed an empty lecture hall beneath a glass dome through which they could see swirling darkness, as if the night sky were being sucked into a tornado . . . that was held in the bower of a great tree.

  Ogre’s heart thumped, as he realised what it meant. ‘It’s begun . . .’ he said weakly.

  ‘Are we too late?’ Dirklan breathed.

  Even Tarita froze.

  Words from the Book of Kore filled Ogre’s head.

  The sky shall fray like a veil torn aside, and the door between Life and Unlife shall be cast open. The belly of Glamortha, the betraying angel, shall swe
ll up with the seed of Lucian, then give birth to the living darkness. Daemons shall she beget, thousands upon thousands, and the torment of those sinners left behind on Urte shall never end . . .

  Ogre cast about, seeking some way to intervene, but this was just a scryed image. Wherever this was truly happening was somewhere else beyond their reach. We should have gone with Lyra and Valdyr, he realised. Only they can stop this . . .

  *

  Having summoned the fog themselves didn’t make it any easier to dissipate it, but it helped hide them, so Lyra and Valdyr let it be. As night fell and the moon rose, the ghostly glow made every direction seem the same, but they clung to the lakeside, clambering their way westwards, towards the pull of the dwyma. Gricoama was somewhere ahead of them, at one with the mist.

  They heard a sudden clatter behind them and darted into cover, just in time to avoid a party of twenty goat-headed men, armed and armoured, thudding past, their cloven hooves pounding the broken paving. They were heading the way Dirklan’s party had gone and didn’t notice their footprints in the dust. Moments later another cohort thudded by.

  The others have been discovered, Lyra thought. Father . . .

  But they’d made their choices.

  When all was quiet again, she and Valdyr cautiously slipped from their hiding place, sharing an anxious look, then hurried on. They could feel the pull of the dwyma ahead strongly now.

  Aradea, Lyra whispered, are you here?

  Nothing responded. For several days now, her grip on the dwyma had felt unexpectedly frail and she’d dreamed one night of her garden, burned out and ravaged – but however depressing that thought, her garden was just a focal point. She’d grown beyond being able to function as a dwymancer only in that one place.

  Suddenly the land ran out and water was hemming them in on both sides. Gricoama was waiting for them on the low promontory, growling softly at the fog ahead. Valdyr laid a hand on the wolf’s shoulder as the mist swirled and the lake lapped at the dirty shore, streaked in greenish slime.

  Sharing a fearful look, they advanced into the murk, sensing what was distressing Gricoama: a dark shape growing in the mist as they approached.

  Lyra stared. A brackenberry—

  But this one was full grown, twisted and bare, the branches contorting around a dark shape within the branches. Even as they registered that, it changed, and something like the great Elétfa was towering over them – but this wasn’t the Elétfa Lyra and Valdyr knew: this one was a shadow version made of darkness. They stood at its feet staring up the towering trunk to the branches that covered the heavens.

  Jehana was held in the upper branches of the shadow Tree of Life, visible even though she was far, far above them: a naked giantess with bone-white hair. Her right hand was extended, palm upwards. Above her was a vaguely human form of gleaming ebony, drifting down onto her, and as they watched, they merged, her light flowing into his darkness, his shadow flowing into Jehana’s hand and up her arm.

  Dear Kore, Lyra thought, Glamortha and Lucian? It really is the Last Day.

  *

  ‘Today,’ Ervyn Naxius told the empty lecture chamber, ‘is the Last Day, foretold and now brought to be by me – so I ask you: on what level am I not a god?”

  He let the silence digest that, imagining the way an audience would stir, struck by his perception and genius, and then begin to applaud, hammering feet on the floor or clapping hands together. He could picture the open mouths, the widened eyes, the amazed rapture.

  Yes, yes, I have achieved this.

  ‘Even as I speak, she succumbs,’ he told the emptiness. ‘Thinking herself the mistress of her own destiny, she twists and turns in the silken web, not knowing that everything she does is according to my will. She hears the knock and she opens and lets in the spider. See the mandibles I forged, dripping with venom; marvel at the tensile strength of the silken snare I wrought: this is my triumph . . .’

  His imagined audience was captivated: astounded.

  ‘Like the pyramids of ancient Gatioch, stones are piled on stones and beings upon beings, each resting on their lessers. Mine is the apex stone: I am the Master of the Future: the Master of Creation. As the world ruptures and the daemons rush in, all humankind will be possessed; each daemon subsuming thousands of men and all subject to a master daemon, who is in turn subject to a daemon prince: and all of that breed will be subject to me.’

  It’s so close now, he thought, trembling a little. ‘In the branches of the dwyma tree that I grew,’ he told the room, ‘the very fabric of Creation is being unpicked: I will be the one who re-stitches it.’

  He paused dramatically and turned to the stage, where he conjured an image of Jehana Mubarak unknowingly surrendering herself to Lucian. She was floating on her back, her white hair spread around, her skull mask shifting as her expression changed from fear to wonder. Above her, the darkness became a darkly beautiful man, falling through the heavens to take her like an offering.

  Their hands moved together, then through each other. The daemon’s hand went straight to her left breast, even as her hand went to his. She convulsed as if struck and her eyes flew open . . .

  Yes, Naxius breathed, yes . . .

  It was happening just as he’d intended – just as he’d written.

  . . . and Glamortha, the Angel of Death, shall lie down with Lucian and beget the Age of Daemons . . .

  The aether was silent, the voices of the daemons stilled, all their attention upon the slow melding of their ruler with his offered consort: the union of life and death.

  Open her up, Naxius urged him, make of her a passage from the aether into this world: begin the End.

  His own preparations were all done: he had Lucian’s ichor in his veins and through that he would control every daemon the moment they entered this world.

  Mine will be the kingdom . . .

  ‘Let him in, Jehana Mubarak,’ he whispered. ‘Let him in.’

  The shadow descended on the floating girl and engulfed her . . .

  Then something below the great tree caught his eye and he shifted the focus of the conjured image . . . and saw Valdyr Sarkany and Lyra Vereinen beneath the tree he’d grown, on the peninsula just a mile away, their faces wide-eyed with fear and wonder.

  And at the same time Abraxas whispered, Intruders, in the western wing.

  They can’t stop this, Naxius thought coolly. They’re already too late. Speaking directly into the mind of Lucian, he whispered,

  Then he strode from the empty chamber, blazing a call into every one of the construct daemons that guarded his hidden lair:

  *

  To Jehana, it was like falling into a sea of cold stars and liquid darkness. There was no gravity, no sense of up or down, just her and him as she fell through Lucian’s skin, penetrating him as he penetrated her, her senses awash with millions of fragmentary lives all bound together. It was horribly fascinating – but the dread of losing her own identity kept her from plunging her awareness into this sea of lives as Lucien showed her endless images of sublime beauty and pleasure purloined from countless thousands of souls.

  He’s no different to Abraxas or any of the others, she realised: he’s another swallower of lives, just better at it. That silenced any remaining shred of doubt and stiffened her resolve.

  From the moment she’d awakened in Naxius’ grasp, she’d been seeking a way out, but she’d finally realised there would be only one chance, at only one moment, when she might just be powerful enough: here inside the dwyma.

  Now, as Lucian flooded her, flowing into her, around her, over her and inside her, she shrank ever more into herself, seeking in the darkness for a way to gain control.

  But the Prince of Daemons struck before she was ready—

  What had been a merging became a forcing as his spirit-body changed from a man to a tentacled horror, dozens of appendages erupting from his body to grip hers, lashing her arms and legs, forcing them wide, as his now be
stial face loomed over her. A black, spiky tongue shoved into her mouth as below, something equally hideous tore her womanhood open and the snarling daemon rammed itself inside her, his eyes alight with triumphant lust – and inside those eyes she saw Naxius, gloating.

  About them, a dark typhoon began spinning madly above her. The tail descended, a tendril of midnight reaching down, striking Lucian’s heaving back, piercing him – and flowing through him and into her, tearing her open—

  Jehana was choking, her throat blocked by a monstrous tentacle distending from Lucian’s fanged maw, and all was agony. She panicked, thrashing helpless beneath him as the daemon lord filled her; the only respite was the growing sensation of icy numbness spreading from her loins as his seed spread. He was so hideous, so horrifying that her mind froze, her sense of self frayed and dissipated . . .

  You are the gateway through which my kind will enter this world, Lucian crowed into her skull.

  If emotion were a weapon, she would have lashed out with hate, but emotion was no weapon, even here, and even as she screamed vengeance, he drove himself deeper inside, laughing all the while . . .

  She didn’t think anything could get worse, until he became a serpent and flowed into her belly. It distended sickeningly as he vanished inside and she stared aghast, seeing it was filled with swirling, gnat-like shapes: every daemon in reach, pouring into her ballooning stomach, and then her ribs spread out, and her breasts became engorged, as something forced its way up her throat, pushing blood and spittle before it as her mouth convulsed open—

  —and a torrent of darkness like a million insects erupted from her mouth, and into Urte.

  Naxius cried aloud in triumph, ‘Done – it is done!’

  Mount Fettelorn, Noros

  The old man is a riddle I must solve, Xoredh realised, once again hammering away with fire and blade, only to be continually parried, evaded and then smashed backwards. Teetering on the edge of another fall, he managed to twist away from a deadly sweep of the man’s blade – but his riposte was immediately, impossibly parried, the old man flashed back a dozen steps in a heartbeat, spinning his blade, and took guard again. He couldn’t get anywhere near him and the ichor he’d pasted to the blade spattered away harmlessly.