by Katy Winter
CHAPTER FOUR
In the few moments granted him, before he was surrounded, attacked and rendered helpless in tight bonds, Quon had the time to realise that yet another species, considered neutralised aeons ago, had also surfaced on Shalah. And they did so in an appalling fashion. They struck dread into hearts of captives who rarely escaped their raking clutches. Quon, slung from a pole to be carried along, knew an unexpected and unwelcome flashback to a scene of battle from aeons ago.
It was the last and definitive battle to free Shalah from the dark shadows that had hung over her for so long recall of peaceful times had faded from memory. Only ages of atrocity, pain, and war were recalled.
That was so long since that Quon blinked. He felt himself back on the battle ground. He saw the columns of smoke, the opposing army reinforced by creatures from beyond Shalah; the waving plumes on soldiers' helmets; sunlight glinting on metal and weapons at the ready. He heard the ferocious yells as foes clashed, fought and died. He tasted blood when his face was slashed in passing. He heard screams and curses. He saw myriad corpses littering the ground, the carnage stretching beyond sight.
He was there - again. He knew he staggered, his staff raised to ward off a blow that would finish him, the runes on it blazing as the incantation on his torn lips screamed into the teeth of the wind. Spent, disoriented, facing defeat, he felt himself suddenly raised and supported.
He saw no one. He touched no one. There was no one near him, yet the sense of comfort and support clung obstinately to him and he knew he had to respond. The voice in his head was insistent and repetitive. It penetrated the fog that enveloped an exhausted mind. Absently, Quon noticed that blood flowed copiously down his cheek and spilled, in little spatters, onto his sleeve. Mechanically, he brushed at his face.
He looked up incuriously, his eyes expressionless, his face blank, to the gathering mass above him where the Anti-Spirit lords were drawn up behind Sh’Bane. Hellish minions were beside and behind them. The allies of Shalah lay dead. Shalah was at the mercy of those who fought for the Progenitor and would rule for him.
He stepped wearily forward. He watched as Sh’Bane, a sneer marring his oddly attractive face, dismounted and tossed his reins to one of his lords.
“Look about you, Maquat!” he invited.
“No,” whispered Quon.
“Look what you and the Maquats have done to your precious Shalah. Had you done the deal with me, none of this would have been necessary. Thousands would be alive today whereas those who follow you will curse your names.”
“Servitude to you and yours?” asked Quon, his bloodshot eyes meeting and holding with Sh’Bane's. “We had to try to stop you. We had no choice.”
“The folly of Salaphon!” mocked Sh’Bane. “Did you and yours seriously believe that the Progenitor could be defeated by such as yourselves? That suggests unwarranted vanity, Maquat.”
“It's not over,” croaked Quon.
“Almost,” agreed Sh’Bane. He signalled to his lords who ranged themselves around their master. His glance at Quon was still mocking. “Make the most of your last moments, Maquat, because you and Shalah are as doomed now as you were the instant the gates opened and we came through with the Master.” He curled his lips contemptuously. “Do you have anything more you wish to say before we strike you to your knees and destroy you and Salaphon entirely?”
“Only this!” gasped Quon, angered. “Come near me again, Sh’Bane, and you'll get no mercy, none whatsoever.”
Sh'Bane laughed. He raised one hand, while the other grasped Quon's hair so his neck was exposed to a lord's naked blade.
Quon came abruptly to the present. He was still trussed, but now he was tied to a stake as well. Beside him, Jepaul was being busily stripped. He had another vivid flashback, so strong he almost cried out.
Quon struggled and managed to plunge forward as a blade hissed by, the whistling sound gone in seconds. The grasp on his hair loosened. He plunged forward to where his staff had fallen. He raised it. He noticed it was covered with blood and was slippery. His grasp firmed on it. And then he called, with all his might.
“To me, Spirit Lords! To me! Salaphon!”
With unaccustomed strength and a resolve stiffened by hatred and the voice in his head, Quon, Maquat Dom Earth, on his knees with weakness, raised the heavy staff above his head. It flared yet again.
Beyond it, three other points of light broke through the darkness. All grew in strength. The lights searched one for the other until, with painful slowness, they met across the battlefield, their light illuminating a ghastly and grotesque scene. Quon didn't see the twisted bodies, the torn limbs, the bloodied unrecognisable faces, nor did he smell the stench that crept inexorably about all who survived. He brushed at insects that settled on him and on those lying about him.
His eyes on Sh’Bane, Quon got to his feet. He watched as Sh’Bane and his four lords melded into a blazing coalescence of power and hung, shimmering, several feet beyond and above him. They turned the sky red.
“You've lost the Fifth, haven't you?” hissed Sh’Bane from the redness. “You're nothing without her, nothing.”
As if in answer to his words and the union of four points of light, a fifth light, its brightness eclipsing all others, appeared next to Quon. He heard the snarl from Sh’Bane at the instant he knew they were attacked. The four points of light, a swirling mass of colour, steadied with the addition of the fifth light, silver, and the silver was dominant. They became a constant united stream that met what poured down onto them, battered time and again but always holding.
And the longer the light held, the stronger it got, until Quon sensed a vacuum open behind him that he dared not turn to look at. He felt the coldness envelop him. He recognised the feel of open gates, and knew the energy pouring from him was directed to keeping them open and pushing the red pulsing coalescence towards it.
He knew Sh’Bane resisted with everything he had. Quon was swung round so he was away from yawning, gaping gates, just as the redness was drawn towards them, against their will, fighting, the lightness always just slightly behind and to the left of them.
Quon didn't remember the four gates that closed, one after the other, but he did remember the last gate. It was there Sh’Bane and a silver-haired woman confronted each other, he and the other three thrown from the union and left gasping, on the ground, wherever they lay. There was no opposing army anywhere. Only Sh’Bane stood alone, proud, defiant and powerful. Islasahn looked small and defenceless, but she made no effort to move backwards.
Quon, detached and quite helpless, watched the play of the staffs as they clashed repeatedly, one against the other but never touching, runes flaring, words flung to and fro from man to woman. Quon saw Sh’Bane close with the woman. He wrested something from her, and at that Quon gave an inarticulate cry when he realised that the Anti-Spirit lord now held the last gate-key.
But even as Quon moaned, Islasahn struck her staff hard down on the stooping Sh’Bane. It caused him to give an agonised yell of rage and pain, drop the key as well as his staff, but swing round upon the woman and strike her hard with his fist. He did it with enough force to make her, in turn, drop her staff. Sh’Bane bent to retrieve both it and the key, but the woman managed to kick the staff so that it rested snugly against Sh’Bane's.
When the staffs weren't in opposition, they melted together. Sh’Bane, his hand down to the now one staff, gave a terrible scream that made Quon clasp his head in his hands. Sh’Bane, his hand seared through, dropped the staff. It separated immediately. Sh’Bane picked up his own and stepped back closer to the last gate. The woman grabbed her staff. She advanced, her arms raised and her voice, light and soft, floating on the air. Sh’Bane tried to counter her. At the very gate, he flung out his good hand, dropped the key, and grasped at Islasahn as she stood there, at the edge of an abyss. He drew her close.
Quon struggled to his feet to scream a warning. Silver light began to flow in
disordered patterns. Only Quon saw Islasahn flung forward. Only he heard her dying cries as her silver light was lost by the closing gate. Then he saw the shaft of extraordinary light show the stairs, the closed gates, and the last gate, Sh’Bane's, tight shut, before it was extinguished. Only the very faintest sliver of silver clung to the gate itself.
Quon knew only agonising pain of loss, the fifth elemental a part of his identity and existence. He felt the terrible anguish of the others wash over him at the same instant. Hours later, when he could think again and was able to crawl weakly to his hands and knees, he found no trace of the staff, even though he searched for a very long time. He only found the key.
He gave a choked gasp, then realised he was back in the present and had something stuffed in his mouth to suppress any outcry. He saw that Jepaul, naked and trussed up like an animal ready for cooking, hung on a pole beside him, the boy's eyes wild with terror and claw marks all over his body.
Knellen rode in a leisurely way from Thay with packages that festooned his horses and tried to burst out of stuffed saddlebags. The Varen felt justly proud of himself because he'd bought enough kit to keep the boy properly clothed for all seasons for at least two, if not three, syns. There were at least six pairs of boots alone, let alone an assemblage of other garments that included thick cloaks for both men and boy, imperative warm clothing for the coming cold months that would try them all, plus enough gear to keep them all comfortably able to camp.
It was just after sundown that the Varen stopped warily, dismounted and studied the ground. It showed signs of a scuffle and what looked like multiple pairs of footprints. Of Jepaul and Quon there was no sign. The Varen sniffed the air and smelled danger. His companions should have been right where he now stood, the reins of his horse held loosely in one hand and the leading reins of the other mounts clasped in the other. Slowly Knellen carefully tethered the horses, then began a circuit round the immediate area, his nose still working while he tried to pin what it was about the smell that bothered him.
On his third circuit, he found himself opposite a small clearing he'd missed the first time. And it was there that he saw Quon and Jepaul, the pair dishevelled and trussed, and carelessly laid against the bole of a tree. Knellen made no attempt to approach. He wanted to know who had made them prisoners.
The boy looked quite battered, his face white and Quon's bloodied, and clearly they couldn't move an inch because their bonds looked excruciatingly tight and unyielding. A kind of cord kept them still and their stuffed mouths kept them silent. Quon lay with closed eyes, but Knellen saw Jepaul's eyes were wide with unmitigated terror.
Then the Varen saw the captors. He almost cried out. These particular zealots were outlawed on Shalah from long ago. They weren’t thought to exist here as minions of the Progenitor because they were supposed to have been sent back through the gates to the abyss where they belonged. He thought they were the stuff of horror myths and nightmares. They were merciless destroyers of all those who didn't participate in their rituals and beliefs, their way of making their sacrificial victims meet their ends singularly cruel.
They were all male, their yellowish tinged bodies bloated, their red eyes small and unblinking. They were shorter than Quon and Knellen, but unattractively squat with bulging muscles that made them extremely strong and formidable foes. They were completely hairless. Their forked tongues flicked in and out at speed, while their multiple hands could do incalculable damage to any they trapped or caught unawares. The nail at the end of each finger was honed to a point that inflicted maximum damage. Clearly Quon had already received a dose of nails already, judging by his face that showed deep scratches and gouges.
The Varen stared intently about him. He was staggered that these creatures would attack in broad daylight since they relied mostly on smell, their eyesight was limited, and they invariably hunted in packs in the early evening or at first light. That they blatantly tripped abroad and with confidence at this time of day suggested the natural order of things on Shalah was seriously upset.
Knellen decided one of the prisoners was soon to be sacrificed. A small area of ground had been marked and pegged out. Cutting and disembowelling instruments lay close by and ties were being regularly placed about the marked area next to the pegs. Knellen then became aware Jepaul was naked and the boy's hair swept back. He wondered what that particular sign was and felt queasy. He was one Varen. There were at least ten of the Cefors, Quon looked incapable of helping himself let alone anyone else, and the boy was too scared witless to be any use either. Knellen uttered a faint sigh.
It was then he saw three Cefors approach Jepaul who was unslung from a pole and laid flat on the ground. They knelt beside him and very methodically began to cut off the boy's hair, as close to the scalp as they could shave. Then the Varen remembered that the cult found any body hair an offence so they carefully removed all traces of it from any they intended to sacrifice and then invite others to feast upon.
Jepaul was being dealt with in the traditional and typically ritualistic fashion. He was rolled onto his stomach so all hair could be removed from the back of his head and neck, but the way they did this made Knellen's body shudder with revulsion. They began to pluck the boy as if he was simply a furred animal and already dead meat. Knellen saw the boy's body arch then fall back. Convulsions wracked the thin figure.
Knellen moved cautiously forward, knife drawn. He was suddenly aware that as soon as he took his first step, Quon's eyes snapped intelligently open and met his with so much meaning in those old eyes the Varen nearly stopped dead in his tracks. Quon wasn't beaten and useless - quite the reverse. Obviously he'd been waiting for just such a signal from Knellen. The Varen saw Quon straighten, snap his bonds as if they were nothing and rise with awesome alacrity for such an old man.
Knellen took the hint. He launched himself across the clearing at the Cefors who busily plucked at Jepaul. Part of the ritual was frenzy brought on by the inevitable bleeding, so the three were caught completely unawares by the Varen as he propelled himself at them. He swept down on them so fast they fell backwards, fingers vainly clawing at air as Knellen swooped on Jepaul and plucked him free. Mentally, he thanked the Cefors' gods that the boy wasn't yet confined by ties to the ground.
In one movement, the boy was swung in an arc that saw him go through the air and come to rest in Quon's outstretched arms. Quon staggered. He held his balance and managed, despite the howls of fury from the other Cefors, to get in a position where he could be protected by the Varen. Knellen stood tall and threatening, his long knife cutting a menacing swathe in front of him. His stance was stolid and uncompromising. While the Varen fielded enraged Cefors, who were half-drunk from earlier celebratory revels and therefore nowhere near as able to attack as usual, Quon quickly unbound Jepaul. He tried to cover the shivering, shocked boy with his long cloak.
Surreptitiously he backed, conscious that Knellen kept pace with him, while the Cefors stumbled over themselves to get at him. Their vicious nails raked him hard where they made contact. The Varen made no sound. He just clenched his teeth and kept an eye on each and every surging, hopping Cefor. Quon stumbled and cursed. Then he nearly died when he heard a voice close by that urged him to hurry.