Maggot’s Eve had come and gone five nights since. She hoped Hagath had waited for her, though it was a faint hope at best. Too many meetings had been missed these past years; news wasn’t travelling as it should. Now, more than ever, it was important the Communion be maintained, but she feared the druids’ habitual solitude would be their undoing. Every year, there were fewer of them. Everywhere she went, temples were left to ruin and sacred sites abandoned. It was rare to encounter fresh druidsign, and when she did it spoke of ill things, of restless, angry spirits and turmoil in the Shadowlands. The Primus grew in strength as the Aspects waned, yet still her gods were silent. The elders had to act; a Conclave must be called. But she’d heard nothing.
Perhaps Hagath would have news to cheer her. At the least, he’d have left druidsign to indicate his next destination, so Vika could catch him up. She was in sore need of company and hope.
But hope crumbled to ashes in her breast as she reached the rise where Ruck waited, and saw what lay beyond.
Before her lay a wide hollow, a dent in the hilltop flanked by steep rising slopes and backed by a cliff. She stood at its eastern edge, with the rolling hills behind her and the long shadows of dusk upon them. The sun, weak and low amid thin layered clouds of gold and blood, was just visible above the cliff. Warm light glowed along the rim, but the hollow lay in a summer twilight.
It was called the Dirracombe – Hirn-Annwn in the tongue of the druids – and it was said that the first humans, descended from the giants of old, paid fealty to the Nine here in thanks for seeing them through the Long Ice to the spring. They raised ten great stones in worship: one for the Creator, and one for each of the pieces into which he broke himself when he birthed the universe. The Nine Aspects: each an individual yet each a part of the same being, nine sides of the same unknowable god.
Those stones had stood through the mysterious millennia before written history, which men called the Age of Legends. They’d endured the rise and fall of empires, keeping silent watch as the land suffered cataclysm and barbarity, and emerged from the ruins forged anew. But they didn’t stand now. After more lifetimes than Vika could imagine, the ten pillars lay toppled.
Ruck whined at her side as she stared, horrified. When she’d last visited, three years ago, the pillars stood proud and grim along the shore of a kidney-shaped tarn, a small mountain lake like a mirror turned to the sky. The tallest, carved for the Creator, had stood in the lake itself. Its shadow reached across the water every dawn, touching each Aspect in turn as the year ran its course, like a giant sundial.
Now that pillar was a broken stump, poking from water grown thick with weeds. The other Aspects lay in pieces, shattered where they fell, hidden among the heather, bramble and vine that sprouted unchecked around them.
Three short years, and the Dirracombe had fallen. Nobody tended it now; no pilgrims came any more. It was already being reclaimed by the earth.
How had she not heard of this outrage?
Dazed, she walked into the hollow, Ruck trotting uncertainly at her side. The pillars had been weathered by the years, and the gods were mere bumps and grooves hinting at form. Yet there was still a sense of them, their presence heavy in the air. There was half of a snarling face that had to belong to the Despoiler, Azra, Aspect of War. Nearby was the voluptuous earth mother, stone-skinned Meshuk, Aspect of Earth and Fire. They’d existed so long, she’d thought them eternal. Now she was no longer sure.
How could you let this happen? she asked the Aspects. Why did you allow it?
But the Aspects, as ever, kept their own counsel.
She scanned the hollow for signs of Hagath, but if he’d been here, he hadn’t lingered. Ruck sniffed at something in the grass, raised her head and gave a sharp bark. Vika drifted over, still stunned by the force of the blasphemy surrounding her. She knelt down and picked up the coin Ruck had found in the dirt.
It was a Krodan guilder. On one side was a vertical sword laid across an open book. On the other, the likeness of the Emperor in profile. She scraped the dirt from the Emperor’s face with one cracked thumbnail and looked down at him. It was proof enough for her, if proof were needed. The stones had been pulled down, destroyed with forethought and purpose, at the order of the Sanctorum.
They are erasing us, she thought.
She dropped the coin and walked to the shore of the tarn. It was summer, and warm even in the shade cast by the cliff, but she pulled her cloak about her nevertheless. Ruck hung back, sensing her mood, as she looked down into the water. A painted face returned her haunted gaze.
It’s true, then, what the Apostates said. Our gods have abandoned us. This land is forsaken.
The fire crackled and snapped at the edge of the tarn, its flames reflected in the black water. Vika sat cross-legged before it, eyes closed, Ruck slumbering nearby. On the ground near the fire was a small black pot from which wisps of steam arose. Night had fallen beyond the circle of light and the sky was sprayed with stars.
She had been still for an hour or more before a rat grew bold enough to investigate her. It slipped along the water’s edge, sniffing the air, drawn by the intriguing smells from the pot. Keeping the fire between itself and the wolfhound, whom it recognised as an enemy, it scurried through the dark and into the shadow of Vika’s knee.
Her hand shot out and she snatched it up by its throat. Lifting it quickly, she held it before her eyes, its paws scratching the air.
‘Thank you, little one,’ she said, and broke its neck with one quick twist.
Ruck raised her head and watched with mild interest as Vika slit the rat’s throat with her knife and drained its blood into the pot. As it trickled out, she muttered prayers of gratitude to Ogg, Aspect of Beasts, and paid her respects to the little animal that had given the gift of its life. When there was no more blood to be had, she tossed the body to Ruck, pulled back her sleeve and drew the edge of her blade along her skin, among dozens of old scars. She let a few drops of her blood run into the pot, then wrapped a rag around the cut.
Swirling the pot to mix it, she bowed her head and murmured ancient words in Stonespeak before drinking the bitter, salty draught. That done, she settled herself again, cross-legged, eyes closed. Ruck snorted, crunched down her rat and fell asleep.
Who is here? Vika asked in her mind.
She’d searched the site for druidsign but found none. Hagath hadn’t been here, and it was too much to hope that he’d also been delayed. Hagath was the most reliable of her contacts. That left two possibilities: he was dead, or he’d been arrested, which amounted to the same thing. Hagath was lost, like so many of her brothers and sisters in faith. One more broken link in the faltering Communion.
She couldn’t keep on like this. She couldn’t stand idly by and watch the sacred places fall into ruin, her gods driven into myth. So she’d ask for guidance, the best way she knew how. She’d call on the spirits of this place, which had once been mighty, and see what wisdom they could offer.
The concoction seeped through her body, from her belly to her fingertips and teeth, through muscle and nerve, loosening her wherever it went. There was an acrid taste of metal in her mouth and a burning in her gut as her senses sharpened. She smelled Ruck strongly, the musky aliveness of her. Her sleeping sighs were loud in Vika’s ears. From the lake came the odour of weedy rot, and the dry-hot scent of burning wood drifted from the grumbling fire.
Soon she began to feel jittery, and her joints started to ache as the poisons in the drink made themselves felt. She opened her eyes, stood and looked up to the sky.
Above the hollow, Sabastra’s Ribbon was a faint, curling cloud of red and yellow, the only colour in the blackness. She took a breath, sucking the darkness into her lungs like water, and wobbled as she lost her balance. The stars wheeled overhead, blurring as they spun. She threw out her arms to stabilise herself. The concoction was powerful stuff, powerful enough to kill someone who hadn’t spent years developing their resistance to its toxins. Once steady, she looked up to the sk
y once more, trying to recapture her calm.
But the stars were not where they’d been.
She frowned. Sabastra’s Ribbon had been overhead a moment ago, but now it was some way to the south. New constellations had moved into view; the Gull was all but gone and the Fox had taken its place on the eastern horizon. The Sisters had appeared at half-moon, Tantera cracked and massive, pale Lyssa peering out from behind her.
A moment ago, it had been summer. Now she stood beneath autumn stars.
So it had begun. The spirits were guiding her. But what did it mean?
Something moved at the edge of her vision, a curling wisp of light, as if a tongue of flame had escaped the fire and was being blown around the broken pillars. She turned, but it was lost among the tumbled stones and thick grass.
Intrigued, she set off to investigate. As she went, she passed before a fragment of a god’s face, lying on its side. The shadows shifted in the pit of its sunken eye, as if it had moved to follow her, and she felt a faint tingle, the presence of a stirring spirit.
Show yourself.
The fallen pillars formed a maze of shattered blocks taller than she was. She hunted through the sedge and bracken between the Aspects. Again and again she glimpsed the light at the edge of her vision and allowed it to lead her on, but at last she lost sight of it and came to a stop. She searched the hollow uncertainly, afraid that she’d missed whatever message had been offered. Suddenly she heard something move.
Behind me.
She whirled with a gasp, the charms in her hair and clothes clacking together, and her face was lit up by the figure standing there. It was a tall being of flurrying brightness, sparkling and shifting like sunlight on disturbed water. In its hand was a sword which burned fierce enough to blind. She shaded her eyes.
‘What message do you have for me?’ she cried.
The figure didn’t speak, or move, or acknowledge her, but it emanated strength, and she knew in the way of visions that it was an ally. A champion of the land.
‘Are you come from the Aspects? Have they answered the prayers of their people at last?’
The champion gave her no reply, so she narrowed her eyes and peered closer. Beneath the glimmering, turning light she could see a hint of a face. If only she could make it out, she’d know the nature of this herald. Tentatively, she extended a hand as if to touch its cheek, to feel its features like a blind woman.
The instant her fingertips touched it, it vanished like a blown-out candle and something thumped to the earth at her feet.
She blinked, surprised. Her night vision was ruined, so she knelt down and patted in the dark grass until her hands closed around what had fallen. It was cool, smooth and sharp. The sword, surely.
Yet when she stood and lifted it from the grass, it was nothing more than a crooked branch.
She frowned at it in puzzlement. The bright figure was gone, and the hollow had become chilly, the starlight steely and cold. She chewed at her lower lip and scanned her surroundings, searching for another sign. What were the spirits trying to tell her?
She looked down again and found she was no longer holding a branch, but an oozing rod of bone and gristle, the long, scrawny forelimb of some creature she didn’t recognise. With a cry of disgust, she cast it away, and as it fell it became a black snake that slithered off through the grass. She jumped back instinctively; her boots caught in the undergrowth and sent her staggering. Seeking balance, her hand touched the stone face of snarling Azra, which lay broken in half. Her palm came away red and wet. Blood was welling from the cracks and splits, spilling along the rough channels of his features.
She stared at her hand, horrified. This was no dream-vision of guidance. The spirits were angry; she felt the dark weight of it. Events were tipping out of her control.
Movement, between the stones. She spun and spotted a blurred black figure a moment before it slipped out of sight. With a pang of terror, she saw several similar figures surrounding her. They stood still, unmoving, and yet they slid out of view whenever she tried to get a good look at them, moving sideways as if pulled on tracks. Each time one of them disappeared, the next appeared closer.
She began to panic. She’d bridged the Divide and invited the spirits through, but only some came from the Shadowlands offering knowledge. Others meant to do her harm, eager to avenge their sacred place, to take out their fury on anyone they could find. She didn’t know who these strangers were, but instinct told her she should fear them. All her charms and tricks fell from her mind, and she ran.
The glowering faces of defiled gods loomed in the moonlight as she passed them, her patchwork cloak flapping around her. Her only chance was to get beyond the boundaries of the Dirracombe and hope they wouldn’t pursue. But no matter how fast she ran, the figures were faster, and closing in.
One rose up from the darkness in front of her.
She stumbled to a halt, head buzzing, mouth dry. It was cloaked in black and wore strange armour made from material like a beetle’s carapace. Its face was corpse-pale and it had no lips, only a grotesque rictus of exposed gums and fangs. Across its eyes was a band of black iron.
She spun, seeking escape, but she was surrounded. Six of them pressed close, each a fresh vision of dread. One wore a net of tiny chains across its gaunt face, hooks planted in its eyelids, stretching them wide to expose the black, glistening orbs beneath. Another’s face had been skinned below the ridge of its cheekbones, the muscle and bone of its jaw opened out like mandibles. Yet another had forearms and fingers that had been split open and doubled in length by some diabolical surgery, which waved restlessly in the air before it. They were like the experiments of some ghoulish chimericist.
The one with the visor of black iron seized her and clamped a cold hand over her eyes. A scream tore from her as everything went dark.
Then it showed her what it had come here to show.
Dawn found her wrapped in her cloak, staring into the fire as she drank a bowl of soup. She hadn’t slept; it would have been impossible even if she had tried. The horrors of what she had seen were too fresh. She didn’t understand all that the spirit had imparted, but she knew it couldn’t be ignored. She needed wise counsel, and there was only one person to go to for that.
By morning she was on her way again, the ruin of the Dirracombe behind her and Ruck trotting at her side. She had her pack on her back, her staff in her hand and, for the first time in many years, a clear purpose.
12
Aren’s pickaxe struck sparks as he worked, brief splinters of light that scattered and died. He swung, drew back and swung again in a steady rhythm. Not so fast that he’d kill himself with exertion, not so slow that he’d feel the guard’s club for it. The fog of exhaustion lay thick on him, dulling the edge of his senses; his back ached and his leaden arms throbbed at the joints. He kept on going regardless, driven by the knowledge that each blow brought him a few seconds closer to the next break, the next meal, the end of his shift. It was how the shapeless hours passed, deep in the black cold of the mountain.
There were two dozen of them on the detail, lined up against the wall of the tunnel, shackles around their ankles. Lanterns hung from mouldering beams, throwing fitful shadows as the men chipped away in the dark. The air was full of stone dust and the maddening echoes of metal against rock.
Cade was next to him in the line, working mechanically with that dead-eyed look Aren had come to know well. At first he’d complained bitterly about the aches and scabs and blisters, the tiredness, the near-constant hunger; but there was little sympathy for him here, and no relief. They were all in the same boat, and eventually even Aren had tired of listening to him. Cade had stopped complaining then, and spoke a little less, and kept his pain to himself. The other prisoners liked him better after that.
‘Strike harder! Strike harder!’ shouted the Krodan guard down the line. For some of the guards, that was all the Ossian they needed to know.
Nobody looked to see who it was directed at. All they kne
w was that someone was flagging. If they didn’t pick up the pace they’d be beaten. Everybody got hit by the guards now and then, but it was worse when a prisoner was approaching the end of their strength. Aren had seen two men beaten into unconsciousness for the crime of being too weak to swing a pickaxe. A third had been killed where he lay when he couldn’t get up.
Spurred by the warning, Aren increased his efforts. His pickaxe barely nicked the tunnel wall with each blow, but now and then a small chunk would break off, a tiny shard of progress. A thousand of those, a thousand thousand, and the Krodans would have enough ore to extract a few drops of elarite. A thousand times more, and they might be able to mix enough witch-iron for a breastplate, or some greaves, or an elaborate helmet. Eventually, at the cost of unimaginable effort and uncounted lives, they’d have enough for a suit of witch-iron armour, which offered the strength of steel at a fraction of the weight. One day that armour would be worn by some mighty Harrish knight, or bought by a rich erl, or gifted to foreign kings, none of whom would ever consider how it all started here, in a dark, cold tunnel in the earth, with a sliver of stone cut free.
This was Aren’s life now. This was his purpose. His glorious contribution to the Krodan Empire.
He struck and struck again, and the sparks flared and reflected in his eyes.
I deserve this, he thought with each blow. I deserve this. I deserve—
Aren was on slop duty that day. While his detail rested, he fetched food from the mine entrance, a task which was both a curse and a blessing. On the one hand, he was denied a break between shifts; on the other, it gave him the rare opportunity to grab an extra helping of food.
He waited his turn at a blackened metal trough where gallons of thin vegetable gruel bubbled over a bed of coals. Lamps hung from poles, casting an uneasy light over the haggard faces of the shackled men in line. The chamber was a small, dim cavern at the junction of several tunnels, and it was busy with traffic. Shabby pit ponies hauled carts full of rocks from the depths of the mine. There were guards everywhere, too; not the stern, efficient Krodans who became soldiers, but low men, glorified turnkeys and angry bullies who took every chance to vent their spite on their charges. This was far from the world the Empire showed its loyal subjects. Only the fallen saw behind the scenes.
The Ember Blade Page 8