Chainworld

by Matt Langley

  All Barl felt in that moment was a crushing sadness.

  Was this another form of attack?

  Had he lost all chance of wielding the codemagic that would take him away from this place?

  Was it his destiny to be trapped here forever?

  Chapter 27

  Galdar followed Lucillian into the yard behind the surgery.

  The Mage-Doctor carried the trap-spells out gingerly in the tray where they lay with the finger bone squeezed from Shryke’s neck. The rain had stopped, but a squall whipped through the bushes and sickly trees that grew in the alley’s shade.

  “We’re going to need to be careful disposing of this. In some ways, it might be better to leave them—but then again, they might have a timed detonation built into the spell, or more likely have been created to recognise when they are outside the host body… we might only have a few moments left before…” she didn’t finish the thought.

  Galdar stopped walking with Lucillian and hung back.” I think I’ll just wait here until you’ve taken care of things…”

  “Outstanding,” the Mage-Doctor said, placing the tray against the far wall. She closed her eyes and began to intone words just beyond the range of Galdar’s hearing. They’d left Shryke recovering on the table.

  “Stop!”

  Shryke burst out of the back door, slamming into Galdar and sending her sprawling face down in the mud. “No! Stop! Don’t…” he screamed, but it was too late.

  As Galdar lifted her head, wiping wet mud from her eyes, she saw that Lucillian had completed her spell and the bone with its five black companions were dissolving on the air into a pall of thick grey smoke.

  She caught a whiff of it as she sat up, the cloying stench making her retch again.

  Shryke had Lucillian by both shoulders and shook her. Hard. His neck was still an angry red, but the swelling around the stitches was already going down. Galdar hadn’t seen him like this in days. Instead of happiness, his desperation frightened her.

  “Hold it right there, muscles!” Lucillian said, trying to squirm out of Shryke’s grasp. “I just saved your life, so calm the hell down!”

  Shryke kicked the tray. It clattered against the wall. “Did you wipe all traces of my blood and flesh from the spell stones or the bone?”

  “I’m a Mage-Doctor not a House-Domestic you ungrateful prick! Now stand down before I put you down.” Lucillian raised her hands as if to begin weaving a counterspell.

  Shryke didn’t back down, and absolutely did not calm down.

  “You’ve killed me, yourself and her,” he pointed at Galdar, “And all because of your bloody stupidity. So no, I won’t be grateful. If we don’t get away from here now, you’ve killed everyone else in this damned city!”

  At last, Shryke was getting through to Lucillian.

  She dropped her hands.

  “What’s going on?” Galdar asked, scared.

  Shryke stopped and fixed Galdar with his iron gaze. “The trap spell and the bone will still have my essence woven into them. The Guild Assassins tracking me will register their destruction as me using the magic to remove them as surely as if I’d done it myself. Right now, they will be preparing an Aether Stage to send a kill team through to end the job!” Shryke turned on Lucillian, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

  Lucillian boiled at the slight but didn’t argue.

  Shryke softened. Just a little. He shook his head. “Thank you for removing that thing. You did save my life, if only for a minute more. We have to get away from here now.”

  A Guild Assassin stepped from the air, swinging a studded battle-axe towards Shryke’s head before his first foot had reached the ground of Saint Juffour. He rolled as the studded head whistled past him, too close for comfort, and shoved Galdar and Lucillian to the ground as he did so.

  Regaining his feet, Shryke created a two-handed broadsword barely quick enough to parry the next blow before the Assassin could cleave his skull. The move put the other man off balance, it was only fractional, weight distribution and momentum combined with what the Assassin had hoped would be the kill stroke. It gave Shryke an opening. He didn’t swing. Instead he kicked the Assassin’s legs away from under him. The other man went down silently, hitting the ground hard, but even so trying to deliver another scything blow with the battle-axe even as he rolled in the dirt.

  The fight lasted long enough for Shryke to stamp on the axe and then, with someone he had known most of his long life staring up at him, took the Assassin’s head off cleanly.

  He kicked it away.

  The only sound in the yard was his raw breathing.

  “We need to go. And you need to come with us.”

  Lucillian backed away, shaking her head, “Ohhhhh…. No. This is not my fight.”

  “It is now. Helping me is a death sentence.”

  Two Assassins waited in the street outside the surgery.

  Shryke leapt at them with all the fury of the already damned.

  Lucillian joined in, dropping one of them with a cleavespell that took out the tendons in the back of her assailant’s knees. The Assassin fell backwards into the mud for Galdar to batter with the flat of the axe. Shryke finished the Assassin off after running his own foe through with the broadsword.

  Somewhere in the town, the city alarm blared a shrill warning.

  Bells started to ring in the spires of the churches.

  Other hollers and screams filled the air from town criers: Saint Juffour was under attack.

  “Galdar!”

  The three turned as one to see Carlow running along the muddy street towards them holding his pack and the battle-mace. “Raiders! They’ve breached the main gates and are ransacking the town! What are we going to do?”

  Shryke sighed. “Raiders at the gate, Assassins at every turn…”

  One appeared behind Galdar, stepping out of the nothing. Shryke didn’t have a choice; he shoved Galdar into him, the impact sending them both barrelling down the stone steps. Galdar rolled away from him as Shryke drew a handheld double-headed crossbow out of the aether and put both bolts into the Assassin’s face.

  Shryke lowered the just created weapon thinking fast. He turned on Lucillian. “There’s a Governor. Important man?”

  Lucillian nodded, “Klane is an idiot who loves his home comforts and his gold, and he certainly thinks he’s important.”

  Shryke ran his fingers through his hair, thinking quickly. “That will do. An arrogant man will have an escape plan.” Shryke heaved himself up on to a windowsill on the outside of the surgery, gaining height so that he could look further down the streets and across the town. He pointed. “The building with the spired minarets, is that his residence?”

  Lucillian nodded.

  Shryke jumped down. “There is magic about that building. I can smell it from here.”

  Lucillian led the way, Galdar followed with Carlow, but not before she had swapped the axe for the battle-mace. Galdar’s connection with the weapon felt stronger and more vital than ever. Any other weapon would have been useless in her hands. She was breathing fast, her body psyching itself for the coming battle. Galdar didn’t want to fight, but she didn’t have the luxury of a choice.

  Shryke took up the rear, moving with the reloaded crossbow ready to take out any threat.

  The Governor’s residence was an opulent stone tower in the centre of town.

  It was surrounded by a sea of mud and panicking townspeople.

  A retinue of the Townsguard attempted vainly to fend off a phalanx of Raiders charging up the steps to the building.

  Shryke hacked his way through the black steel of broadsword scything a path for the others to follow.

  Even before he was halfway to the relative safety of the tower, an Assassin stepped out in front of him. Shryke was unbalanced from dropping two Raiders with brutal efficiency. The female Assassin delivered a punishing blow, smashing the pommel of her short blade into Shryke’s ribs. He yelled in pain but didn’t back down. Instead,
he countered with an elbow square into the middle of the Assassin’s face and as her head went back dispatched her with a dagger drawn across the throat.

  “Thank the gods! Help us!” the Townsguard Captain yelled as Shryke fought his way up the stone steps to the doors of the Governor’s residence.

  Shryke made an apologetic face, shrugged, and tossed the Captain down the steps into the melee. It was pragmatic. He needed to get through the doors.

  The others followed him inside.

  The Townsguard cowered in the hallway. They didn’t resist as Shryke ushered the others through. Galdar pushed the doors closed behind them. Shryke took one of the Townsguard by the throat, lifting him up onto his toes. “Where is it? The devil-door… How do we get there?”

  The terrified Townsguard’s eyes bulged with fear. “I can’t. If I told you they’d execute me at dawn.”

  Shryke held the bloody dagger to the man’s throat. “Enjoy those few extra hours. I can always execute you now? I will only ask one more time, where is the devil-door? I can smell it. If you don’t tell me, someone else will while you’re bleeding to death.”

  The man buckled, telling Shryke what he needed to know.

  They raced up into the heights of the Governor’s residence, charging up the stairs two and three at a time in a headlong flight.

  Three Assassins barred their way on the fourth landing.

  Their tactics were changing. Rather than stepping out of the air, hoping to take Shryke unawares, they were taking up defensive positions and waiting for him to come to them.

  Lucillian brought down one, slicing the tendons just above their ankles with a scythe-spell. Shryke dispatched the other two; the first, with a crossbow bolt punching through his throat, the second with two black-bladed daggers he whispered into existence, not caring about subtleties or risking magic now. The final assassin fell with both blades still shivering in his heart and groin.

  They ran down the corridor at full pelt, arms and legs pumping furiously.

  Shryke peered at the doors on either side as he charged past them, looking for the one he wanted, but it was Carlow who found it. “Here!”

  They stopped outside a wooden door alive with intricate carvings. It sported a mahogany Lion leaping at a cowering Unicorn. The Lion had a human face, a fat, shiny human face wearing a benevolent, beatific smile.

  “Tasteful.” Lucillian said. “Klane always was a vain bastard.”

  Shryke tried the ostentatious brass handle but it wouldn’t turn. “Devil-Door all right.” He stepped back. He closed his eyes, stood still as Galdar watched the end of the corridor, waiting for the next Assassin’s attack. It was coming. She felt it. A fission in the air.

  Shryke opened his eyes. He sketched out a sigil in the air in front of him and the door shimmered out of existence, leaving a blank wall where it had been.

  “Well that helped.” Carlow said bitterly.

  Shryke stepped through the wall.

  Galdar pushed Carlow towards the wall, and the curate disappeared too.

  Lucillian followed, and while Galdar looked down the corridor again to ensure they weren’t being followed by Assassins or Raiders, before stepping through the wall into an impossibility.

  Chapter 28

  Barl felt himself weakening day by day.

  He was excused training after the third successive day of it. His inability to find a Familiar on the Plain had meant that he wouldn’t be able to restore precious energy without feeding like a parasite from another source. That sort of piggybacking was at best a temporary solution, weakening the others to make him stronger, and until they found something more permanent, he was useless to the battlemasters. He was left to wander the Nest while conversations between Xaxax, Rhoan and Vilow sought some sort of understanding.

  Even the simplest use of magic chipped away at his reserves, which were already precious little, and left him vulnerable to whatever that skeletal thing in the crimson robes had been. So, no matter that Gharlin had agreed, there was no chance of him learning to cast energy bolts even if he knew the theory and the incantation. It was pointless.

  Barl still hadn’t confessed to anyone about the attack in the Library Bubble. He still couldn’t work out who he was supposed to trust while his world fell apart yet again.

  He needed to find Summer.

  Gharlin did his best to raise Barl’s spirits, but he had his own studies to attend to. There were long slow ticking tracts when Barl walked alone through the Nest, forced to watch the other trainees in their various lectures, feeling more and more isolated from them, and all the more desperate to go home. But without the access to a Familiar and the magic well that promised, he knew he’d never see God’s Heart again.

  Life went on as usual around him, and that was the worst of it.

  And then he heard a friendly voice.

  “Hey kid, long time no see. You managed to stay out of trouble?”

  Barl spun around, his smile splitting his face in two. “Summer!” He ran at her and hugged her tight. She hugged him back and somehow something so simple, human contact, kindness, made Barl feel a million times better. The warmth of her, surge of energy that passed between them, was bliss. “I thought I’d never see you again!”

  She offered him a rakish grin. “You don’t get rid of me that easy.”

  They walked at length into the heart of the Nest, Barl smiling for the first time in weeks.

  Summer was dressed in her Assassin’s blacks. Her hair had been released from the braids and moved around her head like a fuzzy black cloud. She looked older, he realised. A little more tense than before she went away.

  “You’ve been gone ages.”

  “You have no idea.”

  She led him to a Garden Bubble near the centre of the Nest. The illumination spells were dimmed so it became a restful, peaceful place. They sat on benches beneath a tree with long thin leaves. The leaves rustled in a spell-cast breeze. They were alone. Barl felt he could speak freely.

  “It tried to get me again.”

  Summer nodded.

  “We know.”

  That first word hit Barl like a sledgehammer. They knew? Why hadn’t someone said something? Were they leaving him out there like bait, something to try and hook the thing? Even if it meant he was killed? Didn’t they care?

  Summer put a hand on his shoulder. She saw that she’d said the wrong thing. She tried to reassure him. “When I say we. I don’t mean the battlemasters.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The attack on us in the escape capsule. That wasn’t part of the test.”

  “I know.”

  “It shouldn’t have happened. To project a presence that far, even a skinned one, takes energy even the most powerful Guild Assassins can’t harness. So, when we got back, I knew I needed to find out what the hell was going on.”

  “And did you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s complicated.”

  Barl’s mood sank down to subterranean depths.

  “Has anyone talked to you about the history of the Guild?”

  “No, but I did read some stuff about it before the terminal tried to kill me.”

  Barl explained what he’d read about God’s Heart and the formation of the Guild. Summer was pleased. “It’s a start,” she said, “But it’s far from the whole story. That involves the beings who originally built God’s Heart.”

  Summer looked about to be sure no one was eavesdropping. “God’s Heart was built by Gods. Well Gods by any definition we might understand. Beings with the power to create matter from no energy. That’s the basic principle by which you measure a God. Creation from Nothing. Not matter-potential differences and fluctuations in the baseline reality of the universe, but actual creation from nothing. This is a big deal.”

  Barl didn’t fully grasp what Summer was explaining, but the gravity and tone of voice made sure and certain he knew just how terrifying what she said next was.

  “There’s a thought among some
of us—the ‘we’ I meant before, that someone or something has found a way to mimic these godlike powers, or are a God returned to carry out some foulness we don’t yet understand. We think that’s why you’ve been blocked from finding a Familiar on the Plain. Twice it’s tried to kill you now and you’ve survived.”

  “But that wasn’t me—that was you and Gharlin.”

  Summer smiled compassionately. “Trust me, without your innate energies neither I nor Balloon-Boy would have been able to do a thing to help you. Your proximity helped us in ways I’m still trying to understand. The creature…whatever it is—is trying to weaken you by proxy. No Familiar, no fresh sources of energy to draw upon. It is looking to dry you out. But even with you so reduced it’s no match for you, I truly believe that, and that is why it is reverting to subterfuge and stealth attacks.”

  Barl tried to take all this in, but he really wasn’t grasping the meat of it.

  He knew instinctively what he had to do was take everything she said on trust, but that wasn’t as easy as it should have been, such was the rush of vertigo in his head. “So…how did you find out all this?”

  “Well we’ve thought something like this might happen. We’d noticed some subtle changes in the way the Guild operates, but until now there’s been nothing concrete. But when the Guild Mages located you in God’s Heart, and the levels of potential of your gift was measured, I was sent to retrieve you as quickly as we could, but without telling the Guild Authorities the truth about what you might be. Though the truth escaped, anyway. Your presence outside God’s Heart has been noticed, Barl, and it has made someone very scared. Scared of you.”

  “Am I going to die?”

  “Probably,” she said. “But not today. And not tomorrow. And with luck, not for a lot of tomorrows.” It wasn’t the most encouraging answer, but she offered a wry half-smile to try and take the sting out of her words.

  They left the Garden Bubble and walked back towards the accommodation areas.