Voord’s nostrils twitched. He had handled old books before and knew their distinctive scent of leather, parchment and ink, dust and age, but there was a different tang in what billowed out of the cabinet at him, a musky sharpness he couldn’t place at first. Then heat rose in his face as he blushed scarlet, recognising the fleshy, organic smell of his last visit to a brothel. It came from Enciervanul Doamnisoar, but when he steeled himself and reached out for it, what happened next brought him within a heartbeat of running away as any sensible man would do.
Because the obscene thing squirmed under his hands, in a way that reminded him all too clearly of a whore encouraging him with a display of feigned eagerness. And it was warm.
Voord’s courage almost failed him and he needed an extra effort of will before his fingers gripped the book hard enough to pick it up. It shifted as he took its weight as it had never done before, and its leather-bound spine pressed against his palms in a travesty of the way women stretched languidly beneath his touch. He knew now, without further proof, that all the stories heard about the making of this vile thing’s cover were absolute truth, and felt an acid burn as bile rose in his throat.
If the grimoire had continued to move when he stepped inside the boundaries of his spell-circle, he might well have flung it down and abandoned his purpose. But it stopped as he had hoped it might, with a final abrupt shudder, before lying cold and inert on his cringing skin as any ordinary book might do. Voord’s wavering determination returned in a rush of relief, almost as audible as the gasp of pent-up breath released from between his clenched teeth.
He set the book down on a complex triple whorl of thin chalk lines which acted as the core of the circle’s power, then straightened up and squared his shoulders as he hadn’t done since the last time he was on parade in Drakkesborg. As if still on that parade-ground he walked with brisk strides to the end wall of the library and threw back the curtain shrouding it from floor to ceiling. There was more force in the sideways jerk of his left arm than he intended, more weight in the thick velvet than he recalled, and both factors combined to send folds of the heavy fabric careering along their rail with a hiss and a staccato clash of bronze rings. Voord started at the unexpected burst of noise above his head, then took a rapid pace back, less to do with the noise than a reaction to what he had uncovered.
When he first invaded Sedna’s private sanctum he had explored every cupboard, every drawer, every nook and cranny with the thoroughness of long training, and guessed the function of the thing behind the curtain as soon as he found it. In another place and time Voord had heard a similar object called a ‘Mirror of Seeing’, but the one spoken of then was small enough to hold in one hand. It was nothing like this.
On the first occasion Voord saw it, the entire wall-space behind the curtain had been a single monstrous sheet of some dark, shining substance. Black mica or quartz perhaps, or obsidian sheared so thin that its pigmentation barely tinted the reflected image of whoever looked into its surface. Except that there had been no reflection whatsoever.
And there was no reflection now, even though the mirror’s surface was no longer dark but as bright, smooth and flawless as a bowl of quicksilver. It should have reflected something, at least so logic dictated, but instead it stood there and defied all logic by not flowing in a liquid stream across the library floor. Voord stared at it, and while he stared a series of slow, concentric ripples began to spread outward from the centre of the mirror, as if it was a glassy, undisturbed pond and his intent gaze the stone dropped into it.
The hackles rose on his close-cropped neck and Eldheisart Voord almost ran to the insubstantial security of his spell-circle. It was only when he was once again secure within its boundaries that he dared breathe a little easier, though his heartbeat was still racing and the roiling queasiness in his belly was back. With great care that the chalk-marks weren’t disturbed or, far worse, erased, he sank down cross-legged. Voord shifted his weight until he was as comfortable as possible on the hard floor.
That comfort was more important than it seemed. Earlier ventures into the Art Magic proved he needed a degree of physical ease or he could never attain the light trance his ill-trained mind required for sorcery. At last, gathering his concentration as a man might form a snowball, he visualised a shaft of mental force projected at the huge mirror. Voord had once joked, as far as his atrophied sense of humour could joke about anything, that such effort was like knocking a door with a stick except there was no stick.
For almost a minute nothing happened. Then more ripples crossed the mirror’s surface, faster now and much more violent. There should have been a noise to go with the activity, like a breeze stirring wheat or waves breaking on a shore. Instead there was only silence. He could hear the muffled drumbeat that was his own heart and the rasp of his breathing, but all other sounds were muted.
Then the silvery surface cleared. As the ripples swept across the mirror they drew a swirling pearlescent greyness in their wake, each less dense than its predecessor, as if they were warm breaths blown on an opaque, frost-sheathed window. At last the wall was transparent, a mirror no longer but a window indeed, for peering into other places. An image formed in its depths, condensing out of nothingness just as clouds are born from unseen vapours in the air, and it was a place Voord knew well, somewhere that had been at the forefront of his thoughts for a long time.
At first it was a miniature scene viewed from far away, but it expanded just as the ripples had done until it filled the mirror, filled the wall, filled Voord’s vision with a shifting, living picture. As he hoped, but never dared believe aloud, the Mirror of Seeing gave him access to a place not just far away but shrouded by many thicknesses of stone. It was Sedna’s workroom, not a picture of the past drawn from memory but things that were happening right now. The viewpoint was still his own, as if he had never left the room but still watched from the place where he stood a full quarter-hour before. The only difference was a lack of sound.
Sedna walked to and fro, drawing, checking and chanting. Her preparations were almost complete, and she would soon go to the door, soon find it locked. What she would do then Voord didn’t know. He hadn’t left the key in place, so if she had one of her own his plan was already at risk. Even if she didn’t, a sorcerer would have a way of opening the door, a way of finding who locked it, and many ways of expressing displeasure at what they did. Despite the trance dulling his outer senses a protracted shudder racked his limbs and Voord knew he was still afraid.
He withdrew further into himself and his heavy-lidded eyes rolled back in their sockets until only two moist crescents of white remained, making it impossible for him to see, never mind read. Yet he reached down with the fumbling movements of a sleepwalker to the book on the floor in front of him, threw back the cover, then leafed through its pages with a swiftness and a surety which belied his self-imposed blindness. Voord didn’t realise that a book whose name was On the Summoning of Demons might not need the aid of human hands to find a proper place to open. And he wasn’t aware, as Sedna was, that the opening-place might not be what he originally intended. The rustling of pages ceased, and he straightened his back.
“Hearken unto me, ye dwellers beyond the portals of this world.” His voice was flat, toneless, and far deeper than his own. “I would name those that have no name. I would look upon those that have no form. In token of good faith and as sign of my most earnest wishes, I make this offering of blood.”
Voord took a leaf-shaped sliver of flint from his belt-pouch, because the ancient powers wouldn’t take kindly on any offering made with cold iron. It was slate-blue and cream, with scalloped, serrated edges as thin and sharp as any razor. He touched the stone knife to his left hand and with the lightest possible touch drew a careful line across the palm, hoping to escape with little more than a shaving-cut.
But sharp though it was – he had tested it earlier this very evening on a piece of leather – the flint slid across his skin with only a faint bloodless indentati
on to mark its passage. His eyes opened, stared at the pale groove which faded even as he watched, and went dull with the nauseating anticipation of agony. Pain suffered in the heat of combat was one thing, but this brutal premeditation was quite another. The Powers beyond the Portals might have blunted his blade to judge his strength of purpose, and if they took enough notice to create the test, it was already too late to refuse.
Gritting his teeth, Voord cut again with as much pressure as he dared risk, and cried out in a thin, nasal whine like a hurt dog as the stone edge bit in at last. Frantic to reach the end of this self-inflicted torment Voord leaned harder, sliced faster—
And suddenly the flint was murderously sharp again, shearing far deeper than intended until it ploughed into and through the mosaic of bones that made up the structure of his hand. He shrieked, a sound filled with as much surprise as anguish, and collapsed forward over the mangled flesh. The hand was irreparably crippled; dislocated bone and severed tendons were already drawing the fingers into that crooked claw he knew so well from supervised interrogations. It throbbed and burned as if he had dipped it into molten lead.
It hurt so much…
There was more than enough blood splattered across the floor to satisfy any summoned spirit, and even while his mind teetered near a swoon Voord knew why the ancient powers were sometimes called ‘The Cruel Ones’. They feasted on pain, on wounds to the spirit as much as to flesh and blood, and it must give them extra satisfaction to make a torturer torture himself.
Voord rocked back and forth, hugging his mutilated limb close to his chest as if it was a child, sobbing with the shock of what he had done. All the ritual words were forgotten now. There was no longer any room for such coherent thought in his reeling brain. But no matter how much he regretted it, the sacrifice was made.
And accepted.
Between one jolting heartbeat and the next, a tearing crash of thunder shattered the midnight silence. It boomed and rumbled across the heavens until even the dust-motes drifting in the air vibrated with its echoes. Yet there were no clouds in the moonlit sky, and no rain since late that afternoon, nor even the brief flicker of summer lightning which needs no storm to give it birth. There was no reason for the thunder whatsoever. No natural reason, at least. Even if his chilly mind was calm and unfogged by torment, it could never have convinced him that mere weather was the thunder’s cause.
The library grew cold, then colder still, until Voord’s breath smoked white around his face and coils of steam rose from the blood which still pulsed sluggishly between the unhurt fingers cradling the ruined ones. With that grinding chill came an end to pain and bleeding. Voord’s left hand went corpse-pale and the flesh beneath the nails became a sickly skimmed-milk blue as if, from wrist to fingertips, it was drained dry.
The eldheisart’s shock-taut body sagged. With nothing for his will to fight against, he felt sure he was about to faint, but unconsciousness eluded him as surely as the power to tear his gaze away from the Mirror of Seeing. He stared at it like a bird at a snake, trapped and fascinated, unable even to blink, and in a time with no beginning that would never have an end, he learned what it meant when mortals gained the attention of those who dwelt in the void beyond the world…
*
Sedna heard nothing of the thunder. She completed a final diagram, bowed low and weighed the relative merits of tidying up against those of going to bed at once. She was tired. Then she coughed, a long racking bark that left sparks floating before her eyes and tears running from them, and when she straightened up again she decided on a third alternative: something to drink. An acrid taste lay on her tongue thanks to the bitter aromatic smoke filling the room, and her throat was harsh from chanting interminable formulae in a rasping contrabass voice ill-suited to a woman’s – to anyone’s – vocal organs.
So much trouble over a small spell, she thought wryly, and pressed both hands hard against the small of her back in the vain hope it would somehow ease the aches of repeated stooping.
Wine would be good, cool white wine from the southland to refresh her mouth, soothe her throat, relax her muscles and calm her nerves. Perhaps, if she drank enough, it would even give her courage to take Crisen Geruath to task about his stupid experiments. But not to challenge Eldheisart Voord. No wine in all the world, no beer, no ale, not even the smoke-laced grainfire from Elthan in Alba could make her brave enough for that.
There had always been wine in this cellar. Before she came to Seghar it was full of kegs and barrels, fine imported vintages in glass and stoneware flagons of the dry, rough local red. Now, depending on her mood, there might be a silver pitcher and goblets, or a simple jug and cups of red-ware.
Sedna had been drinking more these few days past. Since Voord and his soldiers came, she realised, as if the knowledge was new. Fear did it. No, nothing as crude as fear. Apprehension was a better word. Crisen became a stranger when the Imperial eldheisart was in Seghar, and she muttered brief thanks that his visits were always short and infrequent.
Tonight there was an elegant carafe three-quarters full of straw-pale Hauverne, and two stemmed glasses made from crystal, all in the simple, understated style popular at the Summer Palace of Kalitzim and just as costly. Sedna splashed wine into one of the glasses, drank it down and took a deep breath to help the fumes mount quickly to her head. More glasses followed the first, until with slight surprise she saw that the carafe was almost empty. She hadn’t meant to do that. Not really.
“So what if I did?” she said in response to a meagre pang of guilt, but already her voice was slurring. Sedna could see, with the unfocussed clarity of sudden drunkenness, what needed done for her own safety’s sake. Self-respect, peace of mind, honour – if sorcerers were allowed such an aristocratic foible – might go by the board, but at least she would sleep sound at night. She would leave. Leave Crisen, leave Seghar, leave the Jevaiden and all the Jouvaine provinces far behind her and go home, back to Vreijaur where men and women had honest, normal vices and where the animals which roamed the woods were only that and not…
Not more than they seemed.
“Leave all this luxury?” Sedna asked herself, staring at the spearpoint candle flames caught and refracted in the facets of her crystal cup. “Why not? You can live without it. You did before.” She refused to voice the thought which flashed across the wine-distorted surface of her mind, that if she stayed here much longer she might not live at all.
“Crisen can make his own magic,” she said as decisively as she could – Father, Mother, Maiden, I’m truly drunk tonight! – and even as she said it, began to wonder why Crisen had asked her to prepare a summoning spell. Last time she did that he had learned unwanted things about his ancestry, so why do it again?
Then the wine turned to hot acid in her stomach, for a stark-edged shadow – her shadow – suddenly stretched across the floor and up the wall before her. The shadow was as black and dense as pitch, and the greenish radiance that made it danced at Sedna’s back, above the centre of the circle drawn with such care on the crimson floor. Sweat broke out all over her body, gluing the thin robe to her skin as it soaked up the moisture. Slowly, as if reluctance kept reality at bay, she turned around.
Her crystal goblet exploded into shards as the hand holding it clenched to a fist, and though splinters drove deep she felt nothing. No pain, at least. Only terror.
The spell-circle held more than just light. Compressed into a towering unstable column by the restrictive limit of the holding-pattern was a thing she had never seen before in all her life. But she had looked between the woman’s-leather covers of Enciervanul Doamnisoar not twenty hours before, and the memory of the pages seen – and one not seen, just a ragged fragment along the spine where the rest was torn out – still burned like a dark hot cinder in the shuttered places of her brain.
Even though this Thing had neither definite shape nor constant colour she knew what It was, well enough at least for a name. Ythek’ter auythyu an-shri. Warden of Gateways, Guardian of the
portals which lie between men and the void. It was the Herald of the Ancient Ones. It was Ythek Shri.
“Who has called thee now?” Sedna managed the question only after three attempts, knowing such entities were bound by certain rules and one was the answering of questions. There was no immediate response and in that brief time she realized she didn’t want to hear Ythek’s reply. She only wanted rid of It.
“You came in obedience,” she said, fighting down the quaver in her voice because she knew it owed no such obedience to her. “Depart in obedience. Return to your proper place. Go back to the Void. I, Sedna ar Gethin, command it!” Once the words were out she realised they were a mistake, giving the demon a gift of her name. In sorcery, names mattered. Sedna choked down bitterness, recited a charm of dismissal and made the swift gesture which sealed it, then watched the shadowy mass shift a little, bulging and contracting, swirling in and out of itself like ink poured into water.
But it didn’t fade, didn’t vanish, didn’t alter at all.
Sedna repeated the charm again and again, stammering in her haste as she varied the rhythm and order of its phrases. Still they had no effect. Blinking sweat out of her eyes, she walked as steadily as she was able towards the lectern where she had left her grimoire and began leafing through its pages. She tried to stay calm, to avoid panic, and yet could feel the need to run trembling in the sinews of her legs.
Don’t run! Never run, never show fear, not even when dread has turned the marrow of your bones to meal…
The whole cellar vibrated as if a deep-sea swell was rolling past beneath the floor, and the air within it became cold. It wasn’t the sharp, exhilarating chill of a bright day in winter, but a heavy rigor like the inside of a long-forgotten tomb, a cold which penetrated flesh, blood and marrow until they could never feel warm and alive again. Sedna’s damp robe frosted over, white rime on white silk, until it became so stiff that each fold crackled as she moved.
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