It had hoped to strike and run, but its prey had proven tantalisingly elusive, an affront to its bestial majesty. It snorted as it stabbed at her again, trying to nail the bronze spider scuttling about its legs. But One-Ear turned the blow with an expert glance of her silvery fang, webbing the air with patterns that made Cade’s eyes burn to look at them.
He could see rows of scars cratered across the creature’s straining back where the guns of the Sisters had struck it. The thing had somehow healed. Cade recalled how it had drawn psychic sustenance from both he and Abi, rendering their arcane energy into solid flesh. Was it using Abi to regenerate its wounds? Charging into the Sisters’ ranks to deliver as much damage as it could, then retreating out of range to restore itself and charge again?
The creature struck a ringing blow upon One-Ear’s armoured shoulder then swung its club in a wide arc to deter her allies. The weapon descended, about to slam One-Ear to paste as she staggered back. But she spun her blade in a glimmering parry and the club fell in half, sheared in two. One-Ear had already moved aside, letting the creature stumble under its own momentum.
Cade ducked, clutching his ears as the Sisters’ cannons roared once again, blasting divots of flesh from the creature’s body. It ran at them, trampling two of them as it barged through the trees to escape the deadly fusillade, vanishing into the woods, too swift to follow.
One-Ear paused. Something was amiss. Her hand went to her waist, seeking Cade’s axe. But he had already slid the weapon from her belt with nimble hands when she had pulled him behind cover. He gripped the wooden shaft between his teeth, invisible beneath the bed of ferns as he elbowed along the ground towards freedom.
Cade knew the beast would eventually wear the Sisters down and kill them all. He could feel the creature restoring its wounded body, drinking from the same boundless reservoir of energy from which he had summoned it. He could feel the weight of that energy lapping like water at the edge of his consciousness as he crawled further away from the Sisters.
He broke into a stealthy run, letting the pulse in the air guide him to its source. He could feel his head clearing, his arcane senses returning, filling him with power once again. But with that power came other things, voices that whispered at the edge of his hearing, icy things that writhed like smoke, seeking human warmth. As he paused to comprehend these vagaries, he could sense them reaching for him and quickly shut them out with a shiver.
Whatever power he had inherited, Cade knew it was polluted. This was how he and Abi had summoned that horned monster into their world, believing it to be their salvation. He cursed himself for the peasant fool he was, knowing it would take more than bare hands and courage to save them now.
Distant gunfire thundered at his back and braying laughter rolled about the trees.
If he was to save Abi, as she had saved him, he would need to do it alone. The Sisters of Silence would not hesitate to kill her should they realise she was the source of the beast’s vigour. She was just beyond those trees, closer than he had realised.
He banged his shin on solid stone and tumbled over, cursing in pain. He sprawled across rubble carpeted with dead leaves. Walls of stacked rock stood nearby, furred with grass. The ruins of stone cottages, roofless and ancient were visible too, impaled by generations of sprouting trees.
‘Abi?’
There came no reply. He limped on, passing yet more crumbling walls sinking into greenery. She was here, he could feel her somewhere among these stones. Things moved nearby. Animals, he thought, though he could see none. The derelict village was empty, populated only by trees. The clouds brooded over the gauzy light of dawn. Something rolled beneath his foot. A torch, reduced to a nub of charcoal, discarded less than a season ago. He found more nearby, lots more, along with footprints and tracks from a heavy wagon. Folk had gathered here on more than one occasion, but for what purpose? He thought he felt someone glaring down at him from above. He turned to look and saw nothing up there but a length of frayed rope.
He could see a well up ahead, its roof and pail long disappeared. Its stones had been cleared of vegetation, as if the thing were still in use, though it must surely have run dry centuries ago.
Cade called for Abi again, reaching out with his consciousness into the ruins, surprised at the ease with which he could do so. He turned to see an empty doorway. He was sure he had seen someone standing there, gazing at him askance as if their head lolled unnaturally to one side.
His senses bristled. He could feel something ringing in the air, echoes of a grim drama that had played upon this remote stage season after season. Men had gathered here from miles around. He felt their excitement, a thrilling fear that tickled his innards, bitter with a hatred that could be quenched only with violence.
Figures watched him from empty windows, from behind trees. Though he dared not turn to look at them, he could tell their hair was long, their dresses tattered, each standing somehow on legs horribly crooked. They gazed at him, resigned to his late arrival, every one of their heads resting oddly on one shoulder, those that had heads at all.
They were directing him towards the well, from which arose the miserable stench of rot upon rot that spoke of heaps of discarded meat and bones. Despair, thick as tar, boiled up from that throat of stone, soaking everything around it, softening reality until Cade felt the ground might fall away beneath him.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Abi.
She stood beside him, alone and with a dreamy smile.
‘This day’s reckoning shall be beautiful.’ She sounded wistful. ‘Such wonders shall be born here. The truth. Finally. The answers we’ve been looking for.’
Cade was so relieved by the sight of her that he couldn’t help but hug her before trying to shake her from her stupor. He could feel her body pulsating with energy, writhing about her like an invisible fire.
‘The Horned King,’ she said. ‘He shall save us from the Nothings.’
‘That is not the Horned King.’ Cade steadied himself against the insanity of what he was suggesting. ‘And the Nothings are not monsters. They’re not spirits. They’re women. Flesh and blood. Warriors. I know not from where, but they’re our protectors, Abi. And they will die, as will we, unless you wake up. Now. And that’s the truth. Whatever that monster has told you, it’s a lie.’
Abi stiffened and Cade shrank back, his hands stung by the livid energy now pouring from her. She drifted up off her feet, her toes lifting from the ground. The beast crouched in the ruins nearby, its body a wreck of dripping wounds, its broken arm outstretched as it channelled restorative energy through Abi.
Abi was sobbing. ‘I’m sorry, my Lord. I should never have doubted you.’
Cade shivered when he heard a growl invade his head, promising Abi that absolution would soon be hers. Its words felt like spiders scurrying in his skull.
‘My thanks, my king,’ Abi wailed. ‘Oh, my thanks.’
The voice promised to forgive her sins, excuse her of the sorrows she had visited upon her fellow orphans.
Tears streamed down Abi’s face. ‘Forgive, forgive.’
Cade stared in horror as the beast’s wounds slowly contracted. He caught her hands, trying to pull her back to earth, driving his consciousness through his grip, trying to intersect the nourishing flow of energy.
‘It’s feeding on your guilt, Abi. But none of this is your fault. You said yourself.’
The beast brayed in frustration as it took a halting step towards them, another of its wounds sealing to a puckered scar.
The voice assured Abi that she was a witch, that power untold was who she was. If she would but aid him, love him beyond all others, it would help her achieve that power, power to protect those weaker than herself, to learn answers to questions beyond imagining.
‘You know a lie when you hear one, Abi.’ Cade’s voice trembled, knowing he spoke in defiance of something like a god. ‘You swore
you would be a slave to guilt no longer, remember? Your only crime is knowing the truth.’
‘Cade?’ Abi’s eyes fluttered as if awakening from a dream and she dropped to the ground. Cade felt his mind seized by invisible claws as the beast rose with a growl and swaggered towards him. Freezing terror held him in its grip as he felt something open inside him. A freezing flood of roiling, whispering energy coursed through him and into the creature that held him. He watched helplessly as the last of its wounds disappeared, its body whole and beautiful once more. He listened, transfixed, his panic melting as it spoke inside his head. Its voice was silvery, hypnotic. It made him think of wildflowers nodding in the glades of the Cradle, the smell of mead and sun-warmed hayfields, rich and drowsy.
I am no monster, Cade. I am everything you ever wanted. I am mother. I am father. I am happiness, contentment. The truth? The truth is myriad, merely paths waiting to be chosen. So choose yours wisely, Cade. You are blessed with a strength most will never know, but you must be taught to wield that strength. Or else others shall wield it for you. Why do you think they are here? Those armoured harpies? They seek to harness your power, my son.
Cade knew it was a lie, though the question haunted him: Why were the Sisters of Silence here? Why had they come to the Cradle?
The beast laughed.
Indeed. And they would deign to call me ‘monster’.
Cade’s gift was his speed. He was thin and wiry, supple as a cat. The beast reached for him, poised to drain the last of his will, as Cade hurled his axe. The weapon lodged deep in the beast’s left eye.
There was no bellow of pain, merely a flinch of displeasure. Then the ground shook as the beast charged through the ruins towards him, snatching Cade off his feet, squeezing him like fruit. He thrashed in the beast’s grip, arms pinned awkwardly at his sides, struggling for breath as his ribs constricted and cracked. He saw the well several feet below, a dead black eye staring up at his flailing legs. He could sense the dead things heaped at the bottom of that pit, bones enriched with rage and sorrow. This is why the beast had chosen these ruins, this arena of misery – its psychic pollution would ease the ingress of its brethren. Cade could feel them, other monsters waiting beyond the veil, allied spirits eager to be drawn hither and clothed in flesh, hungry for the ruin of man.
The beast peered at him, as if curious to see the gradations of terror cross Cade’s face as he slowly crushed the boy’s body in his fist. Abi lay sprawled nearby. Cade’s frustration boiled inside him. He had endured a lifetime of horror in a single night, only to die like this, mashed like dung in a monster’s paw. His fury swelled as he glared deep into the beast’s gleaming eye.
He saw flashes and thought for a second that he was dying. But then he realised branches of lightning were springing about him, churning up from his insides. Free of the Sisters’ malignant presence, he was drawing power from the world beyond, channelling it into lances of destruction and hurling them into the beast. He felt rather than heard the creature roar in pain as it released him. He tumbled to the ground, feeling his leg strike something hard, tendons cracking in his knee. He felt his body’s anguish as a distant thing, anesthetised as he was by the cascade of lightning flowing from him. But this twitch in his concentration was enough; it had opened the floodgates to that vast sea of energy from which he drew. It filled him in an instant, flooding his being.
He tried to contain it, channel it like a river, but already it was a deluge, and he was but a leaf, shrinking, somersaulting as he plunged into its depths. But still he could feel the beast, and still he refused to let go. Cade let the creature’s agonies anchor him as he continued to reach out, lashing it with lightning, flails of white-hot fire tearing its body, restoring it to ruin.
But it was not enough. He kept losing focus. His attacks grew weaker. His attention kept branching here and there. He had become a storm, striking everything around him, each flash blinding him with images of another world, another time, another horror. He gripped his head, too stunned to breathe, deafened by a tidal roar fit to crack his skull. His eyes bulged and saw nothing but a frenzy of lightning streaking around him, sketching predatory faces, hands that reached, clawed, caressed, bodies that coiled and spasmed in the chaos. He was melting, drowning in the maelstrom of energy overwhelming his body, prickling his every pore, crushing him, strangling him to admit a drowning breath.
Yet still he refused to let go.
His consciousness was everywhere. He knew everything. He was being consumed by a realm known as the immaterium. The other names by which it was known flashed through his mind before turning to smoke in his memory. The warp, the ether, the empyrean, a sea of souls composed of pure psychic chaos. A realm traversed by a race of gods in floating iron ships, navigated by a terrible beacon of pure thought projected by a being upon a mountain throne. Yet more truths swarmed him, complexities and contradictions, and the impossibilities that made a mockery of it all. The beast was right. The truth was myriad.
Yet still he refused to let go.
Cade’s consciousness alighted on a shard of truth. In its prism he saw Abi. He saw himself. Splinters of their past, their present and future. He also saw the reason why their world had tonight become a nightmare. The horror of that truth froze what little was left of him.
He let go.
But something else would not let go of him.
Something was channelling his energy for him, focusing it.
He flinched at the brilliance of the dawning sun. He was on his back, his body steaming as he convulsed in the dirt, grinding his teeth as he strained to lift himself. He managed to turn his head and saw the beast raging nearby, its body shredded with wounds.
Abi clung to its horns, her hair and tattered skirts flung to and fro, like a sailor clinging to the mast of a squall-tossed ship. She had saved him, pulled him back from the warp before his mind could be consumed entirely, sustaining the energy he had summoned, holding it in place like a cork in a bottle. The beast staggered and thrashed, too weak to claw his tormentor from her perch.
Cade felt a familiar dullness creeping over his senses. The Sisters of Silence were coming, cutting him off from the energies of the warp. Abi slid from the beast’s crown, exhausted. The creature was now barely a skeleton clothed in rags of smoking meat, though it rose in dignity to meet its executioner. It went to swing a claw at One-Ear, but the woman had already cleaved a leg out from under it. Its great horned head followed, bursting to ash as it spun through the air.
Cade screamed at his limbs to move, but they remained frozen, buckled like the legs of a dead spider. That part of his brain which motivated his body had been scoured by his exposure to the warp. Yet it mattered not. What dominated his mind was the last thing he had seen in that realm of Chaos, those glimpses of the future, of the present. They had shown him the reason why the Sisters of Silence had come for them.
Abi was beside him, gasping as she tried to comfort him. She tried to calm him as he puffed spittle from his teeth, struggling to scream a warning.
Run, Abi! Run while you can!
She smiled down at him, brushing hair from his eyes, deaf to his pleas.
As the Sisters of Silence fanned out to secure the ruins, One-Ear gestured something to Maia. The armoured novice nodded and approached Abi with caution. Cade watched, horrified as Abi’s expression flickered between fear and fascination.
‘As your valiant friend may have already told you, I am Sister Maia,’ she said. ‘And you have led us a merry dance.’
‘You need to help him,’ said Abi.
Cade wriggled, gagging as he fought to release a scream from his throat.
‘That’s why we are here,’ said Maia. ‘If you’ll just come with us, all shall be explained.’ She inched towards Abi.
‘Who are you? Where do you come from? I’m not leaving here until you tell me.’
Maia paused, gazing at Abi in mutual c
uriosity. ‘You are not afraid of us at all, are you?’
‘Being afraid never does anyone much good,’ said Abi.
‘A fine philosophy,’ said Maia. ‘You’re her, aren’t you? The one who we spotted crossing the boundary. If not for you, we would never have found the others.’
Abi frowned.
‘You misunderstand,’ said Maia. ‘Your people are unharmed, I promise you. You’re the strongest of them all, did you know that?’
Abi glanced about her. She looked as though she was calculating her options, though clearly she had none.
‘If you say so,’ she said.
‘We can show you how to harness those talents, that formidable intelligence of yours. We can teach you to wield your strength.’ She smiled like a serpent. ‘Lest others wield it for you.’
‘You make it sound like I have a choice,’ said Abi.
‘No one has a choice,’ said Maia. ‘But I sense your destiny is the one you’ve always wanted.’
Abi looked down at Cade.
‘All I’ve ever wanted is the truth,’ she told him.
Those words made something crack like an egg deep in Cade’s chest, slipping a terrible bitterness into his belly until he felt he might die.
Abi’s hair rose to veil her face as a sudden wind stirred the air and a strange pressure stiffened the atmosphere. Cade watched in terror, helpless to prevent the vision he had beheld in the warp from coming to pass before his eyes.
He had always thought it to be nothing more than a thundercloud. When he had first seen it in the distance from the cliffs yesterday afternoon he had been too innocent to think it anything but an approaching storm. The world had been so much smaller back then. Cade had seen it in the sky again when they emerged from the Tor, a tide of black blotting out the moon above the cornfields. Now, as it obscured the dawning sun, the thing was unmistakable.
Maledictions Page 30