by Darius Hinks
‘Audus will fly us,’ Bullosus grunted. ‘In the Terran’s ship.’
‘Draik? He won’t let us set foot on his ship.’
Bullosus nodded at the blade that had replaced his lower arm.
Lothar raised an eyebrow. ‘Ah, of course.’
Bullosus looked at the tracker he was holding in his one remaining hand. The tag he had bolted into Audus’ chest was giving out a strong, regular signal and, even more usefully than that, it showed the route she had taken. They would soon catch her up.
As they hurried through the gloom, the surface underfoot began to change. Rather than a smooth, slate-like substance, it became fractured and crumbled, crunching under their boots like piles of soot. Pale lights began stretching across the floor towards them – long, grey fingers that grew stronger as they marched on. Soon, Bullosus could see that the light was leaking from around the edges of what looked like closed doors, but if they were doors they were absurdly tall, as though made for giants.
‘Who built the fortress?’ said Lothar, raising his voice over the song of the caged alien.
Bullosus said nothing, trudging on through the hall. The carpet of flakes became so deep he had to wade through great drifts. They billowed around him as he walked, glinting in the light from the doorways, churning and spiralling like a blizzard.
‘There,’ said Lothar.
Bullosus had already seen it. Up ahead of them was another doorway, leading directly to the route Audus had taken – and this one was open. The size of the doorways and the billowing clouds made it hard to gauge the distance, but he guessed half a mile.
The blizzard grew more ferocious with every step and they were only halfway to the door when Bullosus began to struggle. The flakes had reached the top of his prodigious gut. It was like trying to wade through a lake of metal shavings. The flakes buckled and snapped under his weight, but they were landing around him all the time, sticking to his face and clogging his eyes.
‘Wait,’ gasped Lothar.
Bullosus looked back and saw that his brother was covered up to his chest and had ground to a halt. Aurick was the same. The amphibian had stopped singing, looking around in wide-eyed panic at the whirling banks of metal shards.
‘Move!’ growled Bullosus.
His brothers strained, their faces red with exertion, but however much they tried to push through they could not take a step. Bullosus was about to yell again, when the hall reverberated with the sound of metal pounding on metal. It sounded like someone had struck an enormous bell.
The brothers and the creature all looked around in silence. The flakes were falling even faster now, but the sound was so ominous Bullosus forgot about everything else. It boomed again, metal pummelling metal, hitting with such force that the whole chamber shuddered.
‘Something’s trying to get in,’ whispered Lothar, his face as grey as the drifts that were burying him.
Boom. It struck again, with even more ferocity.
Bullosus nodded. Whatever was hammering against the walls was huge.
Boom.
No, he realised. It wasn’t the walls.
‘The door,’ he said, nodding at one of the towering portals.
Lothar hissed a curse.
The metal, or stone, or whatever the door was made of, was buckling.
Boom. The door bowed towards them, starting to rip away from its hinges. The door was hundreds of feet tall, but whatever was behind it was even bigger.
Lothar and Aurick began to splutter as the drifts rose across their chins and into their mouths. They angled their heads back, struggling to breathe, looking panicked. Bullosus tried to reach towards them, but the weight of the drifts was so great he could not move. The flakes had risen to his chest.
Boom. The door was on the verge of collapsing.
‘Draik!’ snarled Bullosus. If it wasn’t for that Terran dandy, he would already have left Precipice with Audus in his hold and his arm still intact. The thought of his injury reminded him of the radium scythe Orphis had grafted to his muscles.
Boom. The door leant forwards.
Bullosus flexed his muscles and triggered the scythe. Heat and smoke engulfed him as the blade tore through mounds of shavings, creating a clear space around the bounty hunter. He wrenched the scythe free, raised it, sparking, over his head, and punched it down. It ripped through the floor like paper.
Bullosus wrenched the blade sideways. He had only meant to create a small opening, but the scythe was blazing with such ferocity that it whirled around him, creating a ragged, circular hole. Bullosus teetered on the edge, staring down into darkness. There was movement down there. Something liquid. Like an underground river.
Boom. The doors ripped free of their hinges and fell.
Bullosus shoved his brothers into the hole and jumped after them, cursing Draik again as he plummeted into the blackness.
20
They met in the outer precincts of the Imperial Palace. A warren of slums and crumbling ruins, crawling with the kind of human detritus the two young nobles had spent their lives avoiding. Draik had never ventured this far from the family estates unaccompanied. As he strode into the Basilica of Saint Scipios, sabre in hand, cloak flung back, he felt more alive than he had ever done before. The atrium soared above him, magnificent – even now, with its walls blackened and its roof gone. Through broken rafters he saw a mountainous heap of catacombs and huts, layer upon layer of city, the tides of history that had drowned this once noble structure beneath hovels, mines and wreckage-strewn landing pads. The air was barely breathable, so thick with fumes that Draik could almost imagine that the basilica was restored to its former glory, its isles and naves swimming with holy fumes, its statues the silhouettes of magnificent priests, blessing the devout legions who had battled their way to the Imperium’s blessed Throneworld.
‘Beautiful,’ said Numa, striding through the fug, approaching from the far end of the nave. He was dressed as finely as Draik and had the same adrenaline gleam in his eyes. Numa was just a year older than Draik and his pale, angular features bore all the same hallmarks of nobility. He held himself with the poise and dignity of a dancer, trailing robes of silk and crushed velvet, intricately braided with the sigils of his house.
Draik nodded, tearing his gaze from the blasted majesty overhead and approaching his friend. As they met in the centre of the basilica they bowed and shared the usual civilities, before drawing their blades and adopting en garde positions.
‘Is it true?’ asked Draik. ‘That you spoke ill of my sister?’
Numa nodded. ‘If I have caused injury to your family name, Janus, I apologise, but I stand by what I said. Thalia shows no respect for anything, least of all you. She has spread revolting rumours and lies. She seems determined to tarnish your good name.’
Draik’s pulse was hammering and he could see beads of sweat glinting on Numa’s face.
‘I cannot let such accusations go unchallenged,’ he said. ‘She is a daughter of House Draik.’
Numa nodded.
For the first time in his life, Draik felt like a man. His father’s words echoed round his head. Without your name, you are nothing. And without honour, you are not worthy of your name.
‘No one must know,’ he said.
Numa’s serious facade cracked for a moment. ‘My punishment would be as terrible as yours, Janus.’
‘Then let us begin,’ said Draik.
‘First blood?’
‘First blood.’
They circled through the ruins, stepping lightly over toppled columns and shattered flagstones.
Numa made the first strike, a desultory overhand slash, more like another form of greeting than a genuine attack. Draik parried easily, disengaged, and struck with more fury, thrusting low and fast. Numa grinned as he parried, returning the strike with an equally furious one. The duellists’ blades clattere
d as they danced past archways and architraves, striking with ever-greater speed and ferocity, stirring up banks of dust as they leapt and rolled.
Draik called on every skill he had learned in the training halls of the palace, tempering his violence with elegance and control. He had sparred with his friend many times – even as children they had enacted mock battles across the ballrooms and terraces of their family homes – but this was different. The reason for duelling was irrelevant. They both knew it. Draik took his family name seriously, as his father had ordered him to, but they would have found some other excuse to fight soon enough. The two youths were on the cusp of manhood. The time had come to test their prowess.
The duel quickly became more serious than either of them had expected. What had started as little more than a game took on a deadly earnest. Their smiles faded and the humour vanished from their eyes.
They had been lunging back and forth for nearly ten minutes when Draik stumbled, surprised, as Numa attacked with a move he had never seen before. He rolled, backwards, over a piece of masonry, landed on his feet and brought up his blade in time to parry the blow. Numa’s eyes were blank as he lunged again, incredibly fast.
Draik parried again, but fell over another piece of shattered statue.
Numa brought his blade round in a wide slash that was headed straight for Draik’s face.
Draik realised, incredulously, that he was going to lose the duel. He hurled himself forwards, moving with wild desperation, his reserve shattered by the idea of defeat.
Numa’s blade flashed across Draik’s face and pain exploded in his left eye.
Blood flew from his face. Draik had lost the duel, but his momentum carried him forwards. His attack was too fast and clumsy for Numa to anticipate. Draik thudded into Numa and landed a thrust of his own. The two friends ended up face to face, their noses almost touching.
A horrible sense of foreboding gripped Draik as Numa’s face twisted into a grimace.
Draik loosed his sword and stepped back.
The blade was embedded, hilt deep, in Numa’s chest.
Numa’s seconds rushed forwards, crying out in alarm as Numa dropped to his knees, a dazed look on his face as he gripped the sword handle jutting from his breast, crimson bubbling between the fingers of his white gloves.
‘Leave!’ hissed Draik’s seconds, grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him away.
Draik was so shocked that he did not think to object as they bundled him from the basilica.
As they carried him off, Draik was barely aware of the pain in his eye. He felt as though Numa’s blood was washing him away, a crimson tide, hurling him towards damnation. He closed the eye that had not been blinded, giving in to the sensation of weightlessness.
Then the reality of what he had done hit home. He had left his friend to die. Whatever the consequences, he could not simply flee.
‘No!’ he cried, opening his eye.
Rather than slum-crowded Terra, he saw a clear, star-filled sky. The kind of sky that had not been seen on Terra for millennia – dozens of shimmering constellations, turning slowly in a sable void. He was about to cry out for his seconds to halt, when he realised he was alone, lying flat on his back in the darkness, agony pulsing up from his wrist, through his shoulder and into his chest. His heart was hammering erratically, skipping and racing as the pain in his side grew.
He tried to sit. The pain tripled and he vomited over his cuirass, groaning. It felt like someone had put a knife in his jugular. His heart stuttered and stopped, then raced and missed several more beats before finally settling into a steady rhythm.
He reached down and felt the device at his wrist, still sparking the electric charge that had stopped and restarted his heart. As he touched it, he remembered everything. He was not on Terra, he was in the heart of the Blackstone Fortress. Despite the agony thrumming through his veins, he laughed.
‘It worked.’ His voice was hoarse and strange.
He managed to sit and look around. He was on a gridded platform, made of the same onyx-like material as the walls, and behind him was a smooth ramp leading back up to the aqueduct. Black liquid was crashing down behind him, vanishing through the holes of the grid.
A few splashes were landing close to him, so, remembering the charred corpses, Draik dragged himself away from the weir, wincing as arcs of energy sparked down from his wrist and across his chest.
When he was sure he was clear, he took a look around. The grid appeared to be floating in space. The platform ended a few feet away from him and from there on there were only stars, blinking at him from every direction. He unclasped the strap, took a deep breath and wrenched it free. Blood rushed from his wrist but the wounds were not deep. He took a bandage from a pouch on his belt and bound them. Then he climbed, unsteadily, to his feet. He was a mess. His coat and boots were charred and his cuirass was covered in vomit. His clothes were dark with blood and his heart was still skipping the odd beat. He wiped down his breastplate and took a few deep, slow breaths, trying to steady his pulse.
Something had changed. His mind was not his own. Since landing on the Blackstone, he had felt an alien presence staring into his thoughts, but now it was in his thoughts, bound to his conscience. Thanks to the axial interrupter, he had been revived, but he also felt altered.
He looked around again. The air was brittle and cold. Even now he could see frost glittering in the folds of his coat. But it was still air. If he were really out in the void, he would already be dead. This must just be another chamber in the Blackstone. He stepped to the edge of the platform and reached out. He was still holding the interrupter and he waved it back and forth. To his surprise, it collided with the stars, causing them to spark and blink. They were not distant, but tiny – a dazzling microcosm, clouds of miniature suns hovering in the air all around him.
He knelt and reached down. His hand bashed against a hard surface. There was a floor, it was just polished to such a perfect sheen that it reflected the stars above.
Carefully, he stepped from the platform. The mirrored floor took his weight but, as Draik stepped into the stars, they detonated against his clothes in a series of little explosions. They sounded like dead leaves – crunching underfoot, harmless and inconsequential – but each miniature supernova burned on his coat, scorching away the cloth and scattering little flames through the air.
Now that he was standing amongst them, Draik could see that the star field was finite. There was a wall in the distance, a few hundred feet away and, if he squinted hard, he could make out the outline of a door. There was no way back, so his route was clear. He took a few steps, still unsteady from his recent resurrection, but sensing that he was moments away from his goal. He picked up his pace but quickly realised a problem. Every star he passed through died, blazing angrily against his face and clothes, and after a few minutes his coat was blistering and smouldering. The stars had even burned through to his skin in some places, leaving painful lesions.
Draik paused. He was not even halfway across, but his coat was already starting to collapse and the shaven part of his head, either side of his topknot, was blistered and smoking as the embers ate into his skull. By the time he reached the other side he would look like a revenant, burned and bleeding, like one of those ruined devotees in the Helmsman. The constellations were more densely packed in the centre of the chamber and his skin was already raw with dozens of burns.
You lack steel, he heard Thalia say. You will always fail.
He gritted his teeth and strode on, ignoring the pain as dozens of little fires erupted over his clothes and face, scorching and smoking as they blistered his skin. The pain grew worse as he reached the centre of the chamber. His uniform was ablaze in several places now, and he could barely see through the cloud of fireballs igniting all around him.
It occurred to him that he might die. The flames were crackling across his whole body. He felt as t
hough he were in a storm of acid. An image of Pious Vorne entered his thoughts. He was still perturbed by the thought that she was willing to burn for her faith despite her perfectly rational fear of such a fate. If I burn, I burn, he thought. But I’m not turning back.
He broke into a run, charging headlong through an exploding universe, trailing flames and sparks, a brilliant comet punching through the firmament.
21
A tongue lolled across the floor, sinuous and serpentine, reaching towards Glutt. It was leathery and black and trailing the heavy stink of rotting meat. He watched the tongue for a long time, hypnotised by its movements, before realising that it was his. He coiled it back into his mouth, tasting the cold, alien flavour of the Blackstone. Then he looked down at the rest of himself.
As the daemon had promised, his feeble body was gone, replaced by something far more warlike. His legs were like slabs of cooled magma: dusty grey and covered in hard, overlapping ridges, like the plates of a crustacean’s shell, bristling with long, serrated spines. There were also more legs than there used to be – seven, to be exact, planted firmly on the ground and ending in blunt, ragged stumps. He reached down to tap one of them and saw that his arm was also changed. It unfolded with a series of clicks, extending dozens of joints. It was clad in the same ridged armour as his legs and, rather than a hand, it ended in a single, scythe-like talon.
He was crouched in the darkness, at the edge of a pool. The pool was a ragged, puckered sore, marring the Blackstone’s smooth floor. Rather than water, it contained a thick, puce-coloured substance that was lapping, gently, against hundreds of white eggs.
Glutt stood, his body creaking and groaning like an old door, and saw that he was surrounded by thousands of the eggs. They were all nestled in similar pools of dark red liquid, heaped in piles as far as he could see. He nodded in satisfaction. The daemon was a good teacher. It had patiently taught him the obscure rituals and complicated chemistry required to nurture the virus. In one of these eggs would be the plague that would ruin Commander Ortegal.