by William King
“Some of it happened then?”
“Some of the conversation and the part with the Eye.”
“So he set a demon on you. I find it hard to sympathise under the circumstances.”
“I suspected you might.”
“What happened?”
“The creature took a great deal of knowledge from my mind and after it was done with me I was thrown into Molok’s dungeons to wait my turn to be sacrificed.”
“He is going to use you as a sacrifice to this Demon Prince Jolgotha?”
“Indeed. Myself and many others. All of whom are bait to summon Jolgotha so that he can be imprisoned and used.”
“You are going to be sacrificed and fed to a demon?”
“There’s no need to gloat.”
“I can’t think of anything else to do under the circumstances.”
“You’re going to have to break into Molok’s citadel and free me.”
“Is there anything else you would like me to do? Like catch the moon in a net or count all the grains of sand in the Great Rust Desert?”
“Now is not the time for levity, Ulrik. If you do not free me soon then I will die and the spell holding the demon in place will dissolve and it will eat your body and soul. It does not matter what Molok will do to you, it cannot be as bad as that.”
Perhaps it was because of the link they shared but Ulrik could sense the truth in the wizard’s words and the desperation in his heart and it came to him that Valerius was probably suffering a great deal at this moment and had nothing to lose by implementing his threat.
“Can’t it? I have no guarantee that you will not feed me to the demon in the future. This way I know you will devoured by demons too.”
“That’s a rather childish and spiteful attitude, Ulrik.”
Ulrik folded his arms and stared.
“I would have preferred voluntary co-operation but if that is not forthcoming…”
Valerius moved his fingers through the air, drawing lines of fire in the air before him. He spoke words in a language Ulrik did not recognise but which sounded harsh and cracked and not at all meant for the human tongue. Ulrik felt as if a huge weight was descending upon him and those lines of fire were being branded into his soul. A strange compulsion settled upon him and not just upon him he knew, but upon the thing that shared his body with him and part of his soul.
“What have you done?” Ulrik asked. “What sort of magic have you worked upon me now?”
“I redoubled the binding on the demon. It must obey me. The demon is bound to you now so you must obey me too. You will seek me out and you will rescue me. You will do so as quickly as possible. You will pass this message on to Rhea and tell her to accompany you. Now you will awake and you will remember what I have told you and you will act upon it.”
Ulrik eyes snapped open and he found himself staring at the cracked ceiling of Marius’s lab. Bound by the strange compulsion to do what he had been told by the image of Valerius in a dream, he rose from the bunk. He tried to stop himself but his body worked under compulsion. Marius lay drunk on the floor, snoring, surrounded by his fallen alembics, his head cushioned on a pile of leather-bound volumes of alchemical lore.
Anger filled Ulrik. It was not enough apparently that his life be usurped by Valerius’s magic but now he was no longer even master of his own limbs. He would not have it. He was not some automaton to dance to the wizard’s tune. He took a deep breath and with a massive effort of will halted his steps towards the door.
Something deep inside of him, something wicked and powerful fought back, tried to make him move, but he refused it. He held his breath, hoping to deny himself strength and air and thus assert his command over his own body. He stood there for long moments, muscles writhing like great cables below his skin, sweat trickling down the furrows of his brow and dripping saltily into his eyes.
He had seen men addicted to drink try to refuse wine, only to reach out for the goblet as if they had no control over their hands. He knew what they must feel like now, but swore that he was not going to give way. His heartbeat thundered loud in his ears, the near-irresistible urge to obey Valerius’s command surged through his veins, and yet he held himself to the spot while he wrestled with the magical control.
The struggle more than anything was proof that what he had just experienced was no simple dream, and that the wizard really had managed to communicate with him. Perhaps he was foolish to resist, because his life and soul really did depend on keeping Valerius alive, so perhaps he should just relax and let his body do what it wanted. Perhaps these thoughts were another manifestation of the power trying to control him exerting its will to get him to do what the wizard wanted. He wanted to be certain that even if he obeyed Valerius, he did so of his own free will. He was taking a stand now, for he feared that if he did not he would never have another chance to be his own master.
Eventually the compulsion lessened, receding away like water flowing down a cistern. His heart stopped pounding, his muscles relaxed. To test his control he made himself walk back to the bed and lie down on it, and take deep calming breaths. Slowly, a sense of triumph seeped into his tired, dream-fevered brain. He had managed to resist the spell that threatened to turn him into a will-less automaton and remained in however small a way the master of his own destiny rather than a wizard’s puppet.
For the first time in a long time, he felt as if he had won a tiny victory, and yet, a small nagging voice niggled away at him, telling him that such a triumph would be useless if the wizard died and the demon within him became unbound. It had taken almost all of his willpower to overcome it while it was dormant and bound.
He had no way of knowing either whether Valerius sensed his resistance and even now was preparing to unleash the creature as a punishment. His knuckles went white. His fists clenched as he considered this but after a few moments he relaxed. Logic told him that it was not going to happen, not while Valerius still had some hope of Ulrik freeing him. It came to him also that the wizard must be desperate indeed if Ulrik represented his best and only chance of freedom.
It was not much of a chance. He was supposed to break into Molok’s fortified citadel, and rescue a prisoner from the dungeon there.
He might as well just throw himself on his sword now and get it over with. Doubtless it would be less painful than whatever fate Molok reserved for those who defied him and it might forestall the painful fate with which Valerius threatened him. Perhaps self-destruction was the only escape route out of this.
And yet, he could not bring himself to do it. Valerius had judged him well. The will to live that had led him survive in the Pits stilled burned fiercely now. There was always some hope, and if the only exit was death, doubtless he would find it soon enough if he made the mad attempt to rescue Valerius.
At least that way the matter would be taken out of his hands. And there was always the chance, no matter how remote, that he might live through this. While that possibility existed, he was reluctant to end it all. The question was: how would he get into Molok’s citadel?
Looking down at the prone figure of Marius, his eyes closed, his mouth slackly open, a trail of drool dribbling from the corner of his lips, it came to Ulrik that he had told the little sorcerer all about his implant and the way Valerius could control him with it. If Marius decided to share that knowledge with the wrong people, it would mean Ulrik’s life.
He toyed with the hilt of his weapon and then shook his head. Where did these ideas come from? Was it the demon that lurked so close to his heart? He knew himself well enough to be certain that this was not the case – he’d had ideas like this before when he woke up drunk. Just thinking about that brought back dark memories of other times and other places when he had woken up with corpses around him or he’d killed men in brawls provoked by drink-fuelled anger. Some of those men had been his friends.
Ulrik wondered how long he’d been out. It had been late afternoon when he came here and the laboratory had no windows and the booze had
affected his sense of time. He had no idea how many hours had passed.
He opened the door. Marius’s wife sat in her rocking chair snoring. The remnants of the compulsion Valerius had laid on him reminded him to seek Rhea. He hoped she was at the Inn. They had a lot to plan and a little time to plan it in.
Chapter Twenty
“What is going on?” Rhea asked. As he entered the inn room, she pointed to Molok’s citadel, visible in the distance through the armourglass doorway.
Ulrik opened it and strode out onto the balcony. Lots of other people were staring at the wizard’s demon built tower. The clouds swirled over it, their colours pulsing with a strange internal radiance. Ulrik focused his magically altered gaze on them. They were pregnant with energy. Elementals danced on the winds. Small demonic beings hovered and then were sucked down into the citadel. Something was attracting them. Something was generating an enormous amount of energy. Even the huge Black Ships hovering above the structure bobbed like balloons in the wind.
“I don’t know,” he said over his shoulder. “I am not a wizard like Valerius.”
Rhea joined Ulrik on the balcony. “I don’t like this at all. It looks like Molok is planning something really big and Valerius is in there. For all we know they may be preparing to sacrifice him even now.”
“Then we had better get him out,” said Ulrik.
“I studied the outside of the tower and I’ve found a route that we can use to get in. There are areas where you can scale the side of the building and not be visible from too many angles.”
“It looks like there’s a storm coming out of the desert. That might cover our movements but it would make the climb much more difficult.”
Thunder boomed. Lightning slashed the sky. Dark clouds gathered. “If we’re going to go, we’d best were now,” Ulrik said.
“It’s a fair walk to Molok’s Tower” said Rhea, looking around at the room. It looked shabby and seedy but he had been happy there for a short time and he felt an odd sadness as they departed.
They moved through Hydra like a pair of shadows. Night had fallen but the pulsing, polychrome clouds filled the streets with strange light. Sometimes Ulrik imagined that he saw demonic faces leering out of them.
Rhea leaned against him as if they were lovers out on a spree. If anyone was looking he was sure they would suspect nothing. The streets around the citadel were deserted in the face of the oncoming, unnatural storm. Ulsios cowered beneath trash-heaps. Grit and wind-blown debris swirled through the air. A few tiny hovering elementals illuminated shadowy corners. The stink of sewer gas rose through the gutters, reminding Ulrik of the vast labyrinth of ancient tunnels beneath his feet. Perhaps, if they had been given enough time they could have found their way into Molok’s lair by such a route, although it was not a prospect he relished the thought of.
Looking at the citadel from so close, Ulrik realised exactly how big it was. It was on the same scale as the Karnak Tower back in Typhon and it had a much more monumental quality. Everything about it spoke of power. It radiated sorcery and ancient, inhuman evil. He did not need his modified eyesight to be able to tell that. It was obvious to anyone as the deserted streets around it attested. No one liked to live in a dark wizard’s shadow, particularly not one as powerful as Molok.
All of Ulrik’s anger and most of his confidence evaporated in the chill aura of menace that the monstrous building radiated. The citadel loomed gigantically above them. Its windows blazed with light and the sky above it swirled with the most concentrated clouds of magical energy, as if within some potent eldritch ritual were drawing to a cataclysmic conclusion.
“How are we going to get in?” Ulrik asked.
“The sides of the tower are scalable,” said Rhea. “Look at all those gargoyles. That sort of decoration must make it very easy for a thief to climb in.”
“It almost makes you wonder why there are not more of them doing it right now.”
“They are all probably too busy getting drunk.”
Ulrik studied the side of the tower. There appeared to be no sentries on any of the balconies. Ulrik studied Rhea closely. He thought he saw fear written on her face, but there was something else there as well: excitement.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked. “You could overcome the geas, or at least try to fight it. I did. So could you. It’s not just the geas that compels you, is it?”
She appeared to consider seriously what he was asking for a moment. He guessed that she, like him, was caught between the twin poles of fear and excitement, of necessity and compulsion. “Because Valerius has been good to me, and I have been around him a long time, and because without his patronage its back to the street for me, or the slave blocks and I find that I rather like being in his service. Also I am fond of him. And in his own way I suspect he is rather fond of me.”
That took Ulrik aback. He had not imagined anyone being actually attached to their master. He had always seen him as a remote, manipulative sorcerer rather than as another human being. It also came to him that perhaps the cat-girl who seemed so insular and self-sufficient in her own way also had her own emotional needs and attachments. Perhaps it was a measure of his own self-obsessed nature that he had not even considered the possibility.
“We could die here.”
“You are going to die anyway. Why brood on it?”
“I have a morbid imagination. The thought of my own death disturbs me.”
“I mean it. You are going to die anyway, if not here today, then at some time in the future. There is nothing more certain. Why not risk your life on something glorious and seek a spectacular end?”
There was something serious in her tone now. She was speaking the truth as she saw it, and it worried him. People who wanted a glorious death had a habit of dragging others down with them. He had seen it in the past.
“Do you really love your life so little?”
She gave a little snort of contempt. “It’s things like this that make me love my life. You only really value something when you see its real worth. Did not your time in the arena teach you that?”
Ulrik had heard this sort of thing before, and there had been times when he had even felt the truth of it, usually after a close fought duel that he had barely survived, but it was only one mood of many, and he passed through it and out the other side. It looked like Rhea was like fighters he had known in the Pits, the kind who loved their work, who could not wait to get on the sand, to roll the dice with death.
“It taught me not to go looking to get myself killed.”
“Like I said. Death comes for everybody.”
“I plan on not being at home when he calls on me.”
“Do you think She will give you that choice?”
“If she doesn’t, I will run as fast and as far as I can.”
“You might not have that choice either. In fact you don’t. You’ve already said so.”
Ulrik could not deny the truth in her words so he did not even try. Instead he let a little anger show in his voice. “And you would prefer to run towards her anyway.”
“That’s better,” she said. “Now you’re showing a little edge.”
He wondered whether she had just manipulated him quite as much as Valerius had. Not that it mattered. He was starting to feel a little better. Anger always made it easier for him to cope with these situations. He suspected that it was simply the flip side of his fear.
“Look at the size of that ship,” said Rhea. Ulrik followed her pointing finger and looked up at a huge black ship, silhouetted against the multi-coloured clouds. It did not look like an ordinary airship. It shared many of the qualities of the tower. Thousands of screaming demon faces were embossed on its side, the expressions ranging from rage to hunger to terror. Something told him those expressions were not there for decoration. He suspected that there were real demons imprisoned within all that metal. From above them he could hear the sound of screaming and chanting, as the sacrifices went on long into the night.
; “Let’s hope Valerius is still alive.”
“We know he is,” said Rhea. “If he wasn’t, neither would you be.”
“Let’s hope that continues.”
“The longer we wait, the less likely it becomes.”
“Once we’re inside, how are we going to find Valerius?”
“We’ll ask someone.”
“And what if they don’t want to tell us?”
“They will by the time I’ve finished with them.”
Ulrik would not have liked to be the man who refused to tell Rhea what she wanted to know, just judging from the sound of her own voice.
“I suppose we better go inside them. We’ve put this off for long enough.”
She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. “I might not get another chance to do that.”
She sounded very fatalistic and Ulrik realised that she no more believed that they were going to get out of there alive than he did.
They scuttled up to the side of the tower, pausing for a moment to see whether they had been spotted. When no immediate alarm was given, Rhea grabbed the first gargoyle and pulled herself up the side of the building. Ulrik watched her go and then followed in her tracks.
Although he was used to clambering around the outsides of a flying airship, there was no way he could keep up with her. She had the agility of her cat ancestors and the sides of the tower proved no more obstacle to her than an open pathway.
The wind tugged at him. Particles of floating grit got into his eyes, making it harder for him to find his way as they got higher. As the ritual wore on, he noticed that some of it was glowing, and getting warm to the touch. Eddy currents of magical energy must be responsible.
Ulrik dug his fingers in to every handhold provided by the mouths and nostrils and horns and ears of demons and still struggled to keep up. Rhea found her way to a balcony. She dropped lithely over the side and gestured for Ulrik to follow.
Ulrik landed beside her. “This is a simple runic lock. I know the trick to opening them,” she said, touching the stone work with one hand and closing her eyes. She spoke something and the stonework glowed in an intricate pattern beneath her hands. As the light faded the armoured glass slid open revealing a large chamber, furnished as a combination sorcerer’s study and bedchamber. A four poster stood in one corner. Alchemical thuribles sat on a workbench. A huge volume lay open on a desk of polished wood. The air smelled of incense and chemicals.