Prophecy's Ruin (Broken Well Trilogy)

by Sam Bowring

‘What goes, soldier?’

  The soldier, who had been running towards the town, spun at his bellow, black braids swinging about her face. Even from this distance he recognised her as Adra, one of the younger penulms of the fort.

  ‘Commander Corlas!’ she called, relieved to see him. ‘You must come quickly!’

  Corlas continued down the stairs, and by the time he’d reached the bottom, Adra had rounded up a couple of blades. ‘You,’ she was saying, jabbing a finger at one, ‘go and tell the gerent there’s been an attack on the mages’ quarters!’

  ‘And you, blade,’ said Corlas to the other, ‘go to the cerepan on duty at the gate. There’s been a death outside the walls. I want to know who, then I want an organised sweep of the fort and mine. Anything out of the ordinary is to be reported.’

  Adra was waiting edgily for him to follow. She led him to the mages’ quarters, which was a building separate from the main settlement and home to the fort’s combat mages, the lightfists, whom Corlas had little to do with. They kept mostly to themselves when not on duty, and existed somewhat outside normal military hierarchy.

  Adra led Corlas into the main chamber. Walls of pink-white marble were lined with elaborately carved bookcases choking with colourful spines. A spidery lantern hung above a majestic table long enough to seat two dozen. From skylights the sun’s rays shone down on congealed pools of blood. Smashed glass covered the length of the table, and amongst the ceramic shards lay glistening lumps of flesh. At the far end a mage was sprawled back in his seat, his middle section gutted. On the floor, slumped against a bookcase, was the torso of a small boy, his eyes still staring in terror at whatever had killed him.

  ‘By the light!’ whispered Corlas.

  ‘I had a look in the other rooms,’ said Adra. ‘They’re just as bad. Many of the mages were in their beds. Did you hear that?’ She cocked her head sharply, braids swishing.

  Corlas stood still. ‘No.’

  Adra moved to the marbled arch at the opposite end of the chamber, drawing her sword. ‘I didn’t check all the rooms,’ she said. ‘Maybe someone’s still alive?’ She ducked through the archway.

  ‘Adra!’ shouted Corlas. He started to follow, but there came a clattering on the tiles outside and the gerent entered the chamber with six of his personal guards. Ateppa froze when he saw the scene, his face going almost as white as his hair.

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  From beyond the marbled arch came a stifled yelp and the sound of something smashing.

  ‘Adra!’ Corlas yelled, drawing his sword and moving to the archway.

  ‘Wait, commander!’ ordered the gerent, his soldiers fanning out beside him. ‘Do not separate!’

  ‘We already have,’ growled Corlas.

  ‘You will wait, commander!’

  Adra stepped back into view, sheathing her sword. Her shoulder banged clumsily against the archway so that she half-lurched into the room. She straightened as she saw the gerent.

  ‘What was that noise?’ Corlas demanded.

  ‘Oh!’ she said, turning to him. She paused, seeming to consider something.

  ‘Penulm!’ growled Corlas, furious. ‘We heard a cry, and a crash!’

  ‘It was me,’ Adra said quickly. ‘It was so horrible in there, I gave a cry. I knocked over a vase.’

  ‘Don’t separate again!’ said Corlas.

  Ateppa was still staring at the carnage. He bent to his knees and ran his finger through a smear of mud on the ground. ‘This has all the markings of a Mireform attack,’ he said slowly. ‘Everybody keep their weapons out.’

  ‘A Mireform, sir?’ asked Corlas.

  ‘A terrible creature,’ said the gerent, standing. ‘Rare and terrible. A shadow creature, hard to kill; they are shape-changers. Fetch more blades,’ he ordered one of his guards.

  He approached Corlas as the remaining soldiers spread over the room. ‘I was in a patrol that ran close to the border,’ he said, loudly enough for all to hear. ‘We came across a monster such as I’ve never seen. It killed twelve of sixteen, and the four of us who lived were lucky to escape. It followed as we fled, changing its shape, taking on the faces of our fallen patrol, mocking us.

  ‘We returned later with mages who told us it had been a Mireform, a denizen of Swampwild far from home, on some errand for Raker most likely. They say Mireforms require a lot of power to control, but make powerful servants once tamed.’

  Adra snorted, and Corlas gave her an odd look. Her face fell neutral.

  ‘Did the mages kill it?’ he asked.

  ‘We never found it again. They’re excellent at evading detection by magic, as you can see.’ Ateppa gestured around the room. ‘Making them perfect assassins for mages. Corlas,’ he continued more privately, ‘do you know what this means?’

  ‘I don’t like what I’m guessing.’

  ‘Without our mages we’re severely crippled, and that will be the point. Something is coming.’ He fingered his sword. ‘Might the mages on watch still be alive?’

  ‘I’ll go check!’ offered Adra eagerly.

  Corlas hushed her, remembering what he had seen from the walls. A shred of red cloth flapping in the wind – the colour of a lightfist’s uniform. There were other things, too, amongst the rocks, and now he was sure the mages on watch had been the first to die, their bodies hurled from the parapets. He told the gerent what he’d seen and Ateppa raked fingers through his white hair.

  ‘Arkus,’ he swore. ‘No mages at all.’

  More soldiers arrived and the gerent divided them quickly into groups to search the building. As they moved out of the meeting chamber, Adra remained.

  ‘Adra!’ said Corlas. ‘Attend us!’

  She came reluctantly behind as they went further into the building. Each bedchamber was as gruesome as the last. Blood seeped from bloody beds. Dripping was the only sound besides footsteps. All the mages were dead.

  ‘Those in their beds,’ muttered Ateppa, ‘are not as cruelly dismembered as those two in the main chamber. I suspect the sleeping were killed first, swiftly and silently. Once everyone else was dead, those last two, sitting up late into the night, could really be enjoyed.’

  Corlas didn’t hear, for he was staring in surprise at the floor. He went to tap his superior on the shoulder but Ateppa had moved away. Face down on the ground, partially hidden under the bed, was a head. A pool of fresh blood was engulfing the black braids that fanned out around it. Beside it lay the fragments of a vase.

  A stifled yelp. A smash.

  He looked up to see Adra watching him intently. A moment later her face split into the most malicious grin Corlas had ever seen.

  They are shape-changers.

  As the gerent brushed past her, Adra spun, raising her sword to plunge it into his back. Corlas yelled as he lunged, his own blade clattering against Adra’s just in time. She backed away, her eyes darting between them both. Then, slowly and deliberately, she dropped her sword. Her expression, however, was not one of surrender.

  ‘By Arkus!’ called Ateppa. ‘It’s her! Blades! To me!’

  In a voice like a sinkhole sucking down slime, the Adra-thing spoke. ‘It was so horrible, I gave a cry!’ she mimicked mockingly. Then her grin widened until it elongated her entire head, deepening to reveal rows of fangs.

  ‘Hello, crow meat,’ it said.

  Soldiers spilled into the bedchamber, surrounding the thing with swords as it backed into a corner. It threw its head back and gurgled, a brown tongue tipped with barbed spikes slopping from its maw. When the head came down again, most traces of Adra had disappeared.

  ‘It’s changing into its true shape!’ cried the gerent.

  The creature’s shoulders broadened and its arms lengthened. Muddy-coloured patches bubbled to the surface of skin and armour. Silver claws, thin and flat like knives
, slid out the ends of its fingers. Its eyeballs shrank to white pearls sunk into deep sockets. The human nose collapsed in on itself, inverting into gaping nostrils. The thing grew taller on thick, bendy legs that were out of proportion to its small abdomen. Its brown flesh was moist and lumpy, peppered with moss-like growths. Holes opened up all over its body to sprout green tendrils. It was like some hybrid of mud, plant and beast.

  ‘Kill it!’ shouted Ateppa.

  With a wet laugh the Mireform tottered forward in a way that might have been comical were it not so terrifying. It swayed atop its bendy legs, shoulders rolling, tendrils whipping so fast they put a thrum in the air. The tongue lashed out at the nearest soldier, sinking a barbed spike into his eye. The man gave a spasmodic jerk as the spike hit his brain.

  ‘Attack!’ shouted the gerent. ‘Slice, don’t stab – hack it to pieces!’

  The soldiers attacked, spurred on by their leader and the death of their comrade. With the creature in the corner, only four blades could attack it at once, but those behind didn’t have long to wait. Soldiers screamed as tendrils pushed into their bodies, or claws rent deep gashes, or the fearsome tongue spiked into hearts and minds. The second wave of blades advanced more warily, hanging back from the Mireform’s ranging attacks. It gurgled, and again the tongue shot out, but this time a soldier was waiting. The soldier cleaved the tongue in half and the creature howled. The severed tongue splattered as it hit the floor, spikes and all, into something like sticky swamp ooze. Muck sprayed from the flailing appendage as the creature sucked it back into its mouth.

  Seeing the creature wounded encouraged the soldiers to press on, and they sliced at its murderous curling tendrils. Each time a piece was cut from the Mireform, it too fell apart into ooze. Swords quickly became coated in brown. A knife spun over the fighting soldiers and sank into the creature’s head, but this did not seem to bother it.

  Ateppa, his face a mask of rage, moved to join the next wave of soldiers waiting for those in front to fall. Corlas also watched for any opening. A soldier screamed as she went down with a thick tendril wrapped around her neck. Another fell, his face in shreds. The Mireform roared, and those tendrils that had been severed suddenly grew afresh. The creature seemed to shrink a little with the regeneration.

  ‘Keep at it!’ screamed Ateppa. ‘Hack and slice! Go for the larger limbs!’

  A new tongue unfurled from the Mireform’s mouth to strike a soldier full in the gut. Bellowing with rage, the gerent took the man’s place. With a fast double slash he lopped off two squirming tentacles, and followed up immediately with a sudden lunge at the arm. His sword struck deep, lopping the whole limb from the shoulder. As it fell disintegrating to the ground, the creature shrieked, a sound that echoed as if it came from somewhere deep within the earth. The Mireform turned its full attention to Ateppa, its tiny white eyes flashing hatefully in their cavities. A tendril shot out to encircle his leg, but even as it tensed to yank him to the ground, his sword came down in a wild and powerful arc. It sank into the shoulder of the beast above the missing arm, carving away a whole piece of its side. The Mireform shrieked again and the tendril around Ateppa’s leg jerked away. Other soldiers took the opportunity to hack off more tendrils.

  The creature fell against the wall and shrank again. As it did, silver spikes protruded outwards through its cleaved side, then came the ends of fingers, then a hand and arm. Tendrils grew once more. In moments the Mireform was whole again, but now no taller than a man. Enraged by pain and fear, it leaped against them, a whirling mass of tendrils, tongue and claws. Three soldiers went down screaming, but the gerent fought on with eyes blazing. Corlas found an opening to join him, swinging his sword back and forth like a pendulum of protection. It protected well – squirming bits of Mireform flew about him like grass from a scythe.

  Two large tendrils seized the gerent by the waist and lifted him into the air. Ateppa swung, but each time the tendrils bent out of his sword’s path. The Mireform grinned and the pointed tips of the tendrils worked their way through Ateppa’s skin. Corlas tried to reach him, but the tongue whipped out to keep him at bay. The tendrils squeezed and the gerent’s cries halted as the air went out of him. As his eyes bulged in his head, it seemed only to strengthen the rage they contained. Leaning against the tendril that wormed into his side, he swung his sword at full arm’s length. The blow struck the creature on the neck and sliced clean through. For a second the Mireform’s face froze in mid-roar. Then the head collapsed into chunks of mud, slopping down its body. It dropped the gerent, who rolled away wheezing.

  ‘Keep at it!’ he managed.

  A blade took his place, but the headless thing was folding over on itself. Its long legs twisted around each other and the body lengthened. Suddenly a thing like a huge brown snake was wriggling towards them! It barrelled through, knocking soldiers from their feet, slithering out the door and around the corner.

  ‘After it!’ shouted Corlas. He flagged down two of the soldiers as they passed. ‘You two wait,’ he said, then kneeled by Ateppa. ‘Gerent?’

  Blood oozed from Ateppa’s side, but Corlas couldn’t tell how deeply the tendrils had penetrated. Ateppa raised his face. ‘Just need to get my breath back,’ he wheezed.

  ‘Blades,’ said Corlas to the soldiers, ‘one of you fetch a healer, the other stay with the gerent.’

  ‘I don’t want that creature leaving the fort!’ yelled Ateppa, flecks of blood hitting his lips from within. ‘Go! Kill it!’

  As Corlas ran from the mages’ quarters, he heard shouts at the fort gate. Ahead were several soldiers blocking the path of the snake thing, which was trying to circle around them. Those chasing it from behind were about to catch up. Just twenty paces past them was the raised portcullis.

  ‘Lower the grate!’ bellowed Corlas as he ran.

  The Mireform twisted its snake head towards him, then turned back to the soldiers who barred its way and made a feint towards them. At the last moment it changed direction, knocking down one with a swipe of its tail. With its way clear, it slithered on towards the gate.

  ‘Lower the portcullis!’ Corlas bellowed again.

  One of the guards at the gate finally heeded the order and yanked a lever. The portcullis creaked and fell, and the Mireform put on a final burst of speed. The pointed tips of the portcullis clanked into a row of slots in the ground, barely clipping the tail end of the fleeing Mireform. As it escaped the fort, a rain of arrows followed it harmlessly.

  A shout of panic from the walls above curtailed Corlas’s attention. The soldiers at the gate were also staring at something out on the plains. Further shouting rang from the walls. From behind him came the sound of a powerful impact, and he spun to see one of the town’s houses with its roof smashed in, fire blazing through the windows.

  What had happened?

  His question was answered as a flaming ball plummeted from the sky and exploded on a street, sending out burning tar.

  They were under attack.

  •

  At the gate, Corlas’s spirits almost failed. On the grey plains before the fort stood an army of the shadow.

  ‘How are they so close?’ he demanded of a gate soldier.

  ‘They just appeared, sir!’ the blade said. ‘There was a shimmer in the air and suddenly an army where none existed before! It must be magic, but why didn’t our mages detect them?’

  ‘The mages are dead, soldier.’

  Fear blossomed on the blade’s face. ‘Dead, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘S-sir,’ the soldier stuttered, ‘they shouldn’t be here now!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s day, sir. The beginning of day, even. Ateppa always said a Fenvarrow army wouldn’t attack in the day!’

  ‘No,’ said Corlas. ‘Their magic is stronger at night. Sound the alarms.’

  For Corlas, the enemy’s
entire tactic clicked into place. The Shadowdreamer had sent a deadly assassin during the night, an assassin that could take whatever shape it wanted. It could have posed as a soldier and come in the front gate, or climbed the walls as a spider thing, or . . . Whatever it had done, it had avoided detection by the mages. Then it had killed them, starting with those patrolling the walls, then the rest in their quarters. It had come at night so as not to be seen, and so that it had a better chance of finding all the mages in one place. Without the mages to warn the light of approaching magic, the Shadowdreamer had managed to cloak his troops from sight until they were within attack range. Battu needed to attack as quickly as possible after the assassinations, to press his advantage – hence here they were during the day.

  As the shadow army’s metal catapults launched another volley of fireballs, Corlas spied a group of Graka beating their bat wings and lifting something into the air. Then another group took off, and another . . .

  The fort echoed with alarm bells. Archers swarmed up the stairs to line the walls and fill the south-facing turrets. Troops of blades assembled in the centre of town, and riders ran to the stables to ready their steeds. Corlas strode around shouting orders to all.

  A wave of attackers, Arabodedas and Vorthargs, broke from the army to charge towards the walls. As arrows rained upon them, three Arabodedas mages stepped aside from the group. One summoned crackling power to his fingertips, while the other two protected him against flying arrows with magical deflection. The first mage’s hands shot forth, sending a great bolt of blue energy roaring up the hill. It hit the wall at ground level, blowing out chunks of blackened rock. The mages swapped roles – the first added his efforts to defence, while the second began to charge up another attack. Moments later a second bolt of energy sizzled up the hill to explode in the same place, deepening the wound in the wall. The mages rotated again and a third bolt followed, this time bursting through the stone and creating a breach in the fort’s defences some ten paces wide. With their powers depleted, the mages fled a safe distance from the archers. The Arabodedas and Vorthargs charged towards the opening.