The Immortal Throne (2016)

by Stella Gemmell

  Rubin was transfixed, but he was merely a spectator, uninvolved. He closed his eyes and it was then he felt the einai stir. It swelled quickly, racing through his sinews and nerves. It was much stronger than before and a spasm of dread made his eyes open again. The veil was floating just above the floor, shining, throbbing with light and power. Jona raised his hands and it rose, until it was above their heads and still growing, blotting out the sun. Its silvery ripples were like a brewing storm, a roiling thunderhead, heavy with fate on this bright day. Jona stretched out his arms and the veil spread yet further, thinned, dissolving into a pearly radiance.

  Rubin shut his eyes again and, with an effort of will, surrendered himself to the power.

  He sensed he was floating in the sky high above the Shield. He was part of the veil and it part of him. He could feel its silken strands running through his veins, tugging on his sinews, sliding round his heart. Bathed in its luminescence, he felt safe in its strength. It was bliss. Distantly he was aware of the others, motes on the edge of vision. In a flood of understanding, he knew what he must do: free his einai, let it flow and blend with that of the other Serafim in the medium of the veil. He thought it and it was so. As their powers merged he recognized each of the three like different coloured threads in the veil itself. He could taste their colours, touch their scents, see their sounds, hear their textures.

  Gates flew open in his mind and memories began to flood in, faster and faster, crowding in until his brain felt like a water skin filled to bursting. In that broken, dizzying kaleidoscope of impressions he learned everything about the three Serafim – their births and lives and loves, their ambitions, frustrations and failures. He experienced their birth-shock and battle wounds, the ecstasy of love and the potency of hate. He felt the terrible ennui of lives lived too long yet unfulfilled.

  And buried deep within the avalanche of borrowed memories he glimpsed visions of the world Marcellus and Archange and others of the First had fled – a world of wonders unknown to him yet clothed in stone, stinking, dying, a glittering sarcophagus.

  Broglanh rode from the palace, heading for the Paradise Gate. He whipped the horse on, yelling at anyone in his way. His eyes were fixed on the distant Paradise Tower, willing it to get closer.

  Thoughts of Emly filled his head. Since the first day he had met her, battling against all odds to save her father from the inferno of the House of Glass, she had never been less than brave and true, despite everything she had been through. Those long summer days, as they travelled together with the Khan army, had been some of the happiest of his life. As he journeyed ever further from Thekla’s thrall he had been beset by misgivings about their scheme to steal the veil, but his misplaced faith in her had lingered – a thin, overstretched thread – until he met Hammarskjald and her mad mother in the Vorago valley.

  He was tormented by the knowledge that he had betrayed Emly just as he had betrayed the City, snatching away the veil when it was most needed. Now he had returned it to its owner and by killing Hammarskjald had, he hoped, made some restitution to the empress and the City. But if Emly were to die, if she was already dead, it would be his fault and his burden and he could not live with it.

  He kicked the horse on, leaning forward in the saddle, checking behind to ensure Amalric was following. As the beast halved the distance to the wall they began racing past streams of women and children and old folk, their goods piled on carts or donkeys or their backs, trudging down the road away from the Great Gate, away from the invading army and its terrible contagion. Injured warriors walked among the refugees, but many lay by the roadside unable to go further. The stench of blood and death hung, tangible, in the air.

  As he approached Paradise and its warren of lanes and twittens Broglanh recalled the whore’s directions and steered the lathered horse towards the northbound wall, staying clear of the battling armies. He tried to ignore the sound of sword on sword, metal on flesh, though his heart and gut responded. He kicked the animal on.

  At last the wall came into plain sight. Reining in and standing in the stirrups, careless of stray arrows, he searched for the steps going north. He spotted them, and the City fighters battling to defend them. He urged the horse round the rear of the fighting, vowing to himself that if Emly were truly dead then he would return here and end his life with honour. How much time had passed since she was injured? Far too long, he feared. He told himself not to hope.

  At last the horse broke free of the throng and Broglanh urged it up the steps, then kicked it into a gallop along the top of the wall, heading north. The sounds of battle began to diminish behind him. Then, with a jarring clash of hope and dread, Broglanh spotted his own big warhorse on the wall ahead. The beast was rearing and lashing out with his hooves at anyone who came near. There was no sign of his rider. A band of civilians, ignoring the battle for the City so close by, had gathered to watch. Someone had managed to get a rope round the stallion’s neck, but it had broken and the end bounced and flew as the horse struck out.

  Broglanh threw himself off his lathered mount, enraged that these people could turn their backs on the battle being waged on their behalf to watch a dancing horse. He bellowed at them as he barged through and they fell back like the sheep they were. He stopped and called to the stallion. Patience’s ears flicked, and he abandoned his vigil to trot calmly over. Broglanh patted his neck.

  Then he saw her, a small pile of rags huddled against the parapet. His heart slowed and stuttered, and the rest of the world – the gaping crowd, the distant battle – vanished. All he could hear was the beat of his heart and the dry rasp of his breath.

  She had curled up with her back to the world. He knelt down and gently turned her over, light as a bird. Her hands were thick with blood, which lay in a sticky pool beneath her. His breath stopped. So much blood, such a small body. He took her in his arms and looked into her face, pale as water under the dirt, willing her to live. He pushed her hair back and touched her cheek. The skin was cold. He laid his ear against her breast and listened. He could hear nothing. And tears, unknown to him since childhood, flowed down his face.

  After a while he became aware of the tribeswoman crouching beside him. ‘Dead,’ she said with certainty. ‘Dead now.’

  Fighting Knife, moved by the warrior’s fierce devotion, laid her hand on the girl’s head and prayed to the god of the Fsaan, whose will was always a mystery but whose mercy was eternal, to let the girl live. Behind her the crowd, suddenly respectful, sank as one to their knees and began to petition their own deities.

  High above the mountain the veil floated and span. Drifting in its threads, heedless now of the City and its distress, Rubin experienced the ages-long lives of the Serafim as if they were his own. At last he understood. He knew what they were. And he was amazed.

  Only distantly was he conscious of the Gulon Veil. Alive and eager, it continued to expand, as it had been designed to, its farthest edges racing towards the walls of the City to form a vast dome encompassing all the savagery within.

  Then, like silver, incandescent rain, it descended.

  At the Great North Gate the brutal hand-to-hand combat faltered and stopped as warriors of both armies gazed up in terror and awe.

  A curtain of bright light was descending from the sky, roaring towards them like a sheet of flame. As it touched the top of the Great North Tower the stones crackled and sparked fire. It sank to the battlements, and the soldiers, defenders and attackers alike, scattered in panic.

  Valla’s old comrades Thorum and Wren, soldiers of the Fighting Forty-seventh, ran for their lives, then, seeing they could not outpace the threat, threw themselves under a fallen stone arch. But they could not escape. Silver motes of light swirled all around and there was nowhere to hide.

  Thorum, believing death was about to snatch them, took Wren’s rough, blood-stained hand in his. ‘You are my life,’ he told her. ‘My wife, my sister and my comrade.’

  They flinched as the sparks touched them, but it felt like cool rain
on a hot afternoon. The pains of their wounds drifted away and they gazed at each other in wonder. They crawled out of their hiding-place and looked around.

  All the invaders, high on the wall and in the streets, scorched, flared briefly then charred like moths at a flame.

  Darius Hex was sunk in despair. He could not bear to watch as the enemy hordes continued to pour into the City through the Adamantine Breach, trampling the dead and dying in the ditch, clambering over the bodies on the earthwork and overwhelming the last gallant defenders. A strong man, he had begged his gods for release but they had not answered his pleas.

  Then there was a moment of quiet, of calm. The din of battle ceased and he opened his eyes and looked up, hoping to see the Gardens of Stone but fearing it would be the blade that would end him. The sky seemed full of light and he blinked the sweat from his eyes. He pulled himself up to sitting, the agony of his shattered spine making him cry out. The battlefield seemed glazed with burnished silver. The fighting had stopped, for the enemy soldiers all lay dead, their bodies burned and contorted as if by a great fire. City warriors stumbled around, disorientated, bewildered.

  Darius realized his pain had vanished, as if it had never been. Am I dead? he thought. Or is this a dream? He found he could move his legs and he climbed shakily to his feet, dazed and mystified, then gazed out over the hushed City.

  Evan Broglanh did not see the silver veil descending from the sky. He did not hear the cries of fear and awe all around him. His gaze was fixed on Emly’s face as he willed her to live.

  He had killed and killed over twenty long years – hundreds of warriors sacrificed in the name of the gods of ice and fire.

  And when Emly opened her eyes and smiled up at him he believed, and for ever would believe throughout their long lives together, that for once the gods had shown mercy on their most faithful servant.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  PAPT IN THE veil’s embrace, Rubin walked like a ghost among the Serafim’s thousand-year memories, pulling together the myriad scraps of recall and emotion, living their successes and losses as his own. He marvelled at the pioneers’ courage and the wild ambition of their task, and wept for their ultimate tragedy.

  For the Serafim were Mankind’s last, best hope of averting extinction.

  Oblivion would be slow in coming, long predicted, but Man’s greed and arrogance, and his insatiable curiosity, would in the remote future inexorably drive this planet’s resources to the brink of collapse. Then the iron rules of entropy would set in, making extinction inevitable. Cruelly, Earth’s last survivors would know by then that they stood alone in the cosmos, a bizarre aberration in an otherwise sterile universe. And that their planet’s death would end that brief, improbable experiment – life.

  In pioneering craft, the building of which would exhaust the darkening planet’s last resources, three teams of voyagers would be flung into the past to pivotal points in Man’s history. These travellers were human, but they were bred to be the best, the strongest and longest-lived. They possessed special Gifts, some shared, some individual, all enhanced. Their goal, to protect and guide the primitive people they found and, maybe, alter their narrative enough to save the future world and life itself. One of those teams was named Serafim.

  Personalities filled Rubin’s mind. Araeon, wise leader, whose strength and resourcefulness kept them alive in an alien world where so many perished. Marcellus, ever-faithful, the studious recorder of the team who in time became its legendary warlord. Archange and Hammarskjald. Sikander Khan. Donal Broglanh. And many others. Rubin knew them all, and their darkest secrets were laid open to him.

  In the beginning the travellers had struggled to survive in this hostile world, and were united by the trials they faced. The brutish tribes they encountered would not be taught, or guided, or even helped. The wildlife was vicious and even the land, as if disturbed by their anachronistic presence, was torn by violent earth tremors. But as their footing became secure and the humble foundations of what would become the City were dug, schisms began to form between those of the team who chose to watch and record and subtly guide the primitives, and those who would force change upon them. There was conflict among the Serafim, then treachery and murder.

  Most of them abandoned the City within a century, despondent that their high ideals had been so distorted; they tried to return to their home and their fate remained unknown. Those who stayed – who formed the noble Families Khan and Sarkoy, Vincerus, Guillaume, Gaeta, Kerr and Broglanh – stubbornly refused to accept failure. They were determined to force this world to their will. They targeted the primitives’ first sparks of scientific progress, for rampant technology driven by the pursuit of profit and the needs of the military would, in time, be the most obvious engine of planet failure. Thus, as any innovation might start the wheel of history rolling towards catastrophic collapse, Araeon decreed that all inventions be suppressed as they emerged. His acolytes roamed far and wide seeking them out – the printing press, magnifying lenses, gunpowder, the steam pump – and their creators were discouraged or killed.

  But for all their resourcefulness and resolve the Serafim could only completely control the City, and the rest of the world raced towards its destiny despite them. Finally the City stood alone, a pariah ruled, in the world’s eyes, by evil magics.

  Even the loftiest ambitions become corrupted by time and circumstance. Over the course of a millennium the Serafim, who wished to be wise and benevolent teachers, instead became rulers, dictators, tyrannical gods.

  Rubin, basking in the deep vaults of memory, became aware that the einai was pulling away from him, slowly at first, then with shocking speed. The veil’s threads, tender and warm before, now cut and tore. Furious, he suspected duplicity by the other Serafim. Then he realized his foe was the veil itself, now huge, ungovernable, writhing like a muscular serpent. He fought it as it sought to draw his power from him. He felt the fear, then desperation, of the other three as the Gulon Veil absorbed their einai like a parched desert sucking up rain. Rubin strove with all his youthful strength. And with a terrible wrench to his mind and soul he pulled himself free. His body collapsed on the throne-room floor and lay as if dead.

  Within, his mind was still trapped, fracturing. Wild thoughts and images tortured him; alien memories he could not understand were trying to tear his grip from reality. Though free of the veil, he was locked into the footprints of the Serafim in a world of stone and metal, both rich and barren, flying through their skies in flimsy craft. He breathed their foul air, staring up at a starless sky. His mind tried again and again to flee from the maelstrom of terrifying memories, but each time it was like waking from a nightmare to find the dreams were real and the monsters were about to devour you. He struggled to recall the narrative of his own life but could remember nothing of himself, not even his name. He was sinking in a terrifying morass of other people’s experiences and could find no way out.

  Who am I? he asked himself. What is my name? He tried desperately to remember, but was buffeted and torn by older, stronger minds than his, clamouring phantoms vying for dominance.

  He was striding the corridors of the Red Palace, uncomfortable in new oxblood armour, furious and frustrated at being out-thought by lesser men. His bodyguard clattered behind him and senior officers scurried at his side proffering advice that was all too little, too late. He stopped at the top of the Pomegranate Stair and, his face stone, half-listened to their lacklustre words. All the while he wondered who was really responsible for this invasion of the Red Palace – Hayden Weaver and his brother had neither the cunning nor the imagination, Saroyan not the courage …

  His eyes caught a movement in the gloom and he saw young Rubin Guillaume climb into sight on the stairs, his face suddenly aglow at the sight of his lord. Marcellus nodded to him, thinking angrily: Why don’t I see this transparent devotion on the faces of my own men?

  Rubin Guillaume. There was a swirling, vertiginous change of perspective as Rubin recognized himself in M
arcellus’ recollections. Rubin. He grasped Rubin’s memories and saw flashing visions – Indaro’s face as she turned to smile at him, the darkness and stench of the Halls, Valla fighting one-armed to save him. Dragging his mind from the morass of memory, he passed out.

  When he awoke in his own body, his own mind, he groaned in agony. The brutal marble beneath him was an instrument of torture after the bliss of the veil. He pulled himself up on one elbow, the joint screaming, then rolled on to his back. Every muscle ached. Even his bones hurt.

  Cautiously he tried to bring to mind the fixed points of his life and, with relief, remembered the grey house on the Salient, gulls crying on the salty air. He recalled the long afternoons spent with Marcellus as his lord charmed him with tales of war and wonder. He saw Captain Starky’s pale face loom out of the gloom and felt the hard corners of carved knucklebones in his hand. Though alien thoughts still screeched and clamoured for his attention, Rubin felt he could control them.

  Then, with a sense of dread, he thought back to the Serafim and all he had learned about them. He remembered everything they had been through, how they had tried and why they had failed, and grief for their lost humanity overwhelmed his heart. For a long time he was becalmed in a sea of misery.

  The pains from his exhausted body eventually roused him. Still confused, Rubin tried to recall what he had been doing before the terrible onslaught on his mind. Then it came back to him – the invasion of the City, the four of them deploying the veil – and he opened his eyes. High above the Gulon Veil shimmered.