by William King
Rhiana came over. She draped an arm around his neck and then slid down into his lap. She shifted her weight and Kormak felt a stab of pain where the creature’s claws had bit into his flesh.
“Sorry,” she said when she heard him grunt. She leaned forward and looked out at the harbour.
“All of those ships,” she said. “All of them going so many different places and carrying so many different things. We could jump on one and get out of here. We could go to Port Blood. We could go all the way to Terra Nova. We could sail into the furthest north and see what the Shimmering Lights of the Aurora conceal.”
“I’ve seen the Shimmering Lights,” Kormak said. “And I’ve seen what lies beneath them. It is not pleasant.”
“Don’t you ever feel like just jumping on a ship and going somewhere, anywhere. Someplace you’ve never been. Someplace wonderful.”
“Sometimes.”
“I felt that ever since I was a little girl. Ever since I first saw a city. Ever since I saw the surface world.”
“I thought that the sea folk hated being above the waves.”
“Sometimes,” she said echoing his tone. “Me and my sister were always different. We always wanted to go places, do things. Beneath the waves can be beautiful but it can be cruel. And, to be honest, I think there is something in us that craves the light and the air. I think somewhere deep in the blood is the desire to see the surface. My people were changed by the Old Ones but originally we were land dwellers just like your people.”
“I hope you were not like the Aquileans. You’d spend all your time fighting each other.”
“I mean we were not like sharks or fish or Quan. It was never natural for us to be beneath the waves the way it was for those creatures. We had not been beneath the waters for a thousand thousand generations.”
“You’re definitely not like a shark.”
“It’s nice of you to say so,” she said. “Anyway we’ve drifted a long way from the subject of taking a ship. I wish we could just get on one right now and leave. I mean what has that creature from the sarcophagus got to do with us?”
“It has everything to do with me. I took an oath long ago to oppose such creatures and to protect people from them. I still hold to that oath.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to see you dead and I think that’s going to happen if you stay here.”
“I’ve fought Old Ones before and I’m still alive. They are not.”
“You’ve only got to fail once,” she said. “You’ve only got to make one mistake against a creature as dangerous as this one. That’s all it will take. Everybody’s luck runs out sometime. Everybody dies.”
“Yes,” he said. “Everybody dies. Everybody. There is no escape unless you’re an Old One. It’s not death that matters. It’s the way you die. I would rather go out with my sword in my hand than be devoured by some wasting disease in my bed.”
“I can see that. It’s one of the reasons that you do what you do, isn’t it? Even though you know that one day your luck is going to run out.”
He shrugged. “It hasn’t yet.”
“But it will.”
“Most likely.”
“I hope I’m not there to see it.”
“Most likely no one will be—except me and I’ll be beyond caring.”
“I’ve met men like you before, men in love with death and danger.”
He looked up at her. He felt tired, of this place, of this conversation, of having to justify himself. He took both her hands in his.
“This is my life,” he said. “And if it is my death, so be it. That’s just the way it is.”
She heard the finality in his voice, glanced towards the sky, bit her lower lip with her strong white teeth. The shadow of a smile passed over her face. “That’s just the way it is.”
A heavy hand rapped the door.
“Who the hell is it now?” Rhiana asked.
“Sir Kormak—the King-Emperor requires your presence in Council.”
“I had better go,” said Kormak.
“Yes,” she said. “You’d better.”
***
Vorkhul limped through the catacombs. He extended his senses as much as they could be and still allow him to maintain his disguise. He was nearing the vault where he had first emerged. His nostrils picked up faint traces of the hounds and the humans and their strange weapons. The scents were unpleasant, hinting at illness and dissolution.
He shuddered and wondered whether wearing this human form put his thoughts more in tune with those of mortals.
He came to the vault door, recognising it at once. Curiosity filled his mind. He felt the need to inspect the coffin that had entrapped him for so long. Perhaps he could learn something from it.
He paused to listen and heard nothing. He pushed the door open. The mortals had not locked it. He considered whether this might be a trap. He did not hear anything or smell anything or sense any change in the flows of magic around him.
He let his nose and his mage senses guide him and he came, at last, to the coffin. It seemed so small. He could not see how it had held his entire form, and he realised that once again that was mortal thinking. His shape was fluid. It would fit.
He considered the vessel. It was beautiful in its way and it hurt his eyes just to gaze upon the runes inscribed on it.
Some of the text looked like it came from scripture, his human memories told him. It resembled the temple calligraphy of the Solar priesthood. His victim had been an educated man, and Vorkhul did not doubt that this was fundamentally correct.
He studied the inscription despite the spikes of pain it drove into his head. He ignored the ripples of giddiness and nausea cascading through his body. The runes were wards. They had not been created by his people but he recognised their form and function.
Like all runes they shaped and guided the flows of magic. They transformed aether from ambient energy into an active force, making it bend to the will of the scribe. Such fixed spells required no supervising mind to function. Close study revealed their purpose to him, even if the style of calligraphy was alien.
These were runes of binding, designed specifically to contain him, to prevent his escape. They had done so for an unguessably long time. In the end, they had failed. The question was why.
Several of the runes were flawed. Damage had altered the flow of energy, distorting it, ensuring they were no longer fit for the purpose intended. Time had eroded them and sudden violence had broken them.
Once again he felt the deep reverberation of utter certainty within his being. More missing knowledge bubbled to the surface, displacing the tattered shreds of the old man’s awareness.
An overwhelming memory flooded his mind, of being confined within great jars of steel, glass and sorcery. Long needles of sungold inscribed with divinatory symbols prodded his skin. Beings of metal and crystal monitored him, their bodies blazing with signs of power. They wore many shapes, quadrupedal, bipedal and many legged like centipedes. Some had no limbs at all. They were mere floating spheres and polyhedrals.
The animated metal forms were not the enemy. They were sorcerously created vessels that housed the enemies’ minds. The Auratheans were capable of shifting their consciousness from vessel to vessel at need. They changed bodies the way a mortal might change the tool he held in a hand, depending on the goal he intended to achieve.
The enemy had forms for every conceivable purpose, from making war to swimming through the depths of the ocean. They could divide their consciousness among a myriad of slaved drones, or concentrate it in one mighty hub.
The Auratheans had captured him and bound him and shipped him to a place of incarceration. They had blasted his mind with magic. They had inspected his physical form with sorcerous probes. They had experimented on him an as Eldrim biomancer might test a subject in his alchemical laboratory. No need to ask what they had been seeking. They had been hunting for the same things h
e would have been in their place, looking for flaws and weaknesses in their enemy.
The Auratheans had not acknowledged him as one of the world’s masters, an equal. They had experimented on him. They had treated him as a laboratory subject on which to test their weapons and their theories about the nature of their Eldrim foes. They had smashed his mind with spells and crippled his body with magic. They had ripped his memories and his power from him. Finally they had placed him in storage within that sarcophagus. They had filed him away and forgotten about him. They had left him imprisoned and going mad until he lost all sense of who he was.
More memories flooded back—of the ancient wars when the Elder Races had clashed for control of the world. The Eldrim had known many enemies but the Auratheans had been the greatest.
It seemed they had fallen even further than his own people. The conflicts which had left the Eldrim a degenerate mockery of their former greatness had destroyed them.
He thought about the strange Solar faith the humans possessed. It bore the hallmarks of the Auratheans. It was as if the whole fabric of the human religion was woven from distorted memories of the elder race. Perhaps it was deliberate. His own people had used the primitive beliefs of others as a tool of domination. Perhaps the Auratheans had learned to do the same.
He had been reborn into a strange new world. He was starting to suspect that with the knowledge he possessed he could dominate it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE PALACE BECAME busier as Kormak approached the Cathedral. The courtyard blazed with light. Soldiers moved back and forth. Messengers raced along bearing satchels full of documents. Sentries with torches stood in doorways. The surviving warriors of the Order of the Dawn saluted Kormak as he passed. Rodric held Fang on a leash. Both of them appeared to be in mourning for the fallen.
Kormak entered the Cathedral and the servant led him to a large chamber that had the look of a library converted to other purposes. The King’s councillors sat around the large central table. Kormak recognised Prince Taran, Jonas, Admiral Lorca, Duke Leone. The King himself stood in the corner of the room, fingers interlocked in prayer.
“Ah, Sir Kormak, good of you to join us,” Prince Taran said. “I was about to send out a servant in search of the servant I had sent out in search of you.”
The man who had led Kormak in said nothing. His face was blank.
“I am here now, sire,” Kormak said. Frater Jonas winced. All eyes went to the King. He smiled and looked up at the ceiling so all of the men’s expressions went mild as well. All except the Duke’s. His smile might have been a fraction warmer.
“And I thank you for it,” said the King. There was no mockery in his tone, only a gentle friendliness. Kormak wondered whether the King practised his manner in front of a mirror. “I believe my brother has a few more words to say.”
Aemon made an expansive gesture with his hand towards Prince Taran then walked over to the bookshelf, took a leather bound tome from it and started to read. He gave the impression of being engrossed but Kormak did not doubt he was paying careful attention to everything said.
“We have a problem,” said Prince Taran. “The Old One is still at large. It killed Abbot Gerd and his hounds. A large section of our own palace is denied to us. The creature may emerge at any time and kill more of us. Does this seem like a reasonable assessment of the current state of affairs?”
Frater Jonas looked up. “There is nothing to suggest the creature will come hunting us. The sunstone still glows atop the Cathedral of the Angel. It’s holy light will drive back the darkness.”
“Let us pray that is the case,” said Prince Taran. “I think we can all agree that the situation is untenable. Once word gets out that the thing is loose in the catacombs, our enemies will have a field day. They will say that we are cursed, that the palace is haunted, that we cannot protect our own subjects in the heart of our realm. This is a crisis for the state. And it must be resolved, quickly, firmly and decisively.”
Everyone around the table nodded.
“And how do you propose doing that?” Kormak asked. “Sire.”
“We know the creature is vulnerable to fire, to essence of truesilver, to various alchemical substances. It is also vulnerable to sunlight, sorcery and your own dwarf-forged blade. Correct?”
“It can be harmed by all of those substances and killed by fire and sunlight and my blade. Also by sufficiently powerful magic.”
“Good. We shall equip our soldiers with all of these things, summon every mage in the city. We shall flood the catacombs with our troops and we shall hunt down this creature until it is dead. It is what we should have done from the very beginning.”
Kormak could see which way the wind was blowing. The blame was to be put on himself and Abbot Gerd. Any failure would be his. Any triumph would be the royal family’s.
“There will be a lot of casualties,” said Kormak.
“There always are in wars,” said Prince Taran.
***
Vorkhul stalked to the foot of the stairs leading up from the catacombs. Up there armed men waited, with weapons that could hurt him and magic that could slow him down. He thought about the mortal he had fought, the one with the awful sword.
It would not do to meet him again. Vorkhul’s claws would burn on the truesilver armour. He could not hope to parry that deadly blade with his own flesh. He needed a weapon. He needed armour. He needed those ancient Eldrim artefacts. He needed to push on, to pass those sentries without them giving the alarm.
It would not be easy. His stolen memories told him he would need to find his way through the palace and across a courtyard upon which fell the light of a sunstone. The moongate was warded by elder signs but he felt confident he could enter the place, given time. Once he reached the moongate he would have no need to fear anyone or anything in this place.
He allowed his body to dissolve into a translucent pool that oozed towards the stairwell.
His thoughts were barely above the level of instinctual. He felt the presence of the light on his skin. He felt the sound of men’s voices as a tremor on his flesh, just as if he felt the vibration of their tread pass through the ground beneath him. He existed in a world of simple noise and basic feeling. Amoeba-like he flowed up the stairs, moving as cautiously as he could. As he reached the top of the stairs he sensed the nearness of the living. He elongated a tentacle of plasma and sent it running along the walls.
He became a long snake of living liquid and flowed behind the sentries, avoiding the glare of their lights. He stayed as close as he could to the stonework, using the cover given by tapestries. The need for stealth and the urgency of getting beyond this sentry-point battled in his thoughts.
He slithered into an alcove and rebuilt his old man’s shape, starting with the skeleton, adding muscle and flesh. He allowed some plasma to adopt a simulacrum of rags and blood. It would not withstand close inspection but in the dim light it would fool a casual human glance.
He breathed again and looked upon the world with eyes. His senses were more concentrated and far keener. So far no one had detected him. He was one step closer to his goal.
In the distance, he heard something begin to bark. He cursed. It seemed a hound had caught his scent. He needed to move before the mortals realised what it was whining about.
***
A long animal howl rose to a crescendo, died off and the started again.
Prince Taran tilted his head to one side. His lip curled. His eyes narrowed. “What is that damnable noise out there?”
“A Shadowhound,” said Kormak. “One that has caught the scent of prey. You won’t have time to gather your army. Or summon your sorcerers. Vorkhul is already here.”
Kormak put his hand on the hilt of his sword. He stared right into Prince Taran’s eyes. “With your permission, sire. I shall go and kill it.”
“And we shall accompany you, Sir Kormak,” said King Aemon.
“Is that wise, sire?” Duke Leone asked. Kormak wondered whether
he was being provocative. The King had to be seen to pursue now or risk being thought a coward.
“The Holy Sun will shield us,” Aemon said. “Let us hunt.”
***
Vorkhul limped along the corridor. A man moved towards him. He was garbed in cowled robes and bore the symbol of the sun, a priest or monk of some sort.
The monk’s head tilted to one side as if he not quite understand what he was seeing. He was taken aback by the sight of a semi-naked old man within the palace. Vorkhul sprang forward. His arm flowed around the man’s throat. His fingers extended themselves blocking the man’s mouth, preventing him from screaming. Vorkhul extended his dagger-sharp tongue and pierced the man’s skull.
He devoured more essence, claimed more memories, drunk them in as fast as he could. The monk’s life swam before him. A boyhood in a monastery learning to write and pray. An adulthood spent on his knees in the Cathedral offering up praise to an empty battleform and copying ancient manuscripts.
A river of details flowed into Vorkhul’s mind, some fascinating, some trivial. He took them all, overwhelmed by a species of gluttony. When it was done, he took the man’s shape and his clothing and strode through the palace. He hoped the robes would provide him with some protection from the light of the sunstone.
***
Kormak raced out into the courtyard. The King and the nobles followed. Outside the soldiers watched uneasily as Rodric tried to calm Fang. The dog tugged at the leash and sought to break free from his handler’s grip.
“Let him go,” Kormak said. “The Old One is loose and we must find him.”
Rodric’s small eyes widened. “As you say!”
He unleashed Fang and the Shadowhound shot off towards the Palace. Kormak ran in pursuit followed by the Brothers of the Dawn, while Prince Taran marshalled the troops behind him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“HAVE YOU SEEN anything like this before, Sir Kormak?” Prince Taran asked, fighting hard to maintain his composure as Fang snuffled round the corpse. The prince kept his hand near his mouth while his gaze darted elsewhere. He avoided looking at the body.