The Maleficent Seven

by Cameron Johnston

  Maeven stretched a hand towards her, the black mist of death magic steaming from between her clawed fingers… then hesitated, a flicker of doubt in her eyes. “What proof do you possess?”

  “None but my word. Never have I lied to you. I promise if you stand with me against these god-touched knights of the Lucent Empire then I will bring Amadden to you.”

  Maeven scowled. “You are mad – the Lucent Empire will march right over us and whatever dung heap you call home.”

  Dalia scowled in derision. “I am not so weak as you imagine. I need you to gather my surviving captains. I made you my right hand for a reason – of them all you were the most vicious and the most manipulative. Will you do what I ask?”

  They were both silent for some time, staring at the swirling, smouldering ashes of Borrach. Finally, Maeven spoke. “If you truly know the location of my siblings then I will do it.”

  Dalia handed over a scroll tube stuffed with pages of parchment. “This case contains the locations of my old captains. It also holds pages of purchase ledgers, accounts, reports of troop movements, and other things that detail the Lucent preparations for war and conquest over the last few years. Familiarise yourself with these and it may aid you in recruiting the others. I leave this task in your capable hands while I prepare the battlefield. Best be swift, we have little time remaining if you want your answers.”

  Maeven glanced at the first document: a list of names and locations. The familiar names made her grimace. “And how long is ‘a little time’ exactly?”

  “Three months,” Dalia replied.

  Maeven’s eyebrows climbed. “So be it. Before I leave, do you wish to know what the Lucent inquisitors did with the survivors? I imagine they will do the same to your little town without my help.” Her lips quirked into a mocking smile. “The ghosts of this place whisper such horrors into my ears. And the Lucents dare to call such dreadful men ‘holy knights’…”

  “I suppose I should hear it,” Dalia replied calmly. “I must know the hearts of the foe we face.”

  The necromancer led the way, squelching along a muddy trail following tracks heading up towards the sound of crashing waves. She stopped at a cliff edge and looked down to where gulls squawked and squabbled over red morsels. Salt and seaweed air couldn’t disguise the sour stench of rotting meat.

  “They marched their captives here,” Maeven said. “The ones that renounced worship of the Elder Gods.”

  Broken bodies sprawled on the rocks below; men, women, even a couple of children… though it was hard to tell them apart now. Sad and bloated shapes floated in rock pools, picked over by scavengers.

  “They made all but the very purest of souls fly,” Maeven said. “After they were blessed, the Bright One was supposed to save them. Gather their tarnished souls to Her bosom, or some such nonsense. I suppose they failed some test or other. It was still a better death than being burned alive in their own homes like the heretics they consigned to Hellrath. The survivors were taken away for training and indoctrination by the acolytes.”

  “I wager the tortured souls of the dead tell you many such stories,” Dalia said, studying the necromancer’s cold eyes. “I suspect I would not care to hear them all.”

  Maeven smiled thinly, scarred lips whitening. “No, you would not. The scars you see are only flesh; I have many more, and have suffered much in the years since you abandoned me.”

  Twisted and foul a creature as the necromancer was, it was not all of her own making. Dalia took a long, lingering look at the heaped corpses and felt that old, familiar rage stir in her breast. It was not nearly as buried and forgotten as she had wished. She held her walking stick white-knuckled and turned her back on the dead.

  She had searched far and wide for heroes, brave folk, stout of heart and strong of arm, willing to make a stand against the Lucent Empire. She’d found none. The Order of Oak, the Knights of Stone, the Sisterhood of Spears… all of the old orders were too afraid to face the behemoth grinding towards Tarnbrooke. They were all certain of the futility and the folly of even trying to fortify the town. No heroes were coming to their aid. So now, she was forced to turn to her old, dread monsters to save her world. But they were as likely to kill her as the enemy.

  “Do you think you can control them?” Dalia asked. “Their fear of me and my authority will have dwindled over the years.”

  The necromancer smirked, a sordid mix of malevolence and pleasure. “Oh, I can’t promise any sort of control over such wicked creatures as our old allies. The best I can do is bring them here and point them towards the enemy. Then they will do what they do best.”

  Dalia nodded. “So be it. After seeing the Empire’s handiwork, I feel no compunction about using evil to fight evil. Bring my monsters home, summon your foul sorcery and use it to protect my town of Tarnbrooke. If my family survives, only then will I tell you what you wish to know.”

  The necromancer shook her head. “If in the middle of this mess it looks likely you will perish, you will tell me there and then. Otherwise, your family will not survive your fall.”

  “A fair amendment; agreed. When summer sun melts off the last of the snow and dries out the roads, the Lucent army will march. Be off with you now: bring me my vampire, the mad alchemist, the orcish warlord, the pirate queen and the once-god. Gather our creatures of darkness to stand against the army of the Bright One.”

  “As you wish, my general.” The necromancer offered a low and mocking bow. “However, one answer will be mine here and now – why did you abandon our conquest forty years ago?”

  Dalia looked south in the direction of her home. “I did it because of unexpected and unsought love, Maeven. Why else? Not for any man, of course, but for a child.”

  The necromancer’s lip curled. “Love? For the fruit of your crotch? You must take me for a fool.”

  “And yet it is the truth,” Dalia said.

  Maeven studied her for a long moment. She sneered and then strode away, grey cloak flapping out behind her like a war-banner.

  Dalia remained there on the cliff, thinking of past choices, of heartrending decisions made so very long ago. The wind tugged her towards the edge, urging her tired old bones to take one more step, to let go and leap.

  How would the black-hearted Maeven react when she discovered that her own hated brother led the Lucent Empire? What would she do when Dalia told her what that deranged fanatic had done to her sister Grace on the day his goddess was born?

  She took one last look at the bloated corpses broken on the rocks below. “What new evil have you wrought, my beloved Falcon? I should have seen the mad-eyed fanatic growing inside you. Perhaps I should have told you that you sired a daughter… But no. You would never have made a good father.”

  She snapped her fingers and a shadow demon detached from the cliff face and rose on legs of darkness. “Mistress?”

  “Take your sisters and return to your lairs,” she demanded. “Shake the hives and wake your slumbering spawn. I will have need of you in the coming months. Inform the others that my mortal life is ending. And that war is coming.” She did not expect to survive the battle of Tarnbrooke, but she would make such an end as to make the gods tremble.

  Maeven was more powerful than ever, and she had her own selfish goals, but Dalia was confident she could stay two steps ahead. The necromancer was arrogant, and had forgotten who she was dealing with. Just because Dalia had lived in peace and quiet did not mean she had grown feeble. “There is always another plan in play, my dear. Always.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “Hurry, little man – stab me with your spear. Summon more of your god-touched magic and strike me down! Fight me! Fight!”

  “You… you monster,” the sole surviving Lucent soldier cried, stumbling back, spear slipping from his grip to clatter to the blood-slick flagstones of the ruined tower. “Bright One protect me!” Nearly blind in the moonless night, the soldier tripped and fell, laying wide-eyed and shaking amidst the dozen corpses of his unit, all shredded mai
l, flayed flesh and shattered bone. Even their holy acolyte’s prayers of protection had proved useless before the monster they faced, and that man’s shaved head now adorned a broken spear thrust into the earth. A pool of piss began spreading beneath the soldier.

  The monster, Lorimer Felle, sighed and sagged, his unnatural flesh slipping out of war-form and back into human guise: claws retreated into fingers and toes, spiked tail retracted into a human spine, and his leathery hide smoothed back into soft dark skin. As always, he felt lesser, but the ever-present hunger also retreated to a dull roar, heightened only by the gaping wounds that marred his body. No matter. He would heal those as soon as he could be bothered to.

  The vampire lord’s once-fine scarlet tunic and fox-fur cloak hung in tatters around his broad black shoulders; the price paid for the change. The last of his finery was gone now that the Lucent Empire and their damnable inquisitors occupied his home of Fade’s Reach. Mighty and enduring as he was, even he could not stand against such a host of men and magic. Not if he wanted to keep his remaining people alive.

  “Pitiful mortal,” he said. His voice was deep as humans reckoned, but after being in war-form it sounded weak and reedy. “Where are your god-touched knights with their golden fire? You think such a pathetic group can kill me with mere steel and petty magics? Fools.” He picked up a fallen sword and separated the soldier’s head from his body with a casual backswing.

  He stepped over the corpse fountaining blood and returned to his makeshift camp in the shade of the crumbling south wall, to where his faithful old servant was pinned to the wall by a spear through the belly.

  Only a month ago Lorimer had been at home in Fade’s Reach, draped in fine furs and facing Estevan across a check board in the castle’s library, each with a glass of ruinously expensive imported wine in hand as they advanced their playing pieces. It had been no surprise Estevan was winning again, but the vampire lord had learned a few new tricks from his books and was offering a good challenge. The fire had been roaring, the wine flowing, and it had been a most pleasant evening. Until the guards rang the warning bell.

  Rushing to the window, they watched as over a thousand burning torches snaked up the hill – the Lucent army had invaded Fade’s Reach. Their holy knights and fire drove Lorimer from his ancestral home. The last he had seen of it, they had been ripping his hunting trophies off the walls to build a bonfire of his belongings outside his own front door.

  It had taken all of Estevan’s calm logic to dissuade Lorimer from making a futile last stand. Instead, he had ordered all his people to flee, to hide and survive in the treacherous mountains of Mhorran’s Spine where the Lucent soldiers would never find them. But Estevan, brave and loyal Estevan, had refused to leave with them and demanded to accompany him into exile. Come what may, he was determined to stand at his lord’s side as they drew the enemy away from their people; the army followed in relentless pursuit of the vampire lord.

  “Take your grace back, my Lord Felle,” Estevan said, shivering in the freezing weather. His manservant’s gaunt blood-spattered face twisted in agony, each breath a short sharp gasp of pain. His brown skin now held shades of deathly grey. “I shan’t… have much need for it myself.” He hissed as his legs threatened to buckle, body held upright only by the spear pinning him to the wall. Even his master’s grace flowing through his veins could not heal such a wound, and the pool of blood beneath him was spreading with alarming speed.

  “Very true,” Lorimer said sadly. “You served me well, my old friend.” The vampire’s bloody wounds needled his ravening hunger, urging his jaw to distend and his teeth to grow into fangs that would rip and tear and swiftly devour. He would make it quick, a small mercy for a century of loyal service.

  A familiar, loathsome voice pierced through the hunger. “Hold. He can yet be healed.”

  It took an act of enormous willpower to stop himself from tearing into the soft, succulent flesh of Estevan’s neck, but his hate was stronger than his hunger. He spun to face the voice, hissing.

  “Maeven.” The last person he had ever expected to see.

  She carefully stepped between the mangled corpses and sketched a brief bow. In one hand she clutched an obsidian knife with a silver hilt, and in the other a small glass vial, brandished like a weapon. “Well met, Lorimer Felle, Lord of Fade’s Reach.” She straightened, met and held his gaze. “Or you were, once.”

  He sensed the tingle of magic at work within both knife and vial and knew she had come prepared with deadly necrotic weapons. His body spasmed, jutting bone spines and razor claws. “Pray tell, why should I not feast on your withered heart?”

  “For the very best of reasons,” she replied. “Black Herran is alive, and she offers revenge on those same Lucent scum who have seized your home. Our previous personal entanglement has no bearing on current events. That, and I suspect you would find my withered heart somewhat tough and bitter.”

  He blinked and rocked back on his heels. “So, our old general has finally crawled back from whatever dank crypt she has been hiding in all these years? Most interesting.” He chuckled, fangs causing it to emerge as a harsh hiss. He forced his flesh back into human guise; after all, he didn’t need such might to slay a mere human woman. Her dark magic, of course, was another matter. The thrill of danger excited him.

  “As for our personal business,” he said, “heal Estevan and I vow to hear your words. Nothing more. Afterwards I will likely feast on your tainted blood.”

  His servant passed out from pain and blood loss and slumped onto the red spear, slowly sliding off the shaft. Lorimer held him in place, the spear being the only thing keeping his blood and guts from bursting out.

  Lorimer’s word had always been his bond, so Maeven shrugged, put the knife away in her backpack and slipped the vial into a pocket before approaching the dying servant. “Very well, but I think you will find your mind changed by what we have to offer you.”

  “I very much doubt it, creature. Black Herran’s army is dust and my trust in her with it.”

  She examined Estevan’s wound with a practiced eye. “You always did love this crusty old relic more than me.”

  “I value loyalty,” he snapped, watching as she pressed her hands to the old man’s chest. The flesh reddened at her touch and Lorimer smelled the sharp tang of sorcery on the air.

  “Ease him off the shaft,” she said. “Slow and steady.”

  Lorimer did as he was told and noted that no blood gushed from the closing wound. But the sight of that red and tempting flesh caused his teeth to itch.

  They lowered Estevan to the floor and the necromancer straddled him, hands on his chest, nails piercing his skin. She muttered arcane words with too many syllables, ancient inhuman sounds that sent shivers rippling up even Lorimer’s spine – an unsettling sensation for a vampire boasting innate mastery of his own flesh. This was the oldest of magics, the lore of blood and flesh and death.

  Estevan’s wounds closed, and for a moment Lorimer considered taking advantage of the distraction to rip the necromancer’s head from her shoulders. Sadly, there were lines he wouldn’t cross, and breaking his word was one of them. He refused to succumb to desire as others of his vampiric kin had in the past: he was entirely a monster, but who said monsters could not be civilised?

  He left her to her work and began to feed while his fallen foe’s meat was still warm, wolfing down the Lucent soldier in great glistening chunks, heedless of the blood and gore spattering his face and body. His gaze never left her. She was not to be trusted ever again. His own wounds began closing, the flesh replaced, mending without so much as a scar. Not that he paid it much attention – wounds and pain meant little to his kind. By the time he was cracking open bones to suck their marrow, Estevan was breathing easier. For the first time in weeks the old man’s face was relaxed and peaceful. They had been through much hardship recently, and his servant was, after all, only human.

  After an hour or so, Maeven groaned and clambered to her feet, stretching cr
amped muscles, her shoulders cracking. “Healing is really not my forte,” she said. “It was close, but he will live. Though I cannot guarantee his future health. His organs were greatly damaged.”

  Lorimer flicked a gnawed human rib towards her feet. “Better than death. Now say your words before I kill you.”

  She wrinkled her nose at the ragged state of him and with the toe of her boot, flicked the rib off to one side. “You think to intimidate me?”

  “Not intimidation,” he replied. “I simply deny such a wretched creature as you the courtesy of table manners. Say your piece. Estevan is dear to me, but that only buys you a few more moments of survival.”

  She swallowed. “I don’t expect your forgiveness for what I did in the years following the end of our war. I did what I felt necessary.”

  He said nothing and began cleaning his sharp teeth with a forked tongue.

  “The Lucent Empire is growing stronger,” she said. “Every year they expand their borders and spread the worship of their Bright One. The Alauna are scattered remnants. The Cahal’gilroy exterminated long ago. Vandaura, Fenoch Ford, Oakenholt and Fade’s Reach have fallen. And now Borrach has been wiped off the map. The age of Elder Gods and old magic is ending and there is no place in their new world for the likes of us.”

  Lorimer dislodged a fragment of bone and spat it at her feet.

  Unperturbed, she continued: “Tarnbrooke will be next. Black Herran and I intend on stopping the Lucent army there and slaughtering them before the people of that town suffer the same fate as Borrach and Fade’s Reach.”

  He snorted. “Altruism is not in your nature, Maeven. What are you getting out of this?”

  She shrugged. “Nor is it in yours. My personal reasons are my own affair. I am offering revenge, to face the inquisitors that drove you from your domain and rend them limb from limb.”

  He rose from his dinner and strode towards her, leaving a trail of bloody footprints. “Do not take me for a fool, harlot. I cannot defeat an entire army.”