Citadel

by Martin Ash

  ‘Aniba, what is happening?’

  ‘It has broken through! Feikermun barely resists - his last defences are falling. The Citadel is here, now. The gates of Selph are wide. All its horrors, all its perils, will be unleashed.’

  ‘What must I do?’

  Before she could answer I was conscious of Feikermun’s bulk charging past me, head jerking wildly from side to side. I had half-noted how he had straightened suddenly when I called out Aniba’s name, how his eyes had wildly searched the room. It had not occurred to me - it should have - that he still could not see her. And I had inadvertently given her presence away.

  He strode forward in the direction of my gaze. ‘Where? Aniba? Where?’

  Aniba drew back, then moved a few paces to one side. Feikermun saw nothing. ‘Aniba, come! Feikermun needs you. Your blood, give Feikermun your precious blood!’

  He looked back at me, perceived the new direction of my gaze and stepped towards her blindly. Aniba moved back.

  ‘Do you see her?’ he yelled at his beasts. I watched their faces as they turned; it was plain that none saw.

  ‘What must I do?’ I asked again.

  ‘Bring the amber, as before. But now it will be more difficult. You will walk in two realities at the same time, both torn with conflict. I cannot predict—’

  ‘Where is she, Cormer?’ snarled Feikermun, his eyes bulging, his wrath and jealousy almost palpable.

  Aniba said as she passed into invisibility. ‘Let him believe that he needs my blood. It’s a fallacy, as I have already explained, but if he believes it he will continue to seek it. It may, just this once, serve you.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  I shook my head. ‘She’s no longer here.’

  ‘You lie!’

  ‘No, Lord Feikermun, it’s not a lie.’

  She had gone. I felt bereft, abandoned, wanting to call her back, needing her presence, lost and alone and frightened.

  ‘Bring her back!’ yelled Feikermun, shuddering with emotion, spittle flying from his lips. ‘Bring her back!’

  ‘I’ve no control over her.’

  ‘I need her. Her blood, she brings it for me. It’s all I need now. Aniba’s blood gives me the godhead!’

  I stared at him, wordless, despising him, fighting down the urge to take the sword I still carried and slay him - for he had turned his back to me now: it would have been an easy matter to step forward and plunge the blade into his unguarded flesh. I would die, yes, but he would be gone forever. I would have carried out my task, the orders of the Hierarchy, the Zan-Chassin. So tempting, to ignore everything else. Cut him down. End his life. Give Dhaout into the hands of Malibeth. She could be no worse.

  But it could not be. The Citadel was real. Selph was real. Sermilio, the Avari, Aniba, the Scrin. The amber against my belly. Feikermun was turning back to me, mouth twisted, discoloured teeth bared, face framed by the helmet gleaming with colour. ‘What did she say?’

  I shook my head. ‘She did not speak. I asked her, for guidance but she was mute.’

  ‘If you lie ...’

  ‘I do not lie,’ I lied.

  I heard my mother sing, so far off, so sweet, and I cried out as I gulped my first air. The road lay before me as my flesh settled in, weighing me down, heavy, heavy, my mother’s face above me. Aniba, Aniba... Far away in the bloodset distance Sermilio waited, gazing outwards, and the bodies of the Avari specked the sky. His voice, sorrowful, filled with wonder, ‘Oh, exquisite! The beauty! The light upon this world! Don’t let it end!’

  He spread his wings and rose into the bloodlight, and the man on the steps, clad in grey - who was me, who was I — watched and waited as the world began to die.

  Feikermun turned from me. Hircun, the one-eyed, had entered the great hall and was conferring with his master; his pocked face gleamed with sweat, was smudged with black grime and blood. I overheard some of their words and gathered that the situation was continuing to deteriorate. Malibeth’s troops were still edging forward and had gained important strategic positions, though they had been forced to withdraw from the palace’s inner compound. Hircun was mooting the possibility of evacuating the palace altogether, at least until the foe could be driven back to the outer wall.

  ‘Impossible!’ snapped Feikermun, near-apoplectic with rage.

  ‘But, my lord, we could be overrun. If we pull back and regroup, we can launch another assault from three sides as her troops try to enter. The south corridors are perfectly designed for an ambush. We could—’

  Feikermun puffed his chest and thrust forward his bearded chin, his upper lip curled. ‘Feikermun will not abandon the palace, Hircun. Kill my enemies - that is your job. Do it now. Drive them away, and bring me the head of the Bitch.’

  ‘My lord, many buildings are fired. This hall might yet burn or come under assault.’

  ‘Do it!’

  His scream was hysterical, awful. Hircun stiffened, then bowed and hurried away.

  I tried to look at Feikermun, but my vision would not stay fixed. He was the ape, he was Feikermun, he was me. There were creatures emerging from beneath his feet - slimy, crawling things. His eyes bulged, burst in a shower of vile jelly and gave birth to shrieking, tapering monstrosities that ran amok in their scores, scattering monkeys and peacocks and other feathered things. Feikermun crouched feasting upon the flesh of a dead Avari.

  I put my hands to my face to try and shut out the horrors. What was happening here? We were inside the Citadel, but the Citadel was here, also. The Citadel was Feikermun, Feikermun of Selph, and he could not control what he had brought forth. The gates of Selph and all its hidden chambers were thrown open; the Scrin poured forth upon Dhaout and the world, and Dhaout waged war with itself.

  And I, too, waged war; for somewhere here amid all this carnage my double existed. Conjured out of Feikermun’s thoughts, inadvertently set free, recaptured, executed and now free again. Who was he? What was he?

  He was you following a course you might have chosen, Aniba

  had said. I was filled with a growing, nebulous fear. A course I might have chosen. Feikermun took you into himself, into the Citadel, though he did not know that he had done so. There - here - you grew...

  What was I now, then? If I had spawned and grown in the mind of a madman, and now was set free? What had I become?

  And another shocking realization rocked me to my roots. My mind recalled the nightmare I had suffered before leaving Hon-Hiaita in Khimmur, the nightmare in which my double had brought himself to Hon-Hiaita and had successfully passed himself off as me. He had stolen everything that was mine, taken my place among my associates and friends, and then he had come for me, sending his assassins in the dead of night to remove me from the world.

  What if he were now making his way to Khimmur to achieve just that while I remained trapped here in Dhaout, in the Citadel?

  He looks like me! I thought. And I do not! He is me, to all intents and purposes, and I am someone else, a man, Linias Cormer of Chol, unknown to anyone, for I do not in truth exist. I became Cormer in order to seek out the person who claimed to be me. Now it is me who is the impostor!

  The blood was rushing from my brain, from my extremities, laking in my centre as my ears roared, my lungs refused to draw breath. Red and black. The wings fluttering weakly as if in their final throes, everything fragmenting, the beginning of the end of the world.

  Waiting...

  Harsh voices pushed through; the double door of the banqueting hall flew open and a man strode in. I blinked, shook my head, discovered I was on my hands and knees on the cold flagstones, particles of sawdust pressing into my palms. But I looked up and recognised the newcomer. It was Wirm.

  He strode towards Feikermun as I climbed to my feet. Behind him came two of his men holding the arms of a woebegone figure who half-sagged between them, his clothing tom, his head hanging low upon his chest, blood upon his leg and neck, legs and feet tottering forward as if boned.

  ‘What do you want?’ gro
wled Feikermun.

  ‘We found this man trying to gain entry to the palace,’ replied Wirm, arching a cold glance at my hands. ‘His actions were furtive. He tried to avoid us, and when caught insisted he brought a message for your ears only. My first inclination was to execute him, for he is clearly a spy, yet I hesitated, for words he then spoke to me suggested there might be something of value in what he wishes to tell you. I have brought him here that you may judge for yourself.’

  Feikermun scowled at the prisoner. ‘Well, speak, if you plan to live another instant.’

  Wirm’s soldier grasped the prisoner by the hair and jerked his head erect. His face was badly bruised and bloody, one eye swollen and almost closed. But I recognized him, and almost staggered. It was Ilian.

  He looked dazedly my way, then back to Feikermun.

  ‘I have a message,’ he said, his words slurred and pained. ‘From my master.’

  Feikermun turned to look at me with indignant surprise. I remained blank, baffled. Feikermun frowned and said, ‘Why do you come to Feikermun in this manner when your master is already here?’

  Wirm’s eyes were upon me, fixed for a moment, hard, hostile. Ilian shook his head. ‘Master Cormer is not my master.’

  ‘You work for him.’

  ‘Employed by him for a few days, but employed by another to bring him here.’

  Feikermun peered forward, then aslant at me. Wirm nodded slowly, displaying a thin smile of satisfaction, for the shock on my face must have been evident.

  ‘What other?’ demanded Feikermun.

  ‘One who stands against you.’

  ‘Malibeth?’ Feikermun bustled, gripping his axe-helve tight. ‘You are Malibeth’s man?’

  Ilian twisted his head. ‘No, not Malibeth’. He grimaced with pain.’ My master is the Golden Lamb.’

  Seventeen

  The golden lamb! I had, for a time, all but forgotten this other mysterious player in Dhaout’s fortunes.

  But what treachery was this? I stared at Ilian in a daze. And why?

  Now we were striding through the northern corridors of Feikermun’s palace, or further into the depths of Selph. I could not tell, for the world was a barely recognizable place. I was here, I was there, without consciousness of having moved. My mind went over and over what had just occurred in the banqueting hall. Ilian’s words had struck me dumb, and what he had told Feikermun next left me reeling, my mind rebelling as it clamoured against the notion that I had been betrayed on all sides.

  Ilian, and plainly Jaktem too, had been assigned by the Golden Lamb to bring me here. No matter that they had saved my life in Guling Mire when Vecco’s men had attacked me; their true motive had been undeclared. They had brought me to Dhaout under false pretences as part of some scheme into which I had no insight. Who were these two who I had come to trust? And what was in the mind of their unfathomable master?

  In the hall Feikermun had been an image of insensate rage. He had almost risen from the ground when Ilian declared himself an agent of the Golden Lamb. He, like I, was initially dumbfounded by the revelation, and when he eventually found words it was only to stammer, ‘Wh - what do you say?’

  Ordinarily I think he would have killed Ilian outright, but Ilian with some finesse trod the same slender line as I had done before him, gambling that the information he possessed was too important to Feikermun to permit the madman the luxury of yielding to his immediate impulses. Even so, it was indeed a gamble; Feikermun’s grip on himself was minimal at best.

  Wirm, close by, was also stock-still, his small eyes unusually motionless, glued now to Ilian. A breathless silence held the hall. It was as though mention of that name, the Golden Lamb, had cast a spell. Even the fighting outside had fallen momentarily silent.

  ‘My master sends you cordial and respectful greetings, Lord Feikermun,’ said Ilian, standing without assistance now, proud, conscious that he commanded the attention of all, though his body was twisted with pain. ‘He charges me to give you notice that he is aware of your plight—’

  ‘Plight?’ Feikermun fairly catapulted the word into the room.

  ‘—and that you risk being overwhelmed by Malibeth’s surprise assault upon you—’

  Feikermun’s grip tightened further upon his axe-helve and he quivered with rage. He still could not admit that he had been taken unawares and that his adversary might be stronger than him. The words that Ilian delivered were an insult he could barely tolerate; I could see the supreme effort he was making to hold himself back, avid to hear the remaining words issued by a foe of whom he, like all others, knew so little.

  ‘My master therefore proposes a meeting between the two of you—’

  ‘Bah!’ ejaculated Feikermun. ‘Why would the great Feikermun seek intercourse with a devil who will not even show his face?’

  ‘For the reasons my master has defined, which I have just related to you, my lord: namely that you risk being overthrown and thereby placing inordinate power into the hands of Malibeth.’

  Feikermun thrust himself toward, pressing the axe-blade to Ilian’s throat. ‘Stay your words, piss of a whelp, or Feikermun will take your head!’ he roared. Ilian twisted his head away bracing himself and closing his eyes tight for an instant as if believing that he had gone too far.

  ‘I give you only the words of my master, which he bade me convey to you exactly, Lord Feikermun. I am but a servant.’

  Feikermun chomped and seethed but eventually he drew back, darting a fiery glance my way, then said, ‘What are the terms of this meeting?’

  ‘That it takes place at a venue of my master’s choosing, to which I am charged to take you, and that it be for the purpose of arriving at a peaceful and equitable solution to the current crisis.’

  ‘Feikermun is being taken for a fool, a rabbit who will hop readily into the lair of a wolf, is that it? Your master wishes to trade insults? Then tell him this: he underestimates Feikermun. Feikermun has the Source, the power, and he will roast your Gold Lamb. But first he will bring him to his woolly knees and hear him bleat for mercy!’

  ‘My lord, I think you are misconstrueing my master’s words. He seeks ways to bring this affray to a conclusion without further destruction, and is willing to work with you to achieve that end. But I am charged also to say that your refusal to at least meet with him will be deemed deliberately obstructive, and therefore an act of war. My master will be left with no choice but to align himself with Malibeth and throw his full weight against you, crushing you utterly.’

  I have to admit, no matter Ilian’s duplicity, I admired him then. It took pluck to stand before a monster like Feikermun and utter those words. Feikermun’s eyes bulged; the veins pulsed in his neck; he spluttered, almost inflating with anger as he battled further with the immense, unfamiliar pressures of keeping himself in check.

  Ilian added, hastily, ‘Equally, any act of violence or vengeance against myself or my companion Jaktem will he held an act of war and will be met in the same manner, as will any similar act against Master Cormer of Chol.’

  Feikermun used the reference to turn upon me. ‘What’s your part in this, Cormer?’

  ‘My lord, I am dumbfounded. Until a few minutes ago I was unaware that this man had any connection with the Golden Lamb. I believed him a casual employee whom I had enlisted purely at random to accompany me here. I have never had contact with the Golden Lamb and know nothing of him. Why he should make reference to me in any way, or why he should assign his agents to bring me to Dhaout is an utter mystery to me.’

  ‘The other one!’ Feikermun suddenly yelled. ‘The other one! Bring him to me!’

  An officer with a detachment of guards ran off to fetch Jaktem.

  ‘Who is your master?’ demanded Feikermun of Ilian.

  ‘I have told you, my lord. He is the Golden Lamb.’

  ‘I know that, you fool! But who is he? Where has he come from? What’s his aim?’

  ‘That I cannot tell you.’

  ‘You will if I choose to make yo
u, be sure of that.’

  ‘Lord Feikermun, I do not have the information you seek. That is why I was sent. Neither I nor my companion, Jaktem, have had direct contact with our master. We work for him only through intermediaries. I can tell you nothing of his ultimate intentions, for they are not revealed to someone as lowly as I.’

  ‘Who are these intermediaries?’

  ‘Again, their identities are unknown to me in advance, and it is never the same person twice.’

  ‘Then how do you communicate? How do you know one another?’

  ‘By coded signals indicating whether it is safe or not to proceed.’

  Feikermun stared long and hard at Ilian who, as if interpreting his thoughts, spoke again before Feikermun could say anything. ‘My lord Feikermun, those persons with whom I met are no longer within your domain, be assured of that. And my work is now finished. There are to be no further rendezvous. I am charged to deliver my master’s message and to bring you to him, nothing more.’