by Phil Tucker
He clasped the hilt, ignoring the looks the others gave him, and this time he slammed down a mental image of bars around the presence as it sprang into his mind. It was formless, wicked, and it probed immediately at its prison, shaking the bars and trying to insinuate itself between them. Audsley knew that there were many things he wasn't, from being a courageous fighter like Ser Wyland to being a tough, lonely man like Ser Tiron; he knew it a weakness in himself to crave the approval of others, knew himself soft and given to indulgences, but if there was one part of him in which he took great pride, it was the strength of his mind.
He thickened the bars and then wrapped a vast chain around the cage, imagined a great beaker of scalding water flooding through the midst of it, and then compressed it all into a small, twisted wedge of iron that he bounced in the palm of his hand. He heard the presence scream in rage and attempt to fight back, but in his mind's eye Audsley popped the small, crumpled remains of the cage into his mouth and swallowed it with a gulp. He imagined rubbing his stomach with satisfaction, and then asked into the darkness of his mind, Are you going to behave yourself?
There was silence, a complete lack of resistance from the presence, and then a softening, a letting go. Yes, came the sullen response.
Immediately Audsley brought the cage back into being and pictured it on a grassy sward, blue skies above, clouds scudding overhead. He stood before it in a fine, resplendent outfit of blue silks with a jaunty hat complete with a very long white feather. Show yourself, then. With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?
Audsley peered into the shadowy confines of the cage. A young child stepped forth, lean and starved, his eyes desperate and his lips trembling. The boy was dressed in rags, and he held his knobby little hands together in supplication. Please, ser, be merciful.
Audsley snorted. If that's what you really look like, then I'll eat my very fine hat.
The boy glared at him, and then swelled up into a dark cloud, losing his definition even as a wave of malevolence wafted from him. Very well. What is it you wish of me?
Audsley hesitated. The question had caught him unprepared. Can you cause this metal platform to fly?
The cloud roiled angrily. I can. That is why I was embedded within it.
Very well, said Audsley. Then be so good as to let us fly!
Immediately the platform vibrated and lifted off the ground. The soldiers cursed, Temyl going so far as to throw himself down, and even Tiron dropped into a crouch, one palm pressed to the iron.
Audsley opened his eyes, hand still closed around the hilt of the sword. He'd done it! He could feel the presence testing the strength of his mental cage, and for a moment the image wavered as Audsley's nerves grew jittery, but with a determined breath he clenched the hilt tight and said, Onward!
The platform eased out of the tunnel and into the void. Wind immediately tore at it, plucking at the edges and causing it to tremble and shake. Temyl let out a low moan of fear that melted into the cry of the wind, and slowly they flew into the center of what Audsley now saw was a great vertical and hexagonal shaft. The tunnel mouth was a dark space behind them, and below them was nothing but an eternal drop into obscurity. Taking sharp, quick breaths, Audsley kept his hand clenched on the sword hilt. He was about to issue another command when suddenly he heard an evil laugh within his mind and the platform dropped.
They plunged down with sickening speed, all magical guidance gone. Audsley screamed, his stomach flipping, panic seizing his mind, and the cage in his head shattered. He saw Tiron lift up off the platform for a moment as he fell slightly slower than the door, but no - the platform was oscillating as it fell, dipping and rising, and in a moment Tiron collided with it once more and went down to his knees.
Audsley could feel the presence tearing at the very fabric of his mind, gouging and shredding with abandon as it sought something. Audsley almost screamed with the piercing pain of it, almost let go of the sword, but a reflex caused him to hold on. If he let go, there was no hope whatsoever for them, none at all. Summoning all his focus, he closed his eyes, forced himself to ignore the nauseating panic that was flooding his whole body, the terrifying sensation of falling faster and faster, and wrenched his concentration back to facing the creature in his mind.
The presence burrowed into his memories, fleeing him.
Audsley gave chase.
Scenes passed before his eyes, some polished with a fine patina of fondness and love, others jagged and raw with anger, shame, and fear. The presence had an unerring instinct for these negative emotions, and fled ever deeper into Audsley's worst memories, forcing him to confront ghastly scenes of embarrassment and pain. It wasn't enough to cause the magister to desist, however, and he followed with greater speed until with a cry he reached out and seized the presence with both imaginary hands and hauled it forth.
Fly this blasted platform! he screamed at it, and took all the anger and pain that the presence had unearthed and poured it into its being.
The presence screamed in agony, and immediately the platform stopped falling, shuddering violently to a stop and causing everybody to flatten and collapse with cries of shock. Audsley slammed down and almost tore his grip away from the hilt, but he held on for dear life and in doing so wrenched his shoulder.
The platform had stopped at an angle. Meffrid immediately slid over the side. Bogusch lunged and caught his outstretched arm, and Tiron in turn wrapped an arm around Bogusch's thigh. Tiron dropped his sword, which slid out and dropped into the void, and latched his free hand onto the raised edge of the platform. Temyl was clinging with both arms to the upper edge, but the platform continued to tip over.
Succumb to me, commanded the voice. Or all will die!
Never, hissed Audsley, and he imagined great vivid bolts of sunlight lancing into the dark cloud, piercing it to its core. Straighten the platform carefully, or I'll shred you into fragments!
The creature screamed anew, and Audsley felt its resistance crumble. The platform righted itself, and with a tearing cry Tiron hauled Bogusch back far enough that Meffrid could climb up and onto the platform. They all rolled onto their backs, gasping and heaving for breath. Aedelbert floated down, gliding in tight circles, and landed beside Audsley, who remained slumped on his knees, his forehead resting on the bicep of the arm that held on to the blade.
"What," gasped Tiron. "The hell. Was that?"
"The blade," said Audsley. "It's fighting me. Trying to take control of me. I've beat it. For now. I think."
"You think?" Temyl's voice was a razor's cut away from full panic. "You think?"
"Yes. I think." Audsley lifted his head and gazed around him. How far had they fallen? Had it been minutes, or merely seconds? His memory of their plunge was a jumbled mess of terror and roused memories. He saw another tunnel mouth off to their left, and he almost commanded the presence to guide them into it, but instead he looked up. High, high above was the faintest glimmer of light.
Climb, he growled at the presence, which remained lanced through by beams of light that held it in place. Take us to the top.
There was no response, but the platform began to ascend. Up it went, ever faster, and Audsley saw a series of tunnels open up on each side as they went. He couldn't guess which was theirs, but soon they reached the top of the shaft. He half-expected the presence to attempt to crush them against the domed roof of the shaft, but it came to a stop by itself.
A balcony was carved out of one side of the shaft here, large enough for the platform to land, and Audsley commanded the blade to fly them over to it and touch down. Once the iron surface had clanged and come to a stop, they all scrambled off it as if it were scalding hot. Rushing and crawling, they fell off onto the black stone floor, and turned as one to stare at the blade, which had now taken on a malevolent air.
"What is it?" Tiron sat beside Audsley, propped up with his arms behind him, his face pale in the ambient gloom.
"I don't know, exactly." Audsley's headache was slowly fading away. The wounds
the entity had dealt to his mind seemed to be healing over. Of course, he had no idea if they truly were, but the diminishing of the pain was welcome. "Something intelligent and evil dwells inside that sword, and its power allowed the platform to fly. But it fought me every step of the way, seeking to take me over like it had the platform." The thought struck fear into his very core. How close had he come to losing his mind, his very soul, to the intelligence within the blade?
Meffrid rose shakily to his feet, hands on his knees. While Tiron looked pale, Meffrid looked almost green. "How did you know what to do?"
"I didn't." Audsley blinked. "I figured it out quickly, however. The necessity of the moment, if you will. Still, it's served its purpose. We've come to a new area, and whatever is up here, I hope it gives us the answers we need."
Temyl had his head covered with both hands, but he finally looked up and around them. "Why'd we come to the top?"
Tiron stood, and Audsley saw that blood was seeping from his wound once more. "The top is where the command would have been. Good thinking, Audsley."
Audsley tried not to puff up with pride, and simply nodded severely as if he were used to being complimented by fierce warriors for his quick thinking in times of danger. Turning, he saw that a tunnel similar to that which they'd first traversed opened at the back of the broad balcony, but this one was short and led to an area of greater light beyond.
"Lost my blasted sword," muttered Tiron, and a quick check revealed that the others had dropped their blades as well. They all drew their daggers, but something within Audsley - some sense of daring, born perhaps from his brush with death - caused him to step forward first and lead the others down the short tunnel and out onto a second balcony which looked out over a great and awe-inspiring room.
The ceiling was high above the floor and was composed for the most part of great expanses of clear glass. These were contained within casements of slender iron, and shaped with organic curves so that they fit together like the tessellated segments of a dragonfly's wing. Through this glass ceiling Audsley could see the serried peaks of great anvils of clouds, all of which were slowly drifting past them. Audsley stepped forward to the edge of the balcony and took hold of the intricately wrought iron railing to gaze out over the expanse of the room. Gone was the gloomy and murky lighting. Here was a soft twilight glow so that the entirety of the room was visible, and it was wondrous.
The balcony was perhaps thirty yards above the floor, and from this vantage point Audsley could make out pools of limpid water that seemed no deeper than a few inches, each pool curved and made so that together they formed great sigils of power. Their still surfaces reflected the clouds overhead, and for a moment Audsley thought they were windows themselves to the clouds below. The left-hand side of the room was dominated by a semi-circular amphitheater, with seats rising up in curving concentric rings nearly to the ceiling. To the right, isolated and raised between pools of water and small waterfalls that joined them, was a severe table of black stone, long enough to sit fifty individuals.
Audsley's sight was drawn to the far end of the room, where broad steps rose and narrowed until they came to a point almost the same height as the balcony on which he stood, a small space surrounded by windows on which a pedestal stood before a stone throne that faced out toward the sky.
"By the White Gate," whispered Meffrid, stepping up to stand beside him. "What is this?"
"The command center," said Tiron grimly. "Look. They'd have met here to deliberate, to make decisions."
"And die," said Bogusch, pointing.
Audsley followed the direction of his finger and saw the remains of a body half-slumped into one of the pools. Suddenly he could see bodies almost everywhere: lying beside the great table, hidden in the shadows at the base of the amphitheater steps, lying partially submerged in the pools. The battle had raged here, it seemed, or had perhaps begun here; some of the glass panes above them were shattered, and a large hole had been shattered in the wall just beyond the amphitheater through which the wind whistled into the room and then plunged past them into the air shaft.
"Let's take a closer look," said Audsley.
There were entrances to six stairways from the balcony, each spiraling down the face of the column on which the balcony was supported and punching through the wall to emerge again on the column's far side. Audsley picked one at random and went down, one hand ghosting over the balustrade, round and round till finally he stepped out onto the floor.
The scope and magnitude of this room filled with him with a sense of reverence. What kind of men had built on such a scale, had wielded the power and craft to forge these windows, to lay out these intricate pools? Everything was stately and stark, elegant and severe, and he felt intimidated by the ghosts of those former Sin Casters, the engineers who had carved this space out and filled it with their might and magic. Drifting forward, Audsley tried to imagine the amphitheater filled with dark-robed figures of power, tried to hear the voices raised in anger or argument at the massive council table.
"Look at this," said Meffrid. He had approached the huge and ragged hole in the wall and crouched before it. Audsley, stomach clenching, stepped up beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder to steady himself. A constant gale blew past them with a moan from the vast aerial landscape beyond.
"Here," said Meffrid. "Look. What do you make of these marks on the floor?"
Audsley tore his gaze from the stunning cloudscapes outside and squinted at the floor. Indeed, there were deep cuts here and there inscribed right into the stone. "That looks like a giant Aedelbert's claw marks," he said. The very words caused his innards to quiver.
Meffrid picked up one of the many slabs of shattered glass that lay around them. "Whatever it was, it broke right in through the wall."
Audsley reached up to pet Aedelbert. "Do you have any horrendous cousins you've yet to tell me about, my dear?" Aedelbert hunkered down, claws dug deep into Audsley's shoulder pad.
"Hey, over here. What do you reckon this thing is?"
Temyl had wandered off to one side and was standing before a sculpture of some kind. It was a mass of stone that was vaguely shaped like a man, hacked from black rock and standing hunched with what might have been its arms crossed over its head. There were no spaces between its arms and legs, as if the sculpture had been left incomplete.
Audsley gratefully left the huge hole and walked over to stand beside Temyl, examining the rough pillar of rock. It was unnerving. There was something vaguely threatening about the shape hinted at by the sculptor: the head elongated, the arms impossibly thin, the ribs visible.
Meffrid drew up next to them. "Some kind of art?"
"Bad art," said Temyl. "Nasty art. Like everything else in this place. Strange, and wrong, and bad." He hawked and spat on the sculpture.
"Enough of that," said Tiron, walking past. "We're not here to judge their aesthetics, but to find food. Keep moving."
Audsley tore himself away from the statue and walked on. Small arched bridges that were almost ornamental allowed him to pass over the pools, and he realized that he was making his way toward the steps at the far side of the room. The others came behind him, so he led them on, and when he reached the first step he paused and looked back. The others, watching him carefully, did the same, and as one they studied the length of the great hall, their balcony small and high up. The scale was intimidating, and as if reading Audsley's mind, Meffrid whispered, "How were these people defeated?"
"By the Ascendant's will," said Audsley grimly, and then he turned to climb the steps.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Kethe checked her pack over one more time, then hefted it by one strap and swung it up and around and onto her shoulder. Not too bad - heavy, but as they ate their food it would lighten up quickly. She squirmed her other arm under the second strap, pulled the pack on tight, then hopped twice to help settle everything in place.
Sticking her thumbs under the straps, elbows flaring out, she strode out of the tiny stor
eroom she'd claimed as her own, into the central courtyard, and up to the small group that was gathering by the gatehouse. Her mother was there, of course, along with Ser Wyland and Brocuff. Mæva had a slender pack thrown carelessly over one shoulder as if she was just going out for an afternoon hike and nothing more, her firecat Ashurina sitting demurely at her feet licking one paw. Asho was standing to one side, brow furrowed as if he was deep in thought. He patted a pouch at his belt, then his dagger, then the blade at his hip, clearly running through a last-minute checklist. Kethe resisted the urge to snort.
"There you are," said Iskra, turning to Kethe with a hesitant smile that didn't touch her eyes. "Do you want to hear my long list of admonitions or should I assume you already know what you're doing and simply give you a hug?"
Kethe felt a wave of sadness pass through her. "A hug would be nice."
"Good," said Iskra, and stepped in to hold Kethe close. Her embrace was surprisingly fierce. Then she pulled back and examined Kethe. "You've packed your water canteens? You know not to drink from standing water, correct?"
"Yes, mother."
"And when you –"
"Mother," said Kethe, stepping back and shaking her head. "I said hug. Not advice." She saw Mæva smirking to one side, but Iskra didn't seem to care.
"One day," Iskra said, "if all goes well, you'll stand where I'm standing and watch one of your children head out into their own life, and their very confidence will tear at your soul." She reached out and touched Kethe's cheek. "Look at you. Very well, a hug will have to suffice. I'll expect you back within ten days. Does that sound right, Mæva?"
The witch shrugged a bare shoulder. "Four days there, four days back, two days to look around. Ten sounds like a fair estimate if all goes well."
"See that it does. Now, my blessings. I'll be thinking of you without fail until your return."