The Obsidian Heart

by Mark T. Barnes

  “Femensetri, I’m here. What was—”

  “The bloody Mahsojhin!” she growled. “That imbecile Corajidin has had his witches open it. But they weren’t alone. I sense the hand of the Drear in this.”

  “I smelled something on the ahm. The energy they used was—”

  “Corrupt. I need you here. Now. I don’t know if there are enough of the Sēq to hold the witches off and defend the city at the same time. Hurry!”

  “I can’t. The Federationist rahns need my protection!”

  “If the witches are freed, all of Shrīan will need bloody protection! Think about the long game for a change!”

  “You don’t think I am? I’m staying with Mari, my friends and the rahns. This is something you’ll need to do without me. The Sēq have—”

  “I’ll be coming for you.”

  “No! I need to—”

  And with an acidic curse, she was gone.

  Indris pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger in a vain attempt to stem the rising pain. Realising the others were waiting for him, he gestured for Neva to continue on.

  Indris took the keys for the Wanderer from the chain around his neck, and handed them to Shar. Before she could ask he said, “Something may happen to me. Take her. She’s faster than anything Corajidin will have. Make sure you take the rahns and whoever else you have room for, with you. Get to Narsis. I’ll meet you there, or sooner if at all possible.”

  “What are you planning, Indris?” Neva’s question sounded more like an accusation.

  “I’ll go with you and your people.” He looked into the night sky. Low hanging clouds obscured the stars, save for the occasional fitful pinprick of light. The moon was a blue-green smear that backlit the edges of a storm that piled up against the mountain face. Femensetri may make good on her threat, weighting the greater good against Indris’s own wishes. He needed to do for the rahns what he could. “We’ll take a wind-galley and I’ll draw lots of attention to ourselves to keep our enemies distracted. They’ll expect me to be protecting the rahns. Meanwhile, Shar will pilot the Wanderer, and get the rahns to safety. All we need to do—Neva, Yago—is keep their attention focussed on us.”

  “How do you plan on that?” Mari asked, clearly unimpressed with the plan.

  “I’ve a few ideas,” Indris said with more confidence than he felt. He saw the look on her face and shook his head. “Before you ask—no, this isn’t your kind of fight. I’ll do what I need to do better, if I know you’re safe.”

  But safety was a relative thing, and before she could even reply, he felt the dissonance in the ahm as a great bubble of energy burst like a boil. Corrupted energy oozed into the world, tainted and reeking. Changeling snarled, moments before Indris was rocked by a wave of nausea and vertigo. Lightning sheeted across the sky, thunder rolling in its wake. He snapped his gaze up the mountain to where a sickly aurora flickered around the heights. Tiny figures swarmed in the air, seen during pulses of jagged brightness. The lightning flared. Focussed. Became jagged spears that lanced from the heavens amidst the repeated concussive blows of thunder too rapid, too loud, to be natural. Hoots, shrieks, and keening wails reached his ears, tattered by the winds and distance.

  “Erebus on a tightrope,” Mari said slowly, face slack with shock. Neva and Yago were likewise stunned, looking towards the riot of surly colour in the sky.

  “You need to go.” Indris grabbed Mari and Shar by the shoulders, pushing them in the direction of the stairs that led down to the Shoals. Mari looked at him as if she did not understand. Shar nodded, Hayden and Ekko following in her footsteps, as she dashed away with the rahns and their own people.

  “Indris… I… What’s happening?” Mari asked softly.

  “Your father’s will is happening.” Indris spared a glance at her, noted her angry frown and the hard line of her lips. There were things he wanted to say to her in that moment. Truths, half-truths, sweet but kind lies about how everything would be better with the new day. But the words got caught behind his teeth as a great gout of flame spiralled around a tower carved from the mountain. The flame formed muscular arms, great curved horns and eyes like slits of the baleful summer sun over the desert: harsh, white, and remorseless. A crown of heat haze and smoke formed above its brow, spiralling slowly amidst fractals of superheated air and dazzling carnelian light. A jinn prince, summoned from the far reaches of the Spiritlands that bordered the ahmtesh. With a stentorian, maniacal laugh the jinn twisted the top of the tower off, the stone melting to slag in its hands. Its voice creaked and groaned like a building burning to the ground.

  Swallowing a very healthy and natural fear, Indris took Mari in his arms. Indris felt the grasping of familiar mystic fingers on his Disentropic Stain. There was no time to comfort her with words that may well prove him a liar all too soon.

  “We won’t say our goodbyes. Not yet.” He leaned in to kiss her. Her eyes closed, lips parted—

  And was wrenched from her embrace by a flutter of wings and a small, violent whirlwind. Lightning crackled around, scorching the air and tingling along his nerves. He was dragged struggling into the air—

  Then all the angles in the world became curves. Edges blurred, while flat planes sharpened and stretched. The world disassembled itself about him and he screamed as he was dragged away and flung across the narrow rift of time and space to stand amongst—

  Chaos.

  “Stay here!” The Stormbringer ordered him. “We’ll call for you when it’s time.”

  And with that she wove a cat’s cradle of lightning that arced outward into the night. It lit the world with a clean, brief, flare of pallid light as it struck witches from the sky. It illuminated the faces of the scholars who stood nearby on toppled columns, scattered about a weed-strewn forum. Their faces were creased in frowns, weapons drawn and Scholar’s Crooks glowing bright with witchfire. It licked at the faces of the witches who flung themselves through it. Her skin shining like a lantern, bright against the black of armour and it’s tracery of witchfire, the Stormbringer launched herself into the fray.

  Scholars hurled the products of their minds, sweeping colours and shapes of energy, into the sky. The Stormbringer hurled lightning, boiling the air around her. Arcane fire licked across the edges of coal-dark coat, almost faint compared to the incandescent lamps the crooning, wailing, screaming, chanting scholars had become. Other Sēq were likewise engaged, from different ranks of the Order, including a powerful-looking Sēq Executioner who scythed through the enemies like a farmer reaping wheat.

  Around him there was what looked to be a century of Sēq Knights, supported by some nervous looking Librarians. A Master loitered here and there, observing, or recovering, or ordering scholars into battle.

  Limned by a brilliant flash, one of the nearby scholars turned to him, face backlit by an incredible power. Supernatural and beautiful she shone, eyes incredibly bright like the glare of backlit summer clouds. Her long storm-hued hair flailed in the ripping wind and she levelled her power at the witches even as she smiled her ravage-me smile and he felt his head spin as his throat constricted around one of the hardest words for him to say—

  “Anj?”

  “NOTHING IS SO VALUABLE TO US AS IT IS ON THE DAY WE LOSE IT.”

  —Karisa of the Ijalian, troubadour and poet to Asrahn-Selassin fa Vashne (493rd Year of the Shrīanese Federation)

  DAY 358 OF THE 495TH YEAR OF THE SHRĪANESE FEDERATION

  Mari reeled in the tempest, losing her footing and falling to the ground as leaves, dirt, and gravel spiralled around her. The fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end from the static. Small arcs of lightning danced across her skin, leaving pinhead burns that caused her muscles to twitch.

  The Sky Knights with her had been tumbled from their feet. They lay supine and groaning in a litter of limbs, weapons, and armour.

  One moment Indris had been there, so close she could feel his breath on her lips and tongue. The next he was wrenched away into
the sky amidst a maelstrom of crackling light and ragged, shrieking wind.

  Neva leaned down and extended a hand to help Mari to her feet. Mari looked at it for a few moments longer than was polite, before taking it. Both women craned their necks for some sign of Indris. Nothing.

  “Femensetri,” Mari guessed out loud, not bothering to mask her anger. She looked down the stairs to where Shar was leading rahns and their protectors towards the Wanderer. Mari knew she was supposed go with them, though doubted Roshana or Nazarafine would welcome her presence. But that was not what mattered. Mari’s friends would need her help.

  “What are you going to do?” Neva asked as if reading her mind.

  “Pretty much what you’d think,” Mari said resignedly. Yago joined them while the gathered Sky Knights looked upward, clearly not keen to take to the air. “What about you?”

  “Well Indris’s plan is pretty much defunct now.” Yago observed. “I dare say you’d be better off with us escorting you out of here like we originally planned.”

  “We’ve a couple of skiffs,” Neva added, “a galley and two squads of gryphons. Should be enough to keep most things at bay.”

  “It’s what it won’t keep at bay that bothers me,” Yago said dryly.

  There came a colossal crack as the air split, high above them. A whirling vortex of spinning darkness with a tornado for a torso, lightning-traced eagle’s head and rangy, almost skeletal arms tore into the world. It gave a piercing cry that echoed across the heavens before it was struck by whirling arcs and tumbling geometric prisms of jewel-hued light. The spirit shrieked again, before going on the attack.

  “We’re really going to fly in this?” Mari asked nervously.

  “Fly yes,” Neva muttered. She jerked her chin at the sky. “In that? Not on your life. We’ll take it low, fast, and safe. South across the Lakes of the Sky, then we’ll turn west once I think we’re far enough away. Hopefully nobody will know we’re gone.”

  “And the decoy Indris wanted?”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Yago muttered. “Grandfather wouldn’t abide by us throwing lives away, not with the sky being so eventful and all.”

  “I hear you,” Mari said. She doubted whether Indris would want anybody risking their lives so recklessly. Unless it was him. “The Wanderer is down in the Shoals. Grab what you need and we’ll see you down there.”

  Neva and Yago looked at the sky with narrowed eyes, assessing the danger. Finally Neva nodded to herself. “Give us about thirty minutes. If we’re late, don’t wait up.”

  A final look at the roiling conflict in the sky and Mari did not need to be convinced further. “Count on it.”

  The streets were almost deserted as Mari sprinted towards the Shoals. Doors were closed and almost all the windows shuttered, except for the occasional brave or foolhardy soul whose curiosity overwhelmed their common sense.

  From time to time, she heard battle cries and the clash of metal, before rounding a corner to see soldiers in the various colours of the Imperialist houses fighting Federationists. The conflict had spread well beyond a battle between the Näsarat and the Erebus. Bodies were left lying on the streets, dead and dying, while grim-faced warriors—their eyes a lurid white in the reflected light from flaring sky—sought to add to the tally of both. There was no sign of the rahns, or Indris’s friends. Mari assumed they had found safer paths than she.

  All the while the conflict in the sky raged on in a terrifying play of light and discordant sound, the vibrations of which drummed on her skin. The air was filled with the cacophony of another battle. She came to a sliding halt at the next corner. Poking her head around she saw the pitched battle occurring in the middle of the street.

  Between her and the street she needed to take. A whole damned city to fight in, and you have to be here. Once in a while it would be nice to do the things the easy way.

  Soldiers in the colours of the Imperialist sayfs—with a handful of Anlūki cutting a swathe about themselves—were fighting against retainers in the blue and gold of the Näsarat. There were a small number of Siamak’s marsh-knights helping them, scarecrow thin dervishes who seemed untouchable as they danced in the storm of metal, threadbare coat flapping around lean, tanned limbs.

  Furtive movement nearby caught her attention. A thin, unsavoury looking man with long greasy hair and a sallow complexion edged forward. His eyes were bright in deeply shadowed orbits. His long fingered hands manipulated a metallic pyramid, like an expensive child’s puzzle box. Mari rested her palm on her Sûnblades hilt and stepped towards him.

  “Nix of the Maladhi! Put whatever it is you have there down, and step away from it.” Mari rolled onto the balls of her feet, fingers curled on her sword, ready to draw.

  “Hoo! I don’t think so, love,” Nix giggled. He gave a piercing whistle and two of the Anlūki looked at her. “I think I’ll get a nice little something from your father for bringing you in. You’ve been a very bad girl, but it’s time to put such childish things behind you. Just come with the nice men and me, eh?”

  The Anlūki ended the lives of the retainers they were fighting and started towards her. Nix hooted with joy, until an improbably tall, awkward looking marsh-knight stepped up to them. He seemed to do little more than tap them with his two-handed shamshir, but they both collapsed to the ground in sprays of blood. The man, who in repose looked made of bamboo wands, flicked his long hair from his brow.

  Nix seemed less pleased with himself.

  “Now—” Mari started to say when Nix began to rapidly work on the puzzle box. The marsh-knight strode forward, just in time for Nix to throw the metal box at the knight’s face. He swayed away, the little pyramid bouncing among the feet of the combatants, giving off high-pitched musical notes that gained in volume as pieces of the puzzle box continued to move by themselves.

  Nix gambolled around and ducked through the melee on quick feet, blades never finding his skin. The surviving Anlūki saw Nix leaving, disengaged and turned to follow him at a run, leaving the remaining soldiers to their own devices.

  Tempted as she was to give chase to Nix, there was something about the box that put her on edge. Sword drawn she waded into the melee, fending off the wild blows of friend and foe with a fraction of her attention, trying to find the box. She had almost reached it when it was kicked away. Then again. The noise had increased in volume so that the fighting ceased in pockets as warriors turned to look.

  The music stopped.

  There came a series of loud clicks. Mari found the puzzle box from the way those near it backed away. Sense overrode her curiosity and she, too, took rapid strides away, towards the street she needed to get back to the rahns and her friends.

  A bell chimed. Too loud for such a little toy.

  Then the stones of the road and the bricks of the houses seemed to drop away, a shift in perspective as if she were standing on the edge of a deep hole that stretched in almost every direction. Those closer to the puzzle box seemed to hover in midair for a moment, before coils of shadow, thick as tree trunks, speared upward. They branched, then branched again, latching on to the walls and roofs of surrounding buildings. The air became thick with the reek of mouldering vegetation and decay.

  A titanic figure dragged itself into the world from wherever it had come. Tall as a clock tower it loomed, great curved horns sweeping the sky as it turned its austere, sharp-featured head. The face was beautiful in its way, hard and angular as a statue, yet streaked and whorled like bark. Deep-set eyes were carved into that face and they looked at the world with a terrible longing. The torso was that of a bare-breasted woman, skin dotted here and there with corrupt-looking blooms, nipples leaking a noisome sap that dripped to the ground far below, forming quivering black pools. Its—her—legs were those of a goat, black furred with cloven ebon hooves. Mari felt a cold sweat down her spine. She trembled. Her mouth went dry at the same moment as she wet herself.

  Bruise-hued flowers grew at her hooves. Tendrils on the walls and ground s
prouted, spread, anchoring themselves before releasing rank spores onto the hesitant winds that panted through the streets.

  For a fraction of a second the giant satyress looked straight at Mari. Terrified beyond anything in her memory, Mari watched as it stamped one enormous hoof, crushing a handful of soldiers beneath it. The ground trembled and any glass facing the street cracked. Throwing back its head the satyress bellowed, a basso sound that seemed to fill the spaces around it. Windows shattered. Dust puffed from buildings. Tiles slid to fall and shatter on the ground. Mari cringed, covering her ears, head ringing.

  From the pools of sap grew bizarre treelings that staggered, then stood firm on a quartet of thick roots. Supple branches, the fusion of fern and tentacle, grew upward. The bark was scored with shapes that looked like faces, with slack jaws and mismatched slashes for eyes. The monsters—for Mari had no other name for them—flailed their branches like a forest in a hurricane. Soldiers attacked them. Where the monsters wrapped their fern-like fronds around a soldier, the victim shrieked and thrashed, trying vainly to escape as their flesh turned necrotic. Within seconds the soldier would turn grey, drying, skin cracking as the monsters fed on them. One of the monsters, taller than those around it, threw the desiccated corpse into the air. It fell to the ground with the sound of a bag of twigs wrapped in a leather bag.

  A handful of the monsters began to move in Mari’s direction, their limbs creaking and branches whistling as they thrashed the air.

  Mari’s Sûnblade flared to life in her hands. She was soothed by the light and the warmth of it. Part of the horror that froze her began to thaw. The sudden brightness caused the tree-monsters to halt. The many mouths on their trunks opened and began a hissing, like the sound of the wind through pine needles. The cold sound chilled Mari’s blood. The cracks-for-eyes widened, glowing with baleful putrescence.

  She planted herself and sought for the aipsé, but her mind would not cooperate. Rather than no-mind, she was assailed by distractions and the fear that continued to gnaw at her. The monster’s hissing, the way one and then another would edge forward, the almost hypnotic waving of their branches and the hazy shine of what passed for their eyes…