by Ian Irvine
‘I will submit myself to the trial,’ he said, voice rasping in his dry throat. ‘I am determined to succeed, to the glory of our people. How long do I have to prepare?’
‘There is no way to prepare for the trial,’ said Dagog, ‘and it will be held immediately you have learned the two spells. You have one hour to master them.’
‘T-thank you, Magiz,’ said Skald, shivering inside. ‘I am proud to be one of the chosen few. And whether I succeed, or … fail and must be ingloriously slain … I am honoured at the chance to serve my people in a greater way.’
But inwardly he was consumed with treasonous rage. Oh, to have the magiz in his power, just for one minute. One day, Dagog!
A pair of red-robed acolytes escorted him down through an empty cellar and down again to a sub-basement, where the first acolyte handed him a sealed spell scroll. They backed away and waited by the steps. He wiped his face and broke the seal. The spell, inscribed in faded green ink on stained leather, looked as though it had been written a thousand years ago.
The basement was large, semi-circular and lit only by oily brown candles. Corpse candles, made from fat freshly rendered from the dead of Guffeons. If Skald failed, what was left of him would illuminate the sus-magiz trial of the next fool to beg for the chance.
It was hot, airless, and so humid that the walls were sweating. He felt an urge to shoulder the acolytes aside, bolt up the steps and run for his very life. But that would also be fatal – once the trial began the only way out was to succeed at it.
One chance in three.
Besides, running would prove the one thing about himself that he was desperate to deny.
Skald longed to sit and study the spell minutely, but a Merdrun never sat when he could stand, never stood when he could walk and never walked when he could run. He started to pace but each turn at the end of the room was distracting, so he walked in a figure-eight, struggling to commit the first spell to memory. As a battle mancer, he was used to learning spells in a hurry, but this one was longer than most, complex, and some of the words were difficult to make out. Yet he had to do it perfectly, first time.
He read the second spell, which was even more difficult. Panic choked him; how could he learn both spells in so little time?
His head throbbed, the thick air clotted in his throat and sweat had puddled in his boots, but a sus-magiz must be able to work under the most difficult of circumstances. As a battle mancer, Skald could draw considerable power from within himself, and also from the im-har, a little cubic box engraved with glyphs, on his left hip. But there were times when a sus-magiz needed greater sources of power – power that could be obtained wherever there were victims.
A sus-magiz had to be able to drink lives. That was the purpose of the first spell.
4
Bring In The Victim
All too soon Dagog entered. ‘I despise you, you stinking son of a coward,’ he said venomously. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to flay your hairy pelt off you and drink your shitty little life.’
Was this part of the test? ‘Yes, Magiz.’
‘And when I find your weakness, I will.’
‘Yes, Magiz.’
‘But if by some miracle you pass the test, you’re mine, body and soul.’
‘Yes, Magiz.’
‘Have you learned the spells?’
‘Yes, Magiz.’ If he said no he might be killed on the spot.
Dagog called outside. ‘Bring in the victim.’
His eyes had a sickly gleam; he was looking forward to the spectacle. The magiz had drunk hundreds of lives, and rumour said he revelled in every one. The thought made Skald feel ill, but he had to prove himself worthy, or die.
A young woman was hauled in, a prisoner taken during the attack on Guffeons and probably kept alive for this purpose. Her hands were bound, her long dark hair tangled, her yellow gown stained and torn.
She looked from Dagog to the acolytes, then to Skald and back to Dagog, and her hazel eyes were large and wild. She did not know what was going to happen, but she was very afraid, and he felt a tickle of feeling for her. He suppressed it. One truth was beaten into every Merdrun boy and girl from an early age – their enemies were subhuman. Their lives did not matter.
The magiz ordered the acolytes out and sealed the door. ‘Because this is a trial,’ he said, ‘I will cast the protective charm that blocks the personality and,’ he grimaced, ‘the sad little emotions of the victim from coming through to you. You don’t feel emotions, do you, Skald?’
‘No, Magiz.’ After Skald’s father had broken and run in battle, his mother had taught him to utterly deny them. Skald’s back still bore the scars.
The young woman reached out to him. ‘Please let me go,’ she said in a cracked voice. ‘My kids got no food, no water ...’
Despite everything, the plea tugged at Skald’s heartstrings. He suppressed the fatal emotions.
‘If you succeed at the trial,’ said Dagog, ‘next time you will master the protective charm and cast it yourself. Are you ready?’
‘Yes, Magiz,’ Skald said hoarsely.
Dagog gestured to the young woman. ‘Stand up straight. Don’t speak your name.’
She looked desperate now; she must have guessed what was coming. She clenched her small fists in futile defiance and shrieked, ‘Damn you! My name is Tataste!’ She pronounced it Tar-tass-tay.
The magiz cursed her, cast the protective charm and gestured to Skald. Now!
He hardened his heart – whether he succeeded or failed, Tataste was doomed. No outsider could witness a sus-magiz’s trial and be allowed to live, and if he displayed the smallest trace of empathy for her Dagog would flay him and drink his life. Skald had to become a sus-magiz. For the son of a coward, it was the first step to being safe.
He cast the spell on Tataste – no, the victim – and knew he had done it perfectly. He had established a magical link between her and himself, and within seconds the life force was flowing out of her into him, weakening her and strengthening him.
And he had never felt anything like it! His gift for the Secret Art was swelling, power surging through his veins like hot oil until the whole world of magic opened to him.
Tataste’s freckled face crumpled and twisted as the life force was torn from her. She fell to her knees, reaching out to him in a last despairing plea, then raised her head and looked him in the eyes. He could not look away.
‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘My little kids –’
With a sickening wrench the magiz’s protection charm cracked and the who of her struck Skald so hard that he was almost overwhelmed: her hopes of returning to the home town she had left years ago; her longing for the young man she had foolishly turned her back on; her terror of the war and what it would mean for her parents and sisters; her desperate love for her little girl and boy, still huddled in the basement where she had hidden them when the invasion came. They must be hungry and frightened, crying out for the mother who would never come back.
He even saw their faces – the girl only three, with bowl-cut brown hair and soft eyes like her mother’s, holding the little boy’s hand and speaking to him soothingly, taking the responsibility seriously. ‘Mummy will be back soon, I promise.’ The boy, not yet two, small and pale and utterly bewildered.
Skald’s own long-denied emotions surfaced and he was wrenched to the heartstrings, but Dagog’s eyes were on him and if he showed any feelings he would die. Using the iron self-control beaten into every Merdrun from the day they could walk, he managed to suppress his horror and pity.
He had to end this before he cracked. He drew all the life Tataste had left in her in a single gulp and she fell dead at his feet, withered and shrunken and entirely pitiful.
Instantly he was overwhelmed by the power her life had given him, power far greater than anything he had ever felt before. It was exhilarating and seductive, but he had control of himself now. He needed it; he had to use that power and cast the second spell – a mighty
enchantment only magizes and sus-magizes were allowed to learn – to create a gate from one place to another. It was massively more difficult than anything he had ever attempted before but with so much power at his disposal, and such golden inner confidence, he knew he could do it.
He cast the gate spell. Nothing happened. He cast it again. Not even the hint of a gate. The malicious smile reappeared on Dagog’s sallow face and he drew a thin-bladed flaying knife. It had wavy brown stains from the last time it had been used, and smelled of rotten blood.
Sweat trickled into Skald’s eyes. He dashed it away. The trial allowed three attempts at the gate spell; if he failed this time, the magiz would gleefully use the knife.
Using all his senses, Skald focused on the one destination he could visualise clearly enough, the dining hall of his barracks – stained wooden tables and benches, a haze of greasy smoke from the kitchens next door, the acrid smell of charred offal, the clatter of cutlery on wooden plates, the taste of leathery water buffalo meat and stringy banister beans – and cast the spell a third time.
A ragged porthole appeared in the centre of the room, crackling and rimmed with jumping blue sparks, and through it he saw the fifth table in the middle row, the place where he took his meals. Warm air hissed through the hole, carrying the reek of stewed cabbage, another staple of the disgusting diet here, then the gate collapsed in a shower of sparks.
The trial was over. His uniform was drenched in rancid sweat, his head throbbed, and he was so exhausted he was swaying. He had made a gate of sorts, but was it enough? And had Dagog noticed Skald’s little slip before Tataste died?
Dagog seemed grudgingly pleased, though was he pleased because Skald had succeeded, or failed? Skald’s gaze slid to the body of the young woman, crumpled on the floor like a deflated balloon, and flicked away. He could not afford to look at her; he forced himself to meet the magiz’s eyes.
‘You made an error,’ said Dagog.
Skald’s heart skipped a beat, then began to pound slowly and painfully. One chance in three. ‘Magiz?’ he croaked.
‘You’re sweating like a hairy pig, Skald. Are you feeling emotional?’
‘It’s this wretched climate,’ he lied. ‘I’m not used to the heat and humidity.’
Dagog smiled sourly. He knew it was a lie.
Skald straightened his shoulders. If he had failed, he would die on his feet with his head high. ‘My error, Magiz?’ he said, and this time his voice sounded true. ‘What was it?’
After another drawn-out pause, Dagog said, ‘You did not take power smoothly. You drank most of the victim’s life in a single gulp.’
‘I was too eager, Magiz.’
‘Gulping a life is wasteful; inevitably, much of the victim’s life force will be lost. Next time you will do it properly. You will savour that life as if it were a fine wine.’
Skald’s heart gave another heavy thud. Next time? But there was no next time in a trial.
‘Are you saying I’ve passed the trial, Magiz?’
‘Are you suggesting that I’ve missed some critical failing in you?’
‘No, Magiz.’
The magiz took a palm-length shard, an oily green in colour, from a locked case and held it up. ‘This will be your rue-har. Look straight ahead. Make no sound. Do not flinch – that also counts as a failure.’
Skald swallowed, then stared over Dagog’s head at a skull-shaped patch of mould on the far wall. The shard was as sharp as a flint blade and came to a wicked point on the end. Dagog raised his hand and for a hideous moment Skald thought the shard was going through his right eye, but Dagog touched it to the black Merdrun glyph tattooed in the middle of his forehead and thrust hard. Skald felt the tip of the rue-har embed itself in bone.
The magiz subvocalized a spell. Pain shrieked through Skald’s forehead and it took all his self-control not to move or cry out. Power surged through the shard and into him; his head grew so hot he expected steam to gush from his nostrils. The magiz wrenched the shard out, dripping blood, put it in a small leather case and handed it to him.
‘Guard your rue-har, Sus-magiz Skald. Lose it and you die disgraced.’
‘Thank you, Magiz,’ Skald said stiffly.
‘I loathe and despise you, Sus-magiz, but I concede you have skill, courage and self-control, and I must accept you. Go to your barracks; prepare yourself for the morrow. You have many spells to master and much secret knowledge to learn. And remember this – as the lowest of my sus-magiz, you are always on trial. Always subject to the ultimate penalty if you fail me …’
Dagog smiled, a sickening sight. ‘I hope you do, Sus-magiz. I ache to drink your life. Clean up this mess.’
As if to demonstrate his own mastery of the Secret Arts, he made a small secret motion with his claw-like left hand and disappeared. Skald was about to let out a whoop when he thought better of it. Dagog had vanished silently, which probably meant he had just turned invisible and was still here, hoping Skald would reveal some fatal failing. If the magiz had transported himself away via any kind of gate, there would have been a hiss of air or a little pop.
Skald picked up Tataste’s sad little corpse and carried it down the street to the nearest body pile, for burning. He ate and drank and went to the bathing chamber, then to his bed, his feet barely touching the floor. He was a sus-magiz – one of the chosen! In the next weeks and months, should he survive, he would learn secrets that not even Durthix, who had been a battle mancer of considerable power and subtlety, was permitted to know.
Secrets that had been handed down, magiz to sus-magiz, from Merdrax the First at the dawn of the Merdrun’s existence. And one day, if he worked hard and had good fortune, and Dagog failed or was killed in battle, which Skald devoutly hoped for, he might achieve the ultimate honour and be made magiz in his stead. He would finally have escaped the family shame, and he would be safe at last.
On that happy thought he fell asleep.
In the darkest hour of the night he woke to hear someone groaning. Nightmares were not uncommon among the Merdrun, especially after they’d taken a fortress or city with slaughter and atrocities, but Skald was horrified to discover that the groans came from his own throat.
The nightmare came home to him with overpowering force as he saw deep into the mind of the helpless young woman he had killed, for power. Again he experienced Tataste’s emotions, though this time there was no protective charm to shield him, and he felt her inner hopes and fears and terrors as deeply and desperately as she had, because they had come across the link as he drank her life and he did not know how to erase them.
As a true Merdrun, Skald had always seen outsiders as vermin to be destroyed, but now he knew Tataste had been a human being like himself, save that she had been good, kind, loving – and innocent. If he had ever been innocent, he did not remember it.
Then he saw her children again, as clearly as if they were right in front of him. Mummy will be back soon, I promise, the little girl had said to her brother.
Skald’s gorge rose and he sprang up and vomited into the bucket at the foot of the bed. All around him the other sleeping soldiers stirred and muttered. He rose and dressed in his sus-magiz gown, took the bucket down to the privies and washed it out, then went to the dining hall and slumped on a stool, gasping.
A sentry came in, off the night watch. ‘You look pale, Sus-magiz.’
‘Something I ate,’ lied Skald.
‘Put your finger down your throat and get it all out. The muck they eat in this accursed city doesn’t agree with me either.’
After he had gone, and Skald sat alone in the dimly lit hall, Tataste’s face reappeared, pleading for her children. They had neither food nor water, and he could not have them on his conscience as well. Could he spirit them out of the city and leave them somewhere safe? Would that redeem him in some tiny way?
With the power stolen from her it would be easy to find out where she had been captured. He went out into the dark streets and, though he encountered many sentri
es on patrol, no one would question the doings of a sus-magiz.
Save another sus-magiz! Skald froze. What if the magiz was having him watched, waiting for the mistake that would doom him? Skald had to take the risk; in this hot climate the children would not last long without water. After taking extra precautions he cast his spells.
He found the street and identified the building where Tataste had lived, a crumbling rooming house, four storeys high, that had been emptied when the inhabitants of Guffeons were driven out three days ago. He located the basement, opened the door with an effort, for it was stuck, and went down ten steps.
And there he found them, the three-year-old girl and the little boy, huddled together between mouldy old chests and empty barrels, but they were dead. They must have tried the door, found they could not open it, then clung to one another until they died of thirst. It would not take long in this heat.
Tears welled in Skald’s eyes and this time he did not fight them; he sank to his knees on the dirt floor and howled. He was a monster, a murderer of innocents, and for a mad instant he contemplated breaking into Dagog’s apartment and choking him to death. He would fail, of course, and Dagog would torture him to the brink of death before drinking his life, though was even that enough to cleanse Skald’s tainted soul?
He took the little bodies down the dark street to the burning pile and laid them beside their mother. Tears flooded his cheeks. He wiped them away and looked around in case someone had seen, but there was no one around at this time of night.
It would not do. He carried Tataste and her children to a park and found a pretty spot between three trees. Skald used a minor spell to dig a hole and laid Tataste in on her back, the girl clasped in her right arm and the boy in her left. He closed their eyes, wiped his own, carefully replaced the earth over them and covered the grave with stones.