Mage's Blood

by David Hair

  ‘What about we men, witch-lady?’ asked Artaq. ‘Do we survive this night, from your divining?’

  She paused, losing her levity. ‘Without a scratch,’ she lied. ‘Let’s go.’

  The outer limits of Brochena were alive with Gorgio patrols during the day, but at dusk they pulled back to the Inner City to provide tighter night-time patrols for the bureaucrats who made their homes there. But Elena was an illusionist and the men were used to moving stealthily. By the second hour after dusk they were in place. So far it looked like no one had noticed Arno Dolman was dead.

  The palace of Brochena was a square with four great towers, each rising like a cathedral spire into the darkness. The Sol Tower was the dwelling of the Royal Family; Elena and the children had lived on the upper floors. Its golden roof caught the light like a beacon; it was the first thing people saw when they journeyed across the plains to the capital city. The Dorobon had built the towers, part of an ostentatious building programme which had nearly bankrupted the realm. There was already a pale luminescence coming from the ghostly Moon Tower, which was roofed with crushed quartz. The uppermost floor was open to the elements. Elena pointed: that’s where Rutt Sordell would be, worrying at his fears. The chief knights of the Guard were in the Angel Tower, and the Jade Tower housed the guest-quarters for visiting dignitaries, as well as Elena’s Bastido, in the top room.

  Elena led them up the walls, creating footholds with Earth-gnosis as she went. She slipped behind the sentry at the foot of the Angel Tower. A single blade flashed, and as he fell, she muffled the sound with gnosis. He looked about seventeen, but Elena felt nothing but relief at having silenced him without giving themselves away. Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the dead sentry, and his glance at Elena was troubled, but he stepped into his place without a word as Luca and Artaq dragged the body aside.

  Sorry, Lori, but I was never the woman you thought I was, Elena thought regretfully. She took the leather bag from her back and took out Arno Dolman’s head. The mage’s eyes flickered open as she turned it in her hands. He was too far gone to speak, but that didn’t really matter. Vedya had once told her that the Sydians used to be head-takers, believing they gained the strength and knowledge of those men whose brains they consumed; she had talked like she’d tried it herself. To a magi, the brain housed the gnosis, and that meant she held Arno Dolman’s waning powers in her hands. His intellect was fading, but for a short while longer his powers were hers to command, if she had the stomach for it.

  She glanced up at the tower and along the walls: there were sentries, but none were too close: the Gorgio had grown complacent, confident their enemies were far away and that Gyle’s magi would keep them safe, a mistaken notion, and one she intended to correct. She looked at the Moon Tower, grey under the starlight without Mater-Luna to wash her opalescent walls white. It had been one of the first things she had noticed when she came here four years ago: that the towers of Brochena Palace stood over sixty yards tall, but only forty yards apart. She smiled and went to work with Dolman’s head.

  Rutt Sordell was nervous. It was a familiar feeling, this perpetual state of queasy unease, that somewhere, some unexpected factor was about to make itself known. Right now he was concerned about the Jhafi relations: the blithe contempt of the Gorgio lords for the race that outnumbered them eight to one irritated him. All through dinner Alfredo Gorgio had stroked his silver goatee with self-satisfaction as he voiced his ambitions for the return of the Dorobon and the restoration of his family’s dominance beneath them. His smugness was sickening.

  Some days Sordell wished their mission was to ruin the Gorgio instead, but then he remembered he despised the Nesti equally, albeit for different reasons.

  Abruptly he decided all these Gorgio lordlings around him were unendurable. He stood and without a backwards glance stalked away. If that wasn’t ‘diplomatic’, well bugger them and rukk Gurvon too, for going off to Bres at this crucial stage of the plan. He waved to Benet and Terraux and his acolytes fell into place behind him as he stomped out of the hall. They were recent graduates from an Argundian college, his own picks, neither yet twenty. The dining hall fell silent until he and his acolytes were out of sight, then redoubled in noise, but he didn’t care. He was a weak-chinned man with lank hair. Worry was ageing him early, lining his pallid brow, plucking at his retreating hairline. He had shaping-gnosis, and when he exerted it he could make himself look younger, more handsome, but it took so much energy that he could rarely be bothered. And he could be charming if he felt like it, but he rarely did – what did the opinion of lesser men matter to someone like him? Let lesser beings like Vedya Smlarsk barter their powers for beauty; he had a higher purpose. Tonight he wanted the company of the stars, not mere humans. He needed to examine the future, see what the latest events portended.

  He wondered what Elena Anborn was doing. He loathed her, for so many reasons. He hated that she was senior to him in Gyle’s cabal despite being only a half-blood. That sickened him: that he, Rutt Sordell, a pure-blood mage of an old house, was forced to play second fiddle to a mere woman just because she spread her legs for Gyle, who had always been blind to her faults. He hated the way she was always undermining him, pouring contempt on him whenever he made even the smallest miscalculation. It had given him a real feeling of satisfaction to see her show her true colours in betraying them. Now, at last, he had been recognised as Gyle’s number two. Arno Dolman had never been in the running, but he had worried that Vedya would use the same wiles as the Anborn bitch to win preeminence – but fortunately Gyle had seen sense.

  Gyle’s absence worried him – what if something had happened? He glanced back at Benet and Terraux. They were good enough at parlour seductions and blackmail or blasting helpless spearmen, but they’d be no use in a real fight, not against someone like Anborn. He’d been divining furiously all week, but despite being almost certain she was penned in Forensa, the worry persisted.

  Fuls was the guard at the door of the Moon Tower, a fellow Argundian, his flowing brown hair half-covered by his traditional conical helm. He let Fuls start reaching for his keys before unlocking the doors himself with a small gesture. He enjoyed these little demonstrations of power; they set him apart and made people nervous to be around him: they made up for so many things.

  Benet was laughing at one of Terraux’s quips. He glared at them, gesturing at them to hurry up, then, fuelled by nervous energy, bounded effortlessly up the stairs, leaving his acolytes behind.

  The Moon Tower’s top room had three great windows. Though they looked as if they were open to the skies, they were permanently warded, preventing birds, insects, even the wind, from intruding. Divination worked best under starlight – it was all to do with energy flows and disruptions; he’d written his thesis on it in college … ah, he missed the college where he had been regarded as heir-apparent to the headmaster until that unfortunate event when he’d been caught practising Necromancy – but they were orphans, not even real children … All those lost years, wasted years, until Gurvon Gyle had taken him in, restored his periapt, given him a new purpose. Gyle deserved his loyalty for such friendship, for valuing him properly. One day he would replace Gyle, when he retired, but he was prepared to wait, not like others, who’d made foolish plans to take over. They’d always resulted in bloody demises; Gyle always knew when someone was plotting against him.

  He shut the door on Benet and Terraux. Tonight he needed to concentrate: there were rumours of Harkun movements in the north, where they were seldom seen. He lit the brazier in the centre of the tower room, added powders to the flames, then used the currents of smoke to channel his questions into visions. Time soared by unnoticed as he conjured visions and interpreted them carefully, determining the status and hostility of the natives. News flooded in from the spirit world: visions of campfires in the deserts, of Jhafi moving in larger than normal numbers – it was worse than he had thought. He would advise Alfredo Gorgio to send some of his men back north, maybe even send one o
f the team. Arno perhaps? But the walls … He cursed. Vedya, then. It would be well to get her out of the capital before she damaged relations with the Gorgio further through her mindless promiscuity.

  He registered in passing the tiny flare of Dolman’s Earth-gnosis-powers, over to the west, beside the Angel Tower, but his mind was scanning the future, trying to determine where the Jhafi might be massing, where they might strike, who might lead them … suddenly some deep instinct made him look up, just before the Angel Tower lurched and he heard men screaming as the whole tower fell towards his own Moon Tower with irresistible, inevitable force. A more resolute mage than he might have had time to act, but he was frozen, both body and mind, unable to make the transition from the metaphysical to the material before all around him disintegrated as one tower struck the other.

  Elena was already running above the courtyard, on a path formed from Air-gnosis, her three warriors following the trail of sparks she left, not daring to look down as they ran on nothing, held aloft by her powers alone. She had marked exactly the right spot on each of the towers, years ago, and now she had called up Dolman’s fading gnosis and expended most of it on the Angel Tower, to set it toppling in just the right direction. The Angel Tower wobbled, and for a moment it looked like it could go either way, before falling exactly as planned. She caught her breath as horrified screams erupted from inside, echoed from without as the men patrolling the battlements became aware of the unfolding destruction.

  The cupola of the Angel Tower struck the Moon Tower a third of the way up, shattering against it and sending debris flying outwards, over the moat and into the plaza beyond. She felt lives being extinguished as people were crushed and prayed they were the enemy, not innocents. A crossbow bolt glanced off her shields and spun away. ‘Keep up,’ she screamed over her shoulder, trying not to think, One counter-spell and I’ll lose all three of them. She plunged into the clouds of dust billowing from the ruined edifices and out to the plaza before the keep, where the Moon Tower had fallen.

  The plaza which had been so dark and silent a few seconds ago was in chaos. Lanterns were appearing in windows and faces peered wide-eyed at the debris strewn everywhere. The cobblestones of the plaza were shattered, and wooden beams jutted here and there from the piled rubble like the bones of some giant fallen beast. There were only a few bodies – the Moon Tower was not used for general accommodation. She could see the shattered body of a serving woman, and an Argundian, Rutt Sordell’s personal guard, Fuls. She sprinted down the currents of air, sending gusts ahead to clear the dust and reveal her prey.

  She found Terraux first. The nasty little snot was already dead, pulped beneath a shattered wall. She couldn’t find Benet at all, but she’d felt him die; no loss there either. But where was Sordell? There! She landed lightly and fired a gnosis-bolt into the broken body. It jolted the prone, twisted form, but Sordell didn’t stir. She still approached cautiously, though his body was a pulped mess of torn flesh and shattered bone. He’d been trapped inside the falling tower and unable to use Air-gnosis to fly free. With no affinity to Earth-gnosis, all he’d been able to do was wrap himself in shields and hope. Such protection might work for instantaneous impacts, like weapons or missiles, but shields couldn’t withstand tons of rock raining down, and the result was the broken shape before her.

  But Sordell had other resources: he was a Necromancer, and they were tougher to kill than cockroaches. She had seen him rise from apparent death before and she was taking no chances now. She fired another bolt into him, and this time she heard a tiny sigh even as Artaq closed in on him.

  ‘Artaq, stay back!’

  ‘He’s dead, lady. I’ll take his—’

  Black light flashed from a twitching finger and caught the Jhafi warrior in the face. He screamed, his back arched and he fell. Even as Elena ran towards him she fired more bolts of energy at Sordell. His flesh was quivering in some unseen wind, rising up with jerking, unsteady movements. A soul-drain! Rukka! There was no help for Artaq; she could see that already.

  As Sordell’s eyes opened she flung herself at him, her sword gripped in both hands. She punched through his shields in a flare of coruscating sparks and buried her sword in his gut. Blood sprayed and his flesh writhed frantically, trying to close itself. Sordell hurled a soul-drain at her too, but she met it with healing-wards, which weakened his attack. But she could not escape his ferocity unscathed: she felt the skin on her face dry, felt her hair wither like desiccated grass. Her lips split as she screamed in defiance and her fingers twisted, even as she threw her weight onto the pommel of her blade and drove it into his chest, through his heart. He flailed beneath her, and the skin on his face peeled away to reveal the muscles and tendons and sinews beneath, pulsing red and purulent yellow, as he howled.

  ‘Take his head!’ she screamed. ‘Cut it off!’

  Sordell tried to climb up her blade, his heart spitted but his body, fuelled by Necromancy, fighting on. One purple-lit hand reached for her and gripped her throat, and as it tightened it seemed to be drawing the blood from her veins. Energy throbbed down into his arms, healing them, reviving him even as she struggled to counter his attack. ‘Kill him!’ she croaked as the fangs of his spell sucked her vitality away. He grinned madly up at her, his body reforming about him despite her efforts.

  A blade swung, a sweep of silver that cleaved Sordell’s neck in two, wielded by a man screaming in fury. As the steel severed the neck it struck the stone beneath and the blade shattered. Sordell’s dreadful visage emptied and his fleshless skull rolled sideways. Elena fell to her knees over his body, propped up on the blade that still skewered his heart. Her hands were twisted with age, like knotted firewood. She felt hollow, broken, and it took all her strength just to look up at Lorenzo, who stood beside her, his broken sword in his hand.

  ‘Lori—’ Her voice was a withered croak. He backed away, raising a hand. Gods, how bad is it? Beyond him, Luca was backing away from the fallen Artaq. There was a hole in the Jhafi’s head where his face had been. That would have happened to her without her shields and healing-gnosis. All around them bells were ringing and voices shouting.

  Luca gasped, ‘Donna Elena!’ and he pointed to Sordell’s head.

  She half-glimpsed an eight-inch-wide multi-legged insectoid thing sliding from his mouth. She raised her twisted right hand and sent a weak bolt, but she was too slow; the hideous thing scuttled into the rubble and was lost from sight. Damn!

  ‘What was that?’ Luca gasped.

  ‘What’s left of Sordell,’ she rasped. She tried to find Vedya mentally, but she had no strength left. ‘We must go – Vedya will come, and if she catches us, we’re done.’

  Luca bent over Artaq, said a few words, then left him where he lay. Lorenzo was still staring at her. ‘Elena, can you—? What happened?’

  ‘This is … nothing. I’ll be fine … just took all I had.’

  ‘Your hair,’ he said. He looked almost nauseous.

  ‘What?’ She tugged a strand from her ponytail and sucked in her breath. It had gone silver-grey. ‘It’s nothing, Lori … could have been much worse.’ She climbed to her feet, feeling desperately frail. Sordell’s attacks had pushed her to the very limit.

  Lorenzo came over and reluctantly put an arm about her and helped her up. He looked like he could scarcely bear to be touching her. ‘Sorry, Lorenzo,’ she cackled mirthlessly. ‘I guess you won’t be wanting my kiss any more.’ She grimaced inside at how hysterical and hideous her voice sounded – and at the self-pity of her words. As she clung to the young knight, he looked at her, his face unreadable, but he didn’t let go of her. ‘I’ll claim one later,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Get us out of here and I’ll freely give it,’ she croaked, her sword shaking in her clawed hand.

  Luca Fustinios suddenly took to his heels, leapt a pile of broken masonry and started rummaging around amidst the strewn rubble. ‘Lady Elena – look!’

  ‘What? Luca, we have to get out of here, now—’


  But the little Javonesi was ignoring her. He bent over something, then straightened carefully, holding something in his arms. He turned towards them with a beaming grin. He was holding Solinde Nesti. The princess was unconscious and battered, but she was undeniably alive.

  Lorenzo squeezed Elena’s arm and whispered, ‘Sol et Lune, the princessa!’

  Elena stared, stunned. She must have been in a lower room of the Moon Tower, she thought, but how could she possibly have survived? Was she shielded, or imprisoned in a warded cell? But all her questions could wait; right now they had to get out of there. ‘Let’s get her away from here,’ she rasped.

  Vedya’s mind teased hers.

  Damn. ‘We’ve got to go, now – Luca, can you carry the princessa? Come on—’ She tottered free of Lorenzo’s arms and poured what last scrap of energy she could summon into her legs, trying to counter Sordell’s spell. She felt utterly stricken – an unwanted preview of old age. Her limbs felt like frail twigs, and it hurt her tortured throat to breathe.

  But fear whipped them all along and they broke into a slow trot. At first they ran through empty streets, then hooves clattered behind them and they swerved into an alley. After another block Luca handed Solinde to Lorenzo and loaded his crossbow. He ran back a few steps, dropped to one knee and fired down the alley they had just left.

  A horse shrieked, and they heard it crash to the cobblestones, its rider screaming.

  Elena? Ah, there you are. Vedya’s tinkling giggle filled her mind.

  ‘Faster,’ she croaked, screaming inside in frustration and terror. We can’t survive Vedya, not when I’m so far gone …

  Booted feet echoed behind them. Luca had already reloaded; now he fired again, and as they heard another death-cry, someone yelled, ‘It’s a dead-end! They’re trapped!’ from somewhere nearby.