Stars and Graves

by Roberto Calas

  “And you use it?”

  “Routinely,” said Meedryk.

  Agglumerant oil was perilously unstable. As a mantic, Meedryk was prohibited from even knowing about the integrant. But he had read extensively on it. He’d pilfered the vial from Master Craen’s strongbox before leaving Maul Kier.

  “So why could you not lay palisades around our camp every night?” asked Ulrean. “Seems you could have destroyed the Beast long ago.”

  Meedryk shook his head. “Palisades are dangerous things. They seal you into an area. And if someone on your squad forgets about them.” He made an explosive gesture with his fingers.

  And palisades don’t work well on grass and leaves.

  He gave the vial to Aramaesia and poured a crimson powder from the second pouch into a small crucible. This powder was the fomentriatic. Igneous eliciam. He added a creamy gray suspension called mage’s mucilage to the powder. The suspension made the powder sticky. He added an extra dollop for good measure. He wanted the powder to hold fast to whatever touched it.

  Meedryk took the vial of agglumerant oil from Aramaesia. He opened the accelerant tenderly, holding his breath.

  I shouldn’t be using this.

  Aramaesia frowned at his expression. “Meedryk, is that something you should be using?”

  The mage gave a tiny nod. “Of course.” He tipped the oil slowly until the barest trickle of it seeped onto the igneous eliciam. He wasn’t sure how much to use, so added a second drop, then stirred.

  He sighed and set the crucible down. Wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his cloak then set a second bowl on rocky path. He poured a layer of thick yellow granules into the bowl then meticulously layered a clear fluid over them, making sure to cover the granules evenly.

  “And what’s that for?” Ulrean asked.

  Meedryk drew a long-handled wooden spoon from his pack. He scooped a heap of granules from the bowl put them into his mouth. “Dinner,” he said through a mouthful. Ulrean laughed. But it was a short bark of a laugh and it trailed off when the boy noticed more shapes gathering at the northern gate.

  †††

  Beldrun Shanks sat in the branches of a shaggy cedar to the west of CWNCR. He had followed the squad for the entire day, reckoning they were his only hope of getting out of Maug Maurai. Finding a way out of the forest was unlikely without help.

  And there was something he needed before he left.

  His eyes gleamed when he spotted Ulrean on the path closest to him. The gem wasn’t visible from this distance, but Shanks could imagine the blue stone shimmering beneath the boy’s bangs. The apprentice was with the boy. Lokk Lurius wasn’t far from him either. And the Grack archer, too. She was talking to the boy. No doubt lecturing him on morality and law. All that rubbish about charity and courtesy. Shanks was done with it.

  Only the weak show kindness. Laws were made to keep the weak from rising against the strong. How did the nobility get to where they were? Not by following laws, that was certain. Not with compassion or kindness either. Just ask the Andraens how much compassion the Larays showed them. Ask the Larays how much sympathy the Galadane had shown during the revolution. Ask any conquered civilization about compassion and kindness.

  They’ll spit at you, they will, he thought. And so would I.

  He heard footsteps. More shapes moving down below. Five, six, seven. They kept coming. His breath quickened at the prospect of dying out here, alone, dragged down and ripped apart by demons or whatever lurked down there. He crossed his arms over his chest, settled against the tree and prepared himself for action. He had no idea what sort of action was coming, but he was certain it would come.

  Chapter 47

  Meridian cloaks must always be worn fully fastened. Young students of sorcery often grow frustrated with the many cords, but personal safety is worth a little frustration, and a disregard for popular fashions.

  —From “The Treatise Canalithian” by Sidare Moldrane

  Uncountable hordes gathered at each of the gates now, motionless. Meedryk had finished the palisades on each of the four paths. Lokk Lurius had boosted him onto the roof of the hall and the apprentice had set them there as well. He was just finishing a circle around the entire hall with the last of the chemics when the Beast cried out again. The shapes at the gates cried out at the same time.

  The sound of their cries echoed and faded, and then something changed. The figures hunched lower and seemed to grow restless. A few of them began making soft, echoing calls that resembled sobs.

  Grae stood in front of the fortified hall with the rest of the squad. He held the harness with the fake arms in one hand. “Maurg.”

  Lord Aeren, standing at his side, nodded. “Many of them.”

  As one, the maurg began hooting and leaping and finally, like dogs released from a kennel, they howled and swarmed into the village.

  “Everybody hold,” shouted Grae. “Fall back to the hall only when the palisades fire.”

  “And make sure to enter the hall directly,” said Meedryk. “There are palisades on both sides of the door and all around the hall.”

  Everyone braced for the violence of the snares, not sure what to expect but hoping for astounding feats of brutality. The first wave of maurg ran into the fomentriatic layers, stepping into the sticky eliciam mixture and carrying it into the abeyant layer on their shoes or boots or blackened feet. Meedryk had an instant to regret that his work would be wasted on maurg and not the Beast itself.

  The maurg sprinted past the palisades.

  There were no bursts. No explosions. The only sign that they had triggered anything at all were burning footprints left behind as they ran. The horde raced toward the village center in a frenzy of grotesquely swollen faces and hands, lit by the torches on the road, the burning tracks making them seem like demons come for the Battle of Ascension.

  Grae turned to apprentice. “Bodlyn!”

  Meedryk’s eyes were wide and red. He said nothing.

  “Palisades?” asked Grae.

  Meedryk couldn’t speak. I was so careful! The agglumerant oil? No, too much or too little of it would not have fouled the ward. He thought carefully, remembered the extra dollop of mage’s mucilage.

  What an imbecile! The mucilage!

  It was the mistake of a first phase occulist, not a mantic. A flush rolled up his neck like red fog.

  Too much mucilage!

  “By that look of panic, I take it there will be no palisade firings?” asked Grae. The creatures were less than a hundred yards away, growing larger. Grae could see the green glint of their eyes. Meedryk shook his head slowly.

  “Too much mucilage,” he said.

  “Too much mucilage,” said Ulrean, nodding.

  “Fucking arse nipples,” said Grae. “This will be wildly interesting. Everyone back to the hall.”

  He needn’t have given the order. Most of the squad mates were running for the fortification already.

  †††

  Meedryk was frozen in place.

  How could I be so brainless?

  He tried to relax himself as the maurg sprinted toward him. He had failed. They had counted on him, and he had failed. If he survived, this mistake would enslave him, bind him to a desk and quill and set a massive woman to berate him every day of his life. Like his father.

  He ground his teeth and fought against it.

  That will not be me.

  Some of the abeyants were still on the path. Meedryk focused on them, ignoring Hammer’s shouts to get yer flab-strewn buttocks into the hall! Ignoring the running hordes. Ignoring his pounding heart and the five humors of his body, all five of which screamed for him to run.

  He rubbed his fingers against one another, chanted the words of esereult that Aramaesia had taught him. Reached back with his thoughts toward that chamber of his mind. The one that had opened briefly the other day, with Beldrun Shanks. He searched for the space that transcended Meedryk Bodlyn, the surging, molten, center of creation that all life shared. He felt
the raw power of that furnace, so much more energy than any integrant, than all integrants combined, than every ounce of chemic magic in the world. One hundredth of a dram of that force could level a city. Meedryk needed just the tiniest fraction of that. A speck of a hundredth of a dram. Just a speck. He barred and embraced, as Aramaesia had taught him. Heard the maurg sobs, the frantic footsteps of a soldier behind him, the rustle of a tick through grass, the strangely perceptible sound of the massive stones of the hall shifting in the soil, his own heartbeat. Everything. He could hear everything.

  He relaxed and strained simultaneously, as Aramaesia had taught him. He achieved a balance. His mind reached for what was needed; and he took it. It was his.

  He opened his eyes and felt his body trembling, vibrating with the stored energy. Intoxicating. He did not have the practice or education to do even a fraction of what was possible. But just the feel of that raging torrent was thrilling. Just the knowledge that he could harvest this raw power, control it, channel it. That it existed at all. Transcendence There could be no greater joy.

  Fuck you, Rudris Howett!

  He focused again on the chemics that lay on the path. The speck of power he had harvested would be the fomentriatic. Would release the power in the chemics. As he had done inadvertently with Beldrun Shanks.

  The maurg were less than fifty yards away. They were past the palisades but there were still more than a dozen creatures near the target areas, stragglers and slower runners. He took a deep breath and spoke the words that would help channel the power: Astruielle lar—

  Something slammed into him.

  He fell to the hard soil before he could finish the phrase. Someone’s arms held him tightly. He flailed and struggled to rise, felt the Transcendence receding. The speck of a hundredth of a dram fading back to its furnace.

  “No!” he shouted. “Stop! Astruielle laronias! Astruielle laronias!” But it was too late. No power lurked within the words. Lokk Lurius dragged him back toward the hall kicking and struggling. They slipped through the gap in the fortified wall as the first maurg leaped; a hunched creature that looked as if its body had deflated. Its skin loose and gray-green, its features drooping. Sage and Hammer thrust out with spears. They impaled the creature through neck and groin. It dropped, twitching, to the soil below. But more took its place.

  “Goodbye, Sage,” Lokk called.

  Six more maurg leaped at the walls, howling and snarling. All of the soldiers held spears. Even Lord Aeren had one. They shoved and stabbed through the slits in the wall like launderers in vertical tubs, the spear hafts clacking and scraping against the stones. Grae held his shield against the opening in the wall and stabbed above and below with his sword.

  The first maurg were repelled easily by the soldiers, but the second wave proved more of a challenge. There were at least two dozen in that group. Several of those made it over the wall. Aramaesia buried arrows in their faces and throats, her aim perfect at this range.

  Meedryk, still in a fury over being dragged into the hall, used the Manumission from Torment to melt the creatures, hurling the integrants at them as they approached. He snarled as he threw the chemics, his face covered in mud and gore. The Manumission was a gruesome way to destroy these creatures. They continued to walk as the skin and muscles bubbled and sloughed from their bodies, their bones were eaten through as if by the strongest of acids, their bodies tumbling apart like wooden block towers. And still they moved toward him by whatever means they could. Until the chemics ate through the parts of their brains that kept them alive.

  He checked his pouches and scowled. Not much vig left. The manumission would not be an option soon.

  A maurg wolf squirmed its way through the gap in the wall, unnoticed in the mass of bodies. It lunged at Aeren and toppled him backward, its jaws straining toward his throat. An unnatural snarl rolling from its throat.

  Sage dragged the creature away by the tail but it snapped at the scout’s arms. Its teeth found a spot where the mail had ridden up. Sage howled. He drew his dagger and stabbed the creature in the throat, sawed until the creature stopped moving. But the damage had been done.

  He shook his hand wildly. “Fucking arse nipples! I’m bit again!”

  “There are more of them!” shouted Lord Aeren. He could see another great storm of maurg rushing toward them. “We cannot kill them all! They are like ocean waves!”

  “Shut your flapper, Threncannon,” shouted Hammer, but the old soldier whispered a prayer to Fulgris Prime under his breath. There had to be more than a hundred of maurg out there now. Even Lokk Lurius’s jaw was set tightly as he marked the new arrivals. They weren’t just former humans. There were other animals, too. Decomposing bears and boar and all manner of things that had been recruited by the Beast.

  “Meedryk!” Grae shouted. “We’re going to need some help!”

  Meedryk took a breath, nodded. He had set palisades around the entire hall, and another on the roof. He caught a glimpse of the maurg horde at the wall. They were spilled out and fanned all along the entrance to the hall. He imagined the entire structure was surrounded. All of them standing directly on the palisades.

  He closed his eyes and fought for esereult. Let his thoughts drift backward again, searched for that blazing well of power. Inward he drifted, past desire and comfort, past will and pride, past fear and anxiety. He searched for those vaults that held the sacred formulas of mankind’s existence, of all existence. He looked again for those burning coals of power…

  ...and could not find them.

  Sweat trickled along his temples. He tried again, and again there was no response. His fists clenched tightly and he resisted an urge to scream and pound at the walls.

  “Meedryk!” shouted Sage. “Either cast or grab a spear.” The scout was jabbing with his left arm now. The right arm dangled limply at his side. Two maurg squeezed over the wall and hopped down toward Sage. One carried a rusty broad-bladed sword.

  Lokk leaped over to the scout. He used his spear shaft to pin the two fiends to the wall, catching both under their throats. The Eridian made one swift motion with the spear and both of the pinned monsters dropped to the floor. Their throats cut nearly all the way through. Lokk drew his theiyras and another two maurg fell. Meedryk couldn’t tell how it had happened. The Eridian hadn’t seemed to even swing the weapons. He drew the swords and the two creatures fell. It was, he thought, Lokk’s magic of death.

  “Aramaesia, watch the back,” shouted Grae as three more maurg slipped over the wall.

  We’re being overrun, he thought. We’re drowning in them.

  There were too many. Half-minded, ceaseless monsters. They sought vengeance, he thought. It didn’t matter who they took it from, but someone would pay for what had been done to them. A small maurg squeezed past the legs of two larger ones and made it into the hall. Its head scarcely reached the brig’s sword belt. A child.

  Grae raised his sword, and hesitated. His thoughts whirled. The creature lunged toward him. He brought the blade down across the creature’s legs. It fell to the floor, mewling, and Grae drove the tip of his sword through its spine, feeling tears in his eyes.

  Lord Aeren screamed. One of the maurg was on him. Its mouth on his face, the ragged teeth sinking deep into the flesh. He screamed again, dropped his spear. Found a dagger at his side—the ebony-handled knife that Rundle Graen had given him—and stabbed over and over again until the creature stopped moving. But not before it had torn a chunk from his cheek.

  Sage screamed again as a monster drove a dagger through the mail on his back, at the left shoulder. There were more maurg than humans past the wall now. It was breaking down into a mad scrum. Hammer howled as a maurg axe came down on his shoulder.

  They’re dying. Meedryk choked back tears. We’re all going to die.

  He drew his short sword and looked to Aramaesia and Ulrean. The archer was dividing her attention between the attacking horde and the hole at the back of the hall. Some of the maurg were trying to climb in from the
rear. When one would pop its head over the lip of the hole, Aramaesia would fire. It didn’t kill them, but slowed their progress. Ulrean sat against a corner holding a shield, his knees drawn up to his chest, his eyes wide.

  We’re all going to die, thought Meedryk again, his heart racing. I’ve discovered Transcendence. And now I’ll—

  Esereult.

  Just a glimmer. He made a mental grasp for it and almost lost it. Forced himself to calm, searched for balance, reached toward the furnace with urgency and serenity. It was the most difficult thing he had ever done. Casting off doubt and terror and excitement. He made himself like stone. It was his father’s trick, the ability to make yourself not matter, to eliminate all pride and emotion. To reduce oneself to the inanimate. To become a vessel and nothing more.

  He felt the heat. Heard the thunderous drumbeat. Ten million drums. The planet’s heartbeat. Roaring in his head. Vibrating in his body.

  He heard the sound of a dagger blade scraping against steel rings. The slow, ponderous creak of Aramaesia’s bow string. Meedryk watched a speck of blood from Lord Aeren’s cheek sail lazily through the air and splatter against the wall.

  Esereult.

  The drums thundered. The universe’s war chant. The blood pulsing through his veins. Flames. Eternal flames roared inside him. Somewhere in his mind, behind the thunderous drums, water dripped. One drop. Then another. A slow, steady fall.

  Carefully, so carefully, Meedryk took what he needed. Just a speck of a hundredth of a dram.

  Again he felt the buzzing, the surge of energy. But joy was absent this time. Only a distant urgency.

  He thought of the palisades outside, the layer of abeyants around the hall.

  Lojen, guide my… he paused, then changed the prayer. Blythwynn, mother of light and life, save us all.

  He released the speck, cast it into the wind like a dandelion seed, sent it where he willed.

  Astruielle laronias.

  He smiled then, knowing he had achieved something. A moment in life when great progress can be measured. But it didn’t last long. Because Meedryk realized, only then, under esereult, that he had used too much agglumerant oil when he set up the palisades.