Magic, Myth & Majesty: 7 Fantasy Novels

by David Dalglish

  “But the Liber—”

  “Says a lot of things that would have Ain blasting the world with lightning—if he were capable of rage, and if he actually wielded destruction like a petulant child.”

  Shader’s jaw dropped, but the Gray Abbot pressed on. “Story-book language for little children. And as for sex—” He assumed an expression of grim seriousness. “Things have insinuated their way into the Liber since the time of the Reckoning that would be unrecognizable to the luminaries of old.” Maybe not unrecognizable, he thought to himself, but certainly unorthodox. “The friar, Otto Blightey—”

  “The Liche Lord of Verusia?”

  “Indeed. Blightey wasn’t always evil. His was once the most hallowed name in Nousia. When the Templum rose from the ashes of the Reckoning, Blightey was the foremost advisor to the Ipsissimus. He gathered the fragments of holy writings that would form the Liber and helped weave them into a system that appealed to the widest range of people. It was the glue that bonded the nations and gave them the strength to emerge from the cataclysm. Once it was finished, all traces of the old scriptures were erased in the name of unity. Not everything in the Liber was orthodox, though. Blightey introduced elements that would have been condemned by the Old Faith. You’ve no doubt been bewildered by the lack of cohesion in the scriptures.”

  Shader nodded, a deep frown etched into his forehead.

  The Gray Abbot went on. “It doesn’t quite fit together.” That was an understatement. “There are conflicting elements, paradoxes. The Liber is riddled with misprision and traducement. Don’t get me wrong, the truth still resides there, but it is hidden like a diamond in a swamp. You should speak to Frater Gardol about it. He’s spent years identifying the authentic voice of the first Luminaries, tracing a golden thread through the pages of the Liber. His knowledge surpasses even mine, and I was raised with the original scriptures. Unfortunately recollection grows more and more unreliable the longer you live. It’s still not quite the book I was raised with, but it’s a good start. If only I’d had mine copied before it crumbled into dust we could have avoided a lot of confusion—assuming the Ipsissimus would accept it after all this time. But to return to the point about carnal love, its association with sin is a later interpolation. Ain, if Frater Gardol is to be believed, not only tells us it’s a good thing, he positively commands it.”

  “But what about us?”

  “The consecrated? Celibates? Either we are the blessed or the deluded. Either Ain has set us aside for a special task or we have been deceived—in which case we are the children of the Abyss, not those who fall in love.”

  Shader’s face was creased with angst. “I still don’t know what I should do.”

  The Gray Abbot sighed and laid a hand upon his shoulder. “I think the tournament clarified one thing.” He eyed the swords buckled at Shader’s waist. “You have established that Pardes is not for you.”

  “You won’t have me back?”

  “It was not I who bore weapons into the abbey. I would say, my friend, that you have already chosen your path.”

  Shader sagged as if he’d received a punch in the stomach. He hung there for a moment, bent over at the waist, hands on hips. The Gray Abbot took hold of his shoulders, afraid he was going to fall. Shader waved him away and slowly straightened up. He nodded, meeting the Gray Abbot’s gaze, tears streaking his cheeks.

  “It has been a lie.” Shader’s voice was harsh and grating. “I’ve known all along, but didn’t want to believe it. Tell me, Pater, can a man kill and still love Ain?”

  “It’s what the Elect do. It’s what you are: a consecrated knight. A monk of war.”

  Shader’s head was shaking vigorously. “I tried, Pater. I tried so hard.”

  “I know. I remember the beating you took outside the pub. Faith doesn’t get more heroic than that. But it’s not you. The real you would have fought back, probably killed the whole lot of them. I can only guess at Ain’s reasons, but he has made you for sterner things than the life of a monk. If we are destined to be the hands of Nous, is it so hard to imagine a hand wielding a sword? At the abbey we oppose evil with silence. Perhaps that is not enough.” The Gray Abbot knew that to be the case, knew that some evil could not be defeated with love; which is why Blightey had been hounded into the forests of Verusia by the full might of Aeterna.

  “But Rhiannon refused me.”

  The Gray Abbot wouldn’t have been surprised to detect the hand of Aristodeus in that as well, or the meddling Huntsman, whom the philosopher had ostensibly come to see.

  “She has her own path to discern. If it is Ain’s will, you will be together. In the meantime, Frater, you may stay here. Resume the life of the abbey as best you can and let us see if we can hear the voice of Ain above the din.”

  THE SICARII

  Shadrak dropped from the rooftop, rolled and came up standing in the shadows cast by the Tower of Glass. The monolith reached to the stars, its surface mirroring the night’s blackness and rippling in the moonlight. An old woman hacked and coughed as she tottered past, a heavy basket in each hand. Something about her reminded Shadrak of Kadee—the crook of her back, the chin tucked into her chest, eyes on the ground. He was half a step towards giving her a hand when she coughed again, this time more violently, blood spattering the ground. Shadrak pulled his hood tight over his nose and mouth and waited for her to pass.

  Looking about to make sure he wasn’t seen, he sprinted for the shadows cast by the lintel above the doors, which were smooth like the rest of the tower, meeting in the middle with a hairline crack. Pulling on a soft leather glove, he flipped open the cover of a panel and pressed a sequence of buttons. There was a rush of air as the doors parted. Shadrak stepped across the threshold removing the glove, careful not to touch the outside where it had been in contact with the buttons, and flinging it into a cylindrical container in the entrance hall.

  Soft light pulsed from long strips set into the ceiling, illuminating the marble stairs leading to the next floor. A red triangle shone above a recess housing a silver door that slid open as he approached. Stepping into the cubicle, he pressed button number 75 and braced himself as the door shut and the cubicle started to shudder. His stomach lurched and he staggered, supporting himself with a hand on the rear wall. The light in the ceiling flickered and a low drone raced towards a shrill whine before the cubicle juddered to a halt. The door hissed open onto a corridor of windows that overlooked the sleeping city from a dizzying height. A covered cart was making its way along Weaver Street towards the monument of Gorkan the Great in the plaza, where bodies were starting to pile up.

  Shadrak crept to the door at the far end, opened it enough to slip through, and slunk into the shadows. A black-cloaked figure stood guard at the end of a passageway lined with doors. Shadrak approached, silent as the grave, and pressed the tip of his finger into the guard’s back. The man squealed and raised his hands. Shadrak gave him a friendly pat.

  “All right, Tony?”

  The assassin turned and looked down at him. “You sneaky little sod. Scared the bleeding life out o’ me! Better go in, they’re waiting.”

  The meeting room was a small amphitheater with banks of colored chairs that rotated upon narrow pedestals. Half the seats were occupied by black-cloaked Sicarii journeymen, all eyes upon him as he entered. The guild’s four masters sat below them around a crescent shaped table made of red glass. The windows were shuttered to prevent any spill of the wavering light coming from strips of crystal set into the ceiling.

  “Good o’ you to join us, Shadrak.” Master Paldane smiled through thin lips, his good eye bloodshot and blinking, the other milky and blind.

  “Don’t leave the Maze much these days, Master.”

  “Except on imperial business,” sniped Master Grayling, looking painfully thin, a rash of blisters almost completely covering one side of his face. “Don’t think we didn’t hear about the visit you paid a certain Bovis Rayn.”

  “Weren’t by choice, as well you k
now, Master.” There’d been six smart-dressed men waiting for him when he’d got home that night. Gave him the choice of taking the job or languishing in the imperial dungeons for the crime of being an assassin. Shameless hypocrisy. Would’ve had bright futures, if they’d not been so easy to find. “Someone broke my cover, told ‘em where I lived.” Someone in this room, most likely.

  Shadrak scanned the assembled assassins, many of whom looked down, pretending not to be watching him. Only the poisoner, Albert, caught his gaze, piggy eyes flitting from him to the table as he deftly sliced some cheese with a garrote. He looked more like a restaurateur than a paid killer, dressed in a sharp black jacket and pressed trousers in the style of the Ancients. From the neck up he resembled nothing more than a Nousian monk, with the narrow band of dark hair camping out at the base of his shiny scalp.

  Master Rabalath looked down his broken nose at Shadrak. “You should be more careful,” he began, the other masters already nodding their agreement. “When people know where you live it’s hard to remain unseen. Whatever you might argue, the only way for a Sicarii to pick up a job is through us. Anything else gets … messy.”

  “If the emperor’s men come to my house with a job, I have to assume it’s ‘cause one o’ you shopped me.” There was a rustle of cloaks around the amphitheater “Can’t say I take too kindly to that.” Shadrak made a show of scraping the dirt from beneath his fingernails.

  “How’s your old mom, Shadrak?” asked Master Frayn, the youngest of the masters, lean and muscular to the point of vanity, and sporting a thin, oiled mustache. “Must say I found her rather charming, for a Dreamer.”

  Muffled giggles and exchanged whispers.

  Kadee might not have been his real mother, but she was the best person he’d known. Almost good enough to balance out his darker leanings. But not quite.

  “Died last winter.” Speaking the words made it so much more real. If he hadn’t had his anger, he might have shown weakness. “Surprised you didn’t know, intelligence being your strong point and all.”

  Frayn stiffened at the slight. A master out of touch was a master in danger of losing the respect of those below him; and the Sicarii were always jostling for position. It was positively encouraged.

  Shadrak gave his most malignant grin to Frayn, at the same time imagining what it would feel like to rip that ridiculous mustache from his face along with the skin. “Good of you to ask, though. Makes me feel tingly all over, knowing a master cares about my family. How’s the little nipper coming on, Frayn? He must be, what, two? Three? No better part of the city to raise a child than Charinbrook, wouldn’t you say?”

  The blood drained from Frayn’s face, and he glowered whilst tugging the ends of his mustache straight.

  “But to answer your concerns, Master Rabalath, the emperor’s men who paid me a visit won’t be doing that again. Took the job, did the bastard, then did the scuts that hired me. Now I’m guessing if anyone else knows where to find me, they must be in this room.” He gave them all a good look, let them know he was memorizing their faces. “As to the matter of freelancing, I find the suggestion … insulting.” He made sure the last word hung heavy in the air.

  Albert cocked an eyebrow, but Shadrak tried to keep his face blank. If the guild found out the pair of them had been creaming off some lucrative contracts the past few years, things could turn very nasty. He didn’t doubt Albert had already prepared something suitably deadly in case they were made: an air-born toxin or a contact poison to be daubed on the seats of the latrines; but there were other Sicarii equally as dangerous, and you didn’t get to be a master without knowing how to survive your colleagues whilst having them retired on the quiet.

  “Glad to hear it,” Rabalath said, to the nodded agreement of everyone in the room.

  “So,” Frayn sneered, back to his pompous-arsed self, “how’s it going in your shitty little kingdom under the city?”

  Shadrak stared at Frayn for an uncomfortably long time. The master’s cheek twitched and he began to fiddle with his mustache.

  “Found more Ancient-tech weapons?” Paldane sought to ease the tension.

  “No.” Shadrak wasn’t about to tell them the truth about that. “Reckon mine’s the only one. But to answer Master Frayn, I’ve spent hours beneath Arnbrook House. Seems the council are a bit jittery about this plague.”

  “As are we all,” Rabalath wheezed, coughing into a handkerchief like he was about to drop dead from it.

  “Governor’s been spending a lot of time with his public health advisor. Seems they’re trying to reassure Jorakum, get this blasted quarantine lifted.”

  “That’ll be my man Cadman.” Frayn sat back with his arms folded across his chest, looking at the other masters like a schoolboy who’d just come top of the class.

  “No doubt Hagalle thinks the plague’s punishment for all the missionaries he’s shogged in the arse and sent scarpering back to Nousia,” Grayling said. “Templum curse or some bollocks.”

  Frayn frowned and sat upright, stroking his chin and looking all business, as if he were commanding everyone’s attention. As if he were head of the guild and not Rabalath. He opened his mouth to speak—

  “Terribly sorry to interrupt,” Albert said around a mouthful of cheese, “but perhaps it is we who should be worried. Hagalle may give the orders, but we’re the ones who give them a good poking, aren’t we Master Rabalath?”

  If looks could kill, Albert would have been holding handfuls of his own guts the way Frayn was glaring at him. Rabalath gave a girlish laugh, but it was hard to tell whether it was from nerves or some hidden shame.

  “Good point, Albert,” Paldane said with a fawning chuckle, obviously trying to keep in with the poisoner—and who could blame him? “Didn’t you once secrete thorns dipped in scorpion venom in their robes? I heard you even mixed their incense with toxic resin, and wiped out the Nousian community at Delta’s Bluff with a donation of mushroom soup.”

  The journeymen burst into laughter and Albert nodded appreciatively, dabbing his lips with a silk handkerchief.

  “From what I see,” Shadrak said, “Zara Gen don’t exactly share Hagalle’s penchant for whacking Nousians.”

  “The Templum of the Knot?” Paldane rubbed at his eye then examined his finger.

  “Nauseating shoggers,” Grayling said, looking up as if he expected applause.

  “Yes, how come they’re off limits?” Frayn turned to Rabalath, who simply shrugged and gave a superior flick of his head, as if Frayn were an annoying fly or a splatter of seagull shit.

  “The reason I wanted this meeting,”—Shadrak cut through the crap—”was because I ran into mawgs under the city.”

  “How many?” Grayling asked, doing his best to look like he wasn’t bricking it.

  “Three. All dead now.”

  “But how—”

  “The Maze is big, Master Grayling, bigger’n the city. No telling how many ways in and out there are. My problem is that if I alert the council they’ll either commandeer it or try to destroy it.”

  “Small loss.” Frayn put his feet on the table. “If you hog all the entry codes, it’s no use to the rest of us.”

  The idiots had tried for weeks to work out the panels. Problem was they’d grown frustrated tapping out random numbers. None of ‘em had the brains for it. Not like Shadrak. When he’d first stumbled upon the Maze and got locked in, he’d worked through all the combinations in sequence till he found the right one. He later spent weeks doing the same with the other panels and wasn’t about to share the knowledge with his rivals, no matter how much they claimed to be colleagues. He’d shown Albert how to access the outer hatches when they’d started working together, but even he didn’t need to know more than that.

  “Nevertheless…” Rabalath drummed his fingers on the table. “…the less the council knows, the better. Let’s see if we can’t deal with the mawgs on the quiet. You never know, Governor Gen might even thank us one day.”

  “Mawgs ain’t st
upid, Master Rabalath,” Shadrak said. “If there’s more down there, they’ll be wary now.”

  “And you can’t deal with them by yourself?” Frayn was loving it, a big smirk crossing his weasely face.

  Rabalath closed his eyes and steepled his fingers. “We can’t let the city fall, otherwise who’d pay us?” Some of the brown-nosers amongst the journeymen laughed. “You will take a group of Sicarii, find out where the mawgs are coming from, and seal the tunnel.”

  Shadrak nodded. He didn’t like it, but it had to be done. Otherwise Kadee would never let him hear the end of it.

  As he left the room with five assassins in tow, he shot Albert a frantic look. He could have done with Albert’s expertise, but instead, he’d been granted a right motley crew who might prove more of a hindrance than a help.

  The poisoner shrugged as if it was no big deal. That was the trouble with having assassins for partners: when you needed them most they were just as likely to wrap a cheese-wire around your throat.

  A BROTHER IN ARMS

  The light from a guttering candle danced across Rhiannon’s flesh, her face flicking between paleness and shadow like a ghost on the threshold of the Void. Her grip on Shader’s wrists was tight, but not painful, her thighs hot and slick with sweat. Shader strained towards her lips, but she resisted, tongue brushing her teeth. His hands slid down her back, pulling her closer. She bent down, crushing her breasts against his chest, nuzzling her face into his neck, licking, sucking, biting. Shader sighed, one hand cupping a breast, the other squeezing her buttock in time to their thrusting.

  Sweet pain ripped through his throat, warm blood oozing down the skin. Rhiannon lapped at it like a dog, gulping it down and hissing with satisfaction. Her nails raked at his chest, tearing out clumps of hair and flesh. She pressed down harder with her hips, silenced his protests with salty wet lips. Her tongue coiled around his, knotting, wrenching. He gagged and rolled on top, pushing her shoulders into the bed. Her hands latched onto his buttocks, rooting him in her. Her tongue grew more insistent, pulling his face toward her wide open maw, fangs dripping with saliva. He arched away, striking out with the flat of his hand. She gurgled and sighed, humping her hips against his. He hit her again, this time with a fist, battering her head from side to side until the tongue let go.