Now everything rested on the shoulders of a skinny kid. Millar scrambled for the wand. It followed, survival rage scorching It with annihilating heat.
Nothing would be left, anywhere. It would kill every living thing it encountered. It didn’t want to feed; It wanted to murder.
Millar grabbed the wand and raised it. ‘I’m so sorry, Cole.’
Millar pushed the rune. Nothing happened.
It made a gurgling, subhuman sound. Millar flicked the rune again, and then again. It advanced, slowly, examining Its human hands and feet. Why hadn’t It come through? Why wasn’t It ripping him apart?
Millar backed away. ‘It’s not working, why’s it not working? Cole, if you’re in there, man, I’m trying, but it’s not working.’ Inside Its prison, Cole was separated from the whirling sensation of emotion, and clarity dawned. The Guardian hadn’t been able to find Andrew. Cole had assumed that meant Andrew had been killed. But what if he, and the other vampires, were here? The Guardians couldn’t reach this place. They were made from Myriad magic; they had no access to the black magic of the Murk. Millar’s wand was useless here; they were cut off from anywhere the Guardians could reach.
It looked around. A massive fortress sat ahead, the gatehouse some twenty metres away up a snaking path. Something was very, very wrong. The ground was cracked and strained, pulling down toward something under the castle. Something massive was pulling this place toward it. It could see wispy haloes of burned-green energy radiating up from below. The sky above was purple and bruised, and hung all around the island they stood on. It backed away from the castle. White rot flooded out from the place. A great whirling mass sat directly above the castle, many times greater than the mass created by François Ancroft after he escaped from the Pit. The two opposing forces – the force from below and the whirlpool above – stretched the fabric of the castle to fracture point. It was afraid.
Millar shouted, prompting painful aggression to tear inside Cole’s body in a stream of red. The well-worn paths of anger he’d carved out suited It so well. Cole had created a welcoming home for It, all those years he had spent looking out for the threat. He’d been priming his shell for It the whole time.
It looked up. Above, a rumbling, discordant mass of gravity and tortured sound rolled overhead, leaking a trail of burned-green life. A choir of hellish suffering sang. The vampire trail they had followed flew above them in the purple sky. It wasn’t a creature. It was incorporeal – he was pretty sure. Visible only to Cole and other Murk-sensitive creatures. It was not one, but a hundred vampire ghosts fused into one. At the ghost’s centre was a great black hole, like the black-magic portal, surrounded by burned-green suffering and heading for the castle.
It lowered Its gaze to Henry and prepared to leap. Henry backed up, hitting the rune on the wand over and over, like a remote-control button. It leapt. There was a boom, a flash of scalding light and a frantic crushing agony as the universe imploded in a galaxy of stars and darkness.
Chapter 22
The young brother of the Coalition stood before them under the high, stone vaults favoured by the Council Citadel. Nessie stood next to Natalia and breathed the cold air. They had just emerged, freed from the Council’s anti-magic prison. Nessie feared the job he was no doubt about to be given. Natalia glance at him, a child again for a moment. He could not raise a hand to comfort her, not yet. His chest weighed with the burden of his duty to Cole. That Cole had behaved in a way that was reckless, foolish and destructive, shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. There could only be one outcome for which the Council would free them both. Nessie spared a thought for Cole’s other watcher, no doubt dead.
The junior brother waited for them with an edge of impatience in the antechamber, beyond the prison’s walls.
‘Brother, is the armiger fallen?’
The man snapped to attention. ‘Sir, I don’t know, sir. I haven’t heard, sir, but to be honest, I don’t know that they’d tell me, sir.’
Breath left Nessie, tension falling away to light a new fire, while hope for Cole encouraged urgency.
Under the uniform, the man was young. If Cole had fallen, the soldier would have known about it. The whole city would know.
Held together in the Council’s prison, Natalia had told him all. The impotence of being locked away with information of dire urgency had gnawed them both. Without the pieces of the puzzle held by Natalia, the Pit would continue to spit out beast vampires. But finally, the portal had ignited, releasing them from the joyless cocoon of the Null Prison.
To a mage’s eyes, runes shone in the stone over their heads. The soldier’s rank was emblazoned on his newly minted gambeson, and his inexperience was plain to see in his nervously shifting feet. The antechamber had all manner of wards mixed into the runes above, as well as a deadly array of weaponry, both modern and ancient. The chill in the air, the stone soaking up the heat from a small electric heater, was welcome after the loss of sensation in the anti-magic void of the prison.
Nessie had assumed they were being freed to execute Ethan. Magic saturated him, like a sponge soaked with syrup. Colour bled back into the dreary world as his blood coursed through his freed limbs once more.
He focused, casting the location spell.
The magic left, seeking Ethan. A hollow ping returned. No position solidified in his mind. All the rune knew was that Cole was alive.
The boy would be in danger of the worst kind. Even without the infiltration of the wytches and the Mother, Cole would not be equal to this task. The Mournanvil would be too potent for Ethan to survive. They could only hope he had not been exposed to it.
Nessie spoke. ‘Ethan is alive.’ Natalia nodded at that. Her bitterness that the wytches had been left alone after her protection was forcibly withdrawn by the Council’s punitive measures was understandable. The punishment had misfired to doom mages who should have known better. Natalia blamed Cole, although she tried to hide it. Nessie knew her too well.
She was already kneeling on the floor, the soft poetry of Nahuatl falling from her lips while she flawlessly navigated the impenetrable grammar of the language. A wash of pride eclipsed pain born of her involvement in the Mother’s secret plot. His pride was then replaced by memory, sparked in the fire of that ancient language. People and places long past wandered by across centuries of life in the hot, humid lands of Central America.
But no amount of pride would remove the twinge of discomfort at Natalia’s unwise choices. There was no time for it now, but the undercurrent of history repeated by the next generation gnawed deep. The foolishness of the defiance of New Mexico’s Council by Natalia’s parents. What had seemed an idealistic quest, foolish perhaps, but with the soundest intentions, had ended in a small, dank cave, surrounded by pitiless butchery committed by their own hands. Such was the darkness that waited a small way from the path. He couldn’t lose Natalia; he’d lost enough.
‘Sir?’
Memory lost its way. The young brother’s downcast eyes warred with his straight back and shoulders. He was a solider in stance and bearing, and likely to die young like most of the others. Nessie forced patience, the tool of the teacher, to lace his response.
‘Brother?’
The young man seemed to weigh the speaking of words against something unpleasant. ‘I have my orders, sir. The brother sergeant was very clear – we must hurry, sir.’
The recruit did not flinch under Nessie’s gaze.
‘The bother sergeant can wait, and if he is unhappy with that, then that is his prerogative. I outrank him many times over.’
The boy’s discomfort drew a smile. Perhaps he would have a word with the sergeant. The Coalition needed as many recruits as it could get – a soldier should not be frightened of his seniors.
Natalia’s honouring of Mixcoatl gained cadence as she invoked the aspect of the hunt. Wherever Cole was, she would find him. Their bond was still strong. The vital tingle of magic thrummed with its own sweet narcotic, curling around the room like
smoke.
The soldier swallowed and stepped back from Natalia, falling into a fighting stance, hand straying toward his ceremonial mace.
‘Recruit!’
The man visibly flinched and spun, face white. Ridiculous! It was not fear of the sergeant, but fear of them, of magic, that caused him to shuffle and sweat so.
‘Your ignorance is an insult. Natalia is a full knight and deserves the respect accorded any martial superior.’
The boy swallowed, shrinking, losing his rod-straight back. He was muttering some nonsense about witchcraft.
‘Stand at attention, brother of the Coalition.’ The boy drew himself up in a salute, his training tightening him to a rigid line. ‘Your prejudice is laughable. We stand in defence of humanity; you do the same. Learn a little more, and your ignorance will not leave you so afraid’.
The boy barked his affirmative.
‘You will address me by my rank, recruit.’
The reply was immediate. ‘Yes, Commander.’
‘Natalia will go with you, to brief the Council on matters of dire consequence. You will do exactly as she asks of you.’
The man snapped a quick salute. ‘Sir, yes, sir, Commander.’
‘At ease, brother. We don’t have two heads you know, and I don’t bite, unless I’m very hungry.’ He chuckled alone; the recruit’s tight smile was polite. They needed soldiers, if they were to succeed in challenging the Mother’s hubris.
He could forgive his apprentice and the Mother’s followers. But how could the Mother not have known? Corruption dangled promises before the seemingly righteous. Cure vampirism? It was tantalising and far too good to be true. It had Murk-spawned deviancy carved all over it, in foot high letters. The Mother would have to die, painful as it was.
First, he had to know the purpose of their release. ‘If we have not been summoned to acquit our duties as watcher to the armiger, then I wonder, brother, if you know what purpose the Council may have for our release?’
The man’s face seemed to weigh the options. ‘Sir? I’m not sure it’s for me to say, Commander.’
The good soldier’s line. ‘I can make it an order, if that helps.’
The man snapped a salute. ‘Sir, it’s probably the Pit, sir.’
Damn. As he had feared. The Mother was unaware of the side effects of the use of the Anvil or, worse, was aware and chose to use it anyway.
‘The vampires, they’ve been climbing out, sir. More and more the last two days. We’ve brought in the help of some of the Lodges outside the city, sir, but you know how it is. Bullets aren’t easy to get in this country, and we’re going to run out. Some say within a day. The Grandmaster has declared war, sir. We are at war with the Pit.’
The Grandmaster would only be on a war footing if the threat the Pit posed could not be contained by the Coalition’s Edinburgh Lodge alone.
‘It’s bad, sir. They’ll want you at the Pit to fight.’ Nessie waved the man to silence. Once the Council heard Natalia’s report, they would approve a different course. Nessie would be ready.
An assault on the Mother’s fortress was the only option now. How she had hidden it inside the Ways was a matter for later, but it should not have been possible.
‘Brother, I’m going to need soldiers. Are there any who are not on the front line?’
Natalia should have found Cole by now; her hunter’s spell was powerful enough. ‘Actually, sir, the Brothers of the Northern Lodge arrived yesterday. They’re refusing to fight, sir.’
Nessie remembered their insolence from the last time he saw Cole. Cruickshank represented the worst of humanity, and his cruelty attracted those of like mind – the price of their co-operation would be too high.
‘Are there no others?’
The soldier shook his head, eyes wandering to Natalia when he thought he wasn’t being watched. ‘The Northerners sir, I should warn you, they want the armiger, sir. They say he killed some of their men.’
Cole told a different tale. ‘That is untrue, brother.’
The man nodded. ‘Sir, not my place sir.’
Indeed. That didn’t stop soldiers gossiping.
Natalia’s eyes opened. ‘He’s not in the bounds of the city. Which means …’
The Ways. She didn’t need to say it. And if Cole had encountered the Anvil …
‘Go and inform the Council, Natalia. We will be forced to assault the Mother’s stronghold, head on. For that we need soldiers. I’m going to have a word with our good friend Peter Cruickshank.’
Natalia stood. ‘Cruickshank’s here for Cole’s head.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Yes, Natalia. But we don’t have to hand it to him. I will not give that murderous toad the satisfaction.’
She nodded. ‘Confession time,’ she said, looking at him overlong. He couldn’t turn a smile to her then. Her foolishness had cost too much.
She went, the brother taking her down the left-hand fork at the first intersection. Nessie turned right and made his way to the barracks, to where a psychopath no doubt held court and bayed for the blood of the man he was about to be instructed to rescue.
The portion of the Edinburgh barracks given over to the Northern Lodge was strewn with debris that only a horde of teenagers with a month to spare could produce. Or a troop of ill-disciplined men in less than twenty-four hours, apparently.
The room looked like a dustpan. Cigarettes spilled from every ashtray, clothes were strewn over the floor, mingling with food wrappers and other debris. Shock and awe was the approach Nessie had decided on, and the anger wasn’t hard to summon at the sloppy sight, so unbecoming of a lodge of knights.
‘Attention!’
The men started to rise, from where they sat around in their bunks. Their eyes strayed to the man in the middle of it all, who had his feet up on a low table and was flicking idly through a pornographic magazine. The others paused, taking their lead from the reprobate.
‘I said, attention.’
Peter Cruickshank looked up and smiled broadly. ‘Oh, didn’t hear you there, sorry about that. Right, lads, look lively, the brass is here.’
The men snickered and stood, their postures laconic as they drew into a mock parade-ground line, tripping over the filth of their wallowing, which only served to further their amusement.
Nessie could freeze them all alive. The Old Woman of Winter could scour their soft arrogance with lashes of frost.
‘Lieutenant Cruickshank, you will address me by my rank.’
The man’s face became a caricature of surprise. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir, I’m trying to remember but since you, eh, wizards don’t wear uniform, I don’t see any stripes on your shoulder?’
Deep within the winter realm, the storm hags flashed and grumbled.
‘See we soldiers, sir, we earn our stripes. They mean something to us.’
The power to make men bow was an invocation away, but this charade would be lost the moment Nessie resorted to force or temper.
‘Oh, I know fine well how you earned your stripes, Peter Cruickshank. And I see what you choose to do with them.’ He indicated the room.
Cruickshank pulled his shoulders back, his chest puffing out. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but how I run my platoon is my business, long as we’re effective, which you know we are.’
Boasts and defiance. The Old Woman’s hardness howled through him. ‘You can beg for my pardon, Cruickshank, but if you continue in this manner, I’ll put you all on disciplinary.’
The weasel’s smirk was too self-satisfied. Cruickshank was drawing Nessie into his game. ‘Well, sir, I’m not sure that’s allowed? We’re here on protest. That leech you lot protect and mollycoddle came up to my province and murdered two of my lads. So, you go ahead. You put some knights, down here looking for justice, on disciplinary. See how that goes for you. We’re off duty, and here under the law, which puts us beyond your command.’
They could not be pressed as long as they awaited justice. It was an antiquated law, but it stood none the less. Th
e moronic narcissism of their petty vendetta gouged in a cost of lives.
‘You cannot say the armiger murdered anyone until it is proven! And I read what you filed. It was full of holes and nonsense. Ethan Cole would die to protect you all. Even a worm like you, Cruickshank. And while you cower in here, brothers die to keep the Pit contained.’
The men collectively hardened. Any hope he had in using the weight of chain of command was lost. They would not follow Nessie under his terms. They might never have anyway. Cruickshank could never bend. Men like that had to come to everything as their idea.
But Nessie would not listen to them call Ethan a leech and accuse the boy of murder.
Cruickshank spoke. ‘You walk in here and accuse us of being cowards? You walk in here with no stripe on your arm and think you can shame us out of our right to see the law done? You? I’ve heard the stories, old man. You’re not so clean yourself.’
Under any other circumstances Cruickshank would have felt the lash of magic. But men forced would gun Nessie down as soon as his back was turned.
‘I don’t argue with your right to justice; I argue with your timing. This is no time to leverage demands.’ The soldiers grumbled.
Nessie’s rank was letters on paper and worthless. Cruickshank made a show of sitting. ‘Well, Commander. I think we disagree, right, lads? We say this is the perfect time to see the black magician pay. In fact, without the leverage, I bet you hoity-toity bookworms wouldn’t see him put up for what he did. Too busy protecting your precious vampires and all the other scum you harbour.’
Cruickshank’s superiority was a simple thing. In the territories where the glamour held no sway, there was no risk to the Armistice in hunting monsters. Only in the glamoured cities was protection afforded. Cruickshank picked his lewd magazine up and feigned interest in it.
The Mournanvil was raising beast vampires from the Pit. The Anvil had to be stopped, or the Coalition would be overwhelmed, and the slaughter would read like the worst parts of the Christians’ bible.
The Cost of Magic (The Ethan Cole Series Book 1) Page 26