When the Heavens Fall

by Marc Turner

  The knight’s progress across the dome was measured. Deliberately so, the priestess suspected, in order to add to the creeping dread Mayot must surely be experiencing. Clutching the Book to his chest, the mage watched in silence as the rider drew near. He looked small and frail as he blinked against the light, and Romany wondered what was going on behind his dark eyes.

  Not a lot, most likely.

  Shroud’s disciple halted at the foot of the dais and raised his visor. Romany couldn’t make out his face from where she hovered, but she did see Mayot flinch. His left eyelid started fluttering, and the priestess smiled. Stupid old man! Did he only now perceive the true measure of the other players in this game? Had he expected them all to have countenances as fair as Romany’s? Impossible! Would Mayot’s nerve hold now he had stared into the whites of his enemy’s eyes? Or would he bend the knee to Shroud’s disciple as she had taunted him?

  Mayot stared down at the rider for a while, his hands turning pale where they gripped the Book. Then he seemed to relax, his expressionless mask slipping back into place.

  The knight’s voice boomed out. “I am Lorigan Teele, knight commander of the Belliskan Order. Hand over the Book of Lost Souls, sir. I command you in Shroud’s name.”

  When Mayot spoke, his voice sounded shrill in comparison. “The Book is mine. Mine, do you hear! By what right does your master claim it?”

  “I did not come here to reason with you—I am the deliverer of Shroud’s judgment, not his mediator. My master claims the Book because he can.”

  Mayot leaned forward in his chair. “He sent you to steal it from me, then? Ah, but it is too late for that. The Book’s power has already been delivered into my hands.”

  “Delivered? By whom?”

  The corners of Mayot’s mouth twitched, and for a moment Romany feared he would betray her presence. Instead he said, “The rules of the game have changed, Lord Knight. Your master is no longer in a position to demand anything of me. If I agree to surrender the Book, what does he offer in exchange?”

  Romany stiffened. This was not part of the plan! Treachery! And after all I’ve done for him! In retrospect, perhaps she should have insisted Mayot fight the knight as the price for her unlocking the Book’s secrets, but in doing so she would have revealed too much of her hand. Besides, she was not so foolish as to think the old man would hesitate to break such an oath if it suited him.

  Lorigan came to her rescue. “Shroud does not deal with mortals,” he said to Mayot. “Nor does he look kindly on those who presume to test his patience. Now, hand over the Book, sir, or spend an eternity regretting your insolence.”

  “You dare threaten me? I hold immortality in my hands! Does your master expect me to give up such a prize for nothing?”

  “Immortality?” A chuckle sounded from the knight’s helmet. “Shroud is a patient god, mortal. You may cheat him for a time, but one day he will hold your soul in his hands.”

  “Perhaps it will be me holding his. The power at my command now rivals that of your Lord.”

  Lorigan’s booming laughter rang out. Romany had to stop herself laughing with him.

  Mayot’s voice hardened. “It would seem this conversation is at an end.”

  The knight closed his helmet’s visor with a snap. “So be it. Defend yourself—”

  Even before he had finished speaking, sorcery roared into life about Mayot. A seething torrent of blackness raced from his hands toward Shroud’s disciple, and Romany watched wide-eyed as whatever defensive wards Lorigan had fashioned about himself were ripped apart. The man was knocked backward out of his saddle. His horse screamed as its flesh melted from its bones, then its legs collapsed from under it. By the time it hit the ground it was no more than a skeleton crumbling into ash.

  The knight lay sprawled on his back amid a swirling cloud of leaves, still clutching his sword in one hand, his lance in the other. Wave after wave of death-magic hammered into him, pinning him to the floor. Tiny symbols etched into his armor glowed red in the darkness. The sorcery invested in the metal had held Mayot off until now, but Romany could sense it weakening beneath the old man’s onslaught.

  Somehow Shroud’s disciple made it to his feet. He took a heartbeat to steady himself, leaning into the storm of sorcery as if it were a gale-strength wind. Then he pulled his left arm back and hurled his lance at Mayot.

  A flash of lightning lit up the blackness.

  Mayot raised a hand, and a blast of death-magic intercepted the weapon, smothering the light.

  The lance melted into nothing.

  Lorigan set one foot on the first step leading up to the dais. The death-magic opposing him intensified, clawing at him with a palpable hunger. A screeching sound reached Romany, like talons drawn along metal. The knight’s armor crumpled inward, throwing off sparks. Still he kept his feet. Then, with a roar that transcended the din of the magical conflagration, he took a step toward Mayot.

  Another step, and another.

  Shroud’s disciple was clutching his sword in both hands now. It shone with an impossible radiance, driving Mayot’s shadows back to within a few armspans of the old man himself. Romany shielded her eyes. Heavens forbid that the blackness might burn away entirely to leave her looking at the mage again. Lorigan climbed another step, halfway now to the dais.

  The swell of Mayot’s sorcery escalated once more.

  Ripples of death-magic from the battle battered Romany’s spectral form, and she retreated higher toward the roof. Below, the glow from Lorigan’s sword was rapidly losing its contiguity, bleeding into the darkness on all sides. The air about it shimmered. Then, with a tortured scream of metal, the sword exploded, sending light streaking in all directions like a thousand shooting stars.

  The storm of death-magic closed round Shroud’s disciple until all that held back the blackness was the red glow radiating from the symbols etched into his armor. Lorigan bellowed his defiance, but for the first time Romany heard pain mixed in with the anger. He raised his right leg to take another step, lowered it inch by agonized inch onto the next stair. A scratch of metal on stone. Then his foot gave way, and he fell to his hands and knees with a clang.

  Get up! Romany silently urged him.

  She started. Cheering for one of Shroud’s disciples? Whatever was she thinking?

  Suddenly the blazing symbols on Lorigan’s armor were extinguished like blown candles, leaving the priestess squinting into the gloom. Moonlight gleamed on metal, then it was engulfed by the gray rush of Mayot’s sorcery.

  The knight screamed, a piteous sound that made the hairs on the priestess’s arms stand up. On and on it went, a cry of such torment it shivered the air. Romany had left her migraine behind when her spirit floated free from her body, but now the pain was back—a sharp, hot agony as if someone had stabbed a needle through her head. She clawed at her ears, but there was no escaping the noise, and she clamped her teeth together to prevent herself adding her own scream to Lorigan’s. Through her spirit-eyes, she saw the small, shining thing that was the knight’s soul blacken and shrivel until with a final shriek it was snuffed out by the shadows surging round it.

  Mayot’s sorceries raged on for a handful of heartbeats. Then the death-magic flickered and died, the tendrils of darkness thinning and dispersing. Romany heaved in a breath. The wind began to fade. The steps the knight had been climbing had melted into molten stone, an orange glow cooling to gray. Leaves whipped up by the maelstrom of power started falling back to the ground. Those that came down on the red-hot rock burst into flames.

  There was no sign of Lorigan Teele.

  Romany drifted up to the roof of the dome where the light filtering through the star-shaped holes was brighter. For a time she stared up at the stars through a break in the clouds, waiting for the beating of her heart to slow. Her head felt like it might crack open at any moment, and if she concentrated hard enough she could still hear the reverberations of that dreadful scream.

  All the same she forced a smile. She wasn’t abou
t to let anything detract from the triumph of tonight’s proceedings. Yes, there had been surprises along the way, but the knight’s death marked the successful completion of the opening moves in the game. Romany had expected Lorigan Teele to give a better account of himself, but then men so often flattered to deceive. Doubtless Shroud was even now wishing he’d sent a woman in his place.

  No way, of course, that the Lord of the Dead could have predicted the Spider’s interference and thus anticipated the measure of opposition his knight would face. How long before he could summon more of his servants here for another strike at Mayot? A few days? Weeks, even? Shroud, after all, did not have a web such as the Spider’s along which to ferry his disciples. And while he was moving his pieces into position, there would be time for the goddess to plan her next move, for Mayot to immerse himself in the power of the Book. When Shroud’s followers finally arrived in this godforsaken backwater, they would face a challenge greater even than the one the knight had encountered.

  Romany rubbed her hands together. All was going to plan. Her success, she decided, had never truly been in doubt.

  Yet still something niggled her. The improbability of what she had witnessed left her feeling strangely apprehensive. Mayot had tried to betray her. Galling, certainly, but not altogether surprising. More unsettling was the ease with which he had brushed aside Lorigan Teele—one of Shroud’s elite—particularly since the mage had only just begun to draw on the Book’s reserves. How much further might his power grow? What other abilities lay within his grasp? For an instant the priestess wondered whether she and the Spider had created a weapon they could not control.

  She snorted. As if such a thing were possible!

  The last echoes of sorcery died away and the sound of lapping waves once again filled the dome.

  Then, rising above that suddenly, Romany heard the dry rasp of Mayot’s exultant laughter.

  PART II

  SHADES OF BLACK

  CHAPTER 7

  SHELTERING BEHIND an outcrop of rock, Luker squinted against the grit on the wind. To the north the road that led down from the Shield’s foothills disappeared into the cinnamon haze that cloaked the Gollothir Plains, an expanse of scorched earth and rock broken only by isolated stands of rodanda trees. Clouds of red dust hung in the air as if a great host had passed this way recently. And while the plains appeared deserted now, Luker had traveled here often enough to know this land was never as empty as it seemed.

  Seven years ago he had stood in this same spot, looking down on the lead elements of the emperor’s invading army as it prepared to advance on Arandas. He’d been tasked with scouting ahead of the Ninth, reestablishing contact with the forces guarding food and water drops hidden along the route of the march. Luker shook his head. Sensible military planning, those drops. Straight out of Fuster’s manual on logistics. Merin Gray could probably tell him the page number. But you didn’t move wagons of supplies through the Gollothir Plains without some tribe or other taking notice, and sure enough when Luker reached the caches he had found them plundered, the soldiers protecting them eviscerated and staked to the ground for the fire ants to feed on.

  The revelation had come too late to halt the Ninth’s march, for the emperor had never been one to turn back once the die was cast. The tribes of the Gollothir Plains had harried the army day and night as it slogged through the dust and heat. Two weeks later the Ninth had stumbled into the shadow of Arandas’s walls, short on rations and bleeding from a thousand cuts. And the fate of the siege was sealed before it had even started.

  The dust of the plains was red, Luker had heard the tribesmen say, because of Erin Elalese blood.

  Luker liked the place. Sculpted by the sun and the searing wind, the plains were littered with the bones of countless dead civilizations. In his travels he had come across the ruins of cities larger even than Xavel and the other metropolises of the Qaluit Empire to the west; statues of forgotten tyrants each as tall as twenty men; raised circles of sand where bones rose to the surface like bubbles in a lake before sinking out of sight again. The land held secrets, he knew. He could feel it in the charged silences that filled the midnight hours, in the tremors of ancient sorcery that rippled beneath the ground like a heartbeat.

  But it wasn’t that sense of mystery that drew him to this place. During Luker’s mission to find the supply caches he had traveled for days at a time without seeing another soul, and every bell had been a blessed struggle for survival. Blessed because while he was fighting to keep Shroud at bay he couldn’t also be thinking about the reasons that had led him to abandon the Guardians that first time nine years ago and go wandering beyond the White Mountains. About how he’d slunk back two years later with nothing more to show for his travels than worn-out boots and the knowledge he was no closer to finding any relief from the sense of restlessness that ever dogged him.

  The trail of death-magic from the Book of Lost Souls led north across the plains. To Arandas? Luker was beginning to doubt it. The city was over fifty leagues away, but the source of the power felt more distant still. He rolled his shoulders. After two weeks’ travel the Shield was behind him, but Kanon remained out of reach. If there was one consolation, it was that with the Book now activated he could strike out alone if he had to and follow the threads of death-magic to Mayot. He’d wait a while longer, though, before deciding on his next move. There was no guarantee, after all, that when he tracked down Mayot he would find Kanon with him. The tyrin’s spies might have information that could help.

  Stones clattered behind, and Luker looked round to see Merin climbing the trail, Jenna and Chamery farther down the slope. The tyrin hobbled his horse before scrambling up to join the Guardian. He had refused to let Chamery heal his wounds after Luker’s attack at the Gate Inn, and the bruising round his neck was still visible as a yellow cast to his skin. His drawn face and sunken eyes were testament to the punishing pace Luker had set since leaving Arkarbour, but unlike Chamery, Merin had not complained about the hardships of the road. He stared down at the lowlands.

  Luker caught his eye. “Time to swallow your pride. We’re taking the direct route to Arandas, straight across the plains.”

  Merin studied him for a moment. “The flow of survivors from the Seventh has dried up since we entered Cloud Pass. Tells me the Kalanese are out there”—he nodded at the plains—“hunting them down.”

  “Just as the Kalanese themselves are being hunted. They won’t get any special treatment from the tribes here.”

  “You think we can avoid both sides?”

  “Going to have to try,” Luker said. “It’s five days to Arandas if we take the road, maybe double if we go round. We need those days.”

  Merin had the look of a commander considering the advice of a subordinate. The tyrin’s still playing soldiers. How long before he woke up to the fact the decision wasn’t his to make? “You know the land?” Merin asked.

  “Well enough.”

  “What about water?”

  “Well enough, I said!”

  “And what happens if we meet any Kalanese out there, or one of the tribes? Odds are we’ll be outnumbered.”

  “We could run into trouble whichever way we go.”

  Chamery’s questioning shout sounded from downslope, but Merin ignored him. “Is there any cover if we need it?”

  “Some. Ruins, gorges, gullies.”

  “Any of which could be used to hide an ambushing force.”

  The Guardian bit back a retort. The tyrin wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. The fact was, Luker stood a better chance of crossing the plains unseen if he traveled alone. If Merin wasn’t careful, he was going to talk himself out of an escort. “I can scout ahead if need be—spirit-walk our route…”

  His voice trailed off. A flash of light had pierced the haze ahead. The Guardian placed a hand on Merin’s arm and gestured.

  “I see it,” Merin said. “Sunlight on armor?”

  “Bloody careless of them if you’re right
.”

  The flicker came again. Luker turned to scan the ridge of hills behind. In the distance he saw the black turrets and crenellated battlements of Point Keep, hewn from the stone of one of the Shield’s peaks. Farther west—

  There! An answering flash from a shelf of rock overlooking the exit from Cloud Pass.

  Luker cursed. “Signals. We’ve been spotted.”

  Merin peered at the plains. “I can’t see a thing through this dust.”

  “Whoever they are, they’re not ours.”

  “Behind us too? From Point Keep?”

  “No, to the west.”

  “They’ll be circling round to cut off our retreat. We have to move now.”

  Luker swore again. He hated running, but until they knew what they were up against … He nodded.

  “We go back to plan A,” Merin went on. “Skirt the foothills toward the Waste.”

  “Once we’re down there they won’t be able to see us any better than we can see them,” the Guardian said. “Maybe we can slip away in the dust.”

  The tyrin’s raised brows mirrored his skepticism.

  Arandas felt much farther away suddenly.

  * * *

  Ebon shifted on the Iron Throne. The imperial crest emblazoned across the back of the chair dug into his back, and there was nothing to ease the cold discomfort of the seat. Admittedly the cushion had been removed at Ebon’s own bidding, for even now his feet barely touched the ground, tall though he was. A reminder, as if one were needed, that this was his father’s throne.