by David Hair
Alaron felt Prancer take fright and reached out delicately with his gnosis to quell the horse’s fear. It was a delicate balance to strike, needing to be strong enough to override Prancer’s fear and yet delicate enough that the sudden flaring of gnosis would not draw the Inquisitor’s attention …
But he failed. Erring on the side of caution, he didn’t do enough and Prancer reared, dragging at his picket. The rider heard the noise and he jerked on his reins, pulling the venator’s head around so he could scan the ground – and saw Alaron.
He ran to Prancer, sending calm, making the horse wait for him as he wrenched the picket cord free and hurled himself into the saddle. From the corner of his eye he saw the venator bank and soar, already more than a hundred yards away. The dim light glinted on the Inquisitor’s helmet and the tip of his lance.
He had no great plan in mind; he just faced his frightened horse downstream and jammed his heels into his flanks. Prancer whinnied and burst into a gallop. For now there was only flight.
The Inquisitor was on him in a few seconds. His venator shrilled, making Prancer veer wildly through the shingle, slewing left, then right, trying to keep his balance. The rider’s lance was clamped into a holder that formed part of the saddle, which left the rider’s hands free to deal with the reins and keep the beast under control. One gauntleted hand lifted and sent a vivid blue mage-bolt searing at him. He barely managed to get his shields up in time, and he clearly caught the Inquisitor’s smug smile.
Damn! Alaron fired a bolt back, aiming for the venator’s head, but the rider’s own shields easily encompassed his massive steed and the bolt sizzled into nothing. He wrenched Prancer to one side as the venator swerved towards him and massive claws tried to snatch him from the saddle, then he fired a mage-bolt at the creature’s pallid belly, putting in enough energy that it shrieked and veered away. He heard the Inquisitor curse as he fought for control.
Then Prancer thundered into the river and all Alaron’s concentration had to go into holding on as water fountained about them. The venator swooped again, the Inquisitor gestured and a wall of shingle and earth erupted at the horse’s feet. Alaron retaliated instantly, thanking Kore that Earth-gnosis was something he was proficient in, and succeeded in quelling the effect enough that they galloped through without falling – but the venator was on them again, the backdraft from its huge wings battering them as a lance stabbed downwards. Alaron snatched out his sword and hacked at the shaft while Prancer weaved away from the raking claws. He blazed gnosis-fire at the venator again, but he was so off-balance that he missed entirely. Then overhanging trees near the bank forced the venator away and he took the opportunity to desperately suck in air.
How far away is this bastard’s support? he wondered. How much time do I have?
Abruptly the Inquisitor changed tactics and urged his winged steed ahead. As massive wing-sweeps sent it climbing, Alaron felt him calling again, and this time he sensed distant replies. He hauled on Prancer’s head, trying to slow him, seeking more control and less blind haste, and as he did, he heard the rolling thunder of the sea somewhere ahead. All about him, the hills were closing in, and there were no paths into the thicket. There was nowhere to go but onwards.
Do I leave Prancer and take to my chances in the forest? But that seemed futile, unless he could somehow kill the venator or its rider and get away from this place.
Yeah, quarter-blood against Inquisitor, he thought sardonically. How’s that going to work out?
The Inquisitor was well ahead of him now, and turning to come back. He’d hauled his venator almost upright and it was hovering in place as if to say, You can’t go this way. Beyond the fearsome beast and its rider the landscape seemed to be opening out, as if lowlands lay beyond. The thunder of the waves was even louder.
Well, if that’s where he doesn’t want me to go …
Alaron stroked Prancer’s flanks as he strengthened his controls, binding the horse to trust beyond reason. The horse was trembling and sweating, terrified and near-exhausted. This chase could not go on much longer. Something had to give.
All or nothing. He dug in his heels to Prancer’s flanks, urging him forward, his sword held aloft. In response, the venator flapped its wings and the Inquisitor lowered his lance.
Here goes …
He kicked Prancer into a canter, sending loose shingle in all directions as he bounced forward, readying his gnosis for whatever opportunity came his way.
Take the Inquisitor down – or the venator … Live through this …
Eighty yards, seventy, sixty, fifty … Prancer kicked into a gallop, then the Inquisitor commanded the venator to lower its head and they careered together at an insane velocity. The lance-tip blossomed fire and bolt after bolt of blue flame began to sear towards them. Most flew wide, but some hammered his shields, blurring his vision as they closed. The speed of impact was going to make his shields almost useless. He heard himself bellow in defiance as they drove into each other.
The moment was on him almost before he realised. He repelled another mage-bolt, then he saw a glowing lance-tip and a beaked maw coming straight at him. He blazed energy at the rider and wrenched Prancer’s reins sideways.
He didn’t attack but threw himself flat on Prancer’s back as they pounded under the venator’s path, as he sent coruscating light into the flight-path of his foe. The massive creature careened past; the lance-tip ripped the air inches from his shoulder and a venator claw buffeted his shoulder, but they passed unscathed.
He and Prancer had just run off the edge of the world.
The reason he’d thought the land was opening out was because he’d reached the cliffs, and there’d been no warning roar of waves because it was low tide. The river ended in a waterfall that plummeted fully six hundred feet, straight down to a huge expanse of bare rock strewn with tide pools. Far, far in the distance he glimpsed a line of spray and a distant blue-grey-green expanse, then his attention was wholly given over to the fact that he was plummeting to certain death.
He summoned Air-gnosis, one of his weakest affinities, let go of Prancer with a despairing cry and managed to halve his falling speed as the horse plummeted onwards and hammered into the sea-smoothed rocks with a sickening crunch. The body bounced once, and Alaron threw all he had left into avoiding the same fate, desperately trying to at least soften the impact. The wall of rock flew at him, but with one last almighty surge of power he landed no harder than if he’d fallen from a tree. His knees cracked against the stone, but his splayed hands caught his upper body and then he rolled to absorb the rest of his fall. He came up battered but breathing and looked around at the bleak, featureless cliffs that spread north and south. The shelf he was standing on was completely bare. Water had carved channels and worn the rock smooth by the tides, and he started to remember geography lessons where he’d studied such places. Tidelands could be a few hundred yards wide to a dozen or more miles, and they were usually only bare for about four hours a day … and the incoming waves could cover them in minutes.
There was nowhere to hide and nowhere to run. He’d landed near a narrow channel that wound from the waterfall above towards the ocean miles to the east, but it was only a few feet deep. He’d dropped his sword as he fell and couldn’t see it anywhere. Brilliant …
Fatalism filled him. There was no way a lowly quarter-blood like him could get out of this. He tried to summon mental images of the people he loved: his parents, Cym, Ramon … Anise – thank Kore I didn’t tell her to wait – and that was about it, really. Not so many to farewell.
The venator topped the cliffs and spiralled towards him. He watched it land heavily above Prancer’s body. Its beak dipped and ripped, tea
ring still-warm flesh from the corpse. The Inquisitor unstrapped his harness, left his lance in its cup and slid to ground. ‘Alaron Mercer, I presume,’ he said ironically. He looked like he might be in his mid-twenties – a half-blood, Alaron guessed, on the basis that he’d not already been overwhelmed. He’d not last much longer though. He had nothing left now, not even a weapon.
He backed away, and the Inquisitor followed him at a leisurely pace. ‘The Crozier wants a word with you,’ he said conversationally, drawing his sword.
‘Malevorn,’ Alaron croaked.
The Inquisitor grinned evilly. ‘Andevarion said he knew you. We have a wager going over who will find you. I thought I’d lucked out when I got sent east, but it appears fortune is on my side.’
Alaron stumbled backwards through the small stream and fell onto his backside on the far side. The Inquisitor gracefully leapt the stream and landed above Alaron with his feet planted wide and his sword pointed at his chest.
‘Kore’s blood, you’ve been a nuisance,’ the Inquisitor said, ‘but I’ve got you now.’ Mage-fire blossomed from his left hand and blasted into Alaron’s midriff. His shields failed and his wet clothing sizzled as the energy jolted through him. He curled up, stricken, trying to breathe. The Inquisitor put the sword-point to his throat. Alaron looked along the straight steel blade and wished only to die.
‘I, Acolyte Seldon of the Eighteenth Fist, arrest you in the name of the Inquisition.’
*
The torture and lingering death of Mercellus di Regia, the Rimoni caravan-master whose people they’d butchered, had confirmed that Alaron Mercer had been with Jeris Muhren when he arrived at the camp. A search of the wreckage had revealed no sign of the Scytale – of course, Malevorn officially didn’t know what they were seeking, so he kept his mouth shut. But Commandant Vordan had been visibly frustrated as he’d ordered the venator riders to fan out, hunting his former classmate.
It still seemed ridiculous that Alaron Mercer could be involved: obstinate, stupid merchant-spawn that he was. But it appeared he really was. Malevorn reported what he knew of him before the Fist fanned out to seek their quarry, then he’d been sent south, to a pass that led into Rimoni. He’d thought it a reasonable chance, but it looked like Seldon had won the bet.
He swung his venator northeast, using Air-gnosis to help it gain altitude. The mental voices of the others – nine voices now, no longer eleven – came from all points. Jeris Muhren had fought like a beast, killing Brother Alain on the ground and then Brother Jonas in the air. He’d fought well, for a half-blood.
Until I spitted him. Malevorn smirked inwardly. That had gained him praise from Adamus Crozier – but not Commandant Vordan, who’d wanted Muhren alive. How was I to know he knew the Soul’s End spell?
Below him the land skimmed by, featureless at this height. He flew swiftly, thrilling to the sheer speed of his beast. He could sense his fellow Acolytes converging, and their excitement as they anticipated the end of the hunt.
Never thought I’d be pleased to see you again, Mercer. But it won’t be a long reunion.
*
As Alaron stared along Seldon’s blade, watching gnosis-energy crackle along the steel, a dark shape rose behind the Inquisitor.
At the last instant, Seldon felt it coming, half-turning as his shields were touched, but the attack came like a striking snake. The figure had arisen from the rivulet, holding a forked trident, and it propelled itself across ten yards like a released spring. Seldon hacked the trident in half with his gnosis-limned blade, but the other hand lashed out, carving a gouge of light in the Inquisitor’s shield before a huge snake-like tube of flesh encased in mottled scales whipped around and encircled him. The Inquisitor shouted as coils of snake-flesh engulfed him and the human-like upper torso of the attacker stabbed down again with a knife. At first Alaron thought that the attacker was riding a serpent, but then he realised in utter disbelief that he was the snake. The creature was naked to the waist, with a muscular pale green torso and a hairless skull with a leathery comb. Its face combined savagery with cold intelligence. But it was below the waist that this thing was truly alien: its hips flowed directly into a massive snake body, at least two foot in diameter and two dozen feet long, which was currently wrapped around Acolyte Seldon’s upper torso, pinning his sword arm. The Inquisitor tried to break out, roaring out a blast of mage-fire from his mouth, but the creature swayed aside even as it twisted the Inquisitor in its grip, causing the blast to shoot harmlessly into the air. Then it pushed its knife through Seldon’s shields and buried it in his right eye. The Inquisitor went rigid, then limp, while Alaron gasped and tried to back away.
A coil of snake skin encircled him from behind and he was forcibly spun around until he found himself facing a female. She was towering over him, her mouth open and filled with barb-like teeth. Her torso was also bare, with pale breasts tipped with black nipples. Unlike the male she had two thinner snake limbs, and her crest was multiple hairs as thick as fingers, black and waving as if they were blind serpents.
He was dimly aware that the venator was trying to lift off, but at least half a dozen more of these creatures were wrapped about it, pulling it down, their weapons rising and falling. He almost fainted in shock when the female opened her mouth and said in perfectly understandable Rondian, ‘You will come with us.’
‘Wha—?’
She silenced him by jerking him towards her with her horribly powerful snake limbs and kissing him on the mouth.
He was too stunned to react at all; could only gape helplessly as his mouth filled with water. He coughed, choked, then began to black out as she dragged him rapidly back to the channel and pulled him under.
*
They all heard Seldon’s death-scream. It wasn’t a warrior’s cry, more the shriek of a terrified child, and it confirmed Malevorn’s impression of him as weak and unworthy. But how the hell had Mercer killed him?
Brother Filius got to the scene first, just as the tides raced in. He’d seen the venator initially, splayed out on the rocks, its blood drenching the stone. Great chunks of it had been hacked off, almost as if the creature had been butchered. Seldon was lying not far from it, and Filius had recovered his body – or what was left of it. The young Acolyte had been butchered too. Though it was impossible to be certain, it looked like he’d been killed by being stabbed through the eye socket. Then the rest of his flesh from the chest, thighs and shoulders – the choicest cuts, as Dranid had muttered – had been carefully cut away. What was left looked horribly like the waste after butchery.
There was a dead horse there, too, with no saddle, only a rope halter, and that had been butchered too. But whoever had done it was gone, leaving no clue as to where. There was no sign at all of Alaron Mercer.
The tide had turned before all the Fist arrived; they took Seldon’s corpse to the top of the cliff before it was engulfed and gathered about the remains, which were covered by a cloak to spare their eyes. Vordan was chanting in old Yothic, the runic tongue. Malevorn, watching impatiently, found his eyes straying to the Crozier. Adamus looked more curious than shocked. His curly hair fluttered in the sea breeze and Malevorn found himself wondering if the bishop’s wide lips and olive skin hinted at Rimoni blood. Pure-bloods descended from the Blessed Three Hundred were mostly Rondian, but not all of them; there had been men and women of many races in Corineus’ flock. The Crozier met Malevorn’s eyes and he bowed his head. He wasn’t permitted to return such familiarity and he wasn’t sure just what Adamus might want of him – but really, if it helped his career, who gave a shit?
Beside him Dominic looked shocked; in his world, Inquisitors were indestructible. For three to die in as many days was in tr
uth alarming. They were all beginning to wonder what they were up against. Something was clearly going on. Malevorn recalled that Alaron Mercer’s exam thesis had been about the Scytale of Corineus being lost. He’d thought it ridiculous then; now he was beginning to wonder.
His eyes went round the depleted circle: Vordan looked grim, and why not? Fist Commandants were not supposed to lose men. Vordan and Adamus were the only people (apart from himself) who knew what they were seeking – unless Raine did? She was sleeping with Vordan and men did talk to their women sometimes. But the sullen, ugly girl looked as confused as anyone. Jonas and Seldon had been her friends so she was isolated now, though of course she still had Vordan to look out for her.
Brother Dranid looked stolidly uncaring, and Filius was bursting with anger at the desecration of Seldon’s body, loudly vowing revenge. Malevorn had always thought that those who ranted loudest were hiding their weakness. Filius didn’t frighten him.
Finally he let his eyes go to Virgina, the golden girl, standing aloof, praying devoutly with her mouth while her eyes strayed, watching the circle just as he did. Their eyes met and just like always, she closed up and looked away with a toss of her hair. What a good Daughter of Kore. And a child-killer, lest we forget.
Finally the chanting was done and cold winds whipped in. Vordan had not been praying for Seldon’s soul; he’d been summoning it. The Acolyte’s misty form came as commanded, wailing at his predicament.
‘Who killed you?’ Vordan demanded in a voice that resonated with the gnosis.
Seldon’s ghost’s answer stunned them all.
*
Alaron huddled naked in the cave-mouth, high above the thunder of the ocean below. Racing waters boiled and roared like a thousand serpents as they engulfed the flats and battered the cliffs. It was high tide, and the armies of the ocean were launching a mighty assault upon the land.