by Mike Wild
Gabriella stared at the pillar of souls, thrusting into the night sky. "She's right, Enforcer. They haven't reached Kerberos yet."
Freel looked helplessly between the two women.
"Bring them back? Is such a thing possible?"
"Obviously Redigor thinks so," Kali said. "Right at this moment those soul-stripped are as much hostages as they are threat. Could you live with yourself if you at least didn't try to save them?"
"Madness," McIntee growled. "This might be our only chance!"
"You know what?" Kali shouted. "He's right. If Redigor manages to get his people into those bodies, they are going to march from the Sardenne and they are going to absolutely kick your arse. They drove an entire dwarven subrace to the point of extinction, for fark's sake. Clan Martak was helpless, utterly defeated, yet still they routed them, massacred them, drove those they couldn't kill into the sea to drown. Freel, your predecessor Munch himself told me — and believe me, that little bastard wasn't averse to a bit of carnage himself — they just never stop."
"We will hold them," McIntee insisted.
Kali slapped his chest again. "Are you listening to me? These elves were an Old Race who enjoyed rape, torture, pillage — even amongst their own kind. They sacrificed every tenth newborn to Yartresnika, their god of destruction. They added blood to their wine to make it tastier. Are you forgetting what happened when your lot first encountered The First Enemy? All you faced then was just one man. What happens when Redigor brings his friends to the party, eh? Thousands of them?"
"You seem to have defeated your own argument," Freel pointed out.
Kali shook her head. "Only if they're not stopped. Freel, let me ask you again — do you really want to slaughter thousands of your own, innocent people if it isn't necessary? Give me a chance."
"The girl was enlisted to shut down the Engines," McIntee said. "She's done that. Send her home."
"I was also 'enlisted' to save Makennon," Kali reminded him. "Let me try to do that. And the soul-stripped, too."
One at a time, Freel stared them in the eyes. His gaze, however settled on Kali.
"What if you fail?"
Kali faltered, swallowed. "Then you'd better hope your general here is as good as he thinks he is…"
"At least," Gabriella added after a moment, "you won't have the blood of your own on your hands."
Freel let out an exasperated sigh. The lives of thousands hung in the balance.
"What do you propose we do?"
"We go in as a strike team to find Makennon as planned. But with fifty mages and some Swords of Dawn, the best you have, as support. And while we're there, we do as much damage as possible to Redigor's ritual. Hopefully enough."
"Any ideas how?"
"One, but it's a long shot. I tend to work on the hoof."
Freel turned to Slowhand, the beginnings of an actual smile playing on his lips. "I heard a good way to deal with resurrectionists is to put an arrow in their head."
"Damn right," Kali and Slowhand said at the same time.
"There is one problem we still haven't resolved," Gabriella said. "If Fitch is right about the Pale Lord's eyes being everywhere, how do we bypass the soul-stripped?"
"With eyes of our own," Freel said. "I've already adapted an Eye of the Lord to make a low level reconnaissance and determine a safe, or at least safer, route through them."
"But wouldn't the Pale Lord still detect its presence?"
"I'm gambling his eyes can't be everywhere at once. There has to be some kind of trigger that opens them. Something alive, for example."
Kali nodded at Gabriella. "Makes sense. When can you send it in?"
"Right now. But before I do…"
Freel turned back to General McIntee, who seemed to have taken the reality of the situation facing his forces a little more on board. "Keep your people here," he instructed. "If this doesn't work, if we don't come back… just… do what you can do."
McIntee swallowed, and nodded. "Good luck, Sir." He turned to Kali, Slowhand, DeZantez — even Fitch. "Good luck to all of you."
The war council disbanded. Freel moved off to despatch the Eye of the Lord and, knowing once more that it would take some time to report its findings, to personally assign the mages and Swords Kali had requested. Slowhand decided to use the hiatus to fletch more of his special arrows and settled himself back before the campfire. Kali and Gabriella took up positions on the other side of the flames, giving him the room he needed to work. They sat in silence for a while, the Enlightened One regarding Kali carefully before she spoke.
"Why do you do it? What you do?"
Kali prodded the fire with her gutting knife, a fresh flare of flame illuminating her face. "What? You mean rub people up the wrong way?"
Gabriella smiled. "You know what I mean. Spend your life digging around in the dirt, trying to learn what's gone?"
"You admit finally that I was just looking for the Deathclaws? That I had nothing to do with the Engines?"
"Oh, I think you're pretty much off the hook. So why?"
Not so long ago Kali would have said to find out what happened to the Old Races. She hadn't yet even shared it with her friends, and she certainly wasn't ready to share it with DeZantez, but her goals had changed — to find out what had killed them, yes, but now also to find out what 'the Darkness' was.
"Urm, because they were there?" She said.
"And now they're not?"
"That's right. It's important I find out why."
Gabriella nodded, poked the fire again. "Did they leave much behind?"
Kali shrugged. "It varies from site to site. Most are empty shells, stripped by tomb raiders down the years, or by your mob, if they manage to beat me somewhere. But you're one of them, you should know that."
"I tend to avoid that side of the Faith's affairs. They… don't sit well with me."
Kali raised her eyebrows. She remembered their meeting outside Solnos, how she had felt that DeZantez was a lot like herself — following a calling, doing good, trying to help — but that somehow the world had changed beyond her control.
"The more inaccessible sites offer the occasional trinket," she continued. "And, every now and then, there's a special site that delivers something like the Deathclaws. Also those that promise much but usually — when you've worked your arse off for days trying to get into the thing — deliver bugger all. The Lost City of Fff, for one."
"The Lost City of Fff? You're making that up."
"I promise you, I'm not. Learned about it from the Followers of Fff at their annual Faff. Should have known better than to listen to people who Faff." Kali shook her head. "Treasures undreamed of, they told me…"
"And what did you find?"
"A chest full to the brim with crap."
Gabriella laughed, an actually quite embarrassing bass, guttural bellow, but the first genuine humour Kali had seen the Enlightened One display. Clearly, she needed the release that a little laughter brought but it soon faded, her smile dwindling until she wore her impenetrable mask of introspection once more. Her guard seemed to have lowered somewhat, though, and Kali couldn't resist asking the question that had been bothering her almost since they had met.
"The graveyard in Solnos," she said. "It's obvious you're not from the town but I got the impression there was — "
"His name was Erak Brand," Gabriella interrupted her. "He was the Enlightened One of Solnos before me. A kind, faithful man."
"You were close?"
"Erak and I were lovers. We were to marry."
"Gods, I'm sorry. What happened?"
Gabriella tensed and the stick she'd been about to throw onto the fire she snapped in half. "He was murdered. By a man named Dai Batsen."
"Why?"
"Batsen was a rogue shadowmage. A hireling of someone who didn't want us to discover an unsavoury truth."
"What truth?"
Gabriella let out an exasperated sigh that turned into a cracked, humourless laugh. "The truth is, I don't kno
w. And now I doubt I'm ever going to find out…"
Kali frowned. "Rodrigo Kesar had something to do with this, didn't he? I saw your face back at Scholten when you learned he was dead."
Gabriella nodded. "And with him my chance to avenge Erak. May that bastard Kesar be burning in the hells."
Gabriella's cold ferocity took Kali aback, but more than that, it struck her that her companion meant exactly what she said. She wasn't speaking of the hells in any metaphorical sense, she was speaking of them as real places. It was clear she believed they existed as much as the Clouds of Kerberos floated above their heads. After what she had seen through the shard at the cathedral, it sent a shiver down her spine.
"Is there no other way you can find out what was behind Erak's death?"
Gabriella shook her head. "My position as Enlightened One of Solnos was only ever meant to be temporary. But I waited and waited and, as the months passed, no one came to replace me. Eventually I found out, from friends, that the Anointed Lord had arranged to have me watched — and then, simply, forgotten."
"You think Makennon was responsible?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. But I do know I seem to have little place in a changing Faith. I believed in their mission — still believe — to bring Ascension to the people, even if we have to purify some with fire. But after what happened to you with the Eyes of the Lord — seeing how they accused you and how they were wrong — I realised just how out of control they have become. The Faith threatens to become a dictatorship, ruling with an iron glove and I think something is rotten at its core."
"Can I take that as an apology for trying to burn me alive?"
"Kali — "
"Joke." Kali said. "But if you realise all of this, why are you still here?"
Gabriella stared at her as if the answer were obvious. "As a Sister of the Order of the Swords of Dawn, I remain sworn to protect the Anointed Lord."
"Now that's a joke, ri — " Kali began, but halted as Gabriella suddenly placed her palm on her forearm, beckoning silence.
At first she thought the Enlightened One had simply had enough of the subject but then saw that she was staring into the dark boundary of the forest, where Slowhand had wandered minutes before to collect wood to whittle into shafts. The archer seemed alone in the shadows but then she sensed another presence in the darkness, watching Slowhand from hiding. Kali stared at the spot, gradually discerning a shape, but she had difficulty making out what it was until there were two simultaneous flares about a foot and half apart at waist height. For a fleeting moment the flares illuminated curled palms, a dark-robed torso, and a white, cadaverous face, steadily regarding Slowhand with malignant intent.
"Fitch!" Kali said, starting to run. "One bastard who should never have got the magic back!"
Gabriella was up and by her side in an instant, the two of them pounding towards Slowhand, but the archer was hacking at vegetation, unable to hear their shouts. The fire in Fitch's palms, meanwhile, had transformed into crackling spheres of energy. As Kali and Gabriella watched helplessly, Fitch drew his palms back and threw the fireballs at the preoccupied archer. Luckily, Fitch's aim was slightly askew, and the fireballs impacted with a tree trunk next to Slowhand, knocking the archer off his feet. He scrabbled back in shock and raced towards his assailant, roaring as he recognised Fitch.
He suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and Kali saw the psychic manipulator smiling and weaving some distraction thread with one hand while nurturing a third fireball with the other. There was no question that this one would hit Slowhand full on and she and Gabriella were still too far away to do anything.
"You tackle Fitch!" Gabriella yelled, and then pounded toward Slowhand. Kali ran at the psychic manipulator along with Jakub Freel, who had been alerted by the noise. As she watched the fireball grow all Kali could feel was the pounding of her heart, and the certain knowledge that the fireball was going to leave Fitch's hand before she or the enforcer reached him. She snatched a glance towards Gabriella and, like herself, the Enlightened One still had too much ground to cover.
Fitch launched the fireball and everything became dream-like and slow. Kali came to a faltering stop and tracked the crackling sphere of fire helplessly, her mouth falling open. As it passed the halfway mark between Fitch and Slowhand, she turned slightly, yelling to Gabriella to drive her onward. Ripping away her armour as she went, driven as much by momentum as muscle, Gabriella left the ground, throwing herself forward through the air, but it wasn't Slowhand she was throwing herself at, it was the fireball.
Enlightened One and fireball collided in mid-air and Gabriella DeZantez was consumed by the magic, disappearing inside an explosion of super-heated fire. The infernal heat it contained would, had she still been wearing it, have turned her armour red hot in an instant, roasting her inside, but with only her surplice she would likely suffer a quicker death than that. She had no chance of surviving, none at all, and so it came as something of a surprise to Kali when, as the fire blasted about Gabriella and then dissipated, the Enlightened One fell to the ground with her surplice burnt away, smoking and stunned, but otherwise apparently unharmed.
Slowhand looked about him in confusion. Fitch, meanwhile, stared at the recovering form of Gabriella DeZantez in disbelief. For his part, Jakub Freel covered the remaining ground between Fitch and himself where he flattened the psychic manipulator with a single punch to the face.
Kali turned her attention back to Slowhand. The archer had stripped off his shirt and was wrapping it about Gabriella as he lifted her slowly from the ground. The woman was clearly stunned, but there wasn't a mark on her, not a single blemish or burn. It was no time for questions, however, and Kali and Slowhand took Gabriella between them and slowly led her back to her tent. Slowhand paused mid-route and nodded to Freel.
"Thanks," he said.
"Don't mention it."
The Final Faith enforcer watched them depart with their charge. Neither of them noticed as, behind them, he hauled Fitch to his feet with one hand and roused him. Neither did they hear the words that passed between the enforcer and the cadaverous manipulator.
"I told you not to make a move," Freel said. "I told you that when the time comes, Killiam Slowhand is mine."
Chapter Twelve
They entered the Sardenne at dawn, not that Twilight's distant sun ever made much difference in the heavily canopied forest. The first few yards of their ingress plunged them into shadow, the next few beyond that to a darkness equivalent to longnight, and with every step thereafter the ambient light lessened until, in parts, their surroundings were as black as a windowless room. To aid their progress, the mages in the party wove soft and subtle light threads that played about them like fireflies, not bright enough to attract unwanted attention but enough to make the individual members of the party aware of where they stepped and distinguishable from each other. Their beacon, albeit an ominous one, was the pillar of souls. The column of spiritual energy continued to grow, and offered a continuous reminder of why they were treading such dangerous ground.
They were amidst the soul-stripped now and followed the route that the Eye of the Lord had suggested was safest, though watching the images the device had returned to them had still been a discomfiting experience. The small sphere had woven a meandering course through the soul-stripped, manoeuvring up to and around them, between them, but never drawing too near and — in case Kali was wrong about what would alert the Pale Lord — never lingering too long. The Eye's passage nevertheless allowed it to see a level of detail that no human would have survived long enough to absorb, snatches of facial features of the soul-stripped — an ear, a nose, a mouth, a dangling lock of hair. That close, they almost became individuals again, might have been husbands, wives, sons, daughters or friends, but it only took one glimpse of their rigid forms or whitened eyes to remind all who watched that they were nothing to each other or their loved ones now.
However uncomfortable watching the images had been, the party's progression along
the route mapped by the Eye was worse.
They moved in silence and almost in single file. Every breath, every footfall brought with it a palpable sense of fear. It seemed that each piece of tinder that snapped beneath a boot, each branch disturbed, would alert the soul-stripped, and that it was only a matter of time before one of them turned its gaze toward them. As a result, Kali moved everyone forward with great caution.
It had fallen to her — as one of the few, and certainly the only member of the current party to have ventured deep into the Sardenne and survived — to take point and in that role she had advised them of a few of the realities of the sprawling, ancient domain. The most important was that the soul-stripped were not the only things to be afraid of. The further they progressed into the forest the stranger and more dangerous the threats they might face. She had allocated everyone some floprat render, the olfactory camouflage she found worked best within the Sardenne, but some, the Swords particularly, wore the foul smelling substance awkwardly, as if they thought she was playing some practical joke at their expense. Kali's sincere hope was that they didn't have to find out otherwise. Familiar with the Sardenne's unnatural menagerie first hand, she doubted that any of the men or women present would believe her if she tried to describe some of the things she'd seen, so she didn't bother.
Oddly enough, though, there were none of the hisses, caws, growls, rumbles, rattles or shrieks from the surrounding undergrowth that she would normally expect to hear. She wondered whether the presence of the soul-stripped, or the aura of Redigor, had actually done their party a favour, driving the wildlife deeper into the forest and leaving the path ahead of them clear. They would only know the truth as they forged deeper.
Though their passage through the soul-stripped was tortuous and took some hours they miraculously avoided detection, reaching a point at last where the Pale Lord's puppets thinned. Soon after, they had passed beyond them completely.
It was at this stage that Kali instigated the second part of her plan to negotiate the Sardenne successfully. Her main reason for including the mages in the party was not for them to help tackle Redigor — five hundred, not fifty, would have been nearer the mark for that — but because she knew they did not have time on their side. Travelling in a normal fashion, it would take days to reach Bel'A'Gon'Shri, and the pillar of souls would have touched Kerberos long before that. But by using the mages to generate portals — effectively teleporting their way through the forest — they could reduce a journey of days to one of hours.