He stood with his back to the mirror like a showman introducing an exhibit. Kane willed the claws to reach down and rend the sorcerer to shreds. Instead they raked the glass again, and he saw Meredith flinch at the piercing screech that seemed to scrape at the nerves of his teeth. The sound roused Marcus, and he swung his sword at Kane, who dodged back. The blade sliced through the air scant inches short of his face, and he retreated further without thinking. It brought him within arm’s length of a mirror.
He heard an unnaturally liquid sound behind him, and knew it for the sound of inhuman fingers parting transformed glass as they writhed forth to seize him. Before he could dodge out of their reach, Marcus swung the sword down at him. Kane ducked aside barely in time, avoiding the clutch of the denizen of the mirror as well. Marcus was unable to halt the sweep of the blade, which struck the mirror.
There was a clang like a blow on a great anvil, and the mirror shattered along its entire length. Instead of scattering over the floor the fragments imploded into a lightless void, bearing the shards of the inhabitant, which jerked in spasms even as they vanished. In a moment the tattered oval frame contained nothing but bare discoloured wood. “Not the mirrors!” Malachi cried, and his voice had grown shrill.
The command appeared to disconcert Marcus, or the destruction of the mirror did. He faltered long enough for Kane to dart past him, out of the antechamber. With a frustrated almost bestial roar Marcus pursued him into the open space between the avenue of mirrors and the altar. At least Kane could manoeuvre here – could retreat as his brother came relentlessly at him, dealing stroke after murderous stroke. Even staying clear of them had begun to sap Kane’s strength. When he blocked them with the sword in his right hand, the impacts shivered through his body and jabbed deep into his wounded shoulder. Then his brother’s sword sliced into Kane’s right arm, and the new wound seemed to open wider as Kane gripped the hilt of his weapon before it could fall from his hand. He backed away from another deadly stroke, not swiftly enough. His brother’s sword slashed across Kane’s breast, laying it open almost to the bone.
Kane stumbled backwards and heard Meredith cry out with fear for him. In the midst of the combat he had almost forgotten her, and his awareness of her peril seemed to lend him strength. He stood his ground, and as Marcus cut at him with a two-handed sweep of the blade Kane blocked it with the sword in his right hand. The clash of steel reverberated through him, throbbing in his wounded arm and chest and shoulder. They felt as though red-hot coals had been embedded deep in his flesh. Nevertheless he had managed to ward off the blow, and at once he put all his weight behind the sword in his left hand.
The thrust redoubled the agony in his shoulder, but the blade found his brother’s heart and pierced deep. Marcus gave vent to a bellow of disbelief, which sounded baffled enough to have come from an overgrown child. The wound was not fatal yet; it seemed not even to have weakened him. He seized Kane by the throat and dragged his brother to him, driving the blade deeper into himself, an action not merely defiant but close to mindless. He glared at Kane with utter hatred and lifted him off his feet, choking him. There was no room for Kane to wield his sword, which was trapped between their bodies, or to twist the other blade. His head swam and the world turned black. He felt as if the ability to think were being squeezed out of his mind, and only instinct was left to him. It made him reach out and snatch off his brother’s mask.
The face was not merely unrecognisable. It had little claim to be described as a face at all; it was a wound, imperfectly healed. Part of the jaw had been torn off by the fall on the rocks, and some of the bone was still exposed. The left eye socket was too large, and a section of the bony rim was visible. The entire left side of the face was clenched into a permanent grimace by its withered skin, the product of Malachi’s healing. The bald misshapen pate looked raw, as if the scalp had been ripped away by the fall from the cliff. Perhaps Marcus retained some trace of his old vanity, which had made him don the mask. Certainly he was infuriated to have his face revealed, and he hurled Kane away from him.
Kane landed on his back, close to a torch on a stand. The fall almost jarred the sword out of his grasp. He scarcely had time to rise into a crouch before Marcus strode towards him, hefting the sword like an executioner’s axe. “Brother, stop,” Kane exhorted him. “Brother.”
If the repeated word affected Marcus at all, it was only to inflame his hatred. He lifted the sword above his mutilated head with both hands to deal the final blow. Kane lurched to his feet, and as he rose he grabbed the torch from the stand. Before Marcus could strike, Kane thrust the torch at him.
The flaming end struck him in the chest, and the heat glued it to the leather of his jerkin. Oil from the brand spilled down him, and in moments he was ablaze. He roared even louder than the flames that had begun to consume him. His torso burned like a barrel of pitch, and his legs were twin pillars of flame, but he tramped doggedly at Kane, slashing almost blindly at him. In a confusion of grief and fury Kane stabbed him with the sword. He had to run him through before Marcus sank to the remains of his knees. He raised his head from the conflagration of himself, and Kane thought he glimpsed a trace of renewed humanity in his eyes, as if the fire had purged him of at least some of the evil. He might even have been offering his neck for the coup de grace. “Rest in peace, my brother,” Kane murmured like a prayer, and gripped his sword with both hands and struck with all his power.
The stroke severed Marcus’s head. The decapitated body tottered and then toppled forward to lie propped on the hilt of the sword in its chest, its hands outstretched as if it were making a hideous obeisance to the bloodstained altar. Kane’s rage was focused on Malachi now, and he was turning away from the blazing remains when he caught sight of a movement that should not be taking place. Something more solid than blood, and with more of a shape, was emerging from the stump of the neck. “What is this abomination?” Kane said through his teeth.
He watched in loathing as it crawled forth. Perhaps the flames were driving it out of the body that had been its lair, unless it no longer found the body useful. Its taloned fingers came first, spindly digits that writhed in the air and then clawed at the floor. Gaunt grey arms followed, and a long livid head as bald as a maggot. At first the motions were so tentative that Kane might almost have been witnessing a grotesque parody of birth, but with every moment they grew more purposeful. The demon lifted its head, showing Kane the little it had for a face – eyes black as a crow’s and a circular mouth. He had seen those eyes before, glaring out of the mask.
He waited until the creature dropped to the floor, spattering the stone with Marcus’s blood. As it prepared to spring up or scuttle away on all fours he trampled on it, pinning it to the floor and splintering its ribs. It screeched like an injured raven and gibbered sounds that might have been words, though not in any language Kane recognised or would want to understand. He chopped at the neck and then sawed two-handed through it, and kicked away the severed head, which continued to screech until the body finished twitching. “Go back to the Hell that gave you birth,” Kane snarled and was turning to find Malachi when he heard Meredith scream.
FORTY
As soon as Meredith dodged behind the column she began to pray for Captain Kane. She would have prayed aloud if it might not have alerted Malachi. She had cried out when the demon in the avenue of mirrors had caught hold of Kane, but she had to be silent now – had to believe that her silence would help to conceal her. She could only hope that Malachi had not observed her flight, wherever he might be. She dared not risk making for the doors out of the great hall in case the horde of raiders was still out there, even though freeing her from the cage had cost Kane a grievous wound. She could do nothing except pray that he would survive the combat, after which they might escape from Axmouth together. Then he raised his voice to taunt the sorcerer, and Malachi answered him.
He was somewhere near the throne, out of Meredith’s sight. She saw Kane’s challenge halt his brother, as though
it had interrupted Malachi’s power over his puppet. She heard Malachi refuse to fight Kane, and thought he was as much of a coward as he had been called. She heard him meet Kane’s gibes with words, and prayed that the lull in the combat would give Kane the chance to elude the mirrors and their demonic inhabitants – but he was still trapped among them by his monstrous brother. Then he extended his challenge to Malachi’s master, and she heard the sorcerer’s response.
She could not quite see what Malachi did then. By peering warily around the column she was able to make out that he had uncovered an enormous oval mirror in the darkest corner of the hall. Something stirred within the glass – something as gigantic, glowing like an open furnace. This was all she could distinguish from her vantage point, and she withdrew hastily behind the column as Malachi turned away from the mirror. In a moment an atrocious glassy screech resounded through the hall. The sorcerer was calling to Kane, threatening him with a demon, and Meredith was dismayed to see one reach for him in the avenue of mirrors. Before she could cry out a warning he sidestepped a blow of his brother’s sword, which smashed the glass. “Not the mirrors!” Malachi yelled.
The panic in his voice felt like an answer to Meredith’s prayers, and so did seeing Captain Kane take advantage of the diversion to dart past his brother. His masked adversary swung around at once and followed him into the open space by the altar. Meredith clenched her hands together to intensify her prayers, although it felt as if she were striving vainly to press some sensation back into her marked palm. She gripped her knuckles until the fingers ached – just the fingers of her right hand. She kept her desperate prayers silent while she watched Kane give ground, parrying his brother’s strokes but never managing to deal blows of his own. She stifled a cry when his assailant’s sword cut into his arm, but she was unable to stay mute when another sweep of the blade slashed his chest open. She had barely cried out before a hand closed over her face.
It was as cold and soft as a slug, and smelled of some unholy incense. The long pallid fingers writhed over her lips, pinching them shut, as Malachi’s face craned gleefully over her shoulder. However pulpy his flesh was, his clutch was as strong as a python’s. She could not move her bruised lips as his other arm slid sinuously around her waist and lifted her off her feet as though she weighed no more than a child. When she tried to kick and claw at him, his robe enfolded her so tightly that it could have been responding to his will. Her helpless struggles brought her close to exhaustion as he carried her to the enormous mirror. As she began to discern a titanic fiery shape within the glass he turned to watch the combat, holding Meredith in front of him.
Captain Kane had succeeded in striking a blow, and his sword was protruding from his brother’s heart. It seemed not to lessen the sorcerous power that possessed him. He was lifting Kane by his throat into the air, but flung him to the floor once Kane pulled off the mask, revealing a face more appropriate to a corpse long gone in decay. Meredith strove to find words for a prayer, however stifled, as the smells of incense and cold corrupted flesh almost overwhelmed her senses. As the unmasked figure moved to finish him off, Kane set it on fire with a torch and then wielded his sword. At last his adversary collapsed like a burning scarecrow, and Kane released him from his suffering with a headsman’s stroke of the sword. At the sight of the fall of his champion, Malachi twisted furiously to face the great mirror, taking Meredith with him. “It is time,” he hissed.
Meredith saw a monstrous face loom down from the height of the mirror – fanged jaws vast enough to hold a man between them, red lurid eyes whose smallness suggested how tiny the savage brain might be. Malachi seized her right arm and stretched it out before him. “Only your innocent blood will release him,” he said and licked his thin lips with his colourless tongue. Snatching the knife from the altar, he cut Meredith’s arm open.
It was not just the pain that made her cry out. Malachi had fastened his lips on the wound. His tongue crawled wormlike over it as he sucked her blood, and she felt as if he were seeking to batten on her soul as well. When he raised his head his mouth looked as rouged as any harlot’s, obscenely vivid against the unhealthy pallor of his skin. His head jerked like a snake’s towards the mirror, and he spat on the glass.
Meredith saw the mixture of blood and spittle splash the mirror. She might have fancied that the world had been diabolically inverted, because instead of running down the glass, the liquid began to climb. It spread tendrils across the mirror as it raced upwards, until it seemed the glass itself was imbuing it with eagerness. It was no longer on the surface; it was merging with the glass, effecting some alchemical transformation. Malachi stepped aside, dragging Meredith with him, as the glass bulged like an enormous transparent sack.
It grew molten with the heat of the shape that was pushing it outwards. It stretched thin, and then it tore asunder like a reptile’s egg, and the monster it had hatched burst forth. It stank like a furnace whose very bricks were burning. Its molten core – all that it had for a heart and guts – was visible between its exposed ribs. Flames flared around the haphazard chitinous scales that patched its torso. Its colossal arms and legs were covered with material that might have been armour or a carapace like a titanic insect’s. A gigantic chain was wrapped around its trunk. It emerged into the great hall with a tread that shook the floor and vibrated as far as the antechamber, where a torch rattled in its stand. As Malachi released a hiss of pleasure at the spectacle, the demon turned its sluggish monumental head and lowered it towards him and Meredith.
The prognathous face resembled the skull of some unholy hybrid of a beast and an insect. Horns curved backwards from the hinges of the jaw to bristle above the flaming skull. The fire that surmounted the cranium might have been parodying a halo or a crown of thorns. Flames filled the gaping mouth and dripped from the jaws, and the eyes were twin pits of flame. It seemed impossible that they could see, but the demon sensed it had not found its quarry. It swung its ponderous head towards Captain Kane, and Meredith began to pray more fervently than she had ever prayed in her life.
FORTY-ONE
Kane saw that Malachi had dragged Meredith to the mirror like a sacrifice to its colossal denizen. The sorcerer cut her arm open and sucked greedily at the wound. The sight lent Kane the strength of loathing, and he was striding forward when Malachi spat the mouthful of blood on the mirror. It rushed up the glass like a scarlet vine, its ascent diabolically accelerated. It fastened parasitically on the mirror and seemed to thin the glass, which ballooned as if reality itself were giving way – as if the laws of God were. The demonic head that was forcing the mirror outwards dwarfed Meredith and her captor. The sorcerer had stepped deferentially aside, taking the injured girl with him, and Kane saw that she was still in mortal danger. Before he could reach Malachi or even challenge him the mirror split apart down the entire length of the oval, and its colossal inhabitant lumbered forth.
As first it appeared to be making straight for Kane with a determination as monolithic as its form. Then it noticed the girl and Malachi beside the mirror, which had sunk back into the frame, regaining its blackness. Did the demon sense Meredith’s wound or the mark on her palm? The titanic head turned with the ponderousness of a landslide, and the fanged rudimentary face bent towards her, drooling fire. It must have found her unworthy of attention, for it reared up almost to the ceiling and came for Kane. “My God,” he breathed, “only You can help me now.”
He had no more time for prayer. The demon was lowering its head to find him, and it was as though an erupting volcano had stooped towards him. He thought its brain might be as undeveloped as the monstrous insectoid skull, which seemed to have no use for flesh, but then what need did such a creature have of the ability to think? If it had any purpose other than to claim Kane, it was to embody the essence of the Hell to which it would deliver him. Fire dribbled from its horned jaws, and its small eyes flared like coals as though expressing a cretinous delight in having identified him. Perhaps it was a fighter’s instinct, but also
a last hope of divine intervention, that made Kane raise his sword.
The colossus was swifter than he had assumed. An incandescent fist swooped down at him like a meteor, and if he had not dodged backwards he would have been crushed to pulp. The blow shattered a section of the floor yards wide as if the stone were as flimsy as shell. Fragments of molten stone flew up from the impact, and one landed on Kane’s arm, burning into his flesh until he brushed it away. Without pause the demon rose to its full dreadful height and came after him.
Each of its strides was equal to half a dozen of Kane’s. He thought of luring it out of the great hall – perhaps he could elude it in the corridors or find some means of destroying it there – but then he saw that it would only have to stoop and reach its arm through the antechamber to seize him in its molten grasp before he could reach the doors. He dashed towards the columns that supported the roof on the left side of the hall, and felt the floor shudder under the pursuing tread. He felt heat on his back as though a furnace had gaped wide behind him. He had barely dodged beyond a column when the demon swung a massive arm at him.
It could have been lunging to catch him, unless this was a gesture of frustrated almost mindless rage. The arm smashed through the column, dislodging a chunk of stone that left a gap as large as Kane was tall. The giant fist would have closed around him if he had not already retreated towards the next pillar. He ran along the line of columns until they hid him from the demon, and tried desperately to plan. Three rose windows overlooked the columns, but they were too high for him to reach. A gargantuan footstep shook the column at his back, and he imagined he was hidden until blazing scaly fingers, each one larger than his arm, groped around the column to find him.
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