Best Laid Plans

by D. P. Prior

  Six riders trotted into view from behind the tower. They were heavily armoured in visored helms and hauberks, their steeds skeletal, but with hellish eyes and flaming breath.

  Frayn squealed and ran to the right, the five assassins with him following. Albert hesitated, checked behind, where scores of corpses were shambling from their graves and pressing in upon the surviving Sicarii. As Frayn’s group reached the tree line to the east of the tower, more horsemen rode from the forest, fanning out to block their way. There were too many to count.

  A light now shone from the upper window of Dead Man’s Torch and a bulky silhouette peered out. Something flapped down onto the parapet and watched like a vulture.

  They hadn’t seen him yet, Albert thought as he edged away to the left. Still hadn’t seen him…Still hadn’t—

  The six original riders moved to cut off Frayn’s group’s retreat and the corpses from the tumuli were now shambling out onto open ground. The wraith drifted to a position on the assassins’ left flank.

  They still hadn’t spotted Albert. He sidestepped away, keeping as close to the tree line as he could, but watching all the while for limbs jutting from the ground. One step…Two steps…Almost there…Just another couple of steps and then he’d turn and flee. Careful. Care—

  One of the six riders wheeled its mount and looked straight at Albert, its eyes red blazes through the visor of its helm.

  ‘Shit!’

  Albert spun and ran as fast as his legs would carry him. He leaped over a flailing hand, kicked an emerging head right off its neck, and sprinted through the trees. Branches tore at his face, snagged his clothing, but he hurtled on heedless. A chorus of screams rose behind him. Steel clashed with steel. Shouts. More screams, and a chilling wailing.

  Albert flicked a look over his shoulder. The skeletal knight was weaving its mount through the trees in pursuit. Dipping his head, Albert ran on over a tumulus, dancing in and out of clutching hands, and down the other side. He stumbled, flapped his arms about for balance, but then stepped into a depression and wrenched his ankle.

  ‘Shit!’ he cried again. ‘Bloody rabbits! Shit, fuck, bugger, damn!’

  Half limping, half hopping, he forced his way through a thicket and out into the open. The skeletal steed was so close he could almost feel its fiery breath on the back of his neck. He reached into his pocket and grabbed the vials. It was useless, he knew, but he was damned if he was going down without a fight. He fumbled one and dropped it. The glass shattered and dust puffed up into the air. Albert whipped out his handkerchief to cover his nose and mouth, hopping further into the clearing and trying to unstop one of the other vials. He didn’t dare look back to see how close the rider was. His face was taut with anticipation of the death blow that could fall at any moment.

  Giving up on the stoppers, Albert slung both vials over his shoulder and hopped even faster. The air shimmered in front of him and a beam of bright light cut across the ground ten paces ahead. The light grew upwards to the accompaniment of a rushing noise, and Albert had to shield his eyes from the glare. The hoofbeats behind him stopped and he risked a quick look back.

  The rider had drawn up to watch the light, seemingly as enthralled as Albert. He peered back at the glare through splayed fingers. It was now a rectangle of white radiance—like a doorway. In the entrance stood a silhouetted figure, humanoid—only much smaller. It held something in its hands—a staff? A tube?

  ‘Get down!’ the figure shouted as it pointed the staff at Albert.

  Without needing to be told a twice, Albert flung himself face down in the dirt. There was a thunderous crack, a rush of air, and a resounding shatter. The figure stepped away from the light and held a hand out to him. Lifting his head, Albert looked into a face as pale as death and eyes like diluted blood.

  ‘Shadrak! What are—?’

  ‘No time,’ the albino said. ‘Come.’

  Shadrak slung the tube over his shoulder and helped Albert to his feet before starting back towards the light.

  ‘New weapon, darling?’

  ‘Later,’ Shadrak said beckoning him on.

  Albert looked behind and saw the rider’s headless body sitting bolt upright upon its skeletal steed. Its helm lay in two halves on the ground, fragments of bone scattered all around it.

  They entered a metallic corridor lit by a ghostly blue glow. Albert blinked until his eyes adjusted as Shadrak tapped some buttons on the inside of the doorway and a panel slid down.

  ‘I was hoping for more of you,’ he said. ‘Seems I’m a bit late.’

  ‘That’s an understatement, if ever I heard one,’ Albert said. ‘Is this the Maze? How come it’s here? How did you know—?’

  Shadrak touched a finger to his lips. ‘Orders from above. Now, you have a choice to make: either you go back out there and take your chances, or you come with me.’

  Some choice. Albert patted his jacket pockets, but found them empty. He still had his cheese-cutter in his trouser pocket, but he doubted that’d do much good against skeletons wearing gorgets.

  ‘Looks like it’s your shout, darling,’ he said with a tight-lipped smile. ‘Where are we going?’

  Shadrak turned on his heel and strode down the corridor. ‘The Homestead,’ he said.

  ‘The what? The sacred site of the Dreamers? Why on earth would—?’

  Shadrak tapped more buttons and a section of the wall slid open. He turned to look back at Albert. ‘You in or out?’

  ‘You’re the one with all the cards,’ Albert said, ambling towards him. ‘Looks like the old team’s back together.’

  Shadrak sniffed and passed through the doorway into a part of the Maze Albert had never seen before. Clearly Shadrak had only revealed as much as he needed to. Albert couldn’t blame him. He’d have done the same.

  ‘Well call me Daisy!’ Albert said, following him. ‘What the blue blazes?’

  The corridor opened onto a spherical chamber dominated by a silver plinth that twinkled with lights. The top of the plinth mushroomed out to house dark mirrors with flashing symbols dancing across their surfaces. A background susurrus caused Albert’s ears to pop, and deep in his bones he felt, rather than heard, a low droning.

  Shadrak flicked some switches on the plinth and two ovoid chairs rose from the floor. He gestured for Albert to sit, and as soon as he did, pliant restraints fastened across his lap and over his shoulders.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Albert yelped, suspecting he’d just stumbled into a trap. Shadrak might have been a partner, when it suited him, but he was still an assassin.

  Shadrak lowered himself into the other seat and restraints rolled out to secure him. That calmed Albert somewhat, but he still didn’t like it. There was a feel of magic about the place, a sense of wrongness. But Albert was no superstitious simpleton. He’d seen enough of the world to know there were secrets that had survived the Reckoning.

  ‘This is Ancient tech,’ he said. ‘How—?’

  ‘It’s a little more than that,’ Shadrak said. ‘This, so I’m told, is the blending of science and lore: the combined knowledge of two worlds.’

  Albert glanced around at the glowing metal walls, the winking displays on the plinth; felt the giving steel of the restraints. Crazy as it sounded, he could quite well believe Shadrak.

  ‘And we’re going to the Homestead? In this?’

  ‘Yup,’ Shadrak said, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes.

  Some unseen force yanked Albert’s stomach through his shoes. It bounced back beyond the top of his head and he vomited. The lights flickered, trees appeared in the walls and gave way to absolute blackness. The low drone became an insistent whine and then Albert felt all his weight dissipate as if he were a ghost.

  NEMESIS

  ‘One hundred and twenty-six, one hundred and twenty-seven, one hundred and twenty-eight! Round four: one, two, three…’

  Cadman’s vision was starting to blur, the mortar between the bricks becoming indistinct and wavy, like the strands
of a cobweb blowing in the wind.

  ‘…six, seven, eight…’

  Pin pricks behind his eyes; a pressure that threatened to pop them from his head as if veins of acid swelled up in their sockets.

  ‘Soon, master, I will have it.’ A parched voice; the words clumsily formed as if the tongue were too large for the mouth. ‘Then I will have freedom? Yes?’

  ‘…eleven, twelve—Will you stop that infernal chatter, I’m trying to concentrate!’ On counting bricks. Can’t you see it’s vitally important? Not like counting sheep, you know.

  Cadman sat up. Or rather, he tried to sit up but his head barely raised a few inches and the rest of his body failed to comply.

  ‘What? Where—?’

  Flame coursed through the nerves of his neck where he’d cricked it. His head had been twisted to the left for as long as he’d been counting; it was easier to see the bricks that way. He tried to lift a hand to inspect the damage but his arm was numb and apparently held fast above his head. His eyes were too sore to look. He strained his head from side to side, ignoring the impinged nerves sending fragments of glass through his scalp. A hint of dark movement in his peripheral vision caused him to strain his neck forwards. Someone stooped over the end of his bed—it was a bed, right?—and grunted. There was a jolt and a squeak like a cog in need of oiling.

  ‘Aaagh!’ Cadman’s arms were wrenched one way, his legs the other— just by a tiny increment, not enough to rip him apart, but enough to stretch the tendons and ligaments to their limits.

  ‘Another turn and the ligaments will be permanently loose.’ A cold voice. It would have been clinical save for the hint of a thrill it conveyed.

  Cadman tried to thrash about but his hip joints popped and his arms felt like they were about to dislocate.

  ‘Blightey!’ Oh my God, Blightey. I’m dreaming. Please tell me I’m dreaming. Wake up! Wake up!

  ‘What I most enjoy about the rack,’ Otto Blightey seemed to be talking to someone else, as if elucidating torture for an interested student, ‘is its inexorable tension. It is almost the perfect incarnation of nature’s inherent cruelty; of the futility of life’s struggle for continuance, the unrelenting march of time.’

  ‘It is as certain as the coming of the Dweller,’ said the first voice as if it were chewing the words.

  Cadman recognized it from somewhere. His mind threw up a tantalizing image of a winged gargoyle with eyes as black as pitch.

  ‘Ikrys?’

  Blightey turned the crank a notch and Cadman screamed as he’d never screamed before, a long drawn-out shriek of agony that echoed through eternity.

  ***

  Cadman rolled out of bed and landed face first on the floor with a thud. He checked he could move his limbs, and breathed a shuddering sigh of relief that he was still fat and still unharmed.

  Someone was murmuring, as if reciting a private litany. Cadman turned on his back and peered through the tiniest gap in his eyelids, dreading what he was going to see.

  Thank God!

  He was still in the tower—Dead Man’s Torch. Still in his bedchamber. Still safe. Still alive.

  The gargoyle, Ikrys, was hunched in the corner mumbling to himself over and over. The creature looked shrivelled and grossly disfigured. Even he had surpassed his limits as far as channelling the dark forces was concerned. Scores and scores of the ancient dead had ripped their way from the earth at Cadman’s bidding. Ikrys had said he was a creature of the Abyss, that the dark currents were his natural habitat. Nevertheless, he suffered as Cadman once had. Perhaps now the assassins had been dealt with they both could rest.

  And then Cadman remembered. Oh God—that ejaculation again. When had he started using it? When had he stopped? God, it must have been centuries since he’d heard the expression. As far as he could remember, it had died with the world of the Ancients. The dream about Blightey must have been a warning from his unconscious, something to jolt him into action. The Dweller was going to return and would expect a suitable substitute for Shader. Cadman had to make ready, had to ensure that the woman was accepted.

  ‘Come along, Ikrys, chop-chop,’ Cadman said, clambering to his feet. That’s another phrase I’ve not used in an age. What on earth’s the matter with me? ‘Can’t have you moping about feeling sorry for yourself. We have a sacrifice to prepare, a demon to greet and…’

  Ikrys shook his wings like a couple of limp dishcloths. He twisted his head at an impossible angle and gazed at Cadman through black slits beneath heavy lids that were so rough and grey they could have been carved from stone.

  ‘And what?’ The words came out like a blast of steam.

  ‘Well,’ Cadman said,’ sounding much more amiable than he felt. ‘There are a lot of dead assassins outside. Can’t have them idling away when they could be put to good use.’

  Ikrys groaned and curled into a ball.

  ‘Come, come,’ Cadman said. ‘A big strong denizen of the Abyss like you. I thought you said the dark currents were your natural dwelling. Surely you can help me raise a few more corpses.’

  Cadman was already reaching out with his mind, searching out the nascent corruption rising from the dead Sicarii like a clogging miasma. He sent out strands of black ichor to each silent heart and then placed a hand on the gargoyle’s head, channelling the unnatural forces through him. Ikrys shuddered and retched, but almost instantly, the ethereal strands tautened and Cadman felt the wailing consciousness of twenty more recruits clamouring for his attention. With practised ease, he dismissed their moaning to the periphery of his mind and headed up the ladder to the roof.

  Rhiannon lay as still as death, back resting against one of the merlons that surrounded the parapet like rotting teeth. She looked pale and waxen, her lips slightly cyanosed.

  Shit. Don’t tell me she’s snuffed it.

  Cadman’s black heart fluttered like a the crushed wings of a butterfly. He hurried to her side and felt for a pulse. Bradycardic, but regular. He turned her head and felt the back of her neck. There was an oozing pustule where Ikrys had stung her. Maybe he’d been a bit overzealous with the venom. Still, at least she was in no state to cause any trouble.

  Cadman peered over the parapet and gave a satisfied clack of his tongue as the dead Sicarii slipped into the shadows of the forest. The ancient corpses that had slaughtered them massed around the base of the tower and the Lost sat astride their skeletal steeds with the stoicism of granite.

  A shimmering of the darkness alerted Cadman to Callixus’ presence on the roof.

  ‘Punctual as ever, eh?’ Cadman said as the spectre took on some semblance of solidity.

  The former Grand Master of the Elect rested a hand upon the hilt of his black sword, red eyes flaring through the eye-slit of his helm.

  ‘It is folly to meet this demon’s demands,’ Callixus hissed. ‘It cannot harm you while my knights stand against it.’

  ‘Surely you’re not suggesting I renege on an agreement?’ Cadman said. ‘Have you begun to lose your Nousian morality at last?’

  Callixus flinched, his eyes smouldering. ‘This Dweller was spawned in the Abyss…’

  Cadman knew where this was going and really didn’t have the time. ‘As was Ikrys. Are you going to deny how useful he’s been?’ He took Callixus’ silence as affirmative. How could the wraith consider anything evil in comparison with his own unnatural perdurance? ‘Look at yourself, before you judge others,’ he said, and immediately regretted it.

  ‘I see what I am, Doctor, perhaps more clearly than you see what you are. I judge myself with the eyes of Ain, even after all these centuries.’

  ‘You still loathe yourself? But I thought…’

  The wraith floated towards Cadman as if he were about to strike. Cadman tightened his hold upon Callixus’ will and the Grand Master came no closer.

  ‘I despise what you have made me,’ Callixus said. ‘I am shamed by the weakness that allowed you to harness my soul. When Ain judges me, if ever you cede him the chance, I pray that he
will be merciful, for I was given no choice.’

  Still angry? Still struggling? Callixus should have quieted by now. Most of the raised dead were acquiescent within weeks, but the Grand Master had been under Cadman’s control for five hundred years. How could he still care? How could he remember anything else?

  ‘Perhaps,’ Callixus continued, the words tumbling out as if they’d been pent up for decades, ‘Ain is still trying to teach me. The Elect are exemplary in all things but their pride. My impotence before your evil may be the means of my salvation.’

  Cadman shook his head, not quite believing what he was hearing. ‘Oh, Callixus, my old friend. You still cling to hope when all the evidence is against it. You really are remarkable—my absolute favourite. What would you have me do, release you?’

  The glow of Callixus’ eyes softened for a moment. ‘You would do that? Then why did you bring me back from the Void?’

  Cadman wanted to touch him then, hug him even, but the gesture would have felt hollow. ‘I need you, Callixus. Right now I need you more than ever. I know you think I’m evil,’ —and I’d be the first to agree with you— ‘but give me a few more days. See this through to the end, not because I force you, but because I’m asking you.’ Begging you. ‘Hell, Callixus, I’m as lost as you are. Even more so, because I chose this path.’ As much as anyone could choose anything. What was it the Ancient World priests used to say about seeds and stony ground, some getting smothered by weeds? If only Cadman hadn’t been so assiduous in his studies. If only he hadn’t looked down on those less capable than him. If only he hadn’t met Blightey…

  Too late for regret, Cadman. Way too late. He’d chosen his path and now he had to follow where it led. Oh, he could have hidden away in the shadows of Sarum for another century, more perhaps, but eventually he’d have had to face what he was. You could only put it off for so long, and Cadman had a nasty feeling his moment was coming. Time to face the music, Ernst.