by D. P. Prior
“Look down there,” said Nils pointing at the immense gate.
Silas squinted. It was more of a portcullis than a gate, probably of wrought iron and virtually impregnable. Shadowy forms passed back and forth behind the grill. It seemed that Malfen never slept, and that it was going to be impossible to enter discreetly.
“What will you do?” asked Nils.
Silas was tempted to march right up and demand a meeting with Shent, but something told him that wasn’t such a good idea. His optimism had deserted him, and the scene below was unnerving.
Malfen looked like a clump of warped and twisted structures that had been randomly thrown together. The alleyways between houses were narrow and winding, giving the whole place the appearance of a spider’s web. Shapes crept through the dark spaces and a reddish haze hung over the town like a cloak of blood.
Not for the first time, Silas wished he’d never clapped eyes on Blightey’s grimoire. If it hadn’t been for the entry about the planting of the Liche Lord’s staff in a secret place in Qlippoth, nothing would have dragged him within a hundred miles of Malfen. That, and the uncovering of a poem by the foppish Quintus Quincy who’d claimed the Ant-Man knew of every incursion into Qlippoth and had captured anyone lucky enough to escape the lands of nightmare and wrung their secrets from them. Silas had caught up with Quincy in The Wyrm’s Head in New Jerusalem. The old soak had talked like a gossiping housewife once Silas had stood him a few rounds.
Quincy said the Ant-Man was just a nickname fashioned to terrorise the people of Malfen into meeting his demands—the usual sort of things: protection and extortion.
Quincy’s source had been the journal of some gold-digging chancer called Noris Bellosh who’d spent a year and a day in Qlippoth before falling into Shent’s hands. Bellosh had served Shent for almost a decade and he believed the Ant-Man knew more about Qlippoth than anyone alive. Shent, he said, had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the geography of the nightmare lands pieced together from the agonised testimonies of his victims. Bellosh had claimed Shent literally was an ant-human hybrid, but Quincy attributed that to the man’s sensationalism. Bellosh had been offered a small fortune for publication of his journal but hadn’t lived to capitalise on it. He’d eaten poisoned walnut and date bread—his favourite repast—and the journal had disappeared. Quincy had bought it from a man named Albert in one of New Jerusalem’s flea markets.
Silas shook his head. It had started as a playful quest. He had rummaged around in libraries, visited the most ancient sites of New Jerusalem. He’d spoken with wizards and even flown on a mysterious air-raft with the mad mage, Magwitch, looking for the ancient portals that Blightey’s grimoire stated existed between the worlds. All a wild goose chase, Silas had concluded, but still the book urged him on.
Finding out about Blightey had proven more or less impossible. As Silas had learned from the diary portions of the book, Blightey was not from Aethir. He came from a place called London, so he claimed. From what Silas could gather from the later entries, the place had subsequently changed names many times. Blightey had later ruled the country of Verusia, where he’d fought valiantly against the despotism of an evil Empire known as ‘Nousia.’ At some point, Blightey had trodden the paths of the Abyss and he’d eventually emerged from one of the gorges of Gehenna into the land of Qlippoth. He’d left his staff there, planted in the loam of nightmares to await the coming of someone Blightey called The Worthy.
Throughout all his research, Silas had been sceptical; but nevertheless, the more he learned, the more he wanted to know. He studied assiduously, and if he didn’t read through the brittle pages of the grimoire until his head was ready to burst, he couldn’t sleep. He thought of little else, and whenever he was deprived of the chance to dip into the tome he’d find himself irascible, bordering on frantic.
“Well?” Nils’s nagging voice cut through the fug of Silas’ pensiveness. “I can’t stand here all day. I got you to Malfen; now you need to keep your side of the deal.”
Silas sighed and started to weave his hands through the air when he spotted something off to the left at the foot of the slope.
A few hundred yards out from the town wall, the blackness pooled in a circle.
“What’s that?” Silas asked, pointing.
Nils took a step forward and yelped as he slid on the scree. The slope shifted behind him and he was caught in a great tide of slate and rock that carried him all the way to the bottom.
Silas trudged down after him, surfing the scree in fits and starts, flapping his arms for balance. He hopped off at the foot of the slope and offered a hand up to Nils.
“Great!” said Nils. “Shogging great! Now I’ve gotta climb—”
Silas held up a hand for silence as something emerged from the circle of blackness. It was the size of a horse, but with a segmented body and thin articulated legs. Antennae twitched upon a bulbous head and twin eyes the size of saucers shone cyan in the pale moonlight.
“What is it?” Nils fumbled with his sword and tried to back up the slope. The way the scree slid under his feet it may as well have been a waterfall.
Another creature darted from the aperture, mandibles clacking like shears. Silas’ heart thumped in his chest as scores more poured forth and scuttled towards them.
“Ants,” he said with as much awe as fear.
Nils was looking frantically to left and right but there was nowhere to run. Silas put a calming hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s just hope the stories are true this time,” he said. “For if there are giant ants, maybe there’s also an ant-man to command them.”
The ants were so close that Silas could hear the clicking of their mandibles. They stopped mere inches away, their antennae twitching, front legs pawing the air. Nils was trembling so much Silas thought the lad was going to faint.
Behind the wall of ants, two men approached. Moonlight glinted from the blades of twin daggers the smaller man carried. The other, a big man with a hooked nose, brandished a long knife and swished a net before him. The ants parted to let them through and the small man spoke.
“Trying to sneak in under cover of darkness?”
“Absolutely not,” said Silas in his most innocent voice.
“Shut it!” the man snarled. “We ain’t stupid here, whatever you civilised types might reckon. And we ain’t rude neither, are we Venn?”
The man with the net flashed a crooked smile.
“No, we’re most hospitable, Carl. That’s why we came to greet you.”
Silas didn’t like the look in Venn’s eyes: it was calculating and full of threat, like a crocodile poking its head above the surface of a swamp. He reached into the depths of his mind clutching for some strand of magic he could use.
“You the Ant-Man?” Nils asked in a tremulous voice.
Carl laughed, a ghastly guttural sound.
“No, I ain’t the Ant-Man, boy, and neither’s Venn here.”
Silas closed in on a black misty thread at the edges of his awareness and let its puissance start to blossom.
“That,” said Carl, turning to look over his shoulder, “is the Ant-Man.”
Silas froze at the sight lumbering towards them. He hardly noticed the burgeoning magic slip from his grasp and disperse back into emptiness.
A hulking man lurched past Venn and Carl. Only it wasn’t a man. It stood on legs that bent backwards, with spines jutting from the shins. The torso was a thick carapace like a black breastplate, and the cuneate head was dominated by the same saucer-like eyes and clacking mandibles the ants had. Knotted muscular arms—human arms—folded over the chitinous chest.
“Shent?” Silas whispered.
With a rush of air Venn’s net smothered Silas and something heavy crashed into his skull. As he was buried in blackness he heard pleading, as if it came from a fading dream.
“Please! I brought him to you. I’m your friend.”
Nils, thought Silas as awareness left him. You little—
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Table of Contents
Praise for The Shader Series
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
MAP OF SAHUL
MAP OF THE NOUSIAN THEOCRACY
THE SHADER STORY SO FAR
BEST LAID PLANS
OCEAN’S EYE
A TRICKY VENGEANCE
MAMBA
ARABOTH
GODS OF THE DREAMERS
TAJEN
IN THE SERVICE OF THE ARCHON
THE WAY BACK
THE LACUNAE
THE RESURRECTION OF DEACON SHADER
PLANS AND PREPARATIONS
SERVILITY AND COMMAND
IN TOO DEEP
THE LION’S DEN
FENRIR FOREST
SEER’S WEB
THE DOME
THE PRISONER OF ARNBROOK HOUSE
THE FATE OF THE GHOST
THE BATTLE OF SARUM
SEKTIS GANDAW’S SHAMAN
THE VILLAGE
THE MESSAGE
A CONTRACT WITH THE ARCHON
THE FALL
IKRYS
A HARMONICA IN THE NIGHT
THE TEMPLUM FLEET
THE GREAT WORK
THE COMING CONFLICT
THE EMPEROR’S RULE
A RETURN TO UNDEATH
THE SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS
NOUS IS NOT NOUS
DOOM OF THE SICARII
NEMESIS
BREAKOUT
BROTHER OF MINE
THE COMMON FOE
ROGUE’S LAST STAND
THE BATTLE OF THE HOMESTEAD
THE STORY CONTINUES IN
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