“Faugh!” the archon cried, one hand flying up to his dazzled eyes as he staggered blindly away from her.
Shel dodged the frozen spear. Before Thorne could recover, she followed up her attack. Wrapping the air behind the stumbling archon in a tight lace of energy, she jerked it forwards. The onrushing net of air caught Thorne from behind and pitched him forward.
Shel could feel the third weaver’s energy twisting and knitting itself in the air overhead on the mezzanine. The attacks weren’t directed at her. Kal! She had to get out from under the loft so she could see what was happening to her friend. She wove a fireball and threw it Thorne’s way, but the sluggish air was slow to kindle and it was barely fizzling when it reached the archon.
Thorne blinked rapidly, but could obviously see well enough to deflect the weak fireball. He batted it aside with one hand, protected in a gauntlet of solidified air. His other hand swept up, fingers contorting and flickering. Dust and grit that lay in the narrow, shallow grooves between the marble flagstones rose into the air and hurled itself into Shel’s eyes.
The Shadowoman threw up her hands to protect her face, but a moment too late. Stinging grit burned in her eyes and she coughed as the sandy granules whisked up her nose and down her throat. Without thinking, she wove a small whirlwind between herself and Thorne and pushed it toward him.
The swirling air sucked up the flying grit in a vortex that wobbled drunkenly across the floor. Thorne bent forward at the waist with his feet planted far apart and brought up both hands, clenching them into fists in front of his chin. As the whirlwind twisted and turned his way, he wrenched his fists around in a circular motion like turning a crank. The whirlwind died instantly, the sandy debris falling back to the floor.
Murdrek Thorne used the momentum he’d stolen from Shel’s whirlwind to launch his body high in the air. Reaching the apex of his climb, he threw his arms out straight and aimed at the young woman. With incredible speed he flew down at her like a massive human spear.
Wiping grit from her eyes and spluttering, Shel barely saw him in time. She threw up her hands and wove frantically. The air was thinner than ever, and she ignored the tiny, invisible particles. Instead, she overlayed her lacy weaving with layer upon layer until it formed an impenetrable barrier of soulstuff. Thorne slammed against it like a wave crashing over a sandcastle. The battling weavers were thrown to the floor, tumbling end over end entangled with each other.
Thorne came up on top, fingers of one hand gripped about Shel’s slender throat with his other fist raised. He straddled her in the center of the floor and glared down at her with undisguised hatred and malice. Wide-eyed, Shel watched the brightening glow of energy building around his drawn back fist.
“Impressive,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “But pointless. The outcome was never in doubt. You're powerful, Gutterweave, but now that power is mine!”
His fist plunged downward, the blinding white mist of his soul stabbing into Shel’s chest and wrapping its icy fingers tightly round her beating heart.
Chapter 24 - Tophylax Emperia
Five hundred men in sleek, black lacquered armor poured steadily through the Highgate, southernmost of the five city gates of Solstice. The chitinous plates of their armor shifted with every step, rattling and scraping and making a sound like giant insects on the move. Razor spikes protruded from the armor in a wild profusion, making these elite soldiers impossible to grapple with. Their heads were hidden beneath massive domed, insectile helmets lacquered in the same flat black as their armor but embellished with reds and blues and greens describing sinister eyes and sharp mandibles. The helmets had no openings, none at all. The soldiers marched in perfect unison.
The Tophylax Emperia had no need of eyesight.
Five hundred of the eternal emperor’s elite personal guard fanned out through the Noble District of Solstice. Where they met resistance, they eliminated it. The Tophylax killed indiscriminately. Thieves, rebels, liveried armsmen – it made no difference to the Tophylax Emperia.
On the Boulevard of Summer Rains, a small band of men in the tan and ochre livery of Archon Gevettan circled tightly around their furious master presenting their lowered pikes to a howling mob of peasants led by four of Alban’s men. Here and there, a Gevettan armsman thrust his lance into the belly of a rioter. The commoners threw cobblestones pried from the streets, or lunged forward with swiping knives.
At the center of his bodyguards, Kelven Gevettan sagged with exhaustion but refused to yield. Arms weaving through the air, he cast his energy out from his person. He alone could have seen the misty white arms of his soul stretching forth, but Gevettan stood with his eyes shut firmly in a face composed in concentration.
An older man in the seething crowd hurled a stone, snarling with hate like a rabid animal. Gevettan’s invisible hand struck the missile aside in midflight. An hour ago, the archon would have whipped his misty appendage back to pummel the old man. He was too tired for that now. He had to conserve his energies, weaving only to prevent injury to himself and his guards. Though he regularly practiced weaving before, he’d never had to use it in combat. His initial panic burned into a dull fervor of survival. Who would attack the archons?
Through his intense concentration, Kelven Gevettan slowly became aware of new arrivals in the pitched battle in the street. He felt their marching vibration through the pavingstones at his feet. He sensed the motion of the air being draw into their lungs. He knew a rippling echo of the fear that suddenly expanded through the howling mob.
Gevettan opened his eyes, dropping his tired arms and smiling with undisguised relief. Seven Tophylax Emperia waded into the rioting peasants. The mob still seethed, but all its efforts turned now to escaping the terrible soldiers in the black lacquered armor. Rarely seen, the emperor’s elite were oft spoken of in whispers. Called the Eyeless Men by most, they had gained the stature of legends. Feared throughout the Golden Empire, their infamy had swelled to rival even the hated Shadowmen.
Gevettan was no superstitious peasant. He knew the truth about the Tophylax Emperia. It far exceeded their reputation.
Tophylax Emperia couldn’t be killed. That was more than some imperial decree; it was a fact. Gevettan had once seen one of the black-armored soldiers decapitate himself – at a whimsical command from the emperor. The headless Tophylax Emperia had then competed in a joust before re-attaching his own head.
These same soldiers had fought at Midnight Grove, one thousand years ago. There they had slain Shadowmen in their master’s name while the man who would become emperor flew in the dark skies above and flung lightning into the midnight trees. The armor they wore now had been looted from the dead of that battle. It was widely believed that the lacquered plates absorbed the souls of all who fell in battle to the emperor’s elite guards, to be funneled directly to the emperor.
If that was so, they claimed many souls this day. A cheer went up from Gevettan’s circle of bodyguards as the Tophylax Emperia swung their enormous broadswords through the shouting, fleeing mass of peasants. The archon saw one black-armored brute disembowel six men with a single whooshing sweep of his seven-foot blade.
It was all over in seconds. Amid perhaps five dozen corpses, seven Tophylax Emperia stood unscathed and unmoved by the carnage they had wrought. Of the rioters, none had escaped.
Kelven Gevettan stepped through his circle of men, striding forward to express his gratitude. He expected the Tophylax Emperia would escort him to the palace, and he was already composing a far more elaborate expression of gratitude for the emperor. He knew he’d have to lay it on thick this time. He was in the emperor’s debt, and that was a nasty place to be…
Seven feet of burnished steel, fully eight inches wide, slid through Kelven Gevettan’s ribs. The archon looked down at the sword piercing his chest and the black gauntleted hand that had put it there. Raising his eyes, Gevettan shook his head in confusion. He didn’t understand.
The voice that emanated from within the garishly lacquered h
elmet was ghastly and inhuman. It was like the sound of foul gas whistling from a bloated carcass when it was cut open. Somehow, this terrible sound formed words. The emperor’s words.
“There is no place for the indolent and frail in my empire.”
Speaking the emperor’s words, seeing with the emperor’s eyes, and motivated solely by the emperor’s own will, the Tophylax Emperia savagely twisted its sword in Gevettan’s chest and wrenched it sideways. Blood sprayed and the archon fell, gasping and still trying to speak. His stunned bodyguards broke formation and ran for their lives.
Seven black-plated arms lifted, palms extended rigidly out. Seven invisible, woven mistings burst from those palms. The emperor’s magic seized Gevettan’s soldiers and crushed out their lives. When it was done, the seven Tophylax Emperia moved on. There was yet killing to be done.
***
Jacin Verret tugged on his sword, the blade sliding out of a dying rioter’s guts with a sickening, squelching sound. Verret turned away before the man hit the ground. There were six more bearing down on him, waving stout clubs over their heads and spitting with hate. Jacin Verret had given up calling on Dunmir’s mercy several days ago, when he had barely escaped the small band that killed his friend Dav Hetters.
Verret had given up on just about everything. Solstice could burn to the ground and its citizens could steal and squabble and murder each other until there was nobody left. Jacin didn’t care anymore. He just wanted to stay alive long enough to get out of the way.
Wearily, Verret lifted his blood-dripping sword and stepped forward to meet his latest attackers. They were more of the same, a seemingly neverending mob of bloodthirsty peasants drawn to his golden cloak and burnished armor. These people were not soldiers, nor were they well armed. Jacin’s arms ached from chopping and slicing and stabbing until he had lost count, lost track of the rage-maddened faces that finally blended together into a limitless mass.
He was in the High Market. He wasn’t certain of the street. Thick smoke drifted through the air, limiting visibility. It seemed fires raged on every corner. The streets were littered with bodies – more than a few of which were garbed in crimson stained, golden cloaks. The mob had broken, sort of. Roving bands of as few as five or six, and as many as two dozen roamed the city and attacked any Suncloaks they found.
There was a big one in this group, Jacin noted disinterestedly. Big and tough by the look of him. A tavern brawler maybe, or just as likely a tavern bouncer. The only difference was whether or not the tavern-keeper paid him. Regardless, today the big guy worked for free.
“Jacin! Jacin Verret!” It was Rebley, fighting off two street urchins who must have been all of eight or nine years old. Dirty blonde curls framed cherubic faces twisted into nightmare masks. The children bore miniature knives that were little more than slender ice-picks. Clinging to Rebley’s legs, they stabbed again and again at his belly. Most of the frenzied strikes glanced off the Suncloak’s armor, but enough of the blows had found the chink between torso and hip plates to bring forth a slowly gushing torrent of blood that spilled down Rebley’s legs.
Verret hacked and slashed at the rioters swarming over him, unable for the moment to go to his comrade’s aid. He mowed down a snarling grandmother and found himself facing the tough guy. The brawler slapped his fists together and spread his arms to grapple with the guardsman. Jacin stabbed him quickly in the chest. Planting one boot on the big man’s stomach, Verret kicked him off the sword and spun to hamstring another.
“Where are the others?” he shouted back to Rebley, who had managed to stun one of his tiny assailants with a vicious blow to the head with the hilt of his sword.
“Dead,” Rebley said through clenched teeth, seizing the other child by the throat with his off hand. Squeezing and choking the boy, he slowly forced the child away from him. A vicious flurry of stabbing icepicks pinged against his gauntleted wrist. “But the emperor’s mobilized the Tophylax Emperia!”
“Reinforcements?” shouted Jacin Verret in a daze, chopping downward with his sword held in both hands. The blade buried itself three inches into the skull of a portly innkeeper. The innkeeper’s eyes rolled up in their sockets as blood waterfalled down his nose. The flour-crusted rolling pin fell from his hand, and when Jacin wrenched the blade free the portly man crumpled. Jacin spun to face the remaining three attackers with renewed hope.
No matter how many of the peasants stood against them, the Tophylax Emperia would put an end to the lawlessness. All Jacin had to do was stay alive until they did.
“Not likely, mate,” Rebley said with a snarl, viciously twisting his gripping hand and snapping the small child’s neck. He tossed the body away and limped forward to stand with Verret against the portly innkeeper’s three sons, all armed with heavy fire place tools. “Word is their orders is to pacify the Noble District. Ain’t nothing been said about the rest of the city. We're on our own out here. Faugh! Just kill‘em all until one of‘em gets you, mate!”
Verret swung his sword, knocking the iron fire poker ringing from one man’s hands. But his newborn sense of hope died in that instant, and he faltered on the follow up killing thrust. The innkeeper’s son dodged aside and dove to reclaim his weapon.
It figured, thought Verret. The emperor had abandoned this city a long time ago when he relocated his palace beyond the walls. What would he care if the mob tore it down brick by brick? No one could ever touch the eternal emperor, secure in his palace and guarded by the invincible Tophylax Emperia. He might deign to shelter his archons, but the rest of Solstice could burn.
Jacin Verret lost more than hope in that moment. He lost the final shred of belief that had once prompted him to join the City Watch. Why should he bleed and die for an empire that cared nothing for even its loyal citizens? Why should he stand for a system that wouldn’t stand for him?
The decision was made before Jacin Verret was even aware of it. Stepping back with one foot, Verret changed his stance. Rebely had barely a heartbeat’s time to register the new threat before Jacin skewered his former comrade. Wrenching the sword free, he shoved Rebley down and away with all his strength before jumping back three quick steps. He brought the blade to a guard position, slanting across his chest, and eyed the innkeeper’s sons warily.
“Hold!” he cried. “Hold! I won’t attack you if you leave me be. I'll even fight beside you if you'll let me. I'm with you!”
“You killed our da!” shouted the youngest son, about fifteen. He held a lead-bladed fire shovel, gripping its iron handle in both white-knuckled hands. His eldest brother spit on the ground to emphasize the lad’s words.
“No mercy, Suncloak!” added the middle brother, who carried the iron fire tongs.
“He’d've killed me,” shouted Verret. “And I'll kill all of you if you try the same. Turn away and I won’t pursue you.”
He could see they wouldn’t listen. Tiredly, Verret struck the three lads with the broad side of his sword, knocking them out. When it was done, he reached up slowly to the clasps holding his cloak in place about his shoulders. Undoing the clasps, he let the golden fabric float down to the ground. He didn’t look back as he strode away, sword held ever at the ready.
***
Hot blood trickled into her eye, stinging and half-blinding her. Kal reached up to wipe the blood away, and another invisible blow slammed into her from the side. She was lifted off the ground and hurled against the far wall of the corridor. Rez was a blurry silhouette advancing on her from the mezzanine balcony.
She was bleeding from a dozen other small cuts, and her entire body felt like one giant bruise. At least one of her ribs was broken, and Kal was pretty sure it had punctured her lung when she hit the wall. Sharp pain exploded in her chest and when she breathed the air turned to pure fire.
She still had the wooden dagger. She still had Shel’s talisman.
Trembling from more than the severity of her injuries, Kal lifted up the carved dagger and held it with both hands. She pointed the tip at Rez, a
dozen feet away and closing the distance rapidly. He threw up a hand, and solidifying bands of air picked her up and held her pinned against the wall. Invisible fingers grasped and tugged at her wrists and fingers, trying to pry the wooden knife from her grip.
Kal held on desperately, squeezing tears from her eyes to mix with the blood on her cheeks. She didn’t understand how Rez could still be alive or why he would attack her. She didn’t want to use the talisman against him. Shel hadn’t even told her what the spell would do. Kal had never thought to ask; she had never thought the other weaver could be her friend.
“Rez, please…” Her voice was cracked and strained, and she felt the first tiny bubbling of blood in her lung and airway. He’d already killed her. She wasn’t pleading for her life; she was begging him to stop, begging him not to make her use the talisman. Rez kept coming, his lips twisted up in an awful sneer. He lifted his other hand and though Kal couldn’t see the invisible pattern of his energy, she knew he was weaving his killstroke.
“You're beaten,” said Rez in a low, growling voice that Kal barely recognized as his. It was a flat, emotionless rasp that hardly sounded like Rez at all. “Look at you, holding your toy knife and begging for mercy. All over the District, your comrades are being slaughtered. Thorne is dealing with Shel as easily as you might swat a fly. Tell me, worm, what did you hope to accomplish here today?”
“Justice,” answered Kal in a keening wail of mourning. There was a blinding flash of light at the tip of the midnight wood talisman. Kal dropped to the floor instantly, the bands of air holding her up winking out of existence. Rez howled in pain and surprise as he tumbled backwards and tripped to the floor.
Kal’s breath was stolen by her impact on the floor. She struggled to suck in another breath, the pain in her lung nearly forcing her to pass out. But she managed to push herself up enough to peer over at Rez where he was picking himself up. He was alive.
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