Moon's Artifice

by Tom Lloyd

  So far, so good. Now we just have to hope Jehq doesn’t kill Irato as soon as he recognises him.

  Enchei touched his fingers to the contents of the bag on his back. Inside was the mace-like object the goshe had used to blank out the light in Narin’s rooms, hastily repaired.

  Got a little surprise for you, Father, Enchei said inwardly, trust me – you won’t like it, but by then it’ll be too bloody late.

  Chapter 28

  To be a hero in the Lesser Empire is an unenviable thing. Many aspire to such a status, but few truly attain it and fewer still survive it. First into the breach in battle and targeted by younger warriors in duels, glorious retirement is rarely an option. A sensible man would not wish for such a thing, but bravery and sense are rare companions.

  From A History by Ayel Sorote

  A levelled crossbow met Irato at the door. With an effort, the renegade goshe did nothing, merely looked forward and waited for the other man to make his decision. In those few heartbeats he felt a sudden liberation, a clarity of mind as the fog of uncertainty and loss parted. Here there was only the moment, the pivot around which his death or salvation would turn.

  ‘Unfuckingbelievable,’ the tall man at the door growled. ‘I should kill you where you stand.’

  ‘Probably,’ Irato agreed. ‘Not your call though, is it ?’

  He had no idea who the man was even once he’d slipped off his black mask. Long curls of brown hair framed a pale, fleshy face. Irato couldn’t guess the man’s heritage, maybe somewhere in the remote east, Houses Raven or Ghost, but his accent was local.

  ‘You search him ?’ the man snapped at Irato’s trailing attendants. He peered forward at them and scowled. ‘Of course not, you just did what he told you. Do it, now !’

  Irato didn’t resist as he was grabbed and pushed against the jamb, three pairs of hands swiftly removing what weapons he carried.

  ‘Bind his hands,’ the man continued, tossing forward a knotted cord while keeping his crossbow pointed at Irato’s face.

  This was done quickly and only then was he admitted to a dark hallway, lit solely with what illumination crept through an archway at the far end.

  ‘Move. Try anything and I’ll not bother showing you to the Elders first.’

  Irato complied and walked as directed, keen to be inside and face to face with his former comrades. Through open doorways he saw bodies, dozens upon dozens on every spare piece of ground available. The hundreds of fever-struck citizens, minds sacrificed to the God these goshe were trying to bring into being.

  ‘Just leaving them there like dead meat ?’ he asked, catching a glancing blow around the head for his troubles. Irato staggered a few steps before recovering himself, his unnatural resilience stretched by a steel pommel or cosh.

  ‘They’ll survive the night, long enough for us to reach all the goshe across the Empire. You, on the other hand, won’t be so lucky.’

  ‘You reckon ?’

  Another blow dropped him to one knee. Irato blinked away the stars that danced at the corners of his eyes and slowly forced himself upright again. From what Kesh had said, his old self was an arrogant man who’d not keep quiet even with a blade at his throat. To Irato’s surprise, the role wasn’t so hard to play as he’d expected.

  ‘Shut up and move.’

  ‘I’m going,’ Irato said, lurching forward before he found his balance again. ‘It’s Jehq I’m here to see anyway, not his pets.’

  There was an intake of breath, but the elite behind him was no fool and could tell when he was being needled. The man didn’t reply, but nor did he strike Irato again. Irato knew he was strong enough to stave in a man’s skull if he got careless out of anger. Killing a traitor while he tried something was easily explained to the man in charge, they’d be naturally suspicious of his presence. Cracking that same traitor’s skull out of irritation while taking him to be interrogated however … Well, that wasn’t the thinking of a man likely to share much of his master’s successes.

  At last they came to a candle-lit hall. Great brass stands flanked an inner ring of pillars, gleaming in the light, while candles shone from every alcove around the outer wall. He glimpsed more bodies through one open doorway – clearly they were not standing on ceremony, despite what they were doing in the centre of the room. With their souls and minds lost, or given over to the God that would inhabit them, he guessed they’d be invalids at best – living corpses at worst – but the goshe would need them alive for certain.

  A stuttering flurry of oaths and curses heralded Irato’s arrival in the hall. Despite himself and the prospect of death, he felt a quickening in his stomach at the alarm his presence had sparked. Unknown faces advanced towards him, some with weapons half-raised until older faces shouted for them to stop. It took a few moments for the senior goshe to restore order within the ranks, but Irato wasn’t complaining as it gave Narin time to put some distance between the two of them.

  The hall was finer than he’d expected of a sanatorium ; intricate detailing on every cornice and pillar, a geometric mosaic on the floor and the black central dome painted with constellations of both the Gods and the lesser stars. The greater stars were silver studs, connected by stylised lines, while the lesser constellations were also faintly described, but dominating it all was the great silver moon at the very peak, detailed with concentric bands of script he couldn’t make out.

  To his left was a wide stairway that led up to the open air, while he guessed the three largest iron-banded doors led to the sanatorium wards. Narin had said this was where the city’s lunatics ended up – or at least the poor majority of them, given that high-caste patients were mostly treated at a smaller version in the city. Irato only knew that any such knowledge was lost in the black hole of his mind, which he guessed meant he’d visited this place often.

  Somehow, the poison, Moon’s Artifice, had separated out parts of his mind – stripping out his memories but leaving the more remote details. He knew the history of the Empire, the Ten Day War and how the smugglers of the Horn Coast plied their trade, but the existence of anything on this small island escaped him entirely.

  There were guards lining the walls, half in cloth masks, he was glad to note. Narin would be able to blend in easily enough ; the faces on view showed half a dozen descents so it was unlikely they all knew each other. There was a clear differentiation between the elite around the inner pillars and the goshe standing guard beyond that. The regulars hadn’t reacted at all to Irato’s presence, just a docile noting of the reaction he inspired in the various elites and elders presiding over the ritual in the centre.

  There, a bluish-grey object a little smaller than a man’s leg stood in a wrought-iron stand – irregular crystal shards set into its body which glowed with fitful light. A balding man with grey, lined cheeks and liverspots on his hands knelt before it, forehead pressed against the largest shard.

  ‘So our errant son returns,’ declared a slim, white-haired man, advancing ahead of a gaggle of goshe elders. ‘A little late for redemption, don’t you think, Irato ?’

  ‘Never too late – isn’t that what the priests say ?’

  Jehq, or so Irato presumed, cocked his head to one side. ‘Not many, no. I don’t remember you being an attendant at Pilgrim’s or Pity’s temple anyway.’

  Irato shrugged, happy to keep the man talking. He could see the curiosity in the man’s greyish cheeks and guessed he could play this out a little longer. ‘I’ll take your word for it, just sounds like something a priest would say.’

  ‘Jehq !’ snapped one of the elders behind, a woman with a ruddy face and thick arms whose sleeves had been rolled up to reveal five or six long scars. Defensive wounds, Irato assumed.

  ‘You’re wasting time. He’s obviously here as a ruse.’

  ‘You didn’t capture him, Sho ?’

  The elite with the crossbow shook his head. ‘Man just walked in with a few guards acting attendants. Guess you didn’t think about trait-ors when you made that Command B
lessing,’ he added with a hint of black humour in his voice.

  ‘I suppose not,’ Jehq mused.

  ‘Sho, kill him,’ the woman barked.

  Irato felt a prickle on the back of his neck, but couldn’t tell whether it was his imagination or the cold tip of a quarrel.

  ‘You let your bitch talk for you ?’ he said to Jehq hastily, trying to delay matters long enough.

  Jehq smiled thinly as the bitch advanced past him and wasted no time in planting a firm knee into Irato’s groin. Her strength was remarkable and Irato’s effort to twist sideways did little good, the impact almost lifting him from his feet.

  He dropped, gasping at the blow and feeling the tremble of sickening pain rumble swiftly along behind it. In moments Irato’s stomach was cramped with bands of hot iron tightening around him. His involuntary cry was a strangled and muted thing ; it was only the shooting pain that garbled the woman’s words as she bent low over him.

  ‘Just for that, I won’t kill you. Tonight of all nights, we shouldn’t be wasting bodies so you get to go the same way as the fever-born. Hear me, Irato ? I’m going to strip out that mind of yours, take all the words away from your big mouth. You’ll live out the rest of your days in a cell here, shitting the bed while I use your mind in your place.’

  She stood again. ‘Bring him.’

  The elite, Sho, gave an amused grunt and handed his crossbow to one of the goshe guards. Drawing a dagger, he touched it to Irato’s throat and dragged the renegade, one-handed, by the collar into the centre of the room. Just as they reached the limp bodies of several old men and woman, Irato convulsed and spewed his guts up over the floor as the sickening pain in his guts was exacerbated by the movement.

  He lay face down for a moment, panting to catch his breath with his head propped against the cooling body of a plump, middle-aged woman. Only then did the demons in his mind dull the pain in his balls to a level he could tolerate.

  Out of the corner of his eye he watched the woman stalk around him just as the man kneeling before the artefact fell back, lifeless. She shoved the body carelessly out of her way and tugged the crystal-studded artefact from its holder, brandishing it like a mace as she advanced on Irato.

  ‘You go first,’ Irato suggested in a hoarse voice, angling his body around in an attempt to get to his knees. ‘Think I’ll pass on it entirely. Lost the taste for grand delusions.’

  ‘Delusions ?’ That seemed to throw her for a moment, but she was not a woman to be surprised for long. ‘I’d ask what happened to you to change your mind, but I’d be wasting time and I really don’t care that much.’

  Without ceremony, she raised the artefact as though it was a javelin to be hurled and carelessly drove it against Irato’s forehead. The impact rocked him back, but instead of being knocked over backwards Irato felt his head clamped against the artefact by some invisible force. Almost instantly, the end of the artefact became hot against his skin. He felt a moment of pure blank terror inside just before his ears began to echo with the high, savage cries of the demons inside his mind.

  In the next moment everything went perfectly black.

  *

  Weapons were out before anyone knew what was happening. The stuttered moment of complete darkness made most of the goshe freeze, but not all. Sho’s dagger slashed toward where Irato had been while he drew a second knife, but the edge caught nothing. In the next heartbeat his Starsight blossomed into life and the hall reappeared in his mind – a shade etching both detailed and beautiful. Before he could move, the white etched lines seemed to shudder and wrench before his eyes. Sho staggered, hands to his eyes as he fought the urge to puke or drop to his knees. His Starsight stuttered, dimmed then reasserted itself and finally he found his bearings again.

  The artefact was a blazing light ahead of him. Irato had somehow got his hands free and was wrestling with Mother Terail over it. Before Sho could close the ground between them Irato wrenched Terail off-balance and slammed an elbow down into her eye. Terail shrieked and fell, whereupon Irato darted out of the way of Sho’s slash and yanked a long-knife from the belt of a blinded guard.

  Sho took a step towards the man, about to attack, when pain exploded in his side. He was thrown off balance and stumbled over the howling figure of Mother Terail, barely stopping himself from falling. Dazed, Sho looked down at his side and saw the black mess of blood leaking out of a neat tear in the cloth – all neatly detailed in white and grey by his Starsight.

  Behind him, sword in hand, was a masked goshe, while to Sho’s complete astonishment a Darkness Sceptre swung crazily above the man’s head from an upper window. The sceptre was a black tear in the tapestry of his Starsight, but clearly damaged – the darkness sputtering fitfully as it blurred the neat white outlines around it.

  Irato has allies ? How many traitors are there ?

  The goshe who’d stabbed him took advantage of Sho’s astonishment to kick him in the ribs and drive him into the nearby pillar. The pain worsened and Sho’s legs buckled underneath him.

  Sho tried to stand, legs treacherous beneath him, as Irato tossed the artefact to his conspirator. The tall figure of Father Olos hurled himself at the man, a corona of spitting light surrounding his reaching hands. Somehow the goshe managed to avoid him, twisted improbably around and out of Olos’ hands as the Father overbalanced and stumbled. The goshe whipped his sword across the man’s head in an artless swipe, but hard enough to crack the Father’s skull and drop him.

  The goshe sheathed his sword and wrapped a piece of cloth around the artefact, blanking out its light before he slipped it into some sort of quiver. Sho watched this happen with an increasing sense of detachment. His side was numb now, his fingers cold. Irato put his long-knife to work as another of the Elders made for the masked goshe. Dangerous though they were, each seemed to move as though drunk, flailing for the burly Detenii while he ducked and sliced with impunity.

  Sho sank back, defeated by the seeping chill. Eyelids drooping, sight dimming, he watched the masked goshe sprint for the door. Those in his path swung wildly for him, some blows seeming to connect but having as little effect as the efforts of the Elders. Behind him went Irato, dragging the blinded guards into the path of the Elders and making for the stair to the balcony. Causing chaos while his conspirator fled, Irato selflessly brought the wrath of the goshe onto himself as he made for the upper floor.

  The darkness was almost complete around Sho now. His thoughts moved as slowly as the reeling Elders and goshe, but even as he sank into unconsciousness a question lingered in some small part of his mind.

  Why ?

  Irato wasn’t a man to sacrifice himself. Irato wasn’t the sort to cover some stranger’s escape, and the masked goshe was no Detenii – that much Sho could see. They were a tight-knit group built over years and betraying that wouldn’t be for selfless reasons.

  Why then ? What did I miss ?

  The darkness took him before any answers came.

  Narin ran without thought. The quiver slapped and rattled on his back, the only thing that was real in the grey murk of outside. In the vague distance there came dulled sounds and diffuse lights – nothing he could make sense of and he had no time to try. A clatter at the open sanatorium gate behind him turned into the heavy tramp of boots in pursuit – not slowing to check on the guards Narin had surprised there. Angry shouts echoed off the high outer wall as they fanned out, his small head-start enough to let the fog swallow him up.

  Clumps of grass seemed to leap up at his knees out of the dark. He careened around them as best as he could without slowing, but skidded off the side of one and his foot went from underneath him. As he thumped down onto his side, the bruising from his torture seemed to burst into life again. The impact drove the air from his lungs and for a moment his vision went white with pain.

  It was the chill and damp touch of mud against his skin that brought his senses back. He used his sword to push himself up, leaning on it like an old man before fear overrode the hot flowers of pa
in in his muscles. He pushed forward, lurching wildly until he caught his balance, but then he stopped.

  Narin looked left and right. In the tumble he wasn’t sure if he was facing in the right direction any more. There were no stars or features of the land to guide him, nothing but that damned fog hiding everything from sight.

  He took a hesitant step forward, deciding to go straight and hope he’d not got turned too far around. In the next moment a dark shape loomed out of the fog, a goshe with a long black scarf wound around his face. The goshe stopped in surprise as he saw Narin and the two looked each other up and down. The other was taller than he, broader too and for a moment Narin felt Irato’s name form on his lips. Then he realised the man carried a curve-bladed spear and just as the goshe began to say something Narin lunged forward with his sword.

  It was an awkward thrust, but the sword slid easily enough into the goshe’s chest. The goshe gave a wheeze, something between disbelief and agony. Narin hesitated, arm extended, as the spear dropped from the man’s grip. The goshe looked down at the steel in his chest and staggered back, drawing himself off Narin’s blade, knees buckling as he began to wail piteously and clasped his hands to the blood flowing from the wound.

  Narin watched the man’s pain in horrified fascination. It had happened so quietly, so smoothly, that he froze at the sight of a man dying before him. Then the goshe flopped sideways, one hand out to break his fall and somehow keeping upright as the fear and panic in his voice increased. That spurred Narin into action again and he chopped down at the goshe’s neck with all the force he could muster.

  He felt the blade snap bone and plough on through. The dying man spasmed and went still, the blade caught deep in his body. Narin wrenched it back out again and stood looking down at the ruined mess of meat that had so recently been a man. His breathing was ragged and pained for a long moment of silence as revulsion welled up inside him.