by A J Dalton
‘Wait!’ she called urgently. ‘My bow’s stuck.’
‘Leave it!’ Saltar called back to her.
‘I can’t! It’s in front of me. Damn, I’ll have to break it. Come on, you…! Ahhh!’
‘Are you okay?’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘Yes, yes! But I think I’ve hurt myself more than this thing. At least it’s moving again. Just get me out of here! It’s like being buried alive.’
‘How much further?’ Mordius warbled in claustrophobic panic.
‘Everybody keep calm!’ Saltar ordered. ‘There are cracks of light ahead. I think the bricks are loose. We might be able to break through to somewhere. Ratboy?’
‘Yes!’ came back a faint voice. ‘There’s something above us. We’re under a floor, I reckon. But the stones are too heavy for me.’
‘Let me. Shunt forwards.’
Saltar heaved, and the giant flagstone slid aside like the lid of a coffin. They rose up into the middle of a long corridor lit by smoky torches in brackets on the walls. Panting, they scrambled out one after another, the Scourge coming last, and took the time to grab large lungfuls of air. Kate looked at her ruined crossbow and shook her head. It had been with her throughout her entire life as a Guardian. With a shrug, she threw it aside, ignoring its clatter and chatter as it careered across the stone floor.
‘Ahh! There you are,’ came a voice from behind them.
They whipped their heads round.
‘The spider!’ ratboy squeaked, and skittered and jittered into in hole in the floor.
‘Wait!’ Kate called, but it was too late.
Young Strap quickly nocked an arrow to his longbow, but he could still only kill by Saltar’s command.
The Chamberlain leaned lazily against the corridor wall. ‘For a moment, I thought you’d end up leaving it too late, but then I realised that wouldn’t be possible, hmm? Welcome home, Balthagar!’
Intrigued by this strange creature as an echo of his lost and former life, Saltar asked: ‘You know me?’
‘As well as I know anyone or anything, hmm? You and I are as old as this realm, are we not?’
‘Shoot!’ the Scourge urged Young Strap. ‘He is the living detritus and corruption of the pit.’
I-I can’t!’ Young Strap said through gritted teeth and with sweat on his brow. He shook, with his bow at full stretch, but could not overcome the aegis Saltar had placed upon him outside of Holter’s Cross.
‘How can we be so old?’ Saltar queried, extending his scythe in front of him. ‘And what did you mean that I couldn’t leave it too late?’
‘Has forgotten so much, but still wants so much!’ the Chamberlain tutted. ‘Life and death are in the balance, aren’t they? You are the only one who is both, yes? You are in the balance, hmm? The balance can only be decided with your arrival, yes? And your departure, of course! Tee-hee!’
Saltar half-expected the spindly creature to start capering around him it sounded so pleased with itself. He didn’t trust it. It was alien but familiar, like a half-remembered nightmare. He could see it sought to distract, test and manipulate him.’
‘Young Strap, shoot!’ Saltar said.
Events blurred: the arrow sped down the corridor; the Chamberlain snatched it from the air scant inches from his nose, span it round his index finger and hurled it straight back at Saltar; who in turn batted it harmlessly aside. Lucius turned backwards and forwards, but he couldn’t keep up with the speed of how it all transpired.
The Chamberlain tutted.
‘Wait!’ Saltar said unruffled. ‘What is your intent? Will you stand aside?’
‘Still wants so much! If I tried to stop you, I would fail, hmm? It is now inevitable you will face the King of this realm and contest the Heart. It all converges, yes? Stop you, I cannot, but harm your group and affect your chances of success I could, hmm? I could lay the female bare, yes? Hook out her insides before you blinked. Or break the life-strings of your musician, no? Make it so that he was only capable of a symphony of screams and groans. Make it so that he never saw his false and fickle sorceress again?’
‘I will not allow it. I will finish you.’
‘Finish me perhaps, but not before I ruined your retainers, your society, your current purpose. You would decide the entire outcome there and then. You would cause your own failure. The divine dilemma, this is, hmm? You remember the dilemma, yes?’
Saltar didn’t understand everything the Chamberlain said but knew he was caught in a trap of sorts, or some sort of paradox, the sort of paradox perhaps that Mordius had always said was at the heart of necromantic magic. He had to be careful not to let the paradox unravel, or he too would be undone. If he forced the Chamberlain’s hand, there would inevitably be damage to his command group, meaning he would not be so well equipped to fight Voltar, and instinctively he knew he needed all of them at his side and in good health if he was to have any chance of triumph against the usurper.
‘What do you want then, spider? What is your price? What will make you stand aside?’
A gurgle of satisfaction issued from the Chamberlain’s throat. ‘My wise and clever Balthagar! A small price it is, hmm, for one from your own tribe? Simply pledge to allow me a place in this realm should you defeat the necromancer, hmm?’
‘If it’s within my power.’
‘Accepted! Our bargain is struck!’ crooned the arachnid-come-human doppelganger. ‘This moment is done. I must now go hide myself in the shadow of a future moment.’ The Chamberlain creepily extended his limbs and suddenly disappeared around the far corner of the corridor.
‘Saltar!’ the Scourge said urgently, drawing his attention back towards the other end of the corridor, where a wall of impenetrable darkness advanced steadily upon them, swallowing all in its path.
‘Run!’ Saltar shouted.
They fled after the Chamberlain, barely able to keep more than a few paces ahead of the ravening vacuum of the void.
‘Come on, Mordius!’
The necromancer whimpered, struggling to keep up with his short legs and heavy robes. ‘Just leave me!’
‘Idiot!’ Saltar chastised him. ‘If you die, I die and all is lost. Move, damn it!’
The small man strove with all he had, the divine spark in him flaring and making his lungs burn.
Round the corner was a wide corridor with no exits on offer except for a pair of large, spiky doors at the end. They stood open like the maw of a hungry beast. There was no sign of the Chamberlain, and there was no way he could have reached the doors so quickly. Saltar ignored the impossibility of it – after all, the laws of nature hardly applied in this place anymore.
The floor stones before them began to separate and disappear. They lost their footing and fell through the doors to Voltar’s throne room in an unceremonious pile. They struggled up and then froze at the sight before them.
Voltar sat his throne on a dais at the end of the long chamber. They dimly perceived that the white sorceress sat demurely in a throne at his side and the gods Shakri and Lacrimos knelt submissively to either side of the throne, facing them. It was like looking through water. The sight of Voltar trapped the eye and remained the focus no matter where they tried to look. All light refracted towards him so that the limits of the room itself were indistinct. The companions began to lose a sense of group, each of them feeling naked and alone before the one divinity. He was the beginning and the end. He was beauty and meaning. He was will. There was only Him. He.
His lips did not move, but they all heard him. ‘Welcome. Fear not, I hold the void at bay from this place by my will. There is only this place now.’
But the void was in his eyes and it had them trapped. Saltar struggled. He struggled… to… keep a grip on his sense of self, his sense of desire and motivation. He lost his volition and stood as unmoving as a corpse. His self-awareness drained away and there was nothing left.
Someone sobbed – that much impinged on Saltar’s flickering consciousness. It was a small man curled in a
foetal position in the corner of the room by the door. He recognised the man, didn’t he? Mordius. Did he know that name?
Someone sighed and it sounded like the whisper of a heart’s final beat. It intruded into his embryonic thoughts and added to them. His consciousness swelled until he recognised the sigh as coming from Kate. And her name he definitely knew, as it was a name written across his soul.
Voltar’s eyes bored into him mercilessly, seeking to penetrate his mind and destroy it. But there was a part of the animee’s mind that none had ever been able to access, a part that he himself had not been able to unlock since being awakened by Mordius.
‘You… will not… enter! I am… Saltar!’
Voltar laughed. ‘You are nothing! Submit to me or your beloved dies. As a Guardian, she is bound to me. I can will her death in an instant.’
‘I care not! Give me the Heart! Where is it?’ Saltar choked back at him.
Voltar’s eyes narrowed. ‘I took it as my right from Harpedon. Then I placed it in the dead body of a sorceress whom I’d murdered. Do not think me cruel, for the Heart returned her to life and granted her immortality. She then betrayed me, so I was forced to take back that immortality and extinguish her soul. The woman’s body that you see sat beside me, and its Heart, are now an indivisible part of me. I am one consciousness possessing the bodies of two people. Join with my consciousness, Saltar! Kate can also be joined with us. Divine communion can be ours. The ten of us here can join as one consciousness, and that one consciousness will have ten bodies, ten avatars. We will rule the cosmos as one. We will be the one. Divine unity. Can you not feel the wonder of it? It is to live an eternal ecstasy, an infinite orgasm, to dwell in such moments of joy that they are a spiritual and physical paradise. Do you not glimpse it?’
Saltar shuddered with essential and primeval emotion. Could it be true? Would he finally have everything he’d ever desired and dreamed of? Could he give the Scourge and Kate the happiness they’d always lacked in their lives? Yes. Could he give Mordius the companionship he’d always lacked? Yes. Could he give Lucius and Young Strap the love they so desperately needed?
He pondered Lucius and Young Strap. They loved the sorceress. Would she be theirs if he acceded to communion with Voltar? How could she be? What was it Voltar had said, that he had extinguished her soul? Lucius and Young Strap would never the white sorceress again. Voltar’s lies began to unravel. The necromancer-King destroyed all those who would not allow themselves to be dominated by him. Communion was submission and the loss of individuality. Communion with Voltar was no more than the triumph of Voltar’s will.
Saltar realised that his entire quest since Mordius had reawoken him had been a quest to discover his own self. He’d sought to find out who he was when he was alive. He’d sought to have meaning and value as the awkward and animated creature he currently was. He’d sought to be a being capable of love, passion and even hatred. He’d sought to have a self. And the quest came down to that moment of realisation. This was the moment of self-assertion, the instant of becoming something… or, the alternative, disappearing into nothingness. He must articulate himself in word and deed.
It all hung in the balance. He tried to push his body forwards, to take but a small step that might tip the balance, but he could find no momentum against Voltar’s will. Through the white sorceress, Voltar controlled all things made of life and death, Shakri and Lacrimos were his pets, his court jesters, his retainers, his playthings, his servants. They could not gainsay the living necromancer-King now that their realms had been reduced to nothing more than this small room hanging in the void.
The Scourge was similarly immobile, impotent despite the rage that had defined his life. Young Strap was in a frozen crouch, his arms covering his head as if trying to fend off an assault. Kate was caught mid-step, an ugly snarl fixed on her face. Mordius was still curled up by the door. That only left Lucius, whose part in the tableau was to stare fixedly at the sorceress, a tear permanently running down his cheek and a plaintiff hand stretched out towards her.
They were trapped in a limbo and there was nothing Saltar could do unless something changed. The flows of Mordius’s magic had thickened and begun to congeal. Saltar felt his body failing, his mind slowing to all but a standstill. This was the end.
The bowl of the greater lute boomed and resonated as it the floor having fallen from Lucius’s loosened grip. The sound echoed round the throne room forcing everything in the room-sized realm to vibrate in sympathy. The elements of this realm could only respond with a harmonic that described their current shape and formative past. The vaguest of frowns creased the sorceress’s brow, almost as if she recognised the tone of the royal musician’s instrument, almost as if she were reminded of a tune she’d heard long ago that spoke of a place of freedom, self-expression and joy, a music and place that had so affected her that it had become a part of her very fabric.
The musical note caused a tremor in her and Voltar’s grip on the Heart, Shakri and Lacrimos shook infinitesimally. Mordius’s magic flowed more strongly for a length of time so short it could not be measured, but it gave Saltar impetus where there had been none before. It took him a millennium, but Saltar finally completed a step towards the throne; and his momentum was such that his next step only took a handful of decades; by the time he’d crossed half the throne room each step was taking merely a year; then a month, then a week, a day, a second. Just as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings could create a cascade effect that caused an avalanche on the slopes of a mountain half way round the world, so Lucius’s single note had tipped the balance of the cosmos.
‘No!’ Voltar said as if his word were an immutable law.
The word slapped into Saltar, rocking him back on his heels, but Saltar did not resist it. Instead, he let it bowl him over so that it would add to the size of his movement, even if that did not help him in his immediate direction. He went into a backward roll and then swirled round towards the throne with an amplified energy and speed.
Voltar realised his mistake and ordered Lacrimos and Shakri forward to defend him. The gods rose up, mindless irrationality in their eyes. Even though they were meant to be the embodiment of mortal life and death, there was nothing familiar about them. Saltar did not recognise their countenances, for they bore no resemblance to the graven images and statuary he’d seen decorating temples, palaces and coins. They had become extensions of Voltar’s will, and were corrupted by it.
Lacrimos slowly took on an increased definition and grew in size. The roof of the room disappeared like smoke and the god of death towered thirty feet above them. He wore a strangely jointed suit of armour that seemed to move and writhe of its own accord. Saltar realised that the god was clad in the ethereal bodies of the wailing dead. They were strapped tightly to the divine limbs and shrieked and cursed at the animee, since any stroke he made against them could extinguish their souls forever.
The god wielded a broadsword that was longer and thicker than Saltar’s own body. It came whistling down and Saltar only just rolled to the side in time. He swung his scythe at the god’s ankle, an ankle which was as wide and immovable as an oak tree. Souls were cut free of the god and drifted screaming into the void above them. New, howling faces appeared magically in their place – Lacrimos would have an all but inexhaustible supply of such dead spirits.
‘You are foolish, Balthagar!’ the god intoned. ‘I am the god of the dead. You cannot kill me for I am death. You should turn your attention to my sister there.’
Saltar could not help but turn his gaze towards Shakri, who seemed by far the easier target. She remained smaller in stature than Saltar, and was never anything but vulnerable as she flickered between innocent girl-child, alluring maiden and frail crone. She shook her head pleadingly and backed away as Saltar advanced menacingly.
‘Look out!’ the Scourge croaked.
Saltar only just ducked the next swing of Lacrimos’s sword. The tip of the scythe ripped open Shakri’s cheek, and all of them in t
he room cried out as they felt the pain of it, including Voltar. By contrast, Saltar felt nothing.
‘Don’t! You’ll kill us all!’ Young Strap begged.
‘On ye go, Saltar!’ the Scourge bellowed with savage glee. ‘I’ve waited my whole life for a go at these bastards. I’ll tackle the overgrown, imbecile brother while you slit that holy cow’s throat. Kate, this is when you decide where and with whom you stand.’
With that, the Scourge ran shouting age-old defiance at Lacrimos and began hewing at the god’s thighs. Lacrimos roared in agony but was too large to get the mortal out from underneath him. With every slice and chop from the Scourge’s unforgiving blade, the god diminished in size and power. The moans of the dead were awful and Lucius and Mordius tried in vain to block them out. The necromancer and the musician ended up echoing the moans themselves and rolling around on the ground with hands clapped to their bleeding ears.
‘I’m with you, Scourge!’ Young Strap called and loosed an arrow straight at Lacrimos’s chest.
The god looked up, sensing this new attack, and smiled evilly. A new face now came into being on his divine chest-plate.
‘Nooo!’ Young Strap cried as his arrow plunged into the eye of his dead friend, Nostracles, and destroyed the priest’s soul. ‘What have I done?’
The bow fell from the youthful Guardian’s hands and he fell to his knees in shock and grief. The horror of his crime divested him of his wits and reduced him to staring ahead with twitching and traumatised incomprehension.
Saltar scythed at the mother of all creation, perturbed that she put up no defence whatsoever. Plagued with misgivings and with all of his instincts screaming at him, he pulled his blow at the last second and changed it from a killing blow into one that would unstring instead. The cut was precise and left the goddess without the use of her legs. Sobbing she looked up at him from the floor, her limbs sprawled about her at unnatural angles and blood pooling around her. She was just a child. What sort of monster was he?