The Malmillard Codex

by K. G. McAbee

  "What delights I shall enjoy with this body, my sister," said Valaren. "What spirits I shall crush, what souls I shall abuse. I will be greater—far, far greater—than ever before."

  "We must finish the spell before you are all these things, my brother," Isole said. She had remained by the stone table that held Madryn imprisoned on its surface, and now she bent down to collect the tiny onyx bowls, each almost full of its burden of ruby blood.

  Isole scooped the thimble-sized containers up on one bony hand.

  "As usual, I see, I must do all the work while you have all the pleasure," Isole continued, her voice harsh and irritated and cold, so cold.

  She set the four bowls in a square pattern on the top of a carved, slender, three-legged stool that sat before the single open window, tweaking them until she was satisfied with their position.

  "Bring him here, brother," Isole ordered. "Your blood must mingle with his for the transference to be properly accomplished."

  Valaren laid a shaking, palsied hand on Val's unresponsive arm and gave him a slight tug towards the window and his sister.

  Val took one step and was still.

  "Come along, brother," snapped Isole; she tapped impatient fingers against the top of the stool. "See, the first star has already taken its place in the sky. Soon it will be the time of the change, and we must be ready to grasp that arcane power while we may."

  Madryn twisted and pulled against the unforgiving iron about her wrists.

  "Valerik. Valerik!" she called, her voice frantic as she too saw a single bright star peering in at the window. "Valerik, hear me, please."

  Isole reached for a tiny lancet that lay as a page marker across an open book that rested on the windowsill. Holding the sharp instrument between two ivory fingers, she leaned over to read from the exposed page, her thin lips moving silently as she repeated certain words to herself.

  Valaren prodded Val's unresponsive body a second time. Again, the ensorcelled body made a single step.

  Another prod.

  A single step.

  A prod.

  A step.

  At last, a blank-eyed Val stood just in front of the small stool, whereon sat four black bowls with their weight of scarlet fluid.

  Isole looked up from her studies and grinned in appreciation at the husky, massive body that towered over even her great height.

  Madryn twisted against the cruel, cold metal, then saw with a sinking heart another star blink into existence outside the window, beside its sibling. The ruddy sky was darkening perceptibly, taking on an indigo tinge. It would darken to black in less that a score of minutes, she calculated, as each star blazed forth, each opening the way for its succeeding brethren.

  But there was something strange about the twinkling stars, something Madryn had not seen during that last, horrid, painful night she had spent chained to this table.

  What was it?

  "Valerik," Madryn called, her voice a frenzied plea.

  Isole seized a filthy rag stained with ominous ochre tints, then stepped to the table where Madryn was bound.

  "Keep quiet," hissed the pale woman. She stuffed the rag hard into Madryn's mouth. "It will be our turn soon enough."

  "Oh, I don't think so," squeaked a familiar squeaky voice.

  Madryn wrenched her head from side to side, trying to expel the noisome rag, trying to see around the skeletal figure that blocked her view of the doorway.

  The doorway from which a familiar squeak had just come.

  But Isole was frozen in place and, try as she would, Madryn could see nothing past the woman's thin but elongated form. The stinking rag sickened her, and she could feel the bile rising up her throat, threatening to gag and strangle her.

  Madryn swallowed it down. Not now; she didn't have time to choke to death just now.

  For that was Garet's voice. She recognized it now, even from those five words, even in this hideous place where he should never be.

  But how? Why? Didn't the little simpleton know that these two would slaughter him, as swiftly and thoughtlessly as an insect squashed beneath a boot?

  Madryn struggled to fight down her terror—even as a tiny whisper of hope struggled up from deep inside her.

  A hope that she knew must be—had to be—false.

  "I told you I did not like the smell of him, my sister," whined Valaren as he shuffled away from the solid form of the enslaved Val to stand beside his towering sister. "See. I told you so."

  "Be quiet, you fool," snapped Isole. Her bony hands were clasped behind her narrow back—and the tiny sliver of sharp-edged lancet twinkled between thumb and finger.

  Madryn flung her head back and forth, trying to dislodge the malodorous rag that threatened to cut off all air to her laboring lungs.

  "So," said Isole in a sibilant whisper, "our other visitor has decided to make his appearance."

  Madryn stopped her struggles for a brief instant, listening, listening. She heard the patter of small feet against cold stone floor. She strained to see around the unholy siblings that blocked her view, her tongue working against the mass in her mouth.

  A further patter of feet, and at last Madryn could see…

  Garet, standing close enough to Val's unresponsive figure to lay a hand on his rock-hard chest. Garet, his shorn head jutting out on its skinny neck from his overlarge tunic and jerkin, his baggy breeches cinched tight with a bit of rope, a flash of dirty toes showing through the end of a battered boot, standing quite at his ease in this frightful, frigid room. The boy would have been a figure of fun in any other circumstances.

  But here, now, he looked to Madryn every inch a savior.

  Though what this scrawny boy could do, she had no idea.

  "The Malmillard have decided to take a hand at last, I see." Isole's words amazed Madryn to the very depths of her frightened soul. "To what do we owe the honor of this visit, wizardling?"

  "We have waited, as we always do, until the proper time, Isole," said Garet, his usual squeak miraculously in abeyance. "It is our way, after all. As you, above all others should know full well."

  Garet raised a hand and laid three dirty fingertips against Val's rigid belly.

  A tremor went through that stolid form. If Madryn had been gazing into Val's dull black eyes, she would have seen a startled look flash across them, like lightning imprisoned in a bottle…only to die away like a snuffed candle.

  But Madryn could not see that faint look.

  "You forget, I was cast out from your august assemblage," Isole snapped, her gaunt face creased into a snarling mask. "I was not deemed worthy to be counted among your members."

  Garet laughed. "No, you weren't, were you?" he agreed. "Never will be, neither, with your shoddy tricks and cheap spells. You and your useless brother have been thorns in our sides for too long, Isole. It is not the Malmillard way to interfere with ordinary folk, nor with those who use their powers for good. But you and Valaren Starseeker, who feed your own weaknesses off the weaknesses of others—your time has passed."

  Isole stalked forward, her hands still behind her back, out of Garet's sight. She stopped in front of the dirty boy—the dirty boy who was so much more than he seemed—her towering form dwarfing his minute frame. She glared down at him, her fiery eyes throwing out palpable sparks in the icy room.

  "Do you think you have the power, little man, to harm me or my brother? Here, in our homeland? Here, where our illustrious father still resides?"

  "Ah, yes, why so he does," said Garet with a grin, his head crooked to one side as he gazed up, up into her stormy face. "He still resides here—in the stony form to which your pride, your ignorance—your bungling condemned him. Your poor father…frozen into an idol that weeps endless obsidian tears."

  Isole glared down at Garet's unassuming form, her red eyes snapping and crackling in ire. "He deserved it," she snarled. "He tried to keep me from my dearest brother."

  "How did your father do that?" Garet asked as he cast a wondering gaze at her skeletal form.
"Oh, yes, I remember now! By making you so ugly that Valaren was forced to another world for the release of his desires, wasn't it? Is that not the real reason Valaren left you here, while he departed to the warmth of that other world beyond the portal—to slake his hungers while he grew in wickedness with the ready assistance of so many, many others?"

  The gag was loosening in Madryn's mouth, driven out by her pressing tongue. Her hands twisted inside the iron manacles as her eyes flicked from one to the other of the two who argued in the center of the room—Isole, enraged, her hands still toying with the sharp-edged lancet behind her back—Garet, looking cheerful, happy and completely at home—and the other two who waited with her for the argument to end. Val's frozen form still stood, unmoving and silent; Valaren waited impatiently by the open window, his eyes locked on the wrangling pair, his drooling mouth stretched into a glassy, expectant smile.

  Outside in the darkening sky another star winked into glittering life.

  "Enough of your insults," said Isole, as if the star had announced its appearance with a shout, "we have no time for this now. Brother?"

  Valaren shuffled forward. Pallid fingers reached for Val's unresponsive hand, seized it, and pulled the rigid figure toward the carved stool that held the onyx bowls full of Madryn's blood.

  "I'm glad you're here, Malmillard-spawn," said Isole as she smiled down at Garet. "Your words cannot anger me any longer. You may see how my power has grown, and then take word of them back to your jealous brethren. Watch, watch, weakling, while the bloods of four mingle and interchange…watch while the transitional powers of this land, our home, are harnessed and contained…watch, little fool, while two die… and two more become whole again."

  Isole's voice had taken on arcane and hideous cadences as she glared with bloody eyes at the short form that stood so calmly before her.

  Outside the window, another star opened its glittering eye and peered down with amused interest at the tableau.

  Six left, Madryn thought desperately. Six more, and the portal will open…and we will all die.

  Garet grinned. "Very impressive, Isole. What's your next trick, pulling a rabbit from a jug?"

  Isole flung her long arms over her head. They stretched, lengths of bone only lightly covered with pale skin, up toward the high arched ceiling. One had had its fingers outspread, and tiny sparks crackled in the spaces between the fingers. The other was closed in a tight fist, with a blue nimbus enclosing it.

  Madryn knew what was hidden inside that glowing, milky fist. She worked harder against the gag that kept her from shouting a warning to Garet.

  Valaren positioned Val's unresponsive body to one side of the stool, and took his own place opposite. The onyx bowls, their ruddy contents shimmering in starlight, bubbled and smoked in response to the great forces released in the room. Cold winds whipped about the upper levels of the study, danced across the floor, birthing minute whirlwinds of choking gray dust.

  "Now you will see what you and your proud members expelled from their coven," Isole shouted.

  Madryn, at last, spat out the gag.

  "Garet," she shouted, her voice hoarse and rough, "she has a blade!"

  Garet looked up and a wide-eyed expression of surprise and shock spread across his grimy face. Even as he gazed upward, the tiny lancet plunged toward his unprotected heart.

  Madryn held her breath as the tiny, gleaming point sped along its short journey, its tender destination a beating, living heart.

  Garet flung up a hand, mouthed three words, and the downward path of the silvery sliver slowed.

  Slowed, but did not desist. Still, his spell gave Garet enough time to jerk aside. The descending blade slashed across his ragged shirt, slicing through the flimsy cloth like a razor.

  A thin stream of blood began to seep into the dirty linen.

  "There is entirely too much blood in this place," Garet said crossly as he fingered his ruined shirt. "I've had quite enough of it."

  With a negligent wave of one small hand, Garet turned…and pattered out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  "A coward, like all his kind." Isole sneered as she watched the door slam behind Garet's departing figure. Then she cast a quick look out the window.

  Ten stars shone within that frame.

  "Come, Valaren, we have but little time left to us," Isole said. "Get the woman, and I shall bleed your new body to gain nourishment for my spells."

  Valaren hobbled to the table where Madryn was sprawled. With a wave of one trembling hand all the manacles fell away, with a rattling clank of chain, onto the stone floor. Valaren seized a handful of Madryn's hair and jerked her, with unexpected strength, off the table.

  Madryn fell to hands and knees on the cold, hard floor. She tried to rise, but weakness overcame her. With a hand still entangled in her tawny hair, Valaren gave a yank and began to drag her toward the tableau before the window.

  "Hurry, brother," snapped Isole. "Two more stars and the portal opens. Then, the powers for transference will be at their greatest. Hurry, brother!"

  "I'm trying my best," whined Valaren as he tugged and pulled at the kneeling Madryn.

  "Here, let me show you how to handle the bitch," snarled Isole. She reached out and slashed the lancet across the frozen Val's wrist. At once, a thin trickle of ruby blood began to seep from it, to fall into one of the onyx bowls over which Isole held his hand. "I'll cut his throat next if you don't move!" she warned Madryn.

  "Not my beautiful new body, sister," pleaded Valaren.

  "Fool," snapped Isole. With a satisfied sneer at Madryn scrambling forward on hands and knees, Isole continued, "See, brother, how she moves now? Even now, so close to both their deaths, she cannot see him harmed."

  A shiver, almost unnoticeable, went through Val's placid form…even as his blood dripped into an onyx bowl, its contents simmering and bubbling.

  "What a pity we cannot keep the merest bit of her alive, sister," said Valaren as he shuffled after Madryn. "What a sweet revenge, to realize that she herself condemned her lover to eternal enslavement."

  "Sweet indeed, brother. But we dare not chance it, not if I'm to acquire her body as you do the slave's. Surely, it will be sweet enough to watch the last remnants of him die as you enter his body and take it for your own?"

  Madryn used Val's stiff form to pull to her feet. She stood at last by his side, her hand tight about his arm, her body pushed as close against him as she could force it.

  Was that an answering movement? A sudden hope sprang up in her heart. Was that a soft reply to her hand upon his own?

  No. It could not be…and even if it was a response, it had come far, far too late.

  The twelfth star winked beside its brothers outside the window.

  Madryn would give her last remaining breath to see Val look at her once more with recognition in his eyes.

  Not that her last breath was a great deal to offer—considering how very few that they both had left.

  Madryn calculated the distance to the window, and kept her hand tight on Val's arm…

  Isole reached out one long, bony arm and slashed the lancet across her own palm. She moved the bloody hand in a careful pattern, muttering words of power beneath her breath.

  One lazy drop of her dark, thick blood fell into each tiny onyx bowl.

  "Now you, dearest brother," Isole commanded.

  Valaren held out a shaking arm, winced and gave a soft mewling sound as the icy blade carved into a vein.

  A stream of sluggish crimson trickled into bowl after bowl.

  "Now, brother, take the hand of your new body," ordered Isole, her voice a screech that battled with the rising winds that whipped about them.

  Valaren seized Val's other hand in both his own and held on for dear life.

  Precisely what he is holding onto, Madryn thought hazily; the cacophony increased as she took a small step toward the window, Val's other hand still tight in her own.

  The mixture of the four bloods in their minuscul
e containers spat and sizzled. Isole chanted, her voice growing louder and louder in competition with the howling winds.

  And Madryn took another short step toward the gaping opening that looked down, down, to the sharp rocks far below.

  A murky miasma, redder than the brightest blood, began to seep from the onyx bowls, rising in sluggish menace—just as the thirteenth star opened its bright eye and spread its jagged rays to join its brothers in rough formation.

  "The time! The time is here!" shouted Isole.

  The ice-pale woman reached across the bubbling, roiling, rising mist and seized Madryn's arm.

  A tempest, far greater than the fierce but contained winds that already circled the chamber, blew in through the wide window. The storm blew the tiny onyx bowls over, and their ruby contents leaked out onto the carved stool.

  A brilliant flash of light seared Madryn's eyes. She groped desperately for the windowsill—determined that the spell would never be complete.

  Then, she felt the flesh under her hand—Val's thickly muscled arm—grow warm and responsive, as if life itself flowed through it in a steadily increasing stream.

  Valaren's life, Madryn knew. Valaren's mind, Valaren's desires…Valaren's evil.

  But she would not let go, not until she was sure that all that was Val—was gone.

  Then she'd do her best to make sure they both died…a true death, of body and spirit and soul.

  Perhaps their spirits, Madryn thought hazily as the room twisted and spun around her, perhaps their spirits would maintain some faint and fragile contact with each other, even after a death in this horrid place.

  It was the only hope she had left.

  Madryn began to pull Val toward the window.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Garet sat on a crumbling step outside the tower study. His eyes were closed in concentration, his face tense but composed, his grimy hands clasped tightly in his lap.

  The step was the topmost of many more cracked and disintegrating steps; they snaked down into the ever-deepening darkness, down into the rank bowels of the pale tower. From the bottom of the steps echoed uncanny groans and screams.