by Alan Baxter
Silhouette appeared to be trying to get around for a better look. With a slight shake of her head she crept along again, staying pressed to the wall. Alex could feel the Darak shard at his chest dragging at him, trying to burst free from the locket and fly up. He used his chi gung breathing again, controlled the almost overpowering urge to rush the dais. Waves of magesign rose from it, like steam from a boiling pan. Something resided up there and it filled Alex with dread.
A voice boomed out, sharp, staccato words in a tongue Alex had never heard. The worshippers leapt up as one, spinning about, their unnaturally large eyes panning left and right. Alex growled, low and angry. The time for stealth had passed.
He rushed forward, heading straight for the raised platform. As the shambling people staggered down to meet him, Silhouette shot across the room to join them.
The pale skin of the flock was damp, slick. Their mouths hung loose, the skin under their eyes sagged. They chattered with low coughs and barks, animal sounds that bore something more than simple noise, some semblance of language. Pasty hands stretched out from the depths of their patchy, stinking hide clothes, reaching for him. Some had too many fingers, some too few. Some ended in soft, rubbery stumps, wobbling with their movement. Most of the faces bore strange mutations, the mouths misshapen, some with teeth growing crookedly from cheekbones, skin distended around yellow bone. Here and there an eye socket held nothing but stretched white skin.
Alex didn’t waste any time testing their skills. He drove a hard, straight kick into the stomach of the first one. It dropped with a primal howl, to squirm in pain on the floor. It had felt soft and vulnerable under his foot. Already he was striking left and right, raining blows on the lumbering, coughing horrors, pushing his way up the steps. The book in his pocket sang with joy.
Silhouette struck across from him, helping clear his path. She moved in her cat form with a grace and agility that astounded him, seeming to fly from one victim to the next, laying waste about her. The loud, harsh voice boomed out again, frustration and anger evident.
The twenty or so worshippers swung almost randomly, trying to overwhelm Alex with weight and numbers, shambolic, but he moved with a fighter’s awareness. Wherever a gap appeared, he moved into it, striking and kicking, sweeping and throwing, creating new gaps in the swinging horde as he went. This was his place in the universe, his element. He laughed as he fought, the bloodlust empowering him, the stone lending new speed and strength, the book singing its endorsement. Silhouette’s strategic attacks assisted his passage, the two of them operating in perfect harmony, an unspoken understanding of method, always aware of exactly where the other was. Within moments all the attackers lay still or writhing in pain. Dark blood leaked from many, howls and meeps of pain and low coughs of anguish filled the smoky air.
Silhouette moved in front of him, slipping back into her normal form, fur re-forming into clothes. ‘There will be more. Where’s the stone?’
Alex looked to the top of the dais. ‘Up there. But there’s something else too.’
A sensation of raw anger and malevolence flooded from above them. Together they raced up the last few steps and gained the top. The surface sloped down, a shallow bowl of dark grey stone. In the centre of the bowl sat something huge and once human. It wallowed in rolls of its own fat. White, slick skin stretched over fold upon fold of stinking, ashen flesh. A furious face stared out under a bald head, reflecting the dim glow of the torches. Two hands waved, thick, pudgy fingers writhing and clenching. The creature howled, its anger mingled with fear. Magesign washed from it.
Immense age emanated, centuries of existence drifting off it like a smell. Alex sensed its need for worship, its anger at anything but adoration. Its shades were all colours of self-absorption, self-importance, all-encompassing narcissism. It stuttered incomprehensible words, weaving them together with its magic, its ’sign spinning out in smoky tendrils. Alex was suddenly dizzy. He wanted to sleep. Nothing seemed more important than curling up where he stood and letting deep, dark oblivion take him. He staggered, looked at Silhouette beside him. Her eyes hung heavy, almost shut. She weaved in the air, as if asleep on her feet. Alex reached for her.
‘So tired,’ she slurred. ‘It’s … bad … magic.’ Her knees folded up beneath her and she collapsed, slid down across a few steps, and lay still.
Alex ground his teeth. The book howled through every fibre of his being, the stone at his chest pulled him forward, trying to drag him into the embrace of the wallowing, corpulent horror before him. The massive thing grinned and muttered, waving its fleshy hands. Its magesign pressed him down, tried to force him to sleep.
And he could feel that this creature’s magic came from the same source as his own power. The connection between his shard and the magic attacking him was undeniable. The stone at his neck sent shockwaves through him, shaking him into action. He forced his eyes open, searching with every facet of his vision. And there he saw it, embedded in this monster, buried deep within it, a part of it. He drew power from his own source and made his arms and hands as hard as steel.
With a snarl of rage he leapt into the air and came down amid the roiling, billowing flesh of the thing and drove his fists down onto its head. Its face arched in terror for a fraction of a second, stunned that its magic hadn’t worked, before Alex’s knuckles smashed through its white, plump skull. Dark red and grey ichor burst up and, in his fury, Alex kept going. He tore into the thing, ripping its flesh apart like uncooked dough, tearing it to pieces, seeking his prize deep within its fetid body.
Its magic died with it and sudden clarity and awareness hit Alex like a physical blow. With a cry of repulsion he drove on, digging and tearing through the thing, pulling lumps of flesh and fat aside, grasping soft, weak bones and ripping them out. The stone pulsed inside, crying out to him, to his own piece. The two were desperate to be joined.
Alex stopped, mired in guts, and pulled his locket from inside his shirt. He opened it and magesign burst out like a sun exploding, hitting everything in a blinding flash of pure magic. The hidden stone rose up, drawn to its fellow. He was pulled forward as the two pieces attracted each other like powerful magnets. When they met he was thrown back by the burst of energy they created. He closed his hand around the locket as he landed on his back, winded by the impact, and slid painfully down the steps of the dais.
Released from her sleep, Silhouette ran to his side, dragged him to his feet. ‘Time to go!’ she yelled, grimacing at the state of him.
He half ran, half fell across the hall. They stumbled from the confines of the building into a bright, cold, salty day and sucked in lungsful of air. Nothing had ever felt so good to Alex as the fresh ocean cold of the outside.
Dozens of white, wide-eyed islanders staggered towards them.
Gore covered his hands and arms, splattered all over his clothes, his feet and legs mired in it. Silhouette stood beside him, trembling. ‘They’re between us and the boat,’ she said. ‘And there’s a fucking lot of them.’
The Darak pieces, still clenched in his hand, swelled with enormous magic. He had thought the shard he already had was powerful. Now it had doubled, the two merging together, exponentially increasing the strength they gave him. Pure magic coursed through him, dizzied him. He could do anything. And there was still another piece to find.
He remembered reading Welby’s element grimoire. It had seemed so incredible at the time, so outside anything in his experience. Now it seemed like child’s play. The things he’d read about in there seemed obvious. He had power now to make those things a manifest reality.
‘Hold on to something,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Hold on to something really, really tight.’
As he spoke, he wound a hand through the ropes binding one of the unfortunate skeletons to an obelisk. Silhouette, eyes betraying her unease, did the same. She locked both hands into the ropes, twisting them around her wrists, and gripped tight.
Alex held the newly enlarged ston
e aloft, drawing on the lessons of Welby’s gift. He spoke to the nature of water, understood and controlled its very essence. He sent his will out into the ocean around them and worked it like kneading clay. Letting the power of the Darak reach out, he drew the ocean up towards them, enhancing the natural swell, instructing it with steadfast, undoubting command.
Silhouette gasped as a massive wave, tens of metres high, rose up behind the island. ‘Hold your breath,’ Alex warned.
The shuffling inhabitants raised their arms, their eyes and mouths wide, as the wall of water crashed over the island. The book in Alex’s pocket throbbed in delight.
Alex locked his other hand into the ropes around the rock, praying they would hold. The water hit them with a breathtaking cold and dragged across the rocks with unstoppable force, covering everything with an icy, muffled silent rush. Time seemed to slow in an arctic green cathedral. As the wave slammed them and sucked back towards the sea, twisted bodies were carried with it, crashing and breaking against rocks and buildings. Some grabbed for handholds as they were carried along, some slammed against stone and were broken and held there. Swirling seaweed and churning white blurred past, all their cries lost in the roar of the water.
Alex’s lungs burned, desperate to take a breath. His hands threatened to give up their grip on the ropes, fighting the inexorable pull of the wave. Then it passed and he and Silhouette were alone.
Alex unwound his hands. ‘Come on!’
Silhouette freed herself, sucking in frantic breaths, and followed, shaking her head in amazement. They forced frozen feet to take step after step. Their clothes, heavy and soaked, dragged on their bodies. Through a haze of exertion and desperation they made it back to the beach, grateful beyond words to find their dinghy wedged between high rocks. They dragged it free and rowed out to the borrowed fishing boat with numb hands, teeth chattering. Silhouette started the engine as Alex drew up the anchor and they powered away from the teardrop of rock, hidden in plain sight.
As the island shrank in the distance, Silhouette locked the wheel and called Alex down below deck. ‘We need to get warm before we get hypothermia,’ she said, vibrating with shivers. ‘There should be some dry things down here, or at least blankets or towels or something.’
Alex’s body pulsated with the thrill of power even as the cold ate his bones. He trailed behind, trying to force rational thought through his frenzied mind.
They sat below deck wrapped in the fisherman’s spare clothes and ragged old blankets, huddled together for warmth. After a while Alex reached into his shirt, pulled out the locket. It was twice its previous size, misshapen like it had been melted.
He slid a thumbnail against the edge, prised the case open. It popped with a slight tink and magesign flooded out. The stone inside had grown. The fine silver banding holding it in place had stretched and warped, but still contained it. The locket and stone seemed combined into a single thing, one an integral part of the other, the leather binding melted in with them. The immense power of it coursed through him, firing every fibre. The exultation of the book was palpable. It seemed disappointed that he had survived the island, yet ecstatic at the chaos he’d caused, the deaths at his hands.
‘What did you do there?’ Silhouette asked. ‘With the sea.’
He was utterly drained. ‘Welby’s grimoire, a gift to me. I understand the elements. The book seemed so simple, but it gave me knowledge. It … imparted knowledge.’
‘Sounds potent.’
‘Must be. Water, earth, air, fire, I feel them all around, even more so now this has happened.’ He gestured with the newly altered Darak.
‘You used an incredible amount of power back there, do you realise that?’
‘Yeah. But it’s the stone.’
‘It’s you, Alex. The stone amplifies it. Most normal people would have been torn apart by what you channelled.’
‘How can something this small …?’
Silhouette smirked. ‘Size isn’t everything. It’s not the physical attributes that make an item like that powerful. It’s the magic that went into making it. Power stones like that, like Joseph’s, they don’t really occupy just the physical space you can see and touch. They direct energy through many realms. The stone itself, that’s just an anchor point. Same as the book that holds a thread of the consciousness of Uthentia. It’s just a physical fixture in this realm.’
Alex rubbed his hand across his face. ‘It feels like it’s tearing me apart. I feel like I could burst into atoms at any moment.’
‘Yet you handled it and survived.’
‘What were they?’ Alex asked.
Silhouette’s face twisted in disgust. ‘More to the point, what was that thing at the top?’
Alex closed his eyes. ‘It felt old. Centuries old. It used to be a man, I’m sure, but it had merged with that shard somehow. That was its downfall. It was so convinced its magic was unbeatable. I had the one thing that could resist it.’
‘A piece of the same,’ Silhouette said.
‘Exactly. It was used to absolute control and adoration, constantly serviced by those weird fuckers. It must have found the stone and it turned into that thing over centuries. Could that happen to me?’
‘No way,’ Silhouette said. ‘You choose how to use it. That … thing was messed up. It had some freaky personality before, I expect. Those people it kept around were horrible, inbred things, all of them kept in a closed loop for fuck knows how long. Anyone who found them got put to sleep and hung up, I’m guessing. The skeletons, remember?’
Alex shivered, with more than the cold. ‘That could have been us.’
‘It would have been me. That thing’s magic overwhelmed me in an instant.’
Alex made a wry face, gesturing with the locket. ‘Thankfully this kept me going. It felt the other part of itself and pushed me on.’
‘And then there were two. One more piece to go.’
‘Then what?’ Alex asked.
‘That’s for you to figure out, Iron Balls.’
17
Silhouette shook Alex awake. He rose from sleep reluctantly, his mind swimming up through dreams like tar. She wore her own clothes again and handed him his. ‘They’re still damp and reek of diesel, but I got them dried out a bit in the engine bay during the trip back.’
He shook himself, throwing off blankets and dressing. ‘Sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘I seem to keep falling asleep and leaving you to sort things out.’
‘You saved our lives,’ Sil said with a laugh, ‘so I don’t mind driving the boat. You feel better?’
‘I do actually.’
The throb of the stone was stronger than ever. He laid a hand over it, through his jacket. The book in his pocket howled to be read.
‘You okay?’ Silhouette asked.
Alex pulled the book out, sat heavily on the bench. He hated the thing. It was like a cancerous tumour on the outside of his body. He didn’t even understand it properly. Some thread of some entity that played with him while it tried to kill him. He didn’t want to read it, to give it any more power over him than it already had. The fact that it was a book had become irrelevant. The thing inside was his enemy and he was reluctant to give it any voice. But its urgency caused a vortex in his mind. He opened it and read, Universe layers and pools of unknown, the stone empowers. Great harmony, power of stars and oceans. More to extract, to uncover, reveal. Play on, with life, with death, with ecstasy.
He slammed it shut. ‘It hurts my fucking brain to read this!’
‘What does it say?’
‘It’s urging me on, that’s all.’
‘Sure,’ Silhouette said. ‘It could wreak incredible havoc with you, if you let it. You’re strong enough to resist. Get the power and use it to defeat whatever that really is.’
Alex threw the book away over his shoulder, knowing it wouldn’t be gone for long. ‘Who am I fucking kidding? A group of your people, the strongest of their kind, were only partially successful.
What chance do I have?’
‘Don’t doubt yourself. That’s what it wants.’
‘Whatever. Are we back?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Come on then.’
They left the boat moored in the harbour and headed for the hotel. Silhouette assured Alex the fisherman would find it all in order. ‘I even tidied the dinghy away for him.’
Alex snorted. ‘You’re all heart.’
‘You should be ecstatic, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
She stopped. ‘Can you feel your mood swings? You’re acting sour when you’ve just survived the weirdest place I’ve ever seen and gained a massive increase in strength. You should be bouncing off the walls.’
He stood still, unsure what to say. He felt bitter, absolutely miserable. He turned away, walking on. ‘I don’t actually want all this. I never did.’
‘So why did you follow Welby back in Sydney?’
There was that moment of choice again. ‘I had to leave town for a while.’
‘But you didn’t have to go with Welby.’
‘I was curious. I didn’t think we’d even get out of the country.’
‘But when you did get out of Australia, you still followed him. You got to London and you still followed him.’
Anger rose. ‘So what? I was fucking curious! I didn’t expect to get caught up in anything like this.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Welby said he could teach me more about myself. More about my vision.’
‘You might be caught up in something you don’t want, but you’re here because of something you did want. You can’t go around lamenting that things didn’t work out like you hoped. Life rarely does.’
‘This is different.’
Silhouette sneered. ‘It’s no different at all. Play the cards you’re dealt, Alex. That thing, whatever it is, is far from human. It’s beyond any of our understanding and it’s toying with you. You’re a conduit for its frustration, can’t you see that?’