“Come on – you – fat – fool,” he pants, focusing on keeping his feet moving, trying to ignore the sweat pouring down his face and the salt stinging his eyes. He wipes them with the back of his hand, blinks his vision clear.
A hooded man in dark and sodden robes blocks the exit from the alley, loitering in deepest shadow. He prays it is a magus here to help.
“There are daemons back there,” Lynas shouts. As he tries to run past, the man hooks his arm out, slams it into his throat. Lynas’ feet fly out from beneath him.
“I know,” says the man.
His back crashing to the cobbles leaves Lynas gulping for air that his stunned body can’t provide. The shadows close in around them.
“I should know,” says the hooded man, pulling a scalpel from a voluminous sleeve. “I am their master, after all.”
I hissed in pain. Magic thudded through blood and muscle whilst my mind shuddered, the vision stabbing into my head in fits and starts. Burn all daemons!
For ten long years I’d had no inkling of who hated or feared me enough to set daemons hunting me. I had assumed it had something to do my part in the death of a god. And yet, perhaps I’d been wrong all those years, for I recognized this particular shadow cat’s badly burned muzzle from where I’d dropped a blazing house on her and her mate years ago. This daemon cat I called Burn had been summoned by the Skallgrim shaman in the skull-mask, but no untrained Gifted reliant on blood sorcery could compel the allegiance of a whole pack of such powerful daemons. Whoever their real master was, they were either one of those tribal savages, or allied. But who was it, and why me?
Now that the daemons had found me I didn’t have to hold back, reduced to relying on my paltry skill with two other – and to my thoughts lesser – magics dealing with air and manipulation of the human body. Every Gift processed the flow of magic differently, offering certain innate talents, and my accursed Gift to control the human mind was powerful when used subtly, and far more dangerous when used without restraint. It was the oldest and rarest of all human magics and these particular daemons could smell it from a league away.
The minds of the two militiamen were snarls of fear. If they caught sight of the shadow cat they would flee and leave me to die. One of them put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I grabbed it and my magic surged into him, breaking into his thoughts. It was always easier with skin contact, and with all his panic and confusion it was a simple task to order him to defend me. The man spun and levelled his spear at the daemon. His confused companion followed suit.
I left them to delay the thing while I lurched towards the ships. They’d be dead anyway when the Skallgrim caught up with them. “I’m coming, Lynas. Hold on!” I tried to reach out to him through the Gift-bond but–
A warm wetness blooms over Lynas’ crotch: he’s pissed himself. “Please. Please, no,” he wheezes. “I won’t tell anybody.”
“No, you will not,” the man replies, a grin flashing inside the hood. “I have need of your flesh, mageborn. The magic it contains will be put to good use.” He kneels down to straddle Lynas, pinning his body to the cold cobbles, arm held skyward in a vice-like grip. A single deft slice and he opens Lynas’ arm from wrist to elbow.
Lynas screams, knows he’s about to die. “Gods save me!”
The hooded man chuckles. “The so-called gods of Setharis have been blinded and chained, Lynas. They are too consumed by their own struggle for survival to notice what happens here. You will get no help from them.”
He knows he has to keep trying to send a message through the Gift-bond. Others would claim it’s an abomination – an invitation to his enslavement by Walker’s stronger Gift – but that trust had already been repaid a thousandfold. Wherever Walker is in the world now, he has to reach him, to tell him of the threat to Setharis, to warn him that Layla and Charra are in danger. If he’s still alive, then maybe…
“I feel you, Lynas. Run! Get out of there. I’m coming. Please…”
It’s too late.
He gathers the power of his stunted Gift, lets it fill him until he’s almost bursting, hoping it will prove enough to bring his friend home. He imagines Walker: that cynical smile, those exhausted and haunted eyes as he walked out of Lynas’ door for the last time.
The scalpel cuts deep. Bright arterial blood spurts across the silvery face of the broken moon.
Lynas feels his power building, eager to surge through the Gift-bond, but then the knife twists and he screams instead.
The hooded man’s grin widens, white teeth gleaming in the moonlight. He shakes his head and tuts. “Nobody will be coming to the rescue, you pathetic waste of the Gift. To think you once thought to become a magus.” He starts to cut the skin from Lynas’ flesh, the scalpel shining red and silver.
Lynas screams as hot sticky rain drips onto his face. He yearns to be home with his family in front of a crackling fireplace, merry with food and wine. All he’s ever really wanted is for everybody to be happy and healthy. And he’s failed them. He closes his eyes and wills the pain to stop, prays for death.
“Death won’t save you either, Lynas,” the man says. “I have something far more useful planned for you.”
A memory surfaces, Walker’s words: unbalance the bastards; kick them in the balls and do what needs doing while they’re busy puking. He can’t give up yet. He has no idea what he’s doing, but if he can somehow distract the hooded man then he has one last chance to bring Walker home.
He fastens his eyes on an imaginary saviour behind the hooded man’s back, starts laughing – mocking laughter that reverberates down the alley.
The man’s eyes widen. “What are you…?”
As the hooded man jerks back, spins to look behind him, Lynas fires off another message, fuelled with every last ounce of his life-force, hoping it’s just enough, that at least part of the message might make it through and speed off into the night, to reach…
Agony exploded inside my skull. I clutched my head as blood gushed from my nose. It felt like something inside my brain had burst. Gods no! Lynas! Lynas! There is no answer. The constant and comforting presence in the back of my head that had kept me sane for ten wretched years began to fade. Then, nothing.
I was truly alone.
Pyromancer or not, I knew what I had to do. Instead of boarding the Ahramish merchantman I staggered onto the battered old caravel, collapsing to the deck just as the sailors cast off ropes and began pushing us away from the dock with long poles. I was going home and wouldn’t allow anything or anybody to stop me.
Memories forgotten for ten years had been torn loose, were bleeding back into my conscious mind, mixed with something from Lynas. The scent of smoke and blood filled my nostrils as one memory surged to the fore, summoned by the vision: a steel gate slamming shut. As if I were floating outside my body I saw our horrified expressions as that bastard Harailt locked Lynas and I in the catacombs of the Boneyards. Oh how he laughed! The darkness, the harrowing darkness…
The details of the vision drained away like sour wine from a burst skin, leaving behind a fearful mass of muddled imagery and a sudden certainty that by going home I wouldn’t have long to live. So be it.
Canvas snapped taut as sails caught the wind. We slid from the docks, leaving the two militiamen to be torn to pieces by the claws and fangs of my personal daemons. Out of frustration Burn took her time with them, tearing off their arms and legs one by one before finally burying obsidian fangs in their throats. She watched me leave, gaze dripping with malevolence – I had killed her mate.
As the caravel surged out to sea we stared at the forest of masts and sails filling the horizon, an enormous fleet of wolf-ships bearing the emblems of dozens of tribes: rearing bears, wolves, dragons and various runic emblems. Ironport’s sheltered bay was the largest and safest on the east coast, making it the perfect place to anchor a fleet, and with the town’s abundance of mines and smithies they would have a plentiful supply of weapons. Nobody brought a fleet eight hundred leagues across the
Sea of Storms just to see the sights and indulge in a spot of raiding – this was an invasion of all Kaladon. The savages had always been numerous, but riven by tribal blood feuds, religious warfare, and hobbled by a strict and somewhat fatal code of honour. Something of huge import must have occurred to see blood-sworn enemies travel halfway across the known world to fight side by side on our shores. Bile rose up my throat. Those sailors’ rumours of stolen children and human sacrifice had not been as wild as I’d thought.
And then my guts heaved as it hit me – Lynas was dead, really dead. He was supposed to have been protected! I had made a deal with somebody too dangerous and powerful to refuse; the reward was the lives of my friends at the cost my exile. There was a secret buried deep inside my mind, locked away by powers far beyond my own, one so dire that even I couldn’t be allowed to know what it was. All I knew was that it had something to do with the death of a god. Every time I tried to remember it only brought back paralysing panic and blackest terror, but now the deal was off and I had to find a way to recover those memories.
The details of the deal itself were fragmented, most of it locked away with that dire secret in my head. I couldn’t remember who, but still knew some of the why: it had been the only way to keep Lynas and Charra safe, their daughter Layla too. They had made some kind of deadly mistake, and Charra had taken dangerously ill. I had been promised that mistake would be rectified, Charra healed, and all three kept from harm if I completed their task and then left Setharis, forgetting everything. Whoever they were, they had broken our deal. And that would not, and could not, be forgiven. I held my head in my hands, throat seized up, eyes gone tight and watery. The sorrow didn’t last. It drowned in a flood of anger. That hooded man would burn for this. Charra and Layla must be protected at all costs.
It was time to go home to a city that feared and despised me. It was time to kill, and I didn’t care how many or how powerful they thought they were. Lynas had always been my conscience, urging me to use my power wisely and well, but now my friend was dead and that “wisely and well” could go fuck itself. I would rip his murderer apart and then I would deal with these Skallgrim that thought they could hunt me with impunity.
The deal was off, and so was my leash.
Chapter 3
We spent five days hugging the Dragon Coast south, battered by huge waves and howling winds. Racked by hunger and constant vomiting, huddled up with the other refugees in that sodden and cramped cargo hold, I was desperate to be back on dry land. Only one more day confined in darkness.
I shuddered and tried not to think of the walls closing in on me, the darkness swallowing me once again – it was only a ship. Only a ship. I could escape into the open air above deck if I really wanted, and I only had to keep out of sight of the pyromancer and pretend to be nothing more than a meek little merchant for one more day, for Lynas. Haunted by feverish dreams of his murder, I endured the waking claustrophobia and dwelled on happier days, to when I’d last had hope.
The previous Archmagus of the Arcanum, Byzant, had taken me under his wing and helped me come to terms with the trauma of being buried alive beneath tons of stone and left for dead, thanks to that arrogant vermin Harailt of High House Grasske who had thought himself so much nobler than a poverty-stricken Docklands pup like myself. He trapped Lynas and I in the Boneyards below the city and left us to rot, sniggering into silken sleeves all the while. Lynas managed to get out. I did not. I’d have died there in the crushing darkness if Lynas hadn’t fetched help, if he’d not found Byzant to haul me back out into the light. They had both saved me in more ways than one.
Byzant had been the head of the entire Setharii empire, with hundreds of magi and noble High Houses under his command and a thousand tasks needing done every day, and yet somehow he’d made the time to mentor me when I’d needed it most.
Those had been the happiest years of my life, running the streets with Lynas and Charra. So many wild nights of drunken truths and raucous laughter with the very best company the world had to offer, touring the disreputable taverns of the city and drinking them dry, dreaming those golden days would never end. I had felt fulfilled doing tasks for Byzant to earn my Arcanum stipend and I’d had friends, a life, and a purpose. The old magus had been like a second father to me, and now he too was dead, reported missing only days after I’d fled the city.
The happier days turned to ash and all I was left with was trying to recall everything about the deal I’d made. As much as I had tried to remember during the voyage, all magic and mental trickery had failed. The locks on my mind remained solid. I would need levers to help crack them open, reminders from the old days. I swallowed, fearful of the atrocity I had been involved in all those years ago.
An age passed in that darkness, worrying at the holes in my memory, until rattling chains announced our ship had dropped anchor. The human cargo crawled up onto the deck, blinking against the burning dawn light.
Pauper’s Docks, the arse-end of Setharis. The air reeked, every sewer and stream in the city spewing out into the harbour our decrepit old coast-hugger was anchored in, almost a million bowels emptied daily. That thought forced me to lean over the side and retch, adding my vomit to the grey scum of shite, rubbish, and fish guts; if anything, it felt like I’d just made the sea a bit cleaner. Bloody ships. If I’d sailed for Ahram I might have died! My Clansmen cousins had the right idea in sticking to their hills and mountains in the rugged north. No mountain had ever rocked and pitched underfoot and made me empty my guts onto the ground… well, not while I’d been sober anyway. I tried to ignore my nausea, to focus instead on the familiar sooty stench of humanity crowded together inside the black granite walls of the ancient city. It smelled like home.
Autumn was waning and the broken moon, Elunnai, was swollen in the sky, every wound on her shattered face visible to the naked eye. One of her tears fell streaking across the sky, then another. It was an omen of bad luck for the tears to fall before winter had even begun, an occurrence that agitated water spirits in the Sea of Storms and caused the unusually vicious waves that had threatened to batter our ship to kindling against the rocks of the Dragon Coast and the hidden reefs around Lepers’ Isle. It heralded a harsh winter and the seas would soon grow far worse, not long left before the storms blew in and all sea travel ceased until late spring for anything other than great Setharii carracks protected by coteries of hydromancers.
Dusty memories woke and stirred. Ten years! It felt like another life. A part of me felt pleased to be home, despite the reason. A murderous grin slid across my face. Somebody had killed Lynas, and now they would burn for it.
Setharis hadn’t changed one bit. Looking bored and miserable in the rain, wardens in rusty chain hauberks and burgundy tabards patrolled city walls slick with slime and moss, while beyond the smog-wreathed slums of the lower city the high and mighty swanned about in the lofty gothic palaces of the Old Town, high on its volcanic crag. The gleaming golden spires of the Templarum Magestus and the Collegiate, centres of Arcanum power, reared above every other building – well, those built by human hands anyway. From amongst the gargoyle-flocked buttresses and steeples of the merely rich and powerful, the five unearthly towers of the gods – slick black, almost organic-looking – jutted from the heart of the rock, twisting around each other like enormous snakes, so high they seemed to pierce the sky. Coronas of raw magic usually crackled from their spires, but now the gods’ towers stood as lifeless as any other lump of stone. The air felt subtly different, the heavy magical presence of the gods was missing. Another bad omen.
I grabbed the burly arm of a passing deckhand. “The towers – when did they go quiet?”
He refused to look up, “Few months back. Same day the earth tremors began.” He pulled his arm free and scurried off to avoid the topic, fingers tracing symbols to ward off evil.
I stared at the towers and recalled a fragment of the vision: Lynas’ murderer had said our gods were blind and chained. But what could do that to beings who coul
d incinerate entire towns with the flick of a finger? Not that these towers were the homes of what other peoples would consider actual gods, mind – primitive worship of natural spirits that gained power from devout worship wasn’t tolerated in Setharis – but assuming a powerful magus survives that long, assuming they don’t burn out or give in to the Worm’s seductions and get put down like a rabid dog, then when they grow old and addicted enough you might as well call them a god for all the humanity left in them. Our gods had been human once.
The elder magi of the Arcanum stood far above the rank and file in power and skill, even as a magus like me stood above the lesser Gifted: the sniffers, hedge witches and street illusionists, unable to ever wield true power without burning their minds to a crisp. Then there were mageborn like Lynas, those whose Gifts never matured and opened up to the magic; mostly all those poor bastards got was good health, or some extra strength and speed as magic slowly dripped into them like water leaking through a cracked pipe. If their Gifts allowed them a drip of magic, I was a stream and the elders a swollen waterfall. And as the elders were to the lowly mageborn, so were our gods to the elders.
Our legends claim that long before the rise of ancient Escharr, the five Setharii gods had been mighty elder magi before they ascended. There was more to it than mere age and skill however, there was a secret to their ascension – I was sure of it; and just as sure that the answer was firmly locked away deep inside my head. My exile had begun the night a god died and that was no coincidence.
Any elder magi I’d ever met were obscenely powerful, deeply knowledgeable, and they always had to be right. They were much like inveterate drunks, their tolerance of magic increasing as the years went by to match their inflating egos. I didn’t think our gods any different. Derrish, Lady Night, The Lord of Bones, Artha the dead god of war, and even my patron Nathair, the Thief of Life – arrogant and self-centred pricks the lot of them, a veritable treachery of gods, though Nathair was better than all the rest. I shuddered at this line of thought. It was an unsettling subject for me, given what was locked away inside my head. Whatever happened back then, I was sure I was in the right. But for a magus certainty always merited scrutiny.
The Traitor God Page 2