Charra’s Place. Layla.
I felt the air stir – too late to do anything about it other than drop to the dirt. An arrow thudded into the wall behind me. I scrambled to my feet, wrenched my strained Gift open and searched for the bowman. Sudden waves of agony made my attention snap to Cillian, who was staring at another arrow jutting from her chest.
Pink froth bubbled from Cillian’s mouth and a dark stain spread across the front of her robes. She coughed, spattering my hand with blood, then slumped against the wall, a sickening sound of air wheezing from the wound. That sound, it… Blood gushed from my nose, head ringing like somebody had rammed a steel-shod boot into my face. Mental protections cracked and splintered, and bled out: the sound of a god’s agonized wheezing, my hands slick with hot blood so filled with magic that it sizzled against my skin. Artha’s heart spasmed as I cut deeper and pushed a hand into it…
Another arrow buried itself in the wall a hand span from my face. I didn’t have time to think, panic stamping the surge of memory back into its pit. I scanned the rooftops as my mind expanded into nearby buildings. Snarls of thought and emotion marked dozens of people out of sight inside the walls. There – two bowmen inside fourth floor windows, their killing intent searing my senses. It was infectious. My urge to kill swelled.
One of the attackers stepped forward to the edge of the window and lined up another shot. I stabbed into his mind, scattered his thoughts and planted the urge to step forward for a better aim, onto a wooden sill that wasn’t really there. I took grim satisfaction in the spike of confusion when his foot unexpectedly plunged down through air. It was much easier to fool somebody than go directly against their survival instincts. He fell screaming from the window, head hitting the cobbles with a sound like a burst melon.
His accomplice was no coward; after a quick glance at the mess on the cobbles he tried to take his own shot. His mind was calm and orderly, an experienced killer. He resisted mightily and was about to loose when his body exploded, painting the surrounding buildings red.
“Got… him,” Cillian wheezed.
I held onto her arm in case she fell. Her breathing came in rapid gulps and her robes were drenched with blood. I reached to pull out the arrow. She hissed, her eyes not filled with panic but with a warning to back the fuck away.
“Wait…” she said between gulps, concentrating hard. The blood stopped spreading. Being a hydromancer had perks I’d never thought of before but it seemed she couldn’t suck all that spilt blood back up after it had soaked into the muck under our feet. She groaned and clamped her hands around the base of the arrow. “Barbs… have to… break off… the shaft.”
I gingerly took it in two hands, and made to snap it off to leave a short stump, then paused and felt bloody stupid as I took Dissever to it instead. The arrowhead barely moved, but she still shrieked as steel grated against bone. “What now?” I said.
She gritted her teeth and held out bloodied hands for me to help her walk. I didn’t think it wise, but then I’d just been about to blindly rip an arrow out so what did I know. Somehow she stood on her own two feet. I didn’t think I would be up and about with an arrow through my lung. She took a few faltering steps clutching onto my arm. “Get me… Templarum Magestus. No… time to spare. Magash Mora…”
“I’ll get you there if I have to carve my way through,” I said, bending so she could put an arm around my neck. She panted with pain as I took her weight. Magus or not, there was a limit to human self-control.
Feet pounded towards us down nearby alleys. Scuffles and cursing erupted as the narrow passages crammed with angry and frightened people. We slipped off the wider thoroughfare and into a narrow winding passage choked with filth. If they were Skallgrim then it wouldn’t take them long to figure out where we had gone.
Cillian was lighter than I’d expected. Somehow she exuded an aura heavier than her frame could possibly allow. My body felt leaden and clumsy and I had to draw in a trickle of power and flush it through exhausted muscles. Magic was all well and good but I badly needed decent food and a few weeks of rest. It was a wonder either of us were still moving.
Through drifting smoke and crumbled tenement walls I glimpsed the gods’ towers and we angled northwest, figuring it would be quicker heading for Westford Bridge rather than risk the centre of the Warrens. We hobbled through the small passages between listing buildings, bare feet squelching through mud and slime, Cillian hissing with each step. People were fighting and dying and a miasma of violence filled the whole area. Up ahead a cloud of anger and fear marked a full-blown riot, their emotions bleeding out into a communal torrent of rage.
Carrion spirits would be swarming over the city, drawn to the shedding of this much blood and magic like crows to a battlefield. The spirits would have a short existence in Setharis before the city devoured them, but they’d instinctively do their best to inflame the situation, to feed and breed and spread disease.
We burst from the gloom of the Warrens into a wider street, barging into some poor sap and knocking them to the cobbles. I turned to spit a quick apology but the words went unsaid as thick coils of smoke drifted past. Flames illuminated the black haze up ahead and terrified people were running for their lives towards us. I knew exactly where I was now. Charra’s Place lay only a short distance up the street towards Westford Bridge.
“Walker,” Cillian wheezed in warning.
I started, looked down at the person I’d bumped into. “Sorry, I–”
“Piece of dung!” The scars at either side of Rosha Bone-face’s mouth pulled white in a scowl. A dozen knives glinted in the gloom as more Smilers surrounded us.
I felt Cillian tense. “Easy now,” I said. “Stay calm.” These people had no idea how close they were to a very messy death.
Rosha scrambled to her feet. “Stay calm? I should cut your stinkin’ cock off!”
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” I snapped, nodding to Cillian. “I was telling this magus here not to burst you like rotten fruit.”
Despite Cillian’s bloodied state she must have given a fearsome glare judging by Rosha’s taken aback expression. “I have no time to dally… with the likes of them,” she said, staring at their scarified smiles.
“A magus?” Rosha growled, voice wobbling with uncertainty as she took in the ruins of Cillian’s expensive robes. The Smilers were used to intimidating people, but we weren’t displaying the slightest smidgeon of worry. “What would scum like you be doin’ with one of those daemon-touched bastards?”
“Councillor Cillian is right,” I said, opening up my Gift and reaching for Rosha. “We don’t have time for this crap.” Her eyes bulged as she felt me prod the inside of her mind. “So, are you going to get out of our way or are you coming to Charra’s Place with us?” I asked, withdrawing but keeping my Gift ready.
A strangled choke erupted from Rosha’s throat. “Councillor?” She coughed and cleared it, looking at us like we were daemons in human form. “That’s the direction we was goin’ anyways, you maggot.” A shocked expression burst across her face, and she paled as it dawned on her what she’d just called the magus. Her bad habits would get her killed some day, but not by me.
“Uh, sorry, my, ah, maguses,” she said. The rest of her gang looked like they’d collectively soiled themselves. Not surprising considering the dread stories that gleefully spread amongst the peasantry. Suddenly their knives seemed woefully inadequate. On the other hand, our reputation as magi was the only armour we had: all it would take was one idiot to stick a knife in my back and I’d be out of the game. I hoped they didn’t have somebody insane enough to risk attacking us. Cillian would slaughter them.
“Get a move on,” Cillian said, hobbling past two young Smilers, the puckered scars still red and angry on their cheeks. We limped uphill towards Charra’s Place, closer to a bridge over the Seth and closer to help. After a moment’s hesitation the Smilers followed us, their confidence returning with each step they took beside us. People coming downhill took one l
ook at the angry wolf pack heading towards them and scattered, slinking off into darkened alleys or closing and barring their doors.
The smoke grew thicker, black coils writhing into the sky as flames licked up a nearby merchant house’s walls and roared from windows on the upper floors. A mob surrounded Charra’s Place, lusting for the riches inside, brandishing knives, sticks and broken bottles, flinging rocks and flaming debris at the shutters. The immaculate garden and delicate moonflowers had been churned into mud beneath their feet. A group of men had torn a heavy wooden beam from one of the burning tenements and was using it as a battering ram.
As we approached, a woman smashed a lantern across Charra’s front door and the oil exploded in a black cloud. Another crashed into the upper wall, flaming oil bursting across a shuttered window. The wood was ablaze but it didn’t deter the men with the battering ram as they continued pounding the door.
A wild-eyed woman in the torn and stained remnants of a dress turned to face us, her eyes catching sight of Cillian’s robes. She snarled, revealing a mouth full of broken teeth. “Old Towners! Get them!”
“Oh, shite,” I said, as the crazier half of the mob broke away and howled towards us. A few crossbow bolts zipped from slits in the brothel walls into the backs of the charging mob, dropping two to be trampled beneath their fellows without a second thought.
“Cillian,” I said. “A little help here?” The front rank of the mob dropped mid-step as something inside them burst.
The Smilers didn’t run. Maybe it was some sort of loyalty towards Charra and Layla, or perhaps this was part of their territory, but whatever reason they readied their knives and closed ranks around us.
The throbbing mass of rage surged towards me like an oncoming forest fire, and as much as I tried to keep it out, their emotion soaked into me.
I wrenched my Gift open as wide as I could manage. It was recovering astonishingly quick. Blissful power and pain roared through me in an uncontrolled wave to slam into the oncoming mob. One after another, I broke in and tore a part of their minds out. I felt laughter building up to eruption inside me as they fell face-first to the cobbles, drooling and blind. Only two survived to reach us, and the Smilers’ knives made quick butchery of them.
I grinned. It had been so easy. Was this the pleasure of potency felt by elder magi? It was glorious. Sudden horror helped me wrestle that ecstatic torrent of power to the floor and stuff the laughter back down my throat where it met the rising panic and disgust at my grisly handiwork.
A terrifying and monstrous strength was biding its time inside me. I couldn’t let the Worm of Magic take the reins again, no matter the cost. I glanced at the Smilers as they swallowed nervously and edged away from me. If I lost control I would take their minds, and they would be mine forever. I now knew exactly what it would feel like to be a tyrant. It was galling to admit the Arcanum were right to fear me.
Cillian stepped over a corpse and we advanced on the suddenly stilled and staring mob in front of Charra’s Place, the human vermin in it for loot, rape, or the primal joy of destruction. The shitweasels that had just come to the horrid realisation they had attacked magi.
The Smilers trailed after us, didn’t seem to have it in them to get too close. Rosha looked about ready to throw up and hung back out of our sight.
I stopped, my gaze sliding past the opportunistic bastards like a reaper calmly surveying a field of wheat. My brush with such a mass of vileness had affected me and it was a struggle to remain calm. If I hadn’t been sickened by what I had just done I think I might have killed the rest too.
“Fuck off,” I said. “Or I’ll kill you all.”
The mob burst apart like a flock of startled sparrows and the burning doors of Charra’s Place swung open to disgorge a fully armed and armoured host, Layla at the head. The hulking forms of Grant and Nevin flanked her as she approached us, both of the big hairy clansmen gits bloodied and battered. Layla’s clothes were bloodstained but it didn’t look like hers. She ignored the twitching mindless bodies behind me. “Where is my mother?”
I swallowed. “She’s safe. The Arcanum has her, but I’ll get her back.” It grew dark as a bank of thick smoke rolled over us, making it more akin to night than day.
Realisation suddenly crapped on me from a great height. Idiot. You bloody fool! In my worry over Cillian and Layla I had forgotten something vital, life and death even. I was covered in sweat and blood and I’d just used an enormous amount of my magic out in the open for any fool to sense – or any daemon. I shoved Cillian into Layla’s arms. “Get her to the Arcanum alive and you’ll get your mother back.”
Cillian gasped for breath. “Edrin, what are–”
I didn’t hear the rest, was too busy fleeing as fast as abused muscles could carry me. A sudden churning in my gut and a glimpse of luminous green eyes through the smoke warned me that my idiocy had paid off.
Chapter 26
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck…
I sprinted towards the Seth faster than I’d ever run in my life, feet barely seeming to touch the stone. They had caught my scent and I now had exactly one chance to live. I bolted towards the turgid roar of the river dead ahead.
A shadow cat the size of a horse padded from the smoke into the street right in front of me. It was Burn, scarred muzzle sniffing this way and that. My senses were befuddled by the smoke but it seemed she was affected just as badly. I slowed and circled right, trying to be quiet as I padded towards a side alley.
Matte black wisps of fur writhed across her body as her great head swung in my direction. Her shining eyes snapped to me and burned with hatred. It hissed, revealing obsidian incisors the length of my hand. Somewhere nearby yet more claws clicked on stone.
Cockrot.
Claws scrabbled behind me as I vaulted a low wall and leapt right. The shadow cat skidded past, sliding into an abandoned goods cart. The expected crash didn’t come, instead a twisting racked my guts as she vanished into the shadows beneath the cartwheels – only to slide from a darkened doorway further ahead.
I lurched from the alley, trying to make it to the river before the rest of the pack arrived. I was so close. Barefoot, I could feel the roar of water thrumming through the ground. A gust of wind thinned smoke to reveal the black bulk of cats stalking me on either side. It was pointless to try to fight.
Up ahead – the hazy forms of weather-worn statues lining the riverbank. I ran for my life. The tang of raw sewage and running water cut through the smoke. So near, but so damn far. Claws click-click-clacked, gaining with every step I took. My wounded leg was about to give out. Come on, not yet, not yet… A pitted statue coalesced from the smog. I panicked, dived blindly past it, hands up to cover my head. For a sickening moment I thought I’d misjudged, was about to smack face-first into the ground, but instead I plunged through smoke towards the river.
A great paw caught the back of my coat, jerking me to a stop. I dangled from Burn’s claws like a fish on a hook, flailing to break free. The beast growled, slowly hauling me up to its fangs. I swung both feet up, planted them against the stone banking and shoved with all my strength.
I swung out towards the river and desperately tried to shrug off my coat. Something tore and I fell. Air gusted across the back of my neck as another paw swiped out, barely missing. The thing yowled and scrabbled for balance, failed.
I hit the Seth, a hard belly-slap that exploded the air from my lungs. Coughing and spluttering, I surfaced just in time to see a thrashing mass of shadow and claw plunging towards my head. I dived. The beast hit the water, shockwave and heavy weight on my back pushing me deeper until my feet scraped the mud. Water churned as the creature struggled to the surface. I clamped a hand over the wound in my leg and played dead, letting the flow carry me downstream. A swarm of pale and bony corpse-fish surrounded me, tasting my blood in the water, then as one they swarmed the struggling shadow cat. Horrors lived in the Seth, and things canny enough to survive centuries of eradication attempts by the Arcanum woul
dn’t have any hesitation in chowing down on my bones – if they didn’t have something bigger and meatier to attract their attention.
I drifted up with desperate slowness. When my face finally broke the surface the shadow cat’s screeches filled my heart with savage joy. After all these years I’d finally finished the damned fleabag off. Darkness steamed from Burn’s exposed insides and the water around her writhed with fish more teeth than tail. My toes instinctively curled up and my balls attempted to retreat into my body. I loathed swimming, hated not knowing what was lurking beneath me – I couldn’t help but imagine things with too many teeth eyeing up my toes like fat and juicy worms. I muffled a yelp as something big and spongy brushed past my dangling feet. The corpse-fish scattered. A second later something pulled the shadow cat under. Burn didn’t resurface.
I forced myself to stay still and waited to be carried down to Sethgate Bridge where I could use the steps to climb back up to street level. Flapping tails and snapping teeth churned the water to froth upstream as scavengers fought over titbits of daemon flesh and magic. Once they’d finished devouring the cat I would be next. As soon as the steps below the bridge came into reach I flailed for the bank and heaved myself up onto solid stone, crawling until my toes were well out of reach.
I lay on my back panting and looking up at the smoke-filled sky, letting my heartbeat slow and the fear drain from my body. Patchy blue and sunbeams struggled through smoke and cloud. “Not dead yet,” I said. My face felt strangely numb. I probed with a finger, finding something soft and squidgy attached to my cheek.
“Ew, ew, ew.” I pried the fat black leech from my skin by sliding a fingernail under its suckers and then tossed it back into the river, wiping blood from my cheek.
I pried two more from my arms. And then something twitched inside my trousers. I shuddered, feeling sick as I undid my belt and whipped them down to my ankles. Horror stabbed me as something pale and cock-sized plopped out and rolled free across the ground. I cackled in relief – just a baby barrel eel.
The Traitor God Page 28