The Fall to Power (The Graeme Stone Saga)

by Gareth K Pengelly

  She nodded curtly and he clicked his fingers.

  A duo of Clansmen marched in, holding between them a bound figure, diminutive and helpless looking beside their warrior forms.

  “Release her, no need for bindings here.”

  They did as she commanded, the captive rubbing her sore wrists as the ropes were freed, before the Marzban snapped to attention.

  “Anything else, milady?”

  “Not for now, warrior. Thank you. You may leave us.

  A nod and the warriors departed, the heavy door slamming shut leaving the two women, the Seeress and the prisoner, alone in the chamber.

  “Gwenna isn’t it? Please,” bade the Lady Council-member, her voice soft, silken, alluring. “Take a seat. Have a drink, this wine is quite lovely. You’ve been through quite the ordeal, I hear.” She motioned to a deep, soft-looking chair by the roaring fire in the hearth.

  The prisoner stared at her, suspicious, but made her way over regardless, sitting and resting gratefully in the proffered seat. She didn’t touch the wine.

  The Seeress moved slowly to her desk, retrieving her own goblet, taking her time as she regarded this new prisoner. The servant girl of a few days ago had been pretty, in an unassuming kind of way, but this new girl had something about her, something that drew the eye, and it was more than just her flaming auburn hair and creamy-pale skin. As Ceceline made her way, slowly, gracefully to take the seat opposite the girl, that was when she saw it; the green eyes exuded a strength and nobility, an unwavering resoluteness and willing to do her duty, as well as a latent and, currently restrained, spiritual power.

  The Seeress smiled, butterflies of excitement in her breast as she settled back in the high-backed chair, the glow from the firelight illuminating her striking features; the next few minutes would be fun indeed.

  She took a long sip of her drink, eyes half closed as she enjoyed the delicate flavours, before gesturing to its crystal twin that sat on the small table between them next to the decanter of wine.

  “Please,” she repeated, her tone sincere, “have some. It’s not poisoned, I promise you. You’ll get nothing so unsubtle from me.”

  The prisoner hesitated, but thirst overrode her caution and she reached for the glass, taking a long draught, taken aback, despite herself, by the fine flavours that ran riot on her tongue.

  Long moments passed in silence, as the red-haired girl sat, acutely aware of the scrutiny of this raven-haired beauty that sat opposite, knowing that despite her appearance, despite her pleasant manner, this was the woman she had heard so much about; the King’s right-hand witch, seductive yet merciless. Beautiful yet deadly. But those eyes, bright and blue, so inviting, couldn’t hide to Gwenna’s keen senses the cold, calculating evil that lay simmering, just beneath the surface.

  “So,” began the Seeress, at long last breaking the silence, “we are both grown women, both intelligent, so let me dispense with formalities. You are accused of conducting spirit-craft in the kingdom, sorcery aimed at none other than our beloved ruler.” She paused, allowing the accusation to sink in, gazing into the eyes of her audience in an effort to discern any reaction to the words. “What say you to that?”

  The girl, to her credit, failed to rise to the provocation, in no rush to defend her actions or rebuke the accusations.

  “I don’t see much point in trying to deny it; the loss of six of your Khrdas alone is testament to my profession.”

  She smiled faintly, as though somewhat proud of the taking of their lives, a confidence in her that Ceceline wouldn’t have expected. The girl was perhaps the same age as Ceceline – in appearance only, of course – but had courage that belied her years. Respectable.

  Yet perhaps also it would be her undoing.

  “So, you admit to being a shaman. Good. That makes things a little easier. But as you’re already aware, within these walls you have no power; it is I who hold the key to your life or death.” The Seeress smiled, yet there was no warmth behind it. “So, please, choose your next words carefully. What is the point of your little plot? Why did your friend die to simply place a Runestone beneath our King’s pillow?”

  Gwenna took a deep breath, unwilling to give in to intimidation, no matter how little bluff there was to it.

  “Now that, I’m afraid, I cannot say.”

  Again, Ceceline smiled. Things were about to get interesting.

  “Very well, my dear. Then you leave me no choice.”

  The air in the warm room grew cold, prickly and Gwenna looked about her with unease as the greasy static feel of sorcery began to envelop the two women, surrounding them in a bubble of power. A bubble that was cold, ruthless. A sphere that had the pure and unadulterated feel of one personality in the room.

  Ceceline sat, ever-smiling, as her cold blue eyes bored into the green orbs of her victim. Lesser practitioners would have to physically touch their prey to rip apart their soul and devour their secrets. But Ceceline was beyond such as they, for she was no mere shaman.

  She was the Seeress.

  Gwenna gasped, involuntarily, as she felt the icy tendrils of a cold and ancient soul forcing their way into her mind, grasping the thick, wooden arms of her chair in fright as she realised what the witch-queen was about to do. Fright, tempered with determination. For this girl was not as fragile as she might seem, and, with a confidence born of long training for just such an encounter as this, she steeled her will. And fought back.

  The Seeress’ eyes widened in confusion, yet also excitement, for rarely had she come upon a victim so determined, so willing to fight back; most of her subjects crumbling under her mental assault after seconds, reducing down to gibbering wrecks as she sifted with glee through the treasure-house of their memories. So, it was a rare pleasure to have to work for the fruits of her labour.

  She smiled, ever wider, as the two souls met, mind against mind, will against will, in a fight for knowledge, a fight on the most intimate of battlegrounds where thoughts were swords, emotions were shields, where probing tentacles of assault were hacked down through force of will, thrust parried and met with counter-thrust, each woman seeking to undo the other.

  The girl was spirited, her training exquisite, and, as sweat began to bead on her brow and her breast that heaved with exertion, Ceceline had to marvel; for what kind of master could have taught her to wield her soul with such subtlety, with such grace? There was surely none such alive today, not with the Hunt ravaging the land. Even during their occasional bouts of lovemaking, when the whim had taken Invictus, and Ceceline had, for the fun of it, deigned to attempt to enter the labyrinth of his mind, the King himself had never shown such fluidity in his thoughts, relying instead on the pure brute force of his indomitable will to cast her out with the grinning pleasure of an apex predator that knew himself invincible.

  A lance of thought spiked through her mind, catching her unawares, driving deep into intimate and forbidden areas of her memories, causing her to shudder with an almost erotic sense of violation. With no choice, facing such unexpected mental might, the Seeress rose, unsteady to her feet, legs weak with the mix of pleasure and pain that wracked her physical body as much as her soul, making her way past the small table to kneel before the girl who still sat, wide eyed and trembling with the exertion of the duel.

  Raising her slender fingers, the Seeress drew near to the girl and grasped her gently about the head, fingers lost in the soft curls of red hair, the physical connection between them a conduit, allowing Ceceline to at last unleash the full power of a hundred years of sorcerous growth.

  Gwenna lolled in helpless penetration, drawing little of the ecstasy from the exchange that the pleasure-seeking Seeress clearly was, as this fresh wave of assault blasted clean through her defences, smashing them asunder and finally allowing the witch full and unfettered access to her memories.

  “Who are you, my darling,” whispered the Seeress, as one would to a lover on a cold and stormy winter’s night. “What is it you seek to accomplish? Who are you worki
ng with?”

  She sifted through the memories, taking pleasure in every nugget of information she gleaned about the girl, forgetting her own defences, not bothered that the shaman was learning as much about she as she was about her, focused instead entirely on this mystery before her.

  A valley. High in the foothills of the North. Cold. Frost. A land of wolves and hardened fair-haired people eking a life from the looming and inhospitable mountains.

  A gathering of like-minded folk, holding fast to traditions of yore, a clandestine society that descended a hundred years from humble beginnings, rising from the ashes of tragedy to rebuild themselves anew with a sole purpose in mind.

  Retribution. No, more than that.

  Seeking to reclaim something lost to them.

  A figure coalesced in the mind’s eye of the petite girl in front of her. In front? Nay within now, their essences, their souls almost merged such was the state of their unholy communion.

  A figure, tall, mighty, yet not the King, no. Older, timeless even, a true immortal blessed by the elements.

  This figure turned, looking at Ceceline even as she realised the impossibility of such a thing, before speaking, his voice one with that of the Avatars he served.

  Leave this girl. She is not yours.

  A cataclysm of raw elemental power blasted the two women apart, sending the Seeress hurtling back, knocking the decanter of wine into the fire where it hissed and spat, before landing in her chair.

  The two women sat, staring at each other in confusion and exertion, sweat glistening, their slender bodies trembling with the force of their separation, their souls and thoughts struggling to reassert their individuality once more. The arcane warding symbols on the walls gently hissed in protest at the power that had suddenly bypassed them, their influence still in flux as the ancient magicks were in disarray, in the manner of the ripples in a pond after the splash of a rock breaking the surface.

  Moments passed, then Gwenna leapt up, into action, speeding her way to the open window on the far side of the room.

  “Guards!” Ceceline shouted out, even as she rose to her feet in pursuit, raising her hands to cast the crippling dark lightning at her escaping rival. But the connection was still too recent and Gwenna predicted her act before she’d even thought it herself, raising her own hands, feeling the welcoming rush of the elements as they sought to aid her through the weakened barrier wrought into the castle walls. Her own lightning, pure and natural, leapt forth, forming a link between the two sorceresses, as the bolts of energy, one white, one black, met and fought, lashing about the room, smashing furniture to kindling and setting alight the beautiful tapestries that bedecked the walls.

  The door to the chamber burst open and the Clansmen from before took two steps in before being beaten back by the sight of the eldritch energies that clashed, unsure what to do.

  Gwenna moved backwards, one step at a time, till she was perched on the open sill of the tall window, high in the Seer’s Tower, the city of Merethia sprawled hundreds of feet below.

  The Seeress lowered her hand, the connection between the two breaking off in a crackle of dispersing energy as she watched with confused interest the girl who stood, precarious on the edge.

  The red-headed shaman smiled, some of the Seeress’ cold humour still lingering to the fore of her mind.

  “We should do this again sometime.”

  With that, she dropped backwards over the edge, to vanish, plummeting into the night sky, away from the cold stone walls and their ancient, stifling wards.

  ***

  The Seeress stood at the window of her chamber, gazing out into the night sky, spying the raven that flew, graceful and free, heading North from the Pen in the light of the three moons.

  Her body and mind still trembled with the lingering vestiges of the battle she’d just fought.

  She closed her eyes, willing the feelings to remain, even as they drifted away. Such an experience, to fight on every level, to pit herself against someone in an evenly matched contest using every scrap of their very beings. So intimate, so sensual; attempting to destroy someone and they you, yet doing so by sharing each other utterly and completely in a way no mere lovers could hope to imagine. She wondered whether the other girl was feeling the same way.

  The last remnants of the connection faded away and, with a snort of disappointment, Ceceline turned to the confused Clansmen who still stood, hesitant and wary at the entrance to her chamber. There were matters to attend to. She had a feeling she hadn’t seen the last of the shaman.

  “Marzban.”

  The warrior snapped to attention, his eyes darting guiltily to her face having been roaming her figure while her back was turned.

  “Yes, milady?”

  “Have the King meet me in the Council Chamber. I have a feeling we shall be calling upon the Huntsman and his Hounds.”

  Chapter Five:

  His calluses screamed at him like little pin-pricks of fire on the palms of his hands, yet he pushed the pain to one side, for he knew that to stop in his toil, even if just for a moment, would be to invite further punishment from the cruel whips of his masters.

  His back still sang the tune of his previous encouragement.

  The stone block before Jafari was dark grey as to be almost black, and perfectly smooth, its flat surfaces finely hewn by the myriad expert masons levied from across the kingdom in recent months. Yet this smoothness didn’t lessen its hideous weight, as Jafari’s – and those others to his sides – screaming leg muscles would testify as they heaved its bulk further up the ramp.

  For the Beacon of Unity was well underway, the monolith looming already a hundred yards above the sharp rocks of the Isle of Storms, Jafari’s team of three only one of hundreds, thousands even, that swarmed the blighted rock, shifting by virtue of fear and willpower the building blocks that would form Invictus’ vision of hope.

  Hope, pah; no such term applied here, in this place.

  Another spray of ice-cold brine as the howling wind smashed yet another rearing wave against the side of the Isle, blasting hundreds of feet up, gnawing away at the unyielding rock as a dog with a bone. This cold, he couldn’t stand it, couldn’t get used to it. How he longed for the hot, desert haze of his homeland.

  His people.

  If he were not so dehydrated, perhaps he might shed yet another tear in their memory. Where were they now? He remembered the roaring cries of the Barbarian Hunters as they’d descended on his makeshift village, their Clan steeds swapped for camels to cope with the ever-shifting sands of the Western Deserts.

  Such horrific, despicable luck, that their paths should cross; his people were nomadic, never settling for long in one place, roaming the dunes from oasis to oasis, hawking their wares and learning the news from the people they met. He’d heard of the King’s enterprise, the folly of the giant lighthouse of emerald and he knew that the slavers were abroad. But who could have expected them to find him, his family, his friends? The desert was vast, untamed, its ever changing dunes wracked with storms of sand that blotted the sun and turned you about in an instant.

  What were the odds?

  Yet some dark fortune had caused the Huntsmen to stumble on his family, in the dead of night, howling their battle-cries in that Barbaric Steppes tongue as they waved their scimitars in the air. They’d not gone down without a fight, of course; he remembered with grim satisfaction defending his terrified sisters, picking up a spear and hurling it into the stomach of an approaching rider, sending him crashing to the ground.

  An instant later, a net had swept over him and tightened, throwing him to the floor where he was dragged across the cool, night sand, before smashing senseless against a rock.

  His sisters, where were they now? He shuddered, trying not to think of the awful stories he’d heard of the court of Invictus, where slave-women were gifted to war-weary warriors upon their arrival, to do with as they pleased.

  Even worse, those who bid in the markets to purchase people, as tho
ugh they were objects; for the needs of a soldier were base and easy to understand. But those with wealth and time on their hands? They often descended into darker, seedier routes in search of their pleasure, thinking nothing of wasting the life of a slave to satisfy some craven whim…

  Jafari flinched, realising that he had stopped in his task for an instant, slackening off his effort as he’d lamented his family. The sharp crack of a whip split the night sky, leaving a burning red line of agony down his bare back, bringing him back in an instant to harsh reality.

  “Urgh!”

  He grunted through gritted teeth, not crying out, denying his foreman the pleasure of his suffering, before heaving forwards once more on the block in front. The slave to his side, a tall, lean fellow with blond hair, a northerner, looked sidelong to him, concern in his eyes, a silent bond between all those forced to endure these hardships together despite the language barrier of their lands. Jafari gave a nod to show that he was alright.

  Finally, the ramp levelled out, the burden easing somewhat, as they no longer fought the pull of gravity. With a grinding squeal of stone on stone, the block finally slid into its allotted place, amongst its brothers and sisters, one tiny, tiny piece in an ever growing edifice that rose, like an accusing finger, into the stormy sky.

  This one block, heaved up many hundreds of feet of ramp from the bottom of the tower; the sole fruit of an entire day’s labour for the three, tired, aching slaves. Yet, as he leant forwards, hands on his knees as he struggled to regain his breath, Jafari was certain that it wouldn’t be their last.

  Their toil would endure, at least as long as they would.

  How would they get back down? The route up had been narrow, precipitous and he’d seen no other slaves making their way back past them. There must be another route. Yes, that’s it; there must be an…

  With a creeping sense of dread he noticed his fellow slaves standing, trembling, as they surveyed the line of blocks that stretched out on either side of them. The lightning flashed, illuminating the wrathful skies and flashing into visibility for an instant the horror of the scene before them.