by Tom Lloyd
‘Venn, shield your senses,’ Ruhen called behind him, and a hurried flare of power told him his order had been obeyed.
Three white-clad disciples came stumbling up the steps behind their shepherd: a burly, bearded man with odd-coloured eyes and the mien of a soldier fallen on hard times; an older woman, grey-haired but with a proud bearing and strong, handsome features, and a slim, black-haired youth following close behind.
Ruhen bowed to the three when the tallest came level with him and they stopped, hesitantly sinking to their knees. The Stepped Gardens grew quieter still, a congregation at prayer, as Ruhen looked down and, without ceremony, slipped off the cloth wrapped around the hilt of his sword.
The air filled with sparkling light, each mote of dust on the breeze glittering like a cloud of ice crystals. Gasps ran around the crowd and the wide-eyed youth kneeling before Ruhen gave a moan of shock. Ruhen slipped his small fingers around the shining sword grip and drew it from the scabbard. The blade sang in the daylight, casting a corona of dancing, dazzling light around him, and his followers sighed and whimpered, their hands raised to shade their eyes from the burst of white light that was as bright as the sun.
Ruhen was unable to look at the weapon held high above his head, but he felt his hand tremble at its touch. Without looking he could feel the pure, bright light shining through his skin, seeping into his bones and forcing his shadow-soul away. He gritted his teeth, unused to the discomfort slowly building towards pain, but determined.
Aenaris – the Key of Life, had been buried far from the sight of others in the Library of Seasons until the Menin lord broke the spell hiding it. Aenaris, wielded by the Queen of the Gods, Death’s equal, until the last days of the Great War. Azaer had kept its distance during those terrible days of earthquake and flame, of which only confused memories remained.
Many said the Queen of the Gods had sided with her beloved creations and fought at their side. Her name was considered accursed by all followers of the Chief of the Gods; it was recorded only in works of heresy, invoked fruitlessly by the foolish or the mad.
Did Zhia know her gift would pain me? Ruhen wondered as his skin crawled and the palm of his hand shrieked in pain, or does the Land seek balance for the white-eye’s burdens?
With an effort he lowered the weapon, feeling the shadows in his eyes recoil as light filled his mind. He took a step forward, then one more, and sensed the three disciples were within reach.
‘My gift I give to each of you,’ Ruhen croaked, ‘and so I charge you: bear my blessing in the name of peace.’
It was a long blade, wider than Ruhen’s palm, with a short tip like a crystal formation and a large forward-slanted guard. Each of the grip’s eight smooth faces was engraved with a phoenix, flanked by leaf-laden branches. Ruhen forced himself to face down its breathtaking presence and stare directly at the weapon more potent and powerful than anything in existence except its mate, Termin Mystt.
With his eyes closed and a single image in his mind, Ruhen touched the tip to the chest of each of the three terrified disciples. ‘Bear my blessing,’ he whispered tenderly to each as the vast magic surged out of Aenaris.
The youth was knocked backwards by its force and caught by Luerce, standing behind him, while the woman cried out in something between agony and ecstasy. The bearded man shuddered as though impaled and dropped flat on his face. The air shimmered white around him and rampant magics hissed in his bones.
Ruhen staggered back, visibly struggling with the power until Ilumene came forward to steady him. With Ilumene’s big hand carefully holding his own, Ruhen managed to return Aenaris to its sheath. Ilumene wasted no time in rewrapping the hilt until the crystal sword was again entirely hidden from view, then he stepped back, blinking away the ghost-trails of light.
Dazed by the power of the weapon, Ruhen stared dumbly at his hand as the pain receded. Everything was blurred after Aenaris’ bright light. Slowly focus returned and he looked down at the small hand of the body he’d stolen before its mother even realised she was pregnant, blinking at what he saw.
Aenaris had left its mark on him, Ruhen realised gradually. The pain in his eyes and reeling shadows under his skin diminished, but a white mark remained on his hand. His palm and the inside of his fingers were scorched white where he had touched the crystal sword. He flexed his hand, testing the sore, taut flesh for signs of greater damage, but if he had really been burned, the Key of Life had healed him, just as it had when an assassin had shot him the day the Harlequins arrived.
His attention was dragged towards the three disciples by a sudden howl from the youth, who was convulsing in Luerce’s arms. His eyes was staring unseeing up at the sky, his back was arched in pain. The alarmed First Disciple eased the youth onto the flagstones at the top of the stairs just as pinpricks of light appeared over the surface of his body. The same thing was happening to the other two, though the woman had somehow stayed upright, but as the flowering stars intensified, she moaned and bent forward as though in prayer.
Each of the three curled up as the light started weaving a skein of shining threads over them. The spider-silk slowly enveloped them and Ruhen found himself taking a step back as his immortal senses felt the rush of magic around them continuing to expand until it had become an unseen torrent of power in the air.
Venn sensed it too, and distantly Ruhen heard the former Harlequin gasp and fall to his knees, nearly overwhelmed despite the shield he’d had raised.
The woman shuddered as though struck by two great blows and writhed left and right under the cocoon of power. Where she touched the shining threads they stuck to her clothes, then her hair and hands too, searing her skin just as Aenaris had marked Ruhen. One hand pushed out, reaching towards him, an awkward movement, jerking forward and back, and when she moved, a lattice of white threads remained.
Beside her the young man kicked wildly, his silence disconcerting, as though he was suffering an agony that could not be expressed with a scream.
The three figures became increasingly blurred, hands and feet thrusting out under the webs of magic, all unnatural angles and movements that expanded the cocoons and all-too-soon stopped corresponding to anything human. Behind them Ruhen saw a scramble of figures, Harlequins and disciples alike, drawing back – all fearful of touching those glittering threads that seared the pale daylight.
The younger man’s cocoon tumbled down the slope onto a lower tier, momentarily out of sight until an arm or something drove upwards and expanded its form higher than a man. The two remaining came together with a hiss and crackle of competing energies, burning the air between them and creating some sort of barrier against which both pressed as they continued their astonishing growth. By fits and starts their progress went in opposite directions, blackening the grass as they reached it and scoring trails over flagstones.
Another spasm brought one, then the others, up even higher, as though a horse were rearing up within the cocoon. Shapes pressed against the inner surface, curved and alien in form, but against the intense light Ruhen’s eyes could not make out anything definite. Again the boy was forced to retreat, now shielding his shadow-lidded eyes from the light.
Something arched and held its position, working up into the air with sharp, jagged movements. The shapeless masses were growing larger with every passing moment and at last the cocoons were starting to weaken, sagging and tearing in places. The lightbound shapes rose again, this time driving up from the ground and huge grey talons ripped through the membrane. The frayed edges curled away as they were torn, flapping in a breeze Ruhen could not feel, until they caught against the talons and feet above them and melted onto the flesh and bone.
The nearer shape lurched forward and almost toppled as a long limb pressed against the inside of the membrane and ripped it open with a savage jerk. Shreds of burning white light burst out and lashed across Ruhen and his most loyal. He heard Ilumene cry out in alarm, but he had no time to turn as light suddenly exploded across his eyes. Ruhen reeled, han
ds clasped to his face as searing pain more intense than the burning touch of Aenaris blanked out his vision.
Ruhen cried out for the first time in his life, shock and pain mingling to cause the Land to lurch underneath him. Only unseen hands stopped him from falling to the ground – hands he realised were Venn’s after crystal wiped across his face and hauled the pain away.
Ruhen shuddered, half-cradled in Venn’s trembling arms, and tried to blink away the blur in his eyes. He felt his left eye obey and gasped as he suddenly made out the shape ahead of him: a near-translucent outstretched wing the size of a ship’s sail. His right eye saw nothing though, just a uniform white nothingness, as though thick fog had suddenly descended.
He touched his fingers to the skin there and hissed as he discovered a long, raw wound curving up from his cheek to his ear. His eye was too numb for him to be able to tell whether the lid was even open or not, but questing fingers found it was, though covering his eye with his hand made no difference to the dull white blur he saw.
‘Master, can you see?’ Venn demanded hoarsely, tilting Ruhen’s head to inspect the burned flesh. ‘Your eye, it’s gone entirely white,’ he croaked, lowering his voice as he added, ‘the shadows are gone from it.’
Ruhen struggled up, disorientated by the unfamiliar sensations, but more horrified by his childish frailty and weakness. ‘It is blind,’ he gasped. ‘I see nothing.’
The wing above was suddenly retracted and a long claw protruding from the wing’s knuckle was driven hard against the ground seeking purchase. It caught the edge of a paving stone and stuck fast while the struggling creature heaved against the smoking remnants of membrane around it.
‘The sword,’ Venn suggested, watching the beast like Ruhen, mindful that only swift action could properly repair injuries.
Venn’s wrist had set as it was, pressed agonisingly back into the semblance of position, but then it had healed that way. To undo that was beyond any healer’s skill. Though the Key of Life might have that power, the pain it would cause was too great; Venn’s breathtaking skill was gone forever, at least in mortal terms.
‘No,’ Ruhen croaked, pushing away Venn’s hands and steadying himself, his attention fixed on the monsters as shrieks of panic rang out across the Stepped Gardens.
The nearest tore away the last of the membrane and lifted its head to the sun, oblivious to the aghast faces watching. A thin blanket of autumn cloud covered the sky, but the dragon shone with an inner light that lovingly illuminated every scale. Huge muscles bunched under the shimmering reptilian armour, while a needle-tipped tail wove with a cobra’s promise. Its broad head was grey, seamed in black below its spiral-horn-studded brow, while the top was almost perfectly white, echoing the hooded cloaks all three had worn. The man’s disconcerting eyes – one had been brown, one green – were now pale and luminescent.
The dragon stretched its wings out wide and roared a challenge to the heavens that Ruhen felt like a blow to his ears.
Beside it, the second beast rose up and regarded its sibling with unblinking eyes; this one was more slender, with a sharp beak and a spear-like head where once an ageing woman’s face had been. It was even whiter than the first, carved from ice, with eyes a paler blue than any Litse’s, but when it opened its mouth to add its voice the tongue and flesh were unnaturally black.
The last, the young man, was darker than the others. The only white on its body was a streak that ran down its spiked spine; the rest was shadowed grey. Great claws tightened and furrowed the earth as the dragons’ birth-cries split the sky and tears fell from the heavens to splatter on the heads of those fleeing the gardens. Ruhen didn’t move, unafraid of the enormous monsters, enraptured by the sinuous, lethal shapes crafted by his mind.
‘The power of the Gods,’ he whispered, savouring the thrill of creation that was only intensified by the pain that remained in his ruined eye. He touched his white-marked fingers to his face. ‘And this I sacrifice.’
Hunger. Prey.
The words echoed out from their minds, barely formed thoughts and emotions. Azaer heard them, just as he had heard the silent calls of men like Venn or Witchfinder Shanatin: an echo beyond human ears, a need of basic and primal origins.
‘One must stay and watch over this city until you are called,’ Ruhen ordered, and the three heads swung down to face the boy who commanded them.
Behind him, Ruhen felt Venn tense at the scrutiny of these inhuman, terrifying beasts.
‘I am marked by your rebirth, just as you are marked by the devotion of your former selves. One will stay; the others will fly west and fight in my name.’
The largest of the three drew back at that, whether affronted or angered, it was impossible to tell, but Ruhen stared it down. With each passing heartbeat he sensed the latent feelings of the three devotees returning as they remembered their blind obedience, their desperation to serve, their sense of purpose in his presence. He was so much smaller than they, but that resonated deep inside their hearts: the protection of the weak, the service of innocence. They would follow the child to a new form of glory.
Obey.
The dragons leapt into the air one after the other, driving up with their powerful hind legs before sweeping out their huge wings and battering the air down. Ruhen was driven to his knees by the force of their strokes, but once aloft they circled low over Byora with little effort needed.
‘One to stay, two to go,’ Ruhen repeated, and the third dragon, the greyest, broke away from its siblings and turned into a long circle that encompassed much of Byora before turning and heading up to Blackfang’s jagged mountaintop. The remaining two beasts watched it go, then they too began to climb high into the sky, until they were indistinct shapes against the distant clouds. There they drifted on the far winds for a time until they caught the scent of those they sought and darted away on long, powerful wing-beats, cutting through the air like the arrows of Nartis.
‘Venn, Rojak,’ Ruhen said to his black-clad disciple, ‘now it is your turn. That Skull of Song you hold: sing a song of fair winds and summer skies. The Stormcaller knows how to ward against dragons. Remove that option from him.’
‘See my power, white-eye,’ Ruhen whispered to the wind as flakes of snow began to sweep past. ‘Match it if you dare. Unleash the horrors of the Dark Place against me – declare yourself the monster the whole Land secretly believes you to be.’
CHAPTER 32
The first winds of winter scoured through the Narkang army, dragging at their raised spears and trying to wrench banners from the grips of their bearers. Tiny snowflakes drifted on the breeze, only rarely falling to the ground. Isak watched the white specks and shivered at a cold he could not feel.
While all those around him were bundled up in coats and furs, Isak wore his usual shirt and cloak only. For him the chill in the air was one of the soul, not of the body; the snow looked like blossom gliding across a dead place. Death’s own blossom: and soon the dead fruit will fall. It was a dismal sight, promising an unnatural harvest.
Now he stood and watched the troops gradually moving into position on the plain in front of him. Orders were shouted, horsemen were thundering in all directions, horns and drums sounded. For once he was surrounded by people, and yet totally ignored. He had no place here, and no rank or unit to impose purpose on him.
In the distance he could see the enemy, already assembled and waiting on the higher ground. Soldiers stood in neat rows halfway up the shallow slope, with staggered knots of cavalry and archers wearing red sashes spread across the plain. In complete contrast, the left flank was a disordered mass of people, thousands of clamouring white-clothed faithful, only held back by the presence of the Devoted cavalry.
‘Isak!’ cried a voice over the chaos, and he turned to see a rider pulling up beside him. The black shield hanging from the saddle had a small bee painted in one corner, and beneath it was a long-handled sword. Isak couldn’t see more than the plain grip and brass scabbard tip, but he knew there would be blue
bells on the scabbard, as incongruous as blossom in late autumn.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Doranei called.
Isak gestured at all that was going on. ‘Everyone has orders but me.’
‘My lord—’
The white-eye cut him off. ‘I’m not a lord, no longer even a soldier.’
‘Aye, well, I still thought you’d be with the rest of the Farlan.’ He pointed to the division of Palace Guard in the black and white of the Ghosts assembled on their right flank. Each man was in heavy armour, their horses in full barding. Isak was already picturing what would happen when they rode into that undefended mass of Ruhen’s followers.
‘Most likely I’ll spook the other horses,’ Isak said. ‘Turns out I’m just a danger to those around me.’
‘Hah, could’ve told you that for free,’ Doranei replied with a scowl. ‘Where’s the rest of your bodyguard? Carel can’t ride with the Ghosts, and Tiniq had a bad enough time riding back from Vanach; horses dislike his scent as much as they did Zhia’s – he’d be thrown before he reached the enemy.’
Isak made a show of looking around at the ground nearby. ‘Seem to have lost them somewhere,’ he concluded.
Doranei frowned. ‘Great, one of those days,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Man was bad enough before the sword scrambled his brains.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Isak said, slipping his hand around the Crystal Skull at his waist, ‘I’m here, with the rest of you. Might be I’m not enjoying being on a battlefield again, though. It brings up bad memories.’
‘Aye, well, we all got things we can’t afford to think about right now,’ Doranei growled. ‘You ain’t special in every way, so focus on your job, soldier.’
‘Good advice from a man who carries a reminder of his pain on his saddle.’