Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  Aranthur raised it, and wrote it in his mind. It was fluid, and easy, and the power came…

  He leapt in the air.

  “Darkness falls!” he swore.

  His left boot was smouldering, and he pulled it off with a string of curses.

  Jalu’d leant forward.

  “I know this a different way,” he said. “You cannot hold the summoned saar. It must flow through you, not pause. In your pause—”

  “I don’t pause!” Aranthur said.

  Dahlia shrugged. “I think he’s right.”

  “Damn it,” Aranthur said.

  “It is only practice,” Dahlia said. “And you need to eat more.”

  Aranthur took a deep breath and then used his kuria meditation to steady himself and avoid anger. He knew they were right—but he now thought of himself as a skilled caster and it was embarrassing to make simple mistakes.

  The second time, he wrote the volteia in his mind, and then let the saar flow into it, so that, in his imagination, the letters lit with fire from right to left in a single, not quite smooth progression, as if a scribe were writing them. All this in less time than the beat of a butterfly’s wings.

  His bare foot was warm, but the nearest vase exploded in fragments, and one cut Aranthur’s face. The young man carrying a tray of fragrant rice flinched, and there was rice on the floor.

  “Exactly!” Jalu’d said. “Much better. It must flow, like dance. This is why I use dance as my focus, because these manipulations are all about balance and timing.”

  “Perhaps you should sing your working.”

  Dahlia was mocking him, but he saw the virtue in the notion. And in that moment, a cascade of insights took place; no time passed, and an entire universe of technique seemed to expand before him.

  “Eagle,” he breathed.

  He took a step back.

  “Everyone stand back,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil more of our dinner.”

  He whistled a tune to himself—a fairly juicy Arnaut tavern song. He imagined playing it on the tamboura. He fitted the volteia to it the way lyrics might fit a song, and he cast.

  “Now I see,” he said.

  “Of course you see,” Sasan said. “You blew a hole in his wall.”

  Dahlia put a hand on his shoulder.

  “I was… making a joke,” she said. “But that worked.”

  Aranthur was shaking his head. “Oh, that’s just the beginning. By Sophia. What if I fitted my workings to the movements of swordsmanship? Like dance, but for combat…”

  Dahlia’s eyes widened. “Damn.”

  “Can we eat first?” Sasan asked.

  And indeed, as the table filled with dishes—roast lamb with saffron rice and raisins, several bargains, and a marvellous vegetable soup—Ansu summoned all the workers to the courtyard.

  “He ordered it,” Sasan said. “There’s not much food in the city. I swear he bought it all.”

  The workers dug in, eating quickly, and Haras passed some of the discussions along.

  “We’ll pay them to work all night,” Ansu said.

  Various voices were raised in protest. Aranthur discovered that he was ravenous, and he wolfed down the rice, and even took a piece of lamb, despite the Academy’s prohibitions. Not eating meat was seemingly irrational in a world so full of violence, but he hesitated with the lamb at his lips, and then put it down, and had a fish curry instead. It was delicious, and he had a second bowl and then a third.

  A boy came in; he shouted something, and suddenly everyone was on their feet.

  Haras shook his head.

  “There is a fog rising—a real fog, from the river,” he said. “But the entities are moving under cover of the fog. The killing has started.”

  Aranthur got to his feet. He felt the familiar urge—to go at the danger, to attack it.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Sasan frowned. “Not so fast.”

  “People are dying,” Aranthur said.

  “You’re dying to try your toy. How are we going to fight it?”

  “Wind, the shield, direct sorcerous attack.”

  Ansu stroked his chin, and flicked more rice into his mouth.

  “And,” he said, when he’d chewed and swallowed, “I want to try cutting it off from its host. These things have tendrils, but they are themselves merely the reaching arms of the thing… that the Pure released. Do I have that correctly?”

  “This is what I have been told,” said Haras.

  Ansu nodded. “Keep it in one place for a little while and perhaps I can sever it from its roots.”

  Haras looked suspicious. “Only a senior priest can attempt such a thing.”

  Sasan looked around. “But we don’t know that we can hurt or even contain one of these things.”

  Ansu smiled. “Life is full of risk.”

  Sasan looked at Dahlia. “You’re the one who—”

  She smiled brilliantly. “I’m the cautious one, you mean. But not here. People are dying.”

  Sasan leant very close. “Answer me this, then. Qna Liras is one of the toughest Lightbringers. He’s one of the Masran priests, and not the greatest among them, correct? So check my logic. They can’t handle these entities. Why can you?”

  Aranthur met Sasan’s eyes.

  “I admit, it is a sobering thought.” He shrugged. “But I think it is because they are human, and feel defeated. We…”

  He wanted to say something noble, but nothing came to him.

  “We’re young and arrogant,” Ansu said. “Let’s go and die trying. Really, is life worth so many questions?”

  “See, that’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Sasan admitted. “I can’t even fight back.”

  “I’ll protect you,” Dahlia said.

  Sasan sighed. “The things I do for love.”

  His humour sounded forced, and Dahlia frowned.

  Out in the dark streets of Al-Khaire, their confidence did seem arrogance, and utterly misplaced.

  The fog was thick. Torches on houses and corner lanterns were mere smudges of light in the thick darkness, and their glow could be as confusing as the darkness itself.

  Aranthur prepared a variety of magelights, and in the end, cast two, one on each knee. Lights low to the ground appeared to throw a better light, although the movement of his legs could make the fog seem to be alive, an illusion that didn’t help them at all.

  Dahlia put her own magelight at her waist.

  The streets were empty, and they walked south through the warren of alleys behind the market, headed for the riverside, where the poorest neighbourhoods were, and from where they’d received rumours of attacks.

  Aranthur raised his magesight.

  “This way,” he said.

  He was looking for sihr, and there was a bonfire of it burning almost due south, past the Temple of Aploun, who in Masr was known as Lyra. They entered the Square of Lyra, with more than a hundred statues of the god, some standing and some seated, all in ancient, stiff styles, the bodies curiously rendered, half-turned away.

  In the fog, they were unearthly. As they moved along the square, each statue loomed up, as if summoned, and the shifting magelights brought the stone to restless life.

  Far in the distance, there was screaming. It appeared to come from everywhere.

  Aranthur, focused on the sihr, led them into a blind alley behind the massive temple portico. Dahlia felt her way out, and moved to the left, then back to the south on a small street that grew narrower and narrower.

  “Stop,” Aranthur said.

  Dahlia, who was in the lead, came back.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “We’re not thinking. All the magelights are just giving us away. We need to think as if we’re on a battlefield.”

  “We’re going to move through the fog in the dark?” Sasan asked. “That’s your plan?”

  “Yes,” Dahlia said. “He’s right.”

  The Masran priest spoke up. “I think we should go back. I think
we will all become food for this entity and to no purpose. We cannot stumble around in the darkness—”

  “You can go back,” Dahlia said.

  Aranthur took Sasan by the shoulder.

  “Put the four shields in front—put Jalu’d and Haras behind. Dahlia, come to think of it, you’re the most powerful—you get behind too. Then if something comes at us from behind, we have a sword and a shield at the back.”

  “Behind us,” Ansu nodded, as if he hadn’t considered all the possible directions.

  There was screaming.

  “Why is no one running away?” Jalu’d asked.

  Without lights, their progress was much slower; every broken pot, every dead dog was an obstacle, and a load of fallen timber was like a wall. They inched their way along the street and then into a winding alley.

  “This must be the Al-Suf,” Haras said. “Yes. There are the perfumers.”

  They could all smell the perfumers.

  The ground began to slope. They were walking downhill on a narrow, cobbled street. The cobbles were fragments of ancient monuments worn smooth by thousands of feet passing over them, invisible now in the fog.

  “Stop,” Aranthur said. “It’s ahead of us.”

  A woman screamed.

  There was a flash, like red lightning, and the fog just ahead of them was illuminated for less than a heartbeat. But it was not the sickly bile-yellow of their last entity, but instead, was lit with capillaries of scarlet, as if the fog had blood vessels…

  “Shields,” Dahlia said.

  Three shields flashed bright blue. In each case, the area covered by the shield was greater than the surface area of the material artifact.

  “Lap them,” Aranthur said.

  “Light,” Dahlia said.

  “Oh, Goddess of Wisdom, save your children,” Sasan said.

  All four adepts engaged their lights together.

  Two red-veined tendrils shot out of the fog and slammed into their blue-lit shields. Aranthur expected a feeling of impact, but there was none. Nor did the red tentacles attempt to climb over the shields.

  Ansu rolled a beautiful array of lights off his hands and began chanting a mantra. The pool of sihr shrank away like a kicked dog.

  Dahlia and Jalu’d unleashed together. A beam of gold and an emerald green pulse struck the fog, and it writhed. There was something inside it, and it made a sound, like the metallic grating of an ungreased wheel.

  Aranthur cast his aspis. He glanced back. Haras was working with a string of beads. Jalu’d was twirling, one hand in the air.

  Behind them, illuminating them in a terrible parody of light, was a pit of sihr. It was black as pitch and deep as a thousand hells.

  Aranthur sang his new transference and the saar flowed out of him and into the sihr. There was a glow like heated metal all across the malignant thing.

  Dahlia whirled, already casting.

  “Behind us!” Aranthur said, as calmly as he could manage.

  In one of the bravest acts of his life, he turned to face the red-flashed thing in front, ignoring the threat from behind. With his aspis he batted away attempts to circumvent their defence, and he felt Jalu’d’s back against his.

  “Eyes front,” he said to Sasan.

  Sasan was trying to look behind him, and he was breathing like a bellows.

  Aranthur threw another transference. In fact, he realised how to roll such a casting in a continuous stream, the way Qna Liras did—it was like music, or like an argument in mathematika. He unleashed a chain of attacks and the red-streaked fog attacked, billowing in ever denser cords. His aspis couldn’t be everywhere—a lash caught his left leg and the pain was intense—but the entity’s attempt to dominate him with fear failed against his own concentration.

  He drew his sword. It glowed a dull blue, as if the light came from deep within the metal.

  Not unless there is no other choice, the sword said.

  Haras, the priest, raised his right hand, his string of beads now a noose. He tightened them with two fingers until the whole string vanished into his hand.

  The red-marbled fog flickered…

  Ansu’s light show intensified until it was like the heart of a lightning storm.

  Aranthur turned, raised his sword over Jalu’d’s head, and played his continuous beam of saar over the black maw behind them.

  Dahlia was down. The Masran priest stood his ground, a crescendo of shields whirling around both of them. Jalu’d leapt, danced, and vanished into the cloud, whirling like a storm cloud of green light.

  Aranthur’s saar cut into the thing like a child cutting cake.

  It fled. Its emanation rolled over Jalu’d and left him dancing alone, ten paces deep in the real fog.

  Aranthur whirled, but Haras was rolling something between his hands. Sasan knelt by Dahlia.

  “She’s breathing,” he said.

  “She overspent.” Aranthur put a hand on her forehead. “Eagle. We’ll have to carry her.”

  “We got one,” Ansu said. “And we defeated the other. We can do this.”

  “Let’s save Dahlia and then we can talk about whether we won or lost,” Aranthur said. He filed away “got one” for another day.

  “The shields work,” Sasan said, his voice a little shaky. “Colour’s coming back to her face…”

  Indeed, by the light of their shields, Dahlia’s face lost the white-grey of death.

  Her eyes flickered open.

  “Fuck,” she said, “I’m not dead.”

  Qna Liras held Haras’ string of beads in a web of force. The others were gathered in a circle around the sacred fire in the sanctuary of Aploun. All of them were standing except Dahlia, who was sitting, and Sasan, who knelt by her.

  “Incredible,” he said.

  “Think of it as a proof of concept,” Ansu said.

  Haras said. “I only caught a very small piece. But the working you taught me—”

  Qna Liras frowned. “That’s enough.”

  “With the glyphs,” Aranthur said, “you can rebuild the defences.”

  “With the shields,” Sasan said, “you can counter-attack when you must—and you can confine any break-in.”

  “And with this—” Haras pointed at the beads—“you can cut the entities off from their—”

  “Gods,” Qna Liras said. “The things that were released are… like gods. While you were running off into the city risking the future for a little entertainment, I was deliberating with my order. What we think has happened…”

  He was looking at the fragment of an Apep-Duat, trapped in the web of the string of beads.

  “It is incredible. We haven’t done this for centuries.”

  Ansu smiled. “Merely brilliant. Incredible is too much.”

  Qna Liras shook his head.

  “Tell us what happened,” Dahlia said. “And tell us about harnessing these entities, since that is plainly what you do.”

  Qna Liras hesitated. “I’ll do my best to explain. The Pure sent us offers last year, and in the spring they took Antioke, at the head of the Delta. Antioke is not necessarily yours—there was much debate here as to whether Masr was under threat. When your fleet appeared before Antioke, there was more debate.” He shook his head. “I was here for none of this, you understand. Regardless, then, suddenly, an attack on the Black Pyramid. Only the gods know what they intended. The priest who survived says that the Disciple was looking for something.” Qna Liras smiled grimly. “We assume he was looking for the Black Stone.”

  “When he didn’t find it, he began destroying the ritual altars inside the Black Pyramid.” The Magos shrugged. “Anger? Rage? Frustration? Some horrible intention of annihilation?” He looked around at them. “Regardless. Something broke free. But it could not fully open the gate. Or rather, one prisoner broke free, and the others…” He shook his head. “It appears that the others tried to restrain it. Of course, we can’t understand them.”

  “If they are gods,” Sasan asked, “why are they wanderi
ng about killing villagers?”

  “Metaphysikal insanity?” Dahlia asked.

  “What a terrifying thought,” Aranthur said.

  Qna Liras nodded. “What best we guess, at least partly based on your little escapade, is that the entities are still caught in the framework of the… I can call it a gate, but it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s a gate to nowhere—a universe with a single door and no access to the Aulos. I’m sorry, this is not my area of study. The point is a practical one, however. The… gods… are still in there, except one or two, who escaped. And the ones still inside can emit these… these killing things, powerful, although not full Apep-Duat. More like wraiths. They wander about, killing. Purely to gather power, so that the entities can grow and in the end, eventuate.”

  Aranthur shrugged in his lack of comprehension.

  Dahlia was as perplexed as he.

  “How did they become so powerful in the first place?” she asked.

  “The Disciple fed them,” Haras said. “One of us saw him do it.”

  Aranthur was shaking his head. “What can the Pure hope to gain—”

  “They sought the effect,” Dahlia said. “Of course they did. The destabilisation of Masr, and the opening of a gate to the winds of magik.”

  “But that’s insane,” Qna Liras said. “They caused the deaths of thousands—if that gate fails… millions. Maybe everyone.”

  Dahlia shook her head. “The Master… does not think the way we do. He takes risks. He assumes that your Masran priests will fix it. After it has accomplished what he wants.”

  “Or he doesn’t care,” Aranthur said. “And in one raid, he knocked Masr out of the war.”

  “Sophia,” Sasan breathed. “How many of these ancient gods are in the Black Pyramid?”

  “Ten thousand,” Qna Liras said. “So far, according to what we have divined, we’re facing between six and ten.” He took a breath. “Listen—what I say is a secret known only to a handful of initiates. This has happened before. We have traps for Apep-Duat that escape—sometimes we even… use them…”

  “Use them?” Dahlia was frowning at the beads.

  “But now we know how to save this city, and we can limit the damage—” Ansu began.

  “Until the food runs out,” Qna Liras said.

  “Imperial fleet, major food lift, and a lot of magik support,” Aranthur said to Dahlia.