by Damien Black
‘Help these people!’ he cried at the angels. But the angels were silent and unmoving. He turned to the demons and saw they were the same, staring impassively at the spectacle below. Turning back to follow their gaze he saw more iron monsters crawling over the face of the earth, crushing all in their path… great towers belched up plumes of smoke, clogging the darkening skies with their poisonous fumes… in the cities people dressed in strange clothing gathered at vast marketplaces, jostling with each other for goods that had no shape or form beneath looming towers of glass that were impossibly straight and smooth.
‘Help these people!’ he cried at the city folk, but no one listened.
Beyond the lands, strangely bare and bereft of forests, the seas roiled and churned, their waves heavy and thick with tar; dead fish floated across their slick surfaces... back on the bare plains he saw vast herds of animals brought to the slaughter; a charnel stench clogged his nostrils as they were given up to vast metal giants for sacrifice… across the land millions of mouths were opened… many fed greedily at a giant trough covered in numbers that constantly changed; many more moaned and wept… some were faced to the heavens and prayed.
But no one listened, and no one answered.
The black angel appeared before him again. ‘YOU HAVE CHOSEN, NOW EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE/THE CRAFT OF MORTAL MEN SHALL OUTSTRIP THE WIZARDRY OF OLD/YET ALL SHALL MEET ME IN THE END.’
The angel grew larger, filling up his sight. He felt himself falling into an endless darkness, one that stretched far beyond the glinting stars into an abyss of nothingness…
His eyes flicked open. He was lying on the floor of the clearing. The Earth Witch was cradling his head in her lap. She smelled of damp earth and roots. Overhead the skies were lightening, mellowing at the rose-fingered touch of dawn.
‘It is over,’ she said softly. ‘Now you have seen what lies ahead.’
‘But… it’s hideous!’ said Adelko. ‘Even if we stop Andragorix… everything will change, and not for the better.’
‘Aye,’ she said sadly. ‘Everything will change. But remember what I have told you – truth has more than one facet. You have seen a vision of many possible futures. Not all may come to pass.’
‘But I saw such horrid things,’ he said. ‘And it was my fault! Because of choices I made… I can’t be responsible for that!’
‘We are not privileged to choose our destiny,’ replied the Earth Witch. ‘In other times and places it will be called pre-determinism, the simple law of cause and effect.’
Adelko got up. He felt uncomfortable lying in a woman’s lap, even such a strange woman as the Earth Witch. It stoked up desires he wasn’t supposed to entertain.
‘Cause and effect?’
‘One action precedes another, therefore everything is predestined to happen. Another way of looking at fate. Many truths, Adelko: if you take nothing else away from tonight, remember that.’
‘But why try to stop Andragorix?’ he persisted. ‘If we’re all doomed anyway to live in a world without faith or magic… We’ll be abandoned.’
The Earth Witch sighed. She suddenly looked very old. ‘Or free, depending on how you look at it. No miracles, no magic, no divine interference of any kind. Just us, left to our own devices.’ She paused, sitting silently, lost in thought.
‘But no,’ she said after a while. ‘Ours is not the luxury to choose between good and evil either. All we have before us are choices, decisions we’ll make influenced by probability. If we stop Andragorix, whatever hellish vision of the world you’ve seen may come to pass, or it may not. It may not even have been our world you saw.’
That would have stunned Adelko yesterday but now he nodded. ‘Yes, that’s true… I had the idea of there being, well, many worlds in our Universe, not just the one.’
‘Or even many Universes,’ replied the Earth Witch. Then she sighed again, shaking her head slowly as if to clear it. ‘No, if we don’t stop Andragorix, the probability is that he really will visit hell on earth. So that’s why we have to try. But even if we succeed, there’s no guarantee of any kind of paradise on earth either. Just less chance of it becoming hell – as far as we know.’
She shut her eyes tightly. Adelko could see and sense her struggling with powerful emotions.
A sudden thought struck him. ‘How old are you? When you spoke of Morwena, it sounded almost as if you knew her.’
The witch opened her eyes and looked at him keenly. ‘I did,’ she said softly. ‘I studied with her at Kell, hundreds of years ago.’
Adelko lurched upwards, making the sign.
‘Calm down, for Kaia’s sake,’ she said, suddenly irritable. ‘I’m not one of the undead! I’ll go to the grave, and sooner than you think. But it’s true I’ve had a longer life than most mortals.’
‘Then the rumours are true!’ exclaimed the novice. ‘About your father being a Terrus.’
‘According to other tales, it’s my Alchemy that keeps me alive – strange potions I’ve learned to concoct here in my mysterious realm,’ she laughed. ‘Or perhaps I made a pact with a demon, so the other tale goes – some even say I’m a demon myself!’
She rose, tall and majestic in the growing light. ‘Many truths, Adelko, many truths – and often we see only what we want to see. Your job from now on is to try and get past that, if you can.’
Adelko nodded, mulling over her words. Another question occurred to him as he got up to leave with her.
‘What will happen to you and your Girdle? If the visions I’ve seen and the prophecies you believe in come to pass? If there’s no more magic, I mean.’
‘I’ll fade, and so will my realm. But at least it will be a gentle death, not like the one Andragorix has planned.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Adelko. ‘I’m not supposed to say it, but your realm is beautiful.’
‘I notice you don’t say the same about me!’ she mocked. ‘In any case, don’t be sorry: I’ve had a good long run here in the mortal vale. Godshome calls to me more loudly each day – my time will come soon, and I’m ready for it. As for my realm… well, the birds and beasts got on tolerably well before I came to watch over them. Perhaps they’ll remember a few of the things I taught them after I’m gone.’
She beckoned for him to follow her from the clearing. Following her Adelko wondered if he would be among the last mortals ever to see the Earth Witch’s Girdle. Perhaps there existed another one like it, in another world somewhere; the thought of that lightened his heart a little as he trudged back to rejoin his sleeping companions.
CHAPTER XV
A Soul Sold
The boy whimpered, struggling feebly at the manacles that bound him to the strangely sculpted wall. Andragorix ignored him as he stirred the viscous liquid he had just collected in a jar, mixing it with tincture of Tyrnor’s Foil. On its own the tincture was a powerful stimulant; mixed with the boy’s blood and his own seed it would give him the strength he needed to continue his work.
‘Please…’ the boy managed to whisper, the manacles clinking as he writhed in agony. ‘I want to go home! Let me go home…’
Andragorix put the jar down on a raised stone slab. Angels and demons had been carved around its borders with a craft lost to mortalkind millennia ago. Walking over to the boy, he stroked his hair and bent to whisper in his ear.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Did I go overly hard on thee just now? Be thankful I didn’t have to open another vein.’
He stroked the bleeding boy with his one living hand; the other shone brightly in the light from orbs of crystal set into the sculpted mouths of demons and angels lining the undulating walls. It was hard to believe the Varyans had worshipped both side by side: though the demons were a later addition, their beautiful forms gradually crowding out their horrid angelic opposites. A perfect metaphor for the progression of the Elder Wizards’ mighty civilisation.
The boy flinched, whimpering more loudly as he tried to move away. The manacles bound him to a round alcove that looked like a gi
gantic sucker. Andragorix felt his lust return as he gazed on the boy’s naked form. Dozens of cuts crisscrossed the lad’s body. He would endure many more before Andragorix was done with him.
He kissed the boy’s filthy matted hair. He began wailing, a desperate sound full of pain and bereft of hope. Andragorix shut his eyes, pleasure coursing through him as he drank it in. The sins of the Seven Princes were his chief delight; body and soul he had lived them for many years now.
‘On second thoughts,’ he said. ‘Your frail body might not survive another turn so soon. I wouldn’t want to curtail your suffering.’
Look at you, so sick and depraved – why don’t you just kill yourself and go straight to Gehenna if you’re so keen to serve its King?
He looked at the ring on his flesh hand, the bulbous red gem swirling with pale mist as his mother’s shade berated him.
‘Still doubt your son, eh mother?’ he said, smiling a sickly smile.
You’re no son of mine! the disembodied voice spat. His binding spell allowed his mother to convey her thoughts and emotions empathically. You should have burned years ago – what a pity that friar didn’t succeed in bringing you to justice. May he do so this time!
‘I’ll rip him apart before he does!’ screamed Andragorix. He tended to speak out loud to her, even though all he needed was to think the words. ‘I’ll drink his blood and chew on his marrow! I’ll tear out his eyes and cook them after I’ve strangled him with his own entrails!’
You are mad, replied his mother coldly. To think I taught you the clean ways of the Right-Hand Path for you to come to this – drinking your own seed and buggering small boys! You are an ABOMINATION!
Something snapped in him then and he suddenly started crying. ‘Oh mother, I’m sorry!’ he sobbed. ‘I didn’t mean to kill thee, you just make me so angry! Why must you anger me so?’
Anger you? Why you’ve been angry all your life, she sneered. Couldn’t stand up for yourself against the village boys who tormented you, and now you despise the world. You say you’ll rule it one day, but you can’t even rule yourself! Given up body and soul to gross passions! You are WEAK!
His sorrow hardened into anger that quickly condensed into a ball of white-hot rage. The wrath of the archdemon Ta’ussuswazelim coursed through him. ‘I’LL SHOW YOU!’ he screamed. ‘I’ll show you how weak I am when I’m sitting at Abaddon’s right hand and ruling his Kingdom on Earth!’
His mother’s ghost sneered again. You’ll never rule anything while you serve another – by all the gods, why don’t you unbind me and let me seek my rest?
‘No,’ said the warlock, his voice dropping to a sibilant hiss. ‘I’ll not, mother! I’ll keep you here by my side so you can watch my triumph! Now be silent, you wretched whore.’
Picking up the jar he strode over to another counter. It was like the first, only much larger. His alchemical apparatus lay sprawled across it; a convoluted web of glass and wood, silver instruments dotted about it. Pouring the mixture into a shallow dish, he touched the wick with his silver hand and muttered a word in the language of magick, visualising the abstract symbol of flame from the Sorcerer’s Script. An orange tongue leapt from his metal fingers and lit the wick beneath the dish.
He felt a wave of weakness washing over him. He probably shouldn’t waste his elan using Thaumaturgy to light a burner, but he’d soon have more than enough to keep him going. And he would need it too – there was much to be done.
As the mixture sizzled in the pan, he began to chant the incantation: his weakness increased as he channelled the powers of Alchemy, but he knew well enough to ride it out. When it was near boiling he lifted the pan off with his silver hand and poured the hot mixture back into the jar. Muttering a final few words, he swallowed the contents in one thick glob.
He felt renewed power course through him as the concoction took immediate effect. His limbs almost rippled with vigour and he felt his elan return to him. He moved towards the sucker-shaped exit with a poise and grace that a skilled dancer would have envied.
The lights went out as he left his laboratory, leaving the boy moaning in darkness.
The corridor turned like a snake; it had taken him a while to get used to the Varyans’ lack of concern for mortal symmetry, but then the Varyans had been more than mortal. What unearthly beauty they had wrought! Even the benighted latter-day sages had the gumption to call it the Platinum Age – there had been nothing like it since.
But there would be again, and right soon. When he took full control and put his plans into operation, a new era would dawn – an era of hell on earth. A hell he would rule.
The thought of that, and the potion coursing through his veins, brought up a welter of intense emotions. He felt the archdemon Invidia taking him in her cloying embrace, filling him with fierce ambition that would never be quelled until every soul moved according to his will.
The corridor emerged into another chamber. Its ceiling had partly fallen in, providing natural light from the stars above. He only used the chamber at night; he increasingly disliked the sun.
Like his laboratory the chamber followed no geometric shape, the sculpted angels and demons chasing its walls as they intertwined with one another in a stone dance of madness. There were other friezes here too: of strange cityscapes that spurned the architecture of those masons who had come after, buildings that somehow managed to stay upright despite their bizarre forms. Some of them were doubtless scenes from Varya itself, the age-old citadel of the Elder Wizards. He would take up his rightful place there, at the Hour of All’s Ending.
For now he had to make do with this lowly ruin: but at least he was getting closer to his birthright.
‘One step at a time,’ he muttered to himself as he approached the dais at the centre of the chamber and mounted the staircase that coiled around it. The steps were wide and deep and seemed to twist back on themselves… yet somehow conveyed the climber unerringly to the summit. More evidence of the mind-bending sorceries of the Elder Wizards.
Andragorix was well accustomed to the dizzying effect and he hopped up the giant steps two at a time, his limbs galvanised by Alchemy. The Varyans had been tall of stature, taller even than the Northlending nobles he was descended from. Thought of the father who had disowned his illegitimate son caused hatred to burn inside him. It was a hatred he had happily carried over towards all Northlendings. He would be revenged on the whole bloody pack of them! That idiot Ragnar had let him down badly: now was his next chance to deliver up the Kingdom of Northalde. He wouldn’t get a third.
In the middle of the dais crouched a statue of a demon, its amorphous body carved to resemble decaying rolls of putrid flesh resting on four thick legs that ended in molluscan feet. Stone eyes set at odd angles peered from all sides of its bloated form. Where its head should have been there sprouted a tentacular maw. The statue was shockingly detailed – a manifestation of Ma’alfecnu’ur, the avatar of corruption and disease. The tentacles were supposed to represent his insidious essence, but Andragorix had found another use for them.
The maw was tilted and clutched a polished silver mirror of unremarkable design. Leaning in, Andragorix breathed on it and muttered the incantation for Scrying, visualising a hawk, an ear and an eye in quick succession. The vapour from his breath swirled on the mirror, becoming a vortex of shimmering quicksilver. From its centre a vision slowly began to take shape, gradually spreading outwards in increasing concentric circles until it covered the surface.
The frosty features of Ragnar appeared before him.
‘Well, ocean-tamer, you’d better have good news for me this time,’ said Andragorix, staring at him with unmasked contempt.
‘I do, my liege,’ replied Ragnar, nodding courteously. ‘I have found a champion among the Northlanders – Guldebrand Gunnarson is both ruthless and cunning. He already has Jótlund in his grasp and now seeks an alliance with the thegns of Scandia and Utgard against Oldrik Stormrider.’
‘Well see he doesn’t spend too much time pa
rlaying! I want the Frozen Principalities united under one Magnate – under our control – and ready to attack the mainlanders by next spring.’
Again Ragnar nodded. ‘The Thegn of Utgard will be readily cowed. The Shield Queen of Scandia will need more persuading, but I am confident she will agree to throw her lot in with us once we make our proposal. With three thegns against him and my sorcery to contend with, not even the Stormrider will be able to resist us.’
‘Promises of that nature I’ve heard before!’ snarled Andragorix, feeding on his anger like a draft of coarse wine. ‘You had better hold to this one, or there’ll be one less warlock to trouble the realms of men!’
‘It shall be as you say, my liege,’ replied the White Eye. His tone was subdued, his expression deferential, but Andragorix knew better. Half a chance and his understudy would seek to use Enchantment to ensorcell him. But that could never happen, for Andragorix was already bound to a far darker master.
‘The King of Gehenna sees all,’ Andragorix reminded him. ‘You would do well to abide by your own words. Serve me better than you did last time, and you shall have rule over the Frozen Wastes. Fail, and I shall find other uses for you, perhaps as one of my undead.’
‘And how go Your Worship’s experiments?’ asked Ragnar, stilling the flash of anger that crossed his face.
‘Well enough,’ lied Andragorix. ‘Concern yourself with the subjugation of the Ice Thegns – and let me worry about mobilising the dead.’
‘It will be as you say, my liege,’ replied Ragnar.
‘Excellent. Now get thee gone – report back to me at the next quarter of the waxing moon.’