by Damien Black
Sir Torgun felt anger stir in his breast. ‘For pity’s sake, Master Horskram, must you be so stark in your speech?’ he demanded. ‘These poor wretches hardly need their woes spelt out to them.’
The adept stared at him coldly. ‘These “poor wretches”, as you yourself so gently label them, are clearly in a state of shock,’ he replied. ‘If hard words are necessary to jolt them into saving themselves, then so be it. I have wandered among the hovels of the poor and disaffected for years, Sir Torgun, whilst you disported yourself at court and played at gilded tourneys. I don’t need lectures from the likes of you on how to address afflicted peasants!’
Flinging his cloak over his shoulder irritably he turned back towards the pass. ‘Let’s tarry not, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘We’ve a mission to complete.’
Sir Torgun stared at the monk’s back, not liking the feeling of cold hatred that seeped through him. He caught Sir Braxus looking at him.
‘Something troubles you, sir knight?’ he demanded, meeting his gaze.
‘Nothing at all, sir knight,’ replied Braxus, favouring him with a brittle smile before turning to follow Horskram back down the trail.
The sun was low in the sky when they caught their first real-life view of the Warlock’s Crown. It was much as it had looked in the Earth Witch’s pool, only now the spectacle was underpinned by a lingering sense of evil.
Adelko recited the Psalm of Fortitude with greater fervour as he and Horskram took the company up towards the blasphemous edifice. If attacked by sorcery they would switch to the Psalm of Gramarye’s Quenching: until then the priority was preserving their sanity.
Up ahead the pass forked. The left-hand fork continued through the mountains and would take them eventually into southern Thraxia. The other fork wound up the side of a mountain that terminated in a plateau; atop it the five broken shards pointed up and outwards at irregular angles. More evidence of the Elder Wizards and their peculiar asymmetrical architecture: it was impossible to discern what shape the entire building would have taken. Looking on the Warlock’s Crown would have given Arclidius, the Golden Age founder of geometry, a headache: the Priest-Kings of Varya had cast their buildings from an alien die, an ancient and forgotten methodology that followed no mortal logic.
Adelko repeated the words that had sustained them back in Tintagael, hoping it would be enough to keep them from fleeing in terror.
The skies deepened as they approached the fork. Still chanting the psalm, they took the one leading up to their destination. Chill winds strafed them as they ascended; drawing his cloak more tightly around him Adelko wondered if the keening gusts would suddenly take unnatural life, but it was as Horskram had predicted. Andragorix appeared to be conserving his strength.
The feeling of evil began to grow stronger. Ravens circled overhead. Adelko forced himself not to think of the Northland superstitions, of Søren and his doom, when the ill-omened birds had pronounced it even as he reached for the very artefact whose fragments they now went to recover.
The psalm’s words were a burning imprint in his psyche by the time they reached the plateau. The crater was vast, covering most of its surface, and the shards were gigantic, the lowest one being the height of several castles. Their stones seemed to change colour as he looked at them; sometimes they appeared to be hues he could not name or recognise. This close they could see that between the shards some vestiges of the rest of the structure had survived; these clung to the lip of the crater and were the height of several men in most places.
‘How in Reus’ name are we going to get in?’ asked Sir Braxus, giving voice to Adelko’s thoughts.
Horskram broke off from the psalm, motioning for Adelko to continue reciting. ‘Andragorix may be able to fly, but his servants cannot. There must be a way, let’s investigate. Don’t stray too close to the walls! They are still redolent of the Elder Wizards’ sorcery after all these centuries.’
Horskram resumed the psalm and they began walking around the vast perimeter. The clouds had dispersed somewhat during the afternoon and the sunset basked the plateau with its golden glow; but in the presence of the Warlock’s Crown the light seemed to take on an unnatural radiance, absorbing the myriad colours of the blasted edifice. It was too bright and hurt his eyes.
He caught a flicker of movement as they approached the first of the shards. Two beastmen clutching pikes stood before what looked like a gigantic sucker protruding from the concave surface of the shard. There was no cover to be had on the barren rock, which looked to have been charred in several places: age-old testimony to the Wrath of the Unseen.
The beastmen had not seen them yet. Without breaking off from his recital, Horskram signalled to Kyra. Unslinging her bow she nocked an arrow, drew and released. A beastman fell in a quivering heap as the Wose’s Bane took effect; the lady of Dulsinor had found time to prepare them some more before they set out. The other turned and reached out to touch the side of the entrance it guarded, if entrance it was. Something next to it lit up. A second shaft sprouted from the creature’s back as Kyra shot it.
They moved swiftly over towards the shard. Both beastmen were dead by the time they reached it. Gazing up at the stupendous ruin they had guarded, Adelko gawped. The shard leaned over them menacingly, like the claw of a gigantic monster, blocking out the warped light of the setting sun and casting them in shadow.
Up close he could see the entrance was inscribed with hieratic symbols around the entirety of its lip: by now he knew well enough that this was the Sorcerer’s Script. The entrance-way was the size of a castle gate. At its side a globe was buried in the alien rock of the shard: it pulsed slowly with a light that changed colour every time it did. A faint humming could be heard above the sound of his own voice as he muttered the Psalm of Fortitude in a voice that quavered. Somehow the sacred words seemed primitive now; he felt like a small child babbling in a grand hall of men.
The entrance was covered with a strange gelatinous substance that was black as night. The humming continued for a few more moments, then suddenly the substance dissolved. Before it was a chamber shaped like a lop-sided S that appeared to be made of some kind of black stone. At its far end was an irregular opening that he supposed was a window. The stone had stopped pulsing and gone dark, though another shaped like it only larger was set into the ceiling and shed a steady grey light on the room.
Still chanting, Horskram stepped across its threshold, motioning for them to follow. Adelko felt it first empathically as it touched Horskram’s psyche, then directly as he crossed over himself: it was like stepping naked through an invisible waterfall, only it was cold to the soul not the body. He shuddered as he stepped up to join Horskram at the window.
As he did so it dawned on him that the chamber was not made of stone, but metal. What kind of metal was black?
‘Ebonite,’ muttered Sir Braxus. ‘This room’s made of ebonite.’
The others looked at him quizzically. ‘There are deposits lying in hills on my father’s lands,’ the Thraxian explained. ‘No other metal is like it. Black as night and harder than diamonds. So hard, no one knows how to smelt it.’
‘Not since the Elder Wizards,’ supplied Horskram, before adding: ‘Come and look at this.’
The window looked like a lop-sided polygon. It was covered with a strange invisible substance, similar to the room’s entrance but transparent. Adelko knew instinctively it wasn’t the sheet glass he’d read about: that had been invented by artificers in the Empire some two centuries ago and was very rare in the Free Kingdoms. Reaching out to touch it he was scarcely surprised when it gave slightly, moving outwards before his fingers like a membrane.
‘Don’t touch anything!’ cried Horskram sharply. ‘I said come and look.’
The novice gingerly pulled back his hand. They had simultaneously broken off the Psalm, but he supposed that they had been reciting it for hours now: if that wasn’t enough to keep them sane there wasn’t much point going on with it.
Following his mentor�
��s instructions more precisely he gazed at the view the peculiar window offered.
The crater was several hundred yards in diameter and topped a shaft that fell for at least the same distance. The lower levels originally counted five storeys, each one as high as those of the Watchtower of Tintagael: their broken remains jutted from the shaft’s walls, giving it the look of a giant screw-thread. Roughly half of the lowest storey before the basement floor had survived the Wrath: Adelko guessed that Andragorix had holed himself up in there somewhere. The portion of basement floor exposed to the dying sunlight was littered with huge chunks of broken masonry, its bizarre stones glowing with the same shifting colours as the shards. At one end was a giant black grill set into the floor, presumably made from ebonite. He could make out two more humanoid figures standing at one end of it.
‘It’s a pretty enough view, but how do we get down?’ asked Sir Braxus.
Adelko looked downwards, trying to follow the shaft wall directly below the room. He could see the shattered remains of the next storey jutting out from it, but nothing more. There were no other exits from the chamber.
‘They must have a secret door somewhere,’ said Horskram. ‘Why else would they have been guarding it? Let’s search.’
‘Here,’ said Anupe. ‘Another stone, just like the one on the outside.’
The stone was exactly the same as its twin, directly opposite and set into the ebonite seamlessly. As a blacksmith’s son, Adelko had to marvel at the craft of the Elder Wizards.
‘Don’t touch it,’ said Horskram. ‘It might shut the entrance and trap us.’
They searched the chamber but found nothing. The sun had set, but the vast ruin remained suffused in the strange light of the stones. No need to light a torch – Adelko felt strangely satisfied at that. A flaming brand in a place such as this would have felt too primitive somehow.
‘Well it’s either touch yon stone or continue with our tour of the perimeter,’ said Braxus. His levity did little to conceal his nerves. Adelko could sense a palpable fear about the entire company.
Closing his eyes and muttering a quick prayer, Horskram touched the stone. Immediately it lit up and the black membranous substance reappeared. Horskram was about to touch it again when they felt the floor judder beneath them. Adelko felt a strange sense of weightlessness.
‘It’s… sinking!’ he said.
Panic broke out. Drawing her falchion Anupe began hacking at the entrance, but the black portal turned her blade. Pulling her aside Sir Torgun hurled himself at it, only to be thrown back into Sir Aronn. Horskram began chanting the Psalm of Gramarye’s Quenching. Kyra and Vaskrian stood stock still, terrified.
Adelko looked out of the window. They were moving quite quickly, passing through the next storey towards the floor of the ruin.
‘Wait!’ he cried, stepping over and grabbing Horskram’s sleeve to break his concentration. ‘Don’t cancel it out! I think the spell is… well, taking us down to where we need to be.’
His mentor paused as if making up his mind, then nodded. ‘Everyone be still!’ he said. ‘Get your weapons at the ready – let’s see if Adelko has the right of it.’
The chamber descended to the lowest level and shuddered to a halt. With a hum the room started to turn on an invisible vertical axis. That provoked another panic, but Horskram told them all to stay calm and keep their wits about them. When the chamber stopped the entrance-way was facing into the shaft. Horskram touched the stone again and the black membrane vanished.
The sight it revealed took Adelko’s breath away. The vast space they stepped into was lined with intricately sculpted friezes of demons and angels intertwined, punctuated at irregular intervals where walls would once have divided it into chambers. The ruined chunks of masonry were also carved with sculptures that looked to have once adorned swirling pillars, lopsided gables and irregular pediments that would have Arclidius turning in his grave. The sculpted demons cavorting with angels were unsettling enough, but there were other things too: depictions of men and women, tall and strong-limbed, with broad flat faces and strange-looking hair, wielding sophisticated tools he didn’t recognise against the backdrop of stylised cityscapes whose buildings followed a bizarre structure. It wasn’t like the crowded tenements of the lower levels of Strongholm, whose builders had strived but failed to achieve perfect angles… these ancient architects had deliberately pursued an alignment that made perfect sense to them. The hubris of it also struck him: a bygone culture that celebrated itself pathologically, even to the point of depicting monuments upon monuments. Not for nothing was Azathol one of the more prominently rendered demons. And yet there he was, hand in hand with his angelic opposite, Siona…
A noise startled him. He suddenly realised he had been wandering around the ruin for he knew not how long, enthralled by its eerie splendour. From somewhere distantly he heard the clash of arms. Turning disinterestedly he saw three knights fighting four Wadwos. Where was Kyra with her poisoned arrows, he wondered? There she was, staring at half a head from a gigantic statue. He couldn’t tell who it was supposed to be. He couldn’t blame her for looking at it, so much more interesting than a handful of armed –
‘Adelko! Recover your wits!’
Horskram was shaking him roughly by the shoulder. Adelko blinked and stared into his keen eyes. Like sapphires they had seemed, when he’d first seen them all those years ago in Narvik…
‘Adelko! The Psalm – this place is unmanning us with its magic. Now is the time!’
The novice shook his head to clear it, realising what his mentor was saying. He reached into his habit for the Holy Book but Horskram shook his head.
‘You should have learned it by now,’ he said. ‘I need you to concentrate on the words themselves, not reading them. Your conviction must be absolute.’
Adelko nodded. This was what he had prepared for after all. Closing his eyes, he began reciting the Psalm of Gramarye’s Quenching with the adept.
Loudly they chanted, shouting the sacred words up to the deepening heavens. Kyra blinked and stirred. The four Woses were the largest of their kind they had seen. Dressed in giant hauberks they wielded huge axes: the three knights were hard pressed. Kyra nocked and drew, her hands a blur. A Wose fell dying.
Vaskrian appeared from around a pile of broken stones, sword in hand. Anupe did likewise a few seconds later. Joining the fray they took the pressure off the knights long enough for Kyra to bring another low with a second shaft. A third turned and charged towards her. Holding her ground, she planted another arrow in its forehead moments before it reached her. The others cut the final one down, finishing it off with heavy strokes.
‘What took you all so long?’ asked Sir Braxus. ‘Didn’t you hear us charge yon beastmen?’
‘Never mind that for now,’ replied Horskram, risking breaking off the Psalm. ‘We need to move quickly. There must be a way into the ruins.’
‘There’s an entrance over there,’ said Sir Torgun. ‘Two of them were guarding it.’
They picked their way through the warped masonry towards the surviving half of the lowest storey. Adelko caught the odd skeletal remains of warriors as they did: doubtless the grisly remnants of freebooters from a bygone age. The novice wondered at the greed that must have set them on such a doomed path.
The half of the lowest storey that had survived the Wrath was uneven and scored by a dozen broken walls jutting out of it at odd angles; a segment of it had fallen in altogether. But where there should have been a gap was a sheet of thick ice that sparkled in the light of emerging stars and the eerie glow of the ruins.
‘More elemental magic,’ said Horskram. ‘We must use the psalm to neutralise it.’
A low rumbling sound distracted him. It was coming from below the grill.
‘That’s what the other two Wadwos were guarding,’ said Sir Aronn. ‘I’m not sure I want to know what it is.’
‘Look!’ cried Adelko. ‘The ice barrier’s disappearing!’
The barrier seemed
to melt sideways into the ruined wall. From behind it stepped a tall figure, dressed in voluminous black robes and a cloak of the same colour covered with sigils of the Sorcerer’s Script picked out in gold thread. A mop of unruly blond hair topped a cruelly handsome face. His left hand looked to be encased in a silver gauntlet of curious design.
‘You didn’t think I’d cower in my private chambers waiting for you to find me, did you?’ he demanded as he advanced towards them. ‘Ah, Brother Horskram, how I’ve longed for this moment!’
‘I am only too happy to oblige you in this matter,’ replied Horskram, keeping his voice calm and measured.
Andragorix stopped and raised his gauntleted hand. Adelko realised then it was his hand, fashioned entirely of silver. It moved with perfect dexterity. ‘Perhaps I’ll cut a few parts off you before I kill you – when you lie begging for mercy amid the slain corpses of your pathetic henchmen.’
‘Enough talk, Andragorix,’ answered the adept softly. ‘This ends now.’
Without pausing Horskram launched into the Psalm of Gramarye’s Quenching again. Adelko had already resumed reciting it. Pointing at Horskram with his silver hand, Andragorix muttered a few words, the fell syllables jarring horribly with the sacred litany. A torrent of red flame shot from his hand straight at the old monk. The fires wrapped around him… but the psalm worked a magic of its own and protected him.
Kyra nocked and drew. Her arrow flew towards Andragorix. He spat another arcane word and the air in front of him shimmered and condensed. The arrow’s iron tip passed through it… but the sorcerous shield had slowed it enough, and the shaft bounced harmlessly off his robes.
The others charged him. Muttering another word Andragorix flew up into the air, landing on top of a chunk of masonry.