Broken Stone 02 - Warlock's Sun Rising

by Damien Black

  At last he sensed Andragorix begin to tire. That was the moment he chose to counter attack. The warlock stepped back, ragged gasps dogging every footfall as Horskram enveloped him in a blurred maze of strikes and follow-ups, his feet moving in perfect synchronicity, always finding the right space beneath them. He followed up a blinding figure of eight that sent the mage’s sword spinning from broken fingers with a pulverising sidewise swipe, twisting from the waist to get maximum power behind the blow. Andragorix gasped as his ribs cracked, spinning around with the force of the strike. A split second later Horskram reversed his staff, bringing the other end down on his clavicle with enough force to shatter it.

  Andragorix slumped to the floor groaning, his silver hand scrabbling across the cracked flagstones as he struggled to keep himself from collapsing in a heap. He began to spit more words of magic but Horskram was ready, kicking him viciously in the gut and knocking the wind out of him before he could complete the spell. The warlock rolled over onto his back and the adept stepped in, placing the end of his staff against his larynx and applying pressure.

  Adelko watched as his mentor slowly began to crush his arch enemy’s throat. He was dumbfounded. He had seen Horskram fight brigands, but what he had just witnessed was far beyond that. He had never seen anyone except Sir Torgun fight with that kind of controlled ferocity. There were few men who could make mortal combat look like a work of art, and his mentor was one of them.

  Andragorix began choking. Adelko thought he was going to crush his throat and kill him there and then, but suddenly Horskram relented. Kneeling down on his chest before he could recover his breath for another spell, Horskram took the Redeemer’s blood and placed it against the warlock’s forehead. He began moaning and shuddering, his body convulsing spasmodically.

  ‘Let’s see you try any more magic while Palom’s blood kisses thy cankered skin,’ he said softly. ‘I need answers before I send you to Gehenna. Where in yon chambers are the Headstone fragments? What sorcerous traps have you set around them?’

  Andragorix moaned and writhed some more. Pulling back the phial Horskram grabbed him by the lapel of his robes, yanking his head up to face his.

  ‘I’ll spare you another touch if you answer swiftly. Where precisely are they and what traps have you laid?’

  Andragorix began laughing. It was just as it had sounded the first time Adelko heard it, back in the Sea Wizard’s chamber at Salmor Castle. It sickened him. Part of him wished his mentor would just kill the mad warlock now and be done with it.

  ‘WHERE ARE THEY?’ bellowed Horskram.

  Andragorix stopped laughing for long enough to squeeze a few words out.

  ‘They’re quite safe… but not here.’

  ‘Thou liest!’ cried Horskram, applying the Redeemer’s blood again.

  The warlock howled and squirmed. ‘NO!… Please, take it away, take it away… I’m not lying, I swear to thee!’

  Horskram withdrew the phial again.

  ‘If not here, then where?’ he demanded.

  ‘I can’t… I can’t tell you… I’ve been bonded…’

  ‘Your service to the Author of All Evil is well known to me, poltroon,’ sneered Horskram. ‘Now tell me – ’

  ‘No… I don’t mean bonded to Him, I mean … aahh!’

  The warlock started to shudder, as if straining against something. Adelko could sense some force stopping him from talking. Horskram’s brow creased with consternation. Adelko’s sixth sense was telling him the same thing as Horskram’s.

  Andragorix wasn’t lying.

  ‘He’s been ensorcelled!’ gasped Adelko as the realisation hit home. ‘He’s serving another warlock!’

  ‘Who?’ demanded Horskram, brandishing the Redeemer’s blood.

  ‘I’d tell you if I could…’ said Andragorix, wincing with every word. ‘Never… never meant for him to get the best of me… after all these years…’ Looking up at the night skies, he muttered: ‘I would have bested thee in the end.’

  The warlock screwed up his eyes. Adelko sensed the controlling force recede, like pressure being lifted off something. ‘Just get it over with, Horskram,’ spat the mage, opening his eyes and grinning sickly. ‘You’ve beaten me and won nothing. Yours is a hollow victory.’

  ‘There’ll be no death sentence until we find out who your master is,’ said Horskram. ‘Adelko, hold him down!’

  Gingerly Adelko did as he was told, but there appeared to be little to fear: Andragorix was badly injured and his Alchemy had all but worn off. Taking the phial from around his neck Horskram placed it around the warlock’s. He screamed horribly, but the monks tore a portion from Aronn’s cloak and stuffed it in his mouth, binding it with another sliver.

  ‘That should disable him until we work out what to do with him,’ said Horskram, rising and moving away from the convulsing warlock. ‘We’d best gather the others together, see about – ’

  ‘Where’s Anupe?’ Adelko interrupted, his sixth sense suddenly jangling.

  The warrior-woman had vanished.

  They cast around, scanning the ruined precinct carefully. The Gygant had gone, leaving more debris in its wake. Kyra and Aronn lay dead, Torgun motionless. Adelko couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not. Vaskrian was sobbing with pain and curled up in a ball on the cracked floor, while his master continued to stare and pray silently.

  A noise came from behind the foot of a vast statue. In its heyday it would have been even bigger than the giant they had just faced. Horskram took up his quarterstaff and motioned for silence. Adelko drew his own shakily and they stepped cautiously towards the huge fragment.

  Adelko’s sixth sense flared at the same time as his mentor’s. As one they turned to see Anupe, dashing over towards Andragorix from behind a chunk of broken wall, dirk in hand.

  ‘No!’ cried Horskram, rushing to intercept her. But it was too late. They had stepped away from the warlock, and a few seconds was all the swift Harijan needed. Whatever effect the magic of the stones had wrought upon her, it had been overturned by the primal forces of love and vengeance.

  By the time Horskram restrained her she had stabbed Andragorix in the chest twice.

  ‘You damned fool pagan!’ he snarled, pulling her away from the dying warlock. ‘We needed him alive!’

  ‘He killed Kyra!’ yelled the Harijan. ‘He deserved to die!’

  A pool of blood was forming around Andragorix as Adelko knelt beside him. He was close to death. Pulling the cloth from his mouth Adelko yanked the phial off his neck.

  ‘A dying man is bonded to no one but Azrael,’ said the novice frantically. ‘You’re free to talk – tell us who you serve!’

  ‘He – ’ began the mage, but blood trickled from his mouth as he coughed up the last of his life. His head slumped to one side, his eyes freezing over.

  ‘Blasted idiot!’ yelled Horskram, flinging the Harijan from him in disgust. ‘Your perverted amorousness has cost us our mission!’

  Anupe spat on the ground at his feet and stalked off towards Kyra’s body. All was silent but for Vaskrian groaning. Horskram stood staring into the middle distance, his eyes registering nothing. Leaning on his quarterstaff he suddenly looked very weary.

  A flutter of wings startled Adelko from his melancholy thoughts. He gazed up, half expecting to see more of the Earth Witch’s silver hawks, but he saw nothing of the kind.

  Perched on the roof, a lone raven stared at them with gleaming eyes, and let out a triumphant screech.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER I

  An Audience With Royalty

  The old monk’s face lengthened by inches as he read the parchment Sir Wolmar had given him. They were alone in the auditorium; the princeling stood in the broad shaft of sunlight admitted by the oculus and fidgeted impatiently. The sooner he was gone from this accursed place the better.

  His three weeks at sea had been uneventful. A great pity: some ragtag remnants of Thule’s rebel navy, or a Northland freesail or two, would have gone well to b
anish the boredom. At least they had made a space for him below decks of the carrack that had brought him to Rima; sleeping with the crew beneath the skies would have been an indignity past enduring.

  The Grand Master of the Order of St Argo shook his head in consternation, his grey eyes never leaving the message Wolmar had crossed sea to bring him. The knight shifted his weight restlessly from one foot to the other.

  He yearned for mortal combat. The fire that burned in him night and day would not be quenched. It had burned all the more hotly since his father had been slain. Lost to peasant scum as he lay dying, beaten by a traitor using pagan sorcery. Kill a thousand men in glory on the field, and the sting of that loss would never abate.

  But at least killing would give him something to keep his mind occupied. It was his favourite past-time, and he was right good at it too.

  And yet here he was, playing messenger boy for a king who could hardly find it in himself to show his nephew the respect he deserved. Despite everything he had done for Freidheim – avenging his brother and killing the leader of the uprising that had threatened to dethrone him.

  Oh no, no thanks for Sir Wolmar! It was his hated rival, Sir Torgun, who got the King’s blessing. Sir Torgun who got promotion. Sir Torgun who was probably even now being lauded by troubadours and knights and soldiers across the kingdom.

  He knew his so-called fellow ravens called him many things. They called him unjust – but where was the justice in the way he’d been treated? They called him cruel – aye, he was where it was warranted, but then so was every knight. They called him vain – vain! What opportunity did they afford him to indulge in that sin? No glory for Wolmar: no, just opprobrium and cavilling, from men he’d proved himself superior to a dozen times and more. Tarlquist and Aronn and all the rest of them, prating on about a Code of Chivalry they scarcely understood.

  None of his achievements mattered to the Order he’d served so loyally: all they cared to remember were the three poachers he’d killed earlier that year. Well, so what if he had? They had been dishonest, common, weak. Preying on their own verminous kind – not that he cared a jot about that, but what had bothered him was the smug look that villein had given him when he’d told him it wasn’t a capital offence under the King’s Law. How dare a common churl tell him, a prince of the blood royal, what the King’s Law was and what wasn’t?

  He had deserved to die – yes, him and his two smirking cronies.

  The Grand Master raised his eyes from the parchment and eyed him keenly. Sir Wolmar didn’t care for the old monk’s scrutiny. It reminded him of Horskram, only it seemed worse – more penetrating, in a less obvious kind of way.

  ‘This is ill news indeed,’ said Hannequin. ‘In fact, the worst I have ever had the misfortune to receive during my tenure as Grand Master. What a pity Brother Horskram could not have delivered it in person.’

  Wolmar caught his icy tone, but was too busy feeding on his outrage to revel in the thought of the friar getting upbraided by his superior.

  ‘Yes indeed, a pity,’ was all he said.

  The Grand Master sharpened his gaze. He had a face that some would call kindly, but Wolmar knew better. The Argolians were a nest of vipers, little better than the wizards they claimed to fight. Why, they were practically wizards themselves! Hadn’t the Purge established that much?

  ‘You certainly don’t have much to say for yourself,’ said Hannequin. ‘Given you’re an emissary of royal blood, carrying a message of… such import.’

  Wolmar gestured dismissively at the unfurled scroll in the Grand Master’s hands. ‘Yon parchment says it all,’ he said. ‘Beyond that, I’m to wait on your pleasure until you have decided on a course of action, then relay news of it back to mine uncle the King. Besides that I have other business to attend to in the capital.’

  ‘I see.’ Hannequin frowned and rested the parchment on his lap. Then he sighed deeply. ‘I cannot pretend that this news does not leave me on the back foot. I must needs convene the Archmasters… we’ll sanction a divination this coming Rest-day and see what we can learn.’

  ‘And the King in Rima?’ queried Wolmar, trying to take an interest in his mission. ‘Will you tell him – or shall I be the one to do it? I bear a letter of introduction to his court, though His Majesty King Freidheim suggested you might want to inform him directly.’

  Hannequin paused and rubbed his chin. He looked deeply perturbed. That pleased Wolmar – any suffering incurred by an Argolian was a good thing. All the more as it was their wretched intriguing that had brought him all the way out here in the first place.

  ‘No, you may as well inform His Majesty if you have been given leave to do so,’ said the monk. ‘Tell him I will hold counsel with him on the matter as soon as he sees fit.’

  The princeling knew enough of politics to realise that the Grand Master might not wish to divulge such details – but now he had no choice in the matter. He also knew enough of politics to understand that King Carolus III of Pangonia would not look kindly upon him for having informed the Argolian Order first about such a matter. But King Freidheim had been insistent on that point. Probably thanks to Horskram and his secretive meddling – Argolian vipers spreading their poison, clouding the judgement of great men like his uncle.

  ‘Very well, I’ll tell him when I see him,’ said Sir Wolmar, dissembling his thoughts. He was about to excuse himself when the old monk said: ‘Your business in Rima… does it involve His Supreme Holiness as well?’

  The Grand Master was staring at him again, his face inscrutable in the bright sunlight that poured in through the oculus and the round windows of the hemi circular chamber.

  How did he fathom that? Wolmar asked himself. As far as he knew, his father’s message mentioned nothing about the Supreme Perfect. The princeling had also been charged with informing the head of the True Temple of Lorthar’s imprisonment and the existence of the Redeemer’s Blood in Strongholm. Lucrative pilgrimages would be arranged, the reliquary opened up to the Palomedian faithful after generations of secrecy: in return His Supreme Holiness would take no action over Lorthar’s abrupt replacement.

  Damned Argolians and their sorcerous sense – Hannequin was reading him like an open book. All the more reason to get away from this benighted place.

  ‘His Majesty King Freidheim’s other business is his own,’ replied Sir Wolmar, meeting his gaze defiantly.

  Hannequin nodded, as if making his mind up about something. ‘Of course,’ he said mildly, though Wolmar suspected his thoughts were anything but mild. ‘I shall in any case have to inform His Supreme Holiness of this calamity, so you needn’t bother dissembling when you meet him – although it would sound better if he heard it from me directly.’

  Making a mental note to tell the Supreme Perfect of the Headstone thefts at the first opportunity, Wolmar nodded.

  ‘It shall be as you say, Grand Master.’

  ‘Your words are compliant, yet your soul speaks differently,’ replied Hannequin, sounding weary. ‘Well, I cannot compel you in this matter. And now if you would be so kind as to leave – I must speak with the senior brethren.’

  Wolmar needed no further encouragement. Turning on his heel he strode from the chamber.

  Striding through the antechamber of the inner sanctum and back out into the circular courtyard, Wolmar made his way over to the south-facing cloister he had entered by. This was one of four elongated buildings that joined the wall enclosing the inner courtyard to the outer walls that encompassed it in a much larger concentric circle.

  Circles within circles within circles… The monastery was just like the minds of the monks who called it home: the Grand Priory of St Argo was by far the strangest building he had ever been in. Its bizarre layout confirmed all his suspicions about the Argolians.

  At the entrance to the cloister Brother Abelard, the journeyman who had escorted him to the sanctum, was waiting.

  ‘I trust your meeting with the Grand Master went as planned?’ asked the monk, a bald man of about
thirty summers.

  ‘Yes thank you, just as planned,’ replied Wolmar, without breaking stride as he marched into the cloister.

  ‘I take it you have lodgings for the night in the city,’ said the monk, struggling to keep up with the tall knight. ‘Otherwise you are most welcome to – ’

  ‘No thanks,’ sneered Wolmar. ‘I’d sooner sup with the Fallen One than the likes of thee! No need to show me out, I know the way – good day!’

  Leaving the monk spluttering in his wake, Wolmar walked past the monastic cells to either side of the cloister’s colonnaded walkway, ignoring the other monks peering at him from their cells as he passed. Reaching the gatehouse on the perimeter wall, he took a side exit into one of the four outer courtyards. Novices were sparring on the clay under the stern tutelage of journeymen, but Wolmar paid them no heed as he headed over to the stables.

  Without waiting for the monk on duty to assist him, he untethered his Farovian destrier and walked it back to the gatehouse. Years of serving in the Order had taught him self-sufficiency, and in any case he was damned if he’d linger here a moment longer than necessary.

  ‘Come now, Svinnhest,’ he muttered to the magnificent steed, in a voice that was soft for the first time that day, ‘let’s get thee gone from this strange place, before they do something to you!’

  Leading Svinnhest out through the gatehouse, he took to the saddle and kicked him into a trot down the winding trail that had taken him up through hills to where the monastery sat on a promontory of rock overlooking Rima. He spared a glance for the Pangonian capital as he did. Though he was glad to be out of the monastery, he had mixed feelings about his next destination.

  He had arrived in Rima that morning, sailing up the River Athos that spilled out into the Athan Estuary to feed the Bay of Biscayan. He hadn’t had much time for sightseeing, but it seemed as splendid as the tales told: at least twice the size of Strongholm, its white stuccoed buildings betokened a rich city that did nothing to belie its origins under the fabled Chivalrous King Vasirius. That galled him somewhat. The Pangonians were widely regarded as the haughtiest of the Free Kingdoms, convinced of their innate superiority to all the other realms in Western Urovia. That such attitudes mirrored his own scarcely entered his mind.