‘They are markings left by the mandrakes for others of their kind,’ Bellathonis explained in a whisper, ‘challenges, taunts, boasts. Each is different and indicates a different mandrake grouping… clan or kin would be the closest translation but to call it a hunting pack would be more accurate. We must have come to regions that they commonly traverse.’
‘This one has seen – no! This one has sensed movement,’ Xagor whispered back.
‘Very good, Xagor. Just vermin so far, gloomwings and such, although I don’t doubt that we are being watched right now and we’ve been followed for a while. It’s time to show our teeth and make a stand.’
‘Master?’
‘One can only enter Aelindrach as predator or prey. Which one do you want to be, Xagor?’
‘Predator,’ Xagor responded promptly.
‘Well then we must act like predators and make a challenge of our own. If we don’t we’ll be hunted down as prey.’
Bellathonis had produced a curved, talon-like blade. In the darkness the edges of the knife seemed to glow faintly with their own inner light as the haemonculus busied himself scraping out a row of angular shapes. The individual sigils blazed with cold light for an instant before fading.
‘Come now,’ Bellathonis told Xagor as he finished, ‘we’ll let those trailing us see our sign and await the results. It should be easy enough to tell where we stand after that.’
‘This one would ask, what message was left?’ Xagor whispered as he hurried to follow his master.
‘The answer to that question is somewhat complicated but I can simplify it for you. There are rulers in Aelindrach, anarchic though it is. Kings and princes, and upstarts too. Two of the most feared rulers – which is to say the most powerful – are brothers at least in the sense that they sprang from the same source at the same time. One of the brothers is indebted to me, so naturally that makes the other brother a mortal enemy of mine.’
‘Message was statement of same?’ Xagor asked nervously.
‘Just so. Either we’ll be fortunate and the message will reach the ears of Xhakoruakh promptly, or we’ll be unfortunate and his brother will hear of it first.’
‘This potential outcome sounds bad.’
Bellathonis had begun to drift away again. His whisper came to Xagor as the faintest breath of sound. ‘Potentially very bad indeed,’ the haemonculus sighed.
Chapter 4
AFTERMATH OF AN ASSASSINATION
Kharbyr woke to the sensation of burning. He thought that he was back at the Raider crash and caught by a rupturing fuel cell. He thrashed wildly for a moment before realising that if that had been the case he would have been in no condition to thrash at all. Strangely, his legs were working again, but they felt odd. His whole body felt odd, altered in some way as if he’d been stretched out across too large a frame. He realised that the sensation of burning was the heat coming from a drool of molten rock that was creeping slowly towards his face.
He flinched back instinctively and found himself scrabbling to sit upright on a cracked, rubble-strewn floor. Kharbyr’s confusion deepened. The smashed-up Raider was completely gone. The whole wreck had vanished even though it had been pinning him a few moments before when Xagor had dragged him out of it. Kharbyr shook his head stupidly and then froze as he realised that the whole travel tube was gone. He was somewhere else entirely.
He was in a windowless space so he reckoned he was still underground. It was hard to see; his vision was blurred and doubling up worse than after a week-long binge. One wall was a slope of rocky debris with an opening melted through it that was still glowing from the blasting heat of its creation. It was from here that the rivulet of molten rock had come. There were tumbled stacks of cryptic-looking equipment and upturned tables scattered around the floor amid the rubble. Closer at hand there was a sled piled high with boxes and containers. There was blood, too, lots of it, splashed around in large quantities, and several huddled, still forms that didn’t look like piles of equipment.
A whisper of sound from the other side of the chamber made Kharbyr freeze again. Something was moving out there, something that made a soft swish of sound unlike anything made by a living creature. Kharbyr had heard a similar noise after Xagor rescued him from the Raider crash and glimpsed a prowling shape in the darkness. The wrack had told him they were being stalked by something but he hadn’t said what it was. As Kharbyr listened to the sound it came to him where he had heard it before. On the banks of the Grand Canal – a Talos-engine hunting for a fresh victim. The soft sigh of its gravitic impellers mirrored the sound he could hear in the chamber now.
Don’t panic, I can help you to get out of this.+
The voice was a dry whisper in his mind. Kharbyr’s nape hairs rose in response. A thousand dread tales combined with all of the dire events he had recently witnessed in the Dysjunction made him fear for his very soul.
…Don’t be such a witless fool. I’m no daemon from beyond the veil. I only want to help you, not swallow your soul.+
The Talos-engine was returning. Kharbyr caught sight of a curving, insect-like carapace gleaming dully with the red glow of reflected fires as it came into view. It was a smaller machine than the engine Kharbyr had seen at the Grand Canal but no less deadly in appearance. This one was narrower and sleeker-looking – an assassin rather than a warrior. A curved, scorpion-like tail held an imposing barbed stinger above the carapace while beneath it dangled a plethora of pincers, saws and flails. The Talos-engine was moving slowly and methodically as if searching for something.
It’s here for Bellathonis – it almost had him too. He used an old Chiarasco trick to transmigrate his soul between bodies and escape. Very risky, but I think Bellathonis was desperate.+
Kharbyr was ignoring the voice in his head because he was busy being shocked by the sight of his hands. They weren’t his hands any more. One was longer-fingered and as pallid as a corpse, the other was sinewy and thick. Kharbyr blinked in surprise and felt eyes that he shouldn’t have respond in kind, eyes that seemed to be set into his shoulder blades. The words being whispered into his mind suddenly took on ghastly new import.
The haemonculus, Bellathonis… Kharbyr had been carrying a talisman for him. Xagor had implied the talisman was some sort of insurance when he delivered it into Kharbyr’s hands. Kharbyr groaned at the memory of the pain he’d felt, the wrenching sense of dislocation. The pain had radiated from the hidden pocket where the talisman lay. He fumbled with his unfamiliar hands to search through his equally unfamiliar clothing – strange, glossy leather robes that stank of acrid chemicals and old blood. The talisman was right there, or rather its twin was, tucked into his sleeve.
‘That bastard!’ Kharbyr snarled. ‘He’s stolen my body!’
There was a hissing noise as the Talos-engine suddenly spun on its axis and sped towards Kharbyr. The thing was fast. It crossed the length of the chamber before he even had time to flinch. The Talos stopped abruptly within arm’s length, its chain flails rattling and pincers snapping in agitation.
Hold still and shut up if you don’t want to die,+ the voice in Kharbyr’s head commanded.
Jewel-like sensors set into the Talos’s metal carapace were regarding him balefully. Rods and spines flicked in and out of pits in the curved surface as the murder-machine tasted the air. Kharbyr froze in place as the probes extended almost close enough to touch him.
If you’re very lucky it will be clever enough to be able to tell that you aren’t Bellathonis even though you’re inside his body. If you’re even more lucky it might be stupid enough that it won’t kill Bellathonis’s old body just to be on the safe side.+
The Talos-engine designated as ‘Vhi’ by its creator was locked in a state of confusion. Multiple contradictory inputs were triggering a series of cascading protocol conflicts in its mind-state. Vhi was caught re-examining the available data thousands of times per second while it as
sessed the unexplained event, even though it knew a significant amount of time was passing. Yet every action the Talos could take violated its specific mission parameters, its core protocols, or both at once, with an unacceptably high possibility of failure. In the terms of a living creature, which in credit to its creator Vhi did closely resemble, the Talos was caught in a quandary about what to do next.
Vhi’s assigned target had been present in the chamber prior to the moment of entry. The physical traces and the psychic spoor had correlated to a significant degree of certainty and this had been vindicated by a visual confirmation of the target after the wall of the chamber was breached. Eliminating the target’s guards had taken Vhi less than twenty seconds and yet the target had abruptly vanished from its sensors some eighteen seconds after initiating combat. The physical component was still present and still functional to judge by its movements and vocalisations, but the psychic component had been reduced to trace elements only. Vhi’s parameters stipulated very specifically that the target was to be completely annihilated in all respects. For a target-focused hunter like Vhi it was highly perturbing to find a key portion of its quarry being so wilfully elusive.
The mystery of the vanishing target could have been solved easily by Vhi’s sibling-machine, Cho. Their creator had constructed the pair of them as a matched, complementary set; Vhi for strength and speed, Cho for intellect and subtlety. When they had first encountered the confused psychic spoor of their quarry in the city they had elected to separate and function independently to enhance their chances of success. With its wider array of sensors and higher cognitive prowess Cho was the better hunter, while Vhi was the better killer. Each machine had felt itself equal to the task of eliminating the target and a certain degree of rivalry existed between them. Both had welcomed the hunt as a chance to test their capabilities to the fullest.
Yet Cho’s presence-signal was no longer being received by Vhi. It was possible that background interference was inhibiting Vhi’s reception. Some light damage sustained while eliminating the target’s bodyguards might also have degraded Vhi’s communications array. However, neither possibility appeared to correlate with Vhi’s own diagnostics and that left the disquieting possibility that Cho was now inoperative. Cho’s signal had ceased shortly after the target vanished from Vhi’s perception; Vhi estimated a strong probability that the two events were interrelated.
With only part of the quarry at hand and Cho unavailable for interrogation Vhi was undecided whether to destroy the fragment it had cornered. Extrapolation from the limited amount of known data for a scenario of this kind indicated a high probability that the physical component would reacquire the psychic portion – or at least provide useful information as to its whereabouts – at a future point. Destroying the physical component of the target was a key mission priority, but then Vhi had no meaningful plan for tracking down and extinguishing the psychic element of it.
The conflict could not be resolved without incurring mission failure of one form or another. Thus Vhi ruminated back and forth about the fate of its captive. Logic could give no guidance in such an illogical scenario and so instinct must provide an answer. Unfortunately Vhi was a construct, so raw instinct was a trait it was not overly blessed with. Theoretically time pressure was a constant; reacquiring the escaped psyche would become increasingly difficult the longer Vhi remained logic-locked.
There was really only one solution.
Kharbyr held perfectly still as the seconds dragged by with certain death hovering only a breath away. Perversely his consciousness spent the time filling in terrifying details about the murder-machine in front of him; the caked blood crusting its pincers, the mangled ribbons of flesh caught in its chain flails, the cyclopean red glow of its armed heat lance. Kharbyr was sufficiently arrogant enough to imagine that – properly armed and prepared – he could have fought this machine with an even chance of victory. Unarmed and disoriented as he was, even Kharbyr could not delude himself as to the likely outcome of trying to fight it under the current circumstances. Still, the thing hadn’t killed him yet and that must mean it could be bargained with. Kharbyr decided to ignore the witch-voice in his head and speak directly to the Talos.
‘I-I’m not him,’ Kharbyr said to the machine. ‘Bellathonis – he stole my body. Let me live and I’ll find him for you. I’ll find him for you and then you can make the bastard pay for what he’s done to me.’
The Talos showed no sign of hearing him, or of caring if it had. It remained poised, hovering in the air like a guillotine frozen mid-fall for another second – and then it was gone, flicking away and exiting the chamber like a shark vanishing into the depths. Kharbyr let out a long, slow breath and willed his heart to stop racing. He virtually jumped out of his skin when he heard the witch-voice inside his skull again. It was laughter; a dry, rustling chuckle like ashes sifting through dead leaves.
You want revenge on Bellathonis?+ the voice sighed mockingly. +Then you’ll need to get in line with all of the others. It’s dangerous to ignore my advice, little Kharbyr, particularly when you know so little about what’s going on.+
‘Who are you?’ Kharbyr growled as he pushed himself to his feet. ‘And how do you know my name?’ He swayed unsteadily, feeling as if he stood on mismatched limbs. His whole body felt as if it had been pieced together or altered. He found that he had to stoop his neck forward to achieve an even vaguely comfortable posture. The voice continued to whisper in his mind, insidious and infuriating.
My name is Angevere, and I know yours because all that you are is an open book to me. I see you’ve already met my old master, El’Uriaq, and my murderer, Nyos Yllithian. You even helped to bring El’Uriaq back from the dead so I suppose I should be grateful to you.+
‘El’Uriaq? You’re talking about when Yllithian sent us into Shaa-Dom!’ Kharbyr cried in dismay. The daemon-haunted sub-realm with all of its terrors and temptations had very nearly destroyed him.
Yes, you were sent to find the bones of a tyrant so dreadful that he could threaten even Asdrubael Vect… And you brought the girl, the worldsinger, from Lileathanir to be his pain-bride too. You’ve been in the thick of this from the start.+
‘The thick of what?’ Kharbyr whined unconvincingly. ‘I was just doing as I was told!’
The Dysjunction, of course – you’re one of the individuals that made it happen.+
A wash of icy terror swept through Kharbyr’s guts at the accusation. He was a Commorrite and as murderous as they come; he’d enjoyed many a thrill-murder and torture-hunt as he’d fought his way up from the dregs of the Old City. He’d participated in raids against the slave races and he’d seen their hovel-cities burning like stars in a night sky. Despite all that, the scale of the destruction the Dysjunction had wrought upon Commorragh had truly terrified him.
For Kharbyr a lifetime of wickedness and cynicism had been bolstered by the belief that there was a place for him in the universe and that Commorragh was it. The mean, tangled streets and glowering spires had been his nursery and his tutor; he fitted into that world like a knife into its sheath. What he’d seen in the last few hours looked very much like the end of the world, his world, and to find that he’d had a direct hand in making that happen was a horrifying prospect. The insidious voice continued to whisper into his doubt-filled mind, seeming to feed off his crumbling bravado as he confronted the ugly truth.
Don’t feel bad, little Kharbyr, you were used just as the ones ordering you around were used. We’ve all been made the pawns of greater powers in this affair.+
Vengeance was a concept to which Kharbyr could still rally his flagging ego. He already wanted vengeance on Bellathonis and now he wanted vengeance on all the greater powers the witch-voice was harping on about, too. The voice chuckled appreciatively at his directionless fury.
You certainly have spirit, I’ll grant you that much. It’s probably why you’ve been such a useful agent up until now. I can help you, Kha
rbyr, if you’ll help me. We can take our vengeance together.+
Kharbyr’s head came up and he looked around the rubble-choked chamber again. Now that the Talos was gone he was absolutely sure there was no one else present. The disembodied voice seemed disturbingly close to him. It felt as though someone were standing by his shoulder and whispering into his ear.
‘And just how would I help you?’ Kharbyr asked it warily. ‘If you’re so knowledgeable and so… so wise about everything I’d think you could help yourself.’
Alas, my capabilities have been severely curtailed, as you’ll see. Step over to that sled piled with equipment. Look for a metallic cylinder on it that’s about as long as your arm.+
Kharbyr hesitantly followed the instructions. The low, bier-like gravity sled was piled with metal crates and boxes covered in an indecipherable script. There were bundles of gleaming tools: saws, scalpels, tongs and pincers of various kinds. Glass tubes, jars and alembics held in place by nets twinkled at the top of the pile like snow atop a miniature mountain. Kharbyr searched carefully, his mind full of the horrors he might find inside a haemonculus’s toolbox. He found the cylinder in plain sight. It was resting on end atop a box and unsecured, as if someone had simply put it there absentmindedly a moment before. He realised at once that the cylinder was simply a sort of casing. One half of it was open to reveal a crystal tube inside, full of fluid.
Another icy chill dripped down Kharbyr’s neck as he looked into the crystal tube. A medusa’s nest of black coils floated in the fluid, masses of lustrous dark hair that all but obscured a pallid, wax-like face. The eyes and mouth of the face were sewn shut and yet they still moved. Dry, croaking laughter erupted into his mind.
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