by Matthew Ward
‘Thanks for reminding me,’ said Mirika drily.
Shadows shifted within the gate as they approached. Yelen jerked to a halt and raised her sword.
‘Easy, easy,’ said Serene. Blood gleamed at a gash in her greatcoat’s shoulder. ‘It’s me. Kain sent me back for you. She thought you were in trouble.’
‘You missed one,’ said Yelen, more curtly than she’d intended.
‘You’re hurt?’ asked Mirika, with rather more concern.
‘I’ve survived worse.’ Serene’s tone told a different story. It wasn’t apprehensive as such, but held a note of reserve Yelen hadn’t heard before.
Apparently realizing she’d revealed more than she’d intended, Serene turned sharply away. ‘Come, if you’re coming. We’re clear to the burial chamber. Going by the light show in there, we don’t have much time.’
Another refrain of the guttural chant echoed over Yelen, its syllables like spiders on her skin. No. It wasn’t the chant. A horrible realization gathered momentum, increasingly inevitable with each passing moment. ‘Where did you say Kain was?’
‘She’s back there…’ Serene’s eye widened. ‘Gods damn her!’
She hurtled back through the gate, the sisters on her heels.
* * *
Yelen heard confirmation of her fears long before she saw any proof. The pitch of Szarnos’ chant dropped. The air hissed with the crisp fury of an icy wind. Kain’s shout of rage and pain all but covered the dull, wet sound of steel tasting flesh.
Even with Mirika as a burden, Yelen all but sprinted over the threshold, Serene only a pace or two ahead. To Yelen’s front, a low balustraded wall gave way to a stone hollow. Ornate stone plinths were arranged around the perimeter like the number on a clock face. Each bore a robed skeletal figure, hands steepled in silent repose, an obsidian cube clutched in bony fingers.
Kain and Szarnos stood on a dais at the hollow’s heart, a golden statue of the tattered-winged dragon looming above them. Half the knight’s face was red and blistered, the matching side of her armour glittered with frost.
The corona of white light around Szarnos’ hands flared as Kain’s sword hacked down. Ice thickening on her armour, the knight skidded across the uneven flagstones. She crashed against a plinth. The impact jarred the sword from her hand and rattled the reliquary in its dead owner’s grasp. Slowly, majestically, the onyx cube tumbled. It struck the ground and broke apart, sending a golden orb rolling across the stones.
‘Kain!’
The knight glanced up at Yelen’s shout. ‘Get out! He’s too powerful!’
Szarnos bore down on Kain. Her hand closed on the grip of her sword. She rose, blade already sweeping out in a brutal arc.
‘I said go!’
Szarnos’ chant deepened into a throaty laugh. White light flared. The stream of magic caught Kain dead on, flinging her to the hollow’s edge. Her sword struck flagstones, and shattered into a dozen pieces. A heartbeat later, Kain slammed into the wall. She collapsed unmoving, ice crackling and thickening about her armour.
Mirika stifled a gasp.
Serene growled and started towards the balustrade. Shrugging Mirika aside, Yelen grabbed Serene’s collar. She dragged her down out of sight as Szarnos’ black gaze tracked towards them.
‘Let go of me!’ Serene clawed and hammered at Yelen’s hand.
‘He’ll kill you,’ hissed Yelen. Had it been sacrifice or arrogance that had made Kain face Szarnos alone? Both, most likely. Not that she had any room to judge.
‘So? We stop him here or no one stops him at all. Nothing’s changed!’
Yelen nodded. She’d expected to feel fear, or apprehension. She didn’t even feel remorse for Kain, alive or dead. Her spirit was at peace, calmer than it had been since leaving Karamasz. She wondered if this was how everyone felt in the moments before they died.
‘You’re right. Nothing’s changed.’ Yelen took a deep breath and glanced up at the balustrade. ‘You cleared a path. It’s my turn.’
Serene cocked her head, brow furrowing.
Mirika worked it out first. ‘Yelen! No! This wasn’t the plan.’
Yelen’s resolve almost crumbled at the heartbreak in her sister’s voice. Almost. She took her sister’s hand, felt the familiar warmth that went deeper than friendship, deeper than blood. Deep as birthright. She clung to it, used it to ward away sudden nausea. ‘This was always my plan. I’m sorry.’
‘No!’
Then, before her doubts could coalesce – before Mirika could summon the strength to dive into the timeflow and stop her – Yelen vaulted the balustrade.
* * *
Szarnos turned as she landed, bluish-white light growing brighter about his hands. Black eyes gleamed. The chant died away.
‘And what is this?’ he hissed. ‘You too seek my destruction?’
Yelen let the sword fall from her hand. ‘Not me.’
She felt the liche’s oily black stare burrowing into her thoughts, striving to unpick her secrets and intentions. He didn’t even look like Magnis any longer, the skin pinched and white as bones reshaped into a form more pleasing to their new owner. Her eyes drifted to where Kain lay. For a fleeting moment, she thought she saw the knight’s lips flutter in breath. Not that it mattered any longer.
‘Then you’ve come to offer yourself?’ A pale hand swept across the chamber. ‘Give yourself to one of us. To the future.’
‘You know what I want.’ Yelen glanced up at the balustrade. In reversal of recent moments, Serene held back a stricken Mirika. ‘My sister lives. My friends live. Give me that, and one more thing, and I’m yours. No resistance. No defiance. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Death is such a waste.’
‘Most assuredly.’ Szarnos stepped closer, lips cracking into a smile. ‘And your last condition?’
‘Tear this parasite apart, and send him back to the frozen hells.’
Szarnos hissed, anger rattling in his throat. An icy hand seized Yelen by the throat, hoisting her off her feet. ‘What foolishness is this? What do you mean?’
Yelen met his gaze, unblinking. ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’
‘Oh poppet,’ gushed Azzanar. ‘It’ll be my delight.’
* * *
Mirika watched in horror as the transformation overtook her sister.
Yelen’s skin darkened to a deep, baleful crimson. Her fingers hooked into black claws. Fire flowed from her scalp, consuming her tightly braided hair to form a flickering, crackling mane. Her clothes smouldered in the sudden inrush of heat, hems charring at the edges as the demon unfolded from her soul. Her face remained unchanged, but the features took on a malice that Yelen had never displayed, not even in her darkest moods.
Until that moment, Mirika had never believed it would come to pass, that they’d always find a way to cheat fate. Not anymore. That realization hollowed out her soul, carving a void she knew she’d never fill. Yelen – no, Azzanar – writhed in Szarnos’ grasp, staring directly up at Mirika with eyes like glittering rubies. There was no recognition in that gaze. None.
‘What is this?’ demanded Szarnos. ‘What trickery?’
‘No trickery,’ sneered Azzanar, forked tongue flickering. ‘Just precedence. She’s mine. You can’t have her.’
Claws raked Szarnos’ wrist, spattering black blood across the flagstones. The liche hissed, and flung her aside. Green light, insubstantial as mist, spiralled up from the ragged flesh. It danced briefly on the air, then dissipated into nothing.
Azzanar landed with a cat’s grace. She stood legs bowed, shoulders hunched and arms outspread, as if compensating for a tail she didn’t possess – or at least didn’t possess in that form. ‘Foolish deadling. Playing at power. You don’t understand true might.’
White light flared from Szarnos’ outstretched hand, frosting the air behind. Azzanar sprang aside, bones scattering about her feet as she scrambled across a plinth. The corpse’s reliquary shattered as it struck the floor, the golden orb rolling free before coming to rest at
the foot of the dais.
‘Defiler!’
Szarnos hurled another bolt of frozen light.
Again Azzanar darted clear. Ice spattered across the plinth, scattering the abused skeleton yet further.
‘I’m demon,’ she laughed. ‘That’s rather the point. A subverter of graven idols and desecrator of dusty tombs. You liches, always the same. Craving order. Where’s the fun in that?’ Azzanar crooked a curved claw at the golden statue. ‘I’ll bargain. Stop venerating that caricature of death. Worship me instead.’ A dreamy look crept over her face. For a moment, but only a moment, she looked like Yelen again. ‘It’s millennia since anyone called me a goddess.’
Szarnos howled. He thrust his clenched fists forward. Mirika shuddered, her breath frosting in her lungs as the temperature plunged. Ice crept outwards from the liche’s braced feet, and a storm of frozen shards scythed across the chamber.
This time, Azzanar stood her ground. With a throaty roar, she swept her hands behind her and leaned forward. A thick gout of soot-tinged flame burst from her gaping mouth. Steam hissed where fire battled ice for supremacy.
‘I had no idea.’
With an effort, Mirika tore her gaze from the contest below. Serene was staring across the chamber, slack-jawed.
‘Even when she admitted about Kas…’ Serene breathed. ‘I expected some infernal seductress… Not this. How the hells did she keep that contained?’
‘I don’t know.’ Mirika spoke the words numbly. She felt like she was trapped in a dream. A nightmare. She wanted to leave, to do anything but bear witness to what Yelen had become. But she couldn’t. It would have felt like betrayal. She stared at her hand, still warm from her sister’s touch. The last such touch she’d ever feel. The sense of failure gnawed at her. ‘I don’t know.’
Azzanar’s flames grew brighter, fiercer. The skin of her brow split, and black horns burst through, curling their way into existence.
Szarnos’ knees buckled. The ice storm disintegrated in a shower of white light. The liche staggered away from the victorious flame, hands raised to shield his face.
‘It is our time,’ he spat. ‘We will guide Felstad back to glory. The world will welcome our embrace. Immortal. Unchanging. Eternal.’
The flames billowed out. Azzanar hissed and sprang through the smoke, claws outstretched. Szarnos gestured, his hands trembling as he hauled them upwards. A wall of ice rose up to block the demon’s pounce. Claws sent splinters flashing from the barricade, but it held.
‘Can’t hide behind that forever, deadling,’ crowed Azzanar.
She lunged for the wall’s nearest edge. Szarnos gestured again. Other walls sprang into being, weaving a jagged, uneven cocoon with the liche at its centre. Azzanar spat, and slashed desultorily at the wall. Her claws gouged deep, then she turned away in disgust.
‘Stalemate?’ whispered Serene.
The familiar chant grew into being. Quiet at first, muffled by the wall of ice, but it grew in depth and volume.
On the nearest plinth, a skeletal arm twitched.
‘Not even close,’ muttered Mirika. ‘He can’t beat her alone, so he’s raising help.’
‘I thought they wanted living hosts?’
‘For that, they need to survive.’
‘What do we do?’
Mirika closed her eyes and reached out for the timeflow. Fatigue set in at once – faster than it should have. Her tempo returned to normal with a sickening lurch. She staggered, sinking against the balcony for support. ‘I don’t know.’
Azzanar prowled the hollow, eyes flaring in frustration. ‘You can’t hide in there forever, deadling. I’d love to leave, truly I would, but a bargain’s a bargain.’ Something metallic skittered away from her foot. ‘Oh, what’s this?’
The demon ducked out of Mirika’s sight. When Azzanar stood back up, her hands cradled a golden orb – the same one she’d earlier disturbed. She licked a fingertip, and ran it across the orb’s skin. Steam rose wherever she traced, the orb’s surface buckling and hissing as if subjected to tremendous heat.
‘Yasimov of the Thirteen,’ Azzanar breathed. ‘Can you hear him screaming, Szarnos? Barely awake, and still the agony’s tearing him apart.’
The chant from within the icy cocoon continued, deeper, louder.
‘I suppose not.’
Azzanar clenched her fist and the orb liquefied, molten metal spattering across the floor. A terrible, shrieking wail howled through the chamber, like a rusty gear forced into movement, but a thousand times worse. Mirika clapped her hands over her ears to block out the noise. It didn’t help. It rattled the roots of her teeth, set her spine aching in sympathy.
Azzanar shook her fingers clear. ‘No empathy for Yasimov? Still, even immortals must feel jealousy. I’d know.’ Her lips shifted into a sly smile. ‘Let’s try another.’
She crossed to the nearest plinth and plucked the reliquary from its corpse. Shaking the black stone once, she cracked it against the plinth like an egg. The reliquary shattered, the golden orb dropping into her clawed hand. ‘How about Mirazka?’
Again the surface of the orb ran like water, the otherworldly scream raking across the chamber.
* * *
Yelen awoke in bed. Warm. Content. The familiar sights of her room recognizable even in the dark. The shelf and its thin collection of books. The wardrobe. The window that always whistled when the wind was in the east. The fire roaring in the hearth. The mirror.
The mirror…
Memory flooded back.
Yelen flung aside the bedclothes and ran to the mirror. The reflection in the glass wasn’t hers, wasn’t the room in the Guttered Candle, but how could it have been? The Guttered Candle was gone. Instead, she saw the gloom of the Hidden Court’s burial chamber, and a cocoon of ice. As to her reflection, it was almost unrecognizable – a dozen stages further removed from the crimson-eyed doppelgänger who’d haunted her dreams and her waking thoughts.
Szarnos’ harsh tones echoed around the bedroom-that-wasn’t. Yelen saw a skeleton half-rise on its plinth. Azzanar plucked the reliquary from the cadaver’s grasp. A rush of heat kindled in Yelen’s bones, boiling up inside her like the deepest rage she’d ever felt, the fires of the hearth leaping in reply.
Both stone and orb disintegrated at Azzanar’s touch. The scream rattled the glass in the mirror, the cracked panes in the window. The hearth crackled almost to nothing. The warmth bled from Yelen’s limbs, leaving her giddy, breathless.
‘What are you doing?’ said Yelen. ‘Stop toying with him before someone else gets hurt.’
‘Hush, poppet. I’m enjoying myself.’
‘The deal wasn’t that you enjoy yourself.’
Azzanar plucked another reliquary from its unresisting host. ‘And yet here we are. That’s the life of a passenger, poppet. May as well get used to it.’
Her tone was strident, assured, but Yelen wasn’t fooled. They’d been together too long for that. ‘You can’t break through the ice, can you? You’re trying to lure him out.’
‘Though it pains me to admit as much, you’re right. I’ve never liked the cold.’
Yelen frowned. Something didn’t add up. ‘Can’t you shatter it? Melt it? You helped me destroy the stone of Szarnos’ vault. It shouldn’t take much to disrupt the tempo of ice – it practically yearns to melt.’
Azzanar laughed. ‘A laudable suggestion, poppet, but impractical.’
Yelen felt the words hang on the air, taunting her. ‘That’s rubbish. Everything you and I have ever done has been through control of the timeflow. How can you even say that.’ Her knees buckled, and she grasped at the hearth for support. ‘Unless…’
‘I’ve never so much as dipped a claw in the timeflow. I’ve stopped you from accessing it, that’s all.’
‘No!’ Yelen sank onto the bed. The timbers creaked. ‘That’s not true!’
‘I’m afraid so, poppet. It’s hardly my fault you mistook a talent not yet bloomed for an absence of the same, now is it? I can�
��t tell you how much work it’s been keeping you from realizing once it finally sparked fully to life.’
Yelen stared at her shaking hands. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. And yet she found she believed Azzanar. There was no slyness in the demon’s mockery, no hint of a larger game at play. Just good old-fashioned gloating, of delight at a long-running joke at last reaching its punchline. She gritted her teeth and stared up at the grinning face in the mirror.
‘So all this time, I’ve been trading pieces of myself for nothing?’
‘Precisely. I’d give you the slow hand-clap you so richly deserve, except I’m rather busy at the moment.’ Azzanar’s lips twisted into a grin. ‘Go back to bed, poppet. We’ll have plenty of time to talk later.’
Yelen buried her head in the pillow and screamed.
* * *
The scream of a dying phylactery faded away, replaced by Azzanar’s crowing laughter.
‘Still hiding, liche? That’s eight of your fellows snuffed out. You can’t win this race. Come out, and I’ll leave the others be.’ She plucked another reliquary from its resting place. ‘Who knows, perhaps they’ll be found in years to come. Plenty of delvers seeking their fortunes in this tawdry city of yours.’
The back of Yelen’s abused travelling coat split. Two black-feathered wings spread wide. Azzanar threw her head back in rapture, fire danced across the tips of her horns. ‘Ah, that’s better. Like old times.’
Mirika tore her gaze away, unable to stomach the sight. Her eyes fell upon Kain’s body, still frosted with ice.
A gauntleted hand twitched.
At first, Mirika didn’t believe it, thought it the result of wishful thinking. Then the fist spasmed. ‘She’s still alive.’
‘Not for long,’ said Serene. ‘Soon as she melts Szarnos, we’ll find out if she bleeds.’
‘Not Azzanar,’ said Mirika, hoping the other woman meant the demon, and not Yelen. ‘Kain.’
Serene shook her head. ‘No chance.’
‘I’m telling you, she moved.’
Serene scowled, then nodded. ‘Keep an eye open. I’ll take a closer look.’