The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013

by Angela Slatter

  Reny felt as if someone had dropped ice down the back of his armour, and it was sliding slowly down his spine. I have a sorceress masquerading as a whore in my tent; a woman who both this army—and the enemy—think is some sort of goddess of death. The last thing I need is Vorn putting further ideas of betrayal in Dael’s head.

  “I’d rather you got rid of Vorn,” he replied, frankly.

  Dael smiled. “Why should I do that?”

  “Soldiers are like weapons,” Reny found himself replying, “more useful in battle than hung on a wall. Advisers are like scrolls. You keep them so you can use their knowledge again and again.” Somehow it had sounded more eloquent when Kala had said it.

  Dael grinned, his eyes bright with amusement.

  “I like you, Captain Reny. And that’s most important. You may go.”

  Reny bowed, and hurried from the tent.

  * * *

  Reny would have liked more time to think, but he suspected that time was something he didn’t have much of now. When he entered his tent and saw Kala waiting for him he felt a wave of relief, but it was followed by one of dread. And, unexpectedly, one of lust. She was regarding him with relaxed expectation from the end of the bed, with a small welcoming smile, and he was reminded once again that it was after strategy meetings that he most often used her services.

  He knew that he never would again. That filled him with regret, but also determination. He drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then sat down on one of the chests.

  “What are you?” he asked. “Are you really a goddess?”

  She showed no surprise, but her expression became serious, almost sad, and then the smile returned. “I am no goddess. What do you think I am?”

  Reny met her gaze. “What he is. What Dael is. A sorcerer and . . . something else.”

  Her eyebrows rose and she regarded him appraisingly. “You’ve worked out more than I expected—or hoped.”

  “I’ve worked out nothing,” he disagreed. “I have no idea what is going on. Am I keeping an enemy in my tent? Am I following someone . . . something more than an ambitious and clever sorcerer mercenary-turned-King, with a love for war and a desire to unite the lands?”

  Suddenly all trace of her smile was gone. She had that knowing, worldly look again, but this time there was anger burning in her eyes.

  “I am from the temple,” she said. “The temple Vorl attacked.”

  His stomach plunged to the floor. He stared at her and felt guilt and pity fill him all over again.

  “I’m sorry—” he began.

  “I lived there for over a thousand years,” she continued.

  Disbelief overtook guilt. He remembered the shimmering air between her hand and the dying soldier, and knew that he had to consider that something so incredible might be possible. If this was true . . . he felt the first spark of awe. I bedded this woman . . .

  “But I am several thousands of years older than that,” she added. She looked away, beyond the tent walls, and sighed. “When I was the age of the body you see before you, I developed more than womanly traits. I aged the same as other people, but then within a day or night I’d grow young again.

  “Whenever I’d returned to youth, I found that I could heal from an injury in an instant, and I could use magic. But in time, I’d lose those abilities and start to age again. How could this be? I only worked out why when a sickness came and many of the local people died. It took many, many more years before I started to age again.” She paused and looked at Reny meaningfully.

  He frowned. “You . . . you can take magic from people who are dying?”

  “I don’t take it. It comes to me. When someone dies, magic is released and if I am nearby it flows to me. Or if there is someone else with the trait nearby, it flows to whichever of us is closest.”

  “So you are immortal.”

  She shook her head. “I am sure that, if I stayed away from death long enough, I would age and die like everyone else.”

  He thought about the temple, so isolated and only attended by a handful of young women. Healthy young attendees were less likely than older ones to die while serving the old woman they believed was a goddess.

  “That’s why you were there,” he said.

  She nodded solemnly. “I have lived too long. I am tired of it.”

  His mind took a leap of comprehension. “But if death gives you magic, why didn’t you save the women in the temple?”

  She blinked at the sudden shift in his questioning, then scowled. “It was their death that gave me magic. Once dead . . . ” She sighed. “I cannot bring the dead back to life. I might have been able to heal one or two of them, if any had been alive after the soldiers left.” There was bitterness in her voice.

  “So you joined the camp followers of an army, which would surround you with a never-ending source of death and allow you to grow strong.” He took a deep breath. “Is revenge worth delaying your release from this life?”

  She smiled. “I am not seeking revenge. If I was, Vorl would have stopped being a problem for you months ago.”

  “Why are you here, then?”

  She looked at him with an expression he could not name, and it sent a shiver down his spine. “All those years in the Temple, waiting for death. I felt boredom beyond what you can ever experience. One thought kept me there, and kept me from giving up and leaving. One question that I will never know the answer to myself.” She paused, and then smoothly rose to her feet. “Where does the death magic go, if sorcerers like me don’t take and use it? What do you think, Remy?”

  He stared at her as she walked out of the tent, and disappeared into the night, her words repeating themselves unceasingly in his mind, and rousing a deep, undeniable horror.

  Soldiers believed in souls. They believed there was a life after death. They might not agree about the form that soul took, how it was judged, or who ruled the place souls went to, but they all held onto the same basic hope.

  If they knew what she did, nobody would worship the Goddess of Death. They would fear her.

  And Dael. Reny shuddered. Now that he knew the truth, some of the sorcerer King’s more destructive decisions made sense. Dael was not trying to unify the lands in order to bring peace to them. He was harvesting fallen soldiers, his own and his enemy’s, and keeping the lands in a perpetual state of war so that he might have eternal life and unending power over the living.

  Reny did not see Kala again that night or the next morning. He did not expect her to return. If her absence was noted, he planned to shrug and say he had grown tired of her, and sent her away. He considered finding himself a new whore to make this lie more convincing, but didn’t.

  He pretended to have an injury—a strain in his back—to avoid having to fight. It wasn’t that he was afraid he would die and lose his soul to Kala or Dael. He simply didn’t want to miss seeing whatever all this was leading to.

  He pondered Kala’s motives and her possible strategy to carry them out. She had all but told him she wanted to stop Dael, but was she strong enough to face him and win? He considered that perhaps she intended to lose, and achieve the death she longed for, but he doubted it. She would not have been gathering strength by walking the battlefield at night. Instead, she would have confronted Dael in a deliberately weakened state, ensuring her defeat.

  At midday Dael led the army into the city to carry out his punishment for their defiance. To Reny’s surprise, the king placed him among his personal companions, and sent Vorl ahead to rouse the citizens, who had not emerged to face the invaders.

  Soldiers beat down a few doors before they realised all were unlocked. They emerged from the buildings, confused and pale, each group hurrying to report to Vorl, whose face grew darker and darker.

  “What is wrong?” Dael called.

  Vorl hurried over and knelt before his leader. “They’re dead,” he said. “All of them. Poisoned themselves, by the look of it.”

  Dael looked up, his eyes scanning the buildings lining both
sides of the main city road. “Surely not all of them. I’d have . . . Keep searching.”

  Though soldiers roamed further and further afield, they found only corpses. Old men, women and children tucked in their beds or slumped in chairs. From the expressions on their faces, whatever poison they had taken had seemingly sent them to a blissful end.

  It was then, in the silence of realisation, that a woman dressed in white stepped out onto the main road. Reny heard all the men around him draw in a sharp breath. She glowed faintly as she walked toward them. Her feet were bare. Her pale hair was long and unbound and much too familiar.

  Reny could not believe this was the whore he had kept in his tent. She had been attractive, but not this vision of beauty. She certainly never glowed like that when she was mine. She must have gathered up the death magic of all the city’s remaining citizens as they expired from the poison they’d taken. Or did she poison them? Is this a part of her plan? Is she that ruthless?

  Unexpectedly, he saw through the glamour around her to a woman who must have suffered much in her long life, despite the magic that kept her alive and healed every wound. She was a woman who had not been able to escape the evils of the world, even when she had isolated herself in search of the peace of death. A woman who had no choice but to question if her own powers, over which she had no control, were evil, She must have cared deeply about the answer, he thought. Perhaps this was the true reason she sought her own death. No, she did not kill these people.

  The soldiers shifted fearfully, muttering to themselves. Reny guessed they saw something else: the Goddess of Death. But Kala’s eyes were fixed only on Dael. The sorcerer King was watched her, his eyes bright and smiling indulgently, as if watching children performing.

  “Greetings, King Dael,” she said, her voice echoing between the buildings.

  “Greetings . . . who do I have the honour of meeting?” he asked in reply.

  “I have had many names. You may call me Saeyl.”

  He gestured to the buildings on either side. “Well, Saeyl. Did you do this?”

  “Poison all these people?” she shook her head. “No. They arranged that all on their own. I don’t know if they guessed what your abilities are and decided to deny you the magic you gain from the moment of their deaths,” she shrugged, “or if they hoped their souls would go to me instead.”

  Dael’s smile faded. She slowed to a stop a few paces away.

  “I have not met anyone with my particular skills before now,” he told her.

  Her lips twisted with distaste. “I have met plenty.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Gone. Dead.”

  “So we can die.”

  Her eyes brightened at his ignorance. “Yes, but only at the hands of another of our kind.”

  “So . . . you killed the others?”

  She shook her head. “Not all of them. Most fought and killed each other. The last one I met wanted to go. He was very old, and tired of living.” She lifted her chin. “How old are you?”

  “Two hundred and forty nine.”

  Reny’s skin prickled with cold. I have been fighting for, and been loyal to, a man who is more than five times my age!

  Kala’s eyes never left Dael. “So young. And with such skill in sorcery. When I discovered my power, few could or would teach me. Now there are mortals who know more than I did at your age.”

  “How old are you?” Dael asked.

  “More than four thousand years,” she said. “Less than five. It is hard to keep an exact tally, when counting systems keep coming and going with the civilisations that invent them.”

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  Her eyebrows rose at his bluntness, then her expression became serious. “I want you to abandon this conquest of yours.”

  “Why?” Dael asked, his voice low and dark with defiance and anger.

  “You don’t need it.” She took a step closer. “Look at me: I am proof that you do not need to wage war in order to live forever.”

  “Do you think that is my sole mission? What of power? What of peace? If I unite the lands there will be no more wars. We can do good things with our magic. And there will be no risk that you or I will be killed in some petty squabble between kingdoms.”

  She took another step, reaching out but not quite touching him. “How will you gather the power you need? Will you resort to slaughtering more innocent people? Will you breed people like livestock, to be a steady supply of sacrifices?”

  “There are always criminals to be executed. And those who die of natural causes. If that’s not enough . . . I’ll think of something. You could help me,” he said, reaching out toward her. His other hand shifted to his waist.

  The movement was familiar, and even as Reny choked back a shout of warning Dael’s dagger plunged into her chest under the ribs.

  Trust that she knows what she is doing, he told himself. His heart raced. He stared at her face, seeing the pain and shock there, holding his breath and daring to hope. She was staring at Dael, her eyes dark with hatred.

  “You said ‘only at the hands of another of our kind’,” Dael reminded her smugly.

  She shook her head. “I did. But you are far too simple in your thinking.”

  Taking another step forward, she plunged her hand through his armour and into his chest, as if metal and bone and skin were the thinnest of paper. Dael’s eyes went round then, as she pulled her arm back, he looked down in disbelief at the bloody, pulsing mess of organs trailing from her hands back to his body.

  Her heart held his heart, twitching and wobbling. Dael opened his mouth, made a faint, whimpering noise, then crumpled at her feet.

  Kala waited until the first sounds escaped the watching soldiers. As the realisation that she had killed their leader sank into the minds of those watching, she raised her eyes and surveyed those standing closest. She gestured with the bloodied heart, beckoning them closer. Instead, all turned and ran, yelling and screaming their terror.

  All except Reny. A movement in the air had drawn his eyes. The shimmer between Dael’s body and Kala was so intense it was almost a sound.

  Is it only her magic or does it come from all the souls he has taken?

  He looked up and met Kala’s eyes. Weariness and resignation had replaced her fierce grin of triumph. She grimaced as she let the heart drop to the ground.

  “I can’t stop myself taking it,” she said sadly. “But I can do this . . . ”

  Then she turned and strode away, the rippling air stretching and slowly thinning between herself and the dead sorcerer until the effect was no longer visible.

  * * *

  When he left, Reny took nothing with him but a large pack and his sword. While he would rather have left the weapon behind, he wasn’t stupid. The road home would not be free of trouble. It would be full of ex-soldiers like him, and some would resort to theft and murder to get food, shelter and other essentials. He’d pass through lands that the sorcerer King had conquered, who would not welcome the men who had followed him, bringing so much suffering and loss.

  At the end of the long journey was his home—and the ghosts of his family. If he made it, he would live the remaining years left to him there, and concern himself only with the strategies of crops and animal breeding cycles and bartering in the markets. He resolved to forget the war, and let all tales of his part in it fade from the memories of others, even if they would never leave his own.

  Every day Kala was in his thoughts, and every night she appeared in his dreams, and he never stopped wondering where she was, and if she still sought her own death.

  Disciple of the Torrent

  Lee Battersby

  The storm had turned the world into a swirl of broken lines. Jeronimus Cornelisz stood with his shoulder jammed against the slick wooden wall of the aft quarters and his opposite arm wrapped around the deck rail, and watched the water grab hungrily at the sides of the boat. He loved the storm, loved the way it destroyed the natural order of the Universe.
The horizon was an unreachable ideal, the sky an enemy of life, the ordered hierarchy of the Batavia a maelstrom of shouting men and panicking women. This was June as Cornelisz wished the whole year to be. Back home it was a time of warm breezes, long summer days and picnics on the open lawns of Haarlem. But June on the far side of the world demanded rain and wind and the chaos of untamed winter. The Sun was low and weak, and fury ruled the elements. It was the torrent brought to life, and the perfect place to rescue his Master.

  Above him on the upper deck, Pelsaert and the skipper, Jacobsz, were arguing again. Cornelisz grinned. Jacobsz had been a worthy ally on the long voyage south. Motivated by money, booze and sex, he was the perfect shield between Cornelisz’ ambitions and the ascetic, nit-picking Opperkoopman, always willing to flood his fat face with angry blood, and argue the slightest command. Jacobsz was the dough that soured the batch. It was all Cornelisz could do not to break into a jig to hear him screaming back at Pelsaert while the ship listed and fought the watery demons hammering at its hull.

  Cornelisz abandoned his fragile grip on the deck rail and squeezed himself below decks. As Onderkoopman of the Batavia, he was entitled to the third best lodgings, which counted for little more than a curtained off cupboard with a rough plank and thin blankets for a bed. He barely owned enough floor space to step around his steamer trunk. But there was room for what he had planned. He rummaged around in the trunk, drew out two candle stubs and a stick of chalk, and placed them on the bench. A quick check to make sure nobody was lurking outside his curtain, then he pushed the trunk as far under his rude bed as it would fit and sketched a rough circle on the floor. Five quick slashes of the chalk filled the ring with a star. Cornelisz knelt with one point between his knees, laid the candles in front of him, then placed a hand over each. There was danger in unguarded flames below decks, and he lacked the time to snuff out a taper and clean up should he hear boot steps approaching. Heat was necessary, to warm the air and soften the ether sufficiently so he could send his message through the gap to the world beyond. The warmth of his hands would have to suffice. He closed his eyes and bent over. Like a dog before its owner, he began to beg.