by Tom Lloyd
The busy dead-end street was a street market during the day. Normally that meant a dearth of city guardsmen around the Beristole – the merchants had licence to police the area themselves – but not today. And they’re not useless amateurs either, Ardela noted as she watched a thin prostitute briefly catch the eye of a man at a window over the road. There are altogether too many innocent little gestures going on in this street – they might still be a bit green and lacking subtlety, but whoever trained them knows what they’re about.
She’d stopped for a hurried scrub in the cracked basin at the inn where she’d left her belongings and a change of clothes. That turned out to be all for the better; if it was her they were looking for and she’d managed to get here first, she’d have not been getting out of the wine shop any time soon.
The prostitute loitered within the shelter of a tavern’s side door, keeping a low profile in a dress modest enough not to induce the ire of the local matrons. She could have been a merchant’s young wife herself easily enough, but for the symbols of Etesia, Goddess of Lust, incorporated into the posy of flowers on her bodice. At the front window was a barman who was paying too much attention to the mug he was drying, while over the street a pair of drivers lounged on their empty cart rather too obviously to be in the employ of anyone nearby.
Add that to the face at the window, a pair of labourers waiting for work on the corner and complaining about their feet, and a beggar near Ardela whose patter lacked the usual mix of resignation and hope, and she was pretty sure she had marked out each assigned section of the street.
Eight at least and almost certainly more on the Beristole itself. That’s a lot of bodies for one foreign agent.
She slipped away from the main highway and into a side street and waited by a street vendor’s stall to watch for anyone following. A scarf covered the uneven mess of her scalp, but there was little she could do about the bruising on her face and she saw a spark of something other than pity in his eyes as he turned to her.
‘Over from Burn today?’ he inquired in a soft accent, looking her up and down as he continued rolling out flatbreads with the ball of one hand. He was more than a head taller than Ardela, and white wispy tufts of beard that made a man of middle years look past his prime.
‘You think men round here don’t beat their wives?’ she murmured softly. She kept her eyes fixed on his cart as she spoke; he was a Litse; he would take her staring him down as more of an insult than her actual words.
The man shrugged and gestured to the small iron stove that comprised a third of his stall. Ardela nodded and he tossed on a handful of thin meat strips, so heavily spiced they were dark red. With a practised hand he kept the strips turning until they were starting to blacken then scooped them all up into a cooked flatbread. She dropped two copper houses into the dish behind his stove and accepted the small parcel of food, using the time to think on her predicament.
So what’s suddenly so interesting about the Farlan’s agent in Byora? And how was Derager’s cover blown in the first place?
She started eating, barely registering the strong flavour of the meat until her stomach reminded how hungry she’d been the last few days.
Well, why did I come here? Because Legana told me King Emin had a communication slate here. She paused mid-mouthful as realisation dawned: Damn, he must know. The Brotherhood adopted Derager as their agent here and moved the slate to his shop to coordinate their assault on the Ruby Tower. So somehow Ilumene must have found that out. Clearly he’s set up a separate intelligence network here – that couldn’t have taxed him too greatly, not when he knows the Brotherhood’s faces and their methods.
But this isn’t the usual surveillance; they’re ready to pinch someone – which means he’s willing to risk revealing what he’s found out – that taking me is worth the loss. But is it to find out what poison I used, or to prevent King Emin hearing what I saw after?
She finished the flatbread and turned away. She was certain now she’d not been spotted by the watchers, and even more certain she wanted to be clear of them as swiftly as possible.
Time to start the long walk home, Ardela realised, heading for her lodgings to collect her remaining belongings and plan a quiet exit from the Circle City.
Whichever’s true, there’s a reason I’ve forced their hand and that’s something King Emin’ll want to know. Might not be the glorious return I was hoping for, but it’ll have to do.
CHAPTER 4
They stopped only when the ghost-hour came, not speaking except to quarrel and even then fatigue and hunger meant those quickly petered to nothing. General Gaur was the last to dismount. While his men flopped from their saddles and sprawled on the crushed moorland grass, Gaur stared off into the distance. His furred face was matted with blood, his right arm bound in a filthy sling, but he made no sign of noticing his injuries beyond the deeper hurt he bore.
‘Gaur?’
There was no response, though a few soldiers glanced up at him nervously. The beastman had already demonstrated the murderous rage within him that day, and none of them believed it had subsided. Gaur had only ever cared for two living beings, Kohrad and— and the lord they could no longer name. The lord who’d been stolen from them by some monstrous magic of King Emin’s devising, the lord they would have gladly followed to the ivory gates and beyond. They still could not believe he was gone so entirely.
‘Gaur!’ The speaker towered over the Menin soldiers who scrambled to clear his path. Even Larim’s robes were torn and dirty and marked with blood, his own and that of many others. That the Chosen of Larat had survived at all was a testament to his white-eye heritage as much as magery. Of the troops he’d led to attack the south flank of King Emin’s fort, only the Byoran allies at the rear had survived, by abandoning their comrades.
Slowly Gaur turned, aware he was being addressed. ‘Lord Larim,’ he said, his heavy tone even more of a growl than usual.
‘We’ve plans to make.’
Gaur regarded the Chosen of Larat. ‘Why?’
‘Why? Because our current options are death or slavery, and I would prefer to find another.’ Larim gestured to the soldiers with them, perhaps two legions’ worth, now that their former allies had left and headed back towards their home states. ‘I suspect most of them would agree with me.’
There was no reply; Gaur just stared at Larim with an unreadable expression, his tusked jaw still for once, his face empty of emotion.
‘Well? Do you want to live to return home?’
‘Home? What home?’
Larim walked closer. ‘The Ring of Fire is their home, and they look to you to take them there, General.’
The white-eye was bald, his smooth face ageless. He wore a brightly coloured patchwork robe of predominantly yellow and blue, within which were set half-a-dozen glowing magical charms. Though young, Larim had the reptilian air about him that all Larat’s Chosen seemed to possess: an unblinking dispassion that was far from human.
‘Then they will be disappointed,’ Gaur said. ‘My plans are only for revenge.’
‘Revenge?’ Larim laughed. ‘And how do you propose to manage that? There is no revenge to be had here, only more death. Can you not accept that we’ve lost?’
‘I will have revenge for my lord’s death,’ Gaur insisted. He looked away, not interested in listening to any more of Larim’s scorn, but the white-eye walked around Gaur’s horse until he was once more in the general’s field of view.
‘Gaur, you will only die,’ Larim said. He cocked his head at the beastman, puzzled by Gaur’s blind determination. ‘Do you think the Gods will care that your lord’s faithful hound followed him even unto death? Do you think the families of these men will appreciate this sacrifice?’
Larim shook his head when he received no answer and turned to the broken troops surrounding them. ‘Soldiers of the Menin, it’s time for you to decide! Do you want to live and one day, perhaps, return home, or do you wish to follow General Gaur to a pointless death?’
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The faces were all turned towards him, but no one spoke. If that perturbed Larim he didn’t show it. ‘You have the night to make your decision. Helrect is the nearest city we have not waged war upon. You can go there, or head south and attempt to meet up with the Fourth Army, but either way you don’t have the numbers to cut a path through. The injured will not make it, but the rest of you can. You may live as mercenaries or die as fools. That is your choice.’
‘And your choice?’ Gaur growled.
Larim turned. ‘Mine? My choice is to survive, of course, to return to what is now mine in the Menin homeland.’
‘To run like a coward and abandon us here?’
‘You are only looking for death,’ Larim said with contempt, ‘and you’ll find it without my help. The Ring of Fire is a long way from here, but Govin and I alone can travel faster than any army might.’ He looked to the side, where his one remaining coterie member stood. The small man with a large head shrank under Gaur’s gaze.
‘The troops of the Hidden Tower were slaughtered in Thotel; I have no allegiance to these men.’ Larim opened his mouth to say something more but then he stopped, an expression of surprise appearing on his face.
A moment later his acolyte reacted in the same way, and both men turned to look west over the moor. Those soldiers who followed their gaze saw nothing, just the advancing gloom of dusk as the sun vanished below the eastern horizon for another day.
‘It seems you don’t need to go looking,’ Larim muttered, reaching inside his robe for a silver pendant that bore the rune of his God, Larat. ‘Death has come to find you.’
At last Gaur looked, but there remained nothing to see, just his exhausted soldiers trying to summon the energy to make camp for the night. And then there was something else: though indistinct in the waning light he could just make out something moving beyond the disordered clumps of troops.
Shouts of alarm erupted from the nearest soldiers; men scrambled to their feet and drew their weapons even as they retreated. Gaur turned to Larim but the mage clearly wasn’t the cause of the disruption: the white-eye appeared apprehensive at whatever was happening out there, and his acolyte, Govin, was clearly terrified.
Gaur mounted again and pulled his axe from his saddle. He urged his horse towards the disruption, ignoring Larim as the mage began to say something in protest. The beastman was too exhausted with grief to feel fear any longer – if this was Death come to claim him, so be it.
Overhead the sky darkened steadily as dusk marched on towards night. Gaur tasted the sharp tang of fear on the wind as his soldiers fell back from whatever it was that had found them. Before long his horse stopped too, tossing its head with anxiety as it smelled something amiss. He spurred the beast hard, but it had no effect, so Gaur dismounted and advanced on foot as Menin soldiers streamed forward and his horse fled.
Some animal sense danced down Gaur’s spine, like the raised hackles of a dog faced with the unnatural. He tightened his grip on the axe even as he started to make out the figure waiting for him: standing still with eyes fixed on Gaur as the gloom shimmered and danced on either side of it. Thick plates of chitin armour glowed a whitish-amber in the waning light, broad shoulders tapered into slender arms, each carrying a long javelin.
He walked on and at last the figure moved, advancing towards him with a few swift, delicate steps. He saw it more clearly now, a reddened body with pale limbs – four legs like a spider’s, jointed up at the height of its waist, and a segmented thorax twitching behind it like a grossly fat tail. The daemon peered at him with two slanted pairs of eyes formed in an X shape about a slit Gaur guessed was a mouth. Its torso was criss-crossed with burnished gold chains, each bearing shifting, arcane symbols that made Gaur’s eyes water to behold.
He came within ten yards of the monster and stopped, spending a long moment observing it before looking to its left and right as the shimmering air started to coalesce into shadows, hinting at fresh horrors arrayed around what the Menin had intended to call their camp. There were dozens of them, no, scores – far more, Gaur realised, than even Larim could have called into existence.
‘Unsummoned by man, yet here you are incarnate,’ Gaur called, unafraid.
‘The breeze sings a song of pain and fear,’ the daemon said in a soft, rasping voice. ‘Drawn to the horrors of your doing we find a Land altered.’ It gestured expansively, at its comrades and its own body. ‘The powers are weakened and we come out to drink the fear of mortals.’ It paused and cocked its head at Gaur. ‘But not you. Your scent is one of hatred alone. Tell me, little mortal, tell me why this is before my kin come to rend your flesh from your bones.’
‘My lord is dead. There is nothing within me but a thirst for revenge now.’ Gaur hefted his axe. ‘If you want my flesh, try to take it.’
The daemon didn’t move, but there came a whisper Gaur realised was laughter. ‘Revenge? How sweet a flavour! Tell me, little mortal, what would you give for your revenge?’
Gaur looked back at the broken army behind him, shrouded in the veil of dusk. ‘All I possess.’
The daemon laughed again, quietly joyful at the prospect of more than just mortal flesh now. It raised itself up high and brandished one javelin at the shadows on its right. The shapes drew back a shade while one was dragged forward and slowly coalesced into a grey lizard-like daemon – six-limbed and sinuous, with a frill of barbs to protect its head. The new daemon crawled up to its master, head low to the ground, subservient.
‘You have the grave thief’s scent still?’
The smaller daemon hissed and clawed furiously at the ground, carving deep furrows in the moorland. ‘I smell him,’ it replied, ‘even among the dead of the battlefield.’
The greater daemon stood up on its hind legs and snuffled at the evening air. Gaur could sense its delight, but he remained impassive. Their agenda was their own. He didn’t care what that might be, or who this grave thief was. If they could deliver the destruction he wished upon King Emin and the Narkang armies, that would be enough.
‘Revenge,’ the daemon repeated. It shivered with pleasure and edged closer.
CHAPTER 5
In the grounds of Moorview Castle every possible lantern and torch had been lit to banish the shadows of evening. Ghosts patrolled the walls, barefoot and silent as they savoured the witch of Llehden’s magic upon their bodies. The sky was cloudless and the deepest of blues, punctured by the brightest stars and the lesser moon, Kasi, which lined the stone walls with silver.
‘Not a vessel,’ King Emin whispered to himself. Such was the hush his voice carried to all of the forty or so people there. ‘Not a tool or lamb for the sacrifice, but shadow incarnate.’
‘Still a vessel,’ Isak said, reluctantly looking up from the fire. ‘Azaer’s just a shadow, nothing more.’
‘So how do you kill a shadow?’ Emin asked bitterly. Recalling a conversation he’d had with Legana on the subject, he added, ‘Preferably by giving it everything it wants, then twisting that against it.’
‘What sort of a question’s that?’ Vesna interjected. The Mortal-Aspect flexed his black-iron fingers restlessly and reached for a jug of wine. Just as he touched it he changed his mind and withdrew. ‘A shadow can’t be harder to kill than a God, and we have power enough to do that.’ Karkarn’s Iron General raised his armour-clad hand to emphasise his point. When he’d tried to return the Skull of Hunting to Isak, the white-eye had shaken his head sadly and pushed the artefact back, pressing it against Vesna’s vambrace until it moulded itself around the armour as a clear crystal band. Now, unbidden by its new owner, the band around his wrist shone with an inner light that made the Mortal-Aspect stand out even more amidst his mortal companions.
‘Azaer has taken a mortal form,’ the witch of Llehden said from Isak’s side where she sat close with Legana and Mihn, ‘stolen from its owner while still in the womb, most likely, but that does not make the shadow mortal. More likely it possesses the body in the same way a daemon would, and can give it
up with ease.’
‘So what, then? It’s weaker than a God, so how can it be so hard to kill?’
‘Not hard to kill,’ Emin said, ‘hard to find, hard to get to, hard to pin down. How do you catch a shadow that can fade from sight?’ He tossed the remains of his cigar into the fire and reached into his brigandine, from which he extricated a slim grey book bound in tarnished metal. Beside him Doranei watched the book warily, as though expecting it to bite him, while continuing to pour liquor down his throat.
‘However,’ Emin continued, raising the book, ‘we may not have to. There is a final arbiter that no daemon or shadow could run from, that extends beyond the physical. Kill a boy with Termin Mystt and no soul inside will be able to escape its power.’
Vesna regarded him incredulously. ‘Your recklessness with the balance of the Land astonishes me. Coming from Isak I can understand it; he was born to upset the order of things and he’s a headstrong white-eye! But you – don’t you know any restraint or caution?’
‘Can you think of another solution?’
‘Yes! Kill the child and his disciples, set their plans back a decade at least and give ourselves time to prepare properly.’
‘It is too late for that,’ Mihn said unexpectedly from Isak’s lee. His voice carried a strange authority that stopped the argument dead. He stood and looked around at the tired, surprised faces around him. Mihn was normally like a ghost at Isak’s side; silent and observing. It was why the witch of Llehden had tattooed him the way she had, to make greatest use of the man he was. As Emin watched him capture their attention by his stance alone, he reminded himself that Mihn had been trained as a Harlequin; shy and unassuming he might be by nature, but addressing an audience was in his blood.