A Lady in Crystal

by Toby Bennett

  “I don’t know what you mean, Your Eminence.” Akna stammered, trying to sound as ignorant and scared as any pinch-purse you might find on the city streets.

  “Allow me to guess, you heard of the fabulous treasures in the cardinal’s apartments and snuck in here to find riches to help your six starving siblings. Spare yourself the effort, boy I know who sent you and you will answer me soon enough. One way or another.”

  “Please, your worship, I meant no harm, I’ve been so hungry.”

  They will take your hand!

  Better a hand than my life, he reminded himself.

  “A common street thief made it past the guards and into my private chambers, is that it? How did you even know where to look?”

  “I didn’t. I thought the apartments would be empty.”

  “But you crept in just the same when you realized they were not?”

  “How many times could I get lucky?”

  “Very good, boy, stick to the story, make it convincing. Did they train you to do that when someone was causing you pain?”

  Akna managed to keep the fear from his face. He had never expected to be believed but there was some value in fulfilling the cardinal’s expectations and allowing him to gloat. His senses drunk in the room trying to spot any dangers, sure enough he saw a slit high up in the wall it had been cleverly disguised but he had no doubt that there were more like it and a crossbowman behind each one. Whatever was waiting behind the door at his back he could easily buy a quick death by simply provoking the crossbowmen watching him at that very minute. That was worth noting but it also seemed that the cardinal was over confident. Akna could move fast perhaps just fast enough to put the silk canopy of the bed between himself and the bolts. The guards would not dare fire if it meant risking hitting the cardinal. It was a manoeuvre he could not survive but then they all knew he was dead anyway, why not finish what he had started? At least his killer would not live to enjoy victory.

  “Please, I beg for mercy,” Akna whined allowing himself to fall down onto one knee, “I’m just a thief, I would never even think to do your worship harm. I place my life in your forgiving hands.”

  Laughter boomed out again, and the cardinal sat up in bed disentangling himself from the limbs of his guests.

  “Oh well done, I almost believe you. Is there anything else you would like to tell me, before I call the guards in to take you below to the dungeons?”

  “Only…” Akna let the word turn into a sobbing sound then, without warning, he threw himself backwards. Four bolts appeared where he had been kneeling. The bowmen were accurate but the last thing that they could have anticipated was that he would go back rather than forward.

  In a bur of motion Akna rolled back and turned the door’s oversized key in the lock. Seconds later something resounded against the stout wood but Akna was no longer there to feel it, he was sprinting forward, the sounds of crossbow winches creaking in his mind. He barrelled towards the cardinal, his weapon held out before him and was gratified to see a momentary look of surprise flick over the cardinal’s face. Akna’s lips curled back from his teeth in something that was both a smile and a snarl. He might yet die in glory, he might yet be worthy of joining Nishkaan’s martyrs.

  Once he was over his initial shock, the cardinal’s reaction was unusually quick for an older man. He grasped one of the girls lying next to him and shook her into wakefulness. A bolt hit the bed post above Akna’s head but he didn’t flinch, he dived into the pile of flesh his blade seeking his mark’s heart. Except as he tried to make his way over the prone forms to the cardinal, he realized his real mistake; the newly awoken girl turned cold, inhuman eyes on him and let out a call to wake the others. Healthy looking flesh split as the cardinal’s bedfellows awoke, tearing through the illusion of youth with barbed claws and tentacles. Too late, Akna realized that the nightmare was not waiting outside the door. The cardinal had brought it into his bed with him.

  Chapter 2

  “The shadow creeps upon me as I sleep, the shade upon my eyes

  Darkness holds me as I weep and swallows all my cries.”

  Gore dripped from the alien limbs that bound him and he could no longer feel the knife in his hand. Not that he could feel his hand either, serpent coils and rubbery tentacles held him in a grip that was just short of total suffocation.

  “Truly eager,” the cardinal crawled closer, peering at him through the tangle of bodies, “a pity, but at least I can console myself with the thought that Gilash did send one of his best after all, even if you are so young. They offered you the cowl for my heart did they not?” Akna struggles to answer.

  “There is no use denying it, boy. Do you think that a street thief would have avoided those bolts? Let alone come within inches of actually touching me? No, you are what you are: one of Asemutt’s desperate orphans. Your masters are less than happy with how I have chosen to assign the contracts that are under the purview of my office and one ambitious boy is little enough to risk for a chance at changing things. You will soon realise how little you ever meant to them.” The fat man’s eyes narrowed, “I, on the other hand, have always had a soft spot for orphans. I advise you to put any hope you may have into that fact.”

  Akna blinked, confused, was his captor prepared to offer him mercy? The cleric read the confusion on his face.

  “No I cannot promise you your life, boy; some rivers cannot be re-crossed. I merely hope that you will see reason and understand.”

  Akna’s jaw tightened and he tried to rise above his growing fear as he had been taught to do. No doubt his captor would enjoy his suffering. Akna was resolved not to oblige him. The cardinal chuckled, “Asemutt might seem the world to you, boy but I can remember when it was only a minor order. It is Gilash’s scheming and his preparedness to do other’s dirty work that has brought them so far. No doubt you haven’t even taken final vows just so they have deniability. You have been well trained, so that you would do anything rather than give me a confession that would compromise your precious house, but we shall see, you and I, which will break first, your love for Asemutt, which has so little love for you, or my compassion for orphans.”

  Laughter echoed through the apartments again, shaking the already straining bed. Akna fought the rising tide of panic and tried to reach beyond himself and into the veil. He no longer needed to fear that he would give himself away and he did not see how the situation could get any more desperate, so he drew himself into the shallowest part of Nishkaan’s realm. Ideally a practitioner should be asleep or drugged to even attempt to draw their dreams into reality. Akna shuddered to think from what terrible recesses of his soul, or the soul of some unfortunate in his care, the cardinal had drawn the creatures who held him now. ‘He took them from the children,’ his instinct whispered to him, ‘stole away all their fears and all their hope just as he will take yours. I’ll wager they sleep very soundly in that orphanage.’

  Akna pushed those thoughts aside and struggled to relax. Ironically, the pressure on his body seemed to make it easier to induce the trance state he was trying to achieve. The limited supply of air was already dimming the edges of his vision, sleep was not as far away as he had first feared. He was dimly aware of the cardinal shifting, no doubt getting off the bed to unlock the door. He forced fear from his mind and settled deeper into his trance, letting his captors hold his body up. He could feel the gloom setting over him, the first blackness of sleep on the very edge of consciousness. His spirit had cast off the shell of his body but it was still aware of the thudding of his heart and the warmth of the limbs holding him in place. It was a doze not dissimilar from one a Sheppard might take, lulled by late afternoon sunshine, just hovering near the edge of consciousness, a lamb’s bleat away from wakefulness. It was a tenuous state to be sure but it was enough to get him in contact with the worlds that were so thinly separated from Niskar.

  If the gospels were true the God of Shadows and Illusion had died in the city and it was certainly true that nowhere else on Seg was
as close to the ancient daemon lord’s shadowy realms. Akna knew he could not hope to draw forth anything to match the nightmares holding him but even a distraction was worth trying for. When he was sure his trance was as stable as he could make it, Akna began to shape something from the darkness that surrounded him. It would not be strong, not like a madman’s or a child’s dream. Even if it never saw daylight, the destroyer of all dreams, the creature he shaped would probably fade after a couple of weeks, its body returning to the dark mass of clouds that hid the city from the sun. It did not matter if his summoning did not last, all he needed was a moment of freedom to plunge the stiletto into the cardinal, or failing that, his own heart.

  Time runs differently in dreams, so there was no way for Akna to know whether he was taking too long to shape his distraction. It would all end very suddenly if a guard ran a dagger across his throat but then in a way that was something to hope for. The most likely and frightening possibility was that he would wake up to the touch of red-hot metal. Once he was so rudely roused, the pain would seal the world of dreams from him forever. ENOUGH, giving in to such distractions would not help. He focused on the creature he was summoning, a monster that looked like some unlikely marriage of insect and reptile and seemed almost complete. Due to its hurried creation it would probably not move all that quickly, one of the creature’s six legs was short and crooked and ended in a pair of thick lips rather than a hand or claw. The teeth behind those lips looked satisfactorily large, however. His creation would probably know nothing but pain when it entered the physical world; there were a hundred things wrong with it that reality would mercilessly press on but it would do… it had to.

  Akna was just about to start waking himself from his trance, his summoning in tow, when he felt a large hand close over his wrist. Not his physical wrist, he quickly realised, he was still sleeping shallowly enough to feel his pulse throbbing even and unimpeded by any pressure. To his surprise, there was someone in the veil with him, something he had not summoned. His training told him not to panic, the true hazards of Niskaan’s realm lay far beyond the veil. Foul and ancient watchers waited beyond the steps and the darkness; things not of the mortal world that dwelt within the heart of darkness and slept fitfully within the glimmering deep. These beings were to be feared but they would not find someone so close to the mortal world. It was not an unknown hazard to encounter other dreamers or stray fancies in the veil. With so many people sleeping in the city at the purple hour, it was not impossible that whoever was standing over him was an unrelated stranger. Unfocused dreamers could be easily dealt with by an experienced traveller and once he was over the initial shock of being halted, Akna gathered his strength and pulled against the hand that was holding him. Instead of tugging himself free, the act of trying to tear away drew the dreamer holding him closer and the image of the cardinal solidified before him.

  Impossible as it seemed, Lothar was here with him; not the fat old man Akna had so nearly managed to stab but a young man in priests’ robes, who shared the same eyes. Akna had been well trained in Niskaan’s arts but he had never heard of anyone being able to find another dreamer so easily and the psychic strength with which the cardinal held him from waking was beyond anything he had ever experienced.

  “I must thank you for making this easy, boy, if you had not come here of your own accord we would have had to drug you, which would have made physical torture redundant.”

  A terrible premonition slunk into Akna’s mind, the cardinal’s smile broadened to confirm his fear.

  “This way we can deal with the problem on two levels at once, my servants can do their work and at the same time, you and I will have a more intimate conversation. It is, after all, so much harder for the spirit to lie, when it is robbed of the security of flesh.”

  As if at some signal, white heat erupted in Akna’s side but he could not wake. He felt the hot metal he had so feared, felt every excruciating moment as the torturer teased him with the heat but he could not reclaim his body. The cardinal held him where he was. His summoning broke apart dissolved by waves of panic, as he tried to find his way back to his blistering flesh.

  “Calm down, boy, we have much to discuss and it is better that we do it here. At some point I am sure that we will remove your tongue, so we might as well begin as we mean to continue.”

  Akna had been trained well enough to know that there was little point in wasting his energy on panic. He stopped struggling altogether and instead struggled to focus his mind, his best chance of surviving Lothar’s interrogation lay in remaining calm and protecting the parts of his mind that were most important. Asemutt’s teachings would serve to protect him, they had to. His masters had taught him obedience and trickery, they had taught him the secrets of poison and blade but before all that, before he could even lift a sword, they had taught him the discipline on which all other skills would be based. Every conflict must begin with a mind at peace. He did not try to fight the fear that welled up within him, it would be a waste of resources, instead he accepted it allowed it to wash through him.

  With the heat of the fire ticking his ribs and the cardinal holding his dream form in an unyielding grip, the fears that he had put behind him began to quickly bubble up from his mind. He could feel them coming, riding the involuntary shudders than ran through his distant body. Akna let those first emotions go, nightmares and worries he could live without, it was hope and ambition that he fought to hold onto; the dreams that made life more than just a meaningless sequence of moments, that made him himself. Lothar was patient, he had emptied many minds over the course of his career, people were always willing to give up their nightmares first. They were less valuable and more dangerous than the dreams and visions that meant most to any in the waking world. No doubt the boy was mounting a formidable defence of his most precious memories and visions but he would relent eventually, the torture made it only a matter of time. Not all dreamers were equal, every night sleepers slipped into Nishkaan’s realm and returned with treasures like thieves laden with the plunder from a wrecked ship. As a prospective brother, Lothar knew that the boy’s mind would hold treasures far more valuable than the confession he intended to extract. This child would provide him with something more than the simple night terrors offered by his tattered orphans. He would just have to be patient. For now he would have to strip away the outer layers of the child’s mind. Lothar drunk in each fear calmly, separating them and drawing them into the crystals that were arrayed in front of him. There was no hurry, he had all the time he needed.

  Time stretched through the veil, dream time, almost meaningless. Akna felt he must have been trying to hold on for hours, centuries. He had blocked it all out, become impervious as they had taught him. Surely he could relax now? That was the first crack. And through that chink he saw that the pain had not changed, it was still waiting for him, still the same. Wave after wave of gnawing doubt, stretched on for an eternity, slowly gnawing at the fulcrum of his calm. For all the fears he lost, one clung to him stubbornly, it was with him, tearing at the crack in his mental defences, telling him the future in gloating whispers. It reminded him that he was no assassin, no priest or adept, simply a boy. It told him the unacceptable truth, that he was a useful pawn, used by his master and that he was about to pay the price for failure. Akna did not doubt that the cardinal was putting some of these thoughts in his mind, or at least encouraging them. Akna could not deny that they must be there to begin with. His loyalty, his pride seemed such small things compared to what was happening.

  “I know they will not have told you much worth knowing, boy, all I need from you is your mark, a confession and it will be over.”

  “I’m as good as dead if I give you that.”

  “You will be worse if you do not.”

  The heat had faded into the background, hidden behind the overbearing tide of pain but now the metal moved. Akna could feel the hairs on his thigh burning, his skin crisping. “Please!”

  “You will give me what I want?�
� Anka almost agreed and he felt something strange happen. It was as if the cardinal’s hand had just sunk into his wrist. As if the cardinal had just invaded his incorporeal body. That wasn’t possible, was it? He fought back and the pressure on his wrist became sharp, as if the young priest who held him in the dream was gaining purchase on his flesh with long claws.

  Despite the yammering of his instinct Akna opened his senses to examine the thing that held him in the dream. He quickly saw the truth, the young priest’s body, which the cardinal projected, was no more real than the flesh that had clothed the nightmares with which he had shared his bed. The cardinal’s soul, his true shape, was that of a monster and his thin claws were already plunged deep into Akna’s being. The spiritual pain redoubled as Akna realised what was happening. He felt those sharp, clever fingers inside him, working and tearing, sometimes brutal, sometimes with precision and caution like someone trying to tease open a suborn knot. There was no point offering up a confession the monster would not stop when he did.

  He is taking your essence as if you were some wretch in the Asylum, Akna’s instinct told him, and not just one vision or dream, he is tearing you up, taking away the things that are most sacred to you. Soon you will be nothing but a husk. Akna tried to forget the pain and put all of his strength into wrestling with the cardinal. It seemed impossible that he could prevail against something so old and evil. Yet he must. His desperation gave him strength. He had grown up, surrounded by those who had had their souls ministered to by the priests, he had seen how they were slowly drained.

  Most people would not miss one or two dreams and if they were taken from the higher levels of Nishkaan’s realm, the veil, the steps, even the outer darkness they were not essential to the person who had created them. Travel deeper however to the realms of the shadow heart, plunge into the consciousness of another being or worse enter the glimmering dark, where all consciousness converges and the damage of taking those dreams was terrible. As a child Akna had seen men, freed from crippling madness only to end up starving to death because there was not enough of them left to even seek food once their malady had been removed. It was one thing for madmen to be purged in this manner, the markets were full of their fantasies and terrors, but to take the essence of a whole man? That was something worse than death.