by Darius Hinks
The door to the laboratories was a circle of polished basalt, built in the shape of the black Athanorian sun, surrounded by a vast mosaic depicting circles of fire stretching out into the heavens. At the centre of the door was single hole and, as he reached it, Alzen opened the lock with a key and pushed the door open.
The chamber beyond was crowded with the Old King’s attendants and they bowed as Alzen entered, but there was no sign of Seleucus himself. Alzen rushed through more rooms, ignoring the greetings of his laborators, until he found Seleucus.
The Old King was waiting for him in the large, rectangular room where Alzen did most of his work. The gleaming colossus was looming over a crowd of anxious-looking laborators who were struggling to answer his questions. The room was filled with stone tables, on which dozens of corpses were lying in various states of dismemberment and decay. The chamber was lit by a single mandrel-fire, a ball of light encased in a glass dome in the centre of the ceiling, burning so bright that the room had a slightly surreal, dreamlike quality. Every surface in the chamber was clad in white polished marble and the mouldering, bruise-dark flesh of the cadavers was shocking against the flawless sheen. The walls were lined with shelves holding plump, globular bottles, filled with powders and tinctures. At the far end of the room there was an ancient-looking brazier, ten feet in diameter, wrought of rusting iron and filled with gently smouldering coals.
Seleucus was dressed as he had been when Alzen last saw him – wearing the same elaborately embellished gold armour and carrying his tall, bronze staff. He looked up as Alzen entered and the harsh light revealed the strangeness of his face. As Alzen had guessed in the Giberim Temple, Seleucus’s face was now made entirely of golden filigree – a beautiful, inert mesh locked in a regal scowl. Looming behind him, almost as tall as the giant regent, was his lion, Mapourak.
“Phrater Alzen,” said Seleucus. Despite the cold rigidity of his face, his voice was deep, mellifluous and full of warmth.
Alzen crossed the room and halted a few feet from the Old King with a deep bow. “Your Majesty.”
“Call me Seleucus, for goodness’ sake,” laughed the Old King. “Surely down here I can be a simple phrater again? A man can only bear so much pomp.”
Alzen laughed. “Attending functions and diplomatic dinners is not all that you hoped for?”
“Alzen, you don’t know the half of it. If I so much as break wind there has to be twelve formal dinners and a royal portrait to celebrate the occasion.”
Alzen smiled, but there was something peculiar about hearing jokes spilling from such an inhuman mask.
Seleucus looked around at the corpses and bottles. “Whereas you have been working in uninterrupted peace. All I hear is how much progress you’re making, Alzen, but you never come to discuss it with me.”
“I would not presume to bore you with my minor successes.”
“Spare me the false modesty, Alzen, we know each other too well. I’ve heard that you are performing acts of transfiguration that no one has seen since…” He laughed. “Well, that no one has seen before at all.”
“You are too kind.”
As the king spoke, his words had filled the air with tendrils of heavy, slow-moving smoke and Alzen was conscious of them circling above his head, watching him. However innocent the conversation sounded, Alzen knew what it really was: a series of carefully placed traps. He was being baited and studied. There was no way Seleucus could have guessed he was behind the murders, but he would be wary of him all the same. There was never an Old King who enjoyed hearing his subjects sing the praises of another phrater. It delighted Alzen to think how jealous and frustrated Seleucus must be every time he heard how Phrater Alzen was becoming the greatest ever practitioner of the Art.
“And your techniques revolve around the study of the dead?” asked Seleucus.
Another barbed snare. Necromancy was utterly forbidden.
“The study of anatomy, Your Majesty. The spirit leaves its mark upon the flesh. By examining the mechanisms of material life, I learn more about the Sacred Light.” He shrugged. “But, to be honest, I have learned more in the slums than I have in our temples.”
“Ah, yes, of course.” Seleucus nodded and began strolling around the corpses, with his lion padding after him. “I have heard much of your work with the depraved and the vulgar.” He paused, near to Alzen, enveloping him in questing strands of smoke. “Our brethren tell me that this is the cause of your success – your humility.”
Alzen shrugged, blinking as the fumes caressed his face. “I do what I do because it feels right. It feels right to ease the suffering of those poor souls as they pass from one realm to the next. But, I have to admit, every one of my breakthroughs follows an expedition into the city.”
Seleucus leant over one of the corpses. It was an inkworm, one of the creatures that lived in the silt of the river – a giant, rotting cephalopod, larger than a man, with one long tentacle and a bloated sac for a head.
“Strangely human faces, the bezerin,” said Seleucus, running a finger across the worm’s face. The creature had black, oily skin and, as the Old King said, its eyes and mouth had an oddly human aspect.
“Some of the salvage crews have learned to speak with them,” said Alzen. “They feed them fish in return for directions to metal deposits. Apparently, they are quite sociable animals. They prefer to live near the slums and boats than in the deeps of the river.” He grimaced. “Their young play with the vulgar children.”
Seleucus nodded. Then fell quiet, stroking the creature’s face as though he were petting a living animal, ignoring the black blood that oozed from its wounds.
“We live in strange times,” he said after a while, still looking at the corpse.
“Majesty?”
“For all these centuries we have kept the secrets of the Art to ourselves. The city has grown more wonderful and complex, but never before has someone outside of the fraternity harnessed our power.”
Alzen tried to keep his tone relaxed and cheerful. “Ah, yes. I see. Yes, it’s a troubling situation. I have only just returned from the slums, but Phrater Ostan informed me of the deaths in Gamala. Something needs to be done.” Alzen’s face was completely shrouded in fumes, but he gave no sign that they were bothering him. “Have your interviews with the other phraters shed any light on the problem?”
“Not yet.” Seleucus stared at him. He was now so close that Alzen realized he had made a mistake. Not all of the old Seleucus had vanished. His human eyes still stared out from behind the mask, clear, blue and intense, peering at Alzen’s face.
“Gamala is full of laborators,” said Alzen, waving at the servants that surrounded them, their yellow-painted faces hidden in their deep hoods. “Could it be that a low-born has somehow found a way to mimic our techniques?”
“No.” Seleucus shook his head. “Impossible. Only someone of noble blood could even attempt the rudiments of the Art. It has to be a member of our fraternity.”
Alzen nodded. He knew that as well as Seleucus but felt the need to pretend he was at least thinking about the problem.
“I’m wasting your time,” said the Old King, suddenly sounding cheerful again. He backed away from Alzen and the strands of smoke dissipated. “You know I would never suspect you, old friend. I came here mainly because you have been avoiding me since the coronation.” He turned away and stroked Mapourak. “I wanted to check there were no hard feelings.”
“Hard feelings?”
“It could easily have been you who was given this crown, Alzen. We both know it. The vote was very close.”
Alzen felt a rush of anger as he recalled the day of the conclave. It took an immense effort for him to keep his reply cheerful. “I had a lucky escape. I doubt I would have progressed this far if I had to spend my time attending formal dinners and celebrating my bowel movements.”
Seleucus did not laugh and he kept his back to Alzen. “Your progress is impressive, Alzen. Many of the other
phraters are trying to imitate your success, visiting the poorest areas of the city and tending to the sick, hoping that such virtuous deeds will elevate their souls to the level of yours.”
Alzen had to stifle a laugh at the thought of his poor, misguided brethren, nursing plague-rotten idiots and thinking it was the key to mastering the Art. “That makes me happy,” he replied.
The Old King turned to face him and, as the mandrel-fire flashed over his mask, Alzen caught a glimpse of something unexpected in Seleucus’s eyes. It seemed, for a moment, that the Old King was amused by him – laughing at him. Then it was gone and he looked as stern and regal as before.
“I won’t waste any more of your time, Alzen,” he said. “Continue with your work. I will let you know when I have news on these strange occurrences.”
With that, he nodded and headed for the door.
Alzen was thrown by the Old King’s sudden departure. He had expected a long interview, and questions about his techniques, but the meeting had actually felt like a formality.
“Your Majesty,” he said, sounding a little confused.
As Seleucus neared the door, Alzen’s housekeeper entered, looking flustered and leading a phalanx of servants, all carrying trays laden with food and drink.
They had to scatter as the Old King and his attendants stormed out of the room.
“Too late,” snapped Alzen, taking a bottle of wine and a glass and sending his servants away again. Then he ordered everyone else to leave the room and headed over to the crucible. He stared into its embers, sipping his wine, considering everything that had happened over the last few days: the death in the warehouse, the treachery of Sayal and the Aroc Brothers, his luck in finding Isten and his conversation with Seleucus. As heat rippled through the embers he pictured Isten’s face again. It merged and flowed, shimmering in the smoke. That morning, before he headed out to the slums, he had stood at this crucible and performed an act of transfiguration beyond anything he had achieved before. With just a few ingredients he had summoned the cadaver Seleucus had just been stroking. What had she done to him? With a few words and tinctures he had dragged the dead creature from its murky grave and landed it here in his laboratory. Never, in all his years of study, had power come so easily to him. He felt closer than ever before to mastery of the Great Work. Soon, he would achieve something his brothers had not even dreamt was possible: the ability to wield power using only his mind. But why had his research leapt forwards at such speed? He pictured Isten in the embers again. His progress was linked to her somehow, he was sure of it. When he channelled his power through her body, his understanding tripled. He held his hand over the embers, feeling the heat, remembering how it felt to be in her mind.
He felt his thoughts slipping away again. Something about that scrawny, vulgar woman was confusing him. He considered the facts. The first breakthrough had been using human souls as his base material. By being present at the moment of death he could use Coagulus to capture souls and harness their potency. The next step had been realizing that it was not enough to wait for the occasional windfall – he needed to kill those who were not going to die of their own accord. Now, there was another revelation. By channelling his power through Isten, he had seen facets that had previously eluded him. She acted as a catalyst.
As he turned to go, he hesitated. From another angle, the embers looked more like Seleucus’s face than Isten’s. The Old King looked up at him with the same peculiar, mocking expression Alzen noticed when Seleucus was about to leave. The face was only in Alzen’s imagination but, as he left the laboratory, it stayed with him, making him feel inexplicably troubled.
16
As the city grew, demons came to feed, boiling in the wake of the riverboats, invading Athanor’s sewers like the serpent of sin, rising into agonized throats to become tongues, eager to announce their rule. But when the clouds broke they screamed, outraged and confused, confronted by an Eden with no God.
She waited for them by the front doors of the Alembeck Temple. It was dusk, and the crowds were thinning out, leaving the narrow, sheer-sided street to the rats and the shadows. The temple doors had been boarded up for decades and the warped frame was ripe with the smell of urine, but Isten stood proudly on the top step, arms folded, legs apart, as the Exiles trudged towards her through the dusty gloom. Gombus was there, she saw with relief, the gaunt mahogany of his face reminding her of another world. With his high, sharp cheekbones and long, hooked nose, he was the epitome of a Rukoner but he was horribly wasted. His shoulders knifed up through his robes like shards of wood and he was leaning on Puthnok for support. The darkness turned Puthnok’s spectacles into black, featureless circles, but Isten could imagine her solemn, humourless eyes staring through the lenses at her, cold and disapproving. Lorinc was there too, loitering at the rear of the group next to Colcrow and his crowd of golden-haired teenagers. Her surprise grew as more Exiles gathered at the foot of the steps, faces she hadn’t seen for years in some cases, looking up at her with a mixture of suspicion and fascination. Now that she had a steady supply of cinnabar from Alzen, Isten was wonderfully calm and clear-sighted. The shadows were rolling and tumbling around her countrymen, but she had the delirium under control. She held up a bottle of wine and smiled.
“My name is Donkey,” she said, taking a swig. “And I can do this.”
She walked down the steps and handed the bottle over and the Exiles passed it round, enacting a ritual none of them knew the origins of.
A few passers-by stopped to gawp at the strange scene so Isten went back up the steps and waved for the others to follow.
They looked puzzled as she approached the huge, rotten doors of the temple. The route up onto the roof was round the back of the building.
Isten shoved the doors. They fell open, revealing a candlelit interior none of them had ever seen before. Isten waved again and stepped inside.
The Exiles hesitated at the threshold as they saw rows of men waiting in the antechamber – large, bare-chested warriors with fierce, scarified faces. They were heavily muscled and carrying brutal, two-handed axes. The warriors’ bodies were deformed by what looked like huge tumours or growths. It was only upon closer inspection that the lumps were recognizable as shrivelled, smoked human heads, sewn into the warriors’ flesh as grisly battle trophies. The shrunken heads had stitched-up eyes, but it was still possible to see the agony of their final moments, their disembodied faces howling, silently, from the warriors’ chests and arms.
They saluted Isten as she passed them, causing the grimacing heads to stretch and thud together. Isten had used some of Alzen’s money to hire herself an honour guard.
“What is this, Isten?” asked Gombus, freeing himself of Puthnok’s grip and approaching her, staring at the hulking warriors in shock.
She was pleased to see that he was as intrigued as everyone else. Finally, there was something other than disappointment in his eyes.
“Headhunters,” she replied. “Newly arrived in Athanor and seeking someone to serve.”
She nodded to one of the headhunters and he closed the door, then she raised her voice, talking to the whole gathering.
“You told me years ago, Gombus, that I would one day lead us to victory. You pointed out the birthmark on my arm and told me what it signified: the fox of the Rukon – the symbol that would prove I was my mother’s daughter; the symbol of hope that would be a rallying cry to every oppressed soul in the homeland I can barely remember. You said that, one day, I would be the one to stop the executions. To give our people the chance to live in peace. I was only a child, but even then I understood the burden you were putting on me – the importance of it.” For the first time in her life, Isten heard power in her voice – not the power of Alzen, but the power of conviction; the strength of will. She could hear faith in her voice. It was the voice she heard in her dreams. The voice of her mother.
The Exiles were staring at her in shocked silence, waiting to hear what she said next. �
�It terrified me,” she said, staring at Gombus. “I had no idea what to do. How could I carry that kind of weight? I had no idea how to be who you thought I was. I have struggled…” Her voice faltered and Gombus shook his head, about to speak. She held up a warning hand, glad to finally share a pain she had hidden for so many years. “It is not your fault, but I did things I am ashamed of. And then, when I could take it no more, I did something so awful I had to leave.” She rolled up her left sleeve and revealed her upper arm. Where there should have been a birthmark, there was an ugly mass of scar tissue.
The Exiles finally found their voices, gasping and cursing and looking at each other in shock.
“Isten!” cried Puthnok, her voice shrill with anger.
Gombus was shaking his head still and his face looked grey, but he said nothing.
“How could I atone for this?” asked Isten, raising her voice over the din and gripping her mutilated arm. “I was so angry. So scared and confused. So stupid that I tried to cut my past from my skin. How could I come back to you after that?”
She looked up, tears in her eyes, wondering what they would do, now that she had finally revealed the betrayal.
Even now, they stayed quiet, waiting to hear what came next.
She wiped away her tears. “But the Sisters of Solace nursed my wounds. They mended my soul. And in their beauty, I saw that there is always hope. If they could believe in me, perhaps I could believe in myself. But they did more than nurse my spirit. They put me in touch with new contacts, new sources of information.” She gave Colcrow a pointed look. “Reliable information.”
She gave the headhunters a nod and they lit more torches, lighting up the nave and revealing a crate at the far end.