by Simon Kewin
“No,” said Menhroth. “They'll cling to the desperate belief your little mission here will succeed. That by some series of impossible miracles you'll retrieve this half of the Grimoire and carry it to Andar. So long as they think you're still alive, Hellen Meggenwar and the rest of them will do nothing, muttering ineffectual spells into the night. And while they're doing that we'll sweep across Andar and kill them before they realise what's happening.”
Menhroth's reply sent the tiniest thrill of hope through her. It appeared they didn't have the book from her world. Someone had carried it through the portal to Andar, or had avoided capture at least. “You won't win,” she said. The words sounded hollow even to her. “Someone will stop you. Sooner or later someone will stop you. All you can think about is death. You're sick, all of you. You're perverts. You're disgusting.”
The king held up a hand to stop her. He laughed, the sound golden and sweet. She wanted to ignore him, carry on shouting, but she could think of no more insults to fling.
“You talk of death,” said Menhroth, smiling down at her from his throne. “Shall I tell you the central truth of your existence? Shall I tell you the fact so huge and terrible that you aren't even consciously aware of it most of the time?”
She didn't want to play his game, but she had no answer for him. She shrugged, as if she didn't care what he had to say.
“It is simply this,” said Menhroth. “You are aware of your own mortality. You all are. You know you are going to die. Every moment of your life that terrible little thought is there, loud or quiet but never disappearing, always there to torture you. Always a clock ticks in your heads. It's quiet when you're young, perhaps, but slowly it gets louder. You are the ones obsessed with death, not us. We don't die. We don't die because we've already died.”
“And yet you've spent the last five hundred years trying to get your hands on the Grimoire. If you're so powerful why do you need it?”
The king nodded his head, as if she'd made an interesting point. “The unfinished ritual is an inconvenience, nothing more. Thanks to the generous supplies of Spirit from your world we thrive as we are. Our armies are unstoppable. But with the book and the blood, we will be ten times more powerful. Yes, we have hunted you and your ancestors all this time, sought that which was stolen from us. But you can see for yourself how well we have survived.” He waved a hand in the air to indicate the splendours of the palace.
Was that true? Her gran had explained how the ritual Ilminion performed on Menhroth remained unfinished in some way. How the undain were incomplete and, as a result, in need of vast supplies of Spirit to sustain them. Despite his words, it was clear Menhroth did desire the book. Desired it very much.
“But they didn't steal the book from you, did they?” she said. “They took it for safekeeping. To stop you from using it.”
“Is that how they tell the story? No. The truth is they stole Ilminion's book. Took what wasn't theirs and carried it across the bridge to Andar. And that wasn't all they stole.”
“What do you mean? What else was taken?”
“They kept that from you? Did you imagine your ancestor bravely fighting alongside the riders as they fled across the bridge? Because it wasn't like that at all. They took a baby girl, too. Weyerd, Ilminion's daughter, your ancestor. They ripped her from her home in Angere and carried her to Andar. Took her without her consent because they knew how important she'd be. But the blood calls, even all this time later. And here you are, Cait. The last of your line come back to Angere where you belong.”
“That isn't what's going on here.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes.”
He smiled his handsome smile. “If you say so. And tell me, what of Ran? You entered the city with only Nox. Did the brave rider die of his burns?”
Perhaps if they thought Ran was dead they wouldn't hunt for him. Nox would surely tell them the truth sooner or later, but perhaps she could buy Ran a little time.
“Yes. He brought us here with the last of his strength. He died where the wyrm road left us, on the banks of the An.”
“Ah. That explains it. It does seem people keep dying around you doesn't it? First your father and now your mother. Then the boy Lugg heads off alone into the mountains on a doomed mission to confront an insane dragon. Now Ran, too. Death stalks you, Cait Weerd. The blood of Ilminion is strong in you.”
So Nox had told Menhroth everything. Xoster, the Smouldering Fire, everything.
“My blood is my own,” she said. “It's just blood. I'm nothing like that necromancer. Nothing.”
“So you keep insisting. Well, it matters little. The ritual can be completed whatever objections you raise. A shame. You might have been as great as he was. I can see it in you. You could have become one of us.”
“I'd rather die.”
“Given what's going to happen that's just as well.”
In desperation, she wondered if she could send a message across the An, tell the witches she was imprisoned, tell them there was no hope. Then at least Hellen could destroy the half of the book they possessed, if indeed it had been returned to Andar. There'd been talk of the witches using the Grimoire, turning the necromancy against the undain. That clearly wasn't going to happen now. Destroying the book was all that was left to them.
“What will you do with me?” she asked. “How long do I have?”
“You've a while to live yet. Once we've reunited the Grimoire we can complete the Ritual of the Seven Ascensions. You can keep your blood until then. You can spend the intervening time in the dungeons. You should be pleased, we have very little need of the lower levels these days, and they are vast and impressive. There are vaults down there as great as this hall, all echoing and empty. You will have a palace in the dark all to yourself. Almost all to yourself, anyway.”
As much as she wanted to get away from Menhroth, the thought of being hurled into an underground dungeon seemed worse. She kept on talking. “And where is Nox in all this? What is his reward?”
“He is being allowed to live. His gift has bought him that much.”
“You do know what he did, don't you?” she said. “You do know he took the Andar half of the book from Genera and gave it to my mother. It's because of him you lost it.”
Menhroth regarded her. For a moment, a look flashing across his eyes, he was the ancient, malevolent monster she'd expected. Then his ready smile returned. “I know what Nox is, have no fear. I have always known. He can be trusted to do what is in his own interests, nothing less and nothing more.”
“So now he's one of you again?”
“He has earned our thanks. That is all. Whether he will ever become one of us is a matter of debate. We shall see in time. We'll think about it for a few decades. We have all the time we need, even if he does not.”
“He hates you. I saw it in him.”
“He is free to hate me. So long as he fears me more what does it matter? Now go. The guards will escort you to your subterranean palace. We will meet again, Cait Weerd. But only once more, at the end, when we are ready to complete the ritual.”
She wanted to object, scream, attack. But she couldn't. She was utterly powerless in the face of him. She stepped backward, some compulsion forcing her from his presence. There was nothing she could do. She strode the length of the hall, back to the doorway.
Back outside, in the dazzling brilliance of the White City, she stood blinded and blinking for a moment. The river was visible in the distance. They were higher up here, but there was still no sign of a far shore. The water stretched forever. In the distance, downstream to the south, she could see the woods they'd hidden within. A short way north, jutting into the water, the ruins of an ancient bridge. Perhaps the old stories were true after all.
More guards came for her as she stood dazzled in the bright light. She could do nothing but follow them.
They led her down a long flight of steps, undain slaves scrubbing and cleaning them part-way down. They passed a tall gate, t
hrough which she glimpsed an archway standing alone in the middle of a wide square. This one was no ruin. Something large was coming through it. A container. A container of bones from back home. Here was the other end of the portal she had seen from the refinery.
They hurried on, crossing a circular space toward a domed building that housed a flight of steps leading into the ground. The smell of mildew and age breathing up at her almost made her faint. The riders led her down, the glow from their bodies illuminating the way. The stairs wound so that the sky was soon lost to sight. Down they descended, hundreds and hundreds of steps. They had to be at the river level, perhaps even lower. The air felt damp on her face. Still they descended, until finally reaching an iron gate, ornately decorated with flying dragons. It squealed as they pushed it open, as if angry at being interrupted from its long slumber.
They pushed her inside. Another squeal was followed by a metallic scraping as locks turned. Then, saying nothing, the glowing dragonriders climbed the stairs, leaving her to the darkness.
Fingers of cold seemed to envelop her. Water dripped from the roof with hard tap sounds. She shuffled forward in the darkness, arms outstretched in case she hit a wall. She tripped on something on the floor, and fell to the damp ground. She reached out, horrified at what she might find. It was only a slimy cone of rock. Was that a stalagmite or a stalactite? She hadn't paid enough attention in school to know. She regretted it, although it made no difference now.
She tried to work a werelight but none would come. She was too weak, too lost. She lifted the seeing stone to her eye, glad of its presence, its simple weight in her hand. But even that was no help. It was just a stone, and the darkness remained absolute. She suddenly didn't remember where the gate was that she'd come through. She shuffled forward again in a random direction, feeling with her feet as well as her hands. Eventually she found a wall, slick with water or slime.
She sat with her back against it, put her head in her hands, and lost herself to misery and self-pity.
Some time later, shuffling sounds from nearby made her heart leap. What had Menhroth said? Almost all to yourself. There was something in the dungeon with her. In her mind's eye she was surrounded by ancient horrors left to rot down there for centuries, reaching for her with clammy fingers. The sound came closer, hesitant, feeling its way toward her.
In her panic, she found the strength to work a light. It flared in front of her eyes, blinding her momentarily. She sent it toward the rustling, shuffling thing.
It wasn't a thing, wasn't an undain. It was a filthy, ragged, blinking human crouching on the ground. It cowered from the light, but she saw immediately who it was. Her heart rang like a bell.
“Danny?”
20. The Destruction of Andar
Andar
They made good progress down the An, Smoke on the Water finding fast currents on the great river, picking its way among them like a weaver working a loom. At times they strayed so far out into the sparkling waters that Ashen lost sight of the bank completely. The first time in his life he'd truly left the soil of Andar behind. Terror filled him each time. He didn't need to be as powerful as his mother to sense the voracious minds of the river serpents, bellowing and clashing in the deeps of the An.
On more than one occasion the waters swirled and boiled as one neared the surface. Once he caught a flash of grey flesh as one of the creatures surfaced. Smoke on the Water turned and sped for the safety of the shallows before a tentacle could reach out for them.
Over the days Ashen grew to trust the ancient mancer whose spirit inhabited the miraculous boat. On the first night of their journey, sweeping down the wide waters, Ashen had lain awake, heart hammering at each new splash and call in the darkness. In his imagination, the undain were out there as well as the serpents, threatening to loom out of the darkness at any moment. But the following morning had dawned bright and clear, and they'd survived unscathed.
By the next night, unable to keep his weary eyes open, he'd slept. The boat, however, never slumbered. The mind controlling it had been human once, but now it was something else. The craft's timbers were oak, hard as iron, and something of that indomitability had taken root in the mancer's mind. A refusal to break or yield. Smoke on the Water ploughed onward, day and night, cutting through the waters with rushing speed.
After six days of relentless southward travel they reached the mouth of the Meander. Turning east to run upstream, their progress slowed, the tributary moving with a wide, steady flow against Smoke on the Water's bows, splashing repeatedly over the golden figurehead. The boat rocked and bucked like a horse as they cut through the currents.
Wide grassy plains lay on both banks, clumped here and there with copses of ancient wood. Good land, it looked, land to grow wheat and apples, graze cattle and sheep. Farms and homesteads ran along the banks, horses and oxen working the fields, harvesting this year's crop or ploughing in readiness for the next. The tang of roasting hops mingled with the sweeter scent of wood smoke in the air. Sometimes laughing children raced him, waving and calling. They were a glad sight. It was hard to believe that they, that all of this, could ever be destroyed. Hard to believe that any shadow threatened these fertile, sunny lands. But the darkness gathering in the west was already moving, and time was running out.
In the distance the mounds and peaks of the Azend mountains picked themselves off the eastern horizon and sidled closer. Ashen had a telescope of brass and glass with him, one of those used to observe the snowlines on the northern mountains to predict the coming winter. He scanned the land ahead, searching for a hill with a stone keep on its top.
The sight of the peaks made him think of his father. He had no memory of the dragonrider Borrn, although his mother had told him he'd lived with them for the entire first year of Ashen's life, away from Islagray in his mother's home village. Then his rider duties had taken him into the wilds and the mountains, to the far north, and they never heard of him again. More than once over the years Ashen had cast the incantations to seek for Borrn through the aether, but there was never anything. His father was long dead.
The thought left Ashen strangely untroubled. He should have felt worse than he did. But Borrn was just a name; a person he had no recollection of. The most he knew of his father was the far-away look in his mother's eyes whenever the subject was raised. A look that spoke of love and loss. He often wondered what kind of man his father had been, to capture the heart of Hellen Meggenwar.
But his mother, now, there was no doubt she was still full of life. Still running everyone's lives, still squabbling with his beloved aunty Ariane. Still plotting and planning, and sharing as little as she could get away with. He regretted staying away so long, now. He remembered the day he'd told her of his plans to travel north to Guilden and seek apprenticeship with the mancers. He'd expected her scowl, the raise of an eyebrow that was all she had to do to make her displeasure ice-clear.
There were warlocks on Islagray and he had some talent for the craft. He could have stayed and learned the old ways. But instead of arguing with him she'd nodded, accepting his decision, then held him close and told him to make sure he came back to visit, or else she'd unleash some terrible plague on him. When she let him go there were tears in her eyes, the only time he'd ever seen his mother cry.
He'd never been able to work out how she became the Hellen that most people saw. The Hellen that wasn't his mother, the Hellen that arranged everything and everyone around her to suit her plans. The Hellen that led. There was some trick to it he didn't possess. His mother had only to utter a few suggestions and people simply carried them out. She never ordered anyone to do anything, but they always obeyed.
There were many sorts of magic in the world. Islagray was the beating heart of Andar and his mother, he often thought, was the spirit of Islagray. The witches and the mancers had their differences over the rights and wrongs of spellmaking. There were plenty in the north who dismissed the witches of Islagray as doddering old midwives, lost in their ancient sup
erstitions. But Ashen knew the truth of it. When it came to it, Andar depended on Islagray. On the Song.
On his mother.
He only hoped he could play his part in the defence of the land and the people he loved. He wasn't his mother, the eldest of Islagray, and he wasn't his father, a dragonrider of Angere. He wasn't anything much. An apprentice mancer. An acolyte struggling to twist his tongue around the simplest spells. But he would do what he could. This message for the girl from the other world was a start. A vital task. But there would be more to do before the end. Much more.
Slowly, the land on the banks of the Meander rose into rougher scrub, uncultivated, cropped by flocks of shaggy brown-black creatures that were either sheep or goats. Buildings became scarcer and he stopped seeing people. He wished he'd stopped and asked some of those laughing children if they knew of the Blind Mapmaker. But the boat had swept onward, meeting the oncoming waters with an outpouring of determined, magical strength that Ashen didn't dare interrupt.
The light was fading from the world, darkness seeming to roll down from the slopes of the mountains, when he glimpsed the keep in the distance, appearing around a bend in the stream. It was a simple stone tower, three or four floors high, atop a perfectly round hill. Ashen, closing his eyes, clutching the gems around his neck in which he'd stored a few shreds of magical strength, murmured the spell of a seeking incantation. He reached into the darkness toward the keep, searching for a presence.
It took time, and in the end the echo was faint, as if the man were close to death. But he was there: a solitary mind within the walls.
Smoke on the Water saw the keep or sensed the presence, too. Without a word from Ashen it heeled to starboard and headed for the bank. It beached itself on a tiny shingle cove to let Ashen off. Even as he stepped ashore, the solid ground feeling strangely fluid beneath his feet, the boat's eyes shut as if the mancer, finally, was allowing himself to rest. Clutching a flaming torch to light his way, Ashen scrambled up the muddy bank and climbed to the keep.