by Ben Galley
Vice sneered at the ragged little man at his feet. ‘Stand up,’ he ordered, and reluctantly Haruld did so, under the watchful eyes of the surrounding men. ‘Where are you friends?’ asked the Arkmage.
Haruld shrugged. ‘What friends?’ he said, knowing instantly he had got the question wrong. Vice’s fist caught him on the chin and he saw stars whirl behind his eyes. Haruld staggered backwards against the wall.
‘I will ask again,’ said Vice, slower this time, as if he were speaking to a half-deaf moron. ‘Do you think me to be stupid?’ he asked, and Haruld shook his head emphatically. ‘Do you think I am blind?’ Once again Haruld shook his head. ‘Then why do you pretend as though I am both?’ he said in a cold growl. Haruld gulped down the stone-like lump of fear in his throat. Vice leant closer, placing his hand around the poor man’s neck and hissing in his ear. ‘Do you not think I hear your whispers? Do you think I can’t see you scurrying about, plotting your little war on me?’ Haruld uttered something that might have been a gargled no. ‘When do they attack? Tell me now and I might spare you.’
Haruld shook his head once more. Vice tightened his grip and Haruld squeaked like a trampled bagpipe. ‘In three days, at dawn,’ he managed.
Vice smirked as if he had known all along. ‘And where are your friends?’ asked the Arkmage.
Haruld tried to swallow. ‘Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell you, erg!’ he choked.
‘Sire…’ interrupted the blonde mage standing nearby. But once more, Vice held up his spare hand and silenced him. He didn’t take his eyes off Haruld for a moment. They bored into him like a hot poker.
‘And where is the vampyre?’ Vice asked. ‘I know he’s here. I know your hiding him.’ Haruld squinted, confused and slowly turning a shade of purple.
‘Vampyre?’ he gasped.
‘Tell me where he is!’ yelled Vice, spit flying from his mouth.
‘Never…’ whispered Haruld with his last breath. Haruld had heard the rumours of a vampyre in Krauslung, but he was as clueless as Vice was to its whereabouts. Whether his last word had been accidental, or some final conscious and glorious effort to taunt the Arkmage, one thing was true; it was not at all what Vice wanted to hear.
Enraged, the Arkmage squeezed the man’s neck until it snapped and then slammed his skull against the brick wall with a loud crack. Haruld’s dead body painted a dark stripe of blood down the wall as it slowly slid down to the cobbles. Nearby, Modren shook his head. ‘We could have used him,’ he began, but Vice whirled around and flashed the captain a murderous look. He took a step towards him. His voice was low and dangerous.
‘Dare to correct me again, mage, and I will tear your head off and throw it in the sea! If I were you I’d spend some time digging out those balls you’re hiding so deep inside you, and for once be the Captain I made you. You’re a spineless worm, Modren,’ he growled, curling his lip contemptuously.
Modren said nothing. He simply held his Arkmage’s gaze for as long as he dared before turning away. While Vice dished out his orders to the other mages, and while they sniggered behind their hands, Modren slunk away into the shadows. He clenched his fists as tight as he could, feeling utterly indignant and furiously bitter. To make things worse, Agfrey was there, leaning against a nearby wall. She smirked and nudged him as he passed. ‘I always knew you were a coward,’ she whispered. Modren bared his teeth and brought his face uncomfortably close to hers.
‘Say that again and you’ll find my fist scraping against the inside of your skull!’ he hissed. ‘You’d better watch your back, bitch, you and the rest of your army.’
Unable to think of a suitable retort, Agfrey just snorted and looked away, fingers lingering on the hilt of her sword. Modren spat at her feet and disappeared into the shadows. Her lip sneered in disgust. Deny it as she might, Modren’s words had rattled her slightly. Coward, she thought to herself, shivering. The Skölgard general combed a stray bit of hair behind her ear with a grimy finger, cleared her throat, and turned her attention back to Vice. He was speaking quietly to the others.
‘Comb the streets for this bastard’s mutinous friends. If anyone puts up a fight then clap them in irons and make an example of them. Do whatever you need to. I want every house overturned, every drain and sewer searched for any signs of a rebellion. If you find the vampyre then summon me immediately. Do you understand?’ he ordered. ‘I want this city on its knees.’ The soldiers nodded eagerly. The mages rubbed their hands together. Voices murmured in accord. There would be blood on the streets of Krauslung tonight. Vice couldn’t have cared less.
The Arkmage spun sharply on his heel and left. Alone and pensive, Vice strode through the misty and deserted thoroughfares of the forsaken city, a dark mood gathering over his head like a personal storm cloud. His earlier mood had been soiled. For Vice there was only one chink in his armour, one miniscule gap in his entire plan, and that was the vampyre; the long-lost vampyre that Vice had buried the memory of deep, deep inside himself and had kept locked up for the last four hundred years. It had been wrapped in iron and thrown in the sea. Forgotten. Entombed. Now it had been exhumed and the smell of it made Vice sick. Fear was not something he was accustomed to.
In the pocket of his cloak his hand rubbed against a sharp shard of blood-stained stone, glowing steadily and stubbornly inside his pocket. Three days, he said to himself. Three days and it would all be his.
Instead of heading towards the Arkathedral, Vice took a quick detour and headed south towards the docks. There was someone there who would have the answers he wanted. He cursed himself for not thinking of her sooner. As he walked, his skin began to shiver and shake and warp. A beard sprouted from his chin. His jowls sagged with age. His gait shifted to that of an older man with a slight limp, and his hair grew longer and greyer with every hobbling step he took down the sloping streets.
On reaching the docks, the Arkmage wasted no time in seeking her out. He limped fearlessly across the boardwalks and the rime-stained cobbles and sniffed the salty air as he went, hidden under his new, or rather, old face. The old merry air of the docks had vanished a long time ago. Now hovels and wooden boxes stuffed with straw littered the boardwalk, packed with shivering people and bags of homeless things. Small groups of people ambled along the waterfront or hovered in doorways, smoking pipes, eying the old limping stranger that wandered past. They whispered wide-eyed about the echoing shouts and noises that had begun to fill the cold city air. Muted and muffled music leaked from a dozen gloomy taverns along the way. Coughing and murmuring filled the silences in between. Somewhere in the night a seagull mewed. Waves slapped the wooden struts of the piers and walkways. Skeletal ships loomed out of the mist. Hunkered on the far side of the harbour, deep in the wispy darkness, huge shapes hovered on the waves and waited to be used. Soon enough, he thought.
Vice kept walking until he saw a tavern on his left, a filthy little hole with a lop-sided sign that said The Bilge Swindler. Avoiding a patrol of soldiers, he ducked under the low door and headed towards the back of the inn, where he knew she would be. The air was clammy and thick inside the tavern. A few patrons were scattered about the place, sipping dolefully on tankards.
He found her ensconced in a smoke-filled corner, sitting comfortably in an armchair, one hand resting on an empty bottle. Three stones sat on the table in front of her, one red, one black, and the other a milky white colour, like a sightless eyeball. She sneered. ‘Knew ye’d come eventually,’ she croaked.
‘I would be suspicious if you hadn’t,’ whispered the Arkmage as he found a stool. She looked older than he remembered. It had only been several months. She noticed his look and waggled a long finger nail in his face. ‘An’ ye can stop starin’ at me,’ she hissed. ‘At least my face is real.’
Vice swiped her hand away and shuffled his stool closer. ‘Be careful who you’re speaking to, wench,’ he warned.
The seer sniffed. ‘Three days, then, and then it’ll all be over, eh’ she whispered, a knowing look in her beady crow-l
ike eyes. Vice eyed the seerstones in front of him on the table and hummed.
‘It is only the beginning.’
The woman cackled with delight, halting only when a cough caught in her throat. She banged her hand on the table, making the stones jump and then thumped her chest. ‘Gah,’ she wheezed, ‘this Long Winter has to stop Vice. It’s killin’ me.’
‘Enough talk. Cast your stones, Lilith, and you can drop that old crone act while you’re at it. I know you better than that. Now, where is Ruin? Where is he?’ There was a serious look in the Arkmage’s face that the seer knew not to trifle with, and so with a sigh she cupped her stones in her hand, closed her eyes, and then cast them back onto the battered table. She squinted at them and murmured to herself while Vice waited patiently. It had never been his virtue.
‘Hmm,’ Lilith said, poking a stone. ‘Your vampyre is not in Krauslung, Vice, that much is true. He’s elsewhere, and the stones don’t say much more than that.’ She cackled suddenly. ‘He lied to me then; he said he was staying.’
Vice leant forward, causing her to lean back. ‘He came and spoke to you?’
‘He did,’ she answered, knowing to tell the truth.
‘And what did he ask you?’
The seer bit her dry lip, and then winked. ‘He asked after you, an’ if he was truly who you think he is. Or was.’
Vice drummed his fingernails on the tabletop in an effort to stay calm. ‘And what did you tell him?’
This time it was the seer’s turn to lean forward, and she brought her leathery face very close to Vice’s, and stared deep into his hazel eyes. ‘I told him he already knew the truth. No point castin’ stones on the obvious, I said, don’t need a seer for that,’ she grinned, baring rows of rotten teeth.
Vice wrinkled his lip and sat back. ‘Would he join me?’
Lilith moved her stones around, flicking them this way and that with her nails. She shook her head. ‘No. He is no longer his father’s son, nor his brother’s brother.’
Vice nodded and glared at the seerstones.
‘Go on,’ she said, knowing there was more to ask.
‘Could he defeat me then, if it came to that?’ asked the Arkmage.
Lilith sniffed and poked around in her nose for a moment. With her thumb, she turned the red stone over and shivered. ‘As a vampyre, no. Not with your brother’s blood in you,’ she confessed. ‘However as his former self…’
But Vice held up a hand. ‘That’s impossible. The curses are irreversible, unbreakable. The triad is ancient lore.’ Vice crunched his knuckles together.
‘So you say,’ nodded the seer, pursing her lips.
‘As a vampyre…’ he whispered to himself.
‘Then what are you worried about?’ she asked.
Vice stared at the stones for what felt like a long time, until finally a glimmer of relief flashed over his angular features. His hunched shoulders seemed to relax. ‘Nothing,’ he said, with the faintest of sneers. The seer watched him closely, nodding.
‘And that’s what you came to hear wasn’t it?’ she asked, already knowing the answer. Vice didn’t reply. Instead he reached into his pocket and brought forth the little glass vial. Lilith’s eyes widened and she bit her lip again, almost drawing blood. Vice held the vial between finger and thumb and turned it from side to side, watching the dark blood rock back and forth.
‘It is almost Cheska’s time,’ he said, ‘and as you know, that child is of the utmost importance to me, to us, and therefore I will not risk even a hair of its head. The mother I care less for. She is a distraction.’ Vice tapped the little vial on the table. Nudging the seerstones aside, he slid it slowly across the wood towards Lilith. The old woman grabbed at it greedily, but Vice held it firmly in his grasp.
He continued. ‘When I have crushed this city under my boot, the child will go with you, wherever you see fit to take it, and stay hidden until I call for you. It will suckle on your foul breasts as if it were your own child, and you will teach it exactly who and what it is, fill it with lies and anger and the old stories, teach it the dark magicks, and when the time comes you will bring it to me, and together we shall bring down the sky. There is nothing that can stand in my way now,’ spoke Vice, his voice a low and dangerous rumble. The flames of the nearby candles bent low and cowered, throwing shadows across their table. The air grew chill and bitter. Shadows quivered around them.
‘And my reward?’
Vice looked at the vial. ‘As we discussed. A lifetime supply, so long as the child is alive.’
Lilith’s eyes twitched back and forth between the vial and the Arkmage.
‘Do you understand me, seer?’ he asked.
‘I do,’ she said, without hesitation. Vice released the vial and she snatched it away, grinning with delight and clutching it to her chest. ‘Then it is done,’ said the Arkmage, getting to his feet. ‘Come to the Arkathedral tomorrow, and wait there until the time comes.’
Lilith wasn’t listening any more. She had heard him, but she wasn’t listening. Vice pulled his cloak about him and stood up. There was nothing more to say. He had found his answers to his questions. Whether they had been the right questions, however, only Lilith knew.
The seer waited until Vice had left and then she did the same, hobbling out of the Bilge Swindler as fast as her arthritic legs would carry her, pausing only to swipe a half-full bottle of wine from a passing table. Outside on the boardwalk she looked around furtively and sniffed the air like a rodent before heading in the opposite direction from Vice.
In a gloomy gap between two lopsided buildings, she found her hiding place. Lilith pushed herself as far into the gap as she could manage and then hunkered down. Confident she was hidden, she took a few deep breaths and then uncorked the bottle of wine with her rotten teeth. She spat the cork to the side and put the bottle to her lips. The wine was strong and stale, and she could feel it burning her throat as she gulped it down. It dribbled down her chin and neck and stained her craggy skin an inky purple. When it was emptied, she smashed it against the wall, and then put a hand to her right shoulder, to the stump of her missing arm, and prodded it contemptuously. It was hard to make out in the darkness but she might have grinned then, and bared those rotten teeth of hers for one last time. Lilith held her little treasure, her little glass vial, to her nose and sniffed it, smelling the coppery sweetness of the blood inside. Then, without a further moment of hesitation, she threw her head back and opened her mouth, and let the daemon blood trickle down her throat. She shook out every last little drop and let her tongue swish the dregs around her mouth. But she knew better than to relax, to sigh and smile, no, there was none of that, for suddenly the sting of the stale wine was replaced with something much, much more painful.
For once, and this came as most surprising to the intrepid little band, it was not raining in Albion. Though the clouds hanging above them were thick and grey and dominated the sky from horizon to horizon, for the moment they remained dry and rainless, and it meant the first night in Albion was an enjoyable one, if not a little cold.
Brightshow had caught a fat stag just after sunset, and now the men were busy roasting what was left of it over a campfire. Lakkin was slowly rotating a plump haunch on a spit, watching it like a hawk as the fatty meat spat and crackled. Occasionally he would prod it with a knife and mumble something. Farden meanwhile was busy polishing his new armour, Ilios was preening his feathers with his razor-sharp beak, and Brightshow was feigning sleep. She lay with her head on the leafy forest floor, keeping watch on their dark and creaky surroundings with one half-closed eye. Durnus had gone for a walk.
They had found their campsite little over an hour ago; a leafy clearing in the middle of a thick pine forest sandwiched somewhere between the low mountains and their bumbling foothills. Against the headwind, it had taken the gryphon and the dragon around five hours to reach the rocky shores of Albion, and they had found it no more hospitable than Nelska. Snow covered most of the treetops and the open ground. Th
e air was sharp and the temperature just above freezing. There were no farms or settlements for miles and miles. They were surrounded by nothing but moorland, mountain, pine forest, and frozen marsh, and for the time being the silence was eerie. The only sounds were the creaking trees, the rustling of dead leaves in the treetops, and the occasional dull thump of falling snow. It appeared that the Long Winter had crept even further south than they had first imagined.
Farden put his cleaned Scalussen armour aside and rubbed his oily hands over the fire. There was a metal pot resting on a rock in the fire, full of ice and snow that they had chipped from the rocks and trees. Farden dipped his finger in the now-melted water. ‘Almost ready,’ he said, wiping his wet finger on his cloak.
‘Good,’ murmured Lakkin, concentrating on the venison haunch. With a spare hand he tossed Farden a packet of something that smelled like bitter herbs and four wooden cups. ‘Good for the cold,’ he said, and Farden nodded. The mage had taken a great liking to the calm and sensible dragon-rider. He was like Eyrum in a way, in his quietness, but Brightshow’s infectious humour had crept into his mannerisms and his personality, just like her scales had crept over his face and arms. Farden could see the similarities between them. They had the same colouring and the same eyes, and when they flew it was as though they were one beast joined together, like all the other riders he had ever seen. Farden had only recently found out that all dragon-rider pairings were male and female, never of the same sex. If a female dragon took a rider, he would be male, and vice versa. Farden had wondered why, but had thought it rude to ask. The Sirens had always been a bit secretive in their ways so he left the matter alone. He made a mental note to ask Brightshow some other time.