The Ashen Levels

by C F Welburn

  His shoulders felt decidedly heavier, and it had nothing to do with Reaver, which now lay back within his pouch.

  The blue dome was phantasmal; an ice-blue that shimmered and crackled with white fingers let loose from a frozen void. At its apex jutted the spire of the askaba’s tower, and it curved down to encompass the palace and hill, houses and town. Dark, shambling shapes stumbled inside, their movements disjointed, lurching as marionettes controlled by an amateur.

  “Thoughts?” Roje asked, scratching his red beard. Slowly Kolak and several other ashen drifted from the hub to stand and stare as they.

  “Break in,” Balagir said, never taking his eyes from the shimmering globe. “Reach the tower. Destroy the field. And make Sisken spill his guts.”

  “Figuratively?”

  He shrugged.

  “You make it sound so simple,” Freya said uncertainly. “Surely there’s a catch.”

  “Well, I’m open to suggestions.”

  “There seem few options,” Roje agreed.

  “Could we wait them out?” suggested Kolak. “They can’t have enough food in there for more than a year. Who knows how that cursed thing filters the sunlight, but I doubt any orchards will yield.”

  “Not feasible. The askaba have means of coming and going through a portal device,” Balagir said. “Also they should not be left unchecked for an instant longer than necessary. I’ve a feeling that whatever power they’ve harnessed, they are just now understanding. They might become more powerful. Unstoppable.”

  “Whatever we decide, we should wait for the Dunn,” Roje reminded. “They should be here on the morrow.”

  Balagir nodded, though he was not sure what the battle- and road-wearied settlers would be able to contribute.

  So wait they did, for there was nothing else for it. And he flitted back and forth between the fire for rest and the great blue dome to observe its activity. And one by one he became acquainted with the six new ashen. Hect, a tall olive-skinned human ashen clad in little more than a loin cloth and armed with two cruel hatchets, had returned from the Bone Forest with Unvil. There was a black-eye amongst their number: a red-nosed, sour-faced ‘gnilo called Lud, and a violet-caped idris named Raf Fade, both of whom had returned with Tal from the isle of Farol. Raf Isil had returned with Kiela from Kirfory, reluctant to leave the library but unable to be a bystander to his own fate. A pale-faced man, whose utter pallidness made his dark eyes darker still and gave him the appearance of a walking cadaver, had arrived with Ginike from Warinkel. He barely said a word and looked more corpse than man. Even so, he seemed accomplished, and went by the name of Denge. The final newcomer, a female jaegir of a hue somewhere between Kolak’s stippled grey and Unvil’s glossy black and with more unbroken plumes than both, had come with Roje from Kasker. She was concerned with what smoke she could reap and treated Balagir with an air of indifference. He envied her remoteness to the gravity and felt himself longing for a time of anonymity where responsibilities were someone else’s burden. She was called Lyger, and made up the greatest band of ashen that had ever, knowingly, been assembled—comprising of ten human, four jaegir, four idris, one ‘gnilo, and one gillard.

  So, they talked, and waited, and his original plan, basic as it was, changed very little, save for some tactical aspects of who would enter where, what would be done with the askaba, and how they would react to the former inhabitants should they prove hostile.

  By midmorning of the next day, as predicted, the vanguard of the Eskarathian army crawled into view like a shadow over the distant vales, the dogged banner of Dunn Elohim leading the way.

  Shortly after noon, they were finally amassed and the Valelanders had been briefed.

  It was a bright day, and there was a buzz in the camp that tattered the edges of tension and anxiety.

  Somewhere, music played. Normal music. Settler music; from one of the soldiers in the Dunn’s armies whose only role was now to wait until the barrier had been disabled. They could do little else, and whilst some had resigned to this rest, others strode about wringing fists in frustration, losing tempers with companions.

  Balagir and Roje met with Dunn Elohim and Yorvic in a blue-striped tent. Beringal from House Ozgar was there as well, and they set about finalising tactics. Kejal made an appearance too, and once, although fleetingly, he caught the white flash of Medic Trell, whose true identity went unknown.

  Then, when there was nothing left to say, the orders were given.

  Balagir would lead the assault from the east, crossing the river along the harbour, and approach the hill through the square and markets. Nine others would accompany him. Roje would not be deterred at taking their enemy face on. Freya would also have it no other way. Of the relics, Morogan joined, lending them a force to be reckoned with. Kiela and Ginike came as well, now inseparable. Balagir worried if their bond might compromise them, but in the end, it was little different than the bond he had with Era. Raf Isil, recently returned and looking decidedly more bookish after his time with Imram, seemed oddly out of place with the aforementioned ashen who had never left the road. Even Ginike with his twisted face made the idris seem mild and inconspicuous. They took with them several newcomers too. The olive hatchet man, Hect, was itching to begin; Lyger, the mercenary jaegir, was hungry for all she could take it for; and Denge, the walking corpse, looked as if he had nothing to fear in death. The ashen, he realised, looked fearsome, and he understood why the settlers regarded them with trepidation.

  The relics Quevil and Ivorn even now circled the dome, forging the river further south. Once in position, they would come around the back of the great hill, meeting up with the others on the winding road that led up to the palace. With them went Kolak and his companions Tal and Raf Kajor, a deadly mix even though the idris had revealed his true colours on Ceniza—not grey, but yellow. Inverna and Unvil went too, she an icy quiver of hatred and he in an even fouler mood than was his wont. Their force was completed by the dashingly attired Raf Fade; the silent, machine-assisted gillard, Ygril; and Lud, the stunted musclebound ‘gnilo.

  The settler soldiers watched on, making the most of the spectacle, drinking ale and getting good vantages from which to view the action. Even the Dunn had left his tent to watch the pieces move into place.

  The air seemed still, as though a collective breath had been drawn. A pent anticipation that would only be expelled once the act was underway.

  Balagir tested the surface, taut but yielding, as a bubble. It shimmered beneath his touch, alive as if all the milky tendrils craved for the lure of his fingertips. Then, when the signal came that the others were in position, he stepped through, pushing through the membrane, which sealed shut behind him. He felt like a strange creature being born into a submerged world. The membrane crackled briefly in his ears as though someone scrunched old parchment, but then it was quiet. Eerily so. The others joined him one by one.

  Within, Ozgar appeared much as it had the last time he had been there. If he didn’t look directly at the sphere, it would be easy to imagine little had changed. The only obvious disparity was that the sky rippled as though he lay beneath water and looked up to the unreachable surface. Then the subtle differences made themselves known. There was no music, no chatter. None of the boats in the harbour were being prepared to dock or sail, and no stalls did business. The denizens stumbled about in a daze. If they talked at all, it was only in low, indecipherable mumbles. They were so quiet that only animals could be heard: the cluck of a hen, the lone uneasy whine of a dog whose owner had been struck dumber than it.

  A sudden noise to his right made him wheel. One of the stumbling inhabitants had unsettled a bucket that rattled on its side. He was approaching them, but as yet seemed quite unaware of their existence. It was only when the resident glanced up that Balagir saw his eyes leaked a lazy white light. A light which intensified when his gaze found them.

  He made a groaning noise, hardly human, and picked up his pace.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ginike
asked uneasily.

  “I’d rather not linger to find out,” Balagir said, striking out across the stone bridge he had once walked across in such high spirits. He could see more of the stumbling shapes about the docks and lingering in the mouths of alleys, like stray dogs mad with disease. The bridge arched down onto the dockside cobbles, where boats bobbed untended and a sign creaked above a deserted tavern.

  When he looked back he saw that the man still followed, although he had barely begun his ascent of the bridge. But that mattered little. For just then a group that loitered on the dock noticed them, their eyes lighting up and with groans swung in their direction. What was in those sounds? Certainly nothing intelligent. A hunger? A base fascination?

  They turned away, heading south along the quay where small shopfronts, normally teeming with life, stood abandoned.

  He recognised the tavern he had drunk at, and across the way, a man who looked very much like the drunken sailor who had affronted him. He had nothing to say for himself this time though. Only a pitiful moaning escaped his slack mouth as he too turned to follow their trail.

  “They follow us like curs,” Morogan remarked distastefully. He had never liked settlers much, and this was doing little to improve his opinion.

  “Rabid ones at that,” Roje added.

  “Up here,” Balagir said, leading them away from the docks and through a snickleway that led towards the hill.

  They were perhaps halfway along when two shapes staggered into the far end, their eyes growing bright. Balagir cursed and looked back. Others had gathered at the bottom of the alley and were pushing and shoving to enter as unhurriedly as a tree’s boughs jostle for sunlight. No force, no malevolence, just inexplicable drive.

  “We’re trapped,” Ginike needlessly pointed out.

  “Then we’ll cut our way out,” Morogan growled, drawing his serrated blade. Balagir laid a hand on his arm.

  “Remember the Dunn’s words. These men are innocent.”

  “Pah,” Morogan spat. “What settler is innocent in their treatment of the ashen? Forever scapegoats of their own ill doings.” Only now did Balagir realise the extent of the relic’s grudge.

  “Even so, I doubt a single baker or sailor of Ozgar deserves to pay for it.” Morogan looked about to argue, when all eyes turned to see Freya jarring open a door with her shoulder.

  “Through here,” she said, and they obliged.

  It was a miserly abode, but an abode none the less. Its most appealing feature was its uninhabited state. The large door leading to the opposite street was locked, so they chose the steep stair and followed the sloping landing into the neighbouring building and a long room lined with tables. It was a neglected seed factory, its workers truant. They continued until they reached a stairwell, but before they could descend, something in the corner moved. They saw her at the last moment, a lurching middle-aged woman in a dirty white apron.

  She was on Raf Isil before anyone could react, bearing him to the floor. The idris went down with a startled grunt as the woman clawed her way up his chest.

  It may have been Morogan’s boot that saved the pinned scholar, lifting the woman in the gut to crumple against a nearby counter, but it was Lyger who seized the opportunity, barging the outraged relic aside in order to claim the first smoke. For Morogan, finally having a reason to kill settlers seemed a boon, but Lyger was swift and eager. Crossing the relic would likely have repercussions in the aftermath. Unfortunately for Lyger, that aftermath was swift in unfolding.

  As she poised her blade at the woman’s throat, a white flash of light passed from one set of eyes to the other, and when the jaegir turned, her expression was most odd.

  “She took something,” she mumbled, patting herself down as a drunk who had just become aware of a pickpocket. To all watching, who had seen that no contact had been made, an uneasiness took hold. They followed Lyger’s agitated movements in silence as her hands slid from her pockets to her head, where she began to scratch and moan despairingly.

  “My smoke,” she said, though it was not clear whether she addressed them or spoke out some doomed soliloquy. “It’s gone. All I had, it… I…” She tried using a bracelet that served some function, and nothing happened. She shook her wrist dumbly, and then drew her blade. The talisman upon its hilt remained dull, despite her grip. “It can’t be…”

  And yet it was.

  And before them, her eyes turned from black to white. They swiftly backed away. Lyger went to speak, but just a startled shrillness escaped her lips. Her eyes grew suddenly wide, then, without further warning, she lurched towards them, grasping at the air as though beset upon by ghosts.

  Now the languorous foe had taken on a sinister edge. Whatever power or curse afflicted them, they were a blight for the ashen. They stepped back towards the stairwell just as the folk from the street had made their way up to enter the doorway across the long room.

  The idea of challenging them seemed preposterous now the threat was known to come from their eyes.

  “Let’s go!” Freya yelled. And like a twig snapped in a quiet forest, they came to their senses and followed her down that narrow well, hoping there was a way out.

  They descended into a house similar to the one through which they had entered. The doors were locked, but there was no going back. Ginike seized a chair and hurled it against the window, which rebounded pathetically, showering them with its splintered components. Balagir made a gesture for all to stand aside, and with four strokes, Doom smote not only the grimy pane, but sundered the frame itself, causing a cascade of red bricks to tumble down about them. He stepped through, dusting his shoulders as he emerged onto the street. Several of the creatures, for men they were no more, had been drawn to the explosion, but they lurked at the bottom of the street by the river.

  The daylight seemed strange after the dark of the seed factory. The bright sunshine juxtaposed against these horrors more suited for nocturnal nightmares. This reality gone wrong.

  Up the street, between the houses, stood the hill. Higher still, casting its shadow, was the upper city itself, with its towers raised like a clawed hand, poised to slash.

  There was no time to waste, and they fled up the narrow street, catching only the occasional white spark of eyes from behind glass. Evidently those trapped within had lost not only their power of speech, but also knowledge of mundane contraptions, making a simple doorknob an alien artefact without sense or purpose.

  Before beginning their ascent, they crossed the lower square. Although the staggering figures were concentrated here, it was wide, and for the most part they hung in the corners, bumbling into each other like sots in a crowded tavern.

  Weaving only marginally to avoid proximity, they were through the archway and upon the wide paved road that looped helter-skelter about the hill unto its spired crown.

  “The others?” Roje asked, disconcerted.

  “We should wait,” Kiela said, looking ominously up at the gleaming askaba tower. Balagir nodded.

  “Numbers would be useful, but we do not have much time.” Already those they had passed in the square were gravitating towards their position.

  As fortune would have it, their hurried footsteps soon brought them into view, though they were short.

  “Lud?”

  Kolak shook his head. “Taken,” he said, struggling with what he had witnessed.

  “As was Lyger,” Balagir said. “We cannot lose more. Let us go.”

  And they did, scurrying up the path as rats would a mast on a slowly sinking vessel.

  They passed various levelled stages of the ascent without too many problems. When they were nearing halfway, however, and a steady-inclined section of low houses ran on either side, they were overwhelmed. Only two or three at first stood ahead of them, but suddenly and without warning, several more stumbled out of an open doorway behind them.

  “Keep going!” Morogan roared.

  “Close your eyes when you pass them!” yelled Roje. “Therein the danger lies.”
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  It was shrewd advice, but running up a cobbled hill, in a company of seventeen, avoiding grasping shapes, made it easier said than done. When Raf Kajor stumbled, nobody dared turn to see who it had been that grunted so. Only when they were finally free could they stop and see him back in the distance, his eyes watching them, vacant and white.

  Balagir cursed and they continued, up and around, the city growing small below them, the towers above ducking out of sight behind the lip of the hill.

  The largest concentration of their foes awaited at the top, between the hedgerows of the gardens, amongst the statues of the palace, struggling with the stairs that led down from the great doors. Suddenly they seemed to come from all directions. The askaba tower was now in view, but it was there that a multitude of the possessed awaited, drawn as if by some beacon. Ragtag peasants, old washer women, armoured guards, and well-dressed officials alike lurked there, mindless now of rank or class, consumed only by the white light and the pull of the tower.

  “Now what?” Unvil snapped, glaring at Balagir as though it were all his fault.

  Balagir stared at the smooth tower, punctuated only sporadically by long dark windows. The lowest of these, still way above the ground, caught his eye.

  “I’ve an idea, but only on how to get myself in.”

  “And us?” Freya asked.

  “A couple of you need to lure them, get them over to the palace. You should be able to keep them at bay on those steps. The others will have an opportunity to reach the door, which I will open from within.”

  “And if it’s locked?”

  “We’ll smash it down.”

  A grumbled decision was swiftly reached. Raf Isil, Tal, and Hect would form the diversion. The others would keep out of view until the coast was clear. If all went to plan, Balagir would be waiting for them on the far side of the door.

  He waited until they had set off, calling to the shapes so that they turned slowly, one by one, until the whole herd stumbled after them, clever as cattle. They led them towards the palace, up the wide steps, where they stumbled and fell and crawled over one another so that before long, the entire stair seemed to writhe and creep. The three ashen waited at the top, making sure their attention never waned while keeping the palace door at their backs for when they needed to retreat further. Now was Balagir’s window of opportunity, in both senses of the expression.