by Andy Remic
A raven, flapping high, flew west over the barren Rokroth Marshes. A light peppering of snow covered the reed beds, the narrow channels of water, and even more narrow pathways, which criss-crossed this treacherous part of the country. Deep in the icy waters, vicious tenta eels and sharp-toothed moranga pike lurked, waiting for an unwary step and plunge; and indeed, waiting for one another.
The raven coughed a cry, dipping its left wing and banking, dropping to lower, slightly warmer currents. To the north squatted the ancient and abandoned Skell Fortress, high black towers like spears, the battlements and their crennellations like so many broken teeth. Deserted, haunted; it was a place not often frequented. It was said men went mad beneath the shadows of its ancient walls.
The raven pumped wings, flowing onwards across Vagandrak. Far to the south a large unit of infantry was camped, fires burning, pennants loyal to King Yoon’s Vagan Division flapping wildly in a rush of tempestuous wind blasted from east and south. The raven continued, heading straight for Vagan. The city, with its huge fortified walls loomed on the horizon like a squat beast, a creature of stone and iron. The huge Eastern Gates were shut, black oak and thick iron bars centuries old and scarred from some long forgotten civil war. Usually the gates were open during daylight hours, allowing travellers, merchants, adventurers and soldiers access; it was an anomaly to see them closed, but the raven did not concern itself with such matters.
Its wing beats thudded on, fighting a headwind now, and as it approached the city walls it noted, without consideration, a change in the landscape below. The ground before the city fortifications was always kept clear, of scrub and trees, of market traders and debris. But a hundred feet out some trees did flourish, and now was the time of year for winter blossoms and the glow of evergreen. However, something was subtly changing in the trees. In the pines, in the red cedar and blue spruce, in the silver fir and various vast holly bushes that ranged away from Vagandrak’s outer walls; the colours of needles and leaves seemed to have subtly shifted. They had darkened, into deep rich greens, perhaps shot through with another colour, something like blood. And, again, a subtle transformation, the trees were leaning, or bending near their summits. As if sending out tendrils seeking sunlight and changing the direction of growth.
The raven gave a caw, ragged and bleak, foregrounding the utter, total silence that drifted up from the city of Vagan like inverted snowflakes. The glossy black bird spread its wings and soared over the fortified walls. There were no guards there. No pikemen, no archers, no infantry standing watch. The braziers were cold and silent and full of black, damp ashes. A chilled ice-wind snapped along the deserted battlements, like an angry little dog.
And over, swooping down into the city. Streets were silent. Cobbles gleamed with ice. Market stalls stood empty with tarpaulins cracking and snapping in the wind. Windows were dark and without light. Not a single chimney pumped out smoke. The War Capital of Vagandrak was a ghost town; an abandoned realm; a city of the dead.
The raven flapped towards the Palace of the Autumn Stars, Yoon’s own private and personal estate at the heart of Vagandrak. Over yet more perimeter walls, across marble walkways and past sculpted gardens, and on to a vast architectural indulgence of fanned, curved, pure white marble steps which were dominated by huge bronze doors.
The raven cawed again, and dropped, black eyes fixing on a figure seated on the steps. The creature, for he was not a man, looked up sharply at the approach and lifted his arm, twisted and deformed, to create a perch.
The King of the Elf Rats, Daranganoth, smiled a smile of thorns and, leaning towards the black eyes of the raven, which appeared glassy and dead, whispered, “Tell me what you’ve learned about the traitor.”
They called him Pockets, on account of his superbly light touch and the ability to lift purse, watch or coin from minister, clerk or whore without capture. He was twelve years old, with dark eyes and a cynical expression far beyond his years and earned, in the majority, from being abandoned by a honey-leaf addicted mother at the age of six and having to learn to feed himself, fight his corner against the larger, more vicious street urchins, and basically survive in a nasty, cruel world of poverty which showed no mercy to a kid down on his luck. And Pockets had been down on his luck right from the start.
The main reason for Pockets’ survival was his intelligence. He was bright beyond the ken of your average orphan or youthful street vagabond. He’d started with simple theft, usually from the markets where the mass of people made it easy to slip in and out, and, indeed, beneath the market stalls where there was always a plethora of fallen fruit and veg, the odd crust of a pie or half-eaten sausage roll. By the age of eight he had a room with another two orphans up by the tanneries where the slums provided plenty of condemned housing – apparently unsafe to occupy, but with a bit of love and care to the broken roof tiles, provided a reasonably comfortable, dry, rent-free accommodation which kept the snow and biting wind from skinny, underfed bones.
By the age of nine Pockets was running his own gang, their crimes escalating until they were staging robberies on carriages during the dead of night, and breaking into jewellers and watchmakers. He had contacts throughout the city of Zanne, and further afield, where he could fence marked stolen merchandise away from the eyes of the makers. He even had a couple of contacts in Rokroth, although had never visited himself. He preferred to stay in the city he loved and loathed, having an expert knowledge of every street and alley, walkway, slum, bridge and palace. From the Corpse Fields to the gloomy, frightening streets of the Haven where even the City Watch hardly dared tread, Pockets was a smiling, happy character with lots of friends and even more enemies, but who knew his place in the great scheme of things and was willing to get on with life after the shit card he’d been dealt by an uncaring God. A boy makes his own luck, Pockets thought nearly every morning when he first opened his eyes after yet another dreamless sleep – Pockets did not dream – and it was a philosophy that had seen him survive this far; survive and prosper.
However. Something had changed.
Pockets had begun, just like his mother before him, to experience the properties of the honey-leaf, that illegal, bitter and most joyous of leaves. Whether smoked, placed under the tongue and sucked, or increasingly formed into concentrated little cubes and swallowed, Pockets and some of his fellow gang members had been experimenting. The previous night, if indeed it had been the previous night, had been the heaviest session yet and it had allowed Pockets to – whilst not dream exactly – to at least experience some forms of colour and flashing wild imagery during that long, coma-like experience other people called sleep.
Now, as he lay on his low pallet bed with cold winter light peeping between cracks in the old wooden shutters, he tried to decide exactly what was different. And then it hit him worse than his pounding head, and the bitter dregs nestling in his mouth like so many unwanted tea leaves. Outside, the streets of the Haven were silent.
Slowly, and with a groan, Pockets rolled over and fought with his blanket for a moment. He rubbed at weary, bloodshot eyes that had no place in the head of a boy of twelve, and searched the room for his companions in leaf experimentation, Jona, Ranz and Solimpsapa. Incredibly, considering the amount of leaf they’d ingested, all three beds were empty. Indeed, the blankets were pulled back as if they’d not even been slept in at all.
What happened last night? Did I come home alone?
Who was I with?
Where did I go?
The previous evening was a blur to Pockets, and he had simple, vague outlines of memories, of dancing through fresh snowfall, laughing into the scratching claws of the wind, an intention for mischief. But that was the last image in his mind. Kicking up flurries of snow.
Why was it so damn quiet outside?
There should have been shouts and bustle and laughter. Only twenty footsteps from his front door was Midwives Market, so called because, apparently in long-gone poorer times, back during the Bad Old Days, it was common for a so-ca
lled midwife to steal a newborn babe and sell it to the highest bidder, whether that be into slavery, to parents who could not sire their own, or to horrible characters who wanted them for personal pursuits. Now, the market was much more respectable – in as far as anything in the Haven could be considered respectable – and dealt in simple pies, vegetables, loaves of bread; and sometimes stolen merchandise and property.
There should have been noise. A lot of noise.
Pockets rolled from his bed and eased open the shutter a fraction. Outside, cold grey light made him squint against the honey-leaf dregs, and his dry-bark tongue roamed around his bitter mouth with a hint of regret. But then, it makes you dream again, so how can there be any regret? He peered down at the blackened, cracked cobbles. A smattering of icing snow clung to them, powdered and fresh. Pockets frowned. There were no footprints. No footprints?
He pulled on some tattered trousers and a thick jumper, shivering at the chill in the room. The reality was he could afford the grandest, richest livery from the finest tailors in the city of Zanne; his money hoard was now quite exceptional thanks to his light fingered approach. But to dress in the manner he could afford would be not only to destroy his anonymity, but ironically, to place him in the firing line of other vagabonds and pick-pockets in the city.
Still frowning, Pockets stepped down the rickety staircase and opened the door a crack. A cold breeze caressed him, along with the silence. Distantly, a dog barked. Then, fell suddenly to quiet. It did not bark again.
Pockets stepped out into the snow, and walked swiftly along Market Street, but before he reached Market Square, which was anything but a square, he ducked left down Cracked Skull Alley, narrow and winding, with the buildings to either side having shifted on weak foundations so they leaned together high above, where they’d been propped apart with hefty iron beams to halt any more progress. It made the alley dark, foreboding, and treacherous unless you knew the right people. Pockets knew all the right people.
He stopped, and listened to the silence again. He moved to the nearest house and, cupping his hands to the glass, tried to peer in through the grime and cracked panels. Inside, nothing looked out of the ordinary. But there were no people present.
Pockets trotted down Cracked Skull Alley, pausing at the junction between Quimspike and Groper’s Lane. It was still silent, still eerie and deserted – a spirit town. But here, now, there were marks in the newly fallen snow. Looking left and right, Pockets moved warily to the scuffled marks. Footprints approached down the centre of Quimspike, quite far apart and smudged. Somebody running? Then the marks turned suddenly into a series of sweeping crescents. Pockets searched around the centre of the marks, which seemed to suggest a struggle. There were no other prints. It was as if the person had simply… vanished. No tracks led away.
Pockets straightened. A very, very bad feeling sank through him and he glanced around again, as if searching for an enemy, or at least some sign of life. It was instinct that kicked him back a step as the creature landed in front of him with a thud; a split second earlier and it would have landed atop him. Pockets caught a glimpse of skin like bark, and deep black eyes and teeth like thorns, and he spun, skidding, to accelerate into a spin… but a cluster of thin tentacles shot out, wrapping around his waist, his legs, his arms, and he was pulled back suddenly with a shriek and gasped as the ground rushed away and he was launched upwards, body screaming, then tugged into the dark black upper stories of a four storey house – where the elf rats were waiting for him.
The Iron Pike Palace, Vagandrak. A vast monolith of marble and iron, a beautiful sculpted edifice towering ten stories up and dominating the centre of the country’s War Capital. Up polished iron steps, gleaming under a winter sun. Black and white tiles spread out in patterned arcs, under ornately carved stone arches and balconies and sculptures that belonged more in a cathedral than Yoon’s War Palace. Rushing through the throne room, it was dominated by vast statues depicting former Kings and Queens of Vagandrak, and a series of ten thrones stood lining the far wall on a raised dais of granite. Now, the vast, high-ceilinged chamber was dominated by a gathering of elf rats. There were several hundred, standing silently around a central space. In this defined area stood four acolytes of Bazaroth aea Quazaquiel, Sorcerer to the Elf Rat King Daranganoth, swaying, each with quests like long white roots connected to a central, locked down figure. Masketh, Captain of the Royal Guards, lay pinned to the floor, face red with shouting curses and struggling against the thin, wavering strands.
Bazaroth appeared at the huge arch that defined the entrance to the palace throne room; a hushed silence spread through the elf rats, and all heads turned, tracking the sorcerer as he shuffled forward, staff clacking on the marble tiles, to eventually stand, staring down at the tense, snarling figure of Masketh with spittle on his lips and hate – and fear – in his eyes.
“You humans are more resilient than I would have given you credit for.” Bazaroth smiled, his face wrinkling and corrugating like some monster from childhood’s darkest dreams. “Many are hiding. But they cannot hide for long.”
“Scum!” snarled Masketh. “Why did you come here? What do you want, you filthy, poisoned rat bastards? You’re not even supposed to exist! What dark sorcery is this?”
“An interesting perspective,” said Bazaroth, gaze fixed on Masketh. “A shame your ancestors felt a need to erase us from the history books; from your history, specifically. Other cultures, the jungle tribes of Jugenda, for example, see fit to give us some credit for the building of their ancient civilisations. But you,” and now a dark gleam was in Bazaroth’s eyes, “not only do you seek to exterminate us, driving us from lands we nurtured for ten thousand years; hunting us like common vermin; exterminating our menfolk, our females and our children. Then you have the fucking temerity to delete us from history altogether.” He’d leaned forward during his exposition, but now straightened, or straightened as much as one so old and bent and broken and crippled could straighten.
“You are childhood nightmares, nothing more,” said Masketh. “This is some black magick. Evil sorcery. We will fight you, and we will defeat you.”
“Your race’s answer to everything,” sighed Bazaroth. “The law of the sword and the axe. Conquest by blood and death and slaughter.” His face grew a little tighter. “By genocide,” he said, quietly. “Do you feel guilty for the crimes of your ancestors? But then, of course you do not. You have no idea of the atrocities of which I speak. The dark deeds carried out underneath the ground in vast torture chambers. The mass exterminations. The burial pits filled with oil and corpses, then igniting with vast explosions, flames roaring up into the clouds like huge mushrooms of blinding white energy, a terrible rage, an all-consuming fire, eating flesh and eyes and bone.” Bazaroth was panting, one hand raised, lifting his twisted hardwood staff. Then it hammered against the palace floor, and a thick marble tile cracked. His eyes narrowed. “Do you feel guilty, Masketh?”
“Fuck you, elf rat scum.”
Bazaroth aea Quazaquiel smiled, and made a swift gesture. From behind, through the crowd, two elf rats dragged a struggling woman. She was slim, dark-haired, pretty. Her blue dress was torn and blood lay indelible on nose and chin and shins. She was barefoot, hair tangled, eyes just a little wild. She stopped struggling the minute she saw Masketh, and from his trembling lips there came a tiny, “No.”
“Masketh. I think you recognise Shaela. Shaela, I think you, too, recognise your loving husband, Masketh. He’s the Captain of the Royal Guards, you know.” Bazaroth was moving, hobbling forward, his staff clacking on the polished floor of the throne room until he was close to the woman who recoiled in absolute terror. Bazaroth grinned at her, teeth like dark thorns tipped with blood. He glanced back at Masketh, still pinned to the floor but struggling now with an intensity that was almost frightening; as if he might split himself in two in the act of trying to escape.
“Please,” said Masketh, halting his struggle suddenly in the realisation that he would nev
er break the root-bonds of the acolytes. “Please. Don’t hurt her. Please. I’ll do anything!”
“Tell me where Yoon’s wife, Tryaella de Franck, is hiding. This palace is a warren of hidden rooms and escape tunnels; she has taken Yoon’s three little bastards and flown their rich little nest. Where have they gone?”
Masketh suddenly paled.
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
“You do know!”
“No, such important information is kept from me!”
“Horse shit!” roared Bazaroth. “You are captain. One of your roles is that of protector of the queen and Yoon’s spindly little fucking offspring. You will tell us where they are, or we will rip Shaela apart!” Already the quests were squirming from Bazaroth’s gnarled hands, thrashing like a fist of oiled snakes as they lurched and writhed across the air space between him and the suddenly cringing, squirming, wailing woman…
The seething mass of thrashing root strands paused in front of Shaela’s face and she went suddenly rigid, as if struck by a bolt of high magick energy, and her eyes were fixed on those seething roots, which bunched as if into a giant fist ready to punch a hole through her teeth and down into the gurgling stomach beyond. Her scream of panic started almost beyond the range of human hearing, dropping in pitch until Masketh coughed, and with tears streaming down his face yelled, “Stop! Stop, please; I’ll tell you. I’ll show you where the queen has fled.”
“Where?” Bazaroth’s head turned and fixed on Masketh. His eyes were older than the forests and mountains of Vagandrak. Masketh felt a chill wind blow through his soul, tolling a bell that signalled an End of Days.
“Let me up,” he panted, sweat staining his clothing, lank in his hair, rolling down his forehead, dripping into his eyes. “There is a chamber, I will show you. I will take you there. But please, do not hurt my wife.”