The Queen's assassin tc-3

by William King

  "Let's go," said Asea.

  Karim virtually sprang to the head of the stair. Rik moved more slowly to follow him. The Barbarian pressed along behind. He might be keen to impress Lady Asea, but he was not that keen. He moved to the head of the stairs and looked down. With the Barbarian blocking most of Asea's light behind him, corners of the room were shadowy, but even so he did not like what he saw.

  Sardec crouched on the stairs. Walking corpses shambled towards him. Asea raised her wand and spoke a word of power. Chained lightning danced within the chamber, flickering from animated body to animated body. A smell of frying meat and ozone filled the air. The walking dead slumped to the floor. Whatever spark of infernal fire had animated them was gone. Rik surveyed the scene with cold eyes while the voices whispered panicked phrases in his head. He did not know what had frightened them more, Asea’s lightning or the sight that greeted his eyes.

  The chamber was a butcher's shop full of human corpses. In the centre of the room was a tub full of fluid that roiled agitatedly.

  Karim sprang lightly down the stairs and Rik followed more cautiously, treading as silently as ever he had done as a thief in Sorrow and paying just as much attention to his search for hidden traps. Karim moved around the room looking for any enemies.

  Rik moved cautiously towards the bubbling vat. He held his sword ready. Fear churned in his stomach. The voices gibbered as if they sensed his fear and responded to it.

  His eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom now. He wished his nose would get used to the stink, but he doubted it ever would. He paused a moment and glanced around. It was like being in a butcher's shop, except that instead of sides of beef from cattle, the hanging bodies were those of men and women. He shook his head, as for the first time he really considered what had gone on here.

  Someone had worked with all this stuff. It had not just happened to be here. It was the product of a lot of work and a lot of preparation. Someone had spent a good deal of time and money creating all this. What sort of diseased mind would do that? There would have been a time, not so long ago when Rik might have had trouble answering that question, but not now. He had encountered too many wicked sorcerers and their creations to have any trouble with that. He knew there were people who would do anything for power. There were those who would work dark miracles to satisfy their own curiosity and bolster their own egos.

  He peered down into the vat. The fluid churned and he thought he made out two dark shapes down there. An almost overpowering urge to bend closer and look in filled his mind. He fought it back. He knew the price such inquisitiveness could exact from bitter experience. He was somehow not surprised when a head broke surface. He found himself face to face with a pale animated corpse, blood dripping from its hair and open mouth and eye-sockets. It reached for him, and instinctively he brought the blade up into the guard position as Karim has taught him. The point of his blade almost touched the hellish thing's chest.

  It did not stop the creature. It pushed forward, trying to clamber out of the blood-filled tub despite the point piercing its breast. Rik leaned forward, putting all his weight on his front leg as he drove the blade home. Dark fluid flowed. There was an odd sizzling sound and the smell of burning flesh as the magical blade bit deep. Wisps of smoke flowed from the wound, more reddish black fluid dribbled from the corners of the corpse's mouth. It slid forward along the blade reaching for him. Its yellow-toothed, grey-gummed smile was ghastly, for there was no expression in its filmed, dead eyes.

  Rik sprang back, ripping his blade free. From out of the gloom something streaked by. It buried itself in one eye of the creature and came out the other side. A moment later Rik realised it was a black fletched arrow. Barely a heartbeat later, another one took out the other eye. The corpse tumbled forward and lay still on the ground.

  Everyone stood frozen like statues for a long minute while they waited to see what would happen next. Eventually Asea broke the tableau and advanced to inspect the corpse and the bubbling vat of hell-broth it had emerged from. She sniffed the air.

  She swept over to the nearest of the corpses. The stink was awful. There was a suggestion of rot and chemicals and something else, curdled milk perhaps. Asea bent over the corpse, took out a small steel pin from her purse and collected a sample of the nauseating fluid. She studied it quite closely, sniffing it. Rik wondered how she could do that without showing any signs of illness. He supposed that after two millennia of practicing sorcery you could get used to anything.

  "What is it, Milady?"

  "Necroplasma," she said.

  "What?"

  "Necroplasma. It is a substance used by alchemists and necromancers when re-animating corpses. It is based on blood and used instead of it. You drain the blood from a corpse, fill it full of chemicals, perform certain unholy rituals over it and then re-inject it into the dead body to animate it."

  "It's obviously been used here then."

  "Nothing much escapes your keen eye, does it, Rik?" He looked at her sharply. Asea was not often given to the use of sarcasm. Perhaps she was feeling more strain than she showed.

  "What is going on here, Milady? Why would anybody want to make these things?"

  "A good question, Rik, and one to which there are several answers. The most obvious one is that they were making soldiers from the corpses."

  "One cellar full would hardly be enough to hamper our whole army."

  "Indeed, therefore it would be perhaps be wise to assume that there is more than one hiding hole for these things."

  "Perhaps it was only one Necromancer going about his business."

  "It would be nice to think that, but these days I find myself overly suspicious."

  "If it's any consolation I share that trait. What are we going to do now?"

  Asea examined the alchemical furnace under the vat. It was a complex device and she studied the workmanship almost admiringly. "We shall empty this vat and bring this equipment up into the light. I want to study it and see what clues I can find about its builder."

  Rik wondered if that was the only reason she wanted to study it. In his association with the Lady Asea, he had discovered she was possessed of a certain fascination with the darkest of lore. There were times when he found that quite worrying about his patron.

  He moved round the corner of the room. Looking behind the hanging corpses, he saw that there was another door that had been concealed by their bulk.

  “I think I’ve found something,” he said. He picked the lock and opened the door. It swung ominously open.

  The area Rik had found was much bigger than the cellar, and it was full of machinery. Asea pushed through with her wand and illuminated the area. Rik made out a vast complex of brass pipes and alembics. There were more corpses on tables. Someone had been dissecting one. Others had pipes stuck into their arms and had a strange shrunken look.

  “What now?” Rik asked. He did not like the look of this in the slightest. There was something very strange about the bodies on the tables. He moved over to the one on the dissection table. It had a weird elongated look and its skin had a scaly quality. Vestigial fangs filled its mouth.

  “Bloody hell,” said the Barbarian, pushing up behind Rik. “It’s a ghoul. Somebody’s made a fair mess of it too.”

  He was not wrong. The flesh of the stomach had been flayed away, and various organs had been removed. Judging by the expression on its face, it had been alive at the time. Or as alive as such creatures ever got. Blackened, diseased-looking kidneys and other entrails half-filled the abdomen still. There was something odd about it. It took him a while to realise what.

  “No blood,” he said.

  “No bodily fluids of any kind, I would guess,” said Asea. She pointed at the pipes that ran into the bodies. Rik followed her gesture and noticed that the metalwork all flowed towards a complex of vats and alchemical engines.

  “Why?” Rik asked. “Is somebody draining their bodies to make potions?”

  “I don’t know. What could anybody
hope to gain from the bodily fluids of ghouls? I know of no spells or alchemical serums that require them. I don’t like this at all. Everything here is in working order. It looks as if the owner just left.”

  “Perhaps we should put a guard on the place?”

  Asea nodded, preoccupied. She began to search the place. She found some leather bound books on the shelves at the back of the laboratory.

  “Anything useful?” Rik asked.

  “I don’t know. This seems to be gibberish. It’s most likely written in some personal cipher. It may take some time to break.”

  “Malkior claimed that there were many Thanatomancers at work in the Dark Empire. Is this the sort of thing they would do?”

  Asea nodded. “It has the feel of their peculiar madness. I just can’t work out what exactly this was intended for.”

  “But you are going to find out.”

  “Our lives may depend on that.”

  The voices whispered in Rik’s head. They liked this place. They really liked it. He shuddered and made his way out, even as Asea called for Sardec and gave him instructions to see that this place was sealed off.

  Jaderac watched Asea and her minions emerge from the building and cursed. The warning from his brothers had come just in time. A few minutes later and he would have been found in situ, not hiding in the shadows of this ruin. Fortunately most of what they needed was away now, shifted by dead of night to abandoned mausoleums in the Grand Cemetery, the contents already being put to good use in preparation for tomorrow night’s ritual. At least there was nothing in the lab that would lead back to him.

  He pulled his cloak tight against the cold and seethed with fury, wondering who had betrayed him. Was it that dolt Sardontine? Or that treacherous little bitch Tamara? She had been playing her cards very close to her chest recently. Rumour had it that her father was in Halim, but Jaderac was inclined to discount that. What would he be doing here? He should be heading back to Askander to contest control of the Brotherhood with Lord Xephan, his replacement as Chancellor and as head of their secret order.

  He looked at Asea and her lover and that arrogant cripple Sardec and wished that his new Nerghul was with him. He would have set it on them, and had it slay the lot of them. Even though it seemed flawed and slow compared to the first one, it would be more than capable of killing all of them. But his creature was up in the cemetery, guarding the stores for the ritual against any interlopers. In any case, he told himself, he would not risk it now, not when he was so close to ultimate success.

  Tomorrow, after the completion of his great plan, there would be time to settle all scores.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Rik lay on the couch in Asea’s apartments and stared at his feet. The massive old clock ticked loudly. He felt useless. Even the voices seemed depressed. They murmured quietly at the back of his mind, but failed to intrude fully onto his consciousness. To distract himself, he ran through one of the sorcerous exercises that Asea had taught him, calming himself, touching his inner strength. It seemed to have dwindled a little. Perhaps this was how it was with thanatomantic energy. Perhaps it dissipated over days and weeks on disuse.

  He felt threatened, as if they were all on the edge of some great abyss. Kathea’s coronation was tomorrow and they were still no closer to working out their enemy’s plan. Asea had been closeted in her chambers for all day and most of last night, and had not emerged. Only Karim had entered to take her food. She turned away all messengers. She talked to no one. She seemed driven in a way that he had never seen her before. Sometimes he has caught a glimpse of her through the door, and she looked haggard. All he could so was sleep here, outside her chambers, like a faithful watchdog.

  He was afraid, and not just for himself. He sensed that Malkior was coming, and he would kill Asea and him too if he got the chance. Rik had prepared for that eventuality as best he could. His hidden blade was poisoned. He had prepared a truesilver bullet in his concealed pistol. He carried another pistol with another special bullet. He had the blade Asea had given him. He knew they would mostly likely not be enough. Even the stolen energy of the Sea Devil would most likely not be enough, but he was determined that if Malkior came he would be as well prepared as he could be. He was not going to be taken so easily this time.

  The door to Asea’s chamber swung open. She emerged. Her face was pale and drawn. Her eyes looked huge. Her pupils were dilated from the potions she took against fatigue.

  “I have solved it,” she said softly.

  “You’ve broken the code?”

  “I did that hours ago. Now I have translated the notes.”

  “What do they say?”

  “The machines were used for preparing a special serum, a component in a necromantic ritual.”

  “The book says that?”

  “No but reading between the lines of the descriptions of the experiments and extrapolating from them, I am sure I know what the serum is to be used for. Whoever created it intends to raise the dead and do something worse. There is some component of the ghoul’s disease that can be used to make undeath spread like a plague. They’ll need to do it soon because the serum won’t hold its potency for long.”

  “How soon?”

  “Tonight, perhaps.”

  “An army of the walking dead, that can infect the living?”

  “Yes. I think so. All they need is bodies and a potent locus of necromantic energies.”

  “If they intend to make an army, they will need a lot of corpses. As for energies…” Rik said. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew exactly where those could be found. “The Grand Cemetery.”

  Asea began inscribing a note to General Azaar. “Go and get Lieutenant Sardec,” she said. “I think we should visit the graveyard as soon as possible.”

  The voices whispered and gibbered and sometimes he thought he could make out words. I smell death. Death and sorcery. Things stir beneath the ground. Wrong place. Wrong place, whispered the voices. A thought insinuated itself into Rik’s mind.

  “What if this is just a distraction? What if Malkior is already here and makes a bid on the Queen’s life? He could get in easily enough while we are trying to deal with this.”

  Asea’s features froze for a moment as she considered his words. “You might be right, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. If Jaderac plans to raise an army of the dead, I have to stop him.”

  “I will stop Malkior,” said Rik. “At least I will try.”

  There was silence for a moment. Rik wondered if she thought he was simply trying to get out of this duty. Surely she knew him better than that right now.

  “I don’t think you could beat Malkior if you met him.”

  “There will be soldiers here, and somebody has to protect Kathea. Otherwise there may be no Queen to crown. I can sense shadowgates. At least I might be able to warn the guards.”

  “You could be wrong.”

  “If I am wrong we have lost nothing. If I am right…”

  “Very well. Good luck,” she said and swept out the door.

  “To you too,” Rik said to her departing back.

  “This is getting to be a habit,” said Sardec. The Foragers marched at double time towards the cemetery. They had been reinforced with all the soldiers of the Seventh that Sardec could have rounded up at short notice. Some of them were groggy with sleep. Some drunk. None of them looked happy.

  “I am sorry to disturb your rest again, Lieutenant,” said Asea. She spoke in the High tongue of the Terrarchs so none of the men could understand. Once more she was garbed for war. She held her glowing wand. Chained lightning glittered within the blue gem at its tip. “But I can assure you this is important. The safety of Queen Kathea and our entire army may depend on it.”

  “There is a plan to stop the coronation tomorrow?” He replied in the same language. If there was something she wanted kept secret it was doubtless for good reason.

  “Unless we find what we are looking for soon, there may not be a coron
ation. By sunrise the whole city may be in the grip of plague and something worse than plague.” The night suddenly seemed very dark and cold. The snow crunched ominously beneath their boots.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think our old friend Lord Jaderac is performing a ritual right now that will raise all the bodies in this graveyard and turn them into an unstoppable army — he is or some of his associates are.”

  Sardec felt a shudder of fear pass up his spine but he kept his face straight and his tone nonchalant. “You are talking of sorcery of the darkest sort, Milady.”

  “I am, Lieutenant. Does it surprise you that our enemies would use it?”

  “These days nothing would surprise me, Milady.”

  The gates of the Grand Cemetery loomed ahead of them. Sardec shuddered remembering the ghouls they had encountered here. The memory of them was as vivid and as frightening as if it had only happened last night.

  “What are we looking for?” he asked her.

  “It will be easy enough to recognise when you see it, Lieutenant. Look for Terrarchs working sorcery. I would not be surprised if one of them was Lord Jaderac and another was Lady Tamara.”

  “What shall we do if we see them?” Sardec suspected he already knew. Her answer came as no surprise.

  “Don’t take any chances. Kill them — if you can.”

  Sardec nodded and began bellowing orders to the soldiers. They were to split into squads and search the graveyard for intruders. If they saw anyone performing rituals they were to shoot on sight.

  “Just hope there’s nobody in there having a funeral,” muttered the Barbarian.

  “If they are, they’ll soon be having a few more,” said Weasel.

  Sardec watched the soldiers fanning out among the gravestones. He had a bad feeling about this. The night was misty. Frost glittered on gravestone and tree branch. Only occasionally did the light of the moon shine through.

  “What was that?” Asea asked. “I don’t like the smell of this.”