by David Hair
. . . Guard your throne, Constant Sacrecour!
He could feel the presence in the aether of the daemon who controlled Toljin. He’d spoken to it, told it what he wanted, and they’d reached a bargain. Bahil-Abliz, its name was; it wanted to extend itself into this world, and his Ascendancy Ritual would allow that to happen. It had pledged to serve him, and his wizardry-gnosis would ensure it did.
He fancied he could feel the physical effects of its proximity: colder nights and the withering of the sparse vegetation, and bad dreams. The air was oppressive, doom-laden, but still the Dokken came, from small, half-wild packs of animagi barely a dozen strong, to clans of almost a hundred, born and bred in the towns, all drawn to the Valley of Tombs by the rumour of a cure. Xymoch’s pack had spread the word discreetly, jealous of rivals gaining ‘their’ prize, and they were impatient, wanting to know why they weren’t permitted to go first – but Malevorn knew he had only one shot at this.
They were all were about to become his slaves, the young, the few old, men and women, even unblooded children. Or they would die.
Ablizians. That’s what I will call them: for the daemon I’m planting in their souls.
He looked sideways at Hessaz, wondering what was going through her mind. The gaunt Lokistani had been subdued in the last couple of days, even more taciturn than usual, and with none of the zeal she’d shown earlier in the process. When challenged she’d claimed that she was just awed by what they were about to do, but something in her manner didn’t convince him. She suspects something, his instincts whispered. But she’d performed her duties without fuss, no sign of fight or flight. And there had been no opportunity for her to sabotage this moment.
After tonight, she’ll be just like the rest . . .
It took almost half an hour until the last of the Dokken had swallowed their measure. The final one was a young mother from Mirobez, where the people were tall and lean, their skin jet-black and their hair close-cropped. She had a three-year-old child cradled in her arms. As she took the poison and fed it to her son, she said something grateful to Malevorn, something worshipful. He looked sideways at Hessaz for a translation.
‘She gives you thanks and blessing,’ the Lokistani woman told him. ‘She says that you are a messiah, a new prophet.’ She sounded faintly disgusted.
‘That’s what I am,’ he replied, amused. ‘I’m another Corineus.’
Only I won’t end up dead.
The Mirobezi woman rejoined the rest of her family and Malevorn surveyed his new brood, now all gathered in the middle of the central plaza inside a giant circle carved into the stone. One by one they lay down in preparation, as he’d told them, and the poison was already taking effect in those who’d been first in line. That left about forty minutes to prepare for the first of them to start dying: plenty of time.
Hessaz turned to him. ‘What now?’
‘Now? Your own reward, my dear Hessaz,’ he replied mockingly. The dying sun glinted off the jewels in the gem-studded collar he had started wearing around his throat as he held out a spoonful of the ambrosia to her. She met his eye and a tremor ran through her, but she opened her mouth and took her measure calmly. ‘Go and join your people, Hessaz.’ She bowed and walked away towards the massed Souldrinkers in the plaza, her step unsteady, as if the potion had already begun to take effect.
And as easily as that, the Hessaz problem is solved.
He settled down to watch the show.
*
Hessaz made her way to the plaza, trying to hide her terror, stepping over the etched lines and symbols that Malevorn Andevarion had carved with Fire- and Earth-gnosis into the flagstones at the edge of the open space. They meant little to her, but she could guess what they were: Wizardry sigils.
She’d never had an Arcanum education, and whole swathes of the gnosis were a complete mystery to her, but she was a hunter, filled with practical intelligence and cunning. Over the past two days, working alongside Malevorn, doing his bidding without any sign of her thoughts, she’d begun to piece together her theory of what was really going on here.
He’s fallen out with Huriya. That’s a fact.
Toljin is not himself. That too is a fact.
This plaza has been prepared for a large-scale spell.
SK’THALI FAIL. AFREET.
She couldn’t work it all out: she didn’t have the knowledge and couldn’t make the connections, and she knew she never would. Elaborate schemes weren’t her way; she had always seen the world in black and white, straight lines. But as the day that should be the greatest in the history of her kind progressed, she began to feel trapped, dread rising within her, and all the instincts she trusted were urging her to run.
But she couldn’t; she was constantly under Malevorn’s eye, and the fervour of the Souldrinkers gathered below was such that no one could have deflected them: this was their day of days. So she was left muttering benefices and doling out poison, and no closer to working it all out.
Sabele will know what to do.
She had to get to Huriya somehow, actually talk to her – but as she swirled the ambrosia in her mouth, she was terrified that she had missed the chance. She quickly found the place behind the rocks she’d already scouted, and making sure no one was looking at her, she spat it all out and surreptitiously rinsed her mouth from her waterskin.
She was careful to feign the same symptoms as the rest, conscious that Malevorn was only a hundred yards away, sitting on an old stone throne and observing them all. Her weapons were stowed in her tiny room in the ruined palace, her pack prepared.
When night falls and he is tending to the first drinkers . . . that’s when I’ll run . . .
In the meantime all she could do was lie on her side, and watch her happy, exhilarated, guileless brethren die, certain that they were about to be born again.
SK’THALI FAIL.
AFREET.
KILL ME.
*
To the east, the waning moon was a sliver carved into the pale blue sky. Opposite, the sun fell towards the horizon in a scarlet blaze. There was a cold hum in the air, and Malevorn could feel the multi-faceted mind of the daemon waiting in the aether for each of these little gateways to reality to fall open.
Some had panicked as the throes of death began and were trying to crawl out of the plaza, but gradually each succumbed. He kept a special eye on Hessaz, but she’d gone still from the moment she’d lain down, as many others had, surrendering themselves to the ambrosia. The woman from Mirobez went last, her son already corpselike in her arms – the ambrosia had been brewed for bigger bodies than his. She was screaming at him, hers the only voice left as the plaza fell silent, tearing at her hair, shrieking prayers that slurred into mumbles until she rolled over and went still.
And now it begins . . .
He rose, walked to the edge of the platform and raised his hands. Calling wizardry-gnosis to his hands, he triggered the protective circle – a rectangle, in fact, for the shape didn’t really matter so long as it was regular. He shouted aloud in the Runic speech – not magic-words, but a verbalising of his intent to aid focus, and a warning to the daemon waiting to enter these dying Souldrinkers that the moment was nigh, though he doubted it needed telling. Indigo rays of light shot from his fingers and suddenly the whole plaza lit up, then it faded again, leaving the wards in place.
Those inside could still leave, though they’d feel some resistance in crossing the boundaries he’d etched: but anyone possessed by Bahil-Abliz would suffer excruciating pain and be unable to cross. That was the purpose of the circle: to keep the summoned daemon from its summoner, giving the Wizard time to take control.
How many will survive? He licked his lips in anticipation, calculating how many he might need to conquer Pallas. After he’d been broken, Adamus had admitted that there were no more than a dozen Keepers still alive, and they were mostly decrepit. I think a hundred new Ascendants will be enough, but the more the merrier . . .
A few minutes after the Mirob
ez woman collapsed, the first of the bodies began to twitch and stir back to life, their jerky movements spreading like a virus. From his vantage atop one of the tombs they looked like maggots exposed when rotting timber is pulled aside, ugly, clumsy wrigglers. He fingered the jewelled collar he’d found in the unplundered tomb, getting used to the unfamiliar weight, for after today he’d seldom be without it.
Then the first of his brood sat up, kindling gnostic-fire, then ramming head-first into the protective circle, making the invisible web of light suddenly flash a very visible scarlet. It laid both hands on the barrier and began to rip.
This is it!
There were risks to a mass conversion, but it was the only way: had anyone seen what happened to those that went before, they would have resisted. This was the trade-off: putting himself in mortal danger.
He conjured the name of the daemon – BAHIL-ABLIZ! – then hurled it like a javelin into the skull of the Dokken trying to destroy the circle. The daemon clutched its skull, trying to reject the binding as it came steaming towards him, out of control and changing shape, growing horns and teeth, humanity falling away as the aether-beast took over its host. Hate blazed from it, and fear rippled like a shock-wave as the rest of the dying Dokken stirred. But he fed the hook he’d planted, shouted the command – SUBMIT! – and left the mental link open. It locked wills with him instantly, tried to blind and stun him, to overwhelm him.
All he had to do was speak three words, and make the daemon believe them.
You. Are. Mine.
It wasn’t so hard, not with the daemon’s name to anchor his will and the gnostic power at his disposal. The demon caved in, fell to its knees and put its forehead to the ground in worship. He swallowed and stared down at it while panting from the exertion of his gnosis.
One down. Six hundred or so to go, with luck . . .
It wasn’t so many, of course. Almost half died while he lost himself in the job of subduing the rest, presumably Hessaz among them, for he never saw her as he fought to subdue those who survived. Sometimes singly, at other times four or five at a time, he pacified them before locking in his control of each individual using a gem in the jewelled collar around his neck. Each gem turned scarlet as it took on the binding of an individual Ablizian, and with each one he added, the necklace’s own aura of power grew and began to fuse with the rest, until he was wearing a collar of red diamonds, glittering with energy.
After an hour, with his gnosis running low, he cut the throat of a newly-made slave – a young man with fanatical eyes – and inhaled his soul to replenish himself. He took care not to let the daemon inside him. A brief vision filled his consciousness – the young man’s life – then power blazed through him: of Ascendant’s might.
More than renewed, and carried along on a wave of exultation, he laboured on, until far into the night, the last of the newly possessed Dokken fell to its knees before him. Two hundred and ninety-three of them, all possessed by Bahil-Abliz and his multi-faceted mind, which was enslaved to him. Two hundred and ninety-three . . .
Hel, let’s call it Three Hundred . . . of the ‘Blessed’.
I’m going to crush the sultan and the Sacrecours and rule the whole of the known world. My reign will last for ever.
He assembled his possessed Dokken – his Ablizians – and accepted their worship.
*
Malevorn never saw Hessaz slip away, so caught up was he in his great task.
I’m just another body, one of those who didn’t get up again . . . She slithered around the edge of the plaza and darted down an alley as behind her the Souldrinker Brethren rose and began to chant Malevorn’s name. She could scarcely move for trembling, could barely see through her tears.
Dear Ahm, what has he done to us?
But there was no time for that. She had to get out.
She raced for her room, threw on her pack and armed herself with feverish speed, straining her ears all the while for footfalls or nearby expenditure of the gnosis. But the reverberations of power from the plaza was echoing over her awareness, deafening her to all other powers.
Then she dashed towards the crypt and Huriya’s cell. She didn’t know how much time she might have, but she assumed it wouldn’t be long. Malevorn had chosen his prison cleverly: there was only one way in or out, and the cells were underground, so even a powerful Earth-mage couldn’t dig fast enough to reach them without Malevorn sensing it. She had to get in and out before Malevorn realised what she was doing.
I have to kill Toljin and get Nasatya out. Huriya too . . . Toljin was the first problem; she had a disturbing certainty that Malevorn was somehow linked to him.
But she was a shapechanger, and a hunter.
Around the corner from Toljin’s post, out of sight, she shed her pack and weapons again, and then her clothes. Relying on the gnostic echoes from the plaza above to mask her efforts, she drew on her strongest affinities: Morphism and Animagery. Like most of her kind, she knew four or five animals well; the one she chose now wasn’t one she took often, for it disturbed her. But tonight it was her best choice: so she pressed arms and legs together and let the gnosis-energy shiver down her spine, changing in a flood of sensations, an agonised ecstasy that hurled her to the stones and made her twist and bend and flow.
Twelve seconds later, a cobra the size of a full-grown python slithered its way along the passage, then using kinesis she flowed to the roof and began to coil her way forward.
She took the final bend and saw Toljin, standing to attention like a statue. His eyes were unfocused, and there was a strange emptiness to him.
She reached a point above him, opened her mouth—
—as he suddenly became aware and shields began to flare. She lunged, burst through the unformed wards and six-inch fangs clamped onto his left shoulder and flooded the wound with venom. She wrenched, pulled him upwards and hammered him against the ceiling beams, then the wall. He tried to reach his sword, but she tossed a coil around him, pinned the arm and bit again, constricting all the while.
He burst into flame, and as her scales seared, the sudden pain sent her squealing and writhing away. Her convulsions threw him from her, momentarily out of reach, and she slithered backwards, beginning to lose control of the shape-change in the pain. As they both rolled apart, a new agony gripped her as the spell reversed and suddenly her tail was splitting and shortening to legs, her burned skin screaming in protest. A few yards down the corridor Toljin was trying to rise, but his shoulder was mottled black and yellow and he was choking and struggling to breathe, asphyxiating before her eyes. They stared at each other in the full throes of agony, each unable to move, each in a race to recover first. Hessaz screamed at herself to change-change-change, plucked arms from her side, snatched up his scimitar then hacked down with all her strength.
His head rolled from his body and the blade snapped on the flagstones beneath his neck. She fell over him, clinging to the hilt with six inches of broken blade remaining, gibbering prayers.
Nasatya wailed from behind his cell-door, and she thought that maybe Huriya gurgled something; those sounds gave her something to cling to, forcing her to go on. Shaking like a newborn colt, she pulled the keys from Toljin’s belt and scrambled to Nasatya’s door.
As she flung it open the little boy squealed at the sight of her, standing there bloody and naked and terrified, and hid his face. That left her at a loss for a moment; somehow she’d thought he’d be silent and compliant, even eager to see her. ‘Stay there!’ she told him, praying he would obey her.
After a moment she turned to Huriya’s cell door, and as she did, the eyes in Toljin’s severed head opened.
‘Hezzaz, Hezzaz,’ it slurred, ‘what are you doing, Hezzaz? I’m coming for you.’
She’d never fainted in her life, but she almost did then; everything lurched as she clung to the doorframe and fought off a wave of dizziness. She steadied herself as the head fell silent, jammed the key in the lock, twisted and threw the door open.
Huriya looked up at her, eyes bulging in hope and dread as Hessaz ran to her, wrenching at the chains; she tried to smash them, but her blade was already broken, and the gnostic bindings threaded through them were well beyond her ability.
Lord Ahm, please help us!
Huriya looked at her with desparing, pleading eyes.
Hessaz understood immediately: there was no way to get Huriya out, not in time. She had to get Nasatya out before they were trapped here. But it still brought a lump to her throat as she stared down at the tiny Keshi girl.
I despised you. I resented that you took Sabele, who was our guide, then toyed with our pack for your own purposes. If it wasn’t that you are also Sabele now, I’d leave you to your fate.
She placed the broken blade over Huriya’s heart and looked her in the eyes; she saw only calm acceptance now. ‘This is for Sabele,’ she said softly.
She drove the blade in, and kissed the girl on her lips.
*
‘Get to her! Now—! Kill anyone who comes between you and her!’ Malevorn strode through his Ablizians, shouting orders, the scarlet diamond necklace glowing in his hand, his senses extended to instruct his charges. But the command he wielded felt sluggish, for the lines of control were still taking shape. He’d lost Toljin a few seconds after seeing the face of the bitch who’d killed him.
I should have killed the fucking Noorie cunni.
The danger he was in was all too apparent; he hadn’t yet managed to undo the heart-binding that linked his own life to Huriya’s.
How the Hel did she slip past me? He gripped his sword tighter and sent the guards sprinting to the cell to protect the one thing that made him vulnerable. ‘Hurry! Bring—’
He staggered as something burst in his ribcage, a feeling like being torn apart by giant invisible talons. Strength drained from his limbs; he stumbled and fell to his knees, and the Ablizians all turned their faces towards him, their eyes filling with curiosity at this newly unveiled weakness.