by David Hair
All of a sudden everyone in the room was clutching at their own throats, turning pale and breathing heavily, but Cera felt no affliction at all, just the tightening of her breath in sympathy for Elena as she clutched her hand.
The Noros woman’s eyes locked on hers in dread. ‘Kaz . . .’ she choked out, then fell to her knees, her whole form becoming softly luminous, white light coalescing about her and then streaming upwards through the ceiling as the guests backed away from them.
Cera dropped Elena’s hand, frozen and terrified as the image of the giant Keshi filled her mind . . . with Timori on his shoulders.
She screamed her brother’s name and pelted towards the stairs to the royal suite.
*
Kazim Makani was still laughing at a teasing jest from the nurse. ‘Borsa, too much!’ he cried at another outrageous comment about him and Elena. He was seeking a riposte as he opened the nursery door, about to exit the room, and his eyes didn’t even register the deeper patch of shadow to his right, where Borsa’s door was partly open.
Then a spear thrust from the darkness and the leaf-bladed head plunged into his side, smashing into his lower ribcage, breaking bones and ripping through muscle and flesh, straight into his right lung. A man emerged behind it, smaller than him, but with considerable gnosis augmenting his strength. The blow was a brutal shock and he gasped, strangely numbed to the impact, though he could feel every inch of that spearhead as it tore him inside. He staggered, thrown against the doorframe, and then slid down it.
The man holding the spear wore the uniform of a Nesti guard – perhaps that of the strange guard he’d spoken to – but the face was different now: a straggling red beard and thinning hair, his nondescript, unknown face gleeful as he bore down and shoved Kazim to the floor.
Then purple gnostic-light coalesced in the spearman’s hands, flowed down the shaft of the spear and into Kazim. He fought it, but the sheer agony of the steel embedded in his flesh destroyed his resistance, and his limbs went numb. He crashed over on his back, his skull bouncing, dimly hearing Timori and Borsa cry out in terror.
With a hideous leer the spearman locked gazes with him and for a moment, Mesmeric energies coursed through his skull, freezing his brain as his intellect locked with his assailant’s. For just a moment, alien thoughts tore through his mind—
—and he became the other: a pale misanthrope, conjuring in darkness, stealing bodies from graves and brewing poisons and scratching at the future . . . uncertain and afraid, hating people, but craving them . . . seeking the approval of others and never getting it, until his god – Gurvon Gyle – took him in . . . Then a torrent of information filled his skull as conversations with Gyle, treasured like diamonds, blurred past him—
—and then the link closed down, its purpose served, for now the assassin knew him. The killer gripped the spear anew and twisted it in his wound, tearing sideways, then ramming the spearhead all the way through his body until it emerged from his back and crunched into the tiles, pinning him to the ground. Purple light – necromancy-gnosis – gripped him, and leeched at his very being.
Kazim’s senses began to fail – then white light burst through him from below and he almost blanked out.
*
Rutt Sordell released the spear, content with where it was right now. He wasn’t alarmed about the pale healing-gnosis that had manifested about the Keshi; that stank of Elena Anborn. He’d expected it from the moment he’d plunged the spear into the Keshi’s side. He understood their link better now that he’d raped the Keshi’s mind as he held him immobile and helpless. Killing her lover would be a blow for Elena – but forcing her to try and save him would utterly neutralise her. The life-drain spell he’d imbedded into the spear would continue to suck the Keshi’s life-force, forcing Elena to give more and more . . .
She’s got about a minute before she either lets him die, or passes out herself, he estimated. And there were no other guards up here, so he now had a free hand . . . and Cera Nesti was on her way.
With a snarl, he turned on the others in the nursery. Before he could focus his power, the nurse screamed and threw herself at him, but he flicked his left hand, catching her in a kinetic grip, and slammed her backwards, headfirst into a pillar. Her neck snapped audibly and she thumped bonelessly to the tiles and went still. He barely broke stride.
But somehow, in the space of that blink of an eye, the boy-king had disappeared. He snarled in baffled fury as he stormed into the centre of the room, widening his senses, seeking where he could have gone.
*
Elena found herself on the floor, vomit in her throat and the most incredible agony she’d ever endured spiking her through the right side of her chest. She spat a thick red stream of phlegm and wine and half-digested food, but she barely noticed, for all of her awareness was spiralling upwards, following the stream of light that led to her stricken lover. She fed that link with everything she could muster, gave all that she had to keep him alive, but it was like pouring water down a drain – it was taking more and more, and having no effect whatsoever. What’s happened . . .?
Her eyes fluttered open and she saw a circle of terrified Rimoni, Inveglio’s dinner guests, staring down at her. They had realised that they weren’t poisoned at all, but that something else was happening. Then Pita Rosco dropped to his knees beside her and pulled her hand from her throat, trying to clear her windpipe so she could breathe. Behind him, Piero Inveglio was shouting orders and running for the stairs, from where Cera’s panicky cries were echoing.
Timori . . . Kazim . . . something’s happened to them. She clutched Pita’s arm desperately and choked out, ‘Pita! We have to save Timi!’ Her vision blurred as a fresh spasm of light burst from her, pulled from her body by Kazim’s frantic efforts to stay alive. Her whole grip on what was around her wavered, almost tearing her awareness from her body and sending it spinning upwards, but she anchored herself, spat her mouth clear and grabbed Pita harder. ‘Get me up there!’
She dimly felt the treasurer’s big arms enfold her, then she was hoisted upright and managed somehow to get feet beneath herself. They staggered towards the stairwell, then she managed to separate just enough energy from the flow pouring into Kazim to pull clear of Pita’s grasp, draw on Air-gnosis and take flight, soaring past the guardsmen who were flooding the stairs to the third floor and the royal suite.
*
‘Where in Hel . . . ?’ Rutt stared about him, initially mystified, until the simple solution became clear: Timori Nesti had simply dropped and scrambled under his bed. He bent down and peered into the darkness until he saw the frightened face and big, glistening eyes. ‘Now, now, my king,’ he sneered, raising a finger and letting mage-fire kindle and grow.
The nurse Borsa was motionless; if she was still alive – which he doubted – she wouldn’t be for long. Her neck was broken, and her soul would soon disconnect from her body. In the doorway, Kazim Makani had perhaps another half a minute, and though killing him would be simplicity itself, it would also free Elena; right now Rutt could see that Kazim was draining her, like a millstone around the neck of a drowning woman, dragging her to her death.
By the time I’m done here, she’ll not be a factor any more. I’ll be able to run amok, until the Ordo Costruo can rouse some kind of defence. If they even can . . .
For the first time in years he felt truly alive. Death stalked the room: the colour of the blood pooling beneath Kazim Makani was vivid scarlet; the reek of sweet iron and voided bowels was glorious in his nostrils, and the Death Scarab inside his skull felt like it was swelling up fit to burst his head.
‘Goodbye, little king,’ he smirked, and blasted.
He never saw the wards at all: the crystalline shields that reflected his mage-bolt back at him like a mirror, striking his own shields and hurling him across the floor in a dizzying spin. He hit the wall beside the dying nurse and rebounded off it.
He lay there panting, bewildered, then he realised what had happened: Elena had made a
haven there under the bed, the place any child would flee to . . .
He snarled in fury, picked himself up and turned to where Kazim Makani, ashen-faced, was choking out his final breaths. The spear-shaft was jutting from him.
Then a girl in a violet dress appeared in the doorway, her long black hair coming loose from some elaborate hairstyle and her face filled with horror. The Nesti really are queuing up to deliver themselves to me . . . he thought with a grin, and he re-gathered his energies. His left hand stretched towards Timori beneath the bed and his right to Cera as she saw him and froze.
Then he blasted mage-fire from either hand, engulfing the royal bed with the left – survive that, you little pipsqueak! – while his right sent it straight towards the defenceless queen-regent—
—just as the door flew closed . . .
*
It wasn’t a plan for survival, just sheer reflex as Kazim registered that Cera had appeared; he saw her eyes swell in sudden terror and with the last of his strength, he kicked out at the door, smashing it closed just as a bolt of energy struck it with a roar, splintering and charring the timbers – but the bolt didn’t get through.
That movement cost him dearly: a tearing sensation inside his chest almost struck him down, and the pain he’d somehow blocked from his mind hit him like a wave, sending him into shock. He clutched the spear-shaft, trying to expel it from himself, as the room around him ignited and Timori cried out in terror.
It was the boy’s voice that galvanised him, keeping him conscious. Ignoring the indescribable pain, he rolled himself sideways, wrenching the spear-head from the broken floor. In the extremity of pain, the room flashed pure white, and for several seconds he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe . . .
But his hands gripped the shaft anew, and this time he pulled . . .
*
Elena slammed Cera aside as she reeled before the burning nursery door, then hurled herself at it, the portal flying apart as she blazed through – then something like a giant fist hammered her shields and threw her sideways and she hit the wall hard, her shields flaring scarlet. She smacked into the floor, her leg twisting beneath her, and she yowled as her left knee ligaments tore in half. Her eyes were wide open but she barely registered the burning bed, and Timori’s fearful cries were almost lost in the roar of the flames; all she could focus on was the dreadful sight of Kazim, hauling a spear with purple runes pulsing on its shaft from his own body.
Mayten Drexel was in the centre of the room, twisting his head to follow her impact, bloodlust and hatred all over his face, but his aura was wrong, it wasn’t Drexel at all, or not entirely.
‘Farsheyd, Elena,’ the man rasped – farewell – and that single Argundian word told the whole tale.
‘Sordell,’ she gasped, then Kazim blacked out and the link sucked almost all her energy into him, stripping her shields, and the kinetic blow designed only to keep her off-balance instead hurled her like a toy across the smoke-wreathed room. She struck a pillar legs-first and her link with Kazim all but snapped as something shattered in her ruined left knee. Her entire grip on the world almost winked out; all she could do was howl as she landed onto a soft lump that expelled air. Her eyes found Borsa’s face beneath hers, her eyes emptying, her mouth falling slack.
She didn’t quite black out, but as she lay there, helpless, she glimpsed Timori under the bed, still inside her wards – but they were no protection from the smoke, and he couldn’t get out. Then Cera appeared at the doorway and Rutt shouted ‘Ha!’ with chilling satisfaction. Lightning coalesced again in his right fist.
Pale light like mist was forming in Borsa’s mouth.
Elena didn’t stop to think . . . she just clamped her mouth over the dying nurse’s and inhaled.
Energy blazed around her and was ripped away whole, then darkness swallowed her in one gulp.
*
Rutt Sordell stopped and stared, momentarily stunned, as Elena quite clearly soul-drank the nurse. Since when—?
Then he realised the danger, but it was a moment too late, for the link between Elena and the Keshi flashed back into life and an intense light flew from Elena in front of him to her fallen lover behind him, burning itself on his retinas. For a moment the life-drain spell embedded in the spear fed him anew—
—then it shut off abruptly as he turned to face what he now realised must be his main threat—
—but that was all the time it took for Kazim Makani to raise the bloodied spear, its death-runes glowing, and hurl it with brutal strength the six yards between them. It took a tenth of a second for it to leave the Keshi’s hand and pierce Rutt’s body, ripping through him and knocking him from his feet and onto the burning bed. His shields already shredded, he tried to reset his wards, lost in the impact, but there wasn’t time and he had nothing to protect him when the flames roared and seized hungrily upon his stolen uniform. Pain engulfed him and he went rigid – and then instinct took over as inside his head, something as big as a clenched fist wrenched itself free of all the tendrils of sensory links and nerves and scrabbled towards the light . . .
*
Cera was too aghast to scream as Kazim collapsed onto his front. She staggered forward, stumbling over his leg and almost falling, dimly conscious of boots pounding in the landing outside and people calling for her to stop, to beware.
She saw Elena motionless in the corner beside Borsa. Beyond Kazim, the impaled attacker was hurled onto the bed and quickly engulfed in flames. Timori’s voice was faltering, and the radiating heat was a physical blow, making her stagger backwards. Dimly in the smoke and shimmering air she saw something black and gleaming push itself from the attacker’s mouth.
Then Timi choked and coughed weakly from beneath the bed.
‘TIMI!’
She forced her body towards the bed, ignoring the roiling heat and calling at the top of her voice, ‘Yagna! Yagna!’ – the word Elena had implanted in her bed-wards so Cera or Timori could neutralise them. She blindly thrust her hand beneath the bed, tried to grab him—
—when something huge and black, big as a rat but shiny like a giant flea, launched itself from the burning bed and gripped her face.
She screamed and convulsed, then started gagging as legs with hooked claws latched on to her, ripping her skin, and something slick and bulbous rammed itself, pulsing, into her mouth. It got halfway, then she fell and struck her head as she flailed about, seizing the huge beetle-thing and trying to jam her fingers into the edges of its carapace, seeking to prise it from her face.
The creature squirmed and rammed its abdomen all the way into her mouth and she started choking on it, retching, losing her breath and almost blacking out. Something gushed out of it and her mouth was flooded with some sort of liquid – then her fingers found enough purchase and she ripped the scarab from her face, her skin tearing and blood filling her eyes as she gripped it around the thorax in her right hand, then rolled on her side, spewing a white mucus that was filled with inch-long larvae that writhed and snapped their tiny mandibles. But her eyes were on the thing in her right hand: she thrust it into the flames, careless of her own flesh, vomited again and again, then spitting furiously, trying to get every last bit of it out of her, oblivious as her hand turned red then black, and started to blister—
—and the insect in her hand screamed, shrivelled and burst into flame—
—then the pain hit her.
Booted feet slammed into the tiles beside her head and suddenly there were people everywhere, men in armour covered with violet tabards, bellowing panicky orders, wrenching her from the flames. She saw a man lift the burning bed, frantically reaching, and saw a small body that was blackened and still, then the red-searing agony struck her again, and she fell away from it all, into nothingness.
25
Funeral and March
Oil and Wine
The Rimoni brought two things to Javon, or Ja’afar, as the local Jhafi name it: olive trees and grapevines. Finding their stock well-suited to the climate
of certain areas, they produced olive oil and wines of an intensity not known in Yuros, products that have since become justifiably famous.
ORDO COSTRUO COLLEGIATE, HEBUSALIM, 874
These are hard lands, and they are not home. We are in exile, and our oldest songs speak of our return. But that dream does not grow closer with the passing of time; it recedes, like a tide that never turns. Instead we seek to make our exile as homely as we may, to ease our souls.
ANONYMOUS RIMONI TRADER, JAVON, 869
Forensa, Javon, on the continent of Antiopia
Awwal (Martrois) 930
21st month of the Moontide
The customs for burying a King of Javon were many, filled with symbolism and meaning to both Amteh and Sollan. The preparation of the body had taken three days, while the sarcophagus and the tomb were readied. There were honour guards, purifying rites, vigils, prayers, and many, many tears to cry.
‘Fuel for the pyre,’ the drui chanted, the traditional funerary call of the Sollans, inviting donated fuel, but also reminding all that the ultimate fuel for the pyre would be the bodies they were here to burn. Cera had always thought cremation to be heartless, but it felt sacred today. The small Sollan chapel within Krak al-Farada was packed so tight, and so heavy with incense and sweat, that it was hard to find air that didn’t taste as if it’d been inhaled already.
Shears reaped the fuel: hair from the heads of the chief mourners. Cera had been shorn first; her hair, which had reached to the small of her back, was now reduced to a black tangle of tresses on the ground, crudely hacked with seven cuts, the traditional number. It was now only a finger’s-length, and she felt like a stranger to herself. One of the younger drui gathered the clumped hair from all down the line and threw it into the fires. Every woman she saw in the crowd had cut her hair, as if their own son had died, and she felt a surge of kinship to them, like being held in giant hands. It gave her the strength to keep breathing. Her already dark skin was smeared in ash, and blood was dripping from the ritual cut above her left breast. Her eyes stung from crying so much. She hadn’t slept; she couldn’t be alone.