by David Hair
Corinea obviously sensed it too. ‘They’re building to something . . .’
‘Then we must interrupt them,’ Ramita said. She gathered gnosis-fire in her hands as the young monks formed their own defensive line on the edge of the takiya.
He pulled down his hood to open up his peripheral vision, then addressed the beastmen, calling, ‘Who are you?’
The closest of the Ablizians, the hawk-headed one he’d first seen, looked squarely at him, then blinked. A single incredulous word escaped its beak, a reedy, piping sound: ‘Mercer?’
The sound didn’t come from a human mouth; it didn’t even form his name properly. But the tone of contemptuous disbelief told him all he needed.
Malevorn can see through these things’ eyes . . .
‘Watch out!’ he shouted as each of the Ablizians raised their left hands in identical gestures and blazed at him with gnosis-fire. He hurled himself to the ground.
The Ablizians struck at exactly the same instant, with more power than Alaron had ever faced – more than he had ever even conceived – and the only thing that saved him was that he was already halfway to the ground before the coruscating light struck. His shields were torn apart and totally destroyed by the concussive force of that energy, which struck as one, in the exact same spot – but they had aimed for his heart, and he had already been moving. If even one of them had been out of true, or aimed lower, he would have been cut in half.
Instead, he found himself lying in the dust, twenty yards behind his fellows, winded and shaken, as the twilight lit up with molten violence.
*
Anger pulls the bowstring, Ramita’s family’s guru had been fond of saying. Since they’d stolen her child, Ramita’s anger had been close to the surface whenever she thought of Huriya Makani and Malevorn Andevarion. Her control had snapped when Alyssa Dulayne attacked the monastery. When Alaron vanished in a livid blast of fire, her instant thought was that no one could survive such a thing, not even her new husband – and that kindled fury and terror in her.
As the Ablizians reeled in the wake of their own strike, she and the Merozains lashed out in response; unlike their attackers, however, their return fire was ragged and ineffective and sprayed off their shields – except for Ramita’s. She sent twinned kinesis-blows at the hawk-headed creature who’d spoken: a savage double-punch from thirty yards away, with all the unique strength that Antonin Meiros had bred into her. The first blow slammed into the Ablizian’s shields with overwhelming force and tore them open. The second, unopposed, shattered the creature’s face, driving the shards of bone and break back into its brain cavity. It dropped, and the rest of the Ablizians staggered, as if they’d all felt the blow.
They are joined somehow, the practical part of her brain reported. The enraged part shrieked in glee and sought another target as her aura blazed with light . . . and began to pull her body into a form that could contain and control her fury.
Dar-Kana-ji, be with me!
Behind her the Merozains gripped their staves; before her the Ablizians turned and sent a coordinated blast of energy – at her. The air before her blazed like sunlight through coloured glass, both brilliant and blinding, and her shields went rose and gold at the stresses – but Ramita was already in motion, blurring forward, so the blasts shredded layers of shielding, but never quite reached her. Her second blows crushed another Ablizian and they all recoiled again, but before they could properly regroup, Yash and his brothers charged into them, picking out individual foes and forcing them to fight one-on-one, preventing further united strikes. Alone, the Ablizians immediately proved less effective, and half were bludgeoned down in seconds – but now more were pouring in from all sides.
Dar-Kana howled inside Ramita’s heart and she let that wave of fury launch her forwards, through a storm of mage-fire that never quite touched her.
Then her heart lurched with savage exultation and the beast inside her roared. She had heard a voice she loved: Alaron had re-entered the fight, battered, but running freely.
*
Malevorn Andevarion had been waiting in a tower of the ruined castle, watching the net closing on the small group of intruders: a mere twenty to his eighty. Then he saw them: young men in grey robes with wooden staves – wooden staves! And they have the gnosis? He hesitated, not quite crediting what he saw.
The peace-worshippers? Malevorn didn’t know what to make of it, but as the Zains and his Ablizians closed, he realised there was nothing peaceful in the blows these monks were striking, and nothing ineffectual in their shielding, either. Alaron Mercer was lying in a crumpled heap – ha! – but there was a Lakh woman among them: Ramita Ankesharan.
Did Mercer somehow unravel the Scytale before I took it off him? Surely he didn’t waste the Ascendancy on a handful of Zains? It sounded inconceivable, but already he’d lost half a dozen or more of his Ablizians. He shouted through his links for the rest to converge, and flowed through the air himself to join the fray.
Alaron might look dazed, but the Lakh wasn’t: when she saw him coming the air about her shimmered, her aura becoming a dark shroud. Within that darkness she grew arms that held flame and lightning and big, crude blades. She had four arms, then six, looking like a giant spider rearing on hind-legs, her face flashing through bestial to monstrous.
What is she?
At the Isle of Glass he’d seen her hurl a mast through the shields of a pure-blood Inquisitor. In Teshwallabad she’d overcome wards designed to prevent gnosis-use by anyone up to pure-blood in power.
Kore’s Light! he cried to himself, she’s been an Ascendant all along!
But so was he, now – and he had another weapon. He bared his teeth and lifted the gleaming spear. Ruby light shimmered as he readied its blast, waiting unflinching as the thing that Ramita Ankesharan had become stormed towards him, shrieking at him in a voice like thunder, ‘WHERE IS MY SON?’
*
Lillea Selene Sorades drifted almost unnoticed through the chaos of the battle, like a knot of smoke amidst a conflagration. She had no desire to fight, only to keep her charges alive – for much to her surprise, that was how she felt about them now. She hadn’t thought of herself as a caring person, not for centuries, but somehow when she saw them in danger, she realised that she was invested emotionally after all, despite the distance she’d tried to maintain.
When the battle was joined, she wound illusion about herself and did nothing to draw while everyone else was consumed by ferocity and bloodlust – even little Ramita, overcome by the urge to destroy those who’d stolen her child and threatened her lover.
Her own objective was quite different.
She’d had an ulterior motive in getting Alaron to do the scrying to find Malevorn Andevarion – she could have done it herself, and probably quicker – but she hadn’t wanted her gnostic touch detected, because now she knew who she was really trailing. His touch, so achingly familiar though she’d not felt it in more than five hundred years, had been all over Malevorn’s gnostic trace, and all through the Ablizian remains in Gatioch.
You’re somewhere near, my love. I know you are . . .
She pulled out her dagger, that same blade she’d plunged into his heart nearly six hundred years ago, and chose a foe. She permitted a goat-headed Ablizian with a narrow skull and winding horns to see her; it snarled and charged. She didn’t flinch, but gripped it in a kinetic fist. The beastman struggled frantically, almost pulling free, then she closed in, and as their eyes met she raised her left hand and plunged her thumb and forefinger into either eye-socket. She threw her awareness into its skull, and they both went rigid as the network of gnostic bindings that tied him to his fellows engulfed her too: a livid blaze of shifting light that throbbed with information.
Th
en she adjusted her perceptions. Overlaying the world of flesh and stone was the aether, the world of light and energy. The Ablizians were linked to each other, but they were also joined to a glowing scarlet ball of light in the hands of Malevorn Andevarion, only a few dozen yards from her, preparing to confront Ramita. The light at that nexus-point was growing with every second, a conflagration beyond any she’d ever seen.
Beyond her experience – but not beyond her reach.
She tightened her grip on the Ablizian’s skull, her fingers gouging out its eyes as it flailed helplessly, then with a wrench she threw a link at Ramita, shouting a warning to shield, while she pulled at the energy of Malevorn’s spear, diverting some of its power to herself. A flash of crimson light forked from the spear in an eye-blink; half poured over Ramita, and the remainder gushed over the Ablizian she was holding.
She let it go as it immolated then crumbled to ash in an eye-blink.
The fire washing over her shields momentarily set her robes alight. Every Ablizian was yowling, and all round her the plaza was blackened, but she was unharmed. She flashed to the next creature, a cobra-headed woman with a scimitar; before the daemon could react she had rammed her left hand down its throat, twisted her wrist and forced her hand upwards, plunging her fingers into its brain. The web of light was throbbing, the spearhead nexus half as bright as it had been. This time she didn’t try to manipulate it: instead, she threw her own spiratus into the link.
The Ablizian woman fell twitching and Corinea collapsed on top, her awareness no longer in her body. But her spiratus flashed along the skeins of light and into the spearhead . . .
. . . and out the other side, into another place entirely.
*
Ramita was focused entirely on the man who had stolen her child, standing before her. She bounded towards him, cleaving a bull-headed Ablizian in two with one of her blades in passing, blasting another with lightning, overloading his shields then turning him to a blackened and shrivelled twig, clearing the path to Malevorn Andevarion.
She felt indestructible; barely registering the glowing red light coalescing around the Inquisitor’s spearhead as she closed the distance. But at the last second, a cool voice spoke inside her skull:
At the same time, something else gripped her, something from the aether that found her and fuelled her, and she shielded a bare instant before a blast of incandescent light engulfed her, a wave of heat and flame that washed over not just her, but everything within twenty yards. Two of the Merozains and four Ablizians just ceased to be: ripped from life and blasted to dust. Another Ablizian standing beside Corinea – who’d suddenly appeared amidst the fighting not twenty yards away – was torched too, but the ancient sorceress looked unharmed.
Ramita’s shields bowed inwards, her clothes shrivelled and caught alight and the blades in her hands went red-hot. The skin on her face and the front of her body seared and she screamed in agony, but the beast inside her snarled and she staggered on. A curtain of fire parted and she saw Malevorn Andevarion staring at her in disbelief. The scarlet light of his spear was lessened, as if it had exhausted its power. He shouted furiously as he lifted it to protect himself, and her first blow, with a sword whose hilt had fused with the flesh in her hand, slammed into the spear-haft.
The wooden shaft snapped.
Something hammered into them both, an explosion of energy that tore them apart. She glimpsed Malevorn as he went spiralling head over heels, but she too flew backwards, the spear-head landing beside her thigh, still blazing with light. She thumped to the ground on her back, winded and dazed, but Andevarion was on his feet, while she was still groaning and fighting for breath.
Then the pain hit her like a bolt of lightning.
Her whole body was burned, her shields were folding up – and Malevorn appeared above her, face blazing. He cast about for the spear-head and when he spotted it on the ground beside her he brandished his sword and it burst into blue fire.
But before he could stab down, he was slammed backwards by a kinetic blow. Then Alaron leapt over her and went after his old college nemesis like a man possessed.
The spear-head pulsed again, and began to move – towards Andevarion – and she grabbed it instinctively. Light blazed agonisingly in her head and she almost passed out, but she clung on grimly, somehow maintaining her grip as she fell into a spider-web of stars.
*
Malevorn hadn’t seen Alaron’s blow coming, but as he spun through the air his well-honed combat instincts took over, he gripped the earth with kinesis and landed on one knee, sword still in hand. He raised it just in time to parry Alaron Mercer’s stupid wooden staff. Then he threw Mercer off with a savage riposte while his mind sought the link to the diamond spear-head. His Ablizians fought on, still guided by Corineus through the spear-link, even though Malevorn was no longer holding it. He tried to draw it to him, but it wouldn’t come –it was gripped in the Noorie woman’s hand. He snarled in frustration, then Mercer came at him again.
Mercer was in grey robes, and his wooden staff was lit up with gnosis-light. The kinetic push he had used had been Ascendant-strong, and his shielding gleamed about him.
Well, well . . . so Mercer did crack the Scytale . . . But Malevorn could taste victory – Mater-Imperia herself had quailed before him. How dare these imbeciles interfere? I am destined for a seat at Corineus’ right hand – gutting Mercer will be the cherry on the cake!
He squared up to Mercer, then went at him with all his skill and fury.
*
Alaron’s staff smashed into Malevorn’s sword and sparks flew as he parried desperately against a battering of kinesis and steel. Fighting Malevorn Andevarion had always been a harrowing experience: his old enemy was bigger, stronger, more ruthless, and with a deadly instinct for picking out a weakness. But this was worse, because Ramita had slumped to the ground, and Alaron was in a delirium of fear for her.
Malevorn kept coming at him, with savage intensity, raining in blows, pushing Alaron to continually defend, all the while sending bursts of mage-fire at Ramita’s body too, forcing Alaron to spread his shielding, preventing him from countering.
Is she even alive? What happened to her? Alaron prayed silently as he fought, wanting only to throw himself over her, but he couldn’t take his eyes from Malevorn for an instant.
All about them the Merozain Brothers and the animal-headed shapeshifters hammered at each other, spread across the plaza, with the Zains in a ragged circle in the middle, and almost double their number of Ablizians pressing inwards beneath the shadow of the broken castle and the shattered Dom-al’Ahm. They were holding their own, perhaps even winning more of the duels, but Alaron sensed that his people were tiring. With Ramita lying motionless, unable to lend her power, they were beginning to waver.
Caught in a losing fight, he tasted desperation, realising that he must break the evolving pattern of this fight before all was lost. He blocked another combination, parried and countered.
Try this, bastard!
He sent one image of himself left while darting right and jabbing at Malevorn’s midriff. Malevorn half-turned the wrong way for a moment and his staff slammed through his foe’s shielding. The shield flared red, he kicked and caught Malevorn on his booted ankle, sent him off-balance. For a moment Malevorn was vulnerable, but he recovered with a blaze of fire and an impossible twist, flipping over, his face a mask of concentration. Alaron circled, keeping himself between Ramita and Malevorn, praying that hadn’t been his last chance. Beside him, another of his Merozains – Meero with the pug-nose and steely eyes, who’d liked to joke that the new order was really named after him – fell, his throat torn out. The Merozain Brothers tightened ranks, fully on the defensive now.
‘You’ve been practising, Mercer,’ Malevorn acknowledged with a curl of the lip. ‘But you’re using a stick.’ He lunged, struck the staff and flashed his blade along it, and he would ha
ve taken Alaron’s fingers off if he hadn’t yanked his hand back just in time: an action that he turned into a jab to the head with the other end of the kon-staff. Malevorn’s shield held, but he was again forced to back up.
‘Useful things, sticks,’ Alaron panted. ‘Both ends can kill, you know?’ His eyes flickered around the mêlée, saw that only half a dozen of his Merozains were down, but they were outnumbered and giving ground. Tegeda was in there, fighting like a Hadishah with whirling scimitar and slashing dagger. But one of the Ablizians stabbed Urfin through the chest and inhaled his soul and Alaron could almost see the energy coursing into its kindred. Come on, he berated himself, do something!
But Malevorn’s blade and the need to protect Ramita kept him pinned in place. Then he saw Corinea, lying lifeless over the body of another Ablizian, her left hand buried past the wrist in its throat and its fangs embedded in her forearm.
Kore’s Blood, we’re not going to win this . . .
‘You found someone who could decipher the Scytale?’ Malevorn asked curiously, as if they weren’t fighting for their lives. All his old arrogance was coming back. ‘I can’t ask you afterwards,’ he added with a sneer, ‘because you’ll be dead.’
Alaron was silent for a moment, then he replied, more to buy time than anything else, ‘I worked most of it out myself.’ He needed a plan. He’d been fighting Malevorn half his life – he knew his strengths and could guess at the weaknesses; he’d just never been in a position to exploit them before. But perhaps there was a way . . . even if Malevorn did have access to all the gnosis, could he use it all . . . ?
He parried hard, seeking a respite, preparing a new attack.
‘You worked it out? Never!’ Malevorn sneered. ‘You had help, surely!’
‘Unlike you, I have friends,’ Alaron replied.
‘And where are they now, Mercer? Dead or dying.’