by David Hair
The men came at him from all sides, but he’d fallen into his state of trance-fighting where the gnosis came as easily as breathing. He threw the central weapons rack into a cluster of men with devastating power, spearing them with a wall of metal, then caught up a bunk bed with kinesis and sent it spinning into the next group, breaking bones and skulls. Thrown weapons spun from his shields and he spewed fire from the tip of his staff into the next group, dropping three and giving him a clear path to the left. Then Ramita entered, hurling the men on the right backwards against the wall, where they slumped, broken or dazed.
It was like bullying children, and left a nasty taste. He spoke to those still conscious. ‘Here’s the choice: stay in this room and don’t come out until someone comes for you, or we’ll have to deal with you.’
Please just stay out of our way.
To his relief, the remaining men who still could fled to the corner and turned their backs. He and Ramita passed, sealed the doors behind them, and found the stairs. They climbed, hurrying, but with heightened caution: there was a sense of gnostic pressure building above, and they felt little life here now that the armed men had been left behind. Southpoint probably didn’t need a lot of guarding usually.
‘What is this for?’ Ramita wondered, brandishing the silver mask that the woman mage had worn.
‘I don’t know, Alaron replied, ‘but I’ve heard the solarus crystals are deadly, so perhaps it protects from that?’
Ramita frowned, then drew the cord over her head and left the face-piece perched on top of her hair. ‘We will need one for you, then.’
They went onwards, through a deserted landing and up a narrow stair, then Alaron sensed life again. He reached ahead with his inner eye, then poked two fingers forwards. ‘Guards,’ he whispered. ‘Give me a moment.’
He reached out and encountered shielded minds: magi. They were both young battle-magi, one dark-haired, the other bald, both tense and curious, their attention on what was happening behind the door they guarded. That would change the moment he came into view, of course.
Then Ramita walked past him, robed in black and wearing the silver mask over her face. The two young men turned to her, saw the mask and relaxed. A second later she’d gripped them with kinesis and slammed their heads together. She plucked a mask from one of the unconscious men and handed it to Alaron.
He put it on, then examined the door. The feeling of gnostic pressure beyond was immense. He took a deep breath, and faced her. ‘Ramita, this is it.’ He swallowed. ‘I wish we’d had longer,’ he blurted.
‘We will, my love. Years and years.’
He stared into her eyes, drank her in. Then there was a sudden, hair-lifting shiver of power that radiated from the next room, dragging them back to the present. The realisation hit him that there might never be another shared look, another kiss, another morning waking in each other’s arms. It almost took the strength from his legs.
He put a hand to the door, vaguely surprised but thankful to find it unlocked, because the three days of flight and the latest exertions had left him hollowed out.
All right. This is where we find out all the answers.
He took a moment to marshal his forces anew: the sixteen arms of the gnosis, waiting for him. He took stock: he wasn’t the world’s best mage or warrior. He’d stumbled into this place in time. But there were moments when he’d touched his potential and done things he’d never dreamed he was capable of. That fortified him, as did his purpose: he had a wife to protect and love, so they could grow old together.
He burst through into a blur of brilliant light, as a dozen masks turned his way, but his eyes went instantly to the centre of the dome, where a man was lying on a reclining throne, his mask upturned to the ceiling of crystals that glowed like clustered stars. His arms were raised and crackling with static lightning, gnosis energy spilling from eyes and mouth.
Alaron smashed his staff into the face of the first mask and it crumpled inwards, the skull of the black-robed wearer shattering. Lines of force linking him to the throne frayed and flashed, and every other masked mage in the chamber shrieked in unison.
Then all Hel was here.
*
Ramita Ankesharan could feel the presence of her gods: Vishnarayan the Protector’s hand was on Al’Rhon now, his armour and his weapon, but Sivraman was there too, in his wild, graceful movements as he struck down one masked man, then another, spiralling around the room.
She waited a moment, letting these magi see her as another masked face and turn away again, their eyes instead drawn to Alaron’s violence. She spent those seconds taking their measure, just as Corinea had taught her, until . . .
Now!
The first of the mages to strike at Alaron used fire: as he evaded, she conjured water inside that mage’s mouth, then rammed it down his throat, leaving him choking for breath, drowning on the floor. She went into the centre, to the nexus, while all eyes were still on Alaron.
Alaron was moving in a blur, striking while the Keepers were still locked within the destructive spell and unable to give themselves wholly to defence. He cut down a middle-aged female with just an empowered staff blow, then another with fire. As one tried to change shape, Ramita intervened, ghosting a long spiratus arm through his shields and a finger into his skull. He screamed and collapsed, then she hurled another Keeper aside, a bent woman with a shrill, imperious voice who tried to conjure a daemon. On the far side of the circle, Alaron countered Necromancy with healing-gnosis, then zeroed in on weakness: drawing the air from the lungs of the Earth-sorcerer then slamming him against the wall, broken.
The throne swivelled, the Keeper in the seat flailing his arms as his helpers were slain or stunned, unable to intervene while he was in the throes of this web of powers. Ramita lit the dagger in her hand and sent it flying at him, impelled by kinesis and alive with energies. It pierced the enthroned Keeper’s shields as if they were gauze and plunged to the hilt into his chest. He choked, bewildered, and in his agony lost control of the forces he wielded. Light blasted in every direction, along the threads of power that bound him to his fellows.
With a hideous, multi-voiced shriek, the remaining masked magi were thrown aside like toys, hammering into the walls and dropping, broken, to the stone floor. The man on the throne writhed and gibbered, sliding from the seat as he clawed at the knife. Healing-gnosis kindled and she snuffed it out, then Alaron slammed his staff across the man’s throat.
‘What do we do to stop this?’ Alaron demanded.
The man on the ground looked up at him, bewildered. ‘Who are you?’
‘How do we make it stop?’
‘You can’t – you’re too late. This tower’s going to explode in five minutes and the whole Bridge is going down.’ He coughed blood. ‘Please, get me out of here! There’s a windship moored to the outside, waiting! Please—’ Then he fainted.
Alaron looked at Ramita, then the throne. ‘We may be too late . . .’
‘Or perhaps not,’ Ramita said. Parvasi, Mother of All, be with me.
Above, the crystal ceiling was ablaze, tendrils of power reaching blindly downwards. She shared one final look with Alaron, then with deliberate movements, lowered herself into the throne and raised her hands to the heavens.
The first of the energy threads touched her fingers, then blazed through her.
*
At first Ramita was alone in a wilderness of stars and forked lightning. All awareness of Alaron, of the room, the tower, her own body even, fell away, and she was caught in a mesh of light, trying to make sense of a thousand sensations at once. The powers were too intense, too much. She floundered, began to panic . . .
. . . and then there was a presence with her: Antonin Meiros, his patient face smiling encouragingly. It was another gnostic message, set here on the throne, but it felt so real she almost believed he was truly present.
She did as he said, reached out with a spiratus arm for the apex crystal, jolting as energy coursed through her again, but she shielded her core and began to knot the threads together, weaving gnosis-energy. It was more power than she’d ever handled, but its nature was the same, and she was no longer bewildered. In seconds, she found that her strength was sufficient to control the flow – something that had taken the enthroned Keeper and a dozen others to do.
As she pulled the threads into one rope they fused, and suddenly the play of energy became clear. Southpoint Tower was revealed as a pillar of light, joined to a larger web of energy. Three cords of light shot away from her, two going diagonally left and right – to Sunset and Sunrise Isles, she guessed. But the thickest poured the energy of Southpoint into Midpoint, the centre.
She placed her awareness within those three flows.
For a few seconds there was only the rush of movement, but then she was elsewhere, or her spiratus was, seeing other chambers and other thrones: two men and a woman standing at the other points of the compass – Sunset and Sunrise; Northpoint and Midpoint. All of their faces turned towards her at once, and they knew her in the same instant she knew them.
In Northpoint, Grandmaster Lens Nauvoine of the Inquisition, raised to the Ascendancy sixty years ago, once a giant warrior and now a bloated, toad-like figure in cavernous robes, snarled in startled fury at her.
At Sunset Isle, vulturine Lady Delfinne de Tressot, staunch ally of the Sacrecours, raised fifty years ago, turned her head with diamond-like eyes flashing.
And Raneulf Fasterius, Ascendant and grandfather of Mater-Imperia Lucia Sacrecour, saw her all the way from Sunrise Isle and set his jaw.
On the central throne, Ervyn Naxius spun, his face unmasked, already so ruined that the solarus could do little more, and laughed savagely. ‘Welcome to the end of your husband’s creation, Lady Ramita,’ he spat. He raised a hand, his power augmented by Nauvoine behind him in Northpoint; his gesture was mirrored by the others, then gnostic attacks blazed down the link towards her from three sides.
*
There were three principle goddesses in Omali theology and Ramita became each at once: in the same way that Alaron became a trance-mage, she found she could split her awareness and do several things at once. The concept that one being could encompass others had been inculcated into her from birth, and everything Puravai and Corinea had shown her at Mandira Khojana, how to reach and use all facets of the gnosis, combined with the core of who she was, an Omali Lakh, made this moment.
Sarisa-ji was Queen of Learning, associated with the Great River. Into her Ramita put her awareness of Water and Sorcery and faced the brutal flames that flowed along the direct link to Raneulf Fasterius at Sunrise Isle to the northeast.
Into Laksimi-ji, Goddess of Plenty, she poured her instincts for life and the physical, using hermetic-gnosis against the deathly power radiating towards her from Lady Delfinne on Sunset Isle.
But the greater part of her went into blocking the combined threats of Naxius, augmented by Grandmaster Nauvoine, that flowed the length of the Bridge aiming directly for her. She became, wholly in her heart, Parvasi-ji – but only for a moment, because she let the wilder spirit of Parvasi’s darker incarnation flood through her, becoming the warrior-woman Darikha-ji, wielding Fire and Earth and all her anger.
Initially all she could do was defend, and she couldn’t have survived without the raw power that Antonin Meiros had literally bred into her, or the hundreds of hours of training she had undergone. Even then, she felt like a candle in a rainstorm, flickering at the edge of extinction. Naxius’ grip on her mind was like the claws of a bird of prey, gripping her naked brain and digging in, seeking an edge as he delved into her mind. He pulled up images of Antonin Meiros, dying . . . Kazim, killing him . . . Justina, dying with her throat torn out . . . Nasatya, lost and crying . . .
Showing her Nasatya was a mistake.
I will see him again! And to do that, I must do this! Her spiratus blazed in anger, and she swatted Naxius away as if he were nothing more than a fly. The energy flowing between her to these others suddenly was no longer a tether, but a road. With a growing sense of her own strength, she sent herself down those roads, fighting three at once.
Towards Sunrise Isle, pale-skinned Sarisa-ji, holding a sitar, floated on a lotus flower along the river of power towards the tall, haughty shape of Mater-Imperia’s grandfather. Raneulf Fasterius snapped out runic words as he threw his spells at her, using Fire thaumaturgy with the intensity to melt stone. But she countered with Water, dousing the fires that burst about her, and poured onwards.
Raneulf Fasterius was a cunning fighter, but Ramita was more than an Ascendant and she overwhelmed him like a wave over a sea wall. He shrieked in agony as something like a steam-bath erupted around him, boiling his flesh on the bone, and his consciousness left him.
She stepped inside his fading mind and the silver-masked Keepers in the chamber at Sunrise Isle saw the dead Keeper’s whole body change. The horribly burned corpse on the throne was engulfed by a loomy earthen fog, which cleared to reveal a woman in Lakh attire, crowned in flowers, with skin of the palest blue. She struck a note on a sitar that reverberated through their skulls, and they all collapsed.
Sarisa-ji turned her eyes to the other thrones, where her sisters still fought.
Midpoint Tower, Leviathan Bridge
Junesse (Akhira) 930
24th and last month of the Moontide
Emperor Constant Sacrecour stared at Ervyn Naxius through a glass wall a foot thick. The ancient mage was on the throne, his hands ablaze with power and his face lit with rage as he hurled abuse at some unseen figure.
‘What’s going on?’ Constant demanded. ‘Has Naxius gone mad?’
One of the silver-masked Keepers, an ancient woman with the foulest breath he’d ever had the misfortune to inhale, was mewling with concern. ‘Southpoint has been usurped,’ she lisped.
‘What? How—?’ He had no idea what that meant, but it sounded bad. ‘Who? Why—?’
‘I don’t know,’ the old woman snapped. She was a former nun of Kore, an abbess who’d ingratiated herself into Imperial favour and gained the gift of the Ascendancy a century ago. ‘Naxius contends with the intruder!’
This place no longer felt safe. ‘Is he winning?’
‘I don’t know! I don’t know anything!’
‘Then what damned use are you?’
She looked at him with a puzzled exasperation. ‘Use? I’m not here to be useful, boy, I’m here to bear witness to history. This is a great moment!’
Constant backed away. It didn’t feel like a great moment. He signalled to his guards. ‘Get me out of here.’
Southpoint Tower, Leviathan Bridge
Junesse (Akhira) 930
24th and last month of the Moontide
All Alaron could do was stare through the eyelets of his mask and pray. Ramita was deep in the link now and barely recognisable, not just because of the lurid colours swirling above her head, but for her own magical aura, which was blending with her body, turning her into a tall, regal being with multiple arms and deep blue skin. It was the aura shape she used when wielding the gnosis now, so it didn’t surprise him, but this version was disturbing. It had three heads, looking away to the northeast, north and northwest, and there was a controlled ferocity and escalating rage about her he’d never seen before.
Abruptly she raised her left hand, pointing savagely into the northwest, along a track of light that appeared stretching towards Sunset Isle. His senses were pulled along the link and he saw a woman hunched like a skeletal bird on a throne. She was bathed in purple light, her hands so translucent they looked like bone. But she was howling with dread, and Alaron suddenly sa
w why: there were tree roots writhing towards her, withering as they touched the purple fires she wielded, but getting closer and closer . . .
. . . then suddenly the woman wailed in despair and tried to pull herself from the link. She never got the chance: the thickest tree-root struck like a snake, plunging through her abdomen like a thrown spear and impaling her. As blood soaked her dress, she convulsed, then more roots burst from her mouth and bloomed into leaves and a black flower, and more sprouted from her eyes, and she was engulfed.
Then the nightmare figure changed again, becoming a beautiful Lakh woman who lifted her head and turned to face Midpoint with burning eyes.
Holy Hel . . .
He turned his eyes back to Ramita and cried out in fear for her—
—and of her.
There was no sign of the Ramita he loved now, just a figure streaming dark light. The throne had vanished; it was now a tiger the size of a horse, and the dark goddess was astride the beast as it roared and swiped with claws like daggers. He pressed himself against the wall, fearful of approaching, scared to look away. Ramita radiated heat as if she were made of burning coals; her robes were smouldering and falling apart, while the tiger seemed to be morphing with her, as if it was climbing into her soul. She became a dark giantess, giving voice to her anger.
His eyes followed the link to Midpoint Isle, where a cadaverous old man was seated, wreathed in energy. Behind him lurked another man, and after a moment Alaron understood instinctively that the second figure was far away in Northpoint, a bloated figure clutching the arms of his own throne, eyes bulging with stress. With a yowl like a great cat, Ramita hurled a spear of light that transfixed the fat man, pinned him to his throne. He deflated in a burst of blood that somehow splattered Ramita in Southpoint. She licked it from her face with relish.