The Sceptre of Storms

by Greg James

  “What is it?” asked Sarah.

  “A Mind-Reaver!” shouted Ruth. “Behind me, Sarah, Sula. You cannot fight this thing.”

  “But the Flame—”

  “Will have no effect on this scion of the Fallen One.”

  Sula ignored her and struck at the creature with his sword. The weapon pierced the robe and sunk into the thing’s flesh, and lodged there. The creature continued to come forward, the sword driving deeper and deeper into its body. The weapon was not hindering it at all.

  “By the Mother!” Sula swore, pulling the sword out and retreating into Mistress Ruth’s shadow, his face white and drawn.

  The snout was twitching and writhing through the air as the creature walked towards them. Mistress Ruth raised her hands and let her fingers dance through the air as she uttered a chant.

  “Ai’a Kel’a’Ka! A’aron Fel’ai’Ka! Ta’Aila’Ma! El’a’Ka!”

  The creature stopped in its tracks and held up its tendrils, as if it were warding something off. Sarah watched the slimy limbs twisting and wriggling through the air. The sudden tension was broken by a blast of revolting air that knocked the three of them to the ground.

  “No good,” Mistress Ruth breathed. “Too strong for me. It wove a counter-spell.”

  Sarah was the first back on her feet. The Sword of Sighs lay in the grass, its blade of magical fire flickering. She grasped the hilt, looked at it, and then at the creature. Then she let the hilt go. Instead, she tore a strip of cloth from her tunic and wrapped it around her hand. As the creature extended a dripping tentacle towards Mistress Ruth, its snout stretching like a toothless mouth, Sarah snatched up a burning branch from the fire and thrust it into the creature’s robes. The material ignited and went up with a loud whoomph!

  Sarah stepped back as the creature began to flail and stumble around the clearing, crashing into bushes and trees. Its tentacles wrinkled away to nothing as it dashed away into the darkness, trailing smoke and ripe fumes.

  “You saved us all, Sarah,” Sula said.

  She smiled at Mistress Ruth and Sula. “Magic didn’t work on it. It was ready for that. It wasn’t ready for some real fire. What did you say that thing was?”

  “A Mind-Reaver,” said Mistress Ruth. “They are the Fallen One’s inquisitors. The snout you saw, they use them to feed upon the thoughts and memories of their victims. The pain turns people into mindless drones, emptier and more lost than the Fellfolk.” She shivered as she spoke.

  “We must hurry on to Yrsyllor. If Mind-Reavers are abroad then the Fallen One must be intensifying His search for you. He would not waste a creation so valuable when Fellfolk and Fellhounds would do as well.”

  ~ ~ ~

  They walked until dawn, careful to keep to the cover of trees and ditches. Open countryside, even at night, brought with it the risk of being spotted. And none of them knew how many of the local people were in league with the Fallen. Or how many had been turned against their will to His Shadow. Just as the sun was rising, there came a mighty crack of thunder and a coruscating flare of light, and colour washed from one horizon to another. Sula’s and Sarah’s hands flew to their sword hilts as the early morning sky was suddenly illuminated by a flickering vision of Mikka Wyrlsorn. It towered up to the heavens and strobing in all colours, it spoke with the voice of a mountain.

  “Peoples of Atosha, Brindan, and Yrsyllor. I am Mikka Wyrlsorn, Lord and Keeper of the Northway. His Shadow has fallen over Highmount. The Fallen are victorious, the Queen-in-Waiting is my prisoner, and my armies march upon your gates as I speak. Let this be my first decree, those who do not kneel to the Fallen shall be destroyed. The Age of His Shadow has begun.”

  With those words, the vision faded, melting into kaleidoscopic vapours that were gradually dispersed on the wind.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The three travellers came to Yrsyllor. It was a city of ghosts. The buildings and streets were decorated with the remnants of a festival. Lanterns that should have shone with coloured lights—tattered mock-ups of palaces, temples and towers—were scattered throughout the gutted city. White gardens where sculpted deer, swans and squirrels had once stood—all elegant and still, never drawing breath, never moving—were burned black.

  The people of the city had been ready to play, to brighten the long dark nights of winter with laughter and joy, to lose themselves for a short time. But this year, no frozen rainbows would blaze against the night sky. Because something long buried had awoken and had sent its darkest servants to drive them from their homes. Yrsyllor was no longer the Shining City of the Three Kingdoms, but yet another ruin alongside Highmount. Her glistening spires, which once shimmered with all colours, had fallen. Life, laughter, and pleasure had vanished and what remained was an eerie, echoing shell overlooking the twists and turns of the Yrsynnyr River. And there were things floating in its waters.

  More bodies, thought Sarah, more people I didn’t save.

  A light rain began to fall as they entered, and the wind bit viciously at their faces as they crunched through the ashes and dust. It was growing late. There were few sounds left to disturb the air in Yrsyllor. It was a kingdom grown cold. Melancholy fingers stroked the strings of her heart as Sarah took in the scene before her. Ghosts of sapphire, emerald, amethyst and carmine were overwhelmed by the cold, the dark, and the emptiness, making Sarah want to run away and scream. But she did not run and scream. She kept on walking. She was here for something; they would not leave until Sula had found his mother alive, or at least some sign of her. Sarah missed her mom, now more than ever. She knew that if she didn’t help her mother then she would die. Sula’s mom could already be dead.

  And it’s my fault.

  Sula had gone on ahead to find his mother, and they would stay in this haunted city until they knew what had happened to her. Sarah was not from this world, and yet there was something here that had made her not want to go back home, somehow. Even when she did, she had been sent back. Was it in her heart? Was it A’aron and the sword? Something was acting upon her constantly, keeping her here in Seythe.

  Something else I don’t understand, she thought, I wonder if I ever will.

  It was something that woke her at strange hours of the night, when all others were asleep, making her sit upright, staring blankly into the night where there was nothing, but where something could be. Watching. Waiting. Patient and ancient. She felt it like a voice without words. She heard it speak to her through the twisting branches of the trees and from the darker cracks in the evening’s twilight. The voice was hungry, that was all; it told her so. Without its body, it was nothing but aches and hurt. It was something as lost and alone as she was.

  The feeling always evaporated with the first light of morning, leaving her alone and doubting the voice, the darkness, and the words it never spoke. But the more she tried to convince herself that nothing was there, the more she felt that something was.

  So, here she was, far from home in a city of ghosts, wondering if she was hearing voices in the night.

  Maybe I am going crazy, she thought, maybe this is all some stupid nightmare and I’m going to wake up soon.

  While they waited for Sula to return, Sarah told Mistress Ruth of the voice in the night.

  “Mistress, what’s happening to me?”

  “As the Flame grows stronger within you, so does A’aron. And you carry the Sword of Sighs, her Soul-Blade. She is becoming more a part of you than she was before. The longer you walk in Seythe, and the longer you carry the sword with you, the more you become like the Mother.”

  “So, like a split personality?”

  “If you like, and no, there is nothing I can do to help you in this. You must find the balance with the part of you that is A’aron. And be assured that she was a goddess as much as E’blis was a god. It will be hard on you to find the balance, but if you do not, A’aron may burn you away altogether and there will be no more Sarah Bean.”

  “But, I thought she was light and good while E’blis was d
arkness and evil. Why would something good burn me away?”

  “Didn’t Ossen tell you, child? These things are not so simple to divide up, much as simpler folk might like to think otherwise. Good and evil are both incredibly powerful things, so powerful that the essence of each can be overwhelming and destructive to the point where they seem alike.”

  Mistress Ruth laid a mother’s arm around Sarah’s trembling shoulders. “I will help you as I can, dear. But some battles are for you alone and no one else. Here, take this ring. It has a slight charm upon it. It should help ease your nightmares and your pain.”

  Sarah nodded without a word as Mistress Ruth slipped it onto her finger. She was so tired and empty inside.

  I am alone, she thought. Even when I am with other people, I am alone.

  Death whispered on the wind that blew through Yrsyllor, and Sarah shivered hard as it passed by. Another vision came to her, like the one she had seen in Highmount.

  She saw a hallway of black ice and slippery snow, heard the sound of her shoes echoing back and forth. The ice of the hall was as smooth as glass and as polished as the finest mirror. She could see herself as ghosts in the ice, their outlines crustily pale, overlapping, blurring white, lit from within by the colours of festival lanterns buried inside the structure. She saw herself as a princess, a beggar, a thief, and a murderer, dabbled with traces of gore. So many people, reflections, aspects showing themselves in the mirrors, all with her face. Some were smiling, others sombre, none were at peace, none were at ease. Their eyes were coals of ice, and she saw a glimmer of something—something ancient and cruel. Something was going to happen to her. All of the people in the mirrors were smiling now, and their smiles were too long, too thin, and too wide.

  What did it mean?

  And where was Sula?

  She was here because of Sula, though she never told him so. She saw how the light moved in his eyes and how its rhythm was different. The shine of it was alluring and subdued. There was no innate brightness to his gaze when it fell on her, but rather an intense persistence. It burned low and old, and it seemed to come from a place deeply buried in his soul. The light in his eyes drew her like a moth to a flame, and that was why she was here among the broken towers and fallen temples.

  Sarah disturbed the silence by calling his name.

  The wind rose to a bluster, snatching the sound away, discarding it far off in the wintry darkness. She knew he would not answer, for he had gone off to search for his mother. But without voices the city felt too dead and empty. It needed to remember what it was once like before the Fallen came to its gates. With the night settling over it, Yrsyllor was changing; she could feel it. The cold was gnawing at her with bitter teeth. Above the doors of houses and taverns, the decorative faces carved as signs of welcome were no longer beatific. The spreading shadows made their smiles too long, too thin, and too wide. Their frozen marble eyes stared like dead things. Sarah’s heart beat tremors against her ribcage as she listened to the whistle of night winds about the place. It reminded her of when she had climbed the Fellhorn with black riders at her back. The moon was a lantern carved from ice, and its light no longer seemed natural but rather old and ancient. It stared down at her from a dismal place beyond the stars.

  “It has a voice and it is hungry,” she said.

  It was then that he came back out of the darkness that had settled over Yrsyllor, stroking his fingertips over the faces above the doors and kicking at the shards of lantern glass and at the torn festival silks strewn across the ground. Sarah wanted to run to him and hold him tight, but she stopped when she saw what was coming out of the shadows behind him. Their long robes slithered across the stone and the moist blue bulbs of their heads pulsated unsteadily. He was walking freely. He was not their prisoner. And he was smiling—a smile that was too long, too thin, and too wide.

  A muttering issued from the Mind-Reavers clustered behind him. A name gargled out over and over again by the lungs of creatures that sounded like drowning men.

  “Malllusss ... Malllusss ... Malllusss ... Malllusss ...”

  Sarah shook her head hard, as if it to dispel the scene before her. The young man she had saved.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  Tears stung her eyes, and she tried to summon the Flame.

  It would not come.

  She felt an intense cold instead, and it was originating from the ring Mistress Ruth had just placed on her finger. She tried to tear the ring off. She tugged hard at the band of silver, but it would not move. She tried to dig her nails in under it, but it would not allow her to. She bit at her knuckle, drawing blood, to try to ease the ring off. Nothing worked. The ring remained on her finger.

  “You cannot remove that ring, Sarah,” said Mistress Ruth, getting to her feet. “The enchantment is mine and only I can break it.”

  “Then, break it. Take it off me.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  The Flame, Sarah thought. I can burn it off.

  She closed her eyes, breathed deep and concentrated, seeking the light in the dark. But there was only the dark, and the hungry voice within it. The Flame was not refusing her—it was not there.

  “What have you done to me?”

  “Nothing much. Just been close enough so the Master can whisper in your ear at night. Then, all I had to do was slip that ring on your finger.”

  “No! You bitch, you used me!”

  “So she did, A’aron,” said Sula. “As you and your daughters have so often used us. Gods and goddesses see us as mere toys and playthings. But now, the game is ours, and we choose His Shadow over Her Light.”

  “But that wasn’t me. I’m not A’aron!”

  “Weren’t you listening, dear?” asked Mistress Ruth. “You will be, one day soon. And the only way to stop that happening is to cut you off from Her and the Flame.”

  “Sula, what’s going on?” Sarah refused to believe her companions were turning on her.

  But Sula was smiling, and the smile was becoming too wide for his face. “I am not Sula, Sarah. I am the first and the last of my kind. You have seen my work upon the land of the Norn Valley and the Three Kingdoms. Soon, all shall worship me with their despair.”

  Sarah watched him change. Black scales were erupting across his skin, his armour was splitting and falling away from a body that was growing serpentine and sinuous and colossal. The cracking of human bones became the grinding of great cinder blocks against each other, muscles and flesh stretching and reweaving into a shape that threw the moon into shadow. Sula shrieked as his throat reformed into something altogether different. Then, great black wings sprouted and spread out from his back, lashing Sarah with the wind they created. A barbed tail struck through the stone walls of a nearby building, making it sag, crumble, and then collapse. She had seen this thing before in the vision that had overcome her at Highmount.

  “He is Malus,” said Mistress Ruth. “The last of the true Dragons.”

  Sarah looked up at the creature that towered over her and met its baleful stare.

  “But you can’t be.”

  “I am Malus, O Flame. I am the last. I watched my kin burn because of you. And now, it is your turn to burn.”

  “But you were human. You helped me. That night ... when you slept with me ... you held me so tight ... it felt so good.”

  “Yes, I took human shape and form, and I spoke sweet words to you. I did all these things, O Flame. I did them because it was not enough for me to slay you. First, I had to hurt you. I wanted your heart to bleed, as mine bled when I saw all I loved slain. A few Fellhounds and a Mind-Reaver were a price worth paying to see you suffer more than mere death.”

  Sarah wanted to speak but her eyes were wet and blurry and her throat was choking, tight and hard, on a sob. Her heart was hurting too.

  I came here, to Yrsyllor, for him.

  A streamer of smoke gushed from each of his nostrils.

  “Come out, A’aron, out of this soft shell of a girl before I
crack her open. You called us to war under the banner of Light and Flame long ago. We were slaughtered in your name. I gave my bones up to His Shadow. That which does not live can never die. I am of the Fallen. We are eternal. Now is your time to die.”

  At these words, Malus reared up, a vision of bones and black, and let loose a torrent of fire.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sarah ran from the shape in the sky.

  Malus was playing with her. The flames he spat into the square missed her by mere inches. She knew she would not be so lucky the next time he had her cornered. For now, this was a chase, and one she could not hope to win. She could not out-distance such a creature, and she could not hope to bring him down without the Flame, even if she could control it enough.

  She hid in one of the gardens. Deer, horses, antelope, and wolves glittered all around them as shuffling Mind-Reavers passed. The tentacles of the robed horrors were whispering and slashing through the air, hunting and seeking. They seemed blind enough, but Sarah was sure they had her scent, that they had tasted a little of her when she had cut her finger in trying to remove the ring. Then there was a creaking of weight around her, a crackling of hardened layers, and a growling. Sarah turned to see the garden come alive. Shaking off a pattering rain of ash and dust from their white hides, the creatures of the garden began to encircle them. The stone flanks of the awakened animals were still, set, and hard. Their eyes shone, chips of calcified ether. Diamond teeth were bared. Claws of adamantine and hooves of polished ebony struck the ground. Sarah blinked, breathless, in awe of the spectacle before her but unable to do anything about it as the ring on her finger continued to deny her the Flame. Grinding cries were followed by a shattering charge. A thunder of blows cracked the ground as the sculptures stampeded. They quickly passed her, smashing through the garden wall and hurling themselves into the street to bear down on the Mind-Reavers.