Ayoni felt a chill of horror. “Mothers name….”
“Most of my family had come to make the pilgrimage to the Carvers Ascent in the city of Besdarok,” Tashil said in a level voice. “Several of them, my father included, were taken prisoner when the Black Host swept into Belkiol — they are among those being held at the temple.”
“That ritual must not take place,” Ayoni said, as memories of the ceremony she had witnessed came flooding back. “Is that why you’re both here?”
“It’s why I’m here,” Tashil said, glancing darkly at Coireg. “He has other matters to attend to.”
“I have been appointed to a crucial task,” Coireg said. “Over on Besdarok Isle.”
“Divinely appointed, I assume,” Ayoni said. “What does it involve?”
“I am….constrained not to reveal that to anyone.” He gave a wry laugh. “Such that I cannot even frame the words on my tongue, Countess, but both of you must accept that the work I have been charged with is vital, and so perilous that I…I may not survive to see it through. Yet I must try.”
Ayoni was sobered to hear the gravity in his voice and gave a nod of assent, even as she itched to know what his task was.
“Time is our first enemy,” Tashil said.
“Exactly so,” Coireg so, looking over at the four Daemonkind who stirred and one by one spread their wings and flapped aloft. Two of them descended towards Coireg and with neat accuracy plucked him up into the air. “Farewell, Tashil, farewell, Ayoni — we shall not meet again. Farewell, and walk in the light…”
As they watched the small group of figures recede into the upper gloom of the night sky, Ayoni said, “He sounds as it he believes it.”
“He does,” Tashil said, “with a certainty that’s almost unnerving.”
“Excuse my curiosity,” Ayoni said. “But what is in the bundle you’re carrying?”
Tashil smiled. “A weapon that harms the Black Host soldiers. I’ll explain as we walk.” She swept her gaze across the sky, then pointed up the shallow dale Ayoni had recently crossed. “Your husband and the others are that way.”
As they hurried through the bushy undergrowth, skirting dense walls of foliage or jumping small streams, Tashil sketched out the terrible events which had struck Sejeend. But her account of the last deadly day, from the discovery of the bonedust’s effects to the attacks of the Black Host and the arrival of the Stormclaw, left Ayoni amazed and horrified.
“How can the empire withstand such a hammerblow?” she said.
“I don’t think that it can survive,” Tashil said. “With the capital in ruins and the emperor dead, the regional governors will take what reins they can seize — assuming that the Great Shadow’s invasion fails.”
A short time later they encountered one of Jarryc’s lookouts who led them into a wood and a large, dilapidated cabin where Jarryc and Chellour and their men had found hidden shelter. After the happy and relieved reunions, Tashil outlined the situation at the temple at Belkiol and the prisoners’ impending sacrifice. Faces were grim as Ayoni told how she had witnessed the same ritual in the city of Besdarok, which led to the vileness of the Blight. There was no dissent when Jarryc gave the order to break camp, only an eager determination.
As Jarryc’s forty or so soldiers began making their way north through the woods, one of the far scouts arrived with news of Baron Klayse who had likewise gone to ground with nearly 50 men less than a mile to the west. Jarryc and the scout agreed on a birdcall signal before the scout left to find the Baron once more and guide him to the southern boundary of Belkiol. An hour further on into the depths of the night the two parties finally met, in a sparse wood near a cluster of charcoal burner huts and on the other side of a low ridge from the town of Belkiol. While Jarryc and Ayoni swiftly appraised Klayse of the foul sacrifice being prepared at the temple, Tashil and Chellour had emptied one of the bonedust tubes and distributed the powder among those with small leather pouches along with instructions for its use.
Over the low ridge the wood thinned out to be replaced by a patchwork of tilled fields whose meagre crops had already been trampled into the mud by other feet. Ayoni and Tashil were at the front, leading the column of men through the darkness, choosing paths through the fields, past empty pens where chickens and pigs had been kept. Ahead, the town of Belkiol was a dark, spread-out mass of low roofs with a scattering of lamps and torches, and one flickering orange glow where a building was on fire, sending a funnel of smoke and sparks into the sky. Tashil gestured to the eastern side of town, where the Temple of Twilight was located.
Stealthily they headed along the southern boundary in that direction. But as Ayoni and Jarryc, with Tashil and Klayse, led the column up a path between the wrecked gardens of two houses, figures emerged from doors and shadows and torches flared. In the glow, Ayoni saw that they faced six black-armoured swordsmen of the Black Host while behind them, looking nervous and uncomfortable, were the Iron Guardsmen who had come with the Archmage as well as another thirty or so ordinary Imperial soldiers.
One of the Black Host swordsmen raised an arm and pointed at them.
“Traitors, every one of you, traitors who would oppose the just commands of your emperor. Bow down now, or face the punishment of the blade.”
None moved or spoke, although swords were calmly loosened in their scabbards. The armoured figure surveyed them and nodded.
“So be it,” he said, drawing his own sword, a long, crooked shard of blackness.
“Wait, captain,” came a voice from the shadows. “Let us not be too hasty with these wilful strays — I shall speak to them myself.”
“By your command, your majesty.”
Tangaroth stepped unhurriedly from the shadows, still garbed in the long, dark hooded robe, but when his face came into the torchlight Ayoni had to stifle her surprise. Only a few hours ago he had spoken to a gathering of officers with a healed mouth and face which had shown no sign of the earlier horrific injuries. Now his features were marred by a swathe of glittering blackness which spread across his face in a ragged blotch from the right cheek across the mouth and chin and ending beneath the left jaw. It resembled the gleaming armour worn by the Black Host yet when he spoke it stretched and moved like flesh. There was a smile upon the lips but seemed slightly skewed while the eyes were clearly deranged.
“Why do you persist in this rank folly, Count Jarryc, Countess Ayoni?” Tangaroth said. “The rewards of the empire await you, yet you choose to flout my express will…”
“The rewards of what empire?” Tashil said. “Ilgarion is dead and the capital is half-destroyed, half in chaos.”
“Ah, the impertinent Mogaun child,” he said, looking at her. “Know that the Iron Guard has offered me the crown, which I have reluctantly accepted for the good of the empire, an empire that is greater than one monarch or one city.”
“But not so great that you would refuse aid from those who have come to conquer,” Jarryc said. “Your majesty.”
Tangaroth gave him a hate-filled stare and moved closer to stand before him.
“You… know… nothing, rebellious upstart! These men and their valiant general are our friends and allies, and they have promised to help destroyed our enemies…”
“But I know something which you do not, majesty,” Tashil said.
His head swivelled her way. “And what would that be? — some noxious Mogaun recipe, or the colour of your father’s socks….”
Tashil’s smile was almost feral and Ayoni could sense the sharp heat of her enmity.
“No — I know what harms our enemies.”
In a single motion she flung out one clenched hand towards Tangaroth’s face, her fingers springing open to release white bonedust powder. Even as the pale cloud enveloped his head, the Black Host captain was drawing back his sword to cut her down. But Jarryc shoulder-charged him, hurling him to the ground.
There was a chorus of shouts as both sides surged towards one another, with the Black Host soldiers leading. But
more handfuls of bonedust were thrown and the black-armoured swordsmen stumbled and went down. A choking, gasping shriek cut through the clamour and eyes turned to see Tangaroth writhing on the ground.
Ayoni had watched in horror as the bonedust powder attacked his face and the black flesh turned mottled grey and began to slough off. But the powder was not stopping there.
“The rot goes deep,” said Tashil, regarding the dying, would-be emperor with dispassion.
By now the brief spasm of fighting had come to a halt as the gurgling screams of the six Host soldiers became a chorus of torment. One of the fighters who had back Tangaroth was staring in terror at one of the disintegrating bodies for a moment before turning away to be loudly sick.
“You men of the army and the Iron Guard,” Jarryc said. “You see how your loyalty and trust has been betrayed. Are you going to keep fighting for this offal…” He indicated the now-still corpse of Tangaroth, “or will you put up your swords and join us in a grave task, to free captives being held in the temple and thereby prevent an abominable sacrifice?”
There was scarcely any hesitation — the opposing soldiers sheathed their blades and clasped hands and exchanged grins with those they had so recently faced at swordspoint. But then a scout came running with news of Black Host swordsmen, a score or more, approaching from the town. Ayoni turned to Tashil but she was already extracting a bonedust tube from the long canvas sack.
“I think I know how to deal with these vermin,” she said.
True to her word, she went a cloud of dust billowing into the gap between the nearest two buildings just as the enemy swordsmen came running through it. Jarryc then led his men past the convulsing black forms and up into the streets of Belkiol. Ayoni and Tashil were at his side, sharing his astonishment at discovering that there were no other Host soldiers to be seen. A few lamps guttered here and there with the brightest glow emanating from the doors of the Temple of Twilight, a slope-sided building with tall windows masked inside and out by heavy red banners. Inside, resistance was slight, a handful of Black Host soldiers who charged the large force of liberators only to be downed by the bonedust again.
Down on the temple floor, amid complex pattern markings, trussed-up groups of Mogaun captives were crying out to be released and Ayoni and Chellour were the first to start cutting bonds, closely followed by Tashil and the others. Moments later they heard Tashil cry out and looked up to see her weeping as she embraced a group of tribeswomen, one buy one, then turned to face an elderly man who came through the crowd with severed ropes still trailing from his neck and wrists. Tashil put her hand to her mouth for a second before embracing him tightly. Ayoni felt emotion sting her own eyes as she saw this, a kind of fierce joy that her friend was reunited with her family.
Then one of the soldiers guarding the outside came dashing in to tell Jarryc that a handful of Mogaun were outside, bearing a truce flag asking to speak with him. Ayoni shook her head, feeling as she were a leaf caught in a rushing river of events. She said as much to Chellour who chuckled.
“Well,” he said. “What will the next one be?”
“I’d say…probably nothing good….”
Her voice trailed off as she saw Baron Klayse hurrying through the crowd towards them, his face serious.
“Countess,” he began. “I cannot interrupt your husband — he’s talking with the Belkiol Mogaun. But I had to tell you….”
“Tell me what, Baron?”
“Up on the temple roof there is an odd enclosure,” he said. “Beneath it are several contraptions on tripod frames, things that act like those neareye devices only they also make the darkness lighter….”
Ayoni was grim. “What did you see?”
“A flotilla of small ships heading this way along the Great Canal,” he said.
“Could they be friendly?” said Chellour.
Klayse shook his head. “The devices bring distant things nearer, and I could see that every deck was crowded with more Black Host soldiers.” He looked at them both. “At most we have less than an hour before they start coming ashore. And I doubt that Tashil has enough powder for them all!”
* * *
From the attic window of a strange lodging house just within spearcast of the Citadel of Twilight, Calabos could see Byrnak’s army making its steady, unstoppable progress up the last mile or two to their mutual goal. The fog of night had just lifted, revealing a wide swathe of bright pinpoints in the perpetual dusk, all the lanterns of that army’s many many thousands of warriors fighting against the Black Host, pushing them back street by street. Overseers soared and wheeled above, indistinct winged shapes which occasionally swooped down to harry fighters on the ground only to be driven back by bristling clusters of long spears. And whenever they employed sorcerous means of attack, they drew a similar, savage response from Byrnak and the dozen or so adepts he had somehow brought into his service.
It was just four days since the fall of Orlag Tower, during which Byrnak had either persuaded or coerced entire knots of chapters and militia chieftains to join his campaign to defeat the Great Shadow. In that time, Calabos had conferred with Qothan and Culri, then with Kerna and Nilka, trying to figure out a way to penetrate the inner and higher floors of the citadel — assuming that the Murknight armour would unlock the gates.
At last a plan formed: they would wait until Byrnak’s army was about an hour from the citadel before approaching the citadel’s gates, led by Calabos in the armour and the Daemonkind posing as Overseers and with some thirty of Kerna and Nilka’s Hornghosts dressed as Black Host soldiery. Kerna and Culri and a few others would be trussed up with convincing-looking bonds and presented as newly-capture rebel leaders who were to be rushed to senior commanders for questioning.
This had met with general approval, except for Culri who insisted that they should also devise a fallback plan in case the first one failed, for whatever reason. This they duly did by adapting one of the rejected ideas in which the Overseers would carry Calabos in the Murknight armour up to one of the citadel’s higher balcony ledges, followed by the others.
Thus it was that Calabos, wearing most of the black eldritch armour (which proved surprisingly light) was standing at that window, gauging the speed of Byrnak’s upslope advance. But as he watched the mile-distant clash under the radiant, unending shadows of the Nightrealm, his thoughts drifted into wondering what was happening back in the other world — some seven or eight days had gone by here but there was no way of knowing how much time had passed for Tashil and Dardan and Ayoni and the others. Had they failed to stem the Great Shadow’s invasion, or were they still holding on in the hope that deliverance would come?
This is what is meant by the burden of responsibility, he thought. An unbearable weight and an uncertain fate. How will I have to change so that I can bear it?
There were footstep coming up the stairs behind him and he turned as Kerna came into view.
“Is it time?” he said.
She nodded so he left the window and followed her down to the ground floor where the rest were preparing themselves. Nilka handed him the black helm and when he put it on he found that the faceplate was quite translucent from within. Culri gave him the gauntlets and Qothan held out the sword of powers, sheathed in an intricately embossed leather scabbard stained black and studded with dark green stones. It was splendidly barbaric.
A short while later he was leading his procession towards the citadel’s gates from the easterly direction. Squads of Host fighters, swordsmen and archers, were hurrying downhill or taking up positions of roof and balconies overlooking the main approaches. Many noticed the prisoners and their escort but none sought to impede them.
Then the tall ebony gates were looming before them, smooth black doors flanked by massive statues of snarling nighthunters. Calabos glanced at the motionless horrors as he led the infiltrating party straight up to the gates….which stayed firmly shut for a long, long moment. Think desperately, he raised one iron fist to hammer on the dull black sur
face but before he could, there were thuds and the heavy scrape of gears and bars in motion…and the gates swung slowly open.
Black Host officers were waiting in the big oval antechamber but bowed on seeing a Murknight in the company of three Overseers. Calabos barked the line about rebel prisoners destined for interrogation and the officers waved them through. Spurred on by relief and the edgy fear of being in the midst of the enemy, Calabos led the party at a sharp pace up a set of lead-grey steps to a high-ceilinged corridor which ran in a long curve around a huge central hall where the main staircases wound upwards on fluted red columns. However, Calabos had gleaned an alternative route from Culri’s long-lived recollections and turned right along the corridor, heading instead for lesser stairways which led up past the outer balconies, restrooms and other galleries. According to Culri, there were several of these secondary networks of stairs and passages, most of which rose to the highest of the Citadel’s 33 levels. It was just a matter of sustaining the plausibility of their deception for as long as possible.
It got them as far as the seventh floor when they encountered a Murknight on a square gloomy balcony overlooking a training room. The Murknight stopped Calabos as he led the others along the balcony, but when Calabos shook off his hand and tried to continue the Murknight gave an angry shout and drew a broad-bladed battle-axe. Instinctively, Calabos snatched out the sword of powers to parry the incoming blow and cleft the axe’s haft clean through. The Murknight already had a long dagger out and was closing with it so Calabos, rather than pull back for another full cut, seized the upper part of his swordblade, just below the hilt, and dealt a brutal hack to the Murknight’s side.
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