Numbed by the sheer force of concentration Meredith moved past the four wardens and into the main corridor. Careful not to let his concealment slip he began to check each of the rooms, but then he sensed the presence of the man he had come to speak with, a dark unsettling presence that seemed to dim and flare like the guttering flame of a candle and Meredith knew he had come in the very nick of time.
The old mage was indeed dying and Meredith could only hope that he was still capable of answering his questions. As he turned into the room it was clear that he need not have worried. Brother Pacatos was shackled to a bed halfway down the room. Propped up on pillows and dressed in a soiled white bed shirt, the ancient mage was looking directly at him. His eyes were clouded with cataracts, but it was obvious that he could see Meredith as clear as day.
Moving into the room Meredith took a moment to conjure a magical seal over the doorway so they could speak in private before turning back to the bedridden monk.
‘Ah, fiul lui Saker. Vin să pună întrebări despre cel trecut,’ wheezed Brother Pacatos in the ancient language of Ferocia.
Ah, the son of Saker. Here to ask questions about the past.
Meredith froze. Not only could Pacatos see him he also knew why he was here. For the first time Meredith felt a surge of doubt. A small muscle twitched at the corner of his right eye and he raised a hand to scratch a faint itching beneath the skin of his temple. Just being in the presence of ‘The Sinner’ was unnerving, but there was no way he was going to be deterred now. Meredith had a basic grasp of Ferocian, but he would struggle to voice his questions in that tongue.
‘În comun, dacă vă rog,’ he said.
In common, if you please.
‘As you wish,’ said Brother Pacatos, switching to the universal language of Wrath.
His skin was a sickly translucent grey, mottled with black contusions and weeping with open sores. The veins beneath his skin were threaded black and his withered lips were cracked and shrunken. His uneven breathing issued with a dry rattle, filling the air with a nauseating stench. Meredith could not disguise his revulsion but Brother Pacatos just smiled.
‘Ask away, Son of Saker,’ he said, his words punctuated by unpleasant rasping breaths.
‘What is your name?’ said Meredith, raising a hand to his temple as the itching became more insistent.
‘They call me Pacatos. That will suffice.’
‘How old are you?’ asked Meredith and Brother Pacatos smiled, revealing a mouth filled with the blackened stumps of rotten teeth.
‘You know how old I am.’
‘Then it’s true,’ said Meredith. ‘You were alive at the time of the Great Possession.’
Brother Pacatos gave a wheezing snort as if he found the description amusing.
‘What happened?’ asked Meredith. ‘Why did the magi not tell people that dragons were susceptible to Possession.’
Brother Pacatos began to laugh, a deep guttural laugh that seemed to claw at Meredith’s mind.
‘Why!’ he demanded. ‘Why did they not warn us?’
‘Because it is not true,’ said Pacatos and now his clouded eyes took on a disturbing directness.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Meredith. ‘I know it’s true. They lied about it then and they are still lying about it now.’
‘You are wrong,’ said Pacatos. ‘None of it is true.’
‘What are you saying?’ said Meredith as he felt a sickening fear leeching into his mind. ‘Are you saying there was no such thing as the Great Possession?’
At this Brother Pacatos began to choke on his laughter and Meredith raised a hand to his head. The itch had become a gnawing pain and he was suddenly convinced that there was something moving beneath the skin of his right temple.
‘Ah, my poor little Saker,’ gasped Pacatos. ‘The secrets of the magi... are eating away at you, and you don’t even know... what they are.’
His tone was thick with mockery and Meredith could stand it no more. Starting forward he grabbed the dying monk’s bed shirt.
‘Just tell me!’ he cried then recoiled as the pain in his head suddenly intensified.
‘You already know the truth,’ wheezed Pacatos as Meredith clasped his hand to the side of his head. ‘You have read it a dozen times and more.’
‘You’re lying,’ breathed Meredith. ‘I haven’t...’
Meredith could not complete the sentence. The pain in his head made it difficult to concentrate and his stomach heaved as his mind was overcome by a growing sense of corruption. Something foul was seeping into his body, poisoning his blood. And now he was convinced that something was writhing beneath the skin of his temple. The nails on his right hand gouged into his skin and blood trickled down his cheek.
‘Your eyes were open but you did not see,’ said Pacatos as Meredith staggered back and stumbled to one knee. ‘You turned the pages... but still the words of the past were wasted on you. Your ears... stopped up... by Brother Serulian’s guile.’
Even close to death the force of Brother Pacatos’s malice was too much for Meredith. Collapsing forward he began to crawl away as a series of images flashed through his mind. Images of himself bent over the table in the archives of the magi, his finger tracing the words of a manuscript. But the words were blurred and indistinct and he did not recognise the text from which he read, did not even remember reading it.
Your ears stopped up by Brother Serulian’s guile.
These words echoed in Meredith’s mind as he tried to escape the befouling touch of the Sinner’s presence. Could it be true? Could he really have read the truth without realising?
The answer was a resounding ‘yes’ but such conviction was now beyond him. What remained of his reason could think only of getting away and still he tried to claw the burrowing creatures from out his skull. Behind him Brother Pacatos laughed a drowning laugh, the scorn and vitriol gurgled in his throat as the decayed membranes of his lungs ruptured and stinking black ichor spilled down his chin. Even as he died, this vessel of evil was determined to take one last soul down with him to hell.
‘You have failed, Saker,’ he coughed. ‘Just as the Falcon will fail.
‘He shall summon darkness.
‘And slay darkness.
‘And the shame of murder shall damn his soul!’
Blind and helpless Meredith crawled away. His nails now scraped against the wet bone of his skull as he clawed the flesh from the side of his face. It was only by sheer will that he managed to reach the doorway and breach the seal that he had set in place.
The four wardens responded instantly. Charging down the corridor they ignored the young mage crawling from the room. Magical energy exploded around Meredith as the wardens unleashed spells to subdue Pacatos, but their power was not required. After four hundred years of hateful beating the Sinner’s heart finally burst. The man known as Brother Pacatos, the last surviving witness of the Great Possession, was dead.
Meredith felt the vile images receding from his mind. The side of his head now burned with a terrible pain but somehow he was able to get to his feet. His right hand was dripping with blood but he wiped it on his robes before raising it again to try and staunch the flow of blood running down his cheek and neck. Still dazed and disorientated he made it to the end of the corridor and started towards the stairs.
A novice appeared on the landing carrying a tray of food and drinks for the wardens, but the tray slipped from his grasp as he recoiled from the bloody apparition weaving towards him.
Meredith ignored him.
There was only one thing on his mind, to get down to the archives and find the manuscripts that had been hidden from him. He encountered several more magi and some of them tried to help him but Meredith just pushed his way past, stumbling down the stairs while they stared after him in shock. Finally he reached the archives and one of the librarians moved to prevent him from entering.
‘What’s going on here?’ said the man. ‘You can’t come in here like that!’
But
Meredith shoved him back against the wall, leaving a bloody handprint on his robes. He moved through to the chamber where he had studied and sure enough Brother Serulian was still in his chair, still staring into space as if he never moved from the spot. As ever, the wrinkled old mage did not respond to his presence but Meredith did not care. Raising his hand he cast the stunning spell that he had learned from Thrall’s guards and Brother Serulian slumped forward, falling from his chair to lie sprawled across the library floor.
Feeling dizzy and breathless Meredith stood for a moment and looked down at the stone table as if seeing it for the first time. Squinting from the pain that lanced through his temple he began to scan the shelves of history texts. His gaze immediately alighted on several manuscripts he had not noticed before. Ignoring the state of his bloody hands he snatched the books from the shelves and tucked them under his arm before moving through to the fifth chamber where the texts on dragonkind were kept. Once again he noticed a number of works that he had previously overlooked, but as he pulled them from the shelves his mind flickered with dreamlike images of having read the books before.
Laden with as many as he could carry he moved back through and deposited them on the table. The librarian reappeared with a senior archivist in tow, but one flash of the dire expression in Meredith’s eyes and both men retreated in fear.
Meredith turned to his books.
With the confounding veil lifted from his mind a strange sense of familiarity returned as he flicked over pages and unfurled scrolls. Blood dripped from his face and his hands smeared the manuscripts with red as he rediscovered passages that he knew were there, his eyes moving with manic rapidity across the page.
As he read, his mind began to recall other books and other threads of discourse: the magi’s growing resentment of the battle mages and the influence they wielded in circles of power. There was a passage that spoke of an ‘opportunity’ now that the Possessed were no longer a threat. He remembered the note of caution and deception in the voices of the past. There was discourse and disagreement but all doubt and opposition was swept aside by the burning vision of Syballian the Prophet, the Grand Veneratu of the time.
Meredith blazed through the texts, a ferocious anger rising in his chest. There were historical accounts and records of the communication between various mage towers. There was a thesis on the ‘madness and memory of dragons’ and more recently there were references to people that Meredith knew. His hands were shaking as he scanned the words, his gaze flitting from one accursed book to the next. But as he read his eyes narrowed and a frown gathered upon his brow. Finally he could bear it no more and the pages beneath his hands grew black as the parchment began to smoulder, scorched by a rising tide of fury. In utter dismay Meredith squeezed his eyes shut as the truth tore at his heart. But then the final words of Brother Pacatos returned to him.
He shall summon darkness
And slay darkness
And the shame of murder shall damn his soul
Scattering burned pages about the room Meredith swept from the archives and ran in the direction of the stables. He was in great pain and the right side of his face was a mess of torn flesh and congealed blood but his mind was startlingly clear.
The summoning must not be allowed to go ahead.
Falco must be stopped.
*
It took Falco and Aurelian about two hours to reach the point where the twisting mountain path became too difficult for the horses. The animals were breathing heavily from the climb but they had gained some considerable height and both the plateau and the city now lay far below them. The night remained fair and clear but the air was cold and the wind whipped about them, whistling against the hard edges of Falco’s armour.
To one side of the path there was an area of rocky ground where more than a dozen horses stood tethered to a rusty metal chain that was fixed to the cliffs. They shifted nervously as Falco and Aurelian dismounted and tied their own horses beside those of the magi.
Falco had just removed his shield and helmet from his saddle when Aurelian nodded towards the way ahead. Turning round, he saw two magi, standing like sentinels on either side of the path.
‘The Grand Veneratu is waiting for you,’ said one of the men.
Giving them a wary glance Falco armed his shield and carried his helmet as he and Aurelian continued up the path. It climbed for another twenty minutes before weaving its way through a towering landscape of fractured rocks and jagged boulders. Finally they crested the ridge and Falco found himself looking down into a vast space that seemed to have been chiselled from the mountainside.
Just like Caer Dour’s Castle of the Winds the crags rose up around a flat expanse of bare rock that looked out over a yawning space of nothing. On three sides the dragon stone was surrounded by cliffs but the fourth side was open towards the sea. Here in the mountains they were several miles from the coast but such was the height, and the sheer vertical drop, that the ocean seemed to be right there below them.
Bathed in the warm light of the setting sun it was a beautiful and awe-inspiring sight. Such a view would normally inspire Falco with memories of home, but now his heart was racing for another reason. He felt lightheaded and breathless as all the horrific memories of Darius’s summoning came rushing back. For a moment he almost backed away but then his uncertainty was checked by the force of his resolve.
He was here to summon a dragon. And despite the years of illness and frailty it felt as if his whole life had been leading to this point. He could not choose what kind of creature would answer his call and there was always the chance that, like Simeon, his call could go unanswered. But he would not shy away from his destiny.
Falco’s breathing calmed as he regained his composure and together he and Aurelian started down a series of steps leading to the dragon stone. As they descended, Falco became aware of the magi.
‘Can you see them?’ asked Aurelian and Falco nodded.
Thirteen magi, each one standing on a ledge carved out of the cliffs surrounding the dragon stone. Two of the men were warrior mages, dressed for battle and primed with deadly spells. They were all shrouded in magic to conceal their presence from a dragon, but the two battle mages could see them well enough.
As Falco looked more closely he noticed that each of these ledges was protected by a standing stone of fortissite set into the rock. If the summoning went awry the magi could shelter behind these indestructible columns of stone. As they reached the flat expanse of rock, Galen Thrall stepped out from behind an eight foot shard of fortissite at the back of the dragon stone.
‘Well met, my lords,’ he said. ‘Your timing is impeccable.’ He glanced towards the horizon where the sun was about to set.
Aurelian looked at the glowing band of clouds on the horizon, but Falco just stared at Thrall. The Grand Veneratu was positively thrumming with stored energy and his waxy green eyes were filled with resentment. He had tried to prevent Falco from being trained in the first place and had done his utmost to stop him during the Rite of Assay, but even Thrall could not suppress a degree of anticipation over what was about to happen.
‘We have reserved a place for the summoner’s second,’ said Thrall, raising an arm to indicate a ledge for Aurelian.
‘And what about concealment?’ asked Aurelian and Thrall smiled.
The powers of a battle mage were many, but the subtlety required to conceal one’s presence was a skill that only the magi had learned to master.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Thrall. ‘We will hide you from the gaze of ptero draconis.’
Aurelian’s expression made it clear that he did not trust Thrall, but they had no choice. Turning to Falco he placed a hand on his shoulder.
‘With a true heart,’ he said and Falco gave him a nod.
Aurelian climbed the rocks to take his place on the ledge overlooking the dragon stone while Thrall swept his gaze round the cliffs as each of the magi confirmed their readiness. Finally he turned to look at Falco.
‘Whe
never you’re ready, Master Danté.’
Falco gave a slight bow and with a last look in Aurelian’s direction he walked to the very edge of the dragon stone. With his helmet still under his arm he gazed down at the great sweep of land below him. The cliff dropped for more than a thousand feet before the tumbling slopes of the mountain levelled out towards the coast. The sun was now lost behind the veil of clouds on the horizon, but apart from that the sky was clear. For a moment Falco breathed in the cold mountain air as the wind whipped his long dark hair about his face. He felt the reassuring weight of the armour on his shoulders and the comforting presence of Malaki’s sword at his waist.
He was Falco Danté, son of Aquila and Eleanora Danté, here as a battle mage to summon a dragon. Falco could barely comprehend the magnitude of what he was about to do and yet he was at peace.
Sweeping the hair back from his face he donned his helmet and moved to the centre of the open space. Then dropping to one knee he placed his armoured fist against the stone. Gathering all the power he possessed he closed his eyes and felt the tingling sensation of power surge down from the crown of his head. For just a moment he held it tight. And then he let it go.
Boom!
The very mountain shook with a great compression of the air as the silent call travelled out into the void.
Boom!
Again a pulse of energy that stunned the watching magi with its force.
Boom!
Like the rolling of silent thunder the echoes of Falco’s third and final call reverberated around the cliffs. Slowly he rose to his feet. The ethereal bell of his soul had been tolled and the next few minutes would bear witness, either to the culmination of his heart’s desire or the folly of his doom.
Battle Mage Page 66