by David Hair
They all stared at the giant wolf padding up to Valdyr and nuzzling him, then looking around with what Ogre thought was something remarkably like a grin.
‘Ysh, he is with us,’ Valdyr chuckled.
Ogre’s heart lifted, and he shared a look with Tarita and saw she felt it too: a sense that Urte itself was responding to the threat of the Master. They weren’t alone.
But are we in time?
Dirklan took charge. ‘Rhune and Sarunia will remain here with our mounts, ready to bring them to us if we find we’re in the wrong place,’ he said. ‘We five – and Gricoama, of course – will go on. It’s been four days since we left Pallas and almost two since we left Norostein and I fear we’re running out of time.’
‘Yes,’ Valdyr said firmly, ‘let’s finish this. The rest of our lives await.’
The sun was setting behind the fog, marking west for them with a glow of gilt and rose. Rhune and Sarunia helped them prepare, shedding travel gear and donning armour or heavy padded vests, checking weaponry, tucking pouches of dried food, waterskins and essentials into deep pockets.
As night closed in and the ruined city woke, the five humans and one wolf crossed the plaza and began picking a path through the rubble.
Despite Gricoama’s advent, Ogre felt a sense of impending doom, borne of living his whole life in the shadow of his creator – they were too few, they were in the wrong place, Waqar was not with them. They faced the Master, the genius even Meiros and the Ordo Costruo had not been able to defeat. So it was hard not to feel that they’d already lost.
But equally, he felt a rising determination to see it through to the end.
Mount Fettelorn, Veronese Alps
Waqar felt the light seep from the grey cloud enveloping him as the day surrendered to the night without a whimper. He paused, clinging to his walking staff, shaking in weakness. All round him the icy rock dotted with deep pockets of snow mocked his efforts. He, a child of sunlight and heat, could die in this frigid place from nothing but the cold, he realised.
Where’s your strength, mage? the wind hissed. Where’s your mighty gnosis now?
All but burned out to get me this far, was the answer. He cast a look back over his shoulder, but visibility could only be measured in yards. The air was thin, and so cold his nose burned at each inhalation. That he was even here was insanity – but from the moment Gricoama bit his hand, he’d fallen into delirium, barely understanding what he was doing, let alone how he’d got here – wherever here was. All he knew was that he must go on.
I have to climb . . .
There was a stairway carved into the bedrock, winding back and forth across the almost sheer face. Some of the steps were so thick with ice he had to hammer at them with the staff or melt with the gnosis before he could risk stepping on them. The wind whistling across the cliff-face tore at his clothing, but his sense of urgency was growing, for the sound of Jehana’s voice came on the moaning, shrieking winds.
Sister, I hear you, I’m coming . . .
But night was coming faster, like the last night of the world.
*
He’d collapsed within seconds of Gricoama’s bite, utterly bewildered at this betrayal. The wolf’s eyes haunted him as he fell, those teeth dripping his blood as he tumbled to the infirmary floor.
What felt like only a moment later, he woke to find Gricoama was licking his face.
‘Madha . . .?’ he slurred. Gricoama nuzzled him, then turned and padded out of the door, nudging it until it closed and the gnostic locks clicked back into place. Waqar stared after him, then a dust mote crawled across his vision like a cloud of stars in the night sky and he was caught up in raptured awe at how light could speckle on the tiniest of spots, that light was the eye of Ahm, seeing all, striking all, terrible and beautiful . . .
The light shifted across the room—
—and then something crashed, bang bang bang, the door rattled and voices reverberated, the tongue too foreign and too loud to comprehend. A woman shrieked in alarm and then there was fuss, bustle and confusion and people were lifting him and liquids were tipping into his throat in a breath-taking cascade, the moisture in his mouth like rain in a desert, and everywhere the light danced, through opened curtains, in the eyes of the people bending over him . . .
. . . and all the voices . . .
There were a thousand voices, ten thousand – no, beyond millions, a deafening, overwhelming cacophony that was both music and discord – until he found himself looking at the ceiling, his eyes piercing the roof as his awareness soared up, up, up to where a light shone.
An oil lantern hung from the hand of a grey-bearded man, robed and cowled in brown like a monk of Kore. He was standing on an outcropping, the air swirling with snowflakes, each one a miniature masterpiece. His eyes were gold, like his lamp, or Gricoama’s eyes, and he was waiting.
Waiting for me . . .
Some time later, Waqar woke to find the afternoon sun gleaming through the open curtains, but somehow he could still see that golden lamp, high above and – he paused to get his bearings – southeast of him, in the heights of the Alps. The old bearded man’s visage flashed across his mind again – as if he was waiting for him.
A bustling Rondian healer-mage in pale blue robes came and went, but he couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying because he was so captivated with how she said it: her words ran together into music and meaning eluded him. He wept at the timbre of her voice, wanting to capture it and listen to those notes for ever. But they faded, so he closed his eyes, dreaming of a pearly-white winged horse sipping from a mountain stream and an owl in a northern garden that someone had cruelly torched. He saw Gricoama padding through a river valley in thick fog, moving like a shadow –
– and a tree coiled about something of flesh and blood, in the throes of feeding, or mating, or giving birth . . . or all three, and from it came a voice, screaming his name—
Jehana!
He sat up, heart thumping, with the sound of his sister’s voice ringing in his ears. She was snared and helpless, her shrieks harrowing – but the vision was gone and he was alone in this darkened suite, his heart thudding painfully, his lungs gasping for air.
But if he looked upwards, just so, the man with the lantern was still gazing down, still waiting.
He moved in feverish bursts, flinging himself upright and hauling on clothing and boots. He found his thick flying cloak, his eye-glasses and gloves, his sword and his periapt. I have to help her, resounded over and over in his mind. I must help her. He didn’t know how, but he was full of the conviction that the old man did. I’ll go to him . . .
He left the room, ghosting past healers and nurses too busy with the wounded to notice, until he reached a bustling lobby and saw big doors leading outside. Faces turned his way, mostly pale Yurosi who scowled or peered at him curiously. ‘Wanker sleeps while his men work,’ someone murmured as he passed, but Waqar had no idea what that meant. Only Jehana mattered.
Someone, dark-faced and exhausted, fell to one knee as he passed and murmured, ‘Sal’Ahm, my prince.’ Waqar hurried by, mystified why anyone would kneel to him.
Then he heard a piercing cry and a name flashed into his mind: Ajniha. He broke into a run, pounding along the halls, bursting through the open doors as a contingent of soldiers entered.
‘Prince Waqar?’ someone shouted, but he ignored them: there was no time.
Ajniha, his mind called, and the bird shrieked again. He felt a painful heaviness in his chest as he ran and he was panting for breath – What’s wrong with me? – but he was outside in the huge fountained plaza before the Governor’s Mansion and a dark shadow was falling from the twilight sky. Moments later, a huge eagle landed before him, buffeting him with the wind of her wings, and he knew her.
‘Ajniha, good girl,’ he praised, leaping to her back. Someone had been tending her, although there were still bare scarred patches on the bird’s flanks, and she too seemed distressed, her breath also short and rasping. H
e vaguely recalled being told that the draken had broken her ribs when it had caught her.
We’re a pair, he thought dazedly, but even his beloved roc couldn’t be spared, for Jehana needed them.
He didn’t bother with saddle-straps but nudged her into motion and they rose clumsily into the air, sweeping into a southeast heading, riding an updraft around the northern face of Mount Fettelorn, which stood like a sentinel over Norostein. Glancing down, he had a flash vision of a startled Xoredh staring straight up at him, although his cousin was two miles away in the Shihad camp. Then Ajniha rounded an outcropping, dipped behind a ridge and Norostein and Xoredh were both gone, excised from his eye and his mind.
High, high up on the southern flank of the mountain, a golden light shone like a low-hanging star.
‘There,’ he told Ajniha. ‘There!’
*
That was hours ago and now he could scarcely remember why he’d come.
Somehow, flying had become impossible. The higher they went, the thinner and colder the air grew until it was so bitterly cold he realised that Ajniha could never make it even if she were fully healthy. Straining his eyes, he saw the stairway carved into the snow-streaked slope and he realised what he had to do. He took Ajniha down, got off, then sent her away. She went reluctantly, crying mournfully as she dived, and the swirling snow snatched her from sight.
He looked upwards and saw that golden lamplight far, far above. He could picture the lined, weather-beaten man, half-lit by the lantern as he peered down at him, waiting. Then he caught another glimpse: of a place beyond the lamp, a swirling carpet of light stretching all the way to the stars: all the way to Paradise.
Gricoama howled distantly. An owl hooted softly, and Jehana sobbed his name . . .
A wooden stave was lying beside the path as if waiting for him. He picked it up, gripped it two-handed and burned the ice away from the next step, then using it as both crutch and probe, he began to climb.
*
Even with ichor in its veins, the cold-blooded venator could go no further. Xoredh cursed as the flying beast convulsed, brayed mournfully, then went rigid and began to careen downwards.
He ripped himself free of the straps and leaped, moments before the beast spun into a ravine. It vanished, but Xoredh engaged Air-gnosis and floated down onto a snow-covered outcrop, landing on one knee, blade drawn and eyes roving.
Nothing else moved on the lifeless stone. Once assured there was no threat, he rose and sheathed his blade. Mount Fettelorn loomed above him, lit by the immense face of the moon painting the night in monochrome swathes of white, grey and black—
—except for one golden pinprick of light, hanging high on the icy peak, well above the snowline. There was a black, waving line that climbed towards it: a stair.
There: Waqar’s up there . . .
Xoredh trawled the daemon’s knowledge of the dwyma: drawing on the experiences of others, now dead and gone: Asiv Fariddan trailed Valdyr Sarkany to a volcano where the dwyma was strong . . . There’s a dwyma garden in the Rondian queen’s castle, and one in the Holy City of Kore . . . So this must be another such place . . .
That suggested the danger to him was real, that he must cut down Waqar before he reached his destination, so he sprouted wings on his back, built up his lungs and chest muscles, pulled in energy and turned it to heat – and with a snarl, he leaped into the air, caught an up-current and skimming the slope, flew upwards to where his cousin laboured . . .
31
A Night to End All Days
Glamortha and Lucian
Theologians have long speculated upon the nature of Glamortha, the Angel of Death and Mother of Daemons. Why would Kore create an Angel who would betray Him? Does she have free will, or is her part in the Last Days fated? And why is it that the two greatest cosmic crimes, those of Glamortha and Corinea, are committed by women?
OFFICIAL RECORDS, CONVENTION OF PRELATES, PALLAS 723
Rym, Rimoni
Martrois 936
Jehana’s eyes flew open, but her sight remained fixed on the vistas playing inside her skull. The first moments, caught in the coils of the tree, had been hideous, but she was numb to such things now, for her time inside the daemon’s mind had shown her far worse.
Something bitter had been forced into her mouth – not ichor, but a liquid caught between the twin poles of the dwyma and the daemonic. When it reached her heart, the beat changed. At first she’d thought she was dying, but now she felt as if she were swimming back from the deep waters towards an emerald sun.
Her vision cleared. The fogbound city and the lake were gone and instead, she hung in space, slowly revolving around a glowing orb, a world wreathed in cloud through which blue waters and green and brown lands could be glimpsed. Like her, it was caught up in a vast tree floating in the starry void – or was it a heart encased in veins, or a fountain feeding itself?
She wasn’t alone in this void: she recognised the other beings floating around her as daemons. What a foolish name for such beauty, she thought. They were always in motion, glittering constellations of awareness shifting, reforming, joining and separating: fleeting wonders that kept reconfiguring into a new shade of emotion. The closer she looked, the more she saw: the faces of the dead and the never-alive joined by a single need: to return to the world of being. They fed on orbs of light that came from the tree – the Elétfa? Some burst right through the daemons, seeking to engulf them, and disappeared into the void, but most were devoured and joined to their new host to become part of a greater whole, like ants being swept up by the tongue of an anteater.
She floated among the vast clouds full of constantly changing mouths and eyes and limbs, their names whispering through her mind: Abraxas, Gorvial, Hrogath, Inaryon . . . as a student she’d seen these same names in ancient daemonicons.
Their shifting forms made her wonder if she could do the same here: she imagined herself as a bird – and she was; and then a snake, then a cat, a man, a jackal, then she lost interest and was herself again.
Where are the apsarai? she wondered. Where there are daemons, there should be angels. She looked to the outer limits, seeking whatever might lie beyond: a giant light hung far, far away in the void – the sun, she realised, which was really just the nearest star . . .
‘There’s nothing out there,’ a melodious voice said and she spun around to find one of the daemons watching her closely: a serpent, which became a lion, which became a glowing, naked man, his face serene perfection, filled with curiosity . . . and hunger.
As he spoke, a majestic marble palace formed around them, with green gardens where tigers roamed with peacocks and fish flew like birds. She ignored it and focused entirely on the one daemon who dared to approach her.
‘Then where do those who escape your kind go?’ she asked.
‘Paradise, or the Pit?’ he replied indifferently. ‘Our nets are incomplete – some slip through.’
‘Holy men? Saints? Godspeakers?’
The daemon laughed, a sound of crystalline loveliness, entrancing as music. ‘Broadly speaking, they are no more or less easy to catch than any other. It’s those who have lived a full life we struggle to contain: they’re the tastiest, the ones we love to pick apart, but they’re the hardest to trap.’
‘So those who elude you are all out there somewhere? Do they feed the apsarai?’
‘Apsarai? Angels? I’ve never seen one, nor heard of any who have.’ The daemon made a rippling, shrugging gesture with all his body. ‘Perhaps they just burn away. I care not – my concern is that.’ He pointed to Urte, his voice hungry with desire. ‘And right now, you.’
He drifted closer and although they were just ghosts, they were also male and female. She felt a tinge of unease because he was just too beautiful, radiant as a morning star.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘I have been called Abliz . . . Lucian . . . Yama: names bestowed by the ignorant. In truth, I’m the greatest of our kind.’ He gestured at the other daemo
ns.
She shuddered at that. The Lord of Hel in Urte’s religions, she thought with a thrill of fear. The opponent of Ahm, of Kore and the Lakh gods: the Great Enemy. Shaitan.
And yet she felt no immediate threat. They stared at each other, looking past bodies, because those were just light and illusion, infinitely mutable; only their eyes gave substance to who they were. His were entrancing, deep pools to dive into, promising all knowledge, all wisdom and every experience; wells of mysteries to a girl who’d barely begun to live. Enticing, dangerous eyes . . .
‘The greater question,’ the shining daemon said, ‘is who – and what – are you?’
She’d not yet got around to wondering that herself. Am I dead and floating in the aether, waiting to be devoured? But she’d never felt so alive. Perhaps she should be running, but she sensed there was no escaping him here. And if she was ever to find a way to defeat Naxius and his hideous plans, surely it was here and now?
‘I’m Jehana,’ she began, but that was inadequate – it meant nothing. Words failed: here others’ lives were experienced, not told. Tentatively, she extended a hand, a shimmer of light and shadow, offering that experience.
Was there a flicker of uncertainty in his glowing red-gold eyes? Perhaps, but then he raised his own hand and slowly, like galaxies colliding, they pushed them together . . .
*
Through the scrying orb he’d conjured in his Chamber of Wizardry, Ervyn Naxius watched Jehana from a mile away, deep inside his palace. He saw her rise from the branches of the poisoned dwyma-tree to be caught in the vortex of energies concentrating around her. She was lying on her back, floating in mid-air facing the skies, where a giant shadow was forming in the mist, the shape of a man . . . or a monster.
Lucian’s ichor flowed in his own veins now, so he saw with the Daemon Lord’s eyes as the copper-skinned, white-haired woman floated upwards to meet him. He raised his hand, in total sympathy with his host.