by David Hair
This is impossible. Perhaps I am dead? But when he stammered, ‘Kore’s Blood, what’s happening?’ everyone looked at him and smiled.
‘Patcheart’s just come from the walls,’ Basia told him. ‘Sulpeter’s capitulated: he’s pledged to Frankel’s constitution and is marching the Corani legions out of the city. Rykjard’s Hollenians are taking control of the Bastion and Frankel’s leading some kind of singalong in the Place d’Accord.’ She smiled shyly and concluded, ‘The world’s gone mad.’
His heart thudded and he reached out and clutched her hand. ‘And Takwyth . . .?’ His eyes turned to the Corani knight, who was now sobbing in the arms of his fake queen.
‘He’s surrendered,’ Basia told him. ‘We survived. Pallas survived—’
But her words were cut off by a great crack of thunder, so loud it made the ground shake. A howling wind rushed in out of nowhere and the night sky was suddenly covered in boiling blotches of darkness which came pouring out from the dark places between the stars, blocking them out. Something like a massive claw raked the translucent canopy above, as lightning split the sky like jagged tears in the fabric of the universe.
The dark shapes took form: giant figures with wings and claws and burning eyes . . .
‘Oh no,’ Basia breathed. ‘Lyra’s too late. It’s begun.’
The Last Days.
Exilium grasped her fingers tighter as everyone looked up in awe and despair.
We must pray, he thought wildly. We must beg Kore’s forgiveness – the Doors of Paradise are closing and we are outside among the sinners. We must repent.
Then indignation set in. ‘How can this be?’ he demanded. ‘It’s not fair – we prevailed . . .’
Basia, her face an inch from his, was gazing up at the lightning raking the sky. ‘Ah, Exilium, life never was fair,’ she breathed, turning away from the ruptured skies and facing him. ‘We never get what we want.’
Then she kissed him as an earthquake rumbled, shaking the city. He barely noticed. Utterly stunned, he found himself responding, kissing her back with all the pent-up passion of a life of repressing every sinful impulse, drinking her in, tumbling with her to the wet ground and falling into her while the world collapsed around them.
35
The Last Hour
Paradise Now
Imagine a world in which we conquered only with love: a place where we embraced our brothers and sisters across barriers of race, nationhood and religion, shared the fruits of the world fairly and raised each other up with all our skill, knowledge and compassion, so that all were equal in possessions and status. Would that not be Ahm’s Paradise made real on Urte? And why do we not already have this?
GODSPEAKER ILAM, JA’ARATHI PREACHER, HEBUSALIM 922
Mount Fettelorn, Noros
Waqar turned from Xoredh’s decapitated body, his cousin already forgotten. His blade dripping ichor, he stared past the breath taking, terrifying vista of the giant tree with the world cradled in its branches to the giant form of Jehana floating above it. Sunlight lit her, but the darkness went on for ever.
He shouted, ‘JEHANA!’ but there was no sign that she’d heard. The darkness continued to engulf her, the sky swirling around her as she writhed, her head thrown back in a silent scream as a dark vortex erupted from her mouth.
Then he saw that Lyra and Valdyr were also standing at the edge of the cavern – how they’d got there he had no idea . . . unless it could be reached from other places? But the how didn’t matter: he needed them, and this time, when he shouted their names, they did hear. They looked shocked, but an instant later, they and Gricoama were standing with him.
Together they realised the dwyma was fighting back – and they were its weapons. Valdyr and Lyra grasped Gricoama’s fur – and after a moment’s pause, ignoring the sudden sharp ache in his hand, Waqar reached out and did the same. The Rondian queen was wide-eyed, her hands white-knuckled, but Valdyr’s flinty face was steadfast.
He’s been here before, Waqar remembered.
The Mollach prince shouted something and instead of the wolf, Waqar found himself with a hand on Ajniha’s feathers, while beside him, Lyra had her arms round the neck of her pegasus, but there was no time to wonder: they threw themselves onto their mounts and instantly they were flying.
‘Jehana,’ he shouted, ‘we’re coming.’
They shot upwards, weaving through branches wider than rivers bearing leaves big enough to blot out the sky, while around them things like the husks of huge insects swooped onto beads of light rising from the immense tree – and as each was snared, there was a piteous shriek that swiftly faded.
Those aren’t insects, Waqar realised, aghast, they’re daemons . . . eating souls . . .
There was a malevolent hiss as the immense spectral insects saw them and came shooting at them with mouths opening around malformed, ever-changing heads, a cacophony of clamouring voices from their throats—
The dwymancers killthemsnarethemtakethem . . .
—the nearest of the giant creatures lunged, claw-like appendages erupting from its shifting maw, and Ajniha banked to the right, shrieking, Pearl shot the other way, while Gricoama leaped.
Waqar bellowed in alarm as the creature reared over him, taller than a palace, and instinctively blasted at it with a puny mage-bolt, expecting nothing – but he was Sakita Mubarak’s son, bred with the potential for both gnosis and dwyma: the bolt exploded from his hands and struck like a meteor.
The daemon shrilled as it collapsed in on itself.
I can use the gnosis here – ai, aiee – but Valdyr was already shouting, ‘Go – go – go!’ as more daemons burst through the leaves, swarming over them . . .
Mount Fettelorn, Noros
‘They’re massing again,’ Dirklan called from his position at the right-hand walkway, the secondary approach to the door they guarded. This was the last place they could make a stand.
Tarita threw him a grim look. They’d not found Jehana or Naxius and now they were trapped while the skies above boiled with apocalyptic shapes, nightmarish visions come to life in the heavens.
We’ve failed.
On the walkway and the wide steps leading to it were strewn the corpses of the successive waves of possessed constructs that kept hurling themselves at them. They’d barely survived the last rush; only her torrent of mage-fire, punching holes in flesh and bone, backed by Dirklan and Ogre’s own mage-bolts, had kept them away: it was wholesale slaughter, but each rush was getting closer, and there were more of them with every attack.
It’s only a matter of time now. She looked at Ogre, sheltering behind a pillar on the other side of the walkway. ‘Hey, Big Man,’ she called softly, realising this could be the last chance they had to speak. ‘I’ve got a new theory.’
‘About what?’
‘About love.’
They could all see movement on the ramp below, and hear the tramp of more feet.
‘What theory?’ Ogre rumbled, gripping his axe and flexing his shoulders.
‘Well, as you know, I’ve maintained a strict policy of sleeping with random men and neglecting my friends, which has mostly led to misery and worse, embarrassment.’
‘And?’
‘It’s time I stopped neglecting my friends.’ She let him digest that, then added, ‘Ogre, you’re my very best friend and I love you, too.’
His spine straightened, he mumbled something hoarse and his eyes gleamed wetly before he turned away. Then a bestial howl echoed and the next wave of daemons came streaming along the footway while a dozen more burst over the top of the rubble-packed roof and threw themselves down from above.
*
I failed.
Yes, you failed.
You used me.
Yes. You are our puppet.
This is all my fault.
Yes, for you are weak: just an orifice, a threshold, an open door.
Jehana floated in stars, locked in the hideous embrace of the daemon as a torrent of spiny, clawed, bestia
l shapes, ever-shifting but always vile, poured through her. Daemons spewed like insects from her mouth, the dead and the never-alive, pouring down into Urte which hung before her tortured gaze, while her nethers disgorged venom that covered the root-soil of the Elétfa, bad blood poisoning the veins of the world’s heart, fouling the rivers of life.
She was helpless. She was nothing.
No, not nothing, that gleeful voice gloated, you’re one of us now: the Mother of Destruction. We will keep you with us, our vessel to poison world after world, until all Creation belongs to us.
She tried to flee from that dreadful thought, but there was nowhere to run to, nothing that wasn’t Lucian, nowhere He wasn’t already present. He was in her. He was her and she was just an extension of Him.
The giant Tree of Life began to wither.
All things fail, Lucian – Naxius – crowed. Everything but us. Only Entropy is eternal.
*
Waqar, Lyran and Valdyr came to rest on a branch in the bower of the Elétfa, their mounts bathed in sweat, their wings shaking. Their riders were scarcely stronger. The deadly pursuit was barely a minute behind them and there was nowhere else to run.
But before them, they saw a stunning vista: Urte, their world, a blue-green planet half-lit by a distant sun, hanging in the gauzy branches of the tree. And from all sides, immense clouds of darkness were beginning to cover it, emerging from a hole in space – a gateway from the aether to the physical realm, Waqar guessed. A shrieking sound vibrated through the air, through the tree, through his skin and bones. Then his gaze shifted, or the stars did, and he saw that the hole in Creation was a mouth, and that the stars around it formed the outline of a face – one he knew.
‘Jehana . . .’ He looked back to see the daemon swarm closing in.
Lyra ran to the nearest branch, plucked three berries, wolfed one down and handed one to Valdyr and one to Waqar.
The Mollach prince stared. ‘What is this?’
‘Does it matter? What have you got to lose?’
‘Put like that . . .’ He bit, tasting acrid juice, then swallowed. ‘What . . .?’
‘Hopefully, it’ll give you what you need to reach Jehana,’ Valdyr said. ‘We’ll give you every second we can – she’s beyond the reach of anyone else . . .’ Then he gripped Lyra’s hand and they turned away to face the oncoming daemons.
Waqar turned his awareness inwards, hoping for a miracle.
At first, nothing happened to him other than the bittersweet berry taste seeping down his throat – then his vision blurred and cleared – No, it’s more than cleared. He caught his breath: everything was brighter, more intense, and he had the strangest sensation that he was living a death-dream, that somewhere else, his body lay dying.
How can any of this be real?
But the daemons were real enough, of that he was certain, and so was what was happening to his sister. He shouted with voice and mind,
But the daemons heard him too, and they roared in like a swarm of giant locusts, an avalanche of living ice, a torrent of ravenous crustaceans. Lyra uttered a wordless cry, echoed by Valdyr, and a bolt of light coruscated from the distant sun and flashed around them. The daemon cloud convulsed—
—and then broke over them like a wave of hate. Jehana’s face vanished, but Waqar clung to the memory, calling her name again as mage-bolts burst from his hand in a last futile gesture of defiance.
*
Gnostic energy burned, kinesis surges blasted out and the next wave of the daemons was hurled back, Tarita’s Ascendant strength making the stairs a place where nothing could survive. She used a wizardry binding to paralyse the possessed constructs, so that they were caught defenceless in her next spell, a torrent of fire, while those leaping from the roofs were dashed aside by Ogre and Dirklan’s kinetic blasts, winning another respite.
They heard a querulous voice shouting, ‘KILL THEM—’ aloud and into the aether.
‘Rukka te,’ Tarita snarled. ‘That’s him, isn’t it?’
Ogre’s face went flaccid with shock, and he mouthed the word Master.
With a mad shriek, she went pelting down the stairs, hurdling the piles of blackened and burning corpses, in the direction of that voice. She heard Ogre cry out her name, then he roared, his big feet hammering into the stonework as he pursued her, followed by the sound of Dirklan’s boots close behind.
She had no plan, just an insane desire to strike first, instead of waiting to be overwhelmed. No more caution, no more waiting: ‘It’s time to die!’ she yelled as she tore along, Dirklan and Ogre pelting behind her. Thunder rumbled and the corridors burst into life around them, a giant horned Mantaur bursting from a door in front of her and other constructs right behind it, larger still than any they’d fought.
Tarita skidded under its giant axe and rammed her silvered sword up into his groin. The Mantaur howled in agony, but a moment later, Ogre had beheaded him, leaving the body to crash to the ground in a spray of blood and ichor.
They exchanged a wild-eyed look: she saw that Ogre got it completely, that he was with her until the end, and she loved that. But there was no time for anything more: Dirklan had flashed by, his false eye blazing as he hurdled the swinging hammer of a giant ogre and plunged an argenstael stiletto into its shoulder. Its howl turned to a torrent of ash pouring from its mouth as it collapsed.
Tarita took the lead again and burst into a courtyard and a flurry of flashing blades. Between them they downed seven constructs in as many moments with argenstael, fire and silvered blades – and to their gratified shock, the rest broke and fled, the daemon’s control overridden by the sudden explosion of death. Tarita sent a mage-bolt laced with necromancy after the hindmost; his head withered in the blast, dust pouring from the disintegrating skull.
‘Effective,’ Ogre rumbled, panting hard.
‘Always, darling,’ she told him, wondering, So where’s Naxius, and what’s between us and him? She cast about and caught sight of a spotlessly clean corridor leading off the courtyard. ‘That way, or I’m a virgin.’
They raced on through increasingly silent halls and she worried she’d got it wrong, until she saw an archway which bore the motto Knowledge is the only true power.
‘Is this it?’ Dirklan asked, breathing hard, and she realised that despite being a mage, he was also an old man, and a lot older than he looked.
‘I bloody hope so: I don’t want to be a virgin again.’
‘He’s here,’ Ogre growled. ‘That’s his personal motto.’ He looked terrified but determined.
‘Are you ready to face your old Master?’ she asked him.
He met her gaze solemnly, his face resolute. ‘So long as you are with me.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘To the end, Ogre.’
He straightened and his voice grew stronger. ‘To the end.’ He reached past her, grasped the handle and stared as the lock instantly clicked open. ‘He didn’t erase my gnostic aura from his wards,’ he said in a puzzled voice.
Because he believes he still owns you, Tarita thought. Old fool.
Ogre pushed open the door and led them through.
*
Ogre’s first step into Naxius’ sanctuary was, in a horrible, soul-crushing way, like coming home. Even though he’d never been here – he’d been bred in another of Naxius’ secret lairs – he knew this was the Master’s chambers the moment he inhaled, for Naxius’ rooms in Verelon had smelled the same – sterile and faintly musty.
He gripped his axe, quelled the sudden hollowness in his limbs and stalked down the corridor towards the only light, which turned out to be a central hall. Tarita and Dirklan were with him, but this was his confrontation: Master and slave.
They stepped into the light, blinking in the glare and trying to make sense of what they were seeing. The room was circular, with a stone slab like an altar of polished marble
in the middle. Above it floated a skull-masked woman with long hair the colour of bone: Jehana Mubarak. Something like a shadow made flesh was ravishing her naked body. Her mouth, caught open in a rictus scream, was spewing out smoke or insects or filth.
A gnostic image, Ogre realised: a projection, so that Naxius could watch the culmination of all his scheming unfold.
‘And Glamortha shall lay with Lucian, Lord of Hel, and beget the Last Days . . .’ he murmured, his heart turning to lead in his chest.
Then he saw a small figure beneath the image, staring up at it with rapt eyes.
The Master . . .
In that same moment Naxius saw them, a flash of mild irritation crossing his face. Dirklan and Tarita attacked, one darting left, the other right, but Naxius splayed his fingers, sending a burst of shockingly strong kinesis laced with webs of light that caught them both and hurled them against the walls. Dirklan hit hard, his skull smashing into the marble with a sickening crunch, and at once he went limp, blood running from the back of his head, scarlet against the silver.
Tarita’s arm had snapped at the elbow, and another twitch of Naxius’ finger cracked a kinesis blow into her jaw, breaking that too. She lay there glassy-eyed and moaning.
Naxius laughed.
He didn’t touch Ogre at all. There was no need.
The Master looked radiant: youthful, perfected, a compact body with a noble face beneath a mane of red-gold hair. His eyes glowed like small suns. As he walked, the very stone beneath him seemed to ripple at his passing.
‘I’m beyond you all now, Ogre,’ he purred. ‘I am the sum of all things.’
Ogre badly wanted to run to Tarita, but he knew he was a finger’s twitch from instant death himself.
‘All that power up there?’ Naxius drawled, gesturing to the streaming shadow slithering in the ceiling dome above. ‘That’s just a fraction of what I can reach now. I could walk into the Merozain Halls in Hebusalim and destroy them all with a word. I could walk into the Bastion and kill every soul therein without a moment of personal peril. I am a God, and I have the power of life and death in my hands.’