Pyke’s training with the Antiquities Guild had taught him there were two ways to learn a great deal from a book: one was to read it in its entirety. The other, to be used when time did not permit, was to go straight to the end, and locate the important parts using the conclusion as a guide.
“I’m going to help the others,” Pyke said to the Relic-seekers. “Stay close to me.”
Without waiting to listen to their objections, Pyke began walking slowly forward, delving back into the book with all the focus he could muster.
The book’s paper heart leapt with joy with each word its reader absorbed. It had no eyes to see nor ears to hear, and so it could not identify the one who read it now… but it knew this must be its love, for none other would have come to so rescue it.
A firm hand took hold of the book’s spine again, and it quivered with anticipation. Then the fingers ran along the edges of the final page, and flipped all the way to the end where the blank leaves cried their emptiness. Dismay seized the tome: was its dear Tamelios skipping ahead?
The pages were turned hurriedly to the last two with any writing on them. This final part of the story was a mystery: even the book knew not what lay upon these pages, save that they had been written in haste and that they must tell of the final events which had led to the book’s long solitude. Had it been able to, the tome would have howled with anguish. No story was meant to be read ending-first, least this one!
Akhesh, O maerisrei, it would have pled, had it possessed lips to speak, Val sur vakhvaris reish vekh rashiust!
Please, my love, do not read only of our downfall!
The four thousand, four-hundred and ninety-ninth cycle of the Fae Queen’s rule. The Viewing Chamber of the manse-weapon
The Dead Lord Tamelios and his beloved Melianne looked out through one of the viewing-screens at the frontrunners of the invading army. In his mind’s eye Tamelios saw the reckoning which was to come, and in a book hidden deep within the manse, words describing what he saw began to write themselves.
The sky-chariot carrying brash Swifter-Than-Wind was the only one of his foes’ conveyances which had come into view so far… but the manse’s instruments showed that more approached from beyond the horizon. The vehicles carried Fae nobles in droves, and, though Tamelios scarce believed the readings of his sensor array, no few Dead Lords were with them.
The Fae Queen wrapped an arm around his waist and laid her head upon his shoulder. “To think, my love… For millennia, nothing’s ever united even two of the Dead under one banner, yet we’ve brought them together with their enemies the Fae. Isn’t it wondrous to be feared so?”
“Melianne, dear one.” Tamelios reached up and adjusted his mask, a habit he had picked up since constructing this mechanical body. “Please refrain from expressing your happiness for our enemies’ unity. It discomfits me.”
“I know you won’t allow them to remain so unified, my love.” Melianne caressed the edge of the mask. Her graceful, slender fingers traced the slowly moving cogs at the edges, and left behind a rime of frost crystals like decorative lace. “Go and destroy them for me?”
“I must rely on your power. I have no other source.”
“You’ll have my strength as always, my love. It’ll be truly delicious to see you finally stop holding back.”
“Then it is time I defended our home. Damnable misfortune, that this should happen during the ninety-ninth cycle of our century-long project. Should I fail, it is upon you to activate the Engine.”
Melianne kissed her husband on the mask’s lips. The bright, chill glory of her presence rushed through Tamelios, awakening joy in him as it had a thousand times before. This time, the kiss carried also a surge of Res which filled the storage nodes of his mechanical body to near bursting. His Phylactery, whose teeth and handle had long since worn away and been replaced with fine Res-channelling engravings, glowed a luminous sky-blue from its cage in his neck.
“Go, my love, and blessings of victory be upon you.” Her words made it so: a brilliant gold-and-white sheet of gossamer shimmered into being and wrapped itself around his shoulders, soaking into his dark cloak to fill it with a protective Glamour.
Tamelios took one last, longing look at his beloved wife. Then he turned away, leaving her to watch the screens and prepare herself for what might come next. His calculations showed at least five minutes until the first of the invaders arrived: he left himself four, to account for a larger than usual margin for error. He didn’t think any of the Dead would put on a wasteful burst of speed and leave the rest behind, but the unexpected was commonplace where the Fae and their haphazard, unpredictable, inefficient uses of Res were concerned. Anything in the name of their precious legends.
Still, in almost two centuries of his elopement here with Melianne, Tamelios had learned to tolerate, and eventually enjoy, the Fae Queen’s flashy entrances and spontaneity. There was something charming and worthwhile in the irrational behaviours and whimsical decisions of the Fae. Nothing for him to emulate, certainly, but something worthwhile.
Traversing the stairwell took Tamelios three of his allotted four minutes, so he made haste to the third-storey balcony, raising his body on a current of Res and jetting away at high speed. As he forced his way through a temporary veil-gate which had formed on the balcony, the darkness of the Place Aside’s void-ceiling gave way to true sky lit by two of his beloved’s vaunted comet-suns, each rising from a different direction.
Through the bright blue expanse raced a chariot pulled by giant eagles. The conveyance was followed by a formation of precisely one thousand wingèd Lelaosh. The Singers were armed and armoured for battle, with blades forged to whistle like flutes in the wind, lightweight armour of breathsteel, and shields fashioned to crash like cymbals when their wielder deflected a blow. The pitches of the flute-swords were arranged such that Swifter-Than-Wind’s fighting force played a perfect, imposing chord as they flew to battle.
Tamelios could acknowledge the benefit this gaudy showmanship brought to Swifter-Than-Wind’s legend… but he could not respect it, for in this case it was wasted on foolishness. The sky-Fae was early by almost the entire minute Tamelios had given himself for margin, having outstripped the ground-bound troops and rushed ahead with a Glamour which put the winds behind his army.
“You should have waited for the others.” Tamelios reached out with one hand, an Invention on his smallest finger gleaming with a radiance so deeply purple that it crossed into ultraviolet in the sight-Inventions built into his mask.
A well of warped gravity opened in the centre of the Fae’s formation. Every one of the thousand Lelaosh were pulled in and crushed into a massive ball of feathered gore. To Tamelios’s annoyance, the giant eagles pulling the Fae’s chariot flapped mightily at just the right moment, resisting the pull for the seconds it took Swifter-Than-Wind himself to leap free and unfurl his own wings. Then the eagles and the chariot fell backwards through the air with a cruel and unnatural speed, landing with bone-crushing force on the meteor of packed bodies.
With a flash of opalescent Fae magic, Swifter-Than-Wind sped out of the gravity well and dove toward the balcony, his oversized flute-sword whistling a pure and searing tone as he raised it to strike with all his force. With the magnification offered by his mask, Tamelios could see the Fae noble’s teeth bared in a zealous smile.
“In the name of the Fae Courts and the Spellbound World, I shall strike thee down, foul—!”
It was Tamelios who struck first, arriving in midair above the still-diving Fae before Swifter-Than-Wind could so much as finish his boast. The Workings of speed and misdirection built into the chassis of the Dead Lord’s body ensured the Fae never saw him draw his sword. The Invention-blade of black iron was darker than the night sky, its edge sharper than starlight cutting through the firmament. A thin tracery running diagonally along the flat of the blade showed where it had once been sundered and then repaired with a filigree of molten gold and captured sunlight.
“You have not heard the last of Swifter-Th—”
Tamelios’s blade drove through the braggart’s face, scattering it and interrupting the Fae’s bluster for the second time. “See that you come more prepared next time,” he told the dissipating Fae, though by now Swifter-Than-Wind lacked ears with which to hear him.
Then the Dead Lord turned to face the horde which blackened the horizon. Ranks upon ranks of squat grey-skinned Many-Arms, seas of tall skeletal Mosoleiosh, and a battalion of towering Hoard-Watchers marched shoulder to shoulder, preceding their masters. These soldiers seemed uncaring of their probable deaths… or perhaps they were simply prepared for those deaths. The mortals were intended as shock troops, and their purpose was to waste Tamelios’s strength and disrupt what Workings they could before their masters arrived.
Tamelios simply waited on his balcony. He had been correct: his foes were moving with haste, uncertain of how soon his and Melianne’s weapon would be ready. They had left behind all soldiers of any but the swiftest-marching warrior races, plus a few specialists such as Seers or Mindspeakers who were carried in wagons and on palanquins. With relief, he noted that he had been correct to prioritize his last-minute adjustments to the Veil-Tide to omit more generalist species such as humans. Workings with narrower scopes were more efficient.
The first of the Hoard-Watchers marched onto the manse’s grounds, and they vanished into the Place Aside. The next rank hesitated only briefly, then kept marching, disappearing also.
Tamelios inclined his head in an approximation of a satisfied nod: the Gigants’ innate danger sense told them it was reasonably safe to proceed. Such minor inborn magics could not detect his wife so far away in the Place Aside, where she waited to remotely activate a weaving of mixed Dead technology and Fae Glamourcraft. When there were enough enemy soldiers advancing on the true manse, the mighty weaving would steal their wills, drain their bodies of Res, and imprint their consciousnesses on the light-automata, lending those bright soldiers a skill and initiative they had lacked as mere constructs. The first ranks of his enemies’ army would become his own.
The first arc of magic artillery screamed down from the blue sky, striking the front face of the manse at the level of the fourth storey. It splashed harmlessly against the wooden façade, as Tamelios had known it would: this had been naught but a range-finding blast, which they no doubt hoped would bleed away some of Tamelios’s stored power. The Dead Lords controlling the artillery Inventions would never pour the large sum of Essence needed to penetrate his defensive Lenses into a long-range strike… not unless they could prove it was aimed directly at the heart of the manse.
Tamelios drew himself up, his body’s attitude-control hydraulics whirring quietly. Now a battle would be fought on two fronts: the remaining soldiers would try to storm the true-manse in the Place Aside, and the Fae and the Dead would aim to open the way to the heart of the manse by neutralizing the greatest threat in evidence: Tamelios himself.
The first of the Dead could be seen walking behind the rearmost ranks of their shock troops. They were five unassuming figures, set apart only by their solitude. Tamelios’s ocular Inventions couldn’t detect any Fae, but that meant less than nothing: they would likely remain incorporeal until the moment was right for the dramatic entrances they were so prone to.
Tamelios was not ready to face five Dead Lord Masters and an unknown number of Fae. He supposed he never would be. But then, he had three advantages they did not: first, a hundred and fifty cycles of Melianne’s vast power, drawn from the Fae Queen over time as her legend replenished it; second, a series of failsafes which would activate should his present body be destroyed; and third, another source of Res which, though less powerful than Melianne, was even more impressively inexhaustible.
Perhaps all this would be enough. He could not hold back now: everything depended on his victory here today.
One hour later
The plan proceeds. I write this hurriedly in my mind: I face the Dead Lord Grandmaster of True Sight on the manse grounds. The rest of our foes are at the door to the Viewing Chamber in the Place Aside, and though my remaining strength yet feeds the Workings sealing that doorway, it will but delay them slightly. When they burst through, Melianne will begin the emergency sunfall to collect the last of the power needed for the binding. She must, before they discover the Serra-Engine.
My preparations for the Cataclysm are incomplete. I make one last entry in this book in the hopes that whosoever reads it may know my fate. Even with the Engine’s otherworldly power, it was beyond me to keep our hundred-cycle bargain. I hope I will be forgiven, though in all my thousand cycles of existence I have never merited forgiveness.
I have only one other regret: that I did not spend more time with my beloved Melianne. Had I the choice to return to the moment our love began, had I the opportunity to prevent all this and save only myself, still I would do nothing differently. I would perish here a thousand times rather than give up having been loved by so precious a jewel. I have been blessed with more joy than any of my ilk is worth.
All may not yet be lost. If luck or providence exist, may they bless my emergency measures. May my dearest Melianne, at least, survive.
Be well, beloved.
Yours,
Tamelios, last and least of the Dead.
There was no more, only a blank page: this had been the final chapter, for Tamelios had never returned to write further. To the book’s horror, its story was nothing but a remnant of a failed conspiracy: a banal tale which lacked a satisfactory ending.
With a mournful howl like a dark wind dragging itself across the teeth of half-remembered mountains, the spirit of the book reached out blindly into reality. Its anguish at the loss of Tamelios collided with its growing certainty that the one who held it was not its love: merely some scavenger in an age which had no knowledge of him. The spirit’s agony and despair coalesced into a terrible storm of rage. Its love was never coming back… and the world would suffer for his loss!
The spirit’s grasp fell upon something corrupted: something creeping, and soulless, and almost as dark as the book’s hatred for the cruel reality which had taken Tamelios from it. Amid the spirit’s pain, there awoke a gnawing hunger.
Outside, in the world of sight and sound, the three Relic-seekers huddled around Pyke and the book in a tiny bubble of safety barely large enough to fit all four of them. It had been only a minute, yet Aquamarine’s pained screeches and the concussions of Raine’s struggles had both ceased.
Without warning, a sourceless gale flung all four away from the book and a freezing cyclone rushed from its pages. Its howl was a piercing cacophony of discordant pitches, and black folds of hateful Res whirled in its winds like razor-edged ribbons. Wherever the whirling black streamers touched the palpable darkness which cloaked the room, they tore it asunder and sucked it ravenously into the book’s pages.
A storm of slithering noises emanated from the dark as a thousand pallid hands released their quarries and darted for the centre of the room, trying to slam the book closed… but the cyclone seized them and dragged them hungrily into the pages as well. The arms flowed past from all directions, the tome consuming them like some morbid mockery of the southern Kingdom’s famous noodle soups.
The papery arms reached the limit of their length, and the darkness which served them for a common shoulder began to flow into the book as well. It rushed over the humans in smothering waves, swirling into the book like water down a drain or rough wool onto a spinning wheel.
And then the collection room was empty of anything but ruined books, scattered Relics, tipped-over plinths, and six living beings.
Aquamarine tottered forward from a corner of the room, their sle
nder five-foot frame trembling. Their face had transformed: instead of a tiny mouth framed with thin lips, the Seer’s features were dominated by a vast carnivorous maw with four closely packed rows of pointed teeth. Their large blue eyes had been replaced by equally sized milky white orbs without eyelids, set deep into the Seer’s skull like those of some monstrous fish.
“I… thank you,” Aquamarine said, the flutes and violins of their voice muted as though the instruments were being played through a pillow. The Seer’s mouth did not move as they spoke. “Please forgive my… appearance.”
Merana and Vino recoiled, and even Eiten stiffened… but Pyke took a deep breath to sublimate his own reaction and nodded in the Seer’s direction. “I assume this is what your people normally look like. You were wearing an illusion to make us more comfortable.”
“Indeed,” Aquamarine sang quietly. “Our mouths are ill-suited to the speech of other races, and many of the beings I encountered in my travels were… violently discomfited by the sight of me. I took measures to calm the waters of your minds.”
A loud thump drew everyone’s attention as Raine, who had been standing stiffly upright, fell face-first to the ground. The Gigant’s face was purple with oxygen deprivation. With the smothering hands of the darkness-automaton gone, though, it was clear from the rise and fall of her broad back that she was breathing again.
Pyke knelt to gather up the book. Its cover seemed none the worse for wear for its ordeal, though he would have to inspect the pages to be sure of its integrity. His intuition, though, told him this was not a Relic designed only for a single use.
The Last Spellbound House: A Steampunk Dark Fantasy Thriller Page 27