If Gloriana had given a signal, it had been too subtle for Kasimir to notice, but whether she had done or not he could only marvel at the coordination of the Shadow Guards: they sprang out of the darkness in perfect unison and were upon Corin’s men before they had time to react, never mind aim. Although their movements were not so inhumanly swift and graceful as the almost ethereal combatants Kasimir remembered from his childhood visions of the Alvere, still they kicked, leaped, gripped, and jabbed with such deadly speed and precision that a good third of Corin’s men were out of action within seconds, mostly unconscious but a few with their necks bent at angles that strongly implied a more permanent fix. That still left all too many of them standing, however, and they had taken advantage of their comrades’ misfortune to back out, putting space between them and their agile but unarmed opponents, which they were well-equipped to take advantage of. For all of their skill, bravery, and early success, Kasimir could only picture a future full of steel bolts and hot lead for the Shadow Guards, but he had not counted on the rest of the Alvere. The remaining coven members and even the Queen herself took advantage of the Brythons’ distraction to take them in the rear, immobilising several more of them and catching the rest in an ugly melee. This did not spell the end of their troubles, however, as the cornered troops quickly began resorting to their knives, seaxes, and bayonets, and their guttural cries of pain were soon varied with shrill cries of agony, both male and female-voiced.
In this tangled, dimly-lit chaos of flashing blades and naked, bloodied bodies it was impossible to be certain if the Queen was still alive or not, but Kasimir’s sympathy for her did not extend so far that he felt like passing up his most promising chance of slipping away. With as light and swift a tread as he could manage, he traversed along the edge of the cliff towards the far wall, hoping to copy the Shadow Guards’ example and keep to the cover of darkness until he could reach the stairway. He was sorry to leave Maradith behind, but she had somehow gotten mixed up in the melee as well, and even if she was alive there was no chance he would be able to extract her from that human maelstrom. Doing his best to ignore the screams, he continued along his circuitous escape route at a steady pace, until the sharp report of a pistol and a small explosion of rock chips and dust at his feet caused him to rethink his intention, and he made a dash for the stone circle instead, hoping the monoliths might give him some cover. Hearing another shot, he made a desperate leap forwards, and although that might well have saved his life, to judge from the searing-hot rush of air that momentarily whizzed past the back of his head, mere centimetres from good brain tissue, he soon had cause to fear that it would not be for long. For he came down upon the hard-edged, stony surface of the ancient monument with a sickening crack, as his right kneecap shattered. He was only given a few seconds to enjoy and express the excruciating pain of that before his head was jerked back and the cold edge of a seax was laid against his throat. The smoothness of the metal was compromised by a gruesome, moist stickiness that he dreaded he would be imminently adding to. His assailant shouted, loud enough for the whole cavern to hear.
“Surrender, or I’ll decapitate this Lucinian vermin!” It was Lord Corin’s voice, but with an unaccustomed air of desperation, both suggesting that the battle had turned against him and his men, and also that he was well aware this hostage gambit was clutching at straws. As if Gloriana’s going to endanger the whole world to save my life. I wouldn’t blame her for thinking that a poor exchange. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and awaited the inevitable, only daring to hope that he might at least bleed unconscious long before Lord Corin had a chance to fully carry out his threat: a seax was not a weapon well designed for instant beheadings. Before the sealord even had a chance to open Kasimir’s jugular, however, another shot rang out, the tight grip around his head slackened, and Lord Corin collapsed backwards. Despite the pain in his bruised and maimed legs, Kasimir quickly dragged himself away from the corpse, and twisted around to assess the situation. From what he could see in the dim and inconstant light, only Alvere were left standing, although fewer in number and many of them wounded. The sole exception was Lord Lycon, who seemed unhurt, in spite of the blood on his face and uniform. No telling to whom that belonged, thought Kasimir, although possibly it might have belonged to the former owner of the smoking pistol he now held in his right hand, which was still extended towards the place where Lord Corin had breathed his last. Lycon looked understandably, if cruelly satisfied at this outcome, but Gloriana did not seem to share his elation.
“What have you done?” she asked, in an appalled tone, as her gaze shot back and forth between Lycon, Corin’s corpse, and the void beyond the precipice. Although confused at first, Kasimir soon found reason to sympathise with her fear. Corin’s blood, flowing from the new orifice in his back, was trickling across the hewn stone floor and pooling in the intricate carvings of the circle, while the once-pale aura that had surrounded them was taking on a deeper, darker hue. This much was unmistakable, but it was the subtler, more uncertain omen that really made his heart rate quicken. Out in the deeper spaces of the cavern, where the strange source of gravity resided, he momentarily thought that he saw a vast shape, albeit only as an outline: a huge, flat-topped, step-fronted pyramid traced in fine lines of shifting red tones, as if a spider could weave a web of smouldering embers. The apparition lasted for no more than a second, but that was long enough to kill any sense of relief that the newly-appointed Lord of Falkraine might have briefly enjoyed.
As for Lycon, he briefly looked as if he wanted to say something cutting and defensive about how no-one was rushing to thank him for having killed their mutual enemy. However, as an icy, intense gust of air hurtled through the cavern, causing a drastic drop in both ambient temperature and morale, it seemed to dawn on even him that he might have made a serious miscalculation, and the riposte he eventually made was half-hearted at best.
“Well … I had no way of knowing … but does it matter? Now that he’s dead, can’t you control this thing? I thought–”
“I can control it when it’s dormant,” interrupted Gloriana, with both exasperation and fear, as she hurried across from the scene of carnage to examine the stone circle. Not only was it now emanating a glow like some abysmal flame, but there was also a low tone in the surrounding air, barely audible yet threatening, as if the rock itself was growling a territorial warning. “The temple needs preparation, programming, like a steam-loom or a tabulating recorder. That was the first step of our ritual, to make sure that it was programmed to follow our wishes, then we would have awakened it with a carefully-controlled group meditation … not a bloodbath. This is a disaster,” she declared, looking over the defiled monument with as blank an expression as ever, but with a posture full of weary despair. “We have no way of knowing what this temple’s last instructions were before it was laid dormant. You know the legend of Azelia. One very plausible interpretation of that is that the creators of these temples at some time, for whatever reason, deemed human life to be a failure: an abortion fit only to be purged. Something stayed their hand eventually, hopefully mercy, but the potential for genocide is most assuredly … Oh no,” she added, as a new sensation swept over the variously wounded, unconscious, and terrified survivors: a prickling irritation, like frostbite and pins and needles mixed into one morale-sapping package. After a few seconds of this, the Queen marshalled her spirits, seized an astounded Lycon by the arm, and practically hurled him into the area of the circle, where he collapsed in a sprawl alongside Kasimir. Before he could protest, she shouted an order in a tone that brooked no denial.
“Stay in the circle! You too, Elwin,” as if I’m about to run off anywhere, thought Kasimir, whose right leg was causing him quite enough pain even as a useless, trailing appendage. “The sigils may provide some protection … I hope. The blood’s summoned them. It won’t be long before–”
What happened next was enough to completely distract Kasimir from his injuries, although in no comforting fashion. One
of Corin’s stunned and wounded men, who had previously been expressing his pain only in a low groan, suddenly leaped upright and back onto his feet, but with a limp-jointed, spasmodic gait that made him seem more like a string puppet that had been suddenly jerked into action. He also began screaming in agony and terror, as his limbs were stretched and manipulated in ways that nature surely never intended, his tunic and shirt were ripped open, and red puncture wounds erupted like a bloody rash on his exposed skin. The shadows in the cavern seemed to dance and whirl tempestuously, with more activity than the flicker of the torches would account for, and although it was hard to tell in the feeble light, it seemed as if the trooper’s face was turning grey and pallid. His screams, however, were no less vivid, and increased in intensity as the skin around his eyes was stretched and torn wide open, and the eyes pulled from their sockets.
For many of the Alvere, this was one horrific mishap too much, and they made a dash for the stairway without even stopping to recover their clothes. Others ran for the stone circle and whatever protection that offered, but Gloriana picked up a fallen seax and stabbed the tortured man through the throat. As she pulled the blade away, his mutilated but mercifully dead body collapsed in a mangled heap, but another of the fallen Brythons almost immediately began twitching, then screaming. Gloriana reacted much more quickly on this occasion, swinging the blade in a sideways arc to cleave a mortal gash across his chest, but even before he had expired the unseen force had chosen another victim. Thus followed the grotesque spectacle of the steel-masked, naked, blood-smeared Queen of Alvenheim moving from wounded man to wounded man, pre-emptively putting them out of their misery.
Horrendous a sight although this was, what disturbed Kasimir even more was how familiar he found it. It brought back to mind a time some twelve years ago when he had been an assistant clerk on secondment to RepSec, and had helped to process a particular sickening murder case. He had read the arresting delators’ notes of the crime scene with disgust, and had expected that when he finally got to meet the murderer, he would turn out to be some near-mindless brute or some cold, inhuman psychopath. He had definitely not expected some traumatised wreck of an elderly, tearful peasant, expressing only pathetic, incoherent mumbling while the officers showered him with insults, spit, and blows. Kasimir’s curiosity had got the better of him and he had used his telepathy on the suspect, to his instant regret. He had seen an elderly woman, her arms and legs stretched out wide as if she were tied to a torture wheel, screaming while her body was disfigured by many bloody wounds. He had felt the old man’s terror and grief as he picked up his hatchet, ended his wife’s ordeal the only way he could, and ran off into the night, clutching his Alvere charm pendant close to his chest. Not that he cared much whether he lived or died, but no way would he let them take him. Not the Reapermen …
It was an insight the young civil servant could have well done without, nor was it even useful in saving the old man from the gallows, as telepathy was considered too unreliable to be used as evidence. It could, after all, only tell him what a person actually remembered, and it was all-too plausible that some superstitious peasant might indeed edit such an atrocious crime from their memory by obscuring it in folklore. Killed her to save her from the Reapermen … That’s not the sort of case I’d like to argue in front of a Republican procurator. Before you know it, we’d be letting people off robbery charges for pleading that a horde of mischievous pukas did the crime. That had seemed rational enough as he had drawn up the poor man’s charge sheets and booked him an imminent court date.
Right here and now, however, he could only wonder if that old man’s ghost was watching over the scene and thinking I told you so, and whether it was doing so in a spirit of dismay or of sadistic glee. He could not have blamed it for either.
As for the Queen, she continued to hack and slash with increasing wildness at both the wounded and the dead alike, until her pale skin was almost hidden beneath a grisly red varnish, and there was not a whole body left among them. When, at length, she could find no-one else to dismember, she stood in silent, shell-shocked exhaustion, until Lycon shouted her back to her senses.
“Nicely fought, Your Highness, but for Thalassa’s sake, get into the fucking circle! Unless you’ve a good reason to think those abominations don’t like the taste of your blood, then–”
“She might have,” interrupted Kasimir, at a sudden inspiration, although he quailed somewhat as Lycon subjected him to a hard, narrow stare that demanded a damn good explanation. He gave it his best, albeit nervous shot. “Err, that is, our legends say that the Reapermen are or were tutelary spirits of the ancient Alvere forests, before our ancestors slashed and burned most of them. They have no grudge against the Alvere, but when it comes to the likes of you and me–”
“Of course! I’m a fool,” declared Gloriana, while hurrying back to the circle. Next to one of the intricately carved monoliths stood a collection of laboratory instruments and ritual articles, including notebooks, galvanometers, silver chalices, papyrus scrolls, talismanic crystals, and one curiously mundane-looking leather bottle, such as a soldier or a traveller might carry. She made straight for this, and as she was uncorking it and pouring its contents – seemingly plain water – into one of the chalices, Lycon took the opportunity to express his bewilderment, which Kasimir’s ‘explanation’ had only succeeded in deepening.
“You what? You don’t mean all of that old wives’ bullshit about vengeful spirits is actually true, then?”
“Of course not,” Gloriana explained, as she filled a second chalice. “The myth is just that, but like most myths it contains a grain of truth. The ‘Reapermen’ are physical beings, but artificial. My own hypothesis is that the creators of these devices, as part of their unfinished purge, took people and altered them … horribly, and agonisingly, so that they would become permanent inhabitants of the Darkshift and have no will of their own. The Reapermen live, if you can call it life, but only to obey a single instinct: to hunt down and kill or convert other human beings, until none remain. In the creators’ minds, they were akin to antibodies, merely curing a disease. Us,” she clarified, grimly, as she sealed the bottle again.
“Us … but not you, apparently?”
“No. All legends aside, I am still mostly ignorant of how or why the Alvere came into being. One possibility is that once upon a time the Reapermen threat in Alvenheim was so bad, that primitive human adepts experimented with protective spells and stumbled upon the Rite of Transition by sheer luck, although the Rite itself only stimulates the change. How that potential for change was implanted in us in the first place, I only wish I knew. Perhaps it was truly like in the legend, where the creators took pity on humankind, and planned to evolve them into less prolific and destructive beings rather than exterminating them, but they could not complete their work. On which note, drink these,” she ordered, handing the chalices to the two men. “I am sorry this needs must be so unceremonious. I had hoped your transitions would be a joyous occasion, but we’re down on our options.” Kasimir accepted his chalice with a more awestruck air than Lycon, who looked at his with doubtful, almost distasteful eyes. Kasimir could hazard a guess why: an Alvere holding high social status was as unheard-of in Brythenedd as it was in Lucinia. Without the advantage of the supernatural power he had hoped to gain, this could well cost Lycon the power and lordship he already had by right of birth.
“Is this necessary?” Lycon asked, with deep reluctance. “Didn’t you say that the circle would protect us?”
“I hoped that it would,” she clarified, impatiently. “It seems to have deterred the Reapermen for the moment, but do you really want to take that risk? In any case, I fail to see how you will rally your men while skulking in a crypt.”
“My men? Why would I … ? You mean those things might also be up there in the town, butchering their way through my troops?” he asked, with dawning horror.
“At the least, and I only pray they have spread no further, as yet.”
&nbs
p; “Then the embassy staff as well … We have to help them,” declared Kasimir, frantically.
“Agreed, but you’re in no state to be the bearer of tidings. Are you well enough, Leolah?”
“I’ve had worse than this, Your Highness,” said a grim but familiar voice behind Kasimir. He turned to see Maradith, the dazed euphoria completely gone from her expression, and he was concerned to see that she was binding a gash in her right arm with a large piece of noctys silk. A smaller piece would have served better, but tearing the stuff by hand was a formidable task for even an able-bodied Alvere. He was also faintly ashamed to realise that he had never even considered the possibility that the faithful delator had a first name, but such familiarities were tragically rare in Lucinian bureaucratic circles. “Nothing like a quick scrap to clear the head … though it might be for the best if I steered clear of any more swordplay in the near future.”
“Swords will be of little further use, I fear, but the embassy staff might be more responsive to orders received from a delator, so wear your uniform one last time. Get back up there, secure their building, and keep them in it, along with any of the Brythons you can persuade to join you. What about you, Saskia?” she asked, a little coldly. The priestess had managed to slip away into the shadows during the battle, and had only now joined the rest of them in the circle, looking dejected but physically uninjured. “Are you fit to move?”
“I would leave this godforsaken place were I fit or not,” she answered, miserably. “I suppose you want me to place wards and sigils around the embassy.”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
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