Art of Hunting

by Alan Campbell

  At one point in particular, the gem lantern’s brightness leaped considerably.

  Whatever could that be?

  He grabbed his pen and made a note of the position. Two seventy-one degrees. Whatever it was, it must surely be an artefact of extraordinary power to cause such a large disruption in the lantern’s field. A course of two seventy-one degrees would take him south-west, out past the prison city of Ethugra, and ultimately into the strange green waters of the Mare Verdant.

  Maskelyne pulled the bell cord to summon Garstone. Then he rifled through the desk in search of quality drafting paper, rulers, compasses and set squares. By the time his servant had appeared, Maskelyne had already sketched a rough outline of the housing system he required.

  ‘Give this to Halfway,’ he said. ‘Tell him to drop everything else, I want all his machinists working on this right now.’

  Garstone glanced at the sketch. ‘To this scale?’

  ‘As it’s drawn. And ready the Lamp. We sail as soon as the device is built.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Garstone retreated.

  Maskelyne dimmed the laboratory lights and went over to the window.

  In the dark the Mare Lux shone like engine oil. To the north and south the island’s headlands stood in ragged silhouette against heavens dusted with stars. Between them he could just perceive the silvery arc of the Beach of Keys. He could not spot any of the Drowned upon that metal shore, but he knew they would be there. They came in droves at night.

  He turned his back on the night and approached the first of his brine tanks. The woman floating within watched him warily. She was in her early thirties, shapely enough, and dressed in a plain knotted weed robe of Ethugran design – some unfortunate jailer’s wife or daughter. Maskelyne suspected she had been drowned, as many of them undoubtedly were, merely to supply him with a fresh specimen. But then, people had to make a living somehow.

  He pointed to the south-south-west, to the source of the power his makeshift device had detected. ‘What lies there?’ he said. ‘Do you know?’

  She stared at him mutely.

  ‘Is this what your kind want me to find?’

  She did not answer.

  He had not expected her to. She was merely a vessel into which he might tip his thoughts and thus peer at them. The Drowned who brought the keys to his doorstep were invariably those from whom the last drop of humanity had long since evaporated: the old Drowned, those from whom the sea had taken everything. They came not as ambassadors of mankind or even of the human dead but as mindless emissaries of the brine itself.

  ‘What is it?’ Maskelyne asked again. ‘What lies there? Punishment? Liberation?’

  But the Drowned woman did not reply.

  Even something designed to empower a body or preserve it from decreation cannot help but alter that body in ways which are often not . . . entirely healthy. Wearing such armour is like drinking water tainted with a drop of brine, it will keep you alive for a while, but it is always going to kill you in the end.

  Granger woke suddenly with a feeling that something was wrong. He had been dreaming about the Unmer, and Marquetta’s words still reverberated through his thoughts. But there was something else. He lay there for a moment, listening to the darkness, then opened his eyes. A breeze stirred the gauze curtains covering the windows. The walls were faintly grey from the starlight reflected off high mountain snow and he could smell the bitter-fresh tang of pine from the surrounding forests. The bed sheets lay crumpled around his legs.

  He was struck with an overwhelming sensation that there was someone in the room with him.

  He lifted his head and looked around.

  Nothing but the curtains blowing in the breeze. No sounds but the distant chuckle of water from a mountain stream.

  Granger knew better than to dismiss his instincts. They had saved his life on numerous prior occasions. Quietly, he pulled himself to the edge of the bed and looked underneath it.

  Nothing.

  He slipped out of bed, feeling the cold stone under his bare feet, and stood there, naked. Pain wrung his joints but he ignored it. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck were standing on end. His nerves screamed: There is an intruder in the room. Only there wasn’t. The room was empty.

  The terrace?

  From where Granger stood he could see most of the terrace through the translucent curtains. He padded silently across the bedchamber and brushed aside the billowing gauze. The terrace outside was deserted. A few old pots lay under the balustrade. He could see out across the treetops, the whole valley glimmering faintly silver under a star-dusted sky.

  Granger sensed something move behind him. He wheeled round.

  Nothing.

  But as he stepped back into the room, a wave of dizziness swept over him. He staggered, but managed to stop himself from falling. A sudden sharp pain jabbed his neck, as though something had bitten him. Granger went to move his arm to slap the offending insect away.

  Only he found that he couldn’t. His arm was entirely paralysed.

  And then he tried to move his feet.

  But they, too, would not budge. Indeed, he found that none of his muscles responded to his will. All of a sudden he was completely unable to move.

  Sorcery?

  He thought of the nerve shredders Ethugran jailers used. Was he now in the clutches of some similar device? It explained the bite he’d felt, the pressure he continued to feel at the back of his neck. That bastard sphere? He hadn’t seen it in here, but the cursed thing was small enough to have hidden itself somewhere.

  And then Granger spied something very odd indeed.

  Something thin and dark crept into the edge of his vision; it looked – for all the world – like a line drawn by an artist. But this line was being drawn through the very air itself. A very fine wire, perhaps? Or a tendril? A samal? His heart clenched at the thought, but then he dismissed the idea. He was too far from the ocean. Not even the largest samal could reach so many leagues inland.

  The line grew longer, proceeding slowly through the air before him in a gentle curve. He tried to turn his head to locate its origin, but found that he could not move his neck. Whatever this was, it seemed to have originated from somewhere close behind him. In this gloom he could not determine its colour – other than that it was darker than the surrounding marble – and yet it seemed to him to have a liquid glimmer.

  As he watched, the line abruptly split into multiple branches, each of which continued to lengthen. Many of these branches began to divide still further, until the whole thing resembled a large plant, or some sort of root system. It continued to grow, filling the air before him, growing until it towered over him. And then the dark lines began to coalesce in places and flow together into larger channels and shapes. And as some of those shapes became more defined, Granger realized what he was seeing. Not a root system, but the circulatory system, complete with blood vessels and a heart, of a large and powerful animal.

  A sriakal?

  Despair gripped him. Sriakals were said to have prowled the battlefields in Onlo and in Galea even before the dragon wars. They were, some veterans said, an unforeseen side effect of Unmer Entropic sorcery – creatures born from the blood-pits of failed Unmer experiments. Galea had endured a plague of them until the Unmer torched their own cities. They were invisible and yet corporeal, able to paralyse their prey temporarily with a neurotoxin sting. With horror, Granger realized that the substance flowing before his eyes was his own blood. The sriakal was feeding on him, drawing his own blood into its invisible veins.

  How did it come to be here? He thought of the tattoo imprinted on the back of Duke Cyr’s right hand. The mark of a Brutalist sorcerer.

  Had Cyr summoned it here?

  Was that even possible?

  He desperately tried to move. He threw everything into the effort, but his muscles simply would not bend to his will. He could not escape, nor would he be able to before the creature drained the last drop of bl
ood from his veins.

  If he could but simply move a finger . . .

  Such a simple movement might lead to a greater one. A finger to a hand . . . A hand to an arm . . . And with an arm freed he could throttle the damned thing.

  He focused on his own hand, willing his finger to move with every shred of effort he could muster. His muscles were tight, locked. His own blood laced the air before his eyes. A gasp escaped his throat – almost a scream of frustration and regret. He could not do this.

  Before him, the sriakal continued to take shape, its great bulk drawn by the lines of Granger’s blood. Now its muscles were beginning to appear, bunched massively in its arms and shoulders. It had no neck as such, merely a thick, mouthless bullish head. Nor did it possess fingers or claws. Rather, its powerful arms terminated in a network of writhing whip-like tendrils.

  Granger had the horrible impression that it was watching him. He sensed something radiating from it. An emotion.

  Pleasure?

  And then the door to his bedchamber burst inwards to a savage kick. And a lean figure stood there, sword in hand, the face thrown in silhouette by the corridor lanterns outside.

  The figure strode forward, and suddenly Granger recognized him.

  But on the heels of this recognition came confusion and horror. It could not be. That man could not exist, could not be standing there with his brine-burned skin and demonic red eyes.

  Granger found himself looking into the soulless gaze of one of his own sword replicates.

  His mind reeled. He stared at the figure and saw nothing in its eyes that he recognized. Nothing of Thomas Granger. There was only chaos and death. No emotion, no empathy, merely a fathomless abyss. This creature was not a part of him. It was part of the sword. It was a monster.

  The replicate strode forward with devilish purpose and fury. It raised the sword high – Granger’s stolen Unmer blade – and plunged it down into the invisible creature and deep amidst that mass of veins through which Granger’s own blood flowed.

  The sriakal shrieked and the air in front of Granger’s eyes boiled with sudden movement. At once the pressure on his neck disappeared and he fell to his knees like a man in penance.

  Now, with a fever-glazed stare and white teeth bared, the replicate tore the Unmer blade clean through the pulsing tangle of fluids. The sriakal gibbered and collapsed and, with a final pitiful wail, disgorged its stolen blood across the pale stone floor.

  Granger swayed on his knees. He lacked the strength to rise and merely gazed up at his hellish rescuer with mute incomprehension. Had the sword spawned this warrior of its own accord? If so, then why did it need him?

  And suddenly he understood.

  The sword was still feeding from him, sucking out his will and replacing it with its own. It needed to keep Granger alive until the process was complete. The sword was slowly forging him into a weapon it could use. Of course it would protect its property.

  He felt a sudden and overwhelming loss, as though something far more precious than his lifeblood had been taken. He opened his mouth to speak, or beg answers from this demon, but could not force a sound past his cracked lips.

  The replicate stood there, drenched in Granger’s own blood, and for a moment Granger thought that it was mocking him. But then he realized that he was mistaken. Its eyes were inhuman, cold and dead – mere openings into the infinite void. It evinced no desires or motives, but existed merely as an extension of the blade itself. That was the truth.

  Soon Granger would be the same.

  ‘Didn’t your father arrange to meet you this morning?’ Paulus said.

  Ianthe blushed. ‘Last night he thought he could persuade me to go with him,’ she said. ‘He’s probably come to his senses. Or maybe he’s still sleeping off the wine. He didn’t look very well.’

  ‘Perhaps he decided to leave.’

  ‘Without saying goodbye?’ Ianthe said. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’

  They were breakfasting on one of the easternmost terraces. Pots of bright flowers crowded the wide space and overflowed through the black marble balustrade. The sun was shining, but the air was still cool enough to make Ianthe glad she’d worn her woollen shawl. Two servant girls hovered nearby, waiting to rush forward and refill a glass or ladle fruit into empty bowls or butter toast or perform any number of other menial tasks that Ianthe would much rather do for herself. Their presence here merely irritated her.

  Paulus sipped his tea, then held out his cup to be refilled. ‘He didn’t seem particularly pleased by our news,’ he said, as one of the servants poured more tea. ‘I hope he doesn’t plan to steal you away against your will.’

  Ianthe looked down at her bowl of fruit. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Well, of course not,’ the prince said. ‘I was joking.’

  ‘He’s not . . .’ She struggled to find the right words, but failed. She began again. ‘It’s not easy for him. I suppose he had everything planned out for us and now that’s all changed.’

  ‘He should be happy for you.’

  ‘He will be,’ she said. ‘I know he will. He’s just . . .’ She shook her head. ‘He’s stubborn.’

  ‘Do you know how he came to be here? Equipped as he was?’

  ‘He told me he’d found a hoard in Pertica.’

  ‘That’s quite a journey. What was he doing so far north?’

  ‘A deadship brought him there.’

  Paulus frowned. ‘A deadship?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Did he meet someone in Pertica?’

  ‘I think so. He didn’t say who.’

  Her father had been convinced that someone had been manipulating the pair of them from afar, moving them like pieces on a chessboard. The deadship, he said, had sought him out and taken him north to that icy wilderness where he’d found the Unmer weapon stash. Ianthe wasn’t convinced. After all, who but a god could engineer such a complicated thing? And why would a god be interested in them? Her father was just being paranoid.

  Paulus stood up and strode over to the balustrade. From here one could see across the forests and the Awl valley to where the snow-capped Irillian mountains rose like a mirage above the morning mists. He said, ‘I sense the hand of a hidden manipulator in this.’

  ‘Who?’

  He didn’t turn around. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But it’s clear that deadship was steered. Someone gave your father the tools to rescue you from the Haurstaf.’

  ‘I didn’t need him.’

  ‘Yes, but whoever gave your father those artefacts didn’t know that.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  He sighed and turned to face her. ‘Nor do I, Ianthe. All I know is that there is a will at work here. Some unseen power has marked you both in some way.’

  Ianthe shivered. ‘But who? Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘Who can know the schemes of the immortals?’

  When he woke he was lying in bed again and there was no obvious sign that the sriakal had ever visited him. The marble floor was clean, polished to a mirror-like sheen. There was no corpse, no tangle of invisible veins filled with his own blood. No smell. Indeed, had it not been for his profound weariness and the sickly pallor of his skin, he might have dismissed the incident as a dream.

  He reached around and touched the back of his neck where the creature had bitten him. There he noted two small bumps. He removed his hand to find a spot of blood on his fingertips.

  No dream.

  The door opened, and the serving girl came in carrying a tray of food. The angle of the light on the terrace outside told Granger he had slept until midday. She placed the tray on the table beside his bed, then smiled, and turned to leave again.

  ‘Wait,’ he said.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Who cleaned this place up?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The room,’ he said. ‘Who’s been in here?’

  She appeared to be genuinely confused by his question. ‘I’m not due to clean it again until this afternoon,’ she said.
‘Would you like me to do it now?’

  ‘No.’ He looked again at the spot on the floor where the sriakal had fallen. ‘I just wondered if someone had been here this morning.’

  ‘Not that I know of.’ She frowned. ‘Is something missing?’

  ‘No.’ Granger shook his head. ‘It’s . . .’

  Had he dreamed the encounter after all? Or worse? The bumps on his neck might indicate needle marks. Had he been drugged? Could he have experienced a hallucination? His gut instincts rejected the idea, but his mind found it hard to explain what had happened otherwise. A sriakal? In Awl? Autonomous sword replicates? Why, if he had merely imagined the attack, did he feel so much weaker than before?

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Where’s Marquetta? I want to speak with him.’

  ‘I expect he is on his way to the palace courtyard right now.’

  ‘Why the courtyard?’

  She smiled. ‘You obviously haven’t looked outside yet.’

  Paulus had been staring at the view for some time, when suddenly he smiled and looked at Ianthe. ‘Is this not more appealing than anywhere in Evensraum or the Anean peninsula?’

  ‘It is beautiful,’ she conceded.

  They had moved from the breakfast table to let the servants clear up, relocating to a bench further round the terrace, where a gap in the forest offered striking views south across the valley to Port Awl. Gun batteries and military compounds pocked the forest stretching out before them. And in the hazy distance between the Irillian mountains there lay a patchwork of green, gold and yellow fields and woodland copses, divided by a looping blue ribbon of river.

  Paulus nodded.‘Sometimes I wish we could make our home here.’

  Ianthe said nothing. The palace held unwelcome memories for her. To settle here would be to remind herself daily of the horrors she had caused. ‘What about your homeland?’ she asked.