by Jason Kenyon
At least, it would have been. It was supposed to have been the last night of her life, with the execution of her plan to release the Syrakh to come during the final day of the Grand Tournament. She’d even anticipated Valia attacking the holding cell beneath the tea factory tonight, especially after Malthanes had unwisely executed Kherim in bold provocation. Malthanes had been sent to oversee the final night’s guard, and given as many members of the Shield of Lut’yis as Salestis could spare to fortify the area.
Now, as she stood at the threshold of the ramp leading into the Shield’s lair, Salestis knew that there would be no salvaging the plan. The Central Council and Knight Champion Terrek would go on living. She’d lost the chance for a heroic death, and so would go the long way out, feeling every part of herself wither and rot away while she still breathed.
Lyssina stirred at her side. Salestis had never told her until now that the Syrakh had been hidden away here, since she’d half-expected her to try to stop it somehow. She felt a slight rush of fondness for her, since she had not done so after all, but that only made her think about Mal, and wonder just what had happened.
They descended into the lair, and the first thing Salestis found was a collection of injured ruffians, all lying sprawled and barely conscious near a crater. There was an old man who seemed vaguely familiar, a sandy-haired youth, a red-haired girl in what looked to be an old set of Order travelling gear, a young, fat fellow, and…
Salestis wasn’t sure it could be true. She rushed over to crouch next to the fallen woman and grabbed her, dragging her up to regard her face.
‘Unette Alhamis?’ Salestis asked.
Unette’s eyes flickered, and then steadily focused on the woman before her. Salestis took no pleasure in the fear she saw there, even after all this time trying to capture her. Now it was too late for it to really mean anything, with the entire plan ruined. All the same, she supposed that with Unette still alive, she could try to drag something out of the whole mess.
‘Salestis,’ Unette said, her voice drowsy. ‘Not you.’
‘Are these your fabled Godslayers, Unette?’ Salestis asked, looking around at the motley bunch. If they were, then they were certainly not quite what she’d been expecting.
‘Leave them,’ Unette replied. ‘I surrender. Let them go.’
‘You are in no bargaining position, Unette,’ Salestis said. She released Unette, who had to throw out her arms quickly to stop her face from hitting the floor. ‘This one is Unette Alhamis – get me a magic shackle right away. And take all these others prisoner too.’
They had brought several shackles after the sole scout who’d made it out to request emergency aid had reported mages on the scene. Tempting though it was, Salestis decided not to waste any time gloating over capturing Unette at long last, given that the woman seemed barely capable of thought right now, but she’d make certain to have some further words later.
The next thing to inspect was the crater, which had apparently been left by some fearful detonation that had been heard even at street level. When he’d arrived at the royal palace, the scout had reported that this had essentially brought an end to the hostilities. After the explosion had killed the Syrakh, the rest of the demons had broken off the attack and fled into the tunnels, and one of the survivors, who had decided not to challenge the retreating demons, said he’d seen the rogue knight Valia withdrawing along with them.
Salestis looked past the crater to see what little remained of the Syrakh. It had presumably been partway over whatever explosives had been deployed when they were set off, and consequently only really some parts of its rear legs and tail remained recognisably intact. The smell was putrid, and Salestis was almost glad that most of her sense of taste had already been eroded. Lyssina and some of the other guards gagged violently as they walked past the giant monster’s corpse.
The rest of the lair wasn’t much better. All around the Shield barracks were corpses of paladins and demons alike, and Salestis was disappointed by how many more paladins had been slaughtered. She finally began to understand just what had happened to Ferrina, and realised that she’d underestimated just what the city had gone through. Mal had always been given to exaggeration, but perhaps he’d told the truth on that occasion.
There didn’t seem to be much point in checking the Syrakh’s holding cell, but nobody had found Mal’s corpse yet, and Salestis had the feeling that he would have hidden himself away with the Syrakh as his protector. If he’d been with the Syrakh when it was blown apart, then perhaps he’d been killed in the blast, but Salestis hoped he had survived. Given that the scout had reported that the Syrakh was attacking their own, indicating that it was no longer in the control of any paladin, it felt unlikely that Mal had made it.
Possibly he’d run away. That was the sort of thing Mal liked to do. Salestis hoped for this outcome. She’d be cross with him, sure, but she enjoyed the thought of bullying him into making it up to her.
This evening was determined to be as disappointing and hurtful as possible, though. Salestis felt her heart squeeze tight as she entered the central holding chamber and saw what little remained of Mal. So he’d indeed lost control of the Syrakh, or at the very least it had taken out its fury on his corpse.
‘Oh, Light,’ Lyssina said at her side.
Salestis didn’t know quite how to react, herself. With loss, failure, and sadness hitting her in fairly relentless sequence, everything was going a bit numb. She almost felt like she would just die there and then. Had she really ever cared about Mal? She wasn’t sure. Since learning of her coming death, she’d found it very difficult to dedicate herself to people, so she’d preferred to be on warm terms with several people at once, rather than really having a single meaningful relationship.
Her relationship with Mal had certainly fallen into the love-hate category, but despite the strains they’d had the occasional close moment. His vistarium obsession had at least helped Salestis maintain some emotional distance, since it had generally made him a bit more distasteful, especially after she’d forced him to stop lately and he’d grown quite irritable. Certainly it had started to erode his physical good points.
Lost in her confused thoughts, Salestis became aware of two people nearby. Her entourage of guards had already moved into position around the pair, weapons at the ready, but it didn’t appear that there was any danger. One of the two people was a small woman – Salestis mistook her for a teenager at first, before realising that she was just about as short as she herself – while the other was a large, bearded man, but he was sprawled on the ground and unconscious, surrounded by blood.
‘I won’t cause you any trouble,’ the woman said. ‘Please help him, though. I can’t do it myself. His hand…’
Salestis stepped over to the pair and regarded the man’s injury. It was most certainly quite a brutal one; someone or something had crushed the hand with either tremendous or repeated application of force, and it was unlikely that, in its current state, the hand would be any use ever again. Indeed, she was quite surprised that with such injuries he hadn’t simply bled out altogether.
‘I don’t know much about healing or treating this sort of injury,’ the blonde woman said.
Salestis was taken aback for a moment – this woman had red irises just like Valia! But it couldn’t be her, could it?
‘Who are you?’ Salestis asked.
‘I’m not Valia, I’m a… a mercenary called Mellara,’ the woman replied.
Salestis got the impression that this misunderstanding had happened a lot recently. But then who else had these striking red irises, and why did these two women have them? Well, she didn’t care. These two were not Shield members, so they could only be more Godslayers, or other supporters of Unette.
‘Take her captive,’ Salestis said.
Two of the guards dutifully seized Mellara and pulled her away from the fallen man, while another freed her of her weapons and supplies. They also confiscated Mellara’s impressive black bow, though the paladi
n who retrieved that seemed to have some trouble picking it up, and even dropped it the first time.
Salestis stared into the woman’s eyes.
‘Why are you here?’ she asked.
Mellara opened her mouth, and then appeared to think better of it. She just glared off to one side, aware that any explanation would get her in further trouble. Fed up of this whole situation, Salestis took in a deep breath and then drove her plated fist into Mellara’s diaphragm, causing the woman to cry out in pain.
‘Alright, let’s sort this man out,’ Salestis said, turning her back on Mellara.
‘I think he’ll die if we leave him like that,’ Lyssina said, kneeling at the man’s side.
‘Indeed,’ Salestis said. She glared down at the man, wondering just what part he’d played in Mal’s death. ‘Lyssie, we have no time. Speed-heal his hand and let’s go.’
‘Your Radiance, we can’t do that,’ Lyssina said. ‘What if he’s innocent, or…’
‘Get on with it.’
‘If we do it like that, it’ll ruin his hand,’ Lyssina said. ‘We need to heal this sort of damage slowly or it will all fit together wrong. You have to know this.’
‘Yes, I do,’ Salestis said, folding her arms. ‘I don’t care – do it now.’
Lyssina rose to her feet and stepped over to Salestis, placing her hands on her shoulders. Salestis became suddenly aware of just how much taller her aide was, which annoyed her more than it probably should have.
‘Please, you were always more of a healer than a soldier,’ Lyssina said. ‘I don’t want to do this until we know what the situation was. We need to tend to him carefully.’
Salestis pushed Lyssina back a pace. ‘I am not spending time, energy, or our resources on this man. He had no business being down here.’
‘Let someone else do it, then,’ Lyssina said. ‘I’m not going t…’
Before she could stop herself, Salestis backhanded Lyssina across the face, and since she was in her battle armour that was bound to hurt. Lyssina stumbled a few paces while her blood spattered the ground, and then stared back at Salestis in shock and humiliation.
This only made Salestis angrier. ‘I’ve had enough of your constant back-chat. It seems that I’ve given you free rein long enough, Lyssina. Get out of my sight.’
Lyssina said nothing further and walked from the room, keeping her head down and avoiding the stares of the other paladins. Salestis turned her furious eyes on this bastard who’d helped murder Mal, and knelt next to his ruined hand.
‘No, please!’ Mellara said.
Salestis ignored her. She funnelled her healing powers into the man’s hand, ensuring that she only healed the wounds with speed, and no finesse. As a long-term, talented, former healer of the Order, Salestis knew full well that healing him in this fashion would fuse the injuries together as they were, so while the bleeding would stop, his hand would never function correctly ever again.
But she did it anyway. Screw this bastard. She enjoyed the rush as she felt the hand come back together wrong, watching the broken fingers twist and bend at unnatural angles. When the man awoke partway through and began to scream, Salestis only felt even deeper pleasure. Mellara was shrieking at her to stop, but she was committed now, and forced the hand back together, closing every wound efficiently, and leaving it completely useless.
Salestis rose to her feet and stared into Mellara’s eyes, unblinking.
‘There you go.’
The man was still screaming at her feet, and she knew that would go on for a long while yet. Rushing healing even on a small wound was apt to result in an itching sensation, so doing it to this sort of mess would be like sealing an amputation with salt. Salestis allowed herself her first small smile since arriving here.
‘Your Radiance, what should we do now?’ one of her guards asked.
‘Gather up any survivors,’ Salestis replied. ‘Deliver proper healing to members of the Order, seal any injuries for renegades like this man, and then take any other Godslayers and their allies to the Iron Wing. I want each one of them held aside for questioning tomorrow, except for Unette. I’ll handle her.’
The Iron Wing was the most fortified dungeon beneath the royal palace. Used for the most dangerous criminals, it would be the best place to hold these traitors.
‘And make sure you put him near the rest of them,’ Salestis went on. ‘I want them all to be able to hear him.’
*
Archimegadon had, up until this point, avoided the uncomfortable shackles of the Paladin Order. Now he found himself with both the neck shackle that bound his magic powers, and the strange contraption that locked his left hand over his right wrist. He wasn’t sure why it had been designed that way, but it did make it enormously difficult to reach any of the lock mechanisms, both on his arms and neck.
The companions had been bundled into a cart. Obdo had explained that this was the same sort of cart that had taken him north to Stornis Hold, only covers had been put around the bars this time so that the companions could not see or be seen. The last they’d witnessed before being thrown into the prison cart was a collection of paladins organising the sealing of the tunnel into the Shield’s lair. It seemed that they’d decided to hide away any truth of what had happened, which came as no surprise.
‘Well, this didn’t go as planned,’ Anjilo said, breaking the silence that had followed Obdo’s explanation.
Archimegadon chose not to answer this. He was still trying to make sense of what had happened, and what must have taken place to result in the Syrakh’s assault.
‘Tharanor said she jumped him,’ Mellara said. ‘When I reached him, he was just about conscious, and I got a few words out of him before he passed out.’
Archimegadon looked over at Tharanor, but he was, for now, sleeping, which was a blessing given what Salestis had done to him. Mellara had told them all about it, and it still gave Archimegadon shivers when he saw the painful angles of Tharanor’s ruined fingers.
‘He saw Valia run away, so he followed her,’ Mellara went on. ‘When he tried to help her against Malthanes, she had her red demons attack him. Then she did that to him, as “thanks” for sparing her at Thorn’argen.’
‘That’s some gratitude,’ Obdo said.
Mellara looked over at Archimegadon. ‘You called it wrong, Archie,’ she said. ‘There’s no fixing a person like Valia.’
‘Excuse me, I called it wrong?’ Archimegadon asked. ‘I ran the plan past the rest of you all.’
‘You kinda pushed it past us,’ Mellara replied. ‘I was wrong to agree with it – I got caught up in thinking that she might have something decent in her too. But what Neurion said that one time was right. Sparing Valia was a mistake before, and it was now as well.’
‘So since everything has gone sour, we’re just going to start throwing blame at me?’ Archimegadon asked.
‘I’m not throwing blame,’ Mellara replied. ‘It’s just, well, look at what she did to him. And now the rest of us are going to die, because she turned on us.’
Unable to tug at his beard as he normally would have done in such a frustrating situation, Archimegadon glared at the dusty floor panels of the cart. He’d genuinely thought that there was a chance with Valia, and that perhaps she’d begin to do good again, like when he’d first met her. But it seemed that she’d never quite got over her grudge with Tharanor, and Archimegadon wondered just how much of a part Tharanor’s demand for an apology had played in that.
‘There’s no point giving up now,’ Archimegadon said. ‘We can still work something out.’
‘We’re not getting out of the royal palace,’ Mellara said. ‘We don’t have friends on the outside, and you can bet that Valia’s not coming for us. Even if she did plan to attack the Supreme Commander in retaliation, it isn’t going to be right away – the Shield made a dent in her demon numbers, no matter if she ruined their own. I just don’t see what we can do now.’
Ithalna was sitting in total silence, and had stayed t
hat way since they’d all regained consciousness. Archimegadon supposed that she was going to get the worst of it, as the witness of Salestis’s plot against the King. It made him wonder why Salestis had spared her at all, but not much reason had come from the Supreme Commander lately.
‘I’ll see if I can talk to them,’ Anjilo said. ‘They might listen to a former member of the Order… and my mother’s name might still carry some influence.’
Neurion was silent just as Ithalna was, but unlike her stoic silence, he looked like he was stuck in a state of total shock. Archimegadon realised that he’d never taken the time to try to mend things between them, and now that his plan to ally with Valia had ended in such disaster for the group, he wasn’t sure that there was anything in particular that he could say or do that would fix it all.
*
The night was terrible. Barely able to sleep anyway, both from fear and discomfort in the palace dungeon, Archimegadon was regularly awoken by the cries of Tharanor, whose mis-healed hand kept him in a constant state of pain and discomfort. Archimegadon cursed Valia for her betrayal, and wondered just how much better things would have been if he’d let Tharanor kill her atop Thorn’argen.
When morning broke, a collection of faceless paladin guards came and collected Archimegadon, dragging him without explanation through the halls of the royal palace. He wished that he was still stuck in that endless queue on petitions day, but when they passed the stairs where the queue had run, he saw that there wasn’t a commoner in sight.
The paladins pushed him through a door and closed it behind him. Archimegadon found himself in someone’s plush bed chambers. Before him, on the opposite wall, was an enormous mirror, and to either side of it were tall windows that stretched up to the high ceiling, letting in deceitful sunlight that seemed determined to pretend that all was well with the world.
To his right, Archimegadon spied an impressive bed, at the end of which was a small table on which someone had left a book. On the left was a grand dinner table around which had been placed a large number of chairs, while someone had set out tea.