The Trials of Empire, page 12
“Do you hear that?” I asked von Osterlen next to me. I could hear a low pulsing sound over the raging silence, something which I had initially taken to be my own heartbeat.
The Dwelkspreker looked briefly over her shoulder, lupine lips pulled back in disapproval.
“Shh!” Sir Anzo hissed. I looked at him sharply, and he pressed his index finger to his lips. “Do not speak,” he whispered.
I looked past him to Vonvalt, but he himself was too focused on the questioning of Kimathi to pay attention.
I wanted to leave now. My gut churned with a feeling of irresistible urgency. Desperate for a distraction, I turned to my left and saw a square window there cut into the wall. The view beyond was not much to look at, simply a cobbled street and a row of silent grey buildings. I examined their surface, trying to find some detail to focus on—
And then I heard something else. It sounded like a breath, or the beginnings of a whisper.
Frowning, I looked across to Sir Anzo.
“You must leave!” came the urgent whisper again.
I turned sharply, expecting to see some sort of spectral form loitering in the window frame – but again, there was nothing.
My skin roughed with gooseflesh. The feeling of unease, that quiet, subtle dread that had not left me since our arrival, increased tenfold.
I turned once again to Vonvalt, but he did not look back to me. He did not speak Kasari either, but continued to watch the proceedings with great interest. He gave no indication that he had heard the voice, and nor did anybody else.
I was about to speak in spite of Sir Anzo’s injunction, when the disembodied whisper came again, even more urgent this time. “You must leave! He is coming!”
Now I fancied that I saw, for the briefest of moments, a rook flitting through the air outside the window. I took several quick steps towards it and looked across the rooftops of that horrible, dead city. I saw, in the distance, one of the large black obelisks.
It was staring directly at me.
“Run! Get out now! He is coming!” the voice shrieked.
I clambered back from the window and turned to Vonvalt. “We need to go!” I shouted. Everyone turned angrily to me, until the sudden sound of running, thumping footsteps filled the street outside.
“Run! Run!” the voice screamed hoarsely, and I saw the alabaster form of Ghessis as he charged down the cobbles towards us.
It was like being faced by an inescapable landslide. My body went rigid, my face scrunched up, and I waited for the inevitable—
And then I was being whisked away from the chamber by incantation, being propelled through the air whilst behind us Ghessis charged, his giant form unhindered by the buildings underfoot. He let out a bloodcurdling, animalistic roar which burst free of his grotesque iron mask like an explosion of seawater against a cliff.
We fled. But for however long we flew above that horrible metropolis – a never-ending city of the sleeping dead that felt more purgatorial than the Plain of Burden itself – Ghessis was behind us, rampaging across the buildings.
Everyone was shouting something. The Kasar conversed madly in their guttural tongue, whilst Vonvalt shouted frantic instructions at Sir Anzo to pass on to the shamans, though the latter was so insensible with fear that he might as well have been a lump of wood. Von Osterlen, veteran of dozens of battles and skirmishes and margrave of one of the most important Templar castles on the Frontier, was mute with fear. Our misadventure with Lady Frost and the dreadport had done nothing to prepare us for this fresh horror.
Other presences now began to manifest around us. The air began to perforate like a sheet of paper held over a flame. Creatures poured into the City of Sleep like flies, thousands of them dragging their way through rents in the aether. They clawed their way towards us, wingless, faceless, leathery black beasts, gripping handfuls of air as though it were physical matter.
Vonvalt turned to me. “Helena! I’m going to send you back!”
“What are you going to do?!” I screamed.
“I cannot leave the Kasar here, I need to make sure that they return! Without them we will never stop Claver on the mortal plane!”
“No! You will not!” a familiar voice called to us, and cackled madly.
We turned. In the centre of the swarm of demons we saw Bartholomew Claver. He floated through the aether like a sorcerer king, his skin death-white, runes glowing above his bald scalp. Behind him, a rent in the air afforded a tantalising glimpse of an appalling plane of existence, a blasted landscape of blood and bone, and at its centre a huge complex of obsidian black ziggurats and temples chaotically arranged in mind-bending geometric constellations. A maelstrom of dark and malign energies bled through the rent in the fabric of space, giving Claver a corona of black light.
“It will take more than a few dog-men to stop me, Sir Konrad,” Claver said. His voice was in our heads, in my ears, buzzing in my brain like flies on a bloated corpse. The demons rampaged forwards, and behind them Ghessis. In moments it would be over, and we would be flung into whatever hellish dimension existed beyond the City of Sleep. Or perhaps we would simply be violently discorporated. It was difficult to know which was better.
“Stop this insanity!” Vonvalt shouted. “There is still time to stop this!”
“Time? The threads of time are converging! The temporal pathways lead to only one place. See for yourself!”
We looked below as the streets suddenly filled with an army, a procession of armoured warriors with none of the rabid insanity of the creatures that chased us, but instead with the grim, malign countenance of demonic soldiers.
Ghessis released another angry roar. He was so close his hand could only have been a few dozens of feet from me, a hand the size of my body. I screeched in fear—
—And then I was somewhere else. Somewhere familiar. A castle chamber, the view through its windows nothing except blue sky and bands of puffy white cloud. Honey-coloured light spoke of a late afternoon, insofar as time existed in this place.
Aegraxes stood before the window, his back turned to me. His robes had changed; he wore a toga of white and cloth-of-gold, stark against his lacquer-black skin. I noticed he wore a silver chain around his neck that reminded me of the Oleni medallion Vonvalt wore during his séances. The castle chamber was bare, as though it had been ransacked.
“What a mess you have got yourselves into,” Aegraxes said, not turning. His voice was clear in the leaden air, as though he had spoken directly in my ear.
I looked about the place, breathless with fear and confusion, my nerves still tightly wound, my sanity wounded. “Wh-what am I doing here? What happened?” My hand went to my chest where Aegraxes had left his mark on me. It pulsed painfully. Was it some sort of psychic beacon? A marker, which Aegraxes could latch on to and draw me to his enclave at will?
“Your master has dismissed you from the City of Sleep. I wanted to speak to you, before you return to the land of the living. I am sorry to say a rather hellish experience awaits you in the Spiritsraad.”
I shook my head, trying to blink away my confusion. “Please, I-I don’t understand—”
“Claver is right. The temporal pathway is narrowing as the threads of time converge. His ascendancy is becoming more likely with every day that passes.”
“What does it matter?” I asked helplessly. “What does it matter who rules the Empire of the Wolf when an entire army of demons is on the march?”
“The mortal and immortal planes are intricately and inextricably linked. I cannot explain matters to you without risking an adverse outcome. But know, Helena, that our enemy has found in Bartholomew Claver a man of unique drive and talent. The temporal pathway always strives to consolidate and align, and Fate does not care whether that alignment brings good or evil to our dimensions. It is capricious.”
“Ghessis? Is that who you mean? Our enemy?”
Aegraxes shook his head. “Ghessis is the Gatekeeper of Purgatory. He will track you for as long as you go where you are not supposed to. He is nothing more than a hunting dog. No. I am talking about something much worse. A being of great malignance.”
“Sir Konrad always told me that there was no good or evil in the afterlife. Just entities that are so vast as to be unknowable.”
“Well, Sir Konrad was wrong,” Aegraxes said simply. He held out his hand, and a rook fluttered down and perched on his finger. He brought the bird inside, and in the blink of an eye, Justice Resi August was standing in front of me.
“Lady August!” I breathed.
“We do not have much time,” she said. She looked agitated, her face flushed. She spoke quickly to Aegraxes. “Our enemy is on the move. They have broken into the Izmyesta. Claver was in the City.”
“I know,” Aegraxes said quietly. “An unexpected development. His patron bestows great gifts.”
“Claver is following Ghessis. He knows he needs to kill me in order—”
“Peace,” Aegraxes said, holding up a hand. He nodded to me. “I do not want to disrupt the temporal pathway. I can still see a way through.”
Now Lady August looked at me as well. “Can we tell her nothing? Our Lady is making preparations. The risk seems slight.”
When Aegraxes spoke, it was to me. “Helena, help is coming. You are not alone. Claver moves on Sova, but you knew that already. You must go back there, and soon. A way forward will present itself – a volume of esoteric lore hitherto overlooked.”
I frowned at this. “A volume of esoteric lore?”
Aegraxes exchanged a look with Justice August. “That is all I dare say. We cannot risk collapsing the pathway.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The answers lie in Sova. Go, now. And steel yourself; fresh horror awaits.”
“Wait!” I shouted, but my chest pulsed painfully, and then I was gone.
I awoke to find myself draped over Vonvalt’s shoulders, being carried out of the chapel and back into the main chamber of the Spiritsraad.
“What is going on?” I mumbled, my mind cloudy with confusion. It was the same feeling as being shocked awake from a deep sleep in the middle of the night.
Vonvalt immediately put me down, and my feet hit the marble of the floor – hard. I saw that he had his sword in his hand, and it was marked with streaks of fresh blood. Only then did I register the screams coming from the chapel.
Vonvalt looked at me, sucking in deep lungfuls of air. His face was dripping with sweat and his hair was lank and crazed.
“Claver!” he shouted.
My attention was stolen as the door to the chapel smashed open on its hinges. The runt which had been used for the Nyrsanar Navi burst through the door. It was no longer the size of a weak infant; it was the size of a huge Kasar, a horrifying mutant creature of bloated, twisted sinews and bulging, irregular body parts. Amid its thrashing limbs and shrieking, snarling maw, I saw, nestled somewhere about its chest, the head of Bartholomew Claver, crowning from the writhing tissue like the birth of an unholy infant.
“Holy Nema,” I breathed.
The creature crackled with corposant light as it charged at us. Vonvalt shoved me roughly out of its path and rolled to the side, seeking and failing to score a hit as it barrelled past. Its claws scratched and clattered against the marble as it sought to arrest its momentum, and then before either Vonvalt or I had a chance to take stock, it was charging back towards us again.
The second head – the Claver head – was spouting complete lunacy. I had no idea what this hellish beast was, this mutated mockery of life, but it was clear that the priest was puppeteering it and likely from a great physical distance. The runt, like an overfilled wineskin, had been stuffed full of dark energy from the afterlife, its limbs lengthened and enlarged, its demeanour transformed from a pathetic, mewling cub to that of a demented and enraged wild beast.
It thrashed its way towards Vonvalt again. A huge hand the size of a platter swung at Vonvalt’s head, which he ducked inexpertly. He managed to cut the creature’s hand with his short sword, and I watched as one of its talons flew off into the air, leaving an arc of ichor in its wake. The blood hissed and sizzled where it touched the holy stones of the Spiritsraad, offending the place with its very existence.
The creature screeched, clutching its ruined hand, clumsily rolling over several times before crashing into one of the pillars in the central chamber. Moments later, Kasar spilled out of the chapel, one of them the Dwelkspreker clutching a tome of arcana, incanting desperately to try and banish the creature.
It nearly worked, too. I watched as it was suddenly seized by eldritch energies, as though grabbed by an enormous invisible hand. But Claver shouted something, some words that burned my ears and hit me like a psychic thunderclap, and the beast was briefly freed from its paralysis. With one swift lurch, it eviscerated the Dwelkspreker from groin to breastbone, spilling a vast clump of guts on to the marble. The book from which she had been reading tumbled across the ground, and another Kasar attempted to dive after it but slipped in the gore. It landed awkwardly on its side, and the beast was able to quickly leap on it and rip it to bloody rags.
Vonvalt grabbed me roughly by the arm and ran us both towards the door – but the creature headed us off. Dripping with Kasari blood, the abomination battered into the main entranceway so roughly the wood splintered. The Claver head once again emerged from its cloacal recess, and dripping with greasy filth, grinned at us.
“There is only one way this ends, Sir Konrad,” Claver gurned, and then suddenly gnashed his teeth as though he were fighting for the control of his own likeness. He spasmed and jerked as if having a seizure. “There is nowhere in this world, or in the next one, you can evade me.”
“By the gods, what have you done to yourself?” Vonvalt asked. Alongside the hatred and revulsion, there was a note of genuine bafflement in his voice. Claver’s transformation from zealous, irritating priest to vessel for incarnate evil had happened so comprehensively and dramatically it was difficult not to be truly curious.
Claver did not answer. His head retreated back into the ectoplasmic mass of flesh. Vonvalt suddenly lunged forward, cracking the top of Claver’s skull like an egg with the edge of his sword. A huge plume of foul black smoke erupted from it, and with it came the screaming sound of a thousand anguished souls and the angry buzzing of bluebottles and flies.
The beast caterwauled from its fanged mouth, gnashing and screeching. It smacked the sword out of Vonvalt’s hand with a ringing clang and sent it skittering across the ground. Vonvalt and I dived backwards again as though propelled by detonation of blackpowder. I was desperate for a weapon of any kind, but there had been no time to arm myself. Instead, I clutched at Vonvalt’s clothes, holding him in front of me as I might a shield.
Behind the beast the doors burst open and a group of Hyernakryger charged in. They wore breastplates of burnished black and white skirts. There must have been five of them, all told, each wielding a large halberd. At the same time, von Osterlen emerged from the chapel, her clothing stained with great sprays of blood. Her hair was, like Vonvalt’s, lank with sweat, and she clutched her short sword.
“Severina! Help!” Vonvalt shouted as the bewildered Hyernakryger closed to engage with the thrashing beast. Even faced with six swords, the demonic spawn was far from outmatched. It rampaged towards the nearest Kasar, parrying the halberd with a smack of its palm which once more released oily foul-smelling ichor from the gash. It closed in to the Hyernakryger’s guard and smashed its right arm off in a welter of blood and flashes of splintered white bone. The Kasar grunted, instinctively sinking to its knees, and the spawn wrenched its head off with one almighty tug.
Von Osterlen screamed as she closed in to engage the beast. She hacked at it as though she were chopping wood, once, twice, three times, each blow scoring a great gash down its back. It looked as though it were a corpse that had been opened up by a barber-surgeon, the great incisions parting its flesh cleanly. But, a moment later, a fountain of gore erupted from the wound. Foul, black energies, ectoplasm and sludge sprayed the Templar in an unholy baptism. The creature whirled around, and battered von Osterlen violently with its remaining good hand. The moment it was turned, the Hyernakryger struck, each thrusting its halberd deep into the spawn’s flesh. Now, finally, the despicable creature buckled, effluents leaking from it as though it were a smashed sewer pipe.
The bloody work of execution began. The remaining Kasar and von Osterlen moved in to dispatch the creature, hacking at it relentlessly, stabbing, parting flesh and bone. All of the dark energies which had filled and animated the host bled out, some of it splattering across the marble of the floor, a great deal more of it simply evaporating into the aether. A poisonous, noxious stench filled the Spiritsraad, making me gag.
Eventually, the thing was killed. In and amongst the gore that remained – great clumps of viscera and strings of sinew which had no discernible purpose – was the mutated runt that Sir Anzo had brought for sacrifice. Of Claver’s disgusting head, there was no sign.
I looked up at von Osterlen. She was covered head to toe in dripping gore, and her composure was one of stunned horror.
“Where is Sir Anzo?” I asked her.
She looked at me as though she had not expected me to be there. Without saying anything, she pointed back into the chapel with her sword.
As the Hyernakryger began to move about the Spiritsraad, checking the corpses of the Kasari priests and securing the temple, Vonvalt and I quickly went back to the chapel to where the séance had started. Inside, the walls were coated in a film of blood. Sitting in the corner was Sir Anzo, completely motionless, and for a second I thought he was alive; then I saw that his eyes had exploded, and the top of his head was blackened as though it had been lit on fire.
“Nema, what a mess,” Vonvalt said, sheathing his sword.
I promptly vomited on the floor.
IX
Prising the Jewel from the Eye
“No one is entitled to success. Sometimes the just fail and the unjust triumph. That is why complacency is the most unforgivable of sins.”
