The Trials of Empire, page 31
Something beneath me was cut. Whatever sinews had been connecting me to my nascent possessor were severed. The feeling of release was profound and instant. I felt breath flood my mortal lungs; the incredible agony in my skull faded into nothing; my muscles relaxed, my bones bent back into shape and that unnameable, indescribable feeling, the rape of my soul, ceased.
And then something else gripped me, and I was falling, falling into darkness and oblivion.
XXII
The Broken Path
“And the Progenitor showed to Vangrid the Broken Path, which had once been whole and perfect, and was now a shattered ruin; for the Muphraab had taken the stone from the earth for his palace at Ambyr, and the Path, which had once been a place of beauty, now was a blasted and evil place that led only to the Palace of Prince Kasivar, the very Halls of Hell.”
FROM “AN ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST MEETING BETWEEN RAMAYAH THE PROGENITOR AND VANGRID”, THE SECOND BOOK OF CREUS
I was standing alone in an ashen place. To one side of me was a great void, an eternity of black nothing. Abutting this was a crumbling cliff face of grey stone.
I was standing on a plateau that in the first instance looked as though it were dusted with snow. Beyond, perhaps a hundred yards away, another cliff face of fractured black rock rose up, easily a hundred feet tall. Its crags and crevices had also collected that dusting of pale grey, and I realised that it was not snow, but ash. It floated in the air, pattering down like soft, gentle rain.
The sky above was a deep sunset red.
I was not alone in this strange, quiet place. In the distance I saw several figures sitting on the edge of the void. There was something profoundly melancholic about them. I could sense it, even from where I stood. Something about their bearing suggested a great agony of the spirit. I watched, mute, as one leapt off the edge of the cliff and into that endless void. They quickly disappeared into the apathetic darkness, nothing at all marking their passage except deafening silence.
“This is a wretched place, is it not?”
I turned. Justice August was standing next to me, looking out across the void as one might regard an ocean. She wore the same battered brown waxed cloak that I had only ever known her to wear.
“Where are we? Is it safe?”
August nodded. “For the moment.” I noticed a rune in the air above her head, this one of weak golden light.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It is what is keeping me safe here. Invisible. You have one too.”
I looked up, to see some light hovering there, like a candle, though I could not make out the detail. I did not know what I had expected.
“What is this place?”
“Come, I will show you.”
I followed her. We traipsed through the ash. It was warm to the touch, and I was soon covered in dusty grey smudges.
We watched another distant figure leap off the side of the cliff and into oblivion.
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“Passing on. They cannot take it. The agony of The Fall.”
She led me up a shallow pathway which was cut into the obsidian-dark rock. I followed her unquestioningly. A part of me was frightened, but it was more like a memory of fear; as though I knew the concept of it, and knew what it should have felt like, but couldn’t quite bring myself to fully feel it. A greater part of me was curious, though August was in no rush to answer my questions.
The higher we went, the more I began to appreciate that this shallow cliff face was the side of a very long and very tall high-way. That is the only way I can describe it. It was as though someone had taken a hundred miles of enormous flagstones of onyx, each a hundred feet tall and a quarter of a mile long, and laid them in a line.
We reached the summit of this bizarre road. The view was unparalleled, for there was nothing higher except some distant fortification. This was a blasted, desolate landscape of black alluvium, veined with golden rivers of molten rock. The sky – or those parts of it visible above the ceiling of roiling dark cloud – was as red as blood. In the distance, lightning flickered and crackled into the earth.
“What is this place?” I asked again. We stood like two dormice on the floor of an enormous hall. The road, which was smashed and fractured and cracked and crumbling in many places, stretched away to an enormous structure on the horizon. That structure was a chaotic mass of blocks, each the size of the Imperial Palace by itself and each wrought in that same gothick ostentation. It was as though someone had taken the architectural tradition of Sova and magnified it a thousand times. I could not even begin to guess at the nature and purpose of such a gargantuan structure.
“Something is happening here. Something is stirring. The enemies of order are rousing themselves after a long slumber. Claver’s work on the mortal plane is part of something much broader. Its nature and purpose we still do not fully understand, but we have our suspicions.”
“Sir Konrad always said that there were no malevolent entities in the afterlife; not in the sense that we understood. That they were inscrutable.”
August shook her head. “Sir Konrad is a product of the Magistratum’s tutelage. Even Kane, for all his ferocious intelligence, could only guess at the nature of the creatures here. But the longer I have been here, the more I realise that the holy dimensions, the afterlife, the astral plane, whatever you want to call it – it is a society. A society like ours. It has its rulers and serfs, its heroes and villains, its generals and its armies and its commonfolk. It is like a giant mirror at our feet, reflecting our best and worst qualities. And like we have our necromancers, so too does the afterlife have its share of creatures willing to breach the skin between our worlds.”
“Like Aegraxes.”
August nodded. “Like Aegraxes,” she agreed. She straightened up. “There is a cowardice in ascribing inscrutability to these creatures. It removes the need for actual study, the need to try and understand. If we just…” she waved her hand “… say ‘oh, well, they can’t be studied, we can never understand them’, then it becomes a crutch. If the most learned of our necromancers couldn’t understand it, then what hope is there for the rest of us? But the truth is there is a great malevolence in this place.”
“What do they want? What is this place? Where are we?”
August sighed. “This is the Broken Path.”
“As in, the Broken Path from the Neman Creed? From the Book of Creus?” I said, incredulous.
“Yes.”
I looked down that enormous road once more, examining it with a newfound feeling of dread. According to the Book of Creus, the Broken Path was the high-way that led to the Halls of Hell. It was a road that had both literal and evangelical significance; literal in that it had been the site of the battle which had secured Kasivar’s position as the Prince of Hell; and evangelical in that it was symbolic of the soul’s journey into the maelstrom of hell.
“And those are—”
“The Halls of Hell, yes,” August said. She did not seem to be particularly worried.
“Are we not in great danger here?” I asked, taking a rather ineffectual step back.
“Some. But we are not alone.” She gestured to the rune above her head. “Come. Walk with me, and I will explain.”
We walked down the Broken Path, a pair of ants on a flagstone.
“You have heard – many times now – about the temporal pathway. Well, every so often, some unlikely sequence of events takes place which has far-reaching ramifications. The moment that Sir Konrad interrupted the pagan ritual in Rill, he embroiled himself – and you, and me – in the machinations of Fate.
“I do not know everything, but I will tell you what I do know. Magick first entered our world during an alignment, or a conjunction, of the afterlife and the mortal plane. The energies of the holy dimensions bled into the real world and transformed everything it touched. That is how we got the Stygion mermen, and the Kasar, and who knows what other creatures. It is believed that this portal opened at the bottom of the Jade Sea, at the centre of the Iris Isles.
“Entities within the afterlife, predatory entities like Prince Kasivar, saw an opportunity to harness the energies of mortals. Their life essences. Their souls. And they harvested us in great numbers. It was like a plague, ravaging the world, leaving thousands dead. But like two sides of a coin, where there is evil, there is good. And other entities within the afterlife, organised under the banner of Oleni – or Nema – decided instead to provide safe harbour for these spirits.”
“Heaven and hell,” I said.
“There was a great battle between the forces of order and chaos, and the portal was sealed. Kasivar was cast out of the purgatorial plane – what we know as the Edaximae – and founded his kingdom here.”
“And these are all… places? Countries, like the kingdoms of the world?”
“Precisely. Arranged of a different matter and existing in a different space, literal and metaphysical, but they might as well be considered nation states. Some are separated by oceans, like the Ossian Sea – which you have already seen. Others by roads, like this, the Broken Path.”
“So where do the souls go now?”
“When a person dies, their soul travels to Myočvara. It is a temporary place, an interstitial space where some transformation happens. And from there, the spirit is taken… somewhere else. Some go to the realms of Oleni, some to that of Kasivar. Some… I know not.”
“And if a soul gets stuck there, Ghessis is summoned?”
“Yes. Ghessis is the Gatekeeper of Purgatory. He cannot suffer a soul to exist in the Edaximae.”
“And whose side is he on?”
August shook her head. “Ghessis is not on anyone’s side. His job is to move souls on. And he does so. Even now, he will be looking for me. Tirelessly,” she added wearily.
“What is the City of Sleep, then? And the Izmyesta?”
August shrugged. “Limbo. Some other part of the afterlife. Or some other dimension altogether, to which both we as mortals and the creatures of the afterlife have access to.”
“And that is where Aegraxes has made his home?”
“Yes.”
“And he is working with you to frustrate… who, exactly?”
“Ramayah, the Progenitor.”
The mention of the creature’s name startled me in the same way someone jumping out from a doorway would. The attempted possession, summoning, destruction of my immortal essence, flooded back to me with a visceral clarity.
“He tried to—”
“Yes. Do not think about it. You will only upset yourself, and there is nothing to be gained from reliving the memory.”
There was a pause as I struggled to put it from my mind – but, of course, it was impossible.
“He is the one helping Claver?” I asked eventually.
But of course it was. Ramayah. I had heard that name many times now, an urgent whisper in my ear, a threat, a promise of pain and horror. I had not made the connexion before; now I realised that this thing, this beast, had been haunting me for some time.
August nodded. “I have suspected for a little while now that it is a greater demon. And given the nature of your Entanglement, Ramayah is a perversely appropriate character for this sorry episode.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Sir Konrad has crossed paths with the Progenitor before, many years ago in Baniskhaven. Do you see, now, how these matters tie together? How the smallest pebble thrown into a stream can be the one that finally dams it?”
I mulled these words over for a while, trying to process their importance whilst trying not to succumb entirely to a profound sense of despair. We had all of us hoped for something much lesser, a creature who could at least be challenged. But not Ramayah. It might as well have been Kasivar himself. “And so, what? He has seen a way to reopen the portal? The Eye of the Sea?”
“We believe so. Sir Konrad was right about one aspect of these beings’ inscrutability; their thoughts and plans and schemes are measured in centuries. It is the nature of the temporal pathway. It must be nudged and husbanded over many years until a tipping point is reached. Now you see events spiralling out of control on the mortal plane; this is a result of slow, patient evil. And, as is so often the case, the forces of order have been slow to respond, always complacent, always indolent, always failing to take the initiative. To act. Well. We acted today.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
August looked at me a little guiltily. “You are not going to like what I am about to tell you,” she said.
“I believe you,” I said dourly.
We walked along the Broken Path for a little longer. “Ramayah is a very dangerous demon. He is one of the chieftains of Kasivar. He has been gathering his forces and preparing an assault on the mortal plane. If he achieves it, then there is no knowing what damage he could do there. To answer the threat, Nema has dispatched her Shrine Guardians to stop him.”
“The angels,” I said. “The golden angels.”
August smiled. Her whole face lit up at their mention. “Yes,” she said dreamily. “They are angels. Beautiful, perfect beings. The personal bodyguard of Nema.” Her expression fell. “The mark of Aegraxes on your chest acts as a psychic beacon. You know this already. We knew that Ramayah was trying to find a suitable vessel for possession—”
Suddenly, everything dropped into place. “You used me as bait,” I said. “A trap. To ensnare him.” My immediate reaction was more muted than I thought it would be. It was to do with the strange, liminal atmosphere of the afterlife, which seemed to dampen extremes of emotion.
August nodded. “I am sorry, Helena. But for too long, all we have been doing is reacting. Trying to stopper the holes. To bale out the water. It was time to finally…” she gripped two fistfuls of air “… do something. Claver has been trying to get the prognosticators to open a channel to the afterlife and so summon Ramayah. Inducing him to choose you, the only person on the mortal plane with a psychic beacon etched on to your soul and a life guard of angelic beings, meant that we could stifle the attempt in the cradle.”
“What if you had failed?” I asked quietly, examining the stones beneath my feet.
August chewed her lip. “It was a very calculated risk,” she said eventually.
“Well. I am glad that some thought went into it.”
We came to a stop near the edge of an enormous chasm-deep crack in the Path. We could go no further.
“My task has become to keep you safe,” August said to me. “To keep your spirit anchored to your body. Every time you enter the holy dimensions, my role is to make sure you exit them again. Others better and more intelligent than me are preparing for the war to come. To try and stop Ramayah – for he will try again.”
“But the Guardians stopped Ramayah,” I said. “They stopped him.”
August shook her head. “They stopped the prognosticators from completing the summoning ritual. Even beings as powerful as Shrine Guardians are no match for an elemental like Ramayah. Once the bindings were stopped, the summoning was stopped, and Ramayah simply returned, like a stone dropped into a lake.”
“Will they try again?”
“I expect so, although a great many things must be just so. It is not straightforward piece of magick, and we have just killed off a good number of the prognosticators capable of writing the runes.”
We stood in silence for a moment.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“There is one more thing I will show you, and then you can return. Come.”
We moved down the other side of the Broken Path and on to that blasted landscape of black ash and dust. Travelling across it was like wading through sand, and such a journey on the mortal plane would have exhausted my mortal lungs and mortal muscles. Here, it was tiresome only in how tedious it was.
I did not notice the landscape shift around me. It happened slowly, subtly, insidiously. The alluvial plains broke up into jags of glassy black rock, and we had to pick our way over it slowly and carefully. At one point, in the distance, I thought I saw someone moving on the plains, some robed nomad, though they disappeared quickly.
Eventually, August led me down into a cave. At first I thought it was a simple natural formation, until I realised that it wasn’t a cave; it was a stomach. It was the innards of a beast which had long rotted away. We were standing amongst its ribcage, the bones surrounding us like racks of scimitars that had long been absorbed into the rock of the walls.
At the far end was Bartholomew Claver.
I yelped.
“Fear not,” August muttered. “It is not him. Not in any real sense. Just a manifestation, an echo of his soul.”
I approached the patria. He was naked, pale in the wan, aethereal glow, and like Westenholtz, had bled into the surroundings, as though someone had moulded his body to the rock using clay. His cheeks were wet with a constant flow of fresh tears, and his mouth moved in… fright? Terror? Supplication? It was clear that whatever this was, this spectral artefact, was in deep distress.
“What is it?” I asked.
August shrugged. “Like I said, an echo. A fragment of his soul. I chanced upon it. I was not looking for him. But such things have a way of finding me.”
I examined the man in front of me. So diminutive. So pathetic. Locked in some apparent eternal torment.
I reached out, my fingers brushing the skin of his chest—
Bartholomew Stanislaus Claver was born in Imastadt, in Guelich. It was an ordinary town. On a clear day, you could see the very tops of the royal fortress at Badenburg, which was perhaps the only remarkable thing about it.
Claver was the younger of two boys, born to parents of not immodest means. His childhood, like his hometown, was unremarkable. Intelligent, precocious, and with his older brother interested only in military service, Claver was earmarked for law or the priesthood.
Time passed. Claver and his brother grew. They attended the funeral of their father and inherited his wealth. Claver’s brother became restive and failed his squireship. One day, a Templar recruiter moved through Imastadt looking for fighting men for the Frontier. Claver begged his brother not to go, but he did. He would die in the Battle of Adalburg a year later.
