The Trials of Empire, page 42
He looked the same as he had always looked: a dark-skinned man, clad in ostentatious robes and holding a black lacquered sceptre topped with a skull wrought from a ruby the size of a fist.
“Matters are reaching a head,” he said. Gone was the wryness I had become accustomed to; now he looked serious, worried even. He walked across the room and took a chair opposite me. “I think you have some idea, thanks to Resi, of what is happening.” He steepled his fingers in front of his face. “You may speak freely. Here, we cannot be harmed.”
The way he said it suggested that, where we were going, we absolutely could be harmed.
“Claver has made a pact with Ramayah,” I said. “I do not think Claver realises quite what it is he has done; Ramayah is sustaining him and his acolytes, using them as tools. He is enabling them to wield the Draedist arcana in a way that they should not be able to.”
“And do you know who Ramayah is?”
“He was one of the chieftains of Kasivar.”
“Correct,” Aegraxes said. He tapped the stem of his cane against the floor. “Probably the foremost of his chieftains. He has long had designs on the mortal plane. He was one of the first to harvest the souls of the living. He poisoned the blood of Creus. He cut out the heart of Vangrid. He is a being of considerable power that… delights in evil. Or, what you would consider to be evil.”
“You would not?”
“As it happens, I would. Which is why I am trying to stop him.”
I took in a deep breath, and let it out in a great sigh. “If you want my help – and I cannot think why – perhaps you had better tell me what is going on. All of it.”
Aegraxes nodded solemnly. A goblet appeared in his hand.
“Ramayah is one of the princes of Hell. He resides in the Palace of Blood, in a region known as Sardach. He was not always so, but he is now, and that is all that matters. A very long time ago, when this place was nascent, and the great elementals of state were carving out their palaces and kingdoms, a channel was formed between this plane and your mortal plane.”
“Resi told me. You stole us. Our spirits.”
“That’s right. To us, you were… Cattle. Lambs. Livestock. It isn’t quite like that, but the analogy is appropriate for our purposes.” I waved him off. “Eventually, some of my brothers and sisters decided that this conduct was unconscionable.”
“Nema.”
“Oleni,” Aegraxes corrected, “and her husband, Hava, who you all insist on calling Savare.”
“The God Mother and Father.”
Aegraxes inclined his head. “Precisely. And so began the great war for the realm. It would take an age simply to recount the events of it; suffice it to say, Oleni and Hava prevailed, the conjunction of our planes was ended, the bridge was severed, and Kasivar, Ramayah and others – including the Muphraab – were exiled to the abyss. Weakened, chastened, they have done little more than plot and make mischief and war amongst themselves and the broader realm for – well, for more time than you can comprehend. And then Fate intervened.”
“Who is Fate?”
Aegraxes considered how to answer this for a moment. “Fate is a being which answers neither to us, nor to you – nor to anyone, for that matter. I am not sure anyone truly comprehends what it is. It may not even be a being. But nonetheless, it guides and guards the temporal pathway, which we all, in our own way, can affect. Many months ago Sir Konrad crossed paths with Bartholomew Claver. You saw, already, I think, how Claver was earmarked for malevolence.”
I nodded as I thought back to the surreal fly-on-the-wall vision I had had of Claver’s life.
“Their meeting, and their subsequent argument, has had important ramifications.”
I snorted. “Quite.”
“These small things, chance encounters, all add up to a singular course of action. And we here in the abyss, in the Edaximae, in the Izmyesta, watch as matters play out on the mortal plane and so affect the future of us all. And beings like Ramayah watch you with a hate which is difficult to comprehend for its intensity. Imagine if one day the daydreamings of oxen could dictate the course of human events. It would drive you people insane.
“So: they do what they can to take your souls as they descend into what you call the afterlife. They consume them, use them, tease and torture them, and many other things besides, whilst Oleni does what she can to prevent it.
“Ramayah has seen a way in which the conjunction can be replicated; the bridge between our plane and yours restored.” Aegraxes pulled an expression of distaste. “For a very long time he has sought out the appropriate puppet, and has found one in Claver. I am afraid that many of us underestimated his cunning and his patience. To borrow one of your human expressions: we have been watching the weather, not the whale.”
“How can he reopen the bridge?” I asked.
“He can’t. But Claver can. He already tried, remember?”
I remembered the abortive attempt at my possession.
Aegraxes smiled darkly. “Yes, you remember. You are likely to remember for the rest of your life.”
“The Shrine Guardians saved me,” I said. “Can they not simply do it again?”
“Would that they could.” Aegraxes smirked. “Think on it for a moment. Let us say that some mischief took place in the Kasar Kyarai, something which only a special force of Imperial Legionaries could resolve. And so the Legionaries travel from Sova to the Kyarai, and they give battle there, and they prevail, and perhaps some of them are killed. And then let us say that a little while later, the same threat appears in the very tip of Haunersheim, and so that force of Legionaries travels all the way from the Kyarai, a journey of many weeks, and gives battle there, and prevails, but again loses some men. And maybe they return to Sova and their numbers are replenished – but then their enemy appears on the Gvòrod Steppe, and as they are halfway there, the enemy appears in the middle of the Grall Sea, and then in Qaresh.”
“I take the point.”
“I’m sure of it. The Shrine Guardians are an élite company whose job it is to protect Oleni from the many threats of Hell. They must be judicious in their interventions. Claver is not the first man to attempt this lunacy – to fall to the charms of Ramayah – but he is the most accomplished and the most powerful. He has about him many demonic entities.” Aegraxes snorted bitterly. “Parasites.”
“And so we are at the tail end of plans millennia in the making?”
Aegraxes nodded. “If Claver succeeds, it will be the end of the Empire of the Wolf.”
“Why am I special? Why must it be me?”
“It is not you. It is what you will do. What only you can do. And I, and my own puppets, Lady Karol Frost, and Resi, and others, are contriving to ensure that you fulfil that end. If all of these little events are pebbles thrown into the temporal stream, then now we are rolling in boulders, left, right and centre. We have failed many, many, many times before. But this time Sir Konrad has you. He picked you up in Muldau three years ago, a useless urchin. Why?”
“Why indeed,” I muttered, stung.
Aegraxes sat back. “We are confident that it will make the difference. When the time comes.”
“You are not telling me what that thing is for a reason.”
“Now you have it. Our machinations must be subtle. If we were to tell you, then the moment you return to the mortal plane, the knowledge is there, planted in your mind. We have artificially diverted the stream. Our enemies will know what it is they must prevent. We cannot have that. It must be natural, and it must be a surprise.”
I sighed. “Tell me what it is I need to do.”
“We need to sever the connexion that links Claver to Ramayah. And we were making great strides in that direction. But we have run into a problem.”
“Resi has been captured.”
“Resi has been captured. Ghessis, the Hunter, the Gatekeeper of Purgatory, has finally caught up to our talisman. He has taken her – and she has finally retrieved the means to sever that connexion. Which means we must rescue her, and quickly. If she dies, then the knowledge dies with her.”
“She is already dead.”
“Not in a way that matters to us.”
I thought a moment. “What is Resi? How is it she has come to occupy such a singular position?”
“Resi occupies a special place in Purgatory. The manner of her death is not unique, but very rare. Her mind was killed on the mortal plane, but her body lingers on in a hospice in Galen’s Vale. Not only that, but she herself is experienced in the Draedist arcana, being what you call a ‘Justice’. Such a person can, with the right help and guidance, achieve many things which we elementals cannot.”
“Where will they take her?”
“The Palace of Blood, eventually. Ramayah being Ramayah will want to put her soul to great excruciation. But he will also want the weapon she carries.”
“Weapon?”
Aegraxes nodded. “It is a very special blade. On the mortal plane you would call it an ‘attenuation artefact’. Here it is a spirit knife. It was the same blade used to cut out the heart of Vangrid. It will sever the bond between Ramayah and Claver. It is the only thing that will.”
“Why can they not take her there now? To the Palace of Blood?”
“Because: she is not dead. Her body is not dead, and therefore she cannot leave Purgatory. Yet.”
Aegraxes stood. He looked, for the first time, apprehensive. “Come, then. We had better leave. Time moves slowly in my fortress here, but it moves nonetheless. I warn you, what you are about to witness will be chaotic.”
We made our way to the Plain of Burden. The moment we emerged, I saw that Aegraxes was no longer a well turned-out Southern Plainsman, with his neat, trimmed beard and robes of ostentatious wealth; rather he was a two-headed snake. Much like the Kasar, it was a human body – and a thickly muscled one at that – but scaly, and the neck bifurcated into two snake heads. Both were black with vibrant red, yellow and orange markings, like those most venomous species found in the Kasari rainforests.
When he spoke, he sounded exactly how I would expect someone with the head of the snake to sound: sibilant.
“Let us go, then,” he said. A sword materialised in his right hand, one that seemed to be made of sunlight and runes. “Rough deeds await.”
We moved quickly across the marshland. But where it had once been a silent, dead place, an endless plane of leaden stillness, it was now a place of screaming. Spirits plummeted through the enormous funnel above like the bodies of suicide victims leaping from buildings. It took me a moment to realise that they were the bodies of the soldiers – and, more alarmingly, the thralls – from the battle in Sova. So thin was the fabric of reality, and so entangled were we in the temporal pathway, that their souls were appearing all around us.
The thralls were ghastly, once human forms corrupted by parasitic demons. They came at us with demented ferocity. Aegraxes’ sword cut through them as easily as a hot knife through butter, and they discorporated in great bursts of foul, screaming black smoke.
“Where do they go from here?” I asked.
Aegraxes shrugged. “Somewhere else,” was all he said.
We sloshed on through the necrotic water. I saw flickers of movement; a flash of gold, a flash of black, runes of pink and blue. All of these fresh spirits were being claimed, some by the forces of Kasivar and Ramayah, others by Oleni and Hava. Those who were gripped by the former seemed to be overcome with a sudden horror, overwhelmed with the certainty of everlasting oblivion. Those who were snatched up by the forces of order, conversely, looked profoundly ecstatic. It seemed random, unfair, brutal. But this was not the afterlife as the Neman Church told of it, where a lifetime of moral behaviour earned you a place in heaven. These souls were chum in the water.
And this was a feeding frenzy.
“This way,” Aegraxes said, straining. I followed him blindly. Though I could see no discernible difference in the land ahead, it was shifting, coalescing, in much the same way as it had when we had entered through the dreadport. So many ways to enter, so few ways to leave.
Now the ground began to change. Gone was the marsh. The landscape was green, a mixture of fields and uncultivated grassland. In the distance were foothills, rising up to a range of grey mountains. A walled city lay in the lee of these foothills – a city that was very familiar indeed.
The only strange thing was that this scene was above me. It was as though we were moving through the soil underneath, or the bedrock itself, but we passed through it without hindrance, and it was glass-clear. I remembered the last time I had experienced this: it was when I had seen the Muphraab beneath Rekaburg.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Hush now. This is a very dangerous place.”
And then, with a jolt, I realised: the city was Galen’s Vale. We passed underneath the Veldelin Gate. Above us, townsfolk bustled, oblivious to both us and the wider upheaval in the Empire. When last I had seen the place, much of it, especially around the southern gatehouse, was in ruin. Now all of the burnt debris had been cleared and most of the buildings had been replaced.
We glided through that strange, unconstructed space. I saw ahead of us the kloster, occupying its fortress-like position above the town. Beneath, honeycombing the bedrock, was the network of secret tunnels I had become intimately familiar with, and where Matas had lost his life.
The mere thought of him seemed to cause some reaction in the aether around us, like stirring up sediment at the bottom of a lake.
“Helena,” I heard him say.
I stopped, overwhelmed with heartsickness.
“Ignore it,” Aegraxes commanded.
“Matas?” I said.
“Don’t,” Aegraxes snapped. “It is not him.”
A chill ran through me.
“Helena, I miss you,” Matas said. I couldn’t see him, but his voice sounded close.
“Shut up,” Aegraxes hissed.
Matas let out a long, plaintive moan. “You killed me, Helena. All I did was love you, with all my heart. You were everything to me!”
“Shut up!” Aegraxes said again.
“You fucking killed me, you bitch!” Matas snarled. The moan turned into a horrible laugh. “You killed my father as well, do you know that? Drank himself to death, didn’t he?”
I stopped. The corpse of Vartan – Matas’ father – was laid at my feet.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling myself begin to panic.
“You’re sorry?” Matas snapped. “Fuck your apology, you whore. Whore of Nema. I’m going to gut you like a fucking fish.”
I felt something brush against my cheek. I turned sharply, and saw, for a time no longer than an eyeblink, an image of Matas, his face a skull, worms in his eye sockets, his mouth a horrible skeletal grin.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered frantically. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Stop it,” Aegraxes said. “He is not here. It is not him. Come on. We don’t have much time.”
Matas’ laughter faded into the distance, to be replaced by another sound, one I had long come to associate with a feeling of deep-seated dread.
The steady, distant sound of monstrous footsteps.
Aegraxes led me to the kloster. Here I saw for the first time a stream of light, a thread of gold which plunged down into the distant depths of nothingness below our feet. I looked up, and saw that it was tethered to the body of Resi August.
She was in the hospice of the kloster. With her mind gone, her body simply… existed, like a ship with no crew, drifting along the currents. But her mortal form was clearly in the grip of something; she tossed and turned and groaned. Several worried-looking nuns tended to her.
But they could not see what we could see.
Standing next to August was what looked initially like a naked man with skin the colour of coal. But then I saw that he had six very long, very thin arms, one of which was placed on August’s chest, as though he were pressing her into the bed.
“The Decapitator,” Aegraxes said with profound dismay. “I have miscalculated.”
The creature turned to face us. It had a mouthless and eyeless black visage, with some sort of bony crest that could have been a halo. A single rune of pink light floated above its head. The space where its stomach should have been was given over to an enormous mouth. Blood dribbled from this disgusting maw, as though the thing had taken a huge draw of red wine but had neglected to swallow.
“Helena, listen to me carefully—” Aegraxes began, but the thing’s arms suddenly uncoiled and lashed out like whips, flickering across several hundred feet of aether and latching on to us like limpets. Before I had time to scream, both Aegraxes and I were yanked headlong into the room.
I could focus on nothing except that enormous stomach-mouth as we raced towards it like loosed arrows. In the space of an eyeblink it had clamped over one of Aegraxes’ heads and torn it off in a great fountain of ichor.
I found myself suddenly released as the Decapitator busied itself with crunching the snakehead bones. I fell bodily and scrabbled backwards as Aegraxes’ second head let out a horrified shriek. From where I sat, I saw that the golden thread of light attached to Resi was wrapped around the demon’s hand and wrist.
The stomach-mouth finished devouring the lifeless snake head and let out an insanity-inducing roar. Aegraxes staggered backwards, clutching vainly at his jetting stump, throwing his sword to one side. Chaos reigned. My panic was overwhelming. Aegraxes had always seemed to be so certain, so sure, so wise and powerful. This was like watching Vonvalt suddenly get stabbed by a random peasant.
“Helena!” Aegraxes’ second head wailed. “I was wrong! Get back! Get out! Get away!”
The Decapitator turned its eyeless face to me. Those empty sockets regarded me with penetrating intensity. It took a step towards me, the ground smoking beneath its feet. Behind, Resi moaned and thrashed. The nuns, oblivious to this ghastly immortal struggle, soothed and shushed her and bathed her forehead with cold flannels.
