AMETHYST 5.4: DREAD VAAHN
“That experience? Its like shall never pass before your consciousness ever again. All experience is singular. No moment is ever repeated. They ask me why I cannot reproduce under laboratory conditions the speeds I attain during an Incursion. My answer? It is a different experience. What else am I to do? What else can I say? Many are the laws of nature that bend before my will. But I cannot break my own nature. I am not a god.”
– from ‘The Notes of Timesnatcher’, recovered after the Fall
Shadows of souls, dressed in corpses. Mockeries of men. Wights.
I felt the anger welling up again, the wrath of Gilaela, now a living coil of white-gold energy inside my breast, my head, my horn –
They turned to face us, snarled their warnings, but it was too late for those who’d spotted us, and those who were roused by their cries. When we moved, we rode the storm-winds above a river of lava. When we met them head-on, it was with those who could not be seen except by the death they left in their wake. It was with the demons of hell and the silent servants of Shallowlie, the glowing blue lines that only the two of us could perceive, tearing invisibly through rank after rank. A vast white wolf, a huge silvery tiger, a tremendous snake sixty feet long and six feet thick, and a set of putrid vultures.
And, most importantly of course, the savage squirrels of the otherworld, our hidden weapon.
The wights were cut down in droves. We left the weave on the eastern edge of the courtyard and moved in with bladed shielding – we didn’t want to push the wights away, didn’t want to encourage them to flee through the streets connected to the courtyard’s far side. We wanted them here. We wanted to smash them, now. Unless my eyes were deceiving me, Timesnatcher and the other diviners were already engaged on the far side of the plaza, hemming them in.
But it wasn’t going to be so simple. They were fast to react, and powerful in those reactions. They didn’t have vampiric grace, but that didn’t stop those at the edges leaping thirty feet up the sides of buildings, taking handholds in the crumbled brick-work. It didn’t stop them springing back down on top of our eldritches, pulverising Shallowlie’s bone-golems – they even landed on our vultures when they descended to attack, and tore them into vast rotten pieces before we could bring our scythed chariot to bear on the crowd.
Khikiriaz, my bintaborax, Shallowlie’s incorporeal horde – these eldritches were a different matter. They couldn’t be touched, and fought with ease, destroying hundreds per minute. We also commandeered dozens of the citizens to fight against their own kind, actively hindering those who were attempting to flee – or mount resistance against – our onrushing tide of carnage. The wights registered as bound, but the will governing them was too weak to resist our influences – unfortunately, we both filled-up on them quickly, and could only bind more as the ones we’d taken into our control were annihilated.
My undead-finding senses were well-attuned now, working as acutely as my sense of orientation (currently horizontal) or sense of temperature (dropping chilly). The information was being conveyed directly into my consciousness, and I was instantly aware of the small group of wights that had turned against the tide, not retreating or regrouping but coming right at us.
“Shallowlie!” I cried over the tumult, the booms of wizards’ fireballs and the shouts in Netheric of their disintegrating targets. “Shallowlie, look!”
I pointed at them. Men and women, well-dressed, like the vampire-lord in Oldtown. Most of the crowd seemed to be dressed in clothing they’d worn in life, now tatty, but these stood out.
They entered my hexagonal shield…
Illusions.
I’d seen this trick before. They –
“No, they’re real.”
… Wight-lords?
“Eight of them.”
The lack of rebuttal, the tacit agreement with my assessment, chilled me to the core.
Thrilled me, making my neck-hairs stand on end.
Eight archmages, their powers essentially robbed from them. Wights were no spell-casters – they had an icy touch, so the tales went –
But then, these lords had walked right through my defences without them even bending, buckling. And I got the impression they’d crossed the barrier with some serious ill-intent in mind – something to do with the way they were looking at me like they wanted to see what new appendage they could add to the effigy with my innards.
Even my reinforced circle would be empty air to them. They didn’t have to break my defences, like the vampire-lord had done so easily, like the arch-demon the night of the Incursion. They could just pass through.
Mockeries of men. Shadows of souls.
Zel blurted: “Imminent danger!”
I didn’t need that warning. Satyr reflexes handled it for me, moving me to the side as the first few pounced at me; the same eldritch musculature let me grip the clawed hand that came at my face, my fingers strong-enough to press into the frozen undead flesh, grind the supernatural creature’s wrist –
It – he – continued his motion and I continued mine in the opposite direction, so I snapped his bones at the elbow. The limb was too tough to come free; I flung him around like a rag-doll by his floppy arm, bringing him crashing into the ground.
Flooded with a feeling of catharsis, I used a burst of flight to spring over him, and, sensing the next coming at me, instinctively kicked out as I twisted.
I felt my heel connect with the next wight, whose own attacks had only just gone over my head. Then I had chance to look back, glimpse her falling heavily to the paved floor, long white hair streaming.
I could get used to this, I thought.
It was somewhat regretfully that I drew a pair of explosive daggers.
“Leaf!” Timesnatcher had to be in haste if he was using the link. “It’s Dimdweller!”
The gargantuan white wolf flickered and seemed to disappear; then a white osprey descended from a point somewhere close to where her belly had been located, disappearing beyond visibility into an area thick with fighting.
The thought of the dwarf, dying – I remembered Shadowcrafter, the dwarf-wight he’d obtained somewhere and used against me when I challenged him – and suddenly I didn’t need the daggers anymore.
The curiosity died away and the fire reignited.
When the next wight-lord came at me I headbutted him with the horn, transforming him into a pile of glitter, glowing as it cascaded on the frigid breeze and was whipped away.
The ones who were recovering from their initial attempts to strike me down, and the ones who’d stayed at the back, watching – I saw the way they all recoiled in terror at the destruction of their comrade.
How long till he returns from that? I asked.
“Hard to say. That attack is something else altogether.”
“Why thank you,” Gilaela said brightly.
“… My pleasure… Anyway, you could be looking at minutes, or millennia, even here… Not that they know for sure.”
I stared at the wights a few seconds longer, while they were frozen in indecision, then I made the choice for them.
I spread my wings and hurtled at the nearest dead archmage.
That did it; they broke, turning to flee.
Smiling grimly, I pursued. I was faster than them, and I had plenty of daggers.
The closest was boomed into non-existence, then the next, and the next –
Just as they thought they would escape, Shallowlie descended in front of them, serene undead mask taunting them.
“You ah noh going anywheh,” she said.
She threw a new weave to me, an inverted one, and we tied it in place before the four remaining wight-lords reached her, leaving them enclosed in the circle between us.
Even a single link, and suddenly the shield was impenetrable. The first wight went for her and was repulsed, thrust back with the same force with which he surged forwards, smashing him bodily into the ground, cracking the stone slab beneath him.
An immeasurably-brief moment later, two other wights tested it, only slightly more-cautiously than the first – they knew if they were going to break through, it would be now.
But, unbeknownst to them, the weave was already eight shields thick.
As we’d trained, we shrank the circle, each of us moving inexorably inwards, which only served to overlap the barriers. It was the best we’d ever achieved. A thousand whirling strands of blue light forming force-tesseracts, interlinking to weave fractals like I’d once seen in a tome at the Maginox library.
The battle raged on about us as we approached the remaining wight-lords. To my right one of the arch-wizards had created a great lava-filled depression in the ground with sheer sides, into which the undead were being hurled.
I ignored it all, facing down my enemies.
We could continue to squeeze, crush them – me and Shallowlie were only ten feet apart now and they were locked into the sphere between us –
“Stop, Shallowlie.” I fastened the latest force-line and halted, staring at the undead men and women who’d once been like us. “Will you speak with us?”
To my surprise, it was the youngest-looking who slid forward, a lad whose death must’ve occurred when he was no older than I was when my parents were killed. His incredibly-out-of-date suit was impeccably-tailored to his not yet full-grown frame, and his white hair was a curly mess combed to one side.
His expression was one I was used to.
The sneer of a highborn.
“How camest such as thou into divine inheritance?” He looked between the two of us with his ever-youthful amethyst eyes, hatred, anguish twinkling there. “Thou art of the lowest order. How hath he permitted thee, thine abomination, to perpetuate thus! To slay my mother, my father!”
The young-seeming wight stamped his suede-booted foot, and more stone paving shattered. Even the smallest shards of material that erupted couldn’t penetrate the weave.
So how did they ignore my barriers like that? I wondered.
“I haven’t a clue.”
I wasn’t expecting you to, don’t worry.
“Who’s this ‘he’?” I asked.
“Dread Vaahn, King of Kings, He –“
“From whom all nobility springs, right,” I cut him off. The kids’ rhyme I’d learned went Dread Undeath but I recognised the cadence of the expression immediately.
The wight closed his mouth, looking taken aback at my interruption.
I gazed about pointedly. “Looks real noble round here.”
“’Twas our sanctum of peace, until ye came,” one of the female wights said bitterly. She was old and lined before the shadowland took her soul; her dress was no less-fine than the lad’s, who might’ve been her grandson if I had to place a guess. “We exist, and hath in us no need for quarrel. Thy Mundic ways are unwelcome in the Diamond of the North. Offer unto us thy hearts, or begone back to thy stinking pits – we need ye not!”
This wasn’t going exactly the way I’d expected. From what I could tell, these wight-lords didn’t exactly look like they were going to be invading Mund any time soon.
“Your vampire-lord friend attacked us,” I noted. “He came through the Door, slew our people –“
“So thou camest seeking revenge,” the young wight-lord said, turning with shining eyes to regard the massacre currently happening all across the courtyard, “repaying revenge for revenge for revenge, as hath the cycle turned and burned for all eternity. Rhinath! He brought this slaughter down upon our heads, we who never raised hand to strike ye –“
“Hate to break it to you, but you’re undead,” I interjected. “If you’re undead and intelligent, you’re evil, and that means –“
“Nay, child,” he said in his ancient child’s voice. “We here are the cursed and lost.”
“You woship de Puince of Cheys!” Shallowlie hissed.
“What other power will cleave us to his or her breast? The Enduring One?” The old woman wight laughed scornfully. “Thou knowest less than thou knowest. We sought no part in the war; for years we hadst argued ‘gainst such dreadful actions, seeking only peace with thy people…“
War? I’ve never heard of a war that affected Zadhal. None of the Mage Wars…
After getting no internal response, I asked aloud, “What war?”
“The war that shattered the Diamond,” she said, looking around at the destruction of her home that had occurred three hundred years ago.
At the destruction of her population that was currently taking place.
I felt a cold lump enter my stomach. We were obliterating undead. There couldn’t be anything wrong with that, could there?
All around me, thousands of them were being returned to the shadowland, returned to the plane to which their souls had been cursed…
“Shallowlie!” a voice roared.
Winterprince descended, and winter ascended to meet him.
A garden of leafless trees, translucent like Ceryad-crystal, rose up out of the frosted, broken paving – blade-like icicle-branches that speared the wights through, bursting their heads, spattering bone and purple ichor across the inside of the weave –
The ice-clad wizard hovered above us. “What are you doing?” He looked across to me. “Yet again, you shirk your duties, Feychilde. I expected better.”
“We wotted iformation, Winnerpuince,” Shallowlie said in a pleading tone, rising up to the same height.
I copied her, then said coldly, “And yet again, you get between me and a talking witness, Winterprince. I’d like to say I expected better…“
The wizard snapped his head about violently, as if biting off a retort, and soared away, smashing his way through the crowd.
I looked around me. I saw the anxiety on the faces of children. Pale, frosted, long-dead children, yes – but still children, still making me feel suddenly like I was the heretic, I was the arch-druid in Firenight Square laying waste to a group of innocents…
My eldritches, my shields – everything was still in play. I was taking part in this massacre. I hadn’t refilled the ranks of my wights in some time and they were all gone by now, reduced to shreds of spirit whisked away on nethernal winds… but Shallowlie had soared back into the fray and seemingly hadn’t thought twice about enslaving a swathe of new ones to replace those she’d lost while we’d dealt with the nobles.
What’s this war, Zel?
“It… it’s not spoken of, anymore.”
Sure, but I know all the stories – and Orstrum never s-
“They took it out of the books, the histories. It’s… ugly.”
I felt chilled, and not by the weather.
How old are you really, Zel?
“Old enough. It was only three hundred years ago, but you can’t remember everything, you know… most of the past is like a dream, isn’t it? It’s easy-enough to make men forget the truth of things, even without magic, given enough time, distance from events… The Arrealbord weren’t stupid, you know.”
So Mund… Mund attacked Zadhal? Why didn’t you tell me any of this?
“It never came up? Look, the last thing I want is you getting side-tracked in a fight against the government…”
But why?
“Those wights are going to overpower Khikiriaz if you don’t help him…“
I didn’t budge an inch. She was lying anyway.
Speak to me, Zelurra, bondswoman!
It felt strange saying that, now. It felt different to before.
Zel sighed. “Zadhal retained an exclusively-archmage nobility. They were ‘stuck in the old ways’ – I’m pretty sure that was how the authorities put it, when they were rousing support for an assault.”
My mouth was dry. But I can’t have been the only one to find an eldritch here who was willing to talk about it – I mean, surely this should’ve gotten out?
“I’m sure it has, dozens of times. I heard rumours about it, once or twice, from sources that got it somewhere second-hand. Who would believe them, though? And why? The Magisterium is good to us, ‘trustworthy’…”
So this is why they’ve never done more than posture at bringing Zadhal back into the Realm’s fold? For fear we’d unearth some evidence they couldn’t easily brush aside?
“I suppose so?”
“Maaaster…” Gilaela said delicately, “I understand that you wish to continue this conversation, but, if you would rather stand back, would you be so kind as to unleash me? It would very much please me to ride down some of these shadowfolk before they are all gone.”
I sighed again, and shook her loose.
The unicorn looked back at me and nodded gratefully before lowering her horn and smashing into a line of wights, just before my swarm of giant golden squirrels surged by her, backing her up.
So they must’ve been dropping rocks about Timesnatcher.
“How so?”
He led this expedition. Even if he just wants to make Zadhal a safe place for us to return to, he’s probably going to uncover some of the hidden truths they want kept quiet. They… I coughed and struggled to breathe, sucking in the cold air, unable to quell the nausea that suddenly clutched me. They wanted enough of us to die that we’d abandon this.
That’s why she wouldn’t send Em!
I seized on the thought and it filled me with dreadful, righteous anger, pushing down the sickness, pushing down everything.
I couldn’t fret about the status of the wights’ souls, couldn’t weigh the morality of sending them back to Nethernum by destroying their physical forms. No amount of conversation was going to lead to us trusting them, leaving them behind us to live out their unlives, while we continued on.
They had to die… again. The onus was upon me to make it as swift and painless as possible, so that we could finish this mission. Return to Mund, where we really belonged.
And on the way, maybe I’d even find some proof the Magisterium waged war on the city, driving the populace to whatever desperate measures led to this everlasting undeath.
The moment I exerted my will upon the wizardry binding me to the air, intending to fly forwards into the thickest part of the battle where my eldritches were hard at work, the strangled sound of the horn split the sky once more.
He was back.
The death-lord.
* * *
He only had about twenty deathknights left to back him up, by the looks of things, and he didn’t seem too happy about it. The purple-lit skeletal face beneath the crown-surmounted helm was misshapen, twisted into a frozen scream of defiance, the lower jaw thrust forwards, lipless teeth glinting.
They came plunging down from one of the nearby torn-off tower roofs, descending on the nethermist thick-enough to support the zombie-horses and their riders. I saw Mountainslide surging up to meet them.
“Why do they blow those ridiculous horns?” I muttered to myself.
The dwarven wizard didn’t get chance to intercept them.
I almost felt sorry for them as I reached out a hand, twisting away the amethyst lightning with a few gestures, motions that indicated the confinement of the energies; the reversal of the portals; the completion of the spell.
They fell a good seventy, eighty feet, and the dwarf changed course to float above them. He rapidly warped their surroundings with one hand, creating another depression and sinking them down into it, even as he started pouring lava on them from on-high with the other hand.
But there was one, just one deathknight still in the saddle – just one whose mist would not return to the shadows from whence it came.
The death-lord reared his mount, crying out in a great voice that all could hear but few could understand: “Hai Verkos fan Verki, E sakh neir mashal kat o eltuun! Dhi ban ar E fanast kat o vasal, kat o menevail; temen ban at neir fanast ban o nekiban?“
‘O King of Kings, I might not defend my people! To thee I surrender my crown, my dominion; wilt thou not surrender thy silence?’
And he suddenly went coursing at the statue of Vaahn, with such speed I could hardly follow the motion.
“Stop – him!” Timesnatcher came through from somewhere in a staccato burst of telepathic sound.
Starsight was airborne, on his way –
But the death-lord on his untouchable, special nethermist had obviously been holding back to stay alongside his now deep, deep-fried troops. He was fast, too fast for even Star to intercept.
He did the last thing I expected.
He slammed into the effigy and it accepted him, instantly swallowing him, horse and all, into its horrid make-up.
I looked across the courtyard. For a few dreadful seconds, the silence of which he’d spoken so hatefully descended to reign over all. The tumult ceased and every creature was still, eldritch and champion, staring at the effigy. Even the ever-dutiful Winterprince halted his non-stop barrage. Star alone moved, drifting away from the centre, away from the effigy towards which he’d been streaking.
“Back, Star!” Timesnatcher roared.
Then the idol rose up. Its skulls came alive. A terrible purple light cascaded across its swollen, stringy corpse-body.
Screams of joy came from the crowd, almost masking the awful hissing that came pouring up from the wight-parts strewn across the plaza. Those shredded pieces started stirring under that magenta light. Even those who’d been reduced to ash were affected. Stirring, streaming, skittering…
Recoalescing.
Decimated bodies were coming together again everywhere I looked, knitting seamlessly and pouring nethermist into the air as they did so. The purple light glared through, making everything an impenetrable nethernal smog, even to me.
I had no idea what to do. Several of the champions were perceptible by the greenish glow that suffused their bodies, a result of the anti-shadow healing spells the three druids had been bestowing –
“Move, move!” Zel shrilled.
I went upwards, but she took the reins and moved me backwards at the same time, retreating us away –
The effigy had embarked off its pedestal under the cover of the mist, evidently striding with sickening speed across the courtyard; it barely passed beneath me, its barbed black crown scraping through the space in which I’d flown just an instant before.
Panicked shouts and confused suggestions filled the telepathic link as I tried to re-establish shields. Predictably, they failed when they intersected the huge avatar of the God of Tyranny.
Spinning force-blades and resummoning eldritches to combat the renewed threats all around me, I almost missed it as Leafcloak appeared through the fog, wolf-shaped and titanic, snapping out with her gigantic maw.
The putrid idol to the King of Kings was fast; disgustingly-so. A morass of body parts rose up, a hideous arm to smash a hideous fist into the wolf’s head. But she had her feral instincts working on overdrive and she slipped the blow, diving forwards to sink her teeth into the seething, heaving graveyard of a ribcage that was the avatar’s upper body, sink her teeth in and pin it down –
I’d almost missed it.
Almost missed watching Leafcloak die.
It didn’t quite happen instantaneously. The white fur turned brown, first, like she’d been swimming in a dirty pond; then green, dripping and rotten, as though she’d contracted a few thousand diseases while taking that swim –
Between one moment and the next, the light left her eyes.
A dozen voices were crying out over the link, but I focussed my energies inwards.
Avaelar! I yelled silently. Can she be saved?
I knew what his answer would be before he gave it.
She shuddered to her knees, the great wolf breaking in submission; her jaws stayed fixed to the avatar’s chest.
“This,” the sylph said in a voice thick with shock, “this you must know is beyond me, Feychilde.”
I could feel his fear.
I could feel Zel’s elation as my eyes narrowed on the avatar.
“Do it.”
Her words ringing in my inner ear – old Leafcloak’s canine death-face, fusing with the effigy – my companions trapped in the wake of this reversal of fortunes, this resurgence of wights and wight-lords –
As I speared towards the effigy of Vaahn I summoned Gilaela into the air between me and the awful entity, joining with her and letting her disappear into me as the bubble vanishes when pierced by the dart –
There was no time to discuss it with her, what I wanted from her.
There was no need to discuss it with her. She knew.
I lowered my head and screwed my eyes shut as I sped, flying the fastest I could. I could feel my best circle-shield there, a multitude of stars reinforcing it, and I waited to feel it break as the horn did nothing, nothing at all to the revolting godling and I too collided with its decaying substances – but I had to try, damn it –
I felt it as I was knocked aside, not by the beast or even wind-wizardry but by a hammer of pure force.
“Wha da hell ah you doin’?” Shallowlie practically screamed at me.
She pursued me, pushing me farther from the fight, battering at me with her blue hammer – behind her I could see the wizards throwing everything they had at the avatar, keeping it at bay.
“Kas, tock to me,” she cried above the mayhem. “Pliz, Kas. I am so scare. I wan Ly…”
I forced us to a halt. “Min, it’s –”
“It’s the only way.”
“It’s the only way.”
“I saw what happened to Leafcloak.”
“I saw what happened to Leafcloak.”
“If it kills us, maybe we don’t have to come back…”
“If it kills –”
I froze.
Wait… What, Zel?
“My dear, you are a morbid one, aren’t you?” Gilaela commented. “Whatever was your name, again? Zelurra?”
“That is correct,” Avaelar said softly.
It was correct, but it almost kind of sounded slightly wrong, a bit. It sounded right, but when he said it was correct, he sounded wrong…
Shallowlie repeated my last words, trying to prompt a response from me, but I was focussed on my most-trusted advisor.
Zel?
The faerie queen’s voice was hard and regal but fragile, brittle, when she replied.
“I apologise. I lost my nerve, I know. We’ll talk about it later. For now, let’s just get through this, yes?”
It was strange. I could’ve sworn Zel had been excited, almost thrilled –
“Forget what you could’ve sworn!” she spat. “Fight, champion! Lay waste the poor folk of Zadhal. I’m gone.”
And she was. I could feel her absence.
Why was she filled with such sorrow, that she saw the shadow of a chance at complete annihilation as cause for hopefulness?
The fairy needed my help. She’d always been there for me, and now it would be my opportunity to return the favour. I considered calling her back, but I supposed I mustn’t have been diametrically-opposed to the idea of her leaving if she, a bound eldritch, had chosen and managed to do so.
“I’m sorry, Min,” I murmured and, noticing the sorceress’s posture, spread my arms. “I don’t quite know what I was doing.”
She moved to me swiftly, clung to me. Briefly we held onto each other, floating away from the chaos, and I could feel the way she was trembling.
No more than I was.
I’d get chance to talk to Zel later. Over Shallowlie’s shoulder I could see that the changes in the avatar had run their course. Strands of tendon had pulled Leafcloak’s tremendous corpse into place, and it now wore her like the garment of her namesake. Her lifeless head served like a grisly hood, speared by the black crown’s protrusions through the underside of the chin so that the spikes emerged through the top of her snout.
We went back to the battle. Our strongest weave was weaker than a highborn’s toilet-paper under Vaahn’s blows so I went back to using Gilaela’s horn on the rank-and-file troops, smashing them into dust, only to watch them reassemble, grey, ashen versions of their former selves. The twenty-or-so deathknights had rejoined the fray and now they were virtually unstoppable, always recovering from whatever we did to put them down, their armour reshaping itself, their broken lances reappearing.
Thousands of wights, climbing out of pools of magma and returning to the fight. Hundreds of eldritches to combat them, our forces slowly but inexorably being depleted as we marshalled them where Timesnatcher called for them. The manifestation of a dark god, wearing Mund’s greatest arch-druid for a fur coat, running amok with elemental attacks streaming off its unholy body, threatening us to make a single mistake. More than once it came within seconds of getting me, getting each and every one of us. Belestae, Goddess of Fortune, must’ve been backing our play.
Then I spotted the small shape, almost impossible to perceive, flying about Vaahn’s idol like a buzzing bee – tiny gleaming stings in its hands.
Dimdweller.
Starsight and Timesnatcher were doing their best to keep everyone away from the avatar, but it was a holding measure at best, and Winterprince and Mountainslide wouldn’t hold out forever; it didn’t even look as though Dimdweller was doing it any harm. Whatever strings of fleshy matter the dwarf sliced through, they knotted again instantly, and every moment that he stayed in proximity with the creature he risked obliteration, even given his powers.
He seemed to be annoying it, though. The sphere of skulls that was its head was trying futilely to follow the arch-diviner.
“How could anyone call this noble?” Glimmermere spat from somewhere, voice lathered in hate. “He from whom all nobility springs? Liar! Murderer!”
“The ministry of the Prince of Chains accepts that the ankle and wrist soon to be bound are oft used in flight or resistance ere the locks are made fast,” Starsight offered grimly. “I have had cause to deal with a number of his cultists in the past. Nobility remains ever their purpose, and thus they can never attain it. Such is granted; never gained.”
“I’m not ending up like that,” Fangmoon breathed. “No chains for me. I’ll die first.”
Where exactly they all were in this abominable purple mist, I was unsure, even when I flew thirty feet over the courtyard. I hadn’t seen the silver-black tiger or huge snake in several minutes. I had to hope the enchanters and diviners had a good lock on everyone.
“What’s with this clock tower, Timesnatcher?” I asked, skewering a dozen wights with my fingers splayed, stabbing out with a multitude of force-blades simultaneously. “Did you mean the horn, or something?”
“No, the clock tower on the western edge. I don’t know what it portends, but we have to be done with this by then.”
“What time will it ring?”
“I may hold things back sometimes, Feychilde, but I think I’d let you know if I could see that. I can just hear them, that’s all. Feedback from the future.”
“Can’t we just –“
“They ring when we try to destroy them.” A touch of exasperation was slipping into his mind-voice now.
“So – what’s our plan?”
“I… I think that’s one of those things you’d really rather wait and see.”
I gritted my teeth. “Not really, Timesnatcher! Is anyone else hearing this? I’d think you’d let us know what you can see when we have a god chasing us, I –“
“Weren’t you listening earlier? I said it’s all in-hand. I didn’t understand until I saw the statue come alive, but I’ve explored it fully now. What she said makes no sense any other way.”
‘She’? Lightblind? I hadn’t been listening, I supposed, while I was trying to get myself soul-destroyed at the behest of my suicidal fairy-minion.
The more I thought about that, the more it called out to me that I had to do something about it – but I couldn’t afford any more distractions.
“The lad has a point,” Glancefall said. “I know I’d prefer to know what you’ve got up your sleeve. After Leafcloak…”
“No, it doesn’t matter,” I said firmly. “Timesnatcher, where’s this Green Tower?”
“What are you proposing?”
“I…” I didn’t quite know myself.
“Don’t stop now,” Gilaela prodded me.
“Indeed, you are right, Feychilde,” Avaelar said. “We should away from this place.”
“I think someone should investigate it.” I didn’t sound particularly confident. “It might be a weapon –“
“Someone being you,” Winterprince mind-spoke, voice as cold as everything else about him. “Not trying to run, are you, boy?”
“Grow up,” I snarled. “Someone. The death-lord is gone, and with him our best chance of finding Shadowcloud… And Direcrown.”
Fangmoon gave an emotionless ‘hah’, a placeholder for psychic amusement. But her voice was numb, no actual amusement in it.
Leafcloak was dead. Perhaps it was too early for me to joke about losing the arch-sorcerer. He was a champion, technically, even if he was a darkmage. But I was fairly sure that he would’ve fled at the first opportunity, unlike Shadowcloud.
I shook my head – I had to focus. “For all we know this Green Tower’s significant. Maybe there’s a clue in there, or something –“
“For all we know, it’s insignificant,” Winterprince retorted instantly. “We know the statue’s responsible for Zadhal, now – we just watched it raise these all back from dropping dust and if you deny –“
“We know nothing of the sort!” I interrupted him. “I do deny it! This is a catastrophe, but it’s clearly a special circumstance. You’ve seen the edges – the streets aren’t filled with this purple mist, are they? The wights seemed as surprised as us when the statue woke up, didn’t they?”
I felt I was arguing with a brick wall – an ice wall – and getting precisely nowhere when Glancefall spoke up in defence of me.
Then Fang, and Spirit.
“I don’t work for any of you,” I muttered. “Spirit, just point me in the right direction…”
“Stop.” Timesnatcher finally spoke again. “You’re not wrong, Feychilde. I can’t see what you’re going into. That alone makes it an interesting factor. You’ve got my curiosity piqued, and it’s an unusual sensation.”
“Tell you what – when I get back, I’ll tell you what I found, if you tell me how you plan to defeat a living embodiment of Tyranny…”
The arch-diviner chuckled. “I’ll take that deal. It’s not far – the link will stay up, so we can do a trade, if you can get in. But I can’t let you go alone.”
Without missing a beat, the cold response came:
“I will go.”
* * *
I gave orders to my eldritches to follow Shallowlie’s commands in my absence. Then I got turned around twice in making my way through the sea of wights to the southern edge of the courtyard, where Winterprince was floating. He was busy directing a beam of white flame into the face of the avatar from the tip of his unmelting ice-sword, pushing it off-balance while Dimdweller’s blades flashed about its lower segments.
“You coming?” I yelled aloud to him.
He continued to keep up the pressure on the godling for a few more seconds, soaring in silence, ignoring me – then Mountainslide was in place, hitting it in the upper body with a slew of different attacks, and Winterprince reluctantly lowered his sword.
Then the arch-wizard was gone, darting ahead of me on the path the enchanters had supplied, whizzing between the towers so quickly I was hard-pressed to keep up, even with the fey wings augmenting my speed. Behind us, the purple mists swiftly receded; when I glanced back I could see the clouds there, barely stirring at the borders, lying like a huge, putrid mould upon the city.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” the wizard snapped over his shoulder at me.
I don’t, I wanted to reply. I’d never seen a giant ball of green energy before – who had? – but I had to try. The only thing I’d experienced which sounded similar was the Autumn Door; as much as I wanted this green orb to fall within my areas of knowledge, I hoped it wasn’t anything like as bad on my head as the Doors had been. Perhaps it wasn’t even sorcerous in nature; I was pretty certain a druidic implement might give off a green glow, and –
And then we came in sight of it, the Green Tower. I didn’t hold out much hope the sphere was a druidic invention once I saw it.
The tower was around two hundred feet tall: quite impressive, one of Zadhal’s tallest. It could’ve served as a minor college-building in Mund, or a guildhall. It was a broad, four-sided building, constructed from large black bricks. The top fifty-or-so feet looked to be a single floor, given that its sides were open as though huge windows had once stood there, now lost to time. That uppermost section was illuminated from within by a fierce emerald light that, had it been night, would’ve shone like a beacon clear across the city.
With my sorcerer’s-eye I could see the wild, tangled lines of faint green force, like otherworld seams bursting out, webs flailing and flopping in a patternless array all around those upper floors.
Zel would’ve been really handy right about now.
Even more disconcerting, bones were piled at the base of the tower so that they made a kind of pyramid about it, reaching three or four storeys up. The pile must’ve been made up of the remains of thousands, barely hemmed-in by the surrounding buildings, completely engulfing what should’ve been a fair-sized strip of empty land around it the tower.
“Timesnatcher, why did no one dare approach it, exactly?” I said.
“Why do you ask?” he replied. He couldn’t mask his tiredness, the grief into which his nervousness had transformed.
Before I could respond I noticed that Winterprince had halted ahead of me, freezing in the air, and I slowed as I approached him. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought the blank slate of ice looked anxious.
“The bones you mentioned – they’re here.” The wizard’s voice was low, so low it was hard to catch amongst the smattering of other instructions and exclamations being uttered over the link. “They’re dormant.”
“Dormant?” I didn’t want to know the answer, really, but I had to know, I supposed.
“The previous expeditions only got to this district twice,” Timesnatcher said. “Both times, the Green Tower was surrounded in what witnesses described as a ‘bony shell’. It appears that these bones you see may move over the building’s surfaces sometimes.”
“Maybe Belestae really does have our backs…” I mused. “Is it because we’re flying, or because we’re invisible, or something?”
“Usually it’s ‘or something’, but I don’t think it matters,” the arch-diviner answered.
“We can proceed?” Winterprince asked.
Yes, he was definitely coming across as anxious.
“You have Father Time’s permission,” Timesnatcher said wryly.
Winterprince grated out an expletive, aloud so that our leader wouldn’t hear, then sped off, at the front again. I could barely wrap shields around him.
It was a good job I could, because as we gained a sickening degree of elevation and drew ever-closer to the walls of the tower, it responded to our presence the only way it knew how.
I felt like sighing. It was just one thing after another today.
The bones reacted the way mist in a mistball reacted when you shook it. The motions weren’t just fast; they were practically instantaneous. Yellowy, spell-bound bones took to the air, whipping at us with the speed (if not the sharpness) of a hail of arrows. Hundreds of human skulls, femurs, spinal cords, all the other bits my rudimentary knowledge of medical terms didn’t stretch to – they hid the Green Tower from view, rising up before us, above us, behind and below us all at once –
But I did have my shields around him.
He halted and allowed me to catch up when he realised we were floating together inside a bubble of, as it would appear to him, invisible force. The white light of the sky was fragmented, almost entirely occluded by the unliving cocoon of bones into which we had plunged.
“Can you clear these?” I cried.
Winterprince floated in silence for several seconds, long enough that I thought he hadn’t heard me. Just as I was about to ask again, the gust of wind struck.
All the bones on one side of the shield were smashed aside – the white light of the sky once more fell upon us – and then within an instant we were surrounded again as the gale went by.
“Great,” I muttered.
“Can you do better?”
I shook my head. I shouldn’t have said anything, should’ve kept my grumblings to myself. I hadn’t meant to make it sound like I was criticising him.
Of course, there was a chance I could do better…
I brought up a double-line of spikes down the shield’s swell, two thin columns of force-blades that stretched from pole to pole. Then with a single motion I sent both columns out in twin waves, screeching around the shield in opposite directions.
The force-blades did little damage to the actual bones themselves – whatever ‘ill-will’ was present in the Green Tower’s defence-system, it only barely seemed to count. But that didn’t stop them sweeping the bones aside, clearing them all off into the air –
For a brief instant we floated free, while huge segments of bone soared about us, flecks in the mistball –
We saw what had happened to the tower, a single flash of understanding before the bone-storm closed in again.
The tower – it was covered in them, wearing the stuff as though it were armour. There didn’t appear to be a single crack through which we might fly.
After the spellbound bones closed in once more, I said, “Can’t we get in underneath?”
The cold response: “Can’t you go through them?”
I considered it. “Move forwards,” I suggested.
Gradually we advanced, and I brought the edge of my shields into contact with the tower’s undead shell.
No.
When I pushed, I damaged my shield, nothing more. The bone wasn’t going to give way like that.
“It’s not having it,” I reported. “You want to try?”
“This was your idea,” he grated, seeming surprisingly reticent to step up. “You should’ve stayed, sent Shallowlie.”
I resented the implication. Did he think Shallowlie’s barriers were more powerful than mine? She seemed very quick off the mark, but I didn’t think she’d ever displayed stronger work than I had.
Not that he was to know that, I supposed. Not like he was there when I’d saved half of dropping Firenight Square while he sauntered about…
I halted the thought. Em had been ‘sauntering about’ too that evening, and I wasn’t thinking badly of her for it…
Em. For a few moments, I remembered the touch of her hands, the smell of her hair. Home, my brother and sister, my extended family – the place I wanted to be, the people I wanted to be with.
But not so badly that I’d give up this.
“There might be another option,” I said. “Fancy distracting it? I might be able to go through, but I won’t be able to take you with me.”
“So long as you don’t run,” the icy head snapped out the words.
It was with some trepidation that I brought my wraith into the shielded space.
“What did you just do?” the wizard demanded.
“You can feel it?”
“You expected me not to?”
I shrugged. The wraith was almost invisible even to me, a mere shadow of a presence.
“Feels different to a ghost.”
“That’s because it is.” I held out my hand, beckoning, and the shadow-man came to my fingertips.
It would be the easiest to join with. It was transparent, insubstantial…
It didn’t matter what I told myself, I still couldn’t join with it. Six at the same time was still beyond me.
Without a touch of regret I ejected Zabalam and sent him home; I hardly had much use for him in a place like this anyway.
The ice elemental was just hanging in the air, watching me as I worked.
Now when I held out my fingers to the wraith it could come, it could enter, and I took its lack of substance into myself, felt myself reflect its abnormal nature.
Howling. Such tortured, aimless howling filled my mind that for a moment I couldn’t even feel, never mind see or hear or think.
“– they slew us! but he wore two shoes! I remember them! two shoes on two feet and I was there! and I had flesh and I had blood and I could pick him up and put him on my shoulders! and now everything would be okay if I just had blood! if I just had flesh like yours! but they slew us and then he was gone! when he wore two shoes –“
Silence!
The sudden cessation of the sounds was almost as relieving as moving away from the Winter Door had been. I could feel Gilaela and Avaelar’s disgust subsiding.
And I could feel something else – or rather, couldn’t feel things I normally could.
I held up my hand in front of my face and I could see through my ever-so-slightly purple-tinted flesh.
I could see the tower… through my palm.
“That might just do it,” Winterprince grated in a condescending, irritated – irritating – voice. “I’ll fly that way,” he pointed to our left, “and I’ll fly fast. My armour will protect me.“
“I’ll put extra shields on you,” I said. I thought about the bony shell surrounding the tower, preventing entry via any ordinary means; the last thing I wanted was Winterprince dying and the rest of the bones coming back, making my job that much harder. “Don’t you go running away, though, eh?”
He tossed his head, facing away from me, and then he was gone, flashing towards the edge of the shield I held about myself. As he went, a blue blur, he bore away his own faint blue circle-and-star formation that I could feel tapping my internal reservoir of strength.
Worth it, I decided, as the moment he left my unmoving barriers the bones poured themselves all over him, pressing in at the smaller, mobile shield that ringed him round.
I was left alone in the rain of skeleton-parts. I quickly soared upwards towards the Green Tower’s peak –
The sensation of my stomach dropping, dropping out of me to the floor far below, was suddenly diminished. I didn’t feel like I was going to fall again.
Marvelling at this new freedom, I stretched exuberantly through the air. My arms and legs felt twice their normal length even though there was no change in my actual proportions. My body itself seemed to be like a purple-green shadow, sailing on the wind far more easily than ever before; it appeared that after merging with the wraith my sylph-wings had become very sensitive, powerful, while the wizardry-flight weakened, went a bit sluggish.
Even still, it was definitely worth it for the fact I could fly higher without feeling sick, without swooning. That was something Zel hadn’t been able to achieve…
I saw the green radiance of spell-threads shining through the bones above me, and knew I had to be close.
I briefly considered dropping my shields and testing my new form on the skeletal storm, finding out whether I could let the missiles pass through me – but I decided I couldn’t risk it. Better to arrive safely in the right area then test it directly against the tower, with my shields still about me. If I was wrong, I could be clobbered to death in a matter of seconds, and my remains would go to join the storm eventually. It wasn’t like I could trust Winterprince to retrieve my corpse.
At last my barriers pushed aside the loose bones surrounding the tower’s highest floor, leaving only the armour in which it was clad; it was preventing the green light from getting out, but it didn’t stop the loose lines of emerald power from protruding through the bone, waving wildly and simmering on the cold air. The lines were eldritch runes stringed together into coils, their luminosity plain to my sorcerous vision, stretching through my shields with no visible reaction.
I positioned myself and my shields carefully, judging the height from the roof down: ideally I wanted to pass through the bone-armour in the right spot so that I could enter through one of the vast, empty windowpanes. Too low and I’d have to traverse the interior of the tower – and who knew what was in there?
I reached the right spot, then I experimented with a single foot; I didn’t particularly want to touch the bones with my bare hand.
It was like pushing my foot into very cold, very still water. A vertical sheet of cold, still water.
I wasn’t exactly comfortable doing this – it was no different to plunging a limb into a pool, a body of liquid so dark and murky you couldn’t see anything below the top inch. Some smarmy, all-knowing part of you expected to not get the limb back, and insisted on whispering about the inevitability of it constantly.
It’s like acid! You’ll push deeper into it and suddenly you’ll burn! You’ll never be rid of the pain of it!
I ignored my metaphorical inner demons and slowly, I pressed forward – my shin was in, the insubstantial skin responding by turning to goose-flesh – then my knee, my upper thigh – and then my foot was out the other side.
To the Hells with it, I cursed, and screwed my eyes shut as I flapped my wings in a single, powerful beat.
I passed through the chilling curtain of undead matter where it had covered the glassless window, and didn’t open my eyes or mouth until I was through, in the musty green air.
I could barely even open my eyes again, the brilliance of this sphere was so great, and I didn’t have Zel on board to adjust the parameters of my vision for me. This room was indeed a vast, black-pillared chamber, five storeys high. Barely-contained within the bounds of the columns and revolving clockwise at a fearsome speed was a huge, coruscating ball of white-green plasma.
A dozen lines of runic energy were passing right through me every second, moving on and being replaced by others as the sphere turned, hovering on the spot several feet above the ground – it was hard to tell exactly how high from up here near the ceiling.
I wobbled a little, and was just about to descend towards the floor and reactivate my shields when –
“I wondered how long you would dally before joining me here,” Direcrown said, stepping around the sphere and looking up at me. There was just a hint of amusement in his voice as he waved a hand and continued, “Come, young man. There is much for you and I to discuss.”
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