INTERLUDE 5D: REDGATE’S DOOM
“Some children delight in pulling the legs off craneflies. Let us not forget that some of these children will inherit the power of the archmage. Following the recent tragedies it could not be clearer that we must scrutinise the candidates more thoroughly. If they have failed to evolve in attitude, prospective recipients of Magisterium funds may end up pulling the legs off citizens and we cannot stand to have ourselves associated with such affronts to the public will any longer. Our good name is tarnished enough, and we cannot risk an uprising at this time. Until further notice the policy of potential darkmage integration is to be discontinued. Only the office of Special Operations will henceforth possess the power to suspend this ruling, on a case-by-case basis. It must be repeated that all contact with archmages of the diviner, enchanter and sorcerer varieties is to be classified as a Special Operation, owing to the balance of probabilities in examining such creatures.”
– from the memoranda of the Kailost 998 NE Briefing
28th Orovost, 998 NE
The ring was far heavier than it looked. There were three golden bands – no, it was a single band formed into a spiral – and sitting astride them in a silvery setting was a lone ruby. Not large to the eye; denser than she expected. The ring’s natural balance-point was stone-down, of course, and even she found it difficult to balance on her palm stone-up. It was tricky, but she was blessed by Enye, they’d always told her since her youth in Miserdell – favoured by the goddess who presided over athleticism and all the various physical sports. To balance a thing that did not wish to be balanced, you had to fight its will with your own. You had to be as still as you wanted the object to be. It wasn’t just a matter of finding the right point at which to balance it – of course that was important, but that was a task for precision, a task for the god Chraunator. Anyone could find the balance-point, with trial and error. No, it was Enye’s business to supply the knowledge, make it part of instinct, habit. To have the courage to act when you knew the time was right, instead of hesitate, miss the moment. It was not Chraunator’s cold assessments that Anathta heard in her ear when she balanced a ring, threw a dagger, slit a throat – it was Enye’s unspoken surge of energy, her rapturous certainty, blissful bravery. It was a thing she felt, in her soul.
‘Slash now!’ ‘Throw now!’ ‘Let go of the ring…’
She let go of the ring and it stood erect upon her palm, even though there should only be a one-in-a-million chance of it resting like that with such an overpowering weight at its peak.
Ring of Unerring Accuracy… Like I need it…
She knew the bravado for what it was, though. She wouldn’t have lived as long as she had if she didn’t have the measure of herself. She had missed, she admitted to herself – once or twice…
If I put one of the moonfrost bolts in each of his eyes… save the third charge for when he opens his mouth – try to put one in his brain? Would the nostril be better?
She could remember what the dragon looked like only as well as she remembered the shapes in her nightmares – she’d probably seen him there so many times now that her memories had been entirely replaced by figments of her imagination.
Most of the nightmares ended with her, not running, not burning away in acid – but riding the dragon’s back, using her arrows and blades like a climber’s claws, making her way to the beast’s face.
Look him right in the eyes, before I take the light out of them forever, and tell him: “Now you pay for what you did to me.”
She’d had a long time to think it over – why she signed up for this stupid quest the moment it presented itself to her. She’d always spoken of it in terms of responsibility, duty, whatever – enough to keep Phanar off her back. But, ultimately, it came down to vengeance. She suspected her brother knew that much.
Everything she’d known had been taken away in the course of a single evening. It was different for Phanar. He was seven, almost eight years old when he’d led them out of the wastelands of Nebril to the gates of Miserdell; she’d been barely one year old, in the back of the cart, the pair of them starving along with the pony that accompanied them. He, at least, had something else to cling to. A past he could remember, a life before this world – a life in N’Lem, in the shadows.
She had none of the heritage, none of the coolness and implacableness that Phanar seemed to possess as a birthright. All she had was Miserdell, a place where she always felt like a stranger without knowing why; the rudiments of a Mundic Realm upbringing, on the far edge of an ancient, long-dead empire.
All she had was gone, melted into sizzling puddles the smoke of which she could still taste in her throat whenever she thought about it.
Wind snared the ring on her palm, toppled it –
She felt the lurch and looked up, seeing the sails billow outwards as they caught the breeze – then they were underway.
“Back to Chakobar – hurray!” she muttered under her breath, trying to rebalance the ring again – the thing was such a stubborn little object –
“My, what do you have there?” the weird-looking Mundian asked softly, stopping beside her as he walked past. “A little treasure, I deem?”
“My, I do deem it to be so,” she mocked, uncertain (and uncaring) as to whether or not she was putting the words together in the right order.
He seemed to miss her sarcasm and seated himself on the crate next to her, placing his arms against the wooden panel that stretched behind them so that she was now sitting, effectively, inside his embrace.
The crate was certainly large-enough to accommodate two, but it still put their bodies in close proximity. She’d been on numerous boats filled with filthy sailors, and she’d even tangled with one random, attractive-in-an-unattractive-way helmsman back at the start of their adventures. But other than Ibbalat, about whom her feelings were still decidedly undecided – Enye was no help with those kinds of feelings, evidently – no man had ever sat beside her with such easy familiarity.
“Runes of seeking – runes of thought-attunement… interesting.”
She looked away from the magic ring, staring instead at the eight glossy black eyes across the front of his mask. “You can read what it does, just like that?”
He laughed, a little tinkling sound. “Not ‘just like that’, my love. Such takes training, a keen eye… and a little deviousness.”
She cocked her head. “Oh? How so?”
“I am a sorcerer,” he said plainly. “Please do not tarnish my reputation by implying I did something unmischievous.”
She snorted, a snippet of involuntary laughter breaking through.
Against her previous judgement, she relaxed, uncoiled her taut pose somewhat. She went to toss him the ring and his hand snapped out from his sleeve – the arm that wasn’t around her back – catching it easily.
She found herself admiring his reflexes. For a magic-user, he seemed to be in fine shape, and she had to admit to herself that his mask, his hidden identity, intrigued her.
He has to be handsome, behind something so disgusting, doesn’t he?
The Mundian studied the trinket for only a few moments before spinning it in his hand and, to her amazement, it stood up on its end on the surface of his palm – ruby pointing up – there was no way…
“It is designed to aid an attack, no more than thrice. Standard password. Do I guess right?”
“How are you doing that?” she asked in reply, staring at the ring – he hadn’t even used his other hand to steady it!
He inclined his head, then tossed it into the air – without taking her eyes off him she shot her hand up, caught it while it was still ascending.
“Just a little luck manipulation,” he said, shrugging, then pressed: “Well – do I guess right?”
She smiled, returning the ring to a pocket. “You do. Redgate, isn’t it?”
He gestured at the little fences and portcullises sewn into the material of his robe.
“Do I not look the part, Lady of N’Lem?”
She took the opportunity to look him up and down. She couldn’t get a read on him; he was like a slippery eel.
“Shall I remove my mask?” he asked suddenly.
She guessed he couldn’t read her responses very well through the black glass. While she was certain she’d leaned forwards impulsively at his suggestion, he continued oblivious as though she required persuading it was a good idea: “We are out of port, now, and I don’t suppose that there’s any harm in it… I’d need you to swear your silence to me, though.”
She smiled. “I won’t tell anyone – who’s there to tell?”
“I shall have to have everyone swear,” he said in a musing tone, looking across her companions, the Dremmedine’s crewmen. “You would swear, to reveal none of my secrets save those I permit you?”
How can it hurt me to swear not to reveal his secrets? They’re his secrets…
“Well, of course,” she muttered. Was his identity really so important? Was he one of those Lords of the Real Bored or whatever Phanar had called it? Her excitement was building.
“Very well.” He reached up, removed the mask and hood.
While she sat, quite enraptured by his classically-handsome features and recently-trimmed brown hair, his aura of power and mystique, it took her a few moments to realise what he was talking about.
“I am so glad to find you so agreeable, Anathta of N’Lem. In truth I had feared this voyage would be the most interminable period of my life since I became an archmage, and I endeavoured to find something to help pass the time in a… less humdrum fashion.”
“Oh?” she murmured, feeling her breath catch in her throat. His eyes were warm, brown, and his teeth were white, perfect. She didn’t know which to look at.
“Why, you, of course! The enchantment requires two different infernal essences to put into effect. Two agreements.” His voice took on the character of a conspiratorial whisper, and she leaned in closer to feel his minty breath on her ear: “Why, now I can tell you! Do you see her? The virtuous daughter of Wythyldwyn?”
He pointed across the deck, to where Kani stood at the rail, and she wondered where this was going.
“I don’t like her. I’m going to kill her.” He moved his finger. “And him. And him. No – don’t –“
Kidneysticker was the closest dagger to her hand – she moved insanely quickly but he almost blurred – he used that uncanny speed, the startling strength hiding inside him, and his fingers darted out to take hers before she could draw one of her many, many knives –
“– you couldn’t stop me anyway, my love – come, think it through – I am here to slay your dragon for you… But please, allow me to finish: I’m going to kill them, right now, if you don’t do precisely as I say. You can watch your brother go last, eaten alive by maggots. He’ll be birthing flies, new life from inside his chest cavity before he even takes his final breath, a sing-song through insectile wombs repurposed from his lungs. And yet, if you sit still, I’ll let you go. I’ll let them all live. Will you sit still? Good. Good girl.”
He released her. He watched her. He smiled at her nausea.
Those teeth should’ve been fangs. Those eyes should’ve been red. But reality lied. He wore the face of a delightful young man, yet behind the surface there was only a charnel house.
The spider-face, that was the real one.
“And will you not smile? I fear things shall look amiss if you don’t smile. You are falling for me, after all.”
She fixed the smile to her face.
“Excellent, excellent, my love. You shall share my hammock – nothing improper, you understand, but I would have you close – and I very much doubt they would take to me bringing a member of my harem into the hold… You should be aware, however, that I am shielded when I sleep, and any ill-will shall awaken me, in addition to the more explosive effects… Please do not make an attempt on my life when I appear defenceless. I am never defenceless.”
“But –“
He met her eyes.
“But – why?” she burst out. “I was – I might’ve…”
For just a moment, the smile on his face broke, and there it was – the smirk. The evil glint in his eyes she’d waited to see.
“You might’ve fallen for me, in truth?” His laugh was exquisite, a raucous, high-pitched noise that everyone around them would take for innocent mirth – but she could hear the coldness, the sheer malice in every cadence. “But where would be the fun in that? That is easy. No, no. You are to be my slave, and upon your performance will rest the lives of your friends and family. That will be something fun to watch for a few weeks. Once Ord Ylon is gone I shall wipe your memories and let you alone, I promise. All of you.”
“You’ll – you’ll take the memory of his death away?”
His eyes narrowed. “Oh, my love. You hate it, do you not, this dragon of yours? Such hate, that can overcome all your other concerns in this moment. Ah, I can leave you something – something to remember it by.” He reached out and patted her hand; she almost flinched then, catching herself, froze the hand, allowed him to stroke her crawling skin. “Perhaps you and I could’ve had something special. We are not so unalike as you might fancy.”
Yes – we – are, she growled internally.
“Do not look at me that way,” he said in a tone of warning. “If you think I will not end your friend’s life so casually, would you have me prove it upon one of these sailor scum?” He cast about at the crewmen surrounding them. “Which would you have me slay? I can easily achieve it in such a way as to cast no suspicion on myself.”
“No,” she breathed. “No, don’t. I – I’ll do as you say. I’ll – be your slave. Until he is dead.”
Until you are dead, she swore.
Kani walked past them, heading for her hammock. She’d been at her post all night, staring out at the accursed city. Ana followed her with her eyes, longing to follow, to speak, to divulge what Redgate had told her – to formulate some plan, some way to end his life –
It wasn’t until Kani caught her on her own and asked her opinion of the ‘champion’, the next afternoon, that Ana realised the extent of the vow she’d sworn. The enchantment that’d taken hold of her tongue, forced her to lie or forced her to silence, whichever seemed less-unusual.
It wasn’t until then that Ana realised how big the problem was. How coming to Mund might’ve unleashed a threat upon them that was even greater than the one posed by the dragon.
At least she didn’t have to sleep next to Ord Ylon, feel his too-fresh breath on her face – or at least try to sleep, languishing for hours in the constant, aborted desire to reach for a blade, plunge it into the soft place beneath his breastbone –
But he’d even done something at one point to show her the shield which surrounded him. Any action taken against him would reveal that there was something amiss; his cover would be broken, and he would start killing people.
No. Her bed was made, and she would have to lie in it. Until the time came, as she knew it would.
Three charges – unerring accuracy – right into Redgate’s heart.
* * *
11th Illost, 998 NE
“Oh, my love, did you see the boy’s face tonight?” The sorcerer closed the door to their private room behind her. “That was another truly magnificent performance.”
“Thank you,” she said in the dead voice she’d learned to adopt when they were alone. It was the only thing that seemed to stop him thinking of her as a real human being, the only thing that curbed his cruellest impulses. She went to stand by the window, looking out over Tirremuir, its red sandstone walls and white-painted palaces, and she folded her arms across her chest, trying not to show the tension wracking her every nerve.
Tonight – the first night we’re really alone together…
How nice it would’ve been, to have been able to poison his drink tonight. To have been able to even plan to do it…
Spells or no spells, there were places she would not go. He would have to kill her first.
Mouth dry, she tried to ignore the worst stories she’d heard over the months from Kani, about the Twelve Hells, about the shadowland, about the depravities of sorcerers…
From what she understood, what she knew in her bones, she already had some idea that even if he killed her, that might not be a way out. Dying might, in fact, make her subservience to him all the more inescapable.
Nentheleme save me…
“His love for you is as a fresh young shoot,” the murderer mused, kicking off his boots, “struggling to bloom as such weeds and shadows as I might conjure choke, strangle it…” He crossed to a shuttered window and opened it, letting in the night’s breeze, and she breathed it in, wondering:
Is that how Pelteron died? Choking? Is he threatening Ibbalat’s life?
She didn’t miss his reference to shadows; she remembered the night she tried to refuse him, the night her sense of rightness flared in revolt and she went in tears to Kani… The degradation, being forced to endure his embrace, his touch on her skin, when he gently took the pencil she was failing to write with out of her fingers, drew her away… The confusion on Kani’s face…
And she remembered the way Redgate then shocked her into stillness with a simple gesture – he’d extended an arm, and a red-eyed snake with two heads, its body long and thin and formed of pure darkness, went streaming like a ribbon of oil out of his clothing. It had disappeared into the hull of the boat and, just as the sorcerer said would happen, Pelteron had gone missing.
‘A casualty of this futile war you would causelessly wage upon me,’ Redgate had summarised. As though Pelteron’s death were her fault.
She knew what he was trying to do to her. She wasn’t stupid. He wanted her will broken. He wanted her to feel that it was her fault. And he would take every moment of her submission as a sign it was working.
So, tonight, she had to make it clear, before his demands went too far and the whole mission was thrown into disarray.
She whirled around. By now he’d removed most of his clothing, wearing only some light, flowing pants; he was stretched out on top of the covers, his slim, muscular body held in a relaxed pose, his hands behind his head against the pillow.
“I shared your hammock, but I will not share your bed,” she said. “Not living.”
He eyed her up and down, and she prayed he could see the determination in her eyes, her frown, the set of her shoulders and her folded arms…
“If you won’t share my bed, don’t,” he said coldly in the end. “You can stand there. All night.”
She stiffened, gritted her teeth –
“On one leg.”
She felt her eyes widen –
“Or your brother perishes. Now.”
Slowly, trembling more than she was wont to, she raised her right foot a few inches off the floor. She’d always been better, far better, at balancing on her left.
“A little higher. Higher… Good. Now stay like that. I know you can do it. The foot touches the floor, you kill someone.” He laughed lightly, as if tickled. “Osantya, my love, come here.”
Ana had to fight back the tears that suddenly itched at the corners of her eyes as she witnessed an example of what she might be forced to become. A squirming dead girl, scantily-clad and pale as snow, appeared on the bed next to him in a swirl of purple mist.
“Osantya, once I’m asleep, watch this girl’s right foot. If she touches it to the floor, wake me before heading downstairs and killing someone. The first person you can find not in this apartment. Do you understand?”
The white-skinned, black-haired girl nodded. The glittering eyes were downcast.
Ana felt a surge of sympathy, and it ripped a single sob from her throat.
Redgate smirked, but chose to ignore her outburst.
She closed her eyes as he turned to the undead thing – she clenched her jaw and focussed, ignoring the sounds she could hear, concentrating on keeping the already-locking muscles loose, on retaining the strength, the purpose, to see this night through – they’d be on the road tomorrow, they’d all be stuck in the tent together and he couldn’t do this again – it was just one night, one night…
She stood on one leg, not weeping, just waiting for the dawn.
* * *
12th Illost, 998 NE
The locked muscles were beyond cramped. The pain was severe, but not unendurable.
If I was stuck on a rock-face, climbing, with no way forward, no way down – waiting for Phanar to come help me, or waiting for the sun to rise, shine on the next handhold –
When she pretended she was somewhere else, the agony was easier to hold at bay, but she didn’t have the luxury. There was an opportunity here to find a handhold early, find a master-key to unlock the whole problem before the dawn.
“Is he gone?”
She grunted the words as softly as she could manage. She’d been listening to the murderer’s breathing for fifteen minutes and it’d found an almost-unbroken rhythm; she was able to perceive through the gloom of the starlit room that his chest was rising and falling at regular intervals.
She saw the whitish triangle of the undead girl’s face dip in a solemn nod. The darkly-twinkling eyes closed in a slow blink.
The voice was quiet and hollow, a trace of some magical essence distorting the words, but it was still that of a young woman about her own age: “He dreams.”
She felt a sudden urge to fall, put her foot on the floor – for the thousandth time she righted herself, stopped the sway before it overtook her. “Are – are you…”
How do I do this?
The girl spoke into the silence Ana left lingering. “I can’t sakh… I can’t act against him, can’t even think against him, not in any way! Do you understand me?”
There was a desperation in the undead voice, a hungering that could no more be hidden than it could be suppressed.
A fury to match her own. And a warning – if Ana said the wrong thing, Osantya might have to report it back; anything she said might be revealed to him later.
Her thoughts whirled. It was obvious to her that she had to take advantage of this opportunity, but she had no idea which route to take. This was an undead creature – a wight if her guess was right – and for all she knew the thing was centuries old, a completely foreign entity…
But she studied the girl’s downcast gaze, took in her disconsolate demeanour.
She’s just a girl. She’s just like me.
The accent she used was strange to the rogue, but it didn’t sound particularly ancient or anything.
Why not start there?
“Where did you grow up?” she panted.
The amethyst eyes slowly raised, to meet Ana’s own.
“I’m Anathta,” she said haltingly, enduring a spasm of pain that wracked her lower back. “I grew up in a place called Miserdell. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds – apparently it was called Misery Dell once upon a time, but someone killed a dragon that lived there and built themselves a castle.”
“A miser,” Osantya said.
“Right! But I definitely wasn’t a miser – we were poor, I stole almost everything I had – and it wasn’t, you know, miserable, there – it was pretty awesome, really. The local locksmiths really sucked, you know?”
She thought she saw the shadow of a smile on the undead face at that.
“And it was a stuffy place, so there were all these people leaving their windows open at night, even in winter…”
“I grew up on the streets of Sticktown,” Osantya interrupted her (finally, Anathta exulted). “No one leaves things unlocked in Sticktown. If it ain’t nailed down, it’s gonna get stole sooner or later.”
“You’re… Mundian?”
The wight nodded, the white face dipping in the shadows.
“I mean – you’re… new to this?”
The same nod again.
Ana breathed a little easier, despite the cramp forming now in the thigh of her left leg. It was reassuring, knowing she and Osantya were on an almost even-footing in this situation.
“What was it like… living… in Mund?” She bit her lip for two reasons: the pain was worsening, and her use of the word ‘living’ might not have been the best choice, in retrospect…
“I worked in the love-house off Cutterwell Way – it was – well, you know… I was alive… I had bread, and cheese sometimes…”
She listened as Osantya told her horrible story, but Ana used a portion of her shock-heightened consciousness to go over Redgate’s words at the same time. He’d certainly been very careful to phrase things the right way, leaving no loopholes that she could twist to her advantage: there was no angle she could exploit to set him up as a target for the wight’s attacks – and no angle where she could put her foot on the floor –
“Ossie,” she interrupted gently, using the shortened form of the name and getting a now-familiar smile in return. “Ossie, tell me something – what’s my foot made of?”
“Erm…“
It was strange hearing a wight’s hollow, sorcerous voice saying ‘erm’.
“Is it made of leather?” she pressed.
“Noooo…?” Osantya replied quizzically.
“So if I were to, say, put this boot on the floor,” she had to remember to keep quiet, she was getting excited, “this leather thing on my foot – would I be putting my foot on the floor? Or would my foot be still on my boot, like it always has been since he first summoned you?”
“I… suppose so?”
With excruciating slowness so that she didn’t collapse in a fit of pleasure and moan so loud that she’d wake the sleeping archmage, Ana lowered her right foot.
“I’ll just… stand here… like this…” she gasped, “and if he… if he wakes… I’ll lift it right back up…”
So it was that they spent the next five hours – standing on two feet was hardly glamorous but it was infinitely more fun than standing on one foot – and she got to know the undead girl pretty well. She got to understand Mund a lot better, too, but whenever the conversation veered too close to mages, champions, Redgate, Osantya suddenly became tight-lipped.
When the sorcerer finally awoke before the dawn and questioned his slave, Ana saw the way Osantya lowered her head to hide the slight smile on her lips as she replied:
“No, Master – her right foot never once touched the floor.”
Standing on one leg again and mimicking what she hoped to be the facial expressions of someone who’d been in the same position for far, far too long, Ana scrutinised the wight’s downcast face.
She saw the warping on the undead features, and felt the panic rise inside her breast –
She’s going to tell!
Her own eyes widened in realisation and horror, as Osantya tipped her chin back and blurted a string of words in a breathy, ominous-sounding tongue, pouring out a report into the air.
Ana looked back and forth between the two of them, feeling her cheeks flush with colour – and then, a cold sensation in her stomach, she lowered her foot again. She hadn’t even had it raised more than two minutes, and it probably showed.
Redgate turned his laughing eyes on her, smiling thinly. “I expected no less of you,” he declared.
For a moment she drew a breath of relief –
“Osantya, will you please now go and kill two people. Anyone. The first two you find. Then begone.”
This was not a question, and the dead girl murmured a simple, “Yes, Master,” before springing off the bed and loping at full-pelt to the door, her long stillness entirely belying the fluidity and ease of her motions, the awful strength inside her.
Ana was no longer locked in place by any power except the disgust, the fascinated disgust, as she waited, staring at Redgate, him staring implacably back at her –
The screams, the distant thuds, were over mercifully quickly. A sound like rainfall, familiar to her.
Blood spattering on walls.
Who was it? Who died?
The brief shrieks had seemed to come from farther away than the rooms occupied by those she knew best, but it didn’t matter. It could be one or two of the staff members, almost all known to her by name. It could be a pair of strangers – but what was the difference? Ana knew she wasn’t a nice person, but the idea, the thought that if she’d just kept her foot in the air, if she’d just held on…
Sure, it was Redgate’s fault. Sure, he was the evil one. Ana, Osantya – they were just tools, puppets in some sick game he played against himself. But she couldn’t avoid all the guilt. She was stained alongside him, painted in the same evil.
She knew in advance. Some part of her knew all along that he would figure it out, realise that she’d talked her way around the problem. But she wanted to do it anyway, wanted to spit it in his face that he couldn’t own her, couldn’t control her.
Mine, the blame.
The same way a person with the chance to pull a kitten out of a fire and didn’t was to blame. Sure, they didn’t set the fire. Sure, they didn’t make the kitten go there. But they had the chance. They might’ve got their hands burnt, but it would’ve been worth it. Would’ve been right.
Her breathing had increased in tempo. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t see. Exhaustion and grief gave way to the inexorable advance of nausea, despair…
She curled up into a ball on the floor, heard his chuckle and didn’t care. Didn’t care that he knew he had broken her will. Didn’t care anymore.
There would be no trace, no explanation. But Phanar would suspect. He would have to, now. First the sailor, Pelteron – now two people in the Sandtrap tavern – surely he would suspect…
But did she want him to? If he suspected, if he acted against Redgate – that would mean her brother’s death.
Trouble like this seemed to follow them, though. This would be the third time someone had been killed at a tavern while they stayed there. Although none of the others would look quite like this. From the suddenness with which the screams had been cut off, she could only imagine the brutality with which the victims had been dispatched…
What if it was him Osantya had attacked? He could’ve been downstairs by this time… Would he have survived, a surprise assault from a wight in the pre-dawn darkness? What about Ibbalat? Kani’s faith might have actually made her the best target, in the long run – she probably had the best chance of putting down a wight at short notice…
But no. Her ears were too good to be misled; there was no way it was one of the people she loved who had died. Though, that presented its own problems. He would expect something like this to have woken her up.
She went and washed her face, knowing what was coming. Not five minutes later, Phanar arrived to find her sitting demurely on the bed next to the sheet-draped sorcerer, her vambraces and belts already fitted, prepared to ‘investigate the murders’ before they went down to the place Derezo would have the camels waiting.
She would play the part that would let her protect her brother. She was weak – she couldn’t help but pray for him to figure out what was happening to her, what Redgate was in truth – but she would pray at the same time for him to never figure it out, pray for his safety.
There was no ‘figuring out’ what Redgate was in truth. There was no word in any language fit to describe him.
Except one.
Doomed.
* * *
14th Illost, 998 NE
It was dawn on the Obarsk Waste when the orc outriders spotted them.
The salt flat was an ashen-grey expanse under the shadow of night, the little grains appearing almost black, but as the sun swiftly arose on the horizon it was already changing in the distance, glistening whiteness coming closer by the minute. They rode their camels in silence towards the darkness of the mountains ahead; the wind was low, and Ana’s mood was lower.
Not that Phanar’s desire to break camp and get mounted-up before sunrise was a problem for her. She didn’t sleep at night anymore. She lay in Redgate’s clutches, counting down the hours until they arrived at the dragon’s fortress. She slept in the saddle, the monotonous plain slipping by, hour after hour. At least it wasn’t too hot at this time of year. Even still, she was unsettled – most of the time true sleep eluded her, and she found herself wondering once or twice whether this was something the murderer had done to her, some kind of living-zombification…
Even in this at-best-half-alive state, she was the first to catch the subtle breeze with her nostrils, the not-so-subtle (to her) scent.
“Fire basilisks,” she murmured, almost to herself – then, realising what she was saying, repeated more loudly: “Phanar! Fire basilisks on the wind!”
The two of them cast about, and it was only seconds before she had them in her sights. Ord Ylon’s lair was south-east, and these orcs were almost exactly on her left, north-east.
Heading closer, black pinpricks on the white line of the horizon.
“I count at least a dozen,” Phanar said in a terse tone. He immediately started tightening the straps at the shoulders of his brigandine armour, the studded-leather-looking coat he wore over his gambeson.
“Fourteen.” Ana voiced her best guess. “Plus two spare basilisks with water casks.”
“An even thirty to kill, then,” her brother replied, and flashed her a wolfish grin as he wheeled his camel about to aim at them.
She did her best to smile back, but then Redgate spoke, and every word that fell from his lips was like a hammer falling against the anvil that was her skull.
“Oh, I am so very glad you said that,” the sorcerer murmured, his voice slightly distorted through the horrid mask.
The archmage had taken camel-riding in his stride, and, like everything else Ana had seem him try his hand at, he came across like a professional, like he’d been doing it all his life. Whether he was using some of his sorcery to aid him or he was just that insufferable, she wasn’t sure. But now he abandoned his saddle and floated up into the air – huge black wings of iron spread from his back, and, before anyone could get a word out, he beat the wings, sending himself hurtling at the orcs.
“Wait!” Ibbalat called, holding up a hand in a futile, instinctive gesture.
“Let it go, Ibb,” Kani said gently.
“But… my potions…” the mage said. “We could’ve just gone by them…”
“What is he doing?” Phanar growled.
Ana felt she was in a dream. “He is going to kill them all, isn’t he?”
“Of course he is,” Kani answered her in a detached voice.
“Can you grant us flight?” Phanar asked Ibbalat.
The mage lowered his face. “I – I didn’t pick up enough bat-wings… I’ve only got enough for the mountain, and a few spares – I can’t make us fly that fast, anyway…”
Her brother had taken his sword-pommel in his palm, his eagerness obvious – now he flung his hand down in frustration, releasing it back into its sheath.
They’d steered their camels to follow the archmage, but it was hardly the thunderous charge of warhorses. It was five camels, crunching ponderously across the salt lying atop the plain – they were going at a twentieth of his speed – or less…
Her eyes were keen. She could see them in the distance, the orcs gathering themselves to meet the magic-user’s approach.
There was nothing wrong with orcs. The way Ana saw it, they were basically people. Most of them lived in a crude fashion, following the commands of their tribal chieftains and shamans under threat of lifelong exile if they were to break rank – thing was, most humans lived like that, in her experience. Sure, the inner countries of the Realm were all nice and fancy, but she’d spent the better part of a year exploring the fringes on the edges of civilisation; orcs were no different to incredibly big, ugly people. The ones she’d met dwelling in cities proved it – they were quite capable of fitting in, living peacefully, so long as they didn’t try showing their big, ugly faces in the wrong places.
And, just like people, she had absolutely no problems killing them. If they’d taken up arms against her, her brother, her friends, even strangers – she could kill them. She was good at it.
As Redgate drew ever-closer to them, they had their basilisks pick up the pace. The orange-scaled, six-legged lizards had to run to get their internal fires burning, and the orcs sitting astride them knew it. They would spit jets of flame straight up at the sorcerer, the moment he was in range –
She cringed, knowing the time was almost upon them.
“What is he going to do?” she whispered to herself.
But Ibbalat overheard her, and answered in a quiet voice, “There are… many ways he could choose to deal with them. A few of his eldritches would suffice. Or he might use an essence. Flames, lightning – there are too many options…”
She watched, mouth dry, expecting to see him do something, exert himself in some way – perform actions that would result in the orcs’ deaths, the slaughter of their semi-intelligent mounts.
No. He slowed as he neared them, but seemingly only to draw the moment out.
His mere approach was enough to do it.
She watched in horror as the little shapes in the distance recoiled, tiny arcs of fluid squirting high into the air from their throats, their flesh torn open by some invisible power that seemed to ignore even their clothing. The basilisks were shredded, falling apart into smouldering heaps, lava pouring out of their innards to pool smoking on the salt. The ones that tried to turn and flee were cut down in kind.
The smashed water casks, leaking their glittering contents onto the plain.
She had absolutely no problems killing them. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around what this had been, though. Certainly it wasn’t killing. Killing didn’t always have to have honour, but did he have to spit in the face of decency like this? This was butchery, mockery. There’d been no time to exchange challenges – they might not have even been hostile… Redgate – everything that was wrong about violence, wrapped up into a nice red bundle.
Finally she was sick. She’d been waiting for it for days. She leaned over in the saddle and let it all go, then had to do her best to stop her camel poking its nose in the mess she left on the salt.
The others halted. Ibbalat wordlessly passed her a water-vial.
“Th-thank you,” she said, voice twanging.
When she took the vial from his hands, their fingers touched, and she felt herself tremble.
“Ana,” Phanar said quietly, staring at the shape of the sorcerer now returning towards them, “did Redgate kill those people back at the Sandtrap? Did he kill Pelteron?”
“That’s… preposterous,” she replied. She spat water, then looked at him. “There’s no way. I was with him all night. And Pelteron? Really, brother?”
“’Preposterous’?” he said slowly. “Really, sister?”
She heard the scepticism in his voice and her heart leapt.
We can’t – can’t fight Redgate – he was right, right all along – Ord Ylon will die, and, and we will die if we try –
But she couldn’t make her lips move, force her tongue to voice the words she longed to say. They couldn’t even plan to act against him… his shields would react, and she couldn’t warn them!
She looked into Ibbalat’s eyes beneath the brim of his hat – he stared at her, without surprise.
She looked across to Kani – the cleric wore a small, smug smile on her lips.
Then at last she realised: They’ve known for two days already…
Ana could barely still the heaving of her breast in time. It was happening. They all knew.
They all knew.
“But –“
“Hush,” Phanar breathed, as the archmage slowed, coming to hover triumphantly over them.
Ibbalat cried up at him, “You!”
A single word that drove all the breath from Ana’s body.
“That… that was – amazing,” Ibbalat finished, grinning.
Redgate inclined his head once, slowly, unspeaking.
“But we could’ve gone past them without raising any suspicions,” the young mage continued, stroking his beard as he wheeled his camel back around to point south-east. “If the kobolds have regular interactions with the local orc tribes, they might hear of this.”
“You are correct,” Redgate said, halting even as he hovered over own his camel once again. There was an unusual disconcert in the voice emanating from the cowl. “Your own leader gave the say-so, did he not? The orcs may communicate the loss of their scouts, by magical means?”
Ibbalat’s smile actually looked genuine as he shrugged, nodded.
Ibbalat, don’t, Ana thought. Don’t provoke him… There was no chance of it anyway. Kobolds, talk to orcs? Redgate was showing his inexperience in believing this bunch of nonsense.
Phanar was just gazing at the sorcerer, expressionlessly.
“Continue without me,” the archmage said in a very different, firmly-resolved voice. “I shall catch you up momentarily.”
This time he didn’t just fly away. Something else happened, a red flame scorching the air twenty feet up where he disappeared.
“He… he went to hell?” Ana asked.
“It is good,” Phanar said quietly, as though the sorcerer might still hear them from another dimension, “that he becomes familiarised now with the place in which he shall spend eternity.”
They all laughed, even Ana.
Riding there with the three people in the world who knew her best, she let the tears fall from her eyes; they rode close together, and for the first time in weeks she felt some tiny sliver of peace, a painful reminder of what should have been.
She couldn’t explain. The enchantment still held her, though the caster was no longer present – though they knew his secret already… She couldn’t even tell Ibbalat she loved him too, that every minute since that horrible morning leaving Mund had been a waking nightmare, seeing the way he was looking at her, unable to do anything to make plain the feelings that were like a knife in her heart, stabbing home with every glimpse of his misery.
I did it – to keep you – keep you alive –
She looked at Kani.
“I can’t break the spell, I’m so sorry,” the cleric murmured, “nor can Ibbalat… but with the sorcerer’s death –”
“We can’t talk about it, even think about it,” Ibbalat said, shaking his head; then his eyes met Ana’s once more as he finished, “yet.”
She looked aside, at her brother. She couldn’t stand the furtiveness with which he was staring at her, like she was a fragile vase about to teeter off a shelf…
Damn it all. We’re probably all gonna die anyway.
Throwing caution to the winds, she leapt out of her saddle and landed behind the mage.
She was tired, and camels weren’t the most receptive creatures when it came to jumping onto their backs, but she still managed to make it look easy. She threw her arms around him and squeezed.
Ibbalat looked back at her over his shoulder; their eyes met, and they rode on. She didn’t look at Phanar or Kani to judge their reactions. Their acceptance could be felt.
Their jealousy.
There might’ve been only minutes before Redgate returned, but, for a few minutes, they would head south-east in silence, and there would be no sorrow in her soul, only joy. She’d return to her own camel, and this time when she fell asleep it would be the restful dreams of the rescued that greeted her, dreams not of blood-arcs and spider-masks hiding spider-faces, but dreams of glittering water on luminous white grains, a simple mage-robe with its faint scent of wane and bird-feathers. Familiar. Like home. White mist on the meadow. Miserdell.
* * *
Redgate did not return in minutes, and hours had passed before a whooshing, crackling sound announced the arrival of a creature in the air above the four companions, wreathed in blood-coloured fire. The noise was strange enough to wake Ana from her slumber.
A black-skinned imp, four wings and a barbed tail framed against the mountain-shelf ahead of them – which looked even more ridiculously huge than before, now that the sun was up, now that they were a few hours closer…
The sorcerer had left them for so long?
The first thought that entered her head was that she could’ve stayed on Ibbalat’s camel with him for longer. Having him riding right next to her was nice, but not as nice as being able to feel his body against hers. Being able to squeeze him – sleep in the sweet, surprisingly non-revolting fragrance of his spell-components.
The second thought that entered her head was that Redgate had realised they were all onto him now, that they’d figured out his game somehow, and was now preparing to attack them – but then the imp gave its report.
“My master extends his apology to the Phanar of N’Lem regarding his continued absence,” it croaked at them. “He has now located the relevant tribes and will be returning shortly. He wishes for me to reassure you that word of your presence here will not reach the kobolds from the orcs. He also wishes for me to tell the Master Ibbalat that he has procured goblin texts of magic from one location which he thinks may be of interest to him.”
The moment it was gone, Ana drew Throatopener and Kidneysticker – no, she wanted Toothdrill for this –
“Anathta – please, put them away, he could be back any minute,” Phanar gestured at her dagger-filled hands.
“Did you hear what it said?” she screamed.
“I am with her!” Kani barked, despite having turned as pale as the ground. “He’s – he’s killed their whole tribe?”
“Oh… oh, no…” Ibbalat moaned.
“I heard the demon say ‘tribes’,” Phanar pointed out grimly.
“What have we done?” Kani gasped. “Bringing him here? What have we done? I could’ve – I should’ve come with you to meet him –“
“And if you had, you would have died, do you remember?” Phanar said.
“We need his power,” Ibbalat grated out the words. “Ylon’s an arch-druid. A full one. You know what that means – we have to take his head off. None of us are achieving that, believe me.”
At least this way, I can be happy whichever of them loses, Ana thought.
Aloud, she said, “At first I didn’t understand Redgate’s power. I thought he was underestimating Ord Ylon, always calling him an ‘it’, always being so confident – but now? I’m just worried because I think I’d rather the dragon kill me, than the sor… oh…”
“What?” Kani asked.
Ibbalat, staring at the rogue, seemed to intuit the same thing. “The orcs?” he said.
She nodded.
“What?” Kani repeated.
“N-nothing, Kani,” the mage stammered, looking down. “It’s just. You know. What a situation.”
“Tell me,” Kani demanded. “Someone tell me – now.”
“Well – he can certainly raise half-orcs as his servants,” the mage said as gently as he could, approaching the topic from an oblique angle, “and I don’t think he’d have any problems doing the same with full-orcs, if you follow me…”
“You think he has… turned them… into his…”
It was Kani’s turn to be sick.
* * *
It might as well have been an escarpment, given the suddenness with which the first shelf of land rose from the salt plain. If they had another day or two to follow the line of the cliff, they’d have eventually reached the point where a natural pass would take them up onto the higher elevation. But climbing would be quicker, and flying quicker still.
The murderer returned half an hour before they stopped, halted by the almost-vertical terrain before them.
Ana found it easier than ever to play the part of Redgate’s beloved since discovering the others knew what was happening – before she had felt like the performance was no better than lying to her friends, but the tables had been turned; every little action she took now was lying to the sorcerer, and she had to restrain herself lest she start to revel in it. At one point she almost caught herself saying ‘my love’ back at him, and, knowing it would sound too sarcastic, too confident no matter how hard she tried to inject some sincerity, hesitancy into the phrase, she just shut her mouth instead.
“Ibbalat,” Phanar said, “your spells?”
The mage, who’d spent the final hour in the saddle doing some last-minute revision, closed his spellbook and nodded. He stowed the volume in his saddlebag and slid off the camel.
One by one, they went to stand before the mage as he sang some high-pitched words in a warbling voice and showered them in crumbs of dried-out animal-parts.
When it was Ana’s turn, she distracted him by meeting his eyes and he almost had to start over.
He’s as nervous as me, Ana realised. She felt a sudden, overpowering urge to throw her hands about his neck and kiss him, even through the stupid-looking beard.
Beards suited some men – it’d definitely suited the attractive-in-an-unattractive-way helmsman she’d dallied with – but Ibbalat was too young – she wanted to be able to see his face, touch it…
“You’re ready,” he said, a little disappointment in his tone.
Well done, she thought, stepping aside so Kani could have her turn in the shower of delightful crumbs. He’s keeping up the act better than me, for once…
The thought of being outdone in a game of deception grated on her, and she resolved herself to commit to the pretence. He’d even managed to look exhilarated when Redgate had presented him with the thin box containing some tiny little scrolls of weird magic.
She looked up at the mountain looming above them, and felt a sudden strange sensation – a kind of weightlessness, focussed on the soles of her feet and under her arms…
She looked up at the mountain and thought: Just a few more hours. A few more hours, and you can be rid of him.
She turned her face to Redgate, smiled innocently, trying to let the same horror fill her eyes as had filled them for these endless past two weeks. But she knew inside she was sliding dangerously-close to ill-will.
Three charges. Straight into your heart.
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