GLASS 4.6: ALL BROKEN
“The scholars of the Yenistraph Par have given their verdict. Therefore I decree in accord with their findings: the Unsunned on manoeuvres in Mund are to be recalled. The identity of the target has been challenged. As it stands, all portents display no more than Yane’s satisfaction with our work. We will make the slaves we took last us, awaiting a clearer vision and a new mandate from the Lightless. We are not dead – we will not be moved. It is the first principle of the First Blood: to order the moment; to refuse to act on impulse.”
– from King Asator’s address to the Ysyri, 16,492 VC
Netherhame stood in what appeared to be her bedroom, a rather-large chamber lit by candles, the curtains drawn. She had the demeanour of an angry governess from one of Jaid’s stories – her heavy shoulders were thrust back, and the hand that wasn’t holding aloft the glyphstone was planted on her hip. Her bright-purple robe with its pink swirls was even more dishevelled than my own usually was, and I had to smooth mine out every time I retrieved it from my satchel – perhaps she’d fallen asleep in it. She had her faintly-green, howling-hag mask on her face, and she sounded tired.
“So, Feychilde, I’m led to believe you’ve been dealing with our fanged friends without me. In direct opposition to my orders, I might point out. Dragging some of the other newbies with you.”
I braced myself for the recorded tongue-lashing.
But after a moment’s pause she just snorted, and relaxed her posture.
“Truth is, Timesnatcher warned me you were likely to follow this path; it was his idea for me to say no to you last night. Seems our all-seeing friend wanted to test you and your pals. I’m glad to hear you all made it out alive.”
Only thanks to Leafcloak, I mused. If Spiritwhisper had died, we’d have all had to live with the consequences of our childish haste for the rest of our lives. Rushing in, nearly getting a few of us killed…
We should’ve waited.
But then how many more lives would’ve been lost? How many more innocent Mundians would’ve ended up as undead-fodder, if we hadn’t acted when we did? Even one day’s delay would’ve cost someone their life.
“I want to meet, today. I’m gonna go mop up the rest of the vampires, then I’ve got a proposal for you. Glyph me once you’re up – don’t worry, I know it won’t be early –and we’ll go for something to eat in Hightown. Normal clothes, please.”
I lowered the chunk of crystal once the recording ended and lay back in bed.
“What time is it?” I shouted.
“Just gone one!” Xan yelled back from the main room. I’d awoken at eight, got cleaned-up and then went straight back to bed. Jaid and Jaroan had taken Xastur out to play under Orstrum’s watchful gaze, so the apartment was mercifully quiet.
I wasn’t hungry, wasn’t ready to contact Netherhame yet. When I thought of food my mind instantly went to fangs ripping into my scalp, distended jaws snapping at my friends’ faces.
No, I thought with a shudder, definitely not hungry.
Instead I reached beneath my mattress and retrieved the slim sorcery-text I’d had Em borrow from the Maginox’s library a few days ago, to supplant the book I’d liberated from those Bone Ring amateurs right back when I started out.
This one was the real deal. I wasn’t certain it’d been written specifically for arch-sorcerers, but it seemed to skip half the nonsense about practical magic, plunging straight into the theory – which was what I really needed. It contained an excerpt talking about what they’d called ‘weaving’, the interlinking of various shields to solidify and amplify their effects.
It also had a guide on the various runes and their meanings: the self-repair ones looked particularly enticing, given how my robe and mask had been damaged last night. To be fair my mask was only somewhat lopsided, once I’d bent it back into shape with my hands, and only a little less comfortable on my face – but the robe was torn right open, caked in my blood. I was thankful now that Madame Sailor had mentioned a back-up and had suggested fixing my old grey robe. I hadn’t thought there’d be any chance I’d get it wrecked within a few days.
And then at the back of the book there was a whole chapter devoted just to joining with extra-dimensional entities.
I was interested to read that, up until the time of its publication, no arch-sorcerer had joined with more than eight eldritches at once – regardless of the eldritches’ power-levels. So far as the authors and their editors had been aware, at least. The book could’ve been centuries-old for all I knew.
I currently had three eldritches ‘bound to the flesh’, as the book put it. If things went well today I would be pushing my limits a little – I would try one of my undead on for size.
After half an hour of staring at a particularly obtuse passage relating to weaving shields together – no diagrams, more’s the pity – I gave up. I contacted Em, and we chatted while she was on her way to the Maginox for class. Once she arrived and got near the front of the queue for future-checking by the diviner-guards, I got in touch with Netherhame.
I threw my robe and mask on this time, despite their blemishes. I’d be feeling weird if the arch-sorceress wasn’t wearing hers now, but I’d feel even weirder if I exposed myself unmasked first. The whole idea of showing our identities was hers in the first place, so it would only be fair for her to take the lead.
I needn’t have worried. She was in an Oldtown or Hilltown street, wearing her full champion apparel, and Shallowlie was at her side in her black robe and pale, smiling mask.
“Netherhame,” I thought at her, “I’m up.”
“Morning,” she replied blandly.
“Ah, yes,” I said, feeling a bit guilty. “Sorry, and all… I’ve got a couple of errands to run… How did you get on with the vampires?”
“Done. Apparently only one or two are left, holed up too deep for us to find. Future lines look just breezy, so I’m told. So – three o’ clock? You know Foltan’s on Dandelion Way?”
“I’ll find it,” I said.
“South Hightown, the road with the Temple of Compassion and the Tower of Knowledge. You can’t miss it. No masks, yeah?“
If it weren’t for the fact I’d spent the last couple of weeks flying around the city, I was pretty sure I would’ve been able to miss it no problem, but I happened to know where the shrines to Wythyldwyn and Locus were located now.
“Sounds good,” I replied. “See you there.”
* * *
Clad in my finest clothes, my new purchase safely stowed in my satchel, I crossed from central Hightown into the slightly less-busy, even more-aloof areas in the south of the district, bordering Treetown. It was an unpleasant, dreary day of constant on-off showers and grey skies that extended even across Hightown’s usually picturesque horizons. Nonetheless it was the kind of weather that made me feel Mundian, called out to my soul. It wasn’t particularly cold, even with the north wind coming down from the mountains. For some reason it made me feel young again, like an actual kid kid. I was too young to get nostalgia, wasn’t I? Evidently not.
I hoped my new mask wouldn’t look too different to the old one, which was now being repaired for a minor fee. I’d opted for the closest copy I’d found available, but the curly horns at the temples were ever-so-slightly longer, sharper, more demonic than the cute little horns bedecking my first mask. The pattern of the copper and tin was slightly less appealing, giving the appearance of a brow furrowed in anger, and the smiling cheeks were less pronounced, more leering than gleeful. Still, it would have to do. Hopefully they’d have my original repaired in a few days. My back-up robe would be awhile, too – I’d have to fall back on the old grey one for now.
If I was attacked, I would use my shields. Not only because my face wasn’t known here – more because I’d finally managed to employ Zab’s gift to reliably hide my scar, the most obvious distinguishing mark someone might use to identify me… without making it look like my cheek had grown a huge fleshy balloon or making my scar flash on-and-off every three seconds. I’d even combed my hair into some semblance of normality, tucked back behind my ears.
Nonetheless, I’d have loved to have been wearing the new mask right now. I wanted my robe, my shields ready; I didn’t like going around in this ridiculously-overwrought get up. However, I had to look the part, as any random not-quite-lowborn youngster.
The Tower of Knowledge was more impressive from beneath; from above it melded into the sea of towers, barely standing out from the crowd, but from down here I could appreciate it was a feat of ambitious imagining come true. A single spire formed the centre of the building, about which other, lesser spires were clustered, joined to the central spire and to one another by broad, open-air walkways, rail-less stairs and bridges that spanned the gaps between the various structures at impressive heights. Some of the bridges up there I wouldn’t feel comfortable stepping out upon without my wings at my back. Even looking up at them made me feel a little green. Nonetheless, there were scholars up there, clothes and hair streaming in the chill wind as they walked those precarious-looking paths.
The Temple of Compassion was no less beautiful, if a little less impressive. A low structure, like many of the shrines, it was still huge, a veritable palace of silver walls and pillars down which flowed dozens of small waterfalls, joining to form a web of canal-moats that criss-crossed the grass on which the temple was built. Orchards… small, picturesque hills…
There was no crowd of bedraggled supplicants waiting outside this hallowed place of Wythyldwyn. No, instead there were more than a few magisters walking their patrol routes. Even in passing I had the opportunity to see a vagrant turned away by them, gently but forcefully being escorted away from the silvery gates that stood at the entrance from the street.
The place she’d named, Foltan’s, was a Myric establishment above an expensive-looking barber-shop. I ascended the narrow stair, awash in the scents of charcoaled meat, and approached the well-dressed waitress standing just inside the door. Despite their image, you could tell this was not your typical Hightown establishment.
By the time I was across the threshold all the lingering images from last night were washed away in the smoky aromas. My stomach complained loudly of its emptiness as I halted at the small desk.
“Uh – I’m meeting someone here?” I said. “I don’t know…” I peered past her as I spoke, searching for anyone that matched Netherhame’s frame –
Two women, out on the veranda overlooking the street, the shrines. Seated at the far side of their chosen table so as to face the door of the establishment. One of them, tall, well-built, had noticed me – and there was the light of recognition on her coarse-featured face.
The waitress showed me to their table. None of the other patrons were braving the bleak weather – we’d be sitting outside alone.
Netherhame was pallid, unattractive. I didn’t take great care of my hair, but hers made it look like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards by an army of goblins. Then dragged forwards through it just for good measure. Her tallness was obvious, even while seated. She wore a striped smock-top, trousers, and a long leather coat.
Shallowlie – it was just obvious it was her from her body language – was Netherhame’s antithesis. Smooth, pale-caramel skin, and big brown eyes; lustrous dark hair, a petite and appealing frame. Her dress was a creation of white layers with a floral pattern, and she wore a too-thin cardigan over her shoulders. If I had to guess, I’d have said she was Habburatian or Hezrenile.
Only in their attitude did the two twenty-something women seem similar: neither smiled, but wore closed, serious expressions on their faces.
Netherhame gestured to the empty seats opposite them. I ordered a hot berry drink before I removed my satchel and sat down, suddenly feeling a little nervous, like a criminal being invited to parley with a pair of watchmen.
“Last night,” I started, placing my bag between my feet, “I know it was foolish –“
“Don’t worry,” Netherhame said laconically, sitting back but still not looking very amused. “Whether you meant to or not, you drew out the lord. Like I said, it was T-Man’s big idea, not yours – not really.”
So Timesnatcher put me in the vampire’s path?
It just felt off, thinking of it that way.
I raised my eyebrows. “Is that how it all works, you think? Really?”
“Obviously.” She rolled her heavy-lidded hazel eyes. “We’re all pawns in their little game – don’t you get that?”
Shallowlie spoke for the first time in my presence, her voice small and squeaky, the accent foreign, exotic.
“Lie,” was all she said.
Netherhame reacted like she’d been slapped, leaning forwards suddenly, almost lunging. “Shut up, Min.”
Shallowlie shook her head. “We haf to trusty chudder, lie. I,” she looked at me imploringly, took a deep breath, and said, “aminnerveve.”
I looked back at her blankly.
Netherhame growled, gracing me with a churlish glare. “She said she is Minnerveve. Min, for short.”
“Oh – so – you’re –“
“Lyanne.”
“Ly… Okay, I get it.” I smiled. Name sounds like ‘lie’. Couldn’t make it more confusing if you tried. “I’m Kas. Kastyr.”
Netherhame – Ly – just nodded, then sat back. Shallowlie – Min – said nothing and didn’t move. The cold breeze stirred her hair and she blinked, but that was it.
This is awkward, I thought.
I put my elbows on the table, rubbed my arms. “So, Min – you disagree? You don’t think we’re just pawns?”
Min gave a wan little smile, and looked back at Ly.
“She thinks, like everyone else does, that she’s free,” Ly said, shrugging. “I’ve been around a bit longer. I’ve seen how these things play out. Before Timesnatcher there was Everseer – you’re old enough to remember her name, right? And then when I was growing up there was Blinkwind – listen, if you heard some of Leafcloak’s stories… We’re just like actors in a play to them, Kas. We’re the same lowborn scum we ever were, doing what we’re told by our noble betters –”
“Doan let her foo’ you,” Min said. “Iss jus’ her idea.”
“Sounds a bit bleak,” I agreed.
“Not at all!” Ly said. “It means you can run with it, you know?”
“No responsibility?” I asked, a bit sarcastically.
“No responsibility,” she repeated with a smugly grim expression, as though she’d completely misunderstood me. “It’s all foredained.”
Foreordained, I couldn’t help but mentally correct her.
“They can’t see everything,” I reminded her.
“Eksacly!” Min said, smiling a little.
“What was it like, with Killstop, last night?” Ly asked, a look of sudden shrewd cunning coming over her features, lending them a predatory aspect as she leaned forwards once again.
I remembered the way the new diviner had been festooned in wooden stakes beneath her robes.
They hadn’t come from nowhere.
Ly obviously took my change of expression as victory – a triumphant smirk twisted her face.
I moved my elbows off the table as a different waiter brought our drinks. Ly had ordered a frosty beer that wasn’t likely to get less frosty very quickly in this climate – the waiter looked at her like she was mad when she nodded to him, but placed the glass-blown pint-pot in front of her all the same. Min had quite sensibly ordered hot mead, and steam billowed off it into the breeze – she put her fingers around the cup gingerly.
My berry-juice was the perfect temperature to sip, so I sipped it eagerly, and before the waiter left Ly ordered ‘the tray’.
“You don’t mind sharing, do ya?” she asked me. “You don’t look like the type to shy away from getting your hands dirty.”
“You can tell I’m not one of them, right? I mean, do I look at all comfortable in these clothes?”
Ly chuckled. “You got a fancy way of talking, though, Kas.”
“I’ve spent the last three years with my nose in a book.”
“You’ve lived an interesting life!”
I disagreed with her sardonic intent, but I wasn’t about to start an argument. She probably couldn’t even read.
“I’m making up for it now, I think.” I shrugged, then sipped again at my warm juice. “So, tell me – what’s this proposal of yours?”
I looked out on the Temple of Compassion’s silver walls and the airy bridges of the Tower of Knowledge as I listened; I ate my meat and wiped my hands on the fancy cloths they brought us for just that purpose. All the while I tried to keep the shock from my face as Lyanne, Netherhame, quietly explained to me the true stakes at play, setting my mind whirling like the wind:
Zadhal.
* * *
The city of Zadhal was once one of the fairest jewels in the Mundic Realm’s crown. Word was that it was located in the Sephanaul Mountains, a thousand miles to the north, in an area that was half-legend by now anyway. The city had enjoyed immense success from the exports generated by its mining and deep-delving wizardry; the huge white stones that made up its walls were hewn by magic, in imitation of Mund’s – the place was far smaller and less impressive than Mund, of course, even if it was, in its origins, more ancient. There were, according to my books, still some elves living who could truthfully say that they’d played in the city’s parks and creeks as children – but it had been almost three hundred years since the mortal races had ruled the place. Three hundred years since any person had been able to live there in peace.
Since any person could step foot there without fearing for their lives every second that they stayed.
What had happened was a matter of debate, but the opposing arguments tended to fall into two categories. There were those who believed that the sorcerers of Zadhal had used bribes to obtain protection from the nascent, Magisterium-like guild that had existed in those days – that the Zadhalite nobles wilfully took their experiments in the blackest of the black arts to such extremes that the city was lost. And there were those who believed the mages of Zadhal had acted in innocence, perhaps uncovering something unspeakable, and in their naivety and the surety of their powers awakening the creature, or creatures, that simply could not be stopped.
All but one of the commentators I’d read had refused to speculate further; the only other notion was that Zadhal simply fell to an outside attack. But this was rejected out of hand by the sources, the stories I’d been exposed to. No one seemed to want to consider the idea that a Mundic city could be taken down by force, even three hundred years ago, before the Magisterium was established in its current form.
Whatever had happened, the archmages of the day had failed.
“It’s a tough bugger to keep closed, the Winter Door,” Ly explained. “Once we’ve gone over weaving –“
“I’ve been doing some reading,” I said through my mouthful, but she just waved a hand and continued:
“– you’ll understand how the Magisterium’s keeping the denizens of Zadhal out.” She shuddered. “They couldn’t pay me enough.”
“They’ve bound the Door tight?” I remembered seeing it from a distance: a Door like the Autumn Door, but a wall of blue fire rather than green; its shrine was steel walls, and it was in the centre of a small wasteland; I could picture how you could set barriers along each face… “With force-lines right up against the portal?”
She nodded. “You’ve been to the Doors before, right? Since you became…” She twirled a finger in the air.
“Just the Autumn Door, actually. I’ve flown near the others, but haven’t, you know –“
“You ever been through the Spring Door? Ever been to Habburat?”
I shook my head.
“Well, yeah, the Doors are a bit less impressive from the air, gotta admit.” She sucked sauce off her fingers. “That’s kinda my point. You’ve been close to a Door. You know what it’s like – for us.” She gave me a knowing look. “It’s even worse when you go through, trust me.”
“Of course…” I remembered how shaken I’d ended up when I visited with the twins, when I actually spent some time in the vicinity of the portal, and I suddenly understood what she’d meant. “How much do they pay? By the Five!”
“More dan we get,” Min supplied.
Ly grimaced. “Yeah, more than us… but you should see the state of the arch-sorcerers in the Box, though.”
“Box? That’s what they call the walls around it?” ‘They’ were imaginative.
“That’s what they call the whole thing – the open ground around the Winter Door, all the dead tree stumps.”
“Ah.”
“It’s laced with runes – you’ll see, when you go.”
“Am I…” I frowned. “Did I volunteer for something?”
Ly looked at Min, who looked back at her, saying nothing.
“Guys… I distinctly remember not saying ‘I wanna go for a two-week holiday in Zadhal this Yearsend,’ you know…”
What would it be like?
“As if anyone’d last two weeks.” Ly’s response hardly started out reassuringly. “You want to sleep in there? No, no – look. There’s one way in, one way out. We can’t even open portals in the place, not for us, anyway – nothing from Materium comes back out non-undead, anywhere around Zadhal – no one even wants to try, anymore. No, look… This is all T-Man’s big idea. He’s been in talks with the Magisterium and the Arrealbord. Something about ‘there’s never going to be a better time than now’, with a side-dish of ‘do you really want to upset my plans?’ They know he’s never wrong, so it’s going to happen.”
“Dere is always choice,” Min whispered, looking down fixedly at the table. She’d eaten only a little, unlike me, and Ly had probably gone through as much as the two of us combined.
“Yeee-ah,” Ly retorted. “Choice is… what was it?… Choice is just your experience of the foredained. Doesn’t mean you coulda chosen any other way. Just that you had to experience the, the struggle to decide.”
She might have mangled her words a bit but she had wisdom, this Lyanne. I started to reassess her.
“But why me?” I asked. “I mean – why didn’t he say something himself –“
“Way I get it, if he said something, you mighta acted different last night. He had to know you’d,” she smirked, “get your hands dirty.”
“Are you going?”
Ly shook her head. “He did explain to you about… D.C.?”
D.C.? I didn’t…
“And R.G.…”
Ah… Direcrown? And Redgate.
“Yeah – why?”
“Well, we can’t leave him here, alone, can we? And someone has to stay, to keep an eye on things – no offence, but I know the darkmages better than you, I’ve fought heretics –“
“I’ve taken down a couple of archmages basically solo,” I protested.
She held up a hand, palm out. “I’m sure you have, but you realise there are more dark sorcerers than any other type of darkmage? I know the city – I’ve been around a few times. T-Man’s plan is to send you, Min and D.C., along with any of the other champions who’ll go, and the arch-magisters they’ve got to spare… They’ve got a magister like us, you know? A fighter. Came into his powers in the Rivertown battle.”
In the Incursion?
I stared at her. “And he decided to join the Magisterium so quickly?”
“He already was a magister, way I heard it.”
My staring eyes widened.
“Anyway, I’ll hold the fort on this side. Four arch-sorcerers, though. Think about it…”
I sat for a moment in thought.
Did that mean Em would end up going with me? The idea of it did thrill me – seeing Zadhal with my own two eyes – we would be taking the fight to them, casting humanity’s spite back in their rotten teeth…
I rubbed my side in half-remembered pain.
In her current mood Em would be a mighty weapon in a place like Zadhal. But would it help her? What about Nighteye, who’d seemed distraught after the slaughter he’d caused amongst the ghouls and vampires? Perhaps Leafcloak would make him stay back…
“You want to go,” Ly said in a satisfied tone, and sat back in her chair, rubbing her now rather-rounded belly, perhaps taking my earlier motion for the same thing.
I could hardly say no. I had butterflies in my stomach, feeling empty again despite the silly amount of food I’d just consumed.
“You using an eldritch power on me?” I asked.
“May-beee,” she evaded. “Am I right?”
My face must’ve answered for me. I opened my mouth but I grasped for the words to explain how I felt – and the triumphant smile returned to her lips, as though I’d done nothing more in this whole conversation than confirm all her suspicions.
“He said that would be how I’d know I was right to ask you,” she said. “He’s one slippery dropstain, T-Man. Look…” She glanced across at Min. “You’re going to have to keep an eye out for each other, you hear me? Watch each other’s backs. Support each other’s shields. You can’t rely on D.C. to put himself on the line for you, remember that.”
I pursed my lips. “Speaking from experience?”
She shrugged, as if expressing nonchalance, but I could see in her eyes how angry she became when contemplating my question. “I don’t believe for a heartbeat that his shield covering Smoulder should’ve dropped that quickly, for a start…”
I realised within thirty seconds that I shouldn’t have asked. This topic of conversation – the various moments at which Direcrown may or may not have betrayed other champions – carried us through the rest of the meal, out of the restaurant, and down the street. It was only when Min used an illusory power to mask us as we changed into our champion outfits that Ly finally started teaching me actual sorcery.
And half the stuff she said about the weave went in one ear and out the other – it took me ten minutes to fix my shield-line to Shallowlie’s while we strolled the wind-ripped yellow leaves of Hightown’s streets, my fingers still slightly shaky, my thoughts elsewhere.
I was going to Zadhal.
* * *
Around four o’clock Netherhame guided us to the edge of Treetown, and in the solitude afforded by a gloomy clearing far from any of the lords’ mansions she started to test what I’d learned.
Wings protruding through my grey robe, the new mask settled about my face, I soared around the tree-enclosed patch of grass and bushes, keeping low, my eyes and hands fixed on my work. Shallowlie was on the opposite side to me, keeping pace with a host of spirits roiling about her black-clad form, casting out the threads of force that I caught, fastened, threw back…
Ghostlike and near-invisible, our mentor floated in the sky, looking down from above to ensure I was doing it right. She didn’t hold back the criticism, either.
“Put a knot in it!”
“No, look, you clod, you’ve looped it the wrong way!”
“Faster!”
“You’re supposed to catch it!”
I knew Ly well enough by now not to let myself become enraged at her belittling tone. It was just the way she was. She spoke to Min pretty much the same way.
After half an hour of toil Netherhame called us together, descending into the centre of the clearing.
“Okay… you’re getting better,” she said gruffly.
“Don’t go over the top with the praise,” I said, removing my mask and mopping at my face with my sleeve. It was a cold day, but weaving shields was hot work.
She glowered at me, so I grinned deviously back at her.
“Feychile, you are almos’ dere,” Shallowlie said, in a much more complimentary tone. “You haf amazing range. You jus’ haf to watch for de line – be ready to take i’ when i’ comes…“
“I’ll try to get better.” I replaced my mask and hood. “Thanks, Shallowlie.”
She nodded, her smiling, creepy mask hiding her expression.
“You’d better learn fast.” Netherhame had a warning tone. “I’ll show you what you might be up against in Zadhal – that’s why we came here. Can’t frighten the kiddies, or get ‘em gobbled up if you screw up your weave. Spread back out, and I’ll show you a zombie giant.”
Once we were ready, on opposite sides of the little treeless patch of ground, Netherhame tore open Nethernum, summoned her zombie giant, and cut her control off.
I was almost sick looking at it, listening to it, smelling it on the wind.
I’d read about them before, heard the stories. Clearly they’d never been written or told by anyone who’d actually encountered such a creature up close. I’d always imagined them to be, well, zombified giants. Huge, dumb undead critters. They’d always been described in that way.
Maybe zombified giants did exist. But this certainly wasn’t that, even though it was giant, and made of zombies.
It was thirty-five, almost forty feet tall, and comprised entirely of corpses. Individual corpses, stitched or fused together somehow at the skin, making out of them a single entity. Tatters of cloth were snared into its fleshy seams, the clothing the dead people had worn to the grave now making a vast, confusing patchwork of rotten textiles.
It was headless, but nonetheless humanoid: a vast round torso that must have contained hundreds, thousands of packed bodies; hundreds more in the two arms, two legs. The faces of the dead on the surface of its pale, wet-looking skin were singing, their eyes shining blankly as their blue lips parted and they raised lifeless, out-of-synch voices in an awful dirge to death.
And sweet Mother of the Mercies how it moved.
There was no hesitation or cumbersomeness to its motions – it was more like a ghoul, crunching the bodies in its ‘feet’ into the earth before leaping, raising its singing ‘fists’, barrelling immediately at Shallowlie, the closest target –
I caught the line of force she threw to me, tied it, threw it back, forcing myself not to look at the thing we were fighting.
The zombie giant reached out with fingers that were limbs, trying to grab the sorceress – and it recoiled from the barrier, crashing back and whirling. I could feel the contact despite the weave being inherently detached from me.
Then the giant came for me, and I almost closed my eyes in squeamishness as its own horrid eyes, covering its flesh all over, stared transfixed upon me. Its choral voice, growing louder as it approached… I half-understood the words, could’ve translated them in my head if I focussed…
Tie the knot… cast the line…
“Great work, Feychilde!” Netherhame cried down. “By Kultemeren, you’re just, like, fantastic, you know that?”
“O-kaaaay,” I growled back at her, already pouring with sweat again, tying the next weave, hurling it back to Shallowlie…
As the eldritch fell back from the honeycomb shield enclosing it, I caught the sound of Netherhame cackling on the wind.
* * *
After just ten minutes I was hurting from the strain, my brain throbbing with every ‘knot’ I tied in the blue weave – that’s what I was telling myself, anyway. It had nothing to do with the singing corpse-faces, no, definitely not.
Dozens of times, hundreds of times, the giant’s fleshy blows came to naught, recoiling from our combined might.
After half an hour I had to call a halt to it. I waved to Netherhame to get her attention then drew my hand across my throat.
She re-bound the zombie giant, dismissed it, and descended, shouting, “All hail Feychilde! That was truly impressive, magnificent, that was! Never seen owt like it before in – my – life…”
“Doan worry,” Shallowlie said once the three of us reconvened, floating in the centre of the clearing. “When we are in Zadhal, dere won’ be any reason to keep a weave up li’ dah, dah long. We will jus’ cont-rol da zombie, or dest-roy i’.”
“You hope,” Netherhame said. “You don’t know that, Min.”
“Now who’s the unsure one?” I smiled. “Do you think ‘T-Man’ would just send us all to our deaths?”
“And I thought you said he couldn’t see everything,” she countered – but I could sense the grin on her face. “Anyway, you’ve got time to practice. We’ll meet back here on Starday night –”
“Err – I’ve got a date, Starday,” I mumbled. I wasn’t a big fan of theatre, but I could endure it for Em. “Sunday? Moonday?”
“Sunday. Nine o’clock.” Netherhame craned her neck. “Min?”
“Sanday, nahn o’coh,” Shallowlie repeated.
“When you said ‘time to practice’,” I said, feeling a little conflicted, “well, he’s not actually planning to make us wait till Yearsend or something, is he?” It wasn’t like I wanted to rush in, but I wouldn’t have been able to handle some extended wait now I knew what was coming.
“He thinks it’ll be a week. We’ve got time for a couple more sessions like this. I recommend you spend the time gathering your strength, any items you might need – a demiskin wouldn’t go amiss if you don’t have one already, and supplies…”
“I’ve got a few things in mind.”
“Good,” she finished. “Well –” she looked across at Shallowlie “– see you in a couple of days.”
Netherhame started flying away, but Shallowlie took her by the hand, stopping her, looking back over her shoulder at me in silence.
What was going on?
Netherhame said, as if she was being pestered, “Okay. I’ll stay. I’ll hear this.”
Shallowlie removed her mask, looked at me with shining, expectant eyes.
Netherhame followed suit – somewhat perturbed, I removed mine.
“Err –” I looked between them “– yeah?”
“Cah you tell me… how he die? I listen at da Gathering bu’… What were Duzzbriger’s las’ words? Was he… in pain?”
I sent my mind back, into the crimson darkness beneath the obsidian tower, the eolastyr’s throne-room.
“Sorcerers, get back! Block them the moment they come through!”
That couldn’t have been the last thing he’d said, but it was the last thing I remembered.
I told them the story the way I’d seen it, gave them more information than they’d received last night at the Gathering. I saw the need graven in their faces, saw the way they both needed to hear it all – the details, how exactly he’d passed from this world. How he was taken away from them.
That he had been silent and still, at the end. That he was surely no longer conscious when the arch-demon claimed him, obliterated him.
But as Min wiped her eyes then took Ly by the hand, flying away with her back towards Hightown, I had my doubts. They had to know, like me, that he had joined with a bunch of spectres and other creatures. There was every possibility he’d been awake when he’d been disintegrated.
I turned my back on the rising moon and flew home towards the setting sun, doing my best to sort through the jumbled contents of my mind. I always ended at the same conclusion. It was more feeling than thought, more emotion than realisation: my hopes, Em’s fears, they were all mingled together.
What I hated in Killstop. My parents.
Me.
I wasn’t scared of dying. I was excited by the possibility.
Zadhal. I’d just straight-up agreed to go – leaving the twins hadn’t even occurred to me.
But they would survive without me. It was me that was doomed. By these powers. By this burden.
And I found that I didn’t care. I didn’t want to die, and I would fight to avoid my last breath until I breathed it – but I knew it would come, and there was a significant part of me, a growing part of me, that didn’t give a damn. That fed on the thought of it. Ten minutes after a vampire-lord pulling out your ribs, you shouldn’t have been rocking back and forth in your seat at the prospect of visiting said vampire-lord’s home to meet his family.
Yet I was. And I wouldn’t be alone.
Thoughts of trying to join with a vampire never further from my mind, I angled my flight towards home. I’d find a cleaner option.
And I would explain. I would tell them.
The worst part wasn’t that they wouldn’t be able to understand – the worst part was that I’d be putting them in that position in the first place.
But cleansing Zadhal? I could no less skip that event than I could the Gathering. We were all in it together.
Then the realisation came.
I thought of us – champions, archmages – and realised.
All of us… It’s all of us.
We’re all broken.
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