PYRITE 10.3: WITH PLEASURE
“The scout reports the movements of enemy troops in the mountain pass. The emissary returns with the fair words of a foreign dignitary. The daughter writes with love to her parents of life in the big city. But in the end, the message is nothing more than what is left unsaid. The skirmishes soon to be joined. The stern rebuke couched in finery. The daily strife that spurs on the writer. You must learn to listen to the silence, listen for it.”
– from the Orovaic Creed
“What are you up to now?” I asked as we soared ahead of the crowds spilling through the streets.
“Ah, you’ve gone and ruined it,” Infrick said petulantly. “Why such a specific inquiry, when you’ve been so broad in your previous requests? Did you get this from the vampire? I’m having a chat with the magisters, if you must know.”
I looked across at her; her words disturbed me to such a degree that my sorcerer’s eye was already focussed, capable of penetrating the invisibility cloak, inspecting the red tangle of demonic essence hiding behind empty Materium space – the essence only I could see.
“A chat? What do you mean by that?” I almost screeched, my exasperation starting to show. “Damn me if you aren’t useful but… you need to start asking permission to do things like that. Not just – do it.”
“Yes, Master.” She sounded distracted once more.
“Do you actually understand, or are you just saying ‘Yes, Master’ to shut me up?”
“I am to seek your authorisation before I take any steps which broadly alter the parameters of an engagement you are soon to experience…”
I was a bit shocked, I would’ve had to admit.
“… Lord Feychilde.”
“Har-har.”
“I do have quite the brain, remember,” she purred. “Colloquially, of course.”
“I know all too well.” I’d never be able to forget the sight of the inside of an eolastyr’s skull, no matter how hard I tried. “Continue.”
“I am still talking to them,” she said archly. “Two conversations at once get rather tricky and I’m afraid they – ah yes, they know who I am now. Oops.” She tried a childish chirp but it just sounded deranged. “I don’t wish to unduly avoid blame, Master, but if you weren’t so damned inquisitive I might’ve maintained the facade a while longer. Shall we turn aside from the fifth cohort, and seek easier prey? If not, I’ll try to scatter them before you. Shouldn’t prove too tricky.”
“Pinktongue’s killers? No, I don’t think we’ll turn aside…” We had a fair percentage of Sticktown following us now, and they’d need a show. “But – tell me – what are you saying to them?”
She used a gloating tone now: “Oh, Master, I just knew your curiosity was going to get the better of you. Will you listen?”
I shook my head. If she ended up saying something that was really going to blow up in my face, at least this way I had plausible deniability.
“Just… make it clear to them I’m only after Henthae. If the others leave, I’ll leave them be. Even the ones who killed my servant.”
“Indeed – I shall tell her.”
“Good… no, wait, what? ‘Her’? No no, don’t talk to Henthae…”
“I’m afraid that ship’s already sunk, Master. She’s a cantankerous old thing, isn’t she?”
“Old. From you… Just, focus, why don’t you?”
“Oh, it’s nothing to worry about now. Thought-transmission is so much simpler when you aren’t masquerading as another. Where were we? No, age is a state of mind, Master, not something you can tally. Have you not known other ancient creatures with every bit as much joy in their lives as I? Henthae was always old, even as a little girl. She was one of those ones who always insisted on buttoning her petticoat up to the very top, even in summer…”
As Infrick wittered, Lord’s Knuckle flashed by, beneath and about us.
“We’re almost there,” I grated. “Are you done?”
“I believe so. I have vastly reduced the amount you will need to kill. Many are already fleeing the marketplace; scarcely half of their host remain at their posts, now, though Henthae seeks to reinforce them with all haste. We should appear in their midst once more, and slay all those who refuse to flee.”
“I wonder if she’ll come herself,” I mused, doing my best to ignore Trappy’s enthusiasm.
“I believe she has to. It is all unravelling for her now. Those other enchanters in her alliance, those whose support she needed – they are gone. It is only her will against which we contend. If we are in and out rapidly, it will truly infuriate her. She will arrive too late to encounter you, and go on to make many more mistakes.”
“If only that were the case…” I lost concentration as Knuckle Market came into view, and I saw the Magisterium forces converged there, the ones Henthae held to use as a shield against my anger. “No,” I said, speaking more firmly. “This is where we make our stand. I tire of the games. You –“ I sneered the word, making it a scathing insult “– seem to be desperate for me to kill more magisters.” I paused, but Infrick made no comment. “Having me summon Pinktongue, when you could have related his death yourself. Warning Cohort Five and Henthae that I’m coming, against your own advice, under the guise of disrupting my enemies…”
Still she said nothing. All I could hear were the cries of the crowd, wolves baying for their freedom.
On a whim, heedless of those beneath and behind us, I momentarily whisked away the invisibility-shroud, revealing the tigress in all her eerie grandeur. The nethernal energies bearing us aloft snaked through her form, adding to the deep purple hue of her fur.
I stared right into her black-hole eyes, no longer frightened or even repulsed. She was just a tool, a resource, mine to command.
“You long for conflict,” I whispered. “You never expected them to run like this, did you? In spite of all your foreknowledge…”
She can’t really see anything, anything at all that I touch…
“Master,” she crooned, the black eyes gazing imploring back into mine. “Master, please…
“My longing is all your own.”
* * *
On the edge of Knuckle Market I came to a halt, floating between the walls of two warehouses, surveying my foes. They’d seen me and they weren’t breaking – not this time. I couldn’t pick out any archmages but they’d clearly been told to hold the line. Barrier-walls shimmered in the air. Rock golems had been created. Nervous hands clasped wands.
I can’t just turn this into a battle, I thought. Can’t have Mundians killing their own. That’d make me as bad as them.
No more bloodbaths in my name.
The cries of the crowd had become like a tremendous layered drumbeat now, thrumming in my veins, rattling my skull. It was as though the earth itself cracked and creaked behind me, opening its stony jaws on some bottomless throat that loosed an unending primal roar, the screaming of tideless seas that must’ve shook the gods on their thrones. My own names were amongst those roars, and to recognise them made me shiver within the ghostly cocoon.
“Sticktown,” I murmured, my low voice sinking down and filling the streets, pitched to cut beneath the cries. “Sticktown, we approach those who would oppose us. Form up on the edges of the square. Stay on the north and east. Let mecorner the rats, eh?“
I was thinking that we didn’t want to cut off the magistry reinforcements that were surely soon to arrive, as that would invite them to attack the protestors in the flanks, but my motives remained hidden and a great cheer rose up at my choice of words. I cast a glance down at the mayhem and chaos running like a human river along the roadways into the marketplace. There had to be almost ten thousand now, and if I let them they could overrun the whole area. I was pretty sure the only reason there wasn’t any looting going on was thanks to the Incursion destroying anything of obvious value along the shop-fronts. The fire of real rebellion was still strong in their stomachs, still burning pure vapour.
They didn’t want random pillaging. They wanted magisters.
They were already ten deep into the levelled zone. I had to manage them before they marched right into the magisters’ shields.
“Spread out! Do not push your brothers and sisters. No jostling, no fighting, or I’ll set my imps on you, yer buggers!” Laughter erupted. “Remain calm. Do not attack the mages. Go no farther, halt now! Trust in me. If any killing is required… I’ll handle it.“
“You’ll handle it?“
Henthae’s voice seemed to resonate from the very ground, pouring from the air about my head. The effect was similar to the Invocatrix, the Mund-wide channel she’d used earlier in the afternoon. But this emanation was surely local to this place, the square, these streets, an act of her archmagery… She wouldn’t want to broadcast our little tiff to the entire city, would she? No, the Head of Special Investigations was responding to me, and she was bitter and brittle as ice, sharp enough to cut.
“People of Sticktown. Kastyr Mortenn is a murderer. Listen to him speak, the awful promises he makes! We will take him into custody. To associate yourselves with him is to partake in his crimes. We implore you now, Mundian to Mundian. Elf or human. Dwarf or gnome. Go home.“
“Yeah, I wanna partake!” one old woman yelled with wild abandon, to the cackling of her friends.
“Then you have followed him to your deaths,” Henthae remonstrated without pause. “Turn back, now, before you directly violate the law. There will be no reprisal. A full amnesty and the open, welcoming arms of the Magisterium for each resident who leaves.“
“I got a fist for anyone who leaves!” the same wild woman shrieked, brandishing a tattooed forearm, a thick-fingered ham of a hand.
“Been liftin’ pints, Brenwe?” a bearded bloke cried.
“More’n you, shrimp!” she cried back.
Sticktown laughter rang out against the twilight, and I was grinning. Somehow, with the support of the people, I was able to forget the harrowing legacy of my actions in the here and now. What the future would make of my treason this night, I trusted no seer to tell, mortal or godkind, dark or light. I could only grin, and be myself.
Then I saw her, on the far side of the marketplace. She was wearing the same rose-coloured robe she’d been wearing the first time we met, the same myriad jewels flashing across her knuckles in the dying light of day. Mistress Keliko Henthae came soaring across the rooftops, skittering at a chronomantic pace, with a cadre of archmages about her. I recognised Elkostor, and the arch-sorceress who’d fled from me earlier, zooming along just behind the arch-enchantress.
As they reached the ranks of magisters the lines parted, and more came down over the roofs – then they were pouring out of the streets.
Hundreds of robed bodies. Many had leashed demons, retinues of tame ghosts –
“Master…” Trappy mewled, “this is not what I envisioned.”
I wrinkled my nose. Did the eolastyr think I’d forgotten how smart she was? She had to have known Henthae would hear that, which would give away the fact that she was right here, a devious arch-fiend by my side as I floated above the crowd.
But she’d deny breaking any rules. She claims her desire to bring us closer to blows is my desire. And Infrick’s mine, damn it. How can she actually be wrong?
Will she obey me? When I say the words that loose her, will she ignore one command in favour of another and lay them waste?
I should’ve stayed invisible too. At least that way Henthae wouldn’t have known where to listen in. By the Five… Curse my pride.
In response to Infrick’s comment I merely moved my hand to my foot, then placed her paw about my ankle. I feigned scratching an itchy ankle as I pressed her claws, forcing her to grip tight about me (so much as such a thing felt possible, given our discorporate bodies) before letting go.
“I need my fingers for this,” I muttered.
Slowly, I started work on spreading shields, reinforcing them. I suspected this might encourage Henthae’s slaves to strike before I got much work done, so it was time to distract her with a bit of chatter.
When I sent out my voice, I realised just how easily the power came to me these last couple of days. The invisibility illusion too. Was it another effect of having worn the crown of Mother-Chaos, soon to fade away? Or was it just that I’d done a better job of incorporating Zab’s essence?
Either way, when I spoke, I didn’t need to yell. I could be as flat and cold as her. They all heard me.
“It sounds like you were threatening my people, just for coming here. What rule are they breaking, really? I was hoping we would be able to resolve this with words but you’re making that look increasingly unlikely. You may be a Mistress, Henthae, but can you master yourself?“
“We won’t be put off, Mr. Mortenn,” Henthae said curtly.
She wasn’t lying. They were building a legion, eldritch by eldritch, elemental by elemental. Flocks of birds came swooping down out of the sky to line the buildings – when driven by druidry into a rash attack, a swarm of birds like this one would alone suffice to disperse a crowd of thousands, never mind the rest of Henthae’s army.
“We’re out for an evening stroll, aren’t we, folks?” I chuckled. “Nothing illegal about that. This is all your fault, you know, Keliko.“
“I hardly think you can blame me for the actions of your townsmen, for inciting a riot – when it was your voice compelling their attendance here at this, this charade –“
“Oh yeah! You didn’t mean to upset us, slaughtering us. Now you come back to bully us, thinking you can cow us just like that. You’re fangless without your magic, aren’t you? Well – if words aren’t enough, it’s up to you. Leave, or stay. I’m going nowhere. If you’re staying, I could arrange you a rat-kebab supper, so long as you pay up.“
“Pay up, witch!” a youngster screamed.
“You may have hidden your crown, Kastyr Mortenn –“
The shields were as good as they were going to get. I’d tried to fix several of them across the face of the crowd, but how stable they’d be under assault remained to be seen. I had to make her play her trump card before she found the right time.
“– and perhaps my power cannot pierce your mind –“
I reached down for Infrick’s hand and raised her up beside me once more. Then I removed the eolastyr’s cloak, and embellished it with a whip-crack sound just for good measure.
“– but – so – you admit to hosting this creature on our plane?” Henthae’s voice rang out from the stones in disbelief. “Sticktowners, gaze upon your saviour now! Regard his minion! This is an arch-demon, a devil-queen of unutterable malice! Is this truly your hero? The gods will curse all who follow such a leader!“
“He’s Kas!” a familiar voice called. “I trust him!”
I looked to my right and my eyes found Salli Meleine. The beautiful young woman was glaring at the magisters and she had a rolling pin clasped tightly between two hands.
“Yeah! He saved us a million times, when you’s didn’t give a twig!”
I teared up a little. It was Tanny Dengen, and I spotted Clun beside him.
“He’s our champion.” Garet, at the head of his Boys.
“He’s still fighting for us.”
Xan, oh Xan…
“And now you get what you deserve, highborn scum. Pah!”
The dwarf from Arnost’s Green was right there in the front row of the crowd, huffing and fuming, her feet stamping.
Once more I found Henthae’s face in the centre of the magister-ranks, and I directed a shrug at her.
“You do realise what Trappy here is capable of, if I were to unleash her, right?” I called.
“I don’t believe you would be so foolish as to turn into an outright rebel. You know how that would end. Looking over your shoulder, every minute, every second, for the rest of your miserable life. No. You won’t kill us. Not when we aren’t offering violence.“
“Your very presence here is violence! You –“
“Now now, Mr. Mortenn. You sound positively criminal. It is a free city, is it not? Was that not your argument?“
“And wasn’t it your argument that I’d start killin’ the lot of yer willy-nilly, even though you’re now saying the opposite? You know I’ve scattered your cohorts –“
“You attacked forces of peace-keepers, unprovoked, yes –“
“I literally showed up, introduced myself, and asked how I could help them. They ran when I shielded myself – a reasonable precaution, as I’m sure you can agree… You call it attacked! Now you come here, demanding my presence, with an armed guard – don’t deny it! – and it’s not violence – not violence to come here to detain me, here, where no one wants you – to the site of a massacre you caused –“
“Was this not where you slew the men and women of the Magisterium, Mr. Mortenn? Did you not kill them with your chaos-sorcery, right over there?” Henthae was pointing. I didn’t care to respond or even look. “You murdered magisters, in the field! You accept they had no way to fight back?“
I felt my face darken. “They posed me no threat, it’s true.“
“And you still wilfully slew them!“
“I killed the killers, yes.” I stared across at her, imagining her eyes I couldn’t quite make out, glaring back at me. “So this is what it comes down to, is it? You want me to be better than them. It’s okay for your guys to kill people, but if I approve them being killed in turn – that’s my fault. It’s all on my head. No. It won’t work this way any more. You can’t just brutalise people indiscriminately.“
“But you weren’t right to slay them, surely. Death cannot answer for death. You are appropriately equipped as a sorcerer to employ those powers which might capture, injure, enrapture your foes, rather than butcher them.“
I shook my head in anger. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking, though? In the time it takes for me to do what you say, capture rather than kill, the next two I’d have killed have escaped. Twenty more Sticktown deaths on my conscience. Two hundred lives changed forever. Two thousand futures affected in minor ways. No. No!” My throat ached, all of a sudden. “I’d rather sleep knowing I killed a killer than I let them go. It’s your plan. It’s how it always worked, with you. You never wanted me to be me, did you?“
“A second Duskdown? No, I never wanted you. Not like this. Not a darkmage.“
“I am not dark!” I cried. “Kultemeren my witness! I wield the blades of Yune –“
“Yune has no blades! What you speak of is her brother’s work! Darkmage! Heretic!“
No. She was wrong, damn her. I remembered Avaelar, winging his way towards me in my moment of need. There was no way that was the work of Yane.
“No,” I growled. “You’ve just spent so long sleeping, you didn’t realise how dire things have become. When Hope herself draws a sword – a sword that will cut you, Henthae! – then you know you truly are screwed. You just can’t face it, can you? When I arrived back here, back home, after escaping your death-chambers, at first I thought the demons had had their way with Sticktown. My home! Mud Lane, reduced to the mud. But no. All along, it was you.
“We had an arch-enchanter dragon take over the city for an unspecified period of time, and guess what’s changed once we got rid of her? Nothing! Do you realise what that says about you? About you and all the others, the way you run things? She liked it! She approved! As far as she was concerned you were doing a mighty fine job of dragon-evil the whole time, with or without her! She didn’t interfere! She sealed and stamped her approval!
“And now here we are. You dropped the candle yet again. If anything you’ve only gotten worse now you’re back in charge. This time, it’s Redgate coming. Redgate, and the Crucible, and the Dracofont. Where are your priorities, Henthae? What of you, magisters of Mund – magisters of the Realm! For I see foreign faces amongst you… not so foreign as to escape the truth.The same fear on your face as lives on mine!And I ask it again, with no less hope in my heart – can you master yourself, Henthae? Can we leave this place as allies, and array all our forces against the darkness that comes to swallow us one and all? I can forgive even you.”
Finally my tirade broke her.
“There will be no alliance!” her voice hissed from every direction. “There will be no forgiveness, none for you! You are no longer a champion, Mr. Mortenn! You were consigned to Magicrux Zyger, and to Zyger you will return!”
Just getting her to name the place out loud, in front of all these witnesses, pleased me greatly.
“If there will be no alliance, then there can only be submission,” I said sorrowfully.
A moan escaped the crowd beneath me.
“I can’t risk the world for your ego. I may no longer wear the crown, but I’ll accept your fealty, Henthae.”
The crowd gasped, as though the idiots had been expecting me to submit. A smile touched my lips. Did they still not know me?
“Swear me your everlasting servitude, now,” I continued, “and hold nothing back, or else I’ll know. I’ll know, and you will be punished.”
“Who is the egotist here?” she snarled. “You would take all of Materium, wouldn’t you, darkmage?”
“I’d take it under my arm, to save it,” I replied. “Who wouldn’t, in my place? Only cowardice compels such a rejection of responsibility.” I suddenly surged forwards about five yards, and watched as the line of the magisters at the fore wavered. “Are you cowards? Will you reject the light by clinging too closely to its leg, never seeing the shadow you cast beneath you?”
“In the name of Everything, who will not permit you Anything?” Henthae laughed haughtily, almost hysterically. “You are a disciple of dark gods indeed, to so enact the will of Lithiguil! How brazenly you swagger forth, to claim control of the city – the Realm itself, nay? And we should just bow down? Accept the darkmage as our emperor! Hah! Hah!”
“You are one to speak of control. How many thousands of times today have you broken laws, each transgression worthy of a lifetime’s incarceration? Yet I? I have done nothing to warrant such treatment. I killed Shadowcrafter in cold blood – but only after you condemned me. I struck a man, once, hard in the face, when he didn’t deserve it – but he did not perish. I slew dark elves, and when they destroyed Telior I didn’t hang around to help – but I came back here, to save the city from Mal Malas, and the Incursion. This is it. This is the sum of my sins. Bad enough, no doubt, but to expel me? To execute me?”
“You consorted with heretics! There can be no exoneration –”
“I do not seek exoneration, not from you! You are the heretic! These men and women – would any one of them be here right now, if it weren’t for your power, dominating their minds?”
A female magister on the front-lines slumped over somewhat, her eyes glazing, then within a heartbeat she stood erect once more.
“You’re losing your grip, Keliko. Give it up. Scorn the crown of Mother-Chaos all you will – if they could be mass-manufactured like children’s toys and handed out at Yearsend to all and sundry, I’d put every plat and penny I could find into the deed! You; Vardae – I see no difference. People using their power to control our society, bend it, mould it as they will. No longer.”
“Oh, but you won’t accuse yourself along with the rest of us, will you, Mr. Mortenn? Even as you propose to curse every man, woman and child in the city with the touch of the Queen of Darkness! Such blasphemy cannot be permitted to continue!”
“Then strike, Henthae! Strike, if you must. Or else withdraw. Bother us no longer.”
“And what then, boy?” she sneered. “What will you do if we withdraw? Prince of Sticktown! Lord of the Sticks! What will become of this place under your rule?”
“How childish are you? You think I want to rule, and order people about? You highborn! Grow the hell up! We’ll do a damn sight better job with Sticktown than you’d have ever believed possible. And the rest of Mund, no doubt. You can go home, and await my summons.”
“Your summons!” she shrieked.
At least a dozen magisters on the flanks of her host seemed to come to their senses. Not seeming to know precisely how to respond, they first cast black glances towards their leaders before shuffling aside and then finally peeling off, sprinting into the shadows of the roadways heading south and east.
In the wake of their flight, two golems of mud and flagstone came apart at the seams; from this distance the clunking noises when they deflated were faint, but the mages closest to them reacted with almost comically-overblown jerks of shock, staggering before the spell reasserted itself over them.
They’re all really enchanted, I thought, suddenly realising just how awful this was. It had seemed somewhat academic, beforehand, to conceive of an arch-enchanter breaking the minds of a large group of people. I’d even been part of such a group, once, deep under the sway of such a terrifying being. But it was something else to actually witness just how bewitched they really were. Who could even guess how long she’d been militarising them, individually, in groups? She would force them to fight, to spill their blood, give their lives for a causeless cause, for the justification of her own miserable mentality. And for every one that ran, her grip over the remainder only grew tighter, the scope of her spell narrowing, focussing in intensity.
For so long as she could maintain it, at least.
“It’s time,” I muttered, then repeated myself with the power. “It’s time. I’ve tried everything. I tried extending the hand of peace. I tried to take you on as a vassal. It’s obvious, now. I simply have to destroy it. Destroy the Magisterium entirely.”
I looked to my left. It was the moment I had to ask the question.
“Trappy. Kill the magisters.”
The crowd bayed for blood. The triangular white head swivelled to regard my enemies.
The magisters quivered as though they shared a single skin.
Her voice was every bit as transcendent as my own, yet when she spoke every syllable dripped with a sinister intent I could’ve never mustered, not in a hundred years or six.
“With pleasure, Master.”
Then the eolastyr leapt off a footing of empty air, shedding the nethernal essence as she bounded high, drawing her ghastly whip from out of nowhere and brandishing it openly.
Infrick crashed down into the wasteland between the two opposed forces and, still bearing every bit of her downwards momentum, she ripped forwards, plunging directly at their shielding –
A dozen blue barriers were torn asunder before her, shreds of energy scattered into the wind like jagged pieces of transparent paper.
I smiled.
Chaos was the answer.
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