Dragonfang (2 page)

‘I am sorry, Kelricka.’

‘Never mind. All things pass, as they say.’ She changed the subject. ‘What do you make of it then?’

‘The slogan? It’s the work of the Preceptor, of course.’

‘Why of course? Why not some empty-headed navvy who has lost his job and blames us for it?’

‘This is not the work of the merely disenchanted,’ Jelindel said. ‘For a start, the author can
write
. That alone sets him apart. It means he is educated, reasonably intelligent. Even the wording is cleverly phrased: “Why Has Verity Forsaken Us?” Not: “
Has
Verity Forsaken Us?” but a question that presumes established guilt. And then …’

‘Yes?’

‘The clumsiness of the writing is too – calculated.’ Jelindel paused. ‘The Preceptor moves against us, Kelricka. He has sworn a vendetta against the Verital Priestesses, and he is not a man to be easily thwarted. If he cannot get what he wants one way, then he will do it another.’

‘By stirring up the people against us?’ Kelricka asked, alarmed.

‘With professional agitators – why not? His forces are perilously stretched across the continent. I would guess that he is discovering just how costly it is to maintain his newfound empire. He can ill afford a major push right now, certainly not one that might prove unpopular with the people.’

‘So he will make it popular with the people first?’

‘That is my guess,’ Jelindel replied.

She did not admit that she might be partly to blame. That part of the Preceptor’s bile was actually aimed at her. She and her former companions, Daretor and Zimak, had eluded the Preceptor’s grasp once too often. History had proven that emperors – especially tyrants – were unforgiving.

Kelricka expelled another deep sigh. ‘These are dangerous times. I will send some neophytes to start scrubbing.’ She turned on her heel and departed.

That night, the first of month four 2132, Jelindel walked the battlements of the Arcadian temple. It was already a full year since her dedication to the Sisters of Verity. Life had been rich in learning and meditation; she had healed many old wounds, those on the outside more quickly than those on the inside. Even in this beautiful retreat, shut off from the outside world, the nightmares continued unabated. Some nights she screamed in her sleep, or
lunged up out of deep dreaming, frantically smothering imaginary fires. The same fires which had consumed her family when she was but a girl of fourteen.

Yet Jelindel was not content. She felt stifled. She gazed out over the battlements at the busy town below, and heard laughter and singing. Somewhere close, a fight had broken out.

The sounds of life. She shook her head in annoyance.

‘Tch! What is wrong with me?’ she asked herself, querulously. And that’s when she saw it. Something dark blotting out the stars.

She stood very still, relaxed her breathing as she had been taught, and scrutinised the star- strewn firmament.
To seek a thing in the dark, the central field of vision is useless,
droned the voice of old Surreanten, her father’s spellcaster.
The dark of the eye cannot penetrate the darkness; for that the peripheral vision must be employed.

She stared into the sky but switched her attention to her side vision. And saw them. They came swooping out of the darkest quarter of the moonless night like so many bats, only larger, and vaguely man-shaped.

Jelindel did not know what the creatures were, but she knew evil intent when she saw it. She raced along the battlement, leaped the eight-foot gap to the roof of the chancery, then swung herself over the railing of the belfry and onto the narrow platform that ringed the great bell and allowed the maintenance men to perform their duties. However, the bell could only be rung from the floor of the belfry several storeys below. By the time she reached the ground floor, it might be too late, despite the guard spells that protected the Temple. Such spells were usually designed to thwart would-be intruders who came afoot; aerial attackers were a rare consideration.

Jelindel knew she must warn the sisterhood. But how? The
great bell, fully nine feet across at the base, bulged above her in the darkness. A braided rope dangled from a giant brass clapper to the flagstoned floor sixty feet below.

‘White Quell protect me,’ Jelindel whispered.

She spat on her hands and leaped into the darkness. And almost missed the rope. She plunged through the air, smothering a cry, twisted like a cat and clutched the thick rope. Her grip was poor and the rope snaked through her fists, burning her palms. She muttered a small binding spell. The electric blue lights danced briefly around her fists and her grip held. She dangled thirty feet in the air.

Above her the great clapper crashed against the sides of the bell – but emitted no sound. That’s impossible – unless a dampening spell had been cast! But who would do such a thing?

Far below she caught sight of a small figure, barely more than a blacker patch of darkness, huddled on the floor. As she watched, the figure raised a hand and inscribed a hexagram in the air. A low muttering reached Jelindel’s ears.

A traitor, Jelindel thought. And she hasn’t spotted me yet, so preoccupied with her dampening spell must she be.

Jelindel let go of the rope and dropped. She muttered a cushioning spell and landed on the huddled figure, smashing it to the ground with a loud ‘Oomph!’

Instantly, the Temple bell boomed out its basso profundo warning as the dampening spell broke, its author either dead or unconscious. Gasping for breath, Jelindel picked herself up and limped over to the still figure. She tugged back the cowl and grunted in surprise.

Lying on the floor was Kelricka.

A raspy voice erupted from the darkness. ‘You have damaged my tool. It is only fitting that you should replace her.’

Morgat, the new Dean of Human Powers, stepped from the shadows. Her hands were already weaving a spell of control. Jelindel took a step backwards, ransacking her mind for the appropriate counter-spell. Behind her, the Temple was rousing. Lesser bells were tolling, emphasising the danger. But there were also hideous cries, and screams of agony.

‘Concern yourself not with what is happening out there, Jelindel. A danger greater than any you have faced stands before you now!’

Jelindel was too preoccupied to answer. Her mind was busy dredging up bits and pieces of mage lore. She was still barely an Adept 9, whereas Morgat was at least an Adept 11. But Jelindel was different to other Adepts: she had worn the dragonlink mailshirt, and absorbed some of the skills and knowledge it had stolen from its legion of wearers.

Jelindel uttered a sharp cry as she felt the blackness invade her mind. Morgat cackled, enjoying herself. ‘You shall become my personal mind-slave, my dear. How does that please you?’

‘It pleases me little, Morgat,’ Jelindel managed to say between clenched jaws. The blackness, a sentient control spell, extended cold penetrating tendrils deep into her being. In a few more seconds, it would control her, and her doom would be sealed.

Then she saw it. It stood out against the control spell like a small and lonely lighthouse. An ancient word, not of this world. And like Morgat’s black spell, it possessed an existence of its own, though unlike anything human.

As the control spell squeezed tightly about Jelindel’s mind, she grunted, almost spitting out the word: ‘
Eskusk-il-Querl!
’

Morgat screamed, her bony hands darting out and feverishly inscribing a counter-spell. But, before she could complete it, a blob of Stygian blackness flung itself from Jelindel’s forehead,
crossing the gap between them in a blurring blink, and dived into the old mage’s open mouth. Morgat gulped, partly in surprise and partly from necessity. Her eyes opened wide with fear.

A moment later her face caved in, as if the brain had been consumed and a voracious vacuum created. The rest of her skull imploded; her arms and legs telescoped backwards into her trunk even as the body itself crumpled inwards with a sound like crunching glass. A moment later, there was nothing left of Morgat except a pea-sized bead of luminescence. Then that too shrank to a pinpoint and disappeared with a pop.

Four silvery globes floated where Morgat had been. They coalesced and hovered above Jelindel. Their single voice was whisper-fine. ‘We await your command to enter, Lord Adept.’

Jelindel waved them away. ‘You are free, slave spirits. Return to your paraplane with my blessing.’

The globes rained a shower of multi-hued energy and healing over her. ‘Be thee well, Lord Adept, and accept our undying gratitude,’ the slave spirits said, and vanished.

If clothes maketh the man, Jelindel thought, then paraplane spirits maketh the Adept. But she wanted no part in enslaving spirits for her own gain. Taking a deep breath, she turned to the growing clamour outside. She hurried towards the door just as Metriele, a novice, cannoned into her.

‘Run!’ Metriele screamed at her. ‘Lindraks! They fly –!’ She collapsed in a blubbering heap. Jelindel pushed her between two latticed columns and stepped outside. A black shape swooped at her from above and she dived to one side; she hit the ground rolling and came gracefully to her feet as would an acrobat.

The attacker wheeled in the air and came back for her.

‘Not a lindrak,’ she muttered to herself. ‘A deadmoon warrior. A
levitating
deadmoon warrior.’

The deadmoon warriors were a creation of an Adept 12 mage called Fa’red. Having engineered the lindraks’ downfall, themselves a formidable enemy employed by the former King of Skelt, Fa’red had turned the deadmoon warriors into an implacable fighting force in the service of the Preceptor. And now this new ability:
levitation.

Jelindel uttered a binding spell that arced out to wrap around the attacker’s legs, but it made no difference. He wasn’t using his legs.

Jelindel muttered a quick curse and ducked aside as a throwing star sluiced the air where she had been standing a second before. All over the Temple compound similar confrontations were taking place. The deadmoon warriors, supernaturally superior fighters against whom few could stand and even fewer succeed, were butchering novices and priestesses virtually unopposed.

As Jelindel watched, a young girl ran screaming across the central courtyard, her arms covering her head in a futile attempt to ward off attack. Like a dark and silent shark of the air, a levitating warrior sliced down out of the night sky and gutted her on his sword. Her screaming ended in a ragged wet gurgle deep in her throat and she collapsed on the mossy flagstones, her arms flung out before her as if beseeching some higher power.

Meanwhile, Jelindel’s attacker banked sharply and came diving in again, a thin tight-lipped smile on his otherwise expressionless face. In this engagement, he had the ‘high ground’ and he knew it.

Jelindel flung herself backwards and upwards in a somersaulting spinning kick that Zimak had taught her, and which she had rarely had cause to use. It caught the deadmoon warrior completely by surprise. Her left foot, punching out like a piston, slammed into his face, breaking his nose and stunning him for
vital moments. By the time he blinked back to consciousness, it was too late. He rocketed headfirst into the Temple wall and dropped like a stone into one of Kelricka’s prized flowerbeds.

Acting on instinct, Jelindel scooped up the fallen warrior’s sword and raced across the apron. Piled high in the centre of the courtyard was a large cairn composed of dried logs and kindling. It had once been kept in readiness to signal for aid, a remnant from centuries earlier, before magic spells replaced the need for crude signal fires.

Jelindel reached the cairn and hurled a word of conflagration into it. The woodpile caught instantly and blazed up into the night. Within moments it was roaring fiercely, lighting the night sky – and a swarm of deadmoon warriors. Now that all could see them clearly, a significant part of their advantage had been removed. But how to remove the next?

Jelindel hunted desperately through her mind for a spell that might undo the power that kept the deadly warriors airborne. But all that came to her aid was another binding spell.

Although the spell itself was useless against the attackers, she knew her mind was trying to tell her something.

Dismissing it for the moment, Jelindel rallied several priestesses and novices to her side. She sent two of the more fleet footed ones racing to the Temple armoury to bring back the ceremonial swords and pikes. The rest she organised into a small fighting unit and armed them with flaming brands, and the surprisingly successful Siluvian kick-fist techniques that Jelindel had taught them, to temporarily hold back the enemy.

‘There are so many of them!’ wailed a young neophyte.

‘So there are,’ Jelindel admitted, tightly. ‘And see how they crowd one another with their inexperience?’

The girl sagged to her knees in prayer.

‘We’re not finished yet,’ Jelindel said, heaving the girl to her feet. She wove a quick spell of confusion and an aerial attacker dived straight into the blazing bonfire. Jelindel’s moment of glory became decidedly less triumphant a moment later when she threw herself into a pile of goat dung to narrowly avoid a hissing sword stroke.

The novices who had been sent to the armoury returned, laden with ancient pikes, halberds, and swords. More priestesses rallied to Jelindel’s side, grabbing weapons. Together they created a wall of deadly blades raised against the sky.

‘Here, I found this,’ one of the novices said, thrusting a crossbow at Jelindel. It was the old-fashioned sort that used a cranking arm. Jelindel’s heart sank. There were only three bolts.

She quickly fitted an iron bolt into the fluted channel of the crossbow, cranked up the string, and aimed. Muttering a spell of true-aim, she let fly. The bolt found its mark and a deadmoon warrior plummeted from the sky.

‘Oh Mother of Redemption, lead us …’ prayed several novices in quavering voices.

‘We’re holding our own,’ Jelindel reassured them. As if to mock her words, twenty deadmoon warriors that had been held in reserve outside the walls of the Temple suddenly rose into view above the battlements, hovering like a terrible veil of blackness. Their sheer number shattered the spirits of all in the courtyard. Novices and priestesses alike cried out in horror and flung their weapons from them, demoralised.