Kormak 01 - Stealer of Flesh (21 page)

The Prince noticed Kormak looking at him. “I killed this one,” he said. “I am considering keeping the head as a trophy.”

“You might want to put it in a jar then and pickle it with salt. A rotting head is not the most pleasant of baggage to take with you on a journey.”

For a moment, Luther looked as if he was seriously considering Kormak’s words and then he dropped the head. “You are right, Sir Kormak. I will simply commit the look on its face to memory. I do not think I have ever seen anything so evil.”

“Then you have not had much experience with evil,” Kormak murmured so low that only Olivia caught his words. Kormak suspected the Prince would garner more experience of it before their quest was done.

Two days passed without any more violent encounters. The desert became even more drab and lifeless. In the distance crystal towers began to rise. In the night, strange lights shimmered, hinting at the presence of demonic entities. Lines of blue light pulsed between the towers creating a web of magic.

As they got closer a high-pitched keening whine filled the air. Inhuman voices could be heard, chanting in languages that no one recognised. No living creature was ever seen, no matter how hard anyone looked. The veteran soldiers looked more and more uneasy. Prince Luther looked more and more wild eyed. Olivia was the only one who seemed to calm. It was not that she was not worried, Kormak knew. It was just that she was better at keeping her fears concealed.

On the evening of the third day, they made camp in the shadow of one of the crystal towers. It bore some resemblance to the work of the Old Ones, but it seemed to be the product of different sensibility, one not exactly theirs. Inscribed on the crystal were strange runes, of the type that Kormak had vague memories of.

When he paused to consider them, he realised that they were not his memories but Razhak’s. They seemed to be becoming stronger the closer he got to Tanyth. He had looked upon these towers before and once he had understood the mystical significance of each and every inscription. He felt that he could do so again if only he looked at them long enough and hard enough.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and he looked around to see that Olivia was looking at him. “Sir Kormak,” she said. “Is something wrong? You have been looking at that pillar for ten minutes now.”

Kormak came out of his reverie. He had not realised that he’d been standing there for so long overwhelmed by the fugue of memories triggered by the sight of the pillars.

“Razhak has been this way,” he said. “He came this way many times. It is like coming home for him.”

“We shall see to it that it is the last time he does so,” Olivia said.

“Let us hope so,” Kormak said.

“You have not come so far to fail now,” she said. “Have courage, Guardian.”

He was not sure that he could exactly explain to her what happened or that he wanted to. It was an odd thing to have the memories of a demon inside his mind. He wondered if this had ever happened to any Guardian before. It most likely had. There were very few things new in this world.

Even as they stood there looking at each other, a voice spoke. The words seemed to come out of the air and it took Kormak a few moments to realise that they were emerging from the pillar itself. They had a hauntingly familiar quality and once again he felt, if only he listened hard enough, he might come to understand them. He cocked his head to one side and tried hard to concentrate. He laid his hand on the crystal and it seemed to vibrate in time to the words.

“What are these things?” Kormak asked.

“Some of the sages think the pillars channelled magical energy across the land, focused the ley lines of magic so that it made the deserts bloom and springs flow. Others think it formed a barrier against the Old Ones. Some say they were created by the Old Ones as part of their campaign against the Ghul. No one knows. So much knowledge has been lost.”

“Razhak knows.”

“He might be the only one left in the world who does now,” Olivia said.

For a moment, Kormak felt a strange sense of sympathy with the being he hunted. What must it be like to be the last of your kind, to remember things no one else remembered, to know things no one else knew?

The voices in the air kept gibbering their incomprehensible nonsense, as if ancient spirits were trying to communicate warnings to those who could not understand.

“Those are not hills,” said Prince Luther, “they are ruins.”

Kormak could see that he was right. What at first glance looked like rocky hills were, in fact, piles of rubble, the tumbled down remains of gargantuan structures. They ran as far as the horizon. The city of Sunhaven could have fitted into one small corner of Tanyth.

“How are we going to find the Ghul?” Olivia asked.

“I know where he is going,” Kormak said.

“You can remember that.”

“The spell-engines are at the centre, at the geomantic focus of the city. I will know it when I see it.”

The chief of the retainers walked over. He looked embarrassed but determined. “Sire, the men have asked me to remind you of our agreement. We have seen you to the outskirts of the lost city. They will proceed no further.”

Prince Luther stared at him. “I will pay each man who accompanies us a purse of solars, imperial weight.”

The soldier nodded as if he had expected this. “Dead men spend no gold, sire. And the lads have families and women. We have agreed among ourselves. But I will put your offer to them and see what they have to say. Gold can be wonderfully persuasive.”

Luther nodded as if he had expected this answer. “You have fulfilled your obligations to me admirably, Benjamin. Wait for us here for three days. If we have not returned by then return to Sunhaven and tell the major domo of my house that if we have not returned in a moon, the rites must be spoken in the family crypt. My father should be informed. He may wish to preside over them.”

Benjamin nodded. “It shall all be done according to your wishes, sire.”

He stumped away. Luther looked at Kormak. “It seems we are on our own.”

“It is what you expected, is it not?”

“Yes but now the moment of truth has arrived I find I cannot quite face it with the equanimity that I expected.”

“You do not need to go on if you don’t want to. You have come further than most men would.”

“I do want to go on,” said Luther. “But I find that I am afraid.”

“At least you are brave enough to admit it.”

Luther laughed. “I admire your skill with the paradoxical phrase, Guardian.” He looked at his sister. “How about you Olivia, will you go on?”

Kormak has the sense that if she refused to go on, Luther would stay behind also. Remaining to protect his sister would give him the excuse to do so while allowing him to retain his self-respect. Kormak had seen many men at these delicate moments before. The whole pattern of people’s lives could be altered by such decisions and they came and went with such speed.

Olivia appeared to be giving the matter serious consideration but Kormak knew she had already made up her mind. “Yes. I want to see the end of this and I want to see the heart of the city.”

Benjamin returned. “The lads will accompany you in return for the increased payment. They would probably have come anyway. They feel safer close to the Guardian’s sword and your sister’s magic.”

“It is alchemy,” Olivia said. “Not magic.”

Benjamin’s respectful nod hinted at the fact that he had no idea of the difference.

Luther deflated a little. “Well, that’s it then. We go on.” He sounded disappointed and afraid.

Kormak shrugged. “Mount up then and let us be away.”

They rode through the streets. The city looked as if an army of giants had stormed through it, kicking down buildings, setting them alight. Some of the stonework was blackened and cracked. Statues had been defaced. Shards of broken runic crystal lay everywhere.

“This army resisted the Old Ones for centuries but the First Empire destroyed it in a year,” said Luther.

“The Old Ones were not really trying,” Kormak said. “It was a game they played to while away the time. They do not think or set goals as mortals do.”

When the words came out, Kormak knew they were true. The knowledge was a mixture of Razhak’s and his own.

“They were thorough,” said Olivia.

“Solareon brooked no opposition to his rule.” Kormak said. “He was a proud, cruel man.”

“But a great one,” said Luther.

“A great mage certainly,” said Olivia. Her tone made it clear that one had little to do with the other. “Possibly the greatest human mage of all time.”

“And chosen by the Sun as well, filled with the Light. How else could he do what he did?”

“An army of warriors and an army of mages always helps achieve military goals,” said Kormak. “And he had both.”

He studied the ruined streets all about him. The destruction was on a titanic scale but it had all happened long ago. It was like looking at a stage long after the actors had left. Cataclysmic events had occurred here but in a time so remote as to make them unimportant.

Incongruously, a Solar centurion’s helmet sat on top of a ruined column, as if its owner had just set it down hours ago and would return to reclaim it.

“You are smiling, Sir Kormak,” said Olivia.

“Just when I think I understand something, it slips from my grasp,” he said.

“It is often the case,” she replied. She glanced around them, shivered and pulled her cloak tight although it was not cold. “This place is not what I expected.”

“It has a certain shattered grandeur,” said Luther.

“Yes, but it is remote, unconnected to our world.”

“The builders of this city were not men,” said Kormak.

“The destroyers were,” said Luther. He sounded at once exalted and appalled by the idea. “We are used to the idea that we live in the shadow of titans, that we are less than the Old Ones but men did this…”

“The First Empire was as powerful as any of the Nations of the Old Ones,” said Kormak. “Much was lost when it fell.”

“Oh, I know, Sir Kormak but it is one thing to know something and another to feel the certainty of its truth.”

At that moment, the look in his eye reminded Kormak of the old hermit, Luther’s father. It was easy to see the connection of blood between the two of them.

They came to the junction of two huge streets. A statue still stood. It was blacked and defaced which gave it a demonic look. At first it seemed to resemble a man, but the proportions were wrong. It was broader and the limbs were thicker. The features were doughy, the eyes round pools in the face, the nose tiny, the nostrils mere slits. There was something suggestive of the face of a cat about it.

“That is what the Ghul originally looked like, I am guessing,” said Luther.

Kormak nodded. Again he had that nagging sense of familiarity, as if he could put a name to the face if only he tried hard enough to remember. For him this place was doubly haunted, by the ghosts of ancient wars and the ghosts of Razhak’s memories. There was a strange sense of homecoming about all of this.

More memories came back, of great herds of humans who served the Ghul, who had thought it the greatest of honours to be possessed by them, that somehow they became god-like themselves by surrendering their bodies. In a way, they had achieved a shadow of immortality by doing so. Razhak had absorbed their memories as he stole their flesh, and thus the pretence of humans joining the ascendant Ghul had been maintained. It was a cruel world, Kormak thought, and always had been.

Ahead of them now was a massive crystal dome, it sat atop a colossal structure that not even Solareon’s armies had been able to destroy. Within it lights flickered and glowed. As they approached, the air vibrated and there was a scent of ozone.

“The Temple of the Immortals,” said Kormak and suddenly he knew the real reason the First Empire had spent so many lives taking this place. Solareon and his men had believed that the secret of eternal life had lain within. Obviously they had been disappointed by what they had found or the world would have been much different.

“We have found what we were looking for,” said Luther. And what exactly was that, Kormak wondered?

They passed through a gigantic arch into the cool shadows of the temple’s entrance. The damage here was less than that in the rest of the city.

Why was that, Kormak wondered? Was it because it was further from the walls or for some other reason. Why would this place have been spared when the rest of the city had been ravaged? It was bigger, bulkier, even more enormous than the structures around it but that could not be the only reason.

“Solareon spared it because he intended to come back and try one last time to fathom its secrets,” Olivia said. Kormak had not realised he had spoken aloud. That was worrying. Something about this place was getting to him. Normally he had more self-control. “He died in the Draconian Wars before he could do so. So Eraclius writes anyway.”

“It is probably just as well,” Kormak said. “The world would have been very different if he had uncovered the secrets of the Ghul.”

“Yes, it might have been better,” said Luther. Kormak looked hard at him.

They emerged from the entrance archway into a glittering hall. It was full of crystal pillars. They were milky and translucent except where their surfaces were scored by glowing runes. Those inscriptions seemed to float on their shimmering surfaces. Once more the air hummed with babbling insane voices. In the distance other sounds could be heard like the rumble of a waterfall, weird ephemeral music, the roaring of great angry beasts. Somehow it all blended together and was obviously all part of the same process even if Kormak could not work out what the connection was. The areas between the pillars were marked by shadows that were not quite shadows. They shimmered oddly and moved in a way that was entirely unconnected with the glow of the lights in the hall. They moved in a furtive sneaking fashion as if they had a life of their own.

“Stay within the light,” Kormak said. “I do not like the look of those shadows at all.”

“I was about to say the same thing,” said Luther. His voice sounded subdued and quiet through all the background noise although Kormak knew he was shouting. A hissing, crackling sound came from a distant corner of the chamber, lights flickered and danced.