Mage's Blood (90 page)

His tenuous link with Muhren flared suddenly: the watch captain was fighting someone or something, fighting hard.
Damn
…
Kore be with you, Jens
–
Kore be with you all!
He would not regret the decision to separate:
if we’d fought in that street we’d all be dead. If I’d gone for the Scytale, I’d still have Vult on my arse. We did the right thing. Just let me live through this
…

He topped the rise, sensed a movement and blazed flame at it, and something small squealed and died in the hiss and crackle of burning wet grass. A rabbit.
Damned waste
–
stupid!

Blue fire flared from along the ridgeline, struck his shields and deflected away. He fired back at a dim shape walking towards him, and it vanished as the fire struck. Another damned illusion – it was too hard to tell in this pre-dawn dark.
Damn this, I’m jumping at shadows and taunts!

Muhren’s hurt
. He sensed the flare of pain and clenched his fists in helpless fury.
I should have stayed with him
. He felt his heart pounding over-fast, his blood pumping.
I should be back at the lake
–
damn this
— He ran back the way he had come, burst around a boulder and ran straight into Eli Besko.

So it’s you, you arse-licker!

The fat man squealed, erecting panicky shields in time to deflect Langstrit’s bolt of energy, and they staggered to a halt mere feet apart. Langstrit had raised his hands to pour flame into the man when Besko did something completely unexpected: he leapt at him, and his sheer bulk battered through the general’s shields and smashed him backwards into a boulder. Air belched from his lungs and his head crunched wetly against the jagged stone. He was wrenched back and hammered into the stone again as Besko shouted something. His face was maniacal. Langstrit’s vision dimmed, his chest felt about to burst and for an instant he was teetering on the edge of darkness. Then he snarled and roared flame from his mouth as if he were a dragon of Schlessen legend.

Besko screamed as his face melted, sinking to his knees as he went up like a torch, but Langstrit felt no pity. He could feel the pulpy wetness at the back of his skull and a throbbing pain in his chest that overwhelmed him. He fell to the ground, the pain in his chest ripping him apart. His left hand pawed impotently at his breast—

My heart!
He managed a sob. His mind was clogged, his senses all astray. He saw Besko topple forward, flames licking at his body, and tried to focus beyond the agony in his breast.
Two down
…

But I’m rukked as well
—

He tried to stand again, but that pain had become unendurable. He fell back, his mouth sucking like a beached fish, and he tried to feed himself oxygen through Air-gnosis, but the exertion made his heart pulse even more frenetically. He clawed the earth desperately.
You’re having a heart attack, you old fool. Lie still and think!

He could feel Vult, making careful little forays, measuring his strength, assessing his weakness.

<
Come and get it, Belonius!
>

His foe didn’t reply, but a faint greenish cloud washed down the slope.
Smoke? Poison?
Langstrit pushed it away, and his heart thumped harder, harder.
No, I
won’t
go out like this
—

More green smoke washed down the slope: poisonous vapours.
A cautious and clever attack, easier to launch than to counter
. Somewhere in Norostein he felt Muhren take a savage wound, as if the blow had been inflicted upon his own flesh. But worse was the tearing thunder in his own chest, a wrenching that felt like being physically torn in two … He shook uncontrollably while the morning sky turned to midnight, desperately holding his last reserves inside, praying for one final chance.

Somewhere up the slope, booted feet came ever closer.

One last chance
…

Alaron swam frantically after Cym, fear of being left behind driving him faster. The girl’s face was concentrated and fierce as she glanced back, then plunged through a crossroads into another drowned alley. <
Do you know where you’re going?>

<
Of course I know where I’m bloody well going
–
unlike you, I was
listening
when the general gave us directions
.> Her voice was caustic in his mind. <
You’re a babe in the woods, Alaron.>
She frog-kicked away into the gloom.

<
What’s got into you? Ramon may be dying back there
—>

<
You heard the general: Ramon can’t be helped further. It’s the future of the entire world I’m more interested in right now
.>

Alaron looked up anxiously: something was silhouetted briefly against the shimmery silver sky that was the surface of the reservoir. <
Cym
–
someone’s in the water with us
.>

<
Rukka
–
watch it, we’re nearly there
…
I think this is it
.>

He worked his way to her side, panting out huge pearly bubbles, and reslung the sword belt.

She turned to face him, her face wide-eyed and urgent. <
Look at this
.> Her gnosis-light darted ahead, illuminating the smashed remnants of a stone plinth. A statue lay fallen at its feet, grimed in green algae; around it pale waterweed swayed in the sluggish currents of the lake.

<
Are you sure that’s it?
>

<
Of course
.> Cym gripped the plinth with one hand and scuffed away the algae. <
The Scytale should be inside the plinth. Do your thing, Earth-mage
.>

He was suddenly overwhelmed. <
This is really it?
>

.>

He kicked his way through the icy water, fighting the cold with gnosis-heat, and gripped the plinth. Earth-gnosis: something he could do. The drowned buildings were black silhouettes, the surface silver. There were no fish here. Maybe they’d scared them away – or someone else had. <
Here goes
.>

He reached out with Earth-gnosis, though it wasn’t easy beneath the water, and plunged his hand slowly into the stone plinth, one inch, two inches, three, four, until his fingers popped through the stonework into a tiny chamber beneath. As he touched a cold metal cylinder his heart double-thumped and almost stopped. He lifted it free. <
I’ve got it!
>

She thrust out a hand. <
I’ll take it, I’m the faster swimmer
.> He wrenched it away and faced her. Her eyes flared, then slitted, and he felt the cold water bite his soul. Something ugly moved behind her gaze, though her mental voice remained calm and reasonable. <
Alaron, I’ll take it. Be sensible: you can’t even breathe down here
.>

<
Is that a threat?
> he sent, shocked.

She stared at him, anger flickering across her face. <
No, it’s not a threat
–
it’s logic, damnit. Why won’t you let me have it?
>

<
Yes
,> cackled Gron Koll into both of their minds, <
why won’t you let her have it, Mercer? After all, you’re the one who
can’t breathe
down here
… >

It is better to die than to suffer the accursed touch of Shaitan upon thy flesh

B
RANDED SCRIPT UPON THE BELLIES OF
CRUCIFIED HEALER-NUNS OF THE
O
RDO
J
USTINIA
,
LEFT BY
H
ADISHAH ASSASSINS IN
908

Brochena, Javon, on the continent of Antiopia
Junesse 928
1 month until the Moontide

She wasn’t dead. Yet. This one thought rose from Elena’s mind, above even the desperate attempt to restart her healing, as Sordell stood over her, watching her shudder towards oblivion. It was primal: the need for survival entwined with the urge to strike back.

<
Bastido! Cinque!
>

On Sordell’s right, Bastido creaked into life and a faint sound warned Sordell, and he spun, somehow blocking the wooden stave that thrust for his midriff. But Rutt Sordell had never been a warrior and in his alarm he put all his shielding there, leaving him naked to the other blows. The chain-flail lashed his face, making him reel drunkenly, then the mace smashed into his temple from the other direction and his body left the ground, spiralling sideways, and blood
sprayed, arcing across the chamber as he struck the wall in a pulverising crunch. His skull left a wet stain as it slid down the stone. He landed on his back, his head propped slightly. His face was slack and devoid of awareness. It had taken perhaps half a second.

Then she realised what she’d done.
Lorenzo!
Blood began to pump from his broken skull.
No!

She reflexively flooded her own throat-wound with healing-gnosis, all that was left to her, sucking air into the wound, then sealing it. She vomited blood, gulped down oxygen, and her vision came and went. All she could do was lie there, staring at the other three bodies.

Gurvon had laughed when he found the deadliest killer in the Grey Foxes was also a healer.
It makes me tough to kill
, she had boasted in return.
I just keep coming back
.

<
Bastido, enough
,> she told the fighting-machine and it went still again, almost smirking. She had nothing left now. All she could do was crawl. So she crawled.

She began to pull herself along the floor, first to Lorenzo, though she knew already she was too late. His mouth fell open and a black scarab the size of a fist scuttled out and away, seeking the shadows. Sordell, gone again.

I killed Lori
…
Damn this!
<
Cera!
>

No one came.

I’ve got to get help, or I’m dead
. She groaned and jack-knifed her way across the floor to the head of the spiral stairs. Her legs were still too far gone to stand. She began to crawl down, head first, her mind churning as she went, barely holding spirit and body together.

<
Cera!
>

Every movement threatened to rip her open again. Her ankle was pure Hel, her shoulder-blades grated and her throat was a line of fire despite all her efforts. She kept coughing up blood, unable to get a clean breath, but she went on, contorting her way through the maze of pain, slipping in and out of consciousness, not rational – but not dead either.

Somehow she reached the landing and kicked at the door. <
Cera! Someone!
>

The door opened, and someone knelt over her. She knew it was Cera just from the smell of her.

‘Oh, Ella,’ she breathed, ‘you weren’t supposed to live.’ Her face was stricken, but her tones were measured. ‘I am sorry, but you were the leg the fox had to gnaw off to escape the trap. I’m truly sorry. I made a deal. Our lives for yours.’

Elena let the world fall away.

She woke on a linen-draped bed, half-naked beneath a sheet, swathed in bandages. Her neck was encased in cloth, as were her shoulder and ankle. Chains clamped down her arms and legs. It was a battle to breath, a war against all the pain and the crushing weight of failure. She tried to reach out with the gnosis and got nothing at all.
I’ve been Chained
.

The door opened. She did not need to look to know who it was.

‘Hello, Elena,’ said Gurvon Gyle, sitting on the bed. ‘I swear, you’re harder to eradicate than a cockroach.’ He removed the sheet. She writhed, but the chains held. Her former lover studied her body coldly, then met her eyes. ‘I wondered if I would still feel any desire for you, despite everything. But I feel nothing at all.’

She walled up her mind, though the Chain-rune left her with limited defences, but Gyle did not attack her with the gnosis; he employed words instead.

‘You never stood a chance, Elena. The attacker has all the choices. The defender can only react. Your little protégée came to realise that.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Thank you for ridding me of Targon – though the emperor will not be pleased.’

‘I hope he dismembers you for it,’ she rasped, startled by the hideous sound of her own voice.

‘Don’t try to speak, Elena,’ Gyle warned. ‘The throat wound is still raw.’

She coughed up blood and spat it at him, missing by some distance.

Gyle stroked her brow thoughtfully. ‘You trained your little princessa well, Elena. When the moment of truth came, she knew how to cut her losses. Ironic, isn’t it? The one who taught her how
to be rational and self-serving became the pawn she sacrificed.’

‘Go to Hel, Gurvon,’ she grated.

‘While Mara led you a dance, chasing shadows in the canals, I was working on the princessa, poisoning her mind against you and the Kestrians. When you obligingly started screwing Lorenzo, it was the final proof she needed; from then on you were doomed. She herself sent Lorenzo into the trap we laid on his way back from the Krak. I was waiting for him.’

She cringed at the remembrance of Lorenzo.
He loved me, and it got him killed. I saw Cera change
–
I should have known
—

‘Oh, don’t be too hard on yourself, Elena,’ Gyle said mockingly. ‘You’ve done magnificently, if wrecking my plans is a criteria for magnificence. It couldn’t last, though. You got lucky, locking up Coin without realising who she was, but that only bought you time.’

Gyle paused, as a huge black scarab beetle crawled out of his pocket. He smiled thinly. ‘Rutt also says “hello”.’ The scarab ran down his arm onto her belly.

She felt a wave of desperate fear. ‘
Get it off me!
’

Gyle smiled as the scarab crawled up her body, its feet sharp on her skin. She writhed, trying to throw it off, but the chains held her in place.