Mage's Blood (91 page)

‘Please, Gurvon!!’ she begged, truly terrified now.

The beetle paused on her left breast and its pincers teased her nipple. She screamed, ‘
Please, Gurvon!
’

‘The thing is, Elena, I’ve got a severe manpower shortage now – and there is so much to do to complete this coup.’

She shook her head mutely as the scarab crawled onto her collarbone.

‘Make no mistake, Elena: you and I are mortal enemies now. You betrayed me, and I can never forgive that. But I’m a practical man, and I can even bear to see you on your feet again, provided you’re under my control.’ His face became bleak. ‘I’d like to kill you, but Javon needs to see that its heroic Queen’s Champion is alive and well; that will reassure them when Cera starts making overtures to the Gorgio and suing for peace.’ He raised his arm and the scarab
of Rutt Sordell crawled onto the back of his hand. ‘And of course, Rutt needs a new body.’

She clamped her jaws shut. <
No!
>

He grasped her jaw and nose with deft hands and pulled open her mouth. The scarab slithered down his hand and onto her cheek. ‘Of course, Rutt would prefer a male body, but beggars can’t be choosers, can they? If he wants a body capable of gnosis, it will have to be yours.’

<
Please, Gurvon, no!
>

Gyle’s eyes hardened. ‘You know, if you hadn’t screwed that Kestrian, not only would Cera have retained her friendship towards you, but I might have felt some sympathy now. But I feel nothing at all any more. Goodbye for ever, Elena.’

The head of Sordell’s necromantic scarab peered into her right eye, feelers waving, mandibles working feverishly. Then it turned and crawled inside her mouth.

There was a sharp pain and a hideous burrowing sensation in her palate.

Then nothing at all.

Norostein, Noros, on the continent of Yuros
Junesse 928
1 month until the Moontide

Alaron didn’t pause to look around; he took a deep breath and kicked for the surface, gripping the cylinder of the Scytale in his hand. With the other hand he cast off his sword so that he could ascend faster. Below him he glimpsed Cym whirling, seeking a target.
She’s barely trained
, he thought, but then he felt Koll’s first attack, a negation of the water-breathing spell Cym had given him, while he was still dozens of yards below the surface. His next breath had to be of air, or he was dead.

He kicked for the surface in blind panic as a bolt of blue fire smashed through his shields, scorching his left thigh. He could have screamed, lost his air and died, but he didn’t – maybe it was all the blows that had been rained upon him in the practise-yards, inuring him to pain. He contorted in agony, but he kicked on. More bolts
flashed below, but no more were directed at him. The silvery surface was almost in reach—

—and then he was exploding through it, gasping in the freezing air. A dark shape loomed: the statue of the King of Noros the council had set in the middle of the reservoir. He splashed towards it, and the next burst of gnosis-fire from below caught him in the belly. He shrieked and almost dropped the cylinder.

Shields, shields!
He summoned Air-gnosis and rose clear of the water, a clumsy flight that pitched him at the foot of the statue of King Phylios III. He heaved himself to his knees. The waters about him grew menacingly still and he could hear shouting from the flood-banks a hundred yards away. He prayed Muhren was winning, then he heard a
plop!
in the water ten yards to his left and all thoughts of what might be happening ashore fled.

Cym bobbed to the surface, face-down, in a cloud of black hair. A knife protruded from her back and as she surfaced blood bloomed over her back like an opening flower. All rationality disintegrated, he dropped the Scytale cylinder and leapt into the air, swooping towards the stricken girl. He heaved Cym from the water with gnosis alone and she rose in a cascade of dark fluids, her body limp. <
No!
> he screamed into her mind as he caught her in midair, <
Cym, please wake up
–
I can’t heal you! You have to wake up
—>

He started to take her back to the statue, and stopped dead, all hope dying.

Gron Koll stood beside the statue, black hair plastered over his sallow face. He bowed mockingly. ‘Thanks for bringing me this,’ he purred, stroking the cylinder.

‘I don’t care about that,’ Alaron pleaded. ‘Just let me save Cym.’

Gron Koll sniggered. ‘You’ve got nothing to bargain with.’ He raised a hand, gnosis-fire licking his fingers.

A torrent of flame lit the surface of the lake.

Belonius Vult edged cautiously towards Langstrit, who was moving with painful slowness some twenty yards down the slope. Beside him was the charred corpse of Eli Besko.
That saves me the trouble, I guess
.
He peered with a seer’s eyes at the old man.
Oh dear, you are in a dire way, aren’t you, Jari? But not dead yet
. He paused. He knew Langstrit; even now, there were risks …
And you’ve already done more than enough damage
… The skiff was destroyed and its pilot slain. It would be a slow journey home under his own power.

And the Scytale isn’t here, that is clear now. I need to get back, before Fyrell gets ideas above his station. But first you must die, old man. Eighteen years of your riddles was far too long
.

He assessed Langstrit’s remaining physical and psychic strength, then struck, a threefold attack: a cloud of gas for poison; a mental attack, and an Air-gnosis-assisted leap to drive his staff into the man’s chest. What did Gurvon Gyle like to say? ‘
A short fight is a good fight
.’

Langstrit saw the blur of movement and the billowing gas and with his last strength rose to his knees, pushing outwards with Air-gnosis.
Ha
–
didn’t think that one through, did you, Bel? Two attacks that could be countered with one parry. You always were a desk-mage
. He rose to his feet unsteadily, clutching his heart, feeling it drumming furiously inside.
You’re not going to make it, old man, but you can take this prick with you
…

Then his link to Muhren went dead: utterly, absolutely severed.

No! > But there was nothing – and Belonius Vult rose in front of him with a face like vengeance.

No
–
Jens!

Evidently Vult had some connection to Fyrell, for his head was cocked, listening. ‘It’s all been for nothing, old man,’ he purred.

‘Not if I take you down, you worm,’ Langstrit spat, and Vult came at him as his final strength faded. It felt as if he was wading through water. Vult tipped his blade aside, then drove his stave at him, hammering his shields and knocking him backwards. He slashed as he stumbled, but he couldn’t control his blows. Then the iron-heeled staff was battering him again, once, twice, with energy crackling along it, too much for him now. Wood and iron smashed into his ribs and something tore inside his left breast as his ribs broke. He couldn’t breathe. He felt his legs give way and then Vult, his usual
smooth mask warped with bestial anger, smashed the staff into his chest again, right over his heart, and he felt it burst. He fell backwards, the sky filling his eyes.
I’ve failed. It was all for nothing
.

Above him, the sunlight kissed the snowy heights with the faintest rose-pink and gold: remote, heartrending beauty – the reason he had come here from fair Argundy, the reason he had fought for this land.
A fitting last sight
, he remembered telling someone once,
beautiful
–
and out of reach
.

Alaron was too tired to react; he hovered above the waters holding Cym to him protectively and waited to die. He saw Koll’s glee as he summoned energy for the fatal strike—

—but Koll’s gnosis-fires disintegrated before they reached him.

‘
Get away from my son!
’ Tesla Anborn flowed out of the shadows, clad in red battle-mage robes, her ravaged face bared, her empty eye-sockets gleaming with pale gnosis-fire. Her ruined hands were raised in an inwards-reaching gesture as she defused Koll’s fires.

Gron Koll snarled and blasted at her, but she batted it aside and struck back with a whip-crack of lightning that made Koll’s shields flare and crackle. His body jerked and he yowled and dropped the cylinder.

Tesla struck again, no subtlety, just a torrent of fire hurled at the young mage. Koll raised shields laced with water and the fires burst over them in a hiss, and scalding steam billowed, blinding all sight. Koll shrieked, the most harrowing cry Alaron had ever heard, and fell over the cylinder.

His mother swooped towards Alaron, laid a hand on the knife in Cym’s back and pulled it. The weapon came free and she thrust it into her belt, then laid her hand on the wound, sealing it with a searing flame that made Cym cry out, almost twisting from Alaron’s grasp.

Tesla placed a clawed talon on his shoulder and drew him with her as they swept across the waves to the statue.
>

Gron Koll lay convulsing on the ground below the statue, inches
from the water’s edge. He had been scalded by the steam where his water-shield had met Tesla’s fire – a water-shield was an effective defence against fire, unless the attacker was more skilled. In that case, it was supreme folly. Koll had been hugely overmatched; every inch of exposed skin was blistered and broken, revealing scarlet under-layers raw and weeping with seams of white fluids.

Alaron looked towards the flood-bank. <
Muhren
—
?
>

Tesla snorted dismissively. ‘The valiant Watch Captain Muhren is more or less alive. He seemed to think he could take on Darius Fyrell head-to-head and win.’

‘Is he—? What happened?’

‘He was losing. Then some of his watchmen came and got killed trying to defend him. Then I came. Fyrell wasn’t expecting
me
.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘Fyrell is a Necromancer, dear. They’re like head-lice – those bastards can survive almost anything. But you won’t be hearing from him for a while.’ There was a touch of satisfaction in her voice. ‘Did you and your friends really think you could keep all your little conspiracies from me, boy? Did you think I was deaf and stupid as well as blind?’ She glanced down at Gron Koll. ‘This was one of those slimes you schooled with, yes?’

Alaron looked down, nauseated by the agony of his old rival.

Tesla appeared to have no such qualms. ‘Good. Then let him suffer a little longer.’ She picked up the cylinder. ‘So this is it?’

He tried to push the sight of Koll from his mind. Cym gave a faint sigh and he lowered her to the ground.
Cym, please be all right!

Tesla stroked the cylinder. ‘The Scytale of Corineus. So this was what it was all about, back in 909 … All that patriotism and speechifying that got half our menfolk killed. Stolen, lost and now found.’ Her empty sockets blazed with some emotion and her shoulders shook, but her voice was its usual raven’s croak when she spoke again. ‘What do you think you’re going to do with it, son?’

‘I don’t care any more. Ma, I have to go. Ramon—’

‘Was still breathing. I got to him about a minute after you left. I did enough.’ She brandished the Scytale. ‘You might not care what
happens to this thing, but the rest of the world does. The fate of nations, Alaron: that’s what this thing is. What did old Jari have planned?’

‘A new Order, dedicated to peace.’

‘Really? How sweet.’ She suddenly sucked in a distressed breath and staggered slightly.

‘Ma!’ He grabbed at her. ‘What’s wrong? Are you hurt?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ll tell you later. Come on, we’ve got to go now. Jeris Muhren is with his men; they’ll look to him. I know a safe place nearby.’ She handed Alaron the knife she had pulled from Cym’s back. ‘I’ll look after the girl, Alaron. You deal with that little prick in the mud over there.’

He stared at her as she wafted her hand to lift Cym and began flowing away across the dappled waves. Someone called across the waters: a watchman. Tesla ignored the man.

He walked back to Gron Koll. He was lying totally still, his breathing laboured and shallow. His eyes flickered at Alaron. <
Please
–
mercy
—>

What is mercy? To spare an enemy so he can come after you?

A memory of Auntie Elena, when he was much younger:
If you pick up a weapon, you must be ready to kill with it
–
that’s what they tell us at weapons-training, Alaron. But the thing is, for a mage, our whole being is a weapon. Even healing-gnosis can be used to kill
…
We pick up our powers and use them every day. We are killers by nature
.

It had sounded wrong then.
Aren’t we shields too
, he had replied,
don’t we protect people too?

She had looked at him thoughtfully.
Perhaps we are, boy
, she’d said. The next day she’d left for Javon. That was the last time he’d seen her.

Now Alaron steeled himself and forced his eyes to take in the ruined youth, his gorge rising as he looked at the bones exposed where the skin and sinew and flesh had been boiled away. He realised that there was only one mercy he could give. He knelt and placed the blade on Koll’s chest.
This is mercy
.

As he pushed it into Koll’s chest, Koll wheezed, ‘
Fuck
…
you
…
Mercer
—’ Then his eyes went misty and lost focus. His head fell back and his features went slack, empty.