The Book of Transformations (54 page)

‘Wouldn’t these warriors be better out there protecting the people?’ Vuldon said.

‘Aye, sir. I suspect they would.’

‘You agree?’ Tane asked.

‘Sir.’

‘Then why the fuck aren’t you out there?’ Vuldon demanded. ‘People are dying.’

‘Not our decision, sir,’ the soldier replied, ‘not our choice. You’ll see.’

Vuldon looked to Tane, who simply shrugged.

Through layer after layer of security, through ever-darkening passages, and into an antechamber, they finally entered a vast room, with a desk maybe fifty paces away at the far end, and little else except a huge burning hearth and several vast windows that offered a remarkable view of the city. No lanterns were lit, no candles, so once they stepped away from the firelight, they were in a room of shadows. Flashes lit up the horizon now, booms of illumination that lingered and hovered, before scattering themselves throughout the cloud base. Snow raked against the windows, wind rattling the glass against the frame.

A figure was silhouetted against the flares of magic in the distance, but as they marched closer, Vuldon and Tane realized that the person wasn’t looking out, but facing towards them.

‘The Knights of Villjamur,’ the figure gasped. ‘I am relieved that the two of you are now here. Those fuckwits behind you are about as useful in a war zone as a silk handkerchief.’

‘You wish us to leave the premises and join the fighting, my Emperor?’ the commander queried, with obvious sarcasm.

‘No, no.’ Urtica’s tone was suddenly devoid of control. ‘Get to your stations.’

As they retreated, Vuldon glanced across Urtica’s desk, on which lay several maps of the city and the Archipelago, and there were more on the floor, too – enlarged, detailed plans of various sectors. On a small table to the left, there sat a platter of various meats on the bone, with a huge carving knife sticking out of it.

‘What do you want us to do?’ Tane asked.

Urtica observed him in the darkness. Vuldon could see the flicker of the firelight reflected in his eyes. ‘They tell me that the city is falling.’

‘Who?’ Tane asked.

‘Them,’ Urtica made a vague gesture to the door. ‘The soldiers. The military. The idiots should be able to handle a few Caveside yokels. They’ve got all sorts of superior weaponry – and all the reports I receive are of military losses, of streets overrun and claimed in the name of the anarchists.’

‘What’s the situation now?’ Vuldon asked.

‘We are withdrawing.’

‘To here, I take it.’

‘Indeed,’ Urtica replied. ‘All councillors and their families are now ensconced within Balmacara.’

‘What exactly are you going to govern over, if there’s nothing left of the city?’ Vuldon demanded.

‘Do not question my motives. I am the reason you are both still in employment – the reason you were first given your new lease of life.’

Like I give a fuck
, Vuldon wanted to say, but even he thought better of it.

Urtica seated himself at his desk and ran his hands through his hair.

Tane looked to Vuldon then back at the Emperor. ‘Do you really think the anarchists are going to come here to get you?’

‘Without a doubt – they have been trying since that Shalev bitch came to Villjamur.’

‘Then why bottle yourself up now?’ Tane asked. ‘Why not have as many soldiers on the streets, wearing them down?’

‘It is not the anarchists I’m worried about.’ Urtica slid back and gestured to the flares of magic. ‘Do you know what that is?’

‘No,’ Vuldon grunted. ‘Not really.’

‘Neither do I, precisely. It is a cultist who has entered the city and, allegedly, begun a systematic destruction of Villjamur. Two garudas are taking it in turns to update me on his progress, and each time they return their news is even more disturbing. So far, much of the first level of the city has been destroyed.’

‘What do you mean
destroyed
?’ Tane asked.

‘Reduced to rubble. Blood in the streets. People burned by magic. Houses collapsed. How precise a definition do you require?’

‘Does he fight for the anarchists?’ Tane asked.

‘He fights for sport, so it seems.’

‘What do you want us to do?’ Vuldon asked. ‘You want us to stop him?’

Urtica’s face seemed to have aged massively – even in this light, Vuldon’s acute vision could make out his tired eyes, the desperation etched on his face and the constant fidgeting of his hands. This was a man on the edge. There was none of the usual calm authority or resplendence that Vuldon had previously observed. ‘Would you mind?’ Urtica breathed, as if it now took all his reserves to form speech.

‘The hell are we going to do against a force of nature like that?’

‘You will find a way,’ Urtica replied insistantly. ‘This is what you were created for.’

‘Or what, you’ll kill us?’ Tane said.

Urtica leaned back in his chair and grasped the arms with bony hands. ‘No. But I will kill the former investigator, Fulcrom, who is currently being interviewed by my agents. You . . . you had a close bond with him, yes?’

Tane’s expression revealed his concern.
Could he really have caught Fulcrom?
Vuldon wondered. The investigator said that he’d be a wanted man . . . ‘You’re lying.’

‘I don’t need to lie,’ Urtica hissed. ‘But if you want proof, I could perhaps fetch for you a finger? Something more convincing, like his arm perhaps?’ There was an almost manic tone to Urtica’s rasping voice, suggesting that if his city was going down, then he was taking everything else with him.

‘We might not be able to do anything,’ Vuldon muttered. ‘If this person’s as strong as you say he is.’

Urtica began to snicker softly. Then he addressed the surface of his desk. ‘My city is falling. Everything I worked for is failing. Those scum from Caveside need to be eradicated. And this cultist needs to be stopped. I don’t care how – just get it done or I’ll personally see to it that Investigator Fulcrom bears the full weight of my disappointment at your failure.’

Tane placed a furred hand on Vuldon’s arm. ‘We’ll see what we can do.’

*

It was carnage. Verain watched though tears as Dartun threw his magic about the city without reason or rhyme. Like a man possessed, he drove his arm into walls, ripping through stone to collapse houses into the street. Men and women ran screaming into the streets and watched in slack-jawed horror as their homes were decimated.

‘It’s good to be back, no?’ Dartun bellowed with a frenzied grin at his cowed order who shadowed his footsteps – too afraid to do anything.

The skies were darkening overhead, and lantern lights in windows indicated all the people looking on. She wanted to tell them to get out – evacuate – but knew they would think she was mad. Where else did people go when their world was falling apart? Home, of course. Citizens on the first level had begun to barricade themselves in, but the act hadn’t done them much good – Dartun was somehow rupturing the very ground, popping up cobbles and flagstones in street-wide spurts. She was numb to it now, they all were. They merely watched, inert, as he ripped apart the city of her birth.

The first show of formed resistance came on the second level of the city. Standing at an intersection, where two streets banked up identical-looking slopes, two cultists from an unknown order had brought a crate of relics and tried to conceal themselves behind a wide grey-brick well. Filtering in alongside them were soldiers she recognized as being from the Dragoons. They fanned out to form a shield wall, while behind them about a dozen archers took position. In the dark skies above, two garudas moved in slow circles, their wings barely discernible.

Please stop him . . .

After some brief orders echoed across the street, arrows were let loose. Verain turned to face them, opening her arms in the hope that one might take her. She closed her eyes . . .

Nothing
.

Dartun held up his hands, generating an invisible barrier that sheltered the members of the Equinox. Arrows weren’t deflected, they were disintegrated. The archers turned and ran as they realized how utterly useless they were. The other cultists moved from behind their own relic-originated shield wall and planted a few objects just in front, before retreating. Safely alongside the military, they turned back to view their work. Dartun laughed and walked forwards. He bent down and lugged a stone at the invisible wall they’d put before him. He repeated the gesture with a handful of similar stones, all the time stepping closer and closer. Then, as if the wall had become water, he pushed himself through – much to the disbelief of the two cultists. The soldiers moved shields to one side and revealed swords before advancing on Dartun.

He crouched into a ball. Screamed. Stood and spread his arms like a prophet.

A wave of energy knocked every soldier back several feet, sending their swords and shields clattering about the place. The two cultists turned to run and Dartun caught one of them by his feet. He pulled slowly, dragging the man back. With one hand on the cultist’s waist, Dartun pulled again at one leg.

Verain could only hear the screams, which faded into a crunch as Dartun ripped him in two pieces. The cultist passed out just after he saw his own ruined legs sail back over his head and into the path of the military personnel.

‘Who’s next?’ Dartun bellowed.

Lan examined the army stationed between their current position and where they needed to be. Troops had perched on rooftops, and there were anarchist snipers firing at anything that moved on higher levels. Cultists were attacking each other, too, shown by the purple sparks of light that crackled between buildings. She didn’t think she could make any successful leaps with the priest on her back without being noticed.

Damn.

Time was slipping away and there was no other choice available: the safest thing they could do was head back the way they had come, back to Fulcrom’s apartment where they could work out another route or perhaps consult him on some alternative paths.

*

When they got to his apartment, they found the place was a mess. His door had been kicked open, his belongings had been ransacked. Papers and clothes were strewn about the place, drawers had been knocked over, pictures smashed.

Lan strolled down the marble-tiled corridor and knocked on the neighbours’ doors. Every one of them greeted her with some fear, whether it was because of her past or her attitude, she didn’t care. Only one apartment revealed anything useful. An interspecies couple, garbed in almost identical brown tunics said that people in long grey coats had started a fight with him outside the building.

Lan tried to hide her fear.
Emperor’s agents.
‘How long ago was this?’

‘About two hours,’ the woman said.

‘What happened at the end?’ Lan asked.

‘Well, they tied him up,’ the rumel said. ‘It seems pretty strange to do that to an investigator if you ask me, and then they took him up-city.’

They haven’t killed him
, she thought
. They just want answers.
Lan smiled politely and only then noticed the children running around in the room behind, that this couple had children – when rumel and human relationships could not produce offspring, and suddenly it hit her somewhere deep inside, a place she’d deliberately hidden away.

‘We adopted,’ the woman said, noticing Lan’s gaze. ‘In case you were wondering.’

‘Oh no, I . . . No.’ She composed herself. ‘Thank you for you answers.’

Stifling tears, Lan turned back to Fulcrom’s apartment.

‘We hope you find him,’ the rumel called out behind her.

Lan arrived back to the room to find Ulryk sitting on the bed studying his books once again.

‘Ulryk, if I can get you to the Glass Tower, will you be all right on your own for a few hours?’

‘Of course. Did you find out what’s happened to the investigator?’

‘I think so. He’s been taken by agents working for the Emperor. If so, he’ll most likely be in Balmacara somewhere, and I want to get him out of there.’

‘Of course, of course.’

*

They set off once again with urgency, taking a different route, a circular one around the outskirts of the conflict. It was longer by far, but for some way there wasn’t the slightest sound of military personnel. Much of the city had locked itself away. As night took a grip on Villjamur, lights began to define windows of numerous shapes across the city, and people could be seen looking out onto the streets below, marooned in their own homes.

Every now and then Lan would run up a wall and across rooftops to assess the route they were on. They managed to navigate furtive channels through the city, going backwards, and sometimes underground, in order to make progress past militarized pockets. It took them two hours to get somewhere that should have taken half an hour, and all the time Lan kept thinking that she urgently had to get to Balmacara, she had to break in
somehow
.

‘There it is!’ Ulryk exclaimed, pointing at the Astronomer’s Glass Tower. It was an impressive structure, like that of a gemstone half buried in the cobbled streets. A circular path ran around the base, and the surface of the glass was incredibly smooth, so that she could see the lights of the city reflected in its surface. It had eight equal-sized facets, about twenty feet wide, but none of them seemed to feature a door or window, no method of entry.