'Mirron, are you all right? What is it?'
'God-surround-me, it feels like a suffocation of decay,' she said. 'He's here. He's close and he's doing something. Something big. I can't—'
The temperature dipped again. Sharply. Dampness on the rocks turned to frost. Cries of disbelief and fear rose to a clamour from the island. Mirron dragged herself to her feet and looked out over lake.
'Oh dear God-take-me-to-rest,' she breathed. Ice. From the outflow of the lake it spread like a wave sluicing a sandy shore. Gorian was turning the lake to ice.
Chapter Eighteen
859th cycle of God, 25th day of
Genasrise
'It's a bridge!' Jhered was already running down towards the island to make himself heard. 'He's going to use the lake as a bloody bridge!'
Mirron just stood and stared. Unconsciously, she had taken energy from the fire at her feet to warm her while the ice formed on the walls of Inthen-Gor and marched across the lake. She felt the energy drain around her like it was pulling at her skin, trying to drag it from her bones.
'How can he control this much power?' she whispered. 'How is it possible.'
The lake was vast, the outflow river long and deep. Crusting the whole was a Work that should be beyond the four of them together. She shivered and it had nothing to do with the cold. A paralysis gripped her and she felt helpless but to look at the march of the ice. Hypnotic. It chased the water south to north across the cavern faster than a man could run.
She dragged her eyes round to the island where a swell of noise was growing. Karku and Estorean alike were backing away from the shore. It didn't matter what previous experience they had of the Ascendants, no one had seen the like of this Work. No one. She stared at terrified faces. Those in the front had forgotten their drawn weapons.
Mirron could hear Jhered and Harkov both bellowing for some form of order. Screaming at the defenders to look past the ice rushing across the Eternal Water and to prepare for what was coming after it. But their words were getting lost in the increasing clamour in which panic grew, threatening to explode.
Yet there was a fascination in Mirron that would not be ignored. The sick feeling deep in the pit of her stomach and climbing into her throat told her the dead were very near. She could imagine the dead walking under Gorian's control, moving inexorably forward, just as Harban had told them.
What Mirron had trouble with was how Gorian could control the dead and form ice simultaneously. It shouldn't be possible. Every mote of research in the Ascendancy pantheon said that it couldn't be done.
She couldn't help herself. She reached out to the energy map Gorian was using to drive the ice forwards. It was beautiful, stamped with his personality. He'd always been the most accurate of them all. There were few stray strands of energy. So little flailing at the edges of the map and wasting precious stamina.
Gorian's map of ice was pouring both over and under the lake. It was dark at its centre, and a blindingly bright blue at its edges. She could see immediately what he had done. So simple and so effective. A classic circuit. In another life, Father Kessian would have been proud. He was taking the living energy from the water, draining it through his body and stripping it away to another place. It left the aura of a deep dusas night and without the depth of life to combat it, the water encased in the map froze solid.
Mirron sought on, moving her mind down, far into the outflow tunnel where Gorian had to be and where perhaps her son stood by him. The more her mind probed out, the more concentrated the feeling of nausea became. It churned in her stomach and fogged her thoughts. She gasped and leaned back against a wall, reacting sharply to the frost that covered it, the intense cold shearing straight through her cloak.
Swallowing the saliva that filled her mouth, Mirron opened her mind further. The flat, cold negative energy of the dead, for that's what it was, threatened to swamp her. But there was something else there. Something pure and bright which drew her on. Long before she felt him she knew it was him. Her son. Kessian. Standing among the dead, standing with Gorian whose aura pulsed with power and greed. It was a disturbing life map. Distorted from that which she remembered even that short time ago when he took Kessian. There was a sensuous beguiling purple wreathing the tight map of his body. It was like sickness though it wasn't the normal dull grey.
Instead, she let Kessian's aura fill her. She could almost touch him, feel him. If only there was a way to tell him she was near. Gorian might sense her but Kessian wouldn't and her life map could not form a communication. So close but it felt like a thousand miles apart. She dragged in a sobbing breath.
'I'm here, my love, I'm here,' she said.
A spear of pain drove her to her knees. The purity of Kessian's life map had a dark heart and the most gossamer-thin of paths connecting him to Gorian. Trembling, she sought the reason for the bleakness infecting her son. The truth brought, clarity, fury and horror.
There was a voice nearby though it sounded distant. She hadn't realised she'd gone so far within herself and into the energies that flowed and formed around her in the cavern. She felt herself being shaken. Gently at first but then more roughly. She drew back, shutting out the multitude of colours and lines her mind could see. She focused.
'Mirron.' It was Jhered.
'Paul,' she said. It was little more than a whimper but she remembered the anger and let it lend strength to her voice. 'He's using my son to control the dead. I know what he's doing and I know what he wants here. That bastard is using my son.'
'Then we have to stop him,' said Jhered.
The noise in the cavern was suddenly intense as Mirron's normal senses reopened. 'We—'
'Mirron.' Another shake of her shoulders. Jhered hauled her to her feet and stepped back. 'Later. Concentrate now.' 'What can I do?'
Mirron cast about her. There was panic on the island. She could see Harkov amongst them, standing to the fore and urging steadiness and courage. From out of the outflow they came. The dead. Shambling, slipping, falling and rising. But moving on, never stopping. Coming for the island.
Mirron gaped. The sickness boiled in her throat and the scratching of the ice captured her. A silence spread across the island. Every Karku voice was stilled. Distantly, gorthock could be heard in the tunnels, keeping back the Tsardon. The sound of boot and metal scraped over ice filled Inthen-Gor. The dead spread like flotsam from a wreck washing towards shore.
'What can I do?' she repeated.
Jhered looked at her, demanded her attention. Despite what he was witnessing, he alone seemed to retain control. 'You're an Ascendant. Work your talent.'
'But he'll know I'm here if I act.' 'God-embrace-me, I hope so. He needs scaring off.' 'What can I do?'
Jhered frowned, then pointed. 'It's ice, Mirron. Melt it.'
He turned and ran back down the path away from her. He was shouting at Harkov to bring the Karku to readiness and not to take a backward step. That he'd be with them soon. A boat waited for him.
'Stupid girl,' muttered Mirron, feeling a flush of shame.
Melt the ice. Easy.
There was heat within her, heat from the fire at her feet and from every blaze that still illuminated the cavern, giving shape to the ghastly advance. And her target was everywhere.
'Out in the deep, Mirron.' Jhered's voice floated up to her. 'And care for the dead. Don't burn them. They can still feel the embrace of God.'
'No, Paul,' she said quietly, letting the fire everywhere coalesce and thrum through her body, amplifying with every heartbeat. She moulded the energy, projecting it forwards. 'At the mouth of the beast.'
Heat marked a shimmering line in the air above the Eternal Water's outflow. Below it, the dead disgorged onto the ice plateau, heading for the island. All but invisible, heat washed down in two sheets, like the graceful slow opening of a butterfly's wings. Their edges struck the ice.
The dead moved on oblivious, while beneath their feet their platform was under attack. Steam clouded in the cold air, gouting up from the lake surface. Water poured over their feet. More of them slipped and fell but rose again, unconcerned. Blank. Gorian had done his work well. The ice was deep and solid. Mirron increased the heat, driving the sheets down, widening them too. They covered the whole outflow now and were still growing. The clouds of steam deepened, obscuring much of the dead advance.
She felt herself thrilling to the energy surging through her. So long since she had exercised her ability to such an extent. A jolt told her she'd broken through the crust and into the pure waters of the lake below. There was energy there she could use. Immediately, she released some of the fires in the cavern to regain their strength and pulled on the slumbering power of the Eternal Water.
Mirron felt it wash through her, a mighty force waiting to be tapped. She opened herself to it, relaxed her mind and let the deep blue trails modulate into the harsher lines of her heat construct. They lent intensity to the heat and it fed on the ice, driving it to water and sending more steam into the cavern and down into the outflow.
Fissures and fractures ran across the surface. The weight of the dead amplified the weakening. The result was inevitable. In great swathes, the ice gave way. The dead fell through into the chilling water. Shelves of ice reared up, spilling the helpless, expressionless walkers to splash and flail briefly before their armour dragged them down to the bottom of the lake.
'There to feel once more the embrace of God,' whispered Mirron.
Yet there was still work to do. Across the lake, the ice needed to be melted if Gorian's advance was to be seriously dented. Mirron also needed to find some way to interrupt the work that Kessian was, she prayed, doing unwittingly. And in the shallows, the dead still walked. Splashing in to threaten and engage the Karku, who were led by Harkov. There was something else nagging at her too. Another presence drawing on the lake's energy. Growing stronger.
Harkov saw the great mass of the dead, a thousand and many more, crash into the water and disappear from view. The steam obscured any struggle but not one of them made any sound. He thought he could handle the few that were left.
'Bless you, Mirron,' he said. 'Bless you.'
Around him, some modicum of confidence returned to the scared Karku.
'Stand firm!' he shouted, Harban translating his words. The Karku responded, his own soldiers among them urging courage. 'We have the numbers now. Strike hard. To stop them now is to help them return to God.'
He looked out at the dead still coming at them. He shuddered. Men and women in tattered Conquord livery. Karku in torn furs. Faces were blackened by frostbite, wounds gaped, jaws hung slack. Boils and sores covered pasty flesh. But the cold couldn't mask everything. The closer they came, the more the stink of decay grew, assaulting the nostrils. Resolving from the steam that still rose in clouds from the water and remaining ice came bodies that were literally falling apart. Limbs missing, bone showing through skin that had sloughed away, heads lolling where muscle had withered. Not all. Some, Harkov considered grimly, were fresher.
Harkov swallowed on a dry throat and gripped his gladius and shield tight. He sensed a shuffling around him. The dead were scant yards from them.
'Stand!' he roared. 'You have nowhere to run.'
He raised his shield, took a pace forwards and butted it into the face of a former Conquord legionary. The man raised no defence. The skin split from nose to forehead, revealing pale flesh beneath. Thin blood lined the split. The blow should have knocked him senseless. But he merely staggered back, rebalanced and came straight back in, sword raised.
Harkov paused. Against a fast, living enemy, probably fatal. Here, not so. The dead march was relentless but it was ponderous. What worried Harkov now was not their ability, it was how they would ever be stopped. Harban shouted and the entire Karku line engaged, roaring determination after Harkov's lead. The few archers they had, fired over the front ranks and into those still chest deep in water.
Next to the general, a Karku warrior buried his blade in the chest of a badly mouldering militia man bearing Gesternan insignia. The blow stopped him but only temporarily. And while the Karku tried desperately to drag the blade from his ribs, the Gesternan brought his gladius through waist-high and drove it into exposed gut.
'Dear God-embrace-me,' whispered Harkov.
He struck his enemy, though it was hard to see this victim as an enemy, once more with his shield, pushing him back, buying himself more time. He stared at the blank advance. No flicker of emotion, no recognition of enemy. Nothing. And behind the front rank the next walked on oblivious of the defence, pushing, pressing.
'Harban,' called Harkov. 'Tell your people. No killing blows. Disable them. Bring them down. It's our only chance.'