Ascendant's Rite (The Moontide Quartet) (44 page)

*

Elena drove Yimat backwards, feinted high and went low, driving her shortsword into his groin and pulling it out in a great spray of blood. The mage folded over and slumped to his knees, but as she jumped free she moved into the lee of a door that was flying open. A black-clad young man came out and saw Sadikh writhing in agony on the floor, not just because of a badly broken ankle, but the dagger buried to the hilt in his back. Molmar’s dagger. The skiff-pilot was back on his feet, burned and moving too slow; he looked up at the young newcomer and saw death coming.

But the young man hadn’t seen Elena. She darted in, ramming her sword into his side and kindling enough energy to blast through shields – but he wasn’t a mage and instead that energy exploded in his torso. The wound was lit from within, charring the inside of his ribcage and breaking his spine; his consciousness extinguished as he fell.

She was long past recoiling in horror at such things. She dashed into the room he’d emerged from, lifted a hand and blazed away at the first thing that moved: a Keshi girl cowering beside a large bed where a plump white man was chained, naked and faintly ridiculous. Her mage-bolt hit the girl in the face, blasting it to unrecognisable blackened bone – she hadn’t been a mage either. But the man on the bed most certainly was: he was Lord Rene Cardien, of the Ordo Costruo.

There was no time to free him; a pure-blood would have Chained him and she’d take far too long breaking it. ‘Don’t go away,’ she shouted and returned to the corridor in time to see Molmar cornered by two Hadishah. She blasted a mage-bolt into the back of the nearest, encountering shields, but at least it made the man spin round to face her, leaving Molmar fighting painfully against the other. Her link to Kazim told her that he too was hard-pressed, pulling at her gnostic resources.

She sent three blasts, almost too fast to separate, at her target, and the third breached his shield, leaving him unconscious on the ground.

‘Hey, you—’ she rasped, breaking her shape with Illusion as she flowed forward to help Molmar. The pilot-mage’s foe was momentarily bewildered to see two Rondian women coming at him – then his gnostic sight engaged and he saw her truly, just as she struck out with blade and gnosis. He managed to anchor his feet with Earth-gnosis and countered, parrying her blows desperately, while behind him Molmar slid ungracefully to the ground.

She pretended to give ground, drawing him away from the prostrate pilot-mage, until the Hadishah man bellowed triumphantly and lunged.

Kids! Do they teach them
nothing
?
She dropped under his blow and hacked through the frayed edge of his shielding at his knee, feeling her blade bite into the joint. The young man cried out in pain and couldn’t stop himself lurching sideways; as she realigned her weapon. She lunged, straight-armed, the sword pierced his belly and she wrenched it sideways viciously. He collapsed forward with a wailing shriek and fell next to his fellow mage.

A swish of silk caught her attention as the door opened between her and the room where Tahir and Kazim were still fighting. A majestic woman of mixed race emerged; she was dressed in a shimmering ivory gown, her hands cradling her swollen belly protectively. Her skin was almost black, but her hair was blonde and piled up on her head. She was festooned with jewellery, looking as if she was just going to a ball, but her expression was filled with hope.

For a moment Elena froze at the sight, until the pregnant woman was suddenly wrenched back into the room from which she’d come and a man with a crossbow emerged, firing at Molmar. He was barely six feet away – but the woman grabbed the crossbowman’s arm and the bolt punctured the opposite wall instead of Molmar. Before he could react, Elena launched herself at him, shoving the woman aside with kinesis and hurling a mage-bolt at the Hadishah. He shielded, dropping the crossbow and drawing his scimitar in one fluid motion; he caught Elena’s blow with a smooth parry then slapped at her with powerful kinesis, battering her backwards. His scimitar crackling with energy, his style all power and ferocity, he came after her and now it was Elena parrying frantically, forced to give ground and finding herself being driven back step by step until she was trapped against a wall.

She didn’t dare take her eyes from his darting blade.
Rukka, he’s good!

Then the Keshi coughed, his whole body convulsing as the head of a crossbow bolt burst from the middle of his chest. He staggered towards her, then fell onto his face.

Behind him the pregnant woman – possibly the most beautiful woman Elena had ever seen, and that was even before she’d saved her life – was holding the emptied crossbow with a satisfied smirk on her face.

‘Darling,’ she said to Elena in Rondian, ‘if you’re here to rescue us, I am your blood-sister for ever.’

*

In the half-second Kazim calculated he had, he twisted and saw three identical young women coming at him, their blades virtually invisible. Gnostic sight showed the true image and he ignored the rest, catching her up in a kinetic hold and throwing her at Tahir, who was midway through some kind of Fire-spell involving the braziers. The girl fell into the middle of it and was immolated, screaming in agony and terror as she was torched. To his credit, Tahir went pale and immediately tried to douse the flames, but the girl had stopped screaming already . . .

Enough of this.
Throwing all his strength into the blow, Kazim unleashed a kinetic push of barbaric simplicity and monumental strength:
Ascendant’s
strength. Tahir’s attention was far less on his shields than it had been, for his mouth was shaping the word ‘daughter’ . . .

A moment later he was a boneless pile of flesh and blood sliding down the cracked and broken wall. The concussion from the spell recoiled, and Kazim wobbled like a newborn colt, then fell to his knees. He crawled to the fallen Hadishah girl, but she was beyond help: her blackened skin was blistering and peeling before his eyes and her hair and her clothing were crumbling into ash. Her eyes were pools of yellow fluid. He could hear her mind screaming, a silent howl of agony that wouldn’t stop.

Killing her was a kindness.

He was pulling his dagger from her chest when Elena lurched in. ‘Kaz?’

He waved a hand in reassurance and clambered slowly to his feet. Then Kekropius slithered through the hole in the wall the statue had made, followed by his kin.

‘Kekro!’ Kazim gripped his hand in relief. ‘Glad you made it.’ He took a deep breath and looked back at Elena. His strength was regained, and his blood was up. ‘All right, who else do we need to kill around here?’

*

The pregnant beauty in the ivory-coloured gown named herself as Odessa D’Ark, a pure-blood mage from an original Ordo Costruo family, and the man she’d killed was Narukhan Mubarak, the younger brother of Rashid Mubarak al-Halli’kut, the Emir of Halli’kut. Narukhan was also the father of her unborn child. She was utterly unremorseful about his death.

‘They
bid
for me,’ she told Elena in her deep, fluid voice. Her dark eyes were examining both Elena and Kazim analytically. ‘What strange auras you have . . . ?’ Then she saw the lamia and her eyes bulged. ‘
What in Hel
—
?
’

‘Later,’ Elena said. ‘Right now we’ve much to do. But you’ll have the story . . .’

It took an hour to mop up the rest, and the lamiae did most of the fighting. All the senior Hadishah – Narukhan, Tahir, Sadikh and the others on this floor – were already dead, and without them the rest, low-blooded and demoralised, either fled or surrendered. Kazim freed Rene Cardien from the Chain-rune – set by Narukhan himself, Odessa said – then the four of them went from room to room, freeing the rest of the prisoners.

After penning the remaining guards in the dungeons below – and remarkably clean and civilised dungeons they were, compared to Rondian ones, Elena thought – they turned their attention to the children’s compound. They weren’t greeted as liberators however, and the children clung to their Keshi mothers in terror, clearly convinced they’d be slaughtered. And even the Rondians were aghast at the snakemen.

Finally Elena, Kazim, Kekropius, Rene Cardien and Odessa D’Ark, with some of the released prisoners, convened in the central records office, on the ground floor, to take stock. Elena had already checked on Molmar, and set one of the Ordo Costruo women to look after him; he was in pain, but awake. They’d lost only two lamiae – the element of surprise combined with terror at the sight of the snakemen had been decisive and once the resistance broke, there had been little more fighting.

‘How many are you?’ Elena asked the freed Ordo Costruo, translating the Rondian to Kazim through their link.

Rene Cardien’s dignity and natural pomposity had flooded back now he was fully dressed. ‘We’ve freed fifty-three of our Order, Lady Anborn, as well as another fourteen magi.’

‘What are your loyalties?’ she asked, and he looked at her strangely.

‘To our Order,’ he declared, as if her question was ridiculous.

‘Though a few of us are rethinking our principles of neutrality,’ Odessa D’Ark glowered.

‘Some of us weren’t given silk and jewellery,’ growled one of her colleagues, a middle-aged grey-haired women also sporting a bulging stomach.

‘Narukhan dressed me this way, Clematia,’ Odessa snapped back. ‘He liked to fuck well-dressed women. Perhaps you’d prefer I was beaten instead?’

‘We were,’ a young blonde girl with a black eye scowled, then silently mouthed the word ‘slut’.

‘Enough,’ Elena said tersely. ‘What of the fourteen non-Ordo Costruo?’

‘Crusaders, like me,’ replied a young man with pale skin and lank black hair. ‘I’m Valdyr of Mollachia. My brother and I were captured during the Second Crusade.

‘How old were you then?’ Elena asked – Valdyr looked no more than twenty, the same age as her nephew. They’d found him naked and tied to a bed, a Keshi girl hiding beneath it, trembling in terror. She didn’t know much about Mollachia; it was a mountain kingdom bordering Midrea and Schlessen, wild lands with strange customs and a bloody history.

‘I was ten. I was my brother’s bannerman,’ Valdyr replied. ‘We were ambushed, and I’ve been here ever since.’ His eyes bored into Elena, then trailed sideways and focused on Kazim. ‘I’m going to make these Noorie scum pay.’ A few of the others, men and women both, growled approval.

Of course he feels that way . . . most will. But it means he’s useless to our mission.

‘Where’s your brother?’

The boy’s face fell. ‘He went with the Godspeakers.’ The betrayal in his voice was painful to hear. His brother had clearly been his hero.

Lock a man in a room with no one but a priest to listen to and that’ll happen sometimes
, Elena reflected. She’d seen it on both continents. She gave Valdyr a sympathetic look, then turned back to Rene. ‘How many children did we recover from the other compound?’

‘One hundred and eight under six. Nearly thirty women are still wet-nursing – I would guess half of those mothers have gained permanent gnosis through pregnancy manifestation.’ He shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Three more Keshi women are pregnant and also likely to gain the gnosis; they are bearing my children.’ His voice had a hollow tone.

she told Kazim.

‘We’ve recovered five windskiffs,’ Kazim put in, ‘but even with our own craft, that’s not enough to transport everyone.’

Odessa fixed Elena with a hard look. ‘Then the path is clear: those who are loyal to us, or aligned to the West, we take away. Those who aren’t must die.’ The controlled hatred in her voice spoke eloquently of what she, and the rest, had gone through.

Elena returned her gaze levelly. ‘I’m sorry, but you’re misunderstanding the situation, Magister D’Ark. We’re not here on behalf of the Crusade, and we don’t murder children.’

‘If you knew what we’d gone through, blood-sister, you’d feel less inclined towards mercy. I’ve been
longing
for the chance to strike back at these bastards.’

The other freed prisoners stirred uncomfortably.

‘Who are you, then?’ the matronly woman, Clematia, demanded of Elena. ‘And
what
are you? Your aura is very strange.’

‘And what of these snake-creatures?’ asked a grizzled Pallacian mage-knight called Beglyn, the oldest of the crusader captives. ‘What in Hel are they?’

Elena looked sideways at Kazim.
Well, here goes . . .

‘They call themselves lamiae; they were originally constructs made by the Pallas Animagi,’ she said, starting with the simpler issue.

‘That’s illegal,’ young Valdyr said indignantly.

‘That’s never been a problem to the Sacrecours,’ Odessa replied disdainfully.

‘They’re abominations, nevertheless,’ Beglyn growled.

‘We didn’t ask to be made, but we were,’ Kekropius said. ‘We have children, we have lives and dreams. And we have the strength to deal with anyone who wishes us ill.’ His eyes trailed over the old knight, challenging.

‘Laws are made for reasons,’ Beglyn countered, not quite meeting his eye.

‘Are you always this grateful to those who save your life?’ Elena asked. She looked at Rene. ‘Can we agree that whatever the crimes of the Pallas Animagi, Kekropius’ people are alive and as sentient beings have the right to remain so? I believe that the Ordo Costruo have taken that view in the past, in similar matters?’

The Ordo Costruo magi looked at each other uncomfortably, then they all nodded agreement. The Crusaders were slower to do so.

‘What the empire sows, the world reaps,’ Rene said resignedly. ‘What troubles me more, Lady Elena, is the nature of your . . . erm . . . Kazim Makani. I’ve seen his kindred before . . .’

‘What are you saying, Rene?’ Odessa asked. ‘What is he? Another construct?’

This time the explanation took longer – the first mention of the word
Souldrinker
sent hands to periapts and wards tingling; the tension rose as Elena showed them the way her aura and Kazim’s were entwined. The abhorrence on the faces of all but a few was clear and she could see their attitudes were shifting from gratitude to fear that their rescuers were worse than their gaolers.