But he could not take up
arms and walk the wall. He was barely strong enough to fly and his eyes were
weak save when the room was darkest. There was something he could do, however,
or there might be something: to gather his pitiful philosophy with both hands
and make a weapon of it, and brace himself for the inevitable disappointment.
He had been a seer of Dorax once, but throughout his years of teaching it had
been a rare thing to even attempt to pluck at the world’s weave. He feared
that, after so long, true magic was beyond him.
‘Close the curtains,’ he
said, and one of his students did so, drawing the patched blinds to cover the
falling sun. He had four in his class now: one other Moth who had likewise
found his home society unbearable, a cynical but gifted Spider girl, a
dysfunctional Beetle youth who could never sit still, and a Fly who came every
tenday but never seemed to learn anything. He would need them all now, for
whatever faint help they could give.
‘We are going to embark
on a ritual,’ he told them, when they were all seated on the floor of his room.
Between the walls and his desk there was so little room that their knees were
all touching in their circle. ‘This ritual is to attack the Vekken army in ways
that the material and mundane defences of this city are incapable of. Precisely
what effect we can manifest I am unsure but, as I have taught you, the power of
magic stems from darkness, fear, uncertainty, ill luck. All those gaps between
the lighted parts of the world.’
‘All things that can’t
be tested,’ said the fidgeting Beetle youth. ‘That can’t be proved.’
‘That is so,’ Doctor
Nicrephos agreed, ‘and very close to the heart of the mystery.’
‘Doctor, is this going
to work? I mean, really?’ asked the Spider girl. She cared, he knew, more for
her politics and her rumours than for her studies.
‘Yes, Doctor, because I
was thinking about finding myself a sword and going onto the wall,’ the Fly
added. ‘I don’t see we can do any good here.’
‘But that is the very
attitude you must banish, if we
are
to do good,’
Nicrephos insisted. ‘Belief is what you require. If you go into this without
belief then, yes, we will fail. You must open your minds to the possibility,
allow room for that uncertainty.’
That they looked
doubtful was an understatement. With no other option, though, he pressed on.
‘Listen to me, close your eyes, all of you.’
With poor grace, they
did so.
‘I require your help,
your thoughts, your strength in this. It is a great magic that I intend, that I
could not manage on my own. I want you to bend your thoughts on the Vekken
camps. Many of you must have seen them from the walls, or from the air. Think
of all the Vekken soldiers, hundreds and hundreds of them, with their tents all
in lines so very exact, and inside those tents their palettes laid out just so.
Imagine them going to sleep there at night, all at the same time, like some
great machine. But they are not machines. They are men and women as we are.
They have minds, although those minds bleed into one another. I want you to
imagine that mind as though you could see it, the mind of all the Ant-kinden
there, like a great fog hanging about their camp.’
He could see it himself,
in his mind’s eye, a great shining jelly-like creature that squatted in and
about all those orderly tents, the minds of all the Ant-kinden, touching and
connecting.
‘We are going to insert
something in that mind,’ he went on, after he had given them a good long chance
to picture it. ‘We are going to put something dark in it. There are always areas
of the mind that are ready to accept darkness. These Ants love certainty and
order, and so they must fear doubt and chaos. You must think of all the doubt
and chaos that you can, imagine taking it from your own minds and placing it
within that great lattice-mind of the Vekken. All your fears, all your worries,
all your pains and guilt, you must dredge these up for me and project them into
the mind of the Ants.’
He stopped talking,
feeling the pull of concentration build up between them. He was straining now,
his heart knocking in his chest. It was so very long since he had done anything
like this, and it was like trying to gather a great thing and push it up a
steep slope. His students were little help, doubtful, embarrassed, reluctant to
look at the darkness within themselves, and more than that, there was the great
and overarching ceiling that was Collegium, city of progress and science, of
merchants and scholars and artificers, and a hundred thousand people who did
not believe.
It was no good, he
realized. He had not the strength to force his own will out of the city, let
alone onto the Ants. He was too old and had been too long amongst these people.
Now his one chance to
aid in the defence of his home was faltering. His students were beginning to
shuffle as the silence dragged.
He called out, in his
mind,
If there is some power that hears me, please help me,
for I have not the strength! I will promise what you ask, but help me, please!
He heard one of them,
the Spider girl, draw her breath in hurriedly, and then there was a sudden pain
in his skull that made him arch his back and choke. It was cold, pure cold,
reaching along his spine and prying its way into his eyes. He felt tears start
and freeze on his cheeks. Something had grasped him with thorned hands that
thrust into his mind.
And, despite all this
pain he heard the words in his mind, a monstrous, mournful chorus that said:
What is this that calls? What is this that begs of us?
I am
Doctor Nicrephos of Collegium
, he said desperately, because the pain and
the pressure combined were on the point of stopping his heart.
If you have strength then lend it to me, for my city is under
threat and I would send my thoughts onto our enemy. Please, if you know any
pity, lend me your strength!
How
bold you are
, the voices said.
Old man, you have not
so many breaths yet to draw. Why seek to save that which will so soon outlive
you? We have no pity but we do have strength. What claim have you on us?
Ask
what you will
, Doctor Nicrephos promised.
Please aid
me, and I shall do as you ask.
He felt his request hang
in the balance. He knew his students had all felt this change too, that the
room was cold enough for frost to form on the curtains, and that their breaths
were pluming visibly in the dim air.
We
shall aid you, but you shall perform a task for us – and it may mean your death
that much sooner.
He would have agreed, he
was sure, but they were not seeking his agreement.
The
compact is made
, the dirge of the voices continued, and he felt the
cold, that had already tested the limits of his tolerance, double and redouble,
flood into the room, through his students, and then out, across the city and
the walls, to poison the minds of the Ants. It fought its way clear of the
great mass of disbelief that cloaked Collegium, and set about the work he had
planned for it, and he knew that the Ants would not sleep easily tonight, nor
for many nights to come, because the nightmares that his new ally could bring
forth were worse by far than the feeble horrors that he and his students could
dream up.
Home at last. Stenwold
made himself a cup of hot herb tea, hearing Balkus stomp into the spare room
and collapse on his bedroll, probably still wearing his armour. He should have
been bodyguarding all day, but Stenwold had told him to fight up on the wall,
and Balkus – Sarnesh Ant-kinden at heart – had been only too happy to empty his
nailbow at the Vekken. More than that, of course, as there had been savage
close-quarters fighting there and Balkus had been in the thick of it, holding
the line on the north wall. A head taller than almost all the other fighters,
with a shortsword in one hand and a captured Vekken shield in the other, the
man had provided a tower of strength for the defenders.
Stenwold sipped his tea,
found it bitter, and poured more than a capful of almond spirits into it. He
needed to sleep tonight, because tomorrow would be no more forgiving to his
nerves. Perhaps Balkus would die, or Kymon. Perhaps he, Stenwold, would.
Tired as he was, he
toyed with the idea of it actually being a relief. With Graden’s suicide,
though, he could not fool himself that way.
He drained the cup. He
knew he should be hungry, but he was too tired for it, too numbed by
exhaustion.
I am
not cut from this military cloth
. The sight of the dead sickened him,
whether their own or the enemy’s. Brave men and women all, doing what they were
instructed was right, and Stenwold, of all people, knew how history wrote over
such victims, and the truth of whether they had been right or wrong got washed
away in the tide of years.
I
hope Tisamon is doing better than I am.
He felt the absence of the
Mantis-kinden keenly. Yes, the man was intolerant, difficult and primitive in
his simplistic concepts of the world, but he was loyal, and could be a good
listener, and Stenwold had known him a long time.
He levered himself up and
trudged his way up the stairs, kicking his ash-blackened boots off halfway,
knowing that he would trip over them in the morning but too depressed to care.
He left his leather coat hanging over the banister. His helm remained
downstairs on the kitchen table.
He slogged on into the
darkness of his room, unbuckling his belt, and stopped.
He was not alone.
In the darkness, with
even the moon tightly shuttered out, he felt fear. A Vekken assassin? A Wasp
assassin? Thalric, perhaps? He had been given no time, these past days, to
brood on such danger. What better opportunity than this to do away with him?
Stenwold reached for his sword and recalled that it was still with his coat,
ten yards and as good as a thousand miles away.
And then another part of
his mind whispered something. Was it a familiar sound, or a scent, that
informed it?
‘Arianna?’ he said
hoarsely. When there was no reply he fumbled for a lantern and lit it with
three strokes of his steel lighter, his hands trembling.
She was sitting at the
end of his bed, a young and slender Spider girl with ginger hair cut short,
gazing at him with wretched indecision.
‘Did . . . they send you
to . . . ?’ he got out.
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘Stenwold, I . . . didn’t have anywhere else to go.’
Ludicrously, he felt his
unbelted breeches slipping, and tugged them up hurriedly. ‘But . . . you could
have escaped?’
‘The Vekken would have
killed me if they caught me – all the more so because Thalric is with them now.
And . . . I have nowhere to go, Stenwold. I am outcast from my homeland and a
traitor to the Rekef. And to you, also. I have
nobody
left to turn to.’
‘Except me?’
She looked up at him. He
momentarily thought that she might try to flirt with him, or speak of the
connection they supposedly had shared, but there was now nothing but mute
pleading in her eyes.
‘Arianna, I—’
‘You can’t trust me, I
know. I could be an assassin. I could still be spying for the Rekef. Stenwold,
I am at the end of everything now, and I have no more. Because I tried, in my
stupid, small way, to save Collegium – and I got it wrong, just like everything
else.’
He put the lantern on
his reading table, words failing him. There was too much, far too much, going
on within him. He no longer felt tired, but more wide awake than he had been in
days. He was trying now to navigate through a maze of pity, caution and a
lecherous recollection of their time together that shocked him with its
potency. He had thought himself past such yearnings, and yet seeing her here,
against all odds and beyond any common sense, was an aphrodisiac, a tonic to an
aging man.
If
she is my enemy, I cannot give in to these feelings.
And if she was
truly as desperate as she claimed, how wrong would it be to take advantage of
that? Of Arianna the student of the College.
But, also Arianna of the
Rekef, the imperial spy gone off the rails. Impossibly, the thought of the risk
she could present only seemed to spur some part of him on.
She stood up abruptly.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I – I thought . . . I have no right . . .’
Without warning she was
trying to dart past him, but he caught her by the shoulders and held her there,
practically in the doorway. ‘Wait . . .’ he began.
The lanternlight brought
out the glint of tears in her eyes, and he knew that she could feign it all, being
what she was, but his heart almost broke with the strain of it.
She stared up at him,
the small breasts beneath her tunic rising and falling. ‘Stenwold . . .’
I am
carving my own coffin
. Perhaps it was the fatigue of these last days, or
the need to find some spark of life in such dark times, but he had now lost the
reins that could hold his desires in check. He bent down almost fearfully, as
though she were venomous, but he still kissed her, and she thrust her lips up
towards him.
When he awoke the next
morning and he turned over to find her there, warm and soft and alive, sharing
his bed, it all flooded back in on him, the pleasure he had taken, for which a
price was surely yet to be paid. Yet this morning, with the Vekken army already
assembling for its next assault, he felt more rested, more vital, than he had
in so very long.
Then there was someone
rapping on his front door downstairs, and he foresaw the chain of circumstance
exactly: Balkus answering the door and lumbering upstairs to deliver some message,
then not comprehending why his employer was sleeping with an enemy agent. He
pushed himself out of bed and slung a robe on.