The Royal Sorceress (50 page)

The breeze shifted and the stench grew stronger. A moment later, the first of the revenants stumbled into view. It had been a child before it had been bitten and forced to rise from the dead, still wearing the rags of a street urchin. Gwen, who had discovered that most street urchins were lucky to have any kind of roof over their heads, wasn’t too surprised. They’d probably colonised the outer edges of Soho and become the first victims when the revenants started their shambling expansion. She drew in a breath as the second revenant appeared, followed rapidly by dozens more. Eerie inhuman eyes – some dangling from eyestalks – fixed on the barricades. No, she realised, it was an illusion. The revenants didn’t seem to be looking at the living defenders, but they could still sense them. It was indisputable that they had some way of navigating the living world. Maybe they could smell the living. Gwen was uneasily aware that she hadn’t had a bath for nearly two full days.

She jumped as the dogs started to bark, the sound blurring together into a single deafening howl of grief. Some of them struggled to pull free of their handlers, trying to flee the undead horde advancing towards them. Others whined and tried to burrow into the mass of humans, seeking safety among their masters. Their growing panic was contagious; Jack barked orders, moving from place to place to reassure his followers. Gwen was mildly impressed, even though she didn’t blame the rebels for being on the verge of panic. Revenants didn’t just kill their victims; they brought a fate worse than death. There were churchmen who claimed that to be bitten by a revenant was to lose one’s soul.

Jack lifted one hand, almost casually, and a burst of flame flared into life. It roared out towards the advancing horde, which marched right into the fire without hesitating. Their undead skin blackened and then caught alight, sending the lead revenants to the knees as their legs collapsed. They kept trying to crawl forward until the fire destroyed their ability to move at all. Gwen pinched her nose – the stench was growing worse by the second – and created her own wall of flames. The revenants simply kept coming, even as they burned to ashes. She allowed herself a moment to believe that they could stop the horde, but it was self-delusion. The shambling creatures kept pushing forwards, the lead ones shielding their followers from the worst of the fire. They’d made a terrible mistake, she realised suddenly; the burning creatures would spread the fire to the barricade. The fire would rapidly spread out of control.

“Tricky,” Jack agreed. He narrowed his eyes and concentrated. A wave of magic scythed forward, pushing the revenants back as if they were caught up in a gust of wind. The flames raged onwards, destroying hundreds of undead bodies, but there were always more behind the burning corpses. Gwen added her magic to Jack’s, yet it wasn’t enough to hold them back forever. And some of the burning undead – having been thrown against the buildings – had set fire to the surrounding street. The barricade might become useless even before the revenants reached their prey.

Gwen scowled and picked up a small cobblestone. Infusing it with magic, she hurled it into the mass of revenants. It exploded, blowing dozens of them into dead shreds of flesh. Jack laughed and copied her tactic, hurling dozens of stones of his own with terrific force. Not all of them had been infused with unstable magic, but it hardly mattered. Breaking the bones of revenants would make it much harder for them to shamble forward – and yet still they kept coming. A flaming monster crashed against the barricade and clutched onto the wooden structure with an inhumanly strong grip. It was rapidly dispatched by one of Jack’s men, but the damage had already been done. The flames that had been consuming the revenant had spread to the barricade. It was coming apart right in front of the defenders.

“Fall back,” Jack ordered. Gwen hadn’t heard the instructions he’d given to his subordinates, but it was clear that he’d expected to lose the barricade. “Swordsmen forward; cripple the bastards. Everyone else to the next barricade!”

The swordsmen moved forward, carrying swords that would have been the envy of a Roman legion – and completely outmatched against a modern army with rifles and cannon. They were hellishly brave, Gwen realised, as they started to slash out at the oncoming revenants, cutting off their heads and arms in smooth motions. Physical wounds didn’t bother the undead – if they felt pain, no one had ever proved it – but they could be crippled, forced to slow down or even stop. The swordsmen were quicker than their foes; they leapt in, slashed out and then leapt back before the moaning creatures could grab them with their rotting hands. Some of the swordsmen weren’t quick enough; Gwen saw a man caught by one of the revenants, his throat bitten by the monster and his living blood spilling over the cobblestones. He fell, his wound already taking on the chilling dead greyness of the undead. Gwen summoned her power and incinerated his body. There was nothing else she could do for him.

Another swordsmen fell to the ground, where he was swarmed by three revenants. He’d concentrated on dealing with those facing him and ignored the one crawling forward towards him, using its hands to pull itself across the cobblestones. It had been so badly wounded that, as a man, he would have had no hope of survival, but the dark power animating its rotting flesh hadn’t cared, as long as there was a chance of biting into human flesh. Jack yanked the swordsman out with his magic, but it was already too late. The revenants had killed him – and damaged his body so badly that there was a good chance he wouldn’t reanimate as one of the revenants. Jack incinerated him anyway, just to be sure.

The heat from the fires was growing stronger. Gwen watched as slums burst into flames, fires that posed a danger to the living and undead alike. They’d been emptied long ago, she told herself, and hoped that she was right. Anyone trapped inside would burn to death a long time before they could be rescued. The fires might well start destroying the barricades, unless it could be brought under control. But instead, Jack seemed to be using his powers to pick up blazing pieces of wood and throwing them into Soho. Gwen was puzzled at first, and then she realised that Jack intended to incinerate the entire district. If there were other revenants hidden within the abandoned buildings, they’d be destroyed before Master Thomas or a necromancer could reanimate them.

“We’re going to have to fall back,” Jack said, catching her arm. “We can’t stand here.”

Gwen looked around, puzzled – and then horrified. Most of the swordsmen had fallen or were in retreat, leaving the advancing waves of revenants unimpeded. Jack summoned fire again and blazed it across their legs, sending many of them tumbling down into the ashes, but there seemed to be no limit to their numbers. Gwen wondered if Master Thomas had visited a graveyard and reanimated every rotting corpse in their coffins. It sounded absurd, yet…she had no idea if it was even possible. The books she’d read had been long on warnings about the evils and dangers of necromancy, but there had been very little hard information. There was a slight shortage of necromancers willing to share their illicit knowledge with the Royal College, knowing that they would be executed after they had been drained of all of their dangerously-won insight.

She nodded, allowing him to pull her into retreat. She tripped over something – a dead body – and hit the ground, just in time for one of the shambling monsters to reach for her. Absolute panic overcame her, only for a second, and flames blazed up all around her body, just before she hurled herself into the air. She had a nightmarish glimpse of a dead face as she rocketed into the sky, undead hands reaching for her. The flames seemed to be pushing her upwards; for the first time, she could look down on London as dawn rose over the city. She could hear the sound of battle all around the city, leaving her to wonder, once again, just how many revenants had been raised from the dead. And how many of those who had tried to stop them would have been bitten and turned into the undead themselves?

She dropped down next to Jack, who looked over at her grimly. The force they’d had on the first barricade seemed to have been reduced sharply; it tore at her that she hadn’t even seen those men fall. Their bodies would have been destroyed by their fellows or started the process that led to their reanimation. She hoped it was the former; behind them, where she had launched herself into the air, the undead were crawling over the bodies of the recently living, heading towards the next barricade. Surely, she told herself, they had to run out of bodies sooner or later. How many had died in Soho?

But the area had been contaminated by disease long before necromancy had been anything other than a legend, she reminded herself. There could be hundreds of thousands of bodies under the city, just waiting for their chance to reanimate and go forth to prey on the living. They were the ultimate soldiers, in a sense; they not only felt no pain, but they were utterly expendable. Their lives – their undead lives – could be thrown away at will. She had a vision of shambling armies laying siege to castles, scrambling over their own fallen to finally climb over the walls and attack the living within.

“It doesn’t sound good,” Jack admitted. Gwen realised that he’d been listening to some of the rebel Talkers. “They’ve broken through the entire first ring of barricades and they’re advancing on the second – some of them have even burst out of the sewers and attacked us from the rear. Master Thomas knows what he’s doing, all right.”

Gwen nodded, wearily. She hadn’t had any proper sleep – and the effects of Master Thomas’s magic potion seemed to have faded away completely. Her body, she realised dully, was on the brink of shutting down. She accepted a mug of wine and several cakes gratefully, realising that the rebels were taking a few seconds to fortify themselves before the battle resumed. The shambling horde of the undead seemed to be pausing, almost. They almost seemed to be stumbling aimlessly, as if they’d lost the force that was guiding them. Gwen realised that Master Thomas had perhaps overreached himself. No wonder their tactics were so basic; the person directing them had to concentrate on several different fronts at once. She
knew
she was right. And yet…something wasn’t right.

Sure
, part of her mind muttered.
You’re fighting beside rebels against the government to which you swore an oath, trying to stop undead monsters unleashed by a man who is sworn to prevent such monsters ever menacing England ever again…of course something isn’t right, idiot!

Jack looked down at her, his face tired and streaked with sweat. Gwen reached out and took his hand in hers, grateful for the human contact. Jack smiled at her, despite his tiredness, and Gwen felt her heart flutter. Her heart was meant to pump blood around her body, all of the autonomy textbooks had stated. They had never mentioned the feelings of…desire, of love, of…everything. Her heart seemed to be pounding like a drum.

And then everything changed.

She looked up as a figure dropped down from high above, wearing a long black cloak that seemed to swirl around him. The tip of his cane rapped out as it tapped against the cobblestones. Master Thomas had arrived.

Gwen drew in a breath. This was not going to be easy.

Chapter Forty-Three

J
ack let go of Gwen’s hand, staring at his old tutor.

Master Thomas had seemed ageless; he’d seemed a man who had carried the weight of the world on his shoulders for over thirty years and somehow refused to allow it to wear on him. He had lacked a peer since the other two Masters had died; Jack knew that his tutor had hoped that Jack would grow to take their place. But now…Master Thomas looked old, old and tired. The only thing holding him upright was his sheer will to live and succeed.

Jack took one breath, and then another. He had no illusions about the difficulty of facing, and beating, his old tutor, even with Gwen by his side. Master Thomas had had more years than both of his opponents combined studying – and practicing – magic. He’d very likely forgotten more than they’d ever learned; no, Jack reminded himself, Master Thomas forgot nothing. He looked upon his old tutor and remembered the days when he’d learned magic, before he’d learned the truth behind his origins. Master Thomas had taught him purpose – and how to fix his mind on a goal and to work out how to achieve his aims. Jack knew that his rebellion would not have succeeded without those lessons…

…And he’d loved the old man. Jack’s real father would never be known, unless the farms had kept records of which man had impregnated which woman. There was a very strong possibility that Master Thomas might
be
his father, although Jack privately doubted it. Master Thomas might have been old, but he was still a virile man; if Masters beget Masters, there would be far more Master Magicians in the Royal Sorcerers Corps. His adopted father – the man he had thought was his real father until the day he’d discovered the truth – hadn’t really shaped Jack’s development. It had been Master Thomas who had taught him, disciplined him and – eventually – made him a man. Betraying Master Thomas had hurt more than being forced to flee Britain for France.

Master Thomas was wearing his black suit and top hat, leaning on his silver-topped cane. Jack wasn’t blind to the message Master Thomas was sending, even as he allowed himself to hope that Master Thomas was as tired as Gwen and himself. He represented authority and order, the authority of the British Empire; the Empire that ruled more than a quarter of the world. And Master Thomas, the man who had played a major role in building that Empire, would uphold it with his last breath. Whatever he might have thought – about the farms, about the wars of conquest, about the transportation of anyone who dared to object to the Empire’s dictates – he would keep it to himself. He was the Empire’s man.

Gwen spoke first, despite the exhaustion that Jack could hear in her voice. “Master,” she said, her voice almost breaking, “this is wrong.”

Master Thomas ignored her, his gaze fixed firmly on Jack. It had been the first time they’d seen each other for five years, apart from their brief encounter weeks ago at the ball, where Jack had been trying to escape. Master Thomas had taught him…and even though Jack had developed some tricks of his own, there was no way of knowing just how much Master Thomas knew. Combining Talking and Charming…Jack had never thought of that, not in the five years he’d spent experimenting and teaching in France. And he’d refused to even
think
about necromancy. There were some things that were best left in Pandora’s Box.