Isak tried to clear his mind, ignoring the fearful shrieks echoing up from the writhing mass below him. He tried to black out the glee on the faces of those jumping deliberately down as the screams intensified, closing his eyes and focusing on the magic surrounding him, finding a selfish refuge there. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing now, but he didn’t want to see what would happen if he made a mistake.
‘My Lord, what are you doing?’ cried Jachen, butting an attacker with his steel helm as the man grabbed his sword arm. They were holding the line, but it was starting to get desperate. The losses at the other pickets had been too great.
‘I’ve woken one God here this evening by mistake,’ Isak muttered, trying to gain a grip over the magic flooding his body: he needed the energies to be settled, not raging. ‘Here, in their own temples, no minstrel’s magic will stop them incarnating.’
‘Them?’ Jachen almost shrieked. ‘You’re summoning Death and Nartis? Oh Gods, you’re going to summon Karkarn?’
‘Let’s see what we can see,’ Isak murmured and turned the magic inward to seep into his soul, drawing his senses out into the hot night air. He found his bearings as the confusion of battle and pain cut through him, stirring strange eddies in the drifting currents above. He could feel the warmth of latent power coming from the temples, the familiar call from Nartis’ house only a few-score yards away, though overshadowed by the looming shadow of Death, so close behind. After a moment he heard quiet voices echoing through the dark, then the scraping of knives and a low, bestial pant, just on the edge of hearing.
A moment of doubt made him pause as he recalled waking the Malviebrat in Saroc. Adding to their troubles really would be the final nail in their coffin. If, somehow, he brought something other than his intended target into being, there would be no going back.
He held his breath and listened, reaching out as far as he could with his mind to whatever lingered on that plain. A dark cloud hung over everything, and he had to push at every step, trying to find a way around the dulling effect of the minstrel’s now-visible magic. After another few dozen heartbeats, Isak made out a number of indistinct presences nearby. He couldn’t distinguish them, though he knew they were separate entities. Five stood closest to him. He felt their eyes on him as, lingering at the edges of his perception, they became aware of his questing tendrils of power.
Now they all turned towards him, and there was a taste to the air that sent a shiver through his body, a strange mix of anticipation and bloodlust that felt far from divine. Isak didn’t know what else there was to be found here - on sanctified ground they surely couldn’t be daemons . . . but he could sense a gratified ache coming from the beings watching over the slaughter. He wasn’t reassured, but now there was no going back.
As he hesitated, pondering the consequences, he got more from his surroundings: the all-consuming hatred radiating out from the horde about to overrun the dwindling lines of soldiers, and a growing terror even closer to hand. Screams cut through the fog of his mind and reverberated in his very bones as the fear of his comrades -his
friends
-sliced into his skin like hot knives.
He could no longer delay. Whatever the result, he had to try and save them.
Consequences mean nothing if you’re dead,
said a soldier whose face he couldn’t remember, a memory from years back. Carel? It was the sort of thing the veteran would have said in a maudlin moment before stomping away to his bed, but when had it been? A second wave of screams, louder and more insistent, forced Isak to put the matter from his mind. There would be time to remember, if he lived through the next hour, and to do that he needed whatever fell creatures remained in this place, watching and waiting.
He reached out to the shadowy figures and touched them with his mind. At first they recoiled, rising up towards the clouds, then he opened the Skulls and directed their vast power towards the spirits.
Dear Gods, let my ignorance not prove the death of others
, he prayed silently.
The entities drew closer, grasping fingers reaching greedily for the roaring streams of power. Isak gasped and shuddered at the searing pain of so much magic rushing through his body, suddenly fearful as lines of heat ran down his arms and legs. Like claws cutting to the bone, the energies from both Skulls took a savage grip and Isak felt a distant cry ring out in the night. The scar on his chest burned like a flame and he realised Xeliath, wherever she was, was pained by what he’d done. Isak’s fear deepened.
His lips were cracked and blistered; they tore open, spilling blood down his chin. Only then did he realise he’d commingled Xeliath’s scream with his own. Somewhere he heard Aryn Bwr cry out, and felt his hand tighten around the hilt of Eolis. The twitch of movement was enough to awaken him to what was happening, reminding him of his struggle on Silvernight, when the last king tried to take his soul.
Isak drew in a huge gulp of air, and as his lungs filled, he felt energised. There was no time now for elegance, so instead he used every ounce of strength in his body to wrench the fat, pulsating streams of magic away from the suckling entities, slowing the flow of power. His mind fell back into his body in time to feel himself collapsing back onto the unyielding stone, but in that moment he felt a wash of relief as the burning pain of rampant magic fled from his body.
His eyes flashed open, but for a moment all Isak could see was a dark blur up above and faint bursts of light as his head smashed back against the ground. Lungs burning, he took a raspy gulp of air and flailed wildly until he was sitting upright again. He tried to focus his vision until he could blurrily make out soldiers jumping back from trench.
‘Piss and daemons, what in the name of Death are those?’ yelled a voice nearby. A name,
Jachen
? It hovered at the back of Isak’s mind as his fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword. Jachen, Major Jachen: as awareness flooded back, he scrambled to his feet, coughing and heaving and blinking away the tears that were obscuring his sight.
More voices took up the call and a fresh wave of horror struck Isak, who reeled until he was steadied by an outstretched hand: the ranger, Tiniq, bloodied and battered, yet strangely more alive and potent than Isak had ever seen him before.
‘What have you done?’ the ranger snapped, his white teeth flashing in the dark. Before Isak could answer, a second shout rose above the clamouring voices of the soldiers.
‘Merciful Death, that’s the Burning Man!’ cried one man in terror. Isak and Tiniq could see the reason for the man’s fear: in the heart of the attacking mob stood a figure twice the height of a normal man, wreathed in flame with his hands outstretched, as though blessing the scrabbling citizens around him. Isak remembered a shrine they had passed with the Burning Man’s face painted on one of the frescos. He wore an expression of sheer agony as fire curled around his head. Isak could see nothing of the figure before him beyond the dancing yellow flames that soon began to spread out to the people around it.
‘Look, with the sword,’ Jachen called, pointing with his own blade at another newcomer to the mob. This one was as tall as the Burning Man, but wearing armour and carrying an enormous sword, skin shining with an inner white light, illuminating gaunt features and grey matted hair falling about the shoulders.
Isak froze; this one too he recognised from the walls of a shrine -probably depicted in the temple behind him as well, standing guard to one side of the entrance.
Jachen found his voice again, almost sobbing with fear as he named the newcomers. ‘The Soldier—And oh Gods, the Wither Queen! Look, they’re all here -
all
of them, the Headsman and Great Wolf . . . the Reapers have come for us!’
Isak grabbed Tiniq by the shoulder and hauled himself upright, almost driving the ranger to the ground as he did so. Forcing his parched lips apart, he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Hold your positions; keep the line!’
‘My Lord?’ said Jachen in disbelief, staring at Isak as though he too was a monstrous figure from the Land’s darkest myths. ‘You summoned the Reapers?’
Isak hesitated.
I think so -it must have been me, but how was I meant to know?
‘I summoned help,’ he replied flatly.
‘The Reapers?’ Jachen yelled. ‘The five most violent of Death’s Aspects?’
Isak turned back the mob where a panic-stricken howl of fear was spreading through their disordered number.
The Reapers; you should have known. Of all the Aspects of the Gods likely to be in attendance as the last people in this city prepare to die, which did you expect to be close enough to incarnate?
‘We’re defending the temples; they are Aspects of Death,’ he said calmly.
‘They’re the Reapers,’ Jachen wailed, almost incoherent in his fear. ‘They kill any
thing
and any
one
! The Wither Queen doesn’t stop to check whether her victims
prayed
to her that morning!’
Isak took a step towards him, Eolis raised and blazing with a fierce light as crackling cords of energy flashed into existence, sizzling from his wrist to the tip of the blade. ‘Hold your ground,’ he repeated, fighting to raise his voice above the frantic screams ringing out all around them. ‘If they want to take one of mine, they’ll have to put me down first.’
‘You’re going to fight the Reapers?’
Isak felt the familiar growl of anger rising inside. ‘I’ll not bloody stand aside and watch if they turn on us. Aspects of Death or not, they’ll fear the Skulls I carry, or I’ll make them do so quickly enough.’
The mobs were in disarray; some were still trying to attack, oblivious in their ferocity, while others were trying to flee the Temple Plaza. Most just stood and stared.
Isak found himself doing the same as a prickling sensation of awe washed over him. Stalking like daemons through a field of wheat, the five Aspects of Death tore a swift and bloody swathe through Scree’s remaining citizens. The Soldier and Headsman were cutting and hacking with a quiet, grim purpose. The Burning Man and the Wither Queen annihilated with a touch of their long, skeletal fingers. The Great Wolf bounded to and fro, its back strangely hunched, more like a jackal’s, and lacking the languid grace of a real wolf. Despite the clamour, Isak could still hear its excited snorts as it chased down those who tried to flee.
The air was filled with people shrieking, screaming, crying, wailing, and there, somewhere on the edge of hearing, Isak thought he heard an echoing laughter. For a moment he thought it had come from inside the temple, as though Death himself was revelling in the most unpleasant sides of himself, but everyone knew Death was impassive. Pleasure didn’t come into this, it was just the act itself.
Isak chided himself at being distracted and returned his attention to the terrible slaughter taking place. Within minutes the Reapers had killed more than his men had managed to take down all evening, but in this Gods-inflicted chaos it was even less of a battle than it had originally been. This wasn’t a desperate fight for survival, it wasn’t the grim repetition of deflect, strike, kill, each soldier trying to control the growing fear inside him as they faced an unstoppable horde. This was different, this was murder, out-and-out butchery, and Isak couldn’t quite believe it of Gods. He could see his own revulsion mirrored in the faces of the men around him.
And in an instant, the folk of Scree returned to their senses and a great wave of pleas and prayers emanated from the mob.
An icy hand gripped Isak’s heart. The minstrel’s magic had been undone, and the savage desires of Gods still gorged upon the minstrel’s victims, thanks to the power
he
gave them.
The old men of the wagon-train, where Isak had grown up, always said the Reapers taught a man what he was truly afraid of. Take anyone into a Temple of Death and look at the painted images: everyone, man, woman and child, would be able to pick out that one they feared more than the others. Isak had always believed the Burning Man was his; the idea of a man aflame made his skin crawl, but as he looked into the pitiless face of the Wither Queen, even his powerful limbs trembled. The other Reapers destroyed indiscriminately, but she seemed to take more than just life. As she caressed each terrified face with her long jagged fingernails, she looked into their eyes, and it was as if her dead-grey eyes tore the souls from each mortal body, as her loathsome diseases ravaged their flesh in a heartbeat. She bestowed upon her chosen pain of years in an instant, condensed and purified into the purest agony, and it was that pain that killed her victims as much as the diseases themselves.
Isak’s hand shook as the Wither Queen cast her gaze on a crowd of petrified, whimpering civilians. He wanted to howl with fear and guilt. He staggered a few steps back and turned to look at the temple. It was still and silent, the only light within coming from the two torches they had set by the arched entrance that now cast deep shadows over the interior. The high altar at the centre of the building was a solid block of darkness, untouched by the torchlight.
But I never meant this,
he thought through a daze as the surging energies from the Skulls howled in his ears and begged to be used.
How has this happened? These men have given their lives to defend what, a grand shrine to these daemons? They will have been told it was their duty to defend the glory of their Gods, and now they see the monsters their Gods really are—Or was this truly my fault? Did I do something to make them this way? Did they take something from me when they took the strength to incarnate?
‘
Stop them,
’ said a voice in his head. The scar blazed hot on his chest as he felt Xeliath’s presence on his shoulder. ‘
They are here at your invitation, they are yours to command.
’
‘Xeliath?’ Isak said aloud, before realising he had no need. ‘
Where are you? Can you see them?’