‘There is a bigger snake here,’ Kazim laughed, gesturing at his crotch, ‘and it’s very much alive.’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m still angry with you.’
He hung his head, which made her heart wrench. Then he looked up, his face ashamed. ‘Alhana, I was wrong. You know so much more than me. I should always listen to you.’
She looked at him, felt the wall of anger inside her shudder. ‘Kaz, we can talk later—’
‘No, we talk now, before we go into danger again.’ He touched his heart. ‘I love you: I know this in here. I do not care what you did before you met me, only what you do now. If you tell me that it is right that two who love should be allowed to, then you have seen more than I have and I hear you. I have been brought up knowing only one way, the path of Ahm. But the men who taught me to love Ahm also manipulated me into killing Antonin Meiros and his followers. So I have learned to differentiate between the pure love of Ahm and the words of those who claim to speak for Him. I still believe in Ahm, the All-God, but I also believe in my love for you.’
She stood and stared at him, awestruck. It was the longest speech she had ever heard him make, and it was obviously from his heart. She suddenly felt horribly unworthy as she realised that to Kazim, love was a celestial state, a state of permanent ecstasy, the sort of love invented by poets and singers.
Kore’s Blood, I’m only a woman, not a goddess. How can anyone live up to such dreams?
He dropped to one knee. ‘Please, take me back into your heart.’
She swallowed, blinking away stinging eyes.
Kore’s Blood, must he make such a scene?
But how could she resist such fervour? It made her feel that maybe some kind of goddess really was inside her. ‘You never left it, you fool.’ She went to him, cradled his head against her stomach, then drew him to his feet and kissed him hard. She wondered at herself, to let herself be transported by such a swell of emotion.
But the mission intruded. They were in a room of a palace full of enemies and they’d spent too much time with their guard down already. She put a finger to his lips. ‘Later, when we’re safe, I’ll let you make it up to me,’ she whispered.
He let her wriggle free. ‘You are right, my love. We need to be ready for anything. Pleasure can wait.’
‘Good grief, you’re growing up.’ She went to the door, listened for sounds. ‘All clear. Listen, we need to rest and prepare for the next stage. If Mekmud’s spies are correct, Sordell is just next door, practising his divining, but he’ll be locked and warded in, and those wards will be too strong to break without bringing all of the keep down on us. We need to wait until the emir’s man arrives to summon Rutt to dinner, then we’ll jump him as he comes out.’
‘Are you sure he’ll eat with these Church knights?’
‘No,’ she replied frankly. ‘They may well hate each other: Rutt is a pain in the arse, and so was every Kirkegarde knight I’ve ever met.’
‘ “The angels sing in harmony, but in Shaitan’s realm all is discord”,’ Kazim quoted. He looked impressed with himself, and exhilarated now that the shadow between them had passed. ‘That is from the
Kalistham
: My tutor would be astounded that I can recall it! I will make a Scriptualist yet.’
‘I very much doubt that,’ Elena scoffed. ‘Aren’t they supposed to be celibate?’ She drew her sword from the leather bag and took up her station beside the door. Kazim took an armchair and cradled his scimitar. Time passed, the dusk-bell chimed, then came a distinctive knock at the next door to theirs.
That should be the servant, summoning Rutt to dinner.
She waved Kazim closer and, taking a deep breath, started running over the spells that she would bring out first, the initial shielding tuned against Necromancy and the first mage-bolt to engage Rutt’s shields while she cleared the door and let Kazim and his blade through …
She heard a second knock on Rutt’s door –
he’ll be deep in concentration
– and a muffled reply. A few footfalls sounded outside her door, then another knock. ‘Dinner, Lady Mara?’ a man called hesitantly in Rondian with a Jhafi accent.
She waited, for a count of three, then made a shuffling noise and dropped into a low tone to mimic Mara’s voice. ‘I am coming.’
The servant walked away quickly while she looked at Kazim and strained her ears to hear Sordell’s door open.
Right … here goes …
She burst from the door, the gnosis flaring about her, shields and wards coming to life at once.
They saved her life.
Three crossbow bolts hammered into her shields. One stopped dead, fusing the spell, and the other two were deflected just enough to miss, though one tore her tunic at the shoulder. Ahead of her she glimpsed four white-clad Kirkegarde soldiers, three crossbowmen and one knight, almost filling the small chamber. Rutt Sordell was pressed against the far wall, and beside him something in a ragged grave-shroud floated above the tiles.
She froze in shock, criminally slow to react as the knight looked straight at her and necromantic-gnosis flashed. Memories of what Sordell had almost done to her in Brochena paralysed her mind, the dread of death-magic almost enough to overturn her all her training and experience. She stood like a deer surprised at a watering-hole.
Behind her, the windows and door to the lake blasted open in a hail of splinters and glass.
*
Kazim had moved when Elena did, scimitar in hand and shields lighting up around him – then she stopped and went into a fighting crouch while crossbow bolts flew around her. Two zipped into the room, one striking the wall, the other splintering on his own shields. Over her shoulder he glimpsed a man with curly grey hair, then he saw a shrouded shape that his brain refused to engage with. Elena had gone stock-still, but he could see the crossbowmen drawing their swords and sensed the gnostic forces rise even as the lake-side door behind him crashed open.
Ahm on High!
He grabbed Elena’s shoulder and jerked her backwards, out of the path of a withering blast of purple gnosis-light. It flew across the room and caught the chest of the first Kirkegarde knights to burst into the room from the lake-door. The knight screamed and fell backwards onto the man behind him. Kazim hurled kinetic gnosis and slammed the main door shut, as Elena clung to his left arm, uncharacteristically shocked. Kazim threw a hasty ward over the door-frame, sealing it shut, and shoved her from him.
‘Alhana! Move!’
The second Kirkegarde from the lake-side threw off his dead comrade and charged. He was a mage and his shields flared about him as he launched himself at Elena, but Kazim intercepted him, blocking his blade and forcibly hurling the man backwards before spinning to face the main door as it rattled and his wards were assailed with a flurry of blows.
‘Kazim, the lights!’ Elena pulled herself together and her straight sword flashed out, blocking an overhand blow from the mage-knight. She parried again and again, giving ground.
Kazim gestured at the oil-lamp and hurled it at the next man in, but the newcomer threw up his buckler and slapped the lamp to the corner of the room. It shattered and flaming oil caught the edge of the wall-tapestry and blazed up as the rest of the room went dark. Steel on steel belled through the suite as he called on his gnostic sight and darted past Elena. Fire flickered on his blade as he thrust it through the breastplate of the man with the buckler, who crashed sideways, bellowing in pain.
Behind him the door shivered again as Kazim cut down the next man and was trying to angle in on Elena’s foe when the mage-knight picked her up in a telekinetic grip and hurled her across the room, battering her against the wall beside the main door. Elena’s shields protected her enough that she bounced off the cracked plaster, but she fell heavily and lay gasping.
He’s a pure-blood
, Kazim guessed as he roared and hurled himself at the man’s back, Ascendant-power gnosis empowering his blade as the man spun to face him.
The Kirkegarde knight met his blow with both a gnostic-shield and his physical buckler, the energy crashing together, but Kazim’s scimitar crunched through leather and brass and left a chunk of the shield on the floor. The man’s eyes widened at the unexpected power of the blow, but Kazim didn’t give him any chance to centre himself; he flew at him, flowing into a series of movements ingrained by months of training: jab, slash high, feint another, then low, cutting through his weakening shielding, then slashing open his thigh to the bone.
Blood gushed as the man grunted and staggered. Another Kirkegarde burst in from the lake door, but Elena had recovered her breath and rolled from her prone position, driving her blade straight-armed up into his groin. Her foe stiffened, dropped his sword and clutched her blade, eyes and mouth agape, then she twisted and let him fall away as she came upright.
Kazim was still battering at the mage-knight, keeping his mental shields fixed and strong, giving the man no time to seek the gaps in his gnostic defences. A complex combination Elena had taught him opened up the man’s defences and he pierced first his shield arm, then his shoulder, before he beat the mage’s blade aside and drove his own through the breastplate and into his chest. As the man’s face went slack and his legs began to give, Kazim kissed him, inhaling his soul. At some level the intimacy shocked him – flashes of a life seared into him, then evaporated – but what he felt most was the blazing energy that coursed through him, turning the world momentarily scarlet and gloriously vivid. He was dimly aware of Elena behind him, thrusting through the shattered window into the chest of a man waiting to enter via the door. He was crackling with puissance as he turned back to the main door just as it shattered.
*
Rutt Sordell knew enough to let Etain Tullesque go ahead; you never went first into a fight involving Elena Anborn. You skirted it, and awaited your chance. But Tullesque was no fool either. He turned to the shrouded figure beside him, something hidden in a bekira-shroud that stank of Necromancy.
The thing unhooded itself, revealing a visage of desiccated flesh clinging to bones and the hands of a week-old corpse. It was possibly female, probably Jhafi, with empty sockets lit with sparks of violet light. The stump of a tongue waggled as it gurgled its hunger, a trail of dark sparks glittering in the air as it lunged through the door, gnosis-light streaming from its hands. A thin cord of light trailed back to Tullesque’s hands.
Impressive … A Spectral mage.
His throat tightened, as it always did in the presence of someone whose skills outweighed his. The corpse had been re-enervated and then used to house an eidolon, but one with its own gnostic powers. It was the kind of Wizardry and Necromancy combination that few could manage. His fear of Tullesque went up another notch.
Tullesque didn’t follow it in; all his concentration was required to control his summoning, for the slightest break in his concentration would see the thing’s hold on this reality lost and in its last few seconds before collapsing it would flash back along that gnostic thread and attempt to take its summoner with it back to whatever Hel it had been plucked from. It was tempting to stab the Grandmaster in the back and provide just such a distraction, but Gurvon needed Elena’s head and Tullesque might just be the man to provide it.
So Rutt waited dutifully as the spectre flew straight at Elena Anborn.
*
Sweet Kore, an eidolon!
Elena recognised the thing that came through the door by the feel of its icy aura before she even turned. Her heart almost froze, but she threw up a warding of healing-gnosis, the only thing she knew that could counter such a death-summoning. She would have to trust that Kazim could deal with the three Kirkegarde pounding up the stairs at her back.
The spectral shape came at her in a rush of cold air, its aura sucking at the living and the dying. Motes of energy were flowing towards it like snowflakes swirling in a storm, and only her shielding protected her, and Kazim behind her, as he hacked at the newcomers one by one. She dimly felt the Kirkegarde men succumb to the spectre’s life-sucking aura and die, but all her concentration was focused forward as she fought the life-sucking spectre trying to absorb all the energy sources in the room. The burning tapestry went out, and the water in the basin dried up. The dead python crumbled to dust on the bedclothes.
But she could still fight, just. Staggering towards it, she gripped her periapt in her left hand and fuelled her blade with all the life-energy she could dredge up. She raised her sword and swung – but she was too close; the spectre’s hand flashed out and grabbed her sword-arm by the wrist. For a single second, life warred with death, then the thing’s eyes froze her, caught in the terror of crumbling to dust in its hands.
Flesh began to quicken on its arm where it gripped her and she saw the skin on her own arm begin to flake and turn purple. She felt the most incredible weakness flow through her and her legs started to wobble.
Then steel flashed and the eidolon’s hand was severed from its arm. The appendage dropped and crumbled while the spectre yowled. Then Kazim used telekinesis to hurl the spectre away from him and back through the door, then slammed it shut. Elena dimly heard three muffled screams, but all her effort was going into just standing, staring at her wrist where the shape of the death-summoning’s hand was burned into the flesh. She swayed and fell …
… into Kazim’s arms.
‘Alhana!’ he cried.
She looked at him dazedly. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here …’
Then everything went dark.
*
Rutt Sordell staggered aside as the shrouded spectre was hurled backwards, through the doorway, shrieking with rage. It struck Etain Tullesque and knocked him over, then turned on him. The Grandmaster grunted in shock as the spectre twisted and hung above him, its visage filled with hate for its summoner. Rutt could clearly see the spiderweb-thin thread of violet light that tied the Kirkegarde knight to his creation: the link that would allow it to pierce Tullesque’s wards and rip his soul out.