Ascendant's Rite (The Moontide Quartet) (16 page)

‘Why did you not come to us?’ Quintius called sourly, interrupting the niceties.

‘I have also had to journey far to get here,’ Malevorn lied. ‘This was the easiest place to find that was equidistant. I have come from far east of here.’

Adamus and Quintius exchanged looks. The crozier cut to the chase. ‘And you have news of the Scytale?’

Malevorn tapped the scroll-case hooked to his sword belt. ‘I have more than just news of it.’

Surprise and greed flashed across both men’s faces. Adamus leaned forward in the saddle. ‘
You have it?
’

Malevorn couldn’t resist puffing out his chest. ‘Not here. This is just the case it was found in.’ He tossed it into the air and used his gnosis to drop it into the crozier’s outstretched hand.

Adamus examined it carefully while Quintius watched, suspicion plain on his face. ‘Well?’ the commandant demanded.

‘This is genuine,’ Adamus admitted. ‘I’ve held it before, in Pallas. Where did you get it, Brother Malevorn?’

So I’m your ‘Brother’ again, am I?

‘The Dokken had indeed taken it,’ Malevorn said, ‘but they realised they couldn’t decipher it. I tracked them all the way from southern Kesh to the mountains of Mirobez, as they sought knowledge, until I was able to steal it from them. Since then, I have been on the run . . .’

‘Have they tracked you here, Brother Malevorn?’

‘I lost them weeks ago.’

Quintius nudged his khurne closer. ‘What is it you actually want, Andevarion? Your clear duty is to return this sacred artefact to the crozier and me. You will be amply rewarded.’

Sure I will. With a knife in the back.

‘You must excuse my caution, Commandant, but when I and my colleagues were beset at the Dokken camp you abandoned us – so you will understand that I don’t know if I can trust you.’

Quintius’ rugged face hardened. ‘You’re in a military unit, Andevarion. We had other issues to deal with. We trusted you and your comrades to hold the Dokken outliers at bay – it was you who failed, not us.’

‘I don’t see it that way, Commandant.’ Malevorn looked beyond the two leaders to the three riders behind them. He could see Artus LeBlanc, his old rival, among them. ‘The taunting from Brother Artus as my comrades fell around me, their bodies ripped apart, their souls eaten, still rings in my ears.’

Quintius threw an irritated glance over his shoulder. ‘Brother Artus might have overstepped, Andevarion, but it’s not his fault your comrades’ blades were slow.’

Adamus Crozier hissed at him to shut up and raised a hand to command silence, clearly concerned that the commandant was antagonising the only person who knew where the Scytale was. ‘Brother Malevorn, you have my personal guarantee of safety, and the right to the full rewards promised for the recovery this treasure. You will be publically acknowledged as a Hero of the Empire, and treated as such.’

Malevorn doubted his words meant a thing, but he bowed from the waist and let a look of relief cross his face. ‘Then please come ahead, my Lord Crozier. I have something for you.’

The churchman’s face lit up as he heard Malevorn’s words. ‘I’ll handle this. You stay where you are,’ he told Quintius. He dismounted, handed the commandant his reins, then walked confidently to the stairs leading to the dais Malevorn was standing on, his hands palm-side up, as if to demonstrate that he had no aggressive intent.

Malevorn wasn’t fooled for an instant. The air around the crozier was positively crackling with energy.

As soon as he gets to the top of these stairs he’s going to realise I’m a Dokken.

Malevorn had chosen the Valley of Tombs for this encounter for three reasons: first, because there was no one here to interrupt or report their preparations; second, because of the warren of tunnels and chambers beneath the sand and stone; no one could be scryed, but they could reach the surface in moments. And third, because it was a maze, strung-out groups could be split up and isolated.

But they were taking on eleven of the empire’s best-trained warriors, in a confined area, where even the element of surprise would be short-lived. Any advantage would be lost if they didn’t take down some of the Inquisitors in the first few seconds.

He stepped from the rim of the tomb, into the shadow of one of the giant alligator-men, putting himself out of Quintius’ line of sight. He heard consternation in the voices below.

He’d specified sunset for very clear reasons: when the sun was gone, spirits were more easily summoned.
After all, what is this place but an enormous cemetery?

While Huriya had started charming Xymoch, the Gatioch packleader, Malevorn had set to work on binding dead spirits to freshly culled bodies from the nearest villages. It had taken three weeks, but he had eighteen walking corpses –
draugs
– waiting in the tombs below. Now, as the last rays of the sun vanished from the west and the valley fell into shadow, just as Adamus Crozier stepped onto the platform, he released their bindings.

The crozier’s soft-featured face stiffened in sudden alarm as he saw Malevorn, closer than expected and with a totally unexpected aura boiling with tentacle-like strands:
a Dokken
! His shields flared as he stared, and Malevorn realised he was trying to determine whether he faced the real Malevorn Andevarion.

Malevorn didn’t give him time to work things out: vultures shrieked high overhead and dived through the purple hazy sky, beasts howled somewhere among the tombs, the ground churned as his draugs began to crawl from their tombs – and his scimitar leapt to his hand, igniting with gnosis-fire as he attacked the crozier.

*

Huriya Makani stepped from the subterranean passage into the twilight in the wake of a flood of shapechangers roiling into the open air in a variety of reptilian shapes. It was a real relief to be out at last; they’d been hiding underground for three days to avoid scrying, using the vast underground network the Gatioch kings had left behind.

Bringing the Gatti Souldrinkers onside had been a delicate matter: Xymoch their leader also carried the soul of an original Ascendant, borne through body after body for five centuries. He might have strangely lidded eyes, tattoos and twisted religious beliefs, but he was Huriya’s equal in power, a man to be reckoned with who controlled his pack with vicious discipline. His people lived in terror of the brightly coloured snakes that were constantly slithering about his arms and torso.

As well as employing her own natural cunning, she had needed once more to draw on Sabele’s knowledge, and she
hated
that. Every time she used Sabele’s intellect, she could feel the old spider weaving more intricate webs around her brain. But it had been Sabele’s wisdom that had made the difference in persuading Xymoch to aid them, instead of turning on them as he’d been inclined.

Now they had finally been unleashed, the Souldrinkers poured eagerly into the fray, bursting forth from the tombs in a dozen different places; most in reptilian forms that hissed and snapped as they stormed towards the Inquisitors.

Sixty-odd Dokken and eighteen of Malevorn’s draugs against eleven Inquisitors . . . I hope it’s enough.

The Rondians were split in four groups: five in the central plaza, two pairs skulking on the flanks and another pair circling overhead on winged constructs, concealed by gnostic illusions. The Souldrinkers were also divided. On all sides she heard shrieks and yowls as burly shapechangers in half-human forms stormed ahead of her towards the plaza. Her shields formed as she walked, flanked by men of her group: the boar-headed Sydian Tkwir and Toljin the Vereloni. Hessaz was somewhere on the far side, seeking a vantage point from where she could best employ her lethal bow. The rest of her pack were aloft, to deal with the venators and their riders.

Below the clamour was another sound: a faint hiss that rose as they walked. She heard shouting, felt staccato bursts of gnostic energy and light flashed through the gaps in the stone. Then flame washed overheard, torching the leading Dokken before dissipating on the shields of those behind. Xymoch’s people screamed in fury and stormed along their designated approach routes. Huriya extended her own awareness as she followed Tkwir; her role was to cripple the minds of enemies from a distance, as she had done when they’d captured Malevorn. She had found to her shame that she did not deal well with direct threats.

She took up position in the mouth of a ruined stone crocodile overlooking the plaza. Toljin stood beside her, scimitar drawn and snorting like a bull. She watched as Dokken ran to engage the Inquisitors before they could reunite. In the sky above, the two venators were now clearly visible as they fought off a swarm of shape-changers. The venator riders were spraying bolts of mage-fire as they descended, and one bolt of lightning caught a winged reptilian Dokken and charred him to black ashes that drifted on the wind. She sought the lightning-wielder and saw a man on a rearing khurne in the plaza. She narrowed her eyes and reached . . .

. . . into the khurne.

Her intention had been to close down the beast’s mind, a comparatively simple spell, for the minds of beasts were more vulnerable than human ones, but what she found was a landscape so strange it sucked her right in. This was a place where a beast’s memories merged with those of a human in a bizarre swirl of thoughts: horse- headed women ploughed arid farms under searing suns; winged men galloped across the skies, wrapped in chains of throbbing sound and light. Commands from the voice of a god drove the khurne this way and that, bewildering Huriya until she realised in shock:
There’s a person inside that creature!

She reached again, differently this time, gripped and spoke her own command while sending a blaze of energy into the link that bound the creature to its master. The rider’s wards weakened her spell, but it still took effect: the khurne reared up unexpectedly, hurling the Inquisitor from its back, and drove its horn into the unwarded back of the man in front, punching through the steel back-plate and straight into the man’s flesh. The rider bellowed in agony, his sword slipping from his numbed grasp.

Blades plunged into the khurne’s side from two directions, but Huriya had already let go. She reached for another, but this time her attack was slapped aside as the Inquisitors adapted to the new threat. Heads turned in her direction and she shivered in sudden fear as an armoured gauntlet rose: the lightning-wielder was now standing beside his fallen steed with blinding white light boiling in his fist.

He released it straight at her – just as Sabele, lurking like a viper, made a bid to seize control, leaving Huriya paralysed before the Inquisitor’s bolt—

*

Malevorn’s scimitar blazed against the crozier’s shields while his left hand was hurling kinetic force into the churchman’s flank. If Adamus hadn’t been prepared, the sword would have skewered his thigh, then the kinesis would have battered him into the wall, but it didn’t work out that way.

Using his crosier staff to deflect the scimitar, he stood his ground, his expression one of mild disappointment, as if a promising child had let him down. He twisted the shaft of the crosier and blades slid from either end as the shepherd’s crook at the top became a sword-catcher. He flowed into a fluid, well-practised stance, his full lips baring his perfect teeth in a fixed smile.

‘So, they’ve turned you against us,’ he noted sadly. ‘It can be undone, Brother.’

Malevorn hesitated, as he was no doubt supposed to.
Is it true?

If it was, it could change all he was about to do.

Or does it? They betrayed me before . . .

He closed down that line of thought and lashed out.

*

Andevarion has betrayed us – I knew he would!
Artus LeBlanc yanked his blade from the flank of Brother Nayland’s khurne, the rogue one that had spiked Brother Magrenius. He glanced up and saw Malevorn Andevarion fighting Adamus Crozier, but before he could react he found himsef shielding against a reaching mind of massive strength: someone was trying to snatch control of his khurne. He looked around, trying to spot the danger, and spotted a small Keshi woman standing in the mouth of a giant stone statue above. But before he could take her on, a crowd of snake-headed, tattooed men burst into the plaza, roaring their fury and hatred.

Nayland, now dismounted, loosed lightning at the Keshi woman, while LeBlanc widened his shields to protect the beast beneath him and edged sideways to allow Commandant Quintius to close up, forming a circle around the fallen Magrenius. Quintius was blasting away with mage-bolts while Margrenius used necromantic-gnosis to keep himself alive, then clambered to his feet with the broken horn still in his back. Nayland blazed more lightning, but a glance told Artus the space where that little Keshi bint had been was now empty.

Then the plaza turned into a vision of Hel.

As fire poured from Quintius’ hands, painting the square a lurid orange, the flagstones at the sides rose and flipped over, and from beneath rose ragged bodies, long dead, but lit with a feral violet light. Snakes were coiled about their limbs, and more serpents boiled from the ground, moving in a wriggling wave towards the embattled Inquisitors.

LeBlanc roared in defiance, blazing mage-fire along his sword at the nearest walking corpse. Pure-blood force went searing through flesh to the trapped soul beneath and the draug shrieked, crisped and fell, toasted snakes dropping from it like blackened noodles. Quintius gushed fire too, torching a lizard-headed woman brandishing a spear and the three men behind her.

The four outriders who had been guarding the main party’s flanks signalled that they were coming in.

<
We’ll link up and fight our way out of this!>
Artus crowed.
<
We’re invincible!
>

He blasted another animated corpse, then set a wall of flame blazing across the path of the snakes, keeping them at bay. Brother Magrenius might have been half-dead, but he kept fighting; he and Brother Nayland duplicated Artus’ wall, enclosing them in a circle of gnostic-fire. Outside it, the shadows had become black. His khurne, locked to his will in case that Keshi girl reappeared, stood steady as a rock, poised to fight if needed.