Ascendant's Rite (The Moontide Quartet) (84 page)

Once Yash had slipped away, Alaron climbed to the Dom-al’Ahm. The dome had been blasted open as if from within, leaving a ragged hole blackened by fire. Beyond the ruined shrine the takiya was strewn with dead bodies – Keshi slaves perhaps, and many armoured men. Beyond the prayer platform was a debris-strewn plaza in front of a broken-walled castle which looked to have been used by the Rondian high command, judging by the banners still hanging there. The ruins were smoking. The close-packed buildings of the town west of the fort looked lifeless. Whatever was left of the army itself was gone; the stench and wreckage of a hastily abandoned camp stretched away to the south.

The Rondians have been attacked and fled, but the Keshi don’t know that yet . . . Or maybe they do know something’s happened, but they aren’t coming near until they know it’s safe . . .

He re-entered the ruined Dom-al’Ahm, making his way through the halls to see what lay on the north side of the shrine. The edifice still echoed with recently discharged gnosis, prickling Alaron’s skin as he crept through deserted corridors strewn with fallen plaster and broken mudbricks. He found another plaza on the north side, scattered with more corpses and a pair of smouldering windskiffs; beyond that was a storm-tossed sea of tents, many burnt out. He couldn’t see anyone, but hooting noises could be heard in the distance – the sounds were too bestial to be human, but there were words in the calls, he was sure of it.

What’s an Ablizian?
he wondered.
Is that their call?

He heard Yash and the others and was heading back inside to the central dome when he glanced backwards, through the open doors, and froze. There was a figure on the takiya, a man-shaped silhouette with a lean waist and broad shoulders, carrying a spear. It walked slowly about, prodding at the bodies with the butt of its spear. Firelight illuminated its face, and Alaron stared.

So that’s an Ablizian . . .

The creature was, just as the soldier had described: animal-headed – this one had an eagle’s skull, man-sized and rising from a thick neck and muscular shoulders, a feathered crest reaching all the way to the small of the back. It had a human torso with arms and legs, though, and walked upright. It was naked but for a loincloth, and its aura was a disturbing swirl of dark gnosis.

And it saw Alaron, even in the shadows and shrouded by illusion.

They stared at each other, and Alaron caught the sense of an encounter unplanned. With his inner eye engaged, he could feel the hum of communication. He reached out with mystic-gnosis to tune into the creature’s mind and isolate it, but touching its mind was like bumping into a hornet’s nest: the buzz increased and he caught an image of himself as seen through the eyes of the creature, projected to dozens of others. Unseen eyes blinked and turned his way from all over the smouldering ruins of the camp. Within a few seconds another Ablizian appeared, this one lizard-headed; it came gliding over a tangled pile of charred bodies and wrecked wagons some sixty yards away, and others followed. Their movements were eerily coordinated, as if the same mind was animating them all, as they closed in from all sides.

Alaron sent a warning to his group:

Corinea commented as she and Ramita emerged from within the shrine, along with Yash, Gateem and Meero. The air thrummed as more Ablizians strode into view or floated over the top of the broken buildings, looking down at them with bright, curious eyes.

Corinea had an intent look on her face. ‘Don’t engage with them mentally. You’re not ready for that, any of you. Strengthen your shielding. Do you see the colours in the aura? They have access to every affinity and at great strength, just like you.’

Alaron gulped. More of his Merozains were arriving as the Ablizians formed a ragged line facing them across the corpse-strewn plaza. Beyond them were the smashed walls of the castle. There were now twenty beast-men before them, and even without engaging his gnosis he could sense more arriving; there was a
thrum
of combined might, growing as their numbers increased.

Corinea obviously sensed it too. ‘They’re building to something . . .’

‘Then we must interrupt them,’ Ramita said. She gathered gnosis-fire in her hands as the young monks formed their own defensive line on the edge of the takiya.

Alaron told his brother Merozains.

He pulled down his hood to open up his peripheral vision, then addressed the beastmen, calling, ‘Who are you?’

The closest of the Ablizians, the hawk-headed one he’d first seen, looked squarely at him, then blinked. A single incredulous word escaped its beak, a reedy, piping sound: ‘
Mercer?
’

The sound didn’t come from a human mouth;
it didn’t even form his name properly. But the tone of contemptuous disbelief told him all he needed.

Malevorn can see through these things’ eyes . . .

‘
Watch out!
’ he shouted as each of the Ablizians raised their left hands in identical gestures and blazed at him with gnosis-fire. He hurled himself to the ground.

The Ablizians struck at exactly the same instant, with more power than Alaron had ever faced – more than he had ever even conceived – and the only thing that saved him was that he was already halfway to the ground before the coruscating light struck. His shields were torn apart and totally destroyed by the concussive force of that energy, which struck as one, in the exact same spot – but they had aimed for his heart, and he had already been moving. If even one of them had been out of true, or aimed lower, he would have been cut in half.

Instead, he found himself lying in the dust, twenty yards behind his fellows, winded and shaken, as the twilight lit up with molten violence.

*

Anger pulls the bowstring
, Ramita’s family’s guru had been fond of saying. Since they’d stolen her child, Ramita’s anger had been close to the surface whenever she thought of Huriya Makani and Malevorn Andevarion. Her control had snapped when Alyssa Dulayne attacked the monastery. When Alaron vanished in a livid blast of fire, her instant thought was that no one could survive such a thing, not even her new husband – and that kindled fury and terror in her.

As the Ablizians reeled in the wake of their own strike, she and the Merozains lashed out in response; unlike their attackers, however, their return fire was ragged and ineffective and sprayed off their shields – except for Ramita’s. She sent twinned kinesis-blows at the hawk-headed creature who’d spoken: a savage double-punch from thirty yards away, with all the unique strength that Antonin Meiros had bred into her. The first blow slammed into the Ablizian’s shields with overwhelming force and tore them open. The second, unopposed, shattered the creature’s face, driving the shards of bone and break back into its brain cavity. It dropped, and the rest of the Ablizians staggered, as if they’d all felt the blow.

They are joined somehow
, the practical part of her brain reported. The enraged part shrieked in glee and sought another target as her aura blazed with light . . . and began to pull her body into a form that could contain and control her fury.

Dar-Kana-ji, be with me!

Behind her the Merozains gripped their staves; before her the Ablizians turned and sent a coordinated blast of energy – at
her
. The air before her blazed like sunlight through coloured glass, both brilliant and blinding, and her shields went rose and gold at the stresses – but Ramita was already in motion, blurring forward, so the blasts shredded layers of shielding, but never quite reached her. Her second blows crushed another Ablizian and they all recoiled again, but before they could properly regroup, Yash and his brothers charged into them, picking out individual foes and forcing them to fight one-on-one, preventing further united strikes. Alone, the Ablizians immediately proved less effective, and half were bludgeoned down in seconds – but now more were pouring in from all sides.

Dar-Kana howled inside Ramita’s heart and she let that wave of fury launch her forwards, through a storm of mage-fire that never quite touched her.

Then her heart lurched with savage exultation and the beast inside her roared. She had heard a voice she loved: Alaron had re-entered the fight, battered, but running freely.

*

Malevorn Andevarion had been waiting in a tower of the ruined castle, watching the net closing on the small group of intruders: a mere twenty to his eighty. Then he saw them: young men in grey robes with wooden staves –
wooden staves! And they have the gnosis?
He hesitated, not quite crediting what he saw.

Corineus exclaimed inside his brain, and if there was any emotion in his voice at all, it was incredulity, if a god could feel such a thing.

The peace-worshippers?
Malevorn didn’t know what to make of it, but as the Zains and his Ablizians closed, he realised there was nothing peaceful in the blows these monks were striking, and nothing ineffectual in their shielding, either. Alaron Mercer was lying in a crumpled heap –
ha!
– but there was a Lakh woman among them:
Ramita Ankesharan
.

Did Mercer somehow unravel the Scytale before I took it off him? Surely he didn’t waste the Ascendancy on a handful of Zains?
It sounded inconceivable, but already he’d lost half a dozen or more of his Ablizians. He shouted through his links for the rest to converge, and flowed through the air himself to join the fray.

Alaron might look dazed, but the Lakh wasn’t: when she saw him coming the air about her shimmered, her aura becoming a dark shroud. Within that darkness she grew arms that held flame and lightning and big, crude blades. She had four arms, then six, looking like a giant spider rearing on hind-legs, her face flashing through bestial to monstrous.

What
is
she?

At the Isle of Glass he’d seen her hurl a mast through the shields of a pure-blood Inquisitor. In Teshwallabad she’d overcome wards designed to prevent gnosis-use by anyone up to pure-blood in power.

Kore’s Light!
he cried to himself,
she’s been an Ascendant all along!

But so was he, now – and he had another weapon. He bared his teeth and lifted the gleaming spear. Ruby light shimmered as he readied its blast, waiting unflinching as the thing that Ramita Ankesharan had become stormed towards him, shrieking at him in a voice like thunder, ‘
WHERE IS MY SON?
’

*

Lillea Selene Sorades drifted almost unnoticed through the chaos of the battle, like a knot of smoke amidst a conflagration. She had no desire to fight, only to keep her charges alive – for much to her surprise, that was how she felt about them now. She hadn’t thought of herself as a caring person, not for centuries, but somehow when she saw them in danger, she realised that she was invested emotionally after all, despite the distance she’d tried to maintain.

When the battle was joined, she wound illusion about herself and did nothing to draw while everyone else was consumed by ferocity and bloodlust – even little Ramita, overcome by the urge to destroy those who’d stolen her child and threatened her lover.

Her own objective was quite different.

She’d had an ulterior motive in getting Alaron to do the scrying to find Malevorn Andevarion – she could have done it herself, and probably quicker – but she hadn’t wanted her gnostic touch detected, because now she knew who she was
really
trailing. His touch, so achingly familiar though she’d not felt it in more than five hundred years, had been all over Malevorn’s gnostic trace, and all through the Ablizian remains in Gatioch.

You’re somewhere near, my love. I know you are . . .

She pulled out her dagger, that same blade she’d plunged into his heart nearly six hundred years ago, and chose a foe. She permitted a goat-headed Ablizian with a narrow skull and winding horns to see her; it snarled and charged. She didn’t flinch, but gripped it in a kinetic fist. The beastman struggled frantically, almost pulling free, then she closed in, and as their eyes met she raised her left hand and plunged her thumb and forefinger into either eye-socket. She threw her awareness into its skull, and they both went rigid as the network of gnostic bindings that tied him to his fellows engulfed her too: a livid blaze of shifting light that throbbed with information.

Then she adjusted her perceptions. Overlaying the world of flesh and stone was the aether, the world of light and energy. The Ablizians were linked to each other, but they were also joined to a glowing scarlet ball of light in the hands of Malevorn Andevarion, only a few dozen yards from her, preparing to confront Ramita. The light at that nexus-point was growing with every second, a conflagration beyond any she’d ever seen.

Beyond her experience – but not beyond her reach.

She tightened her grip on the Ablizian’s skull, her fingers gouging out its eyes as it flailed helplessly, then with a wrench she threw a link at Ramita, shouting a warning to
shield
, while she pulled at the energy of Malevorn’s spear, diverting some of its power to herself. A flash of crimson light forked from the spear in an eye-blink; half poured over Ramita, and the remainder gushed over the Ablizian she was holding.

She let it go as it immolated then crumbled to ash in an eye-blink.

The fire washing over her shields momentarily set her robes alight. Every Ablizian was yowling, and all round her the plaza was blackened, but she was unharmed. She flashed to the next creature, a cobra-headed woman with a scimitar; before the daemon could react she had rammed her left hand down its throat, twisted her wrist and forced her hand upwards, plunging her fingers into its brain. The web of light was throbbing, the spearhead nexus half as bright as it had been. This time she didn’t try to manipulate it: instead, she threw her own spiratus into the link.