Bloodforged (45 page)

A squat stone brazier sat on the floor before the platform, a purple fire blazing within it, and as Ulrika, Stefan and Evgena watched, the kneeling cultists picked up corked bottles they had lined up before them, and threw them at the brazier in time with their chant. One after another, the bottles smashed on its stone lip and clouds of translucent mist billowed from them, making the purple flames leap higher and releasing curls of white smoke.

As it drifted up towards the Fieromonte, the smoke turned in the air, as if pulled towards the flue of a chimney, and was sucked into its sound holes while the violin moaned and keened.

‘The souls,’ whispered Ulrika, clenching her fists. ‘The souls of the sacrificed girls.’

‘They are feeding it,’ murmured Evgena. ‘Bribing it for the great task they wish it to perform.’

‘Praag Ever Rises’ came to its crashing conclusion above them just as the last bottle was thrown, and Padurowski’s voice filtered through the boards of the stage.

‘Now we will play for you a song to honour the wardens of the marches,’ he said, ‘who so bravely guard our northern border. This is a traditional song of that land – an old ballad called “While I Reap and Sow”.’

A hunched figure rose from the first row of cultists and beckoned to men at the far side of the room. ‘Quick!’ he whispered. ‘The last victim!’

Ulrika recognised the man instantly. It was the crook-backed sorcerer, he who had nearly destroyed them all with his magics at Evgena’s mansion. Evgena recognised him too. She growled and began to move her hands in complicated patterns.

The first strains of the ballad wafted through the air as two cultists dragged a woman to the brazier. Ulrika choked. It was the blind girl from the Blue Jug. Her hands were bound, and she hunched in abject terror between her captors.

The crooked sorcerer stepped to her and shook her. ‘Sing!’ he barked. ‘Sing the song!’

The girl cowered back, mewling in fright.

He put a dagger to her throat. ‘Sing, curse you!’

The girl sobbed again, but then, haltingly, began to sing in time with the orchestra. With her first words, Ulrika recognised the song. She had sung it that first night in Praag – the ballad of the girl who waits when her lover goes off to war. Ulrika hadn’t known it from the title, or from Padurowski’s syrupy arrangement, but now she did.

Her chest constricted as she listened, for, as terrified as the blind girl was, she could not help singing well, and the song, so sweet and sad and full of memories of home, was like a lance of sunlight burning straight into Ulrika’s heart. She couldn’t imagine why these degenerates would want to hear something so pure and good, but then she saw the reason.

White wisps of vapour, almost invisible, were coming from the girl’s mouth with each note – a translucent mist that mixed with the smoke from the brazier and drifted up to be inhaled, just as the essences of the sacrificed girls had been, into the sound holes of the Fieromonte.

‘No,’ Ulrika rasped, and started forwards. ‘No!’

Evgena broke off her incantation and tried to grab her. ‘Idiot girl! What are you doing?’

Stefan did the same. ‘Ulrika, wait!’

Ulrika writhed away from them both. ‘They’re taking her voice!’

She charged out of the shadows, launching herself straight at the crooked sorcerer. The man looked up, letting go of the singer and falling back as the rest of the cultists cried out and started to their feet. He threw up his arms as Ulrika slashed at his face, and her rapier stopped in mid-air as if it had struck a wall. He smiled cruelly, and began to twist his hands in arcane gestures, but a bolt of sizzling black energy shot from Evgena’s hiding place and tore through him. He crashed to the floor, twitching and shrieking as crackling arcs danced over his skin.

Ulrika stepped forwards to finish him, but the cultists surged in at her, pulling knives from their robes. She turned to face them and found Stefan at her shoulder, his teeth bared.

‘That was one way to do it,’ he growled.

Together they stabbed and kicked at the howling mob, puncturing throats and guts and groins while trying to reach the cultists who held the singer, but before they could get close, a glint of silver flickered in the corner of Ulrika’s eye and she ducked aside, an inch ahead of a long knife that slashed for her face.

She spun, on guard. It was Jodis, naked again, and lunging with her second knife. Ulrika skipped back, ending back to back with Stefan as four of Jodis’s hulking marauders elbowed through the robed cultists to surround them.

‘You keep running from us, corpses,’ the Norsewoman said with both her mouths, then turned and barked at the cultists and the men who led the blind singer. ‘You, leave these and kill the witch! You two, get her up! Him too! Out of reach!’

Ulrika lunged, trying to kill the Norsewoman while her attention was divided, but the marauders inervened, hacking at her and Stefan from all sides while the cultists backed away and crept warily towards Evgena.

Within the marauders’ circle of slashing steel, Ulrika could only watch helplessly while the two men heaved the blind singer onto the platform next to the cultist who held the Fieromonte, then waved at the men inside the wheel.

‘Up!’ cried one. ‘Up!’

The wheelmen began to walk forwards, turning the spool from within, and with a creaking of ropes and timbers, the platform rose. The singer lay unmoving upon it, still singing, her soul being torn from her mouth by the violin, word by word and note by note.

‘A voice to pierce the heart of all who hear it, eh?’ sneered Jodis as she flicked her blades at Ulrika’s legs. ‘And deliver to them our lord’s sweet venom like a snake’s hollow fang.’

Ulrika drove the Norsewoman back toward the platform in a flurry of steel, and Stefan moved with her, protecting her back and flanks, but they weren’t moving fast enough. The platform was almost to the roof.

‘Mistress!’ Ulrika cried. ‘Stop them! Stop the wheel!’

Evgena had her hands full holding back the throng of cultists that with a wall of shimmering red, but she did her best, shooting a blast of crackling energy towards the wheelmen. But before the bolt reached them, a violet mist formed around them, absorbing it. Ulrika looked past Jodis and saw the crooked sorcerer lurching unsteadily to his feet, violet energy dancing around his hands.

‘You will not spoil our surprise,’ he hissed, and sent an eruption of purple snakes towards Evgena.

Above the battle, the old folk song came to an end, and the blind singer’s voice trailed off in a hideous rattle as the applause of the crowd echoed through the stage floor. Ulrika glanced up and saw a last breath of white vapour leave her mouth to be sucked into the violin, then the cultist that held the instrument kicked her off the platform.

Ulrika jumped back, pulling Stefan out of the way, and the singer’s falling body flattened the marauder to their left, then slid to the floor. The look of uncomprehending horror on her beautiful face made Ulrika want to tear Jodis apart with her bare hands. She sprang at the Norsewoman, her rapier and dagger blurring.

As Jodis blocked and parried, Padurowski’s voice rang out from above.

‘And now, lords and ladies,’ he cried, ‘a special treat for you all! A solo performance by the pride of the Academy, the most talented musician of his age, playing a song that hasn’t been performed in Praag for two hundred years!’

Ulrika glanced up from her fight as the cultist on the platform whipped off his robes and threw them aside. It was Valtarin! He flipped back his mop of hair, tucked the Fieromonte under his chin and began to play a wild melody as a trap in the stage opened and the platform lifted him through it. The Opera House burst into spontaneous applause at his ascension, and began to clap along to the lilting tune.

Ulrika knew the song. She had been hearing it on the wind since she came to Praag. She cursed as all became clear. How could she have been so blind? How could she not have seen that Valtarin and Padurowski were cultists? They had played her like a fool!

Jodis laughed from both her mouths and jumped back, spreading her arms in triumph. ‘You see, corpse? You’ve failed. Already they dance to Slaanesh’s–’

Ulrika lunged, and impaled the Norsewoman through the heart with her rapier. Jodis stared at the wound, then crumpled to the floor, the mouth that grew from her goitre shrieking while her true mouth gurgled and spewed blood.

‘You talk too much,
corpse
,’ said Ulrika, then whipped her blade from her ribs and backed to Stefan, who was still fighting the other marauders. ‘We have to get to the stage.’

‘Aye,’ he said, and together they drove them back towards the door to the stairs.

‘Brothers! Stop them!’ rasped the crooked man.

He was locked in his duel with Evgena, and could not move. Nor could Evgena. Tentacles of purple energy emanating from Crook-back’s hooded forehead writhed around her, trying to penetrate the shimmering red-tinged sphere she had formed around herself.

Obeying the sorcerer, the cultists turned from the boyarina to block Ulrika and Stefan’s escape.. Frantic, Ulrika impaled one marauder with her rapier, then stabbed the last in the neck with her dagger while he was engaged with Stefan, and they ran for the door with the cultists hot at their heels.

‘Go on,’ said Stefan, pushing her forwards and turning in the doorway to face the mob. ‘I’ll hold them here.’

Ulrika staggered into the stairs, blinking back at him. ‘But–’

‘There’s no time to fight them every step of the way,’ he snapped as the first wave reached him. ‘Go. This was your war from the beginning. It should be you who ends it!’

Ulrika hesitated for the briefest of seconds, then ran up the steps. She would much rather have had Stefan at her side, but he was right. There was no time. She raced through the maze of corridors, putting on her mask of tragedy again as she went. It wouldn’t do for her cousin the duke to recognise her in her stage debut.

The scene before her as she burst into the wings appeared so normal she almost questioned her senses. What could be threatening about a soloist playing a violin while a kindly-looking conductor led an orchestra in accompaniment and the audience swayed and clapped along? But a closer look at the crowd revealed the truth. Their eyes were glazed and wild, like merry drunkards in the last giddy stage before collapse, and they clapped and sang along like automatons, all in precisely the same time.

Some, Ulrika saw, were struggling against it – sweat beading on their foreheads as they tried to resist the call of the melody. An old general clenched his teeth and balled his fists as his head bobbed. A priest of Dazh murmured furiously under his breath but could not keep his hands from moving. They knew something was wrong, but they had been caught in the insidious spell before they could summon the will to resist.

Ulrika too, found it hard to fight the pull of the song. As she ran towards the stage, the rhythm was so insistent it tripped her, and the melody, though jaunty and mischievous, had a poignant melancholy that nearly brought her to tears. That must be the blind girl. The voice of her soul, mixed with the soaring shimmer of the violin, was doing just what Jodis had said it would, opening a passage to the hearts of the audience and allowing the poisoned song to enter and corrupt them.

A blistering rage welled up in Ulrika and weakened the grip the music had on her. To use something so pure to do something so foul was despicable. She charged onto the stage, raising her rapier.

The audience gasped and Padurowski turned, then cried to Valtarin, but neither could stop performing, or the spell would be broken. Hope surged in Ulrika as she rushed closer. All she had to do was cut the violinist and the song would stop, but with only five strides between them, he turned, glaring, and played an improvised jig over Padurowski’s accompaniment, practically flinging the notes at her. Ulrika staggered as the full force of the violin’s power struck her, then began to dance, jerking and capering like a marionette on a string, all control ripped from her.

The audience roared with laughter and clapped all the louder. They thought she was part of the show. And why shouldn’t they? Ulrika must look a comic figure with her mask of tragedy and her foolish dancing. She tried to fight it, but she could not make her legs stop skipping and kicking. The harder she tried, the more the violin’s will bore down on her, making her jerk and flail.

But what if she gave in?

She let the music take her, surrendered to the rhythm and danced towards Valtarin, slashing gracefully in time to the music. His eyes widened in alarm and he stepped back. She grinned. It was working, like tacking into the wind instead of sailing directly into it. She pirouetted again, and came within a foot of him with her blade.

But as she jigged closer, Padurowski leapt in front of her, his lilac coat flapping, and went on guard with his conductor’s baton, grinning and mugging to the audience.

‘You see, my lords!’ he cried. ‘How music and culture are the best weapons against savagery and barbarism?’

The audience cheered its approval at this as Ulrika thrust at him. If he wanted to die to protect Valtarin, so be it. His death might shock the crowd from their poisoned euphoria.

But as her blade shot towards Padurowski’s heart, he parried with his baton, and the strength of the block nearly shivered the sword from her hand. Ulrika gaped. How could it be? She should have chopped the slim wand in half.