The door opened into a square and sparsely furnished room. A man in a Penullin cloak was currently lying face down in a slowly spreading pool of blood near the door, but aside from that it seemed perfectly unremarkable. There was another body sprawled across a narrow flight of stairs to the side, and from its charred appearance I guessed he had tumbled down from the wall after my fiery construct detonated.
I peered through the window of the door that led out into the city proper. The street beyond was gloomy and littered with scraps of wood, cloth and paper, but otherwise looked entirely deserted.
‘Are you ready?’ I asked Tatyana.
‘No,’ she said, wiping her sword clean for perhaps the sixth time since she’d opened the first door. ‘I have a very bad feeling about all of this.’
‘Their dark magic hangs heavy in the air,’ I said. ‘It is likely we’ll face our death here.’
She muttered something in a language I didn’t yet know, then shook her head. ‘You’re really shit at motivational speeches.’
‘You would prefer me to lie?’
‘Yes!’
‘Everything will be fine.’
She cursed at that, but there was little venom in it, and shoved me towards the door. ‘Let’s just get it over with.’
That was a sentiment I readily agreed with, and so opened the door and stepped into the outer ring of Aknak, squinting against the arrhythmic flicker of the light within the low hanging cloud that crowned the upper levels of the city. It was brighter towards the centre of the city, and I had little doubt that it emanated from the cathedral that Navar had desecrated with the Lance. The feel of their alien magic was far stronger here, and within a few paces our breath was pluming in front of us as if we walked through a midwinter’s day.
‘Why’s it so goddamned cold in here?’ whispered Tatyana as she sheathed her sword, freeing her hands to rub some warmth into her arms.
Before I could answer, the light emanating from within the inner city swelled and brightened until a column of it shot upwards, momentarily connected city and sky before vanishing into the clouds and rippling outwards across the city. The air filled with a loud buzz and crackle as the first ripple raced towards us. It took me too long to understand what had happened, leaving no time to shout a warning as arcs of white light raced towards us between the buildings, several of which snapped out across both myself and Tatyana. The defences I’d prepared deflected the worst from me, but Tatyana was not so fortunate, and fell to the ground with a surprised yelp, swatting at the crackling sparks as if that would help in any way. She sat up as the pulse of energy raced away from us, clutching at her right arm and groaning. I could see smoke curling from where they had touched her, leaving patches of burned skin and milky blisters.
‘Shit, that hurts,’ she said. ‘What the Hel was that?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘It didn’t feel directed, like it was targeting anything. It may have been the Lance discharging excess energies.’
The healing construct had already woken by the time she was back on her feet and walking with me, and I ignored her mutterings as it expunged the fluid from the blisters and drew her skin taut once more. Aknak was not too dissimilar from Falkenburg in the way it was formed of three ascending levels with the ruler’s residence at the top and centre, although its streets felt a bit wider. We were currently at the lowest and widest level of the city, once home to the markets and most of the common folk. The column of light had originated on the eastern edge of the next level, and so I began walking that way, keeping to the edge of the road where the shadows were more generous.
‘Will that happen again?’ she asked.
‘Most likely. The node has been exposed and damaged, and although the Lance is powerful, I doubt it is enough to impose complete control. At least not yet.’
‘Well, that sounds like something to look forward to.’
It didn’t sound like a question so I didn’t offer a reply. Instead, I hunkered down next to an abandoned cart and the frost-rimed body of the horse that was still harnessed to it.
‘It’s cold,’ I said, rubbing my arms.
‘Was it the ice that gave it away?’
‘Largely, yes. I am fire born, so the cold does not normally bother me.’ I scraped a swathe of crystals from the cart and tasted them, then spat the bitter meltwater out. ‘But this is no mere chill.’
I fanned my sorcery out and let it spread, testing for any sign of life around us. At first there was nothing, not even a rat, but finally I felt the warmth of more living beings some way ahead of us, close to where the roads converged and rose to the next layer of the city. I was unwilling to waste my power and took a little extra time to pull it all back into me.
‘Let’s go,’ I said, gesturing for Tatyana to follow me. ‘There is no one here, not—’
I stopped and turned. Tatyana was still sitting where I’d left her, and didn’t respond when I called her name. I knelt beside her and, with my hand upon her head, fed some power into my vision. She was colder than she should have been, almost as cold as someone who had fallen through an iced river.
I realised then that the chill that I felt was more than a side effect of the spell, it was the spell. As the Songlines carried the positive energy of life, so the necromancers’ magic was powered by the cold, negative energy of death. Those powers had no place in this world, and the Songlines normally ensured that, but the spells being woven here had weakened their flow, allowing the negative energies to swell and encroach where life should have held sway. Their spell was summoning ever greater amounts of negative energy, enough to swallow the life and warmth the Songlines ensured, draining it from everything within its influence. It had Tatyana in its grip now, but I was a creature of the Songlines and, with one hand on her head and another over her heart, I sent a pulse of life-giving sorcery through her.
I could feel the two energies fighting each other within her, and so I pushed a little deeper into her mind. She was more adept with a sword than I would ever be, but this was a different sort of battle. The struggle within her had manifested in her mind, and I found her presence waiting on a shimmering street much like the one we were on now, surrounded by the forms of soldiers who were chanting her name and offering tankards of foaming ale as they beckoned her to take a seat on the benches alongside them. It would have been an enviably pleasant dream had the skull of the soldiers not been visible whenever a shadow crossed their faces. I could sense her fear at the sight of this, but also a strange longing and deep sadness within. It was a dangerous thought to hold onto while the vile magic wormed deeper into her.
I whispered her full name, and she turned to me and took the hand I offered. I fed another pulse of energy into her as we touched, but in truth her spirit did not need much encouragement to rise up again. Around us the soldiers blurred and faded into mist as the will to live woke within her once more. I carefully extracted myself from her mind but kept my hands upon her body, warming her flesh as she shivered back into full consciousness.
‘Wait,’ I said, watching as the unnatural blue that clung to her body slowly faded. ‘The discomfort will pass.’
‘Hands off,’ she said, slapping mine away. She looked around and gasped, but there was nothing around us save an increasingly thick mist. ‘What just happened?’
‘They’re opening the World of the Dead, and we’re at the fringe of the spell…’
‘What?’
‘The cold that you feel is the touch of the void that waits beyond life.’ I paused to rub a patch of ice from her shoulder. ‘It was never meant to cross into this plane. Even the smallest touch of it has an endless appetite for the warmth of life. It will do what it can to erode what binds you to this world and consume that warmth. Whatever happens, stay awake.’
‘This is death?’ She waved her hand through the mist, which was slow to react to the movement.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, fuck.’ She stood up and wiped her hands on the padded tunic she’d slipped over her coat of rings. ‘How’re we supposed to even get to the damned church if we’re walking through death?’
‘Here,’ I said, reaching into my robes and lifting out the medallion of St Tomas. Even in the misty half-light it gleamed brightly, as if I held it in bright sunlight, the blue stone in the centre glittering with golden motes. ‘It will protect you from the worst of it.’
She reached for it, but then hesitated. ‘What about you?’
If my teeth hadn’t been in the way I would have smiled to hear her honest concern. ‘My sorcery will protect me. Go now, take it.’
She did just that and, even as she sighed in sudden relief, I felt the chill press against me with a new hunger. I called to the Songlines and began drawing as much power from them as I could. There was a risk that a skilled wizard or nearby ghouls might sense it, but I needed the power. Without it I was just a crippled man with bad teeth.
‘Are you doing magic?’ whispered Tatyana. Her condition had improved considerably, and the shivers that had made her teeth chatter had all but vanished under the medallion’s influence. One day I would sit and study its construction but that would have to wait for a better, peaceful time.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Once we rise into the thickest of the mist I may not be able to replenish my power, so I’m absorbing as much as I can.’ I could feel it slowly filling me. I had expected it to be sluggish and distorted, but the flow was steadier than I had dared to hope.
‘Oh.’ She stepped back and tilted her head. ‘I can never tell. It’s not very impressive.’
‘Would you prefer it if I lit a candle and chanted?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Who were those men?’
She exhaled noisily and sat on the edge of a collapsed wall.
‘You saw them too, eh? Fourth company. My men.’ She stood and walked over to the other side of the road and back again. ‘You see that building down there? With the broken chimney?’
The building she pointed to was little more than a pile of frost-rimed stone and broken wood sprinkled with shattered glass, but there was indeed a chimney.
‘That was an inn. Our inn. We used to eat and drink there every other day, and when the end came, that was one of our rearguard positions.’ She shook her head and laughed.
‘Why is that funny?’
‘The place was falling down around us and Fraser found an expensive bottle of wine. We stopped long enough to drink it.’ She sat down again. ‘It was our last drink together.’
I thought about what I had felt in her vision. ‘They were your friends.’
‘Friends are people you say hello to at the market.’ She looked back towards the ruined inn. ‘We bled and died for each other. They were my family.’
I felt the magic within the city swelling again, but before I could do more than turn towards the centre, several twisting bolts of white light flashed into the clouds where they remained for several heartbeats, squirming like the tentacles of some great sea beast. The flickering light threw strange shadows across the clouds, the swirls and eddies taking on the appearance of several enormous skulls looking down on the city below.
‘God’s balls! Did you see that?’
It was reassuring to know that it wasn’t my imagination running riot, and as the bony visages dissolved into formless vapours again I heard, and felt, a strong vibration from the distant church.
‘Brace yourself,’ I said, reaching into my newly gathered sorcery and hurriedly forming a shield.
The glow brightened in the east, then rippled outwards once more, arcs of lightning racing from building to building ahead of it, their touch cracking wood and stone in bursts of dust and ice. I put my hands to the ground while Tatyana crouched and put her arm over her head. The cold, scything energy struck like a summer flood, washing over me in a loud tumult, biting and pulling at my flesh, but I let the worst of what my shield couldn’t deflect flow through me and discharge into the ground. Tatyana held the medallion before her like an offering, the stone at the centre flashing like a sun trapped within the thickest ice.
We both stumbled forward as the pressure against us abruptly vanished.
‘Wow,’ was all she said.
I grunted my agreement. The pulse had cleared some of the mist away, but it was already rushing back, thicker than ever, a white wall that swallowed shape and sound entirely. My skin prickled as it enveloped us anew. The flow of the Songlines had slackened as well, but I was able to maintain the contact as we began moving forward again.
Tatyana insisted on going first, which made some sense as she had a fair knowledge of the city. The mist continued to thicken around us until it was as if we were walking through thick layers of cobwebs. The sound and flashes of the light across the clouds was muted as well, although the afterglow of these seemed to linger for far longer than it should have, an effect that played havoc with my sight, as I imagined it did with hers.
The chill had sharpened considerably too, but I refused to use more of my sorcery to counteract it. The dark magic was oppressive, but I would need every mote of energy I could muster for what lay ahead, and wasting it on an illusion of warmth seemed supremely wasteful.
Now and then the mist billowed around us, as if stirred by the passing of something unseen, a sibilant whisper trailing it, as if something was trying to say my name with its dying breath. This happened several times, and the gap between Tatyana and myself grew smaller with each pass.
‘Do you hear it?’ she whispered when we were but a pace apart. ‘The voice?’
‘Some of it,’ I said.
‘It keeps saying my goddamn name.’
It didn’t sound anything like her name. ‘It’s just the wind,’ I offered.
‘The Hel it is.’
Despite this protestation, she started moving forward again, her sword held unwaveringly over her shoulder, the blade beaded with droplets. We both stopped as a metallic scraping found its way through the mist ahead of us. The sound was brief and muffled, but I waited as she did, and not long after it came again. She kept her sword raised as she padded forward, moving remarkably quietly despite her armour and spare knives. I copied her as best I could, my bare feet soundless on the stone below. Several darker shapes began to materialise in the mist ahead of us, and it did not take much wit or a large nose to recognise them as ghouls. Unlike most I had seen, these were actively pacing back and forth, the pearly glow of their eyes marginally brighter than the mist as they swept their gaze back and forth.
Several of them slowed and looked in our direction, and Tatyana quickly pulled me back a dozen or so yards, letting the mist swallow them entirely.
‘I count at least a dozen, possibly fifteen,’ she whispered, her lips brushing my ear. ‘I can’t tell if there are more behind them.’ She squinted into the glowing mist. ‘Wait here.’
She was gone before I could say anything, vanishing within a few paces. I could hear the drip of water from somewhere, and the occasional scrape of metal from the dead lurking ahead of me, but little else, and all the while more mist flowed down the street, too heavy to be anything remotely natural. Pearlescent bands of it coiled around me like fish in a stream, thick enough that I could feel its passing against my skin.
Stratus. The voice was barely the echo of a distant whisper, but it was all around me. Stratus. Light flickered in the distance, the brightness muted to a soft, throbbing glow as it passed over me. I brushed the frost from my face and slowly turned around, but it was a pointless gesture. I might as well have been standing in a pail of milk.
The light throbbed again, and some of the mist before me seemed to drain away, leaving me standing before an immense, tapering skull with a small pair of horns over the hollow eyes. I knew every contour of that head, and what strength I had abandoned my legs as the truth bit into me. I clung to the wall, unable to look away from the skull. From her skull. I reached for it clumsily, but the image drifted apart before I could even close my hand, and I fell to my knees as the mist closed in once more.
Her spirit was out there, somewhere. I had vowed to bring her home, to send her into the fire as our kind had always done, but after almost a millennium I was no closer to finding her.
I would never find her, so why was I still fighting and suffering? If I surrendered, we could be together again, and surely that was more important than any vow sworn in the grip of blinding grief and rage?
She would surely not judge me ill for wanting to join her. I was so tired of grief, pain, and bloodshed. All I had to do was unbind my sorcery and let it drift out into the mist. I would fall asleep and wake in her arms, and it would be such a grand, soft end to this long bitterness.
I didn’t feel my knees touch the ground, nor did I notice when I bowed my head.