I felt Fronsac’s wards flicker to life, but they were not yet completely restored, and my power flowed through the gaps it had yet to close like sunlight penetrating a forest canopy. I had not shaped the power I was filling Lucien with, but had simply focused my intent on driving out the dark magics that ensconced the worm, trusting to the purity of the energy I was channelling to do what was necessary.
The sound and feel of Fronsac’s magic were familiar enough to me that I could identify and guide my construct around it, but anything else was fair game. I saw imprints of Lucien’s memories as the sorcery coursed through his head, dislodging forgotten memories of castles and palaces, food, and dances held beneath glittering ceilings and starlight. Lucien was a child of summer and a fool, but he was a happy one, and despite my misgivings I knew then that everything he had ever offered me had been given without malice or hidden intent. I wanted to curse him for making me like him, but instead I narrowed the focus of my sorcery and let the magic burn its way through the dark spells that clogged his mind, smothering his song and his inner light.
I felt the doubts and fears embedded within those spells turn their poison on me, but the light of the sorcery showed them for what they were, rendering them powerless and setting the worm within his brain to thrashing. I had not been so close to a whole one before, not like this. The depth of Fronsac’s wards and spells seemed to have stymied the necromancers’ attempts to lay the full weight of their spells and enchantments on it yet, leaving it vulnerable. I wrapped the squirming monstrosity in a sorcerous sheath to still its thrashing before it damaged something in Lucien’s brain and rendered him a drooling idiot.
Once it was held fast, I formed my sorcery into needles thinner than a hair and pierced its body, steadily driving them deeper, seeking its core. It was a dumb thing, entirely devoid of thought beyond the instinctive need to feed and entirely defenceless without the spells of others to protect it. I sent a mote of golden power into its body and watched as that part of it discoloured and died, much as flesh would at the touch of raw necromancy. I was about to dissolve it into nothing when I sensed a change in it, an agitation that wasn’t there before. I tightened the protective barrier around it and watched as the grainy gel of its body began to glow with a faint white light that quickly stretched out into a feathery tendril that pushed against my sorcery. It was too weak to penetrate the shield I had imposed, and too primitive to disguise what it was: a cry for help, the blind mewling of an infant seeking its mother.
I pushed my sorcery deeper into its viscous body and filled it with the power of the Songlines. It shivered once, then fell apart from the inside out, decaying into a greyish ooze that I guided to Lucien’s nose before I slowly retreated from his mind.
I sat back and steadied myself as reality reasserted itself around me. Lucien was coughing and gagging next to me as the now dissolved body of the worm oozed from his nose; the smell of it was quite something, and I doubted he’d have much use for his nose for several weeks.
‘God’s teeth.’ The words were muffled behind the hand Tatyana held to her mouth. Death was food and air to these creatures, but they had had been alive once. Necromancy could mimic but not create life, not even something as simple as a worm. I spun out the cry for help that it had generated and listened to its wordless tone over and over again. The intent was unmistakeable. Something had imprinted on it, something with the power to infuse a living thing with the ability to manifest a spark of death’s cold energy and live.
‘What did they call it?’ I said, more to myself than either of them.
‘Who?’ groaned Tatyana, who had covered the bloody sludge in a blanket to try hide the stench of it. Lucien was sat on the edge of the bed, his head cradled in his hands, blood dripping from his nose. His nose. There was something about the nose.
‘Do you remember the man in the birdcage?’ I asked.
‘The man? You mean under St Tomas?’
‘Yes. That’s it.’ I closed my eyes and saw the dungeons in my mind again, the cold bodies laying in the darkness with worms fattening in their skulls. ‘Bloodseed. He called it the Bloodseed.’
‘Yes,’ croaked Lucien. ‘They spoke of it… They... They...’ His voice trailed off and he abruptly began to weep.
‘They what?’ I prompted him, but he seemed intent on watering the floor. ‘Come now. You’re a prince of Krandin,’ I said, lacing my voice with the dregs of the power lingering about me. ‘Yours is the blood of kings, descended from the Firstborn. Stop mewling like a scared child.’
He lowered his hands and looked at me, and for a moment I thought he was going to succumb to his misery once more but instead he stood up and wiped his face with the hem of his shirt. ‘They called it the Bloodseed.’ His voice was a croak. ‘They fed it to us, all of us, even the dying. It was inside them.’
‘Inside who?’ Tatyana said, her voice a hoarse whisper.
‘The necromancers. They had tattoos on their bodies and faces, all sorts of spirals. They held us down.’ He took a deep breath and exhaled it as an entreaty to his god. ‘One of them pressed his mouth to mine and, Drogah help me, pushed something into it. Like a tongue, but longer. It pushed upwards.’ He bent over and vomited noisily across his feet. ‘I felt it crawl into my head. Oh, my god.’
I felt another piece of the mystery wriggle into place. I didn’t know the how of it, but I was starting to understand why. The worms in themselves were nothing but a tool, a way to integrate death within the living. It was a similar thing to what the goat-faced wizard had done with the metal ward in the seneschal’s camp. Their victims accepted the worms, however unwillingly, and as they grew into their living flesh the line between one and the other became blurred, until the thoughts that were projected into the worms would be as their own. It was a fiendish way to create an obedient army, one that could survive and even thrive in the presence of death.
‘It’s inside them. They incubate them,’ I said, more to myself than them. Tatyana muttered something but didn’t stop rubbing Lucien’s back, at least not until Navar’s voice boomed from the skies outside, loud enough to send dust raining from the ceiling and make Tatyana’s sword rattle across the table it lay upon.
‘Stratus Firesky. Come to your Master.’
I could feel the spell he had woven into it wrap around me, and if he had spoken the whole of my name I may not have been able to resist; as it was I had to dig a nail into the soft of my arm to stop it from swamping my thoughts.
‘Sweet mercy,’ said Lucien, gripping Tatyana’s arm and starting out the narrow window. ‘What is that?’
She answered for me. ‘The Worm Lord.’
I stood up and shook the remnants of his spell off. ‘It’s time to end this.’
‘You can’t do this alone,’ Tatyana said, slipping out of Lucien’s grip. ‘You can’t fight that.’
‘I have to.’
‘How? He has an army of the dead out there and god only knows how many goddamn wizards. How can you fight that?’
‘With claw, fire and cunning.’
‘Don’t be glib. It’s suicide and you know it.’
The scent of fear in the room had strengthened, and while they were only human, I felt the same sensation crawling through my gut.
‘This is not your fight, Tatyana. Take Lucien and get out. Once this begins their eyes will be on the east. Go west.’
‘The fuck it isn’t. Krandin is my home, and you’re family now.’ She tapped her chest, right over her heart, and I took her meaning.
‘As you said, it might be suicide. But you swore to see him home.’
Lucien stood and stepped forward. ‘Krandin is my home too.’ He lifted his chin and squared his shoulders. ‘I would be worthy of the blood that flows in my veins.’
It was a grand gesture, even if the vomit and blood smeared across his chin diluted the effect. I looked at him closely but could sense no trace of falsehood. However, before I could speak, more voices rose from outside the cells alongside the one that we stood in, the words somewhat muffled by the walls.
‘I am your man, my prince. I would stand with you.’
‘And me!’
‘My sword and my life are yours!’
Tatyana looked about, then stepped out of the room, and I followed her. Faces were pressed to the bars of several of the other rooms, and as they saw us they reached out.
‘We are yours, my prince.’
‘Paladins,’ I said, unable to hide my dismay. Was I never to be free of them?
‘They were taken with me,’ said Lucien. ‘They fought like lions.’
‘They’re all infested,’ I said. ‘You cannot trust them.’
Lucien spun to face me. ‘I know you don’t share our faith, and by god, I know you haven’t seen the best of them, but I have. I believe in Drogah’s mercy and the courage of these men.’
The sound of weapons hacking into wood echoed up the stairs, a rapid and incessant beat.
‘I do not know what manner of creature you are,’ called the man in the closest cell. ‘But I would give my solemn word that I will serve Prince Lucien to my dying breath.’
‘The word of a paladin means less than nothing to me,’ I replied. I pointed to Lucien. ‘Swear it to your prince, upon the blood of the Firstborn that fills his veins.’
They all did then, their voices overlapping in their eagerness to swear their lives to his service. Once they were done, I smashed the locks open with a borrowed axe. I would need every morsel of power for what lay ahead and didn’t want to waste a mote if I could help it. There were seven of them, which they seemed strangely pleased with as it echoed some legend of their order. They quickly stripped the dead of anything useful as we made our way back to the doors, which by then were almost in splinters and would long since have collapsed if it wasn’t for the iron bands holding the wood together.
Three of the paladins had retrieved long weapons that looked like the bastard child of an axe and spear, and these three put themselves ahead of us as the doors finally collapsed. Then, with loud cries to Drogah, they began cutting and stabbing the dead that forced their way through the doors with exemplary violence, exulting in every thrust and cut they delivered. Had I not been on the way to my own death I might have marvelled at the deft skill with which they used such cumbersome-looking things. They pushed the dead back, quickly finishing off those that stumbled, but there were even more waiting in the street below.
Lucien began shivering as soon as the mist oozed in through the open door and I grabbed Tatyana’s arm and pulled her over, thrusting her against him despite their protests.
‘Stay close to him,’ I said. ‘Keep touching him, no matter what happens.’
His shivering eased as she clutched his arm, and from her lack of argument, she understood my meaning. Sharing the medallion would weaken the protection it offered, but it was better than nothing. It was more interesting to watch how the paladins reacted as the mist wrapped around them. They slowed as the cold energies began siphoning their energies, but then stopped and shook their heads as the effects touched on the worms inside them. Two started bleeding heavily from the nose, but all seven were clearly in pain, clutching their heads or grinding their teeth together. The worms had been surrounded by the same dark magic in the cells, but perhaps the intensity of what hung in the streets was too much for them, like a day-old baby being offered meat rather than milk from his mother’s teat.
And yet, as the paladins hacked their way towards the bottom of the stairs, their long axes separating arms from torsos and splitting heads like old fruit, their cries of pain faded and their movements steadily became smoother and faster once more. One of those with the bloody nose faltered, falling to a knee as blood began to well and flow from his ears and eyes as well as his nose and mouth. The others helped him back to his feet and gave him back his fallen sword. He limped over to Lucien and said something I couldn’t hear, and then walked to the front of our little war-band and began chanting, his voice slowly gaining strength.
At first I couldn’t hear the words, but as the other paladins took it up too I finally began to understand. It was something I had last heard a long time ago: the death-song of the faithful, a plea to their ancestors and their god to witness their courage, and swearing eternal allegiance to the brothers who stood by them. Their forebears had once sung it as they marched to fight me, but I had not paid that much attention to it then, other than as a way to track their progress. The paladin was bleeding profusely, but he marched into the gathering ghouls without hesitation, and kept singing and cleaving right up to the moment that a particularly large ghoul split his head with a shovel.
Tatyana was staying close to Lucien, wielding her sword one-handed which, as she quickly demonstrated, was no obstacle to her despatching stray ghouls who managed to avoid the paladins’ steel. I stayed back as well, making the most of their presence to continue preparing my sorcery for my own trials. One or two ghouls stumbled out from side streets and alleys, but they were alone or in pairs and easy enough to stop. Breaking their necks wouldn’t ‘kill’ them as such, but it left them unable to do anything but snap and claw at the cobbles. Even Lucien helped end a few, his sword finding eyes and throats in the openings that Tatyana created.
Another of the paladins fell before the road was cleared, his neck slashed to the bone by the wild backswing of an axe. He slew the creature who killed him even as death bore him to the ground. Their death-song drifted into a prayer as the last of the creatures fell and they stood there, steaming in the mist as they gulped in lungfuls of the cold air.
Ahead of us the road rose and disappeared towards the steady throb of Navar’s spellwork as it rose into the sky like a strangling vine, robbing the world of all colour and leaving only shadows and the pearlescent glow of his magic. I wasn’t alone in stopping to stare at the column of swirling light as it dispersed into the churning clouds.
‘At least we don’t have to worry about directions,’ muttered Tatyana, pulling Lucien closer to her as another shiver passed through him. The medallion was helping him, but he was only getting a portion of its protection. To his credit, he uttered no complaint and instead bared his teeth.
‘Let’s go kill the bastard,’ he said, offering me a fierce grin. ‘Wizards bleed.’
‘Wizards bleed,’ I agreed, and without another word we set out once more, unaware of the new nightmare that was about to descend upon us.