Risen, p.11
Risen, page 11
part #12 of Alex Verus Series
‘I know it,’ Ji-yeong said. Hermes had appeared at Luna’s feet and was watching us, bright-eyed.
‘We’re going to need a way to get out of sight and escape pursuit quickly. You know a route that’ll do that?’
Ji-yeong hesitated. ‘I don’t know if—’
Hermes yipped.
We all looked down at him. Hermes looked up at me and blinked.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Fox has the point.’
My communicator pinged, then pinged again. I didn’t answer. Everything had been set in motion and the only question was which dominos would fall first.
And then the air shimmered and a portal opened in mid-air. It was messier than the neat ovals created by gate magic, but through it I could see the yellow stones of the castle and feel the warm sea breeze. The sky above was the dusky purple of twilight.
I jumped through. Hermes followed at my heels and Luna and Ji-yeong came through a second later.
We were in a small courtyard at the base of a tower. Archways and a set of stairs led off in several directions. The four of us looked around, holding our breath. Nothing moved. After the background hum of Camden, the castle was eerily silent.
Behind us, the portal hung in the air. ‘Do they know we’re here?’ I asked Ji-yeong.
‘Yes,’ Ji-yeong said. She looked tense. ‘The alarm’s going.’
‘What alarm?’ Luna asked.
‘All of them. We can’t stay.’
‘Just a second,’ I said. The futures were shifting.
‘Master Verus,’ Ji-yeong said, and the urgency in her voice made me turn. ‘We need to go. Now.’
I hesitated. I wanted to see the isolation ward trigger . . . but then I saw Ji-yeong’s expression, and I let the portal back to my shop fade into thin air. ‘Hermes,’ I called.
A red and white head poked out from the top of the stairs, gave us an impatient glance and vanished again. I took a grip on the sovnya, and together we jogged up the steps.
In the distance, the silence was broken by a wail, rising and falling like a siren. ‘What’s that?’ Luna asked.
‘Major breach alarm,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘I don’t—’
‘Brace!’ I snapped.
The world around us shifted. There was no other way to describe it. It was like watching a video feed where the resolution changes, or having your ears pop and suddenly being able to hear. I stumbled, catching myself just in time, while Luna went sprawling. It was all over in an instant and I stood up, looking around. Everything seemed normal again, the moment of wrongness already gone.
‘That was the isolation ward?’ I asked Ji-yeong.
‘How should I know?’ Ji-yeong said. She was looking around nervously. ‘Even Sagash wasn’t crazy enough to fire that thing just to see what it looked like.’
‘Well, looks like you guessed right,’ Luna said, pulling herself to her feet. ‘How many do you think made it in?’
‘Don’t know,’ I said, pointing up at the sky. ‘But I think I can guess where they are.’
The walls around us limited our view, but between two towers was a gap through which we could see a narrow window of sky. Across it, lit in the fading sunset, a cloud of black dots was drifting. They were very small, almost invisible at this distance. If you didn’t look too closely, it could have been a flock of birds.
‘Uh,’ Luna said. ‘Are those . . . ?’
‘Shadow constructs,’ I said. Anne hadn’t wasted any time bringing the things under her control.
‘They’ll be coming this way too,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘Now will you listen to me and run?’
We ran.
Through the castle, across walkways and around buildings. Hermes dashed ahead faster than any of us, a red flash in the gloom. Above us, the sky was fading from purple to grey. Towers loomed up all around, shadowed and threatening, dark windows hiding what might be within.
Elsewhere in the castle, fighting had broken out. A distant boom echoed from the east, followed by more. Lights flickered, faint and reflected, and I could feel the signature of battle magic. I couldn’t tell who was winning, and I didn’t stop to find out. The Council army could afford to fight Anne’s forces in open battle; we couldn’t.
Hermes began to lead us downwards, flights of stairs pointing down toward ground level. As he did, the futures lit up. Incoming, I sent to Luna and Ji-yeong.
The shadows in the archway ahead moved. Black figures appeared out of the darkness, spreading out to block the courtyard. Five, ten, a dozen.
I felt the sovnya stir. Luna and Ji-yeong slowed and stopped. Alex? Luna asked telepathically. Call it.
‘They’re here to slow us down,’ I said quietly. I walked between Luna and Ji-yeong to face the creatures. The jann stayed where they were, blocking the way forward. ‘We’re going through.’
I strode forward. The jann spread out, faces blank and expressionless, welcoming me in.
The sovnya’s bloodlust ignited, and I let it fill me.
The world around seemed to fade. Walls, floors, stone – all were shadows. Dead things, useless things. Only the living mattered. The three humans blazed with life, white blooms against the darkness. The things in front, though . . . they glowed an angry red, twisted, wrong. Tendrils of corruption seemed to spread from them, warping the space around. As I cut through the first, the tendrils that made up its essence flared, wisping away. Behind it was another, and another. It was methodical work, satisfying, like clearing weeds out of a garden. As each one faded, its tendrils faded too, the world seeming to sigh in relief as the taint was burned away.
The last of the things died. But the castle was infested; there were more, far more. I let my senses spread outwards, searching. Another presence, not as harshly wrong as the others, but still tainted, an aberration. I moved toward it but it slipped away. It was small, agile. Familiar, somehow—
Hermes.
Realisation flashed through me and all of a sudden I came awake. No! I struggled, fought the sovnya’s influence. It was like swimming in heavy clothing, trying to reach the surface. The sovnya resisted. Tainted. Kill. I forced it away, clawed upwards, broke clear—
Sight and sound rushed back. I was standing on the other side of an archway. Black bodies lay all around, red light glowing from gaping rents. The ones farther back were already starting to dissolve, vapour drifting upwards.
Luna and Ji-yeong were back in the archway, staring at me. Both had their swords out, the blades a matched pair. ‘Alex,’ Luna said urgently. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. The sovnya’s influence was receding, but I could still sense it, waiting and hungry. From the position of the bodies, I must have kept advancing after the last one had fallen. I knew where I’d been going, too. Dimly I could still sense Hermes, a red glow in the darkness, changed by magic, unnatural—
No. I forced the thought away. This was my mind, and my body. The sovnya withdrew . . . for now.
Hermes had led us to a small enclosed courtyard. Sheets of metal leant against the walls and some unidentifiable machine stood rusting in the centre. The high walls blocked any view of the sky, but I could still hear the distant sounds of battle. Hermes was waiting at the far side, next to a doorway that opened into darkness.
I walked closer; Hermes trotted aside, eyeing the sovnya. The doorway led into empty space. A vertical shaft dropped away into blackness, cables hanging in the shadows.
Ji-yeong walked up next to me. ‘Lift shaft?’ I asked.
‘Yeah,’ she said with a curious look. ‘Down to the old levels.’ She glanced at Hermes. ‘I thought Sagash sealed these off?’
Hermes looked back at her blandly.
‘Does it work?’ I asked.
Ji-yeong stepped forward to study the controls set into the wall. ‘As long as Anne hasn’t broken anything . . .’
‘It’s too quiet,’ Luna said.
‘I know what you mean,’ I said. I looked ahead into the short-term futures. ‘Ji-yeong? We need that lift.’
In answer, Ji-yeong shoved one of the levers. There was a screech of rust and a clanking sound, and within the shaft, I saw the cables start to shake and move.
‘How long?’ Luna asked.
‘Until that lift reaches the top, two minutes,’ I said. ‘Bad news is someone else is going to be here first.’
Luna and Ji-yeong moved instantly towards cover. Hermes disappeared with a flick of his tail. ‘Who?’ Luna asked.
‘It’s Sam, isn’t it?’ Ji-yeong asked.
‘Sam, or Aether, since you said that’s his mage name now,’ I said. I looked at Luna. ‘Lightning mage. He’ll be coming from above, shooting on sight. Stay out of view.’
‘So she got him too,’ Ji-yeong said with a twist of her mouth.
‘You knew him,’ I said. ‘Any advice?’
‘He hates fighting up close,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘You get in range, he’ll lightning jump away. You can’t catch him, but you can hold him off.’
‘Board the lift as soon as it arrives,’ I said. ‘Ten seconds.’
Silence fell. Ji-yeong and Luna were sheltering behind the buttresses that jutted from the wall. I stayed in the shadows of one of the doorways. Night had fallen and the courtyard was cloaked in shadow.
How many times had I waited like this? Keyed-up and still, seconds dragging by. Then the shift in futures, the scrape of a footstep, the lunge, futures splintering into the chaos of combat.
It was very close now. Was that a sound up above? Sam must have flown in silently, alighted on the rooftop. He should be coming into view of the courtyard right about—
I snapped my eyes shut as the courtyard went white. The flash was bright enough for me to see it through my eyelids, and a numbing jolt went through me as the courtyard rang to a deafening crash of thunder. Air rushed past, blasting my hair, then everything was still.
I opened my eyes. From a dozen places in the courtyard, faint trails of smoke were rising. The blast had been concentrated near the lift shaft. The mechanism was still moving, though I couldn’t hear anything except for a faint whine. The air stank of ozone.
Nothing moved. Luna and Ji-yeong had been smart enough to stay hidden. There would be no way for Sam to know how many people were waiting in the shadows, and that would make him cautious. Mages from the air sub-family don’t like to drop down into close quarters. His first instinct would be to wait, to keep his distance—
Sam dropped down into the courtyard.
Surprise skittered along the edge of my thoughts, but I was already moving, closing on Sam in a silent rush. Sam spun, electricity crackling around his hands, and I narrowed my focus to the next couple of seconds. The first lightning bolt went wide; the second would have hit but I pushed with the fateweaver and felt hot air wash over my head. Before he could strike again, I was on him. I could see his shield, hardened air crackling with static, but air shields are more flexible than strong; an enchanted weapon like the sovnya would cut through like paper. I started my swing and took in the futures in a wide-angle glance, a single glimpse with a hundred variations of the next half-second, searching for one in which the polearm cut through cleanly so that I could use the fateweaver to—
There wasn’t one.
The sovnya hit the side of Sam’s shield and bounced off, the shock vibrating down my arms. The impact made Sam stumble, but he recovered almost instantly and looked at me with flat, shadowed eyes from less than five feet away.
Sam fired a lightning bolt into my chest.
8
The Alex from ten years ago would have died in that courtyard. The lightning would have burned straight through his body, killing him instantly. The Alex from five years ago would have survived the first blast, but the shock would have left him stunned. The follow-up attack would have killed him a few seconds later.
But I was very different from my younger self. I had my imbued armour, and the fateweaver’s magic. More than that, I had its mindset. The fateweaver had been designed to command a battlefield, and the battlefield was where it was most at home.
In the split-second before Sam fired, I took in hundreds of possible futures. Nearly all of them saw me die in the next ten seconds. The first blast wouldn’t kill, but it would daze me enough that Sam could easily finish me off. In a few futures I was able to hurl myself out of the worst of the blast, but I’d still be caught by the edge of it. There were no futures in which I dodged: I was too close and the fateweaver couldn’t nudge Sam’s aim far enough off course.
But there was one future in which I broke away.
The lightning burst out from Sam’s hands, blindingly bright, and I pushed with the fateweaver, straining for the future I needed. The lightning forked as the fateweaver guided it, finding pathways in the air. Some of the charge went around me; more crackled through my armour. But there was too much power in the bolt to guide it all away, and instead of trying, I took the hit on my lower body, letting the electricity go through my legs and into the ground.
Every muscle in my legs and feet spasmed, and I kicked off from the courtyard like a gymnast. I did a full mid-air somersault, hit the ground, rolled and came up as another blast of lightning lashed the stone.
Sam was more than twenty feet away. It was hard to make out his features in the darkness but he looked surprised. When you hit someone with lightning, you don’t expect them to jump like a kangaroo. He recovered immediately, but the second’s pause had been enough and I was on my feet and dodging out of sight behind the courtyard machinery.
‘Alex!’ Luna shouted.
No! I snapped at her through the dreamstone. Break left!
Luna had stepped out to attack, her whip coming out in a swing, but as she heard my warning she dived sideways. Lightning crashed through the space where she’d just been.
He’s too strong, I sent telepathically. Ji-yeong, you too.
Ji-yeong had been circling around for a flank; now she halted. So what, then? she asked.
All three of us were briefly out of Sam’s line of sight, the tangle of machinery at the centre of the courtyard blocking his vision. Ji-yeong, stand there, I said, sending the image of the spot I meant. Luna, behind the buttress. When he comes over, hit him from all sides.
Telepathy is much faster than speech: we’d had the whole conversation in two seconds. Now that we weren’t poking our heads out, the futures forked. In some of them, Sam blasted the courtyard blind; in others, he advanced or jumped over.
I reached out for the strands of the future I needed and tapped an iron wheel in front of me with the butt of the sovnya. A faint clang echoed around the courtyard.
Lightning magic surged and Sam came soaring over the machinery in a thirty-foot leap. I was already moving and his strike split the paving stones behind me. Sam landed with a thud, tracking me as he prepared to fire again.
Luna and Ji-yeong came out at the same instant, the three of us forming a triangle with Sam at the centre. Luna’s whip snapped out and silver-grey mist lashed into Sam’s body. At the same time, Ji-yeong and I charged him from both sides.
Sam was midway through his next attack when he realised what was about to happen. If he blasted either of us, the other would get him in the back. As my sovnya began its thrust, Sam’s body went white, becoming blinding energy that flashed upwards in a lightning bolt.
Ji-yeong and I skidded to a stop, our blades halting inches from each other. Behind, I sensed the movement of the lift change, and I pointed towards it. Get in.
Ji-yeong obeyed instantly, breaking into a run. What about you? Luna asked.
I’ll follow.
You can’t—
We all go down at once, he’ll just cut the cables and watch us fall.
Luna hesitated.
I softened my thoughts slightly. I’ll follow, I promise. Go!
Luna ran after Ji-yeong. The old lift had reached courtyard level, and Ji-yeong was waiting impatiently by the door, a lever in her hand. As soon as Luna ducked through, Ji-yeong pulled the lever and darted after her. The lift descended with a shudder, Luna and Ji-yeong disappearing from sight.
I was alone in the courtyard. There was no sign of Sam. His lightning jump would have carried him out of range but he’d have had time to get back down to the edge of the rooftops. He would be up there now, looking to re-engage.
Parts of the courtyard had overhangs, blocking any direct view of the sky above. I drew back against the wall and called out softly, using the fateweaver and the echoes to twist the sound of my voice. ‘You’re fast, Sam. Or I guess I should be calling you Aether now.’
Silence.
I moved right, hugging the wall, careful not to let my footsteps ring out. ‘I remember that lightning trick from the last time we fought,’ I called up. ‘You remember? When you and Darren brought Anne here. You were working for Crystal then.’
The walls and shadows were silent. My ears were still ringing, but I could dimly make out the clanking of the lift. If Sam had been focused on the fight, he might not have noticed that it had shifted from going up to going down.
I kept talking, using the fateweaver to throw my voice. The narrow courtyard cast echoes, and it wasn’t hard to bounce the sound off a first-floor window, making it seem as if I was hiding in its shadows. ‘Crystal’s dead, by the way. Anne killed her. And from what I’ve heard, so’s Darren. You’re the only one left. But you’re not really left, are you? Because you’re not Sam, or Aether, or any of the other names you used. You’re something else, wearing his body. Is the real Sam still in there somewhere? Can you hear what’s going on, or is it—?’
The courtyard went white. Lightning split the sky, striking into the window opposite. Stone chips went flying, bouncing and skittering around the courtyard.
‘Okay,’ I said once the echoes of the thunderclap had died away. ‘Touchy subject.’
My feet and legs were still numb. They were moving, but not quite as fast as they should; maybe a ten or twenty per cent drop in agility. ‘So, jinn,’ I said. ‘Ifrit, general, whatever you call yourself. Are you sure you should be trying this hard to kill me? Because I think Anne would much rather take me alive.’
