Risen, p.29
Risen, page 29
part #12 of Alex Verus Series
Another tremor went through the keep, accompanied by another trickle of dust. The battle with the marid had fried my comm focus and I couldn’t sense the Council forces anywhere. Richard and I were alone. ‘Glad I’m making a difference.’
‘Oh, trust me, no one is going to question that. I don’t know whether to put it down to desperation or sheer stupidity, but dealing with the two of you has been like trying to steer a wild elephant. When Anne was possessed by the sultan, I really thought things might settle down, but you’ve been quite determined to take up the slack. Take that assault on my forces. You have no idea how much work it took me to persuade Nimbus that a head-on confrontation between my adepts and his Keepers would be too costly. And then just when I’ve almost found a way to resolve things neatly, what do you do? You assassinate him and send the Keepers in anyway.’ Richard gave an exasperated sigh. ‘I suppose I only have myself to blame. I did ask you to protect the girl. I just didn’t expect you to take it quite so seriously.’
‘And let me guess,’ I said. ‘This is where you take Anne and that marid and start the whole thing all over again.’
‘I’ll admit, it’s tempting,’ Richard said. ‘To bring Anne to account for her various betrayals, if nothing else. But no. Anne may be powerful and she may be an ideal jinn host, but if I’d known from the beginning just how much sheer aggravation she would cause, I would have shot her myself. Between her conscious self stubbornly refusing to co-operate, and her shadow self wreaking mayhem, she is the most irritating girl I have ever had to deal with. Honestly, I have no idea how you put up with her. I’d have thought you could do better.’
‘You hang around with Rachel, Crystal and Vihaela, and you’re giving me a hard time about my choice in women?’
‘Well, there’s no accounting for taste,’ Richard said. ‘In any case, take Anne and be done with her. Quite frankly, I’ll be happy if I never see her again.’
I didn’t move. I knew Richard hadn’t come here just to tell me that.
‘The ring, however, is another matter.’ Richard held out his hand. ‘If you don’t mind?’
I looked at him.
‘I would really appreciate it if you don’t fight me on this one, Alex.’
‘Do you have a new host lined up? Or are you going to do it yourself for a change?’
‘I’m sure you’ll find out sooner or later.’
‘No, I don’t think I will.’
A shudder went through the keep. I heard a cracking, groaning sound, and felt the floor tremble as something collapsed far below. ‘This strikes me as neither the time nor the place,’ Richard said.
‘Maybe you should have thought of that before triggering that isolation ward,’ I said. ‘And actually, I’d say that the middle of yet another one of your giant destructive screw-ups is a very appropriate place.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Alex,’ Richard said in exasperation. ‘The last time we had one of these conversations, you made it clear that the girl was your sticking point. That you were doing all this for her. Well, you’ve got her, and you even have enough time to spirit her away somewhere safe before you finally fall over dead. Your objective has been achieved.’
I nodded.
‘So can you please explain why you are standing in my way?’
‘One question first,’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘Why am I here? Why am I talking to you? Why do I—?’
‘Why any of it,’ I said. ‘What was it for?’
‘If you can’t figure that out by now . . .’
‘Oh, I know what your plan was,’ I said. ‘Control the marid, make an army of jinn mages, take over the country. But what was the point? Even before this war, you were one of the most powerful Dark mages in Britain. You had a mansion filled with servants, apprentices vying to be your successor. Wealth, status, women – anything you could have wanted, you only had to snap your fingers. But somehow none of that was enough.’
‘I did have such ambitions in my younger days,’ Richard said. ‘But the trappings of success grow stale.’
‘Then what doesn’t? More power?’
‘Essentially.’
‘When does it stop?’ I asked. ‘Say you’d succeeded, taken over the country, then what? Would you have built a bigger army, aimed for other countries? All of Europe? The world?’
‘The world seems a little ambitious,’ Richard said. ‘But as long as it works . . .’
‘You still haven’t given me an answer.’
‘Honestly, Alex,’ Richard said. ‘Look at anyone who rises to the top. The Senior Council, the presidents and prime ministers of the modern age, the kings and warlords of olden times. Why do you think they do it? To change the world? Power doesn’t need a purpose: power is its own purpose. It is the only goal that has value in itself, because it is the means by which all other goals are achieved.’
‘So you’re saying it’s never enough. There’s always more.’
‘Alex, I’ve tried to be patient with you. I have answered your questions and explained my reasons. However, my patience is not unlimited and I do not intend to stand around debating you until this shadow realm collapses. Give me the ring.’
‘No.’
Richard rolled his eyes. ‘You’re as bad as she is.’
‘For someone who spends so much time manipulating people, you have some real blind spots about how they work.’
‘Enlighten me, then,’ Richard said with a sigh. ‘You’ve gone to all these extraordinary lengths to save the girl lying on the floor behind you. And against all odds, you’ve done it. You’ve won! All you have to do is hand over an item – one which was not even yours to begin with, I should add – and that would be the end of it. But instead you’ve decided to turn around just before the finish line.’
‘Well, here’s the thing,’ I said. ‘I don’t think that would be the end of it. I’m sure if I hand over this ring you’ll go on your way quite happily. But sooner or later, in a year or five years or ten years, you’ll pop up with a new host and a new army and start all over again. Because just like you said, it’s never enough. You’ll never be satisfied with what you have, and that means you’ll keep coming back again and again until someone stops you.’
‘I remember a boy who cared nothing for others. Who was quite happy to let them fight, while he followed his own path.’
‘I haven’t been that boy for a long time. And the biggest reason for that is you. You’re more willing to get your hands dirty than the Light Council, but you know one thing you and the Council have in common? You both like to push the dirty jobs off onto someone else. And a lot of that time, that someone has been me. You see it from on high as a chess game between kings and princes. But when I see it from ground level it’s a lot harder to ignore the costs.’ I looked Richard in the eyes. ‘You have left a trail of death and destruction and misery everywhere you have gone. Some of the people you trampled chose to fight you; some were just unlucky enough to be in your way. But no matter what, every part of the world is a worse place once you’ve been there. You were willing to start a war that could have brought a new age of darkness, all to get one over on the Council.’
‘You were the one who decided freeing that marid was a good idea,’ Richard said. ‘Though I suppose you did eventually clean up your own mess.’
‘But worse than any of that,’ I said, ‘is that you lead other people into evil. You built up that army of adepts with promises and honeyed words, and led them to their deaths while you walked away. You started a war between mages and adepts and a whole lot of regular people, most of whom had probably never even heard of you but who just happened to get caught in the crossfire. And if you want the best example, look at your own apprentices. We were supposed to be your legacy, weren’t we? The proof of your greatness. Well, take a look how we turned out. Tobruk, dead. Shireen, dead. Rachel, insane and dead. I’m the only one left, and I’m willing to risk my life to stop you. “By their fruits ye shall know them”, isn’t it? What does that say about you?’ I looked straight at Richard. ‘You’re worse than a warlord. You’re a bad teacher.’
Richard’s smile slipped. In the seventeen years I’d known him, it was the first time I’d seen him genuinely insulted. ‘I gave you everything. I made you.’
‘Oh, all those things you gave me! You made me a Dark apprentice at seventeen, a criminal at eighteen, a slave at nineteen and a murderer by twenty. Every one of the worst things in my life traces right back to that day you walked up to me on the school playground.’
‘You were nothing when I found you!’ Richard snapped. ‘Everything you learnt, you learnt from me! You think I haven’t noticed you copying my tricks?’ He took a breath, seemed to calm himself. ‘Well. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. But I did expect some level of gratitude.’
‘Gratitude?’ My voice cracked as I finally lost my temper. ‘You self-satisfied arsehole. You have never taken responsibility for the shit you’ve done, not once! Even when your jinn nearly wrecked the whole country you blamed it on me!’ I tightened my grip on the sovnya to stop my fingers from trembling. ‘I am sick of you, sick of you coming back over and over again to ruin my life. Now I’ll make you an offer. You turn around and walk away, and you never go near me or Anne or this ring as long as you live. Because if I ever see you again, it’ll be the last time.’
Silence greeted my words. Another shudder went through the keep, and I heard the rumble of falling stone. Richard looked at me without expression. ‘You don’t want to do this, Alex.’
‘I have never wanted to do anything more.’
‘Stand against me,’ Richard said, ‘and after I kill you, I’ll kill her.’
‘You don’t know as much about the future as you think.’
‘Look, Alex,’ Richard said. ‘Let’s—’ He stopped suddenly as his expression changed.
There. I’d been wondering when Richard would see this coming. No more reason to hold back. I flooded the futures with static.
Instantly my precognition was blanked out. When you can use divination all the time, you grow to rely on it. I barely even think of it as magic any more; it’s just another sense, like sight or hearing. Now instead of seeing Richard and the room around me in four-dimensional clarity, all the woulds and coulds and mights, my vision dwindled down to only the present, with everything beyond nothing but a blank void. Hard to believe normal people lived like this all the time.
But it was my choice, and that made a difference. I looked at Richard.
‘Very impressive,’ Richard said tightly. ‘Did you learn that from Helikaon or Alaundo?’
I gave him a cold smile. ‘Use your divination and find out.’
There was a new wariness in Richard’s eyes. He’s afraid. For the first time in probably years, Richard couldn’t see what was coming. He was still deadly dangerous, but his best defence had been stripped from him. ‘Last chance to walk away,’ I said.
Richard paused. If I could still see the future, I knew that I’d be seeing the shifting strands of him making a decision. Then his expression became flat and unreadable. ‘As you wish.’
Sagash’s arena was still. The tremors had fallen silent, and the two of us faced each other across the duelling ring.
‘So,’ I said. ‘What’ll—?’
A thread-thin black wire flashed out towards me.
Even without my precognition, I’d seen it coming. I knew Richard, and I knew how he fought – a killing attack as the opening move. I brought up the sovnya, channelling through the fateweaver, and the black wire curved in to strike the sovnya’s blade, the weapon flashing red as it ate the jinn’s magic.
I charged.
Richard struck again but I swerved as I ran; the attack missed and I felt a flash of triumph. He wasn’t used to fighting without his divination. Richard started a third attack but I stabbed with the sovnya and he had to abort his movement to throw up a black shield.
I pressed in, swinging the sovnya in tight, deadly arcs. I had to control my breathing through the fateweaver and maintain the optasia at the same time, but with no need to keep up my precognition, I had attention to spare. Richard fell back before my assault, face tight with concentration. The black shield around him flickered, flaring when the sovnya cut into it. He tried to strike back with those black wires but they were unwieldy at close range and the fateweaver sent them into the walls and floor.
Another tremor shook the keep, and the floor shifted beneath my feet. Both Richard and I stumbled but Richard recovered first and his hand blurred.
Light exploded at our feet, dazzling me. I felt Richard’s jinn magic lash out and I blindly pulled it in to catch it on the sovnya’s blade. Without my divination, the fateweaver was cruder, a club instead of a scalpel, but I poured power into it and willed myself to be safe and nothing touched me.
My vision cleared, black-purple spots fading as I heard running feet. I was still dazzled but I could make Richard out at the other end of the room. It had been some sort of one-shot, a flash bomb; he’d managed to draw it without my seeing. Now he stood half-turned away from me, right hand behind him while the left held a tangle of spinning black wires. He was working on a spell.
‘An impressive weapon,’ Richard said. ‘Unfortunately—’
I activated my headband and kicked off the ground, soaring towards Richard with the sovnya extended.
Richard’s mouth quirked in a smile. He let the spell drop and brought up his other hand to reveal a gun.
Richard shot me twice while I was still in mid-air, then dived aside as I flew past. I crashed into the wall, and before I could recover he’d emptied his gun into me, firing until it clicked on an empty magazine and the echoes of the shots faded away.
I straightened and turned to face him.
‘A bullet ward?’ Richard snapped. ‘You’ve been saving that this whole time?’
‘What can I say?’ I’d been channelling a thread of power into the bullet ward since the fight started, and it had deflected every shot. ‘You taught me to be prepared.’
Richard backed away. That black shield was powerful, but from the way he was eyeing the sovnya he didn’t seem to want to test it against a direct hit. Another tremor ran through the floor; I kept my balance this time and as the spots faded from my vision I lunged.
Richard created an attack behind me, black wires lancing for my head, but I’d seen him use that trick before and I used the fateweaver to make it miss. The sovnya cut rents into his shield and he had to scramble back. But he was running out of space now, underneath the gallery with the wall behind him. I deflected another shot with the fateweaver, then brought the sovnya around, left hand high and right hand at elbow level so that the blade hissed across at waist height in a sweeping blow, impossible to dodge.
Richard dropped his gun and snatched out something small: with a shing! noise it expanded into a thin metal staff six feet long. The sovnya hit it with a high-pitched clang. The staff should have snapped under the blow but it rang and held.
I reversed and struck again but again Richard parried, sliding away. I followed up, not giving him the chance to open the range. The sovnya flickered and slashed, but each time that staff stopped it a foot or two short.
The clash of metal echoed through the room, mixing with the stutter and thud of footwork. My breaths came in and out, harsh and mechanical, as I forced my lungs to expand and contract. Richard fought in silence, but I could see sweat on his forehead and his eyes darted to follow my attacks. Stone dust hung in the air. My left hand was sweaty and my muscles burned, but my right arm was tireless and I put all its power into my blows, forcing Richard to block perfectly or die.
I brought the sovnya down in an overhead strike. Richard deflected the blow, taking the instant’s breather to try to back away, but I reversed to slash at his ankles, forcing him to jump. He landed with a thump and I was on him again; I wasn’t giving him the chance for any more tricks. Richard was too busy parrying my blows to attack with his jinn magic; from time to time he had openings to strike with the staff but he didn’t take them, devoting all his attention to defence. I recognised the style he fought with; it wasn’t so different from the one I’d learnt in his training hall all those years ago. The sovnya did its part, seeming to twist and strike of its own accord. It could sense the thing inside Richard and it wanted to cleave his flesh and bone to reach it.
And Richard was struggling. He was good – maybe as good as me – and he had that jinn, but I had the fateweaver and a better weapon and a stronger right arm. A blow battered through his defences, scoring a gash across his body armour; he blocked the next strike, but the one after that tore open a webbing pouch, scattering its contents on the floor. I could hear his breathing, harsh and ragged – was there fear in those brown eyes? Richard tried to call up some kind of spell, but I was on him instantly and this time he took a cut to his forearm. I was pouring everything I had into the fateweaver, forcing the futures towards ones where my blows landed. It was the most energy I’d ever put into the thing and I knew I couldn’t keep this up but I wouldn’t have to: Richard was being overwhelmed. He wasn’t trying to attack or get away any more, all his attention was on the next parry. Sweat soaked my clothes and my muscles were crying out, but Richard was slowing down too. A little more—
Pain stabbed through my chest. I ignored it, brought the sovnya down in a crushing blow that cut Richard’s shoulder through his armour. He backed away towards the wall and—
—the pain stabbed again, sharper and stronger. It didn’t stop; it pulsed, and kept pulsing in time with the beating of—
—my heart.
No! Panic filled me. No, no! Not now! Not NOW! Desperately I tried to keep up the attack, but pain flooded my body; my head swam and I stumbled. Richard was backpedalling, watching me with a calculating gaze. I tried to chase after him, but the cramp grew worse, stronger with each beat. I chased him, but I couldn’t catch him and the agony in my chest grew worse and worse until it seized up.
