Infernal, p.1
Infernal, page 1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Acknowledgements
Copyright
The common man struggles to understand men like us, we who have dedicated our lives to the mastery of magic. They rail against the powers that we command and cry to their priests for succour. And yet it is us, not the priests, who are closer to the gods, for in calling forth the language of magic we speak that of creation itself. Not one among them would deny that the gods threw down the Dreamsinger at the beginning of time, nor that they bound its bones to become the earth, its blood to fill the seas, its fire the sun and its wings the canopy of the heavens. From its living flesh they created man and all the beasts, both great and small, and set these upon the earth so that the progeny of their great enemy would love and worship them for all time.
But it is only us, the chosen few, who understand that the Dreamsinger was vanquished, not slain, and that its song reverberates through all things born of it. To hear the song of magic is to hear the name of the Dreamsinger, from whom all our names are born, and to know its name is to know the power of the gods.
An Introduction to the Path of Power
by Tiberius Talgoth, Archmage
Chapter 1
I woke to the sight of vultures circling, three blemishes against the cobalt sky gliding lower with each pass, almost lazily, as if taking the time to savour their next meal.
I sat up to rub my face, to clear some of the fog that hung thick in my mind, but instead I found myself staring at an unfamiliar hand. My hand, apparently, since it was attached to my arm, but I recognised neither. The vultures rasped their displeasure and returned to their overwatch as I steadied myself against a sudden lurching of the world, as if I had just fallen. I shook my head again, willing the numbing fog from it, but the more I struggled for clarity, the more it drew in around me, smothering the knowledge of where I was, or why I was there. A memory stirred within the depths of my mind, an indistinct shape of something that offered little more than a brief affirmation that this was exactly what I had been hoping for before it slipped away.
I flexed the hand attached to my new arm, and watched the five short fingers curl and extend. The skin creasing and folding around the joints was darker than I remembered mine being, but just as hairless. It felt entirely normal, but there was something about the movement that sent a shiver through me. As I struggled back into a sitting position, I felt a flare of heat at the back of my head, as if someone had touched me with a flaming brand.
It was the only warning I had that something was very wrong.
One moment there was simply the sweet scent of crushed grass, the rasping call of the vultures and the sparrows singing, and the next my senses were lost to a maelstrom of pain. Unsurpassed agony swept over and through me, unstoppable and unrelenting. I spent what felt like an eternity screaming and wishing that it would overwhelm me and send me back to sleep, or simply kill me, but no such relief came. I was awake yet could do nothing; my brain felt like it was tearing itself apart from within, and all reason was swept away beneath a torrent of sensation.
When I eventually came to my senses, I was once again staring at the clouds, but now my body felt as distant and unresponsive as a rock. The fog still cloaked my memories, but it was clear enough to understand that something had gone terribly awry. I felt the tug of distant memories, but again they fled from my mind before I could glean anything apart from a vague sense of frustrated urgency from them. I tried everything I could think of as I lay there, the sun bathing me in a heat I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t even grunt with the effort that I put into trying to move my arm. I tried a hand instead, and then a mere finger, but my efforts all ended in disappointment. Apart from touch, my other senses were still keen, but that was as comforting as it was useless.
The horror of my predicament was starting to give way to a sort of boredom when the first vulture reappeared in my field of vision. I willed it to keep flying, but wasn’t really surprised when it ignored my silent entreaty and returned with its friend in tow. I tried to still the panic rising within me, but the return of the third bird put paid to that. They were descending in tightening spirals, emboldened once more by my distinct and terrifyingly persistent lack of movement. Lower and lower they drifted, until they disappeared from my line of sight. I heard the soft thumps of their landing moments later, followed by raucous cawing and clicking as they competed among themselves to decide which of them would be first in line at the feast of Stratus.
Stratus.
My name was Stratus. If I could have spoken I might have said it aloud a few times, but for now I had to content myself with thinking about it. Stratus.
I wanted to sob, to scream, to do anything but lie there waiting to be torn apart by their dirty beaks. But it seemed that my path was about to come to a messy end, and the only consolation that Fate could offer me was that I would at least be spared from the pain of my slow death. The first of the vultures loomed into view, clicking its beak as it waddled towards me. I tried everything I could to do something, anything, but nothing happened. I was a living corpse. I saw it dip its head and moments later my body rocked as it tried to dig into my flesh. When it sat back after the third such attempt, its fierce beak was daubed with a shining, wet smear of my blood. It bent forward again, then abruptly shot out of view, leaving only a single feather swirling where it had been a moment before.
Something that sounded like a particularly large and angry wasp buzzed loudly near me, and I heard a strangled squawk from near my feet, followed shortly after by the sound of beating wings. A few moments of silence followed before I heard soft footsteps coming towards me. Two pairs of them; I doubt I would have heard them if I hadn’t been lying there unable to do anything but stare at the sky and listen.
A voice spoke somewhere off to my right-hand side. The language was unintelligible at first, but as I listened to it, something changed. Warmth flared somewhere inside my brain, but it was a far gentler sensation than the sharp burn that had preceded my convulsions. It passed as quickly as it had come, but in its wake the words being spoken arranged themselves into something I could understand.
‘. . . be a mercy.’
‘Perhaps, but it should be the Deacon’s decision, not ours.’
A man crouched next to me, handing a curved bow to an as yet unseen comrade. He seemed unnaturally large as I looked up at him, a perspective and sensation that I found deeply unsettling. He smelled of sweat, leather and mud, and stared at me intently with eyes that were bright against his browned skin.
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘You go fetch him. Perhaps he can help our naked friend here to tell us what happened to him.’
The other man didn’t respond, but I heard him walk away, his strides long but quiet. My watcher began moving around the clearing while I tried to order my thoughts. The panic was still there, circling me like a wolf around a wounded stag, but I wasn’t going to let this unexpected respite go to waste. And if this ‘Deacon’ could help me, I wasn’t about to squander the opportunity. Not that I had a choice.
The Deacon didn’t take too long to arrive, and soon after I found myself surrounded by a gaggle of men draped in long robes, their combined scent almost overwhelming. Orders were shouted and a canopy was soon erected over us. A man in a darker robe with a white sash kneeled next to me, examining my body while the others fell silent and stepped away. He lifted my left arm with a grunt of effort, and I found it strangely comforting that mine was far larger than his. He rubbed and scratched at my dark nails before lowering it down next to my body again.
‘And you just found him here, lying on the ground like this?’ My examiner’s voice was quiet, his pronunciation far less guttural than that of my bow-carrying saviour.
‘Yes, Father. We thought he was dead. There were vultures around him and he wasn’t reacting, even when one took a lump out of him.’
‘You did well to bring him to my attention. You may go.’ He didn’t bother looking up as they padded away. ‘Jules, come over here, and bring my bag.’
‘Right away, Father.’ This voice was high and clear, a cub of some sort. No, the word found me: a boy.
The Deacon leaned forward until his lined face filled my vision and his softly spiced scent clouded my nostrils. His hair was white, marking him as old for a human, although not so old that his scent ca
‘What a fine puzzle you are,’ he said quietly.
‘Here you are, Father.’
He sat back, out of my sight, and I heard the clink of glass and a rummaging sound. I concentrated on my hearing and tried to build a sense of what was happening around me. I could hear at least three different voices speaking, and the smell of horse and metal was heavy in the air. Without being able to turn my head it was hard to tell where they all were, but I guessed that the men had moved a dozen or more yards to my right, no doubt watching.
‘Who is he, Father? I don’t like him.’
The old man grunted. ‘That is what I hope to discover. But tell me now, why did you say that? He is injured and needs our help.’ He paused. ‘You have not seen a man with such skin before, have you?’
‘No, Father. Why is it black? Is he a demon, like in the stories?’ The sour tang of fear drifted from his direction, but the old man only made a chugging sound which I took to be laughter.
‘And what do you suppose a demon would be doing out here, lying in the sun and being chewed on by vultures?’
I might have laughed too if I could. Or at least until some traitorous part of my mind asked me why I thought that so unlikely, given that I barely knew anything but my own name. And my skin and nails were far darker than theirs. Why was that? Perhaps it would clear up once whatever was wrong inside my head was mended.
‘No Jules,’ the old man continued, ‘the men of the southern islands off the coast of Illutia are known to have skin like his, sometimes even darker if you go further south. And yet, I must say that his frame is far heavier than any of theirs that I have ever seen, even among their warrior caste.’
‘I don’t think he’s a warrior.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘He has no scars. Even the Duke’s champion has scars.’
‘Well done, boy,’ the Deacon replied. ‘That is an astute observation.’
‘So what’s wrong with him?’
‘I don’t know, not yet. I do know that he’s simply too big to have been a cripple all his life, so I’m expecting to find an injury of some kind.’ He loomed over me and pulled my eyelids up, then sat back down and looked at me. ‘Well, friend, I’m going to have a look inside to try to find the problem. We can take it from there.’
‘What shall I do, Father?’
‘Make sure that no one disturbs me until the ritual is complete. No one at all, do you understand? The magic is delicate.’
‘Yes, Father.’
Magic. I knew about magic. I felt the idea of it resonate strongly with the memories locked within my mind, and for one all-too-brief moment I felt the answer to all my questions taking shape before the fog rose up and swallowed it again. It was enough for me to know that sorcery had brought me to this, and that it alone could help me now. Yet whatever capacity or talent I had once had for it now felt as distant and unresponsive as the rest of me.
The Deacon moved to sit down behind me. A moment later I heard a loud grunt and my world tilted crazily. I had a moment of complete confusion where I thought he’d cut my head off, but then I realised he’d simply lifted it. I could see far more now, and I was pleased to see that my guess as to where the rest of the men were waiting was a good one. Half a dozen males stood some twenty yards to my right, talking quietly among themselves while they soothed their steeds. They were clad in hides and vests of metal rings, although two of them wore a different sort with more flat, decorated surfaces that were polished to a bright finish. These two stood to one side with their hands upon their swords as they watched the Deacon. I didn’t like the look of them at all.
‘You have a heavy head, my dark friend,’ said the Deacon behind me, drawing my attention back to him. ‘Now normally I’d tell you to keep very still for this part but I think we both know that’s not going to be a problem.’
With that, he brought his hands back to rest on my face and began chanting softly. I listened carefully, straining towards the sound with everything I had, suddenly as desperate for a crumb of magic as a starving man is for a morsel of bread. I understood magic, and even though I couldn’t yet say how or why I did, I knew that it was the key to whatever I had done to myself.
He was reciting a prayer of some sort, a short one that he kept repeating, a phrase that meant little on its own but one that built up a magical cadence through repetition. My flesh couldn’t feel the touch of magic, but my mind could. I felt the moment where his mumbling transcended a simple mantra and became a conduit between him and the Songlines, those pulsing currents that span the world. I didn’t resist its touch, not that I could, and his magic slowly entered me. I saw it as a brightly glowing network of fine white roots that bloomed somewhere behind my eyes and began to gently unfurl. It reflected his intent to heal, an inflection that helped to still my mind’s natural instinct to push back at the intrusion.
He was looking for damage, trying to feel out where my body was broken, and as I surrendered to his magic, I started to get a real sense of it. It was purely aimed at my physical body and as he wasn’t spending any energy on shielding either it or him, I let myself be drawn into it, basking in its radiance until I was saturated enough to blend in with it. Now that I could understand the nature of the spell he was using, I sensed his painstakingly careful and methodical approach. He clearly had a grasp of human biology that I could never hope to equal no matter how many of them I ate.
Ate?
The thought set a string of questions firing through my mind, weakening my connection to his magic. I hastily suppressed these before it broke completely. There would be time to wonder about that later when I wasn’t entirely helpless.
As I watched him work I began to get a sense of his steadily growing confusion as his magic drifted through my body and found no injuries. I felt his confusion grow and colour with something else, something that shifted his intention and sent his magic probing towards my mind rather than my body. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. If I was a demon of some sort, I suspected that he’d waste no time in having those two in the shiny armour carve me into pieces. I was still debating how to push him away when the tendrils of his magic flowed into my mind, but then I felt them recoil as something within me reacted to their burrowing.
Something that wasn’t me.
There was a glimpse of something dark and bestial, a twisted, writhing mass of magic, flesh and sharp edges that radiated the promise of undiluted rage and bloodshed. It was terrifying, and I recoiled as much as the Deacon had. I felt him hastily pull his magic back, and I knew that he was withdrawing from my mind. It wasn’t hard to guess since I was recoiling as much as he was, my thoughts resounding with a single word. Demon.
However, I also knew that if he did withdraw, he would take away what might be the only chance I would have of breaking free of whatever it was that had broken my body. I tightened my grip on his magic, clutching to it desperately. He felt this, and pushed back, the soft glow of his power darkening as something like fear bled into it. He chose to break off the spell, abandoning the trace of his power that I had grabbed rather than trying to wrestle it away.
For a moment, that morsel of power was mine alone, and the beastly thing within my mind pulled it into itself. I felt something at the base of my skull shift, sending a fierce heat racing through my body like a bolt of lightning. It brought my muscles to life in a series of violent contractions that left me spent and vomiting a clear, viscous gel while the Deacon’s men surrounded me, their weapons drawn and gleaming.
Chapter 2
Someone was shouting at me, but I was still too busy spitting slime from my mouth and clearing my throat to pay them much attention. Once I could breathe again I slowly sat up and looked around, trying to ignore the multitude of clicks and crunches that my every movement seemed to elicit. I felt my innards shift as if arranging themselves into a more comfortable position, but there was no blood or pain, which was already a significant improvement as far as I was concerned. The Deacon was standing well out of my reach by this time, flanked by the two warriors in their shiny armour, and I wondered how he had interpreted his encounter with whatever demon lurked inside my mind.
‘Who are you?’ he asked eventually, and I felt some of the tension leave my shoulders.
