The Scarrabus jerked that tendril back, the end a blackened stump. I felt a ghost of something very much like human pain. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did that hurt? I promise to do worse next time.” I grinned and burned off several more, noting the physical impulses it sent to withdraw the tendrils.
“You cannot save this vessel,” it said, slurring the words.
I laughed at it. “If you know about me being locked away in the darkness then you must also know what type of man I am.” I spat in its host’s face. “I’m half-mad, remember?”
I attacked through Rikkard’s mind, trying to burrow into the Scarrabus through his. Its ability to mesh with his mind allowed the reverse to be true. Its will was strong and its control of his flesh treacherous – but I was Edrin Walker, and I’d rather have my balls smashed by a hammer than give in to the things that killed Lynas and destroyed half my fucking city. I stabbed into its inhuman consciousness, breaking through every wall it threw up to bar my advance. It tried to withdraw its tendrils, but I pulsed denial through Rikkard into its own flesh.
One last push and I was inside it, no… I was through it, past the physical and into a strange realm of the mind I’d only glimpsed once before, when I was high and near-insane from an overdose of magic.
I was fighting for my life. A thousand swarming insects stung my mind, trying to pierce me and inject their venom. Scarrabus. So many! I roared and unleashed the full force of my Gift. A few were crushed to drifting motes of dissipating thought – their slimy bug bodies rendered mindless meat, freeing their hosts from enslavement – while others were flung back, writhing in agony. Hundreds more rushed in to take their place.
In the endless darkness beyond the stinging swarm a vast consciousness took notice. It opened a single burning eye to study me, then dismissed my presence as a mere fly not worth the effort of swatting. That eye closed and another, smaller and more human, opened.
Disbelief and derision filled the realm as a potent human mind touched my own, scouring the surface of my thoughts before I forced it back. “Our intruder calls itself a magus? How very grand these crude little dabblers think themselves,” he said in Old Escharric, every word perfectly formed as if he’d spoken it all his life. He even included the superior status inflections that had fallen into disuse by Arcanum scholars centuries ago.
I probed him and was slapped back, mind stinging. It was enough to realise that this was the host of the Scarrabus queen talking, the mental links between them pulsing with ropes of obscene power. My action seemed to enrage him as he rushed towards me.
I suddenly felt like a sandcastle standing before a tidal wave of magic, knowing full well that once it hit I would be shattered and spread all across this alien mindscape.
I fled back through the Scarrabus flesh and tore myself free from Rikkard’s skull as they struck at me through him.
Back in my body I yelled and flung myself back from the bound magus, taking Cillian with me. Seeing my panic she caused a curved shield of stone to burst from the floor. It took the brunt of the explosion. Chucks of flesh spattered the walls and waves of fire rolled across the ceiling, then died off to greasy spirals of black smoke. We peered around the shield to see a pit filled with molten rock and blackened bone where Rikkard had sat.
I slumped and caught my breath. Shite, Cillian had really been practicing her geomancy. For somebody whose natural Gift was for hydromancy she had come far, indeed she was well on her way to becoming a full-blown adept. That massive potential was what had landed her a seat on the Inner Circle.
She stood and looked at me with shock. “In the name of the gods, what did you do? We needed him alive.”
“You think I turned him into a fireball? Are you cracked?” She hoisted me to my feet. “What then? Suicide?” “Er, not exactly.”
Martain and a squad of wardens burst through the door, all bristling with steel. She cursed them to leave and they quickly retreated in a confused mass, glancing at the mess behind them.
I explained all that happened as best I could given other magi’s almost complete ignorance of how I did what I did. In some ways it was like describing flying to a worm.
“So, that quip about locked in darkness – that was referring to you being locked in the Boneyards beneath the city as a child?”
I swallowed. “Yes, and it used the exact metallic noise that has plagued my nightmares for all those years. It could only have known that from Heinreich’s memories. Even if you don’t believe what happened to me, if you add that to the comment about Old Gerthan and his knives…”
“A hive mind,” she said. “With a queen of some sort hidden inside a magus host.”
I licked dry lips. “That thing is more like a god, Cillian. And I should know. Its host seemed ancient, likely an elder magus. It adds up to bad news for us.”
She paced the room, head bowed deep in thought, chewing on her bottom lip. Minutes dragged past in silence. Then the door burst open and Martain appeared in the doorway again.
“Leave us,” Cillian snapped. “I am not to be bothered.”
He didn’t move, forcing her to look up. “My apologies Councillor, but Archmagus Krandus has summoned all magi to immediately attend a conclave in the auditorium.”
“Ah shit,” I said. “Today just gets better and better.” What had gone wrong now?
Chapter 6
We gathered for conclave in a repurposed lecture theatre at the heart of the Collegiate, dawn’s ruddy light only just creeping through the highest windows. Gone was the gaudy glory of the great hall of the Templarum Magestus with its marble steps and golden thrones, the crystalline art and exquisite moving statuary – now we all sat at old benches scarred with the names, sigils and graffiti of generations of bored initiates. I admired some of my own handiwork, the lines of a hairy cock and balls smoothed and darkened over the years by hundreds of sweaty palms.
We all pretended to ignore the gaps between the various cliques and factions. Even in times of war the magi of the Arcanum nursed their petty grudges. Me, I had a whole end of the back row to myself and a free space in front to put my feet up, which suited me just fine. The spaces only emphasised a sobering realisation of how few magi there were left in the Arcanum: a few hundred at most in a room built to house triple that, with perhaps two dozen more of us spread out through the other towns and villages all across Kaladon, and another hundred south across the Cyrulean Sea leading our legions in a war to preserve the last Setharii colonies in the vast Thousand Kingdoms archipelago.
Most of us had been too busy to note everybody who had died during Black Autumn, even if there had been a definitive list of those confirmed dead. Many others couldn’t stomach searching the lists for those they cared about, but in my case, apart from Cillian and Old Gerthan, nobody I liked or respected could still be alive so why bother. Heads turned to and fro, searching in vain for a certain face that they were sure they must have missed during the last three conclaves. Many bore livid burns and permanent scars from the fighting.