Skilgannon’s limbs were getting heavy now. The swords dropped from his fingers. Numbness crept through him. Slowly he toppled sideways, not able to feel the cold grass against his cheek. Despite the paralysis he felt a sense of exultation. The three Shadows were dead, and he had won again!
And then he saw a fourth Shadow moving up the hillside.
‘ You are an arrogant man, Skilgannon.’
Oh, how true it felt at that precise moment.
The Shadow approached him and squatted down, staring at him with baleful eyes. Then it drew a wickedly curved dagger. ‘Eat your heart,’ it said.
Skilgannon could not reply. In a bewildering instant the creature was suddenly looming over him, the dagger resting on Skilgannon’s chest. He could see the dagger, but could no longer see the creature above him. He heard it grunt, though, as it slumped across him. He wondered what was happening. Was it biting through his paralysed, unfeeling neck?
Then its body was hauled away, and dumped unceremoniously on the ground. Skilgannon could see that a long shaft had shattered its temple, the point emerging on the other side.
Askari sat down beside him. ‘Well, well,’ she said, brightly, ‘what have we here? It cannot be the legendary, invincible warrior. The man who fights alone and never loses. The man who needs no help.
Must be someone who looks like him.’
The ground drifted away from him, and Skilgannon became aware he was being lifted. His body was hauled up, his head falling against Shakul’s chest.
‘You are going to have the worst headache of your life when you awake, Skilgannon. However, you deserve it,’ said Askari, leaning towards him and closing his eyes.
Once back in his apartments Memnon removed his clothes and washed the blood from his hands and arms. His satin shirt was ruined. Bloodstains rarely completely vanished from the fragile cloth. It was a shame, for the shirt was one of his favourites, dark blue, with gold trim. Once he had cleaned himself and donned fresh clothing he called for a servant to summon Oranin.
The young man arrived an hour later, bowing deeply and offering profuse apologies. ‘I was not in my room, lord, so it took them some time to find me.’
‘No matter,’ said Memnon. ‘You will be working alone for a while. I require you to search through the journals, looking for any reference to the technique Landis Kan used to create me. You understand?’
‘Of course, lord. Is Patiacus returning to Diranan?’
‘Patiacus is dead. He betrayed me. Parts of him are still littering the laboratory floor. Clean them up yourself. The sight of his remains would disturb the servants. I shall be leaving tomorrow, to join the Eternal. You will work diligently while I am gone. I expect to see a successful conclusion to your studies.’
‘And you shall, lord,’ said Oranin, bowing once more. ‘Might I ask how Patiacus betrayed you?’
‘Why?’
‘So that I do not make the same mistake,’ replied the man, with transparent honesty.
Memnon sighed. ‘It was not a small oversight, Oranin. I did not kill him out of pique. He poisoned my Reborns. I should have expected something of the kind. Always been a problem of mine, to see the best in people.’
‘Why would he do such a thing?’ asked Oranin, appalled.
‘On the orders of the Eternal. It is so obvious, really. As a mortal I could serve her diligently. As an immortal I might have become a threat. Understandable. I don’t doubt, had the situation been reversed, that I, too, might have come to the same conclusion.’
‘You are not angry with her, lord?’
‘I do not become angry, Oranin. She is the Eternal. It is not for me to question her on grounds of loyalty, or treachery. The virtues of the one are ephemeral, the vices of the other debatable. It is merely the nature of politics, Oranin. Go now, and do as I have bid.’
Alone once more Memnon stretched out on the sofa and closed his eyes. It took him time to release his spirit, but once he had done so he soared up over the palace and sped north. He hovered for a while over the tent of the Eternal. Guards patrolled outside, while inside she slept. He gazed at her face, enjoying the exquisite beauty of her. Then he moved on.
Some twenty miles north of the encamped army he found Decado, asleep in the midst of a group of soldiers. There was no sign of Skilgannon. Memnon circled the area, at last heading east, over wide grassland. He almost missed the dead Shadows, only seeing the bodies at the last moment. Memnon floated down above them. Four bodies there were — one with an arrow through the skull, another with its skinny legs drawn up, its clawed, blood-covered hands placed as if seeking to stem the flow of blood from its gutted belly.
It was unheard of. Four Shadows killed in a single night. He floated closer. Three had been killed by a sharp blade, the last by a shaft. They would not have attacked had the victim not been alone, or vulnerable. Far off to the right Memnon saw a twinkling campfire. His spirit sped to it.
There were Jiamads there, and several humans. One was the Eternal’s Reborn, the other a bearded man in clothes of bright crimson. Memnon admired the tunic shirt, which was beautifully cut, though the cloth was not of the highest quality. The third human was Skilgannon, who was lying down, apparently asleep.
‘Might have been better had they killed him,’ said the man in the red shirt.
‘Don’t say that, Stavi!’
‘I didn’t mean it. Well. . not entirely. Because of him my lads are going into danger.’
‘That is not fair. They are going because of you. You could always stay here. After we succeed I will come back and find you.’
‘I love the optimism. You are going to find a temple that no longer exists and destroy the source of a magic you don’t understand. What does it really look like, this thing you call an egg? How will you know it when you see it? Silver eagles, magic shields! None of it makes any sense.’
‘It does, as Skilgannon explained it to me. The ancients could and did work miracles that we no longer understand. They created the magic. It doesn’t matter how it works, the fact is that it does. Now bear with me. The artefacts of the Elders were just that, for a long while. Empty and dead. Suddenly they had life. Something woke them, powered them. Something at the temple. The legends say that all this power comes from the silver eagle in the sky.’
‘Metal birds,’ muttered the man scornfully.
‘Forget birds. Something metal was raised into the sky by the ancients. Whatever it was gave them the power to work magic. Now somewhere, way back in the olden days, that power suddenly stopped. It no longer reached the artefacts. They all stopped. They. . slept. . would be the best way to describe it. Then something happened, and the power returned. You understand?’
‘I understand this is making my head hurt.’
‘Think of it this way. There is a cup which is empty. It does nothing. It sits. It has no uses. Then someone goes to a well and fills the cup with water. Now it is useful again. You can drink from it.’
‘The power source is someone with a jug?’
‘No, it is the water, stupid. The water makes the cup useful. Inside the temple there is something that fills the artefacts. We will destroy it. The artefacts will become useless. No more Reborns. No more Jiamads. No more Eternal. She will age and die like the rest of us.’