Eventually my desperate hands latched onto Dissever’s hilt. Fury crashed into pain.
Shadea hissed and snatched her hand back. “Drop him!”
Eva let go and stepped away, drawing a green-flecked sword. I fell on my arse, but immediately rolled to my feet with knife in hand, lips twisted into a feral snarl. I barely noticed them, instead growling at the Warrens as an entire street of rotten tenements collapsed in a cloud of dust.
Shadea waved the wardens back, but I only had eyes for the source of the pain twisting behind my eyes.
In the distant heart of the Warrens wood and stone exploded upwards. A block of tenements bulged and burst apart as something huge and fleshy and glistening rose from the depths of the Boneyards in a cloud of debris and death. Mental screams emanated from the thing’s insides as it absorbed the tenement’s occupants. I could feel them alclass="underline" a small town’s worth of agony crashing into me, their minds not quite alive, but horrifically far from dead. Only a fraction of the thing had emerged but I could already sense a dozen mature Gifts of magi flaring bright with magic deep inside that screaming mass, surrounded by uncounted stunted mageborn trickling in power. I was instinctively drawn to one amongst the many, the source of my agony rising from the depths.
Lynas, my Gift-bonded brother.
I gripped Dissever in trembling hands. Hard to think. Pain. Fear. Confusion.
Shadea cursed. “Disable him. Be careful of that blade.”
I brandished Dissever, growled at Eva and shifted my feet for a better stance. Magic flooded through my muscles, readying for the kill.
“Sorry,” she said with a metallic shrug. She blurred and something slammed into my face. Everything went hazy as I toppled.
Chapter 27
When I regained my senses I was on my back with the tang of iron in my mouth and the right side of my face tight and swollen. There was a strange absence of mental pain. I tried to sit up but a steel-shod foot pressed down on my chest.
“Welcome back,” Eva said. “Sorry about the face. I tried to be gentle, and I did pick the side with all the scars. Nobody will notice a few more.”
I worked my jaw. At least it wasn’t broken. Might be a few loose teeth though. “Remind me never to get on your bad side. Well, more than I already am.” She lifted her boot and I sat up to see Martain loitering with a face like I’d shat on his pillow. Oh. No wonder I wasn’t screaming in agony. Even without magic Eva was far stronger than me.
“Nasty weapon you have,” Eva said. Dissever dangled by the pommel, carefully held between two fingers. “Such an ugly spirit-bound blade suits you. How did a rogue like you obtain such a rarity?” Smoke whipped past her head and with it came distant screams.
I rose to my feet, battered, bruised, and exhausted without my magic to sustain me. “Found it,” I said, taking in the chaos around us. Armed and armoured wardens and magi rushed to and from the Old Town walls, weapons clanking, panic-filled voices cursing and barking orders. Ash from the fires raging in the lower city drifted down as grey snow.
Eva grunted. “Figures.” Then she tossed Dissever to me. I suffered a moment of horror for my fingers before the hilt slapped into my palm. “Get ready to fight. We need every weapon we can get.” She stretched a hand back over her shoulder to pull her sword from its fastenings. It glimmered strangely, odd green flecks flowing through the steel – another spirit-bound blade.
I licked my lips, glanced at Dissever. This was going to sound bizarre to her but I’d never had the opportunity to ask the owner of another spirit-bound object about it. “Does the spirit in your sword ever talk to you?”
She looked at me like I was cracked. “Did I hit you too hard? I thought your skull thicker than that.”
I half-laughed, Dissever warm and pulsing in my hand. “I get that a lot. Never mind.” Luckily they were linked to their wielder’s life – if the Arcanum could have taken Dissever from me and given it to somebody more reliable then they would have. I had an instinctive feeling they wouldn’t have lived to regret the attempt. Dissever’s presence in my mind squirmed in response. Was it worrying that such a bloodthirsty spirit actually seemed to like me? Perhaps I amused it – a pet hound doing tricks: stab, slash, roll over…
DrooomDa. DrooomDa. DrooomDa. DrooomDa…
People crowded onto the walls of the Old Town to peer out to sea.
“What is that awful din?” Martain said.
“Skallgrim battle drums,” I said, the sacking of Ironport vivid in my mind. Sack, such a sham of a word when slaughter and rape were far more accurate descriptions. A huge fleet of wolf-ships approached Setharis, their oars churning water to foam in time to the heavy beat, hundreds of ships cutting through the waves with red eyes glimmering balefully.
Cillian hobbled over, leaning heavily on a cane. She looked half a corpse, face grey and gaunt after magical healing. Two portly healers flapped around her squawking complaints but she ignored their protestations. She wasn’t about to let a little brush with death keep her from important work.
“It is good to see you alive,” she said.
“Likewise. You look like shite though.”
“You are a silver-tongued fox, Edrin. Shall we see how well you fare after an arrow through your lung?” Her mouth twisted with a spike of remembered pain.
I held my hands up in defeat. “Where is Layla?”
“Being escorted to the Collegiate, and to her mother,” she said. “And before you ask, no, neither are held hostage to your good behaviour.”
“Where is that bastard, Harailt?”
She grimaced. “The traitor has escaped. Somehow he managed to murder five magi and a dozen wardens guarding him. It should not have been possible given his skills and the strength of his Gift. Some greater power is at work within him. You were correct.”
I should have trusted my instincts and killed him the moment I’d laid eyes on him. Hindsight is a maddening plague on the mind.
Archmagus Krandus hurried down from the Templarum Magestus surrounded by a chattering swarm of attendants. He wasn’t what people might expect in an Archmagus: he didn’t look old and wise, instead he was physically in his early twenties with shoulder-length shimmering ash-blond hair held back by a warded golden circlet. Even in my biased eyes he was disgustingly handsome. In one hand he clutched a signal rod tipped with an inverted cone of gold that he barked commands into, carrying his voice to all such devices within a range of several leagues. “The gate guard and magi must hold off these Skallgrim savages,” he said. “Remind the wardens that our walls have never been breached. We are readying to reinforce them.”
Why was he bothering with the wardens and Skallgrim? Did he not know what was going on?
Cillian limped towards him. Children tore past ferrying armfuls of arrows to the archers on the walls and the wardens massing by the gate. Shadea was too busy directing the magi on the ramparts to pay us any attention, devising some plan to deal with the creature below. Wardens nearby laughed and joked as they readied to pass through the gate, boasting about how they were going to throw the filthy savages back into the sea.
“What are these fools doing?” I said.
“I have just awoken from healing,” Cillian replied. “Archmagus Krandus must think we merely face a Skallgrim fleet and some kind of halrúna summoned daemon.” She coughed and clutched her chest, face twisting in pain. “We must warn him of the Magash Mora before ignorance leads to a fatal mistake.”
Martain and Eva held me back as Cillian closed the last few steps on her own. The Archmagus was being harassed by dozens of messengers all vying for his attention and one stern older woman was hauling others out of the way, desperate to personally hand him a note written by Shadea’s hand rather than go through his aides. Ah, he had no idea what we faced. At Cillian’s approach he ordered all to be quiet and gave her his full and undivided attention. The older messenger barged in and handed the Archmagus the paper. His face went ashen as he learned of the Doom of Escharr’s rebirth.