'Forewarned is forearmed.1
Aracnan thought for a moment, the skin of his gaunt, hairless head contorting strangely until realisation dawned. 'Ah, I understand; the bidden face of covenant theory, the perversity of magic. To achieve grand deeds you must first sow the seeds of your own destruction.'
'Now that would be a little foolish,' said the shadow, 'but it is nonethe¬less necessary to allow for the possibility of those seeds to exist. No magic is unstoppable, no spell irreversible. Without that element of the unknown, nothing could be achieved, but perhaps it is possible to guide the unknown in a certain direction.'
'The girl has been warned that her lord is just a player in your game so you can predict their reaction?'
'Exactly so. Even now she is trying to find General Lahk to explain the danger. Better that than to gamble on what someone is thinking and leave it to chance.'
Aracnan made a sweeping gesture, as though gathering up the threads of a fishing net and drawing them towards him. 'Well then, let us make sure we know what General Lahk will be thinking about.'
The movement ended as his hand reached a pouch sewn onto his black stiffened-leather armour. He pushed one bony finger inside and smiled as the energies comprising his spell danced up his arm, prick-ling; the skin as they dissipated into the black clouds above him and vanished.
Almost immediately the first howls of animal rage rang out from the streets below. They were joined by hundreds more, merging into a great roar of wordless voices and running feet that drowned out the warning shouts from the FarIan pickets.
CHAPTER 29
Rojak watched the scene playing out before him and felt a flicker of satisfaction break through the pain wracking his body. The dead were scattered all around. Men, women and children lay curled up in tidy bundles, or sprawled in almost comic poses. Others were little more than lumps of flesh rendered unrecognisable by the brutality done them. He sat in a broken chair scavenged from somewhere by one of the Hounds. It was far from comfortable, but he was in no position to complain – he was in no position to do anything but sit and watch the final death'throes of Scree.
'It is done,' he whispered, to himself or his master, Rojak was not sure now. 1 am done, he added to himself. Azaer's shadows, so close for all these years, felt like they had penetrated him, flesh and bone. As the corruption inside him raged unchecked, his soul faded faster, merging with the intangible essence of his master.
'Not done, not quite.' The susurrus reply echoed in ghostly fashion all around the broken building. Rojak couldn't move, his strength having failed on the steps below. When they had arrived at this place, it had been a scene of fresh devastation, the air tasting abused, and scorched by the rampant energies unleashed by the abbot. The buildings were aflame, or smashed and scattered over the packed-dirt streets.
'It cannot be stopped now, it is too far gone,' Rojak said, compelling his thoughts to order. His master, whispering in his ear, had told him some of what was going on in the rest of the city, and Rojak could feeI a prickling map of hurt on his skin that echoed the destruction, hot stinging fires that consumed whole streets, the slender needles of Crystal Skulls and divine-touched people scraping a path through the flesh as they moved.
'Lord Isak will soon reach Six Temples and there he will be forced to make a stand with the Devoted.' He paused and struggled to breathe.
A shriek from somewhere below marked some deranged citizen stray¬ing too close to Mistress's remaining pet. 'King Emin is so very close now, and soon he will have all that he desires.'
'Then let it play out. Make your final moves on the board before you fall.'
Rojak tried to nod, but the effort defeated him. Death was so close he could almost reach out and touch the robe, as they said in Embere-
But no, not Death; the Chief of the Gods would not claim him. It was not a black robe he felt all around him, merely shadows. Death would not have him. There was no word for what would happen when Rojak's body failed finally. It would be an ending, but not death.
Rojak's vision whirled, flames blurring for a brief while before the details of the street ahead returned. He could just see the rotting corpse of a wyvern, one of the pair kept by the Raylin called Mistress. The beast had had its fill of the clamour and stink of dead meat all around. It had snapped at what it thought was a corpse, but the mo¬ment a canine caught Rojak's sleeve, the minstrel's plague had caught it, passing through its razor-sharp teeth to its tongue and down its throat. Its scales, once glittering in myriad shades of green and gold, had sloughed off as its body erupted in viscous pus-filled boils and thick, black blood had seeped from all its orifices. In a few moments the wyvern was just another rotting pile on the ground.
Rojak sat upstairs in a small house now exposed to the elements after the abbot's magic had torn roof and walls away. It was the closest remaining building to where the abbot himself lay gibbering, curled in a foetal position, in what was left of his cellar. The furious incarnation of Erwillen, the abbot's Aspect-Guide, fuelled by the Skull's power and random blasts of raw energy, had blown up the building.
Much of what remained was still burning fiercely; the protective ring of fire kept the boldest of Scree's citizens away for the time being. There was little of the house left intact now, only the thick stones of the kitchen hearth and the wall opposite it, almost to the height of a man. The rest was broken stumps of wood and heaps of stained brick. Amid the rubble lurked the soot-blackened feathers and claws of the High Hunter. Rojak could hear the beast's laboured breathing, no doubt echoing Abbot Doren's own exertions.
'Venn,' he croaked. The slim man came to his side as though glid-ing on ice, his tattooed face completely unreadable. Diamond'shapes ran down his left cheek, running around his ear and down the side of his throat, disappearing under the frayed neckline of his tunic. 'It is time for you to leave.'
'Leave?' Venn said in surprise. He spoke in the thick, rolling vowels of Embere. It was an affectation of his, to speak to everyone in the accent of their home, even those like Rojak, who had lost all trace of their past.
'You must leave now,' Rojak repeated. 'You cannot be caught up in the death of the city.'
'You're going to need me here,' Venn insisted, pointing towards Flitter, who was crouched in the furthest corner and looking out at
the abbot's ruined house. If Rojak had been able to turn his head and see through the fog of shadows that thickened in his eyes, he would have spotted the three tight knots of soldiers that were advancing steadily. 'Flitter has said that King Emin outnumbers us. He has the vampire with him.'
Rojak beckoned Venn closer and without hesitating he leaned closer, though Rojak could see his nostrils twitch. 'What must come to pass here is for me to decide. I have plans for you, so do as I tell you.'
Venn didn't argue further. He knew well that Rojak's foresight was unnatural. 'What do you wish me to do?'
'Find Ilumene. You and he shall prepare the way, ready the Land for your master's twilight reign.'
'How? Ilumene is the general, the conqueror, not I.'
Rojak reached out a clawed hand, one hooked finger brushing Venn's diamond patchwork sleeve. In this light it looked pitch-black; only under the sun was it apparent that the tunic was composed of varying shades of cloth that had been roughly dyed. 'You are no gen¬eral, but you must conquer. You were the greatest of your people, until you realised the truth behind the holy words given to the clans. Now you must return to them and spread the word of the twilight herald.'
'Will they follow me?'
'The Harlequins have been servants for too long. You must give
them a banner of their own. No more are they the children of Death, so fearful of their father they will not wear his colour. Remove their pottery masks and give them black-iron to wear. Give them a banner, Give them a king.'