'Ah, a suit of armour? If that is true, then you are dealing with an old one, the most ancient and cunning. Filled with malice they are – and hard to trick out of their prize. Take care how you proceed.'
Styrax hesitated. He knew which inhabitant of the dark would want a hold over him: the daemon-prince he had made a bargain with many years ago. It feared his strength and scrabbled for purchase. So be it; he had always known a reckoning had to come one day. Strange that it comes this way though, 1 wouldn't have expected a daemon to choose such an oblique path.
'Was that what you came to tell me? A warning from a loyal servant?'
'No.' The corpse gave a wheeze, a dribble of cloying blood emerg¬ing from the corner of its mouth. Styrax suspected Purn, back in his festering laboratory in Scree, was laughing at the notion. 'To tell you there is a new air in Scree. Figures of power walk the streets, unknown songs drift on the air. It is nothing I have ever felt before, but it is more akin to the currents surging through the Dark Place than the politics of a city. Something calls to me in the night, something of incalculable power.'
'You're asking for help?' Styrax's puzzlement was plain in his voice. He glanced at Larim, but the young white-eye looked just as confused. A necromancer as powerful as Purn was unlikely to ask for assistance, no matter what the task. Sharing, spoils or troubles, was not often part of the mindset.
'Scree becomes the focus of something quite remarkable, I believe. I do not know what dangers lie here, but they shift and feed off each other. Scree sees the convergence of horrors. I fear this home will soon be no home, not even for a man of culture such as I.'
Styrax knew what Purn meant, but when he glanced at Larim, he didn't appear to understand; his contact with necromancers during his fifteen-year apprenticeship would have been limited. Necromancers disliked states descending into chaos. There were too many factions involved, too many mobs roaming the streets and disrupting their work. They liked their shadows still and peaceful, rather than flicker¬ing in the flames of funeral pyres.
'You lack the power to compete for whatever it is that calls to you in the night?'
'If this convergence draws more people to Scree that will certainly be true, but in fact I suspect the artefact would draw me into the games of lords and Gods, and in these troubled times that would not prove healthy. Instead, I offer to help you secure it.'
'You're offering me this artefact? In exchange for what? A manor back home with your pick of the gaols? A guarantee that your activi¬ties will be unrestrained?'
'No. The pickings will be richer this side of the waste. Every denizen of the dark knows that a storm has scattered the strands of the future far and wide. Fate lies in her chamber and weeps for what she has lost. I do not wish to be absent from such delicious chaos. The freedom you offered me is my price – as well as men to assist me here – but in Thotel, where I am not answerable to anyone but you. That – and one of the Chetse's Bloodroses for my personal use.'
Styrax frowned. A necromancer offering to hand over something of such power? It hardly seemed creditable, yet Purn knew his lord well enough not to expect some foolish mistake that could put Styrax in danger, or honour an agreement where he'd been lied to. 'If this artefact is as great as you claim, I agree. I will send you some men to help and they will accompany you back here.'
The corpse shuddered, slumping to its knees before Purn regained his control. 'I cannot hold this much longer. Who will you send? They must leave word for me at a tavern, the Lost Spur.'
Styrax's thoughts began to race. Killers would be easy enough to find, but who of his staff could he send to lead them? All those men whose names came readily to his lips were men of importance, and he had few friends he could spare for such a thing. Then one appeared unbidden in his mind. Styrax pictured the terror it would cause even as he spoke, and the picture it made caused him to smile inwardly.
'Mikiss. A messenger called Koden Mikiss will lead them.'
Not waiting to hear any more, Isherin Purn broke the link and the mage's corpse collapsed in a heap of stained, stinking robes. Styrax didn't move for a moment, thinking over this remarkable conversa¬tion. Of what importance was Scree? What sort of convergence could be happening there? Then Kohrad's still form returned to his memory. There were more important things to deal with this night. His skills would be required if they were going to break whatever hold the daemon had over his son. Once that was done, there was revenge to be planned.
'Major,' Styrax growled. The tall soldier hurried over, his amber eyes glinting in the firelight. 'Find our friend the messenger and have him waiting for when I finish with Kohrad. Do you have a few men you can trust for a trip such as this?'
'If it's as important as he said,' the soldier replied with a nod towards the corpse, 'I'll go myself, and take the twins with me. Any more than that will make it hard to travel quick and quiet.'
Styrax gave a nod of approval. 'Good. I don't want to send an army all the way up there, not yet. Find out what Purn is talking about and if you think it worthwhile, send word with what assistance you'll need to secure it. Get yourself ready, then bring the messenger to me. But first, find me a horse.'
CHAPTER 10
Mayel pressed his palm flat against the door and stopped. In the gloom of the cellar stairwell, he could just make out the pitted iron ring that opened the door. He held his breath, feeling the insistent thump of his heart pounding as his ears strained to detect any sound from the house above. All was silent, but for a flutter through the house as the blustery wind rattled the shutters. A droning whistle abruptly pierced the quiet, making Mayel's heart almost leap into his throat.
Then he recognised it, and grinned in relief. 'Just the wind com¬ing through the keyhole,' he muttered. 'Idiot!' The lock on the kitchen door was old and broken, like everything else in this house, no matter how grand it had once been. Mayel could hardly believe anyone would let such a fine house fall into disrepair like this, let¬ting the damp to creep up the walls and seep into the floorboards until they swelled and burst like overripe fruit. The surrounding area might explain a lot for, like the house at its centre, the district was decayed, half-abandoned, home mostly to furtive figures who lin¬gered in dark corners, hiding from the light as much as the rain. The abbot, of course, thought the area ideal. Having escaped the austere bleakness of their island monastery, Abbot Doren had sought out its cosmopolitan equivalent, much to Mayel's indignation. That the abbot had paid good silver for it only compounded the young man's irritation.
Mayel had adopted the kitchen as his own and scrubbed it clean. The abbot had the cellar room for his studies, and the rest of the house they had sealed off and left for the rats to enjoy. The abbot worked through the night, talking to himself and clattering around down here as Mayel drifted off to sleep in his makeshift bed. When the old man did sleep it was usually in a chair shaded from the afternoon sun, though his slumber was far from peaceful, his dreams plagued by fell shapes he refused to discuss… Mayel could see them haunting his waking hours too.
Abbot Doren was far from young, but Mayel suspected he was not as old as he appeared, despite the tired look in his eyes. Perhaps it was the dreams that aged him, perhaps it was something else. He was a mage, like most high priests, and neither magic nor Vellern were easy masters. The two together would take a lot out of any man.
Flickering light seeped through the cracks, outlining the door. Finally, Mayel turned the iron ring, and waited. Salvation or damnation, he wondered, slowly easing open the door. Wincing slightly at the creak of the hinges, he poked his head around the door and looked into the cellar.
The morning light was streaming down through the two grime-smeared windows facing him. The cellar had been underneath the main entrance to the house, looking up at what was, at one time, a busy street. The tall oak door that had been the grand entrance to the house was now rotten and broken, with black paint peeling from its surface like a leprous skin.