Prince Maesa, page 14
‘What manner of undead are they?’ growled Stonbrak at Quasque.
‘The Hounds of Nagash! Can you not hear them bark?’ blubbered Quasque.
‘What?’ spat Stonbrak.
‘A breed of Nighthaunt,’ said Horrin softly. ‘They are well known to we of Shyish. They chase down those that displease the Great Necromancer. It is said they were cruel hunters in life, now doomed in death to wear the skeletal heads of their hounds in place of their own. They are implacable, and will track down their quarry wherever they may be.’
‘Then they are wisps, and wisps pass through solid matter,’ said Stonbrak. He groped for his pint pot and drained the last of his ale. ‘Let them come! I have a surprise of steel for them. My axe will see to their second deaths, as will that stick of the aelf’s, I’ll warrant. It has a gleam of magic almost as good as my own.’
‘My sword is inimical to such ghasts,’ said Maesa softly. ‘But the Glaivewraiths are deadly, and hunt in packs. We must be ready.’
‘Oh, I’m ready,’ said Stonbrak.
The thing picking at the door planks moved away to try the window. The shutters rattled violently. Plaster dust shook from the bouncing frame. Streaks of water ran from fresh cracks. Ice spread around the window. The glass broke. A plant on the sill withered and died. Ninian screamed again. Barnabus was crying, but he stood up, fists clenched.
‘Go away!’ he shouted bravely.
Horrin rested his hands on his foster son’s shoulders. He smiled through his fear. ‘They cannot get in,’ he said quietly.
Maesa looked at the innkeeper.
‘The charms over the bar,’ Horrin explained. ‘I have many, from all manner of wizards. They cannot get in.’
‘They will not last,’ said Maesa. ‘This magic is strong, and yours, alas, is not.’
Horrin glanced at the bar. All the charms were shining red, and smoking with the dust burning from them.
The first shutter fell still. The thing outside moved on. There was a brief pause before the next shutter shook to a furious pounding.
Stonbrak narrowed his eyes. ‘The aelf is right. Your charms will be insufficient, Master Horrin.’
‘Barnabus, come with me,’ said Horrin. ‘Fetch the silver balls for my gun, and bring the daggers out for you and your mother. Barnabus!’
Barnabus was panting, staring at the patches of ice spreading all along the inn wall. His breath steamed from his mouth, thin threads at first, then huge billows. The temperature dropped rapidly, carrying frost deeper into the room along the beams. Shattercap shivered.
Noises were coming from the first floor.
‘They’re trying the shutters upstairs!’ said Ninian.
‘I said they can’t get in,’ said Horrin, but he no longer believed it.
All the shutters and the door commenced banging at once with great ferocity. Things outside shrieked and screamed.
‘Your gun, innkeeper,’ Maesa said. ‘Now!’
Horrin nodded dumbly and hurried to the bar, dragging Barnabus with him.
The charms floated parallel to the wall, straining on their chains, now glowing brighter than a tree of candles. As Horrin took up his gun, the first charm exploded, showering the room with hot fragments that hissed on the spreading ice.
Barnabus scrambled over the counter. He rummaged about and shoved a rattling box at his foster father. Horrin half spilled the contents and swore as he fumbled powder and ball into the mouth of his gun. Shaking hands took three attempts to push the ramrod home. Barnabus scrambled over the countertop again, clutching a pair of identical sheathed daggers to his chest. He gave one to Ninian, and drew his own. As soon as it cleared the sheath, flames licked along the edges.
‘Now that’s more like it!’ said Stonbrak. He was shifting about, eager to fight. Maesa stood completely still, the Song of Thorns pointed at the door. Shattercap hissed.
Horrin finally succeeded in priming his gun. He pulled back the hammer with a click.
‘All your weapons are enchanted?’ asked Maesa.
‘This is Shyish, what use is a weapon of any other sort?’ said Horrin.
The banging stopped. The party waited tensely. Soot sifted down the chimney. A cold wind blew out from the fireplace. The flames in the grate sank.
Horrin paled. ‘The fire!’ he said. ‘The fire must not go out!’ He banged himself on the furniture as he rushed to the hearth.
Another charm exploded, then another. The whole string of them went off like duardin firecrackers, banging in succession until only one remained. Stonbrak growled at a fleck of molten gold burning his cheek. Frost raced over the bar, up the bottles shelved behind. Glass broke as the contents froze solid.
Maesa kept a wary eye on the last charm. It floated, buzzing with failing magic, flickering like a firefly heading deep into the woods.
More soot fell down the chimney, damping the fire further.
‘They’re going to come in through the bloody fireplace!’ Stonbrak shouted.
‘The fire! The fire!’ Horrin wailed. He tossed dried mosses onto the sinking flames. They sputtered, but would not take. Barnabus ran to his side with a flask.
‘Try this, Master Horrin!’ he said.
Horrin uncorked the flask and upended it over the fire. Thick oil glugged onto the embers. The fire roared up and Horrin cheered. His jubilation fled when a bone-chilling wail echoed down the chimney, and the fires died back again.
‘Get away from the fireplace,’ Maesa said.
‘It cannot go out!’ Horrin was in a panic, spilling matches and kindling as he tried to revive the fire.
The last charm exploded. To Maesa’s aelven vision, the chain fell slowly, each link clinking in turn on the wood. Broken charms rippled along the length as it swung to a stop. As the last link stilled, the candles in the bar room extinguished all at once. Lightning flashed somewhere in the depths of the storm, sending sharp slivers of light spearing through the gaps in the woodwork. Maesa saw a shadow moving fast outside.
‘The fire,’ Horrin groaned. The last spark winked out.
A moan fluted down the chimney.
‘Get away from the fire,’ the prince repeated.
With a rush of soot and ash, a cloaked thing plunged into the room. Horrin threw himself aside. It sped over his head, wailing piteously. Green and ghastly light flooded the bar. A canine skull jutted from under the figure’s filthy cowl. It had no legs, its body and robes blended into a long, glowing tail of magic. Clawed hands swept at Maesa as it flew by. It raced around the room, its passage leaving a trail of ice and soot upon the walls. The touch of its spectral form knocked pictures down and shattered glass ornaments. As it came at the group again, a glaive appeared in its hands, solidifying from shadows: a black wooden haft hardened by centuries in a tomb, a sword-long blade eaten with rust but still sharp as death’s bite.
The ghast levelled its weapon and sped towards Quasque, who let out a low moan. Ghost fire glowed in the thing’s empty eye sockets. It shrieked triumphantly as it stooped to kill. From far away came the baying of hounds and the shouts of wicked men intent on their quarry.
Maesa stepped in front of the ghast. The Song of Thorns sang through the air, intercepting the blade before it could claim its prey. Green sparks fountained along the point of contact. Maesa encountered a wiry strength he had not expected, and the ghast pushed him back, its fleshless muzzle snapping in his face.
Stonbrak gave a shout and threw. His axe blurred through the air, cleaving through the phantom as if it were composed of nothing but mist. The blade dragged the stalker into shreds of vapour. The runes cut into the axe’s steel flared. The phantom discorporated into nothing, and Stonbrak’s weapon thunked into the wall.
‘That’s you done,’ said the duardin matter-of-factly. He clumped across the room to where his axe was embedded, and grasped the haft.
‘Master duardin!’ Maesa called.
Stonbrak looked back. Maesa dropped the Song of Thorns. His lithe arms moving too fast to follow, he plucked an arrow from his quiver, drew his bow and loosed. The shaft sped towards the outraged merchant, passing his nose by a finger’s breadth, and buried itself in the skull of a second wraith emerging through the wall. It disappeared with a moan and shower of grave dust. Another ghast plunged through the door. Horrin snatched up his gun and fired. The bullet burst into pink fire as it punched through the phantom, sending it shrieking back to the netherworlds.
‘We need to remove ourselves from here,’ Maesa said. He looked at the finger. ‘I do not think they can pass through the body of the god.’
Stonbrak tugged out his axe, and brushed the dust from his arm with distaste. ‘Then we go upward, into the storm,’ he said. ‘There’s too much ground to cover here, too many ways in. We should hold at the sky-dock, keep our backs to the stone, and await my cloud-dwelling cousins. We might be able to hold them off for long enough.’
‘Boy, which way to the dock?’ said Maesa.
‘The stairs are here, good sirs!’ Barnabus said. He hurried to the far corner of the room and opened up a door.
‘But the fire!’ Horrin said.
More shrieks passed close by the inn. Nothing attempted entry.
‘Maybe they’ve learned caution,’ said Stonbrak. He hauled Quasque to his feet. ‘Up you get, master mage.’
Horrin was stacking the fire anew. ‘The dead know no fear at all,’ he said.
‘That is not true,’ said the prince. He picked up his sword, fetched his helm from the table and put it on, and stowed his packs under a bench. ‘They know fear of failure, for their lord will punish them if they do not bring their quarry down.’
‘I cannot go,’ said Horrin. ‘I must relight the fire!’ None of the matches would ignite, so Horrin took up steel and flint and sent sparks fountaining into fresh kindling. It did not take, and Horrin cursed.
‘It will not burn while they are assailing us,’ said Maesa. ‘Come.’
The ground stirred beneath their feet.
‘It is beginning!’ Horrin said.
Shifting timbers moaned. The inn pitched like a storm-tossed ship. Objects fell from the tables and bounced across the floor. Only Maesa rode the motion with any dignity. Stonbrak stumbled. Ninian gripped at a table. Quasque wept all the harder. Chairs toppled over with wooden clatters.
‘We must leave now!’ Maesa said.
Barnabus waved frantically at the dark stairwell. Tears glinted in his eyes. The boy was terrified. ‘This way, this way!’
The room swayed again. A rumbling pitted itself in competition with the storm: the low-bass, tooth-jarring scrape of stone on stone. The few bottles behind the bar that were not frozen in place fell to the floor and shattered. Wood splintered. Windows burst in warping frames.
‘Don’t need to tell me twice, lad.’ Stonbrak shoved past Maesa, dragging the shivering Quasque with him. Ninian went to her son’s side.
‘Please watch my family,’ said Horrin. ‘Help them live the night through. I have to stay here.’
Maesa nodded. ‘Very well.’
Horrin smiled. ‘Thank you for your story, good aelf. Maybe, tomorrow, you can tell me an–’
A howling wraith burst upward from beneath the inn. Its phantom glaive point slid through Ninian’s chest with no resistance. Horrin’s eyes and mouth went round in shock. When the tip emerged from beneath her sternum, it suddenly phased into solidity, parting Ninian’s skin with a sudden rush of gore.
Barnabus screamed. Ninian opened her mouth to speak, but a sheet of blood poured over her jaw in place of words.
The phantom passed through Ninian’s dying body, stilling her heart and covering her in frost. It raced with a shriek at Maesa in order to get to Quasque. Maesa sidestepped at the last possible moment, brought down the Song of Thorns and decapitated it. The hound skull fell towards the ground, the body began to dissipate, but then the Song of Thorns glowed ruddily, and the shreds of the doomed hunter’s soul were sucked screaming into his blade.
‘Grungni’s beard!’ Stonbrak swore.
‘Ninian… My Ninian…’ Horrin stood, hands trembling.
The inn shook, and lurched upward.
‘Go, leave the fire. It is too late!’ said Maesa. ‘Get them all out, duardin, they are coming in earnest.’ He spoke no louder than a whisper, yet the words flew with the force of an arrow.
‘As you say, aelf,’ said Stonbrak. He marched across the room to grab the shivering Horrin. More of the phantoms slipped through the walls as if they were not there, weapons transitioning from ghostly to solid forms. Maesa set himself against them, covering Stonbrak’s retreat. The ghasts clacked their canine teeth together, drifting into a line six wide.
Stonbrak cast hurried glances at them, hustled Horrin to the door, shoved the humans into the stairwell and slammed the door behind him.
The wraiths attacked.
They came at Maesa in a group, glaives pointed at his heart. The Song of Thorns flashed out and took the heads from two of the weapons, causing their bearers to wail and discard the hafts, which boiled into glowing smoke. One of the disarmed wraiths raced at the prince. Maesa leapt lightly onto the table, parrying a flurry of jabs from the others, his eyes ever on his principal opponent as it reached out with its heart-stilling touch. A swift thrust from the Song of Thorns, and its soul was sucked away into the prison of his sword.
The others became wary.
‘There are more terrible things in these realms than Nagash,’ Maesa told them. ‘This weapon I bear was the gift of the Goddess of Life. It is deadly to your kind. Come at me, and know a true end.’
They tried to surround him. Maesa followed their movements, switching his stance just enough to execute deflections and counter-attacks. The inn’s movements increased, not fits and starts this time, but a smooth, purposeful motion towards the ground, steady as a piston drop. The ceiling cracked as the great finger poking up through the roof twitched. Furniture upended and skidded down the sloping floor. Maesa leapt from tumbling chair to sliding table, his feet light, as if the battle were a well-choreographed dance and not a struggle against death itself. Muffled shouts came from upstairs. The phantoms, not anchored to reality, were taken unawares, and passed screaming in fury through the walls and floor as the building moved away from them. The great stone digit the inn was built around flexed. Timbers cracked with such force that splinters exploded across the room.
‘Master!’ wailed Shattercap.
The inn tipped sideways, then stopped abruptly. Furniture crashed down. Aelven grace was no protection, and Maesa was flung clear across the room, landing in a tangle of broken wood and glass. Shattercap gibbered terror into his ear.
‘Master! Master! Master!’
‘Silence,’ said Maesa. The inn had come to rest on its side. One wall was now the floor, another the ceiling. All surfaces were broken and bent. ‘Ellamar,’ he said.
Maesa sheathed his sword and pushed himself out of the debris. He searched frantically for the package containing his beloved’s remains. Finding it, he tied it across his back, leaving his pack, and clambered for the door to the stairs, now above him and hanging open. He leapt, grabbing the edge of the turned-about doorway and hauling himself lightly upward. Once inside the stairwell, he ran along the walls, for the stairs hung broken over his head, all while the great tremors of the god’s waking splintered the timbers further.
Maesa found Stonbrak in a heap of armour and beard.
‘The others, where are they?’ Maesa demanded.
‘Ran ahead!’ Stonbrak said, pushing broken plaster off himself. ‘Quasque fled gibbering up there after them. He refuses to use his magic.’ Stonbrak spat a huge gob of saliva and dust from his mouth. ‘What by the Six Smiths was that?’
Maesa peered out of a crazed window onto a vista of grey grasses and black-barked trees.
‘The arm of the demigod has come down. We are on the plain. We do not have much time before it fully wakes, I think.’
In answer to his warning, the hand shifted, and the inn tilted a little way back towards its proper position. Horrin shouted from somewhere ahead.
Stonbrak got himself up, and immediately put his heavy boot through the laths of the wall currently making the floor.
‘I do not think this will end well,’ said Maesa. He sprang ahead, barely troubling the fractured building, while Stonbrak swore and blundered.
The upper floor of the inn was ruined. Maesa pushed through a rent in the wall to emerge onto a slippery mess of tiles caught in the angle of a gable. Water ran from the smashed inn in floods. Rain pounded at his eyes. The fingers of the god were half curled, the giant hand resting blade down on the ground, the mighty thumb blotting out most of the sky, black stone on black clouds.
Atop a higher portion of the ruin, Quasque held Barnabus to ransom. He had the boy’s flaming knife pressed up against his throat. Horrin balanced on the tiles. He’d lost his gun, and stood helpless.
‘Get back from me!’ Quasque shouted.
‘Leave the boy, Quasque,’ said Maesa. ‘Let him free to his father.’
‘No!’ said Quasque. He searched the sky for the ghasts. ‘When they come back, I’m going to give him to them. Then they’ll leave me alone. I’m sorry. It’s the only way. I must return the eye!’
Maesa withdrew his bow from its case and nocked an arrow to the string. ‘They want you, master sorcerer. Spilling that boy’s blood will make no difference.’ He drew, taking sure aim on Quasque’s head.
‘He’s just a stable boy! I am a mage of Hysh! I carry an aelementor’s eye! It is obvious who should die!’
‘You are just a man, for all that,’ said Maesa.
Quasque laughed wildly. ‘I know the spell that will see me safe!’ He stiffened. From the corner of his eye, Maesa glimpsed what Quasque saw: looping down through the sky on trails of ghostly vapour came the Glaivewraiths. They flew at the terrified sorcerer.
