Mage's Blood

PROLOGUE

The Web of Souls

The Fate of the Dead

What happens when the soul leaves the body? Paradise or Damnation? Rebirth? Oneness with God? Or Oblivion? The faiths of mankind have made a case for each and many other variants. But we of the Ordo Costruo teach this: that when the soul detaches from the body it remains here on Urte for a time, a disembodied ghost. Whether it eventually dissipates or passes to some other place, we can only speculate. But what we do know is that a mage may commune with such ghosts and gain access to all that those spirits perceive. There are millions of such spirits wandering the lands. By communing with them, it is theoretically possible to be aware of almost everything that is happening on Urte.

ORDO COSTRUO COLLEGIATE, PONTUS

Nimtaya Mountains, Antiopia

Julsept 927

1 Year until the Moontide

As the sun stabbed through a cleft in the eastern mountains, a thin wail lifted from a midden. The refuse heap lay downwind of a ramshackle cluster of mud-brick hovels. The quavering cry hung in the air, an invitation to predators. A lurking jackal soon appeared, sniffing warily. In the distance others of his kind yowled and yapped, but this close to prey, he moved in silence.

There: a bundle of swaddled clothing amidst the waste and filth, jerking spasmodically, tiny brown limbs kicking free. The jackal looked around then trotted forward cautiously. The helpless newborn went still as the beast loomed over it. It did not yet understand that the warm embracing being that had held it would not return. It was thirsty and the cold was beginning to bite.

The beast did not see a child; it saw food. Its jaws opened.

An instant later the jackal was hurled through the air, its hindquarters smashing against a boulder. It writhed agonisingly and tried to run, sliding down the slope it had so gracefully ascended, its eyes flashing about, seeking the danger it had never even sensed. One hind leg was shattered; it didn’t get far.

A ragged bulk wrapped in cloth rose and glided towards the beast, which snapped and snarled as an arm holding a rock emerged and rose and fell. There was a muffled crunch and blood splattered. From amidst the filthy cloth a face emerged, a leathery-faced old woman with wiry iron hair. She bent until her lips were almost touching the jackal’s muzzle.

She inhaled.

Later that day, the old woman sat cross-legged in a cave high above an arid valley. The land below was stark and jagged, layers of shadow and light playing amongst rocky outcroppings. She lived alone, with none to wrinkle their nose in distaste at her unwashed stench, nor to avert their eyes from her wizened face. Her skin was dark and dry, her tangled hair grey, but she moved with grace as she built up the fire. Smoke was cleverly funnelled up a cleft in the rock and out – one of her many great-nephews had carved the chimney, and though she didn’t remember his name, a face floated to mind.

Methodically she spooned water into the tiny puckered mouth of the newborn baby, one of dozens abandoned each year by the villagers, unwanted and doomed from their first breath. All they asked of her was that she saw them on their way to paradise. The villagers revered her as a holy woman and often sought her aid; the Scriptualists tolerated her, turning a blind eye – for they too had needs, their own dead to placate. From time to time a zealot tried to drive away the ‘jadugara’ – the witch – but they seldom lasted long – condemning her tended to prove unlucky. And if they came in force she was very hard to find.

The villagers wanted her intercessions with the ancestors. She told them what they needed to hear and in return she was given food and drink, clothes and fuel – and their unwanted children. They never asked what became of them – life was harsh here and death came easy. There was never enough for all.

The child in her lap squalled, its mouth questing for sustenance as she looked down at it without emotion. She too was a jackal, of another sort, and great-grandmother of her own pack. When she was younger, she’d had lovers, and conceived once; a girl who became a woman and bred many more. The jadugara still watched over her ancestors, pieces in her unseen game. She had dwelt here longer than any realised, pretending to age, die and be replaced, for centuries. The crypt-cavern in which her predecessors were supposedly buried was empty – at least of her own predecessors; instead she interred the bones of dead strangers. From time to time she would leave to wander the world, wearing scores of faces and names, moving through young woman to old crone like some season-goddess of the Sollan faith.

She did not feed the child, for that would be wasteful and nothing here could be wasted, not in this place and especially not by her, who purchased power so dearly. She tossed a pinch of powder into the flames and watched them change colour from pale orange to a deep emerald. The air temperature fell in seconds, though the flames flared higher. The smoke thickened and the night inhaled watchfully.

The time had come. She picked up a knife from the pile of knickknacks at her knee and pressed it against the baby’s tiny chest. Her eyes met the child’s briefly, but she did not reflect or regret. She’d lost those emotions somewhere in her youth. She had done this more than a thousand times in her long life, in dozens of lands, on two continents; for her it was as necessary as food or water.

She pushed the blade through the baby’s ribs, silencing the child’s brief cry. The little mouth opened and the hag placed her lips to the infant’s mouth. She inhaled … and she was replenished, more than by the jackal. If the child had been older she would have got more, but she would take whatever came her way.

She placed the dead baby to one side, meat for the jackals – she had taken what she needed. She let the smoky energy she had ingested settle inside her. It recharged her as only the swallowed soul of another could. Her vision cleared, her vitality renewed. Replenished, she rekindled her awareness of the spirit world, which took some time – the spirits knew her, and would not approach unless compelled. Some she had bound to her will though, and from these she selected a favourite. She crooned his name; ‘Jahanasthami,’ as she sent out sticky tendrils of power. She poked at the fire, stirring the embers into flame, and added more powders, making the smoke run thicker. ‘Jahanasthami, come!’

It was long minutes before the face of her spirit-guardian formed in the smoke, blank as an unpainted Lantric carnival mask. The eyes were empty, the mouth a blackness. ‘Sabele,’ it breathed. ‘I felt the child die … I knew you would call.’

She and Jahanasthami communed, images from the spirit’s consciousness streaming into hers: places and faces, memories, questions and answers. When the spirit was confounded by one of her enquiries it consulted others, then passed on the responses. They were a web of souls, connected by uncountable strands, containing so much knowledge that a mind might burst before it could take it all in. But Sabele tried, straining through the endless trivia and minutiae of millions of lives, seeking the nuggets of information that would shape the future. The jadugara shook with the effort.

Hours passed – to her, they were aeons, in which galaxies of information were born, flowered, collapsed and perished. She floated in seas of imagery and sound, immersed in the vast panoply of life, seeing kings and their servants conferring, priests haggling and merchants praying. She saw births and deaths, acts of love and murder. Finally she glimpsed the face she was seeking through the ghost-eyes of a dead Lakh girl haunting a village well – just a tiny instant, when the ghost saw a face revealed by the twitch of a curtain, before a flare of wards buffeted her away. That mere flash was enough, and Sabele moved closer, from spirit to spirit, hunting. She could feel her quarry, the way a spider sensed a distant trembling at the edge of its web, and at last she was certain: Antonin Meiros had finally made his move. He had come south from his haven in Hebusalim, seeking a way to avert war – or at least survive it. How ancient he looked; she remembered him in his youth: a face burning with energy and purpose. She’d barely escaped him then, when he and his order had slaughtered her kindred – her lovers, her bloodline, almost extinguished. Better you still think me dead, magus.

She banished Jahanasthami with an irritable gesture. So, the great Antonin Meiros has decided to act at last. She had been poking around in the constantly shifting potentials of the future long enough to know what he sought; it only surprised her that he had waited so long to act. Only one year remained until the Moontide and the carnage it would bring. It was late in the game, but Meiros’ other options had been torn away.

He and Sabele were Diviners; both had seen the likely futures before them. They had crossed mental blades for centuries, worrying away at the strands of the future. She could hear his questions and felt the answers he got – she had sent him some of those answers herself, lies tangled around suppositions, hooks on gossamer threads.

Yes, Antonin, come south – take the gift I have prepared for you! Taste of life again. Taste of death.

She tried to laugh and found herself weeping instead, in anguish at all that was lost, or some other emotion she had forgotten she could feel. She didn’t analyse it, merely tasted it and savoured the novelty.

The sun rose high enough to pierce the cavern and found her still there: an old spider tangled in ancient webs. Beside her the tiny corpse of the child lay cold.