Blood of the Mantis

*

The walls were twisting, inwards, downwards, all knotted and thorny, and he was falling, drowning, a world opening about him…

Sef screamed, clutching at her head, but Gaved was bewildered, seeing nothing. Tisamon had leapt to his feet, claw ready on his hand…

The world was made of knotted, diseased trees, thorned, running awry with briars, leprous with fungi, and the space between the trees was darkness and shadows and yet more trees and he waited for the jump, the snap taking him back into Nivit’s dingy little hut, but it did not happen.

Achaeos climbed to his feet, and saw his hands were empty and the box was gone.

No. Iam within it.

The prison of the Darakyon, home of all the horrors that warped place could muster, and he was now inside it.

He turned all about, breath issuing swift and ragged, but he was alone, all alone…

Is this it? Am I here now? For ever?

‘I am Achaeos, Seer of Tharn,’ he declared, choking on his own voice. ‘I demand that you acknowledge me.’

We acknowledge you.

But this was not the great voice of the Darakyon, only the voice of the creature from his dream.

‘Laetrimae!’ He turned.

She was there, a Mantis-kinden maid possessed of their lean, angular beauty, and dressed now in the carapace-steel armour of centuries ago, looking fair and pale and terrible.

What have you done? She approached him, picking her way through tortured ground that writhed and contorted all around them. You have opened the box. No other has ever dared to come here.

‘I am here.’ I cannot admit weakness now, because she is Mantis, and she would kill me. ‘I have followed the commands of the Darakyon. What would you have of me?’

She raised a hand, and he flinched, expecting thorns, but it was live, warm skin held against his cheek, and then she leant down and kissed him, briefly but passionately, on the lips, engaging his white eyes with her own.

You, little neophyte? she mocked. We want nothing of you. You are not the one.

And, despite himself, he let out a cry when the thorns and spines burst bloodily from her skin, ripping her apart, goring her through and through, the arcing, piercing and repiercing briars, and the jagged chitin that ripped through her armour and turned it to rust. And he heard-

‘Achaeos!’

A voice from behind him. A real, live voice. Staggering back from Laetrimae, he turned to see Tynisa struggling towards him, brandishing her rapier in her hand. The sword gleamed with a green-white light, and he saw an answering gleam from deeper within the trees.

‘Oh,’ he said slowly, because he had not appreciated the true scale of the problem.

‘What in the wastes is going on?’ Tynisa demanded. He looked back to Laetrimae, but the Mantis creature had gone, fading into smoke the moment he glanced away from her.

‘I… may have made a mistake,’ he stuttered. She gaped at him and he recalled how she had been brought up by dull Beetle-kinden. She looked as though she was on the very brink of going mad.

‘Achaeos, we were in Nivit’s. We… Where are we now?’

‘Calm. Be calm,’ he told her. Small help, as he sounded less than calm himself. Here now was the other gleaming light, striding out of the broken darkness: Tisamon with his claw blazing, his eyes locked on Achaeos.

‘Magician, what have you done?’ he asked. ‘Where have you brought us?’

‘Can you not tell?’ Achaeos asked of him. ‘You of all people? We are in the heart of the Darakyon, Tisamon. We are inside the Shadow Box.’

Tisamon stopped, and Achaeos saw his throat work silently, his eyes widen. He knows at least enough to be afraid.

‘Sef!’ Achaeos called out. ‘Sef, come to us.’ Who else? Not Gaved, not Thalric, and Nivit’s girl was out somewhere on business. ‘Nivit, are you there?’

‘Help me!’ It was Sef’s voice, shrill with terror. Another Spider brought up by Beetles, Achaeos supposed.

‘Here! Follow my voice! Come here!’ he called out.

‘Achaeos, how long are we going to be here?’ Tynisa demanded of him.

He was glad that Sef appeared just then, stumbling and almost falling, until he caught her and set her on her feet. She promptly dropped to her knees, hugging herself, with eyes closed. He could not blame her.

‘I… I need time to investigate our surroundings,’ he said, knowing his words were meaningless. What if Gaved or someone plucks the box from my hands? Will we be wrenched out of here, or trapped for good?

‘Then get on with it!’ Tynisa snapped at him, on the very edge of self-control. Tisamon put a hand on her shoulder.

‘We are safe here,’ he said slowly. ‘We are safe from this place. You and I.’

‘And how do you know that?’ she asked.

‘Because this is our place, a Mantis place.’ He was looking into the coiling dark, stretching out his free hand, and for a second Achaeos saw Laetrimae there, just a glimmer of her, reaching back to him. You are not the one, she had said.

Tisamon?

‘Achaeos, there’s someone else out there,’ Tynisa hissed, and he looked, seeing only the suggestion of movement.

Has she seen Nivit? Or was it a… native?

‘Nivit, is that…?’

It was not Nivit. Achaeos felt the words dry up in his throat, seeing the newcomer approach so effortlessly. Gaunt and robed, it might have been a Moth Skryre, except that the gait and the build were all wrong – too tall, too thin, too pale.

A cadaverous face with bulging eyes that glared red in a world of green and black, Achaeos had never seen this man before but he remembered enough of his own people’s lore to know. The recognition came as a blow, but he drew strength from it as well. Suddenly he was not just a lone seer in a hostile place, he was his whole kinden, its emissary to this ancient enemy.

‘So,’ he said, ‘have I drawn you here as well – or is this the last hole your people have found to hide in?’

The newcomer’s thin lips drew back, exposing needle-sharp teeth. Tisamon shifted uncomfortably, and Achaeos knew that he, too, must recognize this thing from folk stories.

‘Oh, we are not gone at all,’ it said. ‘Hidden, but not quite gone, young Moth. We can hide more cunningly than your kind can ever search for us.’ One emaciated hand gestured at their surroundings. ‘Yet what a hiding place this would have made. No, I will not say that I have been drawn here, but merely accepted the invitation.’

‘What is your part in this?’ Achaeos demanded.

‘Must we be adversaries even here, even after so very long? Surely your kinden have realized how all we old powers are standing together now against the encroaching tide of progress and history. All the wars of the Days of Lore are long forgotten – by all save you and me. Who cares now about that fifty-year struggle with the Centipede-kinden who rose from beneath the earth? Who recalls the coup of the Assassin Bugs, and how it was turned aside? Who recounts the struggle for rulership between the Moth-kinden and the Mosquito-folk? None, save you and I.’

Achaeos stared at him uncertainly.

‘My name is Uctebri the Sarcad,’ the Mosquito told him. ‘My physical form is many leagues distant from you, so I am glad that your actions have allowed us to meet.’

Sarcad. It was, he thought, their word for Skryre. A powerful magician, then? ‘I am Achaeos, seer of Tharn,’ he said. ‘I ask you again, what is your part in this?’

‘I need the box, young Moth. I must have it.’

‘Then we are enemies, after all,’ Achaeos replied. He saw a brittle, sad smile on the Mosquito’s face and realized that the man’s words about the passing of so much history from the world had been quite sincere. ‘I do not hate you for your kinden. You are right, that is gone. I have the box, though, and I cannot give it to you.’

‘No,’ said Uctebri quietly, ‘you cannot. I am sorry for that.’

‘Achaeos,’ Tisamon said tensely. ‘Where is Tynisa? Where has my daughter gone?’

‘Tynisa?’ Achaeos looked round, but the Spider girl was nowhere to be seen. ‘I don’t understand…’

The Mosquito was gone now, swallowed by the blackness. Was it all the time closing in? ‘Stay close by me,’ he said, feeling Sef clutch at his leg.

‘Achaeos, something is wrong,’ Tisamon said, and a riveting pain lanced through the Moth, searing into his side and all the way through him. And suddenly he was falling… falling…

And then gone.

Tynisa snapped awake to see Thalric rushing towards her with a ragged cry. He vaulted some obstacle on the floor and she saw – actually saw – the crackle of his sting flower in his palm. She flung herself back and tripped over Nivit’s low table. The flash of the sting seared over her head.

Her rapier was in her hand, as it had been in the dream. She bounded back up from the floor and lunged at him, and he twisted desperately to avoid her thrust.

I should have struck him. The blade was strangely sluggish in her hand. She tried to follow after him, feeling that perhaps this was still part of the dream, that maybe she had not awoken at all.

The blade of her sword was clotted with blood. Perhaps she had struck him after all, but she could see no wound on him even as he struggled away. He was shouting, though, shouting a name…

She saw movement behind her as Gaved tried to grab her. He got one arm about her throat, but she slammed her elbow into his face, catching him right in the jaw, and he reeled back. Wasp traitor! He and Thalric must have been in it together from the start, and more fool Sten for trusting them.

She tried to stab Gaved right in the face. Again the blade seemed heavy, lifeless in her grip, and it plunged past and into the wall. The twisted hilt smashed him across the jaw, though, and he fell back, stunned at least. The blade slid from the shoddy rotten wood of Nivit’s shack and she turned on Thalric again.

‘You’ve had this coming far too long!’ she shouted at him, and something snapped in him, clearly something he had been holding back. A moment later he leapt at her, and her blade had only grazed his side before he slammed her to the floor with a grimace of rage. She punched him in the face, and he rammed her head back against the floorboards hard enough to make her vision blur, and then she dug her fingers deep into his side, where his wound was, as hard as she could, and he bellowed in pain and rolled off her.

She scrambled to her feet, but he already had one hand pointed at her.

‘Die, you mad bitch!’ he spat.

He lurched up on to one knee to shoot, but abruptly a puzzled expression spread across his face, and he plucked at something on his neck. A moment later he swayed, and then collapsed altogether.

Nivit stood in the doorway staring at her, a blowpipe to his lips.

She looked around to find Tisamon was slumped in one corner, while Sef was still sprawled where she had been sitting earlier. The two Wasps, of course, were both down, Gaved shaking his head groggily… and Achaeos was lying in a pool of spreading blood.

Just like the blood slicked on her blade.

And there was someone else, though she could only just see her. It was a bent old woman with red eyes, and something, some small thing, clasped in her hands. She passed by Nivit on her way out, but it seemed as if the Skater did not notice her at all.

‘Nivit,’ she called out, raising her sword, and she felt something sting her just above her eye.

‘What?’ She slapped at it awkwardly, her hand coming away with a tiny dart in it. ‘Nivit?’

Tynisa’s world shook and swayed. The last thing she saw, before she collapsed, was Tisamon’s eyes opening with a start, the Mantis leaping to his feet.

Sykore hurried away from Nivit’s house as fast as she could, grasping the Shadow Box tightly to her, swathed by several layers of her robe. She dared not touch it directly. She dared not lose her purpose.

I was right there amongst them, she thought. The Spider girl had seen her, she knew, but then the Skater had pricked her with his dart. I might have got hurt. The mere thought of physical violence, of that glutted rapier darting towards her, made her shudder, momentarily unsteady on her feet. She would never take such risks again, but the prize had been too great and Uctebri’s patronage too important.

They had nearly been too strong for her. She had been ready for the shift, but she had nearly become as trapped in the Shadow Box’s little world as they had been. Uctebri’s power, she knew, had helped free her, so that she could continue to act in the physical world while they were all stupefied. That had left only the Wasp-kinden, and it took no great skill to hide herself from those who never so much as suspected magic.

She had headed along the curve of the lake, looking for the swiftest way out of Jerez. Now she was bypassing the outlying hovels, out into the marshy grassland, lumpy and pitted through constant subsidence. She was well clear of the Lowlanders at least.

A great sigh of relief escaped her. She had not realized how much the possibility of harm had terrified her: her people’s sense of self-preservation that routinely won out over common purpose or community. The Moth-kinden had always employed their Mantis guards to die for them, yet they had been willing to die themselves if it became ultimately necessary. Perhaps that was why they had triumphed, all those centuries ago.

She glanced down at the cloth-swathed object she was clutching, feeling its pull. She would hand it straight to Brodan and he would take it to his masters like the docile animal he was. He would feel nothing from it, however. To him it would be just a box.

‘Turn,’ said a voice from behind her, and she did so, automatically, clutching the box to her and hissing in anger. There was a lean figure standing there with a metal blade jutting from his hand: the Mantis from the Moth’s retinue. Her memory brought up the name ‘Tisamon’.

She narrowed her eyes. ‘You are no magician, Mantis, so how did you get here?’

‘Jerez is paved with mud and I need no magic to follow footsteps. I thought you would be Scyla, but you are not. Who, then, are you?’

‘You do not wish to know,’ she told him. ‘Now leave me, Mantis. You do not dare test me.’

‘You have cast an enchantment over Tynisa,’ he told her flatly. She noticed that he was slowly inching closer. ‘Why do you care what happens to a Spider?’

‘She is my daughter,’ he replied. She saw his claw tilt back for the strike, and she thrust a sharp-nailed hand out towards him, seeing him flinch away automatically. She bared her teeth in a needled grin.

‘So now you are here, but what will you do? I know your kind, Mantis. The Moth-kinden bred you well to serve them. But I am a magician, and you fear magic, do you not? And all the things it can do to you. You must know that to slay a magician is to bring a curse on you and all of yours.’

‘I have heard it said,’ he replied. He had stopped edging forward now and she knew she was right. A superstitious and ignorant race, the Mantids, for all their skill.

‘Then leave here before I strike you down,’ she warned him. ‘Do you really think I shall stay my hand? Or will you dare to face me?’

‘You are right of course,’ he said. ‘I shall not.’

Her grin widened and just then a burning fist struck her in the small of the back, hammering her to the ground. She twisted round as she fell, still clutching the box to her, and saw a Wasp-kinden in a long coat landing to one side, a wisp of heat smoking from his hand.

They were coming for her. They were coming for the box.

Her strength was seeping away from her but she had one last trick, even though it was a mere apprentice’s sleight. Concentrating only on the box, she summoned her powers before they had drained into the earth with her blood.

Looking up, she saw both Wasp and Mantis looming above her, the Wasp’s sword poised about to stab. She spat at them defiantly, seeing the Mantis reel back. Then the blade drove into her.

Tisamon waited until the Mosquito was clearly dead – until Gaved had finished twisting his blade and pulled it out – before he reached for the box. He twitched the dead woman’s voluminous sleeves aside. He had seen it there, the angular shape of it hidden in her grip. He had felt it there.

But it was gone. Her hands were crooked about its shape, but it was gone. He exchanged glances with Gaved, who could not understand. Swiftly the Wasp set to searching Sykore’s body from head to toe, but Tisamon just stepped back, knowing that, by her magic, she had defeated them in the end.

Nivit had sent for the best physician he knew, a grey-skinned creature named Doctor Mathonwy, who was seven foot tall, even with a pronounced hunchback, and had to bend double again just to get in through the door. He was now kneeling beside Achaeos, having just cut the Moth’s blood-slicked robe away. Arranged all about him were bunches of herbs, a tiny brazier, some delicate bronze tools. The medicine he was performing was some strange mix of old and new.

Tynisa sat in one corner of the room, as though trying to push herself backwards through the walls behind her. She stared at the prostrate Moth, biting her lip. Her sword lay discarded nearby. She did not want to touch it. She did not even look up as Tisamon returned.

He knelt down beside her, for a moment oddly awkward. ‘She is dead,’ he informed her, and when she made no response he continued, ‘The woman who enchanted you, she is dead.’

‘Does that help us?’ Tynisa whispered. ‘Does that heal him?’

Tisamon grimaced. ‘You were not responsible. She had used her magic on you.’

‘I don’t believe in magic.’ she spoke almost too softly for him to hear.

‘Tynisa, you must. It is why we are here-’

‘I don’t believe it. I stabbed him. What will Che think? How could I do this to her?’

Tisamon shook his head, baffled. ‘But the magician herself is dead. I killed her.’

‘That doesn’t help!’ Tynisa almost spat at him. ‘Killing things… it’s not the answer to everything, Tisamon. Is that your only way around any problem? To kill something?’

She saw his hurt, confused expression, and only then did she remember how he had dealt with the betrayal, as he had believed it, of her mother, his lover. He had gone to Helleron and hired out his blade, and killed people, even people who had nothing whatsoever to do with his pain. He had quenched his hurt in blood on a daily basis.

‘Anyway, we’ve lost the cursed box,’ Gaved said tiredly. ‘I swear I searched everywhere, from here to where we found her, but there’s nothing. She must have handed it on to someone.’

‘She sent it with her magic,’ Tisamon said.

‘Whatever.’ The Wasp shrugged. ‘She might as well have done, since it’s gone, and we’ve got no leads. And the Moth over there was the only one who seemed to be able to locate it.’

Tynisa glared at him defensively but he was not accusing her, just thinking aloud.

‘We have to get Achaeos out of here,’ she said. ‘We must get him to the Maiden and… away to Collegium. They have many good doctors in Collegium.’

The spindly Doctor Mathonwy raised his hairless brows at that, but continued to tend to his patient.

‘We’ve also attracted far too much attention,’ said Thalric. He was seated on Nivit’s bed now, having tied some bandages about his freshly opened wound. The look he gave Tynisa was less than loving. ‘Up until now all the attention we merited was because we were also after this box. Now they’ll be coming for us, so the girl’s right: we should leave with the dawn.’

Tisamon stared down at Tynisa’s sword, and then bent forward to pick it up. Wordlessly he offered it to her.

‘I don’t want it,’ she said. Though he had cleaned it meticulously, in her eyes it was still reeking of Achaeos’s blood.

‘The sword is not to blame,’ Tisamon said softly.

‘I don’t care,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t want it,’ she said.

‘Consider this,’ he told her. ‘Achaeos could not move or defend himself when you struck. You are not so poor a swordswoman as to let such an open target live.’

At last she looked at him, red-eyed. ‘What are you saying?’

‘That the sword did not slay him. Remember the provenance of this blade. It is no mere steel: it is a weaponmaster’s blade. It knew that you were not truly guiding it, not with your heart. If you had truly meant their deaths, then you would have slain them all: Achaeos, Nivit, the two Wasps. I have trained you, and I know that none of them could have stood against you had your heart desired to kill them. So take the sword. It has served you well.’

‘All delightful native colour, I’m sure,’ Thalric harshly interrupted, ‘but we have to be ready to leave.’ He stood up awkwardly just as Tisamon rounded on him.

For a moment the Mantis glared silently, but then he nodded. ‘You are correct. I shall find the Beetle, Allan-bridge. We must get Achaeos back to Collegium or he will die.’

The look that Doctor Mathonwy gave him suggested that this was more than just a possibility in any event.

Brodan awoke in agony. Somehow he had fallen asleep, even here beside the dark lake. Now he was freezing, dew-drenched, and his wounds had stiffened so he could barely move. He groaned in pain, tried flexing his limbs, to be rewarded with pain shooting down his back and into his side.

There was something unfamiliar in his hand. His fingers were locked about it hard enough for the object’s irregular edges to dent his skin. He opened his eyes against the light of morning. It took some prying with the other hand to release his frozen grip.

It was the box. His breath caught as he saw it. He was holding the box. The very thing he had been so firmly instructed to recover.

That brief future composed of recrimination and punishment, which had been facing him like a looming wall, suddenly shattered, and behind it lay a sunny prospect of promotion and privilege, because he had the box.

With some effort, he rolled over onto his knees and then stood up unsteadily. He had to reach the garrison and secure transport immediately for the capital. Brodan was so invigorated by the discovery that he never paused to wonder what price others had paid, to bring the box to him.