Inferno

28

The waterway took them through terrain that was mostly flat and lacking in any particular landmarks. All they saw was an expanse of green, dotted with the odd tree or rock. An occasional low hill, glimpsed in the distance, became an event to be remarked on. Taking advantage of their stately progression, the band rested, fed themselves and maintained their weapons. Curiously, they met no other boats.

As best as they could estimate it, more than a day went by as they slowly glided towards their unknown destination. Some in the band wondered if there was a destination, and whether the canal might not go on for ever. Those who thought there must be a destination speculated on how they would know it. The only certainty was the north star, and they were still heading straight for that.

Into the second day they saw the peaks of a mountain range ahead, and also noticed something strange about the star above it.

“It’s definitely getting bigger,” Coilla decided.

“I think you’re right,” Stryke agreed. He turned to the shape-changer. “Dynahla?”

“It’s to be expected the nearer we get to our goal.”

“You mean we are, at last?”

“It’s in the air. Can’t you feel it?”

Haskeer gave a prolonged, noisy sniff. “I can’t.”

“Take my word for it, Sergeant; our destination’s imminent. Though we shouldn’t get too excited. It may be closer only in distance.”

After that, the star and the mountains it crowned rapidly grew larger.

Eventually the problem of where their destination would lie was solved: the canal came to an end. It terminated in a modest dock, which had the benefit of a winch that proved sturdy enough to unload the barge. But that was the end of their luck as far as the weapon was concerned. Without beasts to help with the burden, it had to be moved bodily. The band was hardly keen on the idea, but they had experience of hauling siege engines over long distances. Once roped up, they found it took about half the band to pull it, which meant they could labour in shifts.

Now as big as a harvest moon, and rivalling the sun, the star was suspended above whatever lay behind the mountains. Fortunately there was a wide pass cutting through them. They made for it.

Halfway along, the pebbly stone floor of the vale began to be covered in patches of fine sand. By the time they got to the end of the pass there was nothing but sand underfoot, and it was quite thick. They had to work even harder to negotiate it. The temperature was also noticeably hotter.

Ahead of them was a low ridge of granite. Leaving the weapon at its base, they climbed the gentle incline to see what was beyond. Lying on their bellies, they looked out at the beginning of a vast desert. More arresting was what stood on it in the near distance. It was a pyramid, the largest any of them had seen, and it seemed to be made of milky glass. At its apex was what looked like a massive, multifaceted gem. Sunlight glinted on it.

“What in hell is that?” Coilla said.

“Something legendary,” Dynahla explained. “If I’m right, it’s the Prism of Sina-Cholm.”

“Which is?”

“An artefact created by the wizards who built this world.”

“What does it do?” Stryke asked.

“It kills.”

“How?”

“Can you get one of the archers to send an arrow its way?”

“Sure. It’s in range. But I don’t think an arrow’s going to hurt it.”

“That’s not the point.”

Stryke shrugged and ordered one of the grunts to string-up.

“It might be an idea if we all kept our heads down,” Dynahla suggested.

The archer loosed his bolt and it soared towards the pyramid. It had almost reached it when an intense white beam shot from the gem at the apex, striking the arrow and obliterating it.

“It targets anything that approaches,” Dynahla said.

“Is there somebody in there operating that thing?” Pepperdyne wanted to know.

“No, it functions entirely by itself. It works by drawing energy from what passes for the sun here, concentrating it and using it to defend itself.”

“Do we have to tackle it?” Stryke said.

“You know the nature of this place by now. It’s there because it’s the next thing we have to overcome. Maybe the last thing. Fortunately, we have a chance because of that.” He nodded at the weapon parked below them.

“Won’t the pyramid just destroy what we fire at it?”

“What if we were to fire more than one thing at the same time?” Coilla suggested.

“That’s not a bad idea. Think it might work, Dynahla?”

“Your faith in my knowledge about this place is touching, Stryke. Frankly, I don’t know. But it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

They needed a spot where they could get the weapon to see its target, and where there was some kind of shelter for the band. Scouts found such a place not far from the incline they climbed. It was a ground-level slab of stone big enough to accommodate the weapon, and with a perfect view of the pyramid. There were enough sizeable boulders strewn around it to give the Wolverines cover. They set about hauling the weapon to it.

“All right,” Stryke said when they were installed, “let’s get the thing loaded and lined-up.”

While that was going on he picked six archers.

There was a lot of fussing with the weapon’s alignment, and when he was finally satisfied, Stryke stood ready at the lever. The archers nocked their arrows and drew back the strings.

“Now!” he yelled, pulling hard on the lever.

The weapon coughed its missile as six arrows were loosed.

The arrows travelled faster than the ball, which described an arcing path. A flash came from the gem and one of the arrows vaporised. There was another dazzling streak and a second arrow disappeared. Then it was the ball’s turn. A beam sought it out, shattering it to fragments. The remaining arrows got through and clattered feebly against the pyramid’s face.

“Fuck it!” Haskeer cursed.

“We proved it can’t handle several things at once,” Stryke said.

“But it got the important one, didn’t it?”

“We’ll do it again, with more archers this time.”

Ten archers lined-up as the weapon was reloaded and its angle slightly adjusted.

Again the launch was simultaneous. The beam from the gem got two, three and then four arrows, and they were picked off before they had travelled as far as the first volley. But the ball got through. It struck the pyramid low down, near its base, and did some damage, although nothing terminal. A cheer went up from the band.

The weapon was primed once more and its angle altered on the basis of the previous shot. Arrows were readied.

“Now!” Stryke bellowed. He pulled the lever and rushed forward to see the result.

The beam singled out no less than five arrows this time, and intercepted them much nearer their firing point than before. Tumbling through the air on a high trajectory, the ball travelled unscathed.

There was a blinding flash and a roar. Stryke found himself on the ground, along with the others, not knowing what had just happened. As they looked up, they saw the ball hit the pyramid at the point where the gem was fixed to its peak. The sound of the impact was tremendous. Swaying for a second, the gem tumbled, and as it fell the pyramid itself rippled with numerous cracks and began to fall apart. Great shards of the glassy material plunged to the ground to shatter into thousands of pieces. In a brace of heartbeats the entire structure gave way, the remains shrouded in a cloud of dust from the debris.

The band cheered. It took them a moment to hear Coilla shouting at them and to realise something was wrong. Stryke turned and saw what it was. The weapon was on its side, the tube broken into several pieces, the woodwork blackened with charring. Its ammunition, the iron spheres, were scattered all around. Some were split in two.

Coilla was on her knees next to something half under the toppled weapon. Stryke and the others dashed to it.

“The pyramid fired at us just before the ball hit,” she explained. “Vobe was standing next to the weapon.”

Stryke looked. Their comrade was crushed, bloodied and unmistakably dead.

They would have liked to give Vobe the send-off he deserved, but they knew that wasn’t always possible in the field. So Stryke and Coilla said a few words about one of their longest-serving brothers-in-arms, and Dallog commended his spirit to the Tetrad with Haskeer looking on disdainfully. Then they buried the body as deep as they could in the desert sand.

“Strange to think we’ve buried him in a place that doesn’t actually exist,” Coilla said as they moved away.

“Nothing that happens these days surprises me,” Stryke replied. “But I wish we could have seen him off on a pyre on Ceragan, where he belongs, with feasting and drinking in his honour. He deserved at least that much.”

“We’ll raise a tankard to him when we get out of this.”

“Think we will get out?”

“Of course we will. And you don’t want to let the others hear you talking like that.”

“No, you’re right. But what with Thirzarr, and now Vobe-”

“I know. But the best way we serve them is to complete this mission, the way we set out to do.”

“That feels like a long time ago, and it seemed so much simpler then.”

“Tell me about it.”

Dynahla approached them. “I don’t want to intrude on your grief,” he said, “but we should be thinking about moving on.”

“Yes,” Stryke agreed soberly. “But which way?”

“To what Sina-Cholm was guarding. Now the prism’s gone we should be able to get through.”

Heavy-hearted, the band set off over the sand towards the ruins of the pyramid. They realised how big the thing had been when they had to negotiate a vast quantity of debris, much of it viciously keen shards of the glass-like material it had been constructed from. But they struggled onto its base, and after rooting through the chaos uncovered an aperture in the floor with a flight of stone steps that descended into darkness. They filed down, weapons in hand.

At the bottom of the stairwell they found that their way was lit, just as other areas had been on their travels in this world, from an unknown source. They were in a wide, tall tunnel, seemingly constructed without blocks, bricks or any evidence of joins. There was only one way to go and they took it.

“This I do know something about,” Dynahla told them. “I was in this labyrinth when I first came to Serapheim’s pocket universe. Take heart. We’re very near our destination now.”

They trudged along the tunnel for what seemed like an eternity, their surroundings never changing and the light staying at the same uniform level. More than one of them noticed the sulphurous whiff in the air that indicated a magical charge. And it was getting stronger.

There was a brighter radiance somewhere far ahead, and it shone more and more strongly as they approached it. When they arrived at its source they found that the tunnel ended at a waterfall of multicoloured light.

“We’re here,” Dynahla announced. “All we have to do is step through this curtain of energy and into Serapheim’s world.”

“Is it safe?” Spurral asked.

“Perfectly. Stryke, I think you should have the honour of going through first.”

“I reckon this… entrance or whatever it is should be big enough for us all to go through together.”

“Good idea,” the shape-changer said. “Shall we?”

The band lined up in front of the dazzling cascade, not quite believing it could be an entrance of any kind. Standeven, as usual, hovered a few steps to the rear of the others, looking fearful.

On Stryke’s word they moved forward and stepped into the luminous whirlpool.

The sensation was not unlike world-hopping with the instrumentalities. It felt as though they were falling from a great height through a madness of churning colours and exploding stars.

They opened their eyes on something like paradise.

The sun beat down on a verdant scene of grassy pastures, soft rolling hills, trees in full leaf and silvered lakes. So blue it almost made their eyes hurt, the sky was host to a few fluffy white clouds. The air was fresh and a gentle breeze blew, fragrant from a thousand wholesome, growing things. There was no sign of the vibrant curtain they had walked through.

“This is quite something,” Pepperdyne said admiringly.

Spurral nodded. “It’s… beautiful.”

“It’s based on Maras-Dantia before it fell into corruption,” a voice boomed from behind.

They spun round. Serapheim stood before them, a broad smile on his face. “Congratulations on getting here,” he said, “and welcome to my world.”