Shadowblood

Chapter Five

The sun shone down brightly on the glasshouse gardens. So high were the walls, so dense were the plants that Rik could almost forget that there was a city starving to death outside. Corpses might be walking the streets and packs of feral dogs hunting starving children through the ruins but in the Palace gardens, peacocks strutted over a manicured lawn, dotted with specimens of plants drawn from all over the world.

Rik felt light headed and calm. Asea’s potion was doing its work. The voices were still, although he sensed their presence deep in his mind. It was difficult to keep a smile from his lips. All morning he had banged into things, and not noticed until he discovered the cuts and bruises later.

Asea walked beside him. They strolled into a maze of hedges that cut off the rest of garden from view, walked passed topiary dragons and wyrms and unicorns and bushes of sweetly smelling flowers. Overhead, a roof of crystal admitted the light.

Asea looked at him sidelong, measuring him and not liking what she saw. She glanced around and made sure no one was looking at them. “I think the dosage is too strong,” she said. “You are perhaps too susceptible.”

“You could make a fortune selling this stuff on the black market,” he said, finding the remark too funny not to giggle at.

“I already have a fortune, Rik. And the drug on which the potion is based is widely used by certain classes of Terrarch. Some prefer it to alcohol.”

“I can understand why.”

“It is addictive and dulls the wits and those you will need to have about you. Use the spell against poison I taught you and reduce the potency of the drug in your bloodstream. Not too much, but enough to prevent you lurching all over the place.”

Rik felt like protesting but knew it would be futile. He concentrated his mind and muttered the words of the incantation. Power surged through his veins, cleansing them. In moments, he felt less light headed and more in control. He also felt much less happy.

“That is better,” she said.

“I don’t feel any better.”

“I think you were feeling rather too good.”

“And it is your duty to keep me from feeling that way.”

“You are developing quite a sardonic manner, my boy.”

“I think your own may be rubbing off on me.”

“An interesting possibility.” She looked around. Spring was most definitely in the air. The sky was blue and clear. Birds sang. “I will be glad to get outside,” she said. “The Palace is starting to feel a little too much like a prison.”

“You have obviously never been in a prison.”

“Ah but I have, Rik. In a life as long as mine there are very few things you do not experience at least once.”

“You were obviously held in a better class of prison than the ones I have been in.”

“No doubt. But then I am a better class of person.”

“I have heard that some of the cellars have been converted into cells since the Inquisitor arrived. Not a few people seem to be going into them and not coming out.” He was serious now.

“My half-brother told me that Joran bore a warrant from the Queen sanctioning his activities. There has been too much dark sorcery lately for the Inquisition to be seen not to act.”

“I keep expecting them to come knocking on the door. It’s worse than waiting for the thief takers back in Sorrow.”

“It might be sensible not to recount your experiences with the thief-takers when you finally do meet the Inquisitor. He may not find them as charming as I do.”

“I’ll try and remember that. I am starting to wish they would come. At least the waiting would be over.”

“That is exactly the way they want you to feel, Rik. You must start thinking like a Terrarch. Learn patience. This is a game to them. They know you are not going anywhere. They think they have you trapped here.”

“I notice a lot of new servants in our part of the Palace.”

“Our chambers are under observation which is why we are having this little chat here.”

“Your sorcery prevents eavesdropping surely.”

“There are other means: wine glasses against walls, secret view points, bribed servants.”

“I have checked the rooms. We have taken all precautions.”

“And this is another one.”

“As you wish.”

“There’s no need to sound so surly.” It came to Rik, that beneath her usual assured manner, Asea actually was worried, and that gave him pause. If she was worried, he should be terrified. He did not enjoy the same level of political influence that she did.

Perhaps she was worried that the Inquisition might take him, and find out all manner of unpleasant things about her. As ever, he was amazed that she had not simply disposed of him. It was what he would have done in her place. He realised that his life might indeed be hanging by a thread here. One wrong word and…

“I am sorry,” he said. “I have never been good at waiting.”

“Life, you will find, consists of very little else, one way or another.”

“I believe you.”

“Now you are being too contrite. Do not worry so much Rik. I am not without influence at Court, and Azaar will support me through whatever might come, and for the moment, he is our commanding General.”

“How long will that last?”

“For the duration of the coming campaign, I hope. He is without a doubt the best General in the West.”

“From what you have told me, politics might still see him replaced.”

“It might, but I doubt it. Even the Emerald faction know that the fate of our world hangs on the coming clash. The flow of history for the next thousand years will be decided by whether Talorea or Sardea triumphs, and that is without taking into account the machinations of the Princes of Shadow.”

“I thought we were supposed to have put the era of the Inquisition behind us.”

“It is not like it once was, Rik. At least they have to make people disappear in the dark now, and they are required to have official sanction. There was a time when they could have simply plucked you off the street without consulting anything except their own desires.”

“And so the world progresses, eh?”

“And so the world does indeed progress. Despite all your youthful cynicism.”

“I heard you talking about the Gate in the East. Do you really think someone could open one?”

“I did once. Much as it pains me to admit it, I may not be unique among sorcerers.”

“What are the Gates?”

“They are ancient artefacts.”

“Did the Terrarchs make them?”

“No, the Angels did. They used them to travel from world to world. Once they linked thousands of planets or so the Dragon Angel Adaana once told me.”

He stared at her. Once again she was alluding to conversations with beings who were legends.

“They were made by Angels.”

“Yes.”

“And yet you opened one.”

“They are devices, Rik, machines made by magic. If you understand how they work you can use them. You can open them and close them.”

“They were made by Angels.”

“You said that already, Rik, and please close your mouth. The slack-jawed look does not become you.

“It is simply that your statement astonishes me.”

“I can see how it might. But I can assure you that it is the case unless Adaana lied to me, and I doubt she did. Angels rarely speak anything but truth.”

“You closed the Gate.”

“To be more specific, I broke it. I did not want anyone being able to open it again after us.”

“And now you suspect that someone has opened one again.”

“I suspect someone is creating a new one. According to Adaana they took centuries to weave and grow. I did not think anyone else had that knowledge but apparently that was mere vanity on my part. The Princes of Shadow gained access to the knowledge of the Angels when they plundered their Temple-Houses. It was one of the reasons they rebelled in the first place.”

He simply stared at her. Perhaps it was the drugs that stupefied him but he suspected that it was the way she talked of matters of theology as if they were part of her personal affairs. She seemed abstracted, lost in thought.

“I did not think that there was enough power in this world to weave a gate, but if you had access to thanatomancy or rituals derived from it, you could conceivably make the seed and after that it would simply be a matter of shaping it. The trick is to create the fault into the Deep and link it to the Angel’s Roads.”

“You said that with access to a Gate, spells as potent as those on Al’Terra became possible.”

“Yes- power bleeds from the Deep through a Gate, like water flowing up from a spring. One who knows the correct rituals could tap it. For decades now the level of ambient magical energy has been rising. That’s when I had my initial suspicions. I ignored them at first because the level always fluctuates naturally. And I did not want to admit to the alternative. Foolishly, as it turns out.”

“You are saying that with access to such power a sorcerer could create this plague and animate the dead.”

“Yes.”

“And they could open a way through to Al’Terra and let the Princes of Shadow come here.”

“Yes.”

“It could already have happened.”

“I don’t think so. I would be able to sense the presence of a fully open Gate, so would you. So would anyone with a reasonably strong gift for sorcery. It would be as noticeable as the sun is in the sky to a man with eyes. I don’t think the Princes of Shadow are here yet, but I have been known to be wrong.”

“Let us hope you are. What now?”

“We wait for the Inquisitor to summon you and for the Queen to decide whether we march East.”

“How long will that take?”

“Messengers have already been dispatched. We await only her reply. I am guessing a week at the most. If the decision has not already been made.”

The invitation to visit Joran was waiting for Rik when they returned to their apartments. It was delivered by one of the High Inquisitor’s henchmen, verbally. It requested that he pay his respects to Joran at the seventh bell, an hour after sunset. The time seemed ominous, and it gave him some hours to brood before the meeting, which as Asea pointed out, was just what the Inquisitor intended.

In his mind, he ran through all the questions that might arise, ranging from the missing books back in Redtower, to the death of Queen Kathea, to his own Shadowblood heritage. He thought about what he would tell them.

It was best to stick as close to the truth as possible. He had shot Malkior with a truesilver bullet. He knew it was Malkior because he had met the Terrarch in Harven at a reception given by the Council there. By the time he arrived on the scene the Queen and most of her guard were already dead. He and the survivors had managed to take the Terrarch sorcerer down. It was not quite the truth but it was close enough.

He tried not to think about all the things that could go wrong. The Inquisitor might see the mark of the thanatomancer upon him, or already know about his dark deeds. You could never tell quite how much any Terrarch knew and the Inquisition had a legendary array of sources. Perhaps even as he sat here trying to read a book, Weasel and the Barbarian were screaming under the hot irons in the cells below.

He told himself not to be stupid but he could not keep such thoughts from his mind, and they upset the voices and made them whisper and that too made him uneasy. He rose from the chair and started pacing up and down the chamber. Asea looked at him sardonically then went back to her own reading. She could maintain her poise through the end of the world. He feared that he could not.

He wondered whether he should make a run for it, leave the Palace and disappear, try and bury himself in the slums until he could leave the city and make his way back to Sorrow.

If they knew anything about him though, the Inquisition would expect him to do that. He could not head for Harven, the traditional refuge of the runaway human. He knew exactly what sort of reception he would get there, after Asea’s daring escape from the Talorean Embassy.

It was a big world. He ought to be able to lose himself in it. He had some money. He had his weapons. He had the sorcery Asea had taught him. Might it not be better to take his chances? But running would simply confirm their suspicions and give them reason to come looking for him, and it was not certain that they knew anything yet.

Perhaps it would be better to talk with the Inquisitor, find out what he knew and then make a decision. Yes, he thought, and perhaps it might be fatal for him and his friends.

Perhaps it was Asea’s potion, perhaps it was his own moral weakness. He could not make up his mind. He had grown accustomed to the Palace, to Asea’s company, to being someone, and he found himself loath to simply abandon that for the life of a freelance thief and beggar.

He still had not come to a decision when the seventh bell sounded, and there was an ominous knock on the door.