The Queen's assassin

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Rik lay on the couch in Asea’s apartments and stared at his feet. The massive old clock ticked loudly. He felt useless. Even the voices seemed depressed. They murmured quietly at the back of his mind, but failed to intrude fully onto his consciousness. To distract himself, he ran through one of the sorcerous exercises that Asea had taught him, calming himself, touching his inner strength. It seemed to have dwindled a little. Perhaps this was how it was with thanatomantic energy. Perhaps it dissipated over days and weeks on disuse.

He felt threatened, as if they were all on the edge of some great abyss. Kathea’s coronation was tomorrow and they were still no closer to working out their enemy’s plan. Asea had been closeted in her chambers for all day and most of last night, and had not emerged. Only Karim had entered to take her food. She turned away all messengers. She talked to no one. She seemed driven in a way that he had never seen her before. Sometimes he has caught a glimpse of her through the door, and she looked haggard. All he could so was sleep here, outside her chambers, like a faithful watchdog.

He was afraid, and not just for himself. He sensed that Malkior was coming, and he would kill Asea and him too if he got the chance. Rik had prepared for that eventuality as best he could. His hidden blade was poisoned. He had prepared a truesilver bullet in his concealed pistol. He carried another pistol with another special bullet. He had the blade Asea had given him. He knew they would mostly likely not be enough. Even the stolen energy of the Sea Devil would most likely not be enough, but he was determined that if Malkior came he would be as well prepared as he could be. He was not going to be taken so easily this time.

The door to Asea’s chamber swung open. She emerged. Her face was pale and drawn. Her eyes looked huge. Her pupils were dilated from the potions she took against fatigue.

“I have solved it,” she said softly.

“You’ve broken the code?”

“I did that hours ago. Now I have translated the notes.”

“What do they say?”

“The machines were used for preparing a special serum, a component in a necromantic ritual.”

“The book says that?”

“No but reading between the lines of the descriptions of the experiments and extrapolating from them, I am sure I know what the serum is to be used for. Whoever created it intends to raise the dead and do something worse. There is some component of the ghoul’s disease that can be used to make undeath spread like a plague. They’ll need to do it soon because the serum won’t hold its potency for long.”

“How soon?”

“Tonight, perhaps.”

“An army of the walking dead, that can infect the living?”

“Yes. I think so. All they need is bodies and a potent locus of necromantic energies.”

“If they intend to make an army, they will need a lot of corpses. As for energies…” Rik said. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew exactly where those could be found. “The Grand Cemetery.”

Asea began inscribing a note to General Azaar. “Go and get Lieutenant Sardec,” she said. “I think we should visit the graveyard as soon as possible.”

The voices whispered and gibbered and sometimes he thought he could make out words. I smell death. Death and sorcery. Things stir beneath the ground. Wrong place. Wrong place, whispered the voices. A thought insinuated itself into Rik’s mind.

“What if this is just a distraction? What if Malkior is already here and makes a bid on the Queen’s life? He could get in easily enough while we are trying to deal with this.”

Asea’s features froze for a moment as she considered his words. “You might be right, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. If Jaderac plans to raise an army of the dead, I have to stop him.”

“I will stop Malkior,” said Rik. “At least I will try.”

There was silence for a moment. Rik wondered if she thought he was simply trying to get out of this duty. Surely she knew him better than that right now.

“I don’t think you could beat Malkior if you met him.”

“There will be soldiers here, and somebody has to protect Kathea. Otherwise there may be no Queen to crown. I can sense shadowgates. At least I might be able to warn the guards.”

“You could be wrong.”

“If I am wrong we have lost nothing. If I am right…”

“Very well. Good luck,” she said and swept out the door.

“To you too,” Rik said to her departing back.

“This is getting to be a habit,” said Sardec. The Foragers marched at double time towards the cemetery. They had been reinforced with all the soldiers of the Seventh that Sardec could have rounded up at short notice. Some of them were groggy with sleep. Some drunk. None of them looked happy.

“I am sorry to disturb your rest again, Lieutenant,” said Asea. She spoke in the High tongue of the Terrarchs so none of the men could understand. Once more she was garbed for war. She held her glowing wand. Chained lightning glittered within the blue gem at its tip. “But I can assure you this is important. The safety of Queen Kathea and our entire army may depend on it.”

“There is a plan to stop the coronation tomorrow?” He replied in the same language. If there was something she wanted kept secret it was doubtless for good reason.

“Unless we find what we are looking for soon, there may not be a coronation. By sunrise the whole city may be in the grip of plague and something worse than plague.” The night suddenly seemed very dark and cold. The snow crunched ominously beneath their boots.

“What do you mean?”

“I think our old friend Lord Jaderac is performing a ritual right now that will raise all the bodies in this graveyard and turn them into an unstoppable army — he is or some of his associates are.”

Sardec felt a shudder of fear pass up his spine but he kept his face straight and his tone nonchalant. “You are talking of sorcery of the darkest sort, Milady.”

“I am, Lieutenant. Does it surprise you that our enemies would use it?”

“These days nothing would surprise me, Milady.”

The gates of the Grand Cemetery loomed ahead of them. Sardec shuddered remembering the ghouls they had encountered here. The memory of them was as vivid and as frightening as if it had only happened last night.

“What are we looking for?” he asked her.

“It will be easy enough to recognise when you see it, Lieutenant. Look for Terrarchs working sorcery. I would not be surprised if one of them was Lord Jaderac and another was Lady Tamara.”

“What shall we do if we see them?” Sardec suspected he already knew. Her answer came as no surprise.

“Don’t take any chances. Kill them — if you can.”

Sardec nodded and began bellowing orders to the soldiers. They were to split into squads and search the graveyard for intruders. If they saw anyone performing rituals they were to shoot on sight.

“Just hope there’s nobody in there having a funeral,” muttered the Barbarian.

“If they are, they’ll soon be having a few more,” said Weasel.

Sardec watched the soldiers fanning out among the gravestones. He had a bad feeling about this. The night was misty. Frost glittered on gravestone and tree branch. Only occasionally did the light of the moon shine through.

“What was that?” Asea asked. “I don’t like the smell of this.”

There was an odd scent of corruption in the air, sickly sweet. There was something about it that made his skin tingle and his lips feel numb. “There is devilish sorcery in the air. We’ve come to the right place.”

“A lot of people would think we were in exactly the wrong place,” said Sardec.

“And I would be tempted to agree with them. But if I am right, we have to stop this. Nobody else can. If we don’t, coronation day will be spoiled for a lot of people.”

Jaderac strode around the perimeter of his pentacle. The smell of the mist from the great canisters filled the air. He could sense the corruption in it, and it thrilled him. There was so much power there. Power to raise the dead. Power to make them into an army. Power that would smash the Taloreans before the night was out.

He raised the flask to his lips and drank. The elixir had the curdled consistency of the congealed blood that was one of its components. It had the sweetness of blood. Energy filled him, energy that had been drained from dozens of captives along with their blood. He felt a little disgusted, not by the fact he was imbibing blood but by the fact that it was human blood, and tainted by their weakness. He told himself it all served a greater purpose, and that purpose was winning the coming war for Sardea and seeing that he was installed back into the Queen-Empress’s favour.

He looked at the others with contempt. They were mostly sheep. Lord and Lady Sardontine so desperately trying to keep in with both sides, and finally forced to take his side. They knew the ritual was going ahead, and that by tomorrow Jaderac would be master of the city. They wanted to be on the winning side, and they knew that he would remember them if they betrayed their obligations to the Brotherhood now. All of them looked at the massive hulking figure of the Nerghul with fear. It was even larger than his first one, with monstrous claws and long white fangs showing in its fleshless face. Its eyes glowed darkly. It radiated evil energy.

The nobles and their bodyguards and followers were beneath his contempt. Only Tamara stood out among them. She was different. It was not just that she belonged to one of the oldest and highest families in Sardea. She was confident where they were sly. She was capable, like her father. He still wondered whether she had really chosen to side with him, or whether she was still her father’s agent. Her comings and goings had been even less explicable than usual recently.

Not that it mattered now. Things had come too far for him to fail now. He noticed then that she was looking at him, with a sly smile on her face.

“There are people coming,” she said. Jaderac smiled scornfully. What fools had chosen tonight to wander into the graveyard? Perhaps it was ghouls again.

“It does not matter,” he said confidently. He could see Sardontine and his fellow cultists were getting skittish. They were nervous, and they might run if they got frightened enough. He was not about to let that happen.

“I think it does,” said Tamara. “There are soldiers out there.”

“Have we been betrayed?” Sardontine asked. His voice quavered a little. Jaderac looked at Tamara. “Have we?” he asked.

She stared at the Nerghul. She knew what it was capable of. She had seen its like before. “Not by me,” she said. Her smile was enigmatic and as always he could not read it. He spoke to his undead creation. “Go kill everyone who you do not see here.”

The huge unliving creature growled and moved to obey. Jaderac’s enemies were as good as dead. Nothing that lived could best such an engine of destruction by night. It had cost him greatly to make the creature but now it would prove its worth.

He looked at the cultists. It was time for them to earn their share of the power they coveted. “Take up your positions,” he said. “Ready your censers. We begin.”

He focused his mind, and concentrated on the ritual. Some time passed before he noticed that Tamara had vanished.

Suddenly Sardec heard screaming. Muskets flared in the gloom. There was a sound of bones breaking, men dying. A group of soldiers broke and ran. “Stand firm,” he bellowed. He heard Sergeant Hef shouting the same. Something hideous erupted from the brush in front of him. Before he could react it was on him, and he was caught in a grip that made him feel like a mouse in the jaws of a cat.

Red eyes burned into his. Yellow teeth grinned down out of a lipless smile. He stared into the face of death. He knew he faced a Nerghul, and he doubted he was going to survive this second encounter.

He slashed at the thing’s face with his hook, peeling away part of its cheek, and letting the white of the teeth shine through. He continued to tug but the blade seemed to have caught on bone. The Nerghul lashed out with its free hand. He went flying, heard the sound of bone crunch as his body impacted on a gravestone.

Lightning flashed, dazzlingly close. The smell of ozone filled his nostrils. His hair stood on end. He looked up and saw the charred form of the Nerghul reeling away from Asea. Lightning arced from the wand in her hand, smashing into the creature, keeping it at bay even as it stripped the flesh from its body. It tried to get closer but, for all its ferocious speed, it could not move against the flow of deadly energy. Asea did not let up. She knew that if she did the thing would be on her in a flash. Blue sparks flickered from the side of the Nerghul’s head. The snow sizzled where they landed.

Sardec groaned and picked himself up and checked his limbs. His jacket was torn and blackened. He could smell burning hair. Everything seemed intact until he realised that he had lost his hook. It must have slid free from its mounting and remained buried in the jaw of the Nerghul. It was the metal of it that appeared to draw Asea’s lightning. He could see metal glowing. He thought he understood now how that ever-twisting worm of lightning kept aimed at the undead beast’s head no matter how hard it tried to evade. The metal was attracting the energy to it like a lightning rod drawing a thunderbolt. Sparks kept leaping from Sardec’s hook. He shuddered to think what might have happened if he had remained attached to his artificial limb.

The Nerghul spasmed and fell. The lightning crackled and faded. The Foragers sprang into action hacking the creature with their bayonets. Even crippled as it was, it managed to toss them off, and headed towards the source of its torment, Asea. The Barbarian crashed into it from one side. His blades hacking at the thing’s blackened, smoking flesh. Weasel’s rifle spoke thunder and a truesilver bullet smashed into the thing’s brain.

Karim sprang forward and separated its head from its body with one stroke. Even as he watched the Nerghul began to decompose, as if the unholy energies binding its form together had dissipated and could not longer hold it together. Perhaps the lightning had something to do with it. After a few moments there was only a pool of protoplasm, bubbling in the snow.

“We won,” said the Barbarian. He sounded stunned.

“This one was weaker than the last,” said Asea with certainty.

“If that’s a weak one, I would not like to see its stronger brethren,” said Sergeant Hef.

“Sergeant, round up the men,” said Sardec. He was proud that there was no sign of the shakiness he felt in his voice. He managed to ignore the pain in his side as he walked over to Asea where she studied all that was left of the Nerghul’s corpse.

“I would not touch that hook if I were you,” she said. “It’s red hot and most likely poisoned as well.”

“Let’s hope there are not any more of those things out there,” said Sardec. “We may not be so lucky next time.”

She nodded. “We’re running out of time,” she said. “The ritual has started.”

Jaderac chanted. His followers echoed the words. Smoke, bearing the substances they had extracted from the ghoul corpses emerged from the censers they bore, and floated out over the graveyard.

Black fog flowed towards him, entered his mouth and his nostrils, extended tendrils into his lungs and brain. He felt the fog now, as if it were an extension of himself, as if he had fingers of mist. Playfully he touched Sardontine with them. The old Lord flinched but kept chanting; what else could he do. Like all of them, he knew the ritual could not be interrupted on pain of the most severe sorcerous repercussions.

Jaderac extended his misty limbs and touched the ground. For days now, his followers had been preparing this area with alchemicals, letting them saturate the ground, sink deep into the earth until all that was needed was the catalyst and the ritual to call all the creatures down there back to unlife. He sensed the substances responding to his touch. He sent his consciousness burrowing downwards, worm-like, and felt the presence of the decomposing forms and the tiny semi-sentient fragments of necromantic energy with which the graveyard had been seeded. He gave orders. The dark spirits flowed into the bodies, providing all that was needed to complete an alchemical reaction already begun. Bodies began to move, to claw their way towards the surface, guided by Jaderac’s implacable will.

He stood at the centre of a great web of energy now, as it slowly extended its way through the graveyard. He touched the bodies hidden in the mausoleums and felt them respond. They too were filled with death energies. Jaderac called them to him and sent his misty tentacles on through the graveyard.

In a hundred crypts, dead eyes sprang open, green witch-fires burning in them. A hundred corpses rose and began to shamble out into the night, their minds filled with an unholy hunger.