Maker grant
that this works,
he thought,
because if it doesn’t, we’ll
all be Minions or Unbound or dead before the day is out…
~~~~~~~
Cylrie
Mannertee, Hedrine-Chantor, looked at Anhedrin Rugriss Ruddleby in
horror. ‘You’re jesting,’ she said. She sat up on her camp-bed
where she’d been resting after her mid-afternoon repast, her face
crinkling in her consternation before she remembered frowning
spoiled her looks. ‘How do you know?’
‘The scouts
just rode back with the news. There’s not the slightest doubt about
it. Havenstar is only a couple of hours away. At least, we assume
the place is Havenstar, and it is being besieged by an army of
Minions and pets.’
‘Who’s
winning?’ she asked and began to fluff up her hair.
‘Neither, it
seems, yet. Meldor’s people are holding them off with arrows and
other missiles. Once they run out of arrows it will doubtless be a
different story.’
‘Well then,
maybe we can pack up and go home. Let the Minions deal with the
rebels.’
‘Cylrie, that
is hardly an observation worthy of a Hedrina. It is the duty of all
Defenders to defend humankind against the Unmaker’s forces. It is
the duty of Chantry to order all Minions to be killed wherever
possible. The death of any Minion is a blow struck for the Maker
and for Order.’
‘Sweet Maker,
you mean to
attack?
To attack
Minions?
Rugriss, tell
me you are joking.’
‘Think! Just
about every Minion in the Unstable is right here, pounding on
Edion’s gate. Now why, do you think? The stakes must be very high
for Carasma to risk inflaming Minions to the point that they will
attack humans. He risks breaking the law that governs his presence
in our world! Think about it. Do we
really
want Carasma to
win? To gain whatever it is he wants so very, very badly?’
She thought
about that and her stomach roiled with fear. ‘But we came here to
fight Edion and his followers, not Carasma and his.’ Damn, she’d
sounded petulant. And more than a little frightened. She sat up a
little straighter, and smoothed her skirt.
‘I know. But
I’m still sending the Defenders onwards. Tomorrow morning they will
attack. You and I and the other chantors will wait here and perform
a kinesis for victory.’
She sighed and
fingered the embroidery on her stole. The bells tinkled. ‘And after
the victory? What then for Edion?’
He gave an
unpleasant smile. ‘I don’t think there’ll be too much left of
Edion’s forces after tonight. He will be in the mood to compromise,
if he still lives.’
She said
flatly, ‘He planned this. For us to be here, I mean. That silly
rule-chantor, Portron something-or-other. Edion used him to hook
us.’
‘I’m afraid
you’re right.’ Rugriss’s bitterness at his own gullibility
smothered his admiration. ‘He wanted the Chantry forces and we’ve
obliged him. He has played us for fools. Never mind, we fools will
prevail in the end, with the Maker’s grace. Come, it’s time for
kinesis.’ He held out his hand to help her up.
‘Oh! What was
that?’ she asked, looking beyond him, out towards where he’d said
Havenstar was.
He turned, too
late to see the sheet of light that had lit the sky to the east.
‘What was what? I don’t see anything.’
She looked for
a moment longer, then shrugged. ‘Just a lightning storm, I
suppose.’ She took his hand and smothered another sigh as she
stood. She may have been a Hedrina, but she did so hate the bother
of kinesis devotions.
~~~~~~~
~
Heldiss the
Heron made a snappy kinesis. He’d learned that much since he had
joined the Havenguards. If you saw an officer who had more colours
on his collar than you had, you made a kinesis of subordination,
two hands crossed with the back of the right one pressed to your
forehead. It all seemed rather ridiculous to him, but officers
liked it and said it helped corps morale, whatever that was.
The officer
was too harassed to make a kinesis in return. ‘Report!’ he
snapped.
‘Low on
arrows, milor’! And there’s another wave of ’em coming down the
slope now.’
The officer
opened his mouth to reply, but whatever he was going to say,
Heldiss never found out. There was a flash of bright light. Much
too bright. And Heldiss found himself flat on his back trying to
suck air into his lungs, wondering if he was dead or not.
~~~~~~~
Baraine of
Valmair smiled fondly at his pet, Carve. The creature was so
midden-blamed beautiful. Sleek, like a wet otter. Silky-haired,
with hair finer than any woman’s. Its animal characteristics—the
furred back, the tail, the ridge on the spine, the spurred calves
and taloned feet—these things only made Carve so much more
desirable in Baraine’s eyes. Maybe his need of it was, well,
twisted, but who cared? It wasn’t his fault. Ley had done that to
him. Ley and Carasma, and he was glad.
Carve was
everything another man could be, and more. He could talk and think
and reason, after a fashion; he was loyal and adoring—and he had a
penis that made Baraine shiver just to think about. Gone were the
days when even to speak of such things was to risk the shame of
society, to ensure Chantry’s punishment. Now he was free, and he
didn’t care what the price had been.
His caressing
gaze glanced away from Carve towards the Channel. Havener peasants!
They’d withdrawn behind their ramparts and then shot off enough
arrows to make kindling for every one of Drumlin’s fireplaces, all
for little effect. Brainless churls. How long did they think they
could keep that up? When the Unmaker’s army attacked this time,
they’d have scarcely an arrow left between them.
Baraine flexed
the muscles of his arms, enjoying the feel of his strength. The
strength that could be his forever. The thought was still
intoxicating, even though he’d had some months to grow used to the
idea of endless health and vitality. Not
quite
immortality
though, unfortunately. Minions healed fast, even when the wounds
seemed grave, but a well-placed arrow
could
end a Minion’s
life.
Even so,
Baraine was enjoying this fight. He found he had a taste for
battle, for pitting his skills against another’s, for the kill at
the end of it all. Because he always won, of course. He even
enjoyed watching his pet rip a man to pieces with its talons and
spurs…
A Minion, one
of Lord Carasma’s specials, was organising another attack on the
Haveners and Baraine found himself grinning. How could these puny
ploughmen and unwashed off-scourings of farmyards withstand such a
force as this for long? They’d fought well so far, it was true. But
it was desperation that had given them determination, and it
couldn’t last. They were just too outnumbered.
Uncomprehending, he saw the light begin along the edge of the
channel and travel like flame inwards towards him. He had time only
to turn his head, to realise the light was coming at him from all
directions, and then the blaze swathed him and Carve, so bright
that it was the light of it that burned, not the heat. There was no
heat. He closed his eyes against it, flung up an arm to protect his
face, and felt himself lift through the air, flung like a dried
autumn leaf in a winter tempest. He landed heavily, but it was not
the pain of landing he felt; it was the pain of the tear that was
made inside him. Something was ripped from his being, torn from him
like leaves whipped away from their tree by a storm. He was left
gasping in appalling anguish. Left crying against the emptiness
left behind. Left weeping with the desolation of knowing—
Knowing—
Knowing what
he had lost.
His perpetual
youth and health, the possibility of immortality, all gone.
A moment later
stability hit him. Terrible rigid stability, the law of the
Universe, all that was ordered and true through all eternity, all
the regularity of even the most idiosyncratic of Nature’s wonders.
It ran counter to what he had become. He no longer belonged to that
world; he was part of Chaos. He was one of the Unmaker’s get, an
irregularity of the Universe, something that did not fit into the
symmetry of That Which was Created. And now he, the aberration, was
being slotted into the stability where he no longer fitted.
Baraine raised
his face from the earth and quietly went mad.
Next to him
another Minion lurched upwards on one elbow and watched in
disbelief as his own skin disintegrated, desiccated…. Watched until
his heart stopped beating and he collapsed, nothing more than a
dried out skeleton of bones over two hundred years old.
~~~~~~~
Lord Carasma
the Unmaker was in the Writhe, not where it bordered Havenstar but
further out, towards the Graven. Davron and his escort arrived
there at nightfall. The ride had been long and arduous. They’d
stopped only once, to water their mounts, and Davron was beginning
to feel increasingly aware he’d not eaten all day. The Minion’s pet
was apparently feeling equally ill-used; its litany of woes had
expanded to include, ‘Sogol tired, master. Want sleep.’ Galbar
continued to ignore it, which worried Davron a little. The hungry
gleam in the animal’s eye was alarming.
The Writhe did
not look its usual fey self when they finally drew rein beside it.
The presence of the Unmaker within haunted it as storm clouds haunt
mountain peaks. Its colour had deepened to damson and the particles
within boiled like angry cumulus. Davron grimaced but he dismounted
at its edge when asked.
‘He’s in
there,’ Galbar said. This time there was some slight emotion in the
flatness of his eyes, the beginnings of a sneer perhaps. It was
chilling.
Davron took a
deep breath and shrugged off his fear. ‘Hey, Galbar,’ he drawled,
‘do all Minions get hen-pecked by their pets? Or is it just you?’
He was rewarded by a flash of hate and rage and felt a moment’s
pointless satisfaction.
He faced the
ley line and prepared himself.
What’s done is done. This is the
penalty I have to pay. But I will never give up.
Keris,
Maker keep you safe
.
~~~~~~~
Carasma had
chosen to seat himself on his fur-strewn throne. He seemed at ease,
sprawled and comfortable in his human guise.
‘Storre. At
last.’ His smile was pure poison. ‘The moment of payment has
arrived.’
Davron
inclined his head as if in polite acknowledgement.
His lack of
overt emotion seemed to offend the Unmaker. Carasma frowned deeply.
‘Have you nothing to say?’
He shrugged.
‘What do you want. That I grovel? I can fake it, I suppose, if I
must.’
Carasma’s face
hardened with noticeable rage. Grovelling was exactly what he
wanted; wanted and anticipated he would have.
‘My task?’ he
asked evenly.
Carasma
controlled himself. ‘Do you think to thwart me, Storre?’ he asked.
‘It’s not possible.’
He didn’t
deign to reply.
Carasma leant
forward on his throne. ‘Let me show you what I am, so that you
fully comprehend the magnitude of my power.’ His voice was almost a
snarl. Davron blinked; he had not thought his outward calm would
rile the Unmaker quite that much.
And then the
world about him changed. One moment he was standing in the purple
shadows of ley, the next he was standing in space, in the sky
itself. There was nothing beneath his feet, nothing tangible
anywhere within reach. He could feel the emptiness, the nothingness
around him. Carasma was nowhere to be seen. In spite of his
control, he began to sweat with fear.
Illusion,
he tried to
tell himself.
Only illusion.
Trails of ley
swirled past in the distance, chaotic in their movement, like sand
whipped up in a gale to stream across the dry surface of a dune.
Behind these ley-streamers was the black emptiness of an infinity
that terrified simply by its existence. Somewhere off to his left
an exploding star was caught in mid-cataclysm; its matter was being
tossed into a void, each particle spinning away from the next in
nihilistic dispersal. Below his feet a burning comet had been
thrown across the firmament, dragging destruction in its wake,
searing the worlds that impinged on its path, destroying,
obliterating. Beyond it, still further away, a black hole seemed to
have eaten the stars out of the sky…
‘I am Chaos,’
Carasma’s disembodied voice said. Its resonance rolled around
Davron like thunder, not of the world, but of the universe. ‘What
you see, guide, is my work. Look on it, you puny human, and
despair. What are you, to stand against me without quaking? I am
all you see before you: destruction … death … extinction …
annihilation … nullity.
‘I am the end
of the universe.’
And Davron,
terrified, managed to think,
And yet if you need to prove your
greatness to me, you have a weakness, Carasma
…
Without
discernible transition, he was back facing Carasma on his throne.
He wanted to sink to his knees in gratitude at the touch of solid
ground beneath his feet, but resisted the urge.
Carasma
continued, ‘What you see before you here and now is mere illusion,
a tiny particle of what I am. I take human form because that is all
your finite mind can understand. How can you possibly comprehend
the extent of my being?’
‘I don’t
particularly care to,’ he conceded. ‘But for all that, why do you
have the need to tell me? By your standards, I am nothing, and yet
what I think or do seems to worry you. I find that … intriguing,
Carasma.’
If Lord
Carasma felt the edge of his irony, he did not show it. He replied,
‘Because, Davron of Storre, there is only one thing that gives me
pleasure. I have no sensory organs to feel anything. I have no
pleasure or pain centres … yet I can feel and gain pleasure in
human agony. I am Chaos, and I must deliver utter destruction to
whatever I touch, but only human pain brings me gratification, only
human despair offers me the thrill of titillation. I crave it. Not
just to see physical pain—that is nothing; no, I speak of the agony
of a woman betrayed, or of a man watching loved ones die… I delight
in the sight of a man who loves, a man like you, being forced to
destroy what he most cares for. Do you understand?’