Ascendant's Rite (The Moontide Quartet) (104 page)

The door before them wasn’t locked. It opened onto a spiralling stair that led upwards, completely dark, and so narrow they were forced to go one at a time. Alaron went ahead and she let him: she had to take the throne, so his role was to get her there.

The stair led to a blank wall, with a touch-panel of carved stone: Ramita recognised the design from the panel used in Casa Meiros to allow only certain persons through. She put her palm to it, felt a faint tingle, then the door slid aside. Alaron peered left and right then stepped through, and she followed. The door, invisible from this side, closed silently. They were on a small landing in another spiral stair, this one well-lit with oil-lamps, floored in tiled sandstone with whitewashed walls. There was a musty, enclosed smell that hadn’t been present in the tunnel, and distant noise. Moreover, there was the throb of powerful gnosis above them, pulsing like a giant heartbeat.

Alaron brandished his staff, while she drew a knife. She hadn’t done a lot of fighting; instead, she’d applied herself to learning the gnosis with all the ferocity she could. She readied shields as they climbed higher and higher, still unseen and unchallenged, even passing doors from whence voices could be heard. Then another door loomed above, and the end of the stair. Before they could compose themselves, that door opened, and a redheaded woman wearing a silver sun and moon mask and deep blue robes stepped through, calling a farewell over her shoulder.

Then she saw them and froze, but not for long: mage-fire blossomed and flew.

42

A Storm at Midpoint

House Sacrecour

The name Sacrecour means of course, ‘Sacred Heart’, a reference to Corineus’ heart that Corinea split with her dagger. Ironically, the image of the dagger and heart is seen as a symbol of religious fidelity and purity by worshippers of the Kore. The victims of the empire have another view: their dagger, our hearts.

K
ING
P
HYLLIOS
III
OF
N
OROS, 910 (DURING THE
N
OROS
R
EVOLT)

Midpoint, Leviathan Bridge

Junesse (Akhira) 930

24
^th
and last month of the Moontide

The storm was rising, and so was the tide. Freezing winds from the north were whipping spray from the churning seas below into their faces, and lightning crackled on the horizon as Seth Korion strode to the front of the lines.

It was the strangest battle he could ever have envisaged: with the battlefield a ninety-foot-wide bridge, and the only visible enemies a pair of large windships tethered to a platform just below the summit of the tower. But he was under no illusions.
We must get inside, or we drown.

For the attack he’d summoned all his battle-magi, and the best fighting men from among the rankers: the elite cohorts of Jelaska’s Argundians and Kippenegger’s Bullheads, and Ramon’s personal cohort, who’d refused to stay behind. For now, the unseen windfleet somewhere in the clouds above had not reacted to his mustering, but he didn’t doubt they were watching.

Mercer said two hours . . . that was nearly an hour and a half ago.

He’d not told anyone why they were doing this yet: he didn’t want panic. If that was the wrong thing, he’d have about half an hour to live with it. But he did convey urgency.

‘Listen, come in close,’ he told the men and magi. He had Jelaska with him, Kip, Gerdhart and Hale. Lanna was here in case she could save anyone who fell. That left just Carmina with the rest of the column, though he doubted keeping her out of the fight would improve her survival chances much.
Virgins go straight to Paradise, according to the
Book of Kore
. I guess I’ll see her there.

He waved a hand for their attention as another rain-squall began. ‘I’m going to keep this brief. After all we’ve been through, it comes down to this: the empire doesn’t want us to go home. They’re going to destroy the Bridge, with us on it, very soon. There is no time to save the column, and nowhere safe, even on this island. The only chance we have is to take this tower. So we’re going to attack. If you’ve a question, make it a good one, because we’ve got about half an hour to do this.’

The looks on their faces were eloquent: initial surprise but not shock: they had probably all expected some act of treachery. Arguably not one as drastic as this, though. ‘How do we get in?’ asked one of Ramon’s serjants, Vidran.

‘Through the front door. We magi will kick it in, then it’s up and up and up, and kill everyone you meet.’ Seth was curiously unafraid. With so few options, there was no room for doubt. ‘Any other questions?’

Jelaska shook her head, answering for everyone.

‘Good, then let’s go.’

They strode towards the huge tower, fanning out in case of fire from above, but the only resistance was the wind scouring their faces. Behind them the column lurched into motion again, moving everyone they could onto the island, in case the solid ground might offer some kind of protection from what was to come. Midpoint Island was a barren and pathless lump of rock only a mile or so wide, and being on it or the bridge probably wouldn’t make the slightest difference. But there was no panic, and that was what gave him heart. They reached the steps unopposed, walked right to the door at the foot of the spire, glowing with its own light beneath the black clouds.

‘Take us ’arf an hour jus’ to walk up it,’ Harmon, another of Ramon’s men, commented. His flaxen hair was plastered to his face and his blade glistened with rain.

‘That’s cos yer a lazy Tocker,’ Vidran grinned. ‘Can’t walk ten paces wi’out needin’ a breather.’

Jelaska strode to the only entranceway, giant doors at the top of the stairs. At once they began to glow with pale tracery, curved webs of light hinting at the wards beneath. ‘Locking wards, woven with protective spells,’ she reported. She wiped strands of wet hair from her face. ‘The Keepers set them . . . this won’t be instant.’

They all watched anxiously as the sorceress drew on her gnosis and laid hands on the door.

‘Holy shit! Lookit that!’ half of the cohort exclaimed. In the stone-work above, a carved face came to life, peering down at them. Seth prepared to counter whatever it did, but it merely observed as the energies around Jelaska grew.

‘Shields up,’ the cohort’s pilus, the always calm Vereloni called Lukaz ordered. ‘Rim to rim, lads.’

A locking spell was a simple binding enchantment made to hold two objects together; it was easy to cast – and to disrupt, though it took strength. An active counter-spell would usually triumph against a passive lock eventually, though other spells woven in made it more complex – harder and more dangerous to disrupt. He could tell just by the interplay of forces that this one was strongly wrought and multi-faceted.

Minutes crawled by as they sweated and worried. Seth glanced back down the Bridge; the rest of the army was slowly rolling into motion under the direction of their officers, crawling onto the solid rock of Midpoint.

Suddenly the air around Jelaska flashed scarlet and a torrent of fire poured from the handles, engulfing her. But she was well-warded, and absorbed the flame with no more cost than charring of the hems and sleeves of her robe. A few seconds later, the lock flashed blue and she stepped back to allow the doors to swing open.

They should have expected the crossbow bolts that sleeted out of the darkness inside.

Seth saw a hail of foot-long bolts pluck at Jelaska’s shields, staggering her backwards as her shields were battered scarlet then torn apart. She screamed and doubled over, clutching her belly. The bolts that bypassed her battered the locked shields of Lukaz’s cohort.

‘Attack!’ Seth shouted, and hurled himself forward.

A second volley slammed into his shields and tore them up, but the bolts only ripped his sleeves or grazed him as he ran forward onto a forest of spears. At his side Gerdhart, brandishing a big flanged mace, unleashed a torrent of blue mage-bolts into the massed Imperial Guardsmen shielding the archers. Then with a roar Lukaz’s men poured in, and behind came the mass of Kippenegger’s Bullheads, Kip at their head in his bull helm, zweihandle flashing as he hacked through a line of spearmen.

Seth followed them in, seeking magi enemies, but a pair of rankers at the side of the entrance lunged at him. He stabbed straight-armed through one’s chest, but took a spear in the thigh; he numbed the pain with healing gnosis and wrenched it out, stabbed the spearman through the throat, then kicked him away. For another thirty seconds it was bewildering carnage, all hack and stab and blast. But men like Vidran and Harmon danced through it, two moves ahead of everyone else, carving paths that others widened and followed. Seth found space as a silver-masked mage on the stairs locked eyes with him, and for a moment they contested a mental link that left him staggered. He was gripped by immense power, Ascendant-strength, and was barely holding on, until Kip – unnoticed in the tumult – hacked at the masked man’s leg and severed it. A second later the masked head rolled and Kip was roaring to his gods. Around him, his men were butchering the Imperial Guardsmen barbarically.

‘“How thin the line between man and beast,”’ Seth found himself quoting, adding reflexively, ‘Sytrius the Younger.’

‘The Elder, actually,’ Lukaz corrected him, then shouted at his men, while Seth threw him a look of startled appreciation. ‘Find the next doors!
Move it!
’

‘He’s right, we’re done here,’ Gerdhart panted, pulling his mace from the smashed helm of a spearman.

‘Jelaska?’

The chaplain shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

Holy Kore, we pray for our sister Jelaska
 . . . ‘We go on!’

He took the lead as they pounded up the stairs.

*

‘The deserters are attacking the tower,’ Yrna Corloi remarked, staring from the side of the windship. ‘Do they know what’s happening?’

Gyle rubbed at his stubble and wondered. ‘Does it matter? Can they do anything?’

Corloi scowled. ‘Do I look like a Keeper?’ She closed her eyes and muttered something through a gnostic-link, then turned back to him. ‘Twenty minutes until destruction. The emperor is nervous.’

‘Constant Sacrecour is always nervous. But does he have a right to be?’

‘Not unless they reach the throne room. Should we help the defenders?’

‘No! Why would we go down there? It’s going to explode in twenty minutes.’

Corloi’s look of contempt was more eloquent than any words. She stalked away to another vantage point, but he noticed she didn’t go rushing off to defend Midpoint, either. He returned his gaze to the tower, focusing on the platform at the pinnacle, where four windsloops were now moored, ready to evacuate the Keepers once the destruction of the Bridge had been set in motion. The crystal cluster was now glowing so brightly no one could look straight at it. He’d heard those crystals were so debilitating the magi stationed there had to use special masks and garments to endure them and he understood that now: the air was growing hot and tainted.

He turned to see Vann Mercer and Ramon Sensini being marched onto the deck. He frowned, then looked at Mater-Imperia as she emerged from her cabin beneath the after-deck, alive with feverish triumph.

‘What a day this is, Magister Gyle!’ she called. ‘Lightning, battle – and soon the greatest triumph of my son’s reign. Are you ready for the spectacle?’

‘Seth Korion’s men are attacking the Tower.’

‘There are twelve Keepers tending Naxius in the main chamber, and ten Volsai with five cohorts of rankers holding the lower levels. Within ten minutes, there is nothing anyone can do to prevent the release of the energy from the Bridge anyway. Korion’s wasting his last breath.’

*

The stairs went on for ever, but they were still a blur as they stormed upwards. Seth pulled morphic-gnosis into his limbs to give him the strength, as did Gerdhart and Hale, behind him. They slammed into another ambush in a reception hall, with crossbowmen, spearmen and more silver-masked magi firing on them from the balcony above. A furious exchange of mage-fire presaged a blind charge by Kippenegger’s Bullheads, who hurled themselves bodily into a withering volley of fire and shafts, then carved through the defenders. The stairs began to run with blood as Seth and Gerdhart led a second wave, Ramon’s cohort, who were fighting with controlled professionalism.

The masked magi kept pulling out of reach, taking toll with mage-bolts and fire. They overmatched Seth’s magi in power – they were pure- and half-bloods – but they were scholars and researchers, not battle-magi, and didn’t fight well. Somewhat to his surprise, Seth found he could deal with them. Pilus Lukaz realised the squalor and chaos of battle confused their enemies, so he let Seth, Hale and Gerhardt distract the masked magi while he sent his men at them from unseen angles. Seth was struggling with a masked woman when the pilus himself darted in on her blindside and his shortsword skewered her beneath the armpit and into her heart. She sagged, and her mask slipped to reveal a middle-aged, bewildered face.

‘Never liked killin’ women,’ Lukaz muttered.

‘You had no choice,’ Seth told him.

‘Not this time,’ the Vereloni said. ‘Kill’d a woman I thought I loved in jealousy, years back. Should’a been hung, but got away. Been tryin’ t’make up for it since.’ He straightened. ‘Old story.’

The hall was cleared. Harmon and Vidran had taken down another masked mage with a deadly double attack, though it cost Harmon a blast of flame in the side that had charred his flesh to the bared ribs. He was now slumped against a wall, unable to move or speak from the pain.

‘Healer!’ Lukaz shouted, but there was no time to do anything for him.

‘Keep climbing,’ Seth shouted. ‘Kip, you’re in front this time! Move!’

On they pounded, up and up. The only window they passed was blank and rain-lashed, and still the stair wound on, narrowing with every turn. Seth rounded a curve, then flung himself aside as a crossbow bolt pinged off the wall beside him and ricocheted against Kippenegger’s shields, already broken. Half a dozen more bolts flew harmlessly; the shooters were not even visible. The part of him that was now inured to war thought,
They’re panicky
. He looked over his shoulder and signed to Kip. ‘Send in rankers to soak up the bolts, then go in.’