Bound (17 page)

Silhouette hissed at him. He started, a furious expression on his face.

‘It’s trying to get you killed,’ Sil said in a sharp whisper. ‘Focus, Alex!’

She was right. The rage and frustration of the book, the slice of entity within it, railed at him. ‘Fuck off,’ he whispered at it, almost silently. The shard burned at his throat and he concentrated on that.

Silhouette gestured towards the doorway. ‘I’ll go first,’ she said. ‘Wait for my signal.’

Magesign swam over her and she morphed into the feline form he was beginning to increasingly associate as a part of her. The colours of her skin shifted, her clothes merged into fur, mottled grey and indistinct. If he had skills like that, all this scurrying about might be avoided. She slipped from cover and into the darkness.

Alex crouched nervously, the cold stone hard against his back. He tried not to think about the bones hanging on the other side, who they might have been, why they died. Did these freaks eat them or just hang them up to rot? All kinds of horrible scenarios flashed across his mind. Silhouette had been too long. What if she couldn’t call out for help? Inaction was unbearable.

He pushed up from the rock and ran into the building, slipping to the side of the door, pressed his back against the wall inside. He paused, let his eyes adjust to the smoky gloom.

Guttering orange light flickered from sconces around the walls. What looked from the outside like inky blackness was a ruddy, hazy murk inside. He crouched, eyes and mind scanning. He caught sight of shades of magesign by the far wall and saw Silhouette, still shifted and camouflaged, glaring at him.

A raised dais against the centre of the rear wall drew his attention. Waves of power emanated from it, washing across the big, open space. Several pale creatures like those outside knelt on the steps leading up to the dais, bowing and rocking in strange obeisance. A low, keening sound accompanied their movements.

Silhouette appeared to be trying to get around for a better look. With a slight shake of her head she crept along again, staying pressed to the wall. Alex could feel the Darak shard at his chest dragging at him, trying to burst free from the locket and fly up. He used his
chi gung
breathing again, controlled the almost overpowering urge to rush the dais. Waves of magesign rose from it, like steam from a boiling pan. Something resided up there and it filled Alex with dread.

A voice boomed out, sharp, staccato words in a tongue Alex had never heard. The worshippers leapt up as one, spinning about, their unnaturally large eyes panning left and right. Alex growled, low and angry. The time for stealth had passed.

He rushed forward, heading straight for the raised platform. As the shambling people staggered down to meet him, Silhouette shot across the room to join them.

The pale skin of the flock was damp, slick. Their mouths hung loose, the skin under their eyes sagged. They chattered with low coughs and barks, animal sounds that bore something more than simple noise, some semblance of language. Pasty hands stretched out from the depths of their patchy, stinking hide clothes, reaching for him. Some had too many fingers, some too few. Some ended in soft, rubbery stumps, wobbling with their movement. Most of the faces bore strange mutations, the mouths misshapen, some with teeth growing crookedly from cheekbones, skin distended around yellow bone. Here and there an eye socket held nothing but stretched white skin.

Alex didn’t waste any time testing their skills. He drove a hard, straight kick into the stomach of the first one. It dropped with a primal howl, to squirm in pain on the floor. It had felt soft and vulnerable under his foot. Already he was striking left and right, raining blows on the lumbering, coughing horrors, pushing his way up the steps. The book in his pocket sang with joy.

Silhouette struck across from him, helping clear his path. She moved in her cat form with a grace and agility that astounded him, seeming to fly from one victim to the next, laying waste about her. The loud, harsh voice boomed out again, frustration and anger evident.

The twenty or so worshippers swung almost randomly, trying to overwhelm Alex with weight and numbers, shambolic, but he moved with a fighter’s awareness. Wherever a gap appeared, he moved into it, striking and kicking, sweeping and throwing, creating new gaps in the swinging horde as he went. This was his place in the universe, his element. He laughed as he fought, the bloodlust empowering him, the stone lending new speed and strength, the book singing its endorsement. Silhouette’s strategic attacks assisted his passage, the two of them operating in perfect harmony, an unspoken understanding of method, always aware of exactly where the other was. Within moments all the attackers lay still or writhing in pain. Dark blood leaked from many, howls and meeps of pain and low coughs of anguish filled the smoky air.

Silhouette moved in front of him, slipping back into her normal form, fur re-forming into clothes. ‘There will be more. Where’s the stone?’

Alex looked to the top of the dais. ‘Up there. But there’s something else too.’

A sensation of raw anger and malevolence flooded from above them. Together they raced up the last few steps and gained the top. The surface sloped down, a shallow bowl of dark grey stone. In the centre of the bowl sat something huge and once human. It wallowed in rolls of its own fat. White, slick skin stretched over fold upon fold of stinking, ashen flesh. A furious face stared out under a bald head, reflecting the dim glow of the torches. Two hands waved, thick, pudgy fingers writhing and clenching. The creature howled, its anger mingled with fear. Magesign washed from it.

Immense age emanated, centuries of existence drifting off it like a smell. Alex sensed its need for worship, its anger at anything but adoration. Its shades were all colours of self-absorption, self-importance, all-encompassing narcissism. It stuttered incomprehensible words, weaving them together with its magic, its ’sign spinning out in smoky tendrils. Alex was suddenly dizzy. He wanted to sleep. Nothing seemed more important than curling up where he stood and letting deep, dark oblivion take him. He staggered, looked at Silhouette beside him. Her eyes hung heavy, almost shut. She weaved in the air, as if asleep on her feet. Alex reached for her.

‘So tired,’ she slurred. ‘It’s … bad … magic.’ Her knees folded up beneath her and she collapsed, slid down across a few steps, and lay still.

Alex ground his teeth. The book howled through every fibre of his being, the stone at his chest pulled him forward, trying to drag him into the embrace of the wallowing, corpulent horror before him. The massive thing grinned and muttered, waving its fleshy hands. Its magesign pressed him down, tried to force him to sleep.

And he could feel that this creature’s magic came from the same source as his own power. The connection between his shard and the magic attacking him was undeniable. The stone at his neck sent shockwaves through him, shaking him into action. He forced his eyes open, searching with every facet of his vision. And there he saw it, embedded in this monster, buried deep within it, a part of it. He drew power from his own source and made his arms and hands as hard as steel.

With a snarl of rage he leapt into the air and came down amid the roiling, billowing flesh of the thing and drove his fists down onto its head. Its face arched in terror for a fraction of a second, stunned that its magic hadn’t worked, before Alex’s knuckles smashed through its white, plump skull. Dark red and grey ichor burst up and, in his fury, Alex kept going. He tore into the thing, ripping its flesh apart like uncooked dough, tearing it to pieces, seeking his prize deep within its fetid body.

Its magic died with it and sudden clarity and awareness hit Alex like a physical blow. With a cry of repulsion he drove on, digging and tearing through the thing, pulling lumps of flesh and fat aside, grasping soft, weak bones and ripping them out. The stone pulsed inside, crying out to him, to his own piece. The two were desperate to be joined.

Alex stopped, mired in guts, and pulled his locket from inside his shirt. He opened it and magesign burst out like a sun exploding, hitting everything in a blinding flash of pure magic. The hidden stone rose up, drawn to its fellow. He was pulled forward as the two pieces attracted each other like powerful magnets. When they met he was thrown back by the burst of energy they created. He closed his hand around the locket as he landed on his back, winded by the impact, and slid painfully down the steps of the dais.

Released from her sleep, Silhouette ran to his side, dragged him to his feet. ‘Time to go!’ she yelled, grimacing at the state of him.

He half ran, half fell across the hall. They stumbled from the confines of the building into a bright, cold, salty day and sucked in lungsful of air. Nothing had ever felt so good to Alex as the fresh ocean cold of the outside.

Dozens of white, wide-eyed islanders staggered towards them.

Gore covered his hands and arms, splattered all over his clothes, his feet and legs mired in it. Silhouette stood beside him, trembling. ‘They’re between us and the boat,’ she said. ‘And there’s a fucking lot of them.’

The Darak pieces, still clenched in his hand, swelled with enormous magic. He had thought the shard he already had was powerful. Now it had doubled, the two merging together, exponentially increasing the strength they gave him. Pure magic coursed through him, dizzied him. He could do anything. And there was still another piece to find.

He remembered reading Welby’s element grimoire. It had seemed so incredible at the time, so outside anything in his experience. Now it seemed like child’s play. The things he’d read about in there seemed obvious. He had power now to make those things a manifest reality.

‘Hold on to something,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Hold on to something really, really tight.’

As he spoke, he wound a hand through the ropes binding one of the unfortunate skeletons to an obelisk. Silhouette, eyes betraying her unease, did the same. She locked both hands into the ropes, twisting them around her wrists, and gripped tight.

Alex held the newly enlarged stone aloft, drawing on the lessons of Welby’s gift. He spoke to the nature of water, understood and controlled its very essence. He sent his will out into the ocean around them and worked it like kneading clay. Letting the power of the Darak reach out, he drew the ocean up towards them, enhancing the natural swell, instructing it with steadfast, undoubting command.

Silhouette gasped as a massive wave, tens of metres high, rose up behind the island. ‘Hold your breath,’ Alex warned.

The shuffling inhabitants raised their arms, their eyes and mouths wide, as the wall of water crashed over the island. The book in Alex’s pocket throbbed in delight.

Alex locked his other hand into the ropes around the rock, praying they would hold. The water hit them with a breathtaking cold and dragged across the rocks with unstoppable force, covering everything with an icy, muffled silent rush. Time seemed to slow in an arctic green cathedral. As the wave slammed them and sucked back towards the sea, twisted bodies were carried with it, crashing and breaking against rocks and buildings. Some grabbed for handholds as they were carried along, some slammed against stone and were broken and held there. Swirling seaweed and churning white blurred past, all their cries lost in the roar of the water.

Alex’s lungs burned, desperate to take a breath. His hands threatened to give up their grip on the ropes, fighting the inexorable pull of the wave. Then it passed and he and Silhouette were alone.

Alex unwound his hands. ‘Come on!’

Silhouette freed herself, sucking in frantic breaths, and followed, shaking her head in amazement. They forced frozen feet to take step after step. Their clothes, heavy and soaked, dragged on their bodies. Through a haze of exertion and desperation they made it back to the beach, grateful beyond words to find their dinghy wedged between high rocks. They dragged it free and rowed out to the borrowed fishing boat with numb hands, teeth chattering. Silhouette started the engine as Alex drew up the anchor and they powered away from the teardrop of rock, hidden in plain sight.

As the island shrank in the distance, Silhouette locked the wheel and called Alex down below deck. ‘We need to get warm before we get hypothermia,’ she said, vibrating with shivers. ‘There should be some dry things down here, or at least blankets or towels or something.’

Alex’s body pulsated with the thrill of power even as the cold ate his bones. He trailed behind, trying to force rational thought through his frenzied mind.

They sat below deck wrapped in the fisherman’s spare clothes and ragged old blankets, huddled together for warmth. After a while Alex reached into his shirt, pulled out the locket. It was twice its previous size, misshapen like it had been melted.

He slid a thumbnail against the edge, prised the case open. It popped with a slight
tink
and magesign flooded out. The stone inside had grown. The fine silver banding holding it in place had stretched and warped, but still contained it. The locket and stone seemed combined into a single thing, one an integral part of the other, the leather binding melted in with them. The immense power of it coursed through him, firing every fibre. The exultation of the book was palpable. It seemed disappointed that he had survived the island, yet ecstatic at the chaos he’d caused, the deaths at his hands.

‘What did you do there?’ Silhouette asked. ‘With the sea.’

He was utterly drained. ‘Welby’s grimoire, a gift to me. I understand the elements. The book seemed so simple, but it gave me knowledge. It … imparted knowledge.’

‘Sounds potent.’

‘Must be. Water, earth, air, fire, I feel them all around, even more so now this has happened.’ He gestured with the newly altered Darak.

‘You used an incredible amount of power back there, do you realise that?’

‘Yeah. But it’s the stone.’

‘It’s you, Alex. The stone amplifies it. Most normal people would have been torn apart by what you channelled.’

‘How can something this small …?’

Silhouette smirked. ‘Size isn’t everything. It’s not the physical attributes that make an item like that powerful. It’s the magic that went into making it. Power stones like that, like Joseph’s, they don’t really occupy just the physical space you can see and touch. They direct energy through many realms. The stone itself, that’s just an anchor point. Same as the book that holds a thread of the consciousness of Uthentia. It’s just a physical fixture in this realm.’