Heirs of the Demon King: Uprising (25 page)

She looked at him then.
Properly
looked at him. ‘You’re not just... one person, are you?’ She felt a little thrill of fear run down her spine, but it was fear of something momentous and unknown, rather than genuine dread. ‘You are... like a demon. That is what Eyja meant when she talked about names.’

‘Yes, child,’ said the old man. ‘You can call me Ignus, but even that is not my true name. There is much I need to say, and if you would hear it, I will tell you. I will give you a choice at the end of it. Both ways will be equally grave.’

Tagan’s fear slowly melted away as she listened to Akhgar speak. It was hard to be afraid of the old man lying on the cushions before her. His manner, his voice, everything about him made her comfortable. He reached out to take her hand in his own and looked up at her.

‘Will you hear me out?’

‘Yes,’ she said without hesitation, and he nodded in approval. ‘Yes, I will listen.’

Akhgar took a deep breath and began to speak. As his tale unwound, the voice telling it grew gradually stronger and surer. ‘This body is dying. Akhgar has carried my presence for many centuries. He has far outlived the years which should have been his, and that was the gift he received for agreeing to be my vessel. Longevity— but not immortality. Akhgar is a proud man. It has brought him joy to see his children, his grandchildren... his descendants grow and prosper. I was fortunate to have found such a soul. The others have not been so lucky. Eyja has known three bodies in her time, Giraldo more. Warin... well, he is different. The form he has taken this time is certainly unusual.’

Tagan listened just as she had promised she would, but when Akhgar paused, she spoke up. Her question was carefully worded; she was dealing with things she simply did not understand.

‘How does it work? You said no mortal mind could hold a demon and survive.’

‘No mortal mind can bear the
evil
of a demon, but that is a word made by men to label something that they do not understand. Do we seem evil to you? Akhgar willingly accepted me, and I have been bound to him ever since. There have been times in his life that he has asked me to withdraw. When he was with his wives, for example.’ The old man chuckled again and then laughed even harder when he saw just how pink Tagan went. ‘I have the ability to give him back to himself at any time. As he aged, of course, it became easier for me to continue speaking on his behalf. But he is always there.’ Akhgar tapped the side of his head. ‘He is always here with me.’

‘What happens if he dies?’

Akhgar’s smile faded a little at the question. ‘If the flesh dies, then I cannot endure in this world. I would be banished back to the Aetherworld,’ he replied. ‘There I would be hunted by evils that I hope you never have to know. They would seek to destroy me. You must understand by now, Tagan, what it is that I am going to ask of you.’

‘Completely,’ she said. ‘But you told me I have a choice. If one path is to... is to accept you into my head, or my heart, or whatever part of me it is that you would inhabit, what is the other?’

‘I will teach you all that you could know of magic,’ he replied simply. ‘In the blink of an eye, before Akhgar’s time is over. Once I am a freed spirit, I cannot remain. I would be gone just as surely as the man before you. I would teach you what I know and hope that it is enough to bolster the work of my siblings in thwarting Melusine’s plans.’

Tagan sat in silence for a moment and nibbled absently at another fig. ‘It was going to be simple,’ she said, in time. ‘I was going to marry Mathias, have his children. Live happily. That’s how it was supposed to be. It’s not going to happen, is it? Whatever I choose, that dream will be forever that. Just a dream. If I accept you into my life, I become a host to something I can never hope to understand. If you teach me what you know, my skills with magic will be needed... elsewhere.’ She knew, even as she said so, that that would be the case. The words that Akhgar—or Ignus—spoke were as nothing to the words he did
not
speak.

‘You are wise for your age, little one.’ Akhgar let out a rasping, painful breath. ‘I will not force this choice upon you.’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘No, you will not force the choice upon me, I accept that. But...’ Her eyes filled with shimmering tears that pooled for a moment before falling down her face, streaking the grime on her cheeks. The old man’s skinny fingers traced the line of the tears and he nodded.

‘I know, Tagan,’ he said, softly. ‘And for what it’s worth, you will never be alone.’

She cried for a while, tears of sorrow for the death of an impossibly old man she had known for barely an hour masking the grief she felt at the impending death of her own sense of self. Everything she had believed in, all that she had worked to achieve... everything lay in tatters. Her wedding dress would never be finished.

After the grief was spent, she sat up straighter.

‘I have made my choice,’ she said.

T
HE CHILL OF
the desert night was forgotten around the homely warmth of the communal fire. People had been gathering there since the sun had sunk below the horizon and the flames licked into the star-studded night. The heady scent of the flowering blossoms on the trees around the oasis filled the air. Someone passed around a bottle containing something that made Mathias’s head swim after only two sips. Giraldo, however, was happily swigging from the bottle and holding court with a group of young women who were hanging on the Pirate King’s every word.

Warin and Eyja sat quietly together to one side of the fire, talking in low voices. Mathias watched them for a little while. They did not touch, not even the gentle brushing of hands that Eyja seemed so fond of to show support and empathy with others. He could feel the sadness in both of them. They were coping with their friend’s failing health in one way whilst Giraldo, now leading a rousing bout of singing with his new-found friends, was handling it another way.

For his own part, he felt as though his innards had turned to ice. It had been in the look Akhgar had given Tagan. Something was happening; something was changing and he was completely powerless to prevent it.

That was the one thing all this had made him realise. Just how little control he had over his own life. Back home in the village, everything was so clear. Back there, he had been one of the educated, one of the lucky. Someone who would rise to a position of authority and leadership. He had welcomed it.

Once, he and Wyn had talked about his dead father. The man put to death by the King for practising magic. The memory of his tears that night had never faded, and neither had his sense of outrage, his desire for revenge. Wyn had taken that anger and tempered it.

‘One day,’ he said to the young Mathias, a child caught between grief for a mother he had adored and rage for a father he had never known. ‘One day, you will recall how you feel right now. When that day comes, lad, you will turn all that anger into a force for good.’

He was at a crossroads in his life. He didn’t need Wyn by his side to tell him that. Everything was crowding in on him. It was arrogance to believe that he was the centre of the universe, that everything pivoted on him... but Warin had called him the
waagehenkel
: the Fulcrum. The balance. What, he wondered exactly, was it that he was balancing?

Staring into the flames, Mathias allowed himself to relax. He could hear Wyn’s voice in his mind, just as clear as if the old fool had been sat beside him.

Accept what comes, Mathias. You cannot change it, after all.
The fire stretched up into the desert skies, and he followed the track of the smoke as it spiralled away into nothingness. Around him, he could sense the contentment of the people. Such harsh lives they led, but everything was made that much easier by the use of magic. How the rulers of his home had come to such a bleak place beggared belief.

He only became aware that Tagan had left Akhgar’s tent when she moved into his line of sight, going first to Eyja and Warin. She knelt behind them and spoke in a low voice. The pair nodded and rose, going to fetch Giraldo, who left his drunken party singing sea shanties happily.

Then she came to him.

‘He wanted to say goodbye to them,’ she said to Mathis by way of explanation. ‘His life is now measured in hours.’ Her eyes were heavy with weariness, and she slid onto the ground beside him and ducked into the protective circle of his arm.

That chill within his body became, if possible, even colder. ‘Then he isn’t coming with us?’

‘He can’t, Mathias. He is so old. He is dying.’ There it was, laid bare. The thing that all of them had avoided discussing—or even mentioning—since they had seen the frail old creature lost amongst the silken cushions. She leaned into his chest and drew a long, slow breath, and he let his fingers run down her hair. Despite their situation, and despite barely understanding anything, he knew that this whole affair had brought them closer together than even marriage might have done.

Such irony,
he absently thought, considering how they had begun this journey standing in the heart of a stone circle long used for marriage.

‘Don’t worry, Mathias,’ she said. ‘His magic is great. He has taught me all that he knows. I can help the other three when the time comes.’

‘But you were barely in there for more than an hour. How can...’

‘Didn’t you sense his power, Mathias? So strong. He passed on his knowledge to me in a way I can’t start to explain. He took my hand in his and I just...
knew
.’ She smiled and removed herself from his embrace. ‘The knowledge of so many years is mine now. All that there is to know about fire is mine. What I had has become so much more. Watch.’

She reached out a hand towards the fire in the camp’s centre and a long plume of flame stretched free and streaked across to her hand. She shaped the flame into a ball of fire that did not quite touch her flesh and tipped her head to one side as though considering what she should do. Then a genuinely sweet smile touched her lips.

‘Butterflies?’ She whispered the word with the faintest hint of amusement. ‘Very well.’ She clapped her hands together and a thousand or more fiery butterflies broke forth from between her fingers, fluttering around everyone seated by the fire. They all called out in delight, some of the younger children racing around attempting to catch them. Whenever they succeeded, whenever other hands touched the shapes, they simply faded away into ethereal smoke. Mathias watched, entranced, remembering that day—long ago, now—when she had concentrated so hard to produce a single butterfly to impress him.

‘You are wonderful,’ he said with disarming honesty. ‘Will you marry me?’ Of course, he had asked her that years ago. But now, when the words came out of his mouth, he had never wanted anything more.

In response, she gave him a bright smile. Mathias was so captivated that he failed to notice how the smile didn’t reach her eyes.

The Sahara Desert

Morocco

T
HE SANDSTORM BLEW
itself out after a few hours, but it was the loss of the horses that caused the greater delay. The men shook themselves loose of the sand piled atop them and blinked owlishly in the evening sun. They had lost another of their number. Blinded and wounded by the flying grit, he had become mired beneath the shifting dune and subsequently buried alive. All trace of the fleeing magi had vanished, but it did not matter, Weaver knew where they were going. Wrapped in their cloaks to ward off the growing chill, the Lord Inquisitor and his dwindling band of warriors pressed on into the night.

Nothing was going to stop them now.

D
AWN AT THE
oasis brought a return of the stifling heat, sucking the moisture out of the air. Mathias had woken before the sun, nestled amidst cushions on the floor of the tent where they had waited before. A thin blanket had been drawn up around his ears—by Tagan, he presumed—and he lowered it sleepily. He and Tagan were the only ones still sleeping. Eyja, Warin and Giraldo were conspicuous by their absence. They had only come back once during the night, and he had been deeply touched by the grief he had seen in their faces.

His thoughts turned immediately to Akhgar. Had the old man died in the night? That would explain their continued absence. He sat up and rubbed at his eyes sleepily before he reached over to gently shake Tagan, discovering that she was already awake. ‘I woke ages ago,’ she said. ‘I just couldn’t sleep.’

‘Shall we find the others?’ He stood up, and despite having slept on the floor, his body was free of the customary gripes and pains he’d suffered on their journey so far. The discovery was pleasing. He felt stronger for it.

She climbed to her feet and nodded, reaching up to tie her hair back. It had grown longer and far more unruly over the weeks of their journey and it suited her. It made her features softer, more feminine. Instinctively, he reached across and stroked a stray strand back from her face, and she turned away from him a little.

‘Don’t,’ she said, quietly and he dropped his hand, perplexed. She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added. ‘I just didn’t sleep that well. I am a little out of sorts this morning. Yes. Let’s find the others.’ As if to make up for her reaction to his touch, she slipped her warm hand into his as they stepped out into the morning.

It was as though the night had never happened. Activity around the oasis had clearly resumed some time ago and people moved around with the comfortable ease of routine. Mathias wondered for a moment why it was that the camp seemed smaller, until he saw one of the gaudy pavilions collapse. People were packing up their tents.

‘Where are they going?’ He asked the question aloud and Tagan shook her head.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘But I am sure we will find out. Come on.’

She tugged at his hand gently and pulled him towards Akhgar’s tent. The tribesman still remained at his post, and lowered his eyes respectfully as the two young people approached.

‘You are just in time,’ he said in his thickly accented voice. ‘The Wanderer’s time draws near. Soon he will sleep.’ He sounded saddened.

‘Thank you,’ said Mathias. ‘You are sure we are..?’

He left the question hanging and the tribesman flashed him a faintly indulgent smile. ‘Truth tell, my friend, I think the Wanderer has been waiting for you, yes? In you go.’

They returned his smile, not quite so brightly, and ducked into the tent. The mood and the atmosphere were very different from the reunion that had taken place there the previous night. There was a sadness that permeated the air, and a sense of solemnity. Eyja immediately moved to Tagan and smiled.

‘He has been asking for you since he woke,’ she said softly and the young woman nodded.

‘Yes,’ she said, gazing over at Akhgar. The old man’s breathing was shallow, his lungs rattling in a way that suggested every rise of his chest might be the very last. ‘I will go to him now.’ She squeezed Mathias’s hand gently and crossed to the dying elder. Eyja studied Mathias’s face momentarily as though looking for some sort of reaction. Seeing none, she relaxed a little.

‘All will be well, Mathias Eynon,’ she said. ‘I have seen a world where your strength and spirit reforge that which was broken. Your purity of spirit, your love and your sense of duty will lead you to great things.’

She Who Sees
. For the first time, Mathias understood the name by which she was known. ‘You really are a seeress,’ he said. It was a statement of fact, not a question. ‘Wyn once told me of the power of the seers. He also told me that people fear them.’

‘People fear the truth, Mathias. They live their lives in denial. When someone learns a great truth it is a cause for change, and change can be painful.’ She suddenly put her arms around him and drew him into an embrace. ‘Remember that, during the times ahead. Sometimes the truth is hidden by those who would spare their loved ones pain.’

He did not understand her words, and yet he felt the weight of them. He glanced over to the dying Akhgar. Tagan knelt at his side, his hand in hers. She stroked his brow and held a cup of water to his parched lips. He spoke in a quiet voice that Mathias could not hear. After a moment or two, she looked up and beckoned him across.

‘He wants to talk to you,’ she said quietly. ‘Come over here.’

Feeling decidedly uncomfortable, but filled with compassion of his own, Mathias obeyed, kneeling beside Tagan. He had barely spoken with the old man the previous day, content to let the magi tell their tale and have their reunion, but now it seemed that there was some final wisdom he wished to impart. As he looked down into the fading light of the old man’s eyes, Akhgar smiled up at him.

‘The Fulcrum,’ he said. ‘The balance on which events turn. Do you understand this name, Mathias Eynon?’ The words wheezed, every syllable taxing the poor, wizened creature.

‘No, sir, I don’t,’ he admitted. ‘I understand very little of what is going on, to be honest. All I have come to learn is that... people are depending on me for some reason. Wyn depended on me. Tagan depends on me.’ She smiled at him. ‘I take my responsibilities seriously. This must be what Wyn saw in me.’

‘Your aura is golden,’ said Akhgar. ‘A protector’s light. Do not let it dwindle and die out. You must look after Tagan. Will you do that for me, Mathias Eynon?’

It could be mistaken for the dying ramblings of an old man, but Mathias knew that Akhgar was something more. He gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘I have taken care of her since we were children. I see no reason for that to change.’

‘Good. Then there is one less thing for me to die worrying about.’ He leaned back and closed his eyes, that same little half-smile on his face. ‘This has been a good life. A long life. A hard life, yes. But a life that has granted more reward than I could have hoped for. My children, and their children, and
their
children beyond them live on. Akhgar ibn Atash’s name will not be lost.’ He let out a deeply contented sigh and the hand closed around Tagan’s briefly tightened.

He did not draw another breath.

I
T WAS STRANGE
to grieve for a man he had hardly known, but Akhgar’s death touched Mathias nonetheless. He retired to a quiet part of the oasis—difficult, with so much going on around him— and he let the tears come. He wept for all he had lost in his young life. For the death of a father he had never known, the loss of a mother who had never really recovered and the horrific loss of the man he had come to love as a parent. So much lost.

But he had also gained. Tagan, a woman he loved beyond life itself. He had made new friends who had never treated him as anything but an equal despite the fact that he knew he was anything but. He had travelled, and he had seen things he could never have imagined.

In the strangest way, the death of Akhgar ibn Atash freed Mathias from the chains of his past. He felt the strangest sense of liberation, gradually severing the last ties to a childhood that had been spent never quite understanding where he belonged in the world. Akhgar’s simple words had given him a sense of responsibility unlike anything he knew. In another man, the feeling might have been crushing. In Mathias Eynon, it lifted him to new heights.

After Akhgar’s death, Tagan remained in the tent for a little longer, helping Eyja arrange the old man’s body for the funeral rites that the other three said they would perform. She seemed calm and composed, carrying herself with quiet pride. When she emerged, her eyes sought out Mathias and both women came to join him by the pool. Tagan seemed subdued.

Mathias was startled by this. ‘I hadn’t realised how much time had passed. When we left Wales, it was late summer. So far away.’ Not for the first time, he felt a pang of terrible homesickness. The stark beauty of the desert was undeniable, but Mathias yearned for the greenery of his childhood.

Eyja sat down on one side of him and Tagan on the other. ‘You will have noticed that some of Akhgar’s people are leaving the oasis for a while,’ she said, as they watched them strike their tents. ‘They came to celebrate his passing, and now that he is gone, they have no reason to remain here. They will return to their hard lives out in the desert.’

Mathias didn’t question it. He nodded. ‘To celebrate the life of a man as long-lived as Akhgar,’ he said softly, ‘is a wonderful thing. It still seems incredible, that his magic could sustain him so long. But aren’t they going to stay for his funeral?’

‘No,’ said Eyja. ‘Only his closest family, those born of his bloodline, will remain for the cremation.’ She smiled. ‘Born in fire, ended in fire. It is a most beautiful and fitting end for a most remarkable man.’ She looked out across the water and let out the smallest of sighs. The sound was not unlike the whispering of the wind in the trees, and it brought memories of home even more sharply to Mathias’s thoughts. ‘When the funeral is done, we must make ready to return to England.’ She gazed up at the sky and her expression grew serious. ‘It must be done before the day is ended, or we will be too late and Melusine will have exactly what she wants.’

T
HEY WERE CLOSE
, he could feel it. Weaver and his men had marched through the night, and with the return of the sun had come the scent of magic on the wind. Anfa had been difficult enough; its blatant use of the arcane had made his flesh crawl with contempt. Magic was a disease that needed to be burned out. Only the urgency of his mission had prevented him from putting the town to the torch for its crimes.

He had weathered the sandstorm better than his men, who were down to their last dregs of water, but his fine clothes and armour were now made tattered and ragged by his journey. Only his mask and his will to succeed remained unblemished.

The same could not be said of the men trailing behind him. They were hurt and exhausted, their skin burned by the sun and scalding sand. Only the invincible drive of the Inquisitor kept them moving, pulled along in his wake like a line of pilgrims swaddled in rags, bound for the tomb of a saint.

The sun was high in the sky and had already begun its descent when a pillar of fire blossomed into the cloudless expanse. Birds, serpents and less recognisable shapes twisted and cavorted in the flames. Its source could not be more than a few leagues distant.

‘We are close,’ he murmured. ‘The magi reveal themselves, and will be brought to judgment for their crimes.’

His words put a little steel back into the listless men and they picked up the pace.

‘I
BRING THE
gift of water. Water nurtures us before birth, sustains us in life and cleanses our bodies in death.’

Giraldo’s was the first voice to speak, breaking through the stillness of the morning. He knelt before the body of Akhgar, now laid upon the ground beneath the shade of a palm. In his hands, Giraldo held cupped water from the clear pool. Not a drop leaked between the gaps in his fingers. He raised his hands high and let the water trickle on the length of the body. ‘May your spirit run with the tides.’ He lowered his head respectfully and stepped back. Warin, his red beard combed neatly for once, took his place.

‘I bring the gift of earth,’ he said and there was a catch in his voice. Akhgar’s death had touched Warin far more than Mathias could ever have imagined. ‘I bring the gift of earth,’ he repeated, in a stronger voice. ‘From earth we are born and to the earth we return.’ He knelt by Akhgar’s body and scooped up a handful of sand, and laid his palm out flat. ‘May your return to earth bring you the peace you have earned, my brother.’ He let the sand trickle, just as Giraldo’s water had done. Then he rose to his feet, choked back a sob and allowed Eyja to step forward.

‘I bring the gift of air,’ she said in her melodious voice. ‘Air is all around us. Our first breath is the world’s gift to us when we are born and the world takes our final breath in payment at the end of our days. In sharing every living breath with the world, we become a part of it. In this way, what we are lives on beyond death.’

As she spoke, the faintest of breezes rustled the leaves above them and she too knelt before Akhgar, leaning down to place a gentle kiss on his cold dead cheek. ‘You were the best of us,’ she said. ‘And you were the wisest, my dear Akhgar. You will not be forgotten.’

She rose to her feet and turned to Tagan, who was wearing the beautiful red silk from the market in Anfa around her head and face. All that was visible of her were her eyes, bright with unshed tears as she stepped forward to do what had been asked of her by the man lying on the ground.

‘I bring the gift of fire,’ she said, her voice trembling on every syllable. ‘In fire our spirits are forged and in fire our mortal bodies are consumed.’ She reached up a shaking hand and brushed away tears. Eyja laid a hand gently on her shoulder, and Tagan took a deep breath before she knelt down beside Akhgar. The next words she spoke came in a much stronger voice.

‘My gift is your gift.’ She reached for the dead man’s hand and closed her fingers around it. ‘In fire we are bonded, and in fire your memory will burn on.’ Mathias watched her, not truly understanding the ritual, but caught up in the solemnity of it all. Even as he watched his betrothed, she drew forth a single flame from nowhere and held it in the palm of her hand—much as Warin had held the sand and Giraldo the water. She tipped up her hand and the single flame slid onto the body. It caught light on the cloth in which Akhgar had been wrapped and Tagan stepped away, closing her eyes and willing it to burn stronger and brighter.