Moontide 02 - The Scarlet Tides (8 page)

Souldrinkers (1)

Word came out of the East, that one of our brethren had found a way to unlock the potential within us. A woman called Sabele had inhaled the soul of a dying mage and gained the gnosis. So I tried it. I had nothing to lose: sooner or later someone was going to hand me over to you, for the ‘crime’ of not gaining the gnosis when you did. Do I regret it? Not at all. At least I took a few of you bastards down with me.

N
OTES FROM THE TRIAL OF
J
ORGI
H
ARLE
,
D
ARK
P
ATH
M
AGUS
, P
ALACIA
488

The Souldrinkers – Dokken, Shadowmancers, Dark Path, whatever you call them – they are the secret evil that blights these lands. Harle was just one of many. We must root them out, every last one.

A
RCH
-P
RELATE
G
EOVANNI,
AT THE
F
IRST
I
NQUISITIONAL
M
OOT
, P
ALLAS
491

Hebusalim, Dhassa, Antiopia
Rajab (Julsep) 928
1
^st
month of the Moontide

Kazim Makani cut the air into a thousand slices, his blade a blur, his bare chest corded with taut muscle as he spun and twisted. Jamil liked to tell him that he was a
beast
, primal, a wild thing. But he felt more caged than free.

It was dusk in Hebusalim and he was in an abandoned dog-fighting
pit, near an old Dom-al’Ahm. The Godsingers were chanting, summoning the faithful to their knees, but Kazim ignored the entreaty. His place of worship was here, his spiritual icon the scimitar in his hand.

Panting, he finished another sequence. His skin was soaked in sweat. He’d been pushing himself hard, trying to drive all other thoughts away. Memories of Ramita and Antonin Meiros; thoughts of his secret heritage. He could feel that hideous strength, the gnosis, coiled and waiting inside him, pleading to be used, but he ignored it. He shunned it, trying to pretend it wasn’t there.

Someone called, ‘Kazim?’ and he glanced up and saw Jamil had entered the tiered seating above the pit, his scarred and lined face cracking into a rare smile. ‘Get cleaned up,’ he called down. ‘We’re wanted.’

‘Who by?’ Kazim asked suspiciously. Jamil was his friend, but he was also Hadishah, and that loyalty came first.

‘Rashid.’

Kazim cursed softly. He had no wish to see Rashid, but despite this he hurried to obey, for Rashid Mubarak was head of this chapter of the Hadishah and his word was law.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked Jamil after he’d poured water over his head and dried it with the cloth Jamil had handed him.

The Hadishah warrior shook his head. ‘I don’t know, but something big. Very big.’

Kazim grimaced. ‘As long as that hag Sabele isn’t there.’

Jamil looked at him steadily. ‘You must learn to accept who you are, brother.’

They both knew he was afraid to see the Souldrinker jadugara Sabele and his sister Huriya; unlike himself, Huriya had embraced the revelation of their shared Souldrinker heritage and followed Sabele willingly – but then, she’d always been a conniving minx.

‘How can I?’ He looked at Jamil. ‘Have you seen Huriya?’

Jamil shook his head. He’d had hopes of a relationship with his friend’s beautiful sister, but those were gone now. ‘My kind and yours – the union is forbidden. Unknown, even.’

That gave him pause.
Ramita is magi now … The world conspires against us.

‘Can you tell what I am, just by looking at me?’

Jamil said hesitantly, ‘Now that you are training, and depleting your powers, it becomes evident. Your aura is different. It is … hungrier.’ He looked profoundly uncomfortable about it all. ‘Come, my friend. We must not keep Rashid waiting.’

They hurried to the Dom-al’Ahm, removed their sandals and entered, barely noticed as they hurried past the ranks of worshippers prostrating themselves to Ahm and praying in echo to the words of the Godspeaker at the front. They took stairs leading below the dome, to a chamber lit by a single torch. The door closed behind them, cutting off the sound of the prayers.

‘Thank you for coming.’ Rashid’s melodious voice filled the small room. He was seated cross-legged on an intricately woven carpet beneath the torch.

Kazim and Jamil sank to their haunches on another larger carpet opposite him.

‘The time has come for the next stage of our plans.’

‘We are ready,’ Jamil said, and Kazim nodded in reluctant agreement.

‘Good,’ Rashid responded. ‘For in a few weeks time, we’re going to destroy the Ordo Costruo.’

*

Huriya Makani stared through the stone lattice-work of the remains of the zenana, the women’s wing of the broken palace, overlooking a ruined garden. The abandoned fortress northeast of Hebusalim had never been repaired after falling during the Second Crusade. Now it stank of stale piss and rot.

She turned as her mentor Sabele hobbled around the curve of the narrow balcony. Sabele was a crone while Huriya was in the full bloom of youth; despite her deeply tanned skin, Sabele was actually a white woman, born in Yuros centuries ago, while Huriya was a dark-skinned, black-haired Keshi of barely sixteen years. But they were both Souldrinkers, magi who had triggered their gnosis by inhaling
the soul of a dying mage. Huriya had never suspected she had the trait until Sabele had revealed it to her, but nerve and greed were things she had always had in abundance, just like Sabele. The hag, herself a Souldrinker for centuries, had been visiting Huriya secretly most of her life, promising great rewards for patience – predictions that were finally coming true.

‘Are we alone?’ Sabele croaked.

Huriya clasped both hands together and bowed. ‘We are.’ She’d been scanning the area carefully with her newfound gnosis.

Sabele smiled her aggravating smile, the one that said she’d outwitted her protégé. ‘Look again, girl.’ She peered through the stonework. ‘Don’t look just for men.’

Ah
. Huriya swallowed her irritation, closed her eyes and reopened her mind. She reached out to the sentinels she’d placed about the old fortress. Under Sabele’s supervision she’d been capturing weak daemons and placing them into the bodies of birds, mostly crows. She now had a flock a dozen strong that followed her everywhere.

A moment’s communion told her what she needed to know.

‘There are jackals outside the walls,’ she reported, a little afraid. ‘And something else.’

Sabele smiled. ‘Better, child.’ She touched Huriya’s shoulder and sent a tingle of pleasure through her nerve system, an exquisite combination of mental and sexual bliss that left her panting slightly, her nipples stiffening, her groin tingling. She exhaled heavily. Sabele knew her too well; she knew how to keep her enslaved. The ancient Souldrinker could reduce Huriya to a quivering lump of flesh with just a touch on the arm, giving pain or pleasure, whichever suited her whim. Huriya hated and craved such moments.

One day I will have learnt all you can teach me, hag. Then beware …

‘Come,’ the crone said, and led her through the maze of half-wrecked passages, dead vines clinging to the stonework and snakes slithering through the shadows, towards the gates. Huriya could feel the jackals entering; she glimpsed them though her daemon-birds’ eyes.

When they reached the courtyard they paused at the top of the
stairs. The beasts below turned and silently regarded them. They were larger than common jackals, with at least twice the body mass, and they rumbled and growled and ducked their heads as if bowing. Then as one they fell to the ground, writhing through the agonies of mutation. Limbs began to form, arms and legs; jaws shortened and narrowed as fur came away in flakes and became dust. Some pissed or shat as they changed, losing control of their bodies in the moment, but then their torsos reformed into lean, muscle-laden flesh. They were men and women of many races, many colours, blonde hair and dark, copper skin and white, and all young to middle-aged, strong and well-made. She watched breathlessly as they changed before her, their faces contorted by pain or pleasure, as if experiencing some ultimate orgasm.

‘Are they all shapechangers?’ Huriya breathed.

Sabele arched an eyebrow. ‘Our kind have tended to band according to prime affinity. It is both a strength and a weakness. This group have been a pack for centuries. They are like insects of the same hive.’

‘Then there are others like me?’

‘You are my apprentice, girl. You will stand above them all.’

Huriya smiled inwardly at this as her eyes were drawn back to the bodies writhing –
like beasts
– beneath her.

Just as the shapechangers were climbing to their feet, a mountain lion entered the courtyard. He did not waste time with any messy transfiguration; he simply reared upright, shedding his shape as he came on. He strode through the strewn bodies as they rose, a godlike body appearing from beneath the fur he shed. His mane became tawny hair that fell past his broad shoulders, and his corded belly flexed as he moved. His manhood was semi-erect amidst the golden thatch of hair at his loins. His thighs were like tree-trunks. His face shone in the late sun, and Huriya’s breath – and her scorn – caught in her throat.

Mine
, she growled inwardly, drinking him in with her eyes. One of the female shapechangers, a hard-faced creature all sinew and sun-blackened skin, seemed to hear her thought. She glared at Huriya threateningly.

‘Packleader Zaqri,’ Sabele greeted him as he went down on one knee.

‘My Queen,’ the golden man replied in Rondian. His words were echoed by the rest of his pack – and it was
his
, Huriya could see that clearly.

‘Thank you for coming, Zaqri my child,’ Sabele croaked in the same tongue. Huriya knew enough of it by now, through mind-to-mind learning, that she could follow the conversation. ‘I have a mission for you.’

‘You have only to command us,’ Zaqri told her.

‘I know.’ Sabele smiled. She was standing a little taller and her skin looked less lined, almost as if she were growing younger.

Huriya wondered if it was illusion; perhaps it was pride.

‘Come, there is food and clothing in the dormitories. How long have you been on the road?’

‘Three weeks in beast-form, my Queen,’ Zaqri replied. His eyes went to Huriya, measuring her, and she looked back steadily. He had a wild beard and tangled hair, and a thick pelt on his chest. The beast clearly still lurked within.

‘This is your new student?’

Sabele inclined her head. ‘Huriya Makani.’

‘Daughter of Razir?’

‘The same.’

He knew my father?
Huriya’s skin prickled.

Zaqri nodded appraisingly. ‘It is good that his line returns to our tribe. She has awakened?’

Sabele stroked Huriya’s arm, sending a pleasant shiver through her. ‘She fed on a half-blood.’

Zaqri bared his teeth. ‘A good start.’

A good start
. Huriya almost forgot to breathe, barely masking her excitement.
Does he mean that I could be stronger?
The rest was easy to work out.
I have to kill someone stronger than me and drink their soul.

Sabele had not told her that – had perhaps not intended to tell her, not when she was the obvious next meal.

But Sabele was still talking, and the mission that she outlined soon erased all other thoughts. ‘We go to Krak di Condotiori, to visit destruction on the Ordo Costruo.’

A whole order of magi to devour … Whose soul might I not consume then?