Salute the Dark (48 page)

We are the eyes through which this ritual will perceive its prey
, Achaeos knew. The work would be done, the power provided, by the others; he and Tegrec would merely focus it. Such
rituals had often been done in the Days of Lore so many centuries before. But in living memory? No, and the power of the very last one performed within record had gone so disastrously wrong that,
since then, nobody had even
attempted
what they were now about to do on the same scale. Of the meagre attempts that had been made, most had failed, some without issue and some with dire
consequences. With magic so thin and so wan in the light of this new Apt world, nobody knew if what they were undertaking was even
possible
any more.

Che . . .
He wished now that he had said more before she had gone off to Myna with the wretched traitor Thalric. Standing here on the mountain-top, with the sky on fire behind him, he
felt so many regrets.

There was no preliminary signal. The ritual simply bloomed around them, burgeoning from the Skryres as they turned the force of their minds on the weave of the world and tried to scar their
desires out upon it. Achaeos felt a ripple of shock run through the outer circle, the lesser magicians yoking themselves into that same great effort, so that the air around them grew hazy and shook
with the power that they called up. He felt himself like a bow, taken up, strung and stretched, so that the arrow that they were jointly forming might be loosed. The strain, even right at the
start, made him gasp. He became instantly, infinitely aware of the city of Tharn beneath him: of the Wasp-kinden intruders who did not belong, their soldiers and officers, the machines, their alien
thoughts and minds.

The Skryres stretched his mind further, until he choked on the pain, and still they tensioned him further. He hoped Tegrec was lasting better than he did, for it seemed that any moment he might
snap and fly to pieces.
Loose!
His mind cried.
For the sake of all, loose the shaft!
But they did not, only pulled and pulled, the arrow yet unformed. The Skryres and their followers
were pouring everything they had – all their living craft and strength – into this one single shot.

And it was not enough.

The greatest magicians in the world, and it was not enough. The circle of Skryres and their acolytes swayed and chanted and
concentrated
, forcing their will upon the very weave of
existence, and it was still not enough. The age of great magics was long past and they did not have the strength. The world was no longer so malleable to their minds.

Achaeos felt the air around him swim in and out of focus. His heart was like a hot stake being driven into his chest, flaring with pain at every beat, and the beats had become irregular,
stuttering. He was held on his feet only by the collective will of those around him. Others had already fallen: the oldest of the Skryres was a crumpled heap across the circle; one of the
Mantis-kinden had dropped to her knees.

It is not working
. That much was obvious. Less obvious was whether Achaeos would survive this failure, let alone a success. Opposite him, across the circle, Tegrec’s face glimmered
under a sheen of sweat.

I can’t . . .
Achaeos could feel a tight coldness in his chest now, an unforgiving clenching that intensified with every breath.

Che
, he thought.

There seemed to be a darkness blotting out the stars, but he knew this was in his vision only. The voice of one of the Skryres came to him, as if from far away.

‘We do not have the power for this! We must stop before we lose what we have!’

Another voice cried, ‘Remember the Darakyon!’

‘No!’ It was the lead Skryre, the great force of whose mind was felt all about the circle. ‘We cannot give up now. We have this one chance only to drive the invader from our
halls. Find more! Draw on every reserve you have! There can be no holding back. Drain your wells and give me
all
!’

What reserves? What wells?
Achaeos thought numbly, but around the circle he sensed the grudging obedience of the others. Not all, maybe, but still there were many who reached and found in
themselves some hoarded cache of strength to cast into the ritual. Some had artefacts from the Days of Lore to which a shred of glamour still clung. Others had places to which they had forged a
link, receptacles in which they had stored their faith long years ago. Some had siblings they could draw upon, or else family, students and servants. Achaeos saw the Wasp Tegrec reach back, and the
hand of his slave girl was in his own without hesitation. He saw Raeka pale as she gave of herself to him, the strength and will leaching out of her.

I cannot
, Achaeos thought, but on the heels of that came,
I cannot stand, cannot last, unless I do.

He had called to her once before, before ever she had given herself to him. How much stronger now was the bond between them.

Che!
he cried, simultaneously in his mind and across the miles that lay between them.
Che! Hear me! Please help me, Che!

The Wasps had now mounted two catapults on the palace roof, but the Mynan resistance had merely found mustering points that lay outside their angle of fire. It had been a
costly lesson.

They had no time: that was what everyone knew and nobody said. The Wasps still held the palace despite a day of savage fighting. They had barricaded the doors over and over, and the resistance
had stormed them with firebombs and crossbows, swords and claw-hammers, and torn the barricades down or burnt them up. The prized furniture of the palace, which Ulther had spent years collecting,
was mostly smashed and charred now, and yet the Wasps held out. They met the Mynans at every door, with sword and spear and sting, and they did not give an inch of ground.

Kymene knew that she was running out of chances now. Fly-kinden scouts were reporting hourly on the relief force on its way from Szar. If she had possession of the palace, then they might be
able to hold off the reinforcements. Otherwise, as soon as they engaged the new force, the Wasps barricaded in the palace would sally out and take them from the rear.

‘We just have to keep hammering at them all night,’ Chyses advised her. She knew that already, though it did not seem acceptable, in this day and age, to have no options but sheer
bloody-mindedness.

‘What about the new explosives?’ she asked.

‘Still being brewed,’ Chyses replied, and his tone made it clear that he knew they would be ready too late. ‘We’ve got another batch of the firebombs, though.’

Kymene scowled. Those were unreliable weapons, just bottles of anything flammable with rags as their fuses. They had caused carnage amongst the Wasps, but had taken their share of the Mynan
attackers too. If the flames really caught in the palace doorway, they could lose hours of progress in which all the Wasps needed to do was retreat up to the balconies above and watch an impassable
blaze raging away below.

If we had our own flying troops . . .
but all she had were a motley rabble of Fly-kinden who would scout for her, but not fight.

‘We’re losing too many fighters,’ she observed. Chyses merely nodded. He was someone who believed in the inevitability of casualties, an ingredient that made eventual victory
all the sweeter. Kymene, however, could only think of her people and the price she was setting on their promised freedom.

‘Issue the firebombs,’ she instructed him. ‘Pass the word along. Twenty minutes and we’re going in again.’

Che watched and said nothing. She was now wearing a chainmail hauberk of Mynan make, and so far she had stood anxiously at the edge of groups, even on the barricades that the Mynans had erected
facing the palace, but had seldom been called upon to fight. She had simply watched the ghastly business unfold: the Mynans’ repeated, bloody charges at the palace; the Wasps’ equally
costly defence. She had seen Kymene try everything, had even made her own suggestions. At her behest, they had made up a small catapult to pelt the palace door with grenades, but then they had run
out of grenades and explosives, and the home-made firebombs were sufficiently volatile that not even Chyses would suggest delivering them by engine.

This is where it ends, is it?
But that seemed ridiculous. After all, Thalric had been right about the Mynan situation, so everything should be working as planned. Instead the Wasps stayed
stubbornly in place despite the losses that the resistance had inflicted on them. They knew that all they had to do was sit tight and wait.

Che
.

She flinched. The sound of his voice was as though his mouth was at her ear, yet at the same time it was faint, far away.

‘Achaeos?’

Help me, Che.

She looked over at Kymene, saw that nobody was paying her any heed. A shiver went through her. ‘Achaeos?’ She could not simply form the name in her mind. She had to say it aloud.
‘Tell me you’re all right.’

I need you, Che.
There was a terrible
wrongness
to his voice, and she thought instantly of his wounds and how frail he had looked when she left him.

Che, I need your strength. I’m sorry . . . please . . .

She did not even ask what for. She did not need to know. Her reaction was as unquestioning as a child’s.

Take it
, she said, and this time there was no need to voice the words aloud.

Beetle-kinden were not a magical people, nor were they great warriors, neither fleet nor graceful. Beetles, however, were enduring: their dogged pragmatism had made them a
power in this world because they worked and worked tirelessly. They owned reserves of strength that other kinden could never guess at.

Achaeos suddenly felt the tenuous connection he had built towards Che start to wax and surge – and he touched her spirit, the core of her. It shook him to discover that within the one
short and amiable Beetle girl there was such a wealth of power. Without hesitation it was offered to him, began flowing into him, and thus passing through his conduit into the ritual. Along with it
he felt, like an aftertaste, her feelings and the love she held for him.

There was agony writ large on many faces around the circle, so when the tears started up in Achaeos’ blank eyes, nobody noted or cared. Between them all the air shook and trembled, not
through the force of their will, but with their sheer frustration. All throughout Tharn apprentices and servants gave of themselves, ancient archives of power were looted, gems went dark, books
burnt and staves cracked. The Wasps were suspicious now: even they could tell that something was happening. Already they were seeking for their governor, not guessing that he was part of the
conspiracy against them. Soon there would be soldiers storming ever upwards, drawn by a taste in the air that would become stronger and stronger.

But not strong enough. Even with all this, with not a man or woman among them holding back, the ritual was failing.

It is too late
, Achaeos thought.
Perhaps a hundred years ago, this could have been accomplished, perhaps even fifty, but we are too late.
Magic had died, year on year, giving place
and ground before the monsters of artifice and engineering, fading from the minds of the Lowlands until only those like the Skryres of Tharn even believed in it still. And belief was all, in the
final analysis.

We are too late.
A little longer and those who scoffed at magic’s existence would be proved right. Even with Che’s borrowed strength, Achaeos could not force the ritual to
happen. The tightness in his chest was only increasing, and there were constant stabs of pain inside his head as though men were fighting a war within his skull. All around him the other ritualists
had started swaying, faces gaunt with exhaustion.

He took the power that Che had lent him, took it with his mind, with both hands, and in a last desperate cry he hurled his voice out away from Tharn, across the Lowlands, and cried,
Help
us!

It was intended to be his final act before acknowledging defeat, before letting the pain that was clawing at him drag him down at last.

But it was not.

We will help you, little novice.

The words were the dry rattle of old leaves across stone – and he had heard them before.

‘No!’ he started, speaking aloud, not that any of the others truly heard. Something chuckled in his mind.

We will help you. We are bound, you to us, and us to you. The Shadow Box is open, and for a moment we may stretch our limbs.
He saw the limbs in his mind, and they were spined, thorned,
many-jointed, not remotely human.

‘I do not . . .’ He did not want their help but he had opened the door to them, and in they came. He felt their approach as though he watched a storm scud over the sky towards him,
coming all the way from the dark, rotten vaults of the Darakyon to Tharn. It was power that had lain in wait for a fool like him for five centuries, from the very cusp of the time that magic had
begun to die.

Pure, ancient power. Evil power. Power of terrible, twisted might. It came to the mountain-top at Tharn like a crippled giant, tortured and raging, and it fell on them like a hammer.

Achaeos screamed. He was not the only one. At least one of the others fell within the instant, face gone dead white, pale eyes filled with blood. Achaeos tried to let go. but he was held up like
a marionette dangling from the Darakyon’s broken fingers. He burnt. The vitriol of their power seared through him, and now he could not even scream.

The ritual exploded. There was a thunderclap of utter silence, a second’s stunned pause, and they all felt the tide of their blighted magic force itself down into the mountain.

Within Tharn all the lamps, all the torches or lanterns, went out at once.

The screams came soon after, the screams of fighting men in utter terror, engulfed by a wave of invisible force they could not fight. It opened their minds. It found where their fears came from,
and it released them, each man becoming the victim of his own beasts. The Wasp-kinden, and many of their Moth subjects also, went mad.