The Long War 01 - The Black Guard (54 page)

His cries ended in a grotesque gurgle and Saara walked down the adjacent street towards which the man had pointed. She thought allowing two of them to leave had been a wise move, because they would tell others what they had seen. She enjoyed the mysterious, half-whispered rumours that followed her around Karesia and, if she were to command Tor Funweir in the same way, the peasantry would need to fear her just as her own people did.

Kabrizzi’s shop was an unadorned stone building with few signs that it was anything more than a squat for junkies and whores. There were no lights in the street and the darkness filled every corner and crevice. A small, rotten plaque next to the door, when Saara had rubbed it clean, read:
Emaniz Kabrizzi, purveyor of rare books and occult items
. He was not a famous man, nor a remarkable one, but he had one valuable asset that meant Saara needed his assistance. Her thief contact had confirmed that Kabrizzi had come across an old book, hidden in the bowels of a Blue church in Ro Haran. The book, seemingly of little interest to Ro scholars, was called
Ar Kral Desh Jek
in the ancient Jekkan language, which translated roughly as
The Book of the Lost
. Saara had not informed her sisters about the book, and she was eager to posses it for the knowledge it contained.

A single knock on the door was enough for her to hear movement from within and a crotchety voice, with a slight Karesian accent, barked, ‘Fuck off, we’re closed… we’re always closed… so fuck off.’

‘Please open the door. I am not a thief and you will like what I have to say.’ Saara spoke calmly.

The voice didn’t respond for a moment and she heard heavy, throaty breathing from behind the wood. A bolt was moved and a key was turned and the door inched open, displaying several heavy chains designed to keep it from being flung open by an intruder. Through the narrow gap, an old Karesian face squinted at the enchantress.

‘Fuck me, it’s one of the Seven Sisters. Which one are you, Jezebel the Bitch or Harlot the Not Particularly Pleasant?’ Kabrizzi displayed the carelessness about insults that only the very old possessed. He chuckled to himself.

‘My name is Saara the Mistress of Pain, and if you insult my order again, old man, I’ll make you eat your own cock before I eat your heart,’ she answered, narrowing her eyes into a girlish smile.

‘All right, don’t take it personally, witch. What do you want?’ he asked, not visibly concerned about her threat.

‘I am told that you recently came into possession of a very rare book. I wish to buy it from you.’ Saara stepped forward so the old man could see her better in the dark street.

‘Show me your coin,’ he said suspiciously.

Saara produced a heavy purse and weighed it suggestively in her slender hand. Its size made Kabrizzi’s eyes light up and a grotesque smile appeared through the gap in the doorway. Saara was gratified that, despite living in Tor Funweir, the old Karesian had not lost his people’s avaricious streak.

‘Open the door,’ Saara said plainly, not wanting to converse across the chains any longer.

Kabrizzi pursed his lips and sized up the enchantress, looking her over from head to toe, assessing the dangers of allowing one of the Seven Sisters into his shop.

‘You have nothing to fear from me, old man, I merely wish to see the book. You are, in a sense, merely a glorified doorman in this encounter.’

Her confident manner did nothing to speed up Kabrizzi’s musings. ‘If I let you in, you could bewitch me, or whatever it is you do.’

Saara nodded. ‘Indeed, I could,’ she replied, ‘but what’s to stop me merely making you open the door? You’ll notice that you still have free will and I am being polite.’

That placated the old man a little and he nodded and disappeared inside for a moment. Saara heard the heavy chains being unlocked and a moment later the door was opened fully. He beckoned her in with a frail old hand and she left the dark street to enter an equally dark shop.

‘Do you not have any lanterns?’ she asked.

‘No, lanterns are expensive. I have candles and books. If you want candles or books, I’m your man. If you want anything else, you can fuck off,’ he said, shuffling inside.

‘Yes, I believe we’ve covered that, thank you.’ Saara could tolerate the old man’s abrasive manner so long as she got what she wanted.

The shop was a low-ceilinged room with several equally cramped rooms spread out around it. She could see a filthy-looking bed in the furthermost room, meagre wash facilities in another, but every other conceivable space was taken up with books, some on bookshelves or in chests, but most simply piled from floor to ceiling. Kabrizzi had three or four candles lit at various points around the central room, but the illumination they provided was scant.

‘Close the door, witch,’ Kabrizzi said as he moved slowly to a gnarled old wooden desk that may, at one time, have been a shop counter.

Saara stole a look out into the dark street to make sure she had not been followed and then closed the door and replaced the rusty bolts.

‘Now, what was the book’s name?’ the old man asked, opening a large leather-bound tome on the desk.

‘
Ar Kral Desh Jek
,’ Saara answered, making sure to pronounce each word slowly and deliberately.

Kabrizzi looked up and narrowed his eyes. Saara thought she detected a hint of fear as the old man looked at her.

‘Some books are dangerous, witch… some books shouldn’t be read.’ He closed the tome and sat back in a rickety chair behind the desk, reaching for a clay pipe to his left.

‘I am aware of that, but my request stands.’ Saara was eager to read the text and tried not to let her excitement show. ‘You’ve read it?’ she asked.

Kabrizzi filled his pipe with sweet-smelling rainbow smoke and touched a taper to the bowl while inhaling deeply. He leant back and peered at Saara through the cloud of smoke.

‘Ancient Jekkan is difficult to translate, my dear. It requires a detailed code to make sense of the characters. Luckily, I have such a code,’ he said.

He took several more deep puffs on his pipe and his pupils dilated as the rainbow smoke flowed through his body and caused him to relax a little.

‘I decoded enough not to want to decode the rest,’ he added, with a catch to his voice.

‘Show me the book,’ Saara demanded with a note of authority.

Now that Kabrizzi was easier to see, his face illuminated by a flickering candle, Saara guessed his rainbow smoke habit was more than just recreational. He had deeply bloodshot eyes and the smoke was of a very high grade, the kind of drug that only a lifelong user would need.

‘Money first,’ he said, his hands visibly shaking.

Saara smiled and dropped her bag of coin on the rickety desk. It made a satisfying thump on the wood and Kabrizzi quickly pulled it into his lap and undid the tie to look inside.

‘A small price to pay for your sanity,’ he said with a vicious grin.

‘I wouldn’t concern yourself with my sanity, old man. Now, the book, if you please…’ She held out her hand.

Kabrizzi stood up slowly and Saara inferred that he was giving her ample opportunity to change her mind. When it became clear that she wasn’t going to, he shook his head and moved to a closed oak chest next to a rotting wooden bookcase.

‘I locked it in here when I started having strange dreams. It doesn’t stop me having them, but it makes me feel better to know it’s locked away.’

Kabrizzi’s hand shook as he removed a large key from a bookshelf and slowly turned it in the lock. Within, Saara could see two books, one was well wrapped in white cloth and the other was tightly locked with an iron clasp. Kabrizzi gingerly picked up the cloth-wrapped book and held it at arm’s length. Saara didn’t trouble herself with the other book. She felt her excitement rising as Kabrizzi crossed back to his desk.

‘It took me a long time to find this and, most days, I wish I’d never heard of it,’ he said, with fear in his eyes. ‘The Blue cleric I got it from was half mad, living in a basement under the library of Ro Haran. He claimed it was the only remaining copy.’

Saara didn’t reply at first but merely gazed at the tome, sensing a strange aura in the room. She looked up at the old Karesian bookseller.

‘Step aside, Kabrizzi.’

He didn’t argue, but held his hands away from the book and took two wide steps to the side.

Saara moved round the desk and brushed dust from the chair before sitting down, elegantly, with her fingers on the white cloth. She began to unwrap it, winding the fabric around her hands to reveal the front cover of the book. It was leather-bound, with dark embossed writing. Rusted from years of neglect, the metal print was grainy and indistinct, but it nonetheless read
Ar Kral Desh Jek
, words of the ancient Jekkan language, long unspoken in the lands of men. The book was said to contain the chronicles of the Lost, those Giants who never became gods or else were cast down or killed by Rowanoco, Jaa and the One. The book was dangerous because the Lost were strange, alien entities whose existence was unknown to all but the most learned scholars, and the few who studied such beings ran the risk of exposure to things that men were not meant to know.

Saara was not afraid, as the Dead God’s name was contained within, and she was guided by his hand across countless layers of the world and countless more beyond death. He had led her far, directed the Seven Sisters to kill old-bloods, to cage exemplars, to hunt the Dokkalfar and to invade the Freelands of Ranen. Now he had directed her to an old bookseller in the Kirin Tor of Ro Weir and to the book that was in her hands.

Kabrizzi had backed off a few steps and was too far away to read over Saara’s shoulder.

‘I’ll just be back here… close the door when you leave,’ he said as he moved quickly out of the central room and disappeared into the bedroom.

Saara composed herself and opened the book. Within, she saw strange Jekkan symbols and magical glyphs designed to compel the reader and to damage fragile minds. Saara had learned to read the language over the past few years and she knew that her mind was strong enough to resist the book’s magical protection.

The pages were of thick, pale white paper with rough-cut edges and numerous dark stains and finger marks. The first few pages contained a warning that men were not meant to read this book – that their minds were not sufficiently advanced to comprehend its meaning. The book was meant for other beings – for Dokkalfar, Jekkan, maybe even for Giants – but it had outlived its previous readers and was now in the hands of a woman.

She bent forward over the desk and moved a candle the better to see the strange writing. It spoke of the Water Giants, Ithqas and Aqas, the creatures now called the Krakens, who had ascended to godhood but had been struck down by Rowanoco in an honour-fuelled rage.

She turned through pages of grotesque monsters from the far reaches of the world, creatures that had once been gods in the ages of Deep Time but were now merely numbered among the Lost, the losers in the Long War. Storm Giants who flew in packs over the highest peaks, Scaled Giants who forged an empire in the forgotten east, and strange, nameless beings that had once walked, crawled, flown or swum.

She leafed through the pages, keeping her mind clear and her will strong, as she searched for the Forest Giants, the Giants of pleasure and blood who birthed the Dark Young and were, long ago, worshipped out of fear by the Dokkalfar.

The lore contained within the book did not provide a time frame or a scale of things that any human could comprehend. It spoke in terms of the ages of the world and of the Deep Time between them, when mountains rose and fell and the continents formed. If the lands of men had existed for only a blink of an eye, the book in Saara’s hands detailed beings that had lived millions of blinks ago. To men, the Giants were simply an ancient race of beings. The book,
Ar Kral Desh Jek
, however, spoke of them as a collection of races, and the word “Giants” was no more than a collective term for the variety of monstrous species that had lived during Deep Time.

Saara turned away and took a moment to calm her mind, realizing that even she, the greatest of the Seven Sisters, was not altogether immune to the book. It tried to scratch away at her mind in a way she had not previously experienced. There was no deliberate intent or enchantment at work, but a constant background grasping that she had to concentrate to avoid. The magic in the book was old and was not designed for men. It was like a weight pressing down on her head, oppressing her rational mind and making her light-headed and chaotic.

Saara clung to the power of the Dead God that dwelt deep within her and clenched her fists, breathing slowly and keeping her will strong. She needed to find the name, the lost name of her god, the name that no mortal being had spoken in many millions of years. It was within the pages at her fingertips and she knew that the high priestess of a god could never be complete without the name of her master.

Leaning in again and with a steely strength, Saara the Mistress of Pain continued to read. She reached pages that spoke of the Dokkalfar, the ancient and immortal forest-dwellers, remnants of the Giant age still present in the world. To her surprise, they were linked to Jaa and to the death of the Dead God. The book chronicled an uprising when the Dokkalfar had realized they were needed to birth the Dark Young and that without them the Dead God could not spawn new Young. She leant in even further and read that the forest-dwellers had been created only to be slain, their death releasing the spores that would ultimately give rise to new Dark Young; and that when the Fire Giant had slain their god, Jaa had gifted them with immolation at their death, a gift that stopped the spores from being produced. This simple act had prevented new Young from being born and had enabled the Dokkalfar to sever contact with their former master.

Saara read all this and sat back in her chair. All at once, she knew why the Dead God had led her to the book and why she had been drawn into hunting the Dokkalfar. With the Seven Sisters’ designs nearing completion, Jaa had been separated from the world of men, his old-bloods dead and his exemplar inert. Saara knew this also meant that the power he had gifted the forest-dwellers must also have been severed. Kill a Dokkalfar now, she thought, and unless he is burnt after his death he will produce the spores that will enable new Dark Young to flourish and grow.