The Trials of Trass Kathra (5 page)

It wasn’t much but it was poetic. And it would have to do.

Thankfully, there was one part of his apartments where he could escape both Freel’s trappings and the Eternal Choir. The inner sanctum – or prayer room – that was common to the quarters of all the Faith elite was sound-proofed and sacrosanct, and no one bar the occupant would dare set foot inside its walls. Safe in this knowledge, Redigor had removed the small altar and kneeling stone that had sat in the centre of the round, windowless chamber and replaced it with a circle of power drawn upon the stone flags of the floor. It was inert as he entered the chamber but, with a small wave of the hand, the runes that made up its pattern pulsed with a bright blue light and, a second later, an equally bright blue and slightly sparkling fog swirled dreamily in the centre of the sanctum.

Not even slowing his pace, Redigor walked into it. Through it.

And was somewhere else.

The cramped, circular confines of the prayer room gave way to a much larger space, one that not only looked different but felt and smelled different, too. Here there was a chillier aspect to the air, and a tang of brine about it, and if you listened very, very carefully, the sound of waves and gulls could be heard from somewhere in the distance.

Away from the cathedral, in this quiet place, Redigor succumbed to a greater tedium than mere weariness, and for a second actually staggered then steadied himself against a wall, his lips pulling back in pain. Only here, far from the stage on which his act needed to be maintained every day, could he acknowledge that it was far more than weariness affecting him.

The fact was, his possession of Jakub Freel required little effort on his part, but what
did
require effort, and sometimes a great deal of it, was ensuring the body did not succumb to the rigours of the dark magic he would have it employ. The channelling of such forces through an elven form exacted some small price on the physiology, but channelled through a human it was the cause of a biological rot that had to be monitored and addressed almost constantly.

Redigor pulled up the sleeves of his tunic and examined the black weals that writhed on the skin of his forearms like living tattoos, leaving necrotised patches of flesh, and knew this pattern was reflected on other parts of his body as well. He knew this because he could feel the burning the writhing brought with it.

A year in human form was, indeed, a long time, and he was unsure for how much longer he could stem the tide of the rot. Already he could feel it manifesting itself in his internal organs, feel them throb and twinge as they threatened to collapse. If that happened there was every chance he would not survive to see the arrival of the Hel’ss. What he needed was a way to rid himself of it. The problem was that though he possessed the capability to take another host, that act would be self-defeating, not only because it would remove him from this position of power but also because he was running out of time. There was no chance he would be able to reestablish himself before the Hel’ss arrived. The only solution, therefore, was not to run from the rot but to eliminate it completely, and it was with this, that if the legends were right, he believed the Hel’ss could help.

Redigor took a deep breath. In the centre of the chamber was a large tank-like structure, wrought of iron and studded with thick rivets strong enough to contain the weight of water that one or two portholes on its side revealed to be contained within. The water was the colour of algae and had clearly come from the sea. There was a dark shape barely discernible at its heart, the size of a tall and stocky man.

Redigor waved a hand and wheels on the side of the tank began to turn. From within, the sound of sloshing and draining water was heard. It was not the first time Redigor had drained the tank but, each time, it had been refilled in order to preserve the items he’d contained within. Different items. This time as the water drained away, foot by foot, what was revealed was not the figure of a man but a woman – a woman carved of wood.

The water gone, Redigor proceeded to a hatch between the two wheels and heaved it open with a metallic groan. Water continued to stream down its inside and pooled at his feet, but Redigor paid it no attention, his eyes fixed on the ship’s figurehead.

Half rotten, encrusted with barnacles and with its joints accentuated by embedded layers of seaweed, the figure was twice his height. It thrust forward, staring over and beyond him, and looked almost desperate, as if seeking a wave it knew it would never ride again. Its features were smoothed by the erosion of years at sea, yet still distinguishable: the half-gown that had once connected it to its ships prow, the curve of its torso and breasts, its arms pressed to its sides, and its head, once crowned with flowing locks of hair, reduced now to a layering of rotten, jagged and jutting wood. What stood out the most, though, were its eyes, larger than those of a real human; blank orbs veined not with blood vessels but the grain exposed by their carving, that stared straight ahead and yet saw nothing at all.

But he would make them see.

It was time to awaken this lady.

Redigor closed his own eyes, falling into a deep concentration in the silence of the chamber. After a second, a sibilant whisper could be heard drifting from him, although his lips appeared not to move at all. The words he spoke were strange, short and clipped at first, though became longer and louder, and each began to overlap the other until eventually it sounded as if a crowd of people were whispering in unison with Redigor. Still, though, his lips did not move.

But as the volume increased yet more, others did.

With a sudden, almost horrified inhalation of air, the mouth of the figurehead opened, and at the same time, its eyes. What had previously been dead wood was suddenly transformed into the semblance of human eyes, though they were grotesquely distorted, bulging, matching the size and shape of the carved orbs themselves. Cartoon eyes, fishmen’s eyes – or perhaps the eyes of a suffocating and drowning man.

Which was exactly what they were.

The eyes’ grotesque appearance was made even more so by the fact that their gaze flicked about the chamber in panic, settling on Redigor, their surroundings, even trying to look down, presumably in search of the form that should hold them. They saw nothing, of course, for the body they had once inhabited wasn’t there, and the eyes widened in terror.

Water vomited from the figurehead’s mouth.

“Who were you?” Redigor asked.

The eyes shot to him, though still flickered wildly, trying but unable to tear themselves away, to make sense of what was happening.

“
I don’t know
.”

Redigor sighed, wearily. The human race’s hold on their existence was stupefyingly weak, hardly worth the effort of their drawing their first pathetic breaths at all.

“Answer me,” he demanded.

“
My... my name was William... William West, sir.
”

“And
what
were you, William?”

“I... I was second mate on the
Fulsome Wench
, sir.”

Redigor nodded. This at least confirmed he had summoned what he wished – necromancy was so prone to strays and intruders, chancers from the fringes of the planes. It confirmed also that West was on the crew manifest of one of the ships he had despatched beyond the Stormwall. The translocation rituals that Makennon’s people had perfected recently had come in very handy in that regard: one moment these ships had been sailing safe waters, the next unknown and lethal seas thousands of leagues away. The magical cost of such translocations – and of retrieving their almost universally doomed remains – had left him exhausted physically, but, as the Eyes of the Lord he had earlier attempted to send beyond the Stormwall had been brought down by its preternatural energies, he’d had little choice.

“You know, do you not, William, that you are quite dead?”

“Yes, Sir. I’m sorry, Sir.”

“There is no need to apologise, William.”

“I... I wasn’t, Sir. What I mean is, I’m sorry for my Meg, my wife, and Rob, my boy. They’re all alone now.”

The smallest of smiles curled Redigor’s lip. West could not know that it was he who had sent him to his death. “Do not worry yourself, William... the three of you will be together again soon enough.”

“Can you promise me that, Sir?”

Redigor’s smile widened. “Oh, yes. I can.”

William was silent for a moment and his eyes stared beyond Redigor, as if picturing that time. Then he spoke again.

“Is there something you wish of me, Sir?”

“Yes, William,” Redigor said. “I want you to show me what you saw.”

“Sir?”

“Before you died.”

The dead sailor’s eyes started to flicker. “I... I’m not sure I want to do that.”

“And why is that? Because it would cause you pain?”

“Yes. The memory.”

Redigor’s eyes, and his tone, darkened. “Is this the kind of pain you would like instead, William?”

Something carried with Redigor’s words and suddenly the mouth of the figurehead began to wheeze and gurgle. Its eyes, in turn, became even more grotesquely deformed than before, flecked with veins that bulged with blood, threatening to burst despite the fact their owner was already dead. William’s voice became a series of strangled, bubbling gasps, the sound of a man desperate to breathe but finding only water where air should have been. Where a few seconds of these gasps would normally have ended with the silence of liquid filled lungs, and of dimming eyes, however, here they simply continued, a frantic and agonising and wild-eyed struggle for relief that the Pale Lord let continue for two minutes or more. When at last Redigor released his hold on his summoning, William West’s eyes stared forward glazed.

“That’s better,” Redigor said. “Now... show me.”

Before him, the vitreous of West’s eyes began to cloud over, as if beset by cataracts, and then began to swirl. At first it was like looking at a reflection of something indistinguishable in a mottled and tarnished mirror, but then the swirls began to coalesce into the view of a storm-tossed seascape at night. Redigor leaned forward and allowed himself to be drawn into the scene – in, and very far away. He found himself travelling out from the peninsula, through the Stormwall and over an endless expanse of ocean. Land disappeared far behind him until there was nothing but water. After what seemed like an eternity an object became discernible on the horizon, and after a few seconds it resolved itself into the shape of a vessel. Then he was sweeping up to the hull of the ship, and then aboard, where at last he came to rest, or at least as at rest as the vision of a man who was trapped on a sinking ship could be.

This was what West had seen moments before he died, and as his gaze shifted across the panorama before him, his fellow, doomed crewmen could be seen, too, frantically working the sails and ropes on the deck of their ship. The
Fulsome Wench
was already breaking apart, and there was nothing they could do to save themselves, but that didn’t matter to Redigor. He didn’t care about their deaths and it was not their deaths that he had summoned West to see.

Redigor waited patiently, disappointed too many times. The seascape of the other side of the world was by now a familiar vista to him – as familiar, that was, as an endless expanse of maelstrom could be – but he needed to see more. And to see more, the location had to be right, the conditions had to be right, the
stars
had to be right. The chances of a translocation bringing him close enough for these conditions to be met were, of course, infinitesimal, and he was already prepared to be disappointed once more. Then, suddenly, his eyes widened.

Something...

Redigor’s eyes narrowed as he studied the last moments of William West’s mortal existence for the finest detail, and at last drew in a sharp breath. There, a glimpse between masts and rigging, of a star pattern that seemed similar to that on the chart from the Halo files. Then as Redigor watched – or rather as West’s perspective shifted – a clearer view, the heavens revealed in all their glory.

Not just similar to the star chart. A perfect match.

This was the place. He had found his destination at last.

All he needed to do now was confirm what he believed.

Redigor’s attention shifted from the night sky to West’s immediate surroundings. The
Fulsome Wench
was sinking, its hull already half beneath the waves, and as a result what the second mate saw was wildly skewed, disorientating, obscured at times by the flailing bodies and screaming faces of his shipmates. Redigor was annoyed that they were stopping him seeing what he wanted to see in the few moments of their lives that remained.

West sank beneath the surface and suddenly all was a maelstrom of air bubbles and darkness, but then, for the briefest of times, he came up and Redigor smiled.

There. No more than snatches and glimpses, but enough. Outlined against the night sky, in the distance, a darkened island of sharp and jagged rocks whose desolation was palpable even through this vision. And before it – washing the island again and again from view – a swirling, unnatural body of water that was responsible for the sinking of the
Fulsome Wench
.

It was fitting that William West should choose that moment to breathe his last and drown. Fitting that the eyes of the figurehead dimmed and reverted to wood once more.

Because their job was done.

He had seen something
in
the water.
Part
of the water.

The legends, it seemed, were true. There was hope for him yet.

The Hel’ss wasn’t just approaching Twilight.

It was already here.