By the time the more-experienced champions had gotten into discussing their plans, magisters had arrived to support Ciraya; I saw her with half-a-dozen other sorcerers going around the hill in a wide ring. It looked like they might’ve been setting up wards, barriers facing in at us where we stood on the wasteland of broken buildings and bodies of ash beside the strange, clay-coated mound.
It was still silent, the cracks in the mound still too narrow to accommodate any kind of sortie from the demons.
Everyone was made aware of the particulars. Touching the obsidian apparently made the bugs lose their souls; not their minds – they carried on their usual tasks without any apparent impediments – but their souls. They stopped responding to arch-druidry, as though the contact had made demon-bugs out of them.
The obsidian had somehow stretched as Shadowcloud had dropped the warehouse and its new-made tower into an abyss; by his best estimates he’d sucked it two hundred and fifty feet into the ground, which should’ve left almost a hundred feet of solid earth on top of the highest point of the tower, even if it had gone in at a lopsided-angle. He had not been expecting the walls to stay in place, the demonic reinforcement to the exterior functioning like a shell, holding the structure together. And he certainly hadn’t been expecting anything to still be on the surface when he was done.
Dropping it deeper held the very real risk that we’d simply be improving on the demons’ work. Obsidian was supposed to break like glass. No one had ever seen anything like this before.
No one who spoke, at least. Of those assembled, only Winterprince and Redgate were silent throughout the proceedings, waiting to one side but not near each other. Perhaps they felt their views had already been sufficiently well-expressed by their colleagues, but if that was the case neither of them made it clear through their body language. Redgate’s arms were folded in his sleeves, his arachnid eyes seeming to follow everything. He was surrounded in shields; the metallic wings had disappeared and he was floating again, a few feet off the ground… Floating like he’d done when I’d seen him picking his way through the carnage at Roseoak with thinfinaran at his sides.
Winterprince’s ‘head’ was level with Redgate’s but his huge ice-feet were planted in the ground, his arms at his sides, entirely motionless.
“I’m rather excited, aren’t you?” Nighteye breathed to me, his posh voice reaching high pitches, twanging nervously.
“They don’t let you go on missions like this usually?” I asked, in a possibly only slightly-less twangy voice.
“Oh no, haha, I am – what do they call it in the arena? hm – side-lined, I think is the expression. Volatile, Leafcloak called me last time,” he said it with a certain amount of pride; “got a bit too into it when we were fighting heretics, and just because I didn’t like my orders and almost killed one –“
“Leafcloak said zat you shouldn’t kill zem?” Em interjected, looking over at the owl-masked druid.
“We’re sworn to never take a life,” he replied, “not something, hm, from this plane at least. But they were targeting children.” His voice had hardened; it was the first time I’d ever heard him speak like that. But then he went right back to his usual jolly tone: “Hey, your accent is really interesting. Are you from Onlor? I had a friend from Onlor, she…”
I watched Em scowl, and squeezed her hand in solidarity.
I was wondering where Em came down on the whole ‘killing people’ thing when I noticed Dustbringer talking again:
“Redgate, are you happy with that, then?”
He was asking if the other arch-sorcerer was okay with him taking the lead on breaching the structure.
“As usual.” The crimson champion spoke for the first time, and it was a low, near-whispering sound – a way of hiding the tenor of his actual voice, I supposed. I wondered how many champions were putting on their voices.
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“Do you have a ghost in your retinue?” Dustbringer asked, making it sound rhetorical.
“I have many insubstantial creatures.”
“So you don’t. Fine. I take the lead.” Endren straightened up – he wasn’t tall but his pale death-mask and sheer aura of authority made it hard to not see him as looking impressive – and folded his own arms across his chest, metal gloves clinking.
“I realise that Timesnatcher has endorsed your scepticism regarding the possibility of us permitting our demons to touch the sunken edifice,” Redgate whispered on. “I might express my own that an insubstantial creature, whether its nature is nethernal or infernal, should be said to touch anything at all. Be that as it may, I agree that you should take the lead, my friend. I cannot pierce the black material with my gaze.”
Dustbringer looked across at him. “Neither can I, Redgate.”
Redgate inclined his cowled head gravely, saying, “Ah, well. A shame.”
“But I have a keyed vamelbabil blade…”
Do they mean they’re trying to see through the clay and mud? I asked Zel. Through the obsidian?
“I think he was considering trying to summon something inside the tower without having to actually pierce its shell,” she replied. “If he could see in there, he could do it.”
What could they have joined with that would grant them powers like that?
“Oh come on, Kas, there have got to be hundreds! Don’t make me start listing them.”
Fine…
“It would just depend on the manner in which the abilities are granted. You know what I’m talking about – you get access to a reflection of Avaelar’s wings, but you can’t employ his healing or his strength and resilience. Almost every creature that isn’t native to Materium has some interesting ways of perceiving things. I don’t think anything short of a king of hell or lord of the fey would be able to see through whatever that stuff is, though.”
And you don’t qualify as a lord of the fey?
“I’m no amateur, but the things we call lords of the fey are so scary you don’t ever want to meet one, trust me.”
“It’s time,” Dustbringer said. “Shadowcloud – Winterprince – Miss Reyd – if you’d like to do the honours and re-”
It occurred to me then that they were missing something, saying we shouldn’t use demons, but the arch-sorcerer had halted anyway, turning his head – the magisters on the edge of the wards were shouting something.
I caught the name and sighed inwardly.
She was crossing the desolation towards us, wearing a grey, plain robe very similar to my own. She had a scarf across her face, her hood pulled up. And she moved with the eely speed of an arch-diviner, clearly walking by her posture yet covering the distance between us as though she were running full-out.
“Okay! Stand down!” Timesnatcher boomed back at the magisters. His narrow frame belied the deep register of his voice –
I realised then where I recognised him from.
It had been him in Hightown last week. His weird pronouncement about gripping the brand tightly… the Scion and Slave of the Sorcerer…
I remembered what he looked like, the narrow features and bleary blue eyes, wavy dark hair. Had he meant for me to be able to put a face to the name?
Of course he had. He was a diviner.
In a slightly-less-loud voice he went on: “I wondered when you were going to turn up.”
“I’m sorry,” Killstop returned, halting nearby. “It’s been something of a busy day, hasn’t it?” She fake-stifled a fake-yawn, stretched dramatically, then turned her face towards me. “Why don’t you introduce me, Feychilde?”
I felt Em’s gaze most keenly as they turned to look at me.
“For those who didn’t catch it, this is Killstop,” I said. “Yes, I know. Killstop. We met this morning, when she decided to be a champion. And yes, before you ask, I told her.” I had to get out ahead of that straight away, or she’d have to endure an endless barrage of questions on the topic of her knowledge about the Gathering of Champions, like I’d had to.
I didn’t want to go further with Em listening, even if it sounded strange to just say ‘I told her’, in case I broke some ancient law and got Em a death sentence or something.
My voice fell somewhat, as I realised just what I owed to this strange diviner. Right on the heels of Morsus’s death… Perhaps my vain quest to find his killer had been redeemed by fate.
“And she’s responsible for saving my… the people I care about, tonight. Truly, she’s a champion.”
I didn’t know how much to say – just that I had to say something before they went ahead. I knew her presence here was inevitable, that she’d accompany us inside the demon-tower, but I had to be able to say that I’d warned them.
“She’s a little crazy, you know. She came into her powers while under the effect of an addictive drug.”
Timesnatcher’s voice was full of mirth. “We’re all a little crazy, you know.”
“This makes thirteen,” Starsight complained.
“You see? Link her up, one of you.”
I couldn’t see her mouth, but Killstop’s eyes told me Tanra was smiling.
* * *