With Feast parked in the garden outside, I led Ciraya through the doors into the drawing room. I introduced her around, and she was noticeably subdued in the presence of so many champions. Doubtless she’d seen or even spoken with some of them before, but this was clearly the first time she’d been so personally involved. Even the unflappable sorceress looked awestruck when people like Timesnatcher and Sunspring used her name. She settled on the couch between Stormsword and Killstop – she’d figured out Em’s identity the moment the wizard announced herself as a champion, it seemed, which I supposed shouldn’t have surprised me. And it wouldn’t have shocked me if she’d run into Killstop any number of times by now, given the areas they tended to cover… She looked most at-ease sandwiched between those two, and she was such a twig that when she sat back and crossed her legs she virtually disappeared into the shadows.
I stayed on my feet, standing near Em’s end of the couch, arms folded across my chest. I probably looked moody but I was just trying to stay awake. No point letting Sol give me another boost. The way I understood it, the amount of healing a person could receive was capped by their level of fatigue somehow. There was a good chance I’d be fighting an eolastyr before too long, and I would want any wounds fixing within seconds or minutes, not hours or days.
Plus, I was down one treacherous fairy… There was a chance the vampire might carry a regenerative effect, but I hadn’t had opportunity to test it – I supposed my fixation on obtaining his sensory capabilities may have prevented me from ever reaching other aspects of his essence… And now it was just his callousness, his bloodlust that I seemed to feel when I tapped into him.
“Feychilde?” Bor was grinning, sitting in a chair within arm’s reach of Tanra. “You still with us?”
I tried to recall what they’d just been talking about. Everyone had accepted Tanra’s story regarding her ‘vision’ at face value, even Irimar, but it appeared she’d neglected to mention anything about him being there. Nonetheless, everyone was one hundred percent onboard with the notion of it being an eolastyr.
Wouldn’t it have been hilarious if, after all this, it was a hoax of some kind? Expose me and Tanra for liars, consorting with heretics…
“Sorry. Off in a world of my own.”
Focus, Kas… They were talking about… talking about… the whip…
Bor laughed. “Man, sorcerers shouldn’t say things like that! Off in your own world indeed…”
“Sorcery can’t actually create worlds,” Neko chided him. The gnome was in his thistle-green cat-shape, spread in front of the fireplace. “Demiplanes are structurally unsound.”
“Maybe not,” the enchanter replied, “but if you went and took over Infernum –”
“That’s enough of that,” Timesnatcher said crisply.
“And quite absurd,” the gnome-cat huffed. “A number of dark gods have their domains on that plane!”
“The whip,” I muttered, having got my thoughts in order, “might be something I can help with. If we can get enchanters to… to stop us feeling sick. My eyes are, like, better at that kind of thing now… Say, Killstop – mind if I borrow a dagger? Heavily ensorcelled?”
I caught the flash in Irimar’s eyes as she passed one over. I could imagine what he wanted to say, what I would say to me in his place: “Which darkmage do you intend to give this knife to?” Or maybe it was more like, “Whose back is she helping you stab, Kas, when you’re alone together at night?” Either way, I’d never seen his gaze smouldering like this before.
But he checked himself, and broke eye contact – chatter broke out once more, and I turned my attention to the glistening dagger in my hand. Belatedly, I sat down. I least I had something to keep my mind sharp now, something to actually work on.
I swished the thing through the air. The grip was bound tight with black leather, and the oval crosspiece was a muted gold colour – just gold-plated, I suspected. The blade itself was a dull black in hue – after the look of scorched iron, if I didn’t know better. But the ensorcellment had given it the most marvellous, dreadful visual upgrade. As it moved through the air, globules of scarlet matter formed in its wake, streaming off the blunt edge of the blade, a bloody smear hanging in the air for a few moments until they seemed to evaporate away.
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Yet that was what any mere mortal could make out. It took me the first ten minutes just to ascertain what I was really looking at. I’d never handled something like this before – my previous experiences with spellbound weaponry had been brief moments, usually taking place in periods of stress, and Tanra had definitely followed my last instruction to the letter in choosing this particular knife. It was imbued with a matrix of several distinct latticeworks, the glyphs bound in loops through eight different dimensions. Each structure was a variant shadow of a vertex relationship, mirroring the higher forms of the glyph: at the centre, those highest forms spun, held in careful equilibrium by a single glob of pure sorcerous force. The full infinity rune.
Actually making the rune was tough as all hell, and, while recognising one was easy, I had the feeling that adjusting its magic or, especially, undoing its magic, would be more like the former than the latter. Nigh impossible.
I could get a sense of the spells woven into it, though. It was like strings of force combined to form letters of some underlying magical language, something soundless, unverbalisable, but nonetheless comprehensible – this one was a petal of perfect symmetry, the next a spear rotated through five dimensions –
Even without the descriptors, on a base level the symbols themselves served like words, forming sentence-strings related by concept, a kind of cryptogram that only a sorcerer’s instinct could unlock.
I was getting the hang of it, but there was no way I’d be better at this than Netherhame or Shallowlie, or indeed an arch-sorcerer who’d chosen to work for some manufacturer’s guild. It was a dead-end in any case – unless they would be able to do it at range, instantaneously, we weren’t going to be able to destroy or even deactivate the eolastyr’s whip.
I waited for a lull in the conversation between Em and Tanra, then passed it back to her hilt-first, saying: “Predominantly druidic in ensorcellment. It’s got life-stealing. You stab them and the amount of damage you do… it’s roughly equivalent to the healing you receive. Blood for blood. I never thought I’d see the Maiden of Compassion arm-in-arm with the Blade-Lord like this. Quite the disturbing little thing. But, no. Whatever’s in there keeping it bound together, I’d have to have hold of it, probably for quite a while, in order to break it… I can’t imagine a weapon straight from one of the infernal treasuries is going to be any easier to break. No way I can do it at range.”
Killstop slid it back into its sheath inside her robe’s folds. “More’s the pity. I guess we’ll just have to wing it.” She drew a different knife, this one pale-rose in colour, black lightning-bolts buzzing all up and down the flat sides of the blade. “The hell-queen didn’t look so tough. Round two should be fun.”
She’s psyching herself up, I realised. She didn’t want to go to Zadhal, but this is Mund. This is her turf. She’s a true champion, and she’ll protect it. I looked across to Em, who grinned appreciatively at the seeress’s words. And she doesn’t need psyching up. She would’ve come to Zadhal at a moment’s notice, if not for Henthae. She’ll do the things we can’t, to protect Mund.
I thought about all the talent we were leaving out. “Maybe we should call the others anyway?” I asked. “Between us, me and Netherhame and Shal-”
“No,” Timesnatcher cut in. “You know its purpose – it’s one of the champion-slayers. We can’t risk the others’ lives unnecessarily.”
I shook my head. “You’re doing the ‘I can’t see the future so let’s stop thinking altogether’ thing again. The more of us work on it, the less chance any of us will die. Otherwise going in alone would be the best route, wouldn’t it?”
The arch-diviner cast me a strange look, cocking his head at me. “Are you ready to bear the burden, if they fall to her claws, those who wouldn’t have attended otherwise?”
I shook my head at him. “Do you leave half your army at home, because there might be casualties in war? Or do you put your best foot forward, try to minimise casualties, by bringing an overwhelming force? I’m not saying we have to coerce people – the Bells aren’t ringing, not yet, anyway… But we have to give them a chance, to join us if they would.”
He sighed at me. “Put out the call, then, if you’re willing to shoulder the blame, if –”
“No!” I cried. “Gods, man. You’ve led so long, you’ve forgotten what it is to follow! It’s not slavery, Timesnatcher. Stop blaming yourself! Set down the weight you’re trying to carry before you sink the lot of us.”
He stared at me, then in the next instant he vanished, presumably moving to another part of the house to be alone with his thoughts.
Everyone stared at me in varying degrees of shock.
“Ooooh,” Tanra said, “Feychilde done a naughty. Right there on the carpet in front of everyone. No wonder our host’s gone ghost.”
“Killstop,” I growled. “Look, he’s wrong. We need all hands on deck for this.” I caught Fang’s look. “A sailing expression… I mean, we need everyone to contribute.”
“And when people start dying, you really won’t feel guilty?” the seeress asked. She sounded more curious than anything.
I shrugged. “No thanks to him. Anyway, should someone else feel guilty if I die? I’m a big boy. I can decide for myself.”
“You could’ve said that to him.”
I stared at her. The realisation she might even be seeing Irimar’s future, it came slowly, a soft fluttering of dread tickling up my spine.
“I am with you, Feychilde,” Em said in a steady voice – Stormsword’s voice.
I drew a deep breath, then retrieved my glyphstone from my pocket and started to put out the call.
* * *