Eidolon (21 page)

Several Kai stood, then abruptly sat when Ildiko signaled a second time. Saggaran troops emerged from the corners and shadows of the great hall, all armed, some with swords unsheathed, others with arrows nocked onto drawn bow strings.

Anhuset yanked her victim up long enough for him to choke and inhale a saving breath before shoving his face into the bowl once more. He writhed in her hold, his struggles growing weaker.

Sickened, but equally determined to quash any future attempts at subversion of her authority, Ildiko stood and swept the horrified audience with a hard gaze. She gestured to Anhuset who released the hapless mayor. He slid off the bench on which he sat to disappear under the table. Retching sounds filled the quiet.

“Most of Bast-Haradis is camped outside those doors, with little shelter, few possessions and even less hope,” Ildiko said. “I assumed it obvious to all, but apparently not. We must ration until this is over. Eat soup, eat gruel, and be grateful we have something to eat at all.”  Some of the Kai bowed their heads while others looked away, shame-faced or fiddled with their spoons.

Ildiko continued. “Lest we forget, the king and the men who ride with him fight an enemy who would devour us to the last man, woman and child. Kai or human, it doesn’t matter to
galla
.”  Several of the Kai went ashen. Good, Ildiko thought. “Brishen Khaskem has appointed me regent in his absence to secure a kingdom undivided and a throne intact when he returns. I will see it done no matter what it takes.”  She stared at several of the nobles she considered a risk. None returned her stare. “Sedition,” she declared, “will not be tolerated and will be punished swiftly and without mercy. Am I clear?”

Except for a few mumbles, no one replied. Ildiko didn’t expect them to. She had made her point. Now she could only pray they took it to heart. A quick gesture from Mertok and the soldiers lining the great hall’s perimeters stood down, lowering bows and resheathing blades.

One woman stood, cup in hand. Ildiko held back her smile for Ineni, Cephren’s discerning daughter. The girl boldly raised her goblet in a toast. “To the king,” she said. “And the queen regent. Long live the house of Khaskem. Long may it reign.”

Others rose to join her, and soon everyone in the hall, with the exception of the mayor Anhuset almost drowned, was on their feet making loud toasts in Brishen’s and Ildiko’s honor. Ildiko wagered such enthusiastic support would last three days at most.

The meal concluded without mishap, and Ildiko later met with both Anhuset and Mertok in the royal bedchamber. She poured three small glasses half full with Dragon’s Fire and passed two of them to her visitors. The glass was warm in her hand, the libation scorching on her tongue.

“And how is our poor mayor recovering?” she asked.

Anhuset downed her drink in one swallow. “I have no idea,” she said between gasps. “Nor do I care.”

“I didn’t expect you to drown him.”

“I almost drowned him. There’s a difference.”  Anhuset lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Besides, it was good soup.”

Mertok choked on his mirth and a mouthful of Dragon’s Fire, slowly turning a dark shade of slate before Anhuset thumped him between the shoulder blades. He handed his empty glass back to Ildiko. After a few wheezy breaths, he spoke. “We should double your guard, Your Majesty. After what happened in the great hall, someone will be planning your death.”

Ildiko disagreed. “I don’t think so. All that applauding and toasting is temporary, but they’ll step carefully now. That Kai was testing the waters with his little display. First to see if I’d back down and second, to learn how loyal Brishen’s troops are to him when he isn’t here.”

“Then that was a foolish waste of effort and almost got him killed,” Anhuset said. “Mertok and I have faithfully served Brishen for years. Our loyalty is absolute, and I can say the same for the rest of his garrison. I can’t believe some in the hall thought otherwise.”

“They certainly don’t now.”  Ildiko was still shocked herself at Anhuset’s ruthless assault.

“And he’s my cousin,” Anhuset added.

Ildiko gave a humorless chuckle. “Familial connections can be the easiest vulnerability to exploit. Traitors and assassins are often relatives with dreams of power. Surely, a Kai court ruled by Djedor and Secmis taught you that.”

Anhuset’s tone was especially acerbic. “I avoided court as often as possible. I don’t make it a habit of lounging in a scarpatine pit.”

“If you won’t allow more personal guards, consider more in the manor itself. A continued show of strength,” Mertok suggested.

Ildiko liked the idea. “Agreed. Just don’t thin your troops too much on the redoubt’s grounds. With more people arriving every day, we need them to keep the peace. We also need fresh scouts ready to reconnoiter the territory daily. I doubt Brishen has managed to capture every
galla
in such a short a time, and even one can do horrific damage and incite chaos if it somehow makes it across the water.”

Mertok nodded and bowed before quitting the room, leaving Anhuset behind.

“You should take the extra guard,” she said.

Ildiko sat on the chest at the end of the bed and unlaced her boots, giving a pleasured sigh when her stocking feet were free, and she could wiggle her toes. She wondered idly if Sinhue still rested. The servant was usually at her side even when Ildiko didn’t summon her. “I will as soon as I see the need. Whichever nobles were out there conspiring together to kill me, they’ll realize it isn’t in their best interest to do away with me just yet. A monarch avenging his wife’s death won’t be in the mood to grant favors or listen to sly persuasion.”

“True. Brishen isn’t easily led on a good day, much less if he were grieving.”

A knock at the door interrupted their conversation, and Sinhue called out to her mistress. She peeked around the door’s edge at Ildiko’s bid to enter, easing it wider and bowing before glancing over her shoulder at something in the hallway.

The servant behaved oddly. “What’s wrong, Sinhue?”  Beside her, Anhuset stiffened and dropped her hand to her sword pommel.

Sinhue bowed again. “My lady, do you remember the maid who served with me when you arrived in Haradis?”

“Kirgipa?”  Ildiko smiled at the memory of the young girl who acted as one of her lady’s maid during her stay in the Kai royal palace. Brishen had carried her brother Talumey’s mortem light to their mother and sister. She’d chosen to stay behind with her family when Ildiko left with Brishen for Saggara. “She’s here?  She made it out of Haradis?”  At Sinhue’s nod, she clapped her hands, delighted. “Send her in!”  The news was a bright spot in a succession of dark days.

The brightness dimmed when Sinhue told her she hadn’t arrived with her sister or mother. “She’s here with two palace guards, my lady. They refuse to leave her side. They’re in the hallway.”

Ildiko met Anhuset’s yellow eyes. This was strange. “Send them all in,” she said. The servant darted out of the room.

“Are you sure that’s wise?”  Anhuset’s grip on the sword tightened.

“Somehow, I doubt Kirgipa wishes me harm.”

“But the palace guards might. These are elite soldiers. I was one in the past.”

“Then I’ll rely on you for the protection you and Mertok insist I need.”

Sinhue returned, followed by a bedraggled looking Kai woman wearing a stern expression. Kirgipa, equally tattered, entered behind her, a bundle of rags in her arms. A Kai male practically tread her heels. His features softened in recognition when he spotted Anhuset.

“Sha-Anhuset,” he greeted her with a quick fist thump to his chest, the salute of one soldier to another of superior rank.

Anhuset tilted her head. “Necos?”  Her stance didn’t relaxed, nor did her hold on her sword. “It’s been some time since we shared a flask.”

Intent on Kirgipa, Ildiko only half listened to the conversation. “Kirgipa, I’m glad to see you.”  She approached the maid, hands outstretched in welcome and was instantly blocked by the Kai woman who entered the bedchamber first. She held her ground even as Anhuset drew her sword.

“Stand down, Dendarah,” Necos said softly. “We’re among friends.”

Kirgipa’s eyes had rounded to gold coins as she stared at the bristling Anhuset. “Truly, Dendarah, we’re safe here,” she said, adding her own assurances to Necos’s.

Dendarah reluctantly eased back. “Forgive me,
Hercegesé
. We have good reason for our caution.”

“Her Majesty,” Anhuset growled.

“No.
Hercegesé
,” Dendarah insisted. She pointed to the bundle Kirgipa held close to her chest. “
That
is Her Majesty.”  Her words fell like anchor weights into the room’s quiet. Ildiko gaped, as did Anhuset.

Kirgipa eased back part of the rags to reveal a tiny head covered in a cap of white hair. The small face was relaxed in sleep, bubbles blowing gently out of her pursed mouth. “We’ve come a long way for your help and protection,
Hercegesé
. I hold the only surviving child of His Highness Harkuf and his wife, Tiye. This is the Queen Regnant of Bast-Haradis.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Haradis, capital of Bast-Haradis, sprawled on either side of the Absu river, a diseased ruin emptied of the Kai and overrun by the
galla
. Somewhere in the shattered heap that had once been the royal palace, a wound in the world bled out abominations in an endless, frothing spume.

Brishen stared at what was left of his childhood home and hummed a dirge low in his throat. He had built good and bad memories here, had hated court and loved the city itself with its lively docks and teeming market places. All gone now, snuffed by the malevolent darkness spilling out of a breach created by his twisted mother.

They had traveled along the riverbank, battling and trapping
galla
the entire way. It didn’t matter that the
vuhana
they rode traveled faster than any living horse. The journey to the city had been a hard, bitter slog of droving and fighting. Even now, each king cut through an attacking demon, sending the thing back to the breach where it would immediately emerge once more. It had become a thing so constant, Brishen likened it to swatting swarms of flies. Gaeres galloped past him, the consummate drover as he whistled and barked sharp commands to the dead who snatched fleeing
galla
and walled them into the now colossal pen packed tightly with demons.

“How do you intend to trap them inside the city?”  Serovek bellowed to be heard above the continuous shrieking din behind them.
Galla
and their captor revenants screeched at each other.

The kings had used the double envelopment tactic multiple times in their chaotic drive to the destroyed capital, maneuvering
galla
against the river as they outflanked them, encircled them and herded them into the straining net created by the dead. It wasn’t an optimal solution, but it was the only one they had until they could push the horde back to Haradis and seal off the city.

Brishen gestured for Megiddo. When the monk drew closer, he asked him “How big can you make your rune circle?”

“How big do you want it?”

He pointed out several spots that encompassed the broken palace. “A small one around the palace only, where the breach originates. We can use it to contain the emerging
galla
until I close the breach. A bigger circle around that one. Big enough for the dead to herd the rest in so we can cut the
galla
down and banish them back to their spawning ground.”

“Do you realize how many of those bastards we’ll have to slice up?”  Andras, who was near enough to overhear, stood in his stirrups to behold the massive horde behind him.

Brishen shrugged. “You heard the
Elsod
. We don’t tire. We don’t sleep.”  And hacking these vile things to dust might finally ease his thirst for vengeance against them. Unlikely, but he relished the chance.

“I can draw down the wards, but they’ll drain your power,” Megiddo warned. “And they’ll be as temporary as the one I drew at my brother’s house.”  He leaned down, impaling a lunging
galla
on his sword. The thing slid down the blade and sank its teeth into his vambrace before disintegrating.

Brishen scowled as he hacked another one in half. “We don’t need them to be permanent,” he said. Megiddo was right. Warding circles that large would sap him of most of the power he possessed, and he feared he might not have enough left to return all the kings back to their bodies. He pushed aside the concern. He had no other option. He needed the containment the circles provided, no matter how risky or temporary.

The
galla
herd fought against their prison as the dead forced them into the city, while the kings battled their way toward the palace, scattering piles of Kai bones they rode past. Those not yet caught attacked in waves, spilling across the devastated city to leap at and crawl over the kings like roaches on a carcass. Swords slashed a swath toward the castle gates.

Brishen dismounted, cleaving a
galla
in two as he did. He called to Megiddo above the noise. “Can you cast the smaller circle around the palace itself?”  At Megiddo’s nod, the two men set to work.

The monk dismounted. Brishen, Serovek, and Andras joined him, providing shield and sword to protect him so he might build the ward uninterrupted. He was mesmerizing to watch, and Brishen regretted that he was too busy battling
galla
to simply stand and admire.

Megiddo stretched out his hand, spoke a word in a tongue unknown and sketched a symbol in the air with graceful fingers. The symbol lit, not with the blue magic of necromancy, but with amber radiance, as if he drew forth the memory of warm summer and wrote with the ink of sunlight. A
galla
grazed the glowing rune as it sped past and recoiled with a shriek before rushing back for a closer inspection. Brishen imagined he heard the thing sniff.

“My sorcery alone won’t hold them. Not this many.” Megiddo said. “You’ll need to follow with me as I draw and repeat the words I recite to infuse the runes with death magic.”

“Cut down as many of these vermin as you can as fast as you can,” Brishen instructed Serovek and Andras. The more they sent back to the breach, the more they could trap within the palace.

He shadowed the monk, carefully repeating each word Megiddo recited and touching the floating amber symbols as he did. They pulsed under his fingertips, their heat bleeding away into the winter air as their color changed to a sullen green and finally to frigid blue before fading away. The ground below them caught fire but didn’t burn. Cerulean flames gave off light but no warmth as they etched a circle’s perimeter into the earth. Brishen knew none of the words Megiddo spoke and he repeated, but their power coursed across his tongue and down his arm to flow through his fingertips. The warding sapped his strength, and they still had another circle to draw after this one.

 Andras and Serovek fought ceaselessly as the
galla
swarmed around them. Many hurled themselves at Brishen and Megiddo, only to be thrown back by the closing circle. It was slow work, and Brishen staggered from the onslaught of the spell’s drain, but soon the palace’s facade glowed from the light cast by the warding circle.

“It is done,” Megiddo pronounced and watched with a faint smile as demons within the ward threw themselves against an invisible wall as strong and unyielding as the one made by the river. He casually stepped outside the ward to a chorus of furious screams. Brishen followed, and for one sweet breath of a moment, nothing attacked them.

“Gaeres, can you control the herd alone long enough for the rest of us to reach and close the breach?”  Brishen needed three kings with him for support, and the Quereci chieftain’s son, with his expertise at herding, was the best choice to remain behind and keep the trapped herd under his control.

“I’ll do what I can.”  Gaeres swatted a
galla
trying to climb the back of his
vuhana
. “But make it quick.”

Brishen raced into the palace with the Serovek, Andras, and Megiddo. He halted in the throne room long enough to flinch at the sight before him.

The great statues of Kai kings and queens that once lined the walls lay toppled, littering the floor with rubble. Tattered remains of banners and royal crests that had always hung from the high ceiling, clung to the twisted metal brackets of burnt-out torches. Blood, dried to brown stains, spattered the walls in a grisly mural. There were no bodies, only bones half hidden by bits of clothing.

This had once been both pleasure hall and battlefield, in which the great noble houses engaged in political machinations and pursued life’s earthly delights under the gazes of successive Kai kings and queens. It was a charnel house now.

He turned his fury at the devastation on the
galla
scuttling down the walls towards them. The kings battled their way to the lower floors where demons filled every space with a wet, oily presence. The floors made for treacherous crossing, coated in a slippery film Brishen chose not to ponder. The air hung damp and rancid in the stairwells and corridors. Despite his eidolon’s immunity to the residual foulness of demon-kin, he still tasted their presence on his tongue.

Twice, he was lifted and thrown against a wall by an upsurge of
galla
as the breach vomited them forth like sickness from a plague sufferer’s mouth. Serovek’s curses rang harsh and loud in the cloying darkness.

“I’m going to soak in a horse trough full of boiling water and lye when this is over,” he vowed. “Thank the gods we’re harnessed.”

“Where’s the damn breach?” Andras shouted as he body-slammed a cluster of
galla
against a wall before slicing through the entire lot with one clean stroke.

Brishen scanned the wide corridor that led off one of the many staircases and split into four more hallways. All of them were obscured by the oily bloom of
galla
bubbling up from the depths, but one pulsed darker than the others. It led to the palace’s buttery and storerooms where perishables were once housed. He pointed to the spot. “There.”

They cut through the ever thickening mob of
galla
in their fight to reach the rupture. Sharp nails and teeth scraped across Brishen’s mail and brigandine, and numerous fingers spidered up and down his legs, jabbing and scratching. Once, Andras lost his footing, sending both him and Brishen tumbled down a short flight of stairs before crashing into the splintered remains of a door.

“Good work, lads,” Serovek crowed and jerked both men to their feet. “You’ve found the breach.”

The wound between worlds, and cause of so much misery and death, pulsed in a chamber tucked away in the palace’s lowest level. The walls literally breathed with the cacophony of endless screaming hurtling from the black. Secmis, in her obsessive search for ever greater power and dominance, had split open the barrier between this world and a void that imprisoned every horror imagined by humans and Kai alike. Brishen likened it to a disembowelment more than a birthing. The breach spewed out
galla
the same way a gutted warrior spilled his blood and intestines into the dirt.

Demons poured from the wound and immediately launched into an attack, punching, scratching, biting. Brishen echoed Serovek’s gratitude that they wore armor. No matter the
Elsod
’s assurances that Wraith Kings were impervious to damage inflicted by the
galla
, he was glad his armor shielded him from their vile touch.

Megiddo, Andras, and Serovek formed a half circle around him as he faced the breach. The ancient spell of a long-dead Kai sorcerer spilled from his lips. Power coiled in his belly, burned away the sludge of demon touch and surged through his limbs in sizzling bolts. Light filled the room, searing away darkness. Had he the vision of a Kai instead of a spirit, he’d be blinded.
Galla
screamed, and the howl of a sucking wind accompanied their cries.

The breach buckled under the spell’s onslaught, warping as if crushed by an invisible fist. The
galla
emerging from its depths tried to escape, skeletal hands clawing the air, the floors and walls. Anything to anchor themselves in place as the rupture narrowed.

A chorus of shouts and cries that weren’t
galla
almost made Brishen stumble with the incantation.  The sight that greeted him when he turned his head would have frozen his blood had it ran in his transformed veins.
Galla
arms, skeletal and insectile, stretched out of the breach to snatch at Megiddo’s legs. They yanked him off his feet. He scrabbled for purchase on the slick floor, still clutching his sword.

Andras clasped his forearm and held on, sliding as the
galla
dragged their captive toward the breach’s maw. Serovek joined the struggle, wrapping an arm around Andras’s torso and lowering his elbow below the knee to lock himself in place.
Galla
swarmed around him, leveling blows on his head and shoulders.

Megiddo cut away at the clawing
galla
with his sword to free himself, but for every arm and skeletal hand cut, four more took its place.

Brishen shook with the urge to help, but he dare not interrupt the invocation. Ancient and unpredictable, it would either collapse and burn out if halted or create a nightmare scenario of backlash and split the breach even wider. He watched helplessly as Andras and Serovek struggled to save the monk as the breach collapsed further inward. Multi-jointed fingers rode higher up Megiddo’s legs until they dug into his hips and torso before reaching for Andras.

In a moment frozen in time, Megiddo halted his struggle and stared at Brishen. Seconds became centuries. Those blue eidolon eyes, still oddly human, blazed until they were almost white. Horror filled the monk’s face before a hardened resolve replaced it. “
Farewell
,” he mouthed.

Brishen’s “No!” thundered inside his head, while the incantation poured from his mouth unabated.

Megiddo twisted, raised his sword arm higher and brought it down hard. A shock of blue light flashed as the blade severed
galla
limbs and Andras’s hand where he clutched Megiddo’s forearm. The injured Wraith King’s cry ricocheted off the walls. He fell backwards, knocking Serovek down. Wisps of blue smoke spilled from the stump where his hand had been as if bleeding ethereal blood. Serovek shoved him off and leapt to his feet.

The
galla
claimed their victim in a swarm of claws and teeth, along with the trophy of Andras’s hand. Before the maw of the breach swallowed him whole, Megiddo flung the sword across the floor where Serovek caught it and beheaded a demon. Brishen swayed on his feet as power poured out of him like water through a sieve.

“Get him out of there!”  Andras roared, even as he fought off
galla
one-handed.

Too late. Too late. The breach had thinned to nothing more than a sliver of black ribbon, the shrieking echo of banished
galla
the only thing emerging from it. That closed, disappearing altogether with a convulsive ripple of air.

Brishen crashed to his knees, dizzy and sick. For all that he was spirit made solid and unaffected by the weaknesses of the flesh, his eidolon still suffered the aftereffects of the spell.