Healer's Ruin (15 page)

'Well, you've been through a lot,' she said, disappearing back into the tent.

An hour after dawn the army was on the move. Jolm's Black Talon rode with the Tarukaveri, arrogantly placing themselves at the head of the pack, the other tribe's warriors grudgingly acknowledging his superiority. After a few hours a dust cloud appeared up in the western mountains. The army of the Ten Plains King was on the move too, it seemed.

'Maybe they killed the Wielder,' Samine said, nodding towards the billowing dust on the forbidding ridge.

'Maybe,' Chalos replied, not believing it for a moment.

That urn would have been useful to you up there, wouldn't it, your Majesty?
He thought with grim satisfaction.
But you had to test it on us first, didn't you? Down here, at a safe distance. And now you've lost the one weapon that would have nullified the Wielder's power completely.

He was beginning to understand how the Ten Plains King had remained so powerful for so long and how he had managed to carve out an empire that covered most of the known world. The fiend was utterly pitiless, ruthless and self-obsessed. Like any monarch, one might say – history was hardly full of Kings and Queens who troubled themselves over the plight of their subjects – but the difference was that the Ten Plains King was more than a mere mortal.

The thought that he might live forever, ruling with an iron fist, disregarding the needs and pains of any other being made Chalos shudder.

I'm on the wrong side,
he realised, miserably.

The army now found itself on an incline, the entire plain rising steadily up towards a hazy horizon line where grey strands of cloud drifted lazily across a lustreless sun. The Ruin lay in the valley beyond and would be visible within hours but Chalos was too tired to be excited at the prospect. He began to nod off in the saddle. Mysa was already asleep on his shoulder, one wing across her dipped beak. Now that the Duke's retinue was with them, a Scryer was mapping the terrain ahead, leaving the bird surplus to the force's requirements.

The strange creature was riding with the vanguard on a subdued, spindly shadamar with odd white markings on its hide, his body was draped in what appeared to be a soaking wet crimson shroud that stuck to his bony flesh like a second skin. His head was always drooping and his listless hands clung limply to the reins of his mount. Four of the Duke's elites flanked him at all times and by the distance they kept it was clear that they did not like him.

His name was Siune, and he was Rovann, like most Scryers. But he was a denizen of Rachta, a craggy and mysterious island  where few dared venture and little was known of the oddly diminished souls who lived there. Siune wore the bizarre robes of his oblique culture's priesthood and was as skilled as any of the King's Scryers, though his attitude lacked a certain refinement.

It was likely he was already mad, of course. Scryers spent more time ploughing through the world of magic than any other users of magery, powering their sensorium beyond their bodies for days at a time, and so were always on the verge of slipping into complete solipsism and eventual insanity. Even on good days they could be found talking to themselves relentlessly or lying slumped somewhere like a sack of sundries, staring into space and drooling. They all went mad in the end, becoming useless to the war effort. Siune was definitely close to the point when any practical application of his powers would become impossible. But for now, he was a valuable asset to the Duke.

He's probably the one that guided Elas through the Dallian Woodland,
Chalos pondered.
No wonder they had such an easy time of it.

It was the sudden passage of one of the vanguard, thundering back through the ranks with a bellowing call, that made Chalos anxious. He started with a gasp as the man tore past on his way towards the heart of the force where the Duke was located.

It was early evening. The sky was a dirty bronze.

'We'll be needed,' Mysa said.

'Why do you say that?' the healer replied, watching the messenger with a frown until the man had vanished into the mass of soldiery.

'That word he's calling,' the bird said. 'It's
Na'anproval!
A word of the Quellian Knights that has passed into Imperial usage. It means the same as
Alarm!
only it's more...'

'...alarming?'

'Yes.'

Chalos knew of the Quellian Knights. They had been the first Rovann heroes. Centuries before, their legendary acts of valour had helped shape the southern world. Now, much was forgotten about them, save for a few military terms, it seemed.

'Another battle?' Samine asked, rubbing her eyes. She had snatched an hour or so of sleep in the saddle but could have done with more.

'Let's hope not,' Chalos said.

Mysa's instincts had been impeccable. It was only a few minutes before an Elite guard appeared, bent over Chalos and ordered him to send his bird into the sky ahead. The Duke had received strange news from Siune and wanted a second opinion.

'Sorry, Mysa,' Chalos said. 'Time to fly.'

'I must say,' the bird replied, as she stretched her wings and hopped down his arm, pausing for a moment on his wrist. 'I'm feeling a little nervous. Scryers are hard ones to put the wind up.'

'I suppose being able to send your spirit ahead of your body leaves you precious little opportunity to be surprised?'

'Heh. Quite so.'

'Well, let's hope it's nothing to worry about,' he said, trying to sound jocular and failing.

The bird took flight, wheeling away to the north. In moments she was gone over the edge of the incline, and was flying over the valley beyond.

When she returned, it was with a manic screech and a frantic flapping of wings. The sight of her, like some ill omen, spooked several shadamar and sent a ripple of fear through the first few ranks of the Black Talon.

'What is it?' the Elite warrior asked, still waiting by the healer's side.

Chalos did not look at his ghoulish, armoured face. He was staring at the bird, his eyes wide with concern.

'I don't know. She isn't making sense.'

He closed his eyes and tried to interpret the half-crazed ranting of his Accomplice that sounded behind his eyes in impressionistic staccato bursts. 'Riders – miles of dust – giants of antiquity – nine eyes!'

'Gods and bones!' he said, opening his eyes. Sweat sprang in his forehead. 'The Pheg-Tol!'

'Golems?' the Elite snorted, clearly well informed as one would expect of a soldier of his station. 'But they were up in the mountains.'

'Nevertheless,' said Chalos. 'What else do you know of with nine eyes?'

The Elite grunted and wheeled his shadamar away with a jerk of the reins before thundering away towards the Duke.

'Golems...' Samine said. 'You talked of them before, but we never saw them.'

'I suppose they're here to guard the Ruin,' the healer said.

'Why would they care about a dead city?'

'I can't explain it,' the healer said. 'But doesn't it feel as though this whole kingdom is against us? Not just the warriors who live here, but the trees, the vines, the rocks... gods and bones, the ancient history of this kingdom is coming to life and trying to murder us. Why not the Golems too?'

Samine chewed this over his silence.

'It's like what's left of the world is trying to stop the Ten Plains King from staking his final claim,' the healer added.

'Then it is another battle,' Samine reasoned simply. 'And another victory, eh, Chalos?'

Victory against the Golems? But these are the gods of legend, man-made gods, shaped by the craftsmen of the greatest civilisation that ever lived. Who knows what power they hold?

'Look at her,' he said softly, gesturing at the bird as she cavorted madly in the air, flapping her wings so violently that feathers were coming loose. 'I've never seen her like this.'

'A few days ago we saw the Ten Plains King annihilate one of the Guardians up in the mountains,' Samine said, touching him on the arm. 'Nothing is beyond this army of ours.'

He looked at her as if she was mad but she didn't seem to notice. She just squeezed his arm and smiled consolingly.

This army of ours?
He thought.
It is the King's army. We're just parts of the machinery. Parts he couldn't even name and does not care to consider. Have we learned nothing of how easily we can be cast into the fire in the name of conquest?

'I hope you're right,' he said. 'Stick with me, Samine. We don't know what we are about to face.'

She smiled again and jabbed him in the ribs.

'Perhaps
you
should stick with
me
, healer,' she said, fire glinting in her eye. 'Gather your bird down and let us meet this new foe arm in arm.'

The army reached the crest of the hill and arrayed itself, a prickly line of jagged armour plates, glinting halberd blades and silhouetted swords. Mounted units emerged at the wings, the riders peering at the vastness before them as the plains dipped into an enormous valley that stretched seemingly into infinite space. Of course, through the mist at the extremes of their vision, was far Aphazail, the Riln capital city. Their ultimate prize.

And of a sudden the Duke realised just how far they really were from the jewel of the Riln kingdom.

But their immediate goal waited for them just minutes away. In the valley was a great dais of greying stone, its walls Cyclopean and ancient. From the crest of the hill, the army could see the streets and buildings of the city and the damage that cruel and unrelenting time had heaped upon it.

No soldiers manned its crumbling walls and yawning gates. No army sat outside its ashen boundaries.

The Ruin was there for the taking.

To the west, a terrible cloud of dust was rising. It had come down from the mountains, a long train of thundering activity, and  spilled onto the plain itself. Now it approached the Ruin, its pennants whipped by erratic winds. To the fore of this massive horde were thousands of Rovann warriors. With them, the vicious Skull-Strippers of Sanul, eight foot tall devils gibbering curses behind false visages of dried flesh. Backing up this mass of soldiery were line upon line of Phaeron archers in high crystalline helms and furtive squads of mysterious mages in turquoise robes, eyes bulging behind copper masks. And behind these fearsome sorcerers of the Ektan, the grim and voiceless retinues of the southern kingdom's eternal champions, the Fenc. Somewhere in the heart of this force, the most powerful army ever assembled, was the Ten Plains King, clad in hulking crystal and silver armour, on a throne of gold, within an anvil-shaped wagon of black iron that bore a beatific face with curious, bedevilled eyes. The wagon was pulled by shadamar with crimson skin and yellow stripes, armour plate sewn into their flesh. A flag as vast as a battalion swooped over this wagon, bearing ten glowing suns, each with the same beatific face, a world hanging beneath them on the palm of an armoured hand.

Chalos and Samine had edged to the Duke's front line, on the eastern fringe where the Tarukataru were arrayed.

'The King...' said Samine in breathless awe.

'The man who tried to kill us all,' Chalos reminded her.

'Nevertheless, how like a god he is!'

'He's precisely like a god,' Chalos grated between clenched teeth, unable to stop himself. 'He does what he likes and doesn't notice the chaos and suffering he causes because everyone else is like an insect to him.'

'Look, little Rovann,' said one of the Black Talon Krune, who Chalos immediately recognised as the maimed soldier whose leg he had healed. 'Those great crests of dust beyond the Ruin.'

'I see them,' Chalos said.

Nine jets of dust were wending their way from the north, heading for the dead city. They hugged the plain, a series of slightly diffuse tornadoes that moved with speed and purpose.

Heading towards us,
the healer noted.
And not by accident.

On his shoulder, Mysa stammered, hopping from claw to claw. The healer winced. Even though he had healed his shoulder after the bird had shredded the skin and muscle when hauling him away from the charging Tarukaveri, the memory of injury still remained.

'The golems!' the crow gasped. 'Nine eyes, Chalos!'

He reached up and placed a comforting hand on his Accomplice, embracing spine and wing. She ducked closer to the crook of his neck and he soothed her hot, quivering head with the pad of his thumb.

'Hush,' he said. 'It's alright.'

'It really isn't, Chalos,' the bird said.

'I know.'

A few of the vanguard had inched down the hill a few metres and now Siune could be seen on his mount, head bowed, hand outstretched. As the appendage emerged from the clinging red cloak, Chalos saw how it was withered and corpse-like, the skin as grey as the sky.

Then the Scryer's head rose up and cocked to one side. His shadamar flinched, staggering back. Siune fought to control it and then froze in the saddle. As the other members of the vanguard – a mixture of Black Talon Tarukaveri and the Duke's Elites – moved closer to the Scryer, reaching their gauntleted hands out to help steady him, Siune threw his head back and tore his cloak free. Beneath was the body of an old man, emaciated and brittle, his toothless maw stretched in a hissing cry. Blind white eyes roved as phlegm dripped from his lip in thin strands. Then he toppled from the horse and lay still.

'Gods and bones,' Samine said. 'What did he see that wrought such terror upon him?'

'We're about to find out,' Chalos replied.

Now the crests of dust were passing around the city and the healer noticed that objects were immersed within them. It looked to him for a moment as if he was watching riders cut a swathe across the plain, but then he reminded himself that this would be impossible. The riders would have to be well over a hundred feet tall, their mounts enormous enough to accommodate them.

As the nine clouds got closer, each spewing dust a mile into the air, he realised that his first instincts had been correct. These were the Pheg-Tol, the golems of Daran al-pat. Giants made by men, built out of rock and steel and ore and a hundred other things that had been at hand. Man-made, synthetic gods that had roamed the entire world and, perhaps, beyond.

And the army of the Ten Plains King, the greatest army ever assembled, boasting the finest warriors and the most powerful mages the southern lands could produce, was now committed to fight against them.

An almighty roar sounded from the west, a cacophony of voices and trumpets. Every head in the Duke's force whipped around – even those in the midst of the ranks who could see, hear and smell nought but their own comrades – each attempting to catch a glimpse of the army of the Ten Plains King as it charged.

'Oh, here we go,' Chalos moaned to himself.

A hand squeezed his upper arm.

'Don't think, don't feel,' said Samine. 'Just fight and survive. You're a veteran now, Chalos. You know what war is all about.'

That's what horrifies me
, the healer thought.

The Duke sounded the charge and his force poured down the hill with the lethal slickness of a lava flow. Chalos and Samine found themselves riding once again with Jolm's host as the Tarukataru pushed their shadamar to the limit in order to be the first into the valley. Behind them, the Tarukaveri followed dutifully. Samine took her hand from the healer's arm and curled the fingers into a claw. Her auburn locks were tied back in a severe bun and her small-featured, narrow face was set like that of a statue, the mien pensive... but her eyes shone like coals.

The Krune around them were bellowing blood-curdling cries. Chalos found himself closing his eyes as his mount matched those about it stride for stride. Mysa dug her claws in and squawked.

'It's a shame we Accomplices don't have gods,' the bird said. 'I could certainly do with a good pray right about now.'

The healer grimaced. What good had the gods done Tankanis, or the Corporal, or any of the dead? Gods, he decided, were overrated.

'Well,' said Laithe, his fine form reflecting the sun in a silver blaze. 'This is one hell of a vantage point, eh?'

The kid slumped on the edge of the cliff, the plains stretching eastwards beneath him. His legs dangled over the edge of the jagged rocks. All over the mountain were bodies, charred and blasted, heaped by the hundred beneath a thick layer of ash. Armour of a dozen different kinds littered the place and the air still reeked of sorcery.

'Not bad, is it?' he said to the broken silver cutlass that lay a few feet away, its ornately patterned guard cracked and flaking. Half the blade had been snapped clean off and was buried three inches deep in the skull of a massive charred corpse to their immediate right.

'My money's on the giants,' the sword said.

The Wielder didn't reply. He was too tired. Already he could feel, in his body, the semi-solid masses of toxic death growing and multiplying... the horrific cost of his remarkable power. This, then, was his fate. To die piecemeal, breath by breath, as the army he had decimated – but not destroyed – marched on the Ruin.

My power, the Well... it's down there, in the heart of the city. But that same hidden cell that gave me my strength has poisoned my flesh. Killed me already, the damage done before I even took up arms.

'Did we fail, Laithe?'

'Nah,' the sword said, its voice cracking as if its ghostly transmission was being distorted by something, or the magic that enabled it was fading. 'We played our part. The southerners won't beat the golems. Those giants have fought a thousand wars down the ages. Nobody has ever beaten them. Not the Siruli, not the Dandaruk Entire, not the Bochrian Dwindling...'

'I seem to remember a single-edged silver smart-arse telling me the same thing about the Guardians.'

'Heh. Yeah, well, time hasn't been kind to them, evidently. They were tougher in their day. Fighting the Xlun obviously took its toll.'

The Wielder allowed himself a smile. He had done his best. Now all he could do was watch the show and hope that the golems could finish the job he had started. But even for all his optimism, the sheer size of the southerner army dazzled him. When he had faced it head-on, he had only been able to see its front lines. Now he could see it from above, his mind reeled at the number of men it contained.

'Don't worry,' the sword said. 'This is where the invaders meet their doom.'

'Fingers crossed,' the Wielder muttered. 'Fingers crossed.'

As the Duke's army approached the nearest golem, the wind picked up enough to push the veil of dust away towards the Ruin and all eyes widened to accommodate the terrifying vision. Mounted, the monster was a full three hundred feet high. It was man-like, bare and broad-chested, and was constructed of modular pieces of metal and stone. The horse it rode on was wreathed in patchwork rags woven together from flags and banners, numbering in the hundreds and haphazardly stitched together. Only the steed's eyes and hooves were visible. The former were dull black globes recessed into a billowing hood, the latter cloven with hardy lumps of ore where bone should have been.

The riders themselves wore hoods too, huge, draping hoods that obliterated their gigantic skulls. Yet still, they seemed able to see, for they rode straight for the southerner lines.

The Black Talon, under Jolm's command, was arcing around to the northeast to cut back in on the outermost golem, catching it in a pincer as the bulk of the Duke's force closed in. It was at that point that one of the Krune in front of Chalos saw something in the trail of dust behind the golem and shrieked a warning.

What has he seen,
the healer wondered,
in that cloud of scattered debris?

The trail of dust behind each golem reached far behind them and only now did the healer realise that there were things hidden within the low, thick ochre clouds, things of presence and weight that clipped and bit into the earth, tearing up clods of soil and shards of stone. Things that bounced and snaked, sinuous and brutally powerful.

The nearest golem raised its right arm and flicked its thick, stony wrist. A colossal length of chain which had been trailing behind the horse suddenly lashed forward and snapped taught with a deafening crack as it drilled through rank after rank of Krune. Baldaw mesh screamed as it was torn apart, with purple flesh and showers of bright blood blasting into the sky moments before the chain snapped back to its bearer, scattering the dead and wounded as its massive, rusted links flew back into the dust. Chalos was far from where the weapon had struck but he ducked instinctively, pale with alarm.

Samine, teeth gritted, shook her head slowly and leaned forward in the saddle.

'Yah, D'alrusselle!' she hissed to her shadamar. 'Yah!'

The mount sped forward, more afraid of its rider than the madness around it, and before the healer could say anything the Dread Spear had engaged the giant. A flaring torrent of bright lilac giving way to deep, churning red spouted from the space ahead of Samine's outstretched hand, striking the giant in the chest. It emitted a sad bellow which reminded Chalos of the sound of a stricken pavarine. The golem's gargantuan horse reared up, revealing an undercarriage as vast as the inner ceiling of a cathedral. Samine, grinning broadly, the tip of her tongue pointing out between her teeth, urged her shamadar on. The giant hooves came down either side of her and she vanished in an ochre cloud.

To the west, the other golems were flexing their chains. Chalos could hear the steady boom of the Ektan sorcerers as they countered and the flash of their magery flickered on the edge of his vision. But his eyes were on the billowing dust beneath the closest golem, where Samine had been.

'Mysa,' he gasped. 'She can't be...'

'No,' said the bird. 'Look.'

Attuned to magic in the depths of her artificial soul, the bird had sensed the build-up of magic before the healer had. A bright flash under the golem sent it toppling from the saddle as its horse convulsed. The vast animal's spine glowed like a line of coals before exploding upwards from its back, shredding the saddle. The beam of magic pierced the animal, streaking into the sky. The horse shuddered and collapsed in on itself like a huge building that had lost its keystone.