The Fall to Power (17 page)

             
“I’m afraid I don’t recall the particulars of the raid in question, woodsman.”

             
With a bestial roar of pent up rage at last released, like the cataclysmic explosion of a volcano after millennia of mounting pressure, Alann spat his vengeance:

             
“Then allow me to refresh your memory!”

             
The woodsman sprinted across the clearing, unassailed by the fighting Huntsmen, for this was their master’s battle. With a cry of glee, Kurnos bade his charioteer charge with full haste, the heavy chariot with its scythed wheels rumbling, shaking the clearing as it lunged forwards, closing the gap between the two combatants, with the inevitability of a crashing wave upon the rocks.

             
Alann ran, his tired limbs infused with the limitless energy that came with vengeance close at hand. Justice was his for the taking and he would not be denied. The rumbling, massive form of the chariot with its two nightmare steeds, black as night, loomed larger and larger as it bore down on him, but his heart pounded with anticipation, not fear. The roaring figure of the Huntmaster cracked his vile whip in the air as he grew closer.

             
Closer.

             
CLOSER.

             
With a scream that echoed the need of every heart that still beat in the chests of the Foresters, Alann threw his axe with all his might, before lunging face down on the ground, the razor scythe of black iron that jutted from a spoked wheel just skimming the top of his hair. A heavy thud behind him, the sound of the chariot receding as it overshot him.

             
Rising, slowly, trembling, Alann turned, almost in disbelief, the forces fighting about the forest halting, for a moment, in their conflict, turning as one and gazing, open mouthed at the scene before them.

             
There, in the dead leaves atop the hard, frozen earth, the great, hulking figure of Kurnos lay, still and silent on its back, the shining head of the woodsman’s axe buried deep in his chest, the handle sticking up into the air, as if signalling his passing to one and all.

             
Slowly, Alann made his way to the corpse, gazing down with numbed finality at the prone form. Nearly a century, a reign of blood, a scourge across the land tearing brother from brother, mother from daughter, ended at the humble stroke of a woodsman’s blade. He stood over the body, looking down on the face that had caused so much pain to so many.

             
Roget. Felice. Avenged.

             
“Justice,” he whispered, his breath a quiet sigh. For no matter what happened from here on out, his quest was fulfilled. His family avenged.

             
Amused eyes flicked open.

             
“Not yet!”

             
A meaty hand reached up in a flash to grasp Alann about the arm, throwing him like a toy to roll across the clearing. He shook his head, looking up with tears of disbelief as the Huntsman rose to his feet, pulling the axe from his bloodied chest as though ‘twere no more than a splinter, an irritation, before dropping it to the floor with a clang.

             
That bearded face smiled, a hideous mockery of good humour, as he regarded the staggered hopelessness of the peasant before him.

             
“I am Kurnos, Lord of the Hunt. You think an axe can fell me?”

             
He laughed, loud, heartily, the faces of every Forester who heard it running cold.

             
“This is no fairy-story, woodsman.” He advanced, slowly, implacably. “There are no happy endings here…”

***

Invictus stood on the bridge twixt his wing of the Pen and the Seers’ Tower. The sky above the sea was clear, for once, the Isle of Storms silhouetted stark and jagged in the moonlight, the Beacon, over halfway complete, already rising high, like a thrust sword, piercing the heavens.

             
“How long now?”

             
The raven-headed Seeress, dwarfed by his mighty form, stood by his side, leaning against the railing of stone.             

“Three months. We are ahead of schedule.”

A grunt and a nod. She looked up at him with her blue eyes, searching.

“Something troubles you, my King?”

He shook his head, but spoke anyway, taking the chance to voice his concerns to the Seeress whilst she was here.

“Dreams, again, my dear. Always the dreams.” He turned to her. “They get stronger, these memories, ever since that night. And they are random; it feels as though they are trying to recall a time long past, but can’t, bouncing off a barrier and settling instead on different times in my reign. I dreamt of meeting you, of finding Bavard, Kurnos, founding the Khrdas and Memphias.” He shook his head, puzzled. “I have to admit, it confuses me. I feel almost… lost at times. Uncertain of my direction.” He pointed over to the Isle. “The Beacon, for instance; why do we build it? What need a God-King to edify himself?”

The Seeress took his hand in hers, so slim and cool, drawing close to him.

“This confusion will pass, my King. Whatever sorcery the traitors employed obviously still lingers. But it shall pass, nonetheless, have no fear.”

“I feel no fear, Cece. You know that.”

She nodded, smiling.

“But you still don’t answer me; what need a God-King for such edification?”

She didn’t answer, turning instead out to sea, pointing up with a slender arm to a cluster of stars that were bunched together in the heavens above the Isle.

“You see those stars, my King?”

He nodded, for see them he did, with eyes keener than hers. She smiled as she continued.

“They grow closer, day by day. And as luck would have it, the day of completion is when they shall align, for the first time in a little over a century. It is by their light that the Emerald Beacon shall begin to shine, casting out its green glow, the glow of your gaze, across the lands far and wide.”

He looked at her, still trying to decipher her point as she went on.

“You see, my King, it is not about edifying you for yourself. It’s about proclaiming your deeds far and wide, for all to see. When that Beacon begins to glow on that fateful day, everyone shall know of the deeds of Invictus. In this world and far, far beyond.”

The King laughed.

“Far beyond this world, eh? You exaggerate. But your point makes sense, I suppose.”

She smiled, her eyes twinkling with a curious amusement.

“Of course, I exaggerate, but you can forgive me a little overexcitement. My whole life is devoted to you, to furthering your reign. But I can see you’re still troubled. It will take more than just pretty words to soothe them.” She walked backwards towards his chamber door, his hand in hers, drawing him on, her thin silken robe translucent in the silvery moonlight revealing a form slender and taut with which the King had become intimately familiar over the years. “Come, let me see what I can do to ease your burden, my King.”

***

The hour was late as the Seeress left the chambers of her King. He had not slept after their lovemaking, for he had neither the need nor the inclination of late, instead, off roaming the Pen as he so often would of a night.

             
Barefoot, she padded across the cold, stone flying bridge, the wind that wound about the towers howling a low and sorrowful dirge as if aware of the her business. She entered the Seers’ Quarter, making her way down the corridor lined with the rooms of her slumbering girls, before finding herself in the Scrying chamber, the crystal device in the centre of the room humming with arcane power.

             
Kneeling, she raised her hands to the sides of the crystal, summoning forth her power with a thought, runes along its brass cradle flaring up and within the cloudy depths of the crystal sphere a vision swam into focus.

             
“Ah, Seeress! To what do I owe this nocturnal pleasure? And how much do I have to pay?”

             
The Huntsman was drunk, unsurprisingly, and Ceceline didn’t rise to his banter.

             
“I am in no mood for games, Kurnos. I only enquire as to how goes our campaign in the North.”

             
The Master of the Hunt belched and grinned into whatever reflective surface was showing Ceceline’s face at that precise moment.

             
“Swimmingly, my dear! Right at this precise moment we head South, with fresh captives for the Games! Oh, but the entertainments that await!” He chuckled in anticipation, even as Ceceline stared cold blue daggers into his vision.

             
“South? I’m hoping for your sake that you mean to say you’ve found and scoured that valley of Shamans and you’re bringing captives from
their
ranks, yes? For last I heard you were struggling to make headway in the Hills…”

             
The intoxicated Huntsman swayed slightly, unable to think up a defence.

             
“Damn you, Kurnos. You and your childish games will have us all on the end of an obsidian blade! Even now his dreams are wracked with memories that fill his waking hours with doubt. I’m having my work cut out here to keep everything on track. If those Shamans that you’ve so carelessly forgotten about should make another attempt on him, it could spell the end of us all.”

             
The Master of the Hunt snorted in derision.

             
“Nigh a hundred years we have dangled him from the strings of fate without his knowledge and he’s never suspected a thing yet…”

             
“And you would have it all fall apart right at the climax because of your hunger for sport?”

             
They were both silenced by a sudden and unmistakable scent, the air in both the Scrying Chamber and wherever Kurnos had pitched his tent growing thick and heavy with the tang of sulphur and unnatural burning. A whispering rose up, low, insistent, scratching, the sound of a thousand tormented souls clamouring from behind the fabric of reality.

             
Silence, our loyal servants. Cease your bickering.

             
The two closed their mouths, skin prickling with the presence of those voices from another reality, ancient, evil. Hungry. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere and, no matter how many decades they had remained in their service, the sensation of pure malice carried in the words never failed to cause the heart to beat a little faster, the skin to sweat a little more profusely.

             
The strands of fate weave according to plan. Our pawn is oblivious and the petty conjurers of the North make no move to help. Soon the alignment will begin and Invictus will be broken.

             
A voice, human, real, yet not lacking in a cold malice of its own, came out of the dark behind Ceceline, causing her to start.

             
“I will be there when he is,” whispered Memphias, grey eyes peering into the future. “For my daggers hunger for the taste of a God-King’s blood…”

             
Soon our faithful assassin, soon. Remain vigilant, all of you; for it is not the larger things that stand to confound our plans, but the small things, the inconspicuous things.

The pebbles that go unnoticed, only to start a landslide.

***

Far below the stone tower of the Seers’ Quarter, where dark conspiracy brewed in the dead of night, waves crashed, hard and insistent, into the resolute and jagged rocks of the coast below the docks of the City, hungering to claim the land, yet ever denied by the steadfast stone.

              The pale light of the moons highlighted a form that lay bedraggled on the black rocks. It was still and one could be forgiven for thinking it dead, but a shuddering, wracking cough that spewed sea-water from cracked lips showed that it was still, barely, clinging to life.

             
Raising his head on trembling neck muscles, Jafari looked up into the dark cliffs, spying the docks, the access tunnels carved into the very rock that ran in a meandering labyrinth under the Pen and into the kitchen stores deep beneath the keep.

             
In a pained grimace, the nomad pushed himself upright onto crab-bitten feet, smiling at his good fortune.

             
“Made it…”

Chapter Seven
:

Higher and higher he strode, his pace never slowing, his limbs never tiring, making his way patiently up the thousand steps to the platform at the top of the soaring tower. Even through the afternoon cloud, he could see the stars, their brightness increasing the closer they came to alignment.