Grimalkin translated for the company, but I knew that Prince Stanislaw would already have understood the gist of what I had said.
‘However,’ I continued, ‘first we shall make a little detour. After advancing steadily towards Valkarky for two days, we will then swing left and launch a surprise attack on this kulad!’
I pointed at it on the map and jabbed it forcefully with the point of my index finger. ‘It is called Kartuna, and the tower is of great strategic importance.’
After Grimalkin had translated my words I noticed that there were a few frowns. Prince Stanislaw raised his eyebrows and Prince Kaylar of Wayaland spoke in a deep booming voice, tugging at his beard in some agitation.
‘Prince Kaylar does not think that a wise move,’ Grimalkin translated. ‘He believes that by pausing to attack the tower, we will give our enemies time to gather their forces and meet us on the Plain of Erestaba. He says that we should sweep past such fortifications at speed, like a fist punching towards a jaw, and concentrate on our main objective.’
I smiled and nodded at Prince Kaylar. ‘You are correct in pure military terms,’ I conceded, holding his gaze. ‘But Valkarky is guarded by much more than thick walls and steel weapons. The Kobalos have many mages who wield powerful magic; it may turn aside our cannon and strike such terror into our forces that even the bravest might flee. But this kulad here,’ I said, jabbing it again for emphasis, ‘is home to a mage who also uses it to store his magical power and artefacts. If we can seize this tower, Grimalkin, who is an expert on dark magic, can learn much that will aid us. She will discover a way to counter the occult forces that our enemies will deploy.’
Prince Stanislaw nodded at my explanation, but the other princes had to wait for Grimalkin to translate.
While she did so I met the eyes of each of them in turn, just as the witch assassin had coached me, finally returning to Prince Kaylar and giving him the longest stare. Then I told my second lie to the gathering. Lying made me feel a little uncomfortable but it had to be done if Grimalkin’s plan was to succeed.
‘Once we have the knowledge that will protect us against their magic, we will head directly for Valkarky again. Within weeks it will be ours and the Kobalos threat will be no more!’
After Grimalkin had translated these words, heads began to nod – even Prince Kaylar grudgingly conceded that this was the way to proceed.
Next, Grimalkin turned to face me and bowed.
‘I would like to offer a little military advice, if I may.’
‘Yes, go ahead!’ I commanded as we’d rehearsed in the event of Grimalkin feeling the need to add anything to what I’d said.
She bowed towards me again and then addressed the princes directly. I wondered what she was telling them, but again they nodded and exchanged satisfied glances.
Ten minutes later we were back in my quarters.
‘You did well,’ Grimalkin congratulated me. ‘You looked and behaved every inch a prince. If all goes well and our luck holds, we may return with valuable information and get most of those men back alive.’
‘What did you say to them at the end?’ I asked.
‘I told them that the Kobalos have two hearts: one lies in approximately the same position as a human one; the other is smaller but is close to the base of the throat. A Kobalos warrior may survive the piercing of his main heart because the secondary one maintains the blood flow of blood to the brain. A wound that would certainly finish off a human might leave a dying Kobalos conscious and still dangerous. So I recommended that they inform their warriors that decapitation is the preferred method of despatching the enemy or, failing that, a double piercing of the chest. You remember that it was in Browne’s glossary, and I advised you to kill the Shaiksa assassin in that way.’
‘Valuable information indeed.’ I nodded. ‘But haven’t you confirmed Browne’s notes are true in this matter? Your notes made no mention of investigations of that nature.’
‘My notes were a limited catalogue of my experiments with Kobalos battle-entities, not Kobalos anatomy. I have others that include my speculations on methods of countering their military might – you may read them if you are interested. Back in the County, I explored the information on the two hearts by dissecting the body of the haizda mage before I filled the grave with earth. I confirmed that finding by also dissecting the body of the Shaiksa assassin.’
I nodded. Grimalkin was thorough and painstaking in her efforts to learn how we might defeat the Kobalos. Everything was woven tightly into the tapestry of her schemes; everything including me. I felt trapped; bound within her plans, with no room for manoeuvre.
TOM WARD
THAT SAME NIGHT Jenny and I climbed the stone steps of the tallest north-eastern turret, heading for the attic where the prince said I’d find the ghost of the Kobalos mage. I was wearing the starblade at my hip, carrying a rowan staff and my pockets contained salt and iron. Hopefully such precautions were unnecessary but after Jenny’s experience I wasn’t taking any chances.
I found the ascent hard work and felt dizzy and breathless before we reached the attic. I was a long way short of returning to fitness. It was just a few days before we were due to cross the river and attack, and I really couldn’t see how I’d be able to ride out at the head of an army. Sooner or later I would have to confront Grimalkin and make that clear.
The keys weren’t marked and I had to proceed by trial and error. I tried five of the large keys before the sixth finally opened the door. Jenny was carrying the lantern and its light revealed a small anteroom with another door facing us. She had hardly spoken since we left my room. No doubt she was scared, which wasn’t really surprising after her terrifying encounter with the thing from the portal.
‘Is this anteroom similar to the one you passed through?’ I asked.
‘It’s identical,’ Jenny said, shivering. ‘It even had a table and two chairs coated in a thick layer of dust, exactly like the ones here.’
I could sense no warning chill telling me that something from the dark was close. Could Prince Stanislaw be wrong about this attic being haunted?
‘Do you sense anything from the dark?’ I asked. I wondered if my own gifts were working properly after the terrible experience that I’d been through.
She shook her head.
‘Neither do I. Let’s go into the inner room. We’re in unknown territory here so I won’t have much chance to explain things. I’ll need to concentrate, so the teaching must come second. Just listen carefully.’
Jenny nodded, and I opened the second door into the inner chamber. This was very different from the room that Jenny had described. There was no water dripping from the ceiling; no stone well.
It was very dusty and cluttered with books: vast leather-bound tomes lay on the floor in precarious piles; the shelves were full to capacity but shrouded by thick curtains of spiders’ webs. Long low tables set against the far wall were bowed with the weight of enormous glass jars containing brown or green substances: it reminded me of the lair of the haizda mage back in Chipenden. No doubt Jenny would recognize these too, and they wouldn’t help her get any calmer. She’d almost died at the hands of that mage.
Did those jars contain the seeds of monstrous creatures such as the ones Grimalkin had grown near the lair of that mage? For a moment I wondered why the room hadn’t been cleared. But it was obvious: terrified by the hauntings, humans had obviously abandoned and then sealed these rooms.
‘Turn the lantern down low, Jenny,’ I said softly. ‘Some ghosts avoid light of any kind and we don’t want to deter this one.’
She fiddled with the shutters and placed the lantern on the floor. It just cast a small circle of light onto the boards; the majority of the room was in darkness. It was now more likely that a ghost would materialize – though of course we were dealing with the unknown. If we did encounter a ghost, it would be the spirit of a Kobalos, and a mage to boot. Anything was possible.
Suddenly I felt an icy chill; the warning that som
ething from the dark was drawing close. Slowly a faint column of light began to form in the right-hand corner of the chamber, close to a tall bookshelf. It flickered and shifted, taking on the shape of one of the Kobalos. This creature was larger and broader than the haizda mage I’d fought back in Chipenden before our journey up here had even begun; it wore heavy leather boots and a long gown not dissimilar to that of a spook – though the bare arms were covered in thick hair like the hide of an animal. The face had been shaved to dark stubble and the big eyes were staring at me. If I was reading its expression correctly, it appeared curious rather than hostile and showed a hint of sadness.
The shape flickered again; one moment it was grey and translucent and I could see the bookshelves behind it; the next, the crisp maroon material of its gown and its large brown eyes seemed solid and sharp: it could have been a living, breathing mage that we confronted.
‘What can you see, Jenny?’ I asked.
‘It’s one of their mages. But I don’t think he’s hostile. There are waves of sadness coming from him.’
Suddenly the ghost spoke in the guttural language of Losta. I couldn’t understand a word and hoped that this mage had the same language skills as the haizda I’d fought back in the County.
‘I’m going to ask it to speak in our language,’ I told Jenny. ‘If it does, I’ll question it and maybe send the ghost to the light – if it’s possible. So concentrate and listen carefully but leave the questioning to me.’
Jenny nodded, and I turned to the ghost.
‘I don’t speak your language. Can you speak mine?’
‘You are brave to speak to me,’ the ghost replied in a deep hollow voice. ‘All the other humans ran. Are you a mage?’
‘My name is Thomas Ward and I’m a spook,’ I said. ‘My job is to deal with ghosts and similar entities.’
‘My name is Abuskai. I am a High Mage.’
‘Do you realize that you’re dead?’ I asked.
That was the standard question a spook asked a ghost, the first step in preparing to send them to the light. But could a Kobalos mage be directed to the light? I wondered. Perhaps, like human malevolent witches and mages, he belonged to their equivalent of the dark. Or maybe there were domains completely unknown to us where the dark of the Kobalos gathered.
‘Of course I do. I have been dead a long time,’ the ghost of the mage replied. ‘It wearies me to be trapped here. I seek release from my torment but cannot pass beyond this world.’
‘What holds you back?’ I asked.
I was quite prepared to attempt to send this creature to the light by asking it to focus upon a happy memory from its life – the method that usually worked with the spirits of humans. But first I wanted to question Abuskai about the daemonic entity in the well.
‘There are magical barriers in place that prevent my escape. Alive or dead, I am no longer needed by those who now rule my people. I am discarded. What a fool I have been! I was the one who helped to bring about the change in the first place!’
‘What change?’ I asked quietly.
‘The birth of our god, Talkus,’ the ghost replied. ‘I helped to bring it about. I created the foundation upon which he was constructed.’
Talkus was the Kobalos god who’d been born as the Fiend died. The horned Fiend, once the most powerful of the Old Gods, had been bad enough. He had been able to make himself far larger than a human and halt time, making his victims powerless whilst he snatched their souls. He had been the source of power for many malevolent witches and other dark creatures and wished to dwell permanently on Earth and bring to it a new age of darkness.
However, Talkus was far worse. Whereas the Fiend demanded that humans submit to him, Talkus wished to destroy the human race – except for the females, who would be permanently enslaved to the Kobalos. He had the shape of a skelt, a creature with many legs and a bone-tube which it thrust into the flesh of humans to drain their blood. But perhaps the most terrifying thing of all was that because Talkus was a new god his powers were unknown. Talkus might be capable of anything and we might have no defence against him.
Destroying Talkus might well be the key to defeating the Kobalos. I needed to find out how that could be done.
‘What part did you play in his birth?’ I asked.
‘Through magic, through belief, I shaped him and gave him substance. A god is born when enough believe; when enough desire; when an architect shapes their thoughts. I was that architect.’
I was stunned. It had named itself the architect. Was I facing the Kobalos who had planned and created this new darkness that we faced? If so, Abuskai was a god-maker.
I realized that there was a potential for great danger here. Such a powerful mage, although a ghost, might be able to do us serious harm. We were dealing with the unknown. I would need to be careful not to anger it. I glanced sideways at Jenny. She seemed calm and was staring at the mage, who hadn’t acknowledged her presence in any way. Perhaps it was because she was female. To a Kobalos she was a purra, no better than a slave and unworthy of engaging in conversation.
I hoped that was all and Jenny was not in danger because she was female. For all I knew perhaps the ghost found her presence offensive. I was glad I had warned her to leave the questioning to me. It might not tolerate any interruption from my apprentice.
‘So what happened? How did you die? Why are you trapped here?’ I asked.
‘Kobalos mages constantly form and re-form their alliances. Within Valkarky, power shifts. Alliances conspired against me, seeking to subvert what I was shaping to their own ends. I was betrayed and murdered. Soon afterwards, the king was also slain and a Triumvirate formed to rule in his place; they continued my work and brought the god Talkus into being, modifying my design and utilizing my magic for their own purposes. I have been cast aside without honour, slain and imprisoned here.’
The Triumvirate was the group of three powerful High Mages who now ruled the Kobalos – I’d heard of them already. But Grimalkin had told me that it did not always contain the same three mages – she had slain one of them on her visit to Valkarky – though it had not changed their policy of seeking to make war upon humans. No doubt it had only increased their enmity. But next time it might be different. Slay one, and the arrival of a replacement might well cause a new Triumvirate to change its way of thinking. Could the war be halted by changing those who ruled the Kobalos? I wondered.
The ghost began to flicker and became insubstantial again, making me fear that it was about to depart. I needed to concentrate and keep the conversation going and speculate later.
Suddenly, despite my instruction, Jenny asked a question. ‘In one of the other attics in this castle there is a dangerous daemonic entity. What is it, and how can it be destroyed or driven away?’
The ghost gathered substance rapidly and looked solid enough to touch. Emotions flickered across its face: incredulity and anger. She really did need to listen to my instructions. I’d never have disobeyed my own master in that way. The ghost looked appalled at what she’d just said, and I grew afraid for her.
But the moment of danger passed. When it replied, it ignored Jenny and spoke directly to me. ‘Anyone who tries to destroy the thing your purra speaks of is a fool. It would seize and annihilate both his body and his soul. It is a being called the “Targon”, which guards the gateways of fire that lead to the domain of Talkus.’
‘So the well in the room is a portal to your god?’
‘Yes – one of the three doorways that I created!’ The ghost’s eyes gleamed with pride. ‘This is the room where I studied and planned. The portal chamber is where I crafted and created the future.’
‘Is there any danger that it could leave the attic and kill people outside?’ I asked.
The ghost shook its head. ‘It is a guardian and cannot venture more than six feet beyond the gateway that it guards.’
‘What about the other attics in the south wing? What do they contain?’ I asked.
‘Echoes of what
once existed but nothing of importance. Maybe there are also human ghosts. Some of your people were questioned and sacrificed there.’
All at once the ghost began to fade.
‘Don’t go!’ I cried. ‘I want to ask you some more questions. And I’ll try to help you escape from here. Just answer this, please – if the rulers of Valkarky changed, could the war end? Could Kobalos and humans ever live in peace?’
‘It would depend upon those who ruled and upon the structure of that rule,’ the ghost of the mage said, becoming solid again, the hollow voice reverberating from the walls. ‘The last king of Valkarky was not as militant as the Triumvirate. His father had fought wars against humans, and so had his father before him. But they were limited territorial disputes, whereas the Triumvirate now seeks unlimited expansion and wishes to kill or enslave humans. There would always be border disputes and skirmishes, but with different rulers, Kobalos and humans could live in peace most of the time. Yes, that is possible.’
I quickly asked another question. ‘You named yourself as the architect who conceived of and shaped the Kobalos god, Talkus – and it is that god who now drives your people forward in this war. Is that what you wanted?’
The ghost flickered, but answered my question.
‘War was not the purpose for which I shaped Talkus,’ it replied. ‘Thousands of years ago, my people carried out a great crime, an act of insanity. We slew all our females. I wished to rectify that act of madness.’
I watched incredulity and horror flicker across Jenny’s face. That was something she must have read about in Nicholas Browne’s Kobalos glossary. However, hearing it from the ghost brought home the insane horror of that act. That defining moment had shaped the Kobalos society of today. It was a terrible tale, and was hard to believe. The Kobalos women had been taken to a vast arena and slain, their throats cut, their blood drained. It took seven days to complete the terrible task. It was, as the ghost admitted, an act of madness. By that act the Kobalos males had hoped to come to their full strength – they believed that the women made them weak, undermining the savagery that was the pure essence of a warrior.