House of Chains

  An elongated mass of the stone floor had fallen away, down to the black rushing water of the subterranean river. Athwart the gaping hole lay a bundle of spears, around which was tied a rope that reached down into the water, snaking about as the current tugged at it. The air of the rough-hewn chamber was chill and damp.

  Kalam crouched at the edge and studied the swirling water below for a long moment.

  ‘The well,’ Sergeant Cord said from where he stood beside the assassin.

  Kalam grunted, then asked, ‘What in Hood’s name inspired the captain and lieutenant to climb down there?’

  ‘If you look long enough, with the torches gone from this room, you’ll see a glow. There’s something lying on the bottom, maybe twice a man’s height in depth.’

  ‘Something?’

  ‘Looks like a man . . . all in armour. Lying spread-eagled.’

  ‘So take the torches out. I want to see this.’

  ‘Did you say something, Corporal? Your demon friend has disappeared, remember—vanished.’

  Kalam sighed. ‘Demons will do that, and in this case you should be thankful for that. Right now, Sergeant, I am of the opinion that you’ve all been cooped up in this mountain for far too long. I’m thinking maybe you’ve lost your minds. And I have also reconsidered your words about my position in your company, and I’ve reached a decision and it’s this.’ He turned his head and fixed his gaze on Cord’s eyes. ‘I’m not in your company, Cord. I’m a Bridgeburner. You’re Ashok Regiment. And if that’s not enough for you, I am resurrecting my old status . . . as a Claw, a Leader of a Hand. And as such, I’m only outranked in the field by Clawmaster Topper, the Adjunct, and the Empress herself. Now, take the damned torches out of here!’

  Cord suddenly smiled. ‘You want to take command of this company? Fine, you can have it. Though we want to deal with Irriz ourselves.’ He reached up to collect the first of the sputtering torches on the wall behind him.

  The sudden alteration of attitude from Cord startled Kalam, then filled him with suspicion. Until I sleep, that is. Gods below, I was far better off on my own. Where did that damned demon go, anyway? ‘And when you’ve done that, Sergeant, head back up to the others and begin preparations—we’re leaving this place.’

  ‘What about the captain and the lieutenant?’

  ‘What about them? They were swept away and they either drowned or were sprung loose in some watering hole. Either way, they’re not with us now, and I doubt they’re coming back—’

  ‘You don’t know that—’

  ‘They’ve been gone too long, Cord. If they didn’t drown they would have had to reach the surface somewhere close. You can hold your breath only so long. Now, enough with this discussion—get going.’

  ‘Aye . . . sir.’

  A torch in each hand, Cord headed up the stairs. Darkness swiftly engulfed the chamber.

  Kalam waited for his eyes to adjust, listening to the sergeant’s boot-steps growing ever fainter.

  And there, finally, far below, the glowing figure, indistinct, rippling beneath the rushing water.

  The assassin retrieved the rope and coiled it to one side. About twenty arm-lengths had been played out, but the bundle of spears held a lot more. Then he pried a large chunk of stone from the ragged edge and tied the sodden, icy-cold end of the rope to it.

  With Oponn’s luck, the rock was sufficiently heavy to sink more or less straight down. He checked the knots once more, then pushed it from the ledge.

  It plummeted, dragging the coiled rope down with it. The spears clacked tight, and Kalam peered down. The stone was suspended the full length of the rope—a distance that Kalam, and, no doubt, the captain and the lieutenant, had judged sufficient to make contact with the figure. But it hadn’t, though it looked close. Meaning he’s a big bastard. All right . . . let’s see how big. He grasped the spears and began lifting and rolling the bundle, playing out ever greater lengths.

  A pause to study the stone’s progress, then more playing out of rope.

  It finally reached the figure—given the sudden bowing of the line as the current took the slack. Kalam looked down once more. ‘Hood’s breath!’ The rock lay on the figure’s chest . . . and the distance made that stone look small.

  The armoured figure was enormous, three times a man’s height at least. The captain and the lieutenant had been deceived by the scale. Probably fatally so.

  He squinted down at it, wondering at the strange glow, then grasped the rope to retrieve the stone—

  And, far below, a massive hand flashed up and closed on it—and pulled.

  Kalam shouted as he was pulled down into the torrent. As he plunged into the icy water, he reached up in an attempt to grasp the bundle of spears.

  There was a fierce tug, and the spears snapped with an explosive splintering sound directly overhead.

  The assassin still held on to the rope, even as the current swept him along. He felt himself being pulled down.

  The cold was numbing. His ears popped.

  Then he was drawn close by a pair of massive chain-clad fists—close, and face to face with the broad grille of the creature’s helm. In the swirling darkness beneath that grille, the glimmer of a rotted, bestial visage, most of the flesh in current-fluttering strips. Teeth devoid of lips—

  And the creature spoke in Kalam’s mind. ‘The other two eluded me . . . but you I will have. I am so hungry—’

  Hungry? Kalam answered. Try this.

  He drove both long-knives into the creature’s chest.

  A thundering bellow, and the fists shot upward, pushing Kalam away—harder and faster than he had thought possible. Both weapons yanked—almost breaking the grip of his hands, but he held on. The current had no time to grasp him as he was thrown upward, shooting back through the hole in an exploding geyser of water. The ledge caught one of his feet and tore the boot off. He struck the chamber’s low stone ceiling, driving the last of his breath from his lungs, then dropped.

  He landed half on the pit’s ledge, and was nearly swept back into the river, but he managed to splay himself, clawing to regain the floor, moving clear of the hole. Then he lay motionless, numbed, his boot lying beside him, until he was able to draw in a ragged lungful of bitter cold air.

  He heard feet on the stairs, then Cord burst into the chamber and skidded to a halt directly above Kalam. The sergeant’s sword was in one hand, a torch flaring in the other. He stared down at the assassin. ‘What was that noise? What happened? Where are the damned spears—’

  Kalam rolled onto his side, looked down over the ledge.

  The frothing torrent was impenetrable—opaqued red with blood. ‘Stop,’ the assassin gasped.

  ‘Stop what? Look at that water! Stop what?’

  ‘Stop . . . drawing . . . from this well . . .’

  It was a long time before the shivers left his body, to be replaced with countless aches from his collision with the chamber’s ceiling. Cord had left then returned with others from his company, as well as Sinn, carrying blankets and more torches.

  There was some difficulty in prying the long-knives from Kalam’s hands. The separation revealed that the grips had somehow scorched the assassin’s palms and fingerpads.

  ‘Cold,’ Ebron muttered, ‘that’s what did that. Burned by cold. What did you say that thing looked like?’

  Kalam, huddled in blankets, looked up. ‘Like something that should nave been dead a long time ago, Mage. Tell me, how much do you know of B’ridys—this fortress?’

  ‘Probably less than you,’ Ebron replied. ‘I was born in Karakarang. It was a monastery, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Aye. One of the oldest cults, long extinct.’ A squad healer crouched beside him and began applying a numbing salve to the assassin’s hands. Kalam leaned his head against the wall and sighed. ‘Have you heard of the Nameless Ones?’

  Ebron snorted. ‘I said Karakarang, didn’t I? The Tanno cult claims a direct descent from the cult of the Nameless Ones. The Spiritwalkers say their pow
ers, of song and the like, arose from the original patterns that the Nameless Ones fashioned in their rituals—those patterns supposedly crisscross this entire subcontinent, and their power remains to this day. Are you saying this monastery belonged to the Nameless Ones? Yes, of course you are. But they weren’t demons, were they—’

  ‘No, but they were in the habit of chaining them. The one in the pool is probably displeased with its last encounter, but not as displeased as you might think.’

  Ebron frowned, then paled. ‘The blood—if anyone drinks water tainted with that . . .’

  Kalam nodded. ‘The demon takes that person’s soul . . . and makes the exchange. Freedom.’

  ‘Not just people, either!’ Ebron hissed. ‘Animals, birds—insects! Anything!’

  ‘No, I think it will have to be big—bigger than a bird or insect. And when it does escape—’

  ‘It’ll come looking for you,’ the mage whispered. He suddenly wheeled to Cord. ‘We have to get out of here. Now! Better still—’

  ‘Aye,’ Kalam growled, ‘get as far away from me as you can. Listen—the Empress has sent her new Adjunct, with an army—there will be a battle, in Raraku. The Adjunct has little more than recruits. She could do with your company, even as beaten up as it is—’

  ‘They march from Aren?’

  Kalam nodded. ‘And have likely already started. That gives you maybe a month . . . of staying alive and out of trouble—’

  ‘We can manage,’ Cord grated.

  Kalam glanced over at Sinn. ‘Be careful, lass.’

  ‘I will. I think I’ll miss you, Kalam.’

  The assassin spoke to Cord. ‘Leave me my supplies. I will rest here a while longer. So we don’t cross paths, I will be heading due west from here, skirting the north edge of the Whirlwind . . . for a time. Eventually, I will try to breach it, and make my way into Raraku itself.’

  ‘Lady’s luck to you,’ Cord replied, then he gestured. ‘Everyone else, let’s go.’ At the stairway, the sergeant glanced back at the assassin. ‘That demon . . . did it get the captain and the lieutenant, do you think?’

  ‘No. It said otherwise.’

  ‘It spoke to you?’

  ‘In my mind, aye. But it was a short conversation.’

  Cord grinned. ‘Something tells me, with you, they’re all short.’

  A moment later and Kalam was alone, still racked with waves of uncontrollable shivering. Thankfully, the soldiers had left a couple of torches. It was too bad, he reflected, that the azalan demon had vanished. Seriously too bad.

  It was dusk when the assassin emerged from the narrow fissure in the rock, opposite the cliff, that was the monastery’s secret escape route. The timing was anything but pleasant. The demon might already be free, might already be hunting him—in whatever form fate had gifted it. The night ahead did not promise to be agreeable.

  The signs of the company’s egress were evident on the dusty ground in front of the fissure, and Kalam noted that they had set off southward, preceding him by four or more hours. Satisfied, he shouldered his pack and, skirting the outcropping that was the fortress, headed west. Wild bhok’arala kept pace with him for a time, scampering along the rocks and voicing their strangely mournful hooting calls as night gathered. Stars appeared overhead through a blurry film of dust, dulling the desert’s ambient silver glow to something more like smudged iron. Kalam made his way slowly, avoiding rises where he would be visible along a skyline.

  He froze at a distant scream to the north. An enkar’al. Rare, but mundane enough. Unless the damned thing recently landed to drink from a pool of bloody water. The bhok’arala had scattered at that cry, and were nowhere to be seen. There was no wind that Kalam could detect, but he knew that sound carried far on nights like these, and, worse, the huge winged reptiles could detect motion from high above . . . and the assassin would make a good meal.

  Cursing to himself, Kalam faced south, to where the Whirlwind’s solid wall of whirling sand rose, three and a half, maybe four thousand paces distant. He tightened the straps of his pack, then gingerly reached for his knives. The effects of the salve were fading, twin throbbing pulses of pain slowly rising. He had donned his fingerless gloves and gauntlets—risking the danger of infection—but even these barriers did little to lessen the searing pain as he closed his hands on the weapons and tugged them loose.

  Then he set off down the slope, moving as quickly as he dared. A hundred heartbeats later he reached the blistered pan of Raraku’s basin. The Whirlwind was a muted roar ahead, steadily drawing a flow of cool air towards it. He fixed his gaze on that distant, murky wall, then began jogging.

  Five hundred paces. The pack’s straps were abrading the telaba on his shoulders, wearing through to the lightweight chain beneath. His supplies were slowing him down, but without them, he knew, he was as good as dead here in Raraku. He listened to his breathing grow harsher.

  A thousand paces. Blisters had broken on his palms, soaking the insides of his gauntlets, making the grips of the long-knives slippery, uncertain. He was drawing in great lungfuls of night air now, a burning sensation settling into his thighs and calves.

  Two thousand paces left, in so far as he could judge. The roar was fierce, and sheets of sand whipped around him from behind. He could feel the rage of the goddess in the air.

  Fifteen hundred remaining—

  A sudden hush—as if he’d entered a cave—then he was cartwheeling through the air, the contents of his pack loose and spinning away from the shredded remains on his back. Filling his ears, the echoes of a sound—a bone-jarring impact—that he had not even heard. Then he struck the ground and rolled, knives flying from his hands. His back and shoulders were sodden, covered in warm blood, his chain armour shredded by the enkar’al’s talons.

  A mocking blow, for all the damage inflicted. The creature could more easily have ripped his head off.

  And now a familiar voice entered his skull, ‘Aye, I could have killed you outright, but this pleases me more. Run, mortal, to that saving wall of sand.’

  ‘I freed you,’ Kalam growled, spitting out blood and grit. ‘And this is your gratitude?’

  ‘You delivered pain. Unacceptable. I am not one to feel pain. I only deliver it.’

  ‘Well,’ the assassin grated as he slowly rose to his hands and knees, ‘it comforts me to know in these, my last moments, that you’ll not live long in this new world with that attitude. I’ll wait for you other side of Hood’s gate, Demon.’

  Enormous talons snapped around him, their tips punching through chain—one in his lower back, three others in his abdomen—and he was lifted from the ground.

  Then flung through the air once more. This time he descended from a distance of at least three times his own height, and when he struck blackness exploded in his mind.

  Consciousness returned, and he found himself lying sprawled on the cracked pan, the ground directly beneath him muddy with his own blood. The stars were swimming wildly overhead, and he was unable to move. A deep thrumming reverberation rang in the back of his skull, coming up from his spine.

  ‘Ah, awake once more. Good. Shall we resume this game?’

  ‘As you like, Demon. Alas, I’m no longer much of a plaything. You broke my back.’

  ‘Your error was in landing head first, mortal.’

  ‘My apologies.’ But the numbness was fading—he could feel a tingling sensation, spreading out through his limbs. ‘Come down and finish it, Demon.’

  He felt the ground shake as the enkar’al settled on the ground somewhere to his left. Heavy thumping steps as the creature approached.

  ‘Tell me your name, mortal. It is the least I can do, to know the name of my first kill after so many thousands of years.’

  ‘Kalam Mekhar.’

  ‘And what kind of creature are you? You resemble Imass . . .’

  ‘Ah, so you were imprisoned long before the Nameless Ones, then.’

  ‘I know nothing of Nameless Ones, Kalam Mekhar.’ He could sense the e
nkar’al at his side now, a massive, looming presence, though the assassin kept his eyes shut. Then he felt its carnivore’s breath gust down on him, and knew the reptile’s jaws were opening wide.

  Kalam rolled over and drove his right fist down into the creature’s throat.

  Then released the handful of blood-soaked sand, gravel and rocks it had held.

  And drove the dagger in his other hand deep between its breast bones.

  The huge head jerked back, and the assassin rolled in the opposite direction, then regained his feet. The motion took all feeling from his legs and he toppled to the ground once more—but in the interval he had seen one of his long-knives, lying point embedded in the ground about fifteen paces distant.

  The enkar’al was thrashing about now, choking, talons ripping into the bleached earth in its frenzied panic.

  Sensation ebbed back into his legs, and Kalam began dragging himself across the parched ground. Towards the long-knife. The serpent blade, I think. How appropriate.

  Everything shuddered and the assassin twisted around to see that the creature had leapt, landing splay-legged directly behind him—where he had been a moment ago. Blood was weeping from its cold eyes, which flashed in recognition—before panic overwhelmed them once more. Blood and gritty froth shot out from between its serrated jaws.

  He resumed dragging himself forward, and was finally able to draw his legs up and manage a crawl.

  Then the knife was in his right hand. Kalam slowly turned about, his head swimming, and began crawling back. ‘I have something for you,’ he gasped. ‘An old friend, come to say hello.’

  The enkar’al heaved and landed heavily on its side, snapping the bones of one of its wings in the process. Tail lashing, legs kicking, talons spasming open and shut, head thumping repeatedly against the ground.

  ‘Remember my name, Demon,’ Kalam continued, crawling up to the beast’s head. He drew his knees under him, then raised the knife in both hands. The point hovered over the writhing neck, rose and fell until in time with its motion. ‘Kalam Mekhar . . . the one who stuck in your throat.’ He drove the knife down, punching through the thick pebbled skin, and the blood of a severed jugular sprayed outward.