“I am guessing that it’s the big building with the Black Ships floating over it.”
“I meant we don’t know where in that building.”
“We need to break him out.”
Ulrik laughed. “I admire your confidence. How are we going to get into the wizard’s palace? It will be protected by sorcery and by more swords than you or I can count.”
“I’ve broken into wizard’s towers before.”
“Was that before or after you were sold into slavery as a thief?”
She stretched and smiled. Her teeth were very sharp and her eyes were very bright. “Both.”
“Valerius had you stealing things?”
“He taught me a lot about how to avoid spell-traps and I knew a fair bit to begin with. My creator was a wizard, remember?”
“That’s good because if you are planning on getting into Molok’s lair, you will need to be an expert on that.”
“Well at least I will have you to help me,” she said, as she leaned forward and pressed herself against him.
“Why are you so desperate to get Valerius out? It will most likely mean your death.”
“If we don’t, it will almost certainly mean your death. That implant is not going away and if our master does die, you will go shortly thereafter.”
“You’re not telling me you want to do it because of me?”
“I want to do it because of both of you, and because I am compelled to by my geas. I would probably try it anyway, just to see whether it could be done.” She grinned at him, and he realised then that she was not quite sane by the standards that humans measured sanity.
There were things he needed to do and they did not involve freeing the wizard just yet. Perhaps ever. He needed to discover more about the nature of the hold that Valerius had on him and he meant to find out if there was some way he could free himself from it. Now that he was back in Hydra there was a chance that he might manage this.
Once again anger burned in the pit of Ulrik’s stomach. He hated being enslaved in this way. At least in the Pit he had been left alone when he was not fighting or training. Now he had to come and go at someone else’s beck and call, like a trained dog. And that person had the means to frighten him, to get into his thoughts and make him seriously want to obey. Valerius could squash him like a bug, virtually without thinking, and would if it suited his purposes.
Such thoughts were getting him nowhere, he’d better get on with whatever was he was going to do. Who did he know here? Who could tell him something? Marius. He would visit that wicked old man and his equally frightening wife. Perhaps they could be of help. At very least, it was worth a try.
His silence troubled Rhea. She spoke again, “Seriously. Why are you not so keen to tag along with me? Death at the point of a sword won’t be so bad as what will happen to you if Valerius’s restraining spell unravels. From what I understand, it might happen even if his concentration lapses, if he was under torture for instance.”
“I take it that’s your geas forcing you to tell me this.”
“It’s my intelligence. I know what is going to happen to you if you don’t help me. Valerius made it clear.”
“Look. I will help you if I can, but there are some things I need to check out. There are people who might be able to help.” Ulrik decided it was best not to tell her that he would be looking for help for himself and not Valerius.
“I’ll come with you.”
“This is something I need to do alone.”
“Trying to get rid of me already?” She showed her sharp teeth. He could not tell whether it was a smile or a threat. Perhaps it held a little of both. “Why the sudden change?” she asked.
“I am going to talk with old friends, folk who would be nervous around strangers.”
She considered this for a moment.
“You can wait here or check out Molok’s Tower. We can meet back here.”
With a quirk of her hips Rhea strode sinuously off through the door.
He felt guilty about that and pushed it aside, deciding that he felt more sorry for anyone who interfered with her. She could look after herself. And what was she to him? There were people in this city he desperately needed to find. There was no reason why he should feel bad about leaving Rhea on her own. He felt bad anyway.
Chapter Eighteen
The air in the Low Quarter had not changed much. It still smelled of strange alchemical compounds bubbling up from the depths of the earth. It was still the same mass of ruins and hovels. Here the ruins were even more crazily toppled than elsewhere. Sometimes they leaned against each other like drunks propping each other in the street. The people had a desperate look, the same feral savagery as was visible among the poor everywhere in this world. Ulrik swaggered along through the streets, counting on his size and attitude and his obvious weaponry to keep him safe.
The smell of dreamsmoke wafted through the air. Hovering glowglobes flickered. Eyes watched him wolfishly, as people looked for their next meal. Ulrik’s appearance, and the sense of danger he radiated kept the scavengers back. A whore who must have weighed twice what he did beckoned to him. Ripples of fat half-buried the pictoglyphs of allurement inscribed on her arms. When movement exposed one of them, he felt the tug of sexual attraction. It strobed away just as quickly when the sweaty, perfumed flesh folded in on itself. Ulrik remembered what Valerius had told him about the way such magic drained life and wondered whether it was that or her way of life that made the woman seem so old.
A dapper tout with a shaven head and neatly cut beard beckoned to him with one human hand while scratching his chin with a reptilian claw. Many people, even the poorest seemed to have been modified with fleshgrafts. Ulrik found it hard to be repulsed since he had been so heavily modified himself. The folk of the slum seemed less human somehow. There was a desperation and a craziness in their eyes even greater than he remembered.
The folk around him were not the confident crews of pirate airships but the lowest of the low in the pecking order of the city, the day labourers, the old, the poor, the dreamsmoke-addicted, the drunks, the beggars, the people for whom Hydra’s dream of ill-gotten wealth had turned out to be just another mirage. Not people like himself, he thought with sour humour, patting the purse of coin Serena had so generously returned to him to make sure that it was still there.
There were labouring Greys too old to work and beginning the inevitable process of dissolution, massive Brutes who had given in to the desire for booze, assorted changelings from the wastelands who could find refuge nowhere else. He remembered this part of the city well. It was where he had lived when he first came to Hydra. Now everyone had a haunted, hunted look when they did not have the glimmer of madness in their eyes. Molok had certainly changed things here.
He was relieved to see that the entrance to the shophouse was still there, and Zela, the wizard’s massive slatternly wife sat outside it, smoking her pipe. An old meat cleaver rested on her leather apron which kept the thugs away just about as well as it discouraged business. She looked up at Ulrik as he approached, and gave him a gap-toothed grin, as if she had just spoken to him the day before. “Wondered when you would show up again, captain,” she said. “Heard you’d been executed.”
He grinned back. There had been a time when he and the wizard and his wife had done quite a lot of business. He had bought some of his best grafts from them. “Marius in? I have some work for him.”
“Do you have some coin for him?”
Ulrik nodded.
“Then he’s in.” She turned her head and bellowed over her shoulder. “Husband, a customer!”
Ulrik strode in and went into the back of the shop. The ceiling was as low as he remembered and even more packed with wizardly paraphernalia. Marius was even smaller and more shrivelled looking than Ulrik remembered. His long yellow stained moustache dripped from his beak nose to his chest. Short sighted eyes squinted up through pebble thick bi-focals. He wiped his nose on the red-embroidered billowing sleeve of his threadb
are whitish robe, smearing some runes with snot, and said, “Captain Ulrik, it’s you.”
“How is business?” Ulrik asked. Marius spread the long gnarled fingers of his surprisingly large hands in a gesture of indifference. A sudden flash of memory, of days when those fingers had been covered with his own blood came back to Ulrik.
“Could be better. How about you? Heard you were captured.”
“I was.”
“Not many make a comeback from that. It’s the long drop for most if they are lucky.”
“I wasn’t lucky.”
Marius raised one bushy eyebrow. “You look healthy enough, although I’d have to run the old aetherscope over you to tell whether that was really the case. How are the grafts I did for you? Still working?”
“Good as gold. You did good work.”
“You paid good money.”
“I hear it’s in short supply these days.”
“If you’re a fleshgrafter it is. Molok and his followers have all the work. They don’t make a profit on it either, or I’m half-Shadar. Drives down the prices everyone else can charge too. Not much money in magic these days. There are times when I wish we had a guild.”
Ulrik looked at their surroundings. They were even shabbier than he remembered and Marius himself looked as if he were still dressed in the same clothes gone even further to seed. Considering what he was going to tell the wizard, he would be trusting the man with his life. Marius was a strange bird, more interested in his research than money, more interested in his drink than his research most of the time, sometimes forgetful, sometimes sharp as a truesteel blade. Ulrik considered him a friend but any man could prove treacherous if the reward was large enough and they were short of cash. Ulrik let his breath out slowly. He doubted that the bounty on the information he was about to give would prove that large. “My life has taken a strange turn.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” Marius rose, looked around carefully, closed the door and unstoppered one of his alchemical flasks. “Drink? The wife thinks it’s material for my experiments.”
“You sure it’s not?” The wizard had been known to be absent minded.
Marius sniffed at the liquid then poured it into two alchemical beakers. “Potion of levitation,” he said. “Will get you high as kite.”
Ulrik accepted a glass and sipped at it. It burned his tongue and made him blink his eyes.
“A strange turn you said,” said Marius returning to the business at hand.
“This place still warded?”
“Always. You can talk freely here.”
“What do you know of House Karnak?”
“Big bad business. Typhonian wizard- merchants. Rich as the God-Kings of Kruul. Mixed up in Imperial politics and dark magic and all manner of subworld stuff. A real power in Typhon which means a real power in this wicked old world. You with them now?”
“You could say that.”
Marius let out a low whistle. “A strange turn like you said.”
Swiftly Ulrik outlined what had happened, concentrating on the binding Valerius had put on him. Marius listened and nodded occasionally but said nothing. When Ulrik finished there was a long silence. Eventually he said; “What do you think?”
“Yes,” said Marius.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, your life has taken a strange turn.”
“What about the implant?”
“Such a thing is technically possible if the caster possessed superlative skill. There are several ancient texts that refer specifically to such forms of binding and compulsion. The Slave Lords of Ygtharok were masters of them. I could probably find something about it in my library if you give me some time.” He indicated the shelves of ancient tomes that covered the far wall.
“All I need to know is can the bloody thing be removed?”
“I take it you want me to take a look into that as well.”
“That, along with my desire to sample your fine potions, is why I am here.”
“Then you’d better cross my palm with coin.”
Ulrik produced the bag which Serena had given him. Marius gestured to a long coffin like metal instrument at one side of the wall. “Strip off and lie down there under the eye of the aetherscope,” he said.
Ulrik did as he was told. Marius moved several crystal lenses into position and then spoke the words of an incantation. The lenses lit up, showing strange patterns that writhed and wriggled like a nest of multi-coloured snakes. Ulrik could see their reflection in Marius’s glasses. The wizard let out a long, low whistle and helped himself to another slug of potion from his beaker. “Impressive,” he said.
“Well?”
“You’ve certainly been ensorcelled by a master of the craft. The thing is growing slowly, feeding on your blood and lifeforce.”
“Is it killing me?”
“You feel hungrier than you used to? Is your sleep deeper? Do you have strange dreams?”
Ulrik nodded. The little sorcerer cackled in a way that was far from reassuring. “Then eat more, sleep more, and maybe take some interesting hallucinogens. That should keep the little bastard happy.”
“It should keep me happy as well.”
“I doubt it. Most of the excess will go to your little visitor.”
“Won’t that make it grow?”
“It’s a delicate balancing act. If you don’t it will most likely start to cannibalise your blood and muscle and thought. Don’t overdo it. Notice any other changes?”
“Those fleshgrafts you put in seem to be working better.”
“That’s no reflection on my workmanship. The grafts share gene-runes in common with the parasite. It’s probably splicing itself to them. Since its also spliced to your nerve-trunks you’re getting the benefit. It’s hard to say how much but I would be surprised if it was not significant. There seem to be other changes. I have never seen anything as wildly mutated as this thing before. It seems to be spreading through your entire nervous system.”
Ulrik steeled himself and asked the big question. “Can you remove it?”
Marius stiffened and drummed his fingers on the cupola of the aetherscope. He looked up at the ceiling as if he expected to find an answer graven on its rune-embossed surface. He paused for so long that Ulrik was forced to repeat the question.
The sorcerer coughed and said, “There’s wards here against tampering and they have the sort of power that it would take an archmage to overcome, which sadly for all of us, I am not. The life-knots are so tied that snapping them would most likely let the little beast go free and do whatever its been intended to do. And if I do more than look at the weave, the caster will know, and it looks like he could do something about it too. This is a truly impressive bit of work. Nasty but impressive.” There was a certain respect in his voice when he spoke.
“You sure?”
“As I am of anything. You might want to get a second opinion but I am pretty certain that any other grafter will tell you the same thing as I have.”
“What do you think?”
“I think you should go along with this Valerius and hope he keeps his end of the deal. It’s most likely your best chance of getting out of this thing alive. Or getting this thing out alive.”
“You think he can undo the spell?”
“If he can’t, maybe no one can.”
“No one?”
“If you had access to Elder magic, a potent artefact or the power of a Demon Prince you might be able to get rid of it. A god would be able to do it, but they all left this blighted world aeons ago.”
“You’re not filling my heart with hope.”
“I can fill your belly with booze which might be the next best thing under the circumstances.” Marius refreshed their beakers and both of them took a sip.
“Interestingly enough this mixture becomes more appealing the more I drink it,” Ulrik said.
“You begin to understand one of the fundamental principles of alchemy.” The booze settled like liquid fire in his stomach but
it did not have the kick he remembered. Most likely that was his implant at work. Still, he felt a buzz coming on and his tongue begin to loosen. It was not the only thing that did. For the first time in days, he did not feel tension between his shoulder blades and his muscles did not seem to be wound so tight.
“You sure the thing is dormant,” he asked eventually.
“It’s sleeping like a rugrat at the moment.”
“Valerius says he can bring it to life. That it will eat my body and soul and turn into a fully-fledged demon.”
“Perfectly possible. The breed of demons that thing was derived from is famous for its unwholesome habit of laying its eggs inside sentient beings. There are wasps and spiders that do the same sort of thing. Gives the larvae something to eat when they hatch.”
“Is there anybody in the city that might be able to help me?”
Marius considered. “Molok might. If anyone has that kind of power and knowledge, it’s him.”
“What’s this about Molok? Last I heard he was some sort of advisor to the Council. Now you’re telling me he’s the man to go for if you want top flight wizardry and a lot of folk are crapping themselves at the mention of his name...”
“And I don’t blame them for it. But if there’s any man in the city that might be able to deal with your problem, he’s that man. Like most wizards I have a tendency to belittle my fellows but I have to say that for all his madness he is most likely the greatest wizard of our lifetime, possibly of our aeon.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Look at the stuff coming out of his sanctum— believe me, I have. Soul-eating blades, demon-binding engines. Infernal warships. It’s brilliant stuff.”
“I’ll take your word for that.”
“Please do. I would like to think that all of my years of actually practising magic counted for something in this discussion.”
“You sound almost as if you admire this degenerate demon-worshipper.”
“I certainly envy him his talent. I fear him more than death, if you want the truth. He’s doing something awful in that palace of his. The flows of magical energy around it are dark as sin. Demons are drawn to the place. They go in but they don’t come out.” Ulrik thought of the flock of demons they had encountered on the way here. Could they have been drawn by Molok’s magic?