Malus’ vision swam. A wave of disorientation swept over him, then suddenly he was kneeling in the square chamber within the tower of Eradorius, surrounded by three doors panelled in dark wood.
He was a heartbeat away from driving his own knife into his throat.
The highborn fell backwards, drawing the knife point from his neck. Pain bloomed beneath his chin and the sensation was almost exhilarating. “An illusion…” he panted, “all… an illusion.”
A shadow fell over him. Malus looked up and saw a hooded figure standing over him, his face lost in shadow. His breath felt like a cold wind against Malus’ cheek.
“Who is the coward now, Malus Darkblade?” the figure said. “Who skulks and schemes in the shadows of his betters?”
For a moment, Malus was startled into speechlessness by the figure. A lesser man might have broken beneath the shock of the revelation he’d been given, but the highborn was sustained by the fire of the hatred still burning in his heart.
“Do you think to break me with but a glance in the mirror?” Malus rose slowly to his feet. “Did you think I would die from the shock of my own ugliness? If so, you are wrong. I am not broken. I am not defeated. My hate is strong and while I hate, I live.”
Malus rushed at the hooded figure, grabbing a handful of his robe with one hand. “You’ve held a mirror up to my face—now let’s have a look at yours, Eradorius!”
The highborn tore away the robe with a convulsive wrench of his hand, revealing a black-skinned figure whose muscular form swelled before him until it towered over him like a giant. A lantern-jawed face leered down at Malus, smiling a lunatic grin full of pointed fangs. Green eyes glowed eerily from the almost-human face and a long dragon’s tongue licked from fleshless lips.
“Clever, clever little druchii,” Tz’arkan said. “But yet so very wrong.”
Malus recoiled in shock—and the daemon struck like a viper, his mouth growing impossibly wide as it closed around the highborn’s head and shoulders and swallowed him whole.
He lay in blackness, coiled around a daemon’s heart.
The darkness around him was empty, like the blackness between the stars. Malus had never known such cold could exist—it sank into his body and sucked the life from it, spilling his living essence into the blackness like a wound carved into his very soul. The cold spread like death itself—no, not death, because to Malus death was a force unto itself, like a storm or a raging fire. This was nothingness, utter and absolute and it filled him with fear.
There was heat in the heart of the daemon—heat nurtured from the lifeblood of worlds. Malus pressed himself against that horrid, unnatural organ, forcing his cold skin into the slime and feeling the souls squirming within. Hundreds of souls, thousands of them, all frozen in a single moment of pure, soul-shattering terror. He felt each and every one, like a shard of razor-edged glass and he crushed them against his flesh, savouring their brief warmth. He howled in agony and ecstasy, propelled by the mingled passions of entire civilisations as the Drinker of Worlds consumed them. For one titanic heartbeat Malus was pierced by the collective madness of an entire people—then they were gone.
Then came another beat of the daemon’s heart and another multitude of souls shrieked in transcendent agony. Malus howled in absolute horror even as he forced these needles of crystalline passion deeper into his soul.
Tz’arkan had possessed him—now he was inside the daemon, feeling what it felt as it looked out upon the raging storms of purest Chaos. He saw with the daemon’s eyes as universes span through the ether, each one trembling with the dew of countless souls. He could feel each soul on each world in each universe, taste a lifetime’s passions in the space of a single breath.
Tz’arkan moved among worlds unnumbered and Malus realised how insignificant he was before such power. When the daemon spoke, all of Creation trembled.
“See the power of my will, mortal, and despair. Give yourself unto me, and all this will be yours in return.”
Malus felt himself fraying beneath the sheer pressure of Tz’arkan’s awareness. He was dying. He could feel it. And with that realisation all his fear simply fell away.
Go on, he thought. Destroy me.
The storm of Chaos raged around him. Nothingness ate at his soul.
Yet he did not die.
Destroy me, Malus raged! I’m nothing but a speck to you—wipe me away!
He hung suspended over the maelstrom of Creation… but still he did not die.
Is this some kind of trick, Malus thought? And then, he realised: of course it was. It was just another turn in the labyrinth, another gambit to break his spirit.
All of it was in his mind. He knew this. And if it was in his mind, Malus thought, it was subject to his will.
You had your chance, Eradorius, he seethed, summoning his hate. Now you’ll dance to my tune.
Malus bent his will to the raging storm around him. Show me your secrets, sorcerer! Open your mind to me!
The highborn’s will blazed like a new-born star in the firmament of madness and Creation collapsed like a bursting bubble. Malus fell into darkness, but his descent was marked by laughter, wild and triumphant.
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE IDOL OF KOLKUTH
There was no ceiling. He was standing in the centre of the square tower, surrounded by staircases reaching up to galleries that rose as far as his eyes could see. It was a vertical labyrinth that twisted and turned back upon itself and stretched upwards seemingly without end. The tower had looked simple and straightforward on the outside, but the reality was anything but, shaped by the insane sorceries of Eradorius and the Idol of Kolkuth.
The maze of the mad sorcerer was revealed at last, stripped of its illusions but no less daunting for all that.
Gritting his teeth, Malus chose a staircase at random and started upwards. It was a narrow, twisting stair, without rails or supporting walls to anchor it, but the stone was steady beneath his feet nonetheless. It carried him up to the second gallery, then turned right, leading into a small room. From there, four more staircases climbed upwards towards the top of the tower.
Stay consistent, he told himself. These things have a pattern to them. Make the same choice every time so you don’t lose your place.
He went to the very same position that the first staircase occupied in the room below and started upwards. The stairway climbed up into the diffuse green light—and ended at a wall. There was a moment of vertigo—Malus’ head swam and his feet seemed drawn to the wall as if by gravity. He took another step—and walked out onto the wall. Malus blinked, unable to orient himself for a moment.
The light was streaming down on him from above. He looked up to see the galleries of the tower stretching endlessly overhead.
He was back in the room where he had begun.
“Blessed Mother of Darkness,” Malus cursed. This is madness.”
“You have never spoken more truly in your life,” Tz’arkan replied. If the daemon had any awareness of the visions Malus saw within the labyrinth, it gave no sign. The labyrinth is a reflection of Eradorius’ own tortured mind. You will wind up like one of those twisted ghosts on the plain before you come to fully understand the maze and its maddened paths.”
“I don’t want to understand the damned place,” Malus seethed. “I just want to reach the idol.” He tried to think of the resources he had at hand. “We need some means of laying a trail.” Yet he had no chalk or string to hand. Malus bared his teeth. “Is there something you could do to mark our path, daemon?” he asked reluctantly.
“Nothing could be simpler,” Tz’arkan said and pain bloomed from the back of Malus’ right hand.
The highborn cried out, raising his sword arm—and saw the black veins on the back of his hand bulge and writhe like river eels. The skin of his hand distended as one of the veins took on a life of its own, extending itself as a pulsing tendril and burying itself in a crack between two paving stones. The line grew taut, but Malus guessed there was
more length to be played out, as though his veins were just one long skein of twine he could unravel as he walked. He could feel the entire length of the living cord, like an extension of his own skin. It was the most revolting, unsettling sensation he had ever felt in his life.
“I bet you never thought you had such depths to draw upon,” the daemon chuckled. “We can unravel you for miles before you spill your organs on the floor.”
Cursing quietly to himself, Malus picked the left-most stair and started upwards once more.
He could not tell if he had been climbing for hours or days.
Malus had made quite a few wrong turns at first, ending up in places he’d been before and using the cord to retrace his steps. Over time he’d grown sensitive to the feeling in the vein stretching out behind him and was able to sense when he began to turn back towards it. So long as he kept it playing out behind him, he knew he was making progress and so he slowly but steadily climbed higher up the tower. Already, the floor of the tower was many hundreds of feet below. He was making progress, of that he was certain.
Unfortunately, he was equally certain something was stalking him in the sorcerer’s great maze.
He’d begun to hear distant sounds—thumps and scrapes, like something heavy lurching across the stone floor. Once or twice when his path took him near the centre of the tower he would peer down at the galleries below and would catch a glimpse of shadowy movement. Was it one of the ghosts from the plain, or did the tower have its own guardian to keep interlopers away from its innermost secrets?
Whatever it was, Malus had few options. He wasn’t about to retrace his steps and try to confront it—that could well be what the creature wanted in the first place. No, he decided, if it wanted to stop him then sooner or later it would have to confront him and when it did he would deal with it.
It wasn’t long after making the decision that he began to hear the sound of deep grunts and long, snuffling breaths, as though some huge beast was sniffing the air for his scent and loping along his trail. The sound came from every direction it seemed—above, behind, left and right, as though the creature were circling him in the twisted maze. Fighting a growing sense of uneasiness, Malus pressed on. The closer it gets, the closer I must be to my goal, he thought.
Then, without warning, he came upon a door. It was a simple wooden affair, but it was the first one he’d seen since entering the tower. Malus laid a hand on the iron ring and pulled it open—and heard an enraged bellow echo from somewhere behind him. Now we’re making progress, the highborn thought.
Beyond the door was a room with another set of stairs—the sight looked disturbingly familiar. Thinking quickly, he picked one staircase and started upwards. It led to another door and room virtually identical to the one he’d just left.
In the room just behind him, something huge smashed against the door with a thunderous crash and Malus remembered the dreams he’d had of this very moment. Without knowing why, he began to run. As if hearing his hurried footsteps, the guardian of the labyrinth bellowed in his wake and the door behind him banged against its frame as the creature burst through.
Malus ran on, focusing on the tendril playing out from his hand and using it to steer his course ever higher. Thunder followed after him as he ran, the beast smashing aside each door he left behind. Whatever it was sounded enormous and powerful and filled with mounting rage. He’d have tried to taunt it if he’d had any breath to spare.
Suddenly the highborn swept through another identical square room and up a flight of stairs—and found himself once more at the rail of a gallery overlooking the tower’s centre. He was so high now that the floor was invisible in the greenish light. The highborn was further surprised to see that only one staircase lay available to him and it led up. Sensing he was near the end of the cursed maze, he sped on, only absently realising that the sounds of pursuit had stopped.
The staircase climbed without support into the open air above the gallery, winding around and around as it led upwards to a central point. It ended in a landing and a pair of rune-inscribed doors.
At last, Malus thought. Grinning triumphantly, he grabbed one of the iron rings and pulled the door open—and a huge creature leapt through the doorway with a thunderous roar, brandishing an enormous axe!
It was the guardian of the maze, Malus realised, hurling himself backwards barely in time to avoid a deadly sweep of the monster’s blade.
The creature was huge, towering head and shoulders over Malus. Its powerfully-muscled body looked brutish and human, but its skin gleamed like brass and its head was that of an enraged bull. The creature swung its axe in broad, powerful strokes, but compared to the druchii it was clumsy and slow. Malus let out a savage cry and lunged beneath the monster’s guard, swinging at its muscled belly. Just at the apex of his swing, however, his hand was pulled up short—the cord leading from his hand was binding him. The blade struck the monster but the blow was weak and the keen edge glanced harmlessly from the guardian’s side. It advanced on him, swinging its axe at the highborn’s neck and Malus was forced to retreat.
“What are you doing?” Tz’arkan raged. “Kill it!”
Malus planted his feet and darted forward like a viper, lashing out at the monster’s knee. This time there was enough slack in the cord that the blow struck with full force—and rebounded with a harsh clang. “My blade can’t penetrate its hide!” Malus cried in horror. “It’s as though it were solid brass! Can’t you do something?”
“It’s all I can do to keep the cord from breaking!” the daemon answered. “You think of something!”
The axe sliced at him in a short, backhanded blow and Malus saw it coming a fraction of a second too late. It struck a glancing blow across his breastplate, but the impact threw him off his feet. For a sickening instant he plummeted through the air, catching himself at the edge of one of the stairs at the last moment. His feet dangled over the tower’s central chasm and Malus let go of his sword and fought for purchase on the smooth stones with his hands.
A shadow loomed over him. The guardian stepped ponderously towards him, his huge feet picking their way through loops of Malus’ living cord. The highborn snarled fiercely, winding a length of the cord in his hand.
“I’ve seen how well you fight, beast,” he said, watching the creature’s movements carefully. “Let’s see how well you keep your feet!”
Just as the guardian reached him it stepped through a loop of living cord. Malus hauled back on the black line with all his might, pulling it taut just as the monster moved forward. The huge creature stumbled, arms flailing for balance and then with a despairing bellow it pitched over and plummeted over Malus’ head and into the central chasm. The highborn let go of the cord and listened as the monster’s bellow receded into the distance. By the time Malus had climbed back onto the stair and rolled, panting, onto his back, it struck bottom with a sound like the tolling of an enormous bell.
Beyond the double doors at the top of the stairs was a small, octagonal room. Inside lay a complicated set of sigils inscribed into the floor, surrounding a stone pedestal. At the feet of the pedestal lay a skeleton, contorted in a pose of agonising death. Upon the pedestal stood an idol worked from brass, barely a foot in height.
The Idol of Kolkuth. Malus saw it and expected to feel triumph, but instead felt only a sort of weary disgust.
“All this blood and intrigue for a piece of brass scrap?” he said.
“Can mere brass twist time and space to its master’s whim?” Tz’arkan replied. Take it, Malus. The second relic is within your grasp.”
Powerful energies throbbed in the air of the small chamber. Malus studied the skeleton warily. “Is that Eradorius?”
“Indeed,” the daemon said with some amusement. “So much effort to build a tower where he thought I could not find him. The madman built a maze beyond the ken of mortal men and placed an implacable guardian to keep it safe—but in his paranoid zeal he gave the guardian too much power and it not only kept others out, b
ut trapped Eradorius within. Wondrous irony, is it not?”
Malus stepped forward, the toes of his boots brushing the outer edge of the sigil—and a powerful wave of disorientation flooded through him. It was as though he was a piece of wood tossed on a stormy sea—and yet at the same time everything felt familiar, as though he’d been here many times before.
Time and space, twisted within the arcane loops of the sigil, the highborn realised. Malus took another step towards the idol and his mind filled with visions.
He hung from hooks in the Vaulkhar’s tower, delirious with agony.
He stood on the deck of a heaving ship in the middle of a fight, ducking at the last minute to avoid a crossbow bolt fired from a would-be assassin.
He stood in the middle of a swirling melee and narrowly avoided a decapitating stroke from Bruglir’s sword.
All points led to this moment. Malus took another step and the visions continued, stretching past him into the future.
He raised his arms in triumph over a swathe of blood-stained sand, holding a druchii’s severed head in his hands.
He saw Yasmir striding towards him across a bridge made of skulls, naked and luminous, her daggers glinting in her hands.
He saw a tower backlit against a seething crimson sky, besieged by an army that blackened the snowy earth and cried out for his blood.
Malus staggered, stumbling forward and the visions came more quickly.
He saw himself upon a throne of red oak with a Vaulkhar’s tore around his throat.
He saw himself at the head of a vast army of druchii, charging up a road towards a waiting elven army with the high cliffs of Ulthuan towering above him.