Page 44

Chapter 44

Armies of Gold and Crimson

Upon the wide plain outside the ruins of the fortress in which I’d been held prisoner, two armies prepared to wage a war unlike any other– and those preparing to do the fighting had been misled, both about their enemy and about their odds of victory.

‘Smaller than I was expecting,’ Corrigan observed.

The seven of us had left the dubious safety of the town walls to trudge back along the same road where I’d carried Eliva’ren yesterday. We’d passed increasing numbers of other travellers, mostly farmhands and labourers, fleeing in the opposite direction. The two armies had approached the fortress from either side and looked ready to race for the ruins as if it were some giant stone flag to be captured the moment a neutral referee could be found to ring the starting bell. The Infernals had divisions of Demoniac Hellions, Malefic Artillerists, even a handful of Devilish Cavaliers mounted on hideous beasts who looked like they weren’t at all meant for this world and wouldn’t long survive their visit.

The Aurorals had come with a far more magnificent cavalry of Glorian Parevals mounted on silver-coated steeds whose gold-shod feet barely deigned to touch unconsecrated ground. Alongside them were contingents of Glorian Ardentors and Angelic Valiants. As with the Infernals, these elite divisions were small in number. The bulk of each army was made up of ill-trained Mortal recruits, who were being deployed far earlier than anyone had intended. I didn’t expect that would make them feel much better about their imminent brutal slaughter.

I believe professional military strategists refer to these situations as ‘shit-storms waiting to happen’.

‘What do they hope to accomplish?’ Galass asked.

The answer lay in the grim, iron-jawed expressions of the twelve Lords Celestine at the front of the Auroral army, armoured in gleaming gold and bearing silver and gold weapons so classical in design as to be archaic. They looked as if they were posing for heroic portraits rather than preparing to fight.

The thirteen Lords Devilish opposing them bore crimson-etched black armour and weapons more devious and crueller in design.

Neither side cared much for heroism.

‘I never knew,’ I said quietly, more to myself than anyone else. ‘I never really understood.’

‘Understood what, Fallen One?’ asked Alice. The absence of her customary sneer when she called me ‘Fallen One’ unmasked her own disquiet. She and I were perhaps the only beings alive to have been shaped by both the Aurorals and Infernals.

‘This is all they’ve ever wanted,’ I replied staring at the expressions on the faces of the Lords Devilish. They might look ugly and gleeful compared to the glorious noble countenances of their enemies, but their expressions mirrored those of the Lords Celestine. ‘They don’t care about ruling over the Mortal realm or winning the contest of souls. They don’t mind the prospect of losing and being eradicated for ever. That’s how badly they crave this fight.’

Among wonderists, there’s a kind of unspoken, tacit recognition that magic is addictive: a drug with as many intoxicating variants as there are different spells within each planar attunement. We all talk about magic as if it’s a set of tools that gives us an advantage over others in getting what we want, but that’s just the lie we tell ourselves. Casting spells, exerting power over others and the world around us. . . it feels good . It’s better than liquor or sex or the admiration of the mob. When we speak of spells as breaches into other planes where the laws of physics operate differently, thus triggering a momentary violation to the natural order of this realm, we’re burying the most meaningful word . That’s what magic is, and what makes it so perversely pleasurable: it’s the chance to violate nature, to violate other sentient beings.

There’s a word for people who do that sort of thing for pleasure.

But we wonderists are still limited by our human bodies. We can handle only so much magic, which is why Tempestoralists like Corrigan often die drawing too much lighting or aethereal fire into themselves, and blood mages like Galass go mad with the rush of manipulating too much of the life force of others. Even angelics like Shame lose themselves in the twisting of their own bodies to match the desires of those around them.

The Lords Devilish and Lords Celestine aren’t like us. They have made themselves into vessels with almost limitless capacities to channel magical forces. However, in their sudden urgency to destroy the Pandoral threat, they were beginning their war too soon, before they’d finished recruiting every possible Mortal soul to fuel their Auroral and Infernal magics.

From the ruins of the fortress a faint buzzing turned into a gale of beating insect wings announcing the Pandoral. He rose from the debris, the swarm of tiny, gleaming carapaced insects drawing pieces of stone and metal and whatever else they could find into the spaces between them, until the Pandoral loomed like a titan, at least a hundred feet tall, facing opponents whose eagerness to destroy him was a mere prelude to the violations they intended to commit upon one another.

‘Both sides have fallen into the same trap,’ Aradeus said. Rat mages always have especially good insight into the intricacies of tactical situations. ‘The Celestines and Devilish will attack, but their charge will be inefficient, as they won’t be working together. Nonetheless, the combined assault will, sooner or later, overwhelm the Pandoral.’

‘At which point they’ll begin attacking one another,’ Galass said, arms outstretched, fingers weaving in the air in tandem with the scarlet tresses of her hair. ‘Cade, I can feel their bloodlust. It’s. . . it’s all-consuming.’

‘Focus on something else,’ I warned her. ‘Don’t get locked into the flow of their life forces because pretty soon those life forces are going to get snuffed out and you won’t be able to pull away.’

‘What do we do?’ Alice asked, her whip-sword drawn but dangling limply by her side. Neither she nor it had any idea who to fight. ‘How can we prevent this from happening?’

‘You can’t,’ said a voice. I recognised it immediately, with its irritating timbre and perpetually fabricated sincerity. A clawed hand patted my shoulder companionably. ‘Best you and your pals get a move on, Cade,’ said my former Infernal agent. ‘What’s got to be is going to be.’

I steeled myself inside, covering up a dozen competing emotions with a veneer of amiability as casually impervious to scrutiny as that of any diabolic. ‘Glad you’re not dead, old buddy,’ I said to Tenebris as I turned to face him.

He grinned. ‘Me? I’m a survivor, Cade.’ He poked me in the centre of the chest with his clawed forefinger. ‘Like you.’

Trumpets began to blare from either side of the looming Pandoral, the brilliant brassiness of the Auroral horns rendered discordant by the reediness of the Infernal instruments.

‘Ugh,’ Tenebris groaned, covering his ears momentarily. ‘Why does our side always have to sound like fucking untuned clarinets?’ The question was rhetorical, because he immediately answered, ‘You know why our horns sound so shitty? Because a couple of the Lords Devilish like it that way and the others don’t give a crap, which means the rest of us have to suffer from their lousy ear for music.’

‘A metaphor, perhaps?’ Aradeus asked, twirling the strands of his moustache. Unlike Alice, he’d kept his rapier in its scabbard, knowing it would serve no purpose to draw steel against what was unfolding on that ill-fated field before us.

‘Exactly,’ Tenebris agreed. ‘That’s what’s screwed up both realms for millennia. Twelve Celestines and thirteen Devilish: twenty-three guys who fought their way to the top and then decided to play at being gods over everyone else.’

‘Then why not rebel?’ Galass asked. ‘Join our cause — ’

He waved away both her plea and her idealism. ‘Because when the guys on top have cannons to shoot you with, you don’t come at them with wooden sticks, girly.’

At last, we’d come to it: the scheme beneath all the other schemes. The reason why everything I had tried to do had been doomed from the start. In fact, we were half to blame for what was about to happen.

The other half, though?

‘It was you, all along, wasn’t it?’ I asked Tenebris, working through the tiny, almost insignificant details of the past few weeks. Our first encounter with the Spellslinger, when she’d taken control of one of the Angelic Valiants and brought forth her doom, which had led me to seek out information from the Infernals because they were the most likely culprits. That had led us to that secret prison and the three captive diabolics, two of whom Tenebris had made sure were dead so there’d be no alternative but to free him. Shit. And when the Spellslinger had finally shown up in person, it had been at Tenebris’ restaurant. From there, the meeting with the Lords Celestine, our capture by the Lords Devilish, the mission to take the Glorian Banner and my subsequent kidnapping by the Pandoral minions, who’d been tricked into thinking they were pulling one over on the Devilish. . .

But no. . . Tenebris’ influence had begun even earlier.

‘ You’re the one who devised the plan to kill the Seven Brothers up in the Blastlands,’ I continued. ‘You orchestrated the ruse to turn them into gates so the Celestines and Devilish could come to the Mortal realm and begin their Great Crusade, knowing all along that they would screw it up and you’d be able to turn them against one another.’

‘Why?’ Shame asked Tenebris. It was unusual for her to care about such things, but I suppose with the world ending and all. . . ‘You sounded so committed to the plans of the Devilish– so dedicated to the Infernal cause.’

‘I’m a patriot,’ Tenebris said without irony as he polished his claws against his crimson brocaded coat. ‘And like any patriot, I’m loyal right up to the point where my rulers turn out to be absolute fucking morons who’re going to ruin everything we’re supposed to stand for.’ He looked at me, apparently expecting some acknowledgment of his assessment.

I didn’t give him any.

‘We Infernals believe in embracing experience, Cade. We’re about living – here, now. The Aurorals, they think life is only a practice exam for some other, more perfect existence. But this Great Crusade?’ He swung an arm towards the armies who were about to attack the Pandoral. ‘There’s nothing to experience here; it’s just one endless slog of drudgery and misery. And thanks to those half-witted Lords Celestine with their so-called “virtues”, it’ll keep going on for ever– there’s no end to the exam, no perfect “other existence”. But no matter how many of us– on both sides– urged them to reconsider, those dumb fucks refused. The bosses are the betrayers, not us.’

‘How many of you?’ I asked.

His gaze shied away briefly. ‘Let’s just say, I represent a consortium of like-minded individuals in key positions within both camps. Unlike most of the Lords Celestine and Lords Devilish, these individuals are capable of envisioning a future in which the Mortal realm and all its opportunities are, if not shared, then let’s say, split down the middle. Under the right leadership, of course.’

Most of the Lords Celestine, he’d said. I glanced back at the Auroral army. The Twelve Virtues stood at the very front of the line. One of them might have sensed my presence, as her head turned. I could’ve sworn she’d winked at me.

Shit , I thought ruefully, if it turns out the traitor within the Auroral Hierarchy is the one Celestine I slept with, Corrigan will never let me live it down. Not that living is likely to be a concern of mine for long.

‘So, a new bunch of fucks to take the place of the old bunch of fucks,’ Corrigan said. He sounded pleased that the universe was proving to be just as corrupt as he’d always claimed.

‘Not as many, though,’ Tenebris insisted, as if that was important. ‘Twelve Celestines and Thirteen Devilish is way too many.’ He grinned at me, his fangs gleaming in the early morning light. ‘Can’t have twenty-three gods in the pantheon, am I right?’

I probably shouldn’t have slugged him. Given how well he’d been manipulating events, it was highly likely that within a matter of hours, Tenebris was going to be some sort of demi-god. But I had it on good authority that I myself was only hours away from dying. Possibly even minutes. Mostly, though, I thumped him because the banality of my former agent’s ambitions pissed me off.

‘You’re going to regret that, Cade,’ the diabolic informed me as he got back to his feet. ‘I was going to go easy on you on account of us having a history together, but now — ’

I slugged him again, harder this time, then turned to the others. ‘Listen, I’m going to try something. All evidence suggests it’s going to fail, but I can’t think of a better plan and I don’t intend to sit out this disaster without putting up some sort of a fight.’

I expected questions, or at least dubious looks, so I was kind of taken aback when Alice asked, ‘Is this plan of yours righteous?’

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. It had been a long time since justice had been any concern of mine, but I found myself nodding. ‘I think. . . I think it might be the most righteous thing I’ve ever done.’

Her whip-sword stiffened, the segments rattling together into a gleaming blade whose hilt she held to her heart. Weirdly, on demoniacs the heart is just above the belly. ‘I am Aliciaj Meharcorum Jedashaavethan Bestrezaada — ’ followed by a bunch of other barely intelligible parts of her demoniac lineage that were painful to hear until she got to the last part: ‘. . . daughter of Hazidan Rosh and a true Glorian Justiciar. Give me my orders, First Paladin. I will not fail you.’

Daughter? I repeated that silently to myself. Hazidan Rosh was going to have some explaining to do when next we met. If we ever met again.

‘I join my. . .’ Shame hesitated, then smiled distantly as if this were a private joke. ‘I join my sister in this oath. Having only recently begun to appreciate humanity’s foibles, I am loath for my education to end so soon.’

‘Oh, shit. We’re supposed to get all sentimental again?’ Corrigan grumbled, but he was smiling when he punched me in the arm, hard enough to numb my shoulder, as usual. ‘Tell me who to blow up and those fuckers will be most certainly obliterated.’

‘And I — ’ began Aradeus, then Shame clamped her hand over his mouth and whispered in his ear. After she pulled away, he looked at her and asked quietly, ‘Really? That’s how I sound? I was merely trying to be — ’

‘Go on,’ I told him. Calamity was unfolding less than a hundred yards away and time was growing short, but some things are worth the risk, you know? ‘Give us the speech, Aradeus.’

He did. It was pompous, poncey and way too fucking long, and I didn’t tear up even once and you can’t prove otherwise.

‘We’re ready, Cade,’ Galass said. She was crying her eyes out, but, you know, teenagers. Everything’s either the greatest love ever or the total end of the world. ‘Tell us what to do.’

I swear to whatever gods never existed, not to mention the ones I was so desperate to ensure never arose, it was Temper who broke me. He placed his paw on my shoulder, lifted it to my cheek, and said, ‘Motherfucker’ with such understanding for what I was about to attempt, such fondness, such. . . love .

Damn it.

‘Okay,’ I said, pulling myself together. ‘Let’s go and be heroes.’