Luke Scull - The Grim Company

Triumph flooded Cole. He tore the glowing dagger free of its sheath and brandished it before him. ‘Yes. A hero’s weapon. And it will be your death.’

That pronouncement wasn’t met with the sudden fear he expected. Instead the Magelord closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again he looked tired. So very tired. ‘You are aware Magebane’s power functions only for you. Did you ever question why?’

Cole shrugged. ‘What does it matter?’

‘The weapon you hold is tied to your father’s blood, which you alone share. It is bondmagic.’

‘No — that’s not true!’ Cole felt anger take hold. Bondmagic was something only Augmentors used.

Salazar raised the thin cane on which he leaned and pointed it at Magebane. ‘The blade is an alloy of unique potency. Abyssium is rarer than dragon’s teeth.’ He lowered the cane and leaned on it once more. ‘The process of enchanting the weapon was complicated. It took me ten days spent in isolation. It is perhaps my finest work.’

Cole’s mouth dropped open as the implications of what he was hearing sank in. ‘You created Magebane?’ he asked in astonishment.

Salazar nodded. ‘After a cabal of wizards attempted to have me assassinated, I decided the city must be purged of those with the gift.’ The tyrant sighed and shook his head. ‘It was not an easy decision. There was a time when I defied the very gods to protect my brothers and sisters from persecution.’

‘What does the Culling have to do with my father?’ Even as he asked the question, Cole could feel cold dread worming its way into his heart.

The ruler of Dorminia raised an age-spotted hand to stroke absently at his drooping moustache. ‘Illarius was a man of many qualities. Loyal. Reliable. Ruthless. He alone I deemed fitting of the weapon you hold. He served me well as an Augmentor for many years.’

My father… an Augmentor? One of Salazar’s killers? Cole wanted nothing more than to plunge his dagger into the wizard before more lies could spill from his mouth. ‘You’re lying!’ he shouted. ‘My father was a rebel leader! Everyone knows that!’

‘Do they? How many men and women in the street, when stopped and asked, have heard the name Illarius Cole?’

Despite his rage, Cole paused to consider this. Only the older Shards, it seemed, had ever mentioned his father: Garrett, and Remy and Vicard, on occasion. They had never been very effusive on the subject. But why would Garrett and the rest lie to him? Salazar’s trying to trick me into letting my guard down .

‘If he truly did serve you, why have him killed?’ Cole shot back, desperately hoping he had found a fatal flaw in the Magelord’s argument.

‘The abyssium that I used to forge Magebane did not react quite as expected to the binding spell. It left me… vulnerable.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Cole, now genuinely confused.

‘The bondmagic possessed by my Augmentors should remain bound to me. Yet I had no control over Magebane. I could not sense its presence, or that of its wielder. I could not siphon from it. Most troubling of all, I could not sever the weapon’s link to Illarius when it had fulfilled its purpose.’ He sighed, and there was a hint of regret in his voice. ‘It pained me to order his death. There was simply no alternative. Not after witnessing his efficacy during the Culling. The threat was too great.’

Cole wanted to refute that cold logic, ridicule the words as a pack of lies. He couldn’t, and so he played the last card he possessed. ‘My mother would never marry an Augmentor!’ he spat. ‘She was a good woman.’ Garrett had always told him so.

Salazar was silent for a time. ‘The Illarius Cole I knew never married,’ he said evenly, without humour or malice. ‘His son was begat on a whore.’

His son was begat on a whore .

Cole took a step towards Salazar. ‘My mother was named Sophia, you lying bastard! She was the daughter of a shipwright. We had a house on-’

‘-on Leviathan Walk just north of the harbour. Yes, I recall. I had offered him an estate in the Noble Quarter. Illarius was never much for ostentation.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Sophia… An exotic name. The kind a harlot would choose.’

Cole’s world was threatening to collapse around him. It all made sense now. The story about his father being a hero. His mother dying in childbirth. The false legacy he held in his hand, a few feet from Salazar’s wrinkled old neck. Lies. All lies.

He stared out past the Magelord, towards the fierce fighting that still raged far below them in the distance, and came within a whisker of tossing Magebane over the edge of the tower. What was the point? He wasn’t the hero they thought he was. He was a fraud. No better than Isaac. And Sasha had probably known it all along, which is why she had rejected him.

Tick tock tick tock . He reached down, pulled out Garrett’s pocket watch. His foster father had lied to him as well. He had known the truth. He had known that Davarus was the bastard offspring of a murdering Augmentor and a whore.

He stared down at the city again. Far in the distance he could just about see the old merchant’s estate west of the river. He had spent much of his time there, growing up. Despite his parentage, Garrett had taken him in. Offered him a home. Treated him like his very own son.

He swallowed the lump in his throat. Garrett had lied to protect him, he realized. Lied only because he didn’t want to see him hurt.

Tick tock tick tock .

He shifted Magebane slightly, brought his hand a fraction closer to Salazar. ‘We can’t change who our parents are,’ he said slowly. ‘But we can decide who we want to be. A chance you’ve denied to countless innocent people.’

Salazar stared back, unafraid. ‘I have always done what I thought necessary. The longer one lives, the more one understands that there is no inherent goodness in the world.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, and Cole was shocked to see wetness glistening on the wrinkled skin beneath those sunken sockets. ‘My daughter’s heart was the purest I have ever known. If good ever really existed, it was within her. And the Inquisition burned her alive.’

Cole stared back, too surprised to speak.

‘I punished all those responsible. I erected this city and named it in her honour. I planted her favourite tree, but even that was desecrated.’

Cole remembered the Eternal Tree which once had stood in Verdisa Park. He recalled the urn down in the Stasiseum. The name that was engraved there. Dorminia .

‘You are not the first to stand here today and judge me,’ the Magelord continued. He drew himself up to his full height then, straightened his robes and wiped the tears from his face. The momentary weakness was gone, and he was once again the formidable Tyrant of Dorminia. ‘I would have tried to kill the other — but even at full strength I might not have succeeded. And I would not give that selfrighteous bastard the satisfaction of witnessing my failure.’

There was a moment of deathly silence — and then Salazar raised one wasted hand. ‘So. You wish to be a hero? Let us see if you have what it takes.’

Cole gasped as Magebane began to throb in his palm. Almost instantly it was boiling hot, burning through his glove to sear the flesh beneath.

He was across to the Magelord in an instant.

Gasping from the pain, still clutching Garrett’s pocket watch in his other hand, he plunged the glowing dagger through those scarlet robes and deep into the withered body underneath.

Salazar’s arm wavered and then flopped down to dangle by his side. Magebane’s hilt cooled almost instantly as the Magelord’s magic sputtered and died. The killer of gods, the most powerful man in the north, began to sag.