Mark Newton: The Book of Transformations

From the doorway and silhouetted against the crack of light, Vuldon, completely unmoved, said, ‘I saw to them, Fulcrom. I got them for you. Every last one.’ She saw drips of blood fall at his feet.

‘Much appreciated,’ Fulcrom replied. He seemed unsure what to make of Vuldon’s state.

‘Are you bleeding any more?’ Lan asked Fulcrom, stroking his hair.

‘No… My tail… it’s probably no use to me any more…’ Fulcrom spoke between breaths, still with pride. ‘What is the plan?’

‘First we need to clean you up.’ Lan then informed him of the rest: the rogue cultists, the anarchists being close to victory, Ulryk’s position on the Glass Tower.

‘Ulryk,’ Fulcrom said. ‘He’s the important one here. Whatever he’s doing, we must follow him. I have a suspicion that, if the city is as you describe, not a lot else matters.’

*

Caley had fallen to the rear of the group, cautiously looking back to see if they were being followed — so far, they weren’t. Still they moved through darkness. Caley’s inability to see anything made him even more nervous than he should have been. He wanted to see his enemies. As they reached the large, winding stairway that led up to the fifth floor, Shalev whispered for them to stop. Two soldiers were stationed on the next floor, either side of the top of the stairs. There was no way of passing without being spotted — and that would be it, their cover blown, attention drawn, the Emperor ushered out of the building.

Shalev ordered them to huddle and she drew out another relic, threw it up — something flashed — and some weird netted material descended over their group.

Caley heard the guards at the top of the stairs.

‘That thunder?’

‘No, it’s lightning that makes flashes, idiot.’

‘That’s what I meant.’

‘Must have been.’

Through the material, Caley could see one of them move down a few steps to investigate. Caley’s heart thumped hard. The guard peered about, then returned to his post. ‘Nothing ’ere,’ he replied. ‘Urtica’s mad as old Johynn was. His paranoia’s getting to you.’

The Cavesiders shuffled up the stairs, smothered in the netting, and stood between the two soldiers. Satisfied there were no others around, Shalev rolled out under the netting and something else flashed on the outside. By the time Caley managed to squirm his way out, too, the soldiers were lying on the floor unconscious.

‘This is the level we need,’ Shalev whispered.

It was a vast place, full of wood-panelling and portraits of figures in regal clothing, and Caley was in awe of the ostentatious display. Shalev pressed her ears against each door as they passed, merely as a caution.

Around the corner: four more soldiers. Upon seeing them, the guards ran towards the Cavesiders but, using their crossbows, they shot the guards in the neck or face, while three of the anarchists dashed up to stop their bodies from striking the floor loudly.

Steering them silently to one side, Shalev pointed towards the largest door in sight. With a relic in her hand, Shalev tried the handles on the double door — with a remarkable quietness, as if she’d been well practised in the arts of burglary. To everyone’s surprise, the door opened easily, and in a hushed manoeuvre they flooded into the chamber.

Shalev activated a relic, which radiated a soft purple light across the room. It was vast, with rich carpets and a hearth that had long stopped giving out any warmth. There was a tall window at the far end, snow rattling against it. The sky was lightening ever so slightly as dawn dragged itself forwards.

Caley stepped towards a desk at the end of the room, and there he saw a leg poking out from beneath it. He ran around to the other side and called Shalev over. Everyone approached.

On the floor, the other side of the desk, lay Emperor Urtica — his throat was slit, a carving knife loosely gripped in one hand. Shalev moved in to take his pulse, tears in her eyes — tears of rage, Caley realized.

‘No!’ she cursed. Then it became a moan, a lament that she hadn’t had the opportunity to do this herself. ‘No, no, no, NO!’

Caley stepped back, afraid. Surely all that mattered was that Urtica was dead?

She picked up the knife from the Emperor’s dead hand, straddled his corpse and repeatedly hammered the blade into his chest and neck. Blood spat up as she withdrew the knife. ‘My family! My life! You took everything…’

A couple of the others tried to pull her off — she had transformed from the cool woman who had led them out of the depths of the city. Shalev eventually regained her composure, realizing what she had become. The now-mutilated corpse of the Emperor vaguely disgusted Caley. Everyone else looked at the body and then each other and then Shalev, who was covered in the Emperor’s blood.

A question lingered in the air, unspoken: Now what?

Caley stepped to one side, to where the Emperor’s hand pointed. Something had caught his eye. There, splattered by blood and almost hiding under the desk, was a piece of paper. Caley picked it up and opened it, but, embarrassingly, couldn’t recognize the letters scrawled across it. He noticed the official-looking insignias, and called for one of the others.

‘What is it, brother?’ The red-headed woman, Arta, came to his side, and examined it.

‘It’s been smeared in blood, but the rest — the rest seems OK,’ she said.

‘What does it say?’ Shalev snapped, approaching slowly, her chest rising and falling in great puffs as she tried to calm herself.

‘Hang on,’ Arta said, squinting at the paper in the dreary light of the room. Someone lit a candle and she thanked them. ‘Right it.. reads as follows. “… in Villiren. Furthermore, from what we have witnessed, with the presence of this otherworld encroaching on ours, I am left with no other choice. I, Commander Brynd Lathraea, of the Night Guard regiment and senior commander of the Imperial Armies, do hereby withdraw the military — what is left of us — from Imperial duty under your name. We do not recognize your lineage any longer. To build a new future, to recover sufficiently, and to form an alliance with alien races in order to fight a further war, we will serve the Empress Rika, who you once dethroned. This is not a politically motivated decision, but one of great urgency in order to defend the Boreal Archipelago.” ’ Arta looked up and said, ‘I can’t see what the rest says, since the ink is blurred.’

‘Is that why Urtica killed himself?’ Caley wondered out loud. ‘He’s got nothing any more. No soldiers, no city, nothing.’

‘What with the Cavesiders taking over much of Villjamur, he must have choked on how quickly things imploded.’

‘Coward’s way out, if you ask me,’ someone muttered.

‘I wouldn’t be so sure that was all…’ Seemingly distracted, Shalev walked over to the window, allowing bright flashes to brighten her face momentarily.

Was that really lightning? Caley wondered.

‘I have never seen such power,’ Shalev breathed. Bolts of purple light shot upwards, and flared across the rooftops. ‘This force is immense. What is that?’

The others gathered around the vast window and stared out at the scene. As the snow rattled against the glass, the city trembled. Now they’d stopped still, Caley could feel the ground vibrating beneath his feet.

‘Is it a storm?’ Arta offered.

‘No,’ Shalev said. ‘No, I recognize that light. To the eye of a cultist, that is the energy of the ancients being used — as I would use it through relics.’

‘Maybe a bunch of cultists then,’ Caley said.

‘No, little brother,’ Shalev said. ‘Not on such a scale. I’ve seen the clouds turn on Ysla with only a fraction of the power of this being used.’