Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

Slowhand suddenly slapped his palm over Kali's mouth, and her eyes widened in shock and rage. She was about to pull free, demand to know why it was she couldn't get a full farking sentence out today, when the archer nodded between thorn bushes, at a feral shape moving towards them fast.

Breaking apart, he and Kali readied bow and knife while Freel dashed into cover, his whip to hand.

A second passed and something wild-eyed, torn and filthy burst into view. But rather than some slavering denizen of the Sardenne, it was human. Garbed in the shredded remnants of a green robe and considerably older than any of their party, however, he wasn't one of their own.

The man collapsed at Kali's feet. "Help me. Lord of All, help me, please."

"Where the hells did you come from?" Freel breathed.

"The Lord… the Pale Lord," the man gasped, pointing back through the thorns.

"Easy," Kali said, kneeling. "You've come from the Pale Lord?"

The man nodded, taking slugs of water from a skin Kali handed him. As he drank, Freel studied him warily. The man was terrified, but beneath the dirt and sweat he was well-groomed. He did not belong in the Sardenne.

"Be careful," Freel suggested. "This could be Redigor's doing."

"No, wait a minute, I know this guy," Slowhand said. "We've met before."

"Before?" Freel queried.

"It doesn't matter where."

" Yes, it does ."

"Fine. In court, if you must know. He gaoled me for a longnight for… well, let's just say I know what colour sheets cover a lot of beds in Kroog-Martra." He stared at Kali. "And before you say a word, Hooper, it was a bet and I had no time to collect their underknicks, okay?"

Kali gave Slowhand a weary shake of the head. "This is the magistrate of Kroog-Martra?"

"Yeah. A magistrate in the middle of the Sardenne. A fat lot of use he's going to be."

"Liam, hang on. If you're right, this guy is one of the twelve taken for Redigor's High Council. He might know something about what we can expect at Bel'A'Gon'Shri." Kali took the magistrate by his shoulders, forcing him to look at her. "How and why are you here? Did you escape? Did you escape the necropolis?"

"Kroog-Martra was attacked. By things hardly alive. Something came. A coach as black as night. Brought me to that place. Oh, Lord of All, that place …"

"Hey, m'lud!" Slowhand pressed. "The lady knows that, okay? You maybe wanna cut the pie and get to the meat?"

"In the depths," the magistrate went on. "Tombs. Vast, cold tombs. There they lie, still. The elves." He struggled in Kali's grip, remembering, suddenly desperate to get away. "But they're coming back. Lord of All, they're coming back!"

Freel strode to the magistrate and gripped him by the head. " How did you escape?"

"The Anointed Lord," the magistrate said, flinching. "She was taken with myself, the others. The Pale Lord took something from us, everything seemed like a dream, a nightmare. But the Anointed Lord she fought him… she was defiant… she was strong ."

"Makennon escaped with you?" Kali asked.

"Makennon?" The magistrate repeated, and shook his head. "No, no. But while the Pale Lord fought to bring her under his control, I felt his magic weaken. Not much… not much at all… but enough for me to run, to flee the Chapel of Screams."

"The Chapel of Screams ?" Slowhand repeated "Oh, the day just keeps getting better and better."

Kali sighed, looked up at Freel. "I think he's telling the truth."

Freel nodded. "The Chapel of Screams sounds like where the ritual is going to take place."

"The ritual," the magistrate said. "Yes, yes, the ritu — "

He stopped abruptly, eyes widening with fear. The forest had begun to resonate with a slow, bass tolling.

"The ritual begins," the magistrate said. "The Time of the Bell."

"Time of the Bell?"

"The summoning ."

Freel snapped Kali a look. "Does that mean we're too late?"

Kali bit her lip. "I doubt it," she said, although in truth she wasn't really sure.

The magistrate had said it begins , and if her calculations were correct they had some hours yet, so likely the Bell was only the start of a ritual they should yet be able to stop. She was about to question the magistrate further when he at last managed to break from their grip and run. Slowhand leapt after him, but halted as he saw countless soul-stripped heading towards him. Slowhand, Kali and Freel stared at the approaching horde open-mouthed, as they passed through the thorns — and through them , too — insubstantial and translucent, leaving them with a feeling that somebody had walked over their graves.

"What's happening to them?" Freel asked. "They're like ghosts."

Kali had wondered how Redigor intended to bring the soul-stripped to Bel'A'Gon'Shri across the sprawl of the Sardenne. And now that she knew, she didn't like it one bit.

"He's using a different plane of existence to phase them to the necropolis," she said.

"But if he has the power to do that, with such numbers?" Freel calculated. He did not need to voice the next question for Kali to answer.

"Once he brings his people back, he can send them anywhere, right across the peninsula."

Freel kicked a tree-root. "The bastard's one step ahead of us all the time! Tricked us into forming a line at the Sardenne. And for nothing. Miramas, Volonne, Andon, Fayence, and Vos beyond — they're all but defenceless. We'll never make it back in time."

"Then we'd better make sure we get to Redigor in time," Kali said.

Slowhand and Freel stared as she stepped into the stream of spectral figures and, absorbed by the mist-like cloud wreathing the figures, began to walk amongst them.

"Hooper, what the hells are you doing?"

"Going along for the ride. Can you think of a better way of getting where we want to go?"

Freel smiled and joined her. "This, I take it, is the 'making things up as you go along'?"

"Aha. But be careful. We'll be in direct contact with the Pale Lord and he could sense us, so try to empty your mind."

The pair concentrated while Slowhand, too, stepped into the stream.

"Empty your mind, Liam."

"Done."

"What?"

"Mind. Empty. Done it."

"Are you taking the pits?"

"Hooper, I'm ready , okay. Now are we doing this thing or not?"

They did the thing, now reduced to phantasms, staring at each other in wonder as they moved. Whole swathes of the Sardenne, including the thorn barrier, passed in instant blur as they, along with all the soul-stripped who had no choice in the matter, were drawn ever closer to Bel'A'Gon'Shri.

Redigor's enchantment did not take them right to the necropolis's door, however, but to a deep, creeper-lined gorge on the approach to it, and there the soul-stripped began to return to corporeality. As they did, some turned to stare curiously at Kali, Slowhand and Freel.

"Redigor's getting his eyes back," Kali warned.

"Then it's time to break ranks," Freel said.

Kali and Slowhand trailed the Faith enforcer as he walked to the side of the gorge and took cover behind a dense wall of creeper. From there, the three of them watched the soul-stripped file in, emerging only when all of them had finally passed by. Then, after waiting a few more seconds, they followed some distance behind.

"Oh, crap," Slowhand said.

Freel stared. "Lord of All."

Carved out of the gorge's end, soaring above them, was the entrance to Bel'A'Gon'Shri. A threshold of utter blackness punctuated only by the occasional circling, cawing shrike. It wasn't the entrance itself that was disturbing but what surrounded it. Angled away from her, rising up on either side of the blackness to the twin horns tolling the Time of the Bell, great rock ramparts had been sculpted into a grotesque statuary which, decrepit and strewn with creepers, loomed malevolently over everything below. Great, winged creatures — the hags Kali had seen in Fayence — thrust stone claws at the world, while sweeping carvings of the black coaches that had come for Makennon and the others raced around and between their malformed limbs. Most unnerving were the screaming faces that covered every remaining space on the ramparts, which whispered as the wind blew past them, murmuring half-heard warnings not to approach, to leave this place while they still could.