Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

No. Iam within it.

The prison of the Darakyon, home of all the horrors that warped place could muster, and he was now inside it.

He turned all about, breath issuing swift and ragged, but he was alone, all alone…

Is this it? Am I here now? For ever?

‘I am Achaeos, Seer of Tharn,’ he declared, choking on his own voice. ‘I demand that you acknowledge me.’

We acknowledge you.

But this was not the great voice of the Darakyon, only the voice of the creature from his dream.

‘Laetrimae!’ He turned.

She was there, a Mantis-kinden maid possessed of their lean, angular beauty, and dressed now in the carapace-steel armour of centuries ago, looking fair and pale and terrible.

What have you done? She approached him, picking her way through tortured ground that writhed and contorted all around them. You have opened the box. No other has ever dared to come here.

‘I am here.’ I cannot admit weakness now, because she is Mantis, and she would kill me. ‘I have followed the commands of the Darakyon. What would you have of me?’

She raised a hand, and he flinched, expecting thorns, but it was live, warm skin held against his cheek, and then she leant down and kissed him, briefly but passionately, on the lips, engaging his white eyes with her own.

You, little neophyte? she mocked. We want nothing of you. You are not the one .

And, despite himself, he let out a cry when the thorns and spines burst bloodily from her skin, ripping her apart, goring her through and through, the arcing, piercing and repiercing briars, and the jagged chitin that ripped through her armour and turned it to rust. And he heard-

‘Achaeos!’

A voice from behind him. A real, live voice. Staggering back from Laetrimae, he turned to see Tynisa struggling towards him, brandishing her rapier in her hand. The sword gleamed with a green-white light, and he saw an answering gleam from deeper within the trees.

‘Oh,’ he said slowly, because he had not appreciated the true scale of the problem.

‘What in the wastes is going on?’ Tynisa demanded. He looked back to Laetrimae, but the Mantis creature had gone, fading into smoke the moment he glanced away from her.

‘I… may have made a mistake,’ he stuttered. She gaped at him and he recalled how she had been brought up by dull Beetle-kinden. She looked as though she was on the very brink of going mad.

‘Achaeos, we were in Nivit’s. We… Where are we now? ’

‘Calm. Be calm,’ he told her. Small help, as he sounded less than calm himself. Here now was the other gleaming light, striding out of the broken darkness: Tisamon with his claw blazing, his eyes locked on Achaeos.

‘Magician, what have you done?’ he asked. ‘Where have you brought us?’

‘Can you not tell?’ Achaeos asked of him. ‘You of all people? We are in the heart of the Darakyon, Tisamon. We are inside the Shadow Box.’

Tisamon stopped, and Achaeos saw his throat work silently, his eyes widen. He knows at least enough to be afraid.

‘Sef!’ Achaeos called out. ‘Sef, come to us.’ Who else? Not Gaved, not Thalric, and Nivit’s girl was out somewhere on business. ‘Nivit, are you there?’

‘Help me!’ It was Sef’s voice, shrill with terror. Another Spider brought up by Beetles, Achaeos supposed.

‘Here! Follow my voice! Come here!’ he called out.

‘Achaeos, how long are we going to be here?’ Tynisa demanded of him.

He was glad that Sef appeared just then, stumbling and almost falling, until he caught her and set her on her feet. She promptly dropped to her knees, hugging herself, with eyes closed. He could not blame her.

‘I… I need time to investigate our surroundings,’ he said, knowing his words were meaningless. What if Gaved or someone plucks the box from my hands? Will we be wrenched out of here, or trapped for good?

‘Then get on with it!’ Tynisa snapped at him, on the very edge of self-control. Tisamon put a hand on her shoulder.

‘We are safe here,’ he said slowly. ‘We are safe from this place. You and I.’

‘And how do you know that?’ she asked.

‘Because this is our place, a Mantis place.’ He was looking into the coiling dark, stretching out his free hand, and for a second Achaeos saw Laetrimae there, just a glimmer of her, reaching back to him. You are not the one , she had said.

Tisamon?

‘Achaeos, there’s someone else out there,’ Tynisa hissed, and he looked, seeing only the suggestion of movement.

Has she seen Nivit? Or was it a… native?

‘Nivit, is that…?’

It was not Nivit. Achaeos felt the words dry up in his throat, seeing the newcomer approach so effortlessly. Gaunt and robed, it might have been a Moth Skryre, except that the gait and the build were all wrong – too tall, too thin, too pale.

A cadaverous face with bulging eyes that glared red in a world of green and black, Achaeos had never seen this man before but he remembered enough of his own people’s lore to know. The recognition came as a blow, but he drew strength from it as well. Suddenly he was not just a lone seer in a hostile place, he was his whole kinden, its emissary to this ancient enemy.

‘So,’ he said, ‘have I drawn you here as well – or is this the last hole your people have found to hide in?’

The newcomer’s thin lips drew back, exposing needle-sharp teeth. Tisamon shifted uncomfortably, and Achaeos knew that he, too, must recognize this thing from folk stories.

‘Oh, we are not gone at all,’ it said. ‘Hidden, but not quite gone, young Moth. We can hide more cunningly than your kind can ever search for us.’ One emaciated hand gestured at their surroundings. ‘Yet what a hiding place this would have made. No, I will not say that I have been drawn here, but merely accepted the invitation.’

‘What is your part in this?’ Achaeos demanded.

‘Must we be adversaries even here, even after so very long? Surely your kinden have realized how all we old powers are standing together now against the encroaching tide of progress and history. All the wars of the Days of Lore are long forgotten – by all save you and me. Who cares now about that fifty-year struggle with the Centipede-kinden who rose from beneath the earth? Who recalls the coup of the Assassin Bugs, and how it was turned aside? Who recounts the struggle for rulership between the Moth-kinden and the Mosquito-folk? None, save you and I.’

Achaeos stared at him uncertainly.

‘My name is Uctebri the Sarcad,’ the Mosquito told him. ‘My physical form is many leagues distant from you, so I am glad that your actions have allowed us to meet.’

Sarcad. It was, he thought, their word for Skryre. A powerful magician, then? ‘I am Achaeos, seer of Tharn,’ he said. ‘I ask you again, what is your part in this?’

‘I need the box, young Moth. I must have it.’

‘Then we are enemies, after all,’ Achaeos replied. He saw a brittle, sad smile on the Mosquito’s face and realized that the man’s words about the passing of so much history from the world had been quite sincere. ‘I do not hate you for your kinden. You are right, that is gone. I have the box, though, and I cannot give it to you.’

‘No,’ said Uctebri quietly, ‘you cannot. I am sorry for that.’

‘Achaeos,’ Tisamon said tensely. ‘Where is Tynisa? Where has my daughter gone?’

‘Tynisa?’ Achaeos looked round, but the Spider girl was nowhere to be seen. ‘I don’t understand…’

The Mosquito was gone now, swallowed by the blackness. Was it all the time closing in? ‘Stay close by me,’ he said, feeling Sef clutch at his leg.