David Gemmell - Morningstar

I had expected a few small fingers of fire, but what followed astounded me.

Flames roared out, blazing with white light — more powerful than any beacon fire, brighter than daylight. The creature rolled to its back, but nothing could extinguish the blaze. In its panic and pain it ran into the other beasts and the flames spread to engulf three of them; then dried leaves on the ground ignited beneath the hooves of the fourth monster, whose legs caught fire, sheets of flame searing around its body.

An unholy glow filled the clearing, and the heat was so intense that Piercollo and I eased our way around the tree, putting the trunk between us and the scorching flames. Even so the heat was almost unbearable, the light so bright that both of us squeezed shut our eyes.

The blaze lit the sky for several minutes, the flames reaching thirty feet or more into the air. Then they died, swiftly dwindling. I climbed around to the front of the tree. There were no leaves now — the branches smouldering, the tips glowing red with hot ash.

Writhing on the forest floor was a score of blackened shapes. One looked like the burned carcass of a dog, another a horse, yet another a man. One by one they ceased all movement.

Suddenly the last creature emerged from the undergrowth. How it had escaped I do not know, but it advanced into the smouldering clearing and stood, its grotesque arms unfolding from its hump. Jarek Mace sent his last two shafts into the flanks of the beast but it ignored them and advanced on the tree, continuing to dig at the roots.

‘Piercollo has had enough of this,’ said the giant. Taking hold of a long part-burned branch he wrenched hard, the dry wood snapping with a loud crack. The branch was some six feet in length and as thick as four spears bound together. He proceeded to strip away the twigs and shoots growing from it. ‘Give me your dagger,’ he ordered me and I did so. Resting the broken length of wood in the crook of the bough on which we stood, Piercollo began to cut away at the tip of the branch, shaping it to a rough point. I could see that he was trying to craft a weapon, but what kind? It was too large for a spear, and too unwieldy to be used as a lance.

At last satisfied, he returned my dagger, then hefted the branch and edged out along the bough some twelve feet above the ground.

‘Ho, there!’ he called out. ‘Creature of ugliness! Come to Piercollo!’The beast lifted its grotesque head, its huge eyes focusing on the Tuscanian. Piercollo stood very still with the huge spear held vertically, the point aimed at the ground below. At first the creature just stood, staring up at him, then it moved across the clearing.

‘That is it, monster! Come to me!’

With a roar it charged at the tree.

Gripping the weapon with both hands, Piercollo dropped from the bough, his enormous weight driving the huge spear deep into the creature’s back, through its enormous belly and into the ground beneath. The monster’s legs buckled and it sank to the earth with blood pouring from its mouth.

Slowly I climbed down and walked among the many corpses.

Megan had said that magick and sorcery were more closely linked than I knew. But as I gazed upon the dreadful, fire-blackened bodies I hoped — prayed, almost — that she was wrong.

Five years before, when I had been living with Cataplas at his home by the Sea of Gaels, I had watched him experiment with dead mice, dissecting them, examining the innards. Then he had laid the bodies side by side.

‘Look at them, Owen, and tell me what you see.’

‘What is there to see, save two dead rodents?’

‘Use your Talent, concentrate. Think of colours, auras.’

I stared at the mice and true enough they glowed with a faint light, radiating out from their tiny bodies.

‘What is that?’ I asked, amazed.

‘The essence of life,’ he told me. ‘You will see that light for three days more — then it will be gone. But watch this!’With a sharp knife he cut the bodies neatly in two, then took the hind legs and rear body of the first and laid it against the severed front torso of the second. Cataplas took a deep breath and I felt the gathering of his power. The light around the two halves swelled and I watched the skin of the bodies writhe together, the edges meeting, joining. The rear legs twitched, the head moved. The hybrid struggled to rise, took several weak steps, then fell again. Cataplas clicked his fingers and the light faded, the twinned beast ceasing to move.

‘You are a sorcerer!’ I whispered.

‘I am a seeker after knowledge,’ he replied.

Here, in this clearing, I could see the result of his quest and it sickened me.

Jerek Mace moved alongside me. ‘Where do they come from?’ he asked. ‘There are at least three men here, and several hounds.’The beasts are… were… merged… creations of sorcery. Hounds, horses, men, boars, bonded together into…’ I turned away, desperate to put the Hellish scene behind me.

‘Sorcery or not, we killed them,’ said Mace, slapping my shoulder. ‘The fire you sent was unbelievable. I did not realize you had such power.’

‘Neither did I. Can we leave this place?’

‘Presently,’ said Mace, with a smile.

I watched in disbelief as he searched the remnants of what had once been the body of Patch. He returned with the bowman’s money-pouch.

‘Should have been mine,’ he said, ‘and would have been had my string not snapped. Let us go.’

The attack left me in a state of numbed shock, the passing of terror leaving in its place an emptiness, a void that could not even grieve for the ghastly death of the archer, Patch. I stumbled on behind Jarek Mace and Piercollo, scarcely noticing the journey or the rising of the sun and the warmth of a new day.

Cataplas had moved from amorality to evil and was apparently unmarked by the process. Throughout my years with him I had never sensed his capacity for darkness, and none of his actions hinted at the horror of which he was capable. Often we would journey on foot across the land, stopping at wayside taverns to entertain revellers, or in castles to perform for the nobles and their ladies. Always Cataplas was punctiliously polite, soft-voiced and charming. I never once saw him lose his temper.

Yet here he was practising the darkest sorceries, merging men and beasts, blood-hungry creatures who lived only to kill. I wondered then — hoped, might be a better description — if he himself had been put under a spell. But I knew it was not so.

Long-forgotten memories came back to me. A performance had been cancelled because of the death of a child; the parents were grieving and had no wish to be entertained. Cataplas had been irritated by what he saw as their lack of good manners.

‘Did they not realize,’ he said to me, ‘that I have walked thirty miles to show them my magick?’

‘But their son is dead,’ I answered.

‘I did not kill him. What has it to do with me?’

All that interested Cataplas was the pursuit of knowledge. Magick he had mastered, as no man before or since. But magick was, he said, merely a game played with light, illusory and — artistic considerations aside — worthless.

We parted company one winter’s evening just after a performance at the Royal Court in Ebracom. He had filled the Great Hall with golden birds whose songs were a joy to the ear and the heart, and concluded with the creation of a golden-scaled lion who leapt upon the table before the King, scattering pots and dishes. Women screamed and men leapt back, tipping over chairs and falling to the floor, alarming the war-hounds who sat beneath the table feeding on scraps. Only the King remained seated, a grim smile upon his cruel mouth.

The lion rose up on its hind legs and became a huge silver eagle that soared into the air and flew around the rafters, devouring the golden songbirds.