Path of the Incubus Read online

  ‘Is it…?’ Morr began, but left the thought unfinished.

  ‘The Dysjunction. Yes,’ Motley said hurriedly, his ordinarily light demeanour suddenly serious. ‘It must be only moments away. We have to leave right now or at best we’ll be trapped here for the duration. At worst, in about five minutes, we’ll be up to our ears in daemons.’

  A weight appeared to lift from Morr’s shoulders. He took up his klaive and went to stand facing the centre of the gate. ‘Then let them come,’ he intoned. ‘I am ready.’

  Motley goggled incredulously at the incubus. ‘Now is not the time to make the supreme sacrifice trying to hold this one portal in a city of a million portals!’ he shrilled desperately. ‘Go to your hierarchs if you must, but we must tackle the root cause of this Dysjunction together and quickly! We have to go!’

  Morr shook himself reluctantly out of the death-fantasy. It was so much easier to seek atonement through self-destruction than by facing his crimes that it seemed unfair to be robbed of the chance. The fact it was easier would have convinced him that it was the wrong path to take even without Motley’s screeching imprecations. The portal throbbed and shimmered before them both uncertainly, a threshold to the webway, itself a path to a billion other places known and unknown, hidden and obvious, open and forbidden. The place Morr must go to was well hidden, but forbidden to none. Any might seek the hidden shrine of Arhra; the true question was whether they would survive to leave it. Morr took a single step towards the open portal with Motley close at his heels before a harsh shout from behind caused them both to halt abruptly and turn.

  ‘Stop right there! You’re not permitted to leave the city!’

  ‘Last chance, Sybris,’ Aez’ashya said as she stepped onto the platform. ‘Back down and join with me. I’ll even make you one of my succubae if you still want it.’

  Sybris’s braided hair gave her an angular, statuesque profile above her high-necked skinsuit. She raised her chin defiantly and shot Aez’ashya a look of withering disdain.

  ‘An honour that should already rightfully be mine,’ Sybris spat. ‘You offer me scraps from your table when you aren’t even fit to be an archon, let alone a ynnitach in High Commorragh.’

  Ynnitach, bride of death. So be it, Aez’ashya thought, as she raised her hydra gauntlets and closed her fists. The crystalline shards protruding from her wrists and elbows crackled as they grew outward into wickedly hooked blades. Sybris needed no more invitation than that to launch into her attack. She pirouetted lazily towards Aez’ashya, her half-moon blades swinging out like pendulums.

  Aez’ashya ducked beneath the glittering arc of the first blade, then sidestepped away from the second to reach the centre of the disk. Sybris instantly reversed her motion with a high kick and came after Aez’ashya hard. The deadly spirals of Sybris’s sweeping blades tightened inexorably to make a double strike on Aez’ashya. The blades sliced down with unstoppable power as the hekatrix threw her full body weight behind them. Aez’ashya rolled away from the attack, snapping up to her feet at the edge of the disk. She was just in time to catch Sybris’s counter-swing on one of her gauntlet-blades and twist it savagely.

  Sybris backflipped to avoid having her weapon wrenched out of her grasp and Aez’ashya easily avoided a backhanded blow as Sybris fought to recover. The razor edges of the hydra gauntlets whispered within millimetres of the silky surface of Sybris’s skin as she twisted away, swiftly pirouetting again to build her momentum back up. Aez’ashya grinned wolfishly.

  Every one of Sybris’s moves was just a fraction slower than they should be, a fact that Sybris herself didn’t seem to be aware of just yet. She swung in again, straight arms sweeping the blades at Aez’ashya’s exposed throat and belly. This time Aez’ashya stood her ground and struck out at the slashing blades, not aiming to block them but merely redirecting them so that they sailed harmlessly past her. One of Aez’ashya’s gauntlet blades seemed to glide across Sybris’s midriff as she returned to a guard position, carving a crimson line through skinsuit and flesh. The tip of the blade broke off in the wound with a high-pitched crackling sound and Sybris gasped as she jerked back.

  Sybris’s blade-tipped braid whipped forward like a striking snake. There was no fractional delay to the move and it caught Aez’ashya by surprise. A bunched fist of scalpel-sharp, finger-long blades came swinging at her eyes, provoking an immediate and instinctive reaction. Aez’ashya grabbed the braid and pulled, forcing Sybris to backflip over her. Aez’ashya drew one of her elbow blades across Sybris’s flashing thigh, carving another red trail and leaving another crystalline shard behind to work its way into the wound. Sybris swung viciously at Aez’ashya’s imprisoning gauntlet, forcing her to relinquish her grasp. Aez’ashya let go and allowed Sybris to spin away from her, re-occupying her position at the centre of the disk.

  It all came down to the planning, as Aez’ashya had come to appreciate after recent events, preparation meant victory. The old Aez’ashya would simply have taken up this challenge with whatever was at hand and wherever was convenient. The new Aez’ashya understood the value of picking your ground and choosing your weapons carefully. The fighting area was just a little too constricted for Sybris to build up to her full speed, the gravity in it just a shade heavier than Sybris was used to. Aez’ashya was of the firm opinion that too many wyches trained in low gravity environs, that many became seduced by the more spectacular fighting styles they permitted. Sybris was living proof of the fact.

  Now it was only a matter of time. The crystalline blades of Aez’ashya’s gauntlets had already regrown. Fragments that they had left in Sybris’s wounds would keep them bleeding freely despite the best efforts of her skinsuit to seal the cuts. Sybris’s style relied on momentum, now that constant motion was causing her to bleed out all the faster. Aez’ashya settled herself to wait for the inevitable opening.

  The masked wrack separated from the Epicurean’s procession and approached openly. As he did so Kharbyr surreptitiously drew his knife and held it ready beneath his cloak. The wrack held up both hands to show they were empty of weapons, although the curved, bird-like claw grafted in place of the wrack’s right hand would have made a passable weapon on its own. A new addition, Kharbyr judged by the way the wrack struggled with it while removing his mask. The thick-browed and morose face that was revealed looked familiar enough – but that meant nothing in Commorragh where flesh could be twisted and reshaped for the price of a hot meal. Kharbyr smiled insincerely and spoke first.

  ‘Greetings,“Xagor”. How many daemons at the gate?’

  ‘Six, and Kharbyr was almost taken,’ the wrack responded evenly.

  Kharbyr’s face flushed angrily at the memory. ‘Very clever, now what is it you want?’ he snapped.

  ‘Too open here. Inside?’

  Xagor stepped towards the entrance to the den, perhaps a little too eagerly, but Kharbyr stopped him with an outstretched arm.

  ‘Out here is fine. No one is going to be paying any attention to us with all this going on.’

  He nodded toward the canal bank where lines of warriors were now filing past to the accompaniment of thundering drums and clashing cymbals. They were irregularly armed and armoured in a dark, curvaceous style that was barbed and bladed in a fashion that would put a scorpion to shame. Several of the warriors bore trophy poles hung with brightly coloured, almost spherical, helmets and a variety of shrunken heads like obscene gourds. The warriors kept to rigid files dictated by their kabals and woe betide any of them that should step into the path of their rivals. In contrast to the mercurial artisans a faithless warrior was worthless, a weapon that could not be trusted. It was better for warriors to die than betray their sworn masters (at least according to the masters). Kharbyr mused uneasily that there might be a lesson to be learned there somewhere.

  Xagor’s forehead furrowed unhappily, but the wrack stayed obediently where he was and settled for expressing himself in a hoarse, ea
r-grabbing whisper in order to maintain his ham-fisted attempts at intrigue.

  ‘The master… sends greetings.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Kharbyr sneered, without bothering to drop his voice. ‘Where is he?’

  Xagor, if it was Xagor, hedged for a moment and Kharbyr grew even more suspicious. Even the trooping warriors seemed wary, their masked helms turning constantly as they scanned blindly for threats. Omnipresent suspicion and a simmering undercurrent of suppressed violence swept along with the warrior’s section of the processional like a glowering thunderhead.

  ‘Secret… the master has had much work to do.’

  ‘So I can see, although I can’t say I’m too impressed by the work he’s done so far on you.’

  Xagor’s ordinarily dull eyes flashed with anger at the jibe. ‘Do not mock the master!’ he snarled, momentarily forgetting his ridiculous stage-whispers act. The slave over in his hutch paid absolutely no heed and Kharbyr laughed derisively in the wrack’s face.

  ‘He can’t protect us!’ Kharbyr hissed. ‘He can’t protect himself! We should just run–’

  ‘The master said Kharbyr would want to run,’ Xagor interrupted hotly. ‘The master said it was a good idea. Run far! Hide well.’ The wrack turned suddenly to leave. Kharbyr was astonished by the turn of events.

  ‘Wait, what? You can’t just leave!’ Kharbyr stepped in close and grabbed the front of Xagor’s robes, holding his naked blade to the wrack’s neck. ‘I’m told nothing and expected to perform like a pet on command! I’m being followed – you know that? I am, and they’ll be catching up pretty soon so tell me what’s going on or I’ll slit your throat here and now!’

  The wrack grinned back at him triumphantly. ‘The master said that when Kharbyr wanted to run Xagor should leave and see what Kharbyr does next. If Kharbyr then follows and demands answers then the master asks Kharbyr to guard something while he runs. Bad times are coming very soon and Kharbyr must protect this.’

  The wrack was suddenly holding an object in its normal hand, a flat, finger-thick metal pentagon with a spiralling groove in its surface.

  ‘What is it?’ Kharbyr eyed the thing suspiciously and didn’t touch it. It didn’t even look valuable to him, but he also knew that in Commorragh looks could be deceptive. An object that small could still hold the compressed form of something much, much bigger. Like a small starship, or a portal to another world, or a bomb large enough to ensure that no part of Kharbyr would ever be recovered.

  ‘It is a secret…that Xagor does not know,’ the wrack glanced at Kharbyr almost with embarrassment as he said this. The implication seemed to be that threatening or torturing Xagor, as much as Xagor might enjoy it, would not reveal anything more.

  ‘Then… how does it help anything?’ Kharbyr said as he lowered his blade with a sense of resignation.

  ‘The master says it will,’ Xagor said soothingly.

  ‘There had better be a reward in this.’

  ‘The master said to remind Kharbyr that the master’s patronage is worth Kharbyr’s life many times over.’

  ‘Much good it has done me so far,’ Kharbyr muttered bitterly.

  ‘The master also said he has already done more for you than you know.’

  ‘Apparently Bel–,’ in his anger Kharbyr barely stopped himself from mentioning the master haemonculus by name. ‘Apparently the master says a lot, only not to me.’ Kharbyr fumed, chewing at his lip uncertainly. As he looked up he saw the end of the Epicurean’s processional was coming into view. Last of all (saving for a rearguard of more warriors, even Epicureans having some sense of self-preservation) came lower Metzuh’s petty archons and nobility of mixed blood. They came two and three abreast in an order of precedence that had probably been the source of much bickering and in-fighting. As it was Lord Naxipael of the Venom Brood led alongside Bezieth of the Hundred Scars, archon of the Soul Cutters. Both were lesser archons that Kharbyr recognised and had had some peripheral dealings with. Ornate palanquins and biers bore the Epicurean lords along elevated above a throng made up of their immediate cliques of bodyguards, confidants, lackeys and hangers-on.

  For all his flippancy the patronage of the master haemonculus Bellathonis was worth more to Kharbyr than he cared to admit. It had already cowed enemies and opened doors for him that had never existed before. Recently Kharbyr had changed the cliques he moved in and begun to ascend no small distance up the slippery slopes of kabalite politics despite his lowly blood. If he ever hoped to ride on one of those palanquins himself he needed powerful allies like Bellathonis. The wrack was waiting with a smug grin on his face, holding the metal thing out as if he expected Kharbyr to take it, but Kharbyr still hesitated. He could never aspire to anything by endlessly serving others; somehow he had to take control of the situation himself.

  The noise of the processional made it hard to think: horns blared and drums beat incessantly, the sound of skirling pipes carried back from the artisans, shrieks and screams filtered back from the pets. The warriors were silent now, their tramping steps their only accompaniment. Over all the background noise Kharbyr’s ears caught a distinctive high-pitched sound that grabbed his attention immediately. He turned back to Xagor and took the metal octagon from his hand.

  ‘I think,’ Kharbyr said hurriedly, ‘we had better go inside after all.’

  CHAPTER 3

  Dysjunction

  ‘Who is it that dares to impede an incubus in his work?’ intoned Morr slowly and dangerously. ‘Show yourself and I’ll judge your worth to give me commands.’

  Mocking laughter came out of the darkness. ‘We’ll stay where we are, thanks, being not such great fools as to come within reach of your klaive nor the clown’s blade.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Motley as he stepped forward as lightly as a dancer. ‘Then how do you plan on doing any impeding at all, friends? We need but take two steps and we are gone from here. How do you intend to allow or disallow that?’

  ‘You aren’t the only one with grenades, fool.’

  If the assailants hadn’t bragged they might have been more successful in their efforts. As it was Motley spotted the first tiny bulb of metal tumbling through the air, caught it and threw it back in one fluid motion. A blast of static lightning lit the tunnel where it landed that illuminated running figures in its crawling afterglow. Haywire, Motley opined to himself, they were using Haywire grenades to try to knock out the gate. Any moment now they would think to throw more than one at a time. Motley glanced backwards to find Morr and shout a warning.

  There was no sign of the towering incubus and the gate was in the process of powering down.

  Motley took in the whole scene within a frozen instant of panic. Time slowed, stretched while each intimate detail imposed itself. Angry red lines were spreading across the metal and stone of the gate’s structure. It was intended to be a permanent shutdown, one that would leave behind nothing but a pile of useless slag. The veil of shimmering energy was still held within the gate for the present, swirling and opalescent now, but it was thinning by the moment. Motley darted for the dying portal just as a shower of small grenades came tinkling down in his wake.

  A vicious pattern of detonations raged around the gateway, electro-magnetic discharges and gouts of plasma (some of the assailants having already escalated their intentions from capturing to killing) intermingling in a catastrophic storm of energised particles. In the aftermath the gate was gone, just a fused and twisted mass was left in its place. Of the incubus and the harlequin there was no sign.

  The agents poked, prodded and analysed the area in a desultory fashion but it was clear there was nothing more that could be done. They consoled themselves that their master was currently otherwise engaged and unreachable. The unpleasant task of informing him about their lost quarry could be safely deferred for another time.

  Had the agents but known it their master was not far away at that moment. Archon Nyos
Yllithian of the Kabal of the White Flames was staggering through the worming guts of the Commorragh’s vast foundational strata. He was now only minutes away from the Dysjunction he’d unwittingly had such a large hand in bringing about. Judgment, seemingly, had already caught up with him. He rebounded from moist stone walls in the near darkness as he desperately sought a way out, his numbing hands stretched out before him as he fumbled along dank, slimy tunnels. Kilometres above him there were silver towers taller than mountains, manses the size of cities, fortress-like continents and island-palaces of surpassing beauty and grandeur. His own fortress lay agonisingly close by, filled with retainers and warriors and slaves to do his bidding. But Archon Yllithian was alone, trapped in the foetid entrails of the world and he was dying.

  By his nature Yllithian was not a creature given to regrets. All in all he shared the almost pathologically forward-facing attitude of his race. The past was the past and nothing more could be said; such was the healthy attitude of the average Commorrite – saving, perhaps, for the propensity to recall slights, vendettas and feuds with crystal clarity. Even so Yllithian felt the bitterest regret now. Not regret for unleashing otherworldly forces beyond his capacity to control by resurrecting the beast El’Uriaq. Not regret for the overweening hubris that had caused the deaths of his allies, nor for the mass murder in the accursed El’Uriaq’s banquet hall left now so ominously silent behind him. No, Yllithian’s only regret was that he had been unlucky enough to get caught up in El’Uriaq’s downfall.

  Yllithian had to admit to himself that it had been a pretty scheme to destroy El’Uriaq. He had only recognised the true danger of it in the last moments, and even then he’d chosen to flee instead of trying to warn El’Uriaq or prevent it. Too slow, too slow by far and now his skin was vitrifying before his rapidly clouding eyes, turning to a lustrous jade colour that would soon darken to black. The master haemonculus, Bellathonis, had contrived to release the Glass Plague upon El’Uriaq and his guests. It was a viral helix created to turn living flesh in glass, meaning a true death for a Commorrite as their body was completely destroyed in the process. No regeneration, no resurrection was possible from the Glass Plague and so any Commorrite of any value was normally immunised against it. That had been the clever part – the haemonculus had persuaded the Exodite witch, the worldsinger, to turn the plague into something that could overcome any form of defence. Being able to communicate with lower forms of life seemed such a safely mundane ability until someone used it to bypass your immune system. Yllithian knew he was as good as dead.