Umbral Ten Read online

  Umbral Ten

  Khaldaia Chronicles I

  Douglas Murphy

  Dedicated to my grandmother Rosary, my grandmother Joan, and my mother Susan, who are all sorely missed.

  Prologue.

  Of course this is where Minerva would find him. It was Alfred’s way, wasn’t it, that when the rest of them were running around like headless chickens making sure there was no box left unchecked, no little problem overlooked, no worst-case possibility left unexplored and proofed and double proofed against, he would be here.

  In his office.

  Sipping tea.

  Like a diiiiiiiiick.

  “Are we ready for the test run tomorrow?” Minerva asked. Rhetorical question, because they weren’t, and they were never going to be, and at some point they were just going to have to careen into untested waters and hope for the fucking best.

  Alfred turned to her like he hadn’t even heard her enter, even though of course he had. This was just pantomime.

  “That might be a better question for our staff. The fellow has his fair share of nerves,” he said mildly. He took a sip of his floral tea, giving a hiss of pain that was as much theatre as it was a genuine reaction to the heat. The man should have lived a life on the stage, truly. “And who can blame them? They could still decide to back out of this, if they wanted to.”

  Minerva could appreciate their trepidation. They were all nervous. The consequences of making even the slightest mistake could be catastrophic.

  But so help her, if any of them backed out of this, she’d show them exactly what catastrophic repercussions could look like.

  “And set us back years in the process. Longer, if our funding gets cut because of it,” Minerva said. She was sure there were investors just waiting for a chance to pull all their funding and give it to whatever vanity project had caught their eye. Nobody had ever completely believed how monumental what they were doing was.

  Alfred gave her a look of gentle amusement, and oh, oh, what she would give to make him drop the wise old professor act. He’d never been her professor. It’d been twenty years since he’d been anyone’s.

  So she doubled down.

  “They can make themselves single-handedly world-famous for bottling the biggest project in history,” she said dryly.

  Alfred arched an eyebrow at her. “Mmhm.”

  “And you seem remarkably calm about it all.”

  “You know what they say,” Alfred said softly. He turned his gaze on her, dropping the wise old man act just long enough for her to see the hawkish sharpness in his stare. “Nobody saves the world overnight.”

  Part I: And In The Sky, A Moon Like Blood.

  Every culture has a different tale to explain the Spirit Trees, and every culture reveres them in equal measure.

  The humans of Aldwick, and the priests of the Ardent Church, claim that on the spot where God cast aside his physical form and ascended to the heavens, the Tree of Light was born, and from the tears he shed for humanity, the lesser Spirit Trees, those of Flame, Water, Wind, Earth, and Mystery were born.

  The pixies hold the Trees to be outgrowths of the great soul of the planet itself, bursting from the ground to protect those who would take shelter beneath them. The Trees, so say the pixies, are proof of the planet’s love for the beings who live upon it.

  The elves of Ilyasvale -- or, that is to say, those who still follow the old faith -- say that the seeds of the Trees were sent down from the Heavens, set in motion by some ancient, far-off world a thousand eons ago. Thus, the Trees are reservoirs of celestial power, whose purity and energy sustains the life of the world, until such a time that they might be returned to the stars.

  And to the dwarves of Kingdom-Under-Stone, they are simply vast and powerful trees, in whom such great magical power rests as to warrant respect and caution. Something does need to be divine to be worthy of praise.

  There is very little that unites all the races of Khaldaia. Perhaps the only thing that unites them is the desire to protect and nurture the Trees. So it is that every ten years, seven Church Oracles travel to the Trees and renew them with holy power, in ceremonies attended by nearly every powerful figure on Khaldaia.

  -- Khaldaian Almanac, XIIth Edition, by Royston Archibald.

  There were two moons in the sky.

  Theo thought her vision was doubled at first, that this was some kind of bleariness from just waking up. Except she hadn’t been asleep, had she? Why would she have slept on this cold, damp stone, and wasn’t she …

  “Hey. Get up.”

  The voice was rough and harsh and entirely unfamiliar. Theo sat up, rubbing a hand over her head. No blood, not even any lumps or pain, so she hadn’t taken any kind of head wound. But then why were the last few minutes so hazy? None of this made sense.

  “I said get up. We don’t have time to be lounging around.”

  That voice again. Theo swung her head in its direction, her eyes alighting on a section of ruined wall. Leaning against it was a … no, not an orc, despite his size he didn’t have quite the height or broadness for that, not to mention no horns. As her vision cleared, she realised he was a human, a large one. Towering, burly enough that his barrel chest and muscles were plainly visible even through the leather armour he was wearing. His features were almost pretty, in a rugged kind of way, his skin and eyes a rich shade of brown; his dark locks of hair, tied back loosely, were streaked with emerald and sea-green.

  He wasn’t looking at her. He was fiddling with some contraption on his -- no, not a contraption on his arm, a contraption that was his arm. From elbow to fingertip, his arm was made of black metal, a magitech prosthesis of remarkable complexity.

  The man didn’t seem hostile. If anything, he seemed barely interested in her at all. He was still a stranger, though, and that meant Theo couldn’t let her guard down.

  Again, she supposed. She couldn’t let her guard down again. It would have been easy enough for anyone to gut her while she was sprawled out on the ground staring at the sudden extra moon in the sky.

  She pulled herself to her feet, straightening her robes. They weren’t the practical robes she usually favoured, far too flowy and fragile for that, the beautiful gilded attire reserved for special ceremonies.

  Special ceremonies? She’d been at one, hadn’t she. If she could just follow the thread of that thought, work down it until it was untangled from her other thoughts, then maybe she’d know how she ended up like this.

  “You’re confused, right? It’ll pass. Slowly.”

  The man again. Still not looking at her.

  “You know, it’s dreadfully boorish to talk to a lady without even making eye contact. Or providing an introduction,” Theo said archly.

  The man cracked a smile. “Forgive me for being a dreadful boor then, my lady. Rook.”

  “... Excuse me?”

  “Rook. My name.”

  “No surname?”

  The man shrugged. Theo fought down a brief surge of irritation at him.

  “Lady Theodosia Archmail, daughter and heir to Lady Morgana Archmail,” she said. “And it’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir Rook.”

  “Just Rook. No sir,” Rook said. “The Supreme Archmage’s daughter, right? We heard about you.”

  Theo raised an eyebrow. “‘We?’”

  “Lucky Raven. Mercenary outfit. Your college was paying us for protection,” Rook said. “All things considered, I dunno if I’d call that a sound investment.”

  There was a tug at the thread in Theo’s mind, an unspooling of memories. The College of Mages had hired mercenaries, hadn’t they? Lucky Raven and the Crimson Blades, providing security for some event. Some ceremony.

  She could remember fragments now: Stepping off a boat onto the shores of some island; her mother
lecturing her about the importance of the ceremony going smoothly; seeing ships appear over the horizon, bearing the flags of Aldwick, Kingdom-Under-Stone, Ilyasvale; an archbishop of the Ardent Church shaking hands with her mother.

  The thread caught. Fragments was all she was getting for now.

  “Like I said,” Rook murmured. “Confused, right?”

  Confused was an understatement. Theo felt lost in a way she hadn’t done since the first day she arrived at the College of Mages.

  She turned on the spot, taking in her surroundings. It was some kind of garden, set into one of the lower roofs of a sprawling, uneven complex of sandstone buildings. She could see where rows of fruit trees had been planted, this one growing oranges, this one lemons, this one apples -- but nobody had cared for them for a long time, that was obvious, and they’d grown out of their settings, winding together in a tangle of roots and wood, half-rotted in places.

  She skimmed her gaze around to either side. On one end, a heavy door leading back inside. On the other, statues. Fraydeus, the legendary King of Heaven; Angelica, the maiden who founded his Church and the College of Mages; and five more that she guessed must be the rest of the Seven Heroes, although they were all too damaged to recognise.

  A monastery, then? Something tugged at her memory again, uncomfortable, sharp, but she couldn’t grasp the thread in time.

  “Where are we?” She asked, as her gaze was drawn skywards again, back to the double moon. One of those moons was definitely the one she knew, that was certain. The other one, though, was wholly unfamiliar: Nearly twice the size of its counterpart, it glowed neither white nor yellow nor blue, but instead a blood red so bright it seemed to wash the sky with blood. She couldn’t see any of the craters or marks she was familiar with on it, just deep, dark rivulets, like the shadow of arteries. “How did the sky … ?”

  “It’ll come back to you,” Rook said. “It’ll be easier if you remember it, instead of having me explain it to you. If I’m being honest, I barely remember what happened either.”

  Theo forced her gaze away from the moons and back towards Rook. His expression was as flat as his tone had been, just levelly staring straight through her.

  “But you do remember some of it,” Theo said.

  “Some kind of battle. At least one Incarnate. They must have slipped past our perimeter somehow,” Rook said. “But apart from that, I don’t know anything, and we don’t have time to discuss it.”

  “Why not?”

  Rook’s red eyes narrowed, just the tiniest fraction of an inch. “We aren’t safe here. This monastery isn’t as abandoned as it looks,” he said. “And if the thing living here catches us, I’m not going to be able to make a dent in it with this damn peashooter.” He waved his arm demonstratively.

  Theo patted her belt. Her brush was still dangling from it on its chain, and as she traced her finger over it, it hummed with the soft song of magic. Too quiet, too quiet by far, she would need to recharge it soon, but if it came down to a fight, at least she would still be able to cast some magic.

  She gave Rook a short nod. “What’s the plan?”

  “I know at least one other guy was sent here with us. My best friend, actually. If we find him, maybe he’ll help us,” Rook replied. “Or maybe he’ll feed us to the monster.”

  “That’s a rather terrible thing to say about your friend.”

  “Well, he’s a rather terrible person.”

  ✽✽✽

  The stench was overwhelming.

  Jakob had come to his senses already gagging, as before he could see or hear the stink of rotting offal and mouldering blood hit his nose like a carriage slamming into him. He’d never smelled anything like it before, had barely even smelled the coppery scent of blood in his life, never even stepped foot in a butcher’s shop -- and yet some primitive monkey part of his brain recognised it immediately.

  While his eyes were still watering, a pair of hands had grabbed him and dragged him backwards into a tight, confined space, slamming a metal door shut so harshly that Jakob could hear it rattling in front of him. One hand clamped over his mouth.

  “Shhh,” murmured a low, rumbling growl of a voice next to his ear, close enough that he could feel the speaker’s breath across his earlobe. “Don’t make a sound.”

  Don’t make a sound? The command was absurd. An empty stomach was the only thing between Jakob and vomiting, as the sickly sweet smell of meat seemed to only grow stronger.

  He tried to breathe. His lungs rebelled, and when he forced out a breath in one loud exhalation through his nose, the figure behind him, still holding him still, still keeping his mouth clamped shut, hissed a warning at him. Jakob shut his eyes, tried to still his thoughts, tried to ignore the staccato thump of his heart trying to exit his chest.

  A cupboard. He was in a cupboard, just barely big enough for two people to stuff themselves into, the walls lined with saws, knives, and chisels of every shape and size.

  It was dark, but there was some dim light filtering through a metal grate through the door, and if he strained his eyes, he could see out into the room he’d woken up in.

  He wished he hadn’t looked.

  It was true that he’d never been in a butcher’s shop, but he’d read about them in books. Cleanliness, one book had helpfully remarked, is of the utmost importance to any good butcher.

  This butcher wasn’t clean. The room was dominated by a bloodsoaked table, so piled with grey and yellowing offal that it had tumbled off the edges and onto the bloody stone floor. Jakob could see tools not unlike the ones in the cupboard discarded haphazardly on the floor. But worse than that, worse by far, was the meathooks, and what was hanging from them.

  Some were bisected. Some were whole. All were human, from every walk of life: A Church knight with his helmet still on; an old woman; a young man with peach fuzz on his chest; a child with pigtails.

  Jakob retched. He couldn’t help it. Nothing solid came up, there was nothing in his stomach to come up, but saliva and bile filled his mouth nonetheless.

  “Be quiet,” the man behind him said softly.

  Something thudded. No, not something, a foot, a footstep, louder than any footstep had any right to be, and suddenly Jakob knew exactly why the man was so insistent that he stay still and quiet. He froze in place, staring out of the grate as a hulking, hunched shadow was cast across the far wall.

  They were both going to die, Jakob decided.

  Another thudding footstep. Whatever it was brayed like a farm animal. Through the metal gate, Jakob saw it haul itself into the room: A wall of tightly packed muscle on two bent, hairy legs, with arms as thick as tree trunks and, above its hairy chest, the neck and head of a bull.

  Jakob blinked his eyes, redirecting the magical energies inside him to well up in front of his pupils like a lens, casting the world in shades of grey. If there was any mistaking the creature for something natural before, then the jet black aura surrounding it killed any doubt as to what it was.

  Incarnate.

  Wait.

  It was almost drowned out by the roiling darkness around the beast, but there was a flash of colour just beyond it, a thin and trembling aura of blue-ish green that looked like it could be snuffed out at any moment. Jakob focused, pushing out the noise, narrowing his gaze onto that spot of colour.

  Jacob shook his head, dispersing the sediment of magic resting atop his eyes, then peered through the grate again, trying to track the source of the aura.

  There. The peach fuzz man, with a meathook in the back of his neck. He was still alive. Alive and stirring awake as the beast padded past him, groaning as he blinked open his eyes.

  Jakob tried to surge forward, to burst out of the cupboard and try to grab the peach fuzz man. His captor held him steady. With a hand over his mouth, Jakob couldn’t protest that the man was still alive, but with a jolt of horror he realised he didn’t need to. His captor would have heard that groan. He knew.

  Worse, if he struggled and cried out, all he’d
do is get them both caught by that hulking beast.

  The bull-headed Incarnate padded past the dangling peach fuzz man, to a corner of the room, lifting a wooden box off the floor with slow, reverent motions and carefully withdrawing the pendant of an archbishop, a wide circle of interlocking gold links and rubies with the winged sun of the Ardent Church dangling from it, inlaid with rubies and sapphires.

  Very cautiously, the Incarnate tied it about his thick neck, tightening it at back. It looked uncomfortable. The pendant had been designed for humans to wear, after all, not hulking monstrosities.

  “Holy of … holies …” the Incarnate mumbled, its voice guttural, the intonations strange, as though it wasn’t used to speaking. “Holy … of holies …”

  The peach fuzz man tried to turn, but seemed to only manage to make the meathook dig in deeper, giving a soft whimper of pain. If the Incarnate noticed, it didn’t react, just turning and lumbering closer. Jakob could hear the air whistling through its nose.

  “Holy of holies …” The Incarnate said, the chain around its neck jangling as it closed in on the peach fuzz man, taking him by the shoulders in an almost comforting, gentle motion. “Holy … of …”

  The peach fuzz man stared blearily at it, blinking tears out of his eyes. “Please do -- …”

  Jakob saw a flash of lamprey like teeth, and then something crunched, and there was just blood. He couldn’t stop himself from whimpering, wanting to shut his eyes but completely unable to.

  The Incarnate turned sharply. Even at this distance, Jakob could see its pupils dilate. With a bellow, it closed the distance in a split second, the bull head suddenly pressed up so close to the metal grate that Jakob could feel its foul breath on his face.

  It had to know they were there. It had to. They were mere inches apart, separated only by a thin piece of metal with a grate in it. It had to know.

  But the Incarnate only breathed out slowly, the tension in its frame draining away. “Holy of holies,” it muttered, turning away from the cupboard. Slowly, too slowly, it sloped out of the room, leaving them alone with the corpses.