With his eyes closed and a single image in his mind, Ruhen touched the tip to the chest of each of the three terrified disciples. ‘Bear my blessing,’ he whispered tenderly to each as the vast magic surged out of Aenaris.
The youth was knocked backwards by its force and caught by Luerce, standing behind him, while the woman cried out in something between agony and ecstasy. The bearded man shuddered as though impaled and dropped flat on his face. The air shimmered white around him and rampant magics hissed in his bones.
Ruhen staggered back, visibly struggling with the power until Ilumene came forward to steady him. With Ilumene’s big hand carefully holding his own, Ruhen managed to return Aenaris to its sheath. Ilumene wasted no time in rewrapping the hilt until the crystal sword was again entirely hidden from view, then he stepped back, blinking away the ghost-trails of light.
Dazed by the power of the weapon, Ruhen stared dumbly at his hand as the pain receded. Everything was blurred after Aenaris’ bright light. Slowly focus returned and he looked down at the small hand of the body he’d stolen before its mother even realised she was pregnant, blinking at what he saw.
Aenaris had left its mark on him, Ruhen realised gradually. The pain in his eyes and reeling shadows under his skin diminished, but a white mark remained on his hand. His palm and the inside of his fingers were scorched white where he had touched the crystal sword. He flexed his hand, testing the sore, taut flesh for signs of greater damage, but if he had really been burned, the Key of Life had healed him, just as it had when an assassin had shot him the day the Harlequins arrived.
His attention was dragged towards the three disciples by a sudden howl from the youth, who was convulsing in Luerce’s arms. His eyes was staring unseeing up at the sky, his back was arched in pain. The alarmed First Disciple eased the youth onto the flagstones at the top of the stairs just as pinpricks of light appeared over the surface of his body. The same thing was happening to the other two, though the woman had somehow stayed upright, but as the flowering stars intensified, she moaned and bent forward as though in prayer.
Each of the three curled up as the light started weaving a skein of shining threads over them. The spider-silk slowly enveloped them and Ruhen found himself taking a step back as his immortal senses felt the rush of magic around them continuing to expand until it had become an unseen torrent of power in the air.
Venn sensed it too, and distantly Ruhen heard the former Harlequin gasp and fall to his knees, nearly overwhelmed despite the shield he’d had raised.
The woman shuddered as though struck by two great blows and writhed left and right under the cocoon of power. Where she touched the shining threads they stuck to her clothes, then her hair and hands too, searing her skin just as Aenaris had marked Ruhen. One hand pushed out, reaching towards him, an awkward movement, jerking forward and back, and when she moved, a lattice of white threads remained.
Beside her the young man kicked wildly, his silence disconcerting, as though he was suffering an agony that could not be expressed with a scream.
The three figures became increasingly blurred, hands and feet thrusting out under the webs of magic, all unnatural angles and movements that expanded the cocoons and all-too-soon stopped corresponding to anything human. Behind them Ruhen saw a scramble of figures, Harlequins and disciples alike, drawing back — all fearful of touching those glittering threads that seared the pale daylight.
The younger man’s cocoon tumbled down the slope onto a lower tier, momentarily out of sight until an arm or something drove upwards and expanded its form higher than a man. The two remaining came together with a hiss and crackle of competing energies, burning the air between them and creating some sort of barrier against which both pressed as they continued their astonishing growth. By fits and starts their progress went in opposite directions, blackening the grass as they reached it and scoring trails over flagstones.
Another spasm brought one, then the others, up even higher, as though a horse were rearing up within the cocoon. Shapes pressed against the inner surface, curved and alien in form, but against the intense light Ruhen’s eyes could not make out anything definite. Again the boy was forced to retreat, now shielding his shadow-lidded eyes from the light.
Something arched and held its position, working up into the air with sharp, jagged movements. The shapeless masses were growing larger with every passing moment and at last the cocoons were starting to weaken, sagging and tearing in places. The lightbound shapes rose again, this time driving up from the ground and huge grey talons ripped through the membrane. The frayed edges curled away as they were torn, flapping in a breeze Ruhen could not feel, until they caught against the talons and feet above them and melted onto the flesh and bone.
The nearer shape lurched forward and almost toppled as a long limb pressed against the inside of the membrane and ripped it open with a savage jerk. Shreds of burning white light burst out and lashed across Ruhen and his most loyal. He heard Ilumene cry out in alarm, but he had no time to turn as light suddenly exploded across his eyes. Ruhen reeled, hands clasped to his face as searing pain more intense than the burning touch of Aenaris blanked out his vision.
Ruhen cried out for the first time in his life, shock and pain mingling to cause the Land to lurch underneath him. Only unseen hands stopped him from falling to the ground — hands he realised were Venn’s after crystal wiped across his face and hauled the pain away.
Ruhen shuddered, half-cradled in Venn’s trembling arms, and tried to blink away the blur in his eyes. He felt his left eye obey and gasped as he suddenly made out the shape ahead of him: a near-translucent outstretched wing the size of a ship’s sail. His right eye saw nothing though, just a uniform white nothingness, as though thick fog had suddenly descended.
He touched his fingers to the skin there and hissed as he discovered a long, raw wound curving up from his cheek to his ear. His eye was too numb for him to be able to tell whether the lid was even open or not, but questing fingers found it was, though covering his eye with his hand made no difference to the dull white blur he saw.
‘Master, can you see?’ Venn demanded hoarsely, tilting Ruhen’s head to inspect the burned flesh. ‘Your eye, it’s gone entirely white,’ he croaked, lowering his voice as he added, ‘the shadows are gone from it.’
Ruhen struggled up, disorientated by the unfamiliar sensations, but more horrified by his childish frailty and weakness. ‘It is blind,’ he gasped. ‘I see nothing.’
The wing above was suddenly retracted and a long claw protruding from the wing’s knuckle was driven hard against the ground seeking purchase. It caught the edge of a paving stone and stuck fast while the struggling creature heaved against the smoking remnants of membrane around it.
‘The sword,’ Venn suggested, watching the beast like Ruhen, mindful that only swift action could properly repair injuries.
Venn’s wrist had set as it was, pressed agonisingly back into the semblance of position, but then it had healed that way. To undo that was beyond any healer’s skill. Though the Key of Life might have that power, the pain it would cause was too great; Venn’s breathtaking skill was gone forever, at least in mortal terms.
‘No,’ Ruhen croaked, pushing away Venn’s hands and steadying himself, his attention fixed on the monsters as shrieks of panic rang out across the Stepped Gardens.
The nearest tore away the last of the membrane and lifted its head to the sun, oblivious to the aghast faces watching. A thin blanket of autumn cloud covered the sky, but the dragon shone with an inner light that lovingly illuminated every scale. Huge muscles bunched under the shimmering reptilian armour, while a needle-tipped tail wove with a cobra’s promise. Its broad head was grey, seamed in black below its spiral-horn-studded brow, while the top was almost perfectly white, echoing the hooded cloaks all three had worn. The man’s disconcerting eyes — one had been brown, one green — were now pale and luminescent.
The dragon stretched its wings out wide and roared a challenge to the heavens that Ruhen felt like a blow to his ears.
Beside it, the second beast rose up and regarded its sibling with unblinking eyes; this one was more slender, with a sharp beak and a spear-like head where once an ageing woman’s face had been. It was even whiter than the first, carved from ice, with eyes a paler blue than any Litse’s, but when it opened its mouth to add its voice the tongue and flesh were unnaturally black.
The last, the young man, was darker than the others. The only white on its body was a streak that ran down its spiked spine; the rest was shadowed grey. Great claws tightened and furrowed the earth as the dragons’ birth- cries split the sky and tears fell from the heavens to splatter on the heads of those fleeing the gardens. Ruhen didn’t move, unafraid of the enormous monsters, enraptured by the sinuous, lethal shapes crafted by his mind.
‘The power of the Gods,’ he whispered, savouring the thrill of creation that was only intensified by the pain that remained in his ruined eye. He touched his white-marked fingers to his face. ‘And this I sacrifice.’
Hunger. Prey.
