in the distance, faint, but unmistakable. A gust of wind swirled forward and gathered a trail of dust up from the stone floor, then fell away.

For a moment all was still around him as if Vanach itself were holding its breath. Isak glanced around. Zhia had sensed them too, that much was clear, drawn by portentous events, perhaps, or the presence of power unveiling, daemons walked the Land beyond Vanach’s walls. Keeping back from the light, snuffling gently at the scents of blood and life, they attended patiently as Isak descended into darkness.

Isak felt a hand on his arm, looked down to see Mihn’s steady expression. For a moment he could taste the Dark Place again — the infernal stink of his jailer, the tang of his own blood and the cold of the void below. Mihn took a step forward and the slight grip he exerted was enough to lead Isak right to the entrance. Once there Mihn made to go first.

Isak reached out and stop him. ‘My duty,’ he said. ‘This is no grave.’ And he descended, ducking to fit his enormous frame down the stair. Once out of sight of the Sanctum he paused and loosed the wrappings around Eolis. With Mihn following close behind, they soon found themselves on the bare upper floor of the ziggurat’s interior. Isak looked around and almost laughed at how mundane the room was. The lowest rank of the commissars were all initiated here — thousands of men and women, far too many for any real secrets to be revealed. All the same, something akin to a schoolroom wasn’t quite what he’d expected. It was empty now, but a dozen short benches stood on the far side of the room, just beyond a second stone stairway that led further down into the ziggurat. A pale green light emanated from the walls, illuminating tablets bearing a carved stone script Isak couldn’t read.

‘Their holy mission,’ Mihn supplied when Isak shot him a questioning look. ‘The nameless stranger who showed them they were blessed by the Gods.’

Before he could say any more a sound came from the upper entrance. Isak turned to see the faint scrap of starlight on the stair’s wall disappear as the door was closed behind them.

‘No going back, I suppose.’

‘Was there ever?’

Isak didn’t reply. He did a quick circuit of the room, briefly inspecting each tablet before starting down the central stair to a similar sort of room, this one partitioned by wooden panels. Icons of the Gods took centre stage on the panels, while the outer walls again bore more of Vorizh’s mysteries — the coming of a saviour whose appearance would overturn the ungodly ways of the Seven Tribes, and more of the regime’s founding and the duties of the commissars.

The pattern was repeated on the next two floors, where stone pillars and walls increasingly divided up the space into multiple rooms, and within each there were more of the mysteries, each coming closer to truth. Mention was made of the Great War and the curses laid down by the Gods on their enemies, of the crimes enacted by both sides.

‘Strange,’ Isak commented as Mihn reported excerpts for his benefit. ‘I forget how much I know of the Land now, the secrets and lies that frame our lives. A few summers ago, half of this would have astonished me.’

‘And it has taken a toll,’ Mihn warned. ‘Your insight has not come without cost. The more I think on what you have endured, the more I fear where it will lead you.’

Isak turned to face his friend. ‘Lead me? You mean us — you’re coming along for the ride, remember?’

Mihn bowed his head to acknowledge the point.

‘It’s too late anyway,’ Isak continued, one hand resting on the Crystal Skull at his waist. ‘We’re well beyond consequences now and you know it. All we’ve got left is success or failure.’ He moved off before Mihn could reply, turning his back quickly as though hoping he could avoid whatever the failed Harlequin might say. The last stairway stood before them, this one more ornate than the rest, with wyvern heads in bas-relief on the large central pillars standing on either side of the open entrance.

‘The labyrinth.’

Isak drew Eolis. The blade shone bright white in the dim interior of the labyrinth. Green trails of magic danced in the darkness, reminding Isak of the first time he’d gone to the dragon’s lair underneath Tirah. The artefacts stored there under Genedel’s guardianship had been mere toys compared to what he sought now, but still their presence had set his mind aflame. Now it was different; now he was more accustomed to magic in all its forms, the presence of the divine and daemonic as much as the wild, raging energies of battlefield magic.

But he found something new as well. Like a man who had withstood the torrent and now beheld the ocean, Isak hesitated before the entrance of the labyrinth. It was muted, hidden from view, but inescapable all the same. He knew there could be no mages within the Commissar Brigade; they would ask too many questions, as unable to resist investigating as an addict who smelled something akin to opium.

‘Isak,’ Mihn whispered, ‘are you okay?’

Isak found himself biting his lip as he nodded, the torn flesh of his lips moulding around the broken teeth left to him by Ghenna’s inhabitants.

‘I don’t know what it’ll do to me,’ he said eventually, ‘what’ll be left of me when I take it.’

‘It is that powerful?’

Isak almost laughed. ‘Can you not feel it?’

‘The air makes my skin crawl, I know that.’

‘It is the sword — the black sword of Death.’

Again Mihn made to go first, seeing Isak’s reticence, and again it stirred the white-eye into movement. ‘We are beyond concerns now,’ he said firmly as Isak pulled him back. ‘There are no consequences, no tomorrows — only the deed to follow this moment.’

‘Another dusty quotation?’

Mihn shook his head. ‘You have had enough of those from me; all I have left are my own words.’

Isak forced a grin in the strange half-light. ‘Learning your place in things at last? So no more relying on the words of others; your own carry far greater weight, my friend.’

They went down into the darkness of the labyrinth. Before he’d left the last step Isak’s head was ringing with the latent power resting uneasily somewhere below their feet. He tightened his grip on Eolis, holding the sword ready as he walked forward to the first turning. The base of the ziggurat was several hundred yards across, while the stone-walled passage they stood in was barely one yard wide.

At the end of the corridor he used his sword to score the wall, inscribing the ‘heart’ rune there rather than a single notch. It seemed appropriate, given the protection Xeliath had given him in Ghenna, but it proved to be unnecessary as a voice rang out from further down the corridor.

‘No breathless commissar are you,’ called a woman, ‘you come bearing power like a mantle, but you are in our domain now.’

Isak exchanged a look with Mihn, then stepped forward and turned right, barely able to make out the figure ahead amidst the shadows swirling angrily around her. The woman had pale, delicate features half-obscured by her loose raven-black hair. She wore a cuirass of beautiful workmanship, and greaves and vambraces, but her sword remained sheathed on her back.

‘Only fools enter the labyrinth,’ she warned. ‘It is only by my hand that you will ever leave this place.’

Isak turned back the way they had come and saw the entrance had vanished, the passage ending in a dead end only a few yards behind Mihn. He didn’t bother going to investigate; something told him this was more than mere illusion.

‘Been called that often enough,’ Isak said, raising his sword for the woman to see clearly, ‘but in this case, you might want to think again, Araia.’

The woman’s eyes blazed suddenly, twin sapphires shining out through the darkness. The shadows around her started to whip more frenziedly around the narrow passageway, but Isak made no further move towards her. He put a precautionary hand on the Skull and continued.

‘Your sister’s at the top of the ziggurat,’ he said carefully. ‘We’re here to end this.’

‘End it?’ Araia gasped, reeling from his words as though physi cally struck. ‘There is no end, not even in death!’

‘Zhia doesn’t believe that.’

Her voice softened. ‘Zhia- It’s been so long… No, I am bound still.’

‘What is that?’ Mihn asked, using Araia’s own dialect. ‘What duty binds you?’

‘I–I am bound to this place, bound to drink of those who come here, bound to protect our secrets.’ She spoke

Вы читаете The Dusk Watchman
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