CHAPTER SIX
Emuel felt himself being pulled in all directions at once. At one point his head was somewhere down around his knees, while his eyeballs orbited his right wrist. It felt like he had been disassembled and put back together again a million times. For a moment he found peace, letting go as his constituent parts tumbled away from each other into the void; Emuel wished his left ear well as it slowly somersaulted past him.
There was a sickening moment of disorientation before he rained down to earth, his consciousness pouring back into him like ice-water, making him clench his teeth against the sudden, migraine-inducing cold. All he could do was shiver, his breathing sounding loud and hollow. Emuel dreaded opening his eyes (did he still have eyes?) The repetitive booming sound he could hear must have been his heart, but when he reached out, feeling for it, he touched hot sand.
He rolled onto his back and looked into a cloudless blue sky. The sun had reached its zenith and he squinted against its harsh glare, before shielding his eyes, sitting up and looking around him.
The ground was spotted with blood and Emuel immediately checked himself, but he wasn’t wounded. Various pieces of equipment were scattered across the sand — bent weapons, crushed water flasks, torn clothing — and when Emuel picked up a shield he found that there was still an arm attached to it. Rings bedecked the fingers of the pale hand; it seemed it had belonged to one of the lieutenants from the Order of the Swords of Dawn.
“Hello?” Emuel called. “Anyone?”
But it soon became obvious that he was the only one here; a fact that he confirmed for himself by climbing a shallow rise and seeing that he was surrounded on all sides by desert.
Was this really Twilight? Looking up and seeing a sky without Kerberos, he didn’t think so.
Emuel tried to remember what had happened.
The ritual had been closed to all but the highest-ranking members of the Final Faith — not even Querilous Fitch had been invited to witness the performance — and had been conducted in a monastery high in the Drakengrat mountains. Emuel’s heart sank when he saw the location, for he had often come here on retreat, to meditate and pray in the beautiful gardens. But there was now no sign of the order of silent monks who had lived here, and the gardens had been allowed to run riot, swallowing the small chapels that dotted the grounds.
Emuel had been unnerved to discover that the sorcery that was to be performed during the ritual had never before been attempted, but Katherine Makennon herself had assured them that she had tasked the ritual to a sorcerer more powerful even than Brother Sequilious.
Albrecht Wolf looked to be old enough to be the great-grandfather of the previous Anointed Lord. He tottered up to the altar on two canes, dragging his right foot behind him. When he placed his apparatus before him, his right hand shook so badly that he knocked over a chalice, spilling a stinking tarry substance that slowly dripped down the stone. No one rushed to help him, and Makennon did not seem in the least perturbed by his infirmity; indeed, she treated Albrecht with the greatest of reverence, and Emuel thought that he could even sense fear when she talked with him. Once Albrecht had prepared his apparatus, the Anointed Lord knelt before him and kissed the ring on his right index finger before leaving the temple with her retinue.
Albrecht looked up at those now gathered before the altar with cataract-clouded eyes, and though his vision was obscured, Emuel could feel the old man’s gaze searing into his. Ignacio stood beside Emuel, dressed in the garb of a footsoldier of the Order of the Swords of Dawn. He didn’t once look at the eunuch or register his presence. Something had been done to him, Emuel wasn’t sure what, but there was nothing left of the man he had once known. Flanking them were two dozen soldiers of the Swords, led by two lieutenants. Emuel was of the opinion that this wouldn’t be nearly enough to apprehend Silus and the crew of the Llothriall, but kept this thought to himself.
Albrecht refilled the chalice and then stepped around the altar, offering its contents to one of the lieutenants. The man gagged on the first sip, but Albrecht kept a hand on his shoulder as he forced the foul liquor down. On the last swallow, sweat poured down the lieutenant’s brow and his face visibly paled.
The cup was re-filled and passed to the second lieutenant, who drank deeply and quickly. He dropped the chalice and his shoulders hitched, but he managed not to vomit.
Next Albrecht lifted a plank of wood from the altar and, painted upon it, Emuel saw one word: Llothriall. Albrecht burned this relic of the broken ship, inhaling the smoke and uttering something in a foreign tongue between wracking coughs.
As far as sorcery went, Emuel had witnessed more impressive rituals, and as the old man bent double in the grip of another coughing fit, he wondered whether Albrecht would die before the ceremony could be completed. Then, as he straightened up, put his right arm on the altar and a knife to his wrist, Emuel realised, with a shudder, that the sorcerer was going to die regardless, that the ritual wouldbe completed.
Albrecht pressed down with the knife, but he had to saw the blade back and forth before his flesh gave way. Even when it parted there was no immediate trickle of blood. The only sound in the temple was the sorcerer’s ragged breathing, as he sought to sever an artery.
Finally, the blade did its job and a crimson thread worked its way down Albrecht’s wrist. He worked the knife and the thread became a trickle, the trickle a flood, and a great scarlet sheet poured down the face of the altar. Despite the life flowing from him, Albrecht still stood, holding the gazes of the men and women before him.
As the blood flowed from the foot of the altar and washed across the flagstones towards them, Emuel wondered just how much of the stuff this dried husk of a human sorcerer could contain. It lapped up against their boots, the coppery stench of it making his eyes water as it surrounded them in a widening pool, quickly spreading to all corners of the temple. When the tide reached Emuel’s ankles, the warm blood began to seep through his britches. He looked behind him to the temple doors, wondering whether he could escape before the Swords could cut him down. The blood quickly rose to his waist and something within the crimson flood brushed up against his thighs. Looking down, Emuel realised that there were things swimming in the scarlet pool. Beside him, he saw something black and scaled curl around Ignacio’s wrists. His friend didn’t blink, didn’t make a sound as he was pulled beneath the surface. Nobody else seemed to notice Ignacio’s passing. In fact, nobody but Emuel was reacting at all to the horror that surrounded them.
Another member of the Swords was dragged under, and another. Soon Emuel was the only person, besides Albrecht, left standing. The blood had reached his chest by this point and Emuel realised that even if the creatures didn’t get him, he would surely drown.
The room swayed. Below the surface of the blood, Emuel could see pale lights, bobbing like lanterns; he thought that they looked like faces. So enraptured was he by their glow that he didn’t react when the blood finally closed over his head. When he took his first breath, letting the warm liquid pour into him, the lights danced around him like a multitude of stars, and he was torn apart.
Clearly the ritual had been a failure. Not only were the Llothriall and her crew nowhere in the immediate vicinity, but now most of Emuel’s companions lay dead on the sand, while the rest had seemingly vanished into thin air.
As far as he could see, he had two options: he could remain where he was and wait for his supplies to run out, or he could strike out into the desert and hope that there was more to this place than an endless expanse of sand.
Emuel chose the latter option, gathering up what little usable equipment he could scavenge from the detritus that surrounded him. Most of the weapons were bent or warped, but he did manage to find a serviceable sword. More importantly, he found two intact water flasks and enough trail rations to last three days. Securing these about his person, he set out, heading away from the sun. He realised that he might die amongst the dunes, but the thought of staying where he was and just waiting for death to find him didn’t appeal.
The sound of the wind amongst the dunes reminded Emuel of the song of the Stone Seers — the great canticle that had kept the city of Morat afloat — and he added his own voice to the song, the harmony lifting his spirits a little, making him feel somewhat less alone. It wasn’t the desert itself that Emuel found the most daunting, however, it was the seemingly infinite sky that hung above him. Without Kerberos, he felt exposed, open to whatever lay beyond that deep cyan expanse. When he found himself stumbling across the head of a dune and momentarily losing his footing, he was terrified that he would fall into the sky and just keep on falling.
