The Red Knight

‘Try me,’ she said.

The captain was surprised by her vehemence.

The Abbess, on the other hand, merely smiled a cat’s smile.

Harmodius shrugged and slapped at the sphere with a fist of phantasm.

It moved the width of a finger.

Then it shot across the room at Harmodius. He caught it, struggled with it, and it began to move – slowly, but without pause – back.

‘Of course he is stronger than you,’ the Abbess said, and she extinguished the globe with a snap of her fingers. ‘But not as much stronger as he would have expected. Eh, Magus?’

Harmodius took a deep breath. ‘You are most powerful, sister.’

The captain grinned. ‘Let us link. I reserve some memories. But my tutor taught me to hold some walls while opening other doors.’

‘I give a great deal for very little gain,’ Harmodius said. ‘Bah – and yet, the Abbess is right. I am not an island.’ He extended his hand to Amicia.

She took it graciously. They took hands around the circle, like children in a game.

‘Captain, I intend to pray. Try not to vanish in a puff of smoke,’ said the Abbess.

She began the Lord’s Prayer.

Prudentia was standing at the door. ‘If you were having guests, you might have asked me to sweep up,’ she said.

The Abbess appeared in his hall. She was young, voluptuous in a tall, thin way, with an earthy power to her face that belied her spirit.

Amicia was elfin and green.

Harmodius was young and strong, hale – a knight on errantry, with a halo of gold.

Miram was shining like a statue of polished bronze.

Mag looked just like herself.

He was at once in his place of power, and simultaneously in Amicia’s, standing on her beautiful bridge. He sat in a comfortable leather armchair in a great tiled room – that had to be Harmodius – surrounded by chess boards and wheels with wheels. He stood in a chapel surrounded by statues of knights and their ladies – or, as he realised, ladies and their knights, each with a golden chain attaching them. A chapel of courtly love – surely the lady’s place of power. He knelt before a plain stone altar with a cup of red blood on it. Miram’s place of power.

He stood in the Abbess’s hall, and there was a needle in his hand. Mag’s place of power was external – in that moment, he understood how very powerful her making was, because where the rest of them worked the aether, she worked the solid.

There was a glow or health, of vitality, of goodness, of power. And no time at all.

He knew many things, and many things of his were learned.

They made their plan.

And then, like the end of a kiss, he was himself.

He sagged away from them, tired from the length of the link. Other perspectives were haunting, exhausting – he could see, as quickly as Harmodius had, how a sisterhood of dedicated nuns was the ideal basis for a choir of Hermeticists, because they learned and practised discipline – together.

Harmodius was stroking his beard. ‘You are taking all the risk, lad,’ he said aloud.

The captain gave them all a lop-sided grin. ‘A single, perfect sacrifice,’ he said.

The Abbess rolled her eyes. ‘Sometimes your blasphemy is just banal,’ she said. ‘Try not to die. We’re all quite fond of you.’

Amicia met his eye and smiled at him, and he returned her smile.

‘I have many things to prepare,’ he said. He bowed to the company, and went out into the night.

First he walked to the northern tower and climbed the steps to the second floor. He climbed softly, his black leather boots and smooth leather soles giving nothing away. The card players were attuned to the sound of sabatons.

Bad Tom was playing piquet.

‘A word,’ he said.

Tom raised his head, pursed his lips, and put his cards face down with a start. ‘I can leave cards like this any time,’ he said, a little too carefully.

Bent was hiding something under his hand.

Given the circumstances, the captain didn’t think he needed to care.

Bent shrugged. ‘They’ll be the same when you come back,’ he said.

‘Better be,’ Tom said. He followed the captain out onto the garrison room’s balcony over the courtyard. ‘My lord?’ the big man asked, formally.

‘I’m going for a ride tonight, Tom,’ the captain said quietly. ‘Out into the enemy. I’d like you to come.’

‘I’m your man,’ Tom said cheerfully.

‘We’re going to try and take him,’ the captain said. He made a sign with his fingers, like antlers or branches growing from his head.

Tom eyes widened – just a hair. Then he laughed. ‘That’s a mad jest,’ he said. ‘Oh, the pleasure of it!’

‘Forget the watch bill. I want the best. Pick me twenty men-at-arms,’ the captain said.

‘’Bout all we have on their feet,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll get it done.’

‘Full dark. You will have to cover me when I- Tom, you know that I will have to use power?’ the captain said.

Tom grinned. ‘I guess.’ He turned his head away. ‘Everyone says you used power against the daemons.’

The captain nodded. ‘True. If I have to cast, I need you to cover me. I can’t fight and cast.’ Then he grinned. ‘Well. I can’t fight and cast well.’

Tom nodded. ‘I’m your man. But – in the dark? After yon horned loon? We need to bring a minstrel.’

The captain was lost by the change of subject. ‘A minstrel?’

‘Someone to record it all, Captain.’ Bad Tom looked off into the dark. ‘Because we’re going to make a song.’

The captain didn’t quite know what to make of that. So he slapped the big man on the shoulder.

Tom caught his arm. ‘You can’t be thinkin’ we can take him with steel.’

The captain lowered his voice. ‘No, Tom. I don’t think so, but I’m going to try, anyway.’

Tom nodded. ‘So we’re the bait, then?’

The captain looked grim. ‘You are a little too quick, my friend.’

Tom nodded. ‘When there’s death in the air, I can see through a brick wall.’

Near Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn had everything he needed to proceed. He’d built his two most powerful phantasms in advance, storing them carefully in living things he’d designed just to store such things – pale limpets that clung like naked slugs to his mossy stone carapace.

He didn’t bother to curse the wyverns who had failed him. It had been, at best, a long shot.

But now it was down to him, and he didn’t want to do it.

He didn’t want to weaken himself by taking on the fortress directly.

He didn’t want to expose himself to direct assaults from his apprentice and the dark sun. However puny, they were not unskilled or incapable.

He didn’t want to fight with her. Although his reason told him that when he killed her, he would be much stronger for it. His link to her was a link to his past life. A weakness.

He didn’t want to do this at all. Because win or lose, he’d engaged forces that forced his hand. Made him grow in power. In visibility.

Damn them all, the useless daemons most of all. It was their fortress, and they were