Empire in Black and Gold

There was a host of thousands of souls in Asta, but they were chaff. They were Wasps or the slaves of Wasps. Here and there was a spark of quality, some luckless scion of an elder race held in imperial servitude. If he had wished he could have found Tisamon and Tynisa easily enough, just by their heritage: Moths, Spiders and Mantids, the ancient rulers of the world.

Che had no such Inapt heritage, but he felt for the cord that must have tied his fate to hers, through her ministrations — linked through more than that? He stamped on such thoughts. He reached out towards the makeshift town of Asta, the grey deadness of its machines, the legion of sleeping soldiers and slavers and artificers. Che!

His powers were weaker even than he had thought. To find an acquaintance was surely not beyond them, not when he was as close as this. Was it all those machines that were confusing his magic? Or was he really such a poor seer after all and a burden on his people? He hunted, but there was no trail, not the faintest mark to lead him to her.

His heart lurched. What is the first mark of the fool? his people asked, and the stock answer came back, That he listens to fools. So it was that fools clustered together to make their plots and their machines, and so it was that Achaeos had been drawn into fools’ company. Stenwold says they have taken her to Asta, but she is not there. Tisamon will waste his stealth, while we all waste our time. The answer brought a rush of relief to him, that at least his powers were not so atrophied — and then another of despair. So she is further, further than I can reach her, and I shall not be free.

As he stood and made to return to the fire, he felt the Darakyon at his back flex and stretch and come awake.

Oh we should not be here! and he hurried back towards the fire, and saw that he was not the only one.

‘Maker! Halfbreed!’ he called out. But he saw them already springing up from the fire and both reaching for their weapons. ‘Get away from the fire, you fools!’ Achaeos yelled sharply, and they blundered towards his voice, in the darkness that blinded them and was nothing to a Moth’s sight. It was so clear to him: the trees and the buckled land, the fire and his two clumsy allies. Clear, too, the Wasp soldiers who had been silently approaching, drawn to the dim glow of the embers.

Stenwold and Totho were already into the pitch dark between the trees before the Wasps reached their fire. One of the intruders unshuttered a lantern instantly and cast the beam across the forest, till the others shouted at him to put it out. There were a half-dozen of them, Achaeos saw. One was kneeling to study the surrounding ground in the firelight. He heard, ‘I told you I saw a fire out here,’ and, ‘Smugglers, you reckon?’

‘Further into the woods,’ Stenwold murmured, ‘but quietly.’

‘No, not further into the woods. .’ Achaeos began, but Stenwold and Totho were already retreating deeper into the Darakyon. All around them Achaeos felt the forest stir, not the trees themselves, but the blood that had been spilt there, the pain and terror of those who had died. He felt his breathing ragged, his heart racing. The Wasps were following after, though, creeping forward as silently as they could, listening for the crack of twigs.

‘Lantern now, then, and rush them!’ one whispered.

‘Fall back!’ Stenwold hissed, and they were ploughing deeper, running and stumbling away from the sudden light of the Wasps.

The light passed across Achaeos, the sharp beam of the lantern. There was a shout, and a sting crackled out, flashing fire past him. He fled, almost sobbing with the sense of the Darakyon stirring all around, and the Wasps gave chase with a savage cry.

He could see Stenwold and Totho ahead of him, staggering like blind men through a landscape Achaeos could see perfectly. He tried to catch them up. It should have been simple.

Achaeos tripped. Those vines had not been there a moment before. He staggered on, the Wasps shouting behind him, letting loose their stings and crossbow bolts. The dense, thorny undergrowth seemed always in his way. He tried to push through it, but it raked at his hands, tore his sleeves. He turned aside, searching for another way round. Stenwold and Totho were further off now, and he realized that their path was curving back towards the forest’s edge whilst his own was only going deeper.

I woke it up. I caught its attention. A horrible sense of inevitability had caught him. Better to be killed by the Wasps. But it was too late to make that choice. The trees around him were vast and twisted, their bark creased and stretched tight about their bulging trunks. There were thorns and briars everywhere, whole nests of them. Wherever he turned, only the path leading into the centre of the wood seemed clear.

He heard a scream behind him, and he stopped running. He did not want to turn round, but something, some morbid curiosity, drew him to do it. There was enough of the forest to obscure his view, but the Wasps’ voices were now rising in panic, in horror. He heard, ‘What is it?’ and ‘Kill it! Kill it before-’ For just a moment he saw a shape, one that was not quite insect, or human, or plant, but possessed thorn-studded killing arms that rose and fell with lethal speed.

Then there was quiet, and he thought of all the blood that was soaking into the soil of the Darakyon, and he closed his dark-seeing eyes and just waited.

And the Darakyon waited, and when he opened his eyes there was no monster, no terrifying chimaera rising before him. There was a darkness, though, between the trees, that his eyes could not penetrate. There were shadows, and the shadows were shapes, and once he had understood that, he did his best not to look at them.

‘What do you want with me?’ he asked, his voice little more than a rattle in his throat, and still they waited, until he realized that whatever it was was posing the same question to him. He had been so bold as to catch its notice, and it wanted to know why.

Nobody has spoken with the Darakyon for a hundred years.

His people forbad it, and for good reason. Time and dark deeds had clawed away at this place, festering in it for centuries.

There was a thought that was coming to him now, because he was standing, alive, in this ever-dying place, and it was waiting for his words. Nobody has spoken with the Darakyon for a hundred years, so what do they know — what do they really know — about what this place might do? The tales of his people regarding this place were all horrors to scare the children with, but the one thing they agreed on was that the Darakyon was strong.

I came here for a purpose. It was while looking for Che that I felt the forest awake. I am a weak seer, unequal to the task of finding her, but I am standing at the heart of the greatest magic I have ever known.

The night had lost its reality. He was outside time, outside all rules. In that moment he felt that he could accomplish anything, that he could overcome the losses of his race and turn back the revolution. and who knew what else?

‘Give me your power,’ he told the trees. ‘Loan me your power this night.’ And he reached forth to take it.

And the Darakyon answered him back, Who asks? in a voice that was like a dry chorus of a hundred voices. He could not tell whether it came from the trees themselves or from between them, but the sound of it froze him. A voice like dry leaves and the dead husks of things, and the passage of five hundred years.

Who would draw upon what we have hoarded? gusted the voice of the Darakyon, and Achaeos could barely speak. His breath plumed in the air, as the temperature plummeted instantly away. His great pride, that a moment ago had seemed to hold the world in its palm, had withered within him, like leaves when the winter comes.

‘I am Achaeos, a seer of the ancient paths of-’ he stuttered out.

Hist! You are no more than a neophyte. What could persuade us to lend you our strength?

He fought in vain to summon an answer, and then they said, What could save you from us?

‘I am a seer. .’ he tried again, but there was laughter now, and it was worse than the voice itself had