Warlock's shadow

jumped up and hurled the Headsman a fraction of a second before the door smashed open and the brightness of the day flooded the hall. In silhouette, there she was. Tasahre. Her swords were naked in her hands, the sunlight like a halo around her.

25

THE WARLOCK IN HIS OWN DOMAIN

The severed head was already in the air, aimed straight at Tasahre’s face. She ducked, fast as lighting, and it sailed over her out onto the waterfront. Berren started to rise.

‘Berren! Run!’ she snapped and charged. Berren scrambled away towards the door. Tasahre ran straight at the warlock. Kuy didn’t move, stayed sitting exactly where he was as Tasahre leapt through the air and drew back her swords to strike. ‘Abomination!’ She landed, both feet at once, right in front of him.

And stopped, frozen and quivering, held in place by some force Berren couldn’t see. Kuy’s voice dripped with hate. ‘Today I came to your temple and stood among you. Now you come into my domain and you dare to threaten me? Your kind are even worse here than you were in Caladir.’

Berren stood at the door and stared. Every muscle in Tasahre’s body was straining, shaking as she tried to break free of whatever the warlock had done to her. But she couldn’t. She was held fast. He edged towards the door, slowly and steadily until he was close enough to bolt.

‘You … cannot … stand … against us!’ Tasahre’s words came out between gritted teeth.

Kuy’s voice rose again. ‘The more you struggle, the tighter it binds! Let it have you and you will be free, but that was never the way for your sort. You are so pathetically easy!’ He picked up a knife with a cleaver-like blade. His eyes flicked to Berren. ‘Call this lying spider friend, do you? Stay! See what becomes of such dull bags of sightless flesh!’

Berren hesitated. He was almost at the door. ‘Don’t! Let her go!’

‘Let her go?’ Kuy almost shrieked. ‘Let her go? This creature came here to kill me and you ask me to let it go? Hear me boy, for I will do no such thing. You brought this here and if you leave now, I will do far worse than kill her. And then I will come for you.’

‘We … will …’ The effort of speaking was too much for the monk. Berren stood in the daylight coming through the bashed-in door. This time it was his head that wouldn’t let him move, not his legs. He stared in disbelief at the knife in Kuy’s hand. It was the one with the golden hilt, the one from Master Sy’s room.

‘Get my head back, boy. Then sit and watch and learn!’ Kuy turned back to Tasahre. ‘You! You will do nothing, monk! In a while I’ll send you home to tell all your bright and blind little friends that the witch-doctor down by the docks is just a harmless old fool. Best to leave him be and not waste precious time on such a small thing, not when there are emperors to overthrow, eh?’ A gleeful grin washed over the warlock’s face. ‘Look, boy, look! She doesn’t know!’

‘Never …!’

‘Yes! You will serve me! My little toy!’ hissed Kuy. He raised the knife.

Berren leapt. Not away, as his head said he should, but back in. He slammed into the warlock as the knife came down. Tasahre screamed and fell, twitching on the floor. Kuy staggered, the knife still in his hand.

‘Boy!’ His face turned pale, his hands too, while charcoal smoke whiffed from his fingers. Berren rolled back to his feet, torn between running away and helping Tasahre. She was still moving, still alive …

Kuy raised his hand. Black shadows curled around it. Berren drew his waster and threw it, hitting the warlock in the chest. Kuy staggered back; the shadows around his hand dissolved into the air and Berren ran at him again. He didn’t have a choice any more; he couldn’t leave, not with Tasahre on the floor, and so he crashed into the witch-doctor a second time, both hands clamping around the wrist that held Master Sy’s knife. Kuy’s skin had turned white as milk, almost translucent so that Berren could see the bones beneath the skin of his fingers. He grinned at Berren as they struggled.

‘You betray me for this? For that?’ He spat in Berren’s face. ‘You betray your master? Oh, how we have punishment for naughty little boys like you! Yes, yes, for this is no knife that you would understand, Berren. This blade cuts souls and now I will show you how. Foolish boy! You will make a slave of yourself and then you’ll do the same to her!’ The blade turned slowly and inexorably towards Berren’s face. With every moment, the witch-doctor seemed to grow stronger. His eyes gleamed with madness. Berren felt the edge of the knife touch his cheek. Kuy’s face was inches from his own, teeth bared, gleaming at him.

‘Dragons for one of you! Queens for both! An empress! Touch it!’ The razor edge pressed into Berren’s skin. Shadows roared in circles around them. ‘The future, boy! See the horror it holds! See the black moon!’

Facing him, no more than a few dozen yards away, he saw himself. He raised his javelin, ready to throw. His own face stared back at him, wild eyed, spattered in blood.

‘Well? Are you going to throw it or not …?’

Berren slammed a knee between the witch-doctor’s legs. Kuy grunted. The vision faded.

‘I have seen my own, too. It showed me. I saw my apprentice kill me. But not you. Ah, my poor brother Vallas. Both of you such hunters!’ Kuy bore down on him with the knife. With a last fling of strength, Berren pushed the witch-doctor away. He cast wildly about for anything he could use as a weapon. The warlock still held the knife. He was grinning like a madman, pointing at Tasahre. ‘Look at her!’ Shadows swirled around Kuy like a maelstrom now, while the witch-doctor himself was as white as a ghost. In flashes, Berren could see right through him to the candle-flames and the gloomy shapes beyond. ‘For Syannis I will let you live. But her?’ He slashed the golden knife through the air. ‘You brought her here, Berren. What would you give to save her, little traitor?’

Give? Berren’s mouth ran dry. There was nothing here that he could use to fight, there were no weapons, at least not as Berren would understand one.

Behind Kuy, Tasahre moved a fraction. Her head turned. Her eyes opened. She looked at Berren.

‘Well? A leg? An eye? A voice? A day? Three lovers you’ll never have? An emperor? Take it! ’ He pressed the golden knife forward. Berren collapsed, helpless. The way the ghost-face of the warlock was looking at him made his insides squirm.

Tasahre was starting to rise. Berren’s hands reached out of their own accord and took the knife, just as they had taken paper and quill before. They clutched the hilt together. Slowly, no matter how hard he tried to tell them not to, they turned the blade towards him. He knelt forward.

‘Yes! Now see!’ The rage of shadows around Kuy was fading. He was using all of his power on Berren now. Tasahre was almost on her feet.

He couldn’t help himself. The knife jerked, the blade pushing into his skin, his own hands pressing it deeper and deeper towards his heart. He screamed but there was no pain. Instead he felt a pressure in his head and suddenly he could see himself, as though he was looking in a mirror; but he wasn’t seeing his skin, he was looking at what lay underneath, at his soul, an endless tangle of threads like a spider’s web wrapped within itself.

‘Tell the knife! Make it your promise: You will be unswervingly loyal to my desires. And then cut, Berren, cut! Three little slices. You! Obey! Me!’

With each command the knife sliced a little piece away from Berren’s soul. His own hand was making him into the warlock’s slave! Even as he cut, he could see it working, see how each thread mattered, how each strand made up what he was, how each cut made him more of a slave. The knife showed him all of it, exactly as it was and would be. Kuy crouched over him. He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Stupid boy! I could have given you everything and you throw it in my face and for what? For a monk? For a girl? Stupid, foolish-’

Tasahre rose behind him and drove both her swords into the witch-doctor’s back. He screamed and staggered away, wringing his hands, looking down at himself, at the two sword-points sticking out of his chest.

‘What have you done?’ Darkness poured from the corner of his mouth. Berren hoped it was blood. He scrabbled backwards to get away, still on his hands and knees.

Kuy’s voice grew stronger and full of fury. An invisible force clamped itself around Berren’s throat, strangling