The sundered seal

Chapter Fifteen: Immortal clones

They reached Brackwater a little before dawn, and the river was already burning.

It was not fire in the ordinary sense. As Kaelen and Lyra swept down out of the dark, they saw that the two streams meeting at the town's spit of land had turned a sullen, oily grey, and that a low mist was rising off the water, thick and iron-scented, creeping up the terraces in slow white fingers. Wherever it touched, the lamps went out. Along the barricade, the defenders were coughing and stumbling, rubbing at their eyes, and on the far bank, in the shadow of the market island, a great mass of shapes was wading through the shallows with their yellow eyes fixed on the drawn-up bridge.

"There must be three hundred of them," Lyra said, her voice sharp with shock. "Kaelen, they have never come in numbers like this."

"They are not hunting." Kaelen's gaze was fixed on the centre of the crowd. "They are escorting."

He was right. At the heart of the host, walking calmly through the grey water with his hands clasped behind his back, was a man in plain grey clothes.

Maren Teague stood on the barricade with her bronze staff raised and her jaw clenched. The damp, heavy air that had gathered around her at their first meeting had grown into a true storm now, a low black cloud pressing down over the town with thunder muttering in its belly. She had called every drop of moisture in the valley to her, and it showed. Her hands were shaking, and her lips were blue.

"Teague!" Lyra called, dropping to the walkway beside her. "How long have you held them?"

"Since midnight." Maren did not take her eyes from the water. "I can stop them from crossing the stream. I cannot stop that."

She pointed with her chin. The grey man had reached the foot of the bridge. He raised one hand, politely, as though hailing a ferryman, and the great timber span that the townsfolk had hauled up on chains began, slowly and impossibly, to descend.

"What is he doing?" a boatman cried.

"He is not doing it," said Kaelen. "They are."

Beneath the bridge, half submerged, a dozen abominations had taken hold of the chains. Their grey arms bulged and rippled. The links groaned, and the planking shuddered, and with a long, tearing crack the whole bridge slammed down across the water.

"Hold the line!" Maren roared. "Spears forward! Do not let them reach the stakes!"

The first wave struck the barricade with a sound like surf on rock.

For a time there was only chaos. Lyra rose into the air above the landing, wind shrieking from her hands, cutting down the creatures that scrambled over the carts. Maren's storm broke at last in a torrent of rain and jagged white lightning, and bolt after bolt tore into the oncoming horde, scattering burnt bodies across the planks. The boatmen fought with oars and pikes and boat hooks, shoulder to shoulder, their faces streaked with water and blood. And Kaelen, standing at the heart of the line with his coat torn open and the light blazing white at his fingertips, did the one thing no one else could.

He freed them.

It was not like the cellar. There was no time for gentleness, no space for slow patience. He flung the light out in great sweeping waves, golden and wide, and wherever it fell, the grey flinched and shrank. Dozens of the creatures dropped to their knees on the planks, clutching their heads, clawed hands softening into fingers. A woman in a torn apron sat down in the water and began to sob. A boy who could not have been twelve stared at his own palms in wonder. Behind them, the black mass of the horde faltered, stumbled, and for a moment seemed to forget what it was for.

Kaelen felt the cost with every breath. The darkness poured into him in rivers. It filled his lungs and his ribs and his spine, cold and sweet and howling, and the voice in his skull rose to a roar. Yes, it said. Yes. More. Take it all. You are so strong. You are so strong.

"Kaelen!" Lyra shouted from above. "Kaelen, tell me!"

"It is speaking," he gasped. "It is loud."

"Then stop!"

"I cannot, there are too many..."

"Then I will stop you." She dropped from the sky like a hawk, caught him around the waist, and hauled him bodily backwards through the press of the line. "You said you would tell me. You promised. And I am telling you, now, that you are done."

The light died in his hands. The roar in his head fell back to a sullen murmur, and Kaelen slumped against her shoulder, shaking from head to foot.

"Good," whispered Lyra. "That is good. I have you."

On the bridge, the grey man had stopped walking.

He stood in the centre of the span with the rain streaming over his shoulders, looking down at the kneeling, weeping figures who had so lately been his hounds. His expression was not angry. It was thoughtful, almost wistful, like a collector regarding a cracked vase.

"Remarkable," he said, and though his voice was quiet, it carried across the whole length of the water. "I had hoped to see it, and I am glad I came. You are quicker than I expected, Ascendant. And so much stronger than your father."

Lyra set Kaelen carefully down against the barricade and rose, her cloak snapping behind her.

"Veyrath," she said.

"Lyra." He inclined his head. "I told you three days. You did not give me an answer. I confess I was disappointed."

"You will have your answer now."

She did not wait. She flew.

It was the fastest Kaelen had ever seen her move. A streak of green across the rain, wind howling at her heels, and in her hands, two spiralling blades of compressed air. She struck Veyrath on the bridge at full speed, and the whole span rocked beneath the impact. The first blade took him across the neck. The second took him through the chest. He did not even raise his hands.

He fell in a spray of red, and rolled once, and lay still on the planks with his plain grey coat spread around him like a shroud.

Silence. The rain hammered on the wood. Along the barricade, the boatmen stared, wide-eyed and breathless.

"It is over," Maren Teague whispered. "She has killed him."

"No," said Kaelen. His voice was hollow. "No. Not yet. Lyra, get back."

Lyra was already retreating. She hovered above the bridge with her hands outstretched and her eyes fixed on the body, and the body lay still, and the rain washed the blood in thin pink threads across the planks.

Then a small sound drifted up from the lower bank.

It was a clapping.

Slow, even, and deliberate, the sound of someone applauding a performance. Every head turned. At the water's edge, perhaps forty paces from the foot of the bridge, a man in plain grey clothes stood on the mud with his hands pressed lightly together.

"Wonderful," said Veyrath. "That was cleanly done. I felt almost nothing."

There was a horrified moan from the barricade. Somebody dropped a spear.

"How many of you are there?" Lyra said hoarsely.

"At the moment? I cannot say precisely. A few hundred, perhaps. I stopped counting. It becomes tedious." He waded out into the shallows, unhurried. "Please do not mistake this for cruelty, Lyra. I have no wish to hurt you. But I wanted you to see it with your own eyes. You cannot win this war by killing me. You can only tire yourselves."

"Then we will tire you first," said Maren Teague. She had raised her staff, and the storm overhead was coiling like a living thing. "I do not care how many you have. I will burn them all."

"Brave woman." Veyrath smiled at her with something like real affection. "But I would advise you to reconsider. You have so very little left. Your storm, your town, your boatmen. The Ascendant, who can barely stand." His eyes slid, with terrible gentleness, to Kaelen. "And all of you so tired."

The mist thickened. Along the riverbank, the freed abominations had begun to shiver, their pale new skin mottling with grey once more. Kaelen watched in horror as the black veins crept back across a boy's cheek, as a woman's fingers began to lengthen.

"No," he whispered. "No. I took it from them. I took it all."

"Did you?" said Veyrath. "Or did you merely move it?"

He lifted a hand, and the mist surged.

It came up from the river in a wall, thick as wool and cold as the grave, and it swallowed the bridge and the landing and half the barricade before anyone could draw breath. Kaelen felt it fill his lungs. He heard the screams begin, thin and high, from the townsfolk who had been breathing it longest. And behind the screams, quiet and unhurried, he heard a voice that was not Veyrath's.

It was his own.

You are so tired, it said. You have been so brave. Lie down. Let us finish this.

"Kaelen!" Lyra's voice, somewhere, very far. "Kaelen, hold on to me!"

He reached for her. He could not find her hand. His fingers closed on empty air, and the grey crept in at the edges of his sight, and through it he saw a figure coming slowly towards him over the planks. A man in plain clothes, with a plain, kind face.

"Come with me," said Veyrath softly. "It is time."

And then the sky broke open.

It was not lightning. It was not Maren's storm. It was a roar, vast and ancient and furious, and it came from directly above. A column of white fire fell out of the clouds and struck the bridge like the hammer of a god, and the whole span exploded in a fountain of burning splinters. The mist tore apart. The shapes on the bank screamed and fell back. And through the smoke, wings spread wide against the dawn, came a dragon the colour of cooling iron.

"NOT HIM," said Vorthak, and his voice shook the river. "YOU WILL NOT TAKE HIM."

Veyrath stumbled back, one hand raised against the glare, and for the very first time since Kaelen had met him, the calm on his face flickered.

"Old friend," he said. "You are early."

"I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND," said the dragon. "AND I AM NOT YOUR HOUND."

The fire fell again.