“Supplicant Hilbert presented himself to me this very day,” Evadine went on, brandishing the pages, voice hoarse but controlled. “Having travelled here with Lord Swain, who, I assume, had no inkling of the contents of the gift that the learned Supplicant wished to place in my hands. Evidently, he thought I might find it interesting. And I did, Alwyn. There’s a great deal of babbling nonsense in this screed, to be sure, almost as if it consisted of nothing but the collected scribblings of a madwoman rather than a prophetess. But then, I have been called mad more times than I care to recall, so I kept reading.”

  She leafed through the pages, then resumed her recital. “‘Be it known. That the one who will be called Risen will not rise. She will be healed. And her healing will be wrought not by the Endless Ones in whose service I struggle, but by those who cleave to heathen rites. The sackcloth witch will heal her but the false Risen will claim a blessing and, in so doing, a kingdom.’”

  Evadine’s hands shook as she lowered the parchment. I saw her anger dim then, brows drawing together, hopeful, beseeching. “Will you lie to me again, Alwyn?” she asked. “Will you tell me that this is falsehood and that you did not allow a Caerith witch to put her filthy hands upon me?”

  I spared a short glance at Swain, seeing his features bunched in the agony of this moment. His loyalty to Evadine had always been absolute, something unbreakable and unimpeachable. I knew he had already answered this question, rendering any story I might concoct irrelevant, not that I could have conjured one equal to the task in any case.

  “You were dying,” I said, meeting Evadine’s pleading eyes. “There was no other choice. If we hadn’t…”

  Evadine let out a wordless cry, more a scream than a roar. It was a sound I had never heard from a human throat, louder than anything a human throat could produce, possessing enough power to send a jolting shudder through me. She reeled away, once again gripping the pages tight in her fist, her other hand on her belly as if trying to ease a terrible ache.

  “You…” She staggered, sagging, a sob colouring her voice. “You have made me an abomination before the Seraphile. I stand corrupted in both body and soul.”

  The sight of her distress stirred a desire to reach for her, embrace her now as I did in private, regardless of all the eyes watching us. But I didn’t. Perhaps it was the sound she made, so ugly, so wrong. Perhaps it was the deep, but as yet unacknowledged, realisation that what existed between us was gone, shattered in this very instant. But, in truth, I feel it was more mundane than that. It was her anger, her condemnation, her self-interested revulsion. No gratitude. No appreciation for all I, Swain, Wilhum and so many others had risked to save her. The supposed soiling of her soul wiped it all away, for she was the Anointed Lady. She was the chosen of the Seraphile. A delusion forever broken, unforgivably so.

  “No,” I told her, my own voice raised with harsh, grating defiance. “We made you the Risen Martyr. We made you the Ascendant Queen. And look—” I raised my arms to the surrounding panorama of destruction, feeling the embers sting my skin “—look at what you did with it.”

  She froze, regarding me with features so twisted with animus I felt I looked upon a stranger. Then she came for me, her sword hissing from its sheath in a blur, her attack so swift and unexpected I barely got a hand to my own blade before she closed the distance.

  “My lady!” Swain stepped between us, hands raised in placation. “My lady, I beg…”

  His words ended in a choking gurgle when Evadine’s sword slashed across his throat. The thick spatter of blood on her skin brought her to a halt, standing in shocked silence to watch Swain collapse to his knees, hands clutching his neck in a vain attempt to staunch the crimson flow. He rasped out another few words before he fell face down on to the cobbles, voice too riven with blood to make them out. I fancy he was still attempting to beg her pardon when his heart pushed the last drop from his wound.

  “You,” Evadine said, pale but once again human features regarding me in horrified accusation. “You forced me to this.”

  The past few seconds had seen me rooted to the spot, the sudden tumult of change too much to comprehend. But now I did. Now I saw what I had to do.

  “Alwyn Scribe, you are hereby restrained by command of the Ascendant Queen.” Harldin spoke with a prideful confidence, clearly enjoying the moment. He might have lived if he hadn’t made the mistake of trying to clamp a hand to my shoulder. “Surrender your arms…”

  The pommel of my sword caught his upper jaw as I drew it, shattering teeth before breaking his nose. He staggered back a foot or two, all the space I needed to reverse the blade and spear him from chin to nape. “Consider that your lesson in manners,” I grunted, kicking his twitching body off the blade.

  It transpired that his sister was not mute after all, for she hurled herself at me with an ear-paining screech. I sidestepped the wild, downward swing of her sword and replied with a slash at her legs. She was fast, however, steel ringing as she parried the stroke. Had she not been subsumed with the need for vengeance, she would have stepped back before mounting another attack. Instead, she pressed forward, raising her blade for a thrust and leaving herself open to a solid punch to the face. I drove my shoulder into her chest as she stumbled, stunned by the blow, casting her aside.

  “How could you do this, Alwyn?” Evadine demanded, crouched over Swain’s now immobile body. For some reason, she still clutched at her belly, whatever pain it caused her rendering her face into a mask of tear-streaked anguish. “How could you do this to us?”

  Evadine serves the Malecite. Words spoken by a man I called a liar. Words I now knew as truth. Suddenly, it was all so starkly clear. The many, many dead of Alundia. The Sacrifice March. The irrational devotion of her crusaders. The cathedral dying in a bright blossom of flame lit by a maddened mob, just like that ancient Caerith city so long ago. The sickening absurdity of it almost brought a laugh to my lips.

  “The Scourge,” I said, voice soft, for I spoke more to myself than to her. “It was there at every turn. Always in your sermons. A promise, not a prophecy.” I did laugh then, though it emerged as more a retching cough. “The Second Scourge, Evadine!” I levelled my sword at her, casting my free hand at the remnants of the blazing cathedral. “It’s here! This is the Second Scourge, and we made it!”

  She replied with another roar, this one more akin to a snarl, still as inhuman as before. Teeth bared, she crouched, sword gripped in both hands, preparing to meet my charge, a charge I would never make.

  The sound of many boots pounding the cobbles saved me, provoking an instinctive ducking of the head to avoid the sweep of the halberd that would have sliced it from my shoulders. I killed the wielder with a practised jab of my sword point to the unarmoured gap betwixt his pauldron and breastplate. Before he fell, I took relieved notice of the colours he wore, black and green, marking him as one of Duke Viruhlis’s men. It would have grieved me yet further to have cut down my own comrades this night.

  More shouts from all around caused me to whirl, parrying a sword thrust, then sidestepping another. The duchy men formed a tight cordon around me now, an inward facing thicket of blades I couldn’t hope to cut through. Yet, I tried. Evadine serves the Malecite. I could see her, still crouched over Swain’s body less than a dozen yards away. I knew with utter certainty that she was the one living soul in this world who needed to die. All the havoc I had helped her wreak as a Risen Martyr would weigh upon me all my days. But what a harvest she could reap as the Ascendant Queen of Albermaine.

  So I hacked and slashed at the soldiers between us, driving their weapons aside to slice at exposed faces in the hope of forcing a way through. My fury was such I barely felt the stabbing thrust of a halberd’s spike into my upper leg, my sword cutting open the face of the man who wielded it, slicing through eyes and bone. I kicked him away and renewed my frenzied progress, ignoring the wetness streaming down my leg. The next blow caught me on the side of the head, a roundhouse swipe of a poleaxe haft which sent a blaze of sparks across my vision. But I was no stranger to a ringing skull and my sword’s reply cut through the haft and the hand that held it. Just for a second the way to Evadine was clear, a few steps and it would be over. Had I not comprehended her true nature, the sight of her in that instant might have frozen me in place. She sat now, cradling Swain’s head in her lap, weeping in abject grief and regret.

  “Evadine serves the Malecite,” I grunted the words out like a chant as I forced myself on, my leg now like ice, a thick trickle of blood streaming from the wound to my head. Evadine made no effort to rise, her sword lying at her side as she continued to weep over the face of the man she had murdered. She looked up as I loomed over her, my sword raised high for the killing stroke. I froze as our eyes met, her tearful, grief-wracked visage staying my hand better than any shield.

  “Would you kill us, Alwyn?” she asked me, shifting her hand from Swain’s flaccid features to rest it upon her belly. “Would you kill the child we made?”

  I had only seconds to stand there gaping in shock before a flurry of blows brought me down. Stumbling to my knees, a gauntleted fist rebounded from the back of my head. I collapsed, spitting iron-tinged bile.

  “Stand back!” Duke Viruhlis stood over me, his pale features for once suffused with colour, a dark red of fury and contempt. I felt my grip on consciousness slip away as he spoke on, barking orders to his men. “Bind this traitor!”

  “You…” I sputtered, raising my hand to grasp at his greave. “You don’t understand… You have to… stop her…”

  “Get your filthy hands off me, traitor!” Viruhlis punctuated his instruction with a hard kick to my gut. He was a strong man and the force of it was enough to finally drag me into the dark.

  PART TWO

  Know this, oh king of many kingdoms – I am your enemy. This role I did not choose, for you have thrust it upon me. You name yourself Protector of all Faiths, and yet you sully mine at every turn. You harbour those who seek to destroy me. You sponsor liars and spies within my borders. Your court turns away my missionaries yet lends a willing ear to exiled traitors. But, above all my tainted brother, you are set against me by the evil that pollutes your soul: the malice of disbelief. Cloak yourself in all the lore and philosophy you wish, but a soul mired in the worship of nothing can be redeemed only through my blessing. Those who deny it, as you do, must accept destruction as their fate.

  Extract from Martyr Evadine’s Epistle to Saluhtan Alkad IX of Ishtakar

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I suppose it was inevitable that Erchel would return during this, my lowest ever ebb. I have no notion of how long I lay in that cell somewhere in the bowels of the royal palace. I know I woke at times and, when I did so, I raved. I have dim memories of my plaintive entreaties echoing through indifferent halls, though what exactly I said forever eludes me. Mostly, however, I drifted in dream-filled delirium. I gabbled pleas at fallen friends and enemies, stumbling from one blank-eyed yet living corpse to another. I recall sinking to my knees before the cadaverous spectre of King Tomas. He seemed to find me amusing.

  “She serves the Malecite, does she?” he asked, rotting features twisting into a grin. “I could have told you that, Scribe.”

  But it was mostly just a confused pandemonium interspersed with bouts of pain as my body suffered through its wounds in the waking world. It was only when Erchel found me that the chaos settled, the formless melange of memories solidifying into something recognisable, in form if not location. Pale fog drifted across narrow waterways fringed with reed-covered banks. It reminded me of the marshland I had travelled through on the back of the Chainsman’s cart, but wilder with a harsh, chilly edge to the air.

  “Martyrs’ arses, Alwyn,” Erchel commented, squinting as he surveyed my beaten person. “But you’re a fucking mess, aren’t you?”

  “What are you doing here?” I groaned in response, hoping this particular vision would slip into misty confusion like all the others. Being lost in a swirl of nightmare was still preferable to the company of this long-dead pervert. “You were Arnabus’s creature, something he stole from my memories. He’s dead, so why haven’t you joined him?”

  “Can’t do that,” he replied cheerfully. “She won’t let me. The curious thing about Arnabus’s particular skill is that, in making use of your memory of me, he managed to entangle a portion of my soul. It was enough for the Sack Witch to seek out the rest of me. Pluck me from the path.”

  “Path?”

  His humour shifted into discomfort and he looked away. “Y’know. The path that takes you… wherever you’re going.”

  “And where were you going?”

  “Dunno, exactly. It was a long path, though. Plodded along it for fuck knows how long before she came for me.” He spoke on quickly, apparently keen to change the subject. “She’s a little concerned, y’see? I get the feeling this wasn’t supposed to happen. Not yet anyways.”

  “That’s a shame,” I mumbled, continuing to huddle, feeling soft earth beneath my back and half expecting it to sublime into nothing whereupon I would find escape from this misbegotten bog. It didn’t. Groaning in angry resignation, I sat up, slapping Erchel’s hand away when he attempted to prod the bleeding wound on the side of my head.

  “What do you want?” I demanded. “What does she want?”

  “To save your silly carcass, what else.” Erchel gave me a pitying look and moved away to kick a loose stone into the still waters. “Shitty place, this. Any idea where it is?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No. Not a clue. It’s like that, being her slave. Spend my time flitting from one curious spot to another. Although, I do get to meet all sorts of interesting people. Granted, most of them are dead or close to it. But even then, they usually have something to say that’s worth hearing.”

  I frowned at him, climbing to my feet and blowing air into cupped hands. “So, it’s not just me who gets to enjoy the dubious pleasure of your company.”

  In life, a jibe like this would have provoked Erchel to voice a few harsh but poorly phrased insults. In death, however, he merely huffed out a good-natured laugh. “It was just you at first, but not any longer. She tells me I have a talent for this. Seems it was one of the reasons she took me from the path.”

  I knew the Sack Witch’s abilities to be impressive, but that she had somehow trapped Erchel’s shade in this place of shifting dreams made it clear her reach was far longer and more powerful than I suspected.

  “All right, then,” I said. “Let’s hear it. What cryptic, barely useful pile of horse shit do you have for me this time?”

  “Just this.” Erchel raised his hands, gesturing to our surroundings.

  “A fog-bound bog. What of it?” I stared at him in expectation but received only a shrug by way of reply.

  “I’m supposed to come here?” I pressed. “Find something here, perhaps?”

  “I don’t know. She just wants you to see it. Look around a bit. See if there’s anything you recognise.”

  Sighing, I did as he bid, scanning the landscape with scant enthusiasm until my eye alighted on a regular shape in the haze. Moving closer, I saw it was a building, a shrine in fact judging by its spire. It was small by Covenant standards, little more than a shack surrounded by a cluster of sheds and a livestock pen. A shrine in the middle of a marsh. I knew of only one such place.

  “Sihlda’s shrine,” I said. In fact, if I was right, this was the Shrine to Martyr Lemtuel in the heart of the Cordwain marshes. Sihlda had been sent here by jealous senior clerics in the hope she would wither into irrelevance. Instead, she built it into a revered place of healing and pilgrimage, until she gave shelter to a pair of knights and a pregnant noblewoman, the act that saw her consigned to the Pit Mines.

  “I’m supposed to come here?” I asked Erchel.

  “How the fuck should I know? Don’t even know where this arsehole of a place is.” Erchel gave another affable smile and started to walk off, the fog around us growing thicker with each step he took.

  “She may not appreciate my situation,” I called after him. “But I strongly suspect I’m currently locked in a cell awaiting a traitor’s death. Quite badly wounded into the bargain.”

  “Sounds nasty,” he called back. “Best of luck with it all.”

  “Erchel!” My voice echoed into a swirl of grey mist, the last vestiges of the marsh disintegrating around me in a smeared, meaningless spiral. “How do I get out?”

  “You’ve always managed it before.” His increasingly distant voice rang with taunting laughter. “Have faith, Alwyn. If the mad bitch didn’t take that from you too.”

  It was Supplicant Delric’s needle that woke me, Erchel’s laughter and the dregs of the dream banished by rhythmic pulses of pain as the healer worked to stitch the cut in my upper leg. The icy air of the marshes was immediately replaced by the damp, musty chill of a cell. I gazed blearily at grey walls streaked with green until another jab of the needle had me jerking, a shout erupting from my mouth.

  “Stay still,” Delric snapped, glancing up from his work. “You certainly don’t want my hand to slip just now.” His face and voice possessed a hardness I hadn’t seen before, leastways not directed at me. He resumed his task, saying nothing more, but his expression was that of a man compelled to a much resented chore. I forced myself to look at the wound, seeing a narrow cut an inch from my left hip. The surrounding skin was red from Delric pinching the lips closed, but I saw no sign of the deeper hues that told of corruption.

  I lay back on what felt like a sackcloth mattress filled with thin straw, trying not to move and suffering through the pain. Usually, Delric would anoint the stricken flesh of his charges with some form of numbing balm before setting to work with the needle. In my case, it was plain he hadn’t bothered. The cell was unremarkable save for its dimensions, bigger than most, with a high, barred window near the ceiling. I would have preferred bare walls since this portal offered no means of glimpsing the outside world while filling my prison with a constant draught of cold air.