Age of War

Chapter 33

“It’s called the Abyssal Howl, the Wind of Ruin, the Breath of Entropy.” Jonis stared into the flames as she sat huddled with the others in the great domed chamber. It was dark now, and freezing cold. Everything was covered in a rime of frost and they were all wrapped in several layers of furs. The inexplicable ceiling of ice still stretched over the damaged section of the dome, though now it dripped steadily and left puddles on the smashed flagstones beneath. They stayed well away from it. They were fewer now, and the bodies of their dead they’d placed off by one wall, covered in their cloaks. Their furs had been plundered for the living. The carcasses of the dogmen they’d heaped into the central pit, a gruesome task, but a necessary one. There was little left of the ones Jonis had killed with that black lightning, just twisted bones and scraps of bloody meat.

“That doesn’t explain what it was,” Tayne said. Her tone was accusatory, but none of them had much heart for an argument. It was dark, and they were unwilling to retreat from the scene of their struggle for survival. They didn’t even discuss it: no one was willing to go into a cramped room and risk being bottled in. Better to face them in the open, if they should come back.

“You’ve seen it before. At Priam.”

“Yes,” she said, “but that was from the Cyclops…”

Jonis could only shrug. “It was the same thing. I have no explanation.”

“But you said that you understood it,” Huldane said. He alone seemed at ease with the horror they’d experienced. Indeed, there seemed to be a fell light in his eyes, as if coming close to this dark power had woken up something within him. He was sharpening his sword. The surviving soldiers seemed to have somehow gravitated towards him. He’d fought like something from a legend earlier, and they too had found some forgotten spark reignited. The whole thing was profoundly unnerving.

“I’m beginning to,” Jonis said, tracing a finger through the frost on the floor. She drew symbols, jagged runes from her childhood. Talosi runes, she supposed, or something older. “When I slept last night, I had what I thought was a dream, although it was very vivid. I was here,” she held a hand up and looked around the vast, dark hall, “but surrounded by ghosts of my ancestors.”

“Your ancestors?” Tayne asked.

“Yes. They looked like me. Some even had the same tattoos.” She ran her finger down her face where her Keeper’s markings were. She barely felt the cold where she’d just been doodling in the frost. “They were carrying out some kind of ritual – and the result was something like what I did. Except they weren’t alone.”

Tayne frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well…there were four of them. Like me. Around the pit there.” She almost didn’t want to glance over, as if the hyen-a-khan would suddenly lurch back into life if she did. “And in the centre was a…well…a Cyclops. But not a real one.”

“You mean it had an eye?” Huldane was looking at her with an odd smile playing across his face.

“Yes. A head and an eye, like the skeleton. For all I know it was the same creature. They…they channelled their power through him somehow, and he sent it up into the sky.”

Calas grunted as she shifted her weight. One of her hands was bandaged up and she now walked with a noticeable limp. “That doesn’t seem to explain much to me…”

“I think…I think my people were once…well…”

“Sorcerers,” Huldane said.

Tayne laughed, although there wasn’t much joy in the sound. It was bitter and hollow; the laugh of a woman who’d watched half her command get slaughtered like animals. “That’s ridiculous.”