The Skull Throne

They spent several more minutes thus, the Par’chin gently coaching him in how to Draw the power.

‘Now hold the power tight,’ the Par’chin said, producing a small folding knife from his pocket. He opened it and flipped the blade into his grip, passing the handle to Jardir.

Jardir took the small blade curiously. It wasn’t even warded. ‘What am I to do with this?’

‘Cut yourself,’ the Par’chin said.

Jardir looked at him curiously, then shrugged and complied. The blade was sharp, and parted his flesh easily. He could see blood in the cut, but the magic he’d absorbed was already at work. The skin knitted together before it could begin to well.

The Par’chin shook his head. ‘Again. But keep a tighter grip on the power. So tight the wound stays open.’

Jardir grunted, slicing his flesh again. The wound began to close as before, but Jardir Drew the magic from his flesh into the crown, and the healing stopped.

‘Healing’s great when your bones are in the right place and you’ve got power to spare,’ the Par’chin said, ‘but if you’re not careful, you can heal twisted, or waste power you need. Now let out just a touch, sending it straight where it’s needed.’

Jardir let out a measured trickle of magic, and watched the cut seal away as if it had never been.

‘Good,’ the Par’chin said, ‘but you might’ve done with less. Two cuts, now. Heal one, but not the other.’

Holding tight to the power, Jardir cut one forearm, and then the other. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, releasing a fraction as much magic as before and willing it to his left arm alone. He could feel the tingle run along the limb, and opened his eyes to see the cut slowly sealing, the other still oozing blood.

There was a howl not far off, the sound of field demons. Jardir looked in that direction, but the alagai were still too far off.

‘Draw power from that direction,’ the Par’chin said. ‘Take it in through your eyes.’

Jardir did so, and found that even though there was no direct line of sight, he could see the creatures in the distance, running hard for their position.

‘How?’ he asked.

‘All living things make an imprint on the ambient magic,’ the Par’chin said, ‘spreading out like a drop of dye in water. You can read the current, and see beyond the limits of your eyes.’

Jardir squinted, studying the approaching creatures. A full reap, more than a score of demons. Their long, corded limbs and low torsos glowed fiercely with power.

‘They are many, Par’chin,’ he said. ‘Are you certain you do not wish to return the spear to me?’ He scanned the sky. There were wind demons beginning to circle as well, drawn to the glow of their power. Jardir reached for his Cloak of Unsight, ready to pull it close, but of course the Par’chin had taken that, too.

The son of Jeph shook his head. ‘We can’t take them with gaisahk alone, then we got no business in Anoch Sun.’

Jardir looked at him curiously. The meaning of the word was clear enough, a conjunction of the Krasian gai, meaning ‘demon’, and sahk, meaning ‘unarmed’, but he had never heard it before.

‘Sharusahk was designed for men to kill one another.’ The Par’chin held up a warded fist. ‘Needed to change it up a bit to bring the wards to bear properly.’

Jardir crossed his fists before his heart and gave a shallow bow, the traditional bow of sharusahk pupil to master. The move was perfectly executed, but doubtless the Par’chin could see the sarcasm in his aura.

He swept a hand at the rapidly approaching field demons. ‘I eagerly await my first lesson, Par’chin.’

The Par’chin’s eyes narrowed, but there was a hint of smile on his lips. His face blurred momentarily, and his clothes fell away, leaving him in only his brown bido. It was the first time Jardir had truly seen what his friend had become. The Painted Man, as the Northerners called him.

It was easy to see why the greenlanders thought him the Deliverer. Every inch of his visible flesh was covered with wards. Some were large and powerful. Impact wards. Forbiddings. Pressure wards. Like Jardir, a demon could not touch the Par’chin, but that he willed it, and his punches, elbows, and kicks would strike the alagai like scorpion bolts.

Other wards, like those than ran around his eyes, ears, and mouth, were almost too small to read, conveying more subtle powers. Midsized ones ran up and down his limbs. Thousands in all.

That in itself was enough to amaze, but the Par’chin had always been an artist with warding. His patterns, simple and efficient, were rendered with such beauty they put Evejan illuminators to shame. Dama who had spent a lifetime copying and illustrating sacred text in ink made from the blood of heroes.

The wards Inevera had cut into Jardir’s flesh were crude by comparison. She would have needed to flay him alive to approach what the Par’chin had done.

Magic ran along the surface of those wards, crackling like static on a thick carpet. They pulsed and throbbed, brightening and dimming in a hypnotizing rhythm. Even one without wardsight could see it. He didn’t look like a man any more. He looked like one of Everam’s seraphs.

The field demons were close now, racing hard at the sight of prey. They stretched out in a long line, a few loping strides apart. Too long spent fighting the first would have the second upon him, and on and on, till he was fighting all of them. Jardir tensed, ready to race to his friend’s aid the moment he began to be overwhelmed.

The Par’chin walked boldly to meet them, but it was warrior’s bravado. No man could fight so many alone.

But again his friend surprised him, slipping in smoothly to grab the lead demon and turn its own momentum against it in a perfect sharusahk circle throw. Cracked like a whip, the field demon’s neck snapped a split second before the Par’chin let go. His aim was precise, crashing the dead alagai into the next in line, sending both tumbling to the ground.

The Par’chin glowed brightly now. In the seconds of contact, he had drained considerable magic from the first demon. He charged in, stomping down on the living demon’s head with an impact-warded heel. There was a flare of magic, and when the Par’chin turned to meet the next in line, Jardir could see its skull had been crushed like a melon.

A crash and shriek stole Jardir’s attention. While he had been focused on the Par’chin, a wind demon had dived at him, hitting hard against the warding field that surrounded Jardir’s crown for several paces in every direction. Including up.

Everam take me for a fool, Jardir scolded himself. In his younger days, he would never have been so reckless as to lose track of his surroundings. The Par’chin feared that the spear had made him lax – and perhaps it had – but the crown was more insidious. He’d begun to drop his guard. Something that would cost him in Anoch Sun. The demon princelings had shown at Waning there were still ways they could strike at him.

Jardir collapsed the field, dropping the wind demon heavily to the ground. It struggled to rise, more dazed than harmed, but as Drillmaster Qeran had taught so many years before, wind demons were slow and clumsy on the ground. The thin bone that stretched the membrane of its wings bowed, not meant to support the demon’s full weight, and at rest the creature’s hind legs were bent fully at the knee, unable to straighten fully.

Before it could manage to right itself, Jardir was on the demon, kicking its limbs out and using his own weight to knock the breath from it once more. The wards scarred onto Jardir’s hands were not as intricate as the Par’chin’s, but they were strong. He sat on the demon’s chest, too high for it to bring its hind talons to bear, and pinned its wings with his knees. He held its throat with his left hand and the pressure ward cut into his palm glowed, building in power as he punched it repeatedly in the vulnerable bone of its eye socket, just above the toothed beak. Impact wards on his knuckles flashed, and he felt the bone crack and finally shatter.

Then, as the Par’chin had shown him, he Drew, feeling the alagai’s magic, absorbed deep in the centre of Ala, flood into him, filling him with power.

Another wind demon dove for him while he was engaged, but this time Jardir was ready. He had learned in lessons long ago that wind demons led their dive with the long, hooked talons at the bend in their wings. They could sever a head with those talons, then spread their wings wide, arresting their downward momentum as they snatched their prey in their hind talons and launched back skyward with a great wingstroke.

Flush with magic, Jardir moved impossibly fast, catching the demon’s wing bone just under the lead talon. He pivoted and threw himself forward, preventing the demon from spreading its wings and throwing it to the ground with the full force of its dive. Bones shattered, and the demon shrieked, twitching in agony. He finished it quickly.

Looking up, he saw the Par’chin fully engaged now. He had killed five of the field demons, but the rest, more than three times that number, surrounded him.

But for all that, he did not appear to be in danger. A demon leapt at him and he collapsed into mist. The alagai passed through him and crashed into one of its fellows, the two going down in a tangle of tooth and claw.

An instant later he reformed behind another of the beasts, catching it under the forelegs and locking his fingers behind its neck in a sharusahk hold. There was an audible snap, and then another demon came at him. He misted away once more, reforming a few feet away, in place to kick a demon in the belly. Impact wards on his instep flashed, launching the alagai several feet through the air.

Jardir was the greatest living sharusahk master, and even he could barely hold his own against the Par’chin’s mist-fighting. Against the alagai, with their powerful bodies and tiny brains, it was devastating.

‘You cheat, Par’chin!’ Jardir called. ‘Your new powers have made you lax!’

The son of Jeph had caught an alagai’s jaws in his hands, and was in the process of forcing them open well past their limit. The demon let out a high-pitched squeal, thrashing madly, but it could not break his hold. He looked over to Jardir, amusement on his aura. ‘Says the man hiding behind his crown’s warding field. Come and show me how it’s done, if you’ve had your rest.’

Jardir laughed, pulling open his robe. The Par’chin’s body was wiry and corded like cable, a sharp contrast to the heavy bulk of Jardir’s muscles, a broad canvas Inevera had painted with her knife. He pulled the crown’s warding field in close and strode into the press. A field demon leapt at him, but he caught its foreleg and snapped it with an effortless twist, dropping it in time for a spin-kick that took the next demon at the base of its skull. The impact ward on his instep was enough to break its spine, killing it instantly.

The other demons, their ravenous fury turned to a more cautious aggression after their battle with the Par’chin, circled, issuing low, threatening growls as they looked for an opening. Jardir glanced at the Par’chin, who had stepped back to observe. His wards of forbiddance glowed fiercely, and Jardir could see the edge of the warding field they formed. It bordered several feet in every direction around the Par’chin, like an invisible bubble of impenetrable glass.

His own warriors had been ready to name the Par’chin Deliverer that night in the Maze. Jardir had thought it due only to the Spear of Kaji at the time, but it seemed the Par’chin was destined to power. It was inevera.

But destined to power did not mean he was Shar’Dama Ka. The Par’chin baulked at the final price of power, refusing to take the reins his people thrust at him. There was still much he had to learn.

‘Observe, Par’chin,’ Jardir said, making a show of setting his feet as he took one of the most basic dama sharusahk stances. He breathed in, taking in all his surroundings, all his thoughts and emotions, embracing them and letting them fall away. He looked at the demons with calm, relaxed focus, ready to react in an instant.

He lowered his guard, pretending distraction, and the alagai took the bait. The ring around him burst into motion as all the field demons moved at him together with all the precision of a push guard.

Jardir never moved his feet, but his waist, supple as a palm frond, twisted and bent as he dodged the attacks and turned them away. He seldom needed more than the flat of his hand to redirect tooth or talon, slapping at paws or the side of a field demon’s head just enough to keep them from touching him. The creatures landed in confused tumbles, dazed, but unharmed.

‘You fighting, or just playing with them?’ the Par’chin asked.

‘I am teaching, Par’chin,’ he replied, ‘and you would be wise to attend the lesson. You may have skill with magic, but the dama would laugh at your sharusahk. There is more than dogma taught in the catacombs beneath Sharik Hora. Gaisahk has merit, but you have much to learn.’

Jardir sent a pulse of power through the crown, knocking the alagai back in a tumble as if from the press of a shield wall. They shook themselves off, growling and beginning to circle once more.

‘Come,’ Jardir beckoned, making a show of setting his feet. ‘Plant your feet and let us begin the lesson.’

The Par’chin melted into mist, reappearing right at his side, feet set in a perfect imitation of Jardir’s stance. Jardir grunted his approval. ‘You will fight without misting. Sharusahk is the eternal struggle for life, Par’chin. You cannot master it if you do not fear for yours.’

The Par’chin met his gaze, and nodded. ‘Fair’s fair.’

As the demons came back at them, Jardir gave the Par’chin a mocking wink. ‘But do not think I am teaching you all my tricks.’

Jardir watched the sun strike the bodies of the alagai they had used as sharusahk practice dummies. Demons more powerful than field and wind had arrived as the night wore on, drawn to the sound of battle. In the end he and the Par’chin had been forced to drop their easy pretence and fight hard to take them with gaisahk alone.

But now their foes lay broken at their feet, and he and the Par’chin stood to show them the sun.

If Jardir lived to be a thousand, he would never tire of the sight. The demons’ skin began to char instantly, glowing like hot coals before bursting into bright fire, casting a flush of heat over his face. It was a daily reminder that, no matter how dark the night, Everam would always return in strength. It was the one moment of every day when hope overpowered the burden of his task to free his people of the alagai. It was the moment when he felt as one with Everam and Kaji.

He looked to the Par’chin, wondering what his faithless ajin’pal saw in the flames. His crownsight was fading as shadows fled, but there was still a hint of his ajin’pal’s aura, and the hope and strength of purpose that filled it in that moment.

‘Ah, Par’chin,’ he said, drawing the man’s gaze. ‘It is so easy to remember our differences, I sometimes forget the similarities.’

The Par’chin nodded sadly. ‘Honest word.’

‘How did you find the lost city, Par’chin?’ Jardir asked.

Arlen could not read Jardir’s aura in the daylight, but the sharp, probing look in his eyes told him this was no random question. Jardir had been holding it, biding his time, waiting until Arlen was relaxed and unsuspecting.

And it had worked. Arlen knew his face in that instant told Jardir much he would have preferred to keep secret. His thoughts offered up a dozen lies, but he shook them away. If they were to walk this road together, it must be as brothers, honest and with trust, or their task was doomed to failure before it even began.

‘Had a map,’ he said, knowing it would not end there.

‘And where did you get this map?’ Jardir pressed. ‘You could not have found it out in the sands. Such a fragile thing would have long since crumbled away.’

Arlen took a deep breath, straightening his back, and met Jardir’s eyes. ‘Stole it from Sharik Hora.’ Jardir’s nod was calm, the act of a disappointed parent who already knows what his child has done.

But despite his posture, Arlen could smell his mounting anger. Anger no wise person would ignore. He readied himself, wondering if he could defeat Jardir in the light of day if it came to blows.

Just need to get the crown off him, he thought, knowing it sounded far simpler than it was. He’d rather climb a mountain without a rope.

‘How did you accomplish this?’ Jardir asked with that same tired tone. ‘You could not have penetrated Sharik Hora alone.’

Arlen nodded. ‘Had help.’

‘Who?’ Jardir pressed, but Arlen simply inclined his head.

‘Ah,’ Jardir said. ‘Abban. He’s been caught bribing dama many times, but I did not think even he could be so bold, or that he could have lied to me for so long without being discovered.’

‘He ent stupid, Ahmann,’ Arlen said. ‘You’d have killed him, or worse, done some barbaric shit like cutting out his tongue. Don’t you deny it. Wasn’t his fault, anyway. He owed me a blood debt, and I wanted the map in payment.’

‘That makes him no less accountable,’ Jardir said.

Arlen shrugged. ‘What’s done is done, and he did the world a favour.’

‘Did he?’ Jardir asked. His calm façade dropped as he glared at Arlen, striding in till they were nose-to-nose. ‘What if the spear was not meant to be found yet, Par’chin? Perhaps we were not ready for it, and you denied inevera by bringing it back before its time? What if we lose Sharak Ka over your and Abban’s arrogance, Par’chin? What then?’

His voice grew in power as he went on, and for a moment Arlen felt himself wilt under it. Stealing the scroll had never seemed right, but even now, he would do it again.

‘Ay, maybe,’ he agreed. ‘And it’s on me and Abban if it’s so.’

He straightened, leaning back in and meeting Jardir’s glare with one of his own. ‘But maybe our best chance to win Sharak Ka was three hundred years ago, when humanity numbered millions, and your ripping dama kept the fighting wards from us by locking those maps up in a tower of superstition. Who bears the weight of arrogance then? What if that was what denied Everam’s ripping plan?’

Jardir paused, losing a touch of his aggressive posture as he considered the question. Arlen knew the sign and stepped back quickly. He stood arms akimbo, offering neither aggression nor submission. ‘If Everam’s got a plan, he ent shared it with us.’

‘The dice—’ Jardir began.

‘—are magic, and no denying,’ Arlen cut him off. ‘That don’t make them divine. And they never told Inevera to have you stop me going to Anoch Sun. They just told you to use me when I got back.’

The anger further left Jardir’s scent as he considered this new possibility. His old friend could be a fool over his faith, but he was an honest fool. He truly believed, leaving him forever hamstrung as he tried to reconcile the hypocrisies of the Evejah.

Arlen spread his hands. ‘Got two choices here, Ahmann. Either we stand around arguing abstractions, or we fight Sharak Ka the best we can with what we’ve got and sort out who’s right after we win.’

Jardir nodded. ‘Then there is only one choice, son of Jeph.’

The days passed, and their tentative accord held. Jardir felt more in control of his magic than ever before, stunned at the breadth of power at his fingertips, and his previous narrow vision of it.

But for all their progress, Waning drew closer by the hour. He and the Par’chin could run at great speed when the magic filled them, but even so, Anoch Sun was not close, and they still had to lay their traps.

‘When will we leave for the lost city?’ he asked one morning, as they waited to show the night’s kill the sun.

‘Tonight,’ the Par’chin said. ‘Lesson time’s done.’

With those words, he melted away into mist. Jardir watched closely with his crownsight as he slipped down into one of the many paths that vented magic onto the surface of Ala. Everam’s power of life, corrupted by Nie.

He was gone for but an instant, but when he rose back out of the path, the current of magic that came with him told Jardir he had travelled a long way, indeed.

In his hands, he carried two items: a cloak and a spear.

Jardir was reaching for the spear before the Par’chin had fully solidified. His hand passed through it at first grasp, but he snatched again, and took hold at last, pulling it from the Par’chin’s hands.

He held the spear before him, feeling the thrum of its power, and knew it was the genuine Spear of Kaji. Without it, he had felt empty. A shell of himself. Now it was returned, and at last his heart eased.

We shall not be parted again, he promised.

‘You’ll be needing this, too.’ Jardir looked up just as the Par’chin tossed Leesha Paper’s Cloak of Unsight to him. His arm darted out to catch it before the edge touched the ground.

He eyed the Par’chin in annoyance. ‘You insult Mistress Leesha by treating her wondrous cloak so disrespectfully.’

Leesha’s gift did not have the hold over his fate the spear did, but he could not deny that the feel of the fine cloth, and the invisibility it gave him against even the most powerful alagai, made him feel their mad plan might have a chance.

‘How will you hide, when the alagai come to Kaji’s tomb?’ he asked when the Par’chin gave no reply. ‘Have you a cloak as well?’

‘Don’t need one,’ the Par’chin said. ‘I could trace the wards of unsight in the air, but even that’s too much trouble.’

He held out his arms, wrists turned outward. There, on his forearms, were tattooed the wards of unsight.

The wards began to glow, even as the others on the Par’chin’s skin remained dark. They became so bright Jardir lost sight of the individual symbols as the son of Jeph faded, much as when he became insubstantial – translucent and blurry. Jardir felt dizzied at the sight of him. Something urged him to look away, but he knew in his heart that if he did, he would not be able to find the Par’chin when he looked back, even if the man did not move.

A moment later, he returned to focus. The glow faded from the wards, and they became readable once more. Jardir’s eyes danced over them, and his heart caught in his throat. Warding was like handwriting, and these were traced in the distinct looping script of Leesha Paper, embroidered in detail all over his cloak.

Normally it made his heart sing to see the art of his beloved’s warding, but not here.

‘Did Mistress Leesha ward your flesh?’ He did not mean the question to come out as a growl, but it did. The idea of his intended touching the Par’chin’s bare skin was unbearable.

To Jardir’s relief, the Par’chin shook his head. ‘Warded them myself, but they’re her design, so I copied her style.’ He stroked the symbols almost lovingly. ‘Keeps a part of her with me.’

He wasn’t telling all. His aura practically sang with it. Jardir probed deeper with his crownsight, and caught an image that burned his mind’s eye. Leesha and the Par’chin naked in the mud, thrusting at each other like animals.

Jardir felt his heart thudding in his chest, pounding in his ears. Leesha and the Par’chin? Was it possible, or just some unfulfilled fantasy?

‘You took her to the pillows,’ he accused, watching the Par’chin’s aura closely to read the response.