An Unclean Strength

CHAPTER ONE 

    "There is a war in heaven,” Heirus said. “Our heaven, you understand, sorceress; not yours.”

Anya had decided on a ride that morning. She found herself growing stale and restless within the confines of Thunderhead. Without the raucous crudity of Jaga’s living mercenaries, the fortress was as silent as a tomb. The living might be frustratingly free-willed, but at least they occasionally did things of interest.

The dead did nothing without prompting. They were merely animate corpses, endowed with enough intelligence to follow basic commands such as ‘march’ or ‘kill’. She had thousands of them on her sorcerous leash.

Then there were the undead, or the half-killed.

She had made thousands of them from the living but spelled Roumnan and Ardeshi soldiers that had assaulted Thunderhead. It was no simple thing to trap a soul in its body, to force it to serve beyond death. But she needed troops that were more than mere puppets. It had been her plan to use some of the half-killed to lead her corpse host, before Heirus had come to her with his ‘bargain’.

They followed her orders, but they did not dice or drink or curse. They did not speak unless spoken to. They were slaves, forced to serve beyond death. Unless actively engaged in following her commands, they simply watched her every move with their desiccated yet still-seeing eyes.

It was irritating.

Irritation she could accept. She kept a coterie of the half-killed around her at all times as her personal guard. She had taken the knowledge gained by making the shabok – however much a failure that had been – and made changes and improvements to her sorcery, and applied them to what was now her personal guard. They followed her instructions unfailingly. And if they were a little less clever, a little slower in most ways than living men, they were also much, much more difficult to make an end of.

The truly dead, the much more numerous animated corpses that formed the bulk of her host, did nothing without instruction, except slowly decompose. It was less-than-pleasant-smelling inside Thunderhead. She had decided on a ride to clear her nostrils as much as her head. But the psychic weight of holding so many thousands of the dead on her sorcerous leash… it was not something a ride could clear away. It was with her, day and night, waking and sleeping.

She had read of the pearl divers of Medisia, how in their quest for the jewels of the sea, they would sometimes swim so deep the pressure of the water around them would cause their ears, and even their eyes to bleed. She felt that she understood that crushing force, though she had never had the opportunity to step in a body of water deeper than a bath.

Her plans required her to control roughly five times the number of dead she currently had, before the end. She worried that such a number would crush her.

“Is the sorceress not disposed toward speaking today?” Heirus asked.

“When you speak of heaven, are you speaking figuratively or literally?” Anya shifted slightly on her mount. She schooled her face to show only bored indifference, but forced her unruly thoughts to focus on his words. The skin walker had been… reticent regarding what he wanted. What they wanted. Knowledge was power, and when it came to the skin walkers, she did not have nearly enough. She desired facts, however; not fairy tales. Certainly not religious ones.

“Quite literally, sorceress. The forces vying against each other are beyond your comprehension. Or mine, for that matter. Billions of beings, more powerful than even you could dream of, slaughter each other in a single battle. Swathes of worlds are burnt from the sky in the blink of an eye. The very foundations of existence itself are being gnawed away by their conflict.”

“I assume there is a reason you’re telling me this.”

“Must our every interaction have a purpose?” The monster, wearing the flesh of the man who was once Heirus the hedge-mage, made the face smile wryly. “Very well. I would like very much for you to see us as a people, rather than a nightmare from the past. Will that do, lady?”

“I suppose.” Anya looked away from the skin walker and, through her conjured mist, towards the remains of the woods that stood west of Thunderhead. The Roumnans had ravaged it in the few days they’d been encamped. At least half of the wood had been cleared down to splintered stumps. War was an endless, insatiable hunger that devoured anything in its path, leaving only ruin in its wake. Traditional war, at any rate.

Not that even she could see, with unaided eyes, to the far end of the clearing. She had bargained with the numen for the power to cover the land she held in a fog that would not disperse, whatever the weather. The living armies of her enemies, especially the damned imperial scouts, would not have an easy time in her demesne.

I have become the evil queen, ruling a cursed land, she thought wryly. The very stuff of folk tales. The corner of Anya’s lip twitched upward in the ghost of a smile. Never mind the fact that this land was cursed long before I set foot in it. Or was born.

The mists swirled and eddied, driven by currents of wind unfelt by mortal flesh. It befuddled not only sight, but hearing. She could barely discern the hoof-falls of her own horse, but she could hear, slow and soft, the creaking branches of the distant trees – and other, less identifiable things. Things perhaps not there at all, in any meaningful sense.

The dead that she commanded were not inconvenienced.

Such was the sorcery that she had wrought, using the power of the numen as an engine. It was an effective means of instilling confusion and dread, and blinding the prying eyes of her foes. It gave her the time and space she needed to prepare.

They came to the place where the Roumnan commander had camped. The tent appeared suddenly in the mists, still standing, though the canvas sagged.

If she had realized her course was taking here to that place, she would have gone another way.

Captain Langyer Gonthat of the Royal Roumnan Infantry had been among those who still lived, in thrall to her magic after Caida had broken the magus’s usurpation of it.

Anya had discovered the captain in the tent during the exhausting few days she had spent re-leashing the spelled soldiers after the siege. He had been surrounded by his slaughtered aides-de-camp, straight sword hanging loosely in one hand, his harsh face blood-spattered and vacantly staring at a blood-spattered canvas wall.

She’d felt nothing. He’d been her tool in Roumney, her means of ensuring she would get her first tranche of troops. He’d believed he would be rewarded with her hand in marriage by ‘rescuing’ her from Jaga’s company. He’d been a fool.

She had taken his dirk from his belt and slit his throat. The jugular rather than the carotid, to avoid the arterial spray. She did not have so many changes of clothes, or anyone to wash them but herself.

“He will be less useful now,” Heirus had observed.

“He was a fool who served his purpose. Let him rot.”

“You are unyielding when it comes to dealing with those who displease you. I know it already, sorceress. If this is a lesson meant for me, you needn’t have bothered.”

Gonthat had bled sufficiently to collapse at that point. Anya had eyed the skin walker coldly.

“You think too highly of yourself.”

She had not told the skin walker that she couldn’t stomach the idea of seeing Gonthat’s mostly-preserved face among the half-killed. That when she had laid eyes on him in the tent, some part of her had decided he’d done enough to further her plans. That she would let his soul find whatever rewards there were after life, instead of being imprisoned in its own corpse to serve on indefinitely.

“You are quiet today, sorceress,” Heirus said, bringing her back from her thoughts once more. “May I know your thoughts?”

“Nothing terribly deep,” she replied. “I do not believe in heaven, Heirus. I do not believe in hell. There are no gods or demons. Those are just metaphors. Only the gullible take such things literally, and I am many things, but not gullible.”

“Most consider my kind demons,” it replied. “Many will call you a demon, as well.”

She cast an annoyed glance at the creature that wore Heirus’s flesh. “The ignorant always demonize that which they fear. It’s human nature. Something about giving a name to our terrors helps us to face them. There is a utility in naming. Even mis-naming, so long as it dehumanizes a foe or belittles a fear.” The thing kept making irritating comparisons between them, pointing out their supposed similarities. She would not correct it – why disabuse an adversary of a false notion? But while their means might be equally reviled by others, their motives could not be farther apart.

“And the numen?” it asked. “Would you not then name it a god? Or at the very least a demigod?”

“I call it a tool. A very useful, very dangerous tool.”

The skin walker smiled. “Would that qualify as belittling a fear?”

“That would qualify as properly labeling a tool a tool.”

“Is everything a tool to you, then, sorceress?”

She reined in her horse, forcing the skin walker to do likewise.

“Let us be perfectly clear about our relationship, Heirus. You believe you have forced me into a partnership with you and your kind. Disabuse yourself of the notion. I have agreed to it because I find it useful. I find you useful. If at any time your usefulness falters, our agreement will cease, for it is clear to me that you need me more than I need you. I am the key that unlocks the gate between your world and mine. The numen will not bargain with you, only me. You know it, but you would do well to keep it uppermost in your thoughts.” She leaned toward the creature slightly. “Do not let your interests diverge too far from mine. Have I answered your question?”

“Completely, sorceress.”

Anya nudged her mount into motion once more. She dismissed the skin walker, and its talk of heaven, from her thoughts. Heaven – skin walker or human – was not a concern of hers. War was.

She held Wyeth. She had an undead army, ten thousand strong. The usual calculus of war did not apply to her – she had no population to protect, and her army did not require anything in the way of care or feeding. Such were the advantages of ruling an empty land, and commanding an army of the dead.

Her situation had also rendered pointless most of the strategies and tactics her enemies might otherwise use against her. She had no cities for them to besiege, no trade routes for them to disrupt, no crops or farms for them to burn or forage from. She had no merchants to cajole or threaten in order to fund her war, and no court politics to navigate. She had only the numen to bargain with, and the skin walkers to... manage.

Where other rulers throughout history had had vulnerabilities to hide, minimize or protect, she was able to present to her foes only dead, unfeeling flesh.

She had taken to heart the strategist Olse’s maxim: First, to the greatest extent possible, make yourself invulnerable to defeat.

If Roumney, Ardesh or the empire invaded, separately or all at once, she would come out the victor. Every single soldier of theirs slain would bolster the ranks of her own host. Any non-magical assault on Wyeth was doomed to defeat, so long as she made no blunders, and she was not in the habit of making blunders. If Roumney or Ardesh was foolish enough to send sorcerers to oppose her, she would take them apart, slowly and with relish.

And if the emperor on his throne ordered the magi to bring her down, he had best send as many as he could spare. With the numen and an army, she was more than a match for any imperial magus.

Wyeth was nigh-invulnerable to conquest.

But she was not content to rule a kingdom of corpses. That had never been her plan. And the skin walkers, however forced their inclusion in her plans might be, did offer distinct opportunities.

“How many of those I summoned for you will follow my orders?” she asked Heirus. The creature had wanted her to summon a hundred more of his kind; she had agreed on ten. They acted as captains to her undead troops, allowing her to split her forces. But from the first day, they had failed to show any sort of deference to her.

“They will all follow orders, sorceress.”

It was not lost on Anya that his answer did not align perfectly with her question, but she chose not to confront him. There would be a time.

“Can any of them convincingly play the part of a well-known person?” She knew that they all could – must – claim human bodies. But the ten she had summoned had almost immediately caused physical changes to the bodies they’d taken. Changes that were unpleasant to look upon. Within hours, they had become, for lack of a better word, monstrous to look at.

“You mean, could they assume a mount’s identity without being detected as an impostor?”

“Yes.”

“No, sorceress. The ones you summoned lack the necessary refinement. But they are not the only ones of my kind that could be put at your disposal.”

“I will not bring more of you over until you have proven both your worth and your loyalty.”

“More would be desirable, but not necessary.”

“You mean there are others already here, besides them and you.”

Heirus nodded slightly.

“I won’t bother to ask how many.”

“I thank you for sparing me the discomfort of being unable to answer, sorceress.”

“And this other, unknown skin walker. It can assume the identity of a well-known human? Even for months at a time, if necessary?”

“My brother is the perfect impostor, I assure you. He is presently engaged in other business, but I assure you, he will make himself available as quickly as he can. There is no one, barring the imperial family and a few imperial agents, that would be beyond his ability. The Axumite’s magic would prevent it, you understand.”

“I do not have an imperial in mind.”

“Which personage do you have in mind, then, sorceress?”

Anya was silent for a moment. Then, “The king of Roumney.”

“Your father,” Heirus said.

“My father,” she agreed. “Your sibling will take his place, and when the time is right, he will abdicate the throne, after naming me his successor.” She had the broad strokes of a plan worked out already, but needed time to refine it in order to capitalize on this new opportunity.

“The crown prince will not like that.”

“By then, the crown prince will not like the fact that he is dead.”

Heirus bowed as best he could in the saddle.

“That is for later. Tell me how your… kin fare in their recruitment efforts.” She had noted that he never called the skin walkers she had summoned brothers, as he had the potential assassin, only kin. She wondered at the significance.

“The Roumnans and imperials have begun slaughtering each other in great numbers, sorceress. Sadly, most of those battles are too far west for us to take advantage of the aftermath. But cross-border raids within our patrol range have seen a few villages razed, on both sides. Your sorcery has been puissant, as always. The dead trickle in, bolstering your host.”

“Numbers, Heirus.” She knew when the dead were added to her host, but knew it only as increased strain.

“Three hundred or so. But the war has barely begun.”

“I want the trickle to become a stream, at the very least.”

“In order to make it so, we will need to do what you have forbidden.”

“You do not need to massacre villages to get more troops. Draw out imperial and Roumnan soldiers. Make it seem as if we are probing their defenses. Draw them into combat with each other. Raid graveyards if you must. Do not slaughter peasants in their fields and hovels.”

“The farmers are easier prey, sorceress, and more numerous.”

“This dead host I am building is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Obey me.”

“I will, though it would be easier to help you meet your ultimate objective if I knew what it was.”

“Then I will tell you – just as soon as you tell me yours.”

Heirus had nothing to say to that, and so changed the subject.

“Your captains press to assault Drum.”

“I’ve already told them and you that we will, when the time is right. Irritating me will not hasten the day.”

“They are impatient. It is in their nature. But they do have a point. The city is badly defended and the closest urban center. The reward for taking it would be a substantial addition to your troops, lady, which you’ve just expressed a desire for. Waiting will only see the city’s defenses bolstered. You risk letting a sure victory slip from your grasp.”

“Your ‘substantial addition’ includes Drum’s citizens. I’ve just told you I am not interested in farmers. Must I also explain that I am not interested in shopkeepers and hostlers? Let the emperor send more defenders. They are what I want. Part of what I want,” she amended.

“May I ask what the other part might be?”

“You may, since your assistance might prove helpful. We wait for a magus to be sent to Drum.”

Heirus seemed genuinely shocked at the news. “But why?” he asked, his tone edging towards incredulous.

“Because I want his book.”

~ + ~

Heirus did not speak again until they returned to Thunderhead. He was in as close to a daze as his kind could come.

He dismounted first, then fetched a block for her and offered her his hand to dismount. She chose to ride side-saddle, which was the way all Roumnan nobility of her gender were taught to ride. She placed her hand atop his, but without any weight to it. She slid from her saddle and down to the block, then to the flags of the courtyard all in one graceful motion. Then she started walking to the storeroom that housed the entrance to the numen’s chamber.

“Sorceress,” he called.

She turned back, one eyebrow lifted.

“I will be… unavailable for several days. I do not know how many.”

“For what reason?”

“In furtherance of your desires. I must meet with an individual. He makes it his business to stay informed regarding the movements of the magi. He is not near.”

He saw the questions behind her eyes. She did not voice them. “Very well. Safe journey to you, then.”

He bowed. She disappeared within the storehouse. He turned away and walked back out into the mists, leaving the horses to be groomed by one of the half-killed.

The sorceress could not be allowed to gain possession of a magus’s book. At the same time, he must be seen by her to be making every effort to help her get one. He had no doubt that failure would not be met with any greater understanding than outright refusal to assist her in her endeavor. He had a very fine line to tread, before the Design could be fulfilled.

He cursed himself for not anticipating her. The sorceress was the single most ambitious human he had ever encountered, in centuries of interaction with them. Of course she would desire such a powerful tool. Of course she would do more than desire it – she was the kind of person who forced reality to bend to her desires.

That was why she had been chosen, after all.

He had to make sure she did not gain possession of a magus’s book, for once she had it, there was an end to everything. The Design would lie in tatters, and three patient centuries of planning and maneuvering would have been for nothing.

And there would be no second chance.

The problem consumed him. He must make sure that she did not gain possession of an imperial magus’s book, while appearing to do everything in his power to help her get one. There was only one way to do both, and it meant communicating with the only one of his kind that had taken no part in the Design since the war. The one known to humans as the Clerk. The one he had once called brother.

The Axumite’s magic had… damaged his sibling during the war, in ways that he had never recovered from. He was not entirely sane, as skin walkers defined the term, and so he was not entirely trustworthy. But his madness, his obsession, included the magi. He lived deep in the bowels of Axumwiste, and gathered information on them, and other objects of his obsession, and had done so since the end of the war, centuries before. What, if anything, the Clerk did with the information he collected was a mystery, even to Heirus.

His kind did not sleep, but Heirus would not have in any case that night. In order to do the sorceress’s bidding, he would have to go hunting.

He did not look forward to the journey to Axumwiste, not any part of it. Calling a bird was something shameful to his caste – it was beneath him. It was primitive. And once he’d called one, it hurt to force himself into so small and simple a creature as a bird. That pain would continue every moment he used it as a mount. And then there was the safekeeping of his current mount to think of, while he was parted from it. Of course, he could just take a new mount on his return, but he disliked riding dead flesh – and that was all Wyeth had to offer, now.

And finally, there was the uncertain situation he faced once he had reached his destination. He did not know what to expect of his maimed sibling.