Watch closely, little neophyte.
In solemn procession the robed men and women wound their way between the trunks to them. Night was all around them, yet a dawn had come to the world that no shadows could resist. This was the end of the Days of Lore, and across the Lowlands their dominion was shrinking by the day. Their ancient cities were overthrown: Pathis, Tir Amec, Shalarna and Amirra had fallen as the slaves rebelled, and not all their craft, not all the killing steel of their Mantis soldiers, could stem that tide. The slaves, the dull-witted and the ugly, the graceless and the leaden, had cast them off. They had made themselves armour and terrifying new weapons, and they had declared themselves free.
Pathis, Tir Amec, Shalarna, Amirra.
And Achaeos’s mind called up the counterparts: Collegium, Tark, Sarn and Myna. And how many more had been the haunts of his own Moth people, that none now even remembered?
And when unity was most needed there had been schism. Centuries of strife had held the Moth-kinden together. They had raised armies against the Centipede-kinden who had erupted from the earth. They had staved off or defeated the machinations of all the other sorcerous powers: Spiders and Mosquitoes, the sly Assassin Bugs and the ancient buried kingdoms of the Slugs. The revolt of the slaves had struck at their very being, and they had flown to pieces. Some counselled peace, some retreat and isolation. Factions and parties grew, and when blades were raised they fell brother on brother, and all the while the inexorable tide of history was sweeping them aside, leaving little sign that they had ever existed.
You have seen some of our stones in Collegium that still stand, and the sewers at Myna that the Mole Crickets built for us. What else remains?
And so this. At last, this. This last attempt to summon the guttering forces of the old magic that the Moths had once lived and breathed — this most ambitious of all rituals. They were renegades, of course. Even those in Tharn or Dorax who advocated war and bloody retribution would have nothing to do with this. These outcasts had vowed to risk anything, to use up all the credit their kinden had amassed. They had come to the Mantis-kinden with stories of revenge, and the warrior-race had listened to them. Thus they had come here.
To Darakyon.
To the Darakyon, Achaeos thought. The Darakyon is a forest. ‘Darakyon’ alone would be a Mantis hold, and there is no such hold there.
But there was.
Here was the hold of Darakyon, seen in brief glimpses in the darkness between the trees, and here was its heart, its idol, once as sacred as that of Parosyal, a place of pilgrimage, of reverence.
They were gathered about it now, those robed shadows, and the Mantis-kinden stood proud and strong, their beast-allies beside them, and waited for the might of the Days of Lore to smite the unbelievers, to fragment their minds and terrorize them.
It was the darkest and the greatest magic ever plotted, to put a shadow on the Lowlands that would last a hundred years, to shatter the spirits of the people of the daylight and drag them down into slavery. A spell to taint the whole world and wash away the revolution, even down to the ideas that had fermented it. A spell that would sicken the world to their children’s children’s children, or for ever.
It was the greatest magic, the darkest magic, and it went so terribly wrong.
I do not want to see this, Achaeos pressed, but the whispering chorus of voices was unmoved.
You could not understand, little seerling, so we must show you.
And he watched, without a head to turn aside, without eyes to close, as the ritual reached its bloody peak and the magic began to tear apart. He saw the deed that wiped the hold of Darakyon from all maps and made the forest of that name into the place of dread that even the lumberjacks of Helleron or the Empire would not approach, and he screamed, but chill hands held him and forced him to see it all, every moment of its demise.
And he saw what was done to the men and women of Darakyon, and how they were made to linger beyond time in that place, forever hating, forever vengeful and in pain.
But most of all he saw what they made of the rotten idol, and all the unfathomable power and evil that their ritual released. He saw it, small and deeply carved and potent beyond the dreams of Skryres, and knew that it was abroad in the world again, a tool for whatever evil hand should find it.
In the form of the Shadow Box. The soul of the Darakyon.
‘So tell me,’ Stenwold said, ‘why I should take the appalling risk of keeping you close, or even keeping you alive.’
Thalric smiled, reclining easily behind the table as though he were back in his own study. ‘You should start thinking like a man of your profession, Master Maker, and not just a Lowlander. I was a spymaster once. We both know the value of an enemy agent turned.’
‘I couldn’t trust you.’
‘You have the craft to weigh what I tell you. I can be of more value to you than ever your Spider girl turncoat is.’
‘No, you cannot,’ Stenwold said flatly.
Thalric raised an eyebrow. ‘Is it like that, then? Well then, do you want me to tell you about her? The truth? You must be still wondering whether the subtle Spider has spun a straight line?’
‘Thalric,’ Stenwold said warningly, and found his hand at his sword-hilt, and the Wasp’s gaze followed it.
‘I did not take you for a killer of unarmed prisoners.’
‘You’re Wasp-kinden,’ Stenwold pointed out. ‘Therefore you’re never unarmed. What do you want, Thalric?’
Thalric stood up from the table, a little of his casual ease sloughing off him. ‘I have been alone before, and hunted, but never so much of both at once. There was always the Empire. Now I find that the Empire I knew is a hollow egg. The insides are rotting with factions and I, who have disdained them, have become a casualty of politics. You believe, Stenwold, in something beyond yourself?’
‘I believe that it is the duty of the strong to help the weak, and of men and women to live in peace and to build together,’ the Beetle said, without even thinking. That was the doctrine so much of Collegiate thought was based on.
‘I believe in the Empire, but it did not bear the weight of my belief,’ Thalric said.
‘So you’re more imperial than the Empire now, is that it?’ Stenwold shook his head. ‘I can’t see you as such a thorough turncoat.’
‘I had my chance to die for my beliefs, Master Maker,’ Thalric said with surprising emotion, ‘but when they came for me, at the last, I fought them. I made my decision then. I can no longer claim now to be a loyal son of the Empire, having failed to follow its last command. I have to live, Maker, and you know as well as I the fate that awaits an agent cut loose by either side. He falls, Maker. He falls and is gone. So employ me, make use of me, while you still have me.’
‘Sit down again,’ Stenwold said, and then, ‘Let’s talk.’
Thalric returned to the table, glancing up at Arianna’s hostile gaze. ‘She would still see me dead, I observe.’
‘Perhaps she has more sense than I do,’ Stenwold said. ‘What do you know of the forces currently marching on Sarn?’
Thalric raised his eyebrows. ‘From what I recall, the Seventh had the honour set aside for it — General Malkan’s Winged Furies. Malkan is the Empire’s youngest general, and very ambitious.’
‘What is the Empire’s attitude to taking prisoners after a field battle, Thalric?’
The question was obviously not one the Wasp had expected. ‘It depends on the battle. A battle against Ants would see few prisoners taken. If the fighting was bitter then the soldiers may leave none alive to be taken, whether they have surrendered or not.’
Stenwold found himself gripping the table, imagining Che surrendering with hands out in supplication, yet the swords still coming down.