Salazar stared back, unafraid. ‘I have always done what I thought necessary. The longer one lives, the more one understands that there is no inherent goodness in the world.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, and Cole was shocked to see wetness glistening on the wrinkled skin beneath those sunken sockets. ‘My daughter’s heart was the purest I have ever known. If good ever really existed, it was within her. And the Inquisition burned her alive.’
Cole stared back, too surprised to speak.
‘I punished all those responsible. I erected this city and named it in her honour. I planted her favourite tree, but even that was desecrated.’
Cole remembered the Eternal Tree which once had stood in Verdisa Park. He recalled the urn down in the Stasiseum. The name that was engraved there. Dorminia.
‘You are not the first to stand here today and judge me,’ the Magelord continued. He drew himself up to his full height then, straightened his robes and wiped the tears from his face. The momentary weakness was gone, and he was once again the formidable Tyrant of Dorminia. ‘I would have tried to kill the other — but even at full strength I might not have succeeded. And I would not give that selfrighteous bastard the satisfaction of witnessing my failure.’
There was a moment of deathly silence — and then Salazar raised one wasted hand. ‘So. You wish to be a hero? Let us see if you have what it takes.’
Cole gasped as Magebane began to throb in his palm. Almost instantly it was boiling hot, burning through his glove to sear the flesh beneath.
He was across to the Magelord in an instant.
Gasping from the pain, still clutching Garrett’s pocket watch in his other hand, he plunged the glowing dagger through those scarlet robes and deep into the withered body underneath.
Salazar’s arm wavered and then flopped down to dangle by his side. Magebane’s hilt cooled almost instantly as the Magelord’s magic sputtered and died. The killer of gods, the most powerful man in the north, began to sag.
Cole held him up, staring into the wizard’s eyes. He was shocked to find that he weighed less than a child. ‘Why?’ he asked quietly. ‘You had the power to change the world for the better. Why didn’t you?’
The Tyrant of Dorminia sighed softly. Cole had expected Salazar to die screaming and cursing his name, but the Magelord appeared peaceful. Almost content. His voice was a bubbling whisper.
‘Things… rarely go as we hope they might. I once thought to save humanity from the gods…’ He coughed suddenly, blood bubbling around his mouth to stain his beard and moustache the same colour as his robes. ‘I did not realize humanity needed the gods more than they needed us. I was blinded by hatred.’
‘And Shadowport? Was hate the reason you murdered an entire city?’
‘“Hate”…’ the dying Magelord repeated, his voice now so weak Cole could barely hear it. ‘That was not hate. That was… compassion.’
Compassion? That made no sense. ‘What do you mean?’ he was about to ask, but Salazar’s breathing had stopped. There was no sound but the whistling of the wind and the tick tock tick tock of the timepiece in his hand.
The Magelord shuddered once. His fading gaze settled on the pocket watch. ‘Time… to die…’ he whispered.
His eyes closed one final time.
Cole slid Magebane free of Salazar’s body. He was about to lower the corpse to the ground when suddenly it began to glow. He jerked backwards as it floated up and drifted out of the side of the tower, rising higher and higher, above even the Obelisk itself.
Without warning, blinding rays of golden light burst from the dead Magelord’s eyes and mouth. Cole shielded his own eyes as the incandescent rays shot upwards — a stream of divine energy fleeing its host to return to the heavens whence it was stolen.
The spectacle continued for two or three minutes before the light died. Salazar jerked once when the last golden motes had finally faded. Then the Tyrant of Dorminia began to fall, tumbling end over end.
The body struck the courtyard hundreds of feet below and burst apart.
The Wolf
Sasha gasped and reached down to her side, probing at the four-inch sliver of wood stuck there. Her fingers came away bloody. A grunt ahead snapped her attention back to the fighting raging ahead of her, and before she knew it a Watchman was grappling her to the ground, his hands closing around her throat. She grabbed hold of his fingers, tried to prise them away. He was too strong. She scratched at him, attempted to bite his face, but he laughed at her clumsy efforts and squeezed harder.
She could see her short sword lying on the trampled turf. She stretched for it, every muscle in her arm straining, but it was just out of reach. She tried to scream, but the crushing hands around her throat turned her cry into a pathetic squeak.
She stared up at the leering face above her. The man’s rancid breath filled her nostrils. Her vision began to blur. Her assailant’s cruel eyes seemed to fill her world, sweat glistening off a nose cratered with blackheads. ‘Die, bitch,’ he panted.
Her right hand closed around the shield fragment protruding from her waist. With a wild effort, she wrenched it free. The pain was excruciating, but she had no time to indulge it; her strength was almost spent. Slowly, almost dreamily, as if she were detached from everything going on around her, she raised her arm from the ground and drove the makeshift dagger through her would-be killer’s eye.
His scream was hideous. The pressure around her windpipe evaporated as her attacker flung his hands up to his face and reeled away from her. She choked in air, rolled over and pushed herself to her feet. Her legs almost gave away beneath her and she stumbled, but she did not fall. With deliberate care she picked her sword up off the ground.
Blood ran down her leg. She ignored it. The Watchman was still howling, his fingers plucking ineffectually at the wooden fragment extruding from his burst eyeball. She limped over to him, raised the sword, and thrust the blade straight through his face.
Sasha stood there for a time, staring at the dead man, then turned and retched. All around her the fighting continued. Thelassa’s mercenary army and the city’s defenders were locked in a vicious struggle. She wiped her mouth, retrieved her sword and limped over to the nearest pocket of fighting. A Sumnian almost fell into her, a pike quivering from his belly, and she pushed him away. The arrival of Salazar’s Augmentors had swung the battle and now they were being pushed back away from the gates.
The blond-haired warrior in the golden armour strode the field like death itself, his sword slaying at will. He was relentless, surgical in the way he stabbed, chopped and thrust his way through the dark-skinned Sumnians. He left a trail of corpses in his wake.
Elsewhere other Augmentors had brought their magic to bear to devastating effect. Nearer to the wall, the warrior in the bronze hauberk scattered enemies like leaves with his terrible hammer. The weapon had annihilated half a dozen mercenaries in a single swing and caused the explosion of splintering wood that had knocked her to the ground and pierced her side.
The pain was growing worse. Her neck throbbed. Through the haze of agony she wondered how the assault on the east side of the city was progressing. In response to the advance of the White Lady’s pale servants, the Watch had seemingly thrown the bulk of the city’s militia against the western gate. If General Zolta didn’t attack soon and draw some of the defenders away, two of the three companies that made up the White Lady’s army could soon be routed.
An explosion suddenly rocked the ground ahead of her. The stench of burning flesh would have made her puke if there had been anything left in her stomach.