Chapter eight: Betrayal
Chapter eight
Dara staggered along, clutching her head. Her face was locked in a rigor mortice mask of fury and concentration. For every step, she growled words of power beneath her breath, struggling to control as many gargoyles as she could, and sending the same order to all the ones that listened to her, over and over again.
Kill Mansuur. Kill Mansuur. Kill Mansuur. KILL MANSUUR.
She could feel him, like an echo of a mocking laughter within the stone that surrounded her, the stone that she as late as yesterday had thought of as an extension of her own being. Now it was rebelling, squirming in her grasp and trying to strike at her. Mansuur had turned her great mansion-body against her, violated her in a profound and irrevocable way.
For that, Dara had decided, he would die. She had never killed anyone before - the few times that she had been in dangerous situations, her powers had sufficed to restrain her attackers until help could arrive. However, she felt no regret for wanting to kill this man. He was a murderer and a lunatic. It would, she grimly told herself, be a kindness to put him down like the mad dog he was.
"Where are we going?" Jalon said. He was walking next to her, half-crouched as if in readiness to throw himself in any direction. Dara realised that as loathsome as it was for her to be surrounded by Witch Stone that she couldn't be sure that she was in control of, Jalon had no control whatsoever - the very floor he walked on could open up and swallow him at any second, and he had no means of resisting it.
"Housekeeper's stairway," Dara gasped. "Kash Noq Galag Nor! Back door. Jialak kash - KASH! Then the labyrinth, all the way to the street. Jarash Heliq! Get back!"
She pulled Jalon backwards, just as a large segment of wall cracked, crumbled, and collapsed in an avalanche of sparks and rune-clad stones. Pebbles rained down from the ceiling, bouncing painfully off Dara's skull.
They stood there and watched the rubble covering ten meters of corridor in front of them, and the open, jagged wound in the wall to their left that revealed a row of empty, dust-covered bedrooms. Dara could hear - as well as feel, in the part of her gut that corresponded to her abilities - how Witch Stone was creaking and rumbling all around the mansion, arcane stresses running through it as Mansuur whipped it into a frenzy of hatred towards its erstwhile mistress.
"Dear me," Jalon said. "That was close. Can Mansuur see us?"
"Not exactly," Dara said. With angry, dismissive gestures, she made the wreckage slid to the sides, clearing a path for her and Jalon. She stomped through it, followed by Jalon, who hobbled and whimpered as his bare feet stepped on sharp gravel. "Witches aren't scriers. We can feel Witch Stone in our proximity, sort of, and maybe what shape it's in, but we can't see anything through it. However, if we're really good at what we do, we can imbue the stone itself with the powers of sight and recognition." She glanced over her shoulder at Jalon. "Basically, Mansuur has given our description to the entire mansion and told it to kill us."
"Well, can't you do something?" Jalon said.
"I am," Dara said. "I'm giving the mansion his description and telling it, 'no, don't kill us, kill him instead.' Some parts of the mansion are listening to me, some parts are listening to him, and we are, right now, wrestling for control over as many as possible."
"But you are winning, of course?" Jalon said hopefully. "This is, after all, your domain. You have the so-called home field advantage - in addition to, of course, having the benefit of being at your sound faculties instead of, not to put too fine a point to it, barking mad. You are winning, yes?"
Dara gave him a look.
"Ahead on points?" Jalon suggested weakly.
"I'm losing," Dara growled. "All right? He took me by surprise, he has the initiative, and he's confident and secure in who he is and what he is doing, while the last two days have done nothing but make me doubt myself. It's all I can do to keep him at bay, and I'm slipping, do you understand? I'm losing this fight. So we need to get out of this house, quickly, so that we can live to rip Mansuur's heart out through his throat another day!"
"Well, at least we have a plan, then," Jalon said philosophically.
"Right," Dara said, "so come on already, because while Mansuur can't see us per se, he probably felt that wall collapsing, and that will tell him that the wall saw us. So before we know it..."
She felt it a split instant before it happened - the control of the floor slipping between her mental fingers, the malicious force commanding it to break asunder. Not enough time to do anything to stop it. Enough time, though, to realise that she couldn't do anything to stop it - enough time to start thinking of what to do instead.
Then, with a rumble like the sky falling, the floor disappeared from underneath her feet, and she was falling, her ears full of the roar of breaking stone. But as she fell, she screamed words, and used reserves of strength she had been saving to rip back control from Mansuur, just for a moment.
She hit a steeply leaning surface, hard. The impact turned her left arm into a solid piece of agony attached to her shoulder, sent a crack through her hip that made her legs go numb. If she had hit straight on, she would almost certainly have broken something, but the tilt of the surface sent her bouncing and spinning instead. There were three more shocks from hard contacts with the floor before she settled into a rolling, sliding motion. She couldn't see. She couldn't hear. There was just pain and stone dust and the desperate determination to keep her witchcraft together for long enough.
Finally, she came to a stop. She remained lying where she was for a long moment. Everything hurt. She wasn't sure if anything was broken, and she was afraid to test any of her limbs.
God, she wanted her gargoyles. She wanted a roaring fire and a cup of coffee and gravel rattling across the floor, spelling out her thoughts in some interesting case. She wanted her carriage waiting for her to take her off to some crime scene where she could bully the Soldiers, harass the witnesses and maybe entertain a few guilty, nervous fantasies about what Rinabaar might look like beneath that uniform. She wanted a bath. She wanted, God damn it, the promise of baked salmon for dinner, with a side of cream sauce and a nice white wine. She wanted her life back.
She didn't want this hard stone surface and pain in every muscle and Jalon groaning and whimpering next to her, but that was what she had right now, so that was what she needed to deal with.
She opened her eyes, glancing up and down. She was lying at the bottom of a great stone funnel, stretching six meters up, to where it surrounded the jagged hole that Mansuur had torn up in the floor of the corridor. The funnel was smooth, like it had been polished, and offered just enough room at the bottom for two people to come to rest.
"Where..." Jalon coughed. He was sitting up on his knees. He had managed to keep the towel he was using as a loincloth on, but his naked torso and legs were covered with scrapes and shallow bruises. "Where are we?"
"I haven't named it yet," Dara said. She tried to move her arm, and pain shot through it that made her yelp. She tried again, more carefully, and this time it moved, just a little. "I just created it, after all."
Jalon gave her a confused look.
"I couldn't stabilise the floor in time," Dara explained patiently. "So instead, I reshaped the stones into something that would turn our six-meter drop onto a stone floor into a six-meter slide - uncomfortable, but much safer."
"Uncomfortable, she says," Jalon muttered. "I think I've cracked my skull..."
"Witch Stone, Jalon," Dara said sweetly. "Witch Stoooooonnnnneeeeeeh. I can shape it into anything I like, but I can't make it any softer. Now get up. We have to get going before..."
One side of the great funnel collapsed into sand and rubble, and half a dozen men stood there. They were all wearing some form of Noble's suits, though the cudgels they were all wielding lessened the elegant impression considerably.
"Please stop saying those things," Jalon said miserably.
With an effort of will that brought a scream of actual pain from her lips, Dara shaped a gargoyle. It rose out of the wreckage, a shambling horror standing taller than a man, with thick limbs and no head, only a pair of hunched-over shoulders. It took a single thick step, placing itself between Dara and the Nobles.
"Get lost," Dara snarled. "Or I will make it rip you limb from limb."
"Careful, friends," one of the Nobles said. "Stay out of its reach. Whomever can distract it for just a few moments will gain the other two time to do what we came for."
They spread out on a broad line, advancing. Dara's gargoyle turned this way and that, trying clumsily to stay within reach of all three of them.
"Nobody move, in the name of the law!" a voice cried from further away. Dara looked over to see half a dozen men in Soldier's uniforms come jogging around a corner, sabres raised. With them came a little bald man in a white robe, who looked very unhappy about this whole thing.
The Nobles, suddenly caught between the devil and the deep blue sea - Dara wondered, with the vagueness of possible concussion, which one she was - turned and hesitated, unsure of which threat deserved more attention.
"You're all under arrest!" the Sergeant of the Soldiers, a small, stocky man with a wide mustache, said.
"Excuse me?" Dara said. With Jalon's help, she managed to get to her feet. "I haven't done anything! This is my home, and I was attacked by these men and some witch that I'm going to pretend is not very obviously Mansuur."
"If you just come with us peacefully, ma'am, I'm sure that we'll be able to work everything out," the Sergeant said. Dara had to say that she found that reassurance somewhat less than reassuring.
There was a loud noise, and cracks appeared throughout the walls and ceiling. Dara's makeshift funnel fell to pieces, its cobbled-together component rocks raining down over the scene. Dara snapped a few words and made the stones land away from her and Jalon, but the Soldiers and Nobles just had to cover themselves as best they could with their arms.
With the obstruction cleared, it became more clear to Dara that they were standing in the northern wing ballroom. She tried to remember where the closest exits were, but her head was still spinning.
"Mystic, try to keep the place stable," the Sergeant told the white-robed man.
"I'm trying," he whined. "There are so many fault lines now that it's taken on a life of its own!"
"Hey, I know you," Dara said. "Weren't you at the western wall yesterday?"
The white-robed witch gave her a look that indicated that yes, he had been, and now he was here. And he hadn't wanted to be there then, and he didn't want to be here now, but the world was a cruel and heartless place.
"Does this mean that you and Mansuur aren't fighting over the whole building anymore?" Jalon whispered in her ear.
She shook her head.
"Right now, I can barely hold this one gargoyle together," she whispered back.
"Then what's keeping Mansuur from tearing down the roof over us?" Jalon said.
"Nothing," Dara said, realising. "And yet he doesn't. And isn't that interesting..."
"Fascinating," Jalon said tightly. "Can we please get out of here?"
"Squad, advance!" the Sergeant barked. The Soldiers closed rank and marched forward, sabres menacingly lowered.
The leader of the Nobles cast a desperate look over his shoulder.
"We can beat them if we work together," he said. "Come on, we can settle our own dispute later - those people are no more your friends than ours!"
"Sorry," Dara said dryly. "I'm kind of notorious for not playing nice with others. But if you really want help, you can take brick-boy over here."
She shot the gargoyle a look. Attack whichever side has the most remaining members standing, until there is no one left on either, she told it.
The gargoyle lumbered onwards, shedding sand and pebbles for every step - it was just barely keeping together, formed in a haste as it was. The Nobles followed it, bellowing fiercely. Dara and Jalon quickly headed off in the other direction. Judging from the screams that quickly replaced the bellows, the battle was going the predictable way. It took more than one gargoyle to help a group of demented cultists to beat twice their number of trained Soldiers.
"Which way?" Jalon panted as they ran - or at least, limped as fast as each of them could manage, leaning on each other like a pair of invalids.
"I'm thinking, I'm thinking!" Dara groaned. She bit her teeth together and concentrated. "We're... we're on the bottom floor. We just need to turn right, then right again at the second corridor..."
Around them, Sablecrest Manor was dying. Cracks were spreading through the walls, the floor shook at irregular intervals, and in the distance there were constant rumbles and thuds as more floors caved in and walls collapsed. Several times, Dara had to call up reserves of strength that she couldn't spare to clear them a way through rubble and wreckage.
Finally, they staggered out through the kitchen door, onto the yard.
Dara stared. In the glow of the distant streetlights, she could see an army of gargoyles spread out across the yard. Her gargoyles - her birds and her lizards, her monsters and her men. They stood in silent rows, quivering slightly in response to the upset of Witch Stone that was afflicting Sablecrest beyond. There were men and women of flesh and blood spread thinly among them, people in fine suits, carrying cudgels, but they were outnumbered by gargoyles four to one.
Mansuur was standing in front of them, the general of an army of Witch Stone. His brutish face was haggard and waxy in the near-darkness.
"Mystic Dara," he said. "Artist Jalon. I thought it was about time that we finally met."
Dara staggered along, clutching her head. Her face was locked in a rigor mortice mask of fury and concentration. For every step, she growled words of power beneath her breath, struggling to control as many gargoyles as she could, and sending the same order to all the ones that listened to her, over and over again.
Kill Mansuur. Kill Mansuur. Kill Mansuur. KILL MANSUUR.
She could feel him, like an echo of a mocking laughter within the stone that surrounded her, the stone that she as late as yesterday had thought of as an extension of her own being. Now it was rebelling, squirming in her grasp and trying to strike at her. Mansuur had turned her great mansion-body against her, violated her in a profound and irrevocable way.
For that, Dara had decided, he would die. She had never killed anyone before - the few times that she had been in dangerous situations, her powers had sufficed to restrain her attackers until help could arrive. However, she felt no regret for wanting to kill this man. He was a murderer and a lunatic. It would, she grimly told herself, be a kindness to put him down like the mad dog he was.
"Where are we going?" Jalon said. He was walking next to her, half-crouched as if in readiness to throw himself in any direction. Dara realised that as loathsome as it was for her to be surrounded by Witch Stone that she couldn't be sure that she was in control of, Jalon had no control whatsoever - the very floor he walked on could open up and swallow him at any second, and he had no means of resisting it.
"Housekeeper's stairway," Dara gasped. "Kash Noq Galag Nor! Back door. Jialak kash - KASH! Then the labyrinth, all the way to the street. Jarash Heliq! Get back!"
She pulled Jalon backwards, just as a large segment of wall cracked, crumbled, and collapsed in an avalanche of sparks and rune-clad stones. Pebbles rained down from the ceiling, bouncing painfully off Dara's skull.
They stood there and watched the rubble covering ten meters of corridor in front of them, and the open, jagged wound in the wall to their left that revealed a row of empty, dust-covered bedrooms. Dara could hear - as well as feel, in the part of her gut that corresponded to her abilities - how Witch Stone was creaking and rumbling all around the mansion, arcane stresses running through it as Mansuur whipped it into a frenzy of hatred towards its erstwhile mistress.
"Dear me," Jalon said. "That was close. Can Mansuur see us?"
"Not exactly," Dara said. With angry, dismissive gestures, she made the wreckage slid to the sides, clearing a path for her and Jalon. She stomped through it, followed by Jalon, who hobbled and whimpered as his bare feet stepped on sharp gravel. "Witches aren't scriers. We can feel Witch Stone in our proximity, sort of, and maybe what shape it's in, but we can't see anything through it. However, if we're really good at what we do, we can imbue the stone itself with the powers of sight and recognition." She glanced over her shoulder at Jalon. "Basically, Mansuur has given our description to the entire mansion and told it to kill us."
"Well, can't you do something?" Jalon said.
"I am," Dara said. "I'm giving the mansion his description and telling it, 'no, don't kill us, kill him instead.' Some parts of the mansion are listening to me, some parts are listening to him, and we are, right now, wrestling for control over as many as possible."
"But you are winning, of course?" Jalon said hopefully. "This is, after all, your domain. You have the so-called home field advantage - in addition to, of course, having the benefit of being at your sound faculties instead of, not to put too fine a point to it, barking mad. You are winning, yes?"
Dara gave him a look.
"Ahead on points?" Jalon suggested weakly.
"I'm losing," Dara growled. "All right? He took me by surprise, he has the initiative, and he's confident and secure in who he is and what he is doing, while the last two days have done nothing but make me doubt myself. It's all I can do to keep him at bay, and I'm slipping, do you understand? I'm losing this fight. So we need to get out of this house, quickly, so that we can live to rip Mansuur's heart out through his throat another day!"
"Well, at least we have a plan, then," Jalon said philosophically.
"Right," Dara said, "so come on already, because while Mansuur can't see us per se, he probably felt that wall collapsing, and that will tell him that the wall saw us. So before we know it..."
She felt it a split instant before it happened - the control of the floor slipping between her mental fingers, the malicious force commanding it to break asunder. Not enough time to do anything to stop it. Enough time, though, to realise that she couldn't do anything to stop it - enough time to start thinking of what to do instead.
Then, with a rumble like the sky falling, the floor disappeared from underneath her feet, and she was falling, her ears full of the roar of breaking stone. But as she fell, she screamed words, and used reserves of strength she had been saving to rip back control from Mansuur, just for a moment.
She hit a steeply leaning surface, hard. The impact turned her left arm into a solid piece of agony attached to her shoulder, sent a crack through her hip that made her legs go numb. If she had hit straight on, she would almost certainly have broken something, but the tilt of the surface sent her bouncing and spinning instead. There were three more shocks from hard contacts with the floor before she settled into a rolling, sliding motion. She couldn't see. She couldn't hear. There was just pain and stone dust and the desperate determination to keep her witchcraft together for long enough.
Finally, she came to a stop. She remained lying where she was for a long moment. Everything hurt. She wasn't sure if anything was broken, and she was afraid to test any of her limbs.
God, she wanted her gargoyles. She wanted a roaring fire and a cup of coffee and gravel rattling across the floor, spelling out her thoughts in some interesting case. She wanted her carriage waiting for her to take her off to some crime scene where she could bully the Soldiers, harass the witnesses and maybe entertain a few guilty, nervous fantasies about what Rinabaar might look like beneath that uniform. She wanted a bath. She wanted, God damn it, the promise of baked salmon for dinner, with a side of cream sauce and a nice white wine. She wanted her life back.
She didn't want this hard stone surface and pain in every muscle and Jalon groaning and whimpering next to her, but that was what she had right now, so that was what she needed to deal with.
She opened her eyes, glancing up and down. She was lying at the bottom of a great stone funnel, stretching six meters up, to where it surrounded the jagged hole that Mansuur had torn up in the floor of the corridor. The funnel was smooth, like it had been polished, and offered just enough room at the bottom for two people to come to rest.
"Where..." Jalon coughed. He was sitting up on his knees. He had managed to keep the towel he was using as a loincloth on, but his naked torso and legs were covered with scrapes and shallow bruises. "Where are we?"
"I haven't named it yet," Dara said. She tried to move her arm, and pain shot through it that made her yelp. She tried again, more carefully, and this time it moved, just a little. "I just created it, after all."
Jalon gave her a confused look.
"I couldn't stabilise the floor in time," Dara explained patiently. "So instead, I reshaped the stones into something that would turn our six-meter drop onto a stone floor into a six-meter slide - uncomfortable, but much safer."
"Uncomfortable, she says," Jalon muttered. "I think I've cracked my skull..."
"Witch Stone, Jalon," Dara said sweetly. "Witch Stoooooonnnnneeeeeeh. I can shape it into anything I like, but I can't make it any softer. Now get up. We have to get going before..."
One side of the great funnel collapsed into sand and rubble, and half a dozen men stood there. They were all wearing some form of Noble's suits, though the cudgels they were all wielding lessened the elegant impression considerably.
"Please stop saying those things," Jalon said miserably.
With an effort of will that brought a scream of actual pain from her lips, Dara shaped a gargoyle. It rose out of the wreckage, a shambling horror standing taller than a man, with thick limbs and no head, only a pair of hunched-over shoulders. It took a single thick step, placing itself between Dara and the Nobles.
"Get lost," Dara snarled. "Or I will make it rip you limb from limb."
"Careful, friends," one of the Nobles said. "Stay out of its reach. Whomever can distract it for just a few moments will gain the other two time to do what we came for."
They spread out on a broad line, advancing. Dara's gargoyle turned this way and that, trying clumsily to stay within reach of all three of them.
"Nobody move, in the name of the law!" a voice cried from further away. Dara looked over to see half a dozen men in Soldier's uniforms come jogging around a corner, sabres raised. With them came a little bald man in a white robe, who looked very unhappy about this whole thing.
The Nobles, suddenly caught between the devil and the deep blue sea - Dara wondered, with the vagueness of possible concussion, which one she was - turned and hesitated, unsure of which threat deserved more attention.
"You're all under arrest!" the Sergeant of the Soldiers, a small, stocky man with a wide mustache, said.
"Excuse me?" Dara said. With Jalon's help, she managed to get to her feet. "I haven't done anything! This is my home, and I was attacked by these men and some witch that I'm going to pretend is not very obviously Mansuur."
"If you just come with us peacefully, ma'am, I'm sure that we'll be able to work everything out," the Sergeant said. Dara had to say that she found that reassurance somewhat less than reassuring.
There was a loud noise, and cracks appeared throughout the walls and ceiling. Dara's makeshift funnel fell to pieces, its cobbled-together component rocks raining down over the scene. Dara snapped a few words and made the stones land away from her and Jalon, but the Soldiers and Nobles just had to cover themselves as best they could with their arms.
With the obstruction cleared, it became more clear to Dara that they were standing in the northern wing ballroom. She tried to remember where the closest exits were, but her head was still spinning.
"Mystic, try to keep the place stable," the Sergeant told the white-robed man.
"I'm trying," he whined. "There are so many fault lines now that it's taken on a life of its own!"
"Hey, I know you," Dara said. "Weren't you at the western wall yesterday?"
The white-robed witch gave her a look that indicated that yes, he had been, and now he was here. And he hadn't wanted to be there then, and he didn't want to be here now, but the world was a cruel and heartless place.
"Does this mean that you and Mansuur aren't fighting over the whole building anymore?" Jalon whispered in her ear.
She shook her head.
"Right now, I can barely hold this one gargoyle together," she whispered back.
"Then what's keeping Mansuur from tearing down the roof over us?" Jalon said.
"Nothing," Dara said, realising. "And yet he doesn't. And isn't that interesting..."
"Fascinating," Jalon said tightly. "Can we please get out of here?"
"Squad, advance!" the Sergeant barked. The Soldiers closed rank and marched forward, sabres menacingly lowered.
The leader of the Nobles cast a desperate look over his shoulder.
"We can beat them if we work together," he said. "Come on, we can settle our own dispute later - those people are no more your friends than ours!"
"Sorry," Dara said dryly. "I'm kind of notorious for not playing nice with others. But if you really want help, you can take brick-boy over here."
She shot the gargoyle a look. Attack whichever side has the most remaining members standing, until there is no one left on either, she told it.
The gargoyle lumbered onwards, shedding sand and pebbles for every step - it was just barely keeping together, formed in a haste as it was. The Nobles followed it, bellowing fiercely. Dara and Jalon quickly headed off in the other direction. Judging from the screams that quickly replaced the bellows, the battle was going the predictable way. It took more than one gargoyle to help a group of demented cultists to beat twice their number of trained Soldiers.
"Which way?" Jalon panted as they ran - or at least, limped as fast as each of them could manage, leaning on each other like a pair of invalids.
"I'm thinking, I'm thinking!" Dara groaned. She bit her teeth together and concentrated. "We're... we're on the bottom floor. We just need to turn right, then right again at the second corridor..."
Around them, Sablecrest Manor was dying. Cracks were spreading through the walls, the floor shook at irregular intervals, and in the distance there were constant rumbles and thuds as more floors caved in and walls collapsed. Several times, Dara had to call up reserves of strength that she couldn't spare to clear them a way through rubble and wreckage.
Finally, they staggered out through the kitchen door, onto the yard.
Dara stared. In the glow of the distant streetlights, she could see an army of gargoyles spread out across the yard. Her gargoyles - her birds and her lizards, her monsters and her men. They stood in silent rows, quivering slightly in response to the upset of Witch Stone that was afflicting Sablecrest beyond. There were men and women of flesh and blood spread thinly among them, people in fine suits, carrying cudgels, but they were outnumbered by gargoyles four to one.
Mansuur was standing in front of them, the general of an army of Witch Stone. His brutish face was haggard and waxy in the near-darkness.
"Mystic Dara," he said. "Artist Jalon. I thought it was about time that we finally met."