Page 111

Tobi spins around. He has to move fast. If the guards get hold of him they will kill him now. He has to get to Harok.

He has to do the thing he wants to do least. And he has to do it now. It’s the only way to defeat Diazuul. He has to put this blade in Harok’s heart.

But as he throws himself towards Harok, he realises it’s already too late.

Harok has fallen onto the flagstones beside the pit, right before where the two statues have been set. A great vapour rises from him. Black and blue. A storm coming. Not a storm. Diazuul.

But Diazuul is not taking Harok’s body. He is leaving it.

Diazuul is rising, out of Harok, like a great and terrible cloud. Tobi feels Demonica start to vibrate in his hand, growing warm with some mysterious force.

Diazuul is everywhere. A force of pure evil in the room. The Solwen scream and scatter, running for the doors of the hall. But they slam shut as if blown by a great sudden wind. The candles all flicker out at once, the fires in the hearths and braziers stutter and die. Even the firepit goes instantly dark with an eerie, sucking sound.

The Sacred Hall is dark except for the blue and purple lights in the dark clouds swirling around the eaves, twining through the branches of Susal-ur-Bellan..

“This is your God,” Tobi yells at the Solwen. “Harok tried to kill this demon and when he couldn’t he held it inside his own body.”

Tobi drops to his knees and bends over Harok. Is he alive? He presses his face to Harok’s chest.

He can’t hear anything. He can’t tell. “Harok, please,” he says in an urgent whisper. “Harok. Irgorye. Diazuul has freed himself from you. We need to get out. We need to go. Now.” Harok does not react. Is he dead? Did Diazuul slay him? Perhaps without Diazuul inside him he does not have the strength to stay alive. No longer the Unkillable Irgo.

A great cracking noise comes from above his head. Tobi looks up and sees something like lightning, breaking the clouds apart.

As Tobi watches, the lightning crackles down and hits the two statues before him, connecting them with a ribbon of bright white light.

Lightning crackles between the statues, then splits, an arm of light reaches for Tobi. He screams as it hits his chest, but feels nothing.

The ribbon of lightning between the statues seems to open then, using whatever it is drawing out of Tobi to form a great crack in the world, stretching to form a hole. And, as the strange hole grows wider, through it Tobi can see something. Something familiar and impossible. He can see Emperor Selim’s private shrine. And in it, the other two statues.

They sit on a wooden altar and before it Selim kneels. Tobi recognises the shaven head of his uncle, a man Tobi has not seen since he was seven years old.

He’s going to take Selim, Tobi thinks. Diazuul is going to use this magical route to possess Selim and through it take all of Azuria.

Tobi tries to cry out a warning to his uncle but no sound comes. He looks again. There’s someone else in the shrine. Another person is there, staring at Tobi like he sees him and knows him. The blue-black storm cloud in the hall rushes through the hole made by the white light with a huge roaring sound. The hole closes behind. A great wind rushes through the Sacred Hall, the branches of Susal-ur-Bellan creak and then the hall is empty and silent. Diazuul is gone. The lights are gone. The candles flicker back to life. The fires all re-ignite.

The statues look back blankly at Tobi.

36

LUKAS

Lukas sits on the bed he shares with Elric in the poky attic room of Sanglora, listlessly feeding Marko some of his scraps. They have already been stuck here almost a moon’s turn. Doroth Zain, it turns out, has travelled to Ceruleum and is not expected back until after the Feast of Flames.

They know this thanks to Elric. Elric is working hard. Using his particular skills to gather information and get messages into the Rose Palace. He seems to have many trusted contacts still in Attar and can work wonders by simply going out for an afternoon in a pair of tight breeches and talking to people in taverns.

He returns in a whirl of energy, shaking out his cloak, petting Marko, kissing Lukas with a mouth that tastes of peach wine, chiding him for being moody, offering to get straight on his knees, as that would “cheer any man, even you, Bastard.” Beneath the cloak he wears a silk shirt that Inez acquired for him. It is held closed by a single button. He looks quite delightful. Lukas supposes that is the point. He knows how Elric extracts information.

“Well,” says Damon, coming out of the tiny chamber he shares with Lyr, to stand in the doorway of Lukas and Elric’s room. “Did you speak to him?”

Elric nods, “Just a moment. I’ve eaten nothing all day.” He winks, sitting down on the bed beside Lukas. He picks up a heel of bread from a tray on the floor and takes a bite.

Lukas sniffs. He trusts the Lordling. He does. But the wretch does like to taunt Lukas, flaunting his easy attractiveness to other men. Usually it is in the hope that Lukas will play along, pin Elric down on the bed and remind him who he belongs to.

But Lukas is in no mood for Elric’s favourite game.

So he simply waits for Elric to swallow his mouthful of bread and say, “I spoke with him, but the Hare cannot come here. He is bound by his oaths not to leave the Rose Palace.”

Damon frowns. “Why would he not be allowed out of the Rose Palace? He is of the Order of the Enforcer not the Immurite.”