Gresse wrinkled his nose yet again.
'Stinks like old magic,' he said.
His voice, gruff for as long as Blackthorne could remember, was further deepened to a painful phlegmy rattle .
'You should have someone check out that throat of yours.'
'Hardly, Blackthorne. Damn mages have done enough damage to my land and people over the years. I'm not going to start entertaining them in my house now. Too old for that sort of thing.'
'You're what, sixty-five? A few years older than me, anyway. Never mind damage; you might even get saved.'
Gresse waved a hand impatiently. 'Cancer is just nature's way of telling you to step aside for your sons.'
'And you think that's what it is?'
'If the blood I cough up and the pain when I swallow are anything to go by.'
Blackthorne sighed. He couldn't help himself. He stared at Gresse and those sunken brown eyes stared back, the hanging skin on his cheeks quivered and the pale small mouth tugged into a smile. At least he had the decency to blush a little.
'Stubborn old goat,' said Blackthorne.
'It's the progression of life, my friend.'
'Yes, and I've lost enough to war, disease and demon to last two lifetimes. I don't need to lose any more unnecessarily. Certainly not those with a part to play while we try and climb out of the mess the demons left behind. It's not burning martyr I can smell but it surely should be, shouldn't it? What by the Gods falling is this defeatism?'
'You really want to know?'
'I'm all ears.'
'I am, as it happens, seventy-two, Blackthorne. Twelve years older than you. And I can't be bothered any more, I really can't. Look at you. I know the effort it takes for you to travel these days but you still haven't gone grey. Just a few flecks in that sculpted beard of yours. Hardly a crow's foot around the eye and think what you endured. Think what you still endure when the night releases the worst of your memories.'
Blackthorne reached for his coffee mug and found the tremble in his hand that usually only came on waking from his nightmares.
'So what's your point?' he asked a little more sharply than he intended. Gresse didn't seem to notice.
'Can't you feel it? It's not just the stench of old magic in the air. Something's on our skin. It's absorbing through every pore. I'd had enough of fighting when The Raven beat the Wytch Lords. And when was that . . . fifteen years ago, wasn't it? When the demons were defeated I thought we might actually see a lasting peace.'
Blackthorne spread his hands. 'Well, we have. Ten years and counting.'
Gresse shook his bald head. 'You know better than to believe it will last. You've had the visions and you've heard the voices. I can see it in your eyes.'
There was no hint of age or his illness diminishing his mind. Indeed Gresse seemed particularly sharp this morning.
Blackthorne studied the vines growing along the valley to the south of the lodge.
'I have nightmares, not premonitions,' he said.
'It comes to the same thing,' said Gresse. He coughed and put a hand to his lips. Blood stained the back of his index finger. 'And I can't fight any more. I just don't have the energy. Nor the passion.'
'So what is this smell in the air then?' asked Blackthorne.
'It is the start of whatever is to come. We'll know soon enough.'
Blackthorne drained his coffee, set down his mug and leaned on the veranda.
'If there's one thing I hate, it's people being mysterious and oblique. Do you know something or not?'
'It's just a feeling, Blackthorne. I've had them before and I've always been right. This is just worse than all the others and I don't have the will to face it.'
Blackthorne rounded on him. 'So you're just going to sit and rot in your rocking chair, is that it? You think any mage will rethink their morals and ethics merely because you choose to die rather than let them heal you?'
Gresse was staring right past him though, not hearing him.
'Told you,' he said.
Blackthorne followed his outstretched hand. Miles to the east, towards the mountains of the Burrs and away across rolling acres of vineyards and rich arable farmland, there was a shimmering in the air. Accompanying it was a very slight vibration beneath the feet as if the Earth itself was trembling. Up in the sky above the shimmering, cloud spewed to brief life and then burned away. A bleak foreboding settled on Blackthorne.
'We just never get a break, do we?' he whispered.
'I may not want to fight it, but that doesn't mean I don't want to see it,' said Gresse. 'Care to ride with me?'
Blackthorne nodded. 'Why not? Sight of the enemy brings with it the comfort of knowledge, so they say.'
'They, whoever they are, must be idiots. It's always struck me with dread.' Gresse clicked his finger at a servant. 'Have our horses saddled and ready at the north paddock on the instant. And we'll be needing a guard too. Half a dozen or so.'
'Yes, my Lord.'
'More coffee, Blackthorne? It might be a while till your next one.'
'Don't mind if I do.'
The riding was easy and would have been pleasant but for the dark thoughts Blackthorne could not keep from his mind. There was a noise in the back of his head too. Like a distant voice, familiar yet disconcerting. It became a persistent itch as they trotted and cantered up and down slope over Gresse's well-maintained vineyard trails.
It was a shame the glorious smells of sweet vine and young grape were obscured by the strengthening odour blowing over them from the east. Gresse was right. It did taste like old magic and more particularly like the product of something violent.
'It's a particularly painful way to go,' said Blackthorne. 'And before the end you won't even be able to eat, or drink your best reds and whites. Imagine that.'
The two men were some way ahead of Gresse's guard. Both barons wore light trail clothes and had cloaks tied to their saddles. Gresse hadn't even bothered with a weapon. Blackthorne couldn't face leaving a place of sanctuary without one even now.
'Trust me, it won't come to that. I shall sit in my rocking chair with a glass of the decade vintage and salute our enemies as they torch my vines.'
Blackthorne shook his head. 'Balaia never lies down.'
'Ah, but back then we had The Raven. Now what do we have? A grumpy man with an arthritic hip who is still unsure if he should be king or innkeeper. And a Lord of the Mount who has become far too deeply embroiled in college politics to see what is in front of his face. I've nothing against either of them personally. Sol has done some great work but the responsibility weighs too heavy on him. And he doesn't like the attention. "King" is too grand a term and Sol was right when he refused to adopt it. It's just a shame the populace didn't accept his decision. Whatever, the two of them are hardly saviour material. Not that it would matter if they were. Nothing can stop what is coming.'
'You don't know that,' said Blackthorne. 'You don't even know there is an enemy. All we've got so far is a heat haze and a rumble in the earth.'
But that was not entirely true and he knew it. Gresse had heard, just as he had, the clank and thud of machinery. It sounded much like someone perpetually raising and dropping a portcullis, though there was a wheezing undertone, like ten thousand Gresses drawing in pained breath as one.
'I've had the visions and the voices. And, deny it all you like, you have too. I just paid attention.'
They were riding up a steep valley side into which terraces had been cut for red grapevines. The path wound through the terraces, ascending gently. The morning was hot and the vibration under hoof combined with the shimmering air and the clanking of chain and metal to bring unease.
Beyond the valley edge, the land swept steeply down to rough grassland and, further east, fine farming territory. If whatever was coming was on the fields or open ground, they would be afforded a peerless view. Blackthorne was not convinced he wanted one. Looking to his left, he could see that Gresse was nervous. His tongue flickered over his front teeth and licked his top lip. His hands were white on the reins.
'We'll be plenty far enough back,' said Blackthorne.
'I do not share your confidence,' said Gresse.
They crested the rise.
'What in all of mighty fuck is that?' breathed Blackthorne.
Gresse would normally have chastised him for the use of language he attributed to Blackthorne's friendship with the lower classes. This time he was mute, merely shaking his head in reply.
Two miles away and advancing across the farmland, came, well . . . men, beasts and a machine, if such terms could be applied in this instance. Blackthorne had seen interesting plans for machines before, wine presses and the like. And Denser had once shown him the drawings for a machine designed to trap and hold demons. But they were nothing like this, whatever it was. Those had been relatively small devices. This was more akin to a ship on a sled being pulled across the land by beasts of burden. And whatever the beasts were, they weren't oxen or mules.
It was a while before they could see absolutely clearly, until the figures and their contraption had materialised from the shimmering in the air. Blackthorne wished they had remained indistinct. The machine was simply incomprehensible. The size of an ocean-going trader, it was principally a long, slender oval from which jutted multiple funnels, each angled differently from the next, over thirty of them and yet maintaining a sculpted poetry. From a raised spine, what looked like five masts fled skywards. Each held four spars and from these spars drifted dozens of lines that probed at the air as if seeking something.
It was a striking piece of work, and while Blackthorne had no idea what it was actually doing, the effects of its passage were as clear as they were devastating. The land in its wake was burned and ruined. Buildings were levelled and trees torched such that only broken blackened stumps remained. Flora and fauna were simply smoothed from existence as easily as Blackthorne might blow dust from a book. Man and animal eliminated without a cry. And for what purpose?
'It isn't the only one,' said Blackthorne. He pointed away to the north where more cloud smudged the sky, dark and filled with lightning. 'And see how the damage spreads in the wake of the thing. If it continues and if there are enough of these machines . . .'
'. . . then the whole land will be consumed,' breathed Gresse. 'Who are these people?'
The machine was being pulled along by a pair of massive brown hairless beasts with tiny heads, barrel bodies and enormously powerful legs. Blackthorne switched his gaze onto the figures walking ahead of them.
They were three in number, walking at a languorous pace. Deliberate, a plodding speed more like shire horse than man. Yet they ate up the ground. Behind them, the machine rumbled. Heat swept out from it in waves, creating the shimmer in the air. A cloud formed above it, shot through with flames of green, blue, yellow and orange.
The outlines of the figures distorted in the force of the inferno at their backs. They had come quite close before Blackthorne realised how tall they were. Perhaps eight feet. Huge bodies wearing ornate helms. Bone spurs jutted from shoulder guards. Ribs of boned leather layered torsos and legs. Gauntlets of obsidian and white covered huge hands. He could see no weapons.
The three walked in a loose line. The full faces of their helms, carved to depict something Blackthorne was too far away to discern, looked unflinchingly forward. Not a glance to their machine or beyond it to the annihilation of everything in their wake.
'Well, that clears it up,' said Gresse when the machine quietened and the cloud dispersed. 'Magic's involved somewhere, wouldn't you say?'
'Those colours leave little room for doubt,' agreed Blackthorne.
'Then I won't be welcoming them onto my lands.'
He swung his horse about and cantered back down the slope, shouting orders to his guard. Blackthorne chased after him, glancing to the north and south to see yet more shimmering in the air.
'I thought you were too tired to fight any more,' he shouted when he caught up with the older man.
'But the idea was to leave all my worldly goods to my children. Can't have them wiped out now, can I?'
'What do you intend to do?'
'Bring everyone I can and ask these gentlemen politely to stop and turn back. That or get carved up. The choice will be theirs.'
'I don't share your confidence,' said Blackthorne.
'And nor should you, as I have none to spare.'
'We've been monitoring some very odd movements in the mana flow all over Balaia. Research on inter-dimensional magics has had to be suspended because the streams have been rendered unstable by something we are trying hard to fathom . . . sudden huge dropouts in the density of mana. Like someone's blotting it up and leaving nothing behind. Am I boring you, Hirad?'
'What do you think?'
'Your ignorance is not my concern,' said Denser.
'Gods falling, Denser, I've been dead ten years. There are gaps in my knowledge.'
'There were plenty of those when you were alive.'
'It was part of my charm,' said Hirad.
'So what's with the sighing and the tapping of your foot? Or the foot of the dead man whose body you have appropriated.'
'I just don't see what it has to do with our problem.'
Hirad felt hot. It was not a sensation he was familiar with any more. He felt like his body wasn't big enough to contain him, like he was pushing at the skin from within, threatening to burst out. And his head was thumping madly, blurring the merchant's already poor vision still further. Hirad didn't know how to stop it. Maybe he needed a bigger body or something. Ilkar would know. If Ilkar ever made it here.
'You're telling me you fail to see a connection between the mana shield around the dead dimension being ripped to shreds, and disturbing changes to mana flow pretty much everywhere else?'
'I'm telling you I don't much care. I just want to go back but I can't. It's all any of us want.' Hirad couldn't fail to notice Denser's cheeks colouring. 'All right, all right. Tell me what it all means.'
'It means our dimension is under attack too.'
'Strange thing but I thought that's what I came here and said.'
Hirad scratched his head. Everything felt wrong. It was like someone was trying to pull him out of his body. He glanced at his shadow. It was shredding like paper in a gale. He put his hands over his ears.
'You all right, Hirad?' asked Sol.
'Dear Gods drowning but it hurts,' said Hirad. 'I think I'm going to explode out of this skin.'
'That'll be your ego trying to escape,' said Denser.
Hirad laughed and the pain eased a little. 'Not bad. Not bad at all.'
'Never mind that,' said Sol. 'What does the pain mean?'
'I don't know, Unknown.' Hirad couldn't keep the exhausted whine from his voice. 'I'm not supposed to be here. I think I need to be with the others. It always felt easier when our souls were close.'
'You should bring Erienne down here,' said Sol.
Denser shook his head. 'We should all go to the Mount. You need to open your bar and then join us. There is already unease on the streets. We need as much normality as possible. We need you on the street doing kingly things.'
Hirad screwed his eyes shut. There was a lengthy silence.