Gateway of the Saviours

by A J Dalton

Genres: Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

Ancient Gods begin to stir and demand resurrection...

A naked and crazy holy man leads a young warrior into the realm of the dead...

In fear for his life, a young member of an evil race flees his home...

An uneasy peace has settled upon Jillan's remote corner of the Empire, but he cannot return to his previous simple life. Tricked into a bargain with the manipulative God of Mayhem, he is forced to embark upon a journey that will leave his hometown undefended. Unsure of his fellow travellers, pursued by assassins and spies, he must discover the means by which to raise up the old gods and defeat the cruel Empire of the Saviours.

Meanwhile, the Empire's vast army of Saints and Heroes descends upon Godsend. Jillan's beloved Hella and a few loyal companions resist the dark magicks used against them for a while, but the Saviours cannot allow such resistance to go unpunished...

And from another realm, the Declension watches. Their servants, the Saviours, have suffered setbacks. The God of Mayhem is loose. A young boy with wayward powers is on his way to Haven, where he may find a way to destroy them. A renegade member of their race is rampaging through their realms.

Everything is going to plan.

Release date: March 21, 2013

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 452

Sample

Dust. As strong as the seals on his father’s chambers were, the dust of the realm still found its way inside to cover everything. It was in the air, invisible but there, like so many things. It coated the inside of his throat and made his eyes run constantly. It was a permanent taste in the back of his mouth and he could feel it causing damage down in his lungs. When he moved, it caused irritation between his robes and his body, and sores at his joints. There was no escaping the dust, for it was pretty much all that was left of his realm. Certainly, there was still enough rock below ground to shelter his kind, the Declension, but the surface was a lifeless wasteland continuously scoured by the solar winds of their erratic and failing sun. Some said that there was less and less rock each year; as the dust storms blew, they exposed that which lay beneath and tore hungrily at it.

Some said that it was time for the Declension to leave their home-realm once and for all, before they were ground down to nothing along with the Geas of the realm. Another faction, led by his father, insisted that to abandon the Geas – that which had given the Declension life in time before remembering – would be to commit suicide as a people anyway. His father’s faction was in no doubt that the Geas could be saved with the blood tribute supplied from all the lesser realms ruled by the Declension. This faction even claimed that, despite the failing sun, life could be restored to the surface once the volume of tribute became sufficient to both sustain the Geas and feed the ground properly. It was imperative, therefore, that the Declension continue to spread through the cosmos in search of new realms to conquer and from which to draw resource. To do otherwise, most believed, would be to see an end to their kind one way or another.

Ba’zel swept the dust from the smooth surfaces of his father’s chambers for the sixth time that day and then used his limited magic to push the dust out through the seals. Why he bothered he was not entirely sure, for there would only be more dust to remove as soon as he had finished the current sweep. His father said the chambers would become uninhabitable if they were not constantly cleaned, but Ba’zel suspected his father actually just wanted to keep his unstable son occupied and out of trouble. After all, many other lines of the Declension used retainers for such menial labour. Besides that, the repetitive nature of the work also reminded Ba’zel of the sort of drill Mentor Ho’zen put him through each day in order to discipline his unstable mind and fitful magicks.

Those who were unstable, of course, were a threat to the future unity and common goal of the Declension. Such individuals were therefore confined and closely watched. All young were naturally unstable and most of the time kept within the chambers of their line, in part to protect them from less influential – and thus more desperate and predatory – elders of other lines. But an unstable youth would only be tolerated for so long, even within their own line. If they did not quickly show signs of developing some discipline, then all their blood and life energy would be fed back into the Geas, in the hope that they would be reborn with a greater willingness to mould themselves to the wider and long-term needs of the Declension. It was the only way their kind could survive, Ba’zel’s father had explained … and had also begun to mention with increasing frequency of late.

Ba’zel knew he was running out of time. If his lessons with Mentor Ho’zen didn’t soon start showing more success, then there wouldn’t be any more lessons. There wouldn’t be any more anything.

And his skin wasn’t thickening and hardening the way it should, either. He was as pale and soft as one freshly reborn. Whenever he was permitted to come close to the realm’s surface, even relatively diffuse light from above would sear him and cause him agony. Ba’zel’s father had used the power and position of their line and faction to secure Ba’zel extra time in the realm’s sun-metal chamber, to which some lines were not permitted access for generations at a time. Yet the privilege had only succeeded in partially blinding Ba’zel and covering his body in large, weeping blisters. The last time he’d been forced into the sun-metal chamber, he’d felt the blood boiling in his veins as if he were being cooked alive. He’d screamed for days after.

Time was running out. If he could not form the stone-like skin that was normal in his kind as they matured, then he’d be of no value to the Declension, either in the home-realm or any other realm. Now, whenever his father returned to their chambers, his eyes would only regard Ba’zel briefly before turning away. The very sight Ba’zel presented spoke of wrongness and being unstable. His father’s disappointment and disgust were increasingly palpable. His father would mutter about how Ba’zel’s mother had also been unstable – the only thing Ba’zel had ever heard mentioned about his mother – and would then question Mentor Ho’zen intently about how the lessons had gone that day. Then no more would be said until Ba’zel’s father went from their chambers the next morning.

Yes, time was running out. The cleaning now forgotten, Ba’zel agitatedly paced backwards and forwards. It wasn’t his fault his skin wouldn’t harden. For all Mentor Ho’zen spoke of how mental discipline could overcome any pain, it wasn’t Ba’zel’s fault that both the sun’s cursed light and sun-metal threatened to kill him, was it? He told himself he did all he could to master Mentor Ho’zen’s impatient lessons. Yet what could he do? Would his father be proud of him if he meekly submitted to his blood and life energy being fed to the Geas? Or be even more ashamed? Or would he be just relieved, perhaps?

Feeling eyes on him, Ba’zel turned to look at the small and pathetic creature crouched in the cage in the corner of the room. It was from some lesser realm or other and served as a supply of blood and life energy for him and his father. When younger, Ba’zel had fancied that the chitterings and doleful eyes of the creature had denoted intelligence – a thought that had made Ba’zel more than a little queasy when drinking its blood at first – but his father had been adamant that the creature was nothing more than the lowest type of animal, and that Ba’zel should never think to do anything as stupid as naming it. It was not a pet. It was unworthy of affection of any sort.

‘What should I do, creature?’ Ba’zel asked.

The creature did not reply, of course; just continued staring vacantly at him.

Ba’zel reached out and lifted the latch, letting the door of the cage slowly swing open. The creature now always displayed the lassitude of one drained too many times over the years: the frenzy of its early days had long since disappeared. It could not pose any real danger. Its muscles were wasted and it seemed old and spent. All it had eaten for the length of its captivity was the thin and negligible waste he and his father produced – and that diet only seemed to have contributed further to the creature’s gradual decline. The creature trembled and crammed itself into the far corner of its home.

‘Yes, it is frightening, is it not? Are you worried you will get into trouble by leaving? Do you think I have opened the door so you can be drained for the second time today, perhaps for the last time in your life?’

Ba’zel sighed. ‘Do you even understand I have offered you freedom? Perhaps you are right to fear freedom, creature. Beyond these chambers you would not last more than the blink of an eye. Perhaps it is safer to stay in your prison, then. Yet to remain can only mean a slow death for you. I do not know, but perhaps you have come to desire it, to be finally left alone.’

The creature whimpered plaintively.

‘I know. Perhaps then there is no true freedom and therefore no escape. Only the choice of a slow or quick death. I understand why you would want to remain – so that you might cling on for as long as possible. Me, I think I would prefer it to be quick.’

Ba’zel hesitated. ‘You see, the Mentor is late coming today. It is the first time that has happened. He has not sent me a thought saying he is ill or has been appropriated by a more influential line. I do not think he will come at all, creature. And I find I cannot even endure waiting for him, or waiting for my father to return. If I can get past the seals, I will leave, and allow the sun, some elder or the Geas to consume me. Goodbye, creature. I hope …’ What should one say at such a time, to such a primitive animal? ‘… I hope you achieve the manner of death you most desire.’

So saying, Ba’zel shook the dust from his grey out-of-chamber robes and put them on. He also retrieved his ceremonial mask from where it lay near the tomes of his line, since it might offer him some protection from the light. Moreover, given that the mask was usually worn by those wishing to conceal both the shame of their hunger and their identity when on their way to the feeding pools, it might encourage others to give him something of a wide berth. Small though he might be, his kind were at their most unpredictable and dangerous when desperate with hunger.

Ba’zel tried to calm his mind, trotting through the trope with which Mentor Ho’zen started every lesson. Now, what was the mental phrasing with which his father sealed and unsealed their chambers? Ba’zel knew its signature, but had never attempted to frame anything so complex himself. For an inexperienced or unstable practitioner of magic, there was considerable risk in attempting such a weave. If he could not keep the threads separate throughout, they might form a loop in which his mind was caught for the rest of eternity. He would become disconnected from his body but be trapped within it, fully aware but powerless to command it. Or he might spin the threads into an unstable pattern that would unravel just as he was passing out of the chamber. The damage done to him by the dust of this realm would be as nothing compared to a stone wall becoming solid right as he was in the middle of it. Or, then again, his father might have set deadly traps and triggers to snare anyone who attempted the seals except himself.

Best not to think about it, Ba’zel told himself. Calm. Say the trope again. That’s it. Calm.

‘You must act with confidence!’ Mentor Ho’zen had always instructed him sternly. ‘A weave begun with doubt and uncertainty will never be stable enough to succeed. Don’t look at me like that, young Ba’zel! You know confidence is not some character trait – it is merely a behaviour to be learned and used with discipline. Discipline, leading to confidence, leading to a stable weave. Otherwise, the first weave you attempt in earnest will likely fail and that will be the end of you. Without discipline, there is only death. Are you confident, young Ba’zel?’

‘Yes, Mentor Ho’zen!’ Ba’zel always replied as confidently as he was able, but always with a slight hitch and tremor in his voice to betray him.

‘You are the scion of a powerful line and must be proud of that. Our kind looks to you for leadership. It wishes you to be strong so that our people can be strong, so that we will succeed in every realm we touch, so that we will be saved as a people. You must become a Saviour. Anything else would be a betrayal of your kind. Now tell me again. Are you confident, young Ba’zel?’

He understood the words and ideas behind them, but as hard as he tried, he never quite seemed able to embody them. He wondered if there was a weave to help him with embodiment, but that was just circular daydreaming. Without the confidence to cast the weave, he would never be capable of the magic to capture the confidence he needed.

Calm. A clear assertion of will. There is nothing to lose. If it goes wrong, that will be that and you’ll never know any different. It will be a relief of sorts.

His breathing stopped and his heart stilled. He was as still as the stone. He asserted his will so that his essence became contiguous with the barrier. Again he asserted himself, to create separation on the other side. His robes and mask snagged within the rock and he felt panic begin to well within. His heart was about to flutter back into life! Calm, calm! His every instinct screamed that he should try and force the material through, but he knew that would be to give in to the panic. Calm, calm! Just stop! Become part of the stone again. Now ease into the separation once more. That’s it, that’s it. Calm.

With a cry he fell into the corridor beyond his father’s chambers, dust pluming up from the floor and temporarily blinding him. He coughed, his heart beating so hard that it felt as if it would punch its way out of him through his back. He felt broken inside, but he’d made it.

He’d made it! Perversely, he wondered if his father would be proud that Ba’zel had found the discipline to achieve such a weave. But no, any such pride would be as nothing compared to the outrage his father would feel upon learning that Ba’zel had, without permission, wilfully left their chambers. His father would be disgusted by such an act of disobedience, for it was yet further evidence of his son being so unstable. This act alone would warrant Ba’zel’s immediate sacrifice to the Geas.

Was it too late to go back? He was trembling now, the weave having drained him. He was probably too weak to return to the chambers, as further attested by his sudden thirst and hunger. In any event, he could not bear the thought of becoming a caged and cowering creature once more, always waiting to be drained to the point of death. Besides, Mentor Ho’zen would not be coming again: there were no more lessons to be had back in the chambers, no more chances to show his discipline. And even if Ba’zel did return, his father would no doubt sense he’d tampered with the seals and exact immediate and final retribution.

He no longer had a home. Where to go? He couldn’t think clearly though, so desperate was he for sustenance. Instinct told him he must seek out the feeding pools. He could almost smell and taste the blood from here, despite its distance. He salivated and had to wipe his chin.

He rearranged his robes, settled his mask back into place and strode quickly through the warren of corridors his people inhabited beneath their realm’s surface. As he reached the main tunnels, he lifted his chin so that he would not display anything but confidence to an observer. So intent was he on reaching the pools, so fixated was he on feeding to renew himself, so concentrated was he on his purpose, he hardly had to feign any sort of confidence of will.

Suddenly, coming towards him out of the gloom was a large, prowling elder. The elder’s nasal aperture widened, either in hunger or in order to identify this approaching stranger. Unable to control his response, Ba’zel found a growl issuing from his throat. Displaying such indiscipline in front of another was shameful, but it succeeded in startling the elder; and they passed each other holding close to opposing walls of the corridor. Fantasies of attacking the elder crowded Ba’zel’s mind. It took some effort to dispel them: if he started giving in to such impulses, he wouldn’t survive very long at all.

He’d only been to the feeding pools once before. When he’d been very young, his father had brought him before the members of his faction to be ritually anointed in the blood that fed the Geas of their realm and people. It had been a deliberate and public display, for his father was ever the politician, even within his own faction. But Ba’zel had ruined everything by slipping and falling into the deepest and thickest of the pools. He’d been at the point of drowning when his father, after considerable deliberation, had finally submitted himself to the indignity of diving in to save his son. The ancient robes of their line had of course been ruined, and rumours about Ba’zel being ill-omened had been whispered ever since. His father had never been able to forgive him. How could he?

The corridors of the warren all looked much the same, but Ba’zel had no trouble sensing the direction of the feeding pools. Both the blood and Geas called to him, promising him life from death. It was all he could do not to break into a run, but to do so would be to show such a loss of control that it could not be tolerated in the presence of others. He would be attacked en masse by every elder in the area, and torn apart so that not one scrap of him remained.

The closer he came to the pools, the more elders he sensed around him, some standing like statues, some secreted in the walls and others lurking in the shadows. Their thoughts hummed just beyond the range of his hearing and limited magic.

They would know him for one that was young. He sensed eyes turn towards him. Minds probed him. His nerves jangled – would they sense that too? He could not bear the scrutiny. They would find cracks in him and force them wide, exposing the soft and vulnerable flesh and being below.

He ground his jaws together in fear, praying the mask would hide the telltale reflex. The edges of his jaws crumbled and became dust in his mouth. Dust. Suddenly, he dragged his feet to make long trenches in the dust; and kicked the stuff up into the air. He turned his thoughts to dust and crouched lower. They were already coming for him, long limbs slashing through the air.

He kicked more and more up, tumbling to stay within the fog and away from the extended, scything forearms and legs. He kept his thoughts drifting and billowing and escaped into a small tunnel off the side of the main space. The larger elders would be unable to pursue him here unless they decided to use valuable energy coming through the stone. He stumbled further away, knowing that every stride he took would make him less and less worth the effort of a chase.

His body shaking with exhaustion, he went to hands and knees and crawled on. If he were to meet an oncoming elder now, it would all be over. Yet he sensed the tunnel led away from the feeding pools and up towards the surface, so it was likely to be little frequented. The deep drifts of dust certainly suggested it was rarely used.

Gasping, he allowed himself a moment’s rest, sitting back against the parched and crumbling wall. It sucked at him, as if trying to leech the last of his life energy. He struggled to breathe, his body wheezing worse than it ever had before. He pulled the mask away, thinking that would help, but it only allowed more choking grit and heat to get at him. So thirsty! Calm, calm. Just wait for those below to settle, then try for the pools again. Perhaps at night, when it will be quieter.

But foreign thoughts of surprise, shock, betrayal and then outrage came seeking him out. His father had now discovered his absence from their chambers.

Ba’zel! thundered the thoughts. Where are you? Yes, you hear me. What have you done? You will return here at once! I will not repeat myself.

Ba’zel whimpered and cringed lower against the wall, putting his arms around his head, as if that might somehow keep his father’s anger at bay.

How dare you? You are no son of mine!

Pain stabbed at Ba’zel’s temples and he came close to passing out. Calm, he prayed. Calm!

There were long moments of terrible and threatening silence. If Ba’zel had had the will and energy to answer his father, he would not have known what to say. What could ever be said that would excuse the shame he was bringing on his father’s line?

When his father’s mind spoke again, it was with more control. He sounded conciliatory now, almost patient as he said, Ba’zel, there is no need for this. It is not too late. Come, let us talk, you and I, before you are discovered by others. Like you, I am afraid. Afraid that the other lines will discover you are alone outside our chambers. Afraid that they will mean you harm, particularly the enemies of our faction. They will seek to use you against me. I am afraid that they will declare you unstable and a risk to our kind that can no longer be sustained. After all, what sort of young would be outside the chambers of their line without escort? Come to me quickly then, before you are discovered, and we will talk.

He almost believed his father, so desperately wanted to believe him. Imagined talking together as if they were both elders. But Ba’zel was no elder. He was an unstable son who was unworthy of any exchange of words each night his father returned to their chambers. No, he was less than that – for had his father not just said Ba’zel was no son of his? He was … the creature in the corner. Less than a pet. He was unworthy of affection of any sort. He could believe his father was afraid for himself, afraid for his position and faction, perhaps even afraid for his people. Beyond that, however, Ba’zel knew his father lied. If he were able to return to his father’s chambers, there would be no conversation. Just as there would be no more lessons, there would be no more talk, and no more mercy.

Will you defy me then by not answering? his father whispered in disbelief, anger beginning to tinge his words once more. Truly you are beyond help. Any discipline you may once have displayed has either completely foundered or has always been the sort of mimicry mere animals adopt. How dare you risk my line like this? I knew I should have let you drown all that time ago. As it is, I must now suffer the shame of putting out a clarion call to all our kind about your escape. I must beg them to kill you on sight. Were I not to do so, and it were discovered I knowingly put our entire kind at risk with one so unstable, then my life would also be forfeit. A moment’s hesitation. So be it.

And the call went out, first as a keening whirl of thought, and then, as it was taken up by others, as the howl of a hunt. Ba’zel pushed himself away from the wall and frantically scrambled up the small tunnel. They would not hesitate to come for him through the stone, now that he’d been declared a threat to all his kind. How long did he have left? Seconds?

There was no hope of ever getting close to the feeding pools, but he furiously focused his mind on the place so as to mislead those searching for him. The tunnel began to narrow as he forged up and he feared he would become stuck, but the walls were becoming softer, reluctantly allowing him to keep moving forward. The soft edge would make separation for those coming through the stone more difficult. He deliberately kicked dust up into the tunnel behind him – not that it required much effort in the desiccated surroundings of this realm.

Panting and coughing hard, he kept his head down and pushed on. The top of his head and his hands began to burn and he knew he must be close. He could not see anything but a blinding whiteness. He pulled the hood of his robe over his head and wrapped his hands in its voluminous sleeves. It helped a little, but he could feel his skin start to bubble and crack. He gagged as he smelt the sweet iron of charring flesh and burning blood.

With a final surge, he pushed through an avalanche of sliding sand and suffocating dust and out onto the barren surface of the realm. He knew better than to open his eyes immediately, having come close to being blinded permanently by the realm’s cruel and ancient sun on a number of occasions. Winds tore at his robes, seeking to pull back the material and sacrifice him to the angry and ailing eye of the heavens. Ba’zel wrapped himself as tightly as he could and tottered away from where he had emerged.

He was fortunate that he seemed to have come out into the tail end of a storm, for its energies would make him hard to follow for a while. On the other hand, it kept him deaf to pursuit and disorientated when it came to direction. And he needed to find his way off the surface as soon as possible, for he would not be able to survive here for more than a handful of minutes. His entire skin felt aflame and the agony was only increasing. How long before he passed out or lost all feeling and sense of self?

His lungs felt like they were shrivelling up, all the moisture drawn out of them. He staggered in the direction of the storm, casting his mind out as far as he could. Eddies and currents burned across his internal vision. He stumbled on the shifting, sinking surface, barely keeping his feet. A hacking cough racked his body and there was blood at the back of his throat. Shadows loomed through his mind now, filling him with darkness. Was he entering the void already?

He risked opening his eyes a crack and fancied he could see dark shapes among the swirling dust devils. He sloughed closer, all but at the end of his strength.

Sifters, hear me! he begged. I have nothing to offer you but the last of my life.

The narrow besailed giants stood with long limbs rooted deep in the surface. Every so often a leg would ponderously rise and anchor itself elsewhere, as a sifter repositioned itself with the changing wind. Ridged and textured flares of skin stretched between their thin bodies and upper limbs. The skin gently glowed as it absorbed particles of energy from the storm and filtered any remaining sustenance from the fine dust of the air. The sifters always travelled in the wake of the storms, feeding as best they could.

Some said that the sifters had once been close cousins of the Declension, but had chosen to adapt themselves to the realm’s surface rather than hide below. Others said the strange and unsightly creatures could never have been related to the Declension and must have been a lesser race, cast off by the unknowable Chi’a in the time before remembering, when the Chi’a had apparently passed through this realm – as they had so many other realms – on their Great Voyage. Still others claimed that the sifters were a simple indigenous life form of this realm, of extremely limited intelligence and entirely reactive, just like the plant-forms of other realms. What all agreed on, however, was that the sifters were completely harmless and possessing of so little life energy of their own that it was not worth the effort of bleeding or consuming them.

To Ba’zel, who had nowhere left to go and no other hope, the sifters were worth his every last effort. He slumped to his knees, which quickly began to become buried. He would be pulled down or covered over soon, for he did not have it within him to rise again. This would be his dusty grave. As the last of the energy and moisture was whisked from him, the dry husk of his body would begin to collapse. It would be blown to the winds in the next storm and the last of his essence would be sifted from the air by the silent giants. He would be nothing but a few motes of dust lost in the endless storm.

The last of my life is yours to do with as you will. Command or use it as you wish. Or spurn it if it is of no worth to you. I am sorry. I have and am nothing else. Should you be able to, tell Mentor Ho’zen and my father that I tried my best and that I am sorry for their shame. I did not wish to be so unstable. I wish it could have been otherwise. He smiled grimly. For see where being unstable has brought me. See what it has won me. See what it will make of me. See how I am nothing but dust.

The final eddies, currents and patterns of energy faded from before his mind’s eye. He could feel nothing but a sort of weightlessness. Frenziedly, he tried to find his body and its pain, but there was nothing there. He couldn’t even hear the storm. Or taste the sapping heat or the blood from the ruptures and lesions inside him. Or smell anything of substance. Here it was, then. A last few moments of floating. Or a disembodied floating forever.

We will command, use and spurn you then! came the whisper.

‘What?’ he croaked. ‘Who are you?’

We have taken you up in the fold of our wings. You will be protected for a while, perhaps replenished. We will take you to the Gate.

‘The Gate? Why? What would you have of me?’

You agree to being commanded, used and spurned by us?

‘Yes.’

Then leave this place.

He felt fear. ‘Can I not stay here with you?’

There was a pause. No.

‘But …’ But what? He had no right to ask anything of them. No right to ask anything of anyone. No right to ask anything of any realm, or of the cosmos. No right to existence. ‘You would not have me become dust?’

One day. One day you will become dust and return to us. All the cosmos comes to us as dust eventually. In this way, we know of realms in the furthest reaches of the cosmos. It is inevitable that you will return to us.

‘But you have spared me from that now, in your mercy. Why?’

So that you may leave this place and find the other realms of the Declension.

‘You want that?’

Yes and no. It grieves us. Look at what has become of we sifters – as you call us – and our realm, because of the Declension. You will see what is being done to other realms by them. This end may be inevitable, we do not know. It is enough for us that the Declension reject you – because of that we shall spare you, for now, and allow you moments in other realms.

‘What purpose will I have to give me discipline and meaning there? I must have discipline and meaning or the existence will be terrible beyond enduring. I would rather be dust.’

You must find discipline and meaning in enduring, then, as we do. You must search for new purpose even if you cannot discover it before becoming dust. It is all we know and can tell you. But we are here now. We c