Bloodless Revolution Read online

  ***

  Ten minutes. If that. Pol looked about him at the figures that milled on the Bridge, the centre of operations right in the head of the dragon, waiting for the go ahead. Gwenna, Virginie, Alann, Arbistrath. Even Stone himself, standing, staring out into the blue sky through the great expanses of Draconis’ eyes. Soon they would make their way down to the cell, to fetch their prisoner, where the Woodsman would escort him to the surface.

  So soon. Too soon, he thought. They knew too little about the enemy operation. The phrases, the words this Brotherhood of the Veil used in their appearances on the ‘television’; all seemed so intensely familiar. Even the name. There was no doubt; these people were allied to the infernal forces they had fought in the past. And yet despite this, Gwenna and Alann seemed content to simply stay one step ahead; to listen to rumour and hearsay, then foil each plot as it came.

  Pol couldn’t understand. Why so lax? Why risk peoples’ lives by their inaction? If they knew everything, then they could make a surgical strike at the heart of this foul organisation. Even as he thought it, he knew that Stone wouldn’t agree to such a direct and bloody approach. He wanted to show the people of this world that he brought peace, not war. Though the demi-god could no doubt smite the entire organisation and whatever city they called home, single-handedly, he had come to win trust, not fear. No, he wouldn’t agree to such action.

  But then, what Stone didn’t know, couldn’t hurt him…

  Quietly, lest anyone notice him, Pol slipped away from the bridge and made his way down into the belly of the beast.

  ***

  Was that nerves he felt as he approached the last corner before the holding cell? Maybe. He’d never done this before, never forced his mind upon that of another to garner the information he needed. But there was no time to tarry. They would be down here soon, ready to take the prisoner away.

  This was his last chance.

  With a deep breath, Pol relaxed, emptied his mind. And called upon the spirits. They came – and how! – and he was astonished, as he always was, at how readily the power flowed in this world. In an instant his every nerve was a-tingle with the borrowed energy of the spirits of water. He was ready, potent, powerful. His purpose clear.

  Gwenna and Stone, he knew, needed no aid from the spirits to accomplish the same feat he was about to attempt. But then Stone wasn’t far removed from a god. And Gwenna? How far she had come since that day atop the Beacon. Sometimes he wondered whether she was even the same girl he had fallen in love with all that time ago.

  Yet Pol himself wasn’t so confident in his abilities. It might take time. There might be a struggle. The prisoner might raise ‘objections’ about this intrusion. Closing his eyes for a second, the shaman called upon the power of the spirits, feeling the strength of the Earth and the swiftness of the Air coursing through his limbs. Just in case.

  Skin prickling with the borrowed power of the spirits, he rounded the corner, determination pounding in his breast.

  ***

  Michael looked up at the sound of footsteps and observed the newcomer through eyes heavy with ennui.

  “Oh,” he said. “You.”

  He’d seen this youth before. Of all the enemies, this one seemed to wear the heaviest chip upon his shoulder. The youth seemed forever cocky, abrasive, as though he had something to prove to the world. He’d come down here on occasion, by his lonesome, and taunt Michael, goading him, trying to glean some nuggets of information from him. And on each occasion, Michael had laughed, enjoying the situation more and more, the bravado of the boy becoming more and more transparent as time went on.

  He was trying to impress someone. A girl, no doubt.

  And here he was again. Though there was something different this time. A change in his posture, a confidence on his face. There was a greasy, static feel in the air that put the Brotherhood man in mind of an altercation he’d rather forget.

  “What do you want?”

  The lad smiled. It was an expression ill-suited to his face. If it was intended to unnerve the prisoner, it was succeeding.

  “Information,” he replied. “I want to know everything that’s in your head.”

  Michael sighed and shook his head in resignation.

  “Change the record. I admire your tenacity, but hearing the same questions again and again grows tiresome.”

  Still smiling, the youth walked forwards, till he was in danger of singeing his nose on the force-field door of the Brig. He raised one hand, touched a stone on the outside of the cell.

  The shimmering wall of energy vanished.

  “Well,” remarked Jenkins, eyebrows raised in surprise. “That was unexpected. And very foolish.”

  He leapt to his feet, an uncoiling cobra, one hand spearing out to strike his opponent’s throat, to crush his larynx and kill with a single blow. It was one of the first moves he had learned from the Brotherhood masters as a neophyte, a move that had worked on a dozen occasions in the past, leaving his foes lying on the floor, writhing as they choked on their own lifeblood.

  Not this time.

  With speed beyond belief, the youth sidestepped out of the path of his blow. Then, with nary a grunt of effort, he caught Michael’s wrist in his right hand and brought the up-turned elbow of his left arm up, simultaneously pulling down with his hand as he pushed up with his elbow.

  Like a cocktail stick, Michael’s own arm snapped at the joint with an audible and sickening crack.

  “Aargh!” Screaming, the prisoner flung himself to one side against the cell wall, white hot lead flooding up his shoulder and causing him almost to black out in pain. “You fucking fuck!” In desperation, he sought to remember the mantras of the Brotherhood, chants that would ease pain and focus the mind.

  But there was no time. The youth loomed as he drew nearer, the prisoner staring up at his aggressor through eyes blurred with pain.

  “You think what you’re feeling now is pain?” the boy mocked him, a cruel smile upon his face. “This is pain.”

  He reached out, hands grasping each side of the prisoner’s head.

  Michael’s eyes widened in horror.

  Then his mind exploded with agony beyond understanding.

  ***

  Stone’s eyes widened and he glanced down to Gwenna by his side. She looked up at him, her own eyes flashing with alarm, feeling the exact same screech of mental pain emanating from somewhere deep within the bowels of Draconis.

  “What is that sound?” Virginie screwed her eyes shut, shaking her head from side to side as if trying to dissuade some buzzing fly intent on landing upon her brow. “It hurts.”

  “It’s the sound of rape. Of a man’s very mind in torment.” Stone’s voice was thunderous. “And I will not stand for it.” Even as that booming word faded to an echo, he made to move, but then a beep in the bridge air and a nervous and disembodied voice called out.

  “Erm. Stone? Alann?” It was Nikki, hailing them from the surface. “They’re here.”

  Stone’s eyes narrowed.

  “Shit.” He pressed his earpiece. “Understood, Nikki. The Woodsman and the prisoner are on their way.” He released the communicator and turned to Alann, his voice dark with anger. “Go. Take the prisoner from his cell. And whoever abused him; throw them in there in his stead till I get a chance to deal with them myself.”

  A curt nod.

  “Yes, my Lord. Luis, Iain, with me.”

  The trio of Foresters left the bridge, leaving the others to stand there, with nothing to do but hope that they still had enough of a prisoner left to hand over to the government…

  ***

  God! Oh God, such pain! As a neophyte, Michael had endured the trials meant to forge the body into an instrument fit for service to the Brotherhood. He’d withstood the Hall of Knives, where an initiate would walk past his fellows, each of whom would lash out with a blade to slice the skin of his bare torso, till he grew woozy and weak from the blood that dripped upon the sandy floor. He’d survived the Leap of F
aith, falling from the high cliff and into the calm depths of the Red Sea, where the water would hit you like concrete, driving the breath from the body and smashing ribs to splinters.

  These trials and more he’d endured, tempering his mind and body to withstand any pain that should be inflicted upon him should he be captured by the British or American governments.

  But this? This was beyond anything the Brotherhood of the Veil could ever have prepared him for. There was no hiding from this pain; no summoning walls of willpower, no distancing oneself from the agony with chanted mantras. For this time, the enemy was within. There, inside his very mind. He could feel him. Insidious, dark and horrifically invasive, the lad’s very consciousness seemed to seep in through his skull where those fingers pressed hard against his head.

  Memories, images of his past, from years ago right up till the present day, all flashed before Michael’s mind as the youth tore through the libraries of his brain, searching, rummaging. There was no order, no direction to the search. It seemed that the youth didn’t even understand what he was doing himself, simply raging, stomping about, heedless of the damage he caused, a mental bull in a cerebral china shop.

  God, the pain. The humiliation. Everything, every little failure, every dark and seedy moment of depravity and shame that he wished no-one to ever see, all was laid bare to this intruder and there was nothing that Michael could do about it. Nothing. But…

  Wait. Even as he felt the weight of the interloper’s mind pressing down upon his own, he also felt an opening, a gap in his assailant’s own defences. His mind driven by fury, rage and desperation, Michael lashed out, lunging forward with all his mental might, driving into that gap even as his foe was distracted by his own search.

  Perhaps a more experienced proponent of this art than the young fool would not have fallen for such a trick. Perhaps a less strong-willed victim would never have managed it. But somehow, miraculously, Michael crashed through the youth’s meagre and hastily erected defences, spearing his way into his opponent’s own mind with joyous and reckless abandon. He could feel the consciousness of his enemy realising its mistake, turning, leaving Michael’s mind, striving to return to his own, to fend off this attack. But too late, he was in.

  A mind, spread out all about him like many doors in a strange and metaphysical room where thought and feeling were given form. Though he could see nothing, for he was not using his eyes, he could feel where each entrance led. Each doorway seemed to lead into archives, halls of memories where every experience that had ever happened to this youth were stored for retrieval. At random, he picked one.

  A grin crept across the face of his mental form and he lunged, intent on wreaking agonies untold upon his foe. This would teach the impetuous youth. He drove in hard, the fingers of his consciousness reaching out like ghostly claws to rend and tear.

  Somewhere, as if calling down a long and distant tunnel, he could hear a mental scream.

  ***

  Oh shit, how could he have been so stupid? This wasn’t some petty parlour trick; this wasn’t like conjuring a fireball or summoning the spirits of Earth to grant you strength. This was another level, a battle upon the plane of souls. A fight, mind against mind. Will against will.

  And suddenly, chillingly, Pol realised that he had come woefully unarmed.

  The mind of this man that he had thought to rip apart like so much paper was instead strong, sharp and cold. One false move, one distracted moment, that was all it had taken and he had felt the fingers of the man’s dark and evil consciousness spear past his defences and right into his mind. Even now, he could see memories rising up, rushing past his mind’s eye like the pages of a flick book.

  Growing up in the foothills of the North, barely a day’s ride from Pen-Argyle. That fateful day, the barbarian slavers of Kurnos, riding out to slaughter and capture. Hiding beneath the floorboards of their home, himself as a young child, his mother teary-eyed hugging him tight, his father, arms about them both. Finally the cries of terror had ceased and they’d ventured to the surface, to find the village razed to the ground. The people, gone.

  Then the long trek North, the weather growing colder, the land more wild, the creatures more vicious. The three of them lying there in the snow, the cold having so numbed their feet that they could no longer walk. Giving up, finally realising their defeat in the face of the remorseless elements.

  But then that face, wizened, lined, yet strong. A square chin, fierce eyes, that tanned, weather-beaten skin. Master Wrynn had found them, him and the first of the new shamans, dragging Pol and his family by sled North, past the frigid mountains and into an area of warmth, life, peace and tranquillity. The Retreat. They were saved.

  Time seemed to fast forward now, images flicking past almost too fast for him to cope. His parents dying, peacefully, of old age. Wrynn taking Pol under his wing, teaching him the art of Spirit Craft. Gwenna, her red hair, green eyes and warm smile beguiling his heart right from those earliest days. Golden years of growing up, learning, becoming a strong young man.

  But then darkness. Events conspiring towards some great climax. Invictus, the barbarian king, constructing the Beacon atop the Tower, thinking it a testament to his greatness, when in fact it was merely a testament to his unwitting role as a pawn of Those Beyond the Veil. The shamans’ plans to warn him, to restore the memories of his previous life before it was too late, to no avail.

  Invictus, betrayed. His memories restored as a final, cruel joke by the dark gods that had built him up, only to send him crashing back down. Now he was Stone, a mere man, fully aware of the horrors he had unleashed upon the world. But then the spirits had rescued him at the last instant. An army, now. Shamans, warriors and ordinary men. Slaves and free men. Banding together, uniting in a common cause. They marched upon the tower, where the limitless hordes of their enemy were unleashed against them.

  No hope. Too many, the enemy too powerful. But then Stone, once broken, now whole, reborn, more powerful than ever. They turned the tide. Held back their foe long enough to flee through the Portal first.

  Events flashed forwards once more. No, not this. He couldn’t, wouldn’t allow anyone to see this. But he had no control. The man’s claws were sunk deep into his mind now. Every time he tried to pull away, it hurt, such fiery agony. Scattered through time. Landing in the country known as France, many hundreds of years ago. Pursued by zealous warrior-priests, eager to hunt down any with the trace of the gift.

  No, not her. Stay away from these memories. But the assault continued.

  A guide. A young peasant girl of France. She risked her own life, abandoning her family to lead her new friends from town to town as they fled south. His heart growing dark with envy as he saw the closeness, the bond developing between the two women, the young French girl and the woman he loved. Then finally that evening in the inn, that ultimate betrayal.

  The dark rage that took root in his soul.

  Captured, freed, then hunted once more. Then the reveal, the hideous irony; the leader of their enemy revealed now to be nothing more than a servant of darkness, a creature of evil himself. An ancient demon that thirsted for blood.

  Stop. Stop!

  That night, in the windmill. The baying hordes outside. The cackling laugh of the vampire. The crackling of flames as the building burned down around them. He was high up in the tower. In a bedroom. Virginie was there. The floor, burning away beneath them. Pol himself standing there, watching as she pleaded with those brown eyes for help, for him to save her from falling to her death.

  A mental scream of desperation and sheer agony, a scream that eventually erupted from his real mouth as Pol finally tore his mind free from the clutches of his foe and fell backwards into the corridor. He lay there, then rose, slowly, wearily, his very soul afire with the raw agonies that he himself had sought to inflict upon the prisoner. His victim turned aggressor was lying there against the bench in his cell. His arm was snapped at the elbow, dangling uselessly at his side. The pain clear upon th
e man’s face.

  But that smile. That rising laugh.

  Pol’s eyes widened in horror, even as he struggled to his feet.

  The prisoner, Michael, stared up at him, continuing to laugh, his face full of joyous revelation, despite the pain that caused him to wince.

  “I know,” he said, relishing the look of pale fear upon the youth’s face. “I know. You’re no less of a traitor to your people than I…” He frowned for an instant. “None of them know, do they? None of your friends know about this betrayal?” His laughter redoubled.

  Pol’s heart hammered within his chest. What could he do? He’d been lucky till now that the French girl had yet to tell Stone or Gwenna of his actions that day. Maybe she was afraid of his reprisal. Or that she simply wouldn’t be believed. Gwenna had known Pol for a lot longer than she’d known Virginie, after all. He’d half hoped, even, that she’d not even seen his betrayal herself as she’d clung to the burning rafter; his actions lost in the heat and haze of the blazing building.

  But now this prisoner knew. He’d seen into Pol’s very heart, his very memories. Knew his deepest and darkest secret. That he had left one of his own to die, out of nothing more than petty jealousy.

  This could not be allowed.

  Eyes narrowed with dark rage, his mind giving no thought to consequences beyond the next few minutes. His fist curled before him and he could feel the strength of the spirits of Earth flooding his limbs, lending him the strength he needed to crush this man to a bloody pulp.

  He would say that it was self-defence. That he went down to try to extract one last confession. Was persuaded to lower the force-field, before the man attacked him. He had no choice. It was Pol or the prisoner. Yes, that would do it.

  He stepped forwards, the prisoner still giggling to himself. But then noise from down the corridor and round the corner. The sounds of running feet. Voices. Alann. Fear clutched Pol’s heart. There was no way the Woodsman would stand for this. And, spirit-craft or not, he didn’t fancy getting on Alann’s bad side.