Page 37 of The Malevolent Eight

Aradeus, bound to the column at my right, coughed quietly to get my attention. I’d hoped this was because he was signalling me about some cunning escape spell he was about to cast. Rat mages are good at that sort of magic. Instead, he said, ‘Forgive my ignorance of the diplomatic protocols of the Glorian Justiciars, but was that comment intended to improve our situation?’

‘Why? Isn’t it working so far?’

Justice waved off Chastity’s impending smiting of me and took control of the conversation once again. ‘The decision by Justiciar Fidelity to incarcerate the Abomination rather than enact the sentence of exile asyouhappened to understand it, Gallantry, was made of her own volition and without consulting either the Glorian Hierarchy or myself.’

I noticed a pale yellowing upon one of the previously pristine columns to my right, while unsightly cracks had appeared in the ceiling above. The gleaming perfection of the cathedral was losing its lustre. This wasn’t unusual– ritual magic of this type does degrade fairly quickly– but the conjuration is also a reflection of the thoughts of those summoned, all of which made me suspect the Celestines were not entirely proud of this little episode they’d kept hidden for ten years. ‘Why do I have the feeling that Fidelity didn’t keep you in the dark all that long?’ I asked.

‘Shedidcome to us eventually,’ Justice conceded. ‘The reasons she offered for the necessity of investigating the Abomination’s perverse mysticism were sound.’

‘You mean, she tantalised you with the prospect of new esoteric weapons with which to one day wage the inevitable war against the Infernals.’

Justice is sometimes blind and often perverted, but she’s rarely embarrassed. ‘Bravo, Gallantry. You have prosecuted your case against us effectively. Do you now intend to pass sentence upon us?’

In case you needed any evidence that I’m not, in fact, an impulsive idiot who launches into lengthy speeches about honour and decency every time he’s confronted with injustice, you’ll note that my next move wasn’t to keep chastising the Lords Celestine for their hypocrisy. After all, hypocrisy isn’t one of the thirteen sins they actually attribute to the Lords Devilish. Instead, I focused my efforts on puzzling out the chain of events between one over-zealous Glorian Justiciar kidnapping a castaway from another plane of reality to the creation of a being who can literally draw an enemy’s least pleasant destiny into being.

‘So what was the problem?’ I asked. ‘You had the Glorian Ardentors experiment on the girl but nothing they tried awakened her magic?’

‘Correct,’ said the Celestine of Justice. Her short reply suggested she wanted me to reveal my suspicions, just as I was probing her own knowledge of the Spellslinger and this mysterious apocalyptic cult for whom she was now working.

‘Then the Ardentors reported her. . . condition.’

I didn’t use the word ‘pregnant’ because I wasn’t sure the Celestines had been able to overhear my conversation with Eliva’ren. Since none of us apparently knew how her powers worked, I couldn’t even be surewhenthat conversation had occurred, since it was, technically, impossible. Had it happened ten years ago when she’d first been captured, making my trip into the Archives today the fulfilment of some potential destiny she’d drawn back to herself? Or had I spoken in the present to some earlier manifestation of her?

Don’t believe anyone who tries to sell you on the wonders of magic. Most of it is brutal, toxic or drives you nuts if you think about it too long.

‘Indeed, her. . . condition was unexpected,’ the Celestine of Justice confirmed. ‘The magic of her people is drawn from six different esoteric energies which are sourced from what is called an “oasis” and then channelled through the metallic inks within the tattooed sigils of the six bands around their forearms. Neither our Glorian Ardentors nor we could have anticipated what would happen once we re-attuned those sigils to other planes of reality.’

That Justice misunderstood me suggested they still weren’t aware of the Spellslinger’s pregnancy, which at least meant they hadn’t intentionally killed the child.In fact, Eliva’ren never explicitly said her baby had died, only that I’d failed to help her save it, which could have any number of meanings, given how esoteric energies coursing through a mother’s body can affect an unborn child.

‘Which plane of reality was the Spellslinger finally attuned to?’ I asked. ‘I imagine Fidelity and your Glorian Ardentors failed with the Auroral or Infernal realms, because those would have been your first two choices in searching for an edge against the Lords Devilish.’

My old boss shared a troubled look with her fellow Lords Celestine that set me wondering just how much they’d really known before today. Nonetheless, immortal beings will go to great lengths to appear all-knowing.

‘I would have thought the answer were obvious, Gallantry,’ she said, a tolerant if over-familiar smile on her lips.

For the record: I never once had sex with the Celestine of Justice. I never even kissed her. Talk about dodging a crossbow bolt. Oh, and no, at no point will I be launching into a detailed explanation of the mystical and physical processes by which a manifested Presence of a so-called divine being lowers themselves into being able to have sexual relations with a Mortal. Trust me, you’re not missing out on anything. It’s really kind of gross.

In my head I ran through the various forms of wonderism with which I had some passing familiarity. Each type of magic is derived from momentary breaches between two planes of reality, allowing the physics of one to leak briefly into the other, which triggers the complex collision of contrary laws of nature which we in the wonderism business glibly refer to as ‘spells’. As each of those sets of laws have different effects, it was easy to discard Totemic, Tempestoral, sonoral, sanguinal and most of the others for having no resemblance to the Spellslinger’s powers.

That left three options, although it didn’t mean I was going to start with one of them.

‘Luminism?’ I suggested to the Celestine of Justice. ‘The Spellslinger’s a jumped-up luminist, right?’

That got a chuckle from Corrigan, at least. No one else got the joke. Shame, Alice and Galass had never been mercenary wonderists, and Aradeus was too polite to mock even such a derisive target as luminists. Temper, noticing Corrigan’s amusement, started to laugh, too. Here’s another tip: never subject yourself to the laughter of a kangaroo, vampiric or otherwise. It’s just plain unnerving.

‘Thought I’d cut the tension a little,’ I explained to the Lords Celestine. ‘Getting down to business, abyssal magic transcends spatial boundaries, which might explain how Eliva’ren wound up in our realm?’

Rationality contradicted me. ‘Logical, in principle, but still wrong. Alas, the correct answer requires adopting a less. . .rationalpremise.’

‘Fortunal magic could explain it.’ I was getting progressively more desperate the closer we got to the inevitable. ‘The natural laws of the Fortunal realm allow for the altering of probabilities, which might suggest how the Spellslinger is able to bring forward a target’s potential destinies into the pres—’

‘Cease your prevarication, Gallantry,’ interrupted the Celestine of Justice. ‘You have already gleaned the answer, as you should have done days ago when first encountering the Abomination’s new powers.’ She slammed a fist on the arm of her throne. Apparently, I’d disappointed her. ‘One wonders why the instincts in esoteric matters nurtured in you by your mentor should fail in this particular instance.’

Does she know about what I did?That prospect terrified me. Celestines aren’t what you’d call discreet by nature. If Justice blurted out my crime, I was going to have some explaining to do– followed by some prolonged dangling from a rope around my neck when they figured out the implications of my decision.

So I put on a show of being shocked, sickened and terrified all at once. I even went so far as to utter the answer in the sort of stage whisper most often used by melodramatic stage actors.

‘Pandoralism. . .’I breathed.

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