Nights of Villjamur - Mark Charan Newton [68]
“Hand it over,” Dartun demanded.
The boy eyed him with a mixture of curiosity and arrogance, obviously weighing up the cultist. His blue eyes were dazzling. “Fuck you, mister.”
Dartun laughed. “Some spirit in you, I see.”
“What’s it to you, wanker?” The lad shuffled from one foot to the other, looking for a way past.
“Just give the relic to me.” Dartun extended his hand. “You don’t want any harm to befall you.”
“No, it’s meant to be mine, it’s my destiny,” the boy said. Then, he threatened, “I’ll use it on you.”
“You really don’t want to try that.”
“No?” The boy reached into his pocket then was holding up the silver device itself. It looked like a compass, a subtle navigational tool of some kind, perhaps used to divine directions.
“No,” Dartun insisted.
The boy ignored him, flicked the relic open, began to press on it at random, looking to and from Dartun with eager eyes, and all Dartun did meanwhile was take several slow steps backward, guessing what might happen, wondering only what form it would take.
A ball of purple smoke erupted, extending in every direction.
Just enough time to see the skin of the boy peel back before he became a myriad of chunks of flesh and bone, which distorted then liquidized as if it was paint. Dartun had ducked in time before he heard the gentle explosion, bringing his fuligin cloak over his face. He felt the remains of the child hitting him first then slapping against the cobbles.
Dartun stood up to regard the mess. Blood was sprayed in a circle all around the relic, which remained intact on the ground, a glistening unstained piece of metal. Mere fragments of the boy remained: the odd bone, a tiny segment of skull. At least his fuligin cloak was so intensely dark that the stains were barely showing up on it.
Primed with an explosion detonator. Haven’t seen one of those for a while.
“They’ll never learn,” he said out loud; he reached down, scooped up the relic, pocketed it, then walked away.
Two nights earlier, he had felt a stiffness in his legs that he’d never noticed before.
Four days ago, he had grazed his hand on stone, drawing blood.
He’d looked at his injury for an hour, contemplating why this was happening, contemplating that narrowing line between life and death.
If you cannot die, it means you’re not alive to begin with. And now the system of relics is gradually failing me.
Dartun repeated this mantra over and over again in his mind, forcing himself to believe it. Home, in a darkened chamber within the headquarters of the Order of the Equinox, he stared at the relic taken from the dead boy. Every relic was somehow protected against use by any lay person, the secrets of handling it known only to the numerous cultists who frequented these islands. Ignorant meddlers were poisoned for their trouble, or corrupted by holding something unknown, the lucky ones only losing a single limb. Other relics used bolts of energy to stop the heart, and some used a toxic gas. Their fate was never pleasant, but it ensured that cultist secrets remained exactly that. And so it had worked for tens of thousands of years.
He held the artifact up to a shaft of light penetrating a slat in the wooden shutter. This new relic was a type of wend, that would have assisted the Ancients in their travels. Even though it wouldn’t help him regain his immortality, he was always delighted to find another relic, whatever its powers. This one was a particularly wonderful piece of equipment. The internal materials were not of this era, that was nearly always certain, although the casing was some form of current silver, so perhaps it had been modified. Round, fitting easily