The Inquisition (Summoner, #2)(90)

Lysander skittered his talons along one of the broad beams in a screech of rusted metal until they came to a standstill. For a moment Fletcher took some deep breaths to calm himself, his face buried in Lysander’s glossy neck feathers. Then he felt the others dismount and he followed their example, careful to plant himself in the very centre of the rafter.

From this view, he could make out the eggs at the base of the pit quite clearly, as well as the platform below. The largest pipe was just beside his head, and the sloshing of liquid could be heard from within. He shuddered and extinguished his wyrdlights, casting the room into pitch darkness. He was just in time, for he could already see the glow of light coming from the entrance they had used.

Then, clutching a crackling torch in his hands, Khan ducked into the room. Up close, his size was even more stark in contrast to the shamans that followed him. His brow-ridge was less defined, and his tusks were somewhat smaller than most orcs’. But that was not what made him stand out the most to Fletcher. It was the demon perched on his shoulder, peering around the room with amber eyes.

Khan had a Salamander with him.





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The Salamander was black as pitch and twice as large as Ignatius. It even had stubs of wings on its back, where Ignatius’s shoulder bones were. But despite these anomalies, it was indisputably a Salamander, from the spiked tip of its tail to the toothless beak on the end of its snout.

Ignatius seemed to think so too, for he chirred quietly as he watched the demon preen itself on Khan’s shoulder. Fletcher quelled him with a thought and watched as the shaman retinue marched behind, following the albino orc over the bridge. One carried a sack of yellow petals from the antechamber.

None had their demons with them, nor did they have summoning leathers but, even from the rafters above, Fletcher could see that all of them had pentacles and other symbols tattooed on their hands, just as he did. Even the new adepts had them, though several held their hands gingerly, as if they had only recently been marked.

Up close, Fletcher could see that these adepts were smaller than the others, with underdeveloped tusks jutting from their lower lips. They wore little more than grass skirts, but their bodies had been dusted with white powder, perhaps to emulate the albino’s skin.

A shout from Khan made Fletcher jump. He gave orders in guttural barks, pointing at the five corners of the pentacle. The shamans that had accompanied him took their places there, while the adepts kneeled behind, watching intently.

More orcish speech followed, and in unison the shamans began to etch complex symbols that intersected in the air above the star. It was mesmerising to watch. For some reason, Fletcher had always imagined orc shamans to be the most rudimentary of summoners, barely capable of controlling anything more than a low-level imp.

He had to remind himself that orcs had been summoning long before humans, and though he daren’t suggest it to Sylva, possibly before the elves had too.

Khan bellowed another order when the etching stopped. A strange ring of double helix hung in the air above the pentacle, and the shamans’ hands glowed blue as they pumped mana into the symbol. Soon, the ring became a disk of spinning blue light, moving faster than Fletcher could follow.

The orc shamans began to wail and chant, raising their voices against the roar of the spell. As their voices reached a crescendo, Khan knelt on the floor and pressed a small knob on the platform. It sank into the stone and a rumble echoed throughout the pyramid. The clank and screech of machinery echoed from the ceiling just above Fletcher’s head. For a moment Khan stared up at the noise and Fletcher ducked behind the beam, his heart fluttering in his chest like a caged bird.

It was only when he heard the slosh of liquid in the pipe beside him that curiosity compelled him to peek again. What he saw was sickening.

Blood gushed from the pipe and into the hole at the centre of the pentacle, pulsing like a severed artery. As the fluid passed through the spell it frothed and sizzled, the consistency becoming viscous, the colour verging on black. Far below, the liquid clotted and congealed over the gremlin eggs, oozing out of holes at the base of the pillar and into the trench. Then, the eggs began to throb, palpitating in the water as they grew in size, spilling out of the trench and filling the pit right to the edges.

A whispered curse from the darkness beside him told him he was not the only one who had seen it. Soon the blood from the pipe had reduced to no more than a trickle. The spell flickered and faded, the shamans collapsing to the ground with exhaustion. Fletcher’s palms prickled with sweat as he contemplated the gruesome ritual. The blood from the blue orcs had a purpose after all.

Khan grunted with approval, reaching into a pouch at his waist and slipping a hunk of meat into his Salamander’s mouth. It gobbled it up greedily, gulping it down with two birdlike jerks of its head.

The albino orc snarled another order and the adepts scrambled to queue up behind him, stringing themselves out across the bridge. Each took a bunch of the yellow petals from the sack, and even Khan snatched a fistful. Together, they stuffed them into their mouths, chewing and swallowing with audible gulps. The younger orcs grimaced at the taste, one even dry heaving before forcing it down with a swig of water from a gourd at his hip.

Fletcher wondered whether it was some sort of drug or poison, to numb their bodies or dull their senses. They certainly seemed to sway on their feet, though whether it was out of fear or the effect of stimulants, he couldn’t be sure.