The Maleficent Seven Read online

  PRAISE FOR CAMERON JOHNSTON

  “There’s never a lull in the action, and the mismatched group provides plenty of fun, with high tension and biting arguments between the over-the-top characters keeping the pages turning… fans of grimdark fantasy will find plenty to enjoy.”

  Publishers Weekly

  “Cameron Johnston is an exciting new voice in fantasy. His writing has a dark sense of humour and his debut is bursting with imagination and wonders. Fantastic stuff!”

  Stephen Aryan, author of the Age of Darkness trilogy

  “Epic fantasy meets hardboiled noir, with a foul-mouthed, seen-it-all narrator you won’t soon forget.”

  Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

  “If you enjoy clever gray characters, gritty but interesting worlds, and creepy magic, this book is for you.”

  Fantasy Hive

  “A dark and rich fantasy with an inventive magic system that will raise hairs on your neck.”

  Ed McDonald, author of Blackwing

  “Visceral and gripping fantasy, horribly and hugely enjoyable.”

  Anna Smith Spark, author of The Court of Broken Knives

  “Coarse, crude, bloody, brutal, and utterly over-the-top...A go-big-or-go-home delight.”

  Locus

  “Like Kings of the Wyld smooshed together with Suicide Squad into a glorious, gory, sweary melee.”

  Rob J Hayes, author of The Ties that Bind series

  By the same author

  THE AGE OF TYRANNY

  The Traitor God

  God of Broken Things

  ANGRY ROBOT

  An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd

  Unit 11, Shepperton House

  89-93 Shepperton Road

  London N1 3DF

  UK

  angryrobotbooks.com

  twitter.com/angryrobotbooks

  Can evil ever be good?

  An Angry Robot paperback original, 2021

  Copyright © Cameron Johnston 2021

  Cover by Mark Ecob

  Edited by Simon Spanton and Gemma Creffield

  Set in Meridien

  All rights reserved. Cameron Johnston asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

  Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkins Media Ltd.

  ISBN 978 0 85766 908 7

  Ebook ISBN 978 0 85766 909 4

  Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ International.

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Mum and Dad,

  who have always been there for me.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  BOOK THREE

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  EPILOGUE I

  EPILOGUE II

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  Fortress of Rakatoll, day twenty-three of the siege. Seven hours before it all went to shit.

  Fifty-one wooden posts were hammered into the ground, forming a line just out of bowshot from the fortress walls. Just before sunset, roaring braziers were placed before each one so both sides could witness the coming atrocity.

  The captured nobles were stripped naked and dragged kicking and screaming from their pens, then bound to the posts as their men watched, helpless and cowering behind the crumbling walls of the fortress.

  After five years of war, Black Herran had finally trapped most of the remaining royal families of Essoran and the remnants of their armies in Rakatoll, and she was eager to display the horrors she had in store for them. The disparate rebels, outcasts, bandits, mercenaries and monsters that made up her army were every bit as keen to watch their one-time oppressors suffer.

  Black Herran, dread demonologist and supreme general, surveyed her army and smiled as any who met her gaze flinched and looked away. As dangerous as they were, it was good to remind them that she was far worse. They pushed and shoved and cursed one another, but did not dare draw steel. Only their bowel-loosening terror of her held this army together.

  She stood with two of her captains, as thirty thousand bloodthirsty men and monsters scrutinised the captives struggling against their bonds. Coin changed hands as bets were placed on who would last the longest.

  Black Herran ran a bejewelled hand through her short, red-tipped hair and looked to her fair-haired lover, who had refused all bets.

  “Come now, Amadden,” she said. “You are not usually this squeamish. Will you not choose one of their highnesses and make a wager with me?”

  The warrior scowled and flicked a speck of dirt off his bright and shining breastplate. “Most might be corrupt, but some fought bravely for what they believed in.”

  “Do you always have to be such a prig?” Amadden’s older sister Maeven said, her long dark hair wild and untamed in the wind. She was a powerful necromancer, and Black Herran’s right hand – far more important to the general than a bed warmer like her brother, and she knew it. She shoved past him and flipped a gold coin into Black Herran’s waiting hand. She pointed to a slender man in the middle of the line. “I choose that one. He is saving his strength instead of wailing and struggling. He will die well.”

  “I have the far left then,” Black Herran replied, picking one at random.

  With that, the night’s festivities began.

  As the sun sank below the horizon, the general’s shadow demons slipped from cracks in the earth to pool at the feet of the captives. By flickering firelight, her army watched liquid darkness rise up the wooden posts and form razor-sharp teeth and claws. They cheered as the devouring began, jeering as their once-overlords screamed their throats red-raw. Her demons started with the toes and slowly ate their way upwards, stripping off skin and fat before gnawing on muscle and bone.

  The little sister of her two captains, Grace, chose that moment to slip through the cheering throng towards her siblings. In one hand she carried a platter of cheese and cured meats, while the other clutched a much-patched brown sackcloth horse with one eye. She was golden-haired and beautiful despite the plain dress and sooty smears. None of the hardened killers in t
he army dared to even look at her in case Maeven’s dark magic rotted the offending eyes right out of their sockets.

  Grace tutted. “You forgot to eat, my sillies. You have to keep your strength up to fight the bad people.”

  Amadden hissed and moved to block her view of the fortress and the ongoing atrocity. “I told you to stay inside our tent.”

  Maeven rolled her eyes. “I asked her to fetch us food. Stop coddling her – this is the world Grace lives in, and she is capable of dealing with a little blood.”

  Her brother’s face flushed an angry red and he reached out for his older sister’s throat. Grace shoved the platter into his hand instead.

  Maeven smirked, knowing he would never truly lay a finger on her in front of their sister. Losing Grace’s affection would destroy him. As much as they disagreed on what was best for Grace, both would die before they let anything else hurt her – and they had ensured that everybody who tried had died.

  The necromancer yelled encouragement to the screaming captives and grinned, her eyes unblinking as she took in the spectacle.

  Amadden’s face twisted in disgust as he watched his sister. His hand twitched around the hilt of the sword sheathed at his waist. “If Grace didn’t love you…” he muttered through clenched teeth.

  Grace’s eyes were blank as they scanned across the horror of dying, devoured nobles, then flickered back into life as she met Black Herran’s gaze. “Make sure you eat too. Keeping this army in line must be tiring.”

  Black Herran sighed. Grace always had a way of seeing the truth of things. She was so weary of their constant squabbling, requiring her constant intervention to keep them all from murdering one another. If it wasn’t the bandits or rebels fighting over ideology and gold it was the ogres trying to eat the orcs, and her selfish captains were even worse – every one of them had their own agenda. Black Herran knew if she got up and walked away here and now, it would take less than an hour for them to be slitting each other’s throats, Amadden and Maeven included.

  In a similar way, only Grace kept her family together: she had taken it upon herself to look after her siblings by caring instead of killing. Amadden and Maeven only suffered each other’s presence for their sister’s benefit, and at Black Herran’s command. The three siblings had never been the same after witnessing the murder of their parents and grandfather: Maeven had plunged into an obsessive study of death and necromancy, her brother into war and the search for some universal truth to reveal the purpose behind his pain, and their sweet and innocent sister had retreated almost wholly back into happier childhood memories. Grace’s vulnerability had made her brother and sister easy to recruit, and their fierce protectiveness enabled Black Herran to mould them into deadly weapons.

  The nobleman that held Black Herran’s bet soiled himself, enraging the demon below him. It surged upwards and into his mouth, his screams muffled as it ripped its way down his throat.

  “Alas, a poor selection on my part,” she said. “Maeven, you have command. Ensure the attacks resume once the troops are done with their games. At first light, I intend to lead the final assault.”

  Black Herran headed for her command tent, and Amadden followed, his eyes filled half with adoration and half with fear. Just the way she liked her men, but not what she needed right then.

  She slapped a hand on his breastplate. “No. Go and see to the army, and your sisters.”

  Back in the command tent, Black Herran slumped into her chair and savoured the relative peace and quiet. It didn’t last. Atop the small table to her left, a silver hand mirror looted from a king’s bedchamber, then enchanted using his blood and torment, trembled and spat sparks – the owner of her soul demanded her attention, and he was not forgiving of delay.

  She took a deep calming breath, picked it up and held it at arm’s length. Her reflection rippled and faded as another took its place, this one far from human.

  Furnace-hot winds blew through the mirror, carrying the brimstone stench of Hellrath and the cries of tortured souls. Atop a throne of glistening bone and stretched, still-living human skin, lounged a bloated toad the size of a war horse, with eyes and tongue of flame: Duke Shemharai of Hellrath, the mighty demon lord who had granted Black Herran immense power in exchange for her soul. His sheer presence hit her like a hammer to the face, but she endured and hardened her expression – it was never wise to show weakness to a demon. Behind the throne loomed his fearsome general Malifer, a titanic armoured monster covered in red scales, something between man and crocodile that was ever ravenous.

  “My precious mortal puppet,” Shemharai said, purple lips smacking and spraying spittle. “Soon you will have all that you desire. You will finally uphold your end of the bargain and open the ways to Hellrath, and my conquest of your world. You may keep the continent of Essoran but all the other lands and seas of Crucible shall be mine – do not dare to disappoint me, wretch.” His burning eyes dipped towards her belly and his misshapen nose twitched. “I smell you are with spawn.” He licked his lips. “A delectable morsel. Should you wish to sell it…”

  “You will get everything you are due, mighty Duke,” she replied, eyes lowered. “That, I promise.”

  The Duke wheezed a laugh and waved a webbed hand. The image in the mirror rippled and reformed into her own sour expression. She sagged into a chair, relieved his overwhelming presence had departed.

  Duke Shemharai was greedy for blood and souls to fuel his never-ending war with the other great powers of Hellrath, and that had made him easy to manipulate. Now that it was time to deliver what she had promised, she found she had other ideas in mind.

  Being with child complicated many matters. Nobody but her had known, and while she had yet to discover any shred of maternal instinct, it had got her thinking about a future beyond this brutal war of hers. She had been blind, obsessed with revenge and conquest for so very long that she had not stopped to consider anything past her victory. What would she actually do after becoming Empress of Essoran? A mortal ruler in a world that would become a feeding ground for the demons of Hellrath…

  She sat in the darkness of her command tent nursing a goblet of cooling blood, listening to the raucous music of the siege as it entered the final few hours. The distant screams of dying men did not hold the lustre they once had, and the prospect of imminent victory roused little joy in her heart. The entire continent of Essoran lay like glittering jewels in the palm of her hand… and she felt nothing. She was just going through the motions. This wicked world of Crucible had not seen might like hers in an age, and yet it all seemed so petty now.

  Beyond flimsy walls of red canvas, her army’s barrage continued through the night: the thunk of heavy catapult arms and the whoosh of burning balls of pitch sailing through the darkness. Magic crackled and boomed to the cheers of blood-mad warriors who lusted for a dawn that offered death and gold and glory.

  She grimaced and upended her goblet. The blood didn’t hit the ground; instead, it disappeared into a pool of deepest shadow that slicked out from beneath her seat. Invisible tongues lapped up the blood and the darkness vibrated with pleasure.

  Black Herran looked to the living darkness pooled around her feet – her beloved shadow demons, summoned from their home by pit-born magic. Considered weak by the other inhabitants of Hellrath, they were her servants of choice, raised on her own blood and power. Unlike her mortal forces, they would never turn on her. They were all that she trusted, in this world or the other. The demons stroked and comforted her, relieved that the mighty Duke had turned his burning eyes from this place.

  “What an arrogant prick,” she growled. After a moment’s thought she slammed the mirror down onto the table, shattering it.

  “I want more than this,” Black Herran said, rising to her feet. “Shemharai and his bargain be damned. I deserve more than the eternal servitude his path offers. As do you, my shadow sisters. Do not fear, for I have ways to ensure he never finds us.”

  The shadow demons stilled, shocked that their
blood-sister would forsake her bargain and betray such a great and terrible power.

  She whispered of futures yet to come, of plans already under way for a better life.

  They understood. They feared. But they trusted too.

  Black Herran took a moment to think of all her captains, including her lover Amadden, and his sister Maeven. “Fuck them,” she said.

  The shadow demons enveloped her. When they drained back into the cracks in the earth there was no sign of the dread demonologist.

  Her captains, loyal veterans of five years of brutal battle, marshalled her squabbling army and continued the siege, unaware that their general had abandoned them on the eve of total victory.

  BOOK ONE

  The Gathering Storm

  Forty years later…

  CHAPTER 1

  The imp kept its horned head low and crawled over the rocks, hissing as frozen spikes of granite stabbed its scales and numbed its feet. It found a vantage point overlooking the miserable human village of thatched roundhouses that squatted in the mouth of the winter-bound valley below. It hunkered down to keep watch, shivering and wrapping its leathery wings around itself to keep in what meagre warmth was left.

  The chill slowly sapped its hellish heat. Concentration began to drift and drowsiness set in. Nictitating membranes flickered as its eyelids drooped. Then, the fear returned, a red claw twisting in its guts. It bit into its hand and the imp hissed with pain, blood steaming where it met icy rock.

  It had been forty years since Black Herran last summoned it from the cosy fires of Hellrath, but the imp’s terror was as fresh now as it had been then. Pretty words could never mask her ruthless ambition, worthy of the Dukes of Hellrath themselves – the imp was no fool; it knew beings far more powerful than itself had failed Black Herran and met fates far worse than death; were, in fact, still meeting it.

  From its high perch, it waited and watched, invisible to feeble human eyesight. After hours of darkness the outer world’s sun began to rise. The imp’s keen eyes squinted as the first of the humans arrived, the ones it had been told to spy upon. At first it only felt contempt, but as they drew closer it tasted the power they carried. Horns trembled and claws dug gouges into stone. All thought of sleep fled. It kept very, very still.