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‘Men wearing the Earl of Sarum’s livery. A body of them stayed while the rest of his host marched north to Delamprey. Friend Sarum has begun calling himself the military governor of Trinovant if you please!’
Willow sniffed. ‘But I thought Duke Richard’s allies were welcomed into the City by the Lord Mayor and his Aldermen.’
‘They were. And the White Tower was the bolt-hole into which all the king’s supporters jumped for safety. They’re still there and dare not come out.’
‘They’ll have to when the king himself orders it.’ Willow resettled Bethe on her hip. ‘Don’t they know that he’s coming here?’
Gwydion offered a vinegary smile. ‘I expect they do. My own best guess is that Richard and Hal will arrive in three days’ time, which is why I must get on with my work—’
‘What does the mystical head of Bran say about the matter?’ Will asked suddenly.
The question came out of the blue. Gwydion halted and squinted at Will. ‘Again?’
‘I asked you about Bran, Master Merlyn!’ Will’s voice was deep and otherworldly. ‘Or does his head lie elsewhere these days?’
Gwydion continued to look hard at Will as he made his reply. ‘Bran’s head remains buried within the grounds of the White Tower. It is still attended by thirteen ravens, just as I promised you, Sire.’
Will, pale-faced and uncertain now, put a hand to his head. ‘I…I don’t feel…’
And it seemed suddenly that he was falling.
When he opened his eyes again he found it hard to breathe. He struggled, but quickly realized that Willow was holding a cloth to his nose, which was bleeding.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘You banged your head.’
‘I must have…fainted.’
‘What do you remember about Bran?’ Gwydion asked as Will stood up.
‘Who?’
‘Bran. He was the twenty-eighth king of the blood of Brea, a great king who with his brother, Beli, took armies across the Narrow Seas and led them against the rising power of sorcery in the East. The brothers sacked the great city of Tibor, and later Bran took his men under the earth. That was the last time any mortal king ever attempted to journey into the Realm Below. It is a place from which few have ever returned. The feat was achieved only once – by a far greater adventurer than King Bran. That man’s name was—’
‘Arthur…’
‘Indeed. Arthur.’
Will felt as if he had been reminded of things that he had once known but had later forgotten. ‘Bran’s name signifies “raven”. He was…the son of Dunval the Lawmaker…who was himself the first king to wear a golden diadem as the sign of kingship in these Isles. Dunval’s two sons were Beli and Bran, and his daughter was Branwen the Fair. And Bran married the daughter of Isinglas – but I can’t recall her name.’
‘Esmer.’
‘Yes! Esmer. Esmer…’ Will looked up. ‘Gwydion, did I know these folk in my former life?’
Gwydion laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘You did not. They lived in a time that lay between your first and second comings. Perhaps you know their names for another reason – for they are part of the histories that I taught to young Wart.’
Will closed his eyes, and put his face in his hands for a moment. When he took them away again he began to sing.
‘Then made Great Dunval his sacred laws,
Which some men say
Were unto him revealed in vision—’
He paused. ‘But why should I bring King Bran to mind now, Master Gwydion? Of all the histories you must have taught me in a previous life, why this one?’
‘I cannot say for certain. Do you not remember what happened at Bran’s last battle at Gerlshome when he was wounded by a poisoned spear? That wound caused him such great agony that his head was cut off by his brother as an act of mercy. Bran’s bodyguards bore his head to the White Tower, and all the way it spoke to them, telling where it must be buried—’
‘It was to protect the Realm against invasion,’ Will continued. ‘The head was set to face the Narrow Seas. But after many years Great Arthur dug it up again, so that he would henceforth be the sole guardian of the Realm.’
Gwydion nodded. ‘I found the head shut up in a golden box after Arthur’s death. It was I who re-interred it at a place then called the White Mound. Oh, the head was quite clear about where it wanted to rest, and enough of its protective power lingered on for the Conqueror to fear it considerably five hundred years after. He built the White Tower over the very place where I buried it.’
Will looked suddenly to the wizard. ‘Gwydion, the White Tower lies upon a lign! I’ll wager my life on it. Bran’s head became a part of the lorc! That’s how it spoke to Arthur during his second coming.’
‘Well, we cannot go to the White Tower now. Nor can we go across the river. Over the bridge lies the Cittie Bastion of Warke. There the Grand High Warden, Isnar, keeps his winter hearth. It is a main counting house wherein the Elders of the Fellowship keep a great stock of gold. They have many rituals concerning the accounting of it. Come along, Will – a thousand hollow eyes stare out from that place. It is best not to spend too long looking back at it, for its golden glimmer ensnares many.’
But Will did not take his gaze away from those blank walls across the water until the morbid feelings that emanated from the place made him turn about – and then he saw the Spire again. Its gigantic presence shocked him now. It seemed to have followed him and grown huger in the hazy sky. Its dark surface was a mass of strange ornament, pillared and fluted, with arches and niches and buttresses and every kind of conceit carved in stone.
The whole weight of it seemed to be falling upon him, and as he looked away he thought that the character of the City had changed. Hereabouts the streets were narrower, and the aspect of the ground felt dull and blighted. They were now so close to the Spire that he could see dark motes in the air, circling its top. Ill-begotten things were fighting and disputing, or so it seemed, about some high platform.
‘Birds?’ Willow said, following his gaze.
‘They are not birds,’ Gwydion muttered darkly. ‘Do you not realize the size of them? They are bone demons, come to feed on human remains.’
‘Bone demons?’
‘Ugh!’ Will grimaced. ‘You mean, there are dead bodies left up there? Exposed?’
‘They call it the Bier of Eternity. When a High Warden dies, his remains are not hidden within a chapter house like those of lesser Fellows.’
‘That’s horrible.’
Gwydion’s grunt was dismissive. ‘The Sightless Ones make singular claims about what happens when a man ends his days, dangerous claims that play upon the weakness of fear, and one form in particular: the fear of death. They intensify it greatly, for they know that in the end they can make a profit from it. What do you think they sell to make such stores of gold? Have I not already told you what is meant by the Great Lie?’
Will did not care to hear more. He fell back and walked a pace or two behind his wife, watching to see that nothing unpleasant happened. She would not let go of Bethe for a moment, nor did she pay any heed to the ragged men who reached out to tug at the hems of her skirts. Yet Will did pause, touched, despite his fears, to see a press of beggars crowding expectantly on the other side of a barred portal. It was the begging hole of a hospice or lazar house, one of the morbid lodgings that Gwydion had once mentioned. The Sightless Ones maintained such houses to draw in the sick, though those who were admitted were expected to feed themselves by imploring passers-by to give them alms. Deformed men whose auras burned dim thrust hands and stumps up through the bars, crying pitifully. Skull-like faces pressed together into the light and the stench of unwashed bodies gusted from the hole. The spectacle was horrifying and made Will take a step back. But he could not look away. The beggar who most caught Will’s eye was heavily mantled in grey. A deep hood hid his face, but it did little to disguise him.
Suddenly, Will’s belly clenched – his feelings flashed dangerously, and he thought of Chlu – but it was not Chlu. Chlu could not be here, surely, for the queen and Maskull had gone into the north and the Dark Child must have gone with them…
Will continued to stare at the beggar, unsure why he had been so affected by him. What had marked him out, packed as he was among so many other beggars? He was certainly large. Will looked at his outstretched forearm. It was solidly muscular, though his hand was swathed in filthy rags. He seemed troubled, and, for all his strength, less adept at beggary than the rest, though hardly a man on the point of losing his will to live.
Will understood from the way the beggar inclined his head as he thrust his bowl through the iron bars that he was blind. Then with a shock he realized that the rags the man wore were the tattered remains of a Fellow’s garb. He was no beggar, but their warder…
Will recoiled, but then he steadied himself and some strange impulse of charity came over him, for this man, though he was a Fellow, seemed somehow more needy even than the beggars who surrounded him.
When Will brought out an apple from his pack it was quickly seized and josded away before the Fellow could take it, so he brought out another and deliberately guided the man’s bandaged hand to it. This time it was taken and Will turned away, driven back in part by the foul stink of the place.
‘Why did you do that?’ Gwydion asked as Will caught them up.
‘Even their warden was hungry. He was begging too. Don’t they feed their own inside the Fellowship in Trinovant?’
Gwydion brushed the matter off. ‘They are drinkers of blood. Why did you give him an apple?’
‘Because he wanted it. And because giving is getting.’ Will’s solemnity melted away and he smiled. ‘That’s something I once learned from feeding ducks.’
When they came to the end of the street the way opened out into a space dominated by the massive structure of the Spire. The foundation storeys and the monument that stood opposite its entrance were wholly faced in black stone. The Spire itself was railed off and the area around it paved in a complicated pattern of black and white stone across which Fellows in yellow garb patrolled. Surrounding the Spire beyond the spiked rail was what looked at first like a market, but Will soon saw there were no buyers at these craftsmen’s stalls. Each booth had its own canvas awning. Each was occupied by a different kind of worker. There were butchers and bakers, metalsmiths and wood-turners, coiners and token-makers, bodgers and cobblers, tinkers and money-changers. Smoke was rising from many of the stalls, and there was the smell of charcoal and the ringing of hammers upon anvils.
‘See how the Fellowship draws in so many of the useful trades and binds folk unto itself,’ Gwydion said. ‘But these craftsmen are not serving the commerce of the City. None of what they make is used beyond the Fellowship.’
‘Then, is the rest of it set in store?’ Will asked, seeing the quantity of goods that was made here.
The wizard grunted. ‘That question shows that you little appreciate the scale of wealth that the Fellowship commands. What you see here is power, for through it the Grand High Warden exercises a torturesome control.’
Will frowned. ‘Torturesome, you say?’
‘Surely. For on the other side of the Spire is a yard such as this, except that there the artisans’ business is the breaking apart of whatever is made on this side.’
Will balked. ‘What on earth is the point of that?’
‘By this means Grand High Warden Isnar regulates every key trade in the City. He can quickly destroy any cooper or candle-maker or any other producer of wares who dares to displease him. He has succeeded in strangling this city and many another, for what could be more torturesome to a man than the prospect of having his livelihood taken away?’
‘But what about the famous Trinovant Guilds?’ Willow asked. ‘The mercers and drapers? The grocers and vintners and ironmongers and all the rest? Don’t they fight back?’
‘They cannot. Their power is now all but broken by the Fellowship.’
As they drew closer to the Spire grounds, Will saw rows of money-changers’ booths and beyond them the block-like monument. Such an edifice stood outside every Chapter House, no matter how small, but no other in the land was like this. It was as big as a house, and its top was decked with statues of monstrous animals and its sides cut with mottoes in the Tiborean tongue. The words were mostly obscured by spills of wax from ten thousand red candles that forever burned among the bronze or basalt legs of the beasts, but the letters were carved deeply and Will made out the legend.
SEIUQ OLEAC NI ALOS
When he asked Gwydion what it said, the wizard told him, ‘The Sightless Ones cherish many strange utterances, though their meanings are more often than not meant to be mysterious to outsiders. That one says, “There is rest only in the sky.”’
‘What does it mean?’ Willow asked.
But Gwydion only shrugged and said, ‘Who can say? They call it “a mystery”. They call by that name every piece of nonsense they choose to spout, for they hope in that way to pinch off all reasoned thought about it. Remember: it is ever their aim to convince others of that which is not. That is how they gather power to themselves.’
Will heard coughs and the clink of mason’s steel on stone. A row of skinny prisoners were chained in a line, white as millers with the dust of their task. They were rough-fashioning stone blocks into balls of the sort that were shot from great guns, and Will grieved to think that such a destructive trade must now be profitable. He wondered if these products were likewise broken up on the far side of the Spire, or if they had already been sold to an arsenal of war.
Next to the shot-carvers was a row of decaying tents that served as stable and fodder store for half a dozen chestnut horses. A large brown and black dog sniffed suspiciously at the air, while men with cruel faces lounged at their ease nearby. All were dressed in well-used riding suits of red leather.
‘Are they messengers?’ Will whispered doubtfully as they came almost to the monument.
Gwydion grunted and lowered his voice. ‘The Fellowship has no need of messengers. The vanes of their spires and towers do all their talking for them.’
‘Then what do these men do?’
‘They are the enforcers of the Iron Rule.’
‘You mean these are the men who take children away from villages that cannot pay the tithe?’ Will’s eyes narrowed as he met their stares. Two or three of them were looking towards Willow now, showing frank interest in the child in her arms.
A flash of anger burst in Will’s heart, but just then the dog came roaring forward, teeth bared, barking ferociously, until it was yanked back by its chain. The sight made Willow flinch away, and as Bethe’s cry pierced the air, Will turned towards her. Then something brushed his cheek and struck the ground a pace or two away.
It was a crossbow bolt.
CHAPTER THREE THE BIER OF ETERNITY (#ulink_a7d6a0f3-0085-5231-91d2-91e2084f0ffd)
Those enforcers of the Iron Rule who saw what had happened rose to their feet and a shout went up. Daggers were drawn, cover taken. The enforcers were men well used to coming under attack. They moved to cover, alert as weasels, looking high up on the monument to the place from which the crossbow bolt must have been shot, but they lacked the means to reply and so their caution was all the greater.
Will saw that the shaft of the bolt was short and set with two triangular leather flights. So powerfully had it been flung into the earth that its iron head had been wholly buried. He knew with utter certainty who had shot at him and why, and when a black-swathed man moved from behind the rump of a great stone griffin Willow knew it too.
‘So Chlu didn’t go north after all!’ she cried as Will bundled her between the tents and pressed her hard up against the monument’s base. Then she saw the look on his face and knew what was in his mind. ‘Will, no!’
But he was already climbing. His hands thrust against the pole that held the nearest awning taut. His feet found purchase on the letters graven into the plinth. When he reached to grip a bronze griffin’s claw and haul himself up, a red waterfall of molten wax cascaded over him and froze in his hair and on his skin.
He gasped at the sudden burning on face, neck and hands, but as the pain passed he saw that above him the crossbow’s string was being drawn two-handedly upwards. Chlu straightened his back, fingers straining as he pulled on the cord. A second bolt was clamped between his teeth.
Time stood still in Will’s head, blotted out by a certainty as strong as any rage. The wax slid under his feet and fingers, but in another moment he had pulled himself upright and was facing his twin. When Chlu saw there was not enough time to cock and raise his weapon, he stood up straight, ready to face him.
Their eyes met. Will felt a tremor pass through him, a moment of horror to be looking into eyes so like his own, yet so informed by hatred.
‘Tell me what I’ve done to make you want to kill me,’ he demanded. ‘If you bear a grievance, tell me what it is or, by the moon and stars, I’ll stamp your face into the mud here and now!’
The other’s malicious stare wavered as a laugh gurgled from him, but he made no reply.
‘I know who you are. Master Gwydion told me everything. I don’t blame you for what you’ve done. I just want us to talk out our differences.’ Will held out open hands. ‘Listen to me! Don’t you know that we’re brothers?
But Chlu’s growling laugh cut him off. It was a deep, barely controlled, animal noise that seemed to catch in the back of his throat. ‘I’m not your brother – I am your doom!‘ He swung the weapon in his hand at Will’s head.
Will raised an arm and fended off the blow, but he was not fast enough. One of the steel prods caught in his face, tearing open his left cheek, and as the crossbow clattered to the ground Will was knocked backwards across the plinth and tangled among bronze limbs. By the time he had recovered his feet Chlu had fled.
There were cries below as the men in red tried to shadow Chlu along the monument, but he had already found a way down where they could not follow him. A stone yale, a horned, tusked animal, rearing up on its hind legs, stood at one end of the monument. Chlu had threaded his way between its legs and leapt down into the maze of black and white paving that formed the closed precinct beyond the iron fence. Now he ran unmolested towards the base of the Spire itself.
The Vigilants who guarded the gate were ill-prepared for their swift-moving trespasser. Chlu dodged them easily and disappeared inside the Spire’s vast, ornamented gates. Will felt a warning turn over his guts, but a great surge of desire thrust him onward. This was not a simple wish to corner Chlu, but an overwhelming need to find the answer. He knew he must not let his twin get away.
‘Who comes?’ came the cry from the Fellows. ‘Who comes?’
They lifted their heads, turning like beasts testing the air, and Will saw how difficult it would be to follow Chlu now that the guardians of the Spire had been stirred up.
Blood dripped from his cheek. He wiped his hand on the waxy shoulder of his jerkin, then he leapt down from the monument and ran straight to where the knot of gate guards were standing. More were hurrying in from all quarters now, groping towards the great iron doors. They moved slowly, no match for Will’s own fleetness of foot, but they were armed: cudgels had been drawn, and whips snaked from sleeves and cracked out towards him, but only four Vigilants directly barred the way.
He put his shoulder down and charged, knocking them aside like so many skittles. Ahead the vast doors were closing. Three Fellows pushed on each, heaving them round on massive hinges. He threw himself forward, dived headlong through the gap into a darkness that was suddenly filled with echoes as the great slabs slammed shut.
He felt himself skidding along an ice-smooth floor, then he lay for a moment trying not to breathe. He was in total blackness. Whatever sense had given him warning before he entered the Spire, it screamed at him now. He stared hard, willing his eyes to pierce the gloom, then he began to see dim shapes in the vast cavern that soared above him. Brown light was seeping in from somewhere, and as his eyes adjusted so the thought began to harden that he had been deliberately drawn into a trap.
He was at the bottom of a curving stair that rose up to an immense height. As the echoes died away, there came the sound of footfalls from above, mounting higher and higher. Again Will strained to hear, but the more he tried the more the sounds faded and the less sure he was.
If he opened his mind he would know instantly where Chlu had gone, but he dared not do it in this place. The air was rank and thick and quiet as a blanket, but he was sure there were Fellows groping silently in the darkness, and still more coming from hidden holes to left and right.
When he drew breath the stink of burnt grease laced the air. That and some oversweet fumigant seemed to rob his breath of vigour. And there was something else too, a musty note that he could not quite recognize. He crawled towards the stair, then began to feel his way up. The surfaces were cold here, solid and unmoving, made of dense basalt that drank in what little light there was. But he could feel the intricate decoration that was carved into every part of this curious ceremonial staircase as it carried him up in a spiral. Beneath his fingers the steps were dished, worn down by use, and in the middle the stone was smooth, whereas everywhere else the surfaces were sticky, as if years of accumulated grease had varnished them. Feeling his way forward on all fours kept him away from the place he most feared, the stair’s unguarded edge, but after a while going blindly forward he was hit by a sudden terror and halted. In the dark corner of the stair he saw guards.
That frozen moment spun out longer and longer, then the stinging in his cheek pushed itself back into his consciousness. He flung himself into a corner, not knowing whether to go on or turn back. They can smell blood, he reminded himself, but then shouts came from below, words ringing in the air.
