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I willed it. I reached for them. ‘Let me see you.’ Louder this time. And I painted their image on the smoke.
Chella appeared first, lean and sensual as I first met her, the coils of her body-art spiralled from etheric wisps. Sageous next. He watched me with those mild eyes of his, wider and more still than mill-pools, as I cut his form from nothing. Jane stepped out beside him, her glow faint now, a mere glimmer beneath the skin. There were others, shapes in the mist, one darker than the rest, his shape half-known, familiar. I tried to see him, poured my will into it. The Nuban came to mind, the Nuban, the glimpse of my hand on a door, and the sensation of falling into space. Déjà vu. ‘Who lends you this power, Jorg?’ Chella smiled seduction at me. She stepped around me, a panther at play.
‘I took it.’
‘No,’ Sageous shook his head. ‘This game has played out too long for trickery. All the players are known. The watchers too.’ He nodded toward Jane.
I ignored him, and kept my eyes on Chella. ‘I brought the mountain down on you.’
‘And I am buried. What of it?’ An edge of her true age crept into her voice.
‘Pray I never dig you out,’ I said.
I looked to Jane. ‘So you’re buried too?’
For a moment her glow flickered, and I saw another Jane in her place, this one a broken thing. A rag-doll held between shards of rock in some dark place where she alone gave light. Bones stood from her hip and shoulder, very white, traced with blood, black in the faint illumination. She turned her head a fraction, and those silver eyes met mine. She flickered again, whole once more, standing before me, free and unharmed.
‘I don’t understand.’ But I did.
‘Poor sweet Jane.’ Chella circled the girl, never coming too close.
‘She’ll die clean,’ I said. ‘She’s not afraid to go. She’ll take that path you fear so much. Cling to carrion flesh and rot in the bowels of the earth if that’s where cowardice keeps you.’
Chella hissed, venom on her face, the wet flap of decay in her lungs. The smoke began to take her again, writhing around her in serpent coils.
‘Kill this one slow, Saracen.’ She threw Sageous a hard look. And she was gone.
I felt Jane at my side. The light had left her. Her skin held the colour of fine ash when the fire has taken all there is to give. She spoke in a whisper. ‘Look after Gog for me, and Gorgoth. They’re the last of the leucrota.’
The thought of Gorgoth needing a guardian brought sharp words to the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed them. ‘I will.’ Maybe I even meant it.
She took my hand. ‘You can win the victories you seek, Jorg. But only if you find better reasons to want them.’ I felt a tingle of her power through my fingers. ‘Look to the lost years, Jorg. Look to the hand upon your shoulder. The strings that lead you …’
Her grip fell away, and smoke coiled where she had been.
‘Don’t come home again, Prince Jorg.’ Sageous made his threat sound like fatherly advice.
‘If you start running now,’ I said. ‘I might not catch you.’
‘Corion?’ He looked into the coiling ether behind me. ‘Don’t send this boy against me. It would go ill.’
I reached for my sword, but he’d gone before I cleared scabbard. The smoke became bitter, catching at my throat, and I found myself coughing.
‘He’s coming round.’ I heard Makin’s voice as if from a great distance.
‘Give him more water.’ I recognized Elban’s lisp.
I struggled up, choking and spitting water. ‘God’s whore!’
A vast cloud, like the anvil of a thunderhead, stood where Mount Honas had been.
I blinked and let Makin haul me to my feet. ‘You’re not the only one to take a hard knock.’ He nodded across to where Gorgoth crouched a few yards off, with his back to us.
I stumbled over, stopping when I noticed the heat – the heat and a glow that made a silhouette of Gorgoth despite the daylight, as if he were huddled over a fierce campfire. I edged around and to the side. Gog lay coiled like a babe in the womb, every inch of him white hot, as if the light of the Builders’ Sun were bleeding through him. Even Gorgoth had to shuffle back.
As I watched, the boy’s skin shaded down through colours seen in iron in the forge, hot orange, then the duller reds. I took a step toward him and he opened his eyes, white holes into the centre of a sun. He gasped, the inside of his mouth molten, then curled more tightly. At times fire danced across his back, running along his arms, then guttering out. It took ten minutes for Gog to cool so that his old colours returned and a man could stand beside him.
At last he lifted his head and grinned. ‘More!’
‘You’ve had enough, lad,’ I said. I didn’t know what the Builders’ Sun had woken as it echoed through him, but from what I’d seen, better it went back to sleep.
I looked back at the cloud still rising above Mount Honas and the countryside burning for miles around.
‘I think it’s time to go home, lads.’
36
Four years earlier
It can’t be done,’ said the Nuban.
‘Few things worth having can be got easily’, I said.
‘It can’t be done,’ he said. ‘Not by anyone who expects to live five minutes past the act.’
‘If a suicidal assassin were all it took, then the Hundred would be the Dozen by now.’ My own father had survived several attempts in which the would-be killer had no interest in escape. ‘No one with a claim to the empire throne is that easy to bring to an end.’
The Nuban turned in the saddle to frown at me. He’d given up asking how a child knew such things. I wondered how long before he gave up telling me it couldn’t be done.
I nudged my horse on. The towers of the Count’s castle hadn’t seemed to get any closer over the last half hour.
‘We need to find the Count’s strongest defence,’ I said. ‘The protection that he most relies upon. The one upon which his faith rests.’
The Nuban frowned again. ‘Seek out your enemy’s weakness,’ he said. ‘Then take your shot.’ He patted the heavy crossbow strapped across his saddlebags.
‘But you’ve already told me it can’t be done,’ I said. ‘Repeatedly.’ I pulled my cloak tight against the evening wind. The man I had taken it from had been a tall one, and it hung loose about me. ‘So you’re just planning the most sensible way to lose.’
The Nuban shrugged. He never argued for the sake of being right. I liked that in him.
‘The weakest spot in a good defence is designed to fail. It falls, but in falling it summons the next defence and so on. It’s all about layers. At the end of it all you’ll find yourself facing the thing you sought to avoid all along, only now you’re weaker, and it’s forewarned.’
The Nuban said nothing, the blackness of his face impenetrable in the dying light.
‘Surprise is our only real weapon here. We sidestep that process of escalation. We cut straight to the heart of the matter.’
And the heart is what we want to cut.
We rode on, and at length the towers grew closer, and taller, and loomed until the castle gates yawned before us. A sprawl of buildings pooled before them like vomit – taverns and tanneries, hovels and whorehouses.
‘Renar’s shield is a man named Corion.’ The Nuban twitched his nose at the stench as the horses threaded a path to the gates. ‘A magician from the Horse Coast, they say. Certainly a good councillor. He has the Count guarded by mercenaries from his homeland. Men with no families to threaten, and an honour code that keeps them true.’
‘So, what could get us an invitation to see this Corion, I wonder?’
The queue at the gates moved in fits and starts, but never above a snail’s pace. Ten yards ahead of us a peasant with an ox in tow argued with a guard in the Count’s livery.
‘Is he really a magician, do you think?’ I watched the Nuban for his answer.
‘The Horse Coast is the place for them.’
The peasant seemed to have won his case, and moved on with his ox, into the outer yard where the market stalls would still be set out.
By the time we reached the gate a light rain had started to fall. The guard’s plume drooped somewhat in the drizzle, but there was nothing tired about the look he gave us.
‘What’s your business in the castle?’
‘Supplies.’ The Nuban patted his saddlebags.
‘Out there.’ The guard nodded to the sprawl before the gates. ‘You’ll find all you want out there.’
The Nuban pursed his lips. The castle market would have the best goods, but that line wasn’t going to carry us far. We’d need a better reason before the Count’s man was going to let a road-worn Nuban mercenary across his master’s threshold.
‘Give me your bow,’ I said to the Nuban.
He frowned. ‘You’re going to shoot him?’
The guard laughed, but there wasn’t an ounce of humour in the Nuban. He was getting to know me.
I held out my hand. The Nuban shrugged and hauled his crossbow up from where it hung behind his saddle. The weight of it nearly took me to the ground. I had to grab the bow in both hands and cling to my mount with my legs but I managed the feat without too great a loss of dignity.
I offered it to the guard.
‘Take this to Corion,’ I said. ‘Tell him we’re interested in selling.’
Irritation, scorn, amusement, I could see them all fighting to put the next words on his tongue, but he raised a hand for the weapon even so.
I pulled the bow back as the guard reached up. ‘Be careful, half the weight is enchantments.’ That lifted his brow an inch. He took it gingerly, eyeing the iron faces of Nuban gods. Something he saw there seemed to set aside his objections.
‘Watch these two,’ he said, calling another man from the shadows of the gatehouse. And off he went, holding the Nuban’s crossbow before him as if it might bite given half a chance.
The drizzle thickened into a steady downpour. We sat on our horses, letting it all soak in.
I thought about vengeance. About how it wouldn’t give me back what had been taken. About how I didn’t care. Hold to a thing long enough, a secret, a desire, maybe a lie, and it will shape you. The need lay in me, it could not be set aside. But the Count’s blood might wash it out.
The night came, the guards lit lanterns in the gatehouse, and in niches along the wall of the entry way. I could see the teeth of two portcullises waiting to drop if some foe should storm the entrance whilst the gates stood wide. I wondered how many of Father’s soldiers would have died here if he had sent his armies to avenge my mother. Perhaps it was better this way. Better that I come calling. More personal. She was my mother after all. Father’s soldiers had their own mothers to be worrying about.
The rain dripped from my nose, ran cold down my neck, but I felt warm enough, I had a fire inside me.
‘He’ll see you.’ The guard had returned. He held a lantern up. His plume lay plastered to the back of his helm now, and he looked as tired himself. ‘Jake, get their horses. Nadar, you can walk these boys in with me.’
And so we entered Count Renar’s castle on foot, as wet as if we’d swum a moat to get there.
Corion had his chambers in the West Tower, adjacent to the main keep where the Count held court. We followed a winding stair, gritty with dirt. The whole place had an air of neglect.
‘Should we give up our weapons?’ I asked.
I caught the whites of the Nuban’s eyes as he shot me a glance. Our guard just laughed. The man behind me tapped the knife at my hip. ‘Going to jab Corion with this little pig-sticker are you, boy?’
I didn’t have to answer. Our guard pulled up before a large oak door, studded with iron bolts. Somebody had burned a complex symbol into the wood, a pictogram of sorts. It made my eyes crawl.
The guard rapped on the door, two quick hits.
‘Wait here.’ He thrust his lantern into my hands. He gave me a brief look, pursed his lips, then pushed past the Nuban to head back down the stairs. ‘Nadar, with me.’
Both men were out of sight, behind the curve of the stair, before we heard the sound of a latch being raised. Then nothing. The Nuban set his hand to the hilt of his sword. I flicked it away. Shaking my head I knocked again on the door.
‘Come.’
I thought I’d faced down all my fears, but here was a voice that could melt my resolve with one word. The Nuban felt it too. I could see it in every line of him, poised to flee.
‘Come, Prince of Thorns, come out of your hiding, come out into the storm.’
The door fell away, eaten by darkness. I heard screaming, awful screaming, the sort you get from prey with a broken back as it crawls to escape the hunter’s claws. Maybe it was me, maybe the Nuban.
And then I saw him.
37
The Castle Red left no ruins to gaze upon. All we had were the ruins of the mountain on which it had stood. We beat the most hasty of retreats and made thanks that the wind blew against us not chasing us to share the smoke and taint of Gelleth. That night we slept cold and none amongst us had an appetite, not even Burlow.
The road from the Castle Red to the Tall Castle is a long one, longer in the coming back than in the going. For one thing, on the way out we rode – on the way back we had to walk. And most of those miles back pointed down. Given the choice I’d rather climb a mountain than come down one. The down-slope puts a different kind of hurting in your legs, and the gradient pulls on you every step, as if it’s steering you, as if it’s calling the shots. Going up you’re fighting the mountain.
‘Damn but I miss that horse,’ I said.
‘A fine piece of horse-flesh.’ Makin nodded and spat from dusty lips. ‘Have the King’s stable-master train you another. I’m sure there’s not a paddock in Ancrath without it has at least one of Gerrod’s bastards.’
‘He was a lustful one, I’ll give you that.’ I hawked and spat. My armour chafed, and the metal held the heat of the late afternoon sun, sweat trickling underneath.
‘It doesn’t feel right though,’ Makin said. ‘The most convincing victory in memory and all we have to show for it is a lack of horses.’
‘I’ve had more loot from a peasant hut!’ Rike called out from back down the line.
‘Christ bleeding! Don’t start Little Rikey off,’ I said. ‘We’re rich in the coin that counts the most, my brothers. We return laden in victory.’ There indeed was a currency I could spend at court. Everything is for sale at the right price. A king’s favour, a succession, even a father’s respect.
And that’s another thing that made those returning miles longer than the going ones. Not only did I have to carry myself, my armour, my rations, but I had a new burden. It’s hard to carry a weight of news with none to tell and days ahead before you can release it. Good news weighs just as heavy as bad. I could imagine myself back at court, boasting of my victory, rubbing noses in it, a certain stepmother’s nose in particular. What would not paint itself on the canvas of my imagination was my father’s reaction. I tried to see him shake his head in disbelief. I tried to see him smile and stand and put his hand on my shoulder. I tried to hear him thank me, praise me, call me son. But my eyes went blind and the words I heard were too faint and deep for distinction.
The brothers had little to say on the return journey, feeling the holes left in our ranks, haunted by the space where the Nuban should be. Gog on the other hand bubbled over with energy, running ahead, chasing rabbits, asking question after question.
‘Why is the roof blue, Brother Jorg?’ he asked. He seemed to think the outside world was just a bigger cave. Some philosophers agree with him.
