Broken Empire: Prince Of Thorns Part 16

I pushed Row's blade aside. He scowled at that, did Row, all pock-marks and squinting eyes.

"You'll just be changing flocks, Father," I told Gomsty. "Your new congregation might look a little fouler, but on the inside? Well, I'm sure they'll be fairer than Row here."

The Nuban grunted and s.h.i.+fted Father Gomst's weight on his shoulder.

"Set him down," I said. "He can walk. We're good and lost now, there'll be no running."

The Nuban set old Gomsty on his feet. He looked at me, his face too black to read. "It's wrong, Jorg. Trade in gold, not people. He's a holy man. He speaks for the white-Christ."

Gomst looked at the Nuban with a hatred I'd never seen in him before, as if he'd just grown horns and called on Lucifer.

"Well, now he can speak to Gorgoth for Christ," I said.

The Nuban said nothing, his face a blank.

Something about the Nuban's silences always made me want to say a little more. As if I had to make it right with him. Makin sc.r.a.ped at me that same way, but not so bad.

"It's not like he can't leave," I said. "He's free to walk home if he really must. He'll just have to earn himself some food for the journey and a map is all."

The Nuban gave me the white crescent of his smile.

I walked on, a cold voice inside me whispering, whispering of weakness, of the thin edge of a wedge, of a sharp knife cutting without tears, of a hot iron to cauterize a wound before infection spread. It doesn't do to love a brother.

Jane's light dimmed and flickered as I drew near. She recoiled slightly with an intake of breath. I curled my lip and imagined her falling from a cliff. It worked better than I'd hoped. She gave a squeal and covered her eyes.

Gorgoth stepped between us. "Keep away from her, Dark Prince."

So I walked in the shadows, and they led us on into the mountain. We followed wide tunnels that stretched for miles, level-floored with curved ceilings. Rust stains ran the length of the pa.s.sages in parallel lines, though to what end men would lay iron in such a manner I can't say, unless these were the pipes through which the secret fire of the Builders ran.

We left Jane and all but two of her kindred at the sh.o.r.es of a lake so wide even her silver light could not reach across the waters. The Builders had made this place too. Stone gave away to water with a single sharp step, the ceiling stretched flat and without adornment. Jane's folk moved away toward shelters of wood and skins huddled at the water's edge. Gorgoth led them, one hand enveloping Father Gomst's shoulders.

Jane paused, her gaze moving between the two grotesques who remained to guard us. She said nothing but I could feel the undercurrent of unvoiced speech as she instructed them.

"No final words for me, little one?" I asked. I went on one knee before her. A fierce humour gripped me. "No predictions? No pearls to throw before this swine? Come, share a glimpse with me. Blind me with the future."

She met my gaze and the light dazzled, but I wouldn't look away.

"Your choices are keys to doors I cannot see beyond."

I felt anger rise in me and pushed it down with a snarl. "There's more than that."

"You have a dark hand on your shoulder. A hole in your mind. A hole. In your memories. A hole-a hole-pulling me in-pulling-"

I seized her hand. That was a mistake, for it burned the skin and froze the bone in equal measure. I'd have set it down if I could, but the strength left me. For a moment I could see only the child's eyes.

"When you meet her, run. Just run. Nothing else." It felt as though I were speaking the words, though I could hear Jane's voice frame them. Then I fell.

I woke to the light of torches.

"He's up."

I found myself face to face with Rike.

"Jesu, Rike, you been gargling rat p.i.s.s again?" I pushed his brutal jaw to one side and used his shoulder to lever myself up. The brothers began to rise around me, hefting their packs. Makin came from the water's edge, Gorgoth looming behind him.

"Don't go touching the Prophetess of the Leucrota!" He used a mock-scold. I could see the relief hidden in his eyes.

"I'll bear it in mind," I said.

Gorgoth paused to scowl at me, then led the way, holding a pitch-torch the size of a small tree.

Our path angled up now, the tunnel thick with dust that tasted of bitter almonds. We walked for less than a thousand yards before the way broadened into a wide gallery crossed by stone trenches of obscure purpose, yards across, and as deep as a man is tall. At the mouth of the gallery a wooden pen hugged the wall, the stays bound with rope. Two children huddled together in the middle of the bare cage. Two leucrota. Gorgoth hauled the door open.

"Out."

They were neither of them past seven summers, if summers were a proper count for the dark halls of the leucrota. They came out naked, two skinny boys, brothers to look at them, the younger one perhaps five. Of all the leucrota I'd seen they looked the least monstrous. A black-and-red stippling marked their skin, colouring them like the tigers of Indus. Dark barbs of horn jutted from their elbows, mirrored in the talons on their fingers. The elder of the two shot me a glance, his eyes utterly black, no white, iris, or pupil.

"We don't want your children," Makin said. He reached into his pocket and tossed a twist of dry-meat to the brothers. "Put them back."

The meat twist skittered to a halt at the elder child's feet. He kept his eyes on Gorgoth. The littlest watched the dry-meat intently, but made no move. Their skin stretched so tight over the bone I could count every rib.

"These are for the necromancers, don't waste your food on them." Gorgoth's rumble came so low it hurt to hear it.

"A sacrifice?" the Nuban asked.

"They're dead already," Gorgoth said. "The strength of the leucrota isn't in them."

"They look hearty enough to me," I said. "With a meal or two in 'em. Sure you're not just jealous because they're not as ugly as the rest of you?" I didn't much care what Gorgoth did with the runts, but I took a pleasure in taunting him.

Gorgoth flexed his hands and six giant knuckles popped like logs on the fire.

"Eat."

The two boys fell on Makin's food, snarling like dogs.

"The leucrota are pure-born, we gain our gifts as we grow. It is a slow change." He gestured to the boys licking the last fragments of dry-meat from the stone. "These two have the changes of a leucrota twice their age. The gifts will come faster now, faster and stronger. None can bear such changes. I have seen it before. Such gifts will turn a man inside out." Something in those cat's eyes of his told me he meant it, told me he'd seen it. "Better they serve us as payment to keep the necromancers from our caves. Better the dead-ones take these than search for victims who could have lived. They will find a quick death and a long peace."

"If you say it, then it is so." I shrugged. "Let's be moving on. I'm keen to meet these necromancers of yours."

We followed Gorgoth through the gallery. The brothers scampered around us, and I saw the Nuban slip them dried apricots from the woollen depths of his tunic.

"So what's your plan?" Makin sidled close to me, voice low.

"Hmmm?" I watched the younger child skip away from Liar's well-aimed boot.

"These necromancers-what's your plan?" Makin kept to a hiss.

I didn't have a plan, but that was just one more obstacle to overcome. "There was a time when the dead stayed dead," I said. "I've read it in Father's library. For the longest time the dead only walked in stories. Even Plato had the dead comfortably far away, over the river Styx."

"That's what you get for all that reading," Makin said. "I remember the marsh road. Those ghosts hadn't read your books."

"Nuban!" I called him over. "Nuban, come tell Sir Makin why the dead don't rest easy any more."

He joined us, crossbow over one shoulder, oil of cloves in the air around him. "The wise-men of Nuba tell it that the door stands ajar." He paused and ran a very pink tongue over very white teeth. "There's a door to death, a veil between the worlds, and we push through when we die. But on the Day of a Thousand Suns so many people had to push through at once, they broke the door. The veils are thin now. It just takes a whisper and the right promise, and you can call the dead back."

"There you have it, Makin," I said.

Makin furrowed his brow at that, then rubbed his lips. "And the plan?"

"Ah," I said.

"The plan?" He could be annoyingly persistent could Makin.

"Same as normal. We just keep killing them until they stay down."

Brother Row you could trust to make a long shot with a short bow. You could trust him to come out of a knife fight with somebody else's blood on his s.h.i.+rt. You could trust him to lie, to cheat, to steal, and to watch your back. You couldn't trust his eyes though. He had kind eyes, and you couldn't trust them.

29.

The Builders had an aversion to stairs it seems. Gorgoth led us up through the mountain by treacherous paths cut into the walls of endless vertical shafts. Perhaps the Builders grew wings, or like the far-seers of Indus they could levitate through force of will. In any case, the picks of later men had chewed a stair into the poured stone of the shaft walls, narrow and crudely hewn. We climbed with care, our arms tight before us, keeping narrow for fear of pitching ourselves into a fall with an inadvertent shrug of the shoulders. If the depths had been lit, I don't doubt but some of the brothers would have needed the point of a sword to help them up, but darkness hides all sins, and we could fool ourselves a floor lay unseen twenty feet below.

Strange how the deeper a hole the stronger it draws a man. The fascination that lives on the keenest edge, and sparkles on the sharpest point, also gathers in depths of a fall. I felt the pull of it every moment of that climb.

Gorgoth seemed least well crafted for such an ascent, but he made it look easy. The two leucrota children danced in front of me, skipping up the steps with a disregard that made me want to shove them into s.p.a.ce.

"Why don't they run off?" I called ahead to Gorgoth. He didn't answer. I guessed the boys' disdain for the fall had to be set against the fate that awaited them if they made it safely to the top.

"You're taking them to die. Why do they follow you?" I called the words at the broad expanse of his back.

"Ask them." Gorgoth's voice rumbled like distant thunder in the shaft.

I caught the elder brother by the neck and held him out over the fall. There was almost no weight to him and I needed a rest. I could feel the tally of all those steps fuelling a fire in my leg muscles.

"What's your name, little monster?" I asked him.

He looked at me with eyes that seemed darker and wider than the drop to my right.

"Name? No name," he said, high and sweet.

"That's no good. I'll give you a name," I said. "I'm a prince, I'm allowed to do things like that. You'll be Gog, and your brother can be Magog."

I glanced around at Red Kent who stood behind me, puffing, not the slightest flicker of comprehension on his peasant face.

"Gog, Magog . . . Jesu, where's a priest when I need someone to get a biblical joke!" I said. "I never thought to miss Father Gomst!"

I turned back to young Gog. "What're you so happy about? Old Gorgy-goth up there, he's taking you to be eaten by the dead."

"Can fight 'em," Gog said, quiet-like. "Law says so." If he felt uncomfortable being held up by the neck, he didn't show it.

"What about little Magog?" I nodded to his brother squatting on the step above us. "He going to fight too?" I grinned at the notion of these two doing battle with death mages.

"I'll protect him," Gog said, and he started to twist in my hand, so hard and fast that I had to set him down, or else pitch over the edge with him.

He scampered to his brother's side and set striped hand to striped shoulder. They watched me with those black eyes, quieter than mice.

"May be some sport in this," Kent said behind me.

"I bet the littlest one lasts longest," Rike shouted, and he bellowed with laughter as if he'd said something funny. He almost slipped off then, and that shut up his laughing quick enough.

"You want to win this game, Gog, you leave little Magog to look after himself." As I spoke the words, a chill set the hairs standing on my neck. "Show me you've the strength to look after yourself, and maybe I'll find something those necromancers want more than they want your scrawny soul."

Gorgoth started up again, and the brothers followed without a word.

I walked on, rubbing the scars on my forearms where the hook-briar had started to itch at me again.

I counted a thousand steps, and I only started out of boredom, so I missed the first ten minutes of the climb. My legs turned to jelly, my armour felt as though it were made from inch-thick lead, and my feet got too clumsy to find the stairs. Brother Gains convinced Gorgoth to call a rest halt by stumbling into s.p.a.ce, and wailing for a good ten seconds before the unseen floor convinced him to shut up.

"All these stairs so we can reach 'The Great Stair'!" I spat a mess of phlegm after dear departed Brother Gains.

Makin flashed me a grin and wiped the sweaty curls from his eyes. "Maybe the necromancers will carry us up."

"Going to need a new cook." Red Kent spat after Gains.

"Can't anyone be worse than Gainsy." Fat Burlow moved only his lips. The rest of him slumped lifeless, hugging the wall. I thought it rather poor eulogy for Gains, since Burlow seemed to put away more of the man's culinary efforts than the rest of us put together.

"Rike would be worse," I said. "I see him tackling an evening meal the way he approaches burning a village."

Gains was all right. He'd carved me a bone flute once, when I first came to the brothers. On the road, we talk away our dead with a curse and a joke. If we'd not liked Gains, n.o.body would have made comment. I felt a little stupid for letting Gorgoth walk us so hard. I took the bitter taste of that and set an edge on it, to save for the necromancers if they wanted to test our mettle.

We found the top of the stair without losing any more brothers. Gorgoth took us through a series of many-pillared halls, echoingly empty, the ceilings so low that Rike could reach up to touch them. Wide curving ramps stepped us up from one hall to the next, each the same as the one before, dusty and empty.

The smell crept up around us, so slowly that there wasn't a point where I could say I noticed it. The stink of death comes in many flavours, but I like to think I recognize the Reaper in all his guises.

The dust became thicker as we made our way, an inch deep in places. Here and there the occasional bone lay half-covered. Then more bones, then a skull, then three. Where the Builder-stone cracked and the waters oozed, the dust became a grey mud and flowed in miniature deltas. I pulled a skull from one such swamp. It came free with a satisfying squelch and mud poured from its sockets like syrup.

"So where are these necromancers of yours, Gorgoth?" I asked.

"We make for The Great Stair. They will find us," he said.

"They've found you." She slid around the pillar closest to me, a woman from the night of my imagination. She moved her body over the rough stone as if it were sheerest silk. Her voice fell on the ear like velvet, dark and rich.

Not one sword left its scabbard. The Nuban lifted his crossbow and heaved the loading lever back, bunching the heavy muscle in his arm into a black ball. The necromancer ignored him. She let the pillar go with a lover's reluctance and turned to face me. I heard Makin suck in his breath at my side. The woman mixed supple strength with a succulence that young princes doodle into the margins of their studies. She wore only paints and ribbons, the patterns swirled across her in Celtic knots of grey on black.