Prince of Thorns (14 page)

27

The monsters came when the light failed. Shadows swallowed the gorge and the silence thickened until the wind could barely stir it. Makin’s hand fell on my shoulder. I flinched, edging the fear with momentary hatred, for my own weakness, and for Makin for showing it to me.

“Up there.” He nodded to my left.

One of the cave mouths had lit from within, a single eye watching us through the falling night.

“That’s no fire,” I said. The light had nothing of warmth or flicker.

As we watched, the source of illumination moved, swinging harsh shadows out across the slopes.

“A lantern?” Fat Burlow stepped up beside me, puffing out his cheeks in consternation. The brothers gathered around us.

The strange lantern emerged onto the slope, and darkness erased the cave behind. It shone like a star, a cold light, reaching from the source in a thousand bright lines. A single figure cut a wedge of shadow into the illumination; the lantern bearer.

We watched the unhurried descent. The wind sought my flesh with icy fingers and tugged for attention at my cloak.

“
Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus
.” Somewhere in the night old Gomsty muttered his Ave Marias.

A slow horror eased itself among us.

“Mother of God!” Makin spat the oath out as if to rid himself of the fear. We all felt it, crawling over the unseen rocks.

The brothers might have run, but where was there to go?

“Torches, damn you. Now!” I broke the paralysis, shocked that I’d stood hypnotized by the approach for so long.

“Now!” I drew my sword. They moved at that. Scurrying to the embers of the fire, stumbling over the rough ground.

“Nuban, Row, Burlow, see there’s nothing coming up along the river.” Even as I said it I knew we’d been flanked.

“There! There, behind that rise!” The Nuban motioned with his crossbow. He’d seen something, the Nuban wasn’t one to spook at nothing. We’d watched the pretty light and they’d flanked us. Simple as a market play of kiss-and-dip. Distract your mark with a pretty face, and come up from behind to rob him blind.

The torches flared, men ran to their weapons.

The light drew closer and we saw it for what it was, a child whose very skin bled radiance. She walked an even pace, every inch aglow, white like molten silver, making mere shadows of the rags she wore.

“
Ave Maria, gratia plena!
” Father Gomst’s voice rose, lifting the prayer like a shield.

“Hail Mary,” I echoed him. “Full of grace, indeed.”

The girl’s eyes burned silver and the ghosts of flames chased across her skin. There was a fragile beauty to her that took my breath.

A monster walked behind her. In any other circumstance it would have been him that drew the eye. The monster had been built in parody of a man, sharing Adam’s lines as a cow apes a horse. The light revealed the horror of his flesh, sparing no detail. The thing might have topped seven foot in height. It even had a few inches on Little Rikey.

Liar raised his bow, disgust on his pinched face. I took his arm as he sighted on the monster.

“No.” I wanted to hear them speak. Besides, it looked as if an arrow would just annoy our new friend.

Under a twisted red hide the monster’s chest looked like a hundred-gallon barrel. A set of ribs pierced the flesh, reaching for each other above his heart.

The girl’s light touched us with a cold kiss and I felt her in my mind. She spoke and her voice seemed to rise from the rocks. I heard her footsteps in the corridors of my memory.

There are places where children shouldn’t wander. I met the girl’s silver gaze, and for a moment shadows licked across her.

“Welcome to our camp,” I said.

I stepped forward to greet them, leaving the brothers and entering the brilliance of the child’s aura. The monster smiled at me, a wide smile showing teeth stolen from the wolf. He’d the eyes of a cat, slitted against the light and throwing it back.

I passed beauty by and stood before the beast. We had us a moment of judging. I ran an eye over the muscle heaped on his bones, crossed over with pulsing veins and hard ridges of scar tissue. I could have eaten dinner off one of his hands. He had three fingers and a thumb on each, thick as the girl’s arm. He could have taken my head in one hand and crushed it.

I snapped my neck forward, sudden-like, and jumped at him with a shout, thrusting my face at his. He flinched backward and stumbled on the loose rock. The laughter escaped me. I couldn’t stop it.

“Why?” The girl looked puzzled. She tilted her head and the shadows ran.

“Because.” I gasped for my breath as the monster righted himself.

Why? For a moment I didn’t know.

“Because . . . because, fuck him. Because he’s such a big bastard.” I pushed the grin from my face. Because he had given me pause. Because he had made me feel small.

I looked down at her. “I’m bigger than you. Are you going to let that scare you?”

“I do fear you,” the girl said. “Not for your size, Jorg. For the threads that gather around you. For the lines that meet where I can’t see them. For the weight, and the knife-edge on which it sits.” She spoke in a sing-song, high and sweet.

“You make a fine oracle, girl,” I said. “You’ve got that mix of profound and empty just right.” I slammed my sword back into its sheath. “So, you’ve my name. Shall we share? Do the leucrota have names?”

“Jane,” she said. “And this is Gorgoth, a leader under the mountain.”

“Charmed.” I gave them a little bow. “Perhaps your friends could come out from behind the rocks, and that way my brothers won’t feel so tempted to shoot at shadows.”

Gorgoth set his cat’s eyes on me, a narrow and feral stare.

“Up!” His voice rolled out even deeper than I’d imagined, and I’d imagined it pretty deep.

Other monsters rose around our camp, some of them shockingly close. Had every gargoyle and grotesque torn free from the great cathedrals and gathered to form an army, the leucrota would be that army made flesh. No two stood alike. All had been sketched on the frame of a man, but with a poor hand. None were as huge and hale as Gorgoth. Most leaked from sores, sported withered limbs, or laboured beneath growths of wart and tumour heaped in foul confusion.

“Jesu, Gorgoth! Your friends make Little Rikey look almost handsome,” I said.

Makin came to join me, eyes screwed up against Jane’s light. He shaded his face with a hand and looked Gorgoth up and down.

“And this will be Sir Makin,” I said. “Knight of the court of King Olidan, terror of—”

“A man to trust.” Jane’s high voice cut across me. “If he gives you his word.”

She turned those silver orbs of hers on me and I felt my yesterdays crowding at my shoulder. “You want to go to the heart of the mountain,” she said.

“Yes.” I couldn’t deny that.

“You bring death, Prince of Ancrath,” she said.

Gorgoth growled at that. It sounded like rocks grinding together. The child put a glowing hand to his wrist. “Death if we agree, death if we resist.” She kept her eyes on me. “What have you to offer for passage?”

I had to admit she was good at her game. It wouldn’t go well for them if my plan worked, and it wouldn’t go well for them if they tried to stop us.

“I did bring a gift,” I said. “But if it proves not to your liking then I can make you some promises. I’ll have Sir Makin promise you too, and he’s a man of his word.” I smiled down at her. “When I saw this place on a map . . .” I paused and remembered the circumstances with a certain fondness.

“Sally . . .” the girl whispered, remembering the tavern with me.

That shocked me for a moment. I didn’t like the idea of this little girl in my head, opening doors, making childish judgment, shining her light in places that should be dark. Part of me wanted to cut her down, a large part of me.

I unclenched my jaw. “When I saw this gorge on my map, I thought to myself, ‘What a godforsaken spot.’ And that’s when it occurred to me what to bring for barter. I brought you God.” I turned and pointed to Father Gomst. “I’ve brought you salvation, the blessing of communion. I’ve brought you benediction, catechism . . . confession if you must. All the saving your ugly little souls can handle.”

Gomst let out a girlish scream and started to run. The Nuban caught a dark arm around his waist and hauled him up over one shoulder.

I expected Jane to answer, but Gorgoth made the deal.

“We will take the priest.” Something about his voice made my chest hurt. “We will guide you to the Great Stair. The necromancers will find you, though. You will not return.”

Some said that Red Kent had a black heart, and that might be true, but anyone who had seen him take out a six-strong foot patrol with hatchet and knife would tell you the man had an artist’s soul.

28

“Necromancers?” I trudged behind Jane with Gorgoth at my back. There had been nothing about necromancers in my books.

“They command the dead. Mages—”

“I know what they are.” I cut across Gorgoth. “What are they doing in my way?”

“Mount Honas attracts them,” Jane said. “There’s death at the heart of the mountain. Old magics. It makes their work easier.”

Even the leucrotas’ caves looked ugly. When I was seven, and William five, Tutor Lundist took us secretly to the caverns of Paderack. Unknown to any at court, the heirs of Ancrath slid and slipped into the blind depths, and came to a cathedral hall of such pillared wonder that it beggared the grace of God. I carry the glory of that place with me still. The chambers of the leucrota had none of that fluid elegance, no touch of the hidden artistry that lies in the deep places of the world. We walked through corridors of Builder-stone, poured and shaped using arts long forgotten. Jane’s light showed us ancient vaults, cracked in places and scaled with lime. We wove a path around fallen blocks, larger than cart-horses, heading deeper all the time, like worms burrowing to the core, seeking the roots of the mountain.

“Shut your moaning, priest.” Row came up behind the Nuban and showed old Gomsty his knife, a wicked piece of ironwork to be sure.

Father Gomst let up his wailing at that, and I did miss it for the echoes had been quite haunting. I fell back for a word. That, and to make sure Row didn’t decide to carve up our gift to the monsters before we’d handed it over proper-like.

“Peace now, Father,” I said.

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 shifted 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 scraped 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 passages 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 shores 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 piss 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 shirt. 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.