Solomon Kane (27 page)

Otherwise they were not reassuring. They stood more than three times the height of a man. In the uncertain torchlight they resembled the hide of a great reptile, scaly with square panels that were studded with diamond-shaped bosses the size of her hand. As the Overlord strode to the doors the light shivered, lengthening the shadows of the bosses, so that it seemed the reptile had drawn an enormous silent breath at the sight of Meredith. Beside each door stood an oval mirror set in a frame unpleasantly similar to tatters of dead flesh. The mirrors were taller than Meredith and darker than the reflection of the corridor should be. Something other than darkness might have been stirring under the glass, but she had no wish to see it clearer. She watched the masked figure grasp an iron ring on the left door with both hands and twist it to push the door wide.

Beyond it was a great hall. Two ranks of mirrors like the pair that flanked the doors led through an antechamber. Many torches on metal stands were ranged about the tiled floor of the main room, and candles were even more numerous. Once it must have been a noble room, but now it seemed to have been transformed into a parody both of a chapel and a throne room, with a colossal flat stone planted like an altar before the throne. At first this was all Meredith could see for the dazzle, but she had the
impression that more darkness had gathered within the great room than the torches and candles could altogether eliminate. A chill impalpable miasma seemed to settle over her soul. Then her captors seized her arms and urged her through the antechamber. She glimpsed movements in the mirrors that she had no time to distinguish, because she was seeing far too much ahead of them.

The round stone was indeed an altar. A ceremonial knife lay on it, glistening with blood. Blood stained the grooved surface of the altar, which was broader than a man was tall. The grooves united in a single gory channel that led down the side of the altar to a circular orifice in the tiled floor. Meredith could not mistake the fate of the prisoners who had been dragged from the cells, but she had a sense of something yet more impious. Was it only the light that made the rim of the pit appear to work like the lips of a great round mouth? She could have thought that the hole had not been dug out of the stone – that it had opened of itself, as though the evil that made the castle its lair had possessed the very fabric of the building. Her captors marched her forward, and she saw the figure that was seated on the throne beyond the altar.

He was attired like a potentate, in sumptuous robes the red of drying blood. His head was lowered, intent on some thought that Meredith was instinctively grateful to be unable to guess. In a moment he looked up, and his long white hand let go of his jaw. The thin cruel face was just as pallid. An unnaturally high forehead was emphasised by a widow’s peak, and locks of oily black hair trailed over his shoulders. Meredith had seen blackness in the eyes of his minions, but it was nothing to the Stygian dark that confronted her now. She might have been gazing into the depths of a void beyond the farthest stars, and the void was staring back.

He considered her for a few moments and then raised an indolent hand. He might have been lazily brushing away an insect rather than indicating Meredith’s fate. Even the Overlord had grown deferential in the presence of his master. He stalked forward as the raiders forced Meredith towards the altar. She was already struggling, and she redoubled her efforts when she glimpsed the contents of the pit in the floor. In a sense the pit was empty; it contained only an exposed section of the foundations, but the material was no longer rock. It was raw and porous and appeared to be steeped in blood, and Meredith was almost sure that it quivered with a feeble pulse. Then her captors swung her around, and she saw what she had been distracted from noticing – a prison cage to the left of the altar.

The Overlord unlocked the door, and the raiders shoved Meredith into the cage. As she stumbled across the floor she heard the key grind in the lock. The raiders retreated towards the antechamber, and their leader followed them. The door beyond the avenue of mirrors shut with a massive slam, and flames bowed as if they were making obeisance to the occupant of the throne. Shadows scurried into all the corners of the great hall, where they seemed to peer fearfully forth to observe him. They might have been enacting Meredith’s dread, but she would not yield to it. She stepped forward to grip the bars and stare at him.

In a moment she found she could neither look away nor breathe. She was seeing more and worse than him. A heap that might have been composed of discoloured refuse towered on either side of the throne. She saw hands protruding from each heap, and grimacing faces embedded in the tangle of flesh. The bloodless cadavers were not simply piled up; they appeared to be in the
process of merging together. Nor was their arrangement entirely haphazard; it suggested some occult meaning that Meredith was glad to be unable to grasp. She could have thought the charnel sculptures were attempts to decorate the lair of the evil that had made Axmouth its home, and she did her best to focus all her loathing in her glare at him.

Perhaps it provoked him. As she managed to regain her breaths, he rose from the throne with a sinuous motion that brought to mind a great lizard slithering off a rock. His robe flowed about him, concealing his form as he crossed the floor with a silent reptilian tread. He paused beside the altar and rubbed a long finger over the bloody surface as if he were searching for dust. He put the finger in his practically lipless mouth and licked it clean before pacing to Meredith.

She held onto the bars and struggled not to shudder. While he was beyond the altar she had seen that his face was decorated with dozens of straight lines, and now she saw their nature. They were lines of some magical text inscribed on the flesh, as though his face were a page of a grimoire. They were in no alphabet Meredith recognised, but she had an uneasy sense that his eyes were able to convey the meaning, unless his actions would. His left temple bore a large raw sigil that might have been the Devil’s brand. Was he aware of her thoughts? His eyes glittered with black delight, and he passed his pale tongue over his lips as if savouring a taste or anticipating an experience. Meredith had the impression that the darkness of which his eyes were no more than a symbol was reaching for her, closing its insidious oppressive embrace around her. She was striving to fend it off with a prayer when she heard a distant scream.

The sorcerer seemed eager to relish her reaction.
Meredith choked down her distress as the screams of protest grew less remote and more desperate. Somebody was being brought up from the dungeons, and Meredith knew she was about to witness one more slaughter. Soon the victim was dragged between the mirrors through the antechamber. The light fluttered with the screams, as if the torches were paying the woman a derisive tribute. She fell silent as two raiders bore her into the great hall, where she blinked in terror at the altar and the sorcerer and then stared with abhorrence at Meredith. She was the woman who had accused Meredith of witchcraft, and her hatred gave her back her voice. “Did you choose me for your entertainment? Has he put you there to watch?”

“I believe I am being saved for worse,” Meredith said.

She had not thought it until she spoke, and she wished she had taken time to find another answer. She would not have been surprised if the woman had retorted that it was no more than Meredith deserved, but perhaps she had grasped Meredith’s plight at last. As the raiders dragged the woman to the altar Meredith called urgently “What is your name? Tell me your name.”

“Anne,” the woman cried as if it let her cling to a scrap of her sense of self. “Anne Cooper.”

“I will pray for you, Anne,” Meredith promised, and dared to go further. “Let my prayer carry you to God.”

She began to pray as the raiders spread-eagled Anne Cooper on the altar, gripping her wrists and ankles. She had to raise her voice when the woman’s screams grew louder as the sorcerer picked up the ceremonial knife. He removed the ragged cap that Anne still wore and laid it on her chest as gently as a seducer. He took hold of a fistful of her hair, in which streaks of grey were visible among the raven locks. Whatever cares had silvered them and etched premature lines in her face, they were at an end for
her. Pulling her head back to the full extent of the neck, the sorcerer cut her throat from ear to ear.

Her shriek of incredulous protest almost blotted out Meredith’s prayer. Soon the scream weakened, growing clogged and liquid. The sorcerer gestured the raiders away and planted a hand on Anne’s heart as she flailed at the altar with all her limbs. He was holding her in position, but he might have been squeezing forth the gouts of blood by leaning all his weight on her. The blood coursed through the grooves in the altar and streamed down the channel into the pit in the floor. Meredith was just able to make out the bottom of the pit – more than she would have preferred. There was no doubt now that it was pulsing like a monstrous heart, and she seemed to sense the presence of whatever it was helping to enliven, as yet invisible but so close that the room grew miasmatic with its imminence. She glimpsed movements in the antechamber, and risked an apprehensive glance. Every one of the mirrors that she could see contained a hideous shape. They had come to the surface to watch the sacrifice.

She would not look again. She kept her gaze on Anne Cooper and managed not to falter in her prayer. Anne’s struggles grew feebler, and her cries subsided to a choking gurgle. As the last of her blood drained away into the heart of the corrupted place, her body drew into itself as though reverting to its unborn state. A parting breath rattled in her throat, and then her face grew slack and empty, just as the rest of her did. Meredith sent a prayer to follow her – to accompany her, she hoped. “Amen,” Meredith said.

The sorcerer lifted his head to enjoy her behaviour. His reptilian tongue flickered out to part his lips and shape a wicked smile. “Amen,” he echoed.

His voice was soft yet shrill as the hiss of a snake. It sounded like the icy darkness in his eyes rendered audible, and sent an uncontrollable shiver through Meredith. All her outrage and dismay seemed to be reduced to a single question. “Why are you doing this?” she cried.

He extended his long fingers towards her and brought his hands almost together. He might have been parodying prayer or demonstrating the mechanism of a trap. “He will come,” he said.

“K
eep climbing, lad,” Mcness told Caldicott. “Nearly there.”

Kane held onto the rungs set in the streaming wall and looked down. Now that he and the men were almost at the surface they had doused their torches, and the only light came through the grating overhead. Caldicott was clinging to the rungs beneath Kane, and Mcness was below the youth’s feet in the vertical passage. The younger man looked grimly determined even though whey-faced. Kane listened hard but could hear no sound above him besides the constant hiss and drip of rain. He was about to raise the grating when he heard another noise beyond it. “Wait,” he muttered.

“Wait,” Caldicott whispered, and the word was repeated by a succession of low voices into the depths of the sewer.

In a moment Kane identified the sound in the courtyard – the rumbling of the portcullis. It gave way to the trundling of heavy wheels, and he heard wails of despair. There was no mistaking the arrival of another prison wagon. “Hold fast,” said Kane.

Versions of the command were passed down into the dimness. It might have been an hour or more since the first of the men had lowered themselves from the cliff path to clamber into the mouth of the sewer. Their efforts were rewarded by a trudge through the noisome passage. Caldicott and several of his young companions had vomited, so that Kane was afraid that if they had to tarry in the sewer they would be little use as fighters. The dull thunder of wheels grew louder, and he saw them roll ponderously past within inches of the grating. Then a prisoner looked down and saw him.

Kane clenched his fists on the rungs and held himself absolutely still – even his face, even his eyes. The woman’s downcast gaze was lingering on him, trying to establish what was there. Although she seemed bewildered, she was opening her mouth, but the cart lumbered out of sight before he heard her speak. In a moment the boots of a raider shook the grating, and Kane grasped the hilt of his sword. Mud fell through the grating to spatter his upturned face, and then the raider had tramped past. Perhaps the woman’s senses were too blunted by her plight for her to comprehend what she had seen, or perhaps she was fearful of drawing attention by speaking. Kane heard the great inner doors of the courtyard groan open, and the cart and the raiders passed within. Their dogged sounds receded, and the doors shut with a massive slam.

Once he was sure that the courtyard was deserted Kane gripped the topmost rung and planted his hand against the grating. He pushed and pushed harder, and then shoved with all his strength, but the cover did not stir. Rust and, he suspected, the weight of passing wagons had wedged it into its metal frame. He thrust the fingers of both hands through the mesh and braced his feet on a rung, and then he levered at the grating with every muscle he could bring to bear. It shifted reluctantly, grinding against the frame. With another shove that involved his entire body Kane dislodged it,
and it reared up with a squeal of metal.