The Rose of the World (26 page)

Virelai felt a buzzing in his head, a rising sensation in his chest. The man was saying something, but the words were just a blur. ‘No,’ he said, then: ‘No!’ He reached out blindly, caught Plutario by the shoulder. ‘NO.’

He had no idea whom he was addressing: it might have been himself. It might have been a rejection of the Master’s nihilism, or of this broken man’s despair. It might have been a challenge to the entropy of all things, an outraged demand of the Goddess, in whom it all began. White light filled his mind; white noise, too. There were two voices, locked in a spiral of sound; then silence.

Virelai opened his eyes. The man, Plutario Falco, was sitting staring at him with something approaching terror in his face. Where the bruise had closed his left eye, the skin was as pink and glowing as a newborn’s. He backed away from the sorcerer, pushing off the floor with his hands. Both hands. With a shock, Virelai realised the broken arm was whole again, the bones knit, the shoulder joint relocated.

‘Wh– who are you?’ Plutario stammered. He flexed his fingers in bewilderment. ‘You’ve healed me. It’s a miracle. I can’t believe it. Is it magic? True magic? By the Lady, I never believed it existed, I thought it all was chicanery, tricks and sleight-of-hand, a bit of clever flimflam like my own. But this—’ He raised an amazed smile to his saviour. There was a gap where the knocked-out tooth was missing; the molar lay still upon the floor, bloody at the root.

Not a complete miracle, then
, Virelai thought inconsequentially. But what else could it be called, and how had it been accomplished? His mind sought wildly for explanation: failed. After a while, tears began to roll down his cheeks, another new experience.

‘Don’t weep, man!’ Plutario cried, hauling him to his feet. ‘You’re free and I’m whole: we can escape this place and never look back!’

‘I cannot leave without Saro,’ Virelai said dully.

‘Give him up, man. He’s as good as dead, that one. My life is yours: let me repay you in fine style. I’ll tell you how – I have friends down on the Tilsen River and they have a boat; if we leave here now, tonight, we can pay a ferryman to take us to them. Have you ever been to Gila? It is a wonderful place, my homeland: wine, women and song from dawn to dusk and no priests or fanatics to spoil the fun. I can’t think why I ever left.’ He paused, considering this, then grinned. ‘Well, what reason does anyone ever come to the Eternal City, eh, my friend? Money: there is always money to be made in the Eternal City, especially in my trade – or there was before they started persecuting magicmakers and gearing up for this mad war. Come with me to Gila and live like a prince and you’ll soon forget about this whole sorry business.’

‘I can’t do that. I must rescue Saro. Where is the Miseria?’

Plutario shook his head sadly. ‘You’re mad. No one goes into the Miseria except as a guard or a prisoner; and of the latter none get out alive, unless they’re on the way to their own execution.’

Virelai looked desperate.

‘Well, my friend, I must be on my way,’ Plutario said at last. ‘I’ll be glad to leave this place. The Eternal City has been nothing but a nightmare for me ever since that jackass Barzaco told the Lord of Cantara I could do magic for him.’

‘What sort of magic?’

‘Oh, he wanted me to make his ships invisible or something, so he could sneak into Halbo and rescue the Rosa Eldi woman. Something nonsensical, and would he listen to me when I said it was all just tricks, that sort of thing? He would not. My idea of making people invisible involves curtains and trapdoors and a lot of blue smoke. He’s a crazy man, that one: believes in the whole shebang.’

Virelai grabbed him by the shoulders.‘I have an idea. And yes, your life is forfeit to me, and I have an idea of how you may redeem the debt . . .’

Sixteen

The Miseria

‘I like this not at all.’

‘It was never a matter of liking.’

‘If they catch us we are dead men.’

‘Not an hour ago you were prepared to take your own life, so you are already in profit by an hour.’

‘An hour does not profit me much.’

‘There is much that can be done in an hour. The future course of the world may change in less.’

‘I’m just a trickster, a charlatan, a mountebank – what care I for the future course of the world?’

In the gloom of the corridor, Virelai turned his pale eyes on Plutario Falco and looked him up and down. The uniform was as detailed as he could remember it – a blue tunic and breeches worked with silver braid, tall black boots, a gleaming silver helm. There were no fat men in the Jetran Guard, and so the conjurer was a shadow of his former self, a shadow which glowed slightly around the edges, which might seem to the casual eye no more than a trick of the light, instead of evidence of the rather poor glamour he had employed. He was reserving what little remained of his sorcery for what came next. He had been surprised his small skills had worked as well as they had, without the cat or any other aid; but remembering how quickly the illusions he used to make could evaporate, there was no time to spare.

‘Your life is forfeit to me: you said it yourself. I shall release you from your debt as soon as we have the Vingo boy safe.’

Plutario shook his head wearily. ‘I do not know why I allowed you to talk me into this; surely you have mazed my mind as well as my body.’

Down they went into increasing darkness, their footsteps ringing on the stone. It seemed remarkable that no one came out to see who made such a racket; but what was left of the soldiery of Jetra had clearly been assigned to other duties; or, knowing the entrances to the Miseria so well secured, did not bother to guard them as well as they might, especially now that chaos reigned in the Eternal City. The stench rose the further down they went, until Plutario held his hand over his nose and mouth. It was not the honest smell of human sweat and waste – or rather, it was not simply that, but a more disturbing aroma altogether. The scent of cooked meat mingled with an iron tang, until the air itself felt thick and fatty, as if it might leave a residue on your face and hands, might slick the nostrils as you inhaled and coat the lungs with an impermeable grease. Even breathing it made Virelai feel complicit in whatever vile acts had been perpetrated here.

‘Faugh!’ exclaimed the conjurer at last. ‘I thought they confined their burnings to the Grand Campo and the Merchants’ Square.’

Virelai felt the disgust rise in him, as acrid as bile.

‘Come on,’ he said shortly, and quickened his pace.

The sound of voices brought them to a halt on the next level down, then laughter and the chink of glassware. Sweetsmoke and incense drifted along the corridor outside the guardroom, hazing the air. Virelai pressed his companion back against the wall and studied the men inside intently. A moment later he removed Plutario’s helm and, muttering softly, rubbed his palm across the other man’s face. Then he stood back, examined his handiwork, and added a scar to the conjurer’s left cheek. A belligerent man stared back at him, bold and bloodshot of eye, with a jutting jaw and a vein-reddened nose.

He had never tried to transform himself. Without a mirror it would be difficult, since he was used to viewing the changes he essayed as he made them and adjusting those features that did not match the template. The houris he had worked on for Tycho’s pleasure, with their wide hips and dark skin and hair, had been of a different species to the Rosa Eldi, and effecting a transformation which would last for an hour or more had been challenging. With luck, he would need to hold these disguises for a short time only. With a sigh he closed his eyes and concentrated on the man facing the door, dealing out the cards. Then with the guard’s face focused clearly in his mind’s eye, he touched his own features. The prickle of the sorcery took him aback. It was less painful than unsettling, as if the skin was crawling over his bones, unanchored from muscle, cartilage and ligament. The buzzing that accompanied it sounded like a wasps’ nest in his skull; the vibrations travelled through his skeleton and earthed themselves in the flagstones beneath his feet. When he touched his face again, he knew it was not his own. The chin was shorter and more compact, the jaw broader, his vision more widely spaced.

Beckoning his companion, he laid a swift spell of concentration on the men inside the guardroom so that they studied their cards intently for a few seconds as they passed the door; then the murmur of their voices rose again.

Plutario, who had little idea of what had just transpired, tapped Virelai on the shoulder as soon as they were out of earshot.‘Now what?’ he asked plaintively. His face ached and prickled, he felt uncomfortable in his own skin; but even so, he wanted to save it and be out of here as quickly as possible.

‘We go down to the cells.’

‘And then what?’

Virelai turned and watched with satisfaction as Plutario almost fell down in shock.

‘By Falla, what you done to yourself?’

Virelai gave him an uncharacteristically wolfish grin, revealing three silver-capped teeth, a detail he was particularly proud to have captured. ‘You may also ask, what have I done to you?’ he jibed. ‘But do not get too attached to your new handsome appearance, for I fear it will not last; and because of that we cannot delay.’

They took the remaining stairs down into the Miseria at a run, then halted as two guards came into view.

‘You took your sweet time relieving us, Manso!’ the first one growled. ‘I’m off duty till noon tomorrow and every damned minute out of this place is precious to me.’

Virelai shrugged. ‘Keys?’ was all he said by way of response, as low and guttural a sound as he could make it.

‘Still nursing your sore head, are you?’ He turned to the other guard. ‘Bet us he could drink a flagon of Circesian Amber by the time it took Bosco to take a piss. And he did it, all right. Hellish stuff, that. Serves you right!’ he thumped Virelai on the shoulder and handed over a huge bunch of rusted keys. ‘Here you go. Not that you’ll need them. These bastards aren’t going anywhere till tomorrow’s burning.’

They picked up the cloaks which were hanging over their chairbacks.

‘You two’re goin’ to be chilly!’ said the other guard, noting their lack of outerwear. ‘It’s as cold as Falla’s tits down here.’

Virelai cursed himself silently: the men in the guardroom had a fire to keep them warm and had discarded their cloaks; he hadn’t thought to include them in the illusion. ‘Bosco was sick on them,’ he said quickly.

‘Filthy fucker!’ said the first man delightedly. ‘Here, take ours. Where I’m going, I don’t need a cloak; nor any other togs, either.’

‘I do!’ the other guard protested. ‘It’s bloody nippy on dawn watch.’

His companion cuffed him round the head. ‘Come on, Lady Lavender, let’s get your poor delicate bones up to the fireside, let these two buggers get on with it.’

Virelai watched them till they disappeared into the gloom, then waited until the clump of their boots echoed away to nothing. Then he went from cell to cell, keys in hand.

The sights he saw made his heart pound in his chest. In the first cell, two women lay in a heap against the wall like broken dolls, their limbs dislocated, their finger-ends dark with dried blood. One of them had no eyes; the other a blackened hole where her lips and tongue had once been. Neither of them made a sound. They might be dead. He hoped they were. In the next two cells a number of naked men were chained to the walls. Some were stuck through metal spikes, the skin so reddened and puckered where the cruel shafts penetrated the flesh that it was clear they had been driven in and left like that for days, maybe even weeks, a trial of the prisoners’ will to live, a test of their mortality. One man had succumbed to death. Flies buzzed around his head, landed in the pits of his eyes. The stench of him followed the pair as they walked the corridor. Now Virelai learned to glimpse quickly and move on. Behind him, Plutario heaved his guts up so that the sharp smell of vomit joined with all the other aromas of human misery.

In the last cell of all, he found a corpse which had rotted down to the bone, and a ragged bloodstained figure.

‘Saro!’

The head came up slowly.

‘What do you want?’

‘It’s me, Virelai.’

‘Manso, I know you love to taunt me, but I have little wit left to field your jibes tonight.’

Impatiently, Virelai shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t Manso, I just wear his appearance, for a little while. We have to get you out of here. Can you walk?’

The figure laughed like a rusty gate. Then with a hand made clublike by swaddling bandages it pushed aside the filthy, tattered cloth which covered it.

‘Oh, my heaven . . .’

Behind him, Plutario fell to his knees, retching.

‘My brother likes to take a little piece of me every day. He believes each part of me he takes makes him stronger.’

Virelai clutched the bars of the cell. He rested his forehead against the cold iron, felt hot tears threatening and blinked hard. The crystal had shown him many horrors, but it had not shown him this. He wiped his hand across his eyes and tried to pay attention to the keys, sorting through them one by one.

‘You won’t find it there,’ Saro said. ‘Tanto keeps it with him at all times. No one else is allowed to enter this cell. He comes every day, twice a day – I thought it was him when I heard voices.’ He coughed into the bandages, a racking sound which made him double up. When he recovered he smiled wanly, head on one side. ‘Is it really you, Virelai? I was sure you were dead on the battlefield. I saw you fall. Or am I going mad down here? I often think I am: I see all sorts of strange visions.’

‘It is me. I was unconscious, then Alisha . . . helped me.’

‘Is she still alive? Is she with you?’

Virelai shook his head. There was no way to talk about what she had done, what she was going to do. ‘She took the stallion and headed south.’

‘Night’s Harbinger?’ Saro sounded amazed.

‘We don’t have time for all this charming small talk,’ Plutario said crossly. ‘If we can’t open the damned cell we’ll have to leave him and get ourselves out of here before someone finds us and invites us to board in one of these delightful chambers. We tried and failed, and it’s really unfortunate and I’m very sorry for your friend, but look at the state of him! Even if you were able to get him out of here, what could he do? And since you can’t get him out there’s nothing more to be done. I came with you as you asked of me, now let me go.’