The Tower of Bones (15 page)

‘Where in heaven’s name am I?’

Lost was the answer. Lost amongst the tangled skeletons of trees and all manner of growths, twisted and deformed by the vapours that descended and coiled down from the Tower. Thorny tangles, leafless and tormented, that snagged and tore at her flesh, things of mildew and rot that painted foul-smelling decay all over her.

‘Try to think … I must think!’

But no clear thought would come.

Her voice was a shaky whisper. ‘Granny Dew – are you there?’

No reply

‘If you’re there, answer me! Why won’t you answer me?’

Again there was no reply, though the growling whispers amongst the thorns and tangles seemed to take heart, as if creeping closer.

A great roar, as loud as thunder, shook the ground and abruptly the tangles were aglow with a blood-red light.

‘Oh no!’

In the distance, the Beast appeared to have freed its jaws. Kate could hear faint but angry shouts and shrieks that meant the succubi were pouring out of the gaping portal, hunting her. Then she heard the howling. It sounded like a wolf. And it came from much closer than the Tower.

‘God help me!’

She was running again, her legs thrusting her onwards with a will of their own, her terrified mind willing them on through the husks of trees and thorn bushes, her spidersweb coverings torn to shreds.

A dank mist hung in the evening air, coalescing as glistening droplets in the hair of the senior Shee and Olhyiu who were gathering about the bonfire on the shore. Taking his place among them Alan couldn’t help but feel humiliated. It wasn’t just the recent encounter with the young Kyra. It was everything. In spite of all his gung-ho determination the Tyrant had easily outfoxed him – he had so outmanoeuvred Alan that the golden robot had almost destroyed him and his mission to rescue Kate. That was him: Alan Duval, stupidly naive! He had refused to listen to the advice of those who had tried to warn him – Milish, Qwenqwo, the High-Council-in-Exile, and most particularly poor Sister Hocht. He had allowed himself to be carried away with his own sense of righteousness. Had it not been for Mark – and he didn’t even begin to understand how Mark had rescued him – the whole thing would have ended
there, and with it any hope he might have had of saving Kate and avenging the murders of Mom and Dad.

‘How could I have been so brainless?’ He slapped his own brow in a mixture of frustration and humiliation.

The heavy arm of Qwenqwo Cuatzel fell around his shoulders and gripped him in a clasp of iron. ‘A toast – to dispel the gloom and worry.’

Qwenqwo had brought a full flagon of liquor to the gathering. Alan had no idea where the dwarf mage found such a ready supply, though he suspected the Olhyiu, who revered the dwarf mage and loved his storytelling. He accepted the flagon, holding its round-bellied bulk in his two hands and raising the neck to his lips to take a measured swig. But he doubted that any simple remedy would assuage his sense of failure.

‘What must Kate be suffering!’

‘Then drink all the deeper. Let us curse the Great Witch together.’

Even the single swig of the liquor had gone to Alan’s head. Eschewing a second swig he passed the heavy flagon back. ‘I don’t know if she can hold out any longer in that monstrous place. I’ve tried again and again to communicate with her through the oraculum but I can’t get a response.’

The dwarf mage, who looked close to being tipsy already, lifted the flagon to his own lips and took an almighty swig, dribbling droplets into his hoary red beard where they glistened like gems of amber.

‘C’mon, Qwenqwo! Don’t get too drunk on me. We’re going to need our wits about us.’

‘Merry I may be already – and a good deal merrier I aspire to become this miserable night!’ Qwenqwo, sitting cross-legged beside Alan, rapped a knuckle on the flask’s fat belly, eliciting a fullness that demanded to sound more hollow. ‘To war, and the planning of it – why there’s nothing more elevating to a Fir Bolg’s heart! So, less of the womanish worries and drink a warrior’s potion – such, if you will but share it with me, will clear those furrows from your brow. Sup – and let friendship banish woe!’

‘Your heart would melt permafrost,’ Alan smiled wanly.

‘What is this permafrost – that I might melt it all the quicker?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Alan took a second, larger, sip and felt it burn, like a punishing gall, at the back of his throat. At his companion’s grunt of derision, he took a third swig, felt the flame expand within his chest. What would he do without the indomitable courage, and company, of Qwenqwo! But no amount of simple cheer could dispel the memory that he had failed to confront the Fáil, and with that failure his plans, and hopes for Kate, were compromised.

He needed to understand what he had experienced in that final moment, when he had been sure that his end had come.

I saw them – I saw Mom and Dad!

He recalled how they had put their arms around him.
How they had pointed to something beautiful – a vision, like an ocean of stars. Were they trying to help him? But if so, what did it mean?

By Alan’s side, Qwenqwo emitted an almighty belch before roaring with laughter at some private joke, his arm crushing Alan’s shoulder all the more.

It seemed to Alan that even if he understood little of what had happened in the ancient city there was something important that he needed to do here and now. ‘Stay here, Qwenqwo. Wait for me – I’ll be back.’ He made his way through the gathering crowds around the bonfire to discover Milish on the periphery of the meeting, in the company of Mo and Kehloke, the wife of the Olhyiu chief, Siam. Alan took Milish aside.

‘I want to help the Kyra, even if she doesn’t seem to want my help. But I’m just not going about it the right way.’

‘Be patient!’ The Ambassador put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

He suggested, on his return to the circle, that Mo and Turkeya, the son of Siam and Kehloke, sat to his left with Qwenqwo on his right. Milish, Siam and Kehloke, he placed immediately to the left of Turkeya and the right of Qwenqwo, so that they were near enough for him to talk to them in confidence, as the inner circle became the most intimate ring of several large concentric circles about the bonfire. Glancing through the mist and drifting smoke, his eyes picked out the young Kyra in close conversation
with Bétaald, both standing apart from the shuffling arrangements of the various groups that made up the gathering council of war. He assumed she was telling the Shee counsellor about their earlier conversation. Alan was determined to try again, and this made Qwenqwo’s drinking all the more hazardous. It didn’t help that the Fir Bolg and Shee shared some lingering resentment that all too easily flared into open hostility.

As if sensitive to his gaze the Kyra looked his way, and Alan found himself confronted again with that resentful glare. He turned to Milish, felt her hand touch his shoulder, and immediately she was on her feet approaching Bétaald, speaking words of confidence into the ear of the spiritual guardian of the Shee. Bétaald was looking his way, as if deeply thoughtful. Alan was relieved to see that Bétaald was now moving towards him through the smoke and babble of the gathering. He got to his feet to face a remarkable woman who, though small among the Shee, was as tall as he was, and whose skin was magnificently black, her hair sleek as the jaguar she would become in the heat of conflict. Though Bétaald moved with the same stealth and grace as the other Shee she was a good deal older, with her long hair, braided over her left shoulder, threaded with white.

‘Mage Lord Duval!’ She nodded. ‘May I wish you a speedy recovery from your recent ordeal!’

Alan acknowledged her words of comfort. He was learning, however slowly, that meanings were sometimes
hidden behind words. ‘I’m really glad to see you, Bétaald!’

A flash of something deep in her eyes. It was only momentary, but he had not been mistaken. He needed to tread carefully.

She spoke, softly, sympathetically. ‘I know what you are really asking of me, but I’m afraid that the young Kyra is opposed to any such intimacy.’

‘Did Milish explain?’

‘The ambassador did explain. You believe that you may be the repository of Kyral inheritance. You offer yourself as Seer in the exchange of the accumulated knowledge of ages, between mother-sister and daughter-sister.’

‘I don’t pretend to be sure. All I’m suggesting is that we consider it. Oh, heck – I don’t rightly know how to go about it. But only that it might be worth looking into – with the Kyra’s willingness of course.’

‘Mage Lord Duval! I wonder if you understand what such an exchange, of the most intimate thoughts and memories, would mean to a Shee?’

‘I guess it wouldn’t be easy to accept.’

‘It would be more difficult than you could possibly understand. It would be a violation of the most sacred precept.’

A swell of the now familiar humiliation rose in Alan. ‘Bétaald, you know that it isn’t the first time I’ve violated those beliefs.’

‘I do not forget that, in desperate circumstances, you saved the daughter-sister of the dying Valéra. Still the new
Kyra would see what you suggest as anathema.’

‘That was the same word the former Kyra used – anathema. And yet she still asked me to help Valéra.’

Bétaald inclined her head.

Alan hesitated. ‘I guess I’ve been pretty clumsy about this. I don’t know the right, or sensitive, way to go about this. Maybe if I know more of what truly worries the Kyra?’

Bétaald snorted. ‘Is it possible you do not realise just how powerful you are? The intrusion of such a mind into another so very different!’

Alan considered what Bétaald was saying. ‘She sees me as alien – and male?’

‘Is that not exactly what you are?’

Alan realised he had allowed himself to be wound up by the conversation. He took a calming breath. Without his noticing it, Qwenqwo, together with Mo and Milish, had also climbed to their feet. Qwenqwo had clearly overheard Bétaald’s words, and was bristling with rage. A bright alcohol-stoked flush glowered in his mist-drenched cheeks. ‘Will these Shee witches never change their tune!’

‘Please – Qwenqwo!’

‘You would have me hold my tongue. But why should I when they brook no reserve on theirs? You offer to help the graceless young Kyra – and now you hear her reply in the words of the adviser? You are not to be trusted – you, whose courage brought us safe to this harbour!’

Clapping his hand on Qwenqwo’s shoulder, Alan spoke quietly, resignedly. ‘Please – no more arguments!
Remember Kate! C’mon now – let’s sit down and talk about strategies for the coming journey to the Wastelands.’

Across the estuary several armed guards dragged a tall man with a steel hook for a left arm into a darkened chamber, where they threw him onto his knees on the marbled floor. Their prisoner was manacled with chains and his face was swollen and bruised. Resplendent in a long silk gown a small corpulent figure was standing with his back to the intruders, peering out of the open arrowslit window with a spyglass on a swivel stand. He spoke to the guards in a sibilant whisper:

‘There had better be good reason for disturbing my tranquillity.’

‘Sire, we found this harbour rat skulking in the stores, stealing food. He was no easy capture, as you will see. We would have disposed of him with pleasure but for your instructions about such vermin.’

The man by the window addressed their prisoner, without troubling himself to turn and look at him. ‘What is your name?’

‘Caleb Dour, Excellency.’

‘You lie. That is not your name. My nostrils tell me that you are one of them, the fish-gutters, who indulge in drunken celebration of their youthful Mage Lord on the beach opposite.’

The one-armed man raised his head brazenly erect, resisting the attempts of the guards to make him bow.

‘The huloima, Duval – one of four such strangers from some alien world!’ He spat out a mixture of phlegm and blood with the name. ‘A stranger I would like to help to his grave.’

The figure span round gracefully on a gilded heel, so the light reflected off his deeply scarred brow. He peered for several seconds with his coal-black eyes at the manacled prisoner. ‘Your real name is Snakoil Kawkaw, which, if I am not mistaken, means a thieving crow!’

‘A man cannot choose the name he is born with.’

‘Pah! What do I care for you or your name! Do you know who I am?’

‘You are Feltzvan, Excellency – adviser to the Prince, Ebrit.’

Feltzvan gazed thoughtfully at the creature. His voice remained soft, little above a sibilant purr. ‘And you may as well know that I have been looking for one such as you, for a purpose. Disappoint me in that purpose and I shall take some small sport in killing you slowly.’

‘I am your servant, Excellency.’

‘Why such hatred of the youthful Mage Lord?’

The prisoner scratched at his chin with the hook that was his left hand. ‘He cost me this.’

‘And the fish-gutters who venerate him?’

‘They cost me a good deal more.’ It was spoken with unmistakable venom.

‘And this is why, Snakoil Kawkaw, you would help my purpose, contrary to the interests of your own kind?’

‘I have my own needs.’

‘Needs?’

‘Do we not all have needs, Excellency?’

‘Do you dare to mock me, bear man?’

A smile played about the lips of the man in the silk robes, but it provoked alarm rather than comfort in the kneeling figure. A growl entered Kawkaw’s voice, low pitched and urgent. ‘I was my people’s natural leader. I had the strength and the cunning. Yet they chose Siam the stupid over me. All that should have been mine became his. Including Kehloke – the woman that became his wife.’

‘It would be only natural, in such circumstances, for you to feel jealousy – to desire retribution.’

‘Excellency – I desire blood, as well as the recovery of my rightful power. Mine was the lineage of leader. I want it all.’

‘You would be leader of the fish-gutters?’ Feltzvan mocked him. ‘But if such was in my power, what would a harbour rat have to offer in return?’

‘Information, Excellency.’