The Tower of Bones (16 page)

‘Information?’

‘Information about the arrogant brat, Duval, and about the chief among the fish-gutters, Siam the stupid. Information also of about a female cur amongst them, she who is known as Mo. The girl is probably the strangest of all. Through such information, Excellency, you might best undermine their purpose.’

‘So tell me, then – what are they scheming?’ He strode up and down the rug-strewn floor, his long silk gown almost tripping his dainty feet.

‘I do not know, Excellency. Other than the fact that I am certain that your concerns are entirely justified.’

‘Don’t patronise me, you vile creature.’

‘Only test me, then!’

‘Here!’ Feltzvan waved the guards to drag Kawkaw closer, his chains rattling over the marbled floor. Then he had them haul the uncouth creature to his feet so he could peer through the glass at the scene on the beach. ‘I am interested in the girl. Search among them. Show her to me.’

Kawkaw peered at the scene, which was half obscured by smoke and fading light. ‘Here – this is the one, sitting by the side of Duval. She’s one of the four, all claiming to have come here from another world.’

Feltzvan, a nosegay applied to his face, had them drag the stinking wretch away. The adviser wiped the eyepiece with a silken handkerchief before peering for himself at the dark-haired girl. He whispered softly, in that high-pitched sibilant purr. ‘Four strangers, you say, from an alien world?’

‘Perverse it may sound, Excellency, but there is a great deal that is strange about them, the girl in particular. I should know. Through adversity, I brought her as a gift to the Mage of Dreams in Isscan. Yet, it would appear, she readily escaped his pleasures.’

‘And the gangling youth – the fish-gutter that seems forever by her side?’

‘An Olhyiu. Son of the excremental chief. His name is Turkeya. After the death of the shaman, Kemtuk Lapeep, this whiskerless pup took on the role of shaman.’

‘These primitives, so deeply embroiled in blasphemous superstitions!’

‘I would not underestimate the Olhyiu, Excellency. They are renowned for their seamanship.’

‘Seamanship, you say?’

‘The Temple Ship was their inheritance, though no more than a wreck before the coming of the huloimas reawakened it as you can see.’

‘Could it be that they are planning a seagoing journey? Is that what the fireside chat is all about?’

The prisoner rubbed once again at his chin with his hook. ‘I could discover this for you, Excellency. I could be your eyes and ears.’

‘I have eyes and ears enough already in that misbegotten rabble. If that were all you had to offer me, you would not leave this chamber with your own intact. I have a more practical use for you, bear-man. I want you to become my hidden weapon in any such journey they might be about to undertake.’

‘I will deliver Duval to you. If you will deliver those fish-gutters to me.’

A flickering light entered the dark eyes of Feltzvan, where it glinted like a single mote of starlight against a
sky of darkness. ‘Take him away. Remove his rags and hose him down. Feed him. Dress him in something less odoursome. Yet confine him while I consider how best he might serve us.’

Feltzvan waited until the prisoner and guards had departed the chamber, then further until the sounds of their footsteps had receded from his hearing. It wouldn’t do for them to realise the nature of his true master. Outside the open window the sun had just set and he felt the sharp breezes of the coming night on his face. Around the setting sun the sky was imbued with indigo. The adviser to Prince Ebrit opened a door onto an inner chamber, only faintly illuminated by candles made of wax infused with human blood. He paused to kneel before an altar of black marble. From a concealed recess he lifted out a dagger with a triple infinity embossed into the handle in glowing silver, above a heavy, spirally twisted blade. His hands now trembling, he gazed down onto the blade, which was constructed of a curious matt-black metal, bringing the hilt, with its embossed sigil, to his lips, lightly kissing it, and then pressing its burning emblem against his brow.

‘My beloved Lord and Master, I may be in a position to sow retribution among the Shee-witches and fish-gutters! A harbour rat has come to my attention with intimate knowledge of the Mage Lord, Duval. His mind is so delightfully clouded with hatred he may prove useful to your purpose.’

Kate knew she was no longer alone. All the time she was running, she sensed her pursuer close behind her. Something big, much bigger than she was. She could hear the padding of its unhurried paws. The gully took her exhausted legs from under her, sucking her down into its marshy hollow where she massaged her hurting feet in its gloom, her eyes wide with fright, her heartbeat bursting out of her heaving ribs.

The voice, when it came in over the lip of the gully, was a deep growl. ‘Come out, little mouse, and let me eat you!’

Kate gasped, hunkering down into the cold wet dirt, her jerky fingers searching for the first of the grassy purses to find a tidbit, then forcing it between her chattering teeth and attempting to hold it there with her trembling tongue.

That same growl: ‘I have all the time in the world – but what time have you?’

She tried to find some saliva, but her throat wouldn’t work. She pushed muck in between her teeth to moisten her tongue, but it only made her gag.

A great wolf head nuzzled down over the lip of the hollow. A ruff of snow-white hair stood erect in an oval around a long face that ended in enormous fangs, the slaver of its hunger dripping onto her face. Grey eyes, shining like moons, peered down into the shadows where she skulked, nostrils sniffing to right and left, puzzled to find nothing to see, yet pausing over her trembling body, as if it could smell her presence.

‘A strange reward for such a delightful hunt! I know you’re still here, little mouse, in spite of the fact that I can’t see you. But all the while I hear this voice in my head – a voice older than the wildwoods, and instructing me to help you in the old speech.
Cha-teh-teh-teh!’

With a start, Kate realised that she wasn’t hearing the wolf through her ordinary hearing, but through her brow. And the voice in the wolf’s head appeared to be that of Granny Dew – nobody other than Granny Dew had ever used the expression cha-teh-teh-teh.

Kate couldn’t suppress the jitter in her voice: ‘Who – or what – are you?’

‘Why, some know me as the wolf who hunts alone.’

Her eyes were frantically searching the gully, looking for a possible escape. ‘I … I’ve never heard of a wolf that talks.’

‘If you listened to my belly you’d hear the growl of
hunger. I haven’t eaten in a week. Why should I heed this voice in my head rather than the hunger in my belly?’

Kate thought about trying to run … but every instinct told her it would be a mistake. The wolf would detect something – a sound, a scent – and those great jaws were only inches from her throat. The tidbit from the first purse had made her invisible, but it hadn’t fooled the wolf’s other senses. She tried to remember what Granny Dew had told her about the second purse.

A handful of life – the beginnings of things.

She didn’t think that the seeds of life would make a difference to her situation. The grey eyes narrowed, the lips retracting over those enormous fangs just inches from her.

What could she do?

She recalled her crystal, which Granny Dew had only recently implanted in her brow. She had no idea what that was meant to do.
You must resist all impulse to draw on the crystal until you are far beyond the eyes and teeth of this accursed place
. She didn’t know if the caution still applied. She was so hopeless with gadgets – and the thing in her brow reminded her of gadgets. She recalled how uncertain Alan had been with his ruby triangle – the Oraculum of the First Power.

Oh, lord – how do I use it?

It’s an oraculum – I’m attached to an oraculum. It’s become part of me – part of my brain – my body.

A rising panic consumed her. She’d have curled even
further into a ball, if that had been possible. But the wolf was already contemplating eating her.

It was a waste of time trying to tell herself to calm down. There was no way she was going to calm down. But she had been familiar with the crystal when she had held it in her hand. With the exception of Mo, they were all given crystals, Alan, Mark and herself, and those crystals had enabled them to read the thoughts of others. She had grown used to her crystal – she had delighted in it. Now, as she spoke, she attempted to read the thoughts of the wolf. ‘Eat me, whatever, or whoever you are – Wolf-who-hunts-alone – and you are no longer hungry today. But you will be hungry again tomorrow. And what will the Witch think of that? Didn’t she command you to recapture me alive? What will she have to say if she discovers you have eaten me?’

‘Cunningly put – and cunning is an art I am inclined to admire. You are no mouse. Of that I am certain. So come up out of there. Let me see you. And quickly – the succubi are closer than you think, and their Garg friends are already skybound, with eyes sharp as eagles’.’

Slowly, her limbs stiff with exhaustion, Kate climbed out of the gully and stood, on tottering legs, before the wolf. He was enormous, much bigger than even she had imagined, lean as a greyhound, with shoulders higher than her own and his great long head a foot higher still. His entire coat was white, not the grey-brown she would have expected of a wolf and, now she thought about it,
his cold grey eyes, aglitter with curiosity, were not the normal amber of wolves. Though he couldn’t see her he sniffed and shuffled in a circle around her, somehow – coming to size her up, she assumed. His desire to eat her was plain to see. And those jaws would surely close on flesh, however hidden from sight, if he bit. Prowling, now, in a sinewy circle around her, the wolf sniffed and slavered, yet all the while some restraint held him from attacking.

‘Much is now clear, yet the more I probe you, one mystery replaces another. The Great Witch would prize your recapture, that much is true. Yet this voice, in the tongue of the ancients, bids me – hah, warns me, more like – to protect you. “This morsel,” it proclaims, “is not for thee!’”

‘The voice you hear is my protector, Granny Dew.’

The wolf snarled, a new rush of slaver oozing through the clenched trap of the great yellow fangs, as if he struggled anew to control his hunger. It seemed to overwhelm him and he roared, with jaws agape, high over Kate’s head. His eyes rolled back to reveal the red-veined whites. His muscles tensed, as if ready to pounce.

Tears of fright erupted into Kate’s eyes.

A thunderclap boomed immediately above them, so loud and close it shook the ground beneath Kate’s feet. A voice, like a continuing low echo of that same thunder, pressed against Kate’s eardrums.

THIS MORSEL IS NOT FOR THEE.

The wolf’s jaws clamped shut. His eyes, cold and silvery, narrowed to slits, his great head twisting in every direction in search of the origins of the voice.

‘I was told to watch out for you, Witch of Morning. The Great Witch anticipated your interference.’

YOU WERE WELL WARNED.

‘Yet still hunger consumes me in this famine landscape.’

YOU ARE EVER NEEDFUL, FATHER OF HUNGER. THAT IS WHY YOU HUNT ALONE

With a sudden whine, as if shocked by a spasm of pain, the wolf backed a half pace away from Kate, yet still slavering. ‘Where are you? Why can I not see you, even when you speak like thunder?’

BE GLAD YOU DO NOT CONFRONT ME. LOOK TO THE MOUNTAIN YONDER. OR TO THE EARTH BENEATH YOUR PAWS.

The wolf span in a circle, snarling, but finding nothing reared his head to the sky again, his fangs agape, slaver pattering over the ground like heavy drops of rain.

‘Who are you to tell me what I can eat? The mountain cannot harm me, nor the earth beneath my paws. Such a feast do I sense before me – rare indeed in these famished times. I see no harm in satisfying my hunger.’

A second crash of thunder shook the ground beneath Kate’s feet.

DO YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW YOU, CARRION-FEEDER, WHO HAS FORGOTTEN HIS OWN NAME?

The wolf went still, tensed in every sinew. ‘You pretend
to know me, you who dare not even show yourself?’

IT IS, AND EVER WAS, NIGHTSHADE.

The wolf’s eyes widened and a moan emanated from the slavering jaws. ‘You have knowledge, I grant you. Yet why should I obey you? The Great Witch also harbours knowledge – and her powers grow day by day.’

I WARN YOU AGAIN, AND THIS WARNING IS FINAL. STAY YOUR HUNGER OR LET IT DEVOUR YOU.

The wolf tensed again, and his eyes closed on the focus of Kate’s trembling presence. ‘Whatever power you claim, do your worst. Yet will I live and breathe – and my hunger be sated.’

But even as he leapt at Kate, there was another deafening crack of thunder, and lightning accompanied it, striking the beast in mid-flight and hurling him thirty yards through the air.

IF HUNGER IS YOUR NEED, FEED ON THIS!

Kate threw herself back into the hollow, peering over the rim as rivulets of green fire tore at the giant body of the wolf, invading its jaws and running down its throat. The green glow of its fire flickered and crackled inside the lean body, the white fur smoking with the intense heat of his meal of lightning until, abruptly, the light was quenched. The gaunt figure swayed and shuddered.

WILL YOU DO MY BIDDING NOW – OR WOULD YOU FEED AGAIN?

‘No more, ancient mother! I have fed enough for a thousand years.’

THEN CARRY THIS ORACULUM-BEARER TO SAFETY AS I HAVE BIDDEN.

‘It will be done.’

Even as he spoke a pack of five other wolves had arrived, much smaller, amber-eyed and grey-brown in colour. Snapping and snarling they encircled Kate and the great wolf, as if cutting off any hope of escape. The great wolf howled, causing them to withdraw a pace or two, but the circle was unbroken and their leader howled back, as if calling for support from the hue and cry of the hunt in the near distance. The great wolf dropped his body low, in a crouch. ‘Quickly then, little mouse, climb onto my back. Take a firm grip about my neck. Hold on tight – do not allow yourself to fall.’