To pass the time, they speculated on how Orica, Harod and Mara were faring. Orica had been hired on the spot, as they’d expected, and they’d left Harod and Mara in the safehouse, getting dressed up in clothes befitting guests of the Krodan Empire. Yet though their companions were entering by the front gate, they faced dangers every bit as real as those in the boat. How much had Keel told the Iron Hand? Did they have names and descriptions? Was Mara’s invitation reliable? If they were caught, or refused entry, Aren and the others would never know.
He became aware of an irritating drumming noise: Cade’s fingers on the gunwale of the boat.
‘Ain’t hardly the breathless charge into peril I was imagining,’ Cade said as inch by inch the cave ahead was revealed.
At last they sank to a level where they could move forward by ducking down and pushing themselves along the ceiling with their hands. After a few uncomfortable minutes, the ceiling lifted again. The passage widened out into a cave and the light of the lantern barely reached the walls. They began to joke among themselves, feeling more cheerful now they were not so confined. Then they heard something splash in the dark, something that sounded larger than a fish, and they quieted again.
‘The way through should be just over there,’ Cade said, pointing.
‘Grub feel more like rowing now,’ the Skarl said. He took up the oars in haste and put his back into it, scanning the waters to either side as they went.
Lantern light played over the wall of the cave, brightening it steadily as they approached. It took Aren only a moment to find the mouth of the next passage, right where the map said it should be. As they got closer, he saw there was something inside it, throwing the light back wetly. He squinted to see, and when he realised what it was, his heart sank.
Bars. Vertical bars, set firm into the rock a short distance along the passage, with a gate allowing access. Grub brought them up to the gate and they pulled the boat in against it. The metal was rusted but sturdy, and a huge iron lock held the gate closed. Aren gave it an experimental tug but it didn’t move.
‘Let Grub see! Grub can pick any lock!’ said Grub, clambering towards the front of the boat while the others fought to stop it from tipping. He muscled Ruck aside and peered into the keyhole, then sat back and thought for a moment.
‘Grub can’t pick that lock,’ he announced firmly.
Cade let out a sigh of exasperation. ‘One day we really ought to talk about your overconfidence.’
‘It rusted solid!’ Grub protested. ‘Nobody put a key in it for a hundred years. Cade can’t pick a lock if the parts don’t move!’
‘This gate’s not on the map …’ Aren said, as if by pointing that out he might make it go away.
‘I told you – the map’s old,’ said Fen. ‘Someone put this in since it was drawn.’
Aren threw her an angry glance. She was being sullen as a defence against nerves, but it didn’t make her unhelpfulness any easier to swallow.
‘If I may?’ said Vika, who was squashed behind Grub. She pushed past and Grub reluctantly moved aside. He began working his way back from the prow, threatening to tip them again.
‘Don’t know what Painted Lady can do that Grub can’t,’ he muttered. ‘She going to pray it open?’
Ruck snarled at him, and he aimed the back of his hand at her before thinking better of it.
Vika studied the lock for a time while Aren chewed his lip, his confidence eroding. Another unforeseen problem, and they’d barely started. How many more were waiting? He’d been a fool to imagine this would go like clockwork, with so many uncertainties involved. Perhaps it was best if they were turned back now, before they got themselves killed. Wilham might have been right to call his plan a naïve fantasy.
Vika reached into her patchwork coat, pulled out a phial and emptied it over the top of the lock. It contained some kind of thick, glutinous liquid. She replaced the phial, took out another and unstoppered it.
‘Push us away from the gate when I say,’ she said. ‘Do it gently, so I do not fall.’ She poured the contents of the second phial on to the first. ‘Now.’
They pushed away, Fen steadying Vika, and the boat slid backwards in the water. They watched the lock. Nothing happened.
Cade, as usual, was the first to state the obvious. ‘Nothing’s happeni—’
He was interrupted by a sharp hiss from the gate, growing louder till it was like a nest of snakes. A wisp of smoke rose from the lock, and then a tiny, furious white glow squirmed out of nowhere, growing in size and intensity until it was blindingly bright. Aren had to shade his eyes and look away until the noise and light faded again, leaving a smell of sulphur and tin.
‘Now,’ said Vika. ‘Let us try again.’
They paddled closer. The passage was murky with a thin, toxic-smelling mist which obscured Aren’s view until they were very close. When they bumped up against the gate, he was amazed to see that the lock had melted into a thick black sludge, shot through with specks of glowing red.
‘Push,’ she urged them, ‘before it hardens.’
They pushed. The metal groaned and the lock stretched and pulled apart, but still the gate didn’t give. They tried again, but the harder they pushed, the more the boat wanted to move away from the gate. Then Fen had the idea of propping the oars against the tunnel wall to brace them. They shoved once more, and this time the gate screeched open, suddenly enough that Vika had to grab Cade to stop him falling in.
‘Yes! Grub knew he’d get through! He is unstoppable!’ the Skarl cried.
They laughed and Aren grinned at the sight, ashamed of his doubts. Who says Ossians can’t work together?
Vika caught his eye. ‘How much sweeter the victory when it is shared, hmm?’ she said quietly.
He smiled at her. ‘I’m really glad you’re back, Vika.’
‘I would not be anywhere else,’ she said. ‘Now, onward, and may the Aspects go with us.’
Aspects go with you. Her words triggered a hint of a memory, which bothered Aren as they passed through the gate. The rough passageway was quickly becoming wider and higher as the water lowered, and he let Cade navigate as he tried to remember when he’d heard those words last. Finally it came to him.
‘Vika,’ he said.
‘Aye?’
‘Just after you woke, when Garric said his farewells and set off with Keel … You realised something, didn’t you? I remember seeing it on your face. Did you suspect Keel then?’
‘Keel?’ she said. ‘No. No, I am sorry to say I had no idea about him. It was Garric who concerned me.’
‘Why?’
She weighed her words, her face thoughtful. ‘When he said farewell … and I could be mistaken, Aren, though I am not often … When he said farewell, I believe he knew it was the last time he would ever see us. He did not intend to come back. I heard it in his voice.’
‘But how could he bring us the Ember Blade if he didn’t mean to return?’
‘That, I do not know,’ she said. Then she shook it off. ‘It matters not, Aren. Our task is unchanged.’
But her dismissal was too brusque to be convincing. The news settled uneasily on Aren, and the dark seemed a little darker after that.
At length, they neared the tunnel promised by the map, the waterway built in days gone by to link this network of caves to the caves underneath Hammerholt. They’d emerged from the passageways into a large cavern, and as they rounded a bulge of stone they found the tunnel entrance before them. Cade sat up a little straighter, raising his lantern.
‘Nine,’ he breathed. ‘Now ain’t that a sight to see?’
The mouth of the tunnel was wide enough for five of their boats, and was flanked by two thick pillars cut from the mountain rock, their surfaces carved with huge leering faces, cavorting figures and strange beasts. The centuries had worn the detail from them, but they still possessed an unsettling primal savagery, and the faces – heavy of jaw and brow, small-eyed, subtly inhuman – unnerved them all. The massive lintel overhe
ad bore an inscription, still visible after all this time, but the message held in those stark, jagged runes was a mystery to them.
‘Urds,’ said Vika, in a low voice. ‘Once they were the masters of Ossia, over the earth and under it.’
Grub studied the pillars as they slid past. ‘Grub think they not as ugly as the new lot.’
Cade snorted with laughter.
The tunnel was a wide, square channel, walled with immense mould-streaked bricks and supported by more pillars and lintels along its length. Glaring faces loomed and receded to either side, craggy and shadowed. Some were urds, brutish and fierce, but others were more monstrous, with huge teeth and bulging eyes. They wore necklaces of ears or sported manes made of swords. Aren sensed the malevolence of old gods here, angry at being robbed of their might, and it made him feel small.
‘Do not fear,’ said Vika, responding to his unspoken thought. ‘They cannot hurt us now.’
‘They can if they decide to stop holding up that roof,’ said Cade.
The tunnel was long, and seemed longer, but at last they rowed out into another cave, higher than it was wide, its upper reaches in darkness. Before them was a metal ladder fixed to the cave wall, rising to a ledge overhead. Running alongside it was a vertical mooring pole.
‘Can you see a door?’ Aren asked, craning.
Cade raised his lantern high, but the projecting ledge obscured his view. ‘Reckon we need to go up there and look,’ he said.
They tied the boat to the pole, leaving the knot loose enough that it would slide up as the water rose. Then they clambered out one by one, except for Vika, who stayed with Ruck. Cade was first up the ladder, climbing awkwardly with the lantern in one hand and Aren close behind him. The ledge was broad and naturally formed, and there they found the door, as promised.
The two of them exchanged a grin. It was a relief just to have got this far. Even this small success encouraged them.
They examined the door. It was narrow and low, made of metal, and it looked thick. Aren doubted even Vika’s concoction could burn through it, assuming she had any left. There was no lock on their side, but a crank extended from the centre, lying flat against the door. Aren tried to turn it downwards, and then up, but no matter how he pulled or pushed, it would only move a fraction. Something was barring it on the other side, as they’d feared.
By this time, Fen and Grub had got up the ladder. Grub insisted on trying himself, with no better luck. Aren looked over the ledge to Vika and Ruck.
‘Are you coming?’
‘The tide has turned, I think,’ Vika said, her particoloured face eerily bright against the dark mass of her coat. ‘I will wait for the water to lift us higher. Easier than carrying Ruck.’
Aren stood back and looked around at the others. He was eager to act, to move on, but the next step was out of his hands. He didn’t like that feeling.
‘I suppose we must wait, then,’ he said. ‘Let us hope our friends in the fortress are successful.’
‘That, or better learn to breathe water,’ said Grub grimly.
Fen hugged herself and gazed into the dark. Cade noticed and forced a jovial tone.
‘Hoy! Does anyone know the story of how Hallec Stormfist fought his way through the hordes of the Revenant King and slew him in single combat?’
‘It rings a bell,’ said Aren wryly, ‘though the version I heard was about a Krodan warrior called Hokke storming the castle of the Lich-Lord.’
Cade cackled. ‘I reckon you’ll like this version better.’ His face came alive in the lanternlight as he turned his attention to his audience, and the performance began.
‘So there was Hallec, alone, having lost all his faithful companions on the trek across the Plains of Poison Fire. All his companions but one, which he was never without: a sword that glowed red as molten rock as the dawn sun struck it, an unbreakable weapon, sharp as time’s teeth. The Ember Blade, they called it, and he carried it with him into the lair of his greatest enemy, the herald of the Outsiders: the Revenant King himself!’
They listened, eager for distraction, as Cade told his tale. Below them the water lapped hungrily against the stone, creeping higher with every little wave.
85
I’m late. I’m late. I’m late.
Orica tapped her foot nervously against the floor of the cart, her lute – safe in its case – clutched to her side. Sards, like Ossians, were not generally concerned with punctuality, but tonight was an exception.
The troupe and their instruments were crowded into two carts, roofed with canvas but open at the sides. Towering before them was another massive gatehouse, the third they’d encountered. At each there had been queues, checks and searches, driving both Orica and their harried leader to distraction. Delays, delays, delays, and with every wasted moment the water in the caves rose higher.
The road through the mountains was clogged with traffic by the time they reached it. Guests and their retinues jostled with merchants delivering last-minute supplies and teams of soldiers borrowed from the Morgenholme garrison. They’d seen signs of the Iron Hand, too: an outsized black wagon with huge wheels, the double-barred cross emblazoned on its flanks. Its contents were a mystery, but Orica felt the cold touch of dread as it passed, which didn’t lift until it was gone.
Soon the road had narrowed, passing between two shoulders of rock topped by squat guard towers, and they’d been funnelled into the shadow of Hammerholt. Some of the musicians gasped at the scale of it as it sprawled up the slope where the mountains met, a forest of square towers penned behind tiered walls that rose steep and angular against the evening sky.
Once inside, their pace had slowed even further. The best organisation in the world couldn’t cope with so many people arriving at once, and the fortress was designed to repel rather than welcome. They inched along walled corridors intended to hamper invaders, beneath rows of murder holes through which arrows could be fired and boiling oil could be poured.
At last, they’d reached the final obstacle, the gatehouse that gave access to the inner fortress, where the night’s festivities would be held. Already the eleventh bell o’ day had sounded. She had less than two hours left; more like one-and-a-half by now. They were scheduled to perform at twelfth bell, providing half an hour of entertainment before the guests headed to their feasts. There’d be a break before the post-dinner performances, which was the perfect moment to slip away. But if they started late, or if the proceedings went on too long …
Surely not. These were Krodans, the most diligent timekeepers in Embria.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Olin. He was an elderly Bitterbracker who played the idra, a traditional Ossian ram-skin drum. ‘Nobles or peasants, an audience is an audience, eh?’
Orica looked down at her tapping foot, stilled it and gave Olin a smile of gratitude. He’d misunderstood the source of her agitation – she could play for the Aspects themselves and not worry – but it was kind of him. A few of the others were visibly displeased to have a Sard among them, but most, like Olin, treated her like anyone else, and the harpist eyed her with obvious lust. Musicians were travellers, always on the move, and less apt to hold the cosy prejudices enjoyed by small-town folk who were never exposed to any but their own sort.
Edgen was the leader of the troupe, a fractious middle-aged Rainlander with a flowing moustache and a mane of glossy black hair that he played with constantly. He was speaking to a gate guard, trying to keep his temper as he ran through the same answers he’d given at the last two gatehouses. Krodan soldiers passed up and down the carts, eyeing Orica with particular suspicion. She kept her gaze on the floor of the cart and said nothing.
She wished Harod were here. It was a new feeling, this sense of need. She was bereft without him, and that thought didn’t make her comfortable. She’d always been independent, even for a Sard, who prized freedom higher than most. How quickly she’d become accustomed to Harod’s tall, solid presence at her side. How easily she trusted him to guard her, when once she’d g
uarded herself.
How absurd that she was jealous of Mara, for being on his arm tonight.
The Ragged Mummer liked her tricks, but it was Sabastra, Aspect of Love and Beauty, who made fools of them all, and the two of them loved to work together. At first, she’d thought Harod a strange fish, but she knew the ways of Harrow and she was impressed by his awkward declaration of loyalty the night she played at his father’s court. For the Harrish, who considered showing emotion to be the mark of an unschooled serf, it was madly romantic, impossibly gallant.
Of course she’d refused, for he was already betrothed and she wanted to save him from himself. But he’d persisted, and when she left for Ossia he’d followed, catching her up on the road. By then, he’d already spoken with his betrothed and destroyed himself in the eyes of his family and peers. She talked with him long enough to ensure he understood her circumstances, and that the most she could offer was friendship. He was undeterred, so she accepted him. It wasn’t the Sard way to reject willing company.
She knew he burned with love for her, but he was ever chaste, polite and restrained, and after some time together, she came to trust that he’d never act on his love, or even speak of it, unless she invited him to. And she couldn’t help being flattered by the force of his attention. Sard passions burned bright and were rarely hidden, but this was of a different order, a level of sacrifice she’d never expected. He was a good and admirable man who’d fallen for her at first sight and given up everything for her. It was hard not to be a little intoxicated by that.
How slowly Sabastra worked her art, and how the Ragged Mummer must have laughed behind her hand. As their friendship deepened, Orica began to see the man beyond that wall of Harrish reserve. She found kindness, a passion for justice, unexpected warmth and humour. She came to admire his morals and his discipline, and to understand what he’d done when he turned his back on his family. To follow your heart was the ultimate rebellion in Harrow, but he’d chosen dishonour rather than to betray his, even with no hope of reward.
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