by Rj Barker
“Are you going to claim the forgetting plague was your doing?” I laughed.
“We only pray, Xus answers when he will.”
“I hear you ally yourself with Landsmen.”
“They are strong, unafraid of bringing death when it is needed. As are you.” He stared at me and I stared back, breaking his stare after a moment because I could not help feeling he saw it as some sort of connection between us. “I still give you the title Chosen of Xus, though you have never come to me to take your place.”
“My place?”
“At my side, as his Chosen.”
“I have no real wish to be Chosen by Xus. It tends to be fatal.”
“It does not do for a deathbringer to joke,” said Danfoth. “Death is serious.”
“And ridiculous.” I sprang into a handstand and then let my legs come over in a controlled fall until I had turned fully over and stood opposite him. He did not move, physically, but I felt the threat of him, the anger that he fought to control as it welled up inside him.
“Things change, Girton Club-Foot,” he said. “Xus’s power grows but if you continue to deny him he will curse you.” Suddenly, as if Xus had removed a curtain from my eyes, I understood these visits. I understood why Neander needed Rufra and why Danfoth felt so confident. We were pieces in another game.
“Does Fureth know you are here, Danfoth, talking to me?”
That ghost of a smile.
“And they say it is your master that has the brains. Of course he knows. Changes are coming.” He took a step backwards, almost vanishing into the darkness. “Huge changes. You can choose to celebrate Xus’s dark palace with me,” he shut the door and his voice came drifting through the open shutter, “or you can go and live in it.”
I listened to him walking away, trying to piece together what I could past the obvious. That the Landsmen were drifting away from the traditional priesthood was obvious, that Danfoth was allying with them was too. But were they behind the attempts on Voniss, on me, and the death of Berisa Marrel? Why? It made no sense to destabilise the alliance, Marrel ap Marrel would not want to change anything, and if he came to a shared high kingship with Rufra the Landsmen could be sure he would support the continuation of their power. So was Danfoth behind Berisa’s death? He was certainly capable and subtle enough to think that way. But he was also a blunt man. No. He would not have killed Berisa, he would simply have killed Marrel. In fact, why not strike directly at Rufra, instead of at his family? It was almost like someone wanted him to suffer and that spoke to me of Chirol, or maybe Rufra’s uncle, Suvander, possibly even Gamelon? From all I had heard the seneschal was a man to whom labyrinthine schemes were second nature.
I would have to pay him a visit.
And then there was Leckan ap Syridd, an assassin walked by his side. I must talk to them also.
Frustration rose. This was my first visit to Maniyadoc all over again, a castle full of people and every one had good reason for me to see them as a a suspect. What was happening here? And where had the Landsmen taken their prisoners? I paced backwards and forwards, wondering what I did not see. Too often I ended up feeling like this, like I stood in a maelstrom and held in my hands the tools to calm it, but I could not work out how to use them. Eventually, I sat down and started to count out my masters once more, waiting until I was released. When I heard footsteps coming into the dungeon I stood, but it was not my gaoler. A small folded piece of vellum was jammed under the door and the footsteps quickly receded. I took the vellum and opened it up. Inside was a message in the assassins’ scratch language.
There could have been a fire, Girton Club-Foot. It would have been so easy.
Easy for me to escape, maybe. Whoever this assassin was, they underestimated me but their callousness appalled me, that they would even consider burning everyone in here just to get at me. Never would my master have countenanced such a thing. I stared at the letter then heard more footsteps.
“Open it.” I recognised the smooth purr of Gamelon’s voice and keys turned in locks, hasps were pulled back and the door opened. “Girton Club-Foot,” he said, the make-up on his face creating false shadows, making him look monstrous. “My apologies for your time in here. It was for your own safety. I hope you understand.” He had not brought his gaggle of children and dwarves with him and the strange symbols drawn on his face seemed to writhe and twist in the light of the torch. Behind him was Saleh, cringing back as if the smell of Gamelon’s sweat was painful to him.
“Have you caught Berisa Marrel’s killer?”
“Regretfully not, though we have convinced Marrel ap Marrel that it was not you.” His face fell. “I am afraid the alliance he had with your king is in tatters.”
“Then I suspect the assassin has fulfilled their task.” I stood. Gamelon looked me up and down, tipping his head to one side. “I expect you would like to wash the filth of the dungeon off yourself.”
“That would be welcome,” I said.
“Of course.” He bobbed his head. “I will take you to the bathhouse. And then I shall take you for a tour. It strikes me you have had little opportunity to see Ceadoc’s glory and will no doubt be stuck with your king once again upon your return.”
“Thank you.” I did not care about the castle’s glories but would not turn down an opportunity to learn more of its layout.
Gamelon led me out of the dungeon and we were joined by four of the highguard, grim-faced men and women in highly polished armour that shone silver. We wound up through the castle until I could smell flowers and soap on the air and Gamelon led me into a bathhouse, an enormous one. It stretched away until the room vanished into the steam that danced and twirled across the surface of the pools of water.
“It is fed from hot springs far beneath the castle,” said Gamelon. “A thousand people could bathe in here.”
“It is remarkable,” I said, “and do you let them?”
“Let who?” said Gamelon. He looked momentarily confused.
“The thousands of people in Ceadoc town?” A smile grew on his face, like watching a crack form in hardening mud.
“A jest,” he said, although it was not, and I suspected he knew that. “Of course, when in the company of jesters I should expect such things. But no, this is a place for kings. Common people would not understand it, they would mistreat it. It is from the age of balance. One day something will break and all this will be lost.” He turned to me and smiled, pointing to a pool. “Bathe here, we shall wait.”
I waited for him and his guards to move away but they did not. Gamelon did not turn away either, only stared at me. There was a hunger in his eyes.
“It is forbidden for an assassin to undress in front of another,” I said.
“Is it?” Gamelon raised an eyebrow. “I have never heard that before.”
It was not, but years of cutting the Landsman’s Leash into my flesh while I learned to control the magic within me had left an intricate network of scars across my skin. Any Landsmen would recognise it. I felt quite sure that Gamelon would also.
“Each sorrowing has their own rules,” I said, “and we follow them.”
“I am afraid we cannot leave someone as dangerous as you are alone and I am not foolish enough to turn my back on you.”
“Then I will have to manage,” I said. I stripped off my boots and greaves. Gamelon studied the curled and sore ball of my club foot, as if hypnotised by it, and I moved so it was not so readily apparent. Then I stripped off my motley and the shirt of small black plates I wore underneath it, leaving me dressed only in the shift of fine wool I wore to stop the armour rubbing my skin.
“You wear all that, in this heat?” said Gamelon.
“It is better to be uncomfortable than dead,” I said. The highguard around Gamelon watched me, hands on their blades and I realised how foolish I had been. What an easy place this would be to finish me, without my weapons, without armour. Gamelon seemed to read my mind.
“You are quite safe,” he said. “If I ha
d wanted you dead, Girton Club-Foot,” his gaze slid to my foot and I moved back so I was up to my knees in warm white water, “I would have had you killed in your cell.” Did he refer to the assassin who had left me a note? “Now, bathe. Become comfortable.” He nodded at the water and I slid further into it, still wearing my shift of wool. When I was clean I submerged entirely, rubbing my face and feeling the layers of make-up peeling away in the warm water.
My mind drifted. It was as if I had built up all my tiredness in the cell and was now releasing it into the heated water: my muscles un-knotting, my mind unravelling. Around me I felt the throbbing life of Gamelon and his guards, their lives so bright against the nauseous presence of the souring far below the castle. How was that possible? Past them I could feel other lives, servants and slaves moving around the castle, armies, and other presences that I could not quite understand: life, but different, dulled. And something else, something I did not recognise, had never felt before, but the more I concentrated on it and the further I extended my mind, the less sure of it I became. It was like a fish, flitting in front of me, drawing me out of myself, promising me something I did not understand but wanted.
I sank.
Down and down.
Grey water—dull water.
Water like mist.
Water whose temperature was so close to my own that it hardly felt like it was there at all. It seemed I floated in an eternal emptiness. These waters were unlike any other. They did not shift like the sea. They did not flow like a stream. This was dead water, slack water. I felt no hint of Blue Watta the hedging lord of the deeps around me. Though I had come close to drowning as a child, and often feared the tangling hand of the hedging lord, there was no comfort in his absence.
I felt nothing.
Nothing.
This water ran through the centre of the souring, bubbling through pipes—any and all life sucked from it—and by the time it reached here it was empty and begging to be filled. It clawed at me. It wanted my thoughts and spoke to me in a quiet and familiar voice. It wanted to know of me, to be part of me. It was as if it were hungry, hungry for life, to experience it, to feed on it.
Thoughts, Drusl, oh Drusl, spilled out of my mind, as if I were unspooling. Hattisha, I loved you, I loved you, dark memories, the door of a blood gibbet clanging shut, strange memories. A moan escaped my lips. Through the water I saw the distorted face of Gamelon leaning over the pool, as if in expectation.
“No!” It was as if a pair of unseen hands pushed me upwards. I kicked out, emerging from the water with a splash, throwing myself toward the edge of the bath. Grasping the stone edges. Pulling myself out, coughing, vomiting up water from my lungs. How deep had I gone?
“Girton,” said Gamelon, “are you all right? Tell me, tell me what is wrong?” And I could feel memories and words that were as eager to escape my mouth as the water I vomited up. I gritted my teeth. Stared at the floor of the baths which was made of millions of tiny stones, polished and shiny from thousands of years of feet. I could see my face in it, distorted by the pattern of stones but still recognisably me. My make-up was gone and the man who stared back at me was unfamiliar. Long hair, running with water, blue eyes, washed out by what they had seen, creased at the corners. My lips were thin, my nose too. My teeth were good, white and strong, but the skin of the face around them was scarred from fights and falls. That person staring back at me looked haunted, worried. I did not know him. He had once been a child, skilled with weapons but lost and confused among people. I touched the reflection. My face had changed so much but the confused boy within remained. Oh, there was a veneer of sureness to it now, a show of competence. But it was a shell, a thin shell.
I remembered my master, how sure and clever I had thought her when I was young. I wondered if she had felt this when she removed her make-up and saw her true face in the mirror, all those years ago.
“Girton?” said Gamelon again, his voice full of expectation.
“Yes,” I said, pushing myself up, standing.
“Are you all right? Most simply find the waters relaxing. I have never seen anyone react like you before.” Did he lie? It was difficult to tell under the strange lines of panstick drawn on his face, they were a neat form of camouflage that hid his expressions.
“I am tired, is all.” Gamelon continued to stare at me. “If I could have my armour and motley back?” He nodded, staring hard at my face, committing it to memory, and I realised how very few people who still lived had seen my true face. It did not make me comfortable that Gamelon was now one of them, and this thought must have communicated itself to him. He turned away and my armour, then weapons, were returned to me. I could not find the sticks of make-up Saleh had given me. “Do you have my panstick?” I asked. My voice sounded emotionless, dead. Maybe it was the effect of all the steam in the air or some quirk of the vaulting architecture of the bathhouse.
“Of course,” said Gamelon, and he produced the pigment sticks from his pockets and gave them to me, then motioned me toward a room to the side where there was a good mirror. If this gave lie to the fact he needed to keep me under surveillance, then he clearly did not care about that any more than the fact he had stolen the panstick showed he had been through my belongings. I wondered how long I had been in the water. It had seemed only moments.
When I was ready he started his tour of the castle. It was not really a tour, more a showing off: an explanation of power and how it was held and used, and it quickly became obvious that Gamelon considered the high king little more than an inconvenience. We passed through glorious throne room after glorious throne room, and though he paid obeisance to each throne his gestures were perfunctory and half the rooms looked like they had not been cleaned for decades. Statues were everywhere in Ceadoc Castle, some so old the features had been erased by time, others newer and with names below them I could read: I did not recognise any of them, not even the one which stood next to a statue of Darsese and must have been his predecessor. It brought home how little power the high king truly had, how little impact he had on the day-to-day lives of anyone outside Ceadoc. I found myself becoming angry with Rufra for bringing us here. What did he see that I did not? What had brought on this mania for a position that, in many ways, was nothing more than ceremonial? What made him willing to put all our lives at risk for it?
What had I missed that made coming to this awful place worth fighting for?
Gamelon had no answer, or interest, in my questions about the old high kings, and he did not really want to show me the throne rooms or their neglected riches. It was the vast halls full of men and women going about tasks I could not fathom, and that he had no real wish to explain, that mattered to him.
“This is my kingdom, Girton. This is where the Tired Lands are truly ruled from.” I did not think it politic to tell him that Ceadoc’s proclamations were generally ignored in the outer kingdoms. “It is, of course, not true,” he said, leaning in close, “but many would say the high king is little more than a figurehead for the machinery of power, which I run.” I waited for him to name some offer. It seemed men or women in power always thought they could impress me and lure me away with the illusion of power. But Gamelon did not try, he only whisked me to the next room, and the next.
“I see many empty chairs, Gamelon,” I said. In the room before us men and women in ragged brown robes took bundles of scrolls down from a huge row of shelves. Then they sat, opened them and leafed through them before bundling them back up and placing them on different, but equally huge, shelves.
“The forgetting plague bit deep, even here,” he said, before quickly moving me to another room containing more people doing entirely fruitless-looking tasks.
“Gamelon,” I said, while we watched a group of thirty scribes copying text from one vellum to another. In a corner one of the Children of Arnst wailed as though she were being tortured and I wondered how the scribes managed to work. It definitely felt like torture to be forced to listen.
“Yes, Girton C
lub-Foot?”
“While in Ceadoc town I have heard people claim that Darsese lives.” He glanced at me and then looked back to his scribes. “Why is that?”
“Foolish superstition among the living and the thankful is all. They find the death of a man they loved hard to understand.”
“They loved him? I heard he barely ever left the castle.”
Gamelon stared at me as if I had grown another head.
“All loved him, Girton Club-Foot. He was the high king. Some even say he cured the forgetting plague.” He turned away. “Come with me now, and I shall show you why he was such a great man. You ask about the other high kings, I will show you what made Darsese different—better.” He took me from the scribe room, still talking. “I shall show you the menageries, Girton Club-Foot. I think you shall enjoy the menageries and it will help you understand.” He led me through more corridors, each one many times higher than a man and decorated with murals of the dead gods going about their daily business: anointing, decreeing. In many places faces had been excised, or objects they held obscured with paint.
“I understand the dead gods’ faces being damaged in anger, Gamelon,” I said, stopping and running my hand over the images. The paint felt like glass and the pictures were slightly raised from the wall. I watched my fingers gently rise and fall over the landscape of a headless figure’s chest. “But why is what they held gone as well?”
“Nobody knows,” he said, “it all happened so long ago. Now, come, we are nearly there.”
He led me through a door. It took everything I had not to recoil.
I have been in many places that smelled disgusting—I had just left a dungeon—but have never, before or since, found anywhere that smelled as bad as the menageries of High King Darsese. It was not just filth I could smell, but rot, and another more subtle, cloying scent: misery. Unlike the other rooms of Ceadoc very little attempt had been made to light the menageries and I could see little in the gloom. I had expected there to be noise in a menagerie: roars, growls and the trilling of lizards as I had heard in similar places kept by other rulers, but there was nothing. Despite there being more cages than I had seen in any other menagerie the place was quiet, almost silent. I wondered whether most of the animals had died from neglect after Darsese’s demise.
