Dalliah walked quickly towards a small building in the centre of the grounds, and Bandermain stopped twice to cough and compose himself, forcing Silas to stop too.
‘Keep moving,’ he said, drawing his sword and jabbing his back with the blade. ‘You are wasting time.’
Bandermain looked up at Silas, clutching his shivering chest. ‘Do not ruin this,’ he said. ‘I need this.’
Dalliah was too far away to hear Bandermain’s words. Silas pulled him up and pushed him forward. He had no intention of letting an enemy walk behind him. ‘Move,’ he said.
‘I know you don’t want to be here,’ said Bandermain. ‘Do you think I chose this?’
‘I know you think you’re getting something out of it,’ said Silas, forcing him on. ‘But you’re wrong. You are dying. Get used to it.’
Bandermain laughed quietly. ‘You do not have to think about death,’ he said. ‘And soon, neither will I. I won’t let you destroy this for me. Let it happen. We will both be better off.’
Silas kept walking.
‘When I first found out what my leaders wanted from your country I thought they were insane,’ said Bandermain, his words breaking with each breath. ‘They think your High Council can communicate with the dead. They told me they wanted to learn the secret for themselves, but I did not believe in the veil then. I was not interested in the Skilled. I thought they were witches, fools and liars. Then I met Dalliah and I knew that I had been wrong. When she told me about you . . . what had happened to you . . . I thought it was all just Albion propaganda. “The soldier who could not die.” But you weren’t a soldier any more. You were never sent into battle again. The High Council made you return to the ranks of the wardens. They were keeping you close by.’
‘I was doing my duty,’ said Silas.
‘And now you are a traitor.’ Bandermain laughed, forcing his lungs to spasm. His knees buckled. His hands grasped for Silas’s arm but Silas stepped away and let Bandermain hit the ground. His body twitched, but Silas did nothing. Dalliah stopped and turned.
‘Your new friend is dying,’ said Silas. ‘Now is as good a time as any to let him get on with it.’
Dalliah hurried back to Bandermain’s side, crouched down beside him and laid her hand upon his throat. ‘I cannot help him here,’ she said. ‘Carry him.’
‘Why? Why is he so important?’
‘He isn’t. His orders are,’ said Dalliah. ‘Help him up.’ Bandermain’s eyes were wide and his mouth hung open as he gasped for breath. ‘Pick him up.’
‘No,’ said Silas.
Dalliah glared at him in fury, but when she spoke she sounded calm, managing to keep her temper under control. ‘This is very simple,’ she said. ‘Bandermain is no fool. If the Blackwatch return with the girl and find him dead, they have orders to kill her before she even sets foot within my walls.’
‘If he passes the creeping lung to her she will be dead anyway,’ said Silas.
‘We need her alive, and we need him,’ said Dalliah. ‘Some of Bandermain’s men are not as amenable as he has been. They will not hesitate to kill the girl and I will not be able to stop them before they do.’
‘I will stop them,’ said Silas. ‘We do not need to appease the Blackwatch.’
‘That is not your decision,’ said Dalliah. ‘You have spent barely twelve years without your spirit and already you believe you know everything. When you have lived a handful of centuries more perhaps you will understand that there are sacrifices to be made if you are to live any kind of meaningful life. Why do you think I am here and not in Albion? I lived on my home soil for two hundred years before they tried to hunt me. You lasted not much more than a decade. Do you not think the Blackwatch came looking for me when I arrived here just as they were sent looking for you? News travels swiftly over the water, Silas. Our presence terrifies those who are not like us and I too have been forced to make many sacrifices in my life. I have been forced to trade secrets, to find allies, to associate with people I would much rather see with their heads on sticks than sipping from a wine glass beside me. Bandermain is such an ally. If he dies now neither of us will get what we want.’
Silas looked down at Bandermain. His lips were tinged with blue, his wheezing had stopped and his body had fallen limp.
‘I can slow his death but I cannot prevent it,’ said Dalliah. ‘Carry him.’
Silas grabbed Bandermain’s arm and slung the dying man over his shoulder.
The walls of the building glinted as they walked towards it. Quartz-flecked cobblestones had been spread across the entire dome-shaped structure, making it look as if something was rising out of the courtyard, forcing up the cobbles like a whale breaking the surface of the ocean. Its door was made of swirls of iron and delicate panes of thin glass that shone blue in the rising moonlight. Dalliah unlocked it and stepped back, letting Silas carry Bandermain in first.
Inside the building was one single room; circular and small, but with the kind of atmosphere that set hairs prickling on the back of the neck. To Silas, the difference between that ominous room and the outside world was as clear as the difference between air and water.
‘Put him down in the centre,’ said Dalliah.
Silas walked forward slowly, carefully analysing his surroundings. The wall had no windows and its bare wooden frame was layered thickly with rows of yellowed bones. Some of the bones were decades old and others were boiled white and fresh. They were tied vertically to the wall, creating what looked like a gruesome fence, and hanging down from the ceiling in front of them were long cords holding thin candles and oil lamps, along with narrow-necked bottles and vials filled with what could only be blood.
‘What is this?’ demanded Silas. ‘This is not true veil work.’
‘It is the way I work,’ said Dalliah. ‘Lay him down.’
‘Whose blood is this?’
‘That is not important,’ said Dalliah. ‘Your blood is in here somewhere, if that is what you are asking. The Blackwatch had plenty of time to take it while you were in their hands.’
‘Take them down,’ said Silas. ‘All of them.’
‘Why? I thought you were a soldier. I expect you have spilled more than your share of blood in your time. This is no different.’
Silas dropped Bandermain unceremoniously to the floor. ‘It is very different.’
‘Why? Because you don’t understand it? If everyone condemned everything they did not understand there would be very little else for them to do in this world.’
Dalliah knelt down beside Bandermain and once more pressed her hand against his throat. This time the veil answered her. Bandermain breathed in suddenly, rolled on to his side and spat blood across the floor.
‘How many times have you done that to him?’ asked Silas.
‘More than I thought I would need to,’ replied Dalliah. ‘This time will be the last.’
Silas looked round at the hundreds of glass containers swinging gently with the movement of air in the room.
‘Da’ru wore a necklace filled with blood when she worked the listening circles,’ he said. ‘Is this where she learned to do it?’
‘I taught her a little of what time had taught me,’ said Dalliah. ‘She was my hand across the ocean. She could attempt techniques in Albion that I could never achieve here. She was a useful tool. I learned a lot from her mistakes . . . and from her successes.’ Dalliah stood up and looked straight at Silas, daring him to say the words that were already on his lips.
‘You told her how to use the circles,’ he said. ‘You told her where the book of Wintercraft was buried and you told her to experiment on the veil. On me.’
‘As we can see, it worked very well,’ said Dalliah. ‘You should thank me. You have been able to see into a world that few people have ever known. You know the truth about the ways of the spirit. Perhaps you have suffered, but that is a small price to pay for what you have experienced. You have looked beyond the boundaries of our world. It has made you more powerful than your enem
ies and carried you beyond the limits of humankind.’
‘Why would you do that?’ asked Silas. ‘What did you have to gain?’
‘I needed someone I could trust,’ said Dalliah. ‘Someone who could see the world the way I see it. You were my first choice. The subjects who died before you were never meant to survive the procedure. Da’ru needed to perfect her skills. And she did so admirably. I only pointed her down the path the veil had already shown me. You were never meant to lead an ordinary life, Silas, any more than Kate Winters was meant to sell books in a dying town. With your skills, you could have changed Albion a thousand times over. You could have overthrown the High Council and taken their place if you had wished. I gave you a gift, Silas. And what did you do with it? You obeyed orders. You waited. You tried to ignore what had happened to you instead of exploring its possibilities. You wasted the greatest opportunity any man could be given, but how you spent your life was not important to me, so long as it led you to be in the right place at the right time. We are all following a path that was laid out for us long ago. Even him.’ She nudged Bandermain’s arm with the toe of her shoe. ‘The veil did not show me the truth until much later, but you were meant to have your spirit torn. You were meant to find Kate Winters and bind her blood to your own. Fate made sure you played your part in history, Silas. You are as much its pawn as any of us. That is why you are here.’
Silas looked round at the hanging bottles. There was no way to tell which one belonged to him, but if his blood was in there it meant traces of Kate’s were too. Silas knew enough about the Skilled to see that something else was going on in that room, something that had nothing to do with Dalliah’s plans for the veil. The place felt too strange. The air felt heavy. The longer he stayed within it the more effort it took to think. ‘Those vials,’ he said. ‘How much of my blood did you take?’
‘Enough,’ said Dalliah, as Bandermain struggled to his feet. ‘That was one of the reasons I chose you. You are an intelligent man, so it surprises me how stupid you can be sometimes. Wintercraft is not a warm and friendly discipline. Its strength comes from blood, suffering and pain. Kate Winters is already discovering that for herself. Even you recognised Wintercraft as the fastest way to free your spirit and find peace in death. You did not care what would happen to the girl when you were finished with her. You did not care what you were opening up inside her soul. There were reasons her family buried that book in the end and why the Skilled were so eager to keep it secret once it had resurfaced. But Wintercraft never remains buried for long. Walkers always find their way to its pages. The veil shows us everything. You believe that you have mastered the veil’s secrets. You are wrong.’
Something sharp prickled inside Silas’s chest, like tiny hairs stabbing the inside of his lungs.
‘The creeping lung is a very interesting disease,’ said Dalliah. ‘Tiny creatures that spread and pass between hosts, embedding themselves in human lungs and slowly eating away the tissue until there is nothing left. Did you think you would be immune to it here? Do you still think your body does not need to breathe?’
Silas tested his lungs, making them bristle more sharply with each deep breath.
‘What the veil slows down, it can also speed up,’ said Dalliah. ‘Under the right conditions it can even transfer physical suffering from one body into another. We may not suffer the ravages of illness and disease, but we feel the shadow of them living within others and we can spread a sickness by influencing the soul. We can make a body believe it is suffering. We can turn it against itself and carry it right to the very point of death. How are you feeling, Silas?’
The first spasm gripped Silas’s lungs like a fist. His chest heaved and he coughed speckles of warm blood.
‘Our bodies do not degrade as quickly as those of others, but they are still quite fragile,’ said Dalliah. ‘We need to take care of them. You have been careless.’
‘This is not possible,’ said Silas.
‘Why? Because Da’ru told you it couldn’t happen?’ said Dalliah. ‘Where do you think she was getting her information? From Wintercraft? Don’t be so stupid.’
Bandermain stared at Silas as if he was watching his entire world fall apart. ‘You told me this wouldn’t happen!’ he said. ‘You told me it couldn’t affect him!’
‘Silas is as healthy as he was the moment he walked in here,’ said Dalliah. ‘His body only thinks it is ill. He cannot fight it. His mind is not strong enough.’
Silas glared up at her.
‘The girl is supposed to cure me,’ said Bandermain. ‘She is supposed to make me like him. But it makes no difference! Look at him!’
‘Calm yourself, Celador.’
‘He should not be able to die!’
‘He cannot die. But that does not mean he cannot suffer.’
Silas gasped for breath. He felt as if he was drowning. His lungs were filling with blood. His body was not healing and the damage was spreading. He had become used to believing in his body’s ability to repair itself and had spent many minutes underwater without any desperate need for air, but this was very different. His body was failing from the inside out. He had assumed, wrongly, that his lungs were no longer of any real use to him. Any energy his body needed was drawn directly from the veil. The veil had kept him alive, no matter what extent of abuse his body had suffered, and he had relied upon it to sustain him. He had not realised how precious his body still was to him until that moment.
‘Pain is the only way to control you, Silas. Da’ru proved that. You are not as strong as you believe yourself to be. Not here. Not any more. I truly believed we could be allies, but now I know better.’
Silas did not feel his body when it hit the floor. His mind was focused fully upon his chest and the scratching pain, like needle-thin claws scraping inside it. He could hear Bandermain’s voice close by and Dalliah speaking calmly in reply. He punched the floor, barely aware of the pain cracking across his knuckles as they crunched into the stones.
‘You have done well, Celador,’ Silas heard her say, as darkness spread across his vision, leaving only a pinprick of light. ‘Soon we will be free of our pain. Nothing has changed. The girl’s death will save us both.’
Silas tried to move, but his limbs were heavy, his body as immovable as a tombstone knotted down by weeds. Then his sight gave out and all he had was the drifting emptiness of the dark. He reached for the veil, focusing hard upon the circle surrounding him. He could feel Dalliah’s energy threading around the room in a gentle pulse, just enough to attract the veil. He should have noticed that. He should have sensed it, but it was too late for regrets. He felt the remnants of Kate’s blood vibrating within him: Walker’s blood. His cheek rested upon the stones, pressed within a tiny puddle of his own blood. Silas concentrated on that blood – willing it to connect with the circle and the veil. It took every ounce of energy he had left, but he felt the chill of the veil upon his face - the freezing touch of Wintercraft – as frost spread out across his cheek.
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Bandermain, but Silas was not listening.
Whatever Dalliah had done to him prevented the veil from healing his body, but she could not restrain what was left of his soul. Silas cast his mind out into the veil, fighting the pull of the pain as it struggled to draw him back. Bandermain and Dalliah stood over him, watching as his eyes glazed grey and his body fell still.
‘What does this mean?’ asked Bandermain.
Dalliah smiled and turned away, walking over to the building’s iron door.
‘Wait! What about our agreement?’
‘You will have what you were promised,’ said Dalliah.
Bandermain felt Silas’s neck, searching for a pulse, but found none. The frost of the veil crept across to his fingers and he snatched them away. ‘Witchery,’ he whispered. ‘What is this?’
But there was no one left to answer him.
18
Into the Dark
Kate looked back as the river curled swiftly away
from the city and saw its huge torchlit walls stretching in a wide curve in both directions, further than the eye could see. If there had been any wardens posted at the river gate they were gone now. Edgar nudged her arm and pointed to something dark among some leafless bushes lining the riverbank. It looked like a black boot, and there was something glinting near it. A silver dagger held in a lifeless hand.
‘So much for the wardens,’ he said.
Kate watched the walls of Fume being swallowed by the night as the Blackwatch slid the split mast up to its full height and attached a large black sail that billowed powerfully in the wind. The leader took charge and soon the wind was powering them along faster than the river could flow, cutting through the wild counties of Albion and pushing them towards the distant eastern shore.
Wintercraft: Blackwatch Page 20
