‘Stop!’
It irked that she had to shout her commands but the necromancy still festering in her had retreated too far for the dead to respond directly to her desire.
The cavalry came to an untidy halt. The horses didn’t take well to dead riders, even if they were the same riders they had carried on the previous night and for weeks before that. Some had refused, screaming and bucking when their dead owners tried to reclaim them. Chella had thought to cut their throats, but Kai convinced her to turn the animals free and send the spare riders back to join the Dead King’s advance.
‘Why have we stopped?’ Kai leaned in toward her, guiding his horse with both knees.
‘I need to ask Thantos a question,’ she said.
There’s a slope down toward evil, a gentle gradient that can be ignored at each step, unfelt. It’s not until you look back, see the distant heights where you once lived, that you understand your journey. Chella looked up from her depths in sudden epiphany. Such moments had punctuated her life, her half-life, drawn out over a hundred years and more. Not once had they given her more than brief pause. Not once had she stepped back.
‘Come,’ she told him, a touch of tenderness in her voice. It should have been enough to set him running.
They went together. Kai not wanting to, but pushing down his fear.
Chella set her hand to the carriage door. The metal handle made her skin dry, made it old. She pulled it open.
‘Now?’ she asked, speaking into the empty horror of the carriage.
And by way of answer a grey contagion flowed out. Kai screamed as it wrapped him. For an instant Chella glimpsed the lichkin, its slim bones insinuating themselves into Kai’s flesh, through clothing, past armour. It took a while. Too long. Ages. Kai’s choking screams drowned out all other sounds, his flesh writhing to accommodate its new occupant, until finally his jaw snapped shut and left her ears ringing.
Thantos turned Kai’s head to look at Chella, bones grating. He didn’t speak. The lichkin stood beyond words. Nothing that interested them could fit within such mean packages.
‘He’ll last. He’s strong,’ Chella said.
Thantos climbed back into the carriage. Even drugged, the team drawing the carriage were skittish. Two had died and been replaced. There was no possibility that a horse would bear him to the palace, not even now he was clothed in flesh.
‘Can you hear me in there, Kai?’ Something in the eyes said he might be listening now that his screams were silent screams. ‘Did you never wonder that we came with five votes but only two delegates? Could not the Dead King spare three more necromancers, or cleaner men bound to his cause? We came in a pair. One host, and one to guard the host, ready to move against him if he should anticipate his fate.’ Secrets are best kept behind a single pair of lips.
Thantos reached out and closed the door, an awkward motion within his stolen flesh.
‘But you never did anticipate.’ Chella spoke the words to the closed door and shook her head. ‘You should have learned to fly,’ she spat. To fault him made it easier.
Above the outlying spread of Vyenese houses, neat little homes with wooden shingles and log piles stacked to the eaves against the coming of winter, came the stink of burning. In many places hearth-smoke rose white from stone chimneys, but in others the smoke lifted in black and angry clouds. Horror stalked the streets, rose earth-covered from family graves, crept in from field and forest. The Dead King’s tide swept in from the west, true enough, from the Drowned Isles, through Ancrath and Gelleth, through Attar, Charland and the Reichs, but it also rose from the very ground, as if a dark ocean waited below the soil, fathoms deep, and now swelled from the depths at the Dead King’s call, lifting the fallen from their tombs.
At Vyene’s gates guard units in their golds thundered past in both directions. News came from west to east. Reinforcements, regular army units from Conquence in the main, made the march east to west. More Gilden Guard manned the gate than would be necessary even at Congression. Additional troops lined the walls, archers with an even mix of longbow and crossbow. They’d clearly had little experience if they thought arrows would stop the dead.
‘Hurry through, madam, you’re the last and we’re to seal the gates.’ The gate captain waved the column on, with no concern for any report from the captains of the escort, no demand that they explain their thinned number or ragged formation. Not even the lack of followers sparked his interest: perhaps he thought they had sought shelter along the way or hurried to arrive ahead of the guard.
Thantos’s carriage rumbled through without remark, though the men closest to it paled, despair soaking into them through their skins.
On through the broad streets of Vyene, onto the wideness of West Street beneath the Western Arch. The grandeur on all sides worked its own magic on Chella. For all her long life she had seen nothing close. Hers were the graveyards and the mire, the bones of forgotten men and the tombs erected to their memory. In the face of such works of men as these she knew herself dirty and small, a bone-picker, a thing of nightmare and of the dark.
‘The Dead King will make a necropolis here.’ It made her feel better to speak the words. Not that she wanted to live always amongst the returned – with life pulsing through her the thought made her stomach roil – but the sheer wonder of Vyene insulted her existence in ways beyond explanation and she would rather see it dust than endure the judgment of its empty windows.
Another contingent of guards passed them as they neared the end of West Street where it opened onto a vast square. Several hundred men, a thousand maybe, riding hard, with the Lord Commander at their head. The Dead King had mentioned Lord Commander Hemmet, spoken of the cloak and staff that would mark him out. A man to watch.
Riding to the palace it seemed that the dome would never grow closer, that its size went from incredible to impossible as they advanced. At one point, perhaps halfway between the distant mansions and the greatness of the palace, the flagstones lay stained with blood. Some effort had been taken to clean the area but the smell of slaughter is hard to disguise. A pulse of dark joy broke from the carriage, brief and then gone, but enough to set the horses pitching and jumping in fear. These deaths pleased the lichkin. A potential foe erased. The wind still carried fortune with it from the west.
Chella’s troop closed on their station, the last to be filled, just to the left of the Empire Gate. They turned from their allotted path only at the final moment, and rode at a walk into the grand entrance before the gate. The thin gold line of duty-guards fell into disarray, confused at their comrades from the road dismounting in the grand entrance. Before they had much to say about it the lichkin stepped from his carriage and all the men’s attention became drawn to him as a man will stare at the bloody stump where his thumb was before he cut it off.
50
‘This has to be fast.’
‘It’s been a hundred and twenty-eight years so far, King Jorg,’ Taproot said. ‘And we’ve not come close to selecting an emperor. Whatever this Congression throws up, fast is the one thing you can count on it not being.’
‘We’ve no time. Can’t you feel it?’ It beat in me like a drum, the threat, the danger, drawing closer.
Taproot offered only wide eyes and blank incomprehension. ‘The guard surround us …’
‘It has to be done fast.’ I ran my eye over the throng, the high and the mighty. ‘Who leads the biggest faction?’
‘I would say you do,’ Taproot said. ‘Watch me.’ An afterthought.
‘Well that’s good. And then?’
‘Czar Moljon, the Queen of Red, and Costos of the Port Kingdoms. Your father also commanded considerable support.’
I spotted my grandfather amongst the crowd, Miana at his side. ‘Moljon is broken – his followers will be looking for new alliances. The queen is outside … Costos it is then. Point him out for me.’
For some reason I had expected a peacock but Costos stood taller than me, with a warrior’s build, clad neck to toe in
burnished steel mail, enamelled across the breastplate with a sunburst behind a black ship, the detail exquisite.
‘Are there laws about approaching the throne?’ I asked.
‘What? Yes – no, I don’t think so. Any fool knows not to.’ Taproot’s unease lived in his fingertips, pulling at hair, buttons, ties.
I walked over to the dais, slow enough, with Taproot flustering behind. Up the steps in two skips and I stood before the throne. ‘I hope you can hear me, Fexler. I want to know if you can work the doors and the lights for me. If you can’t, well I’ve no idea what the point of my last visit was.’ I spoke in a low voice that might be mistaken for a prayer.
For a moment the illumination grew around me, just a fraction and just for a heartbeat, as if far above me the ceiling lights aimed at the throne shone a little brighter. It called to mind the time beneath my grandfather’s castle when Fexler had moved me along his path with failing glow-bulbs. I’m sure Fexler had more important reasons four years before for needing to be brought here, physically, rather than swimming through his hidden ocean. Maybe I helped him past walls I couldn’t see. And perhaps we owed the fact that Vyene was not yet poisoned dust to his residence – but whatever his motivation it was lights and doors that mattered to me most in this moment.
‘And will you hear me wherever I speak?’ Again the glow.
‘You, boy!’ Costos striding my way, bristling, indignant, and gleaming.
‘Boy?’ I had hoped it would be him. It fell to Costos to rebuke me now. The pecking order among royals is as strict as that among chickens.
‘This boy has twenty-six votes behind him, Costos Portico. Perhaps you would do better to call me King Jorg and see what inducements might persuade me to make you emperor.’
That made Costos look again, and hard. Outrage at my trampling of convention warred with his lust for those twenty-six votes. He approached the foot of the dais. I knew what picture that put in the minds of the Hundred. Costos at my feet. A supplicant.
‘We should speak, King Jorg.’ He lowered his voice to a deep whisper. ‘But not where idle ears might hear us. The Roman room should afford us some privacy. Come with whichever of your bannermen will show their hands.’
I nodded, liege to subject, and waited for him to move away before stepping down from the dais.
‘A tricksy one is Costos, watch me!’ Taproot at my shoulder once again. ‘Violent temper, won the Port Kingdom tourney three years in a row when he was young. He was a third son and not expecting to inherit. Watch his second, King Peren of Ugal, a shrewd negotiator and cold as ice. The short man with the scar, there! See him?’
Costos moved around the hall, touching a man here, a man there, assembling his entourage. Too slow for my liking. Beyond him, Gorgoth towered above the crowd, ignoring everyone, head cocked as if listening.
‘Which is the Roman room?’ Taproot nodded to one of the doorways, suppressing a smile. It was the chamber Elin once showed me. She might well be in there now, showing it to her husband. Was there nothing the good doctor didn’t know?
I counted fifteen men into the Roman room, Costos the last to enter.
‘I should gather your supporters,’ Taproot prompted. It would take more than his word to bring my disparate collection of nobles before Costos.
‘I’ll go alone.’ I left him standing.
The Hundred watched me go, some puzzled, some curious, some with the name ‘Pius’ on their lips.
I halted in the doorway. Costos’s supporters stood before me in a loose arc, confident, knowing exactly how these matters worked.
‘You’ve come alone?’ Costos made his displeasure clear and loud.
‘I felt it best,’ I said. ‘Close the door.’ And a hand span behind me the steel door slid down without a sound.
It took several seconds for any of them to find their voice. ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ King Peren of Ugal recovered first, shock still muting the others.
‘You wanted privacy? No?’ I walked toward them. Several backed away, without knowing why – the instinct that removes the sheep from the wolf’s path.
‘But how … ?’ Costos waved a meaty fist at the sheet of steel behind me.
I let the Orlanth rod of office slide from my sleeve, catching it around the end before it escaped me. In the same motion I swung at Costos. To say his head exploded would be no exaggeration. I have seen close up, frozen in time, the damage that a bullet does in passing through a man’s skull. In the bright arc of blood behind the sweep of my rod the same pieces glistened. I had killed King Peren before the first drop of Costos’s blood hit the floor.
Two more men went down with cracked heads before the others scattered out of reach. Old men both, and slow. I had started with Costos as the greatest danger, but others amongst the eleven remaining had their health about them, and many of the Hundred have taken what they hold by strength of arm.
‘This is madness!’
‘He’s crazed.’
‘Pull together. He’s trapped in here with us.’ This from Onnal, one of Costos’s advisors and a warrior born.
So much in life is a matter of perspective. ‘I rather think you’re trapped in here with me,’ I told them.
Tutor Lundist taught me to fight with a stick. He had several good arguments for pursuing the study. Firstly there are many times when you may find yourself without a sword, but a good stick is rarely hard to find. Secondly he proved to be extraordinarily good at it. I don’t normally ascribe the old man base motives, but everyone likes to show off, and how many people who’ve known me a while wouldn’t relish giving me a good beating with a piece of timber?
‘The last and main reason,’ he had said, ‘is to instil discipline. Your sword lessons may come to that in time, but for now I see few signs. To be a Ling stick-fighter requires a harmony of mind and body.’
I lay back at the side of the Lectern Courtyard, finding my breath and nursing my bruises. ‘Who taught you, Tutor? How did you get to be so good?’
‘Again!’ And he advanced, his ash rod a blur in the air.
I rolled one way then the other, failing to avoid either blow. ‘Ow!’ Tried to block and got my fingers mashed. ‘Ouch!’ Tried to rise and found the blunt end of his stick below my Adam’s apple.
‘I learned from masters in Ling, in the court where my father tutored princelings. My brother Luntar and I trained together for many years. These are the teachings of Lee, saved from before the Thousand Suns in vaults beneath Pekin City.
I took the stance, folded the iron-wood rod beneath my elbow, and beckoned Onnal forward, just a flexing of the fingers, as Lundist had beckoned me so many times.
51
Chella’s Story
Thantos walked Kai’s body away from the newly-dead guards between the empire gates. It seemed foolishness to Chella to have built such gates and to have them stand open. If they were not closed now when were they ever closed?
The corpses began to stand, awkward, jerky, drawn by invisible strings, occupied now by only the basest instincts of the men who owned them, housing only their sins. The lichkin spent his power with reckless disregard, but the Dead King had commanded it and so it would be.
‘Hold the gate,’ Chella said, her voice soft.
Thantos turned to stare, his gaze like the touch of sudden grief, of inconsolable, intolerable loss. The creature made her feel that she had lost her child just by looking at her. What would it be to have it riding within your flesh?
Kai collapsed as Thantos flowed out, released in a single breath, red-tinged. Within an instant the lichkin was everywhere, insinuated into the shadows of the grand entrance, haunting the empty spaces. It would take the bravest of men to walk in from the failing light of day outside. It would take more than bravery for them to walk out again. At least alive.
Chella removed the thong from around her neck. The black vial depending from it had hung above her heart half the journey, nestled spider-like through long hours on the road, bounced there when
Jorg of Ancrath had her. She hurried to Kai’s side and dribbled the contents into his mouth while he retched and stared unseeing. The vial held ichor from a lead-lined tomb. An agent of the Dead King had ridden hard to bring it to her on the road catching up with the column somewhere close to Tyrol. Three horses died under the man between Crath City and Tyrol. He didn’t tell her which tomb had been desecrated. But Chella knew.
‘You should have learned to fly. You could have taken that pretty nothing with you, Kai.’ She spat the words and tried to hate him.
The Dead King’s brew worked fast. Kai stopped choking. Knowing came back into his eyes. The thing that had last looked at Chella out of Artur Elgin now watched her from inside Kai. Though he might seize almost any corpse, the Dead King could not exercise his full might through them. It took time for him to settle into a dead man and strengthen him sufficiently to be a conduit for the terrors at his command. A necromancer, however, suitably prepared, provided a more robust host. And the contents of the vial accelerated the process beyond measure.
‘This is the palace?’ He sat up.
When you’re among lichkin you can imagine nothing worse. The Dead King is worse. Chella tried to speak but words wouldn’t come from her dry mouth.
The Dead King ignored her silence. Instead he flexed Kai’s limbs, clenched his fingers into fists, and drew his face into a death’s head grin. ‘This is good. Very good.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m here in my power. Death in life.’ Again the smile, a sudden and unholy joy behind it. ‘More! More than my power!’ His voice hardly raised but it hurt her ears even so. ‘I am remade. I have my foundation once again. I am more.’
All around her the dead quickened. The guards’ still hearts beat with swift corruption, no longer the shambling things they had been when first returned but darker, stronger makings like the quick dead of the Cantanlona swamp. Her work of months there accomplished here in seconds by her master’s will.
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