Fox was waiting by the door.
“Did you have the body brought here?”
“Indeed.” Valiant let out a pitiful sigh. “I hope you have at least some idea of how difficult that was! I had to bribe the Giantling guard by the tomb with a year’s supply of elven dust, and then I had to hire the other two to bring the coffin here. I had to give a master performance in front of the Dwarf council to convince them that I was as disgusted as they were by the sudden disappearance of the body. I neglected my other business interests to come here. I want that crossbow. And I want to make a fortune off it! I’m planning on traveling to Albion myself, as soon as you have it. Wilfred the Walrus seems to be our most likely buyer, don’t you agree?”
“Sure,” Jacob answered.
He was just glad that Valiant didn’t know about his promise to Robert Dunbar. If that crossbow really did save his life, then he’d have to be careful the Dwarf didn’t shoot him.
The inside of the watchtower was empty, except for a few rusty lances and the remnants of a goat that had perished in its walls. The Witch Slayer’s body lay in one of the simple wood coffins in which the Dwarfs buried their dead mine workers.
Fox helped Jacob open the lid.
The simple coffin made the gown on the headless corpse look even more sumptuous.
Fox looked at him.
It had been a long hunt. But they’d made it this far, together. Just as they had promised each other in Valiant’s castle. Just the way their fellowship had shaped not only his but also her life for more than six years. There was hardly a memory from those years that was not shared by both of them. His second shadow. By now she was so much more than that. Nothing had ever made that clearer than these past months. She was a part of him, inseparably connected. Head, hand, and heart.
“What are you waiting for?” His impatience was making Valiant stand on tiptoes in his bespoke boots. They had not only high heels but also soles that made him taller. Dwarf cobblers were very skilled at giving their customers a few extra inches.
Jacob first pulled the sack with the hand from his bag. As with the head, he barely felt anything when he touched the dead skin. He felt a brief twinge of worry that Guismond’s magic might have lost its potency after so many centuries. You’ll know soon enough, Jacob. The fingernails still had remnants of gold on them, but they were not moldy, as one usually saw on the hand of a Warlock. Maybe Guismond had found a way to protect himself from that effect. The regular intake of Witch blood had terrible consequences. It attacked the brain and caused strong hallucinations. All Warlocks went mad at some point. If the archives in Vena were to be believed, already years before his death Guismond had began to distrust even his most loyal knights, and he had friends and enemies executed indiscriminately, usually by starving them to death in golden cages he’d hung from the walls of his palace.
The hand in the south.
Jacob leaned over the body. The hand was stiff and cold, but it fit perfectly onto the stump of the arm, as though he were assembling a sinister doll.
The wind that came rushing through the tower’s windows was cold and damp like snow, and it made the lantern Fox was holding over the casket flicker.
Jacob opened the leather pouch that contained the necklace with the heart. He tucked back the burial gown until it revealed the gold-lined hole in the chest. The black heart Ramée’s granddaughter had worn around her white neck. Jacob felt nothing but a faint warmth as he took the jewel off the chain. It almost seemed to welcome his touch.
The heart in the east.
It fit into the gold-lined hole as though Guismond had a stone heart beating in his chest even when he was alive. And he may well have had.
The Goyl had kept the head in the same swindlesack Jacob had carried it in.
The head in the west.
Like the hand, the face was stiff and lifeless as Jacob pulled it out of the sack, but as soon as he put it on the stump of the neck, the golden lips parted.
The gurgle that emanated from the open mouth sounded like the last sigh of a dying man. The corpse’s pink skin turned gray, and the face began to crumble as though someone had shaped it from golden sand. The neck, the hands, the entire corpse crumbled into itself. Even the gown rotted in front of their eyes, until the casket was filled with nothing but gray dust mixed with a few specks of gold.
“What the devil?”
Valiant stared down at it, aghast, but Jacob breathed a sigh of relief. The Witch Slayer’s magic was still working. And he had found himself a new abode, like a bird let out of its cage.
Fox was already by one of the windows, looking at the ruins.
A shadow manifested from the darkness of the night. It took shape very slowly, for what was molding itself there was huge. Towers, battlements, walls. At first they were transparent, like smudged glass, but then they became stone, as sallow as the dust in the coffin.
The palace, which kept growing into the night like a stone thistle, had not been built to impress through its beauty. It was meant to do only one thing: inspire awe. Even from a distance, one could see the cages on the crenellated walls where Guismond had let his friends and foes starve to death. Beneath them Jacob could make out the Iron Gate. If the stories passed down from the times of the Witch Slayer were true, then the gate came to life with lethal force whenever an enemy demanded entry. A treasure hunter trying to steal Guismond’s crossbow was unlikely to be considered a friend.
Well, first you have to get to that gate, Jacob.
*
Outside, the Giantling was still piling rocks on his companion’s body. The higher he piled them, the more importance he accorded to his dead comrade. Every friend and relative who visited the grave of a Giantling added a stone, so that the graves often grew to the size of a small hill.
The prince was still unconscious. The Giantling had given him quite a thrashing, but he’d survive. Jacob wasn’t sure whether that was good news or bad. Imagining Louis on the throne wasn’t necessarily a comforting thought.
“His father will feed you to his dogs!” Lelou was screeching with a shrill voice. “He’ll have your hearts served for breakfast…”
“…and roll cigarettes from our skins. I know.” Jacob pulled out his knife and leaned over Louis.
Lelou watched him in speechless horror, as though he’d suddenly swallowed his tongue.
“Yes, it’s a pity he can’t come with us,” Jacob said, cutting a few strands of Louis’s pale blond hair. “I’m sure the Iron Gate would welcome him more warmly than me.”
“What’s that supposed to be for?” Valiant asked. “Are you going to sell a strand to every girl you find pining at the prince’s portrait, dreaming of becoming Queen of Lotharaine?”
Jacob left that question unanswered. Never had he felt more grateful for the things Alma had taught him—things that Witches usually never divulged to a human. She had once pulled out one of his hairs and wrapped it around her bony finger. “This here tells me more about you than your blood,” she told him. “Every single hair reveals who you are and where you come from. Yet you humans leave it in combs and brushes without realizing that even a few strands of it give any stranger the chance to put a very powerful part of you in his pocket. For a Witch, the hair you leave on a hairdresser’s floor is enough to create a doppelgänger in just a few hours.”
He didn’t have enough for that. But maybe it would make Guismond’s gate accept him as a distant descendant. It was worth a try.
“You have no right!” Lelou’s voice trembled with rage. “Treasure hunter? You’re all filthy thieves. The crossbow belongs to Guismond’s heirs.”
Jacob got up.
“Yes, but why did his children never come to claim it? What do you think, Lelou?” He put Louis’s hair in one of the empty swindlesacks. “Maybe they never even came to his tomb. How do you expl
ain that? Just with the fact that the Witch Slayer was a terrible father and quite mad toward the end? Did he, as some say, have their mother killed, and was that why they rejected him? Or were they simply too busy waging war against one another?”
Arsene Lelou pressed his colorless lips together. Still, as expected, he couldn’t resist the chance to show off his knowledge.
“They thought their father wanted to kill them all!” he twanged. “That’s why they never came to the tomb. That’s why they never searched for the crossbow. They were convinced Guismond would find a way to kill them.”
Valiant uttered a skeptical grunt. “Why should he? He needed an heir.”
Lelou rolled his eyes. “The Witch Slayer was crazy. He didn’t want anybody on his throne, not even one of his children. He wanted the world to stand still after his death. It was supposed to begin and end with him.”
Fox went to Jacob’s side.
“We should get going,” she said quietly.
Yes, but Jacob was still thinking about what Lelou had said. Maybe taking Louis’s hair wasn’t such a good idea?
He pulled Fox away.
Behind them, Lelou was reciting every horror story ever written about the Dead City. Jacob knew them all.
From his pocket he took the chain Ramée’s granddaughter had worn—and possibly Guismond’s daughter before her.
“I will get you a pendant for it,” he said as he put it around Fox’s neck. “The most beautiful one I can find in Guismond’s palace. But let me go alone. Please! It’s too dangerous. I’ll come back with the crossbow. I promise.”
Fox replied by placing her hand over where the Fairy’s moth covered his heart. “What could be worse than the Bluebeard’s house?” she asked. “Or worse than having to wait here for you?”
At a signal from Valiant, the Giantling kicked an opening in the fence.
The Dwarf handed Jacob two candles.
“They weren’t easy to find,” he said. “Your debts are growing and growing. I will wait here for you. The tomb was enough for me, but don’t get any ideas. I’ll find you, whatever you may try to cheat me out of my share. Believe me, I can be much more unpleasant than Crookback.”
“I remember,” said Jacob. He followed Fox across the trampled fence.
58
HEAD START
Pale blood was dripping from the Waterman’s fingers as he cut Nerron’s ties. He’d scraped the scales off his arms to free himself. Some of his olive-green flesh was probably still stuck to the carriage wheel, yet he never even flinched.
They had, of course, taken all their weapons.
Tricked by a prince dumber than any horse you’ve ever ridden, Nerron.
They saw the palace already from afar. So the Dwarf had brought Guismond’s body with him. Nerron was sick with rage as he pointed his spyglass at the watchtower where the exchange was supposed to have taken place. A pile of stones that looked suspiciously like the grave of a Giantling, and a few dead bodies in front of it. He couldn’t make out who they were, but the Giantling crouching over them was hard to miss. He was quite a hefty specimen. What, by Crookback’s hangman, had happened there?
“Can you see Louis?” Nerron was glad the hatred in the Waterman’s voice was not aimed at him.
He shook his head.
“I want to hear his princely neck snap,” Eaumbre whispered. “Or crush his throat until his stupid face turns as blue as the sky.”
Some Watermen spent years hunting down a man who’d insulted or cheated them. Eaumbre had been very patient with Louis. But Nerron didn’t care whether the prince was still alive. All he cared about was whether Reckless was among the dead. But not even that information was worth tussling with a Giantling for.
He pushed the spyglass back into his belt.
Eaumbre eyed the ruins and the palace that was built around the mountain like a crown. “The Witch Slayer had more treasure than just the crossbow, right?”
“Probably.”
Eaumbre rubbed his raw arms. “If Louis is there, he’s mine,” he whispered.
“And if not?”
The Waterman bared his teeth. “Then hopefully I’ll find enough gold to compensate me.”
59
THE DEAD CITY
Weathered facades. Cracked pillars. Arched doorways. Stairs leading nowhere. Even the skeleton of the Dead City still showed how opulent it had once been. The street they were following wound steeply past crumbled houses. The silence was as black as the moonless night. Jacob thought the first face he saw was an embellishment, the legacy of a talented mason. But they were everywhere, staring out of the gray walls like fossils. Women, men, children.
The stories were true. Guismond had taken the whole city with him to his death. ‘He wanted the world to stand still after his death.’ It was supposed to begin and end with him. Smart Bug!
The Witch Slayer had locked them into the stones of their houses. What had killed them? His final breath? Had he died with a curse on his lips? Jacob thought he could hear their voices as the wind brushed through the empty streets. It groaned and sighed, driving dead leaves in front of it, loosening weathered stones from walls that had been bleached like bones by the passing centuries. Swarms of will-o’-the-wisps dotted them with light, and a few plague-finches were frantically hopping around on the cracked paving stones. Apart from that, the deserted streets with their hemline of dead faces were still.
They were picking a path through the debris of a collapsed tower, when a man jumped out from behind the remnants of a statue. Jacob hacked off his arm before he could ram his rusty scythe into Fox’s back. His clothes were covered with pieces of glass and metal. A Preacher. His eyes were as empty as those of the dead in the walls. Six more were waiting beneath a triumphal arch, its weathered marble celebrating Guismond’s victories over Albion and Lotharaine. They fought as stubbornly as if they were defending a living city, but luckily their weapons were old, and the men weren’t very well fed. Jacob killed three and Fox shot another before he could push Jacob against the hexed walls. The others fled, though one of them stopped after a few steps to scream curses in the local dialect of the surrounding mountains. He didn’t stop screaming until Fox put a warning shot in front of his feet. The curse was superstition, born of the helpless fear of real magic, but the screams attracted more of the ragged figures. They appeared everywhere between the ruins. Some just stood there, staring or throwing stones at them. Others stumbled into their path with rusty pitchforks and shovels they must have stolen from some farmer nearby.
Jacob and Fox had to kill four more before the others left them in peace, and Jacob was sure there’d be more of them waiting at the palace. Guismond’s modern knights. Jacob wondered whether it was the magic that pervaded this ruined city that told them to guard it, or whether it was the fear of their own mortality that had brought them to this place of death—the hope that these ruins might harbor the secret of how to escape the ultimate end.
Not much different from the hope that brought you here, Jacob.
They only made slow progress toward the palace. Their path was often blocked by debris, collapsed bridges, crumbled stairs—Jacob felt as though he was again trapped in a labyrinth. This time, however, Fox was with him, and even the fear of his own death was nothing compared to the fear he’d felt for her in the labyrinth of the Bluebeard.
The ruins grew ever higher into the night sky. Some had walls that were constructed like stone grids. Dragon kennels. They were located right beneath the palace. The street climbed ever steeper up the slope. Jacob felt how much even the short fights with the Preachers had exhausted him. You’re dying, Jacob. But the words no longer had any meaning, as if he’d thought them too often.
Another Dragon kennel. Instead of faces, these walls showed huge muzzles, spiny necks, wings, and barbed tails. Guismond was said to have capt
ured hundreds of Dragons to use in his wars. Instead of the stone they usually ate, Guismond had fed them peasants and enemy soldiers, Witches, Trolls, Dwarfs. It had driven them insane, like cows fed on meat.
One last kennel. The street in front of it was gouged by giant talons. The stairs at its end were even wider than those that had led them down to Guismond’s tomb. These went up, and they were so long that a whole army could have deployed on the steps. A hundred steps to the Iron Gate, and beyond a hundred ways to die. Jacob couldn’t remember where he’d read those words. He was so exhausted that he barely remembered how he’d gotten here. His chest ached with every step, but Fox stayed close by his side.
The stairs led to a snow-covered plaza. The clouds hung so low that the palace’s towers were hidden in their haze. Suspended from the gray walls were the golden cages, and through the bars they could still see the remains of Guismond’s prisoners. The whole palace looked as if it had been cursed just the day before, not centuries earlier.
The Iron Gate stood out from the walls like a seal. The iron shimmered like the breastplate of a king. Jacob could see neither a lock nor a latch, just a garland of skulls and the crest they’d also seen on Guismond’s tomb.
The ragged corpses in front of the gate were more recent than the sad remains in the cages. Some had charred hands, or whole arms burnt to their elbows. Others had terrible bite marks. The Preachers must have thought the entrance to heaven had finally revealed itself; instead, they had knocked on the gate of a Warlock.
Jacob felt the same darkness he’d encountered in the tomb, like a clenched fist behind the gate. And all he had was a handful of princely hair and whatever he’d managed to learn about this world in his twelve years of treasure hunting. Fox dragged one of the corpses out of the way. And you have her, Jacob.
As soon as Fox approached the gate, it began to glow like the metal in a smithy’s forge.
Reckless II Page 24
