He used the wall for cover until he reached the end, and then he glanced towards Axmouth. As far as he could see, the raiders were still unaware of him and Telford’s men. Beyond the wall a Celtic cross might have been marking the absence of a grave. That was where Marcus had fallen – had been flung to his death. Over the years the cross had fallen askew; it might even be sinking into the saturated earth. It seemed neglected, abandoned to the darkness that had claimed the land. Kane dragged his gaze away and looked over the edge of the cliff.
The path he had followed alongside the wall continued down the cliff face, but not as he remembered. Either it had seemed wider to his boyish eyes or it had been narrowed by erosion, and his memory had not suggested it was so precipitous. It was less than two feet wide, and composed of mud as well as rock. Waves lashed the jagged rocks two hundred feet below, as if a gigantic fanged mouth were foaming with savage hunger. “This is the only way,” Kane said and stepped down.
Caldicott was behind him. The youth hesitated on the brink until Mcness murmured “Stay close to Captain Kane, lad.” The veteran followed Caldicott as soon as the youth ventured forward, clutching at a protrusion of the cliff. Kane would have told him not to look down, but failure to choose his footing would be at least as great a risk. “Walk where I walk,” Kane said and risked adding “God does not mean us to fall.”
He heard at least one man mutter a quick prayer before setting foot on the path, and Kane almost echoed the words aloud. The storm that had Axmouth for its heart seemed bent on dislodging the men from the cliff. Gusts of rain lashed them, and water streamed down the cliff face to lie deep in the hollows of the path. The earth underfoot was hardly firmer than a marsh, and the rocks were not much less slippery than ice. Every step Kane took felt like a fresh peril, a threat of plunging to the rocks where he had left the broken body of his brother. The vicious icy winds drove the waves higher against the rocks, as if the frenzied sea were eager to engulf him. The curtain of rain across the bay was almost black, obscuring all sense of the rest of the world, shutting him in with the scene of his brother’s death. Despondency saturated the atmosphere, and only the thought of his vow kept it at bay. He had despaired once, but he would not give way to it again while there was the least chance of saving Meredith. He picked his way doggedly forward, dashing rain from his eyes, until he heard Caldicott expel a shaky breath. Ahead a section of the cliff had sloughed away, halving the width of the path.
The narrowed stretch was at least a hundred yards long, and irregular with rocks embedded in mud. “Put your trust in God,” Kane told the youth and took the first constricted step. There was barely room to shuffle forward with one foot in front of the other while his face came close to chafing against the rock. Parts of the path sloped out and down, so that he had to grasp every handhold he could find, however slippery. Once a handful came away, and a breathless silence measured its fall before it clattered on the rocks. After that he tested every hold and flung away any loose chunks of the cliff that came to hand. He was almost at the end of the narrow ledge when Caldicott’s foot slipped on a rock.
The young man gasped and made a desperate grab for Kane. His foot slithered down the muddy cliff, and he lurched into space. Kane was already hearing the youth’s cry as he fell – it sounded very much like his own brother’s – when Mcness seized Caldicott by the scruff of the neck and hauled him back onto the path. “We need you, lad,” he growled. “Don’t leave us.”
“I can’t,” Caldicott said, his teeth chattering. “I can’t do this.”
“Not far now.” Kane grasped a projection of the cliff face with his right hand so as to extend his left to Caldicott. “You’ll be fine,” he said.
Caldicott faltered and then stumbled forward. If Kane had not caught hold of him, he would have lost his footing once more. Kane gripped the handhold and dragged Caldicott towards him until the youth regained his balance. “Easy, boy,” he said. “Do you want to die?”
Caldicott gritted his teeth until the muscles stood out from his rainswept face. He held Kane’s gaze, and when he was able to speak evenly he said “Not till we’re inside the castle.”
Kane helped him onto the broader stretch of path. The way was still treacherous, and he was watching every step he took when Caldicott murmured “Are you sure this will take us in?”
“It will,” Kane said and pointed. “There is our route.”
Perhaps the men did not immediately understand. The path traversed the cliff face just above a rounded opening from which foul liquid trickled, staining the rock. A wind brought the stench of the passage, and Mcness gave a disgusted grunt. “You want us to go in through the shithole?” he complained.
Unexpectedly, it was Fletcher who answered. “Would you rather fight your way in through the gates?”
“I’d rather wade through blood than shit,” Mcness said. “Can this really be the best way?”
“If we are to have surprise for our ally,” Kane told him. “Without it even we may be too few.”
“Then lead on, Captain Kane,” Mcness said with a gruff rueful laugh, and Kane turned his face towards the open sewer. At least he had suppressed the retort he had been close to offering: that however unpleasant the route might prove, it would lead them to far worse.
THIRTY-FIVE
Meredith expected her captors to drag her from the cell. Once he had unlocked the door and pushed it open, however, the jailer stepped aside. The Overlord did not move towards her, but the shadows of the bars seemed to act on his behalf, plucking impalpably at her as if the simple repetition could entice her forth. Meredith stayed seated on the edge of the rudimentary bed. “What do you want of me?” she whispered, careless whether she was heard.
The jailer answered for his master. The words sounded as though a cave had found a voice. “Do you not know?”
Meredith saw the women watching her across the corridor – saw their eagerness to learn that she was implicated in the evil that had seized them. “I do not,” she said.
This earned her a chorus of jeering from the other cell. At first it was wary, but when neither the jailer nor the Overlord turned on the women it grew louder. “What is she?” the oldest woman demanded. “Why is she here?”
“She has been chosen,” said the voice that possessed the jailer.
“Chosen!” The jeers grew more derisive as the old woman said “Is she Malachi’s harlot?”
“She will bring him what he most desires.”
Meredith gripped the wooden frame of the bed with both hands and stared at the Overlord. “I shall not,” she said.
Her response silenced the women, and she grew tense as the Overlord fixed his black gaze on her. He did not stir except to hold up one black-gloved hand as the jailer took a menacing step towards her. The hand sank and turned upwards before it crooked its long forefinger like a black worm writhing slowly in the air. It was summoning Meredith.
She clamped her hands on the edge of the bed and pressed all her weight down on the unyielding mattress. She told herself that her captors would have to drag the bed with her at least as far as the door of the cell – and then she felt something take her by the left hand. It felt almost as insubstantial as the restless shadows of the bars, and yet it had a kind of power. It might have been composed of cobwebs, tugging feebly but insistently at her, growing stronger by imperceptible degrees. Perhaps the idea of being enmeshed by a spider made her fingers open in revulsion, recoiling from the bed. But no, her repugnance had a deeper source. The sensation of a spidery grasp had not just settled on her hand. It was under her skin, clutching softly at her flesh.
She stared in loathing at her hand. It felt as though the tendrilled stigma had not merely corrupted her flesh but taken control of it. She thrust out the hand at arm’s length, but the gesture of repudiation could not save her. All her consciousness seemed to home in on her blemished hand, so that she was only peripherally aware of letting go of the bed and rising to her feet. The insensibility of her marked fles
h had spread to her mind. Even the derision of her fellow prisoners at the spectacle of her marching mechanically to the door of the cell, one hand extended like a beggar’s, could not return her to herself.
Once she was in the corridor the jailer slammed the door. It clanged like a cracked bell and sent the torch-flames leaping in celebration of Meredith’s emergence. Perhaps the sound or the flaring light reawakened her awareness, unless the Overlord had no further need to exert his power over her. He did not even point to the steps from the dungeons, simply turning his masked head towards them. At least she was able to think again, however sluggishly. She had to be alert for the slightest opportunity to escape.
The Overlord and the jailer paced her to the steps. Prisoners reviled her as she passed their cells; more than one spat through the bars at her. She could not bear to leave them so debased by hatred. “I will pray for you all while I live,” she said.
“Will you intercede for us with your friend the Devil?” a woman cried.
“We have no need of your kind of prayers,” another declared. “May God strike you dead the moment you open your mouth.”
It seemed suddenly crucial for Meredith to demonstrate that she could make a sign of the cross. She was raising her left hand before she realised that it was not the one she used. It ought still to belong to God as much as its counterpart did, and she was determined to use both. She seized its wrist with her right hand to force it downwards and then up and sideways. She had almost completed the sign when, to her horror, she saw that she was not just sketching a cross backwards but inverting it. Her left hand had tricked her into thinking she was in control of it instead of the reverse. She snatched away her right hand and struck herself with it – her aching forehead, her famished belly, her left shoulder and the other. However passionate the sign might be, she felt as though she had made it too late. Too much of her body was at odds with her soul; her left hand lying against her hip was as cold and flabby as a toad. Her fellow prisoners had observed her difficulties and were unconvinced by the sign she had finally made. Their jeers pursued her all the way along the corridor, and their contempt seemed capable of stealing her breath.
The jailer remained in the passage. As Meredith reached the steps, the Overlord was at her back. The steps curved until she grew dizzy with climbing. The light of a solitary ensconced torch threw her nervous shadow ahead of her, and she saw it clamber up the last steps and disappear into a wide corridor. It appeared to have escaped, and dare she take that as a portent? She tensed her whole body in the hope of outdistancing the Overlord, and then it went as slack as her marked hand. Two raiders were ready for her in the corridor.
As she left the steps the two disfigured brutes moved to flank her while the Overlord strode ahead. Her escorts paced her so closely that she smelled their rank sweat and stale meaty breath. The corridor was lit by torches, which showed that the stone floor was blackened by muddy footprints numerous enough for an army of the raiders. Great tapestries cloaked the walls, but the images seemed so distorted that Meredith preferred not to examine them too closely. Perhaps only the unstable light made the heroic figures looked diseased, their flesh grey and spongy as if fungus had invaded the woven material, but the saints were worse; their faces were distorted by grimaces that appeared to shift slyly when she glanced at them, and the signs their hands were making seemed not just occult but obscene. Had Malachi’s evil infested everything here? The succession of tapestries was interrupted by doorways, beyond which Meredith had no desire to look. Those doors that were open showed blackness unrelieved except by the light from the corridor, and she thought the illumination did not reach far enough, instead flinching from the dark with every flicker, unless that darkness kept darting forward, eager to snuff out the light. The darkness looked altogether too sentient, however shapeless, and she was almost glad when the corridor brought her to a pair of double doors. At least light was visible beyond them.
Otherwise they were not reassuring. They stood more than three times the height of a man. In the uncertain torchlight they resembled the hide of a great reptile, scaly with square panels that were studded with diamond-shaped bosses the size of her hand. As the Overlord strode to the doors the light shivered, lengthening the shadows of the bosses, so that it seemed the reptile had drawn an enormous silent breath at the sight of Meredith. Beside each door stood an oval mirror set in a frame unpleasantly similar to tatters of dead flesh. The mirrors were taller than Meredith and darker than the reflection of the corridor should be. Something other than darkness might have been stirring under the glass, but she had no wish to see it clearer. She watched the masked figure grasp an iron ring on the left door with both hands and twist it to push the door wide.
Beyond it was a great hall. Two ranks of mirrors like the pair that flanked the doors led through an antechamber. Many torches on metal stands were ranged about the tiled floor of the main room, and candles were even more numerous. Once it must have been a noble room, but now it seemed to have been transformed into a parody both of a chapel and a throne room, with a colossal flat stone planted like an altar before the throne. At first this was all Meredith could see for the dazzle, but she had the impression that more darkness had gathered within the great room than the torches and candles could altogether eliminate. A chill impalpable miasma seemed to settle over her soul. Then her captors seized her arms and urged her through the antechamber. She glimpsed movements in the mirrors that she had no time to distinguish, because she was seeing far too much ahead of them.
The round stone was indeed an altar. A ceremonial knife lay on it, glistening with blood. Blood stained the grooved surface of the altar, which was broader than a man was tall. The grooves united in a single gory channel that led down the side of the altar to a circular orifice in the tiled floor. Meredith could not mistake the fate of the prisoners who had been dragged from the cells, but she had a sense of something yet more impious. Was it only the light that made the rim of the pit appear to work like the lips of a great round mouth? She could have thought that the hole had not been dug out of the stone – that it had opened of itself, as though the evil that made the castle its lair had possessed the very fabric of the building. Her captors marched her forward, and she saw the figure that was seated on the throne beyond the altar.
He was attired like a potentate, in sumptuous robes the red of drying blood. His head was lowered, intent on some thought that Meredith was instinctively grateful to be unable to guess. In a moment he looked up, and his long white hand let go of his jaw. The thin cruel face was just as pallid. An unnaturally high forehead was emphasised by a widow’s peak, and locks of oily black hair trailed over his shoulders. Meredith had seen blackness in the eyes of his minions, but it was nothing to the Stygian dark that confronted her now. She might have been gazing into the depths of a void beyond the farthest stars, and the void was staring back.
He considered her for a few moments and then raised an indolent hand. He might have been lazily brushing away an insect rather than indicating Meredith’s fate. Even the Overlord had grown deferential in the presence of his master. He stalked forward as the raiders forced Meredith towards the altar. She was already struggling, and she redoubled her efforts when she glimpsed the contents of the pit in the floor. In a sense the pit was empty; it contained only an exposed section of the foundations, but the material was no longer rock. It was raw and porous and appeared to be steeped in blood, and Meredith was almost sure that it quivered with a feeble pulse. Then her captors swung her around, and she saw what she had been distracted from noticing – a prison cage to the left of the altar.
The Overlord unlocked the door, and the raiders shoved Meredith into the cage. As she stumbled across the floor she heard the key grind in the lock. The raiders retreated towards the antechamber, and their leader followed them. The door beyond the avenue of mirrors shut with a massive slam, and flames bowed as if they were making obeisance to the occupant of the throne. Shadows scurried into all the corners of the grea
t hall, where they seemed to peer fearfully forth to observe him. They might have been enacting Meredith’s dread, but she would not yield to it. She stepped forward to grip the bars and stare at him.
In a moment she found she could neither look away nor breathe. She was seeing more and worse than him. A heap that might have been composed of discoloured refuse towered on either side of the throne. She saw hands protruding from each heap, and grimacing faces embedded in the tangle of flesh. The bloodless cadavers were not simply piled up; they appeared to be in the process of merging together. Nor was their arrangement entirely haphazard; it suggested some occult meaning that Meredith was glad to be unable to grasp. She could have thought the charnel sculptures were attempts to decorate the lair of the evil that had made Axmouth its home, and she did her best to focus all her loathing in her glare at him.
Perhaps it provoked him. As she managed to regain her breaths, he rose from the throne with a sinuous motion that brought to mind a great lizard slithering off a rock. His robe flowed about him, concealing his form as he crossed the floor with a silent reptilian tread. He paused beside the altar and rubbed a long finger over the bloody surface as if he were searching for dust. He put the finger in his practically lipless mouth and licked it clean before pacing to Meredith.
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