Nobody answered him. As he set foot in the passage the faces flinched into the dimness as though the torch was too bright for them, unless they were afraid of Kane. “I will not harm you,” he said and made for the nearest cell, which was opposite an empty one. He laid the torch on the floor outside and raised the locket on its chain around his neck. “Have you seen this girl?” he said, cradling the open locket on his palm.
The women in the cell ventured to the bars and narrowed their eyes at the portrait of Meredith. Kane seemed to glimpse wariness before the oldest woman spoke. “She is not here.”
“I am certain she was brought to Axmouth. Do none of you know where she is?”
“She is not here,” another woman said, and her cellmates muttered in agreement. Kane saw nervousness in their eyes, and he was about to question it when it turned to naked fear. Some of the women cried out, and some even found words, but they were too late. Whoever had crept behind Kane had snatched the pistol from his belt and thrust the muzzle against his back.
Kane could not fail now, having come so far. He whirled around to knock the assailant’s hand aside. The man was a jailer, his broad face a mass of livid symbols under the low brow. His dull eyes widened as though the blackness within them had swollen with surprise in the instant before Kane’s blade slashed his throat open. He wobbled backwards, clutching at the wound, and collapsed to the floor as Kane seized the pistol from him.
Kane could not wait for him to die. Three blows of the sword finished him off. Kane detached the keys from the jailer’s belt and straightened up to listen. It seemed that the man was the only guard down here, and Kane risked raising his voice once more. “Meredith,” he called. “Meredith.”
It brought no response. Kane found the key that unlocked the first cell and swung the door wide. “You’re free,” he said.
The women gazed at him as if their captivity had drained them of understanding, and certainly of will. “Go now,” Kane urged them. “Take care which way you go. The raiders may be occupied elsewhere.”
The women emerged one by one from the cell, sidling past him as though they had some reason to be fearful of him. As they fled up the steps he unlocked the next door. Though he showed every prisoner Meredith’s portrait, none would admit to having seen her. He heard their footsteps dwindle along an upper corridor, but no sounds to suggest that the fugitives had been recaptured or slain. He had done all he could on their behalf, he thought as he unlocked the last cell.
THIRTY-SEVEN
At first Kane thought the occupant of the cell was dead. The man lay half crouched on a bed of filthy straw in one dim corner. Apart from a mug of water and a tin plate of half-eaten food on the stained wet floor close to the prisoner’s bare feet, there was nothing else in the cell. A hole in the floor served as a privy. The man’s face was turned to the wall as if he could not bear the stench from the hole or the sight of his situation, but Kane made out that he was old and frail. The strands of unkempt hair that trailed over the shoulders of his ragged shirt were every colour of tarnished gold. He did not react to the sound of the key in the lock, but as Kane pushed the door wide he saw the prisoner take a breath, so feeble that it looked reluctant. “Come, old man,” Kane said urgently. “You are free.”
He heard a laboured breath that might have been a sigh. The prisoner kept his face averted and crouched closer to the wall as though he was ashamed to be seen. When he spoke his voice was barely audible, whether from disuse or determination to be left alone. “I cannot leave,” he said.
Kane was desperate to find Meredith, but he could not abandon such a defenceless captive. “Let me help you,” he said and stepped into the cell.
The flame of the nearest torch jerked back and forth with his movement. The shadows of the bars toppled across the floor of the cell as if to produce an illusion of freedom, and Kane heard the sluggish rattle of a heavy chain. The old man was chained to the wall. Kane found the restraint wickedly excessive, and it infuriated him. “Why are you chained?” he demanded.
“For my sins.” With a kind of guilty stubbornness the old man added “I have said I cannot leave.”
A thick manacle was fitted around his thin wrist, so tightly that Kane could have imagined it had shrunk as the prisoner starved. “These are just chains,” he said. “They can be broken.”
The old man huddled into the corner as if he had made it some kind of refuge. “Even without them,” he said, “I would stay.”
Kane stared at the walls glistening with moisture, the noisome hole gaping in the floor at the chain’s length, the crude bed of rank straw, the food hardly fit for a wild beast, the darkness that seemed eager to overwhelm the uncertain light and engulf the cell. “Dear God, why?” he said.
The old man let out a sigh that sounded like an attempt to have done with breathing. “This was my home.”
Kane peered at the emaciated figure. Worn and hoarse and enfeebled though the voice was, it was not altogether unfamiliar. “Father?” he said in disbelief.
The old man’s shoulders hunched as though he wanted to crouch into himself – to vanish if he could. They sagged with a convulsive shudder, and he turned to blink at Kane. “Solomon?” he wondered aloud.
Kane gazed at him and could find no words. More than the years had drained the vitality from Josiah’s face. The yellowed skin was little more than a tissue over the bones, which looked close to showing through. Lines deeper than scars were etched in his forehead, which bore scabs left by violence. His eyes were haunted, darkened by memories or by the struggle to keep them at bay. It was apparent that moving his head caused him pain, and Kane suspected that even returning to consciousness had. Kane swallowed hard and was about to speak when Josiah said “Are you another phantom sent to torment me?”
“I am real,” Kane said and had to steady his voice. “I am alive. I am your son.”
“I thought I had lost you forever.” Josiah reached out painfully but stopped short of touching Kane’s face. “You were still a boy,” he murmured, “when...”
His voice fell away as his hand did, and Kane was overtaken by a surge of guilt and grief indistinguishable from rage. If he had not left Axmouth because of his pride – if he had not robbed his father of the protection that Marcus would surely have given him – the old man would never have been reduced to this abject state. Kane closed his bruised hands around the chain and wrenched at the ring set in the wall. He hauled at it until his muscles throbbed – until the strain felt capable of reopening the wounds in his palms – but the ring stayed as firm as the rock in which it was embedded. “You will never break them, Solomon,” his father said.
“I am not the boy who left you,” Kane protested and heaved at the chain while his shoulders shook.
“I see you are not.” Josiah’s eyes seemed close to growing blurred, and he narrowed them to regain control. “It makes no matter,” he said. “No man could break them. They are spun with dark magic as much as with metal.”
Kane became aware that the chill of the links was spreading up his arms as if it would fasten on the whole of him. He let go of the chain with an oath and gazed helplessly at his father. “How may I free you?” he pleaded.
“You cannot break my bonds,” Josiah said. “Do not try, Solomon. Do not waste your strength.”
Kane made to embrace him in the hope of affording him some comfort, but the old man winced away from him. Perhaps his body was too painful to suffer any contact, unless he was loath to be held by his son. Kane went down on his knees in front of him and gazed as deep into his eyes as he could. “I have carried so much guilt for what I did,” he said.
Josiah raised one infirm hand as if to sweep the confession aside, but Kane was not so readily absolved. “I never meant for Marcus to fall,” he said. “I never meant for him to die.”
The old man’s eyes had grown more haunted, so that Kane felt guiltier still. “Your brother did not die,” Josiah said. “If he had, this nightmare would never have begun.”
“He did not?” Such a flood of emotion overwhelmed Kane that it felt as though a dam composed of all his years away from Axmouth had burst, and he scarcely grasped what his father had also said. “Thank God,” Kane murmured. “He is alive.”
“Do not blame God.” For an instant the old sternness hardened Josiah’s eyes. “It is not through God’s will that he survived,” he said.
Kane felt rebuked in more ways than he understood. “What do you mean?”
“He was terribly injured by the fall.” Before Kane could take this as an accusation that Josiah had waited all these years to make, his father said “He did not die, but nor would he wake.”
“And now...” Kane had to prompt.
“No surgeon could help him, nor any priest, and so –” With an effort that appeared to send a shudder through his emaciated frame, Josiah admitted “I brought the sorcerer here.”
“Malachi?” Kane spat the name as if he were expelling poison from his body. “You brought him here to Axmouth?”
“Speak his name softly, my son.” Josiah glanced uneasily past Kane as the shadows of the bars seemed to grope like elongated fingers for the men. “He hears everything within these walls,” he whispered. “His power has passed into the very stone.”
Surely the torchlight had been agitated only by a draught. Kane was heartened to be called his father’s son once more but dismayed to see Josiah so fearful, and appalled to hear him talk of Malachi in a hushed tone that ought to be reserved for God. “Let him hear,” Kane said so loud that the bars appeared to quiver with his shout; at least, their shadows did. “Let him know I have come to destroy him.”
Josiah gazed at Kane as if he wondered whether it was not too late to hope. “What did he do to my brother?” Kane said without lowering his voice.
“They said he was a healer. I did not know then where his powers came from.” Josiah gave his head a solitary painful shake and said “Or perhaps I chose not to know.”
“Was he not a priest?” Kane said.
“Aye, so he claimed, but what devil does he serve? I offered him everything I had,” the old man said and gazed about at the pittance that remained to him. “Everything, if he would bring Marcus back to me. I could not lose another son.”
Kane wanted to respond that his father had never truly lost him, but was afraid of presuming too much. He might have bowed his head in shame if Josiah had not spoken. “He succeeded, Solomon,” he said. “He reached into the darkness with his magic and his mirrors and brought Marcus back.”
“Where is Marcus now?”
“He was changed, Solomon.” Josiah shook his head again as if he wished he could turn his face to the wall. “You know he was never gentle,” he said. “You know it all too well. I have often wondered if I made him so. I only sought to raise you both as men.”
His gaze seemed to be searching for the past and finding none to comfort him. He spoke as if each word gave him pain. “His strength came from the worst of him. I no longer know my son.”
“Was it Marcus who imprisoned you?” When Josiah would not answer Kane said “Where is he? Tell me where he is.”
“I cannot say, Solomon.” Kane thought he understood his father’s reluctance – a last attempt to protect one or both of his sons – until Josiah said “He goes abroad on his master’s errands. For a time the sorcerer was content to work his evil here in Axmouth, but now he seeks to claim the entire land for whatever devil he serves.” With an effort that shook his frail body and jangled the links of the chain he added “His face was so damaged by the fall that he hides it behind a mask.”
“No,” Kane said in disbelief that felt like desperation. “That cannot be my brother.”
“It is, Solomon.” With a gentleness that surpassed despair Josiah said “The leader of the raiders is your brother or what remains of him. He obeys only the will of the sorcerer.”
Kane recalled how the Overlord’s voice had emerged from the mouths of his minions – recalled the eyes from which all traces of humanity, however depraved, seemed to have been drained. “That is not Marcus,” he insisted doggedly. “Some demon has possessed him.”
“He does not just lead the raiders. He infects all who follow him.” Josiah laid his free hand over the chained one as if this was the nearest he could come to prayer. “I believe that deep within himself he is still my son,” he said, “and so he may yet be saved.”
Kane did not know and could not answer. He watched his father’s eyes grow less resigned and more determined, and at last Josiah spoke. “Now you must do one thing for me, Solomon.”
“Ask and it will be done,” Kane vowed at once.
“You must end my life.”
Kane would have retreated across the cell, taking all his weapons out of Josiah’s reach, if he had not been on his knees. “No,” he cried, and it felt like a prayer.
“You must, Solomon.” His father stretched out a hand that had regained its steadiness and drew a pistol from Kane’s belt. “We both have our sins to answer for,” he said. “I am ready to answer for mine.”
“But not like this,” Kane pleaded. “Let me deal with Malachi, and then –”
“My son, you do not understand.” Josiah grasped the barrel of the pistol with both hands and pressed the muzzle to his heart with all the fervour of a zealot clutching at a holy relic. “I invited him in,” he whispered, “and while I am alive he will remain. He keeps me here because it gives him power, and he will never let me die. Kill me and you may lessen his grip on the land. Otherwise I fear you will never defeat him.”
He held the pistol against his chest with his manacled hand while he reached for his son’s with the other. Kane resisted, but his father guided his finger to the trigger, so delicately that it felt like tenderness – more than Kane had ever experienced from him. “Do this one thing for me as my son,” Josiah murmured, “and you will bring me peace.”
He met Kane’s gaze without wavering, and Kane saw a prayer in his eyes. Though he could not have put it into words he seemed to share it, and for those moments he was aware of nothing else. He could not have said which of them pulled the trigger. He thought the explosion should have resounded throughout the corridors and shaken the castle to its foundations, but it was as muted as the single blow of a muffled drum. The pistol jerked in his fist as Josiah took a swift sharp breath, which he released as a faltering sigh. His mouth stayed open like a sleeper’s, and the lines of his face seemed to soften. Kane glimpsed fire in the old eyes, but it was the reflection of the torchlight. He touched his fingers to the lids and drew them gently down, and then he rose to his feet, squaring his shoulders as though his grief were a physical burden. “May God take you to Him. You have suffered enough,” he declared and strode out of the cell.
THIRTY-EIGHT
“Malachi!” Kane roared. “Malachi!”
The flame of the torch that lit his way out of the dungeons seemed to flinch from his shout or his rage. There was no point in attempting to be stealthy; his father had made this clear, and Kane wanted Malachi to know that his nemesis was upon him. He stalked along the subterranean passage, his swords ready in his hands. If his fists ached, it was not so much from the pains of battle as with a yearning to spill blood – Malachi’s blood. He heard sounds of conflict ahead, and there was a great light beyond a bend of the corridor.
From the bend Kane saw three corridors leading from a junction. All of them were strewn with lengths of blazing timber. Telford and a few men were battling raiders at the junction. Most of the disfigured creatures were on the far side of the blaze, but Kane saw that it would not hold them off for long. A raider was creeping up behind Telford, a dagger in his hand. With a shout Kane darted at him, and as the raider turned Kane slashed his throat so viciously that he almost decapitated him. “Captain Kane,” Telford cried. “Help us, for God’s sake.”
Kane strode to join him. The passages were scattered with the bodies of raiders, dead or mortally wounded, but Kane saw fewer than a dozen of h
is men still standing. “Is this all you have left?” he demanded.
“All,” Telford said, and there was accusation in his voice.
“The prisoners are free,” Kane said in case Telford thought his men had fought in vain. “Except for Meredith. Free her if you find her, and I shall. I go to pay my debts.”
As Telford stared at him in little more than desperation Kane heard a shot, and a youth beside them collapsed to the floor, blood jetting from his neck. “This is your folly,” Telford protested.
“Just keep them back,” Kane urged him and his men. “Just a few more moments. I think I can end this with a single blow.”
He saw resolution flare up in the eyes of some of the younger men. It could scarcely be called hope. He had often observed it in battle – the grim resolve of men who were looking their own death in the face and who chose to fight on while they lived, to take as many of their adversaries with them as they could in their last moments on earth. “I am proud to have fought beside you,” he said and turned away from them.
He knew where he must go. The passage to the right was narrowed by blazing lengths of wood piled against the stone walls, but he strode between them. No raiders were to be seen. At the limit of the jerking light, steps led upwards. The dimness of the stairway felt like the adumbration of a greater darkness, which Kane seemed to sense waiting for him. He tramped fast up the steps to a door and twisted the iron ring to haul it wide.
It showed him a broad corridor leading to the great hall. Although he recognised the corridor, it seemed dreadfully transformed. Tendrils of some glistening substance had invaded the tapestries on the walls, distorting the faces and gestures of heroes and saints. In the unreliable torchlight the caricatures of figures seemed eager to display an unnatural liveliness, to participate in some ungodly celebration. The corridor felt as cold and secret as a cavern far beneath the earth. Shadows massed in the gloom beneath the roof, where they crawled and flapped and groped about as if the blackness was searching for a shape in which it could grow solid and fall on its victim. As a boy Kane had felt dwarfed by the corridor, but he was no longer a boy. He would be master of Axmouth, and he strode to the great hall.
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