The Prince of Lies

by Anne Lyle

  “Amayi,” his uncle whispered. “Go to sleep, it’s too soon…”

  The room went dark, and Kit found himself standing somewhere cold and silent.

  The boy let them into a long hall that appeared to be the school’s refectory. It was empty at this hour, though bowls and plates were stacked on a trestle table ready for supper.

  “Where are your new pupils?” Mal asked. “Catlyn and Sidney?”

  “I-I don’t know about Sidney, b-b-but Catlyn is in there with Master Shawe.” He indicated a door at the top of a short flight of steps.

  Mal drew his rapier and went up to the door to press his ear against the timbers. After a few moments he turned back to Coby.

  “I can smell qoheetsakhan,” he said in a low voice. “What in God’s name are they doing in there?”

  The boy smiled slyly. “Making him one of us.”

  Mal unfastened his spirit-guard and crossed the refectory to spread his free hand along the boy’s temple and jaw and stare into his eyes. Focusing all his thoughts he tried to slip into the boy’s mind but it parted under his mental fingers like fog, sucking him into darkness–

  He withdrew, gasping. “What are you?”

  The boy just smiled again.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Coby muttered. “Hold him at sword’s point whilst I tie him up.”

  Mal obeyed, unable to tear his gaze away. Despite the spectacles the boy’s eyes seemed unfocused, the pupils huge as a cat’s at night. Coby swiftly bound the boy’s wrists with the bit of rope that had been around her own, tightening the loops that had been so loose before.

  “Come on, we have to get to Kit,” she said, shaking Mal out of his stupor.

  Rubbing his forehead, Mal stumbled after her. Whatever Shawe was doing here, he had a feeling it wasn’t going to have the same effect on Kit as the other boys.

  “Where am I?” Kit shouted. The word his uncle had used came to his lips: “Amayi!”

  Things stirred in the darkness, black shapes he was afraid to look at. Something burned in his chest and spread upwards, along his arms and into his head, blinding him as it poured out of his eyes and mouth and fingernails, a white light brighter than anything he’d ever seen. The dark shapes ran.

  “I am Kiiren,” he yelled after them, “Outspeaker of the Shajiilrekhurrnasheth, and I am not afraid of you.”

  He didn’t know where the words came from, but they felt right. He opened his eyes, shaking off the lethargy of the qoheetsakhan, and saw the two humans staring at him, wide-eyed and angry. The older one held a night-blade, its obsidian edge sharper than any steel.

  “Who are you?” Kiiren said. He felt small, smaller than he remembered. “The hrrith…”

  He clutched at his belly, expecting his guts to leak out between his fingers. No. Stupid. He had died that night; this was a new body, a… oh amayi no, a human body.

  “What have I done?” he whispered.

  “Tjirzadhen,” the man with the qoheetsakhan spat. It was the name for Kiiren’s own kind in Vinlandic, meaning one who had been reborn more than once. He made it sound like an insult. “We should kill him.”

  “No,” the other replied. “No, he is more valuable to us alive. But we need him subdued–”

  Kiiren didn’t wait to hear any more. He dodged around the man with the knife, his new body lithe and swift, and ran for the nearest door.

  Something thudded against the inside of the far door, and the latch rattled. Coby drew her other pistol. A voice, masculine and somewhat nasal. Though she could not make out the words, the tone sent shivers down her back. She lifted the latch with the barrel of her unloaded pistol and kicked the door open. A man stared back at her, his hands around Kit’s throat. Shawe, presumably.

  “Take your filthy paws off my son, demon!” She waved the unloaded pistol at Shawe for emphasis. “Steel bullets, if you’re wondering, so don’t try any enchantments either.”

  Shawe raised his hands, and the chain he had been holding slithered to the floor. Kit dashed past her, into the refectory. Coby backed away, still pointing the gun at the alchemist. Another man appeared behind Shawe, younger and with a more contemptuous expression on his face than on Shawe’s, if that were possible.

  “Run,” he said. “I enjoy a game of hide and seek.”

  Coby raised her other pistol and squeezed the trigger, tipping the barrel upwards at the last moment so that the shot went over both their heads. Both men ducked reflexively.

  “Get Kit out of here,” Mal said, stepping between her and the guisers. “I’ll deal with these two.”

  Coby shoved the unloaded pistol into her belt, grabbed Kit’s hand and dragged him, protesting, out of the house.

  “I want my amayi!” he wailed.

  “That’s where we’re going, lambkin,” she replied, “but we have to run very fast, back to the horses.”

  Kit halted in the middle of the path and stared up at her. “I’m not your lambkin, I’m Kiiren.”

  She looked into his dark eyes and the truth hit her like a blow to the stomach. This was not her son any more. They were too late.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  Mal blocked the doorway, steel in each hand. Shawe to the left of him, a nasty-looking obsidian dagger in his hand, a younger man to his right with naught but a thurible. The bitter smell of dream-herb filled the air. Another ritual like Suffolk’s, no doubt, attempting to manipulate souls. How predictable these villains were!

  “I’d like to kill you slowly and painfully for what you’ve done to my son,” he said to Shawe, “but I really don’t have time.”

  He advanced a few steps into the room. Shawe retreated, stumbled against the velvet-draped bench and fell backwards with a curse. The knife slipped from his fingers and shattered on the tiled floor. Mal ignored him and turned to the other, who swung the thurible like a morning-star. Burning embers fell onto the drapery and a cloud of qoheetsakhan smoke enveloped them both. Mal halted, and for a moment all he could see was the dreamlands, twilit and empty. No, he would not fight them on their home ground. Concentrating all his will on his physical self he slashed the blade of his dagger across the back of his right wrist. The moment blood touched steel, his vision cleared.

  Just in time. He ducked as the thurible whistled through the air, trailing smoke and sparks. Some landed in his hair and he shook them free before they could burn through to the skin. The guiser danced out of reach.

  “You won’t get me this time, kiaqnehet.”

  He swung his thurible again. Mal knocked it aside with his dagger and thrust the rapier blade into the guiser’s belly almost up to the forte. The man cried out and dropped the thurible with a clang.

  “No. You cannot kill me again,” he gasped, sinking to his knees and clutching the blade. “Not again.”

  “What do you mean, again?”

  The dying man coughed twice and looked up, grinning through the blood now running from his nostrils. “Of course, you don’t recognise me in this body. It has been twenty years, Huntsman.”

  Mal withdrew his blade, bile rising in his throat.

  “Tanijeel?”

  The guiser looked puzzled. “You know my name?”

  “You’re Hennaq’s heartmate. The skrayling who was butchered for mine and Sandy’s initiation.” He shook his head. “I’m so sorry…”

  Tanijeel’s eyes glazed over and he collapsed in a spreading pool of blood. Mal spared a brief glance towards Shawe, who cowered on the far side of the now-smouldering bench, and stepped back towards the door. Enough killing. Time to get out of here.

  Coby caught up with Kit on the edge of the clearing and managed to grab him before he could throw himself at Sandy. Her brother-in-law lay with his head in Gabriel’s lap, hands and eyelids twitching like a cat dreaming of mice.

  “Sssh!” she whispered in Kit’s ear, hand clamped over his mouth. “See? Uncle Sandy – I mean Erishen – is fighting our enemies. We mustn’t wake him.”

  Kit nodded, and she let him go. He
walked over to Sandy and knelt by his side, but did not touch him or speak. Ned crossed the clearing, dread written all over his features.

  “Mal?”

  “He stayed behind to fight Shawe. I… I don’t know…”

  Ned put his arms about her and she gasped for breath, fought back tears that she could not spare, not right now.

  “We have to get the horses,” she said, her voice raw in her throat, “get Kit out of here. If Mal… if he comes in time–”

  “He already has,” Ned replied, releasing her.

  Mal jogged down the path to where he had left Sandy and the horses. To his relief Coby was there ahead of him, and Kit was with his uncle.

  “Wake him,” Mal told Gabriel. “We have to leave. Now.”

  “The guiser?” Coby asked as he embraced her and Ned together.

  “I killed the younger one. Shawe lives.”

  Ned shot him a doubtful look. When Mal didn’t reply Ned walked back towards the horses, scooping Kit up on his way.

  “Come along, little man.”

  “I’m not your little man, I’m Ambassador Kiiren.”

  “And I’m Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. Now, where’s your mother’s horse?”

  “I want to ride with my amayi.”

  “Aye, well, your uncle is barely awake enough to sit his own horse, without having to hold onto you as well. Do you want to break both your necks?”

  Kit shook his head, and Ned lifted him onto the grey’s saddle.

  “Now wait there until your mother comes.”

  Coby looked up at Mal, eyes filling with tears. “He’s telling the truth. Whatever magic Shawe worked on him, he’s Kiiren now.”

  Mal kissed her forehead.

  “We always knew this was going to happen one day, love.”

  “Yes, but so soon?”

  He had no answer to that. Gently releasing her he went to see to his brother.

  They rode back out to the road at a walk, not daring to go any faster in the dark. Mal brought up the rear, ready to fend off another guiser attack, but the priory grounds were eerily silent. At the road he urged them into a trot, riding alongside his wife and son. Kit – Kiiren as he supposed he must call him now – had dozed off, exhausted.

  “That was too easy,” Coby whispered after a while.

  “I know.”

  “The younger one said something about ‘hide and seek’. Do you think he’s spying on us somehow?”

  “Not any more.”

  He told her about Tanijeel.

  “I helped create a guiser,” he said at last, glancing back over his shoulder. Still no sign of pursuit. “I’m certain Tanijeel would never have joined the renegades if he had not suffered so cruelly at our hands.”

  “It wasn’t you. You told me you were just a boy at the time, and never even touched him.”

  “So I was. But–”

  “Then stop feeling so guilty about it.”

  “But I killed him the second time.”

  “Killed who?” Kiiren’s voice was childishly high but held a commanding note.

  “No one,” Coby said.

  She began telling him a story; a sure-fire way to distract both the skrayling within and the child he surely still was. Mal listened with half an ear, and realised it was a story of Robin Hood and his fight against the injustices of wicked King John. He wondered idly if generations to come would tell similar tales about themselves and their fight against wicked King Henry. Of course they had to win first, and preferably live to tell the tale.

  The road dipped into a tree-lined hollow. Mal turned his attention back to his surroundings. This was the perfect place for an ambush. What if Shawe had used his magics to persuade the constable to free Monkton and his men? They could be lying in wait even now…

  He reached the bottom of the hollow and the ground began to rise again. The moon was rising, casting a pale glow through the trees… No, that was not moonlight. Coby’s mount whinnied and balked, and Mal reined his gelding to a halt beside her.

  “What is it?” she whispered to him, as the light grew.

  The tunnel mouth coalesced, cutting them off from Sandy, Ned and Gabriel, and now he could see a figure at the far end.

  “Shawe?”

  The figure came closer. He was thin and dark-haired, but it was not the alchemist. This lad was no more than eighteen.

  “Give him to me.” The apparition held out his arms to Kiiren.

  Mal wheeled his mount, but another tunnel was already forming behind them.

  “How did they find us so easily?” Coby muttered.

  “Never mind that,” Mal replied. “Prepare to ride like the wind.”

  He dismounted, drew his rapier and turned back to face the guiser blocking their path. The youth could not step out and confront him, not if his aim was to take Kiiren back.

  “Give him to me, or be destroyed.”

  “And how exactly do you intend to do that?” Mal grinned at him and hefted his blade. The cold steel felt reassuringly solid and unmagical.

  The youth raised his hands and a wind began to pour from the tunnel, whipping his hair forwards and filling the air with dead leaves and… black feathers? A harsh cawing mingled with the sound of the wind, a dark shape soared over the youth’s head, straight towards Mal, who raised his blade in an instinctive parry. The crow exploded in a rain of feathers and gore, but Mal had no time to wipe the mess from his face. Another was coming at him, and another. The rapier sang as he wove a steel net between the monstrous birds and his family. Its blunt edge sliced through the crows as if they were mist, but they felt solid enough when they dodged the blade and raked his scalp with their claws.

  There were too many now to fight; his only hope was to stop them at the source. Mal pressed forward, shielding his face with his left hand and whirling the rapier in his right. At last he reached the mouth of the tunnel. The boy sneered at him, but his smile turned to a grimace of horror as Mal thrust the rapier straight towards his heart. Before the blade could touch him, however, the tunnel flashed a sickly yellow-green and collapsed in on itself, sending a shock like a hammer blow back up the rapier. Mal dropped his blade, shaking his stinging hand.

  “Mal!”

  He stooped and grabbed the weapon with his left hand, and turned to see Coby hunched in the saddle, trying to protect Kiiren from the last of the crows. Mal leapt onto his own mount and set about them with his sword. By the time he had dispatched the last one, the tunnel behind them was open, another guiser standing at its mouth. Mal glanced over his shoulder. The lane in front of them was clear.

  “Go!” He slapped the mare on her haunch and the beast sprang forward. He turned back to the guiser and brandished the rapier, still in his left hand. “You want some of this as well?”

  The boy paled, but began to raise his hands. Mal kicked the gelding forward, and it lashed out with an ironshod hoof that landed square on the boy’s chest. The horse screamed and reared as the tunnel exploded, and Mal slithered backwards, landing in a bone-crunching heap on the cold ground. He rolled quickly out of the way as the animal foundered. What in God’s name had just happened? None of the guisers in England had been this powerful before. He limped off in search of his family, hoping his enemies had spent their best strength against him already.

  A few hundred yards down the road, Coby finally caught up with Sandy, Ned and Gabriel.

  “What did you think you were doing, letting us get separated like that? We nearly lost him.”

  Sandy had the good grace to turn pale. He slid down from his mount and ran over to them to take Kiiren’s hand in his.

  “It was my fault, amayi. Our horses bolted when the guisers attacked, and by the time I got them under control it was all over.”

  “Give me the spirit-guard,” she said. “We all need to be protected from their enchantments.”

  He took it out and passed it up to her. Kiiren protested, but she fastened the necklace about his throat.

  “There, that’s better, lamb
kin.”

  She took the lack of further complaint as indication that Kiiren had withdrawn for a while, as Erishen did when Sandy put on a spirit-guard.

  “We cannot leave it on him for long,” Sandy said, echoing her thoughts.

  “I know. But surely it’s the wise thing to do, until we get further from the guisers.”

  Hoofbeats sounded on the road. Coby whirled, but it was only Mal. Only? She grinned in relief, and it was all she could do not to ride back to meet him.

  As Mal drew nearer he slowed his mount to a trot and reined it in by Coby’s side.

  “You’re hurt,” she said, rummaging in her pocket for a handkerchief.

  “Just scratches.” He wiped his bloody forehead with the back of his cuff and dismounted. “Sandy, what was that?”

  His brother shrugged. “We saw nothing. One moment we were riding along, the next our horses reared and bolted as if hrrith were after them.”

  “The beasts weren’t far wrong. Shawe’s lads were using tunnels from the dreamlands, but they seemed able to bring things through. Wind and leaves. And crows.”

  “They came for me,” Kit said.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” Coby told him. “Your father fought them off, and with your spirit-guard on, their magics cannot–”

  “No, they’ll come again, they’ll find me. I know it.”

  “How? How did they find us last time?”

  Kit raised his hand to his earlobe. “This. Master Shawe told us it’s a finding charm.”

  “Then we must take it out.”

  Coby felt around the back of the earring for a catch, but there was nothing, just a rough spot in the metal. She shot Mal a worried look.

  “I think it’s welded shut. I’ll need my tools to break it–”

  “No time,” Mal said, glancing back down the road and drawing his dagger.

  Coby recalled the boy Martin with his mutilated ear.