The Prince of Lies

by Anne Lyle

Mal sat down, hands clamped around his raised knees to stop them shaking, as he used to sit and hide as a boy when their father was in an ill temper. Sandy sat down by his side so that they were shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, like a mirror image. He took out a small wooden box and opened it. Inside was the obsidian blade he used for shaving.

  “Where did you get that from?” Mal asked.

  Sandy just smiled. “Ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  Mal held out his wrist. The fat blue-green vein leading to his palm twitched in time with his heartbeat, counting out these last moments–

  “No, not you. Me.”

  “What?” Mal looked up. “No. Jathekkil said I was the one that must die–”

  “He was wrong. Your half of our soul is too weak. It might not prevail against mine, and then you are simply dead.”

  “Prevail? You mean I would have to fight you?”

  “Our souls have been apart too long. They cannot simply be fitted back together like a broken cup.” Sandy bared his wrist and laid the black, glassy blade against his skin. “I have to do this.”

  “No!”

  But it was too late. Dark blood was already welling from a long shallow cut along the veins of Sandy’s wrist. As Mal watched in horror, his brother sliced open his other wrist. Mal saw again the piles of skrayling corpses in the watchtower on Corsica, smelt the copper tang of fresh blood. Sandy put the blade down on the floor between his feet and took Mal’s hand in his own. Lifeblood, warm and sticky, pulsed over both their hands and dripped to the floor.

  “Try not to fight too hard,” Sandy whispered, and closed his eyes.

  “No…”

  Mal pulled his brother close, cradling his head against his shoulder. He mumbled something, he knew not what, and heard the whisper of Sandy’s dying reply.

  “Amayi’o anosennowe… I will never give up…”

  Ned and Gabriel stood side by side at the foot of the great stair. The sorcerers advanced slowly at first, as if unable to believe that two mortals would dare to try to stop them. The foremost stepped forward, rising up until he was seven, eight feet tall, broad in the beam and muscular, his face horribly familiar. Armitage? But this was not the man Ned had killed; the shapeshifter made Suffolk’s retainer look like a runt.

  The Armitage-giant launched himself at Ned, swinging his massive fists. Ned dodged; it wasn’t hard to get under the blows. Bending over he headbutted the giant in the groin, and it roared and brought down its fist. Ned narrowly dodged it but the other fist came down, catching him a glancing blow on the left shoulder. Something made a horrible crunching noise and pain exploded inside Ned’s skull. He looked up and to his horror the giant was falling on him, trying to crush him out of existence. Ned held up his right arm in a desperate attempt to fend him off, but as the creature smashed into the steel-studded palm it shrank once more into a slight youth of no more than seventeen, pale-faced and disoriented. Still, his weight was enough to push Ned backwards, and they sprawled on the steps together. The shapeshifter started getting to his feet, growing as he did so, but with an almighty effort Ned swiped him round the head. His opponent grunted and slumped to the ground, out cold. A trickle of blood ran from his temple. He wasn’t getting up any time soon.

  Ned staggered to his feet and looked around, just in time to see Gabriel locked in combat with something hardly less horrific than the devourers they had fought in Venice. Lean and pale as an ox carcass on a butcher’s hook it was, with burning red eyes and clawed hands. It lunged for Gabriel’s throat and bit down, blood gouting over its pink-and-white skin. Ned screamed and went for it, battering it around the head, but by ill chance the metal hand had snapped back into a fist and only the brass knuckles were connecting with the monster’s flesh. He swore and worked the lever, but before he could hit the creature again it dropped Gabriel and went still, as did the others. They all stared up at the keep, then as one they began to move towards the entrance, shifting back into their human forms and scrambling over the fallen.

  A slow drumbeat, getting slower. It was dark here, darker than the dreamlands had ever been before, as if leaden clouds had blotted out even the faint smear of light that illuminated the void. He was dying, and his only hope was that battered fragment of a soul tied to flesh as familiar as his own. He reached out an insubstantial hand, groping in the dark for what he knew must be there, but feared it would not. No. He had to believe, or it would truly disappear. Never give up. I will always find you. I will always come for you. Amayi. Brother. Soul of my soul.

  There. Such a fragile thing, like a cobweb, and yet strong as steel. He groped his way along the bond, feeling it grow thick and corded beneath his fingers like an umbilicus, the shared flesh of their birth. Pouring his essence into its fibres he swam through the darkness, towards the source, hearing the heartbeat grow louder and louder once more. The bond twisted, trembling under his touch, but he pushed on. We cannot fail now.

  All at once he was falling from a great height and he screamed, expecting to smash against the stony earth of the dreamlands any moment. A light flared, so bright he could not see it, could not open his eyes and yet it was there, searing through him, limning his veins and sinews and the tip of every hair on his skin–

  Erishen.

  He screamed his name, and opened his eyes to the darkness of an abandoned chapel.

  “Hendricks?”

  It was Mal’s voice, or more likely Sandy’s; it was hard to tell the difference through the heavy oak door. Coby turned the key and drew back the bolts. Mal stood there, swaying on his feet, his shirt gleaming dark and wet in the candlelight to match his hose.

  “What happened?” she cried. “Oh, sweet Jesu, you’re covered…”

  She peered around him, but there was no one on the stair.

  “I don’t think they’ve broken in yet.” He placed his bloody hands on her shoulders. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything.”

  “We need to finish what Jathekkil started.”

  He glanced back at their captive, then down at the floor. She followed his gaze. The cellars, full of gunpowder.

  “You will have to be careful, on the way down–”

  “No. I can’t leave you here,” she said. “Mal, please–”

  He put a finger to her lips.

  “I am Erishen. I must finish this.”

  “No.” She backed away from him and went to put her arm around Kit, but he ran over to his father and flung his arms about his knees.

  “Amayi.”

  Mal ruffled the boy’s hair, just the way she had seen her brother-in-law do so many times.

  “Where’s Sandy?” When he did not reply, she went to the door. “Where is he?”

  “Gone,” Mal said. “I told you, I am Erishen now. And you must go. Take Kiiren. Quickly!”

  She took Kit’s hand and was about to lead him away when her nerve broke. She ran back to her husband – if he still was her husband – and kissed him on the cheek, then turned her back and walked out with Kit in tow. After a while, however, it was Kit who led the way, since she could see nothing for the tears in her eyes.

  “Come on, Mamma, we have to be quick! They’ll be here soon.”

  He leapt down the stairs like a young mountain goat and she could only stumble after him, her heart a dead weight in her chest. What evil magic had transferred Erishen into her beloved Mal?

  She had no time to wonder further, however. As they reached the exit to the great hall, the archways of the dividing wall lit up as the outer doors beyond burst into flame. She pulled Kit down the next turn of the spiral stair and watched with a pounding heart as monstrous creatures loped or flew or slithered across the hall and up the stairs, intent on their prey. Mal. She started back after them as if in a dream.

  “No, Mamma! We have to do what Erishen – what Father asked of us. Or we will all die for nothing.”

  “How can you…” She broke off, shaking her head. This was all too much to take
in.

  They continued on down the dark stairs, Coby trailing after the ancient creature in the shape of her son. All her family, taken from her by those… things. She would gladly destroy them all.

  When they reached the level of the great hall she told Kit to stay there and hide in the shadows, and went on without him.

  Gunpowder. Why did it have to be gunpowder? She had never trusted the foul stuff, not since that day at the theatre. Mal had forced her to learn to use a pistol, to try and overcome her fear, but the sharp stink of the stuff still made her feel queasy. Still, she did as she had been instructed, taking a small keg and laying trails from each of the main stacks of barrels to the entrance, and then pouring a single trail from the threshold to the foot of the stairs. Further than that she could not go, not without proper fuses and she did not know how to set those. It would have to be enough.

  She took out flint and tinder, and coaxed it into flame. With a whispered prayer she dropped it onto the end of the gunpowder trail and fled up the stairs without a backward glance. Scooping up Kiiren she ran across the great hall, through the ashes that were all that remained of the doors, and down the outer stair to the innermost ward. To her surprise Ned was there, with an unconscious – or perhaps dead – Gabriel in his arms.

  “Run!” She pelted past him towards the old banqueting hall, where the ambassador’s reception had been held. Its door stood open, its temporary roof awaiting repairs for King Henry’s coronation. Coby stumbled and almost dropped Kiiren, but regained her footing and made it into the scant shelter of the ancient walls as the first explosion rumbled through the ground beneath her feet. Smoke and sparks poured out of the arrow-slit windows, and the thunder rolled on as one stack after another went up.

  “Kiiren. Can you reach your amayi? With a… a tunnel of light?”

  “I think so.” He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. “I’m scared, Mamma.”

  “I know, lambkin. Just try your best.”

  He closed his eyes again. Coby sat back on her heels, clasped her hands at her breast and prayed.

  There was only one way to fight Shawe’s creatures: on their own terms. They had learnt to dreamwalk whilst waking, to bend the world to their will as easily as a young skrayling shapes his dreams. The idea had never occurred to Erishen before, but now he had seen it with his own eyes, it appeared absurdly simple. This feeling would not last for long, though, he also knew that. It was the last echo of the soul-joining, reverberating through his mind and putting his thoughts out of joint. For these few moments, he knew how they did it, and he could do it too. He just had to make the feeling last until the girl had destroyed them all.

  He turned and stood to face the door, hearing the rattle of claws upon the stairs. With a thought he turned the door to close-dressed stonework, sealing the entrance just as he had seen the first sorcerer do in Ilianwe’s chamber. The creatures howled in rage and the stones trembled, shivering into tiny fragments that spilled down the stairs around their feet. The foremost of them filled the doorway, human once more apart from black leathery wings that sprouted from his back.

  Erishen folded his arms.

  “Is that the best you can come up with? A Christian devil out of the bible our father used to read from? I am not one of your human victims.”

  The devil folded its wings, and the horns that had begun to sprout from its temples retracted back into its skull.

  “You are not one of us.”

  “No? Then how can I do this?”

  Erishen glanced towards the canopied bed. The sheets and blankets rose up and flew at the dreamshaper, threatening to smother him. At the last moment the youth raised his hands and they melted into a storm of white down, as though someone had burst a pillow. The dreamshaper spat out a feather.

  “Enough of these games. Where is the puppet king?”

  “You mean Jathekkil? Poor fellow, he went to all that trouble to gain the throne and now everyone wants to rule through him.”

  “He is weak, and lacking in vision. Our master knew humans far better.”

  “Master Shawe.”

  The dreamshaper laughed. “Not that dabbler in potions and elixirs. Master Fox, who brought us together. Until you killed him.”

  “Tanijeel.”

  “Yes. He told us what humans are capable of, and what we should do to them.”

  “And Olivia. Ilianwe. What about her? Is she your leader now?”

  The boy shrugged. “We do not need her anymore.”

  She was dead, then; perhaps seeking reincarnation at this very moment. She was a survivor, after all.

  A rumbling beneath their feet made the dreamshaper look around.

  “I’m afraid you’re too late,” Erishen said, glancing towards the heavy wooden chest in which he had concealed the young prince. “In a few moments this entire castle will explode, and there’s rather a lot of steel armour and weaponry on the floor below. Your chances of survival are minimal.”

  He reached out to Kiiren and opened a tunnel into the dreamlands.

  “Farewell.”

  As he stepped through, he felt something catch at his heels. Damn it, they were following him! He rolled over on the dry grass, kicking at the claw-like hands grasping his ankles. Winged things shot overhead as the dreamshapers made their desperate escape. Erishen looked around to see Kiiren at the far end of the tunnel, arms out, beckoning. No!

  With the last fragments of magic at his command he slammed the exit shut before his opponents could get to it. It was a gamble, but he suspected that without Tanijeel or Ilianwe to aid them they were trapped in here. Trapped in the endless night of the dreamlands, for he would not open a door for them no matter what they did to him. Of course, first they had to catch him. Falling onto all fours he transformed into a silver hound and coursed away across the grass, his enemies in hot pursuit.

  EPILOGUE

  Winter came early, up in the hills. By November they woke every morning to a world rimed in frost; by December it snowed as often as not, turning the roads to filthy freezing slush over a layer of compacted ice. The stream of visitors and letters, never frequent so far from London, trickled to a halt, and the estate closed in on itself to await the return of spring.

  Children do not heed the turn of the seasons, however, and Coby found herself spending most of her daylight hours making new clothes for Kit, or altering the ones he already had when she ran out of sufficient fabric to make them anew. Not that he was growing especially fast, but they had brought little with them from London and he could hardly wear his courtly finery to ride his pony or play in the walled orchard.

  “My lady?”

  Their ancient steward hobbled into the parlour.

  “You should not have come all the way upstairs, Lynwood. I told you to send one of the lads with messages.”

  “I know, my lady. But even my old sinews need stretching from time to time.”

  She put down her sewing. “What is it?”

  “I was thinking, my lady…” He wrung his hands together. “Next Friday being the coronation as well as New Year’s Day, I reckon it might raise the household’s spirits to broach a cask of claret, to toast the new king’s health.”

  “The new king?”

  “Arthur, my lady.”

  “Oh. Of course.”

  Robert’s brother had been declared King after Henry was killed in the explosion at the Tower. The work of traitors, according to Lord Grey; the same men who had assassinated King Robert and laid the blame at the skraylings’ door. Grey had produced an extensive list of their names, compiled by his loyal servant Sir Maliverny Catlyn shortly before his tragic death at the hands of the same villains.

  “We could make do with beer, my lady–”

  “No, open the claret. It will not keep forever.”

  “Thank you, my lady.”

  “Only the one, mind. More than that will lead to rowdiness, in my experience.”

  “Yes, my lady.” He turned to go. “I… I had thought you a
nd the young master might have gone down to London.”

  “Perhaps in the spring, when the theatres reopen.” Wild horses would not drag her to a coronation, not after last time. “Master Parrish has been nagging me to go, and I cannot put him off forever.”

  The steward bowed and took his leave. Coby sat down, picked up her sewing and abandoned it again. A visit to London would do them both good, in truth. She could stay with Lady Frances for a while; Kit needed the company of other children, and the duchess’s little boy was of an age to play with him now.

  The pale winter sunlight moved across the parlour floor and she watched it dully, wrapped around the ache in her chest that she had thought was beginning to heal. If they did not go to London she would have to send for a tutor for Kit, but after all he had gone through he needed time to be a normal boy for a while. Normal? No, he would never be that, even though he had become more Kit and less Kiiren in the months since Sandy’s death and Mal’s… She swallowed. Kiiren had said that Erishen, in Mal’s body, had gone into the dreamlands, but Erishen himself had once told her that no one knew what happened to someone who got trapped there.

  Rapid footsteps sounded in the gallery outside, and the door burst open.

  “Mamma, mamma, look who’s here!”

  Kit burst into the room, eyes bright and cheeks flushed as if he’d been outside playing in the snow, but his clothes and hair were dry.

  “What are you talking about, lambkin?”

  “Look,” he said, turning back to the doorway.

  Coby followed his gaze, and her breath caught in her throat. A familiar figure stood there; gaunt and wearing naught but rags and dried blood, but unmistakable.

  “Mal?”

  Throwing her work aside she leapt to her feet and ran to catch him as he fell.

  He opened his eyes, blinking against the light that burned like the midday sun. It was a candle, set in a pewter candlestick. He watched the wax drip down one side, but no matter how hard he stared it took its own path, heedless of his will. Then it was true. He was back in the waking world.