The City

by Stella Gemmell

  Fell was looking at her, but suddenly his gaze shifted to something beyond her, and the blood drained from his face like water from a bowl. He stopped.

  She did not turn round, but stepped forward. “Look at me,” she said, although she could not hear the words. “Look at me, not at him!”

  But Fell’s gaze was fixed. She took another step, although she knew it was the wrong thing to do. “Look at me, not at him!”

  Tears of blood started to run from Fell’s eyes, coursing down his face to drip onto the red leather. A gout of blood spat from his mouth and his whole body shook as if in fever.

  Then his chest exploded.

  Indaro awoke, as she always did from the same nightmare, with panic in her throat, her fingers clawing at the rock beneath her. Around her was darkness and silence, punctuated by the snores of sleeping soldiers and the roar of distant water. Elija, who was lying beside her, turned his head and gazed at her. “Just a nightmare,” he said. She lay back down, and slept without dreams.

  At first Bartellus feared he was imagining it when the flood started to recede. But after a while he could feel the current plucking at his clothes as the waters flooded out of the cell, leaving him frozen and wretched, but alive. He spoke words of gratitude to the Gods of Ice and Fire, who had allowed him to suffer great hardship but had always shown mercy. As soon as he felt able, he bent down and inserted three fingers in the hole he had made in the door. He wrenched at it, and was sure this time he felt it move. Squatting down painfully on his haunches, he got a firmer grip and tried again, pulling with all his strength, so that his knee flared in agony and coloured lights flashed and danced in front of his eyes. He groaned with the effort, and the door creaked in harmony—and the rotting wood gave way with a loud crack. The vertical plank tore off at knee-height. The gap was not big enough to scramble through, but now the old man could get a good purchase on the other planks. It took all his strength, and he tore his right hand on the jagged edges of the timber, but at last he made a hole in the door large enough to squeeze through.

  Once outside the cell he stood in total darkness, water swishing around his ankles, trying to get his bearings. The corridor sloped upwards to the left, down to the right, water flowing speedily over stone. His reading in the Great Library had told him that the dungeons were built in the reign of the emperor Saduccuss the master builder, when the Red Palace had been erected around the old fort, the Keep. Even then the dungeons had been victim to flooding in bad weather, and he had read with amusement, at the time, an angry letter to the chief engineer from the general in charge of the palace guard complaining that in heavy rain water trickled in through all the new cells and flooded the guards’ quarters, which were on a lower level. Although Bart’s every instinct told him to go upwards, he trusted what he had read and started off down, to his right and towards the entrance, he hoped. He sighed, marvelling that he could recall a scrap of obscure information, read years before, when he could no longer remember an old friend’s name.

  He shuffled along, one hand on the wall beside him, the other stretched out. His deprived senses yearned for the sight of a light, although he knew that if guards came that way, to check on their charges, he would be lost. He flexed his left hand. The fingers seemed to have healed, but he doubted his ability to fight.

  When he came to a downward step he stumbled and nearly fell, then he went more cautiously, down low steps, into deeper and deeper water. He started to fear there would be no way out, that the entrance would be too deeply flooded, but water was running away all the time, and it seemed to get no deeper. He reached flat stone again. Then he heard someone speaking, so close by that he stopped, heart in mouth.

  A sharp voice argued, “What do we care? They’ll be dead soon anyway. Drowning is a mercy, I reckon.”

  A lower voice grumbled, “I’m just saying.”

  “What were we supposed to do?” asked the first voice. “Risk drowning to get them out? Not my job, sonny. We were lucky to get out ourselves.”

  The other voice mumbled something Bart could not hear, and he stood still, wondering what to do. He heard the sound of metal on metal.

  “Where you going? Don’t be a fool. If they’re dead we’ll only have to drag the corpses out. Leave it to the next shift.”

  The other apparently relented, for there was silence for a while, then Bart smelled a wonderful scent, of tobacco. He edged forward until his eyes detected a dim light. He moved towards it, careful not to make splashing sounds. At a corner he peered round. At a meeting point of three corridors two guards were smoking pipes, seated at a table with their booted feet up out of the shallow water. There was a loaf of bread on the table, and a jug. Bart’s stomach clenched at the sight of it.

  The guards were not young men, but Bartellus could not hope to take one of them on, let alone two. He contemplated luring one to him by making a sound, but he could not be sure they wouldn’t both come, and he had no weapon. The guards had no blades he could see, but they were both armed with cudgels lying to hand on the table.

  As he debated, the guard facing him stood with a sigh and walked over to the wall and opened his trousers. Both now had their backs to him and Bartellus took his chance. Trying to hurry without sloshing water, he crept towards the seated guard. He was halfway there when the pissing man must have heard him, for he turned and yelled.

  Bart threw himself at the table, making a grab for a cudgel, as the seated guard turned and stood in one movement. Bart crashed into him, his grasp missing the weapon, and they both fell to the flooded floor. Bart sat up and punched the man on the jaw with all his strength. The blow connected but it was weak and hardly shook him. He knelt up and grabbed his cudgel from the table and aimed it at Bart’s head. Bart, helpless, put up one arm and flinched.

  “Here! Stop!” the other guard said calmly, doing up his trousers. “We don’t want him dead.”

  The guard on the floor argued as he stood up, rubbing his jaw. “I didn’t see you rushing to rescue him from the flood.”

  “Dead and drowned is one thing,” the first one said. “You can’t argue with the will of the gods. But dead from a crushed skull is another.”

  “But he hit me,” moaned the second guard.

  “Poor old fart,” the first one said. “Look at him. Shame we can’t do him the favour. He should have drowned.”

  But Bartellus had stopped listening. There was a movement in the blackness behind the first guard. A slender boy had emerged from the dark and was creeping up on the man armed with a club or bat. The second man saw him. “Daric!” he yelled. The first turned his head, straight into a swinging blow from the length of wood. The strike was not strong but it was well-aimed, and the guard’s nose exploded in blood, and he staggered. He lunged forward but the boy dodged back and, putting all his might into the blow, hit him again on the ear. The guard fell to the floor. His colleague moved to attack but Bartellus grabbed him by the arm and the neck, dragging him back. The guard tried to shake him off, cuffing him round the head, but Bart hung on and the boy joined him. Together they wrestled the guard to the floor and held him there, face down in the floodwater, until he stopped struggling. Then the boy jumped up again and returned to the first guard, who lay motionless, and gave him a few whacks on the head to be sure. Then he looked at Bart and smiled.

  “Father!”

  Bartellus blinked, fearing he had finally gone insane.

  “Emly?” he whispered.

  Chapter 39

  It was not dark, but it was not light either. It was just grey, a crepuscular gloom lit by a sinister gleam from the wet walls of the pit.

  The gulon was strong, far stronger than Riis. It had dragged him down countless steps, its long teeth sunk deep in his neck. Finally it had brought him to its lair, a foul place of death and terror. Then it had fed on him, lying across his body lapping his wounds as he lay helpless in the floodwater. He had passed out for a while and as he rose again to consciousness he opened his eyes and moaned.

>   Riis took a deep breath, rallying his remaining strength, and screamed with all his might. He screamed out the pain and the dread and horror—and the gulon moved away from him at last, sliding off his body and slinking to the other side of the cave.

  Riis had lost a lot of blood, but he thought he could stand if only the beast stayed off him. He dragged one arm under him, trying to get up, then realised with horror that his wrist was manacled to the wall. Someone had chained him as he slept.

  “Do not struggle. This is the place of your death, soldier,” said a voice softly. Riis turned his head, crying out as the neck wounds parted and blood flowed again.

  The emperor stood in the doorway of the lair. His white shirt was a beacon of light in the gloom. His fair beard was neatly trimmed. He smiled at Riis, though his black eyes were those of a dead man.

  “Keep it off me,” the soldier pleaded. He believed his mind would snap if the beast came for him again. He glanced at it fearfully. It had lain down in the water beside the corpse of an old man and was rubbing up against it like a cat.

  “Deidoro,” the emperor said, and the gulon turned and looked at him. It bared its long yellow fangs.

  “It…” said Riis, anxious to please the Immortal, to keep the thing away. He swallowed. “It has a name?”

  “We brought them with us to this land, many of them,” the emperor said, smiling a little as if reminiscing with a friend. “They all died eventually, of course. They are not suited to the climate. But some had mated with dogs and foxes, so they still live in the back streets and sewers, changed, lessened.”

  Riis spat some foulness from his mouth. “And Deidoro?”

  “Deidoro is special. He is one of the originals, or a reflection of one, which is really the same thing. He is the emperor’s pet. See how devoted he is.” He gestured, and Riis realised with disgust the body lying in floodwater was not a corpse but a living man, old beyond time, in filthy ragged robes. As he watched the man’s bony hand moved on the gulon’s fur, stroking it. Riis tried to blink the dirt from his eyes. The old man seemed to be tied to the wall of the lair with lengths of wet cloth.

  For a moment his pain and dread receded a little as he thought, Who is the emperor here?

  “But you are not interested in the gulons and their history,” said the fair-haired man briskly. “First you will tell me everything you know about the branded men and their plotting, or I will call Deidoro back. We have plenty of time, Riis, and the gulon is still hungry.”

  The underground river flowing sluggishly beneath the bridge was starting to rise again, and Gil Rayado ordered the army to press on upwards.

  The stone stairs were steep and ancient, worn smooth by the tread of a million feet and made more treacherous by rivulets of water gushing down. Indaro climbed quickly, watching her footing. There were more than two hundred steps and when they reached the top there was only one way to go, along a corridor and through a many-pillared hall. This was where the water was coming from, for the ceiling of the hall was gushing water through a hundred cracks and crevices. In parts it was jetting out as if under great pressure, and the entire ceiling seemed to sag towards them, many of the pillars cracking and breaking under the strain.

  The soldiers traversed the hall quickly, glancing nervously at the ceiling. Indaro hurried through and caught up with Gil and Elija on the other side, at yet another stairway.

  “There is water above us, water below,” she said. “Water always flows downwards. How can it still be above?”

  Elija shook his head. “My guess is that the entire substructure of the City is collapsing. When a gate falls, then water rushes out and downwards. But when a tunnel collapses, water is stored up above it until it finds another way out. I think the dam we saw, the one that broke, was not the only one. I think a higher dam collapsed first. Do you remember, before we heard it fall there was a distant roaring of water? I think a higher gate, a weir, gave way and its collapse caused the lower one to break too.”

  He frowned. “I don’t know, but I think the higher levels in this part of the City have been flooded for some time, but now some of the water has been released to make its way down to the lower depths.”

  “Then perhaps the Hall of Watchers might be passable?” Indaro suggested hopefully. She was eager to see a part of the Halls she recognised.

  “Perhaps,” Elija repeated doubtfully.

  “Are we under the Keep yet?” Gil asked him.

  “I think so,” Elija replied. “Or very near.”

  “Then we stick to our plan. There must be a way into the Keep from the Halls, even if it means climbing a sewage pipe. If we fail to find that way, then we might have to try the Hall of Watchers.”

  Stalker, who had joined them as they spoke, suddenly pulled a knife and flung it. It speared a rat running up the steps at their feet.

  “Rats. I hate ’em,” he commented, bending to drag out the knife, wiping it on the rodent’s oily fur.

  “Have you noticed,” said Gil, “that there are more rats now? For half a day we have seen hardly any. Now they are everywhere. It is a sign that we are near our goal.”

  “Rats like to be near people,” agreed Indaro, watching a dozen or more skittering up the stairs in front of them.

  At Gil’s orders the warriors started putting on breastplates and helms. Archers unwrapped bowstrings from greased packages and strung their bows. Now the way upwards was clear, Elija was moved back to the centre of the army, and armed and armoured men stalked ahead, swords at the ready. At the top of the second staircase they entered a new maze.

  At last they reached a door sunk deep in a mossy wall. Stout and riveted, it looked as though it had not opened in a hundred years. The iron handle had rusted away, and when Gil grasped the wooden nub sticking out of the hole where the handle had been, it too came away in his hand. He threw it down, and put his hand in the hole and pulled. The door scraped open. Beyond it was a guard room. It was small and square, with racks for weapons on two sides, iron shackles embedded in one wall, and it was furnished with a crumbling table and chairs. They crossed the room, moving quietly, to another door. This looked newer and recently used.

  A feeling of misgiving rose in Indaro’s breast. Was this the way into the Keep? After a miserable day of struggling through tunnels and floods, it seemed too easy. She drew her sword.

  Gil put his hand on the handle of the inner door. There was silence in the room, as if all the soldiers were holding their breath.

  Gil smiled grimly. “If there are enemy warriors on the other side, then it doesn’t matter how much noise we make.”

  He eased the door open and peered, then he passed through and his troops followed. They found themselves in a corridor, high and long, but narrow. There was a stone wall on one side and a wooden one on the other. Single file they crept along. Light, hard and bright, gleamed from myriad cracks in the wooden wall. Indaro suddenly realised it was panelling; they were behind the panelling of a room. Like rats running behind the walls. Gil had come to the same realisation, and he stopped and signalled for total silence.

  “Are we in the Keep?” he whispered.

  Elija nodded confidently.

  “This is what we came here for,” Gil said to his troops. “By my estimate it is near to noon on the Day of Summoning. Take a few moments to make peace with your gods, for we will likely not survive this day.” He looked around at them. “Remember what we are here for—to kill as many of the Thousand as possible and give Fell time. Your sacrifice will be unknown, tales will not be told of your courage. Hold on. Stay alive as long as you can. Kill them all.”

  “Let’s get on with it, then,” Stalker muttered.

  Gil grinned at him, then raised the hilt of his sword and crashed it through the wooden panelling. Light splintered into the narrow space, then other men started ripping away the flimsy wall and they stepped blinking into a wide chamber bathed in light.

  Indaro looked around. The room was empty of furnishing but was decorated with
murals of blue sky and white clouds. Sunlight filtered in from high windows and Indaro’s eyes drank it in—it was the first sunlight she had seen for weeks.

  Gil paused, unsure which way to go, and he turned to Elija. But before he could say anything a City soldier came running into the room. He skidded to a halt at the sight of the armed invaders and opened his mouth to shout, but he was felled by arrows from several bows. The Petrassi archers cheered, exhilarated by the kill.

  Then a second soldier arrived and let out a yell. “They’re here! Here!” He was slain too, but they could hear the sound of running feet in the distance and within moments warriors started streaming into the chamber. Indaro saw the black and silver of the Thousand. And they were fresh and eager for blood.

  “They’re here!” she thought. They were expected. She heard an alarm gong begin its deep boom far away.

  Indaro parried a sword-cut and returned it, her sword sliding off the warrior’s breastplate. She was unbalanced and ducked away from the slashing blade. With an ear-shattering scream she rammed her sword into the man’s groin where two pieces of armour met. The man went down, blood jetting, and Indaro stepped back, looking round for Elija. He was flat against the wall, alarm in his eyes, trying to make his way back the way they had come. Garret and the Petrassi soldier Nando were screening him from attack. As she watched Nando took a blade to the belly, and she leaped forward and slashed her sword at the attacker’s neck. Her blade slid off armour, but the man was distracted and Garret rammed his knife into his face above the cheek-guard.

  For a while the invaders held their own, but more defenders kept pouring into the room. Finally there were so many they were waiting two and three deep for a chance to get at the army. Gil went down, a slashing sword wound to the thigh. Indaro made her way through the melee to him. She knelt down.