by Martin Davey
For the first time, she thought she might understand what that line could mean.
CHAPTER 4
“Landros, you look like shit.” Pascal slammed the door behind him. His shirt was hanging loose at the back and his hair was even more unruly than usual. He tossed his jacket onto the bed and stretched like a self-satisfied cat. There was no need to ask where he had spent the night.
“I didn’t get much sleep last night.” Landros was still fully clothed, even down to his boots. He had spent the night sitting in his chair, feet on the bed, eyes never leaving the door where he had seen his friend return from the dead. Or had he? The briefest of apparitions sending him falling back to his bed in sheer terror only to look back and find his friend gone. Could it have just been the stresses of the day which had begun with him Dreaming Keeper Jerohim and ended with the death of his closest friend?
Landros dragged his feet from the bed and rose to his feet, running his hand through his hair and looking out the window. The sun was still low in the sky, Katrinamal only now beginning to stir to life. “How could you go to the Mother’s House after what happened to Feren?” He didn’t turn from the window as he spoke; his eyes were fixed on a stark-ribbed dog slinking through the short shadows still striping the road, its nose brushing the dirt as it searched for any scraps of food.
He heard Pascal pause in undressing behind him. “Don’t judge me, Landros. You’ve been chosen by the Keepers to be the Captain, but that doesn’t give you the right to judge.” More clothes peeled away and thrown to the floor. A faint whiff of perfume; jasmine and vanilla soap. “You wanted to sit in here alone all night. It’s up to you.” A boot joined the clothes on the floor. “Torra and Dorian spent the night drinking themselves senseless at the Fiddler’s Tree.” The boot’s partner joined it in the pile on the floor. “That’s up to them. Me, nothing like watching one of your best friends die in front of your eyes to make you want to live life to the full.” The dog had found something limp and wet and white to chew on, watching jealously every time somebody passed by. “You could have let her know, you know.” The bed creaked and groaned in protest as Pascal fell back on it.
Landros turned away from the dawning day and the scavenging dog, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Pascal lay stark naked on the bed, his pale flesh marked by the occasional red mark across his chest. Landros wiped a hand across his face and looked away. “Let who know what?”
“Elian. She wasn’t best pleased. I told her what happened but she was having none of it. Said at least you could have gone there and let her know. Kali said she waited best part of half the night for you.”
Elian. Landros tried his best not to groan aloud. The thought of her large brown eyes made his heart ache. He wanted to hold her and tell her everything that had happened. Instead he found himself in a barely furnished room with a naked ginger man. “I forgot.” The protestation sounded weak to his own ears. “With everything that’s been happening...look, will you just get some clothes on?”
Pascal’s bed creaked again as he struggled to rise. “She wore me out, Landros. The things Kali does...” He pulled his drawer open and sniffed dubiously at a handful of shirts. “Anyway, you shouldn’t even be here. Thought you’d have settled yourself in that nice house on Fadder’s Way by now.” He seemed satisfied with a brown shirt and pulled it on.
“What would you have me do, break my way in and toss Dorian’s things out in the street?”
“You might have a point there.” Pascal found a pair of pants under his bed, a belt still looped about them. “How did you get on? With Feren’s mother, I mean.”
Landros shrugged and sat heavily back on his bed. “She was upset. How else could it have gone?” He sighed, trying to ease the tension bunching in his shoulders, trying not to imagine Feren knocking at the door at any moment. “Where do you think he is now?”
“Who, Dorian?” Pascal shrugged and sniffed, “Probably still in—“
“No, no, not Dorian. Feren. Where do you think he’ll be now?”
“Probably at the Sleeper’s Hall getting ready for the cleaning.” Pascal settled back on his bed, feet crossed, arms behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. “Still can’t believe it. Can’t believe we’ll never see him again, hear him talking and laughing. Half of me expects him to come bursting through that door at any moment.”
It hadn’t been what Landros had meant, but he didn’t have the energy to press the subject. Instead he threw Pascal’s jacket at him. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Pascal pulled the jacket from his face. “Go? Where are we going to?”
As if in answer, the bells of the Five began to resound about the streets of Katrinamal, chiming under the clear blue skies, pealing about the still quiet streets with the new day’s sunshine just beginning to banish the shadows back to their corners. “The Clerk’s Commune is about to begin. We should be there for Feren.”
Already there was the scrabble of booted feet in the corridor outside their room, a few shouts and curses as people hurried to be ready for the Commune. News of Feren’s death would have spread around the town by now and there would likely be a big turnout. Nothing like a death to make the people want to hear the wisdom of the Keepers.
The smell of spilled beer and other, viler things pervaded the corridor as Landros opened the door. The sound of chinking glasses and slamming doors down below; Raina and Mersa hard at work cleaning the inn after the night’s merriment. The Keepers’ Rest wasn’t a big inn, only five rooms on this floor, and they were small and sparsely furnished.
A surly-looking woman with blonde hair like a haystack dragged through a muddy field looked at them suspiciously before stepping over a huddled shape curled on the floor and heading for the stairs. The shape was her husband, Benjin Cruno and he looked like he’d spent the night out in the corridor again. He might well have noticed someone knocking at Landros’s door, but asking him would mean telling Pascal about what he thought he had seen last night, and waking him could well turn out to be the better part of a morning’s work. Instead, Landros stepped over the old drunk, resisting the urge to give the man a kick on his way. Benjin and his harridan wife had been the cause of many a sleepless night over the past weeks.
Pascal hurried after him down the stairs. “To think you’re going to be away from all this. I hope you’ll try not to miss it too much. Imagine, though,” he nodded to the open door of the inn as they approached the yard. “Imagine having one of those coming around to clean your house every morning.” Landros had a brief image of bare arms glowing bronze in the thin sunlight streaming through the window, blonde hair held back by a strip of sweat-streaked cloth. He wasn’t sure which sister it was, Raina or Mersa, not that it mattered much. More than once he and Pascal had spent an idle morning watching the sisters clean the inn, but after Feren, none of that mattered.
It was already a warm day; for once the winds were still, almost as though the world was drawing breath for the day ahead. The bells had stopped their ringing; now they would ring five times every five minutes before the Commune began. Usually in Market Square at this time awnings would be snapping into place and the cries of sellers not so fortunate to have a shop would be filling the air. Shops were still being readied and peddlers and beggars and doctors and merchants and cleaners still trudged to their various places of business, but many more people were hurrying to the Keepers’ Hall.
“I’ve never known you this eager to get to a Commune before.” Pascal had to quicken his step to keep pace with Landros. “Don’t tell me being blessed by Keeper Jerohim is going to turn you all righteous on us all.” He clashed shoulders with a bulky bearded man in a blue Town Guard uniform. A muttered apology later and he hurried after Landros rubbing his arm. “What about Dorian and the others though? Shouldn’t they be here?”
“If they want to be there, they know where the Hall is.” As it was, Landros was beginning to worry about getting to the Hall before it became full and they barred the doors. He increased hi
s pace, hurrying past Heads’ Place, determinedly not looking to the windows of Mother Jendra’s house in case he saw Elian there. If he saw her brown eyes, her pale cheeks, her delicate neck, he didn’t know that he would be able to leave her and he had the feeling that he was expected to be at this Commune.
Another right and they were on Shaker’s Street, picking their way through the crowds, stepping over the assorted wares the shopkeepers piled outside their cramped windows. All the buildings along Shakers Street were narrow and bony, almost as though their long-forgotten architect had tried to squeeze as many buildings together before he got to the blessed open space of the Keepers’ Place. Here there were only six buildings, all of them glorious; five of them, the temples of the Keepers, were the five tallest buildings in all Katrinamal. No other building was allowed to be more than half the height of the five temples.
Another ringing of the bell, five rings, one for each of the five Keepers who had saved the world of man from itself. The four minutes silence in between each ringing was a silence in memory of the Fallen Four. The bell was on top of the Hall of the Keepers; not tall like the temples, it was only one story high, but it was still glorious in its own way. Sculpted from red stone imported from Jorahal beyond the sea of Kalun, it gleamed under the rising sun like a smouldering ember. Every aspect of the Hall was devoted to the Five. Surrounded on all sides by the individual temples of the Keepers, the Hall of the Keepers was where the five gods united as one with their Clerk.
Landros let himself be swept along by the crowd, the temples were always busy with people seeking favour the Keepers, begging forgiveness or placing offerings, but the majority of the people today were rushing to hear the wisdom of the gods. Would Feren’s mother be in the Hall waiting to hear an explanation for the death of her only son? Would she get the answers she needed? Landros remembered when his mother had been taken by the ravings and he had come to the Hall for answers to her madness, some words from the gods to ease his pain. He had found none, no mention of Henna Endrassi from the Clerk of the gods.
The ravings. Had they started with his mother seeing dead friends knocking on her door? Landros shook his head against the thought. A madman arguing with himself, some part of him mocked, and he grabbed Pascal’s arm to keep him close as they neared the Hall. It was too late to turn back even if they did have a change of heart. They were swept into the Hall like driftwood on the tide.
Despite the grandeur of the building itself, there was no furniture in the Hall. People were expected to stand in the presence of the Clerk. It was cool and gloomy; the only sound the hushed murmur of voices, the only smell the musky odour of too many bodies pressed together. Every wall was painted with scenes of the Deliverance; the battle of the Weeping Walls, the desperate race of Keeper Liotuk to the battle of the Seven Nights, the siege of the last King of the Farsling Lands, Keeper Martuk’s salvation of the Red Iron army at Jourun, the Fall of the three Keepers at the Dread Tower in the Dead Lands, Keeper Diothan’s last stand on the Craven Cliffs and still more, all leading to the painting which covered the ceiling; the surrender of the Nameless One at the City of the Gods. All five remaining Keepers robed in their grieving dress, all masked and all accepting the last crown of the Kings from the vile Nameless One, represented as nothing more than a vague shadow, a nebulous figure of utter blackness in a painting of brilliant colour spread across the great ceiling. Nowhere was any likeness of the Nameless One allowed to be depicted, least of all in a Hall of the Keepers.
There was a great stage at the front made of the finest green wood imported from the forests of Fenneswood far beyond the Winding River. The stage stretched from wall to wall and stood perhaps a hand taller than Landros himself. Clerk Lovelin would tower over his people when he spoke the words of the gods.
Moments after Landros and Pascal were ushered into the hall, the great risonwood doors crashed shut behind them and the room fell into the strange grey twilit darkness of a summer’s night. The quiet murmurs rose a pitch, more than one stifled laugh sounded in the shadows. People started to shove each other in nervous excitement.
Pascal rested a hand on Landros’s arm, “Haven’t seen any of the others here. Did you?”
Standing this close, constantly pressed together by the shifting of the crowd, Landros could smell Mother Jendra’s on Pascal; a sickly sweet mix of berrybloom, vanilla, jasmine and sweat that made his nostrils flare in protest. He leaned away a little and looked all about. All he saw were silhouettes, dark forms, dark shapes no more discernible than the Nameless One himself.
And then he saw her. Or what might be her. Still only a vague dark shape in a sea of vague dark shapes. Some taller than others, some darker than others, but he felt his eyes drawn to this one. She had the same thin hair savagely scraped away from her face into a bun. She had the same sharp angry nose as she turned to look around the crowd. Landros turned his face away so she wouldn’t see him. Not that she would, not that he was even certain it was Feren’s mother. But why did the thought that it might be her frighten him so?
Squeak...creak...squeak...
Unbidden, the sound of the woman’s rocking chair came to his mind. The same sound his mother’s chair made as she raved against the voices in her head.
Voices in her head or apparitions at her door?
Squeak...creak...squeak...
Four torches, one in each corner of the room flared into life to an appreciative gasp from the gathered crowd. Excited chatter as everybody turned to look at the sudden source of light, sudden source of heat. Next to each stood a Town Guardsman resplendent in a blue uniform. Resplendent enough to make Landros feel shame at his and Pascal’s sorry state.
Quiet spread across the crowd like ripples across a pond as they turned back to see the stage was no longer vacant.
Clerk Lovelin stood in the centre of the stage, hands clasped behind his back, looking at them all from eyes of purest black.
All thoughts of mothers and madness and rocking chairs were banished and scattered like feathers on the wind as Landros was held by those eyes of the blackest night. He felt as though the Clerk was taking his soul and weighing the good against the bad, as though the Clerk had reached into his innermost thoughts and was turning them around in his hands like a doctor studying the innards of a sheep. Not a new experience, Landros had had the same feeling every time he had come to a Commune, even when he had been so small that for years he had seen nothing in the Hall other than elbows and legs and matronly breasts, still he had felt those eyes of black on him even then.
“Friends!” Clerk Lovelin called out and raised his hands as though to quieten a hubbub. There was no need, every face was fixed on him and the room was quiet, waiting to hear his words, the only sound the occasional shuffling of feet, the occasional nervous cough.
“Friends,” the Clerk began again, his voice quieter now, regretful even. He slowly lowered his arms to his side. He wasn’t a big man, Ricon Lovelin, nor was he small, only a finger shorter than Landros himself. His blonde hair shone in the torchlight, the flames tingeing the yellow with shifting licks of amber. “Friends, we come together on a sad day for us all.” His voice was as neat and unassuming as his dress. Loud enough for the entire Hall to hear, not so loud as to echo about the cavernous room. His white shirt was neatly fastened to the neck, his back straight. Here was a man of order, of control. His face was cool and white, even the flickering light of the torches looked cold on his smooth pale cheek. “One of our own, one of our Watchmen has passed.” The Clerk looked down at his feet as though only now digesting this terrible information, his high cheekbones sharp and shadowy in the light. “But,” when he looked up, his black, black eyes were dark, bottomless voids. “But you wonder how this can happen when we have the Keepers to guard us? How can this happen when time has no meaning to our Masters?”
The Clerk fell silent once more. Nobody called out, nobody agreed with the Clerk questioning the gods. Around the shadowy walls, seven Town Guardsmen stood with arms cros
sed, their eyes too fixed on Clerk Lovelin.
Seemingly satisfied that nobody was going to call out, the Clerk raised his hands to shoulder height, his fingers long and white. “And I say what I say every time one of us passes before their time, what I say every time we feel grief in our hearts and loss in our lives. Every one of us will pass to Insitur. One day I myself will pass to the realm of the Keepers, one day our new young Captain Endrassi will pass...”
At the mention of his name, an image seared into Landros’s mind as though on the point of an infinitely thin skewer piercing his forehead, an image of a farmstead on a windswept cliff, loose doors clattering in the wind, grey clouds scudding overhead, black-branched trees stark against the giant sky. Landros gasped aloud, loud enough for those pressed about him to look at him, some concerned, some annoyed at the interruption. He staggered forward, palm of his hand pressed against his forehead, blinding white pain behind his eyes.
A hand rested on his arm, Pascal looking up into his eyes. “You okay?” he whispered. It was barely a breath, but Landros was warmed by it; it was a brave man who spoke in the Hall while the Clerk was in full flow. He smiled and nodded to his friend, the image in his mind fading like the final quivering note of a lute. Almost imperceptibly, Landros felt himself having more room around him, people moving away from the restless trouble makers, eyes as shadowy and dark as the Clerk’s own fixed on him and Pascal.
“And who can forget,” the Clerk continued, seemingly oblivious to the movement below him, his black eyes alive with the fire of his fervour. “Who can forget the ultimate sacrifice of the fallen Four? Who can forget Keeper Diothan and his fateful stand before the traitorous army of the Kings? All about him the dead and the dying faithful, piled like bloodied leaves of the sevenoak, the ground slick with their blood, with Keeper Diothan’s own blood. And still he fought on, fought when he had seen his own death time and time again as he gazed into the swirling depths of time. And still he gathered his armies and went to those Craven Cliffs to meet their destiny, to face their traitorous foes. And why, when he knew nothing but death and pain awaited him and his faithful followers there? Why didn’t he turn the other way, spare them all?” Clerk Lovelin clasped his hands together and looked out across the crowd standing beneath the glory of the Keepers, his black eyes now shadowed as the torchlight dimmed.
