The alleyway hadn’t been fully claimed by the ocean of mud that appeared to be steadily drowning Morne. Cobblestones peaked through the middle, leading to a small courtyard and what appeared to be a warehouse beyond it, with a vaulted roof and broken windows. Long glass shards hung precariously from the top of the window frames like icicles. A faint light from within, reflected by the remaining glass, formed tiny amber pools on the cobblestone.
Nathaniel thought he heard the Pink Lady make a sort of disgruntled groaning noise, as she faced the warehouse door. After discarding the now soiled handkerchief she’d used to pull it open, she disappeared inside.
What was she doing in there?
Nathaniel made to follow her but found himself somewhat reticent. There was something that put him on edge and he wasn’t particularly sure why. Was it the warehouse or who might be inside?
Is this a trap? Nathaniel thought suddenly. Surely not? The Pink Lady had seemed rather interested by their conversation in The Hammer and Anvil but there was nothing to say she was interested in him, particularly. He was being foolish. That being said, with all that light in the warehouse, what was to stop her noticing Nathaniel the moment he set foot in the alleyway?
He didn’t allow himself to ponder on that question. Nathaniel padded through the alleyway and across the raised cobblestones, as quickly as he could manage, in a crouch. Please don’t go to the window. Please don’t go. He thought desperately, mouthing silent prayers to Athrana and any of the Gods who’d listen, in the vain hope his luck would hold.
He took the night’s silence to be a good sign, once he’d reached the broken fragments of the warehouse window.
Then he heard the voices. Hushed tones spoken with such urgency. He craned his neck over the window’s edge. The Pink Lady had stripped off her grey coat and stood, somehow taller, with her hands slapped to her hips in front of a man with red-trimmed robes.
That man needed no introduction.
Crow. Here, in Morne. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
‘He need not be dead, just delayed until Kusk can get the Elders’ assent,’ Crow’s clipped voice instructed.
‘And what of my city, Crow?’ came a woman’s voice, annoyingly high pitched, yet equally commanding. ‘What of your promises?’
‘The moment Kusk gets his army, consider Morne, and all its lands and steelworks, a close ally of the Regals.’
‘And what about now?’ she demanded shrilly. ‘How much longer must I suffocate Morne, to further your goals?’
‘I’d suggest you detain the Regal quickly, Stewardess,’ Crow said.
The woman’s dress made a whipping noise as she rounded on Crow. ‘And how would I manage that? The boy’s protected by a Hunter!’
So, she had recognised Nathaniel at the tavern. Or, at least, one of his travelling companions.
‘Whichever way you wish. Have your guardsmen drag him out, if you must,’ Crow’s shoulders heaved slightly with indifference.
‘Guardsmen?’ the woman squeaked, ‘are you mad? I don’t want a battle inside my own city!’
‘It’s not my concern how you solve the matter, Stewardess,’ Crow’s lips curled, wrapping around the Pink Lady’s title mockingly.
The Stewardess scrunched up balls of pink silk in her clenched fists. ‘As you say, Crow,’ she replied. Her words edged with venom.
Crow didn’t notice or, more likely, didn’t care. He was already submerging into a pool of shadows, before the Stewardess had finished her sentence.
The oaths she spat towards the space Crow had formerly occupied should have snuffed out the candlelight around her. Nathaniel didn’t stick around to catch the rest of her vile tirade, creeping away as quickly as he could.
Crow knew they were coming but he didn’t want Nathaniel killed? Wasn’t he working for the Szar? It didn’t make any sense.
Nathaniel felt an itch on the back of his neck as he closed in on the alleyway and looked behind his shoulder. His stomach lurched. The Stewardess stood behind one of the cracked windows, lips curling smugly, watching his escape.
A strangled gasp escaped Nathaniel lips as he burst into a sprint. He took a tumble into the mud after smacking his shoulder against the alley’s wall. Ignoring the pain, Nathaniel clawed his way back up to his feet and scrambled away. For a brief moment, he stood outside the alleyway facing the huddled masses of brick buildings, the next, he was looking up at the stars spiralling over Morne’s towers, his head throbbing. Nathaniel blinked.
The stars flickered over a man’s face. His grizzled chin poking out underneath iron helmet, as he looked down upon Nathaniel.
‘I got ‘im, Mistress!’ the guardsman proclaimed. His voice was deeply guttural, like he was trying to speak through a throatful of tobacco.
Nathaniel blinked once more. A woman’s face joined the guardsman’s underneath the stars.
‘And how, guardsman, did he get past you in the first place?’ she spoke reproachfully.
The guardsman’s chin went beetroot red. ‘Well… I – errr… That is to say Mistress, I –’
‘Oh, spare me your excuses, fool!’ the woman waved her hand dismissively. ‘Take the Regal to the mansion – and quickly guardsman. I’m sure my father will appreciate some company.’
Chapter 30
Nathaniel found himself standing in a bright white room. Maybe room wasn’t the right description – room implied that the space had walls, corners, a defined area. The white surrounded Nathaniel completely, however. Bending around him, stretching endlessly above and beyond him. It was impossible to tell where the light started, for it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
‘Nathaniel Grey.’
A man appeared behind him. Painted gold. At least, Nathaniel thought that was far more probable than the man being actually made of gold. He held his hands together over his short sleeved white tunic. His angled eyebrows, darting towards his nose like arrows, would have given his white eyes a mischievous look had they been capable of expression. His hair looked statue-like. A darker, solid gold mass, stationary atop his brow, no matter how he moved.
‘Where… who are you?’ Nathaniel’s voice sounded far-off, as if it had echoed back to him through a cave.
The golden man held out his hand. ‘a guide, once for your Grandfather, and now for you.’
‘For my Grandfather… Thorne? What do you mean?’
The golden man smiled and draped his arm around Nathaniel’s back, leading the Regal to a wooden door, embellished with a silver handle. The door stopped at the same level as their feet did, giving the white room the appearance of a floor. Yet it cast no shadow, nor seemed to be firmly attached to anything. It merely hung in the air.
‘Wait!’ Nathaniel said. Something scratched at the back of his mind, faint memories of a woman in pink. ‘I need to go back.’ There was little in those memories to go on but he felt the need nonetheless.
‘The cells can wait, young Regal,’ the golden man replied softly, his soothing voice turning the Pink Lady to smoke in his mind. Why had he wanted to go in the first place?
‘After you,’ the golden man said, opening the door and tucking the key he’d used inside his robes.
The door looked strange in this realm of white. Nathaniel would have expected something more… ethereal, something sitting between existence and non-existence.
‘What’s through there?’ Nathaniel inquired, peering through the doorway.
‘Somewhere… Different.’
Darkness flooded from the inside, or perhaps they had been pulled into it, the moment Nathaniel stepped nearer. The howl of surprise that cut against his throat bore no sound. Stars tore past them at an alarming speed as Nathaniel dove headfirst towards an unseen ground. He looked over to the golden man. His arms were flayed out either side, as if diving into a pool. Perhaps he was even enjoying it, though the golden man’s unchanging expression gave no indication on the matter.
Nathaniel wasn’t sure which was more terrifying – knowing that, at
the speed they were falling, the inevitable impact would kill them or not knowing when this inevitability would occur.
Nathaniel closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the darkness had disappeared and the two of them were standing on solid ground. And quite unfamiliar ground it was too.
Nathaniel glanced around the room. The black and white tiles underneath Nathaniel’s boots had been polished till they held a reflection. Most of this hard work, however, had been marred by spatters of blood, cracks, dents, and scorch marks over much of the floor.
Nathaniel looked up, just in time to see a ball of fire, spitting sparks as it hurtled towards him, and threw himself out of its way. The golden man looked entirely unfazed when it flew through his tunic, which wavered as if he were a mirage. The fireball splashed harmlessly against a marble column behind him, leaving a fresh scorch mark.
‘How did you–’ Nathaniel felt his jaw swinging.
‘Welcome to the Sorcerers Spire and the Hall of Majik.’ Hands behind his back, the golden man ambled through the carnage ahead, as if he were taking a leisurely stroll through a garden.
About a hundred blue-robed Warlocks raced about the Hall they entered, hurling fire, whipping out their opponents’ legs from under them with gusts of wind, and impaling former colleagues on stakes of brick, mortar, and tiles they’d summoned from the floor. Giant statues, the height of the hall, stood overlooking the bloodbath below, with sombre, jewelled eyes.
Amidst all this confusion, two knights in golden armour lugged a heavy looking metal trunk towards them. Three more of these knights brought up the front and rear, carving out a bloody path through the Warlocks.
‘PROTECT THE KINGSGUARD!’ the Warlock closest to Nathaniel cried. A burst of flames set her robes on fire a second later.
Kingsguard? Nathaniel thought. There hadn’t been a King in Horizon since –
‘FOR FIERSLAKEN!’ someone bellowed from the crowd.
The rallying call was met with a roar from half the remaining Warlocks. It was difficult to tell who fought for whom in the chaos. Given the way the Kingsguard swung blindly at any Warlock that came to close, Nathaniel wondered if they knew either.
A golden helmet flew over Nathaniel’s shoulder as one of the Kingsguard was blown from the trunk. The trunk banged loudly against the tiles, loud enough for Nathaniel to hear it. Whatever was inside must have been very heavy. Almost before one side of the trunk had struck the floor, one of the remaining Kingsguard swooped in and grasped the handle, urging his comrades on with a raised gauntlet.
Someone grabbed Nathaniel’s shoulder and dragged him back, just as the Kingsguard escaped through a marble archway and out of sight. It didn’t register that it was the golden man, until Nathaniel found himself back where they had begun. The calm silence of the white room felt almost eerie after hearing the cries of the warring and dying.
Impassive as ever, the golden man watched Nathaniel quietly at first. Perhaps, to give the Regal a chance to process everything that had just happened.
‘What did you think?’ the golden man said eventually.
Nathaniel’s heart still raced, as if it had been he wielding Majik in battle. Perhaps he had imagined it but he could have sworn he felt something stir inside him. It was as if the mere sight of Majik had rekindled that warm, fulfilled feeling he’d first embraced in the library of the Lycan Sanctuary.
‘What did I think?’ Nathaniel’s words came out between breaths. ‘Why were they fighting each other? Is that happening now? How did you even get us there?’ The questions flew from Nathaniel’s lips quicker than he could finish them. He winced – he knew it wasn’t happening now. Fierslaken was an old cause – a legend even – and far too long ago to be fresh in the memories of men.
The golden man held his silent gaze long after Nathaniel had finished his barrage of questioning. Why wouldn’t he answer? The image of a golden armoured Kingsguard being swatted away with Majik, like a leaf in the wind, came to mind.
‘The trunk!’ Nathaniel said suddenly. He looked at the golden man expectantly, ‘that’s what they were fighting over?’
The golden man reached for the door’s silver handle. ‘Not the trunk itself–’
‘–but what was in it,’ Nathaniel said, bracing himself for another rapid descent.
When their feet found solid ground once more though, the dark refused to relent.
‘Well… this is most irregular,’ the golden man seemed baffled, as he swung his head about the veil of black that had fallen over their surroundings.
Nathaniel felt his insides contort. If the golden man had no control over what had just happened… what did that mean for them? Were they doomed to stay in this darkness forever?
‘Wait,’ Nathaniel said, leaning to peer at something below their feet, ‘what’s that?’
The golden man followed Nathaniel’s gaze to the scene blooming below them.
A man forged from fire, with black coals for eyes, treaded lightly through a carpet of white lilies beneath them. The man somehow failed to notice Nathaniel and the golden man peering down at him through the glass floor that separated them. But, Nathaniel wondered, the Warlocks hadn’t been aware of them either.
A girl, in a green dress, her hair ornamented with purple orchids, was the centre of the man’s attention. The girl was weeping. He approached her cautiously, as if torn between comforting her or leaving the girl to her own devices.
The girl eventually lifted her head to stare, past the man, at something hidden from Nathaniel’s sight. The girl was just as unusual as the man that had approached her. Flower petals covered her skin, or were her skin, Nathaniel wasn’t quite sure which. Purple petaled eyes and lips protruded from the pale scarlet.
‘You should not have come,’ the girl’s voice was deathly cold.
Nathaniel frowned.
This all seems strangely familiar.
‘It’s alright,’ the man made of fire spoke softly.
Petaled hand seized flaming wrist, bringing the walking inferno to his knees. The man cried out in pain, as he was shaken about like a small child.
‘This is all your fault, Kinslayer!’ she screamed.
Kinslayer.
The word struck Nathaniel like a hammer to porcelain.
This was familiar.
The glass creaked underneath his feet as he stumbled back.
‘Nathaniel, look away!’ the golden man lunged toward him.
I’ve been here before.
Without thinking about it, Nathaniel waved his hand. A wall of fire burst from the ground, boxing him off and causing the golden man to recoil in horror.
As Nathaniel watched, the girl made of flowers had begun a flurry of blows against the man made of flames, burying him in lilies.
‘Nathaniel, let me through at once!’ the golden man’s calm demeanour had all but disappeared, as he struck his fist against the elemental divide between them. But to no avail.
Nathaniel ignored him, pressing his nose against the glass barrier.
‘Who are you?’ he whispered to himself.
The moment the girl had released her hold, the man made of flames began to sink into the bed of flowers. The girl was not quick enough to prevent him sliding away altogether, into the lilies’ limitless depths.
‘NATHANIEL!’
One by one, as the girl stared abjectly at the space the man of flames had once occupied, the petals fell. Grey skin emerged underneath, rising from her hands slowly up to the nape of her neck.
The golden man had managed to slip a hand through the barrier of flames, clawing desperately toward Nathaniel.
Her neck was almost completely free of the petals.
An arm pushed through Nathaniel’s barrier. The golden man’s hand only a hair’s breadth away from the collar of Nathaniel’s jerkin.
‘Gods damn you! Show me who you are!’ Nathaniel cried at the glass.
Red petals fell away to a grey chin and–
Hands seized Nathan
ial’s arms dragging him away from the girl below.
‘No! I must see her!’ he yelled, ‘I need to know!’
‘it is too soon,’ the golden man’s soothing tone had returned as he placed his hand gently over Nathaniel’s eyes.
‘You can’t do this! You can’t– You can’t– You–’
Chapter 31
DING DING
‘Wake up, boy!’
Nathaniel eyes peeled open.
Blurred shapes filled his vision, slowly sharpening into focus.
His eyelids felt heavy… so very heavy.
DING DING
‘Don’t you fall asleep on me now, boy!’
A wrinkled pair of brown eyes, sunken underneath the man’s brow, stared intently at him through the metal bars between them.
Wait… bars?
‘NO!’
Nathaniel slammed against his cage, darting from end to the other, and rattling each run of bars. Outside of a single torch, bracketed against the wall, the rest of the dungeon was deeply immersed in shadow. The room seemed to be almost closing in on itself, the darkness threatening to smother both light and prisoners.
Not again, he thought, remembering the dank dungeons of Obsidia.
The man in the cage beside him laughed coldly. ‘You can keep doing that till your bones snap, boy but it won’t get us out of here.’
Nathaniel ignored him and sprung to the door of his cell. The bars squeaked in protest but didn’t budge. He threw up his hands in disgust and slumped to the floor.
Imprisoned. Again! All because he was foolish enough to follow the Pink Lady – the Stewardess, as it turned out – when he should have been sleeping safely in The Hammer and Anvil.
‘Work with me, boy.’
Though tempered with desperation, the plea still came out as a command. Like a man who was used to people jumping to attention, if he so much as coughed.
‘What skills do you have, Regal?’
‘Uhhhhh.’
Skills? Nathaniel supposed he was good with a sword. Zaine’s gruelling drills, whilst they had camped out in the wilderness, had certainly helped in that regard. No sword could get him out of this situation, however.
Nathaniel Grey and the Obsidian Crown Page 19
