Bloodhoney

by Paul Stewart

  The elders bowed their heads and, for a moment, the chamber fell silent. Kilian cleared his throat.

  ‘Now that it’s safe for our brothers and sisters to return to the chamber, we must salvage what we can.’

  ‘But we have so many mouths to feed,’ Brother Bede ventured. ‘How are we going to cope?’

  ‘Have faith, brother,’ said Kilian. ‘The thaw is almost upon us, and when the snows have receded we shall clear more terraces in the lower valley for barley and set extra wyrmenets across the mouth of the falls. And I shall go forth daily, rather than once a season, into the valley country to preach to the kith and receive alms. The Maker will provide, as He always does, and I shall return each day with riches aplenty until our store chamber has been replenished. Last year was one of our best years. I don’t see why this year should not be even better.’

  The elders smiled. They were already beginning to feel reassured by the prophet’s optimistic words.

  ‘Now,’ said Kilian, getting to his feet, ‘after this ­terrible tragedy, which has left everyone feeling so upset and unsettled, I suggest that we should submit to a letting, that our troubled spirits might be calmed.’

  The elders rose from their chairs, their hands clasped to their chests.

  ‘Maker be praised,’ they intoned softly.

  The elders filed out of the meeting chamber. In the tunnels and chambers beyond, word spread among the Deephomers. They had been saved. Once again, thanks to the prayers of Kilian the prophet, the Maker had protected them. They gathered tools and timber and buckets of steaming water from the hot springs, and were waiting to be allowed inside the store chamber, ­gossiping about what they might find there.

  Kilian walked among them, humbly accepting their gratitude and offering reassurance to those who needed it, while the elders organized the Deephomers into work parties. The prophet was just turning away from old brother Ezekiel, who had particularly close to brother Abel, when Cara seized him by the arm.

  ‘Father, is it true what everyone’s saying?’ There were tears streaming down her face. ‘Micah … Is he …?’

  Kilian opened his arms and wrapped them round his daughter, drawing her close. ‘I’m so sorry, child,’ he said as she sobbed convulsively in his arms. ‘So, so sorry …’

  Forty-Eight

  The kith slaves sat in a small group, some with their backs to the cavern wall, others crosslegged and slumped forward. They were dead-eyed and slack-jawed, yet Micah noticed how, having drunk the bloodhoney, their nostrils twitched and flared at the faint shifting odours that wafted across the cavern from where the keld were feasting. Not having drunk the bloodhoney himself, Micah couldn’t smell the food, but unlike the slaves, he was clear-headed and focused on what he and Eli had to do.

  The cragclimber tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Look,’ he whispered.

  Micah glanced up to see the wyrmeskin curtain in the corner of the cavern billow and shimmer in the flickering red light, and Carafine step out. She was holding the winter caller’s bone mask and, as Micah watched, she strode over to the keld and began talking in a low voice. The keld gathered around her in a huddle, nodding and tutting and gesturing as she spoke.

  ‘The keld of the valley country sent their assassin to attack us and now four of our number are dead.’ Carafine’s voice rose. ‘We kept our side of the bargain and sent my husband to supply them with a share of our bloodhoney each halfwinter, and this is how they repay us! If my sister wants a war, then that is what she shall have!’ She brandished the winter caller’s mask. ‘Let us plan our revenge with an attack of our own.’

  The keld closed in around her, their heads bowed as she began to scratch out a crude map of a cave system in the dust at her feet.

  Eli turned to Micah. ‘Come on,’ he whispered urgently.

  He got to his feet and crept towards the wyrmeskin curtain, keeping close to the wall, his eyes fixed on the keld. Micah followed, fear fluttering in the pit of his stomach in case one of the keld looked round. Reaching the curtain, Eli pulled it aside, and the pair of them slipped silently into the chamber beyond. The curtain fell back into place and Micah stared in horror at the objects which lay in front of the bone chair.

  They were the winter caller’s tools, laid out on the stone floor just as they had been laid out on the snow outside the winter den. The bone-shears, the liver-clamps, the tongue-splitter; the eye-gouge that the winter caller had taunted him with …

  Micah paused. There, at the end of the line, was Eli’s knife and his own hackdagger. And the bone catapult.

  Eli bent down and retrieved the weapons, handing the hackdagger and catapult to Micah and concealing his knife beneath the folds of his jacket. He looked up at the hole in the cavern ceiling above their heads.

  ‘Quick, Micah,’ he said. ‘Reckon we haven’t got much time. I’ll give you a hoik up.’

  He stooped down and laced his fingers together. Micah placed one foot in Eli’s stirrupped hands and an arm round his shoulder. With a grunt of exertion, the cragclimber straightened up, raising his arms and lifting Micah towards the ceiling. Micah reached up into the narrow chimney-like opening, his fingers searching for and finding a grip on the rough surface of the rockinside. His arms shaking and muscles straining, he pulled himself up, jamming his knees against the sides of the chimney to brace himself. Micah looked down.

  Eli was staring up at him. ‘Good luck, son,’ he said, and stepped back out of sight.

  Micah heard the soft dry swish of the wyrmeskin curtain as the cragclimber left the cavern. He stared up. A narrow tunnel twisted away into darkness, its sides studded with jutting slabs, creating a puzzle of tight fissures and dog-leg crevices through which Micah would have to climb. He took a deep breath and started to worm his way up.

  He pushed himself through the first of a series of ­vertical cracks, each one narrower than the last. The tunnel walls closed around him like a tightening vice, pressing against his chest and back, making it difficult to breathe.

  When he feared he could go no further, Micah found a handhold and managed to squirm his way through to a wider crevice above. From here the tunnel snaked up through the rock, its surface shot through with shards of quartz that cut his hands and snagged his homespun shirt. Sweat soaked the soft cloth making it cling to his back, cold and clammy in the chill air. Micah held up a bloodied hand and felt a draught coming from the blackness above. Pulling himself up with aching arms, he squeezed round one final dog-leg and saw that the length of tunnel above was bathed in a soft glow. He climbed towards the light and, emerging from the tunnel, found himself on a narrow ledge high above the great chamber. On either side of him, great jagged stalactites hung down towards the glowing floor, while sparcrystals glittered like stars in the vaulted ceiling above.

  A solitary figure in a grey cloak and white bonnet was kneeling on the floor, head in hands, and rocking slowly back and forth, sobbing.

  Micah picked up a shard of sparcrystal that lay before him on the ledge, and slipped it into his pocket. Then, turning as he lowered himself over the lip of rock, he climbed down the wall of the cavern. He jumped down the last few feet and, as he landed on the straw-strewn floor, the figure looked up.

  It was Cara, her face tear-stained and blotchy. She stared at Micah in disbelief.

  ‘You’re alive,’ she gasped.

  ‘Cara,’ he said, taking her by the hands and helping her to her feet. ‘You’ve got to help me …’

  But before he could say any more, she had pulled him to her and was smothering his mouth with her kisses. Micah held her close, and she buried her face in the folds of his shirt and wept.

  When finally she was still, Micah cupped her chin in his hand and gently raised her head. He looked deep into Cara’s turquoise eyes. There was uncertainty and fear in them, but also a trusting innocence that Micah knew he was about to destroy. Cara looked back at him, her mouth tre
mbling.

  ‘It’s about your father …’ he began.

  Forty-Nine

  Cara paused by the lowest sentinel point, the jutting slab of granite known as beak rock. The air had lost its bitter chill and all around her snow was slipping from the branches of the valley trees and landing on the ground with soft thuds. She raised the bone horn to her lips and gave three long blasts before lowering the horn and walking back down the trail to Deephome.

  Her eyes were red and raw from the tears she had wept. But they were dry now. She had hoped against hope that what Micah had told her earlier in the great chamber was not true. She didn’t want to believe it – believe that her father had been so treacherous. Yet he had lied to her about Micah’s death, and everything Micah told her about the true nature of Deephome had made a kind of terrible sense.

  She’d had to admit that as she had grown older, she had begun to have misgivings, doubts. There were the frequent bloodlettings, the brutal kith gangs who just seemed to leave when asked to, and her father’s mysterious trips to the head of the valley … But she had pushed them all to the back of her mind, trusting in her father and the Maker, just like the other Deephomers had.

  Hearing Micah’s words in the great chamber had been like waking from a dream.

  Her heart had been in her mouth as the two of them had crept furtively through Deephome’s tunnels to her father’s study. There, while Micah kept watch at the door, she had found it, concealed beneath his bed like the evil secret it was. Her father’s grey homespun cloak. As she picked it up, she had heard the clinking of glass and, unfolding it, had discovered the secret pockets, dozens and dozens of them, nearly half already loaded with the tiny vials of deep red liquid.

  Bloodhoney.

  She approached the remains of the wooden stockade, and heard the excited babble of voices calling to one another as the Deephomers took their places. Above them, her father’s voice sounded deep and resonating as he called for calm. She stepped between the piles of splintered wood stacked on either side of the mouth of the cavern and entered the store chamber. Her father strode forward to meet her, his eyebrows raised ­quizzically.

  ‘You sounded the alarm, daughter?’

  ‘I did, Father,’ Cara began breathlessly. ‘I saw figures on the trail … men with bone masks, and strange weapons, coming towards me out of the mist …’ Her voice broke. ‘They were horrible, Father. Frightening!’

  The colour drained from Kilian the prophet’s face. He reached out and placed his hands on his daughter’s shoulders.

  ‘Calm yourself, Cara,’ he said. ‘You know what to do.’

  She nodded, her eyes fixed on the prophet’s face. ‘And you, Father?’

  ‘I shall stay here and talk to … these visitors,’ Kilian replied. ‘As I always do.’

  Cara’s face registered no emotion as she broke away from him. She turned to the Deephomers.

  ‘Let us go to the great chamber,’ she said, ‘and raise our voices in song.’

  Kilian the prophet waited until the last of the ­Deephomers had left the store chamber. He looked around. The few remaining shelfstacks were all but empty and the broken glass and pottery had been swept up into a large pile in the corner. Despite the thaw in the air, the chamber looked cold and forlorn. The prophet shivered.

  Hearing the doors of the great chamber slam shut and singing fill the air, he turned away and hurried from the store chamber. He ran down the tunnel, past the sealed entrance to the great chamber, and on, past the meeting chamber, towards the tunnel that led down to the keld cavern. From the depths came the sound of the door slamming back against the wall, and the pounding of heavy footsteps. A moment later, half a dozen heavily-armed keld emerged, bone masks covering their faces.

  ‘More assassins are approaching,’ Kilian told them. ‘They must have followed the other one.’

  The keld at the front grunted, and all six of them set off for the store chamber, with Kilian following behind. As the sound of their footsteps receded, Micah emerged from his hiding place in the tunnel to the hot spring and headed for the cavern beneath Deephome. It was dark and clammy in the narrow tunnel, and reaching the open door he paused as the hot fetid air of the keld cavern washed over him.

  He loaded his catapult with the shard of sparcrystal and stepped inside.

  At the far side of the cavern, from behind the ­wyrmeskin curtain, the sound of the Deephomers’ singing mingled with the clash and clatter of tools being thrown about. Carafine’s disembodied voice rose up above it all.

  ‘Two attacks in one day!’ she shrieked from her cavern. ‘This must be my sister’s work. Ahab! Ahab! I want those assassins brought to me, alive. You hear me? Alive!’

  By the copper still, surrounded by sweating kith slaves, the overseer grimaced, his lacerated face glistening in the flickering red light.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time,’ he muttered to himself, then looked up. ‘I told ’em, mistress,’ he called back. ‘Break their backs, but keep ’em breathing.’

  On the other side of the still, the only other keld remaining in the cavern snorted unpleasantly behind his bone mask. Eli gazed up from the woodpile from where he had been pretending to work, while watching the cavern door. His face broke into a smile of relief when he saw Micah, then hardened as he reached behind him and drew his knife. He nodded.

  Micah swallowed hard and took aim with his ­catapult.

  Swiftly, silently, Eli sprinted across the cavern floor and leaped onto the back of the keld in the bone mask. He yanked back the keld’s head and, with one deft movement, slit his throat.

  At the same moment, Micah released the drawstring of the catapult. The lump of sparcrystal flashed in the red cavern light. It struck the back of the overseer’s head and embedded itself in his skull, sending a jet of blood ­spurting high into the air. With a low grunt, the overseer crumpled to the ground.

  Eli released his grip and let the dead keld fall. Then, wiping his blade on his jacket, he strode across to the wyrmestalls and quickly and efficiently put the three emaciated redwing wyrmes out of their misery. He bent down and seized a stone jar of flameoil, and removed the cork. Meanwhile, Micah, his arms outstretched, herded the dead-eyed slaves towards the door. Eli joined him, trailing a thin line of glistening flameoil behind him. It ran from the stacked barrels of bloodhoney on the far side of the cavern, across the floor and out through the entrance.

  Micah and Eli retreated back up the tunnel, driving the kith slaves before them. At the top, Micah steered the kith towards the bathing chamber, while Eli ­followed, continuing the trail of flameoil as he went.

  Moments later, they heard the keld returning, cursing and swearing and rattling their weapons in frustration. Micah and Eli froze. Kilian’s voice sounded from the top of the tunnel.

  ‘Tell your mistress that it was a false alarm,’ he called. ‘I shall have a stern word with the latewatch sentinel.’

  ‘You do that,’ an angry voice shouted back. The door banged shut and there was a sound of grinding metal as it was bolted shut.

  Crouching down, Eli pulled his flintbox from his jacket pocket and struck a match.

  Micah and Eli exchanged looks.

  ‘Are you sure about this, Eli?’ said Micah.

  ‘Reckon we don’t have no other choice, son,’ Eli told him.

  He held the flickering blue flame to the puddle of flameoil on the ground before him. With a soft spluttering sound, it ignited and fire rippled along the line of flameoil like the crest upon a wyrme’s neck. Down the tunnel it went, under the thin gap beneath the door, scorching the wood as it flickered past …

  Kilian hammered on the doors of the great chamber with his fists.

  ‘Cara!’ he roared. ‘Cara! What is the meaning of this?’

  Inside, the singing abruptly stopped and the doors opened. Kilian pushed his way inside, to see his daug
hter, arms folded, staring back at him defiantly.

  ‘I might well ask you the same question, Father,’ she replied, her turquoise eyes flashing with anger.

  ‘Wh … what … what do you mean?’ he said, taken aback by the sudden change in his daughter. ‘You sounded the alarm. Yet there was no one there. I went up to the sentinel point and found nothing. No footprints in the snow. Not a trace of these visitors you said you spotted.’

  ‘There were no visitors,’ Cara told him evenly.

  Behind her, the Deephomers murmured among themselves.

  ‘I sounded the alarm because we are in danger,’ she said, turning to them. ‘Not from outside. But inside. Here, in Deephome itself.’

  The Deephomers stared back at her, their open trusting faces clouding over with confusion and concern. Cara turned back to confront her father.

  ‘Beneath our feet is a cavern, a secret cavern. It is infested with keld.’

  ‘Keld!’ The word echoed round the chamber as the Deephomers turned to one another in horror and ­disbelief. Above the rising hubbub, Cara’s voice was ­strident and accusing.

  ‘And you, Father. You are in league with them. When kith come to Deephome, you don’t talk to them, do you, Father? You summon the keld to drag them down to their den and enslave them, don’t you? And when you take our blood, Father, it isn’t for our health, is it? It’s to pay the keld for their protection.’ She spat the word out. ‘Isn’t it? Father?’

  ‘Oh, Cara, Cara, how can you say such things?’ Kilian protested. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ she said, her eyes blazing. ‘Leastways, nothing that my conversation with brother Micah hasn’t put right.’

  ‘Micah? But—’

  Cara turned back to the Deephomers, who were staring at the prophet, waiting, hoping, praying for some kind of an explanation.

  ‘My father lied to you,’ she told them. ‘Brother Eli and brother Micah aren’t dead. He told the keld to take them because they had discovered his secret. The secret he is so desperate to keep from us. But it’s over, Father. The lies. The deceit. The wickedness …’