Lord of Slaughter

28

The dark did not frighten Azemar as he crawled through the tunnels because it was not a true darkness.

The touch of the rocks, the far-off sound of water and above all the smell, the smell of the wolfman, brought pictures to his mind, showing him the way forward. This did not strike him as strange, or rather he thought it only slightly odd he had never noticed these senses before.

As he went on it seemed to him he wandered in other caverns, the caverns of the mind. He was there for a purpose, he recalled. In fact he was there for several purposes. He tried to order them. He was in Constantinople. Why? To find lodgings. No. That was his purpose but it was not his main purpose. Why else? To kill someone. No. To save someone. To save someone and to kill someone. The same person. The thought almost struck him as funny. He was in the caves. Why? Because someone had put him there. No. He had gone there himself. Someone else wanted him to leave. Who wanted him to leave? A wolf. A wolf who was not a wolf.

He remembered his youth, running on the riverbank with other boys on a deep green day in summer. He had run that way before, years before, in lives gone by — now he could sense it.

Memories tumbled through his mind, no more intelligible when he tried to understand them than the blot of an ink cup spilled across a page. He remembered a cornfield, the sun on the unripe stems, the sparkle of the river waters and beside him the woman in her black robe with her hair a burning gold. ‘Do not seek me,’ she had said. Yet he had sought her — he thought he had known her a long time.

In recent years, sleep sent him to strange places. He found himself by a low peasant house, its turf roof no more than waist-high, watching the woman with the golden hair putting herbs out to dry on the thatch. He wanted to talk to her, to tell her he loved her. But she ran from him — always she ran and he followed, begging her to stop.

All his life he had been happy in the monastery. The food was plentiful, the company good, and he was a natural scholar. His order required obedience, stability and conversion to its way of life. He had no need to convert. He had lived under the rule of the monks since his earliest years.

One day he had been working the fields. The lord rode by and behind him his children. He’d seen her in the distance across the river, the duke’s daughter on her grey horse, flanked by warriors. For a moment he glimpsed another life, imagined he was one of those men, destined to marry, to have children and to fight in wars. Then he had gone back to his toil.

His friend Loys had gone, if not to fight then to love, and Azemar had been left with his books, observing the hours of devotion, making the food, cleaning and cooking.

He crawled forward on his belly.

‘What have I been? What have I been?’

He sensed water.

Lights flared behind him, lights and voices. He stood, his shadow long on the walls. From somewhere in the tunnels another voice called. A woman. A girl?

There was water in front of him. The water connected him to her. He put his mouth to it and drank.

‘This is the stream…’

He said the words himself and edged forward into the water. A song came to his lips.

‘The water weft that knots in the world well.

Where the dead god took his lore.’

A current tugged him forward. Was the current of this world or of the dream world?

A scream.

‘What are you doing? It’s him you want!’

‘You’ve made enough mistakes, Meletios!’

‘In the name of the chamberlain, I tell you to stop!’

He recognised one of the voices behind him. It seemed to recall something of his old self, before the Numera, before he had eaten of bloody fruits, sucked knowledge from the marrow of men’s bones, seen the world as it is, in its stains and its sweats, its smears and its stinks, not as men imagine it to be.

There was another scream and a crash.

‘He’s got a knife! The bastard has a knife!’

‘Where’s he gone? Get that torch lit again. You idiot, get a light!’

Frantic voices jabbered down from the upper tunnels, floating on a hot wave of panic, delicious to Azemar as the smell of a cooking pot.

You are near her. Bring her. I will be your salvation. It was a girl’s voice, sounding in his mind as clearly as if she’d been standing next to him.

‘Who are you?’

One who sits and waits. She who gave the most for lore.

‘You are a demon.’

No.

‘You are a thing of darkness.’

You are of the dark, of all fears and fancies made.

‘Who are you?’

Bring her to me.

‘Who?’

There was no answer.

‘Get a light! A light!’ The voices again.

A cry, a shout of pain brought him jolting back to himself.

He remembered Loys. His friend was just a child when he’d met him, too scared to sleep in the big dormitory, crying in anguish and loneliness. Azemar had told him he’d felt like that too on his first night. Loys was among friends, kind and gentle people who would help him.

‘Find him. Here. That’s better. There, down the passage, down the passage.’ The harsh voices were full of panic.

Azemar spoke: ‘I would not be what I am.’

What are you? It was the girl’s voice.

‘A hunger,’ said Azemar.

You are the wolf.

And then he was running towards the lights that flickered from the upper passages, towards the screaming and the stink of fear that drifted down.

Six men, one on the floor dead, one rushing past him, others pursuing.

Azemar didn’t think or question. His keen senses put the world into two categories now — foe and everything else. The man plunging into the dark behind him was not his enemy. The others, their sweat sharp with the stress of battle, their hearts pounding out a rhythm of excitement and fear, their knives bright in the lamplight, were the same guards as the men who had dragged him to the dungeon and left him to fester.

He sprang from the shadows unseen and unsuspected, catching both men in his arms, lifting them and slamming them down hard. Then the others attacked. A knife drove at his belly but it seemed slow, like the man was passing it to him rather than trying to kill him. Azemar stepped past the blade to deliver a backhanded blow to the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe and sending him choking to the floor.

The next knifeman stabbed at him with a high, downward motion. Azemar caught the knife hand and pulled him forward, driving the man’s head into a knee and knocking him cold. Then he span to face the two behind him. They’d regained their feet staggering, groggy, like men on a ship’s deck in a gale. Azemar leaped at the nearest, seizing his head and thrusting his teeth into his neck. The man fell back, his head and chest soaked in a burst of blood. The last died more easily, his neck broken with a quick twist.

Azemar sank to his knees, the man’s head in his hands.

‘I am a hunger,’ he said.

You are a hunger, said the voice in his head.

His nails worked back the skin of the chest to expose the flesh beneath and he ate, enraptured by the taste of blood.

‘Azemar! Azemar!’

The voice. He recognised it. Who was it?

‘It’s me, Loys. Leave him! You have starved too long in here. You’ve gone mad. Leave him!’

Azemar tried to speak. ‘I…’ The word seemed like an anchor to his storm-blown thoughts.

‘Azemar, please. It’s me. Loys.’ The man had a torch in his hand.

‘Yes. I knew you at Rouen.’

‘You knew me? I’m your friend, Azemar. Do you not remember?’

‘You were scared and I comforted you.’ His voice was distant.

‘I have come to save you, to take you from this place. You’re not yourself. You need to recover.’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on. Come with me.’

‘The guards will fetter me again.’

‘No. I have authority over them. These are not prison guards. They are enemies of mine sent to kill me. Come on. I will get you out. You need proper food and drink and to be clean again.’

‘Yes.’

Loys searched the bodies. There was nothing on them.

‘How did you find me?’ said Azemar.

‘We thought we saw you and followed you down.’

‘I have not moved.’

‘Then it was someone else. Let’s get to the surface. Can you find the way?’

Azemar pointed up the passageway.

‘To the bad air,’ he said, ‘and beyond it to the good air. Can’t you smell it?’

‘No, not here.’

‘I can. And other things too, the water and the rock, the blood and the corruption of death. I can smell it all. I can feel it on my skin. I don’t know what has become of me. I am not myself.’

‘We won’t speak of it again. No man can be held responsible for what he does down here. God’s light does not shine here.’

‘Do his eyes see?’

‘The test he set you was too hard. Come on, to the surface. You will return to yourself with care and with affection.’

Loys extended his hand to Azemar, who took it and allowed his friend to pull him to his feet.

‘Loys.’

‘Yes.’

‘Loys.’

Azemar said the word almost as if he didn’t understand it. A presence he recognised was at his side, someone who had shown him kindness and to whom he in turn had shown kindness.

‘Loys?’ That name. He knew it. He had said it for a reason.

‘Azemar, my friend, we have you, we have you.’

‘Save me,’ said Azemar, as a darkness came down upon him and he fainted into Loys’ arms.