Lord of Slaughter

47

He’d sensed her from almost his first step into the caves. The chamberlain knew she was waiting, in those tunnels, waiting for him. Behind the footfalls of the men who carried Styliane he heard another movement, faster, a patter of steps like those of a child.

When he held up his hand to tell his men to pause, the steps had gone, just the tight silence of the caves remained.

The way was easy for him to remember. He could not forget it, he had trod it so often in his dreams. Though the tunnel split, though many routes offered themselves, he knew which one to choose. The one he had travelled before. The others stretched away like ignored possibilities — things he could have done, other roads to other lives in which he had not been a murderer, not been this vessel for magic, cracked and damaged as it was.

The runes keened and sighed as he descended, gleaming and moving like bright fish in dark water.

Karas.

He heard her voice in his mind.

Karas.

The chamberlain crossed himself — a gesture of habit rather than faith.

He had loved Styliane as he had loved his other sister, loved his mother. The well had given him great things for one sacrifice, it would give him great things for another. He had protected Styliane, used his magic to raise her high, been careful to love her, no matter how much she opposed him. Because of that care and love she was appropriate as a sacrifice. The well required gifts that were hard to give. His eyes were wet when he looked at her, the runes jangling madness through his head as they pulled away from him, tumbling down into the dark as if drawn by invisible threads.

He checked her. She was still unconscious. Why? He found that disquieting. Something to do with the deaths that had swept the town? She’d been to the island, his spies told him. What had happened there? He would find out in the waters of the well. He would give and he would receive. Then he would banish the city’s affliction and return to his former life. He hoped he would grieve. He had not grieved for his mother or Elai until his grip on the runes began to fade. Grieving, however, was human — a connection to the mundane world and sanity where magic was a tool rather than… What? He could not put it into words. An ache behind the eyes, an inability to think or to reason, something that made shadows into spectres, reaching out to drag you from your bed at midnight, to consume you and turn you to darkness too.

Now the little stream dropped before him. He remembered his mother bumping down, the lamp in front of her, her arse soaked. A glimpse of the boy who would have found that funny came back to him.

A rune had lit up in him that day, a brilliant shining rune. But it had cast a shadow, something created by light but of the darkness.

‘Are you all right, sir?’

The little Greek watched him. The chamberlain realised his cheeks were wet with tears.

‘Go on. It’s not far now. When we reach the place you can return. I won’t need you from there.’

The man held up his lamp and looked closely at the chamberlain.

‘You’re bleeding. Your nose.’

The chamberlain touched his upper lip. A big gout of blood on his fingers, black in the torchlight.

‘Go on,’ he said. Lights swam at the edge of his vision and he thought he might faint.

The men slid down the smooth rock of the stream bed, one going in front of Styliane’s stretcher, the other behind. The chamberlain followed. Down again and he saw the glow of the rocks. His men hesitated.

‘It is a natural thing, I believe,’ said the chamberlain. ‘I have looked into it and such things are not unknown to miners. There’s no need for you to be afraid.’

The Greek said he couldn’t believe that to be so.

‘Get her into the pool and then you can go. Take her off the stretcher.’ He carefully set his lamp in a nook in the rock.

The chamberlain crawled past them down the passage. Here was the cave, the little crucible where his life had been renewed, the water blood in the red light. He drew in breath.

Something spread out in the water — a cold weed. Hair. There were bodies in there. In what state, after years in cold water? The horror would be useful to him, he thought, to jolt him from his everyday consciousness to where he could find and work the runes.

He lowered himself into the pool, gasping with the shock of the cold water that squeezed the breath from him. The men lowered Styliane. The chamberlain focused intently on her as she came into the pool, grasping her about the waist, pulling her to him, not wanting to see what was in the water next to him. His men all but ran away back up the passage. He recalled the words of the spell he had researched. His mother had not been alive to teach it to him, nor would she have done, he being a boy, but he had paid the price the merchants had asked for the ancient papyri. He had none of the herbs or mushrooms his mother had used in her ritual but he sensed he would not need them. The lamp guttered in the chamber; the light of the rocks breathed, as if they were living things. Around him he saw the runes. This was where they wanted to be. They had fought to return here, and he had followed them into the earth to win them again. He began the incantation.

‘Here in the drowning water,

By the names of those who died violently,

By the names of those untimely dead,

Hecate, lady of the crossroads, lady of night,

Who feeds on filth, grim-eyed, dreadful girl-child

Girt with the entrails of the dead, luckless men, unlucky women,

By their violent deaths I summon you.

Cthonic lady, I call you by your drowned attendants, entombed spirits,

Night-locked sins and submerged dreams,

The awful waters of the Styx, streams of Lethe,

Hades’ Acherousian pool. Hecate, night’s witch,

Answer me, guide me. Shine, moon’s witch, illuminate.

Send your phantoms to guide me.’

Nothing. The water was extremely cold; colder than he remembered. Three women in the water, two dead. Three aspects of the goddess, three ways to look, three streams trickling in. He pushed Styliane’s head under the water. He wept. Even though Styliane hated him, she was a connection to what he had been before. A rubbish-tip-crawling boy, a street child, hungry and poor. But Elai and his mother, they had loved him. Now they were dead. A light shone in the darkness, giving shape to the gloom, his shape — his shadow.

He pulled Styliane’s head up out of the water. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t finally sever his connection to his family, to mundanity, to a world governed not by demented symbols but by thirst and hunger, love and death.

He repeated the incantation, the cold numbing his mind. Again and again he chanted until he couldn’t tell if he spoke the words any more or if they had a life of their own — bird words flapping against the walls of the cavern, rat words scuttling around the rocks, star words burning like comets, the cave like the vault of heaven. Eight runes. No, not eight. More. Sixteen. Two orbits of eight, shining and revolving like little planets about the chamber. He feared them. They were in a dance with themselves, oblivious to him. What would it take to control them? Styliane was his key. All it required was courage. So many runes. He had only ever seen eight. Who else was there?

A voice, as much in his head as in his ears: The lord of corpses. The lady of corpses. He who, a corpse, lies among corpses. She who, a corpse, lies among corpses.

‘Elai? Sister?’

It is me, Karas.

‘Elai, forgive me.’

The chamberlain wept, holding Styliane, pale and cold, in the water.

The voice spoke again:

Luckless women, confined in this place,

May bring success to him who is beset

With torments. You who have left the light,

Unlucky ones, bring success to him

Who is distressed at heart because of her.

Unholy and ungodly, bring the sacrifice,

The woman racked with torments. Bring her.

He recognised it as a spell — he’d read it, he was sure, or someone had revealed it to him. One of the old goddesses’ spells. For what, though?

‘Elai, I am sorry.’

You must give again.

‘I will give.’

Not her.

‘What?’

You must give what I gave.

‘I took your life.’

You were my instrument. I had the will to give my death to the waters. Do you?

‘I cannot. I lack that strength.’

Strength to kill but not to die. The well sets its price very high for such as you, Karas.

‘I have brought her. The only one I love and cherish. She is all that connects me to the world.’

You have brought yourself. You cannot walk forward to lore looking back to life.

The chamberlain’s thoughts spilled from his mouth like grain from a split sack: ‘I have only ever wanted the glittering palaces, the silk and the satin, to command men and be a lord of earthly powers. Magic was for me just a means to an end.’

He saw the treasure room at the palace, the ships of the navy arrayed and awaiting his word to sail, the towers of the great city shining in the bright morning, the order of battle at Abydos, spears that seemed to gleam for him, swords drawn to do his will, even the emperor beneath his sway. What tents there had been, blood-crimson and royal purple like brilliant flowers under the morning light. What slaughter he had made. For glory, for achievement’s sake — so when men spoke of him they would marvel at the reach of his hand.

He had not wanted to be a god. He had wanted to be a king. And to be a king he had taken a little of a god’s power and thought to shape it to his own.

You are a means to the ends of magic. The old god tried to put his runes in me, but I hid them in you. I went to cross the bridge of light but he barred me entrance. I brought you back, Karas. I saw the scholar’s worth. Now all the needed are coming. I have sent for them, Karas. Prepare to receive them properly as the dead man you will surely be.

‘I will not die!’

You took the dead god’s runes and became part of a god yourself. Now you must unite with him in death. Your pain can end the story of agony. We can destroy the god, Karas; we can cease to exist. How sweet will that be?

‘I am a man, not a god.’

He pushed Styliane towards the shelf of rock, brushing against something he could not bear to look at. He lifted her out of the water and set her on the shelf.

‘I am capable of kindness and compassion. I am not cruel like a god.’

You have been cruel.

‘You made me cruel! Your magic, your runes.’

It was only a spark to the tinder of your soul. Join me in death, Karas, join me in death because one is coming who is greater than death. Walk across the bridge of light.

‘I will not die. I will not die! Elai! Elai!’

His sister’s voice faded. In its place, coming from the tunnel, was the sound of someone splashing towards him through the stream.

A voice spoke, almost sang, in Norse, though he didn’t understand a word.

The runes around him shivered and moaned. There were no longer sixteen; there were twenty-four. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to run from this cold awful place with its corpses, its ghosts that whispered inducements to suicide.

The chamberlain tried to lever himself out of the water, but he was frozen and his arms shook in great spasms as they took his weight.

Someone spoke to him in Norse — a boy. He thought he recognised him. Yes, he had brought the emperor’s instruction to begin the investigation.

‘I don’t understand you,’ said the chamberlain in Greek.

‘Well, you’re a fine fellow to be taking a bath down here, my lord,’ said Snake in the Eye in Greek. ‘Let me lend you a scrubbing brush.’ He threw something into the pool. The chamberlain caught a glimpse as it splashed into the water. It was the head of the little Greek who had helped him down. The red-haired man had gone.

‘Help me out!’

Snake in the Eye put his hand to the glowing rock, captivated

‘Oh, I don’t think I shall,’ he said. ‘These waters are singing a song, can’t you hear it?’

‘I hear the runes.’

‘Yes, and do you know what they want?’

The chamberlain swallowed. His teeth chattered with the cold.

‘Death.’

‘Yes, they do,’ said Snake in the Eye, ‘which is lucky, because here I am.’

The runes in the cavern began to hum and shake, and what seemed like a wave of excitement rushed from them like, thought the chamberlain, the roar of a crowd greeting a favourite charioteer.