Prince of Thorns

28

“Necromancers?” I trudged behind Jane with Gorgoth at my back. There had been nothing about necromancers in my books.

“They command the dead. Mages-”

“I know what they are.” I cut across Gorgoth. “What are they doing in my way?”

“Mount Honas attracts them,” Jane said. “There’s death at the heart of the mountain. Old magics. It makes their work easier.”

Even the leucrotas’ caves looked ugly. When I was seven, and William five, Tutor Lundist took us secretly to the caverns of Paderack. Unknown to any at court, the heirs of Ancrath slid and slipped into the blind depths, and came to a cathedral hall of such pillared wonder that it beggared the grace of God. I carry the glory of that place with me still. The chambers of the leucrota had none of that fluid elegance, no touch of the hidden artistry that lies in the deep places of the world. We walked through corridors of Builder-stone, poured and shaped using arts long forgotten. Jane’s light showed us ancient vaults, cracked in places and scaled with lime. We wove a path around fallen blocks, larger than cart-horses, heading deeper all the time, like worms burrowing to the core, seeking the roots of the mountain.

“Shut your moaning, priest.” Row came up behind the Nuban and showed old Gomsty his knife, a wicked piece of ironwork to be sure.

Father Gomst let up his wailing at that, and I did miss it for the echoes had been quite haunting. I fell back for a word. That, and to make sure Row didn’t decide to carve up our gift to the monsters before we’d handed it over proper-like.

“Peace now, Father,” I said.

I pushed Row’s blade aside. He scowled at that, did Row, all pock-marks and squinting eyes.

“You’ll just be changing flocks, Father,” I told Gomsty. “Your new congregation might look a little fouler, but on the inside? Well, I’m sure they’ll be fairer than Row here.”

The Nuban grunted and shifted Father Gomst’s weight on his shoulder.

“Set him down,” I said. “He can walk. We’re good and lost now, there’ll be no running.”

The Nuban set old Gomsty on his feet. He looked at me, his face too black to read. “It’s wrong, Jorg. Trade in gold, not people. He’s a holy man. He speaks for the white-Christ.”

Gomst looked at the Nuban with a hatred I’d never seen in him before, as if he’d just grown horns and called on Lucifer.

“Well, now he can speak to Gorgoth for Christ,” I said.

The Nuban said nothing, his face a blank.

Something about the Nuban’s silences always made me want to say a little more. As if I had to make it right with him. Makin scraped at me that same way, but not so bad.

“It’s not like he can’t leave,” I said. “He’s free to walk home if he really must. He’ll just have to earn himself some food for the journey and a map is all.”

The Nuban gave me the white crescent of his smile.

I walked on, a cold voice inside me whispering, whispering of weakness, of the thin edge of a wedge, of a sharp knife cutting without tears, of a hot iron to cauterize a wound before infection spread. It doesn’t do to love a brother.

Jane’s light dimmed and flickered as I drew near. She recoiled slightly with an intake of breath. I curled my lip and imagined her falling from a cliff. It worked better than I’d hoped. She gave a squeal and covered her eyes.

Gorgoth stepped between us. “Keep away from her, Dark Prince.”

So I walked in the shadows, and they led us on into the mountain. We followed wide tunnels that stretched for miles, level-floored with curved ceilings. Rust stains ran the length of the passages in parallel lines, though to what end men would lay iron in such a manner I can’t say, unless these were the pipes through which the secret fire of the Builders ran.

We left Jane and all but two of her kindred at the shores of a lake so wide even her silver light could not reach across the waters. The Builders had made this place too. Stone gave away to water with a single sharp step, the ceiling stretched flat and without adornment. Jane’s folk moved away toward shelters of wood and skins huddled at the water’s edge. Gorgoth led them, one hand enveloping Father Gomst’s shoulders.

Jane paused, her gaze moving between the two grotesques who remained to guard us. She said nothing but I could feel the undercurrent of unvoiced speech as she instructed them.

“No final words for me, little one?” I asked. I went on one knee before her. A fierce humour gripped me. “No predictions? No pearls to throw before this swine? Come, share a glimpse with me. Blind me with the future.”

She met my gaze and the light dazzled, but I wouldn’t look away.

“Your choices are keys to doors I cannot see beyond.”

I felt anger rise in me and pushed it down with a snarl. “There’s more than that.”

“You have a dark hand on your shoulder. A hole in your mind. A hole. In your memories. A hole-a hole-pulling me in-pulling-”

I seized her hand. That was a mistake, for it burned the skin and froze the bone in equal measure. I’d have set it down if I could, but the strength left me. For a moment I could see only the child’s eyes.

“When you meet her, run. Just run. Nothing else.” It felt as though I were speaking the words, though I could hear Jane’s voice frame them. Then I fell.

I woke to the light of torches.

“He’s up.”

I found myself face to face with Rike.

“Jesu, Rike, you been gargling rat piss again?” I pushed his brutal jaw to one side and used his shoulder to lever myself up. The brothers began to rise around me, hefting their packs. Makin came from the water’s edge, Gorgoth looming behind him.

“Don’t go touching the Prophetess of the Leucrota!” He used a mock-scold. I could see the relief hidden in his eyes.

“I’ll bear it in mind,” I said.

Gorgoth paused to scowl at me, then led the way, holding a pitch-torch the size of a small tree.

Our path angled up now, the tunnel thick with dust that tasted of bitter almonds. We walked for less than a thousand yards before the way broadened into a wide gallery crossed by stone trenches of obscure purpose, yards across, and as deep as a man is tall. At the mouth of the gallery a wooden pen hugged the wall, the stays bound with rope. Two children huddled together in the middle of the bare cage. Two leucrota. Gorgoth hauled the door open.

“Out.”

They were neither of them past seven summers, if summers were a proper count for the dark halls of the leucrota. They came out naked, two skinny boys, brothers to look at them, the younger one perhaps five. Of all the leucrota I’d seen they looked the least monstrous. A black-and-red stippling marked their skin, colouring them like the tigers of Indus. Dark barbs of horn jutted from their elbows, mirrored in the talons on their fingers. The elder of the two shot me a glance, his eyes utterly black, no white, iris, or pupil.

“We don’t want your children,” Makin said. He reached into his pocket and tossed a twist of dry-meat to the brothers. “Put them back.”

The meat twist skittered to a halt at the elder child’s feet. He kept his eyes on Gorgoth. The littlest watched the dry-meat intently, but made no move. Their skin stretched so tight over the bone I could count every rib.

“These are for the necromancers, don’t waste your food on them.” Gorgoth’s rumble came so low it hurt to hear it.

“A sacrifice?” the Nuban asked.

“They’re dead already,” Gorgoth said. “The strength of the leucrota isn’t in them.”

“They look hearty enough to me,” I said. “With a meal or two in ’em. Sure you’re not just jealous because they’re not as ugly as the rest of you?” I didn’t much care what Gorgoth did with the runts, but I took a pleasure in taunting him.

Gorgoth flexed his hands and six giant knuckles popped like logs on the fire.

“Eat.”

The two boys fell on Makin’s food, snarling like dogs.

“The leucrota are pure-born, we gain our gifts as we grow. It is a slow change.” He gestured to the boys licking the last fragments of dry-meat from the stone. “These two have the changes of a leucrota twice their age. The gifts will come faster now, faster and stronger. None can bear such changes. I have seen it before. Such gifts will turn a man inside out.” Something in those cat’s eyes of his told me he meant it, told me he’d seen it. “Better they serve us as payment to keep the necromancers from our caves. Better the dead-ones take these than search for victims who could have lived. They will find a quick death and a long peace.”

“If you say it, then it is so.” I shrugged. “Let’s be moving on. I’m keen to meet these necromancers of yours.”

We followed Gorgoth through the gallery. The brothers scampered around us, and I saw the Nuban slip them dried apricots from the woollen depths of his tunic.

“So what’s your plan?” Makin sidled close to me, voice low.

“Hmmm?” I watched the younger child skip away from Liar’s well-aimed boot.

“These necromancers-what’s your plan?” Makin kept to a hiss.

I didn’t have a plan, but that was just one more obstacle to overcome. “There was a time when the dead stayed dead,” I said. “I’ve read it in Father’s library. For the longest time the dead only walked in stories. Even Plato had the dead comfortably far away, over the river Styx.”

“That’s what you get for all that reading,” Makin said. “I remember the marsh road. Those ghosts hadn’t read your books.”

“Nuban!” I called him over. “Nuban, come tell Sir Makin why the dead don’t rest easy any more.”

He joined us, crossbow over one shoulder, oil of cloves in the air around him. “The wise-men of Nuba tell it that the door stands ajar.” He paused and ran a very pink tongue over very white teeth. “There’s a door to death, a veil between the worlds, and we push through when we die. But on the Day of a Thousand Suns so many people had to push through at once, they broke the door. The veils are thin now. It just takes a whisper and the right promise, and you can call the dead back.”

“There you have it, Makin,” I said.

Makin furrowed his brow at that, then rubbed his lips. “And the plan?”

“Ah,” I said.

“The plan?” He could be annoyingly persistent could Makin.

“Same as normal. We just keep killing them until they stay down.”

Brother Row you could trust to make a long shot with a short bow. You could trust him to come out of a knife fight with somebody else’s blood on his shirt. You could trust him to lie, to cheat, to steal, and to watch your back. You couldn’t trust his eyes though. He had kind eyes, and you couldn’t trust them.