CHAPTER XXXVI
Erishen drew back from the guard into the waking world, ready to take the next step in their plan. Scarcely had he opened his eyes, however, than he saw a tunnel of light open, shimmering blue-green like the ocean. Ilianwe? He backed away, reaching out for the discarded manacles.
The small figure at the far end of the tunnel resolved itself into an equally unwelcome form, though for different reasons.
“Amayi, what are you doing here? Go back!”
Kiiren did not heed him, but stepped out into the tower cell.
“You left me behind.” There was a boyish sulkiness in his tone.
“You are too young for this, beloved.”
“I am as old as Jathekkil. As old as him in body – and older in soul. Why should I not stand beside you?”
Erishen sighed. “And you always said I was the stubborn one.”
“I learnt it from you.”
Human though he was, in the dim evening light Kiiren looked a great deal like the skrayling boy Erishen had collected from his mother after his first reincarnation. Same dark hair as yet unmarked by the silver streaks of adulthood, same determined expression.
“Very well. Come and sit by me.” He explained their half of the plan. “Can you do that?”
Kiiren made a rude noise. “Easily.”
Erishen took him by the shoulders.
“Do not underestimate him, amayi. Jathekkil may be young and weak, but Ilianwe is at least as old as I am and far more cunning. Now, we have delayed long enough. Lie down here, next to me, and we will begin.”
Erishen lay back and closed his eyes, focusing all his will on the dreamlands.
“Stop fidgeting,” he murmured. “Forget your mortal body and leave it behind.”
He did likewise himself, blocking out all the sounds of the city and the smells of the dank tower room. The darkness behind his eyelids shimmered, and he stepped out onto the twilit moor. A moment later Kiiren materialised at his side. Erishen held out his hand. Here in the dreamlands they were equal in height, though Kiiren’s soul burned with a fainter, whiter light that marked his relative youth.
“Ready?”
“Ready,” Kiiren replied.
Only a short distance away, a cluster of dreaming minds marked the position of the great keep. No sign of Jathekkil, but perhaps he was still awake.
“Extend your senses,” Erishen said. “Unless he wears a spirit-guard, there will be traces of his connection to the dreamlands.”
Kiiren nodded. Together they spread their awareness outwards, taking in the scatter of human dreamers in the keep, the rustle of grass that perhaps marked the approach of a devourer… So fine-tuned was his attention that when another dreamwalker materialised behind him, the power bludgeoned his mind and he could not help but flinch.
“Erishen. It has been too long.” A soft, seductive voice, with an accent he could not put his finger on.
He turned around, stepping between Kiiren and the new arrival. “Ilianwe.”
“And this must be Kiiren.” The figure inclined its head, peering around him. “You were reborn as a Venetian, I hear. How fortunate for you.”
“Fortunate?” Kiiren replied. “I had much rather been reborn in my true kind. Our true kind.”
Ilianwe laughed and changed shape, into a skrayling female, short of hair and solidly built.
“Like this?” she said. “A form you so aspired to in your last incarnation.”
“It is traditional–”
“Tradition. It is tradition that bars us all from our former homeland. How can you have any loyalty to them?”
“Enough,” Erishen said. “She is trying to stall us. Kiiren, go and help my brother. I will detain her.”
Before he had even finished speaking Ilianwe changed again, into a winged, clawed thing that flew over Erishen’s head straight towards the fleeing Kiiren. Erishen launched himself after her in a blaze of white-hot light that scorched her wings and sent her tumbling to the ground.
“Go, amayi, now!”
Erishen had no more time to give Kiiren his attention, for Ilianwe was on her feet again. This time her shape was more humanoid, armoured in scales against his fire. She thrust her hands forward and dozens of tiny barbs flew from her fingertips, piercing his dream-flesh. He bit down on the cry of agony that threatened to burst from his throat, lest he distract Kiiren from his vital mission. Illusion, only illusion, he told himself. He circled round so that he was between Ilianwe and the keep once more.
“You cannot defeat me,” Ilianwe said. “Not in your broken state. I am older than you, and stronger.”
“We defeated you once.”
“And yet I am here.”
She gestured to either side; the air rippled and turned to stone that spread out and round and up, forming a dome that enclosed him on all sides. Erishen beat on it with his fists, but it only trembled and sifted dust down to choke his lungs. Illusion. I have no body here to need breath.
Laughing, Ilianwe turned into the winged beast once more and flew after Kiiren. She did not attack, however, but flew straight over his head, light flaring out green and gold and violet as she began to open a portal. Erishen threw himself against the walls of his prison but they were solid as ever. He looked down at his knuckles, raw and bleeding, and realised he was awake and pounding his fists into the stone wall of the tower room. He whirled around, but Kiiren was gone.
The great keep had been designed as the finest and most secure bolthole for a king who had only recently taken his place on the throne of England. Not Jathekkil, of course, but William the Conqueror. Even so, the place served the usurper well. A massive gatehouse defended the main approach on the west side of the keep. The entrance doors were high up on the first floor and could only be reached by a long flight of steps protected by another stone gatehouse. Once inside, any attackers had to cross the great hall to the north side of the keep in order to reach the main staircase to the upper floors.
All this, Mal had determined from their first, brief visit to see the prince. He anticipated guards on each level, probably human; the other guisers must be spread thinly if the usurper was relying on them to control his kingdom whilst he lurked in here. Mal drew his borrowed sword and took the lead, putting each foot down with care to avoid the scuff of leather on stone.
Torches flickered in cressets, making the shadows of the tattered banners dance on the ceiling, but that was the only movement to be seen. The whole keep seemed oddly deserted, as if Henry had already taken his court back to Whitehall Palace, and yet surely that could not have been done within the few short hours since Mal had been imprisoned? He advanced through the great hall, a sick feeling in his stomach.
The hall was divided into two unequal halves by a massive retaining wall pierced by arches. Mal slipped into the shadow of the nearest and peered around the corner, to where he knew a door opened onto the great staircase. At last, a living soul! More torches illuminated the heavily built figure of one of the Huntsmen, standing guard at the entrance to the stairwell, feet apart, hands braced on the halberd before him. Even more ominously, he wore an executioner’s hood, so like the masks worn by the Huntsmen on their rides. The man’s eyes glinted through the slits in the black leather.
“Stay back!” Mal hissed over his shoulder at Coby.
He strolled forward, sword point drooping towards the floor.
“Ho there, good fellow! Will you step aside and let me and my companion visit the King?”
The Huntsman said nothing.
“Or does your loyalty to Lord Grey not extend beyond his threshold?”
“What would you know about loyalty, demon?” The Huntsman crossed himself and hefted his pole-arm.
“There’s been some mistake,” Mal said. “That was all a play, to fool the King–”
“No mistake.”
The Huntsman strode forward, sweeping the eighteen-inch blade in a lethal arc at belly height. Mal leapt back; a sword was useless at this range.
“Shoot him!” Mal yelled, throwing himself sideways and rolling as he hit the floor.
“I don’t have a gun, remember?”
Mal cursed and got to his feet. Something small flew past his head, too slow and silent to be a bullet. The Huntsman flinched, and the missile pattered to the floor and rolled away. Mal laughed. In lieu of weapon or powder, Coby was throwing her ammunition.
Another bullet sailed past the Huntsman’s head, and it was his turn to laugh – until the next caught him in the teeth with an audible crack. The man swore and spat blood, but the distraction was enough. Mal leapt forward and lunged, skewering the Huntsman’s right hand between the base of the fingers and through his wrist, the tip at last emerging below his forearm. Screaming, the man tried to wield his weapon one-handed but the balance was off. The halberd blade rang like an ill-tuned bell as it slammed into the stone floor. Mal lunged again, well below the padded jerkin, stabbing into the meat of the man’s thigh. As he withdrew the blade blood gushed forth and the Huntsman staggered and dropped his weapon, enfolding Mal in an embrace that threatened to crush the breath from his lungs. The two of them fell to the floor, the Huntsman closing his uninjured hand around Mal’s windpipe. Mal smashed the hilt of his sword against the brute’s skull to no avail.
As the world started to go dark, the pressure on Mal’s chest and throat suddenly eased. He blinked and saw a pale figure standing over him. Coby.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I… I don’t really know. I think I stabbed him. A lot.”
Her doublet and hose were covered in a fine spray of blood, as of many small wounds. She looked down at the sword in her hand. Mal’s borrowed sword.
“Well, someone had to,” he said, getting to his feet. Dear God, he was as soaked in gore as a Smithfield butcher, the other man’s blood sticky and disturbingly warm.
Coby looked pale enough to swoon. Best to get her moving; she could think about this later. He took the sword from her, gently, and wiped it on the dead man’s jerkin.
“Come on. We made enough of a racket to announce our arrival; let’s not keep the King waiting.”
The great stair was wide enough for three men to walk side-by-side – or for one man to wield a blade with ease. Mal led the way up to another floor identical in its plan to the one below, apart from a pillared gallery running round all four sides, like a cloister. This one was stacked to head height with breastplates, helmets and rusted coats of mail. A narrow passage led through the armoury to one of the corner towers, where a much smaller staircase spiralled upwards. Mal sheathed his sword and helped himself to a dagger from a pile on top of a barrel, taking one of the torches in his free hand. He nodded towards a rack of pistols.
“Grab a brace,” he whispered to Coby. “And a powder flask.”
She nodded numbly but complied. Damn, but I hate having to do this. I should send her back to Sandy, where she’ll be safe. But it was too late for that now. Nothing for it but to press on.
The stairs opened into a small room furnished as a bedchamber. The scents of qoheetsakhan and burnt flesh mingled unpleasantly in the air. The body of the other Huntsman lay in the middle of the floor, face down and stripped to the waist. Either dead or unconscious, by the look of it.
“I thought you preferred to have someone else do your interrogation for you,” Mal said to the slight figure sitting in the window-seat.
Jathekkil got to his feet and walked forward into the light of the candles.
“Did you think I would not see through your ridiculous little plot? That I would be blinded by my desire to have you captive once more?”
“I thought it worth the hazard, yes.”
“I’m afraid you’ve overreached yourself this time, Catlyn.” He smiled, and a glow began to form behind him. “Goodbye.”
“What?”
“Where do you think my court has gone? Did I spirit them away, as I did your son? Or did I perhaps send them all down to the lowest level of the keep, to sit around the barrels of gunpowder and wait for my orders?”
“You… bastard craven whoreson.”
“Farewell, Catlyn.” He turned to greet the figure forming at the other end of the tunnel. “No. Oh no. Not you again.”
Mal leapt forward, grabbed the boy-king from behind and slid his dagger across his cheek. No need to kill, not yet, but the touch of blood on steel would break any magic he tried to use.
“No!” Jathekkil squirmed in Mal’s grasp as Kiiren stepped through the portal.
“Sorry, Your Majesty,” Mal said, “but it looks like you lose after all.” He turned to his wife. “Go and free the courtiers. Kiiren and I can look after this one.”
Coby hesitated for a moment, unwilling to leave her son in the same room as that creature. Mal glared at her, and at last she turned and ran.
He’s not my son anyway, she kept telling herself over and over. He’s Kiiren now. And yet when she thought back to the little time she had spent with Ambassador Kiiren, the two were much alike: inquisitive, soft-hearted and fond of stories, but with a stubborn streak when it came to protecting those they loved. She wiped the tears from her eyes and ran on. If Henry’s boast had not been an idle threat, the lives of dozens of people still depended on her.
Down and down the great spiral stair she went, until her legs were aching and her head swimming. She passed the great hall and continued on down to the lowest level, which was above ground but with walls several yards thick and only tiny slot-like windows to provide a little light and ventilation. A flask of near-exhausted lightwater hung from an empty cresset, casting a faint bluish glow over the last few steps. She reached the bottom of the stairwell to find a solid wooden door twice her own height, barred with a great beam as well as locked and bolted.
“Oh wonderful,” she muttered, bending to get her shoulder under the beam.
It took several minutes and enough swearing to shock a Billingsgate porter, but at last she had the thing open. She heaved back the door. The darkness within was impenetrable, but the mingled stinks of gunpowder and sweat revealed the cellar’s contents well enough. She fetched the lightwater lantern, swirling it to bring it back to some semblance of usefulness, and held it up. The pallid faces of a hundred courtiers stared back at her.
“Come on,” she called to them. “All of you, out of here, quickly!”
When they did not move, she added, “The King commands it!”
At that they began to stir, and she ushered them up the stairs in ones and twos. They were all dusty and bedraggled, with puffy features as if they had been asleep too long. When she was sure that the last of them was out of there, she closed the door and ran up the stairs, leaving the barrels of gunpowder in peace.
Mal knelt, dragging the boy-king down with him.
“Undo my spirit-guard,” he told Kiiren, “and put it on our prisoner.”
“What have you done with her?” Jathekkil growled as Kiiren came round to stand in front of him, the metal necklace between his hands. “What have you done with my amayi?”
“No worse than you would have done to mine,” Kiiren replied. He looped the necklace round the struggling boy’s head and fastened the clasp. “She’s not dead, not yet.”
Mal tied Henry’s hands behind his back and secured him to one of the bedposts, then took his son aside.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Kiiren replied, his dark eyes sorrowful. “She brought it upon herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“The people in the cellar were afraid. Hrrith came… so Ilianwe had to flee. I thought she would go back to her body, but she flew up into the sky and disappeared north. I think she’s gone to find Shawe.”
Mal’s innards twisted in fear. “Come on, we have to find her body before it’s too late.”
Mal ran down through the keep, Kiiren in his arms, and found his wife waiting at the bottom of the entrance stairs. Outside, courtiers milled around in confusion. Over the hubbub came the low thud of a battering ram.
“What’s going on?”
“They’re trying to break into the Jewel House.” Coby pointed to the long building at the foot of the stairs.
“No matter. We have more important things to worry about than a bit of gold.”
“You really are a skrayling at heart, aren’t you?” she said with a grin as she ran after him.
They pushed their way out through the throng.
“We need to find Ilianwe. Olivia.”
“Her chamber is in the Queen’s apartments,” Coby said. “In the little tower room in the corner.”
“I know the place.” Mal put Kiiren down. “Look after him. I’ll see you soon.”
Ignoring his wife’s protests he raced through the castle grounds, pushing past startled guardsmen. At last he found himself in the outer ward, at the foot of the stairs up to the old royal apartments in St Thomas’s Tower.
“Hold! Who goes there?” a guard shouted down at him.
“Sir Maliverny Catlyn. Please, let me through. The Queen is in danger.”
“And why should I believe you?” The guard advanced down the stair, pointing his partizan at Mal. “I heard you were a traitor.”
Mal raised his hands as if surrendering. The guard relaxed, and Mal leapt up the next three steps and seized the partisan by its decorative side-blades. Twisting out of the way he hauled on the weapon, sending its bearer tumbling down the stairs to land in a heap on the cobbles below.
“Sorry,” he muttered, bounding up the rest of the stairs and pulling open the door.
The dining parlour was just as he remembered it, though it lay empty at this time of night. He ran over to the door in the corner and tried the latch. Locked, dammit! On the other hand, anything in there would take a while to get out. He went through into the other half of the main apartments, to the bedchamber where he and Coby had spent the night all those years ago.
“Ladies?”
One of the bed’s occupants sat up and screamed, waking her companions. Mal belatedly remembered he was soaked in blood from the waist down.
“Please, ladies, I’m not here to harm you, I swear. My name is Sir Maliverny Catlyn; my wife served the Queen–”
“We know who you are, sirrah,” one of them said, gathering a robe around her shoulders. “A traitor and a renegade.”
“Please, whatever you think of me, rouse the Queen mother and get yourselves out of here this instant. You are all in great danger.”
“What kind of–”
Her answer was a loud thud from the room behind Mal.
“Go!” he said, taking the nearest woman’s arm and pushing her towards the door. “Get out through the Wakefield Tower and flee this place entirely if you can.”
The women scattered, and Mal stalked back into the dining chamber, ready to face whatever came through the tower door.