The coldharbour gates held for mere seconds before the fire-wielding sorcerer reduced them to ashes. One or two of his more reckless fellows dashed forward, only to be brought down by a hail of iron missiles from above. The youths gathered at the outer end of the passage, considering their options.
“Not so cocksure now, are you?” Ned yelled at them.
One of the boys raised his arms and a freezing wind poured down the passageway, ice crystals tearing at the defenders’ skin as they tried to stand their ground. Mal squinted through the onslaught, his free hand before his face. The wind-raiser’s companions had transformed into flat, serpentine creatures that slid along the upper walls of the passage, too high to be hit by missiles from above. One of them squirmed through a murder-hole, and moments later screams echoed around the passageway. Mal swore. Their last line of defence breached.
Ned and Gabriel raised their crossbows and shot at the creatures as they slithered out around the walls of the gatehouse, momentarily out of sight of their fire-wielding companion. One of them fell, transforming in mid-air into a boy of about thirteen, naked and with a crossbow bolt through his chest.
“God’s teeth, I hate these guisers!” Ned growled, cranking his crossbow again. “Using children as their soldiers, the craven bastards.”
The two oldest youths advanced through the gatehouse and emerged into the innermost ward.
“This isn’t working,” Sandy panted. “They’re not even drawing on the dreamlands for their magic any more, and I don’t know how to fight them.”
“No, but I do.” Mal raised the sword in prima guardia, ready to fend off the next attack.
“You told me yourself you are tiring. How long can you keep them back?”
“As long as I have to.”
Sandy sighed. “There is another way.”
Mal glanced back over his shoulder. “I’m not going to like it, am I?”
“We have to finish what Jathekkil started.”
“What?”
“Reforge our souls into one.”
“No.”
“Brother, you know it must be. Sooner or later. Or we are both lost, and Kiiren will be alone.”
“No.”
“They’ll destroy us anyway, and Kiiren. And kill your wife.”
Mal hesitated. “She would not want this either. She would call it blasphemy.”
“And if they eat her soul too? Where is her God then?”
The weapon drooped in his hand as he acknowledged the inevitable. “What must I do?”
“We will need a quiet place, and a little time.”
“We can give you that,” said Ned. “Go on. Do whatever it is you have to do to destroy this lot.”
Mal seized Ned’s arm with his free hand. “I can’t let you do this. They’ll kill you both.”
“Most likely. But isn’t that what happens in war?”
Mal hugged him one-handed, holding his sword out of the way.
“I’ll never forget this, or you,” he murmured in Ned’s ear.
“Oh, go on with you.” Ned kissed his cheek. “I mean it. Go.”
Mal retreated into the keep, Sandy still behind him. The last thing he heard was Ned’s battle-cry.
“Right, you bastard sons of whores, which one of you is first?”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
They found a high-ceilinged side-chamber that had once been a chapel, though its rood screen and altar had long since been removed and its coloured glass windows were grimy with neglect. Mal supposed it was as good a place to die as any.
“So, what do we do?”
“Put aside all your weapons, and remove anything made of iron or steel from your person.”
Mal unfastened his sword belt and placed his blades on the stone steps before the missing altar, like a knight of old commencing his vigil. After a moment’s consideration he kicked off his boots and removed his doublet, in case any of the buckles or lace-ends were tainted with iron.
When he was done, Sandy gestured for Mal to join him in a corner by the doorway, where they would not immediately be seen by anyone approaching.
“Now, sit down on the floor. This will go better if you don’t fall over once we get started.”
Mal sat down, hands clamped around his raised knees to stop them shaking, as he used to sit and hide as a boy when their father was in an ill temper. Sandy sat down by his side so that they were shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, like a mirror image. He took out a small wooden box and opened it. Inside was the obsidian blade he used for shaving.
“Where did you get that from?” Mal asked.
Sandy just smiled. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
Mal held out his wrist. The fat blue-green vein leading to his palm twitched in time with his heartbeat, counting out these last moments–
“No, not you. Me.”
“What?” Mal looked up. “No. Jathekkil said I was the one that must die–”
“He was wrong. Your half of our soul is too weak. It might not prevail against mine, and then you are simply dead.”
“Prevail? You mean I would have to fight you?”
“Our souls have been apart too long. They cannot simply be fitted back together like a broken cup.” Sandy bared his wrist and laid the black, glassy blade against his skin. “I have to do this.”
“No!”
But it was too late. Dark blood was already welling from a long shallow cut along the veins of Sandy’s wrist. As Mal watched in horror, his brother sliced open his other wrist. Mal saw again the piles of skrayling corpses in the watchtower on Corsica, smelt the copper tang of fresh blood. Sandy put the blade down on the floor between his feet and took Mal’s hand in his own. Lifeblood, warm and sticky, pulsed over both their hands and dripped to the floor.
“Try not to fight too hard,” Sandy whispered, and closed his eyes.
“No…”
Mal pulled his brother close, cradling his head against his shoulder. He mumbled something, he knew not what, and heard the whisper of Sandy’s dying reply.
“Amayi’o anosennowe… I will never give up…”
Ned and Gabriel stood side by side at the foot of the great stair. The sorcerers advanced slowly at first, as if unable to believe that two mortals would dare to try to stop them. The foremost stepped forward, rising up until he was seven, eight feet tall, broad in the beam and muscular, his face horribly familiar. Armitage? But this was not the man Ned had killed; the shapeshifter made Suffolk’s retainer look like a runt.
The Armitage-giant launched himself at Ned, swinging his massive fists. Ned dodged; it wasn’t hard to get under the blows. Bending over he headbutted the giant in the groin, and it roared and brought down its fist. Ned narrowly dodged it but the other fist came down, catching him a glancing blow on the left shoulder. Something made a horrible crunching noise and pain exploded inside Ned’s skull. He looked up and to his horror the giant was falling on him, trying to crush him out of existence. Ned held up his right arm in a desperate attempt to fend him off, but as the creature smashed into the steel-studded palm it shrank once more into a slight youth of no more than seventeen, pale-faced and disoriented. Still, his weight was enough to push Ned backwards, and they sprawled on the steps together. The shapeshifter started getting to his feet, growing as he did so, but with an almighty effort Ned swiped him round the head. His opponent grunted and slumped to the ground, out cold. A trickle of blood ran from his temple. He wasn’t getting up any time soon.
Ned staggered to his feet and looked around, just in time to see Gabriel locked in combat with something hardly less horrific than the devourers they had fought in Venice. Lean and pale as an ox carcass on a butcher’s hook it was, with burning red eyes and clawed hands. It lunged for Gabriel’s throat and bit down, blood gouting over its pink-and-white skin. Ned screamed and went for it, battering it around the head, but by ill chance the metal hand had snapped back into a fist and only the brass knuckles were connecting with the monster’s flesh. He swore and worked the lever, but before he could hit the creature again it dropped Gabriel and went still, as did the others. They all stared up at the keep, then as one they began to move towards the entrance, shifting back into their human forms and scrambling over the fallen.
A slow drumbeat, getting slower. It was dark here, darker than the dreamlands had ever been before, as if leaden clouds had blotted out even the faint smear of light that illuminated the void. He was dying, and his only hope was that battered fragment of a soul tied to flesh as familiar as his own. He reached out an insubstantial hand, groping in the dark for what he knew must be there, but feared it would not. No. He had to believe, or it would truly disappear. Never give up. I will always find you. I will always come for you. Amayi. Brother. Soul of my soul.
There. Such a fragile thing, like a cobweb, and yet strong as steel. He groped his way along the bond, feeling it grow thick and corded beneath his fingers like an umbilicus, the shared flesh of their birth. Pouring his essence into its fibres he swam through the darkness, towards the source, hearing the heartbeat grow louder and louder once more. The bond twisted, trembling under his touch, but he pushed on. We cannot fail now.
All at once he was falling from a great height and he screamed, expecting to smash against the stony earth of the dreamlands any moment. A light flared, so bright he could not see it, could not open his eyes and yet it was there, searing through him, limning his veins and sinews and the tip of every hair on his skin–
Erishen.
He screamed his name, and opened his eyes to the darkness of an abandoned chapel.