The Hollow King, page 19
‘What are they doing?’
‘Under… always under… Under our feet, under our sight…’ The man’s shoulders lurched and a mass of blood came from his mouth. His pupils were shrinking. The red flecks fading. ‘They told me… They knew… you would come.’ Cado was still. Then something hammered at the door. Shouts rose. The bolts jolted in their settings.
‘They knew…’ Agen’s head sagged onto his chest. The last words a wet sigh.
‘Who?’
‘Them…’ gasped Agen, and the last flicker in the man’s eyes reflected a movement behind Cado. He whirled as a twisted knife descended into the space where his neck had been. He had an impression of a cloak, and a bronze mask under the shadow of a hood, grinning with hooked teeth. He slammed an elbow into the mask. The cloaked figure cannoned backwards. Something heavy hit the door. Wood buckled. The stone of the frame shook. The masked figure rose from where they had landed. Cado was halfway across the room towards them. The shouts were rising from outside. The masked figure whirled, cloak scattering light as it dived for the passage leading to the door at the back of the building. The front door gave way. A metal bolt sheared. A last impact, then the thunder of splintering wood.
Cado snapped a look over his shoulder. Vaux came through the door, two of her militia with her. She saw the blood and Agen’s corpse nailed to the chair. The masked figure was out of sight already. Vaux’s gaze snapped up and met Cado’s. Then he was running for the back door and bounding through it after the cloaked figure as shouts chased him into the rain. He had been set up, pulled by strings that he had not seen being tied, and now he was no longer just a hunter in this city, but the hunted. It almost felt reassuring.
Cado chased the cloaked figure up and through the city. He moved by scent and instinct as much as sight, a hunting beast loosed after its prey. The militia had not been watching the door at the back of Agen’s house, and by the time they reached it, Cado was already out of bow shot. They had pursued, but he was a predator intent on his quarry. Still they might have caught him. They might have flooded the streets with soldiers, raised a mob, stolen every shadow with torches and fire. At a different time that would have been what happened. Now fear boiled through the city, and Cado moved under its shroud.
People bustled past him, climbing as if fleeing a rising tide. Every now and again he would catch a glimpse down the side of the spire. Fog coiled around the lower levels, grey and bruised purple. Light spidered through the murk, crackling and fizzing. Rain poured from roofs. The strings of bird skulls and feathers hanging from the eaves whipped in the rising wind, clacking and snapping. He could taste the magic in the wind and storm. Rose scent and sharp mineral. Out there beyond the clouds, the Lumineth were reshaping the web of power around the city. It would not be long now before they and the Ossiarchs came for their prize, or until the Old Enemy snatched it from them.
Behind, he thought he saw an occasional militiaman with a torch, searching the faces of the crowds and looking to the rooftops. He kept moving, sliding between the buildings and the bunches of people climbing the steps and streets. The scent of the prey was thick in his mouth. Hunger rose with it, until the two were knotted together, spiced and sharp. He was close and getting closer.
He stopped, turned, drawing air but only smelling the rain and the reek of mortal life. A press of people jostled past him, carrying bundles of possessions. A child wrapped in a sodden cloak cried out. An old man coughed. A pulse of white light spidered the fog not far below. Someone muttered a plea for protection. The rain rattled and spattered on grey stone.
He saw it only briefly then, a blink of an impression caught at the edge of his eye as he turned. A ring on the finger of a hand pulling a red cloak close against the rain. The glint of a sapphire set in the palm, a bronze hand haloed by tongues of fire. Then it was gone, and the press of people moving up the steps was flowing on. Cado was still for an instant, and then he was pushing the people aside, vaulting down steps, cries and curses following him. He saw the figure half turn to look back at him, face hidden under a red hood. They were still for an instant, and then they were jumping down the steps as Cado followed. He knew that sapphire ring. He had pulled one from the finger of the false guard on the caravan, and before then in a dozen places across the realm of the dead.
He broke from the crowd. The figure in the hood was at the bottom of the flight of steps. Cado leapt. All thought of the mortals around him drained to nothing. He landed on the wall above the steps and leapt again. A cry went up from behind him: shrill shock and surprise. The figure in the hood sprinted out of sight at the bottom of the steps. Cado landed on the bottom step and twisted up the road that the figure had taken.
Cado knew where they were. Fifty paces up on the skyward side, smoke rose from the chimney above Valentin’s forge. The crumpled remains of the tower with the blue-and-red door stood opposite it. No one else was on the street. Cado saw the tower door swing, and the edge of a red cloak vanishing inside. He lunged for the door, each stride a wolflike bound. He reached the door and went through it without stopping. Wood splintered. He landed in a crouch, sword drawn, fangs bared.
Stillness and quiet, except for the fall of rain through rafters. It was just as it had been before. No… There was something different. At the edge of the floor there was a crack running up between the stone blocks and across the ground. Cado moved over to it, sword levelled. He could taste a new strand to the magic in the wind now: burnt spice and ashes, jagged and bitter, the scent of sorcery and corruption. The crack moved as he stepped closer, altering in his eyes, until he saw that it was not a crack, but one edge of a door set into the floor. When pulled shut it would have been invisible. The weight of the stone would mean that you could walk or stamp on it and not hear a hollow knock. If it had closed properly, he would never have detected it at all.
He gripped the edge and pulled. The trapdoor did not move. He tried again. Muscles stood out like ropes on his neck. Still it did not move. He stopped, forcing his instinct for rage to calm enough for him to think. He took out a knife and ran it along the edge of the crack, feeling for a catch or a point of leverage. There was none. The stone was immovable. He could feel a dull numbness in his hand. There was nullstone worked into this trapdoor. Clever, a physical door too strong to lift or break without knowing its secret, made so that magic could not help finding that secret.
He felt his lips snarl back from his teeth with frustration. Inside him, the black void of hunger opened its maw. Hunger billowed up, using his anger to climb into his thoughts. He had left it too long. He could feel the hollowness under his skin now, in his stomach and soul. He needed to keep his mind clear. He needed to…
Feed.
Red warmth pouring into him, taking away all the anger, all the pain; filling him, giving strength. Bliss and serenity… No guilt. No need to chase redemption. Only the call of the hunt and the release of the kill. Not redemption but purity… The living were nearby… hundreds of them. Fresh life filling all of them, beating, warm…
He reached for the vial of blood he had taken from the acolyte on the road. His fingers rattled against the glass. The blood had clotted brown inside the glass. He took the stopper out and raised the vial to his lips.
‘Cado?’
His head turned.
Ama was standing inside the splintered door, eyes wide.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The thud of a heart.
Life sliced into beats.
He had a device that measured time in the click and turn of cogs. Cog-wrights had made it in a realm where the rain was gold and the fruit tasted of iron. The merchant who had shown him the device had said that it measured time perfectly: each second a copy of the one that came before, each hour a flower of brass-counted minutes. Cado had shaken his head and left the merchant to find another customer for her fancy of cogs. It was a wonder, no doubt, but it held no truth. The slide of sand through the neck of an hourglass told the same lie: that time existed outside of living. It did not. The long afternoons of laughter under the sun, and the instant of waking to the sound of screams and the smell of smoke did not divide into cog teeth or grains of sand. It passed swift or slow, idle or urgent, but always by being lived. And its measure was the beat of blood. The drumbeat of the heart.
‘Cado?’
He could hear it. The rhythm beating inside the mortal’s ribs, so loud, so close, getting faster, slicing time finer and finer.
‘Are you all right?’
He felt his teeth against his tongue. Needle points against skin. No pulse in his own chest, no rhythm of blood, no time.
‘Are you hurt?’
Ama took a step closer. Grit scraped underfoot.
No time of his own but what he stole.
‘Cado?’
Cado turned his head away. Then slowly, with effort, he raised the vial to his lips. The clotted blood tasted of rust on his tongue. He heard the hungering void open wide… and then shrink. The blackness retreated. He took a breath, closed his eyes, smelled the rain on the air.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. His voice was thick. The blood thirst was trying to pull his lips back from his teeth.
‘I was looking out, at the storm and the…’ Ama glanced back at the doorway. Outside the rain glittered in the grey daylight. A fizz of light cracked through the air. ‘Da came back, said he needed to go up to the city top. He went and said to bar the doors and stay in. He said that you had already gone there.’
Cado nodded, only half listening. So close, so close again. They were here. The disciples of the Burning Hand were here. He snapped his knuckles into the stone of the closed trapdoor.
‘That’s a door,’ said Ama. Cado looked up sharply. The boy had come close and was looking down at the crack at the edge of the trapdoor. He bent down and ran a finger along the gap. ‘I have seen broken ones, but the rest you aren’t supposed to be able to see unless you know they are there.’
‘There are others?’ asked Cado.
Ama smiled. ‘Yes. They are supposed to be as old as the first rocks of the city.’
‘Where do they go?’
Ama shrugged. ‘Into the rock.’
‘Under the city?’
‘Under, behind, above – the tunnels they lead to go everywhere.’ He looked suddenly wary, like he had said too much. Cado could hear the boy’s heartbeat rise.
‘You have been into the tunnels?’
‘Da told me not to go where I shouldn’t be.’
‘Is there another hidden way near here? One that you can get through?’ The boy looked at the ground, frowned. For an instant he looked just like his father. ‘Could you show me?’
The boy was still for a moment and then looked at Cado. His gaze was open, his face serious. ‘You are a Soulblight, aren’t you?’
Cado almost flinched. He paused, then nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘There are stories…’ the boy began and trailed off. ‘About what the Soulblights do – are they true?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you are not like the ones in the stories.’
‘But you’re not different, are you? The stories are true. Blood and horror and slaughter,’ Valentin had said.
Ama blinked. ‘You saved da, he said you did. You kept him alive, brought him back.’
‘I have done a lot of things.’
The boy looked at him for a long moment. Then he smiled. ‘You are not like them. I can tell.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘You could be worse,’ the boy said, shrugging, ‘but you choose not to be.’
Cado moved across the roofs. The sky beat at him with rain and tugged at him with wind. He kept his cloak around him and breathed a spell into the air that smudged his outline as he bounded and scrambled across broken walls and tiles. The spell was weak, and it was taking effort to keep it in place. The effort was thinning the blood in his veins even with the draught he had taken from the last vial. He kept Ama in sight as he moved. Every now and then he saw figures moving up the streets. Their flaming torches rippled in the wind. Mail and swords gleamed under cloaks. They saw Ama but did not stop him.
Cado followed the boy across the curve of the spire until they reached a street that followed the edge of an overhang. Pieces of the overhang had collapsed at some point in the past and taken part of the road with it. Cobbles and sections of buildings sagged and teetered over the drop. The buildings next to the rock of the spire were empty and looked as though none of the settlers had tried to claim them. Walls slumped against each other. Roofs had fallen inwards. The white spatter of bird droppings covered the stones, and Cado could see black-plumed birds perched on the exposed beams tucked inside the ruins. Ama paused on the street and looked around. Water was running from the hood of his cloak. Above, the lightning and thunder snarled.
Cado let go of the strand of spell he had been breathing into the air and dropped from the roof to the road. Ama looked around, startled. Cado saw a flicker of fear in the boy’s eyes. Then the fear was gone.
‘Over here,’ Ama said, and moved to one of the buildings. It was little more than a pile of rubble contained by the outer shape of its walls. The boy slid down the gap between the two collapsing walls. Cado followed. It was tight and he could only move by shuffling. The space he came out into felt like a cave. Walls and ceiling had slid and fallen on top of each other, leaving a pocket of space between them. The air smelled of mould. Painted plaster covered one of the walls that leaned in to make the ceiling. Figures dragging comets and bearing hourglasses walked in flaking gold leaf across a heaven of chipped blue. A grey shaft of light fell from a crack in the debris ceiling.
‘There,’ said Ama, pointing. Cado looked. A section of the wall had broken free from the rest, forced out when the structure collapsed above. It was octagonal and, like the trapdoor in the tower, when closed it would be invisible. It was thick enough that it looked like it could have taken a blow from a giant and still stood. A narrow gap opened behind it on one side, no wider than the span of two hands.
Cado crouched beside the opening. The dark beyond was absolute.
‘Have you been inside?’ he asked.
Ama shook his head quickly. Cado looked at him steadily. The boy gave a small shrug. ‘Once, but not far. It was dark and I couldn’t see, and…’
‘What?’
‘It was…’ He shivered. ‘Cold…’ he said, the word trailing off in search of one that fit better.
Cado looked back at the opening. He thought of Leragrais and the rings he still had, of the souls they held. He had chosen to follow the trail of the Burning Hand rather than find the wizard. It had been an instinctive as much as a considered decision. That same instinct had him wondering if the two paths might not intertwine.
‘Go,’ said Cado to Ama. ‘Go back to the forge and do what your father said. Bar the doors. Wait for him.’
He moved to the gap behind the hidden door.
‘What about you?’
‘Tell your father where I have gone, but no one else.’ The boy frowned. ‘Will you do that for me, Amandus?’
His head came up at the sound of his name. His eyes were dark mirrors to the faint light. He nodded.
‘Good,’ said Cado. ‘Go now.’
Ama hesitated for a second more and then went back to the gap between the collapsed walls and scrambled out of sight. Cado looked back at the space beyond the door, then went through.
‘Cold’ the boy had said. He had no other word for what he had felt beyond the hidden door. It was understandable. Only some mortals could understand the raw magic that touched every stone and filled every breath of their existence. Almost all of them could feel it, though.
Cold… Cold like frost on a blood rose. Cold like the inside of a mausoleum. Cold that crept through flesh as the warmth of life faded… Magic. The magic of death and the grave. It breathed past Cado on the still air. He felt it run fingers over the back of his neck. He heard it chuckle in the silence filling his ears.
In the underworlds of Death there were places where the magic of the grave gathered, pooling like water in a lake. That was what this was. Down in the heart of Aventhis there was a source of magic as powerful as any he had felt. He thought of the nullstone worked into the hidden doors – not just to keep them closed to magic but to contain the power inside them.
There were steps on the other side of the door, sloping sharply down between walls so narrow that they touched Cado’s shoulders. There was no light, but Cado’s eyes saw through the dark as though moonlight fell past him. Everything was silver, a gossamer world. He followed the staircase down until he put his foot onto the next step and found a floor there instead. He looked around, surprised to find himself in a space that looked like a chamber. Its walls were roughly circular. Veins of pale crystal ran through the rock of the walls, floor and ceiling. The cold surrounded him, flowing over his skin like an ice wind. But the air was still.
He touched the ring on his forefinger.
‘Solia,’ he said, and she was there, a shimmer behind his shoulder. The light of her spirit flickered like a flame struggling against a gale.
~My… prince…~ she said, and her voice shivered in his skull.
‘There is a source of magic in the core of the rock spire.’
~Yes… I can feel it… It’s radiating through the stone. Souls and stars, it’s powerful! This is what the geomantic ley lines in this underworld converge on. These tunnels and walls, they are like channels to guide the flow of power, to turn it back on itself over and over.~ Solia’s ghost presence fluttered. He imagined her shivering.
‘This is what has kept the feral spirits from the city. This convergence of power.’
