Mercy, he’s blind! she suddenly realized. The hesitation, the questing hands—it was obvious. A moment later, she realized that she knew the man. She flung herself back into the darkness of the doorway.
Guthwulf! That monster! What is he doing here? For a moment she had the dreadful certainty that Elias’ henchmen were still looking for her, combing the castle hall by hall in meticulous search. But why send a blind man? And when had Guthwulf gone blind?
A memory came back, fragmented but still unsettling. That had been Guthwulf on the balcony with the king and Pryrates, hadn’t it? The Earl of Utanyeat had grappled with the alchemist even as he, with Rachel’s dagger standing in his back, rounded upon the Mistress of Chambermaids who lay stunned on the floor. But why would Guthwulf have done that? Everyone knew that Utanyeat was the High King’s Hand, most hardhearted of Elias’ minions.
Had he actually saved her life?
Rachel’s head was whirling. She peered out through the open doorway again, but Earl Guthwulf had disappeared around a bend in the corridor, heading toward the red glow. A tiny shadow detached itself from the greater darkness and skittered past her feet, following him into the shadows. A cat? A gray cat?
The world beneath the castle had become altogether too confusingly dreamlike for Rachel. She unshuttered her lantern again and turned back in the direction she had come, leaving the door to the rough passageway ajar. For now, she wanted no dealings with Guthwulf, blind or not. She would follow her own careful marks back toward the staircase landing and pray that the White Foxes had gone on about their unholy business. There was much to think about—too much. Rachel wanted only to shut herself safely away in her sanctuary and go to sleep.
As Guthwulf trudged along, his head was full of seductive, poisonous music—a music that spoke to him, that summoned him, but that also frightened him as nothing else ever had.
For a long time in the endless darkness of his days and nights he had heard that song only in dreams, but today the music had come to him at last in his waking hours, summoning him up from the depths, driving even the whispering voices that were his regular companions out of his mind. It was the voice of the gray sword, and it was somewhere nearby.
A part of the Earl of Utanyeat knew perfectly well that the sword was only an object, a mute stem of metal that hung on the king’s belt, and that the last thing in the world he should want to do was seek it out, since where it was, King Elias would also be. Guthwulf certainly did not want to be caught—he cared little for his safety, but he would rather die alone in the pits below the castle than be seen by the people who had known him before he had become such a pitiable wreck—but the presence of the sword was hugely compelling. His life was now little more than echoes and shadows, cold stone, ghostly voices, and the tapping and scraping of his own footsteps. But the sword was alive, and somehow its life was more powerful than his own. He wanted to be near it.
I will not be caught, Guthwulf told himself. I will be clever, careful. He would merely venture close enough to feel its singing strength. …
His thoughts were disrupted by something twining through his ankles—the cat, his shadow-friend. He bent to touch the animal, running his fingers along its bony back, feeling its lean muscles. It had come with him, perhaps to keep him out of trouble. He almost smiled.
Sweat dripped down his cheek as he straightened. The air was getting warmer. He could half-believe that after all the stairs he had climbed, all the long upward ramps he had trudged, he might be approaching the surface—but could things have changed so much in his time belowground? Could the winter be fled, replaced by hot summer? It did not seem that so much time could have passed, but perpetual darkness was deceptive. Blind Guthwulf had already learned that while still in the castle. As for the weather … well, in such ill-omened and confusing times as these, anything was possible.
Now the stone walls were beginning to feel warm beneath his questing fingers. What was he walking into? He pushed the thought down. Whatever it was, the sword was there. The sword that was calling to him. Surely he should go just a little farther. …
That moment when Sorrow had sung inside him, filling him …
In the moment Elias had forced him to touch it, it had seemed that Guthwulf had become a part of the sword. He had been subsumed in an alien melody. For that moment at least, he and the blade were one.
Sorrow needed its brothers. Together they would make a music greater still.
In the king’s throne room, despite his horror, Guthwulf had also yearned for that communion. Now, remembering, he ached for it again. Whatever the risks, he needed to feel the song that had haunted him. It was a kind of madness, he knew, but he did not have the strength to resist it. Instead, it would take all his reserves of cunning and self-restraint just to get closer without being revealed. It was so near now. …
The air in the narrow corridor was stifling. Guthwulf stopped and felt around. The little cat was gone, probably retreated to some place less injurious to its pads. When he put his hand back onto the corridor wall, he could only drag it for a short distance before he had to snatch it away once more. From somewhere ahead he could now hear a faint but continuous rush of sound, a near-silent roar. What could lie before him?
Once a dragon had made its lair beneath the castle—the red worm Shurakai, whose death had made Prester John’s reputation and provided the bones for the Hayholt’s throne, a beast whose fiery breath had killed two kings and countless castle-dwellers in an earlier century. Might there still be a dragon, some whelp of Shurakai, grown to adulthood in darkness? If so, let it kill him if it would—let it roast him to ashes. Guthwulf was beyond caring much about such things. All he wished was to bask first in the song of the gray sword.
The pathway took a sharp upward angle, and he had to lean forward to make any headway. The heat was fierce; he could imagine his skin blackening and shriveling like the cooked flesh of a holiday pig. As he struggled against the slope, the roaring noise became louder, a deep unsteady growl like thunder, or an angry sea, or the troubled breath of a sleeping dragon. Then the sound began to change. After a moment, Guthwulf realized that the passageway was widening. As he turned the corner, his blind man’s senses told him that the hall had not only widened but grown higher as well. Hot winds billowed toward him. The grumbling noise echoed strangely.
Another few steps and he knew the reason. There was some much larger chamber beyond this one, something vast as the great dome of Saint Sutrin’s in Erchester. A fiery pit? Guthwulf felt his hair wafting in the hot breeze. Had he somehow arrived at the fabled Lake of Judgment where sinners were cast into a pool of flame forever? Was God Himself waiting down here in the rocky fastnesses? In these confused, distracted days Guthwulf did not remember much of his life before the blinding, but what he did remember now seemed full of foolish, meaningless actions. If there was such a place, such a punishment, he doubtless deserved it, but it would be a pity never to feel the strong magic of the gray sword again.
Guthwulf began taking smaller steps, dragging each foot in a careful side-to-side arc before setting it down. His progress slowed as he devoted all his attention to feeling his way forward. At last his foot touched air. He stopped and squatted, tapping his fingers along the hot passage floor. A lip of stone lay before him, stretching on either side farther than he could reach. Beyond that was nothing but emptiness and scorching winds.
He stood, shifting from foot to foot as the heat worked its way through his boot soles, and listened to the great roaring. There were other sounds, too. One was a deep, irregular clanging, as of two massive pieces of metal crashing together; the other was that of human voices.
The sound of metal on metal came again, and the noise finally pushed up a memory from his life in the castle of old. The thunderous clanging was the great forge doors being opened and closed. Men were throwing fuel into the blaze—he had seen it many times when he had inspected the foundries in his role as King’s Hand. He must be standing at one of the tunnel mout
hs almost directly above the huge furnace. No wonder his hair was about catch fire!
But the gray sword was here. He knew that as certainly as a foraging mouse knows when an owl is on the wing overhead. Elias must be down among the forges, the sword at his side.
Guthwulf backed away from the edge, thinking frantically of ways he could descend to the foundry floor without being observed.
When he had stood in one place long enough to burn his feet, he had to move farther away. He cursed as he went. There was no way to approach the thing. He might wander through these tunnels for days without finding another route down, and surely Elias would be gone by then. But neither could he simply give up. The sword called to him, and it did not care what stood in his way.
Guthwulf stumbled farther down the passageway, away from the heat, although the sword called to him to come back, to leap down into fiery oblivion.
“Why have you done this to me, sweet God?!” he shouted, his voice swiftly disappearing in the roar of the furnace. “Why have you hung me with this curse?!”
The tears evaporated from his eyelids as swiftly as they emerged.
Inch bowed before King Elias. In the flickering forge light, the huge man looked like an ape from the southern jungles—an ape dressed in clothes, but still a poor mockery of a man. The rest of the foundrymen had cast themselves to the floor upon the king’s entrance; the scatter of bodies all round the great chamber made it seem as though his very presence had struck a hundred men dead.
“We are working, Highness, working,” Inch grunted. “Slow work, it is.”
“Working?” Elias said harshly. Though the foundrymaster dripped with sweat, the king’s pale skin was dry. “Of course you are working. But you are not finished with the task I have set, and if I do not hear a reason quickly, your filthy skin will be flayed and hung to dry over your own furnace.”
The large man dropped to his knees. “We work as fast as we can.”
“But it is not fast enough.” The king’s gaze wandered across the cavern’s shadowy roof.
“It is hard, master, hard—we only have parts of the plans. Sometimes we must make everything over when we see the next drawing.” Inch looked up, his single eye keen in his dull face as he watched for the king’s reaction.
“What do you mean, ‘parts of the plans’?” Something was moving in a tunnel mouth, high on the wall above the great furnace. The king squinted, but the flirt of pale color—a face?—was obscured by risking smoke and heat-jumbled air.
“Your majesty!” someone called. “Here you are!”
Elias turned slowly toward the scarlet-robed figure. He lifted an eyebrow in mild surprise, but said nothing.
Pryrates hurried up. “I was surprised to find you gone.” His raspy voice was sweeter, more reasonable than usual. “Can I assist you?”
“I do not need you every moment, priest,” Elias said curtly. “There are things I can do by myself.”
“But you have not been well, Majesty.” Pryrates lifted his hand, the red sleeve billowing. For a moment it seemed he might actually take Elias’ arm and try to lead him away, but he lifted his fingers to his own head instead, brushing at his hairless scalp. “Because of your weakness, Majesty, I only feared you might stumble on these steep stairs.”
Elias looked at him, narrowing his eyes until they were scarcely more than black slits. “I am not an old man, priest. I am not my father in his last years.” He flicked a glance at the kneeling Inch, then turned back to Pryrates again. “This clod says that the plans for the castle’s defense are difficult.”
The alchemist darted a murderous look at Inch. “He lies, Majesty. You approved them yourself. You know that is not so.”
“You give us only part at a time, priest.” Inch’s voice was deep and slow, but the anger prisoned behind it was more apparent than ever.
“Do not bandy words before the king!” Pryrates snarled.
“I tell truth, priest!”
“Silence!” Elias drew himself up. His knob-knuckled hand fell onto the hilt of the gray sword. “I will have silence!” he shouted. “Now, what does he mean? Why does he get the plans only in pieces?”
Pryrates took a deep breath. “For secrecy, King Elias. You know that several of these foundrymen have run away already. We dare not let anyone see all the plans for defense of the castle. What would prevent them running straight to Josua with what they knew?”
There was a long moment of silence as Pryrates stared at the king. The air in the forge seemed to change slightly, thickening, and the roar of the fires grew strangely muffled. The flickering lights threw long shadows.
Elias suddenly seemed to lose interest. “I suppose.” The king’s gaze went drifting back to the spot along the cavern wall where he thought he had seen movement. “I will send a dozen more men here to the forges—there are at least that many mercenaries whose looks I do not care for.” He turned to the overseer. “Then you will have no excuse.”
A tremor ran through Inch’s wide frame. “Yes, Highness.”
“Good. I have told you when I wish the work on walls and gate to be done. You will have it finished.”
“Yes, Highness.”
The king turned toward Pryrates. “So. I see it takes the king to make certain things go as they should.”
The priest bowed his shiny head. “You are irreplaceable, sire.”
“But I am also a little tired, Pryrates. Perhaps it is as you said—I have not been well, after all.”
“Yes, Highness. Perhaps your healing drink, then a little sleep?” And now Pryrates did insinuate his hand beneath Elias’ elbow, turning him gently toward the staircase leading back up to the castle proper. The king went, docile as a child.
“I might lie down for a while, Pryrates, yes … but I do not think I will sleep just now.” He stole a look back at the wall above the furnace, then shook his head dreamily.
“Yes, sire, an excellent idea. Come, we will let the forgemaster get on with his work.” Pryrates stared pointedly at Inch, whose one eye looked fixedly back, then the red priest turned away, his face expressionless, and led the king out of the cavern.
Behind them, the prostrated workers slowly began clambering to their feet, too beaten and exhausted even to whisper about such an unusual happening. As they trudged back to their tasks, Inch remained kneeling for some time, his features as frozen as the priest’s had been.
Rachel carefully retraced her steps and found the original landing once more. To her even greater relief, when she stared out through the crack, the stairwell was empty. The White Foxes had gone.
Off to work some kind of deviltry, no doubt. She made the sign of the Tree.
Rachel pushed a strand of graying hair out of her eyes. She was exhausted, not only by the dreadful corridor tramping—she had walked for what seemed like hours—but by the shock of near-discovery. She was not a girl anymore, and she did not like to feel her heart beating as it had beat today: that was not the racing blood of good honest work.
Old—you’re getting old, woman.
Rachel was not so foolish as to lose all caution, so she kept her footsteps light and quiet as she made her way down the stairs, peering cautiously around each corner, holding her shuttered lantern behind her so it would not give her away. Thus she saw the king’s cupbearer Brother Hengfisk standing on the stairway below her a moment before she would have otherwise run into him in the shadows between wall-torches. As it was, her surprise was still so great that she gave a startled shriek and dropped her lantern. It rolled thumping down to the landing—her landing, the location of her sanctuary!—to lie at the monk’s sandal-shod feet as it dripped blazing oil onto the stone. The pop-eyed man looked down at the flames burning around his feet with calm interest, then lifted his gaze to Rachel once more, mouth stretched in a wide grin.
“Merciful Rhiap,” Rachel gasped. “Oh, God’s mercy!” She tried to retreat back up the stairwell, but the monk moved as swiftly as a cat; he was past her in a moment, then turned to
block her passage, still smiling his horrid smile. His eyes were empty pools.
Rachel took a few tottering steps back down toward the landing. The monk moved with her, one step at a time, absolutely silent as he matched his movements to hers. When Rachel stopped, he stopped. When she tried to move more swiftly, he headed her off, forcing her to shrink back against the stone walls of the stairwell to avoid contact with him. He gave off a feverish warmth, and there was a strange, alien stink about him, like hot metal and decaying plants.
She began to cry. Shoulders quivering, unable to hold up a moment longer, Rachel the Dragon slid down the wall into a crouch.
“Blessed Elysia, Mother of God,” she prayed aloud, “pure vessel that brings forth the Ransomer, take mercy on this sinner.” She squeezed her eyes shut and made the Tree sign. “Elysia, raised above all other mortals, Queen of the Sky and Sea, intercede for your supplicant, so that mercy may smile upon this sinner.”
To her horror, she could not remember the rest of the words. She huddled, trying to think—oh, her heart, her heart, it was beating so swiftly!—and waited for the thing to take her, to touch her with its foul hands. But when long moments had passed and nothing had happened, her curiosity overcame even her fear. She opened her eyes.
Hengfisk still stood before her, but the grin was gone. The monk was leaning against the wall, tugging at his garments as though surprised to find himself wearing them. He looked up at her. Something had changed. There was a new sort of life in the man—cloudy, halting, but somehow more human than what had stood before her moments earlier.
Hengfisk looked down at the pool of burning oil, at the blue flames licking at his feet, then leaped back, startled. The flames flickered. The monk’s lips moved, but at first nothing came out.
“… Vad es …?” he said at last. “… Uf nammen Hott, vad es …?”
He continued to stare at Rachel as if bewildered, but now something else was working behind his eyes. A tightness came to his features, like an invisible hand clutching the back of his tonsured head. The lips pulled taut, the eyes emptied. Rachel gave a little squeak of alarm. There was something going on that she could not understand, some struggle inside the pop-eyed man. She could only stare, terrified.