Taste of Lightning

  He heard Beeman’s quiet voice. ‘Take the left turn at the crossroads, Tansy. We’re almost there.’

  Skir’s feet skidded on the cobbles as he ran downhill into the heart of Gleve. People stared, and he forced himself to slow to a walk. The streets were patched with light from open doors and windows. Skir walked briskly from shadow to shadow, not looking at anyone. His priest’s robes were dark enough to pass for any plain clothing. Only the copper circlet on his brow might betray him, so he snatched it off and thrust it in his pocket.

  Before long he reached the Old Quarter. The buildings here were crammed together, and the doorways were carved with elaborate, old-fashioned symbols, like the panels of the throne room: swirling clouds, twining rivers. Here and there were ugly holes where houses had been blasted away in the fighting, raw gaps like knocked-out teeth. Wild cats slunk through the ruins.

  Two thoroughfares sliced through the Old Quarter: the Market Road, and the North Gate Road. Even at this hour, they were alive with food-stalls and music and spilled light. Skir headed for the noise of North Gate Road; he hunched himself inside his outer robe, and shielded his face with its folds. There might be people in the streets who would recognise him, as Diz and Lora had.

  The North Gate Road wound uphill until it broadened into Sether Square, the winter square. In the bitterest winters, before the war, they’d sluice the paving stones with water so that children could slide on the ice. In summer, it was the home of flower-sellers. The White Pavilion formed the eastern side of the Square. Skir stood still while people jostled around him and soldiers barked orders. One gestured fiercely at Skir. ‘Come on, son! What’s wrong? Got no home to go to?’

  Skir allowed himself a brief, wry grin; nothing had ever seemed more true. He walked, casually, to the gates of the White Pavilion. A smaller door was cut into the larger one, just high enough to duck through. Aware of the absurdity of his action, but somehow convinced it would work, Skir raised his fist and knocked.

  Tarvan no longer existed. Tansy and Perrin rode Penthesi up the hill to the scattering of small houses, white and grey and silver in the moonlight. It looked like any other village, but the houses were as empty as broken eggshells, smashed and hollow, open to the sky. The black mountains stared impassively down.

  ‘We’re here.’ Beeman nodded to the remains of a little temple at the end of the village. Its whitewashed walls were stained and crumbling, the roof was gone, and the whole interior was blackened and burned. Charred skeletons of courtyard trees thrust up above the broken walls.

  Perrin and Tansy slipped from Penthesi’s back. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘The cellar is intact,’ said Beeman.

  Wary, as if any footfall could set off an explosion, they picked their way to the ruined temple. It was cold in the hills, and Tansy shivered in her thin shirt.

  At the temple steps, Perrin said, ‘You stay here.’

  Tansy shook her head; her teeth chattered. ‘I got s-steady hands, remember?’

  Beeman draped his cloak over Tansy’s shoulders. ‘Not too steady just now. Stay with Penthesi.’

  ‘He’ll wait here.’ Tansy walked up the steps and into the blackened courtyard. Dead embers crunched beneath her feet. And – she looked quickly away – pieces of bone gleamed pale in the moons’ light. ‘Which way?’

  Beeman nodded to the back of the courtyard. They passed under an archway and along a narrow passage, littered with debris. Stone steps led down to the cellar, disappearing into pitch darkness.

  Perrin said, ‘I don’t suppose anyone brought a candle?’

  ‘I always carry a candle stub.’ Beeman patted his pockets, then plunged his hands into them and felt around. At last he cursed softly. ‘Every day but today.’

  Tansy let Beeman’s cloak fall at the top of the steps. The blackness yawned in front of her, the breath of cold stone. She swallowed. ‘Come on then. We’ll have to feel our way.’

  The little door swung open and a grizzled gatekeeper scowled out at Skir. ‘Deliveries is round the back, in the lane.’

  With relief, Skir heard the accent of Cragonlands in the gruff voice, not the drawl of Baltimar.

  ‘It’s not a delivery. I’ve come from the Temple.’ He let the gatekeeper see his priestly robes. It was only then that he realised he had no weapon; but that was right, as it should be.

  ‘Temple business? This time of night?’

  ‘It is business connected with our visitors.’ Skir stared at him hard, and the gatekeeper glanced over his shoulder and shuddered.

  ‘She’s a character, that Lady Wanion.’ He licked his lips nervously.

  Skir’s heart jumped. She was here – here already. But he kept his voice even. ‘Lady Wanion?’

  The gatekeeper’s scowl deepened; he knew he had said too much. ‘I weren’t told about any Temple business.’ He tried to shut the door, but Skir wedged his foot in the crack. They stared at each other. ‘Get out!’ hissed the gatekeeper. ‘Or I’ll call the soldiers.’

  Skir fixed him with a steely gaze. ‘You have a priest of the Temple arrested here and there’ll be trouble. These visitors are here under strictest secrecy. I don’t know why you weren’t told I was coming tonight. But if you call the soldiers, there’ll be no secret left to keep, and the blame will fall on you.’

  ‘I weren’t told. I can’t –’ The gatekeeper wavered.

  ‘Let me in,’ said Skir. And, as if hypnotised, the gatekeeper stood aside.

  Skir stepped into a large lobby, elaborately tiled and dimly lit. A pattern of golden stars and moons glittered high overhead. It was very quiet. Skir turned to the gatekeeper. ‘Get back to your post. I’ll find my own way.’

  The man nodded uncertainly and melted away into the gloom. Without hesitation, Skir strode through the lobby and into a wide corridor with huge rooms opening off it. His soft leather boots were soundless on the tiles.

  Skir ascended a massive marble staircase. Another long corridor stretched the length of the wing. This part of the Pavilion was in darkness, except where moonlight leaked through cracks in the shutters. Skir walked on, an urgent shadow. He felt invisible, untouchable.

  Since the war, the White Pavilion had mouldered behind its gates, its ballrooms shuttered, its dining halls draped in dust sheets.

  At the back of the Pavilion, a glow of lamplight filtered up the next staircase, and the sound of voices. Skir paused, listening. What next? He’d been so intent on getting here that he’d thought no further. Somehow he would stop Bettenwey’s plot, that was all he knew . . . And Wanion was here.

  He guessed where he was; it was like Arvestel. He’d left the sprawling reception rooms behind; this part of the Pavilion contained the private apartments, the bedrooms and parlours of the noble guests. These rooms would have been opened up and aired for Wanion and the other visitors.

  Skir slipped around the corner into the next wing. It was completely dark, with a strong smell of mould and mice. Skir bounded up a wooden staircase, swagged with cobwebs. The corridor here was dark, narrow and wood-panelled. Skir crept along, turned another corner and was back in the main wing, but a floor above the rooms that Wanion and her servants occupied. He felt as if he’d known these dark, neglected spaces in his dreams, as if he were following a map he’d drawn up himself long ago.

  Ahead was a gallery, roofed with a dome of dirty glass. Skir moved silently to the edge and looked down onto a large, shabby drawing room.

  Almost directly below him stood a square object, heaped with mounds of green silk and bone-coloured velvet. It took Skir a moment to realise that it was a huge litter of ivory, with long handles protruding from each corner, and the mounds of silk and velvet were the enormous reclining body of Lady Wanion herself. She was murmuring, too low for him to hear.

  Skir’s knuckles whitened on the railing. Crouched close to Wanion was a girl. Her chestnut hair glinted in the candlelight; she was massaging one of Wanion’s withered, claw-like hands. Even before she turned her scarred face upward, Skir kne
w it was Elvie.

  He must have made a sound, and Elvie’s sharp ears caught it. She turned her blind eyes to where Skir stood in the gallery. He stepped back instantly into the darkness, but it was too late.

  Wanion’s head tipped back. ‘Guards!’ she roared.

  Skir sprinted along the wood-panelled corridor. The stairway yawned, but the guards would come up that way. He flung open the nearest door and found himself in a bare room, streaked with moonlight: nowhere to hide. The next room held a single, sagging bed, swathed in cobwebs. He dived beneath it, trying not to sneeze or gasp as the boots of the guards thumped up the stairs and along the corridor. Doors crashed open, boots thudded and squeaked. The handle rattled, then the door smashed open. The boots made straight for the bed, and a spear was thrust swiftly underneath.

  Skir wriggled backward, but a hand seized his leg and dragged him out. Two Baltimaran guards held him at arm’s-length. Skir was convulsed with sneezes; his feet twitched grotesquely off the floor as if he were a puppet. A third guard marched back to the gallery and called down to Wanion.

  ‘It’s only some dirty little Craggish guttersnipe, mam. Shall we spit him on a spear, or throw him back in the street?’

  There was a chance they might have let him go. But Skir had had enough of being disregarded. He was furious: with Elvie for betraying him, with the guards who’d captured him, with Bettenwey for trying to use him. He was angry with Wanion, with Tansy and Perrin, who’d left him to stew in his room alone. He was even angry with Beeman, who was not here when he needed him most. Most of all he was angry with himself for being caught. He struggled furiously. ‘I am the Priest-King of Cragonlands!’ he yelled. ‘I am Eskirenwey, heir to the Circle of Attar!’

  There was silence. Then Wanion’s voice boomed from below. ‘Bring him to me.’

  With a violent wriggle, Skir threw off the guards and brushed down his robes. He extracted the copper circlet from his pocket and placed it on his brow. Then, with his head held high, he marched out of the room and down the stairs to Wanion.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Songs of Fire

  ‘SLOWLY – very slowly,’ warned Beeman. ‘In its current state, the Broken Fire is extremely volatile. If it’s shaken about, or squeezed, or, gods forbid, set alight, it will go up like a volcano.’

  ‘Maybe it’s lucky we don’t have a candle.’ Perrin’s teeth flashed white in a nervous grin. ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘A bundle about this big.’ Beeman indicated an object about the size of a loaf of bread. ‘Perhaps bigger. I’m not sure how much Bettenwey’s got.’

  ‘Don’t seem like much,’ said Tansy.

  ‘Enough to destroy half of Gleve,’ said Beeman grimly.

  ‘Go, go, go,’ muttered Perrin, but he gave Tansy a reassuring smile before they descended into the darkness.

  Tansy put her hand to the wall as she felt with her foot for the next uneven step down. Beeman’s big, warm hand was on her shoulder, and Perrin was beside her, humming softly. She smelled clean soap and sweat and a faint whiff of hair oil. How in the world had he found hair oil? Suddenly she felt giddy; the thought that something terrible might happen to Perrin was worse, much worse, than the thought of anything happening to herself.

  ‘Perrin!’ she whispered. ‘Be careful!’

  He squeezed her arm hard. ‘You too.’

  The darkness opened up ahead. There was a smell of cold stone, and a slow, erratic drip . . . drip echoed from a far corner of the cellar.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ murmured Beeman. ‘This space is too big. The Broken Fire should be tucked away somewhere smaller, more secure.’

  ‘A hole in the wall?’

  ‘Yes, maybe. You check that side, I’ll check this side. Tansy, you check the floor.’

  ‘Be careful,’ said Tansy in a whisper. She felt the sudden vacancy on either side of her as Beeman and Perrin slipped away. She spread her arms wide, groping in the dark. A thought flashed through her mind: this is how Elvie feels, every day. How could she bear it, this crushing darkness?

  And then she heard a faint hissing, rustling, like silk rubbed against silk. ‘Beeman?’ she called, her voice shrill. ‘Is that it, the Broken Fire?’

  ‘Ssh!’ It was Perrin, on the other side of the cellar, his voice low. ‘Snake. Quiet, don’t move.’ He began to sing.

  Tansy froze, balanced on her right toe, left foot behind her, fingers stiffly spread. Perrin’s chantment flowed past her, soothing and persuading, and Tansy heard the soft rasp of the snake’s skin as it slid across the stone floor, drawn toward the steps, gliding up and outside into the night.

  ‘It’s gone,’ came Perrin’s voice in lazy triumph.

  ‘Good,’ said Beeman dryly. ‘But be careful. There may be others.’

  Shaking slightly, Tansy dropped to her hands and knees. The ground was cold and damp and rough. It felt like snakes. She crept forward, sweeping the stones with her fingertips.

  ‘Beeman?’ It was Perrin. ‘I think I’ve found something.’

  ‘Found what?’ Beeman’s voice was sharp.

  ‘A hollow place – like a little tunnel – there are stones missing from the wall.’

  Tansy heard Beeman’s cautious footfalls as he crossed the cellar. ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘That’s the place.’

  Tansy edged her way toward their voices, holding out her hands until she brushed the cloth of Perrin’s shirt. At once his warm arms wrapped around her, and he tucked his chin onto her shoulder. Beeman grunted as he groped inside the hollow.

  ‘Can’t – reach. It’s too deep.’ He swore. ‘And I can’t see if it’s even in there.’

  ‘It is,’ said Perrin. ‘It must be.’

  ‘But I can’t reach,’ said Beeman.

  ‘My arms aren’t any longer than yours,’ said Perrin. ‘And Tansy’s certainly aren’t. We’ll have to get a stick or something.’

  ‘We are not going to poke at Broken Fire with a stick!’ growled Beeman.

  Tansy asked quietly, ‘How – how big is the hole?’

  ‘About as big as this,’ said Perrin, making a circle around her with his arms. Then, ‘Oh . . .’

  ‘Maybe I could wriggle in.’ Tansy tried to make her voice calm.

  Beeman didn’t notice the catch in her throat. ‘Yes. Good girl. Come here.’

  Perrin released her. Even Perrin didn’t know how terrified she was of enclosed spaces; the thick black dark in her mouth, in her nose.

  Beeman grabbed her wrist and guided her hands to the hole in the wall. It was about waist-high; no more than two or three of the cellar stones had been removed, and the tunnel hollowed out behind them. It was just big enough for Tansy to squirm inside.

  She reached all around the hole with her hands. It was just dirt, soft crumbling dirt. This was awful. She could taste the soil in her mouth: cold, claggy in her throat. She groped desperately with her fingertips, but there was only dirt under her hands. Her head scraped against the roof of the tunnel, and more soil crumbled down into her mouth. Tansy stifled a scream.

  ‘Little bit further,’ she managed to gasp, and Perrin and Beeman held her legs and pushed her deeper down the tunnel. Now just her feet were hanging out; she was almost buried. Buried alive . . . No, no. Don’t think like that. It must be here. She groped forward, as far as she could reach. Nothing. Still the tunnel stretched deeper into the earth, narrower than ever. She shifted her hip bones to edge herself further, and then a little further. What if she got stuck in here? What if the walls collapsed? How would they ever dig her out?

  Even as she formed the thought, her fingers touched something. A canvas-wrapped bundle. But she couldn’t quite close her hand around it. She stretched forward, but all she achieved was to push the bundle a tantalising finger-span further away. ‘No . . . no . . .’ she moaned. A single hot tear of frustration squeezed beneath her eyelid.

  ‘Tansy?’

  The voice was so muffled, she couldn’t tell if it was Beeman or Perrin. ‘Tansy? Are you
all right?’

  Tansy took a deep, slow breath, inhaling particles of soil along with the air. She pushed her terror down, held her breath and dragged herself by the fingernails closer to the bundle – closer – she had it. She pinched a corner of the canvas between finger and thumb and pulled it toward her. Stars whirled behind her eyelids; her lungs were bursting. The hole was crumbling in on top of her. She tried to scream, pull me out! but the soft gluey dirt choked her mouth, her nose, suffocating her, and the terror rose, and pulled her under.

  ‘Tansy!’ Perrin’s voice was frantic in the darkness. ‘She’s gone limp, she’s in trouble!’ He seized her legs and tugged hard.

  ‘Gently, gently!’ cried Beeman. ‘The Broken Fire –’

  ‘She’s stuck – Tansy!’ Perrin scrabbled around the edge of the hole with his fingernails. ‘Help me!’

  Beeman scraped carefully at the loose dirt. ‘Slow down, Perrin!’

  Perrin ignored him. He burrowed his arms into the hole. Tansy lay face-down, limp and motionless. Perrin grabbed her around the waist and dragged her out of the hole. He caught her as her body slid to the cellar floor, and carried her to the steps and up into the moonlight. He said, ‘She’s got it.’

  Tansy’s arms cradled a small canvas package to her chest. Beeman prised it free and carried it away to a flat stone where he set it gently down. Perrin lowered Tansy to the ground by the temple’s ruined wall.

  ‘She’s not breathing!’

  In two strides, Beeman was there; he tilted Tansy’s head, and hooked the dirt out of her mouth with one finger. Tansy convulsed, and choked; then she was coughing violently in the circle of Perrin’s arms, gasping in the fresh, cool breath of night.

  ‘I thought – I thought I were going to die.’ Tansy shuddered.

  ‘I couldn’t help you, I couldn’t do anything! I wished I was an ironcrafter –’

  ‘You did help, you pulled me out.’

  ‘But I couldn’t . . .’ Perrin was shaking. It was the first time in his life that his two gifts, his quick tongue and his chantment, had been utterly useless. When Tansy’s feet had gone limp under his hand, when he thought she’d suffocated, and there was nothing he could do to help her – it was the worst feeling he’d ever known. So this was how it felt to care about someone more than yourself, he thought dismally. He knotted his hands around her. ‘You’re all right? You sure you’re all right?’