Solomon Kane (25 page)

“The Devil did,” said Mcness. “He offered Malachi the power to rule the land and all who live there in exchange for his soul.”

“Now Malachi enslaves our people,” Caldicott said fiercely, driving a fist into his open palm. “He corrupts the land.”

“He drains everything of life,” said Fletcher, another beardless youth. “Some say he has the power to hide the sun from us and bring eternal winter.”

None of this seemed to help Kane. He felt as though his adversary had stolen into the cave, attracted by the rumours or infiltrating the discussion with them. The cave was lit by torches, and some of the younger men had begun to glance about at the shadows that flapped at the edge of the light. The shadows might have been the wings of great demons crouching in the gloom. Kane was about to speak, to dispel the devilish illusion, when Telford said “And that masked rider, he is the iron fist who commands his army and spreads his poison through the land.”

“They say he has no face beneath the mask,” said Fletcher. “They say the sight would shrivel a man’s soul. Even yours, Captain Kane.”

“He can possess you with his touch,” said Caldicott.
“It’s true. I’ve seen it.”

“It is the healer’s power gone bad,” Mcness said low. “It no longer heals men’s flesh but infects it, and the soul.”

The demoralising rumours had gathered in the cave once more, and Kane tried to drive them out. “If we kill him Malachi will be vulnerable,” he said.

“Easier said than done, my friend,” said Mcness.

“He will fall. He is but a man,” Kane vowed. “Only God can grant eternal life.”

All the same, he was reminded of the eyes behind the mask – the black inhumanity that had stared out at him. Surely it showed that the Overlord was less than a man, a shell that could be smashed like one. “Enough of him,” he said. “Do you know where this Malachi is?”

“He makes his lair in the west,” Mcness told him.

“Then my travels have been leading me there.” Kane could not help recalling the abbot’s words about him. “Does this lair have a name?”

“That is no secret,” Telford said. “It is on the coast less than a day’s journey hence. Its name is Axmouth Castle.”

“No.” Kane felt as though every shadow of his past had swarmed into the cave. As the torchlight shuddered at some unidentifiable movement – perhaps his own shiver at the chill that had taken hold of him – the shadows pranced derisively around him and above him. “No,” he said like a repetition of a prayer, “that cannot be.”

“There is no doubt,” Telford said, frowning at him. “Do you know the place?”

“I grew up there.” Kane found it hard to speak. “My father was lord of Axmouth,” he said.

“There is no lord there now,” said Telford.

“I did not know he had died.” Kane bowed his head and stared into the shadows. If he had obeyed his father’s
wishes all those years ago, might the Kanes still be lords of Axmouth? Marcus would still be alive, and surely even he would have defended their father against any attack. Kane could have thought that his entire life since leaving Axmouth had been contrived to lead him back there, to the site of his first slaughter – and then he managed to turn some of his trapped rage away from himself. “No lord save Malachi, you mean,” he said, and rose to his feet. “Now this must end.”

Telford and his men gazed up at him. He saw hope in many eyes, and a stirring of valour. “All of you gather your weapons,” he urged. “We will take the fight to him.”

Telford expelled a breath that blanched the air in front of him. “We aren’t ready,” he protested.

“Nor is Malachi,” said Kane.

“But they are legion. We are too few.”

“Ah, come on!” Kane was sure there were no cowards in the cave. “You have seen me take cities with less,” he said.

Memories flared up in Telford’s eyes and left a fierce fire in them. He squared his shoulders and made for the store of weapons. Mcness followed at once, and most of their companions did. “But how can we hope to get through the front gates?” Caldicott asked anyone who might respond.

“You forget I was born here.” Kane took the sword that Telford handed him. He closed one fist around the scabbard, the other on the hilt. The solidity and weight felt capable of anchoring him in the present, relieving him of the distractions of his past, at least until he had fulfilled his vow. “I have no intention of going through the gates,” he said.

W
hen they heard footsteps somewhere above them, all the women in the cell looked up. Some of them glanced across the stone corridor at Meredith, alone in her cell. The footfalls descended the steps to the dungeons, and the women huddled closer together. The light of torches set in brackets between the cells flickered in their eyes, mimicking their apprehension, and the shadows of the bars snatched at the women like a net. The footsteps halted at the end of the passage, where Meredith heard a mutter of brutish voices, which was succeeded by a rattle of keys and the clatter of one in a lock. She knew the footsteps had entered a cell when she heard a wail of protest rising to a scream. The women ventured to the bars and peered along the corridor as the door to the other cell clanged shut. “They’ve taken Martha,” one whispered loud enough for Meredith to hear.

They stayed at the bars while the screams receded upwards. Some of them were glaring at Meredith now. She heard the captive’s feet thumping the steps as the woman was dragged away. The cries passed along an upper corridor and were interrupted by the slam of a great door. Meredith knew this was not the end, and sensed that she was far from alone in holding her breath. Eventually there came a cry that might have expressed outrage and terror beyond words. It was so shrill and so
appalled that, despite the distance, it seemed to pierce Meredith’s consciousness. All too gradually it ebbed away and dwindled into silence, and she wondered if the victim simply had no more strength to scream. Meredith retreated into the gloom of her cell and sat on the edge of the rough bench that served as a bed, but the women continued to watch her. “See how she casts the evil eye upon us,” one murmured and made a gesture to ward off Meredith’s gaze.

“I am just a prisoner like yourselves,” Meredith protested. “I am no witch.”

“Like ourselves, are you?” another woman jeered. “Why then do they treat you like a princess?”

Meredith hugged herself in a vain attempt to keep out the subterranean stony chill. Her movement scared a rat, which had been making for the remains of food on Meredith’s plate. It darted into a hole in the wall, where the glint of its eyes was still visible. “You think a princess would be kept in a cell,” Meredith said.

“You don’t have to share it with us commoners,” a third woman retorted. “Somebody thinks you’re above the rest of us.”

“We can see nothing special about you,” said the first speaker. “Tell us how you are.”

Meredith closed her fist over her blemished insensible palm, only to realise that she should not have drawn attention to it. “She’s hiding the mark,” a new voice declared. “She has been marked by the Devil.”

“Show us your hand, witch,” the first speaker cried.

“I have told you I am not a witch,” Meredith said and clenched her senseless fist. “My parents brought me up to fear God, and I will never betray them.”

“Where are they now?” a woman demanded.

“The raiders slew my family.” For a moment the faces
Meredith saw in the uncertain light did not belong to the women. “My father and my brother,” she said as if she were praying for them. “My little brother too.”

“Tell us why you were left alive.” With a sneer the questioner added “If you dare.”

Meredith dug her nails into her palm but could feel nothing. “God help me,” she said, “I wish I knew. I do not deserve to live now they are gone.”

“Leave God’s name out of your devil’s mouth,” a woman cried. “Show us the mark.”

Meredith did not feel her hand unclench, but she found it had done so. For a moment the dimness obscured it, and then a torch flared beyond the bars, illuminating the tendrilled blotch on her palm. Some of the women groaned in disgust, and all of them crossed themselves. “Is that why you were spared?” one of them accused Meredith.

She could not deny it, and there was nothing else that she wanted to say. As she bowed her head, the rat emerged from its lair. “It is the mark of Malachi,” she heard someone whisper. “He sets his signs in the flesh of all who follow him.”

“Why just her hand?” someone else muttered. “She doesn’t look like any raider.”

There was a pause and then a gasp of understanding. “They have put her down here with us as a spy.”

A woman let out a moan of dismay. “What has she heard? What will they do to us?”

“She heard Martha speak out against Malachi and lead a prayer for our deliverance,” another one declared. “That’s why Martha was taken.”

“I am neither a spy nor a witch. Please believe me.” Meredith lifted her head, but this time the rat did not retreat as far as the wall. “You said yourselves they have
set me apart. Why would they do that if they wanted me to spy on you?”

“So that nobody would see you spying,” a woman answered with a triumphant mirthless laugh.

“But you’ve seen that I spoke to nobody,” Meredith pleaded. “How could I have betrayed your friend?”

The laugh that greeted this was bitterer still, and several women joined in. “We don’t know all the ways of your master,” one said, “but we know he lives within his creatures like a parasite and shares every one of their thoughts.”

“He is not my master,” Meredith said desperately. “None shares my thoughts but God.”

“She’s blaspheming again,” a woman cried. “She will bring evil down upon us.”

“Just as she did on her kin,” said another.

“She fouls the air we breathe,” the oldest woman shrieked and spat through the bars of the cell. “We do not want her near us.”

“Take her to her master,” one woman shouted to the guards along the corridor.

“Or lock her in here with us,” another suggested, “so we can give her a reward on earth.”

“Stop the row,” a guard yelled and started towards the cell.

He had taken no more than a pace when he halted. A heavy deliberate tread was descending the steps. The women glowered at Meredith as though she had summoned the newcomer. She heard the tread enter the corridor, but no words were exchanged. Why were the guards so silent? The women stared along the corridor, and she saw their faces stiffen. They had grown expressionless, but all at once she wondered if she could believe who they were seeing. Might it be Captain Kane,
somehow rescued from the cross? Might God have helped him honour his undertaking to keep her safe because he had made it out of faith? She had despaired of ever seeing him again, but despair was a sin. Prayer was the answer to it, and she breathed one as the purposeful tread approached along the corridor.

She saw a tall shadow turn towards her, and then it swelled massive and ominous. Before its owner appeared she knew he was not Captain Kane. The rat fled squealing as the figure gestured with one black-gloved hand for a jailer to unlock Meredith’s cell. Despair had seized her again, so that she felt she was being held helpless by the eyes in the impassive mask.

K
ane had ridden almost within sight of the castle before he was sure where he was. He meant to keep Telford and his men well clear of any road, having expected to remember the land around Axmouth, but nothing seemed familiar. If it had not been for the view of the sea beyond the cliffs, he might have believed they had strayed into some blighted region that he had never known and would never want to know. It was not just the unrelenting rain that obscured the landscape, or the years that had changed it and stolen his memories, or guilt that prevented him from recognising his home. More darkness lurked in the forests around Axmouth than the absence of the sun could quite account for. Perhaps only rain had turned the trees grey as fungus, although many of the trunks looked rotten as the limbs of corpses abandoned on a battlefield, but the darkness clung to the open fields too, where the vegetation seemed in danger of merging into a single undifferentiated mass, drowned beyond any possibility of growth. The gloom did not belong simply to the veils of rain; it might have been hopelessness rendered palpable, for it fastened itself to the soul. Worst of all were the hollows into which the route forced the riders to descend, since the miasma lingered thickest there. It might have been an essence of the corruption of the land; it seemed to soften the ground beneath the horses’
hooves, so that they felt in danger of sinking slowly but inexorably into a bottomless marsh. Each time the horses seemed to have more of a struggle to climb the upward slope, as though they too were enervated by the murk, dragged down by it. More than once Kane felt the hooves of his steed slither backwards on the slimy grass, and had the impression that the miasma was reaching for him, closing around him as the corrupted earth would. Each of those moments felt like the start of an eternity of despair – of an utter blackness that had already laid claim to his soul.