The Alchemist of Souls: Night's Masque, Volume 1 (32 page)

  The rain returned in a violent downpour that rattled the windowpanes and turned the sky black. After a few minutes it slackened off and the setting sun gleamed briefly on the waters of the Thames.

  Lost in his task, Mal barely noticed the passage of time until the curfew bell tolled its warning. He looked up, and found Kiiren watching him from the doorway. The skrayling's expression was, as far as he could judge, a mixture of anticipation and anxiety.

  "Can I help you, sir?" Mal asked. As an experiment, he added, "Kiiren-
tuur
?"

  "Yes, yes!" The skrayling's mottled face relaxed into a smile. "Please to come this way."

  "Of course, sir."

  Mal put away the cleaning materials and wiped his hands on a towel. The greasy animal scent of the oil hung in the air, a comforting reminder of his normal routine. From the dining room came the sound of Tradetalk: skraylings and humans talking together? The tower door creaked, and footsteps rasped on the steps outside.

  "What's going on?" Mal asked.

  "There is something I need to ask of you, Catlyn-
tuur
. Something important."

  "Very well." He followed Kiiren through into the empty dining room. The table had been cleared of the remains of supper and the fire banked for the night. A row of the little lightwater lamps glowed in the hearth, throwing eerie shadows against the plaster walls.

  "Where are your guards, sir?" Mal asked, suddenly wary.

  Kiiren smiled. "They go to play dice with captain's men."

  "Monkton invited them?"

  That seemed highly unlikely. The captain had not openly expressed an opinion of the visitors, but if the attitude of his men was anything to go by, he did not discourage prejudice against the skraylings either.

  "I ask him to ask them," Kiiren said. "English and Vinlanders should not be apart so much. Bad for friendship."

  "I suppose so," Mal muttered. Kiiren was being hopelessly optimistic. Most likely the experiment would end in broken heads and another retreat to the camp. Why Leland was allowing such a foolish venture so soon after the last incident, he could not fathom.

  "If we cannot trust our friends, what is purpose to come here?"

  Mal had no answer to that. Either Kiiren was far too naive for the role assigned to him, or – no, there was no "or". He shook his head in despair.

  Kiiren paused, looking nervous once more.

  "I wish to share ceremony with you this night," he said, his voice loud in the empty room. "If it be your will."

  "Will it be… like the meeting?"

  "Somewhat like. But we two only." He smiled shyly. "No one to spy on us here."

  Mal swallowed. More magic. But he had to find out the secret of the skraylings' power, for his own satisfaction as well as the safety of the realm.

  "Very well, I accept."

  Kiiren produced an armful of cream wool that had lain folded on one of the benches.

  "It is also our custom," Kiiren began, "to wash body and wear robe–"

  "No more robes, I beg you!" Mal backed away, hands raised. "I will do this as I am, or not at all."

  Kiiren wrinkled his nose, but did not press Mal further. He crossed the dining room and opened a small door in the corner.

  The western tower chamber was the twin of the chapel at the other end of the ambassador's apartments, a small circular space with whitewashed stone walls, though the floor was of plain terracotta tiles and the windows unglazed. The window openings had been blocked with rush matting and covered with patterned silk, and carpets laid on the floor, so it looked more like the interior of a skrayling tent than a castle tower. Lamps hung from four iron stands positioned at what Mal guessed were the four cardinal points, and a low brazier stood in the centre of the room.

  "Please to sit," Kiiren said. "Take off shirt and uncover tattoo."

  Mal removed his doublet and shirt and threw them aside. It was almost a relief to strip off in the humid confines of the little chamber, and with his torso swathed in bandages he scarcely felt undressed. Sitting down cross-legged on the matting, he unwound the dressing over his tattoo. The skin around the inking was still red and tender, but with no sign of festering.

  Kiiren unfastened his necklace, and gestured for Mal to remove his earring. He did so, and stared down at the pendant.

  "Is there magic in this?" he asked the skrayling, examining the pearl.

  "Power is in touch of metal." Kiiren held up his necklace, rolling the beads between his fingers. "In English I think it is called 'lodestone'. Powerful protection against evil spirits."

  Mal remembered the nightmare presences lurking amongst the rocks, and shuddered. He knew without being told that these were the creatures the lodestone protected him from.

  "If it is such a powerful protection, why put it aside?"

  "Because it is anchor also, to hold spirit in body. Tonight we must be free."

  Kiiren sat down opposite, then opened a small wooden box and threw a pinch of fine powder onto the coals. Mal sneezed repeatedly as a cloud of pungent smoke filled the small room, and wiped his streaming eyes with the back of his hand.

  "Please to breathe slowly," Kiiren murmured. "Empty thoughts."

  Mal drew a deep breath. The smoke smelt somewhat like tobacco but with an acrid edge. His throat burned and his toes and fingertips tingled, as if he had taken a draught of raw brandy. Kiiren's features blurred, and the lamps within his line of sight dissolved into a rainbow aura.

  "Again," Kiiren said, his voice barely audible. "All is quiet. All is forgetting. All is remembering."

  Mal breathed in again. He should be afraid, a small detached part of his mind observed, but he felt more content than he had done in months, perhaps years. The feeling combined the bliss of lying spent in a woman's arms with the heightened awareness of combat. He breathed out and closed his eyes, allowing his other senses to fill that awareness.

  Linen and wool against his skin, a faint draught from the window. Kiiren's musky scent, the clinging odour of neatsfoot oil, a faint trace of wine and spices drifting in under the door, the stink of the river outside. The crackle of the charcoal brazier, the sentries on the wall walk, and an owl setting out on its evening hunt. His own heartbeat pounding in his ears, becoming one with the voice of the sea, the hiss and rattle of pebbles as each wave sighed its last upon the land.

  He opened his eyes. The four walls of the tower room were gone; only the brazier remained, the shimmer of its coals echoing the molten gold of the sun, just rising above the ocean. Mal looked about him in panic.

  "Where are we?"

  Kiiren smiled and ran his fingers through the gravel. Mal stared down at the beach. Every pebble demanded his attention, begging to be touched, examined, chosen. He scooped up a double handful and let them go again, watching in fascination as they fell through his fingers. Tiny shards of stone clung to his damp skin: flecks of amber, grey and white.

  "Come," Kiiren said, holding out a hand.

  Now they were walking along the beach in the bright light of noon, the sea at their right hand, low wooded hills to the left. An ochre-sailed ship stood at anchor offshore.

  "You remember this place," Kiiren said, grinning.

  Mal realised with a start that the skrayling was now his own height, with the fangs and tattoos typical of his kind. And yet he was the same Kiiren, Mal knew it in his bones.

  "This is a dream," he whispered.

  "Of course." The skrayling held out his arms. "Remember."

  "No."

  Mal backed away, the pebbles crunching underfoot. Blood began to pour from the skrayling's open mouth. Mal turned to run, but the trunk of the tree blocked his path. No, not this. He could not let Kiiren see this…

  Digging his fingernails into the bark he began to drag himself upwards, his lower body a dead weight, as if his legs were paralysed. The bark scraped the skin from his belly but he felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing but the stars overhead, impossibly distant. Only a little further. He grasped a branch and tried to haul himself up, but it snapped under his weight and he fell, twisting in the air, and landed on hands and knees on the hard stone floor.

  "
Erishen
?
Amayi
, is it you?"

  Mal's eyes snapped open. They were back in the tower room. Was he awake now? He sat back on his haunches, blinking away the last shreds of the nightmare.
Amayi
? Where had he heard that word before?

  Kiiren leant across the brazier, his eyes reflecting the lamplight like a cat's.

  "
Ë amayi, niníhami anosenno. Einotabe'ë mallä."

  It sounded like – No. That could not be.

  "
Mallä
," Mal whispered. That was the word he and Sandy had used to mean "people, grown-ups". He had always assumed it was a play on his own name. Sandy had made it all up to entertain him. Hadn't he?

  "
Lerr – lerrä'a ohilanno
," Kiiren said, his voice trembling. You know my words.

  "
Hä
." Yes.

  The skrayling gave a cry of joy. Crossing the small space between them he flung his arms around Mal, who gritted his teeth against the pain of his still-fresh wounds. Kiiren was babbling in the strange language, between hoarse sobs. All Mal could catch was "people" and something about "dead", and over and over that name,
Erishen
. He stroked the skrayling's spiky black hair awkwardly, his mind a whirl of confusion. What was going on here? Who was Erishen, and why did Sandy know the skraylings' tongue? More importantly, who was dead?

  Mal pulled himself free of Kiiren's embrace and got unsteadily to his feet.

  "
Erishen! Amayi!
"

  Ignoring Kiiren's protests he staggered out of the tower and across the dining room. Too hot in here! He opened the outer door and drew in a deep breath of cool, moist evening air. He stepped out onto the landing, towards the stair that led down into the outer ward, but the stones buckled and twisted before his eyes. Clutching the balustrade he sank down onto the top step and pressed his cheek against the blissfully cold stone.

  Sandy. Had Kiiren attempted some kind of scrying through him, and seen – but he had visited Sandy only yesterday, surely the fit had not been fatal? Mal jumped to his feet and stumbled down the stairs.

  The more he moved about, the better his command of his limbs became. By the time he reached the main gates, he felt almost whole again. He hammered on the ancient timbers.

  "Let me out!"

  He had to get to Sandy, find out what was happening–

  A door opened in the passageway under the tower, and a guard poked his head out.

  "What do you want?"

  "I– I need to leave."

  "No one leaves the castle after curfew. Lieutenant's orders."

  "But–"

  "No one. Now clear off before I report you."

  Mal turned around and headed back the way he had come. Before he had gone ten yards the heavens opened and rain began to fall. Seconds later, thunder rumbled in the distance.

  Mal ran for the meagre shelter of the archway linking the ambassador's lodging to the Wakefield Tower. Beyond it was a garden, one of the many remnants of the Tower's former role as a royal palace. Rose bushes drooped in the downpour, water dripping from their leaves into the puddles that stretched across the gravel paths. White petals streaked with crimson fell to the ground under the onslaught and melted into slush. He stared at the squat rectangle of the Cradle Tower, where the welcoming glow of a fire gilded the windowpanes of a guardroom on the lower floor. Perhaps he could find a way out through the sally-port?

  He skirted the garden and its betraying gravel, then went down a short flight of steps into the sunken pathway around the foot of the tower. Rainwater pooled on the worn paving and lapped around the toes of his boots. He edged towards the gateway, ducking down as he passed the window.

  Sounds came from within: the idle conversation of bored men, the thump of a tankard on wood. He scouted all the way round, but the only exit was through the gate in the tower. Barred, of course, and most likely locked. Even if he got out, there was Bedlam itself to break into. And if Monkton caught him trying to escape… He shivered. The weals on his back were stinging again beneath their sodden bandages.

  His mind was clearing now. What was he doing running around the castle half naked in the rain? Sandy was fine, he told himself. He had made a foolish assumption based on a few words of a language that just happened to resemble a childhood game, when his mind was fuddled with the drugged smoke. A misunderstanding, nothing more. Certainly not worth risking arrest – and another flogging – for.

  No, it was his duty to find out what was going on. The skraylings believed in the reincarnation of souls and, unless he was very much mistaken, Kiiren believed him to be this Erishen reborn. But who or what was Erishen? A prophet, or perhaps a great hero of legend, like King Arthur? That would explain why he was picked out to guard their ambassador. He caught himself grinning like a fool, and had to remind himself this was just a heathen superstition, though perhaps one he could use to his advantage.

  It was part of the intelligencer's stock-in-trade, the assumption of a false identity to gull his victims into revealing what they knew. Baines had drilled him on the essentials; now it was time to put his training into practice. With a last wistful glance at the sally-port, he made his way back to the ambassador's lodgings.

 

Kiiren was waiting by the window overlooking the outer ward, his whole body tense with anxiety. He must have been watching all this time – assuming he could see anything through the gloom. Mal rubbed a hand over his rain-damp face, unsure how to proceed. If Kiiren started telling everyone about this Erishen business, it could go ill for them both.