The Dark Flight Down (8 page)

11

Far up above the dark catacomb in which Boy lay, the snow still fell on the City, a flake here and there sparkling in the flickering torchlight that spilled over the palace walls.

Down in the dungeons, Boy waited, and as soon as the jailer had gone, he stole across toward the shining window.

The man had not moved, but remained in his armchair, staring into the fire.

Boy felt awkward, as if he was spying, but he had already been noticed.

“You again? You’re still here? I thought he might have taken you away.”

Boy tried to ignore the implication of his words.

“What you said about the Phantom,” he said, “how do you know about it? How do you know it’s the same thing that’s been killing in the City?”

The man looked up.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I’ve been thinking and I’ve remembered something.”

“What?” Boy asked, patiently.

“I’ve remembered my name.”

“That’s good,” said Boy. “What is it?”

“Bedrich,” the man said. “At least, I think so.”

Boy sighed.

“Well,” he said, “perhaps I can call you that anyway.”

The man thought about this for a while.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Yes, that’s a good idea. Or was it Gustav . . . ?”

“Bedrich sounds fine to me,” said Boy quickly, then smiled. “I’ll call you that.”

Bedrich nodded, nearly smiling.

“So tell me. Tell me about the Phantom.”

The half smile disappeared from Bedrich’s face immediately.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked.

“I don’t know . . . ,” Boy said.

This was true, he realized. He hadn’t actually stopped to think about it.

“But it killed someone I knew. Someone I worked for, in a way. The director of the theater where I worked with . . .”

He stopped again. There was no point telling this poor old man all his stories.

“So how do you know about it?”

“I look after it,” Bedrich said simply.

Boy was too shocked to speak.

“I am the doctor. I am the palace doctor, you see.”

“That can’t be,” said Boy. “I mean . . .”

“No,” said Bedrich, holding up one hand. He rose from his chair and came over to the window. He inspected Boy’s face closely, as if that would tell him something.

“I am the doctor, Frederick’s doctor. Or rather, I was once. Now I only have one patient. The Phantom. They keep me down here for that alone. I sedate it. I try to stop it from the worst of its excesses. It’s been getting harder and harder recently. I try my best, but I am not always successful.

“When I am not successful, then it needs blood. And that is why I fear for you. Though why you are not dead already, I do not know.”

“But what is it?” Boy asked.

Bedrich stepped back from the window. He looked around furtively, melodramatically, though there was no one to hear him other than Boy in this subterranean prison.

“I cannot tell you.”

“You mean you can’t, or you won’t?” Boy pressed, but Bedrich would say no more.

He turned and went back to his chair by the fire.

“Please,” said Boy. “Please tell me some more.”

“I’m tired,” Bedrich said. “Leave me alone.”

The old man snuffled quietly to himself for some time, and then fell asleep.

Boy had no choice but to return to his cell, where he curled into a ball on the hard floor and closed his eyes.

But sleep would not come. In a way he was glad, for he sensed it would bring no relief from the nightmare he was living.

12

Next time a meal was brought, the rumble in his belly told Boy it had to be another whole day. Something else came with the food.

“You’ve got company,” said the jailer as he rattled a key in the cell next to Boy.

Boy was amazed to see Bedrich being led into the cell. The door was shut behind him.

“No point me walking over to two sides of the place to feed you, is there?” said the jailer.

Boy looked at Bedrich. He was grateful for the company, but there was something not quite right with the jailer’s explanation of why they had been put together.

For some reason, the jailer stood waiting while they both ate, and when they had finished, he took their bowls from them.

“By the way, you’re to go free,” he said, in an offhand manner.

Boy leapt to his feet.

“When?” he cried. “Please, when?”

The jailer tilted his head to one side.

“Not you,” he said. “Him.”

Boy put his hands up and lightly touched the bars of his cell. He turned to Bedrich, forcing a smile.

“Did you hear? That’s good.”

Bedrich had heard.

A smile washed across his face, but it was quickly followed by a frown.

He looked hard at the jailer, but it was impossible to read that blind expression.

“You mean it?” he croaked. “This isn’t a trick or—”

“Do you want to argue about it?” the jailer said. “I’m sure we can change their minds if you’d rather stay.”

“No!” cried Bedrich. “No! Only I just . . .”

He stopped.

Boy looked at the jailer.

“Why? Why are they letting him go? Will you ask about me? Please will you ask when I’m going to be let out?”

“No,” said the jailer bluntly. “Not my business. Yours. As for him, I don’t know. Maybe he’s been pardoned for his crimes. Going now.”

With that he went.

Bedrich called after him.

“When? When?”

There was no answer, but it seemed enough for now to know.

“Boy!” he cried. “Did you hear that, Boy? They’re going to let me out!”

Boy watched Bedrich, thinking, waiting, judging. The last time they had spoken Bedrich had been surly. Boy needed Bedrich now. He needed him to speak; he needed his help.

Watching Bedrich, Boy finally remembered the song Bedrich had been singing. It was the “Linden Song,” which he and Willow and Valerian had heard the miserable cart driver sing as they hunted for the book in that desolate village in the snow-laden countryside.

Like falling snow, its words floated freely through his head now as he relived the horror of that frozen churchyard, and inside the church itself, the discovery of Gad Beebe’s grave, where they had believed the book lay. And so it had, once. But someone had beaten them to it. Kepler.

It was no surprise that Boy’s thoughts had drifted to the book, no surprise at all. He was sure that his destiny lay entwined with it. He knew it would hold an answer for him. If only he could get to it, there was still a chance for him.

It was no use, this nameless life. He had spent enough time as a rootless being, without home, or heritage. He had come to accept Valerian’s abuse of him as normal, but Willow had shown him enough love to make him see that it was not. He had to find answers now. He needed to know who his parents were. Maybe he would never know who his mother was, but one look in the book would at least tell him the truth about Valerian.

Boy watched as all sorts of feelings passed through Bedrich’s mind, as he contemplated what it would be like to be free after untold years.

“I need your help,” Boy said, trying to judge Bedrich’s mood. Boy was pleased to see he seemed calm.

Bedrich nodded.

“When you get out. Will you do something for me?”

Bedrich nodded again.

“Yes,” he said, gently. “Of course. I’ll try.”

“Thank you,” said Boy. “Thank you. I need you to find someone for me. And take her a message. Can you do that?”

“Oh yes,” said Bedrich. “Whatever you say!”

Encouraged, Boy went on.

“I need you to find a girl, a girl called Willow. She works at an orphanage called St. Stephen’s, it’s run by a woman called Martha.”

“Martha, Martha. Yes,” said Bedrich.

“When you find Willow, tell her where I am. Tell her to steal the book and bring it here.”

Bedrich looked at Boy, staring him straight in the eyes for almost the first time since they had met.

“What did you say?” he asked.

Something in his manner put Boy on his guard, instantly. He thought about what he had said.

“I said . . . tell Willow to —”

“Not that,” said Bedrich. “What you said after that.”

“There’s . . . a book,” Boy said, slowly. He had only dared talk of it to Bedrich because he believed it could mean nothing to him. “It’s very powerful and—”

“And it’s dangerous,” said Bedrich. He held up his hand, to stop Boy from speaking. “Oh yes, I know about the book. Only I thought it had been dealt with. Long, long ago.”

13

“Maxim!” yelled Frederick. “Dammit, Maxim! Where are you?”

“Coming, sire, coming!”

Frederick sat up in bed, propped on dozens of small velvet cushions. His bed was a vast thing, far too big for such a little man. In his white nightgown and nightcap he looked like a sailor marooned in a sea of silken sheets.

“Blast this bed!” he cursed. “Why can’t I have something more comfortable?”

Maxim hurried from his own impressive rooms a little way down the corridor to Frederick’s chambers, the most sumptuous part of the palace.

He strode down the corridor oblivious to the spectacular views across the rest of the palace, and then down over the City.

“Max-im!” screeched the emperor from his bedchamber.

Maxim rushed through the doorway and almost slipped on the ridiculously polished floor.

“Sire?” he said.

“Maxim. Why are you always so slow? Anyone would think you are trying to kill me. Don’t you understand I have needs?”

“My apologies, sire,” Maxim said, trying to keep any note of irritation from his voice. “I was attending to some other matters.”

“Well, don’t,” Frederick snapped. “You attend to me and me alone.”

“Indeed, sire. The matters I speak of were concerned with—”

“I’m not interested, Maxim. Understand me! Now listen. I want to see some progress. You’re dragging your heels.”

“Sire?” Maxim said, with too much of a question in his voice.

“Don’t question me! I want to see some results! Bring the court seers to me. I want to see what they think about what you’re doing. Or what you’re not doing . . .”

Frederick stared straight at Maxim. The tall man looked at the floor, his eyes burning. He thought about the useless wretches Frederick insisted on maintaining at court and fumed, but he said nothing.

“You’ve been dragging your heels and I want results. And soon. I’m getting older by the day and I don’t feel at all well. This bed hurts me, for a start. You’ve no conception of it. None at all.”

“I will have it—”

“Just listen to me. You know what I asked you to do, so do it. If not, I’ll find someone else who can. In the meantime, bring the seers to me. Let’s see what they have to say. If you had only kept that boy perhaps you might have got somewhere by now.”

“The . . . boy, sire? The boy from the magician’s house?”

“Yes, yes, of course the boy from the magician’s house. Who else do you think I mean? If you hadn’t had him killed . . .”

Maxim cursed the whims of the emperor, but restrained himself from saying what he really thought. He wasn’t going to let this chance go by, however.

“Ah . . . but Your Highness is absolutely right. Fortunately, it was . . . not possible to dispatch the boy as
you
wished. He is still in our dungeons. . . .”

Frederick looked up at him sharply.

“As
I
wished, Maxim? As
I
wished? I made no such decision. I told you to lock him up until we were ready to see him, and you know I never change my mind! You know that to disobey me would mean your death, do you not? Is that not right?”

“No! No, sire,” said Maxim, hurriedly. How was he supposed to win with this cantankerous old swine? “Of course I do everything you require of me, yet maybe I am . . . misremembering your instructions. Fortunately everything is as you wish. He is indeed incarcerated in our dungeons. If you wish to see the boy . . . ?”

“No, I do not,” Frederick said. “Well, not yet. Have him cleaned and then bring him to court. Let us see what he knows. And then, if he still proves useless, you can drown him.”

Maxim swore silently at the floor as he averted his face from Frederick’s view once more.

“Very good, sire,” he said. “At once.”

He left, shutting the door behind him, just a little too hard.

14

Willow hurried through the darkening City streets yet again, headed south, over the river, her companion at her side.

Kepler.

As they crossed the wide street known as the Parade, Willow pulled her shawl about her more closely as she was struck by a sharp cold wind that sent the snowflakes into flurries.

An hour or so later they turned into a rancid little alley called the Bucket, named after a low-life drinking den halfway along it. At the far end the river lay before them.

They crossed at St. Olaf’s Bridge, a fantastic span of three powerful arches, wide and noble in its construction. At each of the two piers where stone thrust its way into the riverbed, the thoroughfare widened into a bay, where the ponderous or weary might consider the flow of water and time passing below them. On each pier was a small cage, just big enough to permit a man’s body to be forced inside. Willow shuddered as she passed them, but fortunately, it had been many years since they had been used.

At the far bank, the street plummeted rapidly back into the chaos of the City’s maze, and any sense of architectural order given by the bridge vanished.

But after a turn or two, there was the palace mound ahead of them, pressed against a bend in the river.

After she had bumped into Kepler by the North Gate the day before, they had returned to his house, arguing all the way. Yet each knew they needed the other.

They had made their way back across the City as fast as they could, for the night and the snow were deepening. Even without Kepler’s company Willow would have known her way unerringly.

On reaching the house, Kepler had provided some bread and cheese, for which Willow was truly grateful. Kepler was an intelligent man, a great intellect, but he had seemed clumsy and slow as he prepared the food for Willow, as if it was something he never did. It was no feast, but had been enough to sustain her.

As soon as dawn had come, Kepler had collected things in a large shoulder bag, and they had set out once more for the palace.

This morning the arguments had stopped; they had barely spoken.

“We must hurry,” Kepler said, as he got things together. “He’s in danger there.”

“I know,” Willow replied.

“Do you? You don’t know anything of the palace! The people inside. And there’s one to be most feared.”

“Who?”

“A man called Maxim. He’s the emperor’s right hand. He has a reputation.”

“What?” asked Willow.

“It would frighten you to know, child,” Kepler said.

Willow stopped and waited for Kepler to notice that she had. After a few paces he saw that she was no longer with him and turned.

“You think it will scare me?” Willow shouted. “After all I’ve been through?”

Kepler shook his head.

“Maybe not,” he said. “But there is little to tell. Maxim is a dangerous man, with great influence over the emperor and life in court. We must be most careful of him.”

“Why?” asked Willow.

“Listen, girl,” Kepler snapped. “You ask too many questions. I’ve agreed you may be able to help me find Boy, and that’s enough for now. So be silent!”

Kepler would say no more. He turned and walked on, and Willow had no choice but to follow.

Now they were deep in their own thoughts, which were more similar than they might have known. Both were thinking about Boy, though as they walked Willow glanced from time to time at Kepler’s sack. They had agreed on their plan the night before, but Willow couldn’t help wondering what, exactly what, it was that Kepler had brought with him.