They had to heal the old-fashioned way, with the help of time and the resilience of their own bodies. The Tower was emptied of its entire staff except for Gibble, who flatly refused to leave when he saw their state, and the fat little cook tended their wounds as one by one Rol, Rowen, and the King of Thieves descended into raving fevers. Some poison had entered them through their injuries and it festered and fed upon their spirits for days, whilst beyond the walls, Ascari descended into chaos.
Rol remained lucid longest, and he helped Gibble tie his companions down on their beds whilst the sweat coursed down their stark faces and their eyes glared sightlessly and they screamed gibberish at the tops of their hoarse voices. He felt the fever rise in him like the nausea of an evil memory but was able to secure the postern against the roaming gangs outside and leave Gibble orders that the upper levels were to be left undisturbed. They had piled the bodies in Psellos’s study and nailed shut the door, but not before Rol had prised a key out of the Master’s black, melted flesh.
The key remained clenched in his fist for the next eleven days as Rol fought the raging fever that Psellos’s venom had kindled within him. He shouted and raged and wept and was tied to the bed in his turn as all reason left him and his mind became a howling wilderness. Gibble’s exhausted and frightened face was the only recurring image in the succession of nightmares that trooped through his brain.
At last, however, another face appeared in his vision, and it seemed to be not some shrieking travesty, but something reassuring and beloved. A white face framed by hair dark as a raven’s wing, a cool hand on his forehead. The foul sweat was wiped from his eyes. He was thirsty and was given water to drink, and he slept a real sleep without the torment of dreams.
There was a pain in his hand. He brought it in front of his face and opened his creaking fist and a key fell out. It had carved a purple divot in his palm.
He sat up and the tall candleflames that lit the room stabbed pain into his aching head.
“Welcome back,” a voice said, and he turned to see Rowen sitting wrapped in a rug near the foot of his bed. At the far wall a shape snored soundly in another, mounded in blankets.
“Canker?”
“His fever broke yesterday, mine the day before. But we are all as weak as half-drowned kittens. I sent Gibble off to get some rest. He’s not had more than a few hours’ sleep in the last fortnight.”
“It’s been that long?”
“We almost died. Psellos was pure poison, or the spell he read had made him so.”
“The scroll, of course. But the thing he became-”
“That was no spell, it was the nature of the Blood in him coming out.”
She stood up, naked under the rug she had pulled about herself, and joined him on the sodden bed.
“Your wounds?” Rol asked. There had been a lot of blood, and his recollection of her hurts was hazy.
“Gibble stitched them up for me. He has had much practice.” She took his hand, her fingers cool and sure. The long fever had pared away every scrap of spare flesh and her face was gaunt, the tendons standing out on her neck like cords.
He kissed her chapped lips. “It’s over.”
“The worst is, yes. But Ascari without a Thief-King is an unpredictable place. Canker has been off the streets too long. I think he will not find it so easy to come back from the dead. Psellos’s reputation is the only thing that has kept the looting mobs from the door.”
“The Feathermen can’t be the only glue that holds the city together.”
“They were the most effective one. The Watch has disintegrated, except where some of the richer Mercanters have hired a company here and there. The militia was chased out of the lower city like pike-bearing rabbits. Another Thief-King should have been elected by now, but Psellos’s bought Feathermen are unaware of his death and are holding things up. So the Feathermen are now fighting amongst themselves like all the rest of the rabble. Gibble has been out for supplies once or twice-the rumor is that Canoval’s mercenary fleet is already at sea, and will be here soon to restore order, whilst inland the council sits and drafts troops from the ranks of the smallholders. Ascari may yet become a battleground.”
“So it was all for nothing.”
“Yes.”
He had murdered a man in his bed for no good reason, left a wife lying asleep beside her husband’s corpse.
“No more training, Rowen. No more knives in the dark and blades in the back. From now on when I fight a man it shall be face-to-face and fair and square.”
Rowen’s mouth twitched. “How very laudable of you. It’s as well the world is such a simple place.”
“I’m sick of murder. Great gods, the way Psellos died! Was he in any way human at all?”
“He was tainted; I never suspected how badly. Do you know what it means?”
“I knew there was something wrong there. That black tongue of his.” And as he saw the puzzlement on her face he asked: “You mean you never noticed it before?”
“Never.”
They looked at one another, both baffled.
“The way he appeared, at the end,” Rowen went on, “means that he could only have been of the folk of Cambrius Orr; the Fallen. If his tales of your background are true, then-”
“Then it must run in the family. There is a monster inside me also. Is that what you are saying?”
“No, you fool. Think. The taint that produced the Fallen came from interbreeding with Man, but your blood is astonishingly clean. You are almost pure Were.”
“So?” Rol was sullen. He wanted no more revelations.
“So your bloodline and Psellos’s must be very different.”
“He was my uncle, not my father.”
“Uncle by blood, he said, not marriage. Somewhere along the line, Psellos has lied to you, or at least not told you the whole truth.”
“You surprise me.”
She leaned back with some of her old hauteur. “Now is not the time, I see. But we should use that key of yours to hunt out a few secrets.”
“Very well. But after that we’re taking ship. Ascari can eat itself, for all I care.”
With a bath and a change of clothes, Canker was almost unrecognizable. His burly form was well muscled despite the wastage of the fever, and filled out one of the Master’s tunics to bursting point. When the filth had been scrubbed from his face it was possible to see that he was not out of his fourth decade. Only the black gleam of his eyes was unchanged, as cold as those of a serpent.
“The sooner I get out and about the better for the city,” he said through a mouthful of pickled fish. Reaching for the relish, he winced. Rol passed it to him wordlessly. Canker’s wound had touched the lung.
Rol, Rowen, and Gibble sat with the ex-King of Thieves at the kitchen table, wolfing down the choicest cuts in the pantry and washing them down with the Master’s wine. Since they had recovered their feet, the convalescents’ appetites had seemed bottomless.
“It’s a disaster out there, to be sure,” Gibble said. “Some of the big houses on Cartsway are burning, and they’re lynching nobles at the corner of Grescon Street, where they had the fish markets.”
Rowen, also, had braved the streets. “The nobles have withdrawn what militia has stayed with the colors, and have barricaded themselves in the hill districts. The lower city has been left to its own devices.”
“Civilization hangs by a more slender thread than we ever suspect,” Canker said. He seemed almost gratified that news of his death had produced such chaos.
“They are tearing the feathers down from over all the doors,” Rowen told him. “Your followers are too preoccupied with slitting one another’s throats to care.”
“What of those mercenaries?” Rol asked.
“A few days away. Or so they say, and they have been saying that for a week now.”
“Gascar always wore its government lightly,” said Canker. “Things will calm down in time.”
“When the city is looted to the bone maybe,” Gibble protested. “Begging your pardon, but your lordship had better do something. We may be all snug and safe in this here fortress, but the common folk is suffering something cruel. They’re leaving the city in hordes by the North Road. Another few weeks of this and Ascari will be nothing more than a bunch of footpads squatting in a ruin.”
“Then it will have returned to its origins,” Canker said sharply, and Gibble shut his mouth.
The next morning Canker took his leave. “I go to steal back a city,” he said with a grin, and he bowed to kiss Rowen’s hand. “Will you really leave this tower and all in it for the scavengers?”
“We have a little scavenging of our own to do first,” Rowen told him.
“Good luck, then.” He hesitated a second-rare for him-and then spoke with odd formality. “Since it is just possible I owe you my hide, or some portion thereof, I promise that this tower shall remain inviolate, in case you should ever return.”
“We will never return,” Rol said quickly.
“ Never is a long time, lad, even to your kind. I will give this place my protection nonetheless.” And he left them without looking back.
“It is easy to give what one does not possess,” Rowen said, closing the postern gate behind him. “Still, he may survive.”
They packed bedrolls, tinderboxes, spare clothing, and weapons, anything light that might be of use on a journey. Braving the putrefactive charnel house of Psellos’s study once more, they discovered a cache of gold ryals and silver minims, enough to allow a king to travel in style. The Tower echoed darkly about them as they labored up and down within its entrails by the flicker of torchlight. Already it seemed a forsaken place, save down in the kitchens, where at night they ate and drank by a cheering fire and savored the best vintages of the Seven Isles and beyond, Gibble producing them from the depths of a cellar with the pride of a midwife who has delivered twins.
“It is all very well to have a key,” said Rol, “but what about the door it opens?”
“It must be on this level somewhere,” Rowen insisted. “Either that, or there is yet another level below us.”
“How many levels can a place have?”
She did not answer him, but raised the lantern and scanned the stone wall of the passageway yet again.
The stonework this far below the surface was different from that farther up. The usual conglomeration of construction styles, accumulated over the repairs and additions of centuries, had given way to stark oblong blocks set in perfect lines without mortar, not a chisel-mark to be seen upon them. The stones looked as though they had been laid down the week before, and their edges were sharp and clear as if they had been cut from clay, not hewn out of Gascarese basalt.
“These foundations are ancient,” Rowen said with something like awe in her voice.
“The Weren built Psellos’s Tower, or so it’s said,” Rol reminded her.
“Yes, but I thought that was all market gossip, old wives’ tales. I thought-Wait. I have something here. Hold the lantern closer.”
She drew out a poniard and scraped lightly at the join between two of the Cyclopean stones.
“There’s a gap, but it’s squared off. I can feel something against the tip of the blade.”
There was an audible click, and the stones before them seemed to vibrate for a second. They both stepped back quickly, but nothing more happened. Rowen inserted the dagger-point again, to no avail. It was just an odd hole between two courses of stone.
“Give me the key.”
It looked to be made of age-blackened white metal, weightier than silver. She slipped it into the tiny hole, and the click came again, louder now. She turned the key and there was a rapid succession of them, like a stick being dragged along palings. The huge weight of stone before them began to move, a shower of grit falling onto their heads, the floor trembling under their boots.
“A door,” Rol breathed, and inexplicably he laughed.
“Weren engineering,” said Rowen. “I wonder what lost artisans of the Elder Race made this, and for what purpose? All this time, Psellos has been sitting in a Weren tower, ferreting out its secrets. No wonder he was unwilling to leave.” She seemed to collect herself, and touched Rol’s shoulder. “Shall we?”
He nodded. The stone door had moved back ninety degrees, scraping against the dust of the floor. Rowen tried to retrieve the key, but when she took it out of the slot the stones began to close again, so she left it there. They both stared at it, thinking the same thing: if the key came out of the slot while they were inside they would be entombed.
The passageway before them was twice the height of a tall man, and wide enough for a wagon to be drawn without bumping its axles. The stonework was of the same perfect workmanship. The whole slanted downward perhaps a foot every two fathoms.
“Another level, after all,” Rowen said.
They walked steadily, all the time descending. There was not so much as a drip of water or patch of mold to break the monotony of the chiseled stone. The air was dry and wholesome.
“There must be ventilation shafts somewhere, leading to the surface,” Rol said. “The air here is as fresh as in the wine cellar, and it must be eighty or a hundred feet above us.”
“The Ancients needed to breathe, even as we do. I’ve heard they could create bubbles of air about themselves and walk along the bottom of the sea,” Rowen said.
The passageway came to an abrupt end in an arch of buttressed stone. Within the arch a decrepit wooden door stood ajar. It was hinged and reinforced with bronze, but the wood itself was crumbling. Rol touched it, and the grain blurred into dust under his fingertips.
“I could poke a finger through it,” he marveled.
“Try not to. This door is later than the stonework. See here? The hinges have been bored into the rock-a cruder job.”
The lantern-light swung around them, a cocoon of comfort in the echoing spaces. Beyond the door the passageway opened out into a wide chamber with a high, vaulted roof. Corbels upheld rafters of solid granite. In the opposite wall another door stood closed, also of wood, but of recent construction. Rol began to step out into the looming massiveness of the chamber but Rowen set a hand on his arm.
“Look,” she whispered.
She angled the face of the lantern upward, and Rol saw something perched on a corbel high above. The lantern-light cast a fearsome shadow of it upon the curved roof.
“What is it?”
At first glance, a crouching shape with the body of a man and a bat’s wings folded upon its back. The head was that of a crested lizard and a long tail curled about the corbel it sat upon. But it was all carved in dead, gray stone.
“A gargoyle?”
Rowen shook her head and swept the lantern about the chamber. Another of the statues perched at the opposite end of the room.
“Haunhim,” she hissed. “Watch-demons summoned and enslaved by Psellos, set to guard his sanctum. If we try to approach the far door they’ll tear us in pieces.”
Rol studied the grotesque shapes, fascinated. “Are they actually made of stone?”
“That is what Psellos has given them to animate. If the stone can be shattered, then they will be sent back whence they came-but one does not break stone with sword blades.”
Rol began unslinging the coil of rope at his belt. “They guard the approach to the far door, you say?”
“I think so.”
“You’d better be right.”
He stepped into the chamber gingerly, keeping close to the wall. Hefting the coils of his rope, he tied a loop at one end. Feeding the far end of the rope into it, he created a running loop and began swinging it open around his head.
“What are you doing?”
“I made Gannet fast to a rock like this once, after we had lost the anchor and the tide had taken her.” He tossed the spinning loop lightly into the air and it came down over the neck and wing of the haunhim. Both Rol and Rowen dropped instinctively into a crouch, but the thing remained as motionless as the statue it seemed to be.
Rol took the other end of the rope and fashioned a second noose. This time the loop landed clear round the second haunhim and he drew it tight about the thing’s back legs and tail. Then he took up the slack between the pair of them and rejoined Rowen at the door.
“Punch out that rotten wood and loop it about the hinges-they seem solid enough.”
They coughed and sneezed as the ancient wood splintered into a cloud of fragments under their fists. Then they wrapped the rope about the stone-bound bronze of the hinges until it was taut, and tied it off in a bulky knot. Rol drew Fleam and kissed Rowen on her tight lips. “Shall we?”
They padded across the stone of the chamber floor warily, staring upward. When they were halfway to the door they heard a grating sound, like someone moving heavy furniture across a flagged floor. In the eye sockets of the haunhim bright green lights began to burn. Despite himself, Rol halted, and Rowen tugged him on. “Too late now. Move.”
They sprinted the last ten yards, and behind them they heard a rushing noise like the hiss of sliding scree, and then the beat of wings filling the tall chamber.
The door had neither keyhole nor handle, but was blank. Rol threw himself at it and felt the heavy wood move minutely. A gale of wind blew his hair about his face and the lantern cast a mad gyre of flapping shadows.
“Rol!”
He turned from the door in time to see one of the haunhim swooping down upon him, stone jaws wide. Fleam leaped up in his hand and met it point first. The metal of the blade jarred against the back of the thing’s throat and the shock ran all the way up Rol’s arm. He cursed as his hand went numb, and dropped the scimitar. The haunhim was beating and snapping in his face, the wings propelling great gusts of dry air up at him. His rope was tangled about its feet and whipping tail, holding it less than a yard from Rol’s eyes.
The other creature was a hobbling, flapping shadow on the floor of the chamber. One of its wings had been encircled by the rope and was crushed to its side whilst the other beat madly, crashing off the floor with deep clunking booms.
“Get the door before the rope gives way,” cried Rowen. She had set down the lantern, and now both of them heaved at the stubborn wood with all their strength. The door groaned open six inches, ten, a foot. It was enough.
Rowen went through first. Rol retrieved Fleam from the floor but as he was reaching for the lantern the nearest haunhim broke free of its restraining rope and crashed full tilt into the door. It was jarred open another foot and the lantern was smashed to shards of glass and metal wire and blazed up a yard into the air. The flames caught Rol’s arm and set it alight. He threw himself backwards, held up Fleam, and the haunhim’s snout clashed against the steel, slid down it, and ripped the flesh from his knuckles. He beat down on the thing’s head but the blade clicked off it harmlessly. Then he was hauled through the doorway by the scruff of his neck.
“You’re on fire,” Rowen said calmly as she stepped over him and beat out at the enraged haunhim with the pommels of her stilettos. Her hands moved in a fusillade of blurs that cracked the iron bases of the knives about the snapping head of the thing in the doorway. It seemed unhurt but confused, snapping out left and right and missing her fists by inches. It slipped in the burning oil at its feet and Rowen’s foot flew up and caught it on the shoulder, toppling it backwards.
She retreated quickly and in one easy move slammed the door shut. They were left in total blackness, their heads filled with the smell of Rol’s burnt clothing.
Thirteen