The last time she disappeared, she never came back. Strangers came instead, and took him away to a grim dwelling in the city. His mother had struck and killed a man while drunk, they told him. She’d been hanged for it.
He was six years old.
Things scarcely improved after that. His mother’s tribe saw that he had a place to sleep and enough food to survive, but that was as far as their obligation went. Life in the orphanage was brutal, and neither the master nor the other children had any mercy for the newcomer. There was something in his manner that set people against him, and he suffered for it.
The city was his saviour. Now that he was out of the slums, he had access to the boulevards and tunnels of the necropolis proper. He haunted the undermarkets where the furriers hawked their wares and the air was thick with the smell of fried spiced blubber. He went to the pens, where the hardy nomads of the ice plains traded livestock with the city folk while enormous shaggy varanth shook their great horned heads and snorted steam into the air. He sneaked into the longhalls, where men and women feasted by the firepits, swigging brown ale from drinking-tusks while dogs ran about their feet. He begged food when he could, stole it when he dared, but mostly he just stood about and warmed himself, and listened to the skalds sing tales of heroes. Sometimes those very heroes were present to hear them. They sat at the best tables, their bodies dense with tattoos, and drank together while young Skarls edged close, hoping one day to be as glorious.
When the weather wasn’t too cold, he went up to the surface, where the tombs of his ancestors reared high above him, carved from black stone. In the distance, made blurred and dark by frost-haze, a colossal statue of Balik the Sunderer stood astride a splintered peak, holding aloft the god-axe Magoth with which he’d made the mountains and the seas. Grub would walk the snowy streets and read deeds of legend carved on the tombs by the stonesingers, and he’d dream.
In time, he made a friend, a boy who’d noticed him often at the undermarket and who spotted him taking fruit from a stall. That boy brought him back to a chamber where he lived among a dozen other boys, beneath the watchful eye of a crook-backed old man called Nuk. Grub was welcomed and treated as a brother. He never returned to the orphanage after that.
Nuk recognised Grub’s talent for theft and nurtured it. He was particularly skilled at climbing, despite his clumsy appearance. No wall or gate seemed beyond him. Though he was still beaten from time to time, as all children were, he was eager to please, and he pleased his new master well.
But theft was a dangerous game in Karaqqa. The narrow tunnels and underground chambers left few places to run and hide, and thieves were especially reviled among Skarls. Ever since Tharl Iqqba united the tribes, it had been all Skarls together against the world, for they were a people small in number and living in a hostile land. Foreigners could be swindled or killed without conscience, but to harm or betray a fellow Skarl, even to lie to them, was a terrible crime, and punishment was swift and pitiless.
One by one, Grub’s brothers were caught and hanged. Soon enough, his master Nuk was hanged, too. Grub fled the city, knowing the Grave-guards would be coming for him next. He made his way to the harbour where the grey sea lapped against the shore. It was early autumn, but the waters hadn’t yet iced over. With no other choice, he approached a captain and claimed his right of passage as a firstborn embarking on the Scattering. The captain couldn’t refuse him.
He sailed away from his homeland that day, a young man with his body hardly marked but for a few identifying details inked on his left cheek in the geometric runes of Tombtongue. He returned fifteen years later with half his body covered. How things were different then. How they celebrated their returning hero. How the women wanted him. He sat at the best tables in the longhalls, and nobody dared to beat him, despise him, dismiss him any more.
For a few months, he was loved. And then it was over.
‘Hold here,’ said the Hollow Man. Grub stopped rowing and let the boat drift.
‘There’s our way out,’ said the Bitterbracker, pointing. Ahead, a bridge supported by slender white arches reached across the lake high above them. It extended from a towering building on the edge of the third island and ended at a gatehouse in the valley wall.
‘Aye,’ said Garric. ‘But I’ve yet to see any place to land except that one wharf. Nowhere to climb, either.’
‘Maybe on the other side?’ the Bitterbracker suggested.
‘Maybe,’ said the Hollow Man, but he didn’t sound hopeful.
While they talked, Grub leaned over the side of the boat and looked into the water. Reflected back at him was a face he’d known all his life: broad, squashed and toadlike, his shaved head turning dark with stubble. But the black band across his eyes hadn’t always been there, that swiped crescent running from cheek to cheek, drawn in a burning arc by the palm of a skin-scribe while he screamed and begged for mercy.
The sign of his disgrace. The mark of the outcast, hated by his people, spurned by the Bone God himself.
He looked away, up to the spires of Skavengard. It was a hard journey to forgiveness. He didn’t know if it would ever be possible. But he’d started, and there was some victory in that.
‘Take us round the island,’ the Hollow Man said. Grub laid his hands on the oars and put his back into it.
36
Cade watched from an upper window as the boat returned, studying its occupants closely, as if careful observation might answer the question that now obsessed him.
Who are you people?
His conversation with Fen had changed his rescuers in his eyes. No longer were he and Aren in the company of dangerous rogues who might harm them. They were rebels, and that excited him. Even surly and hateful Garric was somewhat redeemed by it. He was their leader, after all, and one held in great respect, even if Cade couldn’t forgive him for the way he treated Aren.
After the others had gone scouting, Cade quizzed Osman, hoping to prise some information from him. But he wasn’t as clever with people as Aren, and Osman proved even less forthcoming than Fen, if considerably more polite.
‘I’m afraid our business is our own,’ he said. ‘If you want to know more, it’s Garric you should ask.’
Cade snorted. ‘He’s more likely to give me the back of his fist than an answer.’
‘Then I would keep my peace, if I were you.’
He returned to Aren, who lay sleeping next to Ruck. It was cold enough that they needed a fire even in daylight. Vika sat a short distance away, staring into the flames while she reapplied the paint on her face.
‘Is he—’ Cade began.
‘He is well,’ she said. ‘As he was the last five times you asked. Do not fret, Cade. He will wake when he’s ready.’
It was kindly spoken, but Cade felt foolish anyway. The Red-Eyed Child had walked close alongside them these last two nights, but she’d walked closest of all to Aren. He was only just getting used to the thought that she was going to spare him.
‘What news?’ Osman asked as the scouts made their way back to the fire.
‘There’s no way around,’ said Fen. ‘We found a few wharves on the north side, but one’s buried under rubble and the other is shut fast. The nearest entrance is open, though.’
‘We still have plenty of daylight,’ Garric said. ‘Eat, all of you. Then we’ll go over there and take a look around inside. Vika, will you stay with the boy?’
‘I will.’
‘Good. Osman, you’re coming, too.’
‘And me!’ said Cade, thrusting a hand in the air. Garric turned a stony glare on him and his arm wilted uncertainly.
‘I’ll watch out for him,’ said Osman. Cade gave his best grin, showing all his teeth, which had the unintended effect of making him seem harmlessly moronic.
‘So be it,’ said Garric. ‘It’s your neck. Make ready, then.’
Cade scampered over to Aren. Ruck stirred briefly, opened an eye, then closed it again.
‘I’ll be back before you know
it,’ Cade said. Then he leaned closer and dropped his voice so only Aren could hear. ‘I’m going to find out who we’re dealing with. Leave it to me.’
Ruck twitched an ear and Vika, still applying the finishing touches to her face, smiled to herself.
They sat round the fire to eat. They’d topped up their packs from the wayfarers’ hut and taken extra packs for Aren, Cade and Grub, but even so Fen insisted they ration carefully.
‘There’s nothing to hunt here, not even birds,’ she said. ‘And we can’t resupply till we’ve crossed the mountains.’
‘If my belt gets any tighter, it’ll cut me in half,’ Keel complained.
‘Oh, stop it,’ said Osman. ‘It’s not three days since we were eating rabbit outside Suller’s Bluff.’
‘Really?’ Keel chewed a piece of dried meat thoughtfully. ‘Feels longer.’
‘One time, Grub walk for three days without food.’
‘Didn’t you eat a whole wheel of cheese back at the hut?’ Fen said acidly.
‘Ha! One time Grub ate five cheeses! He only stop when cheese ooze from his ears!’
Cade spluttered. ‘I thought Skarls weren’t allowed to lie?’
Garric gave a derisive laugh. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Aren did,’ he said uncertainly. ‘He learned it in school.’
‘Always said school was a waste of time,’ Keel replied, biting off a piece of bread.
‘Skarls aren’t allowed to lie to each other,’ Osman explained. ‘It doesn’t apply to foreigners. In fact, there’s a saying—’
‘“When you speak with a Skarl, don’t forget your shovel”,’ Keel quoted happily, still chewing.
‘What for?’ Cade asked, mystified.
‘To clear away the dung that comes out of their mouths!’ Keel said, and he and Garric roared with laughter, until Keel began to choke on his bread.
Cade’s eyes went wide with understanding. ‘You know, that explains a lot.’
‘Hello! Grub sitting right here!’
It was late morning when they rowed across to Skavengard, leaving Aren, Vika and Ruck behind. The druidess warned them to be back before sunset.
‘Polla spoke of a terror that came with the night,’ she said.
‘Seems empty enough,’ said Keel.
‘So it does,’ Vika replied. ‘But I do not trust that place, even in daylight. Keep your wits about you.’
Grub rowed them to the stone landing where Keel moored the boat with a seafarer’s knot. There was another boat moored alongside, smaller and lighter. It had capsized but was still afloat and looked intact.
‘Polla’s?’ Fen suggested.
‘Maybe,’ said Garric.
Before them was a copper door, green with verdigris and studded with black metal nails. It hung invitingly ajar. The stonework round the outside crawled with carved beasts and figures eroded into smooth lumps by the rain. Cade eyed them uncertainly and put his hand on the hilt of the sword he’d borrowed from Aren. He thought about drawing it, but nobody else had drawn theirs, so he left it where it was.
‘No sense pulling steel unless you mean to use it,’ said Keel, who’d noticed his indecision. ‘Swords get damned heavy after a while.’
Cade nodded in a stout fashion, as if from one warrior to another. Keel looked away, suppressing a smile.
‘Do not fear,’ said Osman. ‘I’ve heard many tales of haunted places, but superstition is all they are. I’ve still to see anything with my own eyes that I couldn’t explain.’
‘Aye, well. You’re young yet,’ said Garric, and pushed the door.
It swung open lightly and without a sound at his touch, as if partly propelled by its own will. Like it was eager to let them inside. Dust stirred in the displaced air, blowing across flagstone floors.
They stepped into a high-ceilinged chamber lit by a narrow window above the entrance that cast a blade of daylight into the room. There was no furniture, no tapestries, nothing but blank walls and emptiness. Silence settled around them like a damp fog, and with it a vague and sourceless unease.
It’s just an old, abandoned place, Cade told himself. Just stone and dust and stories, nothing more.
But he couldn’t quite make himself believe it.
They passed through a small antechamber before coming to the foot of a spiral staircase with light spilling down through its hollow centre. At the top of the stairs, they emerged into a long corridor, ribbed and spined like the fossilised insides of some great serpent. A dozen or more doors could be seen along its length and other corridors led off it, deeper into the island’s interior. They listened, and heard nothing but the scrape of their own boots, the chink of buckles and the creak of their leather armour as they shifted about.
‘Pair up and take a look around,’ said Garric. ‘Don’t go too far, and be back here by midday. If you find anything odd, call out. Joha knows, we’ll have no trouble hearing you.’
‘You’re with me, Cade,’ said Osman. Cade opened his mouth and shut it again, disappointed. He’d hoped Garric would pick him, frightening as that thought was; he wanted to get him alone, to winkle out whatever secrets he had. But Garric and Keel, by unspoken assumption, were going together.
‘Grub go with Freckles!’ Grub announced happily.
‘What did you call me?’ Fen said, in a tone that could have iced the lake. Keel burst out laughing, but the sound echoed strangely in the silence and he abruptly stopped.
‘Should have left him behind when we had the chance,’ Fen muttered as she walked away.
‘Take care!’ Keel called after her; then, under his breath, ‘Freckles.’
Fen’s anatomically improbable reply was graphic enough to make Cade blush, but it just made Keel grin all the wider.
Grub trotted after Fen, humming discordantly to himself. Garric and Keel went the other way. Osman headed through an open doorway opposite the stairwell, leaving Cade casting regretful glances in Fen’s direction. After their encounter on the wharf, he found himself picturing her face whenever his thoughts were idle and had developed a puppyish urge to please her. If he couldn’t pair up with Garric, he might at least have gone with her; but he was denied even that. With a sigh, he followed Osman.
The ceiling here was lower than the corridor, held up by a dozen narrow pillars in a double row, each one carved with intricate script. Several large windows looked out onto the valley. At either end, the room was divided by a partition wall and a scalloped doorway. There was no clue as to what the room was used for, but Cade imagined robed figures drifting about it, doing whatever courtly things Old Ossians did.
‘You’re highborn, aren’t you?’ he asked Osman.
‘I am,’ said Osman. ‘Whatever that means in this day and age. A highborn Ossian is still lower than the meanest Krodan peasant, when it comes to it.’
‘Is that why you joined Garric?’
‘I wasn’t yet born when the Krodans came,’ he said. ‘My grandfather was the head of the family and he, like many others, submitted to save his own. But my father was a man of fierce conviction, and he held to the old ways. He never forgave my grandfather, not even on his deathbed.’
As he talked, he headed across the chamber to investigate one of the doorways. He peered inside, then went through.
‘When my father inherited our lands, he already had a reputation for criticising the Empire,’ Osman went on, studying whatever he saw beyond the partition wall. ‘My brothers had taken to Krodan ways and begged him to keep his opinions to himself for the good of us all. But my father was proud. He hated what had become of Ossia, and was full of anger at what we had lost.’
His voice became sorrowful.
‘The Iron Hand heard of his sedition and took our lands away. My grandfather had powerful friends, but not even they could save my father from the gallows. My brothers disowned him in exchange for modest lives as clerks and scribes, and we do not speak any more.’ He sighed. ‘As to me, I left the day my father died. He had friends, too, of a more rebel
lious mind, and they had connections. I went to them and told them I wanted to join the fight against the Krodans. Once they were convinced, they set me on my path to Garric, and Salt Fork, and so to here.’
As he emerged from the doorway, he was shaking his head, and he gave a little laugh. ‘But perhaps that is a longer answer than you hoped for. We all have our stories, I suppose, and—’
He stopped as he realised he was talking to an empty room.
‘Cade?’
Cade heard his name being called, but he was already well away, having nipped out into the corridor the moment Osman’s back was turned. Now he followed the echo of voices through empty rooms, on the trail of Garric and Keel.
‘… place is a maze!’ It was Keel, in the room ahead. Cade crept closer. ‘You saw it from the lake. Buildings piled on buildings, hanging over cliffs; pillared courtyards open to the drop. It must have been dreamed up by a madman, eh?’
‘We’ll keep the lake in sight and stay on the south side. Wouldn’t take us half a day in a straight line.’
‘If we can find a straight line,’ Keel said. ‘Still, if it’s all as lonely as this, we’ll have nothing to fear but hunger.’
‘Let us hope,’ said Garric.
Cade peeped round the corner just in time to see Garric and Keel disappear through a doorway on the left side of the room. He looked over his shoulder, but there was no sign of Osman. Encouraged, he slipped across to the doorway, nervous and determined in equal measure. It was important that he brought something back for Aren, some news that would prove his worth: I did this, without you.
Garric and Keel stood in the ruins of an enormous indoor garden beneath a great dome as white and smooth as ivory. It was cut with dozens of massive windows, row upon row of them set close in a semicircle. The garden spread over many platforms and tiers, with paths winding among them. Stone channels and miniature aqueducts had once carried water between three elaborate fountains. Statues of beasts both mythical and otherwise waited to surprise the unwary: glaring birds of prey, sinuous draccens, roaring bears.
In days gone by, it must have been green and pleasant here, and exotic flowers had bloomed in the soil. Nothing grew now. The stones were cracked, the statues broken, the dome ruined where pieces between the windows had fallen away. Water still trickled from some unknown source, but the channels had cracked and leaked puddles onto the pathway. In the crisp, bright light of the mountains, it was a pale and mournful place. Cade was both awed by it and saddened.
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