“Do you know that for sure?” said Lewis.
“No. But I suspect it.”
“Your suspicions don’t matter. Nothing matters to you and I but the bond between us. You’re mine, Ironheart, body and soul, and your only hope for freedom is to obey me in all things.”
“Yes, Lewis. I’m yours. For now.”
“You’re mine until I decide otherwise.” Lewis emptied his glass, and dropped it carelessly onto the grassy floor. He was tired, and his injured hand ached. He wanted to go to bed and forget the day’s troubles in sleep, but he had to Wait for the Monk’s report, and as usual the Monk was late. Lewis scowled. He had to know what was happening in Viktor’s camp. There was a polite knock at the door, and Lewis growled for whoever it was to enter. The door swung open and a young serving maid came in, bearing a cold meal on a tray. Lewis remembered ordering the meal earlier, but he wasn’t hungry anymore. He started to wave the maid and meal away, and then stopped and took a second look at the maid as a different hunger awoke in him.
“Come here, girl. Let me look at you.”
She moved reluctantly forward, holding the tray out before her as though it could protect her from him. Lewis gestured for her to put the tray down on a nearby table. She did so, her hands trembling visibly, and turned slowly back to face him. She was good-looking in a simple, healthy way, with wavy shoulder-length hair and a firm supple figure. She looked to be in her midtwenties, but her pale face and wide eyes made her seem much younger. Lewis smiled at her easily, but she didn’t return the smile.
“They’ve been telling stories about me again, haven’t they?” said Lewis. “You don’t want to believe everything you hear, my dear. My enemies tell lies about me, and try to make me out a monster, and I tell the same kind of lies about them. It’s all part of the game we play. It’s called politics. Now stop shivering and shaking, and relax. Do I look like a monster to you?”
The maid blushed slightly, and shook her head. Lewis nodded surreptitiously to Ironheart, and his mailed hands shot out and grasped the maid’s arms above the elbows. She shrieked, and tried to break free, but couldn’t. Lewis rose slowly out of his chair, and walked over to stand before her. He reached out a hand to caress her face, and she shrank away from him. Lewis smiled slightly.
“The one thing you should know by now about Castle Midnight,” he said softly, “is that nothing is necessarily what it seems.”
His hands tore at her clothing. Shortly afterward, she started to scream. She screamed for a long time, but nobody heard her.
An hour or so later, the air rippled in Lewis’s quarters as the Monk appeared. His empty cowl turned slightly to observe the still, bloody form lying limply on the floor. Her wide staring eyes saw nothing at all, and her face wasn’t pretty anymore.
“Get rid of that,” said Lewis, gesturing vaguely in the body’s direction.
The Monk bowed, and the body disappeared. Air rushed in to fill the gap where it had been. “The body will not be found, sire.”
“You’re late!” snapped Lewis.
“My apologies,” said the Monk. “There is much of interest happening in the castle at present, and I like to keep you well-informed. For example, I was right in my suspicions about your brother Viktor. He’s using a double for his public appearances. The man you saw in Court this evening was merely an actor under a glamour.”
Lewis frowned. “I would have sworn it was Viktor. It looked like him, it was his voice … damn it, he had fire magic! I saw it!”
“A conjuring trick, Your Highness—sleight of hand. Nothing more.”
“Dominic already knew about this,” said Lewis suddenly. “That’s what he was hinting at earlier on.”
“Exactly,” said the Monk. “It appears he’s known about this for some time. He’s already set in motion a plan to discredit the impostor. There is to be a Testing before the Stone tomorrow morning. Dominic will challenge the double to spill his blood on the Stone, and when he can’t, thus proving himself an impostor, Dominic will demand to know what has happened to the real Viktor. His people will then be forced to reveal how ill and helpless your brother really is.”
“Not a bad idea,” said Lewis, “and one we can take advantage of. My friends, we are going to attend this Testing. Once the impostor has been revealed, I’ll raise a clamor about who else is pretending to be what they’re not. In the confusion, my men will attack Dominic’s, and you, Monk, will kill my brother. I’d prefer to do it myself, but you’re the only one of us strong enough to stand up against his sorcery. Afterward, we’ll claim he was an Unreal double that had managed to replace the real Dominic, and there’ll be no one left who can prove otherwise. Yes. I like that. Make the arrangements, Monk.”
He turned away, chuckling happily, and disappeared into his bedchamber. Ironheart and the Monk watched in silence as the door slammed shut behind him. There was a faint rasp of metal on metal as Ironheart’s steel gauntlets closed into fists.
“I want to kill him,” said Ironheart quietly. “I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything before.”
“In good time,” said the Monk. “For the moment at least, we need him. As long as the castle believes we serve Lewis, we’re protected from too close a scrutiny. The steward suspects our nature, but Lewis’s position keeps her from doing anything about it. Put aside your anger, my friend. Lewis is useful to us.”
“He won’t always be.”
“That’s right. And then you and I will teach him the true meaning of fear and suffering.”
Ironheart stirred, his metal joints creaking softly. “It won’t be enough. No matter how much he suffers, it won’t be enough. I need him to burn and writhe as I have all these long years.”
He reached up with his mailed gauntlets and lifted off his helmet. The room’s soft lamplight shone palely on the dead white face. The flesh was slack and utterly colorless, even where the left eye had recently been cut in two by a sword thrust. No blood had flowed from the jagged edges of the wound, nor ever would.
“I’ve been dead almost twelve years now,” said Ironheart slowly. His words were faintly slurred, as he fought to make the dead flesh of his lips and tongue do what they used to do so easily. “Twelve years since I took my life, and damned myself by magic to this unliving hell. I did this to myself, Monk, and all for revenge on a man whose face I can’t even remember now. I always was a fool where a woman was concerned. Now my organs rot and decay within me, and my bones grow brittle, and still the preservation spell won’t let me die the true death. I can feel the rot and corruption within me, and the pain burns endlessly every hour of the day and night. I can’t rest, I can’t sleep, and I’m always so damned tired! Sometimes I think the tiredness is worse than the pain. Can’t you help me at all, Monk? You have power. Can’t you at least let me sleep, just for a while?”
“I’d help you if I could, my friend,” said the Monk, “but the curse on you is beyond my undoing.”
“I can’t stand this much longer,” said Ironheart. “I can’t. I’ll go mad. I move and talk and fight and pretend I’m still alive, but every day it gets harder to hold onto my memories of who I was. I’m losing them, bit by bit, to the endless pain and rage and frustration. Lewis swore he had a counterspell that would free me from this curse and let me die at last. But sometimes I think I’m too useful to him, and he’ll never let me go. I’m losing hope, Monk, and hope is all I’ve got left.”
“You must be strong, my friend,” said the Monk. “It won’t be long now, I promise you. Just hang on a little longer, and all your suffering will be at an end. I give you my word on it.”
Ironheart looked at the Monk, and his dead mouth tried to smile. “You’re the only friend I have, Monk, and I’m not even sure you’re Real. It doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t care. You’ve been a good friend to me. At least when I’m with you, I can almost forget the pain for a while.”
“I can’t stay with you long, Ironheart. But I’ll stay as long as I can.”
�
��I get so scared sometimes. Scared that when I finally get my chance to die, I won’t have the guts to take it. This is worse than any hell I ever dreamed of, but even so sometimes the thought of dying scares me even more. I wasn’t a bad man, in my day, but since I died, I’ve done … questionable things, just to cling to this horrid existence. I’m afraid all the time now, Monk: scared to die, but just as scared of going on like this.”
“Don’t be scared,” said the Monk. “I’m here with you.”
They talked together for a while, their quiet distant voices so soft they raised no echo in the huge room. Finally the Monk could stay no longer, and he disappeared in a ripple of disturbed air. Ironheart replaced his featureless helm over his dead face, and stood motionless in his corner. After a while, a distant voice began to sing very quietly a song that had been popular some ten years ago, of the tragic love of a fair knight for a wicked lady.
Up on the roof, the guards were chasing gargoyles. The ugly gray creatures ran nimbly back and forth across the uneven slates, dodging the chasing guards with contemptuous ease. The guards ran doggedly on in pursuit, brandishing their nets. The full moon shed its light across the hills and valleys of the massive roof as though it was having trouble believing what it was seeing. The quiet night was full of the curses and harsh breathing of the running guards, and the mocking laughter of the fleeing gargoyles. Damon Cord stood perched on a bulky chimney stack, calling orders that were mostly redundant even before he finished giving them. Those gargoyles were fast.
Catriona Taggert pulled herself up through the open trapdoor and out onto the roof. She shivered once at the cold wind, glared disgustedly around her, and then shook her head. As if she didn’t have enough problems, she now had orders to capture each and every of the gargoyles intact. If the orders hadn’t come from the Regent himself, she’d have told him where to stick them. And even then, it had been close. Apparently, the current belief at Court was that when the Unreal outbreaks had passed, the gargoyles would go back to being statues again. As and when that happened, the Regent wanted them intact. On the grounds that replacing them with new stone carvings would cost a small fortune. The Regent was well-known for being very careful with a ducat. All of which meant that Taggert couldn’t kill the gargoyles, or even do anything that might risk damaging them. Which was why so many of her best men were currently running around the roof like idiots, waving bloody big butterfly nets.
We’d better catch something soon, thought Taggert dryly, Or I’m going to have a mutiny on my hands …
She clambered unsteadily across the uneven roof, heading for Damon Cord. At any other time, she might have stopped to admire the view. Castle Midnight’s roof was an architect’s nightmare of tiles, slates, and chimneys, rising here and there into peaks and gables for no apparent reason, and peppered with pipes and protrusions and anything else the castle’s designers had felt might be a good idea at the time. Under a full moon, it all looked very picturesque. It was also a hell of a roof to have to chase anything over. Particularly gargoyles. The nasty creatures were short and stocky, with lots of teeth and claws, and a set of stubby bat wings that luckily weren’t strong enough to let the gargoyles do more than glide a few feet at a time. They were definitely dangerous, and vicious by temperament, but as yet hadn’t managed to inflict any real injuries on the chasing guards. Probably because the damned things were laughing too hard. They’d never had such a good time.
Taggert watched, wincing, as a guard slowly closed the gap between him and a fleeing gargoyle. The creature was whooping happily, carefully keeping his speed down to the point where the guard still thought he had a chance of catching the thing. Of course, the moment the guard got too close, the gargoyle just put on a burst of speed and vanished into the shadows. The guard skidded to a halt, looked frantically around him, and then threw down his butterfly net and jumped up and down on it. Watching gargoyles rolled around on the slates, giggling hysterically. Two guards tried to jump a running gargoyle from different sides. The creature stopped dead in its tracks at just the right moment, and the two guards slammed into each other. They ended up in a dazed, cursing pile. Watching gargoyles leaned helplessly on each other, shaking with laughter. The gargoyle who’d caused the collision howled with glee, and Damon Cord leaned out from his chimney stack and clipped the creature neatly above the left ear with his mallet. The gargoyle looked very surprised, blinked once, and fell over. The fallen guards finished untangling themselves from their nets and set about tangling up the snoring gargoyle.
Taggert made her way over to join Cord. He grinned down at her and started to brandish his mallet triumphantly. His smile quickly faded away as he took in her grim face. He sighed heavily, and climbed down from the chimney stack.
“All right, what have I done wrong this time? I didn’t kill it, just rattled its brains a little.”
“That’s not the point,” said Taggert carefully. You had to explain things very clearly to Cord, or he sulked. “The point is, you’ve been up here for over two hours, and all you’ve got to show for it is one gargoyle. The other forty-nine are still charging around the roof and crapping in the guttering. And I hate to think what they’ve been doing down the chimneys, but the smell in the kitchens is appalling. How many men have you got up here, Damon?”
Cord’s eyes unfocused as he counted silently, trying not to move his lips. “Thirty-two,” he said finally.
“Thirty-two men, and it’s taken you two hours to catch one gargoyle.” Taggert sighed, deeply. “I should have come up here with you. Whose bright idea was the butterfly nets?”
“Mine,” said Cord proudly. “We tried roping them at first, but that didn’t work out too well.”
“I just know I’m going to regret asking this, but why?”
“Well, every time a guard lassoed one, the gargoyle just kept on running and dragged the guard after him. They’re a lot heavier than they look, those gargoyles. We lost eight men to injuries that way.”
“Damon …”
“Then we tried trip wires, but the gargoyles have better night vision than we do, and in the excitement of the chase, we kept forgetting where the wires were. We lost ten men to injuries that way.”
“All right! I get the picture!” Taggert glared at Cord, who shrugged unhappily. She felt like sighing deeply again, but knew it would be wasted on Cord. “All right, Damon. Call the men in. I’ve got an idea.”
Cord raised his voice in a carrying shout, and the guards came back to join him in ones and twos. All of them were breathing hard, and some of them were limping. The gargoyles gathered together in little groups, and waited eagerly to see what new game the guards were going to come up with. Speaking calmly and quietly, Taggert got her men cooled down and explained her plan to them. The guards brightened up, and went back to work with cautious enthusiasm. They split into groups and chose two chimneys set close together. They then stretched their nets across the gap and secured them lightly. The gargoyles watched frowningly, and muttered uneasily among themselves.
Taggert gave Cord his instructions, and he brightened up as he discovered it involved using his precious mallet. He looked happily about him, and then set off at a run toward the nearest gargoyles, who scattered hastily before him. Cord might be heavy on his feet, but he could build up quite a bit of speed when he put his mind to it. If only through sheer momentum. The gargoyles took off in different directions, but Cord chose one and kept stubbornly after it. For a while, everyone else just stopped where they were and watched as Cord grimly pursued the gargoyle across the uneven roof, with his mallet poised and ready to strike. The gargoyle kept just a few feet ahead of him, ducking, dodging, and plunging back and forth, and generally having too good a time tormenting Cord to realize it was being gradually herded toward the hidden nets. It ran full pelt between two chimneys and crashed to the slates as the nets wrapped themselves around it. The watching gargoyles screamed with rage at such an underhanded trick. Taggert ignored them. The creatures weren’t what you’d
call bright, and had very short memories. It would take a fair bit of running, but the gargoyles were as good as caught. Luckily, she wouldn’t have to do the running. That’s what guards were for.
Two of the guards dragged the trapped gargoyle away, and the others set about making more traps with the remaining nets. Cord leaned against a chimney stack and had a quiet wheeze. Taggert nodded, satisfied. Maybe now she could get back to some real work. She frowned suddenly, and turned to Cord.
“I thought Mother Donna was supposed to be up here with you. What happened to her?”
Cord thought hard, trying to remember. “She was called away. Some sort of emergency in the West Wing.”
Taggert raised an eyebrow. The last she’d heard, the West Wing was perfectly quiet. As always. There was a sudden clattering behind her as Captain Doyle pulled himself up through the trapdoor and out onto the roof. He hurried over to her, and barely paused to salute before speaking.
“You’d better come back down, Kate. All hell’s broken loose in the West Wing.”
“What is it?” said Taggert. “A manifestation? A poltergeist? What?”
Doyle swallowed hard. All his usual swagger and bravado were gone, and his face was deathly pale. “You’re going to have to see this for yourself, Kate. It’s bad. Very bad.”
Taggert and Cord hurried after Doyle as he led them down the gloomy corridor that led to the West Wing boundary. The air was close and muggy, weighed down by a stench of burning flesh. Water ran slowly down the corridor walls, as though they were sweating from the heat. The floor shook and trembled beneath their feet, as though something heavy was tramping back and forth in the distance. As they approached the boundary, Taggert tensed as she began to hear sounds coming from deep in the West Wing: screams and curses and animal howls. Doyle began to slow to a walk, and Taggert and Cord slowed with him.
“How long has this been going on?” asked Taggert breathlessly.
“About three hours, we think,” said Doyle. “It caught us all by surprise. I mean, nothing ever happens in the West Wing. Then two of our patrols went into the wing and didn’t come out again. Captain Blood took a sanctuary and some men and went in after them. They should have been safe enough; Grey Davey is one of the strongest sanctuaries we’ve ever had.”
Blood and Honor (Forest Kingdom Novels) Page 23