A Clatter of Chains

by A Van Wyck

  “There, now, you see?” The dead thing emerged from the dust, hands clasped sedately behind its back. “What have you gained, exactly, by your stubborn refusal?” The thing came to loom over him. “Pain,” it answered its own question. “Not more pain than you would otherwise have suffered, I’ll admit. But then, you did lead me on this pointless pursuit, so I feel I’m due some appeasement.” It bent, reaching for him. An anticipatory smile, horrible to behold, cracked the rotting features. “And now,” it drawled with mock commiseration, its breath the hot gust of an abattoir, “you die anyway…”

  His numb hands hunted through the wreckage around him for something – anything! – to use as a weapon. Anything to stave off death for one more moment. They closed on something, something hard. Not caring what it was, he lashed out at the smiling corpse.

  It jerked from the contact, shrieking. The dead man stumbled, clutching its injured hand to it. It spun in place, obviously hounded by pain, a dog biting at its own wound.

  Still fuzzy from the blow to the head, molten rock boiling from his hip and back, he rolled over. Pushing himself to his feet was an exercise in pure willpower. He swayed, his vision seesawing as he watched the dead man throw back its head to screech pain and rage. It held the injured hand up to its face to stare disbelievingly.

  He stared too.

  The pale claw looked like someone had taken a branding iron to it. A cut, glowing red and angry like a coal, had lain open the palm. The surrounding flesh was blackened, cracked and smoking. As he watched, part of the thumb broke off and crumbled to the ground. Amazed, he glanced down. The silver-white knife weighed nothing in his grip. He held it up to his eyes, watching the light skip across the patterned blade. How long had it been since he’d seen it? That day in the sewers of Oaragh? He regarded it humorlessly.

  Now you decide to be useful? You couldn’t have done this before I got cut to ribbons?

  His gaze traveled back to the shrieking mage, taking in the seared hand. He closed his fingers tightly about the bright hilt.

  Alright, he told it, I know you’re no good at doing what I say but, unless you want to go home with that–

  He glanced again at the shrieking apparition not a dozen paces distant.

  –stick around, yeah?

  He levered himself out of the wreckage, advancing on the writhing ghoul. It spun to face him, cradling its charred hand and hissing menacingly. He raised the knife before him. The dead man retreated a wary step. He followed, ignoring the numbness slowly spreading from his hip down his leg which was making his foot drag. Step by step, he herded the mage down the ramp. It darted and feinted with every other pace, trying to find an opening past him and hissing furiously when he allowed none.

  Its movements had slowed more than a cut across the palm could account for. They rounded the bend toward the seventh arch, its yellow glow a twilight bloom on the walls.

  Casting a desperate glance over its shoulder, the ghoul tried to dart past him but he cut the knife across its path. It leapt back, screaming frustration.

  That’s right, he remembered. You didn’t follow me inside, did you? You waited for me to come out.

  Was there something special about the bottom of the Well that had kept this thing out?

  Let’s see if we can lay a finger on that itch...

  He drove it doggedly toward the last arch and the edge of the angry light beyond. Its attempts to slip past him grew ever more frantic. Finally, growling, it turned at bay five paces shy of the entrance.

  “Not so chatty now, are you?”

  The thing snarled wordlessly and launched itself at him, clawing with its hale hand. He lashed out. There was a sizzle. It snatched the appendage back, howling, and swung the other, blackened arm like a club.

  He slashed at the arm, taking it at the elbow. The silver white knife sheared completely through. The charcoaled forelimb spun away.

  The dead man howled.

  Encouraged, he stepped forward, lashing at everything in reach as he drove the thing back amid sizzles like frying bacon.

  The fiend retreated, gashes on arms, stomach, chest and shoulders trailing streamers of black smoke.

  He feinted a thrust and the thing leapt back – but had strayed too close to the divide. Like someone who’d had a live ember pressed into the center of their back, the dead man yowled, arms thrown wide and back arched in the paralysis of pain. Leaving its chest exposed.

  The silver knife plunged into the putrid flesh, hissing like quenching iron. The dead man shrieked deafeningly in his ear. He forced it across the threshold and into the arid light at the bottom of the Well. The light itself seemed to offer resistance.

  He clung as the shrieking – impossibly – intensified. He twisted to press his elbow beneath the dead thing’s chin, as if pinning it against a wall. As the pain in his ears reached fever pitch, his own scream joined that of the ghoul.

  A brutal twist of the knife sprayed cinders down the thing’s font. Blackened flesh swirled like burnt paper as the yellow light slowly ate at it from behind. Skin and cloth peeled away into ash. Angry orange verdigris scorched across its body, leaving charred ruin. A keening, as of tortured crystal, drowned both of their screaming. Bright, yellow light lanced from the thing’s unseeing eyes and gaping mouth, growing in intensity as it flailed.

  Drawing back his knife, he planted it again. The body jerked, astonished face snapping down to stare at him with beaming eyes. His nerve broke and he leapt away. The fiend, surrounded by swirling motes of ash, collapsed to its knees.

  The brilliant light winked out.

  For a moment longer, it knelt in a mockery of prayer. Smoke curled in oily tendrils from the pits that had been its eyes. It keeled over in increments, unhurried as a falling feather. Where it hit the ramp, its husk split with a dry crack, spreading a mist of fine ash.

  His legs knew it was over before he did and they carried him with them to the ground. His breath did what his legs couldn’t, fleeing as soon as possible. Slumped, shivering, he curled into a ball.

  Still alive.

  He took a moment to savor that… before his thoughts turned to the six levels above him. He considered the (possibly endless) spiral passage after that. Followed by the interminable descent through the Lilly Tower.

  He was spent. He was done. This hip was on fire. The entirety of his back was numb. And unless he missed his guess, he had a handful of broken ribs on top off his broken nose.

  His eyes had drifted closed involuntarily while he took stock. He forced them open now to see his hand still curled in a death grip around the silver white dagger.

  “You want to help?” he wheezed at it. “Go find me a healer…”

  And so saying, he mustered enough strength to lob the offending thing away. There was no clatter of metal. No sound at all. He could picture it, disintegrating into a mass of silver motes before it even hit the ground. It would come snaking back, he knew, to wrap unerringly around his–

  Cool air encircled his ring-finger. He sighed.

  He lay there for a while longer, simply breathing, listening to the lullaby of his heart.

  Move or die… he galvanized himself.

  It took an eternity to get to his feet. A moan escaped him as his hip was forced into motion and his back muscles drew taut. The moan turned into a gasp as his ribs stabbed at him.

  Parting his wraps, he saw a collection of deep gashes riding the rise of his hip bone, burning like wasp’s sting. The skin was inflamed and hot to the touch. There wasn’t much blood. He scrutinized what little there was carefully. Unless his liver had migrated to his ass, the blood was too dark.

  Of course. Why shouldn’t the damned thing be poisonous to boot?

  He needed to get out of here.

  He checked his satchel, gasping as he hobbled over to collect his knives. The searing pain as he bent down to retrieve them made him catch his breath. He glanced up at the ramp that would take him out of here. He started hobbling.

  Definitely askin
g for more money.

  Neever twiddled his thumbs. Despite his earlier words, he’d done little but pray since he’d bid young Jiminy good luck. There wasn’t much else he could do, much as that galled. Pray and wait. He’d waited until the appointed bell and then he’d come here, to the Temple Laundry, where he’d waited some time. And then had waited some more. It was well past the time Jiminy had planned to return. They were no more than a couple of bells from sunrise and, as the night frayed away, so did his nerves.

  He might have comforted himself with the thought that every moment that passed without the alarm being raised was a good sign. But he knew better. If young Jiminy were discovered, there would be no alarm. There will have been no attempted theft. The sanctity of the Temple would remain unbreached and poor Jiminy would disappear into the dank, dark hole that was the Inquisition. And from that hole, the thief’s ghost would come to haunt them.

  There would be no warning. No tramping of masha’na coming to kick in his and Father’s doors in the dead of night. They would quietly disappear. Witnesses would remember having seen Neever on the road back to his monastery – which he would never reach. Cyrus would take ill, poor man, and be cared for by carefully chosen individuals – all visitors turned away. And after they’d wrung all the modernists’ secrets from him, the healer would finally fail in the battle for health. And the core of the modernist movement would fall right alongside – to natural causes and unsuspicious accidents. That could not be allowed to happen.

  Goddess forgive him, he’d added a new wrapper of poison to Jiminy’s bag of tools. Now, like one of the great sharks of the bay, their conversation circled his soul.

  In case you are captured, he’d said, placing the twist of paper on the table before the young thief.

  But I didn’t get you anything, the young man had protested, innocent face full of that particular brand of endearing arrogance.

  This is serious, Master Jiminy, he’d chided.

  Oh? You should have said. That infernal, mischievous smile. Is it real this time?

  Very real, he’d nodded.

  He sighed, shaking his head in an effort to dislodge the unpleasant remembrance. The deep breath brought him the crisp scent of linen underlying the musty reek of stale wash water. He would have an impossible time explaining his presence when the wash workers started arriving...

  (Tolling from outside announced the fourth bell.)

  …in a bell or so.

  He swallowed with difficulty. If Jiminy wasn’t back by then, their plan called for him to leave, to start his day as if nothing were amiss. But he knew he wouldn’t. Not if there were still the slightest chance the young thief might succeed.

  He glanced again at the laundry chute. This one went all the way up to the Hermitage. Even a fit person would wear their feet down to nubs, lugging the entire hierocracy’s laundry down from the Temple Proper. The chute’s insides were polished stone, slick as soap and wide enough to fit a small person. If you wanted, you could climb it. Until you dropped (literally) from exhaustion, dehydration or a fatal collision with a fast moving ball of laundry.

  But Master Jiminy had insisted on seeing it. Had insisted, in fact, on being smuggled to a fourth-level junction, in the dead of night, to judge for himself.

  He’d pitched a fit when the young man had started climbing in, dangling lean legs into the abyss.

  Bye, the young thief had smirked, an instant before disappearing down the stone pipe. Shocked, he’d rushed down here to the laundry level. He’d arrived huffing and out of breath. The young thief had greeted him, hale and smiling, from atop a bale of clean tunics.

  It’s do-able, had been the thief’s pronouncement. But I’m going to need some special gloves and perhaps some sturdier shoes. The frayed ruins the thief had been wearing were held up for his inspection. These have had it.

  A sound made him look up. He stared fixedly at the chute, which had done little but whistle incontinently throughout the night. After another moment of breathless waiting, he heard a noise echoing from its mouth. He stood. This wouldn’t be the first false alarm. But he didn’t have the wherewithal anymore to sit quietly and wait them out. On a nervous whim, he grabbed up another armful of sheets and fed them to the wheeled trolley beneath the chute. It was already full to bursting.

  A sepulchral sigh slid down the pipe. A gasp? Or just a trick of the wind…? All it took was a single open chute, somewhere above, to set this aperture howling. A hundred heartbeats passed in tense silence. Then a hundred more. Sighing, he turned away from the chute, back to his seat. He took refuge in prayer. Holy Helia, guardian mother, deliver safely–

  The trolley exploded.

  A solid wave of laundry rolled him under. He lay, stunned and buried, for only a moment.

  “Jiminy?” he gasped around mouthful of bed sheets. Clawing at the layers of constricting cloth, he fought to his feet. “Jiminy?” he hissed, trying to keep his voice low. Finally he managed to tear the offending material off his head and look around.

  “Jiminy!” he cried in shock. The boy lay, supine, in the wreckage of the trolley. His clothes were cut to ribbons and the white sheets all around him were spattered in dark blood.

  He skidded to his knees beside the young thief.

  “Jiminy,” he chanted worriedly. “Merciful Mother! Jiminy, what’s happened to you?” The boy’s eyes were closed. “Are you alive?”

  The eyelids fluttered, eyes unfocused. “Neever,” the boy whispered hoarsely. “Dead man… poison…”

  The boy was delirious. “You’re going to be alright,” he promised. “Can you hear me? Jiminy, you’re going to be alright.”

  “Poison…” the young thief muttered weakly “…poison…”

  “Don’t worry,” he soothed, patting the young man’s shoulder, “you’re going to be...” Startled at the heat he could feel pouring even through the shredded cloth, he pressed the back of his hand to the boy’s cheek, then moved it up to the clammy forehead. The young thief was on fire! Perhaps this wasn’t delirium talking. The fanged maw of guilt made another pass. “Don’t worry,” he said again, “I’m going to get you help.”

  But first things first. The washers would be here soon. He needed to stash the boy somewhere safe. And then, he was going to run and get Cyrus and if the crotchety old man gave him any grief, he’d drag the healer to Jiminy by the ankles.

  “It’s going to be alright,” he promised. “Everything’s going to be alright.”

  CHAPTER 18 – RESCUE

  This was not at all what he’d been expecting. He lay on his stomach among the wet brush, drops of condensation trickling icy paths down his face and soaking his borrowed clothes. This close, the forest floor filled his nose with the smell of earth and insects and rotting leaves. He could hear himself blinking, his gummy lids rough on his eyeballs. It had been a long time since he’d properly slept.

  Finch was a silent specter on his right. Christian growled irritably on his left. The three of them lay under cover, watching the activity below. If he hadn’t been able to smell Nin, he wouldn’t have known she was there at all.

  They’d ridden through the night, trying to keep up a brisk pace, following Marco’s nose. The trail had been cold and hard to follow. Twice they’d had to wait, horses and men milling restlessly in the dark as he’d crept in a wide circle through the stagnant marsh, desperately looking for the lost scent. His preternaturally sharp hearing had picked out Nin’s voice, whispering to Christian. He’d tried not to eavesdrop but some words had gotten through.

  “He’s what?!”

  “Trying to find the scent.”

  “Find the scent,” she’d repeated, deadpan.

  He hadn’t looked around but he’d heard her grumbling, “Madmen. I’m running around the woods with bleeding madmen.”

  He’d squeezed his eyes tight shut and kept at it, ignoring the rotten eggs and rank mud stench as best he could. He’d picked up the scent soon after and they’d been off again, following the trail out
of the marsh – finally – and into the woods at the foot of the mountains. Gigantic, black pines marched up the slope in ragged lines and the forest floor was thickly carpeted with their dead needles. Heavy ferns rose from that red blanket, thriving on the acidity that killed almost everything else.

  The incline had started out gentle but had soon grown steep. Maneuvering the mounts among the thick trees had become increasingly difficult as the rough trunks closed ranks. The sun had long since crested the horizon by the time Marco had brought them up short. He’d caught another scent among the bitter resins of the ancient trees.

  “Sentry,” he’d whispered.

  With a gesture, Christian had sent the masha’na slipping silently from their saddles to melt away into the brush, motioning Finch and Leffley into the trees. The two men had paused to string their bows before disappearing among the towering boles, the ferns closing behind them.

  Eyes closed, he’d tracked their movement as they’d crept through the brush, drawing further and further away, getting fainter. He hadn’t heard the twang of the bow or the thud as the arrow found its mark. But he’d caught the scent of blood on the breeze. It had seemed to crawl between the trees to find him, clawing down his throat. Sudden fire had ignited in his stomach and he’d been struck by a wave of lightheadedness.

  “It’s done,” he’d muttered thickly, fighting too hard against the nausea to pay attention to the feel of eyes burning on the back of his neck. The two scouts had rejoined them moments later, Finch’s quiver an arrow lighter.

  “You should see this,” the little warrior had said to Christian. They’d left the horses, Christian and him following Finch and Nin tagging along uninvited. After another two- or three hundred paces, Finch had motioned them to remain silent and stay low. They’d crawled cautiously through the ferns, the pine needles crunching beneath them. From the crest of a slight rise, they’d seen this...

  It had been a large, imposing building once. From an earlier age. But great portions had been brought low by time and the patient fingers of creeping ivy and seeping damp. Blocks of gray stone, corners rounded by years of wind and rain, lay strewn around what once might have been a great monastery or church. Now is was a crumbling ruin. It seemed the decay had started at the outer edges, slowly working its way toward the center. The main hall still stood, surrounded by a handful of connecting structures in varying states of disrepair. Some effort had gone into restoring the hall’s round roof somewhere in the past century. The lead tiles were moss-encrusted and verdigrised blue. They seemed mostly intact.