The Immortal Throne (2016)

by Stella Gemmell

  The following night and day was a blood-spattered nightmare. Valla worked from dusk to dusk helping the wounded, the stench of blood and fear and agony hanging over the encampment. By nightfall the bodies of City comrades had been burned and those of the enemy thrown over the cliff. The casualties had been found places to lie down and those under sentence of death were deep in lorassium slumber.

  Valla stumbled back to her tent eager to sleep, but when she saw Rubin was awake once more she went over to him and sat beside him. In the last light of the setting sun he smiled at her.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked him. ‘How did you stop the battle?’

  He shook his head, looking at his hands. ‘I don’t know.’

  But she eyed him silently and after a while he sighed and said, ‘I managed to get my feet on the ground. I was trying to stand, although I knew I was too weak. I put my hand out to you – I don’t know why … to try and help, to try to get help. I remember wanting to end the battle, to rescue us both.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Then I felt this … energy rising from the earth, up through me, like water rising up a flooded drain.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve never known anything like it. It ran through my belly and chest, growing hot, then crackled along my arm like lightning. I could almost see it, blazing from my fingertips.’ He shook his head. ‘Then everyone stopped fighting and started putting their swords away. Everything became calm and slow.’

  He looked at her and she nodded, remembering.

  ‘Everything …’ He stopped and Valla watched the play of emotions across his face like a shallow stream over pebbles.

  He struggled for an explanation. ‘For a heartbeat or two I felt this … exultation, that I had in my grasp a power I could wield at will. But I couldn’t hold on to it. It began to fade. And then you strolled over to me, smiling like an idiot.’

  ‘You told me to kill them all.’

  ‘Did I? I don’t remember.’

  She thought about it, watching the red stain on the horizon slowly disappear.

  ‘Do you think you can do it again?’ she asked.

  But Rubin was asleep.

  News travelled swiftly through the Halls, and news of disaster travelled quickest. Many leagues of tunnels and caverns separated the Hall of Blue Light, where Rubin had been dwelling with Elija and Emly, and his old home, but within a day he had heard of an attack by a band of reivers on Jack’s Tail Hall and had set out to try to help his friends.

  When he reached Jack’s Tail it was deserted save for corpses. Fearfully he examined them by flaring torchlight and found many Dwellers he knew, but not the Captain or Brax. He looked around. The habitual little piles of meagre possessions, which marked what Dwellers called home, had all gone. Nothing in Jack’s Tail spoke of habitation, only death.

  A sound made him turn, startled, and he saw the old man called Salty who guarded the eel-tanks and fed the creatures with the care of a mother-fish.

  ‘Salty! Where did they all go?’

  The old man flung out his withered arms and shook his head. ‘All dead,’ he moaned. ‘Dead and dying.’ He sobbed and wiped his eyes. ‘All dead.’

  Rubin realized he was talking about the eels. The heavy tanks had been overturned and the creatures lay in slimy piles, some still twitching.

  ‘Where’s Captain Starky? And Brax?’ But old Salty just moaned and kept wiping his eyes.

  ‘Reivers,’ another voice said. Rubin saw a tiny old Dweller he thought of as the Orange Woman for he had once seen her with a whole orange, guarding it like an infant, gloating over it as it dried and grew inedible. She was leaning on a crutch, an injured leg crudely bandaged with filthy rags.

  ‘What? Where did they go?’ he asked her.

  ‘Reivers took ’em. Others ran off.’ Her eyes roamed around, searching for someone, for something.

  ‘Captain Starky?’

  She shook her head distractedly. ‘Which way did they go? The reivers?’

  She looked up at him. ‘Down,’ she said. ‘Reivers live in darkest.’

  Rubin prepared himself well. He raided corpses ruthlessly, found torches half used and a few vital phosphorus sticks. He recovered some dried meat from the Captain’s cave and filled two water skins at the nearest well. He still had his long knife, sharpened to a fine edge, and he added two more, strapping them to his body. All the while Jack’s Tail’s Dwellers, the fitter ones who had fled the attack, came drifting back. None could tell what had happened to his friends.

  He set off, trying to recall what he had been told about reivers. They stole people away to kill and eat them and suck the marrow from their bones. Rubin had scoffed at these stories, but he had remembered them. Reivers lived to the west, towards the sea, and down, always down. Rubin knew the geography of the Halls as far west as the Whithergo, a waterway of legendary peril, and resolved to go that way.

  He found Brax almost immediately. The boy lay at the corner of two main ways, gaping wounds on his head and back; he had been slaughtered with an axe or weighted blade. But he lay alone. There was no sign of the Captain.

  The reivers’ trail was clear as day. They left chewed bones, broken weapons and corpses in their wake. They were moving fast and Rubin reckoned they were in a hurry to get somewhere. He saw few other Dwellers, for they stayed well clear of the reivers’ path, but he met one old woman who claimed there were fifty or more in the party, though how many were captives and how many captors she could not tell.

  Rubin reached the entrance to the Whithergo but the reivers had shunned it and carried on north-west. He followed them until he came to regions he had never been in before: vast chambers with blind statuary and tiled floors, empty but for bats; deep crevices in the rock which seemed to go down for ever; and once a great waterfall which fell out of the gloom far above to some point far below, crashing in a distant cacophony, unseen. He sat for a while watching the cascading water, chewing on some dried meat, his legs splashed by the rising mists. It was fresh, the water, and he drank his fill and refilled his water skins.

  When he finally caught up with the reivers he almost walked into them. They had stopped to rest and just in time he saw their torchlight reflected on a rock-face. He pulled back, cramming his own torch into a deep crevice then creeping forward in darkness. He could see little, save for the wild light of many torches, but he could hear their grunts and shouts and oaths. He had no chance to count how many there were, or see if the Captain was among them, before the band set off again. After that it was just a matter of staying out of sight.

  It was hard to measure time in the Halls, but Rubin reckoned he had followed them for three or four days, judging by the wear on his body and his mind, when they finally arrived at their lair. He could hear they had stopped and he lingered, as so often before, waiting for them to move on. Slowly the sounds they made dwindled and he peered out from the hidey-hole where he was lodged in time to glimpse the last man, the last torch, vanishing into a gap in the wall he would never have otherwise seen. He waited as long as his patience could endure, then he crept forward and climbed through after them. Beyond was a vast cavern, and Rubin stopped and looked up, astonished to see it was lit by daylight. It was a poor light falling from shafts in the roof of the cave but, feeble though it was, it illuminated a small settlement on the far bank of a turgid river. The band of reivers was already crossing a decrepit bridge and people were running from the settlement, greeting them with shouts and cheers as if they were returning heroes.

  Rubin looked around the enormous cavern. Daylight, he could see, was also filtering from his right. As he watched it turned pinkish and he realized he was looking towards the far mouth of the cave and the light of the setting sun outside. Comforted by its glow and the promise of daylight he found a nook in the rock wall and settled down to sleep. He woke once to cringe into the shadows when he heard raucous voices pass close by. More reivers returning home. These had enjoyed some fiery spirits, by the sound of it, and there was little chance of Rubin being spotted.

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nbsp; At the first thin light of the new day he hurried across the rickety bridge, staying low, to the edge of the squalid settlement. Keeping to the darkness he circled the outskirts. He found the captives’ prison on the far side of the village, out of the light. It was a cage bolted to a stone floor, walled and roofed with iron bars, rusty but secure. It was only half the height of a man so its prisoners could not stand. There were thirty or more men and women inside, inert, lying as if dead. Rubin could not see the Captain, but then he could not make out anyone’s face and he dared not call out. The cage was locked with a heavy padlock. He resolved to find the key.

  He watched from the shadows all day. Eventually a burly man came idling from the village carrying a pailful of slop which he poured through the bars of the cage, half-filling two troughs, spilling the rest to the ground. There was movement at last in the prison as skeletal figures crawled over to the wretched food. None of them was Captain Starky. Rubin pushed himself back, leaning against the stub of a stone pillar, and fell asleep.

  Clearly the reivers had no fear of intruders, for they put out no sentries, and the next day Rubin found he could make his way unnoticed around the perimeter of the settlement, hugging the darkness. He soon discovered how the captives were used. He ventured right up to a rotten wooden building close by the river. The stench from it, even this deep in the Halls, made him gag. Filled with dread and loathing he pushed open the sagging door. As his eyes adjusted to the weak light he could make out a sturdy wooden block, thick with crusted blood, an array of axes and knives and in the corner a pile of meat, alive with a cloak of flies. Overwhelmed with disgust, he fled.

  Near the captives’ prison there was a second cage, a smaller one. This held mostly corpses – of dogs big and small and a few cats. The only living thing was a black brute of a beast, scarred and twisted. It had the body of a boar and the jaws of a mastiff, with deformed fangs and mean little eyes. Rubin had no idea what it was and he gave the cage a wide berth. Although an idea was forming.

  The next day the light from above was brighter than he had seen since he left the world of daylight. In his hideaway Rubin gazed up at the thick columns of soupy light, swirling with dust motes, and guessed it was about noon on, perhaps, a sunny summer’s day. A strong yearning for fresh air arose in him, bringing painful tears to his eyes. He resolved in that moment that when he had finished his work here, whether he found the Captain or not, he would go Outside again, whatever fate it brought him.

  He had been dozing lightly, his belly gripped by hunger, when he was woken by screams and cries. Dazed, he peered out. The captives were moaning and crying, swaying and clutching at the bars, more alive than he had yet seen them.

  ‘We’ll give you something to cry about,’ a voice called jovially and he saw two men making their way towards them from the settlement.

  Rubin shook off his exhaustion. He got to his feet and hurried, crouching low, through the darkness and into the shadows behind the beast’s cage. The animal watched him, motionless. Rubin slid silently on top of its prison, the creature’s eyes following his every move, and squirmed to the point above the door. He took out his long knife.

  As the guards unlocked and flung open the captives’ prison Rubin leaned over and, drawing a deep breath, lifted the bar across the cage door. The beast shot out as if loosed from a bow then turned towards Rubin, its tiny black eyes gleaming with malice.

  But at that moment one of the guards spoke. ‘C’mon, two of you today. It’ll be over quick. I promise.’ He laughed.

  Hearing his voice the beast spun round and took off towards him. It was not a big animal but it was tough and angry. It ran up the startled guard’s chest and sank its twisted fangs into the man’s neck. The guard screamed and struggled, then his cry was drowned in blood and he fell to his knees, moaning. The beast braced its paws on the ground and tore his throat out. The prisoners screamed and scrambled to get away from the creature, climbing over each other to get deeper into their cage. The beast, bloody meat dripping from its jaws, looked around and, seeing the second guard running for all he was worth, took off after him.

  Rubin raced over and flung himself into the cage. He grabbed the first prisoner, pulling him towards the open door. ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Run!’

  But the man shook him off and cringed further into his prison. Rubin took another by his emaciated shoulder. ‘Go, while you can!’ he pleaded. But the captives, steeped in misery and apathy, shrank from him as if he were the enemy.

  Rubin saw a hunched figure, a flash of green. ‘Captain?’ But when the head turned he realized it was a woman, her face blank, eyes unseeing.

  ‘Come with me,’ he shouted at her, frustrated by their indifference.

  ‘Where?’ she whispered colourlessly.

  ‘Anywhere from here!’ he yelled. He dragged her from the cage and pointed to the west. ‘There’s light there! Daylight!’

  She stared for a moment then seemed to awaken. She pulled her ragged skirt round her knees and staggered off. The beast, still worrying at the body of its second victim, looked at her assessingly as she hurried by. There was a shout from the direction of the settlement and Rubin saw four more reivers, three scrawny men led by a bulky woman, charging towards them armed with cudgels. The beast put its head down and ran at them. It jumped at the woman in the lead, fangs at her throat. She fell screaming, then blood flew.

  Watching, Rubin smiled grimly. ‘Good boy,’ he said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘DID YOU EVER find captain Starky?’ Valla asked, leaning forward and poking their campfire with a branch. Dying embers flared and sparks flew upwards.

  Rubin shook his head. ‘Perhaps he managed to flee Jack’s Tail Hall when the reivers came, then returned later. I hope so. I never went back.’

  ‘Did you escape the sewers then, as you’d vowed?’

  He nodded. His violet eyes, so exotic in the light of day, were hooded and the fluid lines of his face in shadow. Only his hair blazed as he stared into the firelight.

  Valla threw a handful of sticks on to the dwindling fire. It was a warm night and they didn’t need it, but it was cheerful to have a blaze and there was small chance of being spotted by the enemy. They had departed the medical encampment in the Blacktree Mountains and were riding back towards the City. They had travelled by day at first, making their slow way down through high mountain passes and steep rocky trails trampled by goats and deer. Then, as they reached the foothills and the flatter, faster land beyond, they slept by day and rode by night under the light of a waning moon. Rubin had predicted they’d be in sight of the City by morning. Valla hoped so. She had not been in the saddle for years, for the City’s cavalry units did not embrace women, and she had found the riding hard.

  ‘What did you do then?’ she prompted, for he seemed to be wandering in the past.

  ‘I don’t remember really. I was at the end of my strength, my sanity perhaps. I had seen the evil men can do while I lived in the Halls. I thought I had seen it all …’ He trailed off. Then he turned to her, anxious to convey something, and Valla saw the pain in his face. ‘They lived so deep in the Halls, as deep as you could go. But at the same time they were within reach of the outside – just a day or so’s walk to the west was sunlight. Yet the reivers chose to live in the dark. And their prisoners, even when they had a chance, didn’t try to save themselves. I had a revelation then, standing there in that terrible place. I realized I’d been insane to choose the Halls over the world of daylight, whatever the cost. It had seemed so clear to me when I first made the choice – life in the sewers or death in the armies. But I was ignorant and foolish. I thought I knew it all, but I knew nothing.’

  He gazed back at the fire and she watched him, filled with concern. She did not have to see his face to know he was haunted by memories he found hard to bear. She wanted to comfort him, but feared the slightest hint of compassion might break him.

  ‘So why didn’t you go towards the sea?’ she asked briskly.

 
‘I don’t remember,’ he repeated after a while, frowning as if trying to catch fleeing memories. ‘I was starving by then, and crazed, I think. I must have made my way up through the Halls somehow. Eventually I was picked up by a patrol.’

  ‘Lucky they didn’t kill you outright.’ To the elite warriors of the Thousand the emperor’s patrols were no more than bands of unruly thugs.

  ‘I’ve always been lucky,’ he said, and he seemed unaware of the irony. ‘They thought I was an Odrysian spy. I was speaking Odrysian for some reason.’

  His face suddenly lost the haunted look and he turned to her and smiled. ‘Then I met Marcellus again.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘I met him as a child, briefly, in my father’s house. So,’ his voice took on the tones of the teller of tales she knew so well, ‘the guards stood me in front of him, a stinking, demented sewer rat, leaking sewage all over his fine carpet, and he asked me my name and I told him Rubin Kerr Guillaume. I’ve never seen Marcellus so surprised since.’ He smiled again at the cherished memory.

  ‘I told him my story,’ Rubin went on, ‘and he listened.’ He looked at Valla. ‘Everything my father had told me made me believe Marcellus was cruel and ruthless. But he was friendly and sympathetic. He was interested in me and my life and asked me about my father and Indaro.’

  ‘Did he ask why you were in the sewers?’

  ‘No. But I told him everything about my time there, then he called one of his senior officers and ordered him to clear the reivers out of the Salient caves.’

  ‘And did they?’

  ‘I was told later that his troops slaughtered everyone in the reivers’ settlement – men, women and children.’

  ‘And the captives?’

  ‘Everyone.’ His eyes were looking inward again and Valla wished she hadn’t raised the subject when he clearly needed rest. She looked up. The moon was a silver sliver in the south and the stars shone in glory. She pulled her blanket out of her pack and wrapped it round her.