Marcellus appeared undeterred. He was looking high above the rubble and Rubin followed his gaze. On the far side he could make out a wide staircase climbing into the centre of the palace.
‘Bring the casket!’ Marcellus ordered, and Rubin took from his saddle the pack holding the white, wooden box he had been entrusted with. He wondered again what it was for, why so precious that his lord wanted it with him in this place of devastation. He slung the pack on his back.
Marcellus’ urgent need to get into the palace was palpable and he started climbing the mound of debris, his men following his lead. It was hard going, even for the able, for stones shifted as the men scrambled over them and it was impossible not to breathe in the thick dust. Rubin’s heart was in his mouth as they edged under a tottering wall, then over piles of broken beams which seemed ready to give way beneath them. By the time they were halfway to the top Rubin could tell Marcellus’ strength was failing. His face was grey and clammy and his breath rasped in his chest. He was moving forward only with an effort of will. His men, infected by his urgency, kept pressing ahead, then had to stop to wait for him. Rubin knew how cruel that must be to his pride. As Marcellus neared the top of the shifting debris a stone rolled under his boot and he fell awkwardly to one knee, starting a small avalanche. He remained motionless and took a breath, then another. The captain of his guard, who had been shadowing him closely, placed one hand under his lord’s elbow, to steady him or help him rise. Marcellus swung on him, cursing him viciously, and the man stepped back, his face stone.
Fuelled by his anger Marcellus climbed on. They reached the staircase with relief, but then realized it was blocked further up where a wall had smashed down on to it. They had to climb again to get round this obstacle.
Inside the palace was worse, if anything, for in the dismal, dusty stillness they could hear the pleas and groans of men and women crushed by fallen walls. There was little chance of freeing them. Rubin guessed it would take many strong men to shift the great chunks of marble and alabaster. A handful of survivors, both soldiers and servants, struggled this way and that, carrying water and stretchers and medical equipment to those they could help.
At last they found themselves in a wide corridor, largely undamaged, which it seemed was becoming a centre of the rescue operation. Dead or wounded soldiers lay on the floor and propped against the walls, all coated in thick dust. The only difference Rubin could see between the quick and the dead was that those clinging to life still bled. Rubin bent to scrutinize each as he passed, dreading he’d find Valla dead or dying. He lingered to help an injured man, his legs crushed, who pleaded with him for water.
‘Rubin!’ Marcellus growled, and he closed his mind to the soldier’s plight and sped on.
To everyone’s relief the choking dust thinned higher up and they came out into open, fresher air. Rubin craned his neck upwards. Above them, black against the sky, was the curved lip of some great structure. He had no idea what it was. Following Marcellus’ slow bootsteps, he climbed the last few stairs and found himself on the edge of an immense circular platform. He stared around, trying to make sense of what he saw. Over the black and white chequered floor lay a thick layer of what looked like ice. It was cool up there, and silent, and beyond the edge of the platform was nothing but grey cloud. Rubin shivered. They seemed to be at the top of the world.
He looked at Marcellus, who said curtly, ‘The throne room,’ and Rubin was surprised to see a sheen of satisfaction in his eyes as he surveyed the devastation.
He realized the walls of the great chamber had collapsed, leaving just a short section still standing to their left. To their right a score of palace guards flanked a high white throne on the very edge of the floor. And there, wrapped in shawls and seated on rich cushions, was Archange, clad all in black, her white hair loose. Just one woman attended her, dressed in a gold gown. Rubin examined the soldiers’ faces to find Valla, but he could not see her. He’d been told she was always at the empress’s side, so why was she not there now? He searched each face again, hoping.
Marcellus stepped forward. The ice crunched under his boots and Rubin realized it was a million shards of broken glass, glinting and winking in the weak light.
Marcellus and Archange gazed at each other across the floor. There was no birdsong, no sound from the broken palace beneath them, not even the faintest sigh of breeze. The grey mist muffled everything beyond the floor. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked once and was silenced.
Marcellus spoke up. ‘Well, Archange,’ he cried, ‘what a mess this is.’ His voice was clear and strong and only Rubin and his men could see the glint of wet crimson across his jacket.
The empress remained mute, unmoved, so after a moment Marcellus continued. ‘I have come for the Gulon Veil,’ he told her, and he beckoned Rubin who stepped forward with the casket. It was cunningly made of shining white wood, its lid secured by a tiny gold catch.
Archange said nothing, but a deep voice rich with amusement boomed, ‘She doesn’t have it, you fool!’
Only then did Rubin notice the big man sitting cross-legged at the base of the remaining throne-room wall. He stood gracefully, though he was not young, and picked up the sword lying beside him.
‘Hammarskjald!’ Marcellus exclaimed, as if greeting a long-lost friend. ‘I’d a hunch you’d be here! Is this ruination your doing?’
‘It is,’ the man’s voice rumbled. He sheathed the sword as if, for all the armed men before him, he would have no use for it. He wore the ragbag uniform of a mercenary and his wild ginger-grey hair and beard were knotted in unkempt braids. Tall and broad-shouldered, he stood at ease in the throne room. As if he owned it.
So this is Hammarskjald, Rubin thought, leader of the enemy army. What arrogance must he have to stand here alone? The soldiers, even Marcellus himself in his weakened state, seemed diminished by the man’s presence. Rubin wondered if this man shared Marcellus’ skill in butchery and he shuddered, feeling the draining of spirit which comes with the onset of dread. He feared he was about to witness another show of carnage.
‘And the plague I hear about?’ Marcellus asked in his familiar, genial way. ‘That has your bloody fingerprints all over it.’ He looked relaxed in the presence of his enemy, as if they were discussing the merits of a thoroughbred or the price of timber. You would never know, Rubin thought, that he was gravely wounded, perhaps at the end of his strength.
‘Ay,’ replied Hammarskjald. ‘It is.’
‘You must tell me about it some time. Meanwhile,’ Marcellus said, with a calculating glance at the empress and back, ‘do you have the Gulon Veil?’
‘I do not,’ Hammarskjald replied, and he strode along the very lip of the floor, glancing down into the mist. ‘No one does,’ he said, kicking a chunk of glass off the edge and listening to it fall.
Rubin’s eyes followed him, captivated by the man’s aura of invulnerability. He dragged his gaze away and saw all the men-at-arms were watching Hammarskjald too. They knew where the power lay. Looking at Hammarskjald again, at the massive, muscular shoulders, the braided hair and beard, it slowly dawned on Rubin that he had seen him somewhere before.
Hammarskjald turned back to Marcellus as if he’d momentarily forgotten he was there. ‘The veil was stolen by a renegade soldier and went north with Marcus’ army. It vanished at the Vorago. There was a great victory there.’ He paused, then added with a feral smile, ‘For my army, of course.’
‘Then why are you here, Hammar? Just to gloat?’ Marcellus asked and now Rubin could hear the strain in his voice behind the affable manner and wondered what it cost him to maintain the illusion of strength. ‘You must know you will never leave this mountain alive.’ At his words his men drew their swords.
Hammarskjald ignored them, answering, ‘I am here for the child.’ Turning to the empress, he demanded, ‘Hand the brat over, Archange, and I vow that my army and I will walk away and leave the City. That is all I want. The future of the City and everyone in it in exchange for
one infant.’
At last Archange stirred. As if the discussion hadn’t happened, or wasn’t of relevance to her, she commented, ‘You are injured, Marcellus.’ Her voice was husky and to Rubin she sounded frail. Rubin wondered why she would point this out, for here Marcellus was her ally. Wasn’t he?
Marcellus shrugged it off. ‘A graze only.’
Hammarskjald strode to the centre of the floor, kicking glass shards like autumn leaves. He looked intently at Marcellus, as if weighing his strength, then his gaze lingered briefly on Rubin and Rubin felt a flicker of recognition. Then he remembered. The legendary Hammarskjald was the man with the ruined ankle he’d met in the sewers on the Day of Summoning. A man he feared he had abandoned to his death. Was he the same? How could he be? They had met in semi-darkness and the words they exchanged were few, but Rubin remembered the injured man’s apparent lack of concern at his plight, and his satisfaction at the news that the Red Palace was in ruins. ‘Good,’ he’d said. ‘Who builds a palace on top of a river? The poor fools.’
‘Where is it, woman?’ Hammarskjald asked the empress. ‘My agents have scoured this palace and the child is not here. Where have you stowed them, the boy and its mother? They are somewhere on this accursed mountain.’ His tone was threatening, but Archange seemed not to hear and busied herself pulling her shawls around her against the morning air. Rubin shivered in sympathy, from fear or from cold, he could not tell.
He looked at the three arch-enemies – Marcellus and Hammarskjald, confident and relaxed, and Archange, indifferent. He knew each was playing a part, for the onlookers and for each other, but he suspected that deep down each was relishing it. And he realized that, though the City’s future hung in the balance, this game between them was a familiar one – they had played it before in other times and places, though the odds and the prizes had changed over the centuries. Today they were wagering the lives of all the City’s people for the possession of a child and, what, a piece of cloth? None of them had the veil, if Hammarskjald’s words could be trusted, but who had the baby, Marcellus or Archange?
Hammarskjald stared at the empress for a long moment, then, it seemed, decided to alter the odds. ‘Thekla!’ he called.
The woman at Archange’s side left the empress and glided across the floor. Rubin saw it was the sharp-tongued surgeon he’d met in a hospital while searching for Valla. She had discarded her bundled clothes of grey and now wore a slender golden gown, incongruous amongst the grubby, weary soldiers in the broken throne room. The empress watched, her expression unreadable, as a player she believed was her ally moved across to her opponent.
‘She would not tell me, my love,’ Thekla said to Hammarskjald and her voice was the chirrup of birdsong after a long, dark night. ‘The old hag claims not to know about the reflection’s get. I’ve been trying to wheedle it out of her.’ She cast a scornful look at the empress. ‘But she is stubborn and suspicious.’
Hammarskjald took her hand and brought it to his lips. They were an ill-matched pair, he in his dirty, ragbag clothes, she in a sheath of silk seeded with pearls which gleamed in the flashing lights from the shattered glass. She had clearly dressed carefully for this day, for this man, as though the death and ruination about her were of less importance than her appearance.
‘What happened here?’ Hammarskjald asked her. ‘Fin Gilshenan failed. Much of the palace still stands.’
‘He was thwarted by a soldier,’ Thekla told him. ‘She killed him before he could complete his task.’
‘Then it’s as well he’s dead,’ he replied, ‘or I’d have disembowelled him myself.’
Watching them together, Marcellus shook his head and chuckled. ‘What is it about these Vincerus women, Hammar? You can’t leave them alone, even after all this time. They will be your downfall, mark my words. None of them was ever of any worth, except Saroyan. She was the only smart one among them.’
Thekla turned on him, her beautiful voice now dripping venom. ‘Yet you had her put to death! You will pay for that!’ she spat. ‘Your death song will be endless.’
Marcellus shrugged. ‘See? All mad as a bag of cats,’ he commented, looking around. ‘She will creep up on you one night and stab you in the back,’ he predicted to Hammarskjald. ‘Or worse.’ He winked.
Is this what it is to be a Serafim? thought Rubin. To boast and strut like street merchants while beneath them loyal soldiers lie crushed and bleeding and throughout the City people are dying in agony? Is this all their great power is reduced to? Since he had first heard the word ‘Serafim’ on his father’s lips, and understood the inheritance he carried, Rubin had squirrelled away all the information he could find on those mysterious beings. He had plagued his mother and tutors with questions, had gleaned clues and abstruse references from books, and chipped away shards of information from the granite of his father’s disinterest. Marcellus had satisfied many of his questions, but he was tight-lipped on where his people came from and the nature of their powers.
Now Rubin stood among them, and he found he had nothing but contempt for them. He had been appalled by Marcellus’ slaughter of the enemy, but had accepted it as vile necessity. But this was worse. For the first time he was seeing how Marcellus conducted himself when among his peers, and for the first time he looked at his lord and felt shame.
Marcellus turned to Archange. ‘You must be getting old, cousin, if you let that rabid polecat under your guard.’
Thekla lunged at him with a scream of fury and Hammarskjald took two lightning paces and grabbed her wrist. Marcellus’ men leaped in front of him but he rapped out an order and they backed off. Hammarskjald whispered to his woman, holding her tight to him, one hand at her waist. She nodded, then favoured Marcellus with a chilling smile.
‘So,’ Marcellus concluded, clapping his gauntleted hands together. He seemed invigorated by the atmosphere of malice and hatred. He looked from the big man to the silent empress and back. ‘It seems we are at a stalemate here.’
Stalemate, Rubin thought, in a game for supremacy while thousands suffer.
‘Not at all,’ Hammarskjald replied. ‘Within days my army will have conquered the City and brought a deadly plague to everyone within its walls.’ He paused to let them absorb his words. ‘Only I can stop them. Will you really doom the entire City for the sake of a single child?’
Archange cleared her throat and addressed him for the first time. ‘Would you condemn so many people to a terrible death,’ she retorted, ‘for the sake of a single child?’
As the silence lengthened, Rubin tried to understand. The Serafim lived very long lives – he had learned that much – though no one could say how long for no Serafim was known to have died of old age, or so Marcellus had asserted. But in a long life, with godlike powers you can use to acquire anything you want, what still holds value for you? And who do you compare your successes with, other than those diminishing few who are like you? So down the years the Serafim had quarrelled over lands and armies, boundaries and castles, gold and concubines, and over the Gulon Veil. This is all about which of the three can win advantage over his peers, he thought. Hammarskjald is using the might of tens of thousands of warriors to threaten the City of Gold in the hope of getting his hands on Fiorentina’s baby, an infant, a wild and reckless throw to win an unknown quantity who might not be a Serafim, who might not even have survived the trauma of birth.
Rubin could no longer stay quiet. He needed to do something to break the impasse. Though fearful, he strode forward and offered, ‘I will go with you, lord. Take me instead of the child.’
Hammarskjald stared at him without expression, but his pale eyes darkened.
Rubin felt Marcellus’ hand grasp his shoulder. ‘Don’t be a fool, boy!’ he warned, but Rubin ignored him and forged on, knowing the die was cast. ‘I am the son of a Serafim and of two Families,’ he declared. ‘Use me for whatever fell purpose you have planned for the child.’
‘You are Indaro’s brother?’ Hammarskjald’s deep voice rumbled.
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For all his fear, Rubin felt a trickle of black amusement. Would he always be known as Indaro’s brother, Reeve’s son? He nodded.
Hammarskjald threw back his head and laughed and his merriment rang out across the City. As if in answer the morning sun at last burned through the cloud and lit up the field of play.
‘You are an arrogant pup!’ Hammarskjald cried. ‘I do not want any Serafim – I have seen more than enough of them over the centuries. But the newborn is a first. It is unique, incomparable! You are just one in a failing line of dullards.’
Humiliated and angered by the man’s contempt, Rubin reached inside himself for the power that lay there. Whether it responded to his fear or to his anger he didn’t know, but at his thought it flowered in his belly.
Quick as a flash, before Rubin knew what was happening, Hammarskjald’s eyes darkened to black and he trapped the younger man in his gaze. Rubin was held transfixed, unable to move a muscle, as he was hit by a blast of cold, burning energy which ripped the clothes from his body, then the skin from his flesh. He screamed in agony and horror. Hammarskjald released his grip on him and Rubin was flung across the chequered floor, sliding on the ice to the very edge. In a wild insanity of pain and fear he scrabbled with bloody fingers for purchase but there was none to be found and he screamed again in terror as his naked, skinned body shot out over the edge and plunged—
He blinked.
‘And why a plague?’ Marcellus was asking Hammarskjald, seeming genuinely interested. ‘It seems a blunt weapon of choice.’
Rubin stood trembling, panic skittering around in his mind. He stared down at himself, at his travel-worn clothes and old boots. He clutched the carved white box to his chest like a shield, trying to calm the terrified pounding of his heart. Like someone jerked from a nightmare, he struggled to separate the real world from dreams. No one was paying him any attention; all eyes were on Hammarskjald.
‘It is not just any plague,’ Hammarskjald boasted. ‘It is engineered to afflict only people with our blood running in their veins. Serafim blood. Alien blood. And after a thousand years of your stewardship that amounts to most of the City’s accursed population.’ He spat the words with contempt. ‘Anyone else exposed will become a carrier but will not sicken. Which is why,’ he explained, ‘my soldiers are spreading it without falling victim themselves. In a matter of days your, and my, blood will be wiped from the City, from the planet. And good riddance.’ He looked round at them all, gloating in his achievement. His eyes lingered on Rubin and his eyes gleamed.
The Immortal Throne (2016) Page 58