Eight Kings (The King's Watch Book 6)

by Mark Hayden

  All of the left hand wall was given over to forges and furnaces, now cold. Benches were along the back, and the presence of several chairs said that this was a shared space. On the right wall was an arch, and instead of a door, the face of the arch was blackness. Total, light-absorbing magickal blackness. In front of it, Eseld was hesitating.

  ‘Have you been in before?’ I asked. ‘How does it work?’

  ‘How did Niði’s Labyrinth work?’ She was delaying. If she didn’t make a go for it in a few minutes, I’d be leading her back outside. ‘It used magick to move the walls while you weren’t looking. It also had some sort of relativity effect. Time slowed down in there.’

  ‘There’s one area of magick that Dwarves really aren’t good at: Plane Shifting. Dad’s Labyrinth moves you seamlessly between different planes of existence. It means the permutations are infinite.’

  I gave it some thought. ‘Let’s start from the obvious. His killer got in there, either with him or on their own. They also got out again. Why would he be in the Labyrinth at three in the morning?’

  ‘He’s never been a great sleeper. If he can’t sleep, he goes and looks at the flux. This isn’t just a maze for the sake of a maze, it’s the confluence of every Ley line in Cornwall and the start of the Great West Way.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that. I thought it started in Glastonbury.’

  ‘It used to. You must have been reading an old book, because Dad re-crafted it. The Great West Way starts here and runs in more or less a straight line through Glastonbury, Oxford, Cambridge, and ends in Norwich. From here, he could examine the load on the whole country.’

  I tried to soften my voice. ‘How did they do it, Eseld? How did they get in and out?’

  She shook her head. ‘This was a stupid idea. Only Kenver has the potential to understand what Dad did in there. At least there’s no boar here.’

  ‘Boar? You mean there is one somewhere?’

  ‘Yeah. At Kellysporth.’

  I pulled at my lip and thought about what must lie beyond the perfect black barrier in the archway. ‘Tell me about the history of the Labyrinth in relation to Pellacombe.’

  ‘Why? How will that help?’

  ‘Humour me.’

  ‘It was just before Mum dragged us off to Glastonbury. I can’t really remember it, but I’ve heard the stories so often, it seems like I was there.’ She shifted her posture slightly, more confident of what she was doing. ‘Dad built Pellacombe by starting with the Labyrinth. There was an old mine just above the original farmhouse, and he built the Labyrinth in there. Ginnar the Dwarf came and tried it out. For a whole week, he was lost in the maze. I was here for that, but I don’t really remember it. Not long after that, my mother was offered a place in the Homewood Covens and took it. She also took us away from here. Cador was only a baby.’

  I put what I already knew with what Eseld had just told me. ‘And that’s how legends are born,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your real skill is in Wards. Have you had many dealings with Dwarves?’

  ‘I was presented to Ginnar on my eighteenth birthday. By the gods, that was creepy and definitely the worst birthday present ever.’ She looked back at the arch. ‘I haven’t been back to Ginnar’s Hall since.’

  ‘I’ve had extensive dealings with the slippery little buggers. They do not travel from their Halls to test out mazes. There is no profit in that.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘That the Labyrinth never existed. Your Dad made it all up. When Ginnar came here, he was digging out whatever’s behind that portal. Presumably a cavern for your father’s work with Ley lines.’

  ‘No! He wouldn’t spin a story like that.’

  ‘Yes, he would. Mowbray had many faults, I’m sure, but he loved all his children. He even loved Kerenza’s daughter and spent quality time with her. He would not leave a deadly labyrinth for his children to walk into and get lost. He loved you the most, Eseld. He would never risk his little girl going into a Labyrinth with no escape. What if he were away on a job? And what would it serve? Why have such a thing?’

  ‘But why lie?’

  ‘I’m sure there’s something in there. Something to offer protection. Something to show off to clients. But no Labyrinth.’

  ‘How could he have kept that up?’

  ‘In the same way that he plotted to become staff king of Cornwall.’

  ‘Kernow.’

  I left it there to sink in. The ball was in her court.

  ‘What shall we do. I still want to find him.’

  ‘Go through there and see. And you better be as good at Wards as you say you are.’

  ‘Hunh. Watch me.’

  She took a small blue disk from her chain of Artefacts. Mowbray blue. She held it towards the black face of the arch and raised her other hand. The disk shimmered faintly. Then stopped.

  She walked over to one of the benches and took a couple of metal tools from a rack. They looked like something a dentist might use to get revenge on a patient who’d eaten garlic before his appointment. She took the disk and the tools over to an anvil and placed the disk on top. In moments, the anvil was glowing with Lux – I could feel it from ten feet away.

  She used the tools to tinker with the disk and grunted with satisfaction. She picked it up and crossed the room again. ‘Take my hand. And grab Scout.’

  I felt the heat of both magick and a sweaty palm. With her other hand, she presented the disk to the arch and the blackness fell away.

  ‘Quick!’ she pulled on my hand and we stumbled into an open space. The arch behind us clouded over again, but this time as a mirror.

  ‘Is that a Dodgson’s Mirror?’ I said. I’d seen one before, in my quest to rescue the Thirteenth Witch.

  ‘Well spotted. It’s actually a variant and does a similar job on this side by blocking everything. On the other side, it absorbs everything. It’s very energy efficient. I wanted Dad to call it Mowbray’s Mirror and share it. He was too modest.’

  Beyond the arch, in this new space, we had a simple choice: along the corridor or up the stairs. I knew which I’d chose – the stairs. I looked up and they were blocked off at the top. Bricked up. ‘What are these for?’ I said.

  ‘Dunno. Changed his mind, probably. Let’s go and take it carefully.’

  The corridor was definitely Dwarven work, something I pointed out to Eseld. She nodded an acknowledgement and stretched out her arms to check for Wards. I kept quiet and left her to it.

  She walked as slowly down the corridor as a Royal Logistics engineer in a minefield. We travelled ten metres and she stopped. ‘Nothing.’

  She moved faster and we came to right turn.

  ‘We’re going to move to another plane,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It’s that or emerge into the kitchens. They’re just down there.’

  The only way we knew we were on another plane was that Scout started to glow. Orange. Not a good look on a Border Collie. ‘His original Spirit will be enhanced a fraction,’ said Eseld. ‘He’s good. Dad’s the best. This is totally seamless.’

  The corridor started to turn right again, hard right, and Scout’s glow faded. There was an opening ahead, and we found ourselves back in the original room, complete with staircase. The tunnel we’d gone into had disappeared and we’d returned through what had been a brick wall before. I’m sure that if we retraced our steps now, the situation would be reversed.

  ‘The cunning sod,’ said Eseld. ‘That trip had the subtlest Ward I’ve ever seen built into it. Somewhere, a bloody great alarm has just gone off. That tunnel acted like a dynamo: the more we moved along, the more noise it generated. What now?’

  ‘Up the stairs. You go on your own. The serious Wards will be up there.’

  ‘It’s bricked up!’

  ‘Saffron’s cousin, Bertie, has a wall just like that. It hides her workshops from mundane visitors.’

  Scout and I retreated, and Eseld did her thing. I
t took her three minutes (I checked), and she offered no explanation when the brick wall turned into a wooden door.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she said.

  ‘Scout! Find Mowbray. Go on.’

  He climbed the stairs with more enthusiasm than grace. Eseld opened the door and we followed the pooch into a corridor that was definitely human and which quickly doubled back, around the two rooms below us and then presented another staircase, this time down.

  ‘You were right about the stairs,’ said Eseld. ‘How come?’

  ‘I knew that they’d take us up, into the foundation levels of the main mansion. Easy to build access there and then cover it up after. And I knew that because wherever we went, it had to lead to a point five metres north of the forges in the workshop, and two metres lower. That’s where those stairs will take us.’

  ‘Eh? How do you figure that out?’

  ‘When your father came looking for me, he emerged into the sitting room of the King’s Watch suite, which is why Scout got the shock of his life. When they dragged him down from our room, he went at an angle. Those two lines meet down there.’

  ‘Right.’ She stopped at the top of the stairs. ‘I’m not sure I can face it, Conrad. I’ve been reaching out and reaching out, and I can’t feel him anywhere. Nothing.’

  ‘It’s going to be grim. It would be no weakness to wait up here.’

  ‘I need to see. And there might be more Wards.’

  ‘After you.’

  We followed her down the stairs, and with every step I got hotter. Even my titanium tibia started to itch. We were coming into the presence of a lot of Lux.’

  ‘This should be sealed,’ she said. ‘We must be coming near to the intersection.’

  A small square room at the bottom of the stairs had an open door. The heat of Lux flowed from it like a super-sized sauna.

  ‘They couldn’t close the door behind them,’ she said. ‘Or they were in a hurry. All the Wards are linked to the door being shut. It’s safe for you to go in.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ I unzipped my combat jacket and put it on the floor. It helped a little.

  The cavern beyond was definitely Dwarven. They have a thing for pillars, and this one was stuffed full of them, both structural and ornamental.

  It stretched away into the darkness, and on the floor the intersecting Ley lines glowed. Normally they don’t, but a good Geomancer will rough the edges in a place like this so he knows where they are. There was so much energy down here that I couldn’t work out where I was without a dowsing rod to help me sort things out. I looked around. Nothing. ‘Scout?’

  He trotted off to the right, into a dark patch. I took Eseld’s hand and led her gently forward. There was a little opening, behind a mini-arch. The Ley lines in there were damaged and glowed red, not yellow. At the centre was Lord Mowbray, staff king of Kernow. Mage and father. Eseld broke down and started to cry.

  36 — Vigil

  We sat by the remains of her father for a while, and I held my arm round her shoulders. He was dressed for a day at the beach – shorts, tee-shirt and deck shoes, which told me that he’d intended to spend some time in here. Just before we’d sat down, I’d pulled his tee-shirt down to cover the hole in his back.

  The sobs had stopped for a minute before she spoke. ‘Have you brought your fags?’ I lit two and passed her one. ‘How did they do it? Why is there blood on his back?’

  ‘We’re looking for three of them,’ I said. ‘He trusted one of them. He was facing that person when he was attacked from behind. The second one hid behind a pillar, over there. They used a simple blast to knock a hole in his chest. The third was on hand to drag his Spirit back down. I don’t know what they did with it.’

  ‘Why here?’

  ‘So much Lux. Can you sense Scout?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I took a treat out of my pocket. ‘Close your eyes.’ I threw the treat in a random direction and he hared after it. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I lost sight of him after less than three metres.’

  ‘That’s why your father was killed here: they could hide and ambush him. And they thought he wouldn’t be discovered for a long time. They hadn’t reckoned on him raising the alarm. I should go, Eseld. We’ve been here ages.’

  ‘Time passes slowly in here. Much slower than outside. The opposite of a Dwarven Labyrinth.’ She reached out a hand and stroked his fingers. ‘Goodbye, Dad. I’ll get them. I’ll make you proud of me one last time.’ She held out a hand. ‘Let’s go.’

  I waited until we were back in the workshop before speaking again, partly out of respect and partly because when I’d touched the body, I’d checked Mowbray’s neck for his chain of Artefacts. They were missing, and I didn’t want Eseld storming off and trying to search everyone without a warrant. The further I could get away from the scene of crime, the less chance of her asking the question.

  When we were on the other side of Mowbray’s Mirror, I said, ‘What happened after you left the banquet last night?’

  ‘Mega-awkward doesn’t even begin to cover it, even by our family’s standards.’

  I moved myself into a position in front of the door back to the mansion. ‘I need to find your father’s murderer, Eseld. Tell me.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Her chin came up and some of the fire returned to her eyes. ‘You think it’s one of us.’

  ‘I don’t think that the Daughters sent an impromptu hit-squad in here last night. At least one of the three killers is from this side of the mansion.’

  ‘Why not me?’

  ‘You loved him most, and after Aisling, he loved you most.’

  ‘Is that it? That simple?’

  ‘As a Watch Captain, yes, it is that simple. As a therapist, that would only be the beginning.’

  She blinked, and her voice lost some of its Cornish burr. It also gained a touch of cod-Scandinavian. ‘Truly, when the Goddess sent you into the RAF and not psychotherapy, she did the world a favour. Sometimes her ways are not mysterious at all.’

  ‘Yes, Hedda, now tell me about last night.’

  ‘Can’t we get some coffee first?’

  ‘Look on it as an incentive. Give me the twenty second version.’

  ‘OK.’ She took a breath. ‘Dad has broken up the Mowbray Trust into six parts. Broke, not broken.’ She stumbled over her words. ‘Instead of one trust to benefit the family as a whole, it’s now six named trusts. Kellysporth and all the north coast lands go to Ethan; Predannack goes to me; Mowbray House in London goes to Cador in one year’s time; Nanquidno goes to Kerenza; all the other bits and bobs stay with the Pellacombe Estate and are – were – Dad’s for his lifetime. Now that he’s gone, they’re Kenver’s.’

  No wonder Rachael had been so keen to talk to me. This would have massive implications for her firm in general and her in particular. There were two obvious questions, so I asked the less important one first. ‘Why does Cador have to wait a year?’

  ‘Mowbray House is full of magick, so Cador lives in a mundane flat. Dad was going to make it safe for him to live there.’

  It was time for the other question. ‘I’ve got A level maths, Eseld. You only described five trusts and you didn’t mention Medbh.’

  ‘That was the second shock. She gets Ethandun. Sort of.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Mmm. It’s the old palace of the staff kings. Huge castle. Makes Pellacombe look like a holiday cottage. Also mostly in ruins until Dad started work on it three years ago. As a family, we use the lodge in the grounds, and that’s gone to Medbh. The castle is in trust to be turned into a research institution. Mowbray College. To explore magick from both the quantum and traditional approaches.’

  Scout had been waiting patiently by the door. He stood up and stared at the wood. ‘Arff!’

  ‘Someone’s tinkering with the door,’ said Eseld, running her fingers over it. ‘They’ve stopped. Are we done in here?’

  I nodded, and she opened the door. On the other side, Saffron br
eathed a huge sigh of relief.

  ‘Am I glad to see you,’ she said. ‘It’s all going to kick off soon.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘The Daughters have ordered their coach and locked themselves in to the guest wing. Erin’s on watch and Mina’s trying to keep the M… your family, Eseld. Mina’s trying to stop your family from attacking me or running around the countryside. Medbh’s gone.’

  ‘What!’ That was Eseld.

  Saff flicked her eyes to Eseld but told her story to me. ‘I couldn’t get into her room. She wouldn’t answer the alarm. I had to get Kenver to help me open it. She had given him access. Her bed hasn’t been slept in and she’s taken all her stuff.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘They were in the family room, trying to take it in. When we found that Medbh had gone, they wanted to get in here, so I had to take guard. Mina’s doing her best, but even she has her limits.’

  ‘Any observations?’

  She shook her head. ‘Everyone has answered the door in their nightwear, which was nothing in some cases. No one was dressed.’

  ‘Well done, Saff.’ I looked at Eseld. She was still holding up. ‘We found him. Murdered by direct magick. No obvious clues.’

  ‘I … I’d like some time with my family,’ said Eseld.

  I started walking back to the private quarters. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me, Eseld. Your father broke a promise last night. He promised me he’d make an announcement about Medbh. He bottled it. I can’t believe that you and Cador said nothing at the family summit.’

  ‘We didn’t get the chance. As soon as we were through the doors, he said that Medbh’s story was hers to tell, not ours to ask. He said sorry again. Sorry for lying to us.’

  We were outside the door to the family sitting room. I put my hand on the door. ‘How did Medbh take it when he told you about the Mowbray College idea.’

  ‘She knew about it. She said, “I’m not ready for that yet,” and Dad said, “Nor is the castle. You both will be, in time.”’