Citadel

by Martin Ash

  ‘I brought you,’ he replied, his eyes now on one of my outstretched hands. ‘Now, this is an interesting time. The Twiners are close to the end of their season. I suspect that already many will have lost their appetite for flesh, but there will be enough, I think. It means simply that your agony will be prolonged. My advice is that you open your mouth, let the water enter. It will be quicker that way. But I think you will struggle, no matter what, and fight until the last breath. They all do, like men in burning cages. It is the indomitable urge to cling to life at any cost, even to the last excruciating moment, even when all is lost.’

  ‘Wirm, I had no intention of robbing you of your trade with Feikermun,’ I protested. ‘I didn’t know. I simply didn’t know!’

  ‘You ruined everything, you meddling fool!’ he snapped. ‘Feikermun was mine! Everything he had I would have controlled, and then you came along wanting it for yourself. Now he is gone. All my work for nothing. You will compensate me for this, Cormer of Chol. You will compensate with the spectacle of your death, but I will continue to despise you long after you have gone.’

  Now it was clear. Of course, Wirm had higher ambitions than I had suspected. Through controlling Feikermun’s gidsha addiction he had made Feikermun his virtual slave. He knew what Feikermun was doing, probably knew something of the power Feikermun sought. He had made Feikermun his puppet; Feikermun’s power would have become Wirm’s.

  ‘No!’ I protested bitterly. ‘It was not like that. I didn’t know. I sought no control over Feikermun.’

  ‘I warned you when you first announced your intention. I told you then to go. You could have lived, but you paid no heed. Ah, well, I shall enjoy the next moments, though they will not be enough. Far from enough for what you have cost me.’

  He gave a nod to the raftsman. The raft bobbed slowly as he shifted his stance and leaned to the quant. The rope tautened about my ankles and I felt the rough planks start to slide from beneath me.

  ‘No!’ I cried, terrified as much of the water itself as of what it would bring. ‘Wirm, wait, please!’

  But Wirm stood fast, one leg quivering erratically, his eyes glued avidly to my face.

  My legs were fully in the water, then my middle, my chest. Finally, gasping, my head slipped from the retreating raft. I clamped shut my mouth and eyes as the foul wet washed over me, and struggled violently against the ropes securing my ankles and wrists. I came threshing to the surface, spat slime and muck which, despite my efforts, had somehow got into my mouth. Craning back, I saw the raft bump up against the side of the tank.

  The water covered me again.

  When I resurfaced, gasping, the raftsman had raised the gate in the tank’s wooden wall. Did I see or only imagine the surge of disturbed water as the slithering carnivores came for me? I know I was crying out, sinking, held by the ropes, rising. I felt their maws upon me now, the first voracious feeders attacking my side. There was no pain, not yet - just the sensation, almost gentle, of little mouths intimately nudging and exploring... and the knowing. I sank, came back, saw Wirm and his cronies through the film of clouding water, devouring my plight. I sank again, coughing and spluttering, feeling the slippery shapes on my body and face, the eels which tore at my dying flesh.

  And then there was somebody or something else on the jetty. A pallid form, thrusting Wirm aside, springing from the jetty’s edge. It passed above me. I heard the thud as its feet alighted upon the raft. There was a yell, then a splash and screams as the raftsman fell. I was aware of my blood colouring the water, the slithering on my flesh, and the frenetic surge of panic. But the raft began to edge towards me as the pale creature took the quant and thrust hard, then reached out and grasped my arm. I did not see a blade, but the rope gave, then the rope that held my other wrist. My head and shoulders were lifted, the raft sliding beneath. There were yells from above. The other ropes were severed and I came clear of the water. With swift movements, aided now by myself, my rescuer pulled the ravening eels from me.

  ‘Wait,’ came his command. ‘Do not move.’

  He leaped up suddenly from the raft to the jetty, where Wirm was screaming at his men. Two were levelling crossbows. The pale thing was among them, knocking them to the side.

  Wirm had drawn a sword. He lunged at the creature. It blocked his blow with a mighty arm, then stepped in, lifted him and threw him struggling backwards through the air. He came down at the edge of the jetty, staggered, struggled for balance, arms windmilling. He gave a dread-filled glance over his shoulder as he toppled backwards into the thick swill of the mire.

  Wirm vanished beneath the surface, came back, hammering at the water, shrieking. The water churned. Clinging to the slippery raft, I saw the strands of sleek grey backs speeding towards him. He went under again, and when he next rose his face and arms were a mass of angry writhing Twiners.

  More of Wirm’s men were running towards the end of the jetty. Those already there, three in number now, were standing, swords drawn, before the pale creature which had for a second time saved me from the mire. But they positioned themselves well back and were hesitant about advancing upon it. From the far end of the jetty, close to the processing sheds, could be heard shouting. Glancing that way I saw many figures running back and forth; several appeared to be fighting. Others were pounding on to the jetty now. I took them to be Wirm’s men again, then saw they were engaged in combat with some of those who had gone before them.

  I was confused. The pale creature turned and launched itself from the jetty to land lightly beside me on the raft. It sank to one knee. ‘Wait here. You are safe now. Those who come are friends.’

  I looked into a face that was bland and almost featureless except for two enormous dark eyes, wondering. And as I looked I saw, as if through a pale mask. I gasped. ‘Sermilio!’

  His lips formed a smile but he said nothing.

  ‘It was you!’ I said. ‘You who pulled me from the mire before.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘That is a way of looking at it.’

  ‘But this is not you. You are not Avari.’

  ‘I have told you before, we are as you perceive us. We are as you elect to perceive us. You consider us disconnected entities, so that is how you conceive us. You imagine Avari being separate from you. You think of Scrin in the same way also. You are not yet able to conceive of us as all being one. You create us individually, and so that is the nature of the manifestation. Your own ideations. You cannot yet see that. We are aspects of Selph, but it is held secret, locked into the Citadel, where is held everything, all the perceived evils of the world, and more, as well as all the good. For now you can only be as you are, growing slowly in the natural order of things, and the secrets must remain secrets.’ He smiled, seeing the bafflement on my face.

  ‘Were you successful?’ I said. ‘Feikermun is dead. Did he die too soon?’

  ‘Scrin remain in some small number within your domain. We will hunt them down if we can, but be alert. Wherever you hear of carnage without apparent reason, know that Scrin may be at work. It is a tragic fact that, were you only ready, all of you, you could end this with a single thought. But if you realized that power too soon you would become as they are, unable to contain it, enslaved by the need to destroy. We must wait, then. Now, farewell. I go.’

  He leapt away, upwards, and as he did so he faded from my sight. Momentarily I had a vistion – of the winged host, the Avari, rising in their thousands from the sunset ocean, their crimson and black wings filling the sky. Then that too was gone, and I lowered my eyes, knowing there were some things I would never understand.

  Wirm’s men had thrown down their weapons. They were heavily outnumbered by those others pouring onto the jetty, and with their master gone sought only to preserve their own lives. But who were these others, and how had they succeeded in breaching Wirm’s seemingly impenetrable fortress in the mire? The answer to the first part of that question came as a distant figure emerged from one of the sheds and stepped up to the furthest end of the jetty
. I thought I knew him, though at this distance I could not be certain. He was huge and ungainly, and walked with a slow, laboured, listing gait. His approach seemed interminable. He wore a mail surcoat and a silvered helmet, and carried a huge sword. A bodyguard of four soldiers accompanied him.

  I waited, shivering, aware of the blood from the scores of tiny wounds inflicted by the female Twiners over most of my naked body. At last the huge man arrived and stood at the jetty’s edge, hands upon his great hips, huge belly jutting forward. ‘You are in a sorry state,’ he said, and glanced across to where Wirm’s mutilated and now abandoned remains floated in the water. ‘Still, you have fared better than he.’

  ‘You are a welcome sight, Vastandul,’ I said, ‘though your appearance leaves me mystified.’

  ‘I came to help you,’ he said. He spoke to one of his men, who threw me a rope. As I clung to it my raft was hauled to the jetty. I climbed up by a wooden ladder which ascended from the eel-tank to the jetty. A blanket was brought and wrapped around me.

  As I waited I looked down at Wirm’s remains. His blood reddened the disturbed water. I saw a flicker beside one half-eaten eye, and shuddered. The eels had taken their fill and, as was their habit, left him alive but, to use his own words, in a condition in which life could not be sustained.

  ‘Come,’ said Vastandul. ‘Let us go to the manse where you can be properly cared for. Can you walk?’

  I nodded.

  ‘How did you do it? How did you conquer Guling Mire?’ I asked as I shuffled across the creaking boards. ‘And why?’

  ‘All in good time,’ he said. ‘Suffice to say I was not alone.’

  He waved a fat hand towards the processing sheds, and glancing over I saw a figure standing there, facing our way. It was garbed in a yellow-and-blue surcoat, its entire head encased by a reflective golden helm.

  The Golden Lamb raised his hand and I, bone-weary, managed to raise mine in return.

  TWENTY THREE

  ‘A rare disguise indeed, that can keep a man safe even from ravening Twiners,’ observed the Golden Lamb. He was seated upon the blue-upholstered carved-oak chair which I had occupied the last time I had been here, in the opulent reception chamber in Wirm’s fortified manse. He was right: I should have died, for I had been in the water long enough before Sermilio intervened. The Twiners had had ample time to do to me almost as much as they had done to Wirm. But the false flesh moulded on to my face and body by the Chariness and her helpers to transform me into the fictional Linias Cormer had bolstered me against the first wave of hungry mouths. And it seemed the eels had not found it to their liking, for relatively few had sustained their attack. When Wirm had subsequently plunged into the water the Twiners had turned on him with a frenzy that matched the pitch of their unslaked ardour. He had proven far more palatable than I.

  So I had emerged from the mire scoured by dozens of minor flesh wounds - without aid I would almost certainly have bled to death eventually - but none of them would leave a permanent scar. And I was alive, whereas Wirm was, I hoped for his sake, now dead.

  The Golden Lamb, my friend Viscount Inbuel m’ Anakastii of Twalinieh in Kemahamek, was eyeing me keenly, his brown eyes sparkling. ‘You are unrecognizable now,’ he said, the irony still prominent in his voice. ‘A non-identity, somewhat sorry in aspect, and neither Cormer nor Dinbig, yet with elements of both.’

  It was true. I had seen myself in a mirror. My false flesh was half-eaten away. It and my real flesh littered my features in ribbons and tatters and deep uneven craters and scars, bloodless in places, raw and angry elsewhere. I was like a creature tormented by some terrible flesh-devouring pox. More appropriately, I thought, I resembled something that had returned from the dead, and in so many ways I had.

  We were alone, the Golden Lamb and I. I was resting, weak and shaken but grateful for having survived and relieved in the knowledge that it was over at last. Almost. There was still some talking to do.

  Jaktem and Ilian had departed the chamber just a short time earlier. They had come to pay their respects, both keen to explain to me their part in the Dhaout affair. I learned that they had received their orders a few days before my departure from Hon-Hiaita; they had been in Hon-Hiaita themselves, in fact, members of the entourage assigned to Viscount Inbuel during his brief sojourn. But instead of accompanying him back to Kemahamek they had been sent to Riverway in Kutc’pii, to The Goat and Salmon Pool. Their instructions were to await the arrival of an anonymous personage who would be riding out of Khimmur en route for Dhaout. They were to offer him their services as bodyguards - it was expected that he would be seeking such. But if unsuccessful in their application they were to tail him, doing all in their power to ensure his welfare, and once in Dhaout to report to the Golden Lamb on his movements and progress.

  ‘We are sorry we gave you cause to believe we had betrayed you, Master Cormer,’ said Jaktem, looking uncharacteristically ill at ease, ‘but as you now know, it was never that way. We worked for you at all times, assigned by another, and in ways that you could not understand at the time.’

  ‘I see that now,’ I agreed. ‘And, if my memory serves, you have not yet received your due salary.’

  ‘We have been paid in full for our service,’ said Ilian with a glance to the Golden Lamb.

  ‘But not by me,’ I said. ‘I hired you on specific terms, and I shall see to it that the agreement is honoured. Unfortunately I have been stripped of all I had—’

  ‘Your clothing and immediate effects have been found here,’ said the Golden Lamb from within his ornate helm. ‘And we brought your other belongings with us from Dhaout.’

  ‘Then I charge you two to apply to me later, certainly before you leave Guling Mire, and you will be fully paid. And I shall prepare references and endorsements also, for use in the unlikely event that you should ever find yourselves in need of work outside of your current employ.’

  After the two men had left, the Golden Lamb crossed to the door and spoke briefly to the guard outside. Then he returned, closing the door, and seated himself. He removed his helm. ‘It gets so stuffy in here,’ he said, shaking free his dark curls.

  ‘Inbuel, are you not concerned that someone will enter and see you?’

  ‘I have just passed precise orders to ensure against that. We will not be disturbed. Now, let us relax a little. It has been a tiring day.’

  He poured dark amber wine into two silver goblets and brought one to me. I sipped the liquid, welcoming its vigorous bite as it slid down my gullet. ‘Where is Vastandul?’

  ‘He will no doubt be here later. For now, he’s too busy rubbing his hands in contemplation of his new properties.’

  ‘New properties?’

  ‘Guling Mire,’ said Inbuel with a bland smile. ‘Vastandul is keen to become an eel-farmer. In return for his aiding me here it was agreed that he would take over the settlement. There are conditions, of course. Largely they pertain to the treatment of his workers. Wirm used a workforce of near-slaves, kept docile by drugs and brutality. They worked long hours and lived in quite appalling conditions. That will end now.’

  ‘Is Vastandul conversant in the techniques of Twiner cultivation?’

  ‘What he does not know he can learn from his workers. I think he will make it profitable.’

  ‘Can you be sure he’ll not go the way of his predecessor?’

  ‘I believe so,’ Inbuel sipped his wine. ‘He’s not entirely alone in this enterprise, you see. There is an invisible partner, a certain youthful and somewhat dashing noble of Kemahamek with whom Vastandul has done good business in the past. Vastandul has a number of interests in Kemahamek. He would not wish them compromised. There is room for a third partner, should you be acquainted with another trustworthy investor who might be interested. It’s a tempting low-risk venture.’

  ‘I can see it might have its attractions. Should anyone spring to mind I will let you know. For the present, though, I prefer not to think about eels or anything concerned with them.’
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br />   ‘I understand.’

  ‘A number of things intrigue me,’ I said after a pause, and at Inbuel’s bidding I set about trying to fill in the gaps of the previous days.

  By his account, soon after ingesting the gidsha root for the last time in Dhaout, I had fallen into a deep trance. Tentative attempts had been made to rouse me, but to no avail, and given the circumstances it was felt I should be watched but not disturbed. The description sounded familiar as I recalled my acquaintance with the Nirakupi people and their experience of the drug.

  At about this time Feikermun’s beasts, supported by Wirm and his men, had launched a concerted attack against the Golden Lamb’s position in an effort to rescue their master, who they obviously hoped was still alive. The Golden Lamb, being out of his own domain, had made the decision to withdraw to a more secure location rather than risk being surrounded and cut off in the building he currently occupied.