by William King
“That sounds like a plan,” said Rik.
“Just wait till I get my hands on Hopper, Toadface and Handsome Jan,” said the Barbarian. “I’ll teach the bastards to run out on a good fight.”
Chapter Sixteen
Vosh finished his last cup of wine and wondered what he was going to do now. The booze had numbed him nicely and made it almost possible to forget his fears. He was not a coward. He had fought alongside his kin in the High Hills and seen his share of slaughter, but he was afraid now.
Well, not exactly afraid, he thought, more ashamed. It was not the prospect of pain and death that frightened him so much as the thought of having to face his kinsmen after taking the Queen’s betraying crown.
Vosh was a hill-man and proud of it, and that was one of those things hill-men just did not do. It was like finding your sister alone in a room with a man and then not cutting that man’s dick off and stuffing it in his mouth. Actually it was worse. He knew in his heart of hearts that no matter how bad that bastard wizard Alzibar had been, and no matter what Shadow worshipping shit he had been up to down in that mine, he should not have gone to the Terrarchs.
But what else could he have done, a small part of his mind argued? His own clan were so intimidated by the wizard and that bastard Zarahel that they were going right along with him, like a pack of fawning mongrels, and that was wrong.
So what if Alzibar had known all the ancient words of brotherhood that predated the coming of the Exalted to this world? So what if he had known of the prophesies of the Secret Priesthood and told of how they would be fulfilled and the ancient ways return?
Vosh still had not liked what they were doing. Herding those folk into the mine had been wrong. Giving those women and kids to demons had been wrong. A man was supposed to protect women and children. That was what Vosh believed anyway. And if the rest of his kind did not see things that way, it was them who had forgotten their honour, not him, no matter what anybody said.
He thought about Weasel. The bastard had not been so snotty when he found out that Vosh knew about the books. Vosh had been waiting back in the shadows down in the mine when he had heard them talking their treason. They had almost spotted him but he had just managed to duck back out of sight. Now he needed to think about what he was going to do with that information. Who would it be worth most to: the Terrarchs, their Inquisitors or the men themselves? He would have to be careful. The Foragers were too damn quick with their knives. He had better not plan on walking down any dark alleys any time soon. Of course, he would not do that. He was too smart.
The thought reassured Vosh and restored some of his confidence. He decided he would have one last cup of wine and then head for bed. He’d been drinking all day, and all day yesterday and this lowlander wine was strong stuff. He was starting to feel it.
He looked up and saw one of the loose women was smiling at him, as if she wanted to join him. He knew it was his money she really wanted but that was all right by him. He would get fair value in exchange. He made a small circling gesture with his hand, and she slid into the booth beside him. Almost immediately her hand was on his leg, moving up to massage his crotch. Nothing happened down there which was understandable given how much he’d had to drink.
“I could make you hard,” she said, wetting her lips with her tongue. There was a faint trace of the hills in her voice. It was not that surprising. Many women ran away from the harsh life of the mountains and became whores in the lowlands. By the Old Gods though, she was a beauty “I know a right good way to do that.”
He smiled and gestured for her to take a drink. She might well be able to, he thought. They would see to that later. “I want to finish my drink.”
“I can wait,” she said. Even in his drunken state Vosh noticed her looking round the room. He thought he knew exactly the calculation she was making. She could wait and get money from him, or she could find somebody else who would pay her right now. The rooms upstairs were rented by the hour. On a good night she could hope to turn several tricks. He knew by the way her smile widened when she looked back at him that she had come to the same conclusion as he had. Tonight was not a good night. It was the Mourning Time, and the brawl earlier had driven a lot of men out. There were too many girls chasing too few customers. “Take your time.”
“I always do,” he said with an insinuating leer. He was starting to feel better. With the girl’s warm presence so close, and the wine burning in his gut, the fear was receding a little. One thought brought it back. Those stupid bastard soldiers had got the sorcerer but they had missed Zarahel. He shook his head and cursed. The would-be Lord of the Clans was a worse madman even than the wizard. If Zarahel ever suspected who had betrayed him... Damn Foragers could not even take him with the help of a wizard.
It was not entirely their fault. The Prophet had the Old Gods on his side. Vosh had to admit that the Prophet frightened him. He, who feared nothing save the Princes of Shadow, had felt his bowels turn to water whenever he contemplated the Prophet. It was not natural that any man should study sorcery. That was Terrarch work.
“You’re looking very thoughtful,” said the girl. “Want to talk about it?”
“Nothing that would interest you, lass. Man’s thoughts.”
“I can think of one thing that interests me,” she said. Her knowing fingers slid up his thigh once again. He drained his glass of wine and gestured towards the stairs. “Lead the way,” he said.
Vosh lay on the bed, naked, drunk and stupefied with satisfaction. The girl had done all that she promised and then some. Considering the amount he had had to drink that was impressive. He gave her a couple of extra coppers to let her know how pleased he was. She nodded, a little tensely and got up to leave. As she dressed he noticed a small tattoo on her shoulder, one that looked vaguely familiar. Where had he seen it before? There was something about it that let him know he ought to be worried.
She saw his glance and dressed quicker, heading for the door swiftly. He felt a sudden surge of fear. Some of the clansmen, Zarahel’s closest followers had gotten tattoos like that. It might have been just coincidence but Vosh had lived too long by his wits to want to let it go at that.
“What’s your hurry?” he asked, trying to spring forward and grab her. Unfortunately the booze had slowed him and left him clumsy. His legs slid on the blanket and he fell sprawling to the floor. She opened the door and he caught sight of something that paralysed him with fear. A massive figure, robed and cowled like a priest stood there and behind him were a couple of familiar faces from the hills. It looked like he had been noticed after all. The girl must have been in on it, he thought. She had lured him up here.
Vosh opened his mouth to shout for help, but the cowled figure made a gesture and Vosh’s lips locked and strength seeped from his limbs. A swift cuff sent Vosh sprawling onto the bed. His head reeled from the power of the blow. Stars danced before his eyes. He felt drunkenly sick. Before he could do anything his limbs were restrained by brawny arms. He struggled with all the strength of his fear, but could make no headway. Suddenly, knowing he was doomed, he relaxed.
The robed man pulled back his cowl, revealing Zarahel’s face. What was he doing here, Vosh wondered? Why had he left the hills? Had he come all this way just to find Vosh?
“That’s better,” Zarahel said in his low, resonant voice.
Vosh sat up right and shot the girl an accusing glare. She had the good grace to look a little ashamed. Zarahel caught the look and glanced at the girl. “You may go, Marla,” he said conversationally. It had all the force of a command.
Vosh glanced desperately at his kin. He saw no mercy in their stony faces. Finally because he had to, he forced himself to look at Zarahel. The Prophet was a big man, not as big as that Barbarian idiot but just as broad across the shoulder, and thick around the arms. He radiated an aura of physical power, and something more, a confidence that bordered on insanity.
He was a good-looking man in a craggily fierce way. His blonde hair was wavy
and only starting to grey, his jaw square and firm covered in a cropped salt and pepper beard. The grin he gave Vosh would have been engaging if slightly crazy had it not been for the eyes. There was something dead about them, something that told Vosh that he was just another piece of meat, to be carved up at whim. They were eyes that held not the slightest trace of human sympathy.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” Zarahel said in a tone that suggested Vosh was an old and valued friend. “So I shall make this quick. I want to know what became of Alzibar’s books.” He made a gesture. The numbness left Vosh’s limbs. He found he could move his lips again. He caught the scent of Zarahel then, and it sickened him. The smell was a strange sick thing compounded of old blood, rotten meat and something else, something worse.
“What books?” Vosh asked, confusion warring with his fear. His voice came out very quietly almost in a whisper. Vosh wondered if he could shout even if he wanted to. Best not try, he thought, Zarahel could cut him off with just a gesture.
“The books he kept in the mine.”
“There were no books, just demons.” Zarahel held his hand up to his ear and cocked his head to one side. He looked as if he were listening to something. A small smile flickered on his lips. He looked sidelong at Vosh.
“My friend says you are lying,” said Zarahel.
“What bloody friend?” asked Vosh, his amazement overcoming his fear.
“You should not lie to me. I went back to the manor. I found some corpses. Some of them talked to me. Some of the dead men you betrayed.”
“While you were talking to dead men why did you not ask them about the books?” Vosh asked with a last spurt of defiance.
“I would have, except somebody stole the head of the one who could tell me what I want to know.” His hand went to his ear again, and the pensive look flickered over his face. “My friend tells me you know what I am talking about.”
“What friend? Talking to the dead again, are you? Talking to ghosts?”
Zarahel gestured and something that looked like a massive spider crawled out from within his cowl then skittered down his arm until it sat atop the back of his hand. He lowered it onto Vosh’s naked belly. A closer inspection revealed it was not entirely a spider but close enough. Its lower body was long and segmented and had a barbed stinger attached. Vosh felt its furry legs tickling his stomach. He saw the evil, intelligent glitter in its manifold eyes. He saw the venom dripping from its mandibles. As it advanced towards his throat, he felt a terror bordering on insanity.
The spider was unnatural, a demon thing that would suck out his soul, just like in the old tales. Its eyes glittered with a wicked mocking intelligence as they briefly looked into his. The feeling of it on his face was almost unbearable. Its soft bloated body dragged across the flesh of his chest and touched his lips for a moment. The barbed sting arched. He could see its needle point just above his eye. The weight of the thing impeded his breathing.
“Tell me what I want to know and I will let you live. Don’t tell me and I will leave you with my small friend here.”
“All right! All right.” The spider turned and walked down his body again.
Vosh could not bear to feel that soft body press down on his belly, feel those long legs scuttle across his stomach. The thing was heading towards his groin.
“Tell me everything.” Vosh told him everything he knew. He did not owe the soldiers anything. Zarahel got up to leave.
“You’re not going to let that thing kill me,” Vosh asked, almost weeping with relief in spite of himself. The mattress felt wet beneath him. It looked like the Prophet intended to keep his word. He prayed to all the gods that he would.
“It won’t nor will I,” said Zarahel with a smile. He gestured to the glittering eyed youths from his clan. “They will.”
Chapter Seventeen
Rik woke up as the first light of the sun leaked in through the curtains. His bladder felt like it was bursting. His head felt as if someone had used it as a drum the previous night. He looked over at the dark-haired girl on the bed and tried to remember her name. Rena, he thought.
She was very pretty and had been very skilled. He checked his purse and it clinked reassuringly, the same weight as it had been the night before. He looked inside and checked the coins. He had known girls in Sorrow who had been very good at putting pewter buttons in place of coin.
Everything was there except the money he had given her. From old habit, he considered searching the room quietly and seeing if she had anything worth stealing, but it was an impulse easily suppressed. Instead he used the chamber pot, stuck his head out of the brothel window, checked the street for people below and then tossed its contents down. There was nobody except a few beggars in range to be splattered so he shouted no warning, not wanting to disturb the girl.
She stirred languorously, stretched, opened her eyes and gave him a foxy look. He tried to remember how they had met but it was all a fragmented, alcohol-blasted blur of memory. He recalled the candlelit dance palace below, a massive chandelier overhead, lots of people jigging and the Barbarian heading off propped up by a girl on either side. Doubtless he would be waking up without his purse sometime soon. Leon had wandered off with some pretty girl. Weasel he remembered sitting in a corner playing cards with some villainous looking cutthroats, his pipe jammed in his mouth, his cap at an accidentally rakish angle on his head.
“Come back to bed,” said the girl.
“Night’s over,” he said. “I paid your Aunt for the night.”
“No charge. It’s not often I get to sleep with somebody like you.”
That’s what she always says, he thought cynically. These girls liked repeat business and flattery was as much their stock in trade as tumbling in bed.
“You look like an Exalted Lord,” she said, and she sounded serious. Maybe she’s a good actor, he thought, or maybe he was just too hung-over to judge. If truth be told, the last thing on his mind was sex. What he really wanted was a fried breakfast. There was nothing like it for settling a hangover. “And you’re not from around here, are you?”
Rik began to dress. “You don’t say much do you?” she asked.
“I’m from Sorrow,” he said.
“Shadzar, the Place of Sorrow” she said, using the old proper name. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”
It was obvious she was half-expecting him to offer to take her there. She had probably received many such offers in the past. He looked at her and found some of his cynicism melting. She was just a country girl, thinking about the big city, and there was a terrible hopefulness in her eyes. He had seen that look before, on the faces of new arrivals, just before the wicked city broke them.
“It’s an awful place,” he told her. “You are better off here.”
“It’s supposed to be beautiful.” He considered that. He supposed to an outsider the glittering towers and fancy mansions must look that way. To him they had simply been reminders of all the things he could never have, places where all the people who had carelessly and accidentally ruined his life had dwelled.
He felt the old envy and bitterness well up in him, and suddenly the books came back into his mind. He felt a keenness to get out of here, to begin to look them over, to see if he could find some path towards a better future in them. No matter what evil they might contain, it could surely be no worse than what his life already held. He had to find a way to stop Weasel selling them. A chill of fear stabbed through his hangover. He had to find a way to stop Vosh selling them out too. How had things gotten so complicated, so fast?
“It is,” he told her, pulling on his boots. They were starting to come apart at the seams. He would need to see a cobbler before they went on the march. “I have to go,” he said.
“Take me to breakfast with you,” she said. “I know a good place.”
He looked at her for a moment, and considered refusing. They were strangers really, but she looked oddly young and hopeful at that moment, and he could not quite bring himself to re
fuse.
“Let’s go eat then,” he said. First food, he thought, then the books. He needed time to think anyway.
The stairs creaked below Rik’s feet. He could hear voices below him, low, tired and subdued. The place stank like every bar he had ever been in the morning after a big night. The scent of stale tobacco, stale booze and stale bodies hung in the air, and not even the slow breeze blowing in through the open doors could entirely disperse the stink. He studied his surroundings in a way he had not been sober enough to do the night before. They were every bit as tawdry as he had expected. It had long been his experience that places which held a certain seedy glamour by night looked far worse in the cold light of morning. There was nothing about Mama Horne’s to make him revise that opinion.
Cheap prints of famous courtesans and actresses covered the walls. They were stained and peeling. The boards of the stairs were poorly sanded and a little warped. The huge chandelier was still impressive though. It looked like it had been salvaged from the wreckage of some factor’s mansion. It was as out of place here as a Princess’s gown on a scrofulous grandmother. The starbrights had dimmed at the touch of daylight. They would glow again magically come nightfall. Right now they were just inert chunks of crystal.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” he heard Weasel say. “It’s always a pleasure to take your money.”
He rounded a curve in the stairs and looking over the banister caught sight of the man himself. It was obvious the game had run on all night. Three other men were awake at the table, unshaven and red-eyed as Weasel himself. One of them was stark naked except for his hat and his pipe. Several others lay asleep on nearby couches. One or two had girls snuggled near them. One clutched a bottle under his arm and muttered something in his sleep. More empty bottles lay on nearby tables. Weasel looked around and said brightly; “Another hand?”