by Sarah Rayne
There was the same dank fetid stench she had been aware of earlier; a sweetish, rotting-meat, old-blood smell. A decaying tomb-like taint.
Great black iron hooks had been driven into the ceiling of the stone room, and from each of these hooks hung lumps of bloodied meat, Man-size, yes, Man-size, swinging to and fro slightly in the draught created by the opening of the door, moving, rotating gently on the terrible black hooks. The floor beneath each one was darkened and stained, and there was a steady dripping sound as the blood and the fluid and the juices of the carcases drained on to the cold stones.
Sides of meat. Carcases of red-streaked flesh and bone and gristle. Swathes of leathery skin and rattling bundles of whitening bone, and yawning, gaping trunks, with a stump at each comer, where the limbs had been hacked off.
Human carcases and Human meat. Truncated bodies, headless torsos, hanging in a butcher’s dungeon. Fenella felt sickness rising in her throat and swallowed convulsively.
A slaughterhouse. A meat-house. A necromancer’s spell-store.
Fenella was unable to move, but her mind was tumbling and her stomach churning.
CuRoi did not need to use the Fields of Blood, because he had his own storehouse here, he had his own private warehouse of Human flesh and bone and skin and hair.
Fenella backed away, her stomach lifting with nausea, and, as she did so, the whispering, murmuring voices echoed about the room.
The shadows moved and thickened, and Fenella, still half in and half out of CuRoi’s spell, remembered his servants.
Better unseen, Human Lady,
Or we shall rip you, Human Lady.
Fair of skin and dark of eye,
A Human to feed to spells, Lady.
The unseen servants of CuRoi, peering from the shadows of the necromancer’s slaughterhouse … Long, bony fingers reaching out, evil inward slanting red eyes peering … For a brief and terrible instant, Fenella saw them, grinning goblin faces, evil prancing shapes with long, scissor-like nails at the ends of their hands and jagged pointed teeth.
All the better to tear you apart, Human Lady …
Fenella gasped and choked down a scream and fell back into the stone passage. As she did so, a soft, light, footfall padded down the stone steps.
Nuadu was standing at the far end, watching her.
His head was tilted, and Fenella saw at once that there was something subtly different about him; something sleeker and leaner and something that you could very easily imagine bounding forward and felling you to the ground …
He regarded her silently, his eyes gleaming, and the shadows fell across the upper part of his face, so that his eyes showed red and slanting, and his mouth was thinner, a little cruel … Fenella stood very still and waited for him to speak. She felt the sticky spider’s-web-spell fall from her, so that she no longer heard the silvery fire-voice and no longer felt the strong sweet beckoning.
The planes of Nuadu’s face were altering, sharpening, becoming pointed and hungry … It might have been a trick of the light, but Fenella knew it was not. And wasn’t there the faint — yes, more than faint — suggestion of a muzzle forming … a muzzle that would slaver and savour, and sharp gleaming teeth beneath that would tear and rip … ?
Nuadu smiled and Fenella bit back a gasp, because it was not the gentle, ironic smile of the bastard Wolfprince, nor was it the sudden sweet intimate smile of the lover of the forest …
The smile of a Wolf stalking its prey … Alien and strong and possessed of such dark seduction that Fenella felt her senses somersault. A pang of longing sliced through her, followed at once by a wash of fear.
‘Come here, Fenella,’ said Nuadu in a soft voice.
He held out the hand that was flesh and blood and skin, and the thin smeary light from the wall sconce fell across it, so that his skin was no longer skin, pale and Human and ordinary, it was dark and silky and sable.
It was impossible not to be aware of the strong, dark allure of this strange creature who was certainly more Wolf than Human now. Into Fenella’s dazed mind flickered the old legends of snakes fascinating their prey and holding them motionless, simply by the power of their eyes.
I believe he is holding me motionless and probably helpless simply by looking at me now … What ought I to do? If he springs upon me, what could I do? Thought Fenella, her eyes distended. I think I might be fascinated as well. I think I ought not to be, but I have to admit to it.
Nuadu was leaning back against the far wall, his eyes glittering, the shadows still twisting about his body, so that it was impossible to see where the Human ended and the Wolf began …
But when he spoke, his voice was the one she remembered, and when he said, ‘Did I not tell you, Fenella? Did I not warn you?’ Fenella heard the unmistakable note of anguish.
He stayed where he was, wreathed in shadow, and now Fenella could see the wolfmask lying across his face, and she could see that, although he still stood upright, there was an unfamiliar stance, as if he was unused to standing like this, as if he was uncomfortable … As if he was accustomed to going on all fours.
Nuadu said, very gently, ‘I would not hide this from you, my love, but I would that you had never seen me thus. But I am what I am, Lady.’ And waited again, with such a patient mien, that Fenella took a deep breath and fought to remain where she was, but felt her heart singing, because he had said ‘my love’. He had called her ‘my love’, and surely this darkness would pass, wouldn’t it? and he would be freed from whatever strange bewitchment walked these halls?
At last, she said, in a whisper, ‘CuRoi. What has CuRoi done to you — ?’
‘I believe he has reached deep into my mind and found the darkness,’ said Nuadu. ‘Fenella, I felt it happen.’ A brief smile. ‘Did I not tell you what might happen?’ he said. ‘CuRoi has found the Wolf. He has uncovered the deeply buried hungers of my ancestors, the Wolves, and he has called to them.’ He turned his head to look at her again and then, quite suddenly, he said, ‘But CuRoi called to you, also.’
‘Yes.’ The strange fire-voice, the whispering grinning creatures … ‘Yes, I believe he did,’ said Fenella, slowly. ‘Why?’
‘To lure you down here.’
‘Into the — ’ Fenella stopped and Nuadu at once said, ‘You have found one of his storehouses? Human remains, perhaps?’
‘How did you know?’
‘No sorcerer who practises the dark art of necromancy can do so without using Human flesh and Human blood and bone and fat.’ He regarded her, and Fenella found that she was able to look at him quite naturally and easily now, as if the thin, sharply angled wolfmask was not in the least sinister.
Not sinister and perhaps even exciting …
Nuadu smiled at her and moved towards her in one single effortless movement and Fenella felt his arms go about her and felt again the hard, masculine warmth, insistent, throbbing … For CuRoi has woken the hungers …
And then, putting her from him, Nuadu said, in a cool, practical voice, ‘And now, my Lady, we have to explore further.’
Nuadu moved to the second door, and stood confronting it, legs slightly apart, the silver arm glinting dully. After a moment, he reached out a hand and pushed it open.
Sick greenish light poured out at once and, with it, the sour stench of decay. Fenella, at Nuadu’s side, felt his arm come round her, and stood silently by his side, looking in.
The second room was smaller than the first, but it was the same dank windowless oblong as the first, shadowy and silent.
At first, Fenella thought it was empty and then, as her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw that thrown down into the farthest comer was a pitiful collection of tiny shrivelled bodies, blind and boneless-looking creatures, only just recognisable as Human babies. They lay as they must have been flung, huddled together, as if blindly seeking the warmth and the companionship their aborted lives had been denied. Their skins had the waxen quality of creatures who live underground and their tiny starfish hands reached out as if in sup
plication. Most horrifying of all, over each soft vulnerable little skull was a veil, a thin membrane, a pallid film, covering the head and in some cases reaching down over the blind closed eyes.
‘Cauls,’ said Nuadu, softly, a note of horror in his tone. ‘The veils of unborn babies. Believed to hold immense power over death.’
Fenella thought she could not have spoken if her life had depended on it. She was unable to look away from the pitiful tumble of little soft bones, from the blind, barely formed faces, from the tiny reaching hands.
Ripped from the womb to serve a necromancer’s lust for power … This is the worst thing I have ever seen in my life, thought Fenella, staring at the poor, mangled forms. Of all the terrible things, this is the worst yet.
The chuckling bony-fingered beings were somewhere close by, with their horrid grisly chanting.
Kill the babies, eat their eyes.
Shred their skins and drink their slime.
Rip the wombs, deny them life.
Slit the birthsacs, wield the knife.
Smear their fat and let it boil,
Keep the caul, the caul is magic.
The caul is strong, preserve the caul.
‘We can do nothing for them,’ said Nuadu, very gently, closing the door. ‘They are long since gone, Lady.’
‘We can kill CuRoi,’ said Fenella.
‘Oh yes,’ said Nuadu softly. ‘Oh yes, we can do that.’ He looked down at her and Fenella saw that the wolfmask was still lying across his features, but that it was gentler now, less pronounced. Or was it simply that she was growing accustomed to it? It ought to have been menacing and alien, but it was not. There was the feeling of vicious courage, as if he would be quite capable of springing forward on to an enemy and tearing the enemy’s throat out with his teeth …
And enjoying it, Lady, and enjoying it …
Aloud he said, ‘You are already hating the Dark Realm, Fenella. After so short a time, you are hating it.’
‘Yes.’ Fenella frowned. ‘But you — your people — have lived with the threat of it for all their lives.’ She looked at him, ‘That is a terrible thing,’ she said. ‘We have to find a way to kill this creature.’
‘I would kill him with my bare hands,’ said Nuadu, his eyes gleaming again. ‘But he would vanish before I could get to him. Teeth and claws and swords will not vanquish this one.’
‘Probably he is listening to us now and chuckling to himself,’ said Fenella, raising her voice challengingly.
‘Almost certainly.’ Nuadu looked towards the third of the doors.
‘Can there be worse?’ said Fenella. ‘Can what is in there be worse than anything we have already seen?’
‘Will you stay back this time, Lady?’
‘No.’
They stared at one another and, unexpectedly, Nuadu’s expression softened. ‘Courageous but reckless,’ he said, and shook his head. ‘A dangerous combination.’
Fenella said, very deliberately, ‘I am what I am’, and Nuadu smiled.
‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘But let it not be forgotten that I made some attempt at chivalry.’
‘I’ll remember,’ said Fenella, who was actually beginning to feel rather sick.
The third door …
They heard the sounds before Nuadu reached out to the iron ring-handle and there was the sudden feeling that the room behind this door might well be larger and might well contain not pitiful Human shreds and fragments, but something else entirely.
There was a clanking, grinding sound, horridly reminiscent of the Robemaker’s treadmills, as Nuadu turned the handle. There was the sudden feeling of huge power and great force and relentless machinery being harnessed for some terrible, grisly purpose.
Nuadu pushed open the door.
If the first two rooms had been small and closed in, this was neither. It opened on to a short round tunnel, a culvert, which was made of rounded brick, and which was so low that, although they did not have to crawl on all fours, they both had to bend quite low. The sound of the clanking machinery was louder and there was a vast, echoing sound to it, as if whatever was creating the sound was doing so in some kind of vault.
Nuadu took Fenella’s hand in the now-familiar gesture and they moved into the mouth of the culvert and felt their way along its length. The floor was curved and there was a suffocating feeling, as if the smooth rounded walls might suddenly close in on them. There was not very much light, but there was enough to see that the sides were of rough black brick, pitted here and there as if something had scalded them or eaten into them or simply worn them away with the passing of time.
The floor was slippery in places and, as Fenella put out a hand for balance, the sides of the culvert felt cold and faintly slimy. She began to have the feeling that they were crawling through a drain, through which anything at all might have flooded and might still flood.
As they neared the sounds, they saw light directly ahead of them; a dull red, thick light. And then the mouth of the culvert widened and there was a brick archway and they were able to stand up and look about them.
They were standing on a small brick parapet, barely two feet across, and in front of them was a vast, echoing brick shaft, easily thirty feet across, stretching down into the bowels of the Castle. Nuadu, who knew only a little of Castles and ancient fortresses, had still absorbed a smattering of knowledge; he knew that Castles such as this one were sometimes built around a central hall or chimney which would extend from the turret tips down into the deepest part of the foundations and that these great, vault-like shafts could be used for a variety of things. They frequently held water containers near to the roof, which were designed to act as a reservoir for rainwater. Sometimes they were simply crude air shafts, with the Castle privies opening directly on to them. And although he had never seen the inside of Tara, the Bright Palace of his ancestors, he had listened to the stories of how it had been raised from the rock and how it had been used as a model for nearly every palace and castle built since. Tara’s central chimney shaft was said to wind intricately upwards through the State bedchambers, so that each chamber could have a tiny separate garde robe where fur garments could be hung and kept fresh.
But the immense stone chimney shaft at the centre of CuRoi’s Castle of Illusions had been used for none of these rather homely things. It contained a massive iron tank, a monstrous drum, smooth and cylindrical in shape and rather squat-looking. Nuadu, narrowing his eyes, thought it must be at least twenty feet in height and probably fifteen feet in circumference. Short, thick pipes ran in and out from it, as if it had to be fed, and then had to disgorge unwanted matter. The drum itself had the dull finish of steel or perhaps even tin; the sort of surface that would make your teeth wince agonisingly if you scraped your fingernails across it. There was the terrible charnel stench again, but there was a tin-like taint to it now, and Nuadu at once recognised it as the stench and the taste of a very great quantity of blood.
A reservoir of Human blood … A great smooth-sided iron cauldron, a cistern, twenty feet high and reinforced all around to withstand the immense pressures of the fluid inside …
The fluid inside …
At length, Nuadu said, very softly, ‘This is CuRoi’s Blood Reservoir.’
‘Yes.’ Fenella was staring up at the great squat cylinder, finding it horrifying and grisly, but finding as well that it had a dreadful live appearance, as if it might suddenly uproot its feet from their moorings deep within the Castle’s foundations and come waddling and lurching towards them, slopping its terrible burden over the sides as it came …
And then Nuadu’s hand closed about hers and Nuadu’s voice said, very calmly and very strongly, ‘It is very nasty, Fenella, but it is simply a great cistern filled with liquid.’
‘Yes.’ Fenella bit down her repulsion, because it was quite absurd to be felled by this when she had managed to cope with everything else so far.
As they stood watching, there was the clanking, teeth-wincing steel-against-tin soun
d again and they saw that there was an inner drum, very slightly smaller than the outer one, and that it was being pushed upwards from beneath, quite slowly and quite naturally.
Nuadu said, his voice echoing against the cold brick shaft, ‘The blood level is rising. It is being fed from somewhere.’
‘We had — ’ Fenella stopped, and then managed to go on fairly normally. ‘On Renascia, we had what we called water tanks — huge drums a bit like this, with mesh lids. There was a mechanism in them — fairly simple — which would measure the level and indicate when the tank was nearly empty, so that we knew to lever off the lid and catch the next rainfall. The tanks had an inner drum which rose when the level was high, and subsided when it was low. Not unlike this, I think.’
‘Ingenious race,’ said Nuadu. ‘So, after all, there is nothing so very new,’ and Fenella knew he was trying to force the conversation on to a simple, homely level, to reduce her revulsion.
At length, she said, ‘There is nothing here that will tell us about the King. Ought we to — ’
‘Try the other rooms?’
‘We’ll have to,’ said Fenella, firmly.
Creeping back through the culvert was nearly worse than creeping along it had been earlier. Fenella knew it was absurd to keep visualising the great Blood Tank suddenly lurching after them, reaching out its thick pipes like arms or tentacles to trap them, but she did think it.
She was grateful to reach the low door and be able to stand upright in the passage again.
‘Onwards?’ said Nuadu, looking down at her, and smiling to see that there was a smudge of dust across one cheekbone and that it did not make her any less beautiful. Her face was pale and her eyes were huge and dark, but he could feel, through her fear and revulsion, a strong, steady anger against CuRoi.
‘Onwards,’ said Fenella, at once, and from somewhere dredged up a grin, because if Nuadu had lived under the shadow of this evil, clever creature and this massive threat, then she could look upon whatever else they might find.