‘What now, for fox-ache!’ Gapp hissed impatiently. He stared back at the two Paranduzes, who had just collected their moonspears from amid the two steaming piles of wire-head carnage that he had not been able to carry up into the stabbur. Hwald and Finan, for some reason, were not following him.
The little group might now be safely out of sight of the houses, and Shlepp’s nose clearly could not pick up the scent of damp hessian robes or skin sores, but Gapp’s fraught nerves were close to snapping permanently.
‘Mmeth . . .’ Finan voiced with difficulty, and followed this up with something spoken in his own tongue that was so unintelligible Gapp at first thought he was trying to dislodge maggots from the back of his throat.
The boy stared blankly. ‘Right. Meth,’ he acknowledged with a shrug. He then made as if to go, but was stopped by Hwald’s huge hand on his shoulder. He was steered around to find the Gyger face down close to his own.
‘MMETH,’ Hwald repeated, and jabbed a finger back in the direction they had just come from.
Gapp twisted free of Hwald’s grasp and backed away, disbelief rounding his eyes. ‘You have got to be joking,’ he protested. But Hwald and Finan remained where they were and did not look as if they were about to budge an inch.
Gapp began to understand what was going on here, and he did not like it one bit. In the world of the Parandus you just did not leave your friends behind, not even if it meant personal suicide.
And suicide it would be. The trouble was, Gapp considered, looking into their eyes, it was his suicide, not theirs. Methuselech was, after all, his friend. The Paranduzes, despite their physical strength, did not have the air of those now determined to mount a rescue bid. The Children of the Keep had overpowered them, how easily Gapp could not guess, but he needed no sign language or garbled attempts at human speech to tell him that they would not be fighting those devils again. The dread in their eyes said it all.
However, their stance conveyed no coercion. They themselves were not leaving without ‘Mmeth’, but they would not force Gapp to help them. The choice was his entirely. Yes, they were making it absolutely clear that it was his own moral choice.
Gapp’s blood boiled. They had all just escaped by an enormous, unreasonable amount of luck; they were free to go and, now they were mere minutes from certain escape, these two damn steeds were expecting him to walk right back into the dragon’s jaws! And just to make an almost predeterminedly failed attempt at rescuing some night-spawned manipulative leper whose purposes and loyalties were as unfathomable as his true identity, one who seemed more a part of this dark distorted world than even the locals. If they seriously expected Gapp to acquiesce to a moral code even they were unwilling to follow through, they were in for some long-overdue education.
‘FINE!’ he cried, ‘You stay. GOOD! I go. Shlepp, we’re off.’
And, without as much as a wave goodbye, he vaulted away through the trees.
Yggr neither spoke nor moved. At that moment all he could do was stare at the corpses of the two guards and twitch. This sort of thing just did not happen in Wrythe. He had arrived only moments earlier to find the guards dead and the boy gone. His bellow of rage had rung throughout the woods, bringing to the scene every wire-face and Child in town.
It was not that the deaths of two Oghain were any great loss to him. Once he got them into the ‘Urn’ they would serve him again anyway. And it was certainly not as if he actually liked these people. On the contrary, he hated them. The only humans he hated more were Peladanes, and then only because he had not enjoyed the centuries of revenge upon them that he had with the northmen. What fanned the coals of his ire so was that mere outsiders had taken their lives when they were his to take. The Majestic Head’s twisted tastes demanded living playthings if entertainment were to really hit the spot.
While the Children tried to stifle their giggling, he stalked around inside the stabbur and grimly inspected the ruin within. How had the boy managed to do all this damage? And, more to the point, why had he attacked the pickled people? They were no threat to him. Such barbarity! Such wanton vandalism! How could they offend him so?
Damn city folk! They never did understand our ways . . .
But as he surveyed the scene his rage began to diminish. The damage to the pickled folk was not all that serious after all, and the dead guards, though at first sight a complete disaster, probably could be sewn together into some semblance of working order again.
No, maybe not so bad after all. Some of the Children had already begun to clean up the blood, their tongues writhing lasciviously over crimson puddles on the frosty ground. Their eyes rolled in delight.
Yggr straightened up and strode back to the door. Well, the stiffs have been building up a bit lately. Seems like there’s not an attic or cellar that isn’t crammed with the things, and even the timber bunkers are getting a bit full. In fact, it was a measure of Wrythe’s serious shortage of shelf space that they had resorted to storing their corpses in cabbage fields.
No, he had put it off for long enough. Even before hearing Mauglad’s interesting little story earlier, he had been intending to transport another shipment of the Dead over to the Maw. (‘The Urn awaits, as ever.’) But now, it seemed, the time had finally come when he would set sail for the very last time.
‘Come!’ he barked. ‘We find the boy!’
And, with that, every wire-face and Child lurched off into the gloom, fingers twitching and red tongues flicking.
Yggr watched them go and smiled. It would not take long. First, bring the young wastrel back and pump him for information. Then go to work on his mind. No need to send his corpse to the Urn; far too puny to be of any use. Instead, carve the finest, most exquisite work of art out of his young flesh that Yggr’s wicked soul could contrive.
In fact, why not redecorate the entire Keep with him?
Then kill him. And hang on to that pretty little head. It would be nice to share the long centuries to come with such comeliness.
So much more fun to talk with them after their lives have fled, Yggr thought, and remind them of just how dead they are!
Moments later, a series of terrible howls rose into the air and set the trees a-tremble. Two sets of Parandus tracks had been found leading away from the town into the woods, heading south.
The hunt was on.
The keening of the Children could be heard even within the deepest fastness of the Keep. The victim slumped against the wall in the ‘schoolhouse’ heard it, even above the wailing of the imprisoned child-souls and the rasping protests of the embittered Dead that seeped from the very walls into his head. Manacled, his eyes staring vacantly ahead and a thin line of discoloured drool hanging from his lip, Methuselech had undoubtedly seen better days. But there was no reaction in him to that dire screeching that subdued every man and beast for miles around in cowering dread; no recognition of its portent in his eyes. Methuselech’s mind had fled, run screaming to a far realm beyond this awful reality.
Even when he heard footsteps softly pattering across the flagstones outside – those soft little children’s feet; even when he heard the bar lifting from the door – such tiny hands, such unearthly strength – still he did not respond. Their work had been interrupted, but Methuselech knew it made no difference; they would be back soon enough to finish what they had started on him.
It was only when that voice – urgent, fearful, human – finally penetrated his brain like an astral harpoon setting its barb into the floating leviathan of his soul, that he slowly drifted back into the real world. Still bewildered and idiot-faced, he looked up and saw Gapp Radnar staring back at him.
‘Radnar . . .’ he breathed hoarsely. ‘So they killed you too?’
‘What?’ the boy replied.
Gapp was regarding him intensely. Methuselech could see the terror in his eyes, the barely checked panic. There was also a presage of despair and an abundance of doubt. These were things the necromancer recognized well, had centuries of experience of. But, for the
first time in his long existence, he also saw concern. Care and concern for him.
He shook his head. This was doing nothing to alleviate his confusion.
‘Methuselech,’ Gapp whispered, ‘are you all right?’
‘All. Write . . .’ Methuselech repeated distantly, not understanding the question.
‘Listen to me! Can you walk?’ Gapp went on urgently, unwilling or afraid to touch Methuselech’s body, or even inspect it too closely.
Xilva’s lower jaw started moving, albeit a little too loosely, but no words came out.
‘That is, could you walk if you weren’t manacled to the wall?’ Gapp continued, half to himself. He clicked his tongue, at a loss what to do.
He could not complain too much, though; the first part had, after all, been easy. The time of day could not have proved more fortuitous. Few of the Oghain had risen yet, and those who had went about heavily attired against the freezing early-morning fog, hooded and cloaked like shambling monks. It had been simple for the boy’s light fingers to acquire such raiment. Thus clothed, he had smoothly infiltrated Wrythe’s murky depths and arrived without incident at the Keep itself, which, due to his own actions at the stabbur, he found unguarded. Slipping nonchalantly through the main door he had had to choke back a scream when he found Shlepp already waiting for him there. How the animal had guessed his intentions or managed to arrive without raising the alarm Gapp did not have time to speculate. They had both arrived at the heart of darkness, and had swift work to do.
‘Listen, Xilva,’ he hissed. ‘We’re got to get you out of here now – those things could be back any minute. Hwald and Finan have drawn them off into the forest, and Shlepp’s acting as watchdog at the front door, but we’ve got to act fast. Is there any way I can get you out of these manacles?’
‘They removed his bones, you know,’ said Methuselech dreamily.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Him over there. With special knives. Inserted them into his skin, dislocated his joints, separated the flesh, then drew out the bones one by one. Hardly left a mark. What they couldn’t remove, they just dissolved with vibrating tools. Turned his whole body into a boneless lump. We used to try that when we were kids but could never get it right. They must have perfected the process – that one’s still alive.’
Gapp had no idea what he was babbling on about and no time to care. He yanked furiously on the chains, but to no avail.
‘The other one they tied to a stake,’ Methuselech went on, an abstracted look further clouding his eyes. ‘They tore pieces off him and threw them to the wire-faces. He was still alive as they chewed his flesh.’
Ignoring him, Gapp looked about the chamber for something to help him. If this was a true keep, a donjon, he assumed there would be some kind of tool he could use.
‘And the last one,’ the prisoner smirked inanely, ‘they decided to cook. They heated him up in that suit of armour till he bubbled and smoked. Screamed like a lobster, he did.’
‘Just shut up! Shut the flipp up!’
The boy was on the point of just giving up and leaving. If this really was, as Xilva suggested, a torture chamber, then it was surprisingly lacking in metal implements. Not even an axe or a jemmy to be found. The man was obviously raving.
Then he went cold all over as the spirit of the Children entered him. ‘Did you just say “suit of armour”?’ he asked, dreading Methuselech’s answer.
‘Over there,’ the prisoner confirmed, nodding to one corner. Though he had not really registered it at the time, his attention being somewhat diverted by the orgy of blood he had witnessed last night, Gapp now recalled that he had indeed seen a suit of armour in this room. There it stood, blackened and threatening. Even from here he could smell burnt . . . something. He had to find out for sure.
‘. . . for weeks encased in a shell of iron,’ Methuselech was droning, ‘a metal cocoon . . .’
Gapp drew closer, closer still, until he could feel the heat radiating from the armour. Ignoring the repulsion that stuck in his throat, he grabbed the helm’s visor and wrenched it open.
‘Oh for the love of . . .’
He trailed off. It was like being struck full in the stomach with a flange-headed maul. The poor man’s face was a glistening lump of charred meat, mouth gaping in an eternal scream, looking through him with eyes as dead and white as those of a boiled fish.
Gasping, the youth staggered back. He turned and looked at Methuselech with eyes aged far beyond his years, his face clammy and drained of blood.
‘Who were those people?’ he demanded in disbelief.
Methuselech looked up at him and squinted like a psychotic, then giggled. ‘The Children have such monstrous appetites.’
Gapp took another step back. ‘They eat them?’ he gasped. ‘All of them?’
‘No, not all of them. They usually leave the spines – give them to the Oga to wear. Like jewellery.’
‘But who were they?’
‘Just people like you,’ Methuselech replied, a little more coherently now. ‘Adventurers to the Maw. But they never get further than here. Merchants might pass through unhindered; they’re no threat. Your sort, on the other hand . . .’
‘My sort?’ Gapp was on the point of bolting from this place and leaving Xilvafloese alone with all its horrors. But he had to find out. ‘I felt there was something familiar about this place the moment we arrived. And now I think I know what it reminds me of. You!’ He leaned closer. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m the black sheep,’ Methuselech replied, ‘and I should never have come back.’
Gapp ignored this babble. ‘What business is it of the Majestic Head if people want to go to Melhus anyway?’ he demanded. ‘And how do you fit into all this, eh?’
‘Yggr and I, we’re in the same business. Or rather, we were. I’m the black sheep, but he’s the caretaker. We’ve both been around here for a very long time. In fact, he’s always been here . . . And his name’s not Yggr; it’s Scathur.’
Finally, Gapp’s legs gave way completely, and he sank to the ground, smitten by the full weight of despair and dread that that name brought upon him.
‘We’re dead,’ he whimpered.
‘He’s an artist,’ Methuselech murmured, ‘an artist who wears his victims’ blood on his raiment as a badge of honour, and encourages his wire-faced protégés to do likewise. I once saw him create such a masterpiece out of a man’s body that his weeping could be heard throughout the lower levels, mingling in ecstatic rhapsody with the man’s screams. He doesn’t hate them; he exalts them . . . An artist in rapture, who’s even been known to fall in love with his subjects.’
Staring deep into Methuselech’s eyes, Gapp was suddenly aware of two pairs of eyes looking back at him. There were the eyes of this present persona, this ‘black sheep’, who was talking to him. But there were also the eyes of Methuselech Xilvafloese, that happy-go-lucky friend of Peladanes who (he now had to admit) Gapp had always found one of the more pleasant members of the little band from Nordwas. Either way, Scathur had no love for him, either of him. And against his every instinct Gapp had come to save him. Pity, and that spark of loyalty that Hwald and Finan had engendered in him, overcame his misgivings.
‘What did they do to you, Xilva?’ he whispered.
‘They forced me to watch all of it – that atrocity exhibition. Then they gave me a choice: either I gouge out my own eyes or they burn them out with hot pokers. I have to decide before they return.’
Gapp lurched up from the floor with a cry and lunged at the manacles, trying to wrench them off the wall.
‘But it’s too late!’ Methuselech hissed, looking up at the boy in supplication. ‘I told them everything! Everything! Scathur knows as much about the quest as do I. About Nibulus, Finwald, everything!’
‘I really haven’t time to worry about any of that at the moment,’ Gapp grunted, as he tugged on the manacles. ‘All I know is that your “caretaker” and his little friends will be back for their dinner very soon, a
nd I don’t intend to end up as pudding.’
He gave up pulling on the manacles and leapt over to a trough where he had noticed some cutlery. He grabbed one of the knives, the nearest one, and was just about to return to his task when something caught his eye. He hopped over to another of the dining implements and snatched it up.
‘My sword!’ he gasped.
It was true. The blade they had taken from him, that sturdy little hilt-less machete given to him by Ted the Vetter, was once again in his hands. The Children clearly had good taste when it came to stylish kitchenware.
Buoyed by this sudden upturn in his fortunes, Gapp set to working on the irons with renewed vengeance. He inserted the pointed tip beneath the metal plate and levered for all he was worth.
But it was useless: the manacles would never give. And now time had almost run out. Instead, and as a measure of his desperation, Gapp frantically began hauling on Methuselech’s arms. He pulled, heaved and twisted like a maddened terrier with a badger’s hind leg until finally, with a sound like a boiled chicken’s carcass being pulled apart, Methuselech’s hands came off.
The older man struggled to his feet and lurched off towards the door, the boy staring in open-mouthed horror at the dismembered hands on the floor.
‘Don’t worry about them,’ Methuselech panted. ‘Let’s go!’
Half in a dream, Gapp reeled after him. Maybe he really is dead, after all, he thought, as they caught up with Shlepp and fled the town.
That was the thing about Methuselech: you never could tell.
FIVE
On the Plain of Fire and Ice
BOLLDHE HAD TAKEN HIS gloves off for only fifteen seconds, while he took a draught of liquor from his flask, but even that was enough time to freeze his fingers almost solid. With difficulty he finally managed to get the gloves back on, then leant back against the rock in relief.
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