The Immortal Throne

by Stella Gemmell

  And then her time came. An injured Fkeni found a momentary space between two of the soldiers and lunged through. He ran at the women, dagger raised. Em leaped forward, then ducked to one side as he plunged the blade towards her breast. She twisted and rammed her knife into his side, above the hip. It went in a short way then seemed to stick. She wrenched it out, twisting it. The man fell to one knee but kept crawling towards Bruenna. The midwife placed her large body in front of the baby’s and slashed at his face with her own knife. Em plunged her blade into the Fkeni’s neck. He dropped to the ground, blood pouring. Then it slowed to a trickle. She stared at him, gasping, fearful he would rise again.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Bruenna.

  Em turned back to the battle. She could see the old warrior Gus battling two Fkeni and she ran forward to help. Before she could get there Gus sliced the throat of one of them. The second screamed his battle cry and swept his curved blade at Gus. Gus swayed to one side but the blade sliced his shoulder and he went down. The Fkeni caught his weapon at the top of its swing and, with graceful ease, brought it down again towards Gus’s head. Emly picked up a discarded spear as she ran and thrust it at the tribesman’s back. It was a weak strike and caught in his robes, but it deflected the arc of his blade and it drove into the ground. He pulled out a knife, too late. Gus was up and he ran his sword into the man’s belly. The veteran glanced quickly at Em, nodded, and threw himself at the next opponent.

  Then, beyond the screams and the howls, Emly heard a growing rumble, like a summer storm. Suddenly the air was thick with whirling dust and the narrow defile was crowded with horses and riders. Cavalry! City cavalry! Em found herself shaking uncontrollably. She looked eagerly for Evan but could make out no one she knew in the melee.

  Then a Fkeni fighter fought free and ran at her. Em held the long knife in front of her, trembling. The dark-robed tribesman batted the knife aside with his sickle and made a grab for her. She threw herself back in terror, angling her body across where the baby lay. At that moment the mite started a thin, hungry grizzle. The Fkeni heard it and grinned at her. He stepped forward, sickle raised.

  From the melee a big man emerged, ginger-headed and blood-spattered, a giant among the black-clad tribesmen. He took two rolling strides and with a mighty slash of his sword he cut the Fkeni’s head half off. Gore spouted as the body dropped in the dust. The big man calmly nodded his head to Emly, then he twisted and blocked a sword-thrust from behind. He plunged his blade into the attacker’s gut and the man fell screaming.

  The unequal battle was soon over, all the tribesmen despatched. Emly, weak from fear and horror, looked anxiously for survivors. Of the Pigstickers only Stern and Quora still stood. The young man whose brother had been captured was dead, as was the old man Gus. The other soldier, the half-blind one, was wounded and Stern was tending him. The injury to his arm looked painful but survivable, in Emly’s small experience.

  She listened to the troopers talk and learned their rescuers had been out scouting far to the west and were riding hard to catch up with the army. They had found the Fkeni encampment, led by the screams of the tortured officer. The riders had slaughtered the women, who were taking turns with the victim, despatched the wretched man and released the other City soldier, who was unharmed bar a few bruises. Then they followed the tribesmen’s trail.

  The sun was well above the horizon by the time Em helped Bruenna on to a Fkeni pony, placed the sleeping babe in her arms, then climbed wearily on to another mount. She sat there, horses milling around her. The cavalrymen were still exhilarated by their swift, bloody victory, but she was exhausted by the night of terror.

  ‘You all right, lass?’ asked a deep, rough voice and she turned and saw the big man who had saved her life. She managed a smile for him. He wore his greying ginger hair and beard in braids, like a northlander, although he was dressed as a mercenary, in a mixture of uniform purloined from different regiments.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said formally, and he grinned at her.

  ‘You look banjaxed,’ he told her. ‘Can you ride?’

  In answer she heeled the pony forward and it set off up the defile. The big man rode beside her, a strong, comforting presence. The movement of the pony, the fresh air in her face, made Emly’s spirits lift. She had survived the night and she would see Evan again.

  She turned to the northlander. ‘My name is Emly,’ she told him, the least she could do, she thought, for someone who had given her her life.

  ‘Emly.’ He frowned, his thick brows bristling together fiercely. ‘Do you have a brother called Elija, who lives up in that high palace and has the empress for a handmaiden?’

  She laughed. ‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘Why? Do you know him?’

  ‘I do, lass. And I was glad when I heard he still lived. He and I shared many an adventure together.’

  He sketched a salute to her, grinned and said, ‘They call me Stalker.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CASMIR, ONCE KNOWN as the wolf, now special prisoner number seven, lay on the earth floor of his cell and prayed to the death gods to end his suffering. So far they had turned deaf ears to his pleas.

  As a child he had broken both legs. Well, he had not broken them. His father had when he dropped the boy from a second-floor balcony as punishment for some childish scrape – breaking a window, or setting fire to a cat. Casmir had prayed then too, and it had made no difference. But his mother had gathered all her small savings and taken the boy to a surgeon who had straightened the bones and splinted them so that within a few days the legs had healed like new. Lying in his cell in the Dungeons of Gath, one of Casmir’s many fears was that his legs would heal while still shattered, leaving him, even if he were ever freed, the choice of dragging himself about the City as a beggar or ending it any way he could manage.

  In his former role as agent for Rafael Vincerus, he had often been asked to despatch one of the lord’s enemies. And the victims usually prayed to the death gods for a clean ending and he had always made it so. Perhaps that was why those perverse deities failed to listen to him now, because in the past he had denied them the pleasure of many a long and lingering death. The world is full of such irony, he thought.

  The pain inflicted on him since his capture had been unendurable, but he had endured it. It was such as would send a man insane, but he was not insane. He had told his torturers all they wanted to know about his mission at the House of Glass to kill the old man Bart, and other missions. When they remained unsatisfied he had started making up stories. Finally he said he had killed a dragon which emerged burning from the sewers and carried its head to the empress.

  When they came for him again he cried and pleaded. He could not help himself, although he knew it would do no good. He would be picked up and placed on his feet, then his half-healed breaks would break again . . .

  But this time was different. The guards brought a litter and laid it on the earth beside him and, almost with care, placed him upon it. Then they picked him up and carried him, by torchlight, on a long journey through the underground places of the City. It was still a torment and he blacked out into blissful unconsciousness a few times. But, as ever, his curiosity overcame all and eventually he started watching with something like interest as the roofs above him changed, in what became a journey from darkness into light. At last they came to a stone chamber where they set him down and produced ropes and straps. Casmir’s fears came roaring back. What were they going to do to him? But all they did was tie him to the litter, then they started up a series of stairs.

  At last they came out into daylight and Casmir’s tears were not only from the brightness around him. The last time he had been brought into the light it was for his brief trial. Was he to be tried again or to hear his fate? The many and hideous forms of imperial execution flitted through his mind like old, ragged bats.

  He was placed on a floor. A sharp voice barked, ‘Not on the carpet, you oafs!’

  His litter was moved and he opened his one eye
and squinted around. He saw the brutal faces of his guards and, upside-down, the pale face of a woman. She walked around him until he could see her properly. She was old, with long white hair, wearing a white gown and a blue shawl. He recognized the woman who had presided at his trial. Then he realized it was the empress, and his labouring heart shrank like a dried grape. Through the pain and disorientation and fear, he readied himself to tell her exactly what she wanted.

  She gestured and the faces of the guards disappeared. A small stool was placed close by him. The empress sat down and bent forward so he could see her.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ she asked him, tilting her head and gazing into his brutalized face. He tried to speak but his broken jaw had swollen. He tried to lift his head to nod but he had not the strength.

  The empress touched his face gently.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ she asked again.

  For a heartbeat he felt only the butterfly touch of her soft skin on his ravaged jaw. Then cold lightning flashed in his mind, and clotted thoughts of his stifling dark cell and pain and blood were replaced by a great hollow emptiness, full of clear light and overwhelming ennui. In a flash of images he saw a small girl, fair-haired and round-faced, smiling with her arms uplifted to him, then a crescent moon – the old moon of a tired world – and a cross on a crow-haunted hill, and the cloying scent of jasmine.

  The pain drifted from his face and he opened his good eye to see the clouds that had been gathering there dispersing. He could see as well as he ever had. He could see now that the woman was much older than he first thought. He opened his mouth to reply to her question, anxious to please, but his mouth was filled with ashes.

  ‘Water,’ she said, as if she were inside his head, and a hand brought a cup to his lips and another lifted his head with care. He drank the pure, clean water as though it was the last he would ever have.

  ‘Do you know me?’ she asked him a third time, and he swallowed and said grittily, ‘Yes, lady.’

  She smiled and her face became younger again. He realized she was beautiful.

  ‘Your name is Casmir?’

  ‘Yes, lady.’

  ‘And you worked for Rafael Vincerus?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he ordered you to the House of Glass in Blue Duck Alley to kill the old man Bartellus?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do you think his daughter Emly failed to recognize you at your trial?’

  He thought about it, the shock and pity in the girl’s eyes. ‘Because she has a kind heart,’ he told Archange.

  The empress sat back, apparently satisfied.

  ‘Yes, she has,’ she told him, ‘and, as before, that kind heart is delivering her into grave peril.’

  He waited, wondering what she wanted of him, for he had nothing to give.

  ‘Emly has been abducted,’ the empress told him, ‘and I want her returned in safety here to the White Palace. I believe she was taken by a soldier and that the pair are travelling with the Khan army. Retrieving renegades was once your speciality, I’m told. I’m also told you are loyal and resourceful and, above all, discreet.’

  That sly goblin, hope, whispered to him from the recesses of his mind but he tried to ignore it. He was desperate to please the empress, but could not help but say what he believed. ‘General Khan can deliver them to you far more quickly than I can.’

  Her black eyes flashed and she said, ‘Are you questioning me?’

  ‘No, lady. But it will take time for my legs to heal,’ he said honestly, ‘and time to catch up with the army. There are a thousand men better equipped for this than I.’

  She leaned forward once more and touched his legs, pausing on one, then the other. There was a hideous welling of agony and the half-healed bones felt as if they were breaking again, but then he was aware of the same cool, empty feeling, and the pain ebbed. His thoughts were of fire and blackened trees. Of carriages soaring in the sky. Of a baby nestled at the breast. He felt the tears run down his cheeks and he turned his face away from her dark stare.

  Time passed and nothing seemed to happen. He opened his eye again and she was still watching. He tried to sit and was astonished to find he could, though he felt feeble. His body was whole. He wondered if this was a dream, or a nightmare in which he would suddenly be crippled again, dying in agony. He was given a cup of water and he drank it all down, marvelling as the cool liquid soothed his limbs, strengthening them.

  He looked around. The only others present were two warriors of the Thousand, still as statues, their helms closed.

  He asked the empress, trying to sound businesslike notwithstanding his filthy body and rags, ‘What about the soldier? Shall I kill him?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘And bring you his head as proof?’

  ‘I do not want his head,’ the empress told him. ‘Just bring me his jacket.’

  ‘Evan.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Teach me to fight with a sword. Please.’

  ‘No.’

  Emly rolled over on the dry, prickly grass and hoisted herself on his bare chest.

  ‘Please.’ She batted her dark lashes, gazing down at him, and he grinned.

  ‘You are too small to wield a sword,’ he told her, ‘but I will show you how to use that pigsticker Quora gave you. It is a fine gift and should be used with respect. You could disembowel a man with that in a heartbeat.’

  She smiled, pleased with his words but unsure if she could do such a thing.

  Gazing up at the sky, Evan added, ‘Just because you are travelling with an army, it doesn’t make you a warrior.’

  It was five days after the nightmare in the mountain pass. Evan and Chancey had still been far away when Em returned to the bosom of the army, and when they came back the next morning and were told of her ordeal she had made little of it. ‘Stern and his soldiers protected me,’ she told Evan and he had nodded curtly, as if that was only what he’d expect. Then she had told him about Stalker and he immediately sought out the northlander for he recognized the name.

  Now they lay in the long grass of a sunny valley half a league from the path of the army. Patience stood nearby apparently dozing. The sun beat down on them and crickets creaked in the still afternoon air.

  Emly remembered the time they had spent together above the baker’s before the Day of Summoning. The Evan Broglanh she knew then was just a soldier, albeit with a major role in the insurrection. He was loyal to Archange then, and his duty was clear. Now, she understood, things were more complicated and he was unhappy in his present task, though he was following it with grim determination.

  But for the moment he was in a good mood and she was eager to take advantage of it.

  ‘You must tell me why we are fleeing Archange when she has offered me nothing but kindness,’ she told him.

  He looked up at her, his eyes the grey of summer seas, his lashes white in the sunlight. ‘I think the empress is fond of you, in her way,’ he said, ‘but she has other reasons for wanting you at the palace.’

  Emly waited, for she of all people knew how to use silence, and eventually he went on. ‘You remember what she told us, after the scrap in the Red Palace, about the Gulon Veil.’

  The Gulon Veil, an artefact of great power, Archange had told them, but to Em it was just a veil, found in a sewer by her father Bartellus and given to her as her sole and precious possession. It was a creation of gossamer thread, light as birdsong, strong as the heart of a warrior. Em had been permitted to take it to the White Palace with her but then it had vanished for it was too valuable, the empress said, for her to wear.

  ‘My veil,’ she said.

  ‘Yours by finder’s right,’ Evan agreed. ‘The veil was once embedded in glass and formed a cocoon, Archange told us.’ He looked at Em and she nodded, remembering the evening after the Day of Summoning, the weary warriors gathered around Bartellus’ dying body. ‘That cocoon was broken a long time ago and now the veil is of limited use. Archange planned
to exploit your skills as a glassmaker to recreate it. The veil still holds some strength, but in such a cocoon it would be powerful again, for good or evil. Or so I am told.’

  ‘I would have gladly helped her.’

  He nodded. ‘I know, and that is why I had to steal you away. Others, people who know more about it than I do, believe she wanted to use it as the emperor did, for foul purposes.’

  ‘What people? What purposes?’

  When he did not answer, Emly offered, ‘She said the veil can make old people young, and make the dead live.’ She had been told of the reflections which once walked the corridors of the Red Palace, corpses brought to life to wear any form the emperor chose. But she had never seen one.

  ‘The empress could not save my father,’ she added.

  He sighed. ‘Bart was too gravely injured.’

  ‘Surely she can find another glassmaker. There must be others in the City.’

  ‘No, there aren’t. The old ones are all dead and no new ones have been apprenticed since the war sucked all the young people into the army. There are few artists of any kind. No painters, sculptors, poets. Just soldiers.’ He added, ‘She will find someone eventually, perhaps from foreign lands, but for now she is thwarted. Who did you learn your craft from?’

  It was the first time he had asked her anything about herself that wasn’t about a fight for life. ‘An old man on Leaving Street,’ she told him, remembering the smell and heat of the glassworks, an angry little man with bowed legs. ‘Petronicus. He was harsh and could be unkind, but he was a good artist and teacher.’