The City

by Stella Gemmell

  “I’ve got to find Fell,” she said.

  “Take Elija,” he gasped, blood gushing from his leg, “and Garret and Stalker, and try the Hall of Watchers. We’ll keep them busy.”

  She nodded. She had no words for him, but clapped him on the shoulder then made her way back along the wall, behind the fighting. She told Elija and Garret to retreat and they obeyed, but when she ordered Stalker to follow he shook his head.

  “You’ll leave these brave men here to die?” he argued, skewering his man and pausing to draw breath.

  Instantly fury rose in her breast. “I’m here for Fell, not for Gil Rayado!” she shouted above the noise of battle. She grabbed him by the front of his jerkin. “A handful of us can make no difference here. Our mission is to stay alive, until we have done what we are here for.”

  Stalker ducked under a blow to his head, and Indaro leaped to stab the attacker. Her sword slid off the breastplate, but she had winded him and as the man bent forward she held her sword two-handed and rammed it down above the breastplate, through his neck to his heart. She abandoned the blunted sword in his body and grabbed his. Then she turned to Stalker, who nodded.

  “Aye,” he conceded reluctantly, “but I was enjoying myself.”

  He limped after her as she ran along the wall and back out into the guard room.

  “Elija, take us to the Hall of Watchers,” she ordered, and the young man nodded, then set off at a run.

  Dol Salida was not a religious man. This did not stop him praying to the soldiers’ gods when he was in mortal danger, and when he was in the prison camp he took part in the religious rituals of other, more devout, men. But it was his belief that a person’s lot in life was fixed, maybe from the moment of conception—and calling upon the gods for riches or for rescue could not change that. He thought they were either indifferent to the pleas of men, or non-existent, and it made no difference either way.

  But when he was a new cavalryman, all of sixteen and eager to taste the dizzying pleasures of the world, he had attended the ritual of the goddess of summoning, Rharata, called the Radiant. He was invited there by a girl he had hoped to impress, and her family were devotees of the winter goddess. The Feast of Summoning celebrated the birth of Rharata in human form, on the first day of winter, when the Families were summoned to bring gifts to the divine child. Rather to his surprise Dol Salida found he enjoyed the ceremony of songs and dances, and the warmed spiced wines which accompanied it, and he had attended at each year’s-end since, when he was able.

  Since he had been at the Red Palace he had made a point of it, for the Day of Summoning was specially significant to the Families, and no one who cared for their good opinion, particularly that of the Vincerii, could afford to ignore it.

  So Dol was limping towards Rharata’s Tower in the west wing when he heard in the distance the deep boom of the gong which signalled alarm in the palace. Moments later a century of the Thousand raced by him, armour clattering, mailed boots striking sparks from the floor. He backed against a wall to let them pass, and called out, “What’s happening?”

  “Intruders!” someone shouted.

  “Where?”

  But they had gone, and Dol followed. He was pleased to find the information he had passed on had been correct. He wanted to see what would happen.

  They were heading away from the west wing towards the centre of the palace, and Dol quickly lost them. Then he heard boots marching and he followed the sound down two levels before he saw another century he recognised as the Warhounds heading towards the Keep. It was commanded by Leona Farra Kerr, a boot-faced woman with ginger hair.

  “Where are the intruders?” he asked, but she ignored him.

  Dol could not keep up with the soldiers, but when they entered the doors of the Keep he was close behind. He had never been behind the green walls, but he did not hesitate to enter. He looked around in wonder. He had heard stories that the walls of the Keep were carved of gold and gems and the floors were made of deep crystal. Dol had never believed them. On the contrary, the Keep’s reputation as a place of death and horror conjured in his mind an austere place of hard stone and cold metal. But he was walking through high halls and sumptuous rooms filled with rich furniture, carved woods and gold leaf, jewel-coloured draperies and muscled statuary.

  More soldiers ran past him on the soft carpets, and he chased them down two more stairways. He could hear the clash and crash of arms and armour now. He wondered how deeply the Keep was built, and why it was not awash with floodwater.

  Injured soldiers were carried past him, away from the battle, and he realised for the first time that it might be wise to be holding a weapon other than his old silver-topped stick. He came at last to a high doorway. Beyond it was a chamber with sky blue walls decorated with white clouds. Blueskin soldiers were battling an overwhelming weight of the Thousand. As he watched, Dol wondered that so small an enemy force, perhaps fewer than fifty, could still be fighting. They had retreated to a corner, behind a wall of their dead and dying. The warriors of the Thousand were hampered by so many bodies, including their own, and it could, to Dol’s veteran’s eye, be a long and bloody task to winkle out the last of the enemy force.

  Suddenly he was aware of a presence at his back, and he turned to see the Vincerii. He pressed against a wall and the two men passed without a glance. There was a faltering of the battle, then silence punctuated only by the sounds of warriors drawing breath and the moans of the dying. Dol saw some of the Thousand grin and relax, as if the battle was already over. A few sheathed their weapons.

  Marcellus spoke with Leona, then looked around assessingly at the embattled Blues.

  “Gil Rayado!” he said in his amiable way. “I hardly expected to see you here.”

  A tall, lean fighter, crippled by a deep sword-slash to one leg, stood and eyed him.

  “Did you not, Marcellus?” he said pleasantly. “As I recall, the last time I saw you I said we would next meet in your City.”

  “If I remember correctly,” Marcellus said courteously, “you said ‘in the ruins of your City.’” He looked around him. “Of all the thousand halls in the Red Palace this is perhaps not one of the most magnificent. Its statuary was never very fine and has suffered from this day’s work, and the murals are by journeymen. Yet I would not call it a ruin,” he said with heavy humour.

  Rayado replied, “Get on with it, man. I have come here to fight, not to hear you talk.”

  “You have come here to die,” corrected Marcellus.

  Rayado shrugged.

  “And we are not fooled,” Marcellus added, “by this diversion. Your assassin is already dead, or he wishes he were. Your men achieve nothing by dying here, and we do not wish to lose any more of our warriors. Put down your blade, Gil, and I promise you my soldiers will not touch any of your men.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Marcellus smiled. “I am speaking the perfect truth. And I assure you that you yourself will die in this palace anyway.”

  Dol felt sympathy with the Blueskin leader. Given the choice of surrendering himself to probable torture and certain death, with the slim hope of saving his men’s lives, or dying with them, Dol was not certain what he would do. If he elected to die with his troops it might appear that his fear of torture, which all men share, was stronger than his concern for their lives.

  “Would you like to discuss it among yourselves?” Marcellus asked solicitously. “A vote perhaps? I believe that in your land many decisions are made by the will of the people.” Dol could see the man was in high good spirits.

  Rayado spoke to a warrior at his side, then he came forward, climbing awkwardly over the bodies of his own men and those of the Thousand.

  “Who betrayed us?” he asked.

  “It is called intelligence,” Marcellus replied. “Something you clearly know nothing about.”

  “Then I have nothing more to say to you,” Rayado said.

  Marcellus clapped him on the back. “Now, we both know th
at’s not true,” he said cheerily. “By this day’s end you will be babbling everything you know to anyone who will listen to you.”

  “I ask one thing of you, Marcellus.”

  “Name it.”

  “That I be allowed to meet the emperor.”

  “We can arrange that,” Marcellus answered. “The Immortal will want to see you. He has had a busy day today, yet he is still eager for company.” Then he ordered Leona and a small detachment to take the prisoner away.

  Dol Salida wondered if Marcellus would be true to his word, but he never found out, for at that moment Rafe Vincerus noticed him hovering in the doorway. He nodded his head in acknowledgement of Dol’s part in the day’s business, then gestured to the doorway. Dol obediently turned from the hall and limped away, back towards the west wing and the revels of Rharata. He was quickly overtaken by warriors marching away from the hall, so he guessed that, with their leader gone, the remaining Blues had been quickly and efficiently despatched.

  The water was rising faster than Indaro thought possible. She, with her three companions, hurried along gloomy tunnels, ever east. Indaro was starting to recognise places as they loomed out of the gloom—the corner of a wall here, the top of a staircase there. But she was always past them and moving on as her memory slowly caught up. She marvelled that Elija knew so certainly where he was going.

  Soon they were splashing through ankle-deep water again, and she asked the boy, “Is the Hall of Watchers on this level?”

  He shook his head. “One down.” He glanced at her face, which must have shown her concern, for he said, “But the water is rising unevenly, as it did in the lower levels—we might still get there.”

  They came to a dry corridor lined with forgotten statues, glowering loftily at them from high plinths. At the end was a staircase leading down. Elija descended quickly, Indaro close behind, and they came to the bottom where the water was waist-deep and visibly rising. Without hesitation Elija threw himself in, and started half wading, half swimming along a dark tunnel. Raising her light, Indaro could not see the end and she paused before following him, her heart in her mouth. After all they had been through she wanted to die with her sword in her hand, not drowned like a rat in a pipe. The warriors looked at each other, but there was no choice—they had trusted Elija this far.

  The roof became lower and the floor dropped away and Indaro found herself swimming. She was finding it hard to keep her light above the water, and behind her lights went out as the others lost their grip. Elija had no light and Indaro struggled to keep up with him so he could see where he was going. He does not need to see, she thought, he is in thrall to this place.

  At last the boy was forced to stop. They had come to a low arch which dipped to meet the water and they could go no farther. Indaro felt panic rising in her chest. Her hands were shaking, from cold or fear. She held her little lantern high, the only light left now. Stalker was still with them, she was amazed to see, his face gaunt and shadow-haunted.

  Elija told the others, “We must swim under this arch. There is probably a tunnel beyond.”

  “Probably,” Stalker echoed.

  “The archway leads somewhere,” Elija told them. “Keep feeling the roof and eventually we will come out into a higher place, a hall or a staircase. We will be without light, but I know the way now, even in the dark.”

  He spoke with such confidence that Indaro felt her nerves steadying. Then she remembered what he had told her back in the relative comfort of Old Mountain. “I do not know the Hall of Watchers. I have never been there.” She shook her head, trying to dislodge the ominous memory.

  The boy nodded to her, his eyes feverish, then he ducked under the black water and disappeared, leaving a few thick-skinned bubbles popping slowly on the surface. Indaro passed her light to Garret and, trying not to think, ducked her head and swam under the archway. It was icy cold. She felt rough ceiling above her and, with blind faith, she kicked out and followed Elija, hoping the tunnel was straight and there were no side ways to get lost in. She kicked and kicked, one hand out in front of her, one above. Once she felt something move under her searching hand and hoped it was Elija’s fleeing foot. She remembered the last time she had blindly followed his boots, through a crack in the earth—that too was terrifying but at least there had been light and air. She could feel agony in the chest as she kept kicking forward, her head was bursting with pain, her limbs weakening, deprived of air for too long, the need to open her throat and let in the water too strong, the uncaring, peaceful, cold water…

  She felt a hand grasp hers. She held on and kicked feebly one last time. Her head emerged into air and she breathed long and painfully, gasping and spluttering. Elija pulled on her arm. “Make way for the others!” he ordered.

  She scrambled clumsily onto a low stone ledge. Then she turned and reached out. She found a flapping hand and Garret came flopping up beside her, gasping. One more to come. “Stalker?” she asked the darkness. There was no reply. They waited. After a silent count of a hundred, Indaro turned to Elija and ordered, “Lead on!”

  As they shuffled through the utter blackness, hand in hand, the blind following a boy, Indaro felt a sob rise in her chest. Despite his injury, Stalker had followed her everywhere she had asked. She knew northlanders did not press their womenfolk to fight, and she suspected he despised women warriors, yet he had followed uncomplaining, fighting like a demon when asked to, burrowing in the earth like a worm, swimming to his death in a flooded drain under the City.

  She felt Garret squeeze her hand. “Old Stalker, he was a one,” he said. “I thought he’d be standing there at the end, when the rest of us were dead. Like Fell.”

  She had scarcely thought of Fell for hours, and it was typical that it would be Garret who brought him up. Her mission in this gods-forsaken place was to save Fell—but Garret was still expecting Fell to save them, as he always had. She coughed, then she could not stop coughing, feeling the sharp pain deep in her side. Am I injured? she thought. Impossible to tell through all her aches and pains. She remembered ducking a sword-slash during the ambush, and wondered if she had been cut. She put it out of her mind. It scarcely mattered as long as she kept moving.

  In front of her Elija paused. Then he stepped forward more cautiously, letting go of her hand. She could tell from the air around her that they had come out into an open space, and guessed he feared falling down stairs or into an open drain. They could hear water gushing on all sides, and Indaro felt an urgent need to hurry. She would rather cut her own throat than swim blindly along another tunnel.

  “Where are we?” she asked Elija, trying to sound calm.

  But he made no reply and she could hear him shuffling forwards slowly, exploring. She let go of Garret’s hand and worked her way to her left, placing her feet with care lest the ground disappear from under her. Her hand reached the reassurance of a rough wall, and she let her fingers graze along it. She felt a pillar standing proud of the wall and on it, at head height, a carved shape. Eagerly she ran her hands over it. She could feel the smooth head, protruding eyes and sharp beak of an eagle. Her heart beat faster. She measured a long pace along the wall and found another pillar, another stone bird. In her mind’s eye she saw these creatures, and a dozen more like them, guarding a round chamber, brightly lit by torchlight. The watching birds.

  Triumphantly she cried, “We’re here! Elija, you found it. This is the Hall of Watchers!”

  Chapter 40

  The questioner in the pit now was a boy, a lad of perhaps fourteen, who perched on the stone steps at the edge of the lair, his booted feet above the foul water. He asked Riis about the enemy’s plans and about Fell Aron Lee. Riis gabbled everything he could think of about the hostages, the trial, and the branding, as if his torrent of words could hold at bay the gulon which still crouched by the old man, watching him. He held back everything he knew about the invasion, and he buried deepest of all the name Shuskara.

  Which way?” Elija asked, relief in his voice.
>
  Indaro thought. There were two entrances to the Hall of Watchers and they must have stumbled on the one which led to the High Halls, through which she had once helped carry the old man Bartellus and Elija’s sister. They must have walked straight through the gateway without being aware of it.

  She reached out and found his sleeve in the dark. “This way,” she said.

  The other door was on the far side of the Hall, through a narrow gateway. She groped along, feeling each bird with surety of recognition. An owl, a seagull in flight, a songbird with its beak open. Along a corridor, then she came to the bottom of the winding stairs which she had once confidently run up and down a dozen times a day. Long ago.

  Her eyes desperate for the smallest gleam of light she hurried up the steps, losing the others in her haste. Through another doorway, then up a wider, straight flight. Then she stopped, her elation under check. She waited for the others to catch up and heard their boots stepping much more cautiously on the wet stone steps.

  “Elija?” she asked the dark.

  “Here.”

  “In a moment we will be in the Library of Silence.” If, she thought, they haven’t sealed off the door against the rising water. “So you must stay to the rear. It might be that they are waiting for us.”

  She tried the handle. It moved grudgingly under pressure, but the door was warped and reluctant to move. She called Garret and together they forced it enough to slip through. Beyond was more darkness, more silence. She listened, every nerve jangling. All she could hear was a deep, damp quiet and the ever-present rush of distant water.

  “Wait,” she whispered.

  She walked forward, hands out, and found she was between high shelves full of books. Yes, she remembered, the little door came out deep in the stacks, hidden in the farthest recesses of the library. She walked forward more confidently, then to her right where her groping hand came to a pillar, and at head-height a bracket with a torch. The torch felt damp, but she hoped it would light. She went back with it, feeling the squelch of waterlogged books under her boots.