The Cloven Land Trilogy

by Simon Kewin

Lugg's hand was shaking as he studied the picture. “You're speaking the truth,” he said. “You're actually speaking the truth.”

  “Obviously. Thanks for doubting me.”

  “A dragonrider,” continued Lugg, as if the idea was too incredible to grasp. “From Andar.” He looked puzzled for a moment. “Why is he protecting you specifically?”

  “That's part of the long story I mentioned.”

  A look of suspicion crossed Lugg's face. “This isn't a fake is it? I know you can alter these pictures. Is this all part of your plan to lure Phoenix into the open?”

  “No. Trust me, I'm really not big on plans. I'm basically making this up as I go along. It didn't even occur to me you knew what a dragonrider was.”

  “Of course I do! They're our legends. Our heroes and heroines. And here's a real one. Don't you see? This changes everything. This is … wonderful.”

  “But you have riders here, too. The ones who stayed behind. I heard the story.”

  Lugg shook his head. “No, no. They're no longer what they were. They're corrupted, monsters. This Ran is a true rider. He could open up the wyrm roads. He could… He could…”

  A coarse grating sound interrupted him as a large grey bird clattered in through one of the archways. In a flurry of wings it landed on the ground and cocked its head on one side to regard them. It was a tattered mess. A faint alarm wormed through Cait as she saw the bones jutting from its feathers, smelled the stench from it.

  “That's odd,” said Lugg. “That's not one of our birds. It must have flown through the night to get here. It may even have used the wyrm roads. They have some that can do that now, scraps of dragon bone spelled into them to awaken the old magic.”

  Cait's throat had gone dry. “Is there a message?”

  “Around its neck.”

  Carefully, Lugg reached out to unclip a metal ring from the bird. The crow watched his hand with beady-eyed malice, ready to strike at any moment.

  “It's from the White City,” read Lugg. “For the eyes of Duke Greygyle only.”

  “We have to open it.”

  “Why?” Lugg sounded suspicious again. “Is it a message for you?”

  “No. But I think it might be about me.”

  Lugg considered. “Guess I can't get into any more trouble.” He pulled out a little curl of paper and unfurled it, holding the message to one of the archways to catch the light. Finally he looked up at Cait.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “What is it?” said Cait. “What does it say?”

  He looked up at her. “It says they're coming for you. West from the White City, travelling with all speed. A host of them. Imperial Cavalry, two squadrons of Bone Dragons. We have to look out for a girl and two men. Renegades, enemies of the undain. You're to be seized if seen.”

  It felt like her blood was crystallizing into ice in her veins. “When will they be here?”

  Lugg was about to reply when a drawn-out screech cut through the night air. As it faded away it was answered by more screeches, rising and falling, coming from all sides of the palace. Some were distant, some very near. Bestial shrieks that were also, clearly, the calls of communication.

  The look of horror on Lugg's face told her everything she needed to know. “I'm sorry, Cait,” he said. “They're already here.”

  8. The Ice House

  Shrieks filled the night air, a wailing that seemed to scrape across Cait's bones, striking discords over and over. Bestial growls joined the cacophony, like some of the more death metal bands Danny listened to. The sounds grew louder all the time. Closer.

  On her knees, Cait peered through one of the little archways. Banks of lights glowed all around, as if an army was encamped out there.

  Lugg scrambled to his feet. “We have to leave. We have to leave right now.”

  She looked back into the darkness of the loft. “What do you mean we? They haven't come for you.”

  “I can show you a way out,” said Lugg. “I can help.”

  “No. It's not safe. You can't risk it. This is your home. They won't harm you.”

  “You think? You know what will happen to me if I stay. There's nothing for me here. I told you, I'm going to try and reach the Smouldering Fire. With a dragonrider we might have a chance.”

  Cait stood, one hand on her stomach, the tugging pains inside her still sharp. She had a headache coming on too, a thick blanket creeping over her brain. She tried to ignore it all. She could think only of getting away from this terrible, beautiful palace and the monsters living in it.

  They clattered down the spiral staircase. She expected to find a ring of undain horrors waiting for them at the bottom, all swords and snarling teeth, but the corridor was deserted. They had a few more moments before the Duke found out the truth. A draught of air from somewhere made the candles flicker and dance in their sconces.

  “Is there a back door?” asked Cait.

  “They'll be watching it,” said Lugg. “We'll go to the kitchens. There's a tunnel that leads to the Ice House. It's only used by the servants.”

  They ran, past Lugg's room, past Cait's room, to the top of the grand staircase. As they reached the landing, the tugging pain in her insides flared up again, making her gasp and stumble to her knees, clutching the carved bone of the banister.

  “What is it?” asked Lugg. “What's wrong? We have to hurry.”

  “Easy for you to say, I…”

  She stopped talking. The wrenching pain rose to a crescendo, sharp as knives, as if she were being pulled apart … and then suddenly, gloriously, it was gone. In its place a rush of euphoria filled her, like a golden light switched on inside her body. She gasped with the wonder of it.

  There came something else, too: a vivid awareness of her surroundings. She saw everything about her in incredible detail, as if looking through a telescope and a microscope simultaneously. The veins in the back of her hand as she clutched the banister. The gem-like patterns in Lugg's blue eyes as he watched her. The dancing flames of the candles, writhing as if alive. She could hear the beating of her own heart and the pounding of the blood through her arteries. She saw it all with crystal clarity. And, as in the fight outside the factory, when Nox had come for her and Danny, she was within it but above it all, too, gazing down, seeing everything.

  This time it went farther. Her senses expanded, an inflating bubble that soon covered things and places she couldn't possibly see. The veiled servants on the floor below scrubbing the mosaic floor with their tiny brushes. A spider scuttling along the edge of the hallway, its tiny mind thinking only of the hunt. Nox and Greygyle in a cellar below that, still unaware of what was happening outside. The drop of red wine that slipped from Nox's mouth as he sipped at the chalice offered to him. The nod of Greygyle's head as he encouraged Nox. The dead eyes behind the lace veil of the servant who stood with them, holding dusty wine bottles on a tray.

  On and on she saw, farther and farther, her perception passing through the walls of the palace and into the darkness. Her gran had shown her the undain at the roundabout in Manchester, tried to make her see the emptiness, the void where there should be light. The seeing stone had helped. But now she found she could see them without holding the jewel to her eye. The creatures were perfectly clear: an emptiness in the world where there should have been the mothy teem of the night-time air.

  She picked her way among them. Some were brute animals, beasts of burden or ravening attack-dogs clamouring to be unleashed. One or two, commanders and nobles perhaps, loomed with the depths of their intelligence. One, in particular, was a deep well of darkness, threatening to suck her in as she drew near. Surely the commander of the army. With an effort she pulled herself away from him.

  The majority of the undain were sentient creatures, but with minds that were limited and enslaved. Soldiers intelligent enough to take orders but not to think for themselves, not to question.

  Her mind skipped across them. She caught a glimpse of something in one or two: a flicker of movement in their m
inds. A flicker that slipped away as she tried to focus on it, like a moth flittering off in the darkness. What was that? It was like a little light, a spark of colour.

  “Cait? What is it? What's happened?” Lugg was kneeling beside her, an arm on her shoulder, the worry on his face clear despite his swollen features. “We have to hurry.”

  “The undain,” said Cait. “They're out there. I can see them. There are thousands of them, Lugg.”

  “That's why we have to run, remember?”

  “Yes,” she said, her attention still half-caught by the surrounding horde. She had to get a grip. “Wait, I mean no. We have to get Nox. The Baron. My father.”

  “You said he wasn't your father.”

  “He isn't! Look, it doesn't matter. He has to come with us.”

  Lugg cast a worried glance down the stairs. “Why? You said you hated him.”

  “Yes. I do. It's complicated. I thought he'd betrayed me, but now I don't think he has.”

  “You don't sound very sure.”

  She wasn't sure. But if he was an enemy of the undain and they captured him, his fate would be terrible. She'd already let them take Danny. She didn't want to be responsible for anyone else going through … whatever it was they would go through. Not even Nox. If he was on her side she couldn't simply abandon him.

  She closed her eyes and found him again, laughing with the undain lord over some jest. Cait touched his mind, seeking for answers. It felt wrong. Intrusive. She had no right to do this. Still, she had to know and there wasn't much time.

  He was slightly drunk from the wine. That made it a little easier. His mind was always a glass wall, like he had some magical protection or was very well trained. Probably both. She managed to slip beneath his woozy surface thoughts, a knife slicing through fog, searching for the real him beneath.

  For a moment, the briefest moment, she saw him. It was like flicking the light on and off in a room and having that instant to take everything in. She caught only that glimpse, but there could be no doubt. Beneath his calm, cold exterior, his self-control, Nox was terrified. Terrified of Greygyle even as they joked and laughed together. Terrified of what would happen to him. Terrified of the undain.

  Then, seeing her intrusion, Nox reacted. His mind snapped shut, closing itself off from her.

  Was he filled with terror that Greygyle would learn the truth about what they were doing? Or was it something else, a fear that other schemes wouldn't unfold as he wished? His mind was a network of plans, layers of deception, bluff and double-bluff. He was a spider in its web, legs feeling the threads for signals. There were depths there. Subterfuges she couldn't discern.

  This was the Nox that had run Genera. Had he really changed? She couldn't be sure. But his terror was clear, the scale of it boiling away inside him.

  Her connection to him was severed as he threw her out of his mind, furious at her invasion. She clung on a moment more. She had this brief chance to save him. To save him or to fall into his trap.

  She chose. Nox, we're leaving. The undain are here. They know. Get away. Down to the kitchens. Now.

  She fled from his mind, back into her own body. She stood, hauling herself up by the banister. She was slightly out of breath, but there was only the faintest discomfort in her stomach at the magic she'd worked. The light glowed within her still. She felt strong. For the first time in a while, she actually felt great.

  “OK,” she said to Lugg. “He'll find us. Now let's get out of here.”

  A bell began to toll: a deep clanging from one of the high spires. It echoed off the white walls. A moment later, knocks thundered on the door.

  The army from the White City could have bludgeoned down the door, bludgeoned down the walls if they wanted. Deference to Greygyle and his house stayed them. It gave her a few precious moments. On the ground floor, a veiled servant floated toward the main doors to admit the soldiers.

  “This way,” said Lugg.

  They fled from the staircase, farther down the corridor. It looked like another dead-end, but Lugg cut through a doorway from which a flight of steep steps led downward. These were plain and narrow, the walls undecorated and yellowing. The stairs and corridors used by the servants. She'd seen something similar back home, when she and her mother visited country houses on Sunday outings. The stately homes that were, in fact, two separate houses intertwined. Two sets of rooms with two sets of inhabitants who only rarely met. The grand, decorated chambers of the lords and masters. The plain, cramped quarters of the servants. They had their separate floors and their separate doors. And their separate staircases, like this one.

  Cait and Lugg raced along a bare corridor and arrived in the kitchen. It was a cavernous room filled with shelves and jars and copper pots and dead game birds hanging blank-eyed by their broken necks. The steamy air was layered with smells of spice and cooking meat and the delicious aroma of baking bread. One entire wall was occupied by a towering iron stove, a fire raging away behind its grill. The heat coming off it reminded Cait of the furnace back in the factory. The furnace whose fire had taken her father and into which she and Danny had hurled the book. That already seemed like a long time ago even though it was only a few days. A few insane, terrifying days.

  Seven or eight undain servants drifted around the kitchen like ghosts, carrying pots and pans between the oven and a large wooden table in the centre of the room. Why were they cooking? What did they do all day? Of all the inhabitants of the palace, only Lugg ate food as far as she knew. It was like the undain were going through the motions of running an aristocratic house from back home. Greygyle aping the ways of the other world he appeared to be fascinated by. But it was a pantomime. A sham. It wasn't like that back home any more.

  Lugg pointed to a low wooden door in the corner. “Go that way. It runs underground for fifty yards then emerges in the Ice House.”

  “Now you're not coming?”

  “I'll follow. I've thought of something we might need.”

  “What?”

  “I'll only be a few minutes.” He hared off without replying, back to the stairs they'd come down.

  Could she trust him? Was he really trying to help her? She was beginning to doubt everyone. The place was getting to her.

  As she waited, a clock on the wall whirred into life and chimed the hour with a cracked, metallic ring. As one, the servants stopped what they were doing and looked up. Silently, they began to move. Some of them carried serious chopping knives. Cait stepped back, thinking they were coming for her.

  Instead, they filed toward a wooden rack on the wall beneath the clock. Hundreds of small glass ampoules stood on the rack, tiny bottles of a bright blue liquid. One by one, the servants picked an ampoule, snapped off its glass neck and, lifting their veil, drank a few drops.

  She watched their faces as they sipped. For the briefest moment, their lifeless eyes flared as the liquid trickled into them. Then their expressions faded to drab lifelessness. They lowered their veils and returned to their duties.

  She thought about smashing the bottles there and then. It would be easy. They probably wouldn't even try to stop her. But what would become of the creatures? Without their infusions they'd die, fade away, crumble to dust. Would they know anything about it? Would they feel pain? Maybe. Even if they were mindless machines now, they'd been people once. She couldn't do that to them, deprive them of the Spirit that kept them moving. Although, wasn't that the point of all this? Putting an end to the undain? Which meant putting an end to these slaves as well as the high and mighty lords and kings.

  She couldn't bring herself to do it. Instead, watching the servants warily, Cait edged around the room to the wooden door. A rusting iron bolt kept it locked, but she slid this back easily enough. None of the silent servants tried to stop her.

  Through the door, a tunnel led into the darkness, the air cold and smelling of mud. It seemed like she was forever having to creep or crawl through tunnels since this whole thing with the book had started.

  She'd w
ait a few moments for Nox and Lugg. What was going on up there? If they weren't there soon she'd go without them. A line of bells hung on the opposite wall of the kitchen, each with the name of a room underneath on a little brass plaque. Each bell pivoted on a coiled spring and was attached to a chain leading through the ceiling. Two of the bells clanged as she watched. She couldn't read the words beneath, but she didn't need magic to know what was going on.

  Greygyle had learned the truth and was summoning his servants to find her. The veiled servants turned to see which bells were ringing. A third and then a fourth bell shuddered into life and jangled.

  She was about to back into the tunnel when footsteps pounded down the corridor. It was Nox, alone as far as she could tell. He emerged into the kitchen and for a moment, the fear she'd sensed in him was clear on his face. Then his old swagger returned. He strode toward Cait, ignoring the servants.

  “The kitchen,” he said. “Why are we in the kitchen?”

  She could smell the wine on his breath. She ignored his question. “We should never have come to this house. It was an insane thing to do.”

  Anger flushed across his face for a moment, but he kept himself under control. “What was I supposed to do? I wish I knew how the White City found out about us. Greygyle was beginning to open up to me.”

  Was it the dead bird she'd seen at the stones? Maybe. She wasn't going to admit that to Nox.

  “We have to get away,” she said. “Lugg showed me this tunnel. And he says he knows something about Phoenix.”

  “Lugg? You think you can trust the boy?”

  “Not particularly. About as much as I trust you.”

  A smirk passed across his face. He probably practised it in the mirror. “So now you're saying it was worth coming here after all? Just like I said?”

  She was thinking of a suitably scathing reply when Lugg clattered down the corridor, running at full tilt. He burst into the kitchen. “They're here. Searching the rooms.”

  In his arms he cradled a sword: a vicious looking weapon with a snaking blade. It was far too heavy for him; he was barely able to lift it.