by Martin Davey
The boy’s hand twitched and flexed and clenched. A sigh escaped his bloodied mouth, his eyes opened. Blood dripped from his neck and cheek as he struggled to rise.
The Clerk and the creature were struggling, the Clerk holding the monster’s sword arm high over their heads, his other arm by the wrist, their faces close enough to kiss. The Clerk’s back was pressed to the wall, green water dripping on to his shoulder, flakes of brick shaving away under the weight, chains chinking.
The feel of the wall against his back must have been what the Clerk had been waiting for. He swung the creature about, shoved him back into the wall with enough force to send the walls to spewing out a cloud of dust like an unclean pillow and, seemingly in the same movement, the Clerk grabbed a chain and pulled it from the wall in a shower of splintered bricks. Three steps backward and the Clerk swung the chain about his head like some oily lasso, the lock smashing into the creature’s temple with a soft, sickening sound like a rotten orange thrown on the floor. Hair, bone and other grey things flew through the air as the creature’s head rocked back to slam against the wall.
Landros’s stomach roiled. Something scrabbled against his feet and ankles and he jumped back. The boy, he had forgotten the boy. More splattering sounds from the far end of the room, the chain swinging through the air again, a sound like fine pottery breaking, the stink of death almost a solid thing in the confined space of the room.
Landros didn’t look to see the Clerk battering Feren’s corpse, his eyes held by the boy kneeling before him, his head held at an odd angle, the severed neck still bleeding. How much blood could one small body hold? And the boy was speaking, whispering as though afraid the Clerk would hear: “...Landros...maera keru siloh...” The boy’s eyes met his. Not a boy’s eyes at all, something infinitely older and infinitely more intelligent. And it knew Landros as it looked at him. “...Landros...” it whispered again, still on its knees, still groping at his boots to help it rise.
It wasn’t the blood, it wasn’t the whispered words, it wasn’t the bone he could see in the gaping wound at the boy’s neck that filled Landros with revulsion. It was the recognition he had seen in the boy’s green eyes. He swung his poker, the impact jarring his arm as it struck the boy’s neck and shoulder.
More blood. More stinking of death puffing into the air about him. Three more strikes at the boy’s head, skull shattering, and still the boy scrabbled on the ground, his arms twitching, his legs scrabbling like a hobbled spider. Blood smeared under the boy’s limbs as he twitched and writhed. Brown hair clung to his fractured forehead.
Landros’s arm ached, he paused and looked up to see the Clerk watching him from black eyes. Only now did Landros see how the torch had flared back to life, burning bright, crackling and smoking to show the gore spread about the room. The chain the Clerk still held had hair and blue and red and grey and white things sticking to it. A shapeless mound curled on the floor at the Clerk’s feet. Landros tried not to think of Feren. “How did you...?” Landros looked from the Clerk to Feren and back again.
Ricon Lovelin dropped the chain and and pulled the torch from the wall sending light and shadow rioting across the walls, smoke curling into the air. “Just because I now fight my battles from behind a desk or on a stage now doesn’t mean I don’t know how to fight. All we Clerks were once Commanders of the Keepers’ own armies.”
Landros could only nod. How old was the Clerk? When had the Keepers ever needed to put an army in the field? The only sound was the boy scrabbling on the floor, the crackling of the newly revived torch.
“Did I say not long ago that death had taken a liking to you?” The Clerk let the chain fall to the floor, looked at his hands with distaste, more like somebody who had stumbled on wet grass rather than a man who had battered a monster’s brains. He brushed his hands together and stepped over to Landros, grimacing with distaste at the gore slathered about the room. All of his urbane charm and politeness had returned in a moment, the primal violence a thing of the past. “You did well, Landros. A lesser man might have fled; you stayed and did the work of the Keepers.”
Blood, cold and wet spattered on his hands, on his breeches and on his boots. Landros looked at it, looked at the now still corpse of the boy, at the heaped mound in the corner which had once been his friend. “What was that? Why did it kill the boy?” His voice shook and Landros hated himself for it. The Captain of the Watch’s voice shouldn’t shake after a fight.
The Clerk reached Landros and put a hand on his shoulder, a gentle reassurance, a gentle suggestion they should leave the room. “What was it? A monster, Landros. Did your mother ever tell you stories of things that hide under your bed on a night? Things that lurk in the shadows and devour naughty children?”
She had. But now his mother was one of those monsters, hiding in the Clerk’s own room. Or would she be gone now that the Clerk had battered the brains out of Feren? “But why would it kill the boy?” They were out in the corridor now, the dripping water loud and rhythmic. The Clerk pulled out a bunch of keys like a jailer and moved to one of the other doors, heavy and thick with a small window covered by thin bars. “What is this place down here?” Landros wondered, remembering the cruel chains lining the walls of the other room.
Clerk Lovelin turned back with a smile, his eyes bright and shifting in the shimmering light of the torch. “Full of questions today, Landros. Though I suppose that’s preferable to staring at me with dumb fear.” He put the key into the door, but didn’t turn it yet, instead looking back to Landros, the torchlight sending shadows dancing upon his pale cheek. “The creature was death. A remnant of man’s history, of his cruel, shadowed past. And this place,” the Clerk indicated the corridor, the doors, the gory room they had just left, “Was once one of the houses of the Black Prince, one of the minions of the Nameless One himself. This is the place where he brought people to die.”
Landros nodded. Was this the place where the Clerk had brought the boy to die? The place where his screams wouldn’t be heard as he tore the memories from his brain?
“And, my young Captain, while we’re on the subject of questions, I have to wonder why you are down here at all.” The smile was friendly, the eyes watchful.
A lifetime ago, on a darkening hillside with the wind wisping in Dorian’s greying hair, “Never lie to the Clerk,” the old Captain had said. Landros met the Clerk’s black eyes; had he once found them so frightening? In a world where the dead came back to life and killed young boys in places where the Nameless One brought the ancients to die, he could almost find them comforting, reassuring. “I wanted to find what he knew of my mother’s murder.” Landros said, his voice level and loud in the confines of the corridor.
The Clerk’s cheekbones were stark and shadowed in the light of the torch, the smoke not seeming to bother him. “You wanted to find out what I discovered. The creature in there didn’t want me to discover anything.” Clerk Lovelin turned the key. “Battles are being fought all around us Landros, every moment lines are being drawn and sides are being chosen. Keeper Jerohim came to you, chose you to be his Captain for a reason. Never let anybody turn you from him and the truth of his glory. Your mother was killed by a very powerful creature we battle to save your kind from.” Seeing Landros open his mouth to speak, the Clerk lifted a hand, “I will speak with Keeper Jerohim tonight and ask how much I can tell you of your mother’s death.” He pulled the door open.
The effort of keeping her form in this house of the Clerk had already taken a terrible toll on the corpse of Landros’s mother. White teeth poked through cracked and broken and peeling lips, hair dry and brittle and wild, skin thin enough to show the bone beneath. Her nightdress hung off her like a cobweb in a dark corner, her arms thin and bony and sharp. And in a hand with more bone than skin, she held a short sword rusted and pitted as Landros’s poker.
All things seen in an instant, an instant the door had swung open to reveal his mother standing in the darkened room, lips rotted away, twisting that terrible face
into an awful smile. A swipe of a skeletal hand, a rusted blade slicing through the Clerk’s neck, blood gushing, torch falling and rolling on the floor.
Clerk Lovelin slumped to his knees, in ways a more shocking sight than seeing his mother return from the dead. She took a step forward now, her skin sloughing away even as she moved, her nightdress rotting away as smoke from the torch swirled about her legs. No gloating, no emotion of any kind on the rotting face. No hesitation, either, the monster leaned forward and plunged the sword up to the hilt in Clerk Lovelin’s chest twisting it as she pushed, stronger than she had any right to be as muscle and skin and blood drooled from her arm.
The last final sucking of breath by the Clerk and then he fell forward, blood flowing beneath him and spreading across the floor.
Only now did Landros gather his wits to move. He looked from the Clerk to his mother, held the poker out before him. It looked short and dull and pitiful; nothing like a bright shining blade fit to slay a monster from nightmare. But then this creature had slain a Clerk of the Keepers. Could Landros even stand against a monster who had slain such a being?
He swallowed, steadied his poker and resolved not to die without a fight.
“..veru maraili Landros sherum...” she said, more skin flaking as she moved cracked lips. Her words were a hundred, a thousand voices speaking as one. A hive of humanity that hurt the ear to listen to.
Landros clutched his poker. The Clerk was dead. Something was happening to the world of the Keepers and he wanted to fight, fight for what was good and what was right. Fight for the Keepers and all they stood for. But could he lift a hand against the woman who had raised him? It wasn’t his mother, he knew. All he had to do was look in the eyes and see the same creature who had looked at him from Feren’s eyes, from the boy’s eyes. The same foul creature had looked at him from them all. A creature who had the power over death and could hide from the eyes of the Keepers. It was trying to speak to him with his mother’s voice. “...vesimn mena jaarasin...Landros betray your....berun vara smen...kind...” The words getting faster and more muddled, making Landros’s brain ache with the noise. His mother’s throat rising and falling with the effort.
As though the effort of speaking to him had destroyed the last vestiges of its power in the world of the Keepers, the creature began to fall to dust. His mother, so briefly returned to him, began to decay before his very eyes. The poker fell from his numb fingers, clattering to the floor, a small sound compared to the hum of a million voices still echoing about the corridor as his mother putrefied before him. Hair and skin and muscle and bone all peeling and rotting, the stink of it enough to make Landros lift a hand to his mouth. He turned away, looked at the Clerk on the floor, curled around the sword in his stomach like a mother around a newborn babe. The Clerk had been a good man, doing the work of the Keepers only to be cut down in a dank corridor where the cruel minions of the Nameless One had brought their victims to die. Not a fitting end for a great man.
And it wouldn’t be a good end for Landros if he was found alone with the body and a sword by his side. He bent and touched a hand to the shoulder of the Clerk. One last look at his mother, her bones flaking and crumbling into ash. There would be no burning on the shores of the Sea for his mother to send her soul to Insitur. Where does a soul go when the body has been possessed by a murderous monster and the body rots in a place of torture?
The creature had killed his mother, killed the Clerk, and Landros would do everything he could to fight it. But for now he needed to get away otherwise theirs wouldn’t be the only deaths tonight. He ran for the stairs already knowing that there would be little good in sneaking away from the scene.
The Keepers could see into the hearts and minds of all men.
He smoothed his hair, ran a hand over the front of his uniform and stepped out into the great hall.
CHAPTER 19
Spying on Guardian Cioran would have been much easier if Ysora knew what she was searching for.
“Anything.” Tiege had said with a careless wave of his hand and an annoying smile. “My Master is a man of strange tastes. If you go to him with something you’d think important, he’ll shrug and frown. Go to him with a snippet of useless information and he’ll rub his hands and write letters and pace the room.”
Well, there was plenty of useless information in Cioran’s study. Tiege’s Master would probably have the time of his life in here. She could imagine some wizened old man hopping up and down with excitement at the reams of lists and notes and names. She always imagined Tiege’s Master as a wizened old man, more often than not with a long white beard and a knobbly staff to help him walk. Every time she asked Tiege who his Master was, he would smile that same annoying smile and shrug, “When the time is right, my Master will make himself known. Until then he must remain in the shadows. It is a dangerous life he leads.”
A dangerous life. Ysora stopped to flick through a red book on Cioran’s mantelpiece. Lists and names and names and lists. She let the book fall closed again and sighed and looked about the room. Cleanliness. Having a clean, uncluttered house was the surest way to having a clean and uncluttered mind, Cioran always said.
Ysora’s mother had always enjoyed a clean house too; though with her it had been a spartan, cold cleanliness, everything scoured and boiled clean. The house of Guardian Cioran was a homier place; everything clean and soft and bright and airy. The Keepers wanted their children to be clean and happy and at peace, according to Cioran. Rhodry always liked a clean house too. She remembered trying to tidy his boxes away: the tool box so heavy she could barely drag it across the floor, the fishing boxes stinking and slimy, his clothes reeking of ale and cheap perfumes.
She found a book she hadn’t seen before, black and thin, the leather battered and creased down the spine. She walked across the room to it, her steps light and her breathing shallow. Solphin poetry. Even the Guardian was a fan of the poet. Ysora sniffed and let the book fall open at a random page:
They had been born to the strangest of sights,
And came to the world of men,
And rode for a hundred days and nights,
To give judgement on the cruellest of all,
Ysora sighed. She doubted Tiege or his Master would be interested in Cioran reading Solphin. Everybody read Solphin. She flicked through the book some more. And came to a single sheaf of paper slipped inside the back pages. Written in Cioran’s fine, careful handwriting. Obviously a draft of a letter, with more than the occasional word crossed out. It seemed strange to see Cioran struggling with a letter and being indecisive, he always seemed so sure of himself and everything about him.
And then she saw her own name. Written in the Guardian’s own hand:
And I fail to see why Clerk Lovelin hasn’t mentioned the arrival of Clerk Killian. Is he even aware he is coming? You are aware, I know, that Ysora Siran has recently arrived in Yerotan. We must be careful with her so I’m afraid I must ask that Clerk Killian stay somewhere else on his travels. I don’t think the arrival of the Clerk would do our work with her any good....
She was creasing the paper. She tried to breathe more slowly, not hold the paper so tight. A look to the window; Yerotan was beginning to stir to life, families heading off out to the bitterfall fields, stores opening, people calling to one another.
Cioran would be returning soon, wanting to know how her studies progressed. She needed to be downstairs and quickly reading the writings of Keeper Liotuk. Another glance to the window. Still no sign of Cioran. Not that she could see much from the centre of the room. Though the last thing she needed was to walk to the window and have Cioran see her watching him from the window of his own study.
She pulled a pencil and paper out of the pocket of her skirts, copied the letter, put them away and slipped the paper back inside the book. Was she remembering exactly which page she had taken it from? Had she even checked? She frowned and flicked through the book again, “Your Beauty,” that was it. The poem where Solphin compares the beaut
y of a lady favoured by the Five to the truth of the Keepers. She slipped the letter back inside, placed the book exactly as she had found it; on the side of the writing table, though not near enough to the edge to hang over the side.
Her heart beat and her throat felt tight as she hurried down the stairs. She knew her cheeks would be flushed and tried to slow her breathing again. The books of Keeper Liotuk were where she had left them, on the low table in front of the hard-backed chair. She smoothed her skirts and sat down.
Cioran was a good man. Her every instinct told her so. But then why had he lied about her mother? Why was he telling somebody they had to be careful with her? Why were Tiege and his Master spying on him? Every question made her cheeks flush even more. She waved a book before her face to try and cool herself.
She had to forget Cioran and Tiege. Had to concentrate on the words before her or Cioran would begin to wonder what she did in his house when she was supposed to be learning about Keeper Liotuk. Learning of the love of the Keepers.
The Guardian had chosen three books for her to read this morning, all of them piled on top of the table before her. She chose the slimmest volume and looked at the spine. Creased and worn with age, the fine gold lettering hard to decipher, but she could just make out the name Petter Maronghavian. But what would the Guardian think of her choice of another Maronghavian work? Cioran never gave her set reading tasks, he liked to say that he could tell more of her studies and more of her frame of mind by the passages she chose to read rather than having him tell her what to read. This only made Ysora second guess herself at every turn.
Maronghavian it would have to be; she didn’t have time to argue with herself. He was an interesting character anyway. He’d been the first historian of Keeper Liotuk, one of the very first men to prostrate themselves at the feet of the Keepers after the Deliverance. The Keepers had known all the supplicants better than they knew themselves. Many had died that day as judgement was passed, but some, like Petter Maronghavian had been raised from the dirt and rewarded for the purity of their hearts.