The Lazarus Vault

by Tom Harper

  Hugh gives a slight bow. ‘Thank you, your majesty.’

  A terse smile. ‘Make sure you keep your storyteller safe. I want him to tell me how it ends.’

  *

  For three days and nights we ride, snatching sleep and food where we can, never more than half an hour, then back in the saddle and on again. The pace is brutal, the terrain unforgiving. I understand why the Normans never really conquered Wales – why Morgan ap Owain could overthrow them the moment the King’s attention was elsewhere. It’s a wild land of sheer valleys, icy swamps and dark forests that stretch to the horizon. It punishes the horses. One by one, they go lame or collapse with exhaustion. We leave the riders behind, though it’s a long, dangerous journey home.

  It feels as if the land is swallowing us. Each day the valleys grow deeper, while the peaks reach further towards the clouds. Snow blankets the upper reaches, vast heights where only God and eagles roam.

  On the second afternoon we pause at the top of yet another ridge. Hugh reins in next to me and turns round in his saddle, looking for something.

  He points back. ‘Can you see them?’

  I strain my eyes, but don’t see anything. ‘Who?’

  ‘The riders. They’ve been following us all the way from Caerleon.’

  ‘Malegant’s men?’ I look again; I still can’t see them.

  ‘Morgan’s.’

  ‘Has he changed his mind? Are they chasing us?’

  ‘Stalking us.’ He gives a grim laugh. ‘Did you really think your story was so powerful it moved Morgan to mercy? He understood what you were saying, for all you disguised it. He knows we’re after something powerful – a weapon. He wants it for himself.’

  I scan the long valley behind us, the ranks of trees like furrows in a field. Browns fade to greys as they fall in the mountain shadows. It feels like the end of the world.

  *

  At dusk on the third day we come to a long lake nestled in a valley. High summits loom all around it like sleeping giants. On one of them, at the eastern end of the lake, a fire glows against the sky.

  Hugh slips off his horse. ‘That’s them. Please God we’re not too late.’

  We dismount and leave the horses drinking from the lake. We don’t need to tether them – they don’t have the strength to wander far. We’re not much better off, but we don’t have a choice. We jog along the dusky lakeshore, hoping the men on the hill don’t hear the sound of our arms.

  Even on foot, the hill looks too steep to climb. But at the far end of the lake, we find steps cut in to the mountain face, climbing towards the pass between two summits. It doesn’t surprise me. I remember what my mother said, how Wales is a wild realm on the rim of the world, how every rock and tree might hide the door to an enchanted land. Stones stand upright like trees; sometimes when the tide goes out, whole forests appear on the seabed. I think these steps must be the same, a hidden road that’s opened by a beam of moonlight, or the song of a wren.

  Scrambling up the stairs in the dark is agonising work. There isn’t a muscle in my body that doesn’t ache from so many long days in the saddle. The moon’s behind a cloud: we scuttle like crabs, ungainly in our armour, testing every rock to make sure it won’t make a noise. Distant thunder rumbles across the valley – a storm’s coming. Above us, the flames on the mountain sway into the night.

  The last few yards are the hardest: an almost vertical climb up a damp rock face. There must be another way, but Hugh doesn’t want to run into any sentries. We strap our swords to our backs and cling on with numb fingers, praying the fire masks the noise we make.

  At last I haul myself over the lip of the cliff, and flop belly-down in a patch of heather. I tilt back my head and stare at the open hilltop.

  France

  The Land Rover had a satnav, but Ellie turned it off. She didn’t think you could track a car through its GPS, but the idea of a chip sending a signal into space, broadcasting her position, made her too anxious. Instead, she studied the map book and made a list of waypoints, then set out following the road signs. She stuck to secondary roads as much as she could. She wished Annelise had owned something less conspicuous – a Renault or a Citroën.

  She’d never realised how big France was. She drove for hours, but when she checked her progress on the map she still had dauntingly far to go. Around 3 a.m. she almost dozed off – her eyes had closed without her realising it. The shock took her another few miles, but when she felt her eyes starting to droop again she had no choice but to pull over on a farm track and curl up in the back seat. A tractor rumbling past woke her at dawn.

  Now she had a new worry. The fuel gauge on the car was edging inexorably down. She stopped at a small petrol station and spent the last of her euros on a few more litres. The needle barely budged.

  She crossed into Britanny and kept driving. The main roads followed the coast, but she found one that cut straight through the middle of the peninsula, a winding valley overshadowed by a spine of hills. Even in France, she knew it was considered a wild region – a place with its own language, its own customs, its own ghosts and magic. The needle touched red.

  She almost made it. On a road so minor she’d almost missed it, five kilometres short of where Doug had indicated on the map, the engine cut out. She coasted down the hill and nosed the Land Rover on to the grassy verge. After so many hours being carried along by its sound, the silence was eerie. She sat in the car for a few minutes, drawing up her courage. Then she got out and walked into the trees.

  The forest was an otherworldly place. Whereas the Mirabeau forest had been dead and brown, this one burst with life. Green ivy hung from the trees and crept over their bark; moss carpeted the floor in a spongy mass that soaked up her footsteps. At first Ellie found it comforting, a glimpse of spring in the depths of winter, but the further she went the more oppressive it seemed. The colour became alien, not vibrant but poisonous, stifling everything.

  Black clouds began massing in the sky. The forest darkened. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Soon the rain began to beat down, and the leafless trees were no protection. It drizzled down her neck and soaked her clothes. The pack on her back felt twice as heavy. She began to wonder if she’d ever get out, or if she’d die of exposure in this lonely forest. Sheets of rain washed over her face, blinding her.

  The sky seemed lighter up ahead. She plunged on, slipping on the moss and the slick rock underfoot. She came out of the trees on the edge of a ridge and stared. Below her, a narrow valley plunged away like a scar in the forest. Few trees grew there. The entire valley was choked with boulders, a jumble of vast lumps of granite, each taller than she was, piled up like giant golf balls. A stream flowed around the rocks, sometimes dammed into pools, sometimes spilling over them and falling in cascades, sometimes disappearing into hidden channels below. Moss covered everything.

  Something gave inside her. She sat down on the embankment, oblivious to the rainwater that seeped into the seat of her jeans, and stared down into the rocky chaos. She was too tired to cry. She’d been running for days – months, it seemed – and she was spent. Whatever might be down there, or near there, or perhaps not even there – she’d never find it.

  She rubbed a trickle of water from her eyes and stared. In the wash of green and grey that filled the valley a bright flash of colour had appeared out of nowhere. A man in a red anorak stood in the middle of the boulder field, dwarfed by the stones, looking as if he’d always been there.

  He waved, then scrambled down from the boulder and began climbing the slope. He could have been anyone – a hunter, a forester, a lost hiker – but Ellie didn’t think so. She didn’t have the strength to run any more. She sat there and waited.

  Halfway up the slope, he paused and looked up.

  ‘Ellie Stanton?’

  A dumb nod.

  ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’

  Cwm Bychan

  A dozen men stand around a huge fire. They’re staring at an upright finger of stone on the far side of the knol
l. The King’s tied to it, dressed only in a white linen tunic: he’s on the far side of the fire from me, so that the flames seem to lick around him. Between him and the fire stands a flat rock, like an altar – there’s something on it, but the flames hide it from me. Two men stand in front of it – one immensely tall and broad, suited in black armour; the other slighter and stooped, his head buried in the hood of his cloak. I can’t see their faces, but Malegant I’d recognise anywhere. The other, I think, must be the goldsmith with the sky-blue eyes and the silver hand, Lazar de Mortain.

  Malegant picks up a black lance from the rock-altar and advances. The King’s eyes go wide with uncomprehending terror. Even now, he can’t really believe anyone would actually kill a king. Malegant levels the spear.

  It’s the scene from every nightmare I’ve had in the last five years. The bound victim, ghostly white; the executioner and the spear. I can’t let it happen again. I dig my palms into the soft ground, push myself up and launch myself forward like a wolf. Malegant’s so close to the King I’ll never reach him in time. I pull a dagger from my belt, grip it by the tip and throw it – straight through the flames. It strikes Malegant in the back and bounces off him, too weak to penetrate the chain mail, but hard enough that he feels it. He spins around.

  So does the man in front of me. He saw the knife fly by his face and turns to see where it came from. The fire lights me – standing there, empty-handed, I don’t look much of a threat. He steps towards me.

  I reach up to my shoulder as if I’m surrendering. My hand closes around the hilt of my sword, strapped across my back for the climb. The knight can’t see it. I wait until he’s in range, then whip the blade out of its scabbard. I run him through the throat in a single motion.

  Forgive me, I whisper to the hermit.

  The hilltop becomes a battlefield. Men move like shadows around the firelight, hacking and punching and kicking. Some of William’s knights have gained the summit, but not enough. It’s all they can do to keep from being driven back over the cliff. At the far end, I see Malegant grab a man by the scruff of his coif and hurl him over the edge.

  Malegant turns back to the king, but he’s under attack again. Hugh’s managed to get through. He charges at Malegant; Malegant sees him come and puts up his sword. The two trade blows: Hugh’s a big man, but Malegant dwarfs him. The first strike shatters his shield, the second almost takes off his arm.

  I run towards them. I’m halfway there when someone steps in my way. I see a grey face, red in the firelight, and the puckered eye-socket like a screwhole. Alberic. He’s got a sword, but I doubt he knows how to use it. I make the merest of feints, then reverse direction and drive the sword into his shoulder.

  I suppose he screams, though in the fury of the moment I don’t hear it. I just remember his mouth, stretched almost to breaking; his good eye wide open; the skin around his dead eye pulled so tight I think it might rip apart. He wheels away, and in my surprise I let go of the sword. Straight away, I lunge to get it back – but Alberic’s staggering backwards. All I do is push him further. One more step, a horrible second as he teeters on the brink, then he’s gone.

  So’s my sword. I spin around. It’s impossible to say who’s winning the battle, only that it’s still as furious as ever. Malegant has Hugh pinned against the rock altar in front of the fire. Hugh’s clutching something to his chest with his left hand, while fending off Malegant’s strokes with his sword.

  You’ve got what so many men never get – the chance to atone for your sins.

  I grab a brand from the fire and run towards them. Malegant beats Hugh’s sword aside and pins his arm back against the rock. With his other hand he wrests away the thing Hugh’s holding, an egg-shaped white stone. Hugh bucks and writhes like a bird in a trap, but he can’t get free.

  As casually as if it were a piece of fruit, Malegant tosses the stone aside. His gauntleted hand pulls away Hugh’s sword, reverses it, and puts it to Hugh’s throat.

  The brand in my hand blazes like a comet. Malegant sees it and steps away, turning to face me. He has a sword in each hand now, a death-angel coming to claim me. Away on the next mountain, a flash of lightning illuminates the sky. I power on, swinging the torch wildly towards him.

  Those swords could have cut off my head like a pair of scissors, but Hugh launches himself up and crashes into Malegant, hugging him so tight the swords can’t touch him. Malegant tries to shrug him off, but Hugh clings on. The two men wheel away, locked in their embrace.

  Now it’s my turn to rescue Hugh. But as I run on, my foot catches something on the ground. I fall forward and land on my knees. In the flow of battle I almost ignore it, but some sixth sense makes me look back to see what tripped me.

  It’s the lance.

  Malegant must have dropped it when Hugh attacked him. I reach down and prise it out of the mud. Almost before I have it in my hand, I sense a movement from my right. The whole hilltop is a mêlée of breakneck violence and motion, but I have an instinct, honed in the chaos of the tournament field, for when it’s coming at me. I wheel round.

  Lazar is running towards me. His hood’s fallen back; his bony face looks skeletal in the firelight. He moves quickly, despite his age. His silver hand presses the white rock to his chest; the other holds a curved knife.

  Sheer reflex makes me lift the spear. It’s heavier than I expect – I don’t know what it’s made of, but it seems to soak up the light. Lazar doesn’t see it in the flickering darkness. All I have to do is hold it steady. Lazar does the rest.

  Loqmenez

  Ellie followed the man down the slope. There were no marks that she could see, but he led her unerringly between the rocks to a hollow on the far side of the valley in the shadow of a vast boulder. A torrent of water poured down over its face and vanished into a crevice. Peering down, Ellie saw white foam bubbling far below.

  ‘It’s a bit of a squeeze,’ her guide apologised. ‘Try not to touch the water.’

  She gazed uncertainly into the hole. ‘You want me to go in there?’

  ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. I’m Leon, by the way.’ He stuck out his hand and Ellie shook it. He was older than she’d expected, probably in his fifties, but thin and wiry. With his thinning hair and his rimless spectacles, he reminded her of her fifth-form geography teacher.

  ‘You’ve done an extraordinary job. We’re almost there now.’

  Following his instructions, Ellie knelt down on the rock and slid her legs backwards until they dangled into the hole. A weathered groove gave her a handhold in the rock – she wondered if it was natural. Her legs hung in the void. Icy water spattered her calves where the waterfall roared down inches behind her.

  ‘Let go.’

  She stared up at him, his anxious face staring down against the dark sky. He gave a worn smile. ‘Trust me.’

  She dropped – but not as far as she’d expected. A couple of feet, no more, landing on a ledge invisible in the darkness. Through her shoes she could feel criss-crossed lines hatched into the rock, giving her grip.

  A red-hooded head appeared above her. ‘If you shuffle in, you should find a tunnel.’

  Ellie crouched and stretched a hand in front of her. She touched nothing but air. She crawled forwards, sweeping her arm in broad arcs to check the way. She heard a thud and a splash; the dim light at the opening disappeared completely as Leon dropped in after her, then came back artificially bright as he switched on a torch.

  ‘You can stand up now.’

  She did, feeling gingerly for the roof. She walked on; she counted thirty paces, then felt a change. The air was colder and somehow clearer. She could sense space around her.

  Leon came out beside her. The head-torch strapped to his forehead played over the space as he looked around, showing flashes of carefully mortared stone walls, fragmentary images of knights and damsels rendered in plaster, lancet windows filled in with earth, fan vaults spreading into the inky darkness above.

  Ellie gasped. ‘Where are we?’
<
br />   ‘The Chateau de Loqmenez.’

  The torchbeam came down again, crossed a flagstone floor and came to rest on a shiny petrol generator sitting in an alcove. Leon bent over it and yanked back a cord. It coughed three times, roared into motion, then settled into a regular hum.

  The room came to life. Bare bulbs strung between the walls filled the space with light. They seemed to be in some sort of great hall, with a fireplace at one end and a carved stone doorway opening on to the tunnel they’d come through. The only sign of modernity was the lights, and the tangle of cables around the generator. Further back, she could see a tower of stainless-steel scaffolding on wheels. She wondered how they’d got that in.

  ‘Is this a castle?’

  ‘It was buried in a landslide two hundred years ago. Even then, it was already derelict; afterwards, people forgot it completely. But credit to the builders, they built to last.’

  Ellie nodded, though she wasn’t looking at the architecture, or the fragments of plaster murals still clinging to the walls. She was staring at the far end of the room. A black spear hung in mid air, floating weightless above a stone table.

  ‘Is that … the lance?’ Her voice trailed off. She felt giddy, as if she were suspended in space. The world seemed to have been pulled inside out, a mirror-realm of strange enchantments.

  An unreadable look crossed Leon’s face. ‘Chrétien used poetic licence. The blood that flows from the tip – I don’t know where he got that from.’

  Captivated, Ellie reached to touch the lance. Leon’s sharp voice drew her back.

  ‘Don’t touch!’

  Ellie stepped away and gazed around the empty hall. ‘I thought there’d be more of you.’

  ‘We haven’t used this place in years. It was only after we heard about what happened at Mirabeau that we guessed you might make your way here. We’ve been scouring half of Europe for you.

  ‘I’m glad you found me,’ she said. She wasn’t sure she meant it. Leon’s manner unnerved her, so breezy and offhand. He didn’t seem to have any idea what she’d been through. And there were too many things that didn’t make sense. She felt like the victim of some monstrous hoax, that if she shone a bright light on this castle she might find it was all made of cardboard. She looked at the floating lance again. Now that her eyes were used to the gloom, she thought she could make out thin wires holding it in the darkness.