The Way to Babylon

by Paul Kearney

  Scuffling in the street, and the murmur of voices, the chink of metal. They did not move. Hands halted halfway to weapons. A slow riband of smoke curled up unnoticed from Phrynius’s pipe.

  Then there was a crash from downstairs and a sudden bedlam of men shouting. Wood splintered under heavy blows, giving way to the clash of steel. Corrary’s voice carried up the stairs, shouting Bicker’s name.

  The company leapt to their feet, weapons hissing free of scabbards. Phrynius hopped about like a goblin in the gloom. ‘Follow me! Follow me! We must go downstairs. There is a way out there, from the cellar!’ But they hardly heard him.

  Ratagan and Riven dived out of the door on to the landing, meaning to fetch Madra and Mereth, but a tumult engulfed them as they piled through it. The landing was alive with men in armour, Hearthwares and Sellswords both, their feet skidding in the thick dust. Ratagan roared with rage and smashed into them like a battering ram, sending them thundering to the floorboards. One remained on his feet and his sword whistled down on the big man’s back, but Riven twisted out his own blade in time to deflect it. The shock ran up his arm, and the enemy sword careered off in a flurry of sparks to bury itself in the plaster of the wall.

  Bicker and Isay tumbled out of the room behind them. The landing was a mess of bodies, prone and upright, with weapons flashing and men shouting, trying to tell friend from foe.

  ‘Alive!’ someone shrieked. ‘Take them alive!’

  Ratagan was struggling to his feet, with armoured figures pounding him. Riven saw a sword pommel strike him in the temple and lay it open. More figures were running up the narrow stairs, with swords glinting in their hands. Some kicked down the other door on the landing and launched themselves inside. A girl screamed.

  Something in Riven snapped. He bellowed and launched himself over Ratagan’s body, with Bicker and Isay in his wake. His sword swept in a short arc to cleave a man’s skull, then snicked back to clang off a breastplate. A mailed fist struck him on the ear and a high hissing filled his head, deafening him. He caught a glimpse of burly figures retreating down the stairs with struggling bodies thrown over their shoulders, saw Madra’s long hair cloaking a Sellsword’s back, and charged forward again with the taste of blood in his mouth and a mad anger fuelling his muscles.

  An armoured torso brought him up short, and another shattering blow to the jaw felled him. The Hearthware reared over him with elation in his face for a moment, and then Isay’s staff had licked out like a snake, pounding him between the eyes, and he fell back into the arms of the others behind him. Isay propelled himself forward and landed bodily on the scrum of armoured men. They recoiled. One tumbled head over heels down the stairs, his armour digging chunks out of the frail walls. The Myrcan shortened his grip on the staff and punched it into faces. Bodies lay on the floor, but more of the enemy were powering on. They piled on to Isay and grasped his limbs, heedless of the savage blows he dealt out. He staggered as they weighed him down, a scream of pure frustration and rage coming from his throat, and then fell with half a dozen men clinging to him and sword hilts coming down in flurries upon his head. A last effort sent one Hearthware flying free of the tangle to smash into Riven. The man’s metal-clad weight crushed him to the floor, constricting his ribs. His heartbeat was a red yammer in his head. He saw Bicker lunging forward, his blade like a glittering needle, and old Luib battling away indomitably. But then there was a splintering of glass, and more Hearthwares were dropping on to the landing through the window behind. Riven tried to cry out; but he could not muster the breath in his chest to make a sound, and he watched helplessly as Luib was struck from behind and went down like a felled tree. Bicker spun and sent a fountain of blood flying from one of the new attackers, but he was alone and from two sides the enemy rushed him, standing on their comrades’ bodies as they came. A foot stamped Riven’s head, mashing his face into the wooden floor and for a while he could not see or hear, but could only feel the vibrations and blows of the fight in the wood underneath him. But eventually that, too, faded. The last thing he saw clearly was the face of the Sellsword who came last up the stairs. He was grinning widely, showing the gap between his front teeth, and his black hair fell in a curly mass over his forehead. He began kicking Ratagan’s unconscious face with glee.

  FIFTEEN

  THE BLOOD WAS pounding in his head, hot as lava, heavy as lead. He could feel it trying to throb its way out of his temples. It washed across his shut eyes in waves of light and dark. A dry groan scraped out of his parched throat.

  Slowly he became aware of other things. The painful stretching of his arms and constriction of his chest. The bright, bone-grating agony in his wrists. The nerveless weight of his legs pulling him floorwards.

  Dull curiosity grew in him. He tried to open his eyes, but they seemed gummed shut. There was light beyond his eyelids, flickering torchlight—so they had not blinded him, at least. His fingers twitched, and there was the chink of metal. The manacles at his wrists shifted slightly, digging deep into lacerated flesh, and he almost cried out.

  But the pain helped. It pushed the throbbing of his head away, poured light into his darkening mind. He concentrated on moving his legs. The tingle of returning circulation pricked at him and he gritted his teeth, but that sent agony shooting through his jaw. For a moment, as his mind swam, he was at Beechfield again, and there were iron rods holding his face together. But he had beaten that pain, also. A hard school he had been to, but a good one.

  He found his feet. Immediately his arms came down and the tearing pressure of the manacles eased. Air poured into his chest, and he leaned against the wall at his back, sucking it in, eating it up.

  Not done yet, by God.

  He had sufficient slack in his wrist chains to bring a hand to his face. He felt his eyes, the stickiness there, and then in one swift flick tore open the stuck eyelid.

  When the pain had eased, he did the same for the other blood-glued eye.

  He was in a dim stone room, ten feet square. Opposite him was an iron door, shiny with moisture. There was straw at his feet and water ran down the walls. The light came from a single clear-burning torch set in a wall hook to his right. The room was entirely silent.

  A dungeon. A real-life dungeon. Terrific.

  He was alone.

  Not a sound. No jangling of keys, no piteous cries, no cackling jailers.

  And a terrifying thought struck him.

  They’ve left me to die here.

  Ratagan, Bicker: where were they? He saw Isay go down again, saw Madra carried off on a Sellsword’s shoulder. Where were they?

  Panic fluttered at the edge of his mind, but he put it down ruthlessly.

  Christ, I’m thirsty.

  His dry tongue circled his split lips. He hadn’t been in such bad shape since—

  He cursed aloud, his voice startling in the silence.

  A rat scrabbled through the straw of the floor, chittering to itself. It sat up on its hind legs, looked at him for a moment and chittered some more.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he said moodily.

  The rat darted away, and then disappeared in the corner. He saw there was the grating of a drain there, eighteen inches square, and if he quelled the shifting of his feet in the straw he could hear the faint sound of running water echoing; the only sound in or out of his cell. He began to wish the rat had stayed to chitter at him.

  Time passed. The torch burned lower. It would have to be replaced soon. His thirst increased and his legs grew weary from standing, but he dared not relax them. His wrists were no better than meat-wrapped bone. The panic welled in him again, and the fear for the others. Was Madra in another cell like this? Maybe she was enjoying the attentions of her jailers.

  The thought made him twist in his chains, heedless of the pain. He shouted and screamed, the damp air scraping his arid throat, and finally he fell silent.

  Hours passed. The torch guttered, sank, and finally went out, leaving him in impenetrable blackness. A whimper crept unbidden out of his
throat, and he turned it into a snarl.

  Eventually there was a rattle at the door, and a key turned in the lock. His heart jumped. He heard the door swish open through the straw, and then there was a glimmer of light, a low spill dancing in someone’s hand. It shed a yellow glow of illumination that revealed fingers, a dark sleeve and a hood with the face shadowed.

  The door swung shut again.

  The spill was set in a niche to one side, and the monk-like figure approached him. Despite himself, he shrank against the wall.

  The hood was thrown back and he was looking at Jinneth, her face a maze of shadow and light, black darkness and yellow flame; two diamond brilliances shone in her earlobes.

  She came forward until her robe touched his chest, and her face tilted up to his.

  ‘Greetings, Michael Riven,’ she murmured, her voice a silken touch in the low light. ‘I told you we would meet again. How do you find your new lodgings?’

  Words crammed his mouth like a logjam. His breath clicked in his throat. He felt painful tears ooze out of his blood-covered eyes and streak his cheeks. This had been a face he loved, one he had never thought to see again. And here it was with the flame playing on it as though it were the glow of the peat in the bothy, looking at him with those eyes. And he had come to hate it.

  ‘You’re not my wife,’ he croaked, and he saw surprise widen her eyes for a second.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said, her voice as low as the beat of a swan’s wing. ‘I am no one’s wife now.’ Her voice sharpened dangerously. ‘You and your friends saw to that.’

  ‘Where are they? What have you done with them?’

  She smiled. ‘They live yet, never fear.’ The smile broadened. ‘Is not irony a delicious thing? That I should flee you, only to have you delivered into the palm of my hand?’

  ‘Hilarious,’ he grated. Her nearness was dizzying him. He could sense the warmth of her under the thick robe, smell the perfume that rose from her throat.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked him as she had once before. ‘Where do you come from?’

  He stared at her for a long moment, remembering other expressions on that face, other things in those eyes. He heard laughter that had died at the foot of a mountain long ago.

  ‘I am Michael Riven, from Camasunary on the Isle of Skye, and I am a Teller of Tales,’ he said clearly. And he felt that by saying it, he had somehow committed himself to something. A course of action, perhaps. A certain conclusion. But he did not care. He knew who he was and what he did, and that was enough.

  ‘Strange names,’ Jinneth said softly. There was an odd brightness in her eyes. Her hand came up and he flinched, but it caressed the old scars on his forehead. Her face creased with puzzlement. Dried blood flaked off under her touch.

  He bent his head, with his heart thundering in his ears, and at the familiar angle his lips met hers. She did not draw back. Her tongue dipped delicately at his. His broken lips bled against hers, and he tasted the blood in both their mouths. His chains clinked. He had leeway enough to bury one hand in the rich darkness of her hair, to run his fingers on the nape of her neck—and then she pulled away.

  He could have wept with loss. For a moment, an instant only, he had been kissing his dead wife.

  There was a hardness about her face that he had not seen before; a hint of cruelty. She smiled again, and became a stranger, an enemy. His grief was shunted aside by rising anger.

  ‘You bitch!’ he spat.

  His blood ringed her lips. She looked like a vampire.

  ‘I wish to know more,’ she said. ‘I wish to know many things. I wish to know why you and your friends are here, where you are going. These things you will tell me.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘You will tell me, Teller of Tales. Or else the frowning girl who has accompanied you on your errand—and whom you care for, I think—will be lent to our Sellswords for a little while. We will see if the attentions of a dozen mercenaries cannot lift her frown.’

  His fists clenched and unclenched helplessly in their chains. His eyes blazed, but he bit his mouth shut.

  ‘You are stubborn and you are proud. Not altogether bad qualities in a man, but hardly suitable in your present situation. I will let you think on it for a while in the dark. Reason often comes more quickly when one is left alone without distractions. For now, farewell.’ She curtsied to him as though he were a prince. Then the hood was thrown up again, the spill retrieved from its niche, and she left him with the darkness.

  He heard no footsteps retreating after she had gone, and had noticed none approaching before she entered, so perhaps the heavy door blocked out sound. That was a small heartener. It meant he was not necessarily isolated from the others. They might be in the next cell, or down a corridor.

  He slumped against the wall, his legs trembling with tiredness. What was she after? What could she hope to gain by this? Except revenge, of course. Maybe she believed him to be some sort of powerful wizard and hoped to harness him for her own ends.

  But would a powerful wizard really have allowed himself to be captured so easily?

  He moved his wrists in their chains, the iron slicing into his flesh. She would hurt Madra. No secret was worth that.

  It was eerie. The woman who was his wife’s image would hurt the girl he had come to love after her. Punishment for adultery. His laughter barked harshly in the cell, bouncing off the walls.

  And halted abruptly. There was another sound in the cell—a scraping of iron on stone. He stiffened, his eyes stabbing the blackness uselessly.

  Then he smelt it. A whiff of smoke in the stagnant air. The pungence of Phrynius’s pipe.

  Iron rattled in the corner, and there was a wheezing intake of breath. A voice cursed disgustedly. ‘Blasted sewer muck!’, and the straw rustled.

  ‘Phrynius!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Shut your noise! By all that’s holy, I’m too damned old to be clambering about in storm drains, consorting with rats—even polite ones. A man of my station. What times these are!’

  There was a breath of bad air on his face and a bony hand laid itself on his shoulder, making him jump.

  ‘Light. Just a moment.’

  A glow began in the cell, a blue-white radiance. It was a piece of straw. The healer was holding it aloft, and it shone like a lantern. He eyed it critically, and then nodded.

  ‘Magic,’ Riven breathed. Absurdly, he felt like laughing.

  ‘Aye, magic.’ The healer’s eyes looked him up and down, and he sighed. ‘A pretty mess you are in. I heard the she-wolf’s visit.’

  ‘She’s been and gone.’

  ‘Indeed. So we have some time.’

  ‘Where are the others? Have you seen them? Are they all right?’

  Phrynius raised a long finger to his lips, then he touched Riven’s manacles with the tip of the glowing straw. They fell from his wrists at once, clattering to the wall, and the old man winced. Riven sagged forward and fell to his knees.

  ‘No time for that!’ Phrynius snapped. ‘We have work to do, you and I. Places to go and people to see.’ He cackled briefly, seeming diabolical in the werelight of the straw. ‘Come.’ And he hauled Riven to his feet with astonishing strength.

  ‘Where are we?’ Riven demanded.

  ‘The Duke’s dungeons. I know them well.’ Phrynius cackled again. ‘He used to put me down here when his gout lingered too long, but always he had need of me again.’ His face grew petulant. ‘I don’t know why you needed me here. There is enough power in you to hoist yourself and your friends out of this scrape ten times over—if you could but use it.’ He glanced around at the stone walls. ‘This was my cell. There is water running in these hollow walls, over the ceiling and in the sewers beneath.’ He grinned. ‘It is a cell to contain magic, but no one needs magic to loosen a grating. The idiots. I never had the heart to tell them, but then they never put me here for long. A chastener, the Duke used to call it. And he would fill me with mulled wine and apologise afterwards. Nobility is a strange t
hing.’

  ‘The door,’ Riven said. ‘Can you open it?’

  ‘Oh no, my boy. Water in there too—and wards and spells. The Duke has magicians of his own, or had. No, not by the door are we going.’ And he twitched the straw light back towards the hole in the floor with the displaced grating.

  ‘The sewers,’ Riven said slowly. Phrynius nodded, his black eyes gleaming. ‘All the way back to my home. We could follow them, if they had not burnt it down.’

  ‘How did you get away?’

  ‘Their eyes did not see me. They are incurious things, soldiers. It took little effort on my part. You and your friends had given them such a battle that they were not inclined to stay longer. They torched my home, and left with your bodies trussed up in a wagon.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No matter,’ Phrynius said crisply. ‘I saved the most important of my books and a few other things are there yet, buried in iron. They’ll keep. For now, liberty is on my mind, for you and your friends. And for the two maids especially.’ His face darkened. ‘This is not a good place for them. There are worse things than death for women. So come along.’

  He tugged Riven over to the corner and peered down into the gurgling depths of the drain.

  ‘I’ll never make it down there,’ Riven protested.

  ‘I think you will,’ the healer retorted, and promptly began lowering himself into the narrow hole, hissing and grimacing with effort. The last Riven saw of him was a clutch of bony fingers gripping the edge of the drain. Then they were gone, and there was a splash and a flurry of curses from below.

  ‘Come on. We haven’t all the time in the world to burn!’ The old man’s voice echoed out of the wet blackness.

  Riven cursed as well. The hole was too narrow. But he lowered his legs through it nevertheless, his skinned wrists burning with effort. The edges of the hole caught at his pelvis, and then scraped at the flesh of his shoulders. He squirmed, terrified of getting stuck. His feet sank into chill water, and he wondered how deep it was. Then he could feel Phrynius’s hands fastening on his legs. Like a cork from a bottle, he came through the hole all at once and pitched down into werelit water with a phosphorescent splash of spray, bowling the healer over. But Phrynius surfaced an instant later with the glowing straw gripped between his teeth, streaming evil-smelling liquid.