Angel Stations (16 page)

But now he could feel very little of anything; even his fingers had lost all sensation. He had forgotten what it must be like to be warm, and his fur had dried out in thick, uncomfortable tufts, which he longed to drag his claws through. The cold was gradually seeping into his brain.

Sometimes, he heard sound from far above, but the fact that nobody had come to draw water from the well was not a good omen.

As more time passed, the night drew in. Ursu clung onto the bucket, staring longingly upwards. After a while, he found himself playing childhood games with Ewenden. First they played stone rounds, a favourite game of Ursu’s, on the pebble-strewn ground near the well. From time to time, Ursu would look over at the well. Then he would turn back to Ewenden, her skin pallid and rotting, ears and fur tangled with weed, and ask if she wanted to play some more. She would reach over to groom his fur, licking and stroking it into place with her tongue and sharp, canthre-like claws.

Sometimes he would be back inside the well, and he could see the flesh of his hands swelling where they gripped the bucket’s rim. Sometimes he would see smoke drifting overhead, obscuring the well mouth. And sometimes, he dreamed.

He dreamed he had been rescued. This was a comforting dream; he had felt a tug at the rope and the bucket swaying. Slowly, slowly he ascended, and it seemed so perfect, just the happy ending he longed for but knew would never happen. He then dreamed of strong hands lifting him over the lip of the well, and when he called out to Ewenden, called out to Shecumpeh, he heard them shushing him. As if anyone might hear him down at the bottom of that deep dank well.

He listened to the voices around him, waiting for the dream to finish so he might continue clinging to the bucket, deep down in the well.

‘But what was he doing down there, Master Turthe?’

‘Never you mind. Just carry him. He obviously fell in while he was trying to raise water to douse the fire. Now carry him inside.’

Another voice: ‘But how did you know he was there?’

‘I don’t have time now for these questions,’ came the exasperated response. ‘And in the name of Nubala, keep your voice down. Do you want the soldiers to hear us?’

Ursu woke, his nostrils filled with the smell of something burning – so thick and heavy it made him double over choking. As he vomited noisily someone took his head and guided his mouth towards a bucket. As his head fell back the pain returned twice as severely as before. Faces were all around him now, blurred visages that failed to resolve themselves. He saw his own hands, looking thick and misshapen. It took a moment to realize that they had been bandaged.

The next time he woke, he could make out his surroundings more clearly. The pattern of bricks in the walls around him and the carvings on the wooden door looked unfamiliar, unlike anything in the House of Shecumpeh. There was little light, and he could only discern his surroundings by the starlight coming through the window. He moved his head, and saw a figure watching him from a corner of the room. Turthe.

‘You’re awake.’

Ursu felt his hackles rise. He was lying on a heap of rags and the air around him smelled of animal shit. He realized they were in the stables where the icebeasts had been kept, only a short distance from the House of Shecumpeh. As Ursu tried to raise himself a blackness welled up inside him and he let himself flop down again.

‘No thanks to you.’

‘I rescued you from the well.’

‘You put me down there in the first place,’ rasped Ursu, feeling tired even from the effort of speaking. ‘You tried to drown me.’

Turthe leaned forward, out of the shadows, and raised his hand. When Ursu saw his face it was as if years had passed since they had last spoken, not just a day and a night. Blood stained the old Master’s lips, and he seemed greyer, as if something vital had been leached from his soul.

‘Yes, I did,’ said Turthe. ‘And, for my sins, we are all being punished.’

‘The invaders—?’

‘Are everywhere,’ Turthe interrupted. ‘Shecumpeh has failed to protect us.’ Turthe shifted forward. Ursu could see more clearly the lines of pain in his face, saw the way Turthe reached down to clutch his chest, as if something had been damaged beyond repair.
This is death
, he thought. Turthe was dying.

‘The others – where are they?’

‘Uftheyan is dead,’ said Turthe, ‘killed by Xan’s soldiers.’

‘Shecumpeh – they don’t have the god?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know where the god is?’

Turthe smiled, a wan, thin smile. ‘Yes I do. It was true, wasn’t it?’ Turthe’s sad grey eyes stared into Ursu’s own. ‘Shecumpeh commanded you to carry him to safety outside the city.’

‘Just as Ewenden was instructed, and you repaid her obedience by murdering her.’

‘Help me up,’ Turthe said, by way of an answer. ‘I need to get up.’

Ursu’s head felt a little clearer. He pushed himself up from the rags he’d been laid on and looked down at his hands, at the ruined flesh of his palms. Then he grudgingly helped the old priest to stand, and glanced briefly out of a window. Snowflakes drifted through it onto Ursu’s fur.

The window directly faced the side wall of an adjacent stable, and to the right of it a wide lane leading, in the distance, towards the wall surrounding the city. Closer, he could see figures dressed in armour looming in the dim twilight, their black ears encrusted with heavy jewelled rings, as favoured by mercenaries. They seemed to be just standing and talking. Probably standing guard, Ursu guessed, but over what?

There were no other signs of life on the streets, which was very unusual, and no lights burning. Only the constellations shone down on the ravaged city, casting thin shadows under the encroaching night. He looked up at the stars spread across the sky in the thick glistening band of Hesper’s Crown.

‘Is there some kind of curfew?’ whispered Ursu, glancing at Turthe. It was strange to think how, a few days ago, Turthe had been a symbol of authority, but that had all gone now.

‘I don’t know,’ Turthe replied. ‘I’ve been hidden here since before night approached.’

Ursu made a disgusted noise. He had every right to take his revenge on Turthe. Instead, he supported him out into the night.

‘Be careful. There’s been a lot of death, Ursu. Too much death,’ the old one whispered, wary of the soldiers nearby.

‘I’m taking the god,’ said Ursu. ‘Do you understand me?’ He grabbed Turthe’s arm and led him through the darkened streets, moving quietly and slowly. There were indeed many bodies; some, men from the city militia, left slaughtered on the cold ground. As they came across a dead child, Ursu’s heart grew colder than an icy grave. Who would do such a thing? Who would encourage an army to do such things?

As Turthe hobbled along he had to stop frequently to rest, and Ursu anticipated the old Master dying at his feet. But Turthe kept grimly on, and finally they reached the shadow of the House of Shecumpeh – or what was left of it.

It was a burned-out ruin, and snow hissed on smoking embers mixed amongst collapsed masonry. There were footprints across the thin covering of snow on the open square facing the main facade. Someone had been here within the last hour.

‘What happened to you, Turthe?’ Ursu whispered, pausing for breath on the edge of the freezing square. He could hear no sound, only absolute silence, as if everyone in the world had died but them. Smoke rose in great black drifts across the skyline, even obscuring the stars. It was the end of their history, he thought; the end of Nubala, the end of everything.

‘When the soldiers came, I hid the god. Myself and the other Masters were attacked by Xan’s soldiers as we tried to reach a hiding place, and I pretended I was dead even though I was only badly hurt. But the other Masters . . .’ He pointed to the shadows obscuring a far corner of the square, and Ursu realized that one darker patch of soil was in fact a great pool of frozen blood and mutilated flesh.

They slipped over to the wreckage of the main entrance. ‘We can’t get in that way,’ Ursu protested. ‘It’ll collapse on us.’

‘Nevertheless, you have to try, for the god’s sake,’ said Turthe. ‘I will tell you where to look, so listen carefully.’

Of course, there was more than one means of access to the labyrinth of tunnels that riddled the rock below the streets of Nubala. The soldiers of Xan had come all this way to seize their god, but despite so much time and effort, they had not yet found it. Ursu didn’t want to think what retribution they might exact if they remained unsuccessful. He didn’t want to think what would happen to the surviving population of Nubala.

‘Maybe we should just give them the god after all,’ said Ursu. ‘Maybe they’ll spare us all if we do that. Wouldn’t that be the best thing?’

‘When Shecumpeh spoke to you, he must have shown you what would happen if you followed the wrong path. What did you see, when the god revealed what would happen if you failed?’

‘A blackness,’ said Ursu, remembering all too vividly. ‘Like the whole world had come to an end.’ He stared into the gaping maw of the ruined doorway.

‘Stay out of sight,’ he muttered to Turthe. Then Ursu stepped into the shadows of what had once been the House of Shecumpeh.

It was more difficult than he had expected: the mighty stone walls of the House had once supported huge wooden beams meeting far above the heads of acolytes and Masters alike. But these had crashed to the ground as they burned, leaving little level space for him to squeeze through. Here and there a thin layer of frost had formed on the stonework.

The great House of Shecumpeh, he thought, was now like a corpse after the spirit has left it; vacant but still containing memories of its prior vitality. Yet, the god was still in here somewhere. As he hunkered down and crawled through a narrow gap between the broken stone slabs of the floor and a tumbled beam, fearful of its huge weight and dimension pressing against his back, something moved and he froze.

Realizing it was only a nearby beam settling its weight, he kept going, squeezing further into the shadowy ruin of the House’s great hall. Occasionally, vague shapes resolved themselves into corpses, burned partly to the bone.

Ah, here: a little beyond the winding stone stairs that had led down to Turthe’s workshop. Here, where double doors had opened onto a passageway leading down to the room where the god had spoken to him. The doors themselves had been smashed to fragments, presumably by Xan’s soldiers. Why had they burned the House down, when they had still not found the god? He wondered if the fire had been started by someone other than the soldiers. Maybe it was an attempt to hamper them.

He stepped through into greater darkness, his eyes still adjusting, and he paused there, at the top of the stairs. The darkness reminded him of the river – like a black liquid waiting to swallow him. He felt his throat tighten and stepped back. He picked up a still-burning wooden stake, cursing as hot ashes fragmented onto his long narrow fingers, and carried it down into the blackness.

The ember barely illuminated the wide chamber with its flickering light. It seemed so much less now, just an ordinary room, but one of great significance to the citizens of Nubala for dozens of generations. The stone slabs beneath his feet had been polished smooth as glass by the endless legions of acolytes and Masters, coming here to beseech the god. Now he was here all alone, and it seemed just a room.

Now, where had Turthe said . . .? Ah yes.

Shecumpeh had rested on that wide stone plinth near the far wall, but the god was no longer evident. Ursu touched one hand to the wall, and felt the faintest vibration of distant water coursing through the rock beyond.

Carefully placing the burning ember on the ground beside him, he studied the wall hangings and carvings adorning the walls: the intricate work of thousands of craftsmen devoted to Shecumpeh, extending across some unfathomable period of time.

Enough of this dwelling on the past, he reproached himself and, even as this crossed his mind, another part of him stood detached and wondered that he could now be so emotionless, even ruthless, about the heritage of his home.

There
. A wide square slab set into the wall, the deep grooves around its four sides the only thing distinguishing it from the surrounding brickwork. Ursu would never have noticed it himself if Turthe hadn’t told him exactly where to look. He pushed hard on it, until he felt the rock slab start to slide and shift from side to side as if on some hidden pivot. It rotated slowly to reveal a tiny space on its right side . . . a tiny space, yet just big enough to hold the effigy of the god Shecumpeh.

He slid long fingers around the smooth, varnished skin of the god inside, slowly dragging it out of the tiny space. The effigy was heavier than Ursu had thought. For all its interior power, its carved eyes stared sightlessly outward. It seemed more fragile, somehow, than Ursu had remembered.

Cradling the god in both arms, he picked his way back across the chamber to the door that led into the stairwell, the discarded embers casting flickering shadows on the chamber walls around him. When he reached the darkness of the passageway, he sought out the steps with his prehensile toes, climbing back up through fragmented stone and burned timbers.

Voices
.

He froze, only the light of Hesper’s Crown illuminating the night beyond the city walls. Perhaps the soldiers had returned.

After a few minutes, he crawled and wormed his way back through any navigable gaps in the collapsed masonry, to the spot where he had left Turthe. The bulky statue in his arms made progress a lot more difficult and, despite himself, he wished Shecumpeh could be . . . well, a bit lighter, maybe.

Back to the shattered entrance, where he realized to his horror that there was a small group of soldiers gathered in the square. Ursu watched them from the safety of the deeper shadows, wondering if he could make a run for it if they came near the House. He hefted the god in his arms and waited.

He could sit tight, or he could do something – they weren’t particularly looking his way – and clouds were beginning to obscure what little light there had been. The ruined House cast a long shadow across the square, as Ursu half-crawled, half-hobbled out of the door, towards the near corner of a neighbouring building.