City of Dreams and Nightmare (12 page)

Then he noticed her arm: the blood, not all of it the hound’s, and the long gash. “You’re hurt.”

She frowned, following his gaze and glancing down at the wound as if noticing it for the first time. “Yeah, happens I am. Need to sort that out, but first things first, let’s put some distance between us and this overgrown dog.”

He grinned. “Why? It’s not going to be troubling us anymore.”

“This one won’t, but I’ve never seen a demon hound on its own before. They hunt in packs.”

“Oh.” That wiped the smile from his face.

He stepped gingerly around the huge carcass, half-fearing one final twitch of a back leg and doing his best not to tread in the pool of blood which oozed from beneath the still form.

“Thank you,” he said to the girl.

“What for?”

“Coming back for me. You could have got clean away.”

She shrugged, a little self consciously. “Yeah well, didn’t want to let ol’ Ty-gen down, did I? And I’ve still got that sculpture of his to go back and claim…

“Oh, breck!”

The final comment mirrored Tom’s feelings exactly. A huge form had materialised in the mouth of the alley, blocking their way out. A demon hound, an apparent mirror image of the one that lay dead behind them. This time Kat was trapped with him, and it seemed unlikely that anyone else was going to come to their rescue by crippling the hound from behind.

The two knives, sheathed after the fight, appeared in the girl’s hands once more and Tom reached for his own recovered weapon, then paused, struck by a sudden thought.
Demon
hounds? He remembered the precious dust which he had been guarding so carefully, both because it was costly and because it was said to be a rare weapon that could actually affect the Demons of the Upper Heights.

Would demon dust work on a demon hound? There was only one way to find out. Instead of his knife, Tom fumbled for the pouch holding the dust, forgotten until that moment.

The hound snarled at the two of them before throwing back its head and voicing a long, mournful howl. Then it charged.

“Hold your breath,” he yelled to Kat, loosening the chord at the mouth of the pouch and reaching inside to grasp a fistful of the coarse, gritty dust.

“What?”

“Don’t breathe!”

That was all he had the time to say. Teeth flashed towards him, a brawny shoulder struck him and he staggered backwards. Kat’s knives were there but the hound ignored her, seemingly intent on Tom. Drawing a ragged breath and heeding his own advice by holding it, Tom flung the dust towards the face, the eyes, and that impossibly gaping maw.

The passage of his hand was marked by a puff of smoke, a grey trail shot through with sparkling silver motes that blossomed into a twinkling cloud before sinking around the demon hound’s head.

The results were startling and immediate; the beast hesitated, breaking off its attack. It snorted, sneezed, and then began to tremble. Initially, a slight tremor ran down its body, which soon developed into continuous shaking. Tom and Kat both edged back, waiting to see what happened.

The trembling became convulsions. The hound staggered a few paces and then its front legs gave way, folding up beneath it so that the barrel-like chest thudded to the ground. The back legs followed almost at once and the hound collapsed, to roll onto its side, pushed that way by erratically convulsing limbs. It lay there twitching, movements that became slighter and less frequent.

“What did you do?” Kat asked. “What is that stuff?”

“Demon dust.”

“Why didn’t you use it on the first hound?”

“I forgot about it.”

“You forgot?”

“Hadn’t we better get out of here?” Tom asked, keen to change the subject.

“Yeah, let’s.” They hurried out of the alley, both sparing a glance back at the still-twitching hound. “What the hell is demon dust?”

“No idea. Something I was given. Your arm…” The cut was deeper than he’d realised; blood now bathed the girl’s forearm.

“I know. Need to get something on it.”

“If we were near the Thair I’d cut you some larl reeds and wrap the wound in them,” he said helpfully.

The girl grunted. “No river near here, kid, but there is an ‘erbalist I know around the corner, in Ink Lane. She’ll have something.”

The houses in Ink Lane were single storey and neither the worst nor the best Tom had seen. Proper buildings rather than shanty huts but they had a tired, slightly wilted look, as if they had known better days. Kat went up confidently to a door that looked no different from the rest and knocked.

The elderly woman who answered greeted them sourly, as if customers were the very last thing she wanted to see. However, she led them into her front room, which was dingy and had the oddest smell of anywhere Tom could remember. She caught him wrinkling his nose and the scowl deepened. Bunches of plant stalks and withered leaves hung at intervals from the ceiling; some dried and brittle, others well on the way to becoming so. They dangled from strings that looped across the room, causing Tom to duck as he entered. The woman moved around without the need to do so, presumably through familiarity. Rows of glass and earthenware jars were racked on wooden shelving around the walls and the room even boasted a hearth, where a pot of something bubbled and steamed over an open fire. This seemed the most likely culprit for the unpleasant smell.

A younger woman emerged from a back room, presumably the herbalist’s daughter or apprentice, or both; there were no introductions.

The old woman tutted when she saw Kat’s arm, as if it were negligent of the girl to receive such a wound. She then brought them some water, using it to wash the arm while Tom cleaned the residual blood from his face and hands.

Without any direction, the daughter or apprentice selected two jars from different shelves, the second of which was dusty from disuse, and carried them to the herbalist. The first contained a powder, which looked golden orange in the dim light. The old woman sprinkled some over the wound before scooping a large dollop of white ointment from the second container and smearing it liberally on top. She then wrapped a bandage around the arm and they were done. Coins changed hands and the pair were ushered hurriedly from the house. The whole process took a mere handful of minutes.

Tom blinked, wondering whether the incident felt as unreal to Kat as it did to him.

He drew a breath, preparing to ask that very question, except that as he did so a mournful howl forestalled him. It was a sound impossible to mistake: the howl of a demon hound. And it was answered almost immediately by a second, similar call.

Tom stared at Kat. She stared at him. Neither said a word, they simply turned and ran.

SEVEN

“In here, quickly!”

The baying of the hounds pursued them relentlessly, drawing ever closer. Tom had no idea how many of the brutes were hunting them, but knew for certain that they were being hunted and that there was more than one demon hound on their trail.

How could they lose them? “Running water’s the only thing,” Kat supplied, “but we’re a long way from the Thair.”

So they ran, which was not a solution at all but only a means of delaying the inevitable. And now the howls sounded very close indeed and Tom knew they didn’t have much longer, so he decided to take a gamble, to try something before it was too late. The only problem being that his idea was a desperate one and if it failed there would be little opportunity to try anything else.

He grabbed the girl by the wrist and started to haul her into a narrow alley.

“What in Thaiss’s name? You’re going to get us both killed!”

She struggled but he clung on and pulled her after him, surprised by his own strength, fuelled as it was by fear and desperation.

“Trust me!” he hissed, turning to glare at her, trying to convey in that look all the confidence he didn’t feel.

Her struggles ceased and she glared back. “What choice do I have? We’ve lost so much time they’ll catch us for sure unless you can come up with a miracle.”

Could he? He remembered Ty-gen looking straight at him and then saying that his ability didn’t work on Jeradine. What if it only worked on humans? He thrust the memory to one side, refusing to be distracted.

“All right, then. Crouch down like this and get as close to me as you can.”

“Frissin’ pervert.”

“Quickly,” he repeated, desperation in his voice.

“You’d better know what you’re doing, or I’ll kill you myself when this is all over.” With that, she did as instructed, hunkering down so that her knees pressed into his legs. Tom began his familiar mantra, reaching out to hug her at the same time.

She shrugged his arms off irritably and hissed, “Watch your hands, kid.”

“Shut up!” The conviction in his voice startled even him. “Do you want to survive this or not?”

Her eyes widened but she suffered him to reach around and hug her; the only reaction this time being a long, deep breath.

We’re not here; you can’t see us, you can’t smell us or hear us
, Tom began again, adapting the mantra for the occasion.

“What are you doing?”

“For pity’s sake, shush. Let me concentrate.”

We’re not here; you can’t see us, smell us or hear us.

Would it work? This was something new in more ways than one. Tom thought his ability worked on dogs – had noticed their apparent indifference to him when he was hiding and reciting the mantra – but he’d never deliberately set out to conceal himself from dogs before, and the incident with Ty-gen had shaken his confidence. Then there was the additional concern that he had never attempted to hide anyone else this way before. Could he conceal Kat as well as himself? He had to. Banishing any doubts, Tom concentrated on the all-important mantra.

A muttered repeat of, “You’d better know what you’re doin’,” impinged on the periphery of his awareness, but he ignored it.

Seconds later he could hear the pack approach, could hear their snorting, snuffling breaths. A dark shape loped across the mouth of their refuge, to be followed by another. Then everything grew abruptly darker as something loomed in the mouth of the alley. One of the hounds stood there, its vast form completely blocking the entrance. The beast sniffed the air querulously, as if it almost scented something but was not entirely sure.

It took one slow step towards them and then another, testing the air the whole while.

Tom squeezed his eyes to tight slits, hardly daring to look at the creature but not able to look away. He recited faster and faster, fiercer and fiercer, repeating the mantra for all he was worth.

Still the hound came closer, until it stood no more than a pace from the huddled pair, its muzzle looming above them. A sticky strand of glutinous saliva dripped down upon Tom’s shoulder and it was all he could do not to flinch away. Kat now clung to him as desperately as he held her, and Tom could feel the rise and fall of her shoulders beneath his arms, her small breasts pressing against his side. He knew that she was close to panic and prayed that she did nothing to give them away. He feared too that if she didn’t, he might.

If the hound were to take just one more step it would bump against them. Surely the thing must sense the pair of them at any second. Its fetid breath washed over them and Tom squeezed his eyes shut, determined not to let his concentration waver.

Just as he thought he could take no more, that his nerve was going to break, that he couldn’t recite the protective mantra for as much as another second, there came a familiar mournful baying from the street beyond the alleyway. Instantly, the hound stiffened, its head whipping around. Then it turned, not without difficulty in the narrow space, and trotted off, presumably to see what its fellow hounds had discovered.

Tom remembered to breathe again.

Kat still clung to him. He felt her trembling, was conscious of her warmth, and continued to hug her as tightly as ever. They remained like that for a further minute, maybe more, her head buried in his shoulder, neither of them daring to move until the sounds of the pack receded and ceased.

Tom stayed motionless for as long as he could, but this was hardly the most comfortable of positions and his leg muscles were protesting like mad. Finally he shifted, only a fraction but it was enough to break the spell. Kat pulled away from him and hastily jumped to her feet, as if embarrassed.

“Gods, boy, how did you do that? What did you do?” Her voice was shaking. She prowled around to the mouth of the alley like a caged beast, all jumpy, nervous energy, peering out as if to make certain the hounds really had gone.

“I don’t know,” he replied, straightening up and flexing his legs, all the while staring at her, trying to decide what had passed between them during the brief minutes they had hugged each other, or whether indeed anything had at all. “It’s just something I can do.”

“Well, that’s a neat trick my little street-nick, and no mistake.” The girl was fully in control once more, her voice having steadied and regained its conviction. She stopped pacing long enough to stare at him, as if seeing him anew. “There’s more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there? No wonder old Ty-gen thought you were special.”

Then she was moving again, grabbing him by the wrist and hauling him out of the alley. “Come on. The hounds aren’t about to give up. They’ll be back.”

This was the second time Kat had touched him willingly. The first time, in front of the Thunderheads, had been awkward, an unnatural moment for both of them, but this time she had done so without a second thought. Something had changed, but Tom didn’t have time to stop and ponder what. He stumbled after her, trying to think what more they could do to evade the hounds, but he was out of ideas. His mantra and its cloak of invisibility had always been enough before.

“Where are we going?”

“Back-track,” she explained. “When they can’t find us, they’ll come back to the last definite scent and try to work out where we went. If we go back on ourselves, they might not catch on for a while – buys us some time.”

“Maybe, but then what?”

“I’m thinking, kid, I’m thinking.”

That was one time too many. He stopped in his tracks, wrenching his hand from her grasp. “I’m not a kid!”

She looked startled, as if it had never occurred to her that he might actually object to being called kid. “Right.” Her smile was sardonic, but she resisted any temptation to respond further.

“You’re barely older than I am.”

“It’s not all about the number of years, but you made your point.” The recollection that this girl had survived the Pits flashed through Tom’s mind. “Now come on!” That last was virtually a snarl and Tom was suddenly afraid that he had pushed her too far and that, despite everything, the girl might decide he was more trouble than he was worth and so abandon him in order to concentrate on saving her own skin.

They ran back through streets which had already passed in a blur once that day. People, who were beginning to emerge from their homes now that the hounds had gone, stared at them with suspicion: dozens of pairs of hostile eyes whose gaze followed them as they shot past.

They reached a more affluent quarter, where the homes were noticeably more solid and better built, and the girl slowed.

“Merchants homes,” she explained. “No skimping in these houses. Now, if I can just find…there!”

She jogged across to one of the properties. It was large by the standards of the City Below, though still single storey as were most of the buildings down here, and built of solid-looking stone.

“Give me a leg-up.”

Tom cupped his hands and braced himself, as Kat placed one foot into the stirrup made by his fingers, then transferred all of her weight onto that foot, with Tom straining to lift her higher as she reached for the wall’s top. She made it, and nimbly lifted her body onto the roof, before reaching down to offer Tom a hand as he leapt and scrambled to follow her.

He too made it, though not as elegantly or as easily.

“Gods, kid, you’re heavier than you look!” Kat complained in the middle of it all. He was too preoccupied at the time to object to being called kid again.

Once they were both safely up, she led the way across the roof with delicate steps. “Tread carefully,” she warned over her shoulder. “No matter how sturdily these things are built, they weren’t meant to support anythin’ as heavy as us.”

Tom followed as best he could, with Kat’s warning ringing through his thoughts. He willed the roof to continue supporting him with every step.

They soon crossed to the back of the house. There was only a narrow gap between this building and the next, which Kat leapt with ease, while Tom was simply relieved to reach the other roof at all.

And so they went on.

He didn’t ask her why they’d adopted this elevated route. He had no intention of giving her a further excuse to make him feel inadequate and in any case, the answer was pretty obvious. As far as he could tell, the hounds couldn’t climb, and if the beasts did catch on to the back-tracking trick and follow them to that first building, they would have no way of telling which direction their quarry had taken from there.

Which was all well and good, just so long as they didn’t run out of accessible rooftops. The moment they encountered a gap too wide to leap or a roof too high to reach and were forced to return to street-level, however briefly, was the moment they became vulnerable again. He knew all about dogs’ sense of smell and didn’t doubt that the keen nostrils of quartering hounds would detect the faintest of spoor once they chanced upon it.

Tom tried not to think about that and instead concentrated on the figure of Kat ahead of him. There was no denying the litheness of her movements, the way she seemed to flow from one step to the next, making him feel like a stumbling fool in comparison. Subconsciously, he started to mimic her gait, the rhythm of her footfalls. She also made the leaps from building to building look easy, where as he was finding them anything but. The vertigo that had assailed him in the city’s upper Rows gathered at the fringes of his awareness, waiting to pounce, but he resolutely ignored it. After all he had been through of late, the drop to the ground here was nothing.

Kat made each jump without breaking stride, stretching out with her lead leg and soaring through the air like a bird, whereas he had to pause, focus, and then run flat out, hurling himself across the intervening gap.

“Careful!” she snapped after one particularly heavy landing. “Carry on like that and you’re bound to go through at some point.”

Angry protestations from within and the knocking of what could only have been a stick or broom handle against the ceiling beneath him helped to emphasise the warning. Tom expected Kat to use this as an excuse to berate him again, but instead she simply laughed and he found himself laughing with her.

“Come on,” the girl said with a good-natured grin, and his spirits lifted.

She set off once more, dancing across the roofs of the City Below while he did his best to follow, though his own efforts were more akin to a blundering assault or reckless charge than any dance.

The cramped, crowded nature of these streets worked in their favour, with the buildings huddled so closely together that the pair had little trouble in leaping from the top of one to another and would be fine so long as they avoided any major thoroughfares.

They managed to do so for a further dozen or so leaps. Eventually, as they approached the lip of yet another roof, Kat came to a halt. So abrupt was this stop that Tom, who had been focusing on each individual step and not on his wider surroundings, was taken by surprise and barely avoided bumping into Kat and knocking her off the roof.

Her graceful movements had all but mesmerised him. The further they travelled together the more he began to see her as something other than a prickly and irritating guide. He had never met anyone quite like her before. This new appreciation was confusing and he felt embarrassed as she looked back and raised an eyebrow, worried that his face might betray his thoughts in some way.

“Well, looks as if it’s the streets again from here on in,” was all she said.

He stepped up beside her and they crouched at the edge of the roof, looking down at what was clearly a major street, far too wide to even think about leaping. A peddler pushed a barrow of dubious looking knickknacks along immediately below them, the top of his head not far beneath their toes. One of the barrow’s wheels squeaked annoyingly with each revolution. The man’s every movement was laboured and spoke of intolerable effort and weariness.

A young boy scampered along in the opposite direction, presumably on some errand or other. A street-nick in the making, or was he one of the privileged few, apprenticed to some tradesman? Whichever, his hurried passage set the peddler’s dog to barking. Tom had not even noticed the dog until then, so closely did it shadow its master’s cart. A small and scruffy thing, little more than a tatty streak of brown fur, this was a very distant cousin to the beasts that hunted them. The dog looked set to chase the boy, but scampered back to heel at a gruff command from its master.