Fearless (35 page)

The stairs led to a snow-covered plaza. The clouds hung so low that the palace’s towers were hidden in their haze. Suspended from the grey walls were the golden cages, and through the bars they could still see the remains of Guismond’s prisoners. The whole palace looked as if it had been cursed just the day before, not centuries earlier.

The Iron Gate stood out from the walls like a seal. The iron shimmered like the breastplate of a King. Jacob could see neither a lock nor a latch, just a garland of skulls and the crest they’d also seen on Guismond’s tomb.

The ragged corpses in front of the gate were more recent than the sad remains in the cages. Some had charred hands, or whole arms burnt to their elbows. Others had terrible bite marks. The Preachers must have thought the entrance to heaven had finally revealed itself; instead, they had knocked on the gate of a Warlock.

Jacob felt the same darkness he’d encountered in the tomb, like a clenched fist behind the gate. And all he had was a handful of princely hair and whatever he’d managed to learn about this world in his twelve years of treasure hunting. Fox dragged one of the corpses out of the way.
And you have her, Jacob.

As soon as Fox approached the gate, it began to glow like the metal in a smithy’s forge.

Jacob took the sack with Louis’s hair from his pocket. His only hope of getting the gate to let them pass as friends.
And a faint hope it is, Jacob.
Clinging to the pouch was Earlking’s card:

YOU DON’T NEED THE PRINCE’S HAIR.

Fox looked over Jacob’s shoulder. The green ink kept writing.

HURRY, MY FRIEND.

YOU SHOULD HAVE SHOT THAT GOYL.

THE CROSSBOW IS SO CLOSE.

Friend – the word never sounded more fake. Jacob looked up at the Iron Gate. The Red Fairy was also once that helpful. He threw away the card and took the prince’s hair from the pouch.

Another Preacher appeared on the steps. Fox aimed her pistol at him, but he kept walking until he saw the bodies. His grimy coat was covered in thick layers of metal and glass – it really did look like armour. The gate to heaven. Fox struck him down as he stood and stared at the dead. Jacob and Fox been there too long already. A few more hours and they’d start pinning glass and tin to their own clothes.

Jacob took a step towards the gate. It was so high that a Giantling could have carried him through on his shoulders. Most of the gates from Guismond’s era had been built to accommodate Giants. Guismond had some in his service. Their graves were in the mountains, not far from the Dead City.

Jacob put his hand into the pouch. His fingers were going to smell of Louis’s cologne. Not a pleasant thought. He closed his fist around the ash-blond strands. Louis was only very distantly related to Guismond, so his hair would work like a quietly whispered password. But this was their only hope of not being treated like intruders.

Jacob wouldn’t have been surprised if the gate had melted the skin off his fingers. There were legends of monsters that came forth from its iron. The bodies around them did look like they’d encountered just that. Yet as soon as he reached out his hand, the metal burst open like the skin of an overripe fruit. It split into two wings, and each wing sprouted a handle, like an iron bud. They were shaped like wolves’ heads, and even as their teeth were still growing from their pointy snouts, Jacob could feel the wind brushing across the glowing metal until the entire gate was again back to its cool shimmering grey.

YOU DON’T NEED THE PRINCE’S HAIR.

What had Earlking meant by that? A lie, to see Jacob killed like the ragged men around them? Whatever . . .

Fox and Jacob exchanged a glance.

The passion for the hunt. Was that what bound them, more than anything else?

She smiled at him. Fearless. Yet Jacob could still recall the white fear he’d made her drink in the Bluebeard’s chamber. Over the past months, they had both learnt the limits of their fearlessness.

He closed both hands around the wolves’ heads. He thought he’d need all his remaining strength to open the heavy iron gates, but they opened without resistance, with a sigh that sounded like the death rattle from the gilded lips of Guismond’s head.

The air rushing towards them was icy, and the darkness that awaited them behind the gate was so complete that Jacob was blind for a few steps. Fox took his arm until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The hall they had entered was empty, except for the pillars that supported a ceiling somewhere in the darkness above. The echo of their steps bounced between the high walls like the flapping of stray birds.

Fox looked around as the cries of a child came through the silence. The screams of a woman soon joined them. Then the voices of quarrelling men.

‘Stop!’ Jacob whispered to Fox.

The voices faded, as though they were moving away, but they would be audible for hours before they died away completely. The Steps of the Dead. A Dark Witch spell. Every step they took stirred the past: words spoken, screamed, or whispered in the palace. And not just words. Pain. Anger. Despair. Madness. Every emotion would become manifest. The darkness surrounding them was woven from sinister threads. They were going to have to be very quiet, lest they get choked by them.

Jacob could make out three corridors in the dark. As far as he could see, they were in no way different from one another. He pulled from his pocket the pale yellow candles Valiant had given him. He and Fox had used candles like these before in places where they’d had to split up. If one of them was snuffed out, so was the other. Fox got out some matches. Then she silently took the burning candle from Jacob’s hand. The voices again grew louder as their steps rang out on the tiles. Guismond had killed most of the Witches, whose blood and magic he’d stolen, in the dungeons of this palace. The screams were becoming so loud that Fox clearly had trouble walking on. She looked around at Jacob one last time, and then the light of her candle disappeared into one of the corridors. She had chosen the middle one.

Left or right, Jacob?
He turned left.

CHAPTER SIXTY

THE RIGHT SKIN

O
ne of the Preachers had a fresh sword wound. Nerron shot him dead before his filthy fingers could write his madness on to his skin. The Waterman had already been touched by one, but that didn’t seem to worry him. Maybe he felt immune to human madness. Eaumbre had soon realised that the tracks they were following were not Louis’s, but he didn’t turn around. The palace that had risen above the ruins was too tempting.

It reminded Nerron of the fortresses a clan of moonstone Goyl had built a long time earlier against the onyx. Kami’en now used the strongholds as prisons, for they were particularly deep underground.

The ragged lunatics were the only danger they faced in the empty streets, and most of them just let themselves get shot by the Waterman like clay pigeons. It seemed the centuries had weathered the Witch Slayer’s magic, like the city he’d once ruled. Eaumbre was disconcerted by the stone faces staring at them from the walls, but Nerron was not affected. They just proved how much the Doughskins were like his own kind.

When they reached the stairs that led up to the palace, they found Reckless’s and the vixen’s prints like scorch marks on the snowy steps. The snow was now falling ever thicker, tiny icy flakes that felt like stings on Nerron’s stone skin. He hated the cold, and he felt such a sudden longing for the warm womb of the earth that it made him sick. The Waterman, however, just mutely rubbed some snow into his dry skin before he started the ascent.

The scene that awaited them at the top of the stairs proved that the stories about the Lost Palace and its Iron Gate were not just the fruit of some poet’s lively imagination. The charred and ravaged corpses were real, but Nerron could see neither Reckless nor the vixen among the dead.

Where were they? The tracks on the snowy plaza allowed only one conclusion: his rival was already inside the palace.

Damn.
How?

Nerron approached the gate, and the iron began to glow immediately. Eaumbre pulled him back as the metal warped to form a mouth. Mouths, claws. The whole gate was coming alive. Spiny necks arching, scaly paws sprouting lava-red claws of iron.

The Waterman stumbled backwards over the bodies.

But Guismond had not expected a treasure hunter with a stone skin. In his time, the Goyl had been nothing more than a dark fairy tale.

To protect him from the claws, Nerron wore the kind of lizard shirt that had already saved Hentzau’s and Kami’en’s lives at the Blood Wedding. And the jade machete that he’d had made especially for the Iron Gate by a Goyl smithy sliced through the necks and paws as though Guismond’s gate produced only monsters of wax. Nerron hacked and pierced until his clothes were stiff with cooling metal. Reckless was not among the dead, so there had to be way in. Nerron split a head before its muzzle could swallow his head; he cut off paws barbed with dozens of needle-sharp talons. Reckless was not among the dead. There had to be a way!

His arms were already growing heavy, when the Waterman finally came to his aid. The heat of the iron scalded his skin, but he fought valiantly. Soon they were both standing up to their knees in shattered metal. Their own panting rang in their ears.
Reckless is not among the dead, Nerron. Damn it, there has to be a way!
And indeed, suddenly the iron was just iron again, and the gate formed a frieze of skulls. Guismond’s crest appeared on the glowing surface, and a barely visible crack appeared.

Touching the hot iron was painful, despite his stone skin. It hurt so much that Nerron felt as though his bones were melting. But pain was something the Goyl cared much less about than humans did, and finally Nerron managed to force his finger through the crack. The opening he wrestled from the iron was barely big enough to squeeze himself through. The Waterman smelled of burnt fish by the time he joined Nerron on the other side. Behind them, the gate closed itself with a sound like the dull tolling of a bell.

The cold that greeted them brought a relieved sigh from the Waterman, and even Nerron was grateful for the respite it gave to his scorched skin. Through the darkness that surrounded them like the fur of a black cat, Nerron caught the scent of Witch magic. Eaumbre gave him a startled look when he heard the voices, but Nerron smiled. A Step-Spell. He once knew a treasure hunter who was driven to madness by it, but nothing left a clearer trail. Once the voices were aroused, they could be heard for hours. You simply had to follow them.

‘You stay here and watch the gate!’ he said to the Waterman. Maybe Reckless was already on his way back with the crossbow.

But Eaumbre shook his head. ‘No, thank you!’ he whispered. ‘I’ve been the doorman for far too long. Anything I find is mine, right?’

‘As long as it isn’t the crossbow.’

The scaly face stretched into a scornful grin.

‘Right. I’d forgotten. A crossbow is not what you’re after,’ Nerron muttered. ‘But I’m sure you can find treasure you can lay at some girl’s feet. There should be enough for a dozen.’

The look from Eaumbre’s six eyes grew icy. ‘We only ever love one, for a whole life.’

‘Sure. Just that they don’t tend to live very long under your care.’ Nerron went to the first corridor and listened. Nothing. But the voices of the dead echoed out of the other two. Reckless and the vixen had obviously split up. Couldn’t afford to waste any time when you had death lurking in your chest.

The Waterman disappeared without a word into the first corridor. Nerron decided on the one to the left.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

AT THE GOAL

J
acob had been in many enchanted palaces. Every door could mean danger, and every corridor could end in a trap. Stairs disappeared. Walls opened up. But not here. Open doors, halls, courtyards. Guismond’s palace breathed him in like an animal whose stone innards were fermenting the past like an indigestible poison.

Horses scraping in empty stables. Weapons clanging on empty courtyards, the stars above still hidden behind dark clouds. Children’s voices from deserted nurseries. Invisible dogs growling. And all the time screams, echoing through the dark halls and corridors. Screams of fear. Screams of pain . . . Jacob felt Guismond’s madness like grime on his skin.