Lord of Slaughter (28 page)

‘The tunnels are beyond, sir,’ said Meletios.

Every sinew in Loys’ body seemed to strain to return to the surface. A deep animal repugnance was in him, an instinctive need to withdraw from filth and disease. He steeled himself and followed Meletios over the bodies of the sick and the dead.

The room, an adapted natural cavern, was huge and it led away into denser darkness at its far end. As Meletios’s torch revealed more, Loys saw the roof dropped quite quickly. Only a narrow crack in the wall by the floor gave any indication it continued. The crack was nowhere near tall enough to walk through or even crawl. Anyone wanting to go within would have to writhe on their belly and trust they would not get stuck, or that the floor didn’t fall away into nothing beyond the limit of the torchlight. Loys picked his way among the bodies to examine it closer.

‘That’s the way down,’ said Meletios, ‘that’s where the sorcerer went.’

‘Why has this never been sealed?’ said Loys. ‘Can’t the prisoners escape this way?’

‘To what?’

‘To something other than this.’

‘They are chained,’ said Meletios, ‘as you can see. Even if they weren’t, that way offers only death. You can get lost, you can fall, or the ghosts of the passages can take you.’

‘All the more reason to seal it,’ said Loys.

‘It was sealed,’ said Meletios, ‘but God was angry and shook the earth to unblock it. It’s said it’s a path to hell and I have no wish to explore it.’

Loys had imagined the caves as tall and broad affairs, not like this. Was he going to pursue the wolfman into there?

Meletios saw his hesitation. ‘Would you like to go in, sir?’

‘Pass me your lamp.’

‘Or perhaps you’d like to interview the prisoners.’

‘Why?’

‘They were here; they may have seen something.’

Be careful
. Beatrice’s words came back to him.

Meletios watched Loys with mocking eyes. He reckoned he didn’t have the stomach for it.

‘I will look within. You know the way – lead.’

‘I don’t know the way,’ said Meletios. ‘I don’t know the way at all. I’ve never been down there.’

‘Perhaps you should have. You’ve left a dangerous wolfman roaming in there.’

‘He’s no danger. We have two sets of strong doors between us and him.’

‘Go within.’

‘Six men died.’

‘So now you know they died. You said they might be lost.’

‘Lost, dead, it’s the same thing here. Will you not speak to the prisoners? One has seen him.’

‘Who?’

‘The scholar, the monk. Let me find him.’

Meletios raised his torch and peered around.

‘He was here, he was. Wait!’ Panic was in his voice.

He galumphed to the stairs, jumping over the bodies that obstructed his way, and went up. Very quickly he was back with a guard.

‘Where is he?’ Meletios was almost hysterical, shouting and gesturing as he pulled the man down the steps.

‘We have a number of monks in here.’

‘The special prisoner. The lady’s prisoner.’

‘The Norman Azémar?’ said the guard.

Loys felt all the breath leave him.

‘Yes, him.’

‘He should be here.’

The two men searched through the prisoners, turning them over where they lay, staring into wasted and pale faces.

‘What was that name?’ said Loys.

Meletios came to him and bent his knee.

‘On my life, sir, I speak honestly now and hope you will deal with me kindly. I understand there is a prisoner who you know here. I had hoped for you to discover him so I might win favour with you for bringing you to him and arranging his release. He has gone. That places me in grave danger.’

‘Who is this prisoner?’

‘Azémar, a Norman. He begged us to contact you when I admitted him. He says he is here to warn you. I—’

‘Why didn’t you?’ A cold fury rose up inside him. Azémar? His friend.

‘I was forbidden from doing so. An express order on high imperial authority.’

‘What was he doing here? Who …’ Loys was so shocked Azémar was in that awful place his thoughts failed him.

‘I am a servant and a jailer; I know nothing of these things.’

‘Are you a jailer? You seem scarcely capable of doing anything other than taking bribes. Why didn’t you come to me with this information?’

‘He remains here by the authority of the chamberlain. His sister put him here and she derives her right from him. I would be as good as dead if I told you about him. If you discovered him, however …’

Loys was convinced he had been played for a fool by someone. Why was Azémar in this prison? Unless he really had come to warn him about something and had been prevented from doing so. By whose hand? Was Beatrice in danger?
No, Loys, think clearly
. Whoever his enemies were they hadn’t struck at him yet. An assassination or an abduction in the emperor’s house would cause more trouble than it was worth.

He had to help his friend.

‘Forgive me.’ Meletios was actually on his knees.

‘So where do you think he has gone?’

‘There can be only one place, sir,’ said Meletios. ‘Down there, in the caves. He’s somehow slipped his bonds and tried to escape that way.’

Loys pushed Meletios in the chest and stared into his face.

‘That man was my mentor and my friend,’ he said, ‘and we are going to find him.’ He turned to the guards. ‘You lot,’ he said, ‘can at least make yourselves useful.’

28
The Wolf Free

The dark did not frighten Azémar as he crawled through the tunnels because it was not a true darkness.

The touch of the rocks, the far-off sound of water and above all the smell, the smell of the wolfman, brought pictures to his mind, showing him the way forward. This did not strike him as strange, or rather he thought it only slightly odd he had never noticed these senses before.

As he went on it seemed to him he wandered in other caverns, the caverns of the mind. He was there for a purpose, he recalled. In fact he was there for several purposes. He tried to order them. He was in Constantinople. Why? To find lodgings. No. That was his purpose but it was not his main purpose. Why else? To kill someone. No. To save someone. To save someone and to kill someone. The same person. The thought almost struck him as funny. He was in the caves. Why? Because someone had put him there. No. He had gone there himself. Someone else wanted him to leave. Who wanted him to leave? A wolf. A wolf who was not a wolf.

He remembered his youth, running on the riverbank with other boys on a deep green day in summer. He had run that way before, years before, in lives gone by – now he could sense it.

Memories tumbled through his mind, no more intelligible when he tried to understand them than the blot of an ink cup spilled across a page. He remembered a cornfield, the sun on the unripe stems, the sparkle of the river waters and beside him the woman in her black robe with her hair a burning gold. ‘Do not seek me,’ she had said. Yet he had sought her – he thought he had known her a long time.

In recent years, sleep sent him to strange places. He found himself by a low peasant house, its turf roof no more than waist-high, watching the woman with the golden hair putting herbs out to dry on the thatch. He wanted to talk to her, to tell her he loved her. But she ran from him – always she ran and he followed, begging her to stop.

All his life he had been happy in the monastery. The food was plentiful, the company good, and he was a natural scholar. His order required obedience, stability and conversion to its way of life. He had no need to convert. He had lived under the rule of the monks since his earliest years.

One day he had been working the fields. The lord rode by and behind him his children. He’d seen her in the distance across the river, the duke’s daughter on her grey horse, flanked by warriors. For a moment he glimpsed another life, imagined he was one of those men, destined to marry, to have children and to fight in wars. Then he had gone back to his toil.

His friend Loys had gone, if not to fight then to love, and Azémar had been left with his books, observing the hours of devotion, making the food, cleaning and cooking.

He crawled forward on his belly.

‘What have I been? What have I been?’

He sensed water.

Lights flared behind him, lights and voices. He stood, his shadow long on the walls. From somewhere in the tunnels another voice called. A woman. A girl?

There was water in front of him. The water connected him to her. He put his mouth to it and drank.

‘This is the stream …’

He said the words himself and edged forward into the water. A song came to his lips.

‘The water weft that knots in the world well.

Where the dead god took his lore.’

A current tugged him forward. Was the current of this world or of the dream world?

A scream.

‘What are you doing? It’s him you want!’

‘You’ve made enough mistakes, Meletios!’

‘In the name of the chamberlain, I tell you to stop!’

He recognised one of the voices behind him. It seemed to recall something of his old self, before the Numera, before he had eaten of bloody fruits, sucked knowledge from the marrow of men’s bones, seen the world as it is, in its stains and its sweats, its smears and its stinks, not as men imagine it to be.

There was another scream and a crash.

‘He’s got a knife! The bastard has a knife!’

‘Where’s he gone? Get that torch lit again. You idiot, get a light!’

Frantic voices jabbered down from the upper tunnels, floating on a hot wave of panic, delicious to Azémar as the smell of a cooking pot.

You are near her. Bring her. I will be your salvation
. It was a girl’s voice, sounding in his mind as clearly as if she’d been standing next to him.

‘Who are you?’

One who sits and waits. She who gave the most for lore
.

‘You are a demon.’

No
.

‘You are a thing of darkness.’

You are of the dark, of all fears and fancies made
.

‘Who are you?’

Bring her to me
.

‘Who?’

There was no answer.

‘Get a light! A light!’ The voices again.

A cry, a shout of pain brought him jolting back to himself.

He remembered Loys. His friend was just a child when he’d met him, too scared to sleep in the big dormitory, crying in anguish and loneliness. Azémar had told him he’d felt like that too on his first night. Loys was among friends, kind and gentle people who would help him.

‘Find him. Here. That’s better. There, down the passage, down the passage.’ The harsh voices were full of panic.

Azémar spoke: ‘I would not be what I am.’

What are you?
It was the girl’s voice.

‘A hunger,’ said Azémar.

You are the wolf
.

And then he was running towards the lights that flickered from the upper passages, towards the screaming and the stink of fear that drifted down.

Six men, one on the floor dead, one rushing past him, others pursuing.

Azémar didn’t think or question. His keen senses put the world into two categories now – foe and everything else. The man plunging into the dark behind him was not his enemy. The others, their sweat sharp with the stress of battle, their hearts pounding out a rhythm of excitement and fear, their knives bright in the lamplight, were the same guards as the men who had dragged him to the dungeon and left him to fester.

He sprang from the shadows unseen and unsuspected, catching both men in his arms, lifting them and slamming them down hard. Then the others attacked. A knife drove at his belly but it seemed slow, like the man was passing it to him rather than trying to kill him. Azémar stepped past the blade to deliver a backhanded blow to the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe and sending him choking to the floor.

The next knifeman stabbed at him with a high, downward motion. Azémar caught the knife hand and pulled him forward, driving the man’s head into a knee and knocking him cold. Then he span to face the two behind him. They’d regained their feet staggering, groggy, like men on a ship’s deck in a gale. Azémar leaped at the nearest, seizing his head and thrusting his teeth into his neck. The man fell back, his head and chest soaked in a burst of blood. The last died more easily, his neck broken with a quick twist.

Azémar sank to his knees, the man’s head in his hands.

‘I am a hunger,’ he said.

You are a hunger
, said the voice in his head.

His nails worked back the skin of the chest to expose the flesh beneath and he ate, enraptured by the taste of blood.