The Alchemist of Souls: Night's Masque, Volume 1 (53 page)

  "
Dë itorro, pahi saca
." It was Sandy's voice, but Mal knew it was Erishen speaking.
The dream herb will not be enough
.

  "Silence, demon!"

  A snap of flesh on flesh.

  "I told you not to touch him," Mal said.

  Blaise came round to the other side of the pillar.

  "I am the son of a duke," he purred. "I do not take orders from commoners."

  Blaise glanced at his father, and nodded. He produced a small bottle from his pocket and uncorked it, then seized Mal's chin with his free hand and forced his head back. His eyes were glittering shards of amethyst and topaz, filling Mal's vision.

  "Thou hast the devil," Blaise recited from the gospels. "Who goeth about to kill thee?"

  He dug his fingers into the corners of Mal's jaw, forcing his mouth open, and tipped the bottle so that a little of the liquid poured between Mal's lips. Mal tried to spit it out, but Blaise pressed his jaw shut again, tilting his head back as far as it would go until he had no choice but to swallow or breathe the stuff in. The bitterness of the potion left his mouth dry as paper, but at least it didn't burn like the healing tincture.

  The iron hand released him, and he sagged forwards, barely able to hear Sandy's cries of protest over the roaring in his ears. The walls of the cellar spun about him, as if he were blind drunk. He sucked in a deep breath, desperate to clear his head.

  Blaise stood in front of him once more, holding a dagger, if such it could be called. The blade was a sliver of obsidian, its edge so sharp as to be translucent. Blaise held it motionless a few inches from Mal's heart.

  "If you're going to kill me," Mal rasped, "for Christ's sake get on with it."

  "Not until it's time."

  "Time for what?"

  But Blaise was gone.

  Rain sluiced down the windows of the long gallery at Rushdale Hall. The house was empty but for the two boys, its many chambers cold and silently watchful. They were playing a favourite game, standing face to face, hands raised and fingertips touching. The aim was to mimic the other's movements so closely as to be a perfect mirror image.

  Sandy withdrew his left hand and Mal pulled back his right, a fraction of a second too slowly. Sandy smiled in triumph, and Mal remembered just in time to do the same. He fixed Sandy's eyes with his own, watching for any sign of his twin's next move. Something told him there was more at stake here than bragging rights. A trickle of sweat ran down his back.

  "Which of you is real?" a distant voice taunted them. "And which only the reflection in the mirror?"

  Mal tried to take control of the game, but Sandy was too quick for him, had always been too quick. Sandy was real, and Mal only the counterfeit, the shadow, his brother's needs always taking precedence over his own.

  "You are nothing without him," the voice went on. "A cipher, a nobody, dispossessed and friendless."

  No. He dared not even speak aloud lest he lose the game, but he knew the voice could hear his thoughts. I have friends. Ned and Hendricks and…

  "Kiiren? I think not. He is using you. He only wants to find Erishen."

  "We are both Erishen," Sandy said, his voice loud in Mal's ears.

  Too late, Mal opened his mouth to echo the words.

  "Yes, you are both Erishen," the voice whispered in Mal's ear. "In this crucible of dreams I shall distil your two souls into one body, remake you as you were."

  "No," they said in unison.

  "You have no choice. When the night-blade severs Erishen's spirit from your body, you must join with your brother once more. Or take your chances in the dark."

  As one the twins turned their heads. Jathekkil was circling them, a trail of light following him like a serpent's tail, wrapping them about. Mal looked down at himself: his ethereal body glowed a deep molten yellow, whilst Sandy was a brilliant violet, almost too bright to look at. Beyond the circle of light, coal-black shapes lurked in the corner of his vision. Whenever he turned his head, they slid away behind him. Not because they were afraid to be seen, but because they were toying with him, daring him to look and be sent mad by the sight.

  Something else tugged at Mal's attention, something more important than the dark lurkers. A faint current like the undertow of a river, an eddy circling a void that begged to be filled. And he could fill it, start again, free of this body and the responsibilities that went with it.

  "No!" Jathekkil screamed. "That one is mine. You shall not have him."

  Mal focused all his attention on the current, seeing it swirl towards that tiny void. An unborn child, not far away. Richmond Palace. Princess Juliana in her confinement. Now he knew why the duke wanted to die here.

  "Kill me," he told Jathekkil, "and I will end your scheme today. Traitor."

 
 
 

"What have you done?" Coby said in horror, staring at the corpse at the foot of the loft ladder.

  "It was an accident, all right?" Ned muttered.

  "Is…?" She glanced up at the loft in horror. "You didn't kill the girl, did you?"

  "Of course I didn't. What do you take me for?" Ned followed her gaze. "Put the fear of God into her, maybe, but she's safe and sound up there. What were you thinking anyway, arranging trysts with wenches?"

  "I was trying to put her out of harm's way," Coby replied. "Come on, we'd better hide this body."

  They carried the groom's corpse into one of the empty stalls. She had seen plenty of dead bodies in her short life, but never touched one before. This one was still warm, like a living man. Somehow that didn't make it any better.

  When they were done, they hid in another empty stall where they had a good view of the courtyard through the open stable door. Coby told Ned everything she had seen: the empty room, the suspicious writings on the table, the duke and his son going down to the cellar.

  "The cellar? What are they doing down there?"

  Coby's throat tightened. "Where better to torture someone, if you don't want their screams to be heard?"

  A noise overhead alerted them – too late. Ned staggered as a bale of hay dropped on him from a great height, and he blundered into Coby, who fell back into the stall, narrowly avoiding smashing her skull on the back wall. Meg scurried down the ladder and out into the stable yard.

  "Help! Help! Murder!"

  Cursing, the two of them leapt to their feet, but Suffolk's retainers were already converging on the stable. The porter levelled his crossbow at them.

  "Come on out."

  Ned flashed Coby an accusatory glance, then stepped forward, hands raised to show he was unarmed. Within moments they were surrounded, Ned's satchel and the bundle of Mal's weapons confiscated, along with both of their belt knives.

  "What do we do with them, sir?" the porter asked another man, a sergeant-at-arms judging by his gilded Suffolk badge and heavy but muscular build.

  The sergeant examined the confiscated belongings, raising an eyebrow when he unwrapped the silver-hilted rapier.

  "Take them to His Grace," he said.

  "With respect, Master Goddard," a younger servant put in, "my lord Suffolk asked not to be interrupted in his work."

  "Did I ask your opinion, Ivett?"

  "No, sir."

  Goddard took hold of Ned, and another liveried retainer seized Coby. The porter kept his crossbow at the ready whilst the two captives were marched to the cellar steps. The young manservant Ivett fumbled with the door latch, trying to juggle the unwieldy armful of weapons. At last the door swung open, and the men shoved Coby and Ned down the steps.

  "Better bring those along to show His Grace," Goddard told Ivett.

  Coby ducked under the lintel, focusing all her attention on not losing her footing. The stone steps down into the cellar were dished from long use and slick with damp. Ahead of them, a warm glow of lanterns beckoned. A peculiar smell hung in the air, a bitter herbal scent overlaying the earthy, dusty odour common to cellars.

  "My lord?" Goddard called out.

  They emerged into the main body of the cellar and stumbled to a halt. The tableau arranged before them defied explanation. Four men, living and breathing but motionless as statues, as if posed for the painter's art.

  "My lord!"

  Ivett dropped his burdens and rushed over to the duke, who lay on the floor, his face deathly pale and twisted in fury. The man holding Coby loosened his grip, but she was too appalled by what she saw to think of escape. The smoke rising from the nearby brazier caught in her throat, making her cough. Rainbow trails swirled as she looked about the cellar. The man holding her screamed and let her go, batting the air around him blindly. Coby thought she saw a smoky blackness whirling about his head, a blur of flying shapes like monstrous bats, before the man stumbled away through the shadows towards the cellar steps. She crossed herself and muttered a prayer.

  Goddard swore and drew his sword. For a moment Coby thought he was going to cut down the captives, but he began walking slowly towards the duke like a man in a dream. Ivett screamed as the sergeant raised his sword, and tried to shield his fallen master with his own body. Coby looked away as the blade fell again and again, thudding into flesh like a butcher's cleaver.

  Pushing past a confused Ned, she ran to the nearest of the two figures bound to the pillar and looked up into his face. Not Master Catlyn, or at least, not her Master Catlyn. This one was gaunt and pale from too many years in a dark cell: Sandy. She went round to the other side of the pillar, and found Mal, stripped to the waist, eyes tight shut and a frown of concentration creasing his dark brow. Blaise Grey, his expression blank, held a glassy night-black blade to Mal's chest. Neither of them seemed aware of her presence.

  She shot a glance back at Ned, who smiled grimly and launched himself at Blaise. The blade flew from the taller man's hand, shattering against the bricks. Blaise's eyes snapped open and he fought back, seizing Ned in a stranglehold. Coby snatched up the bundled weapons and drew the rapier, wondering what on earth she was going to do with it.

  As Ivett's screams died away, she realised someone was speaking in a language she had never heard before. It was Sandy.

  "
Icorrowe amayi'a. Dë sasayíhami onapama
."

  A brilliant light flared around him and when Coby's vision cleared, he was gone.

 

Sandy – or was it Erishen? – flew upwards like a hawk released, into the nacreous grey sky. Jathekkil howled in frustration and threw himself at Mal, but his hands passed through him. The eternal darkness of the dream realm was replaced by the subterranean gloom of the cellar, lantern-light gilding the brickwork. Mal staggered, no longer bound to his brother, and collided with two struggling figures, sending the three of them crashing to the ground.

  A hand caught him under the elbow and pulled him to his feet. A pale face, worried eyes. Hendricks. She pressed the rapier hilt into his right hand. Cold steel. Yes. He placed his left thumb against the ricasso and slid it downwards onto the blade, wincing as the metal sliced his flesh. Blood flowed over steel, and the last of the fog cleared from his mind.

  Ned lay sprawled at his feet. Blaise ran over to his father, seized the sword from Goddard's hand and ran the sergeant through in one powerful stroke. Goddard collapsed to his knees, weeping in realisation of what he had done, then pitched forward on his face. Blaise heaved Ivett's corpse off the duke's prone body.

  "Father!"

  "Grey." Mal's voice was hoarse, but it carried across the lowvaulted space. "Get up. You can mourn him later."

  Blaise got to his feet. His face was pale, his eyes red and unfocused from the drugged smoke. "He's not dead."

  "Something we can both be grateful for," Mal said. "Now let my friends take your father to the good doctor."

  "Why should I trust you, demon?"

  "Because there are three of us and only one of you."

  "You shall not touch him."

  "Then he'll die."

  Blaise's mouth tightened in frustration, but he stepped away from his father. Ned lifted the duke's shoulders and Hendricks took his feet, her eyes never leaving Blaise.

  "I could call my men," Blaise said.

  "What men?" Hendricks put in. "Two, no, three are dead. One has been driven mad with fear, which leaves an elderly steward, a doctor and your porter. Unless there are others I haven't seen."

  Blaise advanced on her, white with fury.

  "Who do you think you are, whelp, to speak to me like that?"

  She smiled. "Ned, drop your end."

  "No!" Blaise halted, trembling with the effort at self-control.

  Hendricks inclined her head in acknowledgment and began to back away towards the cellar steps. Mal waited until they had left.

  "So, will you let us go freely?" he asked Blaise.

  "You know I can't do that."

  "Then we are at an impasse." Mal hefted his blade.

  "You won't get far," Blaise said. "There's a palace full of royal guards just over the river."

  "And your family," Mal said, "how far will they get? A prince and his most trusted advisor, repeated through the generations?"

  "I can only aspire to my father's level of power and influence."

  "You still don't see what he is, do you? You think he is merely the Duke of Suffolk, loyal servant of the Crown and mentor to the Prince of Wales."

  "Merely? What more is there?"

  "The throne itself," Mal replied.

  "I desire no such thing, and I will cut dead the man who even whispers such treason in my presence."

  Mal stooped and drew his dagger from its scabbard. Grey picked up the cloak in which Mal's blades had been wrapped and flipped it around his hand for protection. Goddard's weapon was shorter and heavier than a rapier, and therefore slower, but no less effective. Mal had borne such a sword himself in times of war, and seen what it could do to an unarmoured man.