The Prince of Lies: Night's Masque - Book 3 (46 page)

“Come, acolyte, and be reborn into our brotherhood,” Master Shawe intoned. “Lie down, and waken as an immortal.”

“I… I’m not sure I want to be immortal,” Kit said, backing towards the door.

But Flint was there, blocking his way. Kit looked up into his grey eyes and swallowed. If a hulking fellow like Flint could do this, so could he. He turned back to the bench.

“What must I do?” he said, trying to sound brave.

“Lie down.” Master Shawe indicated a cushion at the end of the bench nearest to him. “And close your eyes.”

Kit obeyed, nearly tripping on the over-long robe as he climbed onto the bench. It was hard underneath the crunchy layer of velvet, harder even than the beds upstairs. He hoped this wouldn’t take long.

Mal adjusted the hang of his rapier under the black scholar’s gown so that it wouldn’t be too visible from the front. His beard and hair were stiff again with the white greasepaint; not a perfect disguise, but it would have to do. Shawe had not seen him in years, and none of the pupils except Kit and his friend knew any of them, or so he hoped.

“Ned, Gabriel, I need you to stay here and keep watch over my brother. He’s going to distract any dreamwalkers looking for us whilst Coby and I talk our way into the house and find Kit. Be ready with the horses for when we return.”

“And if you don’t?” Ned asked, hugging his metal hand to his chest.

“Then you leave without us. Flee the country, as you did before. No–” Mal held up his hand “–no arguments. There’s no use us all dying.”

He embraced his brother. “If I find Kit and can open a passage back to you, I shall.”

“We may not need to. He may be strong enough now–”

“We can’t count on that. Nor do we know what forces Shawe can muster. Devourers may be only the half of it.”

He released Sandy and bade farewell to his other friends, then beckoned to his wife. Her woollen cap was pulled down low over her eyes to shadow her features, though not enough to conceal the fake bruise that Gabriel had painted around one eye and down across her cheekbone. She turned her back to him and he fastened her wrists together with loosely tied cord.

“Ready?” he murmured in her ear.

“As I’ll ever be.”

He led the way towards the schoolhouse, stomach churning. So close now, he could almost sense Kit inside the building ahead, but surely that was just his imagination. He hadn’t taken off his spirit-guard yet, and in any case Kiiren’s soul still slept, so how could he?

The house loomed ahead of them, outlined against the hazy blue sky of a summer evening. Lights burned in the main wing at ground level, a whole row of windows glowing against the shadowed stone. The near wing was unlit, giving no clue as to the whereabouts of its occupants.

No one accosted them as they approached the side door. Mal knocked quietly and waited, one hand beneath his gown ready to draw his dagger, the other on Coby’s shoulder. After a few minutes the door opened and a boy of about twelve peered out at them. A pair of horn-rimmed spectacles were perched on his snub nose and he wore the same blue earring as their captive, but otherwise he looked much like any schoolboy or apprentice.

“May I help you, sir?” he asked.

“I wish to see your headmaster about this saucy knave–” Mal shook Coby “–he sent me for a pupil.”

“Master Shawe is at work. Please come back in the morning.”

“I shall do no such thing,” Mal replied, elbowing the door aside. “I will see him this very minute.”

The boy opened his mouth to shriek a warning but stopped when Coby produced a pistol and aimed it at his head. The unloaded one, Mal assumed. Still, it had the desired effect. The boy turned pale and stepped backwards.

“Good lad. And don’t think of alerting your master any other way. Now, may we come in?”

Something rattled overhead, and Kit opened his eyes again. Master Fox was swinging the brass bowl on a chain, like the things the Papists used in their church services. The smoke swirled down around Kit’s head and made him cough.

“Close your eyes,” Master Shawe said again.

This time Kit had no choice but to obey; the smoke was making him feel sleepy and it was so much easier to just close his eyes. After a moment he realised someone was speaking, close to his ear. It sounded a bit like Latin, or perhaps Greek, but he did not know the words. He really should have paid more attention in lessons…

He blinked, and there he was, back in the classroom at Greenwich Palace with the other boys. Neville gave him an icy look as he walked to the front of the class, and Kit wondered why the other boy had been called up instead of him. When he looked closer, though, he realised that the figure kneeling before Master Weston wasn’t Neville at all. It was his own father, stripped to the waist, with bloody welts covering his back. Kit reached out a hand to touch him and he turned round, but it was Uncle Sandy, not his father.

“
Amayi
,” his uncle whispered. “Go to sleep, it’s too soon…”

The room went dark, and Kit found himself standing somewhere cold and silent.

The boy let them into a long hall that appeared to be the school’s refectory. It was empty at this hour, though bowls and plates were stacked on a trestle table ready for supper.

“Where are your new pupils?” Mal asked. “Catlyn and Sidney?”

“I-I don’t know about Sidney, b-b-but Catlyn is in there with Master Shawe.” He indicated a door at the top of a short flight of steps.

Mal drew his rapier and went up to the door to press his ear against the timbers. After a few moments he turned back to Coby.

“I can smell
qoheetsakhan
,” he said in a low voice. “What in God’s name are they doing in there?”

The boy smiled slyly. “Making him one of us.”

Mal unfastened his spirit-guard and crossed the refectory to spread his free hand along the boy’s temple and jaw and stare into his eyes. Focusing all his thoughts he tried to slip into the boy’s mind but it parted under his mental fingers like fog, sucking him into darkness–

He withdrew, gasping. “What are you?”

The boy just smiled again.

“We don’t have time for this,” Coby muttered. “Hold him at sword’s point whilst I tie him up.”

Mal obeyed, unable to tear his gaze away. Despite the spectacles the boy’s eyes seemed unfocused, the pupils huge as a cat’s at night. Coby swiftly bound the boy’s wrists with the bit of rope that had been around her own, tightening the loops that had been so loose before.

“Come on, we have to get to Kit,” she said, shaking Mal out of his stupor.

Rubbing his forehead, Mal stumbled after her. Whatever Shawe was doing here, he had a feeling it wasn’t going to have the same effect on Kit as the other boys.

“Where am I?” Kit shouted. The word his uncle had used came to his lips: “
Amayi!
”

Things stirred in the darkness, black shapes he was afraid to look at. Something burned in his chest and spread upwards, along his arms and into his head, blinding him as it poured out of his eyes and mouth and fingernails, a white light brighter than anything he’d ever seen. The dark shapes ran.

“I am Kiiren,” he yelled after them, “Outspeaker of the Shajiilrekhurrnasheth, and I am not afraid of you.”

He didn’t know where the words came from, but they felt right. He opened his eyes, shaking off the lethargy of the
qoheetsakhan
, and saw the two humans staring at him, wide-eyed and angry. The older one held a night-blade, its obsidian edge sharper than any steel.

“Who are you?” Kiiren said. He felt small, smaller than he remembered. “The
hrrith
…”

He clutched at his belly, expecting his guts to leak out between his fingers. No. Stupid. He had died that night; this was a new body, a… oh
amayi
no, a human body.

“What have I done?” he whispered.

“
Tjirzadhen
,” the man with the
qoheetsakhan
spat. It was the name for Kiiren’s own kind in Vinlandic, meaning one who had been reborn more than once. He made it sound like an insult. “We should kill him.”

“No,” the other replied. “No, he is more valuable to us alive. But we need him subdued–”

Kiiren didn’t wait to hear any more. He dodged around the man with the knife, his new body lithe and swift, and ran for the nearest door.

Something thudded against the inside of the far door, and the latch rattled. Coby drew her other pistol. A voice, masculine and somewhat nasal. Though she could not make out the words, the tone sent shivers down her back. She lifted the latch with the barrel of her unloaded pistol and kicked the door open. A man stared back at her, his hands around Kit’s throat. Shawe, presumably.

“Take your filthy paws off my son, demon!” She waved the unloaded pistol at Shawe for emphasis. “Steel bullets, if you’re wondering, so don’t try any enchantments either.”

Shawe raised his hands, and the chain he had been holding slithered to the floor. Kit dashed past her, into the refectory. Coby backed away, still pointing the gun at the alchemist. Another man appeared behind Shawe, younger and with a more contemptuous expression on his face than on Shawe’s, if that were possible.

“Run,” he said. “I enjoy a game of hide and seek.”

Coby raised her other pistol and squeezed the trigger, tipping the barrel upwards at the last moment so that the shot went over both their heads. Both men ducked reflexively.

“Get Kit out of here,” Mal said, stepping between her and the guisers. “I’ll deal with these two.”

Coby shoved the unloaded pistol into her belt, grabbed Kit’s hand and dragged him, protesting, out of the house.

“I want my
amayi
!” he wailed.

“That’s where we’re going, lambkin,” she replied, “but we have to run very fast, back to the horses.”

Kit halted in the middle of the path and stared up at her. “I’m not your lambkin, I’m Kiiren.”

She looked into his dark eyes and the truth hit her like a blow to the stomach. This was not her son any more. They were too late.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Mal blocked the doorway, steel in each hand. Shawe to the left of him, a nasty-looking obsidian dagger in his hand, a younger man to his right with naught but a thurible. The bitter smell of dream-herb filled the air. Another ritual like Suffolk’s, no doubt, attempting to manipulate souls. How predictable these villains were!

“I’d like to kill you slowly and painfully for what you’ve done to my son,” he said to Shawe, “but I really don’t have time.”

He advanced a few steps into the room. Shawe retreated, stumbled against the velvet-draped bench and fell backwards with a curse. The knife slipped from his fingers and shattered on the tiled floor. Mal ignored him and turned to the other, who swung the thurible like a morning-star. Burning embers fell onto the drapery and a cloud of
qoheetsakhan
smoke enveloped them both. Mal halted, and for a moment all he could see was the dreamlands, twilit and empty. No, he would not fight them on their home ground. Concentrating all his will on his physical self he slashed the blade of his dagger across the back of his right wrist. The moment blood touched steel, his vision cleared.

Just in time. He ducked as the thurible whistled through the air, trailing smoke and sparks. Some landed in his hair and he shook them free before they could burn through to the skin. The guiser danced out of reach.

“You won’t get me this time,
kiaqnehet
.”

He swung his thurible again. Mal knocked it aside with his dagger and thrust the rapier blade into the guiser’s belly almost up to the forte. The man cried out and dropped the thurible with a clang.

“No. You cannot kill me again,” he gasped, sinking to his knees and clutching the blade. “Not again.”

“What do you mean, again?”

The dying man coughed twice and looked up, grinning through the blood now running from his nostrils. “Of course, you don’t recognise me in this body. It has been twenty years, Huntsman.”

Mal withdrew his blade, bile rising in his throat.

“Tanijeel?”

The guiser looked puzzled. “You know my name?”

“You’re Hennaq’s heartmate. The skrayling who was butchered for mine and Sandy’s initiation.” He shook his head. “I’m so sorry…”

Tanijeel’s eyes glazed over and he collapsed in a spreading pool of blood. Mal spared a brief glance towards Shawe, who cowered on the far side of the now-smouldering bench, and stepped back towards the door. Enough killing. Time to get out of here.

Coby caught up with Kit on the edge of the clearing and managed to grab him before he could throw himself at Sandy. Her brother-in-law lay with his head in Gabriel’s lap, hands and eyelids twitching like a cat dreaming of mice.

“Sssh!” she whispered in Kit’s ear, hand clamped over his mouth. “See? Uncle Sandy – I mean Erishen – is fighting our enemies. We mustn’t wake him.”

Kit nodded, and she let him go. He walked over to Sandy and knelt by his side, but did not touch him or speak. Ned crossed the clearing, dread written all over his features.

“Mal?”

“He stayed behind to fight Shawe. I… I don’t know…”

Ned put his arms about her and she gasped for breath, fought back tears that she could not spare, not right now.

“We have to get the horses,” she said, her voice raw in her throat, “get Kit out of here. If Mal… if he comes in time–”

“He already has,” Ned replied, releasing her.

Mal jogged down the path to where he had left Sandy and the horses. To his relief Coby was there ahead of him, and Kit was with his uncle.

“Wake him,” Mal told Gabriel. “We have to leave. Now.”

“The guiser?” Coby asked as he embraced her and Ned together.

“I killed the younger one. Shawe lives.”

Ned shot him a doubtful look. When Mal didn’t reply Ned walked back towards the horses, scooping Kit up on his way.

“Come along, little man.”

“I’m not your little man, I’m Ambassador Kiiren.”

“And I’m Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. Now, where’s your mother’s horse?”