The Prince of Lies: Night's Masque - Book 3 (47 page)

“I want to ride with my
amayi
.”

“Aye, well, your uncle is barely awake enough to sit his own horse, without having to hold onto you as well. Do you want to break both your necks?”

Kit shook his head, and Ned lifted him onto the grey’s saddle.

“Now wait there until your mother comes.”

Coby looked up at Mal, eyes filling with tears. “He’s telling the truth. Whatever magic Shawe worked on him, he’s Kiiren now.”

Mal kissed her forehead.

“We always knew this was going to happen one day, love.”

“Yes, but so soon?”

He had no answer to that. Gently releasing her he went to see to his brother.

They rode back out to the road at a walk, not daring to go any faster in the dark. Mal brought up the rear, ready to fend off another guiser attack, but the priory grounds were eerily silent. At the road he urged them into a trot, riding alongside his wife and son. Kit – Kiiren as he supposed he must call him now – had dozed off, exhausted.

“That was too easy,” Coby whispered after a while.

“I know.”

“The younger one said something about ‘hide and seek’. Do you think he’s spying on us somehow?”

“Not any more.”

He told her about Tanijeel.

“I helped create a guiser,” he said at last, glancing back over his shoulder. Still no sign of pursuit. “I’m certain Tanijeel would never have joined the renegades if he had not suffered so cruelly at our hands.”

“It wasn’t you. You told me you were just a boy at the time, and never even touched him.”

“So I was. But–”

“Then stop feeling so guilty about it.”

“But I killed him the second time.”

“Killed who?” Kiiren’s voice was childishly high but held a commanding note.

“No one,” Coby said.

She began telling him a story; a sure-fire way to distract both the skrayling within and the child he surely still was. Mal listened with half an ear, and realised it was a story of Robin Hood and his fight against the injustices of wicked King John. He wondered idly if generations to come would tell similar tales about themselves and their fight against wicked King Henry. Of course they had to win first, and preferably live to tell the tale.

The road dipped into a tree-lined hollow. Mal turned his attention back to his surroundings. This was the perfect place for an ambush. What if Shawe had used his magics to persuade the constable to free Monkton and his men? They could be lying in wait even now…

He reached the bottom of the hollow and the ground began to rise again. The moon was rising, casting a pale glow through the trees… No, that was not moonlight. Coby’s mount whinnied and balked, and Mal reined his gelding to a halt beside her.

“What is it?” she whispered to him, as the light grew.

The tunnel mouth coalesced, cutting them off from Sandy, Ned and Gabriel, and now he could see a figure at the far end.

“Shawe?”

The figure came closer. He was thin and dark-haired, but it was not the alchemist. This lad was no more than eighteen.

“Give him to me.” The apparition held out his arms to Kiiren.

Mal wheeled his mount, but another tunnel was already forming behind them.

“How did they find us so easily?” Coby muttered.

“Never mind that,” Mal replied. “Prepare to ride like the wind.”

He dismounted, drew his rapier and turned back to face the guiser blocking their path. The youth could not step out and confront him, not if his aim was to take Kiiren back.

“Give him to me, or be destroyed.”

“And how exactly do you intend to do that?” Mal grinned at him and hefted his blade. The cold steel felt reassuringly solid and unmagical.

The youth raised his hands and a wind began to pour from the tunnel, whipping his hair forwards and filling the air with dead leaves and… black feathers? A harsh cawing mingled with the sound of the wind, a dark shape soared over the youth’s head, straight towards Mal, who raised his blade in an instinctive parry. The crow exploded in a rain of feathers and gore, but Mal had no time to wipe the mess from his face. Another was coming at him, and another. The rapier sang as he wove a steel net between the monstrous birds and his family. Its blunt edge sliced through the crows as if they were mist, but they felt solid enough when they dodged the blade and raked his scalp with their claws.

There were too many now to fight; his only hope was to stop them at the source. Mal pressed forward, shielding his face with his left hand and whirling the rapier in his right. At last he reached the mouth of the tunnel. The boy sneered at him, but his smile turned to a grimace of horror as Mal thrust the rapier straight towards his heart. Before the blade could touch him, however, the tunnel flashed a sickly yellow-green and collapsed in on itself, sending a shock like a hammer blow back up the rapier. Mal dropped his blade, shaking his stinging hand.

“Mal!”

He stooped and grabbed the weapon with his left hand, and turned to see Coby hunched in the saddle, trying to protect Kiiren from the last of the crows. Mal leapt onto his own mount and set about them with his sword. By the time he had dispatched the last one, the tunnel behind them was open, another guiser standing at its mouth. Mal glanced over his shoulder. The lane in front of them was clear.

“Go!” He slapped the mare on her haunch and the beast sprang forward. He turned back to the guiser and brandished the rapier, still in his left hand. “You want some of this as well?”

The boy paled, but began to raise his hands. Mal kicked the gelding forward, and it lashed out with an ironshod hoof that landed square on the boy’s chest. The horse screamed and reared as the tunnel exploded, and Mal slithered backwards, landing in a bone-crunching heap on the cold ground. He rolled quickly out of the way as the animal foundered. What in God’s name had just happened? None of the guisers in England had been this powerful before. He limped off in search of his family, hoping his enemies had spent their best strength against him already.

A few hundred yards down the road, Coby finally caught up with Sandy, Ned and Gabriel.

“What did you think you were doing, letting us get separated like that? We nearly lost him.”

Sandy had the good grace to turn pale. He slid down from his mount and ran over to them to take Kiiren’s hand in his.

“It was my fault,
amayi
. Our horses bolted when the guisers attacked, and by the time I got them under control it was all over.”

“Give me the spirit-guard,” she said. “We all need to be protected from their enchantments.”

He took it out and passed it up to her. Kiiren protested, but she fastened the necklace about his throat.

“There, that’s better, lambkin.”

She took the lack of further complaint as indication that Kiiren had withdrawn for a while, as Erishen did when Sandy put on a spirit-guard.

“We cannot leave it on him for long,” Sandy said, echoing her thoughts.

“I know. But surely it’s the wise thing to do, until we get further from the guisers.”

Hoofbeats sounded on the road. Coby whirled, but it was only Mal. Only? She grinned in relief, and it was all she could do not to ride back to meet him.

As Mal drew nearer he slowed his mount to a trot and reined it in by Coby’s side.

“You’re hurt,” she said, rummaging in her pocket for a handkerchief.

“Just scratches.” He wiped his bloody forehead with the back of his cuff and dismounted. “Sandy, what was that?”

His brother shrugged. “We saw nothing. One moment we were riding along, the next our horses reared and bolted as if
hrrith
were after them.”

“The beasts weren’t far wrong. Shawe’s lads were using tunnels from the dreamlands, but they seemed able to bring things through. Wind and leaves. And crows.”

“They came for me,” Kit said.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” Coby told him. “Your father fought them off, and with your spirit-guard on, their magics cannot–”

“No, they’ll come again, they’ll find me. I know it.”

“How? How did they find us last time?”

Kit raised his hand to his earlobe. “This. Master Shawe told us it’s a finding charm.”

“Then we must take it out.”

Coby felt around the back of the earring for a catch, but there was nothing, just a rough spot in the metal. She shot Mal a worried look.

“I think it’s welded shut. I’ll need my tools to break it–”

“No time,” Mal said, glancing back down the road and drawing his dagger.

Coby recalled the boy Martin with his mutilated ear.

“No, you can’t!”

“I have to. Now hold him still.”

“What’s the matter, Mamma?”

“It’s going to be all right, lambkin, but you’re going to have to be brave.”

“Is Daddy going to cut off my ear?”

“No!” She hugged him closer. “Just a little cut. Now be still, and it’ll soon be all over.”

She closed her own eyes as Mal steadied Kit’s head against her shoulder with one hand. The blade flashed and Kit cried out.

“Hush,” she murmured, blinking back her own tears as the boy sobbed into her chest.

“Let me take it,” Ned said, holding out his hand. “A diversion–”

“Don’t be a fool.” Mal said. “They’d destroy you, and for what? A few miles’ gain?”

He drew back his arm and threw the earring far out into the field.

“Come on,” he said, kicking his horse into a trot, “let’s get as far away from that damned thing as we can, before they try again.”

Coby followed suit, clutching the trembling Kit tight, and praying they had freed him from the guisers’ snares. A mile or so further on, Mal drew his mount to a halt at a milestone marked
Cambridge iii Newmarket xvii
. The quarter moon was riding high, illuminating the open landscape and revealing a second road leading south from the milestone.

“Shawe may be expecting us to return to Cambridge,” he said, “so we shall confound him by skirting the town.”

“We have to stop soon,” Coby said. “Kit needs to rest.”

“We can be in Saffron Walden by dawn if we press on. We’ll rest there a while, and make our plans.”

CHAPTER XXXIV

The night passed without any further sign of the strange dreamwalkers, and by dawn the rescuers were within sight of the town of Saffron Walden, nestled in the gently rolling hills where Cambridgeshire met Essex. Mal looked around at his companions’ grey faces, and wondered what he was going to say if anyone enquired as to their business. They looked as disreputable a bunch of vagabonds as ever were arrested by a zealous parish constable.

“There’s an inn, just up ahead,” Coby said, evidently having the same thought. “Perhaps we should stop there, rather than draw attention to ourselves by going into the town.”

“Agreed.”

Smoke was rising from the inn’s chimney and a maidservant stood in the doorway, sweeping dried mud and gravel back into the high road. She gave a sullen curtsey when Mal hailed her, but at the sight of his silver she let them in and went off to fetch breakfast.

They gathered in the corner of the taproom by the fireplace, with Kit curled up on one end of the settle, his head in Coby’s lap.

“We can’t outrun the guisers forever, you know,” she said, idly stroking Kit’s hair. “We have to leave England now, unless you have some idea of how to fight them.”

“I’ve been giving it some thought,” Mal said. “I went into this believing there was only a handful of them, but now we know Shawe has been recruiting others, that makes the task far more difficult.”

“How many others?” Ned asked.

“I asked Kit on the road,” Coby said, “and he thought there were about two dozen boys, in addition to Shawe and his lieutenant.”

“They’re only boys, though.”

“Yes, but you didn’t see what they can do,” Mal said. “This wasn’t just dream magic and illusions, it was… I don’t know what it was, but anyone who can conjure stuff out of thin air cannot be underestimated as an opponent. Imagine if they came to London and started loosing devourers onto the streets.”

They fell silent. The serving girl returned with jacks of small ale and plates of bread and cold meat which she set down on the table, but no one made a move to help themselves. She sniffed and left them to it, muttering under her breath about ungrateful foreigners.

“Another thing bothers me more,” Coby said quietly. “Why did they take the other boy as well as Kit? Was he a guiser all along, or did they simply make a mistake? How did they find and assemble all these boys in the first place?”

“They plan for the long term, we know that,” Mal said. “They must have started this scheme a good twenty years ago, long before the skraylings began seriously suspecting what they were up to.”

“I don’t think Shawe’s apprentices are guisers,” Sandy said.

“Not guisers? But I saw–”

“You saw them call upon the power of the dreamlands, yes. But those boys do not have skrayling souls. They are human.”

“But how?”

“You don’t remember our traditions, do you? Of how the
tjirzadheneth
came to discover the dreamlands and be reborn.”

Mal shook his head.

“Many, many generations ago, the skraylings were just like humans: trapped in their own heads, their own dreams. Then our ancestors discovered
qoheetsakhan
and found they could use it to enhance their own dreams and even penetrate the dreams of others. Through practice and discipline they learnt to master their souls and even overcome death. Shawe is trying to do the same to humans.”

For a while no one spoke. The scale… the enormity of Shawe’s scheme was beyond anything that Mal had imagined. To make an army of humans with the power of skrayling adepts, able to live forever if they so wished, but only by stealing the bodies of the unborn…

“How do we stop this blasphemy?” Coby said.

Mal drew a deep breath.

“I think we have no choice but to return to the Tower.”

“What?”

“I was not certain until I heard Kit’s – I mean Kiiren’s – account, but now I’m sure of it.” He swept his gaze around the table, taking in their worried looks. “Jathekkil is afraid of Shawe and his dreamwalkers. Why else do you think he’s still holed up in the Tower, the greatest armoury in the realm?”