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The Truth Emerges
Rampant claustrophobia from twisting and turning down shrinking staircases isn’t helping my nerves. Anguis seems to know where he’s going, but the rest of us are totally lost, so there’s no choice but to follow him into the belly of the beast. I’ve given up peering behind me, firstly because I need to look where I’m putting my ridiculous feet and, secondly, the sight of Curt, Adamo and Wings, stealth creeping from stone to archway, despite there being no place at all to hide, threatens to bring on hysteria.
Adamo’s face pops over my shoulder, whispering, “Where are we going?” The fright almost makes me lose my precarious footing.
“Don’t do that, you twit,” I hiss, letting my heart rate recover. “Anguis, just a moment.”
He obligingly pauses, staring back at us. “No need to whisper. There’s nobody on this side of the castle.”
Now he tells us.
Curt catches up, limping badly, Wings hovering behind him like an anxious nanny.
“You alright?” I ask.
“Do I look alright?” he snaps.
“No need to get sniffy. Adamo can carry you.”
Curt glares at Adamo as though daring him to try.
“She’s joking,” the prince points out, sliding past me to descend towards Anguis. “If there’s no-one on this side, what are we doing here? Where’s Dulcis?”
“And where’s everyone else?” I add.
“Answering your questions in order,” says Anguis. “We’re heading towards the prisoners and you’ll see.”
He resumes the descent, leaving me to call after him, “What does that mean?”
“You’ll see,” his voice echoes, as he disappears around the spiral.
“I really hate stairs,” moans Curt. “Wings, I can feel you twitching behind me.”
“Don’t start on me as well,” grumbles the old birdman.
“No turning back now,” announces Adamo, jogging down the steps.
“He’s beginning to annoy me as well,” groans Curt, teeth grinding with every jolting step.
As it turns out, there’s only two more flights to go before the floor levels out and His Wolfness breathes a hefty sigh of relief. Anguis and Adamo wait for us to catch up, standing beside yet another cracked doorway, although this one looks fairly intact.
“You want to know why I’m helping you?” Anguis asks. “And why we need your help?” He grabs the handle and heaves, the door opening with a groan, revealing a flickering golden light. “See for yourselves.”
We follow him through with a ton of trepidation, even Adamo’s step losing its spring. I peep through the doorway, shadowing the prince’s footsteps. He senses my fear and gently gives my hand a squeeze, ignoring the low growl of wolfish disapproval, rumbling behind me.
“Is that mould?” I ask, spotting the putrid slime over Adamo’s shoulder.
“Yes,” replies Anguis, not bothering to expand on his answer.
“If this stuff is spreading, why didn’t you check clothing and...”
“No point,” Anguis interjects. “The sickness is everywhere. The fire ring slows it, but it’s only a matter of time now.”
“Except in the King’s quarters,” I point out.
“No, it’s there too,” Anguis replies. “He’s hiding it with the tapestries, trying to pretend it’s not happening.” He gestures at another doorway, this one much wider and taller, needing two huge wooden doors to bridge the stone gap. “Steel yourselves. This is hard to see.”
I don’t know what I was expecting on the other side of those doors: a dungeon, perhaps, filled with tortured, dying prisoners. What I’m staring at, struck dumb with horror, is tortured, dying people, but this is no prison – it’s an overrun makeshift hospital.
I use that term loosely, meaning a place to tend the sick. What I’m looking at bears more in common with battlefield triage than a pristine sanitised ward. Row after row of beds stretch as far as the eye can see in this huge galleried hall, although more than three quarters stand empty, festering behind a wall of flaming torches that divides the sick from the cavernous expanse. The ceiling, floor and far walls run with mould, its slimy fingers crawling up the wooden legs of abandoned beds.
Those filled are all closest to us, each surrounded by its own semi-circle of torches in a futile attempt to stave off the bitter cold. None of the miserable occupants appear long for this world and those tending them seem barely any stronger, with gaunt frames, sunken eyes and straggling, patchy hair. Coughing, vomiting and cries of lonely anguish are all the more agonising to hear because of their pitiful weakness.
A few metal trays lay abandoned on a table, with plates of grey mulch, resembling week old porridge, left untouched.
“It’s all they can eat, when they’re this ill,” Anguis says, seeing my nose wrinkle in disgust. “And then nothing at all.”
This whole place reeks of imminent death; a waiting room for hell. Straining to produce a word from a closed throat, I ask, “Are these the prisoners?” Although the bears and wolves I saw from that terrace didn’t seem to be in this condition, as animals at any rate.
“I don’t recognise anyone,” Adamo states, sending a questioning glance in Curt’s direction.
“Nor I,” he mutters in reply, eyes narrowing from the appalling sight.
I gesture at all the empty beds. “You’re expecting this many sick?”
The misery on Anguis’ face speaks volumes and tells me the truth before he says a word. “These beds were once filled. These are all that are left now.”
“They’re snakes?” Adamo asks, his voice echoing round the cavern. One of the flagging carers peers at him, but goes back to her ministrations, all hope extinguished from exhausted eyes.
“There are hardly any of our elders left,” Anguis tells him, “and my generation are becoming sick and dying faster than they did. Our youth are all showing the early signs now. There’s no time left to us.”
I grab one of the metal trays, dump the revolting contents on a table and step past the flaming barrier, to take a look at a small patch of stinking slime, coating the wall. A hefty scrape at the stone doesn’t blunt the tray’s edge or even scratch the surface, it obliterates the stone, which crumbles away as though dissolved in acid. I’m no builder, but this isn’t natural behaviour for solid rock and explains the state of the castle. This toxic brown poison isn’t just resting on top of the stone, using it as a carrier, it’s penetrating deep into the rock itself, destroying the very foundation of its host.
“What is this stuff?” I ask.
“We don’t know,” Anguis answers. “It’s always been here. At least for generations. The library says it came with the cats.”
“Cats?”
“Rumour said they were experimenting with magic,” Anguis continues, ignoring Curt’s snort of ridicule. “But they all died, centuries ago.”
I gesture at the crumbling wall. “Was it always this deep?”
“Not when I was a child, but it’s been speeding up every winter.”
Slithering mould probes the tray’s edge, heading straight for my fingers and I drop the tray out of self-preservation. It bounces on the floor with a nerve-shredding clang which provokes a chorus of groans from the patients, as though they hear the strident chimes of doom.
“Is anyone not sick?” I ask.
“No, but a few are not as bad.”
“Who?”
“Me, for one,” Anguis replies. “The king, and his personal guard. Any who spend time outside the castle.”
“Then the answer’s obvious,” I tell him. Well, come on, it is. “You have to leave this place. How many of your people are left now?”
Anguis looks away. “About a tenth of our once empire,” he finally replies, with an embittered sigh. “And falling every day.”
“What about the eagles?” Wings ventures.
There’s a thought. I’d forgotten Broken Beak for five minutes.
“No effect on them at all,” Anguis answers. “We’ve no idea why. At least they’ve stayed.”
A plethora of sarcastic comments race through my mind, but none of them compete with what comes out of Wings’ mouth.
“They’re probably waiting for you all to die off and release them from their oath.”
“Oath?” Here we go, racing headlong into fantasy lore again. “What sort of oath?”
“I know this,” Adamo pipes up, with the over informed confidence of youth. “Something about a race and the wily snake tricking the over confident eagle.”
“Sounds like the Tortoise and the Hare,” I offer.
“What’s a turtus?” asks Curtus, breaking his temporary silence with half a limerick.
“Never mind.”
“The eagles have been slaves to the snakes for longer than any tribe,” Anguis offers. “Their loyalty is beyond question.”
“I’m sure we’re gratified to hear it,” says Wings, ladling on the sarcasm. “Even if snakes have no concept of loyalty to anyone but themselves.”
“I’m sorry,” Anguis tells him, “for what happened to your family. Your loss.”
“My loss?” Wings’ voice rises in volume and tone, nearer to the cry of an eagle. “Your king murdered my parents, left tethered in the dark to starve because they questioned the oath. He threw me into thorn bushes to die and you’re sorry?”
“Not my king,” Anguis insists, stepping far too close to the old eagle. “His grandfather.”
“Your king is no different,” Wings snarls back, “and neither are you. Maybe fate is finally giving you all what you deserve.”
Anguis’ confidence shatters as he crumples in on himself. “Maybe,” he mumbles, turning away.
Silence descends on the terminal ward as the gaze of dying patient and exhausted carer, alike, rests on the raging birdman. A despairing soul whimpers in agony and the anger leaches out of Wings’ face, swiftly replaced by shame. The old bird has a good heart, underneath it all.
“Wings.” Curt steps forward and mutters in his ear. “It isn’t the time for this, old friend.”
“No,” he agrees, pulling his frame upright and staring down at the ambassador. “The prisoners?”
Anguis nods. “Come with me.”
Despite a wave of guilt, I’m not sorry to leave the hospital behind, although my conscience makes me pledge to return. These people need help before it’s too late, no matter the history of the snake empire, or any empire, for that matter.
A few more twists and turns and another fire gauntlet lay ahead but, thankfully for my knee and Curt’s hip, no more stairs, only bone aching cold and damp. The single corridor branches out into multiple hallways, radiating from a central point, like the spokes of a wheel. Torches flame at distant intervals, leaving shrouds of pitch dark hallway stretching between each oasis of light. Only the rancid smell betrays the creeping presence of mould surrounding Anguis’ miserable band of limping followers.
An outstretched palm shoots into my eyeline and I grind to a halt as the others concertina into one another with muffled groans and the odd rude word. Anguis places a finger against his lips and motions for us to move away from the torch and crouch in the shadows. None of us look keen, since that manoeuvre takes us too close to the mouldy wall for comfort, but we follow direction anyway. Peering out of perishing darkness, droplets of damp clinging to my hair, thighs aching from squatting, I expect to witness a squad of eagles marching down the hallway.
Instead of the thud of hefty boots, it sounds as though a troop of ants are pitter-pattering in our direction. A tiny face, framed with swathes of straight hair the colour of ice, peeps around the corner, scans the hallway and withdraws again. When she reappears, she’s at the head of a group of children, creeping down the hall. They can’t be more than six or seven years old, all shivering as they tiptoe, despite being covered, head to toe, in layers of thick woollen jumpers and leggings, none of which disguise the fact that they’re little more than skin and bone. Some already show signs of dark circles beneath shining eyes and tiny rasping coughs pain the hearer as much as the sufferer.
Where are they going? What are they doing down here?
I glance at Curt, whose face asks the same questions. His eyes open wide with surprise and I turn back to the children, in time to see standing mannequins of clothing drop to the floor, emptied of little bodies. The piles of discarded woollens slip, slide and wriggle as a swarm of teeny, multicoloured, blotched and striped snakes emerge from collars and cuffs, slithering towards the wall. There must be myriad holes in the stone because rope-like bodies undulate and disappear into mould tainted darkness with a final rattle of tiny tails.
“Where are they going?” I whisper.
Adamo, Curt and Wings accost Anguis with a muted barrage of questions and some excited hand gestures.
“You wanted to find the prisoners,” he replies at normal volume, making the rest of us jump.
“This is the prison? Why have children gone into the cells?” Curt asks, his question dripping with suspicion.
“See for yourself,” Anguis replies. He rises and strides down the hallway, boots echoing in the silence.
“Does anyone else find him irritating?” asks Adamo, as he pops upright.
“No more than you,” grumbles Curt, leaning on his knees to force tired limbs to work. His hip jolts into place with a crack and he can’t fully bite down on the yelp of agony. I’m about to offer sympathy, when he glares right at me and I shut my mouth. Besides, I need all my energy to drag my own weary bones off the floor.
The Tin Woman creaks down the corridor, catching up with Anguis just as he stops beside another of the endless rotting doors. What passes for a guard sits outside, slumped in a chair, shivering under the wrapping of four woollen blankets. He struggles to extricate his feet from the shroud and ends up bent at an angle.
“Ambassador.”
“We’re going in,” Anguis tells him.
The guard stares at me, Adamo, Curt, Wings and back at Anguis, before slumping in his chair without saying another word. Anguis turns the door handle, but hesitates, glancing back at the guard.
“Go find your family,” he tells the surprised man. “It’ll be over soon.”
Relief, tempered with a dose of fear, sweeps over the man’s face and he fights his way out of the blankets and hurries away, footsteps morphing into the echo of running feet.
Anguis heaves on the door and another gothic creak heralds a long corridor filled with cells, the nearest open to my hesitant inspection through sagging iron bars, heavy with rust. One good thump from Adamo’s bear paw would probably see them crumble. Not that he would need to; none of the cell doors are closed, let alone locked.
And inside sits a jumble of bears, staring straight at us, eyes wide with shock.
