I was woken by a scratching and, at first, I thought it was another of the tiny lizards that ran around the cell looking for scraps when they thought I was asleep. I rose from the depths realising the scratching had an unnatural rhythm I could attribute to no animal.
“Who is it?”
“It is I, Blessed Girton, Saleh, the gaoler. I have food.”
“Come in,” I said. The door rattled as he opened it and entered, balancing the food on one hand. “It is a rare gaoler who asks permission to enter his own cells, Saleh.”
“A little kindness costs nothing, Blessed,” he said and set down the food. “And it is the last many of those here will know.” He shut the door behind him and placed himself in front of the open viewing window then lowered his voice. “Stay quiet for a moment,” he whispered. I felt my face crumple into puzzlement at the strange way he acted, and then let it go, after all, he was a strange man.
The sound of soldiers’ boots coming down the stairs. I estimated no more than four or five. I watched past Saleh’s shoulder and saw flashes of green—Landsmen—then a cell door opened and there was shouting, uproar.
“Darsese lives! Darsese li—” A fist meeting flesh.
“Enough of that filth. He’s dead and you blaspheme!”
After that I found it difficult to make out the words, only snippets, voices begging not to be taken, turning on each other. Then shouts of two more, no, three voices, and scuffling. I stood, to see better past Saleh’s shoulder, and he shook his head, bringing his finger to his lips to warn me to be quiet. I sat back down. The Landsmen dragged out their chosen prisoners, who screamed and fought but it was no use. I heard the thick sound of a gauntleted hand meeting another head, then another. Then only the sound of bodies being dragged across the flags. Saleh held up a hand, turned and opened the door a crack and looked out.
“They are gone,” he said.
“Bodies for the blood gibbets?” I said.
“No,” said Saleh. “I do not know what they do with them. They do not go into gibbets but they never come back.” He shrugged. “And the Landsmen have no love for you. I thought it best they did not see you, lest they were tempted.”
“Thank you, Saleh.”
He shrugged again.
“I do what I can for those in my charge.” He tried to smile but it did not seem it was an expression he was used to. “You will be freed today, I think. But there are those who have asked to see you before you go.”
“They want to see me in here?”
“One of them says you are a hard man to find alone.” I laughed, nodded.
“Aye. Who is it wishes to visit my court?” His brow furrowed and when he had thought about it, chewed it over and decided I was making a joke at my expense not his, he laughed a little.
“The high priest, Neander, and Danfoth who leads the Children of Arnst. They are powerful men.”
“I know.”
“I brought you these,” he produced from his pocket two sticks of pigment, one white and one black, “to redo your face. I have no mirror, I am sorry.”
“Thank you, Saleh,” I said, amazed by this small kindness. Such things could not be easy to come by. I wondered if he had visited Festival, and I took what remaining coins I had in my pocket to give to him. Before he could refuse I shook my head. “Do what you will with it.”
He placed the money on the floor by the door.
“If you would reward me, there is only one thing I require.”
“What is that?”
“To see you dance, Death’s Jester, that is all. I would see you dance.” Then he slipped out of the door and left me with my food and my thoughts and my sticks of make-up.
By the time Neander entered my cell I felt more like the creature I played, Death’s Jester, beloved of Xus the god of death, greatest at my craft. It is remarkable what a few sticks of pigment can do.
“Girton,” said Neander. He had to look down at me as I sat cross-legged in the straw of my cell. I had no intention of getting up for a man such as him.
“I am Death’s Jester,” I said to him, cocking my head to one side. He looked no different to the first time I had met him all those years ago in Maniyadoc: painfully thin, a large nose dominating a face of crags and gullies, skin like sandpaper. He did not wear his priest’s robes to the dungeon, probably for fear of dirtying them. He had always been a vain man.
“Death’s Jester,” he said, “so you are grown up. It has been a long time since we have spoken.”
“I have wished to call upon you many times,” I said. He smiled at me and some uproar broke out in the cell next door—screaming and fighting—but it did not distract Neander.
“You still hold that girl’s death against me, after so long?”
“Yes.”
He nodded.
“I can respect a well-held grudge.” He wrinkled up his nose. “You stink of piss.”
“My apologies. They have not completed my bathhouse yet.” I nodded toward the cell next door and opened my eyes as wide as they would go. “Problems with the neighbours.”
Neander leaned over. He smelled of old man and ink.
“I am not here for silly word games or grudges, Girton Club-Foot,” he hissed.
“Death’s Jester,” I said, deadpan.
“Very well, Death’s Jester. There is more afoot in this castle than you guess at and I know how you and that woman love to meddle in what should not concern you. Check with me before you do anything, lest you ruin Rufra’s chances any more than you already have.”
I leaned forward so I could whisper into his ear.
“You mean like you did with Barin?” He stared at me, lizard-sharp eyes.
“I thought my past acquaintance with him held weight. I was wrong,” he said. There was something almost haunted in his eyes. “I made a mistake and I should have known better than to trust the Boarlord.”
“Why should Rufra trust you?”
He straightened and was quiet then, for a long time. He turned and walked back to the door. Stood there with his hand on the latch and the only sound was the wheeze of his breath. I thought he would leave but he came back and sat cross-legged in the filth opposite me.
“I am not a good man.” I used my hands to frame my face in the gesture of surprise. He ignored it. “I like power, Death’s Jester, as well you know. But your king has wrought changes.”
“Good changes,” I said.
“For Maniyadoc, and for now, it seems so,” he replied. “But you throw a stone and the ripples travel to places none can see. So it is here.” He twisted one of the many rings on his fingers. “Ceadoc is a dark place, Jester, full of dark things, and men and women vie for the power it can give. Always before it has been kept in balance, no faction dare move on another. But now, with the death of the high king and the changes Rufra has wrought? Everything is twisted.”
“Rufra has done only good.”
He leaned over so he could speak more quietly to me, though who he thought would eavesdrop on us here I do not know.
“And yet the dead gods have cursed him.” My hand shot out, locked around his throat and I wanted nothing more then to squeeze, to crush the life from the man who had been the architect of so much misery. “He …” I could feel the words as they struggled past my fingers. “… needs … me.” I stared at him, his eyes widening as he struggled for breath. Then I let go.
“All know Ceadoc is in flux. You tell me nothing new.”
“But it is more than flux, Jester, something has changed. The Landsmen are no longer close to the priesthood. I think Fureth eyes the crown for himself.”
“The Trunk of the Landsmen? But he already has—”
“Power, aye. But he does not draw it from the priests any more. And he does not confide in me.”
“That is why you ally with Rufra?”
“Don’t misunderstand me, Jester, I have no love for your king, he has ruined many of my plans and shorn the priesthood of much of the power it once had. But I think he is our best hope to contain Fureth.”
“And Gamelon?”
“He likes to sit behind the throne and feels secure there. None know the running of Ceadoc’s government the way he does. Currently the wind blows Rufra’s way and Gamelon bends with the wind.” He stood. “Though it is a slight wind, Girton, and no man can trust the weather.”
“What of your brother, Suvander? Why not stand behind him as high king?”
Neander stopped by the door and I think the smile he gave me was the first time I’d ever seen him look genuine.
“Because he is my brother, Girton, and we are much alike. My advice is to kill him the first chance you get.” Then he left.
It was not long before my next visitor appeared: Danfoth, who led the Children of Arnst. He was a massive man who filled the door to my cell, though he did not step in. Once he had worn his white hair long and curling but now he had shorn it, and his face was painted with red crosses over the eyes and mouth and in a line from his eyebrows over the centre of his head. Though he carried no weapons he wore the black armour he was known for. Once he had been one of the Meredari, a warrior tribe who had a death cult dedicated to Xus. Then he had become second in command to a man called Arnst, who led his own cult, mostly to feed his appetites. But in the uncertain time of the war of the three kings, when Rufra’s rule over Maniyadoc had still been under threat, Arnst’s cult had grown. When he was killed, by the mad priest Darvin, Danfoth took his place. Now Arnst had become almost a god to them, of sorts. His people were led by Danfoth in the worship of Xus, the god of death. But it was a cruel cult and I did not recognise the god I knew in it.
Nor did I like Danfoth. Unfortunately, his people seemed to like me.
“This is a poor way to treat the Chosen of Xus,” he said, motioning at the straw. His voice was surprisingly gentle and his eyes were far away, as if under the influence of some drug.
“I am treated well enough,” I said. “The gaoler is a good man.”
“Saleh, aye. I am told you were visited by Neander, priest of the dead ones.”
“Yes.”
“He is jealous that the people choose the living god over his empty books.”
“Probably.”
“Xus harvested well here, Death’s Jester, before his great forgiving. He has always harvested well here, but the plague made him particularly happy. Those who serve him grow in power.”
“Xus does not glory in death,” I said, “and I have met many who are powerful. It does not seem to bring them anything but pain.”
He did not seem to hear me. A smile ghosted across his face at the word “pain.”
“I told you once, did I not, that I would come here and destroy this place?”
“Are you going to claim the forgetting plague was your doing?” I laughed.
“We only pray, Xus answers when he will.”
“I hear you ally yourself with Landsmen.”
“They are strong, unafraid of bringing death when it is needed. As are you.” He stared at me and I stared back, breaking his stare after a moment because I could not help feeling he saw it as some sort of connection between us. “I still give you the title Chosen of Xus, though you have never come to me to take your place.”
“My place?”
“At my side, as his Chosen.”
“I have no real wish to be Chosen by Xus. It tends to be fatal.”
“It does not do for a deathbringer to joke,” said Danfoth. “Death is serious.”
“And ridiculous.” I sprang into a handstand and then let my legs come over in a controlled fall until I had turned fully over and stood opposite him. He did not move, physically, but I felt the threat of him, the anger that he fought to control as it welled up inside him.
“Things change, Girton Club-Foot,” he said. “Xus’s power grows but if you continue to deny him he will curse you.” Suddenly, as if Xus had removed a curtain from my eyes, I understood these visits. I understood why Neander needed Rufra and why Danfoth felt so confident. We were pieces in another game.
“Does Fureth know you are here, Danfoth, talking to me?”
That ghost of a smile.
“And they say it is your master that has the brains. Of course he knows. Changes are coming.” He took a step backwards, almost vanishing into the darkness. “Huge changes. You can choose to celebrate Xus’s dark palace with me,” he shut the door and his voice came drifting through the open shutter, “or you can go and live in it.”
I listened to him walking away, trying to piece together what I could past the obvious. That the Landsmen were drifting away from the traditional priesthood was obvious, that Danfoth was allying with them was too. But were they behind the attempts on Voniss, on me, and the death of Berisa Marrel? Why? It made no sense to destabilise the alliance, Marrel ap Marrel would not want to change anything, and if he came to a shared high kingship with Rufra the Landsmen could be sure he would support the continuation of their power. So was Danfoth behind Berisa’s death? He was certainly capable and subtle enough to think that way. But he was also a blunt man. No. He would not have killed Berisa, he would simply have killed Marrel. In fact, why not strike directly at Rufra, instead of at his family? It was almost like someone wanted him to suffer and that spoke to me of Chirol, or maybe Rufra’s uncle, Suvander, possibly even Gamelon? From all I had heard the seneschal was a man to whom labyrinthine schemes were second nature.
I would have to pay him a visit.
And then there was Leckan ap Syridd, an assassin walked by his side. I must talk to them also.
Frustration rose. This was my first visit to Maniyadoc all over again, a castle full of people and every one had good reason for me to see them as a a suspect. What was happening here? And where had the Landsmen taken their prisoners? I paced backwards and forwards, wondering what I did not see. Too often I ended up feeling like this, like I stood in a maelstrom and held in my hands the tools to calm it, but I could not work out how to use them. Eventually, I sat down and started to count out my masters once more, waiting until I was released. When I heard footsteps coming into the dungeon I stood, but it was not my gaoler. A small folded piece of vellum was jammed under the door and the footsteps quickly receded. I took the vellum and opened it up. Inside was a message in the assassins’ scratch language.
There could have been a fire, Girton Club-Foot. It would have been so easy.
Easy for me to escape, maybe. Whoever this assassin was, they underestimated me but their callousness appalled me, that they would even consider burning everyone in here just to get at me. Never would my master have countenanced such a thing. I stared at the letter then heard more footsteps.
“Open it.” I recognised the smooth purr of Gamelon’s voice and keys turned in locks, hasps were pulled back and the door opened. “Girton Club-Foot,” he said, the make-up on his face creating false shadows, making him look monstrous. “My apologies for your time in here. It was for your own safety. I hope you understand.” He had not brought his gaggle of children and dwarves with him and the strange symbols drawn on his face seemed to writhe and twist in the light of the torch. Behind him was Saleh, cringing back as if the smell of Gamelon’s sweat was painful to him.
“Have you caught Berisa Marrel’s killer?”
“Regretfully not, though we have convinced Marrel ap Marrel that it was not you.” His face fell. “I am afraid the alliance he had with your king is in tatters.”
“Then I suspect the assassin has fulfilled their task.” I stood. Gamelon looked me up and down, tipping his head to one side. “I expect you would like to wash the filth of the dungeon off yourself.”
“That would be welcome,” I said.
“Of course.” He bobbed his head. “I will take you to the bathhouse. And then I shall take you for a tour. It strikes me you have had little opportunity to see Ceadoc’s glory and will no doubt be stuck with your king once again upon your return.”
“Thank you.” I did not care about the castle’s glories but would not turn down an opportunity to learn more of its layout.
Gamelon led me out of the dungeon and we were joined by four of the highguard, grim-faced men and women in highly polished armour that shone silver. We wound up through the castle until I could smell flowers and soap on the air and Gamelon led me into a bathhouse, an enormous one. It stretched away until the room vanished into the steam that danced and twirled across the surface of the pools of water.
“It is fed from hot springs far beneath the castle,” said Gamelon. “A thousand people could bathe in here.”
“It is remarkable,” I said, “and do you let them?”
“Let who?” said Gamelon. He looked momentarily confused.
“The thousands of people in Ceadoc town?” A smile grew on his face, like watching a crack form in hardening mud.
“A jest,” he said, although it was not, and I suspected he knew that. “Of course, when in the company of jesters I should expect such things. But no, this is a place for kings. Common people would not understand it, they would mistreat it. It is from the age of balance. One day something will break and all this will be lost.” He turned to me and smiled, pointing to a pool. “Bathe here, we shall wait.”
I waited for him and his guards to move away but they did not. Gamelon did not turn away either, only stared at me. There was a hunger in his eyes.
“It is forbidden for an assassin to undress in front of another,” I said.
“Is it?” Gamelon raised an eyebrow. “I have never heard that before.”
It was not, but years of cutting the Landsman’s Leash into my flesh while I learned to control the magic within me had left an intricate network of scars across my skin. Any Landsmen would recognise it. I felt quite sure that Gamelon would also.
“Each sorrowing has their own rules,” I said, “and we follow them.”
“I am afraid we cannot leave someone as dangerous as you are alone and I am not foolish enough to turn my back on you.”
“Then I will have to manage,” I said. I stripped off my boots and greaves. Gamelon studied the curled and sore ball of my club foot, as if hypnotised by it, and I moved so it was not so readily apparent. Then I stripped off my motley and the shirt of small black plates I wore underneath it, leaving me dressed only in the shift of fine wool I wore to stop the armour rubbing my skin.
“You wear all that, in this heat?” said Gamelon.
“It is better to be uncomfortable than dead,” I said. The highguard around Gamelon watched me, hands on their blades and I realised how foolish I had been. What an easy place this would be to finish me, without my weapons, without armour. Gamelon seemed to read my mind.
“You are quite safe,” he said. “If I had wanted you dead, Girton Club-Foot,” his gaze slid to my foot and I moved back so I was up to my knees in warm white water, “I would have had you killed in your cell.” Did he refer to the assassin who had left me a note? “Now, bathe. Become comfortable.” He nodded at the water and I slid further into it, still wearing my shift of wool. When I was clean I submerged entirely, rubbing my face and feeling the layers of make-up peeling away in the warm water.
My mind drifted. It was as if I had built up all my tiredness in the cell and was now releasing it into the heated water: my muscles un-knotting, my mind unravelling. Around me I felt the throbbing life of Gamelon and his guards, their lives so bright against the nauseous presence of the souring far below the castle. How was that possible? Past them I could feel other lives, servants and slaves moving around the castle, armies, and other presences that I could not quite understand: life, but different, dulled. And something else, something I did not recognise, had never felt before, but the more I concentrated on it and the further I extended my mind, the less sure of it I became. It was like a fish, flitting in front of me, drawing me out of myself, promising me something I did not understand but wanted.
I sank.
Down and down.
Grey water—dull water.
Water like mist.
Water whose temperature was so close to my own that it hardly felt like it was there at all. It seemed I floated in an eternal emptiness. These waters were unlike any other. They did not shift like the sea. They did not flow like a stream. This was dead water, slack water. I felt no hint of Blue Watta the hedging lord of the deeps around me. Though I had come close to drowning as a child, and often feared the tangling hand of the hedging lord, there was no comfort in his absence.
I felt nothing.
Nothing.
This water ran through the centre of the souring, bubbling through pipes—any and all life sucked from it—and by the time it reached here it was empty and begging to be filled. It clawed at me. It wanted my thoughts and spoke to me in a quiet and familiar voice. It wanted to know of me, to be part of me. It was as if it were hungry, hungry for life, to experience it, to feed on it.
Thoughts, Drusl, oh Drusl, spilled out of my mind, as if I were unspooling. Hattisha, I loved you, I loved you, dark memories, the door of a blood gibbet clanging shut, strange memories. A moan escaped my lips. Through the water I saw the distorted face of Gamelon leaning over the pool, as if in expectation.
“No!” It was as if a pair of unseen hands pushed me upwards. I kicked out, emerging from the water with a splash, throwing myself toward the edge of the bath. Grasping the stone edges. Pulling myself out, coughing, vomiting up water from my lungs. How deep had I gone?
“Girton,” said Gamelon, “are you all right? Tell me, tell me what is wrong?” And I could feel memories and words that were as eager to escape my mouth as the water I vomited up. I gritted my teeth. Stared at the floor of the baths which was made of millions of tiny stones, polished and shiny from thousands of years of feet. I could see my face in it, distorted by the pattern of stones but still recognisably me. My make-up was gone and the man who stared back at me was unfamiliar. Long hair, running with water, blue eyes, washed out by what they had seen, creased at the corners. My lips were thin, my nose too. My teeth were good, white and strong, but the skin of the face around them was scarred from fights and falls. That person staring back at me looked haunted, worried. I did not know him. He had once been a child, skilled with weapons but lost and confused among people. I touched the reflection. My face had changed so much but the confused boy within remained. Oh, there was a veneer of sureness to it now, a show of competence. But it was a shell, a thin shell.
I remembered my master, how sure and clever I had thought her when I was young. I wondered if she had felt this when she removed her make-up and saw her true face in the mirror, all those years ago.
“Girton?” said Gamelon again, his voice full of expectation.
“Yes,” I said, pushing myself up, standing.
“Are you all right? Most simply find the waters relaxing. I have never seen anyone react like you before.” Did he lie? It was difficult to tell under the strange lines of panstick drawn on his face, they were a neat form of camouflage that hid his expressions.
“I am tired, is all.” Gamelon continued to stare at me. “If I could have my armour and motley back?” He nodded, staring hard at my face, committing it to memory, and I realised how very few people who still lived had seen my true face. It did not make me comfortable that Gamelon was now one of them, and this thought must have communicated itself to him. He turned away and my armour, then weapons, were returned to me. I could not find the sticks of make-up Saleh had given me. “Do you have my panstick?” I asked. My voice sounded emotionless, dead. Maybe it was the effect of all the steam in the air or some quirk of the vaulting architecture of the bathhouse.
“Of course,” said Gamelon, and he produced the pigment sticks from his pockets and gave them to me, then motioned me toward a room to the side where there was a good mirror. If this gave lie to the fact he needed to keep me under surveillance, then he clearly did not care about that any more than the fact he had stolen the panstick showed he had been through my belongings. I wondered how long I had been in the water. It had seemed only moments.
When I was ready he started his tour of the castle. It was not really a tour, more a showing off: an explanation of power and how it was held and used, and it quickly became obvious that Gamelon considered the high king little more than an inconvenience. We passed through glorious throne room after glorious throne room, and though he paid obeisance to each throne his gestures were perfunctory and half the rooms looked like they had not been cleaned for decades. Statues were everywhere in Ceadoc Castle, some so old the features had been erased by time, others newer and with names below them I could read: I did not recognise any of them, not even the one which stood next to a statue of Darsese and must have been his predecessor. It brought home how little power the high king truly had, how little impact he had on the day-to-day lives of anyone outside Ceadoc. I found myself becoming angry with Rufra for bringing us here. What did he see that I did not? What had brought on this mania for a position that, in many ways, was nothing more than ceremonial? What made him willing to put all our lives at risk for it?
What had I missed that made coming to this awful place worth fighting for?
Gamelon had no answer, or interest, in my questions about the old high kings, and he did not really want to show me the throne rooms or their neglected riches. It was the vast halls full of men and women going about tasks I could not fathom, and that he had no real wish to explain, that mattered to him.
“This is my kingdom, Girton. This is where the Tired Lands are truly ruled from.” I did not think it politic to tell him that Ceadoc’s proclamations were generally ignored in the outer kingdoms. “It is, of course, not true,” he said, leaning in close, “but many would say the high king is little more than a figurehead for the machinery of power, which I run.” I waited for him to name some offer. It seemed men or women in power always thought they could impress me and lure me away with the illusion of power. But Gamelon did not try, he only whisked me to the next room, and the next.
“I see many empty chairs, Gamelon,” I said. In the room before us men and women in ragged brown robes took bundles of scrolls down from a huge row of shelves. Then they sat, opened them and leafed through them before bundling them back up and placing them on different, but equally huge, shelves.
“The forgetting plague bit deep, even here,” he said, before quickly moving me to another room containing more people doing entirely fruitless-looking tasks.
“Gamelon,” I said, while we watched a group of thirty scribes copying text from one vellum to another. In a corner one of the Children of Arnst wailed as though she were being tortured and I wondered how the scribes managed to work. It definitely felt like torture to be forced to listen.
“Yes, Girton Club-Foot?”
“While in Ceadoc town I have heard people claim that Darsese lives.” He glanced at me and then looked back to his scribes. “Why is that?”
“Foolish superstition among the living and the thankful is all. They find the death of a man they loved hard to understand.”
“They loved him? I heard he barely ever left the castle.”
Gamelon stared at me as if I had grown another head.
“All loved him, Girton Club-Foot. He was the high king. Some even say he cured the forgetting plague.” He turned away. “Come with me now, and I shall show you why he was such a great man. You ask about the other high kings, I will show you what made Darsese different—better.” He took me from the scribe room, still talking. “I shall show you the menageries, Girton Club-Foot. I think you shall enjoy the menageries and it will help you understand.” He led me through more corridors, each one many times higher than a man and decorated with murals of the dead gods going about their daily business: anointing, decreeing. In many places faces had been excised, or objects they held obscured with paint.
“I understand the dead gods’ faces being damaged in anger, Gamelon,” I said, stopping and running my hand over the images. The paint felt like glass and the pictures were slightly raised from the wall. I watched my fingers gently rise and fall over the landscape of a headless figure’s chest. “But why is what they held gone as well?”
“Nobody knows,” he said, “it all happened so long ago. Now, come, we are nearly there.”
He led me through a door. It took everything I had not to recoil.
I have been in many places that smelled disgusting—I had just left a dungeon—but have never, before or since, found anywhere that smelled as bad as the menageries of High King Darsese. It was not just filth I could smell, but rot, and another more subtle, cloying scent: misery. Unlike the other rooms of Ceadoc very little attempt had been made to light the menageries and I could see little in the gloom. I had expected there to be noise in a menagerie: roars, growls and the trilling of lizards as I had heard in similar places kept by other rulers, but there was nothing. Despite there being more cages than I had seen in any other menagerie the place was quiet, almost silent. I wondered whether most of the animals had died from neglect after Darsese’s demise.
“The high king had many entertainments, Girton Club-Foot.” Gamelon spoke quietly, as if awed. “Many of the distractions one expects of any king: fighting pairs, copulating couples and such—in every variation that can be imagined, every entertainment a ruler could need. But it is the menageries which marked him out for true greatness.” He held out a hand toward the cages that squatted in the shadows.
As he finished speaking, I started to hear sounds but they were all very quiet. Whimpers, miserable sounds the like of which I had only ever heard in the dying rooms of the Grey Priests of Anwith. I approached the nearest cage. It was piled with straw and in among the straw I saw the thick curls of a type of serpent I was unfamiliar with. In the poor light it was hard to make it out. I saw the long, limbless body, the outline of scales and between them running and infected sores caused by lack of care. The size of the beast hypnotised me and, as I approached, I felt its existence as one of those strange lives I had felt in the bathhouse, a barely perceptible red glow—I did not understand how I could feel life within a souring. The creature shifted, and I felt more uncomfortable. For a serpent its proportions were wrong, the body too thick and too short, the face too flat.
Eyes opened.
I recoiled.
“Dead gods below the sea!”
The eyes were human. Beyond question they were human. Full of pain and misery and as the creature rolled over there was no mistaking that its body was, or once had been, human. The arms and legs were gone, either removed or never there. The scales I thought I had seen were nothing of the sort, they had been carved into the flesh as if with hot knives.
“Fire,” said Gamelon as he came to stand beside me. “Darsese was an artist when it came to sculpting flesh with fire; the things he and the girl Arketh could do, the beasts they created for us, well, his art is amazing.”
“No,” I said, but it was barely a whisper.
Gamelon took my arm, pulling me forward, forcing me to confront the horrors he was so proud of.
“Arketh still tries to create, of course, when she has time, but without Darsese’s skill she struggles.” He showed me a man who appeared to have been cut in half at the waist but lived. “Her creations barely live, and never for long.” A woman who had no body from her breasts downward, her face gone, only a small hole where a mouth should be. Her hair had been elaborately cut and curled. “Do not recoil,” his hand was like a vice around my arm, “try and appreciate. This is power, Girton.” A thing, its sex unapparent, the only way to know the pulsing red mess was human was because everything I had been shown before was also. “Or are you weak? Like your king, Girton Club-Foot? For we both know there are no gods, only men.” A pyramid of quivering flesh, one lidless eye staring out from the summit. I hoped to Xus that whoever this had been had lost all their senses and sanity. “And what we can create is astounding. If this can be done,” he whirled me around, showing me the expanse of the menageries, “age-of-balance secrets cannot be far away. But we must not be constrained, do you understand?”
I did not understand. I could barely even think. To be confronted by such things as I had never dreamed could exist. Here in Ceadoc power had run amok. With no one holding it in check it was clear right and wrong had long ago ceased to have meaning. Gamelon stared at me, his eyes twinkling and I wondered if he waited for some confirmation from me. Because for these sorrowful creatures to exist, surely magic must be involved. The souring beneath Ceadoc started to make a sort of sense. No, it made no sense, none at all. How could these creatures have been made in secret with the souring in existence? Once, twice maybe, but after that? And with the Landsmen, men committed to stopping magic, here as well?
Was I wrong? Was it simply that Darsese did have some sort of terrible skill with blade and fire? The likes of which I had never heard of? Or was there some sort of age-of-balance machinery hidden within Ceadoc that allowed this horror?
I glanced at the creature in the cage again, fighting the revulsion, fighting to see it as human, but my mind rebelled. Because with recognition came a tumult of feeling, of empathy, and a deep and unstoppable anger—and here and now that was too dangerous. I felt as if I may burst and if I did the first to die would be Gamelon—and for him to die I would have to kill the two highguard with him also, and the moment I drew my blade Rufra’s chances for any peaceful transfer of power here died.
“Did you show Rufra this?” I said. I wanted to vomit.
“Aye, for a man who doubts all gods, he called on them enough. I had hoped he would be stronger. I had thought him a visionary until I met him.”
Well, at least now I understood why Rufra had brought us here, and why he was so desperate to be high king. He could never abide suffering.
“Denying the gods again, Gamelon?”
We turned to find Fureth, the Trunk of the Landsmen, and with him ten men. One of them was huge, bigger even than Aydor, and he wore the blank visor of their elite. Stood on the other side of Fureth was Prince Vinwulf. For a man who was meant to defend the dead gods Fureth seemed remarkably calm about Gamelon’s casual denial of them.
“Of course I am, Fureth.” He bowed low. “One day we should make a wager on their existence.”
“Should we?” said Fureth. He peered into the nearest cage, unconcerned.
“You seem very unconcerned by blasphemy, for a Landsman, Fureth,” I said. He smiled at me.
“I am a practical man, cripple.” And one who loves power, I thought. “Time changes all, isn’t that what the priests teach us? They say Torelc brings only sorrow, but I am not so sure. I reckon your own king would disagree also.”
“He would disagree with this,” I said, nodding at the nearest cage. Fureth walked over to it.
“The Landsmen’s job is to keep the land safe when magic springs up in some commoner and they think they can change the correct order of things.” He stopped by the cage. “No good ever comes of magic, but you know that, you have seen the sourings.” He stared at the thing in the cage.
“Rufra tells me,” I said, “that despite the cruel things you do, the blood gibbet, the questioning—that not all Landsmen are bad men. I took a step away from the cage I stood near. That you could know about a place like this and not stop it shows me just how wrong he is.”
Fureth nodded slowly, staring into the cage in front of him.
“Very few know about the menagerie. You have a very simplistic way of seeing life for a paid murderer, cripple.” He flicked one of the metal bars on the cage. “Darsese, as Gamelon will tell you, was a practical man. All he really wanted was to be left alone to enjoy his amusements with his sister.” He flicked the bar of the cage again. “He rewarded loyalty, did Darsese, rewarded those who kept him safe. I was always loyal. My predecessor, Kuflyn, he was not as loyal. He paid the price for it. This place,” he glanced over at me, “well, it helped ensure the loyalty of those close to Darsese. Kuflyn would tell you that,” he said, staring at the thing in the cage, “if he still had a mouth. Wouldn’t you, Kuflyn?”
“It is remarkable, is it not, Girton?” I had been so caught up in the horror of the place and in seeing the Landsmen that I had forgotten about Vinwulf skulking behind them.
“It is foul, Vinwulf. And what in the dead gods’ names are you doing here?” He made no attempt to hide from me or to look ashamed that he was with his father’s enemy.
“Fureth offered to show me the castle.”
“What would your father say?”
“He knows.”
Before I could snap back at him, Fureth interrupted.
“Ceadoc is under truce, Girton Club-Foot, and even if it were not, I would not murder the heir to Maniyadoc. There has been enough strife.” His smile was entirely false.
“Have you seen all the beasts of the menagerie, Girton?” said Vinwulf. “Are they not miraculous?”
“They were people once.” He faltered then, I saw it in his eye, even in the dim light.
“Really?”
“Did you not hear what Fureth said?”
“Well, yes, but I thought …” He walked over to the cage nearest to him and stared in at something roughly square. It quivered and whimpered when he breathed on it. He turned and I could not tell whether he was repulsed or thrilled by what he saw. “They were really people?”
“They are a living lesson,” said the Landsman.
“They are monstrous,” I said. “An insult to Xus.”
“And you would know?” said Fureth.
“Yes,” I said.
“They were made by Darsese,” said Fureth, “and as such are wrought by the will of the dead gods, for he was their voice.” The words were said by rote, but I did not think he believed them.
“If the gods exist,” chipped in Gamelon, full of glee.
“Maybe we should wager the gods do exist,” said Fureth.
“But what would you wager? And what on?”
“A fight,” said Vinwulf. “That should be the wager. What could be more fitting for a place like this?” His eyes sparkled in the darkness. “A trial of pain and blood.”
Fureth grinned. “I think the boy may be right, you know,” he said. The hulking man next to him, armed with shield, spear and sword, flexed his muscles. There was something of the small armoured lizards about him, something of the way they shook themselves after flight so the bright cases that covered their wings snapped into place.
The huge warrior came forward a step and I wondered who Gamelon expected to fight his corner. When I turned to the seneschal he was grinning at me.
Of course he was.