‘WE CAN’T LET Sinclair get his hands on that army,’ said Will.
They had stopped at a clearing some miles from the palace, smuggled out of the mountain by Rosati and a handful of local men. The locals had stayed back to keep up pretences with Sloane’s English soldiers, while Rosati had mounted and directed them downslope. He rode double with Kettering, who still looked half-stunned by the army. It was midday, the sun disorientingly bright after the darkness of the oubliette.
Will looked down at the ground under Valdithar’s hooves. How big was that chamber? Did the army extend this far beneath them?
‘We could cave in the entrance,’ said Grace.
‘It wouldn’t work,’ said Kettering. ‘The mountain opened of its own accord. It works for Him. For its King.’
‘It might buy us a day or two,’ said James.
Will shook his head. ‘We can’t risk trapping any workers still inside.’
‘How else are we meant to stop it?’ Grace said.
Cyprian, on the other white Steward horse, had turned back to face the shape of the mountain.
‘Stewards. That army … it’s what the Stewards were supposed to fight, isn’t it? Before we were wiped out.’
Will didn’t answer him. But the Stewards could not have defeated that army. The Stewards had been obliterated by a single shadow. This was an endless force of monstrous soldiers, vast and terrifying. Will had felt the flickers of their spirits … their minds. There were great generals there. They hungered for power. Yet the terrible thought came to him: that was his army, asleep beneath the mountain. His forces, that he had wielded to take over every part of the world. Would they take orders from me?
‘The Elder Steward told us to find Ettore,’ said Will, pushing those thoughts away. ‘She said only with him could we stop what was to come.’
‘He must have known,’ said James, ‘how to stop that army.’
‘Or how to control it,’ said Will.
‘But he’s dead.’ James said it succinctly.
Will turned to Cyprian.
‘Those bandits, they were the last ones to see Ettore alive,’ said Will. ‘You met with their leader.’
Realising what Will was about to suggest, Cyprian was already shaking his head. ‘No. He hates us.’
‘You speak of il Diavolo,’ said Rosati.
Will turned to him. ‘Cyprian says he stays at the osteria in the village. Would he help us?’
‘They say the Devil will do anything for the right price,’ Rosati mused.
‘He’s a murderer. He killed Ettore. He has no qualms about killing us,’ Cyprian said.
‘This is too important,’ said Will.
If that army was released, it would overrun everything. He remembered the vision that the Shadow Kings had given him, himself standing atop piles of the dead, killed by a force that nothing in this world could withstand.
‘The owner of the osteria is my brother. He can send word to il Diavolo, if you wish a meeting,’ said Rosati. Will gave him the nod.
‘A deal with the devil,’ said Cyprian. He didn’t look happy.
‘We need to find out what Ettore knew,’ said Will. ‘Now more than ever.’
The approach to the village of Scheggino was a tree-canopied road, then a bridge over clear water and the multicoloured pebbles of a trout stream. The village itself rose above them, growing up out of the hill surmounted by its single stark tower.
So far, they were not followed. But it was only a matter of time before Howell’s death was discovered, and Sloane sent soldiers out to find them, searching through the hills. They all knew it, and the sense of haste drove them to ride hard.
As the first of the terracotta roofs came into view, Rosati urged his horse forward. ‘Excuse me. To arrange your meeting, I must speak urgently with my brother—’
Reaching a stone house on the outskirts of the village, Rosati dismounted, greeting a white-haired woman dressed all in black. She sat on a stool outside the house, peeling vegetables while watching the world pass, as seemed to be the custom here. Rosati addressed her as nonna, speaking rapidly in the language of the region. She ignored him, her eyes fixed on James, still mounted on his horse.
‘You … you’re one of them,’ she said. Will went cold.
‘One of “them”?’ said James politely.
‘The old blood.’ She spat. ‘It returns, like a weed in the garden it must be pulled out, killed before it can flourish. You bring this here? You bring this into my house?’
‘Nonna, they’re friends, here to help,’ said Rosati. ‘There is a great danger under the mountain—’
‘Help, they cannot help, they can only destroy, they force themselves into our world, they look like us, but they are not, they are a plague that we must wipe out—’
Will said, ‘We need to wait elsewhere.’
They tied up their horses out of sight. Looking around, Will could see many of the houses had second floors with covered walkways crisscrossing the streets, in a manner that wasn’t familiar from London. They needed to stay hidden. The last thing they needed was word of their presence to spread, drawing the attention of Sinclair.
‘How did she know what I was?’ said James.
Kettering said, ‘I ought to have warned you. The people here kill anyone with power.’
‘What?’ said Will.
The picturesque village suddenly took on a sinister quality, as though something evil might lie behind those stone walls, or in the silence of these trees.
‘Scheggino is built at the foot of the Dark Palace. You think there aren’t descendants born here? No one wants those powers back. The locals have a saying, “Non lasciarlo tornare”.’
‘“Don’t let it return”,’ quoted Will.
He imagined Dark forces fleeing the palace into the surrounding hills after the war. They would have done so by the dozen, by the hundred … there might be thousands of descendants out here. This place, it was like the source of a river from which all tributaries ran.
‘They live in the shadow of the mountain,’ said Grace. ‘We cannot know what they have experienced here, over the centuries. Their beliefs may have merit we do not understand.’
‘Barbaric local practices,’ said Kettering. ‘Primitive, superstitious beliefs—’
‘You won’t find a sympathetic ear with these two,’ James told Kettering. ‘Stewards do their own killing.’
The Blood of Stewards, the Blood of Lions … for the first time, it occurred to Will to wonder what other magical bloodlines might have survived out here in secret, hiding their powers from others. To have identified James at a glance, the old lady must have some latent abilities of her own.
‘You’re all in danger if the locals find out what you are,’ said Will. ‘Not just James. We need to be careful.’
‘What do you mean, we’re all in danger?’ said Cyprian.
‘All three of you are descended from the old world,’ said Will. ‘I don’t think these people discriminate between the Blood of Stewards and the blood of everyone else.’
The shock on Grace’s and Cyprian’s faces said plainly that they had not considered themselves the same as James.
Will kept imagining that old white-haired woman who looked too much like the Elder Steward in black clothes, pointing a finger at him and saying, He’s here.
They waited in a taut huddle for what felt like ten slow minutes, though there were no clocks out here on the mountain.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rosati apologised in a low voice when he returned. ‘She believes in the old ways more than most. The white death took her son.’
‘Your father died of the white death?’ said Will.
Rosati shook his head. ‘No, not my father. My uncle. My father’s brother. It happened when he was young. Eleven, helping shepherd up in the hills. He went out with the flock and didn’t come back. It took almost three days to find him. The body was like stone when it was brought back, and the face white. My father was older. He burned the body.’
‘I’m sorry. That must have been awful.’ Will had seen it himself now, more than once. The bizarre wrongness of it, life transformed into white stone.
‘Her words … It is the way here. Non lasciarlo tornare. We do not let those with power grow into adults. They are killed before they can become a threat.’
Beside him, James’s face was carefully blank. Rosati didn’t seem to notice, clapping his hand on Will’s shoulder.
‘My brother has arranged your meeting with the bandit,’ said Rosati. ‘You must go quickly, before word of your presence spreads in the village.’