Solomon Kane (31 page)

His eyes showed no more emotion than the mask did. Kane could have thought that Malachi himself was observing him through the eyeholes, but he spoke as he struggled onto one knee. “Listen to me, Marcus.”

The only answer was an inarticulate snarl from within the mask. Kane might have concluded that the sorcerer’s influence had reduced Marcus to brutishness – to the simple savage instinct to kill – but he had to believe that his brother could still be reached somehow. “You do not
have to do this,” he insisted. “Our father is dead. Malachi has no power here any more.”

Some of this seemed to affect Marcus, who rushed forward with another wordless roar, swinging his sword high to deal a fatal blow. Kane heard Meredith cry “Oh God, Solomon.” It sounded too close to despair. He had not endured so much to abandon her now – it would make a mockery of his vow and her faith. He braced himself on his knee and brought his swords up just in time to meet the descending stroke.

The impact almost overbalanced him. It shivered along the blades and sent a dull ache through his arms. It seemed to widen the wound in his shoulder, which felt as if a claw had dug deep. Perhaps the prospect of leaving Meredith at the mercy of the sorcerer lent him strength. Much of it was in his right arm, but he managed to regain his feet. The swords disengaged, and Kane barely had the chance to draw a breath before Marcus resumed the attack.

Kane parried the scything blow, but it made his shoulder blaze with pain. Marcus came after him, chopping at him with stroke after powerful stroke, giving him no opportunity to fight back and little to defend himself. Soon his left arm was too weakened to help him block the strokes. He had to rely on the other while he sought to wound Marcus with the blade in his left hand – sought only to disable him. Each attempt renewed the agony in his shoulder, and each one fell short of its goal. He was being driven back towards the antechamber, and he could have thought the aim was to deliver him to the raiders outside. He was closer to a worse peril, which he glimpsed once Marcus forced him to retreat between the mirrors. On both sides of him the glass stirred like water that was growing less stagnant, and he had the impression
of shapes rising from the unplumbed depths – tall scrawny figures with little to their lengthy faces except round lipless mouths that fastened on the insides of the mirrors. Marcus gave him no time to glance at them until a great two-handed stroke drove Kane close to a mirror, and two arms sprang forth from the glass to seize him.

He glimpsed the hands before they closed around his throat. The grey fleshless fingers were segmented like the limbs of insects, and abominably long. He strained his body forward as they strove to drag him into the mirror – he hacked at them with both his swords, but they did not relent. They were drawing him inexorably within the frame, and he felt the transformed glass parting to receive him. It was colder than ice and lethargically fluid as a swamp. The sensation revolted him, and he sawed at the creature’s right wrist with all his strength. In moments the hand was separated from the arm, but it clung to his throat, more than ever like an insect, while he stabbed at its partner and wrenched himself free. He saw the mutilated limbs disappear into the mirror as though they had sunk into a marsh while he prised the fingers from his neck and flung the severed hand away. It twitched on the floor and almost succeeded in inching towards him before it grew still.

Marcus had watched with inhuman detachment, but now he advanced to trap Kane in the avenue of mirrors. Beyond him Kane saw Meredith ease open the door of her prison. She darted around the cage and retreated behind one of the columns supporting the roof. Had Malachi seen her, wherever he was? How could she escape from the hall? Kane’s brother cut viciously at him, and Kane barely avoided the blow. Now he was between another pair of mirrors, and shapes moved eagerly to wait for him to stray closer. “Where is your master?” he shouted. “Is
he hiding in the shadow?”

“His master indeed,” Malachi said. “Your brother is the lord of Axmouth. He is the heir, but he is subject to my will.”

His insidious stony voice seemed to emerge from every corner of the hall. At first Kane could not locate him, and then he saw the sorcerer beside the high seat, one hand resting indolently on its arm in token of ownership. His thin contemptuous smile suggested that he had been waiting to be noticed, having rendered himself not so much invisible as indistinguishable from his surroundings, impossible for the observer’s mind to grasp. The trick of vanishing in a cloud of smoke had been merely a disdainful exhibition of his magic, conveying his scorn for his audience. “Why should I hide from you, Solomon Kane?” he said.

Marcus had halted like a puppet whose manipulator was preoccupied elsewhere. When Kane attempted to dodge past him, however, Marcus drove him back with a lethal sweep of the sword. “Then fight me, you coward,” Kane shouted at Malachi. “Fight me like a man.”

“Why should I stain my hands? I have my champion. I shall set brother against brother.” Malachi lifted one long finger as if he were tugging the string of a puppet. “I want you here,” he said.

Kane glimpsed movement beyond a column, and willed Meredith not to betray her whereabouts. He held Malachi’s gaze with a fierceness born of loathing. “Have you staged this for your entertainment?” he demanded. “Or do you need me to complete your dominion? I will never kneel before you, Malachi.”

“You are of no consequence to me.” The sorcerer’s voice took on the tone of a sermon. “Every step you took,” he said, “every pain you suffered, was punishment for your sins.”

Kane might have thought that Malachi had rediscovered his priesthood if it had not been for the derision apparent on the pallid face. “My master will have your soul,” Malachi hissed.

“Is your master as much of a coward as you?” Kane shouted in some desperation. “Is he afraid even to be seen?”

“He has no need to show himself.” Malachi made a sign that might have been an impious benediction, unless it was meant to ward off the vision Kane had called to mind. “See what he has sent to claim you,” the sorcerer said and glided to the darkest corner of the hall.

Less of the light reached into the corner than its distance from the nearest flames could quite account for. An object as tall as the lofty ceiling stood in the gloom. Malachi turned to it, his robes whirling, and whipped off the enormous discoloured canvas that covered it. He might have been performing his last and greatest trick, but the theatricality gave Kane no comfort. “Dear God,” he breathed.

Malachi had uncovered an oval mirror at least five times his height. For a moment Kane thought the glass contained only the reflections of the flames that filled the hall, but the reddish glow was too intense, and it had too defined and purposeful a shape. It was growing – it was advancing to the surface of the mirror, to claw at the glass. As the talons screeched over it, leaving claw marks within, Kane saw that it was a colossus made of fire and molten scaly flesh. “Your soul is damned,” Malachi gloated, “and this demon will not fail to drag you down to Hell.”

He stood with his back to the mirror like a showman introducing an exhibit. Kane willed the claws to reach down and rend the sorcerer to shreds. Instead they raked
the glass again, and he saw Meredith flinch at the piercing screech that seemed to scrape at the nerves of his teeth. The sound roused Marcus, and he swung his sword at Kane, who dodged back. The blade sliced through the air scant inches short of his face, and he retreated further without thinking. It brought him within arm’s length of a mirror.

He heard an unnaturally liquid sound behind him, and knew it for the sound of inhuman fingers parting transformed glass as they writhed forth to seize him. Before he could dodge out of their reach, Marcus swung the sword down at him. Kane ducked aside barely in time, avoiding the clutch of the denizen of the mirror as well. Marcus was unable to halt the sweep of the blade, which struck the mirror.

There was a clang like a blow on a great anvil, and the mirror shattered along its entire length. Instead of scattering over the floor the fragments imploded into a lightless void, bearing the shards of the inhabitant, which jerked in spasms even as they vanished. In a moment the tattered oval frame contained nothing but bare discoloured wood. “Not the mirrors!” Malachi cried, and his voice had grown shrill.

The command appeared to disconcert Marcus, or the destruction of the mirror did. He faltered long enough for Kane to dart past him, out of the antechamber. With a frustrated almost bestial roar Marcus pursued him into the open space between the avenue of mirrors and the altar. At least Kane could manoeuvre here – could retreat as his brother came relentlessly at him, dealing stroke after murderous stroke. Even staying clear of them had begun to sap Kane’s strength. When he blocked them with the sword in his right hand, the impacts shivered through his body and jabbed deep into his wounded
shoulder. Then his brother’s sword sliced into Kane’s right arm, and the new wound seemed to open wider as Kane gripped the hilt of his weapon before it could fall from his hand. He backed away from another deadly stroke, not swiftly enough. His brother’s sword slashed across Kane’s breast, laying it open almost to the bone.

Kane stumbled backwards and heard Meredith cry out with fear for him. In the midst of the combat he had almost forgotten her, and his awareness of her peril seemed to lend him strength. He stood his ground, and as Marcus cut at him with a two-handed sweep of the blade Kane blocked it with the sword in his right hand. The clash of steel reverberated through him, throbbing in his wounded arm and chest and shoulder. They felt as though red-hot coals had been embedded deep in his flesh. Nevertheless he had managed to ward off the blow, and at once he put all his weight behind the sword in his left hand.

The thrust redoubled the agony in his shoulder, but the blade found his brother’s heart and pierced deep. Marcus gave vent to a bellow of disbelief, which sounded baffled enough to have come from an overgrown child. The wound was not fatal yet; it seemed not even to have weakened him. He seized Kane by the throat and dragged his brother to him, driving the blade deeper into himself, an action not merely defiant but close to mindless. He glared at Kane with utter hatred and lifted him off his feet, choking him. There was no room for Kane to wield his sword, which was trapped between their bodies, or to twist the other blade. His head swam and the world turned black. He felt as if the ability to think were being squeezed out of his mind, and only instinct was left to him. It made him reach out and snatch off his brother’s mask.

The face was not merely unrecognisable. It had little claim to be described as a face at all; it was a wound, imperfectly healed. Part of the jaw had been torn off by the fall on the rocks, and some of the bone was still exposed. The left eye socket was too large, and a section of the bony rim was visible. The entire left side of the face was clenched into a permanent grimace by its withered skin, the product of Malachi’s healing. The bald misshapen pate looked raw, as if the scalp had been ripped away by the fall from the cliff. Perhaps Marcus retained some trace of his old vanity, which had made him don the mask. Certainly he was infuriated to have his face revealed, and he hurled Kane away from him.

Kane landed on his back, close to a torch on a stand. The fall almost jarred the sword out of his grasp. He scarcely had time to rise into a crouch before Marcus strode towards him, hefting the sword like an executioner’s axe. “Brother, stop,” Kane exhorted him. “Brother.”

If the repeated word affected Marcus at all, it was only to inflame his hatred. He lifted the sword above his mutilated head with both hands to deal the final blow. Kane lurched to his feet, and as he rose he grabbed the torch from the stand. Before Marcus could strike, Kane thrust the torch at him.

The flaming end struck him in the chest, and the heat glued it to the leather of his jerkin. Oil from the brand spilled down him, and in moments he was ablaze. He roared even louder than the flames that had begun to consume him. His torso burned like a barrel of pitch, and his legs were twin pillars of flame, but he tramped doggedly at Kane, slashing almost blindly at him. In a confusion of grief and fury Kane stabbed him with the sword. He had to run him through before Marcus sank to the remains of his knees. He raised his head from the
conflagration of himself, and Kane thought he glimpsed a trace of renewed humanity in his eyes, as if the fire had purged him of at least some of the evil. He might even have been offering his neck for the coup de grace. “Rest in peace, my brother,” Kane murmured like a prayer, and gripped his sword with both hands and struck with all his power.

The stroke severed Marcus’s head. The decapitated body tottered and then toppled forward to lie propped on the hilt of the sword in its chest, its hands outstretched as if it were making a hideous obeisance to the bloodstained altar. Kane’s rage was focused on Malachi now, and he was turning away from the blazing remains when he caught sight of a movement that should not be taking place. Something more solid than blood, and with more of a shape, was emerging from the stump of the neck. “What is this abomination?” Kane said through his teeth.

He watched in loathing as it crawled forth. Perhaps the flames were driving it out of the body that had been its lair, unless it no longer found the body useful. Its taloned fingers came first, spindly digits that writhed in the air and then clawed at the floor. Gaunt grey arms followed, and a long livid head as bald as a maggot. At first the motions were so tentative that Kane might almost have been witnessing a grotesque parody of birth, but with every moment they grew more purposeful. The demon lifted its head, showing Kane the little it had for a face – eyes black as a crow’s and a circular mouth. He had seen those eyes before, glaring out of the mask.

He waited until the creature dropped to the floor, spattering the stone with Marcus’s blood. As it prepared to spring up or scuttle away on all fours he trampled on it, pinning it to the floor and splintering its ribs. It screeched like an injured raven and gibbered sounds that
might have been words, though not in any language Kane recognised or would want to understand. He chopped at the neck and then sawed two-handed through it, and kicked away the severed head, which continued to screech until the body finished twitching. “Go back to the Hell that gave you birth,” Kane snarled and was turning to find Malachi when he heard Meredith scream.