The Poison Throne (14 page)

It had been so long since Wynter had heard cat-voice. That curious, whining growl, all long drawn-out and with too many
rrrrrrs
. Wynter couldn’t help but smile at its familiar, impatient tone.

The cat watched her with all the inherent scorn of its species, and switched the tip of its tail,
pit-pat, pit-pat
, as Wynter quietly snapped the shutters closed.

As Wynter found and lit another candle the cat tutted, sighed and tapped its claws on the table, impatient to be given her full attention.

“So you’re ready then, are you?” it said. “Quite sure, miss? Want to go bathe perhaps? Or take a stroll?”

“I’m sorry, good-hunter. I cannot see so well in the dark as you.”

The cat
pffted
and turned its head as if to say,
oh please, don’t bother. Flattery will get you nowhere with me
.

Wynter spread another curtsey and, knowing every cat’s love for titles, introduced herself formally, “Protector Lady Wynter Moorehawke at your service, good-hunter.”

The cat rose to its feet, suddenly furious, and Wynter was taken aback at its hissing anger.

“I
know
who you are, girl-once-cat-servant, why else would I be
here
? Do you think, after all that’s befallen, we’d deign to speak with any but you?” It flowed around itself in a prowling figure of eight, grizzling under its breath until it managed to regain some self-control. Then it sat back down and directed its green-eyed glare at Wynter once more.

“GreyMother sent me to warn you.”

“GreyMother? GreyMother lives?” Wynter laughed out loud in joy, but the cat just stared at her disdainfully until Wynter took her seat and composed herself.

“GreyMother lives, though old, very old now. And Coriolanus too, though much weakened and always poorly from the poison.”

“I’m so sorry,” whispered Wynter, tears once again springing to her eyes at the thought of her precious friends.

The cat looked at her as if she’d let loose a fart, its nose wrinkling in disgust. “What care I for your sorrow, human? I am here for revenge on he-who-betrayed-our-trust. That is all, and to use you as an instrument of his downfall. Don’t speak to me of your sorrows. I despise them. We all despise them, as the nothings they are.”

Wynter felt the tears roll down her face at the cat’s awful hatred. “But I did nothing…” she whispered.

The cat stood up and prowled again, releasing a low irritated yowl. “Arrwwww. Hush up, hush up, creature. I do not
care
. Listen to my message and act upon it! That is all you need to do.”

“I will not bring about the downfall of the King!” Wynter said, her voice suddenly steely, “I will not aid you in your destruction of the crown.”

The cat turned sly eyes to her and smiled its needle-toothed smile. “The ghosts are surging,” it said. “They are this very minute about to rise.” It slunk across the table and brought its smiling face up close to Wynter’s, “They will thwart your friend, he who is son-but-not-heir to the King.”

“Razi?” exclaimed Wynter, half-rising from her chair.

“Yes, Razi.”

“Bring me to him!” said Wynter and the cat’s smile widened.

At the cat’s direction Wynter slipped through the hidden panel in the retiring room. They passed the door to Razi’s room and made their way into the pitch-black labyrinth beyond. The passages behind the wall were dusty and very dark. The cat had not allowed her to bring a candle, saying that the light might give her away, so Wynter had to depend on its voice to guide her through the impenetrable blackness. It perched on her shoulder, breathing instructions into her ear, its breath meaty and hot on her cheek.

She ran her hand along the wall for assurance, but sometimes the wall would just disappear and she would be assailed by a blast of icy air as she crossed the junction of a passageway. At those moments she would be gripped by the terrible fear that she was teetering on the edge of a precipice. She imagined a void yawning beside her, her feet a toe’s breadth from its maw, and she was convinced that she would simply topple over sideways and drop forever into the eternal black. At these times, she would be gnawed with doubt as to how far she could trust this cat, who was obviously filled with hatred and had not even offered her its name, but within a few steps the wall would be there again, running along beneath her fingertips, a tangible surface to anchor her in the dark.

They seemed to go on forever, past endless corridors of cobwebbed wood panelling. Occasionally they would hear voices, usually muffled, sometimes loud, sometimes there would be music. Now and again a thin line of light would show through a crack in the wood, and Wynter was glad that the cat had forbidden her a candle.

They went down steps. They took numerous turns. The air grew colder and colder and Wynter knew they must be in the cellars. Or in the dungeons underneath the keep.

“Here,” hissed the cat, “turn left.”

Wynter found herself in a very short, corbel-roofed passageway. There was dim torchlight coming through from the main corridor, which was only nine or ten paces ahead.

They were deep, deep underground, in the most secret of the palace dungeons. Wynter hesitated, terrified, her breath coming in misty puffs in the frigid air.

“Turn right at the top there, and go down the steps,” ordered the cat. “Tell he-who-is-son-but-not-heir that the ghosts will thwart him. Tell him to hurry in his inquisition.”

There were distant screams echoing from somewhere up ahead. Terrible screams, nothing like Heather Quinn’s, nothing like the nightmare cats’. Screams of unendurable agony.

Wynter panicked suddenly. What was she was doing here? What might she have to witness? She tried to retreat into the secret passage, meaning to rush back to her rooms and forget all about this fool’s errand. But the weight of the cat slipped suddenly from her shoulders and before she could turn, it had gone, flickering back into the dark like a snuffed candle. She was left with no way back, no guide through the pitch-black maze of passages. Her only choice now was to go forward and face what lay ahead.

The screams grew as she slowly moved along the corridor. High, bubbling, unending, they made her feel sick; they made her legs turn to water. She was suddenly filled with an urgent need for the privy.

She rounded the corner and found herself at the top of a short flight of stairs. She pressed against the wall, hugging the stone. The screams were so clear here, so full of human suffering. She was panting in fear and horror. She knew she was whimpering, but couldn’t seem to stop.

The stairs led down into a room. The bottom steps were flooded with sulphurous light, shadows moved about, flickering up the walls of the stairwell, making nauseating patterns on the stone. The prisoner, the poor, screaming, tortured
victim
that was the source of the sounds, was very close to the foot of those steps.

If she descended three, maybe five steps, she would see him. She would see what was being done to him, and who was doing it.

There was a smell of fire, of smoke, of burning flesh and hair.

She could make out the scattered, burbling words that punctuated the inarticulate shrieking. The pleading, the promises, the prayers.

How could anyone listen to that and still continue to inflict such pain? How could anyone, for any reason…?

“What in God’s name are you doing here?”

A cracked, appalled whisper from across the corridor. She turned her head to meet Christopher’s wide, haunted eyes. He leant in the shadows of the wall opposite her, looking as though he could barely stand. His face was drawn and horrified and he smelled of vomit. “You shouldn’t be
here
!” he exclaimed, his voice high with anguish. “
My God!
You shouldn’t be
here
!”

The screams fell away to moans and sobs for a moment, and the two of them turned towards the light. There was a short murmured conversation. A thin ribbon of garbled pleading. Sharp, impatient words. Then the pleading again, rising to begging shrieks,
mercy, mercy, oh God, mercy
. And then that great agonised howling again, those clogged, bubbling screams that stole the power from Wynter’s legs and brought her to her knees.

A shadow cut the light suddenly, soft edged and swirling as if walking through smoke, and then a tall silhouette came rapidly up the steps towards them. It was Razi. Wynter barely recognised him. The corners of his mouth were pulled down so far as to be hideous. His eyes were like live coals at the bottoms of tar-pits. He was smudged all over in soot and blood, and was shining with sweat. He looked like a monster cast in bronze, a horrific, horrified gargoyle forced to look on hell.

The screams continued to rise behind him as he topped the stairs. He flung himself on Christopher, who sobbed as Razi grabbed him and dragged him away from the wall. “All right,” Razi said, hoarsely, “All right, you win! Give it to me.
Give it to me
.”

Christopher was snarling through his tears, and Wynter didn’t think he heard what Razi was saying. He kept looking back down the steps. The victim was in a frenzy of pain, a series of high rhythmic shrieks tearing the air. “I should have killed him!” Christopher moaned, “I should have killed him! He’ll never talk! You should have let me…”

Razi shook Christopher hard. There was a patch of blood on his shoulder where it had soaked through the bandages and his shirt. “I’m SORRY!” he screamed, pulling Christopher up close to yell in his face, “I’m SORRY! You were RIGHT! Give me the bloody KNIFE!”

Christopher registered Razi’s words suddenly and started to scrabble at his boot to get his dagger.

Wynter was kneeling on the floor at the feet of the two men, completely disregarded. As she peered down into the sulphurous light she noticed a change in the air, a
drawing out
of the light, a low mutinous buzz that was rising up behind the sounds of torture.

“Razi…” she said, leaning forward over the top steps, staring into the light. It was drawing her like a whirlpool, it was sucking her down. “Razi… the ghosts…” she put her hand on the step below her, as though she intended to crawl down the stairs.

Razi turned beside her, Christopher’s dagger in his hand. He stuttered forward a few steps and then stopped. Christopher sank to his knees on the floor across from her. He fell forward onto his hands, his face tilted to the light, his eyes blank.

The screaming had ceased. The light had turned from orange to white. The air was humming all around them, like bees in a hive.

“The ghosts, Razi…” she said, “the ghosts are surging.”

The light seemed to burst.

Wynter felt her hands slide along the stone floor as she was pushed back up the corridor. She came to a stop against the stone arch with a gentle
bump
, rolling over, limp as a rag doll but still awake.

Light washed over her like watered milk.

Something big slid past her on the flagstones, brushing her legs. Later she would realise it had been Razi, toppled onto his back and shoved up the corridor like a sack of grain.

Great blossoms of white light flared and scattered on the ceiling and walls. All the sound had been crowded from the air, pushed aside, no room left for sound at all. Wynter knew that if she opened her mouth to scream, there would be nothing to hear.

The light went on and on, like a comet passing overhead, moving, flowing and blossoming. Wynter stared up at it, unable to lift a hand or her head, dumb and motionless as a stone.

And then it was over. Stone was stone, flesh was flesh, and she was seeing and hearing and breathing again as if nothing had happened.

She rolled slowly onto her side, her body tingling. Her hair was crackling like summer fire. Her clothes were sparking, sending out little fireflies of light at every crease and fold. Her teeth hurt. Her lips were buzzing.

Razi lay in the middle of the corridor, staring at the ceiling. As she watched, he slowly bent his right leg. Raised his left hand and dropped it again. Blinked.

Across the hall she heard Christopher release a shaky breath.

They got slowly to their feet, and went to look down the stairs. For a moment the three of them stood in a row, silent. Then Razi led the way down into the chamber.

The fires were out, their coals and soot scattered about the floor in a thick gritty carpet. Ash scraped beneath their feet as they walked, stone cold where only moments before it had been searing hot.

The prisoner and the inquisitors were indistinguishable, apart from their clothes and their positions in the room. Bloody, pulpy messes, barely recognisable as human; they looked as though they had been skinned and then carefully dressed again.

Wynter could look only very briefly at what was left of the prisoner before she had to turn away. The horrible chair, the straps, the twisted legs and broken arms, all these things she saw only fleetingly, but they never left her. The chair was ringed about with tables that were laden with terrible instruments, coated now with grit and ash. Great angry iron spikes, hammers, clamps, brands, screws, pliers, and some whose purpose she didn’t dare guess at.

Christopher would not come into the room. He followed them down the steps and she heard him pick up his knife from the floor, where it had fallen from Razi’s hand, but he loitered at the entrance and came no further. He stood staring at the bloody remains of an inquisitor. His corpse had been shoved up against the wall by the door, a scarlet trail leading from it to the torture chair. Christopher’s face was unreadable, but Wynter didn’t think he cared too much about this man’s fate.

Razi prowled the room, his footsteps scraping and echoing. The torch that he’d brought from the hall flared as he held it high and moved from body to body. He was checking for signs of life in the three inquisitors and the prisoner. When he had pressed his sooty fingers to the last bloody neck and found no pulse, he straightened and stalked back up the stairs.

Christopher and Wynter found themselves in utter darkness. Rousing themselves, they sealed the room, locking the door on the awful blackness within, and, without discussion, followed Razi’s footsteps, which led them along another hidden passage to the kitchen.