The Tower of Bones (38 page)

Wicked boy!

I wish!

They laughed in unison.

Then she ran through the sand and he ran after her. Their tracks followed them, without either of them having to think about it. When he caught her, he imagined hugging her, causing her to overbalance, so they tumbled down onto the sand.

He kissed her, gently, on the lips.
A present, fit for a queen!

Her voice was suspicious.
What is it?

I give you the ocean.

They gazed, enraptured, out at the sea, at the thundering of breakers against the white sand, feeling the
incoming breeze on their faces, smelling the brine in their nostrils.

Their imaginations were working together in a creative symbiosis. She whispered, against his shoulder:
It’s so lovely. Could this possibly become real?

It’s as real as we imagine it to be.

I want it to be real. To feel you close, against me.

I want that too.

But we’re not here. We cannot be.

He saw the desperation, the need for him, in her eyes. She whispered her longing:
If only our imaginations were but powerful enough
.

If only.

In his mind he squeezed her tight as they gazed out into the ocean.

Snakoil Kawkaw had been out and about. He was returning with interesting news. But for the moment he kept it to himself, watching the Preceptress in her daily veneration of the sigil. Although he knew little about the inner workings of the Tyrant’s religious cult, he knew enough to know that Preceptresses were exceedingly rare among the Tyrant’s followers. He also knew that they were considered even more malicious and dangerous than Preceptors. And that made his position here tenuous, to say the least. She would think nothing of slicing a blade through his throat while he slept. And even in a straight fight, knife for knife, he wouldn’t bet on his own survival against that dagger with the twisted
blade and the Tyrant’s sigil aglitter in the hilt. What momentous service, he wondered, could she have performed for such a demanding master to be elevated to the rank of fanatical spiritual adviser? When he had been bold enough to ask her what happened to the real soup ladler, she had gazed down lovingly, touched the sharp tip of the poisoned blade. ‘Craves their blood, don’t you, my lovely!’

He decided it was time he made himself seem useful. ‘At last, formidable lady, we have intelligence.’

Her red-veined eyes shook themselves free of their obsequious veneration to fix on his.

‘This army, which we are bound to subvert, will not be following their masters and mistresses into the swamps.’

‘What nonsense is this?’

‘A message has been conveyed, through what agency, I don’t know or care – perhaps the wind from the Kyra’s own backside – but conveyed it was. Her forces, gathered here in their tens of thousands, are playacting at following the expeditionary force. They have no intention of advancing through the swamplands.’

‘But the expeditionary band, even with the brat and his oraculum, wouldn’t dare to confront the Witch on their own!’

‘Why knows what folly they are capable of.’

‘The brat alone, even with his power, would hardly be a match for Olc. And there is more – a rising power – that would scatter a hundred thousand of the witch-warriors, aye, and ten times more.’

‘What power is that?’

‘A power that is not for your hairy ears, bear-man!’

Spit rose in his throat at the insult. But he was prudent enough to hide it. ‘I but serve. Yet none can deceive a deceiver. Certainly not Siam the Stupid and his fish-gutters. And it is evident from my spying that there is a deception in the air.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Because I marked the food.’

‘Explain yourself.’

‘The food they appear to be ferrying to the chasm above the swamps. I noticed that the bearers looked as exhausted on their return as when they set out for the chasm. So I marked some of the haunches of beef and the sacks of flour.’

‘And?’

‘As it went out, so has it come back. The marked haunches and full sacks are returned, untouched, in the quartermaster’s stores.’

‘Which tells you?’

‘They are merely circulating the food, forward and back. Thus do they give the impression of an army about to march.’

‘When in fact they have been commanded to stand down?’

‘Indeed.’

Her eyes narrowed, savouring the thought. ‘If so, their mission is surely lost. The brat will die.’ She hesitated. ‘You could be mistaken?’

‘I’m certain.’

Kawkaw wondered if somehow, in a way as yet not altogether clear to him, he could take advantage of such happenstance.

‘We cannot risk a second failure. You must test it again.’

‘I have already tested it twice. I assure you that the witch warriors are standing down. The expeditionary band is on its own.’

The Preceptress’s eyes were suddenly aglitter. She was pushing him towards the entrance flap of the tent, hissing between her teeth: ‘Get out!’

‘At once, noble lady!’

He saved his ear-to-ear grin until he was out of her sight. Had he not seen how the dagger was already clutched in her hands? And had he not read in that look in her eyes that she was about to use it to impart this new, and valuable, information? What a precious discovery was this, which he had made through the intimacy of sharing the single tiny tent with the Preceptress – that through the dagger with its sigil-embossed handle and its black, pitted, spiral blade, she had a line of communication direct to the foulness that was her Master!

Such knowledge might prove useful.

An exhausted Turkeya hid in the canopy of one of the twisted trees and wept for his cousin and childhood friend Kataba, who had died in the night, killed by his own hand because he knew he was slowing their progress. Turkeya blamed himself. Had he not insisted on joining the expeditionary force, in spite of his father’s reservations, and had that not resulted in his father insisting that Kataba should protect him – loyal Kataba, a born warrior, with a heart of oak – his cousin would still be alive. Turkeya grieved for Kataba, up here, where no one could witness his weeping. And he wept just a little for himself also, for the fact that his role as guide had been supplanted by the Garg, who claimed to be the son of the King, and whose posturing and arrogance should have warned Alan that he was not to be trusted.

Iyezzz, he called himself, which sounded if not ratlike, then surely serpent-like, and one very sly and over-grown
serpent he was in spite of the fact he had helped Turkeya find the venom balm that had enabled him to treat Kataba, and at the very least lessen the inflammation that was consuming his leg. It was of small comfort that this treatment had enabled the Shee to construct a bier and carry Kataba this far, although this blessing had further delayed their progress and eventually provoked Kataba to take his own life in the dark of night.

Turkeya was feeling guilty, and on more than one account. He blamed himself for the death of Kataba. He also suspected that he was being overly suspicious about the Garg, but he couldn’t help the way he felt about him. He didn’t want to come down out of the tree into a camp that was rife with fear and paranoia. Through eyes dimmed by tears he stared around himself at the place the Garg led them to, a sheer cliff face within the foothills of a lofty range of mountains. What really awaited them here? The Garg had mentioned a City of the Ancients. But who in his right mind would trust such a creature? Turkeya had no faith in a giant bat that, whenever he grew frightened, covered his skin with an oil that stank. He couldn’t get used to the fact that the Garg’s eyes glowed – truly glowed like a forest wisp – in the dark. He would find himself squinting at Iyezzz when he wasn’t aware of it, taking a good look at those vicious-looking talons on his feet and the overlapping canine teeth poking out of his gaping maw. Whatever the truth of it, the Garg was excited by the prospect of
what lay ahead, and that was enough to make Turkeya even more suspicious.

Turkeya wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands, matting the fur with his tears. The truth was he no longer knew what to think up here in the canopy, high above the ground. Was he being unfair to the Garg? Was he being overly mistrustful – he, the shaman, who was supposed to empathise with all manner of creatures? But this place, and the beings that populated it, so oppressed him in heart and spirit that he was in danger of losing his faith in nature.

He was familiar with forests, of winter greens or leaf-fall. He knew the names of most of the plants and trees in his homeland, the times of their budding and flowering in the spring, and the bounty of leaf, nut and fruit. But these plants and trees were not bountiful at all. These were alien to sight and scent and to the shaman’s deepest instinct. The boughs were purplish or deep blue, with limey spatters of spots – colours and patterns Turkeya associated more with toadstools than trees. And they did not narrow to a fine lace of twigs, carrying leaves of green, but twisted and turned in amongst themselves, forming a labyrinth in which one expected danger at every step. There was a heavy smell too, a cloying pungency that thickened in the night, so that when the Kyra allowed them a few hours of sleep they breathed in a murk of toxic aromas.

He empathised with nothing here.

The fact that he – it – the Garg – seems comfortable here, why it’s all the more ominous and perfidious!

On occasion, Turkeya had caught him sucking at stubby protrusions of a pinkish colour on certain of the trees. Turkeya had been disgusted to see him licking the traces of the sticky juice that stained his muzzle-like mouth. All of this sucking and licking he went about with a relish that made Turkeya think back to the rat clenched in the Garg’s foot when they had found him trapped by the maneater. And it had made Turkeya feel physically sick when Iyezzz had opened his eyes wide and, with that serpentlike sinewy movement of his long thin body, indicated that Turkeya should copy him and suck at the nipple-like things.

‘Ugh!’ Even now, with the memory, Turkeya couldn’t help but grimace.

‘Hsst – shaman!’ The Kyra’s voice was calling him down out of the canopy, her cat-like face peering up at him through the twisted boughs.

When Turkeya descended he found the company was examining strange carvings in upstanding rocks standing on either side of the entrance to a tunnel. The carvings were of ungodly figures, with staring eyes and bared fangs.

‘Surely,’ the Kyra murmured, ‘these are intended as a warning.’

Alan called up the young Garg, asking the meaning of these totems.

‘Kwatekkk!’

‘What does this mean?’

‘Kwatekkk – it means entrance is forbidden. By order of Mahteman – high shaman to the King.’

‘Forbidden? Like under pain of death?’

‘Yeshhh.’

When Alan translated for the others, there was a disquieted murmuring, even among the Shee.

‘Yet this is where you’re leading us?’

‘Aarrhhkkkuusss!’

Alan recognised the expression from when they had first met the Garg. ‘What? The way is forbidden – because it’s sacred?’

‘Aarrhhkkkuusss – yeshhh!’

‘But it is the only way that will take us to the meeting – to Kate?’

‘To the Sacred Pool – the City of the Ancients!’

‘So, if we enter the tunnel, our lives will be in danger! But we have no option if we are to meet the Momu – and Kate?’

‘Yeshhh!’

Alan shook his head. He paused to talk it over with Ainé and Qwenqwo. Turkeya studied the Garg for the slightest suggestion of treachery. If the shaman was no longer their guide, he still felt responsible for the safety of his friends. He muttered: ‘Does he think we’re just going to believe everything he tells us? I don’t trust him one bit. I sense that he has ideas of his own, things he is failing to tell us.’

All of a sudden there was a distant howling in the forest. It was followed by gong-like sounds that sounded like drums.

‘Gargs!’ the Kyra hissed.

‘Gargs on the ground,’ Turkeya cautioned, ‘with no pretence of being friendly.

Alan confronted Iyezzz. ‘What does that mean? You told us the Gargs were withholding attack.’

‘They have assumed that we threaten the King.’

‘Our shaman thinks you’re leading us into a trap.’

Turkeya looked up into those yellow eyes and saw there a mixture of cunning and deceit. He snorted with disbelief when the Garg insisted, ‘Iyezzz does not lead you into a trap.’

Alan pressed him: ‘Have you ever been to this meeting place before?’

‘Never!’ The ugly head of the Garg was shaking solemnly from side to side, and the solemnity was also there in the low sort of purring rattle behind his voice. ‘Iyezzz would not normally enter here!’

Alan glanced at Qwenqwo, whose brow was deeply furrowed, not knowing what to make of the situation. They were all exhausted from lack of sleep. And the deaths of Llediana and the two Aides had made them jumpy and suspicious.

‘So why would you dare to go there now?’

‘Because it is where the Momu will be. She has called the meeting with my father at the Sacred Pool in the City
of the Ancients. No meeting such as this has happened in a thousand years. Forbidden or not, I must be there.’

Qwenqwo squeezed forward, forcing himself between Alan and the Garg. ‘I trust the creature no more than the shaman. Have a care, Mage Lord!’

The drumming had started up again, causing the Garg’s ears to tense, their membranes veined like spiders’ webs. His face turned skywards and his eyes grew even wider, his wing-talon directed upwards. ‘The drums say that the spywings have your scent. You cannot hide from them. We must go.’

‘Mo?’

‘I believe him. But you must decide for yourself, Alan. You must trust to your own instincts.’

Alan hesitated, looking assessingly into the mouth of the tunnel, then back into the eyes of the young Garg. ‘There’s something else – some reason of your own why you want to be there?’

The young Garg sniffed through those gaping nostrils, as if he had perhaps said more than he had intended. ‘The King and the high shaman, Mahteman, will be there.’ There was a change in the Garg’s tone, a grimace about his mouth, when he used the name, Mahteman, that suggested a background anxiety or distaste. ‘They, alone, will hear the counsel of the Momu.’