Prince of Thorns

29

The Builders had an aversion to stairs it seems. Gorgoth led us up through the mountain by treacherous paths cut into the walls of endless vertical shafts. Perhaps the Builders grew wings, or like the far-seers of Indus they could levitate through force of will. In any case, the picks of later men had chewed a stair into the poured stone of the shaft walls, narrow and crudely hewn. We climbed with care, our arms tight before us, keeping narrow for fear of pitching ourselves into a fall with an inadvertent shrug of the shoulders. If the depths had been lit, I don’t doubt but some of the brothers would have needed the point of a sword to help them up, but darkness hides all sins, and we could fool ourselves a floor lay unseen twenty feet below.

Strange how the deeper a hole the stronger it draws a man. The fascination that lives on the keenest edge, and sparkles on the sharpest point, also gathers in depths of a fall. I felt the pull of it every moment of that climb.

Gorgoth seemed least well crafted for such an ascent, but he made it look easy. The two leucrota children danced in front of me, skipping up the steps with a disregard that made me want to shove them into space.

“Why don’t they run off?” I called ahead to Gorgoth. He didn’t answer. I guessed the boys’ disdain for the fall had to be set against the fate that awaited them if they made it safely to the top.

“You’re taking them to die. Why do they follow you?” I called the words at the broad expanse of his back.

“Ask them.” Gorgoth’s voice rumbled like distant thunder in the shaft.

I caught the elder brother by the neck and held him out over the fall. There was almost no weight to him and I needed a rest. I could feel the tally of all those steps fuelling a fire in my leg muscles.

“What’s your name, little monster?” I asked him.

He looked at me with eyes that seemed darker and wider than the drop to my right.

“Name? No name,” he said, high and sweet.

“That’s no good. I’ll give you a name,” I said. “I’m a prince, I’m allowed to do things like that. You’ll be Gog, and your brother can be Magog.”

I glanced around at Red Kent who stood behind me, puffing, not the slightest flicker of comprehension on his peasant face.

“Gog, Magog… Jesu, where’s a priest when I need someone to get a biblical joke!” I said. “I never thought to miss Father Gomst!”

I turned back to young Gog. “What’re you so happy about? Old Gorgy-goth up there, he’s taking you to be eaten by the dead.”

“Can fight ’em,” Gog said, quiet-like. “Law says so.” If he felt uncomfortable being held up by the neck, he didn’t show it.

“What about little Magog?” I nodded to his brother squatting on the step above us. “He going to fight too?” I grinned at the notion of these two doing battle with death mages.

“I’ll protect him,” Gog said, and he started to twist in my hand, so hard and fast that I had to set him down, or else pitch over the edge with him.

He scampered to his brother’s side and set striped hand to striped shoulder. They watched me with those black eyes, quieter than mice.

“May be some sport in this,” Kent said behind me.

“I bet the littlest one lasts longest,” Rike shouted, and he bellowed with laughter as if he’d said something funny. He almost slipped off then, and that shut up his laughing quick enough.

“You want to win this game, Gog, you leave little Magog to look after himself.” As I spoke the words, a chill set the hairs standing on my neck. “Show me you’ve the strength to look after yourself, and maybe I’ll find something those necromancers want more than they want your scrawny soul.”

Gorgoth started up again, and the brothers followed without a word.

I walked on, rubbing the scars on my forearms where the hook-briar had started to itch at me again.

I counted a thousand steps, and I only started out of boredom, so I missed the first ten minutes of the climb. My legs turned to jelly, my armour felt as though it were made from inch-thick lead, and my feet got too clumsy to find the stairs. Brother Gains convinced Gorgoth to call a rest halt by stumbling into space, and wailing for a good ten seconds before the unseen floor convinced him to shut up.

“All these stairs so we can reach ‘The Great Stair’!” I spat a mess of phlegm after dear departed Brother Gains.

Makin flashed me a grin and wiped the sweaty curls from his eyes. “Maybe the necromancers will carry us up.”

“Going to need a new cook.” Red Kent spat after Gains.

“Can’t anyone be worse than Gainsy.” Fat Burlow moved only his lips. The rest of him slumped lifeless, hugging the wall. I thought it rather poor eulogy for Gains, since Burlow seemed to put away more of the man’s culinary efforts than the rest of us put together.

“Rike would be worse,” I said. “I see him tackling an evening meal the way he approaches burning a village.”

Gains was all right. He’d carved me a bone flute once, when I first came to the brothers. On the road, we talk away our dead with a curse and a joke. If we’d not liked Gains, nobody would have made comment. I felt a little stupid for letting Gorgoth walk us so hard. I took the bitter taste of that and set an edge on it, to save for the necromancers if they wanted to test our mettle.

We found the top of the stair without losing any more brothers. Gorgoth took us through a series of many-pillared halls, echoingly empty, the ceilings so low that Rike could reach up to touch them. Wide curving ramps stepped us up from one hall to the next, each the same as the one before, dusty and empty.

The smell crept up around us, so slowly that there wasn’t a point where I could say I noticed it. The stink of death comes in many flavours, but I like to think I recognize the Reaper in all his guises.

The dust became thicker as we made our way, an inch deep in places. Here and there the occasional bone lay half-covered. Then more bones, then a skull, then three. Where the Builder-stone cracked and the waters oozed, the dust became a grey mud and flowed in miniature deltas. I pulled a skull from one such swamp. It came free with a satisfying squelch and mud poured from its sockets like syrup.

“So where are these necromancers of yours, Gorgoth?” I asked.

“We make for The Great Stair. They will find us,” he said.

“They’ve found you.” She slid around the pillar closest to me, a woman from the night of my imagination. She moved her body over the rough stone as if it were sheerest silk. Her voice fell on the ear like velvet, dark and rich.

Not one sword left its scabbard. The Nuban lifted his crossbow and heaved the loading lever back, bunching the heavy muscle in his arm into a black ball. The necromancer ignored him. She let the pillar go with a lover’s reluctance and turned to face me. I heard Makin suck in his breath at my side. The woman mixed supple strength with a succulence that young princes doodle into the margins of their studies. She wore only paints and ribbons, the patterns swirled across her in Celtic knots of grey on black.

When you meet her, run.

“Well met, my lady.” I sketched her a court bow.

Just run.

“Gorgoth, you bring us guests as well as tribute!” Her laughter set a tingling in my groin.

Nothing else. Just run.

She offered her hand. For a moment I hesitated.

“And you would be?” Her eyes, that had held only the reflection of fire, now stole the green I remembered from a distant throne-room.

“Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath.” I took her hand, cool and heavy, and kissed it. “At your service.” And I was.

“Chella.” A dark fire ran in my veins. She smiled and I felt the same smile cross my face. She stepped closer. My skin sang with the thrill of her. I breathed her in, the bitter scent of old tombs, cut with the hot tang of blood.

“The little one first, Gorgoth,” she said, without taking her eyes from mine.

From the corner of my eye I saw Gorgoth take Gog in the hugeness of his hand.

The air became suddenly icy. The sound came of rock grinding on rock, setting my teeth on edge. The hall itself seemed to let forth a sigh of release, and with that exhalation mists swirled up among us, wraiths finding momentary form in the pale coils. I felt my finger freeze in the muck within the skull that dangled in my grasp.

The scraping ceased as bones found their partners. First one skeleton rose in a complex ballet of inter-articulation, then the next. The mists bound each bone in a spectral mockery of flesh.

I saw Gog explode into a fit of thrashing and writhing within Gorgoth’s implacable grip. Little Magog stood his ground as the first skeleton advanced on him. Gog was too far gone in his rage to demand release. The roar that came from him sounded comical, so high-pitched and thick with fury.

The necromancer slipped her arm around me. I can’t tell you how it felt. We turned to watch Magog fight.

The leucrota child reached up to the skeleton’s knee, no higher. He saw his moment, or rather, thought he did, and threw himself forward. You can’t expect much from a five-year-old. The undead caught him in bony fingers and threw him carelessly against a pillar. Magog hit hard, leaving it bloody. He didn’t cry though. He struggled to get up as the second skeleton stepped toward him. A flap of the child’s pretty skin hung away from the red flesh of his shoulder.

I looked away. Even with Chella’s softness pressed to me, this sport tasted sour in ways I didn’t understand. My eyes found Gog, still fighting in Gorgoth’s fists. Gorgoth had both hands on the child now, though I doubted even I could fight out of his single grip. I hadn’t imagined strength like that could lie in so small a thing.

The skeleton had Magog in one hand, two bone fingers of the other hand ready to drive through his eyes.

It seemed to me that a storm rose, though maybe it rose just in me, a storm lashing a moonless night and showing the world in lightning slices. A child’s voice howled in my head and would not quiet though I cursed it to silence. Every fibre of me strained to move-and no part of me so much as twitched. Hooks held me. There in the cradle of the necromancer’s arms I watched the skeletal fingers plunge toward the black pools of the leucrota’s eyes.

When the hand exploded I was as surprised as anyone. A big crossbow bolt will do that to a hand. The Nuban turned his face toward me, away from the sights of his bow. I saw the white crescent of his smile and my limbs were free. I swung my arm up, sharp and hard. The skull in my hand hit the necromancer’s face with a most satisfying crunch.

Whoever made the Nuban must have fashioned him from bedrock. I never knew a man more solid. He held his words close. Few among the brothers sought his counsel, men upon the road have little use for conscience, and although he never judged, the Nuban carried judgement with him.