The Vault of bones

Prologue

‘The moon was very bright, so bright that the feathery leaves and umbels of the water dropwort under which I lay painted my body with crisp, trembling shadows. Spiders were busy looping their silk between blades of iris, and each new strand blazed like the trail of a falling star. I raised my head and breathed in the clean, sweet scent of the plants. Something flopped wetly in the shallows of the river, and my head cleared. The river. It stretched away from me, straight as a blade of damasked steel, towards the dark hump of the city that squatted away to the north. I stood up lazily, only to be startled by a mighty confusion of noise: I had roused a heron, and, screeching, he blundered into the air, clapping his wings hollowly. The river broke into a ferment of colliding ripples.

I had fallen asleep, that was obvious. Had I been fishing? I could not recall, although I must have had something more than water to drink for my thoughts to be so muddled. I would have to dodge the Watch to get back into Balecester, and I had to be back before dawn: Magister Jens began his class promptly after Vespers, and to be late meant a tongue-lashing in his excruciating Swabian-tinged Latin. I looked around for a bag or a fishing-pole, but could see nothing in the flattened greenery. I had left a man-shaped dent in the tall grass. The dew was already settling, and I found I was soaking wet. My head was cold, and I was brushing the dewdrops from my tonsured pate when an awful peal of thunder shook the ground beneath me and the distant, shadowed city burst into a great roil of fire. A fountain of destruction it was, too bright to look at, brighter than burning pitch or the fire of the Greeks, that burns even on water. For a moment the buildings stood out in the heart of the pyre like children's toys: the cathedral, the castle, the bishop's palace, until the flames poured over them like a tide and they were consumed. Scorching air billowed around me, and my clothes, damp and clinging an instant ago, stuck to my flesh like molten lead. The water dropwort was burning and the fronds and flowers turned to white ash before my eyes. I opened my mouth and fiery air rushed in. Flames blossomed in my throat, my chest, my belly. My teeth turned to glowing coals. With my last strength I threw up my arms and screamed forth a gout of fire.

I was choking, and as I had that thought a voice above me said, ‘You are choking him.' I opened my seared eyes and saw a man's face looking down at me. His forearm was across my neck and he was pinning me down to the burned earth, but as I twisted and turned to see what I thought would surround me, I saw not the ashes of the water meadows of Balecester but rumpled bed linen and, further away, the walls of a chamber, lit by rush lights and by the glow of a dying fire. The man was watching me intently. His face was familiar: black arched brows, brown almond-shaped eyes. I could not place him, though, and let my head sink back into what I found was a sweat-soaked bolster. I let my eyelids fall, and for just a few more seconds the river was running once more, and everything was green and still. Sweet fronds of water dropwort bowed and danced. 'Patch. Patch! Do you hear me?' The green fronds became fingers waving inches from my nose. I opened my mouth to protest, but only a strangled croak came forth. 'He wakes. Piero? Please fetch the Captain’ It was not an English voice, nor an English face. I blinked, and it came into focus again. The mouth was smiling.. ‘Patch, can you speak?'

I shook my head. At once, a strong hand was lifting my head, and a cup touched my lips. I let icy water slip across the charred leather of my tongue and down my throat, then gulped until I gagged and spluttered. "Who am I?' I gasped.