Deadhouse Gates

Felisin sat down with her back to rock and watched for Heboric's eventual appearance at the far end of the flat plain they had just crossed. He had never lagged behind this distance before — the plain was over a third of a league across — and as the dawn's blush lightened the skyline before her, she began to wonder if his lifeless body wasn't lying out there somewhere.

Baudin crouched beside her. 'I told you to carry the food pack,' he said, squinting eastward.

Not out of sympathy for the old man, then. 'You'll just have to go find it, won't you?'

Baudin straightened. Flies buzzed around him in the still-cool air as he stared eastward for a long moment.

She watched him set off, softly gasping as he loped into a steady jog once clear of the rocks. For the first time she became truly frightened of Baudin. He's been hoarding food — he has a hidden skin of water — there's no other way he could still have such reserves. She scrambled to her feet and rushed over to the other pack.

The tents had been raised, the bedrolls set out within them. The pack sat in a deflated heap close by. Left in it was a wrapped pouch that she recognized as containing their first-aid supplies, a battered flint and tinder box that she'd not seen before — Baudin's own — and, beneath a flap sewn along one edge at the bottom of the pack, a small, flat packet of deer hide.

No skin of water, no hidden pockets of food. Unaccountably, her fear of the man deepened.

Felisin sat down in the soft sand beside the pack. After a moment she reached to the hide packet, loosened its drawstrings and unfolded it to reveal a set of fine thief's tools — an assortment of picks, minute saws and files, knobs of wax, a small sack of finely ground flour, and two dismantled stilettos, the needlelike blades deeply blued and exuding a bitter, caustic smell, the bone hafts polished and dark-stained, the small hilts in pieces that hinged together to form an X-shaped guard, and holed and weighted pommels of iron wrapped around lead cores. Throwing weapons. An assassin's weapons. The last item in the packet was tucked into a leather loop: the talon of some large cat, amber-coloured and smooth. She wondered if it held poison, painted invisibly on its surface. The item was ominous in its mystery.

Felisin rewrapped the packet, returning it and everything else to the pack. She heard heavy footsteps approach from the east and straightened.

Baudin appeared from between the limestone projections, the pack on his shoulders and Heboric in his arms.

The thug was not even out of breath.

'He needs water,' Baudin said as he strode into the camp and laid the unconscious man down on the soft sand. 'In this pack, lass, quickly-'

Felisin did not move. 'Why? We need it more, Baudin.'

The man paused for a heartbeat, then slipped his arms free of the pack and dragged it around. 'Would you want him saying the same, if you were the one lying here? Soon as we get off this island, we can go our separate ways. But for now, we need each other, girl.'

'He's dying. Admit it.'

'We're all dying.' He unstoppered the bladder and eased it between Heboric's cracked lips. 'Drink, old man. Swallow it down.'

'Those are your rations you're giving him,' Felisin said. 'Not mine.'

'Well,' he said with a cold grin, 'no-one would think you anything but noble-born. Mind you, opening your legs for anyone and everyone back in Skullcup was proof enough, I suppose.'

'It kept us all alive, you bastard.'

'Kept you plump and lazy, you mean. Most of what me and Heboric ate came from the favours I did for the Dosii guards. Beneth gave us dregs to keep you sweet. He knew we wouldn't tell you about it. He used to laugh at your noble cause.'

'You're lying.'

'As you say,' he said, still grinning.

Heboric coughed, his eyes opening. He blinked in the dawn's light.

'You should see yourself,' Baudin said to him. 'From five feet away you're one solid tattoo — as dark as a Dal Honese warlock. Up this close and I can see every line — every hair of the Boar's fur. It's covered your stump, too, not the one that's swollen but the other one. Here, drink some more-'

'Bastard!' Felisin snapped. She watched as the last of their water trickled into the old man's mouth. He left Beneth to die. Now he's trying to poison the memory of him, too. It won't work. I did what I did to keep them both alive, and they hate that fact — both of them. It eats them inside, the guilt for the price I paid. And that's what Baudin's now trying to deny. He's cutting his conscience loose, so when he slips one of those knives into me he won't feel a thing.]ust another dead noble-born. Another Lady Gaesen.

She spoke loudly, meeting Heboric's eyes. 'I dream a river of blood every night. I ride it. And you're both there, at first, but only at first, because you both drown in that river. Believe anything you like. I'm the one who's going to live through this. Me. Just me.'

She left the two men to stare at her back as she walked to her tent.

The next night, they found the spring an hour before the moon rose. It revealed itself at the base of a stone depression, fed from below by some unseen fissure. The surface appeared to be grey mud. Baudin went down to its edge, but made no move to scoop out a hole and drink the water that would seep into it. After a moment, her head spinning with weakness, Felisin dropped the food pack from her shoulders and stumbled down to kneel beside him.

The grey was faintly phosphorescent and consisted of drowned capemoths, their wings spread out and overlapping to cover the entire surface. Felisin reached to push the floating carpet aside but Baudin's hand snapped out, closing on her wrist.

'It's fouled,' he said. 'Full of capemoth larvae, feeding off the bodies of their parents.'

Hood's breath, not more larvae. 'Strain the water through a cloth,' Felisin said.

He shook his head. 'The larvae piss poison, fill the water with it. Eliminates any competition. It'll be a month before the water's drinkable.'

'We need it, Baudin.'

'It'll kill you.'

She stared down at the grey sludge, her desire desperate, an agonized fire in her throat, in her mind. This can't be. We'll die without this.

Baudin turned away. Heboric had arrived, weaving as he staggered down the bedrock slope. His skin was black as the night, yet shimmering silver as the etched highlights of the boar hair reflected the stars overhead. Whatever infection had seized the stump of his right wrist had begun to fade, leaving a suppurating, crackled network of split skin. It exuded a strange smell of powdered stone.

He was an apparition, and in answer to his nightmarish appearance Felisin laughed, on the edge of hysteria. 'Remember the Round, Heboric? In Unta? Hood's acolyte, the priest covered in flies … who was naught but flies. He had a message for you. And now, what do I see? Staggering into view, a man aswarm — not in flies but in tattoos. Different gods, but the same message, that's what I see. Let Fener speak through those peeling lips, old man. Will your god's words echo Hood's? Is the world truly a collection of balances, the infinite tottering to and fro of fates and destinies? Boar of Summer, Tusked Sower of War, what do you say?'

The old man stared at her. His mouth opened, but no words came forth.

'What was that?' Felisin cupped an ear. 'The buzzing of wings? Surely not!'

'Fool,' Baudin muttered. 'Let's find a place to camp. Not here.'

'Ill omens, murderer? I never knew they meant anything to you.'

'Save your breath, girl,' Baudin said, facing the stone slope.

'Makes no difference,' she replied. 'Not now. We're still dancing in the corner of a god's eye, but it's only for show. We're dead, for all our twitching about. What's Hood's symbol in Seven Cities? They call him the Hooded One here, don't they? Out with it, Baudin, what's carved on the Lord of Death's temple in Aren?'

'I'd guess you already know,' Baudin said.