'My troubles were only starting. My screwrot crew deserted to take service with the prince. This end of winter – the winter cost me pretty, never doubt it – the prince seized my cargo's cream. Six boys – six! The best – young slave boys, trained to service. The temple wanted them for sacrifice. To persuade a god to kill a dragon. We all know what killed what in the end. The prince donated them. Easy for him to give, wasn't it? 'There were women, too – but those went to the prince. He's a fine one for taking. And he's not the only one! The Melski have torn the nails from my ship, working underwater. It's grounded on the riverbed. So here I sit till the Galish come so I can sell what's left -then I'll barefoot back to Runcorn and beyond.'
As an introduction to the habits and practises of Johan Meryl Comedo, this was hardly promising; other stories the wizards heard did nothing to advance him in their favour.
Come morning, they walked up Melross Hill to the black battlements of the castle dominating the heights above Lorford. Although it was spring, the cold wind sang a joyless, bitter song as it cut through chinks and gaps in the walls of the hillside hovels of the servants who worked in the castle but were refused shelter there.
Comedo and his fighting men – and their women -occupied only the castle's gatehouse keep; nobody dwelt in the eight towers of the eight orders of wizards, still sealed against men as they had been through all the centuries since wizards had deserted them. Darkest and tallest was the tower of the Dark Order, the order of Ebber, the order of Shadows, the commanders of dreams and delusions.
Comedo refused to share his keep with his servants, and would not let them build inside the flat area enclosed by the long battlements as he did not want vernacular elements spoiling the classical flow of his castle's interior. Hence the hovels on the hill. Fleabite children stared from shack-shanty doors as the wizards laboured uphill, buffeted by the wind.
'The dragon missed what most needed burning,' said Garash.
The hovels had been built right to the edge of the flame trench which moated the castle. Unlike the fire dyke on Estar's southern border, this trench had never filled with rubble, despite lack of maintenance; it dropped so deep that one could count a falling stone from one to ten before it hit bottom. Where water and wastes were discharged, sprawling green moss followed the moist trail downwards, but far before the bottom of the trench it was too hot for moss to grow.
Writhing red and orange flames simmered at the bottom of the fire dyke. It had been built to last even should the Swarms besiege the castle for five thousand years on end; the passing centuries had not quenched those flames, and, if the right Words were said, they would blaze upward to fill the entire trench for fifty days or more.
Though the flame trench was at its most passive, it was still hot enough for the shack-dwellers to be able to cook meals in metal pots descending on chains a fraction of the way into the depths. A woman emptied a tub of washing water to the gulf; falling, the water boiled to steam.
T suppose the schtot find living so close to the heat makes infanticide easy,' said Garash; 'schtot' was a pejorative from the Galish Trading Tongue, which he was trying hard to master.
'I suppose so,' said Phyphor, not really listening – he was thinking about the love-labours wizards had lavished on these fortifications built for their personal protection, and what shoddy work they had done on the barriers made during the Long War to stop the northward spread of the Swarms.
'Let's go and test this prince's temper then,' said Garash.
'We'll do no testing unless we have to,' said Phyphor. 'And I'll do the talking. Remember that.'
As they crossed the drawbridge, the wind tried to strip them naked. Ahead rose the seventy levels of the gatehouse keep, pierced by narrow windows and garnished with an eclectic array of corpses in various states of decomposition.
'What charming taste!' said Garash, eyeing the dangling bodies.
'What did you expect?' said Phyphor. 'Sophistication?'
'I expect nothing,' said Garash. 'But I mark the prince is a butcher. Perhaps it might amuse him to add a couple of wizards to his corpse collection.'
'Only two?' said Miphon.
'Make it two wizards and a pox doctor,' said Garash. 'If you want to draw distinctions,' said Miphon, 'Make it one of Nin, one of Arl, and one fat slobbery greedbox.'
'I eat to my best because I've got a mind to nourish,' said Garash with dignity. 'Unlike some.'
'Enough,' said Phyphor, for they had reached the archway at the end of the drawbridge.
Coming in out of the wind, the wizards smelt the stench of rotten meat, decayed vegetables and sewerage, a first token of the squalor of Comedo's court. Looking through the archway – which, though it could be sealed by portcullises, ran the length of the ground floor of the gatehouse keep – they saw some men rebuilding charred wooden buildings in the central court, where the dragon had fired stables, kennels and a banqueting hall.
'Well well,' said one of two guards, stirring himself to stand erect. 'What's this now, walking in on its hind legs?'
'Let me pass,' said Garash.
'Not so hasty,' said the guard. 'Not so hasty.'
'My companion may be hasty,' said Phyphor, 'But he has reason. We do have business which should not be delayed. Let us pass.'
The guard rubbed his nose.
'Let you pass? Indeed I'll let you pass, pass left or right or pass back the way you came, or pass water if you wish, but if you try to pass me by you'll pass beyond the sight of men, right quickly, unless you've got the password or some other passable credentials.'
'I am a wizard,' said Phyphor, letting his iron-shod staff thud against the flagstones.
'A wizard, hey?' said the guard. 'Well, by the Skull of the Deep South, a wizard. I'm sorry to tell you, though, we've got no pox for curing. We've had poxy weather and poxy food, a poxy dull winter and the spring not much better, but the actual smelly little article we don't have in quantity.'
Phyphor thumped his staff again on the flagstones.
'Man,' said Garash, pushing forward, 'Man, do you know – '
Phyphor put out an arm to hold Garash back.
'Well, by my grandmother's sweet brown eye,' said the guard, 'We do have a windy temper here, don't we Bartlom?'
'Yes,' said Bartlom. 'We'll see some magic if we're lucky. I've heard of pox doctor magic. The pox doctors, you see, turn sheep into lovers and pigs into whores.' 'We did have a real wizard once,' said the first guard. 'His name was Heen or Hein or Hay, or some such, if you please. Twice my height, yes. his face as white as ice, his eyes as black as night. He had a snake which killed with a single bite. You're not wizards. You may be pox doctors, but we've no requirement for quacks today. So you can't come in, unless you care to turn me into a frog or a fish.'
'Why change you?' said Garash. 'Nature decided you should be born a pig, so who are we to interfere?'
'That's not nice, Mr Pox,' said the guard, frowning. 'He's not nice at all, is he, Bartlom? Would his tongue improve with cooking, perhaps?'
Phyphor lost patience. His staff swung through the air: once. No exercise of magic could have inflicted a worse injury. Bartlom started to lug out his sword. Phyphor felled him with a blow to the head. He went down and stayed down.
'You did that nicely,' said Garash. 'Like swatting flies.'
'Was there no other way?' said Miphon.
'Why worry about scum like that?' said Garash. 'Their lives are worthless anyway. Time only teaches them to waste time.'
'Come!' said Phyphor, venturing in under the first portcullis.
Somewhere, someone was shouting, his voice echoing in the distance: 'Andranovory! Get your drunken arse up here!'
They were now well and truly in Prince Comedo's domain.
CHAPTER TEN
