‘What do you want me for?’ he asked.
Not stupid this one. And a survivor – at his core a survivor ready to do whatever is needed. Lead him slowly though, step by step.
Chella ran her hand lower. Even survivors balk if shown too much of the path at once. There’s a road to hell that is paved with good intentions but it’s a long route. The quicker path is paved with the kind of ignorance that clever men who just don’t want to know are best at.
‘You have talents that are rare, Kai.’
‘The Dead King wants to recruit sky-sworn now?’
‘Sky-sworn, rock-sworn, flame-sworn, sea-sworn.’ Chella pricked his ribs with each word. ‘They are all sworn, and men who can swear once can swear again. We’re the same, you and I, we reach through into other places. What do you think the necromancers are, Kai? Monsters? Dead things?’
‘You’re dead. Everyone knows necromancers rise from the grave.’
Chella leaned in close, close enough that he could bite her neck if he chose, her lips at his ear once more. ‘Death-sworn.’
In five years the Dead King had risen from being simply a new complication in the art of necromancy to a force that would change the world. He no longer bartered with necromancers, no longer manipulated, steered or simply terrified them into carrying out his will. He owned them. He no longer watched from the Dry Lands, peering into life through dead eyes where they fell, speaking with corpse lips, he inhabited the living world in stolen bodies, walking where he pleased. An army had grown about him. The lichkin had sprung from some untapped well of horror, lieutenants for the hordes of his dead.
While Chella had languished, the Dead King had risen beyond measure. His summons to court could mark a grisly end to the dark little tale of her existence, or a new beginning. She would present herself with Kai as her offering. Fresh meat. Even in the Dead King’s forces necromancers were not common. Bearing gifts she would answer his call and answer for her failings with the Ancrath boy – who had also risen beyond measure and expectation.
12
Five years earlier
Carrod Springs stinks. Not a human stink of waste and rot but a chemical offence against the senses, the bad-egg stench of sulphur, combined with sharper aromas fit for turning eyes red and stripping the lining from your nose.
‘You see now why the trail detours so far to approach from the west with the prevailing wind,’ Lesha said.
‘Why would anyone live here?’ Sunny asked.
A fair question. True enough, water had become a rarity as we trekked north into the wasteland, but the stuff that bubbled up in Carrod Springs could surely not be potable. It had risen hot and steaming from the earth’s bowels. And smelled like it.
The settlement, seven shacks and two storage barns, clustered on a rise to the west, a spot where the breeze would offer a clean lungful. If there ever was any breeze. The buildings looked frost-rimed but drawing closer you could see it for what it was: salt, caked to the wood, bearding the eaves. We passed the first barn, doors wide, mounds of salt on display, like grain heaped from the harvest, some piles white, some grey, at the back rusty orange, and to the left-side smaller heaps of a deep but faint blue.
Balky had to be encouraged with a stick. None of the animals wanted to be here. They licked their muzzles, spat, and licked again. I could taste it on my lips too, like the salt spray off the ocean but sharper and more penetrating. My hands felt dry as if the skin on them had died and gone to parchment.
We tied the horses and Lesha led us to one of the smallest shacks – I had taken it to be a privy. A handful of residents watched us from their doorways, all of them veiled, salt crusted on the cloth where they drew breath. One had a huge goitre that wrapped his neck in throttling folds of mottled flesh. At the shack, Lesha knocked and entered. Sunny and I stood by the doorway peering into the gloom. It seemed unlikely we would all fit inside.
‘Lesha.’ A figure, seated in the far corner, nodding to her.
‘Toltech.’ She crouched before him.
Toltech watched her with bright eyes over the top of his veil. He worked the mortar and pestle in his hands all the while, grinding away.
‘You’re going back in?’ He didn’t sound surprised.
‘Three of us, with three beasts. We’ll need pills for a week.’
‘A week is a long time in the Iberico.’ Toltech glanced to me then to Sunny. ‘An hour can be a long time there.’
‘If it takes us an hour, we’ll be there an hour,’ Lesha said.
Toltech put down his pestle and reached across to a low shelf. He picked up a bowl filled with small wraps of greased paper, tightly bound. Scars ran along his hand. The same molten scars that covered Lesha.
‘Take one at sunrise, one at sunset. Swallow them in the paper if you can. The salt steals any moisture in the air and dissolves in it, so these will not last long anywhere damp. Take a hundred. Five silver.’
The right salts helped keep out the sickness caused by the echoes of the Builders’ fire. Nobody knew why. The required salts could be separated from the waters of Carrod Springs with sufficient expertise. Five pieces of silver seemed a small price to pay. I counted out the coins, one stamped with my grandfather’s head, and passed them in to Lesha.
Toltech started to count salt pills into a cotton bag. ‘If you find anything in the hills, even if it’s just broken pieces, bring it to me. I might give you your silver back.’
‘What have you had from the Iberico before, Master Toltech?’ I asked. ‘I’m something of a collector myself.’ I leaned a little way in through the entrance.
