A shade rose out of the rocks before them and crunched through the tufa and ash until it was close enough to touch.
Murad.
Raw flesh glimmered over his naked torso, and sluggish blood welled from his wounds, black as tar. He was half bald where something had ripped his scalp from forehead to ear.
“Murad?” Hawkwood managed to ask. He could not believe that this human flotsam was the man he knew and detested.
“The very same. So they let you loose, did they? The mariner and the mage.”
“We escaped,” Hawkwood said, but knew that was a lie as the words passed his lips. The three of them stood as if they had not a care in the world, as if there were not a kingdom of monsters within the hollow mountain thirsting after their blood.
“They let us go,” Murad said, his sneer still intact at least. “Or you, at any rate. Me I’m not so sure about. I may merely have been fortunate. How is the mage, anyway?”
“Alive.”
“Alive.” Suddenly Murad sagged. He had to squat down on his knees. “They killed them all,” he whispered, “every last one. And such gold! Such . . . blood.”
Hawkwood dragged him upright. “Come. We can’t stay here. We’ve a long road ahead of us.”
“We’re walking dead men, Captain.”
“No—we’re alive. We were meant to stay alive, I believe, and at some point I want to find out why. Now take Bardolin’s other arm. Take it, Murad.”
The nobleman did as he was told. Together, the three of them stumbled down the slopes of the mountain, the ash burning in their wounds like salt.
By the time the dawn came lightening the sky they were almost at its foot, and the unchanging jungle whooped and wailed with weary familiarity before them. They plunged into it once more, becoming lost to the world of the dreaming trees, the shadowed twilight of the forest.
The hidden beast watched them as they disappeared, three wrecked pilgrims pursuing some cracked vision known only to themselves. Then it rose up out of its hiding place and followed them, as silent as a breath of air.
PART THREE THE WARS OF THE FAITH
Chronicle of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 1570
C HARIBON was a prisoner of winter.
The heavy snows had come at last, in a series of blizzards which roared down out of the heights of the Cimbric Mountains and engulfed the monastery-city in a storm of white. On the Narian Hills the snow drifted fathoms deep, burying roads and villages, isolating whole towns. The fishing boats which normally plied the Sea of Tor had been beached long since, and the margins of the sea itself were frozen for half a league from the shore, the ice thick enough to bear a marching army.
In Charibon a small army of labourers fought to keep the cloisters clear of snow. They were assisted by hundreds of novices who shovelled and dug until they were pink-cheeked and steaming, and yet had the energy for snowball fights and skating and other horseplay afterwards. Unlike the poor folk of the surrounding countryside, they did not have to worry whether they would have enough food to see them through the winter. It was one of the bonuses of the religious life, at least as Charibon’s clerics lived it.
The monastery-city went about its business regardless of the weather, its rituals as changeless and predictable as the seasons themselves. In the scriptoria and refectories the fires were lit, fed with the wood which had been chopped and piled through the summer and autumn. Salted and smoked meat made more of an appearance at table, as did the contents of the vast root cellars. Enterprising ice fishermen hacked holes in the frozen sea to provide the Pontiff and Vicar-General’s tables with fresh fish every now and again, but in the main Charibon was like a hibernating bear, living off what it had stored away throughout the preceding months and grumbling softly in its sleep. Except for the odd Pontifical courier determined (or well-paid) enough to brave the drifts and the blizzards, the city was cut off from the rest of Normannia, and would remain so for several weeks until the temperature dropped further and hardened the snow, making it into a crackling white highway for mule-drawn sledges.
The wolves came down out of the mountains, as they always did, and at night their melancholy moans could be heard echoing about the cathedral and the cloisters. In the worst of the weather they would sometimes even prowl the streets of Charibon itself, making it dangerous to walk them alone at night, and contingents of the Almarkan troops which garrisoned Charibon would periodically patrol the city to clear the beasts from its thoroughfares.
I T was after Compline. Vespers had been sung two hours before, the monks had consumed their evening meal and most of them were in their cells preparing for bed. Charibon was settling down for the long midwinter night, and a bitter wind was hurling flurries of snow down from the Cimbrics, drowning out the howls of the wolves. The streets of the city were deserted and even the cathedral Justiciars were preparing for bed, having trimmed the votive lamps and shut the great doors of Charibon’s main place of worship.
Albrec’s door was rapped softly and he opened it, shivering in the cold wind which he admitted.
“Ready, Albrec?” Avila stood there, muffled in hood and scarf.
“No one saw you leave?”
“The whole dormitory have their heads under their blankets. It’s a bitter night.”
“You brought a lamp? We’ll need two.”
“A good one. It won’t be missed until Matins. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
“Yes. Are you?”
Avila sighed. “No, but I’m in it up to my neck now. And besides, curiosity is a terrible thing to live with, like an itch which cannot be scratched.”
“Here’s hoping we can scratch your itch tonight, Avila. Here, take this.” The little monk handed his Inceptine friend something hard and angular and heavy.
“A mattock! Where did you pilfer this from?”
“Call it a loan, for the greater glory of God. I got it from the gardens. Come—it’s time we were on our way.”
The pair of them left Albrec’s cell and whispered along the wide corridors of the chapter-house where Albrec slept. Due to his position of Assistant Librarian, he had a cell to himself whereas Avila slept in a dormitory with a dozen other junior Inceptine clerics, for he had laid aside his novice’s hood only three years before.
They crossed an arctic courtyard, their habits billowing in the biting wind. Scant minutes later, they found themselves outside the tall double doors of the Library of Saint Garaso. But Albrec led his friend around the side of the rime-white building, kicking his frozen, sandalled feet through piled snow and halting at a half-buried postern door. He poked his key into the hole and twisted it with a snap, then pushed the door open.
“More discreet here,” he grunted, for the hinges were stiff. “No one will see us come and go.”
But Avila was staring at the snowy ground about them. “Blast it, Albrec, what about our tracks? We’ve left a trail for the world to see.”
“It can’t be helped. With luck they’ll be snowed over by morning. Come on, Avila.”
Shaking his head the tall Inceptine followed his diminutive friend into the musty, old-smelling darkness of the library. Albrec locked the door behind them and they stood silent for a second, alarmed by the quiet of massive masonry and waiting books, the wind a mere groaning in the rafters.
