‘Still, should keep Death diverted for a while. Every cloud and all that.’ He waved a languid hand at the crew. ‘Full speed ahead.’
The palace gathered momentum. The end of the valley could be seen, and soon the procession would be in the open snow-covered fields beyond.
Melyobar beckoned an aide. The man was ashen, like everyone else in the room; but they differed from the Prince insofar as his features were permanently wan.
‘As soon as we’re clear,’ he said in an undertone, ‘have search parties sent back.’
The aide stooped. ‘Of course, my lord. I’ll have the rescue teams prepare.’
‘Rescue? Oh. Very well, if they find any surviving aristocrats they can bring them out. But tell them to give corpses priority.’
‘Corpses, Highness?’ The aide’s rigid, tight-lipped response made him look like one himself.
‘Just a selection. I could use a couple of dozen.’
‘Does your Highness require any particular kinds of…cadaver?’
‘I’m not fussy. But come to think of it, bodies of the lower orders serve us best, I think.’
‘Very good, sir. Will that be all, Your Highness?’
‘Yes, yes. Get on with it.’
When the official had gone, Melyobar rose, passed a gamut of bowing flunkies and left the wheelhouse. Outside, he was joined by an escort of his personal guard, four strong, who fell in behind him. He led them to a corridor terminating in an oak door. The sorcerer lounging in a chair beside it leapt up, and in a flurry of obsequiousness opened the door and ushered in the Prince and his guard, then squeezed in after them.
They were in a perfectly square, wood-panelled room not much bigger than a large cupboard. The only things in it were a glamoured lighting orb on the ceiling and a book-sized slab of brown porcelain, etched with runes, set into the wall by the door. At Melyobar’s curt order, the sorcerer laid his palm against it.
The room began to descend. Slow at first, it quickly picked up speed, causing the Prince’s stomach to take a little tickling flip. It was a sensation he quite enjoyed.
His private elevation chamber was essentially a box. It sat inside a shaft that ran from this high point to one of the palace’s lowest, with access to various levels in between. Magically generated pressure, drawing from the same energy propelling the castle, moved the chamber up or down at the direction of its wizard operator. Melyobar prided himself on embracing all the latest conveniences.
The limit of the chamber’s capacity was six people. Consequently they were all crushed together, with Melyobar at the centre of the scrum, allowing his bodyguards a unique opportunity to experience his eccentric attitude to personal hygiene. The descent passed in an awkward silence.
When they finally arrived at their destination, to a chorus of expelled breaths, they tumbled into a subterranean corridor. Leaving the sorcerer behind, the group entered a labyrinth of tunnels which led to a lengthy journey through a series of checkpoints and locked gates. At last they came to a pair of heavily reinforced doors guarded by armed men. Melyobar ordered his escort to wait and went in alone.
He was in a large, windowless room with rough stone walls that made it resemble a cavern, though scores of glamoured globes kept it well lit. Perhaps twenty people were working there, most of them sorcerers.
A wizard greeted him. ‘You’ll require this, Highness,’ he added, offering a bulky white mask identical to the one he and all the others were wearing.
Melyobar needed the sorcerer’s help to position it correctly over his nose and mouth. The mask had been soaked in some kind of sanitising agent, mixed with a mild perfume, which made the Prince cough.
‘How goes the work?’ he asked when he stopped spluttering.
‘Well, sire. Would you care to see?’
‘Why else would I be here?’
The sorcerer guided him to the far end of the room. Four huge metal tanks stood there, each with a glass window. Melyobar went to the nearest and peered in, but all he could see was milky liquid. He was about to complain when a spherical, deathly white object bumped against the glass. The Prince jerked back in shock, emitting a startled squeak.
‘No need for alarm, Highness,’ the sorcerer assured him. ‘Nothing here can harm us providing we’re careful.’
Melyobar stared in morbid fascination at the floating corpse’s head. It looked as though it had been a man, but as putrefaction had set in, it was hard to tell. One eye was missing, the other bulged. The flesh was bloated and turning green.
‘Begging your indulgence, Highness,’ the sorcerer went on, ‘but we really do need some more subjects.’
‘I have it in hand. You’ve made use of all the others?’
‘Oh, yes, sire. But the process is experimental, as you know, and wastage has been high.’
The travelling court yielded dead people on a regular basis. Melyobar had supposed enemies hung from the battlements in cages until they starved. Others he tortured at random on the chance they might be his shape- changing arch-foe in disguise. Some he merely had stabbed while having dinner with him. But these obviously weren’t enough for the sorcerers’ needs.
‘What else have you to show me?’ the Prince said.
‘We have our first distillation, sire,’ the wizard informed him with a note of glee.
‘You’ve produced the essence?’
‘Not quite, Highness. But we’re very close. Come, sire. See.’
He took his liege to a secure cabinet and inserted a glamoured key. Reaching inside, he brought out a tiny glass phial. Praying Melyobar wouldn’t demand to handle it, he held the container up to be examined.
The Prince blinked myopically. ‘It’s completely clear,’ he complained, ‘like water.’
‘Don’t be deceived, my lord. There is much here that cannot be seen.’
‘But will it do the job?’
‘In sufficient strength and quantity, sire, yes. Indeed, we’ve begun testing.’
‘Show me.’
An adjoining chamber, one of many, housed a pigsty. It wasn’t possible to enter as the door had been replaced with a thick sheet of glass, but Melyobar could see well enough. The sty was filthy. Two mature pigs lay on the straw, shivering convulsively, their legs in spasm. Their skin had a mottled, greasy appearance, and their eyes were glazed.
‘How do you get in there?’ the Prince wanted to know.
‘We don’t, sire. Once the subjects are exposed to the solution we seal the chamber. We leave them enough food and drink so that we know it isn’t starvation that’s making them ill. Then we observe. We could never dare open this room again, Highness.’
‘Hmm. What of higher forms?’
‘We’ve had some success there too, sire.’
He showed him to another glass-fronted antechamber, this one having bars in addition.
There were three crude bunks inside. Two men and a woman occupied them. All were covered in sweat, and looked as if they were in a twitching coma. The woman’s eyes were open and she was staring glassily, like the pigs.
‘Excellent,’ Melyobar said.
6
No one would have begrudged the warlord riding in a splendid battle sledge, or on the back of a magnificent charger. But that wasn’t Zerreiss’s way. He chose to walk, and his followers loved him for it.
He marched at the head of an army unlike any the so called barbarous lands had ever seen before. Its numbers could only be guessed at. The great multitude covered the vast plain it crossed, so much so that the layers of snow they trampled underfoot couldn’t be seen. They resembled a plague of ravenous insects carpeting the earth.
As remarkable as its size was the constituency of the horde. Many of its members were drawn from the lands
