Whitemantle. Robert Goldthwaite Carter
wizard grunted. ‘That question shows that you little appreciate the scale of wealth that the Fellowship commands. What you see here is power, for through it the Grand High Warden exercises a torturesome control.’
Will frowned. ‘Torturesome, you say?’
‘Surely. For on the other side of the Spire is a yard such as this, except that there the artisans’ business is the breaking apart of whatever is made on this side.’
Will balked. ‘What on earth is the point of that?’
‘By this means Grand High Warden Isnar regulates every key trade in the City. He can quickly destroy any cooper or candle-maker or any other producer of wares who dares to displease him. He has succeeded in strangling this city and many another, for what could be more torturesome to a man than the prospect of having his livelihood taken away?’
‘But what about the famous Trinovant Guilds?’ Willow asked. ‘The mercers and drapers? The grocers and vintners and ironmongers and all the rest? Don’t they fight back?’
‘They cannot. Their power is now all but broken by the Fellowship.’
As they drew closer to the Spire grounds, Will saw rows of money-changers’ booths and beyond them the block-like monument. Such an edifice stood outside every Chapter House, no matter how small, but no other in the land was like this. It was as big as a house, and its top was decked with statues of monstrous animals and its sides cut with mottoes in the Tiborean tongue. The words were mostly obscured by spills of wax from ten thousand red candles that forever burned among the bronze or basalt legs of the beasts, but the letters were carved deeply and Will made out the legend.
SEIUQ OLEAC NI ALOS
When he asked Gwydion what it said, the wizard told him, ‘The Sightless Ones cherish many strange utterances, though their meanings are more often than not meant to be mysterious to outsiders. That one says, “There is rest only in the sky.”’
‘What does it mean?’ Willow asked.
But Gwydion only shrugged and said, ‘Who can say? They call it “a mystery”. They call by that name every piece of nonsense they choose to spout, for they hope in that way to pinch off all reasoned thought about it. Remember: it is ever their aim to convince others of that which is not. That is how they gather power to themselves.’
Will heard coughs and the clink of mason’s steel on stone. A row of skinny prisoners were chained in a line, white as millers with the dust of their task. They were rough-fashioning stone blocks into balls of the sort that were shot from great guns, and Will grieved to think that such a destructive trade must now be profitable. He wondered if these products were likewise broken up on the far side of the Spire, or if they had already been sold to an arsenal of war.
Next to the shot-carvers was a row of decaying tents that served as stable and fodder store for half a dozen chestnut horses. A large brown and black dog sniffed suspiciously at the air, while men with cruel faces lounged at their ease nearby. All were dressed in well-used riding suits of red leather.
‘Are they messengers?’ Will whispered doubtfully as they came almost to the monument.
Gwydion grunted and lowered his voice. ‘The Fellowship has no need of messengers. The vanes of their spires and towers do all their talking for them.’
‘Then what do these men do?’
‘They are the enforcers of the Iron Rule.’
‘You mean these are the men who take children away from villages that cannot pay the tithe?’ Will’s eyes narrowed as he met their stares. Two or three of them were looking towards Willow now, showing frank interest in the child in her arms.
A flash of anger burst in Will’s heart, but just then the dog came roaring forward, teeth bared, barking ferociously, until it was yanked back by its chain. The sight made Willow flinch away, and as Bethe’s cry pierced the air, Will turned towards her. Then something brushed his cheek and struck the ground a pace or two away.
It was a crossbow bolt.
CHAPTER THREE THE BIER OF ETERNITY
Those enforcers of the Iron Rule who saw what had happened rose to their feet and a shout went up. Daggers were drawn, cover taken. The enforcers were men well used to coming under attack. They moved to cover, alert as weasels, looking high up on the monument to the place from which the crossbow bolt must have been shot, but they lacked the means to reply and so their caution was all the greater.
Will saw that the shaft of the bolt was short and set with two triangular leather flights. So powerfully had it been flung into the earth that its iron head had been wholly buried. He knew with utter certainty who had shot at him and why, and when a black-swathed man moved from behind the rump of a great stone griffin Willow knew it too.
‘So Chlu didn’t go north after all!’ she cried as Will bundled her between the tents and pressed her hard up against the monument’s base. Then she saw the look on his face and knew what was in his mind. ‘Will, no!’
But he was already climbing. His hands thrust against the pole that held the nearest awning taut. His feet found purchase on the letters graven into the plinth. When he reached to grip a bronze griffin’s claw and haul himself up, a red waterfall of molten wax cascaded over him and froze in his hair and on his skin.
He gasped at the sudden burning on face, neck and hands, but as the pain passed he saw that above him the crossbow’s string was being drawn two-handedly upwards. Chlu straightened his back, fingers straining as he pulled on the cord. A second bolt was clamped between his teeth.
Time stood still in Will’s head, blotted out by a certainty as strong as any rage. The wax slid under his feet and fingers, but in another moment he had pulled himself upright and was facing his twin. When Chlu saw there was not enough time to cock and raise his weapon, he stood up straight, ready to face him.
Their eyes met. Will felt a tremor pass through him, a moment of horror to be looking into eyes so like his own, yet so informed by hatred.
‘Tell me what I’ve done to make you want to kill me,’ he demanded. ‘If you bear a grievance, tell me what it is or, by the moon and stars, I’ll stamp your face into the mud here and now!’
The other’s malicious stare wavered as a laugh gurgled from him, but he made no reply.
‘I know who you are. Master Gwydion told me everything. I don’t blame you for what you’ve done. I just want us to talk out our differences.’ Will held out open hands. ‘Listen to me! Don’t you know that we’re brothers?
But Chlu’s growling laugh cut him off. It was a deep, barely controlled, animal noise that seemed to catch in the back of his throat. ‘I’m not your brother – I am your doom!‘ He swung the weapon in his hand at Will’s head.
Will raised an arm and fended off the blow, but he was not fast enough. One of the steel prods caught in his face, tearing open his left cheek, and as the crossbow clattered to the ground Will was knocked backwards across the plinth and tangled among bronze limbs. By the time he had recovered his feet Chlu had fled.
There were cries below as the men in red tried to shadow Chlu along the monument, but he had already found a way down where they could not follow him. A stone yale, a horned, tusked animal, rearing up on its hind legs, stood at one end of the monument. Chlu had threaded his way between its legs and leapt down into the maze of black and white paving that formed the closed precinct beyond the iron fence. Now he ran unmolested towards the base of the Spire itself.
The Vigilants who guarded the gate were ill-prepared for their swift-moving trespasser. Chlu dodged them easily and disappeared inside the Spire’s vast, ornamented gates. Will felt a warning turn over his guts, but a great surge of desire thrust him onward.