Whitemantle. Robert Goldthwaite Carter
foraged and dogs ran out to snap at him as he sprinted by. Two men looked up from their work at the tail of a water cart. Beyond the square, several narrower ways branched off. He dared not take any of them, but ran on down the main alley until it forked and he was faced with a choice.
The noise of the pursuit grew louder. He noticed cart ruts underfoot running to the right. He chose the same fork, hoping they would lead him out of the maze. By now he was breathing hard, his heart pounding fit to burst, and he flattened himself against a wall, filling his lungs, needing to listen out. If only he could get away, then he would head for the royal palace of the White Hall. Gwydion would be bound to take Willow and Bethe there, no matter what they thought had happened at the Spire.
But just as he began to think he had foxed his pursuers he heard cries and a clatter of footsteps. Men in black shirts were running across the junction ahead of him. When they turned, they saw him.
‘That way!’
‘He’s there! Spread out!’
Will cursed and dodged back the way he had come. As soon as he reached the corner and moved out of sight, he jinked into one of the narrower ways, fervently hoping that this was no blind alley.
It was certainly deserted, running for thirty paces or so until it reached a dog-leg. Beyond that was only a small yard, hemmed in by house ends and walls that would be impossible to climb. The building that dominated the yard sent Will’s hopes plummeting. It was different to the others, built of expensive dressed stone, heavy and dark, and set back beyond a dry moat that was half choked with rubbish.
Could this be the back of some large, lordly house? he wondered. But he knew he was grasping at straws. A wide flight of steps bridged the moat and ran up to an arched door that was flanked by ornamental carvings. At the centre of the door there hung a brazen fist.
His heart sank. This was the sure sign of a chapter house. Will halted, angry at his false choice, fearful that his other options had disappeared. There were shouts and yelps echoing from the walls – no way out forward or back, and by the sound of it the mob had already decided correctly which way he had gone. They would be here very soon.
He planted his feet with deliberate care, and opened his mind, to invite what powers might be here to emerge from the dry, compacted earth underfoot. He felt the flows, but they were feeble, as if they had been pinched off by the tumble of mean hovels. Barely a tingle ran through his toes, and the aura that usually sheathed him like a cool, blue flame hardly flickered into life. Yet when his eyes rolled back in his head, he was able to give himself over to the ecstasy for a brief moment. A spangle ran over his ribs and launched an upwelling along his spine that drove fatigue before it and refreshed him.
But the joy did not last long and the light of forget-fulness soon faded. When he stepped out of his rhapsody he began straight away to spin and dance out a spell of alteration upon himself. Having assisted Gwydion with the restoring of Lord Dudlea’s wife and son, the appropriate formulas of the true tongue came readily to his lips. He had been the subject of magical disguises before, and so his flesh did not resist the changes that came over him. When he emerged from the alteration he had assumed the form of an old man, a beggar. He was filled with hope that this would be a sufficient armour in which to hide.
He could feel the wrath of the mob. A weird pressure on the nape of his neck made the hairs there stand up and caused him to turn. Picking his way among the filth that clogged the dry moat was the Fellow in tattered grey garb. His head was cowled within a deep hood, and it was tilted in the manner that Will had seen each time he had come under the sightless scrutiny of a Fellow.
A shout came from behind. ‘This way!’
Will turned to see the first forerunners of the mob coming into the yard. They stopped in their tracks. Bigger men joined them, sweating and breathless. They would not approach their prey, though they were roused for blood, for an Elder was coming.
‘Kill! Kill!’ some fool shouted, hoping that a chant would be taken up, but it failed: there was no one to kill, save an old beggarman and a brooding Fellow who was now rising up menacingly out of the moat.
They stared at the Fellow as he came forward. He was a huge man. By now a dozen helpers had closed off the yard and three Vigilants were led forward. The men in belted black shirts who carried cudgels and clubs deferred to the Elder as if he had the power of life and death over them. But still they looked with unavoidable respect upon the tattered Fellow who came to meet them.
‘Who comes?’ the Fellow boomed.
His way of speaking was strange, his voice somewhat lisping, though deep and laced with a quiet kind of menace. When he gathered himself he was a figure to behold, the rends in his robes showing glimpses of a frame of tremendous power.
Unseen now, Will backed up the steps of the chapter house. Above him, the brass fist came to life on the door and splayed grasping fingers from which he was forced to draw away.
One of the Vigilants was ushered forward, but the big Fellow raised a denying hand to him.
‘Who comes?’ he repeated. ‘Who comes to disturb the peace of this House?’
One of the black-clad men spat. ‘Yaaah, Hell-damned Grey Robes!’
‘There!’ shouted another of the Vigilants’ sighted helpers. He pointed towards Will, whose bewilderment at the various competing orders within the Fellowship was not helping him make sense of his danger. ‘That’s what we’ve come for. Him. That’s a bone demon, sitting on your stair! A bone demon from the Spire!’
The Vigilants tilted their heads, their attention focussing now on Will. The big Fellow took a short step forward, which made the others draw back. ‘There is no bone demon here. Only an old man whom I hope will yet be persuaded to our purpose.’
The leader of the Yellow Robes sniffed the air then threw up his hands. ‘Magic!’ he said. ‘Foul magic has been done here! The demon has taken on new form!’
They all looked towards Will.
‘Let us fall upon the beggar!’ one of the mob shouted.
‘Aye!’
They began to surge forward, but the ragged Fellow did not move aside. Instead, he stood four-square and let slip from inside his sleeve a heavy chain. Raising it on high he swept an arc clear before him. Then he said in a stolid but commanding voice, ‘It may be that this old man already belongs! You may believe that approaching him is forbidden!’
The Vigilants drew back from the death-dealing chain that circled and swung over their heads. It filled all the yard with the soughing of stirred air, and no one dared come within its compass for fear that it too was touched by the magic the Vigilant had smelled. It was plain to the stupidest that, in so narrow a space, a chain in the hands of a man like this might easily murder a dozen of them if they tried to take the recruit away from him.
‘You may imagine that we are angry with you,’ the Vigilant Elder said in a high, wheedling voice. ‘One might ask: who is this Fellow? And where does he belong?’
The hooded head turned to face the questioner. ‘And some may hear that he is Fellow Eudas, and that he belongs to the Black House. But certain exalted ones may choose to take care! For perhaps the lowly Fellow was a soldier before he begged admission to the Happy Family.’
Will marvelled at the oddly indirect language of the Fellowship. He had heard Gwydion use it when they had visited Clifton Grange disguised as mendicant Fellows. Now the curious but deadly exchanges sent a shiver down his spine.
‘How then if the lowly one might be commanded to stand aside? How then?’
‘All respect to the exalted! But he may suppose that this Fellow, lowly or not, might decide to send the first man to take another step towards him down to see for himself the fires of Hell.’
A different Fellow pushed his way to the front. He too was an Elder, but one of the senior Brown Robes whose order dwelt in the House-by-Cripplegate. When he drew back his hood, painted eye sockets seemed to