The Poison Throne (The Moorehawke Trilogy)

  She repeated the terrible phrase, her voice cracking. "mortuus in vita" - the King was declaring Alberon "dead in life"? It would be as though he had never existed. Even if her dear friend was alive, he may as well have been a ghost, because, once mortuus had been declared, Alberon was no longer a prince; he was no longer even a person. He simply was no longer there.

  "Razi. He can't... what reason could...? He can't!"

  "He can, and he intends to," said Christopher abruptly, holding up the needle. "And Razi intends to stop him. Now, let go of her hand, Razi, or you'll break it when I start to sew."

  By the time Christopher was finished, Razi was trembling and sweating, and Wynter was crying silently as she held his shoulders down from behind. "He's just done now. He's just finished..." She kept whispering that in his ear, his damp curls brushing her cheek as she leant in.

  Christopher looked into his friend's eyes, the bottle poised over the horribly aggravated wound. He was waiting for Razi to compose himself. Finally Razi glanced at him, gripped the arm of the chair even tighter, braced his legs and nodded curtly. Wynter pressed down hard on Razi's shoulders and Christopher poured the remaining liquid over the wound, disinfecting it and sluicing the clots away in an fragrant, hissing wash.

  Razi muffled his scream in Wynter's arm, drumming his heels on the floor and grinding his fingernails into the wood. Christopher calmly pressed a fresh wad of gauze onto the wound and began to wrap his friend's shoulder in fresh bandages.

  Once everything was done, Wynter wrapped the cloak around Razi and knelt behind his chair, hugging him, her head buried in his neck, his chin on her arm. He was drenched in sweat and shaking. Neither of them spoke.

  Christopher got to his feet, all his tools and the numerous bloody cloths piled neatly in his arms. "I'll be back in a moment," he said softly and padded back through the secret door.

  After a while Razi stirred, pushed back a little and patted Wynter on her shoulder. "I must go, Wyn. We have so much to do..."

  "Where must you go? Razi...?"

  But he was rising to his feet, pushing himself up with shaking arms. "I need to interrogate that fellow, the one who stabbed me... need to hear for myself what he has to say."

  Wynter understood this. Understood the power that firsthand knowledge gave, and applauded Razi for his wisdom. But, dear God, he was swaying on his legs, blinking at her from swollen, bloodshot eyes, his naked torso slick with cold sweat. She put her hand on his chest and appealed to the physician in him.

  "Listen, Razi, you need to dry off, let your body calm itself, put some warm clothes on. If you go down to the keep in that state you'll have pneumonia by dawn. And then where will Alberon be?"

  He dithered for a moment and then sat back down, nodding. She shoved a beaker of still warm milk at him, and the pile of toasted bread. "I'll go get Christopher to bring you some dry clothes," she said and slipped through to the dusty blackness of the hidden passage.

  "Christopher?" She crept cautiously into the dim interior of their suite of rooms. It had that scent of male about it, a scruffy, piled-up kind of feeling. Books and heaps of things were scattered about. She smiled, this was Razi. This was how she remembered his rooms all those years ago. She passed his door, it could only be his door, the room within was so cluttered.

  "Christopher?" she whispered again, afraid to call too loudly in case the guards in the hall heard her. She moved on to the next door, this must be Christopher's room, silent and, except for a dressing trunk, bare of possessions, nothing out of place.

  She heard a quiet scrape in the receiving room and went to the door, pausing to squint about in the gloom. Despite the heat, there was a fire in the grate. They had obviously lit it to boil the equipment and, in fact, there was a small cauldron suspended over it at that moment, the bowls, scissors, and other implements of Razi's trade bubbling away in its depths. The pile of bloody cloths was set neatly to one side and Razi's shirt lay crumpled on the floor beside them.

  Christopher was standing by the window, blue lit by the moon, his back to her. He didn't turn around, and when he answered her, his voice was thick. He had to clear his throat to get any words out. "Does he need me?"

  "No. I've persuaded him to rest a while. Told him I would get him some fresh clothes; his own are soaked through."

  He nodded. "I'll bring them in a moment."

  She turned to go, and then stopped. He seemed so lonely there. "Christopher..." she began, but couldn't think of anything else to say. He didn't turn, just kept standing, looking out the window and she didn't know how to comfort him so she left, returning to Razi whom she found asleep at the table, an uneaten slice of toast in his hand.

  Torture

  Wynter was standing in the kitchen of her old cottage. The sun slanted through the partially closed shutters and illuminated a vase of white poppies on the scrubbed table. She was so afraid. Her heart was hammering in her chest and there were black edges to her vision.

  Outside they were murdering her cats. She could hear them yowling and calling out to each other in their pain and fear. She didn't want to see, but she couldn't help herself and she flung out a hand and knocked the shutter back.

  They had slung washing lines across the yard, passing from the gables of the workshop across to the roof of the stable. The cats hung by their necks, silhouetted black against the white hot sky, the washing lines bobbing and swaying under their weight. There were dozens of them, dying slowly, their legs and tails thrashing and scrabbling at the air, their mouths open, pink tongues and needle teeth flashing in their swollen faces.

  Their awful cat-wails, their high, baby-strangled yowls, filled the sun-laden air, and Wynter felt she was going to be sick. But she was too frightened to run outside to help them. She knew that all she had to do was cut the lines and they might survive, but she was too frightened, and she just stood there as the terrible, unearthly noise clawed at her stomach and her heart.

  "You can never be friend to a king, sis."

  She leapt at the voice and turned to find Alberon sitting at the table, his crossed arms resting on the wood.

  He had grown into a beautiful young man, the very image of his father, as like the King as Razi was different. The sun made fire of his red-blond curls and copper wires of his eyelashes. His big-featured face, his broad mouth, his sleepy blue eyes were all as she recalled them. He was looking at her with a sad kind of affection, and for some reason the sight of him made her want to weep; there was no joy in it at all, just a bitter, bitter sorrow.

  He turned away from her and looked out the window, his face creasing in distaste at the sight of the cats. He got to his feet, stooping slightly to keep sight of the yard. He already had Razi's height, but there was a broad-shouldered, bullish physicality to him that was all Jonathon, more power than grace.

  "The things we do," he said in sad wonder. "The things we find we must do." He gestured to the yard, and looked at Wynter with his vivid eyes. "Here comes the last of them now."

  The horrible screeching started up again. They were bringing more cats down from the castle, great wicker baskets full of them, all tumbled together, clawing and screaming and terrified.

  Wynter ran to the corner, her hand over her mouth, because she knew she was going to be sick.

  She woke in the chair, alone. But the screaming continued. Razi and Christopher had left as soon as Razi was dressed, and she had sat herself down, vowing to listen for their return. She must have dozed off - the candles were burnt out. Two hours maybe? And now the air was full of screaming. Hollow and thready, but real nonetheless. She leapt to the window, and even before she looked down into the orange garden she knew what she would see.

  Heather Quinn was racing through the trees, her mouth wide, her loose hair flying. The moonlight shone through her and almost made her solid as she flitted through the tree trunks and passed through the stone benches. She ran on transparent feet, her hands raised to the windows that overlooked the courtyard, begging for someone to liste
n.

  Wynter had never seen Heather Quinn, but everyone knew what to listen for in the night, should Heather come calling. She had been a King's Mistress, Jonathon's grandfather's mistress to be exact, and had flung herself to her death from the Sandhurst tower. She was the castle harbinger, a foreteller of death, and people took it very seriously when she made her crazy, screaming circuit of the complex in the dead of night.

  Down by the stables the hunting dogs began to howl in their kennels, their rising, ethereal wail a musical overtone to Heather's screams.

  Wynter leant far out of her window, expecting shutters to open and lights to blaze, expecting people to begin shouting and calling and checking each others' rooms. But nothing happened around the courtyard except some discreet movements at windows, and some quietly closed shutters.

  Heather's desperation grew as no one paid her any heed, and she ran a frenzied circle around the garden, her face turned up to the blank windows, pleading for attention. She spotted Wynter and her mouth stretched wider, a horrible gaping chasm in her distorted face. She turned at an unnaturally sharp angle and raced through four orange trees in her desperation to get to Wynter. Her eyes widened to saucer-sized voids and her hands seemed to stretch up, the fingers growing as she sped like lightning across the grass.

  "Don't let her talk to you, child! They'll hang you from a tree."

  Wynter leapt back from the window, partly from fear of Heather Quinn, but mostly at the shock of a cat-voice so close to her ear. Heather Quinn broke away as soon as Wynter was out of sight, cutting sharply left and flying past under the window. She shot out of the garden and passed under the fountain arch, her screams fading into the distance, headed for the river.

  A small, marmalade cat nestled on the windowsill, hidden in the shadows behind the shutter. It regarded Wynter with phosphorescent eyes and she backed away from it, unsure of its intent. It blinked at her. It seemed to be waiting. Wynter looked about her, took a breath and curtsied as in the old days.

  "All respects to you, mouse-bane," she said very softly, "well met, this night."

  The cat sighed, uncrossed its paws and rose to its feet. It dropped from the windowsill like an unfurling silk scarf, and landed with a barely audible patta-pat on the wooden table beneath. "Close the shutters, fool. You will be watched."

  It had been so long since Wynter had heard cat-voice. That curious, whining growl, all long drawn-out and with too many rrrrrrs. Wynter couldn't help but smile at its familiar, impatient tone.

  The cat watched her with all the inherent scorn of its species, and switched the tip of its tail, pit-pat, pit-pat, as Wynter quietly snapped the shutters closed.

  As Wynter found and lit another candle the cat tutted, sighed and tapped its claws on the table, impatient to be given her full attention.

  "So you're ready then, are you?" it said. "Quite sure, miss? Want to go bathe perhaps? Or take a stroll?"

  "I'm sorry, good-hunter. I cannot see so well in the dark as you."

  The cat pffted and turned its head as if to say, oh please, don't bother. Flattery will get you nowhere with me.

  Wynter spread another curtsey and, knowing every cat's love for titles, introduced herself formally, "Protector Lady Wynter Moorehawke at your service, good-hunter."

  The cat rose to its feet, suddenly furious, and Wynter was taken aback at its hissing anger.

  "I know who you are, girl-once-cat-servant, why else would I be here? Do you think, after all that's befallen, we'd deign to speak with any but you?" It flowed around itself in a prowling figure of eight, grizzling under its breath until it managed to regain some self-control. Then it sat back down and directed its green-eyed glare at Wynter once more.

  "GreyMother sent me to warn you."

  "GreyMother? GreyMother lives?" Wynter laughed out loud in joy, but the cat just stared at her disdainfully until Wynter took her seat and composed herself.

  "GreyMother lives, though old, very old now. And Coriolanus too, though much weakened and always poorly from the poison."

  "I'm so sorry," whispered Wynter, tears once again springing to her eyes at the thought of her precious friends.

  The cat looked at her as if she'd let loose a fart, its nose wrinkling in disgust. "What care I for your sorrow, human? I am here for revenge on he-who-betrayed-our-trust. That is all, and to use you as an instrument of his downfall. Don't speak to me of your sorrows. I despise them. We all despise them, as the nothings they are."

  Wynter felt the tears roll down her face at the cat's awful hatred. "But I did nothing..." she whispered.

  The cat stood up and prowled again, releasing a low irritated yowl. "Arrwwww. Hush up, hush up, creature. I do not care. Listen to my message and act upon it! That is all you need to do."

  "I will not bring about the downfall of the King!" Wynter said, her voice suddenly steely, "I will not aid you in your destruction of the crown."

  The cat turned sly eyes to her and smiled its needle-toothed smile. "The ghosts are surging," it said. "They are this very minute about to rise." It slunk across the table and brought its smiling face up close to Wynter's, "They will thwart your friend, he who is son-but-not-heir to the King."

  "Razi?" exclaimed Wynter, half-rising from her chair.

  "Yes, Razi."

  "Bring me to him!" said Wynter and the cat's smile widened.

  At the cat's direction Wynter slipped through the hidden panel in the retiring room. They passed the door to Razi's room and made their way into the pitch-black labyrinth beyond. The passages behind the wall were dusty and very dark. The cat had not allowed her to bring a candle, saying that the light might give her away, so Wynter had to depend on its voice to guide her through the impenetrable blackness. It perched on her shoulder, breathing instructions into her ear, its breath meaty and hot on her cheek.

  She ran her hand along the wall for assurance, but sometimes the wall would just disappear and she would be assailed by a blast of icy air as she crossed the junction of a passageway. At those moments she would be gripped by the terrible fear that she was teetering on the edge of a precipice. She imagined a void yawning beside her, her feet a toe's breadth from its maw, and she was convinced that she would simply topple over sideways and drop forever into the eternal black. At these times, she would be gnawed with doubt as to how far she could trust this cat, who was obviously filled with hatred and had not even offered her its name, but within a few steps the wall would be there again, running along beneath her fingertips, a tangible surface to anchor her in the dark.

  They seemed to go on forever, past endless corridors of cobwebbed wood panelling. Occasionally they would hear voices, usually muffled, sometimes loud, sometimes there would be music. Now and again a thin line of light would show through a crack in the wood, and Wynter was glad that the cat had forbidden her a candle.

  They went down steps. They took numerous turns. The air grew colder and colder and Wynter knew they must be in the cellars. Or in the dungeons underneath the keep.

  "Here," hissed the cat, "turn left."

  Wynter found herself in a very short, corbel-roofed passageway. There was dim torchlight coming through from the main corridor, which was only nine or ten paces ahead.

  They were deep, deep underground, in the most secret of the palace dungeons. Wynter hesitated, terrified, her breath coming in misty puffs in the frigid air.

  "Turn right at the top there, and go down the steps," ordered the cat. "Tell he-who-is-son-but-not-heir that the ghosts will thwart him. Tell him to hurry in his inquisition."

  There were distant screams echoing from somewhere up ahead. Terrible screams, nothing like Heather Quinn's, nothing like the nightmare cats'. Screams of unendurable agony.

  Wynter panicked suddenly. What was she was doing here? What might she have to witness? She tried to retreat into the secret passage, meaning to rush back to her rooms and forget all about this fool's errand. But the weight of the cat slipped suddenly from her shoulders and before she could turn, it had gone
, flickering back into the dark like a snuffed candle. She was left with no way back, no guide through the pitch-black maze of passages. Her only choice now was to go forward and face what lay ahead.

  The screams grew as she slowly moved along the corridor. High, bubbling, unending, they made her feel sick; they made her legs turn to water. She was suddenly filled with an urgent need for the privy.

  She rounded the corner and found herself at the top of a short flight of stairs. She pressed against the wall, hugging the stone. The screams were so clear here, so full of human suffering. She was panting in fear and horror. She knew she was whimpering, but couldn't seem to stop.

  The stairs led down into a room. The bottom steps were flooded with sulphurous light, shadows moved about, flickering up the walls of the stairwell, making nauseating patterns on the stone. The prisoner, the poor, screaming, tortured victim that was the source of the sounds, was very close to the foot of those steps.

  If she descended three, maybe five steps, she would see him. She would see what was being done to him, and who was doing it.

  There was a smell of fire, of smoke, of burning flesh and hair.

  She could make out the scattered, burbling words that punctuated the inarticulate shrieking. The pleading, the promises, the prayers.

  How could anyone listen to that and still continue to inflict such pain? How could anyone, for any reason...?

  "What in God's name are you doing here?"

  A cracked, appalled whisper from across the corridor. She turned her head to meet Christopher's wide, haunted eyes. He leant in the shadows of the wall opposite her, looking as though he could barely stand. His face was drawn and horrified and he smelled of vomit. "You shouldn't be here!" he exclaimed, his voice high with anguish. "My God! You shouldn't be here!"

  The screams fell away to moans and sobs for a moment, and the two of them turned towards the light. There was a short murmured conversation. A thin ribbon of garbled pleading. Sharp, impatient words. Then the pleading again, rising to begging shrieks, mercy, mercy, oh God, mercy. And then that great agonised howling again, those clogged, bubbling screams that stole the power from Wynter's legs and brought her to her knees.