Lord of Lies. David Zindell

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       5

      Maram and Master Juwain hastened to catch up to me as I made my way out into the quiet hallway. They had begun this long night’s quest for knowledge with me, they said, and they would end it by my side as well. I was glad for their company, for the long hallway seemed too empty and too dark. Only a few oily torches remained burning. The sound of our boots striking cold stone echoed off the walls. We passed between the servants’ quarters and the kitchens, as we had come; when we reached the infirmary, we turned down another hallway. There, the pungent smell of medicines mingled with a deeper odor of sickness, sweat and blood. As we moved past the classroom and Nona’s empty room, this odor grew only stronger. It seemed not to emanate from the sanctuary to the right, or the guest quarters to the left where King Kurshan and his daughter had taken up residence. I was afraid to discover its source, even as I pushed my way through a moat of fear and pain that chilled my limbs like icy water.

      At last, we came to the stairwell at the keep’s southwest corner. We entered, one by one, this dark tube of stone that twisted up toward the higher floors. My father had told me that the scryers had been given rooms on the third floor. We climbed up and up into the dark silence, turning always toward the left as the narrow steps spiraled upward. It was cold and close in that dim space; the smell of Maram’s sweat and brandy-sweetened breath fairly nauseated me. He was puffing and grunting behind me, moving as quickly as he could. But he was not quite quick enough, for the fear now pierced through to my heart and drove me up the stairs two and then three at a time.

      ‘Slow down!’ he gasped out. ‘You’re killing me! Ah, have mercy, my friend!’

      I did not slow down. We passed by the exit to the second floor, where the Alonians and the Ishkans had taken quarters. We climbed ever higher. We finally reached the arched doorway that gave out onto the third floor. As I pushed out into the quiet hallway, the mortared stones along the walls seemed to be screaming at me. A sharp pain, with the savagery of cold steel, ripped into my belly. I drew my sword and began running past the closed doors of my father’s guests.

      ‘Come!’ I gasped. Maram and Master Juwain were close behind me, and began running, too. ‘It’s this door – it must be!’

      At the end of the hallway, we came to a door darkened with torch-smoke and reinforced with bands of black iron. I rapped the diamond pommel of my sword against the dense wood and waited. My heart beat ten times, quick as a frightened bird’s, before I knocked at the door again, this time louder. I waited another few moments, and then tried turning the doorknob, but it was locked.

      ‘Come!’ I said to Maram. I rammed my shoulder against the door with such force that the hard wood drove the rings of my mail armor into my flesh almost down to the bone. ‘Help me break this open!’

      ‘But, Val – they’re old women!’ Maram said.

      ‘They might have taken a draught to help them sleep,’ Master Juwain added.

      ‘Come!’ I said again. ‘They’re not sleeping! Help me!’

      Maram finally sighed his consent, and added his great bulk in battering at the door. On our second attempt, it burst inward in a scream of splinters and tormented iron. It was nothing against the scream in my eyes, in my belly and lungs. For the hall’s dim torchlight showed a small, simple room filled with carnage. The iron-sick smell of blood drove like a hammer against my head. Sprays of blood moistened one wall; the red imprints of boots darkened the floorstones. On one of the beds sprawled two of the scryers, whose names I had not learned. Their throats had been cut, and rivers of blood had flowed out over their white robes and white wool blankets. On the other bed was Kasandra. Someone had cut open her belly. She lay on her back with her eyes staring up at the ceiling, and it seemed that she was dead.

      Master Juwain hurried to her side and placed his rough old fingers against her throat to feel for a pulse.

      ‘Ah, too bad,’ Maram gasped out. He held his hands over his own belly as if to protect this massive, food-filled outswelling – or to keep from vomiting. ‘Ah, I’d thought we were through СКАЧАТЬ