They could not keep distress out of their voices.
Tell us, Danatok began, but Xantee pushed him aside, took control of their triple-tongued voice, and spoke without her own distress breaking through: The thing, the gool, is it growing stronger?
Xantee, it’s strangling him. Hari can’t breathe. He draws air in as thin as a cotton thread. We breathe in his mouth. Pearl breathes. And the thing grows stronger. We loosen it, we dig our thoughts underneath, but it tires us out and we fall asleep. Xantee, it’s growing a cord inside itself, twisting tighter, and it mews with hunger, pulling out Hari’s life. Unless you can . . . Xantee, unless you can . . .
How long? How long before Hari dies?
One day. Two. The healer says two. Tealeaf says two. They can open his throat and force in a tube for him to breathe – they’ll do that in the morning – but the thing cuts off his blood as well as his breath.
Blossom, Hubert, listen. We’ve found where the gool feeds. We’ve found the red star and the white, and they . . .
She did not know how to put it.
. . . They circle close to each other and tomorrow they meet. The gool knows. Somehow she knows. She feeds on them. And that’s why her – her children everywhere, the one on Hari’s neck, the others in the jungles – everywhere – why they’re growing stronger. But tomorrow we’ll find her. I promise you, Hari. I promise you, Pearl.
She could not go on and Danatok took the voice, asking questions. Xantee withdrew. She had no message other than her promise, and no more questions to ask. Tomorrow, she had said. That was waiting too long. There was a way she must try now.
Danatok and Duro kept the voice going with two strands. They had questions, messages, and their concentration was so intense they did not feel her slip away. Quietly she went down the winding stairs. The dogs were waiting at the bottom. Lie still, she told them. Wait for Danatok. She went to the door that was ajar, drew it back, stepped through and closed it with a click.
The huge hall stretched in front of her, with the canopy and bed halfway along and the cage off to one side. The dice players were further away, intent on their game. Only the crossbow man saw her approach. He swung up his weapon.
‘Wait,’ she said, not trying to control him. ‘I’ve got a message for the Clerk.’
He kept her covered, the bolt in the bow pointing at her breast.
‘Clerk,’ he called.
The man in the bed sat up slowly. The blanket fell away from his chest, revealing his arms. The left stayed bent, with the hand clawed under his chin, its fingers sharp as fish bones. The right was active, feeling under the pillows and coming out with glasses set in wire. He put them on his nose and his eyes swelled to the size of oysters, filling each lens.
‘Who?’ he said.
‘She’s got past the door somehow,’ said the crossbow man. ‘Says she’s got a message.’
‘Guard,’ called the Clerk to the dice players, who had left their game and come to the bed. ‘Cover her. Every one of you. Shoot if I say.’
Eleven more crossbows were trained on Xantee.
‘Now,’ said the Clerk. He licked his lips, worked his dry tongue, and the woman, the nurse, leaned forward with a water bottle, put her other hand at the back of his head, helped him drink. She wiped his lips with her cloth. He pushed her away.
‘Now,’ he repeated, ‘girl. Who are you? What’s your message?’ He threw off his blanket and swung his feet to the floor. Keech had called him The Fat One, but Xantee saw it had been in derision. The Clerk was wasted away. His clothes – red shirt, green trousers: the Ottmar colours – hung in folds on a frame that seemed made of sticks. His white feet turned inwards so the soles almost touched. Yellow nails shone on his toes like beads. They alone seemed healthy. His clawed hand rested under his chin. And his eyes, swimming behind his glasses, seemed blind. The woman knelt and fitted slippers on his inturned feet. She handed him a hat – or was it meant to be a crown? Xantee could not tell. He used the trappings of kingship in spite of the name he kept and she wondered if she should flatter him by kneeling.
‘My message comes from far away,’ she began, but found her thoughts jumbled by pressures from outside. Duro and Danatok had found that she was gone; they had come down the stairs and were in the passage outside the door. She felt Duro’s panic and his urge to rush in and stand at her side, and felt Danatok restraining him. And Tarl had woken and risen to his feet. She saw him beyond the canopied bed, holding the bars of his cage, and she felt his grief – grief for her. She tried to put them aside. She locked her mind as though locking a door. There was a tiny room and she and the Clerk were inside, with no space for anyone else. She decided not to flatter him.
‘Clerk,’ she said, ‘you live in a small world and the big world lies outside. I come from there and I’ve seen what’s happening. A monster has been bred. Its name is gool.
Her
name is gool. She lives here, in your city.’
She felt the last sleep peel away from the Clerk, leaving his mind hard and clear. And this, she knew, was the man – not his sick body, not his pain, but his knowledge of himself and his knowledge that he ruled. He was like Keech. Yet when he spoke his voice was soft. It seemed he smiled at her.
‘Continue, girl. Tell your story.’
It unnerved her. She tried to read him, but knew that if she went too deep he would be aware, and she did not want that – not yet. But she saw enough to know that he was not only cruel – crueller than Keech, because he was cold – but clever too, that he could dart and probe and discover. She cleared her mind.
‘She lives here, secretly, and she feeds. And she has sent her children out into the world, where they grow – and as they grow the world shrinks. They feed on it. They come from – she comes from the other side of nature and has no place in our world. She must be sent back. Her children must die. Then the world lives. Listen, Clerk –’
He raised his hand like a child in school.
‘A question, girl.’
‘Yes?’
‘Why should I care? Why should the Clerk care if the world dies? It has given me this.’ He brought his good hand down and touched the bad. ‘It has given me this city of fallen houses as my kingdom, and a thousand ragged thieves as subjects. It has given me nothing. Nothing but pain. Why should I care? I would kill the world if I could. I would need no gool.’
‘But you know her?’ Xantee managed to say.
‘I’ve heard of creatures that grow and devour mountainsides and jungles, and drink seas, and of course it interests me. I applaud them. What is the world that it should go on when I cannot? But here, the mother, living in my city? This is your fantasy, girl, and I must know where you have it from. And who sent you. Did Keech send you?’
The question was so unexpected and thrown with such force, although in that same soft reasonable voice, that Xantee staggered.
‘No,’ she managed to say. ‘I don’t know Keech.’
‘Lies, girl. You have his smell. There’s a burrows stink on you. This meeting he asks for – what does he plan?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know Keech. But he’s like you. He feeds the gool. Clerk, it’s your hatred she feeds on, yours and his. Your cruelty and the darkness in your head. And in his. It needs two, and the darkness flashes back and forth. That’s what she was born from and that’s what feeds her still.’
The Clerk smiled. He laughed, and the woman at his side half-rose to her feet, the bowmen wavered. It was a sound they had never heard. ‘A pretty story. I wish it was so,’ said the Clerk. ‘I would bring Keech to sit at my side and we would share the world between us. But girl –’ his smile went away – ‘you’re lying still. What I must have is Keech’s plan. And I think you know what it is.’
‘There is no plan. I spied on Keech and ran from him. I came from beyond the jungles and mountains to ask you – to plead with you and him – go to the gool. Renounce her. Stop your hatred and cruelty. Send her home. That way you and he can be great kings, and no other way. Find her hiding place, Clerk. Do it quickly or the world dies.’
Again the Clerk laughed and again it did not last.
‘Then let it,’ he said. ‘So long as Keech dies with it. And Tarl dies.’ He touched his withered arm. ‘Tarl, who did this to me. But I don’t believe you, girl. We must find out what it is you hide.’
Tarl spoke then. He said, ‘Xantee, don’t waste your time. The Clerk is a worm. He is snake shit . . .’
And Xantee, hearing him begin, cried silently: Tarl, be quiet. He doesn’t know I know you.
The Clerk heard them both. He struck as quickly as a snake: sent Tarl reeling from the bars with a mind-blow as heavy as a punch – and punched at Xantee too, to stun and hold her. She slid away from him, although she felt him scrape her mind. She let him think he held her, while she measured his strength. It was greater than Keech’s because he had studied it and used it with calculation. She found that he could use it to burn and twist. His followers knew its strength. Pain was how he held them. If she fought with the Clerk she must use the whole of her mind and dodge his blows like a fan bird with a diving hawk.
‘So,’ said the Clerk, ‘it’s Tarl the girl plots with, not Keech. See girl, I can hold you. You have the voice but with you it’s like some pretty bangle worn on your wrist. My voice is a hammer. If I wish to I can break you in pieces. Feel it, girl.’
She was ready for his blow and moved so it slid past her; but she staggered and cried out and clawed her throat, to convince him. She measured his range and focus – the one short, the other narrow – and knew that she could stay clear simply by stepping this way and that. And even if she met him head-on she could raise her hand and hold him off; and if she chose (she understood it with horror), if she chose she could strike him dead. She had not known the power she had. She cried out, inside herself, that she did not want it. She did not want the power to kill.
‘Now, girl, you understand how I can hurt you. Kneel to me and say I’m your king. The Clerk is king.’
Xantee knelt. She spoke in a voice still weak from the horror she felt: ‘You are king. The Clerk is king.’
‘And do you think Keech can oppose me?’
‘Keech,’ she said, ‘Keech has the voice too. And the power. But he hasn’t learned to use them like you. Clerk, king, I don’t know Keech. I’ve seen him. He struck at me the way you strike but without your strength, and I ran and came to you –’
‘But you know Tarl.’
‘I met Tarl in the forest and asked him to guide me here so I could tell you about the gool, and tell Keech. But you don’t listen.’
She had recovered herself. Her mind was working quickly. Tomorrow the Clerk and Keech would meet on the hill. She must be there. And Duro and Danatok would be there. They would force them – force the red star and the white – to recognise that they had brought the gool into the world, to recognise it and renounce her. The Clerk still kept his hold on her and she let him think she was in his power, but freed herself, left him her shadow, and said to Duro and Danatok outside the door: I’m all right. He can’t hurt me. I think what he’ll do is put me in the cage with Tarl. His men will carry me up the hill tomorrow. Keech will be there. Don’t talk to me, Duro, he’ll feel you. Tomorrow we’ll make them both do what we want.
She felt Danatok restraining Duro. She knew what Duro’s pain must be. Duro loved her, although he had not found a way of telling her.
Tomorrow, she said.
The Clerk took Tarl’s knife from the table and held it up for Xantee to see. ‘Tarl the dogman,’ he said. ‘Tarl the Knife. I chased his dogs away. I took his knife from him. See, here. See it, Tarl. I branded you once. And you threw your knife at me – this knife. You lost it that day. You stood naked, with your manhood gone. And you’re naked again. Your sheath is empty.’
Tarl had risen to his feet and gripped the bars. ‘I need no knife to kill you, Clerk,’ he said.
The Clerk smiled. ‘Idle boasts, they keep one’s courage up. Tomorrow we’ll see.’
‘Tomorrow I’ll crush your other arm.’
The Clerk snarled. It was the first time he had lost control. Xantee felt the blow he aimed at Tarl. She saw the dogman stagger and fall and lie writhing on the cage floor – saw his eyes bulge and teeth bite and his limbs twist almost to breaking point. She could not help him. She could not let the Clerk know her strength was greater than his. Tarl rolled over and over. He stood and ran blindly, bounced off the bars of the cage and fell bleeding to the floor, where he howled and whimpered.
The Clerk relaxed.
‘That,’ he said softly, ‘is how you will die tomorrow. That is how the Clerk will pay you for this.’ He tapped his clawed hand with the blade of Tarl’s knife, then smiled at Xantee. ‘You see what I can do, girl. I can do that to you if I choose.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Xantee said. She saw that his hatred of Tarl, the agony he had put him through, had drained his strength. In the end Keech, though primitive in his use of voice and command, might prove stronger. Tomorrow would show. But if she made them fight, would the gool grow stronger?
The Clerk yawned. ‘Well, girl, you interrupted my sleep with your talk of monsters and I must sleep again. What tomorrow brings for you, I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll give you to Keech to play with. We’ll see. But now –’ he turned to his guards – ‘lock her in the cage with the dogman. Watch her closely. She has some tricks of voice she might try on you. If you hear a whisper, shoot. Don’t hesitate.’ To Xantee again: ‘Try nothing, girl.’
Xantee shook her head. Two of the bowmen led her to the cage. A third unlocked the padlock and thrust her inside. She went to Tarl, who was twitching and groaning on the floor; put her hand on his brow, seeing how the Clerk had hacked his hair off to expose his brand. She eased a healing current into him.
‘He burned me,’ Tarl whispered.
‘I know. Lie still. Sleep now. You can’t fight him here, but tomorrow, on the hill . . .’
Tarl slept.
Xantee sat with her back leaning on the bars. Two men kept her covered, with the cords of their bows cranked tight. She ignored them. With Duro and Danatok helping, she could escape from this cage, and take Tarl with her – but she did not choose to. Her attempt to persuade the Clerk had failed. She could not understand it – and could not understand his cruelty and hatred. That, with Keech’s equal cruelty, and their rivalry and malice, had given birth to the gool and kept her fed. Keech would refuse to believe it, like the Clerk, she was sure. And even if they understood they would simply shrug. Xantee shivered. These men did not care if the world died. And both of them would rejoice if Hari died.