The White Towers (27 page)

 

Narnok propped himself up on one elbow and gazed down at his sleeping wife. She was beautiful without compare, and in sleep her features had softened; no longer did she have the tiny scowl of concentration that sometimes betrayed the gears of her massively over-active working mind. Now, she was not thinking. Now, she was sleeping – softened, honey, cream – and Narnok’s eyes travelled down her face to where the silk sheets had slipped down a little, revealing her fabulous rounded breasts. He reached out, fingers caressing the velvet skin. She murmured in her sleep, and gradually her eyes opened and she smiled and reached for him, and they made love for the fourth time in as many hours.

 

She was propped up on fat pillows, an ornate silver bowl in her lap filled with fruit from the orchard. She’d giggled as Narnok ran out into the dark and the cold, wearing nothing but her semi-transparent gown with gold-edged trim, showing off his hairy legs nicely, and now pear juice ran down her chin and leaning forward, Narnok licked it free.

“Are you well, my love?” she asked, concern showing in her eyes.

“I had a dream.”

“Not a good dream?” She pouted with those full red lips, glistening, kissed by juice.

“Not a good dream at all,” said Narnok, scowling.

“Oh my love, take those dirty scowls away.”

“I cannot. For it has come back to me in all its magnificent glory.”

“I will kiss it away, then” And she was straddling him, one leg on either side, kissing his eyebrows until he laughed and she swayed above him, sucking her thumb, then her index finger, then her middle finger.

“You are so strong, and hard,” she said.

“Ye gods woman, is there no end to your stamina?”

“Not on this night,” she said, rubbing herself close.

“Well, being the gentleman I am, it would be uncouth to leave you so dissatisfied.”

“Show me,” she growled, her gyrations getting stronger.

And he took her in his arms and kissed her.

 

Daylight burned his eyes through gauze curtains. Narnok groaned, as the previous night’s brandy kicked him in the skull like an irate donkey called Mary. He rolled over, and Katuna was standing, fully dressed, a dark look on her face.

“Kat?” he said, softly.

“That’s him. Fuck him up.”

And she stepped aside revealing big men with helves and iron bars, and they beat down on him and he roared, lurching from the bed, but there were six of them and they hammered him down to the expensive carpets, green with gold and crimson swirls, and he remembered picking those carpets with Katuna, remembered moaning about their extortionate price, remembered her kissing him, pouting; and he remembering giving in to her.

You can afford it,
she’d said.

And now he was paying the price.

 

And awoke tied to a chair in a torture cellar. Ahh. I remember this bit. Ahh. This is my favourite fucking bit! The bit with the razor blades, the bit with the acid, the bit where they burn my eye out…

Xavier stepped close, but that was impossible because Narnok had killed him, watched the sharp steel push in, heard his screams and his bubbling as blood rushed through him and spilled out onto the stone flags like so much Vagandrak Red.

“Welcome home, Narnok,” said Xavier, and grinned his skeletal grin in that old pointed face full of wrinkles beneath a bald head and piercing eyes of fevered evil. “I’ve waited for this moment for a long time,” cackled the old torturer. “I dreamt about it so hard I actually ejaculated in my trews.”

“Well live it up, fucker; this is a dream. I killed you.” Narnok gave him a full teeth grin. “I killed you deader than a dead corpse, fucker.”

“Really?” Xavier raised his eyebrows, a movement accentuated by the fact he was bald and had more exposed forehead to illustrate the facial gesture.

“Yeah, really, so fuck off.”

Katuna stepped forward then, and swam into Narnok’s vision. His mind was still spinning from the beating, and he thought he had broken ribs and… what felt like a knife wound. He stared up at her, and she smiled, like she was his old friend, like she was his… wife.

“Yeah, bitch?”

“Don’t be like that, Narnok. We both know this was a business transaction from the start. We both know I was far too good looking, too beautiful, too sexy, too sensual, too delicate, too smart,
ever
to hook up with a brutal savage fuck-up like you. It’s only your money I was after. We both knew that at the altar. You may have chosen to gloss over the facts in whatever way aids your libido, like those fat pig-ugly politicians you see with twenty year-old beauties on their arms; like those famous playwrights you witness in the city, riddled and crippled with gonorrhoea but sporting some sexy young lady who thinks they’ll be the next Emily Zanzibane. That’s just the way it is. Quim chases money. And you got your money’s worth for my quim,
dear
. All you need to do now,
bastard,
is hand it over. Or Xavier here will scar you up bad. Put out both your eyes. Cut off your cock. You get the vivid picture.”

She stepped back, smiling.

Narnok grinned, and Xavier and Katuna shared a quick glance. “Well,” said the big axeman, spitting blood at his feet on the stone flags, “what
youse fuckers
need to understand is that this already happened, and this whole barrel of horse shit is nothing but a dream. So do your fucking worst, then I can wake up and get on with my life.”

Even as he was speaking, Xavier was nodding to a character out of sight, and pulling on thick black leather gloves, the sort of gloves Narnok had seen down at the docks used to handle dangerous snakes and spiders and scorpions. The phial in Xavier’s hands was steaming softly, just a hint, like sweet tea just gone off the boil; but there was nothing sweet in that glass bottle.

And Narnok transferred his gaze to Xavier. His eyes were fevered, fanatical once more. Sweat beaded his upper lip, which he licked with a quick fish tongue.

And then he leapt, and was upon Narnok, and the acid was poured into the man’s left eye, and then poured into his right eye, and he was screaming and thrashing as the burning flowed into his face, into his eyes – sweet GODS into his fucking brain – like some molten metal, and burned him all the way down into oblivion and down beyond into his heart and core as Katuna laughed, her laughter pealing and beautiful and cold as the distant stars, as the acid flowed down
down
into his fucking soul.

 

Narnok came awake to a cool breeze. He gave a little gasp, a sharp intake of breath, and looked around quickly. He could see. Sweet Mother of the Seven Sisters, he could still see! His hands came up to his face, and he felt the heavy scar tissue delivered by the razor blade of the dead Xavier. And Narnok groaned, and hung his head, and allowed the pain from the ribs and knife wound to pulse through him.

“You all right, Big Man?” Trista knelt beside him. It was night. Somewhere out in the city of Zanne, something burned. Narnok could see the reflection of flames in Trista’s eyes and he realised, groggy and disorientated as he was, that they had moved location. Now, there was a lean-to roof above them. Some kind of balcony, but well sheltered. He also realised he was covered with two blankets.

“They took my eyes,” he said.

“You’ve still got one good one, mate.”

“That’s like the finest stallion stud, with only one good ball.”

“Which means
he’d still have one.”

“Working at half complement, so to speak,” moaned Narnok.

“I’d rather be half than nothing at all. Bad dream, axeman?”

“Yeah. Real bad dream.”

“About the bitch?”

“About
my wife
.”

“That’s what I said.” Trista grinned.

Narnok pulled himself up a little, and half turned, wincing. “Did you have to stitch me up?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. You can do it for me sometime.”

Narnok considered making a joke about stitching up Trista’s mouth, but thought better of it. She had that mean look in her eye again. “How long have I been out?”

“Three days.”

“
Days
?”

“You lost a lot of blood. Some elf rat scum got you with a knife.”

“Yeah. I… remember.”

He reached up again and touched his heavily scarred face. Trista realised, with a start, that there were tears on Narnok’s cheek. They glinted in the reflection of the distant fire.

“What’s the matter?” She reached out. Touched his arm.

“In the dream, I had my face again. In my dream, I had two good eyes. It was before Xavier, and Katuna’s betrayal, and all the rancid horse shit that followed. I was the old Narnok. The full and proper Narnok; the Narnok women actually wanted to sleep with and bear his children.”

“You are a good man,” she said.

“Yeah, but would you fuck me? No. I didn’t think so. It gets so lonely, Trista, you know? Do you know how it feels to be utterly and totally alone? Fuck it, it’s not even about the sex. It’s about… companionship. It’s about having a woman who cares for you, who loves you, who is there for you, to tend your wounds and cradle your crying baby face.”

“I’m here for you,” said Trista, and tears were on her own cheeks.

“But you don’t love me?”

“No,” said Trista, grinning. “But if it’s any consolation, I don’t love anybody. I’d as soon put a knife through a man’s throat than take his cock in my mouth. So you’re ahead of the pack, my friend.”

Narnok took a deep breath, and grinned himself. “Ahead of the pack,” he said. “That’s the place I like to be.” He scratched at his chin, and winced. He’d taken a battering, for sure. “Heard anything from Kiki? Dek? Zast?”

“No.”

“No? I thought not.”

“They’ve abandoned us.”

“They had no choice, little lady. Like us. Backs to the wall. Feet in the fire.” He lifted himself a little, turning again. He could hear the fire now, for it had spread. “What’s burning down there? I feel like I’ve been out of the game for too long. Damn knife wound.”

“Over there.” Trista gestured vaguely. “Some buildings. Some trees.” She looked at him. “Shit.”

“Trees? You mean the twisted black trees we saw growing in courtyards and gardens and that?”

“Yes.”

“Can you see where?”

“Over by the museum. Between the Gardens of the Winter Moon and the Haven.”

“You know what that means, don’t you, Trista, my little honey-pot filled with random scorpion stings?”

“Not really, Narnok. No.”

“It’s the trees. The trees are the key. These are fucking elf rats,
right?
They’re linked to trees – elves are linked to trees. According to legend. It’s part of their physiology, whatever the fuck that is. The elf rats are growing their own spirits, their own bonding trunks, or whatever it is they do with them. Damn odd if you ask me. But the point is,
somebody else knows this.
And they’re burning the trees. Burning the elf rats’
lifeblood
. Teaching them a damn bloody lesson.”

“So we have allies?” said Trista.

“All we have to do is find them.”

“And you think they’ll help us escape?”

“I think they’ll help us fight this scourge!”

Trista considered this. “That’s what I was afraid of,” she said, words a whisper.

 

They had to wait another two days whilst Narnok regained his strength. Trista went on little scouting missions and found water and food, which they ate cold, huddled together for warmth. Out in Zanne, fires still burned. Somebody was on a mission to fuck up the elf rats good.

Finally, when Narnok felt strong enough, they gathered together their meagre possessions and headed down through the building.

It was dawn. At ground level, they could see plumes of black smoke rising into the sky. They travelled deserted streets laden with snow, moving slow, keeping to the walls, avoiding the Haven and sticking to the richer, eastern side of town.

At one point, curiosity overcame Narnok, and he kicked down a door to a narrow, two bedroom terraced house that leaned alarmingly to the left, defying gravity, or so it seemed. Its timbers were ancient and screamed that it was one of the more authentic, original buildings in Zanne. Part of its heritage. Part of its culture, despite the city’s fall from recent grace.

The house interior was gloomy, filled with a chaos of upturned chests and furniture. There was a smell, and the smell was bad. No.
Fucking bad.
Narnok wrinkled his nose and moved through the lower floor, coming to a back bedroom.

Inside the squalid depths, something moved and groaned in a bed of grey, shit-stained sheets.

“Hello there? Are you well?” said Narnok, feeling the words were redundant; feeling stupid in his urgent sudden need to explore this urban interior. After all, how could something so squalid and shit-stinking possibly be well?

The figure groaned in its personal bed of pain, and thrashed beneath the sheets. The smell of corruption was excessive. Something large, and jagged, a bit like a scorpion claw, emerged from a ragged hole in the sheets and started to make a cutting motion in Narnok's general direction.

“I think we should leave,” said Trista, voice ragged and muffled, mouth covered with a torn strip of linen which she'd dampened with her canteen, and held fervently in place lest she catch some terrible affliction.

“Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”

They stumbled out into the grey daylight. It had started to snow again, huge tumbling flakes, romantic in another time, another world. The stench of bad, burned wood drifted to them on the breeze. It was choking and vile.

“This way,” said Narnok, limping ahead.

Trista glanced back at the corruption and shadows within the house. What happened to you people, she thought, uneasily, idly, shivering as she did so. Then she followed Narnok, her sword drawn and close to, her body tense and ready for combat. She’d never been more ready. Never.