I shook my head, confused. ‘Spell? It – it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t using any magic. Something was happening here, but I wasn’t … in control of that. He had me thinking we – were just talking business, till the end. In my office – just sparring over a deal –’
‘Your kind of knowledge. Your kind of magic. Oh, the power behind it, that was … someone else’s, sure. But the using of it, the will – that was all yours. You had to make the moves. Don Pedro, he must’ve seen what had happened, thought you were the weak link in the partnership, that he could beat you on that level. So that’s how you saw it; but you turned it against him. And what you did there you were doing here too, I guess. Didn’t matter how you beat him – you did, and that’s what counts. Smashed his power, broke his body. And now he’s tried to escape from you. To run.’
‘Running? But he’s –’
‘In time. Fled away out of this wider world, where he was beaten. Fled blindly! Panicked like a wounded animal. Remember how I said some folk just break and bolt when the Spiral gets too much for them – back to the moment they first entered it? And look where that’s taken him. Back to his sick-bed. He’s dying of vomito negro – Yellow Jack. Just like he should’ve done all along.’
And as I stared at the writhing form of my enemy I saw that there was some subtle change around him, that the white stones behind him did take on something of the look of high stucco’d walls, the fitful light of the dying flames flickering across them like a single guttering lamp – or a sick man’s image of the fever consuming him. The rich robes his hands clenched and tore in their delirious agony spread out like embroidered coverlets, the stained altar-stone the soiled sheets of a lordly sick-bed. Nausea welled up in me, and a terrible unexpected pity, and I could only stand there, without speaking.
‘You are wrong in one thing only, Master Pilot,’ said Mall softly. ‘Aye, he has the yellow fever. But ’tis not that which kills him. See, the blackened and bloated tongue that near chokes him! Too often I’ve seen men die thus. Helpless in his derangement he cannot look to himself, and he has none loves him enough to risk coming near. Sooner than court infection, they leave him to perish most miserably – of thirst.’
Another voice beside us broke the brief silence. ‘Well! Hope he enjoys it, the little bastard! I’d say that’s just about up to his own standards of amusement – wouldn’t you?’ Clare’s mouth set hard as she contemplated the writhing figure. ‘Oh, don’t look so shocked! When they chained me up in that dungeon of his, with the cage and the bones and everything – they were laughing, those Wolves. Then they took the light away. I’d a few hours to think about his kind of fun.’
‘I just bet you did,’ said Jyp sympathetically. ‘But that’s done with now. And by the look of it, so’s he.’
Once again, though, he was mistaken. Racked by the last throes of his delirium, Don Pedro shrieked and sat upright, clutching at the headwound, his fingers scrabbling in agony, tearing like claws, tearing away the very flesh. Until suddenly it ripped – and slid away and sank, the sallow face sagging like crumpled linen …
There was no blood. There was no white bone laid bare beneath. No skull. Nothing but a shape, a mould, a form of the same solid darkness that lay behind his eyes, shining in the firelight like the blackest of opal.
The few Wolves and Caribs and worshippers who had not yet fallen or fled the field took one look. Then, with a great wailing unison howl they turned and bolted, stumbling over rocks, blundering into trees, trampling each other in their final dissolution of panic, as the hand that had held them was lifted and they looked upon its secret source. One acolyte alone I saw of the dozens there had been, a tall mulatto, backing away, his fingers knotting in his ash-stained robes; then he flung them over his eyes, and with a yell he hurled himself bodily into the still-blazing fire. The flesh slid wholly from the shape that staggered upright before me, slipping down in tatters, collapsing with the remnants of the robe.
Some thing reared up where it had been. A weird thing, a skeletal, shining shape, black against the leaping fires – a glossy chitinous beetle carapace, a tottering stick-insect caricature of a man. It stood, swaying gently, a head above me, far taller than Don Pedro. Indeed, it was stretching and straightening those distorted spider-limbs as if they had been too long cramped, as if it had to pump blood into them after bursting its chrysalis in a new birth. And like something newborn it was swaying its onyx skull of a head this way and that and making low uncertain chittering noises, as if peering around with anxious timidity at what might be a hostile world.
It looked grotesque, grisly, unpleasant – but not in the least bit menacing. Pitiful, almost, as I circled around it, sword ready, and snatched a burning stick from the altar. I advanced, and it hunched its limbs protectively, cheeped and chittered and backed away in great bounding strides. It looked so miserable, this thing of fear stripped of all its disguising, that it was almost hilarious. I couldn’t help it; I began to laugh, great gusty wholehearted laughter that boomed across the air like the thunder overhead. And at my side I heard Mall suddenly laugh, as she had laughed in the castle. Her high clear tones blended with mine and together we shook the skies, like the laughter of the gods from cloud-wreathed Olympus.
Jyp was laughing; I could see it, though I couldn’t hear him. Clare staggered up to us, picking her barefoot way across the stony ground, and hung on our shoulders, doubled-up and helpless. Pierce threw down his bloody axe and guffawed himself scarlet, and all the surviving crew with him, mocking, pointing, mopping and mowing and making rude gestures at the quivering thing that hopped from foot to foot before us. Hands the gunner sniggered and pointed and spat – and even Le Stryge, arms folded over his filthy coat, gave a frosty smile and snorted. At last, less in attack than in dismissal, I hefted the brand and flung it. It bounced off that black skull with no more than a musical clonk, quite harmless; but the dark thing shrilled in panic, and whirling about fled chittering away into the darkness with great bounds of its long legs, and faded utterly into the drizzling night.
Our laughter pursued it, but faltered at last. A great silence fell over that field, with its ghastly harvest of burned bodies, scattered, smouldering, steaming as the soft rain touched them. Slowly I thrust my sword back into my belt. I kicked at the rum bottles that lay around, but most had shattered or spilled. Jyp picked up a full one, still corked, and tossed it to me. I looked to the silent drums where they lay in the wrecked tonnelle, overturned and broken, their decorated skins pierced; and as I strode over to them a robe of rich scarlet, torn and abandoned, tangled about my foot. I picked it up, draped it around over my shoulder, tied it round me like a sash. From beside the drums I scooped up the ogan, the iron gong, and the hammer that had played it. I tapped once, in an experimental sort of way, a quieter, more lilting rhythm than it had played before – then I broke off a moment, put the rum to my lips, drew the cork with my teeth and spat it flying at the altar. I took a great swig, and let the sweet aromatic fire gurgle down my throat. Then I drew a deep breath, and began to play the rhythm again, and, lifting my feet, I danced. A warrior’s dance, a dance of rejoicing but a solemn one, a noble bransle. I snapped my fingers, and thunder beat a vast slow roll. I turned to Mall, took her hand and she danced with me, whirling together under the pattering rain. Jyp danced with Clare, the men and women of the crew in a weaving, wavering line, our eyes laughing one to another in a sort of solemn frenzy of deliverance. A richness and a joy welled up in me that I felt I’d never known. In this my hour of triumph the world – even the wider world, the Spiral and all the worlds within it – seemed too narrow a place for my embrace, for the vast infinite love that was mine to give. And while the thunder and the iron played we swept slowly away from that place of barrenness and ruin towards the forest’s edge.