“She already had a good life. She just needed to realise it.”
“The Devil take the pair of you!” Rufio said. “And he will!”
He dashed down the stair. On the next level stood a junction of vaulted passages, where he found his mother, her path blocked — astoundingly — by Emperor Lucius. Clad once again in his polished black plate with its silver enamel workings, the Emperor’s visor was drawn up, and his eyes ablaze with indignation. He wore a gladius at his hip, but was making no move towards them; Zalmyra held him back with her wand, the jade orb burning with intense radiance.
Rufio could scarcely believe what he was seeing. Slowly, he turned. From the adjoining passages, more tentacles slithered into view, forming equally recognisable figures. He was dumbfounded to see his Uncle Severin, naked and pallid, his throat slit and chest rent open. The bishop held out a pleading hand. Yet when Rufio looked closely, that hand was curved like an animal’s claw, with long, yellow fingernails. Rufio drew his gladius and slashed at it, severing the hand at its wrist. Black ichor spurted, and the abomination leapt at him. In its other hand it clasped a crooked-bladed dagger. It was not a weapon Rufio had seen before, though of course he’d never been party to the sacrifices in his mother’s Pit of Souls. Even now it flashed too quickly for him to visualise, penetrating his battle-skirt, plunging to half its length in the right side of his groin. Rufio gave a gasping screech. The facsimile withdrew the blade and raised it high, grinning dementedly — only for Zalmyra to poke its chest with her green orb. There was a crackle of discharging energy, and the ghastly figure folded up on itself, curling into a blackened, smoldering ball. The tentacle to which it was attached withdrew from view. But there were others circling around them.
“Mother!” Rufio choked, his voice shrill. He doubled up beside her, but she kept hold of his collar to prevent him falling, and began to incant in an ancient tongue.
The Lucius apparition advanced with its own gladius drawn. Again Zalmyra held up her green light to ward it off. But this time there was no need. A mighty blow struck the figure from behind, delivered with a colossal iron-headed club, crushing it with such force that its body burst out on all sides in a porridge of black bile and putrid, half-made organs.
Urgol stepped into view, and kicked the butchered tentacle into a recess to their left. “Mistress… your carriage awaits!”
Zalmyra hurried past, allowing him to shield her with his vast, hairy body. She dragged Rufio, though he could only stagger, one hand clasped to his wound.
Lucan used his last ounce of strength to lower Alaric. He tried to ignore the blows raining on his back, although steel now bit through his fur and mail. If he could just get Alaric to the courtyard without dropping him…
A hand gripped Lucan’s coif and yanked. He resisted, but then felt the rope slacken. The lad must have touched the ground, if sooner than Lucan had anticipated. He released the rope and swept around, swinging Heaven’s Messenger in a great, butchering arc. Limbs fell this way and that. Caradoc lost both arms from the elbows down, black juice jetting from his stumps. Gawaine had lost one arm, but still aimed a pick-axe with the other. Lucan deflected it and drove his steel at the facsimile’s face, only to see it parried.
He was exhausted.
The embrasure stood immediately to his rear. It would be a quicker death, surely, falling thirty feet onto flagstones, than being torn apart by these horrors? Though the outcome would be the same. Suicide meant certain damnation — as if his soul wasn’t already damned enough. Spurred by that thought, he struck at them again. An upward thrust eviscerated Gawaine; a swift backhand sheared through Bedivere’s neck, the head dropping backward on strands of tissue. More black filth exploded over Lucan, but still they pressed against him, now trying to take hold of him rather than inflict wounds. And then he heard a terrible wailing: “Alaric! Alaaaric!”
He managed to turn and peer down through the embrasure.
Alaric’s soft landing in the courtyard was explained.
The ragged, rain-soaked figure of Trelawna’s maid staggered, as though drunk, across the courtyard. But closer, at the foot of the battlements, was Trelawna herself. She was seated on the floor, holding Alaric in her arms, crying out his name, sobbing.
It was a brief, harrowing moment, though Lucan knew that he should not be surprised. No-one could have survived such a wound for long. And there was certainly no time to lament it — not when those responsible were still within sword’s length.
His strength revived by hatred, Lucan spun around and launched himself into the horde of abominations. His steel sang as it smote them, laying twitching, limbless forms on all sides. Those struggling to rise were sundered again. Those not yet stricken were impaled, or beheaded, or butchered where they stood.
“Come one, come all!” Lucan roared. “I summon all monsters to their doom!”
At first he thought they were falling back because his onslaught was too much for them, but then he realised they were not falling back, but clearing a passage through their mewling ranks — a passage along which, with slow, purposeful steps, a new figure was now approaching.
In all ways it was larger than Lucan — taller, stouter of limb, broader at chest and shoulder. Yet it wore the same dark mail and black livery, and the same cloak of black fur was draped down its back. Like Lucan, the newcomer had removed its helmet and pulled back its coif to shake out oil-black locks. It might at one time have been as wolfishly handsome as he was, though now those features had been obliterated by a mask of hideous scar tissue. Its eyes were tarnished sapphires, glinting through holes in parchment. The mouth was a lipless tear, the nose a scorched and flattened patch.
Lucan’s sword almost fell from his hand as the vision glided towards him.
A gleaming tentacle oozed behind it. Like all the rest, it was the construct of a demonic mind, and yet there was no mistaking it. Even after so many years of tumult, Lucan recollected every detail of the human dragon monster that had once been Duke Corneus, his father. With slow deliberation, the imitation drew its own version of Heaven’s Messenger from its back; this one still bore the unholy runes along its blade. Lucan failed to move, failed to respond in any way. He was mesmerised by the distorted form that had haunted so many of his worst nightmares.
“Still… a weakling… boy?” it rasped, in that voice of twisting, tortured wood. “Still… a milksop? No guts… no spine… couldn’t even… father a child…”
“Murderer,” Lucan whispered.
“Were going… to kill me… were you not?” The atrocious mouth laughed its terrible, heartless laugh — a laugh Lucan had heard down the decades, echoing from those many places where, without any writ from the King, Duke Corneus’s foes had been hanged, or garroted, or drawn apart by horses, or nailed to the doors of their own castles.
“Words… boy?” The imitation duke lofted the imitation sword to his massive shoulder. “Only… words? Well… if not battle… prepare for… slaughter. Unless… you beg. Like that weak-spirited… mother of yours. Begging… pleading…. each morn… before her penance…”
“Murderer!” Lucan shouted, raising his own sword.
With the speed of a viper, Duke Corneus lunged.
Thirty-Seven
Rufio had lost so much blood that Urgol had to lift him into the black enamel coach, where Zalmyra laid a cloak over him. She closed and bolted the shutters, and sat facing her son through the dimness, while the woodwose climbed to the driving-bench. With a crack of his whip, the powerful team of horses surged out of the undercroft, trundling up the spiralling ramp, running down any figures that blundered into their path, severing tentacles with steel-rimmed wheels. At the top, the two foremost stallions reared, their hooves smashing the doors off their hinges.