The visitors' arrival sent them aloft in a wild flapping. Scores or hundreds of black birds whirled upward, raising dust, darkening the sky. Others, so bloated by their feast that they could not fly, flopped around amid the carnage, trying to escape, while a tide of rats swirled across the cobbles and disappeared into the arches and buildings. The airborne flock gradually settled on rooftops to scream at intruders like living gargoyles, nightmare guardians in a town of the dead.
Toby closed his eyes until he could breathe again and his stomach writhed less urgently. Then he risked another look. The carrion feeders had ripped the uppermost bodies to shreds of meat on white bone, but there were many layers underneath. He wondered if King Nevil himself had been here in this plaza, supervising the slaughter.
"Throats cut, mostly. It would be quick. We've seen worse." Impalements were worse—people left to die on posts. In some villages they had been burned alive, or hung up by their feet, or staked out along the road for miles, and there were other ways to inflict slow and painful death.
"Don't be so sure," Hamish mumbled through the hand he held over his mouth and nose. "Women on top, see? Children next, men at the bottom. How long do you think the women lived after they saw their children die? Hours? Days?"
"Too long, I'm sure."
Yes, the women were bad, but the children were worse—children with rotting green faces, eyes missing, teeth grinning maniacally where the lips had been torn away. There were dead animals in the heap, also, mostly dogs and cats, of course, because the victors would have driven off the livestock or just eaten it.
That thought of eating made his insides lurch again. This was the first settlement they had seen in weeks that had not been burned to the ground. He turned his back on the atrocity and spun Hamish around also, to face the alley.
"Let's explore." His legs were still stiff from his hours in Oreste's dungeon. He needed a rest from walking, even if it must be in these nightmare surroundings.
"As long as we're away before dark!"
"Obviously. I hate looting, but I'm going to take anything I can use."
"They have no more use for it," Hamish agreed.
"Let's start by seeing if we can find water and something to eat."
Hamish choked. "I'll eat outside the gate."
"If you want. We do need food. And clothes. Why don't you start hunting?"
"What are you going to do?" Hamish peered at him suspiciously.
"I'm going to visit the sanctuary."
"It won't be there!"
No matter what Toby ever suggested he could rely on Hamish to shoot back objections, usually very logical objections. Sometimes they were wonderfully sensible and he had to overrule them anyway, although he hated doing that. Hamish was an equal partner now, but he had always been senior deputy in charge of objections. Sure enough:
"The tutelary won't be there, and even if it is, what's happened to its town may have driven it completely insane, so it'll attack any stranger on sight, and even if it isn't, you know what the hob will do to you if you try this, but we can't risk having you injured here, so there's no reason to go there at all; it's pointless and dangerous, so I'm going to come with you, and why are you laughing?" He pouted, hurt and resentful.
"Just nerves," Toby said, for it seemed inhuman to be amused by anything in this terrible place. "Yes, it's a long shot, but worth a try. If there is still a spirit to tend the souls of the dead, then we can spend a night undercover for a change. I don't think there's any real danger. And if the hob gives me trouble, I'd rather you were out of it so you can come and pick up the pieces afterward."
He strode off around the plaza, holding a hand over his nose and trying not to look directly at the hill of rotting corpses. Soon he had to slow down, because the piled junk made treacherous going for a man whose buskins sported more holes than a lace shawl. He stepped between timbers with nails in them, broken glass, broken crockery, scrap iron. If the hob reacted to the spirit as it had in Bordeaux and other places, he would soon find himself rolling in all that. But even before he started he had been about as close as he had ever come to a sanctuary and the hob had raised no objection. Sometimes he could tell when the hob knew a spirit was nearby, although that did not always work—he had felt no premonition of the demon in the orange grove. He certainly felt none now. Almost certainly, Hamish was right and the tutelary was gone.
Birds fluttered and shrieked. The stench made his head swim, but he came at last into the cool shadow of the archway. He almost turned to see if Hamish was still there, watching over him, and decided not to. If he was, it would embarrass him to know that his intentions were so transparent; if he wasn't, there was no point.
Toby stepped through the space where the doors had once hung, then waited until his eyes adjusted to the dim, cool light of the high-vaulted chamber. So this was a sanctuary, was it? Before the rebels came it might have been very beautiful, although in an ornate Spanish style that would have seemed alien to an ignorant Scottish Highlander. Now it was a ruin, a singularly repellent one. The invading army had smashed everything breakable and then used the place as a latrine, leaving a deep layer of excrement on the floor and splattered over the walls. Stained glass, frescoes, and carvings had all been smashed. At the far end, where there would have been an altar and probably a throne, there remained only bare stonework above a heap of ruins.
No, the tutelary had gone, for no spirit except a demon would tolerate this ugliness and filth. Furthermore, since no spirit ever left its own haunt willingly, it must have been raped away by a hexer and perverted into a demon itself. Tutelaries made the worst demons of all, Father Lachlan had said, because they were wise in the ways of men. It need not have been Nevil himself who worked this abomination—he had many hexers in his service—but it might well have been. Doubtless the former benevolent guardian of this sad little town now resided in a jewel somewhere, perhaps on the rebel king's own finger. A spirit once dedicated to the welfare of its people was now given over to hate and destruction.
Obviously Toby's harebrained plan to rid himself of the hob was even less likely to work than he had expected. Had he found the sanctuary bereft of its tutelary but intact, then he would have shown all its beauty to the hob and tried to persuade it to remain there. He did not know if it could voluntarily quit him without killing him, but it would have been worth a try. It still was.
"Hob? Fillan! I'm talking to you." Could it even hear him or understand? Probably not. "This is a sanctuary. People lived in this town once, many people. Others would like to come and live in the houses, but they cannot if the place lacks a spirit to care for them. If you choose to remain here, then people will come and repair it and make it beautiful again. You see on the walls and the ceiling? They will repair all the pretty pictures for you. They will bring offerings and praise you for helping them."
He heard nothing, felt nothing. He said what had to be said:
"If you can only leave me by stopping my heart, then I will pay that price. Let me die and you will remain here. This will be your house."
No response. The hob either did not hear or did not understand. Or else it wanted to continue traveling the world, because it was peculiarly crazy, even for a hob.