"Come on. There might be some way we can get down into the necropolis."
The two men picked their way onto the floating masonry at the pillar's periphery, taking care to avoid stones whose orbit took them too close, lest the grasping maelstrom pull them in. Hopping slowly from stone to stone, they caught glimpses of the necropolis' interior between the jumble of tumbling rubble. Hair and clothes whipping about them, they found themselves a relatively stable platform and stared down onto a floor they guessed was a few hundred yards in from the necropolis' main entrance. At the base of the pillar of souls, the chamber could only be one thing.
The Chapel of Screams.
Their position, in truth, did them little good. Despite Slowhand's best attempts to find an anchor for a whizzline, there was no way down. All the pair could do for now was reconnoitre from here and then look for another route.
The Chapel of Screams was blood-red. Arranged around a central aisle were tombs, six to the left, six to the right, and before each but one stood a rigid figure, but who these figures were was impossible to tell. At the end of the aisle, the Chapel widened into a huge circular chamber, and a raised stone platform overlaid with a complex magical circle. This was the base of the pillar of souls, and its screaming captives, for the most part, obscured it. All that could be made out with certainty was that the patterns were not carved, because they pulsed and shifted occasionally, darting about the circle like angry snakes.
Or perhaps threads. Black threads.
Standing before the platform, dwarfed by the pillar of souls, were two more figures, one as rigid as those by the tombs, the other, much taller and with a mane of flowing hair, thrusting his hands high into the air, as if summoning the gods themselves.
Bastian Redigor. The Pale Lord.
Slowhand shifted towards the edge of the platform they stood on, and Freel held him back.
"What are you doing? We already decided there's no way down."
"I'm not going down," Slowhand said, pulling Suresight from his back. "I'm going to end this thing right now."
Freel stared at the distant figure of the Pale Lord. "In these conditions? Impossible."
"Yeah?"
Slowhand notched an arrow and aimed directly at Redigor's forehead, right between the eyes. The shot wasn't impossible, but it was challenging, even for him. There were a number of factors he had to compensate for — the height, the movement of the platform beneath him, the disturbance from the pillar of souls — but doing so was just a matter of patience. Unfortunately, patience wasn't only a virtue, it was time-consuming, and by the time Slowhand had locked his aim, the platform beneath him had begun to move again, rotating about the pillar of souls.
It became suddenly like finding a target through a kaleidoscope.
Slowhand narrowed his eyes, unfazed, and loosed his arrow. The tip raced unerringly towards the Pale Lord and would, a second later, have punched directly into his brain — but the arrow stopped dead in the air, an inch from his face, and dropped to the floor. The Pale Lord looked up, directly at Slowhand, smiled, his mouth widening into a razor-toothed maw.
"We're out of here, now," Freel said, and pulled Slowhand up by the shoulder. He bundled him across the floating stepping stones.
"Dammit, Freel. I can take another shot."
"To what end, Slowhand? You saw what happened."
"I'm quicker than he is — I'll get an arrow through!"
"Really? How exactly? By making it up as you go along?"
"What the hells is that supposed to mean?"
Freel span to face him. "That sometimes you have to think about things. Maybe if you'd thought about things a bit more at the Crucible you could have avoided a confrontation. And maybe my wife might still be alive."
Slowhand stared at him. Is this it? He wondered. Is this when it all finally boils over?
"Jenna intended to blow us out of the sky," he said, more calmly than he felt. "And without that ship, the k'nid would have obliterated the peninsula."
"The Faith would have found a way to combat them. I would have found a way."
"Are you sure about that, Jakub? It was, after all, your wife — my sister — who could have avoided a confrontation. But that doesn't seem to have occurred to you, does it — it never does in the Final Filth."
Freel's grip tightened about the stock of his whip but he made no move.
"Face it, Jakub. Jenna became a puppet. The Faith's puppet. Your puppet."
Freel roared, raced at him, and the archer was winded as the enforcer piled into his stomach and threw the two of them back over the floating stones.
Slowhand found himself with his head only yards from the pillar of souls, but his greater concern was Freel's hands, slowly tightening about his throat. For a second the two men stared at each other, faces red and taut with strain, before Slowhand found enough strength to growl, "Is this it, then? Where you kill me?"
"Kill you?"
"Like on the train? What stopped you, Freel? That DeZantez would be a witness? Or was it just what it felt like — some kind of warning, a game?"
"What the hells are you talking about?"
"The shove in the back? The almost but not quite death on the tracks? The whip?"
Freel's eyes flickered over him, as if suddenly shocked to find someone in such a helpless position beneath him and he snatched his hands away. He rolled onto his back and snorted. "I guess working together finally got to us both. I wasn't trying to kill you, you fool! That cable you cut came lashing back, almost cut you in half. I was pushing you out of the way."
"Bullshit."
"Why on Twilight would I want to kill you? I helped save you from Fitch, remember? Even went so far as to steer him away, told him you were mine."
"And just why would you do that?"
Fitch laughed, rough and guttural.
"Has it ever occurred to you that we are, in fact, brothers-in-law, you and I? That out of all the people on this godsforsaken world we are the only ones with something unique in common? Someone we loved?"
"Jenna," Slowhand said. "No… no, it hadn't." He shifted uneasily. "Even so, I find it hard to believe that an agent of the Final Faith would let family get in the way of removing a thorn in their side."
Freel paused. "Let me ask you something. Were you to work in a tavern, would that make you a drunk? If you yanked teeth for a living, would you necessarily like causing pain?"
"I've known a few in both cases. What's your point?"
"Simply put? That the job doesn't always make the man."
"You work for the Filth. You're their chief enforcer, for fark's sake. I'd say that was more vocation than job, Jakub."
"So much so that I almost never pray."
"Come on. I'd have thought that was mandatory."
Freel shrugged. "Abstinence is a privilege of the position."
"Wait a minute," Slowhand said. "Are you telling me that while you're an agent of the Faith, you're not of the Faith?"
"What can I say? I prefer a choice of Gods myself."
Slowhand blew out a breath. "Oh, this day is just full of surprises. Then why, Freel? Why do what you do?"
"Let's just say that certain… factions in Allantia have growing concerns about the Faith's ultimate mission here on the mainland, because Allantia is not so very far away. And that the demise of Konstantin Munch provided them with an opportunity to place one of their own in a position of some seniority — and perhaps influence, if and when needed. Thank you for creating the vacancy, by the way."
"You're a spy."
"More of an observer."
Slowhand said nothing for a second.
"Jenna. Did she know?" He asked at last.