They stared at each other, taking in their faces, their exposed arms, the light and vitality in their eyes. Gerd raised a hand to his face, felt the health and firmness of his skin.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “I… I don’t know.”
“No.” Marius stared into the depths of the fire. “Neither do I.”
They lapsed into silence again. Marius felt deadness seeping into his skin, brought on by his hopelessness, his bewilderment. He glanced down at the back of his hand, and saw the first tinges of grey as his skin dried and shrunk over his bones. Gerd noticed, and stirred.
“So, tomorrow,” he said. “What do we do? What’s the plan?”
“Plan?” Marius replied, holding his hand up and turning it this way and that in the light, watching death spread across it like cancer. “I haven’t had a plan since this whole thing began.”
TWENTY-TWO
There are larger cities on the continent of Lenk. There are more grandiose cities. But nowhere is there one that oozes power the way that Scorby City does. At its heart is a single castle, melded together over centuries from a sprawling cascade of buildings clinging along the ridge of a single, low-lying mountain. The locals call it the Radican, and the buildings that crowd its base have taken on some of its majesty – nowhere in the Scorban empire will you find cottages more ornate, or a populace so assured of their place at the centre of world affairs. The wall that surrounds Scorby City is over twenty feet thick, although nobody has tried to invade in over three hundred years. It isn’t worth the effort. Any potential invader would be so quickly and effectively wrapped in red tape that signing the necessary permission forms just to rape and pillage – and those forms actually exist – would take up most of a season. Scorby City is an oasis of rules and regulations in a world that all too often gives itself over to lawlessness and chaos. Everything is planned, from the layout of its square-cobbled streets to the number of times the cathedral bells ring to signify prayer. The guards wear uniforms of clean, pressed material. The fruit and vegetables for sale in the markets are free of blight and deformity. The children are polite, the maidens virtuous, the politicians truthful and well-meaning. There isn’t anyone on the entire continent who doesn’t hate the smug, supercilious lot of them. But it was exactly this type of regimentation and order that gave the kings of Scorby an empire – no matter how unoriginal and rigid an army’s way of thinking might be, it was priceless when facing an army of drunken, wild-haired mountain dwellers who thought baring buttocks was an effective answer to a rain of exactly three thousand arrows released at twenty second intervals. The Scorban empire was rich in land, and materials, and men, and Scorby City was the clockwork that made it all run.
The Radican rose two hundred feet above the skyline, before ending in a cliff face that fell to the valley floor. Brightly coloured buildings ran along a central avenue all the way to the top, growing in height and grandeur until reaching the Royal Apartments, a six-story edifice that stared out across a massive square at the top. Flags hung every few feet up the length of buildings, and the cobbles gleamed from the daily washing that sent a torrent of muddy water down into the more mundane, working depths of the city. There were children who made a living from combing the mud left behind from those washes, and selling the rings and coins left behind by Radican-dwellers too distracted or proud to recover them.
At its apex, separated from the front of the Royal Apartments by thirty feet of cobbles, as if the buildings themselves wished to step no closer, stood the Bone Cathedral, the final resting place of the kings of Scorby since Scorbus the Conqueror had united the tribes below him and set out to rule the coastal plains. Eighty feet high and with a canopy sixty feet in diameter, it was constructed entirely from the bones of those who had resisted Scorbus and his successor, Thernik the Bone Collector. Those who had never seen the cathedral passed on stories of massive chandeliers made from thigh bones, sconces of hollowed-out skulls, mosaic floors patterned from countless tiny, stained, toe bones. Order is not built on humility. Nobody creates an empire out of politeness. Scholars had estimated that a hundred and twenty thousand skeletons had gone into the making of the cathedral. Scholars are known for being conservative. Had they been even remotely accurate in their calculations, Scorby City would be known as much for its haunted, drunken scholars as for anything else.
A line of people stretched from the massive front doors of the cathedral, past the Royal Apartments, and down the main boulevard of the Radican to the city floor. Every thirty seconds precisely, they took a step forward. Those who went through the doors reappeared at the side of the cathedral twelve minutes later. Then they dispersed, making their way back down the hillside to resume their lives: quiet, reflective, their eyes downcast in deep, sobered thought. Whatever occurred inside the building, for many of these supplicants, would be the defining moment of their lives.
Two robed figures joined the line in the early morning light. They had spent hours before dawn approaching those who came back down the mountain, asking each citizen what they had seen: was it the King? Was he still on display? They had received no reply other than a shake of the head. In the end, the strangers had no choice but to join up and see for themselves, one pace closer every thirty seconds.
“You think it’s the King?” Gerd asked as they took their first step forward.
“Has to be.” They waited, stepped, waited again. “Look around. These people aren’t here because they’re being forced.” Step. “What do you think it’ll take? Eight, ten hours, to climb all the way up?”
They considered the winding path before them, moved, gazed upwards to the looming bone monolith at the end of their journey, moved again. In front of them, and now behind as well, those in the line stepped in concert, a long, silent, solemn dance to inaudible dirge music.
“Ten hours at least.”
“Exactly. And look at them.” They stared about themselves. The citizens were of a single type – silent, patient, uncomplaining. They had the air of people undertaking a pilgrimage, as if they wished to breathe in every moment, roll it around their minds to draw out every sensation, to be able to gather their children and grandchildren to them in future days and say “I remember when–”
“Silent contemplation,” Marius said. “Parishioners, off to see a saint.”
“Their poor, dead King”. Step.
“Yep.”
“And we…”
“Quiet, now.” Marius lowered his gaze, stepped, and stepped again.
It took two hours to move past the final row of houses. Then they began to climb the broad avenue that ran between under the arched wings of the Radican. Slowly they rose above the rooftops of the city so that they stood with only the twin rows of frontages on either side. Bored palace residents stared listlessly down at them from the rows of windows above. Tiny alleyways crossed their path at regular intervals, creating side streets whose dead ends opened out onto thin air. Marius found himself counting the steps between each sliver of horizon – the atmosphere on the boulevard, surrounded by the unthinking herd and the high, dull walls of brick and plaster, was oppressive. Another hour passed, then another, the simple procession of step, wait, step dulling his thoughts until his entire world consisted of the grey cloth covering the back of the man in front, his body so attuned to the tedious rhythm of their ascent that it was several seconds before he registered Gerd’s elbow digging him in the ribs.