Deadhouse Gates Read online

  Back then, in her naivety, she'd looked upon Baudin's murder of Lady Gaesen as an act of reprehensible horror. If he were to do the same today—putting Heboric out of his misery—she would not even blink. A long journey, this one. Where will it end? She thought of the river of blood, and the thought warmed her.

  True to Baudin's prediction, there was no waterhole to mark the end of the night's journey. The man selected as a campsite a sandy bed surrounded by wind-sculpted projections of limestone. Bleached human bones littered the bed, but Baudin simply tossed them aside when laying out the tents.

  Felisin sat down with her back to rock and watched for Heboric's eventual appearance at the far end of the flat plain they had just crossed. He had never lagged behind this distance before—the plain was over a third of a league across—and as the dawn's blush lightened the skyline before her, she began to wonder if his lifeless body wasn't lying out there somewhere.

  Baudin crouched beside her. 'I told you to carry the food pack,' he said, squinting eastward.

  Not out of sympathy for the old man, then. 'You'll just have to go find it, won't you?'

  Baudin straightened. Flies buzzed around him in the still-cool air as he stared eastward for a long moment.

  She watched him set off, softly gasping as he loped into a steady jog once clear of the rocks. For the first time she became truly frightened of Baudin. He's been hoarding food—he has a hidden skin of water—there's no other way he could still have such reserves. She scrambled to her feet and rushed over to the other pack.

  The tents had been raised, the bedrolls set out within them. The pack sat in a deflated heap close by. Left in it was a wrapped pouch that she recognized as containing their first-aid supplies, a battered flint and tinder box that she'd not seen before—Baudin's own—and, beneath a flap sewn along one edge at the bottom of the pack, a small, flat packet of deer hide.

  No skin of water, no hidden pockets of food. Unaccountably, her fear of the man deepened.

  Felisin sat down in the soft sand beside the pack. After a moment she reached to the hide packet, loosened its drawstrings and unfolded it to reveal a set of fine thief's tools—an assortment of picks, minute saws and files, knobs of wax, a small sack of finely ground flour, and two dismantled stilettos, the needlelike blades deeply blued and exuding a bitter, caustic smell, the bone hafts polished and dark-stained, the small hilts in pieces that hinged together to form an X-shaped guard, and holed and weighted pommels of iron wrapped around lead cores. Throwing weapons. An assassin's weapons. The last item in the packet was tucked into a leather loop: the talon of some large cat, amber-coloured and smooth. She wondered if it held poison, painted invisibly on its surface. The item was ominous in its mystery.

  Felisin rewrapped the packet, returning it and everything else to the pack. She heard heavy footsteps approach from the east and straightened.

  Baudin appeared from between the limestone projections, the pack on his shoulders and Heboric in his arms.

  The thug was not even out of breath.

  'He needs water,' Baudin said as he strode into the camp and laid the unconscious man down on the soft sand. 'In this pack, lass, quickly—'

  Felisin did not move. 'Why? We need it more, Baudin.'

  The man paused for a heartbeat, then slipped his arms free of the pack and dragged it around. 'Would you want him saying the same, if you were the one lying here? Soon as we get off this island, we can go our separate ways. But for now, we need each other, girl.'

  'He's dying. Admit it.'

  'We're all dying.' He unstoppered the bladder and eased it between Heboric's cracked lips. 'Drink, old man. Swallow it down.'

  'Those are your rations you're giving him,' Felisin said. 'Not mine.'

  'Well,' he said with a cold grin, 'no-one would think you anything but nobleborn. Mind you, opening your legs for anyone and everyone back in Skullcup was proof enough, I suppose.'

  'It kept us all alive, you bastard.'

  'Kept you plump and lazy, you mean. Most of what me and Heboric ate came from the favours I did for the Dosü guards. Beneth gave us dregs to keep you sweet. He knew we wouldn't tell you about it. He used to laugh at your noble cause.'

  'You're lying.'

  'As you say,' he said, still grinning.

  Heboric coughed, his eyes opening. He blinked in the dawn's light.

  'You should see yourself,' Baudin said to him. 'From five feet away you're one solid tattoo—as dark as a Dal Honese warlock. Up this close and I can see every line—every hair of the Boar's fur. It's covered your stump, too, not the one that's swollen but the other one. Here, drink some more—

  'Bastard!' Felisin snapped. She watched as the last of their water trickled into the old man's mouth. He left Beneth to die. Now he's trying to poison the memory of him, too. It won't work. I did what I did to keep them both alive, and they hate that fact—both of them. It eats them inside, the guilt for the price I paid. And that's what Baudin's now trying to deny. He's cutting his conscience loose, so when he slips one of those knives into me he won't feel a thing. Just another dead nobleborn. Another Lady Gaesen.

  She spoke loudly, meeting Heboric's eyes. 'I dream a river of blood every night. I ride it. And you're both there, at first, but only at first, because you both drown in that river. Believe anything you like. I'm the one who's going to live through this. Me. Just me.'

  She left the two men to stare at her back as she walked to her tent.

  The next night, they found the spring an hour before the moon rose. It revealed itself at the base of a stone depression, fed from below by some unseen fissure. The surface appeared to be grey mud. Baudin went down to its edge, but made no move to scoop out a hole and drink the water that would seep into it. After a moment, her head spinning with weakness, Felisin dropped the food pack from her shoulders and stumbled down to kneel beside him.

  The grey was faintly phosphorescent and consisted of drowned capemoths, their wings spread out and overlapping to cover the entire surface. Felisin reached to push the floating carpet aside but Baudin's hand snapped out, closing on her wrist.

  'It's fouled,' he said. 'Full of capemoth larvae, feeding off the bodies of their parents.'

  Hood's breath, not more larvae. 'Strain the water through a cloth,' Felisin said.

  He shook his head. 'The larvae piss poison, fill the water with it. Eliminates any competition. It'll be a month before the water's drinkable.'

  'We need it, Baudin.'

  'It'll kill you.'

  She stared down at the grey sludge, her desire desperate, an agonized fire in her throat, in her mind. This can't be. We'll die without this.

  Baudin turned away. Heboric had arrived, weaving as he staggered down the bedrock slope. His skin was black as the night, yet shimmering silver as the etched highlights of the boar hair reflected the stars overhead. Whatever infection had seized the stump of his right wrist had begun to fade, leaving a suppurating, crackled network of split skin. It exuded a strange smell of powdered stone.

  He was an apparition, and in answer to his nightmarish appearance Felisin laughed, on the edge of hysteria. 'Remember the Round, Heboric? In Unta? Hood's acolyte, the priest covered in flies… who was naught but flies. He had a message for you. And now, what do I see? Staggering into view, a man aswarm—not in flies but in tattoos. Different gods, but the same message, that's what I see. Let Fener speak through those peeling lips, old man. Will your god's words echo Hood's? Is the world truly a collection of balances, the infinite tottering to and fro of fates and destinies? Boar of Summer, Tusked Sower of War, what do you say?'

  The old man stared at her. His mouth opened, but no words came forth.

  'What was that?' Felisin cupped an ear. 'The buzzing of wings? Surely not!'

  'Fool,' Baudin muttered. 'Let's find a place to camp. Not here.'

  'Ill omens, murderer? I never knew they meant anything to you.'

  'Save your breath, girl,' Baudin said, facing the stone slope.

  '
Makes no difference,' she replied. 'Not now. We're still dancing in the corner of a god's eye, but it's only for show. We're dead, for all our twitching about. What's Hood's symbol in Seven Cities? They call him the Hooded One here, don't they? Out with it, Baudin, what's carved on the Lord of Death's temple in Aren?'

  'I'd guess you already know,' Baudin said.

  'Capemoths, the harbingers, the eaters of rotting flesh. It's the nectar of decay for them, the rose bloating under the sun. Hood delivered us a promise in the Round at Unta, and it's just been fulfilled.'

  Baudin climbed to the rim of the depression, her words following him up. Orange-tinged by the rising sun, he turned and looked down on her. 'So much for your river of blood,' he said in a low, amused voice.

  Dizziness washed through her. Her legs buckled and she abruptly sat down, jarring her tailbone on the hard bedrock. She glanced over to see Heboric lying huddled an arm-span away. The soles of his moccasins had worn through, revealing ravaged, glistening flesh. Was he already dead? As good as. 'Do something, Baudin.'

  He said nothing.

  'How far to the coast?' she asked.

  'Doubt it would matter,' he replied after a moment. 'The boat was to have patrolled for three or so nights, no longer. We're at least four days from the coast and getting weaker by the hour.'

  'And the next water?'

  'About seven hours' walk. More like fourteen, the shape we're in.'

  'You seemed spry enough last night!' she snapped. 'Running off to collect Heboric. You don't seem as parched as us, either—'

  'I drink my own piss.'

  'You what?'

  He grunted. 'You heard me.'

  'Not a good enough answer,' she decided after thinking a moment. 'And don't tell me you're eating your own shit, too. It still wouldn't explain things. Have you made a pact with some god, Baudin?'

  'You think doing something like that's a simple task? Hey, Queen of Dreams, save me and I'll serve you. Tell me, how many of your prayers have been answered? Besides, I ain't got faith in anything but me.'

  'So you haven't given up yet?'

  She thought he wouldn't answer, but after a long minute in which she'd begun to sink into herself, he startled her awake with a blunt 'No.'

  He removed his pack, then skidded back down the slope. Something in the able economy of his movements filled her with sudden dread. Calls me plump, eyes me like a piece of flesh—not to use like Beneth did, but more as if he's eyeing his next meal. Heart hammering, she watched for the first move, a hungry flash in his small, bestial eyes.

  Instead he crouched down beside Heboric, pulling the unconscious man onto his back. He leaned close to listen for breath, then sat back, sighing.

  'He's dead?' Felisin asked. 'You do the skinning—I won't eat tattooed skin no matter how hungry I am.'

  Baudin glanced at her momentarily, but said nothing, returning to his examination of the ex-priest.

  'Tell me what you're doing,' she finally said.

  'He lives, and that alone may save us.' He paused. 'How far you fall, girl, matters nothing to me. Just keep your thoughts to yourself.'

  She watched him peel Heboric's rotting clothing away, revealing the astonishing weave of tattooing beneath. Baudin then moved to keep his own shadow behind him before bending close to study the dark patterning on the ex-priest's chest. He was looking for something.

  'A raised nape,' she said dully, 'the ends pulled down and almost touching, almost a circle. It surrounds a pair of tusks.'

  He stared, eyes narrowing.

  'Fener's own mark, the one that's sacred,' she said. 'It's what you're looking for, isn't it? He's excommunicated, yet Fener remains within him. That much is obvious by those living tattoos.'

  'And the mark?' he asked coolly. 'How did you come to know such things?'

  'A lie I spun for Beneth,' she explained as the man resumed his examination of the ex-priest's crowded flesh. 'I needed Heboric to support it. I needed details of the cult. He told me. You mean to call on the god.'

  'Found it,' he said.

  'Now what? How do you reach another man's god, Baudin? There's no keyhole in that mark, no sacred lock you can pick.'

  He jerked at that, his eyes glittering as they bore into her own.

  She didn't blink, revealed nothing.

  'How do you think he lost his hands?' Felisin asked innocently.

  'He was a thief, once.'

  'He was. But it was the excommunication that took them. There was a key, you see. The High Priest's warren to his god. Tattooed on the palm of his right hand. Held to the sacred mark—hand to chest, basically—as simple as a salute. I spent days healing from Beneth's beating, and Heboric talked. Told me so many things—I should have forgotten all of it, you know. Drinking durhang tea by the gallon, but that brew just dissolved the surface, that filter that says what's important, what isn't. His words poured in unobstructed, and stayed. You can't do it, Baudin.'

  He raised Heboric's right forearm, studied the glistening, flushed stump in the growing light.

  'You can never go back,' she said. 'The priesthood made sure of that. He isn't what he was, and that's that.'

  With a silent snarl Baudin pulled the forearm around to push the stump against the sacred mark.

  The air screamed. The sound battered them, flung them both down to scrabble, claw, mindlessly dig into the rock—away… away from the pain. Away! There was such agony in that shriek, it descended like fire, darkening the sky overhead, spreading hairline fissures through the bedrock, the cracks spreading outward from under Heboric's motionless body.

  Blood streaming from her ears, Felisin tried to crawl away, up the trembling slope. The fissures—Heboric's tattoos had blossomed out from his body, leapt the unfathomable distance from skin to stone—swept under her, turning the rock into something slick and greasy under her palms.

  Everything had begun to shake. Even the sky seemed to twist, yanked down into itself as if a score of invisible hands had reached through unseen portals, grasping the fabric of the world with cold, destructive rage.

  The scream was unending. Rage and unbearable pain meshed together like twin strands in an ever-tightening rope. Closing in a noose around her neck, the sound blocked the outside world—its air, its light.

  Something struck the ground, the bedrock under her shuddering, throwing her upward. She came back down hard on one elbow. The bones of her arm shivered like the blade of a sword. The glare of the sun dimmed as Felisin fought for air. Her wide eyes caught a glimpse of something beyond the basin, lifting ponderously from the plain in a heaving cloud of dust. Two-toed, a fur-snarled hoof, too large for her to fully grasp, rising up, pulled skyward into a midnight gloom.

  The tattoo had leapt from stone to the air itself, a woad-stained web growing in crazed, jerking blots, snapping outward in all directions.

  She could not breathe. Her lungs burned. She was dying, sucked airless into the void that was a god's scream.

  Sudden silence, out beyond the ringing echoes in her skull. Air flooded her, cold and bitter, yet sweeter than anything she had known. Coughing, spitting bile, Felisin pushed herself onto her hands and knees, shakily raised her head.

  The hoof was gone. The tattoo hung like an after-image across the entire sky, slowly fading as she watched. Movement pulled her gaze down, to Baudin. He'd been on his knees, hands cupping the sides of his head. He now slowly straightened, tears of blood filling the lines of his face.

  The ground under her feeling strangely fluid, Felisin tottered to her feet. She looked down, blinking dumbly at the mosaic of limestone. The swirling furred patterns of the tattoo still trembled, rippling outward from her moccasins as she struggled for balance. The cracks, the tattoos… they go down, and down, all the way down. As if I'm standing atop a bed of league-deep nails, each nail kept upright only by the others surrounding it. Have you come from the Abyss, Fener? It's said your sacred warren borders Chaos itself. Fener? Are you among us now? She turned to meet Baudin's eyes. They wer
e dull with shock, though she could detect the first glimmers of fear burning through.

  'We wanted the god's attention,' she said. 'Not the god himself.' A trembling seized her. She wrapped her arms around herself, forcing more words forth. 'And he didn't want to come!'

  His flinch was momentary, then he rolled his shoulders in something that might have been a shrug. 'He's gone now, ain't he?'

  'Are you sure of that?"

  He shook off the need to answer, looking instead at Heboric. After a moment's study, he said, 'He breathes steadier now. Nor so wrinkled and parched. Something's happened to him.'

  She sneered. 'The reward for missing getting stomped on by a hair's breadth.'

  Baudin grunted, his attention suddenly elsewhere.

  She followed his gaze. The pool of water was gone, drained away until only a carpet of capemoth corpses remained. Felisin barked a laugh. 'Some salvation we've had here.'

  Heboric slowly curled himself into a ball. 'He's here,' he whispered.

  'We know,' Baudin said.

  'In the mortal realm…' the ex-priest continued after a moment. 'Vulnerable.'

  'You're looking at it the wrong way,' Felisin said. 'The god you no longer worship took your hands. So now you pulled him down. Don't mess with mortals.'

  Either her cold tone or brutal words in some way steeled through Heboric. He uncurled, raised his head, then sat up. His gaze found Felisin. 'Out of the mouth of babes,' he said with a grin that knew nothing of humour.

  'So he's here,' Baudin said, looking around. 'How can a god hide?'

  Heboric rose to his feet. 'I'd give what's left of an arm to study a field of the Deck right now. Imagine the maelstrom among the Ascendants. This is not a fly-specked visitation, not a pluck and strum on the strands of power.' He lifted his arms, frowning down at the stumps. 'It's been years, but the ghosts are back.'

  Watching Baudin's confusion was a struggle in itself. 'Ghosts?'

  'The hands that aren't there,' Heboric explained. 'Echoes. Enough to drive a man mad.' He shook himself, squinted sunward. 'I feel better.'