Nobody's Son (29 page)

“I say it is not.” The Old Man’s words were dry as bones.

“It is enow!” Mark screamed. “Turn around.
Turn around and look at me
! Or by God I’ll kill you where you stand.”

He felt Ashes, cold and heavy in his hand.

How simple, how simple it would be. All he had to do was kill the Old Man and walk away. He could know sunshine again, and open air, and sky.

He hated the Old Man; hated his dry voice, his hard bones, his blackthorn staff, his walk, his cruel laugh. The Old Man was evil and his touch was unclean. “You
robbed
me,” Mark hissed. “I had a world to look at and you made me see ashes.”

The Old Man said, “All there is, is ashes.”

At that moment Mark hated the Old Man selflessly, entirely, utterly.

He hated him almost as much as he hated his father.

“I gave you
everything
,” he cried.

The Old Man said, “Tha’rt nae worth loving. An thy own father could not love tha, how could I?”

A great shudder ran through Mark’s body. The shock of pain was so great he thought he would die.

But in that instant, before he knew he was still alive and began to swing his sword to crack the Old Man’s skull, some part of the old Mark, a part that had never quite died, held his hand, trembling, for one fraction of a moment.
Why? Why is’t’Awd Man so cruel? What does he want from you
?

He wants to die.

He wants to die.

T’Awd Man is trying every way he knows to make you kill him. And it isn’t hard, because you’ve hated him for weeks (months? years?). He’s beaten you, stroke by stroke, into a long black weapon wi’ blade as sharp as grief.

“I can kill,” Mark said slowly. “You’ve taught me that.” Slowly he dropped his arms, until his swordpoint scraped against the stone floor. “But I won’t do it for any man’s bidding but my own.”

The Old Man turned, eyes bright with fury. “It is the ony way! Hast tha learnt nought after all? Tell me, what dost tha see i’ the fire?”

“Ashes.”

“Ashes!” the Old Man cried.

“… But there are also faces in the flames,” Mark said softly.

What was it Val said?
Look for joy. That must be your candle, when the darkness falls
.

God was in running water, you said to him, and wind
. He thought of the river behind his Keep, racing through rapids, or pooling under willow-wands. Each fishing hole a cup of shadows. He remembered the hissing rain on the road from Swangard, their sudden booming footsteps as they crossed a plankboard bridge; farm windows in the distance, lamplit yellow squares of human hope.

He thought of Gail for the first time in what seemed like years. Remembered her, flushed and quivering and ready to punch him if he laughed, giving him that monstrous pink hat. Remembered her too as he’d seen her first, standing by the throne with her vixen’s face and narrow laughing eyes. He held her like a match before his eyes, her and Val and Lissa too, and the wind that had billowed up behind him when he broke the Ghostwood’s spell, and the infinite blue and empty hawk-specked sky over Borders. His home.

“There are faces in the fire, Old Man, and crowns and swords and elfin feasts. If you listen, you can hear their songs. There is more to life than ashes: I don’t think yours is all the wisdom there is.”

“Perhaps not,” the Old Man replied, his gaunt face raised. “But it is wisdom I have earned.” He gazed at Mark, frail and unimaginably old. “Tha buys wisdom not only from the sins tha suffer, boy, but from the sins tha commit.”

Bitter then was the voice of Hedrod’s Son. “An endless time I waited for my sons to cum and tak my teaching from me, but they did not. Tha’rt the ony son I am ever like to have, Shielder’s Mark. Ashes is the ony wisdom I am master of; I taught it all to tha.”

“It’s what you had to give,” Mark said. “I won’t turn it down.”

“I thought it would change all, when tha stole the black blade Aron used to dam Hedrod my father and all magic else. The spell would be broke and he would be loose again, and he would cum for me at last, in hate or love, and free me from this cursed Keep. But he did not cum. He chose to raise his armies, reclaim his crown, rip tribute from the living: but he did not cum.” The Old Man’s eyes glittered with hate and fear. “Glad I am I murthered him! That I’ll not repent! How can a son absolve his father for not loving him?”

Hedrod
, Mark thought.
That must be the Ghost King! And this Old Man must be Hedrod’s son; the Prince who murdered him all those years ago
. Mark’s mind was racing, trying to make sense of the Old Man’s words. What was that about raising armies? It must have been Hedrod who appeared before Duke Richard, to lay claim to his ancient territories.

The Old Man backed toward a door that led into the heart of the Keep. His lips twitched, and the black dagger in his hand swayed and trembled. “A thousand years have I burned my eyes on ashes, held by Aron’s spell. Waiting, waiting. But now I wait no longer!” he cried. And turning, he fled within the Keep. Mark started after him.

At that moment came a sound so utterly strange that for the longest time Mark could not recognize it. Only gradually, like dawn finally coming up out of the blue darkness before morning, did he realize it was another human voice. And it was calling his name.

Swiftly he turned and flung open the other smithy door, the one that opened onto the courtyard. Outside it was the last hour before dawn. The night was cool and unimaginably fresh after a lifetime before the forge.

Mark halted, stunned by the touch of open air. Overhead, morning stars blinked in a paling sky.

“Mark? Is that you?” Val stood fumbling for a weapon at his side, eyes blinking with fear.

“Good God!” Mark cried. “Next pigs will turn to peacocks! Valerian is wearing a sword!”

“Not to much purpose,” Val gasped, letting his scabbard dangle.

A thin figure went hurrying across the eastern wall and disappeared into the Tower. “There he goes!” Mark cried.

“Wha—?”

“Come on!” Mark yelled, and they were off, pelting across the courtyard. “T’Awd Man means some devilment.”

The oaken door at the base of the Tower was a lattice of rotting boards held in place by iron bands and a great iron padlock on a chain. Mark raised Ashes above his head and burst the bands asunder with a single terrific stroke. He kicked the door open. Piles of rubble lay inside, spattered with bat droppings, dead leaves and smashed glass. The air was thick with the smell of death and decay. A coil of stairs rose up inside the wall like a stone serpent: overhead, the sound of a tapping staff dwindled into the darkness.

Mark glanced at his friend, who stood on the edge of that desolation, pale and blinking. Valerian’s sword wavered like a feather in his hand. “You don’t have to come, Val. This isn’t scholar’s business.”

“This isn’t
anyone’s
business,” Val gulped. “But I didn’t come into the Ghostwood to let you go up those stairs alone.”

Gravely Mark nodded.

Together they plunged into the darkness. Mark took the stairs three at a time, holding Ashes in his right hand while with his left he felt for the wall.

The footsteps above him stopped. A bolt drew back and a door creaked open. Sounds pelted down like hail: glass smashing, tiles bursting, iron chopping against wood or bone, the Old Man’s shrieks.

Mark charged into the topmost chamber of the Scarlet Tower, then stood, watching the Old Man in amazement. “Here I am!” cried Hedrod’s Son. “I will hide no longer!”

Once this had been a chamber of dark knowledge. Now books lay scattered along the floor, their covers slashed and rotted. “Cum, cum tha bastard, tha King of Kings! Drop a cloak of flesh around thy black heart and cum to me!” The Old Man swept a row of glass jars from a table: dark pulpy bodies oozed from them, stinking horribly, and quivered on the floor.

The mummified corpse of a young boy drooped from a pillar where it had been tied. A web of black rags hung around its shoulders. The Old Man danced among the rubble, slashing wildly at the corpse. At its feet crouched a wide copper basin, spattered with dried blood. “Listen to me!” the Old Man howled. “Listen to me!”

A voice grim and low said, “I hear.”

“Oh shite,” Mark said weakly.

A shadow took shape at the far end of the room, behind the pillar where the sacrifice was bound. The air seemed to thicken, the stink of death to weave itself into a form, a tall man, old and terrible. Fear clung to him. The scar on Mark’s right palm opened like a door and magic whirled through it like a cold, damp wind: he felt his skin creep with dread.

something in the house

O god he wanted to throw himself back down the stairs, jump from the window, do anything but meet its face, anything but look beneath its crown into its terrible eyes.

The fingernails of the Ghost’s left hand clicked against the pommel of a long grey sword. His right hand rested on the dead boy’s thin shoulder. “Who dares call?”

The Old Man stood still at last, his thin chest heaving, the black dagger shaking in his hand. His eyes flicked quickly at Mark. “Hast tha cum to learn another lesson then?” he said, with a queer, cackling gasp, half mad with fear. “Allow me to present my honoured father.”

The Ghost King’s mail clinked and muttered. “Son.”

The Old Man seemed now so frail, so empty, as if his father’s presence struck the life from him and left but a shell behind. But when he looked up at his father, his eyes glittered with fear and hate.

Hedrod’s left hand reached to touch his own chest, above his heart, then fell away. “Tha!” he whispered. “It was tha. I should have known that even so base a deed was not beneath tha.”

A great shudder rocked the Old Man’s body. “1 would have died and gladly, to prove my true son’s love, but tha never graunted me the chance. Tha penned me with tutors, that tha need not speak with me thyself; tha graunted me this castle so my shade would never cross thy own. Tha shewed me no trust, and gave me no teaching.”

Hedrod shook his head impatiently. “A son must take some weight on his own shoulders. He cannot seek for plaints in every err his father makes. Tha wert always weak; tha could not be trusted. Time hath shown me right, for with black art tha murthered me.”

“He murdered you,” Mark said. The bitterness between them took his breath away. “Hedrod, look upon your son. Blow by blow you made your son an enemy, hard as hate and sharp as grief.”

“Thruff the heart,” the Old Man murmured, fingering the black dagger. “I slid it thruff the heart of an orphan-boy, swaddled in thy old cloak; I watched thy blood stream from him, felt him twitching root and boughs with thy death-throes.”

Through the heart of an orphan boy
, Mark thought. The frail body hung between the two terrible old men, unheeded.
Through the heart of an orphan boy
.

He heard Val stagger into the room behind him, panting and gasping.
Steady, Mark. Got to hold on. Poor Val shaking like a willow wand but here beside me, and his eyes are steady because he can face the darkness
. Mark forced himself to look upon Hedrod’s Ghost and said, “Bless him, ancient-King.”

“He hath no bless to give,” Hedrod’s Son said bitterly.

“Oh, I can bless,” the old King murmured. “I can give you your death.” Dread pooled around him, thick as midnight, cold as the grave. The Old Ghost’s eyes were black and hard as iron. Lissa said she had seen her death in the Ghost’s eyes. Now, horrified, Mark saw himself there, lying on a black-draped bed. The smell of sickness came foully to him. Valerian, his soft beard almost white, dipped a cloth in a bowl of rosewater and washed his brow. The wire in his chest clenched, cutting into his heart, and

Stop!

Don’t think. O God. Move fast
. “You may not take my life, awd King.”

Hedrod’s heavy shadow grew to lap against Mark’s feet. “Nobody commands me.”

Mark laughed unsteadily. “As it happens, I’m Nobody’s Son,” he said. “And what I tell you, you must do.”

Where’s Gail? Why isn’t she there if I’m sick? Val’s there but Gail, Gail…

Don’t think.

Keep your steel about you just a little longer, Shielder’s Mark. You’ve got to shift the ground on this Ghost somehow. That’s what you’ve always done, lad. When you answered awd Husk’s riddle, when you stole the dagger from Hedrod’s Son, when you claimed King Astin’s daughter: each time the trick was shifting the ground from their strength to yours.

Well what was the Ghost’s strength? Fear, of course. Fear and dread.
But what does a ghost fear
?

And then, with a start, he knew.

From his side the Ghost King drew a rune-carved sword, grey as dead men’s flesh. “Tha be but a fool in a leather hat and muddy breeches. Tha’rt nought. Tha hast no power.”

Quick as thought Mark whirled with Ashes. Hedrod’s sword leaped to block a cut—

But Mark did not swing at him. Instead he laid his long black blade against the Old Man’s throat. “An you so much as blink an eye I’ll kill your son,” Mark said, sick with dread.

No matter how hard he tried, he could not tear his eyes away from the Ghost King’s deadly gaze. His body shook with fever; the smell of stale sheets and rosewater clogged his throat. He was dizzy, no longer sure if he stood, or lay upon a feather bed. He heard women crying.

Hedrod’s iron eyes narrowed. “Feel the turn?” Mark gasped, moving one step closer to the terrible Ghost. “Feel the floor start to slip beneath your feet? Here stands your son. Your killer. If you be ghost, and I kill him, you are avenged. And what then holds you to this second life?”

What must a ghost fear?

Death, of course.

Slowly Hedrod lowered his sword. “Tha wouldst not. Tha hast not the belly for it, to slay a weak old man with thy blood as cold as snow.”

Mark tried to spit but his mouth was dry. “Try me,” he said.

He felt sick and fevered and half in dream, as if he lay already on that black-draped bed while his life burned away.