Silvertongue (18 page)

T
he Railwayman led Dictionary around the edge of the church of St. Clement Danes. The spits who normally stood at the western end were gone, and the snow had piled up on the top of their vacated plinths.

“Tell you what, Dictionary, it ain’t half lonely with all the other statues gone,” he said. “S’like a ghost town.”

“Indeed it may be,” said the burly man, turning the awful scalloped wound in his fire-smelted face to the left and right. “But I fancy I can hear a great multitude behind us.”

The Railwayman stopped moving, and they both listened.

“Trafalgar Square, I’ll bet,” said the Railwayman. “Shall we go have a look-see?”

“You go, my friend. Now I am so nearly back at my plinth I feel the need to rest and await whatever balm and cure turn o’day may bring me. I admit that this unheralded exertion has quite debilitated me.”

The Railwayman led him on, a worried look on his face.

“I’m not happy about leaving you alone here, whether it’s your home or not, tell you the truth,” he said. “Blinded and without a guard? Don’t seem too clever a plan, somehow. I think I’ll stick with you if you don’t mind the company.”

“In any other circumstances I should welcome the society,” said Dictionary. “But if there is a battle to come, you would serve London better by joining our friends than playing nursemaid to an old word juggler. Besides . . .”

Suddenly Hodge went rigid in his arms and hissed furiously at something to the east of them.

“Bloody hell,” said the Railwayman, and hastily unshouldered his gun.

“What is it?” said Dictionary.

“It’s only the Temple Bar Dragon. And it’s looking at us like we’re lunch. . . .” said the Railwayman, cocking his gun.

The dragon at Temple Bar was a different order of statue to the cruder mass-produced dragon statues that guarded the other entrances to the city. It was not painted the garish silver and red of the creatures the Railwayman and the Queen of America had killed earlier. It was thinner and spikier and much more dangerous-looking, lithe and sharp and deadly where the other dragons were more like blunt sledgehammers. And the sharpest thing about it was not its wicked fangs or its cruelly barbed whiplash tail; the sharpest thing about it were its eyes.

It cocked its head and looked at them.

It opened its mouth.

“I’m going to drill the bug—” began the Railwayman.

“Dictionary?” barked the Dragon, a voice as harsh as a shovelful of coals being thrown into a scuttle.

“Wait,” said Dictionary, slapping a blind hand sideways and knocking the Railwayman’s weapon down.

“Eyes. Dictionary. Happened. What?” snarled the Dragon. Its words didn’t quite join up with each other like normal speech.

“It talks!” said the Railwayman, recovering his balance and aiming at its head.

“Of course it talks,” said Dictionary. “But only when it has something to say. I wonder why it has not joined the other dragons?”

“Why don’t I shoot first and ask afterward, eh?” said the Railwayman.

“No,” said Dictionary.

The Dragon leaped forward off its high plinth. As it flew through the air, the Railwayman saw that one of its wings had an uneven rip in it, and when it landed thirty feet closer, it staggered, and when it straightened itself with a hiss of frustration, he saw that one of its ears was torn and hanging at an odd angle.

“’E looks beaten up. Like he’s been through the wringer,” he said out of the side of his mouth.

The Dragon walked forward.

Hodge hissed and stiffened in Dictionary’s arms. The Railwayman kept his gun aimed at the taint’s chest, and his finger on the trigger. The Dragon ignored him and stopped ten feet away. It pointed a viciously curved talon at Dictionary’s face.

“Who. This. Did?”

“Dragons,” spat the Railwayman. “So you want to step back, eh?”

The Dragon ignored him and stepped forward.

“Dictionary?” said the Railwayman.

“Leave him,” said the big man.

The Dragon reached slowly forward and ran its talon delicately over the smooth concave wound that had erased Dictionary’s face above the nose.

“Why?” it said quietly.

“The dragon was trying to kill the boy. The maker you marked. I could not allow that to happen.”

“Fight. You. Did?”

“I interposed myself.”

“Tchak! Happy. Not,” rasped the Dragon, flicking its tail in irritation. “Day. Bad. Time. Gone. Dark. Calling.”

Dictionary coughed and spasmed involuntarily “Why have you not answered the call as the other taints have?”

The Dragon leaned its face closer. “First. Dragon. Am. I.” Its eyes burned hotter. “To. Guard. City. Made.”

It scowled in irritation, and all the spines on its body bristled as it drew itself to its full prideful height.

“Not. Made. Answer. Call. One. Who. Enslave. City. Would,” it growled, and spat in contempt.

The Railwayman stepped out of the way as a fizzing gout of multicolored wildfire hissed into the snow. “Steady,” he said. “What happened? You look like you been in the wars.”

“Lesser. Dragons. Darkness. Answered,” it growled, a talon unconsciously trying to smooth its damaged and dangling ear back into place. “No. Slave. I. So. Fought. We.”

“That’s one for the books,” whistled the Railwayman. “Taints fighting taints.”

“There are bad spits too, no doubt,” said Dictionary.

“Bad. darkness,” hissed the Dragon. “Not. Will. I. City. See. Destroyed. Guardian. Am. I.”

Dictionary looked blindly for the Dragon’s face and spoke just three heartfelt words.

“Then join us.”

T
he streets were eerily quiet as George rode the chariot east along the south side of the river. He thought the Thames must be a barrier that the ice murk couldn’t cross, because he caught flashes of it every time he passed the end of a street heading north, at right angles to the river. If he’d been on the other side of the water, in the City, he would have been lost deep in the murk.

He was a little lost on this side, he realized as he found himself hitting Borough High Street. It was an area he knew a bit, and he thought he must have overshot the road leading to the cathedral. He pulled left on the reins, and the horses leaped and kicked through the slightly thicker snow, heading toward the bridge.

He was looking left for a way into the block in the center of which he knew the cathedral was, when a sign caught his eye.

“Whoa,” he shouted, pulling back on the reins as he’d seen the Queen do. The horses slowed, and he took a left turn into the mouth of a covered stone walkway, leading into the market beyond. The horses stopped. He turned to see why, and then he noticed that though the chariot might just fit through, the scimitar blades sticking out from the wheels would jam it stuck.

“Okay,” he said, climbing down and patting the closest horse’s flanks, his eyes returning to the street sign. “This is the place all right. The way of the dragon. Er, you stay here, okay?”

He had no idea if the horses could understand him, and he wondered if he should tie them up somehow. He decided not to, and ran off down into Borough Market, as behind him the horses stood breathing hard beneath a street sign that read Green Dragon Court.

The market stalls were locked away and the doors to the shops barred, but George still felt a rumble of hunger in his stomach as he hurried through the warren of alleys. This was where his dad used to come and buy things that smelled like a home George now only had in his memories: strong coffee, stronger cheeses, knobbly and delicious fruit, and luscious tomatoes exuding an odor of the sun itself. George ran past a shuttered barbecued-meat stall and wished he had Edie’s gift for conjuring the past out of the stone, because if he did, he knew he’d see his dad again, standing with a younger version of George beside him, breath pluming on a cold Sunday morning, ordering delicious roast pork and apple sauce rolls to eat as they walked home along the river.

He banished the memory and angled sharply into the churchyard surrounding the cathedral.

The spire was the only part of the roof that wasn’t covered in snow, its almost sheer sides too steep to get any purchase. Deep cornices of snow overhung the edge of the lower roof, and each buttress had its own cap of white perched on top of it.

There were no footsteps in the virgin snow, so George had to toil through the thigh-deep drifts by force alone. He reached the door, knowing it was going to be locked, but he twisted the handle and found, to his surprise, that it swung open.

A cleaner’s cart was angled in the entranceway, and a mop stood on its own like the frozen hand on a metronome. George realized a cleaner must have been in the middle of swabbing the floor when the clocks struck thirteen.

He turned to look up the aisle, and froze as something jabbed warningly under his chin. He was pretty sure he went “ulp!” or “erk!” or made some other undignified noise, but he stopped worrying about it when he saw that the daunting figure blocking his way with a sword at his throat.

A wooden sword. But a wooden sword can be almost as threatening as a real one when it’s being wielded by a large armored figure who is himself carved from the same wood.

“Halt!” he said.

“I’m halted,” said George. “And you’re the Knight of Wood.”

“What manner of mortal are you that can see me?” said the Knight.

“I’m a maker,” said George.” And I’m afraid I’m in too much of a hurry to explain.”

“That is not for you to say,” said the Knight, jabbing the sword into his chest again.

“Er, yes it is,” said George. “See this?” And with that he stripped off his two coats and opened his shirt, exposing the stone arm.

The Knight took a step back. “What ails thee, child?”

“Like I said, no time,” repeated George. “The Lionheart sent me. I’m looking for the dead tongue of stone, or the dead stone, or something. It’s important. You see what’s happening out there?” He pointed out of the bright windows.

“We see and we feel,” said a gravelly voice from the shadows. “The ice storm shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters will overflow his secret place.”

“Who’s that?” said George.

“The Stone Corpse,” said the Knight. “One that used to be a monk.”

“I need to see him,” said George, taking a deep breath and walking down the side aisle of the cathedral. The wall was covered in memorial plaques, and he could feel the eyes of other statues and bas-reliefs swiveling to look at him. What stopped him from taking too much notice of them was the figure slowly getting off a stone sarcophagus that was set in a long niche in the side of the wall.

It wasn’t quite a skeleton, but the emaciated figure wasn’t a healthy body by any stretch of the imagination. The stomach had withered down to nothing, making the rib cage stand out like the prow of a boat, and the legs and what remained of the arms were little more than bones with a skein of shrunken flesh wrapped tightly around them. One arm was missing below the elbow joint, giving the impression that it had rotted off, with more to follow.

The head was hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked, and the mouth had the haggard lipless perma-grin of a skull. As the Stone Corpse stood and turned, George saw him shake loose a bunched shroud that had gathered around his head and shoulders, and which now fell over his body like a veil, mottled with cream and brown patches. Although it was stone, the veil was so thin that it both clung to the details of the corpse below, outlining the ribs and joints, and was translucent like alabaster.

As the withered head turned to look down on him, George realized he didn’t quite know what he was meant to ask. He tried to keep his mind straight as he circled the Corpse warily.

“What would you, boy maker?” wheezed the Corpse. “For what would you disturb my rest?”

“I need your help. I think,” said George, trying not to notice the way the shroud billowed out from the face as the Corpse spoke. And as fast as he could, he outlined his predicament and the sudden harm the two dark powers were visiting on London. He didn’t dodge any of the hard facts, and made it clear that it all seemed to be his fault, stemming from his accidental act of vandalism in breaking the stone carving at the Natural History Museum.

As he spoke he heard footsteps and shuffling in the gloom behind him, but he knew it was the other statues and effigies in the church coming closer to listen. All the time he spoke, the Stone Corpse just stood over him, the only movement being the regular in and out of the shroud as he breathed in a succession of flinty rattles.

When George was done, the Corpse held out its one good hand.

“And why should I help you? I have no fear of Judgment Day. The problems of the world are but transitory. . . .”

“You have to do it for all the people who have disappeared. They may NOT be ready for Judgment Day, not like you. We should at least give them a chance, you know, to live their lives.” As he spoke the stone in his shoulder smarted badly, and he flinched involuntarily.

“But why should I help
you
, boy?” repeated the Corpse.

“Because the Sphinx said so,” said George, out of other arguments and beginning to feel the panic rising inside him again.

“What did the Sphinx say?” asked the Corpse, bending closer.

“Something about taking the way of the dragon, which I did—Green Dragon Court, which leads here— and then by the Knight of Wood finding kin I can call my own; and if I do that, then the dead stone’s tongue—that’s you, I suppose—will be in my power.”

“Have you found kin?” asked the Corpse.

George looked around. There were statues looking at him, but none that he recognized.

“No,” he said. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Names,” said a bald trim figure in Elizabethan dress. He stroked a small beard and waved a quill at George. “I always find it best to start with names when I am stuck for a beginning. Yours, for example.”

“I’m George.”

“Well, we have only one George here, but a first name implies no kinship, and I very much fear that unless he was less saintly than we imagine, he fathered no kin for you to have sprung from,” said the quill bearer. “Still, a start is a start. Mayhap he can help you . . . He is at your back, behind the altar.”

George turned and stepped back. And there it was, on the wall. Surrounded by a gilded frame of laurels and ribbons, picked out in gold and red and white and a deeply satisfying lizardy green was a George and a dragon—Saint George and the Dragon, that is.

“There’s a dragon!” he said, in surprise.

“Of course,” said the Stone Corpse. “If you will permit an observation from the other side of the veil: life balances things out. Like for like, ill for ill, good for evil, and for every George, a dragon.”

“But it’s not my kin,” said George, deflating. “He’s a saint, not a Chapman. And you’re right, I’m not a saint. All the bad stuff that’s happening is my fault! Look. Can’t you just answer my question without—”

And here he stopped abruptly, because Saint George pulled his lance out of the dragon’s mouth, and while the dragon coughed and choked like a cat just having dislodged a hair ball, Saint George leaned out of his gilded niche and tapped the long list of names carved into the World War I memorial below him.

George knelt down and traced his fingers over the sharply incised words. And then he gasped.

His finger ran down the column with the C’s in it, skating over
CASEY
and
CHADWICK
and
CHALLIS
and slowing down abruptly as it hit
CHAPMAN
. And not just one Chapman, but three of them.

“I didn’t know,” he said, staring openmouthed at his name in triplicate. Maybe it was because two of the Chapmans had the same first initial as his father, or maybe it was because he knew this was a World War I memorial, but he was, for an instant, so powerfully back in the artillery bombardment that he felt the ground shudder beneath his feet. The smell of cordite and a horse’s fear pressed to his nose, and he saw the soldier with his father’s face gripping an arm over the horse’s neck. And then the moment was gone.

“We oft know little of who we were, only something of who we are, and nothing of who we may be,” the man with the quill said quietly.

“The old blood of this city runs deep in you, boy,” said the Stone Corpse, “for there have been Chapmans here from its very foundation. I am yours to command.”

“Then please tell us how we can beat the Ice Devil?” said George. “I know where the black mirrors are that we must banish him through, but I don’t know how we can beat him first.”

The Stone Corpse’s head rocked back on its neck, and it looked at the ceiling, and then it began to turn slowly. George had the distinct impression that it was not quite standing on the same ground as the rest of them. It intoned the answer, when it came, just like the Sphinxes.

“As the dragon marked your hand, so a dragon shall be your tool, and flames taint and ice have fanned only spit and fire shall cool.”

George watched the Corpse twirling in the air for a moment, while he tried to make sense of what it had just said.

“I don’t understand,” he exploded in frustration. He had been so near, and now seemed as far away from a clue as he had ever been. And what’s more, his shoulder had stopped hurting, but only because the pain had moved across to his chest. He felt under his shirt. His chest was, as he had feared, marked by a distinct gritty ridge, where the stone met the skin.

“This is just like the Sphinx! What does spit and fire mean?”

“To see the flames of darkness fade will require all the light glint and maker made,” chanted the Corpse, as if it hadn’t heard him at all.

George shot out a hand and gripped the stone shroud. It felt thin and slippery, almost so wispy that it wasn’t there, like a greasy cobweb.

“What does spit and fire mean?” he repeated.

The Stone Corpse stopped turning and bent its head to look down at him. As George returned the look, it pulled the shroud back and revealed the full horror of the death’s head beneath.

“You carry the answer with you, George Chapman. You always have.”

Just as George was about to ask what was meant about the dragon and the tool part of the answer, the church was rocked by the sound of a bell.

It was a deep unavoidable tolling, one that George had heard before. He knew in his heart and in his guts and in the sharp pain where the stone arm met his flesh that it was tolling for him.

As if the Stone Corpse could read his mind, it reached down its one bony hand and gently removed his hand from its shroud. He saw the last pink tip of his fingertip gripped between the dead stone fingers, and then he saw the pink disappear as the white limestone engulfed the last bit of his arm.

The bell tolled again. George’s stone hand flexed in answering pain.

“If thy hand causes you to offend, cut it off,” said the Corpse.

“What?” said George, in horror.

“Gospel of Mark: ‘It is better for thee to enter into life maimed than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched,’” intoned the Stone Corpse. “Peace be with you.”

George watched it turn and drift back to its alcove.

The summoning bell tolled again.

The Knight of Wood hurried down the aisle. “Boy? There is a chariot at the door. And a golden girl who says you must go with her.”

George stumbled to his feet and made them walk toward the door. Everything had almost made sense, but now he was going to face the final battle without knowing how to win.

The man with the quill walked beside him, looking at his face.

“The Stone Corpse is of his nature a dark and doomy fellow, but there is often illumination in his words, as a sullen thundercloud may carry the brightest lightning.”