Whitemantle

He looked to himself suspiciously, testing for evidence of magical attack. Was Maskull watching from somewhere? Was that the plan? Had the sorcerer been waiting all along on some rooftop down below, ready to cast a burst of violet fire skyward and sear both his troublesome creations into flaming brands?

Will blocked out the thought and put all of himself into the climb. He also tried to put out of his mind what he had glimpsed from the corner of his eye, but that was more difficult. It seemed as though the wide world below curved away from the Spire in every direction, the drab roofs of the City and then a green land, losing itself in a bright haze of blue which was neither earth nor sky. And against that background he had seen a speckling of dark shapes – bone demons, gathering again.

Will’s certainties told him that a reckoning was at hand. He tried to pull the shreds of his spirit together and scramble faster up the iron staples. The thinking part of him stood aghast at the course he had taken. Why had he done this? He was no murderer. What did he hope to gain by chasing Chlu to this lonely, lofty place? Now he had arrived his actions seemed bizarre and inexplicable. No one could climb such an overhang with a foe like Chlu guarding its top. Only a fool would throw himself at death without surer knowledge that his leaving the world would make a crucial difference.

Even so, there had been no mistaking his inner promptings, the ones he had promised Gwydion he would always try to take account of. The desire was unquestionable: Find him! Get to him! You must!

But what had driven Will on had not been determination, nor any righteous plan. It was not fear or hope of gain that made Chlu attack him. It was a force as elemental as day and night.

Soon, he thought grimly, one or both of us is going to have to die. I feel that, and he feels it too.

A raucous croak awoke Will’s fears. Black wings fluttered, dappling the brightness with shadows. He gritted his teeth then he looked up to see that it was Chlu who had attracted the wrath of the creatures. He had hauled himself up the double rows of ornamental carvings that lay just below the vane, and there he was being swooped upon by black shapes that wheeled and dived at him. But they were not bone demons.

Ravens! he told himself with sudden relief. They’re Bran’s ravens, come from the White Tower!

He took his chance. Hand over hand, he pulled himself up through the overhang, jamming his toes behind the rungs until he had hauled his upper body round to where the capstones were sheathed in lead.

Chlu was struggling on the leaden base of the vane, fighting off the birds that mobbed him. Above, the mechanism’s ribs were grinding and squealing as they turned, a heavy iron pointer wheeling this way and that. Seen this close, the letters were huge, each taller than a man, and the ribs on which they were mounted swept shudderingly around a huge white heart – a heart bled dry of all desire. Like the letters, the fearsome token was no more than a peeling sheet of thin, white-painted copper thrown into motion by levers and sprocket wheels turning below. The haphazardly rotating ribs threatened to cut Will off at the ankles, while the heart turned crazy somersaults in its cradle as it spelled out its arcane message.

Without another word, Will leapt at Chlu and seized him. The ravens scattered as he slammed Chlu up against a stanchion. He tried to hold him there, but Chlu’s fists beat him back with hammer blows. Will threw off the onslaught, knowing he must not use magic to overcome his twin. They traded punch for punch, kick for kick, dodging the flailing vane, somehow avoiding the randomly moving ironwork, and little by little Will forced Chlu back. At last he was pushed out onto the rib that supported the letter E.

Will told him, ‘There’s nowhere left for you to go.’

‘Nowhere’ Chlu gasped, ‘but Hell!’

Arms outstretched for balance, Chlu turned and teetered along the rib in an insanely risky dance. He reached the safety of the giant letter before the support could move and throw him off. There he turned again – not at bay, but triumphantly. He banged the copper sheeting that made up the letter with the flat of his hand, sending out a sound that rolled like thunder.

‘So what’s it to be? Do you have the guts to come for me? Or shall we sit here looking at one another until the Fellows come for you?’

Will shook his head and shot out an accusing finger. ‘You think you can find a way to live forever? You can’t!’

‘It’s the end of this Age. Your old world is finished! Only Lord Maskull has seen what’s coming next. He’s shown me there is a way!’

Will spoke the words that Gwydion had first taught him long ago.

‘First there were nine,

Then nine became seven,

And seven became five.

Now, as sure as the Ages decline,

Three are no more,

But one is alive.’

Chlu showed his teeth. ‘You see? All was prophesied! The one is Lord Maskull!’

‘But what if it’s not like that? What if Master Gwydion is the last phantarch? What then, Chlu?’

Chlu laughed. ‘You’re an ignorant fool, little brother. Your mind is too busy with small things to understand the greatness of the change that’s now upon us. Lord Maskull does not claim to be a phantarch. He never wanted to be that.’

‘Then what?’

‘It’s as I told you. You know nothing of the wonders that were shown to me! This is not just the ending of another Age, not just the passing over of one phantarch for another. This is the end of the world!’

‘The end of the world? What do you mean?’

‘Magic has always been draining away, right from the beginning of the world, and now it’s almost gone. This is the end-time, and when the last Age closes our world will become subject to a new power. Another world is coming for us, little brother, and it’s going to swallow us up!’

The ravens cawed and circled, but kept their distance. Down below, the whole beautiful world seemed to have been laid out beneath them. Will held on to the ornamental iron that supported the rib. He was jolted as it revolved, stopped, then revolved again, but nothing could tear his gaze from Chlu’s own. It did not matter what nonsense Chlu talked. It was the strangest of fascinations just to look at him.

Will let Chlu’s words wash over him, barely aware when they broke off. He knew he had no choice but to go out along the rib and see his labour through to the end. He let his eyes fall, tried to judge the best moment to start out along the rib, but its shifts were capricious. They lacked all pattern, so the direction it would next move in was impossible to foresee, and even if he did choose correctly and even if he did reach the end, Chlu would just be able to push him off.

He watched the golden-headed arrow of the pointer as it swept under the ribs, then he put a hand to his left cheek. When he opened it there was blood in his palm: the cut was bleeding again. Chlu’s right cheek was cut in exactly the same place. Out on the rib, Chlu’s every move mirrored his own. When Will wiped his hand clean against his breast, Chlu did the same. They both looked up and then away, and in that moment Will saw the hideous connection operating.

A confusion of fear and pain reached up to enmesh his thoughts. There was only one way forward. He must clear his mind of all clouding images. His inner promptings had brought him here, they must be allowed to guide him now. He closed his eyes until his mind became ice clear, then he jumped from the rib and ran forward into empty air.

As he reached the edge, the arm of the pointer swung neatly under his foot. One step – two, three – each footfall landed miraculously square on the iron strut. The fourth step brought him crashing hard up against the side of the giant white letter E and there he hung as the pointer swung away again.

The impact shivered the sheet of copper and clattered Chlu hard. Only a knee hooked around the lowest horizontal of the letter saved Chlu from falling, but the copper was flimsy and the rivets corroded, and it began to come away from its support. The next time the rib kicked into motion, the letter tore like dry parchment. Chlu pitched suddenly forward. Will, clinging like an insect to the top of the letter, reached a hand down and grabbed Chlu by the shoulder. But in reaching out, he too lost his balance and they were flung from the vane in opposite directions.

CHAPTER FIVE ‘KILL! KILL!’

They fell at hurtling speed, but the copper sheet worked briefly like the wing of a bird. The air rushed against it and pushed them clear of the Spire. Then they tumbled and the world began to spin faster and faster. The metal’s edge was caught by a billow of air and ripped from Will’s grasp. He tried to call out, but the gale that tore his jerkin open also forced its way into his mouth and nose and stopped his breath.

The ground was roaring up to meet him, threatening to slam him into the patterned precinct below. But while a part of him recognized that he was no more than a count of three away from oblivion, another part of his mind froze. Time drifted, then crawled. His headlong dive slowed more and more the closer he came to the ground. The fall would take forever, and the crowds gathered below with horror and disbelief captured on their faces would look up at him until Doomsday before they would see him land. He felt his body become as light as a hawk’s pinion. There was time enough to minutely examine the smooth black and white stones below, the patchwork of artisans’ booths and the enforcers in their red leather gear. He saw the way that unwelcome sunlight bathed the Vigilants in their yellow and grey robes, hampering them as they turned their empty eye sockets to scan the sky.

Will studied without concern the spiked rail that was rushing up to impale him. In that strange, pliable moment he noticed that the green glow had lit once more around his body. He stretched out his arms and legs, steering his dive, then turned over onto his back and threw his limbs wide.

But the glow was already burning away like the light of a shooting star, and then time came back with a bang.

Suddenly he was tearing through old canvas and into a mass of hay as the fodder tent exploded around him. All the air in his chest was blasted out and everything went dark. He struggled to draw breath, trapped now in a formless chaos, dazed, numbed and drained by so sudden a calling up of magical effort. He blacked out and came to again in what seemed like a single moment. He was still unable to draw breath, choking on dry grass, aware only that horses were bucking and bolting dangerously nearby. His hand made contact with something hard and dry, and it seemed he had never felt anything so solid before. It was the hard-baked ground. He burrowed and twisted along it, pushing forward through the loose hay like a mole, until a spangling of sunlight showed him where holes in the collapsed awning lit a possible way out.

When he poked his head from under the corded canvas edge what he saw amazed him. The entire row of tents which the enforcers had used as a stable had come tumbling down. Their horses had stampeded through the row of money-changers’ booths that stood nearby, carrying several of them down and scattering piles of coin into the street.

The crowd that had gathered to watch the drama unfolding on the Spire top saw their chance and fell on the silver. Men, women and children were filling fists, aprons, hats, fighting one another for what they could get. When Will turned his head he saw the enforcers’ fierce dog. It was roused up, but undecided about what to bark at next. Geese and ducks fluttered all around him. A column of Vigilants, led along by their sighted helpers, men in belted black shirts who had thrown open the precinct gates, were crowding purposefully into the space before the monument.

Their masters were giving them orders, calling out at the sacrilege, shouting up a hue and cry. Already some were beating at the fallen tents with their rods of office, aware that they had come close to the place where one of the defilers had landed. They were whipping the crowd into a ferment with their shouts.

‘It’s a bone demon!’

‘Seize it! Kill it!’

Seeing the whips of the Vigilants, those of the crowd who had not been quick enough to get at the coins turned to this new sport. It was terrifying to see, and worse still for Will to know he was its target. As the Vigilants’ shouts turned into a chant, individual will dissolved, and what was left was a thirst for blood. Will saw the unreasoning frenzy that entered men’s faces, the raised fists that began to pump the air. The mob became a single, many-legged monster.

Will was still dazed from his fall and drained by the involuntary magic that had saved him. He knew he could not fight or outrun a mob. He doubted he could summon any kind of defence now. And the Vigilants were drawing ever closer, using their uncanny sightless sense to close on him.

By the moon and stars, he thought. I’m a dead man!

He cast about, looking for Gwydion or Willow, but they were nowhere to be seen. He twisted and turned, untangling himself from the fallen awning. He ducked under a horse’s belly and dived through a tattered curtain that screened off the back of one of the few remaining moneychangers’ booths. Then he burst out into a space that was piled high with sacks of charcoal and set about with three or four small ironworker’s forges, all of which had been abandoned in the excitement.

His head was spinning – at least his knees had not given way yet – but he had not made his escape unnoticed. A new shout went up behind him.

‘There he goes!’

Will was no bone demon, but a mob sees only what it wants to see, and the hunt was on. Men thundered after him. He stumbled, then crashed on through the forges, throwing down a bellows and a hearth of hot embers in his wake. He emerged into an aisle between two rows of booths. The lane was almost empty, and those who were in it had not yet been caught up in the riot. He ran along it towards the nearest buildings, swaying past a woman carrying a yoke and pails, almost colliding with a bullock cart. He side-stepped neatly round a corner and swung into the open road.

But when he looked back he saw the pursuit surging into sight once again. Ahead, and coming west from another part of the City, were more Fellows, this time wearing brown robes. He had only one option, and that was to take to his heels again. He turned back and saw a huge Fellow in grey rags blocking his path. There was a side alley no more than twenty paces away, and Will made for it, but as soon as he entered he decided he had made a mistake.

The grey-robed Fellow moved into view and scanned the air sightlessly. Will ran on, for now this place reeked of danger – narrow ways such as these were likely dead ends, and he felt as if he was already caught in a trap. He shook his head to clear it, tried to open his mind, to drive out the hubbub of thoughts and fears.

There were dozens of people in the alley. It led to a small square surrounded by badly kept houses with a stinking dunghill at its centre. It was deep in shade, with only a meagre patch of sky above. The noise of over-crowded life came from the dwellings. Too many people lived here – women looking out from jutting upper floors, dirt-nosed children playing in the filth, men watching what passed.

Goats foraged and dogs ran out to snap at him as he sprinted by. Two men looked up from their work at the tail of a water cart. Beyond the square, several narrower ways branched off. He dared not take any of them, but ran on down the main alley until it forked and he was faced with a choice.

The noise of the pursuit grew louder. He noticed cart ruts underfoot running to the right. He chose the same fork, hoping they would lead him out of the maze. By now he was breathing hard, his heart pounding fit to burst, and he flattened himself against a wall, filling his lungs, needing to listen out. If only he could get away, then he would head for the royal palace of the White Hall. Gwydion would be bound to take Willow and Bethe there, no matter what they thought had happened at the Spire.

But just as he began to think he had foxed his pursuers he heard cries and a clatter of footsteps. Men in black shirts were running across the junction ahead of him. When they turned, they saw him.

‘That way!’

‘He’s there! Spread out!’

Will cursed and dodged back the way he had come. As soon as he reached the corner and moved out of sight, he jinked into one of the narrower ways, fervently hoping that this was no blind alley.

It was certainly deserted, running for thirty paces or so until it reached a dog-leg. Beyond that was only a small yard, hemmed in by house ends and walls that would be impossible to climb. The building that dominated the yard sent Will’s hopes plummeting. It was different to the others, built of expensive dressed stone, heavy and dark, and set back beyond a dry moat that was half choked with rubbish.

Could this be the back of some large, lordly house? he wondered. But he knew he was grasping at straws. A wide flight of steps bridged the moat and ran up to an arched door that was flanked by ornamental carvings. At the centre of the door there hung a brazen fist.

His heart sank. This was the sure sign of a chapter house. Will halted, angry at his false choice, fearful that his other options had disappeared. There were shouts and yelps echoing from the walls – no way out forward or back, and by the sound of it the mob had already decided correctly which way he had gone. They would be here very soon.

He planted his feet with deliberate care, and opened his mind, to invite what powers might be here to emerge from the dry, compacted earth underfoot. He felt the flows, but they were feeble, as if they had been pinched off by the tumble of mean hovels. Barely a tingle ran through his toes, and the aura that usually sheathed him like a cool, blue flame hardly flickered into life. Yet when his eyes rolled back in his head, he was able to give himself over to the ecstasy for a brief moment. A spangle ran over his ribs and launched an upwelling along his spine that drove fatigue before it and refreshed him.

But the joy did not last long and the light of forget-fulness soon faded. When he stepped out of his rhapsody he began straight away to spin and dance out a spell of alteration upon himself. Having assisted Gwydion with the restoring of Lord Dudlea’s wife and son, the appropriate formulas of the true tongue came readily to his lips. He had been the subject of magical disguises before, and so his flesh did not resist the changes that came over him. When he emerged from the alteration he had assumed the form of an old man, a beggar. He was filled with hope that this would be a sufficient armour in which to hide.

He could feel the wrath of the mob. A weird pressure on the nape of his neck made the hairs there stand up and caused him to turn. Picking his way among the filth that clogged the dry moat was the Fellow in tattered grey garb. His head was cowled within a deep hood, and it was tilted in the manner that Will had seen each time he had come under the sightless scrutiny of a Fellow.

A shout came from behind. ‘This way!’

Will turned to see the first forerunners of the mob coming into the yard. They stopped in their tracks. Bigger men joined them, sweating and breathless. They would not approach their prey, though they were roused for blood, for an Elder was coming.

‘Kill! Kill!’ some fool shouted, hoping that a chant would be taken up, but it failed: there was no one to kill, save an old beggarman and a brooding Fellow who was now rising up menacingly out of the moat.

They stared at the Fellow as he came forward. He was a huge man. By now a dozen helpers had closed off the yard and three Vigilants were led forward. The men in belted black shirts who carried cudgels and clubs deferred to the Elder as if he had the power of life and death over them. But still they looked with unavoidable respect upon the tattered Fellow who came to meet them.

‘Who comes?’ the Fellow boomed.

His way of speaking was strange, his voice somewhat lisping, though deep and laced with a quiet kind of menace. When he gathered himself he was a figure to behold, the rends in his robes showing glimpses of a frame of tremendous power.

Unseen now, Will backed up the steps of the chapter house. Above him, the brass fist came to life on the door and splayed grasping fingers from which he was forced to draw away.

One of the Vigilants was ushered forward, but the big Fellow raised a denying hand to him.

‘Who comes?’ he repeated. ‘Who comes to disturb the peace of this House?’

One of the black-clad men spat. ‘Yaaah, Hell-damned Grey Robes!’

‘There!’ shouted another of the Vigilants’ sighted helpers. He pointed towards Will, whose bewilderment at the various competing orders within the Fellowship was not helping him make sense of his danger. ‘That’s what we’ve come for. Him. That’s a bone demon, sitting on your stair! A bone demon from the Spire!’

The Vigilants tilted their heads, their attention focussing now on Will. The big Fellow took a short step forward, which made the others draw back. ‘There is no bone demon here. Only an old man whom I hope will yet be persuaded to our purpose.’

The leader of the Yellow Robes sniffed the air then threw up his hands. ‘Magic!’ he said. ‘Foul magic has been done here! The demon has taken on new form!’

They all looked towards Will.

‘Let us fall upon the beggar!’ one of the mob shouted.

‘Aye!’

They began to surge forward, but the ragged Fellow did not move aside. Instead, he stood four-square and let slip from inside his sleeve a heavy chain. Raising it on high he swept an arc clear before him. Then he said in a stolid but commanding voice, ‘It may be that this old man already belongs! You may believe that approaching him is forbidden!’

The Vigilants drew back from the death-dealing chain that circled and swung over their heads. It filled all the yard with the soughing of stirred air, and no one dared come within its compass for fear that it too was touched by the magic the Vigilant had smelled. It was plain to the stupidest that, in so narrow a space, a chain in the hands of a man like this might easily murder a dozen of them if they tried to take the recruit away from him.

‘You may imagine that we are angry with you,’ the Vigilant Elder said in a high, wheedling voice. ‘One might ask: who is this Fellow? And where does he belong?’

The hooded head turned to face the questioner. ‘And some may hear that he is Fellow Eudas, and that he belongs to the Black House. But certain exalted ones may choose to take care! For perhaps the lowly Fellow was a soldier before he begged admission to the Happy Family.’

Will marvelled at the oddly indirect language of the Fellowship. He had heard Gwydion use it when they had visited Clifton Grange disguised as mendicant Fellows. Now the curious but deadly exchanges sent a shiver down his spine.

‘How then if the lowly one might be commanded to stand aside? How then?’

‘All respect to the exalted! But he may suppose that this Fellow, lowly or not, might decide to send the first man to take another step towards him down to see for himself the fires of Hell.’

A different Fellow pushed his way to the front. He too was an Elder, but one of the senior Brown Robes whose order dwelt in the House-by-Cripplegate. When he drew back his hood, painted eye sockets seemed to stare out from his skull like the eyes of a madman.

‘Why, oh why, should a lowly Fellow be believed, if Fellow he really is? Perhaps it is only an impostor who speaks in such a rude and obstinate way to Elders. Proof may be required! Else one may say that he himself is an incarnation of the very demon which fell to earth!’

‘Aye!’ the helpers cried, taking up the idea with enthusiasm. ‘Let him throw back his hood and show himself!’