Smiler's Fair: Book I of The Hollow Gods Read online

  She quickly washed her armpits and face in the hot water Ayesha had supplied, shivering as it cooled on her skin. After that there was nothing to do but go out and face the men.

  It took Nethmi a second to notice what was different about the camp. It seemed empty, and then she realised: the carrion mounts were gone. Mahesh caught her gaze and hurried over, smiling insincerely.

  ‘We’re not at Winter’s Hammer yet, are we?’ she asked. ‘I thought Lord Thilak’s shipfort was in the highest peaks.’

  ‘It is, milady. But the air’s too thin up there for the birds; they can’t stay awing. I’ve seen a mount sicken and die just for lack of breath. We’ll be taking a different transport the rest of the way. They should be meeting us – ah yes, here they are now.’

  Nethmi heard the jingle of harness and turned to see a train of mules being led towards the camp by a man who appeared as rough and unwashed as his animals. ‘Could we not ride horses, Captain Mahesh? Those poor creatures look as if they’d break under the weight of some of your men.’ The beasts looked mean-tempered and foul-smelling too.

  ‘You’d be surprised, milady. The mules are stronger than they appear, and they can climb the rocks where a horse would break its leg and send you both plummeting to your deaths. The mountains don’t breed them pretty, but they breed them tough. You’ll see for yourself’

  It wasn’t an entirely encouraging thought, and judging by Mahesh’s expression, it wasn’t meant to be.

  Up close, the landscape was no more appealing than it had been from the air. The rocks grew sharper as they climbed higher and what plants did claw their way through the snow looked thorny and desiccated. Her mule didn’t seem to mind, stooping its head at unpredictable intervals to take a mouthful of thistles and jarring her already bruised flesh.

  To one side of the path there was a landslide of scree stretching down to the valley, now many hundreds of paces below. To the other was a sheer cliff. She had always remembered the peaks as majestic, even beautiful, but now there seemed nothing romantic about them. This was a harsh, ugly land.

  She fell into a sort of brooding daze as she rode. Damn Puneet, she thought, round and round and over and over. Damn him. Lord Nalin of North Star had sought her hand for his son. Nalin Nine Eggs they called him, a miserable old man forever harping on the raw deal his ancestors had negotiated for the shipfort in the New Covenant: ‘Nine eggs, only nine carrion eggs, and we the largest fort on the five lakes.’ But Arjan was a promising youth and not terrible to look at. Her uncle could have made the match. Instead, he’d sent her to be married on the outer edge of the civilised world.

  The path had flattened as it reached a high plain before the next range of peaks, and she saw heaps of rocks tumbled over the grass to their right. When they drew closer, she began to discern forms in the rubble, sharp right angles that must surely be man-made, and then the glint of sunlight on something polished. She realised with a start what these must be: the ruins of Manveer’s Folly, the palace which, legend said, had killed its creator.

  Captain Mahesh had seen it too. He hesitated a moment, then raised his arm and waved it left. ‘Away,’ he shouted. ‘Let’s skirt them wide.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, stop.’

  He turned to frown at her. ‘Milady, it’s not safe.’

  She yanked on her mule’s reins and slid from the saddle, grimacing as her cramped legs took her weight. ‘Why isn’t it safe?’

  ‘You know full well why, Lady Nethmi. Every child learns the tale.’

  He meant the worm men. Lahiru had spoken of them too in Smiler’s Fair. But even if they were real, the boy preacher Jinn had said they weren’t to be feared. They were the moon’s servants, and the moon was the god of change. She needed his power now more than ever.

  ‘I’m a grown woman,’ she said. ‘I no longer believe cradle-tales. I tire of riding and must stretch my legs.’

  ‘Stretch them later, then. A darkness lives below. King Manveer was a fool to build this place, everyone knows it, and he paid the price with his kin’s blood and his own. There’s a reason they call it Manveer’s Folly and not Manveer’s Pride.’

  ‘My father said it was treachery, not folly, which put the knife in Manveer’s back. It’s not unheard of, is it, for a jealous man to kill one greater?’

  If Mahesh felt the point of her barb he chose not to show it. He wore a mask too; it was the Whitewood way.

  ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘it was nearly two hundred years ago. Memories fail in a generation; how much less reliable must they be after ten?’

  ‘Ten generations or a hundred, it makes no matter,’ Mahesh snapped. ‘There’s death beneath the ground here as much as in the lowlands. The shipfolk sail on and it can’t touch us. But those rocks have been here far too long.’

  ‘My father said–’

  ‘Your father said a great many things, milady. Perhaps if he’d listened more and spoken less he’d be here to advise you himself. But he’s not, and I say it isn’t safe.’

  ‘Do as you will, Captain Mahesh, but I choose to trust my father’s word. He led his men to victory after victory. Where has Lord Puneet led you?’

  She turned her back on any reply he might have given and slipped off her mule. The walk was difficult, over frozen and broken ground, but pride kept her spine straight. After a few seconds she heard the clatter of boots and the rattle of scabbards against leather-clad thighs and knew that Mahesh and one of his men had accompanied her, as duty dictated. Her uncle wanted her gone but he couldn’t afford for her to die on the journey. He needed this alliance to strengthen his hand at home.

  The ruins were further than she’d realised, because they were far larger than she’d guessed. When she finally drew near, she saw the monumental shadow of a watchtower laid across the snow ahead. She shivered as she crossed it, not just from the lack of sun.

  ‘Milady–’ Mahesh pleaded.

  She ignored him. She’d hung her father’s honour on her actions now. A hundred more paces and she was in the ruins themselves, an intact wall to one side and broken wreckage on the other.

  ‘And what do your children’s tales say destroyed this place?’ she asked Mahesh. ‘Did the worm men eat marble as well as people?’

  The captain looked around uneasily. ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s naught but time. The years leave the same wounds as war, if there are enough of them.’

  Ahead of her she could see the gleam she’d spotted from a distance. She jogged towards it, then stumbled as her foot twisted in a hidden pothole.

  ‘Careful, milady.’ Mahesh took her elbow to support her, but he was no longer suggesting that they leave. He’d seen the glitter too, and they could both tell what it was: metal.

  ‘Gods,’ the other guardsman muttered. ‘So much of it.’

  There was a very great deal of it indeed, huge beaten sheets pressed on to the sides of a jumble of marble slabs. She thought the rounded bumps on its surface might once have been the figures of horses, with the smaller lumps above them their riders. It was more metal than Nethmi had ever seen in one place.

  ‘Enough to outfit the King’s whole carrion flock,’ Mahesh said. ‘They called Manveer’s mother the Iron Queen, but I never thought … Such a waste for it to lie here.’ He was leading her now, pulling at her elbow to urge her on.

  As they drew closer, though, his expression fell. The metal was … wrong. It gleamed, but more dully than iron. Nethmi approached a sheet of it and ran her fingers over the faint whorls and lines etched into its surface. It was icy cold beneath her touch.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  Mahesh shrugged. ‘Lead, I think.’ He drew his knife and gouged the tip into the metal. It gave, far softer than she had expected. ‘Useless. And heavy, too.’

  ‘But Manveer didn’t think it useless,’ Nethmi said. ‘He built up here, so far from Ashfall, because he’d heard the mountain savages lived below the ground and took no harm from it. Maybe he’d learned that lead was what kept them saf
e.’

  High walls blocked her way to either side, but ahead there was a clear space that might once have been a park, and beyond it an almost intact building. It was larger by far than Whitewood, larger even than Ashfall, and constructed of solid blocks of white marble veined with red and orange. She tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a place that never moved. She’d come this far; it could do no harm to investigate a little further.

  She hesitated only a moment before striding across the overgrown park towards it. Mahesh huffed but followed, with the soldier beside him.

  The park had seemed green from a distance, brushed clean of snow by the relentless wind. As they walked through it, she saw that the grass was filled with flowers: yellow sunbursts, and tiny blue jewels, and red bells suspended from slender stems. She’d never seen their like, not even in the royal pleasure gardens, and she didn’t understand how they could bloom so brilliantly in the depths of winter. She plucked one of the blossoms and placed it in her hair.

  ‘Perhaps you should take some back to my uncle,’ she said to Mahesh. ‘A gift for his gardens even the King would envy.’

  She’d thought the idea would appeal to his ambition, but he frowned and shook his head. ‘Unnatural things. We should leave, milady. The sun sinks and we’ve further to go before day’s end.’

  ‘Not yet. Where there’s lead there might also be iron. Wouldn’t Puneet want you to find out what treasures lie hidden inside?’ She nodded at the building, now only fifty paces before them. Its roof was supported by great pillars of marble, with intricately carved vines twining from earth to sky. The marble had been cunningly worked so that the yellow vein shone out as sunflowers along its length. The wall was studded with windows, small shards of glass still glittering in their corners. The entranceway was wide enough to accommodate two horses but the door itself must have been wood and had long since rotted away, leaving only a dark hole.

  ‘Men were never meant to stay in one place,’ Mahesh said. ‘This is cursed, I feel it. Don’t go inside.’

  ‘Are you ordering me, captain?’

  ‘Lord Puneet’s command was to protect you.’

  ‘He isn’t here,’ she said and strode towards the doorway.

  She’d almost reached it when he grabbed her arm. His face was implacable. ‘Let Saman scout ahead, then. If you won’t admit the dangers of the past then at least have a care for those of the present. It’s wild country here and many still disdain to call themselves Ashane or bow to the King’s law. Bandits or worse could be using this as their base.’

  She nodded reluctantly and he released her and gestured to the guardsman trailing behind them. The young man’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. His hair was cut very short, a new fashion that had crept down to their lands from Ashfall, and he ran his hand nervously through it before lifting his lantern and striking flint to light it. He paused and looked at her a little pleadingly, but when Mahesh waved him on he raised the lantern and turned to the doorway.

  Nethmi stepped forward, ignoring Mahesh’s protest, to watch Saman’s progress. His face glowed in the lamplight and the beads of sweat on his upper lip and brow looked like crystal. The circle of illumination that surrounded him was little more than ten paces across, and beyond that utter darkness.

  As he walked, the building revealed itself in tantalising flashes. There, for a moment, a mosaic face stared up from the floor beneath his boots. Nethmi recognised the Smiler’s lunatic grin picked out in ruby-red glass before the circle of light moved on. Then the young man stumbled and she saw that a fallen statue had tripped him. It was of a man encased in plate armour, an outfit so grand only the King himself could afford it. A huge green jewel gleamed in its helmet, then, as the light shifted away, was gone.

  Saman paused a moment, ringed by the circle of light. Seventy paces distant his face was a brown blur, his eyes and mouth dark slashes across it. The room must be vast, vaster than any she’d known, if he’d not reached the end of it. ‘Further?’ he called. His voice trembled, the trembles echoing in the huge emptiness.

  ‘Yes,’ Mahesh said. ‘Check every corner.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Nethmi cut across him. ‘It’s clear there’s no one here. The place has been deserted since Manveer’s day. Wait there and we’ll join you.’

  Even at that distance, the young soldier’s relief was clear. He smiled as she took a step into the room towards him. She smiled back, and was still smiling when something reached for him from the darkness. Even at seventy paces, she could see that the hand that closed around his throat was viciously clawed. Something black and liquid bloomed beneath its fingers. For a moment another face hung in the circle of light beside the soldier’s, grey and inhuman, as the young man’s smile twisted into a wide ‘O’ of shock. And then she heard the clang of the lamp dropping, and the light was gone.

  The screaming sliced through the darkness, high and desperate. Without a thought she took a step forward, and then another, and a third, towards the creature that could only be a servant of the moon, and then a hand closed on her arm and jerked her away.

  ‘Let me go!’ she said as she was dragged back towards daylight.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ Mahesh snarled. ‘You’ve killed him. You’ll not kill us as well.’

  And then they were out and running, back through the ruins and towards the safety of the camp.

  3

  Dae Hyo often dreamed about the dead. The drink used to chase away the phantoms, but now he went to bed sober they came nearly every night and he woke smiling. The smile disappeared as he saw the red of dawn on the horizon. Could it really be morning? If he closed his eyes he could sleep just a few minutes longer. But he knew minutes would become hours. And there was a debt he owed the departed. And so, every morning, Dae Hyo got up with the sun.

  This morning was no different. An expedition was setting out and he’d been told there was a place for him on it. He sighed, rolled on to his back and rose.

  The walk back to the settlement felt long, maybe because the sun had risen fully now and the light jabbed into his eyes. He’d thought giving up the drink might make him feel better, but even weeks later he still had a headache he couldn’t shift and a weakness in his limbs he didn’t like. He pulled out his dwindling stock of purple sorghum and filled his pipe, taking a grateful pull of the scented smoke. The drug eased the ache in his temples and he was glad he’d thought to buy it when he’d decided to end his drinking. A man needed some consolation.

  After a few minutes the village came into view, huddled between two hillocks of debris from the mines. The spoil heaps were brown, the plank houses of the village grey and a grim black dust hung over the whole place. The dust coated clothes and faces so that everyone looked to be of one people: a race that had grown from the earth and lived underground.

  ‘Dae Hyo, you’re late,’ Maeng Lu called out as he passed his forge. ‘They’re going in without you.’

  ‘Motherless scum – they wouldn’t dare!’ But he picked up his pace as he headed through the village towards the mine shaft. The buildings that loomed over him looked to be on the point of collapse, as they had since the day they were built. They’d been moved since he last saw them, slid along the wooden rails that ran the length of each street.

  He splashed through the mud sink that always filled the central square, circled the well that, when it felt like it, gave them clean water, and then he was through and climbing the shallow slag heap that spilled from the nearest shaft.

  He caught up with the others just as they’d paused at the entrance. There were nine of them as arranged: five miners and four other guards, with him making the fifth. The expressions they turned to him were a mixture of dislike, disdain and relief.

  He barely spared them a glance, his attention focused on the mine entrance. They’d been working this shaft for a few months now. He’d been on his way back from Smiler’s Fair when the last group went down, but he’d heard the haul had been slight. They seemed to be nearing the end of
the vein of iron and they were perilously deep.

  The sun threw its pale rays down the shaft. They caught the glitter of crystals in the walls and a few puddles of water on the floor. Early morning was the best time to go; the precious light would see them as deep as possible before the darkness took over. Dae Hyo remembered when they’d still been mining the west shaft and they’d had to set out in late evening, the ominous red glow of the setting sun lighting the tunnels the colour of blood. He loosened his sword in the sheath at his back, nicked two fingertips on his axe blades to check their sharpness, then nodded to his companions. ‘Time to go.’

  The miners looked sick with fear. Well, to be fair, Dae Hyo wouldn’t have wanted to march into those tunnels with nothing but a pickaxe to defend himself. Still, they got two shares of the spoils to his one, so they were well paid for their risk-taking.

  Two of the guards led the way into the tunnel. They were men of Ashanesland, dark-skinned and dark-haired. Though they were much shorter and more slender than Dae Hyo, he was reassured to see that they handled their swords like they knew how to use them. Dae Hyo had heard they’d served in their king’s guard, before being discharged for reasons they were tight-lipped about. He didn’t care why they’d been let go. If they could fight, they’d do.

  The miners went next, huddled together as they pulled the empty cart they hoped to fill with ore and darting nervous glances at the rocks around them. Dae Hyo brought up the rear with Edmund and Edgar. The twins were two of the most unappealing men he’d ever seen. They’d been born ugly, with coarse red hair, bulbous noses, crooked teeth and arms and legs that seemed too long for their torsos. And they’d devoted their lives to growing uglier still, picking up a collection of scars that rivalled his own, some from blades and, in Edmund’s case, a whole rash of them from the pox he’d caught the last time Smiler’s Fair passed by.