The Dark City Read online

  “What do you think?” He passed the flask back and chewed the hard bread. “Safe?”

  “Not safe.” Galen stared down moodily. “Those who have the nerve to live in a Maker-house are no ordinary villagers. Since the Emperor fell the land has gone wild. Robber-gangs, warlords, each one fighting the others. I’m sure this is the castle of one such.”

  “And we’re going in, blindly.”

  Galen gave a sour grin. “Going in, yes. Blindly, no.”

  The stones were warm in the autumn sun. Raffi leaned back, feeling better somehow. “Sense-lines?”

  “Around us both. Powders. And if all else fails, the box.”

  Raffi shook his head. “If there are too many of them, that won’t save us. It might be better not to go in at all.”

  “Curiosity, Raffi. Always my downfall.” Galen was rummaging in the pack; now he brought out a small black tube and held it in both hands lovingly. He spoke a prayer, and made the sign of humility. Then he put the tube to his eye and looked down.

  Like the blue box, it was a relic, a holy thing the Makers had left. They had found it in a farm north of the forest two years ago; the woman of the place had sent for them secretly, terrified the Watch would find out. Galen had blessed the farm, spoken prayers over the house, and taken the relic away. He had a secret place to keep them, a cave in the hills. Once, coming back there, they had found signs on the walls, as if some other member of the Order might have sheltered there. But the marks had been rainwashed, unclear. No one knew how many of the Order were even alive.

  Galen gazed at the tower for a long time. Then he handed the tube to Raffi, who stared. “Me?”

  “Why not. It’s time you did.”

  Nervous, Raffi took it. It was warm and miraculously smooth, made of the Makers’ strange material, not wood or stone or skin, the secret no one knew. He muttered a prayer over it, then raised it and looked in.

  Despite himself he gasped.

  The fortress was huge, close up. He saw the weeds growing from it, the cracks in the walls. The door was bricked up, a small black slot where two men loitered, talking. He moved the tube carefully; noted the deep pits, the spiked ditch, the strong fence with the walkway behind it.

  “Whoever they are, they’re well-defended.”

  “Indeed.” Galen’s voice sounded amused. “Now touch the red button.”

  He felt for it; the tube stretched itself in his fingers, the focus blurring quickly to his eyesight. Houses and a row of stalls, their goods hanging in the wind, tawdry and cheap. Dogs in the mud. A crowd of women washing clothes in tubs. Smoke. He followed it up, high into the sky, until the small moon Agramon flashed briefly across the glass. For a moment even that looked close, the smooth faint surface, with tiny formations glinting.

  “That’s enough!” Galen’s hand clasped around the tube; Raffi let go reluctantly. The Relic Master folded it into its wrappings, pushed it deep in the sack, and stood up.

  Suddenly he looked dangerous, his gaunt face tense, his eyes dark under deep brows. “Come on,” he said grimly. “Let’s go and ask for Alberic.”

  IT WAS NIGHT when they reached the gates, and the buildings glimmered behind the palisade. The men stationed outside had a lantern; they were playing dice, but they stood up soon enough.

  Galen ignored them. He strode past without a word, through the open gates, and no one challenged him. Hurrying behind, Raffi glanced back; the men were whispering. Planning to shut us in, he thought.

  They walked together between the dark houses, through the mud, the soft pools of water and dung. The stench of the place was appalling. Filthy children watched them from doorways, silent and unsmiling. The buildings were squalid and patched, the wood rotten and green with age. As he squelched through the muck, Galen muttered, “Anything?”

  “People watching. Just curious.” The sense-lines moved about them, invisible, fluid. Raffi held them with some distant part of his mind, easily, from long practice. It had been the first thing Galen had taught him.

  The fortress loomed up. Noise and smoke drifted out from it, laughter, the yells of an argument. In the ruined windows, faint lights glimmered; the strange smooth walls were dappled with moonlight.

  At the doorway, the entrance Raffi had seen through the glass, three men waited. Their weapons were in their hands—long hooked knives. They watched Galen come with a mixture of fear and something else, something disturbing. Warnings rippled in Raffi’s skull. “Galen ...”

  But Galen had walked right up to them.

  “My name is Galen Harn. I’m looking for Alberic.”

  Whatever else, they weren’t surprised. One grinned at the others. “We’ve been expecting you, keeper. Come with me.”

  Inside was dark, a maze of rooms and passages. Voices echoed ahead, or from behind closed doors; smoky torches guttered on brackets. The air was fetid and smelled worse than outside. As they walked down a long corridor, men squeezed past them, a few slaves, two girls giggling behind Raffi’s back, sending the sense-lines rippling. Looking up, he saw something on a wall, marks under the dirt, a symbol he knew. Next to it was a grid of buttons and numbers by a door. Galen stopped too and made the humility sign; Raffi knew he longed to touch it. “This is a relic,” he said to their guide. “It shouldn’t be left here.”

  The man shrugged easily. “That’s up to Alberic.”

  “Don’t you fear it?”

  “I stay away from it, keeper. The whole castle is old.”

  “Where does this door lead?”

  “Nowhere. There’s a square shaft behind it, empty. Goes right down.” He leered. “Alberic uses it as a burial pit. Knee-deep in skeletons.”

  He wasn’t joking. Raffi glanced at Galen, but the keeper’s face was dark and grim. Putting his hand in his pocket, he let the touch of the blue box comfort him.

  They came to some stairs leading up, wide but dingy. Raffi’s eyes smarted from the smoke; he stumbled on greasy bones and other rubbish in the thick straw. Gnats whined around him; fleas too, he didn’t doubt.

  The stairs rose up. Ahead in the dark, Galen climbed them steadily, his black stick tapping. Something was cooking somewhere, a rich, meaty smell that tormented Raffi like a pain. He wondered if they’d get any of it. He couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten meat.

  Finally they came to the top, a long, dim room, full of smoke. The floor was made of wooden planks, sanded smooth; it spread before them, an empty expanse.

  Their guide stood still. “Go on,” he said curtly.

  Through the smoke they saw a group of four people waiting for them, sitting and standing around a fire at the far end of the room. Galen glanced across. “Well?”

  “It doesn’t feel right.”

  The keeper shrugged. “Too late.” He stalked forward; Raffi followed him down the hall, his heart hammering with nerves.

  Talk hushed. The men and woman waiting stood up, all but one, the man in the center. As Raffi came closer, he saw to his astonishment that the man was tiny, his feet resting on a box, his body far too small for the great cushioned chair in which he sat. His face was narrow and clever, his hair stubbly; he wore a gold collar and a green quilted jacket slashed with red.

  Galen stood still, and looked down at him. “I was told to ask for Alberic,” he said gravely.

  The dwarf nodded, his eyes sharp. “You’ve found him,” he replied.

  3

  Though the Makers are gone, their relics remain. Let the keepers seek them out. For the power in them is holy.

  Litany of the Makers

  IT WAS A TRAP.

  Raffi knew that, as soon as he saw Alberic. He had a sudden vivid sense of the empty room behind him, the stairs, the maze of corridors, the gate and spikes and ditches. It was a trap, and they were well inside it.

  But Alberic only grinned. “So you’re Galen Harn. You took some finding.”

  Galen said nothing. His face was stern.

  “And a pupil!” The dwarf’s shrewd eyes glanced over Raff
i. “Bursting with sorceries, no doubt.”

  Someone sniggered behind him. Alberic leaned back into the cushions, the candlelight soft on the silk of his jerkin. “Sit down, please,” he said amiably.

  A big, black-haired man lifted a gilt chair from the wall and thumped it down in front of Galen. As he straightened up, he smirked at them and they recognized the horseman from the forest. He still wore the breastplate; close up it looked thin, pitted with rust.

  Galen ignored the chair. Someone edged a small stool toward Raffi, and he gave it a longing glance but stayed standing.

  “We came here,” Galen said ominously, “because of your message. A relic . . .”

  “Ah yes!” The small man put his tiny fingers together and grinned over them. “I’m afraid there might have been a slight misunderstanding there.” He gave the briefest of nods. The sense-lines snapped; Raffi found himself being shoved onto the stool by a girl in snaky armor, and glancing around he saw they had forced Galen to sit too, the black-bearded man and another standing over him.

  For a moment the keeper’s eyes were black with fury. Then he seemed to control himself; he leaned back, thrusting his legs out.

  “You seem determined to make us comfortable.”

  “It’s not that. I don’t like looking up.”

  They stared at each other. Finally the dwarf’s grin widened. He spread his hands. “It’s like this, keeper. I’m the power here. My body may be puny, but my brain’s sharp, sharper than any, and my lads and lasses here know Alberic’s plans and Alberic’s cunning bring the most gold. This is Sikka, Godric, whom you’ve already met, and Taran. My rogues, my children.”

  He blew a kiss at them; the girl Sikka laughed, and Taran, a man in a dirty blue coat, gave a snort of derision. Carefully, Raffi moved his hand an inch toward his pocket.

  “Gold.” Galen nodded. “So you’re thieves, then.”

  There was a tense silence. Raffi went cold all over. Then Alberic shook his head. “For a wise man you have a blunt tongue, Galen. As it is, this time I’ll let you keep it.” He leaned over and poured himself a drink from a delicate glass container on a round table beside him, lit by tall candles. The goblet glittered; it was crystal, almost priceless. Raffi tightened his dry lips. Slowly Alberic drank, leaning back on the plump cushions.

  “The relic,” Galen growled.

  “There is no relic. At least—” The small man sat up, looking around in mock surprise. “I don’t think so. Is there?”

  The girl laughed. “You’re a cruel man, Alberic,” she said, coming around and gripping the back of his carven chair. She stared at Galen in amusement. “Did you really believe that we’d have a terror of relics, like the old fools in the villages?”

  Galen said nothing; it was Alberic who answered. “Oh no,” he said softly, watching the Relic Master. “Oh no, my pet, he’s a deeper one than that. Very deep. I think he knew what he was coming into all along. I think he knew very well . . . ”

  For a moment the dwarf’s voice was so thoughtful that Raffi had the sudden sense he had guessed Galen’s bitter secret, and his anxiety sent the sense-lines rippling, so that he had to fight to hold on to them. Alberic watched silently, head on one side. Suddenly his voice was sharp. “Let me see some sorcery, keeper. I need to know you’re who you say you are, not some spy of the Watch.”

  Galen’s hands tightened, the fingers clenching on the chair. Raffi saw them uneasily.

  “I don’t do sorcery—as you call it—on the orders of anyone.” His face was proud and his dark stern eyes held Alberic’s. “I’m a Relic Master of the Order of keepers, and the power I have is holy. Not for fireside tricks.”

  Alberic nodded. “But the Order is finished,” he said sweetly. “Broken, outlawed. Dead.”

  “The power remains.” Galen leaned back in his chair, legs stretched out. He had the look of a man playing chess, playing for his life, on an invisible board.

  “To open and close,” Alberic murmured, “build and destroy, see forward and back.”

  Raffi looked surprised; Galen didn’t. The dwarf grinned at them. “One of your Order was once . . . in the way, on one of our raids. Unfortunately some of my rogues were a little enthusiastic. The only thing he had worth stealing was the Litany of the Makers, written in code on parchment. I worked it out and read it. An amusement for the long winter nights . . .”

  Galen said nothing, his eyes cold with anger.

  “The boy, then!” Alberic waved at Raffi. “Let the boy do something. You don’t object to that?”

  Galen shrugged. “If he wants to. He knows little. A few effects of light that might amuse you.” He turned a cold look on Raffi. “Do your best for our audience.”

  Reluctantly Raffi stood up, catching the hidden message. They all stared at him, and he felt nervous and furious with Galen. But then, he’d had no choice.

  He stepped out and pushed the stool away with his foot. Then he raised both hands, spoke the words in his mind, and let his third eye open, the eye of the Makers.

  In the air he made the seven moons, each hanging from nothing, the small red Pyra, pitted Cyrax, the icy globe of Atterix, all the sisters of the old Book. They glowed in the dark room, and beyond them he glimpsed Alberic, watching intently, his face bright with the dappled lights.

  “Very pretty,” the dwarf murmured. “Most pleasing.”

  But he hardly seemed impressed. Uneasy, Raffi set the globes spinning. They moved in long ellipses, made the complex orbits of the moons, each leaving a glinting thread of light that interwove into a net of colors, purples and reds and blues. And each had its own note of music that hummed, building into harmonies that rose and gathered in the dim hall, an underthrob of sound like the voices of strange beings. He was sweating now, and there was a pain behind his eyes, but he kept the moons spinning till the wordless song rose to a crescendo of exquisite beauty, and then he let it fade, slowly, into silence. The moons became ghosts of light. Then they were gone.

  “Charming,” Alberic said drily.

  Sweating, his head thumping, Raffi glanced at Galen. He hadn’t moved but sat still, arms folded. “Is that enough for you?”

  “Certainly. No Watchman could do that. With such a pupil you must be who you say you are.”

  “You never doubted that.”

  Alberic grinned. “No.”

  “So what do you want? We’re not worth robbing.”

  There was silence. Wearily Raffi sat down; no one took any notice of him. He slid his hand into his pocket and gripped the blue box. The tension in the room was taut as a rope; he could feel it tighten his nerves.

  For the first time Alberic didn’t seem amused. He drank from his glass and flashed a glance at the girl, Sikka. She nodded, her long plaited hair swinging.

  The small man put his glass down. “Revenge. I want revenge.”

  “On us?”

  Alberic smiled dangerously. “Don’t pretend to be stupid.” For a moment he fingered his golden collar, then he looked up and said fiercely, “You called us thieves. Indeed we are. What does a thief hate most, wise one?”

  “To be robbed.” Galen’s voice was somber, his hawk-face a mask of shadows.

  “Indeed.” Alberic looked at him, impressed. “Let me tell you about it. Two months ago, a wandering Sekoi came to this place. He was one of the ones who tell stories: a lazy, mocking creature. Brindled gray and brown. A zigzag under one eye.”

  Raffi edged closer. Any mention of the Sekoi fascinated him. He had only seen a few of them, years ago when he’d been too small and had run away, thinking they would eat him. The Sekoi were the others, the different race. They were taller than men, and thin, their sharp faces furred like cats, their long fingers streaked in tribal markings. People said it was the Sekoi who had made the cromlechs, eons ago, before the Makers came. They had stories about that time, or so Galen said. The Order had had texts of a few, laboriously copied in the great library in the tower of Karelian. All dust now.

  “He fooled us,�
�� Alberic said waspishly. “Hung around, played with the children. We threw him out but he came back. He prattled, dreamed, sang foreign songs. We thought he was harmless.”

  “The Sekoi make an art of that,” Galen muttered. He was looking at the jug of wine. Alberic noticed, and grinned.

  “As you say. All the time he was learning about us, where the strongrooms were, who held the keys, what the raids brought in.” He shook his head. “There was plenty of that, believe me. Gold, silver, clothes, wool, wine. This place is well stuffed.”

  “I can believe it.” Galen leaned back, pushing the long hair from his face. “And so he robbed you.”

  The dwarf glared. “He gave a performance. Down in the courtyard. None of us had seen a Sekoi work.” He leaned forward. “No disrespect to you, boy, but he was astounding. He told a story, and the things he spoke of appeared, and I was inside the story, we all were; it happened all around us. It was some tale of castles and battles and gods who rode from the sky on silver horses, and believe me, keeper, I lived every minute of it! I felt the rain, the sparks from the swords, had to run out of the way in case I was crushed.” He leaned back, remembering. “It was no illusion. It was real. Some of my people were injured in that dream. Two never came out of it.”

  “And when it ended?”

  Alberic’s eyes were hooded with wrath. “The fires out, the courtyard dark, the guards asleep. And the strongroom door wide open.”

  “What did he take?” Raffi asked eagerly.

  “Gold. What do they ever want? A box of gold marks. A fortune!”

  “You want it back.”

  “I want him!” Alberic leaped up suddenly, shoving Godric aside and prowling, a tiny, hunched figure, among the candles. “I want that filthy dream-peddler! What I’ll do to him!” He spun, his eyes bright. “And then with him! Imagine the work he could do for me, the use he’d be to me. I want him brought back, relic-man. And I want you to get him.”

  Galen sat still, his black hair and clothes making him a figure of darkness. Raffi knew he was tense, uncertain.