Spectred Isle (Green Men #1)(69)

“This is my fault,” Saul said, a great hollow feeling spreading through him. “She gave me the responsibility, and this—”

“Is their fault, whoever they are,” Randolph said. “We don’t have time for guilt. What did they take?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Theresa told you the deep secrets. What’s happening here?”

“I don’t know.” Saul’s head was spinning.

“What were they digging for?” Randolph demanded. “What were they after? What did they take? All right, start with this: did they let de Mandeville out?”

The dark closed in on Saul. Utter darkness, impenetrably black. Pain in his head, an odd sweet metallic taste in his mouth, and through it all, the acid burn of wanting. He wanted to live, he wanted to die, he wanted to kill, and kill, and kill again. He wanted everything, all of it. To have empresses and prelates begging for his favour; to make the walls weep blood as he passed for fear of him. He would be the master of city and country and king, had to be, because nothing yet had been enough to satisfy the great raging hungry pit inside him, and he would throw broken bodies and ruined lives into it again and again until it was filled at last, if he could only get out of the soft enclosing metal and the dark—

“Saul!” Randolph had him by the arm. “Saul?”

“De, de— Him.” Saul might have fallen except for Randolph’s grip. “In lead. They wrapped him in lead and he was still alive, or at least, something of him was, and it was dark.”

“Rotten for him,” Randolph said, with no trace of sympathy. “And?”

“I don’t know. I just felt him. Grotesque, vile. Greed beyond belief, greed well past the point of madness. He had a hole where his heart should be, and—the lead, the lead kept him in, and... Something’s missing.” He could feel it, the enclosing prison around a hateful soul, and the dawning awareness that somewhere a door had opened. “Oh God. I think whatever they took might have been keeping him there, in the dark. I think he’s waking up.”

“Well,” Randolph said. “Shit.”

“How bad is this likely to be?” Sam asked.

“If he’s been at the heart of Camlet Moat for eight centuries? That old, that angry, and the sworn Master of London?”

“We’d better put him back to sleep then,” Sam said. “Any idea how?”

“What did they take, Saul?” Randolph gave his arm a shake. “Think.”

“I don’t know. It was keeping him in, it was—it was in the well.”

Randolph scrambled down the slope of the pit, towards the black hole of the well shaft. “They took out the lining stones. Piled them up, there. Were they looking for something set in the wall?”

“Can you see anything?” Sam slid into the pit, joining Saul. The flashlight was a comfort.

“Not to make out. It’s all absolutely buggered. Wait a moment, what’s that?” Randolph knelt in the loose, sloping soil, and leaned forward cautiously.

“Don’t fall in,” Sam said.

“Thank you, I shall try not— Run!”

That was a savage bark, as Randolph hurled himself away from the pit, landing on his arse. Saul started towards him instinctively. Sam grabbed his arm, shouting, “He said run!” as Randolph scrambled backwards, trying to get his footing. He was still on the ground when a great long dark shape emerged from the mouth of the well.

It looked in the beam of light like the waving frond of a river-plant or the ragged limb of some great spider, and Saul stared in blank horror as it moved. It fixed itself in the earth, a second one came out, and the head and shoulders of a long-armed fen-grendel rose out of Camlet Moat’s holy well.

“Forthlaede!” Randolph bellowed, and ivy ripped out of the ground. “Run, you stupid sods!”

“Get on, then!” Sam shouted back, shoving Saul up the slope. Loose earth slipped and slid under his fingers and the toes of his shoes. “Get up, Saul! Take the torch!”

Saul rolled onto the edge of the pit, reaching for the torch with one hand, offering the other to Sam, who ignored it and vaulted up. Randolph was edging towards them, not taking his eyes from the mouth of the well, which was looped with greenery. Saul thought he could see it heave, as though the unnatural growth of ivy were a web and the thing struggling under it a huge insect.

“Get up here,” he snapped at Randolph. “Come on!” He reached out. Randolph took his hand and scrambled inelegantly up and out. “Now what? Can you keep it in?”

“Unfortunately, dear boy, it’s not an it. It’s a them. Hence my alarm.”

“Oh God,” Sam said. “How many?”

“All of them.”

There was a cracking sound from the well, the splintering of green wood. Saul trained the flashlight on the well mouth, revealing a tangled mass of greenery and long, clawed limbs scrabbling at every crack.

“That’s the Master of London’s horde,” Randolph said. “Murder, torture, and rapine a speciality, and they go all the way down. We need to plug that hole.”

As if on cue, the net of ivy heaved and split. Dark forms heaved, clambering out, and marsh-stink rolled over the watching men.

“Leoht,” Randolph ordered, but the light was far less bright than Saul remembered from the castle, and the fen-grendels gibbered, but didn’t flee.