Spectred Isle (Green Men #1)(73)

“It’s a balance,” Saul said softly, or felt the words whispered through him. “And one thing shifted.” Like scales, he realised, like a finely calibrated balance, when a dribble of sand could destroy the equilibrium. The weight on the Master under the water had become just a little less, not quite enough. “It was lead.”

“Are you sure?” Randolph said sharply.

“Yes. Just enough weight. It was—” He felt the dull metal, cold and ridged in his hand, wedged into a crevice between the stones to keep the well. It had weighed just a few ounces, or if you considered its real weight, it had been heavier than any church.

“We need to weigh him down more,” he said desperately. “With lead. Heavy lead. Not metal, but meaning, do you understand?” Please understand, he thought, because I bloody don’t. “A sacrifice. They made a lead sacrifice, over him, and that was what held him.”

“A lead sacrifice,” Sam said. “What the devil does that mean? I don’t mind seeing if I can nick some off a church roof, if you think—”

“Not needed,” Randolph said. “We have to get to the well right now. Chop chop, no time to lose.”

“How?” Saul demanded. “The island is seething with grendels, and your friends are busy on the bridge!”

“You can’t use Wayland’s words again,” Sam said, warning in his voice.

“I don’t need to. Saul’s the Walker. He’ll walk.”

“What?” Saul demanded. “Can you not see them?”

“We’re going to walk to the well, you and I,” Randolph said. “Come on. Do you happen to have anything handy in that bag, Sam?”

He took something Sam offered, then squirmed on the branch, turning. Saul said, “Wait. I can’t—!”

Randolph grinned bloodily at him. “Light my way.”

He dropped to the ground. Howls erupted from multiple throats. Saul said, desperately, “Leoht!”

The light came—fainter, though, much fainter. His own failure, or Camlet Moat losing strength as the sleeper woke? No time to tell. Randolph had both hands out in a fighting stance, and a blade gleaming in one. He lunged at a fen-grendel in a way that suggested his war hadn’t been entirely occult, and another dropped at the same time, vines sprouting from its mouth.

Saul swung himself down to land on the welcoming earth, Sam right behind him. “How do I do the leaves?”

“Focus on the light,” Randolph said. “Claim your ground, ignore interruptions. Lead on, Walker, we’re with you.”

Saul walked. It ought to have been a few steps to the pit and the ravaged well, but he could feel the stretch of time and place in his mind. Camlet Moat was still there, wounded but living under his feet, and Saul breathed into it. I’m here. I’m with you. We stand.

Randolph and Sam were a green presence beside and behind him. Saul didn’t look round, fixing his gaze on the path to the well, but he had the impression of bright eyes, leafy faces in the corner of his vision. Jacks in the Green, Green Men, part of a deep knowledge so ingrained he’d never known he had it. He walked in the yellow-green dappled light and ignored the thumps, shouts, and occasional bubbling scream.

Then they were at the pit, staring down into the endless black hole of the well, and Saul woke up.

It stank here, of fen-mud and weed and ancient dry rot, and the earth felt as though it were holding its breath, held in tension by the malevolent force under the water. It was gathering strength, and soon it would break its bonds and spring.

The discarded flashlight still lay on the ground, beaming white light. Sam picked it up, shone it onto a fen-grendel crawling over the side of the pit, and used it to hit the creature an extremely solid blow on the head. He clobbered it twice more before it fell back in; he slid down after it, shouting a word that sprayed earth and made the grendel scream. “Come on!”

Saul followed, slithering and slipping down the loose earth. There was another fen-thing emerging from the well mouth; Randolph took a long stride forward, dodged a flailing claw, and stabbed it in the eye with disturbing competence. “Right, Saul. Quick!”

“What?” Saul said desperately. “I don’t know what to do!”

“Lead sacrifice. Your bullet. Throw it in.”

Saul’s hand went up to his neck. “But—”

“No gun will save you. We don’t need a gun for that bullet. It’s lead, and it’s hung between life and death if ever metal has. And don’t tell me it’s not heavy, I’ve never felt a heavier thing. That’s your sacrifice, Walker. Give it to the Moat, and hold the bastard down while we put this right.”

Saul reached for the clasp. His fingers were shaking. He couldn’t even remember how it worked; he’d never taken the chain off. He twined two fingers in the metal links and pulled.

“Any time you like,” Sam said calmly. “Only there’s rather a lot of them gathering round the edges.”

Saul tugged again and this time the chain broke. He looked at the lump of lead in his hand. It meant death and shame and failure, loss and betrayal, unspeakable, unbearable grief which he’d lived in order to carry.

Randolph was right. It was so heavy he could barely lift it.

“I hope it nails you,” he whispered to Geoffrey de Mandeville, and dropped it into the well.