The Alchemist of Souls (Night's Masque, #1)(80)

"Come," Kiiren said, holding out a hand.

Now they were walking along the beach in the bright light of noon, the sea at their right hand, low wooded hills to the left. An ochre-sailed ship stood at anchor offshore.

"You remember this place," Kiiren said, grinning.

Mal realised with a start that the skrayling was now his own height, with the fangs and tattoos typical of his kind. And yet he was the same Kiiren, Mal knew it in his bones.

"This is a dream," he whispered.

"Of course." The skrayling held out his arms. "Remember."

"No."

Mal backed away, the pebbles crunching underfoot. Blood began to pour from the skrayling's open mouth. Mal turned to run, but the trunk of the tree blocked his path. No, not this. He could not let Kiiren see this…

Digging his fingernails into the bark he began to drag himself upwards, his lower body a dead weight, as if his legs were paralysed. The bark scraped the skin from his belly but he felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing but the stars overhead, impossibly distant. Only a little further. He grasped a branch and tried to haul himself up, but it snapped under his weight and he fell, twisting in the air, and landed on hands and knees on the hard stone floor.

"Erishen? Amayi, is it you?"

Mal's eyes snapped open. They were back in the tower room. Was he awake now? He sat back on his haunches, blinking away the last shreds of the nightmare. Amayi? Where had he heard that word before?

Kiiren leant across the brazier, his eyes reflecting the lamplight like a cat's.

"? amayi, niníhami anosenno. Einotabe'? mall?."

It sounded like – No. That could not be.

"Mall?," Mal whispered. That was the word he and Sandy had used to mean "people, grown-ups". He had always assumed it was a play on his own name. Sandy had made it all up to entertain him. Hadn't he?

"Lerr – lerr?'a ohilanno," Kiiren said, his voice trembling. You know my words.

"H?." Yes.

The skrayling gave a cry of joy. Crossing the small space between them he flung his arms around Mal, who gritted his teeth against the pain of his still-fresh wounds. Kiiren was babbling in the strange language, between hoarse sobs. All Mal could catch was "people" and something about "dead", and over and over that name, Erishen. He stroked the skrayling's spiky black hair awkwardly, his mind a whirl of confusion. What was going on here? Who was Erishen, and why did Sandy know the skraylings' tongue? More importantly, who was dead?

Mal pulled himself free of Kiiren's embrace and got unsteadily to his feet.

"Erishen! Amayi!"

Ignoring Kiiren's protests he staggered out of the tower and across the dining room. Too hot in here! He opened the outer door and drew in a deep breath of cool, moist evening air. He stepped out onto the landing, towards the stair that led down into the outer ward, but the stones buckled and twisted before his eyes. Clutching the balustrade he sank down onto the top step and pressed his cheek against the blissfully cold stone.

Sandy. Had Kiiren attempted some kind of scrying through him, and seen – but he had visited Sandy only yesterday, surely the fit had not been fatal? Mal jumped to his feet and stumbled down the stairs.

The more he moved about, the better his command of his limbs became. By the time he reached the main gates, he felt almost whole again. He hammered on the ancient timbers.

"Let me out!"

He had to get to Sandy, find out what was happening–

A door opened in the passageway under the tower, and a guard poked his head out.

"What do you want?"

"I– I need to leave."

"No one leaves the castle after curfew. Lieutenant's orders."

"But–"

"No one. Now clear off before I report you."

Mal turned around and headed back the way he had come. Before he had gone ten yards the heavens opened and rain began to fall. Seconds later, thunder rumbled in the distance.

Mal ran for the meagre shelter of the archway linking the ambassador's lodging to the Wakefield Tower. Beyond it was a garden, one of the many remnants of the Tower's former role as a royal palace. Rose bushes drooped in the downpour, water dripping from their leaves into the puddles that stretched across the gravel paths. White petals streaked with crimson fell to the ground under the onslaught and melted into slush. He stared at the squat rectangle of the Cradle Tower, where the welcoming glow of a fire gilded the windowpanes of a guardroom on the lower floor. Perhaps he could find a way out through the sally-port?

He skirted the garden and its betraying gravel, then went down a short flight of steps into the sunken pathway around the foot of the tower. Rainwater pooled on the worn paving and lapped around the toes of his boots. He edged towards the gateway, ducking down as he passed the window.

Sounds came from within: the idle conversation of bored men, the thump of a tankard on wood. He scouted all the way round, but the only exit was through the gate in the tower. Barred, of course, and most likely locked. Even if he got out, there was Bedlam itself to break into. And if Monkton caught him trying to escape… He shivered. The weals on his back were stinging again beneath their sodden bandages.

His mind was clearing now. What was he doing running around the castle half naked in the rain? Sandy was fine, he told himself. He had made a foolish assumption based on a few words of a language that just happened to resemble a childhood game, when his mind was fuddled with the drugged smoke. A misunderstanding, nothing more. Certainly not worth risking arrest – and another flogging – for.