The Prince of Lies (Night's Masque, #3)(30)

They dismounted and tied their horses to one of the sturdier saplings. Mal drew his rapier; if Sandy was right, the devourers had come from here originally, and who knew but that more could have escaped through the reopened wound in the dreamlands? It should be safe enough in daylight, but the sun was sinking and they did not have much time. He waved Sandy behind him and approached the entrance to the manorhouse.

The front door had fallen in and its remnants rotted in the damp upland climate. Within, broken bricks and roof-tiles covered the floor in a thick layer, and a damp, mushroomy smell filled the air. Mal cast about him, all senses alert, but saw no sign of devourers.

They explored the rest of the manorhouse, but found only rot and destruction giving way to nature.

“Shawe,” Mal muttered under his breath. “I know that name. John Shawe? Robert Shawe? Richard? William? Thomas?”

He ran through all the names he could think of, until–

“Matthew Shawe.” That was it. Northumberland’s protégé, friend of the astronomer Thomas Harriot. He beckoned Sandy over. “I know the son of the man who owned this house.”

“You’re sure?”

“He would have been but a child when the place was abandoned, but yes, I would wager good money on it. He is an alchemist; a pursuit he picked up from his father, perhaps?”

“Our people have knowledge far beyond that of Christian scholars. Though how alchemy relates to what happened in the dreamlands…” Sandy looked thoughtful. “There should be traces here.”

“Can you not feel them?”

“I can try.”

“Do it. I’ll keep watch, just in case.”

Sandy crouched in the rubble with his back against one of the crumbling walls and closed his eyes. Long minutes passed, and eventually Sandy’s eyes began to move under their lids. He was dreaming. Mal waited impatiently, half an eye on the sun sinking behind the far wall. They had to leave soon, or–

A sharp intake of breath made him whirl, blade at the ready. Sandy was staring up at him.

“It’s close. I felt…” He pointed towards the rear of the building. “There.”

Mal held out a hand and hauled his brother to his feet, and they made their way quickly through the ruins. At the far end of a group of outbuildings stood one that had remained surprisingly intact.

“Of course,” Mal said. “They would have kept it away from the main house. Too much risk of fire.”

He heaved open the damp-swollen door. The dank air smelt faintly of charcoal and something else, bitter and metallic, but nothing could be seen within. Mal took out his flint and tinder, and improvised a torch from a piece of scrap timber that was drier than the rest. Holding his rapier in a middle guard to defend against an attack from any quarter, he advanced slowly over the threshold.

The building was a workshop of some kind, with thick walls and a hearth at the far end, and wooden shelving along each long wall. Most of the shelves had collapsed, leaving heaps of broken glass and earthenware at their feet, held together by a sticky mass that sprouted clumps of pale fungi. A table in the centre of the workshop had also collapsed in on itself. Mal crunched across the floor to the fireplace, and noted the oven-like structure to one side, its bronze door crusted with verdigris. Sandy stooped and picked something out of the rubble.

“Look at this.” He held it out to Mal.

Torchlight glinted on a glass rod with vivid blue crystals fused to one end.

“Alchemy indeed,” Mal said softly.

“But to what end?” Sandy replied. “Alchemy has many uses, but it cannot affect the dreamlands.”

“Iron can. It cuts off our souls from that place, after all.”

“You think they were searching for a way around that?”

“Perhaps,” Mal said. “That could explain how the devourers got through. Though if the alchemist succeeded, why didn’t Selby use his magic to escape, or at least call upon his friends for aid?”

“Maybe he did and they failed to get there in time. Or perhaps Shawe is still searching.”

Mal wrapped the glass rod in his handkerchief and stowed it inside his doublet.

“Whatever happened, I need to get back to London and find out more.”



Before Mal could make preparations to leave Rushdale, snow fell again, sealing them in for the best part of a month. The delay irked him, but he forced himself to at least appear cheerful, for his wife’s sake as well as Kit’s. The boy was growing fast, and revelled in the combined attention of his father and uncle. He clearly preferred the latter, but so far that was the only sign that the soul within him was Kiiren’s. Mal had been worried that Kit might start babbling in Vinlandic or the ancient skrayling tongue before he learned English, and frighten the servants into thinking him a changeling, but Sandy assured him that it would be some years before Kiiren’s memories started to assert themselves.

“It won’t take as long as it did with me, thank goodness,” Sandy said one afternoon, as they sat by the fire watching Kit and Susanna playing peekaboo over the back of a dining chair. “His soul is strong, and his death was less horrible than ours.”

“It was horrible enough,” Mal said, trying to banish the image of Kiiren screaming as the devourer tore out his guts.

“But we were there with him, at the end. That makes a big difference.”