So the young man is enthusiastic. And he has an aim now-to outdo his master.
Lucretia screwed her face up again.
“Pray tell me who asked this of you, Reldo?” she demanded.
“The King himself asked me to spare what time I could. I should say now that I suspect they will be generous hours indeed, since Papelford seems to wish me to vanish entirely. It makes my apprenticeship… awkward.”
Ellamaria, I owe you my thanks.
“Very well, then,” Ebenezer said. “We shall start with what we know. Hard facts only. We need a list of the victims.”
Reldo smiled.
“I might be able to better that, sir,” he said. “The bodies have been interred in the palace crypts, on the advice of Papelford himself. That was the only place large enough to keep them. It was one of Lord Despaard’s little secrets, but it has become public- secrets are very difficult to keep in these times of fear and gossip. Shall I ask Lord Ruthven if we can see them?”
The alchemist felt his stomach roil.
That is a great deal more than I wanted. But I must be brave. I am not a useless old man just yet.
“Very well,” he replied, “though most will be skeletons by now. Ask him, and we shall begin.”
Somehow, that almost sounded decisive. Reldo must have thought the same thing.
“But before I ask him, sir, I offer you this. It is my account of Gar’rth’s history of his life in Morytania. Doric asked me to write it down for you so that you might have his own words to hand.” He handed over a parchment. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must seek Lord Ruthven.”
The young man left, followed by William and Lucretia. Ebenezer stared at the document he held in his hand, still rolled tightly.
So many answers to questions I have pondered for months. And he might already be dead.
Or worse.
Slowly he unrolled the parchment and began to read.
Two hours later, standing in the dimly lit tunnel stairwell that led to the crypt beneath the palace, Ebenezer wasn’t feeling quite so bold.
A single glance at the faces of those gathered around him told him that he he wasn’t alone.
Lord William stood away from the small group, a few steps above. On the step next to the alchemist stood Lord Ruthven, his eyes closed in despair as Papelford harangued him.
“I do not need these interruptions, Ruthven,” he spat. “My work is vital at this hour, vital to us all, and here I am dragged from my studies by the whim of an interfering old man.” He gazed at Ebenezer balefully. “What do you think you can do that we haven’t already done?”
“The key to this is in the victims, Papelford,” the alchemist said firmly. “Lord Despaard was so busy covering up the attacks that he barely catalogued the dead and missing.”
“That was my job!” The archivist complained bitterly. “Yet it very soon became apparent that there is no pattern, if that’s what you hope to identify.”
“It is,” Ebenezer persisted. “I will take up where you left off.” He stepped toward the great iron-clad double door, then turned suddenly back. “If, as you say, it is such a waste of time, then I will be the one who is wasting it, and not you. You will have ample time to do what really matters in your studies. Now the key, if you please.”
He saw Reldo standing behind his master, grinning wickedly.
“I sincerely hope you know what you are about Ruthven. Logic and reason are no guard against the magic that afflicts us,” Papelford uttered.
“Ebenezer has the King’s confidence,” the nobleman replied.
“And this young popinjay?” Papelford queried, nodding to Lord William.
“He accompanied the embassy, and he knows about, Gar’rth,” Lord Ruthven said. “He can be trusted. Now, open the door.”
“Very well. Prepare yourselves.”
The two guards stood to one side. Ebenezer saw them ready their weapons uneasily.
Papelford inserted the key in the lock and twisted it. The metal gave a shriek as the iron doors fell open. From the cavernous gloom, vague shapes appeared as the guards advanced with their torches held aloft, their swords half-drawn.
“There is no smell,” Lord William muttered at his side. The young man had readied a handkerchief to ward off the odour. “Surely, if there are dead bodies, the smell would be awful.”
Papelford smiled grimly.
“Go in, and you will see why. But be careful not to touch the corpses.”
They advanced carefully. The torches lit up the vast crypt and Ebenezer could see that dozens of extra tables had been pushed into whatever space was available among the stone sarcophagi of previous generations. Each had a white cloth thrown over it, hiding the bodies that lay beneath.
“There,” Papelford said, pointing to one that had been placed slightly apart from the rest. “That one is the first. It is the body of the King’s beloved, slain several months ago.”
Ebenezer followed Papelford slowly across the crypt.
With one swift move he pulled the cloth back.
By the gods!
He was staring at Ellamaria, or so it seemed at a quick glance. The face was pale, dead, the skin still smooth. She was dressed in white, and around her neck was a scarf that he could see hid a wound. Aside from that, she looked as if she was sleeping.
There was no sign of decomposition.
“You see now why Lord Despaard could not release the bodies to their loved ones,” Papelford explained. “Had you been at the Parliament you would have seen the disquiet that caused.”
“I don’t understand,” he muttered.
“Try another,” Papelford said, victory in his voice. “This one.” He pulled aside the cloth, and Ebenezer saw a man’s body with its throat torn out and its stomach slashed. Beside the wounds, the man looked as if he, too, was asleep. “He’s been here a few months.”
A few months? But that’s impossible.
“I see by your expression, alchemist, that you are already as baffled as the rest of us. That’s right-many of these persons have been dead for months.” Papelford looked Ebezener in the eye. Lord William gagged in sudden revulsion. Reldo whispered under his breath, his face the very picture of fear. Ebenezer shook his head.
“But they… they haven’t even begun to-”
“That’s right,” Papelford cut him off. “They have been dead for months, and yet they are not rotting. Not a one of them. When they are first attacked by the Wyrd the skin around the wound erupts black and hideous but in all these cases, after a few hours, the rot recedes and they are left like this.
“Explain that, if you can.”
25
Sulla watched the small group approach, and gave a satisfied sigh.
He had spent four days hiding outside Varrock, just within sight of the gallows tree and its decaying corpse, waiting for Straven’s men. He strained to see. There were four of them in total, with several horses and a cart. On the back of the wagon was a red flag, confirming their identity.
“That’s the signal I told Straven to use,” he said.
“Are you sure we can trust them, Sulla?” Jerrod asked. “They are a day late. Won’t they as likely hand you in as help us?”
That remains to be seen, my friend. But the reward for the Wyrd easily outweighs any reward for my capture. Of course, if the men were greedy, Sulla mused, they might attempt both, and he might find himself hanging from the tree after all.
“We stick with the plan for now,” he said. “Once the Wyrd is in our power, then you will return to Varrock and contact Barbec. I will use your existence to stave off any execution, for if I will be the only person who knows where you are, so the King will be unlikely to dispose of me.”
It is the only insurance I have.
“And what if the mercenaries decide to hand you over?”
“Then you will have to intervene, my friend. I have sent a message to Captain Rovin of the King’s Guard. He is expecting me to turn myself in within a week. I have only hinted that I will bring a gift for Varrock, yet he won’t dare dream that it is the corpse of the Wyrd.” He shifted his position and glanced at Jerrod. “You can still hear her can’t you? Her song?”