On each side deserted buildings rose, every ledge and architrave edged with snow. Light showers of it drifted down on him. Trudging along the street he saw all the doors were barred, the windows shuttered. In the houses nothing moved but spiders.
“This whole area is empty,” he said uneasily.
“Good.” Knee-deep in a drift, Galen dragged his coat tighter. “No one to bother us.”
There were wide steps leading under the portico of the shrine; Galen crunched up them and tried the door. It was locked.
The wind moaned over the rooftops. Raffi looked back nervously up the lonely street.
“Around the back.” Galen half turned, then stopped. There was a broken panel in the base of the door. He crouched and pulled more of it away. It left a hole.
Not a big hole.
Galen looked up.
“Don’t tell me,” Raffi muttered. He dropped on his hands and knees and peered in.
The darkness smelled of damp, a strange musty stench.
“Don’t take long,” Galen said.
Raffi laughed mirthlessly. Then he squeezed his head and shoulders through the gap, squirming in. There might well be traps, he knew. Drawing his knees up he crawled farther and straightened, trying to see in the dimness. From the cracked dome a pale snow-light drifted down.
“All right?”
“So far.”
“Take a quick look. I doubt there’ll be anything, but it’s possible. I’ll watch the street.”
Carefully, Raffi groped in the dim interior. Rubble lay strewn on the marble floors; he tripped over smashed furniture and a great charred heap of wood where someone once had made a bonfire. Reaching into it he pulled out a broken statue of Theriss, her face half gone. Chilled, he thrust it back.
Something slithered over the floor.
He turned, listening.
Around the building the wind howled, confusing his sense-lines. All he could feel was decay and loss, a great bitterness of despair. A door was slamming far down in the corridors below, and bleak daylight pointed one long finger through the broken dome, lighting soiled frescoes of Soren and Flain high on the walls.
Their eyes had been hacked out.
Raffi clutched the fingers of his gloves. He was desperate to get out. But first he had to look.
Between snow-dusted rubble he clambered to the apse. Here was where the relics would have been, stored in gilded chests around the curved wall. But most of the chests were smashed, the floor below them shattered as if some great battering ram had been used. The last one was intact, but opening it he saw nothing but a mass of darkness inside.
A small black moth fluttered out and landed on his sleeve. Wind rattled the doors.
“Galen?” he whispered.
No answer.
He brushed the moth away but it drifted back, and two more with it. They were coming from inside the chest. Wondering if anything was at the bottom, he put his hands in.
The blackness rustled.
With a gasp he jerked back and saw it was made of moths, millions of them. In a great cloud they swirled out, fluttering onto him, clinging to him as he beat them away. They were on his face, his neck, and as he squirmed and dragged them off, he felt to his horror all their millions of wings swarming over his mind, clustering like a weight, a rustling darkness piling on top of him. He tried to yell, but the sound was muffled; he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. The moths smothered him; as he fell to his knees, the seething mass of furred abdomens and tiny antennae crawled into his clothes and sleeves, into his mouth and nose so he coughed and choked on crumpled bodies, their wings clogging his throat.
“Galen!” he screamed, sending the mind-call out, but the moths smothered that too; there were so many of them, their tiny malevolent minds hissing with the instinct to bite and suck. He beat feebly now, writhing, curling up on the floor knowing only the great mass clustering all over him; he was a blackness of moths, more and more of them till his mind darkened and his choked breath stopped, pulling him down a warm tunnel where he could sleep, deep in the weight of wings.
“Raffi!”
The yell was in his head.
Light broke over him, sense-lines like whips of pain that made his whole body convulse and jerk and cough. He was hauled up roughly, yanked upright, bitten and sore, retching.
All around him the air swirled. Moths filled it like dark snow, fluttering, in his eyes and hair, resettling even as Galen dragged him to the smashed door. His face and neck stung, he felt sick and giddy; but as he heaved himself out, the cold wind shocked his mind into clearness.
Galen stumbled after him, a drift of moths crisping from his clothes.
They ran down the steps and crumpled into the snow.
Raffi spat out fragments of wings, coughed them up, shuddering with cold and shock.
“Dear God!” the keeper raged. He staggered up, black hair blown in his eyes by the wind. He looked wild and furious; Raffi grabbed his coat.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Whatever you’re thinking of. Don’t.”
Power cracked down his arm, sharp blue sparks of it.
“I should burn it,” Galen snarled. “As it ought to be burned! Not leave it like this, defiled, a nest of Kesthorrors.”
“And bring every Watchman in the town down on us!”
Galen clenched his fists. “I could burn the whole town, Raffi! All of it!” He glanced down and it was the Crow that Raffi saw, a black restless shadow enveloping them both, charging the wind with energy.
“I know,” Raffi breathed. “I know you could. But it would be wrong. We don’t want vengeance, Galen.”
Galen closed his eyes and wrapped the coat tightly around himself. “Sometimes,” he said, his voice hoarse and bitter, “sometimes we do, Raffi. More than anything.”
IT WAS DARK when they got back to the inn, the wind roaring now, gusting them against walls. Galen was limping and they were both in pain from the bites of the moths, even though Raffi had tried rubbing melted snow on to cool the irritation. With nightfall the town was deserted, all doors and windows barred against the rising storm, but to their surprise the inn room was full.
Some sort of urgent discussion was going on. Many of the people looked like refugees, newly arrived. As Galen and Raffi pushed their way in, they found themselves at the back of a crowd, the heat of the room stifling after the chill air. A great fire burned in the hearth, and a stout man on a stool next to it was talking into an attentive silence. Raffi slammed the door, forcing back the wind. A cold draft roared the flames; a few people turned and looked at him.
Galen moved quickly to the staircase opposite, but Solon reached up from a small table by the window and caught his arm smoothly.
“Thank God,” he whispered. “Where have you been?”
“Busy,” Galen growled. “Where’s Marco?
“Gone to look for you. I think you should listen to this.”
“I’m not . . .”
“Please, Galen. It’s not good.”
“The filthy Order,” the man by the fire announced crisply, “have got to be responsible.”
Galen turned instantly.
“You’ve no proof of that,” a woman said bitterly.
“What other explanation is there! The weather’s gone mad. You’ve all seen that. Now the Watch, have they got the power to do something like this? Do they have the knowledge?”
The crowd murmured. Someone waved for more ale; the woman, Emmy, brought out a fresh jug.
“Who is he?” Galen snarled.
“Some troublemaker. Keep calm. It’s just Watch propaganda.”
But Galen wasn’t calm. Raffi knew that.
“I think we should go upstairs,” he said, pulling Solon’s sleeve urgently.
“Be quiet,” Galen snapped. “I want to hear this.”
“The Order are sorcerers.” The stout man spat into the fire. “And believe me, there are still plenty of them, despite the talk. They have all manner of secret hideouts. And spies everywhere.”