Free The Fatal Child by John Dickinson Page B

cut from it. The colour of the skin was a slate grey. Around the brow was – of all things – a simple circlet of gold!
    Padry forced himself to breathe again. His heart was thumping hard. His fingers had gripped the rough woodwork of the table, and his knuckles were white.
    ‘You are looking at Prince Talifer, son of Wulfram the Seafarer,’ said Raymonde harshly. ‘One of the seven princes who first founded the Kingdom. Do not despise him. He has lived these past three hundred years in a hell you could not imagine. Only lately has he emerged from it. He will be your guide, if you are willing to follow him.’
    ‘I – I…’ gasped Padry.
    The pale head turned towards him as if Padry were a king passing sentence. And Padry stared at it open-mouthed. Thoughts tumbled in his head: the horror of the thing before him; the names, Talifer and Wulfram, the great names of the Kingdom-founders, linked in the glory of song; and the words of the murderer beside him –
three hundred years in a hell you could not imagine
.
    He almost shrieked and fled the room. But as his hands gripped the table, another, stronger image rose in his mind – of Atti, wandering blindly into shadows. It was these things she was groping towards, these things that had suddenly leaped to life in his sight. They were calling her from the darkness. And she was going to them – feeling her way into the pit where nightmare creatures roiled and watched her come …
    Atti!
    His mouth was open. His lungs drew air. As if from far away he heard his own voice speak.
    ‘I – will follow,’ he said.

V
Tears
    t is witchcraft,’ said Lex in the darkness.
    ‘I know,’ said Padry.
    ‘The men will not do this.’
    Of course they would not. Padry was not sure how he would either. He lay wide-eyed in his blankets on the floor of the hall of Lackmere, which was the only sleeping space the house could afford him. His mind seethed with doubts.
    I will follow
, he had said, but he could not see the Path.
    Atti had gone ahead of him. He would have given his life to save hers. But could he give his soul? Witchcraft! He would have to acknowledge powers that were not the Angels. He was already acknowledging them. He might already be lost. And no power could offer him her soul in return. He was trying to bargain where no bargain could be made. What could he do?
    ‘Will you?’ he asked.
    Lex stirred in his blankets. By the light of the fireembers Padry could see his outline, propped on one elbow, looking away into the obscurities of Lackmere. Around them the hall glimmered faintly in the glow from the hearth. There was no sound but the low wind in the wall-slits and passages of the castle.
    ‘I admit I am becoming curious,’ mused Lex. ‘About this “King” who has no land, no men-at-arms as far as we know, who tells ancient princes to serve murderous knights, and to whom people from all ranks and places go in secret for judgement. I should like to see him, even if it puts my soul in peril.’
    ‘Do you think we are in peril?’ (Angels! Why could he not sound as calm as his own assistant?)
    Lex’s grunt might almost have been a chuckle. ‘As a priest, it is my duty to teach that this is the very gravest peril of all. But I wonder. Can witchcraft
never
do good in the sight of the Angels? I do not know. There is peace between Lackmere and Develin, it seems. How was this done? Also the peril to my soul seems somehow less real than the danger to my body if I return to Tuscolo without you. Lord Joyce will want my hide. So, no doubt, will a dozen others. I think I will come.’
    ‘Good. It will be a comfort to me if you do. I confess … I do not like this at all. The more I press myself into this thicket, the more its thorns drag at me.’ He frowned up at the rafters. ‘It was hard, to meet the killer of so many friends.’
    ‘I could tell. I have never seen you go so pale.’
    ‘Do you not feel the same?’
    The outline of Lex shrugged. ‘Remember I left