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THE
ASSASSIN OF GLEAM
by
James Norcliffe
Read
Chapter One
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It
was dusk over the city of Gleam, but because the city was
huddled beneath a range of hills behind which
the blood-red sun was setting already, most of the streets
and low buildings were gripped in a fist of darkness. Only
the waters of the harbour and the quays to the north were still
lit crimson by the sun’s last lingering rays. Crouched
against the iron balustrade of the upper platform of his tower,
the Markgrave of Gleam scanned the mean streets and squares
with his telescope. Soon it would be winter and at this time
of the evening the lanterns would be lit, but now in late autumn
grey figures merged into the deeper grey of cobbles and stone.
His nightly watch had become a tiring and frustrating business.
Evan Twyll, the Markgrave, was the third of his line. Like
his father, and his grandfather before him, he ruled Gleam
with a cruel and unyielding authority, as if it were his personal
kingdom – which, in a sense, ever since the empire had
crumbled, it was. Such far-flung outposts had long retreated
behind their walls and palisades and were beholden only to
themselves or to whichever ruler managed to hold sway. The
Twylls of Gleam had been more successful than most. Constant
suspicion and the application of erratic terror had maintained
their rule. Their people had been cowed and beaten, and such
a network of spies and informants existed that none dared whisper
the word ‘revolt’ or even think the idea ‘rebellion’.
Until recently. Of late there had been whispers of hope, whispers
of a change, and word of such whisperings, muted as they were,
had reached the ears of the ever-vigilant agents of Gleam.
There had been graffiti, too. Walls had been daubed with a
simple whitewashed message; the sides of the small arched bridges
had been chalked with the same single message. The word was
MAIDEN, and what it signified had only been gradually made
clear to the Markgrave’s spies. They tended to discount
its importance until, like mushrooms whose spore had been liberated
by soft rain, the words began to proliferate; and as the words
proliferated there had come a brightening in people’s
eyes, a straightening of backs and a readiness to suggest,
behind a discreet hand, what could never have been suggested
before: the end of the reign of the Twylls.
MAIDEN. The word was everywhere.
‘What does it mean?’ the Markgrave demanded, when he was
finally told of this unprecedented phenomenon. Evan Twyll had
lost his left eye in a fencing accident as a youth. He had
a livid scar that stretched from his jaw-line to the vacant
socket which over the years had clenched shut and gathered
so that it looked like a length of dried fig. Whenever he wanted
to hide his thoughts from his audience he presented this clenched
socket to them. It was ugly and anonymous and invariably reduced
even the most confident of his followers to nervousness.
He did so now, and Martin Sculldung, the Captain of the Watch
who had been charged to inform the Markgrave of what was going
on, swallowed. ‘I’m not sure what it means,’ he
replied, then, rightly sensing that this would be considered
an inadequate answer, added, ‘but I think we would be
unwise to ignore it.’
‘Is it the same hand?’ the Markgrave asked.
Martin Sculldung shook his head. ‘I don’t believe
so, sir. The word seems to be written in many different hands.
I don’t think any one person is responsible.’
‘Hmmph!’
The fig-like socket stared sightlessly at him, and the captain
instinctively looked down. ‘You must know more than this,
man!’ the Markgrave insisted irritably, and once again
the captain swallowed. He did know more, but was extremely
nervous of telling the Markgrave. It was a dilemma. Telling
him risked one of the Markgrave’s famous rages, something
he’d give his pension to avoid; and yet if he did not
tell him and was later found to be derelict in his duty, it
would be far more than his pension he’d be risking. The
citadel beneath the tower was a rambling building of small
chambers and winding ways, and beneath the citadel, as the
captain well knew, were smaller, danker, darker chambers furnished
with chains, shackles, and branding irons and from whose stench-filled
darkness few guests ever returned.
The hurried vision of the dungeons decided the captain. ‘There
seems to be some story,’ he began.
‘Story?’
‘Connected with the passing of the century…’
‘Go on, man!’
The end of the century was only a few months away. In most
states and kingdoms such a milestone would have suggested new
beginnings, a rebirth. The end of the old. Evan Twyll, however,
had not expected that the citizens of Gleam would have given
themselves to such thoughts, such hopes. Incredibly, though,
this seemed to be happening. As the days fell away like dried
leaves in the winter of the century there was a growing belief
that new leaves would follow, and the new days would be fresh,
green, different.
Falteringly, the captain of the guard told the Markgrave what
the people of Gleam had come to believe. ‘They say that
your days are numbered, sir,’ he muttered. ‘Just
as the century’s days are numbered. That a maiden will
come to replace you. A maiden of great strength and loveliness
and that she will bring great changes.’
‘What!’
In his astonishment the Markgrave turned to face Martin Sculldung
and the captain flinched at the anger flashing in his eye.
‘That’s what they say,’ he mumbled.
‘Who says!’
The captain shrugged helplessly. ‘The whole city, sir.
The rumour seems to have spread throughout.’
Thus the Markgrave learned of the story of the Maiden. Not
one of his spies or agents could discover her name, or where
she was to come from, or when. In all probability she had no
name, had no country, had no reality. She was a story. A myth.
But she was none the less powerful for all that. Probably,
the Markgrave reasoned sourly, all the more powerful because
of it. For how could he fight an idea, a belief, a myth? He
might as well have his men take out their swords and cut and
thrust at the eddying mists of the morning. But, as each day
of the century ebbed away, the Maiden’s reality to the
people of Gleam became stronger, and details, even contradictory
were passed about and savoured and treasured and added to.
Now high on the upper platform of his tower the Markgrave lowered
his telescope. As the last of the sun retreated from the inner
harbour he turned and gazed out over the still-shining sea
and the long line of the horizon. Soon the two small green
moons that ever ruled the night sky in the world of Gleam would
appear and begin again their eternal race. Their emerald glow
would not afford enough light for spying and the night would
be given over to the creatures of darkness. Twyll sighed.
At that moment, a small object caught his attention and Evan
Twyll lifted his telescope again and focused on it. There wobbling
in the middle of the circle of the lens was a small vessel,
its square-rigged sails billowing, its thin pennants streaming.
Evan Twyll sighed again, but this time bitterly. Such a boat,
increasingly, would be an object of hope for his townspeople.
They would peer out of their hillside houses and imagine it
carrying a tall fair maiden who would start the world anew,
and they would dream of a fleet of such ships, the sun shining
on their wind-slapped sails, the spray spinning off their rigging.
He embroidered the thought. The ship as maiden lifting her
white arms like sails, ready to embrace the lost city of Gleam.
He saw the figurehead and the angelic face with its long rippling
hair streaming behind like pennants, bearing towards him, her
expression both just and grim, forgiving yet stern.
The fancy angered Evan Twyll, and he brought his telescope
back to the city and swept about. A flicker of flames too bright
to have come from a watchman’s brazier or a chestnut
vendor’s barrel stopped him in mid-sweep and he peered
through the darkness to try to discover what it was. He was
able to make out two figures, dark shadows really, and they
seemed to be prancing around the flames. Grotesque echoes of
their shadows lunged about them. He could locate where they
were easily: a small square in front of a grimy waterfront
tavern mainly frequented by sailors and the hangers-on of the
port. The Gut and Cuttle was its name. His spies found it a
useful place to uncover information.
What were the figures doing? He tried to hold the telescope
steady. The source of the flames was a long elongated object,
an object that insisted on jiggling about in the middle of
the picture. Long. Black, with an aureole of flames and the
two fiendish figures prancing this way, that.
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be an effigy. The sudden
thought filled him with fury and he clawed at the rope that
dangled beside him, jerking it angrily, repeatedly. Far below
he could hear the wild ringing that would summon the watch.
He did not pause to check again but immediately began clambering
down the long spiral of stone stairs.
He wanted those two prancing figures captured. He wanted them
flung into the deepest recesses of the citadel. If they had
dared to burn the Markgrave of Gleam in effigy they themselves
would surely burn, slowly, slowly, until they screamed for
the balm of death.
Long before he reached the bottom step he was screaming hoarsely, ‘Sculldung!
Sculldung! To arms! To arms!’
The interior of the Gut and Cuttle tavern was smoky, cold and
gloomy. The oil lamps dangling from the low heavy rafters flickered
ineffectually, for the landlord was a mean man and he kept
the wicks shortened. The fire, too, was ever meagre, a small
heap of smoking coal which did little except draw the damp
out of the blackened timbers. Certainly it did little to warm
the cluster of huddled drinkers who usually sat morosely in
the small bay surrounding the ingle, nursing their large tankards
of the brown cloudy brew served by the miserable landlord.
These drinkers were for the most part seafaring men between
voyages, wherrymen who plied the waters of the port in their
long sharp-nosed boats, or those scavenging types of either
sex who managed to eke some seagull-type existence about the
wharves. Usually there was little conversation, for who knew
who might be sitting a shoulder or two away, and who might
overhear a rash comment, or a thought that should never have
been put into words?
This evening, however, was different. An argument had broken
out between those who maintained that the end of the century
would bring about a wondrous new beginning, and those who held
that all this talk of the Maiden was nothing more than a fairy
tale, a foolish fancy, a sprinkle of spun sugar to disguise
the taste of a bitter reality. Faces had become flushed and
the landlord’s murky brown brew had loosened tongues,
raised voices and made the drinkers forget their customary
discretion.
Perhaps the most excitable voice in the room belonged to a
tall, slender young man with short-cropped fair hair and a
wispy ginger moustache but no beard. He looked to be about
twenty years old and he wore the clothes and short blue cape
of a student. Despite the fact that he’d downed more
than three tankards already he was a fluent speaker and his
eloquence, if not his arguments, had earned him the grudging
respect of the other drinkers. Two companions sat with him.
One sat deep in the shadows far from the glow of the ingle
nook, wrapped around in a cloak of deep green linen, taking
no apparent interest in what was going on. The other was older
with a dark wrinkled face, crinkled brown eyes creased with
laugh-lines, silvered hair and beard. This man, while merry
with the ale and always laughing at the excesses of his companion,
nevertheless from time to time reached and pulled at the younger
man’s sleeve, as if to warn him of saying too much, and
saying it too loudly.
Every so often, too, the older man’s eyes would flicker
about the room, trying to locate and assess the other drinkers.
Who could be trusted? Which of the huddled figures might be
the ears of the Markgrave of Gleam? Would it be more likely
the silent observing ones, or the noisy provoking ones: those
clever ones, trying to goad a tongue thickened by beer into
betraying its owner? On the surface, none. All looked as they
seemed: seamen; wherrymen; seagulls. But in Gleam nothing was
as it seemed. Any one of these could be an agent of the citadel.
All could. Hugh Cassin reached again for his companion’s
sleeve. Not so wild, he silently implored, all the while smiling
and nodding amiably.
‘The Maiden?’ laughed a grizzled man who could be a sailor.
There was scorn in his voice. ‘You might as well believe
in giants, or mermaids, or lizards that fly in the air. It’s
madness. There’ll be no Maiden come to wrap her white
bandages round the running sore of this place. On my oath – you’re
nothing but dreamers!’
‘But, don’t you see, it doesn’t matter!’ broke
in the young student so excitedly that Cassin gripped his sleeve
once more. ‘It doesn’t matter whether she exists
or not. All that matters is that the idea of her exists!’
‘Whattya mean?’ asked the sailor, grinning in a befuddled
way.
‘It’s the idea of the Maiden that’s important, not
the Maiden herself,’ continued the student. ‘And
the idea of the Maiden certainly exists! Haven’t we been
arguing about her for the last hour?’
Grudgingly, the sailor nodded, and the other listeners grinned
at each other.
The student drove the point home. ‘It’s the idea
of the Maiden that will give people hope. And out of hope will
come imagination!’ Then, dramatically he paused then
dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘And out of imagination
will come action!’
Hugh Cassin gripped the student’s arm so fiercely at
this point it must have pinched painfully, but the young man
appeared not to notice. ‘Oh, Tobias, Tobias Swallow,’ Hugh
groaned to himself, gazing around the circle of slack-jawed
listeners in the sudden silence. ‘If any one of these
is an agent of the Markgrave we are in trouble, in direst trouble.’
Some time later the two men stumbled out onto the cobbled square
which fronted the tavern. It was cold and twilight was merging
into a deeper evening. The sky was cobalt and already spotted
with stars. The larger green moon, Chaser, was already in hopeless
pursuit of its smaller companion.
The third figure followed Hugh Cassin and Tobias Swallow, but
slowly, and with more dignity. Now, out of the shadows of the
tavern, it could be ascertained that she was a young woman,
perhaps a little younger than Tobias and looking strikingly
like him, with her corn-coloured hair and fine features.
She gathered her deep green cloak about her and shrugged her
hood over her head to protect herself against the chill of
the approaching night. Her name was Johanna and she was Tobias’s
only sister. As she stood, still framed by the tavern’s
archway, watching his lurching gait, a faint hopeless smile
briefly touched her face. She loved Tobias dearly, but he was
rash and impulsively irresponsible and needed a steadying hand.
She was so glad Hugh was with them. The three had arrived in
Gleam only that afternoon from their village some ten miles
distant. Tobias was to set sail within a week to return to
the city of Aser where he was studying medicine. Hugh, who
was their mother’s brother, had been given the job by
his sister of making sure that her son climbed aboard the vessel
in good time. The widow Swallow knew her son’s unreliability
well. Johanna had come to wave her brother goodbye and to visit
her aunt in Gleam, where she would stay for a few days to help
with a new baby.
‘Tobias!’ Her voice was sharp in the crisp night.
‘Sister?’
‘I am unhappy. Very unhappy.’
Tobias peered back in her direction. ‘Unhappy? What has
made you unhappy, Johanna?’
‘You have, Tobias. You have! Can’t you see even now what
you have done?’
Tobias shook his head, then grinned foolishly at Hugh Cassin. ‘What
have I done? Johanna? Uncle, what have I done?’
His fatuous tone was more than Johanna could bear. ‘Tobias,’ she
said angrily, ‘I have had to sit beside you in a filthy
tavern and put up with the idle buzzing of grubby bar-flies
for the last two hours. It is now dark. And cold.’ She
drew her cloak closer. ‘Very cold. The city gates will
be locked by the guard by now and – have you forgotten?
We have no lodgings.’
Tobias stared at her. ‘Don’t be angry, sister.’
This response only made Johanna more furious. ‘How can
I not be angry? What will we do?’
Hugh Cassin nodded. The girl was right. He should have been
more insistent earlier. Somehow he should have managed to pry
Tobias loose from his ale and chatter. Gleam was a cold and
treacherous place. There would be a curfew. No doubt there
would be patrols. And even were there no patrols, there would
certainly be a cruel frost. And icy cobblestones would not
make a comfortable bed. He had been a fool.
Tobias smiled and shook his head. ‘Never fear!’ he
said confidently. ‘Help is near. I will find us lodgings.’ He
turned about and promptly tripped and all but fell full length
on to his face.
Hugh leapt after the young man and held him steady. Tobias
lurched backward, peering at his feet. He had tripped over
a long thin object that had been left lying on the stones of
the square. Tobias swung down and swayed up again, holding
the object up, then brandishing it like a sword.
It was a broom, or what was left of a broom. A long handle
with a balding switch of bristles. Tobias broke free from Hugh
and began lunging with it like a bumbling swordsman, giggling,
as he stumbled about in a mad parody of a knight at arms.
‘Never fear!’ he cried. ‘With this trusty sword
I will save us all!’
While Johanna watched, alarmed, Hugh hurried towards Tobias
to try to stop his mad antics. But immediately Tobias began
chasing him and Hugh was forced to duck and weave out of the
way of the flailing broom. Made a child again by the beer he
had drunk, Tobias lurched back and forth on the cobbled square
in front of the Gut and Cuttle thrusting and swinging at his
protesting uncle.
Otherwise, the square was deserted. It was not wise to be found
out of doors within the walls of Gleam after sunset. Citizens,
at such times, hurried about their business for fear of the
officers of the watch, or of those who materialised out of
the dark shadows and evil lanes and made a savage living preying
on stragglers. The square itself was surrounded by ancient
weathered buildings leaning crookedly against each other, with
one side opening to the harbour. Among the buildings in addition
to the Gut and Cuttle was a shuttered chandlers and ships’ merchant,
an apothecary, two or three dubious lodging houses catering
to seamen, and a scatter of dingy shop-houses. A street passed
through the square and a number of narrow lanes emptied into
it.
The cobblestones were wet and slippery, shining in the evening
dew. The flying feet of the mock duellists made a ring and
clatter in the still night air. Tobias could not help shouting
and grunting in the excitement of the game.
‘Stop him, Uncle!’
‘I’m trying!’
Hugh Cassin was increasingly fearful of the racket they were
making. He glanced a little apprehensively up the street that
led from the harbour, through the square, to the portcullis
of the citadel. When he glanced back over his shoulder, his
eyes instinctively lifted from the portcullis to the upper
storeys, the narrow slit windows dark strips against the dark
stone, to the tall tower that overlooked the city. A tower
of black stone, patterned with rusted iron diamonds and triangles
and laced with filigree-work. It rose to a point seventy or
eighty feet from base to tip. Hugh shivered at the brutal spike
of the thing piercing the night sky, and turned away from its
presence. It was like looking up the nostrils of God.
Tobias!’ cried Johanna. ‘Tobias, stop it!’
The tower had eyes. Hugh knew that. All of Gleam knew it: knew
that the Markgrave often climbed the tower to spy from its
lower or upper gallery. And as he thought of that harsh one-eyed
watcher, Hugh was glad of the protection of the enveloping
darkness.
This sense of security evaporated, however, when Tobias, on
a crazy impulse, was moved to an act of unsurpassed stupidity.
There were two small cone-shaped cressets of iron clamped one
on either side of the doorway of the Gut and Cuttle. These
were filled with burning coals offering a soft orange glow
to light up the entrance. Before the others had quite realised
what he was up to, Tobias had thrust the broom into one of
these and after a few seconds the ragged bristles caught fire.
Laughing gleefully, Tobias now lunged with his burning brand
that flamed and smoked like a tiny stubble-field. Hugh jumped
back from one of the aerial sweeps and nearly fell. Now almost
possessed, Tobias swung the broom round and round and streams
of sparks followed like a comet’s tail.
‘Tobias!’ cried Johanna. ‘Tobias! Stop!’
Tobias seemed not to have heard her.
‘Tobias!’ hissed Hugh.
He was in anguish at the mad folly of their situation. First
noise, and now light. What more did they have to do to draw
attention to themselves? Light! Again Hugh had a sudden sense
of the dark spectator in the tower and saw the increasing danger
they were in.
‘Tobias!’ Hugh Cassin’s desperate cry this time.
The older man rushed forward and again tried to wrestle the
broom handle out of his nephew’s grasp, but Tobias, still
wild with excitement, thought this was part of the game, and
would not give it up. Panting, the two men grappled with the
handle while sparks showered about them.
‘Tobias!’ cried Johanna once again. More urgent this time,
almost a scream. Tobias heard and stopped. He glanced towards
her. ‘The gate!’ she cried.
Hugh quickly looked up the street. No need to ask which gate
Johanna meant. He heard rather than saw it, however. The sound
was faint but unmistakable. The strained clanking sound of
heavy chains being geared. The portcullis was being raised.
‘Oh, my god,’ he muttered. ‘The watch. Quick, Johanna,
quick! We have to get away from here!’ He jerked the
broom out of Tobias’s now unresisting hands and flung
it to one side, then raced back to gather Johanna. Pulling
her after him, he shouted, ‘Run!’
They ran. Hugh and Johanna in front, Tobias stumbling after
them, ignoring the faint shouts and the clatter of running
feet. They were able to move quickly, propelled by the slope
of the street. Down towards the quay and along the waterfront,
they ran, not daring to dart into any of the many dark lanes
that offered themselves lest they should prove to be cul-de-sacs.
Dead ends.
Suddenly, Hugh pulled up short, a searing stitch pain thrust
though him like a hot needle. ‘No!’ he gasped. ‘I
can’t!’
They had turned a bend, and were for the moment out of sight
and well ahead of the watch. Beside them was an arched gateway
of a solid-looking house of stone, too large for a private
house unless it belonged to an exceptionally wealthy merchant.
Johanna had an unreasoned inspiration it might be a holy house
or infirmary. There could be shelter there, sanctuary. Pulling
the other two after her she ran through the archway and banged
furiously on the heavy wooden door.
None of them noticed, because of the dark and because of their
desperation, that carved into the front of the arch in bas-relief
was the figure of a crouching toad. An ancient wart-ridden
toad, bloated at the neck.
Martin Sculldung was a fit man. Lean, sinewy, he had risen
to his present position by insisting on his own fitness, mental
as well as physical. While being a member of the Markgrave’s
watch was to be a member of a powerful and privileged élite
in Gleam, it was also a dangerous occupation – for you
were, of necessity, close to the Markgrave, and therefore close
to the Markgrave’s wrath. The Captain of the Watch was
in an even more precarious position and it took a person of
great art and cunning to last long in the office. Martin Sculldung
had survived longer than most. He had learnt, as a master mariner
learns the stars, skies and seas, to read the shifting surfaces
and configurations of the Markgrave’s moods, expressions,
and tones. Thus far he had steered a long but always perilous
course.
When he’d heard the tocsin ring with wild urgency and
heard the angry voice and clamour of the Markgrave clambering
and clattering down the stone steps, Martin Sculldung knew
instinctively that there would be another rocky strait to negotiate.
For the Markgrave had been incensed. From his tower he had
witnessed a scene of sedition. There had been figures dancing
like demons in the streets. There’d been a burning effigy.
All this on top of the unsettling talk of the Maiden. Sculldung
knew it would be more than his life was worth if he failed
to seize and drag the perpetrators of these vile acts back
and fling them, quailing and fearful, before the feet of his
master.
So he’d roared to his men, and they’d leapt to
arms. They, too, had heard the Markgrave, and they’d
also heard the keen edge in Sculldung’s roar. Within
seconds, armed with pikestaffs and short swords, some swinging
dripping lanterns, they’d swept beneath the clanking
portcullis and onto the street. They ran in a clatter between
overhanging buildings towards the Gut and Cuttle. Pausing in
the square, Sculldung cursed as he saw the discarded broom,
its bristles still smouldering. He picked it up and threw it
to one of his men. The square itself was deserted.
‘Did you see where they went?’
‘Towards the quay.’
The watch, Martin Sculldung at the head of a dozen or so men,
raced down the short sloping street to the waterfront. The
black outlines of a number of sailing vessels, their sails
furled, were silhouetted against the sky. There was a cool
breeze off the sea for which Sculldung was grateful. There’d
be no ice underfoot to make the street slippery. His keen eyes
swung right and left and he could make out a movement a couple
of hundred yards to the left. He made a decision instantly. ‘That
way! Quickly!’
As he raced towards the spot where he’d seen the shadowy
outlines he was aware of a bend, and that somewhere beyond
it the outlines had somehow disappeared. Martin Sculldung knew
the waterfront well. There were no alleys on this particular
stretch to hide in, no side streets at all for a quarter of
a mile or so to confuse the issue. They could only have slipped
into a doorway or gained admission to a house. Either that
or jumped into the icy sea. Sculldung hastily checked his mental
map of the district and felt somewhat relieved. This was not
a place that opened its doors to those seeking refuge. It was
a quay of locked warehouses, workshops and ships’ chandlers,
all firmly bolted and secured against the thieves and locksmiths
of the night.
There was only one possible house. A large stone building with
an arched entranceway. The watch paused outside it and looked
one to another uneasily. One man held a lantern up and the
stone toad stared malevolently down upon them.
‘They wouldn’t have gone in there,’ murmured a grizzle-headed
man, Sculldung’s lieutenant.
Martin Sculldung nodded. Surely not. He was a fit man, and
a brave man. But he was neither fit enough nor brave enough
to demand entrance here. He would prefer the wrath of the Markgrave.
He shivered in the darkness looking towards the black portico
with its crouching stone.
There was nothing to be done.
‘Come,’ he ordered shortly. ‘And bring the broom.’
