“The Dead King and this Silent Sister, they’re hidden hands, they play a game across the empire, them and others, pushing kings and lords across their board. Who knows what it is they want in the end? Perhaps to remake the empire and give it an emperor with strings by which he can be made to dance, or perhaps to wipe the board clear and start the game anew. In any event the unborn said we carried the Red Queen’s purpose, and then it said we carried magic. Which we do.” He jabbed a finger at my shoulder and that unpleasant crackling energy built immediately, remaining until he withdrew the offending digit.
“But that was some kind of accident! We’re not on anyone’s purpose! Certainly not my grandmother’s.” Not unless the Silent Sister’s blind eye saw into the future and selected an unlikely chance. An unsettling thought. She was, after all, battling the dead, and Snorri was dragging both me and the witch’s magic north to where his foes worked alongside corpse-men brought in on the black ships of the Drowned Isles. “It’s just coincidence!”
“So maybe the unborn was wrong, the Dead King too. Maybe we’ve got them, the Silent Sister, and even your weasel Allus on our trail. Let them come. We’ll see how much staying power they have! It’s a long way to the North.”
“So,” I said, returning to my theme. “What the hell is an unborn?” I had a vague memory of the name from before the nightmare journey began. I think the first time I heard it I had rather hoped they were just risen corpses, which given their size would be easily dealt with. Not that I’m keen to stamp on babies, dead or otherwise, but it’d be a sight less dangerous than what happened at the circus. “And how the hell is an ‘unborn’ a huge grave-horror that takes a charging elephant to put down?”
“Potential, that’s what the unborn are. Potential.” Snorri picked up his empty tankard, checked its emptiness, and put it down again. “The one we faced wasn’t so dangerous as it had only been dead a few hours. All that potential for growth and change a child has—all that goes to the deadlands if the child dies unborn. It becomes twisted there. Soured. Time passes differently there, nothing stays young. The unborn child’s potential is infected with older purpose. There are things that have always been dead, things that dwell in the Land Beyond Death, and it’s those ancient evils that ride the unborn potential, possess and haunt it, hungry to be born into the world of life. The longer the unborn stays in the deadlands, the more strength it draws from that place but the less it can change, the harder it becomes to return. No common necromancer can summon an unborn. Even the Dead King is said to have been able to bring through only a handful, and seldom in a place of his choosing. They serve as his agents, his spies, able to grow into new forms, disguise themselves, walk amongst men unseen for what they are.”
“New ones are not so dangerous?” I’d latched onto that and repeated it to myself in disbelief whilst the rest of what he said washed over me. “It would have ripped you in half if not for a handy elephant! Let’s hope we don’t ever meet another one, because elephants are in short supply around here, if you hadn’t noticed. Christ!”
Snorri shrugged. “You did ask.”
“Well, I wish I hadn’t. Remind me not to in future.” I took a deep draught of my wine, regretting that we lacked the wherewithal to buy enough to get roaring drunk and wash the whole business back into convenient amnesia.
“There was something there that night at the opera.” I didn’t want to speak about it, but things could hardly get worse.
“This demon of yours?”
I nodded. “I broke the spell.” Cracked it. “Anyway. There was something in there with us. A demon. It looked like a man. Or its body did—I never saw the face. But there was something wrong. I know it. I saw it as clear as I see the Silent Sister when everyone else looks past her.”
“An unborn, you think?” Snorri frowned. “And now you say it’s following us?” He shrugged. “It’s not doing a very good job of catching up. I’d worry more about what lies ahead than behind.”
“Hmmm.” Stop worrying about the frying pan because the fire’s hotter? I shrugged but couldn’t get those eyes out of my imagination. “But what if it did catch us up?”
“That would be a bad thing.” Snorri studied his empty tankard again.
I looked out at the rain, and at the sky darkening with a gathering storm, and at the night’s approach. Whatever Snorri said, out there something that loved us not was following our trail. Quarry it had called us. I picked my wet cloak off the floor, still dripping. “We should press on to the next town. No point dawdling.” Nice as a night under a good roof would be, it was time to be off.
Keep still and your troubles find you. I might not have known much about the unborn, but I sure as hell knew about running!
ELEVEN
“It’s not raining!” I hadn’t noticed at first. My body still huddled as if against the downpour, but on this evening, beside the muddy trail and close enough to our fire to make my clothes steam, there wasn’t a drop of rain to hide from.
“Stars.” Snorri stabbed a finger at the midnight-blue heavens.