Prince of Lies - James Lowder [8]
Af snorted. "Bright boy. The gates are, too." He lowered his snout and stared into Gwydion's terror-filled eyes. "Bet you can't tell me what kind."
"Oh, leave him be," Perdix said. "He doesn't look like a priest to me. They're the only ones who care about such trivia."
"Cowards' hearts," Af gloated, ignoring Perdix completely. "They don't make as good a wall as heroes' hearts, but then, we don't get many heroes here."
Perdix shook his head in disgust. "Tsk. You're so proud of the blasted things, you'd think you built them yourself."
"I did!" Af bellowed. "At least, I was around here when they was first put up!"
Gwydion finally found his voice. "Torm, save me!" he shrieked.
Every denizen in earshot turned to Gwydion, and a webbed hand clamped over his mouth. "None of that, slug," Perdix hissed. "There's one god in the City ofStrife, and he don't like his subjects calling out to any of the others. We don't care if you get in deep with him the first day you're on your own, but right now you're our charge. This reflects bad on Af and me."
"And we certainly don't need the grief," the wolf-headed denizen grumbled. He balled one taloned hand into a fist and brought it hard against Gwydion's jaw. Bones shattered. Teeth spilled from the shade's mouth like marbles from a torn bag.
Perdix frowned. "You're our own worst enemy, Af," he sighed, wrapping one leathery wing around Gwydion to shield him from further blows. "If he can't speak, they'll be really miffed at the castle. Remember what happened last time, when you twisted that shade's head off?
Af slithered sideways on his coils. "Aw, this'll heal before he gets in to see him. 'Sides, he was calling on another power. You know the rules about that."
Reluctantly Perdix agreed but was careful to impose himself between Gwydion and Af until the gates opened. Horns sounded from high in the gatehouses, and the dark doors creaked apart just wide enough for three men to pass through, shoulder to shoulder. Denizens shoved their wards through the gap then followed close behind. The shades tried their futile best to resist these last few steps into the City ofStrife. The matter was always decided by the steady push from the thousands of damned souls milling behind the reluctant prisoners.
A straight boulevard led away from the gates, lined on both sides by hundreds of skeletal guardians wielding pikes and spears. The undead soldiers existed solely to abuse the newly damned and their captors. With their razor-sharp weapons, they sliced off chunks of flesh that were quickly ground into paste beneath the mob's feet. Along the boulevard, hungry things with haunted eyes waited impatiently in the shadows, hoping to recover some morsel.
Had anyone passing through the gates needed to breathe, the press would have suffocated him before he'd gone a dozen steps. A constant drone filled the air. This wasn't a tapestry of prayers, as on the Fugue Plain, but a shrill curtain of vile curses and anguished cries. Near the gates, the noise was so great no one bothered to speak below a shout. Thankfully, the twisted, scarred, ten-story brown-stones that made up the skyline muted the sound as the mob approached the city's center. Time blurred for Gwydion as he made his way with countless others to the heart of the City ofStrife. Only the steady healing of his jaw marked the passing of the hours.
He could feel the bones knit, the new teeth pushing through the raw gums. The pain still plagued him, blurring his vision and scattering his thoughts, but it had lessened to a continuous, throbbing ache. Gwydion wondered dully if his capacity to feel such mundane agony had been stunted. After all, the pain from the spikes buried in his wrists had diminished, too. In his heart, though, the sell-sword knew better than to hope he'd be immune to torture after this. The denizens would invent new kinds of pain for him if the old ones wore thin.
Finally the mob crossed the living bridge that spanned the gurgling black ooze of the River Slith