Chapter 38
Mount Garnot looked more like hell than any depiction of Niflheim I’d ever seen.
It was just past sunrise when we reached the last jagged obsidian outcrop that preceded the mountain itself – perhaps half a mile away from the slopes in and on which Lesceron’s home had been built.
From that distance, in the oddly pearlescent shimmers of the green-and-purple dawn, I could distinguish little more than the blunt silhouette of the volcano and the lazy trails of lava running down its seaside flank – that, and the fumes, which rose in ever-shifting columns from the shoreline where molten rock met the algae-riddled water.
Even where we stood, I could smell the rotten egg stench of sulphur and hot metal, coating the back of my throat.
‘Charming, isn’t it?’ Durlain said next to me.
I pulled a face and tugged the scarf I’d prepared over the lower half of my face.
My stitched formula of naudiz, eihwaz, and tiwaz was only designed to filter actual poison from the air, not the foul smells of it …
but at least this way I smelled equal parts wool and brimstone, which was already a significant improvement.
Next to me, Durlain was making his own preparations.
Scarf. Gloves. Fireproofed boots, and most important of all, his spelled eyepatch, now improved with a truly inspired series of raido and sowilo runes that made him look not just two-eyed, but also not like him.
We’d both put it on to test it yesterday, and it had been more than a little unnerving to see his features shift – still the same angular face, still the same curved horns, and yet the result had been something bafflingly un-Durlain-like.
You look like a portrait of you except drawn by an entirely unskilled artist, he’d said when I’d put it on, upon which I’d informed him that he looked like a portrait drawn by an artist who wanted desperately to be sacked, and won one of the few true smiles of the day.
There was no glimpse of smiles now, true or otherwise, as he glared at the looming mountain ahead and said, ‘Ready?’
No.
‘Of course,’ I said, because if the truth was unpleasant anyway, I might as well lie.
We began our descent down the brittle rocks, to where the main road snaked across the plain.
Mount Garnot was a fortress in many ways, Durlain had explained, of which the most important was the air around it: painful for the first few breaths, sickening for the next few, and deadly after a minute or five spent in the toxic vapours.
Our scarves could filter out the worst of it, but even then it would be useless to approach the mountain on foot – because we’d have to get in once we had reached the building itself, and Lesceron’s home didn’t have doors or windows that could be conveniently left open. Its inhabitants were wiser than that.
Which meant we had to enter the same way everyone did: through the tunnel.
It loomed from the fumes before us, a dark glass-and-steel archway winding towards the mist-shrouded mountain beyond – wide enough for two carts to pass each other but mostly empty at this time of the day.
Closer to the palace proper, the fog churned in truly alarming ways, thick and sickly yellow.
At the entrance of the channel, however, the air was unpleasant but still bearable; the dozen guards posted around the cast-iron gate looked bored rather than threatened, their voices muffled by the masks they too had bound around their faces.
None of them looked particularly interested in our arrival.
Durlain received a handful of impassive glances as two of the guards stepped aside to meet him; I didn’t receive any glances at all.
Garnot colouring, he’d said, pointing at his hair. We got it from our mother.
And, As long as they don’t recognise me, I can talk us through.
That last part sounded dubious to me, given that the guards would surely pay more attention to strangers than to fireborn they knew …
but even without my promise to Durlain, using my magic to kill them all would draw far too much attention.
So I rode behind him and stared at Pain’s neck like a well-behaved servant, while he brought Smudge to a standstill and pointedly ignored the guards’ request for him to dismount.
‘Thevenin Garnot,’ he icily informed the two of them.
The diction of his vowels shifted ever so slightly – his mother’s accent, presumably, sounding even haughtier than the faint traces the Averre court usually lent his voice.
‘I trust there will be no need to spoil my joyful return with this tiresome charade? You know me, you know my name, and I have business to discuss with my aunt. I should be most grateful if we could keep matters at that.’
You know me.
The glances the guards exchanged suggested they did not, in fact, know him.
As they shouldn’t, because his eyepatch turned his face into a stranger’s face, and as far as I was aware, no Thevenin Garnot currently resided at Lesceron’s court – but the uncomfortable silence that fell suggested none of them were eager to admit it.
‘Well?’ Durlain prompted.
‘Ah, Lord Thevenin …’ The shorter guard of the two cleared his throat, fingering his sword in a way that made my fingers strain to reach for my knives. Not now. Not now. ‘We regrettably, um, weren’t informed of your arrival, my lord.’
‘Weren’t you,’ Durlain said coldly, in that flat, dismissive tone that immediately reduced the discussion to a waste of time, and the guards’ refusals to senseless whining. ‘I’ll have words for the Lord Chamberlain. May I pass?’
‘Policy, my lord,’ the guard stammered, so flustered that I suspected he wasn’t often confronted with strangers claiming to be denizens of the place. His colleagues had begun paying attention, I noticed from the corner of my eye. ‘Must enquire— Your reasons for visiting—’
‘I’m not visiting, you imbecile.’ The slur was delivered with calm, disdainful precision.
‘I am, as I believe I mentioned, returning home. Lady Thionne has requested my presence to report on the running of the family estate, and I am, as behoves a dutiful nephew, her humble servant. You do not intend to enquire into confidential family matters, I presume?’
‘No, no, of course not. My lord.’ There was a flurry of whispers behind the poor man’s back, his colleagues offering some desperate suggestions on how to fulfil their duty without losing their rank or even their jobs if it turned out the cold-eyed visitor was in fact who he claimed to be.
‘In accordance with the protocol, my lord, we will send word to Lady Thionne and ensure—’
‘You have run mad,’ Durlain interrupted in flat, clipped tones that sent an unpleasant shiver even across my back.
‘I did not travel for five days to be kept waiting in this wretched fog like a passing peddler, just because some worthless messenger boy neglected to pass on my name. You will open this gate now, or I shall be forced to mention to my aunt the utter contempt with which her family is treated by this corps. My patience has exhausted itself, sergeant.’
Even with my gaze fixed on Pain’s mane, I could make out the man’s heavy swallow under his improvised mask.
The entire group of guards was shifting nervously now, caught between their protocols and the terrifying prospect of offending a nobleman, and a bad-tempered one at that.
They would look at me next, I knew. Lord Thevenin could not be insulted any further …
but his servant might offer some last excuse to delay him, and with the wrath of Lesceron Garnot hanging over their heads, I expected them to grasp at every little escape they could find.
Sure enough – ‘And the woman, my lord?’
Durlain’s air of majestic boredom was an impervious shield around me; if not for him, my hand would already have been on Ehwaz’s hilt. ‘The girl? What of her?’
‘Ah,’ the guard said, looking uncertain but determined. ‘She appears to be, um, armed, Lord Thevenin. Protocol requires us to—’
‘Of course she is armed,’ Durlain said sharply, a promise of complaints shimmering through his every word now.
‘What use would she be to me if she weren’t?
I was not aware the protocol cares about my possessions these days – perhaps you'd care to inspect my saddlebags too?
Or shall I remove my boots for your examination? '
The guard paled beneath his mask. ‘No, no, my lord, of course not. Just … I wondered … but of course—’
Durlain waited, in cold, excruciating silence.
‘Of course,’ the guard finally mumbled again, this time with an audible undercurrent of surrender. ‘I … My apologies for having kept you waiting, my lord. Please send my regards to Lady Thionne.’
‘The lady has no use for your regards,’ Durlain frostily informed him, riding past without granting any of the men another glance. ‘You will hear about this.’
No instructions were aimed at me, but the guards had stepped aside, and none of them moved to stop me; I spurred Pain into motion, hearing the deafening silence behind me as we rode on at a leisurely pace into the wide glass tunnel.
Four-fifths of me wanted to wince at the thought of the risk he’d just taken.
The fifth part merely wanted to laugh hysterically.
I did neither. Eyes were still boring into my shoulder blades.
The tunnel was an impressive piece of craftmanship, elegant steel arches supporting curved panels of tempered glass – clear-coloured at first but soon cut into more elaborate shapes and tinted with shades of violet and indigo.
Serpents writhed around me as we rode closer and closer to Mount Garnot, and flowers bloomed in frozen glory.
The images filtered the light, scattering hues of blue across the smooth stone paving; I could almost believe we were descending beneath the surface of the ocean itself.