Read Online Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series by Catherine Webb - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Catherine Webb
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yourself only as the abbot.’
‘How dangerous, exactly, was this game Andrew and Freya were playing?’ asked the abbot.
‘Everything with my family is dangerous,’ Sam replied, rising to his feet. ‘I pity you mortals who get caught up in it.’ He slung his sword over his back, put on his thermal gear and turned to go.
Behind him the abbot called out, ‘Why were you given a crown, being a bastard son?’ His harsh words cut through the quiet of that place.
Sam Linnfer, alias Lucifer, alias the Bearer of Light – the terrible weapon that some said would destroy its very user – froze as though the question were a knife in his back. Without turning he replied in emotionless tones, ‘I don’t know. They say, because Time declared I was his necessary child.’
And left the room.
SIX
Bubble
S taggering once more through the Portal into the little dungeon, it was clear to Sam that someone had been there and recognised his bag, for the door was open and a fire burned on the floor in the centre of the cell, which was otherwise bitterly cold. Two heads stuck round the door at Sam’s arrival. Each wore a tight-fitting iron helmet, possessed frost-silver eyes and had patches of blue scale across their pale skin. Thick white hair grew from the base of their necks, and coiled down their backs. They wore light chain mail beneath white furs and carried iron-tipped spears.
‘Corenial, Setrezen,’ said Sam politely.
‘The Prince is expecting you, sir,’ growled one. ‘Your normal room has been prepared.’
‘Thank you.’ He had taken off his crown, and it now bumped around inside the box at his hip. The demons’ eyes watched it every step of his way down the corridor. They hungered to wear it, he knew, but didn’t dare.
It wasn’t necessary to take off the thermal gear. Tibet and the part of Hell where Sam had arrived were one and the same when it came to winter temperatures. The only difference was that in Gehenna, at least, it was always winter. Seven eighths of Hell burned for sixteen months a year, and he, Time help him, had chosen to come to the one eighth that didn’t.
Gehenna was a city with a lot of history. He knew that, because he was an integral part of that history. He’d built most of the place, after all. It rested in the far north of the planet, and for eleven months a year it saw sunlight for a maximum of five hours. The rest of the world, save for another small patch of ice on the southern pole, could claim the opposite. It hardly ever saw night.
In Sam’s lifetime Gehenna had been a village, then a town, then a city with a castle, then a pile of rubble, then rebuilt, then once more reduced, then rebuilt with city walls and a standing army, and never defeated again, although people tried.
Oh, how they tried.
But he’d been careful. Not only did he now have a resident Prince and council, but a network of spies and messengers. He could hear of an attack months beforehand, and travel Earth until the day it was due, to return to Gehenna in time to lay waste the approaching army with all the fiery tricks of his specialised trade.
Once, he’d ruled full time as king. But in recent centuries he’d become less an administrator and more a part-time emergency worker, as Gehenna, after years of nurturing, had come to do without him except in times of great crisis. He trusted the Prince and the council to manage their own affairs, and reasoned that after thousands of years of Hellish cuisine, and washing in water with bits of ice in it, he’d earned the right to Earth, caviar and central heating. Not being needed any more made him very grateful.
In the cold corridor, more demons nodded at him as he passed, a mark of respect and little more. They were the perfect winter warriors, he reflected as he acknowledged them. Their hides were thick, their white hair and blue scale were good camouflage, and they could fight for hours, assuming they’d had a big meal beforehand. They
‘How dangerous, exactly, was this game Andrew and Freya were playing?’ asked the abbot.
‘Everything with my family is dangerous,’ Sam replied, rising to his feet. ‘I pity you mortals who get caught up in it.’ He slung his sword over his back, put on his thermal gear and turned to go.
Behind him the abbot called out, ‘Why were you given a crown, being a bastard son?’ His harsh words cut through the quiet of that place.
Sam Linnfer, alias Lucifer, alias the Bearer of Light – the terrible weapon that some said would destroy its very user – froze as though the question were a knife in his back. Without turning he replied in emotionless tones, ‘I don’t know. They say, because Time declared I was his necessary child.’
And left the room.
SIX
Bubble
S taggering once more through the Portal into the little dungeon, it was clear to Sam that someone had been there and recognised his bag, for the door was open and a fire burned on the floor in the centre of the cell, which was otherwise bitterly cold. Two heads stuck round the door at Sam’s arrival. Each wore a tight-fitting iron helmet, possessed frost-silver eyes and had patches of blue scale across their pale skin. Thick white hair grew from the base of their necks, and coiled down their backs. They wore light chain mail beneath white furs and carried iron-tipped spears.
‘Corenial, Setrezen,’ said Sam politely.
‘The Prince is expecting you, sir,’ growled one. ‘Your normal room has been prepared.’
‘Thank you.’ He had taken off his crown, and it now bumped around inside the box at his hip. The demons’ eyes watched it every step of his way down the corridor. They hungered to wear it, he knew, but didn’t dare.
It wasn’t necessary to take off the thermal gear. Tibet and the part of Hell where Sam had arrived were one and the same when it came to winter temperatures. The only difference was that in Gehenna, at least, it was always winter. Seven eighths of Hell burned for sixteen months a year, and he, Time help him, had chosen to come to the one eighth that didn’t.
Gehenna was a city with a lot of history. He knew that, because he was an integral part of that history. He’d built most of the place, after all. It rested in the far north of the planet, and for eleven months a year it saw sunlight for a maximum of five hours. The rest of the world, save for another small patch of ice on the southern pole, could claim the opposite. It hardly ever saw night.
In Sam’s lifetime Gehenna had been a village, then a town, then a city with a castle, then a pile of rubble, then rebuilt, then once more reduced, then rebuilt with city walls and a standing army, and never defeated again, although people tried.
Oh, how they tried.
But he’d been careful. Not only did he now have a resident Prince and council, but a network of spies and messengers. He could hear of an attack months beforehand, and travel Earth until the day it was due, to return to Gehenna in time to lay waste the approaching army with all the fiery tricks of his specialised trade.
Once, he’d ruled full time as king. But in recent centuries he’d become less an administrator and more a part-time emergency worker, as Gehenna, after years of nurturing, had come to do without him except in times of great crisis. He trusted the Prince and the council to manage their own affairs, and reasoned that after thousands of years of Hellish cuisine, and washing in water with bits of ice in it, he’d earned the right to Earth, caviar and central heating. Not being needed any more made him very grateful.
In the cold corridor, more demons nodded at him as he passed, a mark of respect and little more. They were the perfect winter warriors, he reflected as he acknowledged them. Their hides were thick, their white hair and blue scale were good camouflage, and they could fight for hours, assuming they’d had a big meal beforehand. They
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