Whitemantle by Robert Carter

with anyone. He’s using you as his instrument. He needs to have you as his lodestone to seek me out. That’s been his purpose all along.’
    ‘That’s a view that puts you at the centre of all things, and makes me the villain!’ Again that bitter, unbelieving laugh. ‘Lord Maskull wants to find you all right. He wants more than that. He’s sent me to kill you. And so I shall.’
    Chlu threw wide his hands and the bone demons flocked as if at his command. A purplish-red glow like an angry wound pulsed from him. ‘You see how I make them obey me?’
    The creatures jostled forward, encircling Will, pulled by Chlu’s hatred, pushed by their own fear. They dared not closeon the green-blue aura that rippled around Will’s form. But then Chlu bent down, scooped up the dripping skull of the dead Elder and flung it with all his strength. As Will blocked it filth, stinking and foul, blinded him, and he spat the vileness from his lips. Then, without warning, his aura exploded in all directions, filling the world with an immensely bright green light.
    All Will could hear were the shrieks of the bone demons as they took to the air, and then came the rattling of chains. When Will regained his sight he saw that Chlu had vanished once more.

CHAPTER FOUR
THE VANE
    T here was no doubt where Chlu had gone. A chain dangled from a hole in the vaulting. It hung over the Bier, and was swinging. Chlu must have hauled himself up through the hole, and Will knew that he must follow.
    But as he pulled himself up on the chain he felt Chlu’s struggles cease and knew that his twin had found a ledge higher up. Once through the hole, Will saw that the space that formed the tip of the Spire was hollow. The sharp cone rose up a dozen times the height of a man, its interior lit by four great vents.
    The light was dim and diffuse – dust had been kicked into the air, but Will saw that six huge chains depended from a platform at the top. The structure was trussed internally with huge beams and straps of iron that held the stonework together. Chlu had swung up into these rafters and had begun to climb along them and up a series of ladders.
    ‘Come on, little brother!’ Chlu howled. ‘Catch me if you can!’
    Will heard the undertones of his own spirit in the challenge, and, undaunted, he climbed onward. But the way was treacherous. Always go first through a thicket, but second through a mire – that was something Wortmaster Gort used to say while out on his long walks. Going second here definitely put the follower at a disadvantage.
    The ladders were crumbling – many rungs were wormy. They cracked under Will’s feet. Even the lashings that held them to the beams were dry and brittle. No stonemason or carpenter had come into the summit in many a long year, so that nothing had been done by way of repair or renewal. Now that Chlu had climbed some distance ahead he began to unrope the ladder tops and kick them away. He laughed as he tore up whatever was at hand to throw down, but he could not halt Will’s progress up into what, for one of them, would be a dead end.
    Will fended off the missiles and pressed on doggedly, coming at last to a place about two ladder-lengths below the top platform. Here his daring faced a sterner test. The walkway had been almost wholly smashed by Chlu. In the middle all that remained was a single balk of timber. Will knew that one false step would mean falling to his death. He stopped and raised his arms to Chlu in a last appeal to see sense, but his twin’s reply was to fling at him the iron he had been using to tear up the planks.
    Will took a step forward, but was immediately thrown off balance, and when he put out a hand he found one of the giant chains. Each link was as long as a man was tall and all six chains came out of a line of holes pierced in the upper platform. They disappeared far below, somewhere near the Bier, but what their purpose was, Will could not see.
    He hugged the nearest link to save himself.