What was he saying? Goldman twisted his face and stepped forward again. He hoped he would live long enough to see the entire nation restored to its sanity.
He heard Theod fall into step behind him, but just as he was about to turn and say something to him, a shadow swept overhead, and a voice hailed them from above.
“My Lord Duke. See!” a hovering scout cried.
Goldman lifted his head, Theod beside him, but it was the younger man who spotted the waving hand first.
“There,” Theod said, pointing, and Goldman nodded. A man, no, two or three men, climbing down the shale face above them.
Aldenians.
“I have found three,” Theod said, “now there are but nineteen thousand and some hundreds to go.”
And he pushed past Goldman and climbed upwards.
The mines were dense with darkness. There was torchlight, the men who met them explained, but fuel was so precious they did not want to light them until it became absolutely necessary.
“The way here is smooth, and the downhill slope relatively slight,” the man’s voice said out of the darkness before Theod. “Keep your hand on the wall, and you will not fall.”
Theod heard DareWing and another Icarii mutter some paces behind him. The Icarii must loathe this enclosed space, Theod thought, but he wasted little pity on them. They were alive, and they were in shelter for the night’s terror, and no-one could ask for more than that.
“How long have you been down here?” Theod asked.
“Weeks, is all I know,” the man replied. “Time loses all meaning in this darkness.”
He paused, and when he resumed his voice was harsh. “We are crowded like rats into these mines. Everyone gets a space the width of their arms outstretched. Everyone eats, shits and sleeps in the same patch of darkness. We never see the sun, and we grow tired indeed of the same stale voices about us. Many among us have gone mad, even without the touch of the grey haze.”
“I have heard,” Theod said softly, “that there are twenty thousand within these mines.”
“Twenty thousand?” The man laughed unpleasantly. “Was that before or after the darkness began to eat at us?”
Theod shuddered, and remembered the tales his father had told him of these mines. Hadn’t his grandfather been trapped down here once, trapped by Gorgrael’s sorcery even as he was now trapped by that of the TimeKeepers?
And hadn’t Ho’Demi, the old Chief of the Ravensbundmen, found something lost down here?
Lost souls, was it?
Theod’s hand slipped on the damp wall, and he stumbled into the man before him.
“Mind!” the man called angrily, and Theod mumbled an apology.
They descended in silence now. No-one was willing to speak, or to ask the guides in front any more questions. Who wanted answers? The sooner out of here the better, and in the mind of every one of those men who had stepped into the mines for the first time, the same thought tumbled over and over again.
What is worse? The madness of the Demons, or this?
They descended perhaps an hour, perhaps ten—time was unknowable in this darkness. When the way became rocky and uneven, and the guides in front announced they’d reached the first of the chasms—
Chasms?
—they lit a score of brands, and passed them down the long line.
Theod blinked in the sudden radiance of the fitful, smoky torch, and slowly regained his bearings. They were in a spacious enough tunnel, Theod could not reach the roof even if he jumped, but when he looked ahead, he saw that the floor was rent with a chasm some three or four paces wide, with a narrow beam stretching across it.
“It drops to the bowels of the earth,” one of the guides said, and smiled sourly as he saw the pale, shocked faces of those behind him. “I know, see, because my son dropped down one of these, and we heard his scream for an eternity before the darkness ate it.”
Theod caught the man’s eyes, and he looked away at the pain he saw there.
“We walk across,” the guide continued, “and if you fall, then where you land there will be no-one but ghosts to cradle your soul into the AfterLife.”
“Why isn’t the beam broader?” Theod asked. “Why not have two side by side? This is not safe—”
“You’re bloody lucky you don’t have just a rope to balance on,” the man said. “We need wood for fuel, and we don’t waste it on luxuries like wide avenues for the likes of noble visitors!”
Theod’s face hardened, but he made no reply. Instead he turned slightly to Goldman behind him.
“Will you manage?” he murmured.
“Aye,” Goldman said. “If I could balance Askam’s demands for taxes, then I can manage this.”
He smiled—a considerable effort—at the concern in Theod’s eyes. “I will be all right,” he said.
“I’ll watch him.” DareWing stepped up behind Goldman. “There are two Icarii for every Acharite. All will pass safely.”
Theod nodded his thanks, and stepped forward to cross over the first of many beams.
The chasms—there were fourteen in all—claimed no-one, for the Icarii did their task well. After an infinite time of trudging downwards, ever downwards, when Theod thought his legs would drop off from his hips and his buttocks turn into liquid, they reached a gigantic cavern in the mountain.
Here, had they but known it, Gorgrael’s army of Skraelings had once hidden until the Chitter Chatters had driven them forth, but now it was home to the twenty thousand who’d managed to escape from Aldeni.
A few torches sputtered erratically, and the stench of unwashed bodies and barely-covered latrine trenches was appalling, but Theod strode forward, and stood on a great rock that loomed above the floor of the cavern.
“I have come to take you to Carlon!” he called, and a sea of pale faces lifted and turned in his direction amid a swelling murmur. Carlon? It was but a word from a dream, surely?
“Carlon,” Theod called again, hearing the disbelief, and not blaming them for it. “Carlon!”
And then there was a cry, a woman’s voice, and then a figure pushing her way through the crowd.
Thin, but with black hair neatly braided about her ears and her face free of smudges, Gwendylyr, Duchess of Aldeni, threw herself into the arms of her husband.
41
An Angry Foam of Stars
Far to the north, the old horse stood in the courtyard of Gorkenfort, sinking deeper into dream as the snow eddied fitfully about him.
Nothing moved, saved the flurries of snow.
Drago and Faraday, the feathered lizard balancing on Drago’s pack and grabbing playfully at the top of his staff, were well north of the fort, climbing into the Icescarp Alps.
Belaguez had not even missed them, nor noticed the man’s gentle pat on his shoulder, nor the woman’s soft kiss on his nose as they left him.
Left him to Urbeth.
The snow gusted strongly now, and it piled in drifts about the horse’s fetlocks, and in a strange, shifting mound on his rump.
He dreamed on.
A shape moved within the snow.
Urbeth.
She growled, but the horse’s only response was a thin twitching of the skin on his near shoulder. Urbeth’s growl barely penetrated his dreaming.
She snarled, vicious, a hunter scenting prey, but still the horse did not wake.
There was a billowing of snow as a sudden gust of wind scraped it from the ground, and out of this cloud of snow and ice sprang Urbeth.
First her gaping, scarlet snarling mouth, then the glint of her talons, and then her massive body sliding after. Straight for the horse.
He did not notice.
Urbeth landed on his back, digging her talons into his flanks and pot belly, and sinking her teeth around his windpipe in the predator’s death clutch.
Belaguez screamed awake. His whole body spasmed, then convulsed in a great buck, trying to throw the bear off. I am a Skraeling, come to eat you, she whispered into his mind, and suddenly
she was a wraith in Belaguez’s understanding, and he bucked and struggled, his breath wheezing horribly through his tortured throat.
Blood ran in rivulets down his body and stained the snow.
An IceWorm, come to eat you!
And Belaguez could see the frightful horse-head of the worm plunging for his body, could see it vomiting its Skraelings until he was covered in the writhing wraiths.
Danger! Danger!
Something surged within the old horse, some vague memory of strength, and a sudden spurt of his old intelligence and cunning. He gave a huge buck and then, instead of landing on stiff, splayed legs, allowed himself to collapse, rolling over in the snow.
Urbeth lost her grip, and she was thrown several paces.
In one smooth movement, strange in such an ancient horse, Belaguez gained his feet and, instead of running, attacked. His head snaked down towards Urbeth, still lying on the ground, and she seized his nose in her jaws.
Blood sprayed about them, and Belaguez shook his head, trying to dislodge her.
He was angry now, very angry, and fear seemed a thing of the past.
Urbeth suddenly let go, and although Belaguez slipped, he re-found his balance almost instantly. He reared, bringing his stiff forelegs down on Urbeth.
She rolled out of the way barely in time, and scrambled to her feet. She reached out a huge paw and raked it down Belaguez’s exposed shoulder, and the horse screamed in fury.
Again he turned and attacked, and now the bear was laughing, and doing enough only to tease the stallion and to keep just out of his reach.
Belaguez! Belaguez! Do you want to run, Belaguez?
The stallion stopped and stared at the bear, his ears flickering uncertainly. He was streaked with blood, but under that blood his flesh seemed firmer, his neck more muscled, his belly tauter than it had been previously.
Do you want to fight, Belaguez?
The stallion reared and screamed, his fore-hooves plunging through the air. Urbeth reached out with a lazy paw and again swiped it through the air, but this time it did not come near the horse. Instead, a spray of tiny stars fanned out from her paw and caught themselves in the stallion’s plunging mane and tail.
He halted, surprised, then lowered his head and shook it, snorting.
“Run, Belaguez,” Urbeth whispered, and the magnificent white and silver stallion pranced about uncertainly, not knowing what to make of the stars that blazed out from his forehead and neck and streamed from his haunches.
Suddenly he reared and screamed again. The dream was gone, forgotten, and Belaguez was alive and young and angry, and he needed something to vent that anger on.
Run, Belaguez! South! South! South!
And Belaguez plunged one more time, shaking his head at Urbeth, and then he was through the Keep’s gate and skidding through the deserted streets of Gorkentown.
He exploded through the town’s gates into the snow-covered wastes beyond, a shifting apparition of white and silver.
South! South! South!
South! Nothing stood in his way. A league south of Gorkenfort a Demon-controlled bull plunged at him, but Belaguez sailed into a mighty leap that carried him well over the bull and five paces the other side. His nostrils flared red and he screamed again, but he did not stop to challenge the bull. He ran south, ever south, sometimes so indistinct against the snow he seemed only a streaming, glittering whirlwind.
The terror of the night could not touch him, and the hunger of the dawn shaken off without thought.
Risen from death, and filled with the magic of the land his bones had lain on for twenty years, Belaguez ran south, an angry foam of stars.
42
The Lake of Life
They sat their black beasts and stared into the waters of the Lake of Life. The trip through the blue mists surrounding Sigholt had not been difficult; the mists had hindered, but not overly, and the Demons had laughed at the inefficiencies of the bridge’s magic.
“She is such an inconsequential thing,” Sheol had observed as they had ridden to the shores of the Lake, “but irritating. And after we finish here, then I think we might…remove…her.”
And yet even as she boasted of the bridge’s destruction, Sheol, as all the Demons, felt the first stir of danger emanating from the Keep. Something was wrong there. Something dangerous. Something…something to be wary of.
Did the Enemy somehow—impossibly—wait in its shadows?
“This Lake is still water,” StarLaughter said, not realising the concerns shared by the Demons. Her child was clasped, as ever, protectively to her breast. “How do we enter the Repository?”
“With ease,” Barzula said. “The waters will not hinder us. And after we have collected what we need from here, we will have to go down no more.”
“What do you mean?” StarLaughter asked.
“You will see,” Rox replied, irritatingly obtuse. He looked at the child in StarLaughter’s arms, and his gaze softened slightly.
“Your boy,” he said, placing a very slight—and somewhat sarcastic—emphasis on the your, “will be too large to carry once breath has infused his body. You will have to relinquish him to his mount.”
StarLaughter glanced at the spare black mount, and her face suffused with a deep unreadable emotion.
“Soon,” she whispered. “Soon! After so many years.”
The Demons turned back to a contemplation of the Lake’s surroundings. Directly across from them was a substantial town.
Deserted. A few doors swung in the wind, and a shutter slammed shut so violently the Demons heard the sound from across the Lake.
“They have fled,” Raspu observed.
The others shrugged. “It will do them little good,” Sheol replied. “We shall feed from them eventually.”
From the town their eyes drifted over the similarly deserted barracks of the Lake Guard and, as the barracks held no interest for them, continued around the curve of the Lake to the great silvery stone Keep of Sigholt itself.
“Magic,” Sheol said in a soft voice. “StarLaughter? Tell me what you know of this place.”
StarLaughter adjusted her child a little more comfortably. “Sigholt is a place of great magic, although few know where it originates, nor even how to use it. When I lived in this land as wife to WolfStar, it was used part as a residence for the Talon and his family, and part as a staging post on the long flight from the Minaret Peaks to our summer palace in Talon Spike. The bridge guards Sigholt, and demands of all who enter if they are true, or not.”
“True to what?” Rox asked.
StarLaughter shrugged. “I do not know. And when I lived, and entered Sigholt, the bridge always let me past.”
Barzula stared at her, then burst into loud laughter. “But you are hardly ‘true’, StarLaughter! Not to this land, nor to anything in this land!”
StarLaughter kept her eyes on the Keep. “I was then,” she said softly.
“The question must be,” Rox said, ignoring both Barzula’s mirth and StarLaughter’s reply, “is the Keep still magic? If so, why? Where does the magic emanate from? The Star Dance is dead, and surely this Keep has little connection to the great forests far to the east.”
“And which we will shortly deal with, anyway,” Sheol said, almost automatically. “But if the Keep is still enchanted, then how?”
She paused, then turned slightly so she could see all her companion Demons. “It makes me uncomfortable, for I would know why.” Her voice changed, became harder. “As I would know how Drago survived the Star Gate.”
The TimeKeepers had come to repent of their tardiness in disposing of Drago. They’d been distracted by those magicians, still not found, and by the time they’d thought to look for Drago, he’d disappeared.
There was silence as all contemplated Drago.
“When we find him,” StarLaughter eventually said, “may I kill him?”
“Why is it you claim all the joy in revenge and killing?” Barzula asked, a petulant lilt in his voice.
“First you want WolfStar, now Drago.”
She shrugged slightly. “They both thought to use me.”
“When we find Drago again,” Sheol said, “he is mine! He thought to trick me of his death once…he will not do it again.”
StarLaughter thought about protesting her right to Drago, then let it drop. Sheol seemed particularly strident over this issue, and besides, her revenge on WolfStar would be sweet enough by itself.
“As you wish,” StarLaughter said, and Sheol smiled at her.
Always as I wish, you irritating birdwoman.
“Now,” Sheol said, and turned to Raspu, “will you work your magic on this Lake?”
Raspu bared his teeth, and hissed. He dropped the reins of his horse, and flexed his fingers into claws.
Watching, StarLaughter was struck by how skeletal they seemed.
With jerky movements, almost as if he was consumed by a desire so great his muscles had gone into involuntary spasm, Raspu threw a leg over his mount’s wither, slid to the ground, and tore the clothing from his body.
He stood, naked and trembling, staring at the water.
StarLaughter suppressed a grimace. Raspu’s body was so emaciated his bones almost protruded through his skin, and boils and pitted scars of long dried-out pustules littered his body from the base of his neck to the backs of his knees. As the Demon began to jerk and tremble, she ran her eyes down his body, noting every sore, the knotted, swollen joints of his limbs, and the withered, browned genitals shrunken up against his pubic bone.
StarLaughter had once considered Raspu a potential lover, but the sight of his naked body dissuaded her completely. Even Drago, as boring as he had been, at least had a body worth caressing.
If Raspu was aware of StarLaughter’s caustic scrutiny, he gave no indication of it. His attention was completely on the waters of the Lake of Life before him. He stepped towards it, rocking violently on his feet as his muscles continued to spasm. His arms and hands jerked in a violent dance by his side, seeming completely beyond his control, and his mouth had dropped open to allow his swollen, reddened tongue to loll down almost as far as the bony bulge of his chin.