Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 (37 page)

A groan brought his head round. Wu was stirring. The mage clutched at his side, groaned anew. ‘Dying,’ he moaned.

‘No you’re not. You’ll survive.’

The greying head rose. ‘It was touch and go, then. A near thing.’

‘I’ve had worse and kept fighting,’ Dorin muttered, eyeing the plain again. He thought he’d glimpsed a thin shape walking in the far distance – a ragged limping figure, now crouched, as if it were . . . watching.

Without taking his eyes from the rock-pavement desert and its rippling, twisting scarves of sand, he asked once more, ‘Where in the Abyss are we?’

‘Our tomb,’ the mage groaned.

Dorin raised his eyes to the ash-hued sky. Dark shapes were crossing it, their wings huge and rigid. Giant bats? ‘No. Really. Where?’

‘My realm.’

Dorin turned to him, his brows high. ‘
Your
realm?’

The fellow was staring off into the distance. ‘Fitting that I should die here, I suppose. One more beguiling mystery among so many for later travellers to puzzle over. One more set of bleached bones for history to gnaw upon. One more—’

‘The wound’s not mortal.’

This roused the fellow enough to lever himself up upon his elbows. ‘Not this wound!’ Then he moaned and pressed a hand to the side of his wrapped torso.

‘Then what?’

‘You’ll see soon enough.’

Dorin clenched his teeth. He crossed his arms over his chest and grasped hold of the grips of the medium-sized daggers sheathed high in his two baldrics. Movement far down the main way caught his eyes and he leaned out for a better glimpse.

He had to stare silently for a time in order to comprehend what he was looking at. Then, without taking his eyes from the apparition, he asked, ‘You mean something like a giant floating house?’

In an instant the mage was at his side. His hands, caked in dried blood and sand, clutched the window sill. Dorin had no idea what the thing was, other than how he’d described it. It was a blockish structure, a dwelling perhaps, hanging, seemingly unsupported, at the end of the main way. And he was certain it hadn’t been there before.

‘By the gods!’ Wu breathed, awed. ‘It’s true!’ He was out the doorway before Dorin could grab his fluttering jacket where it hung slit and unbuttoned down his back.

‘Don’t . . . we don’t know how many—’ But the Dal Hon was off, limping as quickly as he could down the way. Cursing, Dorin followed, blades drawn. When he caught up to the mage he kept his eyes scanning the crumbling building fronts and asked, his voice low, ‘What is it?’

‘I believe it may be something like the Moon’s Child.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘You know the tales?’ Wu asked.

‘Of course! The song of Gemnal and Astodil – the doomed lovers whose souls fly to the Moon’s Child. Apsalar’s quest for the impossible night-blooming rose. Yes, yes. All the fantasy tales.’

‘Not so fantastic,’ the mage puffed, limping along, holding his side. ‘I have read eye-witness accounts of the floating mountain. Seen sketches.’

‘I’ll believe it when I see it. And that’s not it.’

‘No, no. Something
like
it.’

Dorin could now see that the thing had in fact been part of a larger structure. It was as if a room in a building had torn itself free and floated away. A large ramp climbed to end over nothing; a half-wall of stone rose behind a section of stone floor that was no more than a jagged broken surface. And from this ruin hung a wide ladder of rope and wood slats that brushed the ground.

‘What I want to know,’ Wu murmured, ‘is what is the damned thing doing in my realm?’

‘This isn’t your realm.’

The mage jabbed a finger at him. ‘I found it. It’s mine. Finders keepers. Mine! Well . . . there was this scholar whom I, ah, took some papers from. He’d done some pioneering research – but he’d never
seen
it!’

Dorin raised his hands open-palmed. ‘Okay, okay. I’m just saying that there might be—’ He broke off because someone – or thing – had just emerged from a building ahead, about mid-way towards the floating house. The thing froze and studied them as they in turn studied it.

It suggested to Dorin an upright lizard. It possessed a blunt lizard-like snout, now turned their way. Its legs were thick and powerful-looking, while its arms were thin and frail. It wore a vest of some sort of hide, and baldrics from which hung numerous bits of metal. It was holding one such piece of equipment in its long-fingered hands as it stared at them with unblinking black and amber eyes.

A long tongue emerged and flicked the air. The blunt snout turned to the floating house, then back in their direction as if the creature were gauging the distance.

The tableau held, frozen, until out of the distance beyond the broken ruins, rising and falling across the rocky desert slopes, there came the brassy howl of a hound.

All of them broke into a run. The creature dropped the piece of metal, its gait half waddling, half hopping. Wu fell far behind as he puffed and gasped. Dorin was much faster than the thing, but it was far closer to its goal. It reached the ladder and clambered up, drawing the bottom slat up with it as it went. Dorin arrived, jumping. His fingers brushed the lowest wooden slat even as it was whipped up and out of sight. ‘Let us up, damn you!’ he called.

The saurian head peered down for a moment, the tongue flickering, then withdrew. The structure, which listed severely to one side, now began to edge away on a path that would take it just over the broken tops of the buildings on the right. Wu arrived, panting and wincing. He waved at the artefact. ‘Come back!’ Aside, to Dorin, he whispered, ‘Why didn’t you kill it?’

The suggestion annoyed Dorin immensely. ‘Kill it? We don’t even know what it is.’

The hunting cry renewed, measurably louder now.

‘We are dead,’ Wu stated flatly. He let his hands fall loose at his sides.

Dorin was eyeing the distance between the tallest of the ruins and the course of the broken canted fragment. He waved Wu onwards. ‘Come! Run!’ He started off without waiting or checking to see if his companion followed. He traced a route to a jagged multistorey edifice whose tallest thrusting point would intersect with the artefact’s path if it did not alter. He heard Wu clattering after him through the broken rock and rusted metal litter.

The howl burst upon them once more. So loud was it that its bass impact shook the stone walls raising drifting scarves of dust. Dorin could not even imagine such a beast, and certainly did not want to face it armed only with close-quarter weapons. He entered the building’s ground floor through one of the low wide windows, and was confronted by a maze of rusted mystifying machinery. He spotted a ramp rising to the first floor and made for it – Wu could easily follow his footsteps through the ages-old layer of dust and sand that covered the floor.

The ramp rose in a curve to the first floor and a second one started up leading to the next. These floors lay emptier than the ground; broad hallways led off to rooms accessed by large oval openings. The roof of the second had collapsed in places, and through the jagged gaps Dorin glimpsed standing remnants of the main supporting elements of the third. These were his goal. He clambered up a nearby slope of the broken rock and made the roof – such as it was.

The bottom of the floating fragment loomed overhead, drifting lazily. Dorin ran, picking his way carefully along the edge of a narrow standing wall. As he went he unwound a thin line from his waist. His path took him to a tall jutting angle of wall and he climbed this just as the artefact brushed over. Its shadow, as it fell across him, only slightly darkened the strange diffuse light that pervaded everything.

He released the grapnel’s tangs and they locked, extended, even as he let it go to start whirling, spinning, as he let out more line. He threw. The grapnel arced up and outwards, reaching, only to strike the flat face of a stone wall and bounce away, falling to the street below.

He let his arm drop. The floating platform coasted onward. He heard the mage struggling among the wreckage of the slope behind. He started slowly re-looping the line.

Wu arrived, panting. ‘I’m impressed,’ he gasped. ‘Nearly reached it.’

‘I need a longer rope,’ Dorin murmured. Watching the thing coast away it occurred to him that the unearthly construction, though ragged and broken, still possessed a strange sort of beauty as it silently floated off. He wondered whether it really was a fragment of that giant mountain many named the Moon’s Spawn.

Wu peered round and clapped his hands together. ‘Well. We can perch here like birds and hope they don’t reach us.’

Dorin’s gaze snapped to him.

‘They? There’s more than one?’ The mage’s expression became pained and he wove his fingers together. ‘Er, well, yes.’

‘Wonderful.’

A new howl burst through the streets below and Dorin flinched despite his efforts to contain the reaction. He searched about, frantic for an escape, and his gaze fell on the structure next to them. Shorter than this one, it was in far worse shape; much of its interior flooring had collapsed. In fact, it looked as if all of the ramps to the higher floors were gone.

‘We have to jump.’ He pointed to the roof below.

The mage shrank from the edge. ‘No. There is no way I can do that. I’ll just sit here and think, thank you.’

‘They can’t reach us there. Come on.’ He grasped a fistful of the mage’s clothes at the shoulder and marched him along to where a section of roofing allowed for a run at the gap.

Wu batted at his grip. ‘This is absurd. It matters not where we die!’

‘Do you want me to fight or not?’ Dorin snarled, shaking him.

The fellow threw out his arms to indicate their surroundings. ‘Well, yes. I had hoped we could come to an arrangement. But that was before
this
! Thanks to you we’re stranded in another realm and dead!’

‘Thanks to me we’re still alive,’ Dorin muttered. He faced the neighbouring structure, renewed his grip on the man. ‘We’re going to run and jump, you hear? The gap is narrow. Not a street. It can be done.’

The mage suddenly clutched at his leg, hopping. ‘Oh, a cramp! In my leg. An awful cramp. I get them, you know – damned inconvenient.’

Dorin fought to keep him upright. ‘Would you stop—’

Both stilled then, as each heard it from below: the flinty scrabbling of huge nails or claws on stone, and a titanic beast’s great bellows-like breathing and snuffling.

The mage broke free of Dorin’s grip and took off for the ledge, yelling in wordless terror, his arms thrown wide. He disappeared from sight over the lip, his torn jacket flapping like failed wings. Dorin ran as well, not even daring to glance back to the open floor behind where even now a great shaggy monstrosity might be loping to close its jaws upon him. He flung himself out kicking as hard as he could.

He landed in a bone-rattling impact, tumbling and rolling, his breath punched from him. Shaken, he leaped up immediately to stagger to the edge where he’d glimpsed the mage lying prone, half dangling. He yanked the man away from the lip just as both legs slid over.

‘You have to roll when you hit,’ he explained. ‘Roll. Don’t just land like a sack of flour.’

From the building behind came a great howling bellow of rage that shook the air and they both flinched, hunching. A blow like a sledgehammer struck the wall where they’d been standing and loose stones fell to the alley below.

Covered in stone dust the mage stood blinking, dazed, blood running from his mouth. ‘What? Roll . . . what?’ Dorin led him to the middle of the tiny section of roof they now possessed and sat him down.

‘Think here.’

Nodding, still quite shaken, the fellow sat. He pressed a hand to his side where fresh blood gleamed. Dorin drew his middle-weight blades, thin long-knives, and crossed to the nearest broken edge of roof. Cautiously, he peered over; a pile of rubble here. Tall enough? He hoped not.

He continued his investigation of their perimeter. What now? An anonymous death in some alien desert? Not what he’d imagined for himself. Not at all. He glanced back to the ridiculous mage: the fellow sat cross-legged. Thinking of a way out, he hoped. Still, if he got them in, why shouldn’t he be able to get them out? He went to him, peering down. ‘Do your magery, or whatever it was that you did before. Get us out of here.’

The fellow raised his gaze and offered a sad sort of lost smile. ‘Yes. That’s the idea, isn’t it? Just not that easy. What a shame. I had such plans . . .’

Rocks clattered below. A grating rumble that might have been the growling of a giant vibrated the stones beneath their feet. Dorin went to the ledge to scan the clutter of the collapsed sections. A shape padded into view, a tawny, shaggy pelt of sandy brown. So huge was it Dorin thought for a moment it was a horse. That was until it raised its blunt muzzle, its pointed ears pricking up, and fixed bright amber eyes upon him.

The eyes captured him, and he stared fascinated and horrified, his blood congealing. What he glimpsed was not malevolence or evil, but hunger. A savage primal hunger that allowed no barrier or obstacle to stand between it and its goal. What shook Dorin was the sudden reversal of roles: prior to being caught by those eyes he’d always considered himself the hunter. Now he was prey – and it shook him to his core.

He blinked and shook his head as if coming out of a trance or a dream. Now he knew how the mouse felt, he realized.

The beast let go a great challenging roar and leaped. Its forepaws scrabbled at the lip of the roof and Dorin sliced at them in a sudden panic. Stones were torn away as the beast fell back. He retreated from the edge, his heart hammering. Gods! What a brute.

A howl of frustration went up from below, the roof shaking beneath Dorin’s feet. In its colossal rage and frustration the beast threw itself against a wall and the entire structure rocked, weaving. Another section of wall fell in a crash of stones.

‘Do something!’ Dorin yelled as he fought to keep his balance.

‘No point,’ the mage answered. ‘Look.’ Dorin shot him a desperate glance. The fellow was wiggling his fingers over the stones of the roof. ‘No hard shadows here. None. Nothing to catch hold of.’