Pilgrim (33 page)

“I think you will find,” Urbeth said very gently, “that Caelum is a fine man and a worthy brother. This will not be as difficult as you think.”

“I want to go north to Star Finger from here to see him,” Drago said.

“Yes,” Urbeth said. “That would be good. And I think that he will be more than ready to speak with you. A peace needs to be made between you. Caelum needs to come to terms with his own nightmares.”

“The girl?” Faraday said, abruptly reminded of her when Urbeth mentioned nightmares. “Do you know who she—”

“Hush!” Urbeth cried. “Does no-one relish the adventure any more? Does no-one revel in the delight of finding out for
themselves
any more? It is not the quest, but the
questing
that is important.”

She heaved a great, theatrical sigh and waved a paw languidly in the air. “Go to Star Finger. Speak with Caelum. Find that which is lost.”

“And when I
do
find her, she need never fear again!” Faraday said in a low but vehement tone.

Urbeth stared at her, concerned, then shared that concern in a glance to Drago.

“You cannot be the protective mother to every lost child,” Urbeth said, and touched the hem of Faraday’s gown with one of her paws. “Sometimes, that which is lost…returns to loss.”

“What do you mean?” Faraday asked, her tone sharp.

Urbeth shrugged. “I speak in the riddles of the ice-pack, girl. I cannot help it.”

“And from Star Finger?” Drago asked. “Where from there? What do I
do
, Urbeth? I am wandering the land and watching it sicken about me. Each hour the Demons stretch their grey miasma across Tencendor more creatures fall under their influence and lose their souls! What do I do? How do I confront—”

“Hush!” Urbeth cried again. “What
did
happen to all the adventurers of history? Ah!”

She took a deep breath and calmed herself. “Journeying in itself is learning, Drago. Go where you feel driven.”

“Go where I feel driven,” Drago muttered. “All fine and good!”

“You
do
remind me of my eldest,” Urbeth said, “for you are certainly as annoying.” She sighed. “From Star Finger take your staff to Sigholt. Learn the heritage of the Enemy that lives in you. And once you have learned that, learn to trust
instinct
. One more thing, seeing as I have fallen in the habit of spilling secrets, Drago…I have spoken of how the Acharite magic is released only through death. Use that knowledge to create your allies and the magic that will destroy Qeteb. Destruction through death, resurrection into magic.”

Drago nodded, thinking he understood, and they sat for a long while without speaking. In that silence Drago finally came to an acceptance of Caelum’s fate…the fate Drago had to send him to.

I was ever the treacherous brother, Drago thought, but the thought was tinged only with sadness, not with resentment.

Eventually, when the fire had burned down to hot coals, Urbeth spoke. “I would that you leave the stallion here in Gorkenfort.”

Drago, dozing in the warmth and comfort of the chamber, jerked his head up. “Why?”

“I have need of company, and for the moment you will have no need of him.”

Drago shrugged. “Very well.”

Urbeth’s words made Faraday ponder on the lonely life the Enchantress must have led. “It must have been very sad for you,” she said, “to lose all your children to the world. Three sons, and they all left home eventually.”

Urbeth smiled, her eyes dreamy. “Yes, it
was
sad to lose my sons, but I had my daughters to keep me company.”

Faraday and Drago sat up in interest.

“Daughters?” Drago said.

“Yes. Two daughters. They travelled with you for many, many months. Do you know them?”

“Oh gods!” Faraday breathed, and looked at Drago and laughed.

The Crimson Chamber of the ancient Icarii palace in Carlon was one of the fairest rooms the palace contained, but now it reeked with the stink of madness—and worse.

The beautiful crimson dome reigned over a chamber that was entirely bare, save for the stake driven into the very centre of the floor, and the single wooden chair placed next to the locked and barred door.

On that chair sat Zared, King of the Acharites. His grey eyes were absent of all expression, save hopelessness. His face was ashen, his hair uncombed, his cheeks and chin stubbled with days-old beard.

He stared, and as he stared, he was caught yet again in the recurring guilt he had about his first wife, Isabeau.

He should never have let her ride to the hunt. He should never have given her the horse that killed her. He should never have let her
near
a horse, for the gods’ sakes, when she was five months gone with their child.

Now she was dead, crushed beneath the horse that failed a single stone fence.

Their child, never given the chance of life, was dead.

As was the woman before him, and the child she carried.

Both dead, or as good as.

From the stake in the heart of the chamber snaked a chain that almost—but not quite—extended as far as the surrounding circular walls.

At the end of that chain was bolted a woman. Naked. Smeared with filth, for she would allow none near to clean her.

And savage. She snarled and spat at Zared, her eyes clouded with insanity and demonic rage. Her fingernails had been torn free in her desperate attempt to claw across the floor to reach him.

Blood smeared the tiles and her pale skin.

Zared’s eyes flitted down to the faint swelling of her belly. Her body lived, but Leagh was dead to him.

As was the child.

Zared’s eyes filled with tears. It was his fault. He should never have let her ride with Askam. He should
never
have trusted Askam!

Leagh—or what had once been her—snarled and jerked at the chain that had been bolted to her left ankle. She spat, trying every way her mad mind knew to reach him…to hurt him.

Her only purpose in life now was to destroy the man who sat weeping on the chair just out of her reach.

“I love you,” he said.

T
he Sea Worms had decimated the twenty-strong fleet. Most of the ships had been attacked and crippled or sunk in the initial attack, and in the cold late afternoon air, as the survivors huddled on the gritty beach, the Worms attacked the remaining floating vessels from the safety of the bay’s depths. In one moment a ship floated peacefully, the next it would rock violently as teeth sunk into its keel, ripping away timbers and exposing the belly of the ship to the invading icy waters.

Theod, as all those who survived the sinking of their ships, had swum to shore with only bare minutes to spare before the onset of the mid-afternoon despair. They’d frantically dug themselves holes in the loose shale of the beach with limbs shaking with cold and exhaustion and fear, burying themselves even as the grey corruption rolled over the mountains.

Many had not covered themselves in time, and they and the horses which had managed to escape the holds of the sinking ships, had succumbed to the madness.

Now the horses floated in the water, useless hulks of skin, flesh and bone. Maddened, they had forgotten to swim, and had died drowning in despair.

The men, either those in the water or those who’d found the beach, but not the safety of shelter, had scuttled away into the first gullies of the Murkle Mountains, although not
before a few had stabbed down into the mounds of shale with their swords.

More men dead.

The Strike Force had escaped with no casualties at all—if you did not consider the wounding of their spirits as they watched, horrified, the fate of their wingless companions. The Icarii could do little, for they could not bear the weight of a man to safety of either shore or shadowed gullies, and in the end they were reduced to sheltering in the caves of the first line of mountains, watching and listening as horses and men went mad.

As despair passed, and the afternoon once again became relatively safe, DareWing FullHeart sent a farflight scout back to the fleet of ships still at sea.

“Tell them to turn for the safety of ports in the south,” he ordered, “for it would be death to venture into Murkle Bay.”

Now Theod, with DareWing, Goldman, the Strike Force and what remained of the two thousand men—some nine hundred—sat on the beach watching the Sea Worms eating the remaining planks floating in the sea.

“Enough!” Theod said, and rose wearily to his feet. “DareWing, send a Wing into the mountains to make contact, if they can, with those who shelter in the mines. Keep the rest of the Strike Force in the air for…for whatever protection you can give us.”

“And us?” Goldman asked, gesturing to the white-faced, sodden soldiers standing about in listless ranks.

“Us? Why, we walk into the mountains,” Theod said. “I do not fancy spending this night breathing shale.”

And without waiting for an answer, Theod turned his back to the sea and walked towards the first of the gullies leading into the mountains as the Strike Force rose into the air about him.

No-one wanted to think about what kind of journey home awaited them.

A league out to sea, the farflight scout winged his way towards the distant masts.

Relieved that he would reach them in time, the scout increased his efforts, but then slowed, horrified. The mast of the leading ship was keeling over, and before the scout’s appalled eyes, hit the water with a great splash.

The ship rolled over, showing a massive hole in its side.

The farflight scout descended, desperate to try and help the men struggling in the water.

As he skimmed the waves, not thinking about the danger, a huge purple head reared out of the sea and snatched him from the air, disappearing beneath the waves again.

The water roiled, and then resumed its heavy rolling motion, the only reminder of the farflight scout’s foolhardy bravery being a few white feathers scattered across the flowing waves.

Another ship, and then another, and then yet another rolled over and sank, and by the time Raspu settled his pestilence over the grey sea there was only the odd sailor left clinging to a plank to seize for his own.

Tencendor, as its people, was on its own.

Theod trudged up the gully. His outer clothes were drying off, but his underclothes clung damply to his skin, and the leather of his boots was soaked through, chafing at his frozen feet.

He’d lost the ships, dammit, but he had some nine hundred men, and the Strike Force, and that would have to be enough. Get the people to the Western Ranges…they could travel east-south-east through the lower reaches of the Murkles and then into the Western Ranges, sheltering through the unlivable hours under overhangs and in caves and the shadows of cliffs. It would have to be enough.

From the Western Ranges, DareWing could send farflight scouts to Zared, and Zared could meet them with enough of a force to get them safely to Carlon.

“We could stay in the mines,” Goldman said quietly as he strode beside Theod. He could see the younger man’s face, the determination in his mind, and he knew what he must be thinking.

“For how long?” Theod’s voice was hard, and he did not look at Goldman. “For how
long
? We must trust in a man whom no-one has ever trusted before, and trust him to find us this unknowable called Sanctuary.” Theod abruptly halted and faced Goldman. “And no doubt if all the unknowables resolve in our favour, do you know what will happen? This Sanctuary will be found in a delightful little glade in the furthest corner of the Avarinheim, and what hope,
what bloody hope
, would we have of getting to it?”

Goldman said nothing, just returned Theod’s look with all the sympathy he could manage.

“Besides…” Theod turned his eyes to the nearest cliffs of the Murkles. “I do not want to spend what is left of my life lurking in the depths of these abominations.”

His voice softened almost to a whisper. “Look at them. They are so bare, so lifeless. No vegetation. Not even a lizard left to crawl over them. Just grey peaks and shale-covered slopes. No beauty. Nothing. Are my people in there, Goldman? Gods’ be damned, that all the hope and beauty of Aldeni should have come to this!”

Goldman did not follow Theod’s eyes, but merely looked at the Duke. He wondered if the man knew how much of his grandfather shone out of him at this moment. Not his looks, for, luckily, Theod took after his maternal side in litheness and blond colouring, but in the sheer humanity shining from his face. Roland had been a man who had suffered with every one of his people when Gorgrael’s ice and loathsome minions had crawled over his province, and the man had died before he could see it restored to its former beauty. Goldman hoped that Theod would live to see Aldeni released from its current horror.

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.