Priests of Ferris (17 page)

Wise One came slowly up the slope to Nick and Dawn. ‘There is your army. I hope it will be enough. Others will come, but they need more time. As for me, I am old. I will never fly outside the mountains. But my son is there, and his son. They will tell me what the world is like.’ He smiled at Nick and said, ‘You know that we must ask for help from the Stonefolk? Never have two races been further apart – in the sky and under the stone.’

‘They will help.’

‘I hope so. Now, we must prepare. Time is short.’

The Birdfolk armed themselves and gathered supplies. Nests were brought for Nick and Dawn. Late in the morning the ‘army’ – more than fifty Birdfolk now – left Morninghall and flew south. Wise One and several Councillors, and warriors who had not decided, flew with them. Two of these carried Nick and Dawn. Late in the day they stopped at a place high in the mountains where caves angled into eroded cliffs. Nick and Wise One entered one of them and stopped at the margin of the light. ‘This is where Birdfolk and Stonefolk talk. There has been no need for many turns,’ Wise One said. He raised his voice and called into the dark, ‘Stonefolk. Hear me. I am the Wise One of Morninghall. I come to ask your help.’

No answer came and after several minutes Nick began to move impatiently. Wise One placed his hand on his shoulder. ‘They cannot be hurried. They will come.’

It seemed hours later that a voice whispered far away in the dark, ‘I am here. Ask your question.’

Wise One spoke with care, sending his voice softly down the cave. ‘There has been a Council in our Hall. We have heard a messenger from the Varg and have looked at our Prohibition differently.’

‘With what result?’ said the voice.

‘We have understood it.’

‘It has taken you a long time, Birdman. Why do you come to us?’

‘So that you may guide us. We would be as humble as the worm.’

Silence filled the cave. It seemed there would be no answer.

‘They are deciding,’ Wise One said. ‘Perhaps they will help, perhaps they won’t.’

A new voice came out of the dark – older, furrier, yet somehow more sure of itself. ‘How do we know that Birdfolk will not kill and plunder again when they fly outside the mountains?’

‘You do not know,’ Wise One said. ‘I do not know. Yet I believe any who pass this test will have greed and cruelty burned out of them.’

Silence again. Then the voice said, ‘It is possible. Who is the one with you?’

‘Tell them, Nick.’

‘I am Nicholas Quinn,’ Nick said. ‘I’m Susan’s friend. She is at the Temple with Jimmy Jaspers and Ben, the Varg. They sent me with a message to the Birdfolk. We’re going to destroy the Temple. At least, Susan is. If she can. But we need the Birdfolk to help. So please, show them the way. If you don’t, we’ve got no chance.’

‘What will you put in place of the Temple?’

‘Nothing. That’s not our job. We’ll leave it for the people of O to decide.’

‘You think they will choose something better?’

‘I don’t know,’ Nick said. ‘I don’t know anything. All I know is that the Temple’s bad. They’re going to kill Limpy’s sister the day after tomorrow.’

‘And so we must save her. Yes. An innocent child. The reason is good enough, and the risk justified.’

‘So you’ll help?’

‘We will show the way. But know, Birdman’ – he spoke to Wise One – ‘it is hard. The worm lives in mud, not in stone.’

‘We know,’ Wise One said.

‘Some will die. Others will go mad.’

Wise One made no answer.

‘Well?’

‘I will tell them,’ the old Birdman said. ‘Where will Nick go to wait?’

‘Down the mountain on the other side there is a gorge, and a river bursting from the stone. Beneath the fall, a cave. There is the place.’

‘Dawn will find it,’ Nick said. ‘How long will it take?’

‘All this day and one of your nights.’

They went out of the cave and Wise One told the Birdfolk what the Stoneman had said. None dropped out, and several of those who had been undecided joined the band.

‘They see the sky on the other side,’ Wise One said.

Yellowclaw and Silverwing came to talk with Nick and Dawn. It was hard to tell what they were thinking. Only in their eyes was there any fear, but they spoke of practical things – food and weapons and place of meeting – and made a formal goodbye when Wise One called them. Then the Birdfolk went into the cave, tall and proud, their feathers flashing in the sun. To Nick it was as if they were being drunk into darkness. Colour became grey. Red and green, blue and silver, purple, yellow, orange; a rainbow, an iridescence, streamed into the cave, and light went out. He could not bear to watch it, but turned away and went down the hill and joined the Birdfolk who would fly the nests and weapons and food higher into the mountains. When he looked again only Wise One was left, standing by the cave.

Through the rest of the day, as he and Dawn climbed higher, as they crossed the pass, and waved goodbye to shrinking specks in the sky, and climbed down to the bush-line on the other side, he thought of the Birdfolk deep in the mountain under them, turning in caves, shuffling in passages, with their great wings useless by their sides. He thought he felt some of the pain they must feel.

Dawn led the way down through the bush, almost as quick in the dark as she was in daylight. At midnight she found a place to sleep. They unstrapped their nests from their backs and ate some food. Nick went to sleep with the distant roar of a waterfall in his ears.

That was the sound they followed in the morning. They worked their way along the foot of hills and entered a gorge, and found the place where the creek broke from its underground passage and leaped fifty metres down a cliff.

‘We’ll make a fire,’ Dawn said. ‘They’ll be wet and cold.’

‘Won’t the priest patrols see the smoke?’

‘They’ve all gone to the Temple for the Miracle.’

They hunted for dry wood and hauled it into the gorge and built a mound on a shingle spit down from the fall. Then Nick crept in behind the water, through spray as wetting as rain, and waited by the cave mouth. It was only a narrow split in the rock. The larger Birdfolk would struggle to get through. He went into the dark a little way and listened for some noise, but the sound of the waterfall was too great. ‘If you can hear,’ he said, ‘tell me when they’re coming.’ Then he waited hours in the dark, crouched and shivering. At last, from far away, a whisper came, drifting like a filament of web. ‘The Birdfolk come.’ Nick ran outside. ‘Light the fire,’ he cried to Dawn.

The flames were roaring in the logs when the first Birdfolk stumbled from the spray. Nick ran to them. It took him a little while to recognize Silverwing and Yellowclaw. They looked like two crumpled old vultures, filthy, tattered. Grey mud was caked on their bodies and broken feathers poked out at all angles. They had their eyes closed against the light, and they stood in the gorge side by side, Birdfolk no longer it seemed, but beaten feeble creatures, robbed of strength.

‘Yellowclaw? Nick whispered.

‘Take us where we may wash,’ the Birdman said hoarsely.

He led them down past the fire to the shallow edge of a pool and watched them wade in up to their thighs and spread themselves like grey bats on the surface. Dawn led other Birdfolk down, and Nick ran back, and they were busy then for the rest of the morning, leading Birdfolk to the pool, finding space for them, helping those who had cleansed themselves to the fire, and feeding them; and closing the eyes of a warrior who came out of the cave and lay down and died.

‘Others are dead in there,’ Silverwing whispered. ‘And some tried to turn back. They will die.’

‘There are thirty-four of you,’ Nick said.

‘Nearly half are lost. And now – I feel as if I will never fly again.’

Yellowclaw was standing with his wings outspread in the sun slanting into the gorge. ‘You will fly,’ he said. ‘We will all fly. I am ready now. We have wriggled and twisted like worms and we will not forget the worm in us. Those who have walked in Stone will fly in Wildwood. That is the lesson. Come with me, Silverwing.’

‘Where?’

‘To the top of the waterfall. Another walk.’

‘And if we are wrong? If our wings are not free?’

‘Then we will fall.’ He started away from the fire in his stiff walk. Silverwing followed him. They came to the foot of the water, and began climbing up through boulders at its side, flapping and twisting, bats again; and once more Nick felt they had lost their power, so unnatural they seemed. But when they stood at the top of the fall and spread their wings and leaned over the drop, he believed. Their breasts shone with colour again, light played and shifted on their wings.

The Birdfolk at the fire, and those still washing at the pool, all spread their wings in fellowship. If Yellowclaw and Silverwing failed, all would die. Nick and Dawn felt it. It seemed to them the nation of Birdfolk would die.

‘Go,’ Nick whispered. ‘You won’t fall.’

And Yellowclaw and Silverwing launched themselves. Just for a moment they seemed to drop. Then their wings found purchase on the air and slid them forward as though on a long chute down the gorge. They swept over the fire, scattering flame, and turned on an upward curve, and beat their wings for the first time, and climbed, climbed, out of the grip of the walls. They climbed. And the Birdfolk in the gorge clapped their wings as Yellowclaw and Silverwing flew in forbidden air, took it for their own, and beat and beat, circling up, high over Wildwood.

The stronger Birdfolk flew back over the mountains and brought weapons and supplies to the ‘army’.

‘Others are coming to the cave. The news is spreading. Soon there will be hundreds coming through.’

‘We can’t wait for them,’ Nick said. ‘You’ll have to fly all night as it is.’

‘We’ll fly forever if you need us.’

They set off after dark, twenty-seven Birdfolk – seven were too weak to fly after their underground journey – with Nick and Dawn in the nests. Far away, deep down in the night, pin-pricks of light showed the location of the Temple. Later, when the moon was up, nothing could be seen but silver tree-tops, and the sea, with the line of Sheercliff marked on it. Twice the Birdfolk rested, once on a hillside, and once by a river Nick recognized as Sweetwater. They saw human villages, with their temples lit up and the wing emblem gleaming like mother-of-pearl. Yellowclaw led them on wide half-circles round them.

An hour before dawn they reached Sheercliff several kilometres north of the Temple. They landed on a slope above the cliff and waited there, and soon Yellowclaw said, ‘A Varg is coming. I feel him in my mind.’

‘That’ll be Ben. Can you feel him, Dawn?’

‘Yes. I’ve been calling. He’s coming with Jimmy.’

‘What about Susan?’

‘I don’t know.’

Soon Jimmy and Ben came down the slope. ‘Good on yer, boy, yer a bloddy bottler.’

‘Where’s Susan?’

‘Tell yer later. We gotter get under cover. She’s gettin’ light.’

He led them up the slope, with the Birdfolk circling overhead. They broke through heavy underbrush, deep under giant trees, and came to a rocky hollow, a natural amphitheatre, with growth on all sides round the rim. Limpy and his father waited there. The Birdfolk dropped from the sky and gathered round the humans and the Varg.

‘Is this all yer got? They’re a scruffy lookin’ bunch,’ Jimmy said.

‘More are coming. This is Silverwing and Yellowclaw from Morninghall.’

‘Howdy,’ Jimmy said. ‘Meet ole Ben.’

The Birdfolk and the Varg faced each other in the thin morning light. Yellowclaw stepped forward slowly. He spread his wings a little, held them forward, a movement that seemed to enclose Ben. The bear rose on his hind legs. They were equal in height; and equal in every way, in strength, in authority, even, though each was different, in colour. They stood together without making a sound.

‘They are speaking,’ Dawn whispered. ‘Yellowclaw is thanking him. Now they are making a pact – for all Birds and all Varg. In olden times they were enemies. Now they are friends.’

‘I hope it lasts,’ Nick said.

‘They have promised. They do not lie like humans.’

Yellowclaw folded his wings and Ben dropped back on all fours. Then Kenno, Limpy’s father, stepped forward. ‘Now Birdman, will you make a pact with me?’

‘What will you promise?’

‘I can’t speak for all humans. I’m only a fisherman. But I will fight to destroy the Temple. And others will fight. If you help, then I promise friendship. That is all.’

‘It will be enough.’

Nick moved impatiently. We can do this talking later. Will someone tell me where Susan is?’

‘Yeah, well,’ Jimmy said. ‘Fact is, Nick, they got er.’

‘Who’s got her?’

‘Them geezers in the Temple. She done a bunk, yer see. Climbed the cliff with them gloves. She wanted to have a go at this High Priest by ’erself.’

‘And you let her?’

‘She done it once before, Nick. And it didn’t turn out too bad.’

‘How do you know they’ve got her?’

Ben knows. He can sort of feel her. She’s up there in the Temple, locked inside.’

‘How is she? Have they done anything?’

‘She’s scared, son. Real frightened.’

‘My daughter is with her,’ Kenno said. ‘They will throw them off together.’

‘How can we save them? What are we going to do?’

‘Things ain’t exactly equal,’ Jimmy said. ‘But their army’s down below, they only got the guards up here. If more Birdfolk is comin’ we got a chance. And Kenno can get ’is revolution goin’.’

‘What about now? Today?’

‘I’m gettin’ to it. There’s mebbe a hundred an’ fifty guards. That right, Kenno?’

‘Armed with swords, not cross-bows. And there are no dogs in the Temple. But the guards are fanatical. They’ll die for the High Priest.’

‘They might have to do just that,’ Jimmy said. ‘What we got on our side is surprise. Now, Limpy’s been into the town and pinched some clothes. So what I reckon is, Nick and me and Kenno and Limpy goes in with the crowd, in disguise. We get some good seats, right up front – leave that part ter me. When the time comes, the Birdfolk attack. And we grab the girls.’