The Bell Between Worlds (52 page)

He drew his eyes away and looked up at the massive hulk of iron swinging lazily from the ceiling. This was the point of no return. He set his teeth, ducked his head beneath its arrowhead points and stepped inside.

“I knew you’d come.”

The voice was deep and resonant, but it cut through the sound of the wind. The words echoed along the passageway making it impossible to tell where they had come from.

Sylas stopped breathing. His muscles tensed.

He looked frantically about him, trying to see any sign of movement, any shape in the shadows. Then he saw something. A tall, dark, human shape stepping from the shadows just a few paces ahead.

The figure reached up to its hood. When it fell away, it revealed a dark, chiselled, once youthful face marked by a terrible wound.

Espen.

Sylas froze, his instincts divided: to stay or to run.

His eyes passed quickly over Espen’s face, taking in the piercing eyes, the creased, weathered skin, the livid gash. The Magruman bore an expression that was hard to discern, his brow furrowed, his eyes focused and urgent.

But Sylas thought he saw something else. A warmth that looked like relief.

“I know you don’t trust me, but I can explain everything,” said Espen, taking a step forward. “We must go somewhere safe.”

“Here will have to do,” said Sylas firmly, his voice shaking a little despite himself.

Espen was silent for a moment. He glanced back down the passageway.

“Very well,” he said. “But the Ghor will soon find Paiscion in the eye of his storm, and then they will return. We must move on as soon as you’re ready. Agreed?”

Sylas shifted nervously, unnerved that Espen knew about Paiscion. He nodded.

“Good,” said the Magruman. “I am sorry you had to find out my lies. I wanted to tell you myself. The problem with discovering a lie is that you do not know where it ends – it infects everything, corrupts everything you know of a person.” He fixed him with an earnest look. “Whatever you may think, Sylas, I have not betrayed you.”

“How can you
say
that?” demanded Sylas, a little louder than he intended. “What about Bayleon?”

Espen frowned. “That was regrettable, but he is safe enough.”

“
Regrettable?
How can you—”

“Sylas, you
must
let me explain myself – explain my lies. Then you can decide whether or not to trust me. Is that fair?”

Sylas looked at him with narrow eyes. He shrugged.

“I told you that I was captured by the Ghor after the Reckoning, but that I escaped on to the Barrens. Do you remember?”

He nodded.

“That was a lie. I was unconscious when they finally took me from the battlefield, and when I woke, I was here, in the Dirgheon. I lied too when I told you that I went to the Other in the hope that there might be some truth in the Glimmer Myth. I
knew
that the Glimmer Myth was true and I
knew
that our salvation depended on it.”

He fell silent, as if waiting for Sylas to respond, but the boy looked at him blankly.

“It was Naeo, Sylas... Your Glimmer. You should have seen her at the Reckoning! Such a natural mastery of Essenfayle… There
had
to be something special about her. As soon as I saw her, I thought of Merisu’s poem, of the Glimmer Myth. She had to be the one!”

Sylas eyed him carefully. “So you’ve known since the Reckoning?”

Espen nodded. “But so has Thoth. He had no idea what her power might mean, but he understood that it was extraordinary and dangerous. I knew that she wouldn’t be safe for long. On the one hand she was enticing to Thoth, for he might be able to learn from her, but on the other she was a threat.” He drew a deep breath. “So, I decided I had to tell Thoth something that would make her more enticing than threatening; too valuable to be killed.”

Sylas’s eyes widened. “You told him about the myth?”

Espen nodded. “I told him about the myth and I told him that if Naeo was capable of fulfilling all that it foretold, then her Glimmer was the key. I told him that you must exist, and that if anyone would know who you were, it would be the Merisi.”

“But why tell him so much?” asked Sylas, confused. “Why not just tell him that Naeo was – I don’t know – a great magician, and leave it at that?”

“Because he already knew better, Sylas. This was no girl who had mastered Essenfayle – she was something altogether different. And also because this way I thought I might just get him to
help
me – to help us all.”

“How?”

“By allowing me to bring you together.”

Sylas frowned. “But why would he do that?”

“For your power. Either to use it, or if it proved impossible to harness, to put it beyond our reach. I told him that when Naeo grew a little older I would teach her how to raise the Passing Bell so that you could be summoned. I told him that, if he let me travel between the worlds over that time, I would find the Merisi and then you, and ensure that you were prepared for the journey. Then, when you were both ready, Naeo would summon you and I would guide you to the Dirgheon to deliver you into his hands. I told him that I would do all this if he would let all three of us live.”

“And he fell for that?”

“Not quite. As I suspected, the thought of having both Naeo and you was too much for him to resist. But he had two problems: first, he knew that I was not to be trusted, and second, he knew that whatever this power was, it was likely to be dangerous. He considered my proposal for several days and finally he summoned me…”

He shot an anxious glance past Sylas to the distant opening of the tunnel. Sylas turned and squinted, finding it hard to see anything through the murk. There was a flash of lightning, followed by another. In that momentary light he saw a slight movement, a dark shape shifting next to the canal wall.

Then he saw two and then three stooping figures.

“They’re coming back,” he said, turning to Espen.

Espen looked at him anxiously. “Will you follow me?” he asked urgently.

Sylas hesitated, scrutinising Espen’s open face. “I will. But I want to hear more.”

Espen grasped his shoulder. “As we run!”

He whirled about and took three or four paces along the towpath, paused to make sure that Sylas was following, then darted into an opening in the wall. Sylas hesitated for a moment, and then followed.

Inside, the darkness was even more complete than in the tunnel: there was no glow from the moon, no lightning, no torches but one that flickered in the distance, somewhere high above them.

“There’s a staircase ahead of us,” hissed Espen. “It’ll take us to the first level.”

They began climbing a steep flight of stone steps, bracing themselves against the dank walls.

“They were coming back to lower the portcullis,” said Espen when they were at a safe distance. “You won’t be able to get out through Ending’s Gate. We’ll have to think of another way.”

“We’ve taken care of it.”

Espen glanced over his shoulder. “You have? How do—”

“I’ll tell you when I’m ready,” interrupted Sylas. “Tell me about your meeting with Thoth.”

The Magruman smiled, as if proud of Sylas’s new confidence, then continued to climb.

“Thoth is known to enjoy his games,” he whispered as he went, “and the crueller and more merciless they are, the more amusing he finds them. Scarpia, one of his Magrumen, came up with a scheme that seemed to fulfil his every wish: it would allow me the freedom to help him, but keep me under his control; it would allow you to reach Naeo if that was your destiny, but if not, it would ensure that you could be no threat to him; and, best of all, it would become a pleasant diversion for him – a game of cat and mouse.”

“And let me guess… I’m supposed to be the mouse?”

Espen turned and smiled. “You’re
supposed
to be, yes, though it hasn’t worked out that way.”

He continued to climb and, as they were drawing near the torchlight at the top, Espen lowered his voice to a whisper.

“He told me that I could do as I proposed, but that there were two conditions. The first was that I would tell no one the truth about what I was doing; if I did, it would cost Naeo her life. That was fine, as I had no intention of leading the Ghor to any of my brethren, and in any case, I wasn’t sure that anyone would believe me.”

He reached the top step and raised his finger to his lips. He braced himself, then peered round the corner. The long, dark corridor extended both ways as far as the eye could see, lit only by an occasional flame. There was no sign of movement, no sound but the occasional spit of wax and drip of water.

“Paiscion is doing a fine job,” he whispered. “The guards must have been summoned to the defences. Come – and keep an eye out behind us.”

They stepped out into the corridor. A stale wind blew along its length, making Espen’s cloak fly up behind him. It carried a new, appalling smell: the scent of unwashed bodies, open sewers, disease. Sylas put his hand over his mouth and nose and ran to keep up with Espen.

“What was his other condition?” he murmured.

“One that I didn’t expect,” said Espen ruefully. “He told me that from the moment I told him of your identity – which had to be before the ringing of the bell – you would be treated by him and his forces as a threat; we would both be tracked and hunted as his enemy, and if we were found, we would be killed. He would send his Ghor and his Ghorhund, his Magrumen and his Slithen – anything he chose. It was a great novelty for him: he would test the foulest of his fiends against us and be sure of the outcome. If I kept you safe, you would be delivered to him; if I failed, we would be killed, and he would have no more to fear from you, me or the Glimmer Myth. What’s more, he was placing me in an impossible position: if I refused, Naeo and I would be executed anyway; if I agreed, I would have no quarter to raise a plot against him, for I would only expose Naeo and anyone we met to terrible danger.”

Sylas felt a creeping realisation. “Like everyone at Meander Mill…” he murmured.

Espen turned and met his eyes. “I had no way of knowing, Sylas,” he said. “I was right behind you, but I couldn’t have known that Filimaya would hear the bell, or that Simia would guide you so skilfully and fearlessly across town. And, once you were inside the mill, I was lost: I had to know what was to become of you, but I didn’t dare enter the mill or meet with any of the Suhl. No, I realised that I had to find a way to spy on you, which was a problem: only a Slithen could scale the walls of the mill, and of all the foul beasts in Thoth’s legions, the Slithen are the last to trust. So I paid one I knew, one I thought too stupid to know your value, to think of betraying me. But I was unlucky: he overheard your plans, which he knew would be valuable information to the right people. And, to make matters worse, he saw the Merisi Band around your wrist. He thought there would be a bounty on your head – a bounty far greater than I was able to pay.”

As they walked along the corridor, Sylas thought through everything Espen had told him – it was labyrinthine and hard to grasp, but it did seem to make some kind of sense.

Then something occurred to him.

“You’ve been going through to the Other – working on this –
for years
?”

Espen nodded without looking back.

“So... when did you first go?”

Espen slowed to a stop, then turned. “Just after the Reckoning... and just before your mother was taken to hospital.”

“So did you have something to do with—”

“It was the only way to keep her safe, Sylas,” said Espen softly. “We knew the dangers of the pact with Thoth – dangers not only to you and Naeo, but to those you love. Given your mother’s condition – given her connection to this world – she too would have been—”

“...a threat,” murmured Sylas.

Espen reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “So now you see.”

Sylas nodded slowly, still trying to take it all in.

Espen turned and stepped out down the corridor. “Come on, we have little time.”

Sylas took a lungful of the stale air and followed.

They had begun to pass a series of large openings set far back into the stone walls, each closed off by stout iron doors riddled with strengthening rivets and held firmly in place by a giant bolt and padlock. A great overhang of dusty cobwebs spanned the doorways, which gave the impression that they had not been disturbed for quite some time. At first Sylas had passed them by with little interest, far too intrigued by what Espen was telling him, but the more of them he saw, the more interested he became. Then, as the last of Espen’s words faded away, he heard something. It sounded just like the scrape of stone against stone. A whispered voice.

It was coming from behind one of the doors.

He stopped. “What
are
these?”

Espen turned and followed Sylas’s gaze. “Cells,” he said.

“Who’s inside?”

The Magruman drew in a long breath. “Our brethren.”

Sylas’s eyes moved from the long procession of doors to the crack beneath the one at his side. He saw a slight movement inside.

“The
Suhl
,” whispered Sylas.

“And anyone who helped us – if they survived the Undoing, that is. Thousands of them. No one knows how many.”

A chill passed over Sylas. This was where the smell had been coming from: from people – hordes of silent, despairing people – locked in tiny filthy cells. He thought of the Suhl as Simia and Filimaya had described them: a gentle, peaceful people. That they had been brought to this seemed unthinkable. An overwhelming sadness seemed to seep from the walls and haunt the passageway.

“We have to get them out,” said Sylas firmly.

“I know. But not now, Sylas,” reasoned Espen. “Your priority has to be Naeo – everything depends on you and her.”

Again Sylas saw movement underneath the door.

“But what if—”

“Sylas,” interjected Espen sadly, “it can’t be done. Just look.”

He pointed along the passageway ahead of them. The procession of flickering torches disappeared into the distance and between them countless doors punctuated the damp walls.

“And there are at least a hundred corridors just like this!”