The Outcast

by Louise Cooper

  Fighting the frozen aching in her marrow, Cyllan crawled towards him. ‘Drachea … Drachea, we’re alive … ‘

  He continued to stare at her, looking like a puppet whose strings had been abruptly cut. ‘Alive … ‘ he repeated.

  ‘Yes, alive! The fanaani saved us - I called, and they came, and … ‘ She shook her head, coughing. ‘We’re alive.’

  There was silence for a moment but for the ceaseless noise of the sea. Then Drachea said dully, ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know … ‘ His reason had warped, she was certain. He was unable to face the reality of their peril and something within him had snapped, and she only hoped that he’d recover his wits before the cold overcame them both. Rallying herself, she added more vehemently, ‘But wherever we are, Drachea, we’re safe!

  We’ve survived - isn’t that what matters?’

  ‘Who knows?’ He smiled an oddly twisted smile with no humour. ‘Maybe we’re dead, and this is the afterlife.

  A shingle shore, an unending night, a cliff we can’t climb. Hell, Cyllan. Isn’t that what you saw in your stones? Isn’t it?’ Suddenly he lunged forward and grasped her shoulders, shaking her violently. For a moment she thought he would try to strangle her; then abruptly his grip loosened and he turned away, pressing his face against the cliff wall and curling up like a frightened and defiant child.

  ‘Go away,’ he said indistinctly. ‘If it wasn’t for you, I’d be safe at home in Shu-Nhadek! Go away, and leave me alone!’

  If it wasn’t for me, you’d be dead! Cyllan thought savagely, then quelled the thought as uncharitable and unworthy. Perhaps he was right - but for her, this nightmare would never have happened.

  She remembered then, for the first time, the apparition which had appeared as the Warp bore down on them in Shu-Nhadek. The hand, beckoning - a shudder racked her. That had been far more than a portent. And the stones … instinctively she put a hand to her belt-pouch and felt the familiar bulge of the pebbles there. So she hadn’t lost them … although she was beginning to wonder if they were more of a curse than a blessing.

  Drachea was still hiding his face, and Cyllan realised that, if they were ever to escape from this hellish shore, she would have to take charge. Danger and privation were alien concepts to the son of the Margrave of Shu; she was better equipped to save them, if there was salvation to be found. Turning, she gazed out to sea. The mist had deepened, it seemed, in the few minutes since her rude awakening; beyond the first few lapping waves at the shingle’s edge she could see nothing. She shivered with something besides cold. What lay beyond that mist? Familiar, known land, or … nothing? There could be nowhere in the world so bleak, so barren, so devoid of hope …

  Nowhere, said a silent inner voice, but for one place It surely wasn’t possible … Cyllan struggled to her feet as speculation threatened to flower into certainty, and craned to look up at the towering cliff. Vertigo made her feel sick; she quashed it determinedly and tried to see to the top of the rock face, backing away down the shingle slope until she was wading knee-deep in the sea.

  There was an end to the monstrous granite. She could glimpse a point where the rock abruptly cut off, and from here the perspective of the shore had changed enough for her to realise that the cliff was in fact a stack, rising out of the surrounding ocean.

  Her pulse quickened. If her suspicions were right, then she should be able to see the narrow arch of the causeway that connected this solitary stone pinnacle to the mainland. Straining her eyes through the mist-shrouded gloom, Cyllan stared …

  Nothing. The fog was too dense, or she was wrong and the nagging sense of familiarity which assailed her was a delusion.

  But whatever the truth of it, there had to be a way to scale that daunting face. To stay on this shore would be to give up, and, having survived this far, giving up was something Cyllan couldn’t bear to consider. There must be a way - and perhaps with daylight to aid her, she could find it.

  Still unsure of herself, but a little heartened, she trudged back to where Drachea lay. He seemed to have fallen asleep - or lapsed back into unconsciousness and his skin was disturbingly cold to the touch. Cyllan turned and began to look about her for something that would provide warmth until dawn. Seaweed - it stank abominably and was as wet as they were, but at least it might protect them from the worst of the Winter night’s cold. Aware that her limbs were stiffening with fatigue and chill, she started to gather great armfuls of the stuff from where the sea had washed it, and soon had a pile of green-brown strands which she heaped over Drachea’s still form. Then she lay down at his back, pressing close against him so that their remaining body heat might not be wasted, and, pulling some of the weed over herself, closed her eyes.

  Cyllan woke from a sleep racked with hideous nightmares, aware that something was wrong. The blanket of seaweed had done its work well enough, and some of the cold had eased from her bones; but when she tried to move, her body was so agonisingly stiff that it would barely obey her. And something was wrong …

  She raised her head, staring into the grey-green darkness. Mist still hung like an impenetrable curtain only a few paces away, and the sound of the sea seemed further off than before, muffled by the dense fog. The tide had gone out, leaving a newly washed expanse of shingle gleaming dully at the edge of the mist, which meant that she must have slept for some hours. Even in the extremes of Winter, nights weren’t eternal. The Sun should have risen by now … but there was no trace of the dawn.

  An uneasy foreboding assailed Cyllan. There was no place in the world where the Sun didn’t rise; and yet the night still held this shore fast. Everything felt too quiet, too still - as if beyond the mist there was nothing but a void …

  Shivering, she turned back to where Drachea lay beside her, and shook him. ‘Drachea! Wake up!’

  He stirred reluctantly, and from the way he swore at her she realised that he believed himself in his bed at Shu-Nhadek and berating a servant for disturbing him.

  She shook him again.

  ‘Drachea!’

  Comprehension slowly dawned as Drachea opened his eyes. ‘Cyllan?’ he mumbled, then became aware of the damp shingle beneath him. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘I wish I knew!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind.’ She hadn’t the energy to spare for an argument. ‘Listen to me. I’ve explored as best I can, and it seems that we’re on an island. There’s no link with the mainland that I can find, so we have to seek a way of climbing the cliff.’

  Drachea struggled into a sitting position as clearer thought took over from his weariness, and pushed at the stinking heaps of seaweed that covered him. When he answered, his voice was petulant.

  ‘It’s still the middle of the night! We’re not going to die in the time between now and dawn! And when the Sun comes up, we’ll be found! There must be people out looking for me now - my parents will have raised the alarm. So why should I waste my strength scaling a thrice-damned cliff to no good purpose?’

  Cyllan’s mouth tightened angrily. Drachea, it seemed, had no true concept of the predicament they were in - accustomed to having his every wish granted, he blithely assumed that rescue was imminent. And so it might have been, were they still in the vicinity of Shu.

  But Cyllan knew better …

  She tried to make him understand. ‘Drachea, listen to me! The tide has gone out - that means we’ve been here long enough for dawn to have broken, and yet it hasn’t.’

  He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know - only that something’s terribly wrong here. And another thing - we’re not in Shu Province, or anywhere near it.’

  He tried to protest at that. ‘But - ‘

  ‘Listen to me! Don’t ask how I know - I do! I can feel it, Drachea, as surely as I’ve ever felt anything!’ She paused, swallowing to catch her breath. ‘If we’re not to rot and die here on this shore, we must find a way to the top!’

  Drachea stared at her, unwilling to acknowledge the truth of her words. T
hen he said resentfully, ‘I’m hungry.’

  Cyllan could have strangled him. He was wilfully refusing to face harsh reality, and although part of her pitied him — he had, after all, never known such straits in his life before - another part felt only frustrated disgust.

  Knowing that they could afford no more wasted time she rose and paced to the foot of the sheer cliff, laying her palms against the unyielding granite as though seeking to divine a path upwards. Luck and determination had brought them this far - unless the gods chose capriciously to abandon them now, there must be an answer. From behind her Drachea complained of stiffness and pain, and Cyllan lost her temper.

  Then move, damn you! Help me! I can’t do everything alone, and you expect me to carry you as though I were your servant!’

  Drachea stared back at her in angry consternation, and Cyllan felt tears prick her eyes as the pent-up fear within her threatened to break through to the surface.

  She forced them back ferociously and took a grip on herself. She couldn’t afford to lose self-control - to weaken now would bring disaster.

  ‘Wherever we are,’ she said, clenching her teeth to stop them chattering, ‘Shu Province is a world away.

  And we’ve no food and no shelter. If we stay here we’ll die from cold or hunger or both.’ She stared speculatively up at the forbidding mass of the cliff wall. ‘We have to find a way up.’

  Drachea hugged himself, shivering. ‘If you don’t know where we are, how can you be so sure that we won’t be rescued?’ he argued sullenly.

  ‘I can’t be sure. But I’m not about to sit here and wait until I’m too weak to look for an alternative.’ Cyllan had begun to trudge away from him; now she stopped and looked back. ‘I’m going to look for a path. What you choose to do is your concern.’

  He gave her a withering, venomous glare and turned his back. She had walked two more paces when she heard him sigh and mutter an imprecation under his breath. Then, thrusting his pinched hands into the pockets of his jacket, he moved stiffly across the crunching shingle to join her.

  It was Drachea who finally found the worn steps, carved unimaginable generations ago into the sheer rock, and winding up into the night. Centuries of erosion had worn them to a treacherous glass-like smoothness and their steepness was daunting, but Cyllan believed that, with good fortune on their side, they could make the climb without mishap.

  ‘It should be easier the higher we go,’ she told Drachea, privately praying that she was right. ‘Beyond where the sea can reach there should be less erosion and our passage will be safer.’

  He looked at the carved stairs dubiously. ‘I can’t imagine who could have carved them, or why. And they can’t have been used in generations.’

  ‘But they have been used - that’s what counts. If others have scaled them, so can we! And it means …’

  She looked up at the vast stack toppling out of the night towards them. ‘It means that there must be something at the top. Sanctuary, Drachea … ‘

  He nodded, afraid but trying not to show it. They had subsided into a slightly uneasy truce, submerging their differences in the mutual need for survival, and now Drachea gestured at the worn steps. ‘You go first. I’m more likely to catch you if you fall than you’d be to catch me.’

  The attempt at gallantry, gratifying though it was, was misplaced as Cyllan soon discovered. Drachea’s head for heights was sound enough, but as they climbed the treacherous steps it became evident that his strength was rapidly deserting him. Shock, fatigue and hunger had taken their toll, and Cyllan-who was a good deal fitter - frequently had to pause to avoid leaving him far behind.

  To her, the climb was difficult but not impossibly so; she had taken equal risks in the past, scaling the giddying cliffs of the West High Land coast in the hope of glimpsing the elusive fanaani, but with Drachea toiling painfully behind her she forced herself to hold back an instinct to climb faster, to reach the top of these terrible stairs before her will or her energy gave out. That, she thought, was the most daunting part of the climb. By now they must be at least six hundred feet above the sea, yet there was no sign of the vast cliff coming to an end. When she once dared to look up, she saw only the endless wall of granite rising beyond the limits of vision, offering no hope of reprieve.

  And when — if— they finally reached the summit, what then? As the ascent continued, Cyllan had been acutely aware of an unpleasant core of fear growing within her.

  That same animal instinct which had assailed her in the tavern at Shu, but greatly increased. Something awaited them at the top of the cliff … and she was afraid to discover what that something was.

  But there was no other choice. Hundreds of feet below lay a barren shore that offered no hope of rescue, and even a dreaded unknown held a better prospect than that. They must go on, and face whatever awaited them.

  A fit of coughing from below halted her then, and she looked cautiously back to see Drachea doubled over, clutching at a precarious handhold. Cyllan slid carefully back a pace or two and reached down to take his hand, helping him over a place where the granite steps had crumbled away. He bit his lip, holding his breath until he was up with her, and slowly, painfully, they continued on.

  Eventually, the climb dissolved into a mesmeric, waking nightmare for Cyllan. Each upward step became a torment of fierily aching muscles, each inch of progress a small triumph in itself. She might have been climbing for the whole of her life, Drachea struggling in her wake, ever onward and up with no end in view. Sometimes she almost laughed aloud at the bizarre nature of it all - the unchanging rock, the unchanging sky, the unchanging, mourning note of the wind that froze her hands and threatened to prise her stiff fingers and toes away from their insecure holds. How long had they been climbing?

  Minutes? Hours? Days? The sky gave her no clue; still the night hung over them with neither Moon tracking across its arc to mark the passing of time. If this was insanity, it was like nothing she had ever imagined before …

  ‘Aeoris!’

  The oath was out before she could stop it as, with no warning, the cliff-face ended and she sprawled on to soft, yielding turf. She had time for the shocking image of what confronted her to register in her brain before, remembering Drachea, she had turned and was reaching down to help him scramble the last few steps to safety.

  They lay gasping on the ground, the world seeming to swing giddily around them as both struggled for breath, and Cyllan thought she heard Drachea murmuring what sounded like a fervent prayer of thanksgiving through dry lips. At last, when she had strength enough, she roused him by taking his arm, and pointed, unable to speak.

  No more than a hundred paces away, the castle rose out of the ground as though it had grown from the living rock. Blacker than anything Cyllan could imagine, it towered into the night, dominated by four titanic spires which reached skyward like accusing fingers, and it seemed to absorb what little light fell on it, swallowing and crushing it. Above the sharply defined battlements, a crimson glow tinged the air as though within the castle’s precincts some vast fire burned sullenly but steadily. And although the monstrous structure seemed changed beyond recognition, Cyllan knew it …

  Drachea’s hands clawed reflexively at the turf. ‘What … is that place?’ he whispered.

  Cyllan felt her pulse pounding suffocatingly in her throat, so that speaking was a great effort.

  ‘You said that you wanted to visit the stronghold of the Circle,’ she whispered harshly. ‘Your wish has been granted, Drachea. That is the Castle of the Star Peninsula!’

  Drachea didn’t reply. He was staring at the Castle, seemingly unable to credit the sight that confronted him.

  At last he managed to form words.

  ‘I didn’t imagine … none of the stories said …

  that it would be like this!’

  A shiver racked Cyllan, and the fear redoubled. ‘It isn’t,’ she murmured. ‘Or at least … it wasn’t when I saw it. Something’s wrong … ‘

  ‘The rumours - ‘ Drachea b
egan.

  ‘Yes … if the Initiates have shut themselves away - then how is it that we’ve broken through the barrier?’

  Unsteadily, Drachea rose to his feet. He still watched the distant Castle, as though fearing that if he dared to look away for a moment it would vanish. ‘We must find out,’ he said.

  She didn’t want to go near it … she was suddenly desperately afraid. But Drachea’s reasoning couldn’t be argued with. If they crossed the causeway, there was nothing but the Northern mountains for leagues. Two exhausted and hungry souls couldn’t hope to survive the road through the pass in Winter. And even when she looked to where the causeway should have been, Cyllan could see nothing. Only the mist, hanging like a curtain, as though to mark an impassable barrier between the real world and this world of nightmare and illusion.

  She got to her feet, disturbed by the thought, and moved closer to Drachea. He glanced at her and attempted to smile. ‘We go forward., or we stay here,’ he said. ‘Which is it to be?’

  ‘Forward … ‘ The word formed on her lips almost without her realising it.

  Slowly they began to walk towards the Castle that towered to meet them. Here even the wind was stilled, and the silence was eerie. As they approached the massive entrance, Cyllan realised that there was no sign of life in the Castle. The great gates were shut, and the dull crimson radiance from within remained unchanging.

  The place seemed deserted …

  And how, she asked herself again, had they penetrated the barrier that held the Castle aloof? How had they broken through the Maze?

  ‘Drachea - ‘ She clutched his arm and pulled, abruptly attacked by an unhealthy doubt. ‘Drachea, something’s terribly amiss … ‘

  It was a feeble repetition of her old fear, but she could find no clearer way to give voice to her misgivings.

  Drachea, however, was not to be daunted. He shook her off irritably and began to walk faster, almost running down the final slope of the sward that brought him to the Castle entrance. Cyllan followed, and caught up with him as he pushed vainly at the huge gates.