by Galen Wolf
‘Yes,’ Bernard says, scratching his head. ‘That is a weird damn thing.’
Merlin lands by us. He’s studying the dome from under his floppy gold hat, and then he points. ‘See?’
I see nothing. I peer and squint, but see nothing other than the whirling black and the forking white veins of cold. But Tye sees something. He nods rapidly. 'Yes, Merlin, sir. I see it.’
‘See what?’ Bernard says.
Merlin points again. ‘See that line of red that follows the white?’
I look harder and I think I do see something. Maybe. A thin, faint blood red line as if the dome has a fault in it. Merlin says, ‘If we put the energy into it there, we can open it, I think.’
‘The electroplasmic energy?’ Fitheach asks.
Merlin smiles. ‘Somebody’s been listening.’
The more I look at that huge whirling sphere of viscous white and black, the more I do not relish going inside it. Will we even be able to breathe? Will it be instant death? But if it is, then I resurrect back in the ruined village of Tarvin and we move to Plan B. I’m not sure what Plan B is however.
‘So what now?’ I ask Merlin, who’s standing studying the whirling dome.
‘Just a minute,’ he says. ‘I won’t be long. Then he turns to Tye, who’s waiting, ever eager to help the great mage. 'Come here, little guy.’ Tye runs up like a puppy and Merlin points and they converse in quiet voices. I see Tye nod then he squints and a look of immense concentration screws up his face.
‘Yes, that’s it,’ Merlin says. ‘A little more. Maybe slightly left.’
Tye nods and squints some more and I have actually no idea what they’re doing. Then Merlin grins. ‘Excellent!’ But I see nothing different in the globe.
‘Just support me now, Tye,’ Merlin says.
Tye nods, still squinting and grunts, ‘Yes, sir, Merlin, sir.’
The great gold lame clad mage now stands square to the dome, loosens his shoulders like he was going in for a dance-off and exhales. He puts his hands out in front of him, clasps the fingers, back of his hands together and there’s a loud click as he loosens his finger joints. ‘Now, we begin,’ he mutters ominously.
The dome stops spinning. I don’t know what Merlin’s done, but he’s stopped that frantic whirling and it’s still. It must take a lot of effort because Tye looks like he’s about to have a stroke. Even Merlin has a bead of sweat on his creased forehead. ‘Okay,’ Merlin says. ‘Next.’
There’s an enormous cracking sound, then a noise like someone threw a whole glass chandelier down a big flight of stairs and it smashed up at the bottom.
‘Jeez,’ Bernard says. Fitheach nods in satisfaction like he knows what’s going on, though I bet he doesn’t.
The stopped dome splits. Just a little bit at first, a fissure no broader than a pencil. Merlin grunts and focuses. The fissure opens beside one of the frozen veins of cold. It gets bigger until a cat could get in. ‘A bit more.’ Merlin says. ‘You okay, son?’
Tye can’t speak. He just nods.
‘Good,’ Merlin says and goes back to the job. I look over my shoulder. Storm clouds are gathering in the east and north. Storm clouds or great vapours of evil raised by Satanus’s army, maybe. It looks threatening anyway.
There’s another loud crack that drags my attention back to what the mages are doing to the globe. The split has got bigger, and it’s almost wide enough for a man to get into, if he turned sideways. I peer into the heart of darkness. The middle of the globe is blacker than midnight in a coal cellar. It’s a perfect void.
‘Not enough yet,’ Merlin says. ‘A bit more effort and we’ve got it, kid.’
Tye looks like he’s really suffering but he splutters, ‘Yes, sir.’ and wipes his sweaty brow with the sleeve of his bright blue wizard’s robe.
Then there’s a bang like a cannon going off close by. Bernard jumps back, hands up to his ears and spins round looking for some kind of attack, but it’s just the dome splitting further. Fitheach shakes his head in admiration. ‘Amazing. What talent!’
We can get in the gap now. The halflings who, up to now, have been standing quietly behind us, start to shuffle. They look eager to be off. I look at Josh Maggs-Rimmer who smiles winningly back but says nothing. He’s just waiting for the order.
Merlin bows from the waist, surprisingly supple for an older man, dropping and then standing with a flourish of his shiny golden sleeve. I bet he does yoga. ‘Tada!’ he says, gesturing to the man-sized, horse-sized gap. ‘Your entryway, Sir Gorrow.’
I look at the entrance. ‘What the hell’s inside the dome, anyway?’
Merlin scratches his head. ‘You know, I’m not totally sure.’ He peers into the dark door. ‘Nothing?’
Fitheach says, ‘No, there’s something in there. I can sense it.’
‘What?’ Bernard says. He looks a little anxious.
‘Not sure.’
Bernard sighs and looks at me for help, but I have nothing sensible to say. We’d better get going. Echoing my thoughts, Merlin says, ‘Hurry, it won’t stay open forever.’
I say, ‘But will we die if we go in?’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t think so, but I can’t be totally sure. Never done this before. Never been in anything like it either.’
Josh Maggs-Rimmer and his gang of halflings stand beside Spirit and he looks up and me questioningly. ‘In there, then?’
I nod. ‘Yes.’
We go forward. We will have to enter in a single file. I approach the crack in the dome. I can still smell the engine oil but the buzzing sound is quiet. There’s a cracking sound like the dome is struggling to be moving again. I go right up to the entrance.
Yes, it’s completely black inside, but it looks like there’s space. I turn to Merlin. ‘And the way out?’
He smiles. ‘I’m presuming there is one, on the other side, but I don’t really know.’
Bernard is behind me on Henry. ‘Let’s go, Gorrow.’
Oh well. Death or glory, I suppose.
As Spirit steps into the fissure, I get a message on my HUD.
I hit accept, and that’s that.
Onward.
29
Under the Dome
This place is weird. I mean really weird. It’s got no walls, no ceiling and no floor. At least, there’s no floor we can see beneath our feet but our horses’ hoofs click on it like it’s made of polished stone. Black, shiny, invisible stone if invisible things can be shiny. There’s no air and no sound, but we are still alive.
‘Which way Gorrow?’ Bernard asks. The halflings stand around looking eager with bright empty expressions on their faces. Even Josh Maggs-Rimmer looks blank and happy, and he’s a player character.
Which way? That’s a good question. I shrug and scratch the top of my helmet, even though it isn’t itchy. I’m looking at the map on my HUD but this zone is completely featureless. Nothing is showing and I don’t know if that’s the fog of war effect on the map and it will reveal things when we discover them, or whether blankness is a feature of this place. At least there’s a compass showing on the HUD map. I say, ‘West.’
Bernard looks sceptical. ‘West because you know that’s the best direction, or west because it’s the first direction you thought of?’
I smile — a bit forced because I’m feeling tense, but it’s still a smile. I say, ‘Both. We entered from the east, so let’s continue west.' I force a smile. ‘Unless you’ve got a better idea?’
He shrugs. ‘Nope. West is fine.’ There’s a lot of nodding and agreeing. I click my tongue and Spirit moves off to the West. We go a way and nothing changes: it’s still blank. For the first time, I realise that I can see my companions even though there is no light source. I peer out into the darkness from the back of Spirit but there’s nothing there.
‘West still?’ Bernard asks.
‘Why not?’
‘Why not, indeed!’ Fitheach s
ays in a cheery tone of voice. I don’t know whether he’s enjoying this strangeness, or he’s just pretending, but his optimism is welcome because more and more, I don't feel optimistic. I just thought we needed to get into the dome to get to the King and I had thought little past that. I guess I figured it was just a wall or a barrier and we’d soon come out the other side and be in Caer itself. But that doesn’t look like it’s about to happen anytime soon.
We wander on and nothing changes. We’ve been going about five minutes when Tye grumbles so I stop, reining back Spirit. ‘Okay, this seems pointless,’ he says.
Bernard comes us abreast of me on Henry and says, ‘I think we might be going round in circles.’
‘Maybe.’
‘How about we lay a trail of something so we know where we’ve been?’
Tye brightens up. ‘Like in Hansel and Gretel. We could lay breadcrumbs.’
I give him a look. ‘We don’t have any breadcrumbs.’
Bernard says, ‘I have a load of empty potion bottles. We can lay a trail of those.’
Sounds like a plan. He dismounts Henry and rummages through his backpack, pulling out a handful of empty crystal potion bottles. He sets one down, delicate and pretty, sparkling in the unseen light.
‘How often are we going to set them down?
‘Line of sight?’
‘Sounds good.’
We ride on, still going west and when the potion bottle is almost out of sight behind us, just a tiny thing on the floor, Bernard dismounts again and puts another crystal bottle on the floor.
‘It’s a pity they’re so small,’ Tye says. ‘Hard to see.’
Bernard scowls. ‘If you have a better idea, bro, then let’s hear it.’
‘No, no, uncle. Just saying. It’s a top idea. Just would be topper if the bottles were bigger, just sayin’.’
‘Shut up,’ Bernard says, getting back on Henry, and we ride on. I keep looking back over my shoulder. The first bottle is now out of sight and the second getting further away but the space in front of us remains featureless. I start to feel claustrophobic. It’s not that the ceiling is low, it’s just that there isn’t one at all — neither high nor low, and the impression it gives it that you are in a place of no dimensions.
Tye pulls at the collar of his robe. ‘Phew, it feels airless.’
We go on until the crystal bottle is nearly out of sight and Bernard signals for us to halt and gets down to place the third bottle. The halflings are in column behind us, uncomplaining. ‘Not sure this is helping,’ Bernard says.
‘Don’t give up yet,’ I say. ‘Let’s keep on going.’
We ride on further and then to my dismay I see something in front of us. One the one hand, it should be welcome because it’s the first feature we’ve seen in this place in the whole time we’ve been here. Unfortunately, it’s an empty crystal potion bottle.
‘Great,’ Bernard says. ‘We’re going round in circles.’
I shake my head. ‘How can that be? We’ve been going west the whole time and we haven’t deviated.’
Fitheach says, ‘I wonder if this place is a sphere and we’re on the inside of it.’
If that’s true, it’s not good news.
‘So, how do we get out if we’re inside a sphere?’ Tye asks. ‘Only asking, ‘cause it sounds difficult.’
I look ahead to the first bottle, and behind to the third. It sure looks like we’re in a sphere. Tye is looking at me expectantly. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. Then he points back. ‘Hey, who’s that?’ We look and see nothing. Tye turns to Josh Maggs-Rimmer, he says, ‘Was that one of your guys?’
‘No,’ Josh says. ‘Not one of mine. I saw nothing though.’
I didn’t see anything either and when I look back there’s still nothing. Tye must be imagining things; this place is effecting our nerves. I sigh. ‘Let’s go north.’
‘North?’ Bernard says. ‘Why?’
I force a smile. ‘Because we’ve tried west and east is right behind, so I thought we’d have a change.’
He excepts my explanation. ‘Fair enough. North it is.’
I pull gently on the rein to get Spirit to turn and we head off north. The sound of the animals’ heels makes that strange muffled noise I’m getting used to. We go so far and Bernard says, ‘Potion Bottle?’
Tye says, ‘Yeah, but uncle, thing is that we might mistake them for the other ones, and we’re going in a different direction now, so I think, just saying, that maybe we should use something else?’
For once, Bernard doesn’t complain about Tye calling him uncle. Instead, he just nods and brings out a rune. It’s glittery and silver and he places it on the floor. It looks like an ‘x’ with a tail.
‘What’s that for?’ I ask.
‘It’s a light rune. Watch.’ He touches it like he’s putting on a switch and it gives off a warm glow, very welcome somehow in that featureless, muffled place. Bernard says, 'We can see it from further away.’
Tye says, ‘You should have used those instead of the potion bottles in the first place; they’re more visible.’
‘Shut up, Tye,’ Bernard growls with more venom than normal. He’s normally grumpy, but he’s sounding frazzled now. This place must get to him too. Bernard mounts Henry again and off we ride. We’ve been going about five minutes with no sign of anything different. The glow rune is glowing behind us in the distance now but we haven’t gone far enough to justify putting down another, especially because the runes mark the way better than the potion bottles: Tye had a point.
Then Tye says, ‘There is definitely someone behind us. I saw him again.’
I say, ‘How come you’re seeing him?’
Tye says, ‘I cast True Vision on myself. Just because this place is so hard to see anything. I thought there might be secret doors and stuff.’
‘It’s probably Deathknife,’ Bernard says.
I say, ‘Yeah, but why the heck would he follow us in here? What’s the point? We’re either going to be lost forever in here or get out into Caer and Satanus’s troops are all over Caer anyway, so why follow us?’
‘We should catch him and kill him,’ Fitheach says.
Bernard scratches his chest through his brown shirt. ‘If we killed him, at least he’d get out of this freaking place.’
‘Yeah,’ Tye says. ‘We could all kill each other and escape.’
I say, ‘No friendly fire. We’d have to change everyone’s status to enemy so we could hurt them. It’s a dumb idea. We’re going to get out. This place is set up like a quest, so there must be a way of getting out.’
If there is, it’s not obvious to me what it is, or how we find it.
We ride on some more. Even the halflings are looking frustrated now.
‘I’m really pig sick of this now,’ Fitheach says. Now, Fitheach, who’s normally so insanely upbeat about everything, is getting frustrated. I groan inwardly. I’ve been racking my brains. Usually in a quest, there’s an item lying around that leads you to solving the puzzles, but here there’s nothing. We’ve put another light rune down and I’m dreading seeing the first one ahead of us because that would more or less confirm we were riding round the inside of a sphere. ‘Cast True Vision on me, Tye, could you?’
‘And me,’ Bernard says.
‘Me too,’ asks Fitheach. Within minutes Tye has cast the spell on each of us, waiting for the cool-down to pass each time. Even buffed up by the spell, I see nothing different in this hideous, featureless place. ‘Ah well, never mind,’ I say, disappointed. We start off again and within a few minutes I see a glow ahead. I can’t see the rune, but that’s what it is. We’ve kept north for so long that we’ve come back on ourselves.
‘Yes, it’s definitely spherical,’ Fitheach says. ‘We can see the glow, but not the rune yet. It’s like the sun going down over the ocean. The floor is curved.’
Then Tye tips his head. ‘What’s that?’
‘What’s what?’ I ask.
‘That noise.’
I’m a
bout to ask what noise, when I hear it. It’s a strange breathy sound like a breeze blowing from somewhere.
Bernard twitches his nose. ‘Something’s burning.’
Tye’s looking about him in what appears to be panic. ‘There’s something coming,’ he says, but I can’t see anything. I can hear the noise, and suddenly I get a whiff of smoke, like someone’s burning rubber somewhere close. Even with True Vision I can’t see anything.
Then Tye points. ‘There! There’s more than one of them.’
‘Yeah!’ Bernard shrieks. ‘There! Four or five.’
‘What?’ I yell.
Then I see them.
30
Purple Haze
When they hit, it hurts.
The things come out of nowhere, with just that sound of a breeze then the most horrible halitosis stink. There are four, winding, sinuous, translucent things made of smoke and shadow, black but purple hued.
I draw my sword and turn to my companions. I see Fitheach fire off a light beam which hits a worm and appears to damage it.
Tye screams, ‘Yee haw!’ and blasts it with a fireball. The roiling fire illuminates the limitless featureless space we’re in like a sodium flare going off against a cloudy sky.
I hack at the worm, with a satisfying slicing sound.
Looks like the things are vulnerable to light weapons, which is handy. The worm comes at me, snapping its lamprey jaws. It’s like a twisting, winding tube of purple shadows, with yellow bone-like teeth, hundreds of them arranged in a spiral down its snapping maw. It darts in, but I shield block it and go under my shield to stab it again. The worm rears back, seriously hurt this time, seared by the light damage on my blade.
I see Tye get bitten and think that it would be very serious to die in here, because then we’d be set back in Tarvin and Merlin might not have the time to open an entrance into the dome again before Caer falls and the King is lost.
