‘Turn, Alkland, damn it!’ I screamed at him. ‘Turn.’
Everyone has a special strength in them, a strength they can only find when the alternative is unthinkable. I threw my strength against Alkland and yanked him round, screaming at him to look, but his eyes were screwed tight and his fists pushed deep into the sockets. I lunged behind him and slipped my arms round from the back, wrenching his fists away as the monster burnt my face with its closeness and its smell. I closed my eyes and jammed my fingers into Alkland’s sockets as hard as I could.
‘LOOK AT IT!’
Silence.
I opened my eyes. It was gone.
In front of me stood Alkland, hands over his face, weeping. I could barely see him because there was no light any more: the glow had gone with the monster.
Alkland shook me off when I reached out to touch his shoulder, so I stepped back a yard and let my head drop, panting, suddenly aware of how many muscles I’d torn, how drenched in sweat I was, how much I was trembling, how much I wanted my mother.
I turned and looked at the castle. It was only about four hundred yards away, and the spotlights were still on, sending beams up the brick columns. Letting my head loll back I stared up into the night sky to where the lights were up above.
Alkland was as rigid as a statue, racked with sobs so small and so intense you couldn’t see them. There was nothing I could do for him at the moment.
Say what you like about smoking, that it’s bad for you, that it kills people. I know these things. All I can say is sometimes they don’t seem very important. If I hadn’t been a smoker, that moment would have been a great time to start. And where the hell could I have bought some from?
14
Five minutes later, the worst of the storm had passed. Alkland still had his back to me, but he was less rigid, and looked less as if he was trying to hold himself together by pure force of will. He put his hands on his hips and sagged slightly, head drooping. I lit another cigarette off the remains of the last, wishing I had some that were about a yard long.
There was still nothing else I could do, not yet. You don’t go up and put your arm round a guy’s shoulder when he’s been through something like that. Saying, ‘Hey, never mind,’ doesn’t cut it. The monsters in Jeamland are personal. I’d just interpreted what was happening in the best way I could. It didn’t mean anything to me, and may not have been related to what Alkland felt either. It was Alkland’s monster, and you can never really understand someone else’s pain. When someone’s seen something like that, felt their youngest guts stirred around and trampled, they don’t want comfort from a stranger. It doesn’t mean anything. “
The mind is like a pool of water, and rain falls as you age. The water gets deeper, and looks so still: occasionally some stray thought or impulse betrays its depths, but seldom.
But deep down underneath, right at the bottom, there may be something lying on the bottom. Something that died a long time ago, something rotted and foul that belies the pool’s still surface. Alkland had just seen a bubble rise from the bottom, had smelt the stench of decay: and when that happens, you don’t want other people to come too close, in case they smell it too.
So instead I did my job, and wearily dragged my thoughts towards the next bit. There’s always a next bit, somehow, and I’m always the one thinking about it.
On any other day, at any other time, the castle in the middle distance would have looked pretty weird. Today, now, it just looked like a quality place to be. The lower portion shot up perpendicularly for a couple of hundred feet, and though it was made of brick it looked hundreds, thousands of years old.
Sat on top like a birdhouse was the castle complex itself. It spread wide over the edges of the central support column, which meant we were going to have to go for one of the four much more slender corner posts. They weren’t big, but I thought we could probably both make it up one at the same time. The plain was absolutely silent where we stood, with not a sliver of sound falling down from above, but the lights were on, and that meant people were at home. I just hoped they wouldn’t give us any grief. We were full up. Additional grief, a complimentary side-helping of grief, was not something we needed at this time.
There was a small sound from behind and I turned slowly. Alkland coughed again, and he turned too. His eyes didn’t quite meet mine and wouldn’t for the next half hour or so, and there was a shame he couldn’t communicate in the curve of his shoulders. His face, though, actually looked slightly better. That came from facing the monster, and would only be temporary. He looked tired, and he looked old. After a moment he spoke.
‘You do know what you’re doing, don’t you?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘I always thought that stuff about facing things was just guff, armchair psychology.’
I didn’t say anything again, for a variety of reasons.
‘Anyway,’ he shrugged. ‘Thank you.’
‘No problem. Are you ready to go on?’
The Actioneer twisted his hands together for a moment, and then nearly looked up at me.
‘Couldn’t we, couldn’t we wake up for a while?’
‘Afraid not.’
‘Why?’
‘We just can’t. If you come in the way we did, you have to go back out there too, or somewhere like it.’
‘Can’t we go back the way we’ve come? I know it’s a long way, but I don’t know how much more of this I can take in one go.’
‘No. That way isn’t there any more. Things shift. We could come that way because of what we are, who we are, what we were trying to do. There’s no going back in Jeamland.’
He sighed heavily, and I noticed that his hands were still trembling.
‘So what do we do now?’
‘We’re going up to the castle.’
Alkland looked past me up at the slender brick pillars.
‘Are there lifts in those things?’
‘No. We’re going to climb.’
‘Stark, you’re mad!’ Alkland shouted, suddenly hysterical. ‘If you think I’m going to be able to shin up hundreds of feet of sheer brick you’re out of your bloody mind.’ He ranted on in this vein for quite some time, getting more and more heated. I let him. People always feel better when they’ve had a chance to blow off some steam about something that isn’t the real problem.
I cut him off when he was beginning to repeat himself and his voice had risen to a high squeak.
‘Shh,’ I said. ‘Come with me.’
An hour later we were three quarters of the way up one of the supporting pillars. But was everything going well? What do you think?
I didn’t try to explain to Alkland how we were going to climb. I just got him to walk with me across the plain towards the castle. A minimal amount of moonlight seeped round the almost constant cloud cover above, casting a very dim glow across the plain and its regular sprinkling of ghostly bushes. After the heat of the jungle it was cold, but we were too close to the castle for it to be freezing. It didn’t take us long to get to the base of the columns, though we had to stop halfway for a while to let a dreamer pass by in front of us.
‘Okay,’ I said, when we were standing by one of the slim support columns. ‘It’s “trust Stark” time again.’
Alkland just looked at me, an expression of glum pessimism on his face. I knew that the castle hadn’t come any too soon. He was right about one thing: he couldn’t just keep going indefinitely, not in the state he was in. His face looked as if it had been rendered by an impressionist determined to push the limits of his technique, some final extravaganza before the artist realised he was just being silly and went back to painting properly.
‘Stark,’ he said, slowly and patiently. ‘This column is several hundred feet high. I am a lowly human, and as such am forced to work within the confines of the laws of physics. There is no way I can climb this.’
‘Watch.’
I held my hands out to him like a mime artist, showing I had no pads. I wished I ha
d, actually, but my only set was probably still circulating round Stable’s weather system. Then I approached the column and relaxed, putting Alkland’s scepticism out of my mind. I reached up and wedged my fingertips into gaps between bricks, and transferred my weight to my hands. Then, carefully, I raised one foot off the ground and pushed the tip of my shoe into a crack. Pushing up, I took one hand off and reached up again for a higher handhold.
‘Yes, I rather thought something like that might be involved,’ muttered Alkland. ‘Which is why I say I can’t do it.’
Ignoring him, I raised my other foot and found a gap for it. I paused for a moment, and then quickly shinned up fifteen feet of the column. It did my heart good to hear the small gasp that came down from below. I turned my head and grinned down at him, and then climbed quickly backwards to the ground. Alkland stared at me as if I’d just become a bowl of fruit.
‘How the hell did you do that?’
‘Exactly, Alkland, exactly. I’m strong, but I’m not superhuman. Don’t you remember anything about what dreams are like? Haven’t you ever been faced with something to climb?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And did you have to kit yourself out with crampons and ropes and all that shit?’
‘No.’
‘Exactly. This is Jeamland, Alkland. We have to climb, because climbing is what this bit is about. It’s an atmosphere, a thought, not an activity. It’s not like real climbing. Things work differently here. Once you’ve started it’s almost as if you’re crawling along a flat surface, though you still feel as if you’re going upwards.’
‘So, I can do that?’
‘If you let yourself, yes. Just accept.’
He sighed heavily and stepped up to the column. I guided his hands into cracks and for a moment he stood like that, caught in an upwards dive. Then he raised his right foot and wedged the tip of his shoes into a gap. Tentatively he tensed the muscles in that leg and hauled his body weight upwards, fingers whitening with effort, a tight breath hissing out.
‘Good. Now quickly find a hold for your other foot.’
He did, and hung there, muscles vibrating with effort, and then tumbled back to the floor to land in an irritable heap. I sighed inwardly. The Centre has a lot to answer for. Okay, so most people find it a bit difficult to come to terms with the way things work here, but Alkland was having an exceptionally hard time. No one who thinks memos are important will ever find it easy to fly.
‘Look. Let’s do it together.’
‘It’s not going to work, Stark.’
‘Yes, it is. Come on.’
Making him do exactly what I did, I followed the same pattern as before. When we were both hanging off the column side by side, I turned my head towards him.
‘This is very easy,’ I said, soothingly, looking into his eyes. ‘We’re not climbing at all. We’re just going somewhere that happens to be upwards.’
‘Right.’
‘Feel how easy it is?’ I continued, slowly raising my right foot. He followed suit, and though it was clearly a strain, he managed it. ‘Now the right hand.’ We reached up and I felt a flutter at the back of my mind, a flicker, as if for a moment we were crawling along a brick road, not climbing up a column. He was getting there. We raised our left feet together, and our left hands, and then for a moment rested, clinging on, and yet not clinging.
‘I think I’m getting the hang of this,’ the Actioneer said, with a touch of quiet pride.
‘Good. Ready to go on?’
He nodded, and up we went.
He’d got the hang of it.
We were about two thirds of the way up, over a hundred feet above the ground, when I first thought I heard something. It wasn’t the echo of distant revelry from above, which we’d been hearing for a few minutes. It was something else. A short swishing sound. I peered over my shoulder back down at the ground, but could see nothing. Shrugging, I carried on climbing at the same slow pace so that Alkland could keep up. A moment later I heard the same sound again.
‘What was that?’ asked the Actioneer fretfully.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You heard it too?’
‘Yes,’ he said, peering around. ‘A swishing sound.’
We made it a few more yards and then we heard the sound again, twice in quick succession. Then suddenly something slim and wooden ricocheted off the column next to my hand.
‘Bollocks. They’re firing arrows at us.’
‘Great,’ said Alkland wildly. ‘Super. I mean we’re only clinging onto a brick column a hundred feet off the ground. By all means fire pointy things at us.’ For a moment he wavered dangerously and I snapped out a hand and grabbed his shoulder, pushing him back into the column.
‘Alkland, listen. We’re not climbing, remember? You said yourself you couldn’t climb this high, and yet look where we are. So we’re not climbing. If anything else comes down, just dodge to the side. Try not to worry about footholds. Just duck out the way. You’ll be okay. You won’t fall unless you think you will.’
His strained face shone at me in the faint light, but he nodded faintly. Another arrow swished past us, and I urged him to climb faster. As we got higher the arrows came more frequently, and we began to hear the sound of excited voices up above. Then a spear dropped down, and would have neatly kebabbed me had I not looked up to see it coming and quickly scooted round the column. Seeing that it was possible obviously helped Alkland to believe, because he squirmed out of the way of an arrow coming straight for him a moment later. It was undignified, and he teetered for a moment, but he made it.
‘Nice moving,’ I said, and he grinned at me in the half light.
Soon afterwards the projectiles began to fall thick and fast and we both scuttled round the back side of the column. This was fine for another few yards, but then a small trapdoor opened above and things began falling on that side too.
We crabbed our way back round to the front side of the column and continued climbing, as quickly as we could. Suddenly there was an odd metallic sound from above and I glanced up to see the lip of a large iron cauldron.
‘Shit, Alkland, round the back again.’
We got there just in time to avoid the cascade of boiling oil that shot past towards the ground. We stayed where we were for a moment, trembling.
‘They don’t seem very pleased to see us,’ observed Alkland, shakily. ‘I thought you said this was a good place.’
‘It is,’ I said. ‘They’re just taking precautions.’
Cautiously I stuck my head round the front of the column.
‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘Hey!’
‘What are you doing?’ hissed Alkland.
A head wearing a conical iron helmet stuck itself out over the battlements, now about thirty feet above.
‘Hey!’ I called again.
‘What?’ shouted a voice. ‘What do you want?’
‘Could you stop firing at us, please? Things are difficult enough as it is.’
‘That’s your problem. You’re attacking us. What d’you think we’re going to do, lay out a red carpet?’
An arrow zinged past my cheek.
‘We’re not attacking you. Christ, there’s only two of us!’
‘It’s the principle of the thing!’
‘Look!’ I shouted in exasperation. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
‘Nope,’ he called. ‘Should I?’
‘Shit,’ I muttered quietly, before going back to shouting. ‘Is there anyone in command up there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Me.’
‘Oh.’ I hung my head for a moment, then motioned Alkland to recommence slowly climbing the column. I climbed too, shouting up as we went.
‘Is the King there?’ I hazarded.
‘Of course he is. This is a sodding castle.’
‘Could I speak to him?’
‘Nope. He’s in a meeting.’
An arrow bounced off the column above me and thwacked me sideways ac
ross the cheek.
‘Sorry about this,’ the voice called down, ‘but it’s boiling oil time again.’
Looking up I saw the black cauldron peeping over the edge. Alkland scuttled back round the other side.
‘No, don’t!’ I called up. ‘Hang on a moment. I’ve got an idea.’
‘This had better be interesting.’
‘It is. Look, go to the King, and tell him that it’s Stark, okay?’
‘Tell him what?’
‘It’s Stark.’
‘Sorry, you’ll have to speak up. The oil’s bubbling right next to me.’
‘It’s Stark!’ I shouted.
‘What is?’
‘Me! I’m Stark!’
‘So?’
‘Just tell him, would you?’
Another spear whistled past.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said the voice. ‘How do I know that while I’m away you won’t turn into a ravening hoard of twenty thousand barbarians, or a pillaging tribe of Mongol warriors?’
‘Take it from me!’ I shouted in a strangled tone of voice. ‘It won’t happen.’
‘Hmm.’ The head disappeared for a moment, and I heard the sound of heated deliberation. By coincidence, both Alkland and I took that moment to glance down at the ground. It was now a very long way down. Then the head reappeared.
‘Okay,’ the soldier said, ‘This is what we’ll do. I’ll go and see if I can speak to the King, see what he has to say. In the meantime, I’m afraid my colleagues will have to keep firing at you, just in case. All right?’
‘Christ, all right, but hurry, yes? And can you put the oil on hold?’
‘Er…yes, okay. But only till I get back. That’s my favourite bit.’
The head disappeared back over the rampart. There was a brief pause, and then the barrage of arrows continued. I went round the back of the column, where Alkland was clinging on with increasing desperation.
‘We’d better keep climbing.’
‘I thought you said they’d know you,’ Alkland panted, wearily reaching for another hold.
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