Gwyndion could clearly feel the energy intensify in the room. Samma was staring ahead, her fur standing up as she witnessed something beyond their sight. The Webx fought to control his feelings of panic and loss. He realised how much the companionship of his meerwog meant to him. He couldn’t bear to contemplate life without her. He fought to conquer his feelings of resistance. The water elementals were moving closer towards him. He felt hypnotised by their languid dance. He could hear the crashing of the waves, the soothing sound of surf breaking upon the shore.
Khartyn was moving towards him, chanting softly, carrying a tiny black cauldron. Gwyndion blinked in shock as she threw its contents over him. Black ash, which formed itself into a black bird, flew straight at his eyes. He screamed as he felt the beak of the bird at his eyes. The pain was intense, but only for a moment. He could hear the Crones chanting in the background: ‘Hail! Mambsoz! Ella mambsoz, eli!’ Then he felt the water elementals enveloping him with fluid. He screeched as he realised he was being sucked back into their portal with them. He felt a drowning sensation. His lungs filled with water, and he could feel his head beginning to explode. A red rose erupted in his head. Then silence — cool, blissful, black darkness.
He attempted to open his eyes. They were smarting. It was impossible, he realised with mounting horror; he no longer had normal eyesight. I am blind, he thought with terror. He moved his hands in front of him, attempting to orientate himself. His hands moved through darkness, and connected with something large and scaled. Now his fright was so intense that he forgot everything. The thought of what was in front of him was agonising. His mind pictured a massive sea monster. He heard a tiny voice in his head, silver like a bell. The faint voice of reason. ‘Don’t fear! This is all part of the initiation! Nothing will harm you! Know that I am with you, I am guiding you. You will find sight soon.’ He waited, trying to control his breathing, focusing on Samma, and the quest that he didn’t fully want to complete. He had to want it as much as her, he realised, as he floated sorrowfully in the dark water. He would never achieve his goal if he didn’t totally desire it. Quashing his fear of losing her, he began to concentrate on the meerwog, and how much it meant to her to have her true form.
As he began to appreciate her desire, his sight began to form, but it was not the sight he normally possessed. His eyes remained closed, yet tiny holes above them appeared to open, through which he could see.
He shrank back with fear when he saw what had been in front of him. It was the tail of a mermain. She floated before him in the water, smiling at the shock on his face. He could hardly take in her beauty. Her long dark hair flowed in the water and her skin was luminous, with rays of rainbow light shining through it. Sharp little white teeth reminded him of her savagery, and how her kind loved to devour the flesh of the unfortunate men they managed to lure into the watery realms. He watched, paralysed with fear, as she began to caress her breasts and sing to him.
‘Ignore her.’ The soft voice was in his head again. ‘She is a distraction sent by Shambzhla. Move towards her.’ He obeyed the instruction, and the thought pattern dematerialised. Instantly, another appeared, even more beautiful, holding out her hand to him and smiling her deadly smile.
‘Keep moving forward,’ the voice instructed. ‘She is near! She is near!’
He was now floating past the ruins of a great ship. His hand traced the wood as he swam past. This is not real, he told himself. This could all disappear through my hands, through my eyes, for this is a dream. The name of the ship, The Julie Anne, was barely visible on the rotting woodwork. None of it real, but all of it terrifying. He could see clearly, too clearly, through the oval windows in his head as he floated past. Skeletons of the ship’s crew lay slumped in their final postures, and the skulls of many of the shiphands revealed mouths open in eternal cries of ecstasy, from when the mermain maidens had fed upon them. None of it was real, however, and the blackness could not touch him. Secretive eyes watched him on his lonely journey. There was nothing to see, he thought mournfully, for he was not really there. He passed over tiny gardens of flowers, tended lovingly by sea creatures’ hands. Gradually he grew accustomed to his new eyes and the feeling of his body as it glided through the water.
Then, unexpectedly, there she was, seated on an immense pewter throne depicting thousands of sea slugs and snakes. Vivid electric red hair fanned out around her. Gwnydion was shocked by the decay in her face. One eye was eaten away; her face was blackened, festered, rotting. Then he noticed her breasts, where the eleven gold fish suckled greedily, and he drew in his breath sharply as he remembered his mission. Shambzhla threw back her head and laughed, revealing her razor-sharp jagged teeth.
‘By Neptune’s hairy balls, I did not expect they would send a Webx for their mission! That Khartyn is a sly old bag!’
Gwyndion waited, treading water, attempting to assess the situation. Now what? He was relieved to hear his guiding voice again. ‘I can’t help you any more, Gwyndion. You must choose the fish. Listen to your intuition. You will know the answer.’
Gwyndion groaned inwardly. He fought back the feelings of panic that strained to the surface.
‘Do you know which one it is?’ Shambzhla leered. ‘On which of my tits does the fish feed that contains the meerwog’s soul?’
Gwyndion peered through the water. On a superficial examination, they all looked the same to him. Eleven golden fish, all suckling greedily.
‘Come closer, boy!’ Shambzhla invited, clearly enjoying herself. ‘Have a good look at my old titties and make a guess!’
She cackled with laughter again, and Gwyndion found himself opening his mouth to speak. ‘Let’s make this more interesting. Sea Hag. If I guess correctly, you will also have to give me Mary’s tongue.’
Shambzhla stopped laughing and slitted her eyes at him. ‘What if you are wrong?’ she wheezed. ‘What do you give to me then?’
She considered for a moment, then grinned. ‘All of them!’ she hissed. Her voice, once so soft and childlike, was now menacing steel. ‘I get to keep the sparrows of you, and Khartyn and Mary.’
Gwyndion nodded, but his mind was screaming in horror. What was he doing — making deals with the ancient Warrior Queen? He was bargaining with lives, and he had no confidence in his ability to guess the fish.
‘Come and have a good look then,’ she invited. ‘No touching them, mind! Dirty wood! And you only get one guess, Webx!’
Gwyndion longed for a voice to guide him, but frustratingly, there was only silence in his head. He watched the fish intently, seeking for clues to the one which carried Samma’s soul in its belly.
‘Don’t tarry too long!’ the Sea Hag wheezed, parts of her flesh falling from her face as she spoke. ‘I could rot to death before you decide!’
Gwyndion ignored her. Eleven fish . . . all identical. Which one could it be? One fish was slightly smaller than the others . . . could that be the one? One seemed to look at him directly with a glint in his eye as it sucked. Could that be the one? The more he stared at them, the more he realised they were far from identical. One had minute red scales overlapping the gold; another had green. One suckled on Shambzhla’s nipple tentatively, another greedily. One avoided his gaze; another stared directly at him as if in a challenge.
Pick me, pick me, pick me! Their tiny fish voices sang mockingly to him.
Shambzhla became restless. ‘Are you looking at them, or just ogling my big tits, you dirty wood?’ she sang out accusingly.
Gwyndion hushed her. He continued to watch the fish. There had to be a way . . .
As time passed, his skin began to feel cold and flabby from being under the water. The fish had become bored with his surveillance, and had resumed their busy suckling. He found himself staring at one of them who did not particularly stand out in any way. There was something about the way that it moved against the breast of the Sea Warrior Queen that reminded him of Samma. Some tiny action, impossible to pin down. He continued to watch through the limited vision of
his new eyes. Was it possible that the fish that had consumed the meerwog’s soul had inherited some of Samma’s characteristics? Or — and this was an even more sombre thought — was it a trick from Shambzhla, to throw him off the true scent? He continued to watch.
Finally, as he was about to announce that the fish that resembled Samma was the one, he felt a warning twinge in his belly. It was the wrong decision, he knew it! Thankfully, he continued his examination.
More time passed and, by now, he was oblivious to his surroundings. A part of him was aware that he had gathered a huge audience of Merpeople, Nereids and Asrai, but he was unmindful of their silent watching eyes. Shambzhla was finding it increasingly difficult to sustain the Glamour she had placed around the fish and, at times, it would slip, revealing them to be very different in size and appearance. Some were copper-scaled, others bright green. Gwyndion could see the triple moons dimly reflected on the roof of the watery cavern they were in, and he realised that an entire night and day must have passed. Still he would not be rushed with his choice, and he continued to study them closely.
‘Pick me, pick me, pick me!’ The mocking voices were becoming softer. One little fish did not appear to suckle as much as the others. It was making a pretence of it, the Webx could see, pulling on the nipple, acting as frantic as the others, but no milk ran down its mouth and he saw no signs of its stomach being bloated at times, like the others. He focused his attention on this fish for a while and, as he did so, he saw that its scales became more golden; it merged into a similar size as the others, and it appeared to suckle more greedily. It was protected by Glamour, which began to work as soon as he focused his attention onto it. He then knew without hesitation that this was the one. Aside from this observation, there was very little rational, logical evidence, but he knew it as strongly as if the fish had stood up and introduced itself.
‘This fish is the one!’ he cried, pointing to it. His voice seemed to ricochet through the water, and he became aware that the sound had travelled through all the known worlds, that the Tremite Scribes were recording his choice as he spoke. He groaned inwardly at the repercussions that would follow. Somehow he knew Khartyn, Rosedark and Samma were celebrating his correct choice. The fish had stopped suckling. Shambzhla threw back her head and howled, causing shivers to run down his spine. Would the Sea Warrior Queen honour her promise? She gnashed her teeth in fury.
Gwyndion glanced around him, suddenly aware of the danger he was in. In every direction he looked, Merpeople were standing with cold white faces of hatred. Their pebble eyes gleamed, and their bodies were an eerie shade of green as they stood surrounding the Webx in their hundreds. He knew he was outnumbered. The Sea Warrior Queen moaned, and the fish the Webx had selected suddenly released its sucking mouth from her nipple and swam to her outstretched hand. It lay in her palm, and she stroked it tenderly. Gwyndion was surprised by the compassion the Hag displayed to one of her smallest creatures.
‘Expel Shabxom!’ she said softly. The fish lay down, closed its eyes, and its stomach burst open. The Webx watched in fascination as a tiny sparrow flew from the fish guts and rushed towards the surface of the ocean. Tears came to his eyes, eyes that were closed under water, as he realised in awe that he was witnessing Samma’s soul.
As Shambzhla sat staring mournfully at the dead fish, one of the Sea Hags that stood behind her throne, half-hidden in the shadows, came forward and took the small golden dead body from her. ‘Go now, Webx!’ she hissed at Gwyndion. ‘Go, while the sea still allows you that privilege!’
The Webx shook his head. ‘Not before you fulfil the other part of the bargain,’ he said to the Sea Warrior Hag. Her attendant Sea Hag looked at him with fury.
‘Let me rip his throat out!’ she beseeched Shambzhla, moving closer towards Gwyndion. ‘I have never tasted Webx bark, but I hear it is sustaining!’
‘No!’ Shambzhla screamed into the ocean, causing tidal waves in several of the known worlds. ‘The Webx guessed correctly, and I must honour the bargain. Bring him the tongue!’
With much grumbling among them, the Sea Hags brought forth a glass jar in which a tongue floated. Gwyndion stared at it suspiciously. He did not trust the Sea Hags, and would not have put it past them to present him with the tongue of a seahorse. Shambzhla smiled grimly, her great shark teeth appearing larger under water.
‘It is the Bluite’s tongue,’ she said. ‘But you are just going to have to take it on trust, aren’t you?’
The Webx nodded, suddenly feeling incredibly weary. He knew his time in the Sea Warrior Queen’s kingdom was drawing to a close. He bowed his head to her awkwardly, and she laughed again. To his surprise, she made the traditional Webx greeting, and he attempted to follow suit, while he held onto the tongue.
‘Make me an offering at the next full moons, dirty wood,’ Shambzhla said. Her eyes held his, and he struggled to understand the meaning of her intense stare.
He floated through the watery realms of the kingdom of Shambzhla, clutching the jar in his hand, surrounded by laughing Nereids and the water elementals. Past the doomed ship and its dead crew. The doomed Julie Anne. Mermains peeped slyly out at him, and he resisted looking at them directly, for fear they would lure him to his death with their sensuality. Shambzhla might make one last effort to defeat him before he left her realm.
As he reached the portal, his new-found eyes went blind, and he panicked. The water elementals crowded around him and began to guide him out of this watery world. He was caught up in a vacuum of energy and sucked into space. Gwyndion felt fear explode inside him. By now, the Samma that he had always known would have disappeared. What was he going to find when he re-entered the portal? His head registered lightning flashes as he was swept back into the world of Eronth. He sat, momentarily blind to his surroundings, as his eyes attempted to readjust. The mocking sounds of the fishes singing, ‘Pick me! Pick me!’ began to fade from his consciousness. His heart beating in trepidation, he opened his eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Leura, Blue Mountains, Australia
The house sensed that change was about to occur. It knew without knowing, dreamt without sleeping. Where there had been inactivity, vacuum, a dull ache, a space, now there was a faint whisper. A small spiral of energy, like a golden horn, that signalled an alteration to the sleepy oblivion of the days. The house could sense the thought patterns hitting it like hail from a previous occupant, who had emigrated to a grander residence in another country. Phillip. Phillip’s thoughts were on the house, sending it energy, and for this the house was grateful. It ached with need and loneliness, and did not wish to be forgotten.
Men came with overalls and blaring radios. They pulled sections of the house apart with their bare hands, and drills and hammers destroyed the peace. The house could feel itself evolving, changing. This process it was forced to accept, for there was no choice. The men in overalls ate sandwiches in the garden, reading magazines in which bare-breasted women distracted them from the contractions of their own heart and the dread that lay beneath their bantering. Like the majority of the mountain locals, they feared the moving shadows that tiptoed through the house.
Days passed, slipped into months, and the house kept its knowledge to itself. Visitors from other worlds continued to slip through the crack, through the mural. They materialised suddenly in the cool, hushed centre of the house, blinking in the light of another world, picking themselves up slowly from the floor, and then vanishing into the air with triumphant expressions of rapture. The child came often, bringing the smell of death, of cold and an unquiet grave. Rachel. The house knew her name as well as it knew other things, irrationally, without knowing.
The demon child wandered sleepily through the house, draping herself in white dustsheets, illuminated by the harsh Australian sunlight. She would play for hours with small bones on the floor, quietly. She was part of the dust, the air, the unnatural heavy silence. Once she spoke, and her voice was a tiny whisper that filled every space in the house and tur
ned to ice, to frost, hanging petrified in the air.
‘He is near,’ she said. She held out her grey child’s arms, moving silently in a solitary waltz to demon music that only she could hear. The house could not respond, for it had no voice. But it wondered . . . and it dared to hope.
*
Later, Lazariel could have looked back and seen the beginning of the end. There were so many obvious signs, it seemed incredible he had missed them all. Perhaps he should have recognised the symptoms when Theresa had dyed her hair blonde, when Minette had taken up smoking, and when Ishran had disappeared for a few weeks. Even the realisation that the group now looked to Ishran more than himself didn’t bother him. Looking back, it should have. It should have bothered him a lot.
They were now sharing a small house in the Blue Mountains just outside Sydney. The city workers could still commute to the city every day, but they were far enough out to feel as if they were isolated. Ishran had advised that the group would advance further in their metaphysical studies if they were all under the same roof, and Lazariel had supported him totally. It had long been their dream to be able to relocate from the hired scout hall to their own premises, but they had never been in a financial position to do so before.
Now, with Ishran’s arrival, everything was different. Money seemed to be no problem to the newcomer, and he appeared to have contacts around the globe. That was how they had come by their house. Ishran had a friend, a member of some overseas occult group, who told him that a fellow occultist owned a house in the Blue Mountains, midway between Leura and Katoomba, that was up for rent. He was now living in a chateau in Villefranche-sur-Mer, and the mountain property had been unoccupied for a few-years. ‘He wants the house to be rented by special people,’ Ishran had explained to the group. ‘And my friend has persuaded him that we are special.’ His eyes sparkled, and he smiled. For a breath, the world seemed to stand still.
Bride of the Stone: Circle of Nine Trilogy 2 Page 32
