Nocturne

by Louise Cooper

  “It isn’t.” Indigo’s mind had been moving rapidly, calculating her chances against the odds that would await her outside. “With a little luck on my side, I think I can do it; but—”

  Forth interrupted. “If it can be done, then I’ll go. I’m not going to let you risk yourself!”

  “No, Forth.” Indigo smiled at him. “I appreciate your reasoning, but I’m the only one who stands a chance of getting across the square unscathed.”

  He frowned, uncertain. “Because of Grimya, you mean? Indigo, you know what happened last time we encountered her. She doesn’t know you any more—she’ll kill you, if she can!”

  Indigo shook her head. “I don’t think so. And I have another advantage. I can’t explain it to you now; there isn’t time. All I can ask is that you trust me.”

  Forth made a last effort to dissuade her. “Indigo, listen to me! No human can hope to outrun those monsters out there; it’d be madness to try!”

  “I don’t intend to outrun them.” At least, she thought, not in the way you mean. To forestall any further protest, she put out a hand and laid it on his arm. “Forth, we have to reach your father somehow. Otherwise, we could be trapped in this impasse forever.”

  He couldn’t argue with her logic but he was still unwilling to give way. “If—” he began.

  “No.” This time Indigo’s voice was emphatic. She had to insist, or they might argue interminably without ever reaching agreement. She had made her decision. There was no point in debating it further.

  “Forth,” she said, “I’m going, and nothing you can say will sway me, so you’d best save your breath. Come down to the entrance hall with me, bolt the door at my back, then look after Esty.” She glanced across the square at the inn with its one lit window. “And if you can use the whistle-code to tell Stead that I’m coming, so much the better. I don’t relish the idea of being thwarted by a locked door when I may only have seconds to spare.”

  His arguments rebuffed, his objections thrust aside, Forth’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “All right,” he said, but with taut misery underlying the resignation in his tone. “But be careful!”

  “I shall.”

  He accompanied her down the dark staircase. Esty, who throughout the discussion had sensed that Indigo couldn’t be swayed and had therefore said nothing, watched them go, then shut her eyes tightly, her lips moving in silent prayer as she heard their footsteps diminish. Below, in the entrance hall, Indigo and Forth reached the bottom of the flight, and stopped before the main door. Indigo couldn’t see Forth’s face clearly in the gloom, but she felt his tension, and when he started to say “Indigo—” she let him get no further.

  “Unbar the door, Forth.” Her voice was quiet and steady.

  He moved to obey, then paused and, turning, caught her in a tight embrace, kissing her face in a sudden rush of emotion.

  “The Goddess go with you, Indigo! And I—I—” But he hadn’t the courage to say what he felt.

  The bar slipped from its place, and she lifted the latch. Outside, the square was silent. Did the wolves have wind of her approach? she wondered. Had some demon-inspired sense already warned them of what she meant to do? She tried to take comfort from the knowledge that, whatever else might happen, they couldn’t kill her, but it was small reassurance. And if she should come face to face with Grimya, what then? Would she be able to face the encounter, or would her nerve—and therefore her ability to do what must be done—fail her?

  She thrust the doubts down, knowing how dangerous they were. The door swung back, just enough to allow her to slip through, and a whisper of colder air touched her face. She didn’t look at Forth, but took a slow, steady breath, and eased herself cautiously through the door. It tapped shut behind her; she heard the bar slide home again.

  A hundred yards, no more. She couldn’t see the ghostly pack, but they were there; they were there. A hundred yards. Indigo gathered her courage, gathered her will, and shifted her mind into a new pattern, groping tentatively for the spark, the certainty. Wolf. The word formed in her head, and with it the image. Wolf. She felt the flow of it, the surge of a new strength which was unfamiliar yet not alien. Wolf. The square was changing, the cloying darkness ebbing as her vision intensified; she saw it now from a very different perspective. And she breathed, rapidly, roughly, wanting to snarl but holding the impulse back.

  Wolf…. Slowly, lithely, her amber eyes alert for any movement and her lips drawn back to expose the white gleam of fangs, Indigo padded out into the square.

  Forth found Esty crouched in the middle of the upstairs room, her back to the window and her head bowed. At the sound of his approach she looked up. Her eyes were fearful and hunted.

  “I can’t go and look,” she said. “I just can’t.” Forth glanced towards the window. Still there was no sound from outside, and he didn’t know whether that boded well or ill.

  “I’m going to signal Da.” He brushed past his sister, had to force himself to step out through the casement. The light in the distant attic window still gleamed, but the silhouetted figure had disappeared. Forth sucked at his tongue in an effort to induce enough saliva to whistle, then put his fingers to his lips and shrilled the code for someone coming—be ready. Three long notes; four quicker, sharper ones. He repeated them again—then realized that this time the wolves gathered below in the square hadn’t set up their howling clamor in response, as though suddenly they had something more urgent to occupy them. …

  It took all the willpower he could muster, but Forth forced himself to look down.

  Nothing moved. He could see no wolves, and no sign of Indigo, and his heart quickened to a painfully erratic thump. Where was she? And the pack—they must be lying in ambush—Forth’s fear for Indigo, and shame at his own weakness in being persuaded to let her go alone, surged abruptly into something close to panic, and he swung round, not pausing to think coherently but acting on a blind impulse to go after her. But before he could duck back inside the room, a piercing whistle rang back across the square from the direction of the beleagered tavern. It was a simple acknowledgment of his own message, but it startled him, arresting him so that he turned again—

  And saw the huge, tawny and grey wolf that had emerged from the Brewmasters’ Hall and was walking with slow, controlled deliberation towards the center of the square.

  She was afraid, but fear was tempered with a hot flame of excitement that came from the animal adrenalin running in her veins. She knew her own power and her own strength. And the silence that greeted her as she padded, with only the faintest clicking of claws on stone, into full view of the phantom pack told her that, thus far at least, her transformation had had the effect she’d hoped for. The wolves—and doubtless their unhuman master—hadn’t expected this, and were unsure of themselves. For a few moments Indigo had the advantage: but she knew that it wouldn’t last. She must time everything perfectly, or the plan would end in disaster.

  More years than she cared to remember had passed since she had consciously used her shape-shifting power, and she’d feared that she might be unable to conjure it at will, or—worse—that in taking on a wolf’s aspect she might lose control of her human self. But with the first giddy rush of the change, she had known that all was well. She was wolf-Indigo again; and the agility, the speed, the cunning, had all returned to her. Now, she must face the final test.

  Shadows were gathering more intensely at the dark openings that led into the side streets. She was perhaps a third of the way across the square; still the pack had made no move, though with her heightened senses she could feel a sharp change in the atmosphere, from uncertainty to a new, tense anticipation.

  Another pace. Another, and another. Now Indigo could make out the more definite silhouettes of individual wolves, though she hadn’t yet glimpsed Grimya’s distinctive form among them. Still the pack did nothing. Surely, she thought, by now they must—

  The thought collapsed into chaos as from the corner of her eye she saw two black shapes expl
ode silently from an alley mouth and streak like bolts from a crossbow towards her. Instinct made her spring round to meet them; she braced her legs, snarling as they sprang for her throat—and the snarl became a yelp as the first wolf’s teeth tore at the soft flesh of her shoulder. Shocked by pain and by the revelation that these horrors could bite as fiercely as any living animal, Indigo rolled, squirming to escape the attack and snapping savagely at her assailant. Amid the blur of its threshing black body she saw its mad eyes flash like evil red stars—and then the second wolf was on her, and she twisted desperately about, lunging at its face with bared fangs as the three of them rolled together over the cobbles.

  Suddenly a single, sharp bark rang out. Indigo’s attackers sprang back as though at an order, and for a moment she stood alone, shaking, feeling blood trickling down her shoulder and matting her fur. Then an ululating cry echoed from somewhere behind her. Indigo whipped round—and as the cry coalesced into a chorus of yelps and snarls, Grimya emerged from the darkness, her eyes glaring, her hackles bristling, to stand confronting her not twenty paces away.

  Indigo felt the surge of insensate hunger from the she-wolf’s mind, and the small hope she had nurtured of being able to break through her friend’s bewitchment shattered. This creature might have Grimya’s flesh and Grimya’s blood; but the consciousness that stared out through those insane and brutal eyes was that of an alien monster. A whimper rose in her throat, caught, died. Grimya continued to stare, and mingling with the insatiable hunger she felt hatred; the blind hatred of anything that lived, anything that was not born of this nightmare of illusions. Grimya’s lips drew back, and the black wolves’ yelping grew louder and more urgent, rising towards a crescendo—then the she-wolf raised her head to howl a challenge and a command, and like a bursting wave the entire pack erupted from their hiding place and surged towards Indigo.

  Terror and instinct slammed together into Indigo’s wolf-brain, hurling all reason aside. Her hind legs powered her away and she ran, streaking across the square, dodging and weaving as black shapes came howling out of the dark at her. The tavern—must get to the tavern—but the part of her mind that screamed the imperative was swamped and bowled away; she could only flee, not knowing her direction, driven by the blind desperation to escape.

  A black wall reared out of the gloom ahead and Indigo yelped, contorting her body and bringing herself to a flailing halt a split second before she would have cannoned into the building’s solid facade. No door to give her sanctuary, no side street to gape for her—she spun about, her claws scrabbling for purchase, and saw the dark wave flooding towards her with Grimya a starkly paler phantom in its midst. She was trapped against the wall; they were closing in to tear her and rend her, and immortality was no proof against the agony they would inflict. Indigo opened her mouth to howl—whether in fear or in misery or in a last, frantic appeal for help she didn’t know—

  And the howl was drowned by a titanic roar that ripped through the wolves’ triumphant clamor and thundered deafeningly across the square.

  As though a massive cross-current had hit their tidal wave full on, the pack’s rush disintegrated into a boiling mass of bodies, yelping in panic-stricken confusion. For a moment Indigo was too stunned to comprehend; but then she felt a vast shadow rearing above her, smelled the sulphurous wind of a huge, exhaled breath, and with a snarl she twisted about, looking up.

  The monster towering over her was a pulsing apparition at least twenty feet tall. Its four treelike legs, ending in eagle’s talons, were braced to either side of her, and the vast bulk of its reptilian body seemed to have erupted from the wall at her back. Rumbling air buffeted her as the creature lashed a forked tail as thick as three men’s torsos, and the giant lion’s head, with its mane a flying corona of fire, raised its muzzle to the sky and roared anew.

  Chimera! Recognition smashed into Indigo’s consciousness as the bellowing noise ricocheted back from all sides of the square. Driven to the brink of despair, on the edge of its mad chasm, her panic-stricken mind had blindly summoned the most fearsome image it could create, and, fueled by the raw power of terror, the illusion had exploded into existence. The wolf-pack were falling back in disarray; one creature, slower to react than its fellows, was even now scrambling to join the retreat. The chimera raised a taloned foot; the talon whistled through the air like a gigantic sword, and the hapless wolf howled in maniacal agony as, split from head to tail, it dissolved in a flurry of black smoke.

  Illusion can kill illusion—adrenalin surged through Indigo’s veins and a shudder ran the length of her body. She could do it! She had the power, she had the weapon! Her teeth bared, and above her the chimera tossed its blazing head as though daring the cowering wolves to attack again. Indigo could see the Apple Barrel now; could see the attic light still feebly burning…. Carefully, alert for any untoward reaction, she took a pace forward, and excitement surged afresh as the chimera’s great bulk moved, matching her step for step. Still in its shadow, she eyed her goal again. Thirty yards, no more. She could run the gauntlet in seconds; before the pack had time to recover its wits. And the chimera would take care of any that tried to come after her …

  She braced her hind legs, knowing that her thoughts were also the thoughts of the phantom creature she had created. Her muscles tensed, she felt energy build, ready to run—

  The tawny-grey wolf shot from under the chimera’s shelter, taking the phantom pack by surprise as she raced for the door of the tavern. Behind her she heard furious cries, a third awesome roar, shrieks of pain. Something burst from deep shadows, bearing down across her path; her will screamed silently, and she was all but thrown off her feet by a gale of displaced air as talons plummeted from above to impale and splinter a howling black form. The door was only yards away now; she would do it, she would reach it—with that knowledge perspective lurched and shuddered, and the square seemed to topple towards her at a drunken angle, one image superimposed on another. The door rose up before her; it was opening, swinging back—she howled in triumph and relief, and what came from her throat was a human scream—

  Big, rough hands wrenched the door back on its hinges, and with a cry that shattered into a choking gasp, Indigo flung herself through and collapsed with her hands clutching at Steadfast Brabazon’s legs.

  •CHAPTER•XVIII•

  “Lass, I’m so thankful! So thankfull!”

  Stead wouldn’t let go of Indigo’s hand; he had gripped it tightly as they both told their stories, and now that the recounting was done he held it still, shaking his head as he repeated the words over and again.

  Indigo was still shaken from the aftermath of her experience, but gradually her calm was returning. Outside, the square was still and silent. The chimera, its work done, had dissolved from the world, and the wolf-pack had slunk away into the dark, deprived of their quarry. She believed they were still there, waiting for her next move, but, for the time being at least, they presented no threat. And with rigid determination, she was forcing herself not to consider Grimya.

  The fire which Stead had made from a broken chair had burnt down to embers now, and the attic room was sunk in heavy gloom. It seemed Stead had had no trouble in finding materials for building and lighting a fire in the tavern, and no trouble in persuading the flames to kindle. Indigo suspected that his own ignorance had come to his rescue; he knew nothing of the demon world’s nature, and that innocence protected him from much of its perversity.

  As yet she and Stead had exchanged only the sketchiest details of their stories; there would be time enough later, she hoped, for the full tales to be told, and for the moment she had more urgent matters to concern her. But certainly Stead had run the gauntlet of many nightmarish illusions before finding his way here. He refused to detail the horrors that had been sent to plague him, but from her own experience she could piece together a clear enough picture. One thing alone had given him the determination to press on, Stead said. And at that, they both looked towards the corner of the room where,
on a pile of mats and cushions plundered from the Apple Barrel’s lower floors, Chari lay in seemingly peaceful but profound sleep.

  Indigo’s relief at seeing her had been greater than she could express. With memories of the other sleepwalker painfully sharp in her mind she had feared the worst; but it seemed either that the demon had not yet chosen to fasten its hungering attention on Chari, or that in some subtle way her father’s presence had acted as a buffer against its influence. From what Stead had told her, it hadn’t been easy. Chari had fought like a wild animal when he tried to sway her from her mindless path: Stead was on the verge of tears as he described the brute force he had been driven to use to subdue her, and livid bruises on Chari’s arms and jaw were testimony to his desperate measures. But finally, and very suddenly, the force that held Chari enthralled had given way, and she had slumped at his feet, unwakeable still but at least no longer fighting him. Since then he had carried her until, finding himself on a familiar road, he had followed it and arrived here.

  He had, though, been unable to tell her anything of how Grimya had come to her present pass. After breaking through the thorns they had become separated almost immediately, and in his concern for Chari Stead had forgotten the she-wolf until, much later, he had heard an eerie howling echoing out of the distant dark. He had called out, trying to locate the source of the cry; but as soon as he shouted Grimya’s name a chorus of eerie wailings had answered him, and he was too afraid to draw further attention to himself by calling to the wolf again. He had discovered the truth only when, with Chari in his arms, he had finally tramped footsore and weary into this phantom town, to find the wolf-pack waiting for him with Grimya at their head. In that moment, Stead admitted somberly, he’d though that he was about to breathe his last. But the wolves hadn’t attacked. Instead they’d let him pass by with his burden, merely watching until the door of the Apple Barrel slammed shut behind him before slinking away. But he’d seen Grimya clearly enough.