by Jack
Dunnbyre.
It was Old Pilt; which he was versed in enough to know meant dark cottage ...
‘Or black hut!’ the sleuth muttered in fatigued triumph.
They had found their place.
* * * *
Equipped with such local knowledge, they soon engaged a swain well acquainted with the hindermost parts of the Brandenfells who knew of such a place as Widdenhold, finding him through advice from the common room of the Spout & Hearth and other drinking places. Younger Pemple was this fellow’s name, come in to town without his pigs on a point of business. Born of a line of hog- and goat-herds long-lived in the district, he wore a sagging, well-used tricorn upon his crown and was clad in a long herdsman’s smock over which was buckled a sturdy lambrequin of proofed hide. Smelling strongly of the pigs he tended, he had excellent repute amongst his fellow drinkers and, more importantly to Wells’ unnaturally percipient gaze, possessed a natively honest soul. Declaring that he was venturing near that way himself, Pemple readily accepted the offered imbursement, though Wells could tell that there was a caution in him.
‘Them Piltfolks were right proud of it once,’ the swain said of the isolated fortalice, ‘or so I’m given to understand. They used to cause no end o’ mayhem from it, afor the Tutins came.’
‘Then why is it so obscured to universal knowledge?’ Wells returned loudly over the rattle of their progress.
‘Cause I reckon usual folks — and our masters most — don’t hold that the Pilts is got much t’say nor do that’s worth taking ken of,’ came the sagacious reply.
‘Do people live there now?’ Cilestine Pail asked one of her rare questions.
‘Not so I know of,’ Pemple answered, ‘though some speak of floating lights and fearsome hoots coming from it. P’r’aps hobpossums have taken their home here,’ he shrugged easily enough but underneath his bold show the sleuth could see he was nervous. ‘Still, it bain’t a place with a wholesome reputation at either stretch,’ the swain warned, ‘and with the Gutterfear loose and unchecked about them parts, if ye won’t be minding, I’ll take ye but be on me way again right quick. Best to be indoors by night.’
‘Most certainly, Mister Pemple,’ Wells gladly agreed. The last thing he desired was involving another in dangers not of their own choosing or perhaps more truly, have some curious bumpkin hovering and foiling the entire enterprise.
All settled and arranged they set out under Pemple’s guidance at day break, myriad weapons cleaned and oiled, each member of the party dressed in full harness and ready for daring exploits. Almost immobile when he rose with stiffness from all yesterday’s climbing in the stony cellar chill, Wells reluctantly let himself be lifted in to the lentum that they were to take to the site of their rescue. The carriage was drawn by a six-horse team of stout well-proofed beasts —‘The better to make a hasty exit,’ as Wells said to Cilestine — Door driving now and Pemple acting as his sidearmsman, directing the way from his seat, Sprawle and the Pail sisters stayed in the cabin.
Initially they took the main way back south again towards Coddlingtine Dell. Yet Pemple soon went right onto an ambiguous path possessing barely enough width for the carriage. On this they went south-westwards further and further into the strange tower-like hills and pinnacles of rusting stone so distinct to this part of the hills proclaimed on maps as the Witherfells.
Wrapped in his usual thick scarlet hood and sthenicon on his face, Sprawle sporadically drew forth a stick knotted with a wad of porous cloth from a leather-sealed cylinder about his belt. With this he would lean dangerously out of the cabin window to daub the dark scabrous trunks with scent — a trail to follow back to safer paths. Should Pemple get them lost, he would find them out again. As the day grew to full and the sky more sombre, the lurksman began to speak of faint clues on the wind and several times called for a halt, so that he might take care to discriminate between a real slot and teasing hints that promised a lead but led to nought.
Occasionally they passed through ramshackle settlements huddled behind a sagging palisade of high thorny wood; wooden hovels crouched on uneven foundations of stone as tall as two tall men, keeping their dwellers high from the reach of night-prowling monsters. For as close as this region was to the wide-reaching influence of Brandenbrass and technically held to be safe parishland, such a maze of vales and ravines hid hobpossums and skulking nickers as easily as it did its many degenerate rebellious citizens. As they passed through, narrow regard was ever on the party, jealous heavy-lidded gazes lingering upon the fine harness and glinting weapons of these strangers. Once Wells gave a wry tip of his thricehigh to one especially curious denizen. The soiled sullen fellow snarled, considered violence, but let them be.
Winding a convoluted route along steep-sided gullies through young pines and bent turpentines marching up on either hand to shadows, the vague path Pemple picked carried them deep into untenanted lands haunted by little more than muttering crows and whistling choughs and small azure-headed snakes. Several times they eschewed perfectly serviceable roads in favour of the increasingly obtuse and crooked route, traversing sudden cracks in the ancient stone upon wooden bridges of uncertain construction. These were often so narrow, the passengers were forced to alight and walk behind while Pemple coaxed the team of six and their lentum across. The further they went, the more an ineffable heaviness beyond mere internal abstraction began to weigh on the party, enough to dampen even the swain’s simple cheer. It was with something akin to relief when Pemple called a halt and through the coston’s grate in to the cabin, invited his temporary masters to alight.
‘There’s yer pointy place,’ he declared, pointing up and away to their right with a nod and a poke of his ivory-ornate heirloom musket. ‘An ne’er a more unrote establishment will ye find.’
Out of the black trees rising now row upon row to their right, upon a heel of corroded orange rock thrusting from the slope of a higher summit, stood a high black tower flanked by two smaller keeps. Case Nigrise — the black house, lair of the Seven-Seven, cult of Sucoth, looking all the more dismal under the heavy grey of a lowering afternoon sky. Where the mighty blocks of its jet-black walls might have come from was a mystery, for all the rock about it and upon which it grew was rusted sandstone. It was built so cunningly upon its perch that Wells could easily see a mere company of determined souls might preserve it indefinitely from an entire army railing at its feet. Now that they beheld it so brooding clear, the adventurers wondered why the melancholy fortress had not been remarked by one of them earlier. Yet such were the contortions of these forsaken combes that only when a traveller was under the very caste of its long shadow would they see the Black House looming.
A lonely wind seemed to descend from it, a frosty sigh that brought with it brooding fear and a promise of doom.
Sniffing, sniffing, Sprawle quickly set to work and soon found a trace, the thinnest sandy trail in the needles, snaking and switching back upon itself, disappearing in the dull shadows of the higher woods.
‘It’s our Master Jack,’ he hissed through his box into the creaking hush of the dry shadowy woods.
‘Bless your accurate senses, sir!’ Wells enthused, then turned to the swain climbing down from his high seat at the front of the carriage. ‘You have done admirably, Mister Pemple.’
‘Thank’ee, sir,’ the swain becked. ‘Will — will ye be needin’ more of me?’
Wells smiled graciously. ‘No, Mister Pemple, your labour is complete — as agreed. Go your way, sir, and may your path be always clear.’
‘And yours, sir,’ the swain smiled in open relief. Giving them all a final deeper bow, he went quickly back along the way they had come and going about a gloomy bend, soon ambled out of sight.
Hanging until this moment at their backs, the Pail sisters now fixed their avian masks over their faces, their aspect instantly becoming warlike.
‘And now to getting in,’ the egret-faced Cilestine declared, her voice thick with irony and her eyes twinkling grimly throu
gh the slots in her mask as she peered up at the stronghold and swayed like a viper set to strike.
Wells stared up into the gloom of the precipitous woods. There was no means for the lentum to ascend among the threatening trees and knuckled boulders to the dreary bastion’s stony feet; time was running too short to search for a possible hidden entrance. Their path had come — as the sleuth had expected it might — to a difficult climb. As much as his curiosity might burn within him to look within the den of a fictler cult, his clumsy legs would only be a liability where speed and lithliness and all fashions of physical cunning were best. Wells had got them to this juncture, but now was the moment when Mister Sprawle came most fully into his own.
‘My curiosity can wait,’ Wells proclaimed stoutly. ‘Your safety and Viola’s rescue are paramount!’
‘I shall as always give you as full a description of all I see as I can when this is done,’ Sprawle declared gently to his resolute friend.
Wells smiled gratefully and, relegated to mere spectator, wrestled with the bitter all-too-familiar frustration — his old friend — that threatened its own darkness whenever he was forced to such a choice. With Door as guard and bridleminder beside him, Wells shoved the rising melancholy back down to the pit of himself from whence it rose and fixed his attention on his comrades as Sprawle and the Pail sisters alone climbed.
Following the zigzag route of the path — a mere sandy scrape switching back and forth between the creaking whispering trees, the scent of Sprawle’s quarry became clearer and clearer to him with every step of their cautious yet rapid ascent. Just the once when the lurksman was about halfway up, while the Pail sister leapt and stalked weirdly ahead, did he allow himself a glance down to Wells now far below. In the weird washed-out sight granted by the sthenicon his friend was a small yet clearly pallid blot among the shades of the trees, the larger blot of Door and the duller heavier blemishes of the six horses near obscuring him. No other lurid shapes showed themselves in the trees of the valley. Sprawle always loathed leaving Wells behind, in part because he hated to see his ally so dismayed, but also that he felt somehow exposed and ... well, limping without the sleuth’s sharp mind working away beside him.
Near the summit the three adventurers found a dim channel of steps hand-cut into the stained and lichen-splotched rock. Grotesque statues made of the sandstone of the cliff stood at the end of this stony conduit, effigies depicting a squat figure clutching at its own head and covered in gaping mouths. Should he care to count them, Sprawle was sure he would find seven sets of orifice upon each form. Coming slowly through this carven lane they found the great black footings of Case Nigrise proper and were deposited at last at the base of the dour stronghold. They were in a closed and weedy yard, the leadening sky above, the beetling cliff to back and the inky walls of Case Nigrise on the other three sides.
Waiting in the cover of the statues, the three kept themselves hidden, listening; Sprawle peering into every cleft and shadow above and about, the Pail sisters strangely still next to him, the constant motion of the Perpetual Dance an allowable sacrifice for the cause of safety.
Nothing but tiny furtive wall-dwelling skinks moved here.
All else was silence.
The drag of Mister Jack was so strong now Sprawle could near see it leading to a mighty black gate in the wall of an attached annex to the main tower. As high as the annex itself, it was out of proportion with the structure of the keep it sat within. By the evidence of hewn and patched stone work about its arched frame, it had clearly and more recently been enlarged for some unguessable reason. Indeed, the longer they observed it the more the masonry about the arch looked like jagged teeth, rendering this ponderous door a perversely gigantic mouth.
‘The Devourer ...’ Sprawle murmured to himself as the three carefully approached. Checking the priming yet again in his pair of twin-barrelled pistola, the lurksman sniffed and peered in the quiet for any sign of his allies’ progress or of a foe.
For long moments hidden in the mouth of the channel, they observed and waited, yet the walls were too thick to peer through and beneath the obvious scent of Master Jack, the smell of occupation general. All seemed clear enough; people lived here certainly, but they were not currently present. A bent wandlimb grew before the very front of the gate, showing that it had not been opened for some years. Typically there would be some smaller sally-port in the base of such a gate, but close examination did not reveal it.
‘There must be some hidden way in,’ Sprawle muttered as he stepped carefully up to this impossible portal to pace to and fro before it. ‘The slot brings us right here ...’
Without a falter in their subtle dance, the Pail sisters went to the wall, each upon either side of the gate, and abruptly, began to climb. Finding sufficient claw holds in the uneven slabs of the keep wall, they hauled themselves adroitly upwards, scaling the swarthy surface with astonishing ease while their skirts fell clear by their ingenious cut from the women’s proof-stockinged legs. Near the acme of the wall ran a row of loopholes, mere slits from which to ply fire down upon thwarted and milling attackers, yet with abnormal twistings of their frames, the Pail sisters each found a loophole to their liking and wormed a way through and inside.
‘Well, well ...’ Sprawle exclaimed softly, hands on hips as he watched the two sagaars disappear into the black bastion. He never tired of the resourcefulness of these two fighting ladies.
Before long and with a hollow thunk!, a thin vertical fracture appeared in the overlarge gate, instantly widening to the sought-after sally-port. Cilestine and Paraclesia stepped gracefully out, eyes twinkling with self-satisfaction.
‘I understand you wanted in, sir ...’ the elder sister offered with a slight curtsey.
Within they discovered a great hall made from the removal of the original floors and mezzanines clear up to the aging beams and rafters, an echoing untenanted space hung about with vast woven and painted fabrics depicting nigh-orgiastic scenes of destruction.
At their feet, the rescuers beheld a great e-form — the Enigmatic Mouth of Sucathes — painted in white upon the flagstones in the centre of the chamber. On the right from the door stood a monumental image carven in swart stone, yet another seven-mouths monstrosity formed with unnerving clarity, its oddly crooked arm holding aloft a tiny, clearly struggling figure dangled over a hungrily waiting maw.
‘It appears that no one is here,’ Cilestine declared, peering about cautiously.
Sprawle nodded in confirmation, his box-augmented senses revealing that though this place was usually — and until recently — occupied, its current residents were at this moment elsewhere; no sentinels, no guards, no milling idlers, all were absent.
But where? Sprawle surveyed the hall in brief bafflement.
Upon the left of the wall of what must have been the flank of the main tower, there was spread an immense tapestry woven with a complex scene of a thousand figures of ever-decreasing size gathered in clear groups. In the centre of them all stood a man-sized figure, its comely ruddy frame ringed about with an aberrantly murky light, its thickly-haired head set with seven mouths: one where it ought to be, one for the nose, one either side for the ears, one each for the eyes, and above them one set in the very middle of the smooth forehead — all full-lipped and disturbingly pretty.
‘A heirarchograph,’ Cilestine explained gravely, the beak of her mask pointing up at the bizarre piece of fabulary. ‘In the middle is Sucoth in his human form, and all about him in diminishing importance are his servants, man and bestial.’
Despite all the dark and dreadful deeds Sprawle’s adventurous life had forced him to witness, he could not help a shiver of disgust and felt Paraclesia beside him also shudder. Suddenly something caught his attention and with a flash of relief mingled with a kind of dogged consternation realised what it was.
‘I smell her,’ he hissed. ‘I smell Viola!’
It was faint but it was unmistakable amongst the miasma of older male odours. Lifting a mere corner
of the disquieting arras, the lurksman discovered that the wall had been mined, almost entirely removed, the great gap opening onto a conical vacancy rising to the grey heavens and sinking to incomprehensible gloom — an enormous gaping emptiness from which seemed to emanate an oppressive pall.
This must be the inside of the tower proper.
‘Here ...’ the lurksman confirmed.
Before him a slender stairway coiled down into darkness and this the three now vigilantly descended, Sprawle leading the way with his perspicuous, pit-fall seeing sight. Rain set in, falling through the yawning rooflessness above and making the steps perilously slick. On they declined, the rain becoming a diffuse drizzle then ceasing entirely as they climbed deeper and deeper. Water dripped with conspicuous plops, the echoes bringing an insinuation of some other almost melodic muttering.
Still they went down.
Finally the descent terminated in a cavernous hand-hewn grotto, and though Sprawle could see easily enough, the sagarine sisters were forced to unhood a small mosslight to see by. All about them was the same lustrous black stone from which the tower above was fashioned, somehow cut and hauled by ancient, rude-living Pilts, all the way to the light.
