CLOAK - Lost Son of the Crested Folk

by Russell Thomson

  ‘It’s chest deep for most of the way but the bottom is littered with smaller boulders and the wading is treacherous. Unfortunately the waters deepen for the last ten yards, six feet deep, perhaps more.’

  Needle sighed. ‘I cannot swim..........’

  Needle’s expression forced Cloak to suppress his laugh. ‘Not to worry Master Cliff, I have a plan.’

  Stacking as much as they could high on the backs of the three mules Cloak swam back to the path, hauling the three reluctant mounts behind him before quickly returning to where Needle stood. The old man was naked and painfully white, his face a picture of utter despair.

  ‘This tether looks like a large hangman’s noose,’ said Needle as Cloak slipped the large loop over his head and under his arms.

  ‘I’ll wade with you as far as possible then I’ll swim ashore and pull you ashore. All you have to do is lie on your back and hold your breath.’

  Needle complied, the old man coming safely to shore coughing and spluttering and gasping for breath. Dressing swiftly they repacked their panniers and were quickly on their way. When the track between the boulders narrowed suddenly Cloak released a string of low curses. The laden mules were too wide to pass. Needle waited patiently as Cloak backed the mules down the sloping path before reaching a point wide enough to allow him to unpack and re-stack the mules once more.

  There progress was slow, their ascent up the steep narrow passage between the bare rock walls testing both man and mule. The climb to the top took the good part of an hour to complete, the narrow way between the massive stone slabs hiding the summit and robbing them of any view eastwards. By good fortune the crest of the boulder wall offered them a rare view back over the shallow lake and the far valley floor beyond. Although his eyesight was not as good as Cloak’s, Needle did not need a grow glass to pick out the pursuing column.

  ‘We’re in luck,’ said Needle. ‘I doubt they will have seen us leave the lake and climb the barrier and whilst the column might look closer, I don’t think they have made much time on us. Curious though,’ said Needle, ‘they’ve chosen to follow the path you took, around the lake edge rather than follow the path as I did. I doubt it was the toss of a coin and if it was not, then methinks Master Silverfly may be correct and the Weaver has you on a thread. I’m afraid this moonless bitch is not going to be shaken off, until we find that thread, where you go, she follows.’

  At first the path on the far side of the barrier proved an easy ride, the gradient less steep and the path less convoluted. The closer they came to the valley floor however the larger the rocks became, minute by minute their route growing progressively more cramped as the huge boulders pressed in menacingly from all sides forcing them once more to adjust the panniers in an effort to reduce the mules girth. The time lost felt precious.

  Once beyond the barrier the Holdfast River came into sight. The headwaters flowed south in wide slow arcs, its course pausing occasionally as it passed through shallow reedy meres. Some leagues to the south lay the dark line of the Hold Forest.

  ‘See yon line boy?’ said Needle pointing a bony finger down towards the far end of the valley. ‘Whilst daylight remains that’s our next target. With luck we’ll make the forest edge by dusk and with the aid of another dose of that rather vile concoction courtesy of from Master Smoke we’ll press on into the dark while the Weaver witch sleeps.’

  Pressing their mules hard, the pair trotted side by side across the sparse scrubby valley and as they travelled, Needle told his tale.

  ---

  ‘I was bonded to the king for nearly three score years. Did you know that the longer a bond is in place the deeper it penetrates? The power of the bond eventually saturates the bones and the organs. A new bond is really only skin deep. That however does not mean it is an easy thing to shed or resist, but compared to an old bond, it’s nothing. It took some powerful majics to break my bond down, that dastard Smoke had no time to dally with subtle majics, the painless type that seek to unlace a spell, no, no, no, poor old Needle was subjected to the majical equivalent of a sailor’s rape, even then it took just over a moon to complete, a moon of torture on the body and the mind. When the link cracked, Smoke had some high physic on hand to hold me in a warded cell, it shattered the bond, dispersed it and left me as helpless as a baby for a week. I was so weak I could not even rise from my pallet to piss.’ Needle cleared his throat and spat, his action as much to clear the dust from his mouth as it was a declaration of his displeasure. ‘The cell had been shielded, a thorough job, very high majic designed to make the cell near invisible, cut me off from the world, disguise the little room from any seekers or weavers on the outside who spied for me. Unfortunately for me the shielding wards were more powerful than were really needed. They were in a hurry, they could not afford to waste time carefully measuring the strength of majic they needed. They just piled ward on ward until the shield enveloped all the rock around the cell. To cut a long story short, the shielding totally isolated me from all majic’. Needle sighed. ‘They had anticipated that my talent would return as soon as I left the confines of the cell but it did not. It was as if my gift had been extinguished and could not be reignited.’

  Drawing in his reins, the old man slowed and stopped. ‘Smoke thought that because the book of God and King tells us that crest talents can neither be gained nor lost I must be an unnatural freak. For some reason not known to me, my crest talent, my skill for recording detail, mapping and illustrating remains with me, but, my ability to walk, my ‘un-natural talent’, the one that apparently draws on old majic, is gone. For sixty years I thought wish walking was my real talent, but it turns out my talent is no more than good penmanship and an attention to detail. Un-natural as it is, there is a possible cure.’ Needle trotted on.

  ‘Is it a majic potion?’ asked Cloak

  ‘No such luck,’ replied Needle. ‘First we have to travel almost to the eastern shore to a long dead city, then, we dig and scramble our way down into the bowls of the earth, deeper and deeper. Deeper than a Troll nest.’ Needle tapped sharply on his reins, urging his mule up the shallow slope ahead.

  ‘My father died when I was a boy. It was the year I crested, I was sixteen. He was very proud of my high crest, he was clan, the Keeper of the Tombs in Bastion, capital of the eastern province of Thankless. The folk called him the Master of the Dead, but his real name was Lime and he was a miner and an engineer, not a digger for black-rock or gems, but for resting places for the honoured dead. My mother had died in childbirth, it changed him. From that day he left me with a nanny mother, immersed himself in his work, hardly ever seeing the light of day, spending most of his time deep underground exploring the ancient catacombs or in the great sect crypts.

  His work involved the cutting of new chambers and access shafts but after the great flood of Quince 985, he turned his attention to devising ways to pump out flood water. It became his main challenge and he succeeded, so much so that he exposed levels that had not been seen for centuries. Some of the water he pumped to the surface found its way into the drinking water. Unfortunately, what my father did not know was that the water he was pumping from the combs whilst smelling and looking fresh was actually fetid. Folk fell ill, a bloody flux that spread like wildfire in the summer heat. They tried, but they could find no cure..........’ Needle wiped away the tears that ran from his eyes, ‘...............the city was doomed.

  Just before the outbreak my father had taken me below ground to help him with his work. I had shown some talent in mapping so he thought it would prove useful if I was to try to map out the great depths. We were well prepared, we had back packs and water skins and to light our way, we carried flare orbs. Have you seen one before?’ asked Needle casually. Cloak shook his head. ‘Beautiful. I still remember the majic light, it was pale yellow, like primroses in the spring sunlight.

  We returned to the surface just over a week later, laden with maps and plans, exhausted and black with grime. We had talked and talked, he was happy at his work,
I was happy to be with him. When we returned to the inner gate on the fifth level we found it locked, we worked our way around the level and used an access shaft to reach the forth level but the door there was locked as well. We could not scale the shaft to the level above, so we returned to the lower levels. We used our new maps to trace a route around and up to an old crypt. We broke through a rubble wall, kicking and clawing at the old lime mortar until our nails were bloody. When we emerged, four days later the flux had the city in a death grip. The smell was horrendous, the dead lay everywhere and the black flies swarmed in their millions over the city............I puked like a baby.

  The mob took my father, they blamed him for the flux…………..hung him head first over a pyre of smouldering bodies, roasted him alive until near dead then threw his body into a cesspit. I ran, gathered some supplies and returned to the crypt, I used his maps to find a prayer well, re-filled the skins from the trickle coming from the temple spring, trusting the flow to be pure and returned to the lower levels. I stayed there for nearly a month, returning to the surface at night only when I needed supplies. I found new chambers, new caves and in the furthest depths an underground temple, an ancient place of worship to the gods before time. The temple became my home.

  To pass time I drew every stone, every glyph, every tile. I slept on the altar…………it was a majical place and its spirit of it infused me. I counted the stones and the tiles and I recorded all the cracks and wear but I knew in my heart that the place was as much my prison cell as my home. Looking back, I think it was my time there, deep below the ground close to the core that triggered my talent.’

  ‘Just after the new moon I returned to the surface again, the city was near deserted, civil order had clearly broken down, the pyres were out but the un-burnt dead still lined the street, abandoned to the birds and rats. I searched the deserted houses for food but all I found was more death, men women and children laid out in their beds, eyeless, swollen and black. The streets appeared totally deserted bar a few miserable wretches like myself, scavengers, too weak to leave, half mad and awaiting death. Despite this I did not want to leave Thankless Bastion.

  As I made my way carefully up towards the inner keep a gang of thugs appeared behind me. I ran. I turned down an alleyway, scrambled through a hedge and ran across the ornamental gardens that flanked the lower keep wall. My life below ground had left me with little stamina and they quickly closed the distance. I gardens wall ahead of me was too high for me to scale so I cut uphill towards the Keep itself, making for a narrow path that ran around the base of the Dowager’s Tower. It was a bad choice. The path ahead was cluttered and overgrown, forcing me to slow down. I had lost all strength and in the end was scrabbling along like a dog on all fours.

  When the mob caught me they dragged me back down the path, screaming and hootering. They bound me hand and foot with strips of skin cut from the dead and beat me with human bones before taking me to the top of the high keep wall. It was the tallest point on the keep, three hundred feet above a rocky escarpment known locally as Needle Cliff………. Then they threw me off.’

  Cloak gasped.

  ‘As I started to fall, I wished I had remained below ground, wished I was safe in my temple, on the altar, asleep……… I wished that this was a dream. I recalled the temple and wished I was there.

  When my body hit stone, my world turned to black, but I did not die nor was I badly injured, instead, I awoke in the temple, face down on the altar. I lay still, afraid to move. I had cracked a rib and broken my nose, it was as if I had fallen but a dozen feet, a distance no more than from the temple ceiling down onto the altar slab. At first I thought it a dream, a nightscare, what else could I have thought? But as my senses returned I realised I was still bound, my hands and ankles tied fast.

  I thought god had saved me or at least the old god of the temple, how else do you explain how one second you are falling off a cliff face and the next you are lying on a cold stone slab more than a mile below the ground? It took me the best part of the day to unbind myself, the pain in my chest stopped me from bending or twisting but when I was finally free I sank to my knees and prayed. I prayed and wept tears of gratitude for days afterwards but deep down, my mind could not accept divine rescue as the reason for my salvation.

  The days past slowly so I used what time I had to incant again and again the minor spells for healing I had learned at school.’ Needle slowed his horse again, slowly twisting round to face Cloak. ‘You know when you have a sudden thought, a moment when something hidden to you suddenly becomes clear, like spotting a stripped wren in amongst the tall reeds, it is there all the time but your eye needs to catch its movement otherwise it remains invisible.’ Cloak nodded. ‘Do you remember the flare orbs, the ones my father and I used in our search of the passages, they were yellow majic, made potent by a Guild Mage. They should have lasted a moon but their light shone as brightly as ever, if anything a whiter light, fresh as a summers day. I knew as much about majic as any lad my age which means I knew scant little, but it was clear that the temple kept the orbs charged. If that was the case I asked myself, then maybe the temple was a conduit, a point in the crust where the core flowed close by.

  I was young, I healed quickly but I was weak with hunger. My meagre supply of food had run out, and as you know my previous scavenging attempt had been cut short. All I had left was a pocket full of shell nuts and some dried dates, barely enough for one day more. So, like it or not I made the decision to return to the surface.’ Needle’s turned to face Cloak, his mule walking on unbidden. ‘It took me twice as long as normal to reach the surface and it was late afternoon before I stole a look at the city. My chest still ached terribly and I decided to wait until full dark before I ventured out. I had decided to make for the guild tower that used to house the Sect of Cures. I hoped to find some poppy syrup, dried roots for soup or perhaps some tonics. I hid a flare orb in a thick sack and made my way cautiously to the rear of the tower. There was a chance their store room had already been looted but I was in luck, one of the smaller stores was intact.

  There was no poppy but there were some roots and best of all, there was honey. It was stored in large jars, too big to carry particularly with my cracked rib. I unshielded the flare orb and searched around. I found two sealed barrels of cheese, I was so hungry that I opened the cover of one and dug through the thick wax seal with my fingers. The cheese was heavily veined and tasted a bit maggoty but as they say, hunger is the best sauce so I sat there in that small room and gorged myself.

  After wolfing my fill I thought long and hard about how best to transport the honey jars and the other cheese barrel back to my underground, but I had two problems, firstly I doubted I could carry the honey and the cheese together and secondly, even if I could, there was no way I could ever get them both up, down and over all the underground obstructions I would face. I tucked the sack with the orb into my belt then lifted the cheese and balanced the pot of honey on top. I stood there for a moment wishing I could just step right into the temple without the bother of the weary trek………….then as I stepped forward to return the jar to the shelf, the world changed around me, my knees buckled, the jar fell from my hands and…………I was back in the temple, on my knees, the jar lying in pieces on the floor around me and my hands coated in spilled honey. I was stunned. I had made a wish and it had come true.

  I rose to my feet, leaving the honey to gloss the tiled floor. I closed my eyes and wished I was back in the store room, I wished as hard as I could, trying to squeeze all other thoughts out of my mind and fill it only with my wish. Nothing happened. My elation banished my weariness and despite my aches I returned to the surface and made my way to the store again. I lifted another jar, filled my mid with an image of the temple room and stepped forward…………….jar intact, the temple floor as I had left it three hours before, a sticky mess. Over the next day I transported all the honey jars and found two more cheese barrels, a small rolled up mattress, books and a padded chair
. The temple was now my home.

  It did not take me long to work out that my majical journey into the temple was made possible by my familiarity with the space, the detail I had painstakingly gathered in my early days. I set about recording the details of the store, where it was relative to landmarks, the tower above the room, the now empty racks. Each time I returned to the temple I wished to walk to the store. However, when it happened it came as such a surprise that I was completely unready for it.

  Although it was daylight in the world above, it was black as night in the basement store. I was an ass, I had travelled without a flare orb to light my way and I ended up black blind in a totally darkened room, worse, there were noises coming from the floor above. I froze, closed my eyes, took a tiny step forward and wished frantically for a return only to find myself still in the store. My heart had begun to race, I wished again, and again, nothing……………..I thought I had worn out the gift and near to tears I sat on the floor and cowered. The noses above were growing closer and when I heard the sound of the basement trapdoor being lifted aside I nearly shat myself. I took a deep breath, shook the tremors of fear off and wished again, this time taking a bold step forward into dark. I escaped but I never returned to the store again.

  I spent the next week mapping out the tunnels, caves and shafts that lead to the temple. I studied them, worked on the detail and made sure that I had rendered them precisely. Each day I practiced and practiced, stepping from gallery to gallery to improve my wish walking but I soon realised that this was no life and it was time for me to move on. I did my best to block up the tunnel that led to the temple and I left the city, left my new home and left my old name behind. I took with me the name Needle Cliff in memory of my first walk and to remind me of how lucky I had been to be god touched with such a unique talent.