To say that the atmosphere grew chilly would be an understatement; the air itself seemed to turn to poison, to sprout steely barbed knives and bristle with dragon tongues of forked lightning. No one had expected words such as these ever to be uttered within at least two continents of Nibulus, and especially not by one in Bolldhe’s current position. What in hell’s name did he think he was playing at?
But it did not stop there . . .
‘And Bloodnose was only on the ground because he was cowering,’ Bolldhe continued. ‘It was greed, not bravery, that caused Gwyllch to act so.’
‘Bolldhe . . .’ hissed Finwald warningly.
But Bolldhe would not be quietened. Not this late in the day.
‘Like all your great champions,’ he went on caustically, ‘your Venerated Expurgators of Evil, and all you would-be heroes right now. How many innocents have to die upon the altar of your holy ambition? And your Nahovian mercenaries, where do they fit into your crusades against Evil, eh? How many women and children have you yourself butchered, Paulus, in the service of the Peladanes?’
‘Silence!’ Nibulus roared, and hurled the headstone at Bolldhe. It hit the cave wall above the wanderer’s head and shattered into pieces.
‘At least that’s what they say in Trondaran.’ Bolldhe muttered an addendum in a slightly more conciliatory tone.
‘Then they are all mattress-hugging, knock-kneed, pox-ridden catamites in Trondaran!’ Nibulus seethed.
‘Actually most of them are farmers,’ Bolldhe corrected him, ‘but there are many renowned scholars among them too – including historians. And if you’d heard even a fraction of the histories I’ve heard about the siege of Melhus, Nib, you wouldn’t be here in this cave now. You’d more likely be doing something useful, like trying to make amends for the crimes committed on behalf of your religion. Believe me, boy, you should be grateful the Olchorians exist, cos if they didn’t, Peladanes would be the single most hated people in all Lindormyn.’
There was a pounding silence in the cave. Nobody had ever spoken to Nibulus like that. Ever. He had crushed men’s heads for less. But it was perhaps a measure of just how much had changed for all of them these past few days that the Peladane did not, in fact, do a thing. This place was unreal, their journey had been unreal, and somehow it all seemed so much easier to forget that this day had ever happened at all. It was time for sleep.
But just before Nibulus lay down, he called out, ‘And why are you in this cave now, Bolldhe, on a Peladane’s quest, instead of doing something useful?’
Bolldhe declined to comment. He half-considered informing Nibulus that the Trondaranians’ word for the pox was treponema-Peladane, but was too tired to bother.
Paulus dreams. He is back in the woods near the knoll back in Eotunlandt, and the thieves are out there, waiting for him. The air is hot, sticky and soured with the tang of imminent bloodshed. This time, though, he is all alone, and he cannot quite remember why he is here at all. A purpose? An urgent purpose? He is here to do something crucial, he knows, but what? So little time! Think, Odf, think before it’s too late!
His heart beats rapidly, and his eyes scan the jungle all around, taking in everything. He is stalking through the trees that thrust up from the bushy undergrowth extending on all sides. He is looking for something.
No, not looking, hunting. Not a leaf turns that his lidless eyes miss. Each sound is magnified, conveying a message to his brain, even the slicing of a wood-ant’s mandibles through a leaf. His long, wet tongue flicks out, and he finds he can taste the air. But time is running out, and quickly, trickling through his fingers like blood. He must do something now.
Then he freezes, and a second later he hears it, the sound he has unwittingly been awaiting: the muted, sing-song trill of a child’s laughter. Its gay, musical, twisted pseudo-innocence quickens his heartbeat, and his mouth goes dry. His head swivels round to the left on stiffened cordage, and with new direction he begins to pad softly forward.
It grows ever hotter, and sweat beads his skin. Softly, softly he moves, through the hanging creepers and trailing vines. Bright red flowers open up at his approach, their petals peeling back to reveal pulsating pollen buds that emanate the stench of rotting flesh. As he passes, they scream at him in insane laughter. A scaly lizard hisses at him from its perch, swelling to twice its size.
A voice speaks in his head. It is Kuthy’s. What d’you expect to find in here, Odf? There are no huldres in Eotunlandt . . . Or are there? He glances up and notices in a detached way that the Tivor is perched upon a branch extending just above him. The soldier of fortune’s eyes are wide, and he is picking the flesh off a glowing human bone. Mm, tasty, Kuthy sniggers, scraping the meat off with his rasping tongue. Off the bone, just how I like it.
Odf ignores him and creeps on. Again the laughter – closer now. It begins as a childish giggle but ends in a coarse, scornful cackle, devoid of mirth. Odf’s blade vibrates and whines, yearning for blood. His fingers tightly grip its rock-hard hilt. He advances.
Then his heart stops. He has caught a glimmer of white from the corner of his eye. Slowly his head revolves, and finally he sees it.
The succubus. The sweet, seductive siren of the Hidden Kingdom. An icy inner light glows through her fluttering white gown like a lych-candle. Long hair that shines like the sun’s reflection upon hoar frost writhes about her in slow, serpentine undulations. Eyes beautiful and unnaturally large, black as the Pit, wink at him. The corner of her mouth twists in a knowing smile. One long, slender finger beckons him.
Blood pounds through his veins, and Odf almost chokes. He can feel his problem starting again.
Then she melts from his sight, disappearing through the trees.
Released from the spell that has held him, the Nahovian bounds after her, and plunges like a stampeding bull baluchitherium through the tangle of steamy undergrowth, his blade pointed forward.
Hated huldre! Where’d she go? Wherewherewhere?
For a second time he freezes. Fingers as soft as sunlight creep across his shoulder. He spins around. She is right behind him. His weapon rises. His breath comes in short gasps. The blood throbs madly in his grisly eye. And then she says it, in a voice as sweet as a fountain: ‘Fancy a smoke, handsome?’
With a howl of loathing, Odf plunges his weapon deep into her shimmering form. Again and again and again. Sweat pours from him, adrenalin surges through him, his hatred waxes greater with each successive thrust. But the succubus merely throws back her head and shrieks with buzz-saw laughter at his impotence. Not the merest fleck of blood stains her peerless white gown. She wriggles and giggles, twists and whirls, then arches her back, stretches out her arms, yawns languidly . . .
. . . And turns into a troll.
Her long and lustrous gracefully gyrating hair contracts as if shrivelling under a harsh sun until it is frizzy and dry. Those previously delicate grey lips swell and pucker until they resemble a fungus growing around the fetid orifice of a mouth filled with disintegrating teeth and bleeding gums – a slobbering monstrosity fit only for bawling drunken obscenities at aged passers-by. The eyes contract into piggy, bleary globes of watery lifelessness, and the whole body swells as if being filled by a hosepipe until it sags and wobbles. The huldre stuffs the roll-up, now a filthy dog-end, into the corner of her mouth, slumps heavily onto an enormous, flaccid backside, belches wetly, then leers, ‘Ready when you are, lover boy.’
He has seen women like this in the shebeens of Venna, lumpish termagants with a staggering dearth of self-respect and possessing all the allure and social graces of a freshly picked scab. But it is too late now. He has lost any measure of self-control, and without further hesitation Odf Uglekort surrenders himself to the full madness of his ire. ‘I don’t care what you look like,’ he snarls. ‘I’m having you, ya filthy whore!’
He grabs the hefty face in both hands, and clamps his lips firmly to hers in a fierce, urgent, tongue-entwining kiss . . .
‘PEL’S BELLS, PAULUS! WHAT D’
YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?’ spluttered Nibulus in horror as he wrenched himself from Paulus’s grasp and backed away.
‘Wha’?’ Paulus replied in dazed confusion.
‘I always thought you were a bloody minstrel,’ Nibulus spat, ‘and now I know!’ He wiped the saliva off his mouth.
He had been trying to wake up the sleeping mercenary, who had been moaning a little too loudly in the stillness of the night, disturbing their rest. Now, while Paulus was still trying to grasp what was going on, the Peladane transferred his bedroll to a part of the cave as far away as possible, and lay down grumbling.
Both Bolldhe and Kuthy chuckled and went back to sleep.
It was the dead of night, and absolutely nothing was moving. Appa, the last sentry on watch, had been unable to stay awake and was now slumped against the cave wall, his head on his chest. So grey and inert he was that he appeared to have petrified and melded into the very stone around him. None of the others’ breathing was to be heard either; the day had exacted an immense toll from them all, and they slept the dreamless slumber of the dead. Even the wind of the witching hour had long since spent itself. The stars shone brightly in a cloudless sky, and the air had that hard, icy stillness that can be found only in the small hours before dawn.
Zhang, however, could get no sleep. The horse was restless. His tail kept flicking from left to right, and his ears would frequently point forward, then lie back flat. Something was not right. Stilling his anxious soul, he sent his keen animal senses out into the night, but nothing came back to him. He could hear nothing, smell nothing in the air, nor feel any movement through the ground. Yet he knew beyond doubt that there was something out there – out there in the night.
Something strange. A presence. Fey yet beast. And it was calling to him.
Zhang was not like other horses. The Adt-T’man, stumpy and unremarkable though they may have appeared, nevertheless could not help looking down upon other breeds. There was an intelligence in them very rarely seen in herd beasts and a measure of self-control unknown in all but a few others of the animal kingdom. Their bond with humans was one of mutual benefit and respect rather than obsequiousness. Yet their instincts, especially those outside the usual five senses, were at least as sharp as the sharpest herd animal’s.
Zhang looked down at his devoted master. The bond between them was strong, but tonight the human’s pleasantly rancid odour within the closeness of the cave did not reassure him as it normally did, and neither did the regular sound of his sleep-breathing produce its usual soothing effect. Zhang leant forward and nuzzled Bolldhe, and stamped his foot. But Bolldhe was too far under. Zhang could sense that his master was totally out of this situation; there would be no help from him. Zhang was on his own tonight.
Suddenly his ears snapped forward. There it was again. The call. It was not a sound, no, for all was dead here. More like a voice, or a single high note, the clearest, purest ringing of a tiny bell, which appeared in his brain without entering through his ears.
What was it?
With one last glance at his master, Zhang shook his mane and stepped out of the cave. Immediately he was a part of the night. No longer a steed, mount nor any other vassal of Man. He was Beast. A single animal entity. The slight dulling of spirit and senses inherent in his normal subordination to humankind fell away, and everything sharpened into focus. The horse was shivering, partly from the cold but mainly from the multitude of new sensations that surged through his mind and body. A wonderful or terrible experience, he could not tell, but he had never felt anything like this before.
He trotted on. His agile hooves tapped softly upon the rocky path that led upward. To one side rose a sheer wall of black cliff face. To the other a steep drop into emptiness. Zhang snorted in alarm but picked his way carefully forward.
Eventually the path emerged onto a high, snow-covered plateau. Zhang whinnied in sudden fear and rolled his big eyes. There were great stacks of rock standing about upon the snowfield, like silently watching giants. The slough horse halted and would not go on. This was not a place to come to at night. Why had he allowed himself to be lured here?
But, of course, everything was strange and unnatural these days: the closeness of that tunnel, with its things flitting about, only hours ago now; the Land of the Young before that, with its terrifying thunder spirits and the summer humidity that they had brought with them. And only hours later the blue-aired iciness of these mountains. No, nothing was ever normal when you travelled with humans.
Then he saw it. Some shape, something big, disengaged itself from the blackness of one of the rock stacks, and stepped out into full view. Zhang took a step back and tossed his head vigorously, but held his ground. The thing, whatever it was, did not come for him, but slowly unfolded two great leathery wings. On two legs it stood, and a large head, beaked yet somehow equine, bobbed up and down on a long, long neck. It swayed about, seeming to sniff the air, then turned its slitted, mazarine-blue gaze upon the horse and whined.
The smell of rain-soaked slate and mist came back to Zhang as he recalled the Blue Mountains and those enigmatic caves, high above any path, with their trails of smoke rising from within. There was something primordial, something mythical, something fabulous, about the beast that stood before him now. Like two rampantguardant emblems on a heraldic shield the pair of them stood, facing each other across a sable and argent background. Yet there was no knight-versus-dragon enmity here.
Then a soft laugh resounded through the still air, somewhere off to Zhang’s right, and music began to play. The horse’s head swept round, but he could not locate the source. The melody was stark, intense, weird and beautiful all at once, and Zhang was held captivated – unmoving, unblinking, unbreathing – in its spell. The tone was forlorn, empty and vast as the benighted mountains, as cold as the ever-creaking snow, as icy as the stream of sparkling crystals that coruscated from the horse’s flared nostrils. It held within its harmonies a depth as ancient as the world, and beneath it all there was just a hint of fear.
As abruptly as it had started, the music stopped, and a second figure stepped out onto the snowfield. It cocked its ragged head and chuckled.
‘. . . The night was rife with darkland life; you set my heart alight.’ The singer finished his song, then approached.
‘My, my, what a beautiful animal, eh, Ceawlin? Come, my beauty, let’s dance.’
The night and the mountains belonged to Zhang and his strange new companions as they danced in a whirlwind of scintillating ecstasy.
Back in the cave the humans were beginning to stir. After the ordeals of the previous day, sleep had come easily. But once they had recovered from the worst of their exhaustion, the frigid mountain air began to thin their slumber.
The first thing Bolldhe noticed as he awoke in the early dawn was how freezing it had become. In Eotunlandt they had grown used to a warm and sunny climate, and now the sudden change was robbing them all of the rest they still so badly needed.
Bolldhe blinked the sleep away, and the second thing he noticed was that his horse was missing.
‘Zhang!’ he cried and leapt up in panic. He would not normally have been so worried, for Zhang was, after all, an independent beast and apt to wander off by himself. But some instinct told Bolldhe that his mount had not been in the cave for quite some time, and in these strange mountains that was a worrying thought indeed.
Then Bolldhe stopped dead . . . for the third thing he noticed was Zhang cantering merrily down the path towards him with what looked like a couple of new friends.
‘Er . . . fellows,’ he called.
Zhang trotted up to him and nuzzled him affectionately. The horse was steaming with sweat but exuberant with vitality.
‘Fellows!’ Bolldhe called again, a little more urgently. ‘I think we have guests.’
Still only half-awake, Bolldhe’s companions hardly registered his words, but something in the tone of his voice made them all sit up immediately. From their sheltered position around the co
rner they could not identify what he was staring at. All that they could see was Bolldhe, faintly illuminated by the bluish glow of dawn’s first light, gazing with a look of utter perplexity upon his face. They could tell plainly enough that something was up, but it was only Wodeman who recognized in the way he was holding himself the posture of a rabbit fascinated by the weasel-dance.
In the time it takes a heartbeat to quicken, they were on their feet. Weapons were snatched up, cloaks were hastily secured, and all save Appa and Kuthy advanced to stand by Bolldhe’s side.
What they saw standing outside their cave caused every one of them to step back in fright and break out into a cold sweat.
‘Lord P’ladan save us!’
‘Jugg’s Udders!’
‘Euch!’
‘. . .!’
Behind Zhang loomed the great stalking figure of something that none of them had ever believed they would see in their lifetime – at least, not this close up. Images of dragons, horses, reptiles even orthopterous insects flashed into their confused brains as they sought to make sense of this thing standing before them, and yet the mental image that overrode all the others was that of a crane. Like a great wading bird it stood, though fully three times larger than the horse.
‘Retreat slowly,’ Nibulus ordered calmly, ‘around the corner.’
‘Why?’ Kuthy asked matter-of-factly, on joining them.
‘It’s a bloody Wyvern!’ the Peladane retorted through gritted teeth. ‘It might breathe on us!’
Kuthy swaggered up to the cave mouth, smiling. ‘Well, unless you’ve got extreme hypersensitivity to bad breath, I don’t see why that should bother you,’ he mocked. ‘Wyverns ain’t dragons, you know.’
Everyone in Lindormyn knew for sure that Wyverns do not breathe fire. But it was more than a little worrying to discern two thin lines of smoke (or possibly steam) drifting up from the nostrils on its beak.
A Fire in the North Page 4
