A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  ‘Trying to see us off safely on our way,’ Appa commented suspiciously.

  The more they tried to understand Elfswith, the more confused they became. Beyond what they saw, they knew nothing of him, not even his race. How could such a ragged little man live in such abundance, even luxury, all by himself in this bleak land?

  The only insight they ever gleaned would arrive on the following day.

  Elfswith was busy explaining to them how to use the various items of equipment he was lending them for their journey: grapnels, crampons, ice saws, whalebone skates and skis, cooking equipment. He actually appeared quite animated in this task, for once almost interested in their expedition. Meanwhile, Kuthy was training Bolldhe, Wodeman and the mage-priests in the proper use of slicing weapons, starting with a lesson in the correct method of handling a tulwar. During a break in one such session Finwald drew Kuthy aside and asked him bluntly who and what Elfswith actually was.

  ‘It’s the religious thing, isn’t it?’ Kuthy replied, without answering Finwald’s question. ‘All those idols and symbols in the cave, right?’

  He stared long and hard at the young Lightbearer (still awaiting his answer) much in the way Elfswith had regarded Finwald when they had first met. But then Kuthy said, ‘No, that’s not it, is it? You’re not interested in religion. You’re still an alchemist at heart. Am I right?’

  Finwald remained silent, expressionlessly, patiently awaiting his answer.

  ‘Very well,’ Kuthy concluded. ‘If you won’t tell me about yourself, I won’t tell you about my friend.’

  He waited, but still Finwald was silent.

  ‘Oh, come come!’ Kuthy prompted, smiling. ‘No need to be shy.’ But Finwald was not to be goaded. Kuthy was about to turn away, but suddenly stopped and added, ‘It’s a dull old world, really, isn’t it, Finwald?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This world? No matter what you do, how hard you try, how gifted or imaginative you are. It’s so tedious. So pointless. Mind you, we’re luckier than most, since we don’t toil for sixteen hours a day and still live in poverty with little hope that things will ever improve. Now, those folk need religion, need to believe in something . . .’ he sought for the right words ‘. . . something “out there”. But for those of us who don’t have that need – no, that’s not true, as we all “need” something to believe in, or hope for – well, those of us who can’t believe because we’ve seen too much of the world—’

  ‘What are you going on about?’ Finwald interrupted. ‘You’re starting to talk like Bolldhe.’

  Kuthy laughed again. He was unused to talking so candidly. He searched for words that would answer Finwald, the strange young man who was such an interesting enigma, without actually giving anything away. ‘Me and Elfswith,’ he finally confided, ‘are looking for a way out. Trying to break the chains of this world – and of Time.’

  Finwald thought about this for a second. ‘That’s death, you mean, isn’t it?’

  ‘I hardly think that takes much searching out.’

  ‘I mean, what lies beyond Death.’

  ‘Religion? Blech! We believe in the promises of religion about as much as you yourself do. No, that might be all right for the peasants, but we’re not going to be taken in – gods are the very last ones you’d want to trust in.’

  ‘Immortality, then?’

  ‘Shit, no! Life’s too dull to prolong forever. No, we’re looking for real wild times, unfettered by the constraints of this existence. And there’s got to be a way, somewhere out there. I’ve travelled the world; Elfswith yonder is centuries old; and civilization itself is incalculably vaster and more ancient still. Between the pair of us, if we dig deep enough, maybe some patterns will emerge, some questions might be answered.’

  ‘You really are starting to talk like Bolldhe.’

  ‘He’s better than most people, I must admit,’ Kuthy remarked thoughtfully, ‘At least that one tries, but he limits himself by his dearth of self-esteem. In his way he’s every bit as fettered by this world as are ordinary peasants.’

  ‘We all are, aren’t we?’

  Kuthy looked shrewdly at the younger man. ‘You almost sounded as though you meant that,’ he replied. ‘Don’t treat me like an idiot, Finwald. Me and Elfswith have clocked you, even if your mates haven’t. You ain’t that different to us – are you?’

  So, four days after they had first met Elfswith and his Wyvern, the company from Nordwas finally set foot upon the frozen causeway. Earlier that day they had left the little man’s cave and travelled, with Kuthy, Elfswith and Ceawlin, the last stretch of the way down the mountains to the Last Shore. Fully equipped and supplied, and clad in the warmest pelts Elfswith could provide, they set off across the ice bridge to Melhus, waving goodbye to the three others, who were now on their way to the town of Wrythe.

  ‘Freaks!’ Nibulus muttered immediately they were out of earshot.

  ‘Deviants and cowards,’ Paulus agreed.

  ‘Insolent,’ Appa chipped in, ‘but generous, at least.’ He could not get over the cosy luxury of the massive bear pelt he was buried in – which endowed him with the appearance of a two-legged sea urchin.

  ‘Nomads,’ added Finwald dismissively.

  ‘Just “nomads”?’ Bolldhe queried.

  ‘Nothing more,’ Finwald confirmed. ‘Wandering minstrels roaming the world in search of stimulating experiences to pique, for a time, their jaded sensibilities. Losers in life.’

  ‘Hmn, perhaps,’ said Bolldhe uncertainly, still unsure as to whether he was travelling with the right party or not. Then as an afterthought, he added, ‘Never did find out what Kuthy looked like under that hat of his.’

  Turning to wave to them one final time, Bolldhe was slightly disappointed to see that their erstwhile companions were already stalking off rapidly westward without so much as a backward glance in their direction. Then he was amused to see Elfswith suddenly skid and fall flat on his face upon the ice, whereupon he was stunned to discover what lurked beneath Elfswith’s baggy coat as it flew up around his shoulders.

  A tail. A little twitching tail, almost like a cow’s.

  Elfswith leapt up and hurriedly brushed himself down. Simultaneously, he glanced back at the departing travellers in case they had spotted his little secret – and realized that Bolldhe had. With a guilty smile, the little man pointed over at Paulus and shook his head. Then he winked conspiratorially and was gone.

  TWO

  The Last Town in the World

  IT WAS THE DEAD TIME.

  He had no idea where he was, or how he came to be here. All was utter darkness. The chill vapour of night air against his skin told him he must be naked, but he could not see for sure. He could not see anything.

  Gradually his eyes adjusted, and he found he could now make out shapes. He was lying outside, in some forest. The trees, bark as pale as old bones, stood all around him, hedging him in, spreading twisted boughs above him to keep out the moonlight. Whispering among themselves and creaking with laughter they crowded round to listen to him, watch his every move. Great serpentine fingers of old moss hung down out of their branches, and used the excuse of the stirring air to brush against his skin in playful molestation. Within their boles, night creatures lurked and cackled. Mist leaked from the damp peaty ground, swirled queerly, stinking of decay. In the darkness it could just be seen crawling over the slug-silvered layers of dead leaves, slithering between tussocks of sedge and reed.

  It was the Dead Time – and this was the Land of the Dead.

  A sudden hiss of wind disturbed the canopy above, and an unwelcome moonbeam touched upon something pale, there at the base of a tree whose roots clung like grotesquely knuckled fingers to the bank on which it perched. Between them was an earthy hollow, hung with growths of moss, grey in the moonlight. He approached, dreamily curious. He brushed away thin strands of old cobweb beaded with motes of soil, which hung adorned with one spinning caddis-fly larva still in its rough case.

  He peered
closer at the pale thing. It was a headstone. A headstone split down the middle by the never-ending vigour of tiny roots. It was overgrown with dark ivy and cryptogamous algae, feeding on the Dead.

  Who ever buried their dead in the hollow of a tree?

  Compelled by some sick caprice that had surely not arisen from within himself, he found himself kneeling before the stone, and then scrabbling at it, scraping away its fungal garb until his fingernails were at first filthy, then broken, and finally bleeding.

  He stopped and stared: a patch of bare moonlit stone; letters engraved. He looked closer, his face just inches from the stone itself.

  Two letters.

  His eyes strained to see. (Shogg’s breakfast, why was he doing this? Wasn’t it obvious whose initials they were?) But no – not his own initials. The first looked more like an M, and the second . . .

  Then the fear smote him from behind, a sickening fear, a sense of dread malice, animal yet horribly unnatural. It was right behind him. He felt a chill breath of air upon the nape of his neck. It lingered there a while, stroking softly, and then, drawn by the warmth and odour of his sharpened exhalations, fingered its way around his throat, cupped his chin in its enfolding embrace, and rose further to explore his mouth and nose. It smelt of dank stony caves, and brought with it the hint of a sound: the soft tinkling of golden bells, the strains of weird, foreign music and the wail of ululating voices accompanied by the rattle of bones.

  Every nerve in his body told him to run, or at least turn round. Yet he continued to stare at the headstone. And as he did so he realized that there were seven letters, not two. The name on the stone was . . .

  MAUGLAD.

  Who the hell is Mauglad?

  Then the blackness and animal terror descended upon him in full, and he could remain there no longer. He spun round, stared about him in panic, saw nothing, then fled blindly off through the trees.

  Leaves and twigs reached out for him, tore at his naked skin, grasped at his body as he sprinted away from his enemy. The forest all about him was alive with grunting and snuffling. Images of tiny eyes, bristling backs and ripping tusks filled his mind. But it was coming, and nothing but flight now mattered.

  RUN!

  Suddenly he saw an opening ahead: a clearing or a path. New hope surged. He sprinted on.

  Then stopped dead. A shape, lit by the moon, stood in that opening. Its slitted eyes venom-yellow. Black fingers, bedecked with ancient rings of gold, twitching. A long mace slung at its side. Malign, evil, sick. Shunned even by the denizens of the Maw, disgorged from the maggot-ridden earth that could no longer contain it.

  ‘Mauglad . . .’ the boy breathed, and his knees gave way beneath him.

  Swaggering, it approached. Those creatures of the night too loathsome to be suffered by the world of light, even they now quaked in their holes, retched with fear, begged it to pass through swiftly and be gone. A tattered grey robe hung upon it like dead skin and trailed its damp hem across the marshy ground. A half-decayed nose, upturned like a bat’s, sniffed the air for blood. Mist-wraiths flew about its head, whispered murderous humours in bedlam voices. The leafy earth at its feet crawled with nature’s darkest pariahs in the wake of its passing.

  It stood over the gibbering boy and drew back its cowl. The boy’s eyes dilated in terror, and his mouth froze in a silent scream. The face revealed was that of an insect. With a single convulsion the chitinous mask split wide and its contents spewed forth. A slurry of steaming black leeches wriggled across the ground towards him, drawn by the warm scent of his blood . . .

  With strangled cry, Gapp awoke, flung his blanket aside and vomited. It was a chill morning, and the forest all about him was mantled in mist.

  ‘Oh flip,’ he groaned, still quaking uncontrollably. ‘What a start to the day!’

  Gapp had never liked mornings – or, rather, getting up in the morning. For him, as for most youths his age, that particular activity was the single most detestable aspect of life. It was that dread sense as soon as he awoke each morning that he hated the most, that sense of ‘Wuih! Not another day! Please, not another day! It’s freezing, you haven’t had enough sleep, you have to get out of the womb-like warmth of your nest, get dressed in clammy clothes, eat a hateful breakfast of something hard and tasteless, then travel the half-hour or so from mother’s house to the Wintus estate through darkness and freezing fog, just so you can do a twelve-hour day of grinding toil among people you can’t stand, then return home to a meal and bed again. Such was the lot of Nibulus’s esquire – though now sadly separated from his master.

  But then a voice from the other side of the clearing reminded him he was not in Nordwas any more. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ it mocked.

  It was Methuselech Xilvafloese, his master’s mercenary friend, the odd foreigner who seemed to Gapp to be becoming more odd and foreign with each passing day. Gapp groaned again and wiped a long strand of saliva from his chin with the back of his hand. It seemed to have no end, sticking to him almost as mucilaginously as did Methuselech, and he finally acknowledged defeat.

  He had been feeling weak for five or six days now, drained by the constant travelling, no doubt. But it was only in the last day or so that he had begun feeling sick. Yesterday morning he had thrown up too, and he realized he had been plagued by nightmares ever since being reunited with Methuselech.

  At this precise moment, many miles to the east, Nibulus and his company were leaving Elfswith’s cave for their final trek down to the Last Shore. Though Gapp was unaware of this, unaware that they were even alive, still his thoughts dwelt upon his master, and he would have given anything to be with the main company once more. It had been five weeks since he had last seen any of them. Gapp sighed, remembering all that had happened to him subsequently . . .

  Then the boy cursed. One misplaced step – just one shogging step! – was all it had taken to send him down into the pit. Maybe if he had been that little bit lighter on his feet, that fraction of a second quicker, he could have avoided the Afanc’s lunge, and stayed with the company to share whatever fate had become theirs. But the earth had swallowed him up, for better or worse, embraced him in its icy, subterranean waters, borne him far along through its dark places, tormented him with its infernal horrors and, when it had grown bored with him, spat him out in a far distant land, naked and alone.

  Well, at least he was not alone now. At least one other of the original company was with him again. If Methuselech could truly be called company. How they had ever managed to meet up again, to arrive at the same place, at the same time, in the middle of the forest, he would never understand even if he lived to be as old as twenty. Gapp’s own injuries had been bad enough, his lonely journey long, but Methuselech had hauled himself right out of a chasm! He had climbed the very cliff he had fallen down, out from the Valley of Sluagh, a place of such evil it had sent the whole company packing as soon as they heard the keening from within it. Yet Methuselech had been dragging his wounded body through the wilderness for over a week before Gapp had taken his tumble. And had been doggedly following his former companions ever since. That took something more than just physical strength.

  But it had paid off. For, by chance alone, the two of them had been reunited there in the forest town of Cyne-Tregva – that strangest of places with its strangest of races, the Vetterym. And, ever since, all Methuselech could think of, all he had been doing, was trying to rejoin the main company, no matter how exhausted the pair of them were. For nine days they had been travelling, Gapp and Methuselech riding their antler-headed Paranduzes, and Shlepp the forest hound running alongside. Nine days of hard riding through the vast, seemingly endless reaches of Fron-Wudu, using trails known only to the Paranduzes themselves. Every day was the same: they would rise at dawn, eat a hurried breakfast, and be off as soon as they were packed. Then, each gripping onto the Parandus antlers that swept back down from the rear of the creature’s head, they would ride, and ride, and ride, pausing only for the briefest of rests, a
nd not stop until it was dark.

  Their steeds Hwald and Finan were incredible, untiring, like creatures made of a stone as hard and resilient as the flint of their moonspears. With their multi-layered, tasselled cheche-scarves fastened firmly over nose, mouth and neck, they fixed their eyes upon the path ahead and never once deviated from their course. But still Methuselech would urge them on to greater speed, so much so that for Gapp each passing day blurred into the next in a haze of trees eternally flashing past. At nights he could hardly sleep due to the unassuageable cramps and aches that racked his whole body, and from the sensation that he was still riding. But when he did sleep, the nightmares would return, and by morning he felt even more drained than before.

  Groggily, Gapp got to his feet and breathed the damp morning air deep into his lungs. He stank of sweat, and his clothes stuck to him like flypaper. He looked around and noticed the Paranduzes nearby. The two hulking great beasts appeared to be occupied with, of all things, plaiting each other’s hair. Their big faces were furrowed with concentration, as though this task was the most important thing in the world to them.

  Gapp shook his head. They were strange, those two, such a complete mystery to him that he did not even bother wondering about them any more. Instead he just put them from his mind. Like every race that dwelt in the forest town of Cyne-Tregva, they were so bizarre in every way that they were beyond the young Aescal’s comprehension. Gapp sometimes wondered if perhaps they did not actually exist but were in fact just some hallucination of his exhausted and foggy mind, a kind of psychogenic coagulation of the creatures he had encountered on this journey and the creatures that inhabited his dreams: the body of a warhorse or a stag, a mace-like glypto-tail, the torso of an ogre or some other giant sprouting from the withers, and a face so much like that of Yulfric, the forest giant who had rescued him a month ago.