A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  Gapp did not know whether to believe him. ‘Why do they have to dress like that, anyway?’

  ‘Those wires criss-crossing their faces? Couldn’t say, really. Maybe it gives them comfort.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘Comfort of the mind, I mean. They’re probably the only inhabitants who ever leave this town – as hunters, rangers, soldiers, I don’t know – so they need to bring a part of the forest with them. Stand on a hill near Nordwas, and you see hills, woods, fields, stretching in all directions, and above everything the sky, unobscured and clear for all to see. But here, stand anywhere in these woods or on a hill and look into the distance, it’s all seen through a mesh of branches and twigs. They’re so used to seeing the outside world that way openness scares them. Like fieldmice venturing onto the open expanses of a lawn.’

  ‘How do you feel about being pushed about by these wire-faces? You, a veteran of the crusades?’

  Gapp surprised himself with the boldness of his own words. A mere boy just did not ask legendary men like Methuselech Xilvafloese questions regarding their feelings, especially reactions of fear. Surprisingly, Methuselech deigned to reply.

  ‘On the field of battle,’ he said, though his voice sounded as if it came from somewhere else, ‘I have done things so terrible not even your master, Nibulus, would believe. I have driven back whole battalions with my power. I have broken bodies, ripped out entrails and torn off limbs with barely a conscious thought. I have also slain the greatest warriors in single combat.’

  He paused for reflection. ‘But all that was in war, and when it was over, I would return to my land and to myself, and be at peace with my neighbours. Then if a city guard should threaten me, even were he a simpleton armed with a bludgeon as blunt as his wits, I would merely do as he wished, and walk away from trouble. Because in war you do a warrior’s job, but in peace you become just a citizen once more; and that seems right, somehow.’

  Looking into the veteran’s eyes, Gapp found that for once he wholly believed him. Yet was this man he now believed actually Methuselech or someone completely different? And was this man speaking from his own experience or trying to recall someone else’s?

  ‘You’re not from the desert, are you?’ Gapp ventured carefully. ‘I bet not even Nibulus knows where you’re from exactly, or who you really are.’

  Methuselech raised an eyebrow but merely replied, ‘I hope you won’t talk like that to the Majestic Head. Straighten up, boy, we’re nearly here now.’

  Unlike other buildings in Wrythe, the chief’s residence was a lesson in geometric squareness and solidity. Like a donjon it squatted, cold and ugly, on a low hill right on the edge of town. Here the trees grew sparsely, and a raw wind smelling faintly of salt kept at bay the fog that held the rest of the town in its dismal grasp. It was probably also the only building to date back to the time of the Oghain-Yddiaw of old, and as such seemed wholly out of place.

  As they approached, the sea breeze caused the scant trees to moan like lost souls. It was difficult to be certain in the near dark, but Gapp thought he caught a glimpse of several hanged bodies swinging from their branches. Reminding himself that he had seen worse things in the Torca village back in Wyda-Aescaland, he wrapped his ruffled pelts about him more closely and pressed on.

  They followed the path up the hill, the vestigial twilight dying with each step they took. Unseen things slithered away through the mud under their feet. Night creatures began to stir. By the time they had reached the top of the hill, night had descended in full, and there before them, only a shade darker than the sky behind it, sat the Keep. Silent and unlit by any welcoming torch or lamp, it awaited them.

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be anyone in, ’ Gapp whispered, but no sooner had he uttered the words than figures materialized from the shadows. Without any sound, they came towards them. Gapp gritted his teeth and determinedly did not back off. They were confronted by three wire-faces.

  ‘Ghac deu-nhann!’ Methuselech snapped impatiently, without slowing his progress, and the sinister guards parted to let him through. Hurriedly the others followed, and the wire-faces silently closed in behind them.

  They reached the Keep and entered. Though they had not realized it before, for no light came from within, the main door was already half open. Into the belly of the Keep they walked, Schlepp and the Paranduzes only just managing to squeeze their gigantic bulk through, and found it to be as stony and lightless as outside. They could feel rubble on the floor and wet moss on the door jambs, smell the faint odour of decay that hung in the cold air and, from somewhere within its echoing spaces, hear the irregular drip of water into a puddle.

  ‘Shogg me sideways, Meth, what the heck is this?’ Gapp hissed as, with arms stretched out before them, they continued their sightless, faltering ingress. Behind them they heard the wire-faces follow into the entrance chamber then heave on the door to close it. It scraped across wet grit and rubbish on the floor, then slammed to with a dull thud that echoed throughout the building.

  At a word from one of their unseen guards, they were led stumbling further across greasy puddles and over rubble and pieces of discarded timber, through to a smaller room. Moments later a few candles sprang to life. These shed a thin light, bestowing upon the wire-faces a dull glow and throwing their great looming shadows across the walls.

  One of them left silently through a side doorway, presumably to announce their arrival. The other two remained exactly where they were and watched Gapp and his companions without moving a muscle.

  ‘I really don’t like this at all,’ Gapp whispered. ‘This lot look like they might peel our skin off just for a laugh.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ Methuselech replied. ‘We’re more than a match for just two of them. Anyway, they’re not as bad as the rest of the people around here – at least they’ve still got some life in them.’

  ‘What, you mean they’ve got a pulse?’

  Gapp looked around anxiously. When first told he would be joining Nibulus Wintus on a sacred quest, he had never imagined this might entail standing around in a derelict house on the edge of the world, in near darkness, in the company of beings one might imagine dwelling in the asylums of hell. Out of habit his roving eyes checked the room for quick escape routes, should the need arise.

  Apart from the doorways at either end of the room, there was a single window and a large trapdoor in the floor. The window opened onto the dimly lit courtyard around which the Keep was built. The trapdoor, partly covered by rubble with a virulent growth of moss feeding on it, was secured by a sturdy metal lock which, Gapp noted, appeared new and shiny.

  Shlepp had noticed the trapdoor too, and was now giving it the same attention he had the timber bunker earlier.

  Just then a muted scream errupted from somewhere on the other side of the inner courtyard, followed by a chorus of children’s laughter. All those in the room – save their guards – looked towards the window in alarm. Then there came the strangely sinister sound of metal joints squeaking and a clanking noise, followed by the thumping of something heavy upon floorboards.

  Gapp’s eyes flicked over to the wire-faces. Still they did not react.

  He coughed casually to gain the attention of Finan and motioned with his eyes for the Parandus to nonchalantly place himself between Gapp and the two guards. Hwald cottoned on too and, as soon as the great beasts had blocked the guards’ view of him, Gapp slipped out of the window.

  Heart beating madly, he padded over the stony surface of the empty courtyard in the rough direction of the noises. There was nobody about, and no faces visible at any of the other windows overlooking the yard. Gapp reached a large bronze-bound door on the far side and squinted through the keyhole.

  There was plenty of light in the room beyond, at least, but what Gapp was seeing was difficult to make out. Various images danced before his eye: blurred figures of cavorting children, their skin slicked with sweat and reddened by torchlight, pupils dilated in near-hysterical exciteme
nt; arcs of smoking flame as flambeaux were swept through the air; a man on the floor, his face turned almost inside out with torment; and – Pel save us! – a thick spray of droplets of red raining from floor to ceiling.

  Gapp looked away and blinked furiously. Had he really seen what he thought he had? Was his uncorrected eyesight truly that bad? He put his eye back to the keyhole and refocused.

  As he did so, all sound and movement ceased from within, and Gapp froze. The Ogginda were all staring back at him, as if the stout planks of the door were made of glass.

  He immediately recoiled and stood by the threshold, trembling with new fear. Still the silence continued. He began to back away slowly. Glancing towards the window he had slipped out through, he saw that Hwald and Finan were still blocking the wire-faces’ view of him. If he were quick he could probably still make it back inside without his absence being discovered.

  Then the childish laughter began anew, only this time he knew they were laughing at him.

  An odd thing then happened to Gapp: he began to get angry, very angry. Thoughts of his solitary travels underground came back to him, recollections of the fears he had overcome, ones that might send any normal person into dribbling madness. And here were these yokel freaks playing mind games with him! In a sudden surge of fury, he strode up to the door and booted it in.

  Instantly, all was silent and dark. With the echo of the torture victim’s last cry fading into silence, the room before him brooded with cemetery menace. The intruder ignored it and began feeling along the wall by the door for a torch cresset. As soon as he found one, with his tinderbox, flint and steel, he set about lighting it. Moments later the torch was kindled and Gapp held it aloft.

  There they were, the Ogginda, the Children of the Keep, all standing in a line, staring at him. Not a sound did they make, and of their victim there was not a sign. In the awful malevolence of their regard, Gapp’s anger evaporated, and he fled.

  Just as he reached the threshold, a shape stepped out of the shadows of the courtyard and struck him full in the face. Gapp grunted as he staggered back and hit the stone floor. In the brief moment before he passed out, he beheld staring down at him were wire-face who had struck him and a circle of Ogginda gathering around to gloat. His torch was still clasped in his hand, and its dying flame cast their shadows against the ceiling. Except these shadows did not seem to belong to them but to misshapen creatures with billowing cloaks and horned helmets.

  As the torch finally sputtered and died, so did Gapp’s consciousness.

  Only one man, a non-local, normal man, bore witness to any of this.

  In one corner of the room a suit of armour stood, antique plate armour of the sort used by the Peladanes five hundred years ago. It was bulky and impossibly heavy, and rusted up so badly that the joints were practically welded together. It would have taken any decent armourer an entire week to dismantle.

  But behind the breastplate a heart was beating out of control, and from within the sallet of the helm two eyes stared. Wide with terror and red with blood, they gaped as if through windows looking onto the Abyss of Pandemonium, while the man’s mouth was frozen in a silent scream after the weeks of horror he had endured since arriving in this town. And from the torture he had just suffered at the hands of the Children of the Keep.

  Though still, of course, a non-local man, by now his mind was anything but normal.

  Although he did not appear so, Methuselech was getting concerned. Gapp had not yet returned, and already the third wire-face could be heard coming back. The other two guards had not yet noticed the boy’s absence, fortunately, but soon this would no longer be the case. And when they realized that the small foreigner was wandering about freely somewhere inside the Keep – for there was no way he could have got outside it – things would very likely turn ugly. For all of them.

  Moments later, the third one did re-enter the room. To Methuselech’s alarm he noticed, even in this poor light, blood glistening upon the man’s knuckles. Methuselech maintained his veil of insouciance, but beneath this facade he was coiled up tight, preparing himself for whatever would come next.

  If any of the wire-faces did notice that Gapp was gone, they did not show it. Methuselech was beckoned to follow the returning guard up the stairs, presumably to the chief, but all the others remained behind.

  Stupid boy! What did he have to sneak off like that for anyway?

  Forced to leave the Paranduzes and an increasingly agitated Shlepp behind under the watchful eyes of the remaining guards, and sensing that they were being deliberately separated, Methuselech followed his escort.

  Up a large and crumbling spiral staircase he was led, round and round until he finally emerged into the open air again. They had come out onto the parapeted roof of a large turret right at the top of the Keep. The dank closeness left behind him now, Methuselech breathed in raw sea air and, for the first time in many weeks, looked upon a night sky bright with stars, unobscured by fog or forest canopy. Wind-whipped flames crackled in a couple of braziers, while torches sent swarms of sparks writhing up into the blackness above. Over the sounds of burning fuel could just be heard the distant voice of the ocean.

  Methuselech glanced around but could not see anyone else. He peered carefully into the darker areas between the bright flames in an effort to locate the chief. Then he noticed a dark shape at the very far side of the rooftop and was gradually able to discern a large figure leaning over the crenellations and staring out towards the sea.

  Not waiting for a signal from the guard, Methuselech made his way across the rooftop until he was standing just a few yards away. He was big, that was for sure, at least a foot taller even than any other Oghain. But unlike them, this man was broad. From behind all Methuselech could make out was a multi-layered funereal robe of burgundy that clothed him from collar to ankle, grey-brown crinkly hair swept back into a horsetail and a pair of pale hands. They were like those of the wire-faces, but even larger and bonier, and with fingernails as blue as a hanged man’s face. One hand was wrapped around a large drinking vessel, the size and general shape of a human head but heavily decorated in gold and rubies.

  ‘Uh . . . Majestic Head?’ Methuselech called out.

  ‘My name is Yggr,’ the figure replied in an extraordinarily deep, almost frog-like croak, and turned to look upon his guest.

  Methuselech’s face did not customarily reveal much expression, as if he feared it might split and fall off, but upon beholding the chief of Wrythe a very noticeable look of deep puzzlement passed over it. He could not say why exactly, but there was something very familiar about this Yggr, and it disturbed him greatly.

  The face that now regarded him was very long, flat and stony, with skin looking as old, desiccated and chalky as the calcified karst towers that covered the area. In fact, it bore a manifest resemblance to a gravestone, or similar monument to days and lives now long past. The only words chiselled into it, the only part of it that spoke anything of what lay within, were the eyes: they were small, pale and watery, like oysters, and surrounded by folds of dark skin, but contained within them a pinprick of blackest black that glittered sharply. As Methuselech looked closer, he noticed that one eye was somewhat wider than the other, this one intense and penetrating while its mate was heavy-lidded and languorous. The combination was startlingly beguiling, almost hypnotic, since neither eye blinked, not even once, but stared piercingly into his own. He could not remember ever meeting such a gaze from any man.

  ‘Thank you for allowing me this meeting with you,’ he said to the chief in perfect Oghain, ‘to discuss trade.’

  Still the piercing eyes lanced into his own, the only modification in Yggr’s expression being a slight tilt of the head, as if he were considering something carefully. His lips, large and slug-like, the colour and texture of chopped liver, curled sardonically at the corners, then parted, and again that strange, frog-like voice rolled out.

  ‘And you are from . . .?’

  Even at this distance Methus
elech could smell the foulness on Yggr’s breath. In the capering torchlight he could discern small pieces of skin lodged between his teeth from some long-ago meal.

  ‘My name is Methuselech, from Qaladmir,’ he replied, omitting the surname which might identify him as a warrior even this far north. ‘I come from afar to trade in—’

  ‘You speak Oghain rather too well for my liking,’ Yggr interrupted and took a step closer. Methuselech sensed immediately that the chief was now more than just suspicious and cast his eyes down at the floor to avoid further eye contact. He was beginning to feel decidedly uncomfortable in the presence of this man, something which had never happened to him in over five hundred years, and it was a feeling he was finding very difficult to deal with.

  ‘There were two of you,’ Yggr persisted, coming closer still. This was not mere suspicion, Methuselech realized; he knew there was something wrong with the southerner, and he was searching for the truth, getting closer to it with each step he took.

  He’s reading my mind! Methuselech thought with unaccustomed panic, though he could not be sure.

  ‘My companion is here too . . . down below. He heard some children playing and went to investigate. It sounded like they might be in some distress.’

  ‘What, my brood? I very much doubt it. Look at me when I’m talking to you!’

  Methuselech, dumbfounded at this intimidation, found himself taking a step back. He raised his eyes till they rested on the big man’s chest. What was it about this Yggr that perturbed him so? The man seemed as old and soggy as a piece of bread left in the rain. Even his clothing looked dank and shabby, as if he had wallowed all day in a fungus patch, and when he ran a hand absently down his robe to smooth out the creases, a cloud of old spores was released like a puffball exploding.

  Yggr finally halted less than a yard from Methuselech. He cupped the shorter man’s chin in one big hand and raised his head so he was staring straight into his eyes.

  ‘You’re local, aren’t you?’ he accused with conviction.