A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  Finwald’s disciplined mind now focused exclusively upon his blessings: Paulus is no longer a threat; I’ve found the ones I’ve been looking for; they haven’t killed me yet. Now comes the hard part . . .

  Then began Finwald’s lengthy and desperate attempt to save his own life. He tried to communicate with sign language. It seemed a straightforward enough message at first: he had run away from his old company; he wished to join the Tyvenborgers; and great treasures awaited them all if they would but agree.

  The more he tried, however, the clearer it became that they had not the faintest idea what he was trying to convey to them. Finwald found himself repeating the same hand signals over and again, only more emphatically, till desperation began to fog his concentration. Then he did the worst thing possible in that strange place. Looking imploringly from one thief to the next, his eyes inadvertently fell upon one of the mirrors that lined the wall.

  From where he knelt he could see in this mirror several of his captors’ backs. This in itself would not have been particularly remarkable, since the mirror was behind them. What was alarming, however, was that although the thieves themselves did not move, in the mirror their reflections appeared to be turning around.

  Finwald’s eyes almost popped out of his skull. He quickly tore his gaze away from the mirror and concentrated it upon the thieves themselves. They were still there as before, regarding him with slightly puzzled amusement. Then he glanced again in the mirror, which should have reflected the backs of their heads, but instead saw their faces, grinning at him directly. Grinning sinfully – and now laughing.

  As the Lightbearer stared, the reflected heads began to expand. Bigger and fatter they swelled, fed by grotesque blue pumping arteries that bulged like frantically wriggling tapeworms beneath their skin. Long dark bristles started from that same skin, their eyes shrank and narrowed, their mouths warped into heavy snouts, and brutal ripping tusks slid up from their jaws and began dripping with the innocent blood of all the races of Lindormyn.

  Within seconds this disfigurement was complete: there in the mirror stood the thieves, their bodies crowned with the monstrous heads of swine, which regarded him with porcine mirth.

  Eorcenwold shoved him impatiently, but Finwald found himself now unable to concentrate on his signals.

  Once more he tore his gaze from the offending mirror but found that he was now looking at other mirrors further along the wall. In these he could make out the reflections of other thieves: Oswiu, Dolen and Raedgifu. Raedgifu, he of the fine silks and voluminous leather trousers, occupied a whole mirror all by himself, having expanded to push the thieves nearest to him out beyond the frame. His reflection stared out of that mirror towards another on the opposite wall with an extremely vainglorious and lackadaisical countenance, each self-satisfied image enjoying what it saw in an endless repetition of reflected comeliness.

  Dolen, on the other hand, was less favourably reflected, her face a ghastly mask of loathing blackened by the flames of the hate that consumed her from within. And as for Oswiu Garoticca, he appeared as a skeleton with a Kh’is dagger hovering inside his ribcage.

  Then there was one mirror each for himself and Paulus. The recumbent mercenary, propped against a carved wooden screen and breathing heavily, was shown as a naked old man hunched up in his bed, fondling himself lasciviously, while Finwald stared at a reflection of himself that wore several faces, all of them the brilliant hue of new grass.

  Vanity mirrors, he reflected and dropped his gaze. What personal sins would this room’s previous occupant have gazed upon in admiration, I wonder?

  Back to the matter at hand, Finwald took a deep breath and again attempted to sway his captors. The thieves, however, by nature impulsive and inclined to lash out on a whim, were visibly losing what little patience they possessed, and the Lightbearer began to panic. Raedgifu stepped forward and thrust his face close to Finwald’s, appraising him carefully. Finwald did not dare return his gaze, could not guess what he was up to, and a fear grew in him that this dandified rogue intended to teach him the ‘tricks of the trade’, as the Peladanes euphemistically put it.

  Eventually, and to Finwald’s immense relief, Raedgifu sniffed haughtily and backed away. Then, with a casual flick of the wrist as though whipping a silk kerchief out of his breast pocket, he brought his cat-o’-nine-tails round and smote Finwald full in the face.

  The priest reeled back in shock and agony then collapsed upon the floor with a shriek. The room and all in it turned red as blood poured into his eyes. His sight swimming, the red room began to blur and spin, and he inhaled deeply to prevent himself voiding his stomach. But the acrid stench of the chamber did nothing to help, and within moments his vision totally faded.

  Though he did not realize it, Finwald had fallen into a swoon. In front of him the entire room seemed to distort. The thieves themselves were transformed into those rawgrs and fiends depicted by the statues in the hall below, and even larger ones stepped out of the mirrors and stalked about, conversing in their own diabolic tongue. The chamber pot waddled, growling, out from under the bed, its mouth full of rawgr waste, and multiplied into a whole swarm of chamber pots, gargling on their contents. They leapt up and down irately upon their three-clawed brass feet before charging forward to vomit their cargo upon him . . .

  Finwald felt the splash of liquid on his face – and awoke to find Flekki standing over him with a flask. With an almost childlike cry of relief, the priest hauled himself onto his knees and stared up at the leering visages that surrounded him.

  But it was useless. He had failed and would die. Surely the only reason he had survived this long was because he did not share their language. Otherwise, they would have tortured all the information they wanted out of him long ago.

  Khurghan, indeed, was all for handing him over to Grini, as the Boggart had not eaten for a while and was becoming difficult to handle. Finwald glanced over at Aelldryc and wondered about using his old charm. But as she stared expressionlessly back at him, all that entered his head was: By the gods, she’s got massive hips!

  Of all of them, only the Dhracus offered him any hope. From his companions’ encounters with the Tyvenborgers they had learnt about her mind tricks, and though he did not properly understand how they worked, this was now the only way Finwald could think of communicating his desperate message.

  Sensing herself in his thoughts, Dolen stepped forward to stand before the kneeling man and began searching his mind.

  Those eyes! Finwald winced in repulsion, staring up into the Dhracus’s soulless glistening black orbs. There was an intensity and potency within them beyond anything he had observed in any other person he had ever met. But they were utterly unreadable. This was not going to be an easy task at all.

  ‘Paulus,’ Finwald murmured to her – softly so that his former companion might not hear – and pointed to the Nahovian slumped against the screen. Then he went on to concentrate on an image of himself being chased by the mercenary up the stairs. Concentration, fortunately, was something Finwald was still a master of.

  He looked up hopefully, but the Dhracus merely shrugged.

  What’s the matter, can’t she read my thoughts? Then he remembered something Kuthy Tivor had once said about her kind: ‘It is their cousins in Ghouhlem that possess the psionic art. Those from Godtha are mere apprentices.’ Maybe she’s an empath, he wondered. Maybe she’s better with emotions than with thoughts or images . . .

  So he drew upon his considerable imaginative ability and focused upon the feelings he had experienced during his recent flight from Paulus. The animal terror . . . the desperation . . . the near-hopelessness . . .

  Again he looked up, hardly daring to hope.

  And released his breath in relief. Dolen was nodding her understanding. She turned and murmured something to Eorcenwold, who raised his eyebrows with interest, and the other thieves backed off a little.

  Thank you! He did not need to be an empath to sense the easing of their hostility.
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br />   Next he focused all his thoughts and emotions upon cunning information and greed for treasure . . .

  It was a painstaking process, fraught with infuriating setbacks, constant misunderstandings and an impatience that threatened at any minute to tear the whole process apart. For empathy has its limits, even for a Dhracus. But despite these problems Finwald believed that he and the ghost-faced woman were finally coming to an understanding. The trouble with empaths, unfortunately, is that they can only ever receive, never transmit. Dolen had still not been able to get her own message across.

  Finwald did have one thing going for him: the thieves, it seemed, had not as yet been overly successful in their quest. Gaining ingress was one thing; locating the goods was quite another. And this entire place frankly scared the spats off them. They were not going to leave until they had at least something to make their journey here worthwhile, but neither were they going to stay in this rawgr pit for a second longer than necessary.

  This strange newcomer clearly knew a lot more about Vaagenfjord Maw than they did. How fortuitous. In addition, he was compliant, very eager to please and, above all, alone. So rather than being the threat he had at first appeared, this funny little man was beginning to resemble a gift sent from whatever gods smiled on them.

  But first he would have to prove himself.

  ‘No!’ he cried out in protest. ‘Absolutely not! I can’t!’

  It had taken a while for the Dhracus to get her point across – quite possibly because the mage-priest was subconsciously refusing to get it. But now that he knew what the test for his change of allegiance was to be, his newly regained self-control was disintegrating all about him.

  It was Eotunlandt all over again. This time, however, he was to play the role Bolldhe had performed. A sacrifice was now demanded and, as luck would have it, the Tyvenborgers had just the victim to hand.

  My sweet Lord Cuna. That it should come to this!

  Just as Bolldhe had stared in disbelief at the back of old Appa’s neck laid out before him, so too did Finwald now look down upon the battered and bound form of Paulus. And just as Bolldhe had then done, so too did Finwald now think, How the hell did I get myself into this?

  How indeed? Had the shaman been here now perhaps he would have been able to assist Finwald in searching for the answers within his soul, just as he had done back then with Bolldhe on the plain of fire and ice. On that occasion Bolldhe had journeyed down deep into his past, further and further, until he had reached the deepest and most ancient place of his soul, wherein lay the answers.

  For Finwald it was a journey in exactly the opposite direction. Up, up and up unto the highest chamber of Ymla-Myrrdhain. Up, up and up, from his earliest childhood memories to the awful present that he now found himself in.

  His mother, that vole-faced old scrote with a mouth so big and a tongue so sharp she could have circumcised a fully grown baluchitherium. Oh, what a great mother she had been! He had fed on the milk of human kindness from the flattest-chested woman in the whole desert region, and even then had had to wait at the end of the queue behind her clients.

  Passed like a parcel then from mother to alchemist, Pashta-Maeva by name, possibly the oddest man in Qaladmir. He of the lateral thought, the singularity of purpose, the consuming obsession and, of greatest significance, the monumental collection of literature. All in all, the perfect greenhouse for Finwald’s intellect, curiosity and inexplicable feelings of vocation . . .

  The finding of the sword . . . other mentors . . .

  Then a mentor of an entirely different kind. Appa, the Lightbearer from the north, had arrived in the boy’s life at precisely the right moment. For young Finwald’s searching was by this stage leading him down altogether darker paths, and he had been on the point of stepping over that black threshold beyond which no light shone. But then Appa had arrived, and Finwald had been truly illuminated. Yes, Appa had given Finwald his long-sought-after sense of purpose which had filled that void that had been draining away his very soul. For this Finwald would be eternally grateful to the old priest. Because he knew that same void was not waiting for just anything to fill it; no, that void had been opened in him for one specific purpose. It was awaiting Cuna.

  And finally their journey together to the north, a journey to light, a journey to lands where the summer days swallowed up the night inside him. He had snapped shut his alchemical librams, waved goodbye to a hopping-mad fist-shaking Pashta-Maeva, turned his back on the city of Qaladmir and rejected the Olchorian darkness that had been beckoning him so patiently, so seductively, all that time. He had swapped obsession for discipline, and it was this discipline that would in time set him on a course taking him even further north still, as far towards that light as it was possible to go – driving him on beyond the endurance of all but the Called.

  All that, then, leading to this. Murder. Plain and simple. The culmination of Finwald’s life, all that enlightenment, discipline and study, the careful preparations, the subtle arrangements, the clever machinations, all leading him – by fate or by chance – to this simple, black-or-white choice before him now. Should he throw everything – his own life included – down the drain or should he continue Cuna’s work though murdering his companion in order to do so?

  For murder it most definitely would be. Finwald could call to mind a thousand and one alternative words for it, had he wanted to, but there was no getting away from the truth. He was about to become another Bolldhe; he was about to step over that hidden threshold.

  The chamber then came sharply back into focus. The bed, the mirrors, the drapes, even the slippers and the chamber pot. That earlier feeling of having learnt about this place during his research grew into sureness. Or if he was not exactly sure then at least he could make an intelligent guess, for there could not be many rooms in Vaagenfjord Maw like this one. And if his guess proved right then there should be an adjoining room that contained something which just might save Paulus’s life.

  He made his decision.

  ‘I’m going to get you out of here, Paulus,’ he said to the stony-faced but now recovered Nahovian, ‘but you must do exactly as I say.’

  You must do exactly as I say. But of course. That was always the way with Finwald. He ever had to be the one in control. Appa had often laughed at the skilful methods Finwald would use to get what he wanted. But that joke had turned bitter, and no one was laughing now.

  ‘Stand back,’ he motioned to the thieves. They did so without hesitation, eager to see what cunning device this magician was about to employ in order to kill his friend.

  Finwald rummaged about in his inside pockets and extracted two small items. The first, a small stick of yellow chalk, he used to draw a collection of odd symbols, like a chart, upon the stone floor. The second, a needle of some unknown blue metal, he placed exactly in the centre of this chart.

  Cuthwulf started forward with his voulge, but Eorcenwold yanked him back, glaring at him.

  Finwald then closed his eyes, breathed deeply and focused all his concentration. A look of relaxation smoothed the deep lines in his face. Strange sounds issued from his lips, as silky and languid as if breathed out upon swirls of smoke.

  He was using the ancient occult tongue of the Quiravian thaumaturgists, a coven that had numbered hundreds of thousands of adherents at the zenith of its influence but which had all but died out now. It had taken Finwald years to uncover its deepest secrets, and he was immensely proud of mastering them. More importantly, he loved the way his voice sounded when he uttered the words. The simple spell he was employing now did not need to be spoken in any particular tongue, but to Finwald it always sounded so powerful and mystery-laden, and this enabled him to focus better.

  Roughly translated, it went, ‘Magic of earth, let me know the way to the Rawgr.’

  Almost immediately the needle began to quiver, humming slightly and glowing. As it slowly turned, all eyes in the room followed it. Round it moved, taking its time, until finally it came to rest, ceased hummin
g, and was once again a plain blue needle.

  ‘The bed,’ Finwald announced, seeing where the needle pointed. ‘Of course – typical rawgr, always on top of their work.’

  Eorcenwold nodded to the locksmith of the party, and the little Hauger immediately got to work. Within minutes the cunning thief had found a small obsidian panel on the headboard which, when pressed with the palm of a hand, opened a section of the wall where previously one of the vanity mirrors had been located. The mirror did not slide back or open like a door, it simply shifted itself to another dimension.

  Finwald was impressed; he had never seen anything like that before. But he was a little concerned at the thieves’ lack of similar wonder. They looked as pleased as a party of sots who have just found the key to the wine cellar door, but the magic itself clearly did not impress them. Held securely, with his arms behind his back and Cuthwulf’s voulge at his throat, Finwald was frogmarched through this open portal at the head of the line. As the others filed in behind, dragging Paulus with them, they stared around at this latest discovery.

  ‘Pox!’ swore Eorcenwold. ‘Is this all?’

  Finwald, however, had entered the room with an air of reverence, even awe, for he alone of them viewed the place through the eyes of a magician. There would be no plunder here, he knew, yet for him it held greater wonder than the most glittering gold-strewn treasure room of any tomb of kings.

  It was a small room, barely large enough to hold the fifteen intruders who now occupied it. The ceiling was low, so low that Klijjver was bent almost double; the floor and walls were plain, and there was no furniture or indeed any other item to be seen. The only feature at all was a large stained-glass window that almost entirely occupied the far wall.

  ‘What manner of place is this he’s brought us to?’ Oswiu growled into his brother’s ear. He for one had picked up on arcane resonances from the great window.