A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  Exactly as the scrolls described! Finwald was thrilled, thinking back to the strange old eremite with the green jacket in Qaladmir all those years ago. At last!

  Though prodded forward at spearpoint the priest needed no goading. He got down on all fours and proceeded to crawl along the walkway, heading out over the horrendous void. Moving with utmost caution, he nonetheless felt a surge of adrenalin through every vein in his body, and he had to restrain himself from leaping up and racing ahead in the madness of his excitement.

  Only one other ventured upon the walkway. Right behind him came Grini, tied by the ankle to an umbilical rope held by Klijjver, who remained safely upon the ledge with the others. It was not that Finwald could hear or even smell the Boggart, for the ethereal wind from below grew stronger and more malodorous with each step, but he knew he was there as the saliva from Grini’s tusks spattered now and again upon the bare skin of his ankles.

  Finwald focused his gaze on the churning gloom ahead of him. The threatening shape of the zircon statue drew closer, the wind howled up from the abyss in increasing foulness, but surprisingly Finwald felt the going get easier. Puzzled at first, he soon realized he was becoming physically lighter. The further he crawled towards the centre of the cavern, the less gravity seemed to affect him. The end of the walkway was now only yards away, its grim occupant grinning stonily back at him, as Finwald propelled himself forward on his fingertips, just like a swimmer in shallow water, the Boggart growling in a liquid way that betrayed terror and bewilderment. The voices of the thieves floated out to them as though from the depths of a mountain chasm.

  Finally, Finwald lunged for the rawgr statue. As the writhing eddies of the wind around him howled to a squealing zenith, he managed to grasp the effigy by its horns. Legs flailing in the air, body floating weightlessly, he held on tightly lest he be snatched away into that swirling limbo around him. The zircon image was freezing, and as he pulled himself closer Finwald could feel the skin of his face sticking to its surface.

  Just as he was painfully peeling himself free, he felt the slap of a large hand on his shoulder. In his terror he almost let go. Twisting around, Finwald saw the big round face of Eorcenwold shimmer into view. He had decided to come along after all. On his knees, the thief-sergeant frantically jabbed a stubby finger at the air and directed a questioning look at the mage-priest. Finwald nodded vigorously and, seeing the bewilderment of the Tyvenborger, began to laugh.

  One of the first things I’ll do when I get hold of the tomes is obtain the power of tongues. Even his thievish cant!

  Eorcenwold’s face darkened like a blood blister about to burst, beside himself at the Lightbearer’s asinine behaviour. He snarled out words quickly carried away by the wind as more Tyvenborgers began to join them. Shinning up behind their leader, each appeared as disconcerted as Finwald had been by the sensation of weightlessness, but almost at the end of his time with them, Finwald already felt himself well beyond their reach.

  Floating about, anchored only by his hands as they clung to the freezing zircon, he looked around in wonder. Here at the very centre of the Maw there were no dimensions, no up nor down, but magic was all around: the air crackled with it. It swam about in eddying swirls, caused his hair to cavort madly and his teeth to ache. After convulsing increasingly violently upon its tether around his neck, his beloved hat was finally ripped off by the gale, spinning away into the emptiness. Finwald could have sworn he heard it screaming as it went. With a final squeal it disintegrated into a thousand wriggling threads.

  Before the mage-priest floated visions of faraway places he could not possibly know, of events that might have happened long ago, might be happening right now, or might be yet to take place. Other visions involved his own life: his childhood, his days of apprenticeship under Pashta-Maeva, his time in Nordwas, the journey of the past few months. All shifted in the air like magic-lantern images cast by the candlelight of his mind onto the black felt of oblivion around him, spinning faster, faster and faster . . .

  . . . Until one vision clarified: Bolldhe, flamberge strapped to his back, walking down a wide hallway that echoed with the memory of battle, heading towards a door at the far end. This great door had a huge hole blasted through it and was still smouldering, reeking of smoke, hanging upon tortured hinges . . .

  . . . About to crash to the ground.

  Finwald snapped himself back to reality with a jolt.

  No more time. He swung round to face the thieves. With one hand he held on to the rawgr statue while with the other he yanked out his old silver torch amulet from under his clothes. He let it dangle weightlessly before him from its chain and fixed Eorcenwold with a uncompromising glare. He pointed first to the amulet then to the thief-sergeant before him. Then he indicated each link in the chain and pointed similarly to each of the thieves. Finally he jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the abyss behind. It was clear what he wanted – a floating human chain.

  Eorcenwold’s eyes, already wide, widened even further till Finwald wondered if they might slip out of the baggy red folds of skin that contained them and float away upon their gluey nerve-strings. Eorcenwold shook his head at the priest, reached over to tap the torch amulet, then pointed to Finwald instead.

  Finwald feigned an expression of horror but inwardly he was chuckling. One born every minute, he reflected, then nodded his head in mock-reluctant assent. With his free hand Eorcenwold grasped the uncomprehending Grini by the ankle and yanked the gibbering Boggart from his perch, extending him towards the mage-priest. Finwald took the flailing creature’s hands and wrapped them firmly around his own ankles, then, with one swift backward glance to check that he was held securely, released his hold on the statue.

  Like a maggot cast out on a fishing line, he floated off into the void. Further and further he went as one by one the thieves formed the line. Within minutes all were swimming in this same astral sea, each holding on to the one in front by his ankles and all ultimately anchored to the zircon bollard by the massive weight of the herd giant.

  Though Finwald felt he should be making the most of this extraordinary experience, there was something about the timelessness, the non-dimensionality and undulatory movement of this place that caused his mind to wander. Perhaps it was like being under the ocean amid a storm: while up on the surface the gale rages tempestuously, far below all is depth and powerful feelings. He found himself gazing back at the thieves and could not suppress a chuckle at the expressions on their oafish faces, their eyes dancing about in their sockets and their mouths idiot-wide in maelstrom-engulfed screams.

  It’s no use your howling. We’re way past the point of words.

  But a word did reach him. Whether she had the most penetrating voice or the most forceful mind, Finwald could not tell, but he was sure the Dhracus had managed to transmit one word to him.

  Sophistra!

  It was soaked in contempt and infused with hatred. Finwald’s laughter died in his throat, and suddenly he did not feel quite so sure of himself any more.

  Sophistra – legerdemainer – conjuror! Bloody flux, how he despised those words! It was like being compared to that blue-skinned freak from the Levansy Theatre Company back in Nordwas, who capered about for the amusement of drunken slobbering cretins, singing for his supper and pulling rabbits out of his backside. But what really galled Finwald was that the Dhracus was so close to the truth. What was he, then, if not exactly that? ‘Sparky’ the other boys used to call him back in Qaladmir. Good grief, was that any better than being dubbed ‘conjuror’?

  Finwald drifted further and further out, always further out than anyone else. Yes, he reflected absently as he swam through the air, he was a ‘further out’ kind of person, really, wasn’t he? Further, more advanced, less limited than others. But then Finwald scowled. He knew in himself that there was something very flat, something very linear, about his knowing. He could quickly find his way from stage one to stage two and three, and so on right the way up to a hundred, but Wodeman knew
nothing of stages two to ninety-nine. He did not need to, for he could hop from one to a hundred without the bother of negotiating all the ponderous stages in between. It was like crossing a lake on stepping stones in the fog: Finwald could see only the next stone before him whereas Wodeman’s eyes could penetrate the fog and see all the way to the opposite shore. Finwald may have known the charts, sigils, incantations and substances of magic, just as a mapmaker knows the layout of the land, but Wodeman lived in that land as a real place.

  Face it, Finwald, you just don’t have that type of genius, do you?

  It seemed so natural and simple for the shaman: to Wodeman magic was just Erce, and Erce was magic. What was it he had said once? ‘Whatever Erce is, he can’t be imprisoned by leather-bound parchment.’ He could only be perceived by those who lived in him, right? Yes, that was always the way, wasn’t it? That was just typical of his sort of priest. Appa was much the same, for he taught that magic simply flowed from Cuna. And for him that was enough. But for Finwald magic was . . . What was it? It was a part of alchemy that he was trying to fit into Cunaism. And so far the two were not comfortable bedfellows.

  Admit it, Finwald, you just aren’t the simple type, are you? He continued to float in the howling firmament. What am I then? he pondered (though he knew it was far too late to start asking questions like that). Am I a priest of Cuna or am I some kind of mutated alchemist? And can the two ever be reconciled?

  Years ago, when he had first met Appa, everything had seemed so clear, so easy to understand. He had opened his heart to Cuna, truly opened his heart, embraced his message warmly and had thrived. But during the years that followed, during those long days and nights as he had pondered his faith, especially in the early hours before dawn when the mind cannot tell lies to itself, Finwald had come to realize, deep down, that his was a faith without deep roots, because he had never fully understood its core meaning.

  Be honest with yourself, Finwald, you’re just not solid. You’ve never had any real oneness of purpose, have you?

  Perhaps if he had simply accepted it all, as had the others of his order, things would have been different. But blind faith would never be for him; he was of a different essence. Always he must study and probe, questioning everything. Too intellectually aloof to discuss his faith with other priests, Finwald’s solitary studies had become more driven, more intense, almost like an obsession. And with never anyone to argue with, well . . .

  On the other hand, Pashta the alchemist had referred to him as his ‘disciple’, meaning one who is disciplined. Finwald could study for an entire day and night without sleep. Nevertheless, it was abundantly clear to Finwald that Pashta was the more gifted. His best ideas would often come to him in the middle of a dream or while cutting his toenails. In short, he would be inspired.

  Don’t lie to yourself, you were just never the intuitive type, were you?

  Then Finwald grew angry with himself, crying out to the darkness around him, ‘Face the truth, Finwald, for once. This quest was never about faith or knowledge or understanding – it’s only ever been about one thing: power!’

  And with that, arms outstretched, he plunged hungrily down into the void.

  Falling through darkness, tempest-flavoured and laced with insanity; jabbering souls sine-waving through the primal chaos and burning with an inner chrysoprase radiance; lurching maw sloshing with narceine-tanged bile; quicksilver blood corpuscles pumping at the speed of light along frozen carotid arteries of virulent lapis lazuli, before bursting into lotus-bloom in the brain; the mind splintered by the clanging of quartz bells in the cupola of the Yttrium Chapel; naked mortals hooked through the lip with copper wire, dangling from stratospheric balloons; sailing over a forest canopy of offal-stench; swarm-ridden cryptomeria, sailing, trailing, limb-flailing, face-paling, harpooned from a whaling boat, float through novae of multihued brilliance exploding from the dark before rain-curtained eyes propped open by shards of zinc . . .

  . . . searching for power at the gateway to hell.

  Flekki the Hauger had on occasion experienced this same sensation while concocting her creative little spikenard unguents in her badly ventilated cellar by the riverbank. It was similar also to the soul voyage undertaken by Grini when he had first acquired his shamanistic powers. This was almost how Dolen Catscaul had felt when she had projected her mind into the empty house of her dead swain’s skull at the grassy knoll in Eotunlandt where Bolldhe had murdered him. And it was very close to the dreams Klijjver experienced after a heavy supper of dog cheese.

  Alchemics, narcotics, psionics, cheese-antics; it all boiled down to much the same in the end. So why were they becoming so hysterical this time? What was all the fuss about? What exactly was so terrible about floating, in a living chain linked hand to ankle in the screaming darkness above the gateway to hell?

  Finwald regarded the Tyvenborgers with detachment as they writhed like skewered bait above a ravenous pike; saw how, as the line corkscrewed uncontrollably, the veins in their forearms bulged, skin seemed to turn inside out and bones were almost twisted apart; looked at his own laughable form at the end of the line, wearing its ridiculous expression of rapture. All perceived as though he were studying a scene with a scrying glass.

  He did not care – not about those people, not about anything much anymore. He already had what he had come for, and the problems of the world now seemed just so mundane.

  Ever since his hands had closed around those precious tomes, felt their pulsing animation wriggling beneath hot devilskin covers, smelt their sulphurous sigh breathe out of the pages, nothing else had mattered any longer.

  It had been so easy. Far easier than he had ever imagined. For in hell’s hole one could be anywhere within the bower of Olchor that one desired, grab anything one wanted, even the Tomes of Power that belonged to the father of Drauglir himself, he alone who had true mastery over the Rawgr.

  An odd look crossed the small man’s face, and he tilted his head back a fraction. Beneath the greasy collar, turned up at the back, his nape-fur prickled. Then his pupils narrowed to chromatic blue slits rimmed with cobaltite.

  ‘Elfswith?’

  The half-huldre did not appear to hear Kuthy at first and remained seated against the wall apparently listening for something. Then he turned to his partner and stared into his eyes, seeming for a moment to forget where he was or what he had been doing. Elfswith’s eyes cleared. ‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Just thought I heard something.’

  A fair way above them still, Finwald had just gained possession of the tomes from the hole, and the resonances of his actions had sent vibrations to any of those nearby who could pick up on such things.

  ‘Where was I?’ he muttered, then finally noticed the krummhorn that he was still holding to his lips. ‘Ah yes,’ he said and began to blow into it.

  Hours earlier they had chanced upon this hall. It was a small chapel in which the floors and walls were black with the residue of centuries of bloody sacrifices, and the ceiling dripped with resinous stalactite-like formations from the formerly near-ceaseless emissions of cardamom braziers. As the papery mass of a wasps’ nest gradually engulfs the timbers of the attic in which it is built, so too did these stinking protuberances almost entirely mask the stone ornamentation up above: vaulting corbels, arched braces, hammer beams and purlins, all carved into the likenesses of fiends leering down at the ghastly scenes below. At the opposite end of the chapel to where the company was camped stood an altar in the shape of a great tree, de-crowned, contorted and flayed of most of its bark, with no leaf nor any branches save the main limbs, which had been twisted off to all sides. From these hung the effigies of sacrificial victims, and upon spears thrust through the bole similarly pathetic remains or parts of people had been spiked. The craftsmanship was beyond doubt but the effect troubling to the eye.

  It was a terrible place to seek rest, but it was the best they could find. Most of them had simply sunk to the floor and gone to sleep immediately, and were curled up in varyi
ng states of slumber even now. Some drifted between restless waking and troubled half-sleep, while others remained dead to the world through sheer exhaustion.

  During this unquiet recumbence various scouting expeditions had been sent to locate the two missing members of the party. None of the company from Nordwas had felt up to this, but the Vetters and Cervulice seemed much hardier and proved expert at padding around silently and sniffing out trails. So far none of these reconnaissances had turned up anything, but hopefully it was only a matter of time.

  Elfswith, in the meantime, was growing a trifle restless, and the sprite in him was sorely in need of distraction. He lidded his eyes, inhaled long and deep, then let his weed-soured breath weave its piquant magic over the double reed of the krummhorn. The ancient woodland tone of the pipe, with its tremulous earth-deep vibrato, bardic melody and pagan rhythm, resounded from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and filled the derelict chapel with a beauty and power that did more to heal the company’s scourged souls than any sleep or stirring oratory. Those who were still awake sat or lay transported for a time into another place far from here, and just let his music fill their bodies and minds with bright colours, smells of childhood and greater depths of emotion than any of them had felt for a long time. Even the sleeping ones slept more soundly and peacefully.

  But the old evil that still lingered in this temple of profanity had permeated deep into the resinous stone, and rather than soothe, Elfswith’s music seemed to awaken it. His trilling notes set up a new resonance in the air and caused the fiendish corbels up above to growl and whine. Soon a chorus of diabolic moaning and hissing could be heard from the lofty ceiling, a choir of the inanimate, the unholy and the undead giving full voice to their disapproval of the bard’s playing.