Elfswith instantly ceased, and stared upward. The chorus of grumbling continued for a moment then began to ebb away. Within seconds, all was silent once more.
The half-huldre regarded his krummhorn with wide eyes while his overcoat turned as white as a snow fox. He and Kuthy glanced at each other, and he gingerly slipped the horn back into a pocket.
‘This horn can replicate the calls of over a thousand beasts and birds,’ he said, ‘and I can even make it speak in a hundred languages. But I swear to you, Kuthy, it’s never produced that effect before!’
Elfswith sealed the pocket shut, and instantly his coat thawed out to a seal-grey slush.
He looked around and studied his present company. Apart from Kuthy, Ceawlin and himself, only a couple of Vetters, one Cervulus and the Paranduzes were still awake. Hwald and Finan sat apart from the main company, legs folded beneath them, rather bizarrely engaged in the ritual of oiling each other’s bodies. Elfswith stared hard, thinking he must have seen this wrong but no, there they were, contentedly smearing aromatic oil over every square inch of each other’s torso. It was something they apparently always did before going into battle.
The chapel door opened, and two Vetters came skittering across the floor towards the slumped form of their leader. Without even glancing at the humans snoring upon the floor, they blew softly into Englarielle’s face (the Vetter way of waking each other up) and gently prodded him with their tails.
The large green eyes of their chief flicked open as if he had not been sleeping at all. In muted but urgent tones the two arrivals announced something to him and pointed anxiously at the sleeping humans nearby.
The chief’s ear-tips trembled, and he leapt to his feet.
‘Something’s up,’ Kuthy said and reached for his sword.
‘R’rrahdnar!’ said Englarielle, shaking Gapp violently by the shoulder (the Vetter way of waking humans). ‘Porluss nos lyael dha fley-tregva!’ And he sharply gesticulated upwards.
Gapp was immediately wide awake and turned to shake the Peladane violently.
‘Nibulus, wake up, will you!’ he hissed into the groggy man’s face.
‘ ’Sa time?’ Nibulus slurred.
‘No such thing as time in this place,’ Gapp grumbled, still shaking him.
With a gargantuan burst of willpower Nibulus managed to open his eyes fully, then raised himself into a sitting position. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded as those all around him began to stir.
‘The Vetters,’ Gapp hissed. ‘Those scouts who went out earlier – they’ve just found Paulus!’
Of the half-dozen or so Vetters that had dared essay the higher levels, only one pair had succeeded in picking up the spoor of Paulus and the priest. This had drawn them to the demon bedchamber, and it was here they discovered the Nahovian’s bastard sword, discarded on the four-poster bed. Now, in that secret little side-room, they stood with stood with their chieftain, the five men from Nordwas, Kuthy, Elfswith and Shlepp, all in complete silence, all rigid with shock, all illuminated by the bilious green, red and blue light. The rest of the troop had stayed outside, either in the passageway or in the main chamber, and their whispered growls – amplified in the silence but strangely distorted – echoed around the room like a throng of souls calling from the phantom realm.
‘Paulus?’ the Peladane breathed in shock.
There within the demon-glass knelt the black shape of Paulus, one arm flung up in defence, terror in his face and surrounded by monsters.
Those who had travelled all these long, long miles with the mercenary could only stare. From their faces it was clear that their minds were struggling, caught between the morbid beguilement experienced by any who beheld this window and their attempts to understand exactly what it was they were staring at.
The first to break the stillness was Wodeman. He reached out and, very hesitantly, tapped Nibulus upon the shoulder. Unable still to tear his eyes away from the scene before him, he murmured, ‘Peladane, just who is this Paulus you brought along with us?’
Nibulus eyed the shaman sharply, and a chill enveloped all of them.
‘ “What” not “who”,’ corrected Bolldhe from somewhere behind.
‘And how old is he?’ Appa hissed, before the Peladane could get a word out. ‘This window must be centuries old!’
‘He is Odf Uglekort, mercenary of Vregh-Nahov,’ snapped Nibulus from the disarray of his thoughts and feelings, ‘and he’s no more than five years older than me. All right?’
‘So what’s he doing in that ancient picture?’ Kuthy demanded, though he knew the answer was hardly likely to be known to Nibulus. Again they stared.
‘What is this place?’ Nibulus breathed, and the sibilance of his utterance whispered all around the room.
‘Listen!’ Gapp hissed, and pointed to Englarielle.
The Vetter had approached the window and was both sniffing the ground where Paulus had knelt and pointing one ear towards the glass itself. They all edged closer and listened carefully.
Then an expression of reluctant understanding that turned to utter horror creased their faces. For, just as Finwald had done earlier, they could now hear the voice of their lost companion, a sparse moaning carried upon a wind from far, far away.
‘No! No!’ Appa breathed. ‘It can’t be. Please, anything but that!’
‘Get him out of there, quick!’ Gapp stammered in rising panic.
‘How?’ Nibulus demanded.
‘Just get him out!’
The boy backed away as images of that awful torture chamber from which he had rescued Methuselech spilt out from his suppressed memory to blacken his mind, and his stomach heaved. The others picked up on the horror he felt, and soon it infected the entire room. They looked longingly to the door as their one chance of escaping the hysteria that threatened. The Vetters whined and growled, and curled their lips in fear.
‘What can they be doing to him in there!?’ Appa whimpered, fumbling for his amulet.
‘Appa!’ Nibulus barked at him. ‘Tell us what this is!’
‘I DON’T KNOW!’ the old man howled and began pounding the amulet with his ring again, clearly losing control.
Elfswith’s voice, deadly serious for once, cut through their panic: ‘Wintus! Listen to me! Does that chronicle of yours mention anything about this?’
Nibulus stared at him in bewilderment for a moment, then shook his head. ‘There’s no mention of this kind of devilment,’ he replied, ‘or anything like it. I . . . I don’t think they ever came upon this place.’
‘Some kind of elemental rawgr, or portal,’ Kuthy surmised. ‘A way into their world . . . or a part of it?’
‘Just smash the bloody thing!’ Bolldhe growled. ‘We’ll take the consequences.’
‘No!’ Appa cried but could elaborate no further.
‘Is it really glass that we can smash?’ Kuthy snapped. ‘I don’t think so. And even if we could, would he then come out?’
‘A-and would he still look like that?’ Gapp stuttered, with his back now pressed flat up against the far wall. Shlepp at his side looked increasingly wild. ‘I mean, all flat and sharp and . . . ecclesiastical?’
‘And if he does come out,’ Wodeman stammered, ‘will he be followed by those others?’
‘We must try!’ Bolldhe cried. ‘We must! We cannot allow this to go on! If the pain they can heap on us here in this world is so bad, whatever would it be like over in theirs?’
‘But is he worth the risk?’ Kuthy demanded. ‘You all know what kind of person he is – or was. No one wants him to suffer, but ask yourselves . . .’
But Bolldhe had had enough of asking, had enough of debate. Above all, he had had more than enough of suffering, his own as well as Paulus’s. He marched directly up to the window and whipped out the tulwar he had taken from Finwald.
Cries of protest came from behind him followed by a flurry of movement, but none was quick enough. In one swift move, Bolldhe raked the sword down in a diagonal stroke that sliced i
nto the fabric of the window.
There was a chorus of stunned gasps and a startled grunt from Bolldhe as he felt himself almost yanked in by his sword arm. After a moment of silence there was a brief hiss, little more than the fizzle of a dying squib, then nothing. The stained-glass window remained as before.
Eyes dropped to the smoking remains of the tulwar Bolldhe still held in his shaking hand. The hilt itself was undamaged, but only an inch of blade still survived. That part of the sword that had entered the demon-glass, however, was simply not there. All that remained was a smoking residue of liquefied metal on the floor.
‘You idiot!’ Kuthy sighed. ‘What d’you think you were doing?’
Nibulus stepped forward in order to pull Bolldhe away from the window but, far from being deterred, Bolldhe sprang away from the advancing Peladane, then reached quickly behind his back and tore Flametongue from its fastenings. In almost the same movement he swung the blade around and, with a snarl that seemed to say, ‘Sod you!’ to the horrified onlookers, he plunged that too deep into the evil image.
As soon as the flamberge struck, all colour and light drained from the glass and the room was plunged into darkness. An ear-splitting clash of demonic forces from within the window could be heard as one awful sound made up of many: the wet thrashing of tentacles, the hiss of acid drying upon scorched flesh, the mad wingbeats of a songbird in a burning cage, the splintering of twisted exoskeletons. Behind it all were shrill screams from multi-voiced unimaginable beings. The stonework around them lurched and quivered as if it would tear itself apart. The trembling grew worse, until with a general cry of alarm all there began to collapse, one by one, to the floor. Then, with a boom that flattened the tall ears of the Vetters against their skulls, the window exploded.
There was a burst of brilliant light, a violent scission between the two worlds, and finally a gout of ectoplasm disgorged itself from the exploding window, drenching everyone cowering within the room.
Exclamations of disgust filled the air. Human, Vetter and Cervulus picked themselves off the floor and stared down at the iridescent fiend-filth that steamed and undulated like reanimated tuberculous matter upon their clothing or naked skin. They writhed about in abhorrence ridding themselves of the vile stuff as a dog shakes off water.
‘Stupid bloody idiot!’ Nibulus cursed Bolldhe, who just stood there looking totally stunned. ‘What d’you want to go and do that for?!’
Amid all this activity none thought to look at the space where the stained-glass image had been. But as the company came to realize that this fluid was not of their own world and was already lifting from them in trailing wisps of mucus-green vapour, their attention refocused upon the wall where the window had been.
And the bundle of smoking black rags that huddled before it.
THIRTEEN
Like a Sigh from the Crypt
‘PAULUS? . . . ODF! IS THAT YOU?’
Bolldhe was now alone in the darkening chamber, alone with whatever it was that had come out of the demon-glass. The light of the unholy picture had gone, smashed forever, and the only illumination was the diminishing torchlight of those departing. For the rest of the company were backing out of the room, either slowly and carefully or stumbling out as fast as they could. All their weapons were out, trained on the smoking pile of rags at the far end of the room.
A hoarse exhalation could be faintly heard from the heap of black clothing, though none could be sure if it was human.
‘Bolldhe,’ Nibulus said in a low voice, ‘hadn’t you better see to it?’
His tone was unambiguous: Bolldhe had freed it so Bolldhe must now deal with it. No one else offered to help – in agreement, it seemed, with the Peladane – and all were waiting for Bolldhe to get on with it.
There was nothing else for it then. Bolldhe blanked all doubt from his mind and moved towards the huddle on the floor. Cautiously he extended a foot and everyone held their breath. He prodded it with the toe of his boot, and the doorway behind him rustled with the sound of the watching throng further backing off.
‘Careful, careful!’ Nibulus growled a warning.
The pile of rags did not stir, but that strange breathing continued as before. Again Bolldhe prodded it, this time with the tip of his flamberge. The untidy shape rolled over with a moan and a horrible scraping sound. The onlookers flinched, and the torchlight receded further. The scraping continued.
Then Bolldhe relaxed. Even in the paltry light he could now make out the source of the scraping: it was caused by the brass studs of Paulus’s familiar cape brushing the floor.
‘It’s all right, you can come back in now,’ Bolldhe called out to his cowering companions. ‘It’s him.’
What had Paulus suffered in there?
He was among them once more, all in one piece and without a mark on him. Though a little unsure, he stood on his own two feet. His clothes were still smoking a little, and he was staring round at them one by one.
There was not a hint of recognition in the mercenary’s eyes, no understanding nor any sign of intelligence. Paulus regarded his fellows with vacant eyes, opening and shutting his mouth without words. That air of death that had always surrounded him now seemed more like an air of dead. And exactly how, they wondered, could a seven-foot-tall man suddenly appear so small?
Clutching his hand, Bolldhe led him out of the smaller room and into the bedchamber. All eyes were fixed on Paulus, but only his human companions would approach. Appa inspected him closely, prodding with the tip of his tulwar and even placing his holy torch talisman upon the Nahovian’s skin to see if he would recoil. Wodeman sniffed at him suspiciously as a dog might sniff a wounded animal on the road, ready to bolt at the first sign of movement. Even Gapp tried to get closer, but found himself held back by the forest hound’s powerful teeth enmeshed in his Oghain robe.
‘What happened to you?’ Nibulus said in awe. ‘What happened, Paulus?’
‘And what of Finwald?’ Appa joined in.
But their interrogation was useless, as they soon realized. There was nothing left in Paulus. His mind had gone off to some place where they could not reach it. And it might never return.
Nibulus had seen this sort of thing before among his own soldiers, those twilit souls that rocked back and forth upon the benches lining the corridors of the Wintus Hall almshouse, their death-mask visages drooling or grinning, empty eyes staring sightlessly from cavernous sockets.
‘Here!’ he strode over to the bed and grabbed the bastard sword that still lay there. ‘Maybe he’d remember something of his old vigour if he held his sword once again.’
He thrust the hilt of the weapon into Paulus’s hand and folded the mercenary’s fingers around it. The company stood back to await the transformation, but in Paulus’s flaccid grip the sword drooped briefly and clattered upon the floor.
‘Then again . . .’ Nibulus scowled.
What were they to do? Paulus, their former champion swordsman, was as good as destroyed. And they still had no further information on Finwald.
‘So what now?’ Bolldhe asked, glad that it was not he that had to make the decisions.
Nibulus tapped his boot upon the floor inches from where Paulus’s hand-and-a-half sword now lay, and studied the hollow man before him. Eventually he simply shrugged. ‘You might as well have his sword too, Bolldhe. Come on, let’s just take him with us and get on with it.’
So many colours, so many images! All these sounds, feelings – such things as he had never experienced or even imagined before. All floating around him like glowing baubles, not only near but as far as the eye could see, as far as the soul could reach. It was a veritable kaleidoscope of spinning sensations, experiences . . . knowledge. And Finwald, the mage-priest from the south, was here right at its very nucleus.
They were back upon the safety of the ledge now, the human chain having been succesfully hauled in, and Finwald was flicking through the tomes, leaf after leaf, absorbing their essence at the rate of one ‘page’ per seco
nd. It seemed to him that all the knowledge in the world was his, here at hand, and all he had to do was reach out and touch it. It was fascinating beyond any prior expectation, utterly and unbelievably absorbing, far more incredibly wonderful than he had ever dreamt in even his most far-fetched fantasies.
They were not tomes in any physical sense, but rather the idea of tomes, power-spheres that existed in some way he did not yet understand. And there was so much! If he wished to learn of history, science, even alchemy, his finger had only to alight upon the appropriate sphere, and all the knowledge therein would be his. But subsequently that same sphere would explode into a billion fragments like an expanding universe, each one of them a tiny atom of that greater knowledge yet each one a planet-sized library in itself.
This might take him longer than he had anticipated . . .
The thieves were staring at him, even talking to him. They filled the scope of his real vision, yet he was not thinking about them. Had he tried, he would not have been able to even recall their names or indeed distinguish one from another. In some distant part of his mind that had once cared about such things he was aware that they appeared confounded, flummoxed, even exasperated with him. He was also aware how he must look, gazing back at them with a thin fixed smile on his face.
Yet, he still had business to attend to here. He could not wait around all day grinning like a cretin. Again, he went back to the tomes. His finger reached out –
Drauglir, chamber of: Pictures, images, each from many different viewpoints, from many different times in the past, each conveying a different aspect or feeling of the subject, the Chamber of Drauglir. So much information, such a rapid succession of images and thoughts, too much for the little man to assimilate, to register, to cope with. Finwald found himself spinning into a swoon out of which he knew he might not awaken . . .
No. Too complicated. Far too much for him to absorb at this stage. Try something else . . .
A Fire in the North Page 47
