A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  Thus they found him, days later, still in the caves: the sole survivor. Atop the mound of dead and dying, befouled beyond belief, sat Bolldhe. His glazed eyes stared back at them with laughter; his hands were sticky with blood, and he was unable to speak for the pumping offal stuffed in his mouth.

  Whether dead or just wounded, in his present state it had not mattered. They were meat, they were warm, and he had gorged upon them even as they writhed.

  Such savagery dormant within him it was that he had seen behind the ice wall. Such it was that had sent him screaming through the tunnels of his own mind begging for deliverance and expiation. And such unbridled bloodlust it was that had possessed him when he had murdered Eggledawc Clagfast, the Dhracus’s swain.

  Although, compared to what he was witnessing now, had it really been so bad after all? Was it that childhood horror alone that made him so different, so unique that only he among mortals could fulfil this quest? No, there must be something else, some other reason . . .

  Why had he alone survived the raid on the picaroons? He alone of all his youthful brothers-in-arms? What had impelled him to go off like that, years later, on an endless journey that would take him around the world?

  He reflected on this for a moment, and the answer came to him.

  Granite.

  That’s what they had said: there had always been granite in his soul, right from birth. And the more the Peladanes had tried to crush that granite in order to get at the iron they sought – that malleable ore that was the very cornerstone of their world – the harder the granite fought back. In the end the only weapon they had succeeded in forging was that knife they later received in their backs.

  By the time the searchers found him, it was all over. He could never be the same again. Not after that. He hated the Peladanes even when he was rescued by them, hated their authority, despised their machinations, spurned their care and even their pity. There was no longer any place for him in Pendonium. He had to leave. So he had done so, and to this day had remained an exile, displaced, a permanent outsider. And that long, long journey had hardened him yet more, drawn his armour of granite closer about himself, built up his stony curtain walls, continued the hardening process the Peladanes had begun.

  But see? They were controlling him still, directing him from the other side of the world, or even the other side of the grave.

  So this is what he had become then: a life so extraordinary, so unique. This nature of his, somehow, was what was needed to fulfil the quest. And now that Finwald, the whole cause of this enterprise, had turned on them (or whatever he had done), nobody even knew what the hell the quest was any more – if there genuinely even was a quest.

  Bolldhe was still none the wiser as to what unique act he was supposed to perform. But, sword in hand, he turned anyway and headed up to the top of the ziggurat, for he still had a battle to win.

  A strange and totally unexpected thing happened to Gapp just then. As he and Shlepp were grappling with a couple of wire-faces who were trying to flay their skin off something out of the blue occurred to him. It was, in fact, nothing short of a revelation. For Gapp Radnar, the least among them, had just learnt the secret of Drauglir, understood fully what it was Finwald had been up to and, most importantly, knew exactly how to succeed in the quest.

  Lying on his back with a wire-face struggling frenziedly above him, Gapp somehow managed to twist his head round and cried out as loudly as he could, ‘Bolldhe! I know what it is you must do! It’s all so simple . . .

  And the words of his revelation came flowing from his mouth like the golden sparkling notes of honey-flavoured music.

  But tragically, inevitably he was as usual completely ignored. Bolldhe did not even bother to glance at him as he continued pushing his way through the last of the Vetters to reach the top.

  ‘Fine,’ croaked Gapp after the disappearing figure. ‘Do it your own bloody way!’

  It was a sarcophagus, a monstrous octagonal vault that the Peladanes had constructed to seal over the remains of that which none would touch. In effect an armoured flesh-eating spider-tomb, pervaded with foul gases, enshrouded with the very blackness of Olchor himself, of death without hope.

  Alone – because none other would dare approach – Bolldhe stood before it.

  Each of its eight walls was as high as Bolldhe was tall. Formidable, daunting, terrifying, so solid that it appeared to him as the very axis around which Vaagenfjord Maw turned, yet for all its size and intimidating appearance, it had been fashioned by Peladanes, and thus was inevitably made of iron. And iron does not last forever. It took just three hacks and two hefty kicks, and Bolldhe had knocked a sizeable hole through the crumbling metal.

  A cry immediately went up from the Dead, and from some distance away but closing fast, the Children’s keening could be heard. They could now all sense Drauglir’s presence, his imminence. Bolldhe had no time to waste. So, flamberge in hand, he entered the vault, and was instantly engulfed in blackness . . .

  . . . And emerged, blinking, from the engram cave at the very deepest part of his soul-house.

  ‘What?!’

  Yes, it was true: Bolldhe had come out of that very cave in which he had witnessed himself wallowing in such crimson abomination. He had emerged from the gap where the ice wall had been shattered by the fire giant. There before him now stood a familiar figure, sweeping up the swarf and coke that the Jutul had left behind on the floor.

  ‘Yorda?’

  She looked up sharply, almost in alarm, then relaxed when she saw who it was.

  ‘Oh, hello, it’s you again,’ she said. ‘What are you doing back here?’

  She stared at him for a moment, then when he did not reply went back to work.

  Bolldhe felt understandably befuddled. He was still reeling from the battle, and now nothing in his world made any sense at all.

  Have to think quickly. I’m here in the tomb, or still in my trance up on the ice field . . . or in some other dream somewhere – sometime – else or . . . Or else I’m . . . dead?

  ‘You’re inside the tomb,’ Yorda informed him without looking up from her work. ‘No need to start losing it.’

  ‘Oh. Oh that’s fine then,’ he replied bitterly. ‘So long as we’re both agreed on that. ’

  Why am I talking to her anyway? She’s not even real!

  ‘Yorda, I’ve got just seconds to deal with the Rawgr. I can’t go on skulking around in here, trying to figure out the meaning of my life.’

  ‘Why not?’ she replied somewhat distractedly. ‘At least you’re safe in here.’

  ‘Oh, am I really? And what about the others?’

  ‘Yes? What about the others? Don’t tell me you’ve picked this moment, of all moments, to start caring about people! Well, have you?’

  ‘Yorda! I really don’t have time for this right now. Just tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘It’s your head, Bolldhe,’ she replied. ‘Just yours. There’s no one else in here with you. Not even that shaman of yours. If you can’t answer your own questions, then that’s your lot, I’m afraid. And as for Time, well, you don’t need to worry about him. That one won’t lay a finger on you in here – at least, not for some time . . .’

  Bolldhe shook his head and threw his hands up in utter bewilderment. ‘I’ve got to get back. Got to get to the tomb – to finish this insanity somehow.’

  He turned and marched straight back into the engram cave, then halted. There was no cave any longer. Just a stone wall. All that remained was a vague picture, a far-off image upon the stone of the battle still raging in the chamber, all dull orange light and indistinct figures cavorting through the smoke.

  He turned back and glared at Yorda.

  ‘What’s up now?’ she asked impatiently. ‘I thought you had to get back? I thought you didn’t want to figure out the meaning of your life?’

  He was fuming. ‘Where’s my battle gone to? Where’s my tomb? Where’s my engram? And . . . why the hell are you doing the sweeping up? You
never used to bother with it when I knew you . . . You were a lot nicer too.’

  She grinned knowingly. ‘Must be the company I keep. But to answer your questions, your battle’s outside your head. If you want to get back to it, you’ll have to go up – you know the way. Your engram you can find upstairs too, on the bookshelves of your memory, only it’s not an engram any more, is it? And as for me sweeping up, well, someone’s got to clean up this place before closing time, and let’s face it, Bolldhe, there ain’t exactly many other people in here to choose from . . .’

  At that moment Bolldhe wished, more acutely than ever before, that he had never met that damn shaman in the first place. He had started all this; it was all his doing! He wished the furry old sod had choked on his pork crackling back at the Chase Inn in Nordwas. And despite the assurances of his soul-guide here – if that was what she even was – Bolldhe still felt Time breathing down his neck. That grey-robed Skela had become like an impatient commuter behind him in the queue, urging him on politely but insistently with an umbrella handle in his back. There was no way he could start trying to figure things out – not here, not now. Back up on the ice field time was exactly what he had plenty of, time in abundance, a veritable cornucopia of the stuff in which to still his brain, loosen his muscles and let enlightenment flow into him.

  But now he had no choice.

  ‘Right!’ he snapped. ‘Let’s get on with it then. C’mon you, we’re going upstairs – and you can put that broom down for a start.’

  So he stormed off through the caves with Yorda in tow. She seemed reluctant to leave her broom behind, especially now that the place was so dilapidated and crumbling, but Bolldhe knew breeders well enough and was not about to put up with any of this. They ran together as fast as thought, up through the levels of the early churches, until in no time at all they were striding up the aisle of the Peladane temple.

  There was an old musty smell to it now, and it was empty of people save for one hooded priest who shuffled about in the darkness of a transept, his sandals scuffing through the hymn sheets that lay scattered upon the dusty flagstones. Yorda had clearly not been here before, and her eyes were wide with wonder. Or was it fear? While Bolldhe tried to locate the door at the ‘pommel’ of the temple, she stared around her.

  ‘It’s big, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rather bigger than I’d have expected from you, Bolldhe.’

  Bolldhe frowned irritably. ‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ he admitted, searching the walls for the relief of Pel-Adan that he desperately sought.

  ‘Must mean a lot to you still, after all these long years,’ she persisted. ‘Even I can smell the wistfulness here . . .’

  ‘Crap!’ Bolldhe spat. ‘Just look at it: it’s narrow, and sword-shaped, and has no windows. I’ve been everywhere, seen everything – far more than any of the rustics who built this place could ever even imagine. You think this could mean anything to me now? I can smell in here the fetor of blind acceptance, willing ignorance, in every dusty manual. Fear hovers over this place in every curl of candle smoke. This dank hole’s shut away down here for a good reason. I’m not hanging round any longer than I have to. I’m going up, to where life is.’

  ‘Yet you carry a sword. Are you so sure those Peladanes don’t still direct you from the grave? Are you sure you don’t actually want to be directed?’

  Bolldhe looked down at the sword at his belt. ‘At least this one isn’t straight,’ he muttered, unsure whether this had any significance at all.

  ‘Ah, here it is,’ he announced and without ceremony booted open the door he sought.

  Just as he was about to pass through, holding the door open for Yorda, Bolldhe caught sight again of the shuffling priest in the transept. The figure looked up at him, revealing the face of the Benne Nighe. So she had remained here still, though her caves and bloodied laundry were gone. Winking at Bolldhe and pointing at Yorda, she placed her left hand in the crook of her right arm, then drove the arm up in a rather rude gesture.

  ‘Pathetic!’ Bolldhe slammed the door in her face.

  They were now back in the dungeons. Bolldhe and Yorda immediately retched convulsively. If it had seemed a revolting, terrible place the first time round, it was doubly so now. It felt as if an entire century had passed since Bolldhe had last come this way, another hundred years of terror and despair. The rusted iron bars had splintered into jagged points and been twisted round to form half-obscured forms of diabolical horror; the nail-scratches on the walls had become more frenzied, describing symbols that only the worst cases of psychosis could dream up; the excrement smearings were now augmented by heavy daubings of viscera, some heaped in great cold mounds in darkened corners; and diseased blood exuded in a steady stream from countless cracks in the stonework.

  From the blackness of every cage, it seemed, there came the shuddering cackle of deranged voices, though not a soul could be seen, while an unmistakable reverberation through the foundations of this vile place and the weight from above was causing fragments of stone to fall to the floor.

  Bolldhe could not move a step. Yorda had blanched and was clutching his arm.

  ‘You . . . you’re not going through there, surely?’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s starting to come down already,’ was all Bolldhe could manage. ‘We haven’t got long after all.’

  ‘But you’re not going through,’ she insisted, ‘are you? Bolldhe? Come on, let’s get back to the temple.’

  Bolldhe did not reply nor yet move, though Yorda tried to pull him back. There appeared now in every cage a disembodied mouth, teeth like miniature dripping gravestones and lips caked with sores, hovering in the blackness and continuing the cackles heard before.

  ‘They want me to go back,’ he whispered.

  He closed his eyes, tried to block out the awful noises and, with an awesome force of will, took his first step forward into the dungeon.

  Instantly all the floating mouths gaped and screamed in their death-agony. Bolldhe’s knees buckled in nausea and terror, and it was only revulsion at the miasma of filth and gore upon the ground that kept him from collapsing upon it. Still the mouths screamed and, as Bolldhe lurched forward into a faltering run, he was sure he could discern the voices of his comrades in those screams. And still the reverberation went on.

  I’m too late! I’m too late, and they’re dying back there! Oh God, what must they be suffering?

  ‘Bolldhe, look!’ Yorda screamed. She seized hold of him by the arm, almost dragging him to the ground. He gasped at her strength, then looked up to see what she was wailing about.

  Two cells, facing each other across the gangway. In one, the yak-kirtled man with the magma-red eyes, howling out to Bolldhe to take the flamberge and strike down the Rawgr. In the other, the open cell contained blackness, death without hope, the father of Drauglir. It was silent, as one might have expected from death, for it knew it would win eventually, one way or another.

  Two cells, two choices. Death to the Rawgr in one easy stroke, or death to mankind, without light at the end – an easy way out?

  But this was not the place to make decisions. Sprinting as fast as the abattoir floor would allow him, Bolldhe fled the dungeons.

  The worst of the horror was mercifully behind them, but the shaking and rumbling continued as before. Indeed, if anything, it was getting worse, and it soon became clear that it was spreading through the entire soul-house.

  They were in the corridor now, a plush passageway that spiralled its way round the mid-levels of the house. Unlike last time, however, when it had been a place of elegance and fine light, now it was in disorder, like the collapse of an empire. The lanterns, their silver tarnished to black, jangled violently upon their ceiling hooks or came flying off to smash into shards against window or floor. The books, those volumes of Bolldhe’s life neatly stacked in endless lines, rattled upon their shelves in extreme agitation, or came tumbling down upon the glass-strewn carpet, despairing souls hurling themselves from
the burning tower.

  The corridor itself appeared to be warping. The pillars writhed as though alive and in pain, and the fine glass windows exploded inward.

  ‘This is where we parted company last time,’ Yorda reminded Bolldhe and, despite all the horror he had been through and the madness that continued still, he winced painfully at the memory. Without slowing he reached down and grasped her hand tightly, for it seemed to him that he had never before had such need of company as he did now.

  Together they ran, hand in hand, while all around them heaven and earth collided. Bolldhe hardly even paused when he came to the shelves that had been empty for him at the age of eight, which were now contentedly, almost smugly, filled with a series of fat tomes bound in garish leather made from the blood-drenched skins of freshly sacrificed soldierlings.

  He ran on and could see that he was drawing near to the corridor’s end. A door wrought of chalcedony and jasper swung open ahead. Then suddenly one book flew out and struck him on the side of the head, and landed on the floor, open, its pages riffling violently. He did not stop, but bounded over it and continued on to the door that awaited him. But as he turned to propel Yorda through before him, his eyes could not help being drawn back to that book and what hovered above it now.

  It did not seem to be a part of this place, somehow; it had the feel of something that had been thrust into the soul-house from outside. Yorda sensed it, and frantically essayed to haul Bolldhe away. But he lingered for a moment and stared in fascination.

  Between its mad fluttering Bolldhe could make out that the picture on the cover was of his old comrade Gapp Radnar, an imploring expression fixed upon his visage. Above the book hovered a young girl, who now stilled the rippling pages with one hand, while in the other she held a lancet. Staring closer, despite the protestations of Yorda, Bolldhe saw that the pages she now held the book open at included a picture of some kind. An écorché, a map of the human body, a three-dimensional cut-out diagram depicting the layers of anatomy – skin, musculature, organs, bones – each of which could be lifted or folded back to reveal what lay beneath. As the girl studied it, she brought her lancet to bear and carefully began dissecting it. Screams of indescribable torment rose from the pages as she did so, and blood welled darkly and thickly upon the carpet. Yet the girl still bore an expression of innocence upon her face, a casual interest in the process that was unfolding beneath her scalpel.