A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  And after these went the six remaining thieves, keeping, as usual, a respectful distance.

  With just the last remaining Vetters for company now, Bolldhe, Appa and Wodeman waited in the tunnel. They sat on the floor, crouching below the worst of the fumes, and wedged themselves into the last shadow that the doorway afforded before it opened out into the unshielded glare of the Hall of Fire. They were sitting, in fact, in precisely the same spot where Methuselech’s body had exploded, and found themselves staring silently at the blackened and still-fizzing remnants of the Fyr-Draikke.

  Even as they awaited the return of the Wyvern, the two most grievously injured Vetters gave up and died within just two minutes of each other. Neither made a sound as they passed away, and neither did their kinsmen. The only thing that made the humans aware of their demise was that there was a sudden change in the air, an odd sense of emptiness.

  Eventually, Bolldhe broke the silence: ‘D’you remember the dream?’ His voice was soft and disturbingly remote.

  Wodeman, seated nearest the doorway, turned to him. In the poker-glow from the fire beyond he could see that Bolldhe’s face was already coated in a light mask of grey pumice-like dust. He was staring fixedly at the fire-tunnel beyond, and Wodeman was not sure to whom he was talking.

  ‘Dream?’

  ‘Up on the ice field,’ Bolldhe murmured. ‘You know – the dream you gave me.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Wodeman admitted carefully, not sure where this conversation might lead.

  ‘That Yorda I told you about,’ Bolldhe went on, still uncertain what his own thoughts were. ‘My soul-guide.’

  ‘The woman, yes,’ Wodeman replied. ‘The one from your past.’

  ‘Did you put her there?’

  Wodeman shifted position. ‘I put nothing there,’ he reminded Bolldhe gently. ‘Everything you saw came from your own head. Yours alone, remember?’

  Bolldhe nodded. ‘I know what you said. But she wasn’t from my past. Or rather she was, but he wasn’t.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, Bolldhe?’ Wodeman sighed wearily.

  ‘Yorda wasn’t Yorda,’ Bolldhe explained. ‘She was Drauglir. Didn’t you see her face when Flametongue exploded? She turned into . . . him!’

  ‘Ah, I was wondering who she was,’ Appa interjected.

  Wodeman relaxed a little. ‘What you saw in your soul-journey up on the ice,’ he explained, ‘that was all from you. Like I said, your mind trying to sort itself out, sift through the troubled waters and layers of silt for the golden nugget hidden beneath. There was no rawgr there. But whatever you saw when you went into Drauglir’s vault . . . of that I have no idea. It might not have come from your head at all. A trick of the Rawgr, perhaps?’

  ‘But it was the same place,’ Bolldhe insisted. ‘Two visions, one location: my soul-house. Only the second time round in reverse.’

  He then related to them all that he had seen in his latest vision, missing out not one detail.

  ‘A delusion,’ Appa assured him when Bolldhe had finished. ‘The Rawgr’s deceit, an illusion to lead you astray.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Indeed. I can’t know for sure, but it would fit. Once you entered his tomb, you were in his world, and he could show you anything that might suit his purposes. Surely you’ve heard of Drauglir referred to as the Father of Lies?’

  ‘The Father of Lies? I’ve heard that, yes . . . And yet so many people worship him, dedicate themselves to him and believe in his promises. You’d think with a title such as that . . .’

  ‘Yes.’ Appa pondered, shaking his head at the stupidity of human beings. ‘They never learn, do they?’

  Wodeman laid a hand firmly upon Bolldhe’s shoulder. ‘The Rawgr read your memories, saw what he needed and used it against you. I wouldn’t believe anything you saw in your vision, if I were you.’

  Bolldhe did not react nor say a thing, but something within him did seem to relax a little, as if some inner anxiety had finally been lifted. Then he turned and looked Wodeman straight in the eye. ‘So you didn’t sacrifice Zhang after all.’

  The furnace-room air turned instantly to ice, and Wodeman was at the centre of it. He turned his face away and intently studied the blistered and popping mound of the Fyr-Draikke lying outside. ‘Those Cervulice will never make it through to the other side,’ he muttered almost to himself. ‘Or the thieves. Even before the battle, they wouldn’t have.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Too hot for living things. We need a little something to help us . . .’

  The heat increased and it grew very, very stuffy.

  ‘An augmentation . . .’ Wodeman continued sickly, and beads of sweat the size and colour of resin droplets exuded from his forehead ‘. . . a god-wind at our backs.’

  ‘Wodeman,’ Bolldhe said levelly, ‘what did you do to my horse?’ As he said this a sweltering presence darkened his voice, choked out the light, till Wodeman found it difficult to breathe or even think properly.

  ‘Bolldhe . . .’ cautioned Appa from behind. The old fear had returned to his voice, and he pointed out into the hall beyond.

  ‘Tell me now, Wodeman,’ Bolldhe said thickly, ignoring Appa. ‘Exactly where did you get that blood for your strength spell?’ There were hot tears in his voice, and the dark presence continued to rise.

  ‘Bolldhe!’ Appa hissed.

  ‘What is it, man?’ Bolldhe snapped and turned to glare into the wide glistening eyes of the old priest. And then he noted that they were suddenly no longer glistening, for a black shadow had fallen across Appa’s face.

  They heard something large, something moist, shift out in the Hall. Beyond Appa, the Vetters were shrinking further back into the shadows of the tunnel. A smell of blood sharpened the air. At their feet a puddle of dark viscous liquid spread across the floor.

  They turned, and looked up at the shape that was now blocking the light.

  ‘You . . . were destroyed,’ Bolldhe whispered.

  ‘Not quite,’ Scathur replied, ‘and what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.’

  No weapon did he bear now, for no weapon did he need. Two seized-up fossilized hands lashed into the faces of the two nearest to him. Appa leapt back with a cry as the near-senseless and bloodied forms of Bolldhe and Wodeman came crashing down at his feet. He was too weak to run and could only stare up in horror at the nightmare vision of twisted profanity that bestrode him.

  Scathur was diminished. Or at least his body was – contracted somehow, shrivelled, burnt out, but all the more repulsive for that. From stooped shoulders his habergeon hung like crumpled foil, those tortured faces within its scales long since released. The neck that protruded from it was no more than a leaking nub of gristle, like the rotten stump of a blasted tree sticking up from the poisoned earth.

  Not very Majestic at all.

  Though they had definitely heard his words the lump of jelly-hung bone that was all that remained of his head did not look capable of speech. But then neither did the rest of him look capable of harbouring life. Yet, unlike the army of Dead that had ceased the instant Drauglir was destroyed, the rawgr captain still retained a few hate-fuelled pulses of life within him.

  He did not have long left, nor did he need it. Appa was enfeebled, the Vetters had fled shrieking, and now both Bolldhe and Wodeman were almost gone, too. Granite-hard fingers fastened around their throats, dug in hard and began rhythmically beating the life out of their skulls upon the ground.

  Bolldhe had always known that his past would catch up with him one day, and now he could hear it. Dimly at first but growing stronger with every crunch of his head against the crystalline rock, his past, like the wingbeats of the angel of death, came racing towards him.

  Something had already broken inside his head. This he knew. His brain felt as if it was being shaken apart, liquefying, leaking from every crack in his head. He felt his lips turn inside out and his eyes roll into his disintegrating skull. The wings of doom beat louder, drew closer.
/>
  ‘I – am – the – soul-eater . . .’

  There was still enough of his mind left to hear Scathur’s words. One word with each impact on the ground, spoken like stone grinding on stone – like the lid of his sarcophagus sliding shut, eclipsing the light, sealing him in forever.

  ‘And – you – will – never – EVER – leave . . .!’

  Darkness howled towards him. His thoughts disappearing. Final sensations. Then a slight loosening of the hand at his throat . . . almost a hesitation. A sense of something vast that drove the air over him – a cyclone, a tidal wave, a shrieking apocalyptic maelstrom that would suck all life down into its maw.

  Then Bolldhe’s head exploded, and he was free.

  The hand of the strangler was ripped from his throat, and he could breathe once more. The weight of his tomb lid was thrown off him, and the darkness was rolled back in a rush and clamour of stench and thrashing limbs.

  ‘Bolldhe!’ Appa yelled, and he felt the priest’s little hands fasten around his cloak and drag him away from the furore that raged above him. Bolldhe heaved foul air into his lungs, and for a time the world around him was all madness, as though the very walls and roof and floor of the tunnel had locked horns and were tearing each other apart.

  Then his eyes began to make sense of things and, still sprawled on the floor in a heap along with Appa and Wodeman, he stared down the tunnel to the doorway which now framed the fiery image of the clash of monsters beyond.

  Out there, in Smaulka-Degernerth, they fought. One, the torn and crumpled husk of a fallen rawgr captain, whose obscene parody of a head spouted streamers of syrupy effluence in the madness of his struggle. The other, the angel-winged Wyvern of deliverance.

  Scathur at last found himself assailed by something almost as vicious as himself. But, though debilitated by so many terrible wounds, still he was powered by his d’archangelic hatred. This fight could go either way . . .

  Appa’s face had turned ashen grey. ‘Bolldhe,’ he moaned, ‘we’ve got to go – now!’

  Wodeman too was urging Bolldhe to stand up, tugging at him by his cloak, by his arms, even by his hair. ‘While they’re fighting each other . . .’ he seemed to be shouting above the roar of the titans. ‘Got to get past them . . . follow the others . . . make for the Trough . . .’

  But Bolldhe simply could not move. There was no feeling below his waist, his head was spinning with a kaleidoscope of strange new colours and the blood churned in his body in a way it had never done before.

  Neither Appa nor Wodeman could see this but they could see the vacancy in his eyes, the slackness of his jaw and the drool exuding from his mouth. They finally ceased their efforts in despair.

  Scathur was forcing Ceawlin back towards the lip of the ledge and the river of fire rolling hungrily below it. Ceawlin was weakening, injured, and Scathur’s hands still had the strength in them to shatter those wings.

  Wodeman glanced at Appa, weighing him up. We could try, he thought, or we could die . . .

  Then he looked down at Bolldhe’s face and up again at Appa’s. And their eyes locked: the rheumy eyes of the little old man and the green-brown wolf-eyes of the wood-wight. An understanding passed between the two priests; they had brought him to this end and, for what it was worth, they would stay by Bolldhe’s side, right to the end. It was the least they could do.

  The splintering of obsidian snapped their heads back to the conflict, and they saw Scathur’s feet poised right on the edge as it crumbled beneath his weight and let loose a fall of sparkling emerald-jet scree into the churning current below. For an instant the rawgr faltered, still grappling with his foe, teetering over the fiery channel, his boots fighting for purchase . . .

  Then he twisted around, lunged back and managed to swing himself and his enemy back fully onto the ledge.

  Appa’s eyes dilated. Wodeman’s closed. Not long now, they both thought.

  Then, with a sudden scream, the Wyvern’s great beak gaped open and clamped itself fully over the neck and shoulders of Scathur. Upper and lower mandibles sliced deeply into the flesh, interlocked amid a havoc of meat and shattered bone, and held on limpet-like as Scathur’s body bucked in grotesque spasms.

  What happened next neither of the watching priests could understand. For it appeared that the whole of the rawgr’s body somehow shrivelled instantly, as though some giant unseen hand had screwed it up like a damp canvas bag. There was a great sucking sound, and the Wyvern’s throat swelled up enormously. Then she ripped the headless, neckless and shoulderless remains of Scathur’s body from her beak and flung the bloody wreckage away.

  Like an empty leather wineskin Scathur’s body tumbled through the air and landed with a wet slap upon the rocks beside the remnants of the Fyr-Draikke. And Ceawlin promptly spewed the entire contents of her throat in a hose-like jet – gallons of blood, shredded viscera and semi-liquefied bones – straight down the blazing chute of lava into the very foundations of the earth.

  Despite himself, Appa had to smile. Try getting stronger on that!

  Bolldhe woke up to a world of dazzling white light. Light so brilliant he was forced to shield his eyes and squint hard. And for the first time since he could remember he could feel no pain in his body.

  None whatsoever? There was, in fact, no feeling in him at all. None, save perhaps an odd sensation of weightlessness, a kind of undulating buoyancy. But it was a strangely comfortable feeling, pleasurable, and in a way bordering on the euphoric.

  There was a cleanness here, an icy pristineness to the air that now filled him, familiar somehow yet like nothing he had ever breathed before. Like being transported from a dismal and benighted land . . . where people . . . drift coughing . . . through foggy streets like lost souls . . . to a world of sunshine and joyousness.

  He was puzzled. Eotunlandt?

  He could recall how it had felt when he and the company had staggered out of that hole in the ground to stand blinking in the daylight, swaying in the fresh air, giddy with the rush of colours, sounds and smells assailing them from this dreamworld they had stumbled into. Soon they were afire with energy, laughing drunkenly with the air that breathed new life into them.

  When? Today? Yesterday? Weeks ago?

  And where, exactly?

  No, this was not Eotunlandt again. This was altogether different. A sharp gust of air, damp and frigid, slapped him round the face, and he felt a sudden lurch. The air that had previously seemed icy and pristine now felt simply chilling and raw, and smelt of fish. The rolling too was beginning to make him feel sick. Dull sounds came to him: a lonely wind, the desolate cry of seabirds, the plash of oily water against a wooden hull. The murmur of familiar voices . . .

  A black pit opened up in Bolldhe’s gut, and salt tears welled in his eyes. The dream rolled back from his mind, and those visions that had troubled his sleep, he now remembered, had not been visions at all.

  The Wyvern had come for them, saved them from the rawgr, carried them from the Maw. Passing the other struggling evacuees that trudged along below through fire, then water, then shadow. Thus they had been the first to emerge into the light and the world of men once more. There was the harbour again, the same as when they had left it, unchanged, frozen in grey miasma just as it had been before Drauglir had been destroyed. There were the quays, the fortifications, the piles of debris; there were the limp folds of damp skin hanging from skeletal masts; there was the little building where they had stored their provisions that still awaited them, and where they had stabled . . .

  Bolldhe remembered, turning his face away, unable to look upon that squat little hut where his best friend had been murdered, where he still lay now – just another lump of dead flesh frozen into this landscape.

  No friendly faces had there been to greet them upon their deliverance, only the gaunt and detestable living skull of Yen. Still alive? She had approached them on the quayside, shuffling gingerly through the detritus towards them, but had remained as silent and expressionless as ever. She would
not go anywhere near the Children’s footprints that had melted the ice and blackened the rock beneath. Neither would she approach the ship that still squatted by the wharf, waiting for an army that would never return.

  Over the next few hours the others had emerged gradually, some propped up or even carried by their fellows. All of them had collapsed, either on the wharf or in the shadow of the great gate. There had been a retching and a gasping, and also a death. A Cervulus, this time, if Bolldhe remembered right. The sorry creature had looked up to the sky, breathed in the air, then folded his great legs beneath him and died. Not a word was said by anyone.

  As for the rest, as soon as everyone was accounted for, they had simply taken the provisions from the storehouse, boarded the ship Scathur had thoughtfully provided and set sail. Thirty-two souls drifted out of the fjord that day, including Yen and the six Tyvenborgers. Just thirty-two out of the ten dozen and a half that had ventured to the Maw. And as the ship had glided up the silent channel, not one of them looked back.

  It was a strange journey for Bolldhe, unnaturally hushed and seeming to last forever. The sea was dead, there came not a breath of wind to fill the sails, and the flat pale sun hung over the western horizon for an age, unbudging as though it were encased in the icy grip of that cold colourless sky. None of the voyagers did much either. Hunched over their own private pain, they merely sat and let the ship take them wherever it would.

  Of all of them, only the healers moved about. There were so many hurts to be tended, and Appa and Wodeman went from one to the next, wordlessly bringing succour to each person they came to. By the stern, to which the Tyvenborgers had been banished, the unpleasant smell of Flekki’s salves mingled oddly with the salt in the air.

  Even Shlepp did his bit – though for the most part the healing properties of his tongue were graciously declined. Eventually he seemed to take the hint and padded back to the prow where his own people – Gapp, Finan, the Vetters and Cervulice – had positioned themselves. All just sat or lay there, vacantly, seemingly unaware of the ship’s progress or even the ocean around them. In their native woods they had never seen any body of water larger than the falls of Baeldicca the Great, and though they had encountered the sea just days earlier, had even travelled beneath it, that had been under the glamer of Jagt. But here and now was the first time they had planed across its vast surface, witnessed the enormity of it all. It should have been so fascinating to them, yet all they did was stare at the bottom of the boat.