Last True World (Dica Series Book 3)

by Clive S. Johnson

  “Baradcar!” her mother announced, and Mirabel stared the harder.

  “Baradcar?” she marvelled in a small and therefore unbecoming voice.

  Her mother finally smiled and let her hand carefully drift away from the panel. Baradcar remained stationary.

  Lambsplitter reached up and gently returned an errant strand of her daughter’s hair to behind a delicate ear, lingering for a moment, feeling the whiteness of the skin with her fingertips. “You’re ... you’re seeing a vision of Leiyatel’s lair, of Leiyatel herself in fact.” The mother forced her gaze from her sudden-grown daughter. “Can you see the great crimson crater, the bowl in which she grows?”

  Mirabel slowly nodded.

  “The island at the centre, can you see that?”

  She nodded again, a little quicker this time.

  “There, from upon that island, Leiyatel grows out into the world, out to its furthest stars ... or so she once did, once upon a time.”

  Lambsplitter stole a quick look at Mirabel, her daughter’s face now glowing radiantly, as though mimicking the Certain Power’s reach, before she again addressed the image. “That’s how she looked in the beginning, long before Dica grew and unseated her - the whole of Dica, mind, all of it, not just a part.”

  Mirabel’s eyes flicked briefly at her mother, but soon back to the vision, her words drifting free. “Why are you showing me this, Mother? Why?”

  “When you meet with your Uncle Nephril, I want you to be fully equipped, do you hear? Cognisant of all the facts! I want you to be convincing, not just alluring. Lord Nephril has more knowing, wit and wisdom than most, far more so than you, even you, my very own. He must not see through you, must not suspect anything. For a man willingly to go against his fervently held beliefs takes every ounce of womanly wiles, every peck of pert persuasion, but more importantly a whole raft of reasoned argument.”

  12 Between True Worlds

  He was sure he was asleep. Not just drifting or nodding off, not sliding to some promised somnolence, but fast, fast, fast asleep. Maybe not as fast as his old Jaguar, the one in British Racing Green, the one he’d loved so much but which had nearly cost him his life! Maybe not that fast, but fast enough, fast enough asleep.

  Francis knew he was confused, that one term meant to hold true whilst the other was a rate of knots. Perhaps that was yet more weight to the argument that he was after all soundly asleep.

  He tried to start again but couldn’t remember where he’d come in, or indeed how he’d found himself here. That was the strangest thing of all, though, not knowing making such close bedfellow with certainty.

  Like that sheer rock face for example, there, just visible away to the north, beyond the yew hedge hemming in a garden he certainly didn’t know. He recognised that vertical rise to be the Scarra Face, knew it scowled out from the eastern end of Mount Esnadac’s lopsided shoulder, knew that it stared defiantly at a distant desert. He knew it, but not at all how he did so.

  He also knew that the wizened old face beside him was Nephril’s.

  Nephril, on the other hand, knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was deeply asleep for his arm no longer hurt. He also knew, therefore, that Falmeard’s presence was nothing more than yet another phantom visitation.

  Oddly, Nephril also knew that the virgin sands he saw sweeping along a broad sea bay before him were also real. They were broken at intervals by jutting fingers of black, slanting rock that pointed out accusingly at a totally unfamiliar seascape.

  Cliffs towered some two hundred feet above a succession of coves, each misted with sea-spray, blurring the sloping yellow-white sands. In vast, stately arcs, incessant breakers rolled in with their long curves of froth and spume thrown back as dissipated ebbs.

  Although Falmeard seemed at ease in his company, Nephril doubted he was at all content. One glance at him was enough. Falmeard looked old and drawn.

  Francis had certainly questioned his own state of mind many times. Ever since finding himself in the Whitsand Bay Clinic almost a year ago, he’d spent his time there trying to accept the impossible.

  Adjusting to a seemingly endless life had not been made any the easier by his recently starting to suffer from strange dreams. They somehow felt more real at times than the now familiar cloud-racing skies above his Cornish retreat.

  Now, though, he patiently awaited an answer to the difficult question he’d only just posed Nephril, who’d then leant forward thoughtfully and placed his hands on the darkly stained sill of the oriel window. Seen through the diamond panes of its leaded-glass, Francis watched a heron fly lazily along Galgaverre’s dull, grey northern wall, the occasional beat of its wings keeping it bound for the distant Eyeswin River.

  It seemed so peaceful in his dream, just he and Nephril and an enduring mystery. A tranquil place of quietude; the grey-lit green of the Esnadales, the dull pewter guard of the wall, the far mauve stain of hills, the sheer, stern rise of granite-grey rock.

  While Francis enjoyed the respite, Nephril grappled with a question.

  “I know you will know,” Francis had quietly asked Nephril. “Know why my body seems loath to die.”

  Nephril did know but not how, and certainly not why. How could Leiyatel’s embrace have wrapped itself about this phantom, anyway?

  His palms felt the bright white paint of the bay window’s sill, smooth like hardened oil. It had a strangely fresh smell to it, like a mixture of mint and nettle, a smell that made him thirst for a mash of tea.

  A long, thin, blue and cream box - largely glazed with windows - suddenly appeared at speed from behind the trees. It seemed to glide above the hedge at the far side of the lawn below.

  Strangely, it was full of seats, some occupied but all vanishing from view when it dipped behind the hedge as it swept along. Nephril felt a slight rumble through his feet, as though a stoom engine pulled the box along.

  Francis watched Nephril stare through the window, but for some reason found himself remembering how hard it had been hiding his own identity. It hadn’t been an easy task but his wealth had helped - money once again adept at building lies. It had managed to keep the anomaly he’d become away from prying eyes, kept from the paperwork and computers that had by now come to know everything about everyone.

  When Nephril coughed lightly, Francis cleared his mind and opened his ears for what his old friend might now reveal.

  “Aye, I know full well what be thine affliction, for ‘tis also what ails me. What I know not, though, is how it has come to strike at thee, for I know not where thou truly be.” For the first time they touched, Nephril unthinkingly reaching out his hand to Falmeard’s shoulder.

  “I know thou be not within mine own true world, not in mine own here and now, so how hast Leiyatel come to own a part of thee, as she has of me?”

  Nephril now remembered Dialwatcher, clearly saw how he’d carried his own protective weft and weave into Nubradcar, worn about his finger. He’d been preserved enough from Grunstaan’s deleterious hand by a piece of her good one, wrought within that ring.

  “So too must thee, mine faithful Falmeard.” Francis just stared at him. “Thou must hath worn a ring about thy finger to suffer thus. How it got to thee, though, I canst fain fathom.”

  Francis looked down at his own finger as Nephril shook his head, the finger with the persistent band of pale skin, the kind left behind by the long wearing of a ring. Francis couldn’t remember ever having worn such a thing, not that he recalled, at least not from within his own true world.

  13 Let Battle Commence

  It was as though Nature made a cruel jest. On the outbound voyage she’d set herself with a vengeance against the four-masted Herbengour, her wester-winds demanding Sconner set hard tack against them. It had lengthened the passage and so shortened supplies, bringing death and illness before their lookout could spy land to the west.

  Then homebound, towards each day’s newly risen sun, their barquentine had found yet further fraught passage to sap their wills as the winds
had steadily dropped and finally left them becalmed. By then, though, their lookout had at least sighted Mount Esnadac’s crown, peeping above the horizon to wet their hope.

  Sconner had climbed through the lubber’s hole and into the crow’s-nest himself, from where he’d not only seen the mountain’s summit but also a dark, black stain arising from it. It was hard to tell what it was at the distance, but it reminded him of the palls that had once hung above the torched Lord’s Demesne all those years ago.

  As the winds had dropped, so Sconner’s fears had risen. They’d almost no food left, and what little there was was now foul and discoloured, only their meagre ration of water from the dew-device keeping body and soul together.

  Sconner was an astute and skilled mariner of the old school. His outlook sat uncomfortably with the new, his mind always hard put to range much beyond the reassuringly familiar. For him, navigating the seas was all about harnessing the wind, about riding the tides and negotiating the currents.

  He’d retired as a sea pilot around the time the new stoom engines had begun to make their mark on seafaring, so the one in their ship’s hold remained forgotten until his first mate Ghamster eventually reminded him.

  It had surprised Sconner how readily the smelly things had been adopted - fire aboard a wooden ship usually presaging catastrophe - but fire it was that raised the steam that now drove those ships on. Wood it was that had since displaced almost half a ship’s hold, chopped and chipped so it could be drawn into the engine’s fire by a large metal screw.

  The new vessels all sported a bay within their blunt sterns in which a waterwheel was set, driven by the stoom engine, which paddled them up and down the coast, immune now to the vagaries of the wind. The engine in their own rather ancient sailing ship’s hold was, however, far smaller. It was a donkey-engine, one fashioned to be moved on deck when needed, to drive a wheel at the end of a long shaft lowered into the water.

  They’d not that much fuel for it, maybe not enough to drive their weighty ship home, but with the winds having plainly abandoned them they were left with no other choice.

  Most of the day was spent setting the engine up, the first mate trying to remember what he’d learned at the college. However, as evening approached, the still air was at long last shattered by the phut-phut-phut of steam.

  Somehow that sound seemed to set hope of home firmly in all their hearts. Even Mount Esnadac appeared somehow nearer, almost drawing their desire across the placid expanse of ocean between.

  “Best get cracking then, Master Ghamster,” Sconner had told his first mate. “Can’t afford to waste the night, not wi’ the way things is. We need to get on as soon as.”

  The shaft and its wheel hadn’t yet been tried, and so with the light slowly beginning to fade, they grappled with its union to the engine. They’d become so bent on their task that no one noticed a naked, black figure appear. It stood by the ship’s wheel on the aft deck, mere yards from where the stoom engine’s union now held their hopes. Only when Master Ghamster turned to find a jemmy did the dark silhouette’s presence become known.

  Ghamster stared at it for a good few moments without registering a thing. He almost turned back to the recalcitrant union but instead found himself blinking at the figure, confused then alarmed.

  The light was still good enough to see the dark figure’s featureless face, its lack of eyes or nose or mouth. It was also good enough for Ghamster to see the figure’s silhouette of fingers and thumbs busily working away at the ship’s wheel. His own stillness drew the others, made them look to where he now stared.

  Sconner’s hackles rose. He felt a tingle at the nape of his neck and his vision narrowed. An urgency welled from deep within that ancient part of his mind that selfishly sought survival, but his limbs were deaf to its pleas.

  Whereas the dark figure had seemed bent to its own purpose, it now appeared to have been staring back at them for an age; a contradiction marked only by a silken-scarfed blur between the two rapt stances. Sconner knew he should be moving, should be striking out to protect them all, but the figure had drunk every last drop of time from the space about them.

  At last, Sconner’s legs began to turn his body, forcing it forward as they straightened at the knee. The still evening air was somehow viscous yet crystal clear, rasping sharply against his will. The figure appeared to look straight through him, as though it had eyes that saw, as though hidden deep behind that empty face, it understood.

  When the figure smeared, as though a sudden gust of wind had snatched it aside, Sconner felt as though he’d recoiled despite his body still straining forward. His eyes now caught peripheral sight of the figure, away to his right by the starboard gunwale, an impossible leap away. In the age it took his head to turn that way, the dark silhouette had long gone.

  Warm air slapped into Sconner’s ears, or so it felt, and his limbs moved freely, so freely he was at the gunwale before he knew it, crowded by the others. The ocean’s oil-like surface lethargically swelled below them, not a ripple upon its face, not a single patch of darkness marring its crystal clear depths.

  They all peered into the water, expecting a swimming body, but there was none. The eventide light still lent them a view into the ocean’s deepest depths, gave them unsullied sight of its bed, spread out so unutterably far below. Nothing! Not a thing to be seen.

  Master Ghamster was convinced it had slipped under the keel, and so they spread out about the ship, leaning over the rails, trying to see beneath the hull. Nothing appeared for far longer than any man could have held his breath, and no doubt longer still had they bothered to watch.

  Instead, a shout from the helmsman made them all turn. He was calling them to the ship’s wheel, his ashen face drawn even more so than his hunger should attest.

  Now gathered around the wheel, Sconner bent to peer at where the helmsman was pointing. At first nothing appeared amiss, not until Sconner reached forward and prodded the wheel’s spindle-shaft.

  It gave like a sponge; soft, wet, rotten. The wheel’s post likewise oozed, laden with damp decay, quickly filling the air with its musty scent.

  The retired steermaster briefly nodded to his faithful helmsman, who cautiously grasped at the still solid wheel. He braced himself and hefted heavily to starboard, stumbling sharply forward as the wheel and its post gave way.

  Sconner powerfully caught hold of the man, saving him a fall, but left them all staring dumbfounded at the remains of the wheel, still held firmly in the helmsman’s hands.

  14 To Bear Witness

  Although the Bazarran guilds and the Dican noble families were both ruling classes in their own rights, how each exercised power were worlds apart. Until almost thirty years ago it mattered little for Dican aristocracy had long held sway.

  Within Leiyatel’s benign embrace there’d been no need of a gentry class, the king’s rule adequately carried through his hereditary peers. So the guilds had long lost any real Dican remit, reduced in ancient times to little more than their own city’s parochial affairs.

  The king’s reach was ostensibly far wider than any guild could boast, but influence often finds its own subtle and devious paths. Whereas the aristocracy bore authority purely through chance inheritance, the Bazarran guilds were far more rationally organised.

  When the old tribes of the Dacc of Esna were still only an unruly collection of simple tillers and gatherers, the Bazarran invasion had brought with it such clear structure that it had soon overwhelmed and subdued those disparate tribes. The Bazarran were not particularly aggressive, but they were deadly methodical.

  Their decisive regime came in the form of guilds, of which there were four. The Earth Guild had complete authority in matters of the ground upon which all things stood, be it quarrying, masonry, mining or the like.

  The Sky Guild took to it all manner of airborne activity, such as the trapping of pheasants and partridges. It also took to it the running of windmills, the gathering of rain for drinking water, the making and repairing of sa
ils, and anything else that depended on the substance all living things breathed.

  The Sun Guild controlled almost all farming, anything in fact seen to have direct benefit of the sun’s daily passage. Likewise, the Moon Guild was the mariners’ own, be it for trade or the drawing of fish, holding sway over everything owed the ivory orb’s daily arc, be it the tide or the flight of moths.

  Of course, there were many contentious areas, all of which had steadily been resolved over the millennia. When the Bazarran began smelting ore for example, it started a long period of bickering between the Earth and Sun Guilds. One claimed right through the earth’s riches whereas the other cited the sun-like heat of the furnaces. On that occasion it had been the Earth Guild that had won the day.

  When the tribes from the Dacc - that is, the steep but workable slopes of the Esna mountain - eventually drew together and so built strength in unity, the slower guilds soon found themselves out-witted by the fleeter of mind.

  Despite subsequent millennial Dican dominance, with its eventual expression in a royal line, the Bazarran guilds failed to die out. Not only did they persist but they did so with increasing stealth - a doggedly methodical one. By the time the ancient realm of Dica had seen its last king fall without heir, the guilds still stubbornly retained much of their influence.

  With Leiyatel’s waning, the old Bazarran verve had finally begun to reappear, especially in the keenly mechanicking mind of Melkin Mudark. Not only had he reinstated the defunct position of Steward but had also returned much pride to his own kind’s long-maligned blood, and with it set the stage for a new Bazarran age.

  It was therefore hardly surprising that the grateful folk of the city were forever at the college door, still home to the Mudark family. The latest talk of the town, and what lately drew so many to call, was Mirabel’s impending seventh thridgaer. Lambsplitter and Melkin both knew that the ending of their daughter’s neanic state would have to be well marked, commensurate with her father’s now prestigious position as head of all guilds.