Last True World (Dica Series Book 3)

by Clive S. Johnson

  She thought of the old pilot - of Sconner - and hoped he’d live. He was owed that much at least. He’d shown her the way, even if it had been to a far harder match. Mirabel’s voice brought Lambsplitter back, stopped her lingering on the ancient engers’ lamentable lack of foresight.

  It seemed appropriate that her daughter’s recounting had by now moved on to the barquentine’s arrival. Mirabel had skated over her meeting with Nephril and was now describing the collision, how they’d only just got clear.

  It was when Mirabel came to Phaylan’s part in Sconner’s rescue that Lady Lambsplitter took closer note of her daughter’s voice. There was that joy again! Not only in her voice, but when Lambsplitter turned to look, in her eyes as well, eyes that now stared longingly at the pavilion.

  When Lambsplitter turned, to follow that gaze, she saw a man striding down the pavilion’s ramp. Even at distance she could see his ivory eyes set so brightly within his tanned face, easy confidence lingering along the line of its mouth. It was that mouth, though, that brought a vague recollection, but Mirabel’s words the confirmation.

  “It’s Steermaster Phaylan, Mother!” Lambsplitter was about to pretend pleasant surprise when Mirabel added, “He’s the one I’ve matched.” Lady Lambsplitter looked from Mirabel’s besotted eyes to Steermaster Phaylan’s handsome innocence - then back again.

  “In Leiyatel’s precious name, what ... what ... what are you saying, girl?”

  Mirabel started and cast her eyes down. “I know I’ve tasted neither spit nor seed,” she wailed, “but I know, somehow I know he’s the one.”

  Lady Lambsplitter sagged, just for a moment, as though the weight of history bore down upon her shoulders - and then she raged. “IMPOSSIBLE! DO YOU HEAR? IMPOSSIBLE!”

  She’d turned on Mirabel, arching towards her - more incredulous than angry. “For Leiyatel’s sake, he’s a frigging Galgaverran ... you idiot! You damned fool!”

  There was something in Mirabel’s eyes now, something Lambsplitter only vaguely recognised, something reborn of Leiyatel’s demise. In her daughter’s eyes there was ... there was ... there was love!

  “Oh, Mirabel, you poor fool. It cannot be. Phaylan is a Galgaverran, is wholly unable to carry means to our furtherance. They lack the tool to spread seed, be it for the taste of match or the continuance of blood. They’re sterile, my dear, don’t you understand - unknowing of love and so completely useless to our needs!”

  22 The First Step is a Journey Made

  It felt a little like dawn, but a leaden, cloud-filled dawn boasting nothing but teal and slate, and mist and mizzle. It was only a little like dawn because no dawn had ever been as drawn-out as this, had ever dug its heels in so firmly as to gather the whole morning to itself.

  Despite the weather being so poor, Laytner was sure the journey from the college had taken no longer than before. He was therefore fairly certain it was nearing noon, maybe an hour before - perhaps two.

  When he’d pulled into the villa’s driveway and up to Nephril’s retreat, it hadn’t been raining, not quite, although it threatened. There’d been enough moisture in the air, however, enough to make the coachbank’s boiler hiss and fizz as dew dripped to it from its misted header tank. The sound became more evident once Laytner had yanked on the brake, once he’d doused the burners and stretched his arms.

  He felt an ache in his shoulders and a strain in his arms and so leant forward, chest against the huge wheel. Over the top of it, he closely watched the droplets leap and dance, erratically jigging as they boiled away - their tiny souls finally adding yet more dampness to the moisture-laden air.

  A guttural, grating moan began to accompany them. It was like a frayed bow being drawn over snagging strings, but it stopped when Laytner pulled more firmly at the brake, finally stopping the coachbank’s slow but steady creep back down the yard’s steep slope.

  Once he’d stepped down, he realised how small the yard was. The coachbank was much larger than he was used to, large enough to have suffered plenty of scrapes and scratches along the way here. He suspected yet more would be added before it once again gained the freedom of the road.

  A few rows back from the driver’s, Dialwatcher gently snored, unaware of their journey’s lull. Even when awake he’d hardly spoken, which had well suited Laytner.

  He reached up to shake him, making Dialwatcher snuffle and snort, finally opening his yellow, blue-crazed eyes to lighten a darkly brown-bruised face. “Ay? What? Where are we?” He looked around, dazed, finally resting a disconcerting gaze on the villa’s gable wall.

  “This it then? Lord Nephril’s gaff?” Laytner nodded. “Bit bloody desolate!”

  The gable chimney gave no smoke, what few windows visible no light and the rain had begun, softly at first but slowly gathering weight. Laytner thought he heard the roll of distant thunder.

  He beckoned Dialwatcher and led the way through a narrow, stone-arched gateway into the garden. He hurried them against the rain, along the front of the house to a small, curved rise of steps. Just a short rise, a few steps only, and they were now before the villa’s old front door, darkly hidden beneath its stout, stone canopy.

  As they huddled in its shelter, the heaven’s opened. The rain came in stair-rods, a thick haze of spray and cinders thrown up from the path. Broad leaves quickly yielded whilst the garden’s gay flowers were all ruthlessly battered down.

  Where Laytner knew the rose garden to be was now half hidden behind close, rippling curtains of rain, the strident rose colours washed to grey and black. The grey and black of stained suede boots, he thought, and scowled until the memory of the fluttering fritillary lifted his mood, albeit for a moment.

  The weather had slowly worsened over the few days since he’d first been taken aside by Steward Melkin, the day after Mirabel’s Maturity Ball. It was as though Laytner’s new duties had somehow vexed the clouds, had angered and bloated them.

  He was about to turn to the door when the canopy above let loose a torrent of that angry, bloated water - a flat, stale smelling, grey-green sheet of it. Something must have broken above, or at least been overcome, for the pour continued unabated. It splashed noisily down the steps and rolled the toppled sundial further along the path.

  Dialwatcher looked more than startled - he looked terrified. To be honest, few even in Dica had seen such a deluge, never a one, yet this was the third day running.

  They only just heard the door open, and when Laytner turned, he came face to face with the Guardian. “In the name of the Certain Power, come in, come in.” Penolith stepped aside. “Quickly, quickly! We think a gutter’s gone. It’s just pouring straight off the roof at the front, and there’s something hanging past Nephril’s window, although you can hardly see for the torrent.”

  Putting the door between themselves and the downpour made it seem even more threatening, as though unwatched it would become a greater menace. They were both quite reticent following Penolith down the dark hall to the rear of the villa, into the lighter but less raucous kitchen.

  Nephril was there by the fire, sitting on a hard wooden chair and wrapped against the damp air’s chill. He looked to be in some discomfort. Cresmol stood at the range, preparing a brew, and surreptitiously eyed Dialwatcher. In the rooms above, the sound of men moving about signalled impromptu maintenance, the thud of a ladder striking a jamb in their haste.

  At the far side of the room, a window silhouetted the figure of a man, just turning towards them. In better light they’d have seen how broad set he was, his height belying a stocky frame. Despite the poor light his eyes still keenly glinted, clearly weighed and assessed.

  It was only the second time Sentinar Drax had met Dialwatcher, the only other occasion being when their Nouwelm guests had first arrived in Dica. Drax had last seen him at the Farewell Gap - some thirty years ago - when Lord Nephril had convinced them all that Dialwatcher’s ring must be destroyed.

  Drax could still see the gentle arc of its leaden path; see the young priest’s nonchalant
flick of his hand, the ring’s grey blur passing - as though through syrup - slowly out into the void and ... but then his memory seemed to falter.

  It was a hateful memory anyway, not because of the ring’s loss - for which Drax cared little - but because of the reminder it brought him of Storbanther’s end at that very same spot. Drax was relieved of that stark image, though - of the stick of a man’s unbroken hobbling gait taking him beyond the edge - by Nephril’s voice croaking to his ears.

  “Thou hast come by stoom-wagon I suppose, Laytner? I hope it was not its rumbling that has dislodged our gutter!” He tried to grin.

  “No, Nephril, not quite,” Laytner smiled back. “A coachbank, but nearly as big - the accursed thing.”

  Nephril’s brows lofted, one higher than the other. “There be only the five of us, Laytner!”

  “And your new contraption, Nephril. Don’t forget that.”

  “Oh. Aye, indeed. That!” Nephril looked unsettled.

  “I hope you’ve been practicing.” There was an almost fatherly condescension in Laytner’s look, a strange inversion. “Bit late in the day if you’ve not I suppose.”

  He stared questioningly at Nephril but it was Penolith who answered, “He has, Master Laytner, quite assiduously. I’ve made sure of that.”

  “Enough to do the job,” Nephril asserted, indignantly, but looked pained.

  Cresmol started handing around good, strong mugs of tea, the smell of nettle and beet soon filling the kitchen. It went well against the weather; wet, pungent, piping hot. It steeled them for their day’s task ahead, for the journey to come.

  While they drank, Cresmol left and busied himself down the side of the villa, the trill of a small stoom engine squeezing to them through the persistent rain. It had eased considerably but was still a downpour, making Cresmol’s task the harder. Far more adeptly than Nephril, Cresmol soon drove the contraption up the ramps he’d secured onto the back of the coachbank.

  They weren’t long getting aboard themselves, nor long reversing back out onto the lane. The stout stone gate posts won the day, though, leaving the expected gouges along the coachbank’s flank but themselves intact and erect.

  A small bush and much of the grass verge opposite were sacrificed to Laytner’s rather cavalier driving skills, but nothing more beset them. They were soon drawing out onto Nordgang Road just as the rain reluctantly eased.

  The turn south onto Weyswal Way was more than wide enough to avoid further mishap. The way itself was also broad and straight, taking them uneventfully the seven or so miles to Galgaverre’s lone gate. There they would pass into Penolith and Drax’s once only world, and then on towards Baradcar at its heart.

  23 Of Pressing Concern

  A grey blur coldly hung where life rarely passed, where naught but broad-winged birds might wheel and climb. A dense grey blur - coloured from winter’s breath through icy sea to rooftop slate - it robbed the sky of both hue and light.

  Higher still, far above life’s own shallow living, between thick grey clouds and blue-black sky, miniscule thieves roamed in untold numbers, once dark denizens of a fiery depth. Up and up they floated - jostled from below as they were drawn above - thinned by thinning air fast slipping towards a boreal bed.

  Some few, though, denied that draw, found the heady heights and breathless spaces too unbecoming. They it was who slipped from the cold, dry plume to dip within the ever thickening air below until weighed down in warm and wetter ways.

  Of late, though, those first few thieves had become yet more, enough to add an ashen hue to the leaden clouds, to join together and so begin to fall. And fall they did, but slowly, drifting down to where that breath lay close upon the Dican realm’s own breast.

  They fell both far and wide, sliding along the sky’s great sluggish folds, through waft and breeze and whipping wind, trapped now within a denser weave that held them fast with unseen hands. A press of deeper, denser air; unseen by eye, unfelt by flesh, known only in the mind of one.

  Lady Lambsplitter understood the strength of such unknown mass but knew not of how it bore upon those sunlight thieving motes of ash and specks of soot. She knew only how it lent securing weight to a precious space.

  She turned a serious and questioning eye to Mirabel, carefully using recently dusted words to enquire, “Hietho af vinderbraeth, Mirabel, hietho af vinderbraeth, eh?”

  “The air above us, Mother dear.”

  “Yes, you’re right, quite right, ‘tis its own great height, its many leagues amassed above our heads.”

  Lambsplitter flicked her eyes heavenwards but struck her hand out, its palm quickly passing close by Mirabel’s cheek. “Slihtes berandis againes hwaet bweyn pressened ahlod,” she affirmed before sharply asking, “Ac, eh? For why?”

  Mirabel looked startled, almost fearful, but rote-learning soon brought a halting answer. “Slihtes berandis ... slihtes berandis againes ... err ... slight bearing against? Ah, yes, yes, ac ... ac theah slihtes eyn braeth, hwanne ... when heaped it be leaden.” She hurried those last few words, words that tripped from her tongue for fear of haste only tripping the memory.

  Her mother smiled, a smile that lit the corners of her eyes. “Good, Mirabel. Well remembered. For slight in breath, it be leaden when heaped.”

  Her hand by now had come to rest on the featureless door, here in Leigarre Perfinn, here where they now stood once more at the top of the central column, their narrowly squeezed reflections shining back at them from its gently curving metal.

  Mirabel found her learning coming back in full. “Height of air’s matter lade not slight bearing, against what be pressed, for though slight in breath it be leaden when heaped.” The joy of remembering lit Mirabel’s face, its glow lifting the shadows from Lambsplitter’s own.

  “But what does it mean, Mirabel, eh? What do the words tell us?”

  “That ... that despite air being invisible, it still has weight, that it presses down, that it pressenes with surprising strength.”

  For the first time all morning, Mirabel’s attention had been kept from the stairs, her eyes no longer glazed and distant. Phaylan had finally been displaced from her daughter’s mind, but no doubt only to somewhere in-waiting.

  “Enormous weight, Mirabel, just simply enormous.”

  “The weight of a mountain, wasn’t that how you described it, Mother?” Lambsplitter had indeed, and had also told her why all things in that air weren’t crushed, that they were balanced by a pressure within.

  “Anything will do, Mirabel, provided it’s near as dense.” Lambsplitter raised an eyebrow. “But if devoid of such, then, well!” She smartly pressed her cupped hands together with a dull clap. Her voice lifted a little. “The last time we were here you asked me if I was going to show you how to unlock this door,” and she rapped smartly on it, producing little noise. A devious look stole across her face. “Well, the answer, my dearest daughter, is that I need not for it isn’t locked and never has been ... has never had need to be.”

  Lambsplitter ran her hand smoothly across the gentle curve of the door, then arched her fingers and began to drum upon it as she looked expectantly at Mirabel. “So how do we open it?” her daughter quietly asked, to which her mother lifted her hand away and beckoned with a finger.

  She led them back up the stairs to the floor above and into its dark obscurity, following the thin line of light coming from the opaque slits along its wall. When they reached the centre of the room - directly below the hole in the ceiling - she knelt down.

  Lambsplitter gently pulled at Mirabel’s sleeve, drawing her daughter to kneel beside her, and then leant forward, face close to the floor. Mirabel did the same, although not quite as near.

  In the darkness, Lambsplitter felt for something, soon finding a raised nipple within a small and shallow hole.

  Her voice was soft and low, a confidential hush. “The door below is not locked, Mirabel, because it’s forever held shut, pressed to its tapered opening by the weight of air above.” Her grin was lost in th
e gloom. “The space to which it gives access has long been voided, its air laboriously removed until nothing remains, nothing to resist the weight without.”

  Mirabel heard a squeaking noise, like a mournful mouse, but her mother just pressed on. “The miles of air above push down and so press the door hard shut, tight within its soffit, like a plug. It has done this since early times, since Storbanther’s very fashioning.”

  “Storbanther, Mother?”

  “What? Oh, well, err, perhaps another time, Dear.”

  A loud hissing sound erupted from close between them. “Stand up, Mirabel, and keep clear if you would.”

  Mirabel stood and stepped back, the room quickly filling with an ear-splitting scream. She felt her arm being tugged and was soon urged to the stairs, down and back into the glare. As her eyes adjusted, she saw a crack appear around the upper edge of the featureless door, one that quickly spread around it to the very bottom.

  Under its own freed weight, the foot thick door slowly slid out and down, a stout, curved hinge lowering it from within. All it revealed, though, was a black interior, a toothless, gaping mouth.

  Mirabel couldn’t take her eyes from it, and so didn’t see her mother’s untold pride and contentment. “Our job for now is done, Daughter. Leiyatel’s crucible has once again been opened and now awaits her safe return. We wait upon Lord Nephril, Mirabel, wait upon our venerable Master of Ceremonies.” Her gaze now wandered, her smile quivering at the corners, as though breaking free to laugh.

  24 An Impatient Nature

  Slowly and steadily, through fitful showers, the coachbank chugged its way south down the Weyswal Way. When it reached Galgaverre’s gate, it turned even more slowly and haltingly creaked onto the drawbridge where the vehicle’s weight immediately broke some of its timbers. A wheel subsequently caught, its attempts to push the coachbank forward only shattering yet more of the bridge.