There’d been consternation and some affront amongst the gate’s guards, but under Drax’s orders, they soon brought stouter wood and the coachbank’s progress continued. There now began a worrying period for Drax, his jaw set tense as he eyed Laytner’s seeming disregard for Galgaverre’s crucial structures.
Fortunately, most of the thoroughfares were broad, but Drax still had occasion to intervene, fearful of serious damage. It wasn’t until they came onto a wide, black, radial road that he began to relax.
He and Laytner were at the front on the driver’s bench, Nephril and Penolith behind - Nephril’s view obscured by Drax’s broad back. On the next bench behind, Dialwatcher sat to one side with Cresmol on the other - a wide gulf between.
They’d travelled in enforced silence, in light of the stoom engine’s raucous and unrefined rhythm, which had chased them all to their own close thoughts. Nephril’s, however, suddenly gained far sharper clarity.
“I remember my first sight of this,” Falmeard’s voice was saying from somewhere nearby. Nephril looked around but couldn’t see him, nor did Penolith seem to stir. “Those huge black towers! I remember them so well, but for the life of me I don’t know why.”
Nephril considered replying, but Penolith turned and shouted against the engine’s noise, “When were you last here?”
“I don’t know,” Falmeard quietly answered, but she didn’t hear.
“Nephril? Are you awake?” All he did, though, was squeeze her hand reassuringly.
She smiled at him but he heard Falmeard’s voice come from her lips, although they never moved. “You worried me, Nephril, did you know that? All that fevered talk of digits. But it now makes sense, now I’ve had the benefit of my own world’s recent knowing. The eight circling pairs of digits, eh, the sixteen bits that made up the word. The advent of computers has shown me much, much indeed.”
Nephril had no idea what Falmeard was talking about.
“Are you alright?” Penolith asked, surprisingly clearly. Nephril realised the coachbank had stopped, its engine no longer gasping.
Each of a pair of those very digits now reared impossibly high to either side, blotting out all but the way ahead, the view no longer obscured by Drax.
“You don’t look at all well, Lord Nephril. Are you feeling alright?” Drax asked from where he now stood beside the coachbank.
Nephril couldn’t answer, nor easily turn to face Drax, not whilst time’s startling leap still unnerved him and his arm continued to suffer so. Had he slept? Could that be it? Could time have been stolen by his slumber - or was it something else?
“I am well enough, as well as may be.” Penolith’s look told him he’d not been believed. “I ... I must have dozed off.” He said no more and Penolith knew better than to press him.
When Nephril shuffled his backside on the bench, so his age-stiffened neck no longer stopped him glancing down at Drax, he saw the Sentinar had dropped to the ground, now beneath the coachbank’s bed. A short and terse exchange proved herald for a series of knocks and curses from the very same place, Laytner’s voice carrying the furthest and linguistically the most inventive.
“Seems the fire’s gone out,” Penolith explained, but Nephril’s gaze had already been captured by something else.
Even as Dialwatcher corrected, “burners not fire, my Lady,” Nephril had already become awed by the change in those digits.
It may have been true - that his ancient memory played tricks these days - but he knew he should now be seeing a perfect reflection of themselves, of the coachbank and the opposing tower. What he actually saw was a dull ebony lustre - a smoky-black wavering wall.
“Something’s wrong isn’t it, Nephril?” Penolith’s face seemed engraved with even more lines.
“It’s so run down!” Nephril looked shocked.
“But you knew it would be.”
“Yes, but the knowing and the seeing are such worlds apart. It’s so sad!”
A jet of steam hissed from the coachbank, chasing Laytner from beneath. For a brief few seconds he and Nephril looked at each other, a huge grin forcing itself on Nephril’s pained expression.
“Thou dost mimic a cnihtbagge, Master Laytner, dost thou know that?”
“A Badger, Lord Nephril? How do I...” Laytner’s hand shot to his face and came away with soot on its fingertips. He too grinned, but sheepishly, then laughed.
It seemed their moods had sunk without them knowing for the mirth quickly lifted them. Even the coachbank gave up its obstinacy and soon began to chatter away quite merrily to itself.
Nephril was just turning to grin at Penolith when he caught sight of their reflection amidst an infinity of diminishing towers, just as many coachbanks vanishing into the distance at their feet. Nephril’s light-headedness abruptly evaporated.
“Come on,” he chivvied, “we have an errand to complete,” and with that, Laytner and Drax climbed back aboard just as the rain started to become heavier, thunder rolling in the distance. With a heave and a lurch, the coachbank juddered forward once more, the short distance left to Baradcar.
25 Across the Field of Battle
Mirabel nearly fell over Phaylan, so quickly did the door open, almost pulling her through and into his arms. “By the Certain Power!” he shrieked, then saw who it was. “Mistress Mirabel? What’re you doing here? I thought you were at Leigarre Perfinn.”
A roll of thunder tumbled across the Bay, coming back at them from the castle heights to the north. A cold grey-blue light now darkly stained the clouds, as though dipped in stale old ink, the kind to leave a yellow tidemark around an inkwell’s porcelain lip. Before Mirabel could reply, though, the cloud’s ink was again lit by lightning, more thunder on its heels.
Phaylan carried a strong smell of rancid flesh, drawn from the lamp-lit room behind him. “Is there a problem?” he asked as he softly closed the door and drew her aside. She looked hopefully into his eyes but there found only surprise.
“How are you, Master Phaylan? Are you well? And the Steermaster of course, is he any better?”
“Sconner? Oh, he’s a little improved, yes, but, Mistress Mirabel, why are you here? Has something happened?”
Before she could answer, he gently drew her back along the oak-panelled corridor and into a slightly less dark chamber. A large mullion window ran along one wall, its diamond-leaded lights giving a distorted view onto a cobbled yard’s ancient swell. Had they been high enough to look over its bounding walls they’d have seen it mimic the swollen grey sea beyond.
Mirabel inched closer and looked up into his eyes, hers like a new-born calf’s. “We finished early, Master Phaylan, our tasks well done.”
“But I thought you were there for Lord Nephril’s return, if I understood you.”
“Oh no! No, we can’t stay there. Too dangerous you see. I did tell you.”
The yard suddenly lit brilliantly, the cobblestones all glistening like eyes, drawing Phaylan’s own sharply their way. Hers, though, stayed firmly fixed on his.
“Is there ... is there anything I can do for you, Master Phaylan, you know, anything at all?” His gaze swung back to her as thunder rattled the windowpanes.
“You can tell me what Lord Nephril’s doing in Galgaverre.”
Mirabel looked guilty, an unusual look for her. “I didn’t tell you, did I?”
“Why’s it so secret ... Mirabel?” Her eyes flashed at his use of her name and her heart leapt. “Why the reticence?”
“Phay... Phaylan?”
“Yes.”
“Why ... why do you want to know?”
He turned from her, leant on the broad windowsill and looked out at the darkening sky. More thunder rumbled, but this time from far away. One or two bloated raindrops splattered against the crystal panes, turning them from diamonds to tears.
“Sconner’s been well enough to talk,” Phaylan quietly told her, but then turned her a worried look. “He’s a wise man in his own way, did you know that, Mistress Mirabel?” She searched his fac
e, as though seeking something hidden.
In the chamber’s darkest corner, a door creaked open, an even darker figure floating in to prompt Phaylan. “Ah, Leechmaster Skein, good afternoon to ya.” Mirabel turned and scowled, noticing the blink of eye-white catching what little light the window gave.
“A’noon, Steermaster,” the dark figure croaked as it drew nearer, the white slits now hungrily eyeing Mirabel. “Mistress Mirabel avisiting again I see. Welcome to thee.” She nodded, disinterest filling her face. “How is he?” he asked Phaylan peremptorily and sniffed.
“He’s better, Leechmaster. Your infusions seem to be doing the trick. He’s able to talk a bit more now, and at more length.”
“Is he indeed, well, there’s for t’better, eh? Popig always works well.”
He smiled, darkly, and nodded at Mirabel - casting her cleavage an appraising eye. When he caught Phaylan’s eye, though, he smiled. “Be off to him then,” he said, to which Phaylan only nodded. Mirabel, though, despite her training, felt a shiver run down her spine.
As Stein creaked from the chamber, Phaylan respectfully took Mirabel’s arm and led her out the way the leech had come in. A dimly lit flight of stairs took them to a half-landing, from where an open door gave access to a slightly lighter room.
It was small and sparsely furnished; a table with two chairs, a small sofa, an even smaller bed, its bedclothes in disarray. Mirabel’s eyes lit at the sight of the bed and she arched her neck just so, but Phaylan seemed not to notice.
It was only in the better light - the room’s window here looking out across the top of the yard’s walls - that she now saw how tired he looked. “You poor thing,” she said without thinking, “you look shattered.”
She reached up to stroke his cheek, to run her fingertip along the dark stains below his eyes when he pulled back; surprised, uncertain. “Mirabel?”
She smiled, expectantly, disarmingly. “Yes, my ... my sweetest.”
“Mirabel? Sit down would you? Please.”
He drew a chair from under the table and nodded towards it. She demurely sat down, her bare shoulder brushing his hand where it held the back of the chair. She shivered, noticeably, and sighed through her full lips, lips like ebony in the day’s strange light.
The small window began fitfully rattling as Phaylan sat beside her. She glowed softly, her skin making best use of the poor light, her unnatural scent seeking Phaylan’s nose. His eyes didn’t swim, though, nor gaze in on his own inner delight, and certainly didn’t fill with longing.
The room went even darker. “Mirabel?” She leant over the table, her breasts resting softly against its edge. “Is Nephril bringing something back from Baradcar?”
It may have been the abrupt roar of torrential rain now beating at the window, but Mirabel’s face filled with alarm. “I never said...”
“ I know you didn’t, and I know you’ve tried your hardest not to, but, Mirabel, it’s important I know, very important.”
“Why, my love ... Master Phaylan, why?”
A dilemma rose darkly before him, darker yet than the threatening sky now filling the rain-smeared window. Who could he trust, if any, in this war-torn world? Who? Steermaster Sconner with his travelled wisdom or Mirabel and her innocent guile? Who was on which side, and on which side lay the truth?
26 A Wealcan Ride to Baradcar
Few places in Galgaverre were prominent, it was after all built on the flattest of plains. Few things were high enough to escape the obfuscation of its close buildings.
Galgaverre was a mundane spread of almost featureless structures, some akin to buildings but others not. There were groups of metal lattice-like towers scattered here and there, like winter copses, their meagre rises crisscrossed with spars and beams and bars.
Apart from a spattering of squat pyramids and some segmented domes, every other structure was plainly rectangular. There were pipes running amok amongst them, of varying girths, either between the buildings or spanning them, and cables and hawsers and tubes, and all sorts of unrecognisable things.
Even the district’s largest feature, Baradcar, was invisible to all but the birds, to those recently returned exiles. It was a vast crater, some good few miles across and shallowly sunk into the very rock of the plain. It easily hid behind its own meagre boundary, a plain, grey wall that ran unbroken around its rim.
That wall hid the view into Baradcar, to the island charge that nestled there within its once-red eye. Even had they been able to see in, Leiyatel would no longer have instilled any wonder, her infinite spread of green crystal limbs now gone, their myriad branching twigs no more. Leiyatel no longer reached out to the world from her island lair.
Only those eight pairs of towering black obelisks – now devoid of their once perfect reflections - had ever stood out and marked Baradcar’s presence. For thousands of years they’d leant in towards the realm’s redeeming power, had long made safe Baradcar’s space from the hand of Nature.
That hand now seemed uppermost for the rain had become a squall, great curtains rippling across in the growing wind. Even those black digits for once bowed before Nature’s veils, shrank to obscurity behind her levelling grey layers. Only Baradcar’s wall stood out, and only because it was now so near.
It marked the end of the journey for the coachbank and the adoption of a slower gait for its passengers. The path that ran alongside the wall was too narrow for it and so forced them all onto foot, all except Nephril.
Cresmol, Laytner and Drax busied themselves at the rear of the coachbank, fighting to see through the lashing rain, saved from a drenching by their waxen hats and capes. They managed to slide the ramps out far less easily than their swear words flowed, clamping the wooden lengths to the coachbank’s mounts. Laytner then jumped aboard and soon had the straps unfastened and the tarpaulin removed.
In the failing light, huddled beneath an umbrella held aloft by Drax, Laytner primed the burners against his fear they’d all have been spoiled by water. The fear was unfounded, the pop of blue flames spreading meagre light beneath Nephril’s contraption and a broad grin across Laytner’s face.
Penolith fussed over Nephril, making sure he was well wrapped as the contraption’s little engine coughed into life. Secretly, Nephril had grown quite fond of the thing in their short time together. He’d come to enjoy the freedom it gave and so again felt reassured when its birdlike trill soon filled the rain-lashed air.
It was another of Melkin Mudark’s clever ideas, a means to an end, but a means that somehow endeared itself to them all. Maybe it was its pedestrian speed that charmed, or perhaps its long, low and narrow shape, like a skeletal ferret or weasel.
Nephril had given it a name, an unaccustomed habit, one drawn from his ancient voice. To him, and so far to him alone, it was his wealcan for it moved by sitting on a long, rolling band of leather. This ran beneath the length of the wealcan, ingeniously passing below to the rear whilst simultaneously returning to the fore above.
It had a seat amidships - just for’ed of the small stoom engine - and on which Nephril soon sat, legs astride and square to the ground. The wealcan gave him easy freedom in a straight line but a devil of a job turning, especially with only one genuinely usable arm. Would they have countenanced it at all had they known about his injury, he wondered, seriously doubting it.
By leaning and digging one foot in, however, it was possible to bring the thing about eventually. He wasn’t that confident the technique would work as well when the metal cask it carried was full, a thought that instilled yet sharper pains in his arm.
Their path now, though, led to the north, beside the gentle curve of the wall and through the thickening black squall to a small, low and unremarkable building - the entrance to Baradcar.
The last time he’d walked this way had been long ago, but he was sure it had taken less than an hour. This time it seemed to last an age, a lifetime astride the wealcan.
The pair of digit towers they’d left behind were long gone, easily lost to the
sheets of rain - not that he’d bothered to turn and watch them go. The ones ahead had not as yet been seen, and probably wouldn’t be given the persistently heavy rain.
What was happening to time? Nephril wondered. Why was it suddenly so unpredictable? “This damned rain doesn’t help,” he cursed, but the rain soon swallowed his words. They did, though, seem to mark a change in their plight.
A gap appeared to their left, the higgledy-piggledy clutter of buildings and walls giving way to a greater depth of slate-grey veils, the rain’s spray rising as vapour from a cloistered yard. Nephril tried to turn into it but soon came up against a low wall, the wealcan trying it hardest to climb over.
Nephril flicked a lever and the wealcan trilled more quietly to itself as it slowly slid back. Another flick and they both edged away, Nephril trying his hardest to turn them about.
It took Laytner lifting the rear, and a number of back and forth attempts, before they got into the cloister and along to its furthest end. Here, at the base of a short flight of steps, Nephril finally doused the wealcan’s burners.
No one moved or spoke, all quickly stilled by the eerie silence, despite the heavy rain. It was as though the downpour had somehow been muted, its querulous persistence muffled by the thick, grey fog of its spray.
Time seemed leeched from the world, but this time by silence, despite its nemesis still teeming from the sky. Drax would have dug for wax in his ears had Nephril not leant the wealcan creakily against its lowered stand.
Time abruptly gushed forward, filling their ears now with the rain’s thunderous hammering as it smote against the ground. Drax was about to speak when the sky lit horribly white.
The ground shook and their sight was lost, lost to a bleaching light, a colour long thought exiled by the day’s persisting greys. When Nephril could see again, and the world darkened to sharper shapes, he saw it was now raining wood and leaves, each leaving behind thin trails of smoke.
Last True World (Dica Series Book 3) Page 10
