The air about them had become yet darker still, a stranglehold about the delicate green span. Here and there, bursts of sparkling emeralds escaped, flashing their bright alarm through Dica’s very fabric, but Nature blindly held on until she thrust out with the only weapon she knew.
Falmeard and Nephril now stood together directly before Lady Lambsplitter, a dark silhouette of a figure beside her. They all looked startled, all but the dark figure whose face held no features at all. They stood at the Farewell Gap, green and black air slowly drawing back to their respective hosts.
The wealcan stood on its stand to one side, its cask somehow prominent, unprotected, seemingly naked and alone - alone but for Lady Lambsplitter. The dark figure seemed to eye it coldly, although exactly how was impossible to say.
“You’re a fool, Nephril, do you know that?” Lambsplitter told him, but he stayed silent, still stunned.
It was only when Falmeard asked him who she was that Nephril finally said, “Mine dear Lady Lambsplitter, how fares thee?”
Her look of admonishment was withering. It even made Nephril appear to doubt himself, but then he shook his head. “’Tis in thy blood after all, mine Lady. That I now do see.”
It was as though she wanted to smile.
“Clever old Leiyatel, eh,” Nephril mocked, “or the ancient engers to be fair. And there was I thinking Storbanther the only one. It just goes to show.”
Lambsplitter glanced at the dark figure, but said nothing.
“Thou canst fain be so wholly of her, though, for thou hast certainly given birth, and so must have full weft of womb at least within thy weave.”
At last she spoke. “I am no less than any Bazarran, although of the only line to have married into Dican blood, and only so we may each serve her better there.”
Nephril scowled. “Surely thou mean only that Leiyatel may lay wider falsehood upon Nature’s wiser providence?”
“I said you were a fool, Nephril, but you didn’t listen, your ears too full of this abhorrence’s guile.” She angled her head towards the dark figure, but it didn’t move.
“It matters little what thou dost think, Lady Lambsplitter. A fuller future now lies ahead of Dica, ahead of us all, but only after we have returned to Nature’s true balance, once Leiyatel’s unnatural sway has finally been expunged.” He looked towards the Gap and nudged Falmeard before casting off his tattered splint, and with his now whole arm, pointed at the wealcan’s onerous burden.
Falmeard leapt to the wealcan and pulled the cask clear, the dark silhouette of a figure sweeping its arm across Lambsplitter to bar her way.
She dropped back to the very edge of the Gap, spread her arms across its narrow span and screamed at Nephril, “Not only a fool but a dangerous one, one who’s about to sacrifice all life, and all prospect of it throughout this world and beyond. Think, Nephril, at least hear me out, at least listen to life’s own argument.”
Perhaps in the heat of it all even Nature had become distracted, lost to her champion’s cause. The press of grey cloud to the west parted, revealing Mount Esnadac’s lately hidden summit, opening a view to its billowing plumes of thick, black smoke.
The dark figure seemed to notice, but it was Lady Lambsplitter’s startled stare that turned all their eyes towards it.
Nephril finally faltered, his resolve shouldered aside as Falmeard exclaimed, “But ... but Mount Esnadac’s a ... a volcano for Christ’s sake!”
Although not a one of them understood a thing he’d said, they all recognised the fear in his voice, saw it plainly in his eyes. They were so swept along by it that they hardly heard Phaylan’s voice assail them from close by.
“You now see what Sconner saw, what he told me was so, not that I really believed him, not until now. Glad I am that I had faith in him, though, that I felt his words spoke true.”
Phaylan held Nephril in his keen gaze. “For pity’s sake, my Lord, see the truth of it before it’s too late.”
“Truth?” Nephril pleaded. “Truth? What mean thee by truth? Is not Nature all but truth? Is she not what gives true purpose to our world ... to all worlds?”
Phaylan’s heart stretched near to breaking, stopping his voice. How could he tell Nephril the truth? How could he convince him that Nature was but life’s own mortal enemy, that her only purpose was to return herself and all she contained to eternal chaos?
What words could he use to make Nephril understand, to make him see that life existed only to battle forever against Nature? If life lost this battle then Nature would have her victory, her own infinite, unchanging and everlasting darkness.
How could he hurt such a poorly used soul? How could he? Yet Phaylan knew he must, for the sake of all true worlds.
40 A Chase Begun
It felt to Nephril like one of those dreams again, but whereas it had always been Falmeard at his side, now Phaylan had joined them, but a Phaylan almost encased in black. Only his face seemed free of it, only his lips mobile, and what they said came but indistinctly, as though through deep layers of soot.
Their last time here at the Farewell Gap came back to Nephril, flooded his mind. He remembered how naturally Phaylan had understood, how he’d so clearly seen what needed doing. He’d dispatched the ring as though doing nothing more than discarding a blotted piece of paper.
There’d been an innocence to Phaylan, but also a knowledge that hadn’t surprised Nephril, nor struck him as odd ever since - not until now! Now he wondered what it had been, what made him trust the Galgaverran as much now as he’d done back then.
The blackness about the lad somehow thickened at the thought, turned from soot to ebony as Phaylan began to draw away. Nature had thrust at them a second time, Phaylan’s words now stumbling against themselves through what little of his face still remained exposed - his lips.
Nature felt the jar of her thrust strike home. She followed through, drove hard against time’s habitual pull. She was distracted, though, surprised by a hand, one that carried a blade that threatened to sever her marionette’s strings.
Phaylan felt a hand grasp his as the green tail of the wealcan withdrew to the distance, far, far below, down where the Farewell Gap gave opening within the Foundering Wall. There was a slur of speech close by, from which, “Not so fast!” struck sharp and clear at his ears.
Lord Nephril watched Phaylan’s lips reappear, watched them surface once more from the black stain that filled the space before him. A green slash cut sharply across it, Falmeard’s hand at its tip, a hand firmly holding another. In a blink - in Nephril’s own blink - the green cracked across his vision like lightning and joined all their hands; his, Falmeard’s, Phaylan’s, even Leiyatel’s.
“Naningemynd ganan nioere ta der aedre,” Phaylan said from a face once more grown whole. “Down to the stream, my Lord, to where it tumbles, falls and soothes all hurts.”
Nephril cried back, “But thou hast already spoken against mine ode with thy cursing of Nature. Why quoth thee the Aoide tar Degan if it be such falsehood in thine eyes?”
“O Nephril! How I dearly love you, respect you no less, but I must deny you. You have seen the ode with an age-softened heart, my Lord, through eyes lacking a harsh reality’s sharper edge. Leiyatel has had good reason to cushion our world, a reason laid out in the ode itself but for the knowing of how to read it.”
The dark figure had clearly been in their dream for it reached out to grab Phaylan, but Falmeard’s hand came between them. A cold pain shot through their shared dream, and the dark silhouette no longer moved.
“Naningemynd isn’t some ultimate truth,” Phaylan hurried.
“How canst thou purport such knowing, Master Phaylan?”
“Steermaster, if you would, my Lord. Steermaster Phaylan!”
“How know thee of the ode then, Steermaster Phaylan? What makes thee seek to correct mine own far longer knowing, to question mine surety?”
Phaylan looked saddened, his words now soft, entreating. “The Lady Penolith, my Lord, your own devoted
servant ... your ... your longsuffering consort.”
“What? What of the Guardian?”
Phaylan lowered his gaze, unease creeping into his voice. “The Lady feared for your wellbeing, Lord Nephril. She asked Cresmol to search me out after Mirabel’s Ball, and pass on her worries...”
“Worries? What worries?”
“That your chosen course may be ... well .. misjudged!”
Shock and disbelief now plainly settled on Nephril, his shoulders weighed down, his eyes made heavy. Phaylan had finally become removed from the blackness, free to move within their dream, to reached out and hold Nephril.
“Naningemynd was the name given to the metal column at the heart of Leigarre Perfinn, Lord Nephril. I know this for a fact. The ode is nothing more than a description of it, of how it works ... and why of course.”
“Thou art mad!”
“No, Nephril, far from it.”
“Mad or not, why art thou not struck down by now? Thou should have been brought low already. Leiyatel should hath rendered thy flesh with all manner of ailment, but thou ail not. Be this truly only a dream?”
Phaylan firmly gripped Nephril’s shoulders. “Naningemynd - the metal shaft - goes down to the stream, down to the flowing molten rock beneath our feet, where it was once believed our dead found their lives’ many failings annulled.”
A glint of intrigue flashed across Nephril’s eyes and he leant forward, closer to Phaylan’s words. “There will rest our own truth guarded from lies, safe in its purity from a gross world.”
The dark figure made to move but Nephril stilled it with a thought, anger beginning to simmer in his heart. “All Leiyatel’s beneficence was drawn from there, was it not, Phaylan? Is that thine implication, that everything needed to forge Leiyatel was drawn but from molten earth?”
The young man took the ancient one by the hand and led him to the Farewell Gap, and there they found Lady Lambsplitter, her arms still outstretched across it.
She stood, frozen, locked in unmoving time, but already marred about her skin. Her face held imprisoned terror, yellowing yet hard with resolve.
“There lives our own lie guarded from truths, my Lord, beyond reach of purity in this gross world.” Tears slid from Nephril’s eyes, eyes that beheld the decay in that lady’s contrived beauty.
Phaylan pointed at her. “Here lives a lie of form and flesh, unprotected from untrammelled knowing of a True World, her form no longer safe in Nature’s returned uncertainty.”
“I have destroyed her, have I not, Phaylan?”
“She will have sacrificed herself if we delay any longer, Nephril... if you delay.”
Time presses, Nephril thought, thought most forcefully at Nature. I cannot sort wheat from chaff in such short order, so must trust to mine own gut feeling. All that be right points me toward Phaylan, that he can fain dissemble with naught but Galgaverran blood to guide his reason. “Thou must speak the plain truth, Phaylan, that I can now truly see.”
The ground began to shift, like ice loosened upon a winter’s pond. They all stumbled, Lambsplitter included, fortune granting her safe hold to the wall. Behind her the air filled with yellow smoke that billowed up from the Garden of the Forgotten to sting their noses - Mount Esnadac’s sulphurous belch.
In the distance, a grating noise dragged across the castle’s rise, its affront tearing through the mountain at their feet. The dark figure now loomed above Nephril, high above him, towering over Dica, engulfing all in its darkest of shadows. Nephril, though, looked up at it and smiled.
“In thy despair thou hast shown thy face, Mother Nature, shown thy true intent.” He turned to Phaylan, now hard to see in the growing darkness, only his eyes glinting white against Nature’s assault. “A hand revealed!” Nephril shouted against the growing rumble, against the thunder building from deep within the depths of Mount Esnadac.
“I understand it not, Steermaster Phaylan, but I now hold true to thee. I now see thou art right. Nature be life’s eternal foe, and so am I truly sickened to think how I nearly threw away our one remaining weapon. Nearly, but fortunately not quite.”
He raised a puny fist and shook it at the gigantic figure still looming over them, shook it and cried, “Our challenge now be at the chase, mine paltry promise. A chase through which I will better thee,” at which the grey cloud cover flashed crimson before rock fell from it, like fitful showers of torch-red rain.
41 The Heat of Battle
“I wish I’d believed Sconner when he first told me,” Phaylan lamented, “then maybe we’d have stolen a march on Nature,” but Nephril would have none of it.
“I am to blame yet again, Steermaster. Had I not foolishly lent myself to her service then she would not now be so petulant at mine treachery.”
An ominous thud shook the nearby flags, a shower of sparks and a drift of smoke taking their gaze on to where Lady Lambsplitter had clearly already fallen, crumpled at the Farewell Gap.
“Thou must hurry, Phaylan. We need to get the Lady away. Take her with thee on the thrijhil. Use the north entrance, the one past King Belforas that leads onto Foundering Way.” Phaylan looked uncertain.
“Left at the bottom of the woods onto Swine Lane, then west on Eastern Street, eh? I know it be a long way past Utter Shevling and Grayden, but by the time thou reach Leigarre Perfinn we should already have delivered Leiyatel unto Naningemynd.” Nephril’s confidence seemed forced, but Phaylan nodded all the same.
While Falmeard got the wealcan’s burners going, Nephril helped Phaylan settle Lady Lambsplitter onto the thrijhil, its own engine already trilling merrily away to itself.
Before setting off, though, Phaylan confided, “I can’t tell you everything Sconner’s discovered, there’s not the time, but if he’s right about Leigarre Perfinn, you’d better not delay getting Leiyatel there.” He grasped Nephril’s arm. “You both have Dica’s very survival in your care, you do know that don’t you? Don’t fail, whatever you do, don’t fail us all, don’t deny life its only purpose.”
He was soon gone, the thrijhil quickly puttering away across the flags, its wan wisps of steam lost to the unnatural darkness. “May chance go with thee, Phaylan,” Nephril softly said, “thine own chance and not Leiyatel’s.”
Falmeard called over that the wealcan was now ready.
Their own mount had one of the Steward’s ingenious un-flickering lamps affixed to its front, but it did little to alleviate the gloom. Its meagre light kept them to a walking pace, slowed yet further by the frequent turns on the climb to the Upper Reaches.
Picking their way was made more difficult by a bright horizon, its narrow strip of sunlight running in a vast arc from the Plain of the New Sun in the east, past Deadwold, behind the Southern Hills and on to Foundling Bay and the Sea of the Dead Sun in the west. It marked such a stark contrast against their own false night.
Falmeard shivered, as though he felt the dread weight of Mount Esnadac. It was no longer a benign presence, no longer solid reassurance of a place kept safe. Now it threatened them, threatened them all, but only Falmeard really knew the true nature of that threat.
They should have made better speed once they’d reached level ground but their way became more fraught. Smoking boulders and stones littered the place, adding their own small plumes of smoke to the steadily thickening fog of grey dust and flakes now drifting down from the sky.
By the time they’d returned to the gateway through which they’d first entered the Upper Reaches, a blizzard of ash swirled thickly about them, hiding the once bright horizon from sight. More worryingly, the road itself had become lost, leaving only a dimly raised camber beside the wall.
They’d wrapped themselves against the foul air so they could breathe, but their eyes still suffered, soon bringing them to need a rest. They stopped and sat quietly on the wealcan, listening to the mountain’s diminishing rumbles until it seemed only to brood within the eerie silence. It made them jumpy, Mount Esnadac’s sporadic grumblings hinting at the very end of their wor
ld.
“What did the Steermaster say about getting Leiyatel to Leigarre Perfinn, Nephril?” Falmeard chanced to ask, but Nephril at first only stared through him.
“How could I have been such a fool, Falmeard? Why was I an easy chink in Dica’s armour, eh? Was it because of mine ancient years? Could that hath been it?”
“I think I know why, Nephril, my old friend.”
The flat-grey landscape lent Nephril’s face a dead, wan light from which coal-black pools silently stared into Falmeard’s eyes.
“It’s that ancient yearning for your own end, if you ask me, Nephril. Nature’s used it to fool you, to make you believe that only she could grant you your wish, and only in her own way.”
When Nephril tried to object, Falmeard told him, “We have a saying back in my own true world: When the wolf shall lie down with the lamb.”
A grin spread across Nephril’s face. “Ah, I see. Never then, eh, Falmeard?”
“The struggle never ends, my dear old friend, never. There’s no such thing as Nature’s balance, only eternal conflict. Only at the very end of time - if Nature ever wins through to it - will she have that balance, and then all true worlds will simply crumble into eternal darkness.”
Had Falmeard been able to, and had the mountain not now begun to rumble ominously again, he would have seen an appraising look in Nephril’s eyes. As it was, all he could do was pat Nephril on the back to signal he was about to press on. A smouldering stone glancing harmlessly from his arm adding urgency.
The wealcan’s leather belt came into its own, easily tackling the ever deepening ash. Eventually, Falmeard drove more by feel than sight, keeping to the bank that ran at the foot of the wall.
The only relief to the dark, grey blanket about them came in the form of red streaks, rocks plummeting leadenly to the ground around them. When one thudded nearby, it would lift a hazy, grey phantom, bristling with red and yellow strands, its footprint a smouldering crimson star, a transient beauty amidst the overwhelming despair.
Last True World (Dica Series Book 3) Page 16
