They were now having to go so slowly they could talk once more, Nephril the first to speak. “Thou seem to hath knowing of the true nature of Mount Esnadac, Falmeard. Dost thou know if it can do any real harm to the castle?”
Falmeard remembered an earlier view he’d had of the sea. He remembered seeing a body of water that Nephril had called Foundling Bay. “What’s now happening with Mount Esnadac,” Falmeard told him, “has happened before, but a very, very long time ago.”
When the wealcan slithered to one side, it distracted Falmeard for a moment while he fought to keep them upright. “To me,” he eventually continued, “Foundling Bay looks suspiciously like a caldera.”
Nephril remained silent.
“It’s what eruption’s often leave behind ... well, what I mean is, what mountains like Esnadac become reduced to when they ... when they...”
Nephril tried to turn to face Falmeard but only managed to unbalance the wealcan. When Falmeard had again gained control, Nephril said, “Thou mean to say that Foundling Bay itself was once a mountain like Esnadac?”
“Err, well, yes, Nephril, almost certainly.”
Mount Esnadac itself now joined in. It bucked the ground beneath them, throwing the wealcan perilously near the drop to the scarp. It was the ash layer at the very edge that saved them, that sank under the wealcan’s weight to a track-holding trench, and from where Falmeard somehow managed to pull them back to the road.
They stopped for a moment to settle their nerves, the renewed silence drawing more from Falmeard. “If Leiyatel has been holding the mountain in check over the millennia, then ... well...” He didn’t want to scare Nephril but his words just tumbled out. “...what’s already begun to happen is likely to remove all trace of the Realm, every last bit of it.”
His voice became a little more distant. “Just dust and ash scattered to the four winds ... to a black and sunless sky. No more than just another bay.” It was as though he no longer heard his own voice. “A massive one probably ... the Bay of Dica perhaps, if there’s anyone left to name it.”
Nephril stared wide-eyed ahead of them but Falmeard didn’t notice. He’d become distracted by a bright red glow, somewhere higher up the mountain, above where they were sure to pass quite soon. “Oh no,” was all he said before tapping Nephril on the shoulder and pointing as he again moved them on.
Falmeard remained quiet, occasionally glancing at what only he knew was lava, each time closer, lower, nearer the road, seemingly bent on cutting them off. He snapped and threw all caution to the wind.
The sluggish and feeble wealcan suddenly seemed to Falmeard to be more like a Honda Blackbird, and their ash-laden track one of England’s finest biking roads. Without quite knowing how, he slipped into that zone, his senses now one with all around him.
The wealcan had become his body, its leather his limbs, the road but the flow of blood through his veins. He’d no need to see for he could feel their way, knew how the mountain twisted and turned, how it rose and fell as he flowed upon its face. The burners glowed white-hot in his stomach as he fed them their naphtha, as they turned paraffin to vapour to expand his lungs and so drive them on, furiously through the darkening day.
The land of leached-colour swiftly swept by, a wake of luminous dust lifting to either side, setting them upon the back of a stately grey swan. Blood red and fiery, sparkling yellow and white, the molten stream slid unstoppably down towards them - Nature’s tongue long lapping to wolf them down.
Falmeard was not a lamb to be devoured so easily, though, but a demi-god of the road, and so he sped past the lick of that tongue in his own smug biker way, the lava crashing noisily behind them, snapping at their heels. Unsated, the mountain growled and roared the more, bemoaned life’s theft of the only seed that could now regrow the last of all true worlds.
42 A Persistent Gain
What had been such a closely and deftly wrought face - a hint of pink flush set so coyly within smooth, white skin - now boasted crimson blisters set against blue-veined, ochre wealds. Lady Lambsplitter’s unrecognisable face raised no undue alarm in Phaylan, not whilst it remained a seeming testament to her recent demise.
He’d never liked ... no. He’d never quite trusted her, not from the day they’d first met, that morning when they’d walked out together from the Lords Demesne to join the king’s cortege.
Since setting out with her now, though, he’d only glanced at the Lady - their unfamiliar route too selfish to share his gaze for long. Her once rich, dark hair had begun to bristle, like an old mare’s tail, brittle hanks falling away.
Life was still plainly in her, though, for she spat a loosened tooth, its pink trail of dribble glistening across the yellowed shelf of her breasts. Her once fine figure now seemed to weigh her down, dragging her forward against the makeshift restraint of the seat.
She groaned and slanted her head at Phaylan. “I should have known ... a Galgaverran!”
For a while she said no more, not whilst the massive statue of King Belforas dimly slid past, vanishingly high above them on its black, grassy mound. Even in the dark, the heavily weathered king still commanded an uncommon might as he powerfully pointed them towards the distant Gray Mountains’ long magisterial march.
Only after Phaylan had brought the thrijhil below the king’s right hand, down the broad sweep of the mound and into the woods below did the Lady once more move; jarred into life no doubt by the steep, stone steps down which Phaylan drove at breakneck speed.
The thrijhil was through the arch and well on its way down Swine Lane before Lambsplitter startled him with a cold, wet hand on his. Surprised, he stopped the thrijhil and stared at her.
She cackled then coughed. “Wasting valuable time on a fruitless rescue, my sterile stealer of special maiden’s hearts.” The coughing got the better of her, bright red blood beginning to seep from her blue-tinged lips. It wasn’t the blood that disturbed Phaylan, more its oiliness.
“A Galgaverran beyond term!” she marvelled. More coughing. More blood. “A Galgaverran not devoured as he should have been when still tender meat. Left by Leiyatel to mature to his own immortality, and with it far too much knowing.”
Lambsplitter sighed, blue-red froth bubbling at her lips. “All gone to shit!” she bemoaned, and passed the sleeve of her tunic across her mouth, the cloth’s blue satin sheen coming away dulled to brown, looking as black in the poor light.
“Can’t blame the engers, not really. Just too complex by far, and too far in time.” She now sounded weak, her voice rapidly thinning. “Seems my lone-born bait found false lure in thee, for your unusual blood should never have been met, not in the right course of things.”
The thrijhil rattled, some of its looser parts trilling lightly as the ground beneath them began to shake. They heard a deep rumble, seemingly from far beneath the feet of men, but somehow above the spring of waters. The Lady wept; quietly, forlornly.
Dark-hidden clouds briefly reappeared, but now shot through with red, a sound as if of heavy rain falling about the thrijhil. It wasn’t water that fell, though, but bright, bloody drops of pumice.
“Even back when I first knew you,” Lambsplitter eventually confided, “I could never get you to cleave to my purpose, certainly not by lust alone, despite your tender age. Thwarted by nothing more than perpetual innocence.”
Phaylan had no idea what she was talking about, and his face must have shown it for she feebly drew him closer and whispered, “Does it not seem odd to you that we’ve yet to be struck by this current shower?” Phaylan followed her yellow but intensely blue-streaked eyes as they looked aside, as they peered into the red-spotted gloom.
The ground around them was peppered with molten pumice, all except close by Phaylan. As if to prove the point, the Lady cried out in pain and grabbed her arm, smoke rising between her fingers where they grasped at her newly charred sleeve.
It hid yet more blood, the wound as yet unsealed by the ember it held. Phaylan’s nosed twitched, curious at the smell of
burnt flesh.
Ignoring the pain, Lady Lambsplitter drew him yet closer still. “Like all Galgaverrans - living cheek by jowl with Leiyatel - you’ve unknowingly suffered instilment of her very own weft and weave. But you shouldn’t have! No! Should rightly have been curtailed when you were due.”
“You mean we Galgaverrans have now gone far beyond such time, Lady Lambsplitter? That we’ve stolen a march by stealing a shield?”
Lambsplitter looked diminished. “It is so, I’m sure of it, and why you’ll survive where I will not.”
Deep within Phaylan, in some long pruned part of his own kind’s nature, a dormant glimmer of sympathy lit a little of Lambsplitter’s suffering.
“I have failed,” she lamented, her voice now very small. “Failed in the sole duty given my line. I’ve failed because the engers saw fit to keep our blood free of weft and weave, so we could play cuckoo amongst the Dicans.”
She gripped Phaylan’s arm with what seemed like her last ounce of strength. “Our kind cannot play out our part, not now we are no longer embraced by Leiyatel. We’re too soft in Nature’s far harder world.”
Phaylan smiled. “But there’s some of Leiyatel in all Galgaverrans now, is that not so, my Lady? We’ve been let live long enough for some of her to grow in us each, isn’t that what you said?”
“I did,” she only breathed, weakly clinging to its hope. “Together, Phaylan, I reckon you and I stand a chance, one your sexless state would otherwise deny you. You lack what I have in abundance, even now. You lack the procreative urge to survive - to survive at all costs. Your shield and my will and guidance should deliver your aid to Lord Nephril, to help him undo what he’s so long unwittingly brought upon us.”
By now the Lady clung to Phaylan, as though he were her lifeblood, but her voice almost dwindled away to nothing. “I fear he’s too long been a vassal to old Mother Nature, been returned to childlike suckling at her breast.”
The red rain eased, a wind drawing in from the north, bringing some strength back to the Lady’s voice. “Leiyatel, though, seems to speak to Nephril through you. That I have seen. It draws him back from succumbing to Nature’s subterfuge.”
She squeezed his hand more. “We must hurry, Phaylan, for I feel it in my bones that Nephril’s need, and by it our very own survival, has become far too pressing now.”
43 On Which Side to Fall
How narrowly they’d missed the lava soon sank in to Falmeard, made his hands tremble so much he found difficulty controlling the wealcan. With no more lava in sight, he now felt safe enough to stop for a rest.
They came to a halt so quickly he realised just how sluggish the wealcan had really been. Was it his fear-stoked excitement that was to blame, or had Nature’s meddling in time lent him the impression of speed?
Nephril shuffled around in his seat and looked questioningly at Falmeard.
“Just thought we’d give the engine a bit of a breather,” he lied, but soon saw disbelief in his ancient friend’s eyes, even in the gloom.
“’Tis a good job thou hast come to a halt here, though,” Nephril said, before turning to peer along the vanishing line of the wall. He flicked a finger dismissively towards a darker patch along its nearby length.
It turned out to be a rather inconspicuous gateway, unembellished and unmarked, the very entrance to Leigarre Perfinn. If its gates had ever been closed, they were thrown open now, revealing a narrow driveway set between two high walls, its surface softened by ash. Gently rising away up Esnadac’s shallow slope, the driveway was soon swallowed by the gloom.
Falmeard had thought their journey over, but the driveway proved both tiresomely long and ever steeper. Instead of eventually turning to steps, however, after a mile or so it rose beyond its bounding walls and slowly turned onto a long but narrow ledge. This exposed stretch leisurely climbed across the face of a cliff, from where they should have had a clear view of Bazarral.
They continued to climb, above the yards and gardens hidden earlier behind the driveway’s walls. The grey quilt that Esnadac’s storm of stone had made of them lay beneath an even greyer sky, heavy across the castle’s blurred spread, as though seen before dawn by a sleep-ridden eye.
It seemed strange to rise only to feel more enclosed; the air intimately deadened, the view riven black. Just when all seemed most quiet, Mount Esnadac violently shattered the peace.
The wealcan bucked, leapt and slewed across the driveway, its tail smashing heavily against the parapet wall. There was a sickening lurch, as something snapped free, and a dull thud sounded from the ground now rearing up at Falmeard.
Pain shot through his leg, the kind that’s plainly serious, as his vision became lost to clouds of ash. His mouth filled with it - dry and flat to the taste. His nose, though, filled with the astringent smell of naphtha as his ears heard the close by pop-pop-pop of the burners.
Whereas normally after a spill everything seems still and quiet - the senses somehow dulled - the noise and commotion this time carried on, quite unabashed. Falmeard even felt his body being struck repeatedly as he lay pinned to the softened ground.
The first thing he eventually saw was Nephril’s arm, felt its hand tug at his leg worryingly near his groin. “What the bloody...”
“Shut up, Falmeard!”
The ground again heaved and bucked, sharply throwing Nephril out of sight. “What’s going on, Nephril, I can’t...”
The air had cleared enough for Falmeard to see why his leg wouldn’t move, despite Nephril’s best efforts. The wealcan lay heavily across it, naphtha dripping from its tank to soak his jeans. Above him, not far from his face, he watched the burners - a number of which still glowed white - shimmering slightly in the haze of the naphtha’s vapour. “Oh shit!” He couldn’t take his eyes from them, nor clear his nose of the smell. “NEPHRIL!”
“I can’t move thee, nor the wealcan,” Nephril croaked. “’Tis just too heavy.”
“I’m going to burn to death, Nephril. If you don’t get me out of this NOW, for God’s sake!”
For a moment, Nephril only blinked at Falmeard, lost to his own eclectic thoughts until he finally mumbled, “God?” before looking askance. “Thou be a funny old fish, dost thou know that, Falmeard? A strange one indeed.”
Falmeard braced himself and closed his eyes as one of the burners began urgently popping, each time more violently than before. An almighty crack rang out, echoing even against the ash-muffled world, rattling the wealcan’s parts shrilly close in his ears.
It was as though he’d been punched hard in the chest but had actually been struck on the head, stars sprinkling across his darkened vision. His nose stung as though bleeding and he sucked in ash before his leg was painfully wrenched aside.
The leg now felt as though it was burning, excruciating pain biting hard to the bone. It was so intense he couldn’t move, not a finger, and felt sure he would pass out. Let death take me now, he thought. Let me be consumed by fire if it means the end to this agony.
Falmeard’s rash wish was not to be, the loss of the sprinkling of stars to his vision returning the wan, grey light of this last true world. Another of Nature’s great heaves of the mountain had thrown the wealcan from his leg, the pain simply the agony of his blood flowing back.
He looked about him as best he could and found Nephril, his ancient, newfound friend, clinging to the tail-end of the wealcan, the end now slowly see-sawing up and down by the edge of the driveway. The rest of the carriage pivoted out from that edge, one created by the breach in the parapet wall through which Nature had seemingly thrust the wealcan.
“Nephril? What’re you doing?” Although he didn’t say a thing at first, Nephril’s stare said enough.
There was a cold look in his eyes, as though suspicion lingered there, but then he glanced up at what he hung from - at Leiyatel’s cask. His eyes finally stared out longingly, almost lovingly, at the empty void beyond the breached wall, at the long drop it so temptingly offered.
Nephril hissed, “Ne
arly taken in again. Nearly duped by her poisonous voice, by her selfish repair of mine body. Ha! When all about so plainly speaks of Nature’s own truth, of the only truth a true world should hold.”
Falmeard’s blood ran cold. Nephril’s face, however, held plain intent and he’d begun to grin, broadly, almost ecstatically as he slowly let go his grip.
44 A Stitch in Time
Well known by the engers of the ancient world, Leiyatel and Nature both were self-same similar yarn. No other way gave countenance, for all things in the last must be that same true way, when all that’s gross be but one dust when ground away. Where they differed was in the matter of their pattern - how wove their weft and weave - but more importantly, how their yarn was spun so differently.
Although their cloth’s own threads were oft disparate yarns, and wrought to patterns clearly of a singular design, each had same need of cut and sew to clothe form properly. Each dressed their nakedness in a common stitch, as all felt worlds must do, each to their own within the shaping force of time.
Each within their own!
Nephril was to find he’d been wrong - yet again. He was also to find yet more surprise in the form of his old friend Falmeard, in the form of he who’d once more slipped along the frayed threads of time - or been drawn to be precise.
On the other hand, Falmeard had himself been surprised by no less than Leiyatel herself. Like the crackling freeze of ice across a pond’s cold winter spread, her voice sparkled sharply through his blood and to his head. “I can tolerate no end of time, ‘tis but a dalliance of mine,” Leiyatel had said, but it only raised goosebumps in Falmeard’s mind instead. “I can strike it out at will for ‘tis plainly in me still.”
Last True World (Dica Series Book 3) Page 17
