Mount Esnadac had quietened, its falling pumice held still within the stiller air, but only close about them, as though they were but trapped within a crystal jar. Falmeard likewise didn’t moved; breathless, without a beat of heart, thoughts soon drifting out upon his tethered gaze.
Above him, Nephril hung from the wealcan as though painted onto Falmeard’s sight. Although distantly aware of the passing sun and moon, of the gentle fall of ash without, Falmeard was himself more stilled than all of those; frozen like the wealcan, like Nephril’s hanging form, stiller yet than the hands his ancient friend still held about the cask.
“I strike out with but a borrowed limb, wilt thou hear,” Leiyatel breathed across Falmeard’s ear. “A limb I had a mind to draw through time,” and softly sighed, “A limb thereby most suited to thrust aside the same.”
The deathly stillness froze Falmeard’s heart the more, his blood but icy, icy cold with ne’er a chance to thaw. It was an eerie stillness, a frightening grip about his chest, a growing horror cold-clawing at his exposed neck.
“It cannot be,” she was adamant, “mine servant in arms, mine nascent knight. It must not be!”
Falmeard had always assumed his worst prospect would be death itself, but he’d been wrong. When Leiyatel thrust her hand about his heart, when she savagely tore it from his chest, then he found fear. Then he found real fear.
The horror opened up through Falmeard like a river gorge, wide and deep and torrent filled. From it, goaded terror gushed to fill their crystal jar, a fill enough for time to find no space at all and so slip back along its only just trod path.
45 Battle or Balance
When Phaylan found Leigarre Perfinn deserted, he thought it would finish off Lady Lambsplitter but he’d seriously misjudged her. Far from succumbing to her weakened state, she seemed to rally for a while at least, enough to command his course.
She’d insisted he leave her there, alone, despite the prospect of Leiyatel soon drawing near, or the certainty of being buried in ash. “I’ll hold on ‘til I know. Give me that at least, Master Phaylan. It’s only fair I learn what my bloodline’s fruit will yield, whether it be ripe or rotten.”
For all she looked a diseased corpse, her eyes firmly followed Phaylan’s retreat. He’d carefully propped her against the entrance to Naningemynd’s lair, facing down its southern driveway, and had quickly driven on in search of Nephril.
It was only after he’d dropped from sight that he thought to stop and turn, to take one last look at the Lady. In the normal course of things he wouldn’t have bothered, but that novel glimmer from deep within him had nudged at his conscience again, had set light in his heart to a sliver of concern.
Lady Lambsplitter had quite confidently led them across the northern slopes of the castle, beneath lowering cloud that gave at least sufficient light for their haste. Now, however, on the Bazarran side and south of Leigarre Perfinn, the light had become too poor by far. As the way steadily steepened, Phaylan sensibly slowed, enough to notice something strange in the air a little lower down.
Whereas ash filled the air about him, there was a column beyond the brow of the slope that somehow seemed clear. Bazarral’s distant lights were all so hazy, dim and brown except when seen through that column, when they then became sharp and bright and red.
There was also a whisper in the air, a chatter of high-pitched voices, as though bats conversed, a noise that grew louder the lower he dropped.
It became so dark and steep that Phaylan finally jammed the thrijhil against a doorway’s jamb and continued on foot. Even in the dim light, he could see a sharp bend below, vanishing from sight beyond the crags to his left. The base of the column was clearly somewhere down there, hidden from view.
The way was certainly steep, very steep indeed, too steep to stare as he picked his way down. Once round the corner, though, the driveway darkly dipped away less steeply along an exposed ledge.
The base of the column - some good few yards across - rested at the driveway’s outer edge, straddling what appeared to be a gap in the parapet wall. What was in that column, though, was hard to tell. Whatever it was, it screamed in a high pitched voice, but one that hardly seemed to carry at all.
It was hard to get near, although as Phaylan strained towards it the screaming became far softer, stretched out more to form near-familiar words. It seemed there were three voices to it, two somehow known but a third one strange. They were arguing, almost certainly, three raised voices thrown in anger. If only he could hear what they said!
He’d stopped and was now standing and staring, trying hard to see what shimmered and swayed within. Whatever it was it seemed to swirl at great speed, seemed to flit back and forth in the blink of an eye. Bursts of garbled words flew out to match the flicker and flash of red-streaked light within.
“NEPHRIL?” Phaylan screamed at it, as hard as he could.
“FALMEARD?” came drifting back at him, and so he tried again, just as ineffectually.
He’d hardly filled his lungs for the next try when the blur of red light in the column turned black, formed a huge gaping hole from where a voice bellowed out, “Be that thee, Phaylan?” It echoed along the crags and cliffs, little quietened by the falling ash, returning undiminished from the mountain slopes.
“NEPHRIL?”
“Is that thee, Phaylan? I take it it be, though I see thee not ... though I see too little at all.”
“Where are you, Nephril? What’s going on?”
The column quivered, shook at its base and wavered high up, up where a large, dark figure seemed to hover.
Nephril’s voice came again, as though it slid in from some great distance, skidding to a halt before Phaylan’s ears. “Which be it, Phaylan, which be true, battle or balance? Tell me true, as I know thou must do.”
“You have to believe me, Nephril! Believe me or all will be lost, lost forevermore. Do you hear? Come down wrong and you’ll destroy all of time, all of it, all of it in all true worlds.”
The column howled, as though all the storms of all those true worlds raged within, all the storms that had ever been. Falmeard’s face then flashed by, formed of cloud and light, of ash and breath, making Phaylan step back. But the air wouldn’t let him, growled as his back, and so he leant forward towards the ring-shod hand the column had now become.
“IT’S BATTLE, NEPHRIL! DO YOU HEAR? BATTLE, BATTLE, BATTLE!” he screamed at the hand until he was hoarse. “True worlds are made of conflict, Nephril, for it’s the very thing that makes them true.”
He coughed and began to cry as he slumped to the ground, before bowing his head and weeping. “The fight for survival, Nephril! A forever fight!”
Phaylan now realised with shock just what the knowing had been he’d gained in Cleofandale, that his blood had for so long held from him. Now he finally saw what heat that blood had long foregone, the warming comfort his heart had until then never known. Regret burst from that heart as he remembered Mirabel’s final cries from beneath the upturned carriage.
Phaylan hadn’t noticed the quietness return, not through his sobs, not through the new wonder now filling his heart; wonder tinged with regret for such a late knowing of love.
He also never saw the ash rush in and fill the column’s void, to wash away the hand and ring. He heard Nephril’s voice, though, so close and clear and calm, and so looked up, bleary-eyed.
“When the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, wast that not what thou said, Falmeard?”
A huge grin broke across Phaylan’s face, one more of relief than joy, relief enough to hide his words beneath a leaden tongue.
Falmeard - looking somewhat the worse for wear – now stood beside Nephril, and he also said nothing. Beside him stood the wealcan, cask-laden and now carefully propped, strangely enough, against an un-breached parapet wall.
46 Dream of an End
It must have become nighttime at some point for the moon now shone through a rare break in the clouds, away to the northeast. It was low and bloated,
glowing like the tallow that sits beneath a candle’s flame.
Lady Lambsplitter couldn’t see it, not from her southern vantage, propped before Leigarre Perfinn. She could see its effect, though, its mellow light now shining across the leaden blanket of ash within which she sat. It seemed a pitiful attempt to render a warmer colour to such a grey and dying world.
The falling ash had found respite, its absence now bringing time-denying stillness to all in sight. No arc of sky nor flight of birds set any evidence of time before the Lady. Had death already crept in upon her and stolen her breath? Had it slipped in beside her with a cuckold’s cold embrace?
It seemed only pain denied such prospect as it worried, scraped and scratched, as it clawed away inside her. Great pain indeed, but eased by the cold compress of ash long heaped about her.
Very slowly, an age at a time, the static spread of grey gained some movement, although but slight, almost illusive. Above the driveway’s buried brow before Lambsplitter, a single dim and yellow eye blinked within a hazy rising head.
It slowly swayed as it grew, as it lurched up the hill towards her. Beneath the eye, a chattering, dust-veiled mouth rolled it tongue, girned its lips and bared its teeth, chewed its way forward through the fresh fall of ash. A muffled sound slowly sought her ear and Lady Lambsplitter caught the hint of a burr, perhaps even the sweet chatter of life, although not the kind a true world makes.
No. Certainly not life of our own kind, just its insentient mimicry, a breath blown but by mechanical lungs, animation given of ceramic and leather. Like some ancient phantom fiction, the wealcan indomitably shuffled its way up the driveway towards Leigarre Perfinn.
Far from becoming louder as it neared, the wealcan’s trilling notes withdrew, simply thinned and drifted away. By the time it came to rest before her, it seemed as unreal as though painted on glass. Into a near silent world, Lady Lambsplitter now watched ghosts drift in from the wealcan’s back, saw another stride from its obscuring wake of drifting dust.
Three figures fought through the drifts, likes black wavering veils they thinly floated nearer, wisps of smoke to form a darkening wall before her.
A gap appeared as a figure bent low. A murmur, a faint rustle of non-existent leaves, a hush of falling phantom water all filled Lambsplitter’s remaining mind, lent lukewarm, languid longing for a lasting touch of life’s own heat.
Her view became darkened, drained of life and light, lost to a swirl of thoughts, each one less than the one before. The dark silhouette of a face seemed to draw near, or was it perhaps the moon’s own hidden side about which she now flew.
Whether face or moon, it spoke. “We are come with Leiyatel, my Lady,” is all it said, all it seemed to say, all it needed to say, before a close, dark shadow crossed before her eyes. Even that was denied her when her eyelids were drawn down, remaining so forevermore.
Contentment finally hovered about the lady’s shoulder, anxious, keen, lastly resigned as it nuzzled hopelessly at her now lifeless mind.
Phaylan slowly rose; uncertain, confused. That spark had been struck again in another dark corner of his heart. Sadness? This time it must have been sadness. Must have been. What more would he have learned perhaps had Nephril not added his own impatience.
“The lady must wait, Phaylan. I am sorry, but there be so little time left.” He must have seen the hurt in Phaylan’s eyes for he rested his hand on the steermaster’s shoulder for a moment. “Lady Lambsplitter would hath understood. This was after all her sole purpose in life.”
A swallow and a slow nod marked Phaylan’s agreement before he looked Nephril in the eye. A nervous smile was all Nephril returned before leading the way into Leigarre Perfinn. Close on his heels, Falmeard followed him in, labouring dutifully under the weight of Leiyatel’s cask.
47 A Herald’s Mixed Message
They’d crammed into a stoom-wagon, the largest vehicle they’d had with them and the one with the widest wheels. It gave Mirabel, Melkin and the engers a far better chance of getting off the mountain without sliding into a ditch or getting bogged down in ash.
Melkin’s initial retreat - to a lower viewing point - may have rescued Mirabel, but it had ultimately fallen foul of the air’s later fill of ash. It had left them none the wiser as to Nephril’s progress, the wealcan’s sparkling tail as obscured as it would have been by the clouds.
Mirabel and her father had talked little since her rescue, once he’d seen she wasn’t badly hurt. He’d been more concerned about Lambsplitter, why she’d left so abruptly the previous day and upon what errand. He’d fretted so much it had made Mirabel reticent of divulging the little she knew. After all, cuckoos gained their nest not through fulsome song but by silent stealth.
The Steward had seen too great a risk in staying where the ways were so narrow and steep, and certainly remote. “We’ll get to lower ground whilst we can,” he’d announced. “No point getting cut off.”
Ever practical, Melkin Mudark had chosen the harbour as their destination, reasoning it was less likely to become ash-bound having access to the sea. He also reminded them that the harbourmaster’s hospitality had been second to none.
Mirabel wondered if her mother had been right about Uncle Nephril. Had he stuck to his old ingrained ways and seen a last chance of ridding the realm of Leiyatel? Had his belief in a benevolent Nature ultimately won through, overridden his only recent allegiance to their own true cause?
She peeped from her blanket, out from the stoom-wagon’s cab and into the grey swirling mass of ash, convinced she saw failure. I must have failed, she thought, where I’d dared believe I’d won.
“Too wily by half, that man,” she’d absently let slip, “though I’ve known him as an uncle all my life, I’d be foolhardy to say otherwise,” but Melkin couldn’t hear above the engine’s rumble.
And what of her ... of her ... of Phaylan? What now of him, and why the untutored feelings he’d somehow drawn from her? Mother had been right, though, she was careful to think. I could never bear daughters from such a union as his, and what benefit would Phaylan’s position have bestowed anyway?
She noticed there was less ash about now they’d dropped down to the outskirts of Bazarral, and so she turned in her seat to peer back towards the northeast, across the swathed heads of the engers behind. She noticed her father do the same, both staring into the dark grey wall that hid Mount Esnadac, and both their likely losses.
Mirabel caught sight of a gibbous moon as she turned back, just a glimpse but enough to make her rise and stare out at a stoop from beneath the stoom-wagon’s cold, canvass roof.
Newly risen, the moon seemed to have rent both the clouds and the fall of pumice alike. As though peering in at the world’s vain folly, it lent a sallow tint to both the sky and the ground, but also revealed how they seemed to have escaped the worse of the ash. Steward Melkin nodded to himself and called a halt.
They were soon out of the stoom-wagon, standing in the road, freeing their faces of blankets and scarves and wraps. Somehow, the sight of the moon seemed more than simple chance, more than a fluke confluence of wind and cloud and the arc of the moon. Mirabel thought it seemed to evoke despair in Melkin’s eyes when he came to stand by her side, although her own heart felt strangely lighter.
It was only when veiled once more behind the clouds that they finally turned from the view and carried on their way to the harbour, south through Bazarral’s empty streets. The lighthouse towers had become clear to see when Nature once more seemed bent on vengeance.
The thick, dark cloud above Esnadac suddenly burned a bright blood-red, curtains of black ash soon dropping from the fiery tumult. The ground grumbled more ominously beneath their wagon’s rumbling gait, as though Mount Esnadac stoked a great anger at its heart.
Just when Mirabel’s fear was beginning to outstrip her sanguine inheritance, one of the engers shouted, “LOOK! THERE! Within that break in the cloud! Isn’t that Lord Nephril’s contraption?”
Their driver stopped so quick
ly the air filled with the screech of metal, the stoom-wagon slewing drunkenly across the street. Bazarral’s buildings were higher here, hemming in the street and its view. They followed the enger’s pointing arm, through the gap between two gables and into a cleft in the ash-filled sky, to where they knew Leigarre Perfinn distantly lay.
Sure enough, the wealcan’s thin tail rose into the air, lifting its glittering column straight to the base of the clouds above Naningemynd’s lair, seeming to take their own hopes as high. So much hung on what that signal truly meant, hope for their own world’s teetering destiny.
Mirabel swallowed hard, the glitter-filled hope in her own eyes now displaced by wonder. Love, she thought. Love. Have I truly felt such a thing? Despite the ancient engers’ best endeavours, has Galgaverran blood smashed all their hard work?
The wealcan’s unmoving tail gave Mirabel hope of Phaylan’s success, of his likely survival. Not just Phaylan, though, but the one she now knew she truly loved; above all else, above all expectation of her own unique bloodline.
It struck her how much her newfound love would mean nothing without time in which to grow. That’s what they all now clung to, each in their own way, that hope of time’s continuance. But time itself now stood in its own way for Naningemynd still had need of a few hours more.
She glanced at her father, his eyes still glistening with tears. Oh mother, she thought. Oh mother, dear. I hope for my father’s sake you were wrong, that time hasn’t demanded too much of you, that Nephril’s not been the fool you always said he was.
“Well, we’ll know in good time,” she finally spoke aloud for a world gone awry to hear. “Just a few hours more. Time for Naningemynd to take Leiyatel down to the stream where she’ll be forged anew and carried beneath the ground to Baradcar, to her island charge. If we’re lucky, there she’ll grow and so shine out life’s last surety once and for all.”
Last True World (Dica Series Book 3) Page 18
