by Clive Barker
He dropped to his knees and laid his palms on the glacier. This time he definitely heard a sound in the wind, a raw howl somewhere overhead. The invisibles had entertained his dreaming presence long enough. They saw his purpose and were circling in preparation for descent. He blew against his palm and made a fist before the breath could slip, then raised his arm and slammed his hand
against the ice, opening it as he did so.
The pneuma went off like a thunderclap. Before the
tremors had died he snatched a second breath and broke it
gainst the ice; then a third and fourth in quick succession,
striking the steely surface so hard that had the pneuma not
cushioned the blow he'd have broken every bone from
wrist to fingertip. But his efforts had effect. There were
hairline cracks spreading from the point of impact.
Encouraged, he began a second round of blows, but he'd delivered only three when he felt something take hold of his hair, wrenching his head back. A second grip instantly seized his raised arm. He had time to feel the ice splintering beneath his legs; then he was hauled up off the glacier by wrist and hair. He struggled against the claim, knowing that if his assaulters carried him too high death was assured; they'd either tear him apart in the clouds or simply drop him. The hold on his head was the less secure of the two, and his gyrations were sufficient to slip it, though blood ran
down his brow.
Freed, he looked up at the entities. There were two, six feet long, their bodies scantily, fleshed spines sprouting innumerable ribs, their limbs twelvefold and bereft of bone, their heads vestigial. Only their motion had beauty: a sinuous knotting and unknotting. He reached up and snatched at the closer of the two heads. Though it had no discernible features, it looked tender, and his hand had sufficient echo of the pneumas it had discharged to do harm. He dug his fingers into the flesh of the thing, and it instantly began to writhe, coiling its length around its companion for support, its limbs flailing wildly. He twisted his body to the left and right, the motion violent enough to wrench him free. Then he fell, a mere six feet but hard, onto slivered ice. The breath went from him as the pain came. He had time to see the agents descending upon him, but none in which to escape. Waking or sleeping, this was the end of him, he knew; death by these limbs had jurisdiction in both states.
But before they could find his flesh, and blind him, and unman him, he felt the shattered glacier beneath him shudder, and with a roar it rose, throwing him off its back into the snow. Shards pelted down upon him, but he peered up through their hail to see that the women were emerging from their graves, clothed in ice. He hauled himself to his feet as the tremors increased, the din of this unshackling echoing off the mountains. Then he turned and ran.
The storm was discreet and quickly drew its veil over the resurrection, so that he fled not knowing how the events he'd begun had finished. Certainly the agents of Hapexa-mendios made no pursuit; or, if they did, they failed to find him. Their absence comforted him only a little. His adventures had done him harm, and the distance he had to cover to get back to the camp was substantial. His run soon deteriorated into stumbling and staggering, blood marking his route. It was time to be done with this dream of endurance, he thought, and open his eyes; to roll over and put his arms around Pie 'oh' pah; to kiss the mystif's cheek and share this vision with it. But his thoughts were too confounded to take hold of wakefulness long enough for him to rouse himself, and he dared not He down in the snow in case a dreamed death came to him before morning woke him. All he could do was push himself on, weaker by the step, putting out of his head the possibility that he'd lost his way and that the camp didn't lie ahead but off in another direction entirely.
He was looking down at his feet when he heard the shout, and his first instinct was to peer up into the snow above him, expecting one of the Unbeheld's creatures. But before his eyes reached his zenith they found the shape approaching him from his left. He stopped and studied the figure. It was shaggy and hooded, but its arms were outspread in invitation. He didn't waste what little energy he had calling Pie's name. He simply changed his direction and headed towards the mystif as it came to meet him. It was the faster of the two, and as it came it shrugged off its coat and held it open, so that he fell into its luxury. He couldn't feel it; indeed he could feel little, except relief. Borne up by the mystif he let all conscious thought go, the rest of the journey becoming a blur of snow and snow, and Pie's voice sometimes, at his side, telling him that it would
be over soon.
"Am I awake?" He opened his eyes and sat up, grasping hold of Pie's coat to do so. "Am I awake?"
"Yes."
"Thank God! Thank God! I thought I was going to
freeze to death."
He let his head sink back. The fire was burning, fed with fur, and he could feel its warmth on his face and body. It took a few seconds to realize the significance of this. Then he sat up again and realized he was naked; naked and covered with cuts.
"I'm not awake," he said. "Shit! I'm not awake!"
Pie took the pot of herders' brew from the fire, and
poured a cup.
"You didn't dream it," the mystif said. It handed the cup over to Gentle. "You went to the glacier, and you almost didn't make it back."
Gentle took the cup in raw fingers. "I must have been out of my mind," he said. "I remember thinking: I'm dreaming this, then taking off my coat and my clothes... why the hell did I do that?"
He could still recall struggling through the snow and reaching the glacier. He remembered pain, and splintering ice, but the rest had receded so far he couldn't grasp it. Pie read his perplexed look.
"Don't try and remember now," the mystif said. "It'll come back when the moment's right. Push too hard and you'll break your heart. You should sleep for a while."
"I don't fancy sleeping," he said. "It's a little too much
like dying."
"I'll be here," Pie told him. "Your body needs rest. Let it do what it needs to do."
The mystif had been wanning Gentle's shirt in front of the fire, and now helped him put it on, a delicate business. Gentle's joints were already stiffening. He pulled on his trousers without Pie's help, however, up over limbs that were a mass of bruises and abrasions.
"Whatever I did out there I certainly made a mess of myself," he remarked.
"You heal quickly," Pie said. This was true, though Gentle couldn't remember sharing that information with the mystif. "Lie down. I'll wake you when it's light."
Gentle put his head on the small heap of hides Pie had made as a pillow and let the mystif pull his coat up over him.
"Dream of sleeping," Pie said, laying a hand on Gentle's face. "And wake whole."
When Pie shook him awake, what seemed mere minutes later, the sky visible between the rock faces was still dark, but it was the gloom of snow-bearing cloud rather than the purple black of a Jokalaylaurian night. He sat up feeling wretched, aching in every bone.
"I'd kill for coffee," he said, resisting the urge to torture his joints by stretching. "And warm pain au chocolat"
"If they don't have it in Yzordderrex, we'll invent it," Pie said.
"Did you brew up?"
"There's nothing left to burn."
"And what's the weather like?"
"Don't ask."
"That bad?"
"We should get a move on. The thicker the snow gets, the more difficult it'll be to find the pass."
They roused the doeki, which made plain its disgruntle-ment at having to breakfast on words of encouragement rather than hay, and, with the meat Pie had prepared the day before loaded, left the shelter of the rock and headed out into the snow. There had been a short debate before they left as to whether they should ride or not, Pie insisting that Gentle should do so, given his present delicacy, but he'd argued that they might need the doeki's strength to carry them both if they got into worse difficulties, and they should preserve such energies as i
t still possessed for such an emergency. But he soon began to stumble in snow that was waist high in places, his body, though somewhat healed by sleep, not equal to the demands upon it.
"We'll go more quickly if you ride," Pie told him.
He needed little persuasion and mounted the doeki, his fatigue such that he could barely sit upright with the wind so strong, and instead slumped against the beast's neck. He only occasionally raised himself from that posture, and when he did the scene had scarcely changed.
"Shouldn't we be in the pass by now?" he murmured to Pie at one point, and the look on the mystif s face was answer enough. They were lost. Gentle pushed himself into an upright position and, squinting against the gale, looked for some sign of shelter, however small. The world was white in every direction but for them, and even they were being steadily erased as ice clogged the fur of their coats and the snow they were trudging through deepened. Until now, however arduous the journey had become, he hadn't countenanced the possibility of failure. He'd been his own best convert to the gospel of their indestructibility. But now such confidence seemed self-deception. The white world would strip all color from them, to get to the purity of their bones.
He reached to take hold of Pie's shoulder, but misjudged the distance and slid from the doeki's back. Relieved of its burden the beast slumped, its front legs buckling. Had Pie not been swift and pulled Gentle out of harm's way, he might have been crushed beneath the creature's bulk. Hauling back his hood and swiping the snow from the back of his neck, he got to his feet and found Pie's exhausted gaze there to meet him.
"I thought I was leading us right," the mystif said.
"Of course you did."
"But we've missed the pass somehow. The slope's getting steeper. I don't know where the fuck we are, Gentle."
"In trouble is where we are, and too tired to think our way out of it. We have to rest."
"Where?"
"Here," Gentle said. "This blizzard can't go on forever. There's only so much snow in the sky, and most of it's already fallen, right? Right? So if we can just hold on till the storm's over, and we can see where we are—"
"Suppose by that time it's night again? We'll freeze, my friend."
"Do we have any other choice?" Gentle said. "If we go on we'll kill the beast and probably ourselves. We could march right over a gorge and never know it. But if we stay here... together... maybe we're in with a chance.'*
"I thought I knew our direction."
"Maybe you did. Maybe the storm'll blow over, and we'll find ourselves on the other side of the mountain." Gentle put his hands on Pie's shoulders, sliding them around the back of the mystif's neck. "We have no choice," he said slowly.
Pie nodded, and together they settled as best they could in the dubious shelter of the doeki's body. The beast was still breathing, but not, Gentle thought, for long. He tried to put from his mind what would happen if it died and the storm failed to abate, but what was the use of leaving such plans to the last? If death seemed inevitable, would it not be better for him and Pie to meet it together—to slit their wrists and bleed to death side by side—rather than slowly freeze, pretending to the end that survival was plausible? He was ready to voice that suggestion now, while he still had the energy and focus to do so, but as he turned to the mystif some tremor reached him that was not the wind's tirade but a voice beneath its harangue, calling him to stand up. He did so.
The gusts would have blown him over had Pie not stood up with him, and his eyes would have missed the figures in the drifts but that the mystif caught his arm and, putting its head close to Gentle's, said, "How the hell did they get out?"
The women stood a hundred yards from them. Their feet were touching the snow but not impressing themselves upon it. Their bodies were wound with cloth brought from the ice, which billowed around them as the wind filled it. Some held treasures, claimed from the glacier: pieces of I their temple, and ark, and altar. One, the young girl whose corpse had moved Gentle so much, held in her arms the head of a Goddess carved in blue stone. It had been badly vandalized. There were cracks in its cheeks, and parts of its nose, and an eye, were missing. But it found light from somewhere and gave off a serene radiance.
"What do they want?" Gentle said,
"You, maybe?" Pie ventured.
The woman standing closest to them, her hair rising half her height again above her head, courtesy of the wind, beckoned."I think they want us both to go," Gentle said.
"That's the way it looks," Pie said, not moving a muscle.
"What are we waiting for?"
"I thought they were dead," the mystif said.
"Maybe they were."
"So we take the lead from phantoms? I'm not sure that's wise."
"They came to find us, Pie," Gentle said.
Having beckoned, the woman was turning slowly on her toe tips, like a mechanical Madonna that Clem had once given Gentle, which had played "Ave Maria" as it turned.
"We're going to lose them if we don't hurry. What's your problem, Pie? You've talked with spirits before."
"Not like these," Pie said. "The Goddesses weren't all forgiving mothers, you know. And their rites weren't all milk and honey. Some of them were cruel. They sacrificed men."
"You think that's why they want us?"
"It's possible."
"So we weigh that possibility against the absolute certainty of freezing to death where we stand," Gentle said.
"It's your decision."
"No, this one we make together. You've got fifty percent of the vote and fifty percent of the responsibility."
"What do you want to do?"
"There you go again. Make up your own mind for once."
Pie looked at the departing women, their forms already disappearing behind a veil of snow. Then at Gentle. Then at the doeki. Then back at Gentle. "I heard they eat men's balls."
"So what are you worried about?"
"AH right!" the mystif growled, "I vote we go."
"Then it's unanimous."
Pie started to haul the doeki to its feet. It didn't want to move, but the mystif had a fine,turn of threat when pressed, and began to berate it ripely.
"Quick, or we'll lose them!" Gentle said.
The beast was up now, and tugging on its bridle Pie led it in pursuit of Gentle, who was forging ahead to keep their guides in sight. The snow obliterated the women completely at times, but he saw the beckoner glance back several times, and knew that she'd not let her foundlings get lost again. After a time, their destination came in sight. A rock face, slate-gray and sheer, loomed from the murk, its summit lost in mist.
"If they want us to climb, they can think again," Pie yelled through the wind.
"No, there's a door," Gentle shouted over his shoulder. "See it?"
The word rather flattered what was no more than a jagged crack, like a bolt of black lightning burned into the face of the cliff. But it represented some hope of shelter, if nothing else.
Gentle turned back to Pie. "Do you see it, Pie?"
"I see it," came the response. "But I don't see the women."
One sweeping glance along the rock face confirmed the mystifs observation. They'd either entered the cliff or
floated up its face into the clouds. Whichever, they'd removed themselves quickly.
"Phantoms," Pie said, fretfully.
"What if they are?" Gentle replied. "They brought us to shelter."
He took the doeki's rein from Pie's hands and coaxed the animal on, saying, "See that hole in the wall? It's going to be warm inside. Remember warm?"
The snow thickened as they covered the last hundred yards, until it was almost waist deep again. But all three— man, animal, and mystif—made the crack alive. There was more than shelter inside; there was light. A narrow passageway presented itself, its black walls encased in ice, with a fire flickering somewhere out of sight in the cavern's depths.
Gentle had let slip the doeki's reins, and the wise animal was already heading away down the passage, the so
und of its hooves echoing against the glittering walls. By the time Gentle and Pie caught up with it, a slight bend in the passage had revealed the source of the light and warmth it was heading towards. A broad but shallow bowl of beaten brass was set in a place where the passage widened, and the fire was burning vigorously in its center. There were two curiosities, however: one, that the flame was not gold but blue; two, that it burned without fuel, the flames hovering six inches above the bottom of the bowl. But oh, it was warm. The cobs of ice in Gentle's beard melted and dropped off; the snowflakes became beads on Pie's smooth brow and cheek. The warmth brought a whoop of pure pleasure to Gentle's lips, and he opened his aching arms to Pie 'oh' pah.
"We're not going to die!" he said. "Didn't I tell you? We're not going to die!"
The mystif hugged him in return, its lips first pressed to Gentle's neck, then to his face.
"All right, I was wrong," it said. "There! I admit it!"
"So we go on and find the women, yes?"
"Yes!" it said.
A sound was waiting for them when the echoes of their enthusiasm died. A tinkling, as of ice bells.
"They're calling us," Gentle said.
The doeki had found a little paradise by the fire and was not about to move, for all Pie's attempts to tug it to its feet.
"Leave it awhile," Gentle said, before the mystif began a fresh round of profanities. "It's given good service. Let it rest. We can come back and fetch it later."
The passage they now followed not only curved but di- vided many times, the routes all lit by fire bowls. They chose between them by listening for the sound of the bells, which didn't seem to be getting any closer. Each choice, of course, made the likelihood of finding their way back to the doeki more uncertain.
