by Morris, Dave
Altor lowered his sword and turned round in amazement. Standing in the cave mouth was an old woman. She held up a lantern and gave him a welcoming smile.
‘I’m sorry about that. They get a bit boisterous sometimes.’
‘Boisterous?’ Caelestis looked up, eyes half closed. ‘One of them nearly had my arm off...’
‘Oh dear. Well, we’d better see to that right away.’ Turning to Altor, she said, ‘Bring your friend inside.’
She went back inside the cave. Altor didn’t bother wondering what had happened to all the briars. He helped Caelestis to his feet and they followed the old woman.
At the end of a narrow tunnel hung a fur rug. Pushing it aside, Altor gasped to see a huge hearth where a pot of stew bubbled enticingly over a crackling log fire.
Caelestis’s nose twitched. ‘Is that roast pork?’ he murmured. ‘Mulled wine, too? Must be dreaming...’
Altor lay him gently on a cot covered with thick blankets. Caelestis smiled as his head sunk into the pillow. A moment later he was sound asleep.
The old woman came over and rolled up Caelestis’s sleeve. Three or four fangs were lodged in his flesh. Using tweezers she pulled them out, put lotion on the cuts, and wound a bandage over them. Caelestis’s only reaction to this had been to wince slightly as the fangs were drawn out. Now he sighed in his sleep and turned over, snuggling contentedly into the blankets.
Altor watched all this from beside the fire. His skin, pinched numb by the cold outside, was tingling as the warmth came back.
The old lady looked up beaming and the firelight made her eyes twinkle. ‘A nice pot of tea would go down a treat, I expect,’ she said.
Altor nodded. As she busied herself with making the tea, he looked around the room. ‘You don’t get many caves like this.’
‘You do around these parts,’ she said.
Altor took the tea. It had a pleasant aroma of ginger root and rose petals. The thought briefly crossed his mind that it might be drugged. He was instantly ashamed of himself. He looked up blushing, even though the woman could hardly have known what he was thinking.
‘I expect you’re a bit wary after all your trouble with the Magi and what-have-you,’ she said.
Altor realized at once that his suspicions were foolish. A warrior had to trust his instincts, and deep down his instincts told him the woman meant them no harm. Trust, Oraba had said. He sipped the tea. It tasted delicious.
The old woman nodded to a big armchair by the fire. Altor sat and yawned while she prepared a supper tray. When she brought it to him, he managed to eat about half and then the day’s long journey began to take its toll. He yawned again, stretching in the warmth.
He was aware of the woman tucking a blanket around him. He opened his eyes. Kind eyes looked down at his and for an instant Altor felt a twinge of sadness. He had been reminded of the mother whom he never knew.
‘Who are you?’ he said.
The woman smiled and looked at the crackling fire. Altor followed her gaze. How often he had stared as a child into the heart of the abbey fire and conjured up images of far-off places in his mind’s eye. Now, gazing at the leaping flames, it was as if he were a child again. Pictures seemed to form: a strange city with crumbling walls, five meteors fleeing from the ruins to hide among the stars. The meteors became grim lordly faces. Then he saw a sword with a glittering jewel on its pommel, from which the five lords turned away scowling. Lastly there was a withered man with a brittle stare, who clutched to his chest the hilt of a broken sword.
Altor reached out sleepily. The images vanished, leaving only flames.
‘Yes,’ murmured the woman soothingly. ‘Some see their dreams in fire. Others, sad to say, in ice.’
As Altor drifted off, he imagined the woman younger, her face radiant and full of dignity and wisdom, her gown of white samite glowing in the amber firelight. He realized he had a hundred questions he had to ask her, but by that time he was already asleep.
Altor woke with a start. The woman was gone. The fire had died down to a heap of glimmering coals. The dull red light was faint, but bright enough for Altor to see at a glance that the room had changed. The cooking pots and kettle no longer hung above the fire, which in fact no longer occupied a brick-lined hearth but only a stone hollow at the back of the cave.
Altor rose and saw that instead of the soft armchair he remembered he had been sleeping on a shelf of rock. The cushions were pine needles wadded with spider-silk, the blanket just strips of bark. Nearby, Caelestis lay on a bed of moss. Altor nudged him awake.
Caelestis stretched extravagantly. ‘Top of the morning, Altor!’ He sat up, rubbed his eyes and looked around. ‘Er, it is morning, isn’t it?’
Altor went to the mouth of the cave. It was still covered by a hide that hung from a lintel of rock. For an instant he imagined the frost hounds waiting in a silent band outside. Making sure his sword was to hand, he flipped back the hide and put his head out.
Slowly drifting snowflakes fell, draping the thorn forest in a fathomless hush. The scene was suffused in a grey gloom that could have been dawn or dusk or any time between.
Caelestis leaned out beside him and took a gulp of crisp cold air. ‘I have had a most invigorating sleep!’ he declared. ‘And the strangest dream. Do you know, Altor, I think I must have been a little bit delirious from the hound’s bite when you brought me here last night—‘ He paused, frowned, and looked back into the cave. ‘She was here. I’m sure I didn’t dream it.’
‘If you did, we both had the same dream. And look, your arm is bandaged.’
Caelestis walked back across the cave flexing his fingers. ‘It’s a little stiff, but there doesn’t seem to be any infection. Hello, what are these?’
He picked up a handful of sharp curved icicles that had not melted even though they lay right beside the fire.
‘The frost hound’s teeth,’ said Altor. ‘Throw them away, Caelestis—they’re ungodly things.’
Caelestis chuckled. ‘They’re my only souvenir of a stroll in the forest of thorns! Anyway, I can probably get some service from the Faltyn in exchange for them.’ He slipped them into his coat pocket along with the chequers pieces and the jar of jeshroot ointment.
They set out again to the north. Around them the thorns looked ragged and evil in the twilight, but the sleep in the cave had put them in good spirits. Caelestis even tried whistling, but the snow muffled the notes and made the tune sound melancholy, so he soon gave up. They trudged on in silence.
Bristling briars hung on either side of a path that laced its way through the wood. The thorns at times were poisoned black knives, at others fingers that pointed the way. The snow had a stark grin, the wind danced but carried a sting. The cold got under their furs and showed itself to have an urgent caress. The sky was an enormous shutter of lead.
‘How long have we been walking?’ said Caelestis after a time.
Altor frowned, puzzled. ‘I can’t tell. Hours?’
He hesitated. Was it hours since they left the cave, or days?
‘We’re out of the woods,’ said Caelestis.
They were on a barren moor sprinkled with thin swathes of snow, walking in the direction of a lake ringed by strange hunched crags. The water glistened in the dreary twilight.
Looking back they could just make out the edge of the thorn forest. Their journey through it seemed unreal, like a dream recalled on waking—or the waking world as glimpsed in dreams.
Their gaze dropped to the snow behind them. It was unblemished, showing no sign of tracks leading from the forest’s edge.
‘We don’t leave any footprints!’ said Caelestis.
‘Then this,’ said Altor, ‘is the dreamworld.’
They looked all around. For a dreamworld, the landscape was featureless and drab. What Oraba had told them was true. The Warlock King had stifled men’s dreams.
‘The question is, where is the Palace of Dusk?’ wondered Altor.
‘That’s easy,’ said Caelestis, sm
iling at the simplicity of the idea that had just come to him. ‘We’re at the heart of the dreamworld. All we have to do now is wake up.’
He reached out and pinched Altor on the back of the hand, then did the same to himself.
‘Ouch,’ Altor protested.
‘There’s your Palace of Dusk,’ said Caelestis triumphantly.
And now it stood directly ahead of them, a brooding grey edifice of heavy arches and squat stone towers, built on an island in the middle of the lake. Three massive covered bridges, each doubtless honeycombed with corridors and chambers, stretched from the shore to the central keep.
For each bridge there was a gate. With difficulty Altor read the ancient inscriptions above them: ‘Confusion, Dismay and Death...’
‘Cheery sentiments,’ said Caelestis with contempt. ‘If I should ever become a mad warlock I hope I’ll have a more imaginative line in door-plates.’
Altor was too preoccupied with the three gates to notice Caelestis’s mordant humour. ‘We have to make a choice,’ he said. ‘Death?’
‘Why not? Fortune favours the bold, after all. After you.’
Altor drew his sword and stepped through the gate. Instantly it fell with a clang, sealing him inside. Caelestis peered in through the bars but he could see nothing but indelible darkness.
‘Altor!’ he shouted. He was answered by silence.
Stepping back, Caelestis rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. There was no way through the Gate of Death. ‘Still, they all lead to the same place,’ he said aloud, finding some comfort in the sound of his voice. ‘We’ll no doubt meet up somewhere in the Palace.’
There were too gates left to choose from. To take Dismay was surely tempting fate, but Caelestis liked the sound of Confusion even less. His choice made, he strode onto the bridge and the portcullis snapped shut behind him like a trap.
Caelestis found himself walking along a gallery that stretched as far as he could see. To his right ran a line of bronze-framed mirrors in which he saw himself reflected, and also the reflections of bizarre and frightening portraits that seemed to hang on the left-hand wall. When he looked to the left, however, he found mirrors hanging there which seemed to reflect a row of portraits along the right-hand wall.
‘I think I’m more confused than dismayed,’ said Caelestis, wondering if the Warlock King could hear him. ‘Perhaps the inscriptions had got mixed up.’
The gallery was thickly carpeted, swathed in silence. Caelestis, who normally liked a place where he could move stealthily, found himself becoming uneasy. As he progressed the faces of the portraits become more alarming, their stares seeming to follow him along the gallery. He was relieved to emerge at last onto steps that led down to an open courtyard.
A bitterly chill wind had whipped up, making the bare trees sway against a star-dusted sky. Across the courtyard, a faint glimmer of lamplight escaped from narrow mullioned windows.
Caelestis started down the steps and then froze and pressed himself flat against the wall. Someone was coming. Bolts grated back, a door opened on the other side of the courtyard and an eerie procession emerged. Seven pallbearers in cowls like witches’ hats carried a shrouded body on a bier.
Caelestis stared down in horror but the seven took no notice of him. They slowly bore the bier to the centre of the courtyard and there set it carefully on the flagstones. Then each took a tall black candle and lit it and these they placed around the body on the bier. That done, they filed back the way they had come and the door boomed shut behind them.
Caelestis waited with a thief’s patience until he was sure they had gone before descending the steps. The wind was fierce by now and had a stormy scent. It howled through the turrets of the Palace, it whipped at his clothes and tugged the sheet on the bier. But the black candles burned steadily.
‘More confusion?’ said Caelestis under his breath. He didn’t like to speak aloud now. For some reason he was sure the Warlock King was listening.
After a leery glance at the shrouded body he had intended to pass by. After three steps, though, curiosity got the better of him. Returning to the side of the bier, he gingerly reached out and took hold of the hem of the shroud.
For an instant he hesitated with tongue between his teeth. What horrific sight might confront him if he pulled back the sheet? But if the Warlock King really was watching him, this was something he was meant to see. And how bad could a corpse be that was freshly prepared for burial?
He whipped away the shroud. At the same instant a spear of lightning flashed across the sky, turning the shadow-draped courtyard ablaze with light.
Caelestis gave a gasp and dropped to his knees beside the bier.
The figure lying there was Altor. And he was dead.
Thirteen:
The King of Wyrd
His thoughts in turmoil, Caelestis fumbled for a pulse. Finding none, he leaned across the body and listened for any faint beating of the heart, any breath no matter how shallow.
Not the slightest spark of life remained. Aghast, Caelestis drew back and shook his head in shock.
Rather than giving in to grief, he forced himself to consider the facts logically. There was no mark on the body, but Altor’s skin was drained of colour. What could have slain him, so swiftly that there wasn’t even an expression of surprise on his face?
With grim deliberation Caelestis turned the ring on his finger. Lightning flashed again, and the Faltyn stepped out of the darkness that flooded after it.
‘Here’s a sorry sight,’ said the Faltyn without sympathy. ‘A hero lacking life. Still, it is the earnest wish of all heroes to fall in the right cause. We should feel happy on his behalf—especially since he, bereft of being, has no longer happiness to spare.’
Caelestis had no spirit left to chide the Faltyn. ‘How did he die?’ he said bleakly. ‘Is the Warlock King so powerful?’
‘Not while you possess the pommel stone. It means he can only kill you through his servants.’
Caelestis groaned. ‘We were fools to come here, Altor! What are we? Two wanderers—barely more than boys! We were no match for the Warlock King.’
The Faltyn smiled. ‘It was your friend’s own choice. He willingly entered by the gate of Death.’
Caelestis whirled, suddenly savage as a desperate idea leapt into his brain. ‘Use your magic! Restore him to life! See these magic trinkets—?’ He pulled the chequers pieces and frost hound’s teeth from his pocket. ‘All yours if you resurrect my friend.’
The Faltyn shook its head. ‘That’s far beyond my means. In all Creation, only One can conquer Death. His power is the brightest of flames, mine the merest spark. Pagan creature that I am, I may not even speak His name.’
Caelestis sagged, his last hope dashed. Supporting himself on the bier he looked sadly down at Altor, who seemed so peaceful that he might almost have been asleep.
‘Sleep and Death, in legend, are brothers. I only hope you knew, Altor, that I had come to regard you—‘
He broke off as his hands, thrust disconsolately in his pockets, encountered the smooth ceramic jar that held the last of the jeshroot salve. He slowly took it out and looked up at the Faltyn, open-mouthed as if hardly daring to voice the idea that had come to him.
‘You look like a fish,’ remarked the Faltyn.
Caelestis cleared his throat. ‘This ointment. It can heal anyone, even if they’re at the point of death?’
‘The jeshroot sprouts once in a hundred years, and is magical only then if collected when certain stars are in the sky. It has miraculous properties, therefore. But it cannot restore the dead to life.’
Caelestis wagged his finger impatiently. ‘You said... You said your power was a spark. If God is a flame, you are a spark. Is that right?’
‘True, I employed such a metaphor for rhetorical effect.’ The Faltyn frowned. ‘I fail to see what you’re driving at.’
‘You owe me a small service,’ said Caelestis. ‘I’ll have it now, then. Put the “merest spark” of life back in Altor�
�s body.’
The Faltyn cocked one eyebrow. ‘It would only be for an infinitesimal time. He would not even draw breath before the spark faded again. Why trouble his soul on its journey to the next life for so little purpose?’
Caelestis seized Altor’s lifeless arm and felt for the vein in his wrist. ‘He’s not even cold yet. Do it!’
The Faltyn shrugged and drifted around to the head of the bier. Leaning over the body, it placed its blue lips on Altor’s. Caelestis saw a spark, just as faint as an ember in a bed of cinders.
The Faltyn lifted its head with a smile. ‘There. It’s done.’
Altor’s eyelids fluttered. The vein throbbed once under Caelestis’s fingers.
Instantly he reached out with his other hand and poured the last of the salve into Altor’s mouth.
‘Ahh!’ Altor instantly gave a terrified shout and sat up. After a second he stopped screaming, blinked in puzzlement and looked at Caelestis. ‘Why are you sitting there on the ground?’
‘I had a bit of a shock.’ Caelestis got to his feet, still trembling.
Altor swung his legs off the bier. ‘What happened? I went through the gate. Someone else was there. Caelestis, it was the goddess Hela! You remember when we were in the Battlepits, and she came to claim Imragarn’s soul? She looked like a monster, but I said that in myth she has two faces? It’s true, at the moment she touched me I thought she was beautiful.’ Altor looked down at his hands. ‘Shouldn’t I be dead?’
Caelestis held up the empty jar. ‘Luckily I still had an ace up my sleeve. Or in my pocket, rather.’
‘You used the last of the ointment? But it was worth a king’s ransom!’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Caelestis, tossing away the jar. ‘I think I got a bargain.’
The Faltyn whistled in boredom. ‘I will return to the ring, if you are quite done with me. Note that I have now performed the “small service” that was still owed.’
Caelestis nodded, and it disappeared in a swirl of lambent blue vapour.
