Then Thomas was standing in the middle of the short wide bridge straddling the last rocky stream, looking at Orson’s house. It was as much a part of the forest as the trees, and at night, only discernable from the mysterious glow of the single, dim light in one of its windows.
He stood looking for a few dreamlike minutes; the sounds of the mercurial water playing with the pebbles and the rocks, and the hooting of the owls nesting in the cottage’s chimney, seemed very loud.
Suddenly, from one dark corner of the cottage’s veranda, a ball of orangey-blue fire flickered on, and burning, seemed to first just hang in the air. Then it moved: first slow and mesmeric and from side to side; then suddenly - having identified its target - faster and down the four steps, towards a gaping Thomas. It stopped in front of him and hovered, hot and softly crackling and smelling of sulphur.
Then Orson croaked - also from the veranda’s dark corner.
‘Welcome Thomas, and thank you for gracing my humble home with your noble presence. For the second time, I should add.’ He cackled. ‘I was out the first.’ A snort and a hiccup. ‘Sorry about that, but John really should know better…’ The ball of fire, as big as a dinner plate, slowly began moving again.
‘Allow me to light your way, young sir, then come sit with an old man, and talk and listen for a while.’ A giggle. The fireball threw a spotlight at Thomas’ feet and he followed it; off the bridge and over the leafy ground, then up the steps and onto the deeply shaded veranda, into the dark corner where Orson sat. It hovered over a footstool and Orson said, ‘Sit down, Thomas.’ The boy hesitated and he asked, ‘or would you prefer a chair?’
Thomas shook his head, mutely, and sat down on the tightly stuffed leather-pouffe.
‘Coke?’ asked Orson and Thomas - not understanding the older man’s guttural croak, said, ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Do you want a Coke, Thomas?’ Orson repeated. It was still early, his speech still lucid.
His throat was dry, and Thomas nodded, ‘Please, sir.’
Orson didn’t move. But the sphere of light bounced a time or two, and then sped through the open door and into the cottage.
They were left in the gloamy dark and Thomas could see nothing of Orson’s face. He heard a door suck open (like that of a fridge), and then slam. And then another one open, and the tinkling of glass and another slam. The sound of released gas as a can was opened…
Seconds later three items came drifting out off the door. A tin of cold-drink, a glass, and behind them - like a guard providing light, the ball of fire. Amazed, Thomas took the cold tin and the glass from the air, and the fiery sphere returned to its previous place a couple of metres away, hovering above and between Orson and his guest.
Thomas placed the glass on the wooden floor and drank straight from the can; Orson sat watching him in silence and sipped at his wine. The light invaded the lines and dips and crags of his face, turning its planes and protuberances into a grotesque mask.
‘So, Thomas. Are you to be our next Traveller then?’ Orson asked at last.
‘I don’t know, sir.’ Thomas hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ he repeated, ‘although Ariana says I’m the only one who does. The only one who knows… sir.’
Orson, in a surprised voice, rasped, ‘You’ve seen Ariana?’
‘Yes, sir. Twice, sir.’
Orson choked and spluttered red wine over the stomach and legs of his yellowish long johns. They looked grey in the dark. ‘Stop calling me sir,’ he said, and then asked, ‘When did you see her?’
‘Yes, sir. The night before last, sir. And again this afternoon.’
‘Three days? You’ve seen her twice in three days?’ Orson gargled, amazed.
‘Yes, sir.’ And then, as an afterthought, Thomas added, ‘I’m seeing her again tomorrow.’
Orson sank back into his recliner and seemed to deflate.
‘And, sir?’ Thomas continued.
‘Yes, Thomas?’ Listless.
‘She’d like to see you tomorrow, sir,’ and Thomas gave him Ariana’s message.
A long silence followed; Thomas listened to the night and heard the wine gurgle down Orson’s throat when he took another gulp of it. When he spoke again, the Traveller seemed perkier.
‘Tomorrow, huh?’
Thomas nodded.
‘Both of us?’
‘No, sir,’ Thomas shook his head. ‘She asked that you come early; she’s seeing me tomorrow night.’
‘Stop calling me sir,’ Orson said, then sighed. ‘I suppose we’d better get started then.’
‘Sir?’ Thomas had no idea of what he meant.
Orson frowned at the “sir”, and shook his head as at a lost cause. Then said, ‘Let me tell you what a Traveller is, Thomas.’
‘I already know, sir.’
‘Know what?’
‘What a Traveller is, sir.’
Orson grimaced. ‘No, you don’t,’ he said.
*****
The dwarves were drinking and smoking and Jason was dancing. The fire in the centre of the clearing burned high and orangey-red, and flickered and made shadows and secrets on their happy faces and the giant trees. A long low table stood to one side, groaning under the weight of cold-cuts and pastries and puddings; another held drink.
Some of them played poker, two of them dominoes. One played an accordion and another a banjo, while two or three took turns at dancing with Jason; each sang to his own tune and used his own words, some even another language.
It was night, and at night, the Petrified Forest came alive. And Jason laughed and twirled and danced; for at night, in the Petrified Forest with his little friends, his crippled foot was not crippled at all…
13
Cork was cold and wet, and a hungry young Bryan Stone was sleeping in one of the doorways that emptied into a long dark alley. There were six of them and he was just thirteen. They thought him easy prey. They were wrong.
A short minute later, when two of the Night Walkers lay groaning amongst overturned rubbish bins, and a taunting Bryan Stone egged the rest of them on, slapping his rubber cosh into the palm of his free hand, the remaining Night Walkers decided to change their method of approach. They spoke to him, and a few minutes later, supporting their two injured friends, they rode the Moonbow.
Desolation… His clothing was old and too big for his thirteen year old frame: army boots, camouflage pants, a roll-neck jersey, and on top of that, a leather jacket; but when Rudi tossed him a bundle of old, unwashed black clothes and told him to put it on, he laughed in the older boy’s face and threw the foul smelling garments right back at him.
This time there were nine and they tried harder. After all, it was their home-turf and they had something to prove. But Bryan Stone had worked his way into a corner and from there - with an expertise that belied his young age - bestowed blows with the solid piece of shot-loaded rubber pipe. They hurt badly - and sometimes incapacitated. The black clad boys only gave up when two more of their number lay moaning on the icy floor, and they were all out of breath. They left him alone then, and their leader, Rudi, tried yet another avenue to win the younger boy over.
He brought him food: a mug of the thin gruel and a hunk of stale brown bread that was their staple. Placing it on the floor in front of Bryan, the older boy stood back; in a friendly, almost grovelly voice, said, ‘I brought you something to eat. You’re hungry, I know - it was one of the reasons you agreed to come with us…’
Bryan stood watching the yellow-eyed Rudi with distrust, ready to strike again at a split-second’s notice: the cosh gripped tightly, but out of sight in one of his jacket pockets. But he was hungry, and whilst keeping an eye on the other boy, bent forward to inspect the fare placed in front of him.
And with a curse, kicked it towards the hovering leader of the Night Walkers - splashing his shoes and streaking his lower trouser legs with the thin, yellowy soup. He shouted, and his use of expletives, like the use of the cosh, was truly remarkable for one so young.
‘Sl
op!’ he snarled; and, ‘fit only for pigs and rats!’ Gesturing, ‘Or you smelly lot!’
He took a threatening step forward, and Rudi retreated a hasty few backwards, before stumbling and landing on his backside. Bryan kept advancing, and the older boy - with a look of fear on his ferrety face, scrambled to his feet and out of the room. He stood outside the open archway, and his face, already pale, was paler still.
‘You are going to die here,’ he hissed; taunting spite in his voice and hate in his eyes. He turned to go and then swung back to the younger boy with a warning. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’d stay right here.’ His smile was cruel. ‘If Kraylle finds you, he will tear you to pieces… little man.’ The last was said with contempt and Bryan saw a strange light burn behind the other boy’s pale muddy eyes. It was dementia. He’d seen it in his own mother’s look a hundred times before she committed suicide. The older boy was insane. Bryan took another step forward, and Rudi fled.
He began pacing the icy floor of the icy room, and thought of, and weighed his options. He had seen the desolation of Desolation when they landed outside, and he knew he was in trouble. He had no idea, no clue, of how to get back to Cork; or for that matter, any place in Ireland. He paced some more, but could think of no solutions - only conclusions. Two of them.
One: he was going to die if he stayed here. In this room.
Two: he was Bryan Stone, and Bryan Stone feared nothing and no one.
When he left the room, and stepped into the first long grey and yellow corridor, two of Rudi’s younger “Walkers” trailed him. They were like hyenas with their tails between their legs; staying far back, and skulking and muttering between themselves.
He explored for almost an hour, but might as well have stayed where he started from. The castle consisted of rooms and passages, and only that - the passages long, gloomy and bare, devoid of anything except the occasional dull-yellow and smoky oil lamp; the rooms all grey and lifeless - some big, some small - mostly empty, but some with heaps of oily looking grey-black blankets on their floors. There were no windows. Not a single one…
And then there was yet another T-junction, and when he turned to the right, the slap of his two escorts’ shoes rapidly faded as they ran away…
The first room he looked into was as bare as all the previous ones, the second darker and bigger. It was dominated by a throne - huge and seemingly chiselled out of ice, its seat filled by what looked to be a massive pile of white fur.
Bryan Stone stood staring for a long minute, and then - curiosity getting the better of him, stepped closer, and closer still, to the huge white chair of ice. There were five or six steps leading up to it, but he’d only just stepped on the first when the pile of furs moved and took on the shape of a man. Bryan stood frozen.
He was huge: to the boy, a giant; totally bald with skin almost as white as his furs. He opened his eyes slowly, like those of a waking snake into whose glass cage a live rat had just been thrown. Black, they seemed as old as life itself. And bored - apparently very unsurprised to find a young man crouched in front of the throne, clutching half a rubber truncheon and hissing like a trapped tiger cub.
‘And who are you?’ asked Kraylle, ruler of Kraylle’s Castle and King of Desolation.
‘My name is Bryan Stone.’ The boy’s voice seemed very small to himself; the ‘sir’ he added at the end came by itself.
The huge figure’s obsidian eyes travelled slowly up and down - taking in the boy’s different clothes, his young but already hard face, his red hair… They lingered on his pale blue eyes and seemed to probe behind them. Then went back to the cosh, clutched tightly, with white knuckles. His hairless eyebrows lifted in amusement and Kraylle asked.
‘And who, pray tell, is Bryan Stone?’
‘Just a boy, sir. A boy trying to get out of this…’ he saw Kraylle’s eyes narrow. ‘Trying to get home, sir,’ he said.
‘But why?’ The giant smiled and his voice hissed, his puzzled tone exaggerated - mocking. He was playing with Bryan, as a snake would with a mouse. His eyes took in the overly-large clothes again.
‘And what’s at home Bryan Stone?’ he asked. Probing behind the young-old eyes again. ‘For that matter,’ he supplemented, ‘where is home?’
‘It is not here,’ the boy answered, and Kraylle asked - still mocking, ‘But why then… why come here in the first place?’
‘I was duped - lied to. Promises were made.’
‘Promises?’ Kraylle’s eyebrows lifted again and he sat forward in his throne - as if surprised. ‘What kind of promises?’ he asked.
‘Food,’ the boy said. ‘Good food - not the slop they tried to give me; a bed to sleep in; fresh clothes…’ He fell silent.
‘And who made these promises?’ Hissing.
‘Rudi.’ The name was said with loathing. Contempt.
‘And where is Rudi now?’
‘Hiding somewhere, I’m sure.’ Bryan waved to the corridor outside. ‘Skulking.’
Kraylle’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why would he be hiding?’
‘Licking his wounds,’ said Bryan. ‘Him and his band of cowards. I gave them a beating.’
Kraylle looked at the boy in front of him with amused disbelief. He was just that - a boy. Thirteen, maybe fourteen: reddish hair and pale, with strange, translucent blue eyes; smaller than Rudi, or André, or Gerick…
‘Rudi!!’ he screamed and his voice thundered out of the large room, down the gloomy passage and into the rest of the castle. He saw with interest that Bryan Stone took a couple of paces back and lifted his cudgel a few inches, but didn’t turn and run, as Rudi or any of his cohorts would have done.
They waited: Kraylle’s long fingers tapping the ice of his armrest with impatience, and Bryan feeling cold under the burning black of his gaze. Barely a minute (a very long minute to the boy) went by, and then running steps came from the passage outside. Seconds later Rudi, who had been expecting the summons, came skidding into the room, and keeping a safe distance between himself and the new boy, halted in front of Kraylle’s throne.
‘You called, Kraylle?’ he asked, his voice a tremor, eyes on his feet.
Kraylle hissed, ‘Look at me, Rudi.’
The boy did - albeit obliquely, and Kraylle, waving a huge hand at Bryan, asked softly: ‘Who is this, Rudi?’
Rudi tried explaining: his voice rambled on, but when he started stammering and stuttering, Kraylle thundered, ‘Don’t lie to me, Rudi!’ The boy hung his head and Kraylle continued, ‘You know better. Never lie to a god, Rudi.’ He saw Bryan’s head jerk and the boy stare at him with new interest. Kraylle nodded at him and said, ‘Yes, I am. Just a demi-god, actually.’ He turned his attention back to Rudi. ‘Did this young man…’ he put emphasis on the “young” and lifted his chin towards Bryan, ‘did this young man,’ he asked, ‘give you and your band a beating?’
Rudi glared at the “young man” in question; his eyes were filled with hate and malice, but fear as well. Glancing at the truncheon, he nodded, mutely.
‘All of you?’ Ominous. Rudi swung back to Kraylle, about to answer, and the demi-god warned, ‘Don’t lie to me, Rudi.’
All duplicity left Rudi then; he lowered his head, and with downcast yes, nodded, once more.
Two red spots burned on the seated giant’s high cheekbones, and he pointed a shaking finger at the open archway. ‘Get out,’ he hissed. ‘Get-out-of-my-sight.’ Rudi started saying something and Kraylle - rearing halfway out of his chair, screamed: ‘Get! Out!’
The boy turned, and in his haste, half-fell over his own feet. He scuttled into the passage, and the two heard him rapidly run off.
They were quiet then, the young tiger and the giant: one judging, and weighing… the other meeting his gaze, and waiting.
Bryan - at last understanding it would not aid him one iota, slid the cosh into one of the camouflage pants’ large pockets, and Kraylle gave a small smile.
He said, ‘Bryan Stone. It is a strong name.’ Shifted his huge body in th
e chair’s seat and pulled his furs closer about himself. ‘Is it your own?’ he asked.
‘No.’ The answer was candid; the boy made no attempt to explain, and the demi-god’s one eyebrow jumped in amusement. He asked the same question as earlier, ‘Who are you, Bryan Stone?’
The boy’s head tilted to one side and he stood thinking for almost a minute. He had never been asked that question: nobody had ever cared enough. Who was he…?
‘My father was a sergeant major in the SAS,’ he said. ‘He died when I was three.’ His eyes met those of Kraylle squarely. ‘My mother,’ he said, ‘was a lady of the night. She died just after I turned nine.’ He shrugged his young shoulders and Kraylle saw the hidden strength there. ‘Me?’ The boy shrugged. ‘I’m just Bryan Stone, I suppose.’ An afterthought then, ‘And I’m different.’
Kraylle steepled his hands together - as if in prayer, and rested his chin on his fingertips. He watched his visitor with hooded eyes for another long minute, then asked in his soft, sibilant voice, ‘Why? Why are you different, Bryan Stone?’
The answers simplicity, its total lack of pretence, sent a tingle of excitement down the demi-god’s centuries-old spine.
‘I’m bad, Mr. Kraylle,’ said the boy. ‘I’m real bad.’
14
There was still wet on the grass and the morning smelled of violets. Ariana was sitting on the Talking Rock, enjoying the friendly morning sun. She wore a white dress; knees drawn up under her chin and her arms wrapped around her shins: lost in thought and staring into the water of her pool.
Orson stopped to look at her - this young woman. That was how he thought of her (most of the time, at least). On the whole of Rainbow’s End, only Joshi and the dwarves had known her longer, and although Orson would admit it to no one else, the young goddess was like a daughter to him. He stood gazing for a long minute, and wished good things and happiness for her, and then the finch saw him and started its infernal racket. He walked the rest of the way to where she sat, and she looked at him with a welcoming smile.
Rainbow's End - Wizard Page 13
