‘Anyway,’ he offered a carrot, ‘it takes years just to master the basics, and we do not have that sort of time.’ A skull-like grin. ‘I have much bigger plans for you,’ he said.
They sat in silence for a while, both simply staring at the marble playing surface between them.
‘Like who?’ Bryan asked then. Kraylle frowned, not understanding the question, and the boy expanded, ‘Who have you tried teaching? Which famous persons?’
Kraylle gave the boy in front of him a long, thoughtful look and then sat back in the large chair again, stretching his long legs and crossing them at the ankles. He brought his hands together on top of his flat stomach, interlaced long fingers. ‘You must remember that we are talking of a period lasting almost fourteen-hundred years,’ he said, ‘so I will only give you some names you might recognise.’
An enigmatic smile, and Kraylle looked at the grey ceiling overhead, thinking.
‘My all-time favourite was little Adolph,’ he said. He was the perfect little pageboy; so eager to please… And a real little backstabber.’ He noted Bryan’s blank look, and supplemented, ‘Hitler, Bryan. Adolph Hitler.’ The boy’s mouth fell open and this time Kraylle laughed, amused; and continued: ‘Benito was a fat little slug and a bully.’ He nodded at the question in Bryan’s eyes. ‘Mussolini,’ he confirmed. ‘And Genghis Khan: the other boys called him “Genie” - he loved knives… Iosef was here for a long time. He changed his name, like you. Called himself Joseph Stalin, “Man of Steel”.’ Kraylle snorted. ‘He was a cry-baby…’
Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic - he had the evilest little eyes; Josef Kramer, Heidrich, Ceausescu… They were all here,’ said Kraylle. ‘Name them: Almost every man who was ever responsible for atrocities against humankind back on your Earth... they have been here - at Desolation.’
They were quiet again and Kraylle sat up; picked up one of the chess pieces - a queen, and silently studied its tiny features.
Bryan asked, for want of something else - ‘Do all the boys go back? Eventually, I mean. To the Earth…?’
Kraylle’s flat black gaze met the boy’s pale-blue one again, and probed behind them for a long time. ‘No,’ he said then, and carefully, studiously replaced the figurine on its open square. He sat looking at it for a long time, but his eyes were unfocussed, turned inward.
Then, suddenly, got to his feet and said, ‘Come,’ to Bryan Stone, and in a swirl of white robes, strode from the room.
*
There was a door in Kraylle’s castle: A huge thing of heavy black wood, invisible in the dark gloom at the end of the passage passing his icy throne chamber. It was split vertically down the middle; the two panels each at least ten feet high and four wide. Up close there was enough light for Bryan to see an image of a gargoyle carved into each; one a thin, cruel face with bulging eyes and a single horn in the centre of its forehead; the other a werewolf. Both had their lips drawn back in snarls, their long fangs exposed.
Kraylle waved a negligent hand and the heavy panels crashed open, smashing loudly against the walls behind. He halted and motioned Bryan to his side. Dark steps of stone fell away and out of sight in the murk ahead; it seemed suddenly warmer, and far away, below, reddish light glowed, ethereal. The giant looked at him, and the boy saw the black eyes smoulder with the same fiery gleam as that from below.
‘Welcome to the heart of Desolation, Bryan Stone,’ his master said. He clapped his hands once, very loud, and a hundred torches lining the descending steps burst into instant flame, reminding of ancient streetlights: those closest stronger, further away weaker and fading, as in mist. They started down in silence; the only sound the boy’s boots on the wide, dimly-lit steps; Kraylle’s ghostly still, as if gliding. ‘The steps are for you,’ he said to Bryan. ‘I don’t need them.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Be very careful, young Stone. If you fall and reach the bottom before me - even if you are not killed by the impact, you will wish you had been. You will die a quick but horrible death.’
All around seemed to be endless space: closer - dimly luminous in varying shades of grey; further away - progressively darker until utterly black. The steps had no visible support, and it might have been his imagination, but Bryan thought they each rocked slightly when he put his weight on them. Stalactites - some three or four metres in length, hung on either side, eerily suspended from an unseen roof, translucent and weeping slow rivulets of pale fluid. When he looked down, there was just a gaping abyss; the dark infinitely deep and thickly threatening.
Time passed in a mesmeric daze: it could have been a mere minute, or several of them; step followed swaying step interminably, and the red gloam below got slowly stronger, the heat more palpable. And then there were stalagmites as well, the same sickly grey colour as their hanging ilk, but these rising from beneath: some hugely round and thick, others flattish and thin, some with blunt tips and others needle-sharp; grotesque shapes with their bases hidden on an elusive floor covered in slowly swirling red mist.
And then, suddenly, there were no more steps. The smoky mist parted and dissipated before Kraylle’s boots and his swinging white coat. Bryan followed close behind the giant, who obviously knew his way around; striding unhesitatingly through the smaller stalagmites rising from the floor. To Bryan’s amazement, one or two of these rock-hard formations simply crumbled to dust before his master’s huge strides.
They stopped suddenly and Kraylle held out one arm to block his young protégé’s forward progress. Only after the boy had come to a halt, did he remove his arm and allow him to step to his side. There was a hole in front of them; large: five or six metres across and its depths impossible to gauge. ‘Very, very deep,’ Kraylle answered his question. It was what Bryan’s demented old grandmother would have called the pit of hell.
He’d met her only once, when he was still quite small. She was in a home; a little sparrow of a woman, Irish, with wide wild eyes and no teeth; scraggly sparse hair. The remaining wispy strands she pulled out herself with long horny fingernails, and stuffed into her mouth - endlessly gumming them. She spoke about hell a lot, and even now, Bryan remembered plenty of it: The depths of hell; the gates of hell; straight from hell or straight to hell; the fires of hell; the food and staff of the nursing-home were all from hell… so were the Chinese and the Eskimos and Africans…and on, and on…
The heat emanating from the hole was stupendous: the rocky rim reddish-pink with it, making it impossible to get closer than ten metres or so; for fear of bursting into flames oneself. The red smoke, slowly drifting along the floor of the massive cavern, came leisurely roiling from it, joined by strange, disturbing sounds: crackling and the occasional “boom” as loud as a high calibre rifle shot; and sizzling and hissing and the boiling of lava. The very rock under their feet seemed to groan at times.
Bryan looked at Kraylle and found the demi-god watching him with amused assessment. ‘What is that noise?’ he asked, and his voice sounded trembly to himself.
‘Desolation,’ said Kraylle. ‘Desolation’s heart.’ He stepped right up to the red-tinted rim of the pit and stared down it. Any mortal would have burst into instant flame, but Kraylle - not even his clothes, were as much as slightly singed; the pale skin of his face merely flickered a reddish hue.
‘Imagine Desolation as a planet, Bryan - just a very small one. It is really; it does circle your galaxy’s sun - albeit at its own time, and not close enough for its heat to provide any succour. As with most other planets, Desolation’s core is lava, molten rock. The sounds you hear are the cracking and bursting of rock melting.
‘Also, remember that beneath the crust of Desolation, lies billions of litres of water.’ He turned away from the living hole and said, ‘It is, after all, my Life-Force. Thousands of litres spurt through faults and fissures in the rock every second, cooling down the superheated core of our little kingdom. The steam, the humidity, and the red colour of the rock down here - all of that causes this.’ He waved a hand at the low-swirling, crimson clouds.
>
‘What do you mean, your “Life-Force”?’ Bryan asked.
‘Later,’ said the demi-god. ‘I will explain it to you later.’ He turned in a slow circle, eyes searching; and once or twice possibly found what he was searching for, for Bryan saw his thin lips twitch in a small smile, his eyebrows jump. ‘You asked about the children: the ones that don’t go back?’
Bryan nodded and Kraylle clapped his hands, twice. It sounded like two shots, and suddenly there seemed to be movement everywhere.
Shadows; some furtive, some frozen and as still as to seem like figments of the imagination, shadows hidden in more shadows, glimmers, flashes, flesh as pale as the hanging and standing pillars of mineral deposits, they all came to life, although - after an initial horrified look - Bryan wished they hadn’t. Gnomes, ogres, hobgoblins, or simply creatures from hell or one’s nightmares; they came shuffling and stumbling out of the dark and from behind the wide translucent pillars; they rose from the red swirling mist; a few even lowered themselves on hairy ropes from out of the cloying darkness above. They were truly horrendous and loathsome; the term “creatures from out of hell”, probably suited them best. All were deformed: their faces terrible and leprous; their limbs unnaturally short or elongated, twisted; their heads misshapen; knobbly protuberances on their faces and other exposed parts of their bodies. Dressed in odds and ends and sackcloth, they shuffled along on badly shortened and horribly deformed feet, some dragging lame legs and club feet behind them. Some were grunting and groaning, some moaning, some panting; all of them slobbering.
Kraylle raised his arms and stood with them wide, in a cross-like pose, a look of demonic delight on his face. And the bizarrely misshapen and ugly creatures - all children - clustered around, jostling each other and touching his robes, his feet, even embracing his long legs; huffing and moaning. The demi-god was not repulsed in the least - the opposite seemed true; his demonic grin reminded Bryan of the gargoyle’s carved into the door upstairs. Only the fangs needed adding.
‘Meet Desolation’s children, Bryan Stone,’ Kraylle said, and his demented laughter echoed and re-echoed around the massive cavern, down the fiery pit and into the hell of Desolation.
27
Annie was waiting when John and Edith Carter came walking up the steep path to the cave; the woman carrying a clinging Maggie, who had her face buried in the hollow between her grandmother’s neck and shoulder.
‘You must be Edith,’ Annie said, and took the large handbag that John wordlessly handed her. He cast a troubled look at Maggie’s grandmother, then turned, and with long strides, strode off the way they’d come.
Edith nodded, said: ‘Edith Carter,’ and unconsciously tightened her grip on the child in her arms, adding, ‘I’m Maggie’s grandmother.’
Annie smiled. ‘Of course you are,’ she said, and then, ‘Welcome to Rainbow’s End, Edith. I’m Annie.’ She faked a glowering look at John’s retreating back, and said in an overly gruff voice, which caused the other woman to give a tentative smile. ‘And that’s Big John - our gentle giant.’ She caught the worried look in Edith’s eyes. ‘Now don’t you worry,’ she reassured. ‘He isn’t normally so taciturn… so... disapproving. He’s just shocked. Everybody is. You are the first adult to land in Rainbow’s End in…’ Annie decided not to confuse her guest further for the moment, and simply said - ‘in years.’ And then further astonished Edith by, without thinking (it came so naturally), - drying her still-wet clothes with a single up and down look.
Edith stood in the centre of the amphitheatre like cave; slowly turning in a circle and gaping in astonishment. All around her was a wonderland: massive grey walls curved away to the sides and top - forming a huge circular room and a high domed roof; the floor the same grey rock but polished to a smoked-mirror sheen; thirty or forty doors were evenly spaced, except the three at the end of the room which were further apart; in between - crusted into the rock - starting on the floor and disappearing into the roof, were ribbons and ropes of blue, green and red: sapphires, emeralds and rubies; the whole lit and glittering by sunlight falling through a large round hole at the apex of the domed roof.
‘Are they real?’ she whispered.
‘The gems?’ Annie asked, and when Edith mutely nodded, smiled. ‘Very real,’ she said, and then, ‘Come on, you must want to freshen up.’ She led her guest to a door with “Annie” painted on it, and opened another world of wonders.
The room was large, comfortable and washed with sunlight. It had a close-up view of the Rainbow Pool, which Edith knew was impossible; it was much further away - she had just walked from there. Hundreds of dolls sat, lay or stood in every bit of available space.
The bathroom was exquisite - the most beautiful Edith had ever seen, and ‘Yes,’ Annie assured her: ‘The rainforest and pool on the other side of the glass covering the whole of one wall, were real.’
*
Later… Night had fallen outside, and with it Maggie had fallen asleep; much earlier than usual - her small physique mentally and physically overtaxed by the excitement of the day gone. She was awake one moment, happily babbling to Edith about all the wonders of Rainbow’s End, but especially Frieda; the next her pansy-blue eyes had closed and she was deeply breathing through her slightly open mouth.
‘Put her on my bed Edith,’ Annie had told the woman, and when she saw her reluctance, said softly. ‘We need to talk, don’t you think?’
*
They walked slowly, stopping often to allow an amazed, at times simply astonished, Edith, to turn in slow circles and absorb what her eyes registered, impossible as it sometimes seemed.
It was a typical Rainbow’s End night: the dark, softly silver and lit by the large low-hanging moon and billions of stars, giving the wide, twisting path before them a yellowish glow. Crickets played their rasping music in the grass along the sides, and from up and down the river come the songs of a thousand frogs. The flowers had gone to sleep, but their fragrance remained on the very slight breeze playing through both women’s hair.
Edith asked, and Annie answered.
‘No, Rainbow’s End is not on the Earth; no part of it…’
And - ‘no … Thomas had not lied - he never does. Why should he? At Rainbow’s End, it was simply not necessary, not done…’
And - ‘yes… There are fairies here, and dwarfs, and little people…’
And - ‘Of course there was magic - how did Edith think her clothes got dry; or how the new dress from Annie’s cupboard shrunk to fit her smaller (only slightly) frame. And the shrinking and expanding dining room in which they’d had dinner…’
And - ‘Edith was the first adult (Excepting Izzy and the occasional gypsy), to set foot at Rainbow’s End in centuries…’
And- ‘Yes, Thomas did mean it when he said that you should be back home today. It has to do with curves in time and space. Don’t ask me how it works, but you could be here for months, and then get home just minutes, even a day, before you left…’
And - ‘yes. (Amused), Rainbow’s End is looked after... protected by a water-nymph.’ Annie laughed softly, to herself. Ariana should enjoy that one…
And -‘The cave, the gems, the Rainbow…? And who is Frieda? Maggie’s every second word seems to be about her…’
They halted again, and Annie put her hands on Edith’s shoulders. They were almost the same height. ‘Give it time, Edith,’ she said. ‘When you go back, you will not remember any of it in anyway.’
‘Why not?’ Edith frowned, bewildered, and Annie shrugged. ‘It’s just the way it works,’ she said.
They walked in silence for a while, and then Annie’s hand on her arm stopped the other woman again. Before them - forty or fifty metres away, lay the Rainbow Pool, the huge hanging moon leaving it, and the waterfall dropping down the stepped cliff, dark and silvery-shining, mysterious. On the same rock that she had been sitting on that afternoon, the same young woman still sat.
Annie said softly: ‘That’s Frieda.’
*****
<
br /> Orson choked, and John gave him a hefty slap between the shoulder blades, causing him to spray red wine over the longhaired carpet and Tessie, who was watching an episode of Mr. Bean. He gasped for breath and then croaked, incredulously: ‘He what?’
‘You heard me,’ John said; pulling Orson’s foot stool out of his reach, and sitting down on it. ‘He brought back Maggie’s grandmother.’
The Traveller groaned and lowered his grizzled head into cupped hands, blunt fingertips vigorously scrubbing at his unshaved cheeks. John heard him mutter several expletives - some of which still made him blush; some never-heard-before ones only recognised by the vehement tone in which they were uttered.
Long seconds later Orson lifted his head, and stared at his twin with haunted eyes. ‘When?’ he sighed. ‘When did they get here?’
John shrugged. ‘Four, maybe five hours ago.’ They both looked out of the large window; at Orson’s bridge and the small stream, some small distance away. The sun was sinking behind the far away mountains, and John had to leave.
At the door he turned. ‘Orson?’
‘Mmmm…’ Lost in thought.
‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ the Traveller’s brother said. ‘Remember - the final decision is the Traveller’s, no one else’s.’
*****
‘I think you should go and talk to her,’ Annie said, and then, without another word, turned and started back to the cave by herself. Edith, after only the slightest hesitation, walked the rest of the way to the pool by herself, towards the rock on which Frieda sat.
The moon and stars provided more than enough light, and after removing her shoes, Edith stepped onto the rock. Frieda still wore the same yellow dress of that afternoon, she saw; it was patterned with flowers - dark enough to see in the light of the moon. Her braided blonde hair was pinned to the sides of her head.
Rainbow's End - Wizard Page 25
