by V M Jones
‘Me? What did I do? I didn’t make him drink it!’
‘Adam’s right: we all knew not to drink the water, Kenta,’ said Jamie righteously.
‘Yes, Jamie — but Weevil wasn’t here. He arrived afterwards, remember — when we’d already started looking for wood. He didn’t know. And now …’ Gen’s words trailed away into silence.
As if one of them had given an invisible signal, the chatterbots were swinging away through the trees, their jabbering cries fading to the distant chatter we’d heard the evening before, and then to nothing.
But not all the chatterbots. Up in the forest canopy one remained, hunched forlornly on his branch, peering down at us through the leaves.
Kenta gave me a last, reproachful look. Then she turned her back on us all and picked her way through the undergrowth to Weevil’s tree. ‘Weevil,’ she called, holding out her hand. ‘Is that you? Come here — come down. We won’t hurt you.’
‘Be careful — he might bite,’ cautioned Jamie.
Kenta ignored him. Slowly, branch by branch, Weevil clambered his way down. Watching him, my heart like a stone in my chest, I wondered how everything could possibly have gone so wrong. Was what Kenta had said true? Was this new disaster with Weevil my fault? Could I — should I — have done something differently? Sure, Weevil had been wrong. But did that make me right?
Jamie’s cheery voice broke into my thoughts. ‘Hey, guys — there is something left, after all! In the inside pocket of my pack — chewing gum, two whole packets! What’s more, I’ve had an idea.’ He lowered his voice to a loud whisper. ‘The healing potion! Do you think it might work on Weevil? Should we try a drop and see?’
‘I dunno, Jamie,’ said Rich dubiously. ‘I think it’s for making sick people better — and he looks like a healthy chatterbot to me. Nah — we’d be wasting it. There’s nothing wrong with him other than … well, other than the obvious. And I don’t think there’s much we can do about that.’
‘Maybe it wears off after a while. Or maybe he’ll change back once we get back to our world. But meanwhile, he looks happy enough. I wonder if, inside his head, he thinks like a chatterbot, or like he used to when he was a person?’
I wondered too — but there was no way of telling. What was going on behind that monkey face was anybody’s guess. But my fault or not, as far as I was concerned he was still Weevil — I wasn’t about to start liking him better just because his bum had turned blue and he’d sprouted a tail.
I walked quietly up to Gen and held out my hand. ‘Gen — that penny whistle. Weevil … took it, back at Highgate. It’s mine.’
‘Yours?’ Gen looked at me in astonishment. ‘But … it’s beautiful! Where …’ Something in my face must have stopped her. She gave me a long, searching glance, then shook her head. ‘Sometimes I feel we don’t really know you at all, Adam,’ she said softly, and pressed the penny whistle into my hand.
It fitted there just as it had always done — as if it belonged.
We packed up camp and pressed on through the forest with grumbling stomachs, Weevil loping along beside us. ‘At least we don’t have to waste time having breakfast,’ Jamie puffed, toiling along beside me. I gave him a sidelong grin, and thought but didn’t say, or lunch … or dinner.
And it was about lunch time when we finally emerged from the trees and sank down thankfully for a rest and a drink of water. It was a grey day, fat-bellied clouds threatening rain. Ahead of us, the track wound upwards into low hills, then disappeared into the mist. ‘I was worried this might happen,’ Richard told me under his breath. ‘Let’s hope these aren’t the foothills of the main range — it’s hard to tell what direction we’re going in, now the sun’s disappeared. If we have to climb those mountains …’
‘If we have to, we will.’ I sounded a lot more confident than I felt. ‘Let’s get moving again. We should try to be on the other side by nightfall — it’ll be freezing at the top, and the weather looks grim.’
The path climbed steadily. I led the way, Jamie puffing and panting behind me, the girls trudging along after him and Richard taking up the rear. Weevil bounded beside us, sometimes scampering on ahead and looking back to chitter at us, sometimes falling behind, never completely out of sight.
Soon we were completely enveloped in cloud — swirling mist that made it impossible to see where the path was headed, or how much further it was to the summit. Every now and then the track would level out, or dip down slightly; then it would round a bend and climb again. It grew colder. The mist gave way to light rain, the occasional snowflake swirling in the eddying gusts of wind.
Then suddenly I stopped. ‘Look,’ I said softly to Jamie. ‘Over there on the left.’
‘Houses!’ Jamie’s button nose was all I could see of his face, deep in the shelter of his hood. ‘That means fire, maybe even a bed for the night. And food…’
‘Hang on a minute. Let’s not rush into anything we might regret.’
The others had come up alongside us now. We stood in a damp huddle, staring longingly at the squat shapes of the cottages, smoke smudging up from stone chimneys.
‘It looks like a friendly little place to me,’ said Jamie hopefully.
‘If only we knew how much further we had to go …’ I said.
‘If only we knew how much daylight is left,’ said Gen.
‘If only we knew what the weather’s going to do,’ said Rich.
‘If is one of the smallest words in the English language,’ said Kenta quietly; ‘and also the biggest.’
‘Do you think this could be Marshall?’ asked Rich after a pause.
‘I guess it could. But we have to go to Marshall and beyond, so even if it is, we still have a way to go. Jamie — the map.’
‘Look!’ Gen pointed. ‘The black stuff — the shroud — it’s moved again! We’re here — and here’s the village. Drakendale.’
‘Drakendale …’ said Kenta thoughtfully. ‘Where have I heard that name before?’
‘On Quest of the Dark Citadel, I’ll bet.’ Rich gave her a grin. ‘We all know you’re the world expert, Kenta! But what interests me isn’t Drakendale — it’s Draken Pass. I don’t know much about maps and geography and stuff, but isn’t —’
‘Yeah! A pass is normally the uppermost point of a route — we learned about it in Young Explorers Club at school! And if it is —’
‘Then the track should start heading down pretty soon,’ finished Rich. ‘So what do we do?’
There was a short silence. ‘I say we head on,’ I said reluctantly. ‘There’s no telling who lives here. And even if they’re friendly, it’ll be more time wasted. Anything could be happening to Hannah and Kai. Every second could make a difference.’
Between life and death … or worse. I didn’t say it, but looking round at the cold, pale faces of the others, I realised I didn’t have to.
Without another word, we turned away from the cottages and headed on into the swirling whiteness. On, and down.
As if confirming we’d made the right choice, the weather began to clear. The mist shredded into ragged strands, revealing distant glimpses of blue-green hillside, yawning canyons and towering, rocky crags.
Down we slithered, loose stones skittering away under our boots. Then, without warning, the last of the mist lifted like a veil and a valley opened up below us, washed in the pale gold light of evening.
In the valley was a town.
And beyond the town was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen.
The edge of the shroud
We stared down into the valley in silence, trying to make sense of what we were seeing.
The village was way smaller than Arakesh. It had the ramshackle look of a frontier town, like in an old Western movie. There was no wall, and the buildings seemed to be made of wood. There were a number of what looked like corrals, some with animals, some empty. On the main street I could make out a kind of hitching post, with a dozen or so horses — at least I assumed that’s what they were — tethered to
it. Tiny people scampered about like ants, scurrying in and out of buildings and fussing round a straggle of wagons and carts parked up at the far end of the street. Every now and again I caught the flash of watery sunlight reflecting off polished metal. King Karazeel’s soldiers. Instinctively, my eyes searched for the hunched figures of the Faceless, a chill crawling spider-like down the back of my neck … but if they were there, they were invisible.
On the outskirts of the town were scattered several clusters of low buildings surrounded by tidy post-and-rail fences. Farms. In some of the paddocks animals grazed peacefully. Other fields were planted with crops. Over on our left I could see the main mountain range curving away to the west, its peaks lost in cloud.
A typical country scene, reassuringly — deceptively — familiar. It was what lay beyond the town of Marshall that chilled my blood.
‘Just as well we got down off the mountain before that hit us,’ muttered Rich. ‘Talk about a storm …’
‘I don’t think it is clouds.’ There was a tremble in Jamie’s voice. ‘I think … I think it’s the edge of the world.’
It began a couple of hundred yards beyond the northern limits of Marshall, and stretched away on both sides as far as we could see. Rich was right — it looked like a bar of pitch-black cloud, dense and impenetrable. It lay over the land like a vast, billowing eiderdown, reaching far higher than the tallest tree or building ever could … but from our perch on the side of the mountain we were looking down on it, and could see that it extended unbroken as far as the distant horizon.
‘I live up in the hills overlooking the city,’ said Kenta quietly. ‘Sometimes there’s fog, and we’re up above it. Do you think …’
‘It reminds me of flying over cloud in an aeroplane,’ said Gen, ‘only no cloud in the world — in any world — was ever as black as that.’
But I knew what it was. I could hear Hob’s voice as clearly as if he was standing beside me: Beyond the shroud … to Shakesh. ‘It isn’t a storm, or the edge of the world. It isn’t cloud or smog.’ I hadn’t realised I was speaking my thoughts aloud till I turned to the others and saw they were all staring at me, eyes wide. ‘It’s shroud. Real shroud. Not a black stain on a map. Real blackness. We’re going to have to go through it to get to Shakesh. We don’t have a choice.’
‘Well, let’s hope it’ll retreat ahead of us, like in the game,’ said Richard. ‘If it does — no problem, huh?’
But if it doesn’t …
‘Yeah,’ I said grimly. ‘Let’s hope so.’
Our perch on the mountainside was the perfect vantage point, but being able to see also meant being able to be seen. There wasn’t much shelter at this height — only a few low, grey-green thorn bushes clinging stubbornly to the sparse soil. Lower down, though, the slippery scree slope gave way to groves of gangly trees and denser pockets of scrub. We could make out glimpses of the track zigzagging its way through them, eventually joining up with the main street of Marshall.
We followed the track down to where the vegetation was thicker, and then branched off cross-country till we were almost directly above the town, well hidden by a tangle of prickly shrubs.
With sighs of relief, we shrugged off our backpacks and flopped down onto the ground. ‘What wouldn’t I give for a ham sandwich, with lots of mustard!’ said Jamie mournfully.
‘An apple for me — a bright red one, crisp and juicy — and a big chunk of cheese!’
‘Don’t, Rich,’ groaned Gen. ‘I’d settle for a crust of stale bread … but if I could choose anything, it would have to be chocolate. Milk chocolate, crammed full of hazelnuts.’
Jamie dug in his bag, producing a small, rectangular package. ‘Chewing gum, anyone?’
Weevil had settled down on his skinny haunches on a flat stone in the sun, and was watching us with bright button eyes. ‘He’s listening to every word we’re saying, aren’t you, Weevil?’ asked Kenta. Weevil chittered back at her. She tilted her head to one side, smiling at him. ‘I wish we could understand you! What would you choose? You’re trying to tell us, aren’t you? Let’s guess what it would be …’
‘A banana — or maybe a crunchy beetle, huh, Blue-bum?’ Kenta glared at me.
‘Hey, guys — look! Something’s going on down there. Come check this out!’ Richard was lying on the ground, half-hidden by a thorn bush. An undercurrent of excitement in his voice made me wriggle in beside him, my heart thumping.
The ground fell away steeply, giving a perfect, unobstructed view of Marshall, clear as a photograph, framed by prickly branches. Rich was right — something was happening. Whatever preparations had been underway before were complete. A caravan of laden carts straggled slowly away from us down the street, each drawn by a brace of harnessed … horses? Oxen? Glonks — or those funny llama-type things we’d seen before, in Arakesh? From this distance, it didn’t look like any of them — but it was hard to be sure. Whatever they were, they moved with a strange, swaying gait. I rubbed my eyes and squinted down, straining to see every detail. Were they tied together — or chained in some way? And each one seemed to have something dangling in front of it, almost like a long nosebag …
‘Wish I had a pair of binoculars,’ whispered Rich.
At the head of the column was what looked like a leader of some sort — a single animal with a rider. Behind it, the line of vehicles trundled slowly forward, some driven by figures that looked like soldiers, some led, some lurching forward in response to the cracking of whips that echoed into the foothills like gunshots. Behind the wagons, a rearguard of tall figures with pikes and gleaming helmets marched in tight formation. ‘Headed for Shakesh, I’ll bet,’ breathed Rich.
Breathlessly, we watched the caravan approach the edge of the shroud. I stared, unblinking, my eyes watering, willing a magical tunnel of light to open up in front of the leader. The entry point to the shroud was marked by standing stones, half a dozen or so on each side like sentinels flanking the track. Five metres … two metres … one … and then the animal and its rider disappeared into the blackness. Close on its heels followed the next, and then the next … until the entire column had been swallowed by the shroud as completely as if it had never existed, leaving Marshall as empty and deserted as a ghost town.
I was turning away when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. My heart flip-flopped; my skin was instantly slick with cold sweat. The standing stones were moving, drifting, floating away into the shadows of the buildings like ghosts.
They weren’t markers at all. They were the Faceless, guarding the entrance to the shroud.
Cautiously, under cover of the deepening dusk, we scrambled down to level ground, staying well away from the outskirts of the town. It had seemed unthreatening before, but now it crawled with menace, filling us all with sickening dread. There was no way we dared take the same route as Karazeel’s men. We’d just have to find our own way through. ‘Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks from above,’ Rich said cheerfully. ‘If they can do it, so can we.’ But I could see the worry in his eyes.
With every wary step the shroud loomed closer, taller than a skyscraper, blacker than the blackest night. It seemed to lean over us as we approached, threatening and claustrophobic. Soon — too soon — we reached it, and stood in silence, face to face with the black wall. Far over to our right the buildings of Marshall crouched in the dusk like animals waiting to pounce.
Tentatively, Richard reached out one hand, palm outwards. For a moment his hand was resting flat against the solid wall of shroud; then, with an effort of will I could almost see, he thrust his hand elbow-deep into the darkness. It was as if his forearm had been amputated. Behind me, someone gave the tiniest whimper.
There was a gleam in Richard’s eyes I was starting to recognise. ‘I’m going in, to see what it’s like.’
‘Richard — no!’ Gen’s eyes were huge and scared.
‘I’ll come with you, Rich. I agree — we have to know.’ I rummaged in my backpack and found my torch. Dug in my pack again,
and pulled out a coil of nylon rope. ‘Jamie.’ I handed it to him, twisting one end in a tight double loop round my hand. ‘Whatever you do, don’t let go. Rich —’ I held out my other hand, fingers spread. Rich gripped it with his warm paw, our fingers tightly intertwined, solid as a rock. Our eyes locked. Together, we stepped forward into the shroud.
Shakesh
It was worse than I’d imagined. Much worse. The shroud wasn’t like normal darkness: it had a cloying weight that caught in my throat like steam, but cold as ice. It pushed in on my eyeballs with the suffocating pressure of a black pillow, making me want to kick and struggle free. I felt trapped — couldn’t breathe. Taking a breath of shroud would be like taking a lungful of water — it would swamp me in darkness.
A sick wave of panic surged through me — and then Richard’s hand tightened on mine. His voice came faintly out of the blackness beside me, muffled, but cheerful as ever. ‘Pretty murky, huh? Can you hear something?’ I could — the faintest undulating rise and fall of sound, the sort of white noise air conditioning makes, or waves breaking on a beach very far away.
I fumbled for the switch and clicked on the torch. Off; on again. But there was nothing — not the faintest glimmer of light, even when I held it right up to my face. It was impossible to believe the others were only a couple of paces away. I couldn’t hear them at all; they could have been on another planet.
‘So.’ Richard’s voice was grim. ‘We’re going to have to go in blind. Follow our noses, and hope we don’t go in circles and get hopelessly lost.’
He was right: there was no other way. Or was there? I wished I could have got a closer look at the strange procession that had headed so purposefully into the darkness.
‘Had enough?’ I nodded, then remembered there was no way Rich could see me.
