Beyond the Shroud

by V M Jones

  I crept quietly towards the sound, my heart thumping in my chest. The stone corridor stretched ahead into blackness … and then at last the dim circle of torchlight shone on metal bars: the door of a cell.

  I fumbled for the keyhole, my hand shaking, praying the key would fit. Now the words of the chant had taken form: ‘I am Meirion — Meirion the Prophet Mage. I am Meirion — Prophet Mage of Karazan.’ Understanding flashed through me. Alone in total darkness for who knew how long, the invisible prisoner was clinging to sanity by repeating his name over and over … holding on to who he was, because it was all he had.

  The key grated into the lock — jammed. Cursing, I twisted it back and forth. It was stuck fast. I could feel the roughness of rust in the lock … desperately, I jerked, and it came free. I spat on the key — once, twice — rubbed it. Back into the lock — left … right … something gave, and the key turned.

  I eased the door open. Silence filled the cell now, except for the drip — drip — drip of water. I edged towards the back wall, following the beam of light. Something squealed and skittered away. I could see something on the floor — a bundle of twigs. No — not twigs.

  Toes, the flesh fallen away to leave bare bones under tents of skin. Above them, legs, shrunk to nothing, the knees obscene lumps. A filthy loincloth. Ribs as bare as a skeleton’s. Arms cruelly stretched, shackled wrists bolted to the wall. A beard, matted with grime. A tangled mane of hair, dark with the filth of years. A face with no eyes, shrunken lids loose pouches of skin over empty sockets … a face tilted up at a strange angle as if it was staring sightlessly towards the invisible sky. An iron collar as wide as my hand circling the neck, forcing the chin up. The steady drip of water falling on the bare forehead, then trickling into the empty sockets and down into the beard like tears.

  My hand shaking, terrified of touching him, I reached up, fumbling for a keyhole. Yes! There it was, I could feel it … but it was tiny, encrusted with rust. There was no way the key would ever fit …

  A whisper of breath brushed my cheek like a cobweb. I froze. The face was expressionless as a corpse — but I realised I could hear words — the faintest whisper, dry as dust in the darkness. ‘The five are come, Man-child … the time is nigh …’

  There was the scrape of a boot behind me, and a heavy hand fell on my shoulder. My knees buckled … and Rich’s voice came hoarsely out of the darkness: ‘Hurry, Adam! They’re coming back!’

  ‘Rich — the shackles — the key won’t —’

  Rich pushed past me to the living skeleton hanging from the wall. Reached up and snapped the iron manacles and the collar like sticks of spaghetti. Hoisted the limp body in a fireman’s lift and headed out of there at a run, with me behind him.

  We raced back along the main passageway. The others were clustered round the open pit, Jamie stuffing a last handful of pastries into his pack. I could hear the rattle of the portcullis, and the echo of heavy footsteps marching towards us.

  I stuffed the torch into my pack and shouldered it, Tiger Lily squirming inside. Vaulted down into the void. Felt myself falling, a metre, two metres — then landed thigh-deep in raw sewage, thick and stinking. Held up my arms to Rich. Took the prisoner from him, light as a feather … lowered him beside me. Jamie tumbled down with a splash and a moan. Rich lowered Gen, pale and bewildered-looking. Kenta hopped down, trying not to retch. I took Hannah gently from Rich’s outstretched arms, and held her close. She clung to me like a little limpet. ‘Yuck,’ she whispered in my ear, and hugged tighter.

  ‘Are we all here?’ I breathed. ‘Who’s got Weevil?’

  ‘Me — Kenta.’

  The square of grey above us darkened, the stocky form of Rich blocking out the light. My heart lurched. The grid — how would he close the grid from inside? There was no way he could reach it once he’d dropped into the sewer. But Rich had thought of that. He swung by his hands from one rung to the next, monkey-bar style; then braced his feet against the wall of the shaft and heaved. The grill grated across the floor with a grinding squeal that almost drowned out the clatter of the second portcullis, close — so close.

  The grid clunked into place and Rich plopped down beside me. ‘Hard to tell whether we’re in the shit, or out of it,’ he muttered with a grin. ‘And now — let’s get out of here!’

  The Way of the Dead

  A split second later all hell broke loose above us. There was a harsh cry of dismay and the rasp of swords being drawn from their scabbards. Shouts, the crash of cell doors being flung open, the drumming of running feet … then the hoarse fanfare of a trumpeted alarm.

  We shrank back against the slimy wall where the shadows were deepest, hardly daring to breathe. We’d used precious seconds to re-lock the cell doors and replace the keys on their hooks in the hope that the guards would believe the mystical Mauler had somehow conjured us away — if we’d simply vanished into thin air, there’d be no point looking for us. But now the alarm had sounded, and the search was on. Kai’s words echoed in my mind: King Karazeel would loose the Faceless, and they would hunt you down …

  The crosshatch of shadow cast by the grid darkened and shifted as someone held a burning brand close to the bars. A rough voice boomed down the tunnel towards us, shockingly close: ‘They cannot have taken the Way of the Dead, I tell you. They are children, fool — maggots, not flies. Use your wits, if you have them …’

  Further away, another voice growled, ‘We’ll swing for this …’

  A boot scraped against the grating, and heavy footsteps stamped away.

  Rich gave me a shove — the sooner we got away from there, the better. I groped for the gaunt form of the old man beside me, and gently took his arm. It was like holding a broomstick. I was still carrying Hannah, her legs wound tightly round my waist, light as a feather. My eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and I could just make out the faint figures of the others. Without speaking, I motioned them on into the darkness.

  As silently as we could, we crept forward through the stinking ooze. Soon we’d left the dim light filtering through the grid far behind us, and it was completely dark. After a whispered discussion, we dug in Richard’s pack for his torch and turned it on, but it made the surrounding darkness even more oppressive.

  The tunnels twisted and wound through the heart of the mountain like a labyrinth, branches leading away randomly to left and right. We ignored them, doing the best we could to keep heading in the same direction, trying to stick to what we hoped was the main tunnel. But it was like trying to navigate a maze in a nightmare … soon we had lost all sense of direction, and one way seemed as good as another.

  We sloshed grimly on.

  At some stage Hannah dropped off to sleep — her head nestled itself in the angle of my shoulder, and her soft, regular breathing tickled my neck.

  It felt like hours later that I realised the thick stench had lightened. The darkness was lifting, too — at first the shaft of torchlight had cut through the blackness like a blade, but the beam had been fading steadily as we walked, and now I realised it had given out altogether. Without me noticing the pitch-dark had given way to translucent greyness, and the cess we’d been wading through had dwindled to a slimy sludge that made our booted feet slither and slide as we walked.

  We rounded another bend and turned a corner … it grew steadily lighter, and I could almost taste the fresh air.

  I turned to the others with the beginnings of a grin — and then my feet scooted out from under me, and I found myself skidding helplessly forward. My boots kicked desperately for some kind of foothold, and I realised with a sickening lurch that the floor of the tunnel was sloping downwards. Far from slowing down, I was speeding up — I slithered round a bend, and saw the tunnel winding down in front of me more and more steeply.

  My breath had huffed out when I’d fallen, and now I gasped out a warning to the others — way too late. I sensed rather than saw them skidding down the slope behind me, as if we were on a giant water slide … and then the tunnel swooped round
a final bend and straightened, and a bright square of light was rushing towards me with terrifying speed.

  Legs kicking, my free arm flailing, I hurtled towards it, totally out of control, hanging onto Hannah like grim death and hearing her squealing in my ear: ‘Isn’t this fun, Adam? Faster — go faster!’ With a sickening jolt I saw there were bars in the opening — metal uprights as thick as a man’s thigh, encrusted with gooey red rust and dripping slime — we’d smash into them!

  Then I was on top of the exit and saw it was huge — wider than a door — and the bars were far enough apart that if I twisted and turned and aimed myself …

  I shot clean through them and down like a stone into nothingness, my eyes squeezed tight shut and my stomach somewhere back in the sewers of Shakesh.

  And then there was an almighty SPLASH and I was sprawled waist-deep in water, scrabbling to get out of the way before the others landed on top of me.

  The water was far from clean — there was an oily film on the surface, and it smelt like the toilets at Highgate on a bad day. But it was a huge improvement on the stuff we’d been in before, and Hannah and I splashed happily to the edge like kids at the beach.

  We’d landed in a shallow, almost circular pool. A vertical cliff face, dark and menacing, stretched above us and away to either side. Squinting up I could see the aperture we’d fallen through five metres or so above us, a glistening crust of gunk dribbling down the rock wall below it like a festering scab. We were at the foot of the plateau the fortress of Shakesh was built on — I could see the buttresses of the castle far above, though from this angle most of it was hidden by the towering cliff. There was no entrance I could see, and no exit other than the one we’d come through — I guessed the main gate must be on a side where the ground sloped less steeply.

  Turning, I saw that the pool narrowed into a shallow stream that wound away to meet the vast expanse of swamp … and at its edges, like a thick sea fog waiting to roll in and engulf us, loomed the edge of the shroud.

  Jamie was beside me, fiddling importantly with something. ‘According to my compass, we’ve come out on the western side of Shakesh — and I’m pretty sure the main entrance is to the south. Looking at the angle of the sun —’ he pointed up to a hazy patch in the low cover of cloud — ‘that must mean it’s evening — and my stomach tells me it’s time for dinner.’

  ‘We should try the microcomputer again,’ said Rich. ‘Looking at where we’ve just been, it’s no wonder it didn’t work.’

  Jamie’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘What’re we going to do with him?’ He gestured across to the prisoner, sitting at the edge of the pool with his knees bent and his head resting on his arms. I stared at him, fascinated and full of horrified pity.

  He was even thinner than I’d thought — and dirtier. His face was hidden, but I could count every one of his ribs and every bone in his back. The skin stretched over them was black with grime; it was impossible to tell the colour of his hair. The loincloth, soaking wet from its dousing in the pool, was a filthy, tattered rag that barely covered him.

  ‘You brought him, Adam,’ Jamie was hissing, ‘but I reckon you should have asked us first. We don’t know who he is — whether he’s good, or … We can’t just leave him. You should have thought it through.’

  ‘He was in the dungeons of Shakesh, Jamie. That automatically puts him on our side. And I do know who he is,’ I said. ‘His name is Meirion, and he’s a mage — a prophet mage.’

  ‘What’s a mage?’ asked Richard. ‘If you ask me, he’s a crackpot. He’s been locked up in the dark too long — I heard him burbling away back there, and he’s totally lost it, poor guy.’

  ‘He’s starving, and he’s probably been tortured,’ said Kenta fiercely. ‘I expect we’re the first friendly people he’s seen in years — and we’re hanging back as if he’s a leper, or an animal at the zoo. Shame on us!’

  She was right. I felt myself flush as I watched her walk primly across to him, Hannah skipping along beside her with Tiger Lily in tow. Kenta bent and placed a gentle hand on the bowed and grimy back, then removed her own cloak — soaked as it was — and spread it over him. As if in slow motion, the tangled head lifted, the hollow sockets staring up at her. I should have warned her … but being Kenta, she smiled down at him without so much as flinching. Then she rummaged in her pack, brought out her water bottle, and held it to his lips.

  ‘I guess we’ll have to take him back with us,’ Rich muttered reluctantly. ‘Get him cleaned up, and give him a feed. Some medicine too, maybe. Then he can pop back again through the computer and carry on with his life in Karazan, just like before.’ He grinned. ‘Imagine old Q’s face when he sees him!’

  Imagine Q’s face when he sees Hannah, I thought, watching her squat next to Kenta, solemnly unwrap a stick of gum and offer it to Meirion. ‘Tiger Lily likes you,’ she was chirping. ‘And she hardly ever likes strangers …’

  ‘You’re right, Rich — he must come with us. And now, I’ve hung about here long enough. I’m for a hot shower and some serious food — wonder what’s on the menu at Quested Court? Come on, Gen.’ I took her hand. She was pale and dazed-looking — she hadn’t spoken since we left the dungeon, following us through the sewers like someone sleepwalking. Now she trailed obediently across to the others.

  ‘OK, Jamie — let’s try it again.’ I held out my hand. ‘Well, come on!’ I said impatiently. ‘The microcomputer! Do you want to stay here forever? Dig it out!’

  Jamie gulped. His eyes flicked to his bulging pack, then back to me again. He turned bright red, and his eyes filled with tears. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish, but no words came out.

  You didn’t have to be the Prophet Mage of Karazan to figure it out. Jamie had left the microcomputer on the guards’ table back in the dungeon.

  A scientific fact

  ‘OK, let’s look at our options,’ I said grimly.

  ‘Not that we have any, thanks to you,’ muttered Rich, giving Jamie a dark look.

  We were sitting by the edge of the pool, sheltered from view of the castle by the cliff. The sun had come out from the clouds, its slanting evening rays reflecting off the swamp like a mirror of gold. The rock was warm against our backs, and a makeshift picnic of fruit and rolls was spread out on Richard’s sleeping bag.

  But the mood was dismal — and you only had to look at the others’ tense faces and Jamie’s swollen eyes to see why.

  Far from wolfing down bread and honey like I’d have been doing in his place, Meirion had taken himself off a short distance and was standing with his back to us, his face turned up to the setting sun. He couldn’t see it, I realised with a pang, but he could feel it — and maybe, after years of darkness, the warmth of sunlight on his skin was more important to him than food.

  ‘Option one,’ I went on, ignoring Rich. ‘We go back into Shakesh and find the microcomputer.’

  ‘But it was on the table,’ said Jamie in a small voice. ‘The guards will have turned that whole dungeon inside out. There’s no way in the world it’d still be there.’

  He was right — by now the microcomputer would be in the hands of King Karazeel, Exhibit A … and trying to get it back from him wasn’t even an option worth discussing.

  ‘I won’t go back in there,’ said Hannah firmly.

  So much for option one.

  ‘Option two …’ I hesitated. Was there an option two?

  ‘We spend the rest of our lives in Karazan,’ growled Rich. ‘But cheer up, guys: with the Faceless after us, that won’t be long.’

  ‘We could ask Meirion for advice,’ suggested Kenta doubtfully; ‘though he hasn’t spoken a single word. I wonder whether he’s quite …’

  Rich gave me an ‘I told you so’ glance.

  Suddenly, abruptly, Gen spoke. I hadn’t realised she’d been listening — and maybe she hadn’t. There was a pretty, low-growing plant on the banks of the pool, with tiny white flowers like daisies. She’d made a little pile of them and was stringi
ng them together into a chain. Now she looked up and across at Meirion, her eyes unfocused and dreamy. ‘The legends be truth. The tales of a portal in the Cliffs of Stone …’

  We stared at her; then at each other.

  ‘Huh?’ said Rich. ‘Say again, Gen?’

  But Gen just smiled and sighed, and went back to her daisy chain.

  ‘That’s what Kai said when you told him where we came from, Adam!’ announced Hannah.

  ‘What’s a portal?’ asked Rich.

  ‘It’s a gate — or a doorway!’ Jamie was on his feet, his face pink with excitement. ‘Kai thought we’d come through it, but then you told him about the computer, Richard. So that means …’

  Even Weevil had stopped gloomily nibbling his slice of apple and was capering about, chittering excitedly.

  ‘It means there’s a legend in Karazan about some kind of magical gateway to another world —’

  ‘Our world —’

  ‘But it’s not just a legend —’

  ‘It’s the truth!’

  ‘Maybe these are the Cliffs of Stone,’ Jamie said hopefully, gazing up at the dark wall of rock above us. ‘Maybe the portal’s that hole … and if we go through in the other direction, we’ll be home!’

  Somehow I doubted it — it seemed impossible that the stinking, gunge-encrusted sewage outlet could be magical … and even if it was, there was no way we could ever climb back up to it. My mind was racing. Like the others, I hadn’t heard about this ‘portal’ till today — so why did it sound so familiar? A memory hovered on the fringes of my mind, agonisingly close …

  Kenta was stashing the leftovers away in Jamie’s pack. Rich heaved himself to his feet, frowning. ‘You know what I think of when I hear cliffs of stone? That real high cliff where we came into Karazan — remember?’

  Jamie’s eyes lit up. ‘Yeah! If you think about it, it’s logical that’s where it would be — at what Q calls the ‘entry point’! Remember what Kai once told us? Magic be logic …’