Cloud Castles

by Michael Scott Rohan

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Better get it out o’ here then, or something might happen tae it. Dead rough neighbourhood, this is.’

  ‘I’ve got business here. I go when I’m good and ready.’

  He raised his glass to his lips, and talked around it. ‘Fella might get himself an awfy sore face wi’ an attitude like that.’

  ‘Just what I was thinking.’

  He made a mock-surprised face and looked around the bar, courting a laugh. He didn’t get it. There was a taut, repressed atmosphere in the place. An ancient one-bar electric heater was scorching the lino as it obviously had for years, and the faint sickliness caught at the throat. He put down his drink deliberately, and pushed himself upright; so did I. There was more to this than met the eye; and if I wanted to know what it was, he was the obvious person to ask. He might take a little persuading, though.

  The barman hurried over. ‘I’ll have no squarin’ off in here. Drink up and get out, the pair o’ you, or I’ll have the cops here in two minutes. C’mon, piss off!’

  Neither of us bothered with our drinks. Slowly, keeping an eye on each other, we moved to the door. I opened it; he stood back, and I went out first. But I was still on the step when his heavy hand seized my shoulder, and I was thrown away back against the grime-blackened wall. The huge man swung himself out, and grinned at me, nastily. For the first time I noticed how large his teeth were, great splayed and distorted things, and how yellow. ‘I could settle ye inside or out,’ he grunted, ‘one way or t’other. But this way’s better.’

  He hadn’t scared me before, but the sheer strength of that hand altered things a little. And the teeth. Urgently I looked around; the street was empty, the light fading from the sky. From the occluded moon the shadows of the vast Victorian buildings poured down into the narrow way like pools of ink, dark, heavy, impassable. But one of them, above its crumbling ornament, cast a shadow tracery like a gigantic web, and my heart pounded harder at the sight of it. Then the man was looming over me, his white hair falling forward over his face, and his face swelling with it, growing longer, narrower. His lips curled back and blackened, a stench of breath rolled over me and hot slaver fell on my face. The hands that lifted were fingerless, featureless mitts – until black claws burst out between the coarse white fur. Then the moon sailed out into a wide gulf in the clouds. Eyes, narrowed and darkened, glittered above me with hotly vicious rage. The largest living land carnivore, I knew, could have looked a tyrannosaur in the eye; he glared down on me from around eleven feet, an adult male polar bear.

  But I had seen the shadowlace, the mastheads of great square-riggers that docked here, scoring the sky. And as the moon crossed it, without any visible change or shift, the gulf in the clouds became, for an instant, that window opening upon wider seas, the glittering steel blue of the cloud archipelago. A wild joy overtook me at the sight of it, the infinite road I’d sailed so often. I laughed in the creature’s face, and thrust out my hands; I expected a crash of glass, but instead came the faint whirr of an electric window wind. I was getting better at this. Then, with a swift spinning rush of air, the sword slapped down into my open palm. As quickly as that I lashed out, pushing the creature back across the battered dustbins by the door, and grabbed him by the greasy fur that had been his sweater. I ran the blade up under his jaw, where the slightest thrust would send it up into his brain. ‘And the inlay’s silver, in case you’re wondering. So one twitch too many and you’ll never taste another seal, friend. Now – where’s the Tavern?’

  There was an abrupt inflowing, and suddenly my fingers were sunk in a coarse jersey once again. ‘Is it you that’s got the Spear?’ gasped the big man, man once more.

  ‘You’re awfully inquisitive for somebody who’s about to have no head,’ I told him, and shook him by his sweater. ‘What if I was? You thinking of claiming a fiver for spotting me or something?’

  ‘There’s prices oot on yer bloody head!’ he growled, trying to twist away. ‘You’ve got the smell o’ it on you! I’m no’ taking you near ony mate o’ mine!’

  ‘Prices?’ I demanded. ‘You mean, more than one? And what mate? You mean Jyp? He’s in port?’

  His eyes were wide, and he was sweating. ‘Lissen, if it’s you stole that spear, what the hell use have ye for me? Or Jyp? What’ve we ever done tae you?’

  ‘I don’t want to harm Jyp, you bloody fool!’ I barked. ‘I’m his friend! I want his help! And for some reason I can’t get through to the Tavern!’

  ‘Are ye surprised? After yon rioting? The Wardens have a’ but built a bloody wall! You ken fine what could’ve spilled over into here wi’ the Children loose!’

  ‘I do, Paddington, I do,’ I murmured, and backed off, letting him stand up. ‘I saw some of it. The Wardens, eh? But we’re already over the boundaries, or you couldn’t have changed and I couldn’t have called my sword. So, you can guide me from here, can’t you? Get in the car!’

  ‘If you’ve got the Spear,’ he repeated, shaking his head. ‘There’s no barrier could stand against that …’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’ I flung open the door. ‘Get in.’

  The big man was shaking like a leaf, but he didn’t move. Deliberately I tossed the sword onto the back seat. He started as if I’d kicked him, and shook his head wonderingly. And then, mistrustfully, he opened the driver’s door and clambered in. ‘Jist who are you?’ he demanded. ‘You’re not like any sorceror I ever met.’

  ‘Top marks, Paddington. I’m not. Now – which way?’

  The way there had never seemed so long or so winding as it did tonight. Through the old docklands we crawled, afraid of missing a turning, dwarfed by the gloomy bulk of the warehouses around us, stone ghosts of a vanished empire of commerce – vanished, that is, within the Core. In everyday ordinary streets they were more than half of them empty, eyeless shells with windows boarded or broken, grass growing between the crumbling bricks. In places they were demolished, their places taken by rusty corrugated-iron sheds, half-empty industrial developments, timber yards and small grubby engineering shops, or simply vacant lots where the grass and the fireweed blew. But around and behind those streets, in their shadow, older thoroughfares still ran, and tall buildings filled with strange merchandise from every corner of the Spiral, for sale to stranger places still; and above their roof-tops towered the webbed rigging of the tall ships that bore it. We passed a mule train, laden with heavy sacks, led by men with hawk-nosed impassive faces, and it was only then that I began to trust my ursine navigator. The men carried bows, and they glanced around suspiciously at us. We passed a strange silent truck, gleaming in white and gold, that came rolling smoothly down one main road on two black spheres, apparently unattached. The big man and I exchanged glances; even aspects of the far future could be reached along the Spiral, for those who were clever enough to navigate there. But it wasn’t that popular, the trade being low and the culture shock immense. And on the pavement outside one warehouse, hooded crouching figures were gesticulating over piles of sacks that twitched. I accelerated past there, and the big man nodded.

  ‘Spooky,’ he said succinctly.

  I might have pointed out, when I was new to this game, that the same could be said of him; but I’d already called him Paddington, and tact is something you learn early. Or never.

  ‘Turn left down here,’ he said, and where a minute before I’d noticed only a wall there was a narrow lane. And at its end, glowing against the night, mirrored in glistening puddles, were the warm red-curtained windows of the Illyrian Tavern.

  ‘You left your drink,’ I told him, as I swung the car across the junction, and onto the stone-flagged court at the side of the Tavern. ‘I’ll buy you another.’

  ‘I thank you,’ he said. ‘But if ye’ll but let me out, I’ll be on my way. No insult tae you, for I see you’re something of a leader of men; but I want nothing of yours, or that clings about you. I smell danger in the being with you. And so may Jyp; but that’s for himself to say.’ He clambere
d out, tossed his white head and sniffed the air. ‘You’re expected,’ he grunted, turned and lumbered off into the night.

  That didn’t altogether surprise me. But even here I hesitated, under the familiar sign that seemed to show a different set of languages every time, all of them gloriously misspelt and unidiomatic. I’d brought danger on my friends often enough, but never so consciously as now. Still, there was no help for it; I had to have their advice. I pushed upon the door, and the familiar waft of spice and beer, strong pickles, woodsmoke and odours less familiar wafted out around me, the low buzz of voices, mostly human but not quite all. It carried with it the memories of kindness and, more, of belonging. I shut out the world behind me, and went down the steps. And at the foot Katjka was waiting.

  She draped her arms around my neck, and I wrapped mine around her. It wasn’t at all hard to be fond of Katjka, though she could be disconcerting and just occasionally a lot more than that – and though the position made it fairly obvious that, as usual, she hadn’t washed quite recently enough. It wasn’t in her cultural background, whereas cheap rosewater apparently was, in quantity. She was dressed, also as usual, in one of her peasantish dirndl outfits, if you can imagine the kind of peasant who hangs around under lamp-posts and leans low over bars, somewhere between a milkmaid and Lili Marlene. But tonight there was nothing of her usual sardonic come-on; the wide, innocent grey eyes that were the best of her were troubled, with dark smudges beneath, and the cynical furrows that flanked her mouth were deeper somehow. I bent down and kissed her, and noticed her lips were badly bitten.

  ‘I am glad you are ssafe, Sstefan,’ she murmured, transforming my name with her sibilant accent. ‘Sso nearly you were not, asstray in all that. But you did well, sso well!’

  ‘Last night, you mean? You know about that?’

  She gave me another highly pneumatic squeeze. ‘I know, some at any rate, though there is much I do not undersstand – that bitch who is trying to kill you, for one. But ah, I’m proud of you, proud!’ She followed up the squeeze with a wriggle that did terrible things to my self-control, and drew me down into the warm embrace of the tavern’s main room. Its customers mostly preferred the privacy of shadow and soft speech, so it was hard to tell how many there were; but today it had a curiously empty, quiet feeling about it. ‘Come, Master Pylot is here, he must hear from you all about your heroicss!’

  ‘Yes, but how do you know? You weren’t … keeping an eye on me?’

  She laughed, ‘Would that I could, always! It might while away the long days here – sso long, sso very long! But it would be too much a strain. Besides,’ she gave me a sidelong look, ‘I sshock easily. This …’ She shrugged. ‘This was close at hand, a violence in the Sspiral; that I was bound to esscry by all the means I have. And in doing sso I found many things – and one of them was you.’

  I stirred uncomfortably. ‘Making a bloody fool of myself. Trying to stem a flood. Bossing everyone about—’

  ‘Beating ssome sense into their thick skullss!’ she spat. ‘Ssomebody musst lead. I know you, I love you, my Sstefan, but I would not have thought it of you, you who have sstood on a great threshold sso long, never quite sstepping over. Something happens, something grows within you, at lasst. Those times, they called for one who would stand against the flood, who would become a leader of men. And you came forth.’

  I thought of witches, and scratched my head. ‘I didn’t do much good. It was a God-awful mess—’

  ‘Ssome is better than none!’ she snapped, eyes hooding. ‘Believe me! You used your head, you saw what was afoot, you cut the heart out of it where you could, both in your own time and in the sshadow – and where it was not sso clear, you let it be. Without you that night’s work would have been worse – so much, sso much worse! As I feared it would; for already I was uneasy. Ssomething has happened, Sstefan, something you would not know of, but it is ssomething awful, terrible. Something that has not happened in all the days of my being here, and they are very many. We were expecting trouble.’

  ‘Which translated,’ drawled a quiet voice from the shadowy stall near the open fire, ‘means I was lookin’ for the first ship out. Dammit, I’m just in off the Ultima Thule run with a cargo of fire-amber and rhino furs and icicles in parts personal! All I want’s a quiet spell and my feet warming, and suddenly here’s all Hell breaks loose.’ Jyp snorted uneasily, and levered his spare frame up to greet me. ‘Literally, just about. And now look what the wind blew in!’

  ‘It nearly didn’t!’ I told him, when we’d exchanged the usual backpounding and ritual insults. ‘Blow me in, I mean. Is it the Wardens, or what? There was hardly a road open!’

  Jyp nodded. ‘Me, I’d’ve been just as happy to see you back home and out of all this. Still, ol’ Sir was a good safe guide, nobody’d bother you with him on board. Glad to see you got on okay.’

  ‘The preliminaries were a bit rough, but – Sir?’

  ‘Well, just what’d you call a seven-foot guy who –’

  ‘– can turn into a polar bear? Right. But listen, what is all this? What’s been happening?’

  Jyp sucked his breath between his teeth, obviously very hesitant. He never liked drawing me into the darker affairs of the Spiral, not since he’d accidentally done so on our first meeting and almost got me killed several times over. ‘Better let that ride awhile. Not the kind of thing you get gabby about, unless you have to. But I can tell you, I’m just hitchin’ up my pants ready to sling my hook for quieter climes when Kat here shows me you’re right in the thick of it – and I figure that sure as hell you’ll be panting up here next morning, so I stick around. Meanwhile everyone else’ll have the same hunch, and the devil a berth I’ll ever raise, not so much as a fo’c’sle flop on a tin-tray coaster. Things I do for my friends!’

  I chuckled. ‘You know damn well there’s hardly a skipper on the Spiral who wouldn’t cheerfully trade in his soul, his wife or half his cargo to have you as his sailing-master. But don’t think I don’t appreciate the thought; I’ve a lot to tell, more to ask. So why don’t we – Myrko!’

  The landlord, face agleam like an appreciative toad, came barrelling out of the darkness, bearing a tray laden with beer steins, tujica flasks and bowls of fierce pickled vegetables. ‘Daj, daj, panye Stefan, they tell me you is comink! And I ssay trouble, trouble, bielzhaje trouble – hah? Pulls you like lodestone. So I pulls the beer. Skies may fall, spearss be stolen, but beer – that you can trust! Hah!’

  ‘Stolen – what was that?’

  But he just bustled about the table and wouldn’t be drawn; which was unusual. And under the patter he was looking more serious than usual, too. I began to press Katjka, but she pushed me down into Myrko’s cushion-draped settles, put my feet up before the fireplace with its crackling logs, and flopped herself down between us.

  ‘It’s not sso often I get ssandwiched between two such bravos,’ she smirked, stretching and writhing like a cat in the fireglow. Then abruptly her mood changed again; her eyes grew hooded and cold. ‘Sso now – tell of last night!’

  ‘It goes back longer than that,’ I said. ‘I was literally just home – I’d been to Germany, for the C-Tran—’

  Katjka sat bolt upright, and rounded on me. ‘Germany?’

  Jyp put his hand over his eyes. ‘Oh, Lord,’ he said quietly; and Jyp had had a religious upbringing. ‘Say it ain’t so …’

  ‘You’d better hear it,’ I said. ‘From the top …’

  They listened; and as they listened I felt Katjka’s body stiffen against mine, and her breath go faster, shallower, as if she was living every minute of it with me, that mad race across cloud-driven heights, its crazy aftermath, the vision of the city and my terrible homecoming. Jyp stared moodily past his outstretched feet, into the fitful patterns of the fire, and never interrupted; but at the end he leaned forward sharply, shivering, and tossed two big logs into the grate.

  ‘Figures,’ was all he said at first. Katjka said nothing, only held on hard to my arm, as if striving
to weigh it down. But both their faces betrayed their feelings – pale, stricken, appalled.

  ‘What figures, Jyp?’ I asked patiently.

  ‘Clouds. Mountains. Both fractal forms, kind of similar progressions. Make the transition easier.’ He watched the ceaseless shaping and unshaping in the flames as if it meant something to him, and perhaps it did, for he could draw meaning from the flux and flicker of space and time along the Spiral itself, and steer a true course between them. After a while he added, ‘That town … how’d you feel there?’

  ‘You mean, apart from hunted? I … I liked it. I think I’d have been drawn to it even without Le Stryge’s ’fluence or whatever it was he put on me.’

  ‘A geass,’ snorted Katjka. ‘A brutal thing to wrench at mind and heart.’

  ‘Kind of a subtle one, to work so directly and still not tip off the poor guy caught up in it. Stryge’s been learning himself some new tricks, it sounds. And you don’t even know what the damn place is called? Then I’ll tell you. It’s Heilenberg.’

  ‘Heidelberg?’

  Jyp’s face twisted. ‘Heilenberg. And I wish I had a nickel for all the guys who’ve spent half their lives struggling to find that little town that you just landed and waltzed so calmly into, that’s all. It’s – what’d be the word? – one of the most powerful places on the Spiral. No, power-filled, that’d maybe come a tad nearer.’

  ‘Numinous?’ I suggested.

  ‘Yeah. Wish I had your schooling. Numinous it is – and it’s one of the most dangerous, too.’

  ‘As you say.’ I sighed. ‘It figures.’

  ‘Yeah. Kind of goes together. See, it’s like this. You know the Spiral well enough by now, you know how places have their shadows …’

  I nodded. Long shadows, like those the fire threw across the stone-flagged hearth; thrown out of the Core into the Spiral, out of time into timelessness. Blending and uniting the changing natures of a place to embody its character. Everywhere men have lived – and more …

  ‘Well, like you might expect, whole nations cast those shadows too – only kind of broader, enveloping the others. That’s what we ran into back in Jawa. But whole continents, now, groups of nations, they do as well. Only they’re less material, sort of misty; but there’s almost always some kind of focus, a centre, a place that embodies their spirit, their history, all that and more. All that’s truest about them, what some folk’d call culture or civilization, but that don’t more than half cover it. Heilenberg, now, you could call it the heart of Europe, of European civilization and everything gives it its inner life and strength. That’s why you felt right at home.’