Cloud Castles

by Michael Scott Rohan

  ‘E’en as you said, Master Stephen – e’en as we saw on the Chorazin’s stern, true enough. A pentacle – but a pentacle’s such a device as may serve many a turn, both good and ill, and be made in many fashions. Such as this I never saw before, with that swathe across the heart. Nor can I read this curst inscription! I’d have looked to find arcane signs, Greek figuring, Hebrew or Sanskrit ciphers, emblems elemental or zodiacal – or other alcheme or astrology. Were it not so concealed I’d think little enough o’t.’

  ‘Seems bare somehow,’ agreed Jyp softly, thumbing his narrow jaw. ‘Might be signs tricked up and twisted into all that fine filigree stuff,’ he added, flicking his flashlight across it. ‘Good way to conceal ’em, maybe. Or maybe not.’

  I began to feel stupid. Had I just started at shadows? Had I led everyone on a wild-goose chase? It didn’t seem possible – and yet they didn’t seem at all excited by what we’d found. ‘But this pattern underneath, in the pentagon here, what about that? I was hoping—’

  Jyp clicked his tongue softly. ‘New one on me. Might be just a decoration of some kind, no real meaning. Mind you, now …’ The words seemed to be dragged out of him. ‘Gone to a mort of trouble just to say nothing, haven’t they? And spent a whole heap of spondulicks.’

  He had a point there. My torch glowed on white English marble, black German, raw-meat pink Carrara that must have cost a fortune, green from God alone knew where and plummy brown with dark red veining, all separated by fine lines of gold. Yet all that costly material had been carefully pieced into nothing but a shapeless splash of colour. Seen this close, it was divided into a mass of rough-edged concentric shapes, a comic-book explosion smudged across the heart of the design, as if mocking the stiff regularity of the golden bars above. ‘Kind of like fire, isn’t it? Mall?’

  ‘Aye, though a flame would hardly be limned i’ those hues. Nor is it all within the pentagon.’ She kicked the edges of the carpet wider. ‘See, it crosses it here – and here, right to the outer margin of the circle.’

  ‘Now hold hard there a minute!’ said Jyp, softly but with mounting urgency. ‘Belay! Seeing it whole like that – dammit, I’m beginning to recognize something!’

  I began to feel that, too. ‘Something I’ve seen before, often, but nowhere like this …’ An amoeba, maybe. There was something amoeboid about it, with the light spot at the heart like a nucleus and long pseudopods stretching out in every direction. You half expected it to come flowing out towards you – but that was crazy. I swallowed. What was the matter with me?

  Mall shrugged. ‘Then you’ve the vantage of me; but this is a place such as sets cobwebs i’ the head. What says our spae-witch?’

  Only then we realized we hadn’t heard a word out of Katjka. We turned as one, and saw her standing there, arms outstretched, hands working in convulsive tangling patterns, repeated over and over. ‘Idiotss!’ she hissed, grinning with the effort of speaking. ‘Deluded fools! Did I not warn you it would be guarded? Do you not wonder why you are sso uncertain?’

  We gaped at each other, slack-jawed. We felt it as soon as she said it, weighing down on us like a stifling mantle, obscuring our thoughts. Nothing much … not important … doesn’t matter … forget it … forget …

  Suddenly my heart was stuttering. ‘You mean … they know we’re here?’

  Jyp snatched for his sword. ‘They’re coming? We’ve gotta—’

  Katjka half laughed. ‘Fear – is the next defence! I told you this was besst left to me! Go, before you trigger things worsse!’

  ‘Not without you!’ cried Mall, and drew her sword with a menacing hiss.

  I caught her arm. ‘The sign – our one chance, remember?’

  ‘Jehosaphat, it’s a map!’ yelled Jyp.

  ‘What?’ cried Mall.

  ‘Christ, you’re right!’ I shouted. ‘I should’ve known at once – a topographic map, the kind I use for climbing! And dammit, this one’s of a mountain, too!’

  ‘Right!’ barked Jyp excitedly. ‘The colours are the contours, the higher the lighter, right up to the light spot in the centre.’ His torch-beam touched it.

  The sound was immediate; it might have been a high wind, or a howling of many voices. So were the shadows, shadows that seemed to fall from the flashlight beam but stayed as it swept back, strong dark shadows across the map, creating strange streaks and pits and hollows, the illusion of detail, of three dimensions. Only it wasn’t an illusion. The shape in the pentagon was solid, swelling, rising, a looming mass of shadow spotted with sparks of fiery light, wreathed in swirling streaks like haloes of windborne cloud. And at the same instant the floor seemed to lurch under me, to tilt and slope inwards towards that smoky vision. I staggered, lost my balance, fell and slid. I clutched a handful of carpet and caught myself, managed to thrust my sword back into my belt but almost lost my grip. Jyp, hanging on higher up, grabbed me by the wrist and swung me back again. But the slope was steepening, throwing more and more of our weight onto our arms. The thing looked like a model mountain at the bottom of a pit now, pentagon and circle blotted out. I could even see tiny bristlings of dense forest on its flanks, and the bare rock at its summit gleaming under the moon. We were hanging on around the pit mouth, like ants scrabbling to escape an ant-lion.

  On the far side dangled Katjka, her petticoats flaring as she kicked out desperately for a foothold; and where the hell was Mall?

  I grabbed another fistful of the carpet, so Jyp could let go. I boosted him up by his heel, but he managed only another foot or two before sliding back. I kicked my heels down, and almost lost my grip again when I felt them dig into earth and rock; the slope was a hillside now, a steep valley side sloping down towards the swelling mountain at its heart. I boosted Jyp again, and he gained another foot or two; but he was incredibly strong. How long could Katjka hang on? ‘Keep trying!’ I yelled. ‘I’m going after her!’

  I heard his grunted reply, but it was obvious he couldn’t move easily from where he was. I tested my foothold, and let go the carpet. Even as it left my fingers it felt like a grass tussock. I snatched out as my foothold gave, caught the stem of a scrubby bush and inched my way over, kicking another hold. But the slope was getting steeper still, precipitous now, and widening, so that Katjka seemed to be receding. I saw her get a foothold as I had, and called out to her.

  ‘Get away!’ she screamed. ‘Idiot boy, you do not know what you rissk! Leave me, get back, save yourself!’ Red light from below flickered on her bare legs as she fought the slope. ‘Go!’ she yelled again. ‘I am not worth it!’

  Smoke boiled up around us, pungent, stinging, full of resin and sulphur and worse, and I coughed violently; but I clawed at the earth and stones, feeling my fingernails splinter and tear. I could still reach her – but what then? Fall with her? We’d be on a cliff by then.

  Too bad; I was past making sense now. I kicked another hold, reached out to a solid-seeming tussock – and felt it spill loose in my hand. My hold gave, I slipped, twisted, swung by one hand from the wiry little bush-stem, facing outward into the smoky chasm. Then I screamed aloud. Through the smoke, like a falling comet, a great pale flame rushed in towards me, as if to envelop me; and I all but let go. ‘Stephen!’ cried the fire; and I saw the human shape of it, the corona of hair that billowed around the head like a halo and streamed out like wisps of smoke behind. It was Mall, centuries old, near-immortal wanderer on the Outward paths of the Spiral, in the aspect that burned within her, yet rose to view only rarely and at times of terrible danger. One day, maybe, it would consume all that was mortal in her, and leave her demi-goddess indeed; for now it was fitful, draining, but terrible to encounter for friend and foe alike. Out of the flame a hand reached, coursing with the same cool fire, and caught mine; tingling agony danced over my wrist. Even in this aspect Mall couldn’t fly – not yet, perhaps; but she had caught our rope, and swung over the abyss.

  ‘Jyp—’ I choked.

  ‘He’s safe! Now save me the witch, for I cannot reach her alo
ne!’

  Her voice echoed among vast spaces. Clutching at her, I felt something of the same flame awaken, burning and tingling in my bones. I laughed, lightheaded, and cast loose with a springing kick. Over the abyss we swung, I reached out; Katjka caught my hand.

  And screamed, an ear-splitting shriek of real pain; her grip flew off, but I clamped my hand on her wrist again. She struggled convulsively, and I stared down, saw the flames that danced over my arms, not pale, but golden, as if altered somehow. Little electric flickers of them rode down her writhing arm and danced across her twisted features.

  ‘Hang on, you stupid bitch!’ I yelled. ‘D’you want to lose us both?’

  Her eyes, screwed shut, flashed open suddenly, and glared into mine. I almost let go. The pupils rolled and boiled like blazing cauldrons, red flame, consuming flame; and beneath her, out of the smoke, something flashed by. She swung, violently, and screamed with fright, as if something had snatched at her. ‘Haul up!’ I shouted. ‘Up, for God’s sake! Up!’

  I felt Mall’s vast strength take hold, lift us easily over the gulf, but even as we came up the speeding thing flew by again, or another like it, and Katjka screamed again. This time I heard tearing cloth, and the coat fell away at her shoulders as if the back was torn. Again that speeding something, half her skirt ripped away and the blood started in shallow welts on her bare thigh as though a claw had swiped her. Higher and higher we rose, but the smoke billowed under us, the mountain peak swelled and grew, and those frightening halo-things, too fast to see, swept by and struck – always at Katjka, never at me. She struggled no longer, except when they touched her, but twisted feebly in my grip.

  ‘Mall!’ I howled. ‘Hurry it up, will you?’

  ‘Easy, Stephen!’ came the echoing voice. ‘I am e’en now at the roof – you follow!’

  Desperately I kicked up as she hauled me, tried to lift Katjka that fraction higher; but the passing things rose with her, and I seemed to see the arms that swept out to strike – or were they striking? They were human arms or very like them, flung wide. I managed to hook one leg over the lip of the window as Mall hauled me through, and with that purchase I snatched Katjka up high enough to loop her free arm round my neck; but at the same instant she snapped rigid, and I felt another weight, as if someone clung to her legs now. And another, another, till I was trying to support three people, or that was how it felt. ‘Mall!’

  I felt one of her hands keep hold, the other release and reach past me, straining to reach Katjka’s arm. But Katjka, staring into my face, gasped, ‘Nej! No, Sstefan! They will pull you all down now, even her! Down to the Great Ssabbat, the unending pool of evil! The Brocken is too sstrong for you, for her, for anyone! Kill its agents! Tell – tell the Graal! But me – leave me where I belong!’

  Too suddenly for me, the arm around my neck flew away; the extra strain on my hand tore her slender wrist right through my fingers. As quickly as that, her ruined clothes flying free around her, she shot down into the cauldron that had been a room, dwindled and was gone. I swung there, in Mall’s grasp, shaking and numbed. Not only by the strain; but by the awful flash of longing I’d seen in those reddened eyes, the instant before she let go.

  Chapter Seven

  It was Mall who hauled me out, Mall aflame no longer, her blonde curls plastered to her brow with sweat. Mall who dragged me upright and shook me, though I could see the streaks on her own cheeks. ‘Lackwit!’ she yelled in my face, with the force of a slap. ‘Must needs look now to our selves!’ And she did as much for Jyp. ‘To heels, man! Afoot, down and away! Or would’st share her fate?’

  I saw what she meant. No need for concealment now; the cupola was flickering and flashing like a beacon, and as we flung the rope over we heard shouts and barking. Mall seized the rope, sprang out and went slithering down hand over hand, sea fashion, with only the odd kick off the wall; Jyp and I followed more slowly. When she reached the ground floor windows she sprang loose and dropped onto the lawn, casting about like a wary animal. We abandoned the scientific approach and slipped after her with skin-stripping speed; we jumped from lower down and landed rolling, out from behind the angle of the building.

  Suddenly, with no sound at all, the whole gardens were flooded with glaring light. It turned the open lawn stark white and threw the uniformed figures who came charging up into brutal silhouette. Before Jyp or I could move, Mall’s anger overrode her weariness. Springing up from her feral crouch, she unleashed a fearful swinging kick that caught the leading guard in the stomach and simply smashed him off his feet and into the man behind. A gun hit the ground and jarred off a burst at nothing, skittering across the terrace on its own vibration. A machine-pistol, safety off, no challenge – these weren’t any ordinary security men. The others jumped back. One raised his hand, and the turf spewed fragments where I’d been. But they were too slow, far too slow; they hadn’t fought out on the Spiral, and there was no rage in them. I drew and slashed in one savage sweep; the gun spun into a flowerbed, the man whipped round and fell. The last already lay at Mall’s feet.

  We ran then, shading our eyes, our long shadows racing across beside us like spindly giants. But we weren’t half-way to the trees when we heard the thudding of other feet behind us, and the hoarse, harsh panting. The dogs were after us, and our ghostly shield was gone.

  Mall was already turning to bay, sword held vertical in both hands. With one stroke she could sever even those blunt necks; but she made no move to. She stood, breathing deeply, as the beasts rushed in on her; and at the last moment she tilted the sword, caught the intolerable glare of the floods and with inhuman accuracy flashed it right into their eyes. They twisted, blinded; and she hit out with the flat only, a swift slapping left and right. They rolled, stunned and yelping. Jyp’s pistol barrels spat and smoked in turn; two of the lights went out in a spray of hot cinders, swathing us in shadow again. Mall plunged into the copse ahead of us, bounding through the undergrowth to the fence. I saw her run straight past the tree we’d come down, and take a mighty swing at the swathe of wire along the top. Too late to shout, I winced. There was the whipping twang of razor-wire parting, then a mighty explosive sizzle and a fat spark. Mall knew perfectly well about electricity, but she didn’t always remember.

  We hauled her out of the bushes, still clutching her scorched sword, shinned up into the gap she’d made, and, sitting astride the fence, struggled to hoist her after us. We had her draped across our knees when we heard the rushing footsteps, and hastily tipped her down. There was a muffled thud in the leaf-drifts below. But as we swung our legs across to jump after, we heard a harsh, ‘Halt! Ruhren Sie nicht!’ from outside. They’d used their heads and sent men round the fence. I couldn’t see them, but I heard their breathing, harsh and fast. Big men – heavies from the gate, probably. ‘Kom ‘runter!’ barked the voice. ‘Und kein Scheis—’

  More or less at their feet Mall rose up like some sort of local wood demon, plastered with several season’s leaves, and enveloped them. As we landed there was a brief thrashing, then we saw her beckoning. Silently I handed her her sword. She snatched it, and ran. Beside me Jyp tripped over something solid, and swore; and that was the first word spoken since we left the roof. We raced up the slope, wheezing and gasping; I was amazed I could still keep up with these two hardened superhumans. I even had the energy to risk a brief look back as we crested the rise. Flashlights were sweeping the woods below, and the grounds still blazed with floods; but the cupola was dark and silent and still.

  We ran through the night, not silently, maybe, but light-footed and fast enough to pass unheard. Jyp’s night eyes and sense of direction kept us in line and away from obstacles, and the steady rhythm of our feet and the roaring blood in our ears helped to blot out our simmering feelings. Just at the first hedge I heard what might have been a shot far behind, but it didn’t come anywhere near us. Across a road, through fields, vaulting a stream to more fields and a small neat farmyard, the kind the EC subsidizes so that German farm-owners can wor
k full-time on the assembly lines. Beyond that, across more fields, by the half-hidden shell of an old church, to the low wall of woodland into whose shadow we’d managed to push the helicopter. I only hoped we’d have the strength to push it out again. We were alert for pursuers, but we saw none. I guessed the guards mightn’t feel too eager, given what we’d done to the others. If Lutz had been at home it might have been different.

  Somebody had apparently filled the ‘copter with lead blocks while we’d been away, and Mall was a shadow of her normal self. Nevertheless we managed to haul it far enough on its skids from under the trees to get a clear take-off. When I slumped down into the pilot’s seat, though, I found my hands were shaking too much to press the starter. I knew I didn’t have long. It would be dawn soon, and people about; a helicopter in a field would be visible for miles and attract all kinds of attention, not least from the local cops. The sky ahead was growing definitely greyer, behind what looked like gathering clouds. I glanced back at my passengers, sprawled gasping in their seats. They gazed stonily back at me, as grey and drawn as I must have looked. Delay broke down our defences, and opened the door to memory. ‘What happened?’ I demanded, and was startled at how choked I still sounded. ‘What happened?’

  ‘What d’you think?’ said Jyp dully. ‘Like she said, we weren’t wary enough. We tripped the big one.’

  ‘Yes, yes, for Chrissake, I know that! I mean, what—Where’s she gone? Is she alive or dead?’

  Jyp’s mouth twisted. ‘Death she could’ve coped with. She felt four centuries was too long. She’d have preferred it.’