Cloud Castles

by Michael Scott Rohan

  ‘You sawn-off little ratfink!’ yelled Jyp, flailing against his own bonds. ‘You’re no greater’n all shit, y’ hear?’

  ‘You are scarcely equipped to judge, Pilot,’ said the little man imperturbably. ‘But even you can perceive the scale of the force that dwells here – and the power of the Brocken, remember, is mine. It will become more so, as only through me it achieves its ancient ends, which began when the first men spread across this land in the wake of the retreating Ice. Then … ah, yes, then!’ His chilly eyes became gloating suddenly. ‘A new Master is about to emerge.’

  Jyp stared, and I understood what had struck him. That wasn’t at all like the old Stryge, austere and cruel but never betraying such bare ambition. He was a monster, in his way; but this was Le Stryge plus something else, and far, far worse. This was a devouring devil. And yet obscurely, impossibly, I found myself pitying him.

  The airship was circling now, easing in towards the landing shelf with a hesitant care that made me realize just how good Jyp and Alison had been at piloting it. Le Stryge nodded, amused; he seemed to be thinking the same. ‘You have talents, abilities beyond the common, all of you. That is my only reason for keeping you alive. It would be criminal to let such gifts perish needlessly. Therefore, if you do not all wish to be thrown away and wasted utterly, if you wish some tiny shred of your individuality and identity to remain, then you would do well to hold yourself in readiness and accept what comes. Remember, I am not a sadistic little idiot like that fool Don Petro. I will rule, not despoil.’

  I looked at him; and I remembered his dark brand of magic, the awful familiars in human form he kept and the black suspicions of how he’d come by them, the murderous cold wrath he’d more than once displayed. And now, I guessed, he was hardly more himself than Don Petro had been; he’d plunged too deeply into dark waters, and been overwhelmed. Like so many others I’d encountered, he’d made what he thought was an alliance and turned out to be servitude. It was the mysterious creature of this mountain, wherever it dwelt, that looked out from behind those eyes now, as much as the man himself. The fate he was predicting he had already met himself. He’d swallowed fire in order to breathe it, and become the first to burn.

  There was no need to ask what that force would do; the example was all around us. A degradation and depravity beyond ordinary comprehension, almost infantile in its viciousness; that was what the alliance of these two dark minds would create. No doubt they meant to spread it, too. Now I could guess the point of Lutz’s neo-Nazi links, and the Children of Night fomenting riot and murder in a peaceful demonstration. Their corrupting purpose would spread like gangrene from country to country by that kind of means, by old suspicions and hatreds inflamed, by war even. I could just imagine that cold face gloating over the aftermath of a battle or a brisk bout of ethnic cleansing, then stirring up the losers to return the favour, until in the end the whole human race was swept up. A fate like Katjka’s, with no chance to fly from it—

  Like Katjka’s. Voices rode the air, tearing at my ears.

  The winds are scarcely merciful. And they are never still.

  The image was bitter in my mind, bitter and terrible; I hardly dared confront it. Katjka dangling over that impossible gulf, with the creatures of the winds plucking at her like sharks at a struggling swimmer, and that fearful blend of terror and longing distorting her face.

  But me – leave me where I belong!

  Her hand, slipping away from mine. Her shape whirling away, barely visible against the smoke and the glare. The creatures hadn’t pulled her down. It was Katjka herself. Even after centuries of remorse the things she had done, the unhallowed pleasures she’d taken in them, those had weighed her down. The remembered lure, the scarred self-image; they had made her want to fall. As a dog returns to his vomit, the addict to his drug, pleasure and punishment together; and if only I’d understood I might have reached out more than a hand to her, more than merely physical support. But there hadn’t been time. It was too late.

  Was it – entirely?

  I reached out with my free hand, my Spear hand, straining hard against the binding withies; but my arm was still held down. Le Stryge glared at me; but after a second he laughed contemptuously, and turned away to watch the other airship wobble in to land. In my heart I knew he was right; alone, unaided, I couldn’t shift anything. I needed something extra, something that came from within, I needed to burst into flame like Mall—

  I twisted violently about to catch her eye, but her head sagged, and I didn’t dare make a noise in case Le Stryge noticed. Desperately I willed her to just glance my way, even for an instant; but deep gouges on her neck and arm leaked blood over the thorns, and her hair overhung her face. Softly I pursed my lips and blew; the curls stirred, and I caught a flash of green. But beneath it, on her cheek, I saw something that shocked me more deeply, a single smudged streak. On her? Mall? I mouthed at her, furiously, praying she wouldn’t make a sound. Her eye was dull and dazed, as if the weight of this place had settled on her more heavily. But she seemed to understand what I was saying, because slowly, hesitantly, she burrowed her free arm back into the branches again, wincing as the thorns pawed at her. But she kept it coming, until there was a stirring in the branches that caged me, and her strong bony fingers entwined with mine and held fast. I clenched my grip, pulled myself as close as I could, feeling my own neck savaged, and risked the faintest of whispers. ‘Fire, Mall! That can save us …’

  The answer came softer still, barely a breath. ‘Stephen, heart, I have none – darker and older than mine, these flames here – alone I cannot assail them – I am embers …’

  ‘But you’re not alone! With Katjka the flame changed – and with the Graal! He said I was kindled! Mall, woman – kindle me!’

  Her jaw dropped; but her eye glittered with green mischief, and her fingers clamped so hard on mine I almost yelled. ‘I’ love o’ God’s will!’ she murmured. ‘Will the man never stop trying!’ And, wonder of wonders, she chuckled; and yet in that chuckle I sensed something else, and at last I begun to understand what fired her spirit.

  It was nothing I hadn’t felt in myself often, only enlarged and broadened by century upon century of bruising life. Anger seethed and bubbled till at last it boiled dry; and the residue was laughter. Laughter at cruelty, laughter at crime unpunished, laughter at the torment of the weak, laughter at injustice, laughter at fear and agony and the final devastating kicks of destiny. Laughter, because tears were helpless; tears were defeat. A laughter that scraped against anger like a match against a wall, that left a trail of stinging sparks and finally, when it seemed there could be no more, struck a flame within the mind, pure and sharp and cleansing. In a lifetime you might see no more than a glitter in the eye, a piercing brightness to a sudden glance; but Mall had known many lifetimes, and her laughter could make the corners of the wide world ring.

  She laughed silently now, but the tremor of it passed through her grip to me. My own swelled up in answer, till holding it back strained my ribs and brought me near to choking. Jyp was laughing too, with the cold manic glitter his eyes wore in a fight; and he was staring at me. So was Alison, where it should have been Mall they watched; because there was a light in her eye again, a flash in her sudden grin, a swift transparency under her face as if the bones had turned to frozen milk. Her hair stirred and heaved, and I felt my own scalp crawl as I watched it lift and billow in some private wind of its own, some interplay of vast forces from the margins of human experience. Yet they were still staring at me – her too. I struggled to point; then I understood. In front of my eyes, over the back of that hand sparks were passing, little crackling arcs, not blue like Mall’s, but yellow, golden even. And they ran along the Spear, right to its tip.

  Then I laughed aloud. The golden fire blazed up in blinding corona, and hurled a long black shadow of Le Stryge upon the ground. He turned quickly, only to hide his eyes and howl. ‘Idiot! That will avail you nothing! You will only summon worse!’

  A
nd that decided me; because it was exactly what I had in mind. I reached out with the Spear, as high as I could, and when I could reach no higher I pulled it back and threw. High into the seething smoky air that glittering spearhead rose, and out of its black glass the golden fire blazed like a beacon. I gathered my breath and yelled out, with all the strength I could summon, one word, one name.

  Katjka’s.

  The Spear tumbled in the air. The light faded. The hollow bestial howlings devoured my voice. The branches heaved and clutched about my throat, my chest, squeezing the breath from me more surely than any constrictor. Beside me Mall jerked, gargled; her fingers slipped from mine. The Spear fell, and I strained my fingers desperately to reach it again. Le Stryge opened his mouth to cackle.

  Instead he gaped. Beyond us, up at that endless ribbon of humanity that rolled above, stooping down now, low, lower, roaring close above our heads. With the last gasp in me I whistled, shrilly, on the same high note as that keening wind. To my astonishment Le Stryge slapped his hands to his ears in sudden anguish – and the living cord lashed apart, recoiling like a snapped sinew. Out of it, tumbling, gliding along that note in the air as if it was a bridge, came a human shape, naked, torn, terrible, one eye still visible in a mask of rawness and filth; and the branches sprang and split with the force of her answering, avenging shriek. Out of the air, inches from my hand, she plucked the Spear – and with the force of her fall, unstoppably, she cannoned right into Le Stryge. His arms flew wide as the primeval weapon lanced through his breastbone and stood out a foot behind his back; and his scream was lost in the roar of the flame that enveloped them both.

  Katjka recoiled and fell among smoke. The ensnaring branches vanished, spilling us to the ground in a gasping heap; they had never been there at all. What had held us half strangled in the air was the force of Le Stryge’s spell. I hurled myself into the smoke, hand outstretched, and for an instant I touched warm living fingertips; but as my hand closed over Katjka’s it sank inwards with a feathery insubstantial touch, and a faint rustling sigh, to ash as fine and soft as talcum, and as clean, that blew away almost before it touched the ground. But Le Stryge, shrieking, struggled with the flames, beating them down only to have them billow out anew, prolonging his agony. He stumbled past us, ignoring us, arms outstretched as if he reached out for something. Looking around, we saw why.

  There at the clearing’s edge stood Lutz, tall and white-haired and fleshily handsome as ever even in a bloodstained black uniform, his ridiculous monocle popping from his eye as he goggled thunderstruck at the scene. But we can’t have been much better; because beside him, at the head of a little knot of human thugs, all armed and dressed in bloodied City guard uniforms, stood Lieutenant von Albersweg. And in their hands between them, encased in a shielding cage of metal, they held the rough stone mass that was the Graal itself.

  Nobody said anything; nobody needed to. The same sinking instant of cold understanding hit us all. That had been Le Stryge’s scheme from the start – to strip the Graal of its warlike, outgoing aspect, the Spear, and of most of its human defenders in searching. Normally the Graal was too strong even for him to assault; but that way, and aided by treachery from within, a small force might seize it. He would have struck at once, if I hadn’t run off with the thing; then he could never be sure the weapon wouldn’t suddenly show up somehow and devastate his attack. But the moment the captain was on his way with it, he’d ordered Lutz to launch the attack, and bring the Graal here – to where, however great its power, it would be imprisoned apart from its other half, and so weakened, altered, even destroyed. Its realm and all its aims would collapse, and into that void would step Le Stryge. And within his iron, austere will the almost infantile drives of the force that had created this revolting place, destruction and degradation. That would be the new heart of Europe.

  It was a vision worthy of Hell; and he’d come within an ace of it. He hadn’t even wholly failed, perhaps; not yet. Towards the vision of the Graal the old man staggered even as the flames tore at him within and without, reaching for it, clawing for it, whether for power or for redemption no one could ever say. But Lutz and the lieutenant recoiled in terror from the flaming, gibbering thing, and Le Stryge staggered, screamed despairingly and stiffened in a last agonized rictus. His will must have slackened then, because the fire roared out again in untrammelled triumph, and he fell backwards like a log, stiff and unresponding. The flames were out before he hit the ground; and among the smoke, untouched, the Spear struck the hillside and stood upright, quivering.

  For a moment the air seemed to sing with vast energies, then—

  The ground erupted. Crackling black char scattered across the slope, smoking, as the earth where the old necromancer had fallen heaved and shook, spitting stone. The slope juddered, sending everyone sprawling, and a great raw crack went racing across it between the trees, widening with every convulsive heave. Tree roots waved and writhed as the soil split like a broken shell. Another crack went popping and screeching off at right angles, flinging clouds of stinking soil into the air. A tall tree tore free from the entangled mass and collapsed near us with a jarring thud.

  Alison was on her feet before me, but off them as quickly. Sailors fared better on this swaying ground; Mall was afoot and retrieving her sword, and Jyp, though lurching wildly, already held his. I staggered over to the patch of blackened debris that had once been the old enchanter, and with an effort I tore free the Spear, rejoicing in the crackle of power in my fingers. Then, without the least hesitation, I went straight for Lutz von Amerningen’s throat.

  He and the lieutenant were already running. Turmoil was breaking out around us, more cracks zigzagging out in every direction, toppling tall rocks or splitting them where they stood. Out of the widest crack, higher up the mountainside, something bubbled and burst like boiling mud, and beneath it things glistened and stirred. Another fountain spewed up behind us, shrilling like a broken steam pipe, and the ground around it caved in on a pool of the stinking slime. Avalanches of scree came rattling and roaring down between the pines, fires went out or blazed up wildly and their dark frequenters screeched and scattered or were smashed down in their tracks. Suddenly we were enveloped in a fleeing mass of creatures, humans, Children of Night in all their stages, even some of those monster shapes hobbling through the trees like blighted blendings of man and beast, lower than either.

  The trees were bunching and swaying now, bending independent of the wind as if some huge unseen hand twisted and tormented them. Or as if more than tanglings and twinings linked them, as if this whole dense forest had itself been changed and united by forces beneath the soil, into one organism. I believe it was; it writhed like tendrils or tentacles in a slow-motion spasm of anguish and wrath. But, miracle of miracles, among the revolting crush of creatures it disgorged came some of our own men and women, generally by ones and twos, swept by in the flood and fighting it hard still; but those who saw us and the Spear still had the strength to cheer. We struggled to break through the black tide, but it was like fighting a moving wall now, that hurled us off at every contact.

  The humans and the smaller Children seemed hardly to see us in their panic, and the main threat was in being kicked or trampled or sent slithering away down into blackness; but one or two, maddened or bloodthirsty, hewed and hacked at us at sight. The first one fell to Jyp, and another two, an instant later, to Alison, who sent them rolling among the stones before either of us could intervene. The giant Children were easier to dodge, more concerned with keeping their feet because if once they fell their less massive counterparts would swarm over them like a parade of ants; I saw it happen a couple of times. One toppled down the slope, and his own gross weight skewered him kicking upon a slanted tree. We only had to slash at them or shout, and they cleared the paths. It was the inhuman creatures, minor powers or half-incarnate spirits maybe, who were the worst danger. Even as they fled they stopped and turned to fight, as if in their malformed shells self-preservation counted for less
than the eternal nagging malice in their minds. A great bowed brute with a long-horned bovine skull came slithering down the rock-face and in among us, swiping about with its huge blunt claws so that we had to duck and scatter. I slashed off one black-tipped horn; Mall’s blow cut the sinews of its neck and it crashed roaring among the heaving roots. Its feet were human, calloused and scorched but strangely ordinary; perhaps it had been as human as us once. Its fall broke a path through the stampede, and Alison and I sprang through, towards the downhill flank. Mall and Jyp were following, when the sounds above sent warning.

  That wind-blown web of bodies still whipped and flailed like a broken belt, sloughing off bodies and filth, and suddenly its severed end came lashing down against the hillside, hard, twice, where we’d been. Screaming voices were suddenly cut off, and an awful rain spattered down onto the trees. ‘Avaunt!’ yelled Mall, and positively threw Alison out of the way as the other end came smashing down, much closer. The trees upslope flew into matchwood, spraying blood and bodies in all directions.

  Alison and I, clinging together, struggled out from under that lashing mass as it thrashed the wood again where we’d been that minute earlier, skidding downhill in a mass of tumbling rocks and rotten tree-limbs. I lifted the Spear in the hope it might somehow shield us, and looked back desperately to see if there was any sign of the others, or of our quarry; but in that flickering, sparking confusion it was impossible to tell. In the wan moonlight the flanks of the mountain ran with great rippling shudders like the skin of a branded horse, the cracks oozed and bubbled. As those lashing ends slashed and struck, almost at random now, more and more soil fell away. Where there should have been rock, it exposed a glistening dark stuff beneath, not solid but churning and writhing, forms that scrabbled and heaved across one another in a sink of dark slime. It looked organic – but only when I saw the oddly misshapen limb that stuck out of it did I begin to understand.