by Martin Ash
Triune stepped forward with six hands raised. 'We should talk no longer. It is time for preparations. You must know the terms and manner with which to approach the arch-fiend Urch-Malmain. You must deviate not a single degree from what we are about to tell you. Do so, and all may be lost.'
v
The first obstacle was, again, the Karai camp. It was necessary for Leth, Issul, Galry, Jace and Shenwolf to pass through it, via the chamber of the Farplace Opening, before they could make their way across country to the tail of the Portal. Triune busied herself with composing a diversion which would, with luck, allow them to escape.
Before they departed Orbelon took Leth and Issul aside. He held forth the blue casket of the Orb. 'You must take this with you. Protect it as before, as though it is your child. If it is lost then we are lost also.'
Issul was puzzled. 'Orbelon, I thought you could not be parted from the blue casket.'
'I will not be parted from it,' replied Orbelon, mysteriously.
'Then . . . what? Are you saying you will be within?'
'I will be where I will be. Enchantment may sustain me. But listen closely: when - if - you find the Soul of the Orb, at that time, but not before, open the casket. But I say again, not before. Never before.' He paused. 'I have deliberately excluded Shenwolf from this conversation. Until we know what is within him, he must know no more than is necessary.'
'He will see the chest,' Issul said. 'We can hardly hide it from him.'
'Then guard it with extreme diligence. In his actions so far Shenwolf has only demonstrated concern for its safety, as he has for yours. Hence, this is a precaution, nothing more. We simply do not know.'
Leth took the casket. Orbelon said, 'Leth, have you thought more about the question I put to you?'
Leth regarded him with a quizzical frown.
'Have you brought something with you, Leth? From my world; from the Orb?'
'I can think of nothing.'
'There is something. I am not mistaken. You are not as you were before.' He turned to Issul. 'Do you not perceive it?'
Issul appraised Leth for some moments, but shook her head. 'To what do you refer?'
'Something - it is indefinable.' Orbelon turned away. 'Reflect upon it, Leth. It may be important that we know.'
They rejoined Triune, who was observing the Karai camp via the second seeking eye which had initially sought out Leth after he had stepped from Urch-Malmain's Portal. Leaving the eye in the camp had enabled covert monitoring of the activities of the new garrison there. Now, with a note of jubilation in her voice, Triune declared that the underground bunker was once again empty of Karai.
'We have put the winds right up them!'
Standing at the gold disks before the haze in which the two views - the tail of Urch-Malmain's Portal, and the Karai bunker - were displayed, she performed several small dance steps with her three child bodies, and made various adjustments to the disks. The seeking eye swept through each of the bunker's chambers, then out up the ramp to the forest.
'Here is where it becomes interesting,' said the smallest Triune-child.
Issul, Leth and Shenwolf watched keenly. Beneath the trees in the shadows of the forest, just a little distance from the entrance, several Karai bowmen could be seen crouching.
'There are more on the far side of the clearing,' the middle child said. The seeking eye passed unnoticed across the area that had been the slooths' feeding pen. Issul winced, seeing the tatters of dried flesh, damaged, discarded white bones and torn clothing that littered the earth.
The eye floated past the two tall posts against which the Karai's victims had been routinely tied. For a moment Issul was back there again, cold with terror, awaiting that dreadful fate. She saw again the face of the teenaged boy who had died beside her, heard his blubbering terror. She shuddered, her heart hammering, and a small sob escaped her lips. Leth slipped his arm around her shoulders. She held herself against him, trembling and forcing back tears.
The eye entered the forest shade and more Karai bowmen were revealed. A dozen, possibly fifteen.
'They are taking no chances,' the middle child said.
'Can you divert them?' Leth asked.
'We think so. We can put ourself among them in the realized realm, but again it will be brief, and they are too widely spread for us to place enthrallment upon them like before. You will have no time for hesitation.'
Triune gave them further instructions. She then gave each of them - and Leth in particular - items of equipment to assist them on their journey, particularly when the occasion came to face Urch-Malmain and subsequently recover her Soul. She provided them with weapons, superior in quality to those they carried. The children, also, were given short slender swords and scabbards. To Issul, Shenwolf and Prince Galry and Princess Jace she gave hauberks of light metallic armour, sorcerously infused and more resistant to attack than standard mail; Leth, of course, still wore the sapphire armour he had brought from Orbelon's World.
Triune continued to monitor the seeking eye. The others assembled in the lofty chamber before the Farplace Opening, ready to step through at her word. Orbelon was not with them. After speaking to Leth and Issul he had not been seen. The misty fabric of the Opening rippled slightly in front of them. Leth had the chest containing the blue casket of the Orb strapped upon his back. Shenwolf stood at his shoulder. Both had their swords unsheathed. Issul waited behind them with Galry and Jace, clutching the children’s hands in hers.
Triune appeared. 'It's clear. Go.'
Leth stepped through, with Shenwolf. The air shifted and they were within the underground chamber of the Karai. It was empty, as they had already seen. They darted forward to the next chamber as Issul stepped through with the children. Together they moved down the central aisle between the slooth brooding-pens, towards the shaft of slanting grey light that penetrated from above.
At the base of the ramp Leth, Issul and the children halted while Shenwolf stole upwards. He kept close against the side wall. Near the head of the ramp he dropped to one knee, peering forward into the slooth feeding ground.
The feeding-ground was empty, but beside the two posts where the prisoners had been tied to fill the bellies of the winged monsters, as Shenwolf watched, three small children abruptly materialized. They had pure white hair falling past their shoulders, and wore long silver-grey gowns. It was impossible to define their gender. Two of the children appeared to be tied to the posts. The third, the smallest, began to walk around them in a slow circle, its hands held with steepled fingers before it.
Immediately there came a guttural cry from within the fringe of the woods. Shenwolf beckoned the others forward. As Leth, Issul and the children crouched behind him they saw Karai warriors, most armed with bows and arrows, emerge from cover at the periphery of the clearing. Their movements were tentative, arrows notched to strings, pointed at the three figures. One, an officer carried no bow. He called tersely. The children paid no heed.
Karai had come from the trees close to the entrance to the ramp. Most had their backs to Issul and the others; all their jewel-like eyes were fixed upon the strange sight at the centre of the clearing. The officer barked again at the three mysterious children, raising his hand, but they continued to ignore him. Little by little the Karai edged closer, encircling the children.
And then the two bound children stood up, casting off their bonds, and stepped away from the posts. The Karai gasped. The third child ceased walking. All three faced the encircling warriors, each in a different direction, smiling, their hands held out, palms upward.
The Karai officer, clearly unsure of himself, yelled another curt command. The three smiling children rose into the air.
At this the Karai all raised their bows and let fly. Twenty or more arrows sped towards their targets. Several flew wide, the rest passed straight through the white garbed bodies and travelled on into the forest. The three children, a little over head height above the ground, turned together and began to float at a stately, u
nhurried pace across the clearing, away from the camp, into the trees. The confused Karai followed in pursuit, loosing arrows.
At this point Issul, Leth, Shenwolf, Galry and Jace came from hiding. They raced up the remaining few yards of the ramp and, unseen by the distracted Karai, veered away into the cover of the trees.
vi
There followed days of furtive travelling as they sought out the location of the 'tail of the worm'. The journey was facilitated by the presence of the seeking eye which Triune had travel before them, spying the way and bringing warning of any perils that lay ahead. Furthermore Aztin's Locator provided Leth with a sure indication of the direction to pursue.
Late on the first day, by sheer chance, the travellers stumbled upon two of the horses that they had previously set free at the Karai camp when fighting their way into the bunker. The animals were grazing quietly at a bubbling streamside, and submitted without resistance when Leth and Shenwolf approached them. They lacked saddles and harness, but even so made travel a less arduous affair.
On the second morning, after a chill night spent huddled beneath the trees, they came upon a small village of wood and brownstone cottages nestling in a hollow. From the cover of the trees they watched for some time until satisfied that the place was not occupied by Karai, then entered. Here they were able to partake of a hearty meal in the village inn, The Grey Heron, and with the money Leth had brought from Castle Ang purchased two more horses and saddles and harness of reasonable quality. Hence, with the children doubling up on one mount, none of them was now obliged to travel on foot.
They struck out on Angsway later that day. Apart from the Karai and prowling grullags their greatest concern was that Urch-Malmain would relocate the Portal to some ever-more distant locale which would extend their journey by days or even weeks. Back in Enchantment Triune was doing all she could to ensure this did not happen, but now that Urch-Malmain's surviving warriors had returned to him and had failed to retrieve Leth, there was presumably little reason for him to maintain the Portal's tail in its current position, unless he had plans that Triune and the others were wholly ignorant of.
Urch was fully aware, too, that he was resisted. Presumably he knew - or surmised - that the Portal was observed. His intentions, therefore, were likely to be towards attempting to move the Portal without detection. At which, if all else met his conditions, he would step back into this world. But he would be wary now of transferring it to his desired location, for fear that his enemies travelled with him.
Would he, then, dismantle the entire Portal and disperse his entities and sentient-agents? Orbelon and Triune believed not. He was so close, after so long, to achieving his liberty; the temptation must be overwhelming to persist with his plans. The alternative was to endure further eons of incarceration in Orbelon's World.
Leth recalled that Urch-Malmain had believed Orbelon to be unaware of his presence within the Orb. Did he still believe that? He must by now surely have begun to suspect something. What measures might he be driven to, therefore, to try to ensure his own safe return to Enchantment? Was he prepared simply to permit the destruction of Orbelon's World through his misuse of the Portal?
Leth had ample time to ponder this throughout the days that followed. The weather had turned to sharp cold as winter extended ever closer. Though from time to time a pale tawny sunlight filtered through the filigree of branches overhead, it was too weak to cast any tangible warmth. For the most part the skies were characterized by gloomy grey cloud, sometimes dark and heavy, and the threat of storms. On occasion icy rainfall forced the travellers to don capes or take shelter.
Four times the seeking eye returned to confront Issul. By a series of urgent bobbing motions, a code agreed with Triune beforehand, it informed her of danger ahead, and the party took cover. In three instances the threat was a Karai patrol. Two of these were upon Angsway itself, both riding northwards; the third was a fifty-strong mounted troop crossing country towards the west.
The fourth delay was caused by grullags. From the concealment of a massed tumble of boulders Issul and the others looked down into a narrow wooded valley and watched as a group of five of the lumbering ursine-men loped determinedly into the south-east.
On the fourth day Leth noted a change upon the face of the Locator.
'The Portal has shifted,' he announced.
Previously the Locator had been directing them towards the southwest. Now the blue liquid stuff within it had swung around within the dial, gathering at its eastern rim.
The party left Angsway and struck eastwards into wild country, apprehensive of what this new direction might import. An hour later Leth noticed that the inky blue fluid had altered its form. Previously it had always gathered in a single globule, pressed to the edge of the Locator disk. Now it had attentuated into a single, slender filament, spanning the Locator disk from centre to rim.
'Does this mean we are close?' asked Issul.
'I don't know. It hasn’t done this before. I think we should assume that may be the case.'
Within minutes they were proven correct. The seeking eye appeared before Issul. It performed several small loops, the signal that it had found the Portal.
'Urch-Malmain has shortened our journey by more than two days,' she noted wryly to Leth, apprehension in her breast.
Leth nodded tensely, scanning the woods. 'The Portal has effectively come to us. Is it deliberate or mere chance?'
The five dismounted. The seeking eye led them up a sparse winding trail for about a hundred paces between stunted oaks and thrusts of limestone. They came to a small glade atop a knoll, and there before them was a hazy discolouration of the air, approximately circular in form, resting a little distance above the earth.
Shenwolf gazed upon it and nodded. 'Aye, it is from this that I came into the world.'
Leth motioned them back. 'Take cover. Now we wait.'
They concealed themselves behind a screen of nearby trees. An hour passed and then the small, semi-transparent globe of the seeking device that had located Urch-Malmain in Orbelon's World appeared in front of Issul. It made a series of agitated motions. Issul leapt to her feet. 'This is it! Urch-Malmain is alone in the chamber of the Living Artefact. Move swiftly.'
Leth drew his sword. He looked from her to the children, to Shenwolf. 'Are you all ready?'
They nodded. Leth placed the sapphire helm over his head, lowering the visor. The others donned the helmets Triune had given them. The eye-slits of each, including Leth's, were obscured by strips of reflective metallic gauze. Through this gauze they could see without difficulty, but to the Noeticist, or anyone else gazing upon them, their eyes were concealed.
Leth moved to the Portal. He was to leap through first, with Shenwolf immediately on his heels. They aimed to take Urch-Malmain alone and unawares on the other side. Galry and Jace would follow immediately with Issul.
Leth glanced around once to ensure they were all with him, then stepped up without hesitation into the Portal. His body seemed to freeze for a pulsebeat, seized in a shimmering light, then he was gone. Shenwolf followed upon the instant.
Issul lifted Galry and Jace together. They clung to her sleeves.
'It's all right,' she reassured them hurriedly. 'I’m coming with you, but we must be quick.'
She kissed them both. 'Release me now.'
As they let go she eased them gently into the Portal. She watched for an agonized heartbeat as their small perfect forms shimmered and vanished. She stepped up to push herself through, and was dimly aware of a soft, heavy thumping sound. She half turned. There was a blurred brownish movement at her side. Something locked around her, gripping her powerfully and propelling her away from the Portal. She struggled, crying out, but her arms were pinioned to her sides. She was lifted off the ground and borne away. Glancing down she saw that she was held by a long, powerful arm clad in shaggy, thick drab-brown fur. A foetid, stale reek assaulted her nostrils.
Issul twisted and kicked but was helpless in her abductor'
s grip. She was carried along at a rapid lurching pace, then, after perhaps half a minute, thrown to the floor. She fell, half-dazed. Something rolled her onto her back and an irresistible weight pressed down upon her. Huge hirsute figures were moving around her, towering against the sky.
Through a haze of pain she distinguished a grating male voice, harsh, mocking and familiar. 'Hah now, the Issul bitch! Deluded miltpot! Whore of the Soulless! Now you may witness the end that you deserve.'
She could half-see Grey Venger above her, at the edge of her vision. She heard him laugh, a wild jubilant jabber, then hawk and spit. She felt the tepid slime of his sputum collect upon her lips.
Issul retched, and strained, but grullags held her arms and legs firmly to the ground. Something struck her head a glancing blow. Then a face, closer than Venger's, descended until it was just inches from hers, and another voice whispered mockingly in her ear.
'Hello, dear Aunt Issul,' said Moscul. 'I did wonder when I would see you again. I’ve missed you so.'
FOUR
i
Through the frantic haze a single thought hammered into her mind: 'Are the children safe?'
She was dazed and disorientated. It had happened so fast. She had had no time to think.
Yes! Yes! She had seen them pass into the Portal. She had put them there herself, and had witnessed them vanish in the haze.
They were with Leth.
But safe? In Urch-Malmain's domain?
She could barely believe it. To be parted from her family again. A prisoner again. Her thoughts spun around and around, anguish and disappointment flooding her, an imponderable weight lying upon her limbs, deadening the blood in her veins. For a moment she lay limp and unresisting, her spirit gone.
Rough hands were tearing at her hauberk and clothing. Her legs were pulled apart. With new horror she saw Grey Venger lowering himself between her thighs. His hands were tugging at his waistband; his eyes blazed, a leering grin on his face.
