by Hugh Cook
So Elkor Alish found his confidence on those rock
walls, and found also, on a more mundane level, the one way up to the rim of the cliffs: a steep slope of scoria, where there was only the occasional rock outcrop, and no steam or boiling water.
Hearst and Alish spliced together all the bits of rope and twine they could find, ending up with enough length to link the men together, though they were dubious about its weight-bearing capacity. When the climb began, there were regular pauses as the stronger climbers took the rope higher, securing it to the next solid rock.
The climb, beginning at dawn, proved hard going. None dared throw their full weight on the rope lest it part under the strain, though the wizards seemed prepared to trust it more than the soldiers.
Soon the only sounds were stones grating under boots, the intermittent shuffle-rush of sliding scree, the panting of sweating men burdened by heavy packs, and the occasional clink of steel against rock. There was no sound of insect. No breath of wind. Labouring upwards, they saw nothing but the scree in front of their faces, the stones that slid, shifted and frustrated their strength.
As they climbed upward, any who cared to look down when they stopped to rest - and those few needed to squint against the dazzling glare - saw the rafts were growing small beneath them. But they were only a fraction of the way up the slope.
Like the others, Blackwood sweated, panted and cut his hands scrabbling for handholds in the loose scoria, but derived one consolation from his hard labour in that the exertion in the sun made the smoke parasite suffer, so it irritated him less.
Miphon, climbing just behind Blackwood, twice saved him from sliding away down the slope. Miphon was hardly panting; it irritated Blackwood to know that the wizard was finding the climb almost easy.
Hearst called a halt.
Strung out on the slope, the men rested. 'There's a strain on the rope,' said Hearst. 'Don't throw your weight on the rope. It can't hold you all.' His voice died away.
A stone rattled down the slope, starting other stones moving far below. Then silence again.
Blackwood wiped a hand across his forehead, which was slick with sweat. His throat was dry. He turned to Miphon. 'You look like you could climb all week,' said Blackwood.
it's your dust,' said Miphon, grinning, i get strong eating it.'
'You'll have more than that to eat if this climb goes on. It's killing me.'
'You're not going to die,' said Miphon. 'Not for a thousand years.'
if you say so,' said Blackwood.
But he could tell that Miphon was just trying to keep his spirits up. Miphon grinned again, face good-humoured beneath his feathered hat.
if it's any consolation, others are suffering more than you. Can't you hear Garash, grunting like a pig?'
Blackwood smiled; it was his first smile in a long time.
Someone was drinking from a leather bottle with a noisy gurgling of water. Blackwood, narrowing his eyes, looked up the slope to see who it was. It was Footling.
Hearst sang out the order for the climb to begin again.
Blackwood felt as if he had hardly rested at all, but even that short pause had been enough to make his muscles stiffen. He was dismayed. After all the years of hardship his body had endured without fail, would his strength abandon him here, in the wilderness? He dreaded the prospect of being left behind if he could not keep up with the others.
Suddenly the bottle hanging from Blackwood's belt began to shake and rattle.
'No!' shouted Blackwood. Everyone stopped climbing. 'No!' he cried.
But a stream of vapours shot out and coagulated into the form of Prince Comedo. He screamed as the sunlight seared his eyes. He slipped on the scoria and fell. Blackwood made no effort to save him: it would have endangered the whole party. But Comedo grabbed Miphon's boot as he slid past. The wrench shook the rope.
It parted, breaking just above Blackwood's hands.
He grabbed for the end of it, but found himself off balance and sliding. So was Miphon. Soon the thirty people below the breaking point were sliding. Some managed to brake themselves with their boots before they had picked up too much momentum. Others grabbed outcroppings of rock. But the rest were swept away down the slippery sliding slope.
Hearst, safe above the rope-break, screamed at his men, ordering them to roll onto their backs. Blackwood already had, to let the stones grind and rip at his leather pack instead of his belly, while he tried to brake with his feet. Comedo, still clinging to Miphon's boot and still screaming, lacked the self-possession to do anything to slow his fall. Miphon booted him in the face. Comedo let go and slid to the bottom of the slope.
Blackwood and Miphon came bumping down after him with half a dozen others. The rest were still clinging to the rope far above them, or were scattered through all the points in between. Comedo was screaming like a bayoneted baby, his face torn, his clothes ripped, his body gouged and scraped.
'See what you've done?' snarled Blackwood, picking himself up.
Comedo cringed like a dog that knows it is about to get kicked, and blubbered through a mask of blood:
'It was so hot, so hot, so stuffy. It was so sway and jolty, voices so cruel. I was sick, sick, oh I was so sick
and suffering, and nobody comforts, I scream and nobody comes, nobody, oh I suffer, poor me suffering, poor me.'
Miphon, ever the healer, stepped forward to see what he could do. Comedo smelt of neglect, defeat and musty self-abuse. His hair was dirty and unkempt; he was half-shaven; his skin had erupted into boils. His wounds and welts, half-disguised by dust and blood, looked terrible, but Miphon suspected most of them were superficial.
'Kiirhim, Miphon,' said Blackwood. 'Kill - '
A spasm of coughing racked his body. He doubled over, then was forced to his knees. He clutched at his belly. Cold smoke dribbled out through his twisted lips.
i don't like this place,' moaned Comedo. 'I don't like it.'
'Kill him,' said Blackwood, raising his head high enough to look at Comedo. 'He's good for nothing else now.'
But Miphon was examining the prince with skilled hands, satisfying himself that the damage was all superficial. Blackwood forced himself to his feet. His last fit of coughing had felt as if it was tearing his innards out; he held his gut with all his strength to reinforce it against the pain.
The others had picked themselves up by now and were dusting themselves off. None were seriously hurt, which was a minor miracle. One of those graced by the miracle was Gorn, who stalked toward Comedo, axe in hand. There was no doubting his intentions. Comedo reached for the ring.
'Miphon!' shouted Blackwood. 'Stop him!'
Miphon grabbed Comedo. But Comedo twisted the ring - and the two of them dissolved into a fog which was sucked into the bottle so fast that there was a rush of wind as air swept into the place where they had been standing.
'Give me the bottle,' said Gorn.
The bottle was hanging from Blackwood's belt by a
thread; the slide down the slope had almost torn it away. Blackwood pulled it free and passed it to Gorn, who shook it.
'Come out, you scag!' shouted Gorn. 'Out!'
Nothing happened.
Gorn hurled the bottle against a rock. Chips scattered from the rock. The bottle was unharmed. Gorn marched toward it.
Blackwood grabbed his arm.
'Gorn, it's no use - '
Another fit of coughing interrupted what Blackwood had to say. Gorn shook himself free and attacked the bottle with his axe. Men stood round watching till Gorn had exhausted his anger.
'Weil wait,' said Gorn. 'The wizard must be able to overpower that little scag. Then we'll do him. We'll do him dead.'
Gorn sat down on a rock to wait.
Blackwood coughed again. The dust he had breathed in while sliding down the slope was combining with the parasitic smoke to cause him agony. He had to have water to wash the dust out of his throat. There was dust on his boots, in his hair, in his eyes and on his lips; up on th
e slope, the dust kicked up by the slide was still settling measure by measure through the hot dry air. They could hear Hearst shouting something at them, but what he was saying they could not tell over the distance.
Blackwood walked to the water and stooped down. A Melski lept from the water and threw him backwards. His pack absorbed the shock of the fall, but the creature got its hands on his throat. He clawed for its eyes. His fingernails scraped across tough skin. Then the creature thrashed and screamed: Gorn had axed it open. Blackwood threw it off. He unshipped his knife.
More Melski came plunging out of the water. There was a brief and furious fight. The Melski outnumbered the men two to one, but they fled when reinforcements came crashing down the scree slope.
The odds had given the Melski the better fight: there was one dead Melski, there was a spare Melski arm twitching on the stones, and there were three dead men. Blackwood watched the amputated arm with fascination. It shed little drops of water in its spasms. Stones clinked as the fingers flexed and contracted. Slowly the sun dried it and it ceased to move.
Hearst was in a filthy mood when he got down to the water's edge. He spat in disgust at what he saw.
'We were outnumbered,' protested Gorn.
'Outnumbered! By animals!'
'They had weapons,' said Gorn.
'Yes, and a rabbit has teeth. Where's Miphon?'
in Comedo's bottle,' said Gorn. 'Comedo grabbed him and pulled him in with him.'
'Then why hasn't he come out?'
'We're waiting,' said Gorn.
'You're waiting! What kind of answer is that? A Rovac warrior and you let this happen. Don't speak to me, I don't need your excuses. Who's dead?'
'Trother, Onger and Ilchard.'
'Let's have their packs off then,' said Hearst. 'Move, man, move! And you! And you!'
The packs were rifled for food and clothing. They had plenty enough weapons already, so Hearst broke the blades the dead men had carried. He studied the three bodies. Ilchard had a nice pair of boots, and they looked about the right size . . . Hearst whipped them off and got his feet into them.
'Now we wait,' said Hearst. 'We wait until Miphon comes out with Comedo's head in his hands.'
But they waited in vain, and Hearst, growing tired of watching the sun shifting shadows over the rocks, gave the order for the climb to be resumed.
* * *
In the afternoon, long after resuming their climb, 262
they saw the surviving Melski come out of the water and haul one of the rafts onto the lake. From the height Hearst's men had reached, the Melski looked like insects setting sail on a bit of twig. When the Melski were well clear of the shore, they stopped; perhaps they were fishing.
The expedition was still climbing at nightfall; they finished their climb by starlight. Before they reached the top, one man slipped and went rattling away down the slope. He shouted as he slid away, but they did not hear him cry out again. Perhaps he hit his head on a rock. When morning came, they saw his body lying lifeless far below.
The sun, rising in the east, glittered on the vast expanse of the Araconch Waters, and illuminated snow which capped the higher peaks of the mountains to the west. The men, still somewhat weak from the underground raft journey and the consequent underfeeding, could have done with more sleep and rest, but Hearst got them moving.
They set off in a northerly direction, beginning a trek through a land of barren hills, steep bluffs and overhanging cliffs, gorges and waterless riverbeds. This shattered landscape would make for slow going.
Some twenty leagues to the north, clearly visible from the higher ground, rose the cone of a volcano, from which a little smoke ascended. From memories of an old and faded map never seen by his own eyes - the wizard Phyphor had consulted it once, in Castle Margus -Hearst named that volcano: Barg. The name was a contraction of the name of the sometime ruler of the Empire of Wizards, Barglan Stanash Alkiway.
And Hearst remembered the inscription mapped over the countryside around the volcano: Here Be Dragons.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
'No closer,' said Comedo. 'No closer, or I swallow it.' He kissed the ring.
Miphon took another step forward. Comedo grinned and parted his lips, stretching a thread of saliva to breaking point. His tongue lolled out to accept the glistening gold. Suddenly he snapped his mouth shut and gulped. Miphon swore. Comedo plucked the ring from his mouth and capered up and down: a grotesque figure of dust and blood, blood and tatters. He was, Miphon was sure, quite mad.
i fooled you then, didn't I? Your heart squeaked nicely, nay? A mouse, and I stepped on it. I fancy that, for Miphon's fancy's fool, the mute word's moron. Nay?'
Then suddenly the pretense of humour was gone: 'Now down on your knees and grovel! Or I'll swallow it.'
Miphon shook his head, and said, as he might say to a dog or a horse:
'Soft now, soft, I'm no harm to you, soft now, easy.'
Slowly, carefully, as if easing out over thin ice, he began to close the distance. Comedo lept away, and shouted:
'Belly down to the dust or I'll swallow the ring.'
'Swallow it then,' said Miphon, suddenly angry. He drew a knife. 'Swallow it, and I'll rip you from vent to gills.'
'That blade may kill, but hardly the hand that holds it.'
'You're still walking, but that doesn't make you immortal.'
i'm mad,' said Comedo. 'You mustn't hurt me. I'm mad, I can't help it.'
An extravagant cringing fear had replaced Comedo's arrogance. He was like ... like what? Like a patch of sky in which any sort of weather might manifest itself. Princes have the opportunity to create the kind of reality that suits them.
i won't hurt you,' said Miphon, regretting his outburst of anger.
'You couldn't anyway,' said Comedo, suddenly fierce, drawing a blade and snarling. 'Magic doesn't work in the bottle, does it? Blade against blade, I can take you. No contest. Now what will you tell your toenails if I go outside with the ring and leave you counting days to years - forever!'
'Try it,' said Miphon.
'Not today,' said Comedo. 'I'm a prince, not a prince's fool, my princely fool. But the swords won't be waiting outside forever. The dragon will munch them down, soon if not later. I saw the dragon from the shores of the lake. It flew from my dreams: practising. Wonderful! Bones crunch slowly. I wish I could watch.'
Miphon watched Comedo as one might watch a scorpion. The subdued green light from the walls of the bottle allowed him to see everything clearly here, for they were in the neck of the bottle. Downstairs the rooms would be gloomier. How many rooms were there? How many chambers? Miphon had no idea. He had never studied the magic of enchantment of bottles: it was old lore, now commanded, to the best of his knowledge, only by the order of Varkarlor.
Suddenly Comedo ran for the spiral staircase that led downwards. Miphon chased him down the stairs, and found himself in a storeroom a hundred times the size of the room above. Firestones studded the ceiling, shedding light on massive barrels of water, ale and wine, on sacks bulging with potatoes and onions, on
fish smoked and salted, dried meat, pickles, hams, bunches of herbs and dried figs.
'Come and get me,' said Comedo, with a giggle. 'Come and get me.'
'I will,' said Miphon grimly.
This was getting too dangerous. He should have knifed Comedo in the room above. Would Hearst have hesitated, or Gorn, or Alish? Even Blackwood would not have hesitated under the circumstances. Comedo dangled the ring over a drop-hole.
'Don't drop it down there!' said Miphon.
'Why not?'
'We'll never see it again.'
Miphon knew all about the drop-holes. They would have a common opening located beneath the overhang of a tower at one of the wizard castles - in the case of this bottle, most probably Castle Vaunting. Anything thrown into one would finish up in the flame trench which circled the castle.
'We don't need to see it again,' said Comedo. 'We already know what it looks like.'
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Miphon lunged at Comedo, who skipped back, snatched something from a shelf and hurled it at Miphon. It shattered at Miphon's feet: a jar of pickled pigs' trotters. Comedo threw another one. Miphon ducked. The jar clipped a barrel and burst in a shower of ceramic shards.
'Come on then,' said Comedo.
Miphon threw a jar at him.
'Missed,' said Comedo.
The prince danced away down another flight of stairs. The chase ended in a totally bare room. It was much larger than the one above, but was split in two by a massive stone wall which was fantastically carved with figures of wizards, warriors, dragons, and creatures of the Swarms. In the wall was a single doorway, flanked by twisting stone pillars.
There were no firestones here, but the bare floor was
patterned with a filigree tracery of green light which supplemented the dull glow from the outer walls. , 'You can't run much further,' said Miphon. 'Give it to me.'
Comedo backed toward the doorway. Miphon followed him cautiously. The other half of the room was also bare and featureless, apart from a stairway leading downwards. Miphon tried to circle round Comedo to cut off his escape down that stairway.
