Fearsome Journeys (The New Solaris Book of Fantasy)

by Jonathan Strahan

  “Sir?”

  “The road.”

  Oh, the laconic treatment! “What about it?”

  “It runs two directions.”

  “That’s kind of in the rules for roads.”

  That crack brought in a crop of dark looks. Some folks do not appreciate Croaker the Annalist. He has a nasty habit of recording flaws and fuckups as well as triumphs. Plus, as he ages he speaks his mind more.

  The lieutenant made a mark in the notebook of his mind. “This road could go back to before the Domination. You went east. We went west. We found a ruined fortress that was the nightmare of someone worse than the Dominator.”

  So. Once he knew there was a secret bridge and hidden road he went to see where it started.

  “The new Taken hails from there?”

  “She does. Reminding you, she isn’t Taken. Yes. It’s only eight miles. It was uglier than that place in Juniper was. Bones everywhere, some of them human.”

  I was not overwhelmed. Some of that had leaked across from the Taken. “There’s more?”

  “We found people there, living in squalor you wouldn’t believe. Servants, sort of, and livestock in lean times. They don’t speak a modern language. We couldn’t have communicated without Goblin and Silent.” Those two being senior Company wizards.

  “Your new Taken is Blind Emon. She is blind. She’s the slave of something called the Master, which sounds more intimidating in their language. He was human once. He made himself immortal. Now he just lays around and eats, too bloated to move. No one has seen him for ages except Blind Emon. Anyone else gets that close, they end up on the menu.”

  Ours is an ugly and challenging world.

  “So Blind Emon is a Taken, just not the Lady’s Taken.”

  Much that had leaked to me from her now made more sense.

  “If that’s how you want to see it. It doesn’t matter. What does is, we need her not to notice us.”

  Hmm. The hiding off the road now made sense. He wanted Blind Emon’s caravan to slide by rather than us falling back toward Whisper.

  He said, “You know what you need to do. Go do it.”

  Blind Emon’s mules would not be long arriving. Time to get the clinic hidden inside a glamour.

  LIKELY THE BRIDGE and road had been built to connect the settlement and the Master’s hangout. I could not imagine why, though.

  Everybody hid in the best glamour.

  Warning came. The mule train was close. I needed no word of mouth. I felt Blind Emon’s pain. I was more sensitive to her than was anyone else. Bless my happy days as a prisoner in the Tower!

  This contact was the worst yet. It wormed inside more deeply. I became disoriented and distraught. I suffered fifteen minutes of condensed torment, reliving Blind Emon’s Taking.

  There had been others like Emon, once. She was the sole survivor of the Master’s ancient collision with the Domination. He actually antedated the Domination era. He had repulsed the bilious sorcerer-tyrant known as the Dominator, at the cost of becoming the darkness-bound buried horror that he was now.

  Emon had started out as a brilliant mage known for her clever mining of ancient mysteries. She was beautiful, she was young, she was in love… Then she unearthed something foul that had faded to a dreadful rumor and should have been left to fade even further.

  Blinding was the first of a thousand atrocities she suffered.

  Too much of her torment leaked over. I was so bowels-voiding scared that I was leaking back.

  SHE WAS PAST. She had become an intermittently visible scarlet lily blossoming over the improbable bridge. Countless mules and men crossed that dispiritedly, making an art of their absence of enthusiasm. Blind Emon barely kept them moving.

  Shit. Toss it in a hot iron skillet and fry it up, shit!

  Distracted, I thoughtlessly moved to get a better look at Blind Emon. Now I had a frozen muleteer staring at me, mouth agape.

  I froze, too, hoping to disappear into the glamour.

  He dropped his mule’s lead tether and oozed away, never breaking eye contact and never showing expression. As I began to have trouble keeping him in focus he stepped out briskly toward home. He never said a word to the mule driver behind him.

  Him just taking off was as good as doing some yelling. He was too near Blind Emon to exit unnoticed.

  Emon was a ruddy shimmer amidst the high foliage of illusory trees when the muleskinner began his heel and toe dance toward home. She solidified as she moved my way.

  I tried becoming one with the forest. That worked, some. She failed to pick me out of the mast but she for sure did sense someone who could be touched, mind to mind.

  She searched but never pinned me down.

  Kill me!

  She knew I would hear her.

  Kill me, I beg you!

  Her dash round the sky turned frantic. My head felt ready to explode. Normal men ground their knuckles into their temples. Mules brayed.

  The plea for surcease from pain, Kill me! eventually knocked me out.

  ELMO AND THE original patrol, with my apprentices, surrounded me. I mumbled, “Shouldn’t have tapped that last keg.” My head throbbed, worst hangover ever. There was a foul taste in my mouth. “I puked?”

  “You did, sir,” my apprentice Joro admitted. “In record fashion.”

  I was dizzy. The dizzy was getting worse.

  Elmo added, “You yelled a lot, too, in some language nobody knows.”

  “That was only for a minute,” Joro added. “Then you were out and the thing in the sky shrieked in tongues.”

  Dizziness morphed into disorientation. I fought to focus. “What about her?”

  Elmo said, “She went away. She gave up looking for you.”

  No. Even unconscious she had left me with news enough to know that she had been summoned by the Master.

  The lieutenant appeared. “He going to make it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Joro replied. “The problem is mostly in his head.”

  “Always the case with him, isn’t it? Move out now, Elmo. Let him get his shit together on the road.”

  THEY PLANTED ME on a captured mule. The old jenny had been loaded with produce that was in Company bellies now. Other captured mules had carried kegs of salt pork, salt and pepper color granules, or sacks of what looked like copper beads. Elmo thought the beads were ore. Others said it was too light. I felt too lousy to work up a good case of give a shit.

  Prisoners had been taken but were almost useless. Nobody understood their turkey gobble.

  “What the hell?” I blurted when I realized Elmo was headed across the bridge.

  “Super shitstorm about to hit. Our guys will be in it. They need you there.”

  A fight? I was headed for a fight? Feeling like this?

  A lone crow, notably ragged, watched us pass from a perch on the rail of the bridge. It offered no comment.

  THE EARTH TREMBLED. My mule shied. She had been skittish for a while, now.

  We were two hours west of the bridge, near where our guys were operating. Twice we heard distant horns.

  I was lost. Nobody else had a clue, either. Some thought that the lieutenant hoped to engineer a collision between Whisper and the Master. If that happened Whisper would have to consult the Lady, who might recall the Master from back when she was the Dominator’s wife. She might want to get in the game herself. All that would cost time. The lieutenant could build a bigger head start.

  The road west of the bridge was better hidden. The farther we went the healthier the glamours became. The earth trembled again. There was noise ahead, muted by the forest and the hill we were climbing.

  We found a gang of mules and mule drivers hiding beside the road, just short of the crest. They were unarmed and disinclined to resist. They were terrified. I did not blame them. Blind Emon was not happy.

  Some heavy-duty shit was shaking beyond that ridge.

  I urged my mule forward. I had friends involved. Some might need help.

  Came an epic flash.
An invisible scythe topped every tree rising above the ridgeline. Whittle observed, “First news you know, de weader be gettin’ parlous roun’ dese parts.”

  Rusty did a credible job of managing his fear. This would be his first experience with battlefield sorcery. A little real terror might be just the specific to purge his soul.

  We clambered through fallen limbs that had been shredded like cabbage for kraut, reached a tree line, looked out on a bowl-shaped clearing more than a mile across. It had been farmland once but most was going to scrub, now. A natural rock up-thrust centered it. Ruins topped that. They were ugly and, though it sounds ridiculous, they felt abidingly evil… probably because Emon had prejudiced me.

  Emon was a roiling storm of cardinal strands above the ruin, filling far more sky than she had over the bridge. Three Taken on flying carpets circled at a respectful distance. A fourth carpet lay mangled in a field, smoldering while someone dragging a damaged leg crawled away.

  Imperial soldiers crept toward the downed Taken. Local people were fleeing the invaders.

  Elmo nudged me. “Whisper,” indicating one of the airborne Taken.

  “Where are our guys?” They were nowhere to be seen.

  Mule drivers gobbled and pointed.

  Some of their gang had reached the ruins before the excitement started.

  Elmo said, “We’re exposed here. We need to take cover.” And that was the moment when ill fortune noticed its opportunity.

  Whisper sensed me… for the same reason that Blind Emon had: my one-time exposure to the Lady’s Eye.

  Meantime, Emon grew inside my head, trying to gain control of my eyes. She knew who I was, now. She could pull on me as strongly as I could read her. She was more powerful here, near the Master.

  She riffled through my memories, trying to gain a better handle on a situation for which she and the Master had been preparing for weeks.

  Whisper probed. One sniff of Croaker had her convinced that this incident had been crafted by the Company to inconvenience her personally.

  I felt both Taken. Blind Emon had a fine read on my emotions. She pilfered random thoughts while depositing disturbing notions. Whisper drifted our way. Meantime men, mules, and that sentinel crow all oozed into concealment. I refused to give up my view completely.

  A keg of the sort that had been aboard so many mules flew up out of the ruin. Blind Emon jinked, did something to shift its course and add velocity. Wisps of smoke trailed it. It exploded thirty feet from Whisper. The fireball enveloped her.

  Elmo offered up a soft prayer. “Holy shit. That’s gotta hurt.”

  Whisper wobbled out, trailing flames. She headed down toward someplace where she would not have to fall any farther.

  “It was stupid to come here,” Rusty grumped. “Ain’t our fight.”

  Even Robin glowered at that. Still, the man was close to making a point. He told Elmo, “We should get the hell gone while that bitch is cleaning the crap out of her drawers.”

  “Right.” Elmo stared past where Whisper had hit hard enough to fling smoking chunks of everything but her fifty yards in a dozen directions. A second keg had sailed out of the ruin.

  Blind Emon repeated her manoeuvre, her aim direly precise. A Taken distracted by Whisper’s calamity took a direct hit, but this keg did not explode. It fell, shattered, ignited belatedly, created a foul gray miasma.

  The impact did overturn the Taken’s carpet and left that dread entity hanging on desperately with one hand.

  My companions were more interested in travel than observing sorcery spectaculars. Rusty poked me with the dull end of a javelin. “What part of we need to get the fuck out of here are you not getting?” He added, sarcastically, “Sir.”

  Elmo barked foul agreement from the shredded woods. I moved reluctantly. Our crow friend watched from an oak stump, head cocked.

  I felt a sudden urge to put distance between me and what was bound to turn uglier than I could imagine. Emon guaranteed it.

  I cannot deliver an account of the evil versus evil sorcery duel of the decade. The desire to see the sun rise again quashed the compulsion to watch. But I do have to report that Emon and the Master engaged in an action they had been preparing for since soon after we invaded their forest.

  We clotted up getting out of there, our patrol, mules, gobbling foreigners, local refugees, and the troops and wizards the lieutenant had sent to stir the pot before.

  THE MOB KEPT moving, less panicked but jockeying and jostling. Everybody wanted across the bridge. Our wizards tried to nurse information out of the gaunt serfs but they were little help.

  The road was about to tilt down into the Rip. There would be no leaving it then. A demand of nature haunted me. I would not last till we crossed the bridge. I flitted into the woods, found a useful log, dropped my trousers, began my business buzzed by flies, plagued by mosquitoes, and watched by a curious crow.

  I heard a rustle. I looked down. A rattlesnake looked back, equally surprised. I froze. It coiled but reserved its warning rattle.

  The crow made a leap and single flap, took station behind the snake. Its eyes shone oddly golden. One began to glow. The glow expanded into a ball an inch in diameter, a foot, a yard. The rattler decided to take its business elsewhere. It took off at maximum snake speed.

  My bowels released, explosively and rankly, as I saw exactly what I dreaded: the Lady in the golden light, sweetly beautiful, the most alluring, lovely evil ever. She had not aged a moment in a decade.

  The air all round whispered, “There you are. I was afraid I’d lost you. Come home.”

  Gods! Temptation, Lady is thy name! Suddenly, treason seemed entirely reasonable. I forgot most of what made me me, including recollections of suffering in the Tower. She infiltrated channels into my soul already chafed by Blind Emon, scraping up informational residue left by Emon while she explored.

  The Lady was not pleased.

  She abandoned me suddenly, no explanation, leaving me convinced that she regretted not being able to linger.

  I tried pretending that I was not disappointed. It gets harder to fool myself as I get older.

  ONE-EYE ASKED, “YOU see a ghost?” He was repairing that ugly hat.

  “Worse.” I told him.

  The lieutenant arrived before I finished. He had a special assignment for Elmo’s patrol. We had impressed him that much. Goblin got to join us.

  Heads together with the boss, Elmo looked less happy by the second. Meantime, the lieutenant’s staff cut mules out of the passing mob. Each carried kegs or sacks of coppery beads.

  Elmo rejoined us. “Great news. We’ve been entrusted with cutting the bridge once everybody gets across. And you get to help, Goblin.”

  That little wizard’s toad face twisted up nasty. He had come around just to check on how we were. Elmo thumped him atop the head before he started bitching. “And we get to do it in the dark, using those kegs that go boom when sorcerers toss them around.”

  One-Eye got all positive, told Goblin, “There’ll be plenty of moonlight later.” He grinned wickedly.

  “Dey’s still light now, some,” Whittle noted.

  “Yeah. I can still see my wife if I squint,” Rusty countered, waving his hand in front of his face.

  “We got to do it so let’s get doing,” Elmo said. “No farting around. Whisper’s gang shows before we’re done, the lieutenant blows it with us still out there.”

  A true motivator, our Elmo.

  He said, “Robin, you head back up to that last straight stretch and keep a lookout. Somebody comes, you get your ass down here fast.”

  The complaining commenced.

  “Did somebody declare this a democracy?”

  One-Eye grumbled, “You can rob a soldier of his choices but you can’t take his right to bitch.”

  Goblin giggled.

  Elmo told Robin, “Grab your gear and get. And be careful.”

  Rusty started getting his stuff together, too.

  Elmo shook his head, pointed at
the bridge.

  SO THERE WE were, clambering through the trestlework, operating on guesses based on what we thought we had gotten from the mule people, plus what we saw happen between Blind Emon and the Taken. If it went the lieutenant’s way he would look like an improv genius. If not, he could become the fabled Commander Dumbass.

  It did not start well.

  Rusty fell. He survived only because Elmo had bullied him into wearing a rope safety harness. I dropped a keg, almost fell trying to save it. It rattled around in the rocks below, never breaking up. A keg Goblin was wrestling came apart. Its contents caught fire, sparked by his gear clanking together. For a while we were enveloped by ghastly sulfurous smoke.

  There were lesser mishaps too numerous to recount. We accumulated bruises, bloody abrasions, splinters, and mashed fingers. The moon was no help when it rose. We were down in the Rip, under the bridge deck. We did catch a break when a cold breeze rose and dispersed the smoke.

  Robin swung over the rail and came down. “Blind Emon is coming.” Somewhere, a mule brayed.

  Soon we heard chatter and clatter approaching. Blind Emon began to leak over.

  Had she won? No. No final winner yet. Whisper and the Taken had gotten mauled, bad. But they had broken the command link between the Master and Emon. A tactical success for them. Emon ran the moment the connection went. No loyalty at all, that gal. She was wiped out, now, barely able to keep up with the people she was trying to protect.

  All of the Lady’s Taken had suffered grievously.

  Emon seemed unaware that the Lady had become interested herself.

  The Lady, I was sure, would deal with the Master permanently.

  I knew the exact instant that Blind Emon sensed my proximity.

  Right away she wanted me to know things. I needed the information. She was hurt bad. She did not expect to see the dawn.

  I monkeyed through the trestlework, reported to Elmo. He asked, “You able to communicate?”

  “Sort of. She’s getting most of my thoughts, now. I think.”