The Lord of the Green Manor, a swag of firewood hefted on his back, staggered through the snow to his front door. He tripped over the hall carpet and fell headlong, spilling the splintering logs in every direction.
A young woman exploded out of the kitchen, her long silk dress swamped in an oversized apron. “Oh, Tangent, you idiot! I just swept that carpet!”
The young Lord picked himself up. “I don’t see you tromping about out there in all weathers.”
“Well, I don’t see you coming anywhere near the kitchen, except to feed your face,” she snapped. “Don’t you understand anything? The Emperor is coming, expecting hospitality. Would you rather I asked the Court to cook their own damn puddings when they come?”
“It’s not just us, Ree,” he said darkly, closing the door before the high winds could blow more snow on to the carpet. “All the manors are struggling this winter. They can’t expect us to pretend this isn’t happening.”
“Oh no?” said his sister. “This is the Emperor, Tangent. One mistake even resembling an insult, and we’re to the headman’s axe, nobility or not. He’s already confiscated four manors, two castles and a fortified village on his so-called grand tour. We’re next.”
* * *
“Where the hell are we?” Daggar choked, wiping a faceful of snow away with his sleeve.
Sparrow peered at the amber crystal set into the ship’s wheel. “It shows a picture of—snow.”
“Brilliant,” he grumbled. “I could have worked that out all by myself.”
“It does not matter what pictogram it shows,” she flung back at him. “If this is the future, the name of the year will mean nothing to us.” She stared hard at Mistress Opia. “Where exactly have you brought us?”
“Into the future of course,” said Mistress Opia. “Twenty-three years, to be exact. You really must trust me.”
“I would sooner trust a troll-hunter,” Sparrow growled.
“I’ll bite,” said Daggar finally. “Why twenty-three years?”
“In order to successfully purge the liquid gold which the young woman ingested in such a foolhardy way, it is necessary to make a triangular chronometric oscillation,” said Mistress Opia, as if that explained everything.
Sparrow blinked. “What did you say?”
Mistres Opia sighed. “You will need similar objects from two reference points at equal distances from your point of origin.”
“So,” said Sparrow slowly, wiping a handful of melted snow from her hair. “I have coins from the Year of the Sculpted Concubine, and from our own present. If I could get another from this time period, you could perform the purging ceremony?”
“Something like that,” agreed Mistress Opia pleasantly. “Of course, if you would rather sail somewhere balmier, I wouldn’t mind in the least.”
“I would,” said Sparrow harshly. “Daggar, let us go for a walk.”
“But it’s freezing,” he complained.
“Tough. Bring the Blackguard too.” Sparrow gave Officer Finnley a brief grimace which almost resembled a smile. “You can arrest the Brewmistress if she causes any trouble.”
Finnley smiled very weakly in response, wishing that he had followed Hobbs’ example and run like hell.
They all climbed off the boat and turned away to walk through the snow.
“Aren’t you going to close up the ship?” Sparrow asked Daggar.
“Oh, sure.” He clapped his hands in the requisite manner and then spun around, horrified. “I don’t believe I just did that!”
“Did what?” Sparrow stared at him, and then into the bleak patch of dim snowiness around them. “Daggar, where’s the ship?”
“Well,” he said steadily. “It’s about two inches long, and it’s out in that.” He gestured at the patch of grey snowiness. It was hard to see anything, let along a two-inch long piece of gold jewellery. It had vanished under the constant blanket of snow. “We have to find it.” A horrible thought crossed his mind. “Singespitter’s still in there! He’ll go spare.”
Sparrow grabbed his sleeve. “Daggar, we have to find shelter, and quickly. We could freeze to death rummaging around in that stuff.”
“But it will be buried deep by morning!” he said in horror. “We’ll never find it. What about my sheep?”
“Come on,” she said urgently, pulling him away. “Get walking. Freezing to death is not a nice way to die. There are lights up ahead. There could be a house.” She drew her sword and stuck it deeply into the snow at her feet. “We’ll come back and find the ship when it stops snowing. Move it!”
They started trudging towards the dim lights up ahead, all shivering and trying not to think of what the consequences of losing the ghost-ship could be.
After all, there were worse things than being stuck twenty-three years in the future…were there not?
16: Oracles Etc
“Gods!” said Lady Luck angrily, flinging her arms around dramatically. “Gods gods gods gods gods.”
Destiny, flicking her way through the latest illustrated gossip-scroll, lifted her large eyes towards her elder sister. “Something wrong?”
“Someone’s helping him,” the goddess snapped, throwing an antique vase at the infinite mosaic floor. “I haven’t been able to track him since he started nosing around in Zibria. Now he’s vanished off the face of the…well, the island!”
“Perhaps he’s gone interstate?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Lady Luck. “No one goes interstate. It’s a wasteland. A bland, colourless collection of primitive tribes…”
“They don’t believe in us there,” said Destiny with a humphing sigh. “We must be the only gods in the cosmos who are confined to one teeny tiny island.”
“They would believe in me if I wanted them to,” said Lady Luck dismissively. “Everyone believes in me. Some of them just don’t know it yet.”
“So where is he?” asked Destiny pointedly. “This Aragon Silversword of yours. How was it you were going to punish him? Or has it been so long since you started trying that you can’t remember?”
This barbed comment had a devastating effect on Lady Luck. “I’ll show you,” she spat, and promptly vanished.
Destiny yawned, and picked up another gossip-scroll. A nearby cupboard opened and Fate, the gnarled and wizened third sister of the Witch’s Web, climbed out. She shook out her legs and stretched her wrinkled arms over her head. “I thought she’d never leave,” she said in a disgruntled voice. “No chance of tea and biscuits, I suppose?”
“Get them yourself,” said Destiny.
* * *
Aragon waded through the murky cloud. It was too difficult to imagine himself walking blithely over the top of the stuff as if it were concrete, and likewise he was not keen on falling through to the world far below, so he pretended the cloud was deep grass and kept it at a steady ankle-height.
He couldn’t see the finely-sculpted mountains anymore, just acres of drifting cloud in random shapes.
Then the vague mist faded, leaving him surrounded. High peaks of solid purplish cloud rose around him on all sides, forming cliffs and caves and ominous shadows. Aragon looked disparagingly up and up until he could see the top of the highest peak. “I don’t suppose the Priestess of Forgotten Gods lives in a bungalow on the ground level?” he suggested aloud.
The only response was a low cackle which sounded through the cloudy mountains, echoing in a menacing refrain until it became too soft a sound to be heard at all.
“Yes, that’s what I thought,” said Aragon grimly. Setting his sights on a particularly narrow and rickety mountain path which swirled around the highest of the cloud mountains, he began to climb.
Just as he had reached the top of the highest cloud-mountain, it vanished under him. Someone’s idea of a joke, he supposed.
Aragon fell onto the lower cloud layer with a muffled thud. For something so white and fluffy, this stuff packed quite a wallop when you fell on it from a great height.
There was a creak
ing sound, and a set of double doors opened in the foot of one of the mountains. A figure stood there, wrapped in robes of black and purple. “You were right,” she told him in a voice which grated in harsh amusement. “About the bungalow.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, Aragon was sitting in a cloud-shaped room holding a cup full of a strange hot pink liquid with leaves floating in it. He drew the line at drinking anything he didn’t know the name of.
“Rosehip tea,” said the Priestess of Forgotten Gods, reading his mind. “It’s good for you.”
“So is marriage, apparently, but you don’t see me hobbling down the aisle,” said Aragon in a cracked voice. He put the teacup down. “It appears that I need your help.”
“Oh?” replied Tmesis harshly, beginning to unwrap the robes which bound her head, hands and face completely from sight.
“I have been told that this was the place to come,” Aragon went on.
The wrappings fell away. Tmesis was a very dark woman with pale eyes and astoundingly smooth skin. She regarded Aragon patiently. “Perhaps it is.”
“Purple,” he said suddenly, noting the colour of her robes. “Is that the colour of reverence for forgotten gods?”
“Not exactly,” replied Tmesis. “Purple and black are the only colours not assigned to any of the current legitimate holy orders, thus by default they belongs to the hidden gods. At least, I think that’s right.” She managed a smile which made her face appear even more distant. “We are all here by default. Even the troll-gods, who rejected our collective, are represented by the purple and the black. Have you seen such robes elsewhere?”
“Perhaps I have.” Aragon could hardly remember. He dismissed it as unimportant. “I wish to travel to the Underworld.”
Tmesis inclined her head gravely. “I thought as much. It will not be an easy journey.”
“I did not expect it to be.”
“It will require much sacrifice,” she continued. “Do you believe your cause worthy of sacrifice, Aragon Silversword?”
“I believe my sanity is worth a great deal to me,” said Aragon in a voice almost as harsh as her own.
“Well then,” replied Tmesis, Priestess of Forgotten Gods. “By all means, let us do what we can to examine your sanity.”
“Were you a goddess once?” Aragon couldn’t help asking. “Are you one of the forgotten ones who were laid aside, because of the late Emperor’s whim to decimalise Mocklore’s deities?”
“Perhaps,” said the smooth-skinned priestess, risking a tiny smile. “I no longer remember. Come, let us consult the crystals.”
She produced several crystal balls from a velvet-draped chest and laid them in various strategic positions around the room. As they all began to glow softly, she spoke a long, winding prophecy in her harsh voice. When she had finished, there was a long pause.
“A golden what?” demanded Aragon Silversword finally.
“Frog,” replied the smooth-skinned Priestess of Forgotten Gods, her face illuminated by the many glowing crystal balls. She frowned slightly. “At least, I’m almost certain that it’s a frog. Possibly a log…”
“Could you check?” he said darkly.
The crystal balls seemed to be having a strange effect on Tmesis. She was losing track of the conversation. “Possibly a pond,” she mused now. “What were you saying? Yes, of course I can check. Not a problem at all.”
Aragon waited for a few seconds, watching Tmesis gaze in fascination at a blank white wall. “Will you do it soon, or shall I wait for you to forget a few more times?”
Tmesis shook her head and rose to her feet, lifting the china teapot to refill his already-brimming cup. “I’m sorry, what were we talking about?”
“Kassa Daggersharp,” Aragon growled, putting out a hand to stop her from over-filling his teacup for the third time. “Rescuing from the Underworld. Some unidentified object which may or may not be golden.”
“The bough, you mean?” she asked, replacing the teapot. “The silver bough?”
“It’s silver now?” said Aragon, barely concealing his irritation.
“No, of course not,” Tmesis said in a baffled tone of voice. “It’s golden. A golden bough. Everyone knows that. What made you think it was silver?”
“Must have been something I read,” he muttered. “And where is this bough?”
“At the mouth of the Underworld,” said Tmesis as if it was obvious.
“Yes, and how do I find it?”
She frowned. “I’ve forgotten. Isn’t that strange?”
Aragon scooped up all the glowing crystal balls, wrapped them in their thick cloths and dumped them back in the ceremonial chest. “Right,” he said firmly. “Let’s have a proper conversation, shall we?”
The intelligent glint returned to Tmesis’s eyes. “You’re not supposed to do that,” she replied. “I am supposed to give you a vague interpretation of some irrelevant prophecy or other, and you are supposed to leave without the slightest idea about the quest you have to devote the rest of your life to.”
“I prefer shortcuts.”
“I had noticed. Tell me something first. Why do you wish to make this journey to the Underworld?”
“I don’t know.”
Tmesis clicked her tongue. “That means that you do know the true reason, but don’t want to admit it, particularly to yourself.”
“Oh, really?”
“Tell me, or I will not help you.”
“I am compelled to rescue a person I do not like from death itself.” He spoke in emotionless tones.
“Oh, a witchmark,” said Tmesis, finally understanding. She sounded almost amused. “I thought they faded when one of the participants died.”
“If it had faded,” snarled Aragon, “would I be this obsessed? The only explanation is that it is lingering somehow. Trust Kassa to break the unwritten rules. Are you going to help me, or not?”
Tmesis leaned back in her padded armchair. “Do you have a pencil? This is what you have to do…”
* * *
Aragon returned to earth with a shudder, his feet slamming against the uneven cobblework of the Zibrian gateway. He stared at the marble pillars of the nearest temple as if seeing them for the first time. Then he turned his back on the city, staring out at the countryside. The forest of the dead, Tmesis had told him, is anywhere you want it to be.
And there it was. A sprawling collection of shades and ghostly branches, casting spidery shapes against the grass. A forest which had not been there before, and might not ever be there again. Aragon took one step towards it, and found himself slammed back against the walls of the city.
Something large and dense thudded into his stomach. Spinning away from the rebound of the solid blow, he saw a heavily-muscled man grinning nastily into his face, and felt another lay meaty hands on his shoulders. The two thugs tied his hands roughly behind his back and then threw him face-first into the dust of the road.
A pair of boots hovered in front of his face. He looked up, past the shiny buckles of the boots to the shapely calves beyond. Supporting himself on his elbows, his grey eyes took in the vision of slinky chainmail, straggly hair and hobgoblin smile. Behind him, one of the thugs behind kicked Aragon solidly in the kidneys, and he grunted in pain. “Hello, Bounty.”
Bounty Fenetre glowed at him, nudging his bruised left shoulder with her boot. “Only doing my job. According to all the bounty bulletins, the Lady Emperor will pay good money to get you back in one or two pieces, and the Zibrian secret police want you turned in before you’re found in their territory.” She nodded firmly at her hired muscle. “Get him up. Don’t break him yet.” Her eyes flicked back to Aragon’s dust-smeared face. “I’m feeling conversational.”
The grizzled thugs hauled Aragon to his feet, dusted him off with a couple of well-placed slaps, and stood to attention. Their leather-strapped leotards bulged under excessive amounts of muscle and beer-fat.
Aragon looked past the bounty hunter and the thugs to focus on the s
hadowy forest of the dead. The spidery trees flickered and faded away, to be replaced by a cheerful green meadow. “No!” he muttered, twisting numbly at the ropes which bound his wrists. “Not now! You can’t do this.”
Bounty tipped her head to one side, nibbling a stray lock of hair. “I think I can, you know. I have a reputation to keep up.” She smiled. “Besides, this gives us a chance to add new levels to our relationship, don’t you think? We never did get around to playing with ropes.”
Aragon’s teeth drew back in a feral snarl. “You don’t understand—I can get her back!”
Surprised by the passionate tones, Bounty nodded to her two hired thugs. “Head back to the Charterhouse and pick up your money. I can handle it from here.”
They ambled off, grunting to each other. Bounty moved around Aragon, tugging hard on his tied wrists until he winced with pain. “Are you saying I should let you go free in the name of true love?” she suggested, her mouth very close to his ear.
“No,” Aragon said harshly, staring straight ahead. “Not that.”
Bounty nudged him in the ribs, her natural talent finding another of the bruises her thugs had inflicted on him. “Then what? Why should I bother to release you—this is my one chance to impress the Lady Emperor and get hired to her personal staff. I could do with a pension plan.”
“Wait!” Aragon spoke haltingly, the words wrung painfully out of him. “You’re right. I love her. That’s why what I have to do is so important to me.”
Bounty blinked, half a smile hovering over her perfectly-shaped lips. “I know you, Silversword,” she accused. “Of old. You wouldn’t admit to something like that unless it wasn’t true.” She shook her head incredulously. “Even now, you are lying to me.”
“True,” he admitted, finally meeting her gaze. Was he lying? He didn’t know any more. All he knew was that he had some things to work out with Kassa Daggersharp, and he wouldn’t have a chance to do so unless he got to that damn forest.
Bounty moved away, still staring at him like he had surprised hero in some way. After a long moment, she laughed. “Oh, one of these days, I’m going to figure out what goes on in that devious little mind of yours.”
The Mocklore Omnibus (Mocklore Chronicles #1 & #2) Page 43
