A pheasant suddenly crashed through a bush to his right, launched into the air and flew across the clearing, clucking with each beat of its wings. He glanced in the direction of the bush, which swayed from side to side.
He saw a movement behind it, in the shadows of the wood.
A human figure emerged from the darkness, stepping nimbly over some broken branches.
Sylas held his breath. At first he thought it was Espen and his heart rose, but he saw quickly that it was not a man’s frame, nor even a boy’s: it was far smaller and its lines were much more slender.
It was a girl. But her slight figure and her disobedient mass of red hair were the only signs that she was not a boy, for her movements were robust and masculine, her skin ruddy and tanned and she wore a coat that was almost comically oversized, made of a brown, crudely woven material. She took three steps into the clearing, throwing her shoulders back and her head high as if to defy her smallness, then she stopped and stared at Sylas, looking him up and down.
Her narrow face bore a bold expression, but the way she carried her elfin body betrayed her caution: her knees were bent as though poised to run and she held her grimy hands slightly out from her sides, ready to defend herself.
Her eyes fell on the bracelet around his wrist and suddenly her eyes met his. Sylas saw for the first time that beneath the streaks of mud on her cheeks she had a pleasant, even pretty face, with lively, smiling hazel eyes.
“Who are you?” She had a husky voice and a rich accent.
He was almost surprised at the question. He had become accustomed to everyone seeming to know more than him, and he had assumed that the girl would be no exception.
“I’m Sylas,” he replied, “Sylas Tate.”
She said nothing, as though she expected him to say more.
“And you?” he asked.
“I’m Simia,” she said. There was a brief silence, and she shifted her weight from one foot to the other and played nervously with a stray lock of her fiery hair.
“Are you… a Bringer?”
“A what?”
She cleared her throat and repeated herself more loudly: “A Bringer.”
He was baffled. “No,” he said, “I’m not.”
The girl frowned and nodded towards his wrist. “So what’s that?”
He looked down at the silver and gold bracelet. “If I’m honest, I don’t know what it is,” he shrugged. “It was given to me.”
“Given to you?” said the girl, in a tone of disbelief. She narrowed her eyes as though to detect a lie. “But you are from the Other, aren’t you?” she probed.
“The other what?”
Simia exhaled loudly, sending out a cloud of mist, and looked around her. “The Other. You’re from the Other, aren’t you?”
Sylas shook his head despairingly. “I’m from Gabblety Row. In town,” he said, deciding that any kind of answer would be less irritating than another question.
“Gabbity-what? There’s no Gabbitywhatever in town,” she replied suspiciously. She eyed him for a few moments, staring into his friendly, open face. “Listen. We haven’t got time for games. Just tell me this: did you come from the bell?” She pointed to the vast golden teardrop that loomed above them. “Did that bring you here?”
Sylas gave her a cool look that told her straight away that he was not playing games. He was not aware of having been brought anywhere, but her questions made him start to wonder. He looked around. He was in a forest as he was last night, but it was strangely cold and the trees were bare, as though it was winter. Then he remembered how Espen had talked about escaping to the bell, as if it would take him somewhere safe. Finally he looked at this oddly dressed girl with her strange accent and nonsensical questions. Perhaps this really was somewhere... else.
“I guess so,” he said, without conviction.
“You… guess so,” said Simia, putting her hands on her hips. She gave Sylas a long, steady look, then began to laugh. It was a light, cheery giggle and Sylas found himself smiling with her.
“Well, I guess that’ll have to do,” she said. Her face straightened. “If you are from the Other, and you did come through by the Passing Bell, you really need to get out of here.”
“Suits me,” said Sylas. Then he added, almost to himself: “I’ve got to start looking for—”
“Forget looking for anything!” said Simia incredulously. “You need to—”
“I need to find my mother,” said Sylas firmly. “That’s why I’m here. Well, at least that’s—”
“Whatever... right now all you need to worry about is what they’ll do when they know you’re here.”
“They?” repeated Sylas.
Simia let out a sigh of exasperation. “You really don’t know anything…”
She stopped mid-sentence. Sylas was staring past her towards the bell. She turned and saw in an instant what he was looking at: the bell was moving. They both instinctively took a step backwards as its huge mass tilted slightly and then began to sink very slowly towards the ground.
“What’s happening?” asked Sylas in a whisper.
“It’s leaving.”
The rim had reached the highest of the broken branches and Sylas expected to hear them splintering and cracking under its weight, but there was no sound. It continued to sink towards the earth, its great form moving through the tangle of wood as if the branches were made of air. The mist in the clearing rolled away sluggishly towards the trees. The bell reached the point at which it should have struck the frost-hardened ground, yet it continued to sink out of view, into the earth itself. The only sign that it had made contact was a very low, almost inaudible chime. Soon its base had entirely disappeared and the runes had reached the level of the broken limbs. Sylas watched the beautiful symbols gradually sinking from view.
Before long, half of the massive metal structure was embedded in the ground and he could clearly see the ring as it slowly descended from its place above the treetops. The deep chime was fading now, and it became less and less audible with every passing second. As the top of the bell drew level with his eyes, he glanced over at Simia. She too was watching, leaning back against a stump with one hand shoved deep into her pocket and the other twirling a lock of her hair. When he looked back, the bell had almost completely disappeared. Finally the last glimpse of bright metal slipped out of sight, the last strains of the chime died away and the clearing was once again shrouded in absolute silence.
Sylas looked hard at the place where it had disappeared, but there was no sign of the bell: branches still lay strewn across the ground and even the mist was now drifting slowly back into the clearing. It was as though it had simply melted away.
“Well,” said Simia with a tone of finality, “looks like you’re here to stay.” She tucked her unruly hair behind her ears. “Now follow me.”
She gathered the great folds of her coat about her, tied them tightly round her middle with a rope belt and darted off through the undergrowth.
“Follow you where?” Sylas shouted after her.
She stopped on the fringe of the forest and looked over her shoulder. “Somewhere safe.”
“But I don’t even know who you are!”
“I’m one of the Suhl,” she said. “And I’m all you’ve got.” She dashed into the undergrowth.
Sylas looked back at the place where the bell had disappeared and saw only a dank wasteland of broken trees disappearing into grey mist. Without the golden light from the bell, the surrounding forest looked darker and more threatening than ever. Not even a ray of sunlight penetrated the blanket of cloud above. He had no idea why he was here, what was happening or what to do about his mother, but there was no going back now. He turned and ran after Simia.
Despite her size, she moved at great speed and Sylas found it difficult to keep up with her, especially with his bloody knee. He could see her bright hair bobbing up and down and side to side ahead of him as she avoided trees, leapt over gullies and vaulted rotting logs. She moved as t
hough she lived in the wilds: certain of her way through the labyrinth of trees. They were running downhill so he assumed that they were heading towards town, though he was no longer sure that it would be there. He willed himself on, forcing his injured leg through the undergrowth and over the many obstacles that lay in his path. But he was falling behind.
“Wait!” he shouted irritably.
She slowed her pace and glanced back. Her shoulders slumped in her huge coat and she started to jog back up the hill towards him.
“We have to keep moving!” she said impatiently.
“I know, it’s just my knee,” said Sylas. “You’ll have to slow down – or go on without me,” he added reluctantly.
Simia looked down at his bloodied trouser leg. “What a mess,” she said, sucking her teeth. “Why didn’t you say?”
“You didn’t really give me a chance.”
She arched a ginger eyebrow. “If we slow down, we’ll almost certainly run into them, and that would be bad,” she said, with heavy emphasis. “I can’t believe we’ve even got this far. You’ll just have to keep up as best you can…”
Her voice trailed off as something seemed to occur to her. She turned and looked back down the hill. “Unless…” She glanced at Sylas. “I’m going to try something, but it may not work.” She looked unsure of herself. “Just… well, just... stand back.”
He took a step back.
“No,” she said, flapping both hands. “Further back.”
He eyed her warily and limped several paces backwards.
She turned her back to him, facing directly down the hill. She took a deep breath, pulled up the heavy sleeves of her coat and stretched her arms in front of her. Sylas looked at her tiny figure dwarfed by the vast tangled arches of the forest, wondering what new miracle he was about to witness.
Precious moments passed, but nothing happened. The forest fell silent.
Simia shook her hands and lifted herself up on her toes, as though a couple more inches of height might increase her chances, but still there was nothing. Her arms dropped to her sides and she shook her head. She adjusted her stance and her shoulders seemed to heave as she took in a lungful of air, then she raised her arms again.
“Come on, Simsi,” she muttered under her breath. “Concentrate! ”
Once more Sylas looked out into the dense forest, waiting for something to happen. At first he saw nothing, but then something peculiar made him squint. Slowly he became sure that the forest ahead of them was shifting and changing. He blinked his eyes, but the shapes of the trees continued to alter and warp. It was as though he was looking through a lens that was distorting the light, blending the lines of one tree with another, stretching them and morphing them until he was unsure which was which. The ground too was shifting. Leaves blurred with moss and roots until the forest floor was a mass of melding browns and greens. All of this motion was focused directly ahead, between Simia’s outstretched arms: to the left and right, the forest looked as it had before.
Sylas started to feel a little dizzy as he watched, but he found it impossible to look away, so beautiful was this display of colours, so strange the spectacle. And the longer he looked, the more there seemed to be order in the chaos: the vertical lines of the trees seemed to be drifting left and right, leaving an open pathway in the centre. There, where the trees had stood, the battle between the colours of the forest floor was being won by the brightest of all the greens. Soon the movement slowed and, as it did so, Sylas began to understand what he was looking at: it was a pathway, bordered on both sides by the trees that had stood in their way, its floor carpeted with soft, verdant moss.
But Simia had not finished. She moved one of her arms out towards the passing stream and moments later the silvery flow of the water started to veer from its path downhill and turn towards the long line of moss. Before long it had reached her feet, where it turned again and started flowing over the bright green surface. Sylas watched in amazement as the stream gathered pace on this smooth, slippery channel and became a shallow film of water, cascading between the trees.
Simia’s hands fell to her sides and she gasped for breath.
“It’s called a Groundrush,” she panted. “It’s for...”
There was a noise somewhere further up the hill and a bird nearby launched itself into the air. They looked sharply in its direction, their eyes scanning the skeletal trees and the shadows between. A wood pigeon sped upwards towards the grey sky, slapping its wings together as it darted through the branches.
Sylas glanced nervously at Simia. Her bold grin was gone and for the first time there was fear in her eyes.
They heard footsteps pounding through the forest somewhere far behind. The sound was heavy and resonant – whatever was making them was huge.
In the next moment the silence of the forest was shattered by a blood-chilling howl.
Even as the terrifying sound met their ears, Simia was in motion, grabbing Sylas by the collar and dragging him to the edge of the streaming water.
“It’s them! The Ghor!” she hissed in his ear. “Do exactly what I do!”
Then, without warning, she leapt into the air, throwing her legs out in front of her. She travelled some distance with her giant coat flapping about her before landing with a great splash in the icy water. As the water rushed about her, she lay back and wrapped her arms round her chest. She began to slide forward, carried with ease over the slippery, spongy surface. She quickly picked up pace and in no time she was careering down the hillside away from him, swiftly passing out of sight as she fell away into a dip in the forest floor. Seconds later she was thrown into the air some distance beyond and he heard her cry out to him as she landed back on the slide somewhere entirely out of view.
Just then a great chorus of howls echoed through the forest behind him and he heard the footsteps – closer now – crashing through the forest. They were on his trail. He pulled the rucksack from his shoulders, clutched it to his chest and leapt into the air.
He splashed into the freezing stream and gasped as the cold made its way quickly through his clothes. There was a gentle jolt as he went over a rise, then suddenly his heart was in his mouth as he accelerated downwards. Tree trunks flew past him faster and faster and, when he looked upwards, he could see a flurry of bare branches silhouetted against the grey sky. On both sides a blur of rocks and roots whisked past his face and he felt a growing excitement. He tucked in his elbows and allowed the surge of the stream to take him. He went over a bump and was thrown up in the air – suddenly weightless, hanging some distance off the ground – and in that moment everything went strangely quiet: the sound of rushing water faded; the wind stopped roaring in his ears. As he turned through the air, he was able to look back up the slide, and his blood ran cold.
Where he had been standing only moments before were two gargantuan black hounds, sniffing the air and prowling through the undergrowth. He saw in them the features of the beast that had pursued him the previous night: the cruel jaws bearing rapiersharp teeth; the immense, powerful shoulders; and the long, sloping back.
But there was one difference. They seemed almost twice the size.
Before he saw any more, the ground hurtled up at him and his pursuers disappeared from view. He hit the slide face first and water splashed into his mouth and nose, but he was quickly flipped on to his back as the mossy path banked left and then right.
Trees, leaves, bushes, rocks whisked past him in a stream of colour. He looked down between his feet and saw the bright green slide below him, turning this way and that, sometimes rising, the force pressing him down into the ground, other times falling away so that he was thrown into the air. The sound of wind and water became deafening and the Groundrush swerved ever more quickly from side to side, throwing him against its mossy banks.
Then, as quickly as this strange journey began, it was over. Sylas looked ahead of him and saw that the green of the moss came to an abrupt end. He just had time to brace himself before shooting off the s
lide into a pool of water that sent up a wall of spray around him. Gasping for air, he slid on to an expanse of brown leaves that flew up in a blizzard around his tumbling limbs, tearing at his hands and face. There were several painful jolts as he bounced off mounds and roots, but finally he came to a halt, face down against a row of bushes.
He lay panting and spitting out soil. Everything was quiet except for the flutter of leaves gradually settling on top of him.
The thought of the dark figures running through the woods made him push himself up. He saw Simia standing a few paces off, drenched from head to foot, but already on her feet, staring back up the Groundrush. As he watched, she steadied herself, held up her head and lifted her arms into the air. He looked back up the slide, which he could see writhing and turning through the forest, sometimes clearly visible as a long green line, sometimes falling out of view into a dip or twisting out of sight behind a clump of trees. As his eyes followed its curves, rises and falls, he realised that he was once again looking at a confusion of colours and lines. No longer was the slide a distinguishable shape, but a drifting slurry of colours like paints in a mixing pot. Soon the outlines of the trees were shifting again and he could no longer see any sign of the path that the slide had taken. Seconds later the trees were once again standing in their rightful places on the hillside.
It was as though the Groundrush had never been there.
10
The Ghor
“What rule is there, what law
But gnashing teeth and grasping claw?”
SIMIA FLEW ACROSS THE forest floor, moving even faster now that the ground was flattening out. Sylas winced each time his knee twisted beneath him, but somehow he kept up with her, turning this way and that to avoid trees, logs and bushes. He listened for sounds of their pursuers, but heard only the wind in his ears and the leaves and twigs under his feet.
“They’ll know now that we’re heading for town,” panted Simia, “but we’ll be safer once we’re there – more places to hide. It’s not far.”
The Bell Between Worlds Page 8
