The Bell Between Worlds

by Ian Johnstone

  How true that had proved to be.

  For some moments he flicked through the pages of the Samarok, scanning the strange runes and countless entries, and his thoughts turned to his encounter with Fathray.

  “… your journey to the Magruman and your journey to find your mother are one and the same,” the gentle Scribe had said.

  Sylas’s gaze rose from the Samarok to the river and the wave that drove them onwards towards the Barrens. His eyes travelled over the passing rocks, the towering forests that shrouded the hilltops; then still higher, up into the darkening sky, where a great grey blanket had dulled the encroaching sunset to a pallid glow. There, far above the green canopy, he saw the dark shapes of giant birds turning lightly on the breeze, tilting on invisible currents to form graceful, intersecting circles in the void. It was another familiar sight, like the birds he had watched from Gabblety Row, flying high over the distant hills, calling him on.

  He was meant to be here. He knew that now. Just as Filimaya had said, this strange place was a mirror to his own world – not an alien world, but one that brought him closer to understanding his own. Already it had taught him about himself and about his past, about his mother and hers. And it held many more answers – he was sure of it. Perhaps, after all, this mysterious journey was his best chance of being with her again.

  “I’ll try to understand,” he had told Mr Zhi.

  “ That is all that I can ask. And that is all your mother would ask,” was the reply.

  He looked downriver, towards the deep ravines in the hills and the glowering sky above the Barrens, and for the first time he felt ready for what lay ahead.

  “I’m coming for you, Mum,” he murmured. “I’m coming.”

  24

  Our Darkest Shame

  “In these barren wastes our darkest shame

  O’erhangs where once the greenest bowers grew…”

  AT FIRST SYLAS WAS only dimly aware of it, for it was not the presence of something, but rather an absence. He walked on, the river far behind him now, hardly knowing that anything was wrong, but feeling a growing tightness in his stomach. Sweat pricked the back of his neck, as if his body was trying to tell him that something was amiss. And then, as they walked across a small clearing in the densely thicketed forest floor, he realised what it was.

  Silence.

  The birds had stopped singing. The insects no longer chirruped in the undergrowth. The great canopy of trees was silent and still, for even the hilltop breeze had died.

  It had not happened suddenly but gradually, so that he could not know how long it had been, but now it was absolute and suffocating. He felt oddly disoriented, as though this thick, heavy silence was like a descending blanket of darkness.

  Suddenly he heard a sharp crack somewhere ahead. The snap of a twig. He peered through the bushes and caught a glimpse of red hair, stark and bright against the thick undergrowth.

  Simia. Just Simia.

  He breathed deeply and picked up his pace, keen to catch up with the others. His boots crushed the leaves and twigs, rustles echoing from the trunks of nearby trees. He flinched and glanced about him, feeling that surely something out there was watching him, mocking him. He kept moving, pushing aside branches and bushes, forcing his way through the undergrowth until he drew near to Simia.

  To his surprise, she seemed entirely unperturbed as she marched steadily through the forest, her great coat pulled tightly round her against the cold, humming a tune while coiling a strand of her hair round a finger.

  She turned and raised an eyebrow, looking amused. “Something wrong?”

  Sylas frowned and spread his arms wide. “What do you mean, ‘something wrong’? Can’t you hear it?”

  Simia paused, drew a long breath of dank forest air and listened to the silence.

  “Nope,” she said, moving on.

  “But why’s it gone so quiet?” demanded Sylas, falling in behind her.

  “It’s just the way of this place,” she said, not turning, but the smile fading from her lips. “You’ll see.”

  She picked her way onwards through the forest, her slight figure shifting nimbly this way and that despite the heavy folds of her coat, deftly dodging bushes, logs and low branches. Hardly reassured, Sylas glanced about him for his other two companions. He could just about make out the lithe shape of Ash somewhere far ahead, the faint, colourless light occasionally catching his great nest of wayward blond locks, but the bear-like form of Bayleon was nowhere to be seen, already lost among the silhouettes of mighty trunks and the dank overhang of leaves.

  The quiet settled about Sylas once again, cold and heavy. He felt the chill biting at him through his tunic, pooling in his lungs. He tightened his belt and picked up his pace, glancing hopefully up at the canopy of leaves, yearning for a glimpse of brightness, a ray of sunshine. But there was nothing. The silence had brought with it a slow, gathering mist: a featureless fog that hung about the highest branches, robbing them of light, shape and colour. And that was when Sylas realised that it was not just the sounds of the forest that had deserted them, it was the colour too.

  Gone were the livid greens and rich textures of the riverside trees where they had moored their boat; gone were the dappled pigments of moss and crisp dried leaves that had splashed the forest floor as they had made their way up that lush gorge; gone too were the greens, browns, oranges and yellows that had mottled their path. In their place, their poor cousin had taken hold, something less wholesome.

  A creeping, doleful grey.

  The shapes and features of the forest were still visible, but all had been infected by a contagion of grey, sucking from them all that made them distinct and beautiful. Leaves, branches, bushes, logs, even the very earth, were only distinguished by the drabbest shade of grey. Light and dark had themselves surrendered, giving way to the plague of drabness, becoming mere shades of that lifeless hue, so that there were no contrasts upon which to focus the eyes, no absolute forms, no respite.

  “What is this place?” Sylas murmured to himself.

  He reached out to a nearby bush and ran his fingers through the leaves, which left a cold slimy trail across his fingers. His instinct was to pull his hand away in disgust, but instead he pulled the slippery branch down towards him and peered at the leaves. In most respects they looked normal, with the delicate veins and elegant shapes entirely intact, but they were utterly devoid of colour. He reached up with his other hand, took hold of one of them between his thumb and forefinger and pulled. It separated like wet tissue paper and broke up on his fingertips, quickly becoming a grey sludge, like damp ash.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Simia change direction. She walked towards a dense mass of foliage that seemed, if it was possible, even greyer than its surroundings, and there he spotted the waiting forms of Bayleon and Ash. They were deep in conversation, apparently discussing the route ahead. He was reassured by their easy manner, and by Bayleon’s massive, imposing presence: his well-worn, weathered features gave him the look of one accustomed to such wild places.

  Sylas wiped his hand on his coat and set out to join them.

  “Unnerving, isn’t it?” said Bayleon with a gentle smile as he walked up.

  Sylas nodded. “What is this place?”

  Ash puffed out his cheeks. “Nowhere. Nothing,” he said. He nodded towards the tangled mass of colourless leaves. “It’s what’s through there that you ought to be worried about.”

  Sylas shot Simia a questioning glance.

  “What he means to say,” she said with a smile, “is that this is just the edge of it, the beginning.”

  “The beginning of what...?” pressed Sylas.

  “Of the Barrens, Sylas,” said Bayleon, placing an encouraging hand on his shoulder. “The Barrens of Salsimaine.”

  Sylas looked about him, a little confused. Somehow this was not how he expected the Barrens to be. He opened his mouth to say so, but saw Bayleon had already turned away and with his great arm was pushing at the veil of
foliage. It buckled and snapped with surprising ease, pallid grey light showing between the branches.

  “Welcome to the Barrens, Sylas.”

  Sylas found himself looking at a towering wall of featureless grey. But, as he looked more closely at the blank space, he squinted and blinked. He could see movement: great leaden clouds of grey drifting and billowing, granite shadows beneath and in their midst, tracing a path above, a trailing, ashen blanket. It was not a wall of grey at all, but a vista of staggering breadth and depth, stretching from his high viewpoint as far as the eye could see.

  Sylas raised a hand to his mouth. “My God...”

  It was a landscape of utter devastation, depicted entirely in shades of grey. He saw now that the horizon glowed slightly paler, but above and below, the grey became thicker and more sombre, advancing towards them in waves of dreariness. He could just make out the gentle undulations of open country leaving the base of the hill on which they stood and setting out into the grey void. It rolled aimlessly, despairingly into the vast colourless expanse, broken only occasionally by streaks of blackness, as though the sun had somehow penetrated the greyness to char the fog-chilled surface. A gentle breeze blew up from the plains, cold and harsh, bearing the scents of Nature’s decay.

  He shuddered. Such a place seemed so alien in this world of wonders, this world of Essenfayle and the Suhl. It was more like an old photograph he had seen in Revelations – the science book given to him by his mother – a picture of a landscape blasted by fire and raked by winds and cloaked in death: the aftermath of a nuclear bomb.

  He turned to Bayleon, who was just stepping into the clearing. “What did this?”

  “We did,” he said.

  “Well, Thoth played rather a large part…” objected Ash, following close behind.

  The great Spoorrunner adjusted his leather breastplate and looked out over the dreary expanse of grey. “We were there too. This place shames us all.”

  For some time the small group stood staring out at the nothingness. They became so still, so silent, that it seemed to Sylas that the greyness was drawing their life from them. It was not only the cold, or the absence of light or sound, but a sense that something so terrible, so unthinkable had happened here that it had taken root, seeped into the earth and infused the air.

  His thoughts went back to his conversation with Ash in the boat, about Thoth and his legions, about his war against the Suhl and all that they stood for, about his attack on their entire nation and way of life, their men, women and children.

  “Is this where it happened?” he asked. “The Undoing?”

  The Spoorrunner stared out across the Barrens.

  “The Undoing doesn’t end, Sylas: it is not confined to a single place or time. But you could say that this was the worst of its horrors.” He drew a breath of the heavy air. “This is the place where our people made their last stand in a battle we called the Reckoning. This is where Merimaat fell and where we all despaired. The Barrens is a place of endings, Sylas. Nothing good happens here.”

  There was a short silence, then Ash ran his fingers through his tousled crop of hair.

  “Not the most cheery way to begin our journey across the Barrens, is it?” he ventured.

  Bayleon shot him a withering look.

  “What? I’m just saying that we need to be a bit more...”

  “I know what you’re saying, Ash,” sighed Bayleon. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this journey with Sylas will be the first good thing to come of this place, but for now, it fills me with nothing but dread.”

  Ash drew a long breath. “Lunch! Lunch is what we need! As my rather portly father used to say, ‘Never despair on an empty stomach!’”

  He walked to a nearby rock and laid down his pack. Sylas and Simia watched as he pulled open the drawstring and began unpacking some of his things.

  Bayleon regarded his friend with the trace of a smile. He laid down his own pack and began emptying it, taking out a small axe and various objects that Sylas took to be the trail-finding tools of a Spoorrunner – something that looked like a compass, a glass orb, various measuring devices. Finally he produced a large chunk of cheese and a loaf of bread wrapped in a waxen cloth.

  Soon they were all eagerly taking their share of bread, cheese, dried meats and a fruit that Sylas did not recognise. Ash made a show of taking out a small jar of a yellow substance and spreading it thinly on his piece of bread.

  “Mustard!” he announced triumphantly. “The spice of life. Never cross a dismal wasteland without it!”

  Simia wrinkled her sun-blotched nose.

  They ate heartily and between mouthfuls found themselves discussing all that had happened on that fateful day.

  “What exactly happened at the river, Sylas?” asked Ash. “When we were being attacked. Did you stop the Slithen? Or was that Filimaya?”

  Sylas thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I’m not sure – I know I couldn’t have, but it felt like I did. It was like the river was in the bottom of my stomach... the fish and the reeds... the crabs, the eels... everything... Like they were all... it sounds stupid, but—”

  “Like they were all part of you,” said Ash, grinning. “That’s exactly what it’s like!”

  “Yes!” said Sylas excitedly.

  “Well, I didn’t see you do anything except stand up in a boat,” said Simia grumpily.

  The smile faded from Sylas’s face. “Well, it felt like that... for a moment.”

  “Hang on, hang on,” said Simia. “You’re really saying that you stopped a whole legion of Slithen without anyone seeing anything?”

  “I don’t know, but—”

  “You think you’ve mastered Essenfayle in... what? A day?”

  “Simia, you’re not listening,” said Sylas irritably. “I don’t know what happened, I’m just—”

  “Well, it sounded like you were saying—”

  “You didn’t listen long enough to hear!” snapped Sylas.

  There was a silence. Ash and Bayleon exchanged glances and raised their eyebrows, then deftly changed the subject.

  They talked about their friends travelling to the Valley of Outs, about the fate of Fathray and Bowe, about the Barrens. Soon conversation turned to Paiscion, the man for whom they were making this long journey, the man in whom they had placed so much hope.

  “Do you really think it’s worth it?” asked Sylas, his eyes travelling across the great expanses of the Barrens, picturing the dangers he and his companions might face. “Crossing the Barrens just to see this one man?”

  “Well, there isn’t anything to go back for,” said Ash. “There’s nothing left. The mill, the work of the Scribes, the community – it’s all gone and what’s left is hidden in the Valley of Outs. The only way is forward now. Your journey, wherever it leads us, might be our only hope.”

  Sylas looked at Ash’s youthful face, set firm, brimming with vigour and determination, and he knew that he was right, that somehow his journey was now as much theirs as his, that his questions were their own.

  Simia looped an arm through his. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  It was difficult to tell where it first came from. It began quietly like the solitary hoot of an owl, then gained volume, rose in pitch and hung ominously in the grey air until there was no doubt what it was.

  A howl.

  Even as it reached its crescendo, it was followed by another, this time almost certainly to their left, and then another behind. As more joined the devilish chorus, the entire forest seemed to resonate: the leaf-strewn ground, the dark trees, the hanging canopy, all of them seemed to moan and tremble. It was a savage, canine battle cry.

  Sylas rose to his feet and glanced about the clearing, but all he saw was the forest.

  “We have to run!” hissed Simia.

  “Yes, but where?”

  There was a slight movement ahead of them, at the edge of the clearing, and everyone froze. Their eyes searched the undergrowth until suddenly leaves parted and a
broad black shape appeared, striding boldly from the shadows, directly towards Sylas.

  Its predatory figure was thrown forward, its hood drawn low, its powerful shoulders swinging from side to side. As it reached the middle of the clearing, the shadows shifted, making the trees move darkly, and then more shapes emerged and began to advance in unison, silent and purposeful. As they prowled into the murky light, Sylas saw that they were larger and carried themselves lower to the ground, so low that their grisly canine jaws brushed the colourless grass, leaving trails of drool behind them. Their pale yellow eyes seemed to glow as they sighted their prey, and their manes of matted black fur rose menacingly on their shoulders, adding to their terrifying bulk.

  Ghorhund. Scores of them.

  He was vaguely aware of Bayleon and Ash stepping forward to stand at his shoulder, but his eyes were fixed on the lone figure, now just a few paces away. Still it came on, moving deliberately, steadily, like a hunter.

  As it drew near, it reared up to its full height, raised a black hand from beneath its cloak and slowly drew back its hood.

  The single barred window gave little comfort to the huddled captives, for the view that it offered was quite terrifying. It showed the sweating, bristling, arching backs of the Ghorhund as they bounded along the road, straining at their yokes, baying and snarling to clear the road ahead. So fast were they moving now that sometimes an unfortunate peasant or travelling tradesman was caught unawares, only to be snatched up in powerful jaws and tossed aside.

  This was the scene the Suhl feared the most, because it drew them ever closer to the things of the Undoing: the city, the Dirgheon and Thoth. Nevertheless almost all of the pale faces in the carriage were turned to that window, for at least it offered a meagre shaft of grey light, and the world outside helped them to forget the dark, silent presence of the two Ghor crouching just a few paces away.

  The only prisoner who took no interest in the window was a large powerfully built man who crouched at the rear of the carriage. He had a strange appearance, with a long, sad-looking face, rangy limbs and a glistening bald head, which bore strange markings and symbols. His doleful green eyes moved slowly around the shadows of the carriage, looking from face to face, taking in the expressions of fear and failing hope, then beyond, into thought and feeling. He saw the thick blacks and amorphous greys of hopelessness, the angular, purple sharpness of terror and the gaunt, thin blues of grief. In most he could still make out the dimmest glow of companionship, though even this was fading.