The Bell Between Worlds

by Ian Johnstone

  “No.”

  “Then don’t tell me what can’t be done.”

  Espen stood up and turned to face their enemy.

  Sylas took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind. He thought of all the life of the river rising up and seizing the Slithen. Then at least his imaginings had seemed to come true. But he couldn’t be sure, could he? Just as Simia said, he hadn’t seen it – no one had seen it.

  He looked over at the riverbed, trying to picture the sandy bed collapsing and falling away, leaving behind only a dark, gaping chasm. He found his eyes drifting back to the bared teeth and tearing claws of the approaching Ghorhund and the unnatural, bestial movement of the Ghor. Already they were so near that all he could hear was the thunder of their charge and all he felt was the ground trembling beneath his feet.

  “Raise your hands!” cried Espen, more urgently now, lifting his arms in front of him. “They’ll focus your mind!”

  Sylas hesitated, terrified by the approaching legion.

  “Do it!”

  He brought his hands up until they were in line with the riverbed, framing the scene. He realised that this was just what he had seen the others doing when they had conjured their magic: Espen in the town, Simia in the hills, Filimaya on the river.

  “Now you take that part of the river!” cried Espen, raising his voice above the baying of the Ghorhund. “I’ll take this!”

  Sylas moved his hands until one was directly in front of him and the other was held far out to his left, wide of the last of the advancing beasts. He saw the river between his fingers, held in his grasp.

  Still they came on, the Ghorhund tossing their heads and gnashing at the air, the Ghor seeming to glide effortlessly in their midst. Then, as the ground started to shake beneath the stampede of claws, they fell silent. They ceased their baying and howling and drew together, closing the line until all that could be seen was a wall of blackness, broken only by yellow eyes and the dull glint of teeth. And in that moment, as the hunters smelt their prize and prepared to strike, Sylas’s heart failed. His hands wavered in the air and he shot a frightened glance up at Espen.

  He found impenetrable eyes already looking down.

  “Imagine it so, Sylas,” said Espen. He raised his head and looked away.

  Sylas bit his lip, steadied his hands and focused his mind on the impossible. They were just paces away now and already some of the Ghorhund had launched themselves into the air, heaving their massive shoulders over the riverbed.

  And, in that instant, he imagined oblivion.

  He imagined the hard-packed earth of the riverbed cracking; the ancient sands belching upwards into the air; the tumbling banks turning in upon themselves. And, as he pictured those things in his mind, so they happened. The great sweep of the river flowed once more, not with water, but with gravel, earth and dust. And, as the cracks widened into gaping ravines, so this weird torrent drained into them, pouring vast floods of dirt into the nothingness below. He pictured waves of sand hurled into the air and, as he saw them in his mind, so they rose, catching the flailing claws of the Ghorhund, enclosing them in their clinging mass, snatching them out of the air, pulling them down. He pictured the banks widen and break away, collapsing into gaping darkness, and so they fell, ensnaring black limbs in the deluge of earth. He pictured a black abyss, a mighty void opening in front of him, swallowing all that lay in its path.

  And so it was.

  Scores of creatures fell from sight, snarling, wailing and baying as they were consumed by the earth; grasping claws flailed at crumbling banks and gnashing teeth rolled back into the darkness.

  As the last of the Ghor let out a wailing howl, Sylas was consumed by his vision. He imagined the chasm falling in upon itself, closing up over the heads of the falling beasts. In that moment the ground shuddered beneath their feet and, with a calamitous boom, the towering walls of the chasm crashed into one another, sending up a great rush of wind and, with it, a curtain of sand that rose hundreds of feet into the air.

  The vast cloud of dust and sand slowly sank towards the ground, settling about the fugitives as they stood in silence, staring at the turmoil of earth where the river had once been.

  One by one Simia, Bayleon and Espen turned to look at Sylas, their eyes wide with fear and wonder.

  26

  Tales Untold

  “You ask about the host of tales untold?

  Read on, let the Ravel Runes unfold.”

  THE GLOAMING LIGHT FADED slowly to a dull smudge on the horizon. Pale greys darkened into charcoals and blacks that gradually closed in upon the three figures in the open plain: two working feverishly amid heaps of earth, the other lying motionless to one side.

  “Yes, but how did you do it?” pressed Simia, wiping her brow. “Like I say, I just thought about it,” said Sylas, plunging his small wooden shovel into the dust. “Imagined it. And whatever I thought about just… happened.”

  Simia shook her head and turned back to the pit.

  “Well,” she said, picking at the sides with her shovel, “I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, OK, that’s how Essenfayle works – using your imagination and everything – but not like that. Not unless you’re a Magruman or something.”

  Sylas carried on working in silence, scooping up dirt from the bottom of the pit and throwing it on to the growing pile at his side. It was as much a mystery to him as it was to anyone else. Even thinking about it made his stomach turn over: the screams of the falling beasts haunted him even now. He tried to avoid Simia’s eyes, hoping that she would stop questioning him or even better change the subject.

  But, as usual, Simia had different ideas.

  “So were you scared?” she asked, dropping her shovel and wiping her hands on her tunic.

  He sighed and thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think I was. I mean, I was terrified before it started and I’m pretty scared thinking about it now, but while it was happening – I don’t know – I guess it just felt… right.”

  Simia frowned. “Right?”

  He nodded.

  She rested her hands on her hips. “So let me get this straight. You split the earth open, you threw a whole company of Ghor into it and you turned the world upside down, and you felt… right?”

  He shrugged. “Right.”

  “Right.” She stared at him quizzically for a moment. “You’re quite scary, you know that?”

  He smiled and turned back to his work.

  Simia picked up a shovel and drove it into the side of the pit. Just moments later she stopped, holding the spade in mid-air.

  “So hold on a minute, why are we breaking our backs digging a fire pit when you could do it with… I don’t know… a nod of your head or… or a sneeze or something?”

  He sighed. “Because Espen told us to use a spade?” he suggested.

  She grunted.

  “Besides, I have a feeling I can’t do that kind of thing just... whenever I want.”

  “Why not? You haven’t tried.”

  “No,” he said flatly, “and I don’t want to.”

  The thought of any more magic made him decidedly uneasy. It was one thing to try this kind of thing when he was told to – with Espen standing next to him – but it was quite another to do it just because he could.

  “I won’t tell,” she whispered, glancing at their unconscious companion. “Ash won’t either.”

  “Look,” Sylas snapped irritably, “I’ve done enough magic for one day – I’d rather just use a spade, if it’s OK with you.”

  She looked piqued. “Fine,” she said, jabbing savagely at a clod of earth.

  They worked in silence for some minutes, Simia making swift progress as she vented her annoyance on the hard-packed earth, Sylas moving rather more slowly, his mind wandering from the task. He felt guilty for having snapped and he tried to think of another topic of conversation.

  “So why do we need to build the fire in a pit anyway?”

  “So it can’t be seen, of course,” mum
bled Simia, flinging a shovelful of earth on to a heap. “If we made a normal fire, it’d be seen miles away. Obviously.” She looked over at him. “That’s deep enough. Now we use the dirt to make a bank around it – you know, to block the light.”

  She started to shape one of the piles of loose earth so that it formed a neat ring around the pit, several paces back from its edge. Sylas climbed out and began to help.

  “How do you know this stuff?” he asked.

  She was silent for a few moments. “Because I used to live here.”

  He stopped digging. “You lived here?”

  She kept working, but nodded.

  “Why would you live here?” he asked incredulously.

  She shot him a sharp look. “Well, not because I wanted to, stupid.”

  Sylas watched her for a moment as she jabbed irritably at the earth with her shovel, then decided that it was best not to ask any more and turned away.

  They continued to dig and shape the heaps of dirt, Sylas moving one way round the circle and Simia the other, neither talking. As the ring took shape, he saw just how effective it would be at hiding the flames, but not only that, it would act as a windbreak and a support as they rested around the fire. She really did know what she was doing.

  Soon it was nearly finished. As they shaped the final pile, they gradually closed the circle and found themselves working near one another. Simia glanced at him a couple of times, then finally broke the silence.

  “I’m not from here. My parents just brought me here,” she said. “We came during the war.”

  Sylas nodded, but carried on working, sensing that it was best just to listen.

  “Just about all of us were on the move then – running away, or trying to fight. My father thought it was best to do what most people were doing, and most were coming here.”

  She patted the final load of soil into place, then laid down the shovel and sat on top of the pile of earth.

  “Took us months to get here. I don’t remember much about the journey now, but I know it wasn’t easy. My parents were really determined. They said that this was a special place – beautiful. They said that all the Suhl would be here and we’d be safe.” She laughed emptily. “And, for a while, we were. In fact, it was great: open grasslands where we could farm our crops; forests we could play in; cool rivers…”

  She glanced over to where the dried riverbed had been, now just a sea of sand dunes and dust.

  “There used to be hundreds of those, all over the place. And we were all together – thousands of us – tens of thousands. Even Merimaat was here.”

  Sylas looked up. “Who exactly was Merimaat?”

  “She was our leader – the leader of all the Suhl,” said Simia. “A really great leader – as powerful as Thoth; more powerful, even…” She lifted her chin a little. “I met her once, a few miles from here…”

  “You met her?”

  “I did,” she said, raising her eyebrows and looking away, as if talking of something incidental. “In fact, in a funny kind of way, she saved my life.”

  Simia paused for dramatic effect. Sylas sat down on the pile of earth and looked at her expectantly.

  “Well, we were both crossing a river,” continued Simia, “maybe even this one for all I know. There were some stepping stones. I was small and scared of the water and I was even more petrified when I realised she was behind me. I kept slipping off one stone and tripping over the next. I was drenched, and I was only part of the way across. Anyway, she caught up with me, put a hand on my shoulder and whispered something in my ear. She said: ‘They aren’t trying to trip you, they’re trying to help you.’”

  She paused, smiling to herself.

  “I know it sounds silly when I say it, but when she did, it just sounded clear, simple... like real, absolute truth. Then we walked across, hand in hand at first, but then on my own. And I didn’t slip once. Didn’t even wobble.” She laughed to herself. “By the time I reached the other side I was almost skipping over the stones.”

  She fell silent, enjoying her memory.

  Sylas frowned. “And what happened then?”

  “That was that – she went one way and I went the other, and I never saw her again.”

  “So how did she save your life?”

  “Oh, it was only later that she saved me – when the war started. It was what she said to me… about the stones trying to help me. I came to see that she wasn’t just talking about the stones and the river, she was talking about much more than that: not just me, but all people; not just the river, but all of nature. Everything.”

  Sylas thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Nope. I still don’t get it.”

  “Well, what I mean is, she changed the way I look at things. I started to see that it wasn’t only the stones in the river that were trying to help me, it was everything in Nature: the sun and the rain, the rivers and the plains, the trees and the grass...”

  She got up and started to pace round the fire pit.

  “They always talked about the connections between things at school, but for the first time I started to see what they meant – that even I was part of those connections – that Nature was there to help me.” She gave him a steady look. “It sounds stupid, I know, but it’s true. It really is. And when I looked – when I really opened my eyes and my ears and my mind and… and breathed it in – when I lived it... I knew that it was true. It was all around me.”

  “And… that’s what saved your life?”

  She nodded, gathering the folds of her huge coat around her shoulders.

  “We’d only been here for a few months when Thoth and his Magrumen came. The Reckoning, they called it. Their army was huge: the Ghor, the Gherothians, the Basetians and the Sur – legions of them. Tens of thousands of them.” The wistfulness left her face and was replaced by contempt. “Overnight this place became a battleground: the Suhl on one side and everyone else on the other. Essenfayle against all the Three Ways – Kimiyya, Druindil and Urgolvane. Everyone fought – my parents, my teachers, even the kids…”

  Her voice trailed off and she fell silent for a moment, remembering something that made her wince.

  “Even I fought.”

  Sylas looked about him into the blackish grey of the Barrens. “That’s how all this happened… the magic?”

  She nodded. “Not Essenfayle, but the rest. The problem with the others is that they change Nature, twist it. They do awful things… things that shouldn’t be possible…” She shuddered and looked away. “We started to lose and that was when it got really bad. Every kind of hell you can imagine: firestorms, boiling water, seas of mud, lightning falling like rain, howling Ghor, winds that stripped the trees and carried people away. The ground was scarred, forests were burned, rivers were poisoned. They didn’t just stop at killing people, they destroyed everything: our homes, our farms – even the land we lived on.” She kicked at the charred earth with her heel. “Everything.”

  Sylas sat in silence, trying to imagine what she had seen and, at the same time, almost frightened to. Simia seemed even smaller, her face paler in the cold, empty light of the evening. But what shocked him were her tears. Her eyes were turned away, but he could see that she was crying. He knew at once that she had rarely spoken of these things. He wanted to say something – that he was sorry or that he wished it hadn’t happened or that he wished he could have helped or… something, but all those things sounded trite and meaningless.

  In the end he said simply: “But they didn’t get you, Simsi.” Simia smiled with some effort. “No, they didn’t.”

  “So how did you stay alive?”

  “Skills. Cunning. Guile,” she said, grinning, brushing her sleeve across her eyes. He smiled with her.

  She brought her shoulders up and rubbed her arms to warm herself against the growing cold, then tucked her hands beneath the sleeves of the coat.

  “It was what Merimaat told me that helped more than anything. During the peaceful time, in the six months or a year b
efore Thoth came, I got to know this place so well that it felt like part of me. I knew the sounds in the trees, the way the wind moved, how the rivers flowed. I started to see them as I had seen the stepping stones that morning – that they weren’t things outside of me, moving around me, doing things to me – they were part of my world... part of me almost.” She turned and looked at him. “That if I was open to them, they would help me, just like the stones. And when it all got bad, that’s just how it was. I trusted that the world around me would help me, and it did. Somehow I knew when and how to keep myself hidden – behind banks, in ditches, holes, riverbeds. When water was poisoned, somehow I managed to find streams that no one knew about. I knew how to keep myself downwind of the Ghor so they wouldn’t smell me, how to move through the grass so I couldn’t be seen, where to run at night without any moon. I wasn’t the only one – anyone who knows Essenfayle can do that kind of thing. But I was good...” She turned to him with an earnestness in her eyes. “Really good.”

  He looked at her with admiration: suddenly she seemed a little older, and for a moment she almost seemed to fill the many folds of her father’s coat.

  “Will you teach me?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Sure. If you teach me about those birds you talked about.”

  He looked at her quizzically.

  “You know, the ones made of paper and string.”

  Sylas suddenly remembered telling her about his kites when they were in the Mutable Inn. “Oh yes, sure I...”

  Suddenly they heard something behind them.

  “As I remember you in those days, Simsi, you were quiet as a mouse...” Ash pushed himself up on one elbow, fingering the bandage around his head. “How things change.”

  Simia rushed over and helped him to sit up, but was waved off. Ash looked about him a little unsteadily.

  “Well, I’ve either died and gone to hell, or I’ve lived and... gone to hell.”

  Simia giggled. “Ash, you sound as good as new. How are you feeling?”

  “Never better,” said Ash witheringly. He cast his eyes around the makeshift camp. “So what kind of mess are we in now?”