The Bell Between Worlds

by Ian Johnstone

  Simia lowered her eyes and kept walking. Clearly she liked this subject even less than Ash.

  “But we had no choice,” continued Ash. “We had to fight to the end. Even once Thoth was joined by the other two Priests of Souls, and we knew that the war was all but lost. Not only was Merimaat fighting three of her own strength, so were each of her Magrumen. Thoth’s army of Gherothians and the Ghor, who had been weakened by months of fighting, were reinforced by the Sur and the Basetians. What had been a fairly balanced fight turned into a rout – worse than that, a massacre. They outnumbered us and they used magic the like of which we’d never seen: strange mutations of living things – probably some kind of Druindil; devastating Urgolvane forces that tore into our ranks and charred the very earth beneath our feet; and all manner of awful devilish creations – no doubt the work of Kimiyya, Thoth’s own magic. Within weeks, our settlements had been utterly destroyed and the tide of the war had turned. We were in retreat, and we needed to find a way out.

  “It was Espen’s idea to go south. These plains were once riddled with rivers, all of them flowing towards the sea no great distance away. The Suhl Magrumen – Espen, Paiscion and Blissil – were to use the dry riverbeds to take the weak and the sick out by night, while what remained of our fighting army and Merimaat stayed behind. Once the fugitives reached the sea they were supposed to be met by the Ghalaks – a sea-faring people working for hire – hardly allies, but they were outside Thoth’s influence and were reliable enough if you paid them well.”

  Simia had fallen behind, not wanting to hear any more, and was trying to strike up a conversation with Espen. Ash looked sombre as he paused to take a swig from his water bottle.

  “We don’t know how,” he continued, “but Thoth found out about the plan. While the other Priests of Souls stayed to fight Merimaat and the army, Thoth and Scarpia, the most powerful of his Magrumen, followed our people to the sea. There they found them gathered on the sand flats, looking out at an empty bay, crying out in despair. The Ghalaks hadn’t come. That’s when Thoth and Scarpia attacked. They summoned downpours of acid rain, torrents of molten rock and flames that belched from the sea. It was like the end of the world, and in an enclosed bay like that, there was no escape. Blissil was killed in the first attack and Espen and Paiscion were too busy fending off the onslaught to have any hope of helping. In despair they sent the Spoorrunners to search for a safe way out.

  “While they were away, Thoth walked alone out on to the headland, cloaked all in black and silver, wearing his dread mask of cloth. He looked down on the Suhl and raised a terrifying magic: the earth began to tremble and quake as though it was about to break in two; the sands beneath the waves churned and boiled, mixing with the water, seething like they too were part of the sea. Soon they were little more than a liquid morass, heaving, swirling, eddying. Slowly at first, then all too quickly, they engulfed the people, swallowing them into the earth, pulling them beneath the waves of sand and water.”

  Ash paused, checking that Simia was still far behind, then he added in a low voice: “Within minutes, everyone was gone, lost beneath the sand flats of Salsimaine.”

  Sylas shook his head. “Everyone?”

  “Everyone. Except a few, including Espen, it seems. And Paiscion – he was still fighting on the headland.”

  “And Simia’s family?” whispered Sylas, glancing behind him.

  “No, not there,” was the hushed reply.

  “But she seems so…”

  “The Reckoning touched us all in its own way,” replied Ash with a glance behind.

  His face was drained. Once again Sylas felt overwhelmed by the scale and horror of it all. It was an unthinkable, hideous thing, an evil that he could not even begin to comprehend.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. The words sounded feeble.

  Ash offered no reply.

  They walked on in silence. The terrible images of people sinking into the sands grew in Sylas’s mind, for Ash had painted a vivid picture, and thoughts of such horrors formed all too easily here on the Barrens. He was relieved when Simia finally tired of trying to engage Espen in some kind of conversation and caught up.

  They had long since lost sight of their meagre camp somewhere in the grey behind them. The view was exactly the same in every direction: flat, empty plains whose only features were occasional slopes, undulations and dried riverbeds. It was a wonder that Bayleon knew where to go without landmarks or the sun, and Sylas marvelled as he watched him walking confidently on, stooping every now and again to examine the ground underfoot, then setting out again with renewed energy. Sylas thought back to Ash’s account of the Reckoning, to the huge responsibility that had rested on Bayleon and these other Spoorrunners.

  “You’ve never told me about the Spoorrunners,” he said as the three of them clambered up a riverbank. “What do they do exactly?”

  Ash glanced in Bayleon’s direction and smiled with admiration. “They’re a dying breed,” he said. “And Bayleon is one of the last. They do two things: they guide and they hunt. Guide, because they can find their way just about anywhere; hunt, because they can find anybody or anything just by following their tracks – not the kind of tracks that you or I can see, but ones we don’t even know are there.”

  “Like what?”

  “They spot the tiniest things, like scuffed dirt or a bent leaf or a blade of grass out of place. But what’s really weird is that they even feel changes in the wind and vibrations in the earth – there’s no getting away from them.”

  “Too true,” said Simia with a sigh.

  Ash laughed. “Simia’s tried more often than most!”

  Simia grinned proudly. “Bayleon’s always finding me up in the hills or in the tunnels under the temple or in the fish market. I don’t know how he does it.”

  “And the things in his bag? Are they for tracking?”

  “Some of them,” said Ash. “But they use most of them for showing others the way – they normally don’t need such things themselves. It comes naturally to them: passed from father to son, mother to daughter. Bayleon himself is from the Spoor family – the family that gave Spoorrunners their name – and his greatgreat-grandfather was the most famous Spoorrunner of them all.”

  Then he cleared his throat. “He’s also a bit of a know-all of course...”

  Sylas smiled. “Of course.”

  They walked on in silence, all of them looking ahead to Bayleon’s impressive figure, his assured strides consuming the empty miles of the Barrens. It was a great comfort to have him there.

  The hours passed slowly. At one stage they reached a point that was a little higher than the rest of the plain and Sylas hoped that they might see something – anything – that broke the tedium of grey, but they looked ahead on to yet more of the cold, desperate expanse, punctuated only by scores of the black, inky stains where the earth had been scorched. They picked their way onwards between ravines and riverbeds towards the distant horizon, which was now darkening ever further as the sun retired. The cold and stiffness had finally left Sylas’s limbs, but the endless trudge was sapping and he found himself desperate to know how much further they had to go.

  “Are we nearly there?”

  “When we’re nearly there,” said Ash cheerlessly, “you won’t need to ask.”

  By the time that moment came, the dwindling light had become little more than a grubby mark on the horizon. Sylas had started to wonder if they would reach their destination after all, but as they climbed a low rise, something caught his eye. It was a curious, jagged break in the long, featureless line between the earth and the sky. He made out several shapes like crooked teeth rising from the earth, silhouetted in the gloomy grey light. He squinted, trying to see more, but they soon lost sight of them. They walked for some time without seeing anything, but as they climbed another slope and rounded its top, he saw it, directly ahead of him.

  It was a massive structure, hewn from giant blocks of stone as tall as a house. Some stood proud from the g
round, rising at haphazard angles high into the air; others lay across their tops, bridging one stone to the next. Although they at first seemed to be arranged at random, a pattern soon became clear: it was a vast circle with majestic, sweeping arcs, spanning the length of a football field, with other smaller rings inside. The result was at once a collection of mighty stones, each astonishing and splendid in its own right, and a single vast monument in which every part played a role, forming a complete pattern, a closed circle.

  But there was something wrong. Many of the stones were not whole, but had corners missing, deep cracks and fissures running across their surface, sections broken away. Many were blackened and charred. Others seemed to have symbols chiselled crudely into their surface. Some leaned over at impossible angles, the earth at their base ripped up into great mounds, and many had been toppled entirely and now lay next to the deep holes in which they had once stood.

  Espen strode up behind them.

  “Welcome to the Circle of Salsimaine,” he said. “Or what’s left of it.”

  30

  Betrayed

  “Even as they had deceived their kin, so the

  Priests of Souls betrayed themselves.”

  FOR SOME MOMENTS SYLAS and his companions were still, looking silently down at the great monument of Salsimaine, marvelling that it was the creation of men. They could hardly believe their eyes: here, in the midst of so much devastation, such absolute oblivion, something so immense and so beautiful had survived. It was as though it would not be subdued, would not be destroyed.

  “Come,” said Espen, patting Sylas on the shoulder and striding out in front, “I want to show you something.”

  They walked down a gentle slope towards the ancient ruin, stepping between splinters of rock and walking over large tracts of blistered, scorched earth. Some terrible battle had been waged here, its violence leaving nothing untouched: the ground cracked underfoot as though it could bear no more; the air smelt so strongly that at times it seemed that they were breathing smoke; and their path was strewn with piles of earth and boulders.

  As they reached the bottom, they encountered one boulder so large that it was clear that it had been placed there deliberately, like the stones in the circle. It had been broken by an unimaginable force, snapped at a sharp angle across its centre. Gouged into the face of the exposed rock was a hideous graffiti symbol: a bird with high shoulders and a long, cruelly arched beak.

  “This,” said Espen, running his hand over the cold surface, “is the most important of all the stones. The Scrying Rock.”

  Everyone gathered round except Bayleon, who walked on without pausing and made his way towards the centre of the circle.

  “This is the point from which the circle is meant to be seen,” continued Espen, directing their attention back towards the ruin. “From here, its true significance becomes clear.”

  Sylas turned and looked back, then took a sharp breath. The great circle looked like a solid wall. It was not complete, as many of the stones to the right had fallen away or were missing large sections, but everywhere else the stones entirely shut out the faint light from the horizon. Where there were spaces between the stones of the outer circle, they were blocked by stones inside, and where there were spaces between those of the inner circles, stones at the far side filled them in. The result was an almost perfect black wall of stone, which seemed to stand as an impenetrable barrier not only to all who would pass, but to the very light of the sun. Only in two places could any light be seen. In the very centre, the criss-cross of vertical and horizontal stones seemed to have been designed to frame, not to block, the light. They formed two perfectly shaped windows, one precisely above the other, near the top of the exact centre of the wall.

  “Those windows are the Scrying Holes,” said Espen, following Sylas’s gaze. “They are the only place in the wall of rock where—”

  “Scrying?” blurted Simia, pushing past Ash to get a better look. “What – scrying like Scryers do?”

  Espen looked a little irritated. “Well, I was just coming to that, Simia. As their name suggests, they are for scrying, but this form of scrying is far older than anything done by the Scryers. It’s not about the connections between people, it’s about the connections between the sun and the moon.”

  Simia looked excited. “I know about this! I learned it at school! It’s something to do with sunrise and… and priests… and the sun and the moon…”

  Her voice tailed off.

  “I think we had established that the sun and the moon were involved, Simia,” said Ash sarcastically.

  She frowned at him reproachfully. “Well, I do know. Just... not right now.”

  Ash looked at Espen. “I think you should put her out of her misery.”

  The trace of a smile passed over Espen’s lips. He leaned back against the Scrying Rock.

  “Once every eighteen years, at the summer solstice – the longest day in the year – the sun and the moon come together right here on this spot, showing for all to see that, although one rules the kingdom of night and the other of day, they are connected: two parts of a whole. For a whole month surrounding the solstice, the moon rises so that it passes through that tiny window at the top of the great Circle of Salsimaine. It happens every night, and people came from all around to stand here, at the Scrying Rock, to witness it. But the most important moment happens every eighteen years exactly. In those years, on the summer solstice, the sun shines through the lower window just before it sets and then, just minutes later, while the crowds would still be muttering their amazement, the moon would rise. It would climb behind the wall so that no one could see it and then, in a moment of seeming magic, its sacred white light would beam through the other window.”

  Simia rolled her eyes. “That’s right, now I remember,” she said triumphantly. “Isn’t there something about the stars as well?”

  Espen raised an eyebrow. “The constellations? Yes, there is. The Circle of Salsimaine connects the sun, the moon, the stars, the seasons, the months of the year – every part of the cosmos. Its full significance has been lost over the years.”

  “No wonder it was this that finally took us to the Other,” whispered Ash, staring reverently at the black stones.

  Espen nodded his agreement.

  “And this is the same as the circles we have?” asked Sylas. “There’s one called Stonehenge not far from where I Iive.”

  “Exactly the same,” said Espen, smiling. “Two sides of the same coin, like the rest of our two worlds. And the one that you mention, Stonehenge, is in exactly the same place as this one, though of course it’s in your world, not ours.”

  Sylas stared at the stones with new wonder. This stone circle... in the very same spot as Stonehenge? It hardly seemed possible.

  “And you used these to pass between the worlds?” he asked.

  “This is one way, yes.”

  Sylas felt a growing excitement. “So I could get back to my world right now? I could go back and look for my mum?”

  Espen stiffened. “In theory, yes.”

  “What does that mean, ‘in theory’?”

  “It means that yes, you could go back, but perhaps that isn’t what she would want. Not yet.”

  “Don’t tell me what my mum wants!” snapped Sylas with a sudden surge of emotion. “I’m sick of everyone thinking they know her!”

  Espen’s face darkened for a moment and he looked away, as if to consider how to react. He laid a hand on Sylas’s shoulder. “Of course you know her better than anyone. I just meant that she knew about this world and about the Glimmer Myth. In a way she and the Merisi led you here: to this world, to these discoveries, to the Suhl. Do you really want to turn away from that now?”

  Sylas lowered his eyes, the familiar confusion clouding his thoughts. He knew that what Espen said made sense, but he yearned to see her with all his heart. How could he do nothing, knowing that this place might take him to her? But then he too believed that this journey was somehow what she
wanted. That the answers lay here, not back where he started. He kicked out at the dry earth, sending up a cloud of dust.

  “No,” he said.

  “Come on, it’s late,” said Espen, drawing himself up. “Let’s set up camp.”

  He headed off towards the Circle of Salsimaine. Ash patted Sylas on the shoulder and set out after the Magruman, but Simia stayed behind.

  “He might be right,” she said quietly, “but that doesn’t make it any easier.”

  She linked arms with Sylas and together they set out after their companions.

  They made their way between some of the fallen stones, clambering over the rubble that had once been part of the great monument. Soon they were walking among the vast uprights, some jutting straight up into the darkening sky, others topped with stones just as mighty as themselves, forming an eerie arch that seemed like a doorway into the unknown. There was so little light that they cast almost no shadow, but they seemed to Sylas to draw in what dying rays there were, deepening the gloom of the Barrens. He reached out and touched one of the smooth sides, running his fingers over the cool surface until they fell into a deep crack. He felt the cold, damp interior and snatched his hand away.

  They moved past the outer circle, which swept off to their left and right, and stepped beneath the arches of the first inner arc, which seemed in better condition. Finally they entered the smallest of the circles. Here the stones were whole and, although some were cracked or crudely engraved with the glaring face of Thoth, they were still well formed. This was the inner sanctum. After hours of staring into wide open spaces and endless horizons the giant perfectly crafted enclosure was breathtaking. Sylas could sense the presence of the creators in the looming stones, as though their souls were even now bound up in the dark rock. It was at once frightening and comforting; ominous and exhilarating.

  A vast stone table lay in the centre of the circle, supported at its two ends by great plinths of rock upon which some ancient carvings were still visible. Bayleon had already unpacked his bag on to the table and was now busy digging the ash out of an old fire pit.