by Roger Taylor
'Come on!’ Nertha shouted again, waving to him. She was clambering up a small cluster of rocks that marked the highest point of the mountain and that did indeed look as if they had been pushed up from below by some last desperate effort. He walked across and climbed up after her.
Nertha was standing with her hands resting on one of the rocks and her eyes closed. ‘Do your praying silently,’ she said. ‘I need to concentrate.'
Vredech was half-inclined to ask her what she was doing, but the tone of her voice forbade it. He grunted an acquiescence.
He did not close his own eyes, however. Instead, as before, he watched Nertha, for fear that, in the stillness of her own darkness, she might be in some kind of danger. Silently, he started to reach for the abundance of prayers and litanies that were a routine part of his religious life. After a moment, he hesitated. They would not be enough, he realized. They would suffice for most people, for most of the normal ills of life, but this was no normal ill. Nor was he an untutored member of a flock to be consoled by a solemn utterance. He was a Preaching Brother, well versed in the origins and inner meanings of the church's rituals and, if he were brutally honest with himself, more than a little hardened to their balm. No form of words, however revered, would aid him here. It came to him that if he was truly to find the strength to oppose this menace, then he must look to the very heart of his faith.
He felt helpless. Nor was he unaware of the dark irony of his position, standing on top of the Ervrin Mallos and looking to find form where generations of scholars had searched and failed. He was given no time to ponder his position, however.
'It's here,’ Nertha said, her voice a mixture of triumph and disgust. He looked at her. Her eyes were still closed, but she had removed her hands from the rock and was waving them vaguely in front of her. As she turned, one of her hands struck him and she seized hold of him. ‘It's here, Allyn,’ she said again. ‘Something that doesn't belong. Something that's binding it here.'
'What do you mean?’ Vredech asked, bewildered. ‘There's me, you, and the rocks, nothing else.'
Nertha's head shook in denial. ‘Hush,’ she said. ‘I'm listening.’ She released him and, gently easing him to one side, held out her hands again, searching. She was treading carefully, her feet testing the ground before she placed them down, her hands moving slowly for fear of impact with the rocks that formed this shattered crown of the mountain. For an instant, Vredech felt cackling mirth rise up inside him at the sight: mirth without humour, full of the savage unrestrained cruelty that only a young child can know. He wanted to take hold of her and push her with all his strength from their small eyrie, to end this foolishness here and now and to walk away from everything.
The shock of the thought made him gasp.
'Hush,’ Nertha said again, irritably.
This time it was cold fury that filled Vredech and he found himself looking around for a rock suitable for dashing this insolent woman's brains out. He was on the point of bending down before he realized what he was doing.
'Here!’ Nertha cried.
'No!'
Nertha's eyes opened and she turned to him sharply, for there had been such rage in his shout. ‘What's the matter?’ she asked, alarmed, as she met his own wide-eyed stare.
Vredech gaped and shook his head several times before he could release the words. ‘I don't know,’ he managed. ‘Such thoughts, such emotions. Horrible.'
Nertha, her arms extended, was leaning forward, half-sprawled across a flat-topped rock. She was torn between going to him and leaving what she had discovered, as if it might somehow slip away from her. Vredech ran his arm across his forehead. It was clammy with sweat as though he had just completed some massive task.
Nertha frowned and, still reluctant to move, motioned him toward her. Vredech's head began to spin. He put out a hand to steady himself on one of the rocks. ‘I think I'm going to be sick,’ he said.
And he was.
Nertha abandoned her discovery immediately and in two long strides was by his side, offering a supporting arm. He brushed it aside. ‘I'm all right, I'm all right,’ he said.
'You don't look it,’ Nertha retorted. ‘What brought that on all of a sudden? We've both had the same things to eat.'
Vredech was fumbling for a kerchief to clean his mouth. ‘Guilt and disgust,’ he said, quite clear in his diagnosis. He turned to her. ‘I had such appalling thoughts ... about you. Dreadful, primitive. They came out of nowhere.'
'Tell me,’ Nertha said. Vredech shook his head. ‘Tell me, damn you, Allyn. Whatever they were, they're gone now. Bring them out into the light for pity's sake if you don't want them to come back.'
The Whistler's words came to him. ‘We must remember the darkness in our own natures,’ he said softly, speaking more to himself than to Nertha. ‘If we forget, we'll be taught again.’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘I understand that,’ he tapped his head, ‘as an idea. But when it came like that, possessing the whole of me, visceral ... unreasoning ...’ He shivered.
'This is your Whistler's advice, is it?’ Nertha asked. Vredech nodded. ‘Well, he's got more sense than you have,’ she said with some appreciation. ‘Now just tell me what happened.'
Vredech knew Nertha well enough to accept that he would have to tell her sooner or later, and telling her now was likely to be much easier. He did so. Nertha grimaced, but more because of the pain it was causing him, than from distress at the nature of his thoughts.
'Very interesting,’ she said calmly, when he had finished. ‘Don't feel bad about it. You should hear some of the things I've heard. They'd really make you throw up.'
Vredech was still distressed. ‘But ...'
Nertha shook him. ‘They were nothing, Allyn. Smoke in the wind. They're out and gone now. Gone for good. And you didn't act on them, did you?'
'I nearly did.'
Nertha sneered. ‘Nearly, nearly. Nearly's nothing. Nearly pregnant. Nearly a virgin. The point is, you didn't do anything.’ She tugged at his arm. ‘Forget it. Come and look at this.'
Nertha's earthy dismissal set Vredech's concerns aside for the moment, but he had the feeling that something within him had been changed for ever.
'I felt it here.’ Nertha was back at the flat rock, her hands splayed over it. She closed her eyes. ‘It's gone,’ she said angrily. ‘I've lost it.’ She swore at herself. ‘I'm not very good at this kind of healing.'
'What was it?’ Vredech asked, puzzled by the reference to healing.
Nertha tapped the rock anxiously. ‘I can't really explain. If I was dealing with a patient I'd say it was a hurt, a tension ... a wrongness.'
She looked at him uneasily, as if expecting him to laugh, but Vredech was watching her carefully.
'And when you'd found such a hurt in someone, what would you do?’ he asked intently.
'Look to ease it, obviously,’ she replied.
'How?'
Nertha looked flustered. ‘It depends, doesn't it? I can't answer a question like that. You have to be there.’ She became defensive. ‘I told you, I'm not particularly good at this kind of healing. It's an intuitive thing.'
Vredech took her hands. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘It's like faith. There are no words for it.’ He held up a hand for silence as she made to speak. ‘Don't say anything else. And don't doubt yourself so much. Go back to where you were before I distracted you.’ He laid her hands back on the rock. As he did so he noticed a dark stain in the centre of it. In so far as he had noticed it previously he had assumed it to be residual dampness from rainwater or dew that had collected in a slight hollow. But there had been no rain for some days, and virtually continuous sunshine. Even as he looked at it he felt a sense of unease returning.
Hesitantly he reached out and touched it. The unease pervaded him.
'What's the matter?’ Nertha asked.
Vredech replied with another question. ‘What's this?'
Wrinkling her nose, Nertha wiped her fingertips across the stain and peered at them
intently. Then she closed her eyes and sniffed them.
'It's here,’ she said, her eyes opening in horror, her voice low and awe-stricken. ‘This is what I felt before. The seat of the hurt, the wrongness.’ She hesitated for a moment, and a look of fear and disgust passed briefly over her face. Then it was replaced by the expression that Vredech had seen as he had watched her treating the injured in the PlasHein Square and the Sick-House: a strange mixture of compassion and almost brutal determination.
'What is it?’ he asked again.
Nertha bent forward over the stain and ran a finger along a thin line radiating from it. There were several such, Vredech noted. They were splash lines.
'I think it might be blood,’ she said softly.
As she spoke the word, Vredech knew the truth of it. Blood and sacrifice. The cold, cruel dream he had touched had come back to him. He felt the oppression about the summit grow in intensity. ‘Some injured animal?’ he asked faintly, knowing that this was not so even before Nertha shook her head. No animal was going to clamber to the top of the mountain to die from an injury.
'It must have been brought here,’ she said quietly. ‘And it was brought here as part of all this ... business. I can feel it again now. It's awful.'
So many questions filled Vredech's mind that he could give voice to none of them. In the end he said, ‘We can't leave it. We must do something.'
'I need to think,’ Nertha said, a hint of desperation in her voice.
Vredech shook his head. ‘No,’ he said agitatedly. ‘Now we must feel. React in the way our hearts and stomachs tell us to, while we're here. You know this. Later, we'll think. I'm going to pray over this. A prayer of purification of some kind, or for the safe passage of the dead, I don't know—whatever comes to me.’ His agitation increased. ‘You can heal it.'
'I ...'
'Do it!'
He seized Nertha's hand and placed his free one on the stain. Nertha did the same. Their fingers were touching. Both closed their eyes.
In the darkness, the oppression of which he had been vaguely aware seemed to take an almost solid form about Vredech. And, like Nertha, he began to sense a will behind it. To his considerable alarm however, he found that, try as he might, he could remember none of the prayers that were his stock in trade: prayers that he had recited from memory week in, week out, year in, year out; prayers to which he had turned many times in his own private meditations. His mind filled first with a scrabbling confusion and then fear. He felt Nertha's grip tighten about his hand. It was the only sign that passed between them of their common struggle. It heightened his resolve. He must cling to his faith. But still his prayers eluded him, mocking him with disjointed fragments of long-familiar phrases. His fear began to twist into panic. And into the now almost crushing oppression came hints of scornful amusement. He recognized them as the will that had touched him once before, when he and the others had been searching for Cassraw. He was the merest mote before such awesome power and majesty.
If Your power is so great, why do You use such a feeble vessel as Cassraw?
The thought, stark in its challenge, emerged through the whirling confusion of his mind, its source unknown. Another came.
Whatever else I might be, I am near enough his equal. If You need his strength to do Your will here, then know that I will oppose You with a strength no less.
'I need the strength of no mortal. Cassraw is my Chosen. My vessel. My Way.'
The voice that spoke inside Vredech was icy and terrible, but to his horror, the voice that his ears heard, though distorted and distant, was Nertha's.
He could not move, and he dared not open his eyes.
'Why do you seek to persecute me, your Lord?'
Vredech could feel the presence moving through him, searching, testing, learning. Soon, he must surely fall before this terrible possession. Despite the defiance that he had offered, the words of his faith were gone, the heart of his faith was...?
Yet something other than this will held him. As he clung to his sanity, so something clung to him. Literally. In the shapeless darkness and turmoil he felt it, tight and desperate, pressing itself into him with a force that cried out for help.
It formed itself into Nertha's hand, gripping him now with appalling force. Vredech's awareness cleared. As she had supported him so much over these last few days, so now he must support her in whatever pain she was suffering.
Abomination! he shouted silently into the darkness. Whatever else You might be, You are not my Lord. Get Thee hence, demon. Leave us, I command You in the name of Ishryth.
The words rolled back over him, echoing hollowly, empty and futile. They were not enough to warrant even a flicker of attention. They had been like the least of insects riding the uncaring wind to dash themselves to destruction against a great cliff-face.
Vredech's ordered resistance, such as it was, crumbled at the insight. Beneath it was a primeval desperation, full of a burning fury.
'Nertha!’ he cried out. ‘Nertha, I'm here. Hold on to me. He can do nothing, except twist our thoughts and desires. For all His seeming power, He is weak and feeble. A great enemy has wounded Him sorely. He holds Himself here by the merest of threads. Threads that we can break. Hold on. Reach out and heal the hurt that He is.'
But even as he called out, he knew that the hatred and anger that was in him was merely sustenance for the obscenity that was binding him here. He felt it burgeoning, nourished by his own will. Yet he could not relinquish his rage. It poured forth like the vomit that had poured from him only minutes earlier.
Then he was surrounded by a sound like a great rending. Its terrible shrieking tore at him, making him cry out, though he could not hear his own voice. He felt as though he had been lifted into some fearful limbo where nothing existed save the pain and the noise. And Nertha's clinging hand. Still holding on to him, trusting, dependent. Nertha, who could no more bring herself to believe in Ishryth and Ahmral than fly. He seemed to hear the Whistler saying, ‘Astonishment, Vredech. Astonishment.'
And that, he realized, was why Nertha had been so easily possessed. She would not have believed what was happening to her.
But he did. He would not be downed by his own inability to accept.
His rage became a determination. Whatever else happened on this desecrated mountain-top, he would save her, even if it cost him his sanity and his soul.
'Hold me, Nertha,’ he called out into the tumult. ‘As you love me. And I you. Hold me. He can do nothing, but what we allow.'
And, as abruptly as it had begun, like the sudden closing of the door to a boisterous inn, the noise was gone. As was the presence.
Vredech slumped forward across the rock. Silence flooded into him.
Silence and horror.
He opened his eyes, fearing to see what he knew he would. Sunlight burst mockingly into them, but nothing could illuminate the darkness that was filling him now.
For the summit was deserted.
Nertha was gone.
* * *
Chapter 28
Vredech had no measure of the time he remained at the summit of the Ervrin Mallos, save that it was dark and a bright moon was high in the sky when he finally came to his senses. He was leaning over the rock that had been the focus of all that had happened, gazing into the stain, black now in the moonlight, as if he could see through into wherever Nertha had been transported.
Physical exhaustion racked him, his robe was soiled and torn, as too were his hands. They confirmed the frantic, confused memories that he had of dashing about the summit, desperately searching for Nertha, ridiculously turning over rocks, peering into impossibly small crannies, going repeatedly to the edge of the precipitous face that dropped away from one side of the summit and staring over it, despite the fact that he could see no sign of her on the rocks below. Calling out her name as though for some reason she might be playing one of their childish hiding games. Calling and calling, now angrily, now fearfully, now pathetically. All to keep him from turning
to the truth that she was gone.
Then, for a hideous, timeless time, he had curled into the lee of an overhanging rock and sobbed hysterically, gnawing on his fists and driving them into the unyielding rock. Sobbing not only for the loss of Nertha, but for fear that there had been no loss, save that of his sanity. Fear that Nertha had never really been there, that all the mysteries and horrors of the past weeks had never occurred, that he was still on the mountain, searching for a demented Cassraw, separated somehow from Horld and the others and lost himself now. Lost and utterly crazed.
He straightened up painfully. Now, though none of these questions were answered, he was too spent to sustain such agitation. And into this strangely enforced calmness, thoughts began to emerge that grimly demanded order from the churning chaos of his mind. There was little else he could do now, but he was trembling with the effort as he exerted all his will to determine that order.
He spoke out loud through gritted teeth. ‘If this is the day of our search for Cassraw, then I've simply become separated from the others—suffered a seizure of some kind. Dreamt all this, for some reason. I don't dream, so perhaps my first would affect me thus.'
The sound of his own voice was unreal and jarring but he forced the words out.
'If it isn't, then all that has happened is true. And Nertha has gone.'
The words tore open his burgeoning inner quiet. He slammed his hands down on to the rock and lifted his face to the moonlit sky. ‘Where could she go?’ he roared at it. ‘Where? She was there, then she was gone. It isn't possible!’ His voice faded. ‘It isn't possible.'
'What isn't?'
Vredech spun round with a cry. A tall figure stood a few paces away from him.
'Who was there and then gone?’ the figure asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, ‘You've not had a young woman up here, have you my man?’ The stern righteousness in the voice combined with the tall, thin stature to identify the speaker.
