Cold Angel Days (Dica Series Book 4)

by Clive S. Johnson

  However imposing the architecture - of plinth and elevation and pediment, of colonnade and entablature, it all paled to insignificance beside the might of Eastern Gate. Like a leaden sky, the Great Wall that it broached marched in from the north in stately progress, past and to the east of Uttagate before vanishing far off into the distant, hazy, sun-arced south.

  As the coachbank rocked over a worn patch of road, it brought Prescinda’s eyes back to their way ahead. Eastern Street now drew her sight yet further still, around the curve of Scout Hill, beyond which Eastern Gate’s enormous timber doors rose between its stout stone towers. The hundred foot width of the gatehouse lifted almost three hundred from the street at its feet, so high in fact that its battlements looked down upon Scout Hill.

  Although not her first close sight of the gate, it always awed Prescinda beyond belief, so she turned to gasp her amazement at Geran only to find her nestled against Falmeard’s crooked arm, contentedly smiling from the softest of dreams. He too looked peaceful, his sleeping lips gently nuzzling Geran’s tousled hair, an arm unselfconsciously draped across her breasts, its hand at her hip.

  Of all the things in the world to set against such a spectacle as the Eastern Gate, that one sight alone stole Prescinda’s wonder, drew a smile from the moue of her mouth.

  The coachbank soon came to a halt beneath the gate’s southern tower, at the hole breached in its gate, its ages-long seized wood recently hewn back to allow small vehicles through. Falmeard’s eyes flickered and finally opened at the change in the engine’s note as it dropped to a lilting purr.

  For a contented moment, his eyes smiled at Prescinda from across Geran’s scented hair, but soon noticed the massive, monumental rise of masonry now towering so high above his head - and then he screamed.

  All the time Prescinda spent trying to calm him, and of course an awoken Geran, the other passengers just tittered or smiled or looked aloof. Although the word yokel came to her ears a few times, she also noticed some of the seasoned travellers themselves looking up with something akin to renewed wonder.

  In all the kerfuffle, neither Geran nor Falmeard seemed to remember their slumbering rapport, something Prescinda felt best not to mention. By the time things had settled down, though, she’d already put it to the back of her mind.

  The passengers that joined them here from the Vale of Plenty had already gathered by the gate, so the coachbank’s departure was hardly delayed. There weren’t that many of them, nor did they have much luggage, and so the sun soon came to rest at their left as the coachbank retraced its way to the Old Wall.

  Prescinda had been to Uttagate before, often enough to recognise increased activity here, to note how many more folk seemed to have taken up residence. It had plainly brought life back to many ways once thought long lost to Dica’s eternal dotage. Some of the buildings looked somewhat tidier and the roads better made, but an air of neglect still hung about the place.

  Just before reaching the Old Wall, they turned onto a newly laid but quite steep and curving road, one that brought the sun directly before them. The coachbank laboured up the incline as courtyards, squares and alleyways slowly came into sight over roofs that steadily fell away below. This new road curved in towards the Old Wall, coming onto its top through a newly opened breach in its eastern parapet, its castellation rudely torn away.

  Their own party sat towards the front of the coachbank and so only needed to crane their necks to see ahead along the narrow, arrow-straight run of the wall. Its stone flags glared brightly in the reflected light of the late morning sun.

  They’d perhaps been going for an hour, Cambray’s even more desolate spread now taking Uttagate’s place to the east, when the coachbank ground to a halt. Prescinda could just make out a workman walking towards them through the sun’s reflected glare, still flagging them down, red rag in hand. He drew near the driver and spoke, but Prescinda couldn’t hear a word.

  “What’s going on, Presci?” Geran asked.

  “I don’t know. They’re pointing off to the right for some reason.” This naturally made them all stare that same way.

  Another although shorter gap had been made but this time in the western parapet, a short way ahead. From there, a steep, temporary slope had been made to a road below. When Prescinda looked more closely, she could see wheel-tracks coming onto it from the hard-packed rubble of the ramp.

  The workman backed away as their driver began nodding and labouring the engine against the brake. He then leant his weight to the coachbank’s guiding wheel and cautiously eased them forward.

  Carefully, they began to turn through the new gap and from the wall, crunching softly into the shifting rubble coming beneath the wheels. The workman stood and peered down their offside, indicating to the driver how near he was to the wall. A thumbs-up boded well, the driver then letting the coachbank lurch forward entirely onto the ramp.

  It brought to Prescinda’s mind the few times she’d been to the beach, where she’d spent many a happy childhood hour clambering through its static tempestuous sea of dunes. Somehow she could feel the self-same thing through the coachbank, its own feet slithering and sliding on the cascade of gravel, its brakes doing little to slow their descent until they lurched out onto the road at its feet - safe and sound.

  Their way now took them westwards, worryingly close to the tight road’s bordering properties, bedroom windows grinding past but feet away, the dust of flaking facades falling in about their feet. Fortunately straight, but decidedly decrepit, the street had potholes that jarred and jolted them up its steepening climb. The rhythmic impact rapidly slowed until the coachbank crawled at little more than a snail’s pace.

  Before painfully inching their way around the next junction’s turn, they’d done little more than cling to their seats. So, when they finally settled onto a broad and level road - once more heading south - Prescinda only now realised how high they’d climbed.

  The Old Wall ran parallel but a good way lower down the mountainside, maybe a mile or so away. She caught glimpses - between the close passing properties - of a wealth of work going on. Men laboured along much of its length, the wall strewn with piles of earth and stacks of stones.

  Her curiosity got the better of her and she was about to turn to a fellow passenger with an enquiry when something out of the corner of her eye stopped her dead.

  Further along what had become quite a wide road, a gap began to open out onto a large flagged area. Only because she happened to be looking that way, she now noticed a massive copper dome peeping above the roofline of the remaining buildings on that side. On top of it there rose what appeared to be a huge sculpture of a strikingly green tree, a yellow serpent coiled about its bole.

  Its strangeness held Prescinda so fast she failed to notice when the terraced properties gave way and laid open an expansive view across a vast paved square. A mass of pediments, pillars and broad sweeping steps rose from the far side. It all seemed set only on keeping aloft what Prescinda now saw was the effigy of Leiyatel. Whatever the place had once been, it was certainly massive, bigger even than the Kings’ Mausoleum on Grayden Head.

  No one else seemed to notice other than Geran, her voice now no more than a tiny mew. Prescinda tried to summon her own voice but failed, even failed to turn away until Falmeard piped up, “I see we’re coming at the Scarra from above.”

  When Prescinda turned to him, she saw something stare back from his eyes, something she didn’t recognise, as though someone else sat beside Geran. It was certainly more so his eyes than his smile, despite it being easy, untroubled and very, very knowing. She then noticed his hand, how its rested unselfconsciously at the top of Geran’s thigh.

  Prescinda’s own eyes came sharply back to his when he softly asked, “So? What did old man Grub tell you about me I wonder. Did he spill the beans on poor old Francis then?”

  27 A Fall to Forgetting

  Prescinda and Geran stared in disbelief at Falmeard, both too shocked to find words, and just when they might
have done so, the coachbank juddered harshly on its brakes. Without warning, it turned sharply into a side road - poorly marked by a faded red flag - and here descended rapidly. The hill they now found themselves on was so steep the setts were almost stepped, sending an almighty shudder throughout the coachbank.

  They gained speed alarmingly; as fast as grew their doubts about the brakes; as fast they clung to their seats with ever-whitening knuckles. Expletives arose, more as mumbled supplications than invective, whilst all the while the coachbank’s weight fast overcame the driver’s best intents.

  As though the jarring descent wasn’t enough, the Old Wall at the bottom quickly drew near, its ancient granite courses looking decidedly unforgiving. Only at the very last minute did the coachbank suddenly lift clear, as though taking to the air, before its locked wheels cut deep grooves in the makeshift ramp on which they now rapidly came to a halt.

  Disarray ruled.

  No one had been thrown clear, fortunately, but there were many bruises to contend with, and much mixed language and luggage. The driver himself looked shocked, soon needing comfort from the prettiest of the passengers.

  “By the Certain Power,” he spat, “the damned idiots, what were they thinking of, sending us down such a hill?” He’d been the first to leap from the coachbank, to slump to the ramp’s coarse gravel and there stare wide-eyed back up the mountainside. Those passengers who’d followed were inclined to agree when they too looked back through the smoke and the dust.

  Falmeard helped the sisters down, both shocked but unhurt. The gravel offered poor footing for their narrow heels and so they didn’t tread far. They, like everyone else, stood upon shaky legs and looked up at the way they’d come, at their frightening ordeal.

  A voice began calling from somewhere along the Old Wall, and the sound of running boots - hobnailed in all likelihood - drew near. Some turned to look, Prescinda included, and watched as a workman raced towards them.

  “What in bleeding blazes are thee playing at? What’ve you done to our new ramp!” He crunched past them and bent to the rear wheel - now half buried in the gravel. “Bleeding mess thee’ve made. We’ve only just laid this, and now look at it.” He peered amongst them until finding a peaked cap.

  “Oi! You? Driver?”

  The cap’s peak shaded incredulous but now simmering eyes. “What d’ya mean, we’ve done? What stupid dickhead sent us down here in t’first place? Look at my coachbank will ya! Look what you’ve done to it.” He pointed at his pride and joy.

  “Main thing is,” Prescinda calmly said, “how on earth do we get ourselves out now?”

  The driver and the workman, soon aided by quite a few of his colleagues, eventually found enough middle ground and cool heads for a solution, and then the digging began.

  Meanwhile, Prescinda eyed Falmeard’s back, where he stood watching them digging the rear wheel out.

  Careful he couldn’t hear, Geran edged closer to her and said, “What was it Falmeard asked you about Dad, Sis? I didn’t really follow. It made him sound so like his old self, though, didn’t you think?” A glint of hope shone from the black depths of her eyes which made Prescinda cautious.

  “It was just something Dad told me, before he passed on. The night before in fact.”

  “Oh yes. What was that?”

  “Don’t set too much store by it, Geran, but it wasn’t so much what Dad said but a name he used.”

  “A name?”

  “Hmm. Dad made mention of a name, one told him by Falmeard, one he now shouldn’t remember at all.”

  Geran’s eyes lit up. “It was a name was it? I did wonder.”

  Before Prescinda could answer, the noise of an engine impinged and drew their attention back to the wall. A massive wagon came along it towards them, eventually stopping by the ramp. A rope was paid out from it and tied around the coachbank’s front axle. With the aid of the wagon’s winch and much furious digging, the coachbank finally came free quite unscathed, and it wasn’t long before they were back into their journey south.

  The Northern Balconies soon lifted them towards the Scarra Face as the passengers regained their composure. Having shared such travails, it seemed barriers had been worn down, chat now flowing a little more freely.

  Somebody behind Prescinda, a man perhaps in his nineties, leant forward and coughed politely. Prescinda turned to find a genial smile set beneath twinkling eyes.

  “Lovely view from here isn’t it?” he said.

  “It is.”

  “You know of the mirage of course?”

  “Yes, but I’ve never seen it. Came here once as a child with my uncle but we weren’t lucky enough then.”

  “Ah, shame. Mind you, I’ve recently heard some in Bazarral - some engers or the like - reckon it ain’t a mirage at all.”

  The man sat back, smiling.

  “How exciting!” Geran said. “So what do they reckon it is then?”

  He gave a short but dismissive laugh. “Real cities!”

  “Real cities? What, you mean places like Bazarral?” Geran enthused.

  He seemed to find Prescinda more to his liking and so leant nearer her. “Sort of, from what I can gather. I don’t suppose they really know, though. There’s so many rumours about these days, you never know whether you’re coming or going. Probably just trying to angle for something, funding maybe, you know, for some hair-brained scheme or other.”

  “What?” Geran asked. “Like that Steermaster fellow did a few years back, you know, when he sailed out west and came back mad, and all his crew dead?”

  “I don’t think you’ve quite got that right, Geran. I don’t think he was mad. Very ill, yes, but not mad.” Prescinda remembered Nephril telling her about Steermaster Sconner and his important discoveries, but she found it quite difficult to remember much about it now.

  “Well,” the man said. “Here we are anyway, on Aerie Way. So, see if you can see any cities now, eh, real or otherwise.”

  For a moment he put his hand on Prescinda’s arm, where she’d placed it along the back of the seat when she’d turned. He smiled again, somehow differently this time, but she turned back to the view without meeting his eyes. Once again, after all these years, she still saw nothing, either real or mirage.

  Geran on the other hand saw phantom memories that were all too real. She saw Falmeard and herself standing at the Viewing Gallery doorway, the moon washing over his frightened face, his lost look tearing at her heart. When that very doorway itself came into view, she yelped, stifled a further cry, snatched Falmeard’s hand and held it tight.

  She didn’t dare face him, the embarrassed stiffening of his arm making it all too clear that the old Falmeard had once more departed. She couldn’t let go, despite his hand’s feeble tug, for the pain was now far too much, far too much to bear alone.

  28 Galgaverre

  Beneath the lowering sun, the easternmost sprawl of Bazarral lay stilled, pale shadows raking a slant through the thin breath of its streets. Exquisite facades faced one another across the avenues, smiled through their flaking splendour, no longer mindful of the ravages of time.

  A sharp crystal edge hardened the early Summer’s late afternoon air now gathered about Galgaverre’s rather modest gate. Two of its Guard leisurely leaned against its leaden parapet, orange robes glowing in the pale-yellow light. They looked out across the moat’s wooden bridge to where three figures stood, forlornly peering up at the gatehouse.

  “What d’ya reckon?” one guard said to the other.

  “Directions.”

  “Nah. There’s plenty of people around to ask.”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know what, Guardsman?” another but deeper voice called, its red-robed owner strolling out into the slanting sunlight, his gold sash laying a speckled reflection across the grey metal floor at his feet.

  The guards both turned and jerked to attention.

  “Well, Endran? Spit it out.”

  Endran immediately explained, eyes
held to the fore, just a slight nod - almost of the eyes alone - towards the drawbridge behind.

  Sentinar Drax came beside him and leant against the parapet. “At ease.”

  Shading his eyes, he peered out at the two women and the man still standing there, still staring up at the gatehouse.

  “Off the Eastern Gate service you say?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  The Sentinar squinted. “Hmm. Think I might just take a stroll down there. Could do with stretching my legs.”

  The two guards waited, during which time Endran accepted the offer of a boiled-cane sweet, picked pocket-fluff from it and popped it into his mouth.

  The Sentinar finally came into view below, his impressive stride marking hollow time on the planks of the drawbridge. As he drew near the figures, he began to raise a salute but then faltered.

  Words were exchanged, firstly with the man but then quickly and almost wholly with the two women, the man’s head only following lamely back and forth. Drax soon pointed towards the gate, nodded a few times and then led the way back.

  Half way across the drawbridge, he shouted up, “Endran? Get a message to the Guardian. Tell her we have Master Falmeard at the gate. Do you understand? And at the double, Man!”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Endran barked back as he saluted. “Straight away, Sir,” turned and marched off at double-quick time.

  Galgaverre was unlike anywhere else. It had quite a low boundary wall, but one nearly a mile-thick. Made of a solid, leaden metal, red-lit passageways laced it throughout, all festooned and strung with cables, pipes and sheaths of fibres.

  Its very thickness hid Galgaverre’s jumbled landscape, one whose chaotic appearance fair assaulted the eyes. Sunken well below the wall top, the place held a vast variety of pyramids, domes and towers, although mostly just simple irregular boxes. They all seemed thrown together, all higgledy piggledy like children’s toys hastily tidied to a shallow drawer.