Pilgrimage

by Carl Purcell

  “There's a letter and something else.” Roland turned around so his companions could see. He revealed the folded letter and the brown paper bag. Both items bore a red wax seal. Griffith took the letter and Caia took the bag. Roland zipped up his backpack and slung it over his shoulders, then turned his attention to Griffith. The young sorcerer opened the letter and read aloud:

  To my most worthy adversaries

  I give you my sincere apologies for the misunderstanding between us at my home in Guyra. I think you will agree that we both made hasty and ill-considered decisions that led to such an unpleasant arrangement as your proposed execution. Who can say what fateful forces drove us to such madness? Alas, it does not matter, now. I have seen the error of my ways and I hope you may say the same. Now my only desire is to make amends for my part in what has passed. I know that you are on your way to Salem and so I have endeavoured, with all my talents and resources, to arrange a meeting with you that will not detain you too long or take you off course even a little. I hope you will find it in your heart to accept my invitation and meet with me. Only then, do I feel, that we can close this unpleasant chapter in our lives and look forward to new and profitable alliances. Should you agree to meet with me, I will send for you at the Highland hotel. I have arranged for you to rent room seven.

  Yours Sincerely

  Lord Pentdragon

  “He sure takes the long way around to say he's sorry,” Roland said. “What's in the bag?”

  Caia nodded and tore open the seal. Inside the bag were two chain necklaces with ornamental golden plates hanging in two rows.

  “Hideous jewellery.” Caia pulled one of the necklaces out so the others could see.

  “Does he expect us to wear them? What are they for?” Griffith snatched a necklace and took a closer look. Caia took out the second one and tossed the paper bag aside.

  “I thought my jewellery was ugly. Why would he give you these?”

  “I don't know. We can ask him when we go see him.” Silence followed Griffith's words. Griffith looked from Caia to Roland and then back to Caia. Roland stared at him in disgusted disbelief. “What?” Griffith asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “We're not going to see him,” Roland said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he tried to kill us.”

  “And he changed his mind.”

  “He'll try to kill us again.”

  “You don't know that.”

  “Griffith, you wanted me here to tell you when your plans are stupid. This is the stupidest fucking plan you've had yet. We're not going to see Pentdragon.”

  “It doesn't matter if it's a good plan or not. We have to go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he's got my stuff. You got your bag back; I need to get mine. There's no other way.”

  “Is what you've got really worth dying for? If it's so important, why didn't you mention it before?”

  “You're being overly dramatic, Roland. This can only work out for the better.”

  “You're an idiot. Caia, you agree with me, don't you?” Roland turned to Caia for help.

  “Actually,” Caia smiled. “I think we should go. Even if Pentdragon tries to kill you again, we can just escape. In fact I hope he does – it'll be fun to ruin his plans. And while we're there we can get Griffith his stuff back and help ourselves to whatever else Pentdragon won't miss. Or will miss. I don't care.”

  “We're not going there to rob him!” Griffith protested. “Look, we have to go and see him. If we don't, he'll only keep following us. He might even take offence and then he'll definitely try to kill us again. If he is going to try to kill us – which I doubt – then at least we'll get my stuff back, first.”

  “I can't believe you're doing this.” Roland said.

  “I'm not doing this. We're all doing this. Now let's go or we won't get to Glenn Innes in time.” Griffith didn't wait for more argument; he started walking again. He shoved the letter and the necklace into his pocket. He walked with renewed vigour in every step. Roland knew their latest detour could only end in disaster and he promised himself that he would rub Griffith's face in it when he was proven to be correct. Saying I told you so would probably be the last thing he got to do but, as far as final words go, they were satisfying ones.

  The walk between Stonehenge and Glen Innes took up the rest of the day. They were travelling under the fading glow of twilight when the little country town came into view. Glen Innes appeared first as a row of houses in the distance. When they reached those houses, Roland realised that it was only a taste of what was to come. They continued along the highway for a little more than a kilometre and the rest of Glen Innes exploded out in front of them. They could see cars on the road and people on the streets. It was quiet and it was small, but it was really there and it broke up the emptiness of the countryside with true, honest-to-god civilisation.

  The Highland motel was the last motel before Glen Innes transformed from short row of houses into sprawling country town. The Highland Motel was spread out over four buildings and decorated with a brown and green theme that combined modern luxury with a distinct Celtic motif. A long driveway led from the highway and around a colourful garden arranged with tables and chairs between the flower beds. Several guests were eating dinner outside, in spite of the cool air. The driveway rounded in front of an administration building before branching off towards the other three buildings. Griffith marched in first; the long walk and Roland's sour mood had done nothing to bring him down.

  The lobby was high roofed with exposed rafters. The floor was a similar dark, varnished wood but decorated with a white rug printed with a Celtic knot. Just as the letter promised, a room had been booked in advance for them and the desk clerk handed over their keys. With no other instructions, they decided to head straight for the motel room.

  A black passenger van was parked outside their door and a familiar, tall and hairy man was standing beside it. As they approached the van the hairy man slid the door open and stepped aside so they could climb in.

  “We were starting to think you had refused. Pentdragon will be glad you decided to meet with him. When he heard that you'd picked up a new friend, he asked that I give you another one of these.” He handed a necklace to Caia. It was the same tacky design and fake gold colour as the two they'd found with the letter. “You'll be required to wear these while you are in Lord Pentdragon's presence.”

  “What do they do?” Caia asked.

  “They make you more presentable.” The hairy man didn't explain it any further.

  The hairy man ushered them into the back of the van and slammed the door shut, then climbed into the front seat. What little light there was outside barely pierced the tinted van windows. They sat in almost complete darkness. The hairy messenger drove them into the heart of Glen Innes and then turned west. They drove past a hospital with viridian walls lined by row after row of windows, then a muddy race course and Glen Innes was gone. A quiet five minutes passed; the van left the highway and turned down a narrow road before eventually coming to a stop in front of a mansion that looked as though it had been accidentally dropped by the side of the road. The mansion was two stories high, long and wide enough that you could fit four or five modest houses inside it. The walls of the house were covered completely by ivy. Even the windows were invisible behind the dark mess of green. There was no driveway between the road and the house, only a strip of wild, unkempt grass. The mansion stood at an angle to the highway and the northern corner had sunk into the ground, making the building stand uneven. Both sides of the road were lined with sleek, expensive cars.

  The driver made his way around the van to open the door but Caia had already swung it aside and let herself out. Griffith and Roland followed. The driver didn't speak but stared at them expectantly. Griffith got the idea and put on one of the necklaces. He closed the clasp around his neck and immediately his clothes transformed into a dark, two piece suit complete with tie and navy blue shirt.r />
  Seeing that it had no ill-effect on Griffith, Caia and Roland clipped the necklaces around their neck and found themselves similarly dressed in style and class. Caia examined her new, baby-blue satin dress with contempt and then shot a similar look at Griffith, making sure he knew he was to blame for this indignity. Roland's new outfit matched Griffith's perfectly. He could still feel the weight of the cheap necklace hanging against his chest but it was no longer visible. Roland ran his hands along the sleeves of his suit jacket and felt the same cotton bomber jacket that he'd been wearing all day. He pulled at his tie but his hand slipped straight through it.

  Their driver nodded with satisfaction and turned towards the door. He led them over the grass and opened the double doors at the front of the house. The front doors opened into a wide entrance hall. A staircase began on the right side of the room and wound its way along the walls up to the second floor. Opposite the entrance were three archways through which they could see a prodigious assembly of men and women in equally fine clothing as had been forced upon them. Wine flowed; everybody looked happy and engaged in excited discussion while the music of a string quartet played as a backdrop. The music rose and fell in quick changes, a whining from the violins at one moment and a roaring from the cello the next.

  The driver brought the companions through the entrance hall and into the ballroom. He slipped the bag off Roland's shoulders, saying:

  “I'll put this in the cloak room with your other one. After Lord Pentdragon has talked to you, you can take your things and go.”

  “Great. So where is he?” Roland was only half listening. He let the bag slide off his shoulders without a fuss while he scanned the room for somewhere to get a drink. Caia scowled at the man as he reached for her bag. He smiled, nodded and let her keep it.

  “I'll let him know you're here and he'll come down.”

  “Why are all these people here?” Asked Caia.

  The hairy man took Roland's backpack and left them without answering.

  Roland spotted a drinks table and made a beeline for it. Half a pyramid of wine glasses and a row of wine bottles were spread over the table. An under-dressed, spiky haired teenager stood behind the table. He smiled and nodded at Roland before speaking:

  “What...” His voice came out as a high pitched squeak and the teenager turned bright red. He cleared his throat and, with a false, deep voice, kept talking. “What would you like?”

  “Whatever's good.” The boy poured Roland a glass of white wine and handed it to him. Roland smiled, closed his eyes and, in one gulp, downed the glass. Letting out a long happy sigh, he put the glass down on the table and nodded to the boy. The boy filled it and Roland drank. When the glass touched the table again, the boy was ready and he immediately began pouring. Roland gave him a nod of approval. He took more time with his third glass and made conversation with the server.

  “You look pretty young to be working the bar.”

  “I'm nineteen but I get mistaken for younger, all the time.”

  “That right?” Roland scanned the room. Pentdragon's guests were all older than the bar boy by thirty to a hundred years. “What the hell are you doing with this crowd, then?”

  “My aunt is a sorceress. She was going to teach me but then her job transferred her to the Gold Coast. She asked Pentdragon to take me as an apprentice.”

  “How's that working for you?”

  “Well I haven't started learning, yet. Lord Pentdragon is powerful and it'd be great to learn from him but he's also busy. He says if I prove myself, though, he'll assign one of the sorcerers that work for him to teach me.”

  “Powerful? I doubt it.”

  “Oh he is. I heard he doesn't even need a focus. Not many sorcerers can use magic without a focus.”

  A wrinkled woman marched up to the bar. She looked more like an aging albino peacock than a woman. She thrust her champagne flute at the bar boy; her bangles and bracelets clattered together. She didn't say a word but cleared her throat at him and tapped her foot until her drink was ready. When the bar boy handed the glass back, she inspected it from top to bottom as if counting the bubbles in the glass. Without saying a word she span around and walked away.

  “And how are you supposed to prove yourself?” Roland asked.

  “I'm not sure. I guess I just have to show my loyalty and maybe teach myself so I can show I have what it takes,” The bar boy said.

  “You know he's dicking you, right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well...” Roland paused to choose his words. “How much are you being paid for serving booze to the brown-noses?”

  “Nothing. I'm doing it to show my loyalty.”

  “And that's what I mean.” Roland finished his wine and gestured for more. The boy filled it up again.

  “Well, I have to learn, somehow.”

  “Is everybody here a sorcerer?”

  “Of course. Lord Pentdragon wouldn't let them in if they weren't. If they discovered any of the illusions it would be a disaster.”

  “Illusions?”

  “Oh.” The boy turned red and started rearranging the bottles of wine on the table. “Never mind. I should get back to work.”

  “I am your work.” Roland quickly downed his drink and set it ready for a refill. “This is called being a bartender. You pour and talk, kid. What illusions?”

  “Well it's not like it's a big secret. Nobody mentions it around Pentdragon, though, because he likes to keep up appearances. But the whole exterior of this house is fake. So is a lot of the inside, actually. He just makes it look better with magic.”

  “And nobody says anything?”

  “Nobody wants to make him angry. He's easily the most powerful sorcerer around here. We all stay on his good side and we're better off.”

  “What does he do for you if you stay on his good side?” Roland prodded the glass pyramid and the table to make sure they were both really there.

  “Well, he makes sure all the laws are enforced.”

  “But didn't he come up with the laws?”

  “Yeah, but they're good laws and they should be enforced. He also makes sure our world is a secret. Can you imagine if everybody found out about us?”

  “I can. They might expect you to do something for them like heal the sick of feed the poor.”

  The bar boy responded with a blank stare.

  Another woman came up to the bar. Roland looked her over – her purple, satin dress left very little to the imagination. Roland wished it did. He could have imagined something a lot better and less resembling a prune with a bad attitude. He shook his head, took his drink and took another look about the room.

  “You're an idiot, you know that?”

  “What?” The bar boy asked.

  “You're an idiot. Grade A retarded. This fucking Pentdragon is dicking you all and you go along with it. Why? Is he that scary?”

  “He can be.”

  “Yeah? I've seen the big scary Pentdragon at work and all he does is puff out his chest and posture. But can he do anything? Not fucking likely. He's just a bully, kid. You pour a good drink, so I'll tell you something for nothing.” Roland nodded at the boy and waggled his glass. “You tell him to shove his apprenticeship up his ass and find somebody else.”

  “You really shouldn't talk like that.” The bar boy's eyes moved back and forth over the room in a panic. His voice was low. “You'll get us both in trouble.”

  “I'll tell you what,” Roland said. “You pour another drink and I'll let you go back to being stupid. No nose off my skin.”

  The bar boy poured him another drink.

  “All the best, kid.” Roland sipped his drink and turned his attention to the crowd. Caia strolled past him and he nodded a hello at her.

  Caia took the time to walk once around the ballroom. She tasted the cheese and sipped at a glass of wine somebody had left unattended. They were awful. She couldn't understand what possessed a person to willingly eat or drink either of them. They were foods th
at had gone bad – mouldy milk fat and old grape juice. Pentdragon's guests were no different from their food. Although convinced of their own superiority, they were long past their prime. They had gathered to beg for table scraps from a man who had taken arrogance and turned it into an Olympic event. All the guests who had squeezed their egos into formal wear that night thought they were lions – some kind of social order-apex predator - but behind the stomach-turning cacophony of perfumes and patronising, haughty laughter they were, all of them, slugs at the very best.

  Caia quickly grew bored and made her way back to the entrance hall. She had stomached all that she could of Pentdragon's fan club and wanted some more challenging game. Somewhere beyond the cheap illusion of wealth and class was the big fish himself. His authority and his magic was a good show but she wanted to see if he was all the rumours had said he was. Was there a real lion here? That curiosity drove her out of the ballroom, through the entrance hall and up the winding staircase. At the top of the stairs was a closed door. Caia tried to open it but her hand turned around the knob without gripping it. She made a fist around the knob and her fingers slipped through. Another illusion. Caia stepped through without hesitating and found herself in a dark, empty room. It was more like a box than a room in a house. She could hear the party beneath her but around her, in the room upstairs, everything was quiet and grey. A row of floating lights, like giant fireflies, lined a path between the fake door and the only other thing in that room. A weatherboard cottage stood in the centre of the room on a thin layer of dirt. The white paint had peeled off the weatherboarding in some places and hung off in long strips in others.

  It didn't seem possible that this belonged to Pentdragon but there it was, hidden away like an embarrassing secret. Unable and unwilling to leave before her curiosity was satisfied, Caia continued forward. As she approached the cottage, the door opened. She walked through and a light flickered to life above her, on her right an open doorway led to a room lined wall-to-wall with bookshelves. There were more books than space to read them. A narrow hallway stretched out in front of her, away from the library. She turned to enter the library but the door swung closed. She heard the tumblers click in the lock. She shrugged, turning back to the corridor. A little further forward was a cracked door frame that led into a kitchen. She couldn't see whatever door might have once been attached. Past the kitchen was another closed door and then the corridor turned a corner. This second stretch had no doors but opened up, at the end, into a room Caia could not identify. From where she was standing it looked as if the end of the corridor was on the horizon. She turned back the way she'd come and the front door looked as it was just as far away. It had closed, too.