Authors: Simon Morden
It came at him again, slower, misstepping, uneven, and Dalip spun away again, leaping aside and letting the beast ram the wall with its thick skull.
He could have stabbed it again, in the time it took it to recover, but he backed away, carefully avoiding the sticky ribbons of blood on the ground.
The boar limped around, breathing heavily, trembling with effort now, not with anger. It staggered, its forelegs slipping underneath it. It rose and made a drunkard’s walk towards Dalip, who circled away, forcing it to follow.
Halfway around, it sagged to the floor, shivered all over, and didn’t move again, save for the slight rise and fall of its ribs. Once. Twice. Then nothing.
Dalip kept a wary distance, and closed on it from the rear. There wasn’t much blood left to pool, but what there was shone thickly around its hindquarters. He prodded it with the outstretched knife, pushing the point into its hairy back, through the skin and into the fat below.
The boar didn’t move, and he thought it safe to assume it was dead.
The guard, on the other hand, was weeping as he tried to hold his wounds together. In the shadow of the tunnel, Dalip found it impossible to tell where clothing finished and flesh started. Both were bloodied rags.
‘Why? Why?’ the guard sobbed.
Dalip didn’t know, beyond naked barbarism and utter contempt for life. The man couldn’t be moved – he screamed in agony when Dalip tried – and perhaps with modern medicine and a team of doctors, he might have survived. Scarred inside and out for certain, but alive nevertheless.
He died too, slowly, sadly, knowing he was going, sliding inexorably into darkness and terrified of it. He died clutching at Dalip’s forearm, and only let go when he slid to one side, awkwardly trapping his head in the angle between the wall and the door. Not that he cared any more about comfort.
Dalip walked back out into the pit and stood centre stage. He threw the knife down and looked up at the geomancer, dressed in her finery.
‘Are we done here now?’ he shouted at her. ‘Are we?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and stood, adjusting her skirts, readying herself to leave. The steward tapped his silver-tipped cane against the balcony, in annoyance or impatience or just out of habit, and scowled at Dalip.
Who bent down and caught up as much blood as he could off the floor, before flinging it up at his captors.
Most of it either fell back or flecked the high walls of the pit. But one or two drops reached their targets. The steward stiffened as something touched his cheek, and the geomancer saw it without knowing her back had its own darkly shining jewel clinging to the fine fabric.
‘There. That’s your share of this butchery.’
He stared up, his bloody hands raised to them, while they stared down. Whatever they were expecting, they got defiance, not supplication. They got his red palms and drying scabs instead of his fear.
They still left, and he had to drop his arms by his side at some point. He hung his head, and went to pull the body out of the way of the blocked door.
Mary made the top of the last rise. Even at a distance, the gorge that divided the two peaks was discernible. The base of each mountain was forested, like most of Down that she’d seen so far, but higher up where the slopes grew steeper, bare grey rock dominated. The peaks, facing each other over the chasm, were high but rounded, scraped clean by the wind and the rain.
She still couldn’t see the geomancer’s castle which, Crows assured her, was behind the rightmost peak, tucked in a hollow with a lake.
Crows puffed up behind her. ‘We should turn back before it is too late.’
‘Shut it, Crows,’ she said. Between them and the gorge was uninterrupted forest, and this was the last chance she had to get her bearings and see if there was a different route. But the best choice seemed to be the simplest: meet the river that bisected the mountains, then climb up past the gorge to the very top, where they could look down on the castle unseen. It looked like hard going, with a lot of scrambling over loose rock especially just below the summit, but far from impossible. By going for the more difficult ascent, she hoped to avoid anyone guarding the way from the valley up the lea side of the slope.
The sun was creeping lower to the horizon, and the moon would only rise halfway through the night: enough to hide her once she was in position, and enough to let her climb down while it was still dark.
She took one final look and pointed her toes in the direction they needed to go, angling down the ridge and heading for the start of the gorge. The forest covered her, and she tried to keep to the right path, even though she’d lost all her landmarks.
She seemed to be doing this all by herself. Crows was dragging his feet, and she was fed up of waiting for him. She’d given him the option of not coming, and he’d said he’d take her to where she’d be able to see the castle. She understood he didn’t want to get closer, but he should at least keep his promise, and without complaining every step of the way.
And then, almost on cue, she heard a wolf howl. She stopped and rolled her eyes.
‘Just what we needed.’ She didn’t know if it was the wolfman, or a regular wild wolf, but actually, she did know. She didn’t even have to bet herself which it was.
Crows drew level with her, and licked his lips nervously.
‘We can avoid him, right?’ she asked. ‘Like we did before?’
‘Perhaps someone else has come through the portal. If so, he’s far away, and not looking for us. If not, he could still be looking for you. He doesn’t hunt on his own, Mary. Ever.’
‘He did that first night. It was just him.’
Crows shook his head. ‘No. The forest would have been full of them. When you moved off, they followed you. When you started questioning the wisdom of where you were going, they attacked you. The wolfman is never on his own: he is scared of Down, scared of its spaces and its silences, scared of being alone and scared of not being owned. He joined with the geomancer to stop himself going mad, and he lives in fear of her sending him away.’
‘Oh. Okay. Let’s hope he’s after some other poor bastard then, and not us. At least for now.’
She checked the direction of the sun through the canopy of leaves, and set off in what she guessed was the right direction, which was downhill. They reached the river, and walked upstream alongside it – there was no need to go all the way down to it, just keep it on their left. Then uphill towards the clear, bare rock beyond the forest.
The ground bent upwards, and the trees began to sprout from between weathered boulders and moss-covered outcrops of stone. Soon the river was below them, rumbling away between the walls of the deepening gorge. The wolf howled again, plaintive and symbolic in a land devoid of human habitation, a wilderness made more wild by desolation.
The vegetation stopped abruptly at a steep ledge. Above it, there was no cover, nothing to mask her from view. She was, of course, still wearing orange.
Down’s gifts only seemed to run to buildings, not clothing. She almost turned back then, realising what a stupid thing she was doing, and that any half-blind idiot would be able to spot her, the only splash of colour pinned to a mountainside. Then again, if she could draw down darkness and make fog, could she camouflage herself with what she had around her?
There was only one way to find out. She stooped down and collected a double-handful of dry, brittle leaves, all browns and dark reds. She knew what she wanted, and she could see it in her mind.
A cloak like Crows’, not black and ragged, but the colours of nature, muted and ending beyond the edges of the cloth so that it looked like a storm of leaves, continually moving and changing.
She threw the leaves she held up in the air, and let them fall around her. She scooped up more and cast them backwards over her.
And when she straightened, it was done. She was wearing a shifting mirage of browns and greens and reds which trailed out behind her and flowed over her arms. She brought her hands together, and the folds of the cloak closed over her orange boilersuit, concealing it beneath the fluttering, rustling cloth.
It wasn’t her, and was still part of her. Like the hem which had no definite beginning or end, neither did she now. No longer isolated and self-contained, she was growing into the landscape as it was growing into her. Let the wolfman and his gang find her now.
‘You should go more slowly,’ said Crows, puffing up behind her.
‘We’re not going to get there if we don’t get a move on.’ She gazed up at the steep slope, and tried to work out her route.
‘That is not what I meant.’ He too tilted his head back, scanning the sky. ‘You know how dangerous magic is. If you do not control it, it will control you. I have seen the results and they are not good.’
‘I can handle it, okay?’
‘Being lucky once does not make you invulnerable.’
‘I know that. Crows, you’re not my social worker, all right?’
‘Am I correct in thinking you did not listen to them either?’
She gave him the look, and he turned away, holding his hands up in mock surrender.
‘You are free to destroy yourself in any way you see fit. Just that it would be a waste, that is all.’
The wolf howled again. It seemed closer, but that could have been her imagination.
‘It’s almost like you care,’ she said. ‘What about those people who you were supposed to be protecting?’
‘Mary, they are not here. You are.’
‘They don’t stop existing. They’re still there, locked away in her castle. They’re people like you and me, who were running from something terrifying: they ended up here and tried to make the best of it. They don’t deserve this any more than my lot do.’
‘The strong do as they want, and the weak suffer what they must. I cannot protect them: I built myself up for a role I could not fulfil. Now, we all suffer, they in their prison and me in my ruin.’
‘Fucking hell, you sound like me, and I sound like someone else. Things change, Crows, and there’s no reason why we can’t make them change.’
‘Strong words. Perhaps once you have seen her castle, once you have seen her, you will realise how pointless all this is.’ He swirled his own cloak about him, gathering the darkness and blotting himself out for a moment before reappearing as the cloth settled again.
‘Maybe I will. There’s no harm in looking, is there?’
‘Yes, there is. We are deep in her territory, almost up to her door. If you think there is no risk in this, then why are we hearing the wolf ’s howl?’
Mary pushed her hair away from her face. It felt tangled and greasy, and her scalp itched. Perhaps Crows did have a point, but she was certain she did too. She wasn’t doing this blind, but naively? She shrugged.
‘Is there any way of working out whether the wolfman’s hunting us?’
‘Only by finding him before he finds us. Which is not very wise.’
‘So let’s get on with it.’ She clambered up, and turned to look at the last rays of the sun touch the crowns of the trees. She had no idea where this sudden courage had come from. First sign of danger and she’d always run. And sometimes not fast enough.
Crows was still below her. ‘You may go if you wish,’ he said. ‘I have done my duty, and I will go no further.’
‘Shit, Crows, what is wrong with you?’
‘Whatever follows, you cannot say that you were not warned.’ He flapped his cloak a second time and was gone.
‘Well, fuck you too.’ She set her jaw hard, and turned back to the ascent.
The summit was above her, and close up it was now clear that gaining it wouldn’t be straightforward. The direct route took in at least two bands of loose scree and a vertical cliff just below the top, where the rock had broken away and tumbled down into the forest beneath. To her left was a steep incline that merged with the sheer side of the gorge, and only to the right did the mountain become easier to navigate.
She didn’t want to climb in the pitch black, so she started off again, zigzagging up rather than confronting the whole edifice at once.
She worked her way around to the shoulder of rock that sloped down from the summit, scaling the last ridge in the last of the light. She was almost there, a few more steps and she’d be on the very top. It didn’t seem at all likely, the girl from the tower blocks, on a mountain, exhausted, exhilarated.
The view opened up to take in what looked like the whole world. At her back were seas without end, at her front, a mountain range so tall that the snow didn’t carry all the way to the top. Left and right were bays and islands, and everywhere between was cut with rivers and leavened with lesser peaks and hills. Up on the darkening mountain, her leaf cape was now redundant. She discarded it, and unlike Crows’, hers caught the gusty wind and came apart, leaves separating and spiralling away, chasing each other across the bare rock like children.
The last sliver of reflected sunlight died in the sky, and it was night. With no stars to appear, she was left entirely unsighted, at least until moonrise. She couldn’t tell where the mountain ended or began. She realised that if she took a step anywhere, she might end up broken at the bottom of the gorge, or bouncing down the way she’d come in an avalanche of loose rock.
She crouched, felt around her, and sat down. She wouldn’t have that long to wait for the moonglow to begin glimmering on the underside of the clouds far away on the horizon. A couple of hours before the massive moon ground into view and thundered across the heavens.
While she sat, aware of the unseen vastness around her, she began to see things. Flashes of light where there were none, trails of luminescence in the sky, bright sparks dancing around her: none of it was real, and yet it didn’t matter. She’d never experienced anything like it before, and it was her reward.
The land turned silver, and the lights were gone. The moon hung low, a huge half-circle of white bone carving its way into the night sky. The illumination it gave was nothing compared to the majesty of the full moon, but it was not just sufficient, it was generous.
She picked herself up now that she could see. The crystals embedded in the rock made it twinkle like frost, and she could skip over the puddles of shadow towards the far side of the mountain. As she jumped from high point to high point, she could see an edge forming ahead of her. She slowed, and stepped cautiously. She could see into the valley below, but not the slope that led there.
Eventually, she was crawling on her stomach. It was a cliff, high and long. It swept down the mountainside to form a huge bowl of land that was itself perched halfway between summit and river. At the bottom of the bowl was a lake, and next to the lake, the geomancer’s castle.
Like Crows’, it had a ring wall, but it was no mere collection of stones thrust out from the ground. This wall was tall and broad, set with gates and towers. Inside were various squat buildings, and two towers, one broad and short, the other tall and thin, with a roof that pointed upwards like a wooden rocket.
Fires lit the yard, and plumes of silver-lit smoke drifted away in spirals. She was close enough to see the shadows of the men around the largest fire, black shapes against the orange of the fire glow, but too far away to catch any of the sound they made.
The castle was large and impressive. It was guarded both by walls and by people. The central tower had commanding views over both within and without, down the mountain and beyond. The ground immediately outside the castle was bare, and unless she learnt to fly – unless she learnt that she could fly – the geomancer would get plenty of warning of anyone approaching.
She looked harder. The gates were pointing at the lake and toward the valley, which left a lot of the wall nothing but blank stone all the way to the battlements. There didn’t seem to be anyone patrolling them, either. She’d known warehouses like that, where security had a warm cabin and control of the
CCTV
, which they sometimes even watched when they weren’t reading a paper or napping in their chair.
If no one was watching, it made getting in and out easier: only the physical barriers would cause a problem. But once she was in, what could she do? Even if she managed to sneak in, find Dalip, Mama and the others, where would they go? Back to Crows’ castle if they could. If the wolfman and his crew came looking for them there, they’d just have to have moved on first.
It wasn’t a great plan. It was barely a plan at all. And it’d be far easier with Crows’ help than his recurring lament that he’d already fought his battle and lost.
The wind on top of the mountain was starting to batter her and make her cold. She decided that she’d go away and think about things again. She had one last look, and the more she looked, the less likely it seemed that she’d be able to get anyone out at all. Maybe one or two, if they were quick and quiet, hidden beneath shadow-cloaks woven from her own fingers.
That wasn’t going to be good enough, though. She wanted everybody: her lot, and anyone else who would come, free of the person who’d enslaved them.
She glanced behind before she backed up.
And saw a dragon, perched on a rock near the summit, staring at her with its hard, black-marble eyes.