Dreamlands (19 page)

“Lost
it to gangrene,” he said matter-of-factly.  With a groan, the captain lowered
himself onto a straw pallet in the center of the room.  “Looks like we’re both
of us accident prone.”  He drew a finger across his throat where a lifetime ago
I had caught the edge of a blade.

I had
stopped to stare in astonishment at the ceiling.  Shaped all of a piece, like
an enormous shell, it was painted everywhere with stars, and illustrated with
animals, men, and stranger things.  The mural was marked in a fashion similar
to a nautical chart, though for what purpose I could not guess, since the
constellations were unlike any I had seen in the Dreamlands or New England. 
The crown of this illustration, immediately above Captain Smiley’s mattress,
was the symbol long ago shown me by Bo’sun Longbottom, a pillar inside the
letter Omega.

The
few articles scattered about the room –two rugs, a battered brazier, a sailor's
kit bag– reaffirmed what I already suspected, that this queer lodge wasn't
Smiley's home, but a waystation.

"I
have questions," I said at last.

“And
I am the guru atop the mystical mountain,” he replied sardonically.  He
produced a small pipe from the breast of his robe and began to tamp it.  Soon
thick, sweet smoke billowed from his mouth in improbable volumes.  It was the
same variety as that of the craggy old seaman I had met my first night in
Kingsport, and as the incense I had discovered in my uncle’s hideaway on the
cliff.  Settling more comfortably into the straw he said, “Proceed.”

“I
am in pursuit of a galley belonging to the turbaned traders from the north. 
They have taken a very dear friend captive.”

“Pirates,
slavers, and all round dastards,” Smiley said, drawing on his pipe and exhaling
after each designation, “with yellow eyes.”

“Yes,
everything you said,” I replied, walking over to crouch down beside him, “and
with yellow eyes.”

“You’ll
have a piece of work catching them, for their craft are remarkable swift.  It’s
their oarsmen, you know, very motivated fellows.”

“Whether
I will or not, I cannot pursue them any farther into the Fantastic Realms.  My
crew will do no more.”

“Let
me think on your problem,” he said, setting that topic aside.  "A long
time ago, your uncle and I were sworn to fight the servants of the Old Ones,
among whom your moon worshipping galley masters certainly number."

"My
uncle?"

“Of
course your uncle.  The way Eamon handled a cutlass, he could have been a
surgeon.”

“Every
time I speak with a friend of my uncle’s, my list of questions grows longer,
but this is the one that vexes me most.”  I rolled my sleeve up past the burn
on my left forearm.  “What is this?”

Smiley
took a powerful draught of smoke and propped himself up on one elbow.

“It
is a sign of your opposition to those who would enslave mankind.  It offers
protection as well.”

“What
do you mean?”

“It
is a ward against those who
watch,
" he said ominously.  "Do
not ask me to explain further.  If you never know more of what I speak, it will
have done its job in full.”

Through
an aperture formed by a pair of forked branches, the sun was setting over the
endless wash of the sea.  When the first star twinkled into view, Captain
Smiley said, “My mountain aerie gets awful cold after dark.  There is coal in
my kit bag, son.  Light the brazier for us.”

I
did as he asked.  In the fire’s unsteady light, the walls became a trackless
forest, the ceiling a phantasmagorical night sky, and the captain’s scarred
visage the face of a demon.  With the scene thus set, he launched into his
stories.  The place names had changed, from Algeria and the Andalusian Coast to
Ooth-Nargai, the jungles of Baharna, and the Cliffs of Glass, but they were the
same tales of heroic deeds and desperate ends told by my uncle on his last
night on earth.  So we passed the hours until in a pause between adventures, Captain
Smiley’s pipe died and he chose not to refill it.

"None
of your tales explain what brought you to this mountain," I said.

"I
have served the Elder Gods, in my own way.  Now I wait here, if it please them,
to rise into the Overworld."

He
rested his pipe on the floor and we slept, he on his pallet, I on a rug with a
dizzying pattern of sharp angles and contrasting colours.  I dreamed that the shell
roof shivered open like an enormous iris.  The sky's light warped above us, a
lens through which we became the focus of an unfathomable entity.  I heard
Captain Smiley's breath coming shorter and shorter, and turned to my friend.

“You’re
dying,” I said.

“No,”
he replied, painfully.  “This earthly husk will expire, but my self rises into
a more sublime state.  The humanity I leave behind is but a chrysalis.”  He
shrank back from this small effort, and a lengthy and rattling hiss signaled
that the following words would be his last:  “But how I long to see New England
again.”

I
came slowly to consciousness as the sun’s glow consumed the chamber.  Bromm’s cot
was empty except for a scrap of onionskin, about two hands wide, covered in circles
and slashes.  I secured it in my belt and, taking up my walking stick, pushed my
way out of the green house.  The morning was eerily quiet without birdsong, but
I met no phantoms on my descent, which was as quick and uneventful as the previous
day’s climb had been torturous and bizarre.  It was not yet noon when I reached
the beach again, where the majority of my crew were taking their ease by the
water.  Their cheer at my return could be described as halfhearted at best.

For
the first time in weeks there was purpose in my stride, and by the time I had
returned to the Peregrine and assembled the pages of the palimpsest on top of a
crate on the main deck, everyone had gathered close.  The three leaves came
together into a map, as I had expected, although its subject was not
immediately clear.

“Where
does it lead?” Marthin said, igniting a storm of wild speculation which, predictably,
leaned towards treasure.

“It
doesn’t make any sense,” Jome said, shouldering his way to the fore.  “These lines
everywhere are too straight and the corners too crooked.  They can’t be rivers or
coastline.”

I myself
was drinking it in with my eyes, knowing the riddle was on the cusp of being
solved.

“It’s
a street map,” I said.

“You're
right,” Erik agreed.  “These quadrangles and recursive lanes can only describe
Dylath-Leen, the city of the yellow-eyed merchants.”

“That
may be Dylath-Leen,” Huspeth said softly, “but the yellow-eyed merchants merely
trade there.  They are not her citizens.  They are the Men of Leng.”

I
had heard tales of that forbidden plateau, but never guessed anything human
made its home there.

“Very
well,” I said, concealing the chill I felt, “assuming the map represents Dylath-Leen,
what does it lead to?”

My
question hung unanswered in the air as I studied the document for further
clues.

“What
is this text here?”  I pointed to a section where the layers of the palimpsest had
resolved into cryptic symbols rather than streets.  “It doesn’t appear to be a
legend.”

Huspeth
traced the characters slowly with her finger.

“It
describes the original source of the map, a certain arcane tome now thankfully
lost.  The map itself points to a component of a dark ritual, the summoning of–” 
Here she struggled with the script.

While
waiting on her, I became keenly aware of the press of sailors around us,
scanning the secret map with hungry eyes.  I considered the problem of the black
galley, how it lingered always just out of reach, leading us to these forsaken
shores and now to the resolution of this puzzle.  For the first time, I
suspected that Isobel’s abduction had been a deliberate strategy, that she was part
of a script which I had followed to the letter for an unseen master.

The
old woman had read something
that bled her face white.

“The
annotation follows the patterns of a swamp people dialect,” she said, also realizing
how many eyes were watching, "but with runic characters.  I cannot translate
more whilst standing on deck, crushed by sailors.  It will take time.”

I
declared an extra ration for the men, and invited them to make whatever
merriment they could until nightfall.  The promise of another day of rest was
met with a more enthusiastic cheer than my reappearance, and soon Jome was
sharing out his last remaining stash of tobacco.

While
the crew resumed their leisure, my exultation at completing the map waned to a
bone-deep exhaustion.  As my mystic advisor worked on the translation, I slept
below until Ajer woke me near dusk with as stony an expression as I’d ever seen. 
With one hand, he signaled two things:  the swimming motion of a fish,
which he had adopted to describe
Trout
, followed by a dismissive gesture,
meaning
gone
.

Ajer’s
news abruptly cast Trout’s inexplicable behaviour during our voyage into a very
different light.  I headed to the captain’s cabin, wringing my hands like a
supplicant.

“I
did not wish to say more with so many looking on,” Huspeth said without raising
her head, “but I am close to finishing.  The remainder of the text was in the
form of a cipher, which I have now solved.”

When
I explained that after viewing the map our youngest deckhand had vanished, Huspeth
did look up, with a stare as flat and dead as a snake’s.

“Our
swab, the master spy,” she said, spitting on the floor in disgust.  “The Men of
Leng led us to the place where the riddle would be solved, but they could never
have climbed the summit.  The map was what they wanted all along and you
delivered it into their hands.”

“You
are quick to place blame,” I retorted, “but when did you advise me this entire
time?  I’d have been better served to bring a marble statue for counsel.”

“I
wanted my revenge,” she said, shaking her head at her own foolishness.  “If
they hadn’t kidnaped your Isobel, Lark never would have died.  I did not
understand what was at stake.”

“What
is at stake is Isobel’s life and freedom,” I replied, my voice steadily rising. 
“Whatever else you're on about doesn't concern me.”

“But
maybe it will.”  She squared the vellum sheet on which she had been scratching her
notes.  “I have deciphered enough of the text to guess the rest.  This cipher
is the work of the Toad cult, and the map shows the location of their secret
temple in Dylath-Leen.  Every such temple houses a sacred relic at its
exact center.  
That must be what the yellow-eyed ones are
after.”

“What
will they do with this relic?”

“They
seek to enact an unspeakable ritual,” she replied calmly.

“And
Isobel?”

“She
will yet be on the black galley, if she is to be had at all.”

“If
we can run them down before their ritual, I will have Isobel and you will have
your revenge, I promise it.  Do you know how to find them?”

“Simple.
 Now that they’ve acquired their prize, they surely make for Dylath-Leen,
as the crow flies this time.”

“If
they are able to plot a proper course while we must follow the coast again–”

“Not
at all.  Your navigator may take the most direct course.”  To my nonplussed
expression, she said, “The stars are auspicious.”

I
climbed to the deck where Erik was already staring upward, sextant dangling from
one hand.  I looked up.  For the first time since we had entered uncharted
waters, each star was in its proper place and every constellation in order.

“Unless
I misread the stars,” Erik said, “we are not far from Jundara.”

Dylath-Leen
was the biggest port in the Dreamlands, and her walls, towers, and houses
sprawled into the low foothills at her back.  We had arrived at the basalt city
without sighting the galley again, but Huspeth was not bothered.  As she said,
there was a chance we preceded them.  Hoping to frustrate any who might be
watching out for the Peregrine, we had berthed the ship in a natural harbour a
few miles from town, a place popular with poorer traders who wished to avoid
the exorbitant fees of the city harbour. 

Dylath-Leen’s
gate was unguarded and the people were as unwelcoming and dour as the streets
and skies, which that day pushed down with a demotivating drizzle.  In their
sluggish perambulation, the native inhabitants brought to mind cogs in a
massive, slow-moving machine.

Our
small group included the soothsayer, Erik, Jome, Marthin and Gavrel, a
middle-aged carpenter we had taken on during the voyage north.  I had left Ajer
Akiti to watch over the ship. 

“The
wall is thick enough,” Jome remarked, “but not so high.  I could just about
jump it if I got a running start.”

“It
must be a dike,” said Erik.  “I don’t see why they should need a wall.  The
best way to keep people out of this place would be to let them in to have a
look around.”

“Are
we going to search the harbour for the galley?” Marthin asked.

“Someone
should look out for their ship, yes,” said Huspeth, “but do not suppose you can
take Isobel by force.  The Men of Leng have brought their trade to Dylath-Leen
since time out of memory, and have many friends.”  Shaking the palimpsest in
her fist, she said, “This is the key.  Once we have this treasure, they must
come to us.”

Though
I wished to see for myself if our enemies were near, I had to agree.

“The
map shows the location of the Temple of the Toad in Dylath-Leen,” she said. 
This final detail she had kept from everyone but me.  “Since theirs is an
outlawed cult, its places of worship are a closely guarded secret.

“There
is also another errand needs doing before checking the harbour.”  Marthin
stepped forward, and after Huspeth whispered to him whatever it was she needed,
he set out on his own.

The
houses of the city were high-walled, unnumbered and much alike, and the
confined streets full of obtuse angles and dead ends.  Even with the map it was
the work of two hours to locate the temple.  The entrance was a narrow, five-foot-high
slot in a bare basalt wall.  It was unmarked, except for a splash of paint on
one side which may have been a secret sign, or just graffiti.  I ducked down to
peer within.

“If
secrecy is their wish,” I said, “they’ve done a fine job.”

“Maybe
they’re still doing it,” Jome said.  “How do we know this is it?”

“This
is the place referenced on the map,” Erik averred, shielding it from the rain.

“Are
you sure this is necessary?” I asked Huspeth, holding out the jumble of rags
that had been Marthin’s first errand, before he left for the wharf.

“You
cannot go inside temple dressed as a sailor,” she said, “and secondhand garb
will be less likely to arouse suspicion.”

“Stinks,”
I said upon donning the beggar’s robes.  Little better than sackcloth, the
ill-fitting garment itched everywhere it touched my skin.

Erik
stepped back as if pushed away by the smell.

“If
at the end of today a new batch of lice is your biggest concern, you can count
yourself lucky.”  He pushed something cold into my hand, on a length of twine. 
It was an iron emblem of a toad, the same Gorice had picked up at the coal
burners’ camp.  I fastened it round my neck and pulled up the hood of my foul
costume.  It was like draping myself in a curse.

“Take
it out,” Erik said.  “Won’t do you any good if it can’t be seen.”

I
drew the talisman out of the folds of the collar, the metal slick in my hand
and unreasonably heavy round my neck.  Saluting my companions as if fully
confident I would see them again shortly, I slid through the opening.

A
few smoky tapers bathed the corridor in an unsteady light.  The passage
broadened a little as I went, and after a long flight of downward steps I came
to a picket of two men garbed in robes as rough and unappealing as my own.  They
also displayed the toad amulets.  I passed between them, believing I would go
unchallenged, but a hand reached out to halt me.

What
I could see of the face in the cowl was fat but sickly, with fleshy, colourless
lips.  Wide cheeks merged into his chest without the interruption of a neck.  He
did not speak, but indicated a bin set aside for weapons.  I dropped my cutlass
into the box and the sentry bowed me on.  Through a torn pocket, I reassured
myself my pearl-handled knife was still close at hand.

Past
the guards, the torchlight was replaced by a greenish luminescence from the
floor where a low recess ran along the walls on both sides.  Small, hidden lamps
emitted just enough light to keep me from braining myself on the regularly
spaced overhead beams.  When I heard soft footfalls ahead of me, moving in the
same direction, I slowed my gait until they faded.  I did not know if the
disciples were silent by vow or by nature, but I had no wish to engage with any
more of them.

The
way continued without intersections or doors, and I walked on for several more minutes
before arriving at a pentagonal room approximately three meters to a side.  An
idol in green marble squatted in the middle, a bulbous monstrosity the height
of a man and in the shape of a toad.  Its ugliness combined with the low
ceiling and too small space to disturbing effect.  Shrugging off my distaste I approached
the altar in front of the idol, where a low mound of cut gemstones glittered in
the faint light.

Huspeth
had indicated the artefact would sit immediately before the statue.  I knelt to
look more closely at the gems and they wavered before my eyes as if shimmering
with heat.  I gave my head a shake at this dizzying effect and found myself looking
not at precious stones but a shallow pile of river rocks, upon which two snakes
slept, twined together.

I
stepped back from this unsettling illusion to think on my options.  The statue told
me nothing.  I inferred that the disciples may have hidden their artefact,
knowing it was threatened.  But if that were so, they should have stopped me
earlier, or attacked me now that I was cornered in their sanctum.

I
heard a rattling sound from behind the idol, like something knocked off a shelf,
and moved around to the far wall.  A wooden hatch near the floor had recently
been kicked in, and I crouched down to look into a fetid smelling compartment. 
It was a garbage room, heaped with refuse in all stages of decay.  The source
of the trash was an upwardly sloping shaft in the far wall at about shoulder
height.  Perhaps the chute was part of a clandestine system for drop-offs, or
perhaps it was an architectural holdover.  Whichever it was, the citizens of
Dylath-Leen used it as a trash bin.

A slight
man stood with his back to me in the dingy rectangle of light from the opening. 
He had shifted a pile of debris beneath the chute and was trying to lift
himself up into it.  His leather satchel bulged with an object the size of a watermelon.

Trout
turned as I crawled, knife drawn, into the room, his eyes like holes gouged in
plaster.  He looked as if fifteen hard years had passed since I’d last seen
him.  He had already found his purchase however, and wasting no time sprang
into the tunnel and began pulling himself upwards.

I had
no difficulty accessing the shaft, but my weight and wider shoulders slowed me
down.  Where Trout climbed its entire length in a few minutes, I took ten, and emerged
aboveground filthy and sore, nowhere near the place I had left my colleagues.  The
rain had let up, at least, and despite the byzantine windings of the city’s
streets I was able to locate my friends quickly.

“I’ve
seen Trout,” I gasped while sloughing the soiled disguise for my seaman’s togs. 
“He has the relic.  Gavrel, Huspeth, go to the Peregrine and tell them make
ready to sail.  The rest of us will head him off at the wharf.”

We
raced for the docks, dodging around the disapproving city folk, for whom haste
seemed to be a kind of sacrilege.  Marthin waved us down, and we followed his
pointing finger.  Having just cleared the harbour, the galley was turning her
prow north, silhouetted against the horizon as if to deliberately mock us.

“I
saw them cast off, Captain,” Marthin said despondently.  “That’s the ship, but
there was no way to stop them.”

“This
is no time to stand around moping,” Erik said, already turning back the way we
had come.  “Step lively.”

By
the time we reached the Peregrine, the clouds had parted on blue sky and she
was prepared for departure.  We sailed on a fierce following wind and within an
hour caught our prey heading north-northeast.

Once
she was in our sights I was ready to declare our luck changed, but the galley’s
oars
moved with metronomic constancy.  Two hours later, both my head and arms ached
from holding the spyglass up to watch the hateful vessel.  Though the wind was
in our favour, the gap between us had grown no smaller.

“Always
they race ahead of us,” I said, looking up into the rigging as if I could will
us faster.  “We are undermanned again.”

“While
we were wandering the alleys of Dylath-Leen,” Erik said, “some of the men jumped
ship.”

“Are
we such hard masters as that?” I asked, dismayed.

“Since
leaving the Fantastic Realms, we’ve only stopped to replenish supplies.  Weeks
spent
sailing but not trading is time unpaid.  If so many of them weren’t our
friends, they’d probably cut our throats and take the ship for themselves.”

I
vented every curse I could call to mind, though more at myself than the crew, and
went below to corner Huspeth in my cabin.

“The
foe is in our sights,” I said to her, “but they are too swift.  You were a help
to us deciphering the map and finding the temple, but now I need sorcery.  Can
you stop them?”

“There
are forces I can call on, perhaps.”  I disregarded the tremor in her voice,
usually as steady as an oak beam.

“Then
call them,” I said frantically.  “Get me close to that ship and I will smash
them.”

“These
forces I speak of,” she said hesitantly, “there is a cost.”

“Damn
the cost!  The crew is on the edge of mutiny.  Help me make an end of this or I
will lose Isobel for good.”

Huspeth
lowered her chin in resignation.

“The
men will not understand what must be done,” she said, gathering chalk, a tiny
bone figurine, and several other small items from a traveling case.  “Get everyone
below, and yourself as well.”

“Everyone?”
I asked.  “We’ll drift with no one at the helm.”

She
answered simply, “I must do this alone.”

“What
are you doing?” Erik said, aghast, as I hurried everyone off deck.  Despite the
good weather and fat sails, the men were content to drop their labour and asked
no questions.  “With the wind on our side, we need only wait them out.  Their
oars must slacken eventually.”

“I
don’t believe they will,” I said, testing the weight of the new cutlass I had
salvaged from our stores.  “The Men of Leng have commanded this game since the
day it began.  It's time to change the rules.”

“Speak
sense,” he retorted.

“The
soothsayer has a plan, but the men must not see her working magic.”

Erik
had no confidence in the old mystic, but he marched unhappily below with the
rest.

I
took the wheel myself in defiance of Huspeth’s directions, intending to keep the
galley in sight as long as I could.  Ignoring me, she hunkered down on all
fours.  She began to draw on the deck with her chalk, and fastidiously set out
her selection of objects in a grotesque parody of a children's game.

Nothing
transpired while Huspeth carried on her with preparations, except that with no
one trimming the sails we began to lose ground on our target.  When she was
satisfied with her drawings, she rose up and spread her arms wide to perform a
series of gestures in the air.  If she spoke at all I could not hear it from
the helm.  Though I had seen no rainclouds approaching, we sailed suddenly in a
grey pall, our visibility cut almost to the gunwales.  Huspeth had stopped in
place, arms and face upraised in supplication, and the air grew charged.  The
tension broke with a bump from below, as if a whale had brushed against the
keel.  With a cacophony of groans, the Peregrine lifted clear of the waves and the
deck fell as motionless as a ballroom floor.  The dense fog had opened like a
corridor ahead of us, and we were racing towards the black galley.

Breathless
and terrified, I clung to the wheel, slack now that the rudder was free of the
water.  Through the chaos of fog and spray I saw, far off the port side, a
surface like a high cliff, carved with a giant, flat-featured face.  I waited,
hypnotized, for the illusion to vanish in the furiously eddying mists, but our
velocity increased again and the sound of shouts and confusion rising from
below deck forced me to gather my wits.