Tyler's Dream (10 page)

Then the most horrible thing Tyler could imagine happened. Varkon stepped forward and then turned to face the same direction as the hordes of his brothers and sisters crowding behind him. A snake smile slid over his spiked teeth, and his eyes widened with glee.

Tyler rose slowly to his feet. Varkon had deceived him. He had ignored every clue that had pointed to this treachery: his dream, the ghatu’s disappearance last night, Varkon’s unreasonable dislike of Haranio – all overlooked because his trust in Hargill’s judgement had outweighed his doubt. Now he would pay the price, just as Glivin had predicted.

The fattest, most vile ghatu Tyler had ever seen shoved through the ranks of his kind, pushing them aside as he moved. His gluttonous body was blotched with tattoos that had long ago lost their form and now appeared to be grubby, shapeless pools of ink; only his cheek remained bare except for a crescent and red line to mark it. A nail pierced his forehead, which was puffed with infection, and dozens of short and furry feelers, like those found around the mouth of a river-shrimp, emitted from his lips and brushed at the air like waving fingers.

The monstrosity halted just ahead of Tyler and Haranio, seemingly unafraid of the snow lion, although given the number of jagged weapons pointing towards them, Haranio was one aggressive movement away from becoming a pincushion of spears and darts.

His heart dead in his chest, Tyler’s eyes fixed on Varkon. What else had Hargill been wrong about?

“Never trust a ghatu,” Haranio said. He had transformed back into a human and had stepped to stand shoulder to shoulder with Tyler. It was quite a sight: a young boy and an unclothed old man standing before the most fearsome hordes of their enemies.

The large ghatu grinned with considerable amusement, exposing a forest of rotting teeth. “Vaz urit ama? Vuri-a-nanga!”

The encircling ghatu burst into laughter. Tyler saw Varkon smile. Tyler
only
saw Varkon; his hate did not allow him to focus on anything else.

As the ghatu leader laughed, black spittle leaked from his mouth. After licking this drool away with a long tongue, he rotated his enormous form and smacked a hand against Varkon’s shoulder in congratulations. He then shouldered his way back though the crowd of ghatu and disappeared among them.

“That was Yuguth Rut, son of Ti-Fuza and high Sa-Tsu of Mount Natsa. You owe him your respect, for he has decided to spare your lives,” said Varkon through his smirk. “This is far more than you deserve. Know that I begged for him to do otherwise. Instead, he sees fit to give you as homage to the Dhimori.”

Tyler’s lips twisted with hate. “Traitor.” Varkon slapped him across the face with the back of his powerful hand. The taste of blood only made Tyler more resilient. “What about your high and mighty
Ruilk
, O noble ghatu?” he continued, stubbornly. “You have broken your oath, corrupted your soul.”

Varkon stepped forward so that his foul breath burnt like mustard against Tyler’s face and eyes. “You have spirit, boy! That was hard to miss during our short journey, but we will crush that here. We will break you, Tyler. By the end you will be a miserable creature indeed. Starved and crippled by abuse and hunger, you will cringe at my feet like a dog.” With that Varkon turned on his heel and made as if to stroll through the ghatu ranks, but then he paused and spoke with his back towards them. “As for my
Ruilk
, Hargill was a fool. I swore to protect you
until your journey’s end
when I sealed my oath. How could Hargill not have noticed my play on words? Well, your journey
has
ended now, and with it my oath. What happens to you now is up to the Dhimori.”

Varkon pushed into the crowd of dark-faced ghatu, and their ranks pulsed outwards to make space. The ghatu massed around Tyler and Haranio began to howl incoherently.

Tyler remembered shaping small figures of clay from a muddy patch by the river when he was a child. The ghatu reminded Tyler of those clay people: each of their bodies was twisted and warped in different proportions and incredible angles. There was no “normal” figure; each was unique in some way. Skin colours varied from cloud-greys to lime-greens and even pinks; teeth bulged out of the mouths of those who did not have lips; ears spread like palm leaves or sunk into their heads; backs were hunched, pointed, or even shaped to bear sets of misshapen wings; some bore more similarity to fish than humans, and all were covered in great arcs of detailed tattoos.

They were forced to march before the jeering crowd. As they climbed higher, the snow took on a dirty-brown taint. They passed several small burrows and caves, their entrances black with muck that looked as though it had been belched from the mountain. Eyes watched them from the gloom, and at one time a thin ghatu child with a pale face came rushing at them yelling, his infant lungs with bloodlust. Thankfully his gangly mother had hurried out of the burrow and restrained him. Finally they entered one of the caves as the sun was setting behind them.

Half a dozen guards remained with Tyler and Haranio, goading them on with spears and insults. For a while they stumbled through a series of dim, dank caverns. In one of them a group of stupefied ghatu sat around a small fire, drool hanging from their slackened lips. Above the flames a pot was boiling, its base warming the room with a metallic red while steam gushed from the liquid. Tyler’s head turned light, and his thoughts drifted more than they should have.

Finally they came to an enormous cavern. Tyler couldn’t see that it was enormous, but he could sense it with some unknown instinct. A flight of stairs trailed downwards against the cavern wall, and to their right lay a profound emptiness, occupied only by an insufferable breeze of hot air that extruded from below. Initially Tyler moved with caution, because each step was barely wide enough to fit one foot at a time. Then one of the ghatu smacked him unkindly with his spear butt.

“
Vavi raz!”
the monster growled. “
Vavi raz,
nout!”

His words echoed hollowly into a distance, to mingle with sharp scrapes and bangs of metalwork and digging. Tyler traced his hand loosely against the wall to his left as he stepped down the spiralling stairway. He was thankful that Haranio was ahead of him; the old man appeared far more confident in his step.

On and on the stairs unwound from the gloom as they descended towards hell. Tyler rubbed his steaming brow. He guessed it must be towards the early hours of the morning.

Still they walked downwards. The dark seemed to permeate Tyler’s eyelids, swelling them with heaviness as the long trek continued. The very stairs began to move before his eyes, bending and sliding ahead of him, and he came close to losing his balance more than once. Not even a sharp crack of a spear butt to his back woke him fully.

“Vavi raz!” the ghatu droned madly. “
Tr
akav!”

Just when Tyler could not endure another moment, they reached the bottom. The path met with what Tyler thought was an expansive, flat piece of ground, though it was hard to be sure in the dark.

A few paces across this space, and a crouching figure drew into view. Its shape was dreadfully deformed, and as they came closer, they bore witness to its decrepit face. The old ghatu’s upper lip was pierced back with long bones, as though it were a loose flap that had to be secured, and red warts had blistered its eyes almost entirely shut. With its two remaining fingers, the fiend stroked Tyler’s arm and pressed at his stomach as though examining a melon for bruises. “
Kou! Kou!”
he hacked, pointing at Haranio and then Tyler. “ThiKz my … Vraka! Prizion. Kou owbey
ve
– Knowone elv!” Then he turned with a grunt and motioned that they should follow.

They passed several long pools of silent water, their inky nature masking the fathoms that swirled beneath. Every so often a line of silver would slink onto some unnatural wave. Tyler shuddered. Surely no living thing could be finning or sliding its way through the depths?

The ghatu stepped up to an iron gate, which was sunk deep into the stone. It inserted a key and then dragged the heavy door open with a tired metal screech. “BeKwar tah hol,” the old one rasped ominously, gesturing through the open gate. “Atk ta bottom, a wyloth Klivz.”

The companions were then shoved through the gate, which was slammed and locked after them with a high-pitched clang.

CHAPTER TEN
SHADES OF NIGHT

“
Haranio?” Tyler whispered. “Are you t
here?”

Haranio answered him with a pair of limpid eyes. The shamif had changed into his snow lion form. Tyler waited until he had examined the area, and then there was a pause mixed with a couple of crunching bones and clicks. At least the blackness meant Tyler did not have to witness another grisly transformation.

“Even as a lion, I can barely see in this wretched place,” said Haranio. “What I can make out is a large hole bored through the centre this prison. Tyler, I hope you are a still sleeper, because one turn …”

Tyler flayed out his hand tentatively to feel for the ground he had assumed was ahead of him. His fingers swiped on empty air, and orientation awry, he pressed up against the slimy wall behind him that so he felt cool juice secrete from the moss and run down his back.

“I was a foot from the edge!” he yelped. His voice rang down the unseen hole ahead of him and then leapt back up with a disembodied echo. “Haranio, I’m so sorry I trusted Varkon.”

“The fault is as much yours as it is my own. In the end we both trusted in him enough to lead us though the mountains.”

“Yes, but his betrayal wasn’t as unexpected as you might think.” Tyler told Haranio of the dream which had revealed the murderous intent of one of his companions and of Varkon’s disappearance from their cave. “I didn’t know who to trust,” said Tyler, who felt the burden of his secret lift as he spoke. “In my dream I could feel how all-consuming Varkon’s
hatred
was for me. It was so powerful that I’m surprised he did not kill me himself.”

Haranio did not comment immediately. Instead, he paused for a long time, his expression obscured by the gloom. “So,” he said eventually, “you think that your dreams allow you snippets of real thoughts? You should have told me all this long ago. Avalon’s Blessing is not something that may be taken lightly, Tyler. Remember what happened when you neglected to tell Varkon about your dreams? Your body has had a jab of something new shot right into its heart. How do you expect me to help if I never know what’s wrong? From now on, promise me you will tell me everything.”

“I promise,” Tyler said. “Did you understand what the old ghatu meant? About something living at the bottom of this hole?”

“A wyloth,” said Haranio. “Fisherman often unwittingly stew them with their day’s catch of eels when young, but time has no meaning to such a creature, and over the centuries it can grow to be enormous. I have seen the destruction caused by one in a forest.”

There was a frightened cry from outside, very far away. Slowly its volume intensified until it was silenced with a soft
w
hack
.

Despite himself, Tyler smiled. “Sounds as if the ghatu are having trouble staying on their ledges!” When the echoes had softened enough, Tyler spoke again. “Do you know why the ghatu are each so different, Haranio? I’m beginning to suspect Varkon might have been considered strange for having only two arms and a head!”

“Ah yes,
that
is fascinating business!” said Haranio with the enthusiasm of a scholar. “You see, their natural home is not the mountains.”

“I know, Varkon told me about the Grey Lands.”

“Ghatuan history would be best told by a ghatu, I’m sure. So you know that they were unable bear the light of the lands further south?”

“Varkon told me he couldn’t see as well in the light, but he never mentioned anything about his skin.”

“Imagine spending all day with your head tilted back, staring directly into the sun. A ghatu’s eyes are so poorly adapted to sunlight that they physically hurt when open during the day. They are designed to collect as much light as possible, not to deal with too much of it.”

“At least we have the satisfaction of knowing that Varkon’s last few weeks were not pleasant,” said Tyler, surprising himself with his cruelty.

“Yes, they would have been painful indeed. But Varkon would have had to deal with another burden, too: his skin. In the Grey Lands the ghatu were nomadic and would trek great distances to seek out food. The lands would thus change as they travelled. Red hills would shift into plains of tired green, for instance. To aid their hunt, the ghatu found it beneficial to blend with their surroundings, and so with time the ghatu began to be able to alter the colour of their skin. Not by much, only enough to take on a shade of whatever background colour they inhabit. Unfortunately for the ghatu, this chameleon-like nature was not as useful away from their home. Over long periods of weeks and months especially in the snow, their skin would become ever paler and would thus burn.”

“It must take a long time indeed,” said Tyler. “Varkon was hardly affected.”

“But he was! You may not have noticed, but in another week or two, he would have begun to develop a few nasty burns.”

“But what exactly does this have to do with what I asked before? The reason why there are so many different types of ghatu?”

“
Everything,
lad. In the night lands the ghatu were all the same, much like us humans. However as they migrated south, their aversion to the sun forced them to live in very different circumstances to their natural habitat. Over thousands of years, those that migrated began to adapt, to evolve. Some became muscled to dig at hard rock; others hunched to slip into tiny burrows. There are even rumours of ghatu that have grown a semi-transparent eyelid that can shut out the sun, or of others that now live like fish at a bottom of the oceans, hidden by the sheer—”

Tyler and Haranio scuffled to their feet. Someone was fumbling with a set of iron keys right outside. There was a click, and their prison door was shoved open with a bang.

By this time Haranio had changed into his lion form, his two eyes narrowed into luminous slits of intent.

“Tyler,” a voice hissed softly, familiarly. “Haranio, are you there?” It was Varkon. Haranio snarled in reply. “
Wait
! I’ve come to help you!”

As the only person able to speak, Tyler realised it was up to him to ask the questions.

“Why should we trust you? After what you did today …”

“There is not enough—”

“
Tell me
!” Tyler hissed as loudly as he dared.

“Keep it down! We must move fast. Half the mine woke when I tossed a ghatu from his ledge.”

“Why are you helping us?”

“I never stopped. When we rested in our cave last night, I saw signs that only a ghatu would understand: symbols on the rock, dirt in the snow. I realised the mountain was heavily guarded. In fact, we’d already been spotted and were surrounded. So I crept out during the night when you were sleeping.”

“I saw you.”

“I and went to the Sa-Tsu of the mountain, who had only recently begun mining here. I told him that I was pretending to be your guide but was in fact leading you right to him. I told him you were the boy the Dhimori was looking for. He was easy to convince. The next day I gave you away to gain the Sa-Tsu’s trust.”

“And you didn’t tell us this plan of yours because …?”

“I couldn’t. Ghatu can
smell
fear,
smell
loathing. Pretending would not have been good enough.” Varkon grunted with amusement. “Actually, boy, you almost played your part too well by mentioning my
Ruilk
. Some ghatu are not entirely deaf to the words of your tongue and would have killed me themselves if they thought I had betrayed my oath. Thankfully I was quick-witted enough to make up some convincing rubbish.”

Haranio had changed back into his human form. “Varkon, you fool, you’ve led us to ruin. We should have gone around the mountain in the first place.”

“I know. I am sorry,” admitted the ghatu in an unusual display of humility. “I thought this way was safe, and I was very wrong.”

The surge of joy through Tyler’s body was difficult to contain. He had been so
sure
that he was going to die. He had accepted it emotionlessly like some dull, listless fact.

A voice roared from somewhere high up the mineshaft, soon followed by a chorus of vicious cries.

“They have found the first body,” Varkon noted. “We don’t have much time.” For the first time since Tyler had met Varkon, he heard an unmistakable tone of fear. If caught, his betrayal would not go lightly punished. Varkon quickly fumbled in the dark. “I have a rope; I only hope it is long enough.”

After a moment there was a sound of a rope lashing through the air down the hole ahead of them. Tyler waited for the reassuring tap of loose slack against the bottom. He was to be disappointed.

The shouts from the mineshaft were drawing closer.

“Tyler, climb as fast as you can.” Tyler crawled blindly towards Varkon, who pushed the rope into his hands. “Good luck,” he said. Then Tyler had hoisted himself over the edge and into the abyss.

He swung his feet against the side of the hole and used this for support as he descended. In the absolute dark every sound became more apparent. He noticed the scrape of his boots against the rock, faint drops of water falling from the moss, and the scuttle of rats.

The tension in the rope changed;– someone had climbed onto the rope above him. A voice whispered faintly, as though it were drifting from the depths of a well, “Tyler, are you all right? Haranio is coming down after you.”

“Still going down, but fine!” he called back quietly.

His arms were beginning to ache. He gritted his teeth, well aware that the rope was all the more unsteady now that Haranio was on it, too.

Suddenly the wall underneath his feet disappeared. Tyler’s legs swung loose, and he endured a dreadful moment of panic before managing to steady himself once again. He had to keep moving. Shuddering with effort, he reached his left hand down once to grip at the rope – and slipped. The rope burnt his skin, and he let go with helpless instinct.

Three feet later he landed quite safely, half-laughing with relief at the drama he had played out so near to the ground. He groped until his fingers closed about the dangling rope.

“Haranio, I’m at the bottom!”

The reply drifted back in that disembodied way. “Good. I’ll be with you soon.”

The ground curved upwards evenly on either side of Tyler, giving him the impression he was enclosed a giant tube. He moved a little to one side so that he was no longer positioned directly below the hole.

Just then something clicked into place within Tyler’s wandering mind, like the last piece of some monstrous jigsaw puzzle.
Varkon had not betrayed him
! The ghatu was not the murderer in his dream.

Haranio landed at the bottom with a stony clap. “Tyler? Tyler where are you?” He was welcomed with silence. Tyler pressed himself against a nearby wall. “Tyler, I know what you are thinking, but I am
not
the one in your dream. I could have killed you on so many other occasions. Why wait until now?”

The
only
time Haranio could have murdered him without consequence was when they were alone together just a few moments before. Perhaps he was going to, and Varkon had prevented a bloody murder by arriving when he had. It was only a matter of time before the shamif would change into his snow lion form and be able to see precisely where he was.

There was a swish of rope, and then a large body hit the ground with a grunt of pain. Tyler stooped and ran towards the noise. “Varkon?” he called out worriedly.

“There you are, Tyler!” breathed Haranio. “Thank goodness.”

Tyler stretched his hands to where he guessed Varkon must have landed, but the ghatu was already on his feet, and his voice sounded from above.

“Tyler, I’m fine. I didn’t fall far. Now stand away from the hole before anything dangerous is thrown down at us from above. Trail your hand against the wall and follow my voice.”

Varkon set off down what Tyler now realised was a sort of passageway, humming tunelessly. Tyler followed closely, feeling safer now that Varkon was with him. Haranio surely wouldn’t kill him knowing that he needed Varkon as a guide.

The curses that lashed down after the companions gave lungs to the entire mountain, ringing it like a hollow bell.

“Wait,” Varkon commanded a short while later, and for a while there was nothing but the sounds of rummaging. Tinkles and thuds reverberated softly from the walls. “Ah!” the ghatu let out with success, and three other imaginary Varkons down the passageway echoed similar victories.

There was a flash of red sparks, and then the oiled torch that Varkon held fire-balled into existence. The ghatu’s face was dark with shadows, but he was smiling grimly. “Good. I thought the flame might not catch,” he said. “The air down here is very bad.”

It was an understatement. The rot that had so gently wafted into their prison was nothing compared to the full-blown reek they now were forced to endure. The tired light showed they were standing in what appeared to be a hollow tube that headed to darkness in both directions, bored through the solid rock. Varkon only narrowly avoided hitting his head against the ceiling by a mere foot or so.

“I had a hard job getting this torch. Ghatu have no need for them.” Although Varkon’s hard face was made even less pleasant by the shadows, it felt good to see it again. “Friends, I have grave news. Perhaps it is only a rumour, but I have heard from others there is a terrifying creature that infests the roots of this mountain. Have you heard of the creature they call—”