by Greg James
Willow knelt at the Wealdsman’s side and peered through the obscuring mist. For a moment, she glimpsed a tower – perhaps, two – rising above the dense trees and bogs below. “Yes, I think so.”
“I pray that we are able to survive the journey to it,” Henu said.
As he finished speaking, there was another low moaning – but this came from behind them, inside the hut. There was a rustling from the straw pallet Willow had been sleeping on. Suddenly, two arms burst out, snatching and grabbing at the air. Willow and Henu jumped to their feet. A mottled form lurched up out of the straw, groaning from a slack mouth. Its hair was long and white. Its eyes were yellow with sickness.
“Get out ... my bed ... my house ... my bed ...”
Henu was at Willow’s side, pulling her away from the ghoul staggering towards them. The other pallet spilled its straw everywhere as a second ghoul emerged, “Our house ... our home ... our bones ... give us ... your bones ... to suck on ... to feed ... ”
“Gross,” Willow muttered.
The two companions descended, still sleep-deprived, back to the depths of Cheren Mokur. Willow looked back up at the hut and saw the huddled forms of the two ghouls peering over the side.
“Let’s go,” Henu said, “they are scavengers and cowardly creatures. They feed only on the lame and the sick when the No-men are not around to command them.”
Crack ... crack ... crack ...
“What was that?” Willow asked.
“Take courage, Willow.”
She saw shapes in the mist, hunched and pale, coming towards them. Their starving faces were snarling and their hands were curled into claws. A few were close enough for the light cast by marsh-fires to catch their eyes. Willow saw how pinched and unsteady the pupils were. Their lips twitched as if they were silently laughing at something she couldn’t hear.
One of them hissed as it reached for Willow.
She drew the thule and slashed at it.
A soundless gout of white fire poured from the blade like a molten river. She gasped in shock and then grasped the hilt to steady the thule. The magical flames licked over the ghoul, roasting it alive. Its smoking corpse dropped into the marsh with a splash. It didn’t have the chance to scream. The eyes of its fellows widened as silent tongues of flame began to flow towards them. They began to back away fearfully. Willow tried to relax; she didn’t want to kill them, just scare them off. There had been enough death already.
But the thule’s fire didn’t relax instead it began to rage. She could feel its fury building, thrashing and slithering out of her control. The ghouls screamed and ran moments before the raw power of the thule tore into them, incinerating them on the spot, leaving only threads of grimy smoke behind to mark their passing.
The thule’s fire died away.
Willow let out a breath as the short blade became calm and cool once again in her hands. They were dead. All of those ghouls. She was shaking. The thule fell from her grasp for the second time as the fact she had killed again sank in.
Where would it end?
“Greychild ... friend Willow ...”
“Stop calling me that ... those names. I’m Willow. That’s all I am. Just Willow. Willow Grey. Nothing special, alright? I’m just a girl who wants to go back home and see her Dad. I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t want to save anyone. I just want to go home!”
With that, she ran off.
Henu’s warning cries faded behind her.
“Beware the Voice ... beware the Voice of Cheren Mokur!”
*
Willow was ran until she was well and truly lost. She turned and turned again, and saw nothing but the murk of the marshes in every direction. It was then a shadow walked out of the mist ahead of her. It stayed for a moment before it turned and walked away. She heard a voice from the direction of the shadow. “... Willow ...”
Her name carried on the air by a voice that was familiar.
“... Willow ... come with me ...”
She looked after the shadow as it retreated into the mist.
It looked familiar too.
Was it Dad? Could it be?
Willow ran after the shadow splashing through mud and water.
The shadow’s pace was steady but she never seemed to come closer to it no matter how much she tried.
She called out to it, “Wait for me. Wait! Please! Dad!”
Willow was running as best she could. The ground she could feel under her feet was little more than slime but she didn’t stop; all she could hear was the voice.
“ ... come ... come with me ... my Willow ... my dear ... follow me ... come home ...”
Tears stung her eyes. Her heart pumped hard and fast. He was here. It was all going to be set right now. She was going home and they would be together. She could leave Tirlane behind and forget about it – not that any of it had been real, no. It was little more than a dream, and dreams didn’t matter as much as the real world.
She could see Dad. He was on his knees, not far ahead of her. Something must’ve attacked him. She grabbed for the thule and then remembered that she’d dropped it.
Damn it.
Dad was falling into the marsh. He was going to drown. She couldn’t let him die. Willow rushed forward to the edge of a black pool where the rippling surface was just settling down. She could see Dad down there, just under the surface. Willow dove in after him, pushing herself down and kicking hard until she was deep in the water. She reached out to her Dad with both hands.
I’ll save you.
Dad looked up and reached for her. His hands fastened on her wrists.
Yes! I’ll save you and then we’ll go home!
A terrible change then came over his face.
It became empty and dead.
It wasn’t her Dad.
It was a ghoul but different to the others. This one was long-dead and its limbs were wrapped with dark, wrinkled tendrils that seemed to come from somewhere buried even deeper in the marsh’s depths. Its eyes glowed with the same light as the marsh-fires.
Willow tried to pull away but the undead creature was pulling her down. She felt a strength in its hands greater than her own. She was weakening as it hauled to a deeper and darker place below Cheren Mokur; where a light burned which was the source of the marsh-fires. A light that might be a single, glowing, giant eye. She looked into the eyes of the ghoul knowing they were not her Dad’s eyes, and they never had been.
She could still hear its voice, and knew it to be the Voice she had been warned about.
“ ... come with me ... my Willow ... my dear ... follow me ... follow me home ...”
She could let go. Let it all be over.
She could let herself die down here.
It was what she deserved after what happened to Nualan.
A life for a life.
What’ll happen to me if I let myself die in Tirlane?
The Voice did not answer her question as unconsciousness consumed her.
Chapter Nineteen
Willow stood on a quayside where boats and ships loitered as dark waters slushed and kissed against their hulls. She couldn’t remember how she’d come to be there, or where there was. It was a cool brisk night to be out and the sky was untroubled by clouds. The skull of the moon was a rarefied hue, shading somewhere between amethyst and rose.
She peered out to sea, where twin piers embraced the port’s harbour like a crab’s claw of white stone. She saw the light of lamps aboard boats wandering beyond this boundary, waxing and waning in the gathering darkness. She felt suddenly cold and rubbed her arms. She came to the very end of the dock and there she found it waiting; long, lean and white as bone.
The Pale Ship.
She saw there was an elegant, light-blue bird circling its masts.
There was someone at the helm; a lone hooded figure. His head was bowed so that the moon and materialising stars cast his face in deep shadow. She could see grey-white suggestions of an aged beard tangling in the gloom. The state of his
clothing was appalling, torn strips and sorrowful tatters strung together by the barest stitches. He made no gesture as she approached, not seeming to perceive her until she came close enough to reach out and touch the Pale Ship’s hull.
He came to life, slowly, and swept his arm out in the time-honoured gesture for inviting another aboard one’s own vessel. There was no welcoming smile within the hood – only darkness and the void.
Still, Willow extended her hand and he took her outstretched fingers, raising her up onto the deck. His fingers were rough, hers were soft, and she noticed the texture of his skin was barnacle-hard. In the murk of his hood, she still could not clearly detect his features, just those coiling strips of beard.
Willow felt the Pale Ship moving, drifting away from the dock. It went cleaving through the waves, scattering water and whispers of spray. Her heart was fluttering in her breast. The Ship went between the twin piers and then the sea was before her, wide and open; its surface shimmering with a million black diamonds.
She breathed its clean, untainted air.
“Sir, where are we bound?”
Her companion did not speak to her.
The Ship went on; parting the waves, almost gliding over the surface, as a lover’s fingers might pass over the skin of the one she so desires. The moon loomed large and pregnant among the stars overhead and its doppelganger in the shifting depths of water revealed another world beneath the waves; nocturnal cities cut from blackstone and white coral adorned with seaweed emeralds and silica gemstones; mermen and mermaids frolicking in their grottoes, and performing weird rites in dripstone caverns.
The bird, which flew ahead of the Ship, let out a cry.
As she watched the world below, something emerged from the sea; a shimmering ethereal aurorae. It wove a wondrous mist, gleaming with arctic colours, which crept aboard the Ship. She felt it coldly tickling at her pores and playing with her hair; stroking over her in languid waves until she could see and feel nothing but its pulsating flux. It strung itself between her fingers and toes, around her wrists and ankles, embracing her waist with phantom limbs that she could barely perceive. She felt herself sinking slowly down, wanting to lose herself in this state forever.
Willow saw the helmsman’s hood had fallen away and hung loose around his shoulders.
She recognised him.
He wore the face of Nualan. Beautiful, lost Nualan; aged and with a beard as white as the paths of the Long Ride – the afterlife of the centaurs. Her heart became a small bird beating its wings hard against its cage. She wanted him so much, but there was a strange mien marking his looks.
“I told you that I do not mean to let you die, Willow.”
“But I want to be with you. I don’t want you to be dead.”
“I died to save your life. I will not let my sacrifice be in vain. You are precious to me, and to Tirlane. Your time to join the Long Ride is not yet. Tonight, I am your ferryman bearing you back from the lands of the dead. This time alone can I do this, do not dare to cross the borders between life and the dark again.”
“Nualan–”
”Awaken, Willow. Awaken, live, and be true.”
Willow’s eyes fluttered open. She saw the Pale Ship as a retreating ghost in the mist of Cheren Mokur. She was beside the pool where she had drowned. Nualan was gone – somehow he’d been able to come back and save her.
She wept for him and for her loss.
*
Mist lay everywhere as Willow moved through away from the place where she’d nearly died. The vapour seemed to reach toward her with long fingers as had the aurorae in her dream of the Pale Ship. Weeping willow trees and beds of reeds seemed to founder and fade into its greyness. It was like walking through the fumes trailing from a thousand cauldrons.
She began to meet toads. To start with only their croaking could be heard then Willow felt one move underfoot. It was slippery and ripe with warts. She cried out and jumped away from it, only to feel another damp, bulbous form squirming beneath her toes. Several struck against her feet as she ran through the marsh. She pounded through the black, miry water and was sure she heard the sound of the toads in coming after her. The water became deep and surged up to her waist. Willow stopped and turned to clamber back the way she’d come.
There was no way through. The marshy soil and surrounding bogs were alive with them. Black, gnarled toads croaked and splashed all around her. They were a tide which meant to drown her. She could see it in the glassy stare of their eyes. Willow tried to push through them but they closed the way. She felt the pain of dull, stud-like teeth biting at her. What more could they do? What was her fate going to be once they tired of this baiting game?
Then, like the lifting of a grey curtain, the mist suddenly rolled away.
Willow was dazzled by a burst of starshine as a fire without heat or smoke swept across the black tide of toads. The noxious creatures fled before the burning light. It arced across their mildewed ranks, reducing many to steaming pulp. The light died and Willow blinked, clearing her eyes of its after-images. Henu stood alone among the reeds, with the thule held aloft in one hand, taking a last sip from his flask of stardraught.
She’d never been so happy to see someone in her life.
Chapter Twenty
“How did you find me, Henu?”
“I followed the toads. They are thralls to the Voice of Cheren Mokur and, wherever they might be going, I thought I would find you. We should not tarry here long. There is a vileness in the air I do not care for. I think it comes this way.”
“The Voice?”
“I fear so.”
“It got me once. It won’t get me again.”
“It has more ways to catch its prey than we have so far seen. It will also be angry that it has failed to ensnare us so far.”
They followed the bank of what might once have been a river and which was now a sluggish open sewer.
“This was once the Heartwash. It travelled from the northern steppes by Silfrenheart,” Henu said, “if we follow it back then we will come to the castle.”
They passed stunted, fungal trees and overgrown grasses of the marshes, seen through the veiling mist they were like glimpses of half-forgotten nightmares. A tremor passed through the waters, making the mutant fauna of the marshes scatter with a series of unpleasant cries.
“What was that?”
“The Voice, it is close,” Henu said, “and it is hunting for us.”
“What can we do?” Willow asked, looking at the marshland around them. Much of the ground had fallen away so that they were surrounded by pools and small lakes of scum-crusted swampwater. There was nowhere to escape to – except for the hollow shell of a fallen tree.
Willow grimaced as Henu shrugged, “This will have to do, I’m afraid.”
They crawled inside on their hands and knees. It was soft, wet and cloying inside.
“We must hope it will pass us by.”
Willow didn’t know how long they hid there. Through splits in the wood, she saw lamp-like eyes glowing in the mist and she heard things sloshing about in the slow waters.
“The ghouls,” Henu said, “they are searching for us along with the toads.”
There was a cry from the sky above. The ghouls screamed and scattered.
Willow peered out of their hiding place through the gloom and saw a shape turning in the sky. “It looks like a No-man but they don’t have wings.”
“Remember the ones that took on the form of wolves,” Henu said, “the No-men are moulded by the Lamia’s will. They can be anything she wants them to be. They can grow wings. They can take on the shape of any creature, if need be.”
Eventually, the winged No-man had turned and flew further south. Knowing the Lamia was still watching did not make Willow feel much better.
*
Rain was falling in miserable torrents, battering against the hollow tree. Henu dug into his pockets and pulled out some amethi plums which they ate, feeling a little refreshed as the cool, sweet fr
uit lined their aching stomachs. The downpour seemed to go on forever and Willow grew restless. Water seeped into the dead tree and ran over Willow’s skin like well-oiled fingers. She didn’t like the feeling of this rain. Something was wrong with it. She tipped her head back and opened her mouth to catch a few drops. She could taste it – it was wrong, like something gone bad lodged at the back of her throat. As their hiding place began to flood and the water level rose, she wondered if it was a ploy of the Voice to drive them into the open. She hated this waiting but knew that going outside would get them killed.
Willow pulled her knees up against her chest. Her head was pounding, not just from the rain. Her eyes hurt and her skull ached. She looked over to Henu and asked him, “Why are you here? Why are you still with me, Henu?”
“Why do you ask this question, friend Willow?”
“Because I need to know. I still don’t know if all of this is real, or if it is a dream I’m having after falling down the steps in the cellar.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
“I don’t know. There is something about you that feels true but part of me can’t be sure. I wonder if you’re only with me because this is some kind of fugue.”
“Am I real? What could it mean to me if I was not? These are hard questions but I believe people in your world ask them also.”
“You’ve got that right, I guess.”
“So, if I am not here, if I am just a dream, a thought, an image then I am one which can weep, shout, be hurt, cry, and love all the same. I am more than a word because I have a name and perhaps you gave me this name. If so, then you are something more than just a friend to me. You named me, you shaped me, you made me what I am and, for this, I say I will not abandon you to whatever fate is awaiting.”
Willow let the Wealdsman take her hand and squeeze it gently.
“Thank you, Henu. I mean it.”
He smiled, “I know you do.”
The downpour broke and the clouds cleared somewhat. Willow was soaked to the skin and fell into a shivering sleep as Henu once again kept watch through the night.