by Simon Morden
‘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.
There was nowhere to run to, and nowhere to hide. The only way down the mountain not barred by a giant winged lizard was straight over the cliff.
‘Fuck. Me.’
Crows hadn’t warned her about this possibility, and he really should have. Or perhaps he had, and she hadn’t been listening. Though casually mentioning that there might be dragons ought to have got her undivided attention. It flexed its wings and blotted out the half-moon. The gust of wind it caused raised a hail of grit, and she had to blink it out of her eyes.
Its scales glinted in the silver light as it loosely folded its wings against its sinuous body. Its two clawed feet rasped against the joints of the stones, and its snake-like head danced on its neck, tasting the air with its tongue.
She placed her hands firmly on the rock and shuffled around on her knees to face the beast. She had no idea what to do. The East End had many dangers. Massive fuck-off dragons wasn’t one of them.
Perhaps it would just fly away. Perhaps it didn’t see her as food, and if she wove a shadow-cloak around herself and crawled away, it’d leave her alone. Perhaps it was a tame dragon, and she could coo to it until it let her scratch it behind its ears. She couldn’t see any ears, though. Its head was smooth and dart-shaped.
In the absence of anything else to try, she swallowed hard against the brick in her throat.
‘Good dragon?’ She knelt up, very slowly, holding her palms out in what she hoped was a calming, non-threatening way. She was a fair way away from it, and if it got lairy, she could stop and back up again.
The dragon opened its mouth very wide and lunged at her. Its teeth were like rows of knives, except for the incisors, which were swords. It covered the distance between them in a single leap, and its jaws snapped shut, just where her hands would have been if she hadn’t snatched them back and dropped to the ground.
Not a friendly dragon, then.
Its head wound back in, coiled for another strike, and she still had nowhere to go. Her hand closed on a frost-edged shard of stone that cut into her fingers as she instinctively picked it up. The dragon’s mouth gaped wide and she threw the rock, as hard as she could. She didn’t think she could miss from that range, but she did. It sailed out of sight, over the creature’s head, and again she had to press herself to the mountain to avoid being swallowed whole.
It seemed surprised that it hadn’t got her, impaled on its teeth. Not as surprised as Mary was. The next time for sure.
It flapped its great wings again, rising into the air and battering her with a gale that almost hurled her over the edge. She grabbed another saucer-sized chunk of rock from the ground and half rose from her crouch.
And just when the dragon was settling again, claws closing against the loose surface, head rearing back and wings cupping the air, there was a clatter of falling stones from behind that distracted it.
It twisted sharply around, fearing an attack and, in that moment, Mary stretched her legs like a sprinter from the blocks. The moonlight wasn’t sufficient for what she was going to do, but she didn’t have a choice. No matter that she was on top of a mountain, she was going to die if she stayed there a second longer. She ducked under the outstretched wing and ran.
It was downhill all the way. She could feel the wind in her face, the wind at her back, and the roaring in her ears was either the speed she was moving at or the dragon’s displeasure. Whichever, she was going too fast to stop, the ground bending away from her feet and forcing her to take larger and larger strides.
She realised her descent was out of control at the same time she knew she couldn’t choose to avoid the drop-off formed by a ledge of rock. She’d climbed up it on the way. She knew how high it was. She could only guess how much it was going to hurt on the way down.
She sort-of-jumped, arms and legs wheeling. She landed in the scree beneath it, feet first but overbalancing. Then she was over. The mountain rose up and smashed her in the face.
It hurt, but more disorientating was seeing the land and sky becoming interchangeable. Moon and mountain passed each other. With each rotation, the dragon hanging above her grew closer, a silver outline against a black sky.
She stopped, eventually, abruptly, catching herself around a boulder like a ragdoll, all the air in her lungs forced out by the impact. The shadow deepened around her in a rush, and her back opened up to cold air and hot blood.
The most remarkable thing was that she was still alive enough to register the pain. She reached up a ragged hand and pushed herself away from her anchoring rock, rolling over and staring at the darkness of the sky and vastness of the moon.
Apart from her own heart, she could hear the steady pulse of beating wings. The dragon was coming around again. This was it. Could she stand? Could she work out how? Nothing seemed to be responding properly. She had one arm, one hand, and the rest seemed useless.
Not like this. She turned over again, on to her front, and somehow managed to wedge a knee under her. Here it came, all night and teeth, and she was determined she would face it. As she half-rose, because that was as much as she was able to manage, the stones of the mountain rose with her.
The dragon, full of pomp and arrogance, checked its advance, uncertain as to the threat. Mary didn’t dare look away, in case the slowly turning rocks fell. If this was her doing, then breaking her concentration as well as her bones would be the end of her.
Whatever instinct or intelligence drove the dragon on told it that it would come to no harm. It bent its head low and clawed at the ground, then rushed her.
She willed the rocks to stop its charge, and they flew at it, a solid storm of stone, battering its scales and membranous wings. The dragon stumbled and fell, and still the stones kept coming. It turned, lashed its tail, and ran.
The rattle of falling stones like rain marked the end of her resistance. She was alone in a world that was not hers, more than half-dead, halfway up a mountain she’d just fallen down.
‘Enough,’ she said. ‘Enough.’
20
Something had changed, possibly because the guards now realised that they were no more valuable, and no more protected, than the prisoners they were keeping. The man who’d died – Dalip heard him referred to as ‘Charlie’ or ‘Old Charlie’ – had been, if not well liked, not so unpopular that his singling out by the geomancer made any sense. His fate could have been theirs: they knew it, and resented it.
The harsh regime the prisoners had been kept under relaxed by degrees. Inside the cell block, the individual cells were only barred at night. They could talk to each other freely outside those times, as long as it didn’t interfere with their chores. The women were made to work in the vegetable plots inside the walls, fetching and carrying water, doing laundry in vats of boiling water, from sunrise to sunset. It was back-breaking, exhausting labour that would have been hard if it had been done for themselves or with the promise of pay.
Neither Stanislav nor Dalip were compelled to join in. The pit was deemed sufficient for them, but, led by the older man, they turned up every morning to do their share. Hoots of derision had joined the slaps and kicks which had been common enough to begin with. They tailed off as the prisoners got used to their roles. And now, a week later, casual violence was mostly redundant. Of course, the guards weren’t going to boil washing or weed between rows of cabbages. Then again, they’d thought they weren’t going to die in the pit either. That they might made them realise the geomancer didn’t care about them one way or the other: prisoners, guards, they were all the same in her mind.
The threat and the promise was that the regime grew to be normal, when it was anything but. Their lives consisted of mean meals, hard physical labour, beatings and captivity.
Dalip was with Stanislav in the pit, training with short wooden sticks instea
d of knives.
‘We must rebel. While the memory of Charlie’s death remains fresh,’ said Stanislav.
‘Before my next fight?’
‘Your next fight will be against something that you cannot hope to defeat. Remember that you are supposed to be scared. You are not. You are simply too angry at her to be scared. That is why she shut Charlie in with the boar. He was scared when you were not.’
‘But I was scared,’ Dalip protested.
‘She does not want ordinary frightened. She wants you to experience such terror that you piss yourself and run screaming for the door. You will not give her that, whatever they put in here with you.’
‘Don’t be so sure.’
‘And if it is the dragon?’
Dalip thought about that. They had all seen it early on: almost as if it had made a show of itself. Then it had been conspicuous by its absence. The sky above the castle was strangely blank without it. But the gates had remained open, and the guard not reinforced. It was still around, that was certain.
‘Well, maybe,’ he conceded. He ought to be terrified of it, but he was already thinking of ways of cutting it, if only he could get close enough.
Stanislav lowered his stick, not in a feint or a ruse, but in a way that meant they were no longer sparring. ‘Undress,’ he said, and when Dalip hesitated, he grunted: ‘Just do it.’
Dalip dropped his stick at his feet and wrestled the heavy zip down to his navel, then shucked the top half of his boilersuit. He pushed it down to his knees, and straightened up.
‘Look,’ said Stanislav. He walked around Dalip. ‘Look at yourself.’
Reluctantly, he did so. It was him. It was still him. Yes, he had visible muscles now, even at rest. He had broadened, and he stood taller even if he hadn’t actually grown.
‘This. This should not have happened. Not this quickly. Training, yes, over weeks and months, to make you strong and fast, will bring about such changes. Not days.’ He stood in front of Dalip, his hands on his hips, appraising him. ‘There is something else at work here.’