Raven felt her face go cold, her limbs grow weak, as she looked upon this unhuman thing that was Moonshadow’s tormentor. Two eyes it possessed, like most living things, but eyes spaced on each side of its triangular face, each on a mound of flesh that moved to let the eyes see backwards and forwards. The jaws were open, and yellow teeth gleamed, but the tongue that tasted the air was long and flexing, like a snake, with hooks and catches on it that would impale a tiny creature in a moment. Its flesh was drawn tight about its pointed, craggy body, the bones of its libs probing and pushing beneath the scaly skin like great lumps and deformities. Its flattened nostrils flared, and glistening fluid ran from eyes and lips as it struggled with the resisting form of Belthis.
The warlock was in trouble. His body had been squashed in a way no human body could stand, and yet he survived; Raven could see his hands working as he cast spell after spell, not to destroy the Crugoan, but to keep his own body whole; still the foul beast worked the flesh and bone downwards, and Belthis was folded and creased like a discarded leather outfit. His head was flattened, and his arms crushed into his torso, and yet his fingers remained full and flexing, and somehow he remained alive, even when the Crugoan stepped on fat and horny legs from the whole discarded corpse and unceremoniously kicked Belthis over the cliff edge.
As a rag flutters in the wind the crumpled cadaver tumbled from the cave, a rag doll, lost to Raven and Spellbinder for the moment.
The Crugoan shrieked as the green spider crawled across its naked body, and reared up to drive its sparkling fangs into the beast-Sorcerer’s soft and flaccid member.
But a hornified hand knocked the arachnid from its body in an instant, and Moonshadow rushed at the Crugoan, wielding his sword and scooping to clutch the spider and sweep it back on to the foul, semi-transparent body before him.
The Crugoan panicked for just a second, long enough to again shake the spider from its body. It saw Raven come running at it and, almost contemptuously, it picked her up by the hair and flung her to the back of the cave, where dazed and in pain she watched the beast run into the void above the precipice.
And vanish from sight.
Moonshadow wailed loud, reached down and picked up the spider. The creature folded into the shape of an emerald and he held it out before him, staring at it.
“Had I had my full strength!” he screamed. I should have destroyed it!”
He turned his eyes on Raven, looked at her darkly. “I should not have followed you for so long. I made a grave mistake. Now I must seek it in another world! Oh Raven, Raven, you have condemned me with your lust for Chaos!”
“No!” cried Raven, standing and running to Moonshadow. He moved from her and her hand brushed him. “I meant only to help you!”
“I should have killed it! I should have had it for the last time, dead, at my feet!” Moonshadow was incensed. “But I lent you my sword, and my time, and time worked for the Crugoan and not for me.””
As Raven stood behind him, tears in her eyes, her mind searching for some word, some placation that would make Moonshadow turn and smile at her, so she saw the enigmatic man’s body turn watery and transparent. He was shaking his head as he walked to the cliff.
The last she saw of him, before he vanished, was his moonsteel grey eyes. He had turned to look at her at the last moment. He disappeared, with a flash of green, and a flash of silver. The wind seemed to moan words to her; she thought she heard his voice say, “Forgive my anger, Raven—but pity me, pity me.”
Then there was just the snow filled cave, and Spellbinder hugging her, walking with her to the precipice and looking through the bright mists as they cleared above the mountains.
One by one the band was arriving at the cave, breathless and in agony with the exertion of the climb.
Arreena went straight to where Krya lay, in agony and despair, and soon the cave was filled with the sound of sobbing, and the mercenary girl’s words of comfort. Krya would be safe now, and within days would be back with M’rystal. The crisis was over.
Raven walked right to the cliff edge and stared across the shrouded mountains, and the bitter wastes. She shook her head as she thought of Moonshadow, and of his failure, and of his accusations. “I did not understand him,” she said. “He always remained beyond my comprehension. For one who has the flow of time in her body, for one who is the focus of spheres and events, I seemed to remain remarkably distant from him. And yet…he moved me, Spellbinder. He moved me very greatly.”
Spellbinder’s arm around her was as comforting as a heavy cloak against the cold. She leaned against his body, drinking his strength, relaxing in his secure grip.
He said, “Moonshadow’s sphere of events was further from our world than even Quwhon. Of course you could not relate him to the events of Chaos. Of course he seemed apart from us. For a while, here, two worlds joined, and each managed to interfere with the other just sufficiently to cause a problem. But do not brood about it, Raven. He was not accounted for in the scheme of things. His effect on us was unimportant.”
“How can you say that,” said Raven, looking up at the warlock, “when he saved us both?”
Spellbinder said nothing, but raised his eyes and frowned as he stared across the mountains.
“Perhaps,” Raven went on, “you do not know as much as you would like. Perhaps you only know a fragment of what this world is all about. Perhaps you are also in the dark, as much as am I.” She smiled.
Spellbinder squeezed her. “Perhaps,” he said quietly; and then, “You learn more of me with each adventure, Raven. You come to understand my strengths and weaknesses a little more with each passing day.” He smiled at nothing in particular. “So it goes,” he whispered. “So goes the scheme of things.”
Raven had wanted to ask Spellbinder about Kharwhan, and about the secret it contained that was so attractive to Belthis, and whether Spellbinder knew anything about it, but Silver, standing behind them, said, “Look!” They stared into the distance. The mist had cleared from the mountains and the day brightened, and distantly, faintly, they could see a strange and unknown land, a land of crags and grasslands, and valleys and shapes that moved at the very edge of their vision.
“Quwhon,” said Raven. “It calls to me.”
“Aye,” said Spellbinder. “I feel it too.”
He turned Raven to face him and stared into her green eyes. Then he reached out and grasped Silver by the shoulder and pulled the dark-haired man into the group of them. The three figures stood there, silhouetted against the bright sky and the enigmatic landscapes beyond.
They were still standing there, thinking of the past and the future, when a shadow passed across the land—night, covering them with its dark cloak of intimacy so that they were no longer ashamed to let the apprehension manifest itself in their drawn and tired faces.
Epilogue
The wind howled across the desert like moon beasts, scampering and hunting in these darkest of night hours. The tents billowed and strained against the creaking bone and wood frames, and the sand inside them swirled and drifted as the breezes squeezed through cracks and splits in the cured and stone-blasted hides.
A single lantern flickered miserably before the old man, and he stared at its dancing yellow flame, perhaps waiting for the tenuous life to be extinguished. The shadows the lamp cast were wide and alive, and the shadows on the old man’s face, too, made his features ripple and shift with that same unnatural life; every wrinkle on him, every crag, every fissure in his carved and stone-like face became a landscape feature, etched and painted with a story of its own.
His eyes gleamed blue, now that the wind and sun and been blinked from them, and their natural life and colour returned.
The young warriors had crept away, into their own tents and the clinging and loving arms of their wives. Only the war-lord remained, watching his guest.
“This is the world you shaped,” he said, “you shapers of worlds, your Raven and Silver and all the rest. IF you had known it would come to th
is, would you have gone ahead?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed, his face creased even deeper with puzzlement. The war-lord stared impassively at him, and now for the first time the old man recognized the experience, and the years, that hung on his host as distinctively as clothes hang on a man’s frame. No vital man, this, no scrawny tough muscled youth, but a man of age, who had seen life and had seen death, and could not disguise the weariness.
The stranger said, “I did not dream of this, but perhaps a greater dream is yet to come. So it goes.”
The war-lord smiled. “Aye. So goes all the world. Your stories are pleasurable to the ear, and frightening to the mind. But there is about them something that is not story, that is not simple-minded legend. You tell them with all the excitement and detail of a bard, but you talk of the way things were, and remember, if not the words and the names, at least the excitement of those days.” He laughed, something bitter in his voice, something of regret. “You dreamed of this world, and now we dream of yours. There seems little sense to it.”
The old man climbed stiffly to his feet, picking up the half empty stone flagon and cradling it in his arms. He was smiling. “To keep the tales alive in the minds of those I meet, this is my quest, this is my dream. Dreams, like yours, are for building upon. But as a dream slips from the mind as a sleeper wakes, so when you build upon your dreams you will find the dream faces; what you will build will be new and fresh and original. And then even Raven may sleep in peace.”
He turned from the war-lord and walked out of the tent, into the cool sand-blown night. After a while a dog howled, and the tethered horses whickered at being disturbed.
By morning the old man was gone, and the tribe thought no more upon him, save to remember the wild and wonderful tale he had told.
A Time of Ghosts Page 22